HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: seb@tadtec.co.uk
Subject: Re: Jutland
Organization: NCR Corporation -- Law Department
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 17:35:35 GMT


From seb@tadtec.co.uk

The comments posted earlier about Jellicoe's performance at Jutland seem
unfairly harsh.  Jellicoe was well-known to be "the only man who could lose
the war in an afternoon".  This was probably a true sentiment - true on
either side!

The initial assesment of Jutland was that it had been a British defeat
(although this was played down in any official comments at the time, of
course) but subsequent events and analysis suggested a fairer verdict was a
marginal British victory.  Consider the following:
i)  A few days after Jutland, the British fleet was still had substantially
more     
    battleships able to put to sea than the Germans.
ii) After Jutland, the German fleet never ventured to sea again.

If the German fleet had been *destroyed* (or at least seriously damaged),
then landings on the Dutch coast line might have become feasible.  Would
this have substantially shortened the war (in particular, ending it before
the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, one of the points of the original
post)?  I very much doubt it.

The British fleet's performance *was* fairly abysmal, but to blame the
failure to inflict greater damage on the Germans on Jellicoe...  What were
the major failings on the British part?

i)  Failure to communicate contact reports adequately or at all
ii) Poor gunnery
iii) Battlecruisers blowing up.

Communications were mainly done by flag signals.  What flags were flown
tended to be obscured by all the smoke from a couple of hundred
coal-burning ships ploughing up the ocean.  The cruiser and battlecruiser
commanders repeatedly failed to report what the enemy were doing & those
reports they did make were *not* exactly models of clarity.

Poor gunnery was at least in part due to minimal practise due to a desire
to keep costs down.  A classic case of "for a ha'porth of tar".  I seem to
remember that German procedures were better, too, but I can't remember
details of the differences (I'm at work, far away from source books).  Was
it that centralised gunnery directors were used by the Germans?

"There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today", to quote
Beatty, who was commanding the battlecruisers.  It's thought the problem
was fire-flashes going down ammunition hoists & into the magazines.  The
Germans had apparently had a very narrow escape at the Battle of Dogger
Bank earlier in the war and had made modifications to overcome the problem.
 The British weren't aware of the problem prior to Jutland, so no
modifications.  Boom!  Oh, look, there goes another battlecruiser...

Steve Barber, speaking for himself.


Newsgroups: sci.military
From: ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Iskandar Taib)
Subject: Re: Marine Aircover <was New Carrier Plan>
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 19:55:46 GMT


From ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Iskandar Taib)

In article <Bx3oKt.2t8@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> Dan Sorenson <viking@iastate.edu> writes:
>
>From Dan Sorenson <viking@iastate.edu>
>
|Joel Upchurch <joel@peora.sdc.ccur.com| writes:
|
||It isn't obvious to me that the the acceleration and jolt that a shell
||experiences in 16 inch gun would be higher than that of say a 155mm
||field gun. It might not even be as high. The pressures on the base of
||a 16 inch shell must be something incredible, but I'm not sure to what
||extent that would effect an electronics package on the front of the
||shell.
|
|	The accelleration rate has to be higher if you're going to get
|it to fly 20+ miles (compared to 3/4 of that in a 155, let's say).  That
|accelleration is what's hard on the electronics, especially as it will
|go from let's say 20G's accelleration to zero instantly once the shell
|clears the muzzle.  Thus, you'll have to make the electronics survive.
|I'm not saying it's particularly problematic, but those electronics
|will force a trade-off in explosive, expense, and reliability.

Not necessarily. The barrel of the battleship's gun is far longer, so
you have more time to get the projectile up to speed even if accelera-
tion is comparable. Then theres the ballistic coefficient to take into 
account. A battleship shell has much more sectional density than a 
howitzer shell, so it gets slowed down a lot less by drag. Same reason
why you get far more range out of a .50 BMG projectile compared to a 
.223 M-16 bullet, even though muzzle velocities are comparable.

||I'm not sure about the rifling thing. Are Cooperhead shells fired out
||of unrifled barrels? I wouldn't think so, since it would take a
||special gun, but I might be wrong.

Didn't they have to do something similar to fire finned HEAT rounds out 
of rifled tank guns? Something like mounting a rotating sleeve on ball
bearings..

You could lessen the problem by eliminating the rotating bands on the 
shell, or perhaps use mount the rotating bands like the sleeve above...




