The Vital Guide to Modern Warships

The modern warship is a complex vessel. In the last thirty years the pace of change and development has greatly increased as new technologies, including electronics, missiles, propulsion and hydrodynamics, have been applied to make each ship more effective than its predecessor. As in any form of warfare, there is a constant struggle to upset the balance between attack and defence, and the situation is made more complex by the fact that warships must basically fight in three separate environments: on the surface of the sea, under the surface and in the air above. Here, the reader is presented with a representative sample of modern warships although, in a book this size, it would be impossible to describe every type of warship in use. There are literally hundreds of warship and submarine classes in service today, so some type of selection has been necessary in order to reduce these to manageable proportions. In general, therefore, the most modern and up-to-date vessels are described, although it has been necessary to include some older ships where these have a particular operational significance. For example, many of the current US Navy aircraft carriers are over thirty years old but are still among the most powerful warships in existence. Some other major warship classes are included where they are operationally significant, despite being relatively long in the tooth.

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The Royal Navy in Focus 1940-49

To any Naval enthusiast the names of Mr Wright and Mr Logan are well known — they having taken many excellent photographs of H.M. Ships entering and leaving Portsmouth harbour. Their photographs have been used in a great variety of publications around the world. Some 14 years ago Mr Ron Forrest—an ex-R.A.F. photographer—purchased the business to continue his industrial and commercial photographic skills. In the early days of establishing his photographic business in Portsmouth—Naval photography was a very small part of that business. At the end of his working day the new owner would pass through a first floor room stacked from floor to ceiling with shelf after shelf of half-plate glass negatives. The subject matter was the same—Naval vessels of every type and from most of the world's navies. From the early 1920's most of the ships to arrive in Britain's premier Naval port were photographed—from tugs to battleships. These negatives, of such high quality, fired Ron Forrest's imagination. Since then most of his working life—and spare time—has been spent preserving and printing these historic photographs. At the same time he has continued the Wright and Logan tradition of recording on film the arrival of warships at Portsmouth and other south coast ports. The collection gets bigger daily. Future generations will no doubt gaze at the photographs taken today as we do at these photographs of a bygone age.

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The New Navy 1883-1922

By the 1870s the huge Navy of the Civil War was a memory, most of its ships sold or broken up. A small collection of obsolete steam frigates and sloops flew the nation's flag in foreign ports. The United States Navy compared poorly with other countries' new and modern ships. During this period, the Navy used the subterfuge of repairing old vessels to obtain new ships. Efforts by naval officers to get appropriations for new ships fell on deaf ears until 1882 when Congress authorized three cruisers and a despatch vessel, the first ships of the New Navy. The success of their efforts can be credited to Secretary of the Navy William Chandler and his predecessor William Hunt. The following year, funds were authorized and the Office of Naval Intelligence was established. At the same time, Congress authorized the condemnation of all ships for which the cost of repairs was too great (i.e., greater than the original cost). Under this law, forty-six ships were stricken from the Navy List. Of these, eight were incomplete, some of which had been on the ways for more than twenty years and one since 1815.

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The Battle of the Atlantic - The Royal Canadian Navy's Greatest Campaign 1939-45

The Canadian navy's large contribution in the Battle of the Atlantic was critical to Allied victory in the Second World War. After the fall of France, the Low Countries and Norway to the German and Italian forces in the spring of 1940. the only Allied foothold in Europe was the British Isles. Britain's survival depended almost completely upon the transport of supplies, equipment and troops from North America across the Atlantic ocean in merchant ships. The Germans and, for a time, the Italians, endeavoured to sever this lifeline by sinking merchant ships with their rapidly expanding submarine fleets that operated from bases in France, close by the shipping routes to Britain. Canada's east coast ports played an important part in supplying Britain right from the first days of the war because they were the North American harbours closest to Europe. Canada, however, had a tiny navy that was able to do little more than help Britain's Royal Navy protect the sea routes off Canada and Newfoundland against long-range German warships. With the fall of France in 1940, Canada rushed most of its warships to Britain, and accelerated the construction of anti-submarine warships, a huge achievement given the fact that the shipbuilding industry had scarcely existed in 1939. There was no other choice, because the United States was still neutral, and Canada was Britain's largest ally.

