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How the lack of computing power affected naval battles in world wars

It was a difficult task to gain sufficient awareness of the situation when GPS and computers did not yet exist.



Such a perspective is ideal - but it was inaccessible to admirals of the First and Second World Wars

" Network-centric combat operations " - the most popular military concept at the moment. In its framework, soldiers fight not only with weapons, but also with the help of a web of sensors and computing power, giving them and their commanders an advantage in assessing the situation on the battlefield. However, the problem that this approach is intended to solve has always existed. I'm here, the enemy is out there. How to find him? How to track? How to find out where to move after the start of the battle? How can I even track my troops?

Long before the concepts of the Internet of things flooded the entire planet, 20th century squadrons were the first to use a systematic approach in answering these questions. Sails gave way to steam engines, and European colonies sprawled around the world. Warships began to move even faster and required coordination on even larger sections of the seas than before. Meanwhile, telegraphs and radio made it possible to instantly exchange messages at unthinkable distances. All of this together revolutionized the use of information by the navy.

If you played strategy games such as StarCraft or Civilization, or watched techno-thrillers from the Cold War, you saw an ideal perspective for the commander: a map on which all the positions and status of friendly and enemy troops are shown and tracked in real time. Such a unified and general picture gives commanders such a bird's-eye view of the battlefield, which can be used to make accurate decisions. But how did the commanders recreate such a picture without computers, GPS and communication satellites? How did they keep their cards up to date?

Today it will be difficult to believe, but the greatest fleets of the past used different methods, which entailed significant changes in the tactics, strategy, design of warships, and as a result, the course of the battles themselves. It is no exaggeration to say that some of the greatest battles of the First and Second World War turned to an increase not only in combat, but also in computing power.

Battlecruisers and the birth of the Infocentric Warfare


In 1900, the British Empire was at its peak, and the Royal Navy ruled the seas. However, the British had a problem. The most likely enemies of the crown were Russia and France, who knew that they could not stand up to the Royal Navy in a direct clash. Instead, they built armored cruisers - powerful warships capable of sinking anything less than a battleship, and at the same time having great speed. In the event of war, these ships could be set against the sea trade routes of Britain, which posed an existential threat to the Empire, held only by sea trade.

To cope with this threat, Britain began to build its own armored cruisers, which were faster and better armed than the French and Russian ships. However, it was not easy to find a ship on the high seas, so Britain needed to build enough armored cruisers to place them on all trade routes. Attempts to close all the holes in the defense quickly turned into too expensive a treat. Although the British Empire was rich, it had to come up with a different strategy.

And then Admiral John Arbuthnot “Jackie” Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, enters the scene . In 1904 he was appointed " first sea lord ", commander of the Royal Navy. He is famous for technical innovation, and most of all for his conceptdreadnought [by name of the first ship of this class, His Majesty's ship " Dreadnought ", from the English. dreadnought - “undaunted”]. This concept set the trend for all subsequent warships. Less well known is that Fisher was originally appointed not to realize his ideas for turning the Royal Navy into a more powerful military force, but to stop the exorbitant inflation of the naval budget.

His solution to the problem of armored cruisers was another revolutionary concept: the battlecruiser. Its speed was supposed to exceed the speed of any armored cruiser, and the armament should correspond to that of the battleship. Theoretically, he could overtake and destroy any armored cruiser, remaining out of the reach of his guns.

Battle cruisers were so important that the original Navy decided to build only one new battleship to try out the concept of dreadnoughts in fact, but almost immediately the fleet built three more battle cruisers class " Invincible " [from the English. invincible - “invincible”]. The history of battlecruisers is too controversial to delve into it as part of this article. However, it is worth raising one question - why could Fisher, or someone else, decide that the construction of such ships was a good idea? And why, despite the budget problems, the British began to build ships even more expensive than those armored cruisers, which they came to replace?

The answer to these questions is less obvious and not so well known - because it is not connected with the technology of ships, but with the way Fisher imagined their application. Norman Friedman discusses this topic in detail in his book “Battles in the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology” [ Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology ].

If you compare the British battlecruiser with the battleship of those times, you can find several obvious differences: for example, fewer guns and more chimneys. However, there is a more subtle difference - battlecruisers were equipped with high masts, on which long-range radio antennas were mounted. These antennas allowed them to communicate with ground stations located hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and this was the key to a new type of cruising warfare.


