Six Ships That Shook the World

JOSHUA HUMPHREYS’S IDEA OF A SUPER -frigate (“Six Ships That Shook the World,” by Roger Archibald, Fall 1997) was indeed a technological breakthrough that shook the naval establishments of Europe. It can also be viewed in terms of another European naval concept. After touring the USS Constitution at Charlestown Naval Shipyard some years ago, I came to realize that “Old Ironsides” and the other vessels of her class were the embodiment of the pocket-battleship idea adopted by the German navy just prior to World War II—a ship whose armament and armor would enable her to destroy any warship fast enough to catch her, but fast enough herself to outrun any enemy she couldn’t deal with. Unlike the Constitution class, though, the German pocket battleships did not prove a successful weaponsystem design, if the fate of the Graf Spee in 1939 is any measure.

The art of technological design is the art of arriving at the optimal compromise involving a number of objectives and constraints whose satisfaction mostly leads to conflicts. (Joshua Humphreys succeeded in satisfying his ambitious design objectives only by devising a novel means for overcoming his most critical constraint.) American aircraft designers have tended to favor the balanced approach to fighter design, whereby all weakness factors are minimized even though this usually means reducing strength factors as well. The Japanese “Zero” represented the other extreme in philosophy—a fighter design in which all other considerations were sacrificed to one: maximizing performance and maneuverability.

The specific design flaws discovered in flying Zero 4593 after its retrieval from Akutan Island (“Koga’s Zero,” by Jim Rearden, Fall 1997) enabled American fighter pilots to level the playing field during the earlier part of the Pacific War, but its more fundamental weaknesses were what doomed the once-invulnerable Zero when it came up against later-design American fighters. These weaknesses included inferior armament and lack of armor protection for the pilot and for critical components, particularly fuel tanks. Japanese industry simply lacked the material resources to carry on comparable programs for developing new models.

Marvin A. Moss
North Hills, Calif.

Six Ships That Shook the World

THE COVER OF THE FALL 1997 ISSUE contained language more appropriate to the publications one finds near the supermarket checkout counter. It’s a bit much to say that the American warships built at the end of the eighteenth century “shook the world.” They were certainly a step forward in naval design. They could outfight anything in their class and outrun anything they couldn’t outfight. The British admiralty, accustomed to dominating in ship-to-ship battles, was forced to alter its tactics when dealing with American warships. That was a major accomplishment for the infant republic, but the world stayed firmly in its orbit.

The claim that these ships made young America a superpower might be charitably described as patriotic exaggeration. According to Thomas Gillmer’s 1993 book Old Ironsides , the British fleet at the time of the War of 1812 consisted of 1,017 warships of all classes. The American Navy had a grand total of 18. The British fleet included 141 ships that mounted 74 or more guns; any one of these was capable of reducing any individual American ship to matchwood (admittedly they first had to catch it).

The fact is, in the early nineteenth century we were a poor, weak country. Only the Europeans’ preoccupation with their own wars and the Atlantic Ocean kept us from being overrun by the true superpowers of that era.

Paul L. Olson
Ann Arbor, Mich.

Six Ships That Shook the World

ROGER ARCHIBALD SAYS THAT “THE maximum hull speed of any vessel is directly proportional to its length.” Actually the maximum speed of a displacement hull is proportional to the square root of its length. The hull speed in knots is about 1.3 times the square root of the waterline length in feet.

Displacement hulls generate waves as they move through the water. These waves travel at the same speed as the vessel, and their wavelength is proportional to the square of their speed. At hull speed the wavelength is equal to the length of the hull, so the vessel is traveling in a hole of its own making. Applying more power simply makes the hole deeper. Small engine-driven boats can overcome this limitation by planing, but the transition to planing mode requires more power than is practical for large vessels or for sailpowered vessels of any size.

The designers of the early fighting ships therefore faced a dilemma that was even more severe than Archibald suggests. To double the hull speed, the length of a sailing vessel had to be quadrupled.

Roger W. Heinig
Cocoa Beach, Fla.

Six Ships That Shook the World

I LIVE ABOUT AN HOUR FROM BALTI -more, where the USS Constellation is moored. There has been a controversy as to whether that Constellation is really the Constitution ’s sister ship or an 1853 impostor. Do you have any information on the subject?

George A. Tompkins, Jr.
Boonsboro, Md.

The editors reply: THE VESSEL KNOWN as the Constellation was built in 1853-54 to a completely different plan from the 1797 ship of that name. Since the new vessel contained some wood salvaged from the old one, some people have asserted that the surviving ship is the 1797 Constellation , which was merely “rebuilt” in the 1850s. This claim borders on the frivolous.

The Wisconsin River Machine

THOMAS H. CARVER’S ARTICLE ON the Wisconsin River (“A Four-Hundred-Mile-Long Liquid Machine,” Fall 1997) brought back a flood of memories, for a friend and I attempted to canoe the river’s entire length in the summer of 1969, after our high school graduation. Unfortunately we ran out of time just past Prairie du Sac, so after having the privilege of portaging all the dams, we missed the obstruction-free float to the Mississippi.

The trip was wonderful except for two disappointments. We were upset that the river was so controlled, especially when we were reading a riverside plaque describing the Wisconsin Rapids only to look up and see a placid pond. The other disappointment was paper-mill waste. Imagine a river completely covered in viscous brown smelly mush several inches thick—so thick birds could walk on it. We had to paddle in unison to force the canoe ahead one foot at a time. That substance is not going to be missed by anyone.

Mark Mecikalski, M.D.
Tucson, Ariz.

The Wisconsin River Machine

I FEEL COMPELLED TO POINT OUT A small error in a caption for the photograph of the Petenwell Lake hydroelectric power plant on page 16 of the Fall 1997 issue. The electrical apparatus in the picture is not a group of transformers but actually three-phase oil circuit breakers. A minor flaw in an otherwise impeccable publication. Keep up the good work.

Warren E. Sayes, P.E.
Bossier City, La.

Another Zero

I ENJOYED “KOGA’S ZERO” (BY JIM Rearden, Fall 1997) but was disappointed that the author did not mention that another Zero was reconstructed in a very primitive environment halfway around the world, by Gerhardt Neumann, a German engineer who had been interned by the British in Hong Kong when World War II started in 1939.

Neumann joined the Flying Tigers in China as a master-sergeant aircraft mechanic and was given the task in October 1942 of rebuilding a Zero that had crashed near their base. He actually had to do the job twice, because a pebble, lodged in the landing gear during the first flight, caused the gear to collapse. The aircraft was used in China to develop tactics and eventually was shipped to Wright Field for further engineering analysis. Neumann went on to a distinguished career as vice-president and general manager of General Electric’s aircraftengine business.

William T. Harmon
Dayton, Ohio

No Respect

IN HIS FALL 1997 ARTICLE, “PENN Station Lives!,” William D. Middleton notes that in 1901 Alexander J. Cassatt, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s president, visited a new electrified portion of the Paris-Orléans Railway “while traveling in Europe.” Mention might have been made that Cassatt was visiting his very famous sister Mary, the pioneering expatriate artist. Certainly Mary Cassatt was accustomed to being in the shadow of her industrialist brother.

After living in France for some twenty-five years, she visited Philadelphia in the winter of 1898-99, and the Philadelphia Ledger reported her visit thus: “Mary Cassatt, sister of Mr. Cassatt, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, returned from Europe yesterday. She has been studying painting in France and owns the smallest Pekingese dog in the world.”

Margaret Fife Tanguay
Louisville, Ky.