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Mine Warfare Vessels of the Royal Navy 1908 to Date

For many decades the navigable waters of the world have been traversed by ships of all nations in peace and in war. and during the peace ships have foundered by stress of storm far loo often. With the commencement of war. the hazards of the sea are increased many times by reason of the weapon known as the sea mine, or mine. The evolution of the mine is dealt with briefly later in this chapter, but despite the swept channels, the seas are still dangerous today from mines that have been laid by ships of many nations. In the early 20th century the British Admiralty decided that the threat from the weapon of the weaker power, for such was the mine described, was now too well known and foreseen on too large a scale to be ignored. Consequently, in 1908 the Board decided that a number of the smaller vessels of the Fleet such as ships of the 'Alarm', 'Dryad' and 'Sharpshooter' classes should be converted into minesweepers. From information gained by the trials and experimentation with the purchased trawler Oropesa II and its minesweeping gear, additional trawlers were purchased from commercial owners.

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Churchill's Navy - The Ships, Men And Organisation 1939-1945

The navy's troubles continued in peacetime. An arms race with the United States threatened, but the politicians and taxpayers were not prepared to pay for it and forced the navy to accept the Washington Treaty in 1922. Battleship strength, still regarded as the main determinant of naval power, was to be equal between Britain and the United States, France, Italy and Japan had their fleets regulated to a proportion of that size, while Germany was still allowed only a very small and limited fleet. The Americans were happy to be granted parity with Britain, and parity with France was welcomed by the Italians. However, the French were very unhappy with the demotion to a naval power of the third rank, and the Royal Navy was devastated at the blow to its prestige. Like the Americans and the French it took the treaty limits very seriously, with two long-term effects. The navy needed as many cruisers as possible to maintain patrols in an empire that was even more widespread than ever, but tended to build them as small as possible to keep up the numbers. And it spent a great deal of its limited budgets on ship construction, leaving little for updating the accommodation of its ships, for antisubmarine warfare, or for naval base facilities. Nevertheless the treaties were reaffirmed at London in 1930.

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British Warships & Auxiliaries

The 1998 Strategic Defence Review is seeking to strengthen the public perception of the role of the services by reviewing and revising the core national interests, but in truth the outcome is yet another rationalisation of defence cuts by playing to the long term (which can always be reviewed again), by invoking the spirit of more combined service co-operation (which gives an illusion of savings and always at the expense of espirit de corps), and doing little to reinforce capabilities which are urgently needed now. Of these, top of the naval list is the replacement air defence ship, cocooned in a rigid collaborative project with the French and Italians, which is proving to be a strong competitor for the longest, most expensive and least effective international naval project in history. You might think that something would have been learned from the NATO frigate fiasco of the early 1990's, but politically, collaboration is always seen as good news and bureaucrats everywhere enjoy the opportunities for establishing international relationships. The Treasury is happy because the spending of serious money is constantly delayed and the only people who suffer are the industries which need the work and, most important of all, the sailors who have to deploy to dangerous places with obsolete technology. Project Horizon is becoming a scandal, and it is to be hoped that the political courage exists in the UK, which of the three countries involved has by far the largest and most urgent requirement for new air defence ships, to break the shackles and actually place some contracts with the shipyards. This can probably only be done by shifting to the looser collaborative format so successfully used by Germany, Netherlands and Spain.

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Birth of the Battleship - British Capital Ship Design 1870-1881

These two interpretative tendencies go hand-in-hand, and are indeed closely connected. The fleets of the period 1860-90, Britain's included, were, in the words of a charitable authority, 'some of the strangest collections ever assembled, reflecting not only a rapid series of technical inventions but a state of anarchy in the ideas of naval architecture.' As such, the tendency to focus on the ships' technological characteristics, reinforced by the peaceful service lives of most of them, is scarcely surprising. Moreover, the ships of the 1870s and 1880s stand in stark contrast to those of the 1890s, whose design had stabilised and whose numbers grew rapidly, the consequence of greatly increased funding and a public increasingly stimulated by navalist propaganda. In other words, modern perceptions of the mid-Victorian British battlefleet are almost unavoidably coloured by comparison to that which followed in the 1890s. The ships have been criticised by subsequent standards, and, not surprisingly, they have been found wanting. At best they have been seen as curios, blending some characteristics of pre-Dreadnought capital ships with inexplicable hold-overs from earlier days—sails, most prominently. At worst they have been dismissed as bizarre evolutionary dead-ends: Neanderthals of naval architecture, doomed to extinction by the march of enlightened progress and modern technology.

