And now for something completely different...RAAF chooses EE Lightning over Mirage.

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Herald12345 6/14/2009 12:15:22 AM

Herald to be truthful the RAAF would probably have been better off replacing the Canberras with the conventional strike derivative of the A5 Vigilante the was originaly selected prior to the government commiting to the F-111 instead.

The Vigilante's bomb ejector didn't work well (a Newton ejector?) and she couldn't carry standoff weapons very well . Get the Buccaneer, wire her for the Paveway series, and use some tankers for range instead.. Blackburn built a winner in Buccaneer. I still think the Cranberry SLEP is a better dollar spent for the need at hand. Speed is not everything. Electronics, stable launch and drop, and good low level transonic performance, (well two out of three) is good enough.

It would have been available to enter service in the mid 60's, would have been substantially cheaper than the F-111 and could have been manufactured / assembled locally. While not as capable as the F-111 and likely not as long lived the Vigilante would have done the job required of it while freeing up funds for other capabilities that were ignored with the F-111 purchase. i.e. Tartar County DLG's and a new CVL capable of operating off the shelf fighters....F-8 anyone?

Could Australia build Vigilante? Probably. What was the state of Australian avionics research and her capacity to fix North American's foul ups? You'll have to fix these faults. It took US ten years.

PPDI- a very primitive HUD.

REINS-from the primitive NAVAJO tercom that didn't work.

VERDAN-the nav computer that was a teardown every half hour, or so, to see what burned out this time?

None of that crap worked right in first iteration.

Herald

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Volkodav 6/14/2009 5:26:59 AM

More thought on the County.

The RAN had traditionally operated almost equal numbers of destroyers and cruisers up until the early 40's when the number of cruisers was reduced through attrition while he number of destroyers increased through transfers from the UK (N and Q class) and local construction (Tribal class) a a far greater rate than attrition. At one point we were down to s single County class cruiser along with the obsolete HMAS Adelaide leading to the RAN relying on destroyer, inparticular the Tribals, filling roles that previously would have been assigned to a cruiser. This led to the misconception that the Tribals, in truth DL's rather than DD's were in actual fact almost as good as CL's.

This fiction that larger destroyers were interchangable with light cruisers persisted post war with the Darings and then the Adams in RAN service being seen by many as "almost" cruisers. In reality both were fleet destroyers and not even as capable as the DL and DLG designs being prepared and (sometimes) built in the US, UK and Europe.

The RAN's acquisition of two CVL's, whose strike aircraft were seen as the true replacement for gun cruisers, as well as plans to retain one CA in reserve and one CL as a combat capable training ship mitigated the fiction surrounding the fighting prowess of our destroyers into the mid 50's. Unfortunately by the late 50's the decission had been made to dispose of both cruisers, retire one carrier and convert the other into a helicopter only ASW carrier when her fixed wing aircraft (Seavenom and Gannet) reached the end of their useful lives. This plan effectively religated the RAN' future role to that of an ASW Flotilla.

What changed was Indonessias arms purchases and regional aspirations which saw a life extention for Melbourne with orders for Skyhawks and Trackers as well as the order of the three Adams class DDG's.

What we needed to do was accept the two Majestic class CVL's as replacements for the County class CA's while acquiring a pair of new CL (Colony or Minatour class) or modernised CLAA (Dido class) to act as DL's to the various destroyer classes that made up the escort groups for the carriers during the early 50's / Korea.

Concurrent to this we would have purchased two of the four Centaurs still on the stocks at the end of the war and have them completed to the same standard as Hermes instead of modernising the Majectics, one of which would have become a training ship and the other would pass to reserve. This would have seen Australia enter the 60's which two modern carriers operating Seavixen and Gannet, with the potential to later add Bucaneer. At this point the logical decission would have been to replace the two cruisers and some of the destroyers with a number of DLG's (County, Leahy, Belknap) which would allow the remaining destroyers to be replaced with general purpose frigates (idealy broadbeam Leanders). The Majestics would be available for operation as training ships, ASW helicopter carriers, transports, or Commando Carriers as required.

Long term the DLG's would be replaced with AEGIS CG's and the frigates with something along the lines of the Type 23 Duke Class. The carriers would be initially be converted with skijumps for Sea Harrier and then both the Centaurs and the Majestics would be replaced with a class of three V/STOL carriers.

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Aussiegunneragain Herald 6/14/2009 8:42:00 AM

I used to be a fan of the idea that Australia could, can and should operate a comprehensive naval air defence system, but I've come to the conclusion that this was beyond us then and remains so now. The Melbourne and our other skimmers were useful convoy escort asset for Australia to contribute to the allied effort against Soviet submarines and surface raiders, but they couldn't have operated independently against more than an air threat constituting the odd TU-16 or TU-95 lobbing one or two ASM's.

You need to think clearly about how you would fight Mister Badger (and Konfrontassi) in your AO, AGG. GF gave you some of it when he mentioned Bloodhound though I prefer Thunderbird for its mobility. Make him fight on your terms and commit himserlf to the wrong actions.

You have to lure Mister Badger into combat beyond his fighter cover and into your fighter/SAM defense.

Let's face something else, you don't put to see without some figbter defense as long as Mister Badger is around. Part of the point I harped upon earlier was that you have a severe budget and operations manpower limitation, so that you have to pick and choose carefully how you go about the Konfrontassi. Everything from submarine delivered commando raids to blow them up up in their aircraft shelters to counter airbase missions by Canberras to just plain sabotage to maybe trading in the Majestics for Centaurs to buying Swedish fighterts and land based attack aircraft as we've discussed to this point is geared to three systems objectives:

-active deterrence to show the Indonesian dictator that military confrontation is useless.

-the STICK (Teddy Roosevelt) to prevent that regime from embarking on adventurism in your areas of interest. (Solomons, Papua, New Guninea, etc.)

