Hearted Youtube comments on Drachinifel (@Drachinifel) channel.
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My father's Annapolis classmate, Hugh Wood, is credited with getting the first two hits on the Yamato. Lt. Cdr. Hugh Wood, as commander of the USS Bennington's dive-bomber squadron, launched in his SB2C with his XO as wingman, accompanied by 4 or 5 other aircraft. The Yamato's anti-aircraft guns could elevate to something like 72 degrees, so Cdr. Wood and the rest of his flight had to fly directly over the ship and then come straight down in a near-vertical dive. During violent maneuvering to avoid AA fire and to get into the perfect dive-bombing position, Cdr. Wood was separated from the rest of the formation (or, to be more precise, most of the formation was separated from Cdr. Wood), with the exception of his XO who stuck to his wing like glue. They began their dive from 30,000 feet (I didn't think the SB2C could attain that altitude but apparently it could in the hands of an exceptionally capable pilot). Cdr. Wood scored two hits, while his wingman scored at least one. They then flew back to the Bennington, landed, rearmed and relaunched to repeat the process. For his efforts, Cdr. Wood received his second Navy Cross. Sadly, Hugh was killed in the early 50s while test piloting some Grumman counter-rotating monstrosity called the Skyshark. RIP and God bless you, Cdr. Wood.
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A follow-up on the efforts to preserve the ship. Initially the plan was to seal off the aft end of the slip that it's in and pump out the water comverting it to a permanent dry dock. This would spare the hull from the ravages of the brackish water of the Houston Ship Channel as well as the chemical and petrochemical exposure it suffered from owing to the heavily industrial nature of the channel.
But, in the end it was all going to be far too expensive and, ultimately, it wouldn't have addressed a major problem this museum ship has always faced: an insufficient number of visitors.
Why you ask? Because the location is, quite frankly, awful. It's in a highly induatrial area that has only gotten worse in the 70-plus years since the ship was placed there. Despite a quadrupling of the metro population in that same time the ship has never been able to attract enough paying visitors to become self-sufficient.
Why then, did you folks put it in such a stupid location? The answer is that the location is actually the San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site which is the location of the final historic battle where the Texas Republic defeated the Mexican army and won its independence from Mexico. In addition to the USS Texas there's a massive 173 meter tall monument with an observation deck and a history museum located in the base. Otherwise the battleground isn't much to look at...it's a flat marshy area devoid of any real topography. But, you can understand how it all kind of makes sense given the history of the location. Still...it's a pain in the ass to get out there and it's less than pretty.
So now there's a new plan. The Texas Legislature has approved $35 million to repair the USS Texas. She's going to be floated out and towed to Mobile, AL where she'll be placed in a floating dry dock and all the major work performed. And here's the catch: once repaired she will not be returned to the San Jacinto site. The funding was contingent upon the ship being relocated somewhere along the northern Texas Gulf coast which everyone takes to mean Galveston, TX which is a huge tourist destination with over 7.5 million visitors each year. It's believed that this will provide the ship with its best chance to become economically self-sufficient instead of constantly having to rely on stop-gap and emergency funding from a Legislature that's only in session once every two years (Texans are notoriously wary of government so the state constitution limits how often they can meet...the idea being that if they can't meet they can't mess things up, LOL).
So that's where we stand. The ship will be fully repaired and we're just waiting for the site selection folks to formally say "Galveston".
Although I'm sure the folks in La Porte, TX will be disappointed the fact is they've had over 70 years to make this work accompanied by a quadrupling of the metro Houston population to almost 7 million and yet it's been a resounding failure. It would be insanity to put her back there. Relocating her is absolutely the right decision. This view is supported by a Deloitte study. As the Houston Chronicle reported, "Cyrier and other supporters of moving the battleship have cited an economic study prepared by Deloitte that shows a potential windfall if it were to move to Galveston.
The 17-page report, commissioned by the Battleship Texas Foundation and completed in September 2016, projects 283,000 visitors to the battleship in Galveston and $3 million in annual revenue, compared to 88,000 annual visitors and $1.3 million at its La Porte location.
The Galveston projection would put the Battleship Texas on par with attendance figures for similar World War II-era museum ships, such as the USS Lexington in Corpus Christi (306,000 annual visitors) and the USS Alabama in Mobile, Ala. (277,000 annual visitors)."
Including the latest $35 million appropriation the State of Texas has spent $54 million on the USS Texas since 2009. That is an enormous amount of money. The ship has to go where it at least has a chance to become self-sufficient if it's to survive. The folks in Harris County bitching about the proposed relocation and vowing to fight it seriously need to STFU. It's like...stop, you're just embarrassing yourselves, you and your constituents have utterly failed this historic treasure and you need to step out of the way and give someone else a chance to make this work...because clearly you can't.
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It's not just the hulls. The USN needed all the machinery. The interior fittings. Bunks, storage lockers, refrigeration, desks, chart tables and God knows what else. Just how many light bulbs were there on a Cleveland much less an Essex. All of the electrical equipment. Generators, radios, radar etc. The armament. 20mm, 40mm, 5"38s, 6", 8", 12", 16" and the ammunition for each. Fuel. Av Gas. Food. Plates, bowls, cups, flatware. Uniforms.
And we still haven't even gotten to the most important part of the ship yet. The crew. Basic training. Advanced training. Plus all the administrative work to keep track of just where all of these men went.
Now add on everything the Army needed from small arms ammo to bridging equipment much less lend lease.
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An epitaph dedicated to HMS Warspite from one of the many sailors that had served on her, Lt-Cmdr R A B Mitchell. This was written after HMS Warspite ran aground at the Prussian Cove on her way to the breakers yard on St. Georges Day 1947.
You say you have no subject
And your brushes all have dried;
But come to Marazion
At the ebbing of the tide.
And look you out to seaward,
Where my Lady battle scarred
Hugs the rock that is more welcome,
Than the shameful breakers yard.
Paint her there upon the sunset
In her glory and despair,
With the diadem of victory
Still in flower upon her hair.
Let her whisper as she settles
Of her blooding long ago,
In the mist than mingles Jutland
With the might of Scapa Flow.
Let her tell you, too, of Narvik
With its snowy hills, and then
Of Matapan, Salerno
And the shoals of Walcheren;
And finally of Malta,
When along the purple street
Came in trail the Roman Navy
To surrender at her feet.
Of all these honours conscious,
How could she bear to be
Delivered to the spoiler
Or severed from the sea ?
So hasten then and paint her
In the last flush of her pride
On the rocks of Marazion,
At the ebbing of the tide.
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A bulbous bow allowed, on some ships, for the crew to engage in the unofficial sport of, 'Bow Jumping'. On a Knox Class, for example, the forward supply room was in the bow. After a long voyage, the store room would be mostly empty- leaving a large space that sailors can 'chill out' in. In heavy seas when steaming through the waves, the pitch of the ship could make the deck change elevation by as much as 20 feet. So, to play the sport, you crouch ready to jump as the deck rises. When the ship crests the wave and the bow begins to go down, you jump as high as you can. Whomever stayed in the air longest wins.
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I qualified submarines in 1980. I knew two men who had served aboard WWII diesel boats, although their service was after WWII. Our own submarine, one of the early "41 for Freedom" Missile boats built in the 1960's, still had a lot of interior gear that was exactly the same as a WWII submarine. When I see something on the discovery channel today that shows the interior of new Nuclear submarines, I am well amazed. We were gages, valves, torn clothing, linoleum covered decks forward, asbestos lagged piping, etc. We all owe everything we have learned as a group to those brave men of WWII.
There is a submarine memorial in Oklahoma (of all places, also my home state) where the USS Batfish SS310 is on display. The ship needs help, it is in peril of decay and has accidentally been floated by floods on more than one occasion. Every year that passes there is less interest in her. Batfish is the champion submarine killer of all time, a record that has stood since 1945
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I enlisted in the USN back in 1977, went into the Naval Nuclear Power Program, all my time on submarines and a tour on the old sub tender Hunley. All the damage control gear and practices were still from the WWII / 1950's era. In 1982 when the Falklands War occurred, I was aboard the Hunley in Holy Loch Scotland. A year later I returned to the United States, and was stationed aboard one of the first Trident submarines in Washington state. I was amazed by what I saw as far as damage control gear - nearly all of the WWII / 1950's era gear was gone, except for the occasional bits that were still useful, even those having undergone a serious upgrade - but the vast majority of it had been completely replaced, they had leapfrogged ahead 30 years or more in technology, in the span of little more than a year - thermal imagers, full insulated fire suits, modern multi-position fire hose nozzles, Scott air packs, a serious upgrade to the old OBA oxygen canister breathing apparatus, they had adopted the RN practice of using flash hoods and protective clothing, updated their air sampling equipment, and updated their fire fighting techniques and strategy.
The USN had taken a good hard look at what the RN had went thru in the Falklands War, and with what can only be described as amazing speed and alacrity for any agency of the US Government, had completely revamped all the damage control gear and practices based on the lessons they'd drawn from that analysis, little more than a year after that war was over. It could be that many of these changes were already being contemplated, with the Falklands War providing the necessary kick in the arse to get things moving and funding provided. Those lessons extended to ship construction as well - in the Arleigh Burke class, the USN abandoned the use of aluminum superstructures to save weight, and went back to steel, based in part on what happened to the Sheffield when struck by an Exocet missile.
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41:02 Lee's recommendation against a night surface action at Philippine Sea is one of my favorite moments of the Pacific War history, and says so much about Lee's intelligence and character. There's so much to unpack in Lee's brief communication to Spruance:
"Do not - repeat not - believe we should seek night engagement. Possible advantages of radar more than offset by difficulties in communications and lack of training in fleet tactics at night."
Lee was getting the chance to conduct exactly the sort of action a surface commander would dream of, and he was unquestionably the most qualified U.S. admiral to lead such an action at the time. However, that intelligence and experience told him that such night actions were chaotic, unpredictable, and tended to offer many chances for a supposedly weaker force to turn the tables on its notionally superior counterpart. He knew firsthand the skill of the Japanese Navy in night actions, and recognized that his own ships would have at best a minimal advantage over them in training and capabilities. Thus, he recommended that the USN avoid playing to the IJN's greatest remaining strength, foregoing the chance at a victory exclusively for his own ships. Instead he recommended (in effect) that Spruance fight an exclusively carrier-based battle, which would minimize the role of his own ships but play to the overall fleet's greatest strengths and give the best chance for overall victory. This was a commander who could be brilliant in his particular sphere of naval warfare while still clearly understanding the overall picture, and acting accordingly.
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"scare horses and, somewhat decisively, bypass armor"
"discover new and interesting ways to disassemble their enemy"
"surrounded....by smarter crews in swifter ships"
"vaguely legitimate, but mostly piratical"
19:50 "Let's just say, shipboard guns, of the period, included, but were not limited to, the following: (he names 26....i'm not doing that...the exhausting thoroughness of the list is it's own humor)
(i've said this before. this type of video, tracing the evolution of a particular technology, is my favorite. thanks and well done, Drach.)
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Well done Drachs, its a superb analysis; been reflecting on this off and on for years, and this is the best explanation I've seen. Three additional nuanced thoughts. First, the weather on the day, from the footage of Bismark firing, was about Sea State 4 or so, by eye. With Hood steaming at 28 knots, the depth of the exposed area under the main mast will change slightly as she runs through the swells and troughts, with the possibility again of further exposure of the hull area below the main belt, thus potentially further increasing the probability of penetration. Second, if her turn to port is underway, then at 28 knots she will start to list to starboard, by 5 to 7 degrees, I'd guess, which will change the impact geometry slightly, and in two ways: the exposure of the hull below the waterline will be reduced, thus reducing the probability of below belt penetration; but this will be balanced again slightly the change in horizontal geometry, as the angle of penetration becomes closer to perpendicular. Third, and very subtly, if the Hood's rudder has just been put over, but she has not started to turn, then else will come into play. Battleships and battlecruisers were designed with metacentric height such that they were not too 'stiff', and were thus good gun platforms. For any warship, but especially a warship that is so designed, when the rudder is put over, the first thing that happens is counter-intuitive, namely the vessel will list in the direction that the rudder is put over. The reason is to do with the physics, in that the rudder is below the vessels centre of gravity and, at the moment of the rudder being put over, a vertical lever force is applied below the centre of gravity, causing the vessel to list in the direction of the turn. Once the rudder bites, and the vessel's turn commences, then classical hydrodymanic forces come into play, and the vessel will then list in the opposite direction of the turn. In Hood's case, if the moment of impact coincided with the application of the rudder, but before it had begun to bite, then she would have been listing slightly to port, which would have further exposed the hull below the armour belt, and made for a slightly higher probability of penetration as you propose. All of which tends to increase the probability that your explanation is the right one.
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This was a great discussion of the alternative outcomes. I suspect this was the last battle the Japanese would have had any chance of winning, as long as winning means "we sunk more ships that you did". In terms of the overall outcome of the war, the shipyards were pouring out huge numbers of the Fletcher class and their bigger and more dangerous brothers, the Sumner and Gearing classes. Vast numbers of Cleveland light and Baltimore heavy cruisers were still coming down the ways, not to mention the fearsome Iowa class. US carriers, from escort to fleet types, were also being commissioned and stationed in the Pacific, so any Japanese warship could count on meeting not only generally superior US surface ships but being swarmed by hundreds of US aircraft.
As a final blow, the British Pacific Fleet shows up in January, 1945 with four more modern battleships, six fleet carriers, fifteen light carriers, and eleven excellent cruisers. This doesn't even take into account all the other smaller ships. The combined US and British logistic trains meant almost any ship damaged in battle could either be put back in service in a few days or made ready to sail to a rear repair area for heavier work. Japanese ships damaged really depended on whatever a crew could scrounge for repair work, all the while trying to remain camouflaged and dodging constant air attacks. By early 1945, very few ships were able to run the gauntlet of US subs to get back to mainland dockyards, and most of those they did were further damaged or sunk by allied air attacks. One can only wonder about the state of morale of many Japanese sailors in 1945. The Japanese were well and truly stuffed long before the events of August, 1945.
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@Drachinifel The mechanization of agriculture started in the late 19th century and the automobile was taken up en masse in Rural America in the 1920's, it was ubiquitous by the 1930's. In fact, I recall one survey from the mid 1920's that said the single largest occupation group visiting national parks (a craze of that era that was only made possible by the proliferation of the automobile) was farmers. It was not at all uncommon for households to have a car and a tractor before they had indoor plumbing. It was really rural America that drove the development of American car culture, as they are the ones who had the most use for cars; this is arguably why a more densely populated Europe never quite developed the same car culture as America: when automobiles were still the toys of the rich in Europe they were already starting to be regarded as a necessity by the lower and middle-classes in much of America. What rural areas did have less of was was industrialization, so they didn't have as many machinists and highly skilled tradesmen who exclusively worked on machines compared to more populated and industrialized areas (though many of these industrialized areas were in the mid-west, especially the 'eastern mid-west' like Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, I believe you're thinking of the south and the west, not the mid-west). But a lack of these occupations didn't mean a lack of mechanical skills, in fact it meant the opposite, farmers were heavily reliant on their own mechanical skills to repair their own tractors and automobiles which quickly became vital to their survival.
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Retired USN submariner, 1977 to 97, Machinist Mate in the Naval Nuclear Power Program.
That whole episode speaks volumes about the professionalism, knowledge, and experience of Rodney's Engineering crew. It took a well-trained crew, who knew their plant well, and just how far they could push it - especially given the overall condition of the machinery - without causing a catastrophic failure - and still managing to keep the ship operational afterwards.
During my 20 years in the engine room on submarines, there were times when we had to make repairs that normally would have required the services of a shore facility - but because we had good people that knew their job, we were able to pull it off.
Your analogy with a car engine is spot on. If you don't stress your machinery when it isn't necessary, it will be capable of going above and beyond, and holding together, when it IS necessary.
My respect to the Engineering crew of the Rodney. They were good lads and good engineers, none better.
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As a Frenchman, I really appreciate the effort you gave into thorough researching for this episode.
I entirely agree with your perception of the event. Even though the British had breached some articles of neutrality when firing upon the French vessels, it was vital for this French fleet to be put out of action so long as its loyalty to the Allies was in doubt. Failure to have done so could have had very dramatic results on the war as a whole, not just the Med theatre. I cannot bring myself to blame the British for this, as belligerent Churchill was, since if they had not done it the Allies could have lost the Med, leading to the potential fall of Egypt, allowing the Axis to seize the Middle East, and then I will let you imagine what would be the end result...
Gensoul and Vichy are the culprits of this tragedy. Vichy first because they are traitors, flat out traitors. There is a reason why 1940 to 1944 are regarded as the darkest years in all of French history, not because of the military defeat but because of the collaboration regime. Had these nazi sympathisers not been put in power following the debacle of 1940, and real French patriots kept control of the military, the entire French fleet would have carried on the fight alongside the British just as it had done up to that point. As to Gensoul, not only did he fail his men and let them die in the worst circumstances possible, at the hand of their allies, but his refusal to join forces with the British in by itself shows that Gensoul was willing to collaborate with Vichy/the enemy and lay down his arms and worse, perhaps fight against the Allies. Even still, he could have simply sailed to Fort-de-France and regrouped with the rest of the demobilised fleet. No deaths, no breach of orders. But no, that would have to sensible!
Mers-el-Kébir is also the perfect representation of why Britain always had an edge on France and why it was more successful. In military terms, the quality of British equipment was never excellent, almost always inferior when compared to French equipment. Be it in gunsmithery (beginning in the musket era, France had tougher musket designs and overall established itself as a nation of excellent gunsmiths even until today), troop quality (Britain was the last major European military to finally adopt a professional army while France had a long history of having a well-trained standing army), and in ship design (yes, as much as it seems incredible, French ship designs, starting in the 18th century, were regarded as among the best in Europe very close to that of the Dutch. And guess who thought that too. The Royal Navy itself! Read about the Commerce-de-Marseille class for example), and in to a lesser extent depending on which field we look at, innovations. France had an edge on Britain in terms of means.
BUT! One thing France did/does not have or at least did/does not have consistently throughout history is an effective leadership. Britain always, ALWAYS, had that edge over France. Where France had a single outstanding general, Britain had two. Where France had a single great minister or adviser, Britain had a whole cabinet and a Prime Minister of great cunning. Where France had one successful admiral surrounded by ten incompetent other, Britain had two matchless admirals and countless naval geniuses. France ended up with the best tools, but Britain ended up with the best minds. Look at the Seven Years War, look at the Napoleonic Wars, look at the Invasion of Algeria, look at the intervention in Mexico, look at Franco-Prussian War, look at the Lebel in WWI, look at inter-war France, look at French rifle stocks in 1939, look at WWII, look at Indochina, look at the Algerian War, look at France today. At Mers-el-Kébir, another French incompetent and worthless leader led so many valiant sailors manning some of the better ships of this conflict to their futile deaths while on the other end clear-sighted and thoughtful British commanders had endeavoured whole-heartedly their very best to prevent this tragedy. It has always been so and it will always be so...
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The Coast Guard cutter was the USCGC Modoc (WPG-46). She really played a more critical role in running down the Bismarck than she is often given credit for. She was on Greenland ice patrol and had responded to an SOS from several torpedoed ships from a convoy in the Bay of Biscay, along with her sister Northland and the much smaller USCGC General Greene. While rescuing survivors, she was amazed to see the grey outline of a large battleship loom up out of the gloom. The Modoc's radio operator had copied the British message ordering all RN ships to intercept the Bismarck. The captain was therefore aware of the rough position of the Bismark, but never expected to find herself this close to the path of the ship. She signaled Bismarck with signal lamps and radio but received no reply as she steamed past in silence. The Modoc's radioman immediately got on the aircraft radio the Modoc carried, raising that American piloted Catalina. She was able to give the Catalina the last seen position of the Bismarck. The Catalina was able to locate the Bismarck within fifteen minutes of getting the message from the Modoc, and was then able to notify Coastal Command. Thus, Modoc played an important part in the final location of the Bismarck. The three cutters continued to rescue men in the sea, all the while frantically signalling the Prince of Wales of their identities as Norfolk prepared to lob eight inch shells toward what it presumed to be a German destroyer. The Bismarck was already past the cutters, and the PoW was able to relay the cutter's friendly status to the other British ships and stop the Norfolk from opening fire, helped by a timely jam of her forward turrets. The three cutters patrolled the area looking for survivors but found none, only wreckage, floating corpses, and body parts, before making way again for Greenland. It was the closest to a major historic battle ever witnessed by Coast Guard Cutters
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One of the Dutch gunboats Drach mentions, HrMs Soemba, only made D-day by the skin of her teeth, as she had worn out most of her guns during her time in the Mediterranean. In order to make the repair request stand out amongst the flurry of despatches send to the Emergency Repair Section of the navy, capt. Nicholl (RN) decided to send it in verse:
"A report has come in from the Soemba
That their salvoes go of like a Rhumba
Two guns, they sound fine,
But the third five point nine,
He am bust and refuse to go Boomba."
This evidently inspired the people in charge, as the entire discussion (a total of ten messages to and fro) that followed was conducted by way of limmerick, consisting of increasing pleas from Nicholls for repair and increasingly snide responses from command that they had no room, material, or inclination to waste any that the did have on such a minor ship. This continued until the Dutch liaison in the Admiralty had had enough and responded:
"After so much backchat it is but right
That Soemba should join in this fight
Because she loves very much
To be rude too, and in Dutch
So no one can read it, serve you right
Waarom wordt nog niet begonnen (Why has work not started)
Met verwisselen der kanonnen? (On changing out the guns?)
Rijmpjes maken helpt geen zier (Making rhymes is a bore)
Want met pen, inkt en papier (because paper and ink)
Werd geen oorlog ooit gewonnen" (Never won anyone a war)
Soemba would serve until 1956, and remain a depot ship for the navy diving school until 1985, when she was scrapped.
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A true story concerning the results of a lack of ridged hierarchy. During Arctic Light Infantry Training (ALIT) we were trained to erect a 10 man Arctic Tent in a 10 man groups. Since there was an excess of officers, there was a team made up of a Lt Col, Maj, two CPT's, a few LT's (both 1st and 2nd) and a Specialist.
While the Officers, having never seen a 10 man, single pole tent, were all looking at the Colonel, the Specialist started pulling things apart. The Colonel asked said SPC4 what he was doing.
Still rummaging through the pile of equipment the SPC4 said, "Every piece of US Military equipment has a set of instructions somewhere, Sir." About that time, the Enlisted man pulled back a flap revealing a diagram for the tent. "And here it is, Sir."
The Colonel looked at the diagram, then the stunned officers, then the SPC4, then the diagram again. The Colonel pointed at the SPC4 and said, "Specialist, you're in command of this detail. Get this tent up, we need a place to sleep tonight."
I got a letter of commendation somewhere in my 201 file for that.
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Nice research and humor. I served on a Fletcher an a couple Sumners. One doing gunfire support in Vietnam. I also served on various riverine boats and got to see the 5"x38 shooting from both ends. Sometimes, depending on the map accuracy, the first round would be within 10' of the target and sometimes would hit with the first round. Rarely did it take more than a few rounds to destroy the target. I read Japanese Destroyer Captain by Hara, a destroyer captain thru most of the war. In his book, Hara stated in actions with US destroyers, his ship was usually straddled by the first US salvo. A good book from the Japanese viewpoint.
The 5" concussion was tough on destroyers. Florescent lights would often be hanging from their wiring, one deck below the mount, after a heavy firing mission. We had a large ventilation fan and ducting fall down in a passageway, and fire hoses flung from their racks. Sometimes the bridge radar repeaters would go offline because of damaged vacuum tubes.
Maps in Vietnam were based on early French surveys and some with later Japanese updates. Until the army made new surveys, some landmarks could be 3-5 miles off. In a remote area on a boat down in the river channel with heavy jungle all around, I'd call for artillery and never hear the round land.Thanks!
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I agree with your conclusion in the final section. A fast battleship is essentially designers looking at their previous/contemporary generation of battleship and saying "we want all of that, but faster". A fast battleship is a battleship that gains a distinct speed advantage, but without compromising the firepower or armor that allows it to match up against other contemporary battleships (either "fast" or "slow"). Invariably this means a substantial increase in displacement compared to the slower battleships, which we see with both Hood and Iowa. To me, the clear dividing line between a fast battleship and a battlecruiser is that the former is still clearly intended to be able to fight another battleship 1v1, whereas the latter is not (just giving the ship some marginal capabilities to not be instantly obliterated by a battleship, a la the German WWI battlecruisers, doesn't count).
As I mentioned on the Alaska-class video, my personal definition of a battlecruiser is similar to yours, but a bit more expansive in that I don't consider having the exact same gun caliber as the battleships to be a requirement. I consider just having substantially larger guns than cruiser size to be sufficient, which is why I include the Alaskas in my definition of BCs. In my opinion, any ship that is designed for the mission of "kill cruisers, run from battleships" qualifies as a battlecruiser. So my criteria for judging whether a ship counts are based on the two parts of that mission. In my own personal definition, a battlecruiser must:
1. Be easily capable of killing contemporary "standard" cruisers. This means it needs all of the following:
a. Much greater firepower than a standard cruiser through larger guns.
b. Armor to protect against standard cruiser guns of the time.
c. Speed comparable to contemporary cruisers.
2. It also needs to be incapable of matching up against a contemporary battleship 1v1, by being deficient in at least one of the following:
a. Number of guns.
b. Caliber of guns.
c. Armor protection.
If a ship fails #1, it's not powerful enough to be a battlecruiser. If a ship meets #1 but doesn't have any of the deficiencies listed under #2, it's a fast battleship.
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Perhaps a little unrelated, but the glass marble example mentioned, triggered an old funny memory from school.
The school I attended has four floors, and in one location there are stairs with an open volume through all floors
down to the basement floor. Thus five floors. The floor at the bottom is smooth stoned slabs, very tuff and hard.
So... one day walking the stairs, holding a small billiard ball that I inexplicably had found somewhere, an intrusive
thought raised it's stupid head. I could not resist, so from the top of the stairs, looking down an estimated 18 m(?),
I threw the billiard ball, balancing force with control, as hard as I could down towards the bottom of the stairs.
I expected the ball to shatter, but to my surprise, the ball bounced back high enough for my friend standing one
floor below me to catch it. Examining the ball, there was little to see, just a small mark of contact. Looking at the
stone floor... there was a somewhat larger mark of contact. The slab was cracked to each corner, with a very
visible crater at the convergance of those cracks, but it had not shattered either. Physics is fun, in theory and
practice. We the started to calculate the G-forces involved, but decided to go talk to the girls walking by instead.
That is at least how I choose to remember the end of the story... 🙂
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And fast forward to 2018 and planes and submarines are the battleships of today. Although Brazil once again had a second hand carrier, this time French rather than British, the worn out condition of the carrier combined with several major fires since being brought on strength in 2000 led to her decommissioning in 2017 and probable scrapping. Given the need for the Brazilians to have something that looked like a carrier in the fleet, she scrambled to make the British and offer they couldn't refuse and purchased the ex-HMS Ocean, renaming her the Atlantico. Since she is a mere 20 years old, the youngest major ship purchased from another navy since the Brooklyn class light cruisers in 1951, there's some chance that she may remain in service for another 15 years or so as a helicopter carrier. The dreams of Brazil to operate a true fixed wing carrier appear to be dashed at the moment.
Argentina and Chile are no longer major players in South America. Argentina is in deep financial trouble, and her surface fleet has been relegated to possibly a few corvettes. Chile maintains a much more effective navy, but the youngest combat ships are the ex British Duke class frigates at 28 years old with other classes now being 30 years old or or older. Chilleans now seem content to control the Pacific coastline of her long borders while maintaining a navy strong enough to dissuade the Argentine and Peruvian Navies from any mischief. Speaking of Peru, while she wasn't part of the early 20th century arms race, she has now modernized most of her vessels and is probably the equal of Chile and much stronger than Argentina.
The newest race is for submarines and naval aircraft. The Brazilians are still talking about building a nuclear sub, and Brazil, Peru, and Chile will all have air-independent submarines sometime in the 2020's. AI subs will be the new Dreadnoughts of the 21st century. Brazil is looking toward Embraer to build a new maritime patrol aircraft that would be the equal of the P-3 Orion, as well as maintaining their current fleet of upgraded Skyhawks, aircraft that don't have a carrier to operate from after a long battle with the Air Force to allow the Navy to operate fixed wing combat aircraft. There are rumors that Peru is in talks with Russia for a new maritime patrol platform as well as new SU-35s that could serve as maritime strike aircraft. Chile may cooperate with Brazil and Embraer in purchasing a new maritime patrol aircraft while continuing to upgrade its considerable fleet of F-16s. The Dreadnought race may be over but the arms race in South America continues unabated.
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In addition to the Hipper being attacked by a blazing zombie ship headed straight for it with siren wailing, another strange incident occurred with one of Hipper's Arado Ar 196a float planes. It had taken off on a scouting flight on the morning of April 9, 1940. Due to the damage to the Hipper from the ramming, it was unable to return to the Hipper before it ran out of fuel. The crew then landed off the village of Eide and paddled ashore in their emergency raft. They posed as tourists trying to buy gas for their stranded car. Even though the locals didn't know Norway had been invaded, they were suspicious and called the local police - all three of them. After a short tussle, the identity papers on the two men (Ltn Polzin and Obit Techam) revealed them to be German navy pilots. This was shortly confirmed when a fishing boat towing the float plane returned to harbor. The crew were arrested and the aircraft turned over to the Royal Norwegian Navy Flying Service. They hastily painted out the German markings, substituted Norwegian insignia, and flew off to repel the Germans. The Norwegian Navy had a relatively large number of floatplanes. They were familiar with flying them, and several Norwegian pilots that understood German were recruited to fly the plane since they could understand the gauges and German instrument labels.
The Arado flew several reconnaissance missions for the Norwegians and British, eventually ending up in an as hoc squadron of two British twin engine Walrus float planes, a Norwegian M.F. 11 floatplane, and the captured Arado. The British were eager to examine the Arado since it was the most modern float plane in German service. The British wanted to return to Britain before their planes were lost in the deteriorating situation in Norway, and the Norwegians wanted to fly to Britain to get modern planes and return to Norway to fight to the end. Plans were hastily made to fly this motley flotilla to a British seaplane base in the early morning of April 18. The two Norwegian pilots were not to return until 1945.
The hazardous five hour flight went off without a hitch...until they got close to the British base. The Walrus's crew didn't have current radio codes or frequencies, the Arado had a German radio that couldn't operate on British frequencies, and the M.F. 11 didn't have a radio at all. The flight was picked up on radar and Gloster Gladiators were launched to intercept what was assumed to be an enemy flight. The two Walrus were faster than the Arado or M.F. 11 so they were ahead them on the flight. When the British fighter pilots spotted them, they knew the Arado was German and assumed the M.F. 11 was an unknown German type, since they appeared to be chasing the Walruses. They moved in for the kill, downing the M.F. 11 before the Walruses circled back, frantically wagging their wings, and the attack ceased. The pilot of the M.F. 11, a Lieutenant Diesen, was able to crash land on the water uninjured, and he and his crew were rescued.
The story of the Admiral Hipper's float plane doesn't end here. The British started testing the Arado immediately, and personnel of the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment (MAEE) started to catalogue all the parts and make blueprints. A Fleet Air Arm commander was given flying duties to report on the attributes of the plane. All went well until April 26. The Arado landed safely after its fourth test flight. What happened next is a little murky, but it appears a strong wind gust got under the wing of the plane and, despite frantic efforts to save it, the fated Arado tipped over and sank in 150 feet of water. It was raised several days later but was too damaged to fly again. The engine fuselage, and instruments were examined and provided valuable data to the MAEF, and some of the features made it into later British float planes. Some bits are still left at the British and Norwegian navy's museums.
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My grandfather, age103 on the 1st October this year (ie, still with us!) is arguably the world's leading authority on the Section Belge being the 1st Lt. on the first ship of the 'Belgian Navy', HMS Quentin Roosevelt (formerly the French Fisheries protection vessel FPV Flamant) under the command of Frank Allen, another RNVR officer. His name is John Shannon, Lt, RNVR, retired and can not only tell you stories about the Section Belge, but about the Royal Navy throughout WW2, as he signed up before war broke out and ended his active duty after the war ended. One such story is that he was the second to last to leave the sinking HMS Dunvegan Castle, a 15,000 ton armed merchant cruiser sunk by U-46 in August 1940. I still have the key to the 'Dunvegan Castle 6" magazine aft' which my grandfather pocketed after relieving the sailor on duty who would not leave his post until relieved even though the ship was sinking. One of the last acts of Captain Ardill was with my grandfather to go to one of the ships safes and thinking they were going to remove some important documents...but no, a bottle of whisky and a bottle of brandy saying to my grandfather, "we might need these later". Many many stories and as he's still with us, he can still tell them as first hand reports. He might be 103 but he has not lost his marbles in the slightest!
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Classicist here: The "Snake account" is from Cornelius Nepos, Hannibal, 11,5-7. Hannibal was in the service of Bythinia at that point. The account reads:
[5] reliquae Pergamenae naves cum adversarios premerent acrius, repente in eas vasa fictilia, de quibus supra mentionem fecimus, conici coepta sunt. quae iacta initio risum pugnantibus concitarunt, neque quare id fieret poterat intellegi.
[6] postquam autem naves suas oppletas conspexerunt serpentibus, nova re perterriti, cum, quid potissimum vitarent, non viderent, puppes verterunt seque ad sua castra nautica rettulerunt.
[7] sic Hannibal consilio arma Pergamenorum superavit, neque tum solum, sed saepe alias pedestribus copiis pari prudentia pepulit adversarios."
"As the rest of the Pergamenian ships bore hard upon the enemy, the earthen pots, of which we have previously spoken, began suddenly to be hurled into them. These, when thrown, at first excited laughter among the combatants, nor could it be conceived why such a thing was done; but when they saw their ships filled with serpents, and, startled at the strangeness of the occurrence, knew not what to avoid first, they put about their ships, and retreated to their camp upon the coast. Thus Hannibal, by his stratagem, prevailed over the force of the Pergamenians. Nor was this the only occasion; but often, at other times, he defeated the enemy with his troops on land, and with equally skilful management."
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Former USS Constitution Museum employee here (again).
One of the most impressive artifacts on display in the Museum is actually a result of this battle. If I recall correctly, while he was recuperating aboard the victorious USS Constitution, Lt Chads was approached by the first officer of the USS Constitution (A Lt. Parker, I think) with a request that they work together to figure out what happened in the confusing, twisting battle between the two vessels, with an eye towards making a copy for each of their nations. Chads agreed and the two eventually had created an after action report. Parker then made two clean, neat copies of the report (on paper with colored pencils) as a map of the battle showing the progress of the action.
The American copy is there in the Museum, on display, in a special box, over two hundred years after the battle. I don't know what happened to Lt. Chad's copy, but hopefully as worst it is still someplace safe and awaiting discovery by some enterprising soul at the Admiralty.
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The USN's fleet train was the thing most responsible for the more varied and palatable food served on most USN ships. Whole ships were devoted to refrigeration and freezers, and those fresh foods were broken up into ship size loads for everything from minesweepers up. My dad's PT base in New Guinea and Solomons was visited every several weeks by these supply ships, who offloaded the food package to their tender. They would then be distributed to the individual boats. He'd get fresh milk, eggs, and frozen meat of all kinds, including turkeys for the holidays. His tender, the USS _Mobjack_, had added refrigeration space to hold all this food, but each PT also had a refrigerator. Not very big, but enough for five days of refrigerated food before they had to visit the tender for another load, generally needing to rearmed anyway. Each boat had a tiny galley, with one member of the crew being designated as the cook. This was pretty good duty on PT boat since they didn't have to do all the repetitive tasks like swabbing the deck and cleaning out the below decks spaces. A good cook was second only to a good skipper in terms of fighting effectiveness and morale. My dad's boat's Cookie (they were all called Cookie) was particularly good, turning out bread, pies, and even breakfast cinnamon rolls. He remembers his hams, steaks, and turkeys as being particularly good.
When the boats were at base for heavier repairs and general shore duty, they had to eat at the base mess, and his memory of the food at these messes was nowhere near as good as they ate on the boat. Cookie and the skipper were both good horse traders, and they almost always ended up with a couple cases of cokes, a couple cases of beer, five or so gallons of ice cream, and some fresh vegetables. When they were at advance bases, they were stuck with C and K rations and whatever fish they could catch from the back of the boat. The best day he remembers from advance bases was when his boat sailed over a reef with about a foot of water under the keel. The sharp eyed lookouts didn't see just the reef but also a huge lobster colony! The boat immediately dropped anchor, and a couple of the good swimmers (my dad couldn't swim at all) dove down to start grabbing them. They managed to snatch about twenty of them before the squadron commander called on the radio and wanted to know why they were stalled in the lagoon. They "fixed" the engine problems and got underway again. That night they had the lobster feast to end all feasts. Cookie was even able to work some kind of magic with margarine to make it kinda taste like drawn butter. He said he didn't know if it was all the lobster or just being exhausted after having no nights off for almost three weeks, but he said it was the best night's sleep he ever had while in the Navy. :-)
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This was actually surprisingly balanced and fair. You sir, do not understand how the internet is supposed to function. :P
Basically I have the same ideas and conclusions. Both the RN and USN had there own operational requirements and produced different ships as a result. The RN and USN basically converged with the Malta and Midway classes. That party has to do with operational requirements. There is a point where not building the strength deck at the flight deck level is just a pointless waist of tonnage and a detriment to the ship. For the USN, Essex was about as large as they could go with a traditional hull and superstructure hanger and flight deck. For the 45.000t Midway they had to build the strength deck at the flight deck to keep structural integrity acceptable. Why not armour the flight deck while you are at it?
The RN in that aspect was ahead of the curve. However the 4.2m/14feet high hangers on Indomitable and Implacable massively crippled those ships in just a few years after completion. Illustrious at least had 4.8m/16feet of headroom in its hanger. USN was all around 5.2m/17feet. Because of that fact I to a degree I consider the Illustrious to be better design than the follow ons. It didn't matter in the 1940-1943 time frame because most planes will fit all the RN armoured carriers which makes Implacable the best ship of the group. After that point you will start running into problems. By the introduction of the first jets, the Indomitable and Implacable where becoming obsolescent because of space constraints.
Further I would also give the Illustrious the nod over Yorktown in the 1940-1943 time frame with one conditions met, proper planes. With proper I mean USN planes (aside from the Devastator) and not that FAA crap which was on them the first few years. With that condition met I would prefer the three Illustrious class, or even better Illustrious, Indomitable and Implacable with deck parks over the three Yorktown's in the 1942 naval battles in the Pacific. For example Hornet and Enterprise combined managed 117 aircraft at the crucial strike during the Battle of Midway. Two RN armoured carriers with deck parks should be able to roughly match that. The RN carriers probably would be limited to some 50 ish planes per CV in the strike because of there shorter flight decks. You couldn't really launch more than 60 aircraft of a Yorktown or Essex for that matter because of the need to mass the strike and lack of space to position all the aircraft on the flight deck before take off. The 117 planes already took the Hornet and Enterprise an hour to launch, and then the strike still was spread out with poor coordination and massing. In that aspect a few planes less might actually be better because it allows you to mass and launch and a strike faster and keep it together in the air. In the case of the Battle of Midway a smaller but more concentrated strike might also have given the torpedo bombers a chance to really finish the carriers off instead of the CV's having to be finished off by Japanese destroyers.
Both designs, no matter there pro's and cons however still beat the IJN carriers. Not that is was that hard beating a floating bomb with a lot of design errors anyway. Especially the closed hangers, no armoured flight deck, poorly flash tight munition lifts, terrible protection and shock resistance of the fuel tanks, poor ventilation and the brilliant idea to place fuel lines along the width of the hangers. Basically when a 250kg/550 pound bomb hit an IJN carrier, the hanger would just blow up and the fire would be kept going by ruptured fuel lines. Further most of the Japanese damage control parties also worked inside the hanger. They would basically all die at the first hit. That basically covers Kagi, Agaki, Sōryū, Hiryū and its derivatives as well as the Shokaku class.
Taihō was interesting. She had a 75mm armoured flight deck just as the RN armoured carriers. But Taihō did not have armoured hanger sides and used the freed up weight for taller hangers. Taihō however had the same design issues as the other IJN carriers as well as elevator wells extending to below the waterline. That final problem doomed here because it allowed fuel vapors to get into the hangers. Stupid damage control then turned the ship into a fuel air bomb. Without all these flaws, Taihō might actually have been the best WW2 carrier to see service. She had space for a fairly large air group, very capable planes and good armour.
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Another absolutely hysterical RCN story from WWII is that of HMCS LOCKEPORT (J100), a Bangor-class minesweeper.
While en route for Baltimore for a refit in January of 1944, she encountered a fearsome nor'easter that knocked out all power and crippled her engines. With no propulsion or electrical power with which to call for help, the crew gathered all of the hammocks, blankets, tablecloths, rags, upholstery, and curtains they could find, and hand-sewed it all into a massive mainsail, which they then rigged from the ship's mast. Under this improvised sail power, they made it 200 miles before encountering a friendly tug who, after some improvised signalling involving a 3" starshell, a handful of Oerlikon tracers, and some hastily-painted dinner plates (as the semaphore signal flags had been washed overboard during the storm), agreed to help the stricken minesweeper reach harbour. They made a full repair and returned to service shortly thereafter.
Or at least that's how the lower-decker story is told today. The historical account is probably much less interesting.
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Hi Drach, just FYI the video's description says "(Jan'42 - Jun'42)" rather than 1943.
As an aside, Wahoo herself ALSO experienced a torpedo stuck in one of her forward tubes (as a result of a test being run that O'Kane would have stopped had he known, but his original skipper had chosen a poor arrangement of watches etc, one that O'Kane wrote prevented acting as an effective Exec). There's a funny element to it, however.
She'd advised the relevant authorities in her message on reaching the 1,000 mile line from Pearl that she'd need a port mooring. On arrival, however, they found they'd been given a starboard one at Pier 1 with a bunch of dignitaries, well-wishes and a band present.
The following message was sent:
HAVE POSSIBLY ARMED TORPEDO PROTRUDING TO STARBOARD
STILL RECOMMEND PORT SIDE MOORING
Apparently that caused quite the exodus, LOL.
This was in mid-October '42. Taken from "Part Two FIRST PATROL In the Carolines" in O'Kane's book "Wahoo".
Cheers
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Then there's all the fun you can have with SUBMERSIBLE hulls.
Back when the US began playing with nuclear powered submarines, they decided to build a little experimental boat, mostly full of batteries, to do some testing of what the handling characteristics of this new hull form called a 'body of revolution' would be like. The tank tests said it should be a very efficient hull form for a sub while underwater, which was where a nuclear powered sub was expected to spend almost all it's time while on patrol.
A body of revolution is one which is formed by taking a curve and rotating it about an axis. For the sort of curve you'd use for a hull shape, the result is sort of cigar shaped, and all cross sections of it are circles.
So, they build this test boat and take it out to do test maneuvering to see if it does anything strange.
Well, it did something strange, all right. The strange behavior was named the "Jesus Christ Factor," most likely due to someone saying that when it was discovered. One of the properties of a hull form that has all cross sections being circular is it has no hydro-dynamically preferred orientation in the water. They tried to pull a sharp turn (like you'd pull in combat to evade enemy anti-sub weapons) and discovered that when you turn sharply in a sub with this kind of hull form, it likes to snap-roll into a steep dive, in excess of 45 degrees down.
Now, snapping into a steep dive is fine and dandy when you WANT to do that, and could make for a nifty evasion maneuver, but most of the time you don't want to evade like that. It risks you hitting the sea bed or exceeding your crush depth. fortunately, it just needed a small rudder added to the back of the conning tower to prevent the boats from doing that.
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Suction: I was on a destroyer hit by a carrier at near 90° and almost dead center. The ship went on it's side, the carrier sailed thru and split the hull. On the stern, protected by several full bulkheads between engine and boiler rooms, righted itself and floated, and I was ok. The bow stayed on it's side, filled and sank in 3 minutes. Close friends birthing in the bow had to make their way either thru the bow hatch or the hatch near the sprayshield that had water flowing in. The crew on watch in the superstructure and the people getting out from below, gathered on the bow side until the captain ordered them in the water and away from the ship. One friend was swimming with about 25 others, was pulled under twice. He barely made the surface the first time and when he stopped and drew a breath was pulled down again. The first time was the worst. He was picked up by one of the carriers' boats, but the others were gone.
This was 1969, 3am local, and the Evans DD-754 with HMAS Melbourne, the peacetime tonnage record holder. I sent much of my life on the ocean, I'm still on a ship, and a captain 50 years. In all that time, the Melbourne had the most professional crew I ever saw. They had many boats with search lights in the water in moments. Also all their helos were in the air. We lost 74, but it would have been more without Melbourne's fast reaction.
BB's: Until gliding smart bombs, naval gunfire was the best support in coastal areas. In Vietnam a few years, I had the chance to compare 16", 8". and 5" results. And I knew a senior marine that had been under Japanese BB shells on Guadalcanal. Every round hurt and said it was the scariest thing he faced including Peleliu and Okinawa. The 16" gunfire was a real killer of morale for the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese wouldn't enter peace talks until the New Jersey was decommissioned. If BBs weren't so expensive to operate, I think they should have stayed in service until the gliding smart bombs. The would have been even more valuable with a AA missile system.
You do a great job with your research and analysis. You always get a thumbs up from me.
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A quick addition regarding the Ships carpenter. At least in the Royal Navy. During the Age of Sail the Ships carpenter was one of the permanent Warrant Officers of the ship, which means unlike most of the crew, including the Captain and officers, the Ships Carpenter was permanently assigned to the ship. Even if the ship was placed 'in ordinary' (in reserve), the Ships carpenter would be one of the small number of men who would stay with the ship. Basically they would be responsible for the day to day maintenance of a ship in reserve
That at least was the theory, obviously in practice many ships in reserve would have no permanent crew assigned simply because the Royal Navy had so many of the things!
Still it does highlight the fact that the Ships Carpenter was part of a very small, very highly skilled group that included the Ships Gunner, the Ships Master, the Ships Sailmaker and a few others. Depending on the time period there were 5 -7 permanent Warrant officers. In many ways the ship was their ship, everyone else were just temporary occupants of the vessel.
As you can imagine, this generally meant that those senior Warrant Officers knew their ship VERY well.
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Midway was a massive team effort
Nimitz's leadership and intel created the general battle plan, kept the carriers ready for battle, his subordinates aware of the Japanese Midway invasion.
The pearl harbor shipyard workers made Yorktown ready for battle ridiculously quickly and effectively.
Fletcher and Spruance positioned the ambush and coordinated the recon efforts.
Henderson and all the Midway aircraft conducted the initial recon that allowed the Americans to hit first.
Waldron (VT-8), Lindsey/Ely (VT-6), Massey (VT-3), and Thach (VF-3) pestered the Kido Butai and kept them too busy dodging their hits, which prevented the launch of the counterstrike and distracted the IJN CAP from going after the dive-bombers.
Best(VB-6), Mcluskey(VS/B-6), Leslie (VB-3), and Shumway (VB-3) delivered the final hammer blows that broke Nagumo's back.
If any of these people had done anything different, Midway may have turned out very differently.
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Around 1990 I was a real estate photographer in the hire of realtors in the Adelaide Hills This day I went to a house in the older German estates of the hills, a house located in open land that looked for all the world like it had been put there from Austria, and that Julie Andrews would make an appearance over the meadow at any instant. The house itself was quite the architectural triumph with splendid indoor/outdoor garden, a number of glazed interior walls, extensive use of interior masonry and timber work. The lady of the house spoke with a German accent and invited me to look around to get my bearings. As I passed one of the glazed walls I passed by a model of a warship in a glass case, an old man spoke to me in a German accent, 'do you know what ship that is?' to which I replied, "I knew her at once, she is unmistakably Bismark". His face filled with joy that I knew his ship. This frail old man was dying of cancer, and he described to me something of his experiences about being crew on Bismark. We exchanged a few questions, I recall he did tell me about being picked up by a British destroyer, and his term as a POW. And that after the war was over he returned to Germany only briefly to bring his wife back to the UK where they lived until emigrating to Australia. In an experience that I found hard to forget, I often wonder how he got on.
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Some more "fun" things"
(1) When several ships were firing at a single target, you had a MAJOR problem of figuring out whose shells were landing where so that you could adjust your guns' aim point. This started to be a problem in WWI battles when director/computer control of all of the guns became the rule. (This was before radar eventually helped show your shells in flight and thus the ability to see which ones were yours from the fire-control radar operator, if he was good.) The US, France, and Japan after WWI decided to try to fix this problem, though interestingly, the British and Germans did not (to my knowledge). The thing to do was to give each ship's shells some way of making their hit at the target area different enough to, at least in good visibility and during daylight, allow the spotters with their telescopes to sort out what to report to the fire-control personnel to adjust the gun calculations on the computer. The method was colored dye in the shell windscreen (the sheet-metal hollow false nose of the shell to make it more streamlined without compromising the usually-much blunter projectile nose and, if fitted, armor-penetrating (AP) cap on the actual shell nose). The US system had a simple paper bag full of a colored powdered dye, each ship in a group using its own color powder, and some spot-welded-over holes in the windscreen to let the water on impact slam through the windscreen interior to color the water-impact splash -- it did not work at night or in low visibility or, unfortunately, if a direct hit on the target occurred (kind of a bummer, that last fact!). The Japanese, in their post-1931 major caliber gun (6.1" (155mm) and up) Type 91 and later Type 1 AP shells, was effectively identical, but had the entire windscreen tear off the nose on water (or any other) impact to allow the now-flat-faced shell to travel underwater nose-first for a long distance in the hope of hitting the enemy warship well below the waterline if the shell hit short of the target, so it acted like a tiny torpedo on such hits (they also made the shell fuze delay extremely long to help this, which caused some problems with hitting thin armor on an actual target direct hit, a negative aspect of this shell design). The French, as they usually did, went to a more elaborate and "elegant" solution for their new 33cm (13") and 38cm (14.96") battleship guns: The dye bag was increased in size and supported by a framework near the tip of the windscreen; the windscreen was enlarged -- making these the most streamlined shells used in any warship gun ever, to my knowledge -- and a strong base was crimped/screwed to the face of the shell's AP cap to rigidly support it; and, uniquely, the tip of the nose of the windscreen had the instantaneous nose fuze and booster charge of their high explosive (HE) shells used for shore bombardment and shooting at small, unarmored enemy ships. On impact with anything whatsoever, the nose fuze would go off, making a colored flash and large puff of smoke, visible at night and even in some low-visibility conditions and, the best point, on a direct hit, too. More expensive and making the shell have to be handled with care due to the exposed nose fuze (as did any HE shell, though), but it solved all of the problems. When the British got some French naval material from refugee warships after the fall of France in 1940, they decided that the French design of this was good enough to add to their battleship AP ammo -- they had had some problems when their cruisers were firing at the German "Pocket Battleship" ADMIRAL GRAF SPEE in 1940 due to this shell-sorting problem -- and they thus created their "K" AP shells with this kind of nose-fuzed dye bag to their new and refitted AP shells, though they did not change the windscreen shape so that the shells kept their old ballistics. Germany, probably due to having so few warships, never used this dye bag option.
(2) At the start of WWII most ships used the "follow the pointer" system to aim their guns, where personnel in the turret would manually adjust their traverse and elevation controls of the mount using a pointer dial set by the calculator (either the central ship calculator in normal control or some backup in-turret calculator using its own inputs in local control); he did not usually see the target he was shooting at himself. Just prior to and during WWII, the US and Germany and, eventually, Britain, developed their own forms of what the US Navy called "Remote Power Control" (RPC), where the calculated values were amplified reliably enough to directly be input into the controls and the human controllers became backup/emergency use only. To do this required the amplification of the signal with the aiming orders without changing its value by more than 0.001 degree or so (even a small error could make a big difference at longer ranges or against higher-speed targets, especially with anti-aircraft fire). Attempts to do this with direct-current "stepping-motor" systems -- most warships used DC power systems throughout at this time -- with tiny jumps from value to value, as in the second hands of some clocks, had never been successful, with errors jumping upward in sync with the signal strength needed to run the controls automatically. What was needed was a very fine control range method that could be amplified in strength with no change in the error. The solution was to change to alternating-current (AC) signals and use transformers -- the same method used in homes to change the higher-power electrical pole voltages to the much lower one used in the home wall outlets -- to adjust the signal strength up and down. To keep the same error required a very precise way to measure the values being transmitted (any signal could be converted to this system, not just angles for gun aiming, note) and a way to shift the signal strength without changing the precision of the original measurement/calculation (this can go to and from any device, not just from the computer to a gun mount). The solution used by the US Navy was the "synchro" or "selsyn" ("self-synchronization") technique. The information to be transmitted was changed to an angle value on a 360-degree dial by appropriate gearing/electrical conversion and then this was sent to the transmitter for output. The transmitter had a magnetized needle on a pivot that rotated to the angle given to it. Around the needle in an equilateral triangular set of three AC electromagnets was placed on the same plane as the needle, so when the needle moved, it changed the strength of the output to each of the three coils slightly in a unique manner for any angle value. These three currents could be put into a single voice-radio-style transformer/amplifier to boost all three by exactly the same amount and this boosted current sent to the receiver where it too had the three coils and its own magnet needle, which the now-strong signal on the three coils pushed to match the position of the needle in the original transmitter. Shazam, the signal was "teleported" to the device attached to the receiver, no matter where it might be on the ship. To handle slop in the needle position, a second geared needle system with a 36-to-1 geared needle (10-degree range) was also created by the transmitter and sent parallel to the the 1-to-1 signal and, using a simple geared or electrical network, the two were combined to make the final geared needle output match the original one within any accuracy desired (even higher secondary adjustment needle ratios could be used if, rarely, even higher precision was needed). Instead of vacuum-tube-enhanced transformers, the Germans used magnetic amplifiers (also used by the US in some systems after WWII) with similar results. The original British system, the "Magslip", was a hybrid requiring the human to move the controls to within 10 degrees of the aim point before the RPC could cut in; it was replaced after WWII by a more conventional fully RPC system, as was done by everybody else. Against surface ships, which were rather slow for the most part, the follow-the-pointer system worked OK, but it failed badly during WWII against smaller attacking aircraft -- not straight-line horizontal bombers -- as the aircraft got faster and more maneuverable. The analog synchro-type systems remained in use until digital equipment began to replace them during the 1970s, though it took many years to finally do this, given the slow overhaul rate of warships and the "if it works, don't fix it" logic when using older equipment...
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My fathers uncle was the telegraph operator on board Eidsvold, and one of the 8 survivors. He allowed me to hear the story once before he died, because he knew how interested I am in history, but never again, because of the trauma. Couple things: He said Eidsvold did not have enough heat in the boilers to start accelerating or steer. Also he heard the conversation with the German coming aboard the bridge, as he was located just on the side. They did try the "you are now protected", but it soon turned into a threat the Norwegian captain did not respond too. Also, when the german boat was returning, my fathers uncle watched the German officer give a hand signal on the way, and that set the torpedo attack in motion immediately, so there was no time ti initiate attack before the torpedo hits. He fell in the water, managed to find something floating from the ship, and eventually got to the shore and lived.
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I did my university dissertation on WW1 Dreadnought Fire Control Systems - specifically the 'controversial' argument concerning the merits of Arthur Pollen's 'Argo Clock' system verses Lt. Frederic Dreyer's own in-house system, and the later arguments between academics on the issue (centred on Prof. Jon Sumida's pro-Pollen 1989 account 'In Defence of Naval Supremacy' and later John Brooks' 2006 rebuttal 'Dreadnought Gunnery and the Battle of Jutland - The Question of Fire Control').
Overall, I found it a fiercely argued debate with a strong suggestion that the Argo system was probably superior - when the system's gyroscopes worked as intended - but that Dreyer used his position as Assistant to the Director of Naval Ordnance (a certain John Jellicoe) to get his own system approved over Pollen's. Sumida has pointed to the fact that at Jutland, HMS Queen Mary had an Argo Clock, and had consistent and effective firing results right up to the moment she got citadel'd.
Pollen, however, wasn't blameless; his system relied on gyroscopes to work effectively, and they proved finicky. Plus he was asking for a lot of money for his system, with the Admiralty ultimately opting for Dreyer's cheaper system. POllen himself would later go after Jellicoe after Jutland in a series of accounts and articles which have an element of 'sore loser' about it; as Jellicoe himself said, "It fell to me to turn down his inventions on more than one occasion".
Sumida argued this was what led to the Royal Navy's prized and expensive battlecruisers having such poor gunnery during the Battle of the Falklands and later at Jutland - the high speeds of the ships causing heavy vibrations, leading to ineffective plotting of firing solutions, and that the Argo system would have eliminated these problems.
I would be very interested on your take Drach. It's a highly technical topic as this video has showed, but for me it has a personal connection given my previous work.
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I was born and raised in Dundee, I’m back living there now but I’ve never actually been aboard H.M.S. Unicorn, having seen this video I think I’ll take a drive down and have a look over it. Just out of interest, for many years there was a second ship moored alongside Unicorn in the Tay estuary, H.M.S. Mars, a two deck 80 gun ship of the line launched in 1849, she was also used as a training ship until she was scrapped in the late 1920’s. Mars was also used as what we would call nowadays a “Young Offenders Home”, many youths who got into trouble were sent there to basically learn how to be a sailor and given the opportunity to better themselves, as it was said, there was an expression used at the time “You behave yerself, or we’ll send ye tae the Mars”.
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Okay, I've finished watching it. And my goodness, there's so much terrifying detail in this video. 41:50 That last torpedo shot from the Hood is the stuff of legends - some hero managed to fire off a torpedo in the final seconds of his life, never knowing the incredible effect he just had in the war and possibly saving the crew of the Prince of Wales. Even besides him, those heroic British sailors 36:00 managed to fire off one more shot from the turret as they were sinking. That's just so incredible.
Yet on the flipside, the horrifying accounts of the death and damage upon the Bismark. The graphic descriptions of bodily debris...the hopelessness, the sailors trying to surrender. This is true terror right here.
If the Germans had just surrendered when it was truly hopeless, how many more may have survived the war? If the secondary gunners on the Bismark had just held their damn fire, would the Brits have honoured the surrender signal and started boarding survivors earlier? If that damn uboat hadn't been there to spook the cruiser, how many more sailors could have been saved from the water? I'll lose sleep over this tonight, because there was just so much unspeakable horror that could have been avoided. Remember, as shocking and horrifying as those accounts are, we only heard about it because some survivor had to witness it and report it later. These horrors didn't just happen in a vacuum, they were /witnessed/ by others who had to carry the burden of those memories for the rest of their lives.
I found myself weeping several times. This was an epic and legendary navy battle, yes, but it's also a horrifying tale at the same time. RIP all those brave sailors.
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While the hedgehog was a far superior A/S weapon over the stern discharge depth charges and the K-gun launcher. However, Hedgehog caused the Germans to start on a crash program to develop acoustic homing torpedoes. These could be fired just before a Hedgehog attack started, the torpedo homing on the sounds of the ship attacking it. These so called "down the throat" shots sank or seriously damaged a number of US DE's before an acoustic decoy was developed, once again by the British, called Foxer. It was towed several hundred yards behind the destroyer, the long cylindrical body having large parallel gaps to let water rush through. This generated cavitation noise about ten to one hundred times that of a ship's propellers. Since the acoustic system on the torpedo was set to home in on the loudest cavitation noises, Foxers were used very successfully to decoy Zaunkönigs on North Atlantic convoys, with only an estimated 77 hits from over 700 Zaunkönigs fired.
Foxer came late to the war for some DEs, since production problems initially limited the numbers available for non-convoy escort DE's. USN captains developed their own brute force decoy system, firing off a salvo of charges from their K guns just before firing the Hedgehogs. This provided enough noise to decoy off any Zaunkönigs fired their way. Hunter killer groups centered around an escort carrier and three to five DE's were especially at risk from the Zaunkönig torpedoes since most of their attacks were on subs diving after being caught on the surface, and the DE's had to race in and fire off a Hedgehog salvo before the sub could escape. The K-gun diversion mostly stopped those "down the throat" attacks that sank about 14 DE's during the War.
Interestingly, no US destroyer class carried Hedgehog during the war. In USN doctrine, the destroyer was a fleet unit whose main role was protecting the battle fleet. This required a much larger torpedo loadout than a DE, generally two quintuple tube mounts compared to the single triple tube mount on a Buckley class DE. A Hedgehog mount required about the same space and weight as another triple launcher, and US destroyers were already at their weight limits. DE's were able to handle the weight because they less overloaded to begin with, so they could usually retain their triple tube launcher while mounting a Hedgehog. During the late war period, threats from aircraft were greater than subs, so most US destroyers lost at least one set of tubes, and sometimes both if they were assigned radar picket duty. It's not hard to see the weight problem when the average Fletcher went from an AA armament of seven 20 mm cannon and a single 1.1 quad mount to ten 40mm and 10-12 20mm cannon. This increased on the Sumner and Gearing classes to 12-14 40mm guns and as many as 17 20mm cannon, some in twin mounts. The destroyers did finally receive Hedgehogs after the war, generally at the expense of the B mount 5" guns and a much reduced antiaircraft suite, usually six 3"/50 guns in twin mounts. Hedgehogs survived several attempts at "improving" them, lasting until the early 60's, with the advent of ASROC, finally ending a long service life.
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Some additional stuff on the sinking and the court-martial :
The commander of I-58, Lt.-Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto, mistakenly identified the USS Indianapolis as the New Mexico-class battleship USS Idaho.
McVay was charged and convicted with "failing to zigzag" and also charged with "failing to order ‘abandon ship’ in a timely manner".
There was evidence that the admirals in the USN were primarily responsible for putting Indianapolis in harm's way. For example, McVay requested a destroyer-escort for the ship, but this was denied on the grounds that the priority for destroyers currently was escorting transports to Okinawa and picking up downed pilots in B-29 raids on Japan. Furthermore, naval command assumed McVay's route would be safe at that point in the war. Many ships, including most destroyers, were equipped with submarine detection equipment, but McVay's ship not equipped with such, which casts the decision to deny his request for an escort as military incompetence.
Many of the survivors said McVay wasn't to blame for the sinking, the families of some of the men who died thought otherwise: "Merry Christmas! Our family's holiday would be a lot merrier if you hadn't killed my son", read one letter. The guilt that was placed on his shoulders persisted until he committed suicide at the age of 70 in 1968, using his Navy-issued revolver, being discovered on his front lawn by his gardener with a toy sailor in one hand, revolver in the other.
What I find exceedingly admirable if the commander of I-58, Mochitsura Hashimoto:
“On 5 September 1945, he was promoted to Commander and was given command of the Kagerō-class destroyer Yukikaze, to be assigned repatriation duties, returning Japanese troops home from overseas/ But before he could begin his new duties, he was summoned by the United States military to be a witness for the prosecution in the court-martial against McVay. He was transported on 9 December 1945 from Tokyo to Oakland, California aboard an aircraft of the Naval Air Transport Service. He was assured he would be treated as a naval officer instead of a war-criminal, but he remained under guard during his time in the US and was not allowed to leave his hotel, as his appearance had been front-page news that day in various newspapers. The next day he arrived in Washington, D.C., where hearings were taking place. For the duration of his time in the United States, he spoke through translator Francis Earl Eastlake from the Office of Naval Intelligence.
He first spoke with judge Cpt Thomas J. Ryan for 4 hours on 11 December, speaking the next day with McVay's chief defense counsel Cpt. John P. Cady, due to both men wanted to determine his credibility and competence to take the stand. He He told them the visibility was good on the night of the attack and he had been able to easily spot the Indianapolis. Hashimoto testified in the court on 13 December in a crowded courtroom. It was the first time that an officer of a nation at war with the United States had testified against an officer of the U.S. Navy in a court martial. At the behest of Cady, Hashimoto took both a Japanese civil oath and a U.S. Navy oath and so he could be charged for perjury in both nations if he lied. Hashimoto's 50 minutes of testimony focused on whether or not Indianapolis was "zigzagging" and he noted the ship did not deviate from its course. However, he also noted that its position made such evasive maneuvers incapable of diminishing his ability to attack the ship. Still, his testimony is considered integral in McVay's eventual conviction that he had been negligent. Charles Butler McVay III was exonerated in 2001. Following his appearance at the trial, Hashimoto remained in U.S. custody under guard until early 1946, when he was returned to Japan aboard Haskell-class attack transport USS Effingham.
With the Nuremberg Trials underway and Japanese war crimes during the war coming to light, the announcement of Hashimoto's appearance in testimony against an American officer caused considerable controversy in the American news media. Though Hashimoto was himself known to be innocent of any war crimes and was generally treated well by his guards, he spoke little English and was subject to derision in the press. Among the public responses, socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean sent an angry telegram to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal to complain, and U.S. Representative Robert L. Doughton publicly stated, "It is the most contemptible thing I ever heard of to summon a Jap officer to testify against one of our own officers. I made my living practicing law before Navy courts and boards for 25 years, and this reaches an all-time low in courts, board or congressional investigation." Columnist Robert Ruark accused the Navy of using Hashimoto to "hype up" the court martial. Even after his departure his testimony remained controversial, and the Chicago Sun criticized his trip, which it estimated to have cost $1,820 (equivalent to $25,800 in 2019).”
And that's not the most interesting part either:
“After the war, he eventually became a Shinto priest at a shrine in Kyoto. He was later interviewed by author Dan Kurzman for his 1990 book Fatal Voyage, in which Kurzman stated, "Commander Hashimoto was amazed by the Americans. While penned up in his dormitory during the trial, he was treated more like an honored guest than an enemy officer who had caused the deaths of so many American boys." Hashimoto later authored a book Sunk: The Story of the Japanese Submarine Fleet, 1941–1945 in which he detailed Japanese submarine operations in the war, including an account of the sinking of Indianapolis.
In December 1990, Hashimoto met with some of the survivors of the Indianapolis at Pearl Harbor, where he stated through a translator: "I came here to pray with you for your shipmates whose deaths I caused," to which survivor Giles McCoy simply responded: "I forgive you.”
In 1999, he assisted the surviving crew of the Indianapolis in attempting to exonerate McVay of blame for the ship's sinking, writing a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee in which he stated, just as he had more than five decades earlier, that even if the Indianapolis had been zigzagging, there would have been no difference: "I would have been able to launch a successful torpedo attack against his ship whether it had been zigzagging or not." Regarding McVay's conviction, Hashimoto wrote:
“Our peoples have forgiven each other for that terrible war and its consequences. Perhaps it is time your peoples forgave Captain McVay for the humiliation of his unjust conviction.”
Hashimoto died at the age of 91 on 25 October 2000, five days before a resolution to posthumously exonerate Captain McVay was passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton.”
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For anyone interested in the three "surviving" (I say this acknowledging all of them are underwater) Konig class ships, Markgraff, Kronprinz and the Konig all were left untouched by the works of Ernest Cox and Metal Industries ltd. - they were just too deep to bring to the surface safely during the early days of modern salvage ops. This does not mean they were left untouched until now however; all three were subjected to blast salvaging during the late 1960's through to the early 1980's - by Nundy (Marine Metals) Ltd and by the Scapa Flow Salvage company (owned by a lovely man named Dougal Campbell)
For the most part these operations targeted two components:
Non-ferrous metals (boiler components, torpedo tubes, etc)
Pre-atomic ferrous metals (armoured plate) for use in precise radiological instances (medical, astronomical, the list goes on) - remember, all steel made post 1945 has trace quantities of radionuclides in .
What would happen is a liberal amount of explosives would be used (I've heard of evidence of both torpex and C4, so I have no idea which it was) by a diver, who would scuttle back up to the surface. The charge would be detonated, blowing a massive hole in the hulls of the upturned battleships, and then a crane barge could be brought in to lift out anything worth recovering.
This has lead to several changes on the wrecks. These are most evident on the Konig, which sustained large amounts of blast damage during salvage ops and has broken up a rather large amount because of this (including a beautiful swim through), but most importantly has helped weaken areas of the forward hull enough that you can see into the bruno turret base. The Kronprinz withstood little better, and large amounts of her armoured plate has been stripped away, causing widespread damage up and down the wreck. Her boiler rooms were also blasted open for that precious non-ferrous material, and is really a main attraction for her 30cm guns that are trapped beneath the wreckage. In my opinion, the Markgraff will forever remain the Queen of the High Seas Fleet wrecks. There is still large amounts of blast damage, but she is far more intact. Her bow has collapsed from the wreck, and the hull does show damage in the boiler rooms, but other than those two areas, she remains gorgeously intact. If you want to see the finest backside in Orkney, go to this wreck. If you want to see casemates, go to the Markgraff. You can easily see forward from the blasted boiler rooms into the turbine rooms and see the now ceiling stricken turbines.
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I just finished reading a book* about the tortuous process the French Navy went through going from a wooden navy with their first steam powered vessels to what could be thought of as a modern (early 20th Century modern) navy. The system of French planning, procurement, production, and logistics had been in place since Jean-Baptiste Colbert had become France's Naval Minister in 1669. What may have worked well in the time of Louis XIV was a disaster in the mid to late 19th century. I'll give a couple of examples of why sticking with their old systems was so bad.
The French would often build a wooden warship until it was about 80-90% complete and stop building until the ship was actually needed. Better to keep a nearly finished but as yet unneeded wooden warship out of the water where it could be more easily maintained rather than sitting in the water where it would more quickly deteriorate. The problem with doing this with 19th century iron and steel warships was how fast they became obsolete. If you design and start building a wooden warship in 1680, but don't actually launch it until 1690, it's probably going to be just as combat effective as a ship built and launched in 1690. If you start building a warship in 1880, but don't finish it until 1890, that ship is probably near the end of its life as a first class warship. Some French battleships of this period took twelve years to complete.
If you have a wooden navy, you need to keep on hand lots of the right types of aged wood, canvas for sails, many different sizes of rope, anchor chains and anchors, among other things, to replenish and maintain your wooden fleet. The French tried to do this with engine parts for their new steam engines. The problem was the people who did the ordering didn't consult engineers to find out what types of parts would need replacement and what parts might last the life of the ship. This was also a time of rapid technological improvement so any extra ordered parts would be useless in a ship built just a year or two later, because that ship would have a newer and probably better designed engine. The old parts wouldn't fit in the new engine. It's said that French naval depots had mountains of obsolete parts taking up space for decades.
It took decades for the top brass and ministers of the French Navy to first see the need and finally overhual this mess. They weren't stupid, they were just used to doing things the way they had been done for a couple of centuries. In some ways I think it was easier for planners in the German and U.S. Navies to design their systems from the ground up. They weren't stuck, or as stuck, with an old way of doing things.
* The Development of a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy, 1871-1904
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Great video. As a professional propeller designer and amateur propeller historian it is a good brief summary of propeller development. In such a short video some people and stories are always going to get missed out, which is shame because lots of interesting people show up in the story of propellers (and a lot of them end up suing each other).
You did however, include Hooke's propeller. This is an odd one, It doesn't appear that he ever suggested anything of the sort for ship propulsion. The image commonly shown as hookes propeller, Bourne admits is just a windmill taken from Emerson's Mechanics textbook, not anything Hooke ever drew himself. One of the early textbooks took what he wrote about windmills, wind speed meters, depth gauges and roman galleys and inferred that clearly Hooke must have suggested a propeller as a screw driving water and water driving a screw are essentially the same. However Hooke never seems to have made that leap, his work only has water driving screws, never the other way round and i have spent years looking for any evidence otherwise. I suspect this has more to do with an 1850's author wanting an Englishmen to be first in his book. It has then been copied verbatum down the years even to modern textbooks.
The image you showed of Bushnells turtle, which appears to be the first vessel recorded as ever being driven with a screw propeller, shows an archimedian type screw, this was a later mistake and the image has been used repeatedly since. the actual screws used were two bladed and shaped like the heads of oars.
Am sure there are other things i could say but don't want to write an essay, or spoil the book i am slowly trying to write on the subject.
