Amphibious Landing Research Articles

The Bonny Landing: The anatomy of Black Africa’s first amphibious operation, July to September 1967

The amphibious landing of troops at Bonny during the Nigerian Civil War is often described as a landmark feat accomplished by the military of a modern Black African state. It was the first of five landings which along with the instituting of a naval blockade formed the basis of the encirclement and eventual defeat of secessionist Biafra. This article captures the transformation of an erstwhile civilian marine department into a naval force which endured sabotage and defection prior to successfully transporting, landing, and affording covering fire for the federal Third Infantry Division. The article explains the military and political objectives, and also reveals the pivotal role played in its planning and execution by James Rawe, an expatriate British naval officer who was a veteran of the Normandy landings.

Autonomous Shallow Water Hydrographic Survey Using a Proto-Type USV

Maritime unmanned systems (MUS) have gained widespread usage in a diverse range of hydrographic survey activities, including harbor/port surveys, beach and coastline monitoring, environmental assessment, and military operations. The present article explains a validated, rapid, and reliable technique for processing hydrographic data that was obtained via an autonomous hydrographic survey, and which was executed by a prototype unmanned surface vessel (USV) belonging to the Unmanned Survey Solutions (USS) corporation. The experimentation was part of the annual Multinational Exercise Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping that was augmented by Maritime Unmanned Systems 22 (REPMUS22), which was held in the national waters of Portugal. The main objective of this experimentation was to assess the underwater environment over an ocean beach for an amphibious landing exercise. Moreover, the integration of the multibeam system with the autonomous prototype vessel was assessed. A short comparison between the USV survey and a traditional vessel multibeam survey is presented, whereby the advantages of performing an autonomous survey operation near the coastline is emphasized. A correlation between a known multibeam processing technique and the dissemination of a rapid but consistent product for operational use is described, highlighting the applicability of the technique for the data collected from small experimental platforms. Moreover, this study outlines the relationship between the particular errors observed in autonomous small vehicles and in conventional data processing methods. The resultant cartographic outputs from the hydrographic survey are presented, emphasizing the specific inaccuracies within the raw data and the suitability of distinct hydrographic products for various user domains.

A Fully 3D‐Printed Tortoise‐Inspired Soft Robot with Terrains‐Adaptive and Amphibious Landing Capabilities

AbstractTerrain adaptation and amphibious landing pose the greatest challenges for soft amphibious robots. Based on the principles of tortoises, this paper presents a fully 3D‐printed soft amphibious robot with four pneumatic bionic legs that are capable of bending in three dimensions. The gaits of the robot are described in six different ways and a dynamic model is developed for its control. In addition to linear motion (0.97 BL s−1) and turning (25.4° s−1) on rigid terrain, the robot can also maneuver on various surface conditions (such as hills, gaps, smooth slopes, gravel, sand, muddy terrain, and water), and even make an amphibious landing. These properties, together with the soft amphibious robot's continuous obstacle avoidance capabilities, high load‐carrying capacity (28 times its own weight), low cost, and high camouflage, allow for a wide variety of applications.

Operation Devon, Termoli 1943: ‘A catalogue of errors’?

The little-known World War II battle for Termoli, code named Operation Devon, took place in early October 1943 and began with the only Allied amphibious landing on Italy’s Adriatic coast. It was a joint operation between newly formed elite groups and regular units of the Allied armed forces. A brigade made up of two units of commandos and the 1st Special Air Service, known during this operation as the Special Raiding Squadron, was given the task of making the first landing. Despite the initial success of the operation, a drawn out and fierce battle ensued. With the help of archival material from the Imperial War Museum, London, and The National Archives, Kew, this article reconstructs the key elements of a battle that has received little scholarly attention, particularly in relation to the role of conventional forces in the fighting. In doing so, it provides an overview of the battle, analysing the main factors that led to a chaotic handover between special and regular infantry forces and what made the action ultimately successful. Finally, it reveals how the operation was part of an evolutionary process for special forces and helped to cement their role in UK military doctrine.

