Fullbore Friday

I bumped into a post I did over six years ago on the passing of one of our greats.

Phyllis. 

Thought I'd repost today ... because, she deserves it. 

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Circumstances display character. Character comes often from places least expected - unless of course you know the best of military spouses; 

She said in a Richmond News Leader interview in 1971 that while Galanti was a POW, she just “wanted to be a housewife.” She wanted to “sink into oblivion” when he returned.

By 1969, she had become active with other POW wives. 

In 1970, the wives group became the National League of Families and Friends of POWS and MIAs in Southeastern Asia. It evolved into a tour de force in crusading for the North Vietnamese to adhere to Geneva Convention protocols in treatment of prisoners and eventually for the release of POWs and the accounting for those missing in action.
Mrs. Galanti served as chairwoman of the league.

In a televised speech before the Virginia Senate on Feb. 12, 1971, she kicked off an areawide campaign, “Write Hanoi: Let’s Bring Paul Galanti Home,” part of a nationwide project.

Her efforts generated more than 450,000 letters from the Richmond area, around 300,000 letters from Northern Virginia and 378,000 from Gastonia, N.C., where Paul’s parents had moved in 1964.

More than 80 percent of people living in the Richmond area contributed a letter, which was thought to have been the greatest response to the Write Hanoi campaign anywhere in the United States.

In March 1971, Mrs. Galanti was among a delegation of 10 Write Hanoi campaigners who went to Stockholm, Sweden, to try to obtain information on the POWs from the chargé d’affaires in the North Vietnamese embassy there.

They also wanted to send the letters asking for freedom for American servicemen being held in Southeast Asia to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong delegations attending the World Assembly of Paris for Peace and Independence of Indochinese Peoples. 

Because “they knew we had” the letters, Mrs. Galanti said they were able to talk with officials. The letters were flown to Paris to be given to the North Vietnamese delegation at the peace talks.

By Christmas Eve 1971, she received two letters and two postcards from her husband. “Those four little pieces of mail were the most elaborate Christmas gift,” she said.

She reported in March 1971 that she was using the services of a peace group to correspond with her husband.

Mrs. Galanti called for a shift in strategy in July 1971. Instead of writing Hanoi, she asked Americans to write to President Richard Nixon and Congress. “The issue has become a political matter,” she said. “Their release can come from one place — Washington.” 

In an op/ed piece in The News Leader in 1971, she wrote, “I can honestly say that I have never done anything so rewarding and worthwhile in my life. Knowing that so many people were genuinely concerned gave me a much-needed boost.”

When she and other POW wives went to Versailles, near Paris, in February 1972 to talk about release of POWs with 800 communist delegates from 75 countries at the World Assembly of Paris for Peace, they failed to get an audience. However, Mrs. Galanti said she felt a softening on the part of communist officials to Nixon’s plan to end the war.

Mrs. Galanti and two other POW wives talked about prisoner issues with Nixon and Henry Kissinger, then national security adviser, on May 15, 1972.

In October 1972, she was elected chairwoman of the league and early the next year learned that her husband’s name was on a list of living POWs.

Galanti was released on Feb. 12, 1973, among the first group of POWs freed by the North Vietnamese. Their plane landed at Clark Air Base, Philippines. He arrived in Virginia from Travis Air Force Base, Calif., on Feb. 15. He was reunited with his wife at the Norfolk Naval Station.

At the time, he told reporters, “Phyllis was pretty shy when I left, and I came back to a real tiger.”

We should all be so lucky. 

Ms. Galanti passed in the spring of 2014 after 51 years of marriage.

Fullbore.

Even the Chairman Goes Salamander on Overseas Forces

As regulars here know, from the start of the blog - and a decade earlier IRL - one of my core stands is that we are long past the need for having large formation of maneuver forces based overseas in now rich and ready allies.

Besides unit rotations, occasional exercises to practice surge, and combined training and logistics facilities, everyone needs to come home.