-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iskandar Taib                          | The only thing worse than Peach ala
Internet: NTAIB@SILVER.UCS.INDIANA.EDU |    Frog is Frog ala Peach
Bitnet:   NTAIB@IUBACS                 !

Newsgroups: sci.military,soc.history
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker)
Subject: 50 Years Ago: Monday, 2 November, 1942
Followup-To: soc.history
Organization: NCR Corporation -- Law Department
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 16:05:18 GMT


From military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker)

Monday, 2 November, 1942

Operation Supercharge, the second phase of Montgomery's attack on the Axis
line at El Alamein, succeeds.  The 15th Panzer Division inflicts heavy
losses on the British armor, but by the day's end the German divisions can
muster only 35 tanks and are critically short of fuel and ammunition.
Rommel informs Hitler that he must withdraw.

Australian troops recapture Kokoda, New Guinea.  The town's airfield
greatly enhances the supply situation; the difficult mountain trails had
limited the provisions which could be sent to the soldiers.

Fighting in Stalingrad continues, but the German drive has lost its
momentum in the face of stiff Soviet resistance.

--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--	--
Bill Thacker   Moderator, sci.military  military-request@att.att.com
(614) 860-5294      Send submissions to military@att.att.com

"Face, priceless to the Japanese, had to be saved regardless of cost, and
this portended, if nothing else did, an attempt to recapture Guadalcanal."
- Admiral William V. Pratt, USN, Retired
Newsgroups: sci.military
From: Markus Stumptner <mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at>
Subject: Re: Opinion on Japan being "forced" to attack
Organization: NCR Corporation -- Law Department
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 19:48:54 GMT


From Markus Stumptner <mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at>

>From Mike Fester <island!fester@uunet.uu.net>
> I was under the impression that we got the Phillipines from Spain, rather than
> "liberating them by colonizing them". The Phillipines were already colonized
> by the time we wandered into the area.

Nice euphemisms. "We got the Philippines from Spain."  If that is not
treating a country as a colony, I don't know what is.  "Wandering into
the area."  Dewey was in Manila Bay because someone influential in the
State Department (a friend or close acquaintance of Dewey, sorry,
don't recall the name) had decided that the Philippines might be up
for grabs and that it would be nice if the US could get them.  Dewey
did not "wander" there, he sailed there with a specific goal in mind.

The Philippines were ceded by Spain to the US as part of the peace
treaty after the Spanish-American War, which had been fought over the
liberation of Cuba from Spanish suppression.  The Philippines were not
liberated, they were, as the Filipinos saw it, simply swapped from one
colonial oppressor to another.  They did indeed expect to be liberated
as a result of the peace talks.  When they were not, there was an
armed uprising which was bloodily suppressed by the US military.

Note that I'm not saying that the US were worse than others in that
respect.  This happened in the same period as the Boxer uprising or
the Boer War.  During the Spanish-American War, Germany had a cruiser
squadron in position in the Pacific ready to annex the Philippines if
nobody else did.  But the point remains that US behavior was quite
indistinguishable from that of other colonial powers.

> whereas
> the US took over a colony, and immediately made plans to give that colony its
> independance.

Which means that they immediately decided not to make that colony
independent, except when they would finally feel like it.  They "took
over a colony."  They kept it a colony.  And they fought a bloody
guerilla war too keep it a colony.  If the plans for liberating were
"immediately" announced and finally implemented two generations later,
then that first announcement was a joke.

--
Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert!mst@relay.eu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst



Newsgroups: sci.military
From: mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us
Subject: Re: WWII Japanese Carriers (was Re: WWII -- Why didn't Japan invade Hawaii?)
Summary: Fuel shortage and ship losses
Organization: :
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1992 17:25:13 GMT


From mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us

In article <Bwu9wA.Bx4@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM>, swilliam@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Steve Williams) writes:
 
> The problem with Taiho and other future Japanese carriers (after Shokaku
> and Zuikaku) ... Japan needed to build more aircraft carriers as quickly
> as possible, with limited resources.  ...  To complicate 
> things further, the Japanese Navy had serious shortages of qualified 
> pilots, aircrafts (for pilot training), and aviation gasoline.

> ...
 
> Even the Shinano, a Yamato-class battleship converted into the largest 
> carrier in WW2, sank as result of an attack by an American submarine 
> without participating in any battle ...

