Drachinifel
Published 3 May 2025The S-Boats, fast attack craft of the Kriegsmarine, are today’s subject.
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September 28, 2025
S-Boats – Guide 438
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September 21, 2025
Chatham Dockyard – Half a millennium of supporting the Royal Navy
Drachinifel
Published 16 Feb 2022Today we take an overview look at the history of Chatham Royal Dockyard and some of what you can find today at in its preserved premises!
Visit the dockyard – https://thedockyard.co.uk/
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September 20, 2025
Dutch Navy Luger: From World War One to the End of Neutrality
Forgotten Weapons
Published 12 May 2025The Dutch Navy first acquired Luger pistols in 1918 specifically for its aviators. They had 12 German P04 Lugers taken from a German submarine stranded in the (neutral) Netherlands, and 28 more were purchased from DWM in 1918 to round out the 40 guns needed to equip the Naval Air Service. The pistol was formally adopted as Automatische Pistool Nr.1. In 1928, the Dutch Army adopted the 1906 New Model Luger for its own service, and the Navy decided to update its revolvers at the same time. The Navy opted not to get grip safeties, and so took a copy of the German P08 model instead of what the Army had. The first order was placed in 1928 through BKIW in Germany, and deliveries would run until 1939 with a total of 2654 delivered before German invaded in May 1940.
Dutch Army Luger trials:
• Politicians Ruin Everything: Dutch Lu…Dutch East Indies Lugers:
• Lugers for the Dutch East Indies Army
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September 18, 2025
“The British fleet is strong and at the ready” (1939)
British Pathé
Published 12 Nov 2020GAUMONT BRITISH NEWSREEL (REUTERS)
Comprehensive documentary of the Royal Navy in the lead up to war
Full Description:
SLATE INFORMATION: Britain’s Navy Ready for Any Challenge, The Combined Fleets Filmed by Gaumont-British News
Comprehensive documentary of the British fleet and their preparedness for action including shots of numerous ships at sea and at anchor, sailors on deck, aircraft on deck, ship’s guns, officers in quarters, destroyers, aircraft flying off deck and landing on water
Archive: Reuters
Archive managed by: British Pathé
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September 11, 2025
The CH-148 Cyclone helicopter – the navy’s flying lemon
Over at Noah’s True North Strategic Review, a question came up about the Cyclone helicopters in Royal Canadian Navy service and whether the navy would include Cyclone landing pads on the upcoming Canadian Continental Defence Corvette design:
Q6. Any updates on the Cyclone helicopter and its replacement? I’ve read that the class is grounded and it’s already an orphan. Has it rolled into NTACS?
You probably heard our favorite Vice-Admiral absolutely tearing them apart lol. The fleet was grounded due to parts issues, a long-standing problem with the Cyclone fleet. In fact everything about the Cyclone is a problem.
I’ll let Mr. Topshee explain:
So yeah, the fleet was grounded or should I say the majority of the fleet is still grounded. Not all of them anymore, but still the majority last I heard like two weeks ago?
Of course even before the grounding the fleet was in bad shape. Nearly half haven’t flown this year, and again the majority is still grounded. Link 11 deprecated back in January/February? Lockorsky is asking ~$20,000,000 an aircraft to upgrade to Link 16, and even then it will take about two/three years to get the entire fleet upgrades.
And it ain’t like Link 16 is some optional capability. It is quite literally the standard. You can’t do much without it.
This isn’t counting other capabilities set to deprecate or in need of upgrading on the way to Block 2.1 … All to support, yes, an orphan fleet that we are paying tooth and nail to keep going.
And it isn’t like Lockheed is winning here. They reported a $570 million loss on the Cyclone this year. Quite literally no one is winning here. We are all suffering to keep these birds flying, lord forbid if we try to keep them going into the 2040s as planned.
Cyclone isn’t a new helicopter. It’s a product of 1990s requirements, from a contract signed twenty years ago. It still has yet to reach its final Block 2.1 state. I get why it’s frustrating to everyone. I’m glad Topshee said the quiet part out loud. Call them what they are.
I’m of course missing things, I know. I wont go into the entire history and issues with the fleet (yet) but I will say that I truly believe there is no fixing them by this stage. The navy has been using modified Hammerheads to fill the gaps and future UAS will likely take some role.
Unmanned systems aren’t at the level though to fully replace the capabilities a maritime helicopter like the Cyclone brings to the table. The loss of the fleet is a loss of capabilities. Eventually something has to give.
I don’t wanna go to into the Cyclone right now, as I’m currently working on something for it. However there are a lot of issues, more than the public knows.