-naval reach to extend your influence and help- across to your friends and neutrals within the area and block his.

All of it we doscuss is geared so that you can outwait the dictator's regime while Australia uses diplomacy and economics to nudge Indonesia's successor government into a friendly relations posture, post dictator.

This is more or less what Australia actually did. But Konfrontassi was ramped up hypothetically so the respnnse has to be within the limits.

I am not in Volkadav's corner suggesting a fleet of Coumties, and a couple squadrons of Vulcans. I'm just trying to figure out how to give Darwin a TALOS battery, swap Majestocs for Centaurs find the men and money for a couple of Counties, four squadrons of Sea Vixens, at least four squadrens of Drakens and the NADGE*1 to go with it, and do a Canberra bomber upgrade. (Introduce the AGM 76 as a standoff missile for anti-airbase strikes.

AGM-76 This is a HUGE A2A FALCON rocket converted to an AGM It would have a Kerry's wallop at Mack 2+ and twice the effective range.

Herald

My mistake on the Badger K, the confusion comes from the Indonesian of the Badger B also being called the Badger KS.

The point is that we couldn't afford a couple of Centaurs with airwings and escorts. Post WW2 apart from an increase in defence spending to between 4% and 5% of GDP during the Korean War, during which time we managed to run the two Majestics. Once defence expenditure dropped to around 2.5% in the early 60's where it stayed until the mid 80's, we had to drop one of the carriers (see link below re defence expenditure). All that keeping defence at a higher level (say 3% to 4%) would have achieved would have been to maintain our two light carrier capability with the necessary upgrades and escorts. We might have swapped them for 1 Centaur, airwing and escorts but not two.

www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.NSF/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article102001?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1301.0&issue=2001&num=&view=

The second point is that strike carriers weren't even the best way for us to defeat Indonesia as we had access to air bases within a reasonable range of anywhere where we would want to fight them. I do think the potential was there to increase the range of our land based air cover to improve coverage and persistance, either through improved tanking and/or more longer range aircraft. The light carriers were useful for our contribution to ensure that materials got from Australia and the Middle East to potential areas of conflict with the Soviets and their allies, such as to Japan, the Korean Penninsula and in in the case of food back to the ME.

Even if our one Centaur had been available to go to sea against the Indo's when a conflict came around, placing close enough to Indonesian territory for it to effect a blockade or take strike action would have been far too risky in the face of airpower they had in the 60's. All they would have had to do would have been to tie up the interceptors with their land based fighters and let the Badgers launch. They were planning a raid with 6 Badgers (12 missiles) on the Dutch carrier Karal Doorman if it had come to blows over West Papua and even if the AS-1 was crap and our EW good you could count on at least one connecting with something per raid,. Remember thatwith all the great EW gear available in the 1980's even the USN didn't manage to stop all of the Exocets and crappy Silkworm missiles fired at them and the ships they escorted in the Persian Gulf tanker war. After 3 or 4 raids by the Indonesians you could count on the carrier being hit and with an 1300lb warhead on the missile, sunk.

If we had chosen to spend more on defence I would rather have seen them upgrade the Sydney to the standard that the Melbourne was and supply it with a modern airwing and escort, and to upgrade our land based airpower capability with F-4's, tankers and maybe a squadron of some sort of medium/heavy bomber (Vulcans, B-47's, Victors all fit the bill) if we had any change, rather than tying up so much capital in the one Centaur.

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Aussiegunneragain Herald - Read this one, less typos 6/14/2009 8:47:32 AM

My mistake on the Badger K, the confusion comes from the Indonesian of the Badger B also being called the Badger KS.

The point is that we couldn't afford a couple of Centaurs with airwings and escorts. Post WW2 we had defence spending of between 4% and 5% of GDP during the Korean War, during which time we managed to run the two Majestics. Once defence expenditure dropped to around 2.5% in the early 60's where it stayed until the mid 80's, we had to drop one of the carriers (see link below re defence expenditure). All that keeping defence at a higher level (say 3% to 4%) would have achieved would have been to maintain our two light carrier capability with the necessary upgrades and escorts. We might have swapped them for 1 Centaur, airwing and escorts but not two.

www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.NSF/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article102001?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1301.0&issue=2001&num=&view=

The second point is that strike carriers weren't even the best way for us to defeat Indonesia as we had access to air bases within a reasonable range of anywhere where we would want to fight them. I do think the potential was there to increase the range of our land based air cover to improve coverage and persistance, either through improved tanking and/or more longer range aircraft. The light carriers were useful for the different task of being our contribution to allied efforts to ensure that materials got from Australia and the Middle East to potential areas of conflict with the Soviets and their allies, such as to Japan, the Korean Penninsula and in in the case of food back to the ME.

Even if our one Centaur had been available to go to sea against the Indo's when a conflict came around, placing close enough to Indonesian territory for it to effect a blockade or take strike action would have been far too risky in the face of airpower they had in the 60's. All they would have had to do would have been to tie up the interceptors with their land based fighters and let the Badgers launch. They were planning a raid with 6 Badgers (12 missiles) on the Dutch carrier Karal Doorman if it had come to blows over West Papua and even if the AS-1 was crap and our EW good you could count on at least one connecting with something per raid of that size. Remember thatwith all the great EW gear available in the 1980's even the USN didn't manage to stop all of the Exocets and crappy Silkworm missiles fired at them and the ships they escorted in the Persian Gulf tanker war. After 3 or 4 raids by the Indonesians you could count on the carrier being hit and with an 1300lb warhead on the missile, sunk.

