In 1939 the FAA and RAF's anti-shipping options were at best antiquated. Both were equipped with obsolete slow-flying biplane torpedo bombers.

The navy also had a small number of more up to date monoplane dive bombers, procured by claiming they were fighters. The modern Mark XII and XIV 18" air launched torpedo were entering service to replace the fragile Mark XI (most of which were repurposed for use by MTBs), but the armour piercing bomb dated from the 1920s had a tiny explosive charge and couldn't be carried by Skua dive bombers.

Generating mass. The Sherman Tank.

The American strategy in WW2 was to find ways to produce more of a 'good enough' tank design than the opposition - the M4 Sherman. Different variants largely reflected ways of increasing production rather than enhancements in design. The M4 was initially designed to be built by locomotive manufacturers using a fully cast hull and turret. Casting saved time and required fewer skilled employees to build than welded fabrication. The baseline M4 was powered by a modified Wright Whirlwind 1920s aeroengine.

Getting things done in Britain:

How Sgt. Rod Banks and the Mosquito shadow modification network gave Mosquitos the extra ooph to avoid Luftwaffe fighters.

Rod Banks was a lowly engine fitter at RAF Marham, exceptional engineer and former Rolls Royce apprentice. When the Mosquito entered service it was very fast at 380mph at altitude, but soon pilots found that the new Bf 109G and Fw 190A fighters could catch them.

Banks had realised there was a small discrepacy between the tolerances of the engine and the the meximum boost limit.

On Trafalgar Day its worth looking at the post-1840 reforms that turned Britian's then often defeated navy into the precision instrument of victory wielded by Nelson and Pellew in the Napoleonic Wars. Many have resonance to this day. The key moment was the appointment of John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, as First Lord of the Admiralty from 1747-51, 1763 and 1771-83. He oversaw a series of far reaching naval reforms and also invented fast food, both of which came to define the Anglo-Saxon world.

Carl Schmitt's 'state of exception' being engineered in America. Schmitt, a jurist and philosopher (and later a Nazi party member), introduced the idea of the 'state of emergency' in his 1921 essay 'on dictatorship' as a concept to enable a strong executive power to overrule the Weimar constitution. The Italian philosopher Georgio Agamben developed this further in his 2005 book 'state of exception' to show how this could be extended indefinately.

Schmitt helped draft legislation after the Reichstag Fire to temporarily suspend civil liberties which was never repealed.

Second lives.

Many obsolete aircraft had second lives on D-Day. 12 new Hurricane IIc were modified to carry 31 cu ft.mail by 1649 (Air Dispatch Letter Service) flight from RAF Northolt. Working with the Post Office they delivered mail to US and UK forward airstrips in France. Mail was carried in the port droptank and in the fuselage aft of the pilot. Guns were retained but no ammo was carried to reduce weight. By this time Hurricane production was ending, but they were still used by training units.

The A22 Churchill infantry tank - an unlikely success story.

A🧵

The Churchill failed, failed and failed again, and yet evolved into the most useful British tank on the 1944-5 battlefield. The Churchill has its origins in hastily dusted off plans to send a new BEF to France after the Munich crisis in 1938.

Envisaging a return to 1914-18 trench warfare, the War Office issued a requirement for a larger gap-crossing infantry tank to complement the Matilda.

1SL Gen Gwyn Jenkins set out an ambitious strategy for rebuilding the Royal Navy yesterday:

1⃣ within 100 days a plan to deliver full capability in 4 years and new assessment methods trialled to select a new cadre of wartime commanders.
gov.uk/government/spe… 2⃣ mass to be generated by rapidly delivering uncrewed systems to team with crewed ships, submarines and aircraft. The first LUSVs and collaborative combat aircraft to be inducted in 2026.
3⃣ largest maritime warfighting training overhaul since the Cold War.

The UK's plan to aquire 7,000 long range weapons is becoming clearer. In addition to the FC/ASW 1,000km TP15 and RJ10 subsonic stealth and supersonic cruise missiles for the RAF and RN, the Army will deploy 600km BRAKESTOP OWEs and NIGHTFALL tactical ballistic missiles. Both BRAKESTOP and NIGHTFALL are sovereign developed, ITAR-free and domestically produced capabilities, like FC/ASW, but unlike the Anglo-French-Italian MBDA missile programme and to be low cost and rapidly developed for fielding before 2030.

Lets talk about castles.

The castle was a Norman military innovation of the 11th century. It enabled a small elite, highly mobile military force to dominate and control large territories and much larger populations.

https://twitter.com/BiancoDavinci/status/1959026633060331987

The castle served as an impregable command post, observation post, supply dump and garrison for a highly trained raiding force of mobile (mounted) warriors. These became 'knights'. The Normans, of Viking descent, used them to wrest control of territory in northern France.

IAMD priorities
- Portsmouth, Faslane, Devonport, Gibraltar naval bases
- Lossiemouth, Coningsby, Marham, Brize Norton, Akrotiri RAF bases
- GCHQ Cheltenham, Whitehall, Wyton, Waddington C2, ISR.
- Fylingdales and 8 Remote Radar Heads
- AWE Aldermaston and 6 nuclear power plants. On the 'The Wargame' Sky podcast, Gen. Sir Richard Barrons, one of the SDR architects, said an 'Iron Dome' for the UK would cost £24 billion and is thus unaffordable.