Battlecruiser Invincible. Long-range radio antennas are located on massive tripod masts.


Compare it with the Dreadnought battleship - more guns, more armor, but only one tripod mast

Fisher knew that Britain could not afford to build enough battlecruisers to protect all trade routes. However, she would not have to do this - Britain was a superpower not only at sea, but also in the information field. Over the past few decades, British companies have been building a global network of telegraph cables and radio transmitters, so Britain has access to the best communications infrastructure in the world.

Instead of sending battlecruisers to the ends of the earth, and patrolling there, hoping to find the enemy’s battleships, Fischer suggested just waiting. Reports of attacks on British trucking would be immediately transmitted to the Admiralty (headquarters of the British Navy) in London, and based on them there would be a complete picture of the location and operations of enemy battleships. Then the Admiralty could only send battlecruisers to the right places in order to find and destroy these enemies. It was like aiming, but instead of trying to get into the ship with a cannon shell, the battlecruisers themselves would be shells fired by the Admiralty.

To realize this idea of ​​centralized fleet control from battlecruisers, Fisher needed a clear picture of the real threats. Therefore, he organized a top secret building in the Admiralty building, where intelligence and news about cargo transportation from around the world were collected on large maps, where the positions of all friendly and enemy ships were visible.

This system was known as the Admiralty Plan. Unlike monitors in modern headquarters, which can be updated every minute or every second, these paper maps were updated every few hours or even days. But they were still revolutionary, because for the first time in history, a centralized commander could look at a representation of the maritime situation of the whole world, in which all allies and all known enemy forces around the world were tracked in almost real time. The British command could issue orders in accordance with this situation.


I could not find images of the plan of the Admiralty of the times of the First World War. This photo shows a plan in the filter room of the Daxford Imperial War Museum, which tracked the location of aircraft duringBattle of Britain .

Such was the innovative strategy of using battlecruisers, and it was especially useful in one of the impressive battles during the First World War.

Shortly before the outbreak of war, an East Asian German squadron left its base in Qingdao, China. Impressive naval forces with powerful artillery, the core of which were the armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau , were commanded by Admiral Count Maximilian von Spee , perhaps the most impudent and innovative commander in the Navy of the German Empire.

After the declaration of war, the East Asian squadron began to behave exactly as the early strategists of France and Russia planned - for several months it made a rustle on British trade routes in the Pacific Ocean. In the end, they crossed the Pacific Ocean and destroyed a small detachment of British battleships off the coast of South America in the battle of Coronel. This was the most devastating defeat of all that the Royal Navy had encountered in the previous hundred years.

However, radio communications by British traders who were captured or sunk allowed the Admiralty to pinpoint the location of German forces when they crossed the Pacific Ocean and rounded Cape Horn.

The Royal Navy dispatched its battlecruisers, Invincible and Inflexible"[English" unbending "] to the south of the Atlantic. And there, in the battle of the Falkland Islands, the German squadron was powdered by British battlecruisers superior in strength and range of shots of guns. This was precisely the case for which they were developed battle cruisers that proved the efficiency of not only Fisher’s ships, but also of its infocentric strategy.

This was the highest achievement for battle cruisers. Unfortunately for their reputation, after that the Royal Navy was drawn into a completely different kind of war than the one for which they were designed. Germany, unlike France and Russia, decided not to concentrate on battleships attacking merchant ships. They decided to attack Britain directly, and build their own fleet of battleships and battle cruisers.

These sea monsters eventually met in the Battle of Jutland in 1916. There, the British battlecruisers suffered a difficult fate - and this is another story that goes beyond the scope of this article. In its framework there remains only the critically important, almost decisive role of the information played by it in this battle.

Cards on the table: battleships near Jutland


The British quickly realized that such "large-scale" representations of what was happening, like the Admiralty’s plan, were useful for both the sea and land. For hundreds of years, admirals commanded the fleets on the basis of only what the eye could see. Naval battles quickly slipped into disordered dumps, and admirals usually could do little for battle tactics, except to put into practice Nelson’s famous aphorism, which states that “not a single captain will make a serious mistake by turning his ship parallel to the enemy’s ship.”

The situation began to change in the years preceding the First World War. The British fleet grew at an incredible pace, and its commanders needed to better understand where the allies were and where the opponents were, so as not to shell their own and occupy a superior position in relation to the enemy.

