Confused by German palestine policy

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This doesn't make sense.

We practically went to war in 1999 to support the Kosovars against the supposedly ethnically cleansing Serbs, guarded Kosovo, recognised Kosovo, subsidised the genesis of a Palestinian state through the EU for years - and now we're voting against Palestine's membership in UNESCO even though our government should have known in advance that this application would succeed?

This sounds devoid of principles to me, to say the least.

By the way; congrats to the Palestinians.

S Ortmann

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On the Central Quest of Military Art and Theory:

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The pursuit of the decisive, "unfair" (net) advantage over the enemy.

Many recipes have been developed over time for the accumulation of such an advantage. Clausewitz developed the military Schwerpunkt, Erfurth wrote a book about surprise, v.Schlieffen became fixated on encirclement battles and especially Cannae, ancient writers such as Vegetius already wrote about training, strategems and rules of thumb (Master Tzu).

It's been also a classic approach to overpower an enemy with superior numbers. This took in modern times the shape of overpowering the enemy with superior military budgets during peacetime and superior industrial output during wartime.

The modern approach is typically a combination of almost all known ones, epitomised in doctrine manuals and organised training.

The central theme in almost all of these ways is to seek victory/success before (or even without) a fight. You strive for being the almost safe winner of a battle before you go to battle. All else would be negligent.

This is where the previous post kicks in; it's important to draw a strong line between small contacts with the enemy and the big battles.

The focus is usually on the big battle; popular military history is especially fixated on battles.

That is disconcerting, especially in regard to military theory development, for battles should be among the least interesting episodes of a skilful campaign. Battles should be pretty much decided prior to their initiation. The real challenge is ahead of a battle.

By the time a battle would be accepted, the enemy should be so much disadvantaged that he better withdraws and accepts a pursuit (a common occurrence in turning movements and 18th century army-manoeuvring campaigns). The withdrawal and pursuit -albeit no easy thing for either party- were in many historical wars the really big affairs. The losses of an army after its ranks were broken were usually much bigger than during battle itself. There were exceptions (such as Greek inter-Polis warfare, Pacific Island battles, 1st World War), of course.

The only thing that's better than to pursue an enemy without needing to break his force in battle first is to encircle him. Thus the aforementioned Cannae fixation of German military during the 2nd and 3rd Reiche.

The focus should be -today as ever - on the accumulation of a decisive net advantage. Later on, this advantage has to be realised.

This is a bit analogue to seeing the value of your stocks rising; you also need to sell them at some point in order to cash in. Stocks rising in itself is of no value.

The accumulation of a decisive net advantage may happen through diplomacy, force building, reconnaissance, ruses, skirmishing, positioning and many other known components of military art and theory.
The realisation (exploitation) of the advantage require battle, pursuit or -best of all- peace negotiations. A political move will be the ultimate realisation of the accumulated net advantage, of course.
Yes, I'm that much a Clausewitzian.


Some readers may be tempted to think that all this is trivial; it isn't. It's helpful to look at war this way.

For example, activity that in itself has a poor record (such as reconnaissance with high attrition) can be fine, even necessary. This is part of the reason why a truly attritionist mindset is very problematic. Such a mindset would usually label such activity as wrong.

So basically this post addresses the decades-old anglophone debate between 'maneuver'-oriented and 'attrition'-oriented schools of military theory. That distinction is simply not as helpful as the distinction between "accumulating a net advantage" and "realising the net advantage". This addresses only those people who aren't overburdened by 4-word titles instead of 1-word ones, of course.


Just in case of doubt; my two concepts are of course not phases with a discrete succession. They do overlap each other. They're constructs to help a more clear and more purpose-focused thinking about military art and theory.

S Ortmann

P.S.: I'd be proud if I could say that I developed this clarity of thought (which I think it is) before skirmish and scouting tactics caught my major interest. Sadly, it was the other, not-so-methodological, way around. First I formulated my skirmish theory (largely unpublished), then I formulated this text in support of it.

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What is a "battle" - what is not?

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(This post is a preparation for the following one.)

The English word "battle" is nowadays more ambiguous than the German word "Schlacht". It's also in a much more inflationary use.

I found it useful to not call fights of all kinds and all scopes "battle". Such an ambiguous use of the word clouds the view for what's important (in the next post).