As a maritime and aerospace power, we need to be home based, but postured for forward deployment of land forces to support allies and interests.

We are a mercantile republic, not an empire.

It has been a lonely vigil, and I know many of the respected and wise members of the Front Porch disagree with me, but that's OK.

That being said, the Chairman is not all the way Salamander, but I'll take 80%;

In remarks on the future of warfare, Army Gen. Mark Milley said he believes the military should be more selective in its peacetime presence abroad. He said he strongly favors an overseas U.S. presence but prefers that it be rotational or “episodic” rather than permanent. He was not referring to counties like Afghanistan and Iraq, where U.S. forces have been involved in wars for nearly two decades.

“Large permanent U.S. bases overseas might be necessary for rotational forces to go into and out of, but permanently positioning U.S. forces I think needs a significant relook for the future,” not just because of the cost but also because it can leave military families vulnerable in high-risk areas, he said.

In the same article, I found these remarks interesting from a navalist point of view;

Competing effectively and peacefully with China requires a vastly larger U.S. Navy, he said, including a much larger investment in robotic surface and underwater vessels.

That was right after a discussion about flat to slightly smaller budgets. So, an Army 4-star can see the argument for Navy getting a larger slice of the pie?

Interesting. 

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UPDATE: I'm sorry, but I refuse to not LOL.

Even NAVSEA is going Salamander. No one of the Front Porch should ever have to buy a beer again. Also, we need to make clear that I am not VADM Galinis IRL. 

The Navy’s experience with fielding new warships in the last two decades has shown that an evolutionary approach to ship design is more likely to succeed than a revolutionary approach, the commander of Naval Sea Systems Command design said.   

“As we go forward and look at future platforms, [consider an] evolutionary approach versus a revolutionary approach,” said Vice Adm. William Galinis, speaking Dec. 3 in a Defense Forum 2020 webinar sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute. “Where we have done that [evolutionary approach], frankly we’ve been pretty successful.” 

I would laugh harder is it weren't for the untold hundreds of billions of dollars, and untold destroyed careers that resulted from the Age of Transformationalism.

Just read all the above and join me in saying, "NOT ONE DAMN LINK OR CREDIT TO CDRSALAMANDER? That is just rude."

Have We Forgotten the Art of Deception?

Looking back at some overlooked but critically important - and successful - naval tactics that have a direct and sometimes dramatic strategic effect ... I found myself thinking of a great example from WWII.

Can you defeat the worlds most feared warship with just some lumber and canvas?

Maybe ... 

I'm pondering over at USNIBlog. 

Come by and give it a ponder with me ... and think why this may be of use today.

Hug Your Local SINKEX Today

Some of my most memorable peacetime experiences in my naval career were SINKEX. I mean ... really people.

There is the "fun" factor - but I also fully appreciated the good information we received from sending warshots downrange. Sure, the targets didn't shoot back or try to intercept our weapons ... but it did give you a good outline of the performance of those things in the kill chain you could control. 

That is why - while using the exceptional google translate function - this bit from Russian open source caught me off guard;

... testing modern means of destruction of the Navy on it. And as an example here, we, alas, the US Navy, which does not just use old ships as targets, such firing has a pronounced research character, all reports on which, of course, the US Navy is tightly secret (with a minimum of details for the media).

Such events have not been carried out in our fleet for many decades, despite the fact that new anti-ship missiles with a sharply reduced mass of warheads are being adopted for service, the issues of the real effectiveness of which on large ships are acute.

That's right kiddies ... the Russians and the Soviets before them were not in to doing SINKEX. 

I find that, frankly, amazing. You learn so much by doing even these highly controlled and scripted exercises from both a weaponeering and damage control point of view.

While we may need to work on basic seamanship and preservation, there are two things we like to think we are good at compared to other navies; damage control and weaponeering. Both of these assumptions - which I think are very defendable - derive a fair bit from what we learn from SINKEX.

