Posted on 09/29/2014 1:14:09 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
The new ship appears to be different from any other PLA replenishment ship. Photos: cjdby.net
The Chinese military may be building a new type of resupply ship, according newly surfaced photos, as the country’s navy seeks to shore up its ocean-going capabilities.
The half-finished People’s Liberation Army (PLA) ship was photographed anchored at a harbour, identified as the Guangzhou Shipyard International (GSI), in about two dozen pictures published at the weekend on cjdby.net, an influential military forum in China.
The website is known as an unofficial outlet of rare images of some of the PLA’s latest weapons and caters to a large audience of military enthusiasts.
In the past, the website was among the first to leak images of China's stealth fighter J-20, giving the public a rare glimpse of the PLA’s latest machinery. The Chinese military generally keeps a very tight control over information on its hardware development.
Photos of the new, unidentified PLA ship were taken from afar but still revealed some telling clues.
The ship is seen next to a Type 903A replenishment ship.
The photos showed the largely completed hull of the ship being fitted out. The new ship was docked side-by-side with a similar-sized Type 903A, also known as the "Qiandaohu-class" replenishment ship, which has a water displacement of 23,000 tonnes. The new ship appears to be a modified model of the 903A, but with many different design features。
The person who uploaded the photos is a military enthusiast and active user of the forum. He or she did not disclose where the photos were taken.
Replenishment ships are a key part of the “blue-water” capabilities which the Chinese navy is keen to develop so it can project its global power and step up protection of its own strategic interests across the Indian Ocean and Middle East.
The Chinese navy so far has only less than 10 active large-scale replenishment ships and there is still clearly a gap before it can reach a “fully operational blue-water navy” by 2050.
Military experts pointed to long-distance naval supply capabilities a key vulnerability of the Chinese navy during the rescue mission for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 earlier this year.
They said the navy was unable to stretch its supply lines and sustain logistics of its rapidly expanding navy because it lacked offshore bases and resupply ships.
Why don't they just use a few of these?..............
Or a few of these?..................
That's a fine art.
BFL
They would run out of gas and have no dock to refuel at between Shanghai and SF.
IIRC, during WWII the USN by 1945 kept half a million men afloat, victualed and armed in the Pacific. That supply chain miracle has never been surpassed.
COMPACFLT must’ve had one heck of a master logistics map table with the little ships they moved around with sticks.
Still need to get that cargo off that ship and onto a combat vessel, either at sea or in an unimproved anchorage.
Japanese ran out of torpedoes.
At one time you could darn near walk across the Pacific and never get your feet wet:)
Plus the U.S. Army, which was doing most of the fighting in the Pacific.
I was on a tin can off of Vietnam, and you are not kidding unrepping is a fine art. All E-5’s on down, unless on watch took part in all unreps, refueling, taking on stores, and taking on ammo. The best part was when we took on stores and got fresh MILK.
and ice cream
As an RM2 I never remember anyone E-6 on down getting ice cream except the officers mess and maybe the chiefs mess. We were on an old WWII destroyer commissioned in 1945 off the coast of Vietnam in 1972. The ship had two evaporators to make fresh water, one was always down, so they had to save the water for the boilers. The ship would cut off water including the water fountains and showers were far and few between. You have never seen such a sight of naked sailors getting showers when it was raining and we were off the gun line. Great memories.
Only in the PI.
Everywhere else it was the USN and USMC.
Hell, the Army took a hard pill in the PI and swallowed it like the men they were, but the USN/USMC won that theater.
Oh, I guess the Air Force was part of the Army then and they had huge impact. But they were not decisive.
Everywhere else it was the USN and USMC.
You better check again. The Army did all the fighting in New Guinea, took Attu and Kiska, and relieved the Marines on Guadalcanal. The army went on to take the northern Solomons, fought on Saipan with the Marines and Guam with the Marines and, of course, provided most of the troops for Okinawa. In all over 20 infantry divisions fought in the Pacific.
No, the Army was doing the big fighting in the Pacific as well as conducting the vast majority of the amphibious assaults.
While the Navy lost double of the Marine Corp, they were also in all theatres, but as it was, the total WWII Navy and Marine losses were about equal to the Army losses in the Pacific theater.
Remember that the Indian windtalkers that the Army was innovative enough to create, helped them with radio communications.
“Only in the PI. Everywhere else it was the USN and USMC.”
Ha! Marine propaganda.
11,000 Marines landed on Guadalcanal on August 6, 1942 in the first major allied offensive of the Pacific war. They would be fighting the Japanese for possession of the island for months. Japan reinforced nightly by sending the Tokyo Express down The Slot. Fighting for Guadalcanal continued with Marine reinforcements and 3,000 Army arriving through November.
By December the 1st Marine Division was worn out and was replaced by XIV Corp commanded by Gen Alexander Patch, US Army. XIV was composed of the Army Americal Divison, 25th Army Infantry Division and the 2nd Marine Division, about 50,000 men.
With heavy Army units leading the drive the Japanese were finally driven off of Guadalcanal by February 1943. Marines had put up a long fight but they didn’t have the numbers to break Japan’s hold on Guadalcanal.
I was an undesignated fireman on a Fram in late 1965/early 66. We unreped every 3 or 4 night. When the stores ship
was fresh from Subic, we got ice cream at every unrep. After a couple of weeks, evidently the stores ship ran out of ice cream. I mess cooked in the Chiefs mess, so as long as the ship had ice cream, the chiefs did. Once I went to bravo 3, we got ice cream on the mess decks only the day after each unrep. Know what you mean about water. Using water from the feed bottoms, we use to wash our dungarees & skivvies on the mid watch in the fire room. We would hang them over the rails to dry. At times the fire room looked like a Chinese laundry. We would also do a quick PTA sponge bath on watch when we could.
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