It's about as annoying to me as the typical description of a lone AK shooter as "sniper" just because he didn't shoot at stone-throwing range and his position is unclear.

Die Alexanderschlacht; oil painting of Albrecht Altdorfer, 1529

 

For example, it would be a mis-use of the word "Schlacht" to call an assault on a platoon-sized outpost a "Schlacht". That word is reserved for much bigger fights; as a rule of thumb I wouldn't call anything smaller than a division on division engagement a "Schlacht". Meanwhile, it seems to be common practice to call almost ever fire-fight "battle" nowadays - as well as many entirely non-military actions that don't even necessarily include opposing parties.
I've been told that this inflationary use of the word "battle" only began by the time of the Vietnam War.

As a contrast, even many corps vs. corps contacts of WW2 weren't even mentioned in daily reports of the German supreme command, much less named as "battles" with their name. I got to admit that Germans coined a dedicated word for the really, really big world war battles in order to differentiate them from more normal battles; "Großkampf" (great fight).

A platoon vs. battalion-sized engagement would be - especially in a great war context- nothing bigger than a reconnaissance (if the platoon is moving) or a practice assault for a green battalion.

The attention on small wars during the last years has done us a disservice and clouded our mind. It helps to have a clear linguistic differentiation between a real battle and a small contact between hostile parties that merely gets equal attention as a battle would (for lack of a real battle).

I cannot redefine a language that changed over time, but I wanted to point out that it's important to keep the difference between a small exchange of fire and a real battle in mind. Clarity of language is important for clarity of thought.

S Ortmann

P.S.: The German word "Schlacht" (battle) is a close relative of "schlachten" (slaughtering).

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Website recommendation: "Napoleon, His Army and Enemies"

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I can heartily recommend this great website, for it's a huge and great and just splendid website about the major European armies of the Age of Napoleon.

Napoleon, His Army and Enemies

The "Strategy and Tactic" section is outstanding!

S Ortmann

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An article about artillery

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Typical articles about artillery in professional journals look like

Artillery [blah] 21st century [blah] transformation [blah] lethality [blah] network [blah] leap ahead [blah] revolutionary [blah] effects [blah] efficiency [blah] joint [blah] system of systems [blah] excellence !

I stopped reading such articles years ago.

Their illustrations are often neat, but the content of truth or even actual information is 'moderate'. Moreover, often it's important what's not being written (for example that the shiny new gun is already out-ranged by foreign substitutes or that the bureaucracy plans to buy only a small supply of the new ammunition). Ongoing programs are usually being hyped - up to the day when they're being cancelled. Afterwards there's perfect silence about them and whatever is the next move of the bureaucracy is going to be hyped as super-wise.

In short: Most professional journal articles about artillery (or most other military topics) are pretty much an insult to the reader's intelligence.

Luckily, this blog is not professional journal, so I can dare to write an article about artillery without being ashamed.

Earlier blog posts about artillery looked at hardware examples, sub-sets or specific conditions for effectiveness or other specifics:

2011-09: A "15 years too late" analysis on precision munitions and survivability
2011-08: The underrated genius gun
2011-01: A German artillery fire control computer in '45?
2010-08: "Who Says Dumb Artillery Rounds Can’t Kill Armor?"
2010-04: A little bit German artillery and anti-tank defence history
2009-11: The future of multiple rocket launchers
2009-09: On defensive firepower and much else...
2009-05: DM 121 purchase / modern artillery
2009-04: C-RAM
2008-11: Cluster munitions ban
2008-07: Mortars and howitzers

This time I'll try to write about the grand picture, of all artillery since the 20th century. It will also be somewhat applicable to other indirect fire arms (such as mortars).

The purpose of the artillery is to influence a land campaign advantageously by achieving effects through fires (and the threat thereof). These effects were exclusively destructive / lethal / repulsing a long time ago, but jobs such as illumination, smoke screening, disruption, radio jamming were added during the 20th century.

The effects are the centre of attention (or should be), for they are the justification for the effort.

Old photos about arty can be interesting, too...

It's thus interesting to create a list of what influences artillery effectiveness (in a somewhat abstract way). This is the area where public discussions of artillery are especially narrowed-down and dumbed-down. My attempt to create such a list follows:

Artillery hardware-dominated factors

(1) Ammunition quantity (including the availability of ammunition to the firing unit, not just in national depots!)