If we had chosen to spend more on defence I would rather have seen them upgrade the Sydney to the standard that the Melbourne was and supply it with a modern airwing and escort, so that we could always have a carrier on hand in case of war with the Soviets. I would also have upgraded our land based airpower capability with F-4's, tankers and maybe a squadron of some sort of medium/heavy bomber (Vulcans, B-47's, Victors all fit the bill) if we had any change, rather than tying up so much capital in the one Centaur led battle group.

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Aussiegunneragain Herald - Read this one, less typos 6/14/2009 8:52:41 AM

don't forget that during Konfrontassi we also had Bloodhounds in place. Badgers had to go continental if they intended to do a Pearl, and the only valuable property within their range was also within Bloodhound range.

If they wanted to do a Pearl they would have done it at low level, below the Bloodhound's operational altitude.

maybe not. they were gunshy and not too keen about travelling around without escorts - none of their fixed wing pointy jets could have gone the distance - and they had even less effective ground control of those aircraft. Even in the 60's we had a signal reach advantage over the Indons. they'd never done low level strike - Plus, even that silly claim that an ex indon aviation general made about flying over Alice Springs was caveated with them going high to avoid the Bloodhounds (even though there were none at Alice, and even though Alice served no strategic benefit so WTF would they even try to fly to it in the first place. :)

Perhaps, but the capability of a low level strike (with pop up in case of an anti-airfield attack) was there if they had have wised up to it.

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Aussiegunneragain I mean GF 6/14/2009 8:53:52 AM

If they wanted to do a Pearl they would have done it at low level, below the Bloodhound's operational altitude.

Perhaps, but the capability of a low level strike (with pop up in case of an anti-airfield attack) was there if they had have wised up to it.

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Aussiegunneragain Volkodav 6/14/2009 8:55:32 AM

Nice plan but we couldn't have afforded it. See my post to Herald for more details.

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StevoJH 6/14/2009 9:56:16 AM

Could a 1965 transfer of Centaur at scrap value have been paid for? Albion becomes available in 1973 but had been stripped of its catapult giving the option of either converting for Harriers or refitting the Arresting Wires and Catapult. Could the wires and catapult from Melbourne be transferred across?

Sea Vixens and A4's into the later 1978's when you refit them with a Ski Jump to carry Sea Harrier FRS.1. Replace with either the Invincible class or a stretched version by the late 1980's. When i talk about a stretched version of the Invincible class i'm fairly sure there were studies done in the 90's regarding a SLEP of the Invincibles including a hull plug forward of the island increasing the size of the airwing by a number of airframes.

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Volkodav AG 6/14/2009 10:30:36 AM

It all comes down to priorities and ideology.

For instance National Service has been identified as one of the main factors Australia couldn't afford to mechanize the Army in the 50's or 60's. The cost of providing the necessary cadres to train intake after intake of national servicemen meant there was limited resources left to introduce new equipment and tactics, let alone a completely new order of battle. i.e. the government of the day chose to defend Australia with a conscripted Light Infantry Division and 2 CMF Light Infantry Divisions instead of the alternative of a regular Armoured Brigade and a regular Infantry Brigade, with the CMF providing another 2 brigades of each type. Two thirds the manpower similar cost, far more hiting power in a continental defence scenario. The trouble is the idea wasn't to defend Continental Australia from invasion it was to fight Indonesia in the Papuan Highlands.

The RAN at the same time was intended to provide an ASW escort group and a brigade amphibious lift in support of the RN in SEA. This priority was behind the RAN's concentration on ASW at a time when the regional submarine threat was minimal Common sense would have suggested that a smaller number of general purpose warships with decent Anti-air, surface and submarine capability would have been more useful than the slightly larger number of specialist ASW ships that were useless against air or surface targets (the Q class conversions) or of limited use (the River class) that formed a major part or our fleet.

The RAAF was operating a flying reserve using Mustangs, Vampires and Meteors. Large sums of money were being spent developing Australianised variants of types that were already approaching obsolescents, i.e the Avon Sabre when they entered servce. Instead the RAAF could have had reserve personnel working side by side with the regular personnel and have spent their cash on regularly updating their fleet with modern off the shelf types.

The money was there it was just being spent on other things that in hindsight may have been less useful or less value for money than what we could have had.

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Herald12345 6/14/2009 3:28:42 PM

My mistake on the Badger K, the confusion comes from the Indonesian of the Badger B also being called the Badger KS.

Maybe we confused each other. The Russians called the Badger B, the Tu-16 KS, and the Indonesians copied them.

I am not in Volkadav's corner suggesting a fleet of Counties, and a couple squadrons of Vulcans. I'm just trying to figure out how to give Darwin a TALOS battery, swap Majestics for Centaurs find the men and money for a couple of Counties, four squadrons of Sea Vixens, at least four squadrons of Drakens and the NADGE*1 to go with it, and do a Canberra bomber upgrade. (Introduce the AGM 76 as a standoff missile for anti-airbase strikes.

^1 Forgot to tell you that the national air defense ground environment was the English translation for Swedish term for SAGE.

Australian defense budget as % of GDP and Commonwealth outlays.

The second point is that strike carriers weren't even the best way for us to defeat Indonesia as we had access to air bases within a reasonable range of anywhere where we would want to fight them. I do think the potential was there to increase the range of our land based air cover to improve coverage and persistence, either through improved tanking and/or more longer range aircraft. The light carriers were useful for the different task of being our contribution to allied efforts to ensure that materials got from Australia and the Middle East to potential areas of conflict with the Soviets and their allies, such as to Japan, the Korean Peninsula and in in the case of food back to the ME.