Research on hull pressure distribution of amphibious landing on water based on RANS method

Aiming at the strength problem of amphibious landing on water, the pressure distribution of ship bottom is studied. RANS multi-phase flow method is used to solve the coupling problem of gas, liquid and solid in the process of amphibious landing on the water surface. Overlapping grid technology is used to simulate the landing under different initial horizontal velocity and vertical velocity. The influence of initial conditions on the motion response of amphibious is analyzed, and the variation law of pressure on each section of ship bottom with time is obtained, This paper analyzes the variation of pressure with time and position, and provides technical reference for the design and application of water loads in the development of amphibious.

Past forward

Summary form only given, as follows. The SCR-536 Handie-Talkie was designed for operation under battle conditions," according to its technical manual. An ad for the World War II handheld radio set, a direct ancestor of modern-day walkie-talkies, featured a soldier’s endorsement: "Just like having a house telephone at your fingertips. We're never alone. We feel safer, stronger, because we’re always in touch with our command post!” Years later, though, a retired Army officer who used the radio during the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942 offered a less enthusiastic review: "In our amphibious landing in North Africa … it leaked water - and salt water ruined the sliding switch contacts." Users could be hard on the 536, he added: "One set came into our shop…with all the tubes dead. Some infantryman had used it to pound in tent pegs!"

“Getting the Shells to Fall Where You Want Them”: COORDINATING U.S. NAVAL GUNFIRE AND AIR SUPPORT IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD

During the years of peace between the First and Second World Wars, it is clear that Navy and Marine Corps planners failed to sufficiently address several problems that would confront American forces in the looming conflict with Japan. Of these, one of the greatest omissions concerned the application of naval and aerial fires in support of an amphibious landing. Though American officers recognized and resolved concerns over landing craft, logistics, casualty evacuation procedures, communications, and much more, planners failed to adequately address the difficulties of controlling and coordinating supporting firepower in a triphibious operation. The 1934 Tentative Manual for Landing Operations highlighted the individual roles of naval gunfire and air support without confronting the more general coordination of land, sea, and air efforts, and it minimized the importance of flexibility and continuous coverage in amphibious fire support.

Implementation of Support Systems for Determination of Amphibious Vehicle Landing in Disaster Emergency Response Using Fuzzy Takagi Sugeno

Amphibious vehicle is a vehicle that can maneuver from the mainland to the sea. Amphibians are divided into certain characteristics according to their use. The use of amphibians for disaster emergency response because amphibians have the ideal ability to cross various fields. Amphibious vehicle maneuvers require an understanding of oceanographic and geographical aspects. Amphibians require certain criteria in determining the ideal landing location. The ideal location for amphibious landings is examined in two main variables namely the sea and land variables. Amphibian operations that are currently applied do not utilize information technology that can analyze geographical aspects. Researchers build a system that can analyze the destination area of a landing mission that is assessed according to the ideal parameters in making a landing. In this study the determination of the landing site uses an artificial intelligence method that can help determine the ideal position in making an amphibious landing. Fuzzy Is a method that is in the sub-section of reasoning in the science of artificial intelligence. Fuzzy is used to process data for each variable and adjust to the rule base of that variable. The variable used to input the fuzzy membership function is the beach gradient and current variable. These two variables determine the level of suitability of the amphibious vehicle landing mission.

