Defiant
(pronounced dih-fahy-uhnt)
Characterized
by defiance or a willingness to defy; boldly resistant or challenging.
1830s: From
the French défiant, from the Old
French, present participle of the verb défier
(to challenge, defy, provoke), the construct thus def(y) + “i” + -ant. Defy dates from the mid thirteenth century
and was from the Middle English defien,
from the Old French desfier, from the
Vulgar Latin disfidare (renounce
one's faith), the construct being dis-
(away) + fidus (faithful). The construct in French was thus des- (in the sense of negation) + fier (to trust), (from the Vulgar Latin fīdāre, from the Classical Latin fīdere (fidelity), In the fourteenth century, the meaning
shifted from “be disloyal” to “challenge”.
The suffix –ant was from the Middle English –ant & -aunt, partly
from the Old French -ant, from Latin
-āns; and partly (in adjectival
derivations) a continuation of the use of the Middle English -ant, a variant of -and, -end, from the Old
English -ende ( the present
participle ending). Extensively used in
the sciences (especially medicine and pathology), the agent noun was derived
from verb. It was used to create
adjectives (1) corresponding to a noun in -ance, having the sense of
"exhibiting (the condition or process described by the noun)" and (2)
derived from a verb, having the senses of: (2a) "doing (the verbal
action)", and/or (2b) "prone/tending to do (the verbal action)". In English, many of the words to which –ant
was appended were not coined in English but borrowed from the Old French,
Middle French or Modern French. The negative adjectival forms are non-defiant
& undefiant although there is a kind of middle ground described by quasi-defiant,
semi-defiant & half-defiant, the latter three sometimes used in military
conflicts where, for whatever reason, it’s been necessary (or at least
desirable) for a force to offer a “token resistance” prior to an inevitable
defeat. The adjective over-defiant
refers to a resistance or recalcitrance, the extent or duration of which is not
justified by the circumstances; in such cases the comparative is “more defiant”
and the superlative “most defiant”. Defiant
is a noun & adjective, defiantness is a noun and defiantly is an adverb;
the noun plural is defiants.
Defiance
in politics: use with caution
The
commonly used synonyms include rebellious, direful, truculent, insolent,
rebellious, recalcitrant, refractory, contumacious & insubordinate but in
diplomacy, such words must be chosen with care because what is one context may
be a compliment, in another it may be a slight.
This was in 1993 discovered by Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of
Australia 1991-1996) who labelled Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad (b 1925; prime
minister of Malaysia 1981-2003 & 2018-2020) one of the “recalcitrant” when
the latter declined to attend a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC). For historic
reasons, Dr Mahathir was sensitive to the memories of the imperialist oppressors
telling colonized people what to do and interpreted Mr Keating’s phrase as a
suggestion he should be more obedient (the most commonly used antonym of
defiant, the others including obedient & submissive). Things could quickly have been resolved (Dr
Mahathir of the “forgive but not forget” school of IR (international
relations)) but, unfortunately, Mr Keating was brought up in the gut-wrenching “never
apologize” tradition of the right-wing of the New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party
so what could have been handled as a clumsy linguistic gaffe was allowed to
drag on.
Circa 1933
Chinese propaganda poster featuring a portrait of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
(Chiang Chung-cheng). Set in an oval
frame below flags alongside stylized Chinese lettering, the generalissimo is
depicted wearing his ceremonial full-dress uniform with decorations.
The admission
an opponent is being “defiant” must also sometimes be left unsaid. Ever since Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek
(1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the
renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975) in 1949 fled mainland China, settling on
and assuming control of the island of Taiwan, the status of the place has been
contested, most dramatically in the incidents which flare up occasionally in
the in the straits between the island and the mainland, remembered as the First
(1954–1955), Second (1958) and Third (1995-1996) Taiwan Strait Crises which,
although sometimes in retrospect treated as sabre rattling or what Hun Sen (b
1952; prime minister (in one form or another) 1985-2023) might have called “the boys letting
off steam”, were at the time serious incidents, each with the
potential to escalate into something worse.