And then the British transferred the idea of ​​building a real-time location of forces at sea. They created tablet tables - large desktop maps that were updated every few minutes, showing the location of the ships of allies and opponents. These were smaller versions of the plans used by the Admiralty.

And to supply these plans with information, in addition to large rangefinders used to determine the distance to enemy ships during firing, they equipped the ships with small tactical rangefinders, which were used to measure the distance to their ships and their location.

This progress can be observed by studying the changes in battleships that have occurred over time. Before the dreadnought appeared, for example, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1906, the bridges had a fairly simple structure. In fact, it was an open platform on which the admiral and several signalmen could stand, and there were no objects hindering the review so that the admiral could see everything around as far as possible.


The bridge of the Japanese battleship Mikasa, the flagship of the Japanese fleet in the Tsushima battle , in the era before the dreadnought, 1906. On the right is a picture of the Japanese commander during the battle.

But with the growth of requests for information for building plans, requests for free space also grew. After all, without computers, everything had to be physically designated. The admiral needed several plans at different scales and resolutions. What was needed was a large, strategic plan, which indicated the location of entire fleets in the territory of hundreds of miles, which could be used to plan strategic movements. Smaller plans were needed, where separate ships were shown during the battle. It is impossible to “zoom in" on paper, so each plan needed a separate table.

And although the simplest analog computers already existed to calculate the shooting parameters, it was necessary to track the ships and calculate their course manually, people with paper and slide rules. Therefore, each table required its own team of officers and sailors to update the location of each tracked ship or fleet, as well as people who transmit and record measurements made using rangefinders.

Over time, large structures grew on battleships - large structures, which are something like small office centers where the admiral and personnel could work and manage their operations.


On the left is the ship of the era preceding the appearance of the dreadnoughts, the Mikas. To the right is the battleship Missouri. Noticeable increase in the size of add-ons with increasing requirements for free space.


Artillery planning room on the Missouri warship. And this is only the personnel responsible for the shooting, without any strategic planning!

British innovation led to a landslide victory in the Battle of Jutland, which was the first and last meeting of entire fleets of Britain and Germany in World War I. The battle became massive - 151 warships of the British Great Fleet against 99 ships of the German High Seas Fleet. Twenty-eight British dreadnought plus nine battlecruisers versus 16 German dreadnought and five battlecruisers. This has become, and remains, the largest clash of battleships in history.

German Fleet Commander Admiral Karl Friedrich Heinrich Reinhard Scheerfought in battle the way his predecessors could have fought decades before. But Admiral John Rushworth Dzheliko , commander of the British fleet from the ship “Iron Duke” had at his disposal not only superior forces, but also tactical plans, which marked the relative positions of both the ships of his fleet and the German ships. Speaking in terms of video games, both admirals seemed to play real-time strategy, only Scheer had to do it in the first person.

The results were predictable. The British fleet was able to take a superior position. In the era of battleships, the ideal position was the top of the letter T - that is, you had to board the enemy so that all the guns of your ship could fire a salvo, and the enemy ship would point at you with your nose, and could only shoot from bow guns, which were much smaller .

Thanks to the superior awareness of the situation provided by the construction of battle maps, Jellico twice managed to occupy the advantageous position of the letter T in the ships of Scheer. In addition, in the evening he was able to take a position between the German fleet and its base. The German fleet suffered serious damage, and it seemed that the British could only finish it off in the morning.

However, as is often the case with serious innovations, it was still necessary to hone many details in practice. So it was with tablet tables. Remember how much space these tables occupied with the people serving them? And this means that they could be placed only on the largest ships. Also, due to the limited capacity of Morse code and signal flags, the overall picture observed on the flagship was very difficult to recreate on other ships.

That night, the German fleet made a breakthrough towards the house, and in the process went through the ranks of observing destroyers and light cruisers, which were supposed to be the eyes and ears of the British.

The captains of light British ships knew that their admiral, using the battle plan, usually has a more complete picture of the general situation than they do. Therefore, each of them fought on their own, and, assuming that the commander understands the general course of the battle better than they did, they did not even bother to tell the command details of their location. Jelliko only knew that some of his light ships were involved in isolated battles with German forces, but where, at what time and how many of them remained unclear. The captains of the ships did not understand that the general picture of the battle to the admiral was helped by their reports.

And in the morning it was already too late. The German fleet slipped through the gap and was on the way home.