Even if our one Centaur had been available to go to sea against the Indo's when a conflict came around, placing close enough to Indonesian territory for it to effect a blockade or take strike action would have been far too risky in the face of airpower they had in the 60's. All they would have had to do would have been to tie up the interceptors with their land based fighters and let the Badgers launch. They were planning a raid with 6 Badgers (12 missiles) on the Dutch carrier Karal Doorman if it had come to blows over West Papua and even if the AS-1 was crap and our EW good you could count on at least one connecting with something per raid of that size. Remember that with all the great EW gear available in the 1980's even the USN didn't manage to stop all of the Exocets and crappy Silkworm missiles fired at them and the ships they escorted in the Persian Gulf tanker war. After 3 or 4 raids by the Indonesians you could count on the carrier being hit and with an 1300lb warhead on the missile, sunk.

Let's look at that?

You postulate a raid by six Badgers,( type KS). I never have been satisfoed that all the Indonesian Badgers were cruise missile carriers. That actually makes no sense to me as the type was a highly specialized anti-shippung weapon. Biuts lets postulate that the Russians sent the Indonesians twenty of that bird..

What do they have to do?

1. They have to find you. Even today, it takes aerial reconnaissance to find a small ship in a big ocean. Let's assume that the Badger KS Argon was replaced with "Ruben" a better radar for an air recon function, but still limited as a blob detector to about 270,000 meters for surface search for an aircraft carrier sized object.

a. To find, you they have to radiate. Either the observer has to radio you in to vector the attack force, or the the searching aircraft has to paint you. The goiod thging about radar is that it can do this well. The bad thing about radar is that it is a flashlight un a dark room. If you have RDF, you will see him 3x the distance he sees you, barring curvature of the earth in that era because radars had lots of side noise to exploit..

b. Okay, so now you are at sea and your six Badgers and one recon bird announced themselves as they hunt for you, say north of Darwin in the Arrafura Sea. He has to fly his bombers out beyond his Mig cover to reach you. (Trust me on this, most of the MiGs he has are cannon armed, are target defense interceptors, barely an hour in the air at cruise. He can't cover out that far. His bombers have to come to you without air escort.

c. What airbases can support the Badgers that he has? At that time the only 3000 meter+ paved runways he has I know are on Java. Threat bearing from him is rather well established, from the WNW.

d. What that means is that he has to hunt for you at the limits of his search radius and spoend some time to do it. With few antiship missiles to use (The Russians normally exported three sets with the aircraft they gave their allies so we postulate no more than sixty max.) he just sent sox aircraft and twelve missiles + 1 hunter bird aloft in a three attack section grouping to find you. Followiung Russian doctrine of the day, he will try to make a two axis hammer and anvil attack to split your "pathetic" fighter defense. Gee, you are in a lot of trouble!

e. Are you? If you had any brains at all, (and you do) you would have a new system called COASTWATCHER. It isn't very complex or very expensive. it consists of a chain of radars and radio listening posts that look out to sea. They pick up sortie chatter from the Indonesians as they look for you.Out of Darwin, that Canberra squadron I wanted you to SLEP puts up one of its ELINT birds as an AWACS. Another Canberrra tanker bird is also up there with her. Now curvature of the Earth wise you can look out about 370-1000 + kilometers depending on whether you use surface stations or airborne RDF and what respective altitides are.. You will have bearing on him very quickly. How soojhn is he going to be bearing fixed so you have an interferometric track? If it takes COASTWATCHER more than thirty minutes to set up a track once the Badgers are aloft from their bases, then, yoiu need toi send your radio operators to Bletchley or Arlington for remidial RDF training. f. Meanwhile at sea.......Those very expensive Sea Vixens on your somewhat expensive HMAS Sydney are taking off in pairs. The poor overworked GIB aboard each Vixen runs his radar silent for the moment as does the entire task force. Only every now and then does the outlyiing River class frigate designated as the Banzai Jammer turn on her big 3D radar to one quick sweep search for contacts. She also listens hard for an Argon or Ruben. In that part of the world in those days, a jet aircraft emitting radar can only mean one thing. So the fighter director center goes into action.......

g. Two Sea Vixens vector out to the RDF contact bearing and turn on radars once they have their own RDF track. (Why do you think they operate in pairs?) They find the recon Badger before the Recon Badger sees them. Presumably RAN Sea Vixen as is the RAN custom, is wired for SIDEWINDER and they had the foresight to buy into SPARROW. SPARROW will knock down bombers even if REDTOP won't. Splash one RUBEN. Took four damned missiles, but he's gone.......... Now what?

h. The three attack sections must know that their surprise is blown. The have three choices. Abort, hunt silent, or go active and hunt line abreast. They may be only thirty minutes out at this moment if they are lucky. At 275 m/s that puts them at 500,000 meters slant, or so. They have to close to 100,000 meters to launch at extreme range and then they have to STAY there for at least 350 seconds for their slow missiles to acquire and endgame. Long time to die..

i. Sydney has six Sea Vixens left. She launches pairs as fast as she can while that poor River continues to fighter direct. the Sea Vixens out to the now targeted Badger firing sections. Nearest track gets first look first shoot from the forst available Sea Vixen pair. Omce again it takes four missiles to down a Badger SPARROWS and SIDEWINDERS. But the Sea Vixens chase until they are sure. A Badger carrying Kennels has two choices press on or dump the Kennels and rin. They cannot outrun a Sea Vixen restricted to 400 knots (200 m/s) when the Sea Vixen can chase at 550 knots (275+m/s) That is suucide for the Badgers.

j. Two Badger sections left and only four Sea Vixens to stop them. Next pair intercepts at twenty minutes out. same drill. dump missiles and run, or press on and die? These Badgers dump, but the Sea Vixens chase and get one Badger. The other one escapes.

k. Now you face two Badgers, and you are down to your last two Sea Vixens. Things get very dicey. Time to choose. Will you light up the Perth (Adams class) or will it be the Brisbaine (County Class)? Someone is going to have to start shooting at the Kennels soon. The Sea Vixens get their fourth Badger, but one finds you at last and launckes hois two Kennels. He blind launches high altitude hoping that his missiles once they go active will hit SOMETHING.. The Sea Vixens need help as they give chase as this wiuley badger trues to circle route to escape Sydney launches Skyhawks. Yes, I said Skyhawks, they are cannon armed and they are wired for SIDEWINDER. Between them and the Sea Vixens the last Badger dies. .

