One can't help but think that Morty was... um... overcompensating for something.
One of those things that nobody ever thinks about is bomb aerodynamics. I mean regular people, that is. The military, they think about things like that all the time. After all, when you strap something to the bottom of a wing, it's usually a really good idea to make sure it's not going to have the airflow of an apartment building. Also, when you drop something from an airplane, it makes it a lot easier to hit what you're aiming at if you know how the thing is going to "fly". Fall. Plummet. You know what I mean.
But of course, there's a catch: getting the darn thing into the sky in the first place. If it's got more drag than RuPaul on Halloween, strapping it to a wing may not be good for the plane or pilot's long-term survival chances. Putting it in the bomb bay of a larger plane sounds good, until you actually drop it and you haven't the faintest idea what's going to happen next. If it tumbles instantly upon the application of an airflow, it's a bad idea to find that out at altitude after it rips your tail off.
So what's an aerial ordinance designer to do? Well that's just easy as pie: get it into the air without an airplane! Easy! Except we're talking about something 500, 1000, 2000 pounds in weight... you can't just pick it up and throw it like a baseball. Well, I can't, maybe you can. 500lbs is the weight of a 10" naval shell, 2000lbs is closer to a 16" battleship round. So what's a good way to do it?
Meet the Little David, a 36" caliber mortar! Yes, a three FOOT diameter barrel. You put an aerial bomb into a... kind-of sabot thingy... and voop! You've got a way to get an aerial bomb into the air without endangering an aircraft. It didn't have much of a range considering the size involved, less than 10km, and accuracy came down to "over there somewhere", but that's not what the US military was wanting anyway.
Until people began to realize that that the Japanese were turning the home islands into a fortress, and then they began to look at the Little David as a bunker buster of extreme proportions. The Powers That Be developed a 36" shell, weighing over 3600 pounds, for the mortar. Problem was that neither the accuracy nor the range was ever improved, and it was never what you could call "portable." See that wall the guy is standing in front of? That's a concrete and steel base that had to be buried for stability purposes that the mortar itself would be placed into... the FORTY TON mortar and the FORTY-SIX TON base.
Of course the invasion of Japan never occurred, and people quietly retired Little David as a weapon. Only one of the six built exists today, and it's on display at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland.
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 30, 2019 10:33 PM (Id/Jh)
6
My first thought was "you went to war to gain access to resources.. here, have lots and lots of steel, express delivery."
Watching that video, especially where the crewmen were working in line with the muzzle while ramming in a live charge, then just standing around while the shell slid down the barrel... yikes. If something went wrong, they'd be finding bits of that crew in the next county.
Posted by: David at October 31, 2019 03:37 PM (A/T0R)
First, when dropping bombs, they can also get caught up in the airflow around the plane, and instead of falling, hug the bottom of the aircraft. This is what is known as a Bad Thing. A friend of mine who was working on early GPS systems told me that the engineers of GPS autopilots didn't quite understand bomb dropping dynamics, not being pilots of having dropped any bombs. The bug he caught probably saved a lot of pilot's lives. The engineers treated the bomb drop like just another waypoint, meaning that a turn could start immediately after. This runs into that whole "Bad thing" thing. you have to continue on for a short time in order for the bomb to clear the wind envelope around the plane.
Second, the concept of a ground-fired bomb hasn't gone away. The Military is working on a system that will launch the standard Small Diameter Bomb from artillery, and that is a GPS-guided bomb. One range figure I've heard bandied about either as a capability or a goal is 80 miles.
Posted by: Mauser at October 31, 2019 05:24 PM (Ix1l6)
Sherman! Set the WABAC Machine to go to...The USS Vesuvius! Using pneumatic launchers to fire 'dynamite' rounds is...Well, pretty useless for naval combat. However, is seemed to be useful for shore bombardment.
Second, the concept of a ground-fired bomb hasn't gone away. The Military is working on a system that will launch the standard Small Diameter Bomb from artillery, and that is a GPS-guided bomb. One range figure I've heard bandied about either as a capability or a goal is 80 miles.
I thought the SDB was being tested with the rocket motors from MLRS units (Because somehow cluster munitions is eviler than thou.). Extending the range of regular artillery round has been a slow project over the last few decades, as the Navy discovered when the ERGM project was failed. I do admit to liking the big 8" howitzers and guns that the Army no longer has.