Strategically, the first two crises were interesting studies in Cold War
politics, the two sides at one stage exchanging information about when and
where their shelling would be aimed, permitting troops to be withdrawn from the
relevant areas on the day. Better to
facilitate administrative arrangements, each side’s shelling took place on
alternate days, satisfying honor on both sides.
The other landmark incident was China’s seat at the United Nations (UN),
held by the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan) between 1945-1971 and the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) (the mainland) since.
Jiefang
Taiwan, xiaomie Jiangzei canyu (Liberate Taiwan, and wipe out the remnants of
the bandit Chiang) by Yang Keyang (楊可楊) and Zhao Yannian (趙延年).
A 1954 PRC
propaganda poster printed as part of anti-Taiwan campaign during first Taiwan
Strait Crisis (1954-1955), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek depicted as a
scarecrow erected on Taiwan by the US government and military. Note the color
of the generalissimo’s cracked and disfigured head (tied to a pole) and the
similarity to the color of the American also shown. The artists have included some of the
accoutrements often associated with Chiang’s uniforms: white gloves, boots and
a ceremonial sword. The relationship
between Chiang and the leaders of PRC who defeated his army, Chairman Mao (Mao
Zedong. 1893–1976; paramount leader of PRC 1949-1976) and Zhou Enlai
(1898–1976; PRC premier 1949-1976) was interesting. Even after decades of defiance in his renegade
province, Mao and Zhou still referred to him, apparently genuinely, as “our
friend”, an expression which surprised both Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US
president 1969-1974) and Henry Kissinger (b 1923; US national security advisor
1969-1973 & secretary of state 1973-1977) who met the chairman and premier
during their historic mission to Peking in 1972.
A toast:
Comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (left) and
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (right), celebrating the Japanese
surrender, Chongqing, China, September 1945.
After this visit, they would never meet again.
Most
people, apparently even within the PRC, casually refer to the place as “Taiwan”
but state and non-governmental entities, anxious not to upset Beijing, use a
variety of terms including “Chinese Taipei” (the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) and the Fédération
Internationale de Football Association (FIFA, the International Federation
of Association Football) & its continental confederations (AFC, CAF,
CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA)), “Taiwan District” (the World Bank) and
“Taiwan Province of China”
(the International Monetary Fund (IMF)).
Taiwan’s government uses an almost declarative “Republic of China” which
is the name adopted for China after the fall of the Qing dynasty and used
between 1912-1949 and even “Chinese Taipai” isn’t without controversy, “Taipei”
being the Taiwanese spelling whereas Beijing prefers “Taibei,” the spelling used in the mainland’s Pinyin system. There have been variations on those themes
and there’s also the mysterious “Formosa”, use of which persisted in the
English-speaking world well into the twentieth century, despite the Republic of
Formosa existing on the island of Taiwan for only a few months in 1895. The origin of the name Formosa lies in the
island in 1542 being named Ilha Formosa
(beautiful island) by Portuguese sailors who had noticed it didn’t appear on
their charts. From there, most
admiralties in Europe and the English-speaking world updated their charts, use
of Formosa not fading until the 1970s.
All that
history is well-known, if sometimes subject to differing interpretations but
some mystery surrounds the term “renegade province”, used in recent years with
such frequency that a general perception seems to have formed that it’s
Beijing’s official (or at least preferred) description of the recalcitrant
island. That it’s certainly not but in
both the popular-press and specialist journals, the phrase “renegade province”
is habitually used to describe Beijing’s views of Taiwan. Given that Beijing actually calls Taiwan the
“Taiwan Province” (sometimes styled as “Taiwan District” but there seems no
substantive difference in meaning) and has explicitly maintained it reserves
the right to reclaim the territory (by use of military invasion if need be),
it’s certainly not unreasonable to assume that does reflect the politburo's
view but within the PRC, “renegade province” is so rare (in Chinese or English)
as to be effectively non-existent, the reason said to be that rather than a
renegade, the island is thought of as a province pretending to be independent;
delusional rather than defiant. Researchers
have looked into the matter when the phrase “renegade province” was first used
in English when describing Taiwan. There
may be older or more obscure material which isn’t indexed or hasn’t been
digitized but of that which can be searched, the first reference appears to be
in a US literary journal from 1973 (which, it later transpired, received secret
funding from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)). It took a while to catch on but, appearing
first in the New York Times in 1982, became a favorite during the administration
of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) and has been part of the
standard language of commentary since.
