Trent Telenko Profile picture
May 8, 2021 16 tweets 7 min read Read on X
@DrydockDreams has put up another Coral Sea post modeling ships & US Navy CAG William Ault plus his disappearance returning from the strike against IJN CarDiv 5.

This thread goes into what the role of preventable HF communications failure played in that

...disappearance.

To do so I will be using screen captures from Squadron Leader A. L. Hall, RAAF, presentation "farewell to communication failures" reprinted in the Aug 1944 CIC magazine

This is a clip showing the beginning of S/F Hall's manuscript.

WW2 wartime military periodicals often have 'retro' or 'era specific' high tech buried in the articles that modern eyes will not understand.

3/
What that diamond & cross shape with chains between a plane, a ship and two ground antennas represents is a Rhombic antenna.

This antenna was invented by Bell Labs in the 1930's and was used extensively in WW2 era strategic HF coms & SIGINT.
See:
qrznow.com/the-mighty-rho…
4/
At the beginning of WW2 Australian government & military built a series of rhombic antenna point to point high frequency analog voice circuits (wireless telephone of W/T) to link Northern & Western Australia to the South East.
5/
This system brought Australia face to face with the problems of what we now call "space weather" living in the bad radio neighborhood of the "Great South Pacific Radio Blob."


6/
This radio system didn't pop into existence like Athena from Zeus' brow.

Australian Radio Research Board, established by J P V Madsen in 1928, worked together with the Australian civil service & got the American Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism to
7/
...put an ionosphere observatory in Watheroo, Australia.

The operation of Australia's HF wireless telephone system brought Australian RAB scientists face to face with the fact that the British military HF frequency prediction system pushed by Marconi scientist T L Eckersley
8/
...did not work as well as the the British civil radio predictions using the Appleton-Beynan periodic layer model.

E Appleton & T L Eckersley had been academic enemies of the worst sort since 1930. When the British ISIB was stood up in 1941 & copied by the USA. It used the
9/
...rival Newbern Smith model instead.

In Australia, it was all "needs must as the devil drives" & the devil was the "Great South Pacific Radio Static Blob."

Just prior to Coral Sea, Gen. MacArthur called a scientific conference to standardize HF communications in the SWPA.
10/
This standard was implemented for Coral Sea and all SWPA air & sea search elements. They had no problems communicating with each other.

This was not the case for CAG William Ault and the air groups on Lexington & Yorktown.
11/
S/L Hall obliquely refers to this inability of the SWPA to communicate by radio to USN carriers during the Battle of Coral Sea in his manuscript.

The inability of the SWPA & SoPAC to effectively communicate endured until the latter was absorbed by the former in Aug 1944.
12/
The inability of USN carrier groups in 3rd/5th Fleets to communicate to SWPA units lasted the entire war and played a major role in the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

The US Navy, or course, blamed General MacArthur for this.

13/
S/L Hall's manuscript gives a very good idea of how CAG William Ault died.

Six Mhz was generally the best SWPA HF radio freq. during the daylight hours, but failed at dusk & dawn. But, you had to have planned alternate frequencies for where your plane was going & it's base.
14/
CAG William Ault was not so blessed.

Being outside the ground wave, facing a weather front, Ault wound up in a high freq. "skip zone" where no communications would reach USN CV's.

Like Hudson A-16-198 in S/L Hall's manuscript, Ault got lost, ran out of fuel & crashed.
/End

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More from @TrentTelenko

Nov 22
So, the Russians are using TMM-6 assault scissor bridges to cross gaps in partially destroyed bridges?

Nothing like a medium girder bridge?

This points not only to a major gap -ahem- in Russian bridging capability, but also one in the Russian state.

Logistics & the State🧵
1/ Image
I've mentioned this gap in both Russian bridging capability and Western Military Intelligence assumptions about it back in June of 2023.

2/
That video of Ukrainian PSU glide bomb strikes underlines Russia still has nothing like the partial dry bridge gap crossing capability of a medium girder bridge in the 3rd year of the war in Ukraine.

3/
Read 11 tweets
Nov 22
This line about AFU drone warheads:

>>It is especially well suited for attacking energy infrastructure.

Makes me wonder what is about to happen to the Russian power grid after Pres. Biden leaves office.🤔⬇️
Please recall DR. Celeste Wallander [ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS] extended rant about what the Biden Administration considered civilian versus military targets inside Russia for Ukrainian assault drones.

2/
Wallander saying Russian oil refineries are civilian targets most likely means the Biden Administration views Russian power infrastructure even more of a civilian target.

The lack of AFU grid strikes on Russia & this new power grid killing drone warhead make me go...hummm.🤔
3/3
Read 4 tweets
Nov 21
This act of cost-ineffective public theater by Putin is his going away present to the Western escalation managers they so desperately need to justify their failed retread of appeasement policy jobs

The cost of an IRBM/ICBM is around 10-20 times the cost of an ALCM/GLCM/SLCM
1/
...for about the same payload, with the several hundred meter CEP accuracy of a daylight of February 1945 B-17 raid.

The Putin regime put out propaganda yesterday about using the RS-26 Rubezh, a SS-20 SABER lookalike, to scare Western policy makers⬇️

2/
Image
It is unlikely the Putin Regime has a significant warstock of such missiles, & every RS-26 Russia fires reduces the nuclear threat to the USA.

It is military madness...but it's great for impressing dullards in media and politics like @JakeSullivan46, German Chancellor Scholz
3/
Read 8 tweets
Nov 20
Please note:

@elonmusk has stated two launches from now there will be an attempted 2nd stage catch at Boca Chica.

That is in the 1st quarter of 2025.

The SpaceX Starship catch will be the "HMS Dreadnought" moment of the Space age.
1/3
After that event, every non-reusable orbital class rocket launcher in the world designed and built before her will be obsolete the same way every battleship built and designed before the all big gun HMS Dreadnought was made so.

2/3 Image
Image
Nothing except another fully reusable rocket can compete with Starship in exactly the same way that no other battleship could compete with HMS Dreadnought, unless it was a all big gun main battery dreadnought battleship.

3/3 Image
Image
Image
Read 4 tweets
Nov 19
People haven't paid anywhere near enough attention to this development⬇️

Russian cruise missile production is now like their tank production.

Russia is living off of Cold War stockpiles that are thinner & thinner as time goes on, & harder to resuscitate.

Attrition🧵
1/
The spokesman of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Andriy Yusov has stated that Russia's military-industrial complex can produce 40-50 Kh-101 cruise missiles every month.

2/
unian.ua/weapons/skilki…
The question that @GrandpaRoy2 photo raises is exactly how much of that X-101 production rate is being assembled using recycled Kh-55/55SM missile components?

"More than zero" was confirmed from that photo...but exactly how many?

3/ Image
Read 15 tweets
Nov 18
Russia seems headed towards a February 1917 moment.

1. A kilogram of potatoes in Nov 2024 is 73% more expensive than in Jan 2024.
2. Interest rates reached 21% in Oct 2024
3. Mortgage rates have risen to 28%

1/
express.co.uk/news/world/197…
The Russian railway system is now falling apart.

It's not one thing, it is everything.

The Western ball bearing were the excuse for the Russian railway system to fire its entire maintenance department in 2013.

2/
moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/15/rzh…Image
~40% of Russian railway rolling stock is Soviet era vintage.

Russia went to 100% utilization of the Trans-Siberian railway in the late summer of 2021 and has stayed there ever since.

Those rail cars were not well maintained to start with, less Western bearings.

3/
Read 11 tweets

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