CSS Florida's Blakely Rifle Shells

Currently on display in the museum's CSS Florida exhibit are three Bashley Britten shells that were used with the ship's Blakely Rifles. The shells are named for Bashley Britten, an English inventor who patented this new type of shell in 1855.  This shell has a lead base that would expand upon the gun being fired.  This expansion would  make the shell fit better in the barrel of the weapon as it travelled down the barrel, thus producing better accuracy once the shell left the gun.  This design feature can still be seen in modern-day small arms bullets and some artillery shells.

The Blakely rifle is named for Captain Theophilus Alexander Blakely, a British ordnance expert who designed a series of light and heavy artillery pieces from the 1850s through the 1880s. His sympathies lay strongly with the Confederacy during the Civil War and he did much to assist the Southern states' problem of not having enough modern artillery.  He sold finished guns to both the Confederate Army and Navy, and his knowledge of ordnance via his patents (which in turn was used by men like John Mercer Brooke to design the Brooke Rifle) was extremely important.  Rather than inventing a new type of shell specifically for his guns, Blakely used the widely-adopted Britten shell design.

One of Florida's seven-inch Blakelys is currently on display at the Washington Navy Yard's Willard Park. The second gun is currently on display at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Florida's wreck is located in Hampton Roads and the Hampton Roads Naval Museum is the official repository for the ship's artifacts.

USS Philippine Sea (CV-47) aircraft in the Korean War

Flight crews warm up the engines of F4U Corsairs from Fighter Squadron 114 (VF-114) during the Korean War, 1950. Loaded with air-to-ground rockets, the versatile Corsair was used extensively as a ground strike platform. These aircraft were bound for fighting around the Chosin Reservoir during the U.N. offensive into North Korea.

The aircraft are on board the Norfolk-based USS Philippine Sea (CV-47), which was raced to the theater shortly after the North Korean assault on South Korea. Despite how some Atlantic Fleet admirals felt about participating in the Korean War in 1950 ("Korea is the Pacific Fleet's problem, the Soviet Union is ours" was a typical quote), several Norfolk-based ships (namely the battleships, Essex-class aircraft carriers, and minesweepers) participated in the war. The Pacific Fleet did not have the resources to handle the high intensity combat operations.

Nonetheless, Korea was only seen as one part of a large Communist plan and many of Norfolk's bigger aircraft carriers stayed in the Atlantic. After this deployment, the Navy transferred Philippine Sea to the Pacific Fleet on a permanent basis.

LEGO Shipbuilding Promo-Quick and Easy Construction!

Want to show off your LEGO shipbuilding skills? Bring come to HRNM on Saturday, February 4 from 10 am to 5pm for HRNM's "Brick by Brick: Lego Shipbuilding" program.  Enter your LEGO ship in the builders' contest contest to win prizes or use design plans to build ships here at the museum from scratch.  Contact us at hrnnavalmuseum@navy.mil for more information!

USS Cayuga Model

This is a ship model of the USS Cayuga, a Civil War-era gunboat.  The ship was one of the "90-day" gunboats built by private shipbuilders at the beginning of the war.  Officially a part of the Unadilla-class, the press gave Cayuga and her twenty-three sister ships the "90-day" label as they allegedly were to built in just three months.  While none of them were finished in time advertised shipbuilders did deliver most of them by the end of 1861.  The class of ship fill the Navy's critical need for coastal warships to serve in the littoral regions of the Confederacy.

USS Cayuga as drawn by noted naval artist R.G. Skerret

Cayuga herself did not served in the Hampton Roads region (she served with Farragut's squadron in the Mississippi River).  However, many of her sister ships like USS Aroostook did.  As all the ships were almost exact duplicates of each other, the model is effective interpretation tool for this part of the region's Civil War history.

Photograph of USS Aroostook in the Far East during anti-piracy duties

The model itself is 1/8 an inch to 1 foot model.  Master ship mode maker Tom Tragel restored the model in 1984.  It can be seen in the museum's Civil War gallery.

1921 Virginia Capes Bombing Tests

Foster and his fellow Shamut shipmates during the operation

One of the more controversial events in history of the U.S. Navy was the bombing tests on old American and German warships off the Virginia Capes in 1921.   With the experiments General Billy Mitchell of the U.S. Army Air Corps set out to prove the superiority of airpower over surface warships (namely battleships), thus a large surface fleet would  no longer be needed in a future war.  Much has been made about the experiments being a fight between the U.S. Navy and Army. In reality, the Navy participated in the experiments just as much, if not more, than the Army.  Read more about the experiments on our command's website.

 While assigned to the minelayer USS Shamut (CM-4), BM3 Robert Foster took several of his own pictures documenting the event.  Shamut served as  the observation platform for Army and Navy inspectors. She also served as a tender to the thirteen seaplanes that were "searching" for the enemy fleet of the German battleship Ostfriesland, light cruiser Franklin, the destroyer G-104, submarine U-117, and USS Iowa (BB-4), which was operating under remote radio control.  Here is some of what Foster witnessed:

German battleship Ostfriesland being hit by a 300-pound bomb

Inspection party boarding USS Iowa (BB-4).  At considerable expense, workers installed an apparatus that allowed the Spanish-American War-era battleship to operated remotely.  This way, pilots would be bombing a moving target. 