l. Nail biting time........ What now? The two kennels are inbound. The Brisbane (or maybe a river if you bought the Wessex mod Leander) sends up her helo. The helo dangles a radar target and a howler underneath her. This is where BANZAI JAMMING comes in. The ships all turn end on to the threat except for the Perth which lights up and starts throwing rockets at the inbounds as fast as she dares. She has 100 seconds to engage. She can fire 10 missiles in that time The ftrst five TARTARS miss. The sixth TARTAR hits. 20 seconds and one Kennel left. Every ship at this time releases balloon decoys, some chaff, and KABOOM!

M.What is the highest decoration that Australia can offer? That Wessex helo crew just earned it, because it was their blip the Kennel selected when it went HoJ.

I just described worse case scenario for you where everybody did everything according theoir doctrines on both side. Now what? Well your task force runs for shore based air cover. that means darwin as fast as they crank on knots. The next move is up to the RAAF. That means those SLEP Canberras will have to stage into Darwin and Tindale most likely ......

The battle of the Arrafura Sea means a full scale war with Indonesia the US PACFLT probably on the way, but until then....... You will need tanker support out of Darwin. as I expect you will want to bomb the rest of those Badgers to keep Alice Springs safe.. This is where it gets dicey. Night raids low level are always very tough. You will be beyond your own fighter cover as even with tanker support the Drakens woll be at their limit at 1800 kilometers. The bombers though with RB04s will be within reach of theirs Pick an airfoeld and freck it. Rinse and repeat until that bastard, Sukarno, gets the merssage or Suharto deposes him. Then patch up a peace.

DATA:

RAAF bases.

Map 1

Map 2

Map 3. Alice Springs.

Now you see why you need Draken and NADGE and that TALOS land battery with its associated radar complex/? Most of what you have to do, as I described it will be out of DARWIN.

You will need your two carrier task forces for the Papua New Gunea and Timor campaigns. The whole pf the Turkey gobbler and Timor has to pass under new management after Sukarno pulls a bullheaded stunt like the one I just described. It will give you the geography to put the permanent kibosh on any fitire konfronatassi. (Those islands are the only ones beside Java with the right geology to support heavy bombers within range.)

Light infantry for jungle warfare, and heavy naval OFFENSE. You can afford that at 2.5% GDP 1955-1965

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Aussiegunneragain 6/15/2009 8:48:35 AM

I've looked at this. The big heartburns are programmed purchases and operating costs and I've tried to factor those in. it as I discussed. My baseline was money was 2.5 % of GDP. I'm glad to see my assumptions were not too far off. It turns out that pourchasing the hull of a Centaur was 6-8% greater than the Majestics you did purchase. The problem is that you modernized the Majestics (one) with exactly the same kind of deck and handling machinery that you would use that I need to allow you to operate the aircraft that we discuss here EXCEPT the lifts. Too quote Volkadav, steel is cheap. You should have bought the Centaurs.

I'm sceptical about that cost estimate and I'd like to see a reference from a reputable source. I'd also note that your cost estimate excludes the cost of purchasing two bigger airgroups of more expensive radar equipped fighters and the considerably higher running/manning costs of the Centaurs.

However, even if the purchase cost is true it is irrelevant. The HMAS Sydney arrived in Australian service in 1948 and the HMAS Melbourne in 1955 (it only took that long because we modernised it with an angled flight deck etc during construction). HMS Centaur didn't arrive in RN service until 1954 and the last ship of the class, HMAS Hermes, arrived in 1959. After Sandy's the Brits might have directed one of their carriers to us ahead of the RN, but I can't see that we would have gotten one until 1958 at the earliest. That would have meant that we would have gone for 10 years without a carrier (incidentally ruling out the HMAS Sydney's service in Korea). That clearly wouldn't have been acceptable given that our post war naval strategy revolved around aircraft carriers, so buying the Centaurs instead of the Majestics wasn't an option. If we had gotten them it would have been in addition to the Majestics which would probably have then been retired and we couldn't have afforded that.

The light carriers allowed you do something that we realized as far back as Magic Carpet and even during later operations in WW II: move lots of troops and their equipment in a big hurry. Where do you think the LPH for us came from? An aircraft carrier was/is a base ship. I know that is leap ahead thinking, but that hanger is a garage.

We didn't buy carriers with the intention of using them as troopships and they couldn't perform that task and operate as a carrier at the same time. The Sydney was just used that way because it was too shagged to do anything else with.

Aside from that you have to think about your geography. Your AO is mostly water dotted with islands. How do you cover your allies to your east and west? That dictator was threatening everything from Malaysia and the Andamans to Fiji and the southern Philuppines. (Yes, he was that crazy.) As for the north, your coverage has to reach Java and threaten his Slocs.as well as defend your own. (more about that below.)

Malaysia had airfields and the UK as an ally, as well as us. The Phillipines had airfields and the US as an ally, as well as us. The Andamans are an Indian territory, not our problem. Fiji? In the highly unlikly event that Surkano acted against Fiji the carriers we had would have been fine as the Indo's didn't have any carriers at all.