DECISION SELECTION MODEL OF LANDING BEACH IN AMPHIBIOUS OPERATIONS EXCERCISE WITH FUZZY MCDM

To determine the ideal landing beaches in amphibious operations must meet the requirements / criteria that have been determined, because it serves as an important component in the choice of landing beaches. The criteria include the type of beach, gradient beach, the basic material of beach, long beach landings, the type of breaking waves, tide, the kind of obstacles beach, ocean currents, the field behind the beach, the reference point mark landing beaches and access to the exit / entrance beach , In determining the selection of the landing beaches Marine / Navy had not done the calculation / mathematical model and not using a scientific method, such instances it is necessary to make a decision-making model in the case of election of the landing beaches in amphibious operations exercise. This study aims to determine the location of the landing beachesusing Fuzzy MCDM. The use of this method is the solution to produce a more objective group decision in the selection of an amphibious landing beach which data are accurate and reliable to help solve problems that are multi-criteria. There are 11 (eleven) criteria and 4 (four) alternatives identified in this study. Of the 11 criteria which have the highest weighting criteria for the alternative chosen in the first rank third alternative, namely PPD 3.
 Keywords: Amphibious Operations, Fuzzy MCDM, Criteria and Alternatives.

Approach to generate 3D‐printed terrain models using free software and open data sources: Application to military planning

AbstractThe students of the Defense University Center at the Spanish Naval Academy (Marín, northwest of Spain) attend both the military studies and mechanical engineering degrees. These students are the future officers of the Spanish Navy. Among them, the Marine Corp students attend subjects focused on topography, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and an amphibious landing. In this framework, this paper presents an example of an application of the use of physical models for a better understanding of the terrain, as well as for landscape design or military planning. Through the use of different GIS and Computer‐Aided Design software, the students have to demonstrate their capabilities to create and produce three‐dimensional (3D) printed models. This work shows how the use of printed scale models of the terrain offers visualization advantages and more understanding to students when compared with virtual models or traditional maps. Additionally, a methodological approach is presented aiming to produce 3D‐printed models using open data sources and free license software. From a point cloud of data, this software allowed creating and editing the virtual model (scales, vertical exaggeration, smooth, etc.), as well as to merge different point clouds. The methodology was applied to the Island of Tambo (Galicia, Spain). Using Light Detection and Ranging data, several printed scale models were elaborated on, including the Digital Terrain Model and Digital Elevation Model. Additionally, a bathymetric model was created, aiming to assist in the design of an amphibious operation.

ASSESSMENT OF THE RISK OF POTABLE WATER SUPPLY IN THE AREA OF AMPHIBIOUS MILITARY OPERATION

This paper proposes a method and a tool for assessment and management the risk of potable water supply in the amphibious military operation area through examples from military history. Amphibious landing is one of the most risky types of military operations, and the supply of military units with potable water in such operations represents a critical logistic function that may depend on the success or failure of a military operation. Potable water supply is a very important segment in the overall supply. Potable water is resources without soldier cannot endure long-term combat, for this are many examples in military history like is, for example, a battle of Hattin in 1187. The assessment and management of drinking water risk is an area of interest for military logistics and military geosciences. The water supply risk assessment matrix is a tool that can help military planners to realistically assess the risk, to determine the level of risk management and method how to control this risk.

APPLICATION OF DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR DETERMINING AMPHIBIOUS LANDING BEACH IN WEST PAPUA INDONESIA

ABSTRACT
 Determination of the landing beach becomes a must for the Marine Forces of the Indonesian Navy as an element of the landing forces in order to carry out the task of amphibious operations in particular to determine the ideal landing beach location for the successful implementation of the task. Requirements on the determination of ideal landing beaches should be in accordance with predetermined parameters and serve as an important component in determining the weighting value of landing beach selection criteria. This study aims to determine the location of landing beaches by using the Preference Ranking Method Method of Organization for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) combined into the Borda method. The research stages started from determining the value of criterion preferences to the landing beach alternative options analyzed by PROMETHEE method then processed again in Borda method. The PROMETHEE method is used to analyze individual decisions of decision makers, while the Borda method is used to manage group decisions from the PROMETHEE method of ranking. The use of both methods is a solution to generate more objective group decisions so as to obtain a ranking result against the selection of logical amphibious landing beaches and have an objective value in accordance with accurate data and greatly assist decision-makers to solve multi-criteria problems. From the results of this study can be seen that the location of the selected beach is the most feasible to serve as the location of landing beaches in amphibious operations is Beach 3 with a weighted value of 0.389.
 Keywords: Amphibious operations, the landing beach, Decision Support Systems, PROMETHEE, Borda