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Amusing story about the IOWA Class 1980s resurrection: Nobody in the US Navy (at least nobody who was part of the people who did ship overhauls) thought that the IOWAs would ever come back and, over time, lots of documents kind of "fell through a crack" concerning details about the intricate internal design of these ships. All of a sudden the NEW JERSEY was to be overhauled at Long Beach Naval Shipyard, San Pedro, California, (since closed) as the lead upgrade test ship and they needed those plans YESTERDAY!!!! Mr. Landgraf, the one who was assigned as lead engineer for this project needed details on the metallurgical specs of the various steels used in the ships, most especially the deck armor, as they were going to have to cut several 8"-wide holed through the armored (4.5" STS laminated on top of 1.5" STS) 2nd deck and the thinner (1.5"), but also armored STS, weather deck (above the Citadel between the front of the forward Turret I and the aft of the aft Turret III). He needed actual physical test results, not general specs. He had heard about me and called me up where I worked (before retiring), what was called NSMSES, Port Hueneme, California, and now is NSWC/Port Hueneme Division, where I worked at that time on TERRIER AA Guided Missile System software debugging and testing. He asked me if I could send him any information on this topic. I used a lot of Xerox paper and within a week he had a 1" thick set of documents including the US Navy armor specs, the results of an inspection of armor manufacturing sites of the three manufacturers (giving actual manufacturing information as to such things as temperatures and timing of hardening/tempering processes and so forth), and anything else I though he might want that I had. He said it was exactly what he needed and because of that work for him, I got not one, not two, but three visits to the NEW JERSEY when it was preparing or undergoing overhauls with Mr. Landgraf giving me a guided tour of much of the ship. Indiana Jones, eat your heart out!
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I am a former crew member of Constitution, and have enjoyed this tour very much. Thanks Drach. I have fired the 40mm saluting batteries (one on each side), although when I was on her, the saluting batteries were the two most forward guns on the gundeck. I do not know when they got moved back aft but it is clearly safer than pointing the gun at the pier, which is what happens when the ship is moored bow in, and the foremost guns are pointed slightly forward of directly abeam (perpendicular to the ships keel) as you could see in the video of the gun deck, forward of the ships galley (the empty gunports second from the bow, on each side, were the ones we used to use).
I spent two wonderful years on board, as a tour guide, and ships crew, performing maintenance and upkeep on the days when I was not on tour guide duty. I was assigned to the small boat maintenance area over in the main dockyard building, where the real work on keeping the ship floating happens. I was a member of the Captain's gig rowing crew, and took part in the Charles river regatta both years I was on board.
Again, well done Drach, and thanks for the memories.
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Box is an electrical switch refurbishment kit, which while it is for the water distiller, those switches and parts would have been common throughout the U boat, so that kit would have been used all over, for switch and control maintenance, as the switches are a common ship part, and the ceramic parts used to contain the brass and silver contact blocks, and those do wear with use. That it was in the front was just that it was probably last used in the torpedo room as a tool kit, and then it stayed there, till it would be needed again for the water distillation plant, or there was more need for it at the front, or at least space to store it there, as often tools would be stored all round the ship, where you had a space free.
BBC later on amalgamated with the Swedish Asea group, and then became Asea Brown Boveri, and later on also dropped the names, becoming ABB group. I have used Brown Boveri relays, they are an incredibly popular item in German built equipment, all the way through to this century, as they are both very reliable, and also very robust, with a lot of the relays going well past the rated million cycle guarantee, and some probably went well past the hundred million cycle point before they physically wore out.
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A most interesting series, to which I have come only lately.
I was both XO and Captain in USCGC INGHAM, a member of the USCG Secretary Class of Cutters of 1936. INGHAM is still afloat as a museum ship in Key West, FL. She served in the Battle of the Atlantic, the Pacific, was in commission during the Korean War, and served in USCG Squadron 3 in Viet Nam. I was her XO in VN, and then fleeted up to command her. These are beautiful ships, two examples still afloat, and served for 50 years. I am certain that the loyal followers of this series would enjoy a Coast Guard Cutter, and mine is the most decorated ship in both USCG and , I believe, USN. Not sure of that, and followers of this series are welcome to correct me.
Joseph H. Wubbold CAPT USCG (Ret)- Captain Joe
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The French gave it the old college try with dual purpose armament, weighing down this class with nine six inch guns that were designed to be dual purpose. The weight saved by removing these and replacing them with either more 100 mm guns or, as the Americans proposed, the standard 5"/38 guns in twin mounts, would be an obvious benefit to the Richelieu class. The British understood that value and proposed replacing the Nelson class mixed armament with ether six or eight such twin mounts, although the limited availability of such guns saw WWII run out before this could happen. The French, however, still wanted their supposed dual purpose 6" guns, even though they never worked as intended before the war. They would spend even more money after the war trying to make these guns work in the AA role without any more success. The French wanted French weapons, working or not.
The USN, not learning from the French example, went ahead and built the Worcesters, the heaviest class of "light" cruisers in any navy, armed with 12 of the supposed 6"/47 DP guns, and expended large amounts of scarce resources trying to make these work in the AA and surface roles, having little more success than the French. The class lasted only ten years in service and had guns that were not effective in the surface or AA role compared to the reliable 5"/38. The only two times she fired her 6" guns in anger in the AA role were both off Korea. The first was at an unidentified aircraft headed toward the ship. After three rounds of 6" fire that missed, the target was identified as a British Short Sunderland flying boat, and fire was checked. The second was the "Battle of the Geese", when Worcester, Helena and four destroyers opened up on an unidentified radar target that was later determined to be two large flocks of geese. It's unknown the number of geese casualties, but more than 300 rounds of 5" and 6" were fired at the poor creatures.
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I met HRH the prince once when he just walked up to where I was working. It was at BAE Warton in the 80s fixing some air systems out on the apron where the prince's aircraft taking Phillip to Holker Hall for his carriage driving competition apparently, his transport was late in arriving and he was wondering around in the rain being pursued by a management brown noser with a brolly, I was keeping my head down stuck in the cabinet of the system I was repairing when I became of someone approaching and looked up to see, it was the prince walking toward where I was, whilst telling this bloke to "f*ck off", I made an involuntary noise which brought him to me, his first words to me was that he believes these people thought he would dissolve if he got wet, honest I was scared to say/ the wrong thing, etiquette etc, so I just said "yes sir daft really you being a sailor", it took his transport about 10 minutes to arrive and we just stood in the rain two blokes chatting about my job and his Carriage racing. I have never in my life met a more impressive or pleasant man, he knew I was nervous about being near him, and he just treated me like a friend.
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The biggest difference between RN and USN rations was the amount of refrigerator (cold room) and freezer space available. The USN built almost all ships from about 1934 forwards with enough cold room and freezer space available that the crew could have mostly fresh food available for the first 8-12 days (depending on climate) at sea and frozen meats and vegetables for about 20-23 days. By 1942, it was the goal of the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts (later Bureau of Logistics) to retrofit every ship with enough cold room and freezer space to have enough room for food based on the above plan. Each ship also needed to have about twice that cubic footage available for dry stores like flour, rice, and potatoes.
The USN prepared a tremendous amount of dry store products. Loaf bread was the most popular, but men from the South wanted biscuits and grits while men from the North generally wanted oatmeal and toast or sliced bread. They all wanted cakes, pies, doughnuts, and coffee cakes. On destroyer size ships and up, one night was usually steak night, and every meal had some kind of meat product, with bacon, chicken, turkey, and some types of fish being common. The main meal in the Navy was called dinner, and that meal had the most food. Supper was served in the evening and was generally the lightest meal of the day, even lighter than breakfast. Breakfast was often eggs, bacon or sausage, griddle cakes, French toast, dry cereal, grits, or oatmeal along with fruit, fresh or canned. A pot of soup with bread, butter, and coffee as almost always available in the galley for men who missed a regular meal or were just hungry. Men out on the gun line during regular meal hours were brought out trays of sandwiches along with coffee, milk (if available), and fruitaides. Surprisingly, peanut butter and jelly was the most popular sandwich, followed by the aforementioned spam slathered with mustard and ketchup, and sometimes cheese.
The fleet train could generally resupply ships with dry and frozen foods at sea, but they obviously couldn't do so when the ships were under constant threat of attack from kamikazes, and that's when the cook's talents (or lack of the same) would come to the fore. A good cook knew twenty ways to prepare food men would grow to hate, like spam or Australian lamb, and make it tasty enough the men would eat it. He could make dry eggs and dry milk taste like the fresh products, and knew how to substitute one ingredient for another and still make food that mostly tasted good. It's said that ships with the happiest crews had good cooks, and captains often horse traded with other captains for cooks and kinds of foods. Bad cooks could find themselves reassigned from a cruiser to something like a minesweeper just so a captain could get a good cook assigned to his ship. There are numerous stories of good "cookies" given anything they wanted by officers and crews, from women to vodka, as long as they could keep them on their ship. I'm sure being an admiral was good, but it seems like being the most popular cook in a fleet was even better.
Well, rats, I've done another "War and Peace", but I now realize I have no idea how things went in the RN. From everything I heard and read, British and Commonwealth (especially Australian) ships didn't fare as well in the food department. Anyone here who knows how food service went in the RN?
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The Atlanta class antiaircraft escorts really came into their own when the quad 1.1 guns and .50 machine guns were replaced with the more capable 40mm and 20mm guns in late 1942. The introduction of the proximity fused round, or "VT" round, for the 5" guns made the Atlanta class the most useful antiaircraft escort in any navy. What the Atlanta class wasn't was a light cruiser, even though they were classed as such initially. They were really very large destroyers, and the original group of ships with te 5" rear wing turrets were very unstable in rough weather as too much armament was attempted on an enlarged destroyer hull. Their lack of ability to fight in a antisurface role was tragically shown by the loss of the Atlanta and Juneau during the Guadalcanal Campaign. The Oakland subclass removed the wing 5" turrets and replaced them with additional 40mm mounts, which improved stability and added much needed close-in fire.
The designers of the class back in 1936 could hardly have foreseen the massive growth in electronics, directors, and radars that, while they increased the effectiveness of the ships, also exacerbated their topweight and stability issues. This was mostly solved with the introduction of the Juneau class, but they commissioned just too late for service in WWII. In belated recognition of their true role, all the surviving Atlanta/Oakland/Juneau class ships were reclassified as CLAA, Anti Aircraft Surface Escorts. Most never saw action again after WWII with only the Juneau in commision during the Korean War. The time of the gun based escort ship had passed, and all the survivors were decommissioned from the reserve fleet in 1965 and scrapped during the following two years. The Falklands War of 1982 caused a renewed interest in guns for antiaircraft protection of the fleet.
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wrt the main armament, in my reading, it was head of BuOrd, Admiral Strauss, previously known for being the father of the superimposed turrets on the Kearsarge and Virginia classes, that was advocating for the 14". As Drac said, Strauss maintained that engagements would always be at 12,000 yards or less. At that range, the 14" could penetrate well enough, and, being lighter, more could be carried. In a newspaper article speculating whether the Tennessees would have 16" rather than 14", there was some FUD injected into the debate, claiming the 16" had an alarmingly high wear rate, and claims that the British 15"/42 also had a very short service life, while the 14" had an excellent service life. Strauss held the line on the 14", until the summer of 1916. Jutland made it clear his 12,000 maximum engagement range was unrealistic, and, that summer, Daniels announced, with the agreement of the General Board, the next class, the Colorados, would be armed with 16" guns. In his annual report in the fall of 16, Daniels said this decision was made "over the objection of some officers". Strauss requested sea duty. There was no movement on his request for sea duty for a month or two. Late that year, in Congressional testimony, Strauss, again, rolled out his talking points for the 14", publicly pushing back on the decision made months before by Daniels and the General Board. President Wilson moved the next day to appoint then head of the Indian Head test range, Ralph Earle, as head of BuOrd, and Strauss was given command of the Nevada. The SecNav annual reports from 15-16 and newspapers of the same period made for some fascinating reading about this debate.
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Drachisms of the Day
10:01 "The Royal Navy could trade beer and the Americans could trade ice-cream.
Which was a massively equitable arrangement for both."
28:34 "trying to catalog all of those, we'd be here till the sun dies"
(I felt the same way when I saw Drydock was 4+ hours long)
33:22 "What do you mean, 'Our ships fell completely apart in a typhoon.'
That's dishonorable. Tell them to stop immediately."
59:03 "Don't you just love the weird confluence of technologies that was around in the 1910s?"
1:06:33 "She can theoretically make her top speed.
If you fancy the experience of being a brick in a tumble-dryer."
1:19:05 "British battle-cruisers get a lot of stick, ummm and, for understandable reasons
given that they seem to have a distressing habit of, um, scattering themselves actively to the four winds."
1:33:24 "It meant you EITHER angered the Atlantians, in which case Jason Momoa was about to come and
rip you ship in half OR, perhaps more prosaically, you were approaching a rock, which might also rip your
ship in half, only without the whole 'sucking you down into the Mystical Underwater Kingdom' part."
1:49:46 "Everyone's like 'Ah! Let us follow this man. He speaks in clear sentences'."
2:46:08 "The Russians and Ottomans fighting together. I suspect the next thing will be dogs and cats
living toghter and somebody cracking open the Book of Revelations and noticing four horsemen
riding across the skies. But never mind."
2:48:45 "I mean, after all, touching things with considerably longer than a ten-foot-pole didn't
work out for the CSS Hunley, did it?"
2:52:58 "this kind of slightly eccentric hysteria kind of just ran away with them"
2:57:00 So that's a grand total of sixteen fleet carriers and, uh, another twenty eight smaller carriers,
three french-hens and a partridge in a pear tree."
3:40:17 "a radar equipped Yamato wandering around, wondering what all the ice is about"
3:42:28 "Although, if you did name a carrier USS Congress, it might mean you could legitimately say
that Congress was actually doing something for a change."
3:44:33 "His ears must be ringing a little bit."
4:06:16 "That was down to it's captain's seemingly pathological desire to ram everything in sight."
4:12:52 "the US keeps..sort of starts 'turret farming' the twelve inch gun"
4:18:21 "I was gonna put it at the end of this video, but, to be perfectly honest, the chances
of the majority of you reaching this point are fairly slim."
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Drach, a small correction. The German navy is no longer called the Bundesmarine. Since 1995, the name has been changed to „Deutsche Marine“ ( German Navy).
The reason: from 1949-1990, there were two German navies, the East German „Volksmarine“ ( people’s navy) and the west German Bundesmarine (Federation Navy, since Germany is a Federal Republic ). Both were German navies, making it difficult to understand which one you were talking about. After reunification it took a few years to integrate both navies into one. Officially, that process was finished in 1995, and, since then, the German Navy is called “Deutsche Marine”, since there is only one left.
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A few more notes on the armor scheme:
Drach mentions the 350mm belt and the 60 to 100mm deck. This alone does, however, not tell the full story of just how well armored they were. Above the 350mm main belt sat a 200mm upper belt and above this, 170mm of armor protecting the casemate guns. By comparison, the QE class had a 330mm main belt and 152mm as upper belt and casemate armor.
Given that the fuse quality of AP shells in WW1 was far from what it would become in WW2, I believe heavy upper hull armor was quite important in dreadnought battleship design, since they could either break up or prematurely detonate AP shells, as happened a lot with British AP at Jutland. Even if the shell would penetrate intact, heavy upper hull armor would reduce its kinetic energy quite considerable and help to prevent deep penetrations.
Another interesting point is that the König had a 350mm belt backed by 100mm slopes. The following Bayern class kept the 350mm belt but reduced the slope to 80mm, and the freed up weight was used to bring the upper belt up to a very impressive 250mm - almost as thick as the 280mm main belt of 1st generation British dreadnoughts, and quite a bit thicker than the 230mm main belt carried by 2nd generation British battlecruisers of the Lion class and Tiger. Apparently, German engineers though that the main belt offered very good protection anyways, and that a heavier upper belt would contribute more to the overall protection of the ship.
Again comparing to the QE class, the British ships had only a 25mm armor deck and slopes behind the main belt, which isn't really enough to act as ballistic protection, only as a splinter catcher. They did carry some armor on their upper decks, but this could be bypassed by penetrating the 152mm upper belt. Heavy slopes were a distinct feature of German dreadnoughts. They weren't as pronounced on contemporary British battleships.
It should be remembered that the numerical inferiority of the Germans made them come up with these very heavily protected ships - which is in itself a noble goal. But it did force them to make sacrifices in speed and most importantly, gun caliber, and this in turn allowed the British to be content with less armor and go for bigger guns. My point is that the dreadnought race was even more of an uphill battle for the Germans than most people realise - they shouldn't have started it at all.
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YAMATO and MUSASHI had an anti-torpedo system that had no liquid layers (no water and/or fuel oil), as was used in all other modern large WWII warships to help soak up the blast and water-hammer effects. I think that this was done to save weight, allowing thicker armor. The system was designed to use the extremely wide hull to allow such a large space that the spaced internal bulkheads of the anti-torpedo side system did not need water to help support them and soak up energy. Unfortunately, actual wartime damage showed that the system had some Achilles' Heels in that the ship support structure could deform and cause internal I-beams to punch deep holes into the hull, even to the last bulkhead of that protection system, bypassing the need to penetrate all of the spaced plates by water pressure and blast shock, as was expected. Also, the anti-diving-shell thick tapered lower belt was pressed up against the bottom edge of the inclined waterline 15.8-16.1" Vickers Hardened face-hardened belt armor (VH, a successful face-hardened armor -- it only had to pass the same spec as the WWI-era Vickers Cemented (VC) armor that it got in 1912 with the IJN KONGO so its reduced resistance compared to more recent foreign armors was not due to inferior workmanship but over-conservative design and manufacturing processes -- that did not add the thin cemented surface layer as unnecessary, which was completely true against high-quality AP shell by WWII; only the Japanese in WWII successfully used non-cemented face-hardened armor much, with the US having some before WWI, but with mixed results as to their success against large-caliber AP shells and the companies that were using it, Midvale and Bethlehem, stopped doing so after they won a US Supreme Court judgement in 1912 nullifying Krupp's KC armor patents). For some reason, they did not key the two vertically-aligned plates together using nickel-steel keying strips pressed into matching slots in-between them, as most other navies did by WWII (after poor WWI results), so when the torpedo blast pressure hit the wedge-shaped upper portion of that lower belt, it was able to tear it away from the main belt, opening up a huge hole in the anti-torpedo system at the top several feet below the waterline. Not a good idea when real hits showed what REALLY happened due to torpedo hits even on a ship as big as YAMATO.
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Totally impressed how the entire Pearl Harbor event was placed in context. Too often only specific highlights are talked about or constantly repeated in the media without including equally important incidents. Having visited, during my USN service, Adak, Hawaii, Guam, Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore and Australia, the distances involved are often overlooked. Logistics requirements to support the tip of the spear was incredible.
This video is special and I’m recommending to my friends.
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Still see this today...
Worked for Company, did a good job.
There were lots of odd procedures in building X, some of them were literally "drill/tap 6/32 hole at position Z, install screw" and appended near the end of the instructions "remove 6/32 screw from position Z, force in [some metric screw]"
Why like that? Why re-work X while it is still being built?
Why run a mis-matched screw into a drilled/tapped hole?
Why not [some metric screw] drill/tap in the first place?
This was not a mismatched revision, this was first-run assembly directions.
Turns out the tech that wrote the "6/32" part was a novice when he wrote that, and X really did need to use [some metric screw] at position Z.
Being a novice, he thought that the tiny difference would be OK. I mean, the [some metric screw] could be driven into the 6/32 hole, with a little effort.
Besides, you could leave off the lock-tite if the threads are a tiny bit jammed.
The answer to all those questions was simple: over 20 years, that junior tech moved up the corporate ladder, to a VP position.
So pages had to be added ammended to the instructions to make allowances for the many mistakes Junior Tech made.
To go back and make ANY edits to the original document was to insult their author, today.
Sure, it was a Japanese owned company, but the attitude that only the upper echelon knows anything and that underlings are all lazy liars lives on.
The [some metric screw] could be driven in once, and usually held OK. But since the threads were not well matched, the screw would fail and a new one used.
By the third time running in a screw, the screw-hole would be worn out, requiring drilling/tapping one size up.
After all that crap, the bottom line was 'wing it'.
sigh.
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As a naval architect with more than 45 years of experience in hull design, this was a good video for non-technical people to help them understand the complexity and compromise that goes into every ship design.
On stability: roll acceleration is critical not only to equipment functionality but also to habitability. Too stiff a ship, roll period very short, and equipment, especially those located in high places can actually be broken off the ship, and people have trouble standing and moving around.
On speed/power: as a gross rule of thumb for every 3 knot increase in speed, double the shaft power. This rough approximation works throughout the speed range.
During my 12 years responsible for hull form at a major U.S. shipyard, it was common for us to go through dozens of iterations on the hull geometry (both commercial and naval auxiliaries ships) before we settled on one that met all of the requirements for speed, power, range, habitability, seakeeping, maneuverability, as well as sufficient volume to carry whatever was necessary to meet the mission requirements. Inevitably, the final hull was not ideal for any requirement, but always met, and often significantly exceeded, the contract specifications. Always a fun puzzle to crack!
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Dear Drach,
as a former XO on Fast Patrol Boats with the 5th FPB Squadron, I really appreciate this work. You could continue this, focussing on the smaller boats as well, which differed a lot from any destroyer like type soon after.
By the way, "Schichau" is pronounced like "Shichow" in English, while the "ch" is spoken very soft, without any "s- or "sh"-sound, a fact which may which cause some trouble with English speaking people. ("Drach" would be spoken by a German with an "ch"-loud which is very soft, too 😉
Best regards,
Jan-Erik Schmidt,
(Lt. Cdr. German Naval Reserve)
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A few more notes on these ships:
Unlike earlier German destroyers, the Narviks were unnamed and only had their hull numbers, similar to German uboats. The 8 earlier ships were called the type 1936A, while the latter 7 ships were called the type 1936A(mob), the mob being short for Mobilmachung, which translates to mobilisation, indicating that they were built as a war emergency and were not planned to be built prewar.
Drach mentioned that Z28 mounted 4 single guns in a superfiring layout fore and aft. This was because Z28 served as command ship for the FdZ (Commander of German destroyer forces). This ship needed additional quarters for the staff officers, and these were mounted atop the aft deckhouse, where originally, one of the 150mm guns was placed. This gun was therefore moved into the superfiring position forward. Apparently, this layout meant that Z28 had better seakeeping qualities than her half-sisters. Z28's conversion was necessitated by the loss of the previous flagship, Z21 Wilhelm Heidkamp, at Narvik.
The Narviks were powerful ships, this was demonstrated when they engaged the Royal Navy's standard destroyers, which usually carried 4 guns of 4.7inch caliber. During 1942, two Narviks, namely Z24 and Z25, severely damaged 4 of these ships while attacking convoys and HMS Edinburgh in Arctic waters: Amazone, Fury, Foresight and Forrester. Z25 is furthermore sometimes also given credit for the torpedo hit that proved to be the final nail in the coffin of HMS Edinburgh. This is, in my opinion, a rather good service record. Neither Z24 nor Z25 were equipped with the twin turret at that time.
They had some success against merchant ships. In late 1942, Admiral Hipper's Ar196 floatplane located the large Soviet tanker Donbass and an escort ship (afaik an ASW ship) and guided in Z27, which sank both ships with gunfire and torpedoes.
Their bad seakeeping was in full display in December 1943, however, when several Narviks and Elbing class torpedo fought two British light cruisers in the Bay of Biscay. Z27 was lost in this battle. She had served as the flagship of the flotilla commander, Captain Hans Erdmenger, who had commanded Z21 Wilhelm Heidkamp during the Narvik campaign.
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Thank you very much for this latest excellent video. I mentioned in a previous comment that my father served on Dido (tangentially he always referred to the ship as Dido, with an 'i' rather than 'Deedo'). From memory this was his first posting after completing training as an ERA at HMS Caledonia. Children never listen to stories and parents do not talk. As a result, my knowledge of my father's service is limited to half remembered anecdotes coupled with the excellent publication about the ship produced by the Dido Association. Nevertheless, I know that my father was part of the ship's company when she was on Malta Convoy duties, the evacuation of Crete - when she sustained considerable damage - , in the Italian campaign at the time of the Anzio and Salerno actions, convoys to Murmansk and so on. Following the damage sustained at Crete, she was sent, after temporary repair to New York. My father did not go to the USA and seems to have spent this time in South Africa. I have a photograph of him and some colleagues at that time. recently I scanned and enlarged it. I recognised my father (ages c 21), but he is gaunt and drawn. I do not know, but perhaps, after the horrific experience of the Crete evacuation, perhaps a group had been left in Johannesburg for some kind of PTSD recovery. Without looking up his record, my father left 'Dido' late 1944 (ish), being posted to HMS Seagull. Early in this posting the ship was involved in taking relief supplies and minesweeping duties on the River Scheldt to new liberated Rotterdam. Another story for another time. Thank you again for filling in a large number of blanks.
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Thanks for this overview of the T-class. My late father served on them in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, being posted twice in Australia. He was an ASDIC/SONAR operator on the Talemachus and Taciturn.
One story he told me was of the time he crewed an old T-class (I forget which one) from Australia to Britain to be decommissioned and scrapped. Each year of life of a submarine reduces the safe depth to which it may dive - this submarine was so old it could not dive at all, so it had to make the whole journey on the surface. This is fine, of course, unless there is a storm and heavy sea. By their nature, submarines generally don’t fare well in heavy seas, so the normal routine is to dive beneath them. Well, as they passed through the Mediterranean, a major storm hit and they had no choice but to stay on the surface, bows into the oncoming waves. Again, by their nature, submarines are not designed to ride the waves, so each wave that came just rolled straight over them. Being on the surface requires an officer on watch duty. As the submarine was running on Diesel engines only, the conning tower hatch needed to be open for the air to be drawn down to the engines. But every time a wave came over, the hatch needed to be shut and sealed so that the sea didn’t come pouring in. My dad was the crewman tethered above the hatch - his job to shut the hatch when the officer called that a wave was about to hit, another crewman inside would turn the wheel to seal it. My dad and the officer would take deep breaths and wait until the wave had passed, then he would knock on the hatch for the man inside to release the seals, then both of them would pull and push with all their might to open the hatch. With the engines running and the hatch shut, the air pressure inside would drop, making opening the hatch an effort. And then the next wave would come and the procedure would be repeated, and again for each wave that passed for several hours. There was no time between waves for either my dad or the officer to be relieved - they just had to keep going until the storm had passed.
But my dad said that the worst part of the whole ordeal was that they received a distress signal from an Italian liner that was in serious trouble in the storm. They were the closest vessel and in normal circumstances they would have changed course to provide assistance. Unfortunately, if they had altered course the waves would have capsized them, so they were forced to sail on by, unable to offer aid.
My dad joined as a boy seaman at the age of 15. He was serving on the Barfleur at 16, during the Suez crisis. He volunteered to join the submarine service at the age of 17, setting the record for the youngest submariner in the Royal Navy - shortly afterwards, the system was changed and the minimum age limit was set at 18.
My father’s father served on S-class submarines before, during and after WWII (and he had some stories), and his father served on the infamous K-class in the ‘20s.
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A Example of the present paying for the sins of the past, British Merchants and Plantation owner's had become very rich off the Slave Trade, but the British People and Government decided although this had been legal in the past, they could no longer justify it on moral term's. This was done Against the objections of the powerful group of people that owed their position to the Slave Trade. As in the United States, a Plantation owner whose wealth was in his Slaves, was going to fight every attempt to end Slavery. In 1860, the average Slave sold for $850.00 when the income of the average family for a year was $60.00, for them the end of Slavery meant bankruptcy and the Destruction of the Economy of the Southern States. Here it took a Civil War and the death of 600,000 men when the total population was under 50 Million people. The Economy of the South took almost a Hundred Years to recover. The British Government also decided the practice had to be ended, despite the cost to the Government and it's people. While people are willing to accept changes over time, Injustice tolerated in the past could no longer be allowed in the present and if those people who built their wealth and power on the backs of Slaves suffered, so much the Better. That the British were willing to pay the cost of stopping this evil practice, while it doesn't justify the past, was the Right Thing to do for the Future. All the Evils of the World cannot be ended in one pass, Government's must end them one at a time, taking a stand against their own actions in the past and paying the cost for a better tomorrow. This is the sort of thing that makes Great Britain, Great and a Leader in World Opinion. Kudos to the Royal Navy for taking a stand on this Issue, at a time when it was unpopular and expensive to do so!
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Ooh, not often one sees a smoking water snake
(Explanation: "the snake will smoke" WAS a brazilian saying, basically "when pigs fly", and it was said that Brazil would go to war against Germany when snakes smoke, "It's more likely for a snake to smoke a pipe than for the FEB [Brazilian Expeditionary Force] to go the front and fight". Brazil then went to war against Germany, and sent troops to fight in Europe, as Drach detailed. These troops were, suitably, nicknamed "the Smoking Snakes". These days, "the snake will smoke" means quite the opposite in Brazil, something that will happen, and explosively so...)
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My cousin served aboard the New Jersey from 1986 to 1989. The two "resort pools" on the New Jersey were retrofitted to the former 40 mm gun tubs because of rulings from the brass. Back before they got involved, swimming in tropical waters was a way to cool off during long deployments to the Pacific. Given the freeboard of the New Jersey, some sailors got injured diving from her decks. It was mostly things like a few broken arms, but those in charge of fleet safety weren't having it. No more swimming, and morale plummeted. Even though living spaces were air conditioned, working space weren't, and place like workshops and the engine rooms could get over 110 degrees in the tropics. Captain Katz solved this by having his engineering staff rig up a portable swimming platform that was only about five feet about the sea surface. Morale returned to normal as the guys could once again get in some swimming.
This worked until the medical staff in Washington got involved. With reports that some men were picking up various tropical parasites from swimming in the Persian Gulf, swimming was banned completely to save the three cases that had ever showed up from the New Jersey, all easily cured. For those that have ever sailed in tropical waters, not being able to swim so you could cool off from the oppressive tropical heat just seemed impossible, and crew morale immediately suffered. Captain Katz once again called on his engineering staff for a solution. Once of the Machinist Mates was a swimming pool installer in civilian life. He came up with a vinyl over foam covering that could be used to line the two forward abandoned 40 mm gun tubs. They were filled from portable pumps that ran through a filtering system devised by engineering to make sure those nasty parasites couldn't get on board. The crew was able to at least paddle around and cool off, and morale soared. Thus, the New Jersey came to be the only USN combat ship to ever have two swimming pools.
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I am remined of a famous poem from WW1 about the German guns:
"Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,
Boom, Boom, Boom"
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One of my neighbors growing up had been the CO of an LCT during the great storm. She was blown ashore and had to wait for weeks to be salvaged. Due to fear of Luftwaffe attacks, no lights were to be shown at night and they were to lie low. Then, one night, it happened. Around dusk, first one ship, then another began firing, soon grounded vessels and Army AA batteries joined in. Artillery roared, small arms rattled and tracers sped into the night. Off shore, even the battleships and cruisers were giving their all. Flares and star shells illuminated a surreal scene. Convinced the Germans had broken through, and were headed to the beach, my neighbor sounded general quarters and rifles and submachine guns were issued to all hands not manning a gun. My neighbor strapped on his 45, determined to "take one with him." Then it occurred to someone to look at the calendar when making an entry into the log and yelled the news. That's how my neighbor and thousands of his brothers in arms celebrated July 4, 1944.
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Regarding the cool names; I totally agree. The names sound amazing. The IJN naming convention usually assign super cool names not only to capital ships, but also to their other ships, even their numerous destroyers because they thought that ships having names would positively influence morale of the crew.
Some names are taken from mountains, like the carrier Akagi from Mt. Akagi, or the four Takao-class heavy cruisers, Takao, Atago, Maya and Chokai were also named after mountains. The Kongou class battlecruisers also fall in this camp. Some ships, mostly cruisers, have names that come from rivers, like the Mogami class cruisers, or the Nagara class cruisers. Also, many capital ships were named after ancient Japanese provinces. Carrier Kaga, superbattleships Yamato and Musashi are some examples. The two Big 7 sisters Nagato and Mutsu are also named after ancient provinces.
A lot of fleet carriers beside Akagi and Kaga got seriously cool sounding names though. Hiryuu means 'flying dragon', Souryuu means 'azure dragon', Shoukaku means 'soaring crane', Zuikaku means 'auspicious crane', Unryuu means 'cloud dragon', though her sister Katsuragi was named after a mountain. Hiyou means 'flying falcon' and Junyou is a peregrine. Shoho means 'lucky phoenix' and Ryuho means 'dragon phoenix'. Basically Dragon Ball imagery everywhere.
However I think the best names actually go to the destroyers. Destroyers are usually named after natural phenomena or traditional seasons. Not in any particular order or implying any class relations, I'm just listing them as I recall them but here are some examples. Fubuki is literally 'blizzard', Yuudachi means 'evening rain', Akatsuki means 'dawn', Hatsushimo means 'first frost', Ayanami means 'weaving waves'. Wakaba means 'young leaves', Yukikaze 'snowy wind', Samidare 'Rain in May', Shirayuki 'white snow', Shimakaze means 'island wind', Hatsuharu means 'beginning of spring', Ariake 'daybreak', Kagerou 'mirage' and many many many more cool names. Most of the Mutsuki class were named after old lunar calendar names for months. Mutsuki is equivalent to 'January', Kisaragi 'February, Yayoi 'March' and so on. The way the ships are named really reflect the love the Japanese have for their history, geography and nature. A lot of the names are passed down to JMSDF ships today.
Source: I speak Japanese and am a fan of WWII ships, not only Japanese ones.
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Drach and Ryan, great duo. There is no doubt that Iowa class are battleships. I will acquiesce to your judgement on Hood being a battleship even thou I have always considered her a battlecruiser, perhaps wrongly, by tradition. Given that Hood's belt armour and armament is battleship class and that only her deck armour was under scantling I can see your argument. Similarly, the Iowas' belt armour would/could be considered under scantling, yet the angle/slope gave it effectively proper armour while saving hundreds of tons of weight. All ships sacrifice somewhere in order to achieve the most effective result. Of course at the time, was there any class of battleship in the world that could stand toe to toe with the Iowas and win expect to win a gun battle? The answer is mostly no. Yes the Yamatos likely could have. However, given the US use of radar ranging vs optics it is likely(as you have previously pointed out) that the Iowas would have gotten in several early blows before the Yamatos could gauge the range. The minimum 5 knot speed advantage certainly helps the Iowas.
Simply, the Iowas would likely win any gun battle vs any surface ship in the world at the time, except for perhaps the Yamatos. IMHO, of course.
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4:08 Coal is one of those very interesting logistical items that varies throughout time. Initially, the Brits used Northern coal, which is mainly bituminous. Once the Admiralty developed a mechanism for measuring coal's BTUs per pound, they found that coal from SW Wales was pound for pound the best they could require. This is semi-bituminous coal.
The United States initially used coal from Connecticut (I think, my notes aren't readily available at the moment, but it was definitely a NE state), which was a bituminous coal. It doesn't seem to have been an admiralty study in the US like there was in Britain, but rather the USN used university and US Geological Survey (USGS) studies. They found that call from the Pocahontas mines in Tazwell County Virginia, specifically Pocahontas No. 2, iirc, had the highest BTUs per pound. The Norfolk Western made a lot of money moving coal from western Virginia and West Virginia to the ocean. USN, like the RN, burned semi-bituminous when it could.
I've found studies on burning anthracite were conducted in the US. It was good for cruisers remaining sneaky due to less smoke, but rather rubbish as a fuel source, on account of frizzling (inconsistent burning qualities), higher clinker volume (stones left over from the burning process), and lots of ash. The qualities that make anthracite so low in moisture content also make its carbon bonds hard to burn. So you're only getting like 85 to 90% of the BTUs from anthracite as semi-bituminous.
In terms of Pocahontas versus Welsh coal, the absolute best Welsh coal seems to have been very marginally superior. 15000 BTUs per pound vs 14600.
There are old studies on coal available on the internet. It seems to have been one of the first scientifically studied objects. They went into very great detail very early on how coal works.
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During my first year aboard DD540 ,a Fletcher,I was in charge of 7 motley apes, in the ammo compartment below #5 AA gun. Being the tallest,it was my job to push clips of 40's, up thru a slot above my head. The gunners would grab them and drop them into slots of the guns,where they would automatically fire,as long as the gun Captain,and the Sight Controller each held their firing switch on Fire mode. We saw nothing from inside. One time our ship was missed by 2 bombs, which exploded in the water, missing us by about 5 feet. The concussion blew out our lighting,and blew a couple of control boxes loose from the bulkheads.that caused them to swing by the cables, in the dark, knocking a couple of guys down. Thinking we were hit,I opened the hatch.There was just blue sky filled with AA puffs, and soon the damage control team came and secured the Control boxes. After a year of that GQ station, I was assigned as sight-setter on #AA1 Sight . This was right on the bridge where I could hear some orders, and see the action. Officers previously were assigned to that position. I was FC2C at the time. We were a lucky ship, with the 3rd. or 5th. Fleet, involved with everything starting with Saipan, and ending with 'The Bombs'. We were one happy bunch, and were shocked when we realized we had survived.The Captain celebrated by giving us a straight shot of Bourbon!
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Fantastic! I've been waiting for a PT boat guide. My dad was in Ron 10 on PT-124 from January 4, 1943 until it was disbanded in November, 1945. The Lewis guns and turrets were long gone when he arrived. They only carried two torpedoes by mid-1943, and they spent the vast majority of their time shooting up those barges, by then being used for attempted resupply of isolated islands. The Japanese barges kept adding bigger guns, and the squadron kept scrounging bigger guns of their own. It was an arms race in tropics, and the Navy, with the exception of the 40mm Bofors, never approved any of it.
Dad's boat did have some ad-hoc armor. One of the guys was a metal worker, and he crafted a pair of 3/8" sheet steel plates from a scrapped P-39, and the crew installed them around the refrigerator/freezer. It used ammonia for refrigerant, and a stray round going through the refrigerant line filled the boat with ammonia fumes. Even worse, it meant the refrigerator was out of commission, and that meant no cold milk or ice cream, things they got from their monthly visit to the USS Mobjack, the squadron's tender. No one much cared about armor for the crew, but they wanted their ice cream and milk!
Oh, I forgot to mention that no one in the squadron thought very highly of Cdr. Bulkeley. He got to be a big celebrity because of the daring rescue of McArthur, and pretty soon he became the Navy's version of him. He was apparently an intrepid sailor, and the guys felt like he wanted to make sure everyone knew it. His book "At Close Quarters", written in 1962, got an even frostier reception, since most of the guys felt like it was a self promotion book, but also a promotion for JFK and the PT-109. A lot of other heroic actions by PT boats got short shrift in the book.
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Drachisms of the Day:
5:25 "Basically, roaming 'death squads' of British and American ships
looking for things that haven't yet been exploded."
6:39 "And moving at such speed that U-Boats were just like, "Hmmm! I hear
a ship coming. Up periscope." Zzmmmmmmmm. "AH! Oh well, back to looking
for merchantmen. Never mind."
12:48 "I'd say, to a certain degree, they probably hated each other more
than they hated some of the people they were fighting."
14:10 "There was almost a 'Klingon-level' of rivalry between officers
within the same naval service."
30:07 "It's like saying "Well, yes. This person has the advantage in killing
you if he runs you down with a 32-ton HGV, as compared to this person who is
ONLY hitting you with a 7.5-ton moving van." I DOUBT you're really gonna
appreciate the difference that much."
33:58 "And then N3 unleashed the torpedo salvo of 'complete unexpectedness'."
37:11 "You don't want a Spearfish or an ADCAP coming towards you, much less
six. Umm...or worse if you have the misfortune to meet an angry Seawolf-class.
But never mind."
39:15 "The British would probably have gone, "Hmmm. You declare for our enemies,
do you? It's real pity you're using those Vickers 14-inch guns, isn't it? Ah
well, I guess we have some spare 14-inch guns. Anyone buying?"
42:31 "Submarines submarines everywhere. And, oh dear, carrier-aircraft."
45:41 "On a battleship, it would be considered a medium weight AA weapon at best
and 'Why the hell have you put this thing on our ship? Why can't we have
something better?"
46:48 "You also have to consider things like 'inertia' and 'momentum'. Which
are fairly related." (Newtonian snark)
50:55 "The answer tends to sound a bit 'waffley'".
54:10 "If you just did a straight swap...ahhh...the British would rip your hand
off, in their efforts to shake it. And thank you from the highest-of-heavens
for the absolute easy ride you've just given them."
54:53 "But that was because it was handed a weapon that was probably better at
beating the enemy over the heads with physically in a boarding action, than
actually firing at them."
55:13 "The phrase 'a little bit faster than the Bureau Of Ordnance' can be applied to many
things including Competitive Snail Racing."
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The only really effective role of US PT boats in the Pacific was preventing Japanese resupply of isolated island garrisons. It was all gun battles between the PTs and Japanese barges to starve out these garrisons. The torpedos had no aiming system except point the boat in the right direction, fire, and hope for the best. Even with the improved Mark 8 torpedoes, the firing mechanisms weren't built for the exposed position of the torpedoes on a PT in the tropics. The electric firing black powder charge often leaked water and the firing mechanism shorted out. Most boats actually engaged in a torpedo attacks had men standing by with a large sledgehammer to hit the exposed trigger and fire the torpedo. The boat had to slow down to an even keel before firing or the gyro wouldn't be able to get a good position and the torpedo would run off in surprising directions, including circling back on your boat. The tubes were packed with grease and oil to ensure the torpedo didn't get stuck in the tube. The black powder charge would sometimes ignite all this grease, causing a huge cloud black smoke that immediately gave away the position of the boat.
My dad was on PT boats from late 1942 until May, 1945. By mid 1943, the tube were landed and the torpedoes were carried in simple shackle mounts. To fire the torpedo, one man popped the shackles while another yanked a lanyard to start the torpedo motor. Both guys then pushed to torpedo overboard to start the attack. As you might imagine, this was even more inaccurate then firing them from tubes, but at least the torpedoes would run once they got in the water. My dad's boat made eight torpedo attacks. Seven missed, and the one that hit was a dud. The boat went from carrying four torpedoes to two and, by early 1944, none, with the weight and space saved devoted to more 20mm and 40mm guns. Most boats after 1943 functioned as motor gunboats. They were successful in that role, but some of the romantic stories about the PTs charging in on torpedo attacks and sinking a major surface vessel were more propaganda than reality.
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Hey Drach, I want you to know one thing:
I have three huskies and usually I have a "short" 6km evening walks with them on weekdays and a "long" 11km walk at weekends. The both start the same, and then, at one particular T-junction, it is either turn to the left for the "short" or to the right for the "long" walk. One more thing, I live in the Netherlands now, which is very nice country, but bloody cyclists are everywhere, so I do not use headphones during my walks, just listen to podcasts or YouTube videos via the main phone speaker (Sorry, passing by Dutch folks), so I can hear their bells.
About a year ago I realised that my dogs start understanding where to turn on Saturdays, I attributed that to my schedule first, but then work-from-home started, but still my dogs knew where to turn every Saturday. I even start suspecting my Siberian Huskies of having some Jewish ancestors :)
But just a couple of weeks ago I realised the way they guess the direction: it was a Saturday, but due to some reason I was listening not to a fresh Dry-dock but to other podcast. And they turned the "weekday" route suddenly. So, Drach, I want you to know: there are not only thousands of naval geeks on this planet for whom your voice is a sign for pleasure and joy, but three Siberian Huskies who love to hear your voice as it means more fun for them this evening!
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So, amateur railroad historian here (I'm actually typing this before going off to work as a streetcar conductor at a museum) and I can confirm what was said in the video is generally accurate. The triplex locomotives were built between 1914 and 1916, at a time when most freight cars were at least partially built of wood. Railway couplings (whether automatic couplers or chain-and-buffer couplings in Europe) have slack in them, and railways at the time relied on this to gradually jerk the cars along when starting the train. Too much force at the front could break the couplings, and so Triplex locomotives were quickly relegated to helper (Britain: banking) duty, pushing trains uphill from the rear. Even then, too much force at the rear could cause cars in the middle of the train to pop off the track on curves. This was low-speed work, and they didn't have the boiler capacity to feed the cylinders at speeds above 10 mph anyways.
There are two other flaws with the Triplex design that meant they could never reach their full potential: Adhesion, and drafting. Locomotives must be sufficiently heavy to prevent the steel wheel from spinning on the steel rail. (There are some interesting early experiments by people who didn't think this would work, including locomotives engaging gear racks or fitted with shoes that pushed along the rail). Ideally, the factor of adhesion (weight on drivers divided by starting tractive effort, both measured in pounds) should be at least 4. But putting driving wheels beneath the tender means that, as coal and water are consumed, the weight on that set of drivers decreases, which either reduces available tractive effort or increases the chances of wheelslip. When the rear engine slipped, it would consume all the low-pressure steam available, meaning the front engine would stall out as well.
Drafting is the other problem. You've mentioned how that works with steamships, and it's also critical for locomotives. The reason steam locomotives make that chuffing noise is because the steam exhausted from the cylinders is directed up a blast pipe below the stack, into the open space of the smokebox, and so the blast pulls fresh air through the firebox. More speed = more draft = hotter fire = more power, a natural feedback loop. On a conventional compound locomotive, all the exhaust steam from the low-pressure cylinders is directed up the blast pipe, contributing to draft, and so compound articulated locomotives (named Mallets after their French inventor) were generally successful. But with Triplexes, the rear engine exhausted through a separate stack on the tender, and so did not contribute to the draft, which further limited the amount of steam the boiler could generate.
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How many total rounds of any caliber naval ammunition was produced, how many were expended, and how much it all cost during WWII is devilishly difficult to find out at this late date. I did manage to come up with one very preliminary estimate from six different sources for 40 mm rounds. It appears that about 17 million rounds were produced in 1942, 89 million in 1943, 130 million in 1944, and back down to 15 million in 1945. That's a total of about 251 million rounds. The total spent on 40 mm ammo ranges from about $600 million to $700 million. Just choosing the midpoint, I'll assume a reasonable amount was $650 million. Given that, $650 million divided by 251 million means each round cost $2.58 in 1945 dollars. A single 40 mm gun had a practical rate of fire of 80-90 RPM, so let's choose 85 RPM. $2.58 per round multiplied by 85 equals a cost of $219.30 per barrel per minute, or $877.20 per minute for a quad mount. Now we know why there were so many ads about buying war bonds!
Now, just getting this admittedly imprecise data was about two hours of trawling the net and a splitting headache, so anyone wanting to try to come up with the same figures for things like five inch rounds, have at it. :-)
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I would like to thank everyone for their kind words and Drach himself for the chance to be on his Channel. I am stunned and amazed at the response to my appearance here. As someone who has followed the Channel since robovoice days with 4k subs, it has been a true Honor to appear on this channel. I would also like to note my errors, which I am listing here in order to issue my Mea Culpas and make sure I get the History right.
ERRATA LIST
1. Was not knocking the Abacus, just amazed an ancient device was used in 1941. Have since looked up further information and have a 17 line Soroban in hand and am awaiting the arrival of a 21 line one. I am intrigued enough by the Abacus to want to learn how to use one, and teach my 5 year old daughter the same. When I lived in the Former Soviet Union in 1992-3, they still used Abaci to calculate sums in certain places. So the Abacus has long been an interesting tool for me. Another fascinating period calculating tool is the E6B flight computer, which is a form of slide rule and is still used today by many Aviators as a non electronic calculation device.
2. Cunningham was primarily at Alexandria, though in 1941 he operated as a frontline Fighting Admiral with his flag on Warspite, my favorite RN Warship. Malta was on my mind, we have a 1/30 scale Faith in our collection and will cover the Air Campaign there in the future. Also, I did condense the supply line situation in the Med a bit, and should have touched upon the importance of the Suez Canal as a supply artery. The recent Evergiven Fiasco should show everyone how important the Suez still is for the global supply chain.
3. The man who trained the Imperial Japanese Naval Air Force was William Francis Forbes-Sempill, not Frederick Sempill. Given his activities up to December 15, 1941, my error was both a legitimate mistake, and perhaps a Freudian slip by me regarding a man I share the same name with whose activities weren't exactly honorable. Also, the British Military mission took place in 1920-21, not 1919. We wrote a detailed account of Sempill and posted it to our Museum Facebook on December 15th, the 80th anniversary of Sempill being caught calling the Japanese Embassy, FOUR DAYS after Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk by the very IJNAF he trained two decades below. The Wikipedia account of Sempill contains so many twists and turns that we posted bits en masse simply because his activities and consequences of his actions are so unbelievable they are worth repeating in the fullest possible detail. We include an analysis of the British Class system in order to highlight Lord Sempill's place in the hierarchy and how his position and luck regarding codebreaking secrets protected him from being shot as a Wartime Traitor.
4. Yes, the President Grover Cleveland replaced in 1893 was Benjamin Harrison, not Rutherford B. Hayes, I know them as the H name Presidents and mixed them up.
5. I also condensed activities on the Ni'ihau Incident, and have posted a detailed account of actual events on Ni'ihau from December 7-14, 1941. During the course of our research we discovered that the Army Relief party which arrived on Ni'ihau to mop up was commanded by Lt. Jack Mizuha, a Japanese American officer who subsequently served in the 100th Battalion, U.S. Army. Although Ni'ihau proved that there was a collaboration between Ni'ihau's ethnic Japanese residents and Sigenori Nishikaichi, the rest of Hawaii's ethnic Japanese population remained loyal Americans after December 7th 1941. This connection to the 100th Battalion and 442nd Infantry Regiment will be expanded in further posts as we continue our coverage of various events to commemorate their 80th anniversaries. I have evidence my Grandfather was instrumental in the formation of these units and the decision not to intern Hawai'i's local Japanese population, and am already in touch with a member of the 100th Battalion's historical society. We aim to get things right, and there are unique nuances between the 100th/442nd. The 442nd (including the 100th) as a whole is the most decorated Combat unit in U.S. Army history, fighting from Salerno (the 100th) to Dachau. The 100th Battalion still exists as the only Infantry formation in the U.S. Army reserve. A significant portion of it's soldiers come from Company B, which was stationed in American Samoa until October 2021. My recently departed father served alongside them while he was an Army Reserve Officer, and he used to joke about how the 100th was best known for its Samoan Jeep Throwing Contest.
Finally, regarding the Dutch starting World War II, a better description would have been World War II in the Pacific, or the Pacific War.
This Episode was planned to be a free flow format between Drach and I, and not meant to be a monologue. Whenever I paused, I was both waiting for a reply and also at times so amazed to be on that I had to remind myself I was the guest speaker and not simply watching an Episode.
Thank you again for all the positive comments, and as for the negative ones, yes I have face for radio, but I prefer to judge a person by who they are as a person rather than what they look like. I hope you can recover from whatever negativity rules your lives. For those who issued corrections in these comments, I appreciate them and will certainly admit errors when they occur, as the list above shows. Finally, as for the sound and Kung Fu movie like mismatch, this episode was recorded during a Transatlantic Zoom call with my iPad as the camera device.
Best regards and Aloha,
William S. Cobb
Director, Pensacola Aerospace Museum
For our past and current posts, please follow us on our Facebook page at;
www.facebook.com/pensacolaero
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@Drachinifel When she was being introduced into World of Warships I wrote a full song. It would have to be tweaked. :)
♫ Gosh it disturbs me to see you, Gascogne
Stuck in development Hell
Ev'ry ship here'd love to be you, Gascogne
Knowing how well you will sell. ♫
There's no ship in port as admired as you
You've got guns with all of the range
♪ When released folk will forget Richilieu
Though we know you're subject to change.
Ohh....♪
♫ No one's slick as Gascogne
No one's quick as Gascogne
No one's belt is as incredibly thick as Gascogne! ♫
For there's no battleship half as manly
♪ Perfect, a pure paragon!
You can ask any Bogue, Sims or Langley
And they'll tell you whose team they prefer to be on! ♪
No one's been like Gascogne!
A king pin like Gascogne!
No other ship's gonna pad your wins like Gascogne!
♪ As a specimen, yes, she's intimidating!
My what a ship, that Gascogne!
Give five "hurrahs!" Give twelve "hip-hips!" ♫
Gascogne is the best ♪
Of all the battleships!
♫ No one fights like Gascogne!
Douses lights like Gascogne!
In a brawling match nobody bites like Gascogne!
For there's no one as bouncy and tanky ♫
As you see I've got bow armour to spare
♪ Not a bit of her scraggly or scrawny
That's right!
And ev'ry last inch of her has got anti-air! ♪
No one hits like Gascogne
Matches wits like Gascogne
No one runs down and sinks the Tirpitz like Gascogne!
She's espcially good at belt penetrating!
BAM! Citadel hit for Gascogne!
She's a work in pr'gress
Anything can change
This first peek may leave you surprised
Over the next month
You'll see all sorts of change
Her statistics are not finalized!
Oh, ahhh, wow! ♪
My what a ship, that Gascogne!
No one shoots like Gascogne!
♫ Makes those beauts like Gascogne!
Then goes stomping on PUBBies and n00bs like Gascogne!
♪ She hits 38 knots when accelerating!
My what a ship, Gascogne! ♫
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On a historic note, I read an accounting of the "last slave ship" the Wanderer and her devious exploits up until 1858. She was never caught, so fast a ship she was. And, one of her "sister" ships, a slaver called the Martha was captured by U.S. frigates, it was considered a prize catch. The Wanderer, the Martha, and one other slaver, whose name escapes me, were considered to be the prizes the anti-slavery squadrons all wanted. The Brits sent congratulations to the U.S. frigate, captain and crew, for snagging the Martha, but at the same time issued "orders" or perhaps "strong encouragement" to all her captains to please don't let the Americans have the honor of catching the Wanderer or the other elusive slaver.
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Hey Drach, would you consider doing more videos on ships of the line? I'd love to see an extended one on the L'Ocean class of french line ships. Your video on the american ships of the line was probably one of the most informative I've seen, not only on the specific ships, but on the design, construction and operation of ships of the line in general. Maybe a series of videos on the evolution of ships during the age of sail, from the late medieval ships like the cog to the caravels, carracks and galleons, finally ending in the indiamen, pinnaces, brigantines, fluyts/flyboats, frigates and line ships that dominated the late age of sail till the XIX century.
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Drachisms of the Day:
3:50 "Eww, well. This one's a little bit of a doozie. Innit?"
15:26 "And before this entire episode turns into
'The Adventures of Admiral Drach, Royal Navy'."
19:02 "Once it gets going, it's gonna get going at a pretty
sharp clip. And good luck stopping it."
26:58 "At the battle of..um..I have no idea how to pronounce this.
The battle of Me Yong Gim Yang. Question mark?"
30:17 "And, as well the name suggests, this was a dispute in the early 1960s
over...who should have the right to fish for lobsters. Well I suppose the
UK got involved in the Cod War, so this is really not THAT much more absurd.
Although there is the rather interesting premise of whether a lobster is a fish or not."
35:24 "The war started earlier than they expected, um, thanks to Germany's antics."
44:58 "Who do you believe are the seven most awful admirals, captains, commanders etc,
thru naval history." (The second I heard this question I knew that I'd end up transcribing
the entire answer. I'm not doing that. Enjoy listening for yourself. It's a hoot. Here are some samples.)
45.19 "Lest I start getting very angry and ranty again."
46.17 "How the heck do you end up in command of the second largest formation
in the British Navy? Just 'How?'. And 'Why?'.
48.22 "You can kinda see how Napoleon wanted to replace him."
1:36:13 "I can't remember from my german-class how you pronounce that
weird 'sb' shape in German. Anyway, sorry."
1:38:11 (exasperated resignation) "OK. Fine."
2:01:23 "More important codes that were broken, were broken by the Japanese Army.
Who, of course, refused to tell the Navy about it."
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There were 24 large ferrocement barges constructed by the US, mostly being used by the Army during WWII, with several being taken up from USN service as floating refrigerator/freezer craft. They were 265 feet and about 3,000 tons and were used mostly to transport frozen meat, chicken, eggs, and milk between Pacific bases to improve the diets of the men as the war dragged on. The most famous was the Ice Cream Barge. It's only job was to manufacture, store, and distribute ice cream to the fleet and shore bases. To do the job it had 14 ice cream plants capable of turning out 12 gallons of ice cream per minute in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. The facilities were so overtaxed by demand that another ice cream barge was about to build when the war ended. It was towed from island to island by two Navy tugs. The role of ice cream as a morale builder was so valued that Navy Secretary Forrestal gave standing orders that the barge was not to leave port unless Navy meteorologists could guarantee there was no bad weather on the way for at least twice the period of the next voyage, and an aerographer's mate was on board to take readings and observations during the voyage.
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Shell weight gets full effect against homogeneous, ductile plate, but against face-hardened plate, weight has much less effect since the failure method by such hard-faced armor is always (other than some surface flacking) due to cracking of the hard face layer radially and circularly, like safety glass in a car window, and this is much more due to shock effects from the velocity of the shell when its tip suddenly stops on the plate surface and the shock of impact goes back into the shell and into the plate. Once the shock forms the cracks to weaken the hard face, it can be pushed back through the soft shock-absorbing back part of the plate by the mass-based KE- remaining to the shell. Since the cracking of the face is needed to allow the shell to do more than gouge the plate face somewhat with no other real effect, the mass part is delayed and thus has minimal effect in the total penetration results. Against homogeneous, ductile armor, the deforming of the softer steel or iron begins immediately on initial impact and full KE using the full mass is always applied. If you have weak/brittle AP projectiles that can't take the initial shock, especially at an oblique angle, then those shells will be even more degraded against all armor type with one exception: Above 45 degrees impact angle, a projectile nose shape and AP cap design affects the penetration ability -- ricochet result instead of penetrating at a given impact velocity -- and it turns out that a broken shell, if not reduced to to small pieces, can have its upper end broken off and fail to penetrate (glance off), but now this no longer pulls the rest of the shell with it, so the middle and lower body, if not too broken up, can keep digging into the same area of just beyond it like a snow plow and punch through where an intact shell merely bounces off. In some cases, if the filler cavity is small enough, the shell will still blow up at full power, too, though don't count on that. Still, any penetration is better than no penetration, even if the results are minimal.
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The reason why the electric razor trick could have worked was razors of that time only had shielding so they didn't interfere (much) with the medium wave AM broadcast band from about 550 KHz to 1550 KHz. This was the only band used for commercial broadcasting at the time, FM and higher frequencies still being in the future. An unshielded electric motor emits tons of spurious RF signals, and that's why the razors (may) have worked. As it turned out, the Fritz-X and HS-293 receivers operated at a frequency of about 50 MHz, quite high for 1943.
The Americans and British spent a lot of time trying to discover the guidance frequencies so they could develop transmitters to jam those frequencies. They sent a total of 40 radios to sea on two DE's off Italy in hopes of being able to pick up the frequencies of glide bombs actually in use. Through a combination of faulty intelligence and bad luck, the frequency pairs chosen were in the 17 MHz to 20 MHz range. After deploying some hastily built jamming transmitters, the results were...nothing, since the jammers were nowhere near the correct frequencies. Through one bit of luck, a single guidance transmission at 50 MHz was picked up, opening up the possibility that all the previous work had been for naught.
A twenty-three year old US second lieutenant was part of the team trying to decode this knotty problem. He was also an amateur radio operator and had built a number of his own ham radio transmitters. He calculated that a 50 MHz receiver would ideally operate with a 3 KHz intermediate frequency in a single conversion circuit. Without getting into all the complexities of an IF circuit, the main advantage is the IF, operating below the transmitting frequency of signals the operator wanted hear, made it far easier to design band pass filters. These were then able to filter out frequencies outside the desired range. A frequency of 3 KHz was ideal because there were no commercial broadcasters operating in that range. Anything being received above or below the IF could be removed with high or low band pass filters. A 3 KHz signal couldn't be removed as it was needed for the IF to work. A number of Hallicrafters ham transmitters were modified to operate at 100 watts at 3 MHz, a powerful signal that would swamp an IF in that range. They were tested off Florida and then sent to Italy. No ship with the jamming transmitter was successfully attacked, and glide bombs could be seen going wildly off course as soon as the jammer was turned on. The project to modify the radios received an AAA1 priority since D-Day was less than four months away. Between British and American radio manufacturers, over 500 jammers were built in about a month. It didn't take long for the Germans to figure out we had come up with some kind of radio jammer, but it took them until after D-Day to come up with their answer, a wire guided missile that couldn't be jammed
Now, about the electric razors. In theory, an unshielded electric razor motor is one of the dirtiest electric devices around. It will put out spurious emissions on almost any HF frequency, including 3 KHz. However, the RF energy has to be tiny, like in the tenths of a watt. Because the path from a shaver to the glide bomb is line of sight, the power output isn't quite as important, but I'd need to be convinced that the electric razor defense ever really worked. The HS 123 and Fritz-X bombs only had about 1 hit for every 20 launched, and having them just go out of control through a guidance failure wasn't uncommon. Having a guidance failure for reasons other than guys waving around electric razors seems a lot more likely to me. I've scoured all the books I have and and online resources and, although I've found numerous instances of the electric razor story, I've yet to find evidence of any kind of controlled test to show it would work IRL. Unless I can find something, I remain skeptical.
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My father's Annapolis classmate and best man, then-Lt.Cdr Hugh Wood, is credited with getting the first two hits on the Yamato. As CO of Bennington's VB squadron, he launched with 5 or 6 other SB2Cs and headed for the Japanese fleet in a desperate bid to buy the taffies some time. Picking out the Yamato as his primary target, Lt.Cdr. Wood executed a series of violent aerial maneuvers to get in the ideal dive-bombing position (the Yamato had AA guns that could elevate to something like 72 degrees vertical, so you had to come down in a near-perfect 90-degree dive if you didn't want to be blown out of the sky). During his twisting and turning, Lt.Cdr. Wood lost his XO and a couple other aircraft, but he continued on, initiating his dive from something like 20,000 feet...straight down. I always wondered what that ride was like for his radioman/tail-gunner. He scored two hits, while his wingman scored a hit as well. Then they flew back, rearmed, and re-attacked. For his initiative, airmanship and flat-out guts, Lt.Cdr. Wood received the Navy Cross....his second, as a matter of fact. Tragically, Cdr. Wood (he was later promoted to a three-striper) died in the early 50s in what is now Edwards AFB while test-piloting the Douglas Skyshark, some kind of crazy, twin counter-rotating propeller beast of an aircraft.
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Here's some interestings fact for you all --
Out of the 24 units finished (out of 26 ordered) of the Essex class,
the four that were preserved (CV-10, -11, -12, -16) as memorials were all ORIGINALLY short-hull ships. (The later refits brought the modernized Essex-class ships basically to similar standards. Long-hull and short-hull really only refer to the parts of the ship ABOVE the water, directly under the flight deck I believe.)
The numbers of the museum ships are 16 or lower by hull but the Lexington (CV-16) was actually commissioned FIRST because the yard that built her worked faster than the yards that built the other 3 museum ships. (To be honest, they also had a loose "numbering" system which meant ships weren't necessarily commissioned in the order they were contracted or meant to built in, either!) CV-16 ended up serving in the US Navy for close to 49 years, about 30 of those as THE primary training carrier.
(No, they never operated any fighter bigger than an F-8 off an Essex-class carrier. The flight deck wasn't stressed for fighters with the gross take-off or landing weights of the F-4 or F-14. The F-4 Phantom was originally intended to operate from the Essex-class ships but the USN felt the Essex-class flight decks would have to be strengthened to operate the plane safely from them and seeing as most Essex ships would be decommissioned by the late 1960s and early 1970s thought the modifications weren't worth the investment.)
Technically, we could say five of these ships still exist since Oriskany (CV-34) was scuttled and became an artificial reef. How long its hull will last under the beating waves of the Gulf of Mexico is anybody's guess but it will probably be recognizeable for at least a few decades more and there will still be pieces of it hundreds of years from now even after the hull degrades and becomes a jumbled, rusting mess. Two undeniable facts -- the Oriskany has already been shifted at least 10 ft deeper than when originally sunk by the action of Hurricane Gustav (2008) and the interior fittings made of steel are rusting quickly. There are layers of rust all over the interior of that ship. Divers have penetrated very deep into that ship since it was sunk in 2006. The Oriskany, btw, is the only surviving long-hull Essex-class ship.
There's a myth spread about the Bunker Hill and Franklin, guys. A lot of people said they weren't fit for service after World War. ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE -- they were fit enough to go back into combat after they were repaired and one of those ships (Bunker Hill) actually transported troops and remained in active until 1947.
These two ships basically became surplus in the 1950s as newer, supercarrier-class ships were commissioned (the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk Classes) and purpose LPH ships (heli-carriers) were built. A few of the unmodernized Essex-class ships actually were pressed into service as LPH's but not these two. Franklin was sold for scrap in 1966. The Bunker Hill continued on longer and was used in electronics tests by the Navy but never went back to sea in active duty. It was sold for scrap in 1973.
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The initial 3"/50 was also capable of antiaircraft fire, but it was a terrible gun for surface action, with a shell weight barely adequate to penetrate the hulls of larger merchantmen, let alone a warship. They were armed with this inadequate gun specifically to discourage surface action. The Pacific war changed from mostly using torpedoes to actually needing an effective deck gun by late 1943. The remaining Japanese shipping was mostly shallow draft sampans and coasters that couldn't be sunk with a torpedo. The 3"/50 was generally swapped out with a 4"/50, a very effective gun for surface action. Many skippers wanted to retain their 4"/50s when the official armament became the 5"/25. They avoided enough yard time to allow the gun to be changed and generally did whatever subterfuge they could to avoid losing the 4"/50. A few managed to retain the 4"/50 right up to the end of the war. Most skippers did come to recognize the hitting power of the 5"/25 gun, especially when a director was mounted in the last year of the war. The 5"/25 needed no preparation for diving, unlike the 4"/50, which needed a muzzle plug and the telescopic sight removed.
Although the 5"/25 was theoretically capable of antiaircraft fire, the Mark 40 mount only allowed a maximum elevation of 40 degrees rather than the other marks of 5"/25 gun mounts that allowed an elevation of 85 degrees. This made the wet mount submarine gun a single purpose antiship piece. Even if it had been capable of antiaircraft fire, it's doubtful a submarine would have chosen to fight it out with an aircraft 10 miles away flying at 15,000 feet rather than diving to avoid the fight. The 40mm gun(s) was an effective antiaircraft weapon at the 3 to 5 miles range a sub might have to fight off an aircraft that jumped them at the surface. It was also found the gun did a good job of shooting up and sinking many of the lightly built Japanese merchant shipping remaining toward the end of the war.
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Quite frankly, the entire thing smacks of unmitigated, galling arrogance on the part of the Britain-based elements, from Churchill to Whitehall to the Naval Planning Office. Not just in one part, but at every individual step.
-Treating the Ottomans as a backwards colonial nation that could be bullied with a show of force rather than galvanized into action, ignoring the entire history of an empire whose existence predated Britain and indeed multiple prior historical examples that could have provided Britain with knowledge about what might not work in this situation
-Seizing the Ottoman ships despite having a perfectly good idea of what the response would be, and then getting offended when the response happened
-Continuing to treat the Ottomans as a backwards non-threat in their battle plans by outrageously hamstringing the naval force with absurd deployments and restrictions on fire
-Continuing said absurd deployments by actually having better tools for the job available IN THE AREA in the form of the minesweeping destroyers and refusing to use them for no conceivable reason beyond "well it shouldn't be necessary"
-Every single god damn thing about the Gallipoli Campaign
Of all the points, as well, Point 4 is the most outrageous to me. The whole point of building an overwhelming advantage is to make use of it to the absolute maximum, because of the ancient maxim that mass minimizes risk. You deploy more and better troops so you can utterly overwhelm at the point of attack, producing a fight of minimum length and thus minimum overall risk. The same is true with ships, certainly at least in this context. Deciding to just not send in the purpose-built military ships is an absurd decision that undermines this maxim in the first place, but doing so and then not having those purpose-built ships do anything else in the meantime, just sit around twiddling their thumbs while they wait for Dogger Bank fishermen to try and handle shellfire in a box canyon, is almost offensively wasteful. Even if it WORKS, the trawlers being slower means it will definitionally take longer and thus give your ships more time that they have to be suppressing the Ottomans and are at risk of getting hit in return, causing expensive damage and wasteful casualties -- and that's if it works, which it bloody well didn't.
Edit: Oh, yes, and it taking longer also means your big ships will definitionally have to fire more shells and put more wear on their barrels, which was the whole reason you wound up in this stupid mess, trying to avoid just that. So you're not just not benefiting your overall objectives with the decision to use trawlers instead of destroyers or fleet sweepers, and you're not JUST putting the operation at risk, you are also contradicting your own stupid self-imposed limitations!
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Admiral King was an alcoholic, womanizing, and constantly pissed off desk sailor. He seems to have developed his Anglophobia sometime during WWI when he was a staff officer assigned as liaison to the British Home Fleet. He apparently got into several battles with British officer over antisubmarine tactics, and is rumored to have only just escaped sacking when discovered in the bed of a British admiral's wife, although I have never been able to learn the name of the admiral or his wife, so that's really hearsay at this juncture. After that, he seems to have developed a loathing of all things British, and the RN in particular. He refused to allow convoys off the US coast for the first six months of the WWII. While his stated reason was we didn't have enough escort ships, others suspect it's because the convoy was a British invention. He also fought the Army's plan to fly B-24's to fly from Greenland and Iceland to close the Iceland gap to German subs. He felt the Navy's next flying boat, the Coronado, could handle the task, even though the Coronado turned out to be a failure as a long range patrol bomber.
On the plus side, King was the main advocate for the invasion of Guadalcanal in the face of fierce Army opposition. While it was a long and bloody campaign, history has proven King's strategic thinking correct. Guadalcanal was the first retaking of conquered Japanese territory in the war, and it proved the Army and Navy together could use amphibious operations to take islands from the Japanese. He was also instrumental in seeing that enough naval strength was available in the Pacific in 1942 to protect supply lines to Australia and prevent the Japanese actually invading the country.
By far his most egregious decision was his role in the court-martial of Charles B McVay III, captain of the USS Indianapolis. He overturned Admiral Nimitz's letter of reprimand as a result of the sinking of the Indianapolis and instead demanded a court-martial, and carried his demands all the way to Secretary of the Navy Forrestal. Forestall gave in because he didn't want to start an open battle between him and King so soon after the end of the war. The court-martial eventually convicted Captain McVay in November, 1945 of failing to zigzag as an antisubmarine measure. Even though Forrestal overturned the sentence, and McVay had an essentially honorary promotion to rear admiral just before his retirement in 1949, the court-martial was the end of the career for a promising and honorable Navy officer.
Indianapolis's survivors came together and tried for many years to have the court-martial removed from what they consider "their skipper's" record. McVay spent many years in self recrimination over the deaths of so many of his men, even though most (but not all) the survivors tried to rally around him. His family stated he received hate mail and telephone calls from some survivor's families for many years after the court-martial, particularly as each anniversary of the sinking approached. McVay suffered from mental health problems for years after the court-martial. His family reported he would wake up screaming from nightmares he was back in the water with his shipmates, trying to fight off attacking sharks. Finally, he lost the battle and, in 1968, committed suicide using his Navy service pistol on the back steps of his Litchfield, Connecticut home.
After all the attempts to clear McVay's name, it was a 12 year old schoolboy's class project in 1998 that finally bought the miscarriage of justice to national attention. Hunter Scott testified before Congress and turned over the voluminous notes he took from interviews with almost 150 Indianapolis survivors. Congress passed a resolution in 2000 asking the Navy to exonerate Captain McVay. President Clinton, to his credit, signed the resolution the same year. The Navy finally, after fighting tooth and nail not to, exonerated Captain McVay in July, 2001, with Secretary of the Navy England ordered McVay's Navy record purged of the court-martial and of all implication of wrongdoing on his part.
Why was King so intent on seeing McVay convicted? The evidence implicates King carrying a grudge all those years because McVay's father, Admiral Charles B McVay Jr, had ordered a letter of reprimand be placed in King's file in 1922 because he and others were caught sneaking women onto a Navy ship. He apparently decided his best revenge was seeing the career of his son destroyed, and this is exactly what Admiral Charles McVay Jr thought was the reason. King has been accused of the death of many US Navy sailors and merchant sailors because of his refusal to initiate convoys. That can be argued, but one death can be laid squarely on King's shoulders, and that was the death of Captain McVay.
I'm sorry for the length of this, but I couldn't let the mention of Admiral King pass by without telling this story. Like Hunter Scott, I was a 16 year old schoolboy in 1963, and my junior history project was the sinking of the Indianapolis. Captain (then Rear Admiral) McVay paid me the honor of speaking to me for almost three hours over two days about him, his ship, and the sinking. He told me of the heroism of not only his own crew but what survivors would call the Angel of the Sky and the two Angels of the Water. Many more of the crew wouldn't have survived without them. The rescue was more a result of them and their amazing efforts than the Navy. Look them up to find out what they did or this will become more of War and Peace than it already has. Even in 1963, McVay still bore the full responsibility for the sinking if his ship. My school project didn't stir anything but one newspaper story, but it left me carrying Charles McVay in my heart. My heart sank on that terrible day of November 6, 1968 when I heard of Admiral McVay's death, and not a November 6 goes by that I don't think of him.