Diplomats, aware of Beijing's views on the matter, tend to avoid the
phrase, maintaining the “delusional rather than defiant” line.
Picture of defiance: Official State Portrait of Vladimir Putin (2002), oil on canvas by Igor Babailov (b 1965).
The idea of
a territory being a “renegade province” can be of great political,
psychological (and ultimately military) significance. The core justification used by Mr Putin
(Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia
since 1999) when explaining why his “special military operation” against
Ukraine in 2022 was not an “invasion” or “war of aggression” (he probably
concedes it may be a “state of armed conflict”) was that he denied Ukraine was
a sovereign, independent state and that Volodymyr Zelenskyy (b 1978, president
of Ukraine since 2019) was not a legitimate president. In other words, Ukraine is merely a region of
the modern Russia in something of the way it was once one of the 15 constituent
SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republic) of the Soviet Union. Although the Kremlin doesn’t use the phrase,
in Mr Putin’s world view, Ukraine is a renegade province and he likely believes
that applies also to the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia) and
possibly other former SSRs. Lake many,
the CCP is watching events in Ukraine with great interest and, as recent “exercises”
seem to suggest the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have sufficiently honed
their techniques to execute either a blockade (which would be an “act of war”)
or a “quarantine” (which would not), the attention of Western analysts is now
focused on the hardly secret training being undertaken to perfect what’s needed
for the triphibious operations demanded by a full-scale invasion. The US think-tanks which think much about
this possibility have suggested “some time” in 2027 as the likely point at
which the military high command would assure the CCP’s central committee such a
thing is possible. What will happen will
then depend upon (1) the state of things in the PRC and (2) the CCP’s assessment
of how the long-term “strategic ambiguity” of Washington would manifest were an
attempt made to finish the “unfinished business” of 1949.
Lindsay Lohan, who has lived a life of defiance.
The
objectification of women’s body parts has of course been a theme in Western
culture since at least Antiquity but rarely can as much attention been devoted
to a single fingernail as the one photographed on Lindsay Lohan’s hand in July
2010 (during her “troubled starlet” phase).
The text printed on the fingernail was sufficiently explicit not to need
a academic deconstruction of its alleged meaning, given image was taken when she
sitting in court listening to a judge sentence her for one of her many
transgressions; the consensus was the text was there to send a “defiant message”
the internet’s collective conclusion (which wasn’t restricted to entertainment
and celebrity sites) presumably reinforced by the nail being on the middle
finger. Ms Lohan admitted to fining this
perplexing, tweeting on X (then known as Twitter) it was merely a manicure and
had “…nothing
to do w/court, it's an airbrush design from a stencil.” So, rather than digital defiance, it was
fashion. Attributing a motif of defiance
to Ms Lohan wasn’t unusual during “troubled starlet” phase, one site assessing
a chronological montage of her famous mug shots before concluding with each successive
shot, “Lindsay's
face becomes more defiant — a young woman hardening herself against a world
that had turned her into a punch-line”.
The
Bolton-Paul Defiant (1939-1943)
The
Parthian shot was a military tactic, used by mounted cavalry and made famous by
the Parthians, an ancient people of the Persian lands (the modern-day Islamic
Republic of Iran since 1979). While in
real or feigned retreat on horseback, the Parthian archers would, in full
gallop, turn their bodies backward to shoot at the pursuing enemy. This demanded both fine equestrian skills (a
soldier’ hands occupied by his bows & arrows) and great confidence in one's
mount, something gained only by time spent between man & beast. To make the achievement more admirable still,
the Parthians used neither stirrups nor spurs, relying solely on pressure from
their legs to guide and control their galloping mounts and, with varying
degrees of success, the tactic was adopted by many mounted military formations
of the era including the Scythians, Huns, Turks, Magyars, and Mongols. The Parthian Empire existed between 247
BC–224 AD. The Royal Air Force (RAF)
tried a variation of the Parthian shot with Bolton-Paul Defiant, a
single-engined fighter and Battle of Britain contemporary of the better
remembered Spitfire and Hurricane.