At war, our weapons may not be as good as we think they are ... but pondering the Russian admission above, I have to wonder ... what effectiveness are Russian weapons in comparison?

I know what I assume ... but maybe even less effective?

Hmmm.

As a side note, take time to read the full article linked to above. Nice discussion of lost opportunities by not having proper stewardship of existing warships ... and even a dig at LCS. Nice confirmation of what I had heard SEPCOR about Soviet Era gas turbines. 

H/t SJS.

China Bully-boys Australia

Here is one hard fact; Australia has 1.7% of the population of Communist China. 

Additionally, Australia is 80% of the landmass of Communist China. Australia is also heavily reliant on China with regard to trade. 39% all goods exported in 2019-20 go to China, while 27% of all goods imported were from China.

This is top of mind to the Chinese Communist Party.

As they have in other parts of the world, once China gets comfortable with their economic leverage, they will begin to use it against you. 

They are not too good at it, and more often than not they come out as rather thuggish. They also lack cultural competence to see that what may work in some parts of the world, may not work elsewhere.

Case in point, Australia.

China has been pushing its influence in Australia for awhile, resulting in the occasional scandal and insult. 

Their latest play seems a bit much; 

Fraying relations between Australia and China have sparked a more than 25 per cent drop in coking coal prices even as iron ore — the other ingredient needed to make steel — has soared to six-year highs.

China last month placed what has been seen as an unofficial ban on imports of coal from Australia, following a sharp deterioration in diplomatic relations after Canberra called for an inquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. On Friday, Beijing followed up with tariffs on Australian wine.

In a sign of China’s influence over commodity prices, since the coal ban came into effect the price of premium Australia low-volatility coking coal — the current industry benchmark — has dropped from $138.50 a tonne to $101.25.

Julien Hall, Asia metals pricing director at S&P Global Platts, said October was a “big tipping point” for the market as its recovery from the demand hit caused by the pandemic was put on hold by Beijing’s action.

“The need to find other destinations [for Australian cargoes] led to a rapid fall in the price,” said Mr Hall.

To top things off, this happened over the weekend; 

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson has hit back at the Australian government's demands for an apology over a doctored photo posted by a Communist Party official.

The photo, blasted as "repugnant" by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, has been altered to depict an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of a child atop the Australian and Afghanistan flags.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian today tweeted the faked image, sparking Mr Morrison's swift rebuke demanding an apology from China and for the image to be taken down.

...

"The Australian side is reacting so strongly to my colleague's Twitter," Ms Hua said, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.

"Does that mean that they think the coldblooded murder of Afghans is justified? The Australian government should feel ashamed of this; they owe an explanation to the world and they should solemnly pledge such crimes will not be repeated."

The Brereton report was actioned by the Australian government after allegations of improper conducted by SAS troops.

READ MORE: PM urges restraint over alleged war crimes exhibits at War Memorial

Mr Morrison earlier today said Australia was demanding an apology and immediate removal of the image, which he labelled as "false and a terrible slur".

"There are undoubtedly tensions that exist between China and Australia. But that's not how you deal with it," he said.

"It is deeply offensive to every Australian who has served in uniform.

"It is outrageous and can't be justified on any basis whatsoever."

The Australians don't need me to tell them this - but make no mistake, the Chinese don't just want to force Australia to submit to their will - they want to humiliate Australia. The Chinese do not see them as equals - and in the long run they have plans for Australia that they need to set the proper conditions for.

I'm not sure what we can do from here but be an even better friend and ally to Australia. Buy some Australian wine ... but more importantly, let both Australia and the Communist Chinese government know that we see exactly what they are trying to do, and call them on it.

The international community needs to get used to this. This is what dealing with a powerful China will look and feel like. 

Best thing nations can do is not to rely on Chinese money all that much. Their money comes with strings.

Fullbore Friday

One of the highest forms of the military arts is to use your enemy's habits against them. Not forcing them, but simply opening a door for them they are simply too willing to enter out of habit.