There are only two villains in this story. The first are the unknown naval bureaucrats that denied the Indianapolis a destroyer escort and then delayed rescue for days because they didn't have a system to alert them when a single ship was overdue. The other is Admiral Ernest King.
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NOTE: When talking about the skeg problem, you had a picture of the later design of the IOWA Class stern skeg/propeller/rudder complex. Did you note how narrow the gap was between the two side-by-s9de huge rudders at the tail end of the ship? This concentrated the turning moment of the engine power of the two inner skegged multi-blade propellers and made the ship significantly more maneuverable at higher speeds. Better than the NORTH CAROLINA Class, as you mention. However, it turns out that it had a secondary use that was more-or-less unique to the SD and IOWA Classes that used this rudder arrangement: To wit, The gap was so narrow that if both rudders were turned in OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS to right-angles to the ship centerline, they formed a roughly SOLID WALL to the water being pushed through the two center propellers and at least some of the water from the two outer propellers. The result? Even when moving at full circa-33+ knot speed, the ship could be stopped more-or-less WITHIN ITS OWN L:ENGTH!!! "Ultimate Emergency Stop" as noted in some sci-fi stories, but real here. The force could possibly damage the rudders, so it was not to be done unless really needed and an inspection would be needed after each use to make sure about this, but it was a very unusual ability, wasn't it?
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Thanks for the well-informed and pleasantly snarky presentation.
I can't imagine I'm the only one to mention this, but your storytelling style is extremely reminiscent of that of "Mr. Peabody," a brilliant historian who happened also to be a dog, and who appeared in each installment of The Adventures Of Rocky And Bullwinkle, which was an American animated TV show that was shown on Saturday mornings to little baby-boomers back in the late 1950s and early '60s.
Mr. Peabody lectured his young pupil Sherman on various historical events in a style that was both cynical and omniscient, just as you do, and he had a pronounced English accent as well. The humor style was very dry and understated, which appealed to me as a four or five-year-old at that time, for some reason.
I don't know if it is intentional, but you sound almost exactly like an updated version of Mr. Peabody, with a somewhat increased emphasis on engineering details instead of personalities. Even the tenor range of your voice is similar to that of the reedy Mr. Peabody, who sounded like a patient but sardonic English tutor.
If you're curious, some Sherman and Mr. Peabody bits can - at least for now - be found (the were called "Peabody's Improbable History" in the show) on YouTube.
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Vought produced two world beating fighters and two dogs. You mentioned one dog, the Cutlass, that actually made it to squadron service. At least one could argue the Cutlass failed because it used too many new features at once with and underdeveloped engine, but it did have potential.
The other Vought dog was the F6U Pirate. It used a thoroughly conventional layout of straight wings and various aerodynamic bits and pieces in an attempt to wring out maximum performance from the largest turbojet available at the time, the Westinghouse J34 with an afterburner, a first for carrier aircraft. Unfortunately, US engine designers were still working out how to make powerful turbojets that would fit in small naval fighters, and the J34 wasn't the engine designers hoped for. It was seriously underpowered for sea level use, although the Pirate did have a top speed of nearly 600 mph at 20,000 feet. At sea level, however, it could be outrun by the speedy F8F Bearcat prop fighter, leading to the nickname "Groundhog". Given the straight wind design, it had no real development potential, so only 33 were built. On the plus side, it was a docile aircraft to fly and never killed any pilots, something that couldn't be said for the Cutlass, with 320 produced, in which 25 pilots died and 28% of the airframes were destroyed in accidents.
Amazingly, in an attempt to win public favor for an aircraft already being being denigrated as a widowmaker, the Cutlass was ordered into use by the Blue Angels. I've never been able to find out what admiral made that decision, which is probably just as well for him. While trying to make full power take offs, the aircrafts experienced multiple serious flameouts, total hydraulic failures, engine fires on the ground and in the air, and a landing gear door falling off into a crowd of spectators, miraculously not killing or injuring anyone. The last straw was Lt. Lewis "Whitey" Feightner experiencing a total hydraulic failure in the first Cutlass Blue Angels flight while attempting to make a full afterburner takeoff. After clipping some trees at the end of the runway and losing one of the two engines, Feightner contemplated ejecting but was afraid of the risks to the people on the ground. He stayed with the plane long enough to get the backup hydraulic system on line so he could make a hard left turn, get the gear down, and safely get back on the runway, all the while a huge blue flame of hydraulic fluid trailed behind him. The crowd cheered, assuming it was part of the show. During a straight and level flight on the way to an airshow in Chicago,, the other Cutlass in use also experienced a flameout, forcing Feightner's wingman, Lt Harding MacKnight, to make an emergency landing at Naval Air Station Glenview. Being short on fuel, Feightner had to make an emergency landing at what was then Orchard Airpark, plowing through rows of peach baskets place on the new runway to keep vehicles off, thereby landing on what became the first runway of what we now know as Chicago O'Hare Airport. The Blue Angels brass, deciding discretion was the better part of valor, had the two aircraft dismantled and trucked to NAS Memphis, where they served for many years a maintenance instructional airframes. Ironically, both were eventually destroyed while being used for firefighting training.
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My experience with screw overspeeding aboard the USS Virginia CGN38 was during the 1993 Atlantic Storm. We were underway for that, and trying to make Halifax, before the Admiral in charge of the task group decided that wasn't reasonable. As the largest vessel in the NATO unit it was axiomatic that we were less pounded by the storm than were the other ships nominally in company with us.
The waves and rolls were such that one or the other shaft was coming out of the water, and you could feel it through the whole ship. There'd suddenly be a notable attempt at motion towards the side of the ship with the screw coming up out of the water; if you were in the rear half of the ship you could hear when the shaft strut bearings lost lubrication as they came out of the water because the rubber would SCREAM as the shaft spun without the seawater lubrication. Because the blades of the screw were coming out of the water, that's where the overspeed comes in, and we were usually only dealing with a fraction of an arc of rotation, as the next blade in the screw slammed into the water, which would shake the whole ship again. And this could be repeating two or three times per shaft revolution. We'd still be averaging 20-40 shaft RPM, but the difference in instantaneous speed was incredible.
This was with modern turbine engines, and heavy duty reduction gearing, run through an equally robust & tested thrust bearing. We weren't too worried for the turbines in the enginerooms, but the shaft seals were another issue. That kind of torque and abuse through that collar had the potential to damage the seating surfaces on the shaft seal, which would have allowed lots of water to come in along the shaft. Most of the time, the back-up shaft seal on a modern ship is going to be an inflatable boot. That can only seal when the shaft is still. On a twin screw vessel, like Virginia, this would have been possible, but there was one ship in company with us that lost their shaft seal during this storm, and had the lovely choice of trying to deal with the massive flooding past their failed shaft seal, or going dead in the water.
That's what the experience of overspeeding a screw aboard a modern, turbine engine ship was like.
I can only imagine just how many more things could go horribly, and permanently, wrong with an early vertical expansion steam engine. Eek.
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One of the potential advantages of the Montana class postwar was for midshipmen cruises. The term "midshipmen" In this regard is a little misleading, since the postwar Navy had summer cruises for not only Annapolis midshipmen but for naval cadets from the various colleges and university, midshipmen from the Coast Guard and Merchant marine academy, plus quite a large number of petty officers being trained for specialized roles like electronics and engineering. While a Montana required a large (2,400 crewmen) manning in war, she could get by with about half that number in peacetime, especially with the trainees filling in some roles. That left a lot of berthing space for midshipmen of all types, something that was lacking in the cruisers normally used in that role. Not only could they have accommodated between 500-600 midshipmen, their 15,000 mile range at 15 knots would have allowed them to visit any part of the world with one fueling, an expensive proposition for smaller ships with less range. The class also had expansive flag accommodations, useful for training command staff, as well as the largest Combat Information Center afloat, allowing more training opportunities. The fact the flag accommodations would have also been the most comfortable in the Navy for admirals tagging along on training voyages wouldn't hurt, since their recommendations were important for deciding what ships remained in active service. They would have been carrying modern 5"/54 guns, and probably would have had their 40 mm guns replaced with the 3"/50 guns that became standard postwar, allowing trainees experience on a wide range of modern weapon types. Of course, all this assumes that at least a couple of the class would have been built and commissioned by war's end. If they had been, their best postwar use may have been as the world's largest training ships.
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Drachisms of the Day:
11:50 "The US engineers assumed some degree of sanity had gone into the
manufacture of Prinz Eugen's propulsion system, were left in charge, the
majority of Prinz Eugen's propulsion system took itself off to it's own
personal fuhrer bunker and shot itself. Disassembling in a rather spectacular
manner."
12:44 "None of the very early carriers came out of things looking particularly
brilliant."
17:58 "I suppose if you do need to worry about 'ship worm' on an iron ship,
you've probably got bigger things to worry about."
20:19 "Tracing genealogies and various people who basically spent their part of
the last millennia stabbing, shooting or hitting people over the head in the military."
21:00 "And yes, I will write it in the manner that I tend speak, hopefully.
So it will be a little bit sarcastic, a little bit flippant, a little bit off the
hook. But, what else do you expect, to be perfectly honest?"
23:25 "As built they were so terribly weak that THE SEA could bend them out of shape."
24:06 "Putting a 6-inch cruiser gun on them would probably end up looking like a
giant 20000-ton-bus-version of that."
"
35:57 "Master Of Dickery asks..."
42:44 "Uncle Stir-fry asks..."
52:27 "Grand Emperor Kurtz asks..."
58:32 "Assuming there's a magical money printing machine that is immune to the effects of inflation thru temporal paradox ... or something."
(all due respect to the names of people asking questions....it just sounded funny)
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I have watched the Texel video couple of times, and I have to say that I enjoyed it more, but not because quality of making, but the circumstances of scenarios. At Texel both sides would have had a plan ( I guess) and technology was for the both sides was similar, while alternate Samar has too many "what if's". At Texel both sides would have had full armament, fuel, commands structure and one general site of battle with bad weather (allways). At alternate Samar you have number of battles on large area, with different commanders and goals etc.
What I am trying to say is that I might be more fun making a video about scenarios where conditions are better known and scenario plays differently from real event by a single flip of a coin then rolling a dice and letting it play out. For example if the Scharnhorst would not has lost its radar at North Cape early on or if Prince of Wales and Repulse would have gone unspotted by the Japanes and returned to Singapore to fight another day.
Love the channel, keep at the good work.
P.S I have suggested before, but if you ever get around and find it interesting, the British Navy at the Baltic during and after WW1 is a toppic that would easylly be made into an episode in it self. You have submarines operating against germans, torpedo boats sinking russians, espionage, royal navy saving estonia from Soviet fleet, L55 submarine ending in the hands of the russians, submarines scutteled of Finland, etc.
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I think a great example is HMS Shannon who actually had a 1v1 fight in 1812, her armament and the performance of her sister ship HMS Guerriere, would show she should lose to Chesapeake, but not just did she win, she won so decisively, you'd need 4 chessapeake's too have the same number of cannon balls hitting Shannon as hit Chessapeake. This doesn't even go into the tactics and the way the Shannon had a cannon at the bow specifically placed their to act like a giant sniper rifle taking out the cheesapeakes helmsmen and wheel, this wasn't a particularly normal tactic, but won them the battle.
Another example is HMS Speedy Vs El Gamo 14 guns vs 32 guns of bigger calibre, yet Speedy won.
The idea of doing a 1v1 based on specs does not show training or how ships are set up differently, the accuracy or preferred tactics, it doesn't examine the captains. Or as you said when, where and why they are fighting which create 100s of different results.
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Regarding writing- I was A USN Fire Control Technician, and had my radar director suffer a hard casualty on the firing line. Range gate was gone- we could no longer track Oscar for shore bombardment (this was during Desert Storm). When the radar goes down on the firing line that's a problem. We had to soften the beach and there was a rather narrow channel that allowed approach. Only two ships could fire at any time and we were all lined up to do so. Several more were behind us (USS Barbey) and we had 3 minutes to fix the radar and get some 5" shells on their way or get out of there.
In this kind of stress, the most important member of the whole weapons department is the Gun Chief. In that moment, this enlisted man of E-7,8 or 9 rank (Chief, Senior Chief or Master Chief) gives orders to commanders and they obey. There are only two people on the ship who know how to fix this radar- myself (FC3 Cunningham) and Jimbone (FC2 Jackson). Our division officer, the weapons officer and even the XO showed up on gun plot, asking questions but otherwise being useless. Jimbone and I knew or equipment well, and identified the problem rather quickly. We powered down, I pulled the faulty crystal bank out of the console and turned to face the crowd. Chief was standing right in front of me. I said, "I found the problem!". I handed the card to Chief. He looked at it, then looked me in the eye and asked, "Will this fix the radar? 'Cause if it doesn't, it's your ass." I replied, "this will fix it. Get me one now."
Less than a minute later, Chief arrives with a new card in hand. I put it it, fired up the radar and we made our firing run with 12 seconds to spare.
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In the 80s I had the privilege to watch the "Iowa" and the "New Jersey" at sea and in port. At Kiel week one of them was just at the horizon, because she was not allowed into Kiel harbour (because she carried possibly nuclear weapons, which I found ridiculous).
On the other occasion, we took part in the naval parade for the centennial celebration of the "Statue of Liberty" in New York, where President Reagan got the President's salute by 27 international "men of war", as I was a cadet on the Federal German Navy's training ship "Deutschland". As my own grandfather was a cadet on the old ship of the line "SMS Schlesien" some kind of circle closed for myself as I could watch one hell of a ship closely passing by, covered in gun smoke due to the salutes. It has been a quite happy moment. And I was not surprised to learn whole libanese villages were wiped out, when they shot their guns at them, as we watched in the news...😳
Thank you both for this interview!👍🏻 BRAVO ZULU! Well done!😉
Kind regards,
Jan-Erik Schmidt,
LtCdr, German Naval Reserve
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On the underappreciated role of what it takes to operate a propulsion plant on a warship - I have an old Navy friend down in Texas, who served on the recomissioning crews for both the Iowa and Wisconsin in the 1980's, and was on the Wisconsin when it was deployed during the First Gulf War, a Machinist Mate, who's job it was to operate the propulsion plant - whereas I was the nuclear equivalent on board submarines.
One time while visiting him, I commented that the one thing I really hated about being in Engineering, was having to get up at 2 AM to start up the reactor and propulsion plant, whilst most of the rest of the crew didn't have to bother being on board until 7:55 AM for an 8 AM underway.
That's the one time he ever got anything approaching angry with me, he let me have it with both barrels - "I don't want to f*****g hear that! Try having to be on board FOUR DAYS ahead of time, to get four separate boiler rooms and four separate steam plants up and operating and balanced out, on a 40 year old steam plant!"
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Drachisms of the Day:
13:02 "Oh, look at me. I've got such a big battleship.
Insert relevant 'compensation joke' here thing."
14:02 "Now, it has been pointed out to me that I have recently
been answering multi-part-questions in the correct order. This
is heresy and must not be stood for. So, in the reverse order...."
17:59 "And, as for just how lethal these things could be, there's a
reason why an awful lot of people who flooded ships magazines
and saved the ship by doing so, ended up being awarded those
medals posthumously."
18:37 "The rigid airship, as lovingly modeled here, by USS Akron."
21:34 (in regards to rigid airships) "You could just divert over
another country and ... what are they going to do about it?"
22:22 "Battleships are big. The Earth is CONSIDERABLY larger."
22:45 "Because, to be honest, if you were close enough to a hostile ship
the detailed picture would help you figure out which ship it was,
you were probably far too close."
24:56 "But from this altitude, are you really going to be able to pick out
exactly which ship it is? Wether it's a North Carolina or a South Dakota?
Um...I mean for those of us who are obsessive naval historians, we probably
can do."
29:52 "At the beginning of WW1, the British based the grand fleet for a while
over in Northern Ireland. Umm..so, yeah, good luck with that."
43:51 "But be a much more fightable ship without it's front turrets being
turned into temporary aquariums."
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A point about the multiplicity of water tanks: You don't want to be filling the same tanks that you're drawing water from. for any particular service. While it's possible, you'd prefer to be able to test the water in a tank before putting that tank into service. So, ideally, you'll have at least three tanks for a given use: One ready for use, one being filled from the distillation plants, and one supplying the load. Then compound this by the number of active distillation plants aboard ship: My ship had two enginerooms, each with an independent distillation plant, that could nominally supply a large fraction of the design water needs of the ship - and in practice could meet the needs of the ship by itself, if we went to strict water rationing. I'm guessing that an Iowa would have at least a distillation plant per engineroom. Though those may have been less efficient than the ones we had aboard a later era ship. Each distillation plant/engineroom would have it's own dedicated potable water tanks; and it's own dedicated boiler/engineering feed water tanks.
Furthermore, since the quality of the water your distillation plant is going to vary based upon whether the intent is to produce feed water or pot water, your distillation plant can only produce one or the other.
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Because the early American Navy was so small, it could afford to pick the best available men for service. Now at times those men maybe weren't the ideal candidates, but they were still good stock.. The American merchant service payed ridiculously higher wages and offered better conditions so many many potential recruits signed on with them instead, and I can't blame them.
But the life of a sailor in the Navy was attractive to some apparently.
Also, interestingly enough, and this is not covered enough in various books, the crews of many early American warships had a sizeable minority of black sailors. On the Constitution in particular several entire gun crews were black only. I believe it was Issac Hull who cited many of them for bravery. Saying they fought like devils, stripped to the waist, singing and chanting as they loaded, fired the big 24s. Even though Captains weren't supposed to hire black sailors, many openly did and apparently the Navy had bigger problems and ignored it.
Fantastic video as always Drach.
Im now 8 DryDocks away from my 100th episode. Glorious day indeed.
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Drach, it's important to note that the displacement Springsharp gives is not standard displacement, but normal displacement. To see your standard displacement, you have to generate and view the report, which will list light, standard, normal, and full load displacement. Also, I'd recommend using miscellaneous weight to simulate the weight of things like, say, aviation facilities.
Springsharp's top speed is also often not accurate to the listed top speeds of real ships, if you use the locked-horsepower option. However, what it does generally match is the actual in-service speed, at typical displacement and with a typical level of bottom-fouling, as opposed to a clean bottom and light displacement for trials. Engine factor was never implemented, so note that if you're trying to build a destroyer in it, it will claim that the engines are too big or too heavy for the ship, because it's trying to put battleship engines of that power in there.
Also, clicking the "Flush Deck" or "Mid Break" buttons on the freeboard tab sets the freeboard at each end of each section completely independently of what you've entered, based solely on the ship's waterline length.
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Notes on the US Navy AP fuze problem: The Mark 21 Base Detonating Fuze (note spelling) was designed to be highly resistant to the extremely high forces involved with penetrating thick face-hardened armor at angle up to 40 degrees (which acceptance tests showed the projectile could do) -- this was the most extreme testing regime of any AP rounds ever made. To achieve this, the Mark 19 base fuze design used in the new High Capacity rounds (without or, later with the largest HC shells, with a short 0.01-second delay) was heavily modified to cause the firing-pin-initiated primer explosion in the fuze, in addition to setting off the total 0.033-second delay, to physically jam the black powder delay element and post-delay detonator and its TNT-filled connecting tubes to the two tetryl boosters -- one on each side of the end of the fuze body -- into a "am firing" locked position that could not be reversed by impact forces from any direction. The jamming locked the elements into one compact, solid, damage-resistant mass that would require the total crushing of the fuze to inactivate during the delay interval. However, this new locking system had tight tolerances inside the the fuze, much higher than any previous US or foreign base fuze. Explosive "D" (ammonium picrate) is chemically reactive with several metals including steel, requiring that the cavity surface, the inner face of the base plug, and the outside of the base fuze be thickly coated in lacquer. Unfortunately, this did not make the fuze air-tight and over time fumes from the Explosive :D: could leak into the fuze and put a very thin layer of corrosion on the internal parts. After 6 months or so, this corrosion got thick enough to mess up the motion of the locking system's moving parts of many of the fuzes and this resulted in duds or reduced-power booster action that resulted in the extremely insensitive Explosive "D" being merely set on fire (deflagrating) or exploding in a "low explosive" (black powder, for example) manner. The various duds and other not-acceptable results of this MASSACHSETTS/JEAN BART engagement episode were documented and fuzes dismantled and studied and the corrosion problem was found a few months later. Note that this fuze was used in ALL US Navy AP shells 6" and up during WWII, so finding a solution was critical.. To fix it, the fuze had to be made airtight and, by early 1943 it was found that the new Bakelite plastic could be coated over the surface of the fuze projecting inside the cavity and this sealed the fuze from the fumes, ending the problem. This is how US Navy bureaus are supposed to operate...
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Your segment on damage assessment reminds me of a great story. Every bomber returning from Europe would have every bullet hole and damage recorded. Occasionally they would be able to add armor, like 25 pounds or so, as improvements in engine efficiency, etc. proved the added weight was OK. The brass and those less informed would look at the data and say "look at all the bullet holes in this area, put more armor there". Well, that's NOT where to put it. A hungarian (or Polish?) data analyst suggested the idea that no, you put the armor where you are seeing very few bullet holes on returning bombers. Why? Because an area with statistically a LOT of bullet holes on a returning bomber meant that that area CAN withstand damage, otherwise the bomber would be more likely to have been shot down. Areas with few bullet holes on RETURNING bombers meant that those that did get hit in that area were more likely to be shot down, so put the armor there. Obviously there's other considerations such as CG impacts, woundings, etc. This is just a top level synopsis. I just found that really interesting.
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I served on an Adams Class Destroyer (USS Henry B. Wilson), which is just a Forrest Sherman class with missile launchers. They were, as far as livability, just part of the updated family of the Fletchers (Sumners, Gearings, etc). Pound for pound, these ships were tough son-of-a-bitches. In the late 1980's, there really wasn't any other class of ship with the shear firepower per ton than these pups. And, as a tin-can sailor myself, the tales of Cpt. Evans and the Johnston are legendary.
And I do have a Naval tale to tell- and I'm sure Drachinifel will look into it being the historian he is but it's a true tale. In 1987, while serving on the Hammerin' Hank, I went to a rummage sale where I bought an old sea chest. In it, amongst other things, was a midshipman's training manual from the US Naval Academy from 1903. Inside it were also a number of artifacts from the midshipman who had the manual- letters from home, laundry receipts, test scores from the academy, etc.
After the Gulf War I was assigned to the USS Crommelin in Hawaii. And, only a few days after my assignment, I went to visit the Arizona Memorial. And I freaked out. The midshipman who had the book was Franklin Van Valkenburgh. And I didn't realize who he was until that moment- the captain of the USS Arizona on Dec 7th, 1941
Any US Sailor knows that the Arizona was and is still commissioned and is under the command of COMPAC fleet. I ran to the headquarters, freaking out, burst into the building quarterdeck screaming, "I gotta talk to the admiral! I gotta talk to the admiral!" (I was an FC2 at the time, and in dungarees). He heard the commotion and came out to the quarterdeck. He asked, "What's all the commotion?" I turned to him, put the book in his hands and said, "Look at this, Sir!"
He at first gave it an appraising an cursory look until he saw the name in it. Then his eyes got like dinner plates. He looked at me and asked, "Where did you find this?!?" I replied, "I've had it for years but I didn't realize what it was until today."
The Admiral handed the book back to me and said, "Petty Officer Cunningham, this is an incredible and valuable find. What did you want to do with it?" I replied, "Sir, it belongs to the ship and my shipmates. Take it!" I thrust it into his hands and ran the hell out of there, went back to my ship and spent the next two hours trying to remember how to breathe.
The book, as well as many of the artifacts that were in it, are now on display at the USS Arizona museum. And, about 2 months later (after it was authenticated) the Admiral himself promoted me to FC1.
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Only tangentially related to the channel, but I just returned from visiting the newly widowed wife of the second-to-last WWII veteran of the congregation I serve. This gentleman was a flight engineer/ gunner on a B-24 in the Pacific. From the stories he told to me, his crew mostly flew maritime patrol missions. On the long flights, he would sometimes be given the chance to sit in the copilot’s seat and fly the aircraft. After the war, he became a private pilot and flew for years. A fine gentleman who could spin a good yarn. In the 15 years I have been at this, I’ve had the chance to know dozens of these men and women - including a fellow who joined the navy in 1937 and served on Oklahoma in the engine room until late November of 41 when he was sent stateside never to see his buddies again, an Avenger pilot, a B-17 ball turret gunner who bailed out over Germany, a Marine who was with the 1st Division on Guadalcanal, a married couple who were head doctor and head nurse of a field hospital in Normandy, and many others. In each case it has been sad to say goodbye to these ordinary yet extraordinary heroes.
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It also depends on the type of antiaircraft guns mounted on a sub. The quad 20 mm mounts on U Boats did a good job of sending enough metal downrange that attacking aircraft, if not shot down, were at least thrown off the accuracy of their bomb runs. As you say, once Coastal Command figured out the limitations of those mounts and changed their routes of attack, being attacked by three or more aircraft was almost always a death sentence for the sub, even if they shot down one or two of the attacking aircraft. In addition to bombs and depth charges strafing was a killer for surfaced subs. Since the AA guns had very little in the way of splinter protection, strafing would disable or kill many of the members of the gun crews, and they couldn't be replaced fast enough to drive off all the attackers. The idea of the Flak U Boat (U-flak) was only tested on four boats. While there was some limited success by the first two U-flaks (U-256 and U-441), they and the other two that were actually converted suffered heavy damage and lost 10-20 crew during the attacks by the RAF. Once the U-flaks were repaired, they were returned to service as normal VIIC boats when it was obvious that the idea was a failure.
The US experience in the Pacific was quite different. All the fleet boats had at least one 40 mm Bofors, and many had two. The most heavily armed boat I've been able to find was USS Balao a boat whose captain seemed to delight in collecting guns. It had two 5"/25 guns, two 40 mm, at least two and sometimes three 20 mm cannon, four .50 Browning machine guns, and, although I don't know how many times this loadout was used, stanchion mounts for another four or five .30 Browning machine guns. In the case of the USN, this wasn't really in response to Japanese air attacks (although somewhere around 100 aircraft were shot down during the war) but to strafe Japanese armored barges that were resupplying stranded Japanese troops. Their draft was too shallow to sink with a torpedo, so subs often teamed up with PT boats to use their radars to locate and attack these barges. All the boats would use their smaller guns to keep Japanese gun crews away from their heavy armament until the sub could bring it's 5" guns to bear. It was the only weapon in the absence of a destroyer that could sink a barge, and most barges kept to shoal waters where the destroyer couldn't follow them. My dad served on a PT boat, and his boat was involved in these "combined operations". Being a much braver guy than me. he said it was the most fun he'd ever had during his service while he was still vertical. :-)
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Drachisms of the Day:
14:46 "No one ever accused them of being competent. But schizophrenic may well be accurate."
16:02 "And then, when the war ended it's like 'Navy? What Navy? We don't have a navy. No, no, no!
Those lovely Slovenes, Croats and Serbs over there. They have a navy. That they're very quickly
repainting. But it's not ours. So you can't have it.' Buuut....well..........the allies didn't quite buy that."
17:40 "They just had the misfortune of when they eventually encountered pushy westerners in warships."
20:13 "They never really quite got their act back-together after Lepanto, way back when.
But, they tried. You got to give them points for trying."
25:14 "Trying to command a battle from an open bridge was a cold and damp affair.
Being British, I don't know quite why they were complaining about that. It's the natural way of things after all."
28:23 "Which could best be described as a steel ingot that they put a Lion class armament on."
1:02:13 "The hundreds of thousands, if not more, volts of energy, that you need to drive a ship,
suddenly being dumped into them and their surrounding environment.
Mmm, tends not to go to well."
1:03:09 "At least you're not turning the entire rear half of your ship into a giant fly-grid. Except for humans.
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It is interesting to think that all the 3 LatinAmerican Dreadnoughts could have been modernized like the battleships of the Main naval powers between world wars.
For Minas Gerais, They could have changed the 6 twin 12' turrets with 4 twin 14 inch /45 like the ones in the USS New York and Nevada classes. Also a propulsion plant change and bow redesign could have resulted in modern battlecruisers for the time being. If the focus would have been into "Battleship like" upgrade, protection could have been improved (both belt and deck) but i think the starting point was too low to get to a satisfying result, therefore a too much of a large improvement should have been needed. At the end of the day, a Kongo-like modernization should have been the best bet for the class.
The Rivadavia Class could have received similar main armament modernization (replacing the 6 twin 12' with 4 twin 14/45) change that was in fact planned by the Argentineans as a part of a major upgrade plan for the class, but budget restriction forced to maintain the 12 inchers. In this class, the belt and deck armor had a better starting point, so at the end of the day a propulsion plant change and increase in the deck and belt armor would have been posible, ended up with battleships on pair with USS Standars in terms of protection and about as good as Kongos in terms of firepower.
Lastly, Latorre could have just incremented his armor protection both belt and deck at the expense of speed, which could have even been compensated with a new improved powerplant. There's no doubt this was the battleship with best upgrade perspective, since it started with guns that were not obsolete for WW2 standars.
At some point the Latin American naval race was in response to pure theoretical conflict. Except for the 1978 south border "Beagle" crisis between Argentina and Chile, the relationships where allways very peacefull between the 3 neighbors. Despite that, armed forces between the 3 where allways on pair (parity which in fact broke after 1982 Malvinas/Falklands conflict, due to the fact that Argentina was gradualy desarmed). That being said, i think the Argentinean Dreadgnouths at a distance of about 10NM had better belt protection and firepower enough to penetrate Brasilean and Chilean ships... but those advantages where so slight that at the end of the day a conforntation result would have been absolutely circumstantial
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Drachisms of the Day (3/3):
5:56 "Firing, effectively, a full-broadside, let's say every ten seconds,
because the Captains feeling kind."
16:39 "Oh, well look! The person with the massive heavy ships versus lightweight ships managed to win. Shock, horror!"
17:28 "So I'd be able to turn that around, at least, in theory. Assuming anyone listened to me."
19:27 "And...also the simple fact of the matter is generally, in land battles,
that, ah, you are shooting at men and horses which are a lot squishyer and easier to kill
than ships of the line."
23:02 "But they don't need to be available quite as soon as the machinery, cause,
well generally speaking, as you can see here with the USS Florida, the guns go on the top."
27:20 "I managed to avoid a 'technical derail'. Huzzah!"
28:21 "The OTHER way of doing it was to basically bake it into something that was
so hard and moisture-free that it was more 'building material' or 'melee weapon'
than food-stuff."
30:56 "And discovered that they hadn't quite got the technology right. And
they kind of put on a minor electrical storm every time they tried to turn
the turrets. With massive arcs of blue fire. Which looks pretty but is
not particularly effective."
38:34 "As an Englishman, I'm almost genetically duty-bound to rag on
the French on occasion."
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The reason the USN was still building battleships with reciprocating engines, when the RN and other navies had already switched to turbines, was that US industry was not yet up to the task of building turbines that would even match, much less outperform, the efficiency and cruising range of the triple expansion reciprocating engines. Cruising range was of paramount importance, as the USN had already been planning for a potential war with Japan since the end of the Spanish-American War (War Plan Orange), when faced with the vast distances in the Pacific, the lack of bases, and the need to steam all that way to the relief of the Philippines as the main objective of that war plan. Even with the Nevada class, the USN still wasn't confident with the state of US turbine technology - the Oklahoma still having reciprocating engines. The concerns with reliability, efficiency, and cruising range were such, that after the Arizona and Pennsylvania, all the remaining Standards were completed with turboelectric drive for the advantages it offered in these areas. Turboelectric drive was even planned for the canceled 1920's South Dakota class, and the Lexington class battlecruisers - with the result that the carriers Lexington and Saratoga were unique in having that type of propulsion. Probably the main factor that pushed them away from the use of turboelectric drive, and pushed them to finally develop an efficient reduction geared turbine setup, were the displacement restrictions of the Washington Naval Treaty, as a turboelectric setup was significantly heavier than a mechanical system for the same power.
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Such a great video. My father and I almost met a Veteran named Stew, he was at Pearl Harbor aboard one of her battleships. I... Cannot recall the name exact vessel but he was a Fire control man , and usually in general quarters they'd keep their feet on the gun pedels. Luckily for stew, as he was relaxing and had his feet off the pedels, sitting back, he was just missed by a piece of shrapnel that flew through the gun pedels, right where his feet would be. Another tale from him was the way they evacuated ship to a safer destination. Seeing some of their mates trying to run across the 5in gun barrels only to get shot down by passing fighters, Stew and his fellow sailors decided fuck that and dove into the water, swimming under oil pools to a nearby ship.
Sadly Stew passed away just a few months ago, about a day before my father and I could get a chance to meet him. He was great from what we heard, being able to recall anything throughout his life with the memory of an elephant. A shame we lost him, however, we remember his fight and devotion to the Navy.
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The invaders must have seen them,
As across the coast they filed,
Standin' firm between them,
There lay Thunder Child!
Moving swiftly through the waters,
Cannons blazing as she came,
Sent a mighty metal warlord,
Crashing down in sheets of flame,
Sensing victory was nearing,
Thinking fortune must have smiled,
People started cheering,
"Come on Thunderchild!"
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The USS Narwhal and Nautilus with their pair of 6" (152mm) guns proved to be surprisingly useful in the Pacific once their difficult and unreliable MAN diesels were replaced with the slightly less powerful but infinitely more reliable GM engines. Their great size, large fuel tanks, and great interior volume allowed both boats to conduct war patrols of 70 days. They were the first submarines to have "cold rooms" (refrigerators) and freezers, so fresh vegetables and fruits were available during the first two weeks or so of a patrol and frozen meats available for almost the entire time, something only dreamt of by earlier submariners. Both boats received partial air conditioning to make things less onerous for passengers and crew for their new roles of being a general workhorse for many special operations, carrying everything from commandos to evacuees from occupied islands, including women, children, and at least one infant. They carried ammunition and other supplies to island outposts and the occupied Philippines, did shore bombardment everywhere from the Aleutians to the Japanese mainland, and landed various Army personnel as liaisons and advisors to local guerilla groups in the Philippines. In between, both boats sank a surprising number of enemy vessels with deck guns and torpedoes while withstanding a several severe and prolonged depth charge attacks. They were really more successful than the Navy ever expected them to be. Both boats were completely worn out from hard service at the beginning of 1945 and were decommissioned in April and May of 1945, stricken days later, and unceremoniously sold off for scrap before VJ Day. The only remnants are the two 6" guns of the Narwhal functioning as the Navy equivalent of gate guards at the submarine base in New London, CT.
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My father, ship fitter Leonard Glaser, served on the USS Taberer, DE 418, during typhoon cobra, and multiple battles. As damage control, he volunteered to cut through cables connecting the mast to the ship after the mast snapped during the typhoon as it was threatening to puncture the hull of the tiny destroyer escort. He volunteered to go over the side with ropes tied around him carrying an ox-acetyline torch during the typhoon. He and his crew members survived. He was very modest about this, saying that it was his job. His ship was saved and went on to rescue survivors from the Hull and Spence. My father and mother would attend yearly reunions of the Taberer crew with survivors rescued from the tragic disaster. I was able to attend one of the later reunions. Meeting some of the brave heroes and survivors and seeing some of their families was beyond description. My father passed away 10 years ago. He will never be forgotten ♥️. For further information, please refer to "Halsey's typhoon" Bob Drury and Tom Clavin, pages 210 and 211. Grove press, copyright 2007.
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The Type 3 shrapnel/incendiary shells were also used for shore bombardment, such as at Guadalcanal, and were pretty good at that for air bursts using the time fuze, when combined with the more conventional Type 0 nose-impact-fuzed HE shells, which worked quite well, too, as a waterline hit on USS SOUTH DAKOTA by a 14" Type 0 shell blew a large hole in the 1.25" (32mm) homogeneous Special Treatment Steel (STS, the Bureau of Ships term for homogeneous armor, to separate it from the virtually identical Bureau of Ordnance Class "B" armor (a "ricebowl" thing)) waterline hull in front of the recessed and inclined 12.1" (308mm) Class "A" (face-hardened) armored belt -- no damage happened to the main belt there, but some light flooding to a region around the impact below the waterline in the gap between the outer hull and the innermost layer of the anti-torpedo side system. A Japanese Type 91 AP shell hit there might have been much more serious. The Japanese ship, KIRISHIMA, had Type 0 and Type 3 shells in its hoists for shore bombardment and it took several salvos of those shells to finally get its AP shells into the guns, which only got one hit with one of those from its final salvo, a rather strange weather deck/barbette of Turret 3 hit on SOUTH DAKOTA that could not penetrate either the 1.5" STS deck (too highly oblique) or the 17.3" Class "A" barbette side armor (WAY too thick) but was caused to ricochet downwards off the barbette by it peeling the deck away from its joint with the barbette like a smiling mouth and inserting its upper body into that hole when it detonated, causing considerable local superficial (as far as ship battle operation was concerned) damage in the space between the weather deck and the 2nd main armor deck, which was itself undamaged.
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Great Britain: Has no less than 35 different classes of Destroyer with a variety of specializations.
America: A Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher, SUMNER, GEARING! A Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher, SUMNER, GEARING!
...Okay, granted they had 11 other destroyer classes but they sure as hell weren't the majority!
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As Drac noted, these were the first USN battleships mounting the new 12"/40, which was specifically designed to use smokeless powder. As mentioned in response to another question a week or so back, when the 12"/40, and the 8"/40, were designed, the designers did not fully understand the dynamics of smokeless powder. As a result, these guns had a tendency to blow off their muzzle and chase, due to higher than expected pressure in the tube. The Navy instituted a modification program that encompassed installing a heavy nickle steel liner inside, and hooping the barrel to the muzzle on the outside to reinforce the barrel. The Maines also used the Mk IV turret, which was the first balanced large turret used by the USN. The preceding Illinois class was the first the use the Mk IV, but pared it with the older 13"/35. As Drac said, by WWI all the Maine and Illinois class ships were relegated to the reserve squadron, spending the bulk of their time tied up in a navy yard with a skeleton crew. On March 6, 1915, Maine was being used as a receiving ship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard when a sea cock burst and the ship sank at the pier.
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What is often forgotten was the tactical ability to enter IKEA-battle-mode and both disassemble and assemble the ship with hex wrenches. The still super extra secret Swedish WWII plans for invading England builds upon a sea invasion. If facing the UK home-fleet the disassemble alarm was to be sounded, and all 700 crewman of the TreKronor-class had a personal hex wrench and an assigned part of the ship to hide under their jackets. The plan reveals that the crew was then to meet in central London to reassemble the ships downtown: HMS Tre Kronor in The Serpentine, Hyde park, and HMS Göta Lejon in the Boating pond in Battersea park. This mean they would dominate all state and decision making institutions, It was estimated that England would only hold our for about an hour before handing over the empire to Sweden...… The plan was based on even more super secret advanced intelligence work including listening to BBC learning that England had planned to "fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills" But Swedish intelligence found out that it did not say anything about "in the Parks"...Also linguistical experts estimated that the names of the ships was so hard for native English speakers that the RAF command would need at least 6 hours language traning before being able to order an counterattack... For the worst case scenario the ships had a small stock of HE-ammunition loaded with the Swedish traditional food sour-herring, deadly for anyone exept people from northern sweden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_haw_YDC_zo ). Using weapons of mass destruction would of course have been a grave war crime but loading the guns with sour-herring was only a last resort. Luckily for England the swedish super extra secret invasion plan was never realized as Sweden found it easier to gain global supremacy via controlling Santa Claus via his Swedish reindeers, controlling peoples minds via Swedish popular music, and invading every home in the world with IKEA-furniture….. (Some people might consider Iowa or Yamato classes a match ….however, then they don´t realize the penetration ability of the sour-herring loaded grenade. Even a near miss and Yamato/Iowa would be history….but this is of course super-extra-secret)
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I'm by no means an expert, but as far as the Ming treasure fleet, there's a lot of convoluted politics that goes into it (Imperial Chinese Bureaucracy be like that). For one thing, the fleet was a partisan issue, supported by a particular court faction, and when they fell from favor there wasn't much political will to continue the expeditions. Meanwhile various other political interests had their own reasons for opposing the fleet, be they bureaucrats who thought the whole thing was a waste of money, or commercial interests who didn't like the navy crowding in on their smuggling operations.
Fundamentally though, the reason the Ming treasure fleet is an anomaly in Chinese history is because Imperial Chinese states were, as a rule, land empires without any vital maritime interests. And, I think I need to stress, China already was a massive empire. In the 17th century, the Ming ruled over a population larger than all of Europe, including the Ottoman Empire, combined. There were individual provinces larger in population and landmass, than all of France! And when you have a giant and rich state like that in the middle of the Asian continent, surrounded on all sides by unfriendly neighbors who wouldn't mind taking a bit of that for themselves thank you very much, the government is unsurprisingly going to be focusing most of their resources on that. As an example of the kind of threats the Ming faced, just about 15 years after the last treasure fleet expedition, the Ming army was destroyed by the Mongols and the Emperor was captured, precipitating a decade long political crisis. And it is worth remembering that both the dynasties immediately preceding and following the Ming were established by foreign conquerors. Aside from sporadic pirate raids no military force of any size ever threatened China from the sea prior to the 19th century. For most of Chinese history before the modern era, naval warfare meant riverine warfare, and focused on controlling internal waterways during times of internal conflict, much like the US during the Civil War. And since that was not a major concern for the Ming at this point in time, it can't exactly be said that their focus on the army was unjustified.
A lot of the western confusion surrounding the Ming treasure voyages seems to stem from a very Eurocentric idea about what an empire is, and that if it doesn't have big floaty things and smallpox, it doesn't count. Thus, whereas for the Ming at the time these voyages were probably seen, a bit like the Apollo program, at best as an interesting side project, and at worst as a costly and wasteful PR stunt, the narrative in the west has become that this was a missed opportunity for the Chinese to learn how to empire the "right" way, if only they hadn't been so shortsighted and complacent. By that logic, my question is why the Romans didn't pull all their troops from the German border and instead spend the money on a giant Indian Ocean fleet. Didn't they realize that if they kept doing that for long enough they would have discovered America?
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One thing that sort of proves your point is the opposite as well, the golden age of piracy has very little contemporary paintings on it and nothing to the scale were you can understand the actual lines of a ship as almost all are 2d things that the measurement are all wrong for, if they were correct Bartholomew Roberts ship Royal Fortune was bigger than a city, and the earth is concave. The time was one of great change in ship design, you can find many paintings of grand 1st rates which are so over the top I still can't wrap my head around that those transom existed, but frigates and smaller ships pirates would use, there are no detailed paintings of, so you have to do a bit of guess work, you don't know how orinate they would be, how squared the transom is etc. It's no wonder pirate movies and TV shows always get the ships wrong, as they are looking at ships 9x+ heavier.
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To add to answer about the benefits of electrified warships: electric lights also have a couple other benefits that weren’t mentioned. These are largely a result of light bulbs not using fire to produce light.
Candles and oil lamps generate smoke and consume oxygen and lamp oil gives off fumes, so the air quality belowdecks would have improved once these were replaced by electric lights. This would have been especially beneficial in the days before mechanical ventilation became well understood. And even old incandescent light bulbs are much more efficient at producing light than candle flames, so the light bulbs would produce less waste heat than candles or lamps of equivalent light output, making what ventilation the ships did have more effective at keeping the spaces below deck cooler and more comfortable. Both of these things would tend to improve crew morale.
Candles and lamps also both require that the ship carry some sort of consumable just to produce light. For candles, the ship would need to carry lots of extra candles to replace the ones in use as they burned out. And oil lamps require carrying and storing spare wicks and lamp oil. The electric light bulbs last longer and only require the ship to carry the same coal it already uses for the boilers. This simplifies the life of the supply department a bit.
And fire safety is a big benefit. Both oil lamps and candles use a flame. If an oil lamp or candle fell, it would likely continue burning and could easily start a fire. In particular, lamp oil is very flammable, so if an oil lamp fell and broke, the result would often be that the oil would suddenly catch fire in a big woosh of flame. And the stores of that lamp oil below decks are obviously a major fire hazard if they get hit by an enemy shell in battle, or fall over and start leaking in heavy weather or something.
And to top it all off, electric lights can be turned on or off instantly with the flip of a switch, and that switch can control a bunch of lights and doesn’t need to be near the actual lights themselves. Things like navigation and masthead lights could be turned on in any weather without needing to send a sailor up the rigging, and lights could be put in hard to reach places in the engine room and controlled by a switch in an easy to reach place.
And of course, nobody ever had their light bulb blown out by a sudden gust of wind.
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On the question at 31:43 about night landings on carriers...having done a number of these in jets (S-3 Vikings), I can testify that even by the 1980s, with all the instrument landing aids available, they were still, if not terrifying, at least quite stressful.
They had/have a system called "Automatic Carrier Landing System", or ACLS, that provides roughly the functionality of civilian ILS ("Instrument Landing System'). It has a "horizontal" beam and a "vertical" beam, that indicate whether you are high/low left/right. This is presented by a pair of needles, horizontal and vertical, superimposed over your primary attitude reference. So if you are on course, on glide slope, the needles will be centered.
You can hook this up to the autopilot, and it will fly you down the approach. We almost never used this function, because once you get used to/dependent on it, it will surely break down.
The procedure was to fly this quasi ILS approach down to the last 3/4 mile. (maybe 1200 meters). At that point, you transition to visual...you look for the fresnel lens optical glide slope indicator, AKA the "meatball". This indicates if you are high, low, or on glide slope. For lineup, they'll have a row of dim lights running down the center line of the landing area, and this extends to some "drop" lights running down the stern. (These are all the lights on the deck that you'll see.)
The other parameter you have to watch is airspeed/angle of attack.
You control rate of descent with throttle, and airspeed with your pitch angle. To speed up, pitch nose down, to slow down, pitch nose up. To descend faster, pull the throttle back. You get the picture.
You fly down this path (3.5 degree glide slope) all the way down to touchdown.
As soon as you feel the wheels touch (actually, it's a pretty good thump), you jam full throttle. This is so that, if you miss a wire, you can roll off the end of the landing area, climb up, and go around for another attempt.
(Inside baseball trivia: The angled landing deck, the fresnel lens "meatball", and the steam catapult, are all ideas which the USN cheerfully stole from the Royal Navy.)
If you successfully trap, you're still not done...they land at 45 second intervals, so you have to get clear of the landing area for the next guy. Look to your right for a guy in a yellow jersey. At night, he'll have a pair of lighted wands, with which he'll give you hand signals. (Yes, I'm using all male pronouns, because we're talking 1980s). Hook up, fold your wings, taxi forward, turn right. They'll typically park you on the bow, or in the "six-pack" area adjacent to the island superstructure. They'll chain you down, and you can shut down, climb out, and go have a cigarette.
Not gonna lie, my hands used to shake for awhile.
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Drachisms of the Day (1/3):
18:51 "It was commanded by the rather wonderfully named "Manley Power".
19:38 "And they seemed to carry the tradition of the ALABAMA in more
ways than one. Especially as they all ended in similar ways."
21:54 "Hmm. Nice merchant navy. Shame if something were to happen to it."
23:03 "By the traditional method, which was 'Pay us or we'll shoot you.'
Because the British would have been; 'OK, you want to try it that way.
Let's go then.'".
29:18 "But then again, I am British. So I guess eccentricity is somewhere
down there in the DNA."
33:47 "Instead of...well, yeah...the 'melee-weapon' that is the Mark XIV."
34:07 "But it's certainly going to put a VERY big spanner in the works."
(to my ear, this is a 'Yank-specific' Drachism).
46:44 "If I ever find who made that video, I'm coming for you with a blunt object."
47:00 "As I've said before, if I could BE on any one ship, it would be something
like the USS Massachusetts, because, well, if you didn't loose anybody, so I get to
live. Huzzah! I like life."
49:56 "Sit there and let the horribleness overtake you."
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“Fast battleship” has been a term that always had been baffling for me in regards to how certain secondary sources described Axis battleships of WWII, and how some people absolutely stick to the idea the Axis battleships were universally far larger and far slower than Allied contemporaries (not that this mattered for either side in the end given how battleships ended up strategically in WWII…).
The Yamatos for example are not considered fast battleships in some sources, on the basis that they were a bit too slow to keep up with carriers, even though the same sources consider the NorCals, SoDaks and KGVs to be fast battleships (which has also led to the misconception that the NorCals and SoDaks were much faster than any Axis contemporary battleship and able to keep up with carriers). The idea seems to be that because they’re often called “superbattleships”, by definition they couldn’t be fast battleships.
Bismarck also often gets the “heavily armed and armoured but sluggish compared to the smaller, much faster Allied capital ships” treatment (when in reality it was the other way around, with Bismarck being on the fast end of WWII capital ships while also being poorly protected and a bit underarmed for her size). I’ve even seen people sincerely claim that she was much slower than the NorCals and SoDaks and unable to serve as a carrier escort (assuming the Kriegsmarine ever got Graf Zeppelin operational), even though she was actually faster than the. NorCals and SoDaks.
On the other hand, the Littorios for some reason are almost universally treated as fast battleships, which indicates this whole thing is the result of a general miscommunication issue with the public rather than being an attempt to downplay Axis vessels.
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Your mention of "nice to have", "could you do this", etc. at ~10:00 made my blood pressure rise. I worked in aerospace for 35 years, mostly satelltites but also missiles and aircraft. It annoys me to no end when I hear the press and congress berating a contractor for cost overruns. I would estimate 1/2 of all the cost overruns are due to customers doing just that, changing what they want from what was agreed to via contract. Real life example: A satellite program used a Digital Storage Unit (stores all the pictures and stuff for later download). The DSU was previously flown, fully qualified. Well, in the 3 to 4 years it takes to just design the satellite, the subcontractor came out with a brand spanking new unit with 3X the storage. Of course the customer says "we want that new one" even though the satellite design is well advanced. Well, it requires more power so we need more solar array area, weighs more so things may have to be moved around to keep the cg within limits, it's bigger so even more things need to be moved around, new harnesses to support the increased power and capacity, software updates, it isn't qualified for our environments so add an extremely costly qualification program that is run IN PARALELL with build to try to meet schedule and hoping it passes testing, and if it doesn't, even more work to be done. And that just scratches the surface. For something just like that you're probably talking about a $10 to $20 million dollar cost. Multiply that by 3 or 5 "wants" and now congress hears about it and doesn't understand the why's and the contractor gets blammed and bad press ensues. Sorry, had to vent....feel better now.
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A excellent continuation of a magnificent and professional documentary!
As a polyglot, I commend you on your efforts with Spanish and French names, but as a Newfie, I must apologise for us throwing you some nasty curve balls.
Argentia is the port of the town of Placentia, which was originally named "Petit Plaisance" (or "Pleasant Little Place") by French settlers. It was anglicised with the handover of the settlement from the Treaty of Utrecht to "Little Placentia" and over the centuries the name eventually shortened. The port's name is Latin, for 'place of silver' (as there were deposits of ore in the area), but rather than the classically-educated English who named it, the port was USED mostly by Irish settlers, so the name evolved into being "ar-JEN-chuh".
Also, the pronunciation of the whole island gets a lot of people, even 'Mainlanders' (aka the rest of Canada). Rather than "nu-FOUND-lund" it's actually "NU-fun-LAND" (as in the actual word 'Land' and not the suffix for place names like England, Cumberland, etc.) At the least, the sentence "Understand Newfoundland." should rhyme, if that helps.
Thanks again for all the wonderful content you give us all!
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Regarding the uboat AA question, there are several things that should be pointed out:
- adding machine guns was very much a thing in the Mediterranean, not so much in the Atlantic. Apparently, this was done since the boats in the Med were in more pressing need of AA upgrades, and machine guns could be added fairly quickly. They required only the adding of pressure-proof containers on the conning tower, while 20mm guns required a more serious rebuilding of the conning tower.
- the massive Wintergarten rebuild with 3 gun positions on the tower only appeared in mid 1943, but smaller rebuilds for 2 gun positions were already operational in 1942. Many boats carried two single 20mm guns in superfiring position, with the lower platform being either added directly to the tower, or being an entirely different structure mounted on the deck aft of the tower.
- During 1942, you would rarely see something different than 1 or 2 single 20mm guns, with twins and quads taking until 1943 to be ready for uboat service afaik. During 1943, many boats initially continued carrying their single 20mm guns, a notable example being U185 under the command of Ritterkreuz holder August Maus, which actually shot down a British Whitley and an American Liberator with this armament. This shows that with a well-trained crew (which U185 certainly had, according to prisoner reports), even a relatively light AA armament could be lethal to big aircraft.
- AA armament could also vary between patrols, for example, U515 under uboat ace Werner Henke carried 2 single 20mm guns and a quad 20mm on her 4th patrol (indicating that there were some difficulties with producing enough twins, which is also backed up by Clay Blair), then 3 twin 20mm guns on her 5th patrol, and finally 2 twin 20mm guns and a new, fully automatic 37mm Flak 43 on her 6th patrol (these patrols taking place from September 1943 to April 1944)
- uboats also had upper deck containers for spare torpedoes (2 on the type VII and 8 on the type IX, with possibly more on later IX variations, such as the IXD2). Since loading the torpedoes down into the pressure hull was a long process, AA ammunition was carried in the containers instead during the later years of the war, which especially for the type IX bit into their torpedo capacity. For example, on her final patrol in mid-1943, the type IXC/40 U185 carried only 60 rounds for her 105mm deck gun, but 21 torpedoes and 7000 rounds of 20mm ammo for her two single 20mm guns, of whom 400 were carried in ready-use pressure cylinders built into the conning tower.
Hope this helps.
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One thing that I'm sure Drach knows is that the Bonnie was the fifth carrier operated by the RCN, the first two being the Bogue-class, HMS Puncher and Ruler-class HMS Nabob. Both were built by the Seattle-Tacoma Shipbuilding Corporation
, part of Henry J. Kaiser's shipbuilding enterprise (both shipyard and man having interesting histories in their own right).
The idea behind these two was that the RCN would be getting its own carrier(s) after the war, and this would give the Colonials valuable experience in carrier operations while sill having the Royal Navy to fall back on.
The Puncher had a Canadian crew but British Fleet Air Arm squadrons. Nabob similarly had British aircrew, with her engineering crew being RN as well, all other crew were Canadian. This effectively made them both RCN vessels, although neither ever bore the "HMCS" initials. One interesting note: the RCN paid its crews rather better than the Royal Navy, so when the Nabob, on its first mission, arrived in New York to take on a load of P51 Mustangs, there was a near mutiny over the issue. The terribly Canadian solution was to consider the British crew to be under Canadian regulations, which meant they should be paid a the higher RCN pay rates, which made everyone happy again.
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Armor penetration is rather complicated because there are two different kinds of armor, face hardened (based on a variant of German Krupp Cemented (KC) armor in the 20th Century) and homogeneous, ductile (either based on the highest-strength steel similar to KC armor, but no face hardened, used for thinner direct hit protection or protection from highly-oblique impacts such as decks, or a weaker steel, such as British High Tensile IHT) or the improved post-WWI "D" steel, both pf the latter used primarily as anti-blast/fragment protection with projectile impact being secondary. Face hardened armor is designed to break projectiles up to reduce their penetration ability and the AP shells designed to penetrate it had steel "crash helmets" called "AP caps" added to their noses to prevent the nose breakage. as well as making the projectiles stronger by various other means to stay in one piece. The AP caps can be soft, tough, hard, or super-hard, each having different properties. This gets complicated very fast...
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My father comes from a small farm on a steep hillside on the northern side of the Ofotfjord, and this is the place we used to go during long weekends or the summer. The fjord is 8km wide at that place, and 350m deep. You can see diagonally over to Narvik, which is about 12km away. The area surrounding is called 'Veggen' - meaning the wall. So it's 150m of steep mountain side down to the fjord, and an immense view. At the bottom, in a crack in the mountain, my grandfather had managed to cram a boat house. During the battles of Narvik in 1940, my fathers' oldest sister was 14 years old. They were seven siblings, she born in 1926, my father in 1944. She told me a story about the battles. How the shells were cracked in the mountains around, and how the fjord would light up from fires and gunfire. On the dawn of the next day she saw loads of small, black dots on the fjord below, and my grandfather urgently wanted to go down the steep path to the boat house. Her uncle going with. She wanted to come with as well, but my grandfather told her no, this was mans work. She wondered a lot about what all these bobbing, black dots were. But after a couple of hours they were getting fewer, and soon they all disappeared. Her father and uncle were away all day fishing bodies of the men from the sea.
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Design work on the North American AJ Savage series had begun just after the atomic bomb attacks on Japan. The Savage was a considerably larger aircraft than the B-25. Wingspan was 75 feet over tip tanks, measuring 50 feet with the wings folded compared to 67 feet for the B-25. Empty weight for the Savage was 27,558 with maximum loaded weight of almost 51,000 pounds compared to 19,480/35,000 pounds for the B-25. The outstanding difference for the Savage was a bomb load of 12,000 pounds compared to 4,000 pounds for the B-25. The Savage was operated successfully from modernized Essex class carriers, but it an aircraft rushed into service to preserve the Navy's role in the atomic era, that large size and load carrying ability due to the 10,000 pound weight of early atomic bombs. The Navy had even larger bombers built in the 50's as the A-3D Skywarrior and huge A-5 Vigilante to defend their role as a nuclear deterrent, but all carrier aircraft were knocked out of that role by the ballistic missile submarine.
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We've waited almost as long as Nelson spent chasing Villeneuve across the Atlantic, but now we're here. The most fitting re-enactment possible of one of the most famous battles in naval history.
Also, while this might have fit better on the previous Nelson video, I always love hearing about the conference aboard Victory where Nelson laid out his plans. A relatively simple tactical plan, but a clear and powerful message of effectively: "Gentlemen, I have every confidence that you captains, your ships, your officers, and your crews are demonstrably better then their enemy counterparts. If we can bring our full strength to bear against the enemy, we should have every confidence in our ultimate victory. Here's the basic way in which I intend to bring that battle about, but if chaos should reign, I trust each of you to fight your ships as you see fit, find an enemy, and defeat him."
Now that's a leader showing trust and confidence in his subordinates, which they would justify. No wonder his captains adored him.
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On the HMS Chester when she engaged the four German cruisers...Gun Layer Jack Cornwell... "The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the grant of the Victoria Cross to Boy, First Class, John Travers Cornwell, O.N.J.42563 (died 2 June 1916), for the conspicuous act of bravery specified below. Mortally wounded early in the action, Boy, First Class, Jack Travers Cornwell remained standing alone at a most exposed post, quietly awaiting orders, until the end of the action, with the gun's crew dead and wounded all round him. His age was under sixteen and a half years."
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Good picture of the four Fletchers and Tamandare, ex-St. Louis, sailing out in 1961 to confront the French "fleet" that consisted about 25 fishing boats. The French were sending the 2750 ton destroyer Tartu to look after the fishing fleet after two Brazilian corvettes drove the French fishing boats out of the area of the Continental Shelf.
The Brazilians and French were deadly serious about their fishing rights so DeGaulle sent Tartu as a show of force. Unfortunately for Tartu, the Brazilians responded with their aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and seven destroyers, and their air reconnaissance located Tartu when she was still 200 miles away from the fishing fleet. When Tartu discovered the Brazilian fleet looming up on their radar, discretion became the better part of valor. She cruised outside the territorial waters of Brazil while a Brazilian corvette captured the French fishing boat Cassiopée to raise the stakes. Given the weakness of the French fleet trying to fight a war off the Brazilian coast, cooler heads prevailed, and the dispute was settled by the World Court. It would certainly been an interesting war game, and President João Goulart was quite prepared to give the French a bloody nose.
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I loved reading Neptune's Inferno, such a great book!
Two things from that book about this specific battle I remember and cough my eye when reading it are:
When the Japanese warships illuminate the US ships (12:34)
"'There was a shocking moment when staring into that light all seemed completely silent. Everything around us was quiet and black, and here we were standing out for all to see. [...]There was a feeling, one that you knew was without logic, that there was protection in getting out of the direct glare of that light. Everyone I could see crouched into a shadow.'
It was while squatting into that undignified position, stooping behind the 4 inch high side of Helena's open bridge that Rodman Smith decided he had enough, and hustled over to his skipper. 'Permission to open fire, captain?'
Hoover, docking out of the light himself, shouted back to his gunnery officer, 'Open Fire!'.
The Atlanta was swinging through her own turn to avoid a collision with the van when the searchlight, probably from the destroyer Akatsuki, lit upon her from abaft the port beam. Captain Jerkins reacted as commanders had been trained in peacetime: 'Counter-Illuminate!', he shouted. His gunnery officer, Lieutenant Commander William R. D. Nickelson JR. preferred to respond with other hardware. At once he shouted into his headset mike: 'F*ck that! Open fire!'"
When Helena spots a mysterious ship (San Francisco), and aims her guns at the approaching vessel (27:43)
"Finally, a lookout announced the sighting of yet another unidentified ship on the port bow. The Helena's killing train was set quickly rolling. Hoover ordered, 'Shift target!' and Rodman Smith, the gunnery officer, coached his turrets on the new bearing. This ship, spectral and suspicious, had been shattered. Not a pane of glass remained in her. Fires glowed in several places on deck.
The officer of the deck of the damaged mystery ship was studying the Helena through his binoculars as she overtook him to starboard. From about two thousand yards away, he could make out her twin stacks and five sleek turrets - all trained right at him. Then the Helena's superstructure, a light signalled the letters 'H-I-S H-I-S.' An encoded challenge signal required a prompt reply, but neither of the two officers up forward on the battered vessel's navigation bridge, Bruce McCandless nor John Bennett, knew what reply to give to this challenge. The dispatch containing the reply codes assigned for use that day had been lost in the fires. Though the codes had also been scrawled with chalk on the bulkhead of the flag bridge, the metal where they had been recorded was thoroughly punctured and scorched. Any attempt to memorize the codes had been 'driven from my mind by the events of the last hour', McCandless wrote. 'In seconds, unless the correct reply was given, fifteen six inch and four five inch would fire on us.' Virtually all of the principal means of communication - TBS radio, searchlight, signal flags and halyards were inoperable. The steam line to the flagship's siren and whistle had been punctured by splinters. The signalmen had a blinker light, but they hesitated to respond because they knew something their officers didn't: the three letter reply code specified for that day was
'J-A-P'"
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Drachisms of the Day:
1:36 "not particularly badger-like to my estimation"
28:57 "If, by any chance, there's a human behavioral psychologist or two listening to this maybe you can
chime in as to whether this theory has, or ever had, any particular weight, um, and we'll see where I go from there."
31:55 "Carriers generally have a fairly enlightened bit of self-interest in staying away from enemy shipping as well."
32:55 "Was in line with the three British battleships, forming a somewhat incongrous battle-line."
34:12 (with pride) And, ironically enough, technically won."
34:44 "There was nothing in it's design...that was completely impossible to do."
43:39 "So this particular little interception scenario greatly depends on what the Japanese actually bring to the party."
47:07 "In regards as to what happened to Mutsu ... well, it went BOOM."
47:56 "The report that was issued at the time officially blamed a disgruntled crewman
who had been accused of theft and may have decided to do the ultimate hara-kiri."
50:49 "A bit of note, note-paper that says 'Something bigger, better and faster than whatever the French have just built.'"
58:16 "There's also a little bit of ramming. And a few of the British ships are lost.
Umm. But, by and large, that may come as little shock to people."
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A fascinating video. I know I'm a bit late getting to it, but I thoroughly enjoyed this What-If exercise answering a question I myself have asked in my head many times.
A few points that particularly stood out to me:
I'm surprised that Derfflinger was able to survive as long as it did with such a spectacular turret fire blazing forward. One would have thought it would have been a matter of seconds, minutes as most, before those flames reached her main magazine, but she kept going long enough to at least contribute a bit more before succumbing. One can only imagine the desperate action below decks of damage control crews with firehoses trying to keep the flames at bay long enough to flood the foreward magazine and save the ship from exploding as the British battlecruisers did at Jutland.
Not gonna lie, my heart swelled with pride when the British battlefleet (or at least the American contingent) was being led by the overtaxed piston engines of my home state's flagship, the USS Texas. Historically, she was always the first into the fight and the last to leave during the Second World War, even flooding her own torpedo bulge to get a last few shots in at Normandy, even overstraining her engines similar to this in 1946 during Operation Magic Carpet to ensure that American servicemen from the Pacific would get home in time for Christmas. Some have pointed out that the spark-filled black smoke clouds may be inaccurate as the Texas was oil fired, but I can believe that detail as the engineers forcing the boilers' oil burners open beyond their normal limits to pour on every ounce of fuel, leading to some of it not burning properly and forming an impromptu smokescreen. And later in the battle I can also agree with the Americans accepting the temporary leadership of HMS Warspite, more than likely the only British dreadnought even they would respect.
My biggest surprise was the crucial contribution of the K Class submarines. Long derided as next to useless, even by your own good self, I was shocked that they would be the element to turn the tide of this battle, and I must admit somewhat validated; had they been designed stronger with better maneuvering capabilities, the idea of a steam submarine in the First World War era is not as daft as it sounds, especially as the K's boilers were specially designed to be shut down and fired up quite rapidly. That said, historically their crush depth (if memory serves) was less than twice their own length, which they could reach quite easily through uncontrollable dives. As such, it also seems accurate that four of them were lost without a trace during the engagement. But at least they got their moment of glory that was denied them in real life, leaving them an undeserving historical laughing stock.
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This explains why Mahan, in his intro of "The Influence of Sea Power on History", makes an argument that lessons for modern naval tactics can be drawn from sailing ships as well as ancient triremes and galleys. When I first read that I thought, "Wait: Why the heck would navies in the 1880s look to ancient warfare for tactical lessons? Why not the Age of Sail, since those ships at least had guns?" You've given me an answer.
I suppose it makes sense that, in the absence of large naval engagements between the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Sino-Japanese War or 1894 (as far as I know), navies were stuck looking at the most recent examples of battles to try and figure out what the best way to fight was going to be in the next big naval war. And since the last big battle significantly involved ramming and it had been demonstrated that armor was superior to firepower at the moment, I can see why lots of people would jump to the conclusion that ramming would play a major part in warfare between iron-hulled ships.
This also explains why so many other ships built in these years, such as China's Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, had hulls that tapered into jutting, pointy bows. I never realized they were mainly intended for ramming enemy ships, and figured it was the just latest and greatest hull design before designers inevitably came up with better ones. The more you know.
Thanks for making history fun!
(Actually, would you even do a video on Dingyuan and Zhenyuan? They've got a pretty fun history, and Dingyuan even has a 1:1 replica built in China to use as a museum.)
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About supplying Army Groups North and South by sea - it very much depended on "when".
In the Baltics supplying by sea was used throughout the war. Obivously, german troops in Finland were supplied by sea. But also, for some bizarre reason, while units were mostly moved by rail, most troop rotation in the AG North (moving soldiers given home leave and soldiers returing from home leave and recovered wounded) were done by sea (usually from Tallin).
But there were three periods when sea transport was crucial for the AG North:
1. During the initial offensive in June-July 1941. The germans rushed first convoys into Riga even before they were able to provide any cover or escort. But they used small ships (500-700 t) that were able to move through water too shallow for soviet mines. And there were some crazy situations. For example, after two convoys in a row were attacked, the german command ddecided "The Russians haven't sunk anything yet, but sooner or later they will. Let's stop using convoys and start sending lone ships without any escort, so the Russians won't get excited and won't conventrate forces for an attack". And it worked.
2. In the first half of 1944, during combat along the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, as railroad connection to the area was questionable, the germans had to supply a rather substantial force (including 3rd SS Panzerkorps) by sea.
3. After the Courland pocket was formed, for obvious reasons, they didn't have any other options.
In the Black Sea, until the very late stages of the siege of Sevastopol germans either moved supplies from Romania to Odessa, or from Romania and Odessa to Ak-Mechet (modern day Chernomorskoye). After that sea transport was vital for german forces that tried to hold on to Taman peninsula in 1943 and later - for supplying cut-off forces in the Crimea. Here germans used some large ships (mostly Romanian), but the main workhorses were MFPs.
As for "could the Kriegsmarine do better?" - it's doubtful. The main problem is distance over land. AG North fought not only near Leningrad and the Gulf of Finland, its southern flank was at Velikie Luki - about 450 km from Narva (the closest port) and 600 km from Tallin (the closest safe port). And there are no direct roads that will allow to move supplies from Narva\Tallin to the southern flank or center of the AG North lines. In the south it is the same - the main events of Case Blau took place hundreds of kilometers from the shore.
As for books and articles... Miroslav Morozov wrote a lot about german shipping in the East and soviet struggle against it. He is very thourough in processing soviet, german and finnish primary sources, but I don't remember, which of his books were translated into English.
Also, there is a great series of articles by Andrei Kuznetsov about german convoys to Anapa on Taman peninsula - https://warspot.ru/7446-ohota-na-maluyu-medveditsu-nachalo (that's the first part, the link to the next one is at the end). Again, it is very thorough (even schemes of soviet airstrikes from german combat reports are included). But I suspect that auto-translate will butcher it mercilessly =)
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Back in the 1960's, in her collection of books, my mother had a paperback volume from Reader's Digest. It was a collection of humorous stories, anctedotes, and jokes from WWII.
One of the stories concerned a group of senior enlisted men going thru Officer Candidate Training, to become warrant and commissioned officers. On one day, they had to undergo a test of their swimming abilities, which involved swimming from one end of a pool to the opposite end in a set amount of time. The instructor for this test was a former Olympic swimmer, who tended to be rather snobbish about his aquatic accomplishments, being rather dismissive of those lacking ability in the swimming department.
The instructor gave the signal, and all the men dived into the pool and started swimming to the other end. Presently, all of them had made it to the other end of the pool - save one gentleman, who was still barely a quarter of the way there. His attempts resulted in much splashing and thrashing about, but with little results to show as far as forward propulsion.
At length, he did make it to the opposite end of the pool, to look up and see the instructor standing there with arms crossed, and a disgusted look on his face. The instructor snorted, and asked him "What in the hell do you call THAT, because it certainly wasn't swimming!".
The old Chief Petty Officer looked up at him, and said "Well, young man, I don't know what you'd call it, but it kept me afloat when the Lexington went down".
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My father was a commando, Gdsmn Charlie Lloyd 6 troop 2 Commando), who participated in Operation Chariot, the attack on the Noramandie dry dock, the only one large enough to hold the Tirpitz outside of Germany. Whilst moored in Falmouth during a days delay, the ships cat from ML268 repeatedly came aboard ML156, that which my father was on; this occurred so any times that they left the cat where it was aboard 156. When the attack began 268 was hit in the auxiliary fuel tanks, erupting into a ball of flame, there were 2, possibly 3 survivors picked up. ML156 was badly damaged, hydraulic steering destroyed, one engine only & operating only at maximum rpm whilst slowly sinking, she crabbed slowly down the Loire, fighting all the way when not hidden in fog. Meeting HMS Atherstone, 156 was abandoned, my father was about to ascend the scrambling net when he remembered the cat so he dashed below to grab the it from where it was curled up on his bunk, terrified by the gunfire & explosions. During a memorial service 38 years later, to the day, for those brave & valiant men who died at St. Nazaire, my father noticed a man staring at him &, being the man he was, approached his observer to ask what his interest was, the response being "Were you the fellow with the cat?" It was the sailor who had helped my father on to the deck of the Atherstone all those years before.
That cat certainly seemed to have some foreknowledge of impending doom as it steadfastly refused to remain aboard its home boat. Dad said the first time the human cost of the operation hit him was going to breakfast on the morning of their return to Plymouth; there were place settings for the 25 men of 6 troop who had gone. There was 6 of them left, 5 PoWs & the dreadful toll of 14 dead. Words are inadequate to describe those men who went after being told it was, in all likelihood, a one way trip, not to expect to return. But the puss survived minus one life
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This is a great idea for a WWII naval series. I'm looking forward to the late entering allied naves and neutral navies. One small correction however. The introduction to the British of the Hazemeyer stabilized 40 mm Bofors mount was when the Dutch minelayer Willem van der Zaan arrived in Portsmouth after the fall of the Netherlands. She was newly commissioned at the time, and the Hazemeyer mounts weren't yet fully developed. In particular, the Dutch version of the later British Type 282 radar wasn't mounted at the time of her escape, and the Dutch crew had to do the mounting and integration of the radar to the mounts with no written specifications, those having been left behind at the Dutch dockyard that was going to do the work just before the country was overrun by the Nazis.