(2) Ammunition quality (type and quality of warhead/cargo, quantity of sub-munitions, including fuse type)

(3) Duration of munition flight (relevant against moving targets)

(4) Angle of descent (important for unitary fragmentation munitions and in hilly/mountainous terrain)

(5) Reliability of guidance / trajectory correction and fusing (inclusive ECCM)

(6) Vulnerability of ammunition to hard kill countermeasures (C-RAM)

(7) Fuse setting in use (timed, proximity, super quick, quick, delay, mine fuse?).

(8) Quality of ammunition storage (especially for certain white phosphorous rounds) and ammunition age / shelf life.

(9) Fires observability (radar cross section or smoke trail of munition in flight, flash, noise, smoke, trajectory height, manoeuvring munition?) 

(10) Resistance of artillery to non-fires influences (EMP, deep sub-zero temperatures, moisture, heat)

(11) Dispersion of impacts (usually an elliptical pattern, not a simple circle - thus a difference between longitudinal and lateral dispersion)

Other artillery factors

(12) Reliability of artillery personnel (morale, accidents and errors, willingness to fire when civilians are present)

(13) Close security (360°) concerns

(14) Survivability of artillery against dedicated anti-arty measures (camouflage, concealment, deception, hardening, redundancy, mobility, tactics)

(15) Readiness of artillery (On the march? Shoot and scoot? Double crews? In range? Fuelled? Supply times? In need of repairs? Suitable trajectory when mountains are present? Suitable direction (in light of different safety distance requirements for longitudinal and lateral dispersion)? Artillery in a self-defence fight? Authorised/actual strength?)

(16) Accuracy of impacts (or of projected impacts if rounds become effective prior to impact; correct calculation with correct input variables including ammunition characteristics, barrel wear, temperature, altitudes, coordinates, meteorological date and more)

Communication and command

(17) Delay (lag) between arrival of request/command and fires (calculation, checks, deconfliction, loading, aiming weapons, communication between calculating and firing small unit)
 

(18) Resource allocation (Centralised decision-making? Schwerpunkt?)

(19) Reliability of communication (line of sight, range, clarity, inter-lingua, ECCM)

(20) Delay (lag)  of communication (speed of transmission, queuing of messages, procedures)

(21) Timing of fires requests / commands (tactical timing, not = lag!)

Related to observation of the enemy

(22) Accuracy of observation (own and relative position)

(23) Reliability of observation (IFF, recognition of decoys, night and bad weather performance)

(24) Lag of observation (non-digital aerial reconnaissance, acoustic sensors)

Target (area)-related factors

(25) Susceptibility to soft-kill countermeasure reactions (timely warning, taking cover or evading, deploying smoke/chaff/dazzler/decoys against target-seeking munitions)

(26) Surprise factor

(27) Surface quality (Deep snow? High trees?)

and a big one:

(28) Nature of the target (dispersion, cover, hardening, morale, proximity to "blue" troops, size, movement, importance, vulnerability to secondary effects such as secondary fires or explosions, ability to make identification more difficult, exploitation of red cross or protected sites etc)

I suspect the primary utility of such mil porn pictures is to keep readers motivated.

Having thought about this for a while, I'd like to make three comments and leave all else to the reader and later blog posts:

(a) The challenges are much greater and much more diverse than the mere shopping of some fancy precision munitions or new guns. I hope none of my readers will be ever tricked by marketing hype about a supposed silver bullet (again)!

(b) The actual effect is much, much smaller than the potential effect because no force comes close to mastering the first 24 points. An incomplete understanding of these influences leads to a wrong estimation of artillery's actual effectiveness and the relative importance of specific influence factors.

(c) Wouldn't it be great if sometime in the near future we'd be able to read an article about artillery in a professional journal in which the officer-author writes about the artillery of his army and uses a list such as this one as a check list, commenting on every point briefly? I mean, instead of a buzzword mash-up?

S O

P.S.: Word count for buzzwords: 4 x "effects" and once "tactical" (in some contexts that would be a buzzword) in my 'article'. All uses seem justified to me, for they're being applied with the original meaning.

I do sometimes ask others to preview and comment/correct my texts. This time I'm thankful for preview comments by the SWC members "Xenophon" and "GMLRS".