Despite this setback, it was clear that the tablet table more than proved its usefulness. This quickly became known to the British allies during the First World War, the main of which were the US Navy and Japan. Both sides, which will subsequently become hostile, learned a lot, working together with the main sea power of the world, and they took this knowledge home with them.


Three American aircraft carriers at the Alameda Sea Airport and the light aircraft carrier San Jacinto in the background. Escort aircraft carriers were even smaller than San Jacinto, which gives an idea of ​​the relative size of escort aircraft carriers compared to aircraft carriers.

Leyte Gulf and Tablet Table Rematch


The tablet table has become such an important part of the US and Japanese fleets that it could possibly explain one of the long-standing naval mysteries of World War II.

The battle at Leyte Gulf in October 1944 was the largest naval battle in history. To regain the Philippines, the US fleet gathered the combined forces of two fleets. The 7th Fleet consisted of older battleships and small escort aircraft carriers, and although it was a supporting force, its firepower exceeded the entire combined power of the American fleet before the war. Further into the sea, aircraft carriers and fast battleships of the 3rd Fleet, the largest gathering of naval forces in history, were under the command of Admiral William Frederick Halsey , nicknamed the "Buffalo".

And although they had an advantage over the Japanese imperial fleet, the latter still represented a powerful adversary. And he was not going to give up without a fight. The Japanese fleet has developed a sophisticated multi-stage plan for dividing the strength of the American fleets, so that it can attack directly vulnerable transport ships carrying infantry and supplies for invasion.

The Japanese forces were about to sacrifice the aircraft carriers that remained with them, having lost most of the pilots and aircraft, as bait in order to lure the aircraft carriers of Halsey to the north. This would allow the Central Force, commanded by Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, to attack vulnerable transport ships in conjunction with the Southern Forces. The central unit, in the heart of which were the super battleships Yamato and Musashi, with the support of other battleships and cruisers, was the deadliest of all the troops of Japan. Together, all these troops made up the entire Japanese Navy.

The initial phases of the battle were not in favor of the Japanese. American submarines sunk several ships of Kurita, including the flagship, the heavy cruiser Atago. Air attacks from aircraft carriers Halsey also sank the battleship Musashi and forced Kurita to turn around. Early in the morning of October 25, 1944, the Southern forces were destroyed by battleships of the 7th Fleet in the Surigao Strait, the old Pearl Harbor veterans, raised and updated.

But after sunrise, the situation changed. On the eve, considering that the Central Connection of Kurita was broken and retreating, Halsey turned north in pursuit of Japanese aircraft carriers. But Kurita decided to turn around. And now, when Halsey’s 5th Fleet went north, and the 7th Fleet’s battleships went south, the only thing that stood between the battleships of Kurita and the transport ships of the occupation fleet were the Taffy-3 escort aircraft carriers - one of the most small ships throughout the 7th fleet.

The battle was uneven. Against the four battleships of the Central Compound (including the Yamato, which weighed like all the American ships opposing it, combined), six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and 11 destroyers, the Tuffy-3 could oppose only six miserable escort aircraft carriers, three destroyers and four escort destroyer.

Officially escort aircraft carriers were classified under the CVE code - Carrier, aViation, Escort. Unofficially, sailors transcribed this abbreviation as Combustible, Vulnerable, Expendable (flammable, vulnerable, disposable). They didn’t even have armor-piercing shells - they had to shell the Japanese infantry on land, and not fight against the pride of the imperial Japanese fleet.

The Taffy-3 group fought bravely, using planes from the nearby Tuffy-1 and Taffy-2 groups. Tiny destroyers made suicide attacks against battleships 30 times larger, and the planes in which the ammunition ran out flew over, causing the Japanese ships to maneuver. One of the pilots even defused his 38-caliber pistol from the cockpit, aiming at a Japanese ship.

The brave battle “Taffy-3” became the legendary, desperate last line of defense, which will then go down in history. And these small aircraft carriers even managed to sink several Kurita cruisers. But that was not enough. They were able to delay the battleships of Kurita, but not to sink them.

But when, it seemed, everything was lost for the Americans, when escort aircraft carriers fled from Kurita, and the transport ships of the invaders were within reach, Kurita ordered the Japanese fleet to turn around and go home. The largest and most powerful battleship ever built has put several cargo ships to flight. What happened

At the end of the battle, Kurita gave confused explanations of why he had turned around. But in the end, he settled on the fact that in the heat of battle, he decided that he had encountered the main aircraft carriers of Halsey, and that if he had not turned around, he would have been destroyed by an air attack and the battleships of Halsey.