As for NTACS? There is no plans to include the Cyclone. At least not right now. The NTACS team went back to the drawing board over the summer to hammer out what they want. We’ll see what comes of it.
Pre-delivery Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone helicopter, 4 April, 2012.
Photo by Gerry Metzler via Wikimedia Commons.
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September 6, 2025
New Evidence on the loss of HMS Hood!
Drachinifel
Published 5 Sept 2025Today we take a look at a heretofore unpublished account from a sailor who saw the destruction of HMS Hood, and take a look at what this might tell us about the incident.
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September 2, 2025
2 September, 1945 marked the formal end to the Second World War
On The Conservative Woman, Henry Getley notes the 80th anniversary of the formal surrender of Japan to the United Nations forces represented by Douglas MacArthur on board the battleship USS Missouri:
Representatives of the Japanese government on the deck of USS Missouri before signing the surrender documents, 2 September 1945.
Naval Historical Center Photo # USA C-2719 via Wikimedia Commons
ON September 2, 1945 – 80 years ago today – General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, accepted Japan’s formal surrender in a ceremony aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Then with the words “These proceedings are closed”, he brought the Second World War to an end.
That final sentence, broadcast worldwide by radio, came five years and 364 days after the global conflict started. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, but Britain – followed by France – did not declare war on Germany until September 3.
Six years later, on his enforced retirement, MacArthur told the US Congress: “I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads which proclaimed most proudly that ‘old soldiers never die, they just fade away'”.
Now, with the 80th anniversary of the war’s end, Britain’s old soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen have indeed faded away. At the war’s peak, 3.5 million men served in the Army, 1.2 million in the RAF and almost one million in the Royal Navy. Today, fewer than 8,000 veterans of those fighting forces are thought to be left. Most will be 98 or older.
It’s a striking thought for those of us who were brought up in the immediate post-war years. As I recalled in an earlier TCW blog, back in those days almost everyone’s father, uncle or brother had served in the military in some capacity.
The men we kids saw going to work in the offices, shops and factories of Civvy Street were the unsung heroes of the River Plate, Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Battle of the Atlantic, the Arctic Convoys, the Western Desert, Italy, Normandy, Arnhem, the Rhine, Imphal, Kohima, the jungles of Malaya and Burma and many other battles large and small.
Being interested in military history, I was lucky enough to have become friends with several veterans of the Second World War, all sadly no longer with us. They were without exception the finest of men – modest, generous, good-humoured, gentlemanly. All had been at the sharp end in battle, but the last thing any of them would have called himself was a hero. They shared their memories with me reluctantly, anxious not to be thought they were “shooting a line” – that is, exaggerating or boasting. I was honoured and humbled to have known them.
Their passing reminded me that while the war was obviously seared into the very being of those who had experienced it, we of the first post-war generation inherited a lot of what you might call its folk memories and thus it loomed large in our perceptions.
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August 24, 2025
This is Westland Helicopters (1960s)
British Helicopters History
Published 17 Jan 2020Major rationalisation of the UK aircraft industry occurred during the 1960s. With the acquisition of Bristol Helicopters, Fairey Aviation and Saunders-Roe, Westland Helicopters transformed itself into Britain’s only helicopter maker with plants at Yeovil, Weston-super-Mare, Eastleigh, and Hayes, producing helicopters for all roles.
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August 19, 2025
Dieppe 1942: The Failed Raid That Shaped D-Day
Battle Guide
Published 2 May 2025On 19th August 1942, as dawn was breaking along the coast of occupied France, a force of just over 6,000 men stormed the beaches around the port town of Dieppe in the first major allied strike against Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Within a matter of minutes hundreds lay dead or wounded, washed up against seawalls, hung on wire entanglements or incinerated in the burning landing craft. Over 60% of the mainly Canadian assault force were killed, wounded or captured by the end of the day, and the Dieppe Raid has, for the allies, gone down as one of the most infamous days of the Second World War.
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Operation Jubilee: Canada’s Devastating WWII Loss
WarsofTheWorld
Published 17 Jun 2023By 1942, the war was no longer another great European conflict. It was now a firmly global affair enveloping all of the world’s great powers as the Allies squared off against the tyranny and aggression of the Axis nations. Against such colossal forces, no one country could stand alone and events that affected one combatant would ultimately have consequences for the other further down the road.
To that end, while the western Allies and the Soviet Union were effectively fighting separate wars against the same enemy, there needed to be cooperation between the two fronts in order to squeeze the life out of Nazi Germany and insure victory against Fascism. However, the relationship was often a strained one as both Allied power blocks were suspicious of the other’s intentions once the war was over.