American Power in Korean Shamanism

The Korean War was a formative event in the making not only of Korea's contemporary political geography, but also of its religious landscape. This is the case with shamanism as well as other more institutionalized religions. Focusing on the originally northern-Korean Hwanghae shamanism tradition now based in Incheon, this paper examines how rituals of this tradition engage today with legacies of the 1950–1953 war. In Incheon, an important episode of this war was the amphibious landing in September 1950 led by Douglas MacArthur; a notable change in Incheon's Hwanghae shamanism in the postwar era has been the introduction of the persona of MacArthur and other emblems of American power to its ritual world. This article asks how foreign these apparently foreign symbolic entities are and whether they can be seen as a manifestation of Hwanghae shamanism's authentic, traditional ritual order confronting a new historical and physical environment.

Groundwater as a military resource: pioneering British military well boring and hydrogeology in World War I

Abstract The first British Army hydrogeologist to be deployed as such on a battlefield was Lieutenant W.B.R. King, in June 1915 on the Western Front. There, the British Expeditionary Force, in Belgium and northern France, expanded at its peak to five armies: 1.5 million men and 0.5 million horses/mules, each man/animal requiring on average 10 gallons (45 l) per day of potable water. A ‘Water Boring Section Royal Engineers’ was eventually raised for each army, equipped with American-made ‘portable’ drilling rigs, and utilizing air-lift pumps. These innovations and King's pioneering ‘water supply’ maps facilitated the development of the British Army's first operational ability to exploit groundwater from deep aquifers, primarily those in Cretaceous Chalk, by drilling >470 boreholes. Additionally, in 1915, a report by three ‘British’ Geological Survey officers helped guide limited boring within Allied amphibious landing areas on the Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey. A civilian water adviser, Arthur Beeby Thompson, transferred from Gallipoli to the Balkans in January 1916 and thereafter used geology to guide significant groundwater abstraction by siting 125 military boreholes and 211 Norton tube wells. From 1915, the Director of the Geological Survey of Egypt, W.F. Hume, provided similar guidance for campaigns from Egypt into Palestine.

The tide predictions for D-Day

Based on the physics of Newton and Laplace, the big brass tide-predicting machine designed by Lord Kelvin was crucial for the success of the Normandy invasion in World War II.

A generic decision support architecture for maritime operations

This paper describes a generic decision support architecture (DSA) for supporting maritime operations. The system's core is a decision support tool (DST), consisting of a risk assessment framework aimed at computing risks related to each action that can be performed on the maritime operation under consideration. In particular, the risks are computed for each action and for each class describing the forecasted condition of the environment (favourable, marginal, and unfavourable), according to their posterior probabilities. A fuzzy classifier is used to estimate such probabilities, starting from the forecast of the environmental variables affecting the operation. A distinctive feature of the implemented DSA is its flexibility: many different types of operations can be handled (amphibious landing, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) recovery, etc.) with no architectural change. The architecture has been tested both on synthetic data and on real data, the latter collected during two cruises carried out in Adriatic Sea and Ligurian Sea.

A Study on the Chinese Government's Prediction Processof the Incheon Amphibious Landing Operations

A Study on the Chinese Government's Prediction Processof the Incheon Amphibious Landing Operations

Omaha Beach: D-Day June 6, 1944, and: Utah Beach: The Amphibious Landing and Airborne Operations on D-Day June 6, 1944 (review)

