“…Sink the Bismarck”

For those interested in the history of WWII, may I commend the book (or audio From audible.com) named “Bismarck, The Final Days of Germany’s Greatest Battleship”

Hitler wanted the world’s best warship to challenge the might of Britain’s fleet, and, despite being under international restrictions, Germany built what was described as “faster than anything stronger, and stronger than anything faster.”

The trick was to get it from Germany into the Atlantic Ocean without being discovered by the British, but that was like sneaking a steak past a hungry dog, and, as you might imagine the Bismarck was discovered — but it made it to the Atlantic, unmolested.

It had a short, violent life. About nine days to be exact. Hitler apparently did not know that a pack of individually weaker wolves can collectively bring down a much larger and stronger animal.

First, the Bismarck sank the British Battle Cruiser HMS Hood (much to the dismay of the British), and 1,400 British sailors died while only three sailors survived. (One of the Bismarck’s salvo struck a magazine of Hood’s ammunition, and the Hood sunk in seconds.)

When Churchill heard the news, he famously said, “Whatever it takes, sink the Bismark.” British Battleships, Aircraft Carriers, and Battle Cruisers were signaled to return from their stations as far away as Nova Scotia and Africa, and the hunt for the Bismarck commenced.

Partially disabled in the initial fight with Hood, the Bismarck tried to get to occupied France for repairs, but it was trailed by a Battleship that fought alongside the Hood, but was no match for the Bismarck. The British Battleship was fitted with early RADAR, as was the Bismarck.

(I was surprised by this — I never knew the Germans had RADAR that early (1941) and was surprised the British were so well RADAR equipped. As I discovered, even canvas covered British bi-plane aircraft had RADAR.)

The first attacks on the injured and coastal-bound Bismarck were from torpedo planes from a British Aircraft Carrier — single engine, fabric covered bi-planes who bravely flew (slowly) to the attack against withering fire from the best guns and gunners the Germans had, and all survived although only one torpedo from nine planes struck the Leviathan. Oddly, it was the slowness of the planes that saved them. The German guns and gunners were not prepared for planes coming in at wave-top heights at only 170 MPH!

Slowly, the might of the British Navy gathered, and, as the Bismarck fled from rainstorm to rainstorm, she was further  injured by more bi-plane attacks. The Bismarck finally succumbed to withering collective surface ship gunfire and torpedoes, taking more than 2,000 German sailors with her.

Hitler should have learned at that time that being a German Army Corporal in WWI did not make him a military strategist — which is why the German military tried three times to assassinate him. In this case, he could have built a LOT of much more successful U-Boats for what the Bismarck cost in money, war material and men.

Many of us studied the overall Bismarck story once upon a time, but this detailed account is a thriller.

Robotics, Retirement and Unemployment

It is not a new idea, mechanization, but it is getting highly accelerated by, of all things, the military.

Last night’s NBC news announced an effort to get military retirement costs under control. It is overdue. The military retirement costs 50 BILLION dollars a year, and that is unsustainable.

The US citizens HATE the “draft” (so do I!), and the citizenry would never stand still for “Universal Military Training” (i would not either) but the Powers That Be have supported a system that gives them what they want — a highly trained civilian core of military-trained people.

They did, and do that with a National Guard and really good recruiting packages. Then, they discourage retirement by paying below-market wages that gives skilled individuals an incentive to leave the service.

With large fighting forces, we have larger retirement forces.

Enter mechanization — robotics. The most obvious is the increasing drone military and civilian fleet, but increasing Da Vinci medical operations, and coming, Big Dog, a go anywhere ammunition carrier and eventually robotic soldiers.

We have a drone that can land on an aircraft carrier without any pilot control, and unmanned helicopters that can take off a ship, search ahead for mines and return to the ship with no more command than “Go!”

Mechanism is rampant, and growing. Obamacare will require that employers provide medical insurance if they have more than 50 employees and work more than 30 hours. Initially, businesses are cutting such employees to under 29 hours, but as pressures increase — robotics.