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A history of the infantry gun in the U.S. (and elsewhere)

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The German army/armies improvised the concept of an infantry gun for knocking out pockets of resistance that survived artillery preparations. I wrote about that in an earlier post. The French did something similar, and eventually many countries employed relatively light guns for such purposes during the Inter-war Years.

Anti-tank guns, mountain guns and even light field cannons were imperfect substitutes for dedicated infantry guns in the direct fire role and Brandt-pattern mortars were imperfect substitutes for infantry guns in the indirect fire roles. So in theory, you could make do without infantry guns - and infantry guns were squeezed considerably by such competition.

The U.S. Army was a bit slow to catch up with the whole concept and was especially interested in the indirect fire role, as it seems. Its quite belated adoption became known as 105 mm howitzer M3.

In 1941, the U.S. Army requested a 105 mm howitzer suitable for carriage by air, and as a rough guideline, a weight of 2,500lb and a range of no less than 7,000 yards were stipulated. In response, the M2A1 howitzer was cut down in length by 27 inches, to become the Howitzer T7. The carriage of the 75 mm Howitzer M3A1 was adopted as a Carriage T6, and the recoil mechanism of the 75 mm Pack Howitzer, much modified, became the Recoil Mechanism 105 mm Howitzer T13. Surprisingly, when it was all put together it worked quite well and required very little further modification, and the design was standardized as the Howitzer M3 on Carriage M3 in February 1943. Trials of production models revealed a lack of strength of the carriage, so those converted from 75 mm matériel remained the M3, while a newly-manufactured design, with thicker metal in the trail, became the M3A1. [...] 2,580 were built [...].

(Ian V. Hogg "British and American Artillery of World War Two", 1978)

105 mm M3 Howitzer in action, WW2

 

These guns - eventually used as a kind of medium infantry gun since there weren't even remotely enough airborne troops to make use of such a production run, were a moderate success. The Army didn't exactly fall in love with them. U.S.Army field artillery of the time was a huge fan of multi-battalion "time on target" fire missions that united the firepower of many batteries, while infantry guns lack the range to be available for this and are inherently rather point target destruction tools for commanders below division level (that would be battalion or "Combat Command" a.k.a. brigade in the WW2 U.S.Army).

There was a lot of competition as well. Mortars, recoilless guns, bazookas, artillery, on-call fighter bombers and most of all a huge quantity of Sherman tanks in direct cooperation with infantry.

There's also the possibility that the U.S.Army knew about infantry guns, but didn't understand them.

- - - - -

You might think that this was the end of the American infantry gun story, but there's a funny twist. One hand didn't exactly understand what the other did, and the Marines re-invented the wheel. The M3 Howitzer was - as the quote showed - a 105 mm howitzer (rifled barrel) on a modified 75 mm pack howitzer (=mountain gun) carriage.

The Marines - being Marines and all, but most importantly different - had post-war the glorious idea that their 4.2" mortar could be mounted on a carriage. A modified 75 mm pack howitzer carriage. Yeah, THAT 75 mm pack howitzer carriage.

4.2" M30 mortar in action in Korea, 1952

Well, the 4.2" mortar was an unusual one - it had rifling just like a howitzer. Most mortars have smooth-bore barrels.

Let's see - 4.2", what's that in millimetre? 107 mm. Interesting.
What was its range? 7,400 yards as a mortar.

Well, that's only a coincidence! ;)

The Marines being Marines and innovative and all did some PR. They didn't call this bastard gun a howitzer. No, they called it M98 Howtar ("Howtar" being an unofficial designation).

 Ain't that funny?

(The Marines became actually innovative afterwards, but that was not exactly a success.)

- - - - -

Meanwhile (or actually slightly after the M3 Howitzer), German engineers thought hard about an improvement of the infantry gun idea. They combined mortar-ish hardware with a gun-ish carriage as well.

They had the idea for the High-Low pressure system in which the propellant has first some volume for expansion (into a lower pressure state) before the projectile begins to move much. This allowed for a much lighter (but longer) barrel and a lighter carriage.

Everything had to be done in great haste, so the projectile of a 81.4 mm mortar and the carriage of the semi-obsolete 50 mm anti-tank gun were married with (afaik) the muzzle brake of a 75 mm anti-tank gun and, well, what else a gun needs. There was a shaped charge version of the shell and some experimentation with a purpose-built very light carriage, too.