Thanks for the entertaining read on the Battle of the Arafura Sea but before you wrote it you should have considered this point more thoroughly before spending all that time on technical detail. Exactly what mission are you going to conduct that is out of range of the Indonesian Migs? as you can see from this link link the Indonesians had towns with airfields (usually ex WW2 ones) strung out along the southern coast of Irian Jaya at about a 500km radius. They were quite capable of operating Mig 15's and 17's which could have drawn off and whittled down the Centaurs fighters while the Badgers attacked the task group , at any time that it was close enough to do anything useful such as hitting coastal sea traffic or inland supply lines. In any case, how are the Centaurs with a squadron of Skyhawks each, which would have had to operate unescorted due to inadequate numbers of carrier bourne fighters, going to be able to do a better job of this than the 58 Canberra bombers that we had within range which could operate at night or against targets closer to the front line during the day, under fighter escort out of Australian or Papua New Guinean bases? That's even before you count that the Kiwi's would have added at least a squadron of their B(I)-12s to the mix. In fact, to hit the coastal traffic we would have been better off getting into the submarine game earlier than 1968 (though the British submarine flotilla based in Australia at the time would have undoubtedly contributed).

You will need your two carrier task forces for the Papua New Gunea and Timor campaigns. The whole pf the Turkey gobbler and Timor has to pass under new management after Sukarno pulls a bullheaded stunt like the one I just described. It will give you the geography to put the permanent kibosh on any fitire konfronatassi. (Those islands are the only ones beside Java with the right geology to support heavy bombers within range.)

Jakarta was easily in range of heavy bombers like the Vulcan from Darwin, not tha bombing Jakarta would have proved much. Also, Timor was a Portugese colony in those days and we wouldn't have involved ourselves there, we couldn't do anything about the Indonesian invasion in 1975 even if we had wanted to and we couldn't have done so in the 1960's either. Any war that we went into that was predominantly an Australian operation would have only been in PNG, which was our protectorate at the time. For that campaign land based airpower would have been far more cost effective than bigger carriers.

Quote Reply

Aussiegunneragain Volkodav 6/15/2009 8:56:54 AM

We did that because that because our defence policy at the time was oriented towards helping our allies to the Cold War, which meant defending merchant shipping against Soviet submarines. They had submarines in the Pacific and in the Indian ocean and it would have been easy for them to send more had they wanted to. That task was the main game for the navy, while defending PNG and suppressing communism in SEA was the main emphasis of the army and the airforce.

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gf0012-aust 6/15/2009 9:49:48 AM

don't forget that the russians were cheeky enough to shove a nuke on the surface just outside the Great Australian Bite - just to send a message in the late 80's.

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Herald12345 6/15/2009 11:54:19 AM

I've looked at this. The big heartburns are programmed purchases and operating costs and I've tried to factor those in. it as I discussed. My baseline was money was 2.5 % of GDP. I'm glad to see my assumptions were not too far off. It turns out that pourchasing the hull of a Centaur was 6-8% greater than the Majestics you did purchase. The problem is that you modernized the Majestics (one) with exactly the same kind of deck and handling machinery that you would use that I need to allow you to operate the aircraft that we discuss here EXCEPT the lifts. Too quote Volkadav, steel is cheap. You should have bought the Centaurs.

I'm sceptical about that cost estimate and I'd like to see a reference from a reputable source. I'd also note that your cost estimate excludes the cost of purchasing two bigger airgroups of more expensive radar equipped fighters and the considerably higher running/manning costs of the Centaurs.

First, there were eight Centaurs on the weighs. Four cancelled. (Purchase opportinity at reduced rates in 1945?) Centaur was hulked in 1965. She was a purchase opportunity in 1958. Bulwark ditto. A country looking for aircraft carriers at the time was Chile. Marketing strategy sell one Majesoc buy one Centaur. Overcome British objections with the Commonwealth fleet foilderol they peddled at the time.. . .

However, even if the purchase cost is true it is irrelevant. The HMAS Sydney arrived in Australian service in 1948 and the HMAS Melbourne in 1955 (it only took that long because we modernised it with an angled flight deck etc during construction). HMS Centaur didn't arrive in RN service until 1954 and the last ship of the class, HMAS Hermes, arrived in 1959. After Sandy's the Brits might have directed one of their carriers to us ahead of the RN, but I can't see that we would have gotten one until 1958 at the earliest. That would have meant that we would have gone for 10 years without a carrier (incidentally ruling out the HMAS Sydney's service in Korea). That clearly wouldn't have been acceptable given that our post war naval strategy revolved around aircraft carriers, so buying the Centaurs instead of the Majestics wasn't an option. If we had gotten them it would have been in addition to the Majestics which would probably have then been retired and we couldn't have afforded that.

Do like the Canadians and French did and get one on "loan". You need to learnb ops anyway. How about borrow a CVE or two until yours are ready?). Not hard to do. As to modernoization. Before we ran our shipbuilding industry down, Uncle was farly good. How about Newport News or Bethlehem? Two shipyards were noted for their Essex conversions. Faster and cheaper than waiting for the guys on the Clyde to figure it out. SCB 125......just tack two more into the queue and away you go. . .

And look at what Britain did with her Centaurs after the retrea?. The Suez Canal crisis defeat put an end to dreams of empire and to their aspirations of a global navy. (Eisenhower and Eden is another story for another time.). At any event, it was opportunity missed. Sometimes you have to be quick to exploit, AGG.

Aside from that you have to think about your geography. Your AO is mostly water dotted with islands. How do you cover your allies to your east and west? That dictator was threatening everything from Malaysia and the Andamans to Fiji and the southern Philuppines. (Yes, he was that crazy.) As for the north, your coverage has to reach Java and threaten his Slocs.as well as defend your own. (more about that below.)

Malaysia had airfields and the UK as an ally, as well as us. The Phillipines had airfields and the US as an ally, as well as us. The Andamans are an Indian territory, not our problem. Fiji? In the highly unlikly event that Surkano acted against Fiji the carriers we had would have been fine as the Indo's didn't have any carriers at all.