The cruiser De Ruyter did have a fully developed battery of five twin Hazemeyer mounts, certainly one of the most effective light antiaircraft systems of 1940. The RN was duly impressed with the performance of the guns during practice with the Dutch navy in the prewar period, and the plan was to have her system fully documented while De Ruyter was in refit at Singapore in February, 1942. We now know the fate of both De Ruyter and Singapore during that disastrous month. Some of the details of the Hazemeyer mounts still weren't known to the RN even postwar, since the plans of both the Hazemeyer company and its German parent, Siemens-Halske, were destroyed in the ensuing fighting. Hazemeyer had planned to move the radar and the optical sights to an off mount director somewhat similar to the US Mark 51 director, but the war was over for the Dutch before that advanced beyond the planning stages.
The RN struggled for years with the STAAG and Buster systems, but by the time the mounts themselves would operate reliably, the 40 mm gun was considered obsolete. A few were hastily repossessed from museums for use aboard British landing ships during the Falklands war. Several Argentine aircraft were claimed damaged or destroyed by these guns, but I've yet to find confirmation of this. The gun crews used the weapons enthusiastically, firing off hundreds of rounds during the air attacks, so it's certainly possible at least one aircraft was hit by one of them.
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Not long ago, I reread "Fifty Ships That Saved The World" about the destroyers for bases deal, and service of the ships in the RN.
HMS Ludlow, that Drac mentioned at the end of his piece, had an interesting incident at the start of it's RN service. Ludlow, the former USS Stockton, was one of the earlier Caldwell class ships, significantly shorter ranged than the later classes. She had made it to France in 1917, so she should have been able to make the trip again, if everything went smoothly.
Ludlow, in company with several other destroyers, was making her way to the UK, when radio traffic was picked up from Jervis Bay, which was engaging the Scheer, desperately asking for help. The USN had turned over the ships with full magazines and torpedo tubes. so the destroyers rang up flank speed and rushed to Jervis Bay's assistance.
They arrived at the scene too late to help. But that flank speed run had tossed Ludlow's fuel consumption calculations in the dustbin. According to the book, Ludlow's burners went out, from lack of fuel, just as she dropped anchor in Belfast.
Reports of Jervis Bay's action say that Scheer's reconnaissance plane had spotted the convoy, and reported it as completely unescorted. Can't help but wonder, if the destroyers, iirc, about six, had been steaming from Halifax with the convoy, would Scheer have attacked? If Scheer had attacked, what would the result have been, with six destroyers firing their large loads of torpedoes at Scheer?
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Concerning those French AP shells for RICHELIEU made in the US: They were made by the Crucible Steel Company of America, which made the best P ammo in the world during most of WWII (the other two major ammo makers for the US Navy, Midvale and Bethlehem, seemed to make good ammo too, but, like Midvale during WWI, Crucible was the one that came up with the improvements that the others were forced to meet in the next ammo spec up[date; the 14" Mark 16 MOD 8 AP projectile made by Crucible in 1942 was adopted for all of WWII as the standard test shell for acceptance spec testing of heavy armor, even -plates 19" thick (!!) at 30 degrees obliquity from right angles, which, for example, a British 14" Mark IB APC shell could not make more than an 11-12" deep dimple in the face of even at muzzle velocity, from actual comparative US Navy tests after WWII).
The projectiles made for the RICHELIEU were the 380mm AP Projectile Mark 1 (the US also made some smaller shells for French naval vessels but I do not know how many of for whom exactly). It was externally shaped exactly like the very long, streamlined French AP shell (the longest and most streamlined naval AP shells ever made, to my knowledge), with matching weight and balance to the French design, but otherwise was a US 14" Mark 16 MOD 8 AP shell in virtually every other way (US AP cap design, US Navy Explosive "D" filler, US Mark 21 Base Detonating Fuze, the Crucible 14" version's oval nose shape, and Crucible's metallurgy and hardness pattern techniques). This was proven when some post-WWII tests by the French were done on their own KC armor plates using the 380mm Crucible shells. I assumed that the armor was the "universal" WWII-era KC type (average in all ways using WWII-era assumed metallurgy and original KC armor specs from 1894) and that the shell would be the US Navy 14" Mark 16 MOD 8 with the French version's size, weights, and so forth applied. The US Naval Ballistic Limit (barely completely penetrating) that I got using my FACEHARD program matched EXACTLY (in all four digits!!) to the value reported by the French. This is the best match I have ever calculated, so I think that Crucible kind of passed, wouldn't you think?
Note that RICHELIEU had a damaged gun barrel due to one of their original French AP shells blowing up when fired. The reason for this failure was that they decided for some reason to drill two deep pits into the bottom of the AP shell base plugs to allow poison capsules (never actually made) to be inserted for additional effects on the assumed German ship targets (the French were REALLY down on the Germans, obviously!). However, due to a machinists error or a design error, the pits were drilled too deep and on occasion one would allow the propellant blast to crack the tip of the holes and flame into the French explosive filler (somewhat similar to British Shellite in composition), with KABOOM!! I am not sure if the original shells for RICHELIEU were retained, but new base plugs would have been necessary, also made by Crucible, I suppose, if so. Interestingly, JEAN BART found out about the shell problem and, while they could not make new shell in Casablanca, they took each base plug and welded thick steel buttons over the inside tips of the pits to reinforce the base plugs there. To my knowledge this worked correctly.
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And thus, is the only mention of a supply ship so far, and I can understand. Refueling and resupplying the carrier and fleet isn't all 'that' entertaining, and not as enjoyable for the public to watch for the most part. it lacks the boom boom boom and pew pew pew that warships do, lol.
Thanks for mentioning the AOE2, I never expect to even hear the ship named or see so much as a photo due to the above reason. That was so long ago, and another life for me. I think the operating cost of 4 battleship boilers and age of the hull where the 'Only' reasons for scrapping the AOE1 and AOE2, as we could keep up with the carrier and some newer ships couldn't (back then). Nothing like seeing a "Little" 720-foot long ship (220 meters, ish) bebopping across the water like a speed boat, lol. (We got fuel and bombs for your aircraft and ice cream for the crew, we need to get the ice cream to you before it melts. JK)
Good stuff Drachinifel. B)
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5:16 The Moltke bombarded the Hartlepools on 16th December 1914 (alongside Seydlitz and Blucher), and not Scarborough down the coast as noted. She fired about 400 main and secondary shells : our museum has three unexploded 28mm (11") shells from either her or the Seydeltz in our collection. One of the 123 shots from the Durham Royal Garrison Artillery 6" coastal defence guns fired from the Heugh or Lighthouse coastal guns struck her, killing 9 German sailors. In contrast, the 1150 shells from the three attacking ships killed 114 civilians, 9 solders and 7 RN sailors at the Hartlepools (most of the latter on the HMS Patrol as she moved out of port to engage the Blucher), and wounded over 500 people (442 people had hospital treatment of at least 1 night overnight for their wounds, so this figure could be as high as 800). 18 killed at Scarborough (1 disputed after research by Mark Marsay), and 3 killed at Whitby. A handful of the dozen 11" shells recovered by the Royal Engineers after the attack at the Hartlepools landed about 10 miles inland (17,600 yards / 16,000 m) : which goes to show that these guns had range despite their early low elevation. (I'm the Principal Curator, and lead of Research and Development, at Hartlepool Museums)
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Hey Drach, as a german I can tell you: As a general rule, ships are feminin. Also, while we can say "das Schlachtschiff Bismarck", we can also say KMS (Kriegsmarineschiff) Bismarck. There is also the equivalent to HMS in german, that would be SMS (Seiner Majestät Schiff). So one would normally call a ship of the Reichsmarine RMS ...., one of the Kriegsmarine KMS and one of the Kaiserliche Marine SMS. It is only the modern German Navy that has no acronyms in front of the ships name, so the present practice would be to call a ship like the frigate Sachsen either "die Fregatte Sachsen" or in short just "die Sachsen". In terms of supply ships, we would say "Der Versorger", but still refere to the ship itself as female - "Die Westfalen ist ein Einsatzgruppenversorger". So congrats, you got that.
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Regarding the state of shipwrecks in the north sea: (from the question state of the wreck of HMS Incinvible) Ships might actually be broken down and almost unrecognisable in only days, weeks or years, dependant on the depth, usual area sea conditions and the material the ship is built of (wood/ iron / steel)
I've been diving for years on the norwegian west coast and a few dives on the war wrecks in the Narvik area. You have wrecks that are recognizable from the battle of Narvik sitting at the bottom in a moderate deteriorated condition as they where when sinking in 1940, and the opposite, where a new fishing wessel grounding on at submerged reef, sinking on top of it in 5-7 meters, being completely smashed in a few days, and bits of the hull being embeddet (!) into the solid rock.
Drach is right that shallow waters are very hostile to wrecks, and sea conditions in the north sea is very rough. In addition to this, worms that eats wood and other materials thrive there. Wooden ships, unless buried in sand/silth or mud, are very vulnerable.
To give an example, propellar shafts found on the bottom was shaped by the rock bottom lying beneath. That's a pretty solid chunk of metal, and it will bend to the forces of nature.
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I don't think Admiral Gensoul actually cared so much about the fact that the British had sent a captain to negotiate with him. I fully believe he made a fuss about it to buy his fleet time to come up to steam and to see if the British were actually serious.
In my opinion, Admiral Gensoul wasn't entirely unjustified in refusing to hand over his fleet or scuttle it in harbor. In hindsight, his best options were to join with the Royal Navy or scuttle them, but he did not have the gift of hindsight. As you had mentioned, many observers on both sides thought the Brits were mere weeks away from brokering a peace with Germany. Mers-el-Kebir was the first test of the Vichy government's legitimacy, and just surrendering the ships would have dire consequences for the French afterwards both for the sailors, for the Vichy government, and for the fleet as a whole. From the French perspective, the Vichy government was France's best bet at resuming a "normal" life with some degree of autonomy. Granted, they couldn't really trust the Germans, but what choice did they really have? If they opposed the Germans and the Brits did seek a separate peace, then they'd be subjugated in whole, like the Poles. There's no telling what would happen to the families of the sailors and officers. The Vichy government would seem weak and unwilling to back German interests (remember, the Vichy government staying neutral also served Axis interests, as its fleet wouldn't fall into British hands, and the French colonies in North Africa wouldn't have to be occupied by Axis troops). If this is the case, Vichy France becomes a liability the Germans would be unlikely to put up with. There is some degree of validity behind this, as when the Vichy troops in North Africa put up only a token resistance against the Allies in Operation Torch, the Germans invaded Vichy France and tried to take the ships at anchor in Toulon.
Granted, I'm not slamming the British, either. They had no reason to trust the Germans would keep to their word, and so long as the French fleet existed, they would always pose a threat to the Royal Navy. Both sides did the best they could in a really bad situation. As unfortunate as it was that so many French sailors had to lose their lives and see all those ships sent to the bottom, the deed had to be done one way or another.
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Perfect ending for this tribute.
Odd as it may seem, as I am an American, I had the opportunity to meet HM Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Philip on two occasions at two very different times in my life.
The first was as an 12 year boy in 1976, when I was spending the summer with my mother's family in the Miramachi area of New Brunswick, Canada. One uncle was the Mayor of Chatham, NB, and I was with my older cousins when the Queen and Prince Philip visited Chatham.
Another uncle was head of provincial parks for the area, so I was with my cousins who were the same age as me, when we made our bows and I got to shake the Duke's hand. It was quite the story for a boy from rural coastal Maine, and I dined out on regulary in our school's cafeteria.
My second meeting occurred during my career as a US Federal Law Enforcement officer. I was stationed in our Cincinnati office, and given my security clearance and the fact my boss liked me, I was included in a party of officer assigned when the Queen and Prince Philip came to Kentucky to see her horse farm there. While I spent most of my time wearing a suit, our agency had full dress uniform which included the classic American campaign hat, so I was wearing that.
I remembered my childhood meeting vividly. Prince Philip lingered with the uniformed officers who were present while the Queen was busy with local dignitaries. He was very affable, not at all what I was expecting. He was bluff, and good humored as he chatted with us, much as you would expect from a sailor.
I gather from things i have read about Prince Philip over the years, that people either greatly admired and respected him or despised him. I gladly count myself among the group that admired him. One can not help but admire a man who dedicated his entire life to the service of his "adopted" nation.
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I know that I’m biased in their favor based on how much fun I have playing them in World of Warships, but even before I started playing that game, I always had a bit of a crush on the BBs and BCs of the Kaiserlich Marine. (Yes, this is including the Nassau class. I know you viscerally despise their design, and you have a valid point. But I look at their short, tubby design and think, “Aww, that’s so ugly it’s adorable!”)
The earlier BBs I like because their lighter armament, balanced by impressive armor, gives them “underdog” status in my mind. Then there’s Koenig and her sisters, which are still under-gunned compared to the competition but are still very tough and some of the most attractive ships of the dreadnought era. Then there’s Bayern and her sisters, which keep the universal toughness of their predecessors but actually have an impressive main battery this time around.
And as for the Battlecruisers, well...you’ve already described all the reasons why I like Seydlitz so much, and then there was the Goeben, which changed hands to the Ottoman Empire and refused to be sent to the big sea lane in the sky until the NINETEEN-SEVENTIES. Considering that (as far as I know) the only other ship of that era to survive that long was our USS Texas, and I’m pretty sure she was a museum ship by that point, well...let’s just say I nurse a very small grudge against the Turks for not giving the faithful old girl the same treatment. I don’t usually like Battlecruisers, but when I do, they tend to be German. Tough as old shoe leather, lightly armed but still scrappy in a fight, and they tend to be attractive to downright gorgeous in my opinion. (I consider the WWII-era Scharnhorst and Gneisenau to be the last German Battlecruisers, and they easily share a slot in my “Top 5 Most Attractive Ships” list.)
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Thank you very much for this video. The 30th Flotilla (Black Sea Fleet) has always been a sub-research topic of interest. As both of you mentioned, it is extremely difficult getting information on these 6 Type II subs and their operations. I am fortunate to have a handful of original photos and documents relating to the topic- very, very hard to find.
One thing not mentioned is Soviet supply was mainly done close to the coast, which limited the operational depths of the u-boats. Because of this, deploying mines on identified routes was more profitable. Further, many of the Soviet coastal supply boats were armed, resulting in dangerous gun duels.
One English publication that deals with U-boats in the Arctic & Black Sea is Lawrence Paterson's "Steel and Ice". It is well researched and provides good information on both theatres of war... both which are terribly under reported in English historical accounts.
Closing note: please, please, never be discouraged if your sources are books or documents in German or Russian. I speak neither but you will find my bookshelves contain a number of non-English sources. Prior to Google Translate, it was hard & dedicated work translating information. Now, if you are patient and need the information for your research, translation programs are a very good way to add vital information to your knowledge. It is also amazing how quickly you start picking up languages by translating documents, etc. :) Viel Glück und viel Spaß beim Forschen/Lesen.
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During D Day the German Snorkel Submarines had a few successes, U-984 damaged a Frigate and 4 Library Ship's in a Channel Convoy, the U-763 Attacked a Convoy, was Depth Charged for nearly 30 hours, got lost and checking the surface with it's periscope found it was surrounded on three sides by land and had numerous Ship's anchored near by, soon realizing they were in Spithead, the Great Naval Anchorage off Portsmouth, one of the most Heavily Defended Harbors in the World, sat silently on the bottom until night and slipped out in the wake of a Convoy and back to France, having used more than it's share of Luck and been damaged by the Depth Charging as well. These could run just as fast under water during the night as the Electro U-boats, when their Snorkels couldn't be seen and weren't swamped by Waves. There were just too many AntiSubmarine Ship's for even the Electro U-boats to get by the Massed sonars.
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Pollyanna the Reindeer was a gift from the Soviet Navy to the crew of the HMS Trident in 1941, and she spent 6 weeks aboard, originally being small enough to fit through a torpedo tube, she developed a taste for condensed milk and was too big to fit when the submarine got to port, so they used a winch and a crewman using a broom to pull her out of the sub and onto dry land. She's known for refusing to sleep anywhere else than under the captains bed, barrelling her way through the submarine and knocking everyone in her way over when the sub surfaced for fresh air, eating the navigation chart, and being well loved by the entire crew, even when she was acting like a diva haha.
Pollyanna was given to Regents Park Zoo (now London Zoo), and was said to have ducked down for cover whenever she heard a siren or loud bell. She died in 1947, within a week of he HMS Trident being decommissioned and scrapped.
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I must put in a correction here. I work as a Museums teacher at a Aircraft Museum outside of Gothenburg, Sweden.
However, we have one large scale model of a Swedish warship, namely the HMS Gotland. The model was saved by us when the local Maritime Museum was about to toss it away since they no longer cared about warships.
But Gotland is very special. She was built in Gothenburg for one thing. But most importantly she was Swedens only purpose built seaplane cruiser.
On her stern she had a catapult and space for up to 8 Hawker Osprey recon aircrafts.
The Ospreys served as recon, search and rescue and most importantly Artillery Spotters.
Gotland herself only carried 6 Bofors 15cm guns, five in one broadside, but they had a range around 15 km, some sources even say 18 km.
But Gotland was really not intended to fight alone but to act as the Eyes and Spotter for the Coastal fleets heaviest units, the Sverige class Coastal defence ships.
Her Spotters were there to guide the entire squadrons fire of twelve 28 cm guns, together with Gotlands 15 cm guns.
And that is not to consider lightly.
I hope you will make a video on Gotland in the future. She really deserves it.
I am willing to help out.
By the way, Gotland alone should be credited with spotting Bismarck. The airplane that first saw her was one of Gotlands Ospreys.
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Dye bags. These were developed, from my limited knowledge, after WWI due to the problems noted with "concentrated fire" battles -- what also happened to those British cruisers against the Pocket Battleship ADM. GRAF SPEE too, so it was still a problem in WWII in some cases.
There were two main ways to do this, the usual way and the French way (naturally!). The US and Japan did the "usual" way -- Germany did not use dye bags; not sure about Italy) for their battleship APC ammo (and possibly for their cruisers, though this had to be carefully thought out due to limitations as to the range of possible colors, as you mentioned). To do this, the large empty sheet-steel pointed hollow windscreens ("Ballistic Caps" to the Army) had an ~5-pound (2 kg) paper bag of the assigned dye color inserted into the empty space by unscrewing the windscreen (most windscreens were screw-on for this purpose or to replace easily if they, being sheet-metal, got bent during storage or handling). The US windscreen were not especially fragile when hitting water and many remained intact, so to solve the dispersion problem, triangular holes, closed by thin plates spot-welded at the corners were cut into the upper end and a ring of small circular holes, with crimped-on plugs were cut into the lower edge of the windscreen just above the attachment threads. These pop=in/pop-out plugs would allow water to slam through the windscreen and disperse it into the shell splash (only good for water hits during the daytime, of course).
The Japanese had it easier, since they had those break-away "Cap Heads" on their Type 88 (1928 cruiser and battleship "diving" versions of 1921 British-style hard-capped 15" Mark VA AP) ammo with new fuzes and modified AP caps and windscreens and later 1931 Type 91 and even later, for some ships, Type 1 battleship-sized very-low-dreg AP designs, where the threads holding on the windscreens were weakened on purpose and the threads also held on the upper end of the shell's AP cap -- hence its name "Cap Head" -- that would be snapped off on water impact (any impact, actually) to allow a flat end of the cap to act to improve entry into the water in a stable, nose-first manner to allow the shells to dive under the armored belts of heavily-armored enemy (US Navy) warships to increase the chance of damage even if the shells missed the target by falling short (designed for an optimum 15-25-degree angle of fall gunnery range). This breakaway would always happen, useful or not, and cause the dye to disperse.
Initially, the British did not use any dye bags, either, though they needed them just like the US and Japanese Navies did due to their several warships, as the GRAF SPEE battle clearly showed. The French, however, even though they had only a very few warships that might need this kind of ID for their ammo, thought ahead, and decided to adopt it, even if they only had basically planned pairs of warships at any battle shat might need it (DUNKERQUE and STRASBOURGE, for example). They, however, were going to do it THE CORRECT WAY, (but of course!) and ALWAYS know which shell was from which ship, during the day, during the night, and even if they got a direct enemy ship hit, which was an admitted failing of the windscreen-splash-dispersal-only method. What they did in their special-dye-bag post-WWI "K" APC shells was to reinforce the windscreen of their new 33 cm and 38 cm APC ammo for their new DUNKERQUE and RICHELEIU Classes and put the nose fuze and booster of an HE shell in the tip of the windscreen with a somewhat heavy bag of dye held in a reinforced thin sheet-steel container inside the windscreen that the setting off of the nose fuze on impact with anything would blow the dye all over the place, into the splash water, but also into the air, coloring the explosion flame and smoke, including at night and when a direct hit was made on the enemy (one of the best parts of this pre-radar idea). The British got information about this after RICHELIEU escaped the Germans and decided that they liked it, so they adopted the new "K" shell ID for 8" and up APC shells used during much of the latter part of WWII and for at least a short time thereafter. Not all, though. Thus, you have British 14" Mark IB N.T. (colored burning "Night Tracer" in the base fuze) K. APC Projectiles, some without the "K" and some with this new dye bag system, which were both available during mid-to-late WWII.
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Regarding the Adm. Kimmel whatif: A metaphysically forewarned Kimmel has a big problem in the fact that most of the defenses of Pearl Harbor were not under his direct command. In a certain sense, Kimmel was like an American tourist in a Belle Époque French hotel — he may smell smoke and see flames, but he has to convince the snooty concierge of the danger before the other hotel guests can be alerted. The defenses of Oahu and the Territory of Hawaii generally were in the hands of Lieutenant General Walter E. Short, a man promoted at least one star beyond his competence. There was no significant force of fighters stationed at the Ford Island airbase on December 6-7. All of the real air strength, mainly P-40 Warhawks, was commanded by Short, and even though an admiral outranks a lieutenant general, Kimmel could only advise Short. It was revealed in the Roberts Commission investigation that General Short fundamentally misunderstood his mission in Hawaii. He thought that the presence of the US Fleet added to the defensive status of Pearl Harbor and that it could, as it were, take care of itself even while at anchor with their boilers offline. Therefore, in my opinion, Step One should be to convince Short to hold a major air raid drill at Wheeler Field at 0715 Sunday. Short liked drills, so he might have gone for it. Similarly, base security at Pearl Harbor was the responsibility of Rear Admiral Claude C. Bloch, CinC 14th Naval District. Bloch was a better officer than Short, and he and Kimmel worked well together. If Kimmel had a hunch, Bloch was likely to play it.
Emptying the 14" and 16" magazines is a good idea, but I'd make that secondary to repositioning my battleships. In Kimmel's shoes, I'd resist the temptation to sortie the whole US Fleet. They couldn't catch Nagumo if Nagumo didn't want to be caught, and leaving Pearl Harbor would risk losing valuable ships permanently. Therefore, Step two would be to move the battleships West Virginia and Oklahoma to a position north of Ford Island to clear the fields of fire of the AA guns of the other battleships. Next, Kimmel should order the four-piper destroyers Allen and Chew to screen the repositioned battleships. They were elderly ships without the endurance and strength to operate with the US Fleet at sea, so if they got hit by torpedoes meant for West Virginia or Oklahoma, the loss would be tolerable. (This callously disregards the fate of their crews, but that kind of sacrifice is what DDs are born for.) The destroyer Blue and the light cruiser Phoenix should take up stations closer to Battleship Row for AA defense. As the final phase of Step Two, Kimmel should order the tenders Tangier, Dobbin, and Whitney to positions in the main anchorage near Battleship Row to present a barrier to Japanese torpedo planes. The open water between Ford Island and the tank farm was well-understood by Nagumo's pilots and torpedo attacks in that area had been thoroughly rehearsed, putting low-value targets in their way could have fatally discombobulated their actual attack. Lastly, as Step Three, Kimmel should send submarines Narwhal, Dolphin, and Tautog due north to intercept and sink as many of Nagumo's carriers as possible. These ships were in base for refueling and provisioning, whereas the other subs were in for overhauls. With enough warning, they could have made the whole Pearl Harbor operation much more interesting for the Imperial Japanese Navy.
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Naval architect here: They don’t teach us this sort of stuff in school, but based on my knowledge of ships, fire damage alone can sink a steel ship a number of ways. One is by opening the hull. If the fire is inside the ship but the outside is in contact with seawater, then the inside of a hull plate is going to be more or less at the temperature of the fire and the outside will be at the boiling point of seawater. That’ll induce a lot of thermal stresses into the plates of the hull, making them want to warp and opening riveted seams. It can also cause some of the plates to crack, letting seawater into the hull. And plates near the waterline will be getting hot and then rapidly cooled when hit by a wave, possibly cracking it. Another is by affecting piping inside the ship. A hot fire might easily melt or burn gasket material in a pipe joint in the seawater system, letting water out of the pipe. It can also weaken the steel of the pipe, causing it to sag and pull away from its connections, letting water out of the pipe. In either of these scenarios, if the pipe was a seawater pipe, that would directly connect the inside of the ship to the sea, allowing flooding from hydrostatic pressure. Small tanks and sections of pipe that are closed off but full of liquid can also boil, causing the pressure to rise and making a steam explosion that throws shrapnel that can punch through the hull, too.
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I can't believe you didn't go at least a tiny bit into the American stern, with its surfboard like qualities that got rid of the turbulence not by narrowing the stern horizontally, but tapering it vertically. THAT is where America got her fast battleships, even though prop design then became a problem for quite a while, due to cavitation, the boatman's nightmare.
But by narrowing it vertically, it made each fast battleship into a surfboard, not only not wasting its hp by burying its ass into the sea like any old displacement hull, but using that wasted hp to propel them even faster, by surfing their own wake, a phenomenon most experienced pleasure boat captains are familiar with. Transferring that concept to a battleship platform, given that almost all pleasure yachts at the time went for the traditional horizontal narrowing so the bow looked much as the stern, was indeed revolutionary.
It was really only achieved 100% with the Iowas, due to length limitations on the Washingtons and South Dakotas, but not mentioning it is sort of goofy, given that all modern warship and many commercial ships use the exact same technology, just tuned up a bit.
Funny you included the square stern, but not that. You do know only American Heavy Cruisers had that stern? Light cruisers had traditional round sterns, which were the beginning of the surfboard stern, although far simpler as they were so narrow. The fat battleship sterns came from this concept.
But I suppose you could go on forever on this subject. Kudos for a valiant charge at a complex subject and an extremely understandable presentation. I dare say you might have saved many lives by making Sunday sailors more aware of metacentric height alone! (Their eyes glaze over when the phrase is even mentioned, even though they own a million dollar yacht!)
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Drach, Thanks for another fine video and for the photo of Liberty Ship Samuel Chase. (37:20) My father was crewman on that ship, Dec 44 to Jan 45. NY--Cherbourg--Swansea--Delaware. By coincidence I was just reading his fine 2-page memoir which brings to life the Chase and the N Atlantic. I give just a few examples.
Approaching the British Isles, the escorts were more active, and dropping more depth charges. In a light moment, someone said "they were nearing the area where Irish subs could cause trouble."
They arrived in France just after the Battle of the Bulge and my Dad noted the many wounded shipping back to England. He mentioned the hospital ship Llandovery Castle.
The Samuel Chase stopped at Swansea Wales to take on ballast for the return trip. In mid-Atlantic a gale shifted the ballast causing a 15-degree list. To restore trim, hundreds of tons of slag and shale had to be repositioned. The deck gang turned to and, with no shovels on board, did it manually using buckets. "A tough way to do that job."'
Finally back at Delaware Bay, my father noted a large unfamiliar warship, concluding it was a USN battle cruiser. I confirmed this detail. On 1/17/1945 the USS Guam departed Philadelphia for Okinawa.
In sum: Despite arduous work, bad weather, and fear, it was always interesting. And not as bad as PQ-17.
Thanks again
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Oh, mysterious technical issues. Those make both the best and the worst experiences. Best workshop I ever had about it was explaining that:
1) Focus on the actual physics, work out how sensitive the mechanisms are for disturbances. Be careful rolling away with only how you think it works. Human imagination is way to eager to construct complicated failure modes in the face of uncertainty than admitting that simple key parameters are actually not known or even quantified.
2) Don't be afraid to apply maximum conclusive tests: so if you think a certain small very inconsistent misalignment, might 'somehow' be causing quality issues, it might be better stap to crack up that misalignment a few factors and see if quality issues go through the roof or stay similar. A way more conclusive way instead of trying to figure out if an possible issue, that 'might be the cause', actually occurs enough or significantly enough to matter. The later way easily ends you up in a rabbit hole that risks always ending up trying to proof a hypothetical failure scenario occurs instead focusing if this scenario actually matters.
A good design should have a certain robustness in regard to the small uncertainties that you expect, and you really want to prove if this expected robustness is actually present, or maybe even underestimated. If your designs works even under overloading, but still fails in the field, than this could indicate your design loads are not taking into account actual field circumstances: that is not a quality issue, but might be a design issue.
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RE: If USA was still part of the British Empire in WWI. I know you are a mostly Navy guy Drach, so to expand on the army.
While both the USA and the British Empire relied in peace time on a small, purely volunteer professional army, it is worth looking at the numbers of troops both had in France, in the UK's case in June of 1916, and in the case of the US in June of 1918. The reason why the two year gap is due to the different times of entry the US Army buildup in 1918 was at about the same stage as the British Army buildup in 1916.
Exact figures for June of 1916 for the British Army are difficult to gauge exactly, however, we do have one important yardstick. During the battle of the Somme, which lasted July 1916 - November 1916 no less than 50 British Divisions were engaged at one point or another, though not continuously of course. A British Division of 1916 consisted of some 16 - 18,000 troops, which meant Britain committed 900,000 combat division troops to the Somme, with a tail of at least the same, so just shy of 2 million troops. This does not include troops stationed elsewhere, still at home or currently training, it also does not take into account replacements.
Compared to the French army this does not sound impressive, until you consider that the BEF in 1914 consisted of 6, later 8 Divisions, and that consisted of virtually all active duty soldiers and recent reservists that could be made available to the Continent. A sum a some total of around 180,000 men, of whom about half were infantry. In other words the British Army had expanded by ten times in 18 months.
You see EXACTLY the same scenario in the US, a small army of around 250,000 men rising to around 2 million men actually in France by June/July of 1918 (though about half of those were still undergoing final training), a time period of around about 18 months. Of course, this did not include the around 2 million young American men who were undergoing training in the US at the time, or who were waiting to be shipped out.
Now imagine the US and UK started mobilising at the same time because the US was still part of the Empire? You are easily looking at 4 million men in France by 1916. Around 9.5 million British men wore the Uniform of the British Army in one role or another throughout the war. You could EASILY at least double that if you look at the USA's manpower pool. If the war was still ongoing by 1918 a combined British Imperial Army in France of over 10 million men is NOT inconceivable....
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Heya Drach, former staff of the Battleship Iowa Museum here, wanted to add a couple fun tidbits that I used to say when doing my tours:
-At 26:18 those three switches on the left side are respectively for the General, Chemical, and Collision alarms, and when the ship was first opened those alarms (unbeknownst to everyone) were still live! An early visitor pulled one of those switches and gave everyone a nice shock. We actually clipped the wires one deck below to prevent that from happening again.
-Amidst your lovely analysis of the Iowa/Yamato models, at 35:05 you can see the bottom of a very large bell in the top-center of the picture. That is actually one of USS Iowa's original brass bells from 1943, that used to hang below the bridge. When Iowa was recommissioned in 1984 the crew petitioned the Navy's History and Heritage Command for their ship's original bell, and received it! Unfortunately, being the 1980s, the crew then went out and had the lovely brass bell *chromed*, which I'm sure must have made the History and Heritage Command very happy indeed. Somehow the Museum was able to convince the Command to lend us the bell again (perhaps they figured we couldn't do anything worse than what the poor thing has already suffered), and it's been displayed in the museum since it arrived in 2018.
Loved the video!
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Drach,
Loved the video! I think what happened at midway was (mostly) a great example of how U.S. Navy command philosophy is supposed to work. Fletcher was SOPA (senior officer present afloat) and as such was responsible for all forces. He was also OPCON (operational control) of both task forces (ie, responsible for overall concept of operations), and TACON (tactical control, responsible for localized execution) of the Yorktown Force. Spruance was TACON for the Hornet and Enterprise task force. When Fletcher's ability to exercise OPCON was impeded, he passed OPCON to the officer most able to exercise operational control of the forces- i.e., Spruance. I'm not clear on how TACON of the Yorktown group devolved, if at all, but I doubt Spruance was exercising TACON remotely. It likely devolved to the screen commander for the Yorktown force, but I don't know that for certain.
That bit of mastery of the obvious aside, things that occurred to me as I watched the vid:
1- Fletcher never relinquished responsibility (he was still SOPA) for the battle, despite relinquishing operational authority (OPCON). If everything had gone wrong while under Spruance's operational control, Fletcher would have still been responsible. His decision to devolve OPCON was not only clear headed and doctrinally correct, but also selfless in that regard.
2- I believe Spruance, as TACON of Enterprise and Hornet, should be held accountable for Hornet not obeying tactical direction. Even though he could not of course read Mitscher's mind and countermand the flight plan, Hornet was under Spruance's TACON and as such its actions reflect a loss of command and control on Spruance as OTC (officer in tactical control.) Mind you I say this as a huge Spruance fan, but the question of, "What the hell, Ray, can't you control your carriers?" would have been valid from either Fletcher or Nimitz.
3- As far as "credit" goes, I don't think there's much point on dividing the credit amongst the officers present. Technically it was Fletcher's battle, in that he was responsible no matter what, but the decentralized TACON and shifting OPCON meant that everybody had to do their bit or it would come apart- witness what happened when Mitscher decided not to play along. Fletcher and Spruance were remarkably in-sync in their handling of their task groups and the overall operational concept, which just points to them both being true professionals who were doctrinally savvy and inter-personally trusting.
Anyhow, I apologize for all the jargon- and I realize that this is modern jargon, not period. But the jargon defines the thought behind what happened- to wit, The SOPA was impeded in his OPCON and devolved it upon the officer most able to exercise it, while retaining overall responsibility. That is exactly what is supposed to happen, and you have to laud Fletcher for the selfless but correct call, and Spruance for showing absolutely no gaps or seams in control when the time came. Consummate professionals both, and both deserve credit for that.
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Remember Chatham Dockyard well. My father worked ( in the R.N.S.T.S) there between 1955 (approx) to late 1960s when he did a stint in London (Empress State Building) then went back to the "yard" till his retirement which was the same year the yard closed. The number of Navy Days I went to, as well as the Children's Christmas party which was held in the Sports Hall, opposite side of the road to the Main Gate. I believe it was part of the Royal Marine Barracks. The closure of the Gun Wharf, which is now where Chatham Library now is ( I think it may have moved). Living across the river in Wainscott, the narrow gauge Lodge Hill and Upnor Railway which ran from a place just by Upnor Castle to the Naval Armaments Depot at Lodge Hill where the ammo from any ship in for a refit was stored, occasionally hearing at the end of a refit the sound of the gun armament being tested with blanks.
The Sail Loft, not only manufactured sails but was in latter years responsible for supply ensigns and flags to the Navy. Apparently they had books dating back years which showed all the correct colours etc.
The Dockyard used to have a large collection of ships figure heads that were displayed around the yard, I am not sure if they are still there as, I was told, some seemed to vanish during closure.
In later years, after my parents both died I went back to Chatham for a look round, and I'm sure that I was standing some where near the Naval Memorial looking over Chatham and could see a building with the word " Aggie Weston's" painted on the roof in faded white lettering.
Finally living on the Isle of Man I met an engineer who was working on the tunnel connecting Whitewall Creek and the Dockyard that was part of the regeneration.
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While there were no dedicated PT boat carriers I'm aware of, the story of the SS Stanvac Manila, a tanker that was torpedoed with six PT boats from the second division of Squadron (RON) 10 being carried as deck cargo, may be as close as the USN got to a PT boat carrier, albeit from a ship never designed for such a role. Stanvac Manila was torpedoed May 24, 1943, off Nouméa, New Caledonia. While the merchant crew abandoned ship, the senior PT officer, and senior officer onboard, Lt. (jg.) Russel W. Rome, belayed the abandon ship order, and the PT crews started to free the boats from their cradles. The naval armed guard remained aboard, and they, plus the PT crews, fighting from their boats, were able to keep Japanese planes at bay while the tanker slowly sank. I won't write another book here, but check out the story at http://www.pt171.org/PT171/writeups/stanvac.htm. RON 10 was my dad's squadron, and he was aboard the Stanvac Manila that day. Amazingly, my dad's boat, PT-172, was able to motor into Nouméa harbor under its own power, and three of the remaining five boats floated free and were towed into harbor. No better example than this of the fighting spirit of green PT boat crews encountering their first taste of combat.
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I have to go further into bursting charge size effects.. I only rate these shells into generic classes, AP (under 4% filler weight), SAP,/Common z(4-5% filler weight), HE (over 5% and under 8% filler weight), and bombardment/CPC (over 8% filler weight, up to 12%). I assume a reasonably powerful, detonable, HE-type filler and effective, reliable fuzing capable of giving a full-power detonation of that filler type reliably (at least 80% of the time, roughly), which unfortunately for many shells, including WWII German AP and SAP-type shells, the fuzes and, particularly the booster/"exploder" that sets off the main filler was not very good in some designs with the post-WWI reduced sensitivity fillers (not a problem with Japanese shells!). It took some nations some time -- if they ever com0letely fixed the problems -- in getting reliable detonations even when the shell worked perfectly otherwise. German shells, maybe due to sabotage from the slave labor or not-so-good design work with booster charges, seem to have had the worst problem during WWII. British shells using Shellite had a problem with this too, since they originally used the delay-action modified version of their old Lyddite fuze, the Number 16. Shellite was much less sensitive to impact shock, as desired, but it also was somewhat more difficult to detonate at full power, so lots of "partial detonations" mixed with less-powerful, black-powder-like "violent explosions" occurred, These gave OK results in many cases to nearby spaces in the target, but not nearly the complete destruction desired. The TNT fillers used in smaller guns and, I believe in the NELSON 16" APC shells, was actually better, since more work was done to make these shell detonate at all using Tetryl boosters and only later did tetryl boosters start being applied to Shellite-filled APC shells with good results. A mixed bag here. The US use of Tetryl, starting in 1928 (the same year that British TNT shells started getting reliable Tetryl -- "CE" -- boosters) and had a better design from the start, using two small rocket-nozzle-shaped pits ion the sides of the upper end of their fuzes with Tetryl filling them, so that they fired two needle-like shaped charge jets into their extremely inert Explosive "D" fillers and very reliably set them off in full detonation with this redundant booster design.
So, let us say that all of the shells go off with full-power high order detonations. The filler size does affect the blast effects, with the bigger the better, obviously. Bur larger fillers cut out bigger cavities in the shell, greatly reducing the number of high-velocity sideways fragments of the main body of the shells. Nose pieces of heavy-nosed, base-fuzed AP, SAP, and CPC projectiles are all broken up into a few large chunks (sometime they stay in one huge piece) and can act like a huge bowling ball tearing through several spaces and only bouncing off the thick deck and far-side armor plates. However, these are not very many pieces and only do relatively minor damage, barring a blind luck impact (not likely) -- pieces of the armor punched out are on the same scale of secondary damage effects. Base pieces are just as big as nose pieces but tend to be reduced a lot in speed by the detonation in front of them and do little damage, if any at all. So you get faster, but less high-velocity middle-body fragments from large-filler shell, but s9mewhat slower, but a lot more, fragments from small-filler shells. So as long as the filler sizes are in the ranges I give above, the total effect of blast versus fragments roughly balances' out, since fragments cause somewhat different, but just as deadly damage as blast does (its a "wash" as far as I can see). When the filler sizes switch to the larger ranges, the blast effects get bigger much faster than the fragment sizes get smaller (the filler cavity gets longer and makes some more fragments due to this) so there is "a more blast for the buck" effect, but the ranges have less effect since the ship spaces are fixed in size and you can only do so much damage to the space you blow up in and perhaps one space to the sides by blast along (fragments from side blasts do not penetrate very well due to their small size and highly irregular shapes), so it takes a lot larger filler size to get more blast-created damage results that matter.-- the CPC/bombardment shells are much like small aircraft bombs, with CPC (the later TNT-filled version after WWI) having some light armor penetration ability due to its heavy nose and AP cap and SAP-type base fuze -- US bombardment shells, originally railroad gun projectiles in WWI, also had base fuzes, but were designed as merely enlarged HE/HC shells with very little true armor penetration ability, but good rock, masonry, cement, or earth penetration against land forts.
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Hey Drach, just curious what the status of the public domain site for the ship photos is.
I would love to volunteer my skills as a sysadmin and at finding unorthodox solutions, if you need any help. For instance, it would be my advice to use archive.org to host the photos, and then use the embed API the site provides to then embed the photos on your site, where you can add whatever information. That way, if/when your website goes down, the photos are still on archive.org, and secondly, it would use less bandwidth and processing power for the server, so you could possibly get away with a free-tier google cloud or AWS VPS rather than actually having to pay for hosting. Text doesn't really take up much bandwidth, and since embedding the photos means they'll be pulled from Archive.org instead of your server, you don't even have to worry about the photos.
If I can be of literally any help, let me know and I can email you. :) I'm also chemputer on discord.
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I am taking an educated guess here, but I have about 20 yrs experience in restoring 2 different WW2 vessels (LCI and a PT Boat) along with their electrical components, and this looks very familiar to me. These cylindrical parts bear a very strong resemblance to multiple position rotary switches that I have taken apart and rebuilt. We use them mostly for controlling the lights and some other light loads, but larger versions can control a lot of amperage. The rotary switches used by the USN are not exactly like these, but they both work by rotating a disc with contacts inside them that align with other contacts on the disc housing. There are internal springs and mechanical detents that give them a positive "click" noise when they are turned. On the USN switches, you need to ensure they are only rotated clockwise! (If you turn them anti-clockwise it can break the little ratchet teeth.) It would not surprise me if these are the same type of thing. Going from the description you read about "controlling power to the 6 different heating coils" inside the water distilling unit, I would surmise that these rotary switches can be used to energize 1,2,3,4,5, or 6 of the heater coils sequentially, thus giving very fine control to how fast you are boiling the seawater inside the distilling unit. I would need to see a schematic of the distilling unit to know for sure. All of the other bits inside the box seem to be spare terminal blocks and connection points for replacing the switches or perhaps the heating coils. Again this is only a guess, but it sure seems similar to the rotary switches that i have rebuilt over the last few years. Thanks for making such an interesting video! Jerry
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51:00 Degassing
Short answer Drach is right, by the time the navy gets the bunker fuel it is already de-gassed. It happens before distribution.
Long answer
Crude oil has hydrocarbon gas in solution, refined fuel and destilate products have little or no gas in solution.
Crude oil inside the reservoir is under pressure, and gases are dissolved in the crude oil, held in solution by the pressure. During production, as crude oil travels UP the wellbore the hydrostatic pressure is reduced. A lot of gas comes out of solution as pressure is reduced. (think opening a bottle of soda that forms a lot of bubbles suddenly when it is opened). The first step of De-gassing is what is called a "gas separator", usually at the well site. The gas separator is a primitive device, simply a tall cylinder with baflles inside to allow the gas to vent to the top, and liquid to collect on the bottom. The crude oil that comes out of the separator is called "unweathered".
The unweathered crude is then pumped into pipelines under some (lower) pressure. In the refinery the crude is then passed thru a vacuum Degasser to capture valuable gas (these gases are feedstock for chemicals or used as fuel)
The degassed crude is now passed thru a distillation column, where the different fractions of hydrocarbons are separated by their condensation temperature (pretty much a large moonshine still). The liquids that are extracted from the distillation column are called distillates and have negligible amounts of gas in solution.
The most valuable fractions become gasoline or diesel. The less valuable are called BUNKER FUEL. Bunker fuel is just a notch above asphalt and tar. Ship's boiler run on bunker fuel. Bunker fuel usually has to be heated to thin it out and pump it, use it in burners for boilers. This is why ships have fuel heaters and pre-heaters.
Beware that distilates are still volatile, they can evaporate and become gaseous (gasoline in open jars will evaporate)... but this is a change in phase, not release of solution gas.
Cheers.
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About the french ships of the line:
1) Their admirals were terrible but their naval engineers were great, Dupuy de Lome in particular. They were quite innovative.
2) Speaking of innovation, they built the most prominent vertical hull ship of the line, the Valmy, which was kind of a failure for being too unstable, and then followed that with the Napoléon, the first purpose-built steam warship, which was a great success.
3) The quality of their manufacturing was also on par with the british, and their Océan class was considered quite good.
So my request for the future, either as a Q&A or dedicated videos, is a discussion on that, namely...
- Dupuy de Lome's designs, particularly the Napoléon
- The Valmy
- The Bretagne (1855)
- The Océan class ships of the line.
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The RN, USN, and, I believe, the French used range clocks, large clock like round structures with a pair of hands, generally mounted high up on the main and fore masts. They could communicate the range when found by the lead ship, or indeed any ship, in the line, allowing the following or leading ships to use that range without resorting to all the tables. There were still some small adjustments made to compensate for their place in line and any variation in direction, but range (or concentration, in RN terms) clocks allowed all the ships in the line to set their guns to a known range and get into action rather than each ship having to find their own ranges.
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I loved the 25mm demonstration! On silkworm Missiles, during the Iran Iraq war the American Oliver Hazard Perry class Frigate Stark was hit by two Exocet Missiles, one failing to explode the other hitting in almost the same place did explode, both fired from a Iraqi Fighter, probably hoping to blame it on Iran, it hit a crew quarters area, killed 37 men and wounded 21. I learned not to go by memory but check the facts first. It didn't inpair the seaworthiness of the Stark that much, other than a large hole in the side. This got Sadam Hussain put on the American hit list when oppertunity allowed and eventually, oppertunity did allow it. Great work as always, robotic voice or not, this is still my favorite channel! LoL, Always check the facts First or those who do will nail you for it! The Exocet had a 165 kilogram warhead and speed of Mach 0.92, the Silkworm Missile in the Middle East at that time Hy-1J had a 513 kilogram warhead and speed of Mach 0.8, the SY-2 a 365 kilogram shaped charge warhead and speed of Mach 0.9.
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I seem to recall that on swedish moored mine during the second world war, the mine achor would have a bottom sensing sensor (basically a weight in a adjustable length chain. Say 5 fathoms as un exemple) hanging below the anchor. When the mine landed in the water, the mine would float on the surface and the achor would sink towards the bottom with the bottom sensor hanging down below the achor. As the anchor would sink, it with unroll the chain, connecting the mine to the achor. When the bottom sensing sensor hit the sea floor, the spool for the chain between the mine and the anchor would lock, pulling down the mine below the surface, until the anchor hit the sea floor, with the mine now floating at the depths set by the lenght on the bottom sensing sensor. All very simple and all mechinical, with only chains, weights and simple mechanical locks.
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On 24 October 1944, Albert W. Grant joined TG 77.2 and sailed to engage a Japanese task force reported steaming northward from the Sulu Sea toward Surigao Strait. That American battleship group met the Japanese force in the Battle of Surigao Strait, and Grant, along with other destroyers in advance of the main battle line, conducted a torpedo attack. During this attack, she was hit and severely damaged by gunfire, not only from Japanese naval forces, but also by its covering US battleships. Grant suffered 22 hits, many by six-inch shells. Fires broke out, and the ship lost steering control and all power. Thirty-eight men were killed and 104 were wounded. Although their ship was down by the bow and listing heavily to port, the destroyer's crew got her engines working again and enabled her to retire to American-controlled waters in Leyte Gulf. They were great destroyers too - tough tin cans!
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in one very real sense, while at sea we are always doing battle with her. Regarding commonly seen shot damage, having the gun tackle eyes shot out was another big one. We often see reports of "two gun ports battered into one", and that results in the loss of the ropes and pulleys holding the cannon. In rough water this was dangerous as a cannon careening across the deck out of control could be disastrous and deadly. The loose gun had to be quickly toppled over with a long breaker bar before it crashed though the ship's side. Also, having either the ship's wheel or the rudder itself shot away was actually fairly common. The iron pintles and gudgeons holding the rudder often broke off. Regarding a dis-masted ship, there was another reason to put up some sort of jury rig as soon as possible... even a few stay sails will help stop the horrible rolling that will happen in heavy seas, and allow the modicum of steerage way needed to keep from broaching-to (being parallel to the deep wave troughs which has been the end of many ships). And on this themes of being "always at war with the sea"; Damage to the bow from collision was especially bad, as it sprung timbers causing heavy leaks that fothering would rarely help with. Lastly, before the widespread implementation of effective lightening rods, masts could be literally exploded by being struck by lightening. During the Napoleonic era, when fairly good records were kept, the RN lost several times fewer ships to combat than to the ongoing battle with the sea.
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Greetings and salutations Drax! Thank you for all your fantastic videos, I am an avid fan of yours. I am also an amateur student of Naval History, especially the WW2 period. I am an Icelander, living in Sweden, and I befriended a Brit whose father served in WW2 on the HMS Ashanti. I started to look into the history of that particular ship, and what a story that turned out to be. One of 4 of the 16 RN Tribals that survived the war. Her story reads more or less as "been there, done that". The Norway campaign, (where my friends father was decorated), later the Arctic Convoys (incl possibly PQ 17), definately with PQ 18, down south to the Pedestal Convoy, back up north to the Arctic and then back south taking part in the Torch landings. Later she operated in the Bay of Biscay alongside some of the Canadian Tribals. If ever there was a ship deserving a video of it`s own I would vote for the HMS Ashanti. Again, thanks again for all your fantastic videos, I especially liked your recent ones about AB cunningham and Johnny Walker. All the best to you and yours, Billi Stefansson.
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I remember reading this many years ago. After the declaration of war by Britain, it was not standing alone. All its Dominions ( South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and Canada), and its colonies, and territories contributed their men, leading to men of all sorts of colours, with all sorts of unfamiliar shoulder patches to puzzle British civilians, e.g. ANZAC - Australia and New Zealand Army Corp, SA - South Africa, and so on. It was especially surprising for British civilians to see dark skinned subjects of the Empire.
The story I read, decades ago, was of an Australian officer who was in London, on leave, with a friend of his, a dark-skinned Fijian officer. They were in the City of London, the middle of London, just walking down the street, attracting many curious glances. Eventually, a British civil servant in a bowler hat, suit, tie and with a briefcase, approached the pair and started a conversation with the Australian officer, but was clearly very curious about the Melanesian Fijian officer and spent a lot of time looking at him and his shoulder patch "Fiji". He eventually asked the Australian officer what his companion's shoulder patch signified. The Australian decided to take the piss, and told the curious Brit, that it was an acronym for "First Imperial Japanese Infantry" to the great amusement of the Fijian.
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So far as the prohibition question goes, the 18th Amendment says:
"Section 1
After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited." So, merely possessing alcohol wouldn't be a violation of Federal law unless you planned to transport it or sell it.
So being drunk, or even having alcohol on you, wouldn't be strictly illegal unless you're planning to transport it or store it. So a British sailor who got drunk on ship and then went ashore would only face local laws against being drunk and disorderly. Which is usually a misdemeanor, and at the time would probably end with the sailor being bailed out of jail by his captain, then he'd face discipline aboard ship.
Now, if he took some of his rum ration off ship, and local laws prohibited possession, then he could be charged, but again, he'd probably be released to his commander and disciplined aboard ship.
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Also, when you someday run out of warships to review, i suggest going for transatlantic liners, which competed for Blue Ribbon. Not only Titanic and Lusitania but also QM, QE, United States, SS Bremen, France, Normandy, RMS Empress of Ireland, and so much more.
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US Navy destroyers (and destroyer escorts and frigates) have pretty much all been named after notable navy personnel since USS Bainbridge (DD-1). Early on in the era of steel ships, protected cruisers got the names of cities while armored cruisers got the names of states but as mentioned when battleships started being built, they got the names of states so armored cruisers got demoted to cities alongside the protected cruisers. Though the Alaska-class is an interesting case because they were named after territories (Alaska and Hawaii not yet being states at the time they were built).
A couple of the more amusing conventions are (non ballistic missile) submarines which were named after sea creatures (mostly fish) for a while starting with the Barracuda class until the Los Angeles class and ammunition ships many of which are named after volcanoes. There's been a fair amount of change in conventions after WW2 and of course there are exceptions, like Jimmy Carter getting a submarine named after him given his time in the submarine service.
The IJN naming conventions were arguably the most poetic, probably because the idealized image of the samurai is that of the warrior-poet (the reality usually didn't live up to the ideal). Similar to US convention, IJN battleships were mostly named after provinces, but the difference is that they were named after provinces of classical Japan, not the prefectures established after the Meiji era. Armored cruisers, heavy cruisers, and battlecruisers were named after mountains; two of the names of unfinished Amagis - Atago and Takao - were later used for heavy cruisers. Light cruisers got the names of rivers, destroyers got the names of various weather related names such as snow (-yuki/-buki of which Fubuki is probably the most notable given its impact on destroyer design), wind (-kaze), tides (-shio), waves (-nami), and the like. Carriers were named after mythical flying creatures like dragons (-ryuu), cranes (-kaku), phoenixes (-hou) unless they were converted from a different type in which case they sometimes kept their old names like Akagi, Kaga, or Shinano. Carriers converted from merchant vessels usually got renamed because those generally end in -maru. Though the name Amagi got reused for an Unryuu class carrier later. No idea why they broke convention there. Submarines only got numbers which is probably telling of something, and I'm not sure what naming convention their auxiliaries used because there don't seen to be a whole lot of them comparatively. They really weren't and still aren't into naming ships after people (Musashi was not named for Miyamoto Musashi but Musashi province).
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Drach mentioned USS Midway’s excessive rolling and others have questioned her stability. Covering this in a few words is a challenge but may be of interest to some. Due to her long (47-year) service life there were four different “Midways.” First, the axial deck ship which delivered in 1945 – the largest warship in the world for ten years. Armored flight deck. First US warship too big to transit the Panama Canal. Second, in 1957 a modest canted deck was installed, permitting simultaneous launch and recovery (not feasible in axial-deck carriers). She began operating sub-sonic jets. Third, in 1966-1970 she went through an extensive modernization (40% increase in size of flight deck, steam cats, bigger JBDs, more and bigger deck-edge elevators, etc.). Over the next 10-15 years displacement continued to grow to accommodate super-sonic aircraft, new electronics (radar and comms), new self-defense systems, add substantial air conditioning to improve habitability, and other improvements (some unauthorized). When lowered, deck-edge elevators were now wet (unusable) in some seas. In 1986-1987 it was decided to add 10-foot blisters port and starboard to increase reserve buoyancy, reduce draft, and add to hull girder strength – the fourth Midway configuration. Transverse stability improved (GM varies as beam squared). None of the time-tested NAVSEA-NAVAIR ship motions criteria were exceeded (ramp vertical displacement and touch down point (#3 wire) vertical velocity).
On sea trials, however, the CO reported that the ship now rolls excessively in moderate seas to the point that air ops are degraded unacceptably. This got everyone’s attention. When the nation’s only forward deployed aircraft carrier is in trouble, even the White House starts asking questions. How serious is this? Can it be fixed? How soon and how fast? How did this happen and who is responsible? Can it be lived with? A major study got underway with the nation’s leading hydrodynamic experts involved. The distance (Yokosuka is eleven time zones from DC) was an additional challenge.
Prior to the blister Midway had a natural roll period of 18 seconds and now it was only 12-13 seconds. This had been anticipated since roll period varies inversely as GM, but roll period had never been a criterion, so no red flags were raised. No one considered that the snappy roll would increase the lateral acceleration on the flight deck (high above the ships center of gravity) to the point that aircraft would slide and tip when being moved by yellow gear. For info, Nimitz and cruise liners have 20+ second roll periods. Two senior flag officers, both outstanding engineers, were retired early, but the unwillingness to fund basic hydrodynamic research to validate criteria was a root cause. (Finding funds for model tests, simulations of ship/aircraft interface, full scale at sea experiments, and improve predictive models isn’t easy.)
Meanwhile, Midway routinely got a new CO, and at the same time four fixes were identified and tested at four different labs (notching the blister at the waterline was the preferred option). Perhaps unwilling to spend much of his 12-month command tour in drydock, the new CO reports that the motions can be lived with by adjusting heading to avoid beam seas, especially synchronous ones. And accepting restrictions when adjusting heading is infeasible. Midway later served in the first Gulf War, conducting 3330 combat sorties over 27-day period. Dropped 2000 tons of ordnance. She decommissioned a year later and is now a museum. She transitioned from Hellcats and Corsairs to F-4s and A-6s and finally to F/A 18s - a good return on investment. 200,000 men served in her.
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Drach, I'm a retired Chief Petty Officer (USN) and I had the pleasure of serving with Captain Seaquist from 1986 to 1988 on the IOWA, I served aboard her from Dec. 1983(precomm) until Jun. 1989. Without a doubt Larry Seaquist was the best damn "ship driver" I'd ever served under in my whole career (25 yrs.). He would have the tugs stand off and he'd take us out or pull us in by using all four engines and both rudders to "walk" the ship away from or to the pier.
Very accurate presentation on Larry's part, helluva memory, hell he picked mine !
He was a little bit off on his speed recollection though......We Snipes would've loved to hit 37 knots, however our Chief Engineer told us "She's a 43 year old lady, let's not push her too hard, she's already waltzin' like a champ"......so we held her to 36.6 knots.....that's the Honest to Gods truth, we hold the fastest speed record for an IOWA class Battlewagon........regardless of what hogwash the New Jersey spews forth....They're just jealous. (We also hold the longest accurate shot record.)
In closing, a Snipes Prayer of sorts: "And on the first day of creation, God said "Let there be Light" and the answer came from deep down below "number one switchboard AYE"......and the Navy Electricians Mate was born.
"Eight Burnin'; Four Turnin'; Four Churnin' "
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01:19:39 I can speak from personal experience of dealing with lightning damage.
The only thing predictable about lightning is that it is unpredictable.
We had a CCTV camera on an outside pole with an intercom box get hit by lightning almost 15 years ago. The lightning came inside on the coax cable, laughing at the so-called "lightning arrester" along the way, and hit the 16-port distribution amplifier. What the distribution amplifier does is take an input signal, amplify it, and then output it to several outputs. This lets multiple pieces of equipment use the TV signal without signal reflections and weak signal issues. In this case the amplifier sent video signal to the video matrix, for live monitoring, and to the DVR, for recording. This unit could take 16 camera inputs.
The distribution amplifier got so hot from the strike that it melted the solder on many components, leaving heat damage on the unrelated equipment above it. However, the damage did NOT propagate to the video matrix, the DVR, or the other 15 cameras plugged into it. The lightning went into the distribution amplifier, but no further. Upon testing at the office, about 8 of the 16 ports were actually still functional. I still have that distribution amp at home as a souvenir of the story. All I had to do was replace the distribution amplifier and all the cameras, other than the one that got hit, worked again.
The intercom system was completely fried. The lightning came into the main switcher, wrecking it as well as many of the intercom stations around the facility. I didn't work on that portion thankfully. Nor did I have to fix the outside camera that was originally hit.
Several years before that, I was working retail and there was a huge rainstorm going on outside. The store was slow due to the weather. I and a couple of customers were chatting while looking out the tire center windows at the rain. We saw a bolt of lightning hit a manhole cover in the street while not touching the power pole or power lines 40' away from the manhole cover. Sure enough, a day or so later I was able to run out to the middle of the street and see a scorch mark on the manhole cover near one edge.
So yea, lightning will often, but not always, strike the tallest object. It has so much energy in such a short time that the path it takes to ground is wildly unpredictable. The best you can hope for it to increase the odds of directing it away from sensitive things
Hope people find this interesting.
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Minor complaint: The photo that appears at the 1:10 mark to explain the ideas of the Jeune École wasn't a torpedo boat. (Yes Drachinifel, I know it's still a creation of the Jeune École, but I want to have some fun with this.). The vessel in photo was built on a torpedo boat hull, but it was actually a prototype of a proposed; but never built, class of warships called bateau-canon (or cannon boat). It was armed with a single 5.5 inch gun (about 140 mm). You might think it was designed to counter enemy torpedo boats; which is a reasonable assumption to make, but an incorrect one. This little 70 ton craft; actually a swarm of these 70 ton boats with their single guns, were meant to attack enemy (read Royal Navy) battleships, or barbette ships, or ironclads. (Whatever you want to call them.) This wasn't just a French idea. Sir William George Armstrong; a noted 19th century engineer and artillery designer, had suggested a similar idea about twenty years before the French Navy thought they could make it work.
The small size and high speed (about 20 knots) of these vessels would be their armor. Plus, this was about a decade before smokeless powder was introduced. Once the big ships started firing their main and secondary batteries, a defacto smoke screen would be created allowing the bateau-canon and torpedo boats to close with the enemy. It is reasonable to ask what a 5.5 inch gun could do to a Royal Navy capital ship of the 1870's and 80's which often had an armor belt up to 20 inches thick. The bateau-canon weren't going to fire at the armor belt or anywhere near it. The bow and stern of these ships were unarmored. In some cases the unarmored sections of ship were very long. The French had done experiments with new high explosive shells which suggested that the blast from even medium caliber shells; like the 5.5 inch gun would fire, were capable of collapsing water tight compartments in the unarmored bow and stern sections of enemy capital ships, at least slowing them down. (The interpretation of the results of these tests were probably overly optimistic.)
The reason why the bateau-canon class was never built was because; as you might expect, when you fire a big gun (even WW1 destroyers didn't carry guns this large) on a very, very small vessel, the shock from firing the gun to port or starboard will make the vessel roll in the opposite direction and then correct and roll back the other way. Reloading and continuing to fire keeps the bateau-canon rolling back and forth making aiming close to impossible. So eventually the Gabriel Charmes; the name of the prototype, was converted into a torpedo boat.
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I recently discovered your channel and have spent the better part of the last three weeks catching up. Damn fine work, sir.
One thing I've not seen you mention in any detail is the issue of operational range/combat endurance*, save for a few mentions of fuel and ammunition capacity**. What of a ship's available space for storage of food, spare parts, lube oil, bandages, typewriter ribbons, etc.? How did such considerations affect ship design and/or the establishment of both forward repair/supply bases and underway refueling/replenishment capability? Perhaps a two-part special - Part 1: Ship design considerations and Part 2: Forward/combat repair/resupply (i.e. Ulithi and the establishment of underway support task forces (oilers, dry goods ships, escort carrier aircraft transports, etc.))?
* The two are, of course, not the same thing. Operational range refers to how far away from home port a ship can travel and still be functional, while combat endurance (in this context) refers to how long a ship can keep shooting before it runs out of ammo.
** I note (among others) references to a County-class cruiser (?) having to return to England to restock magazines during D-Day (twice!); German support for u-boats and raiders; and, of course, the debacle that was the Russian Second Pacific Squadron.
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The Oil King is the enlisted man ( small ships) or petty officer (large ships) in charge of the ship's fuel supply. He supervised refueling operations and ran the piping manifolds directing fuel to the various tanks, pumped fuel from one tank to another to correct trim as fuel was burned, sounded the tanks daily and reported the quantities to the ships Engineering Officer and was responsible for maintaining the fuel supply system - tanks, piping, pumps, filters and strainers - to the boilers. The Oil King's store would have the spare and repair parts needed to maintain the system.
"He quickly learned on his first assignment aboard the USS Wallace L. Lind (DD-703) that there are no one-trick ponies in the Navy, and according to Dalby, when he wasn’t firefighting, he was going to be “Oil and Water King.”
“My job was to run up and down, making sure the tanks all over the ship held the necessary fresh water and oil.”
And while the “uninitiated” may not realize the importance of the sea monarch, the “Oil King,” donned in an oil-stained shirt and pants, controlled the ship ballast and all the freshwater. The role is one of the most “mighty important men for you and your ship,” according to the November 1958 issue of “All Hands” naval magazine."
https://www.hullnumber.com/ALL-HANDS/article.php?title=the-oil-king-sea-going-monarch
On some ships, at least, there was a Water King, - my uncle Jimmy served as part of his party on an LSD after he was promoted from Fireman First Class to Water Tender Third. The King was in charge of the ship's fresh water supply, - evaporators (always "the Vaps"" to the Black Gang) piping, tanks, filters, strainers, etc - to make up the feed water supply to the boilers and drinking water to the Galley and scuttlebutts. My uncle served as one three watch standers in the Water King's gang, assisted by Firemen striking for Water Tender. Diesel powered ships had a bastardized system to provide the crew with fresh water, but my uncle was glad he never had to deal with one.
"In the United States Navy, "watertender" (abbreviated WT) was a petty officer rating which existed from 1884 to 1948. Watertenders held a paygrade equivalent to today's petty officer first class. A chief watertender (CWT) paygrade was established in 1903. In 1921, the lower paygrade was split into watertender first class (WT1 or WT1c) and watertender second class (WT2 or WT2c). Another lower paygrade, watertender third class (WT3 or WT3c), was established in 1943. The watertender and boilermaker ratings were merged into a new "boilerman" rating in 1948, which merged into "machinist's mate" in 1996"
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there is a story, concerning the Danish navy, post-1807 that some might find amusing: Following the British..Colonisation of the Danish navy, a crash building program was initiated. Off course you'll need large amounts of tree (specifically oak, is my understanding? i don't really know anything about how wooden warships were built, though)..So large amount of oak trees were planted, in order for the danish navy to, eventually, have acces to building material..Fast forward "some" time and the wood was finally ready for use, so a letter was sent to the danish fleet, that their trees were ready for use...However..at this point we're now in the 1960s and the time of the wooden warship has passed >< (while a good story it's possible that it's apocryphal, since i've come across 2 dates, several decades apart, where the letter was supposedly sent. the trees HAVE been of some use, though, for at least 1 ship, formerly, of the danish navy, since some of the oak has been used to repair the steam frigate "Jylland", currently a museum ship in the city of Ebeltoft.)
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Marine Ecologist here. When looking at the body plan of many of those fast fish, especially things like the Marlins and Swordfish, IGNORE THE SPIKE. They are NOT, I repeat NOT part of the animals hydrodynamics.
If you remove the 'sword' of a swordfish for example and take a look at the cross section of the animal without the 'beakiness', you will notice its a more or less oval shaped. The entire cross section is, with the thickest part usually being a little behind the head near the gills and the frontal and dorsal fins, which you could see quite well in the picture Drach put up.
The beak or sword is how these fish catch their prey, it is nothing to do with increasing hydrodynamics.
In fact if you actually look at the cross section of all the fastest fish in the world, INCLUDING the Mako, the 'point' referred to is never due to locomotion. In the case of the Mako its where the majority of its Ampullae of Lorenzini are located. These are the organelles that detect the electromagnetic field put out by other living organisms. Just to put this into perspective, the sharks with the most Ampullae of Lorenzini are the Hammerheads, which are generally bottom feeders and hunt prey usually covered partially or completely by sand or mud. The very REASON their heads are that hammer shape is to stuff as many of these organelles as possible as far forward as possible because all sharks use these to a greater or lesser extent in their final attack. So thats why the Mako has a pointy nose, and its NOTHING to do with hydrodynamics.
Again if you look at the cross section f the Mako without the forward part of its nose (where most of the Ampullae of Lorenzini are), its again roughly oval shape, again with the thickest part being just around where the gills and pectoral fins are located.
I could literally go on for hours.... But I think I made the point well enough.
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Thank You for triggering me (Ex-German, born in Hamburg) to look into my library, about that p-or-pp detail ... so I have three German books where her name is mentioned, but not analyzed linguistically as You did. Two books name her "Wappen ..." (Quinger 1980 and zu Mondfeld 1984) and one more by Grobecker 2007 naming her "Wapen ...".
Had I not seen this episode by Drach, I would have just continued to think, oh that is just the difference between modern standard and "flat" German dialect ("Plattdeutsch"), which is not taught in schools. You know, the dialects were from the ages before the Duden dictionary, which was introduced during the Second German Empire in the 1870s, that set on to start something like "orthography" of the (standard) German language. I have documents of my ancestors where our family name has a "variety" of spellings, so normally You would just think, oh, see, they could just not write "correctly" in those days.
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Hey Drach, appreciated the Drydock as always. In terms of highest-ranking admiral, though, I would tend to disagree.
First, the Duke of Edinburgh is a political figure, having been a member of the house of lords for fifty years or so. Also with his post beeing a grand office of state and the other members of said group beeing mostly career politicians, I would doubt that he is not into politics at al.
Second, there are of course equivalents to a Lord High Admiral - the swedish Navy, for example, has a "Riksadmiral" and Wallenstein for some time was commander in Chief of the Imperial Navy in the Baltic Sea.
Third, I would argue that other candidates have a chance to outrank even a Lord High Admiral, at least historically. Take Don Juan de Austria, for example, who, at Lepanto, outranked a whole bunch of guys who were quite High-Rank-Admirals, including the likes of Alvaro de Banzan (Captain-General of the spanish navy) and Venier (Captain-General of the Navy of Venice).
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Regarding the 'E'- The Battle E award is still part of the US Navy. It can be awarded to a ship for ''Excellence performance' during fleet training exercises (including gunnery, maneuvers and other such) as well as during wartime for the same. When a ship is given a Battle E, each crew member is also given the Battle E ribbon (I personally received the award twice in my career). However, the E on the stack is no longer done in the US Navy. Instead, on a modern US ship, near the bridge should be painted the ships' ribbon awards. The modern Battle E is mostly blue with yellow stripes and a silver 'E' device in the center. Multiple awards are denoted by additional 'E's. There is another award specifically for gunnery in the US Navy (or at least there was back in my day) called the, 'James F. Chesek Memorial Gunnery Award'. This was awarded to the ship's gunnery crew that outshot all the others on a shore bombardment firing line. Although there is no ribbon for this award, it is actually a memorial endowment and each member of the gunnery crew received a cash payment. My ship, the USS Barbey, received this award in 1991 and all of us got a 'share'. (Prizes, prizes lots of money!)
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I'll add here some snippets of the earlier naval plans (and their coastal defense ship ideas). Only parts of the plans is included
Bonsdorf 1919 - called for four 3 500 t battlebarges (i guess) armed with no less than six (6) 305 mm guns, four 1 300 ton destroyers (5 x 130 mm), four mortar boats (?) with pair of 240 mm guns, six 350 t patrol boats and no less than 45 torpedo boats (not MTBs)...
Schoultz 1920 - had no coastal defense ships, four 1 500 ton destroyers, eight 800 t destroyers, 30 MTBs...
Golov 1921 - eight 700 ton armored gunboats with single 234 mm gun and single 150 mm gun, six 800 t destroyers, four 340 t gunboats, 34 MTBs (armed with pair of torpedoes as well as with a single 75 mm field gun, yes)...
Schoultz-Golov 1921 - six 1 200 t armored gunboats with one or two 234 mm guns, four 900+ t destroyers...
Enckell 1922 - six 2 400 t armored gunboats with two 210 mm guns, four 300 t gunboats with 2 howitzers, six 900+ t destroyers, 48 MTB...
Enckell 1923 - pretty much the same but in smaller numbers
And i actually skipped few of them... Finally government decided to build 2 coastal defense ships, 4 submarines, 4 MTBs... slightly less than what had been envisioned.
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Explosives worker here, so I'm already on a list and happy to talk about it. I agree it's nitroglycerine exudation.
There really isn't anything wrong with nitroglycerine bonded propellant, provided the stabilizers bring down its sensitivity enough. Triple base propellant these days are still guncotton (nitrocellulose), nitroglycerine and stabilizers and are fine to use (although its not as high percentage of nitroglycerine as Cordite). In fact Cordite in its original state sounds fine to work with; a reasonable flash point, moderate shock sensitivity, relatively slow burn time etc. I've worked with much angrier modern propellant for ships that have a lower flash point and burns more with more energy and speed than black powder.
However as was stated all explosives degrade over time and need to be carefully monitored by people like me. In particular, any explosive with a petroleum jelly stabilizer really doesn't like temperature deviations (such as you mentioned with the lack of temp control in some powder mags) and starts to separate over time. It'll start to feel like its moist on the outside like its sweating, which is the nitroglycerine beginning to separate, forming pure pockets of crystalized nasty. If this isn't caught, you'd have in storage and be handling propellant with all the sensitivity of nitroglycerine with the safety of Cordite. I've found the 1933 "Instruction for the examination, testing and sentencing of cordite, ballistite and nitro-cellulous powder". Seems to indicate there is a war clause for condemned or low test cordite to be held in the magazines.