Posted by: cxt217 at November 01, 2019 03:25 PM (LMsTt)
9
I wonder if that B-17 lost half its horizontal stabilizer to a normally falling bomb from a higher aircraft in the 'box' rather than to one of its own bombs, but indeed, weapons separation is a tricky thing, and a very important one.
Modern fighters, which can carry all sorts of ordnance and (hopefully) launch it at a variety of attitudes, altitudes, speeds, and g vectors, have got to be a worst case.
The A-5 Vigilante, which was supposed to have carried its bombs internally (linked to a couple of auxiliary fuel tanks, also indoors) and sort of pooped them out the back rather than opening bomb-bay doors underneath, presented a different kind of problem. From what I've read, they never did this with live weapons in operational service, partly because of reliability; partly, in those pre-JDAM days, because accuracy, which counts for something even with nukes, was... charitably described as modest.
Posted by: Ad absurdum per aspera at November 04, 2019 05:51 PM (8TunF)
10
Unka Ad, that's exactly what happened to it. If I remember the story correctly, the dropping plane was out of position, perhaps from damage, perhaps from avoiding another plane.
I just couldn't find a picture of a plane that lost part of its construction to self-dropped ordinance that I liked. Artistic license and all that.
Posted by: Wonderduck at November 06, 2019 05:20 PM (EXhwA)
11
Hard to tell with the resolution of the picture, but the port wing seems to me to be not looking too healthy either.
Posted by: AlanL at November 17, 2019 07:09 AM (GXOZK)
12
[Picture of B-17 missing its horizontal stabilizer]
> If I remember the story correctly, the dropping plane was out of
position, perhaps from damage, perhaps from avoiding another plane. <
I'll spare everyone the train of thought that led to this (my train of thought is a crosstown local and makes a lot of stops), but I may have blundered onto an account (sans photo). It was indeed thought to be out of position, though without speculation as to why. See page 4 of this report.
Posted by: Ad absurdum per aspera at June 30, 2021 07:26 PM (5HpRn)
Akagi Found!
As I semi-postulated would occur in the Kaga post, Paul Allen's team has now found what they are pretty sure to be the Akagi.
Guess the report on them having another ship's location was right! All of this was breaking just shortly before I'm typing this, so we don't have much information yet, and the RV Petrel apparently either hasn't been down yet or they haven't released any footage. Still, we can tell a lot from these sonar images. Like Kaga, Akagi is sitting upright, and it sure looks like she hit with not too much horizontal motion. I'm hardly an expert on that sort of stuff, so take it with a grain of salt.
I'm pretty sure the bow is to the left in both images. If she landed stern-first, that might explain the "arrow-head" shape... the impact could have compressed the stern maybe? Of course, the flight deck is gone, though I wonder if the Akagi's massive underdeck supports might still be there? In any case, this is just as exciting as the Kaga finding, and for similar reasons. Hopefully we'll get to see more as the day goes on!
edit: forgot to mention... according to a comment I saw from Jon Parshall over at the Petrel's facebook page, the Nauticos company did not share the location of the chunk of Kaga's hull with Paul Allen's team... they found the ship on their own, making all this even more incredible.
Posted by: Ben at October 21, 2019 10:17 AM (osxtX)
2Soryu would be the obvious next one to be found. She went down in the vicinity of Kaga and Akagi and around about the same time. If the Petrel Bunch are still searching (instead of researching the hell out of the two wrecks they've already found), I'd expect her to be located within the week.
Hiryu and Mikuma will be much more difficult to find as both were sunk after a substantial amount of undamaged sailing time.
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 21, 2019 01:19 PM (zI5rk)
3
"What's next?" led me to wonder "What's left?" And a quick google search is surprisingly unhelpful. There are of course tens of thousands of shipwrecks scattered on the ocean floor, and there are some major ships of historical interest like the Santa Maria waiting to be found, but of the major WWII combatants that got sunk, I can't seem to find a list of the ones that haven't been found.
Posted by: David at October 21, 2019 04:00 PM (A/T0R)
4
Clearly there can only be one next target for the search.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 22, 2019 10:30 PM (2yngH)
5
Well, they found the Yamato in 1985, but as far as I know finding the Space Battleship Yamato would involve time travel or dimension jumping.