You have seen the robots making cars — do you think robots can’t make burgers? Those NYC fast food workers striking for double their current pay remind me of how I reacted when I first saw a sign outside the Gay and Robinson Sugar Plantation on Kauai more than a decade ago. The sign read: “Home to the highest paid agriculture workers in the world.

My reaction was — that company is going out of business.

It did. I hated that, because I squired so many island-visiting friends around the plantation that the company knew me by first name, and only charged my guests. It was fascinating! I loved the company because, in addition to being the last sugar plantation on the island, the Robinson family money supported the tiny island of Ni’ihau, which permitted almost 100 Hawaiians to live pretty much as they always have.

(As an aside, the Hawaiians on Ni’ihau collect tiny (really tiny) multi-colored sea shells — so rare and only on that island that an entire family can only collect a baby-food jar of shells each year. Before the family can produce a necklace, the family uses a hand dentist drill to make the holes and the family breaks two out of three shells. The necklaces, called Ni’ihau shell lei, are historical among natives, and so valuable that “Aunties” are buried in them to keep families from arguing over them. They are rare, but those who know, know. My wife and I can count on First Class service everywhere in airplanes, hotels and fine restaurants. Tourists think they are just cheap Puka Beads, but Hawaiian Airlines Stews and  Maitre d eyes light up. I have no idea how the Robinson family can continue to support the island.)

Those sugarcane plantation workers now join the ranks of pineapple field workers in unemployment lines, bragging about how much money they once made.

Employers always face economic pressure from labor costs, but there are only so many things an employer can do. Robotics solves lots of problems — pay, vacations, unions, medical costs, and yes, retirement.

How we handle a growing unemployed and unemployable population, replaced by mechanism robotics?

Beats me!

In One of My Previous Lives…

Regular readers know that in one of my previous lives, I spent a decade serving in diesel submarines — the love of my life, and my greatest disappointment when I was “surfaced” as a result of my activity with the seizure of the USS Pueblo (AGER-2).

And, even that activity was diesel submarine related, since I went to Pueblo’s side because its Skipper, Cdr. Bucher, was my Executive Officer on the submarine, USS Ronquil (SS-396).

It is little wonder then that after reading (or listening to) many books on the European theatre war against Germany, I would eventually get to a book about the War in the Pacific, where diesel submarines ruled. With about 1% of the sailors, submarines sank more than 50% of Japanese merchant tonnage and a huge percentage of the warship tonnage. They did this at a huge cost — submarines suffered high death rates than the first wave of Marines landing on a beach — Submariners died at a 24% rate in the Pacific.

My current book, “The War Below, The Story of Three Submarines That Battled Japan,” tracks that the war was not all shooting ships and dodging  planes and depth charges. The submarine, Tang (SS-306), was assigned lifeguard duty off the Island of Truk, while Naval aircraft pounded that island which the Japanese used much as we used Hawaii — as an anchor island.

In one day, the Tang picked up 22 downed aviators, one, two and three at a time. Submarines were offensive weapons, hating every second spent not closing the enemy.

Submarines wanted to return to port having fired all of their torpedoes, flying the fabled broom on the periscope to indicate a “Clean Sweep” — but this mission, followed by return to port with all 24 torpedoes but with 22 saved aviators, was more than successful. The fabled Skipper, O’Kane, sunk four ships with only six torpedoes.

Here I might note that there is a great, on-line tour of the interior of the WWII submarine, USS Pampanito (SS -383) — currently the museum submarine tied up at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, and, not incidentally, the submarine on which I served as Officer-In-Charge when it was the Reserve Submarine at Mare Island, and I was Commanding Officer of the Reserve Center.   

http://www.maritime.org/tour/index.php

You can direct the examination of each photo by using a mouse or your finger on a tablet, going not just 360 degrees, but up and down as well. It is really an interesting website.

 

A Heroic Story, But a Foul Aftertaste

I seem to have my Reading List scrambled.

The Washington Post reviews “The War Below — the Study of Three Submarines That Fought Japan” and in the last paragraph of the book review notes that the “War Below” covers in the last chapters, the Japanese POW atrocities also covered in “Unbroken.”