As nitroglycerine tends to detonate not burn if given the right stimulus, it will propagate easily to the rest of the magazine. This will result in either an immediate explosion or a contained aggressive fire that can't vent fast enough, causing an explosion shortly after.
Side note: explosives don't 'go off' like parties or 'set off' like a dragster, they 'function' either when you want them to or not.
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Any video you make is good for me! It’s interesting… and hear me out, I’m 58. I’m probably at least a couple of decades older than you, and although I’ve been something of a WW2 historian since I was around six years old, I have learned so much through your channel. For instance, until I became a “fan,” I never really understood the practicalities and/or conventions of warship guns. I never considered the tonnage or spatial budget necessary to construct a battleship or battle cruiser, so I often wistfully thought, “I wish the US would’ve made 18 inch guns.” It hadn’t occurred to me that that the weight of these and their barbettes were impractical for a ship that a) had to transit the Panama Canal, and b) needed the requisite speed to keep up with the fast carriers.
By now, I think I like the 15 inch guns ships like Valiant had as much as the 16” 50 cal. guns of the Iowas, knowing that while not having the range of Yamato’s guns, either could certainly put holes in her just the same. Only now do I get the balancing budget of propulsion vs. armor. vs. armament.
*you might appreciate this: several years ago I bought a cabin cruiser and fully intended to name her “Warspite.” Unfortunately, my girlfriend at the time hated that idea, and so I had to settle for “Rhiannon” (yes, like the Fleetwood Mac song). A decade on and she is gone as well as the boat, but I remain undaunted. If I ever get another boat, not only will she be awarded the name of the great battleship, I intend to fly the white ensign from her mast.
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If CarDiv 5 is replaced with CarDiv 2 at Coral Sea. It might be a bloodier tactical victory for the IJN. If I recall Shattered Sword correctly, Soryu and Hiryu had highly trained and experienced pilots. But their main strength came from Dive Bombing. So highly likely that Lexington may take 3 Torpedoes and another 1 or 2 Bomb hits. Which may sink Lexington outright. Whereas Yorktown may avoid the Torpedoes, she may take similar damage to Enterprise at Eastern Solomons. So 3-4 550lb Bomb hits, which is survivable but would mean Yorktown would not entirely be ready for Midway. Unless the damage control crews and later the shipyard workers at Pearl Harbor are being Intravenously fed coffee.
Soryu is smaller than Shokaku and arguably more maneuverable. The issue is that she is also more fragile regarding bomb hits. For the sake of argument, Soryu still takes 3 hits. The explosions could catch something flammable like her Avgas system, even without aircraft in the hangar. Also, if one of the hits lands next to her stack, like at Midway and penetrates the lower hangar. Then it could damage or destroy her boiler and engine rooms leaving her dead in the water.
Fast forward to Midway, and Shokaku and Zuikaku, for the sake of argument, are loaded with the same numbers of Aircraft as at Coral Sea. That's 21 Zeroes for Shokaku and 25 Zeroes for Zuikaku. 20 Vals for Shokaku and 22 Vals for Zuikaku, and 19 and 20 Kates for Shokaku and Zuikaku, respectively. Also, there are deck plans of Shokaku and Zuikaku's hangar decks, complete with aircraft spots. Assuming that the events leading up to and during the "Dauntless Ex Machina" occur similarly. Shokaku may end up like Franklin in that it would be a long, bloody and fiery battle with a slight chance of survival. But without the redundancies in here, damage control systems and the open hangar to vent the explosions, fire and smoke. She may go the same way as Akagi and Kaga. Zuikaku if caught in the same circumstances as Hiyru (closed in on TF16 and TF17 and lost most of its air group). Then it could take the 4x 1000lb bomb hits. As Shokaku survived a similar number at Santa Cruz. Of course, if those aircraft are full and ready for another strike, it would cause a fuel-air explosion. Resulting in Zuikaku being sunk outright or being scuttled. Being close to Midway would mean that even if the damage control crews worked through the night to get the fires under control. She may be spotted and tracked by radar-equipped PBYs and be finished off by Enterprise and Hornet the following morning.
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Shaping armor and connecting plates together.
Drach, you are correct that face-hardened armor is very difficult to shape after the hard face is created. However, when improved plates were made using post-hardening tempering to toughen them (as was used in non-face-hardened steels, such as knives and so forth), the reheated armor (to a lower temperature than the hardening process, of course) would soften the plates a little bit and small adjustments using heavy-duty presses could be used to adjust the final shape to exact specs, once this process was perfected, as it was by experts at most major armor manufacturers. Professional steel-makers can overcome lots of such problems.
You are incorrect about edge connection, though,, Drach. While many early armor plates were merely pressed tightly together and supported solely by the support structures that they were bolted to, this was found before and during WWI by the results of hits at such cracks at the joints to weaken the armor enough that major leaks could be created if a heavy AP shell hit at such a joint, even if it failed to penetrate. Several British and German ships at Jutland suffered from this and the German ships almost sank due to this being added to their other damage. What was done later more-or-less universally was to "zip-up" the plate edges where they joined by cutting deep wedge-shaped notches along the two edges that met perfectly when the plates were installed. A red-hot nickel-steel "keying" ribbon shaped to exactly fit into the final shape of these combined notches was pressed into the notches from one end along the entire length of the two joined plate edges. These held the plate edges tightly together no matter how the plates and back supports were distorted by a shell edge hit. For very thick plates, more than one keying strip would be inserted.
In addition, these results from early-20th Century battles showed that having a moderately thick layer of wood or cement tightly fitting between the ship's plating supporting the armor and the back of the armor plate allowed the armor to distort somewhat under impact and still minimize the distortion and breakage of the supports. WWII armor, in many cases, was much more strongly attached to the ship than many plates used through WWI.
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2:38:05 Drach, I don't say this to be nitpicky (I mean, no more than this channel is), but the literal definition (or, at least one of them, as there are many various accepted versions, as it can get a bit fuzzy but in this its clear) of major surgery is if it requires general anesthetic (even if they normally would anesthetize you, but can't, and must go with another form of anesthetic, such as a nerve block and work on you while conscious) and if they are cutting into a body cavity. Doctors will never use general anesthesia for minor surgery. I know what you meant, I think, that it's not a serious operation, but there is a strict difference between "minor surgery" and "major surgery", and it's more or less like referring to a battleship as a torpedo boat. Minor surgery is essentially a procedure a doctor can do in their office, pretty much the most cutting involved in minor surgery might be the removal of a mole or something, as you can't cut into a body cavity.
Probably doesn't bother 99% of the viewers, but to those of us who have some medical knowledge/background, it kinda makes your ears burn just a little.
You'll be fine. If you're nervous, tell them, and they'll give you something to calm you down before the procedure. I personally look forward to an opiate-fueled drydock! :)
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The way you ended the episode is perfect. It shows the same humanity, emotions, and the will for friendship regardless of politics as the Christmas Truce. It is hard to understand from our modern perspective, that these young and old men, so cordial and friendly with each other, would turn against one another, ragged on by the public and the politicians within two months. That singular gunshot in the streets of Sarajevo caused these competing nations, whose leaders were not only respected their opposing colleagues, the young men who served in the armies and navies, and the royal families that saw their relationship to Queen Victoria, (in a belief it would keep them from war), become entrenched in the ideas of war and hate. That story at the end of this video is a good way to describe the Great War, friends turned foes, neighbors turned traitors, servicemen of other nations turned into demons and monsters, all because of politics...the issues weren't personal...the politics tore these relationships between the competing British and Germans apart. An excellent episode as always Drachinifel.
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The picture at 1:40 is of Lieutenant Colonel Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat and Chieftain of Clan Fraser, CO of No 4 Commando disembarking at Newhaven Docks carrying his personal 6.5mm M1892 Steyer-Mannlicher after the Dieppe Raid in 1942. "“It was a rifle I had done a lot of shooting with, and I was dead accurate with it.”
"Nimble and light, Steyr Models 1892 and 1893 were exceedingly popular stalking rifles in the British Isles from the turn of the 20th century and throughout the interwar years.
The 6.5 mm round is exceedingly accurate and perfect for medium-size game. Re-barreled many times over throughout the decades for competition, from 6.5 mm to .303 British, then to .303 Magnum, and again to 7.62x51 mm NATO in the 1960s, this turn-of-the- century rifle has shown both its flexibility and its inherent ability for robustness and precision. It is little wonder then why Lord Lovat chose to carry such a useful rifle with which he was so familiar."
"Simon “Shimi” Fraser, the 15th Lord Lovat (the 17th de facto), was one of the most brilliant tacticians Britain produced during World War II. A fine gentleman, a superb soldier and a commando leader, Lovat was once referred to by Winston Churchill as “the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled a ship or cut a throat.”"
British Army officers was expected to provide their own side arms, the only stipulation being the weapon must fire standard British ammunition - Fraser was probably stretching things a bit, although aboard a vessel stuffed with men armed to the teeth, what was the problem? Additionally, speaking as an old officer, if a lieutenant colonel is having to engage the enemy personally, things have absolutely gone to shit and a disaster is looming. His job is to direct the battle, not get involved in firefights
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Your explanation of decapping plates is pretty good. Bravo.
One point, though: The 1.5" STS outer hull on the IOWA Class was thick enough to crack the solder on all projectiles except German L/4.4 APC shells (latest design used on all post-1930 Krupp naval gun designs -- older guns kept their old shells in German warships), which used a super-strong high-temperature solder (Krupp must have had some cap problems just prior to WWI when it developed its C/11 -- 1911 Model, most advanced German shells in WWI -- APC shells). These Krupp APC shells needed about 20% of the shell's diameter in thickness or more to knock them off, compared to only 8.05% for all regular-soldered naval APC shells used by everybody else. Krupp was the only naval shell maker to use such a solder when it changed its APC shell specs to require the C/11 shells to work at 30 degrees against half-caliber-thickness KC armor (the most stringent design requirement in WWI), since this hot solder can cause problems with the nose hardness/temper unless very carefully applied.
Also, in some cases, the plate of this 1.5" thickness is marginal against YAMATO Class 18.1" APC shells and usually would work (80% of the time?), but obviously iffy -- if the shell hit near a hull plate edge where there were reinforcing doubler plates, then it would always work, period, but that would maybe be one hit in 4 or 5 or so. The gap in the IOWA hull between the 1.5" STS plate and the main inclined 12.2" Class "A" waterline belt plate was at least 3' (1 m) at the top edge and got wider as one descended downward on the 10' (3 m) height of this belt plate, so it was quite wide enough to allow a knocked-off cap to separate even with the YAMATO shell. Note that the SOUTH DAKOTA Class only had a spaced 1.25" STS hull plating, so only a doubler-plate hit would work against a YAMATO shell, ever.
Decapping gives a 20% (sometimes), 30% (mostly), or even 40% (rarely) increase in the effective thickness of the armor plate at right-angles, but this increase slowly goes away to essentially zero at about 55 degrees oblique angle and actually helps penetration at higher angles, though in these cases the shell is usually in large pieces, though sometimes only the nose breaks apart and the middle body stays in one piece to work properly when the fuze goes off. The loss in improvement is simply due to the fact that with the nose and, usually, body in pieces, trying to force the shell to glance off at higher impact angles is strongly suppressed (nose pieces glancing off can no longer change the direction of the rest of the shell!). This is why face-hardened armor is not good for decks and turret roofs. French WWII BB turrets assumed AP bombs were the bigger threat and used KC armor for their turret roof plates, which was a problem when HOOD was shooting at DUNKERQUE and hit one of its turret roof plates, making a long, shell-body-shaped, 15"-wide shell hole in the roof with the lower half of the shell going into the turret, even though the broken nose glanced off. Bad guess...
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I try not to comment twice, but that was an excellent explanation of the USN's awful aircraft naming system. For contrast, it's worth noting that the IJN's system is effectively a direct copy, but with all the bad stuff fixed.
The IJN system:
* Uses single letters for the type/role (no "SB", etc).
* Doesn't omit the "1". Combined, this avoids the common issue of people attaching the variant to "numberless" USN designations (like awkwardly listing "F4F, F4U, SBD-3" together).
* Runs the numbers across ALL manufacturers, thus the A6M is the sixth carrier fighter, full stop. There are a couple very rare exceptions where two competing designs were both selected, thus have the same number.
* If an aircraft is made by more than one company (I believe some A6Ms were built by Nakajima) the designation does NOT change. All of these together make things FAR less convoluted.
And since we're here, two other smaller things which don't affect the quality of the system:
* The USN system has a dash before the variant (F4F-3) while the IJN does not (A6M2).
* Similarly, the USN uses a capital letter for the subvariant (F4F-3A) while the IJN uses lowercase (A6M2b).
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15:15 On the topic of how the most-common usage of a word changes over time, my dad (American) has a fun story. When he was young and in school, one of the standardized tests which he took asked the simple question: "What does the word 'terrific' mean?" The issue is that in the 1960's in the USA, you could still find many people (generally over the age of ~50 at that time) who would respond that 'terrific' means 'scary, intimidating, inspiring of terror.' However, most people under that age would respond that 'terrific' means 'great, excellent, wonderful, etc.' So, since he didn't know the age of the person who would be grading his test, he had to guess which of the two equally-valid meanings would be considered 'correct.'
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The French Battlewagon Lorraine was the one Bretagne class ship to be modernized. France was allowed five capital ships under the Treaty regime and they would be Dunkerque, Strasburg, Richelieu, Jean Bart and Lorraine (until a follow on to Jean Bart could be commissioned).
Armament
5 × 2 – 340mm/45 Modèle 1912 guns
22 × 1 – 138.6 mm Mle 1910 guns
7 × 1 – 47-millimetre (1.9 in) guns
4 × 450 mm (18 in) torpedo tubes
Armor
Belt: 270 mm (11 in)
Decks: 40 mm (1.6 in)
Conning tower: 314 mm (12.4 in)
Turrets: 250–340 mm (9.8–13.4 in)
Casemates: 170 mm (6.7 in)
She had four refits prior to WW2 ". During these periods in dock, the range of the main battery was increased, the anti-aircraft battery was strengthened, and her boilers were replaced with newer, oil-fired models. Between 18 September 1934 and 20 September 1935, a fourth and final pre-war refit was carried out in Brest; Lorraine's amidships turret was removed, and an aircraft catapult along with a hangar for three aircraft were installed. "
After joining the Free French in 1942, she was refitted at Oran in 1943. "The work included removing the aircraft facilities and installing a large number of anti-aircraft guns, including eight 75 mm (2.95 in) guns, fourteen 40 mm (1.6 in) guns, and twenty-five 20 mm (0.79 in) guns. Radar equipment was also installed on the ship."
She provided Naval Gunfire Support for the invasion of southern France, then spent time in the Bay of Biscay, 1944-45, bombarding French ports held by the Germans, These ports were besieged on land by newly raised infantry battalions comprised of ex-FFI men to give them some combat experience before they were posted to the French 1st Army, which formed the rank flank of the Allied host on the Western Front.
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Most of the Japanese battleship armor plates -- Vickers Hardened (non-cemented) face-hardened and Molybdenum Non-Cemented (primary heavy deck) armor only used in YAMATO Class BBs -- tested at the NPG, Dahlgren, Virginia, after WWII were from selected SHINANO plates. A few earlier Vickers Cemented face-hardened, New Vickers Non-Cemented, and Copper Non-Cemented plates (used by many armored Japanese warships after 1931, including YAMATO (VC was based on the improved 1912 Vickers version of KC armor) were also tested. The 66cm (26") SHINANO main turret right-side gun port plate (half of the gun hole cut out of one side) was the heaviest armor plate ever tested by the US Navy at the NPG, using the 16" Mark 8 MOD 6 (latest version) AP projectile at right angles -- one shell almost penetrating and the next, at a higher velocity, completely penetrat8ing -- where neither projectile suffered any damage (other than the loss of the AP cap as is normal for such impacts) and the plate snapped in two through the impact points in both cases. VH armor was the best non-cemented form of KC armor ever made, though the brittle center due to its extreme thickness took some time to fix, though by then no more large armored warships were being made in Japan.
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Warning! This is going to be another of my "War and Peace" type posts. :)
The plan, as I understand it, for covering landings on the Japanese mainland from air attack would have mainly been assigned to massed squadrons of Fletcher, Sumner, and Gearing class destroyers. There was a rushed refit of most of these units from mid-1944 to right up to August 1945 for every ship of these classes to have at least twelve 40mm Bofors guns with fourteen and even sixteen on the Gearings. This was done by landing all the torpedo tubes and, in typical USN fashion, covering the available deck space with twin and quad mount Bofors, supplemented by 20mm mounts wherever they would fit. Another goal of these refits was to install completely up to date radars and fire control equipment to allow every vessel to use VT rounds in their 5"/38 guns. Magazine spaces previously used to store torpedoes were given over to gun round storage. Many of the Sumner and Gearing class ships would also have been radar pickets, much like we saw in the earlier campaigns.
The destroyers would have been backed up by the various permutations of Atlanta class cruisers, any of the three British Dido class that could have been spared from carrier screens, and masses of Cleveland and Baltimore cruisers. Most of these ships had increased AA guns fitted along with the requisite radars and fire controls systems. The Canadian Prince Robert, a former passenger vessel converted to a merchant cruiser and later as an auxiliary antiaircraft cruiser, had performed well in the Mediterranean. It was expected her main role in the planned invasion of Japan would be covering landings and escorting supply ships. Many British, Australian, and New Zealand destroyers, corvettes, sloops, and frigates would have been assigned to cover landings of British and Commonwealth troops. The major push with the British ships, in addition to increased AA defense, was adding air conditioning and stores refrigeration equipment. Ships built for the North Atlantic would have been much reduced in combat effectiveness in the tropics without these additions. The accounts of men serving on some unconverted warships serving in the Pacific are quite harrowing in terms of below decks temperatures and humidity. The 31 RN submarines were expected to play a major role in patrol and reconnaissance offshore from Japanese naval bases, rescuing downed carrier pilots, and attacking any remaining Japanese warships foolish enough to sortie from port. A little remembered ship was the HMS Ariadne, an Abdiel class fast minelayer, and one of the first RN vessels of the later Pacific Fleet, joining the US Seventh Fleet in January, 1944. Her very high speed was put to good use landing many US Army raiding forces on various islands as well as laying over 1,000 mines. The other two Abdiel class minelayers assigned to the British Pacific Fleet (BPF) would have been equally useful if they had been ready for BPF use before the war ended.
In addition to the better known roles of the battleships and carriers of both navies, a major role for the British was the Fleet Train (BFT). The BFT had 54 large ships, from oilers to ammunition ships, and well over 100 smaller ships assigned. The RN had extensive experience supplying their ships while underway. Many of the ships were Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) vessels, and some were mostly manned by merchant seamen. It was expected the British Pacific Fleet would be sustained by their own Fleet Train with enough excess capacity to also supply some USN ships. It didn't quite work out as planned, with some USN supply ships needing to be added to the BFT. Nevertheless, the ships and crews performed magnificently under sometimes horrendous condition, since many BFT vessels didn't have a/c or refrigeration. The high intensity work of underway replenishment and island supply without the help of even one air cooled space onboard tested the mettle of the crews, and they stood up better than could be expected. A humorous sidelight described by one of the RFA crewmen was when a special alarm sounded, and the men rushed up on deck. The men weren't carrying helmets and life vests that you might expect with most alarms. This alarm had men carrying soap and towels, since the alarm let men below decks know of a passing rain squall so they could cool off and get in a shower, both rare experiences on most RFA ships.
As usual, a combined British/American operation couldn't go off without politics getting in the way. It started with Churchill want to use British forces to recapture lost British territory like Burma and Hong Kong and leave the Pacific islands to the Americans. Strong protestations from the Chiefs of Staff eventually overcame Churchill's objections. The RN chiefs rightly believed that not participating in the eventual conquest of the Home Islands of Japan would decrease British influence in the Pacific and rob the RN of valuable experience participating in fleet operations and amphibious landings larger than any they had done in the past. BPF experience was part of the planning for the Suez operation and, indirectly, gave the RN confidence they could support amphibious landings in the far off Falklands.
Things on the American side were no better. The Commander-in-Chief United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations was Admiral Ernest King. He was a well known Anglophobe who saw the British as coming in after most of the battles were over and then claiming part of the prestige of helping to defeat Japan. He raised so many objections to the offers of help from the British that Roosevelt himself had to intervene and essentially order that King accept the offer of a BPF. It appeared to the public that allies were cooperating in the defeat of Japan when the reality was the USN was dragged kicking and screaming into accepting the offer. King, after grudgingly accepting, set down a requirement that the BPF be totally self-sufficient. Try as they would, the BPF wasn't capable of that, and later USN aid was freely given, sometimes over the objections of Adm. King, and some BPF supply ships aided USN ships. Admiral Nimitz had more pragmatic objections based on the differences in British aircraft, carrier operations, and a myriad of logistical problems, from incompatible radios to completely different guns and ammunition between the two navies. To the credit of both navy's operational staffs, most of these problems were overcome in a matter of six months. Adm. Nimitz became an enthusiastic supporter of the BPF carrier forces after seeing their performance at Okinawa, when the armoured decks of the fleet carriers and well trained damage control teams allowed RN carriers to absorb Kamikaze attacks and continue to operate. All in all, and ignoring the political interference, it was quite a performance from two fleets that had to learn to work with each other in a matter of months.
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At the end of WW2 the Japanese had two aircraft carriers; the Katsuragi which was badly damaged by an airstrike in July 1945 but it was partially repaired, and the Hosho which was only slightly damaged at the end of the war. Both of these ships were put into service after the war, but not as part of the Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force. (Which wasn't created until 1954.) They were used to ferry Japanese POWS, Japanese soldiers from islands that had been bypassed and Japanese civilians from war zones back to Japan. There is a YouTube video which shows the Katsuragi disembarking Japanese soldiers from Rabaul. (This video also briefly captures an older Japanese light cruiser whose boilers are functioning because there is smoke coming out of the ship's funnels.) The Katsuragi and Hosho both made a number of voyages for this purpose and both were scrapped shortly after this work was completed in 1946. It is estimated the Hosho by itself repatriated 40,000 individuals back to Japan. Can you imagine how difficult it would have been to use U.S. or Royal Navy ships for this purpose?
There is a book, "Japanese Naval Vessels at the End of World War II," which gives technical details about every ship which the Japanese turned over to the allies at the end of WW2. It was compiled by IJN Constructor Lt Cdr Shizuo Fukui for American Naval Intelligence. It was originally handwritten in (sometimes) poor English, but it gives the condition of each ship; though it doesn't tell you how the vessels got in that condition, and the fate of each ship was added in later by the editor. (You can still find it on Amazon) A handful of smaller vessels were turned over to Nationalist China and the USSR, but most were scrapped or sunk for gunfire practice and you know that the Nagato was nuked as was the IJN Sakawa, an Agano class cruiser.
The fact is these ships were far more valuable to Japan as scrap metal then anything else. We tend to think only about the damage done by the atomic bombs, but far more extensive damage had already been carried out in numerous Japanese cities by conventional bombing (mostly incendiary bombs) before the two A-bombs were used. Basic building materials were in short supply and these vessels were a good, if limited resource which could be put to use to help rebuild Japan. (The IJN Mikasa had been designated as a museum ship in the 1920's and thereby escaped being turned into scrap.)
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Reading up on the Soya, she had a few run-ins with topics that have been brought up lately. She was torpedoed by USS Greenling in January 1943 (and hauled up one of the dud torpedoes to the deck in celebration...probably not wise considering there was genuinely rather a lot of explosive material in there and the firing mechanism was in an unknown state, but ok). She fled Truk during Operation Hailstone, running aground in her haste to escape but surviving the operation. Additionally, she was in a convoy attacked by USS Parche in June 1945, though was not herself targeted, and her flotilla was bombed in August 1945 at anchor, again, not being hit but being in the vicinity of other Japanese vessels being hit, which brings her to a total of 4 encounters with Allied forces which she survived in remarkably good condition. (10 sailors died in the running aground incident, but those appear to be the only casualties, at least caused by the result of enemy action...assuming she would not have run aground had she not been fleeing air raids and battleships.)
She was also the ship that evacuated the Showa research station in 1958 but left the 15 dogs behind. 2 of them survived (Taro and Jiro) and were found when she returned that spring. (This is the incident that inspired the movies Antarctica (originally Nankyoku Monogatari or South Pole Story) and Eight Below; if this is vaguely ringing a bell to you, one of these movies is probably why.)
All in all, not too shabby a career for a simple cargo ship.
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wrt the Torpedo strike on Gneisenau, that operation is covered in detail in "Torpedo Bomber" by Ralph Barker. The book was also published in the UK as "Ship Busters". As Drac said, the raid was botched quite badly. iirc, from reading the book a few years ago, one other Beaufort did make it to the rendezvous point outside the harbor and was waiting for the other Beauforts to arrive. As that Beaufort orbited, the pilot saw Campbell arrive, and roar past, into the harbor, instead of forming up with the other Beaufort. Reading how that raid had been planned, the thought that occurred to me was that, had the bombers shown up as planned, all the AA gunners would have been awake and at their posts when the Beauforts tried to penetrate the harbor, and would probably have been shot out of the sky. As it worked out, Campbell took everyone by surprise and successfully reached the ship. The Germans recovered the plane and crew from the harbor. Apparently Campbell had been hit moments after dropping the torpedo, because the Germans reported a Canadian, I don't recall the man's name at the moment, was in the pilot's seat, when the plane was recovered.
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Thanks for your reply to my question about Courageous. I am satisfied that Furious was intended as a test bed for the 18". The design was in hand, could be built quickly, and, was large enough to carry the 18" guns. Since posting that question, I found a letter on The Dreadnought Project: Fisher to d'Eyncourt, saying words to the effect that the Baltic operation was "the story we will use to sell them to Cabinet", which makes it sound like the Baltic op was not what Fisher really had in mind, but only an excuse to build them. In that letter, Fisher also says having the draft be 22 1/2 feet or less was imperative. The draft was the only parameter laid out in that letter that Courageous missed, by a wide margin. Renown's draft was some 5 feet less than Revenge, but Courageous' draft was only some 14 inches less than Renown, so hardly seems worth the bother. I tried redesigning Courageous in SpringSharp to see if I could get to that 22 1/2 foot draft. Could not make the hull any flimsier, so replaced the two twin 15" with three twin 9.2" turrets borrowed from Lord Nelson pre-dreadnoughts, to reduce weight. Only reduced the draft to 24 1/2 feet. It could be a matter of Fisher seeing those unused 15" turrets and deciding he would see them used, for something, other than a monitor, and Courageous was what he came up with, to have the turrets put to use, much as the construction of Vanguard was due to the availability of those same four turrets.
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Roy Adkins' book, Trafalgar - The Biography of a Battle, ends with these passages:
"Some of the paid-off seamen found other employment at sea, filling the gaps where crews of merchant ships and fishing vessels had lost sailors pressed into service with the navy, but there were far more sailors than were needed. Many had no chance of other employment in the continuing upheaval of agriculture and manufacturing that would become known as the industrial revolution, competing as they were against unemployed agricultural workers and returning soldiers. They were frequently reduced to begging or turned to crime to survive. As is often the case, the people who won the war were regarded as a nuisance and a burden once the first wave of relief at the return of peace had ebbed away. Nelson himself had experienced it after the end of the American War of Independence in 1783, and in speaking about the navy as a whole, he denounced the situation in a letter written in 1797: 'We are a neglected set, and, when peace comes, are shamefully treated.'
In the years following the defeat of Napoleon , the seamen laid off from the navy were indeed shamefully treated. The king and Parliament found it far more convenient (and cheaper) to regard the Battle of Trafalgar as having been won by Nelson than by the thousands of men and the handful of women who fought on that day. The triumph of 21 October 1805 was followed by many personal tragedies among the people who made it possible. Just over a decade after the battle, the fate of many of them was summed up in a few poignant lines of verse;
Who is it knocks so gently on my door?
That looks so way-worn, desolate and poor;
A paid-off Sailor, once his Country's pride
But now a wanderer on the Highway's side;
Whose haggard looks real misery bespeak
Famine, and care, o'rspread his sun-burnt cheek;
'Help a poor Seaman.' is his suppliant cry
'Grant me a pittance, lest for want I die -
'At Trafalgar, I play'd a Briton's part;
'Strength in my limbs, and courage in my heart:
But now a-drift, distress has brought me low,
'As this poor wasted form will plainly shew.
'I had little thought, the day great Nelson fell,
'That I should live so sad a tale to tell:
'Far better I had died that glorious morn,
'Than lived a wretch so miserably forlorn.'
Come in, my friend, and share a poor man's meal,
Curse on the caitiff, with a heart of steel
That cannot for your fate some pity feel."
- Roy Adkins (Trafalgar: The Biography of a Battle, Chapter 15: Heroes & Villains, pg. 349 - 350)
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To add to the most effective anti-ship discussion, Norman Friedman would also agree with Drach. In "US Naval Weapons," he states that, "A review of war experience showed a total of 1,287 attacks [this count only includes those launched by carrier-borne aircraft, other US Navy aircraft launched another 150 torpedoes - TD], of which 40 percent (514) resulted in hits, including 50 percent hits on battleships and carriers (322 attacks, including Midway), 31 percent on destroyers (179 attacks), and 41 percent (out of 445 attacks) on merchant ships."
Now those figures are based off of claims by USN pilots, which is prone to exaggeration, so the actual number is lower. Most naval historians estimate the actual figure to be 10-20% lower, which is still a very successful figure when comparing the torpedoes to ships sunk ratio.
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Ranger was always considered kind of developmental carrier, a step between Langley and the Yorktowns. US wargames of the 30's showed flush deck carriers presented few advantages compared to the operational efficiency of having an island, and stacks exhausting through the top of the island were far superior to the side mounted exhausts of Ranger. She could have been a better carrier if the stacks could have been changed when the island was added but, this still being in the depths of the Great Depression, the money wasn't available for that drastic of a redesign. Nothing could be done to improve her low (for a fleet carrier) top speed, and the flight deck and hangers all required strengthening to cope with the demise of the biplane.
For the rest of the war, other than a few relatively low intensity periods of combat, Ranger worked out what was to become an increasingly important carrier task - transportation of and flying off fighters to reinforce AAF aircraft and crews in Africa and Europe. After a disastrous start to this task that caused the loss of ten aircraft on her first mission, she was able to fly off more AAF P-40s from the deck to supply badly needed replacements in North Africa. As far as I know, these are the only instances of P-40's flying off from a carrier. She settled down to her transport task until 1944 when she returned to the East Coast to operate as a training carrier. Given the flood of new carriers and pilots coming online, this was probably her most important role. Her role as a training carrier continued until October, 1946 when, being well and truly worn out, she was struck off the naval register and sold for scrap in January, 1947.
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Radford was one of only three Fletchers to receive a FRAM II overhaul. This was a more austere overhaul than the complete reconstruction of the FRAM I ships. The original intention was reconstruction almost all the surviving Fletchers. However, the experience with the three that did get the modernization was they were far overbudget as the inevitable feature creep added more and more electronics and other equipment, and the increased crewing demanded by all the new equipment made the Fletchers intolerably crowded.
The main reason for the FRAM II upgrade was so the ships could handle the DASH drone helicopter. While derisively known as the Down At Sea Helicopter by some captains and crews, those that operated the drones in strict accordance with the Gyrodyne (makers of the QH-50C drone) procedures found the drones to be both controllable and effective. The Radford was one such ship, making more than 500 flights, including launching two torpedos while being fed dummy targeting information while the drone was over the horizon.
The DASH helicopters developed a generally poor reputation in the USN due to the lack of command support, general laziness of the crews in not making enough practice flights, and poor adherence to maintenance procedures. In contrast, the Japanese Marine Self Defense Force, with I will call the Japanese Navy to save my fingers, operated sixteen DASH drones from the decks of seven destroyers. The Japanese Navy, known for their adherence to both command instructions and maintaining their equipment, operated the QH-50D drones with nearly complete success, losing only three drones from 1969 to 1977. This is compared to losing well over half the drone fleet in the USN. The Japanese were well satisfied with the DASH drones, and only decommissioned them in 1977, due to the USN abandoning the program the previous year, leading to fears of parts and spares shortages after that date. The Japanese Navy flew their Dash helicopters every single day, at sea or in port. The program had a command officer assigned that stayed with the ship and the program from the date the drone was introduced until he retired or the DASH drones were taken out of service. Compare this to the USN, which had some ships flying the drone only twice a month, the absolute minimum demanded by regulations, and some ships having only a Petty Officer Third Class being in charge of the drones on his ship. The program, while being chronically underfunded and undermanned, did lead directly to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) now carried by by many USN combat ships. Believe it or not, the UAV program of today is underfunded and undermanned, and naval aviators don't like the current crop of UAVs any more than they liked the Gyrodyne DASH helicopters.
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Here's a bit of a story about His Highness I read at one point. I haven't been able to find the story again, so it is a bit from memory...if anyone can find a reliable source to back it up, it'd be appreciated.
When the STS Young Endeavour was being sailed from England to Australia after it had been completed in 1987, the Prince was one of its initial guests. As the ship was pulling out of the construction dock, the Prince stayed near the wheel, providing guidance to the helmswoman. Eventually, however, the ship's captain saw they were going off course and ordered her back to the correct bearing. The third time he had to do this, however, he was annoyed, and yelled at her to get back on course:
Helmswoman: But sir, I'm only following his highness's advice...whose orders should I follow?
Captain: MINE! I'M THE CAPTAIN!
At which point the Prince simply smiled and wandered off...
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Concerning the new 14" naval guns for the US Navy. When authorized, the guns were not only larger, but the AP shells (soft-capped 1400 pound enlarged US Navy 870-pound soft-capped 12" Mark 14 AP projectiles) now also had to withstand a specification that required a 10-degree angle off from the old right-angle testing against scaled-up Class "A" armor (face-hardened using some version of the Krupp thick-faced armor type, though at the time both Bethlehem Steel and The Midvale Company used in-house developed variants that did not use a thin super-hard Cemented ("Harveyized") surface layer, since only Carnegie Steel was willing to pay Krupp the license to make a variation of Krupp Cemented (KC) armor called Carnegie-Krupp Cemented (CKC)). Only after the Krupp patents were declared invalid by the US Supreme Court in 1912 did Midvale and Bethlehem start to make their own variations of KC armor with the cemented surface layer added.
Carnegie never made large naval gun projectiles, to my knowledge, but Bethlehem, Midvale, Firth-Stirling (its US company), and the new-to-projectiles firm of Crucible Steel Company did (Firth-Stirling eventually got out of this business just before or during WWI, but the other three listed here continued making large AP shells for the US Navy through the end of WWII). In fact, by the mid-1930s Crucible became the best AP projectile company in the world, starting with the US 14" Mark 16 MOD 8 AP projectile design, which was about the best, most-damage-resistant, hard-capped AP shell ever made starting in early 1942, with other AP shells from 6" through experimental 18" being matched to it as the test standard to reach from then on. When the first batches of the new 14" AP shells were made for test purposes circa 1910, Bethlehem, Midvale, and Crucible entered a test lot of shells for the new 10-degree test standard. The acceptance standard allowed two test failures taken randomly from the lot of the several shells tested against the Class "A" plates, but a third failure was "curtains" for the projectiles submitted. Bethlehem had no test lots EVER succeed during these tests (I do not know when it finally fixed its problems, though it made good AP shells in WWII). ALL Midvale lots passed, most with no failures whatsoever, while Crucible also had no lots fail, though there were a few lots that had one individual shell failure that almost failed that lot.
Shortly thereafter, Midvale started making for the large guns its "Midvale Unbreakable" AP shells that at up to 15 degrees obliquity almost never broke when hitting any armor at all, with the sole US exception of the Midvale Non-Cemented Class "A" plates made from 1906 to1912 before the Krupp patents were eliminated. (This armor had a new tempering process that, was not understood at that time and prevented what was later called "temper brittleness" so that these plates could shatter ANY projectiles whatsoever made at that time that did not have a hardened AP cap at any angle at all, no matter how thick it was or large the projectile was. Only Austro-Hungarian Witkowitz KC of the WWI era seems to have been similar in its damage-causing ability of all armors designed before about 1930. After 1930, most, but not all, new face-hardened armors were similarly improved in toughness by using better tempering systems and could also shatter any soft-capped shells.) The first of these new super-strong-bodied shells was the 8" Mark 11 first made in 1911, but only when the 12" Mark 15 MOD 6 (this MOD being the new Midvale version of that AP shell design) of 1916 did the US Navy finally realize that all of its other AP shells were now obsolete and changed all of its requirements to meet the new Midvale shells or fail the armor impact tests. The 14" Mark 8 and the 16" Mark 3 AP shells used through the 1930s until replaced by the new hard-capped designs were all of this soft-capped Midvale shell type, regardless of who made them.
This failure by Bethlehem Steel to be able to pass even one single test lot of 14" AP shells during the time period just before WWI shows that their quality control needed a BIG FIX. Their armor plates taken from the sunken OKLAHOMA after Pearl Harbor and tested at the US Naval Proving Ground, Dahlgren, Virginia, during WWII also showed a wild variation in the armor plate metallurgical properties from plate to plate when three such Bethlehem OKLAHOMA belt plates were tested and given metallurgical tests comparing them to modern (WWII, that is) plates. One Midvale Non-Cemented plate was also taken from OKLAHOMA (at that time the individual plate lots could be bought from all three manufacturers in a crazy quilt per ship) and turned out to have an 81% deep face (!!!), which was the thickest ever used to my knowledge, and which was partially why it could shatter the old Midvale shells, but this plate had two features noted during the testing: One was that it did have the huge scaling effect against AP shells that made it inferior in penetration resistance to 14" and up AP shells even when they shattered, noted in tests made in 1920 and 1921, so it was only superior for stopping soft-capped AP gun projectiles up to about 12" size. The second point was the extremely good quality control of the plate's various parameters, including a very smooth and uniform hardness shift from the face of about 490 Brinell (600-700 Brinell cemented layer not used due to the Krupp patent fight) in a flat line to about 25% in from the surface and then a very smooth long "ski-slope" hardness decrease to a flat 200 Brinell soft back layer at the 81% point -- this was about the best quality control I have ever seen in this hardening process, and the opposite of Bethlehem's wild changes inside each plate with no two plates being even remotely similar. No wonder Midvale became the new standard to match at that time in both armor and projectiles.
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Drach, you brought up some great points about spare parts, machine shops, and repair capabilities on larger ships. I served exclusively on Nimitz class carriers. The machinist would make a lot of components for the machinery on-board. As it was explained to me it took up less room to carry different types of metal and then make the parts rather than trying to carry every possible consumable part. Occasionally they even welded up titanium and steel tubing for our aircraft. You also mentioned how they would make parts for the other smaller ships, which is also accurate. As for hatches and such, they could, if needed, build one, but it's seldom an entire door that needs to be replaced. It's usually the dogs, the hinges, and seals on those that need replacing; and there were a few spare watertight doors onboard as well.
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Located just a few hundred meters from HMAS Castlemaine in Williamstown Melbourne is the original anchor from HMS Nelson.
HMS Nelson was one of the last wooden walled ships of the line produced for the Royal Navy in 1814. She was gifted to the colony of Victoria in 1867 where she became Her Majesty's Victorian Ship (HMVS) Nelson and went through various modifications. During the latter half of the 19th century, Melbourne was one of the most heavily guarded ports outside of the UK with a colonial navy of sloops, gunboats, torpedo boats, a breastwork monitor (HMVS Cerberus), HMVS Nelson, and fortifications. All paid for by the Gold rush of the 1850's onwards.
There are numerous naval guns scattered around Melbourne, from these vessels. HMAS Castlemaine survived because it was used as a training ship for engineering cadets as well as acting as a stationary and rather large floating hot water service for the shore base HMAS Cerberus (the shore base, not the monitor). Unfortunately, without a boat it is difficult to visit HMVS Cerberus, but it is clearly visible from the shore.
Not far away from the wreck of the Cerberus is the wreck of the J7, a J-class submarine, but it's in a sorry state.
The 40mm Bofors on the stern of HMAS Castlemaine used to be at the Royal Australian Naval Cadet training depot TS Voyager. I have many happy memories of playing with the Bofors as a boy in the 1970’s.
I'm only sticking to "things that float" so I'm leaving out Fort Queenscliffe and Fort Nepean and just a bit too far to travel for a short trip but both very interesting in their own right.
Williamstown for HMAS Castlemaine and HMVS Nelson’s anchor.
Sandringham for the wreck of the J7 Submarine.
Black Rock for HMVS Cerberus.
Polly Woodside is at South Bank. Note. Probably no one at the Polly Woodside remembers, but many of the older blocks and tackle used in the rigging were donated by the Naval Cadets from old stores dating back to the time of Her Majesty’s Victorian Navy in the late 1800’s!
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For question 25:51 I will also expand on that about certain cargoes having risks (Drach already pretty well covered coal and grain). Different types of cargoes also carry different variations of risk when it comes to shifting. For instance, many different types of ore (likewise, salt and sugar), when reaching a certain moisture content in the cargo, can cause that cargo to partially liquify, which is when the free surface effect pokes its head out to greet a ship into the depths of the ocean (more often than not). Especially dense ore cargo, this can be very deadly, such as iron ore, or nickel ore. To not be overloaded, there would be significant space left over in the hold, and when part of the cargo liquifies as vibrations and rolling influence water trapped in the cargo to move to the surface (creating a slurry in the holds), you very quickly can roll over and sink (sometimes in just one minute, case in point, Nur Allya in 2019, crew never even got off a distress call). It should also be noted that different conditions of ore can change its risk of shifting, such as iron ore fines as opposed to iron ore *pellets*. Also, cargoes of scrap. Obviously scrap comes in many shapes and sizes, and more clumpy/blocky scrap (engine blocks, steel beams or plates, etc) can puncture your hull if they shift (Antacus 1984, Murree 1989). Scrap can also lead to serious fire, such as scrap turnings (when not properly treated with chemicals prior to loading, Agios Giorgis 1979). And of course when it comes to coal and dense ore cargo, they can wear a ship out pretty well, which is why maintenance is paramount on the part of the shipowners.
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@thatdude3938 I believe Military History Visualized also looks at the original source material as a matter of course. I do find it somewhat harder to follow, though, thanks to the narrator's German accent. That could just be a me-thing, though: I speak both English and German, but when I hear one language in the melody of another, I get confused and distracted.
So what I'm saying is: content-wise, Military History Visualized (and Military History Not Visualized) is nearly as thorough as Drachinifel (though I prefer Drach's calm methodical approach, making it easier to follow every step of the thought process involved). Form-wise, it's really no contest, as Drach is pleasant to listen to (tales of the horrors of war notwithstanding), whereas MHV and MHNV can be a struggle.
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firstly, congratulations on this... as a person who has a background in Japanese History, I am very much impressed!!!! given it's complexity I did not really think it possible to cover so much detail of that period of naval development in just 30 minutes of video.
I would however beg to very slightly differ on a few points...
the first of these is what should be called the Origins of the Imperial Japanese Navy... if you said the Modern Japanese Navy, that would be a different story, but, to me, the Daimyo/clan Navies were occasionally blue-water, to the extent any medieval navy could be that.
after all, these navies were effectively traders & pirates all along the coast of the Orient, including places fairly far from the mainland, like Formosa, Okinawa & the Philippines
Whilst the quality of the ships was different, there is a direct lineage of experience and command between the Navies of the southern Daimyo domains *(Primarily those of the Sumitomo & Satsuma Clans) & the Navy established by Meiji... using the weakness of the government by the post Genroku period, these clans developed their own independent forces raiding unprotected areas on Russian Chinese and Korean mainland or trading with Okinawa & the European outposts in Formosa, sometimes as far as Thailand and Indochina. (you can see models of those ships in a lot of Clan History museums on Kyushu today)
my second (related) contention, is that, I would say, the Ryukyu Kingdom(s) were for most part an independent island based Kingdom, with connections to China and Kagoshima-Satsuma, but not under any of the powers of the region... as may be assumed from this account.
by the 18th century, they were also a very useful part in being used as Proxies by the Lords of the Satsuma to covertly connect to the outside world gathering necessary power and skill.
the history of their growth and demise as an early oriental navy is in itself quite an interesting study... if you get the chance, certainly quite worth a look at, with it's unique mixed Portuguese-Cog Chinese-Junq style ships and quite different naval tactics based on Polynesian warfare...
though I do understand translated material on this topic can be somewhat scarce (even translated from Ryukyu to Japanese)
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Thanks for covering the career of the Alabama; the Confederate raiders are a very interesting subject and often ignored.
As I really like your channel and I appreciate the high quality of your videos, I wanted to bring to your attention a source for a better image of the French ironclad frigate La Couronne: This ship was originally built as a more graceful-looking iron-hulled equivalent of the Gloire (well, I think she was more graceful-looking, anyway.)
Because she was rebuilt later on as a training ship, given an extra full gundeck and knee bow, to make her look like a Napoleon-class two decker, more images exist of her in the later guise than at the start of her career. But, when she escorted the Alabama out of Cherbourg, she looked like the image seen on this web page (about half way down, between Thetis and Gladiateur), the particular image has her name on it!
http://pierreloti.eu/?cat=49
Trying to put a link to the image itself:
http://pierreloti.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/10-COURONNE.jpg
There, that hopefully works - the ironclad La Couronne, as she appeared at the time of the naval Battle of Cherbourg between USS Kearsarge & CSS Alabama.
Keep up the amazing work, my friend!
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@wingsofwrath4647 'Hot Bulb' engines were not all Paraffin and, seeing as 'Heavy Oil' is mentioned, alongside Bolinders, famous constructors of this type of engine, and Canals, where such engines were taking over from the horse, I suspect that the engines were in fact Semi-Diesels. These burnt, you guessed it, Diesel but at a compression that did not cause it to self ignite, hence the Hot Bulb. Pressures were at a level that machinery used for Steam Engine construction could be used to make them and, at least on canals, a trick from Steam was used, the exhaust was cooled in a condensing chamber connected to the 'back' of the piston, adding 'suck' to 'boom'. The interrupter governor on the E-Series and the Direct Reversing are also rather fun.
Several single-cylinder versions of these wonderful engines are still in use on the canals of Britain and have a distinctive booming note, interrupted in a random manner that makes it sound like the engine is malfunctioning, that carries for some distance. This distinctive sound leads to heads and bodies emerging at speed from all craft in hearing to watch in awe as a member of the canal aristocracy moves serenely past.
http://www.oldengine.org/members/diesel/Marine/bolinder.htm
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They're fortunate they rigorously tested it, you can imagine the disaster of if we adopted it too early for our cold water navy.
Also, 'iron' comes as both elemental iron and 'cast iron' cast iron has a huge quantity of carbon. My assumption was they were using cast iron, extremely high carbon 'steel' that is very brittle.
Was that incorrect? Do you know the carbon content of the iron?
Both kinds of iron were a relatively new product, steels were the result of 'iron age' manufacture. Similarly poorly named is the 'bronze age' which should be called the copper age, or very least brass age.
I loved your video on the later adoption, too- and your videos on the later forging techniques for differentially tempered steel hulls. Have you considered combing these into a comprehensive, full length documentary? Or perhaps a book? It's an interesting topic in my view. And while there are few naval architects in the world, i don't think there is quite a resource like it.
Delving into titanium, aluminium and composite is certainly a possibility from here, though i'm not sure how much experimentation is on public record.
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00:10:34 - Smaller ships of the South American Dreadnought race?
ARGENTINA
- Battleships: 2 vessels acquired (28,000t and 12x305mm+12x152mm); and 1 approved-cancelled vessel (356mm).
- Cruisers: No vessel orders (only improvements to existing ones).
- Destroyers: 4 vessels acquired (1,000t and 4x102mm+4x533mm); 4 vessels ordered-sold (1,000t and 4x102mm+4x533mm); 4 vessels ordered-requisitioned (1,000t and 4x102mm+4x533mm); and 4 vessel ordered-requisitioned (1,200t and 4x102mm+8x533mm).
- Submarines: No vessels orders (only design studies).
BRAZIL
- Battleships: 2 vessels acquired (19,000t and 12x305mm+20x120mm); 1 vessel ordered-sold (28,000t and 14x305mm+20x152mm, redesigned from 32,000t and 12x356mm+16x152mm); and 1 vessel ordered-cancelled (31,000t and 8x381mm+14x152mm).
- Cruisers: 2 vessels acquired (3,100t and 10x120mm+4x457mm); and 1 vessel approved-cancelled (3,200t and 10x120mm+4x457mm).
- Destroyers: 10 vessels acquired (500t and 2x102mm+2x457mm); and 5 vessels approved-cancelled (500t and 2x102mm+2x457mm).
- Submarines: 3 vessels acquired (200t and 2x457mm).
CHILI
- Battleships: 2 vessels ordered-cancelled (28,000t and 14x356mm+16x152mm).
- Cruise ships: No vessel orders (only canceled modernization projects on existing ones).
- Destroyers: 2 vessels acquired (1,400t and 6x102mm+3x457mm); 4 vessels ordered-requisitioned (1,500t and 6x102mm+3x533mm).
- Submarines: 2 vessels ordered-requisitioned/stoled (300t and 4x457mm).
I hope I don't forget anyone else. I am omitting gunboats and other small or non-oceanic vessels.
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@Drachinifel No disrespect intended. I thought as much, but had to set the scene so that the details of the shell/gun evidence of the Moltke off the Hartlepools made proper sense. Incidentally, deliberate government censorship of the details of the attack at Hartlepool and West Hartlepool, both defended and military sensitive, in favour of pushing "innocent" Scarborough, actually changed how the raid was remembered. Initially newspapers and the Associated Press wires called the attack "The East Coast Raid", or "The Bombardment of the Hartlepools", but as the War went on they shifted to solely focusing on the effects at Scarborough instead of elsewhere during the raid ("Remember Scarborough", as the WO poster said). A good example of deliberate manipulation : the earliest Gaumont Graphic newsreel "Attack on the Hartlepools", filmed on the afternoon of the 16th December, in the Hartlepools, Scarborough, and Whitby, was seized by the Military Authorities, and the Hartlepool sections almost complexity edited out and the sequence of towns reordered with Scarborough dominating, before reissued as "The Attack on Scarborough". Just goes to show the lasting power of manipulating the news for propaganda purposes. (Bf. anyone asks how I know this, let's just say just watch the news nearer to Christmas ... 😉)
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Regarding Vanguard's upgrade, the only real problem with the heavy emphasis on the heavy AA guns would be the relative lack of room for the radar systems after a point. An engineer I knew mentioned that he had his naval architecture/systems engineering students actually do something not too different from this, taking a 1940s design and updating for the 1960s, and the great problem they had was the volume of radar systems and their unique requirements for placement, power supply, and such. His basic purpose was to warn students that ships are multi-system platforms where every single system has to literally be designed around every other system simultaneously, or you won't be getting functional, let alone efficient, ships.
Fortunately, for Vanguard, I think there was room enough, even if I suspect a lot of cables would be exposed and you might have to drop a number of the turrets. Still, doable.
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Hey Drach, here in Canada, we study the War of1812 in Jr High, but a contradictory American view of the causes, from your position, has worked it's way into our usually Anglophile Canadian History texts, at least back in the '70s when I was a schoolboy.
Good historiography in your naval-gun engineering vid, btw, on the nation-based biases in the sources when comparing wire vs jackets for late 1800's-WW2 large naval guns, or histriography as you so wittily put it (as a Historian, I find your reasoning irresistibly clever for using the antiquated spelling😉). However, I recently asked you to take a second look at your position that during and just before the War of 1812, American flagged ships commonly were crewed by large numbers of Royal Navy deserters, who could be identified at a glance by any Royal Navy marine in an armed boarding party. Thus the war?😂.
My usually VERY pro-British, Grade 8, CANADIAN History text, usually as pro "Rule Britannia..." as my Loyalist Nanny, actually flat out contradicted you on this point. It held the apparently contemporary (1970's) view of Historians in the US that these boarding parties were pure press-ganging raids to man the wildly expanding Royal Navy at the time, who were busy trying to strangle Napoleon's Europe to death.
Drach, I must say, THAT could use a Histriographer, imho, how did those POVs originate, and any consensus NOW on that issue? Imho, enjoy😉.
Gummys are legal in Canada, and I'm retired😂
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Drachisms of the Day:
21:53 "They were deliberately going out and colonizing areas, but it
was not for imperial acquisition purposes, it was more for, well, either
offloading weird religious fanatics..."
38:01 "Or, in some of the German cases, you ended up with ships that sincerely wished
to identify as U-boats and would do everything in their power to join the U-boat corp, eh,
whenever the waves looked to be more than a few inches high."
47:51 (conspiratorially) "And, I may or may-not have quietly sneaked into a couple history-course
lectures without telling anybody that I wasn't actually on the course while I was at university.
Um, but we shall say no more about that."
49:07 "Which again, they got very familiar with me." (no judgement)
54:13 "The idea of your own ship basically committing suicide by running up to full speed
is not something that you want to take lightly."
57:32 "At the end of the day, nothing quite beats taking a big slab of metal downrange
and then blasting away with naval artillery."
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Kind of disagree on the Beatty analysis. Jellicoe spent too much time and energy protecting Beatty. Additionally, the lack of the standard court-martial following the loss or significant damage to HM vessels caused a significant issue.
From the collision of Australia and New Zealand, to the failures at Dogger Bank, and the cluster that Beatty made of Heligoland Bight, Jellicoe could have relieved or promoted Beatty for any of those before Jutland. After Jutland, Jellicoe should have immediately promoted Beatty to the China station.
I feel like Jellicoe couldn't understand how Beatty kept fouling up. The curse of knowledge, as it were. These are not mistakes Jellicoe ever could have made, and so he looked for extenuating circumstances in others.
Perhaps more particularly, the lack of court-martials was damaging to the service. This is Jellicoe's fault, but also that of Churchill and to a lesser extent Fisher. During WWI, the court-martial to be removed from Royal Navy cultural correction systems. The Royal Navy had a system set up before the war, really set up by Pepys, of conducting court-martials after the loss or damage of an HM vessel or even a poor showing at a battle. If the court-martial had been performed for the damage between New Zealand and Australia, or the cluster that was Dogger Bank, then either Beatty would have better subordinates forced on him, or he would have been removed. Either way, the unforced errors at Jutland don't take place. at the end of the day, it's Churchill's and Fisher's job to make sure that the court-martials and the Royal Navy culture goes on unimpaired. They, particularly Churchill, failed.
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Drach,
Great video, it brought back a lot of memories from my day as a US Navy Officer of the Deck (OOD) underway. Here is my two cents worth:
Let's assume a starboard turn. When the rudder is put over to starboard it develops a horizontal lift force to port, typically below the ship's center of gravity (G). Initially the ship is still translating forward, so we have the following effects occurring simultaneously:
1. A translational motion to port as illustrated in the diagrams
2. A heeling moment to starboard, i.e., towards the direction of turn (in this case to starboard)
3. A rotational moment to starboard about a vertical axis through G, causing the drift angle (similar to a wing's angle of attack) to increase from zero to some positive angle
The ship's hull is essentially a huge inefficient symmetrical airfoil; its effective area is essentially length X draft, and it acts at about half draft. As the drift angle increases from zero it develops a huge horizontal force (more than the opposing rudder force) directed towards the center of the turn. From basic physics we know that a force at a right angle to velocity causes circular motion, and this is why the ship changes heading in the turn. In addition, the hull's side force overcomes the rudder side force and causes the ship to heel towards the outside of a turn. At this point the rudder angle is essentially controlling the drift angle.
An experience mariner instinctively knows this sequence of events during a ship's turn, and he can tell which direction a ship is turning regardless of his location in the ship.
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I don't rate Watts as highly. I understand he had a bit of a reputation for missing minor details. But I hardly think placement of masts on a dreadnought is a minor detail. More damning, poor mast placement repeatedly occurred in other designs after being identified as a significant defect. It took d'Eyncourt to finally put paid to this practice.
Watts' gun layout was (dare I say it? (Dare, dare!)) inefficient. It also took d'Eyncourt to put UK dreadnought gun layout right. Yes, dreadnought was new, and yes, Watts was not the entire design, approve, and build himself, but he still should have done much better. The fear of battleships riping themselves apart from big gun recoil should have been set aside immediately after HMS Dreadnought and certainly after the Bellerophons.
Additionally, Watt should have had a better answer to follow up the Invincibles than the Indefatigables. That class of ship is simply inexcusable. The lack of a prepared design, or at least a willingness or polical clout to build Big Cats instead of (especially) New Zealand and Australia is inexcusable.
And that the "breakthrough" of all big gun design was inevitable rather than inspired. The Japanese, Americans, and Italians were all playing with the idea. If anything, Watts, as the naval architect with the most resources in the world, should have had a clean all big gun design well before Jackie Fisher showed up.
The DNC before Watts was White, who put out some amazing ships. It took D'Eyncourt to fix Watts' mistakes. I think one could make the case that Watts was bookmarked by two superior designers.
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Radar, once it's capabilities and limitations were understood, changed everything. Now the fleets would have sufficient warning to make fighters useful in defense. HF radios were heavy and required the use of Morse code. UHF radios, especially FM, were line of sight and could carry voice transmissions. Now, not only could enemy strikes be detected, fighters could be directed to meet the strikes 20-75 nm out from the center of the force. It helped that by the late 1930s, such radios were lighter and more reliable. The use of a circular formation by the USN, adopted in the early 1930s, aided this defense, allowing the force to change directions for air operations without the carrier having to leave the formation. Based on gaming and exercises and initial reports from Britain, the USN was already planning on expanding its fighter complement on its carriers to 27 aircraft from 18 in 1940. The use of the deck park made this possible as there was simply not enough hanger space. This allowed the carrier to send fighter escorts with its strikes and retain a viable number of fighters for defense. The increase in fighters was constrained by the condition of the US aviation industry from the inter-war period of pacifism, limited government budgets and the Great Depression, despite the FDR Administration's use of economic recovery funds to build warships and aircraft for the USN through 1937. With the demands on US resources by the French, British and then Soviets, it was May 1942 before there were (barely) sufficient F4F-3 fighters to increase the VF squadrons complements. Despite the numbers of F2A-3 fighters available, USN pilots were unhappy with the continuing failure of the landing gear and the evidence of sabotage of aircraft by the Brewster work force and they were assigned to USMC squadrons. Around 1943, the RNAS adopted the deck park (the RN had actually looked at adopting the deck park in the early 1930s but was vetoed by the RAF). Previously, the doctrine of limiting air groups to hanger space had led to carriers as large or larger than USS Ranger and USS Wasp, which carried (and operated) 72 aircraft, operating 33 aircraft. This doctrine had another effect in that British carriers had significant amounts of flight deck area which couldn't be used for parking aircraft because of the "round down". Still, the "Illustrious" class could park as many as 56 aircraft, depending on type. Most of the additional aircraft were fighters, now critical to the defense of the Fleet, thanks to radar and radios. The problem for the RN was that the constraints imposed by a carrier originally designed for 33 aircraft. The fuel and ordnance load was designed for two or three days of operations for 33 aircraft of mid-late 1930s endurance and fuel requirements. Additional fuel could be carried in portable tanks on the flight deck, but ordnance had to be stowed in protected locations in the hull. The USN would suffer this problem to a lesser extent as aircraft grew in size and consumption of fuel and ordnance.
Prior to 1940, USN fighters had been restricted in size, as far as length and wing span, by the size of the elevators on American carriers. It was felt that wing folding mechanisms were too heavy and would pose too much of a performance penalty, the USN having experience with folding wings on its bombers. The major impact here was the growing availability of powerful, 1,000-1,300hp aircraft engines, that could lift and maintain performance against the additional weight of folding wings, pilot armor and self-sealing gas tanks. Even more powerful engines were available, with the XF4U-1 lifting a 1,800hp XR-2800 that made it the fastest US single engine fighter (not just carrier fighter, and the twin engine XP-38 had exceeded 400mph in level flight in 1939) when it flew in 29 May 1940. With the folding wings of the F4F-4, USN carrier air groups could now carry 36 fighters into battle. Again, the deck park allowed this number of aircraft to be operated, even as the size of USN fighters grew with the F4U and F6F of 1942-43. This growth was balanced by the adoption of folding wings on dive-bombers (SB2C) and the method of folding used by the VTs (TBF). The increasing numbers of carriers began to match the numbers of aircraft the NWC showed as early as 1921 would be needed to execute War Plan "Orange". The increased performance of USN aircraft and the maintenance of the carrier wing size and the availability of catapults resulted in an operational and tactical over-match at the Battle of the Philippine Sea as IJN carriers faced the problem of larger aircraft stowed in the same hanger size, reducing the size of their air groups and forcing the adoption of fighter-bombers on smaller carriers.
The final impact on USN VF size and component of the carrier air group was the kamikaze. Initial tactics reflected conventional strike tactics and were more easily countered by the USN carrier task forces. It was the adoption of "swarm" tactics, with aircraft coming from seemingly every direction and at all altitudes that overloaded fighter defense. Fighter defense had to be decentralized to control ships like destroyer radar pickets, which required more fighters to cover all avenues of approach. At one time, the number of VF reached 72 on an "Essex" class carrier. Strike capability was retained to a point as all USN VF were now equipped to carry ordnance, such as 1,000lbs bombs and rockets. But VFBs were not as effective as VSBs in delivering ordnance on target and toward the end of the war with the invasion of Kyushu in prospect, VFBs begin to be replaced by VSBs.
This is just a quick look at the subject. I would highly recommend Norman Friedman's "Fighters Over the Fleet: Naval Air Defense from Biplanes to the Cold War" as both a primary reference and a starting point on this subject, along with Lundstrom's "First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway" and "First Team and the Guadalcanal Campaign: Naval Fighter Combat from August to November 1942". Hata, et al "Japanese Naval Air Force Fighter Units and their Aces, 1932-1945", Hobbs "British Aircraft Carriers: Design, Development and Service Histories", Norman Friedman's "British Carrier Aviation" and others.
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NOTE: That "minor" error where the old 16"/50 gun from the COLORADO Class era was designed into an IOWA Class turret designed for a new-model 16" gun (lengthened version of the new 16"/45 as on NORTHCAROLINA and SOUTH DAKOTA, being lighter-weight and of narrower barrel and breech than the old-style gun), requiring the new lighter-weight long gun be used and forcing the redoing of half of the design work already done, had more effect on the US Navy than one might think. For some time before this, there had been an effort to streamline the US Navy bureaucracy by merging BuOrd, BuC&R, and BuEng in some manner, since they all were mainly mechanical engineering experts, though with different regions of application of this expertise. BuEng was responsible for the huge requirement and installation and maintenance work for boilers, engines, all forms of electrical/communication (not sure who had the different radar installation design and installation duties) systems, and so forth, and BuC&R had similar responsibility for the ship hull, superstructure, and general building and repair of the ship wrapped around the BuEng equipment -- in effect, BuSHips and BuEng were "Siamese Twins" since virtually everything either did had to be worked into the designs developed for the other one. Back when ships were wood and the new steam engines were iron, these were different areas of expertise, but that time was long, long past by WWII. There was also some overlap of BuOrd and BuC&R duties: For example, hull armor was very similar if homogeneous, ductile type -- BuC&R STS and BuOrd Class "B" armor were virtually identical, though BuC&R STS was only made by Carnegie-Illinois (new name for Carnegie Steel) for all US Navy ships, while Class "B" armor was made by them, Bethlehem Steel, and The Midvale Company (as bid on each contract). Note that BuC&R was forbidden (!) to use the BuOrd-only word "armor" in its official documentation. On top of that, Class "A" face-hardened armor (basically modified/improved Krupp Cemented armor originally made in 1894) could only be made under BuOrd contract from those same three manufacturers, so battleship belt armor and Citadel end bulkheads had to use BuOrd specs/contracts applied to BuC&R hull designs. When the IOWA gun fiasco happened the streamliners saw their chance and, with CNO and Congressional approval, rammed through a major change, rapidly eliminating BuC&R and BuEng and creating a new single entity called BuShips. They did not try to include BuOrd at this time, though many years later that too occurred and NavSea merged NavShips and NavOrd (mostly just new names for the old "Bu" agencies). The moral: Don't screw up when people are after your job!!
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wrt to Dr D M Platt's question about replacing guns, expanding a bit on gun refurbishment, since he mentions whether a gun has a liner or not: To replace the liner the gun was placed in a pit, and the outside tube heated, while cool water was flushed through the bore to cool the liner, with the difference in thermal expansion between the cool liner and hot tube hopefully loosening the liner so it could be pressed out. Initially, the USN made liners with a uniform outside diameter, but then realized if the liner's outside diameter had a slight taper the chances of successfully pressing the liner out were improved. If the liner refused to be pressed out, then the procedure is the same as refurbishing a gun that was not originally made with a liner: the inside of the gun would need to be bored out to entirely remove the stuck liner, or to prepare a gun to have a liner fitted for the first time. Boring out a gun would take several weeks. I may have a more specific number in my notes somewhere, but I recall reading that the boring time was a matter of 3-4 days, for each cut. I just found a piece on youtube by Ryan, the curator of Battleship New Jersey, talking about 16" gun construction and maintenance. He says the refurbishment process, if all goes smoothly, took about 2 months.
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On the question of the KGVs being built as Lions, the treaty would not have allowed it, in the same time frame. The treaty required the parties to negotiate a displacement escalator, when it was determined that a non-signatory to the treaty was building a larger ship. The US and UK did not finish those negotiations until mid 1938. so, at the very least, KGV and PoW would have been laid down a year and a half later. Being laid down in the second half of 38, neither would have been in service when Bismark attempted it's breakout. I looked up where all the other RN capital ships were on the day of the battle in Denmark Strait. If the KGVs were not yet in service, the RN would probably have kept the Nelsons close to the UK. How would they be deployed to catch Bismark? How would Denmark Strait play out with both Nelsons, or Nelson plus Hood? If the Admiralty had decided to leverage existing material on hand, to speed construction, there were actually 8 twin 15" turrets in hand: the four from Courageous and Glorious, and the four that were on the Erebus and Roberts class monitors. Laying down only two Vanguards in late 38. rather than 5 KGVs would put less of a load on industrial capacity, so might result in a faster build. but I would not bet the farm on both being in commission by May 41. If they did make it into commission by late 41, then scratch one of only two modern battleships with Force Z. A Vanguard may not have had the same vulnerability that PoW had, but the Japanese would probably have kept beating on it until it sank.
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Very cool that you made a video about viking naval combat. When talking about the larger viking fleets, you are probably right that there was a mix of ships, the saga mentioning part of the fleet and in some cases the king's ship would be a "knarr"
Drake-ships where huge, we are talking about ships in the range of 25-30 meters. The Myklebust ship is believed to be the ship of a regional viking King and is 30 meters long, a full size replica of a find in a big burial mound. I have been onboard the ship and they plan to crew her and take her out of the boat House to row her around when weather and corona restrictions permit it.
The ship with the ram is likely a ship mentioned in sources with probably a party Iron clad bow section. What it was used for is uncertain, but it could possibly have been used for reinforcement when clashing against the enemy ship or oars. No specific rams where mentioned, but there might have been big, prestigeous ships that was partly Iron clad.
About binding the ships together to fight: it was said that this was a common way to fight. This is how ever sources mostly written in the 1200s, so this might be different for battles in the 800s.
One purpose the shield on the side could have had is to create a higher freeboard and cover from the elements. Shields would overlap each other, making it possible to repell some water comming over the railings in rough conditions.
Stones is mentioned to be a part of the viking weapons in the sagas. The larger viking ships had a some sort of a deck, leaving space below for storsge or maybe ballast. It is possible that the Stones have been used for both.
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U.S.S. Gridley CG-21 boiler technician here. 'Skuttlebutt' was our captain was upset when they removed our twin 50 caliber guns and installed the Phalanx CIWS. The other BT's told me he used to shoot an M-16 off the bridge to pass time I suppose(?). They also told me they'd light the boilers off the back wall. I was a 6YO BT and I said that ain't gonna happen, as well as my 'initiation', which they mixed up greases, coffee grounds, cigarette butts, blue dye, etc. and hung you upside down to apply it. It happened, yet I dunked my hand in it and got them good. Only problem was the captain unexpectedly came down for inspection. I hid under the escape trunk until the coast was clear. I miss you Bug, Boo-boo Bair, and French Frie, even though you used to call me Sgt. Joe Friday behind my back("Just the facts!!!")
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Thanks a lot of for answering my questions about the Vanguard. As a Yank, I don't always understand British thinking about what ships were built and what weren't. All your reponses make sense. It's unfortunate that the British government never saw the possibility of the Vanguard being more than the world's largest and most heavily armed royal yacht, her main use until she was placed in reserve in 1955. It's unfortunate that she never participated in the Korean Conflict. The RN might have gained a new appreciation for the need for shore bombardment even without another world war
After a fairly comprehensive and expensive refit, and being placed into reserve in 1955 , Mountbatten and Anthony Eden came to power and seemed to be bent on disposing of half the RN fleet. After just four years in reserve, the decision was made to scrap the Vanguard and, by 1960, she was gone. The USN/US government maintained many ships in reserve postwar, some of which were war weary and completely obsolete, like the USS Wichita, for fifteen or more years before the mass scraping program set in from 1960 to 1962. I guess the end of empire, in some people's minds, also meant the end of the need for the RN beyond nuclear submarines, and that the USN would become the protector of the UK itself. It was a decision that would come back to haunt the British in 1982.
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Whether or not it's efficient armor, the idea of rubber clad warships ramming each other and just bouncing about like in an amusement park fills me with glee.
As does the monitor shenanigans of the USN. One wonders, say you have a ship under construction at the end of the US Civil War. No need for it now, but, it's 20% done, and maybe we'll need some ships later, we'll "mothball" it. Decades past, and now a new ship is needed, because War was declared. The 20% is a bit deteriorated by now, so we'll strip out what's not good, and restart building. Opps, the war was quicker than we thought. The ship is now about 40% done, but, no budget, we'll set it aside. Rinse, and repeat. Come 1997, US resumes, and finally finishes, building the ship, a new missile cruiser. Laid down right after Civil War, the captains desk is made of the oaks that were originally the keel of the ship. A silly thought, but bureaucracy has done sillier.
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Armored gratings: The original versions were crisscrossing layers of steel bars partially blocking the funnel opening, which were not very good against an AP shell, though usually good against most non-AP bombs. By WWII, this had been replaced by very thick plates of solid homogeneous, ductile armor steel, the same as the armored deck itself, with many large holes drilled in it (wider at the bottom than at the top), at the same level of the primary armored deck, continuing that deck across the funnel openings. These plates, when tested by the US with large-caliber AP shells hitting at high obliquity, were shown to be equal to 40% of their thickness of solid deck armor, requiring them to be very thick to compensate for the holes. Sometimes they was not quite as strong as a solid armored deck on the same ship, but at high obliquity, before the shell moved very far sideways it had left the grating if it hit it directly and, if the shell slid over it after hitting the regular deck, the shell would usually be moving in such a sideways angle as to make the grating act just like a deck plate, though it might have some webbing between some holes split off and fall into the funnel under the deck. Either way, these new-type gratings were considered adequate against virtually any AP shell or bomb that the regular deck around them could stop or deflect.
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Concerning the hits by KIKISHIMA on SOUTH DAKOT: Only two were from Type 91 AP projectiles:
One was an underwater near miss that blew up under the hull due to the very long 0.4-sec delay-action fuze designed to allow underwater torpedo-like damage ("below-the-belt" hits on the side was the true goal, but only occurring against USS BOISE from a single 8" Type 91 shell, to my knowledge). This did a little bit of flooding damage to the triple bottom tankage, but that was all. An 18.1"Type 91 shell would not have done much else.