Posted by: Ben at October 23, 2019 08:25 AM (osxtX)
Shokaku, Taiho, and Hiyo would be nice finds, but the water depth for them are probably far deeper than at Midway. A similar problem would apply to USS Princeton.
HMS Barham should be easier - the depth is not as deep and they should have a good idea of where she, but given how far off HMS Ark Royal was compared to where the Royal Navy recorded her as sinking at, it will not be easy. The three Italian heavy cruisers lost at Cape Matapan would have the same issue.
Posted by: cxt217 at October 23, 2019 09:45 PM (LMsTt)
7
Sorry about the outage, your site should be back to normal now!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at October 29, 2019 04:36 PM (2yngH)
8
And the answer for "next?" appears to be Johnston, or possible Hoel, the ID isn't confirmed yet.
The crew of R/V Petrel must be working their behinds off, but the thrill of finding one historical wreck after another has to be amazing. I imagine they've done a ton of prep work to narrow down these search areas.
Posted by: David at October 31, 2019 04:19 PM (A/T0R)
Kaga Found!
The late Paul Allen's team has done it one more time... and this time, they did something I thought would never happen.
They found the Kaga.
In this sonar image, the stern is in the lower-right corner. The Kaga's flight deck is gone, which comes as no surprise whatsoever. Of the four Japanese carriers sunk at Midway, Kaga was the one that suffered the most grievous and swift fire damage. Nearly all of her hangar deck personnel (aircraft mechanics and armorers) were killed by the fires caused when a 1000lb bomb punched through her flight deck to explode among fully fueled and mostly armed aircraft. That particular explosion also ruptured her avgas lines, knocked out the generators powering the water pumps, damaged the fire mains, and destroyed a one-shot carbon-dioxide fire smothering device.
The ship is upright in the sea floor, though she's quite deep in the mud and silt. Information is still sparse... the announcement was only made about five hours ago as I write this... but from what I've managed to piece together, they should still be able to locate where the Nauticos chunk would fit on the hull.
Undoubtedly the Nauticos find is what allowed Paul Allen's group to narrow down the search area. There's only a finite amount of distance the burning ship could have moved before she was scuttled, and the Nauticos report linked above gives a presumed maximum of about five hours, 30 minutes from the time the chunk was blown free to the time of scuttling. So knowing the ship went roughly thataway for up to 5h30m gives you a search area. Then it's just the tedious job of combing the ocean floor with sonar and ROV until you find something.
Like a piece of hull with a gun turret on the side. Oh, and speaking of finding something... one report I saw said they have a strong possibility for another ship location. Could we have an Akagi or Soryu next? Hiryu is probably quite a distance away from the others... if any of them is going to stay missing now, I'm guessing its her.
Holy crap, folks... I'm actually giddy about this. Seriously: what a find! Naval historians everywhere owe the late Paul Allen a debt of gratitude... pour a YooHoo out for your homie tonight!
1
Paul Allen's group is doing a great job of finding these relics. They found the Saint Lo not long ago, and I presume not far away, unless they have two separate search groups.
Aside from the cool factor, and perhaps verifying how they sunk where the record is unclear, what is the actual historical value of finding these? Not that I want to say "go do something more useful" by any means, I'm just curious what the actual value is, if any.
Posted by: David at October 18, 2019 01:33 PM (wXI5i)
2
Think of it as "battlefield archaeology", David. Midway was one of the largest (in terms of area) battles ever fought, and the location of one of the opponents has really only been approximated. Now it's getting nailed down pretty drastically.
USS St Lo was sunk almost literally half the Pacific Ocean away from Midway. Its wreck was found about six months ago.
Posted by: Wonderduck at October 19, 2019 01:33 AM (zI5rk)
3
The archaeological aspect is important, as is improving the techniques for finding stuff in a body of water the size of the effin' Pacific. This is SUPER cool.
Posted by: GreyDuck at October 19, 2019 11:02 AM (rKFiU)
4
I was confused on the St Lo thing, as I was seeing reporting on it being found very recently. Apparently it was found months ago as you said, but they just released the video footage recently.