Uniquely, the Defiant had no forward-firing armaments, all its firepower
being concentrated in four .303 machine guns in a turret behind the pilot. The theory behind the design dates from the
1930s when the latest multi-engined monoplane bombers were much faster than
contemporary single-engined biplane fighters then in service. The RAF considered
its new generation of heavily-armed bombers would be able to penetrate enemy
airspace and defend themselves without a fighter escort and this of course
implied enemy bombers would similarly be able to penetrate British airspace
with some degree of impunity.
Bolton-Paul Defiant.
By 1935,
the concept of a turret-armed fighter emerged.
The RAF anticipated having to defend the British Isles against massed
formations of unescorted enemy bombers and, in theory, turret-armed fighters
would be able approach formations from below or from the side and coordinate
their fire. In design terms, it was a
return to what often was done early in the World War I (1914-1918), though that had
been technologically deterministic, it being then quite an engineering
challenge to produce reliable and safe (in the sense of not damaging the
craft's own propeller) forward-firing guns.
Deployed not as intended, but as a fighter used against escorted
bombers, the Defiant enjoyed considerable early success, essentially because at
attack-range, it appeared to be a Hurricane and the German fighter pilots were
of course tempted attack from above and behind, the classic hunter's
tactic. They were course met by the the
Defiant's formidable battery. However,
the Luftwaffe learned quickly, unlike the RAF which for too long persisted with
their pre-war formations which were neat and precise but also excellent
targets. Soon the vulnerability of the
Defiant resulted in losses so heavy its deployment was unsustainable and it was
withdrawn from front-line combat. It did
though subsequently proved a useful stop-gap as a night-fighter and provided
the RAF with an effective means of combating night bombing until aircraft
designed for the purpose entered service.
The Trump class "battleships"
In a
surprise announcement, the Pentagon announced the impending construction of a “new
battleship class” the first of the line (USS Defiant) to be the US Navy’s “largest
surface combatant built since World War II [1939-1945]”. The initial plans call for a pair to be
launched with a long-term goal of as many as two dozen with construction to
begin in 2030. Intriguingly, Donald
Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) revealed that while the
Department of Defense’s (it’s also now the Department of War) naval architects
would “lead the design”, he personally would be involved “…because I’m a very
aesthetic person.” That may sound a
strange imperative when designing something as starkly functional as a warship
but in navies everywhere there’s a long tradition of “the beautiful ship” and
the design language still in use, although much modified, is recognizably
what it was more than a century earlier.
The Secretary of the Navy certainly stayed on-message, announcing the USS
Defiant would be “…the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking
warship anywhere on the world’s oceans”, adding that components for the project
would “be made in every state.” It won't however be the widest because quirk of ship design in the US Navy is that warships tend to be limited to a beam (width) of around 33 metres (108 feet) because that’s the limit for vessels able to pass through the Panama Canal.
Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.
By
comparison with the existing surface fleet the 35,000 ton Defiant will be
impressively large although, by historic standards, the largest (non-carrier) surface
combatants now in service are of modest dimensions and displacement. The largest now afloat are the 15,000-ton
Zumwalt class destroyers (which really seem to be cruisers) while the 10,000
ton Ticonderoga class cruisers (which really are destroyers) are more
numerous. So, even the Defiant will seem
small compared with the twentieth century Dreadnoughts (which became a generic
term for “biggest battleship”), the US Iowa class displacing 60,000 ton at their
heaviest while the Japanese Yamato-class weighted-in at 72,000. Even those behemoths would have been dwarfed
by the most ambitious of the H-Class ships in Plan-Z which were on German
drawing boards early in World War II. Before
reality bit hard, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of
government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) left physics to the
engineers and wasn't too bothered by economics.
After being disappointed the proposed successors to the
Bismarck-class ships would have the bore of their eight cannons (the main armament) increased only from 380 mm (15 inch) to 405 (16), he ordered OKM (Oberkommando der
Marine; the Naval High Command) to design bigger ships.