Anyone who has lived in Europe - especially around or with Germans, French, Dutch, and Scandinavians, will enjoy this FbF.

This story is short, but it is important in a couple of ways. First, the French military was never really given a chance in WWII. Beset with spotty leaderships and in some cases just bad luck, the incredible martial example of WWI just two decades earlier was as if it never happened. They had a few bright spots against the Germans ... and this was one.

Secondly ... the naval battle in the Mediterranean was a near run thing. If the Royal Navy were not so good and the Italians such sub-performers, the entire course of the war would have changes. 

A big "what if" was the large and modern French Navy fleet in Toulon. Most here know it was scuttled ... but do you know the story about why the French Sailors had time to make it happen?

Well, let's set the board. Remember here, this is the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS of the early war. Man to man ... the modern world has probably not seen a more effective fighting force.

...the 7th Panzer division arrived in Toulon. There were tanks, armored cars, armored personnel carriers and an SS motorcycle battalion. This fast-moving force entered the town and rapidly took control of the major port defenses to the west and east of the harbor. They entered the headquarters of the fleet on land and arrested the French officers, but not before a warning was radioed to Admiral Laborde on the great flagship Strasbourg. Laborde was shocked at the rapid and unexpected attack, but he swiftly took command of the situation. The orders went out to the fleet. They were to prepare to scuttle their ships and to fire on any German troops who approached. 

Have you worked in a shipyard? This will make complete sense. 

It took the German soldiers longer than they had planned to reach the harbor. It was surrounded by a great maze of naval infrastructure, sheds and warehouses, barracks and administrative buildings, turrets, watchtowers and high walls and fences topped with barbed wire. When they finally found their way to the main gates they found them closed and manned by French soldiers.

...but here is the trick; 

The German officers demanded the gates be opened. The French officer in charge smiled.

‘Of course,’ he replied in German, ‘Do you have your access paperwork?’ 

Yes ... right out of a bad Hollywood WWII movie; "Your papers please."

The German officer was perplexed, but his orders were to capture the port and the fleet without bloodshed, if possible, so he began to debate with the officer at the gate. The conversation went on for some time, and in the end, the German officer was obliged to produce documentation for the Frenchman, who nodded, smiled, thanked him, and then left him standing at the gate.

The French soldiers began to banter and chat with the Germans. The officer returned with more questions and requests for further paperwork. He delayed the German officer for as long as he could, but eventually the man’s patience was at an end, and the French soldiers were obliged to open the gate.

It was 5.25am when the German tanks finally rolled through the gates, by which time all was ready on board the doomed fleet. The order was given to scuttle the ships, and the French crews began to pour onto the harbor. Dull explosions reverberated through the air as the pale light of early dawn began to spread across the sky. The main force of the German tanks rumbled toward the flagship Strasbourg, which was already listing to one side in the water. Infantry dismounted from their motorcycles and ran toward the disembarking crews. Sporadic fighting broke out as thick greasy black smoke began to pour from the docked ships. 

Can we count this as a French victory? I think so ... but such a tragedy. If only the French Navy had made a run for it instead ... that would have been a story.

Total cost:

3 battleships (scuttled)

7 cruisers (scuttled)

15 destroyers (scuttled)

3 destroyers (seized by Germany)

13 torpedo boats (scuttled)

6 sloops (scuttled)

12 submarines (scuttled)

4 submarines (seized by Germany)

9 patrol boats (scuttled)

19 auxiliary ships (scuttled)

1 school ship (scuttled)

28 tugs (scuttled)

4 cranes (scuttled)

39 small ships (seized by Germany)

12 killed

26 wounded 

 

Have a Happy Navy Thanksgiving

...and take a moment not just to think about all the Sailors at sea, but every single person on the Mess Decks who work hard to make it happen.

I love those guys. Few ratings are as great a combat multiplier than those who can make the magic happen during the holidays at sea. From the dedicated Culinary Specialists to those just mess cranking for a spell. 

BZ.