The Imperial Japanese Navy and the battle of the Philippine Sea: An analysis of the main causes of defeat

This article aims to demonstrate through mathematical analysis that the primary reason for the defeat of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the battle of the Philippine Sea during World War II (WWII) was quantitative, and that the defeat is particularly attributable to the lack of force concentration. Scholars have placed much emphasis on the qualitative aspects of the forces involved, such as the skill of IJN pilots or the air defence capabilities of the United States Navy (USN), in seeking to explain the Japanese defeat. We, however, assert that in this naval battle, quantitative factors played a more important role than qualitative ones. Accordingly, we offer an improved version of the mathematical model of Armstrong and Powell, which was previously used to analyse battles between aircraft carriers (CVs). The coefficients in our mathematical model will then be estimated and verified using historical data from the main battles between CVs of the IJN and USN during WWII. Finally, we will analyse the factors underlying the IJN’s defeat in the Battle of the Philippine Sea using the model. This study proposes a useful technique for evaluating quantitative and qualitative aspects of naval forces.

Crew endurance training in the united states navy: Lessons learned from senior leadership, prospective commanding/executive officers, and department heads

The Crew Endurance Team at the Naval Postgraduate School led a 3-year project to develop and deliver crew endurance and sleep hygiene training to support the US Navy’s implementation of circadian-based watchbills. As part of this effort, 16 training sessions were delivered to 362 active-duty service members (ADSMs) of the USN, including senior Navy leaders (n=249), prospective commandingIexecutive officers (PCOIPXOs) (n=30) at the Surface Warfare Officers School (SWOS) and students (n=83) attending SWOS Department Head School. Overall, responses from all audiences were positive indicating a high level of satisfaction with the training. We identified the need to expand two parts of the training: stimulants and sleep-promoting medications, and tips for sleeping in military environments. We will continue to tailor the training to the specific needs of ADSMs. We continue to train military audiences to increase awareness of the critical importance of sleep for operational performance and resilience.

‘True, Publick and Notorious’: The Privateering War of 1812

During the War of 1812, hundreds of private armed vessels, or privateers, carrying letters of marque and reprisal from their respective governments, served as counterweights to the navies of Great Britain and the United States. By 1812, privateering was acknowledged as an ideal way to annoy the enemy at little or no cost to the government. Local citizens provided the ships, crews and prizes while the court and customs systems took in the appropriate fees. The entire process was legal, licensed and often extremely lucrative. Unlike the navy, privateers were essentially volunteer commerce raiders, determined to weaken the enemy economically rather than militarily. So successful were they, that from July 1812 to February 1815, privateers from the United States, Britain, and the British provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia (as well as those sailing under French and Spanish flags) turned the shipping lanes from Newfoundland to the West Indies, Norway to West Africa, and even the South Pacific into their hunting grounds. In the early months of the war, privateers were often the only seaborne force patrolling their own coasts. With the Royal Navy pre-occupied with defending Britain and its Caribbean colonies from French incursions, there were relatively few warships available to protect British North American shipping from their new American foes. Meanwhile, the United States Navy had only a handful of frigates and smaller warships to protect their trade, supported by 174 generally despised gunboats. The solution was the traditional response of a lesser maritime power lacking a strong navy—private armed warfare, or privateering.

The United States Navy, Slave-Trade Suppression, and State Development

The mission of the United States Navy expanded significantly because of the presence of the institution of racial slavery on American soil. Most important, both proslavery and antislavery forces favored, for very different reasons, a substantial naval buildup in the late 1850s. The navy had, however, long been engaged in securing the nation’s borders against slave smuggling, an activity that also seemed to have broad support at the time. Finally, somewhat more controversially, the navy had been associated with the American Colonization Society’s Liberian enterprise from its very inception, deciding to deploy vessels to Africa in an otherwise unimaginable time frame. The relationship between the presence of slavery and the pre–Civil War activities of the navy is a largely untold—or, at best, half-told—story of American state development.

Oxygen toxicity seizures during United States Navy Treatment Table 6: An acceptable risk in monoplace chambers?

Introduction: Hyperbaric oxygen treatment (HBOT) may be complicated by oxygen toxicity seizures, which typically occur with hyperbaric partial pressures of oxygen exceeding 203 kPa (2 atmospheres absolute). All other hyperbaric units in Australia exclusively use a multiplace chamber when treating with United States Navy Treatment Table 6 (USN TT6) due to this perceived risk. The purpose of this study was to determine the safety of a monoplace chamber when treating decompression illness (DCI) with USN TT6. Methods: A retrospective review of the medical records of all patients treated at Fiona Stanley Hospital Hyperbaric Medicine Unit with USN TT6 between November 2014 and June 2020 was undertaken. These data were combined with previous results from studies performed at our hyperbaric unit at Fremantle Hospital from 1989 to 2014, creating a data set covering a 30-year period. Results: One thousand treatments with USN TT6 were performed between 1989 and 2020; 331 in a monoplace chamber and 669 in a multiplace chamber. Four seizures occurred: a rate of 0.59% (1/167) in a multiplace chamber; and none in a monoplace chamber, indicating no statistically significant difference between seizures in a monoplace versus multiplace chamber (P = 0.31). Conclusions: The rate of oxygen toxicity seizures in a monoplace chamber is not significantly higher than for treatment in the multiplace chamber. We conclude that using the monoplace chamber for USN TT6 in selected patients poses an acceptably low seizure risk.

Case Closed: The Completion of the United States Navy 501-K34 Gas Turbine Engine RADCON Program (2011 - 2019)

The United States Navy (USN) 501-K Series Radiological Controls (RADCON) Program was launched in late 2011, in response to the extensive damage caused by participation in Operation Tomodachi. The purpose of this operation was to provide humanitarian relief aid to Japan following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck 231 miles northeast of Tokyo, on the afternoon of March 11, 2011. The earthquake caused a tsunami with 30 foot waves that damaged several nuclear reactors in the area. It was the fourth largest earthquake on record (since 1900) and the largest to hit Japan. On March 12, 2011, the United States Government launched Operation Tomodachi. In all, a total of 24,000 troops, 189 aircraft, 24 naval ships, supported this relief effort, at a cost in excess of $90.0 million. The U.S. Navy provided material support, personnel movement, search and rescue missions and damage surveys. During the operation, 11 gas turbine powered U.S. warships operated within the radioactive plume. As a result, numerous gas turbine engines ingested radiological contaminants and needed to be decontaminated, cleaned, repaired and returned to the Fleet. During the past eight years, the USN has been very proactive and vigilant with their RADCON efforts, and as of the end of calendar year 2019, have successfully completed the 501-K Series portion of the RADCON program. This paper will update an earlier ASME paper that was written on this subject (GT2015-42057) and will summarize the U.S. Navy’s 501-K Series RADCON effort. Included in this discussion will be a summary of the background of Operation Tomodachi, including a discussion of the affected hulls and related gas turbine equipment. In addition, a discussion of the radiological contamination caused by the disaster will be covered and the resultant effect to and the response by the Marine Gas Turbine Program. Furthermore, the authors will discuss what the USN did to remediate the RADCON situation, what means were employed to select a vendor and to set up a RADCON cleaning facility in the United States. And finally, the authors will discuss the dispensation of the 501-K Series RADCON assets that were not returned to service, which include the 501-K17 gas turbine engine, as well as the 250-KS4 gas turbine engine starter. The paper will conclude with a discussion of the results and lessons learned of the program and discuss how the USN was able to process all of their 501-K34 RADCON affected gas turbine engines and return them back to the Fleet in a timely manner.