8 cm PAW 600 a.k.a. PWK 8H63, true calibre: 81.4 mm (smoothbore)

This gun did not have a great maximum barrel elevation (only 32°), but it combined light infantry gun weight, reasonable effective range and penetration in the important anti-tank role and a reasonable performance in the indirect fire role (out-ranging the common 81.4 mm mortar by much and being about on par with the other regimental indirect fire asset, the new 120 mm mortar).

It's still amazing that it was a quite accurate weapon despite launching a subsonic mortar bomb with an according made-for-subsonic shape with a muzzle velocity of 520 m/s (about Mach 1.5).

The USMC re-invented the Army's M3 Howitzer / medium infantry gun, but the Bundeswehr failed to get the high-low pressure guns (there was also a 100 mm model), too. Instead, recoilless guns were in fashion during the mid-50's (moderately practical, but even cheaper than a high-low pressure gun!) and later on there were the first generation anti-tank guided missiles that finally evolved into practical munitions.

Those were in turn replaced by second-generation anti-tank missiles which were more practical, but with a distinct survivability drawback.

Now guess what was fired in anger against Argentine field bunkers in 1982 during the re-conquest of the Falklands, in best WW1 infantry gun fashion ...

BTW, those 2nd generation ATGMs (with typical SACLOS guidance) were in turn replaced elsewhere with more modern ones, and Hezbollah used those against Israelis troops pinned in buildings during the 2006 Lebanon War.

The infantry gun thing keeps bouncing back.

S O

edit 2016-11: A related (old) article in a South African military journal, pp.47-50. I suspect the author is Russian (judging by spelling certainly not American or British, so it wasn't Storr). The described D-395 gun design would be interesting for 3rd World ground forces if it is fully compatible with standard munitions.

Also, see this about infantry guns today.

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Some good stuff from other blogs

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...after complaining about them in general.

"No wonder we need a $700 billion defense budget: some of us are planning strike operations at the hint of an anti-American plan."

http://tachesdhuile.blogspot.com/

"Why I Published US Intelligence Secrets About Israel's Anti-Iran Campaign"

http://www.truth-out.org/why-i-published-us-intelligence-secrets-about-israels-anti-iran-campaign/1316550301

"Which begs the question: What, exactly, is the purpose of ISAF reports in the first place? Is ISAF seriously going on record to say that the data that they are making public cannot be relied upon? If analysts cannot build arguments out of the “basic, factual information” that ISAF is providing, why provide it at all?"

http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2011/10/isaf-says-dont-quote-me-bro/

"Die de facto unabhängige Region Somaliland schafft es auf erstaunliche Weise, relative Sicherheit und Stabilität zu gewährleisten. Und doch wird der Enklave auch nach ihrem 20-jährigen Bestehen die Abspaltung von Somalia verwehrt."

http://www.zenithonline.de/deutsch/politik//artikel/das-ignorierte-erfolgsmodell-somaliland-002261/

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A rule of thumb for the allocation of specialist support

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About long-range long-radius specialist support assets (such as helicopters, artillery, engineers, maybe scouts) in general: A rule of thumb (of mine) is:

Long-radius specialist support assets should as a rule of thumb be assigned to a level of command that has approximately the radius of (short-term, ~24 hrs) responsibility / operations as the asset has radius of effect (very short term, minutes to 4 hours).

I developed this as a my rule of thumb (or rather as a description of the common ground of my opinions on different force designs) a while ago and mentioned it indirectly in earlier posts. The reasoning behind this is mostly about efficiency. Longer range assets than needed (say, 80 km artillery instead of 13 km mortars when you need 8 km radius) are more costly and thus often wasted at lower levels. It's on the other hand not convincing to give a formation commander an asset that doesn't enable him to relocate his main effort quickly (which is big chunk of his job, after all) because of its lack of effective radius.

There are complicating considerations that have to be taken into account as well, of course. Horizontal support doctrine, Schwerpunkt idea in a slow-moving campaign, speed of assets (scouts, for example) and many other considerations play into this.
Thus it's only a rule of thumb. I justify the elevated position for the radius variable over the other considerations with my assumption (observation) that it appears to be the dominant factor most of the time.