Nevertheless, we should explore cheaper and more flexible means of providing IAMD against a first strike.

In the 1930s the RAF allocated '300' series squadron numbers for crews from occupied nations and the '400' series for Article XV squadrons crewed by commonwealth allies.

Numbers 1-299 were regular RAF, 500 series for the Special Reserve and 600 for the Volunteer Reserve.

https://twitter.com/Destroye83/status/1939606168428503327

The first 300 series squadrons were formed in July 1940 with experienced Polish refugee aircrews.

Four (300, 301, 304 and 305) were bomber squadrons, initially given Fairey Battles withdrawn from RAF service, which were exchanged for Vickers Wellingtons by the end of the year.

The missing link to make sense of the SDR and recent decisions on air power is a major ACP (Loyal Wingman) programme for both RAF and FAA.

This is an SDR recommendation and needs to be properly funded (billions), but is unlikely to get those resources until after 2029. Introduction of an ACP to FAA needs to be timed with a 2030s MLU of the carriers, but can enter service earlier with the RAF, initially as part of UK IAMD and for the SEAD/DEAD mission, increasing mass in the fast jet force.

With the prospect of the RN getting a new Type 92 sloop, I though I'd take a look at the history of the 'sloop' in the Royal Navy.

Sloop is an anglicised Dutch term, meaning a small flat bottomed ship, adopted by the Royal Navy from the 17th c. for small second class warships. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the sloop was formalised as an unrated single gundeck warship of 18 guns, under the command of a 'Master and Commander' rather than a post Captain. Smaller than frigates, they were used for trade protection on distant outposts.

Hunt class escort destroyers.

Concerned that the new classes of large fleet destroyers were unsuited for convoy escort duties, a new type of small escort destroyer was designed in 1938-9.

The design was for a 1,000 ton ship based on the Bittern class colonial sloops. Like the Bitterns, they would be built to naval standards, but power was raised from 3,300 to 19,000 shp on two shafts, giving a speed of 28 knts.

This resulted in considerable loss of range, making them only really suitable for North Sea and Mediterranean service.

O & P class destroyers formed the 1st and 2nd Emergency Flotillas, and were the first wartime emergency classes.

Stripped down J-class hulls with raised fo'castles that could be built quickly, the 'O' class had four 4.7" low angle guns, similar to the earlier pre-war classes. The 'P' class were armed with five 4" HA guns for improved AA performance.

Both classes were optimised for escorts duties with only four 21" torpedo tubes.

AA armament was a quadruple 40mm pom pom and six 20mm Oerlikon guns, four on power operated twin mounts.

Weapon class destroyers were the last RN wartime design, a larger follow-on to the War Emergency Classes, which could be built in yards too small for the Battle class.

Armament was similarly arranged to the Battles, with four 4" guns in new twin power operated mountings forward. They had a heavier torpedo and ASW armament than the Battles - 10 torpedo tubes and twin 'squid' ASW mortars, and were optimised for ASW escort of carrier groups.

Secondary AA armament was two twin STAAG radar guided 40mm bofors mounts and four single 40mm bofors mounts.

The L & M class destroyers were the last classes laid down for the Royal Navy before the war in 1938-9.

They were larger and more complex ships than the J, K and N classes, incorporating three power operated twin 4.7" dual-purpose gun barbettes as main armament. Four were completed with four twin 4" HA mounts in place of the 4.7" barbettes, and it was found the better AA performance and higher rate of fire of the 4" guns offset the loss in weight of shot.

Secondary AA armament was a quadruple 40mm pom pom and four twin 0.5" HMG mounts.

The J, K and N class, were built during the run-up to war, and were smaller and cheaper versions of the Tribals. They swapped two 4.7" guns for two extra torpedo tubes.

Five 'N' class were all crewed by the RAN, two by the Dutch Navy in exile and one by the Polish navyin exile. As some of the most modern destroyers in Royal Navy service during the first two years of the war, they were heavily engaged in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Inidan Ocean, and 13 of the 24 ships were lost - mostly to aircraft while on convoy escort duties in the Med.

Why is Diego Garcia and BIOT different from other overseas territories?

1./ At the time of Mauritius and Seychelles independence in 1966, BIOT was created specifically for UK defence purposes, with an agreement to return it to Mauritius once UK no longer needed the base.

1/2 2./ It was created in the context of the UK withdrawal from East of Suez, and its naval and air bases at Singapore, Gan (Maldives) and Aden (Yemen), so that USN and USAF could pick up the burden in the Indian Ocean.

3./ the population of DG was forcibly evacuated to Mauritius.

The Surface War, the Atlantic 1941-2: a 🧵..

After Operation Berlin and the commissioning of Bismarck, Tovey's Home Fleet was faced with the prospect of both Donitz's u-boat campaign and sustained KM surface raiding disrupting the vital flow of troops and supplies to Britain. By mid-1941, the wartime shipbuilding programme began to pay dividends, with large numbers of smaller combatants coming into service.

Dozens of rapidly-built convoy escorts, destroyers, escort carriers and AA light cruisers would need to backfill the gaps in the surface fleet.