How was Konfrontassi waged as a WAR in Brunei again? Infiltration and popular front "guerilla" operationsand "irganizations" fronting for the Indonesian Army wasn't it, a lot like East Timor? Seems to me that history sort of repeats itself, and that the tools at hand Australia wanted desperately then were LPHs and or aircraft carriers, as they are wanted NOW?

Sidebar:

Sukarno was everybodies' problem child including his Russian allies' who thought he was a lot of nuts.. He was a WW II pro-Japanese psychopath collaborator, who took over a huge country after independence, that was athwart Western SLOCs. To whom was he goung to turn after Japan went down as his patron? Predictably Russia. That was the certain out growth of his whole mindset he had. That madman was a small little childe with a huge chip on his shoulder and with grandiose delusions of his own personal importance and no outlook for what his nation needed.. What replaced him, in the end, was possibly much worse (Suharno, the butcher) but I note with a certain grimness, that the Malay Indonesian War didn't end until Sukarno was out of there..

Couple of things.

First: the actual effective radius of a MiG 15 and 17 (not what you see in the books) is about 200-300 kilometers with air combat time of thirty minutes. They are target defense interceptors not bomber escorts. They aren't going to draw off anybody without radar vector and ground control intercept. Where is that going to be again? MiGs with the Scan Odd or AScan Odd II aircraft radar found it didn't work worth a damn and until we lost a SIDEWINDER they didn't have reliable rockets, they used almost excliusively on N-37 and N-23 cannon by that late date when they are a threat to you.

Second: while the Russian fighters can base out Irian Jaya fighter strips. (1500 meters or less grass and mud for the moast part), how long are they going to last against Drakens? Not long based on the SAAB fighter's performance.

You will need your two carrier task forces for the Papua New Gunea and Timor campaigns. The whole pf the Turkey gobbler and Timor has to pass under new management after Sukarno pulls a bullheaded stunt like the one I just described. It will give you the geography to put the permanent kibosh on any future konfronatassi. (Those islands are the only ones beside Java with the right geology to support heavy bombers within range.)

Jakarta was easily in range of heavy bombers like the Vulcan from Darwin, not tha bombing Jakarta would have proved much. Also, Timor was a Portugese colony in those days and we wouldn't have involved ourselves there, we couldn't do anything about the Indonesian invasion in 1975; even if we had wanted to and we couldn't have done so in the 1960's either. Any war that we went into that was predominantly an Australian operation would have only been in PNG, which was our protectorate at the time. For that campaign land based airpower would have been far more cost effective than bigger carriers.

You don;'t have Vulcans. You have Canberras..

CREF above.and here for rebuttal. Malaysia wasn't your concern either: yet Australian ground forces fought in Brunei as late as 1965 didn't they? And later you did wind up in East Timor, though it still was technically not your problem as you also did in the RoK, did in Vietnam, are now in Afghanistan, etc. etc. etc. etc.

The Australian government chose not to intervene in Timor in 1975. That was a policy decision. It could just as easily have gone the other way had the means been available. (Another story for another time; but Kissinger again. After his peace policy disaster in Vietnam, he advised Ford to support Jakarta's aggression, letting Suharto, the butcher, add another quarter of a million innocents murdered to the more than a half million of gis fellow Indonesians he already butchered to that point.)

One last comment: those aircraft carriers were the freedom of action that Canberra couold exercise in the Australuan AO. I just gave you two raw examples where Australian interests were ill served by a lack of capability (Malaysia and East Timor) where a lack of carriers hurt your efforts. Suppose the Brunei mess happened to you in New Guinea? How do you transfer heavy equipment and lots of troops again?

Herald

Quote Reply

Herald12345 Gagh typos! Need to add some technical stuff. 6/15/2009 1:29:53 PM

I've looked at this. The big heartburns are programmed purchases and operating costs and I've tried to factor those in. it as I discussed. My baseline was money was 2.5 % of GDP. I'm glad to see my assumptions were not too far off. It turns out that purchasing the hull of a Centaur was 6-8% greater than the Majestics you did purchase. The problem is that you modernized the Majestics (one) with exactly the same kind of deck and handling machinery that you would use that I need to allow you to operate the aircraft that we discuss here EXCEPT the lifts. Too quote Volkadav, steel is cheap. You should have bought the Centaurs.

I'm skeptical about that cost estimate and I'd like to see a reference from a reputable source. I'd also note that your cost estimate excludes the cost of purchasing two bigger air groups of more expensive radar equipped fighters and the considerably higher running/manning costs of the Centaurs.

First, there were eight Centaurs on the weighs. Four canceled. (Purchase opportunity at reduced rates in 1945?) Centaur was hulked in 1965. She was a purchase opportunity in 1958. Bulwark ditto. A country looking for aircraft carriers at the time was Chile. Marketing strategy sell one Majestic buy one Centaur. Overcome British objections with the Commonwealth fleet folderol they peddled at the time.. . .

However, even if the purchase cost is true it is irrelevant. The HMAS Sydney arrived in Australian service in 1948 and the HMAS Melbourne in 1955 (it only took that long because we modernized it with an angled flight deck etc during construction). HMS Centaur didn't arrive in RN service until 1954 and the last ship of the class, HMAS Hermes, arrived in 1959. After Sandy's the Brits might have directed one of their carriers to us ahead of the RN, but I can't see that we would have gotten one until 1958 at the earliest. That would have meant that we would have gone for 10 years without a carrier (incidentally ruling out the HMAS Sydney's service in Korea). That clearly wouldn't have been acceptable given that our post war naval strategy revolved around aircraft carriers, so buying the Centaurs instead of the Majestics wasn't an option. If we had gotten them it would have been in addition to the Majestics which would probably have then been retired and we couldn't have afforded that.