Ostfriesland hit by a 300 and a 2000-pound bomb

LEGO Shipbuilding at HRNM!

You may have already heard a bit about HRNM's upcoming LEGO Shipbuilding program, but this blog post contains all details relating to the event.

When: Saturday, February 4, 2012
Time: 10am to 5pm
Where: At HRNM (2nd floor of Nauticus)
Cost: FREE!

What you should do: HRNM wants people to bring their already-built LEGO ships (made from a kit or from scratch) to display at the museum for the day. At 2pm on February 4, staff members and members of the local Lego hobbyist group, HARDLUG, will hold a ship contest. Prizes will be given to the winner of the best adult-built ship and best child-built ship brought in before 2pm.

It is NOT a requirement to bring a ship with you, however. There will be many other fun activities for people who do not bring a ship for the contest. This entire event is for both adults and children.

HRNM will set up a ship-building station during the program, where anyone can build their own ships to enter into the contest or create one from HRNM’s own diagrams. Build everything from simple ship designs to a scale representation of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor. Participants will learn the science behind building ships while using LEGOs. Have fun showcasing your talent while “connecting” with enthusiasts in the Hampton Roads community.

Want to participate in the contest but can't make it to the program? That's okay! Just set up a time to drop off your submission with HRNM staff (see below for contact info).

HRNM is partnering with the local LEGO hobbyist group, Hampton Roads Lego User Group (HARDLUG), to produce this program.
Contact Laura at hrnavalmuseum@navy.mil or 757-322-2987 with any questions. No pre-registration is required. See you at HRNM on February 4!

**Please note: All LEGO creations made with HRNM LEGOs must stay at the museum.

Local View of the 1942 U-boat Operation Paukenschlag

January 1942 Fifth Naval District Map showing successful U-boat kills off the coast of the Virginia Capes and Cape Hatteras. (Click image to enlarge)

It is January at the museum, when cold weather slows visitation. Nothing was slow 70 years ago this month when the Battle of the Atlantic came to Norfolk – or more broadly speaking, to the 5th Naval District, a Navy administrative area stretching across the mid-Atlantic region. Its headquarters were at the Naval Operating Base, the installation now known as the Norfolk Naval Station.This location was deliberate, since Commandant of the 5th Naval District also commanded the Naval Operating Base. In January 1942 German U-boats brought their campaign to cripple Allied shipping to the Atlantic seaboard (which the Germans labeled the campaign Paukenschlag, which loosely translates in English as "Drumbeat"). One day alone, January 19, witnessed a swath of destruction across the shipping lanes near Cape Hatteras: SS Lady Hawkins torpedoed, (250 killed); SS City of Atlanta torpedoed, (44 killed); SS Malay torpedoed, shelled, damaged; SS Ciltvaria, torpedoed and sunk.

The reaction of the local Navy commanders to this crisis is detailed in an official report held by the museum: “War Record of the Fifth Naval District 1942.” These 542 typed pages, held in a standard issue Navy green binder, were compiled per the direction of Rear Admiral Manley H. Simons, who was Commandant during the fateful year. (He also simultaneously served as the Commander of the Chesapeake Task Force of the Eastern Sea Frontier.) The report was described by the anonymous staff officers who wrote it as “a digest of verbal accounts, written stories, and reports of officers and men who have taken part in Fifth Naval District war operations during 1942." Its purpose was to “capture the Fifth Naval District’s participation in the U-boat campaign of 1942.”

While the Battle of the Atlantic’s military actions are well documented, the “War Record” does provide a contemporary point of view, and also details the wide responsibilities of the Navy staff. These included assembling all the basic building blocks of military intelligence such as first-hand accounts of enemy actions, charts, and photographs. At one point on January 28 one naval district officer was dispatched to the burning hulk of the unfortunate SS Empire Gem, abandoned after an enemy attack off Cape Hatteras to retrieve “routing instructions, zigzag tables, confidential books, and Navy merchant codes” from the wheelhouse. He found “the entire wheelhouse, chart room and bridge quarters under water … Thus it was impossible to obtain the papers.”

NAS Norfolk's The Dope Sheet Gets Cold

This alarmist headline is from The Dope Sheet, the official newspaper for Naval Air Station Norfolk. It was not the typical headline from a newspaper that devoted much of its space to changes in command, "bravo zulus" to Sailor volunteer work, movie listings at the base theater, and the latest news (and pictures) on Hollywood starlets. Did the Sailors at NAS Norfolk know something about the end of the world that others did not? Well, not necessarily. After one reads the accompanying article, one learns that the headline is a bit overblown, but not by much.



1948 was indeed the beginning of dangerous times for the United States and the world as a whole. President Harry S. Truman's 1947 public speech that announced American support for Greece and Turkey against communist forces (the "Truman Doctrine" as it has since been called) is considered by many historians to be the beginning of the Cold War. This was followed by the more secret "NSC-68" paper that concluded, "The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself."

The Dope Sheet article references a Joint Chiefs of Staff planning document known as the "M-Day Plan." This document outlined what the JCS saw as possible threats, particularly nuclear weapon threats, over the next thirty years. It also produced a map of the current and very real national security threats facing the United States in 1948.



But, fear not, hillbilly music would remain.