Thus, we come to the subject of today’s episode and a story of the war that is still the subject of much debate today. It was an operation with no specific military objective other than to experiment with conducting division-sized amphibious landings against a fortified beach and as a gesture to the Soviet Union who were starting to feel abandoned by their Allies. It is an operation that has become seared into the hearts and minds of the Canadian people for the sacrifice they were asked to make for it.
0:00 Introduction
3:26 A Red Request
7:50 Planning and Preparation
13:32 Operation Rutter – A False Start
18:10 Reviving Rutter
24:02 Operation Jubilee
35:52 A Necessary Lesson?
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August 17, 2025
Battle of Norway, 1940
Real Time History
Published 7 Mar 2025The Battle of Norway in Spring 1940 cemented the reputation of the daring and invincible German war machine under Adolf Hitler. But while Denmark and Norway were successfully occupied by Germany, the campaign came at a heavy cost. This was especially true for the German Kriegsmarine which lost a significant amount of warships including the Blücher — losses that essentially crippled them for the remainder of the war.
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August 15, 2025
The Royal Canadian Navy should go for the GLAAM
At True North Strategic Review, Noah returns to a familiar topic when discussing the Royal Canadian Navy’s current and future needs, in this case he recommends that the RCN goes for the GLAAM:
Photo from True North Strategic Review
One thing I neglected to fully discuss during that piece, and one that always comes back to me time and time again, is the Global Logistics, Aviation, Amphibious, Medical Support Platform from Davies, aka GLAAM.
This is quite funny, as I have had somewhat of a monopoly on the GLAAM subject, which is probably why it keeps coming back to me. I think I’m one of the few who ever brings it up, and probably the one who does most frequently.
Maybe that’s why it always surprises people when I don’t throw my support behind it. In fact, historically, like most larger vessel proposals, I have been fairly unsupportive of talks of acquisition. As I stated in my Support Ship post, I believe priorities are needed elsewhere, on getting more important things done, and given the River-class, subs, and CDC are a decade out, there is little pressing need for anything beyond the two JSS in the immediate term.
At least not to the point of urgency. I would rather see CPSP fully funded along with CDC before any talks of new vessels like GLAAM. I have always made that clear. That remains my overall position now.
However, in the last few months, I’ve been surprised to see just how much universal support the proposal has, both from the average online reader and those in the navy. There is a fairly broad love for GLAAM, even among those who would rather have JSS — there is always some love to be thrown its way, even as an “if only x and x allowed it” conversation piece.
And let it be known, I don’t dislike GLAAM at all. I think it’s cool. I think it’s unique and has capabilities I like. Even if it didn’t make it into my initial assessment, I focused on vessels a lot smaller like the Vard 7 313, that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge GLAAM and its potential.
So. What is GLAAM?
First, what is GLAAM? For those unaware, GLAAM is a proposal from Davies Shipyard for, essentially, a Multi-Functional Support Ship. One could even call it a Joint Support Ship! In fact, looking at GLAAM you can see a lot of what was originally demanded from the Joint Support Ship in its first proposals with the Afloat Logistics Support Capability (ALSC).
Of course, ALSC would evolve into the JSS project and over time drop the amphibious, RO/RO, and vast majority of HADR capabilities. Of course, that’s another conversation for another day, but a lot of GLAAM, at least to me, reminds me of that concept—and then some.
Visually and capability-wise, she is very similar to the HNLMS Karel Doorman. In fact, you could almost call them sisters. They share many design features and capabilities that take a step above the traditional Landing Platform Dock we see in other navies.
“HNLMS Karel Doorman, which GLAAM shares a striking resemblance to.”
Photo and caption from True North Strategic Review
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August 14, 2025
D-Day’s Flat Pack Ports OR Lord HT Gets Cross with The Fat Electrician
HardThrasher
Published 13 Aug 2025In which we use the @the_fat_electrician as an excuse to talk about the Mulberry Harbours, make a specific threat to a building in the United States and get to oogle at giant bits of floating concrete.
Primary Source – Codename Mulberry – Guy Hartcup, Pen & Sword Military. Kindle Edition 2014 (org. 1977)
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August 7, 2025
The Arctic, strategically speaking
CDR Salamander suggests we tilt our globes (you have a globe on your desk, don’t you?) 90 degrees and consider the Arctic Ocean:
First things first, as it is the focus of the report, let’s go to the chart room and properly define the, “Central Arctic Ocean”.
There it is, the horizontally shaded bit outside everyone’s EEZ.