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Anatomy of the Ship - The Battlecruiser Hood

Between the two World Wars the Royal Navy operated against a background of financial restrictions, a strong campaign for naval disarmament and a widely held belief that the battleship had been made obsolete by aircraft and submarines. This led the Admiralty to court public support by promoting its belief in the battlefleet, and emphasising the quality of its ships, men and equipment. Of these ships Hood, more than any other, lent herself to a public relations exercise. Apart from the endless lists of amazing facts which could always be produced for a battle unit, she was the largest, fastest and one of the most handsome capital ships in the world. Early in her career, being the newest and most prestigious ship of the fleet, she was employed on several international assignments as a representative of the British Empire, culminating in 'showing the flag' on a grand scale in the world cruise of 1923-24, and for most of her life she enjoyed the glamorous status of flagship of the battiecruiser force. Thus she became one of the major symbols of the Royal Navy, a position she would no doubt have occupied without Admiralty help, and was held in high regard by both the British public and the men of the Fleet to whom she was affectionately known as "the mighty 'ood". Little wonder that the news of her destruction in action with the German batdeship Bismarck in May 1941 was received with shocked disbelief throughout the country.

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Coastal Command 1939-45

The RAF's maritime role went back to World War 1, when coastal squadrons of the Royal Naval Air Service performed useful anti-submarine work, spotting for convoy escorts and harassing U-boats in the North Sea. In April 1918 a unified Royal Air Force was created when the RNAS was amalgamated with the Royal Flying Corps. By this time many air stations had been established around the coast of Britain, and the value of aircraft in protecting seaborne trade had been well demonstrated. Though lacking the weaponry to do any real damage to enemy U-boats (only one is believed to have actually been sunk by an aircraft acting alone), the effectiveness of the coastal squadrons as a 'scarecrow' force was certainly appreciated by the Royal Navy. Sadly this potential was not to be developed in the austere years that followed. Instead, with the 'war to end all wars' over, the RAF in particular suffered huge cutbacks in its strength and underwent a major re-organisation. By the end of 1919 three separate geographic commands or 'Areas' — Northern, Southern and Coastal — had been formed. Coastal Area was responsible for what was left of the RAFs coastal squadrons, as well as the contingents of fleet-spotters and reconnaissance aircraft assigned to Royal Navy ships (the nucleus of the Fleet Air Arm). In 1920 Northern and Southern Areas merged to form a single Inland Area. By 1924 Coastal Area had only 29 operational aircraft, all of which were flying boats.

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Walkaround 36 - UH-1 Huey Gunships

One of six Bell YH-40 service test aircraft makes a test flight in the late 1950s. The YH-40s followed the three XH-40 prototypes, the first of which made its initial flight from Hurst. Texas on 22 October 1956. These aircraft introduced the recognizable Huey profile that was continued through successive models. Employing a turbine engine helped Bell meet the Army's 1953 requirements for a new utility helicopter. This aircraft was painted overall Aluminum (FS17178). The HU-1A led to the HU-1B (later UH-1B), whose many improvements included armament provisions. Shortly after the B's first flight on 27 April 1960. the US Army awarded Bell a contract for the HU-1D (later UH-1D), which was designed for the troop transport role. The third of seven YUH-1Ds (60-6030. left) faces an HU-1 B (60-3618) from the first production batch.

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Air Pictorial 1958 01

THE space age has begun! The launching of the two Russian Sputniki is an indication that emphasis is passing from aeronautics to astronautics. Having mastered the air, man is now taking the first steps towards the conquest of space—a much more difficult task. As we shall see, the difficulties are such that it is unlikely that manned space flight in even its simplest aspects will take place for some years yet. But with two Russian surprises following in swift succession it would be unwise to make any definite statement concerning the time scale for the development of spaceflight. There may be other surprises in store for us, and things happen so rapidly that it is not unlikely that this article may be out of date by the time it appears in print. These "surprises" are only such as regards their existence and timing: the practicability of satellites and spaceflight has been known for several decades and the details of various projects have been worked out by the British Interplanetary Society, the American Rocket Society, the Gesell-schaft fur Weltraumforschung, and other members of the International Astronautical Federation. The trend of future developments can be seen today; how soon they come about depends only on the effort and money which governments are prepared to expend in this field.

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