Historians have argued for decades about how this could happen. How could Kurita mix up the small and slow Taffy 3 escort carriers with the Halsey carriers, which were three times as large?

There were probably many reasons for this, including exhaustion, and the stress caused by the flooding of the flagship. But in recent years, some historians, as Norman Friedman writes in his book Network-Centric Combat: How the Navy Learned to Fight Smarter during Three World Wars [Network Centric Warfare: How Navies Learned to Fight Smarter Through Three World Wars ], came to different conclusions. And they bring us back to the tablet table.

Admiral Kurita spent most of the battle in Leyte Gulf from the battleship Yamato, to which he switched after losing the flagship, the Atago cruiser. The cruiser sank so quickly that Kurita had to escape by swimming, and in the process he suffered two critical losses.


Heavy Atago Japanese cruiser, Admiral Kurita's flagship in battle in Leyte Gulf

The first were tablet tables. He lost both strategic and tactical plans. The tactical raft could be recreated at some level after the admiral switched to Yamato, but critical information from the strategic plan — the location of several American fleets relative to the Japanese — was lost.

The second, perhaps more important loss, was the loss of a large part of his staff who served on the Atago. Recall that it was the state of the admiral that was engaged in updating the positions of ships, counting speeds and courses, and was the computing force that allowed us to remain aware of the situation that the admiral relied on when making decisions. This meant that even if he had the information to build a better picture of what was happening, he would not be able to use it. He simply did not have enough capacity to handle it.

This answers one question that historians had for this battle. Externally, one aircraft carrier is similar to another, and perhaps in the heat of battle, in the smoke obscuring all, it is easy to confuse a small escort aircraft carrier with a large aircraft carrier located a little further. However, the aircraft carriers were fast ships, much faster than the battleships of Kurita. And escort aircraft carriers converted from tankers and cargo ships were much slower. When the battleships were approaching the small aircraft carriers, and their artillerymen with anti-aircraft guns watched helplessly, the officer cheered them up, exclaiming “wait a bit, guys, we lure them to a shot distance of 40 mm caliber!” How could Kurita not notice that his fleet was catching up with small Taffy 3 escort carriers?

The answer, of course, is that he did not understand this. He could determine his location relative to the American aircraft carriers according to his plan, but he did not have enough hands to update this plan in real time. And without a strategic plan, Kurita had a very vague idea of ​​where the rest of the American ships are.

So all he knew was that he was constantly bombarded by planes from nearby aircraft carriers, and he had no idea where the main American forces were. As far as he knew, at any moment he could be overtaken by large and fast battleships of the American Navy.

Therefore, being only a few miles from vulnerable American ships, when several small escort aircraft carriers stood between him and complete victory, Kurita turned and went home. Why? Because his awareness of the situation was destroyed. He had enough firepower, but not enough computing.

Epilogue: Computing, Air War, and the Future


The last great clash of warships occurred in Leyte Gulf. Over the past 75 years, the U.S. Navy has been a major force at sea, and because of its dominance, has not been very worried about naval battles, concentrating on threats from submarines and aircraft. The unique demands of such hostilities have further increased the importance of situational awareness and information. Submarines influenced this because of their stealth, and airplanes because of speed, which made tracking them even more important.

In this sense, Leyte Gulf allowed the US Navy to look into its future. He noted the emergence of a new disaster: suicide attacks. The following year, pilots of Japanese special assault squads, known as kamikaze , wreaked havoc on the U.S. Navy.

The use of radars to track the enemy allowed the United States to finally defeat the Japanese imperial fleet, once the best in the world. However, older planes used by special assault squads, flying singly or in small groups, overwhelmed the ability to manually track Americans, and many of the planes broke through the defenses. These were massive attacks.

Shortly after the war, the USSR adopted the technology of guided missiles to combat ships, which was first used by the Germans during World War II. This new threat replicated the kamikaze attacks and threatened to overload the American defense. Therefore, the US Navy had to come up with even more complex computerized systems, which eventually led to the emergence of the famous system " Aegis"which modern warships are equipped with.

Today, the capabilities of the sensor network available to a warship surpass everything that World War II admirals could only dream of. But it all started with the most analog of computing power - people, pencils, paper and sweat.

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