The chart comes from the report in question by RAND: The Future of Maritime Presence in the Central Arctic Ocean.
Before we dive in — and the Front Porch knows exactly where I am going here — I need to point out again what we see at the very top where all the red, green, and blue lines intersect. You can’t miss it, and it should have you screaming to whatever direction The Pentagon is from where you sit.
Yes kiddies, that is the Bering Strait, half of which is ours, and the other side is Russia. As you move from the Arctic into the greater Pacific or from the Pacific to the Arctic, you have to pass through that strait, and before it the American Aleutian Islands.
As we’ve covered here before, we have criminally avoided leveraging the blessings of the geography bequeathed to our nation, that of controlling both the inner and outer gates to the Arctic Ocean from the Pacific.
I should not have to explain to you the importance of the Arctic shores of Alaska to anyone. Challengers to the security of our resources in the north, both old and new, are back on the scene. We are a decade late in building a base at Nome and reactivating Adak. I covered that in a previous Substack linked in the prior sentence. Read it and come back if you need to catch up.
A weakness of much of the RAND report is, it is mostly based on stale talking points about immediate climate change in the Arctic, and questionably alarmist assumptions about the Arctic climate for the rest of the century, which seem more suited to the first Obama Administration, but put this to the side.
Should the climate in the Arctic mid-century trend towards the more ice or less, the simple facts remain — the competition in the Arctic is only increasing and the time to act on this new reality is now.
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July 25, 2025
The Royal Canadian Navy announces eight of the Kingston-class ships will be retired this year
The Kingston-class Maritime Coastal Defence Vessel (MCDV) has been in RCN service starting in the mid-1990s and they’ve apparently done well for the navy in their intended role. Unfortunately, naval ships have a normal working life expectancy of 20-30 years, and the Kingstons are at the upper end of that range, so it’s not surprising that they will be taken out of service. It is a bit of a surprise that the announcement came on Thursday and two-thirds of the class will be paid off this fall, without a direct successor class of ships on the slipways:
The Kingston-class Maritme Coastal Defence Vessel (MCDV) HMCS Moncton in Baltimore harbour for Sailabration 2012.
Photo by Acroterion via Wikimedia Commons.
Starting this fall the Royal Canadian Navy will begin divesting of the Kingston-class vessels. Eight of the Kingston will be divested while four, Moncton, Yellowknife, Edmonton, and Nanaimo will remain in service for the time being.
Formal ceremonies will take place in Halifax for Shawinigan, Summerside, Goose Bay, Glace Bay and Kingston. Ceremonies in Esquimalt, B.C. will be held for Saskatoon, Whitehorse and Brandon.
The remaining four will be divested over the next three years:
- Yellowknife in 2026
- Edmonton in 2027
- Moncton and Nanaimo in 2028.
The duties of the Kingstons will be transferred to other vessels in the fleet. The AOPS have already taken over the OP CARRIBE and Patrol roles the last few years, while training duties will be moved fully to the Orca [class].
The new Remote Minehunting and Disposal Systems, being containerized can theoretically be deployed on any available vessel, and will be another role taken by the AOPS and the Kingston divest. They’ve already been doing MCM testing so that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
The remaining four Kingstons will likely continue to participate on things like OP REASSURANCE, which Yellowknife and Edmonton are currently deployed on until October as part of SNMCMG1.
In basic terms the AOPS will be taking over a majority of the Kingston‘s tasks, which they have been slowly adding to their belt already. To say there hasn’t been a slow transition would be ignorant of me.
Nor is this surprising. We knew this was coming. Its been an open discussion for a while. I expected we would hear something this year about the divestment plan, however I didn’t expect eight to be paid off right away.
That comes as a surprise to me, also dropping it out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting this to come at this time, so this is a rare moment of genuine shock for me. Of course the Kingston fleet isn’t in the greatest of shape.
Several haven’t sailed in years (I believe Whitehorse is on almost five?) and the decision to not do another refit was basically the death blow to the class as a whole.
Things get harder before they get better. It is better to divest now and have people available for the platforms that are working and in greater need than it is to try and stretch the Kingstons for a few extra years, nor was it deemed worth the ever-increasing cost to keep them in service.
The Kingstons will be replaced by the future Continental Defence Corvette. I expect as the fall comes that we will be hearing more publicly about the project. I was a bit surprised they didn’t bring it up in the Press Release given it’s not exactly a secret, although it was teased a bit.
Arctic Offshore Patrol Ship (AOPS) HMCS Harry DeWolf shortly after launch in 2018. The ship was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy in June, 2021.
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