Seventy Years Ago: Battle Of Rennell Island

The first six months of the war in the Pacific were fought mostly with ships, planes and men already in the Pacific when Pearl Harbor was attacked. They had been worked up to a high state of combat readiness by their fleet commander, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel. Even after Kimmel was relieved of duty following the attack, the surviving forces acquitted themselves well.

The Pacific Fleet was hard pressed. They had lost four of their six large aircraft carriers in combat, and the remaining two, USS Saratoga and USS Enterprise,  were just returning from extensive repair.

Some Pacific Fleet assets had been diverted to the Atlantic for the invasion of North Africa. That invasion now over, ships were moving through the Panama Canal to reinforce the Pacific.



That was the good news. The bad news is that the ships, their officers and their admirals weren't accustomed to operating in the Pacific. Not only was the tactical challenge different from the Atlantic, there was a less tangible difference of attitude.

The Atlantic Fleet was a "spit and polish" outfit. The Pacific Fleet was more a "get the job done" operation. That was especially true of the aviators and submariners.

RADM Giffen's Formation

RADM Robert C. "Ike" Giffen, a favorite of Atlantic Fleet Commander Admiral King, had just arrived in the Southwest Pacific with heavy cruiser USS Wichita and escort carriers Chenango and Suwanee, all having just completed the invasion of North Africa.

Giffen had experience against German submarines, but none against Japanese naval air forces. He also had very limited experience operating aircraft carriers. The two escort carriers were slow. Converted oilers, they could make no more than 18 knots. Worse than that, the wind was from the southeast, opposite from the direction Giffen needed to go.

Giffen had no concept of Japanese naval skills at operating both warships and aircraft at night.

Giffen's task force of three heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, eight destroyers and two escort carriers left Efate January 29. Destination: Guadalcanal by way of Rennell Island. Mission: Support a four-ship resupply mission for the marines, then sweep up through the "slot" to find and destroy Japanese ships.

Giffen ordered radio silence. Japanese submarines and aircraft tracked the force from the time it left Efate.

Louisville Towing Chicago

Under the circumstances, strict radio silence made little sense. The ships used their air and surface search radars, which the Japanese could detect at about the same range as the UHF radios used for line of sight communications. Most importantly, this order prevented the cruisers from communicating with the aircraft launched by the carriers.

Early the afternoon of January 29, Giffen worried that he wouldn't be at his rendezvous point on time. He ordered the two carriers, along with two destroyers, to continue at best speed, while the remainder of his force increased speed to 24 knots, remaining in a formation designed to protect against submarines rather than aircraft attack. Steaming at that speed increased the force's self noise so greatly as to render the sonar used to detect submarines nearly useless. It also announced the presence of the task force out to almost as great a distance as UHF radios would have.

Shortly after increasing speed, radar operators on the cruisers began picking up radar blips of unidentified aircraft ("bogies"). The US radars were equipped with an IFF feature to electronically distinguish friend from foe, but operators deemed it unreliable. To find out whether the radar blips were friendly or hostile aircraft would have required fighter-director personnel to send aircraft from the carriers to visually identify the aircraft. But they couldn't do so because of radio silence.

Radio silence made no sense.

At sunset, Giffen ceased zigzagging his force and proceeded on a set course to his rendezvous. The bogies were about sixty miles to the west, approaching fast. They were in fact hostile, Japanese twin-engine land-based bombers, armed with torpedoes. The Bettys maneuvered around Giffen's force and attacked from the east, where they sky was dark, but with Giffen's ships silhouetted against the evening twilight.

Giffen's ships put up a barrage of anti-aircraft fire, and the first wave of bombers did not damage any of the ships. USS Louisville was struck by a dud torpedo, but there was no damage. Giffen issued no orders, and the force continued as before.

A second Japanese air group dropped flares alongside Giffen's cruisers in the moonless night. At 7:38 pm, the lead Betty crashed in flames off USS Chicago's port bow, brightly silhouetting the ship for the following aircraft.

One air launched torpedo hit Chicago in the starboard side, flooding the after fire room. Two minutes later, another torpedo hit at number three fireroom. Three of the ship's four shafts stopped turning, the rudder jammed, and soon the ship was dead in the water. Another torpedo hit the flagship Wichita but did not explode.

Chicago's crew managed to control flooding with the list at 11 degrees. At first, they had only electrical power from the emergency diesel generator. Soon they were able to relight one boiler and generate more electricity to use more powerful pumps.

Giffen ordered USS Louisville to take Chicago in tow. By midnight, The tow was underway at three knots, headed for Espiritu Santo.

Problems With Outsourcing

Boeing's vaunted new Dreamliner aircraft have all been grounded, with no prospects for flying again until its battery problems are solved.

Just an unforeseeable problem? Not according to New Yorker's James Surowiecky.

In a recent article, Surowiecky lays the problem at the feet of Boeing's bean counters.