Do like the Canadians and French did and get one on "loan". You need to learn ops anyway. How about borrow a CVE or two until yours are ready?). Not hard to do. As to modernization. Before we ran our shipbuilding industry down, Uncle was fairly good. How about Newport News or Bethlehem? Two shipyards were noted for their Essex conversions. Faster and cheaper than waiting for the guys on the Clyde to figure it out. SCB 125......just tack two more into the queue and away you go. . .

And look at what Britain did with her Centaurs after the retreat?. The Suez Canal crisis defeat put an end to dreams of empire and to their aspirations of a global navy. (Eisenhower and Eden is another story for another time.). At any event, it was opportunity missed. Sometimes you have to be quick to exploit, AGG.

Aside from that you have to think about your geography. Your AO is mostly water dotted with islands. How do you cover your allies to your east and west? That dictator was threatening everything from Malaysia and the Andamans to Fiji and the southern Philippines. (Yes, he was that crazy.) As for the north, your coverage has to reach Java and threaten his Slocs.as well as defend your own. (more about that below.)

Malaysia had airfields and the UK as an ally, as well as us. The Philippines had airfields and the US as an ally, as well as us. The Andamans are an Indian territory, not our problem. Fiji? In the highly unlikely event that Sukarno acted against Fiji the carriers we had would have been fine as the Indo's didn't have any carriers at all.

How was Konfrontassi waged as a WAR in Brunei again? Infiltration and popular front "guerrilla" operations and "organizations" fronting for the Indonesian Army wasn't it, a lot like East Timor? Seems to me that history sort of repeats itself, and that the tools at hand Australia wanted desperately then were LPHs and or aircraft carriers, as they are wanted NOW?

Sidebar:

Sukarno was everybody's' problem child including his Russian allies' who thought he was a lot of nuts.. He was a WW II pro-Japanese psychopath collaborator, who took over a huge country after independence, that was athwart Western SLOCs. To whom was he going to turn after Japan went down as his patron? Predictably Russia. That was the certain out growth of his whole mindset he had. That madman was a small little childe with a huge chip on his shoulder and with grandiose delusions of his own personal importance and no outlook for what his nation needed.. What replaced him, in the end, was possibly much worse (Suharto, the butcher) but I note with a certain grimness, that the Malay Indonesian War didn't end until Sukarno was out of there..

b. Okay, so now you are at sea and your six Badgers and one recon bird announced themselves as they hunt for you, say north of Darwin in the Arafura Sea. He has to fly his bombers out beyond his MiG cover to reach you. (Trust me on this, most of the MiGs he has are cannon armed, are target defense interceptors, barely an hour in the air at cruise. He can't cover out that far. His bombers have to come to you without air escort.

Couple of things.

First: the actual effective radius of a MiG 15 and 17 (not what you see in the books) is about 200-300 kilometers with air combat time of thirty minutes. They are target defense interceptors not bomber escorts. They aren't going to draw off anybody without radar vector and ground control intercept. Where is that going to be again? MiGs with the Scan Odd or A Scan Odd II aircraft radar found it didn't work worth a damn and until we lost a SIDEWINDER they didn't have reliable rockets, they used almost exclusively on N-37 and N-23 cannon by that late date when they are a threat to you.

Second: while the Russian fighters can base out Irian Jaya fighter strips. (1500 meters or less grass and mud for the most part), how long are they going to last against Drakens? Not long based on the SAAB fighter's performance.

You will need your two carrier task forces for the Papua New Gunea and Timor campaigns. The whole pf the Turkey gobbler and Timor has to pass under new management after Sukarno pulls a bullheaded stunt like the one I just described. It will give you the geography to put the permanent kibosh on any future konfronatassi. (Those islands are the only ones beside Java with the right geology to support heavy bombers within range.)

Jakarta was easily in range of heavy bombers like the Vulcan from Darwin, not tha bombing Jakarta would have proved much. Also, Timor was a Portuguese colony in those days and we wouldn't have involved ourselves there, we couldn't do anything about the Indonesian invasion in 1975; even if we had wanted to and we couldn't have done so in the 1960's either. Any war that we went into that was predominantly an Australian operation would have only been in PNG, which was our protectorate at the time. For that campaign land based air power would have been far more cost effective than bigger carriers.

You don;'t have Vulcans. You have Canberras..

Herald

Some of the things about fighter direction. You need farly good electronics for that, radios, radars, and electricity, lots of electricity.

The last time anybody looked at Irian Jaya, how was their fixed radar network in the 1960? NTG.as in non existent? The Indonesians had a choice of various Flat Face, Knife Rest, and Spoon Rest early warning and GCI mobile radars , for their MiGs, non-effective beyond 150,000-200,000 meters slant, against a bomber sized object and useless near ground at ranges greater than 30,000 meters.

Well I guess those pop up coastal attacks by Skyhawks that the USN practiced will work after all, even with BULLPUP!

Well. How many Guidelines do you postulate? Area is about the size oif northern Vietnam. so we could expect at least four and maybe as many as four regiments of SAM troops.6 launchers per battalion site three to five sites served by one radar system per sute, three battalions per regiment, so 27 to 36 sites per regiment and that could be as many as 300 missile sites! Could Indonesia afford that? No. Not the whole country. The Russians made a special case of Vietnam. My guess is a company (one or two sites per air base) Indonesia can afford. and no more than TWO such defended airbases.that far east. If there is going to be a dense PRVN type of defense it will be at the Badger bases on JAVA.. I don't think I'd risk my foighters too far forward either. Not given the realities of the geography, infrastructure, and the terrain.

So Irian Jaya is actually a non issue as far as the hypothetical Battle of Arufura Sea is concerned. The RAN would have to come within coast artillery range for the Indonesian fighter force that they would dare risk to be a factor. If they bring theirs forward, you kill them with counter airbase operations-which as I pointed out would not be restricted to just your air attacks.

Data.

. .

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