That directive emerged as the ambitious Plan
Z which would have demanded so much steel, essentially nothing else in the
Reich could have been built. Although
not one vessel in Plan Z ever left the slipway (the facilities even to lay down
the keels non-existent), such a fleet would have been impressive, the largest
(the H-44) fitted with eight 508 mm (20 inch) cannons. Even more to the Führer’s liking was the
concept of the H-45, equipped with eight 800 mm (31.5 inch) Gustav siege
guns. However,
although with guns, cars, tanks, buildings and much else, Hitler found it hard
to resist gigantism, the bitter experience of war at sea convinced him the
battleship was not only obsolete but had become an expensive strategic liability. After the Bismarck was lost in May 1941,
Hitler made his change of view clear to Großadmiral
Erich Raeder (1876–1960; head of the German Navy 1928-1943), paraphrased by
historians usually as: “I was always a supporter of the big ships but they've had
their day, the risk of attack by air is too great.” That ended the prospect of any more being
built but further failures darkened even more the Führer’s view and in 1943 he
demanded the Navy scrap the entire surface fleet, devote all construction
resources to Unterseeboots (literally
“under-sea boat” ie submarine and referred to usually as “U-boat) and
re-allocate the crews to ground warfare or the U-boats. On that, Raeder’s
successor persuaded him to relent because merely by inertly existing, the big
ships did have a strategic effect of forcing the Royal Navy to keep on stand-by
a battle-fleet which could otherwise usefully be deployed. The decision during the 1930s to build the big
ships certainly had a profound effect on the path of the war. Had U-boat construction been afforded a priority
in 1937-1939, the Kriegsmarine (German
Navy) could have entered World War II with the ability permanently to have 100 U-boats
engaged in high-seas raiding rather than barely the dozen initially possible
and the early course of the war might radically have been different. In was another indication of the way German policy
had been directed by the assumption a war with the UK could be avoided or at
least long-delayed. Germany indeed
entered the war without a single aircraft carrier (the only one laid down never
completed), such was the confidence the need to confront the Royal Navy either
would never happen or was years away.
The US Navy
in 1940 began construction of six Iowa class battleships but only four were
ever launched because it had become clear the age of the aircraft carrier and
submarine had arrived and the last battleship launched was the Royal Navy’s HMS
Vanguard which entered service in 1946.
Although the admirals remained fond of the fine cut of her silhouette on the horizon, to the Treasury (an institution in the austere, post-war years
rapidly asserting its authority over the Admiralty) the thing was a white
elephant, something acknowledged even by the romantic, battleship-loving Winston Churchill
(1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who, when in November,
1953 planning a trip to Bermuda for a summit meeting with Dwight Eisenhower
(1890-1969; US POTUS 1953-1961), opted to fly because “it costs Stg£30,000 if
we go by Vanguard, and only £3,000 by air.” In 1959, Vanguard was sold for scrap and
broken up the next year while the last of the Iowa class ships were decommissioned
in 1992 after having spent many years of their life in a non-active reserve. Defiant is of course a most Churchillian word and after World War I, he was asked by a French municipality to devise the wording for its
war memorial. He proposed:
IN WAR: RESOLUTION
IN DEFEAT: DEFIANCE
IN VICTORY: MAGNANIMITY
IN PEACE: GOODWILL
At the time, old Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; French prime minister
1906-1909 & 1917-1920) wasn’t feeling much magnanimity towards the Germans
(he called them: le boche) and nor was he much in the mood to extend any goodwill so Churchill’s
suggestion was rejected.
Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.
The
conventional wisdom therefore was the days of the big warships were done and
the Soviet Navy’s curious decision in the 1980s to lay down five (four of which
were launched) Kirov class battlecruisers seemed to confirm the view. Although the Kremlin called the ships тяжёлый
атомный ракетный крейсер (heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers),
admiralties in the West, still nostalgic lot, choose to revive the old name “battlecruiser”. The battlecruiser (essentially a battleship
with less armor) was a brainchild of the naval theorists of the early twentieth
century but while the concept was sound (and in practice may have proved so if
the theory had been followed at sea) but in service was a disappointment and
none were commissioned after 1920 until the Soviets revived the idea. As recently as 2018, NATO (North Atlantic
Treaty Organization) sources were sceptical any of the Russian ships would ever
return to service but in 2025 the Admiral
Nakhimov (ex-Kalinin) emerged
from a long and expensive re-fit & modernization to serve as the world’s
biggest warship. Although fast and heavily
armed, concern remains about her vulnerability to missiles and torpedoes.
Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.
The US Navy
seems confident about the protection afforded by the Trump class’s systems,
claiming “the
battleship [the Pentagon’s term] will be capable of operating independently, as part of a
Carrier Strike Group, or commanding its own Surface Action Group depending on
the mission and threat environment.”
In other words, unlike an aircraft carrier, the security of the vessel
does not depend on a flotilla of destroyers and other smaller escort vessels. The first of the Trump class is projected to
cost between US$10-15 billion although, on the basis of experience, few will be
surprised if this number “blows out”. The
Trump class will be the flagships for the Navy’s “Golden Fleet” initiative (an old
naval term dating from days of the Spanish colonial Empire and nothing to do
with Mr Trump’s fondness for the metal).
In an age in which small, cheap, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, usually
referred to as drones) have revolutionized warfare (on land and at sea), the
return of the big ships is as interesting as it was unexpected and analysts are
already writing their assessments of the prospects of success.
Although
the concept wasn’t new, it was late in the nineteenth century naval architects
began to apply the word “class” systematically to group ships of the same
design, the pioneers the Royal Navy but other powers soon adopted the
practice. It had long been the practice
for warships to be constructed on the basis of substantially replicating
existing designs and some truly were “identical” to the extent a series would
now be called a “class” but before the terminology became (more or less)
standardized, warships usually were described by their “Rate” or “Type” (first-rate
ship of the line, corvette, frigate etc) but, in the usual military way, there
was also much informal slang including phrases such as “the Majestic
battleships” or “ships of the Iron Duke type”.
The crystallization of the “class” concept was really a result of
technological determinism as the methods developed in factories which emerged
during the industrial revolution spread to ship-building; steam power, hulls of
iron & steel and the associated complex machinery made design &
construction increasingly expensive, thus the need to amortize investment and
reduce build times by ordering ships in batches with near-identical specifications.
Navies in
the era were also becoming more bureaucratic (a process which never stopped and
some believe is accelerating still) and Admiralties became much taken with precise
accounting and doctrinal categorisation.
The pragmatic admirals however saw no need to reinvent the wheel,
“class” already well-established in engineering and taxonomy, the choice thus
an obvious administrative convenience.
The “new” nomenclature wasn’t heralded as a major change or innovations,
the term just beginning to appear in the 1870s in Admiralty documents, construction
programmes and parliamentary papers in which vessels were listed in groups
including Devastation class ironclad turret ships (laid down 1869), Colossus
class battleships (laid down 1879) and Admiral class battleships (1880s). In recent history tests, warships prior to
this era sometimes are referred to as “Ship-of-the-line class”, “Three decker
class” etc but this use is retrospective.
The French Navy adopted the convention almost simultaneously (with the local
spelling classe) with Imperial Germany’s Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) following in the
1890s with Klasse. The US Navy was
comparatively late to formalise the use and although “class” in this context does appear in documents in the 1890s, the standardization wasn’t complete until about
1912.
As a naming
convention (“King George V class”, “Iowa class” etc), the rule is the name
chosen is either (1) the first ship laid down, or (2) the lead ship
commissioned. According to Admiralty
historians, this wasn’t something determined by a committee or the whim of an
admiral (both long naval traditions) but was just so obviously practical. It certainly wasn’t an original idea because
the term “class” was by the late nineteenth century well established in
industrial production, civil engineering, and military administration; if
anything the tradition-bound admirals were late-adopters, sticking to their old
classificatory habit long after it had outlived its usefulness. With ships becoming bigger and more complex,
what was needed was a system (which encompassed not only the ships but also
components such as guns, torpedoes, engines etc) which grouped objects according
to their defined technical specification rather than their vague “type” (which
by then had become most elastic) or individual instances; naval architecture had
entered the “age of interchangability”.
A docked Boomin' Beaver.