I just finished “Unbroken” and I am not certain that I can face a second helping of those Japanese atrocities. Let’s just say that POWs in Germany and Italian POW camps in WWII, died at a rate less than 1%, while POWs in Japanese internment perished at a rate of 37%. And that is just those who made it to POW camps.

“Unbroken” tells the heroic story of of Louis Zamperini, a great athlete who was destined to be the first runner to break the Four-Minute mile at the Olympics until the war intervened and he went off to war as a Bombardier on a B-24.

I won’t give away too much of the book because it will apparently appear as a movie at Christmas, directed by Angelina Jolie.

Suffice to say, Zamperini was shot down, survived (only three out of 11 on board made it out of the plane), and easily eclipsed the previous record by surviving at sea for 46 days, only to be captured by the Japanese. His prison punishment was even worse than the sea travails because he was both world-famous and absolutely rebellious.

This is a great read, and probably the movie will not portray the harshness of the treatment in view of the current friendliness with the nation of Japan.

Zamperini’s sadist in the POW camps (named Watanabi) was listed number seven in the first list of those to be tried after the war as war criminals, but he escaped into the hills and awaited the political decision to grant amnesty to those who survived. Wantanabi died of natural causes, unapologetic, and without spending a day in jail in 2004. The decision to grant amnesty had to do with our new friendship with Japan.

Political correctness trumps history every day.

The California Japanese (aided by friends in Japan) last week successfully stopped a memorial in Buena Park, California, to the “Comfort Women” (sex slaves) the Japanese enslaved by the thousands for the benefit of their military. (Best estimate, 200,000 to 300,000 women were so enslaved.)

The Japanese still refuse to take full responsibility for the war and their crimes.

 

 

 

Playing For a Tie

 

The most recent Memorial Day was, once again, a scene of crosses – millions of them.

We have lost a lot good people in wars. I lost the “Best Man,” Jack Peace at our wedding over Vietnam – actually, I lost him in a prison camp where he was seen alive, but disappeared.

I once facetiously suggested to a friend who was a Congressman from Iowa that, since we were not doing everything we could to win Vietnam, perhaps we could just take 500 our finest physical and mental specimens into an Iowa corn field and just machine gun them each month — and the North Vietnamese could do the same in their country. That would have the same stalemate effect we were doing, but without the added cost of shipping, and weapon production and development!

I had an Annapolis roommate, Ejnar Christiansen, who was recommended for the Blue Angels — he resigned from the Navy because he had two planes shot out from under him, but got out to sea where he was picked up. He quit because he was forbidden to attack the missiles being fired from the palace of Ho Chi Minh, and, as he put it, “Drop my ordinance on some dumb farmer behind an ox in the field, who is doing nothing to me.)”

My submarine had one of the two dredges that kept Haiphong Harbor silt- free in our periscope, as it went to China for refitting — an easy shot. We did not have permission to shoot, and my (liberal) Commanding Officer had tears rolling down his face in frustration. We could have, with a single torpedo, closed the harbor to Russian ships who were providing the arms to the North Vietnamese.

The last war we went into full use of weaponry was WWII. We have lost a lot of good people by fighting with one hand behind our backs.

In WWII, we had bombing raids of Germany that included 4,000 bombers at one time, while we were prosecuting a huge war in the Pacific!. THAT is the way to fight a war. Anything less just chews up men uselessly to no end. We get into too many wars we never intend to win — just play for a tie, do just enough, never annoy the uninvolved nations.

That was never a concern in WWII.

War is terrible. Ending it quickly and decisively is the most humane method. For some reason we just feed men into the meat grinder, slowly, and settle for a tie.

Some things Need to Remain Secret

It turns out that the AP is being investigated to discover the source of how the AP found out that the US had “in their control” the bomb made in Yemen?

The answer is, a double agent. That we know. What I did not know until tonight is that the double agent was British.

I find that interesting, because of the previous blog entries I made about the famous WWII double agents, “Garbo” and “ZigZag”

Richard Engle of NBC News is all over the AP case. It is obvious that leaking that information about the Yemen bomb obviously endangered the life of the double agent.