I recall reading somewhere (Morrison's _Two Ocean War_?) that the loss of
sea lanes and tankers forced Japan to fuel her ships with crude; the high
volatile content of the crude filled the ships with combustible fumes and
led to the loss of several vessels.
-- 
 (This man's opinions are his own.)
 From mole-end				Mark Terribile

 mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us, Somewhere in Matawan, NJ
From: tom@dtint.dtint.com (Thomas R. Kimpton)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: What did he do??
Date: 11 Nov 92 17:26:48 GMT
Organization: Digital Technology, International


From "Thomas R. Kimpton" <tom@dtint.dtint.com>

In article <Bwy40F.DAz@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> randy@ms.uky.edu (Randy Appleton) writes:
>
>From randy@ms.uky.edu (Randy Appleton)
>
>                                   &    &    &
>>831.  Commander's court martial
>>     GOODFELLOW AFB, Texas (AFNS) -- The former commander of the Goodfellow
>>Training Center goes on trial Nov. 17 on charges involving pornography and
>>pornographic material.
>>     Col. James Maxwell is accused of conduct unbecoming of an officer for
>>using his personal computer to solicit, collect and distribute pornographic
>>material.
[deleted]
>
>Does anybody know what Col. Maxwell did?  From this descrption it
>sounds like he was a member of alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.
>
>Also, how full a newsfeed do the military bases get?  What kind of
>computers do they have?
>
>
>-Just curious
>-Randy
>
I don't know how things are now, but in the mid-70's Goodfellow AFB
was a training center for the military intelligence services, not
MI, but things like the Army Security Agency, Naval Security Group,
Air Force Security Service, etc. Security was tight, multi-layered,
and armed, inasmuch as they had all levels of classified material
being taught.  I suppose they wouldn't want the base commander of
such an operation being "compromised".  Sounds kind of lame, though.

Tom.

-- 
---
Tom Kimpton                            tom@dtint.dtint.com
Digital Technology Int.                (801)226-2984	
500 W. 1200 South, Orem UT, 84057      FAX (801) 226-8438
From: mdlouie@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Michael Louie)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: 50 Years Ago: Tuesday, 20 October, 1942
Date: 4 Nov 92 17:32:02 GMT
Organization: NCR Corporation -- Law Department


From Michael Louie <mdlouie@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>

>First Lord of the Admiralty Alexander reports to Britain's House of Commons
>that 530 German submarines have been sunk or damaged since the war's
beginning.
      ^^^

Is this figure correct? If so, that is A LOT of subs :)

---
Michael	Louie	     	                  
Univ. of Texas at Austin   
mdlouie@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Newsgroups: sci.military
From: janm@Moskva.docs.uu.se (Jan Mattsson)
Subject: Re: Montreux Treaty
Organization: Uppsala University
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 16:15:43 GMT


From janm@Moskva.docs.uu.se (Jan Mattsson)

wwo@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (Thomas Schoene) writes:


>The Kuznetsov is officially a "Heavy aircraft-capable cruiser" thus dodging the
>requirements of the treaty. (oddly her sister-ship the Ulyanovsk is designated
>as an "air defense aircraft carrier" but the issue is unlikely to arise since
>she doesn't seem likely to leavy the Black Sea in anyting resembling a
>completed state.)

I believe the sister ship of Admiral Kuznetsov is named Varyag.
Was Ulyanovsk an earlier name?

--
Jan Mattsson, CS student, Uppsala University, Sweden
janm@bern.docs.uu.se or janm@minsk.docs.uu.se

Newsgroups: sci.military
From: Markus Stumptner <mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at>
Subject: Re: Jutland
Organization: NCR Corporation -- Law Department
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 17:39:25 GMT


From Markus Stumptner <mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at>

>From article <BxEvtx.1AE@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM>, by john@sekrit.wpi.edu (John Stoffel):
> [...]  The German dreadnaught battleships had also
> suffered grieviously.  Konig, Markgraf  and Grosser Kurfurst all
> needed major refits when they returned to port and the German battle
> line could not have met the British at four weeks', let alone four
> hours' notice, except at risk of out right defeat.