Posted by: David at October 21, 2019 03:47 PM (A/T0R)
1
That really was a heck of a piece of editing & compositing. Was amused to see a tiny bit of Macross Frontier in there, too.
I'm no font of useful advice, but please do keep on keeping on, good sir.
Posted by: GreyDuck at October 12, 2019 10:17 PM (rKFiU)
2
Somewhere in Sakura-sou no Pet na Kanojo there is a duck. (Saw it in a clip video).
Posted by: Mauser at October 16, 2019 10:10 PM (Ix1l6)
3
You know, possibly you need to establish a little routine. Nothing big, nothing stressful, but something improving.
Like: Read something from the classics, or the Bible, or Shakespeare for 15 minutes, at the same time every day.
Maybe read it out loud, as vocal exercise.
Maybe memorize some poetry or song lyrics, just for fun and mental exercise, and recite them out loud.
Of course, me being Catholic, I would recommend some EWTN or Institute for Catholic Culture videos/podcasts. Even for secular folks, they have a lot of history and philosophical info of interest.
But there's always true crime, etc....
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at October 17, 2019 08:39 PM (sF8WE)
Python 50
Today is the 50th anniversary of the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
I don't believe there's been ANYthing that's been more influential in my sense of humor, and possibly my entire life, than Python. At the age of nine, every Sunday night at 930pm you could find me camped out in front of the television at the Old Home Pond. Then, after staring at a blank screen for a while, I'd actually turn it on.
What came forth from that box would change me forever. I knew types of cheeses that didn't exist yet. I learned that hedgehogs hated gangsters. I learned that penguins were electric and had long stinging tentacles. Musical instruments played by whacking mice with hammers. I learned what a fjord was, and that certain types of parrots pined for them. I learned what a twit was.
As it turned out, very little of this would help me in the formal sense. I knew the winners of the 1949 FA Cup but I couldn't do math.
Despite this, there's no question that my life, and that of countless others, has been...
...improved by Monty Python being in it. It's a debt I can never repay, nor would I want to... who has that much gouda?
1
The Pythons are one of the three media forces that shaped the sense of humor of my young, impressionable mind. From them I learned that absurdity can be a powerful tool for entertainment, but you need to sell it just right or it falls flat.
(The other two: George Carlin, from whom I learned that words have meaning and power, and The Marx Brothers, from whom I learned... well, the power of well-disguised innuendo if nothing else.)
Posted by: GreyDuck at October 06, 2019 01:48 PM (rKFiU)
2
And for the current generation, it seems harder than ever to access, given the Wealth(?) of entertainment sources we have today.
Posted by: Mauser at October 06, 2019 07:38 PM (Ix1l6)
3
Oooh! You can listen to the Goon Show on the BBC!
They also did a documentary about these two crazy comics who were actually predecessors of the Goons, and did that style of comedy onstage right before, during, and after WWII. There was also a nice audio doc about Spike Jones.
So yeah, the Goons did their stuff in their own way, and Monty Python did Goon-type stuff.
Also, the legendary George Martin produced the Goon Show original albums, back when he was low man on the totem pole and was doing whatever the other producers didn't want.
Which was why the Beatles were ecstatic to work with him, because they wanted to do all sorts of crazy sounds too, albeit more seriously than the Goons and Spike Jones.
Everything is connected....
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at October 17, 2019 08:46 PM (sF8WE)
4
Oh, BBC Radio 4 Extra just put out a 6 part comedy radio drama on the history of the band KLF! It's called "How to Burn a Million Quid."
They've also got a fair amount of dramas and stuff, nothing really sweet right now, but you can look back into the past in the full schedule and listen to anything that's a week or two old. (Even if you live in the US, as is not usually the case with their TV stuff.)
"I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again" is another pre-Python thing, with John Cleese and his Cambridge buddies. It seems to have some eps on YouTube as well as on the Beeb streaming radio.
On regular BBC Radio 4, they have David Tennant doing Chekhov with a multi-part "Wild Honey."
And if you really want odd stuff, CBeebies is the kids' radio drama, talkshows, and "soothing sounds", and every UK language group has local radio you can access.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at October 17, 2019 09:21 PM (sF8WE)
I'm actually giddy about this. Seriously: what a find! Naval historians everywhere owe the late Paul Allen a debt of gratitude... pour a YooHoo out for your homie tonight!