What we do know is that a drone strike killed the maker of the bomb just days after the bomb fell into British hands, and was transferred to a CIA bomb facility in Virginia.

Obviously, getting a double agent into Al-Queda is REALLY tricky business, and being found out would be not instant death, but a slow and lingering death.

I do not know the fate of the British double agent. The NY Times says the double agent was a Saudi spy and he and his family are safe in Saudi Arabia, but the bad news is that even if he escaped he is no longer “operable.”

Pity!

Many WWII British double agents were not unmasked for more than 50 years after they were safe, much as the “Ghost Army” was protected for equally that long after the war was over.

The war against terror may never be over in anyone’s lifetime now alive, so we may not know what actually went on.

We do not have a need to know EVERYTHING.

How Wide Is Our Reach?

I am not certain that two parries can constitute a conspiracy, but it seems to me that a two-party conspiracy would be the easiest to be successful.

Stay with me here…how’s this: North Korea is ramping up their threats to get some of the heat off their nuclear/missile friend, Iran.

The president himself says that Iran is within a year of getting the bomb, and that he doesn’t want to cut it that close. North Korea supplies much of the know-how to Iran both in nuclear technology and missiles. Both nations are somewhat isolated as to deep knowledge of the outside world, and it is just possible that there is some question in their mind if we can walk and chew gum simultaneously – or at least have the reach to bomb Iran while keeping sufficient forces at the ready off North Korea to contain them.

Certainly Iran has successfully gamed the West through a five-point stall, and certainly North Korea has threatened successfully, and gamed the West for food for their starving masses. Each nation believes the West, and particularly the US is managed by fools.

They have a point.

North Korea may also be managed by a fool – one who believes his Generals when they tell him, even as Saddam Hussein’s Generals told him, that they can beat an American army. North Korea actually did that once, or at least they ran us all the way to the Pusan Perimeter with a lightning strike and managed at least an overall draw.  The NK also has our reluctance to retaliate for the USS Pueblo, and the destruction of the EC-121 as proof of our reluctance to retaliate, and their actions on sinking a South Korean ship and raking a disputed island with artillery fire reinforces their misinterpretation of our overall power.

The NK can certainly destroy most of Seoul in a couple of hours before our bombers can destroy their artillery.  Right now, there are 20 million civilians in the immediate line of fire who would take the brunt of the attack, should it come, and those civilians would also be a huge displaced person burden to a counter-attack by the South.

Iran is the benefactor of our current build-up in the South, because it takes needed aircraft and ships away from the Middle East – whether the North Koreans attack or not. Similarly, the need to keep the Mediterranean strong is weakened by the need to try to dissuade the Boy King.

The Boy king could just be dumb enough to think his love for video games is sufficient to make him a master strategist, and that the fourth-largest army in the world could indeed rush all the way to the bottom of the peninsula before the US could mount a sufficient counter-attack. They came within a few miles of doing it once before, and I suspect they could do it again UNLESS we were willing to use tactical nuclear weapons.

Could President Obama do that? Doubtful.

Meanwhile Iran is rushing their centrifuges for a date no one knows, while we look the other way.

If Israel thinks we are too engaged in the Pacific, will they act alone out of fear? Can they do it alone?

I hope everyone plays their cards right, or we could see two losses simultaneously, and a great disaster.

A “Bail-In?”

So what is the opposite of a bail-out?

A bail-in, as was demonstrated by the Cyprus kerfuffle. This exercise in stupidity is a perfect example of “unintended consequences.”

A fiasco of the first order, and this concept has no parents. Germany denies its their idea. Cyprus denies it was their idea.

Basically, the European Union was willing to bail out nearly bankrupt Cyprus with $13 billion if, and only Cyprus came up with $6 billion, and someone, some unnamed someone came up with the concept of seizing about 10% of bank deposits over €100,000, and about 6% of deposits under that amount.