Another was the very odd 14"Type 91 AP hit on the barbette of Turret 3 (aft) that hit the 1.5"STS armor weather deck just short of the turret mount at an extremely shallow angle, had its AP cap dislodged as it bent down the deck into a U-shaped slot and slammed into the barbette just below where the weather deck usually met the barbette 's 17.3"Class "Ä"" face-hardened curved armor steel plate at about a 45-degree horizontal angle and a 5-10-degree downward vertical angle. Since the cap was dislodged it failed to provide full protection to the projectile nose on barbette impact and the hit was only a very shallow, bluntly-pointed dimple in the armor. The projectile with a damaged nose ricocheted downward but was wedged between the narrow opening it had made in the deck up against the barbette and the barbette itself, so the nose stayed where it was and the body rotated upward like a baseball bat and slammed into the barbette a couple of feet above the deck level (the body length of these shells was only 3-3.5 times their diameter without the thick AP cap and long, pointed windscreen), at which point the very sensitive Type 91 Explosive, trinitroanisol (it had over 33% inert cushion in its cavity to keep it from exploding on impact) detonated with the projectile nose-down with its tip projecting slightly into the space between the weather and heavy armor 2nd deck, removing a wide fan of wood around the barbette on the weather deck and causing a lot of close-in fragmentation damage both above the hull and in the space about the 2nd deck , though only a few of the heavy nose pieces of the projectile made it horizontally through more than one vertical bulkhead (body fragments are mostly tiny and going very fast, but that means these are also very light-weight and have only a small amount of remaining energy if the hit a steel bulkhead, even a thin one). The barbette, turret, and gun at and near the blast suffered superficial damage and could have been used after the hit, but the turret was "Casrep" (ordered to cease operations) until the damage was evaluated. It an 18.1" shell had hit just like the 14" one did, the results would not have been terribly different, in that the projectile could not have completely penetrated or even made a hole in that thickness of armor with its cap not functioning properly, though the damage would have been at least doubled or more to the outside of the barbette and in the hull above the armored 2nd deck, but the only change in results would possibly have been that the turret would actually have been unable to function due to a dent or displacement of a barbette armor plate by the heavier impact, but the turret was not being used after that anyway and only a delay due to fixing the added damage might have been needed after the battle was over .
The other hits from KIRISHIMA were Type 0 HE shells or Type 3 shrapnel/incendiary shells (only a couple) that did some superficial damage (one blowing open a hole in the outer hull near the waterline but stopped by the internal main belt armor from doing anything important. 18.1" versions would not have made much larger effects. All of the other his on SD were from Japanese 5.5"-8" shells, mostly SAP type or HE type, with a couple of 8"" Type 91 AP hits that also did negligible damage to the fighting power of the ship (one 5"/38 twin mount was knocked out by holing its back plate from an 8" AP hit coming from the far side of the ship and tearing through the superstructure (a dud) -- it also tore open a large safe on its twisted path through the superstructure, which I think that the crew using that safe considered more of a problem than just one 5" gun mount.
Remember that KIRISHIMA was set up to bombard shore targets, hence the HE and incendiary loadout of its projectile hoists. By the time it had cleared out these and finally fired AP, it only got one or two salvoes at SD with AP before WASHINGTON surprised it and at close range tore it apart. At the ranges that WASHINGTON was, even YAMATO would have been in extreme trouble from those US 2700-pound 16" Mark 8 AP shells, which were only about 500 pounds lighter than the YAMATO's AP shells and better penetrators for their size. I would think that most, if not all, hits on KIRISHIMA would have done much the same thing to YAMATIO, leaving that ship a wreck in short order.
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Regarding the Japanese bomb-shell found in the Arizona. Many of my family, myself included, are either currently in service or have prior service in the various branches of the US military, and I can tell you that there are some stories of some just plain weird shit you sometimes come across that make you scratch your head and wonder if anyone really knows what the hell is actually going on.
Your story about the bomb-shell reminded me of a story once told to us by my brother's friend (both in the US Navy at the time) of a bombing sortie flown into Iraq during Desert Storm. The strike package called for a guided JDAM load, but when they ordinance techs brought the load up, it turned out the bombs were not of the type specified, but were much older dummy (unguided) bombs from the Korean War era that had somehow made their way into the ship's magazines. According to the story, the officer in charge had asked only two questions and the conversation went something like:
"Chief, will they still explode when they hit the ground?"
"It ..... should, sir."
"Will they fit the racks?"
"Yes, sir"
"Good, send them."
According to my brother and his friend, the bombs had been mislabeled while in inventory in the shoreside armory, stored in the wrong bunker, somehow made it through shoreside inspection, gotten loaded and past the shipside inspection, and taken into the magazines. The story goes that after all was said and done, they used them anyway, but head's stilled rolled later because of it.
The point being that, in war, chaos is still king. If asked, I would theorize that the Japanese, when deciding to convert battleship shells into bombs, probably decided to built some prototypes first to see just how feasible the idea was. Instead of using possibly valuable 16" shells that they KNEW would work in the battleships for a theoretical test, they might have gone into their old armories and found some old obsolete 15" shells that were close enough in size and weight to test the shell-into-bomb theory on, and thus converted a batch or two for testing. Once that was proven to work, they would have gone ahead and converted some of the 16" shells for testing, but the remaining 15" prototypes might have gone back into some bunker or armory, because in my experience, militaries never throw stuff away that MIGHT possibly be theoretically useful someday for SOMETHING, even if they have no idea what for. Then, when the stage is set and the show's about to start, some technician finds the prototypes, might not even know what they are, but is reading a chart on a clipboard and thinks" hey, the label on this box seems to match what this chart is calling for, and orders the prototypes loaded, and off they went.
If a load of Korean War bombs can make their way onto a modern US carrier, with all of our modern electronic logistical tracking software, computerized inventorying, digital device and barcode confirmation tech, what was it like when it was just a couple of guys with a stack of papers and a clipboard trying to match inventory numbers in an ammo bunker?
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I've been an avid viewer of your content since back in the robo-voiceover era and I'm fairly certain I've watched every video at least once or more (Battle of Textl, the Jutland series, the journey of the 2nd Pacific Squadron, the voyage of the Great White Fleet to name just a few I watch/watched repeatedly), and based on my recollection of what you've shared about your personal life and background, you laid the foundation of your engineering credentials via the university route, correct? However, it's my recollection that re: naval history you don't have a university background, except perhaps tangentially as it relates to engineering.
·––———My Question! ———––·
So, am I correct that you're credentials as a naval historian (which as far as I can tell are rather well respected in the field) have been earned/established by simply doing it and doing it damn well?
If so, that's absolutely über awesome and incredibly impressive and inspiring.
I really have been watching since the robo v/o days (under my MFDamien acct), so I'm amazed at where you are now; your channel has become one of, if not the most popular and respected YouTube channels in the genre of naval history. It's really cool to see all the new navy & naval history related content/channels (the more the better!) many obviously drawing inspiration from your channel, and few sad, wanna Drach's. 😆🤦🏻♂️.
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I was Tin-Can Navy. We walked up ladders face forward, and slid down the rails on our hands, face-away from the ladder, at sea or in port, regardless of sea state when at sea. Going down was dangerous, and it was just best to get it over with. One time, when we were in port, I got assigned to tour guide duty (USS Berkeley, DDG-15, somewhere around 1982, San Diego, IIRC). I had just shown my troupe the signal bridge on the O3 level forward, one deck above the bridge, and was taking them down to the ASROC deck on the O1 level. The only starboard to port ladder on the entire ship was behind the forward stack, and it went from the O3 to the O2. It was a long one. The next was a for-and-aft to the O1 just forward of the ASROC. I wasn't thinking. I jumped the rails and slid down to the O2, took the standard one-step-and-turn at the bottom of that ladder, turned to the next ladder, and slid down to the O1. It only took seconds, and not very many of them. I looked up two decks and there were some boys staring at those ladders with something akin to pure glee in their eyes. I yelled, "DO NOT DO THAT!" Their mothers and/or fathers grabbed the kids and kept them off of the rails. The boys were horribly disappointed. I could have gotten into some serious trouble. Without extensive practice, riding the rails can get you either killed or severely injured. It's just how we took the ladders.
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Thankyou once again for your insightful and ongoing documentaries on warships of all types and through the ages. I have to say, jokingly of course, that of all war ships since the 'monitor' class of the 1860's, HMS 'Ark Royal' (1938), must have been styled by either Giorgetto Giugiaro or Pininfarina of Italy, as she is both beautifully handsome and proportionately balanced in her appearance and silhouette. As a young teenager, I chose her to be the very first scale model ship, 'Airfix' I believe, that I pieced together. Such a shame she did not survive the war, as I would have liked her to have been preserved as a museum ship for all to still see today. Especially as she was the first purpose built UK 'Aircraft Carrier'. I was wishing, in vain of course, that the two new UK carriers would be named, rightfully, after 'Ark Royal' and 'Illustrious", but the UK politicians as always, wanted to cow tail to the royals. Again, thankyou so much for your dedication and enthusiasm. Mal.
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Turret stops. Lockout cams were also used. Allowed for full traverse, but kept you from shooting yourself. Usually.
Dad was gunnery officer on USS COLLETT (DD730) , a new build at the time. In November 44, she was attacked by 4 Japanese aircraft. While she had extensive training, and some combat, this was the first extended battle she was in. There was an explosion in the gun tub, and Dad ran to see what happened. There was blood everywhere, and it was immediately obvious to Dad that he had FU'd -- he said he had set all the cutout tabs for the gun to prevent firing into the superstructure, but, in the cooling buckets, there were two hot barrels that had been swapped out due to the extended engagement time. He had never cut cams for them, since they had never been used in anger before. Fortunately, all the blood was from superficial nicks -- no significant injuries to anyone in the crew. But they got two of the aircraft, a third went away smoking, and nobody knew what happend to the fourth. Typical combat.
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So this is a long shot. USS Borie DD704(actually the Borie II) my grandfather, a radio man, stepped off the USS Enterprise as she headed back to Bremerton, WA from the kamikaze attacks at Okinawa. He had been drafted in the early days of January 1942 at Newport Harbor High School, the Sailors no less. The high school I would graduate from 49yrs later. 5wks of boot camp, cause that was the new norm, and off to fight. So, he’s on the Big E from February of 42 till roughly April/May off 45. Then he steps onto the Borie II, just to have to end his time at sea by getting taken out by a kamikaze on the 9th of August. 48 dead 66 wounded. The captain received the Silver Star for his heroics on that day. 3 more kamikaze’s tried to end the Borie II. My grandfather is one of the 66 wounded, but he received the Bronze Star for his heroic actions that day. He lost almost all his hearing. As he said many times, I’m alive to tell the stories, some are not. He spoke more about his time on the Borie II, than ever about the Enterprise. I was way too young to hear any of it. If there was any chance you could do up the Borie II, I would be extremely grateful. Their patch is a story in itself….. thanks for all you do. I was too young to grasp the heavy stories. Now I can’t thank you enough for bringing this history to life.
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2700-pound 16" Mark 8 AP projectiles fired at 2500 feet/second by the IOWA 16"/50 guns and the more "conventional" 2240-pound 16" Mark 5 AP shells used by the COLARADO Class 16"/45 guns. Both of these shells were made initially of about the same quality steel and hardening processes, though the Mark 8 did have a slightly better MOD 6 version introduced in 1944 that had a little bit more chance of penetrating with no significant damage the thickest armor expected by any enemy warship (if hitting at the minimum velocity needed, of course) at a higher oblique angle -- all US AP shells after 1935 had higher oblique angle test requirements than any other navy, being 35-40 degrees against 0.8-0.9-caliber Class "A" (KC-type) armor, depending on the exact plates used in the test, since some tests used up a no-longer-needed supply of mid-1920s "Bethlehem Thin Chill" (BTC) Class "A" plates made by Bethlehem and Midvale for the cancelled battleships and battle-cruisers of the early 1920s to save money after calibrating them to match the equivalent WWII-era "Thick Chill" Class "A" plates by adjusting the angle of impact.
At this time, the US Navy used the Thompson "F" Armor Penetration Formula developed by Dr. L.T.E. Thompson in 1931 from many 8" Mark 11 (1911 design) obsolete soft-capped AP shells removed from all US 8"-gunned warships when the Washington Treaty of 1923 was approved.. These were the true first of the "Midvale Unbreakable" type later standardized in 1916 when the Midvale-made 12" Mark 15 MOD 6 was introduced and made all prior soft-capped shells used by anybody anywhere obsolete, simply by being impervious to damage by most (not all, if was later found) face-hardened plates when hitting at angles of 15 degrees or less (soft caps deformed and tore free of the nose when hitting at higher angles, with the 15.1-20-degree range giving roughly a 50% chance of keeping the cap, but no chance over 20 degrees, at least with the cap attachment solders used by most navies, including the US and Britain, other than Germany's Krupp, which used a high-temperature super-strong solder that allowed up to about 30 degrees before tearing free in its 1911-model "C/11" and after WWI-era "tough-capped" APC shells -- but not in its earlier soft-capped APC shells with lower requirements -- and for its hard-capped post-WWI APC shells, though they no longer needed such a solder). However, the armor used for these tests was US Navy BuOrd Class "B" or BuC&R STS homogeneous, ductile plating up to 8" thick, though mostly less, since not a whole lot of thin-enough Class "A" face-hardened armor was still available for 8" AP shell test purposes after 1923. This formula, though rather complex, used an "F" ("Fudge Factor"?) this-test-plate-versus-this-test--AP-shell quality factor that was a measure of the kinetic energy needed to penetrate compared to the 8" Mark 11 AP shell and the average resistive strength at all angle from normal (0 degrees) through 75 degrees (very thin plate) of all US Navy Class B/STS plates used in the tests (assumed to be typical of all such US and most foreign ductile armor after WWI). This formula was rather good when the proper table of "F" values was employed for a given projectile against a given ductile plate at various angles of impact, but it had no scaling term (allowing for size changes with the plates and projectiles being kept to as close as possible to each other, no matter how big or small), so the "F" values would change slowly for ductile armor in cases where size changed, which turned out to be a problem in its interpretation, as will be mentioned below. The French 1890 De Marre Homogeneous Armor Penetration Formula, that the Thompson "F" Formula was designed to replace, was only good really for normal impact by intact-after-penetrating AP shells, but had a built-in small scaling term which turned out to be essentially perfect for this kind of armor, even after WWII!.
The Thompson "F" Formula, by giving the kinetic energy involved in the given impact (when the striking velocity was modified by the Cosine of the impact angle to mostly cancel out this complication), was very good for giving baseline information of trends needed to improve the performance of both projectiles and armor by trying to get bigger "F" values for the same kind of tests if trying to improve the armor or lower "F" values if trying to improve the projectiles.
However, applying a formula developed for homogeneous, ductile armor for testing Class "A" face-hardened armor -- having a huge range of 20-80% face thickness for the various kinds of face-hardened plates made by the three manufacturers and used by the US Navy from 1895-1945 (a more uniform average of 55% face for all US Navy "Thick Chill" Class "A" armor installed after 1935) -- turns out to be incorrect, as it can give confusing results as to exactly what properties of the Class "A" plate never tested for in the original "F" values are actually giving the results of a given test. I discovered, for example, such things as that the face layer thickness of face-hardened plates of any kind causes a large change in the scaling effects, with the thicker the face, the greater the scaling effect is, so this would greatly confuse tests for plate/projectile development tests using the "F" values alone when trying to determine what is giving the improved or worse results when various properties are changed in either the face-hardened plate or the design of the projectile. Such factors have be separated out as explicit variables to allow other design changes to be sorted o0ut as to their actual benefit or penalty to the designs being tested. Unfortunately, much of this difference between face-hardened and homogeneous armor was vaguely estimated from the large sets of test results, but was never really firmly identified as due to specific causes. If they had so identified these causes they would have made their thicker Class "A" plates with thinner faces, closer to the 35% used by the original 1894 Krupp Test Plate #420 or even thinner to inhibit the scaling as the plate got thicker and thicker against larger and larger shells. Also, I found -- in agreement with Mr. Drachinifel here -- that shell weight did not affect Class "A" armor penetration nearly as much as it affected ductile armor penetration, so the extra-heavy Mark 8 AP shells, while better at long range against decks were, due to their lower muzzle velocity and hitting velocity at any range, less effective than a lower-weight Mark 5 AP shell fired at a significantly higher velocity at all shorter ranges against any face-hardened side armor type. Using the wrong formula without understanding this gives misleading results!!
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Regarding the US Navy’s Aviation Green Uniform, personally, I loved that outfit. It was comfortable and looked sharp. There is a principal reason that there are so few pictures of Aviation Officers wearing that particular garb. For the best part of the time that the “Av Greens” were being issued, the ensemble was considered a “Working Uniform” similar to oil and grime-stained dungarees, or flight suits, i.e., not deemed suitable attire for wear anywhere off base. That being the case, no officer could wear the uniform off base where a civilian could snap a picture, and since camera toting civilians were generally considered taboo anywhere on base, there were precious few opportunities for Aviators wearing the Av Greens to have their photo taken.
That however, begs the question, why was this uniform considered on par with oil and grime-stained dungarees for off base wear? I put it down to professional rivalry or dare I say jealousy. The surface Navy despised any uniform apparel that set Aviators apart from the rest of the fleet. Flight jackets, garrison caps, and brown shoes drove them to near comic levels of distraction. They were successful, albeit briefly, to ban Aviation Officers from wearing their traditional “Brown Shoes.” That was a step too far, pun intended, and the brown shoes were soon reinstated. It has been a while now, but if I recall, it was not until the mid-1980’s that the Av Green uniform was briefly approved for wear off base. Even then there were numerous and varied restrictions. For example, I could wear the uniform out in town in the vicinity of my Squadron at what was then the Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland. However, if I had to make a run up to the Pentagon, located in Naval District Washington, D.C., just fifty miles north, for a meeting, its presence was strictly verboten! Soon after, the surface mafia was able to garner enough support to ban the uniform altogether. Too bad.
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Thank you again for another great video, Drach!
Speaking of wooden ships being refloated and used again: After the Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, three of the Lake Erie squadron of US ships were sunk near Presque Island. When the base there was closed in 1820, the Niagara was sunk nearby as well - to preserve the ships against future need. Eventually they were sold, and raised in 1836 to be used as commercial ships. Two of the ships were deemed to be in too poor condition, and had too small holds, to be economical as merchant vessels, and were allowed to sink again.
That means after over 20 years in the water two of the ships were able to be raised and put into service.
(Later on, in 1913, the Niagara was salvaged and rebuilt, but looking at the photo of what they pulled out then, you can't say it was ready for service after nearly 100 years.)
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Many years ago my grandfather told me about how he served in WWII on an ocean going Tug Boat (my later research showed me that it was USS Mataco, AT-86/ATF-86). He described how it was a 180' ship (the ship was 205'), much smaller than the other ships in the fleet. When I asked him about some of the most exciting things he'd done on the boat, he casually mentioned that he went through a typhoon with Admiral Halsey. I asked him about how such a small boat could survive such a storm, he described how his boat just rode on top of the mountains that were the waves. He explained how he would have to stand on the walls, and sometimes even the overheads to stay standing up as their boat rode over a wave. He also told me about how he was very concerned for the larger ships. He described how the destroyers were rolling nearly over sometimes, and how they were plunging through the waves. The bigger ships were even more terrifying to watch, apparently, as they were spread across two, or even three wave crests. He was concerned the battleships and carriers would break their backs being suspended like that.
In retrospect, I wish I could have learned more about it from him, but I was only 12 or 13 when he passed away, and I didn't know to ask about other specific things. He told me a few other stories as well, and after he passed away I learned about some of the more grim tasks he'd had to do as well. I'll never forget these stories he told me, and they're part of why I eventually joined the Navy myself.
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After being somewhat obsessed with naval history for most of my 50+ years, I have become accustomed to the fact that after one has absorbed a certain amount of information, the discovery of something new becomes fewer and farther between. At least something new that is fascinating or exciting. Not that anyone can know everything, but one becomes familiar enough with the subject that it is most common to find oneself revisiting well trodden (by oneself and others) ground.
Between this video, and the one about Lee himself I watched immediately prior, I have been treated to many fascinating tidbits of info about Admiral Lee, USS Washington, U.S. battleships in general, and the 2nd Savo action.
You also clarified a number of things, and answered several questions that I personally have never seen addressed before.
Thank you Mr. Drach! Your refreshing and well made videos make naval history as interesting and rewarding as when I first discovered it!
Bravo, maestro!
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A really interesting question and answer on Cradock.
I must admit, I had forgotten he thought he was pursuing only Leipzig, which makes leaving Canopus behind and keeping Otranto with him to help search and also keep her safe makes a lot of sense, which is a really important reminder to not be, as Bernard of MHV puts it, a Hindsight General or Hindsight Historian and judge decisions based on what information was available to leaders at the time, in this case Cradock.
Sure, we can say now exactly what he should have done, ie keep Canopus with him and/or send Otranto off the moment he spots Von Spee's fleet, but that's easy to say in hindsight; we know what Von Spee was doing and what he planning to do. Again, MHV often says; Context Matters, and in this case, there were good reasons Cradock left Canopus and retained Otranto when viewed in correct context, rather than just reading the results of the battle and working backwards.
It's good to be reminded of that now and then, and I think this question does do that (For me at least)
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Some interesting things i remember from te taken down video(tho i might misremember some of the details):
-One of the guys in the overhanging(hanger) damagecontroll stations was passing through a bulkhead when the bombs struck. evereyone in the room was floor, and most badly injured. the guy himself was knocked off his feet, but due the more rigidity of the area around the bulkhead safed him from worse injury.
-a small group sailors were in the hangar, fleeing from the fires, and found a hatch going down in the ship. the person behind the guy telling the strory, shut the hatch, and shortly after that a lot more ordenance exploded. So hail to the sailor that safed the group by sacreficing him self. After the fires had died down, the group tried to exit their hiding place, but found that they could not open the hatch...... It had welded itself shut by the extreme heat in the hangar.
-On flightdeck(i think) one of the men went to the planes, and de-armed a lot of ordenance. that made sure either less or it took longer before the ordenance on the planes fired/exploded.
-the cruiser helping fight the fire, had to move away from franklin, becouse at some point word had gone out to abandon ship. That ment that to manny personel were fleeing the franklin to the cruiser. and thus she had to brake away.
i hope this was somwhat interesting
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My father served onboard the Bennington from late in 1953 through to her refit and repairs from her famous explosion in May of 1954 during which she was given her angled deck. She had the distinction of being named after both a battle from the Revolutionary war and another famous ship which in its time also had the distinction for being the ship to have the higest loss of life due to an explosion diring peacetime. The Bennington easily beat her namesake's record to become the worst peacetime US naval record for loss of life, a record she still holds to this day. Others try to put forward the USS Forrestal's fire as the record, but that is for wartime naval operations instead of peacetime as that fire took place in 1967 during the Vietnam War. Dad told me the explosion aboard the Bennington was due to a design flaw where the hydraughlic fluid from the over pressure on the catapault were vented into the hull instead of ouside of it, in effct setting up a fuel ir bomb in some of the ship's compartments. The explosion originate in the Officer's ward, likely when an officer at breakfast lit up a cigarette. Dad had just entered the enlited men's mess when the explosion occured and blew him back out of that compartment,saving his life. As I mentioned he continued on the Bennington after the blast and through much of the rebuild and was in a really good position to see the mess left by the explosion and be privy to the process of finding out what went wrong. The Bennington's two explosion. one in 1953, no less, are quite a story. Though you didn't mention her in connection with it, she partiipated in the space program as well as a recovery ship. I think she is very worthy of a video by you. If you would like more, I've made quite a study of her and her career since I was born in April 1956, almost two years after the explosion. My e-mail addy is stanleyloper@gmail.com.
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00:00:35 - What is the actual relationship between a captain and an admiral on his ship?
To make this one a lot simpler: it depends on the admiral. If the Admiral wishes to command the ship he is on for whatever reason, he can. If a captain overrides an admiral's orders or commands, the captain's ability to do so is dependent on the charisma of the captain and the timidity of the admiral.
Where things get murky is the fact that this is about two human beings asserting legal and actual power over one another, so what the rules say and what the conditions demand are very different concerns. This is what Drach's answer is mostly addressing, the many different ways in which a captain and admiral can work around, with, or against each other depending on those conditions.
00:05:36 - Where is/was the line for gross insubordination drawn, and how loose were the boundaries on it?
Again, depends on the conditions. The Rules are simple: refuse an order and get punished for it. The question is if someone is actually refusing an order or adapting to the situation in a manner consistent with the values of the military in question. German military tradition, for example, was inclined towards a subordinate that refused orders to attack was much more likely to be punished for insubordination than a subordinate that declined one order to attack in favor of attacking somewhere else. The expectation of the German tradition was to attack somewhere, so failure to attack was generally punished more.
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British Mark 12 9.2 inch APC shells looked like the larger BB-sized APC of the new models developed during the 1930’s, but the 9.2” retained the large 3.8% filler (now Shellite, I think) of the old WWI designs. They were still widely used in Coast Defense batteries in WWII. The large filler would seemingly weaken these shells against thick face-hardened armor or , at higher impact angles, even homogeneous (deck, etc.) armor of moderate thickness. Also a large amount of the latest lots of these shells were made by the U S Crucible Steel Company to closely match the British design specifications,including the large filler size. However, amazingly, these shells tested out to be the BEST armor penetrators (for their size) ever tested by the British Navy, remaining intact (“fit to burst”) during all complete penetrations at 30 degrees (much tougher than the 20 degrees of the last WWI APC shells — the final “Greenboy” models usually referred to generally as the “Mark 5” APC after the last post-WWI early-1920’s 15” shell ID). This included the US-made shells too, interestingly enough, showing that the British design somehow was superior no matter who made these APC shells.
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I did the Atlantic fleet scenario
Whether you choice to read this or not is you choice, if you just want results they will be at the end (apologise for any spelling mistakes I cant spell very well)
Both fleets heading forward straight towards each other, plan of action for the british is for the battlecruiserd (repulse and hood) to target the the two scharenhorst class, and for the battleships (king george and prince of wales) to target the the two bismarks class, the germans do the exact same but to the british. Plan of action for the british Is for the battlecrusiers to reduce there range as they are only just in range to fire whilst the battleships fire a full broadside at the germans. The germans however all turn to fire a full broadside.
Repulse scores a lucky first hit when a shell slams downward into the c turret of scharenhorst causing a small explosion which starts a fire and also causes the c turret to be knocked out of action and also causing its ruder and propulsion to be severely damaged, causing her to head straight for the British fleet and to become a sitting duck for the time being.
Repulse on her second salvo somehow misses her target the scharenhorst and accidently hits the tirpitz c turret however no damage was caused
More hits from hood and repulse start to cause a severe list on the scharenhorst
Tirpitz causes a fire on king george
Guinessanau causes a fire on repulse
B turret on king george is briefly disabled by Bismarck
Guinesanu is forced to stop as it nearly collides with tirpitz during the battle
Tirpitz hits king george causing am explosion and a slight list
At this point in battle scharenhorst has still failed to get its ruder and propulsion back online and she is severely damaged, her fait shall soon arrive
King george causes a fire on tirpitz
Guinesanu hits a turret of repulse causing an explosion and knocking out the a turret, this is quickly followed by scharenhorst hitting repulse causing a much larger explosion on board which causes a severe list. Repulse and hood then turn to starboard so that they can both fire a full broadside. Until then only b turret on repulse is able to fire.
With tirpitz out of the way guinesanu starts to turn to fire a full broadside. After doing so he hits repulse severely which causes her to make an attempt at disengageing, her b turret is also disabled from this blow
King George's propulsion is damaged severely from tirpitz
Guinesanu hits repulse again causing a huge explosion causing even more of a list, this happens again a second time however she is still afloat.
Fires on board the tirpitz cause an explosion causing a sever list, however shortly after she fires a salvo at king george which causes an explosion which knocks out the a and b turret, with only 1 turret remaing she starts to fall back.
Hood hits scharenhorst b turret knocking it out, he cannot retreat as the ruuder and propulision is still damaged from the first hit from repulse. He is forced to stay and fight with 1 remaining turret
King george is severely hit from tirpitz, she is unable to disengaged due to the damaged to the propulsion caused earlier by tirpitz
Hood hits scharenhorst a turret knocking it out, with the rudder knocked out as well as her propulsion and no guns left to fight with she is nothing but a floating wreck and decides to scuttle, the first loss of the battle. With scharenhorst gone hood switches fire to guinesanu.
Repulse finally managed to escape the battle with severe damage, with repulse gone guinesanu switches fire to hood.
King George's Y turret is disabled by Bismarck briefly but not knocked out, so she remains in the fight, she also starts to pick up speed making a disengagement more likely.
King Georges y turret comes back online but another hit from the Bismarck further damages her propulsion
Hood hits guinesanu causing a large explosion to rock the ship.
Prince of Wales hits tirpitz b turret knocking it out and water begins to pour over on the port side of tirpitz. Any attempts of tirpitz disengageing are impossible as her propulsion is also severely damaged.
A hit from tirpitz causes an explosion on board king george which causes a list with water reaching up to turret y, king Georges rudder is also damaged by the shell, this would quickly come back online not long after
Guinesanu is forced to turn to starboard as she finds her self going head on too king george and prince of Wales. Doing so she switches fire to king george as he is no longer able to get a full broadside on hood, gunisanu is now left to with the task to finish what was left of king george whilst Bismarck and tirpitz begin to fire at prince of Wales, hood is no longer under fire for the time being.
Hood hits guinesanu causing a large explosion which caused a slight list
King george finally sinks to gunfire from gunisanu, gunisanu now switches back to firing at hood
An explosion on board prince of wales caused by tirpitz results in a port side list, another hit from bismarck results in severe damage on prince of Wales and she decides to disengage to prevent any further loss of British capital ships
Prince of wales b turret is knocked out by Bismarck, her propulsion is further damaged by tirpitz which makes it unlikely for her to disengage, she stays to fight and attempts to finish of the remains of tirpitz, however this plan is short lived as an explosion on board tirpitz caused by the fires on board causes it to capsize and sink. Prince of wales then switches fire to Bismarck.
Fires on board hood and Bismarck both cause an explosion roughly at the same time but hoods being more severe as it causes a list on the stern
Another explosion caused by fires occurres on bismarck being more effective as it causes a list to port
Prince of Wales y turret is knocked out by bismark, she is left only with a turret
Yet another explosion occurs on Bismarck which causes it to lean more to port with water now spilling onto the deck, another ocures moments later when bismarck is hit by prince of wales, followed by again, another explosion caused by fires with water now reaching Bismarck d turret
King george explodes due to fires with a slightly more list to port than before
Gunisanu is severely damaged, due to damage to the propulsion he is unable to disengaged
A turret on prince of wales Is briefly put out of action by Bismarck, a few moments later she is sunk by bismarck leaving only hood, gunisanu and bismarck left in the battle
Hood is only just in range of Bismarcks guns, hood turns to flee away so she is out of range of Bismarck whilst she can still fire at gunisanu to finish it off, however her damaged propulsion prevents this and bismarck is able to catch up
In an odd turn off luck for the hood the fires on board bismarck cause an explosion, this would be followed by a large magazine detonation onboard the Bismarck causing her to sink.
This luck would be short lived as the hood would surcome to the same fate as bismarck moments later. The battle had ended.
Battle results:
Britain:
2 battleships sunk
1 battlecrusier sunk
1 battlecrusier heavy damage
Germany:
3 battleships sunck
1 battleship heavy damage
Conclusion: draw
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Fantastic video as always Drach, always love getting off work Saturday morning and seeing a Patreon notification from you. A couple of my thoughts. Firstly, I'd LOVE a t shirt with a choice of sayings available to choose from. That would be fantastic, hopefully there is an option for a 100 percent cotton shirt for us people in hot climates.
Secondly is that seeing you with a beard kinda surprised me but then I realized you fit in perfectly with the Elizabethan era sailors and swashbucklers. I could see you captaining a race built galleon hunting for some Spanish gold. You and David Fletcher have properly amazing facial hair. Thirdly , I think if the Japanese had been forced to keep Yamato in port due to a lack of fuel, and she been captured. I think she would have been taken back to the US, taken to pieces and studied extensively. I'm sure the US Navy and even British Navy(I could see them being involved) would have made extensive drawings, studys and comparisons to their ships from what they learned.
I think pieces and parts of the ship would have been preserved. Maybe an entire main gun turret. But the hull of the ship would have been used for conventional weapons testing and other things like that. We would at least have a much more comprehensive understanding of the Yamato class.
Fourth and lastly, if Hood AND Prince of Wales had been sunk at Denmark Strait along with the Bismarck and PE. That would have been a collective shock to the British core. But it would have spurned the Royal Navy to do something about it. And as you said, Vanguard would likely see the water far sooner, maybe even late 43. And maybe a Lion or two by early to mid 45. Maybe they would have started working on a 6th KGV as well.
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Dear @Drachinifel , you have made it again, an exellent video that goes deeper than just numbers. Your explanations of the conceptual considerations, limitations
of the construction is exellent and gives an logical understanding of the very intresting context of the construction. To often the WEB is full of simplified ship vs ship comparisions, where the only logic would be that any built ships should be bigger, faster, heavier armed and better protected than the previos one as if any battle would take place in the open sea. Your analyzes gives an insight that warship contruction instead had to take a number of considerations into account, describing that also the Nelson-class was a kind of a genious construction given the conditions. In a theoretical reality where only ship vs ship on high seas is the scenery everyone would of course build an Iowa or Yamato, but in the more interesting real world that you describe with defesive/offensive tactical doctirines, need for range, political treatties and limitations, as well as geographical realities you actually make it intresting to understand the rationales of both UK to build Nelsons as well for lets say Finland to build an Illmarinen (and not an Iowa). So thanks again !!
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I can attest the depth of water in places around th Isle of Wight, having crewed for a Prout 43' (catamaran) owner out of the Solent, Our voyage was to the Baltic, I was leaving the boat in Holland, Peter the owner wanted to beach the boat on a sandy beach to clean her hull, which we achieved, with a Spring tide due nobody expected a problem to re-float a catamaran, Learning curve for sailors 101, Just because it say's so in your Almanac doesn't mean it's true, 😂 after a little excavation work with spades nicked off kids on the beach, 24hrs later we were on our way again,
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As Drac said, wrt the 14" armed Tennessees vs 16" armed Colorados, the question came down to USN expectations of engagement range. Head of BuOrd Strauss insisted that engagements would always be fought at 12,000 yards, or less. The 14" could penetrate well enough at that range, and, being smaller and lighter, more could be carried. Jutland drove the final nail in that theory. In the summer of 1916, the General Board, and SecNav Daniels, agreed 16" was the way to go, and overrode Strauss' recommendation. In his annual report that year, Daniels discussed the switch to 16", and said the change was made over the objections of "some officers". Strauss was very proud of the 14"/50, ordering it into production off the drawing board, with no testing. Can't help but wonder, if testing had been done, and the dispersion problems these guns experienced been discovered, would the 16" been selected for the Tennessees, by virtue of the fact the 16" can actually hit what it is aimed at?
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Public Health commentary: Reasonably good discussion about infectious diseases (7:54). Most Age of Sail sailors had the "Usual Childhood Diseases" (Mumps, Measles, Rubella/German Measles, Chickenpox) as children and were immune for life. Smallpox was also very common but after 1796 vaccination (and variolation before that, see George Washington's General Order #1, 1775) minimized this on ships. England introduced compulsory vaccination of children in 1853. Introduction of these diseases to naïve populations, e.g. the Spanish and Portuguese into the Americas, caused massive depopulation, possibly as much as 90% of the Americas in the 16th Century and were the major factor in the success of the European occupation. Even in the 20th Century, measles in Africa caused severe outbreaks during my tenure with case fatality rates of over 25%. A lot of that was probably due to malaria co-infections. Malnourished (not undernourished, just dietary imbalance) could put sailors at high risk of other diseases, particularly Yellow Fever and Malaria. These are both mosquito-transmitted, so if the water sources on ship are protected, they don't propagate, although that knowledge didn't exist until about 1900. Hence the original US Public Health Service sites were quarantine stations for sailors.
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Experimental archaeology is fun!
Greek Fire = Pine Resin + Quick Lime + Naphtha (+Sulphur)... Maybe - of course without the recipe we are making educated guesses.
If you do a follow up might I suggest seeing how much of the Naphtha can be replaced with hot olive oil, and if successful is the resin required?
I'd also suggest trying dehydrated or highly concentrated urine and / or table salt - but be very, VERY careful indeed!
Reasoning:
-Greek Fire is something that could be made in quantity in the ancient world.
-The 'secret recipe' needs to be practicable if hard to replicate and non-obvious.
-It would also be good if the bulk ingredient(s) are very easily available, stable, and preferably waste products.
-If the odd red herring could be spread around your enemies so much the better.
So (pending experimental results) I might expect the ingredients could be:
-Olive oil in a large, sealable, metal boiler with a valve and pipe. Burns like blazes when hot, floats on water, and sticks well to most things.
When ready for battle:
-Add a good dollop of quick lime for extra nastiness in the presence of water.
-Dump in a load of concentrated or powered urine plus/minus salt for some added wallop.
-Throw in some water to help raise a bit of steam to pressurise the boiler..?
-Fasten down the lid and start heating your pot to build up pressure for the hose.
-When ready to 'fire' light up and open the valve to hose down the enemy.
-Rinse and repeat when you run out of mixture or pressure.
Olive oil would be in plentiful supply, floats on water, sticks to stuff, and burns like blazes when hot.
When heated along with the quick lime you'll start making a basic soap that will thicken the mixture, make it stick better, and help mix all the ingredients - resin may not be needed at all.
The Urine +/- ordinary salt should make for a fantastic roaring fire and horrific burns along with the quick lime.
Large quantities of urine would be, er, on tap in a city like Byzantium but you would have to know to collect and concentrate it then add it to your mixture. That would serve to keep the recipe from other powers and may explain why Greek fire wasn't always available in quantity - cooking urine is unpleasant and you need to remember to keep a fairly fresh supply on hand in volume.
Um, it wouldn't take too much imagination to consider the likelihood of someone adding charcoal and sulphur to the above and the explosive consequences. But that might be stretching credibility too far.
In the absence of experimental results at this point I suspect Naphtha as an ingredient is a rumour - possibly because it's properties were known and might have been considered by those who might try to recreate it, and possibly seeded as misinformation by the Byzantines.
Some of the properties of Greek fire could be the result of olive oil and quick lime forming a soap as the pressure pot is heated - at the time that would be an unexpected consequence of the process only discovered by accident, so helping to maintain the secret - capturing a Greek fire ship would not serve to reveal said secret even if fuelled and ready to go.
It would be very interesting to see if the above speculation would perform as I expect.
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@Drachinifel, i have a family story you might like, i asked you in the past about an part of it and now i'll tell you the full story.
My grandfather Robert was a 15 years old errand boy in the Davie Naval Yard in Quebec Canada at the start of world war II. He was running messages, plans, welding rods and crates of parts around the shipyard and eventually became a professional naval hull welder when he turned 17 in 1942. He told me of several minor things, which have sadly left my memories now, but this one anecdote has stuck the best.
As he was training under a journeyman to become a welder while dangling on a rope-held board on the side of a corvette, he saw a truck of large telephone poles entering the yard and wondered what was up. He asked the journeyman about them and got told that the cannons' industry was slacking and they could not have enough guns to fit the corvettes and destroyers. The journeyman they went on to tell him that they would paint them the afternoon a dark grey and black in one of the hangars and that other guys would fit them to turrets and mounts to make it look like the ships were armed. That way if spies would look from afar at the yard or from the shore at ships leaving, they would see mean armed warships while, in reality, the crew would hope to not run into anything. My grandfather would always tell this story with a big laugh at the end so i never knew if i could believe him because he was a joking man but he might as well have laughed at the idea that it might have worked too.
There, these are only small anecdotes but they are, like you said, family stories that are probably not told in history books
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Another AWESOME video. Thank you much.
For James, the shipyard, I have a small request. Could you speak just a little slower, just a little please?
I enjoy collaborations like these very much.
For Drach, thank you for doing all this work and research. Many times I knew a bit about something, but without any details. Thank you VERY much, for filling those blanks.
Cheers, salut, shokdi, langevar, nastrovia, proost.
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Absolutely agree with you re: dumbing down of RN Museum, Greenwich, which we see in our own Smithsonian Museum's components in DC. Here, though, our administroyers go one better, by providing gratuitous swipes of political rectitude at every turn. E.g., did you know that model airplane building was a hobby "reserved for young white males?" (Air & Space Museum, DC, 1st floor, west.) Neither did I, but I'm sure glad my tax dollars are being used to tell me so instead of, say, restoring the SS UNITED STATES as she rusts away in Philadelphia.
I also agree re: Portsmouth, which I did visit twice within the same year and enjoyed greatly each time. I'll make my second visit to Historic Dockyard, Chatham, this fall, which I likewise commend to you, and not just for its excellent introductory video. It and nearby Rochester are an easy day trip from London, with frequent bus connections between, to, from, and around.
Always enjoy your videos. Bravo Zulu! - PO2, USN, '72-'75 (SIXFLT).
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Kudos to HMS Conqueror.
As a USN submariner of that period, I will not argue the point of USN vs RN submarines. However, ahem, MY boat, the unique USS Narwhal SSN-671, was our quietest and as a sonar tech, We/I detected RN boats.
Tom Clancy even acknowledged the Narwhal as being the first to detect the sonar anomaly that eventually became the Red October. President Reagan questioned where Clancy was getting his intel from.
BTW, we had our own versions of Operation Barmaid at sea, & Operation Barfly ashore.
I'll repeat my request for a study of the interwar, 6" gunned, USS Narwhal SS-167 (15 battle Stars), USS Nautilus SS-168 (14 Battle Stars) and near sister, USS Argonaut SS-166 class V-boats. I know them well and believe your subscribers would be entertained as well. They fought hard and one died, serving us well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Argonaut_(SM-1)#/media/File:USS_Argonaut_ships_bell.gif
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Thanks, one question though:
The book "Battle-cruisers: A History 1908-1948" the author (Ronald Bassett) writes that Renown and Repulse didn't receive their thicker main belt until well after the Great War.
Quote:
"Renown and Repulse joined the Grand Fleet for working up in September 1916, and met critical eyes as they steamed into Scapa Flow. Their armour had been based on the scale provided for Indefatigable, and everyone knew what had happened to her. Along the entire length of the of each new battle-cruiser were two uninterrupted rows of scuttles, which meant hull almost devoid of protection; above a 6-inch belt that extended only 26 inches below the waterline, the sides were of merely 1½-inch plating. These two ships, well gunned, fast, and outstandingly beautiful were 'tin cans'.
It was an assessment not ignored by Jellicoe. In October he recommended heavier deck protection for the crowns of the magazines and over the engine-rooms. This reinforcement was carried out at Rosyth - adding 500 tons to their tonnage calculated at design stage - before they were allocated to Beatty's Battle-Cruiser Force. Nothing however, could be done about that paultry side-armour."
After the war:
"In May 1923 a refit costing £979,927 increased Renown's armoured belt from six to nine inches, using steel plates taken from the battleship Amirante Cochrane, initially intended for Chile. Magazine protection was strengthened, and concession to the crew included Petty Officers and Chief Petty Officers improved by cushioned seats. Garden seats from reading rooms placed in men's smoking place and cinema house."
"Renown resumed less regal activities in home waters in 1928, but eight years later was subjected to another refit which amounted another major refit which amounted almost to a rebuild from the bare hull. It cost £3,088,008, or only £30,000 less than her cost of her construction, but when she steamed out she was to all intents and purposes a new warship, well protected, re-engined and fast, achieving 29.93 knots in post-refit trials.
Neither her sister Repulse nor Hood would enjoy such a lavish expenditure.
Following an armour-strengthening refit in 1918-20 (costing £860,684 and also utilising steel from the converted Almirante Cochrane), Repulse joined Hood in visiting Rio de Janeiro for the Brazilian centenary celebrations".
This opens up a few question marks; while I find his book be excellent sources of information and generally extremely accurate, I don't doubt that the ships had their side-armour replaced and improved after the war; I just find it debatable if Admiral Cochrane could be the sole "donor" for both ships, especially since Admiral Cochrane was a shorter ship than both.
And I don't think they used soft steel from Admiral Cochrane and bundled it together, it must have been armour belt.
I think evidence is clear looking at pictures and also the source of Ensign series of books the upgrade was done inter-war period, I think Admiral Cochrane wasn't the only donor, in fact several of the battleships taken over from South American and Turkish navy had a similar 9-inch belt, so it might have been one of them as many were scrapped post Washington Treaty.
Would you agree that is more likely?
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About the question of Slesvig-Holstein, first the demographic in the mid-1800's, Holstein was german speaking and german-mind, Slesvig was much more mixed, with northern Slesvig being danish speaking and danish minded, with southern Slesvig being german speaking and german minded.
With the first dansih constitution of 1848, there were the war of 1848-1851, which was a kind of a civil between Denmark andg erman-minded Slesvig-Holsteiner with Prussia aiding the german-minded rebels. Part of the peace agreement was that Slesvig-Holstein was to remain undivied.
Fast forward to 1863, the danish goverment brought forward a new constitution, which seperated Slesvig into the Kingdom of Denmark, and left Holstein to the German Federation or what ever it was at the time.
Bismarck used this as cause for war, which led to the danish-prussian war of 1864. In april of 1864 Bismarck offered the danish a peace settlement with the borders roughly where the lie today. The danish goverment rejected the peace offer.
The Prussian then conqoured the rest of the Jutland, and beat the danish army at Dybbøl and Als. Bismarck then said to the Danish goverment: You want Jutland back? Accept that Slesvig-Holstein is ours.
His Majesty goverment accepted this.
Afterwards, King Christian IX through back channels offered that Denmark joined the German Federation, which Bismarck declined, for political reasons.
Fast forward to 1918, and Germany bashing was highly in vouge, there were a popular vote in Slesvig to decide if they wanted to be Germans or Danes, and this it the borders that we see today.
In the aftermatch of WWII, there were talks in the danish goverment about moving the border a tad further south, but saner-heads prevailed.
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Darlan gets a bad rep from most of what occurs, is he perhaps unfairly judged? He did initially secretly order "every ship able to cross the Ocean under her own power, by fuelling at sea or by being towed, should endeavour to concentrate at Halifax in Canada. Vessels are not to obey an order to return to France or to a port under enemy jurisdiction unless an order is headed 'In the name of Xavier-Francois'" This would seem to show honourable intent, however he was a political animal and future public comments about the fate of the fleet during the Armistice negotiations, as mentioned by Drach, would seem to make this order unreliable.Yet as a politician was he not merely saying what he wanted his new overlords to hear with a nudge and wink to the British? If so he was perhaps too subtle. Furthermore the British had a copy of the Armistice which they had translated (together with the translators bias to interpretation of certain words and statements, and was it a final draft) and compared it to a copy provided by Darlan (with French bias and interpretation). They did not match and this was seen as further unreliability. However show many people a short film and each one when asked will tell you something different when asked what they had just seen. This is because, simply put, we use our experience or 'bias' to interpret what we see and hear to fit our own 'narrative'. Then of course the Germans had made and broken many promises so the Armistice was not really worth the paper it was written on. It suited the Axis to have a large chunk of France under French control as this reduced the occupying force required. It also split French opinion and kept them sniping at each other and thus more involved in petty in fighting than real resistance. The reality of France now was much like the Revolutionary France of Robespierre with neighbours settling old scores by turning each other over to the authorities for this crime or that crime. As for the scuttling at Toulon showing they would have prevented the Germans and Italians getting the fleet, well no. Many of the vessels scuttled at Toulon were raised and repaired by the Axis within months. If given an extra two years to conduct repairs then who knows, even some of the larger vessels may have been returned to service.
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Drach- thanks for everything you do!
I would like to see what documentation exists/ further explanation about the reduction gearing on BELFAST. In general, ship's reduction gears are of a fixed ratio, and need to be toleranced and sized to handle the full output of the turbine- thus making it impractical to have multiple, changeable gears. As such, speed is ordinarily managed by varying the RPM of the turbine by allowing more or less steam into the casing; reversing is normally achieved by actually reversing the turbine. This is why you see two throttle valves: an "Ahead" throttle and an "Astern" throttle- they supply different nozzles to drive the turbine in different directions. If, as you mention, there is a clutch mechanism, I imagine this would be used to de-couple the shaft from the turbine, allowing you to "trail" the shaft while stopping one turbine or the other underway, reducing drag and saving fuel from both the drag reduction and not running the turbine (modern, gas turbine plants do this regularly). This would also allow you to maintain the turbine without stopping the ship, as the ship moving would cause the turbine rotor to rotate.
Of course, my experience is mostly with merchant steam systems. If this is not how the plant on BELFAST operated, which your description makes it sound like it wasn't, I would love a deep dive (or at least a pointer in the right direction) to learn more about it! Thank you again for what you do!
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Hi! Adore your videos! Would you consider a profile of my grandfather and the ships he commanded? Richard Boyer Laning, Submarines Salmon and Sickleback, received Navy Silver Star award among many others, later, commanded the Seawolf, the second nuclear sub, and after that, support ship Nautilus...before that, in his younger years he was involved as an officer on the watch of the carrier Hornet in the Doltittle bombing of Tokyo aboard the carrier. He had a feud with Nimitz who held him down from Admiral...I have some family insight if you'd like to chat, but your research is fantastic, I'd be so pleased to see him featured! According to family stories aboard Salmon they were the most heavily damaged submarine to ever return to port without casualties. When I was younger, after he passed, I met some of his crew. He was adored as a Captain, known at the time, and reported by his lieutenants to me. Would love you to make a video, I can share family knowledge if you like, but there is plenty of public detail on him, but no YouTube content of your quality : (
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00:33:21 - Could you describe the type of guns aboard the Mary Rose and Tudor navy?
Important thing to note is that Bronze is not significantly "weaker" than iron. With the right working, bronze can comfortably substitute for iron and even many steels in many applications. The two are highly competitive as structural materials, and the much lower energy requirements to make bronze is a big bonus in an age, like the Elizabethan when charcoal is your main energy source for forges.
The issue with bronze is that it requires two relatively rare elements to be made, with there being several times more iron in the world and in more places than copper or tin, especially tin.
Thus, it became more economical to develop better energy sources to work iron, despite the much higher energy demands, because it was more practical to do that than find more copper and tin to make the demanded quantity of metalwork.
It also eventually came to pass, with improvements in energy, that making steel became more practical, and it was far easier to make a steel stronger than bronze than making a stronger bronze, leading to the eventual replacement of bronze for most practical purposes.
If there was as much copper and tin as there is iron in the environment, it is likely iron would be far less popular than it is.
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A most interesting question. Here's my spin on it:
First? My understanding of topic.
Reduce cross section of penetrator and you increase penetration for an equal weight/mass round (and propellant charge*). Smaller impact area transfers more energy into a smaller point, concentrating stress on a hard, but brittle, surface (face hardened plate is the similar to Tempered Glass for its method of impact resistance). That's the good part.
Unfortunately, artillery rounds in flight are affected by aerodynamic/fluid dynamic factors the same as any Mach2-3 Jet. There is a "perfect" length versus diameter plus optimal ogive for every particular caliber of gun. Make an artillery round too long (L:W) and it tends to nutate severely in flight, which loses accuracy, and absorbs muzzle energy through greatly increased drag. That's the bad part.
Now for a bit of hard evidence.
Planet Slo-Mo has a video posted where they fire both the 12.2cm P Obr 42/L46 AND the M4 (L) Tank's 76mm M1A1/L51, and follow the rounds in flight. Notice that even these, supposedly "perfect" shapes are prone to nutation throughout their flight. Longer L:W rounds are far worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpJ8EoGmLuE
So-o, why not? Diminishing returns.
Disclaimer: I am no military expert. I am old and have spent most of my life reading military history and technological examinations of military gear. For absolute understanding, let me recommend Ian Hogg.
*Reducing barrel diameter makes you increase the heat and pressure in your chamber, too. You'll need a reinforced Breech,, Chamber and Barrel to push the same mass the same speed through a smaller barrel.
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46:46 I think you are perfectly right when you say that this is an impossible question to answer for certain. When the Washington treaty was debated in Japan, it was very much an argument between two factions of the Navy. The Japanese called it “the war of the two Kato” because the two factions were led by admirals named Kato: Katô Hiroharu (or Kanji depending on the reading) and Katô Tomosaburô. However Katô Tomosaburô was the most senior of the two, and had been minister of the navy and full admiral since 1915, and was Japan's chief commissioner plenipotentiary at Washington, so his faction, which was the majority, won. From what I read the Japanese were not too much against the Washington treaty as an armament regulation treaty (Katô Tomosaburo was appointed Prime Minister after his return from Washington). They were, however, disappointed by the British because they felt that London chose Washington over Tôkyô and the British were relegated in the camp of “the anglo-saxons” i.e. the English speaking superpower that wanted to undermine Japanese success. The relations between Japan and the US were already tense and the British siding with Washington was a big disappointment for the Japanese. However the big Kantô earthquake of 1923 put aside military matters and worsened the economic and budgetary situation of Japan. But by the end of the 1920’s, Japan had recovered from its economic crisis and then came the London naval treaty, which was much more debated and opposed than the Washington treaty. Katô Hiroharu was by then Chief of the Navy General Staff and Japan’s economy was doing well unlike the US’s and Britain’s economies (Wall Street Crash of 1929) so the treaty was seen even more as unfair for Japan. So… To return to the initial question, I don’t see anything against a continuation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance at least until the 1930’s. In the late 1910’s and in the 1920’s Japan was in a period called “the Taishô democracy” so is not the dangerous, expansionist and militarist country (anglo-saxon vision) of the late 1930’s. And to be honest (non-british opinion here) I don’t see the British oppose imperialism, unless it is against their interest. Japanese politics at this period are quite unstable so it would be impossible to guess the outcome of an alternative 1930 London treaty in which the British are still allied with Japan (they might obtain more with British support) but at this point it is science fiction.
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A great commentary on a WW I sea battle that involved 4-armored cruisers, four light cruisers, one AMC (Otranto) cruiser. This video has been well researched with emphasis given to the mechanics, the speeds, the background of the warships involved, the two Admirals, and their gallant crews. The battle itself, under 11-1-14 conditions, should not have been engaged by Admiral Craddock. He should have broke up his squadron and fell back on the pre-dreadnought Canopus, that was struggling to catch up. Her 12-inch rifles could have aided Craddock, my modest opinion. Craddock did not expect to see the whole German squadron, but was on the scout for a single German light cruiser he thought was lurking about, NOT the whole German squadron! Thank you again for this great video on a seldom covered sea battle.
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00:12:04 20 mm Oerlikon as a rule during WW2 didn't have a means of self destruct. Mainly because SD in small calibre is related to the burn time of the tracer, it burns until it reaches the explosive content sometimes by flame in Germany by heat transfer - then bango, some later ammunition in pacific campaign may have had this type of SD but a debatable point especially as AP solid shot is part of the ammunition mix. 20 mm has a alleged 1.1 km range personally I rather not be down range of a 20 mm without multiplying that by at least x 2. and remember MGs were common place until 1943 and were generally all solid shot or incendiary with or without tracer, All German 20mm and larger had a SD destruct by either tracer and alternately spin decay. and this would include their Oerlikons (Flak 28) which were generally all land service.
For the allies 2pdr pom pom and 40 mm were SD tracer destruct for all HE ammunition - obviously an AP solid shot isn't going to be SD but not part of Naval load out. For UK service 40mm Bofors has an SD at 3,400 and 5,500 yards depending on the tracer. similar with 2 pdr pom pom. All that said it doesn't stop failures, sometime the tracer or spin decay fails - I came across one locally in the late 1970s when a "thingy bomb" was found in a roof of a building during demolition, it turned out to be a face draining 40 mm Bofors, but must have been a real friday afternoon special as it had gone up 7000 metres and back down pierced a slate roof and embedded itself neatly in the large timber of the roof structure and probably the home owner thought they had lost a slate, but EOD guys are wonderful people 😉
However one weapon that was a safety pain was the 2 inch rocket which had No SD and some were fitted to Merchant ships, but mainly used for Star shell illumination, for land use they were set up as overwatch on South coast and Estuaries because no-one wants a big firework coming back to earth in a built up area or even over farm land.
All this in brief but that said there is a load of bollocks out there, including one book by an annoying right wing "historian" who says that more civilians died because of blue on blue A/A gunnery than where killed by Luftwaffe , but has no clue as to what No 207, 208, or 214 fuse is/was and its functionality (and he should because he is British). Vanity publication and latterly the Internet has a lot to answer for.
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Imagine that the Navy of the United States had called the Japanese ships by their names directly translated to english? There would have been some really badass names:
Long Gate (Nagato), Great Peace (Yamato), Diamond (Kongou), Island Mist (Kirishima), White Mountai (Yamashiro), Flying Dragon (Hiryuu), Blue Dragon (Souryuu), Red Castle (Akagi), Heavenly Castle (Amagi), Blue Leaf (Aoba), Old Hawk (Furutaka), Black Wings (Haguro), Love Cave (Atago), Sea Bird (Choukai), Blizzard (Fubuki), Island's WInd (Shimakaze), Dawn (Akatsuki), Ikazuchi (Lightning), and so on...
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Concerning the effects of a dud/solid shot projectile going through the unarmored parts of a warship.
(1) USS SOUTH DAKOTA in the battle where USS WASHINGTON demolished IJN KIRASHIMA took a water ricochet of a Japanese 8" (20.3cm) Type 91 AP shell across its lower superstructure from side to side more-or-less horizontally. The description of this and several other hits to SOUTH DEKOTA during this battle has several photographs of the progressive damage due to this hit, such as it slamming through a heavy safe along the way and its final bashing into the rear of one of the 5"/38 mounts on the far side of the ship. If you can get a copy of this document or a book describing the battle's hits, you will have n interesting read!
(2) During tests of cast iron cannon balls against thin wrought iron plates simulating the spaced bulkhead plates of the unarmored parts of a warship or transport ship, the cannon ball is undamaged during its entire flight. However, the holes left in the plates change form and size progressively, as follows: The first hole, at high speed, cuts out a hole the size of the cannon ball that looks like it was drilled through the plate by a drill press, with a single dented disk of wrought iron cut from the plate. As the projectile slows down more and more through each successive plate, though, the hole made becomes larger and more irregular, with a large dent surrounding the hole and the wrought iron being torn open on the far side of the hole such that it pulls long "tentacles" of wrought iron out the back of the plate, which get more numerous and longer as the cannon ball slows down, as well a tearing out many small pieces of the iron plate flying along-side of the cannon ball. This makes the damage near the far side of the target when the cannon ball has almost stopped being much more difficult to try to plug up if flooding is occurring than the original hole is. Due to this and other such tests, the use of wrought iron in warships prior to thick armor being used was determined to be much worse than retaining wood bulkheads and these results slowed the introduction of iron armor being considered for warships during the first half of the 19th Century.
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1:45:06 regarding bilge pumps: from a medical perspective, am not quite as sanguine as Drach about how age-of-sail ships kept their bilges clear of sewage, even with the designated parts of the ship used to keep sailor's egests separate from their ingests. Let's start with where rat droppings and corpses ultimately ended up... but wait, it gets worse.
Using the heads during the day in good weather is one thing: using them at night or in bad weather would have been another. Although this was partly addressed by ship's fire buckets having more than one use, one might like to think about where spills ended up, as did vomit from seasickness, and diarrhoea from those who didn't make it in time. Then we start thinking about embarked troops / passengers preferring to relieve themselves in nooks and crannies in the hold or orlop that were somewhat less al fresco than the 'seats of ease' up forrard. One might then also like to consider why moving the 'cook room' from the hold (per Mary Rose) to the upper deck (per Victory) had some medical merit. Bearing in mind how all this effluvia ended up in the spaces used to stow their food and water, it can be seen why effective bilge pumps were medically important quite aside from any other considerations.
I think these issues form the basis for the British regarding French or Spanish ships as generally being 'dirty'... even without the latter burying their dead in the ship's ballast into the 17th century rather than burying them at sea for religious reasons.
Lastly, it should be noted that UK dockyard mateys apparently relieved themselves in the bilges of the ships they were building into WWI: although they normally cleaned them out before handing the ship over to the Navy, this didn't happen for Tiger when she commissioned early, which probably didn't do any favours for a ship's company that wasn't too flash to begin with...
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PART II
Explosion problems. While using Lyddite (trinitrophenol or picric acid), British ammo did not have to worry ever about the main charge in their shells exploding if their fuzes worked (and, against heavy armor, even if the fuzes didn't work!). The US, with its large amount of experience in the US Civil War, and Germany, did not like such a sensitive and, to them it seems, dangerous explosive in their ammunition (the US would not even allow double-based propellants like Cordite, which contained nitroglycerine, in their ships anywhere, so Lyddite was out of the question). The Germans decided to use the commercial explosive TNT but only when they could get their AP shells through KC armor in an intact manner, which Krupp finally succeeded in doing in 1902 with a satisfactory soft-steel AP cap at near-right-angle impact (the then standard for test) -- prior to that, their AP shells for hitting heavy armor were solid shot only. The US went directly from black powder or black-powder and granulated TNT, which were rather low-power explosives by 1900, to Explosive "D" (ammonium picrate), the most inert explosive anyone ever used through the end of WWII and slightly weaker than TNT, just like Lyddite was slightly more powerful. Germany and the US had a problem, though: While large-filler HE shells with minimal armor penetration requirements could use large booster charges of TNT attached to the end of their impact or time nose fuzes to set off these much more inert explosive fillers, AP and base-fuzed Common ("SAP") shells had to have tiny fuzes and boosters to keep them intact on heavy armor impact so that they could live long enough to set off the main filler, even when no delay was used (which none had back then do to lack of adequate design work). Various ideas on how to get small boosters to set off AP/SAP shell fillers (even using small fillers didn't seem to help -- the scaling rules for such things were NOT relative, but absolute, it seems) were tried, with only partial success. Krupp fuzes used long, narrow fingers of Lyddite (under their own name of course) that extended deep into the filler to get as much surface contact between the booster and filler as possible, while still keeping the finger strong enough to not break during the armor impact. The US Army Coast Defense Artillery, which also never got on the Lyddite bandwagon, also used Explosive "D" and they tried using a finger with a TNT filler and a set of stacked TNT rings surrounding the finger, using the idea of "many bangs" will get enough hits that, like rolling dice, you will roll "box cars" at least once most of the time to get a full detonation. These worked most of the time, but they never got the 90% minimum success spec level that most designers are held to with every other part of the shell design. Also, they made the fuzes more expensive. When delay-action fuzes became the rule (French in 1908 or so, Germany and, I think, Austria in 1911, Britain and, following their lead, Japan and, I think, Italy, after Jutland in 1917, and the US during the early 1930s), things got worse, since the upper part of the fuze that was attached to the booster, and the booster itself, had to survive the ENTIRE penetration BEFORE it was set off, rather than being already in the burning/exploding process and only having to survive the initial impact to get to that point. This degraded the reliability of the fuzes with the inert fillers significantly. The British after Jutland switched to using Shellite (a 70% Lyddite, 30% dinitrophenol (an weak Lyddite cousin) mixture) and the French Switched to "Mn.F.Dn" (an 80% Mélinite (their version of Lyddite), 20% dinitronaphtaline mixture very similar to Shellite), which could be set off by the same fuzes that they used with Lyddite (now with an optional delay added in the British case), though tests I have seen with Shellite seem to show that it really needed as booster like TNT to get good results. The Japanese were very stubborn and tried and tried again to get Shimose (their name for Lyddite) to work with AP shells, but even those hard-headed conservatives finally gave up and in 1931 replaced Shimose in AP shells, not in any other shells until WWII, though, with Type 91 Explosive (trinitroanisol), which was ALMOST as sensitive and needed thick plaster, wood, and aluminum cushions in the cavity to keep it inert on heavy armor impact), but it could be set off as easily as Shimose by a similar tiny booster. The US Navy -- following the US Army in 1918 (their specs about safety were not as strict, obviously) --and British in 1928 both finally got the extremely powerful and, in tiny amounts, booster explosive "tetryl" (abbreviating a very long chemical name), called by the British "Composition Explosive", that could very reliably detonate ANY explosive then in use with only tiny amounts. The British used a fiber can placed on the end of their base fuzes that had very thin layers of tetryl separated by fine metal foil separators, building it up to the needed minimum amount, while the US put it in two tiny rocket-nozzle-shaped pits on either side of the end of its fuzes, using two (for reliability) needle-like jets of blast into the bottom of the filler to set it off, which even Explosive "D" could not resist. However, looking at German fuzes, they have all sorts of improvements as to reliability and safety (Japanese base fuzes were based on them in WWII), but their block-TNT fillers and long fuze booster "fingers" are identical to the WWI-era designs, and for all I know, they still used picric acid as the booster, with the expected inferior results. Does anybody have more information on this?
Mutual interference. Gun blast from one gun hits a shell from another gun on its side,, causing it to wobble and corkscrew through the air in badly-controlled flight. Most multi-barrel guns in warships when longer range were necessary ended up using a short delay between firing built into the trigger system so that the first gun firing gave its shell time enough to be out of at least most of the blast of the other gun(s). The closer the guns are together, the worse this gets, obviously. Italian WWII cruiser guns, for example, were almost on top of each other, being loaded from opposite sides of the mount inside and needed a considerable version this kind of delay. In fact, they almost needed to work like 40mm pom-poms to really prevent the problem. I am not quite sure why this was not accomplished. Japanese YAMATO main armament guns had a double-delay to keep ANY of the turret's guns from firing at the same time, seeing how powerful the gun blast was. I think that most other nations that had guns even marginally close together used such -- I am not sure of BISMARCK with its very wide separation needed it.
Every subject is handled by different countries in different manners. Some are quite logical, while others make one think of Rube Goldberg cartoonists being given the job. It makes this subject of naval technology "interesting", does it not?
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The Kreigsmarine had 57 U-Boats on inventory at the start of the war, of which you can pretty much garuantee that at least a third of them would not have been able to sail as they were resupplying with crew on shore leave, refitting or undergoing maintenance. The Kreigsmarine generally managed a ratio of one boat on station, one boat going to or from station, and one boat in port. This was pretty much comparable with other nations that utilised submarines. So there would likely have been only around 20 boats available to make the attack. Even had you used a few boats that were close to finishing resupply, you would still have had 3 - 6 boats on long range patrol in the Atlantic, hence why around 20 boats would be the absolute maximum you could send in.
Have you ever looked at a map of Scapa Flow? None of the approaches to the Harbour are wider than about 3km, most considerably narrower, and the narrower approaches are less than 100 metres wide. Gunther Prien took U-47 through the Eastern approach but even he had to use an unusually high tide and exceptional skill to make it between the few gaps between the block ships. It was a feat that required an exceptional commander and sailor. You are NOT taking 20 submarines into Scapa Flow undetected even in 1939. There simply is not the room for them to do so.
So yes, I reckon he did answer the question, Gunther Prien was an exceptional submariner, probably one of the finest the world has seen, but even he had more than a little luck in making that approach. The fact that U-47 was alone also aided in remaining undetected. Had you sent 20 submarines in, or even just 10, then one or more of them WOULD have been detected, and trying to hide a submarine from an alerted Destroyer in those narrow and enclosed waters would have been nothing short of an impossibility, especially as the submarines would have had to use more or less predictable approach vectors, with much of the maneuverability constrained by the various anti submarine defences protecting the harbour.
Sending large numbers of submarines into Scapa Flow was so possible that the kreigsmarine never once attempted it..... That should give you some idea of how difficult it actually was.
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wrt the collapse of the naval treaties, Japan gave formal notice in 1934 that they would drop out of the treaty system at the expiration of First London, at the end of 36. Italy did not participate in the Second London treaty, due to the other parties being upset about Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. The Washington Treaty had licensed France to build up to 70,000 tons of battleships, beginning in 27 and 29, and that license was good until used, not subject to the continuation of the freeze on BB construction in the first London treaty. Dunkerque and Strasbourg used some 53,000 of the 70,000 ton allotment, so, when Richelieu was laid down in October of 35, it put France blatantly in violation of the treaty. Bottom line, by the time the Second London conference started, the US and UK were the only powers trying to comply with the treaty at all. The US insisted on the gun size escalator, to be triggered in April 37, if any party to the treaty system had not signed on to the Second London treaty. As Japan had given notice two years earlier that it would drop out of the treaty system, it was a virtual certainty that the escalator clause would be tripped. The tonnage escalator was nowhere near as clear. It would be tripped if it was determined that a power that was not a party to the treaty began construction of a ship that was not treaty compliant. When the clause was tripped, the powers participating in the treaty were to confer and agree on a new tonnage limit. Yamato was laid down in November 37. Intelligence reports regarding the amount of material being ordered for Yamato made it clear the ship would significantly exceed 35,000, so, at the start of 1938, the US and UK conferred on where to put the new tonnage limit. From my reading, the UK wanted a 43,000 ton limit, as that was the largest the RN facilities could support, while the US wanted 45,000. Negotiations continued for about six months before the US got the 45,000 ton limit it wanted for the Iowas. So, the short answer is the treaty system died a death of a thousand cuts, over a period of several years, starting in 1934.
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6:10 So...this is really only true if your car is intended to run on premium fuel, like, for example, you have a relatively modern car designed for efficiency, with a very small, direct-injected turbo engine, or one meant for high performance. The ECU will back off timing (and in some cases, boost) to keep the fuel from pre-igniting and causing damage to the engine. Older high-compression cars will simply start knocking and eventually self-destruct. This said, if you have something with a relatively low to moderate compression engine that's meant to run on regular fuel, you won't see any benefit from using higher octane fuels, and might see some deposits from them causing issues instead. Always use the fuel grade prescribed in your owner's manual.
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wrt Brenden's question about armored cruisers, I was reading about British capital ships a couple weeks ago, and one piece talked about the armored cruiser/battlecruiser decision. An armored cruiser would cost a few hundred thousand Pounds less than a battlecruiser, but not enough less to enable more of the ships to be built for the same amount of money in the annual budget. The Admiralty was considering building another generation of armored cruisers, after building the Invincibles, as a budget cutting option, but then got wind of Von der Tann being built with battleship grade guns, so the Admiralty dropped the armored cruiser idea and proceeded with the Indefatigable class. Bottom line: 9.2" armored cruiser would cost almost as much as a battlecruiser, but could not stand up against a battlecruiser, nor could serve as an adjunct to the battleline. I was reading about the Courageouses in particular, and read that Fisher was specifying a maximum draft of 22.5 feet. The Courageouses failed that parameter spectacularly, drawing nearly as much as a Renown. I used SpringSharp to try to redesign Courageous to meet the 22.5 foot spec. By going to three twin 9.2" turrets taken from Lord Nelson class pre-dreadnoughts, to meet the cost and availability parameters of the Courageous, I could reduce the draft to 24.5 feet, which still missed Fisher's requirement.
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In Norman Friedman's book on US battleships, it looks like one of the few things that didn't really change throughout the design process was the main battery of twelve 16"/50 guns. However, the US did build one experimental 18"/48 gun but converted it to a 16"/56 with a new liner after the Washington Treaty took effect, then converted it back into an 18"/47 when the war started so knowing that the Yamatos carried a 46cm/45 main battery might have influenced the decision.
While different speeds were considered, none of the design studies had a design speed lower than 27.5 knots so the Montana wouldn't have been slower than the Yamato. But one difference would have been length, as the Montana was considerably longer than the Yamato (which was actually shorter than an Iowa) and not quite as beamy. While large US warships of the era did have a bulbous bow, the Yamato had a more advanced one that protruded forward by about 3 meters which allowed it to efficiently make 27 knots with a shorter length to beam ratio than the Montana. The belt armor on both designs were pretty similar, being 16" and 410mm thick and inclined at about 20 degrees.
So assuming that the US doesn't instantly conjure up the secret of the advanced bulbous bow in the days before CFD, even with the knowledge of the Yamato specs the Montana would likely still be much longer and a bit narrower than the Yamatos so it'd be hard to imagine it'd have fewer than four turrets. That's a lot of deck space not to fill with guns. A main battery of 4x2 18" guns would probably be seen as unacceptable but a 4x3 or 5x2 (or 5x3 as per Tillman 4-2) 18" battery would add a lot of weight. Then there's the matter of whether they could even procure a bunch of 18" guns in time to be useful, given how you've said they're the longest lead items and how the only example they had was a prototype.
Given the timeframe, I suspect that the Montana would have ended up not too different than it was had the US known about the true specs of the Yamato, maybe giving up a knot of speed (to 26.5 or 27) for more armor because they'd have wanted something in the water that was a reasonably even match on paper. Then there'd probably have been furious work designing a new 18" gun and a 90k ton battleship, and who knows what else on the crazy train.
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The problem of concentration of fire causing mutual interference in determining whose shells where hitting where was partially solved by some navies between WWI and WWII by the introduction of dye bags into the AP shell windscreens of the newer, elongated, streamlined shell designs. The US and Japanese designs were simple, with the former having pop-out plugs in the windscreen when hitting water and the latter having the entire windscreen snap off on water impact (Type 88 and, later, Type 91/1 "diving" AP shells), with colored -dye paper bags, one color for each ship in a group, inside the windscreen. The problem was that this would not work at night or in poor visibility or if the shell got a direct hit. The French had a better idea in their "K" shells, which had a larger dye bag and an HE shell impact nose fuze and booster charge, reinforcing the windscreen to handle the added weight. These shells would give colored explosions when hitting, including at night and when getting direct hits, absolutely sorting out which shell was which. When the British obtained some of these shells after the fall of France in WWII, they started using the same designs in their own mid-WWII "K" shells for their heavy cruiser and battleship SAPC and APC anti-ship ammo. Of course, radar soon made these shell dye designs obsolete, but this was not expected earlier.