This sort of thing has happened before in American industry. When General Motors was taken over by accountants instead of engineers, this started a long decline in quality which eventually drove the company to bankruptcy.

W. Edwards Deming, whose management techniques were adopted by Japanese auto manufacturers in the 1950's, had no problem with outsourcing. But he did have a problem with outsourcing based price. He especially did not like short term contracts with multiple suppliers, a particularly favorite of bean counters.

We have outsourced government functions, prisons, military operations, etc. all under the illusion that this will save money.

In Boeing's case, it demonstrably cost money. And reduced quality.

The whole approach needs another look at all levels of government and industry.

Should We Worry About Wind Farms And The Marines?

Today's County Compass reports a brouhaha resulting from a request by representatives of Cherry Point MCAS to appear before a joint session of the Pamlico County Board of Commissioners to discuss wind farms. Commissioner Delamar, who has supported wind farms in Pamlico County, voted against the meeting. His was the only vote against it.

I plan to attend the meeting. I hope to hear from the Cherry Point representatives an informative discussion examining potential problems, including a technical explanation, along with proposed solutions. I want to see some empirical data backed by research. I would hope that an expert from NRL might appear. If the proposed solution is not to have wind farms in Pamlico County, I will be very disappointed.

One commissioner is quoted as saying "the Marine Corps deserve our respect just based on who they are." I share that commissioner's high regard for the marines. At the same time, I would hope that our marines are bending every effort to insure that we can share the land, sea and air space of Eastern North Carolina without precluding other future economic development in the region.

By the way, we should all recognize that effective alternate energy sources to replace the burning of fossil fuels is an urgent national security priority. In fact, the Department of the Navy (including the marines) has taken the lead in DOD in fostering alternate energy development.

I gather that the marines share a concern of a number of government agencies that wind farms present a particular challenge to radars, including air search and air control radars, including doppler radars for meteorology. The fundamental concern is radar clutter.

Clutter has been a major challenge for radar designers from the earliest days. Dealing with clutter has generated an alphabet soup of anti-clutter measures: STC, AGC, FTC, IAGC, MTI, frequency agility, circular polarization, Moving Target Detector, Pulse-Doppler Systems, and on and on. Clutter presents some of the same challenges as are presented by electronic and mechanical jamming.

Solving particular problems of clutter from wind farms may not be trivial, but is certainly surmountable.

The following is an executive summary of a 2008 report by The MITRE Corporation, one of our premier defense contractors with experience in this area.

Wind Farms And Radar

January 2008

The MITRE Corporation


1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

"Wind farms interfere with radar. This interference has led the FAA,
the DHS, and the DOD to contest many proposed wind turbines in the line
of sight of radar, stalling development of several thousands of MW of wind
energy. A large number of such denials is a serious impediment to the nation’s
mandated growth of sustainable energy.

"There is no fundamental physical constraint that prohibits the accu-
rate detection of aircraft and weather patterns around wind farms. On the
other hand, the nation’s aging long range radar infrastructure significantly
increases the challenge of distinguishing wind farm signatures from airplanes
or weather.

"Progress forward requires the development of mitigation measures, and
quantitative evaluation tools and metrics to determine when a wind farm
poses a sufficient threat to a radar installation for corrective action to be
taken. Mitigation measures may include modifications to wind farms (such
as methods to reduce radar cross section; and telemetry from wind farms to
radar), as well as modifications to radar (such as improvements in processing;
radar design modifications; radar replacement; and the use of gap fillers in
radar coverage).

"There is great potential for the mitigation procedures, though there
is currently no source of funding to test how proposed mitigations work in
practice. In general, the government and industry should cooperate to find
methods for funding studies of technical mitigations. NOAA has an excellent
research plan, but no adequate funding to carry it out.

"Once the potential for different mitigations are understood, we see no
scientific hurdle for constructing regulations that are technically based and
simple to understand and implement, with a single government entity tak-
ing responsibility for overseeing the process. In individual cases, the best
solution might be to replace the aging radar station with modern and flexi-
ble equipment that is more able to separate wind farm clutter from aircraft.
This is a win-win situation for national security, both improving our radar
infrastructure and promoting the growth of sustainable energy.

"Regulatory changes for air traffic could make considerable impact on
the problem. For example, the government could consider mandating that
the air space up to some reasonable altitude above an air-security radar
with potential turbine interference be a controlled space, with transponders
required for all aircraft flying in that space. This would both solve the
problem of radar interference over critical wind farms and would provide a
direct way to identify bad actors, flying without transponders.

"Current circumstances provide an interesting opportunity for improving
the aging radar infrastructure of the United States, by replacing radar that
inhibits the growth of wind farms with new, more flexible and more capable
systems, especially digital radar hardware and modern computing power.
Such improvements could significantly increase the security of U.S. airspace."