...which of course meant nothing, since the British could not (or did
not dare to) take advantage of it.  As long as no immediate strategic
goal (e.g., some amphibious invasion or protection of a convoy) or a
subsequent battle with a weakened fleet is the result of a fleet
breaking off an engagement, ships with damage just mean the damage
will have to be repaired.  Sunk ships are gone for good.

The one and only decisive effect of Jutland was psychological: Scheer
was convinced he would not be able to whittle the British down to
size, and therefore refrained from provoking other engagements later
in the war.  With new British ships coming into service, the notch in
the Grand Fleet that had been cut at Jutland was filled out sometime
during 1917.

I did find it quite interesting at the time that Keegan, who started
out on psychological issues of warfare, ended up analyzing Jutland in
terms of number of hits to be repaired.

--
Markus Stumptner                                mst@vexpert.dbai.tuwien.ac.at
University of Technology Vienna                 vexpert!mst@relay.eu.net
Paniglg. 16, A-1040 Vienna, Austria             ...mcsun!vexpert!mst

Newsgroups: sci.military
From: bf469@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Twila Oxley Price)
Subject: Daisycutter
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 17:36:13 GMT


From bf469@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Twila Oxley Price)



AS I recall, this is not an FAE.  It is a GP or General Purpose Bomb,
basically high explosives in a case.  One was used in Desert Storm which
caused some Brits to believe we had nuked the site.  Don't know what the
poor Iraqi's thought.  A contact in the military said the item had passed
through his base enroute, and they were glad to get rid of it.  It took up
to much space. 
Bruce A. Price


Newsgroups: sci.military
From: ppugliese@pimacc.pima.edu
Subject: Re: WWI trench fighting 
Organization: NCR Corporation -- Law Department
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 19:11:28 GMT


From ppugliese@pimacc.pima.edu

In article <Bx97ox.2GI@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM>, jimd@sfu.ca (Jim Davies) writes:
> 
> From Jim Davies <jimd@sfu.ca>
> 
> Richard Pierson <fist@iscp.bellcore.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>From Richard Pierson <fist@iscp.bellcore.com>
> 
>>I remember reading years ago when they still taught the
>>older versions of world history how the german government
>>threw fits over the first US Marines to deploy to the trenches
>>in WWI, they were almost to a man equipped with Winchester
>>Model 12 Pump 12ga shotguns which were ideal for cleaning out
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>                 I always thought it was the model 1897 Winchester


I read somewhere that the Germans actually sent a protest to some
sort of organisation in Switzerland that was supposed to monitor 
adherence the the Geneva Accords. The author commented that he thought
it silly of them to protest the use of shotguns to clear bunkers when
the several armies (including the germans) were already using flame-
throwers!

PHIL


Newsgroups: sci.military
From: Fengxi Zhou <fengxi@prancer.eche.ualberta.ca>
Subject: Re: Marine Aircover <was New Carrier Plan>
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 19:36:01 GMT


From Fengxi Zhou <fengxi@prancer.eche.ualberta.ca>

drw@cbnewsg.cb.att.com ("david.r.wells") writes:
: 
: From "david.r.wells" <drw@cbnewsg.cb.att.com>
: 
: In article <Bx5CMu.IHM@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM> Steve Benz <tivoli!steveb@cs.utexas.edu> writes:
: >
: >I'd add the following.  First, there aren't all that many targets which
: >need to be shot with a 16" shell that are within 20-some miles of deep water.
: >
: 
: Except of course every port city in the world! Are you arguing that ports
: are not valuable targets? How 'bout Kharg Island? Is that worthless?
: It's loaded with SAMs, so it's not exactly an easy air target.
: 
: 				David Wells
:
Then the chances are it is loaded with shore-based anti-shipping missiles as
well.  French built exocets might not worry the captain of New Jersey too much
because of smallish warheads.  But Russian ones have 500+ kg warheads which can
smash a distroyer sized surface vessel with one hit.  And they are "cheap and
many".  It would be a pretty exciting scene on the radar screen.  Even Aegis
class cruisers would get their hands full by then.  Mind you, it's only 20-some
miles off the shore.  You don't get much time to react. 

Newsgroups: sci.military
From: eriks@lin.foa.se (Erik Svensson FOA2)
Subject: Re: Existence of THAAD (Was: Re: Need help finding datalink simulations (THAAD contractor))
Organization: FOA, Linkoping, Sweden
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 16:05:26 GMT


From eriks@lin.foa.se (Erik Svensson FOA2)


>From fcrary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary)

>>Is it
>>for "strategic" air defence or a bigger and better umbrella for advancing
>>ground forces or both?