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Excellent video as always, except SHE,SHE, SHE, not it, it, it. Don't MAKE me come over there! And I WON'T come back till it's over over there!
As I understand it, your 3" guns had a greater elevation than our 4" guns on our destroyers of that period, giving them greater range, and with all of them being mounted center-line, negated the one more gun our tin cans carried wing-mounted.
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Definitly the best docu on that "matter" I had the pleasure to see so far.
There won´t be any better thereafter, I assume, as the all over facts been
so incredibly close attended.
Auf jeden Fall die beste Doku, die ich je zu diesem Thema gesehen habe.
Man kann es wohl kaum better erzählen, wenn man die Fakten so auseinanderdröselt
Unbiased, straight forward and a kind of fair as well.
Ausgewogen, sehr informativ und irgendwie auch fair.
And all time full of either unknown or long since forgotten details, which give us a
little bit of, if not enlightment, than at least otherwise impossible insight.
Jede Menge Details die entweder keiner mehr kannte oder die keiner mehr wissen
wollte.
The question is always :WHY
Die Frage bleibt : WARUM
???
Thousands of fellow sailors of both sides lost their lifes
Tausende Seeleute beider Seiten verloren Ihr Leben
So?
Who won / Wer hat gewonnen ?
Who lost / Wer hat verloren ?
Alle/All/Alle/All/Alle/All x 2.000 = 6.000
And, yes... I am German
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Q & A
I'm a little late to the game, but I was just watching your Drydock episode 07, and you mentioned you were an engineer. I'm a mechanical engineering student myself, and I just wanted to say you did a nice job of explaining the boiler situation. Based on your explanation, it sounds like you are a mechanical engineer, and I was curious if this was the case. Whether you are a mechanical engineer or not, I am curious what your area of specialization is, ie thermofluids, design, etc for example if you are a mechanical engineer, soils, structural analysis for a civil engineer and so on. Likewise I hope I was able to articulate this properly, and I just wanted to say I really enjoy your content, and look forward to your seeing future content.
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Back in the days where there really were a multiplicity of guns on USN ships. the Marines provided gun crews for at least two 5"/38 mounts and a couple of quad 40mm mounts. They not only provided the crews, they became the experts on repair and and maintenance on their mounts. They'd assist Navy ordinance men at those tasks when asked, and they provided a far bit of training for the FNGs that were assigned to gunnery roles. With far fewer guns on Navy ships now, Marines still man some of the free swinging light weapons like.50 caliber M2 machine gun and 25mm Bushmaster cannons. They are the landing force in being if a small target needs to be attacked and secured, and they provide ship security for nuclear weapons compartments and various top secret areas of the ship. Marines are responsible, along with the Navy Master At Arms, for the overall protection and security of the ship while in port and at sea, with Marine NCOs often acting as the Officer of the Deck. They were generally in charge of the brig, and moving prisoners between the Captain's Mast and place like sick bay. What Marines really practice for is an attack of the ship while it is in port. If the SHTF and the ships is under fire from attackers attempting to seize the vessel, the Marines are the ones that turn out with weapons locked and loaded, ready to fight off the threat or die trying. In between such feats of derring do, Marines also swab the decks and do KP, so it's not all fun and games.
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Ohh, okay - Hatsuharus were very unfortunate but I honestly thought you were going to pick the obvious 'Chidori' type torpedo boats, for class member Tomozuru's actual falling over like some kind of anti-weeble during that fleet exercise - precipitating the raft of 'corrections' tot the entire top-heavy group of the IJN pre-war... the same problems which saw the Hatsuharus embroiled. But hey, you're still addressing the IJN's biggest problem so it's good.
100% agree with the Duquesne and Sims - especially the Sims; topless turrets? Hsa ha ha.
I'm fine with the 1934 Type pick, but the comparison with the much later Fletchers was unfair. Yes, German machinery was heavier, so ate more of the weight allowance and so the Fletchers carried more topside kit (and mid-1942 spec as standard at service entry, so no Chicago Piano thank god), but the 1934s are fine in wargear terms for their date. - The only criticism you needed to level at them was that, for their size and power, they just didn't work because of that temperamental (snigger) machinery. That they broke down so easily was the single stupidest crime that a destroyer could ever commit, so yes they deserved the German 'top spot'.
As for the British, I would have gone with the 'Kingfisher' class escort/patrol vessel or fast sloop. Too small to do very much and carry very much, too much speed eating too much of the already-limited displacement, too weakly armed it's ridiculous and with no plans as to what to do with them when war started (because they were few in number, overengineered and thus too costly for series production plus unsuited to mass-production in commercial yards anyway)... so they just got hidden away on the East coast for the duration, where they did very little of note while the technically inferior 'Flowers' covered themselves in fame and glory a nd did useful - vital - work in the Atlantic.
At least HMS Puffin managed to sink a German midget submarine, but unfortunately did a 'reverse HMS Fairy' when the much smaller midget sub sank and blew up, wrecking the Puffin as BER for the rest of the war - she was never recommissioned and was just scrapped.
Fun video; thanks.
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I vote for the 84 hour version. Although I have occasionally busted your nuts over certain production thingys, your engineering skills are easily understood, and if you are not teaching this, you are wasting your life. You have a happy talent for explaining complex situations simply. This is not a common trait. Perhaps you did not see how the former Captain of the Iowa HIMSELF deferred to you in so many things. You are put together in much the same manner as a ship's design. It is a matter of balance: purpose, technical prowess, and, above all, humility, which is the true measure of any expert. The more you know, the more you know you don't know. Yet, no blithering idiot.
OK. I promise i ill offer no more encouragement to you...unless, of course, you really deserve it.
Or you mispronounce a ridiculously simple ship's name.
By the way, your explanation of metacentric height should become a YouTube textbook. And I have an ME degree from quite a prestigious engineering school.
Cheeri-o.
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Commenting a little about ludicrous/ambitious ship designs in the Ancient World: there were not really ludicrous designs in the sense we intend things like HMS Habakkuk or the H-klasse series, since we have documented evidence on most of these. We know ancient rulers regularly built and maintained fleets of 10s, 20s, and at least half a dozen 30s per fleet, which were actually used in combat. The tessarakonteres, the 40, is the pinnacle of this design philosophy, but ancient authors its sheer mass and weight made it impractical to use; therefore it is assumed it was built just for show, since Ptolemaic Egypt was possibly the most powerful naval force of the time. There is a continuing debate around the actual look of the ship, although research in this direction has gone far in modern times, and as cool as it may have been, the 'catamaran' twin hull design for what is often depicted as an upscaled trireme has to be discarded due to its sheer impracticality under oars.
Other notable mentions are the so-called naves lapidariae, very large sea-going transports needed to ferry stones and marbles from quarries to their place of intended use. A good example is provided by the one ordered by Emperor Caligula to transport the obelisk which is now in front of Saint Peter in Rome, and was so large as to be sunk and used as the basement for the ancient Ostia lighthouse by his successor, Emperor Claudius. Such vessels were regularly used in Ancient Egypt as well to transport obelisks, which has to be remembered were quarried out of a single piece of stone, then laid flat and ferried this way. By the very nature of their cargo such vessels had to be made very large.
And lastly a note about the Nemi ships: even though the hulls were originally close to 71mt in length, they were not that big compared to contemporary vessels. I know this sound absurd, but as previously mentioned, fleets of the hellenistic world regularly built and employed 10s, 20s and 30s. The Nemi vessels were build along the lines of a dekeres, a 10, at least as far as profile goes. We know the 40 was in the order of 130mt in length (roughly, give or take 10mt), so the classes in between (16s, 18s, 20s, 30s) were all larger than 10s but smaller than the 40. Let that sink in for a moment.
I can't recall any other ambitious designs of the ancient world off the top of my head, but we know for sure they regularly built vessels of the size of a WWII destroyer in terms of size.
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In those days, the sophisticated fire-control (mechanical) computers of WW2 weren't yet available, so range, lead, and other factors had to be worked out the hard way, or simply estimated by "seaman's eye". Once shots from the first salvo fell, their positions relative to the intended target would be noted visually and a corresponding correction dialled in. It was vitally important to identify which shell splashes belonged to which guns of which ship, which was not always easy - hence the assignment of particular targets to each ship, and some of the difficulty caused by Tiger shooting at the wrong target. Two ships with similarly sized guns firing at the same target would end up confusing each other's spotting.
Getting all this right was something of an art form, which Tiger's crew never had the chance to learn properly. Though it has to be said that even in this diminished state, RN gunnery seems to have outperformed that of the Russians a decade earlier - though that's not a high bar to clear.
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Pretty big tbh. Dreadnought had 5 knots speed advantage over Majestic, which is pretty large. While the armour thickness on Dreadnought was only 2 inches more on the belt and was otherwise broadly similar, Dreadnought used cemented Krupp armour, which was both more flexible (so it cracked and spalled less) and was around 15% more effective for the same thickness. So the 11 inch belt on Dreadnought was equivalent to 12.6ish inches of Harvey armour, a major upgrade over Majestic's 9. However, comparing Majestic to Dreadnought here is a tad unfair, because there had been over a decade of tech advances between the 2. So the real point of comparison should be the later Pre-Dreadnoughts, like the Swiftsures and Lord Nelsons. Dreadnought was still a few knots faster than either, and while it was similarly armoured to the Lord Nelsons, it heavily outclassed Swiftsures, which only had a 7 inch belt (but did used cemented Krupp, so was similar in overall protection to the earlier Majestics).
However, it really was the guns that made all the difference. Yes, the calibre was the same for primary batteries throughout the period at 12 inch. But that doesn't tell the whole story. While all the mentioned Pre-Dreadnoughts had 4 12 inch guns, Dreadnought had 10. That's a pretty hefty boost, meaning that Dreadnought could put out greater weight of fire than the primary and secondary batteries on the Lord Nelsons combined (so the Majestics, with 6 inch secondaries, compared to the 9.2 inch Lord Nelsons, would be even more outclassed), not to mention the range advantage, as Dreadnought didn't need to worry about getting close enough to bring the secondary battery into play. Plus there was the whole 'one gun type makes fire control easier business, as you knew all the big splashes would be 12 inch shells, no quibbling over what was a primary and what was a secondary splash.
So yeah, while you could argue that Dreadnought didn't entirely invalidate the Lord Nelsons (iirc Drach has said previously the RN at the time reckoned both LNs together could match 1 Dreadnought), the difference was much more pronounced for the earlier Pre-Dreadnoughts. Substantially slower, less armoured and horrifically undergunned.
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Boilers and Forced Draught.
Sorry if this is a bit long, I have experience working on ship boiler plant dating from the 1930s up to modern installations.
'Forced Draught' is not a 'speed boost' Even simple boiler plant on a ship uses a forced draught.
A boiler will run at it's designed pressure for as long as you want it to as long as there is fuel and feed water, it will not burst or explode.
Maximum boiler pressure has a limit set by the design of the boiler. It is enforced by whatever pressure the safety valves are set to.
Boiler room fans run at a constant speed and give a constant draught, you regulate the draught in to the boiler by operating the 'dampers' on the front of the combustion chamber and boilers have multiple combustion chambers. Work from the boiler is also controlled by the fuel flow, either quantity of coal or oil put in to the combustion chambers through either the stoke holes for coal or the atomisers for oil.
Boilers have a pressure range where they are at their most efficient and ships have multiple boilers. On small ships like the Leanders I served aboard there were two boilers, to increase speed fuel flow was increased and dampers opened, the draught was constant. On bigger ships that had multiple boiler plant such as cruisers and battleships a number of boilers would be kept just 'hot' but not at a high working pressure. When more speed was required this plant could be flashed up to pressure. Again the draught was constant.
As a Sea Cadet before I joined the Navy I worked for a while aboard the former HMS Neave, the last of the Isles class Admiralty trawlers that had been converted in to a tank cleaning ship under the name of SS Tulipbank, my dad was working aboard as the engineer refitting the boiler and triple expansion engine. It had a 'Scotch' type oil fired boiler. Even she had a forced draught provided by electric powered fans. They had one speed and ran all the time the boiler was in full steam.
Loss of fan draught on any ship 'kills' the boilers, without the forced draught they will not steam.
Film of the SS Shieldhall raising steam, it shows how the forced draught works. Until they have enough steam to power their plant they use a portable fan to get the draught.
Neave was more sophisticated than Shieldhall, it had a small auxiliary boiler to give enough pressure to operate the auxiliary machinery while raising steam.
https://youtu.be/wBEOSAI2je8
RN film from 1942, Raising steam on a Destroyer
https://youtu.be/uwMRCU0olS0
HMS Neave as she was in service
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205121299
As she was as the Tulipbank, the engine is preserved in the National Maritime Museum
https://www.shipsnostalgia.com/media/tulipbank.1840/
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A "six-armed mutant with several engineering degrees" was not just a problem in WWII Germany. It was a problem in post-WWII US Navy when it came to the new "high-tech" electronics, particularly anti-aircraft missile systems, TALOS, TARTAR, and TERRIER. Contractors were on those ships to keep them running because garage mechanics, who could be trained for most mechanical systems in the US Navy, as in WWII, and those radars could be handled by ham radio nuts, these did not work in maintaining guided missile systems, which were orders of magnitude more complicated and tight-tolerance pieces of equipment that had to interact with each other and with the ship in general. The place I worked for 41 years, originally called the US Naval Ship Missile Systems Engineering Station (NSMSES, pronounced "Nemesis") -- now NSWC/Port Hueneme Division -- was established on the Sea Bee Base in Port Hueneme, California, to fix this in 1963. It did this by adopting the US Navy Nuclear Engineering Support System lock, stock, and barrel, adopted to missile system requirements. It was a smashing success (I mean it!). I got there on January 11, 1972, and worked for TERRIER as long as it lasted, then TARTAR, then the Mark 92 GMFCS for the FFG-7 Class frigates (and some peripheral Aegis software), at the end as a Software Quality Assurance specialist (the ONLY person doing this in my entire software department) -- most video games have about ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE DOING THIS JOB, to give one a slight idea how far behind many US Government establishments -- and many other places -- are getting behind in software compared to the game industry, which is pulling the entire computer industry into the future kicking and screaming because that is where the money is. Super-computers are now running banks of GRAPHICS PROCESSORS as their CPUs because, while not necessarily the most efficient, they are SCREAMING FAST WITH HUGE BANDWITH -- here literally quantity has a quality all its own...
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I have written about the Laconia incident previously. While the results of the sinking of Laconia and the later attack by a USAAF B-24 was terrible, and I'm in no way defending the ultimate decision to attack made by the pilots, there were a number of "fog of war" issues surrounding the entire incident. Please take the time to read The Origins of the Laconia Order at https://preview.tinyurl.com/sybm439. It gives a much clearer picture of what was happening before, during, and after the attack than most accounts.
Drach, I have a read a lot about the Laconia Incident, as I know you have. I have never read in anything authoritative that the U-156 was attacked by a B-25. As far I know, it was that one B-24 that was the only US aircraft to attack her. An A-20, one of four flying escort for a Stratoliner carrying a British admiral, reported the day previous to the sinking of the Laconia , being fired on by two surfaced U-boats. None of the five B-25's dispatched to look for the U-boats made contact, and they were at the extreme end of their range in any case, so could not loiter in the area to look. The B-24 that ultimately carried out the attack was dispatched to try to find those two U-boats because it had the range to conduct a useful search. The pilots had no idea Laconia had been sunk or that she was even in the area. If you have more information on this B-25 attack, I'd like to have a link.
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The US navy's goal by mid-1944 was to have all destroyers assigned the Pacific theater that retained their twin quad torpedo launchers to be be fitted with at least ten 40mm barrels, those with a single quad launcher to have at 12 barrels, and the complete anti-kamikaze ships with no torpedo launchers were fitted with between 14 and 16 barrels. The most heavily armed were some Gearing class ships with a pair of quad 40mm mounts amidships in the same positions as the landed torpedo launchers, a pair of twin mounts opposite the bridge, and another pair of twin mounts aft ahead of the depth charge tracks replacing the previous three to five single 20mm mounts at the same location. This was a total of 20 barrels. At the same time, all the remaining single 20mm mounts were replaced with twin mounts. Most of these ships were used as radar pickets that were heavily attacked by Japanese aircraft once they realized ot importance of their early warning role. The ability of these ships to send up a hail of antiaircraft fire was a surprise to Japanese pilots and caused many suicide attacks to be broken up, especially when there were enough destroyers available to assign pairs to a radar picket station.
The problems with this kind of heavy armament was not the stability issues that have been written about, it was where to berth and feed all the extra crew. Each quad mount required a crew of 8-10 and twins 4-5. that was a total additional crew just to man the mounts of 32-35 men compared to the original three twin mounts. This doesn't count the additional crew needed for ammunition handling, magazine manning, and machinist and gunners mates to repair and maintain the mounts. The additional electronics and Combat Information Centers already required an additional ten to fourteen men before the armament changes, so even the Grearings were hard pressed to find space for these crew, and it was even worse for the converted Fletchers and Sumners. Even the amount of extra provisions required was estimated to add some thirty tons to the displacement, not to mention the additional cooks and stewards needed. The USN before the kamikaze threat prided itself on every crew member having their own berth. By April, 1945, hot bunking, hammocks, and even deck sleeping was the norm.
Many more complaints by the men centered more around the difficulties of getting a hot meal than the rough berthing. Letters home from Pacific theater destroyer crews told of waiting for up to two hours to get through the mess line, only to have that disrupted by general quarters for another air attack. Some gun and CIC crews ate nothing but sandwiches and coffee for days on end. If you want to start sailors to bitching, don't feed them hot meals, and the bitching from crews extended from letters to their families all the way to letters to their Congressmen and Senators.
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There will always be tension between professional and amateur. Just as they will always exist between different "streams" of professional (academic and media) and differently motivated amateurs. Not to mention between professionals competing among themselves, and amateurs competing among themselves!
Amateur does not automatically equate to poor quality, populism or political propaganda - as many academics would have you believe.
Academia does not automatically equate to agenda-setting elite cabals involved in ancient conspiracies - as many amateurs would have you believe.
What matters is the quality and substance of their work.
What matters is understanding that they target different audiences.
I started down my path as almost every book about carrier aviation in the 80s and 90s was written for a US audience - both by and for amateurs and academics. That meant the RN carriers rarely got more than one or two (yes, I counted them!) sentences in even the most expansive tomes.
When I began trowling through the original reports and correspondence, I saw how pathetically wrong much of this was - among both amateur and academic sources - because they were only rewriting the same one or two sentenes written by their predecessors!
These days I look for just one thing: Anyone - academic or amateur or alternative professional - that seeks out primary evidence, compares and contrasts this, and dares to highlight the conflict and confusion evident even among such baseline material!
I personally define quality as those who approach history as an investigation, and crap as from those who seek to use it as an affirmation.
And those traits apply to everyone (politicans, sports stars, media celebrities, homebodies, history academics and history amateurs).
A prime example? Just look at Putin's attempt to rewrite the history of WW2 - and of European empires dating back 500 years - to justify his dreams of empire.
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During the time period after 1916 both the US (due to the major improvements in metallurgy by the Midvale Company) and British (by the results of Jutland making them study Krupp shell designs and finding out that they needed new test specs for their AP shells -- they hadn't been updated in decades since the first major ironclad, HMS WARRIOR, was commissioned) had some major improvements in their AP ammunition and, in the British case, also a better understanding in how the 10%-black-powder-filled Common, Pointed, Capped (CPC) shells for use against smaller armored warships actually worked.
The Midvale Company had developed in 1911 an 8" (203 mm) Mark 11 MOD 1 AP projectile that, in most cases when tested at right-angles, remained intact even when it bounced off the armor it hit, which was previously considered impossible against Krupp Cemented type of face-hardened side armor. Since this was not a battleship shell, though, it seems to have been ignored by the US Navy. In 1916, though, in its Midvale-made 12" Mark 15 MOD 6 AP shells, Midvale had enough test results to apply this hardening/tempering system to its battleship ammo. The results were even better, even when tested at up to 15 degrees from right-angles all of its new "Midvale Unbreakable" shells remained intact whether penetrating or not, allowing the "Effective" (British "Fit-to-Burst") striking velocity to be lowered to the barely-penetrating-in-any-condition "Navy Ballistic Limit" (British "Perforating Limit"). This immediately made all prior US AP ammo obsolete. Because the AP caps remained soft, though, the impact angles for possible unshattered penetrations did not improve.
Only when hard-capped mid-1930s US Navy new AP projectile designs were introduced did projectile shatter of US AP shells no longer occur at any impact angle (the caps always worked), though of course other types of damage could occur, especially against the lower shell body at higher impact angles as the shell was "refracted" to a more-right-angle direction as it punched through. The WWII hard-capped AP shells, made by all three manufacturers of US Navy AP shells -- Midvale, Bethlehem, and Crucible Steel -- used a Russian Doll (softer regions of smaller size as one went from the top to the bottom of the shell and from the outer surface to the explosive cavity surface) "Sheath Hardening" method, where the entire nose was of one maximum hardness (525 Brinell or 555 Brinell, depending on the manufacturer's idea of the optimum nose hardness), then along the centerline the hardness dropped rapidly to the minimum hardness of circa-249 Brinell, which it kept to the tip of the explosive cavity in the lower half of the shell. Along the outer surface of the shell, the hardness dropped much more slowly to about the minimum 249 Brinell value just above the lower bourrelet where the driving band was cut, going rapidly softer to the 249 Brinell when you reached the surface of the explosive cavity from top to bottom. This eliminated any sudden steps in hardness anywhere between the highest and lowest hardness values, so cracking of the projectile near the explosive cavity from a force from any direction was minimized. Later shells had some improvements in the hardness pattern, such as having the minimum hardness upper to 256 Brinell in the 12" Mark 18 MOD 1 to make the shell slightly more rigid at oblique impact and a proposal, never actually implemented after WWII, to change the final tempering temperature of all AP shells to 350 degrees F from the WWII standard 475 degrees F, which was found to give a harder and more rigid shell lower body but with no increase in cracking during experimental tests. US naval ammunition had much more variation in design during WWII than any other country had.
The rather major change in the hardness pattern from the earlier "Through Hardening" -- with the entire projectile nose of one maximum hardness everywhere and then a sudden step to the minimum middle and lower body hardness at the joint of the nose and cylindrical body, which was originally used with chilled cast iron projectiles -- and the British-developed improved form called "Decremental Hardening" -- where the Through Hardening method was modified to have a more gradual softening at the base of the nose to the minimum hardness around the tip of the explosive cavity but kept constant at any distance downward from the centerline to the outer surface (unlike the Sheath Hardening, there is no improved rigidity against forces from the side, so high-obliquity impacts can bend the shells much more than with WWII US Navy AP shells) -- when Sheath Hardening was introduced, imply to me that this may have been, among other improvements in hardening and tempering that the Midvale Unbreakable AP shell used, the basis for the later major improvements in post-1930 US Navy AP shells resulting in 35-40-degree oblique impact spec intact penetration requirements against 0.8-caliber of US Class "A" KC-type armor from plates of the 1921-25 "Bethlehem Thin Chill" (15-20% face thickness) made by both Bethlehem and Midvale for and then stored due to the cancelled Washington Treaty of 1923 battleships to the latest Thick Chill (55% face) WWII armor and, even more, the ability of these US Navy WWII AP shells to penetrate in an intact condition plates much thicker than the US AP shell's diameter -- 17.3" Thick Chill Class "A" barbette armor using 14" Mark 16 AP projectiles at 30 degrees, for example -- which was virtually impossible for any non-US AP shell made at any time by anyone else.
(CONTINUED BELOW)
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Also during the British post-Jutland overhaul of the shell designs for more realistic APC/APBC/SAPC oblique-impact intact perforation requirements (tougher middle body and base designs; insensitive Shellite or, for smaller guns using the CPBC/SAPC shells, TNT explosive fillers; and use of hardened AP caps that work against shatter at any impact angle that might occur in a battle), they found out some other interesting facts:
(1) Cast projectiles (12" Mark VIIA APC, the first of the Greenboy shells), where the shell was machined from a single pre-shaped steel shape with only heat treating used to adjust the hardness and toughness of the projectile nose and body from point to base, were considerably weaker and more brittle than forged larger shells, where the cylindrical metal blank was squeezed, hammered, and bent to its final rough shape, being heated and reheated between and during mechanical shaping treatments, forcing the cylindrical initial shape into various curved nose-shaped dies and creating the large internal cavity by forcing a cavity-shaped hardened-steel shape into the shell bottom. The mechanical working of the projectile's metal caused the "grain" of the various crystals formed in the shell's metal to line up in ways that reinforced one-another along the directions that impact forces from hitting thick armor would also align. Thus, while the 12" shell could not remain intact when used against 8" (0.67-caliber) KC plate (British "Cemented Armour") at 20 degrees or more obliquity, there was no problem with the larger shells at even high angles against plates of several thicknesses -- tests of the HOOD's design armor by 15" Mark VA APC shells demonstrated this conclusively. Forging was used in all later British shells to be used against armor of any type or thickness.
(2) Possibly due to the fact that Shellite was somewhat less powerful than TNT, though Shellite could usually be detonated by a black-powder booster just like Lyddite could, smaller British guns in cruisers and destroyers -- and strangely in the 16" AP shells for NELSON and RODNEY -- used TNT as their explosive filler when introduced in the 1920s, though Shellite was resorted to for the 14" and projected 16" guns in the British WWII battleship designs. TNT was not detonable using black powder and was difficult to get reliable full-power detonations until Tetryl was introduced in 1928. From the many tests that I have seen, including those against the German battleship BADEN, Shellite had a rather large number of less-than-full-power explosions from its use of the same black-powder ring-shaped booster used with Lyddite. It seems that to get delay-action deep target hull penetration, any explosion was considered acceptable. Thus, until 1928, the TNT-filled APC/CPBC/SAPC shells were accepted even with their non-optimum explosive effectiveness. This was similar to all US Navy Explosive-"D"-filled shells AP and Base-Fuzed Common shells until they introduced Tetryl also in 1928, even though the US Army had been using Tetryl boosters in its Explosive-"D"-filled shells since 1918, indicating that the safety requirements of the US Navy were such that retests and re-retests were necessary to convince the safety personnel that Tetryl was "safe enough". Once the Tetryl had made TNT-filled British naval ammo get fully-acceptable test results (90% reliability), eventually the Shellite-filled large-caliber APC shells (all but the TNT-filled 16" Mark IB) were improved by using the same Tetryl booster used for the 16" APC to get full reliability by WWII.
(3) Hard caps worked better than soft or tough caps because they punched a deep pit into the plate face as they were destroyed -- which a softer-faced cap could not -- and this acted just like the use of a center-punch just prior to drilling holes in steel plates at a manufacturing plant. No new soft-capped British ammo was made (neither was any US Navy soft-capped AP ammo after the last Midvale Unbreakable 16" Mark 3 AP projectiles were completed for the COLORADO Class battleships, where no new-design, hard-capped AP ammo was introduced until the miod-1930s.
(4) British Common, Pointed, Capped (CPC) 10%-black-powder-filled anti-ship (and anti shore in some battles) ammo, was an unusual soft-capped semi-armor-piercing ammo used by the British Navy during WWI. The nose was very similar to a British APC shell, including a soft AP cap for penetrating face-hardened armor at a near-right-angles obliquity. It was specially designed for large guns hitting small enemy ships. The cap was for those ships that had face-hardened armor (battle-cruisers) but armor thin enough, up to 0ne-third caliber, that the shell at those low impact angles could remain intact after penetrating. Black powder in the usual uses exploded with a powerful blast, but not a true detonation, so the shockwave created did not have anywhere near the same power as a detonating explosive like TNT or Lyddite, being about 0ne-third as powerful and causing more damage due to the fireball it creates than its explosion power. Also, however, the shell is blown into fewer, larger, slower pieces, forming more like a shotgun blast moving in the direction of the shell when it exploded, with the heavy nose and base plug punching the deepest and largest holes in front of the shell. The blast from the base fuze takes up to 0.075 second to spread to enough of the black powder filler to finally tear open the projectile body, so that the shell has a very long delay built-in without the need for a delay-action base fuze. Note also that even if the shell breaks up during penetration, the friction from the breakup will usually set off the filler and it will cause considerable fire and fragment damage from the side of the shit hit to as far as the pieces can reach inside the target. In effect, the results of being hit by this shell were in many cases just as bad or even worse than when hit by a Lyddite-filled APC shell. Until the new Greenboy APC ammo was introduced, the post-Jutland battle instructions was to use CPC instead of APC in most situations. It seemed that the British had realized that deep penetrations were better, but until Jutland had not been able to overcome their previous infatuation with the most powerful filler being the best filler, ignoring all other facts.
(5) British CPC had another effect that was previously not realized when hitting thick face-hardened armor at a low obliquity. The projectile would collapse like a bag of water dropped from a height onto a concrete plate, being compressed lengthwise as the nose decelerated and the weak middle body kept moving forward. However, when CPC shells hit at low obliquity at a high-enough velocity for a similar size and weight APC shell to perforate the CA plate hit, an unusual thing happened. The black powder, made up of finely-packed, but separate powders of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate (saltpeter), was thrown forward by the intense inertial slowdown at the plate face, compressing it to a virtually solid mass with all of the empty spaces between the powder grains squeezed out. This pushed the powder into the front half of the cavity where the shell was surrounded by the armor plate as the nose punched through. Thus, the filler was held tightly in a oval-nosed cavity held rigid by the thick nose and the armor to the sides and the huge force from the rear due to the sudden slowdown. It was also crushed so tightly together that it started exploding everywhere at once throughout its entire volume, simulating an HE detonation. Since the amount of filler was three times what was in the usual APC shell and one-third as powerful, the result was a detonation inside the armor plate exactly like a Lyddite filler detonating while its shell was imbedded halfway through the armor. This caused British CA plates so hit in tests to have enlarged holes made in them and many plates actually split in two through the hole. Thus, CPC shells could have even better anti-hull armor damage than the APC shells that were supposedly the ones designed to so penetrate the enemy target. Another result not understood and not utilized until after it was no longer the major weapon result desired. It is necessary to fully test and understand the results of the tests of anything that you need to do a task, military or otherwise...
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On the topic of Wikipedia, one thing I've found to be immensely useful is to check native-language pages for a given thing, as they'll nearly always have far longer, more in-depth, and more accurate info than the English version. For me, usually this is for WWII-era military gear (planes, ships, tanks, small arms, etc), and I've found the difference to be especially notable with Italian and Japanese things. Even just basic stuff, like proper designations/nomenclature; many Italian small arms' names being very "Americanized" in English material, the proper spacing in German designations (Bf 109, MG 42, etc) being ignored, Japanese info being wrong seemingly due to mixed up mistranslations passed around for ages as fact, and so on.
I suppose it's often the stuff that's less to do with specific historical events and "sources", but rather basic linguistic/national standards.
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If I may contribute to your excellent presentation: I offer the memories of a US Navy Sailor who retired 13 years ago.
When fixing the ship's position in inshore waters, the plotter will be at the chart table and have charge of all efforts involving the chart (or map) (which becomes a permanent legal record). The plotter will call out "Mark around!" The observers at each of the bearing circles (there's a more technical name I don't remember) will take turns in a previously practiced order calling back bearings to fixed landmarks in rapid succession; for instance, "Lighthouse X bearing two-four-zero degrees," then the next will call out "Point Y bearing three-two-two degrees." Usually a third bearing is taken for certainty, "Mount Z bearing zero-four-two degrees." Now the plotter can say with a great deal of certainty that the ship is at a specific location and will quickly calculate a course and speed made good since the last observation.
Hope this helps!
About that battle bridge inside the bridge: remember when Midway was constructed - Battle damage onboard the carrier was still remembered as a common event. You are correct in your observation that the bulkheads around this inner bridge are not what you would call armor, but being inside the main bridge and being so high above the deck where attacking munitions are going to explode was considered likely to offer enough protection to suffice for a battle bridge.
Again, I hope this helps!
Somewhere around 39:40 you show an officer's galley, too many dishes for just the Captain. This likely served the CO, battle group admiral, and their staffs. There would have been a separate wardroom (officer's mess) for the pilots and other flight officer's. Yes, the CO and Admiral still each had private messing where they could dine privately or host say half a dozen guests. My wife was an Ombudsman for USS Enterprise 2000 through 2002 and dined with the Captain on numerous occasions when the ship was in home port. Moving on, back in the day, American microwaves were commonly finished in a wood-grain adhesive skin. And yes, that's a dish washer - saved carting dishes down to the scullery (main dish washing facility - associated with the enlisted mess). Remember the staff of the officer's galley was limited and labor saving devices like dish-washers were not that big an expense when compared to the cost of an aircraft carrier and they took up MUCH less space than a scullery.
As before, I hope this helps!
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Great to see something different! Of course I need to provide everyone some helpful hints since I have made lots of ice cream at home.
1. Dry ice is your friend. Now your freezing bowl is only really good for one go, but if you pick up some dry ice, you can place it in the bowl, inside an ice chest, wait 20 minutes, and it's hard as a rock. It also makes a finer grain / creamier ice cream than just out of the freezer since the freezing bowl is actually colder than normal. Once batch #1 is done, you just have to wait the 10 - 20 minutes for the bowl to refreeze.
2. Cook / chill your ice cream mix. The closer your ice cream mix is to freezing temperature, the less time it will take to churn ice cream. Granted Drach used cold milk and room temperature mix, ideally he should have placed it in the fridge. This also lets the flavors time to integrate.
3. Make a larger batch. If you go the dry ice route, you now can make a larger batch of base. This has many positives since your measurement can be slightly off and it won't make as much of an impact.
4. What you freeze it in counts. Now thin, disposable plastic food storage container are your best bet. There is not much thermal mass to overcome one way or another. Make sure there's plenty of air flow as it sits in the freezer.
Enjoy!
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Of the eight preserved US battleships, all but one (Texas) is a "modern" era ship. The Iowas were always considered ready reserve ships up until the mid-2000's. They were in excellent material condition when they were finally retired. The Navy knew that any plan to scrap the ships was unthinkable so they actively worked with the states and ultimate museum anchorages to preserve the ships, even to the point that the agreements with the museums was the ships had to be maintained in "as-delivered" condition and were subject to repossession by the Navy at a time of national need. Even though only one of the four was the namesake of a coastal state, the value of preservation as tourist attractions was already well in place by the 1990's
Of the four South Dakotas, the two preserved ships (Alabama and Massachusetts) are named for coastal states that fought for their preservation. The two that were scrapped (South Dakota and Indiana) are inland states with nowhere to display the ships. Both states preserved many pieces of the ships before scrapping, and they are now displayed in suitable monuments in their respective states.
The name ship of the North Carolina class is displayed at Wilmington NC. Starting from 1960, when the donation fo $331,000 collected by schoolchildren to purchase the ship, to being a self-supporting museum today, North Carolina has done a remarkable job of preserving her "Showboat". North Carolina was a donor ship for parts needed to renovate the Iowas when they were being refurbished in the 1980's. Unfortunately, many of her mechanical systems were removed at the time, along with the barbette of turret #1, but the parts live on in the Iowas. North Carolina is still a cosmetically beautiful ship and well worth the visit.
This brings me to the shame of the state of Washington. While other states were already preserving or taking steps to preserve their ships, Washington simply didn't seem to care. At the same time that NC school kids were collecting pennies to buy their ship, the Washington legislature seemed to think the same $330,000 was an outrageous price and refused to fund the purchase. Vets attempted to get the same kind of schoolkids campaign going but, once again, no one seemed to care. The ship was decommissioned in June, 1960 and towed away for scrapping in May, 1961, probably a modern record between the two events. The ship's bell and a few other mementos are on display in the Bremerton Naval Museum, and that's only because of the efforts of the late Helen Devine, museum curator, digging through crates and boxes in a dusty warehouse in Olympia to find them and bring them to the museum. Other than this one corner of the museum, there's no real memorial to the ship, and certainly no memorial commensurate with the ship's historical value. Another move is underway to construct a proper memorial, but most of the ship's crew have passed on, and only some lonely naval historians and buffs have taken up the cudgel. The last Ship's Reunion was in 2005, and even the ship's website (http://www.usswashington.com/) is now mostly a mass of broken links.
As you may be able to tell, I'm more than a little ill with the state of Washington and the shameful way they have treated "their" ship and the veterans who sailed on her. I've visited all the other battleships, and just thinking about the fate of Washington sets my teeth on edge.
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16:05 What Drach said here is broadly on point, but if you want more specific info on that, you can google the article: 'Bird-head devices on Mediterranean ships'. It is a study specifically aimed at akrostolion (pl. akrostolia, the bow ornament) and aphlaston (pl. aphlasta, the stern ornament), although the bottom lines remains there is still much argument as to their use and such longevity unchanged.
Also it may be counterintuitive, but studies show for a given thickness of wood the ancient mortise and tenon construction is exceptionally stronger than more modern plank on frame. The main reason it was abandoned is that it requires a massive amount of material (planks need a minimum thickness for a slot to be cut into it without breaking), and very time-consuming. Planks on frames could be much thinner, and therefore easier to work with, and took less material than building a shell-first hull. So if anyone would have magically found enough wood to build a ship of line shell-first, it would have been stronger than a plank on frame hull. The caveat to that is, it would have been if the planks were the same thickness, but a ship like Victory has a hull about 60 cm (2 ft) thick, from four to six times the thickness of the largest shell-first plank ever found in a wreck.
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French ALGERIE SAP shells will work perfectly against HIPPER due to no face-hardened (Krupp post-1936 KC n/A) on the German ship. ALGERIE has some Schneider et Cie., Creusot, face-hardened armor, but the German APC will be able to penetrate that due to its hard AP cap. Thus, your statement that the French shells give more "bang for the buck" is quite correct since a hard AP cap is not needed and the thinner German homogeneous, ductile (Krupp Wh) armor can be penetrated quite well by large-filler SAP ammo. Face-hardened armor has two advantages when hit at close-to-right-angles impact: It can shatter the nose of uncapped shells and thus significantly increase their needed striking velocity to punch through and, in many cases, even if the cap works and prevents this, at impacts with some oblique angle where the shell is slowed considerably by the armor, the hard face can severely damage the projectile as it tries to pass through the plate, making the shell act more like broken solid shot with much lower damage-causing capability. To do similar projectile damage with homogeneous, ductile armor takes a much thicker plate, on the average, at any given oblique impact angle.
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@ 12:45 You were talking about Steam Turbines. Another issue was precision balance!!!! Each blade not only have extremely tight tolerances to length, width, "airfoil" shape, But also weight, if you had one blade slightly heavier than the one on the opposite side, it would cause trouble by causing vibration and the fact that it would try to shift the shaft in it's direction. Same thing with Reduction Gears! Extremely Delicate Balance considering the speed of rotation of parts!!
As for VTEs, ATEs, etc., remember most people had seen a steam locomotive, so the idea of a steam cylinder moving back & forth (or up& down) wouldn't be such a big surprise. In fact I've heard stories about mainly Canada, but to a lesser degree the US looking for Railroad Engineers and Locomotive Repairmen for service aboard VTE powered ships.... (truth? don't ask me, but it just might be worthwhile to research "one of these years" since I do know you're extremely busy!)
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Drachinifel, in Law School, we discussed some of your points of law in my International Law class and we concluded that 1. The Vichy government was an unrecognized enemy puppet government, and 2. The French Government (in exile) was the proper authoritative government, and 3. The French Naval Vessels that were under the control of Admiral Darlan and Gensoul were, in effect, in a state of mutiny since Admiral Darlan did not recognize the rightful authority of the French Government (in exile) but had defected to and followed the orders of the Vichy government which was, as you correctly stated, under the direct authority of the enemy, ie., the Nazi Germany. That was our take on it. Unfortunately, I can no longer give you the case law or treaty statutes that backed up our position as law school was 15 years ago. However, you have done a fantastic job researching the facts of the incident and the applicable laws. Thus, your conclusions are sound and expertly made. Great work!
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Yes, undoubtedly, an avoidable tragedy and you have comprehensively pinned the blame where it, apparently, should sit. I'm not asking for it, and I guess there are books on it(?), but one wonders about the upbringing and psychology of the French admiral. I read a book about the British Pacific Fleet and it said that at least one American admiral was highly resistant to the British 'assisting' them because his ancestors of only 2 or 3 generations had fought them for independence and again in 1812. Some people do not forgive and forget and maybe this admiral was the same? Re: another subject, if you haven't already done so, my dad served on HMS Urchin , a destroyer, and took part in the raid on the Palembang oil refinery complex in Indonesia and was at Okinawa where Urchin was a picket ship and so saw the first waves of Kamikaze coming in. He was a radar operator so he saw lots of dots heading to them.......
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Hi Drac. Good advice. Couple of observations: (A) At our museum we scan images at both 96 dpi for web and at 300 dpi for digital archiving. If we need them higher, for example, for huge backdrops to exhibitions, we can always go back to the original. (B) Regularly back up all your images : It's terrible to lose years of work. For example, even though our data is "loss-proof" on various commercial servers, we still put copies of items such as our ship plans on SSD drives and physically keep "the master files" in our stores, and off site, just in case. (C) Even though you have duplicated the images, physically preserving the originals is also critical for future researchers. Nothing ever retains the detail as an original. Simply putting prints in proper photo sleeves or glass slides into the proper archive boxes (to reduce risk of dust and scratches) is a great start. (D) Sadly, the majority of private (or corporate, for that matter) collections don't survive the passing of their creator. It's therefore worth thinking about who would be best at looking after your original material after you pass on to the other side. I'd obviously suggest the NMRN and IWM for warships, but regional maritime museums or even societies (such as the World Ship Society) are other good possibilities. (E) If you find original cine film I'd suggest contacting your regional Film and TV Archive for help. We work with YFA and NFTA http://www.yorkshirefilmarchive.com/yfa-nefa , who then pull in the BFI if something turns out ot be of national importance. It's also worth knowing that original nitrate film is highly flammable, and is a fire risk. (F) Copyright Law is hideously complex. One really good summary which can help is at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/481194/c-notice-201401.pdf
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I love the new intro, it is so much more fitting, I also love the classic news reel look of the text, it has a bit of Pathé and a bit of training films of the era.
With the quote "to hell and back" at 00:14:57 I take it you also have paid a visit to the local Thai restaurant for a bit of spicy food.
I also sit and smile at the discussion at 00:23:18 about the effect of storms as I have been out in everything from small patrol crafts to sail training ships in some pretty nasty weather, with nasty I'm talking about everything from 17-18 meter/second (gale-fresh gale according to Beaufort scale) up to 35-40 meter/second (hurricane force) and that is quite an experience to go up in the rigging and trying to reduce sail in a strong gale (21-22 m/s) although in a two masted brigantine schooner made in steel, up to trying to rescue lives in 35-40 m/s or just going about your business showing the flag...
We had sort of friendly rivalry between the people with the guns and missiles (CIC and the weapons officers) and the engineering section and I always had fun after a storm as I did my rounds and more than once scored parts of their fire control equipment that had blown off and landed on deck and salvaged them, much to their chagrin.
(Part of my job, besides keeping the engineering section ticking over, when it comes to maintenance, was also the responsibility for damage control and the ships safety which was why I had to do my rounds to check for potential leak or deck equipment of whatever it could be that had been damaged or potentially was a risk to the ship (causing drag or fouling propellers or other types of damage). So typically I found the things falling off the masts, macks or what ever and stowing it and handing it over when we are back in port or in calmer weather, I loved the banter; "can't you keep your bloody gear in order or at least stopping it from falling off and blocking the path to the life rafts..." ;) )
I can affirm it can create all kinds of problems, I have seen plates of steel positioned to stop water going across the deck and causing damage to deck gear, sort of wave breaker, although five to eight mm thick being crumbled like tin foil by waves. Some pretty serious wave action and you feel seriously small trying to handle deck gear, cranes, winches and capstans while out in that kind of weather!
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Regarding a triple turret version of the QEs? Your notion of a rebuild that removes the aft superfiring turret so that they can end up with useful speed in their 1930s refit has another implication going forward. You now have something a lot more interesting than the Courageous-class's twin turrets to put on HMS Vanguard. If we assume that as in reality, only Warspite, Valiant, and Queen Elizabeth went through full rebuilds since the outbreak of WW2 interrupted the schedule, that leaves three triple turrets to work with. Which means that Vanguard wouldn't need nearly so much redesign work relative to the Lion-class as she went through IRL, because she doesn't need to be lengthened to make room for a 4th turret. This would likely mean she would be given the same thickness of belt armor as the KGVs rather than having it thinned to 14 inches to make up for the longer hull. The simpler process of simply redesigning the Lions to use smaller turrets rather than having to accommodate an AB-XY layout also likely would've sped up the entire process, potentially allowing Vanguard to be laid down in 1940 instead of 1941.
The question then is, would that result in Vanguard being completed before the war ended? At one point her construction was prioritized out of hopes that she could be completed in 1944 by diverting resources from other ships, but labor shortages made that impossible and she dropped back down the priority list. But even given said labor shortages, if her construction had begun a year sooner that might actually have been an achievable goal. Not that it really would've mattered much, since there weren't a lot of surface ships left to fight at that point.
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An absolutely excellent telling of not only CAPT Johnny Walker's introduction to a/s warfare, but of that HG battle. As an A/S officer, CAPT Walker is still, after 80 years, a hero of mine, and I have, from Mrs. Walker, his page of his as=it--happened bridge clipboard notes of that very convoy. Plus a pair of his dividers he kept in his pocket to measure chart distances, as. in the uproar of continuous battle he could never find the navigator's pair! His motto - preparedness!
CDR (TAS) F M McKee, RCNVR/RCN(R)/CFR, etc.!
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I noticed a sign that said "A.P. and H.E.". HE are nose-fuzed shells with large explosive charges and usually rather small penetration ability through any armor more than at most 0.25 times the shell's diameter (if using a base fuze, too, or a very short delay in the nose fuze, which would be strengthened in this case) -- US "High Capacity" (HC) shells, their HE terminology, had in most cases both a nose fuze, could be removed and replaced by a hardened steel nose plug to allow the base fuze to function, or switched for a time fuze (VT (radar proximity) fuzes were permanent for HC shells so equipped due to requiring different shell nose designs and protective covers) -- and were used for shore bombardment or AA (with a time fuze) or firing at very lightly-protected enemy ships. Armor-Piercing (AP),, using a very small explosive charge and thick casing for punching through very thick armor, for British 6" guns in WWII is something that I did not know that they had. Original terminology was CPBC (Common, Pointed, Ballistically Capped) which meant what was later renamed to be SAP (Semi-Armor-Piercing) due to having an explosive charge midway between AP and HE and using a base fuze much like an AP shell but not having an Armor-Penetrating Cap (APC, as in all larger British naval guns in WWII) and thus would not work very well against the cruisers and battleships that had face-hardened ("Cemented" in British terminology of WWI and WWII) armor that could shatter the nose of uncapped shells due to impact shock if not protected by a properly-designed AP Cap (hardened after WWI experience with soft caps was less than satisfactory in actual use). The larger British WWII 8" SAP shells, termed "SAPC", did have such a cap and, while not designed to penetrate thick armor like a true APC shell, could be relied on to penetrate most cruiser and some lighter battleship Cemented plating, when used -- the 6" CPBC could do this only for softer non-cemented armor, which was the major type used in most cruisers built prior to the late-1930s. Was a capped or uncapped AP shell added to the British 6" guns for use against more heavily protected enemy ships later on?
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The captain (and naval commanders in general) had two big problems with the design. The worst was the ship carried 30 shells composed of "desensitized blasting gelatin", a combination of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. The were only desensitized to the extent this volatile mixture was somewhat protected by their brass or steel shells and fired using compressed air. The ammunition was carried in a magazine with about an inch of "armor" which was really just sheet iron. Estimates from amorers were even a near miss by a large shell like one of eleven or twelve inch shells Drach talked about would be enough to set off the nitro in at least one or two shells. Once that happened, the propagating shock effect would have set off the entire magazine. As was said at the the time, the upside to this was neither rescue efforts nor funeral expenses would be involved for the crew, since the resulting explosion would have been rather like a miniature HMS Hood blast.
In addition to the dangers of sailing a ship filled with poorly protected and only marginally stable explosives into action, it doesn't take many measurements of the hull and freeboard compared to average wave heights, even in the Caribbean, to realized this vessel was much more like a coastal yacht than an ocean going warship. The vessel took green water over the bow in even moderate seas due to the low freeboard, and much of that water would go directly down the gun tubes if the barrel plugs weren't in place. This is a pretty obvious issue for a ship that would need to be pointed toward a target with the barrels unplugged during combat. The very fine curve to the stern was needed to achieve the relatively high speed of 20 knots in a 252 long vessel with only 3,200 horsepower worth of engines The stern shape caused large waves to backfill over the stern in a following sea, This made the stern 3 pounder gun unusable and flooded the below decks spaces through the large ventilators on the stern section of the main deck. While it wasn't the worst naval vessel ever built, it's usually on top ten lists for these and other faults.
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Drachinfel, you are producing excellent work. Keep it up, please.
In these times of short attention spans, the 5 minute concept seems good, but I think your audience is generally not given to such an approach.
I think many of us enjoy the greater detail offered when more time is devoted to the subject.
I love your sense of humor because you use it to make a point more vividly than literal speech would do.
If you chose to do smaller craft, I'd love to see you do an hour or so on boats that have won the America's Cup, or to cover the delightful skipjacks we have on the Chesapeake Bay.
While the use of old-growth live oak on the Constitution is fairly well known to those interested in sailing ships, another valuable American product is less well known.
In the 18th century, hemp grown in Virginia made into rope was prized for its quality.
British ships sailing to and from the Caribbean would go out of their way to stop in Hampton Roads to refit their ships with it.
One nation, I forget which (best guess - Sweden), sent her entire navy to Virginia to be fitted out with rope made of Virginia hemp.
Much good work gives you plenty to be justifiably proud of, sir.
Thank you.
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Have just stumbled across this channel (again - the first time was when it was robo-voices, and while I generally prefer to read in any case, when the options are robo-voices I'd prefer to claw my eyes out with rusty forks!) and you've got some good videos and clearly know your stuff :). Thought your review here might have been a tiny bit unfair, as I suspect (given the choice of warships and the way they were discussed) Preston actually intended the book as a 'trojan horse' into discussing significant issues of naval design and doctrine, rather than as an objective thesis of 'world's worst warship based on design relative to intended use' which was how they were generally reviewed here. The title of the book (very 'appeal to the masses') and Preston's past work (which is generally very good) also point to this. That said, other than perhaps talking at cross-purposes with the actual purpose of the book (not unlike the arguments of the Brexit camp, or reading the Bible word-for-word, or similar, one shouldn't take what is said at face value), all the points made were sound and interesting, so cheers :).
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As to rates of fire of various guns mounts on various ships. In this category, again the US Navy seems to have had some interesting developments concerning its 8"-gunned heavy cruisers in WWII. The by-the-book rate of fire of the later heavy cruisers in the US Navy was 3 rounds/minute per gun. However, there was a number of ships that got together and shared ways to greatly improve this, even though this could have gotten them into official trouble from the various controlling personnel on both ship fleet and shore stations supporting these guns. What they did was the following:
(1) Due to the high strength and quality of the gun mounts, the crew found that they could tighten up the recoil mechanism for each gun so that it returned to the loading position after firing in a very short time, cutting a few seconds from the delay.
(2) These guns still used bag powder, so after each shot, the gun barrel had to have a stream of air blasted through the gun to clear and hot fragments of the powder in it before loading could start for the next shot. They actually had a man with asbestos gloves and leg padding jump onto each gun to look down the barrel to improve the use of this air blast and cut a further few seconds off the loading time.
(3) Due to the small gun, the powder bag rate of supply was adequate from the magazines to keep up with a high firing rate (they may have sped up the powder hoist rate of climb). This was already good.
(4) The gun projectiles (260 pounds for the older ships and 335 pounds for the new 8" Mark 21 AP shells) were stored in standing rings (nose up) wrapped around the inside of the barbettes, These were supposed to be moved by a cable and clamping loading system that pulled the shell along the floor to the shell hoist. This took some time to wrap the selected shells up, pull them to the hoists, unwrap them and send them up to the guns. No more! Each gun now had a dedicated small group of men holding a cot like those used to move wounded men to the infirmary. A couple of men wedged themselves on each side of the selected shell and with their legs pushed the shell so that it fell over into the cot. The men holding the cot's handles then ran over to the hoist and slammed the shell, nose-up into the hoist for immediate movement to the gun. This saved a LOT of time.
(5) The manually-controlled power rammer that loaded the shell then the powder into the gun had its speed when pushing the shell sped up considerably (not the powder ram, though, since they were not stupid!), saving several more seconds.
As a result, the new rate of fire was FIVE (5!) rounds per minute in many of these "sailor-alt" modified guns. Captains obviously did not complain, making sure that nobody from outside tried to say they were sabotaging the guns (some shore people are not very smart, it seems).
That is rather a big improvement, wouldn't you think?.
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Re warship reconstructions, you should also notice the Soviets’ reconstruction of the Imperitzia Maria class into VMF Marat and Oktobriskya Revolutsiya. Another good example of silk purses and sow’s ears, as the 4 turrets all on main deck layout meant that the superstructure could only go up not out, and that AA guns had to be installed on turret tops as there was nowhere else to put them. More successful was the modernisation of the Krasnoy Kavkaz, which added almost as many AA guns as a US Cruiser. My vote for the least successful warship reconstruction is HMS London, which ruined a perfectly good County Class CA by converting her to the cruiser version of Warspite, with consequent overloading of the ship girder resulting in chronic oil and water leaks and jamming of rotating structures that was never fully fixed.
Re use of surplus naval guns, most of the 4” and 6” guns from the Grand Fleet were recycled for shore batteries throughout the Empire (one of HMAS Adelaide’s spare 6” can still be seen on a hill above Noumea harbour) or used in WW2 on Defensively Armed Merchant Ships. And larger 9.2” British naval guns were ideal for harbour defense. WW1 provided plenty of opportunity for use of guns up to 15” on railway carriages in support of armies as the front lines were stable, allowing plenty of time for the guns to be emplaced, in a way that was not possible in WW2. The Australian War Memorial has on display a German 28cm naval gun captured on the Western Front at Amiens in WW1.
Re first use of naval radar in battle in WW2, my understanding is that this was by Graf Spee at River Plate, where she had a Seetakt gunnery radar on both the fore and after director towers. Not sure how much use it was given the battle conditions, but I read somewhere that the British government after the battle purchased the wreck of Graf Spee through intermediary scrap merchants, then sent a special intellligence team out to the Plate estuary and carefully measured the radar antenna to see what wavelength it operated on, so that its performance could be assessed and perhaps jamming measures devised. The results were then sent to London where they were promptly marked Top Secret, filed and forgotten, so that Bismark’s use of gunnery radar to fire through fog at Dorsetshire in 1941 came as a surprise to the RN. Unfortunately I cannot recall where I read this story nor vouch for its accuracy.
May I also say, thank you so much for your extraordinarily informative and interesting videos. I have learned so much. I also commend your good judgement and critical analyses. And I love your jokes. Please don’t be afraid of using humour, even if some people can’t take a joke.
Finally, could you please do a video on the RN Hawkins class cruisers? I would be particularly interested to know how the RN sailors operated a 7.5” pivot mounted gun on the open quarterdeck in mid-Atlantic with electric traverse but hand elevation and without ammunition hoists or any other mechanical aids to loading the 200 pound shells.
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Re: battleship obsolete dates, while they weren’t entirely obsolete (though definitely obsolescent) at the TACTICAL level by PH, I still stick with the idea they were fully obsolete at the STRATEGIC level before that point. The issue I have with people who defend the value of battleships in WWII is that they only look at the surface-level tactical concerns and ignore strategic implications or even why navies would want to build battleships in the first place.
You yourself pointed out the big issue with battleships as capital ships in WWII in the most recent drydock video-the many advantages of battleships over carriers (durability, firepower, ability to operate at night) as capital ships are nullified by the two big advantages carriers have (far greater range, air wings being cheaper than entire capital ships). I especially have to take issue with the idea of carriers being vulnerable to battleships at night when they cannot launch their aircraft, because the “hope” of carriers that enemy battleships won’t find them during the dark was more reality than hope; sure, there were some cases where surface forces did end up surprisingly close to enemy carrier forces during a time of darkness, but these cases also usually resulted in said surface forces being unable to find the carrier force due to the darkness (as happened during Operation C) or being unable to close the distance (as at Midway). Even if you widen the goalposts to include all battleship night engagements in general, that’s still a very situational niche in which battleships were able to serve as viable capital ships (as opposed to serving as subcapital units) in WWII.
As for supporting roles like AA and shore bombardment; yes, battleships can do these things, and in some ways they can do these things better than other warships, but in other ways they’re inferior to cruisers and destroyers in these areas. Yes, battleships offer far more firepower and can shell targets further inland compared to cruisers and destroyers, but they were also unable to get as close to shore (for more accurate fire) due to greater draft, and officers were much less willing to risk them against minefields or shore batteries. Yes, a battleship offers more stability and more concentration of fire than multiple cruisers or destroyers carrying the same number of AA weapons, but that comes at the expense of operational flexibility (since a ship can’t be in two places at once), and once it became clear air cover was the best air defence AA escort doctrine became all about picket lines and deep layered defences-and you needed a lot of smaller ships for that rather than a few capital-ship-sized AA units. Most importantly, while it’s all well and good using an old (pre-existing) capital ship as an AA carrier escort or gigantic monitor, once you start putting new battleships into service only to use them for such supporting roles it becomes a strategic pitfall: in the end you’re investing in a brand-new capital ship to use it as a destroyer or monitor. It’s a good idea to use the Standards for shore bombardment or stick a bunch of AA on Renown to use her as a carrier escort, because the Standards and Renown had been built a long time ago and you didn’t need to put further investment into building and launching them; but things like building the Iowas only for them to end up effectively as supersized Atlantas once in service weren’t such a good idea in hindsight.
The question I’m ultimately asking all the time is: ”Would any navy have authorized the construction of ANY battleship from the late 30s onwards if they were able to know ahead of time what battleships would be used for in WWII, and weighed the pros and cons?” I’m still willing to bet the answer to that is a “no”.
I do agree with the point with the USN committing heavily into carriers even before PH (the fact the Essexes were finalized in 1940 is more than enough to indicate that); I’d also point out that a lot of people have the same misconception about the IJN, assuming they kept building more and more battleships just before and during WWII while not bothering to build carriers due to wrongly assuming that ALL Japanese battleships were modern battleships (when only the Yamatos were). And of course, even with both the USN and the IJN investing heavily into carriers even before PH, they didn’t go far enough in hindsight.
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Concerning the ALGERIE discussion on exploding and accurate shells. ALGERIE, like the Italian ZARAs, had face-hardened (French high-quality Schneider et Cie. KC-type) armor, though thinner than the ZARA (kept to the weight restrictions) -- ZARA used Terni Company KC-type armor, which seems also to have been rather high quality -- unlike the German HIPPER Class, which only had comparatively thin homogeneous (Krupp Wotan Härte) armor. For thin plates, homogeneous armor is superior in that it is not brittle against SAP or AP projectile impacts. You have to have enough ductile back in KC-type armors to soak up an impact on the hard face and have enough resilience -- ability to "give" and still support the hard face layer -- to keep the plate intact long enough for the projectile nose to have time to fail first, by sideways shockwave reflection in the nose, and thin face-hardened armor does not give you that extra time cushion unless you are only being hit by small and mostly unhardened bullets (it does work in armored cars against many machinegun bullets, but those are not what ships shoot).
PART I
German APC ammo -- XXcm Psgr.m.K. L/Y,Y (where "XX" is the shell size and "Y,Y" is the shell length in calibers) -- after WWI had two generations: The "L/3,7" for the 15cm guns and the 28.3cm guns (both on the Pocket Battleships and, in the 15cm only, on the first post-WWI light cruisers through BB secondaries -- never replaced) and, in the mid-1930s, the "L/4,4" for the 20.3cm, SCHARNHORST new-model 28.3cm, 38cm, and 40.6cm coast defense and proposed but never built H-Class BBs. The former were basically "warmed-over WWI late-model APC shells with a slightly blunter nose, a pointed windscreen for better drag properties and a rather small, but now hardened AP cap (following French post-1908 and British post-Jutland design practice -- in fact, the cap looked like a shrunken version of the British Firth Company "Knob and Ring" AP cap design). It had poor penetration by later standards and broke up easily due to excess brittle body metallurgy -- reflected in the Krupp penetration charts and US post-WWII tests. The Krupp later APC shells were considerably better, with a full-size K-and-R cap shape and a long aluminum windscreen (unique windscreen material). Heavier, much better streamlining similar to modern US and British shell shapes, and with a somewhat smaller 2% (by weight) block-TNT filler (US went down to 1.5% filler and a "Russian Doll" full-body sheath hardening pattern to strengthen the shell better and the British kept the late-WWI 2.5% with a softer, bendable middle and lower body to make its shell be able to remain intact even at high angles when hitting medium-thickness armor (they made the shells work fine against "Treaty" warships, but not against more heavily armored ships). Krupp also seems to have decided that the L/3,7 shells were unsatisfactory and did a major redesign as to their metallurgy, bringing them up to US metallurgical standards, but they too seem to have accepted the "Treaty" armor as the typical enemy protection level (SCHARNHORST and BISMARCK were not the most heavily protected of WWII warships, though their new Krupp KC n/A ("New Type") armor was second to none in most cases). As such, their L/4,4 APC projectiles were somewhat of a compromise: The projectile body was a fixed tough harness level (similar to the lower body of US WWII AP shells but only a single hardness throughout), which was not all that good when hitting at highly oblique angles (not the primary spec, it seems, unlike US and British shells, though those went to opposite extremes to try to match this requirement). The nose hardness was changed considerably to similar to the US sheath hardness design with the outside being very hard and getting softer and tougher in a radial manner as one went directly inward to a point where the body and nose merged. Unlike the US design, where that gradual softening also extended down the length of the body to almost the base to strengthen the entire projectile, the Krupp pattern abruptly stopped in a single step down to the body hardness across the projectile at the lower edge of the forward bourrelet (the slightly raised ring where the projectile slide down the gun barrel with minimal erosion). US tests showed that on hitting thick armor, the nose could snap off right there, much like the old chilled cast-iron Palliser projectiles did in the late 19th Century. It worked at moderate angles and against plates similar to what the British shells worked on, but, unlike the US shells which could punch INTACT through things like the 26" VH turret face plates of YAMATO Class BBs under post-WWII 16" AP testing, against very thick plates the German shells broke up unless they hit at well above their minimum penetration velocity (reduced the time of the shock on the shell structure and minimized the deflection and twisting forces on the shell as it punched through the armor). Krupp must have realized that this step in hardness was not the best idea. but obviously it was "good enough" for current (British and French) threats ("Tradition"?).
(Continued)
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A couple of points on conning towers:
- Armour up to the 1910s still held fairly well against contemporary shells at the longer engagement ranges, so I think that conning towers could still make sense in that account. I know that there's the issue of spalling and such, but WW1 era guns were quite lacking in penetration in many cases.
- Much more importantly, a conning tower would still hold well against smaller calibre weapons, and warships often engaged others smaller than themselves. Yes, the odds are small, but if, say, King George V were to engage Admiral Hipper, the latter could easily penetrate KGVs conning tower and kill everyone inside. If that was North Carolina instead, Hipper wouldn't stand a chance at that. I'm not saying conning towers were definitely the way to go, but there's good arguments for them.
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A couple of points I'd like to add...Generally speaking, the members of the Submarine force in the US Navy are the brightest in the entire US military when taken in as a group. And, I'd further add that the test scores required for Navy Special Warfare are very high. As for galley fires...Standing joke in the Navy when we heard the "fire, fire, fire" over the 1MC ( Ship's general announcing system ), it was often a Class "C" fire ( electrical ). The one that would give you chills, was when we had a main space fire in one of the switchboard compartments on the USS Kitty Hawk in the early 90's. Fires on board ship, especially an aircraft carrier were unusual, but not as uncommon as you might think. Interesting pictures from San Diego...The ferry was soon replaced by the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge in 1969. The square-rigger is a part of the San Diego maritime museum, "Star of India" ( One of the ferry boats in the picture is a part of the Maritime museum. This is also right next to the Midway and the Navy Supply Center pier ) The paddle boat was still around in the 2000's and was a harbor dinner cruiser (forget the name, and it might still be active...It's moored, or used to be by the Charthouse restaurant right on San Diego Bay. ) The picture of the Mariner is very interesting photo. The only installation that was in that area that was there in "my time", was the Fleet ASW Training Center ( This might explain it's somewhat unusual location and it's mounting ) and the Fleet Intelligence Training Center. At this time, Convair ( General Dynamics ) had a major presence in San Diego with plants at Lindberg Field and Kearny Mesa ( Atlas missile division ), Ryan also had a plant on the field in San Diego at Lindberg on the opposite side of the field. Across the bay you can see the "double domes" seaplane hangars at NAS North Island, which at the time housed the last squadrons of P6M "Marlin" flying boats that would be retired in 1967. LOTS of aviation and Naval activity both then and now...However, much of the aviation giants have long merged or moved to different area of the country. I was stationed at NAS North Island for 12-years in 4-different commands, flying in the SH-2F and SH-60F/HH-60H as an aircrewman/rescue swimmer...So, if y'all have any questions, fire away! As an addendum, it's too bad that ADM Willis "Ching" Lee wasn't able to write his memoirs...He stand out in my mind as one of the FINEST commanders in the entire US Navy! SO SO underrated and not fully appreciated by the Navy and historians alike...By all accounts he was not only a superlative tactician, but made it a point to understand the duties and equipment of the watchstanders in the fire control and gunnery parties...Looking forward to seeing you in Camden!
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What a great video history! An interesting side story with USN destroyers were the experiments with mounting seaplanes. The first attempt was with the USS Charles Ausburn (DD-294) mounting a TS-1 floatplane in 1923. The fixed platform was inconveniently mounted directly in front of the bridge. This not only obstructed vision from the bridge but also greatly interfered from the field of fire from the forward 4" gun. Several successful flights were conducted, but the inadequate crane capacity, being needed to lower the plane and retrieve it, and the fragile nature of these early seaplanes, made the experiment generally a failure. The seaplane and platform were removed in early 1924 with the Ausburn being restored to the configuration of other Clemson class vessels.
The next attempt was aboard the US Noa (DD-343), yet another Clemson class. I realize this is slightly outside the 1939 limit of the discussion, but the plans for the seaplane mount were started in 1938, and Noa was originally scheduled for recommissioning in 1939, so close enough. Frank Knox, then Secretary of the Navy, was a great believer in the idea of using destroyers as seaplane carriers to extend their range for fleet protection and commerce raiding. To test this concept again, the Noa was taken in hand when she was recommissioned in April, 1940. She had an XSOC-1 seaplane mounted this time on a rotating platform, displacing the aft bank of torpedoes. She also had a boom with a much greater lifting capacity, and the XSOC-1 was a much more robust aircraft than her predecessors. This time the experiment was more successful, with many flights, and the ability to retrieve the plane while underway, a difficult task for a relatively small Clemson class ship. Noa retained her seaplane until November, 1941, and the generally successful experience with Noa led to Knox mandating the construction of six Fletcher class destroyers with seaplane capability, this time with catapults (!). However, as Drach would say, that's a story for another day.
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The Battle of Santiago de Cuba was not so much a battle as it was a one sided massacre of an insanely courageous, but technologically inferior Spanish squadron…. So much so that at one point, the Texas’ Captain, Jack Phillips, ordered his men to stop cheering their own success, shouting “Don’t cheer boys, those poor fellows are dying”. As soon as the Spanish ceased firing, Texas and the other ships immediately tried to rescue as many Spanish sailors as they could. Admiral Pascual de Cervera was rescued by a boat from USS Iowa, and brought aboard with full honors, Captain Robley Evans returning Cerveras sword to him, and treating him as an honored guest. Shortly after returning to Spain, it was learned that Cervera was facing a court martial, so a southern newspaper began a fund-raising campaign to buy Cervera a house in Florida, and thousands of Americans contributed, hoping to give the noble old sailor a peaceful retirement.
I guess we were just better people back then…..
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A story from my Uncle Ralph, ex Repulse B turret, on exercise of the south coast and being closed up, the turret bearing indicator sprang into life, being at "battle stations " they swung the turret onto the new bearing which was then pointing at the coast, slowly the bearing moved with B turret following, suddendly it reverse direction but continued at a steady pace of movement, so far so good, then the turret stopped, whats going on they all thought, when again the turret started to move this time quickly. Later he found there was a new Sub in the spotting top and he had seen a man walking his dog, he wondered what sort of dog it was so took a look forgetting all guns would be pointing where he was looking, It was a white dog and the man well he picked the dog up and ran for his life thinking he was going to be blown to kingdom come . My uncle had many good stories to tell, unfortunately he had a bad accident on board and was invalided out of the navy before WW2.
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The 16" Mark 5 AP shell shown first was BARE-NOSED, having lost both its AP cap and its windscreen. Those shallow pits ringing the lower nose are used to crimp the AP cap onto the nose in addition to the use of low-temperature solder (safety first!).
The 16" Mark 8 AP shell that had its lower end gone had detonated, blowing its lower body into chunks inside the JEAN BART. The small (1.5% weight) Explosive "D" filler used, coupled with the extra-long shell to get the 2700 pound weight of the Mark 8, caused the upper end of the shell to remain in one piece, though the shorter, lighter Mark 5 would probably have had its nose broken up, too (not certain). This was not the only Mark 8 shell recovered from JEAN BART and a few had not deto0nated properly, which was what lead the US Navy to find out that their new Mark 21 Base Detonating Fuze, used in all US Navy WWII AP shells duri9ng WWII, was being compromised by fumes from the Explosive "D" filler so coating the fuzes in liquid Bakelite plastic during manufacture from mid-1943 was needed to make the fuzes air-tight and preventing the corrosion.
The Mark 8 also used crimping as well as solder for its AP cap. Note that both of the 16" AP shells had somewhat long and pointed noses with only the tips rounded. Later MODs (versions) of both shells had nearly hemispherical noses and somewhat thicker and harder AP caps, with the 16" Mark 8 MOD 6 (last version) being the strongest AP shell ever made, to my knowledge.
Note where the windscreen attachment threads cut into the AP cap are on the Mark 8 with no windscreen. They were cut into the softer portion of the cap near its base. This design was used in all early-WWII AP cap/windscreen designs used by the US Navy; later designs had the windscreen shortened and threaded to the very hard upper edge of all of the AP caps, the same as used in all foreign WWII AP caps. This made the cap somewhat wider and heavier and put a sharp edge on the rim of the AP cap hard front face that cut a notch into the plate surface and improved deck penetration at an angle over 50 degrees from right angles. US NPG kept doing tests throughout WWII and any improvements that they noted were added to the design requirements of the later-WWII AP shells.
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For age of sail book recommendations 00:35:30 I'll throw out a couple of suggestions, but only for those people who really get into the subject; because some of these books can be difficult to find and can be very expensive.
Great Ships: The Battle Fleet of Charles II by Frank L. Fox - This is IMO the best reference book on warships of the mid to late 17th century.
A Distant Storm: The Four Days Battle of 1666 by Frank L. Fox - You want to get an understanding of the largest and longest naval battle of the Anglo-Dutch Wars and how these huge fleets maneuvered and fought, this is it. There is also a less expensive version of the same book; I guess it's an abridged version, simply titled The Four Days Battle of 1666.
The Seventy-Four Gun Ship: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Naval Architecture (4 Volume set) by Jean Boudriot - Do you want to build a 74-gun ship of the line from the ground up and maintain it? This will include learning exactly what kind of dock yard facilities you will require, and every type of wood and hemp rope; and how much, you will need for every part of the ship. Plus, as a bonus you will also learn exactly what type of iron you will need to mine; because a specific crystallization pattern is required for some metal parts. You will also learn to man and provision your new late 18th century terror of the seas. If that sounds enticing and you have money to burn, these are the books for you.
I just have the first two volumes and it was cheaper to purchase them at the Musée de la Marine in Paris and mail them home, but that was a number of years ago.
John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme Richard: A Reconstruction of the Ship and an Account of the Battle With H.M.S. Serapis by Jean Boudriot. A much less expensive; though not cheap, book on a more limited and specific subject, but really in depth. The amount of research done on the ship itself is freaky amazing. This author has a number of interesting books, I wish more of them were translated into English.
