BUILDING THE PT BOATS is vastly exceeding my sales expectations. Terrific book.
It was waiting for me when I got home from work this afternoon. I haven’t read it yet, but have looked through it a number of times. Bottom line, I think this is the most significant book on PTs in decades!! I’m just delighted to have it. Ya done gud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A nit pick – there is no PT-200 sub-class. Boats in this group began with 197.
Thanks again for creating this important work.
Al Ross
via The PT Boat Message Board – Your book has arrived, Frank….
Some complaints later in the post about picture quality. Bottom line: the photos tell a story that comes through just fine. Glossier paper, higher dpi would have meant much higher production cost. Higher cost = no book. It’s well worth it anyway.
Disagree. That is exactly the sort of person that you entrust with the military decisions upon which hinge the safety of the nation.
Also, if the safety of the nation can hinge upon decisions (which is doubtful — are decisions doors?) then, since it’s “decisions,” plural, it’s “hinge”, plural.
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don’t entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation.
via Charles Krauthammer – The Use of Torture and What Nancy Pelosi Knew – washingtonpost.com.
This makes sense if you think of agriculture as a device for enabling leaders to concentrate resources for their own benefit.
Agriculture and cities made human life better, right? Wrong, say archaeologists who presented stunning new evidence at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting. They pooled data on standardized indicators of health from skeletal remains, including stature, dental health, degenerative joint disease, anemia, trauma, and the isotopic signatures of what they ate, and gathered data on settlement size, latitude, and socioeconomic and subsistence patterns. They found that the health of many Europeans began to worsen markedly about 3000 years ago, after agriculture became widely adopted in Europe and during the rise of the Greek and Roman civilizations.
via Civilization’s Cost: The Decline and Fall of Human Health — Gibbons 324 (5927): 588 — Science.
- This defense budget is a liberal dream, the rolling back of scores of hitherto invulnerable mega-programs. but …
- It remains to be seen what the budget will actually be after Congress gets done saving programs that protect jobs in the midst of the worst recession since 1945.
- People seem to forget that these defense spending waves are cyclical. A surge of dovish sentiment and force reduction in the 70s was followed by the Reagan rearmament. How much do you want to bet that we see another spending surge in 2017?
Defense Secretary Gates just proposed the most sweeping overhaul of America’s arsenal — and of the Pentagon budget — in decades. Major weapons programs, from aircraft carriers to next-gen bombers to new school fighting vehicles, will be cut back, or eliminated. Billions more will be put into growing the American fighting force, both human and robotic.
via Gates Proposes Radical Overhaul of Pentagon Arsenal | Danger Room from Wired.com.
Whether you call the LCS the modern equivalent of a torpedo boat, or the modern equivalent of a torpedo boat destroyer, either way it is a validation of the threat from small, fast ships so well chronicled in Joe Hinds’s THE DEFINITIVE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE TORPEDO BOAT.
We will increase the buy of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) – a key capability for presence, stability, and counterinsurgency operations in coastal regions – from two to three ships in FY 2010. Our goal is to eventually acquire 55 of these ships.
via DefenseLink Speech
Actually, Obama’s #1 priority is driving General Motors into the grave.
“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told The Atlantic. The Iranian drive for a nuclear weapon was a “hinge of history,” he said, emphasizing that all of “Western civilization” was responsible for preventing an Iranian bomb.
“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs,” Netanyahu said of the Iranian regime. “When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”
via PM: We may be forced to attack Iran | Iran news | Jerusalem Post .
Worth’s book does three things well:
1) Defines the cruiser designation in a historical context with special attention to “Treaty Cruisers.”
2) Explains how armor layout was as much art as science and how that renders many standardized references on the topic moot or misleading.
3) Compares Treaty Cruisers across navies in Med and Pacific contexts.
I found most of it fascinating and read it through in one sitting. I also share most of Mr. Worth’s biases. But it bears mentioning that:
1) There is little discussion of torpedo or AAA doctrine and virtually none on underwater or AAA protection.
2) His choices for “best” are not classes of cruisers but ‘one-offs’
3) This pamphlet cries out for comparison tables with a variety of weightings.
Yes, Worth is correct that raw numbers are misleading and on the continuum of data -> information -> knowledge, his discussion quite refreshingly belongs in the realm of knowledge. So, no doubt about it: he’s done his homework and expresses his opinions forcefully. But this publication would have been better if it ALSO organized his decision criteria in tables (not merely in the text,) so that readers could more conveniently assign (or add) their own weightings and arrive at their own conclusions.
Still, this book will be a real eye opener for beginners and a great niche publication for those who have already spent considerable time dwelling on the trade-offs inherent in warship design…as long as they don’t find the price too dear for 40 pages. Btw, interspersed throughout the text are some wonderful black and white “ship portraits” (i.e. pictures) that I’ve never seen published before.
Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: In the Shadow of the Battleship: Considering the Cruisers of World War II.
Some great discussion of Joe Hind’s magnum opus in the thread below. The message board is a great find for anyone interested in MTBs!
The PT Boat Message Board – “The Definitive Illustrated History of the Torpedo Boat”.
All a laughable misunderstanding? that’s what the rest of the article says. But even so, very, very frightening.
As if the dollar didn’t have enough problems, Timothy Geithner took China’s bait yesterday and said he was “quite open” to its suggestion this week to displace the greenback with an “international reserve currency.” The dollar promptly fell and stocks followed, before the Treasury Secretary re-emerged to say “the dollar remains the world’s dominant reserve currency. I think that’s likely to continue for a long time.”
via China and the Dollar – WSJ.com.
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