Everyone, except the IMF and EU came apart at the seams…markets dove worldwide, the Cypriot legislature had to stop ATM withdrawals and extended the opening of the banks until Tuesday just to stop a run on the banks. There is a rumor that Russia will step in since their people have the largest accounts – Cyprus has large natural gas deposits and Gazprom is highly visible.

The fact that the Cypriot legislature stopped the seizure may ease the bank run, but I would not trust the bank ANYWHERE in Europe. The very concept must concern anyone I in Spain, Portugal, Greece, or Italy.

Next time the Troika of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission may not give warning.

Remember when FDR seized all of the gold currency?

OK, I don’t either, not yet having reached teen years, but I read the history books. So should you.

You Are Kidding Me, Right?

I was watching Shawn Styles, who does weather on Ch. 8 in San Diego, and he was doing a piece on measuring and reducing your “carbon footprint.”

It immediately struck me as the former CEO of a TV station in Los Angeles, and Chairman of a TV Broadcasting system, that damn few things in most people’s lives have larger carbon footprints than TV systems!

Think of the size of a TV station, with multiple “sets” and the lighting required, not to mention the heating and cooling systems. Think of the people who drive there, and back throughout the day, and their car pollution. Think of the transmitter site — it takes huge electrical punch to distribute a local signal — and think of the power consumed to build a rocket and the fuel it takes to launch satellites to distribute the signal.

Ch. 8 (just like all stations) has multiple enormous trucks for remote broadcast, and even a helicopter — probably the least efficient aerial vehicle type known to man.

Multiply that imagining times all of the TV stations in not just this city, but the state, and then the nation.

Now, think of the number of TV sets in this country — probably close to a half a billion. The cumulative amount of power drawn by TV sets is enormous!

And Shawn, using all those power-using assets, wants me to be concerned about my washer and refrigerator?

‘Gimme a break!

I Just Want To SCREAM!

Watching the Senatorial hearings this morning I came away with the knowledge that we did not have sufficient assets properly placed to help the defenders of Benghazi.

Leaving our people in indefensible positions without backup is not new, but it is apparently a lesson we must learn and re-learn regularly – and people die unnecessarily in the meanwhile.

Just from my own study and experience we did not have assets properly sited to help the USS Liberty, the USS Pueblo, and the SEALS of Benghazi.

My personal knowledge about the Pueblo seizure by the North Koreans is that the sister ship to the Pueblo (the USS Banner) had been shadowed by a US Destroyer over the horizon when a threat was perceived, but the Pueblo mission was (wrongly) not considered threatened. At least one Air Force General ordered fighters from Okinawa, but the Admiral with security responsibility did not even have ships in his command at the time of seizure.

There is a new book on the Pueblo seizure scheduled for release in time for the Christmas sales, called “Act of War: Lyndon Johnson, North Korea, and the Capture of the Spy Ship Pueblo” authored by Jack Cheevers.

I was one of the many sources for the writing of this book. The book will be published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Books, and the author just e-mailed me this morning that he finished the book cover last night.

We apparently do not have sufficient institutional memory, not just of history but of RECENT history, to provide our people out on the “Point” with cover. I had many discussions with Pete Bucher, the CO of the USS Pueblo about his contention that he would have been better prepared if he had simply known the circumstances of the deadly Israeli attack on the USS Liberty.

The Senators were rightly indignant that the SEALS were under attack for almost eight hours without a single US asset being directed to their defense. The Secretary of Defense said that we could not send C-130 gunships without having better information – how’s this for sufficient information, Mr. Secretary: “Our guys are out gunned and under attack. Request you sanitize the surrounding area for several hundred yards.”

If you have ever seen the destruction that a C-130 can accomplish in less than a minute, you will understand the value of sanitizing an area. It seems that a Secretary of Defense would need little other information.

A C-130 does not care the makeup of the attackers, how heavily they are armed, which branch of Al-Queda they come from, how many attackers there are. None of this matters to the gunship – it may well matter in the hot wash-up within the Pentagon or the State Department, but the gunship only cares about suppression of enemy gunfire.

That’s all.

And that is enough.