For what it's worth, in my opinion the Marine Corps needs to take the lead in getting this project budgeted. FAA, DHS, Air Force, Navy, DOD and perhaps some other agencies should chip in.

This is not an optional program. We urgently need more renewable energy sources. The cost of failure to control global warming and allowing the sea level to rise is incalculable. It is already threatening Norfolk, VA. Projected sea level rise of one meter later in this century will make my home unlivable - and those of many other Pamlico County residents as well. One meter this century may well be an underestimate.

There is no single silver bullet. We need to explore every avenue.

Not just for the residents of Eastern North Carolina, but for the marines as well.

Senate Reforms

The good news is that the United States senate adopted some reformed procedures to tackle grid lock.

The bad news is that the changes were pretty weak and unlikely to do the job.

I could be wrong.

But I don't think so.

The Specter Of Greed

There is a specter haunting America. Like many apparitions, it is also sometimes an object of religious devotion.

It is the specter of greed.

This specter is said by some to be in our own self interest. The reason why we are in the best of all possible worlds. It is why, we are told, we must exalt the "makers" (and facilitate their greed) and demean the "takers."

More than a century ago, the wealthy justified their greed by the authority of Darwinian evolution - the survival of the fittest. Now it is often justified by the revelations of Ayn Rand and her acolytes. But always there is a genuflection in the direction of Adam Smith and the "invisible hand," where "self interest" results in the greatest good for the greatest number.

What could be better than that?

But that isn't what Smith means, at all. What he really means is that the bargains that put dinner on the table, clothes on our backs and roofs over our heads, must be in the interest of everyone involved. Not a one-way bargain, "red in tooth and claw," but mutual bargains. Smith explains: “Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer, and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of” (WN I.ii.2: p 26)

Gavin Kennedy provides a fuller explanation here.

Bottom line: cooperation works better than compulsion.

Seventy Years Ago: Eleanor Roosevelt's Diary

January 22, 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt travels from Washington to Christen the new USS Yorktown. She christened the first one in 1936 at Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock. As Mrs. Roosevelt explained, Yorktown (CV-5) gave a good account of herself in the war, but was lost at the battle of Midway. Now she was to christen the second one, USS Yorktown (CV-10), the second new large aircraft carrier of the Essex class, also built at Newport News. Here are Mrs. Roosevelt's thoughts on that occasion about the US shipbuilders.

The second Yorktown  had a distinguished record in World War II, Korea, Viet Nam and in the Apollo program. She is still afloat, having been decommissioned in 1970 and in 1975 becoming a museum ship at Patriot's Point, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. She is a National Historic Landmark.

Seventy Years Ago: New Guinea

January 19, 1942, the Charlotte (NC) News reports news from New Guinea that MacArthur's forces have captured the Japanese stronghold of Sanananda on the north coast of Papua.

The report was only slightly premature. It was to take the Allied armies of the United States and Australia two more days to finally capture Sanananda, Buna and Gona. This effectively ended any imminent Japanese threat to Port Moresby, where the 27th Air Depot Group was hacking out a major aircraft repair facility from the jungle.

Casualties were more than twice as high as for American forces on Guadalcanal. One in eleven troops fighting in New Guinea died, compared to one in 37 on Guadalcanal.

Gnomes Of Frankfurt

The Deutsche Bundesbank wants its gold back. At least they want back half of their gold reserves presently held by the New York Fed.

Will we soon be talking about the "gnomes of Frankfurt" instead of the "gnomes of Zurich?"

Do I hear echos of The Hobbit? "My precioussss!"

What is the Bundesbank up to? Economist Antonio Fatas wonders.

"I am really curious," Fatas writes,  "about what (doomsday) scenarios [Bundesbank Board member Thiele]...has in mind"  when he explains:"to hold gold as a central bank creates confidence. We build trust at home and have the possibility to exchange gold at short notice into foreign currency abroad."  Fatas asks what circumstances the Germans fear "where the gold reserves of the Bundesbank would become crucial to restore confidence. By the way, the gold reserves of the Bundesbank which at 130 Billion Euros are large compared to other central banks seem small compared to many other magnitudes that matter in financial markets, more so during crisis time. And I am assuming that these scenarios are catastrophic, otherwise why would gold be needed to buy foreign currency. And given that they are thinking that those scenarios are likely, is there anything that they are planning to deal with them?"

John Maynard Keynes is supposed to have observed ninety or so years ago, that "gold is a barbarous relic."

The "gold bugs" of his day and of our own have never forgiven him.

The Washington Post offers one possible explanation for the Bundesbank's action. The Post article also explains why such a move is quite rare. It turns out to be much easier to move some gold bars from one nation's cage to another cage to keep track of transactions than to ship the bars across oceans.

So the actual gold bars are used much like poker chips or other tokens.

The natives of Yap figured out a similar scheme long ago:

 

It turns out that stone tokens work just as well as gold bars.