Reviewed by: Omaha Beach: D-Day June 6, 1944, and: Utah Beach: The Amphibious Landing and Airborne Operations of D-Day June 6, 1944 Adrian R. Lewis Omaha Beach: D-Day June 6, 1944. By Joseph Balkoski. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2004. ISBN 0-8117-0079-8. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xxi, 410. $26.95. Utah Beach: The Amphibious Landing and Airborne Operations of D-Day June 6, 1944. By Joseph Balkoski. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2005. ISBN 0-8117-0144-0. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xx, 380. $26.95. Utah Beach: The Amphibious Landing and Airborne Operations of D-Day June 6, 1944. By Joseph Balkoski. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2005. ISBN 0-8117-0144-0. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xx, 380. $26.95. Historians have two primary tasks: first, to describe historical events as accurately and comprehensively as possible; and second, to explain change and identify the primary causes for the outcome of a given event. Balkoski succeeds brilliantly at the first task, but all but ignores the second task. In my book, Omaha Beach: A Flawed Victory (2001), I took the exact opposite approach. My objective was to explain the outcome of the battle for Omaha Beach, to explain why the Allies attacked and fought the way they did. I all but ignored the first task. Balkoski has provided us with the most comprehensive historical narratives available on the Army's one day, tactical battles for Omaha and Utah Beaches. He has spent a quarter of a century studying the Normandy invasion, collecting oral histories, conducting interviews, examining and collecting primary documents, walking the terrain along the Normandy coast, and conducting battlefield tours. His first book, Beyond the Beaches: The 29th Infantry Division in Normandy, published in 1989, was an excellent study of the Maryland and Virginia National Guard Division that fought under the [End Page 870] operational command of the 1st Infantry Division (ID) at Omaha Beach. (Though disguised, Balkoski is partial towards the 29th ID, particularly the Virginia 116th Regiment, which drew its lineage from the Confederate Stonewall Jackson Brigade). Balkoski's methodology is that of the Army Staff Ride (cf. Jay Luvaas and Harold Nelson, Guide to the Battle of Gettysburg). Balkoski takes a unit that fought at Omaha Beach, describes the unit, its mission and equipment, and identifies key leaders. He then takes the reader to the terrain where a particular action took place and retraces the footsteps of the soldiers who fought there. Using maps he shows the disposition of enemy and friendly forces. He then narrates the action. Finally, he provides the reader with firsthand accounts of what took place. These oral histories are excellent, and Balkoski has one of the largest collections in existence. In many cases he also provides a picture to depict a particular action or piece of equipment. (Balkoski eliminated the first step of the Staff Ride, which was to provide an overview of the entire tactical plan of battle; and the final step, which was to identify alternative courses of action.) Balkoski's work is chronological and sequential, starting with the watery approach; moving to the assault at the water's edge; and tracking the advance of major units across the beaches, over the bluff, and into the towns directly behind the beaches—a period of less than twenty-four hours. He moves back and forth describing the actions of major units. The appendixes are excellent. Appendix one is a breakdown of casualties, the most comprehensive available. No other work provides a more accurate and comprehensive narrative of the battles for the American beaches at Normandy. General comments: Footnotes on works cited would have enhanced the value of these works to future researchers. Maps would have been more effective had friendly and enemy forces been shown in color. The bibliographies are incomplete. Significant works are not cited. Focusing on the Omaha Beach book, the most controversial assault, it is important to say what Balkoski's work is not. It is not a study of combined operations. The British who greatly influenced the overall invasion plan were left out. It is not a study of joint operations. The...

The Battle of Tanga 1914 (review)

Part of an attractive Battles and Campaigns series, this study of an often ignored World War I amphibious landing in East Africa demonstrates the growing promise as well as continuing limitations of much military history. In this case, Dr. Ross Anderson, a former British army major, has managed a prodigious quantity of research looking at the battle from a variety of perspectives. He has located and utilized not merely more British material than many previous authors, but also evidence of the German operations in defense of their East African colony. Particularly impressive is his inclusion of many German and British photographic images associated with the operations.

Book Review: The Sea Services in the Korean War, 1950–1953, Assault from the Sea: The Amphibious Landing at Inchon

Book Review: The Sea Services in the Korean War, 1950–1953, Assault from the Sea: The Amphibious Landing at Inchon