It’s good
the US Navy is gaining (appropriately large) “Trump Class” warships (which the
president doubtless will call “battleships” although they’re more in the “battlecruiser”
tradition). Within the fleet however
there are on the register many smaller vessels and the most compact is the 19BB
(Barrier Boat), a specialized class of miniature tugboat used deploy and
maintain port security booms surrounding Navy ships and installations in port. Over the last quarter century there have been
a dozen-odd commissioned of which ten remain in active service. Unlike many of the Pentagon’s good (and
expensive) ideas, the Barrier Boats were a re-purposing of an existing design,
their original purpose being in the logging industry where they were used to manoeuvre
logs floating along inland waterways. In
that role the loggers dubbed them “log broncs” because the stubby little craft
would “rear up
like a rodeo bronco” when spun around by 180o. Sailors of course have their own slang and
they (apparently affectionately) call the 19BBs the “Boomin’ Beaver”, the
origin of that being uncertain but it may verge on the vulgar. It’s not known if President Trump is aware of
the useful little BB19s but if brought to his attention, he may be tempted to order two of
them re-named “USS Joe Biden” and “USS Crooked Hillary” although, unlike
those reprobates, the Boomin’ Beavers have done much good work for the nation.
The Arc de Triomphe, Paris (left), Donald Trump with model of his proposed arch, the White House,
October, 2025 (centre) and a model of the arch, photographed on the president's Oval Office desk (right). Details about the arch remain sketchy but it's assumed (1) it will be "big" and (2) there will be some gold, somewhere.
As well
as big ships (and the big Donald J Trump Ballroom already under construction where
the White House’s East Wing once stood), Mr Trump is also promising a “big arch”. A part of the president’s MDCBA (Make D.C.
Beautiful Again) project, the structure (nicknamed the “Triumphal Arch” and in the
style of the Arc de Triomphe which stands in the centre of the Place Charles de
Gaulle (formerly the Place de l’Étoile), the western terminus of the avenue des
Champs-Élysées) is scheduled to be completed in time to celebrate the nation’s
250th anniversary on 4 July 2026.
Presumably, on that day, it will be revealed the official name is
something like the “Donald J Trump Sestercentennial Arch” which will appear on
the structure in large gold letters. The arch is said to be “privately funded”, using money left over from what was
donated to build the ballroom, a financing mechanism which has attracted some
comment from those concerned about the “buying of influence”.
Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government
1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) sketch of an arch (1926, left) and
Hitler, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister
of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and others examining Speer's model of
the arch, presented 20 April, 1939 upon the occasion of the Führer’s
50th birthday (right; note the pattern in carpet). As
usual, the Führer reviewed the display of gifts, surveying the statutes,
paintings and porcelain (both good and kitsch) with interest or amusement but the
one to which he kept returning was the four-metre model of the arch and that
evening, several times he would return “with visible emotion” to examine the details.
A model of Germania. To give some indication of the scale, within the dome of the huge meeting hall (at top of image), St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome would have fitted several times over; its diameter of the dome would have been 250 metres (825 feet). Commissioned to honor those who fought and died for France during the
French Revolutionary (1792-1802) and Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), construction
of the Arc de Triomphe (officially the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile) absorbed
30-odd years between 1806-1836, as a piece of representational architecture the
structure is thought perfectly proportioned for assessment by the human eye and
perhaps for this reason it has been admired by many. As early as 1926, Adolf Hitler sketched his
vision of a grand arch for Berlin, while bitter experience taught him the big
warships were a bad idea because of their vulnerability to air attack, he never
lost his enthusiasm for megalomania in architecture and in Albert Speer he
found the ideal architect. Noting the
dimensions in Hitler’s sketch, Speer responded with something in the spirit of
their blueprint for Germania. Hitler’s
planned the rebuilding of Berlin to be complete by 1950, less than
ten years after the expected victory in a war which would have made him the
master of Europe from the French border to the Ural mountains (things didn’t
work out well for him). While the 50
metre (163 feet) tall Arc de Triomphe presented a monumental appearance and provided
a majestic terminus for the Champs Elysees, Speer’s arch stood 117 meters (384
feet) in height but even though obviously substantial, it would have been entirely
in scale with the rest of Germania, the whole place built in a way to inspire
awe simply by virtue of sheer size.