- - - - -

Now let's move over to a specific application (I mentioned this one in an earlier post as well): Helicopters as brigade or division assets. This is particularly popular with U.S.Americans and in small war contexts, but rarely if ever being mentioned in other contexts. Helicopters as division assets has been the dominant pattern in the U.S.Army for a long time (+ helicopters in armoured cavalry regiments ~ brigades, helicopters in marine expeditionary units ~ very small brigades).

The radius of effect of a helicopter unit is in excess of 100 km and thus much greater than the short-term area of operations of a brigade. A brigade may occasionally move 100 km over night, but something goes awfully wrong if its elements are in combat 100 km away from its temporary helicopter base.

What's more to be considered?

Helicopters are  fuel hogs while armour, mech and even infantry brigades are manoeuvre formations (heavy divisions too). The combination of both looks quite wrong if you take into account that the mere supply of a moving brigade for its ground element's essential supply needs is already a logistical problem of the highest quality (and rarely mastered for long).

The fiscal cost of helicopters may contribute to them being an inefficient aerial support asset in comparison to alternatives, such as aerial recce drones and guided indirect fire munitions.

U.S. ground forces are the greatest proponents of a strong use of helicopters in regiments, brigades and divisions. They have been much-influenced by the Vietnam experience, a de facto ban for fixed wing aircraft in the U.S.Army and the assumption of air supremacy and effective suppression of enemy air defences.

They are quite specific and alone in this regard, which can be taken as an inspiration to think about whether their conclusions are correct and generally valid (which would mean that dozens of other modern armies were wrong about it).

The availability of helicopter support far forward (= in a brigade combat area) may be marginal due to hostile air defences. If in effect, this might turn the organic helicopter support into deadweight.

Helicopter support may be somewhat similar to other organic support (a subsittute). This resembles the 'UAV' point above. "KISS - keep it simple, stupid!" and the concept of friction in war (v.Clausewitz) appear to suggest that such redundancies may at times be a mistake.

An organic helicopter force impact the march agility of the brigade. The additional vehicles add to column length and duration of passing of a bde convoy. The responsiveness to a march order may be poor because of helicopters still away or not in flyable condition.

Centralisation vs. decentralisation. Different armies have different preferences here, for good reasons. The responsibeness to a formation's support needs is better with organic assets, but having them organic reduces their availability for large operational-level actions. Decentralisation also reduces the efficiency of the dedicated support (~more aircraft mechanics needed for same qty of helos).

The temporary helicopter base in a brigade's area would be in range of (much) hostile artillery and even of hostile air surveillance. This would be the foundation for a high exposure to artillery fire on the base, which is unlikely if the base was more centralised with the corps, for example.

Finally, there are usually* alternative levels for the allocation of helicopter support assets at available:

# division

# corps

# theatre / Armee

I prefer the corps level, for  modern corps would have a radius of short-term responsibility that matches about the (practical, ~90% of missions) radius of effect of helicopters.

(*: Marines and forces in small wars being an exception at times.)

- - - - -

Similar considerations can be applied especially to artillery support, which appear to have advanced in range even more than the (linear) growth of the area of responsibility / operations of formations did.

My approach can be contrasted with the (let me call it) "wish list" approach of some others who at times appear like spoiled children in their expectation of near-unlimited resources no matter what costs. The agility- and logistics-related points even show that having more does not necessarily equal being better off.

Armies have a responsibility to serve their people, but they have also a responsibility to avoid waste. This means they need to allocate resources rationally, not the least because this habit is important for great wars when practically all resources become very scarce.

S O

P.S.: I apologise if anyone finds my texts difficult to read because I cut them down to the bones without much explanation. I take much as self-evident and attempt to keep blog posts at a bearable length and thus omit some explanations.

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Depressed

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An hour ago, I activated dozens on of bookmarks in Firefox to sweep over all bookmarked Milblogs. Then I proceeded with reading ... and now I'm kinda depressed.

To state it nicely, I feel alone with my idea of a Milblog.

I feel also quite alone in my appraisal of the costs of war, and my subsequent rejection of most wars and 'opportunities' for war as net harmful to all communities involved.

There are two explanations;

(a) I'm wrong.

or 

(b) The Milblogosphere is quite terrible.

Neither is charming.

S Ortmann
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Analog-mechanical computers

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If you were ever curious about the technological level of World War 2...

That was slightly below cutting edge back in '45; tube-based electric computer did exist, but were apparently not preferred for the harsh conditions on a warship.

S Ortmann

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