>The current design calls for a fixed launch site able to defend
>targets within several hundred miles, so I guess it's a strategic
>air defence system.

Hmm, the system mock-up I saw at the AUSA show looked rather mobile to me. 
ALso, one of the design specs was that each component shold fit inside a C-130.
I think I'd call it mobile.


--
Erik Svensson			Research Officer
Guided Weapons Division		National Defense Research Establishment (FOA)
Stockholm			Sweden

net.address: 	eriks@fenix.lin.foa.se

"Another casualty of applied meta-physics!" -- Hobbes

Newsgroups: sci.military
From: sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu (Doug Mohney)
Subject: Re: Subs
Organization: Computer Aided Design Lab, U. of Maryland College Park
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1992 17:21:59 GMT


From sysmgr@king.eng.umd.edu (Doug Mohney)

In article <Bwy45w.DH3@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM>, "Sean J. Roc D'Arcy" <bphdarcy@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu> writes:
>
>From "Sean J. Roc D'Arcy" <bphdarcy@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu>
>
>In article <BwuA1w.C64@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM>, nak@cbvox.att.com (Neil A Kirby) writes...
>
>>>This might be a concern if the role wasn't deterent.  I would think that 
>>>the missle deck would be viewed as disposable in a nuclear launch 
>>>situation.  I don't believe the US has enough Tridents to reload and the
>>>need assumably would not be there.  But, you have an excellent point about 
>>>the exhaust gasses.  Maybe partial submergence is required, in which case 
>>>many more variables come into play.  
>> 
>I guess that maybe I wasn't all that clear here.  I literally meant that 
>the missle deck would not be needed in functional condition again.  I 
>didn't mean that the boat itself was meant to be disposable.  Its just that 
>we don't really have the quanity or logistic need to reload a boomer.

Well, no.

There were/are plans to reload boomers, even during a nuclear war. Washington
Post had a nice article about some more of the, er, practical aspects of a
limited nuclear war.

The shortage is not with the number of missiles available, but the warheads
fitted on top of them. Usually, you build x number of missiles + y of spares
for testing and reliablity. 

I don't have the specs in front of me, but there weren't as many Mk-whatever
warheads to fit on each Trident missile as spec'd, so they went to sea without
the full load-out of .. 12 (?) warheads. 

Later, safety studies deemed the D-5 Trident + Mk-whatever combo as "bad"
due to the basic design of cramming as many warheads on the bus as possible,
wrapping them AROUND the solid-fuel motor. 


                 Play in the intelluctual sandbox of Usenet 

  -- >                  SYSMGR@CADLAB.ENG.UMD.EDU                        < --

Newsgroups: sci.military
From: "Sean J. Roc D'Arcy" <bphdarcy@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu>
Subject: Re: All this F-14 Strike stuff (kinda wordy)
Organization: University at Buffalo
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 19:35:58 GMT


From "Sean J. Roc D'Arcy" <bphdarcy@ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu>

In article <BxB8J2.KxM@law7.DaytonOH.NCR.COM>, fengxi@prancer.eche.ualberta.ca (Fengxi Zhou) writes...

>: As to the F-117 I really can't guess what its original intent was (since 
>: I'm sure its still classified).
> 
>Whatever it was, it was not for air-to-air mission.  It has no radar, no gun
>(not that crutical, you may say), can't carry any AAM.  The best and only
>weapon in an AA engagement is stealth.  Once seen and locked on (very
>difficult, but impossible?), it is more or less dead already.  Those are what
>i learned in an air show through talking to a guy who flew this thing in the
>gulf war.  Comments in the braces are mine. 


Interesting that you would say this.  The US Government made public some 
time ago the fact that the F-117 DOES have air-to-air ability.  One 
possible udesign spec may have been to attack enemy radar suvailence 
planes.

The F-117 can also carry AAM.  They type and how they track and lock I have 
not seen, but the ovious Sidewinder comes to mind.  I have a feeling the 
guy you talked with was eithrer a.) a pilot-wanna-be or b.) was following 
orders not to mention and to possibly deny any F-117 abilities except those 
the are already known to the public.

SJRD

Newsgroups: sci.military