@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

7 May
@DrydockDreams has a great post up on the Battle of Coral Sea with models of the ships sunk there.

This thread is going to take a lessor known road in exploring that battle.

Namely, why search plane radio communications sucked in the battle.
1/

When people remember the Battle of Coral Sea. These are the sort of strategic and tactical maps people use to understand the battle.
2/
This map is not one normally used for the Coral Sea, but is absolutely necessary backdrop to it.

These are the active Japanese seaplane search sectors in May 1942.

So...why didn't they both spot USN CV's & pass on data to the Japanese CV's?
3/
Read 15 tweets
4 May
This thread is the fourth visit to the logistical disaster known as Operation Iceberg.

1/
The three previous threads have dealt with the hidden friendly fire, USN doctrine & a horrid staff planning error that left far too few staffers to plan because of a grand standing USMC general/Deputy Chief of Staff in 10th Army .

"Failing to plan is planning to fail."

2/
This thread focuses on how unexamined CentPac & 10th Army staff assumptions in changed combat conditions turned around and bite them all in the assets.

3/
Read 35 tweets
30 Apr
@BoneyAbroad @ReassessHistory @greg_jenner The twin flaws with most histories of the strategic bombing campaigns in WW2 are factually illiteracy & projecting current identity/moral values on people living the 1930's & 1940's.

Two world wars in 21 years makes democratic peoples very bloody minded.
@BoneyAbroad @ReassessHistory @greg_jenner And as far as factual illiteracy goes, I have a "bozo filter" resource list on strategic bombing that I use to judge a book's credibility.

1. Richard P. Hallion's "America's Pursuit of Precision Bombing, 1910-1945

2/
@BoneyAbroad @ReassessHistory @greg_jenner 3. Charles W. MacArthur's "Operations Analysis in the U.S. Army Eighth Air Force in World War II"

4. James K. McElroy, Chapter Nine in "Fire and Air War" by the National Fire Protection Association

3/
Read 19 tweets
30 Apr
Two days ago plus a further 76 years (27 Apr 1945) the capstone logistical catastrophe of the Okinawa Campaign occurred.

The US Army ammo ship SS Canada Victory was given a berth far from the shipping off Hagushi beach by the SOPA. She was struck & ignited. The 7,400 tons
1/
...of artillery ammunition aboard her burned.

Nor was she the only Army ammo ship damaged off Hagushi Beach 27 Apr 1945.

The SS Clarksdale Victory was also struck by Japanese artillery & the SS Bozeman Victory took rudder and propeller damage from a ram from another ship...
2/
...maneuvering during the 27 Apr 1945 air attacks.

This is how page 36 of "Contribution to Victory - The Distribution and Supply of Ammunition and Ordnance in the Pacific Theater of Operations" describes the impact to the Battle of Okinawa.

3/
Read 33 tweets
18 Apr
The US Naval Institute is commemorating the survival of the USS Laffey at Okinawa Picket Station #1.

This thread is about a critical planning mistake the USS Laffey crew paid for with their lives
1/
The day USS Laffey was attacked, 16 April 1945, was also the day that the island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa, was invaded by the 77th Infantry Division.
2/
history.navy.mil/content/histor… Image
The full panoply of amphibious firepower from air and sea also required a huge part of the radio spectrum to control.

USN warships, USN rocket & mortar gunboats and strafing planes each required separate radio frequencies.
3/ Image
Read 17 tweets
13 Apr
This thread subject is about researching friendly fire that involved flag ranks at Okinawa in 1945.

The really frustrating thing about friendly fire incidences in military history is how often they are covered up. 1/

This happens so often that it amounts to a normal state of affairs.

The story of the 2004 friendly fire death of former professional NFL football player turned post 9/11/2001 US Army Ranger Patrick Daniel Tillman is a case in point.
2/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillm… Image
This is most especially true when it involves small numbers of deaths, the most politically connected and powerful officer leadership cliques in a military service, and the failure of a military doctrine that clique championed, as was the case on 6 April 1945.
3/ Image
Read 130 tweets

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