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Gato class submarines weren't like those from other nations, but paved the way for future innovations and alterations of design for everyone. A) Bigger hulls can carry more in terms of specialists and specialist equipment. Wartime patrols from all nations with submarines found strange bedfellows and fellow travelers aboard at the worst moments. B) Air Conditioning (Crew Comfort +1), C) Onboard Refrigeration. Without a doubt, USN submariners ate the best. (Crew Comfort+1), D) Better sensors for surface operations. RaDAR was a luxury few other nations could afford to mount on their submarines. Few will deny that RaDAR for target detection and shadowing was the greatest advantage of all. And, since most submarine existence was on the surface (the U-waffe was effectively neutered once the British concentrated surface and airborne ASW patrols just outside of Brest. Put simply: submerged transit was exhaustively expensive in time and fuel. That defeated the U-Boat arm BEFORE ElInt and code-breaking is factored in.). Good show, you lot. E) better weaponry for fighting it out when surprised or unable to dive. Surface weapons on submarines were effective; torpedoes were hugely expensive. They were the sexiest (highest sticker price) budget item for individual rounds, other than wunderwaffe. Many, many, many, submarines resorted to deck guns during patrols, especially early on (for almost everyone), and near the end (for the USN). This truth has been overshadowed by submersible fanboiz, who favor the torpedo (perhaps the most inaccurate way to deliver a single warhead ever*) in their popularist accounts. Remember, submarines of the period were surface ships, not Aquaman: they were slow and relatively unmaneuverable when submerged. E) Gatos were better sea boats than the submarines of other nations, able to maintain a higher speed for longer in an open seaway. As Drachinifel points out, T-Class were very short ranged for fleet boats. This precludes their effective integration into the PTO . . . which was one third of the war for the UK (unless you ask Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Australia, or New Zealand), and half of the war for the USA**.
The downside to the larger boats should be included in any look, of course. For one thing, Gatos (and Typ IX, and B1) had longer diving times (not that much longer in practice, btw), and were more awkward when maneuvering in close spaces. Drachinifel also rightly points out that UK and, especially, Deu, boats could run a bit deeper (considerably deeper for the Deutschers) with confidence. This can be very effective in keeping you alive . . . once you're trapped and held down by enemy ASW assets. Which is the one thing EVERY submarine commander wants to avoid. It's also more of a tribute to your welding and packing gland technology than it is to the metal of your hull.
*I am talking CEP here. One did not use a V2 on a ship at sea. And Tallboys NEVER hit fish, whales, or dolphins . . or invisible wreckage or chunks of floating ice) on their way to target. Further, no dropped iron bomb ever circled around to strike the bomber who dropped it (though a few bounced). Also, air currents do not divert bombs with anything like the effect that water currents have on torpedo tracks. And, of course, bombs aren't near as likely to porpoise.
** And here is where code-breaking really came into its own. Both Germany and Japan were interested in trading materials and tech. Several trading missions were perpetrated through submarine means; only one of these really came through and that but partially. Google I-51 for more on that. These submarine missions of military mercy were intercepted, in the main, thanks to a combination of code-breaking and SonoBouy+FIDO tactical coordination. So that extreme long radius of action of fleet boats (for IJN, KM, and USN types) should not be discounted or marginalized.
Finally, never underestimate the effect that crew comfort has on combat efficiency, which is not quite congruent with, but heavily affects, efficacy.
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Hi Drach, great work as usual :) I'd like to submit a video idea, if I may? The life of a warship, of whatever you think is most appropriate, from design to construction (building the hull, launching, fitting out, what happens in a commissioning ceremony, what happens with the shakedown cruise etc), then at the end of its life (sending into ordinary, decommissioning and scrapping etc). I have to confess I'm fascinated with naval history but although I know of the existence of all these steps I don't know what a lot of them entail.
Thanks again! :)
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I'm not sure the Didio class was equal to the Atlanta class for some antiaircraft roles. It wasn't until the Bellona subclass that the 5.25" turrest finally remote power control (RPC) and the High Angle Control System (HACS) Mark VI combined with the type 275 radar with blind fire capability that the 5.25" gun was able to achieve the role that it did best the Atlanta's, that of firing at very high altitude aircraft. The RPC reduced the turret crew from 12 to 10, allowing more room in a cramped turret. Combined to the maximum AA ceiling of over 40,000 feet compared to the 5"/38 of about 37,000 feet, and having a higher bursting chage and weight of explosives, and an increased one minute 10 RPM, the HMS Black Prince was able to hit Japanese bombers flying at 36,000 feet and drive off Japanese snoopers flying at 40,000 feet while she was off Okinawa. This was a major shock to the Japanese, who had been able to fly safely at high altitude, out of range of the 5"38 guns.
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I hade a reeeeally cool chemistry teacher in the Swedish equivalent to junior high.
In ninth grade he let us make guncotton. We even got to make it twice, since they got the formula wrong the first time.
My friend and I were lab partners, and we actually did discover something important about the process.
While the proportions of the acids is critical to actually get guncotton, the quality is largely determined by how thoroughly you soak the cotton in the acid, and, importantly, how thoroughly you wash the acid out.
Me and my friend did both steps very thoroughly (the teacher let us stay in the lab for almost an hour after class to finish), and we ended up with a top quality product that burned incredibly cleanly.
We found this out when we were testing the guncotton in the next lab session.
We had a glass petri dish full of the stuff to one side, a ball of very loose cotton fluff about the size of a fist. We took small pieces off and set fire to them in a metal dish on the other side of the bench, about a metre away.
One of those pieces combusted so explosively that it shot itself across the table in a split second, landing in the petri dish.
The whole classroom lit up in a yellow flame about a metre tall, and all that was keft was an almost invisible yellowish/brownish residue burned into the surface of the glass.
Most other lab pairs had lumps of slightly sour-smelling cotton that did not burn nearly as well.
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I live in Boston, and love your channel. Every weekend morning I wake up early before my family does. I get coffee, and then lock myself in my modelling workshop. All the while listening to your channel while I work. About a year ago I believe I commented on visiting Boston for its museum fleet. I assume you'll be going to the Boston Navy Yard to board the USS Constitution, and tour the USS Cassin Young. As well as touring the heavy cruiser USS Salem in Quincy. The Salem is only open on the weekends and you must buy a ticket to tour the ship. Battleship Cove, the USS Massachusetts, USS Joseph P. Kennedy Jr, USS Lionfish as well as the PT Boat displayed inside is well worth the hour drive south from Boston. I also suggest you hit the Lizzie Borden House Museum. It's not on topic, but it is definitely worth the visit because it 1-2 blocks from the main entrance of Battleship Cove. You are going to love it in Massachusetts. P.S. If on your way back to England you stop in Boston again, I would love to show you the lesser known naval history sites, Ft. Warren, Ft. Independence, the dozens of abandoned coastal artillery sites, the Tea Party Museum and ship, hit me up.
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#Drachinifel - thanks for the clarification on IHP & SHP. Yes, in turbine plants, it's impossible to find where they hid the pistons. I would finish the discussion with this note, as ships with steam turbine plants have an SHP spec:
Upon leaving the yards (after initial construction or overhaul,) threw ship goes out for sea trials. As with IHP, the design anticipates certain performance, and the ship's actual performance is measured, with certain corrections for wind, current, increase in ship's displacement with age (sure to paperwork, systems and "stuff" — no joke!) Electrical load, fuel burn, air temperature (for combustion,) etc.
Results of the trials go into files for reference. Operationally speaking, the most visible numbers are max speed and speed versus shaft RPM. Less visible to operators but significant logistically is fuel burn rate versus speed.
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The rather poor terminology describing damage from shell impacts is not only in battle damage, but maddeningly also in many design and acceptance testing at Proving Grounds. Only a few personnel seem to have been trained or had enough common sense to realize that test results have to be described in considerable detail to sort out various causes and their results to allow later engineers to be able to try to come up with improvements to reduce excessive damage to, say, a new AP shell. Just saying that a projectile went from being "broken" to being broken "badly" is not helping, as I have considerable experience in such testing documents. It wasn't until I finally got a thick set of photographs of US AP shell tests against US Carnegie-Krupp Cemented (CKC) Class "A" armor in 1917 from the "Mark Twain Scrapbook" in the US Navy BuORD National Archives files for the last year it was at Indian Head, Maryland, before moving to its final location near Dahlgren, Virginia, that I was able to sort such things out well enough to understand what was happening to the armor and the shells on impact. Later improvements in scientific research principles by the Dahlgren personnel were also much of an improvement, especially the very high level of documentation by Dr. Allen V. Hershey, the head of the Ballistics Calculation Division, who led in the development of improved armor and gun projectiles for the US Navy during WWII and after.
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In terms of the 'maritime Hobart's Funnies', the smaller vessels used by the Allies during the Overlord operations merit mention, although mostly smaller than true 'ships'.
Peter Scott's flotilla of Denny steam gunboats were all 'converted' prior to D-Day into fast minesweepers; as far as I can tell, these were basically just using their considerable speed to produce waves which would detonate pressure mines safely without the boat still being horribly over the weapon when it blew. So that's an interesting 'misuse' of a fighting vessel.
Others of note were the various LCT conversions, which included LCFs (Landing Craft, flak) - an LCT mk 2 to 4 with the lank deck taken up by copious 2-pdr and 20mm guns for close-in AA defence of the landing forces. One of the early versions even received a pair of twin 4-inch HA guns as found on early 'L'-class destroyers or Hunts as main armament.
LCGs (Landing Craft, Gun) were a combination gunboat/monitor conversion with two destroyer guns mounted singly on the tank deck, with the later LCG(M) (LCG Medium) being slightly smaller and purpose-designed with two echeloned 17-pdr gun turrets, as well as ballast tanks which allowed them to be flooded down to ground at known map references so they could then act as fixed inshore artillery batteries to either support the troops with predicted fire missions or even indirect point fire missions on call from the troops ashore's liaison officers.
LCT(R) were the famous floating rocket batteries, again converted from LCTs for fire support to the troops ashore (carrying out suppression/barrage missions).
And of course, several of the smaller landing craft were modified into gunboats for direct fire support during the landing phase itself. Small numbers of Fairmile 'H' type LCIs were given a Valentine tank turret with 6-pdr gun for this role, and other small craft had 4-inch smoke mortars added, becoming smokescreen layers instead of assault troop carriers.
Perhaps my favourite is the inventive use of the old and, by 1944, very redundant Holman Projector (steam or pneumatically-operated anti-aircraft hand grenade launcher); this was modified for use as a grapnel projector and was mounted in LCVPs used by the US Army Rangers in their assault on Pointe du Hoc.
Intended to fie a line up the cliff to allow the troops to rapidly scale the face to reach their objective, it's not clear that they functioned as well as anticipated, but they were mounted for that purpose and so these handful of LCVPs became the maritime equivalent of the famous ARK ramp tank, being there especially to help their team get past an obstacle to reach their objective.
EDIT: Who can forget the famous German Sperrbrecher, either? Mercantile hulls, modified to withstand mine blasts forward without sinking straight away, they had not just sweep gear for general minesweeping duties, but also the very famous blisters either side of the forward hull, filled with buoyant materials like kapok, so that if they did hit a mine, they would only partially sink before the blisters took the strain and kept the bow up, hopefully just far enough.
This enabled their use as 'mine bumpers' when leading U-boats in and out of their Atlantic bases, or when escorting convoys and blockade runners up the the Channel; all areas which were extensively & constantly mined by the British.
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An interesting thing about the British 9.2" guns used for coast defense in WWII. These guns were repurposed WWI-era British Navy guns for the most part. During the late 1930s a new Mark 12B (long windscreen) APC shell was developed for these guns that weighed the same as the original APC shell of WWI use and even retained the same 3.8% Shellite filler size (instead of the original Lyddite filler). One would think that the new shell, because of the large 8internalk cavity by WWII British standards (2.5% was used in the new battleship APC shells, mostly Shellite with TNT with beeswax for the 16" Mark IB APC, as used in the smaller WWII British cruiser-size anti-armor shells, 6" CPBC and 8" SAPC). However, the 9.2" Mark 12B APC shells were made to the same standards as the larger WWII battleship shells and, amazingly, had the same armor penetration ability as the larger shells did. While British WWII APC was rather soft and bent rather than broke in many cases when hitting thick face-hardened armor, the fact that this 9.2" shells large cavity did not compromise the anti-armor capability of these APC shells in worth noting. It seems that the improve WWII British AOC shell design, while unable to penetrate really thick armor due to the bending on impact, actually was superior to many other designs when hitting more reasonable armor thicknesses up to about caliber thickness. Don't use it against things like YAMATO or the turrets of US WWII battleships, but otherwise these new 9.2" APC shells were quite effective against their expected targets.
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1- Dubuque, Iowa is pronounced Dew-Bewk.
2 - USN vs Bismarcll -
) In 1941, the North Carolina's crew would have been mainly regulars and long service reservists - men with experience - few would have been conscripts as the first inductees weren't drafted until November 1940. So they may well have been farther along in learning their new ship than the totally green crews later in
CV7 USS Wasp was part of the Atlantic Fleet in 1941 and carried 100 aircraft and was commissioned in April 1940. By May 1941, she would had over a year in service - longer than Bismarck - and would have been well worked up. Even if she didn't carry any TBD's , she could have carried two squadrons of fighters (40 aircraft) and three of dive bombers (60) and along with CV4 Ranger's single fighter squadron and three dive bomber squadrons, giving the USN Atlantic Fleet 120 strike aircraft against two ships (Prinz Eugen being the other KM vessel). The planes would have been a mixture of monoplane SB2U's and biplane SBC's - both carrying 1,000 pound AP or HE bombs. US doctrine called for the deck load strike - hurling all your aircraft in one mighty blow against the enemy. So the Bismarck could face up to 60 attackers at one time - 120 if the two US carriers managed to coordinate (doctrine said US carriers should operate in separate task forces) The bridge and fire control systems of both ships would almost assuredly be damaged or destroyed under that sort of attack, leaving them vulnerable to the North Carolina and any or all of the CA31 USS Augusta, CA37 USS Tuscaloosa and CA45 USS Wichita.
3. The most important product from Chile in 1917 were nitrates for use in explosives and as fertilizer. For many years - and maybe still today - the principal supplier of beef to the UK was Argentina - absolutely vital in war time. Don't forget all those gauchos riding the pampas!.
4. 2-41 the Radars are CXAM long range air search (bed spring at the fore top, the first USN radar set) and Mark 4 5 inch fire control on the front of the Mark 33 director aboard CV4 USS Ranger early WW2
5. All the German 15cm guns were actually 14.94 cm
6.Drach ignores the primary route to becoming a ship's carpenter. Completing an apprenticeship in a Royal Dockyard and applying for a warrant from the Navy Board. "Although it was possible to serve an apprenticeship afloat as Carpenter's Crew and Carpenter's Mate, the majority qualified as shipwrights in the dockyards before going to sea, and some of the Master Shipwrights and their Assistants were former Carpenters who had returned to the yards."
7. Don't forget the Cinque Ports - "By 1135, the term Cinque Ports had come into use; and in 1155 a royal charter established the ports to maintain ships ready for the Crown in case of need. "
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Drach, a super job on a much-neglected aspect of naval warfare...from W.W.II to today. A few points to reinforce what you presented:
- Quantity has a quality of its own. You briefly mentioned crew size, but it is more important than most think. Look at crew sizes of Taiho and Franklin. About 2x the number on U.S. ships. Real DC takes time...lots of time, and that takes bodies. Individuals cannot fight fires for long periods, particularly in the enclosed spaces of warships. Rotation is essential. Likewise, large crew sizes allow compensation for casualties. Many of today's navies have lost this insight. Fighting for cost savings and efficiency, and putting too much emphasis on automated systems, they have justified much smaller crews. Fine for peacetime operations, but disastrous in combat.
- Ability to learn. You hit this hard...well done. I would offer two books that help illuminate why the USN had such a learning culture going into the war: Trent Hone's "Learning War" and Norman Friedman's "Winning a Future War." Bottom line is that the USN cultivated a learning and adaptable culture from the beginning (at least as early as 1907). This is the reason the USN only suffered what it did in the early part of the war rather than more catastrophically. The learning culture resulted in very rapid capture of lessons learned (in all aspects of naval warfare) and equally rapid distribution of those lessons to the fleet in the form of doctrine. PAC-10 of mid-1943 standardized doctrine, facilitated plug-n-play organization (task organized forces), and allowed rapid introduction of new ships into the fleet. It presented a "school solution", but could not have been as good as it was without the pre-war learning and agile culture.
- Every sailor a damage control sailor. The USN started that in W.W.II and still adheres to it. This has continuously proven itself in combat and peacetime incidents. There are two key factors that make this work. (1) Individual initiative is still important...but initiative conditioned by good training and effective doctrine. (2) The good training part. USN started its firefighting school during W.W.II in San Francisco. It's primary purpose was to convince sailors that they COULD beat fire; much the secondary purpose was to teach the techniques. Today's navies forget the former at great risk.
- Carriers vs. the rest. Roger your point on why you focused on carriers. Plus, I suspect there is more material. And, after all, perhaps no other ship but a carrier could lose 800+ men and still sail home on its own power. But there are incredible stories about smaller ships that survived horrendous damage, such as the light cruiser Houston (see John Miller's "Battle to Save the Houston") or the destroyer Laffey (see John Wukovits "Hell From the Heavens"). Combining large ship DC with that of smaller ships further emphasizes y our point that DC (people, procedure, tech) makes a huge difference. This is increasingly important as a corrective to the currently more prevalent idea that DC is defeatist and, in the face of modern weapons, useless.
- Installed vs portable systems. In the case of the Franklin, you mention that portable equipment allowed them to fight fires until power was restored. In my read of the Franklin damage report, I thought I saw that some firemain pressure was maintained by an installed backup diesel-powered pump. There were two installed, one forward and one aft. The forward one ran for a couple of days (?) without any human operators and allowed effective containment of the fires. The distinction between portable and installed backup is an important element of the redundancy you rightly emphasize.
- Redundancy. So very critical to controlling battle damage. And, as you mention, the ability to isolate sub-systems is equally critical. Sometimes ship design cuts corners on both of these factors, and while that's ok for peacetime steaming, it can spell disaster in war. As such, this kind of cost cutting is a silent killer.
- Kaga photo. Thanks for that picture of Kaga burning. Had never seen it before.
- Falklands. I know you focus mostly on earlier history, but it would be useful to compare and contrast W.W.II USN/IJN DC with that of the RN in the Falklands War. Could even throw in some of the USN's recent DC history (Cole, Samuel B. Roberts, Stark, etc.).
Again, thank you for tackling this issue and doing so in such a brilliant fashion!
Gerry
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wrt the question about RN secondaries, seems the reversion to 4" on the Renowns and Courageouses was due to Jackie Fisher's involvement in the design of those classes, as he believed that a quick firing 4" was a better choice than a casemate mounted 6". As soon as Fisher was no longer involved in designs, the RN reverted to a heavier secondary on the Nelsons. I did a bit of comparison between the USN 5"/51 and the dual 4"/50 that was experimented with on a few USN destroyers. The guns had the same rate of fire, but the 4" was a twin. The 5" had slightly better armor penetration, but the DDs the secondaries were intended to fend off were not armored. They had virtually the same range. The single 5"/51 and twin 4"/50s, guns plus mount, weight virtually the same. Creating a hypothetical USN DP 4" mount, cutting the 4"/50 down to 45 caliber to reduce the moment of inertia, and mounting them on a copy of the RN DP mount used with the British 4"/45 Mk 16 in the mid 30s, would give a twin mount that weighed less than the combination of a 5"/51 and a 5"/25 that modernized USN standards were equipped with in the 1930s, while providing twice as many guns in each role, while leaving the 01 deck clear, for installation of additional light AA.
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Fascinating vid, Drach - I like the esoteric tangents as much as the 'deep' naval topics. Many thanks.
Living within bus-ride distance of Wool and Bovington, I'd love to make it to TankFest, but I have a horrible feeling I'll be cleaning holiday caravans over that weekend as usual - bills and all.
Which is quite the shame, as there are a bunchette of related 'army/navy' sidebars & ideas that I'd really enjoy discussing with you; from the Buffalo's origins as one of the alphabet soup of small landing vessels (putting their origin somewhere on the clade with the Higgins boats?), to the use of ex-air-force prototype anti-tank guns as boat guns courtesy of Rolls-Royce again (and how that links to a VC of particular renown) and, well a whole bunch of stuff. Including the use of Army AA rockets as equipment on coast-defence AA paddle-steamers.
But, like I say, probably can't get the time off.
You're a very busy man, but I would love to chat sometime, so maybe if there were some way of DM'ing or similar, who knows?
Keep up the good work and excellent content; I enjoy your pragmatic take on things and your lawyerly avoidance of selling false impressions in your narratives.
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If you think landships are cool, ever heard of submarines with tank tracks? Russia, Germany, and the US all had minisub designs for crawling along the sea floor in the early 1900s, Russia even had one in the 1980s (look up hisutton, "Russian Tracked Submarines Baltic 1980s").
It's really hard to research though, I don't know what has changed with Google and other search engine algorithms, I used to be able to easily find them and today it took ages.
One example of a US tracked sub was the Defender. The Germans had the Seeteufel in WWII, and I know I had a picture of a WWI design with heavy tracks sitting on land, implying it was amphibious, but now I can't find it at all.
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Concerning water impacts: Windscreens made of thin sheet steel are screwed on either to the shell nose lower edge, or to the AP cap or to a "Hood" (a thin mild-steel cap-like nose covering soldered to the nose to allow the windscreen to be screwed on without cutting weakening threads into the nose itself, as had been done in the original windscreen-equipped AP and base-fuzed Common shells with less-than-desirable results as to nose breakage). In many cases they are strong enough to remain intact and attached to the projectile nose (US windscreens had to have holes cut into them with thin metal covers to allow the water to enter them on ocean impact when using dye bags). German Navy Krupp WWII L/4.4 AP shells, the last version of their AP ammo, had aluminum windscreens that shattered on impact with anything solid, including water, to prevent them from applying any leverage on the AP cap that might loosen it -- Krupp also used a super-strong high-temperature solder not used by anyone else to attach all of its AP caps from just prior to WWI, so it seems that Krupp must have had some bad soldering experiences early-on and vowed to never let it happen again. The Japanese Type 88 and later Type 91 "diving" AP shells with the break-away windscreens and nose or, if used, AP cap tips, obviously did not worry about the windscreen after hitting the ocean.
Pointed noses are bad underwater due to the high forces generated by turbulence as the shell tries to move nose-first as it did in the air (also, the shell is no longer moving at supersonic speed in the water, due to water's much higher speed of sound). Since the conical nose has a large angled surface area located far away from the shell's center-of-gravity, the spin of the shell is no longer strong enough to cause it to remain going nose-first and it tumbles, with the spin now making it rotate in all sorts of complex ways, drastically increasing drag. Flat noses, even somewhat-tapered flat noses like in the Japanese shells, force the water to move radially sideways in a "cavitation bubble" surrounding the shell and close up behind it's short body, so there is nothing to push the shell from its nose-first orientation, allowing a much longer rather straight or only mildly-nose-up underwater path before its fuze blows it up or it slows enough to just sink downward. While hits where the shells are falling at a steep-enough angle to dive into the water and stay there for a long period before, if not hitting at a steep-enough angle, coming back up due to the pressure difference on the top and bottom surface of the shell, will usually have the base fuze activated (barring a dud due to manufacturing error), if the shell hits at a shallow-enough angle to immediately ricochet off of the water with minimal immersion time, the base fuzes are almost never activated.
Even Japanese Type 91 AP shells designed for such water impact, as mentioned, if they ricochet upward due to too-shallow a hit (under 7 degrees angle of fall or so), will usually become duds from such hits: This was shown when an 8" Type 91 AP shell skipped off the water short of the USS SOUTH DAKOTA and its windscreen, removable bluntly-pointed "Cap Head" (for direct hit penetration of thick homogeneous, ductile armor, which was the only kind used by Japanese cruisers), and nose-first (but wobbling like a corkscrew) body, diverged from one-another and made a Mickey Mouse head (no joke!) punched into the side of the amidships lower superstructure of the US battleship and the inert projectile body moved through that lower superstructure in the sideways direction, tearing entirely through the ship, making holes and slots in bulkheads, tearing off a heavy safe's door, and finally punching a deep dent and partial hole into the back of one of the 5"/38 armored twin mounts on the far side of the ship, before falling to the deck, where it was quickly thrown over the side by a damage-control party. This same thing happened to some US AP shells fired at JEAN BART that skipped off that ship's armor at high obliquity and ended up inert in the city of Casablanca behind the port, though some of these inert US base fuzes might have been defective due to filler fumes. Very high impact angles are not good for fuze operation, ever.
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Q&A CLARIFICATION
I guess I should clarify. I was primarily asking about the placement of Bofors VS the 5 inch gun mounts on different US carriers in line with the island and funnel. For example, Lexington and Saratoga both had 8 inch gun mounts(because of the surface threat at the time in the '30's), but they were replaced with 5 inch guns on Lexington (?) and Bofors mounts on Saratoga, i think. May be the other way around. I was wondering why the US might have changed it on different vessels of the same class, as i have the basic understanding of AA down. It may just be that the early war mid range AA was, lets be honest, bad. Granted, I think its better than the Japenese 25 MM gun, but that's not saying much.
If i'm honest, it should probably be a good idea to make a video on AA for most of those who dont understand why Flak is a huge deal, for example the difference between the british "pom pom" mounts and the US quad Bofors between the German Flak guns and the other nations.
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Sme less-well-known things about this topic:
(1) The US Navy until well after WWII and both the Bureau of Ordnance (BuOrd, later NavOrd) and Bureau of Ships (BuShips/Navships, combined Bureau of Engineering (propulsion mostly) and Bureau of Construction and Repair (ship design, maintenance, and overhaul) in 1941)) were combined into Naval Sea Systems Command (NavSea) had BuOrd handle face-hardened armor (all of it, no matter where on the ship, called "Class 'A'" armor) and all armor on major gun mounts and on the conning tower (if homogeneous, ductile type, it was "Class 'B'" armor), while BuShips handled armor; BuC&R/BuShips called it Protective Deck Plating (PDP) or Special Treatment Steel (STS) when applied to the hull and secondary gun mounts and so forth -- it was always homogeneous, ductile armor (virtually identical to Class 'B' BuOrd armor and made solely by the Carnegie Steel Corporation (later, Carnegie-Illinois Corporation and still later, US Steel), while all BuOrd armors were made by this company plus The Midvale Company and Bethlehem Steel Corporation to almost identical specs. You would think that BuOrd would also control the specs for such things as fire-control gear and all things related to it, but >>>unfortunately<<< this was not true: BuEng and then BuShips/NavShips was given the control of NAVIGATING and DAMAGE CONTROL equipment, which also used many of this same type of information. We thus have, as with ship armor, a "rice bowl" issue when the equipment for such things was being designed and installed aboard ship (pitch and roll and ship speed and so forth, both in measuring and in DISPLAY/USE equipment). in some things, no matter how important and seemingly simple, NEITHER bureau would give an inch, which is stupidity incarnate but this "I'm from Missouri" stand-off was true until NavSea eventually fixed it by mandate on new designs well after WWII. What kind of things did this head-butting affect? Well, one of the most important things needed to do navigation and ship damage control and maintenance, as well as gun fire control, is the PITCH of the hull (up/down tilt of the ship lengthwise). In measuring this, you can define the BOW UP ANGLE as POSITIVE or as NEGATIVE in your displays and navigating/fire-control equipment. BuOrd and BuShips had these OPPOSITE!!!!!!!!!! So one device would show and >>>USE<<< a PLUS value if it was one bureau's pitch-sensitive device and a MINUS if the other bureau's device. You would think that somebody, like the Chief of Naval Operations, would have had them flip a coin and only use one value from then on, but no, as mentioned. Thus, as this pitch data was transmitted through the ship from the gyroscope/tilt meter where it was measured to wherever it was used/displayed -- ship bridge, damage-control central, combat information central, all fire-control equipment, various weapon mounts (both main guns and secondary guns), etc. -- the electrical cables transmitting that information >>>HAD TO BE PHYSICALLY REVERSED<<< (by hand during installation and maintenance) if it passed through one bureau's equipment space to the other bureau's equipment space!!!! Back and forth as the signal was moved through different parts of the ship. As you can imagine, mistakes were made in such things A LOT and wringing out such errors caused headaches to both designers of said equipment and the ship personnel who tried to keep it working. As Einstein said, while genius has its limits, not so with stupidity...
(2) One of the pieces of information that own ship speed and direction and enemy ship speed and direction affected was ARMOR PENETRATION. You would think that ships are going so slowly compared to a gun projectile that this can be ignored (and it usually was in most fire-control systems), but this can affect penetration in two ways. First, the impact velocity changes, since you have to add or subtract the speed of both ships to the speed of the shell in the air (muzzle velocity is affected by own ship speed) and the speed of the enemy ship along the line of fire of the shell. This is small compared to its terminal velocity when it hits the enemy target, but if two ships are moving directly at on e-another at 30 knots each, we get a 60 knot (somewhat less for the firing ship speed as the shell slows with air resistance and the angle of fall has to be adjusted for here too, of course), we get 60 knots closing speed that is 1.6875 ft/sec x 60 =101.25 ft/sec (30.861 m/sec) higher than the nominal average range-table velocity value of the shell at the given range. This is minor, but might be important against deck armor when hitting at a very oblique angle at closer ranges. Another effect, mostly ignored too, is the YAW of the shell caused by this change in the velocity horizontally, but not vertically. This causes the shell to act like it was tilted somewhat compared to a perfect nose-on motion along its trajectory (though not really true, since it may be spiraling ("nutating") slightly as air pressure on the shell, especially the nose, tries to cause it to flip sideways, countered by the rifling-induced spin) and such a tilt can also significantly affect the actual impact angle on the armor plate compared to if the target was not moving. While small, such things are why shooting at armored things where movement of the gun and target are concerned is somewhat a crap shoot unless the penetration ability of the shell is way under or over the armor's resistance value.
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Re US tourists. I think tourist to Europe don't well represent a cross-section of our citizens. It's very expensive to travel to Europe and the average working US citizen can't afford it. It also takes a good chunk of time, and US vacations (holidays to you) are much shorter. Typically, US citizens get only a couple of weeks per year, and often this time can't exceed more than 7 consecutive days. So, Europe sees mostly upper class and upper middle-class people from the US, and they can be a bit self-important and prickly. Friends I have in Mexico generally have a better opinion of US tourists, because just about any US citizen can afford a trip to Mexico. You can drive there from several states. Remember, the average US citizen doesn't even own a passport and never leaves the country. It is rather large and culturally diverse, so you can see a life time of sights without ever traveling abroad. My experience with tourists from abroad is that those from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Central America and South America are generally pretty friendly, but those from elsewhere, no so much.
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With regards to the King George V armour thickness (and British armour plates in general), British armour weights were specified in lbs per sq foot. In design documents the conversion was universally done (in my experience) as 40 lbs : 1" so 15" and 600 lb plates are used interchangably. However, plates were rolled to the weight specifcation, and the precise conversion is 40.8 lbs : 1". So the 15" plates are actually 600 lb / 40.8 = 14.71" thick, at least nominally. This difference between 40.8 and 40 is about 2%, which was apparently considered too small to be of any note. For example, with a 5" plate, it's the difference between it being 125mm and 127mm thick. A 1/10th of an inch being not worthy of note. Generally, take any British plate's design thickness and multiply by 98% to get its actual thickness. e.g. 14" x 98% = 13.7".
Direct evidence for this can be seen in the handbook for the 14-inch gun, which lists the turret armour thicknesses. Unlike any other document I've seen, this gives the thickness in precise values. So while the Ship's Cover talks of a 13" faceplate and a 6" roof, the handbook lists 12.74" CA and 5.88" NCA. These are the values you get if you use the 40.8 lb : 1" conversion. You can also see this if you compare the design and actual weights in the completed ship. The design weights assumed 40.8 lb per square foot, whereas the completed weights were to 40 lb per square foot. So the KGV's belt armour was designed to be 4,755 tons. The completed ship had 4,640 tons, or 97.6% (compared to the theoreretical 98%) of the nominal rounded number.
The final aspect was the rolling tolerance. For the KGVs this is listed in Buxton's "Battleship Duke of York". For belt armour this tolerance was 0 lb/sqft over and 10 lb/sqft under, for deck armour this was 0 lb/sqft over and 2.5lb/sqft under.
So, the design documents referred to a 15" or 600 lb plate, but the design weights taken reflected to 'full' value of 612 lbs (15" X 40.8). The plate manufacturers however would roll to the 600 lb nominal thickness, and had a +0 / -10 lb/sqft tolerance, so the actual plate thickness was allowed to be 590 to 600 lbs thick (providing it met performance requirements, of course). Given that the ship's final armour weights were 97.6% of the design weights, the typical 15" plate was likely approximately 597 lbs thick (612 x 97.6%). Or in other words, 14.63" or 372mm.
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3:20:40 the question about a 14" armed Florida class. As Drac suggested, without the pushback that existed in the USN to the move from 12" to 14", which was repeated in the move from 14" to 16", resulting in moving to larger guns sooner, I can think of a significant impact. The Washington conference engaged in some political art in discriminating between pre-Jutland and post-Jutland ships. In their art, Hood was deemed "post-Jutland" even though it was designed before the battle, while Tennessee and California, laid down after Hood, were deemed pre-Jutland, while Maryland, which was laid down before Tennessee, was deemed post-Jutland. As the Colorados were largely a repeat of the Tennessees, with the exception of the 16" guns, if the Tennessees had been armed with 16" guns, which was openly discussed in 1915, defining the Tennessees as pre-Jutland would be even more problematic. If the Tennessees were armed with 16" guns, and therefore deemed "post-Jutland", then, for parity, the US would not have been allowed to complete Colorado and West Virginia. That would result in the US retaining the Delawares as "front line" battleships. In the fleet drawdown in First London, the Delawares would go, and one or both Floridas and both Wyomings would be retained as "front line" battleships.
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Hi Drach
Just a observation about Ise and Hyuga. Agree with your analytical approach to the battleship-carrier, just not your figures
They carried a combination of 22 (or 24) Judy dive bombers or Paul recon float planes.
At the time, that is after Feb 1944, the Japanese had arranged their naval air group/squadrons in a type of RAF/RAAF squadron systems where air planes were assigned to specific squadrons for specific roles, regardless of where the squadrons were placed on the battle field
Hence CarDiv 1 had no planes assigned to it, rather Air Group 601 had their planes specific trained as carrier based planes. These planes could operate on a carrier in CarDiv 1 or as a land based air unit on land. Bit of the results of Midway, Santa Cruz battles and rigidity of aircraft deployment that hemmed in the air groups to specific carrier divisions.
Rightly or wrongly, the Japanese believed that most carriers attacks in a given battle would launch one strike per day per carrier. The 22/44 Judys/Pauls attack and scouting planes would compliment any Japanese carrier attack for one day in a given battle.
The Japanese chose bombers and recon planes over fighters because IJN was attack minded. They believed a battleship with its armour could survive ONE counter strike by itself by dodging bombs and torpedoes. As we know, this was proven correct before and during Leyte too.
Ise and Hyuga were in CarDiv 4 in the 3rd Fleet in May 44. Air Group 634 had 2 squadrons of recon planes, 301 Squadron and 302 Squadron, made up of 18 Judys and 16 Pauls. AG 634 also had 2 fighter squadrons as well. They were assigned to the 3rd Fleet. The 3rd Fleet assigned these aircraft to CarDiv 4 to compliment the battleships.
In the mid October 1944, the US 3rd Fleet started their soften up of the Philippines in October and Japanese activated Sho but not knowing exactly which island the US intended to invade. The US bombed Formosa and after 1st raid, it was decided to send Air Group 601 (CarDiv 1, eg Unryu's) Air Group 653 (CarDiv 3 eg Zuikaku & CVLs) and 634 (CarDiv 4 eg Ise's) to Formosa to counter-attack the US 3rd Fleet.
Most of recon wing were destroyed or lost many planes on the 15th.
Ise and Hyuga had very few planes left for the Sho-1 sortie. So the planes stayed behind at Formosa as part of 2nd Air Fleet.
So you are right in a round about way, that in the only battle they fought in, the battleship-carriers carried 0 planes while missing a third of their armament maybe more with hangar in the way if they were fleeing in a gunnery duel.
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Hello Drach, a bit of additional info regarding Polish Navy in 1939. Yes, it didn't fight the Soviets in the Baltic, you were right on that. But you missed few reasons (or rather, you were uncertain).
1. Soviet Navy never intended to fight surface forces - entire Polish coast (for the record, it was less than 100 km) was Germany for the taking (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact made it clear), so Soviets had no businnes in going there.
2. After the 17th of September, Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces issued an order that strictly forbidden any hostile acts towards Red Army, with the only exception being retaliation of fire (also urged all army units on the east to retreat towards Romania. Some of that units got by sea to France and continued fighting from there). And I believe it applied to the Navy as well which in turn meant that polish submarines (yep, there were 5 of them, 2 got to GB - "Wilk" and "Orzeł", 3 were interned in Sweden) when they were freed from their disasterous initial positions were not allowed to attack Soviets even if they wanted.
3. There is an "incident"involving 2 Russian ships "Metalist" and "Pionier" - when the Soviets claimed that an unknown submarine (which was supposed to be "Orzeł" after it escaped from Tallin) were attacked ("Metallist" sunk) but it's either complete propaganda fake or a set-up by Russians themselves in a political "negotiations" with Estonian goverment which led to Soviet ocuppation of Estonia (being a Baltic State always sucks when there's a big, angry Russia next to you).
4. The only possible way of a Polish Navy fighting Soviets could occur, ironically, on land. Poland in 1939 had a small force of river flotillas of which at least one was stationed in Soviet occupation zone (modern Pinsk, Belarus). But as far as I'm aware none shots were fired and sailors were incorporated into nearby land units and retreated to Romania.
BTW Some time ago you said something about making a detailed video regarding "Orzeł" and it's adventure and I would love to see it. Yes, I'm a Pole and I love that story. Second favourite is the battle of Ushant. Man, i gotta become a Patreon to make them real.
Also - love you and your content. I wish all Drydocks would be 3h+, still would watch them.
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Some tips on Australian pronunciations …
DYE-MEN-TINA
Named after the Diamantina River, in turn named after Lady Roma Diamantina Bowen, an Italian Countess who was married to Sir George Bowen, first Governor of Queensland.
CAR-PEN-TARE-EA (the 3rd syllable is tare, to rhyme with hair or care, not tar to rhyme with car or far)
Named after the Gulf of Carpentaria (the huge, roughly square, body of water between Cape York Peninsula at the top of Queensland and Arnhem Land at the top of the Northern Territory), in turn named by the Dutch explorer Jan Carstenszoon in honour of Pieter de Carpentier, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.
SHED-YULE
The preferred Anglo-Australian pronunciation of schedule, as distinct from the American SKED-ULE.
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British CPC shells during WWI were capped and thus could punch a hole through the same thickness of face-hardened side armor at low-to-medium impact angles as the APC for the same gun (British shells prior to the post-Jutland "Greenboy" designs were more uniform in weight for a given gun). Unless the armor was no more than one-third or so as thick, though, the CPC shell would break up while most of it went through the hole it made. Thus, these shells were for use against ships with lighter armor than the ship firing them at the enemy ship. Note also that CPC did not use Lyddite as a filler, but black powder, so it had a delay of roughly from about 0.5-0.9 second after the impact if intact so the fuze set it off. If the shell broke up while penetrating, however, the black powder would be set off by the impact forces on such thick armor and be undergoing a long-duration low-order explosion and burning as the pieces moved into the target. Thus, CPC would act inside a target ship as a huge shotgun blast of fragments and flaming and/or exploding black powder with superior incendiary effect compared to the higher-power, but short duration Lyddite explosion of a British APC shell. CPC was NOT removed from British warships during WWI prior to the Greenboy shells being issued. In fact, after the results of Jutland were in and the Greenboy shells were being developed, for a large number of binaries, the Admiralty issued instructions that CAP, not old APC, was to be used unless the enemy armor was extremely thick and an APC might penetrate, broken or intact, when a CPC might fold up like an accordion and fail to penetrate. After WWI, most British battleships and cruisers had their CPC removed, but British battle-cruisers did not for some time, merely having their filler replaced by the new APC filler Shellite and their fuzes replaced by Number 16D APC-typer fuzes. HOOD, for example still had them at least during much of the 1820s, probably due to the very power effects of their 15" CPC on cruisers and such other small ships, now giving full, high-order detonations of their huge fillers (10-13% compared to 2.5% for the new APC.
Note also that black-powder-filled CPC had an interesting impact result at low obliquity if the shell succeeded in punching its nose through the armor plate hit. This effect is true no matter what the thickness of the plate was, as long as it was thick enough to reduce the remaining velocity of the shell as it is moving through the impacted armor plate to a low value. What happens here is that the CPC does not instantly collapse during a complete penetration -- British term "perforation" -- against such armor at low obliquity, but will move forward at least half of its body length before the body folds up against such thicker plate. During this short, circa-0.003 second interval after the initial impact, the internal black powder filler decelerates at a huge number of :G's", compressing the rather loose, compared to Lyddite and Shellite, mixture of powdered charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter to compress violently into the forward portion of the filler cavity, maybe to half its original size. As anyone who has hit a piece of black powder with a hammer knows, this will cause it to explode, but here it is confined by the armor to the sides and the very thick nose in front of it, so the explosion is contained and occurs throughout its entire volume simultaneously, creating a Lyddite-like detonation of about one-third Lyddite's power per weight of filler. Since there is about triple the filler size in CPA, the total power is about the same as with Lyddite and the blast can literally break armor plates in half, which occurred during many CPC tests. Thus CPC can make holes in some armor about as big as pre-Jutland APC could, while sending fragments and flaming filler material through the hole into the target ship. Not as good as with delay-action effects but better than pre-Jutland AP when both shells can perforate the hit plate..
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Hi @Drachinifel, and bravo for the very unique and interesting content you are producing :) First paragraph is deserved compliments, second one is a request I have.
One thing I like the most in your channel are the long episodes in which you take time to tell the story of a major battle. I can imagine the amount of work this kind of episodes represent, but I have to say they are a pleasure to listen to, with accurate infos you don't get anywhere else and sometimes minute-by-minute details of the engagements. Not to mention the tone and characteristic humour that is additional cream to this delightfull cake. To be honest, their end quality is in my opinion comparable to thus of the best historic radio broadcasts we have in France (i'm thinking of some France Inter's and France Culture's program here), except you don't really have the same manpower to produce them. Very well done Sir!
I was wondering, have you ever talked about the "attack" of the french Marine by the Royal Navy in Mers-el-Kébir in 1940?
This event is really interesting for as much as I know because it was partly caused by a misunderstanding and delay incommunication between the commanders in charge of the two fleets, and resulted in the death of hundreds of men from the same side. Too bad really, and and i think it would make a great background for subjects like forces in presence in the mediteranean early war, or relations between French and English Navy at this time.
Thanks again, and looking forward to the next one anyway! ;)
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30:15 -- "... if you can imagine a French version of Jeremy Clarkson..." -- AS IT HAPPENS, History is stranger than fiction. The French obsession with Speed is well evidenced in the actual course of the Second World War. There IS an actual historic French figure noted for his over-eagerness, other than De Gaulle. His name is Émile Muselier -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Muselier
Most notably, Musilier helped to trigger the St. Pierre et Miquelon affair, starting in December 1941; the political ramifications took months of time in various government committees, not to mention the press, including the US government, the Canadians, the British, Vichy France, and others. This also seriously strained the relationship between Cordell Hull (US Sec of State) and FDR.
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Hey , Uncle Drach, my uncle Arthur was a "boy" in the RN and was in the battle of Jutland, Dogger Bank and Heligoland Bite. My uncle died later died in 1943 and is buried in England (Devon, I think). Some tropical disease he picked up while at Tobruck, His lighter was named :"Eskimo Nell" of suggestive fame:) In sorting my mum's photos, she died in 2008, came across the original picture postcard you use the the Second Battle cruiser squadron, with my Uncle writing that they have been issued "sennits" and will be back in home port soon, 1920's I think. No postage, or other markings. I quite enjoy your series, cheers and keep up the good work:) Gordon Hopkins SF Bay Area
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Drach,
This is the only accurate assessment I've seen in WW2 era of the "Japanese Technological Style."
It came from a US Army Signal Corps document during the immediate surrender as General Spencer Akin's long range radio communications boffins got a good close work at their Japanese counter part's work and came away both impressed and educated.
Sadly, this remained classified far too long to make it into any of the US Army Green Book series.
================
Report on Japanese Research on Radio Wave Propagation,
Vol 1,
General Report and Survey of Technical Literature
Page 9
I. INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY
1. THE JAPANESE APPROACH TO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
European and Americans are frequently misled into thinking that the Japanese have little ability along the more material ways of the West. The Japanese skill at copying, even to minute detail, the products and ways of Industrial civilization is generally cited in support of this view.
Such a view is not only false, but betrays a lack of understanding of the goal which the Japanese have set for themselves. In coming out of centuries of self-chosen isolation during the latter part of the last century, the Japanese were faced by an outside world in which feudalism was apparently unable to survive, and in which great industrial and scientific progress was being made and the concomitant skills being obtained. The Japanese believed that for their self-preservation as a nation, they would need to acquire industrial skill and scientific knowledge with a minimum of delay. To have begun from first principles, and to have passed through the long periods of basic development, through which western nations had already passed, would have taken years, and could only have resulted in keeping Japan in a position permanently inferior to the western nations in those things Japan considered necessary for further survival.
The goal then was to make Japan the Industrial equal of the larger western nations.
To achieve this, intensive copying was the most direct means to the end. To get ahead, to be in a position to make new discoveries in science, to pioneer in industry, Japan had first to understand and equal the West in technical skill. Then, and only then, could true pioneering, and scientific originality, he expected to occur.
Japanese ability is real, and should not be underestimated.
In the light of the above comments, Japanese scientific and technical work must be examined.
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Hi, loving the vids, however I am a bit behind, having only recently discovered your channel, I am binge watching to catch up and am gathering together a list of comments and questions - some of which are being answered as I move through, but I thought I'd stop and pass a few comments on your excellent presentation on the rum ration.
As the viewer asked, there were many traditions and rituals around the rum ration.
At the appropriate times, the quartermaster/bosuns mate would pipe 'Up spirits' at which time the appointed person - usually a leading hand, would take a 'fanny' - which in my day (which, incidentally and sadly, was after the abolition of the Tot) was an aluminium container for fetching food, drink, the tot, etc., into which was measured the correct amount, with a small allowance for error, for all of the eligible hands in the mess - i.e. over 18, not on leave and not under stoppage. In the mess, this would be issued to each man using a special measuring cup and then the person was expected to drink it there and then, i.e. the lunchtime ration had to be consumed before turning to in the afternoon and the evening ration before 'pipe down'. Saving the ration for later was, although quite regularly done, a disciplinary offence. At the end of issuing the ration, whatever remained (see above) would be poured into a glass/cup and would normally be drunk by the person fetching/issuing the mess allowance who would toast the monarch - hence the remaining amount was called The King's/Queen's. I am not 100% sure, but 'The Queen's' may also have been given to another person if it was their birthday. Again, on someones birthday, it was common for other members of the mess to let them have 'Sippers' - or a sip, of their tot. It was also a form of currency for favours e.g. standing someone's watch for them or swapping duty days. Depending how big the favour was, the person giving the favour might get 'Sippers' or 'Gulpers', which was significantly more, or for a REALLY big favour, might get the entire tot.
'Splice the Mainbrace' was a special extra ration and traditionally came from getting that extra for carrying out a particularly arduous job. The exact term refers to the main rope which holds the mast in place on a sailing ship which could break in a particularly bad storm or during a battle if the opponent was using chain shot to destroy your rigging. If that happened then it would be vital, to prevent you from losing your mast, to splice a length of rope into the mainbrace which would be a task in itself in normal conditions, but in the midst of a storm or a battle would be worthy, in my opinion, of a damn sight more than an extra tot of rum! But that is where the saying originated. As you say, it could be used to issue a drink for any special occasion, in my own case, I was at the fleet review in 1977 for the Royal 25th Anniversary Jubilee. We were given the option of 'a tot' or a standard measure of another spirit - I wasn't into rum then, so I had vodka!
As far as the actual rum - and your favourites, is concerned, it was just a plain rum blended from whatever could be obtained from Caribbean distilleries at the time, although I believe in more modern times there was a specific blend from a selection of preferred distilleries. Kraken is a spiced rum similar to Captain Morgan Spiced and a number of others which are very nice and very easy to drink, I can certainly drink either of those two without any form of mixer, but they bear very little resemblance to 'Pusser's' rum. The alcohol content was considerably greater than normal being 56% rather than the usual 40%. If you go online and google it, you will find (a) mail order supplier(s) who stock 'Pusser's Rum' blended to the original recipe, but at 40%. The same distiller also markets what they call 'Gunpowder proof' rum which conforms to the correct 56% alcohol content. According to their description of it, there must have been some tampering went on with the rum in olden days and so, if someone complained that it was being diluted, a pinch of gunpowder would be soaked in it and then a taper put to it. If it ignited, then it was pure and had not been diluted in any way.
There clearly was a distinct culture in the Navy that was based around 'The Tot' which drew messdecks together - and probably also tore them apart on occasions, and I always sensed, talking to and listening to the older ratings, that the whole culture and 'atmosphere' within the service changed in 1970.
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Its not so simple even today. Carpenter, joiner and cabanet maker are different elements within the wood working trade. Cabanet maker is self explanitory, they make furniture, tend to work to finer tollerences, and rarely see the liht of day, Joiners dont as a rule work on site they work in workshops making sub components, windows doors etc, generally you want to be within a mill in around 2 to 4 meters, all though bi fold doors are generally very tight on tollerences, depending on the runner system been used more like 1 mill in 4. Carpenters or chippies as they are commonly known work on siter deal with both structural elements, and fit the products made by joiners, they tend to work to slightly greater specs due to the larger scale of what they are dealing with, roof trusses, flooring joists etc, think 5 to 15 mill over an 5 to 10 meter linear distance. but folks who arehalf decent across all 3 specialities will achieve far better than the minimum. What has changed is the precision of the tools folks have at their disposal
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I am going to hate myself for this comment, but I hope it is appreciated that I mean well. I'll format it as a "shit sandwich" to make myself feel better. The comment I make here is more of an accumulation for the last several non-drydock videos rather than an opinion formed from this video alone:
I really like that the channel is branching out into location shooting. Filming on location is very hard, especially with sound and lighting. I am therefore willing to forgive a lot of the issues caused and experienced, and especially given the skill set that the channel was established with.
But, having said that I am frustrated by the lack of editorial effort to account for those mistakes or unfortunate errors, teething troubles, whatever one would categorise them as. In the case of a malfunctioning mic on the day of the shoot, then a voiceover could (and I think should) have been used. The editing of the video then changes to accommodate a scripted over-dub and/or voiceover in order to ensure that the end product video suffers as little as possible from the sub-optimal circumstances that befell the filming of it.
There are clearly efforts being made to edit the videos to mitigate it I'm suggesting that it goes further. This is because the channel being the size that it is probably requires it by now; it's no longer amateur enthusiast level in my opinion.
To that end though, I have full confidence that all people involved with this channel have the ability and the desire to develop skills in areas where they are lacking. There is no reason why a microphone failure, a malfunctioning drone, or a lack of professional camera crew (the full team of people I mean), would be a reason why the video output from this channel can't be very polished and presentable given enough time to learn from mistakes and seek out development skills from all possible sources.
Apologies Drach, I mean no offence and trust me; I am by no means a person to leave negative comments on YouTube videos on a regular basis
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Drachisms of the Year Vol 2
1/25/20
Drachisms of the Day
15:06 "yet it did practically nothing other than roll over and sink"
21:21 "All Galena really did was to provide an oppourtunity for some Confederate gunners to up their kill-count.
So yeah, cancel that thing. Bit of an embarrassment, really."
29:24 "Much as I hate to say it, noone was going to be particularly terrified of the Phillipine Navy."
34:14 "Nobody is going to be particularly distressed if your plate isn't perfectly circular.
Unless you've got really crippling OCD."
35:42 "Now, I don't know about you, but two kilos of explosive is a fair bit of BOOM."
41:37 "You can't run. You can't hide. Big Daddy Lexington's coming to fiiinnd you."
*
*
*
1-22/20
"Previously, the text-to-speach was damning the Swedish language for tying it up in pretzels trying to pronounce the word "Sverige" correctly.
Now I'm speaking in English, I have a microphone, I can mess it up in all sorts of new and interesting ways. Anyway."
*
*
*
1-11/20
Drachisms of the Day:
1:36 "not particularly badger-like to my estimation"
28:57 "If, by any chance, there's a human behavioral psychologist or two listening to this maybe you can
chime in as to whether this theory has, or ever had, any particular weight, um, and we'll see where I go from there."
31:55 "Carriers generally have a fairly enlightened bit of self-interest in staying away from shipping as well."
32:55 "Was in line with the three British battleships, forming a somewhat incongrous battle-line."
34:11 (with pride) And, ironically enough, technically won."
34:44 "There was nothing in it's design...that was completely impossible to do."
43:39 "So this particular little interception scenario greatly depends on what the Japanese actually bring to the party."
47:07 "In regards as to what happened to Mutsu ... well, it went BOOM."
47:56 "The report that was issued at the time officially blamed a disgruntled crewman
who had been accused of theft and may have decided to do the ultimate hara-kiri."
50:48 "A bit of note-paper that says 'Build something bigger, better and faster than whatever the French have just built.'"
58:16 "There's also a little bit of ramming. And a few of the British ships are lost.
Umm. But, by and large, that may come as little shock to people."
*
*
*
1/4/20
Drachisms of the Day:
0:53 "Greetings people of the future. Tell me of your strange and mysterious ways."
8:59 "And of course you've got the fact that this would almost certainly being done by the Soviet Union,
in an era where their maintenance budget for the Red Fleet was two bits of black bread and a bowl of stroganoff."
*
*
*
12/21/19
Drachisms of the Day:
21:53 "They were deliberately going out and colonizing areas, but it
was not for imperial acquisition purposes, it was more for, well, either
offloading weird religious fanatics..."
38:01 "Or, in some of the German cases, you ended up with ships that sincerely wished
to identify as U-boats and would do everything in their power to join the U-boat corp, eh,
whenever the waves looked to be more than a few inches high."
47:51 (conspiratorialy) "And, I may or may-not have quietly sneaked into a couple history-course
lectures without telling anybody that I wasn't actually on the course while I was at university.
Um, but we shall say no more about that."
49:07 "Which again, they got very familiar with me." (no judgement)
54:13 "The idea of your own ship basically committing suicide by running up to full speed
is not something that you want to take lightly."
57:32 "At the end of the day, nothing quite beats taking a big slab of metal downrange
and then blasting away with naval artillery."
*
*
*
12/14/19
8:48 "Short of a Death Star laser, or something, Germany wasn't going to be
winning WW2."
9:26 "Luke Dogwalker asks..."
*
*
*
12/11/19
Encrypted Drachism of the Day:
53:14 "JNER SDIF GHWE BORS DDFL XKIQ ISKE DPEJ BDRT KWQI GJCM NWTY VYIS SZPE DEFL KWTE TOWS,
ZIFE AEIW DEIB HUXC ICNR WRMD IWDF WPIN MPET DAIC CUNJ NARF"
(decrypted)
53:14 "And, if you've particularly enjoyed the nice warm feeling of your brain melting out of your ears,
in a desperate attempt to flee from what you are trying to do to it"
*
*
*
12/7/19
Drachisms of the Day:
3:50 "Eww, well. This one's a little bit of a doozie. Innit?"
15:26 "And before this entire episode turns into
'The Adventures of Admiral Drach, Royal Navy'."
19:02 "Once it gets going, it's gonna get going at a pretty
sharp clip. And good luck stopping it."
26:58 "At the battle of..um..I have no idea how to pronounce this.
The battle of Me Yong Gim Yang. Question mark?"
30:17 "And, as well the name suggests, this was a dispute in the early 1960s
over...who should have the right to fish for lobsters. Well I suppose the
UK got involved in the Cod War, so this is really not THAT much more absurd.
Although there is the rather insteresting premise of wether a lobster is a fish or not."
35:24 "The war started earlier than they expected, um, thanks to Germany's antics."
44:58 "Who do you believe are the seven most awful adminrals, captains, commanders etc,
thru naval history." (The second I heard this question I knew that I'd end up transcribing
the entire anwser. I'm not doing that. Enjoy listening. It's a hoot.)
45.19 "Lest I start getting very angry and ranty again."
46.17 "How the heck do you end up in command of the second largest formation
in the British Navy? Just 'How?'. And 'Why?'.
48.22 "You can kinda see how Napoleon wanted to replace him."
1:36:13 "I can't remember from my german-class how you pronounce that
weird 'sb' shape in German. Anyway, sorry."
1:38:11 (exhasperated resignation) "OK. Fine."
2:01:13 "More important codes that were broken, were broken by the Japanese Army.
Who, of course, refused to tell the Navy about it."
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As a native Texan and minor naval history dabbler myself, I am exceedingly proud of my home state's battleship and would like to thank you for this thoroughly well researched tribute to her illustrious career. A couple more points I would like to point out:
1. During the First World War, one of Texas' most prominent roles was as a floating hospital. At the time of her service with the Royal Navy, her surgery facilities were among the most advanced of any warship afloat.
2. On her last voyage as part of Operation Magic Carpet in 1946, the Texas' captain noticed that at the rate of speed specified in her orders, the ship would not arrive in San Diego harbor until almost New Year's Eve. Upon realizing this, the captain essentially said "Well, fuck that" and ordered the engines brought to maximum cruising speed. Thanks to this bending of orders, the Texas arrived in San Diego late in the evening of December 24, delivering her US servicemen passengers home to American soil just in time for Christmas.
I would also like to agree with you regarding your disgust and shock at the appalling state that our state legislature has allowed this once proud ship to fall into. Sadly, our's is a deeply politically divided legislature and is rotten with corruption to its core, with Republican congressmen in particular far more interested in political agendas and lining their own pockets and those of their lobbyists than approving funding for anything that is actually meaningful, including the Parks & Wildlife Dept. It is worth noting though that although hurting, the old girl can still take a beating; when Hurricane Ike struck the Texas coast in September 2008, USS Texas served as an emergency shelter for workers at the adjoining museum complex and their families. In spite of being directly in the path of one of the worst hurricanes to hit the Houston-Galveston area for over 100 years, the Texas survived virtually unscratched. That said, her condition now is growing dire, with the ship having been closed off to visitors due her her condition. The sad fact of the matter is that it seems here in America we just don't give as much of a shit about preserving our history as other great nations of the world do; perhaps it comes from us being a relatively young nation, or a nation more concerned with boundless capitalist greed than preserving what we've got, I don't know. I am glad to say that great efforts are being made to both patch together what is left of the old ship to stop her condition getting even worse and to raise funds privately to help secure her future, since the state government has proven useless. Most notably, Wargaming.net ran an extremely successful special event this past summer (2018) to raise funds to donate to the USS Texas through their game World of Warships, in which the virtual Texas is widely regarded as one of the best mid-tier premium warships in the game. Like you I am not holding my breath that our state's politicians will see fit to grant the funding necessary for another drydocking for desperately needed repairs and restoration work, much less the proposed dry berthing project, and like you it breaks my heart to practically watch as one of my state's most important symbols crumbles away before our eyes, right in front of one of our most important state battlefields no less. But I remain hopeful, however faint that hope may be, that either our state congress will pull their heads out of their collective asses, that private funding will be raised to do something, anything, to help, or a combination of the two before this proud old warhorse fades away.
P.S. Perhaps a bit of an overly pedantic note, but one that I find endlessly amazing and amusing, not only was the SS Great Britain brought back to "a dry berth" in Bristol, but it was in fact the same dry berth where she was built in 1843.
Also, not only is the Texas one of the oldest modern warships in the world, she is the last Dreadnought type battleship left in the world. The only comparable surviving warships are the protected cruiser USS Olympia, built 1892 and fought in the Spanish American War, now moored in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and in a similarly deplorable state to the Texas, the IJN Mikasa, the last Pre-Dreadnought battleship in the world, built 1902, Japanese flagship during the Russo-Japanese War, now permanently embedded in concrete in Yokosuka, Japan, and the Greek armored cruiser Georgios Averof, built 1911 and the only other surviving First World War capital ship in the world.
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19:48 The Sackville depth charges. Let me introduce you to Pat Waddell, a young Ontarian who decided his WW2 place was to be an RCN sailor. He was assigned to Corvettes and soon realized to hang high his hammock high as the waves washed through these tough little boats.
Anyways, peace returned (for a short while) and before Pat was de-mobbed, he was ordered to make the Corvettes storage safe by removing all the stuff that could go "BANG!"
Job done, and Pat wanted a souvenir , so a visit to the scrap yard and Pat walked out with a Mark 7 depth charge casing which moved around with him for 20 years, until it ended up in a storage shed at his last managerial job at a forest reserve.
With Pat's passing, the new reserve owner decided to repurpose the shed and ordered it cleaned out. In 2018, the labourers found all kinds of rusty tools, spools of cable wire, dead animals and chainsaws, 'steel drums'- and a couple of cases of Forcite dynamite! Pat liked blowing up tree stumps instead of digging them out.
The police called in the military demo engineers to move the dynamite and they spotted the war memento depth charge casing and confiscated it. Manager Pete, being a history buff, told the engineers to return the casing, they agreed but soon rescinded their word and after a year of heated phone calls and expensive lawyer letters, Pat's war memento is now a prized piece in Pete's collection.
So there is at least one WW2 depth charge exists!
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@ 50:08 (I'm not an "Oil King", but my Rating did have me know parts of various tests needed for DFM & JP-5. (Distillate Fuel Marine, and Jet Petrol #5.) As a Water King I do know how Sub-Atmospheric Pressures will cause separation. (Bunker C was a few decades before my time, however, on a old ship I did see the paper work for testing! But unfortunately the standards listing was no longer there....)
I imagine they did the "Flashing" at Refineries so that various other fuels could use the vapors and what was left would be Bunker C. I don't think you can "Evap" off AvGas (of various Octanes), or even MoGas (which was 50 Octane), and I'm also doubtful about Diesel fuel (~30 Octane).
Here's a bit of explanation of the two ways to rate a fuel: Octane is a measure of Resistance to Detonation, which explains why Diesel fuel has such a low Octane Rating since it relies on only the compression of the engine to allow the injected (basically directly injected into the cylinder) to ignite the fuel.
The difference between JP-5 & JP-8 is that JP-5 has a higher Flash Point (not sure if they did a partial evap/flash on it, or added chemicals (or a bit of both), JP-8 also has some lubricants added to it that JP-5 doesn't have.....
Another way of rating fuel is the Cetane Number. This is a measure of potential energy of the fuel, so you want Bunker C and Diesel Fuel to have a hit Cetane Number! (I imagine that Bunker C, after having the volatiles "evaped" or "flashed" off would have a high Octane as well as a high Cetane Number! DFM, since it is used for Diesel Engines aboard ships and for the Gas Turbines (Navalized Propulsion version of a jet engine)
Note: by adding a lead compound that was marketed as Ethyl, you can raise the Octane Rating pass 100, but also cause health, sometimes serious health issues from inhaling the exhaust or even direct contact with the gasoline. (This would be in addition to the issues caused by exposure to the petroleum "spirits" due to spills or inhaling the vapors of unburnt gasoline (and diesel)!!!)
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@Drachinifel The German WWI Psgr.m.K. (capped armor-piercing HE shell) Bodenzunder (base fuze) was a complete "Rube Goldberg" (US slang for a bizarre contraption to do a simple thing found in some US newspaper comics pages of a few decades ago) design of very poor reliability with supposedly a nominal delay of 0.025 second (rarely achieved properly). It was a "quick and dirty" modification to the older non-delay design with the same detonator hit by the firing pin on one end of the fuze (near the base of the shell) and picric acid "finger-shaped" booster imbedded into the felt-and-paper-lined stack of pre-shaped block TNT charges making up the main filler (there was a thick wooden plug at the tip of the cavity toward the nose to increase the cushioning of the not-quite-insensitive-enough TNT when hitting heavy armor). To make it work without any major change to the old non-delay fuze used in its earlier APC shells prior to 1911, the new fuze had the short tube connecting the detonator to the booster replaced by the following mess: (1) The tube was twisted into a tight corkscrew of triangular cross-section to increase the effective distance between the detonator and and the new delay element, which due to this longer distance and the bouncing around between the corners of the twisted path of the detonator blast was theoretically reduced in strength enough to not damage the new delay element, but still be powerful enough to set that delay element off properly (it failed to achieve these aims much of the time). Why they didn't simply create a new detonator of reduced power instead seems unclear. (2) instead of the later standard design with a weak primer set off by the firing pin, which then sets off the delay element, which, when it burns through a thin layer of black powder, then sets off a second, more powerful detonator to then set off the booster (here picric acid like the British fuzes) and then the TNT main filler charge, there was NO second detonator after the delay element and they assumed that the burning black powder wafer would be able to set off the picric acid booster, which was then assumed to be able to set off the TNT charge reliably. This failed on several levels much of the time, making the fuze very unreliable, both in its delay and in its dud rate. For one thing, a ricocheting shockwave in the corkscrew path sometimes adds and sometimes cancels and thus at the end of the tube when it hits the black powder delay wafer, which is very thin to get the short delay needed, it sometimes does not have enough power to set off the delay, duding the fuze (on top of the many other such problems of base fuzes that made them the most unreliable of fuze types for everybody); on the other hand, the shockwaves might add and blow the wafer away, setting off the booster immediately (making the fuze no better than the older design). To try to solve both problems at once, the designers added a thin metal plate with many tiny holes to protect the wafer and a teaspoon or so of loose finely-powdered black powder in the space in front of that plate to help allow some explosion to occur, even if way later than it is supposed to (anything is better than nothing, I assume). (3) Note that the use of the much-less-sensitive TNT as the main charge rendered a picric acid booster of such small size very unreliable in setting off the TNT properly, so there were lots of duds and weak explosion from this cause, no matter what kind of fuze the Germans used (large boosters could be used in nose-fuzed HE rounds and gave reliable results, but the requirement that the fuze had to survive the impact shock and sideways slamming of a shell at oblique impact against heavy armor did not allow such a large booster, so the most powerful explosive that was considered safe to use at that time was used in base fuze boosters -- eventually the US and Britain gave up on all other booster explosives but "tetryl" (called by the British Navy "Composition Exploder"), which was so sensitive, but so powerful, that it was used in many US Army and Navy WWII 20mm HE rounds with merely a crushable nose providing enough force to set off the tetryl inside very reliably; it was used from the mid-1920s through well after WWII by the US and Britain, but I do not know when any other nation adopted it, if ever).
Thus, we have a fuze with very unreliable fuze action either in setting off the booster or in a usable delay, connected to a filler where the booster was inadequate for the job much of the time; things did not bode well and the results of battles agree. Britain adopted the same delay from the German fuze in their uprated Number 16D base fuze, but they reduced the power of the primer, added the delay in the middle between the primer and the black powder detonator/booster used in the older shells to set off their Lyddite fillers and, the main point, added a second, more powerful detonator AFTER the delay to make sure that the blast hitting the booster (still black powder too) was always (as much as this was possible) of the same strength, and finally they switched to Shellite, which was much less sensitive to impact shock, but much more easily set off than TNT. Later, even this was found to be inadequate (too many less-than-full-power filler detonations with Shellite in tests) so tetryl replaced the final black powder booster late in WWII for their new base fuzes for Shellite-filled APC shells (I have no good data on how much that improved things, unfortunately). Note that British base fuzes for APC shells had a "bypass" option that could be set on loading the shell to turn it back into a non-delay shell by going around the delay element -- late in WWII German APC shell base fuzes, originally of fixed 0.035-second delay from the mid-1930s, had a three-way setting added: Non-delay (0.003-second average), 0.01-second delay, or their original 0.035-second delay for various targets.
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I note that you use a 9.2" APC shell as your WWI-era diagram. Two things:
(1) It has a small picric acid (trinitrophenol or, in British terminology, Lyddite) booster at the tip of the fuze. How many Lyddite-filled shells used a separate compact lump of Lyddite in addition to the main charge as a "booster" (the US Navy term)? Did the regular Number 16 base fuze for APC shells with Lyddite fillers (the main APC fuze shell before the Greenboy APC shells and their Shellite fillers and modified Number 16D base fuzes with 0.025-second nominal delay added) always use the booster? Usually, a booster was made of a small charge of a more powerful and more easily set-off explosive that, depending on the main filler explosive and how much room in the shell the booster would be allowed to fill, could reliably (though this term varied with what was available at the time to that nation) set off the main filler in its maximum power way (violent explosion for black powder and full detonation for high explosives like Lyddite or TNT). Was this small picric acid booster of any real use here, as it was of exactly the same explosive as the main filler around it?
(2) In WWII tests, it turns out that the new 9.2" Mark 12 APC rounds, which was made much like the larger battleship APC rounds as to casing and base plug metallurgy and hardening processes and filler type (Shellite) and base fuze, retained their pre-Jutland large-size 3.7% filler weight (of total shell weight), unlike the larger shells, which all had been reduced after Jutland to only 2.5% weight. This made them close to SAP shell filler size, like the British heavy cruiser 8" SAPC with its roughly 4% filler weight (though using TNT instead of Shellite). One would think that this would compromise their ability to remain intact after penetrating the thicker forms of armor, which was the reason the larger shells reduced their cavity size so much, but one would be WRONG! Using scaled armor thickness of WWII British Cemented plates, these new 9.2" APC shells, from actual test results of all versions (both made in Britain and made by the US Crucible Steel Company), were the best APC shells the British Navy had, as to minimum-velocity for penetration and for complete perforation of the armor in a "fit to burst" state and thus being able to detonate properly inside the target (though this size APC shell was only used in Coast Defense guns in WWII). They were rivaled only by the 15" Mark 17 APC shells being made by the Cardonald, Scotland, Navy-run ammunition supply activity, which were the best of the 14-16" APC shells made through the end of WWII for British battleships. It seems that cavity size is not the only thing that separates good from not-so-good AP shell effectiveness...
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Hey Drach, BZ on the Drydock B. I particularly enjoyed the parting rant. As a Desert Shield/Storm Veteran, and Former US Navy man, as well as an amateur USN WWII historian myself, your reaction to the most excellent (holding the sarcasm sign up high here) Bureau of Ordinance's handling of the MK 14 torpedo debacle was spot on. I couldn't agree more. your final comments were heartfelt and most appreciated, as being a Navy man myself, and seeing firsthand the effects of people such as you described, that are still in service, or at least were when I was in. ( left active service in 1993). Love your channel, enjoy all the music, as well as the information, and the wonderful dry, tongue-in-cheek British wit. Cheers mate.
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OK, here we go. One reason for the USN's dramatic cuts in ships under construction was that it had learned its lesson when it built up a huge fleet of Flush Deckers after the Kaiser War which were facing bloc obsolesence in the Thirties. Also, among the hangers on in the under construction category at the end of the WW2 Congress authorized that vessels 80 percent or more complete to be finished, vessels between 60 and 80 percent complete were to be suspended, less than 60 percent were to be scrapped. 1) All pre-war destroyers except two were either expended as targets at Bikini or scrapped. Two Porter class ships were converted as Radar Training ships and rated as miscellaneous auxiliaries (AG) but were scrapped in 1949. The four gun Benson and Gleaves classes went into mothballs, most never to return (some went to allied nations in the Fifties). The only active members of the class were those converted to 3 gun High Speed Minesweepers (DMS). They went into reserve after the Korean War (they were too vulnerable to modern mines) and had a paper re-rating to DD. Almost all the Fletchers also went into reserve, but a bunch were reactivated for the Korean War. Some were converted to ASW Escort Destroyers (DDE) with mount 52 replaced by a trainable Hedgehog or Weapon Able-Alfa, Mount 53 deleted in favor of a dual 3 inch gun and the torpedo tubes replaced by ASW tubes and an additional pair of dual 3 inchers. Many ended up their service being assigned to the Naval Reserve - a few in their 1945 configuration (maybe with updated radars) 2) All prewar subs were either targets at Bikini or were assigned as immobile (props removed) Naval Reserve dockside training ships rated AGSS. One reason for the number of subs remaining relatively high was the Navy was experimenting how to use them against something other than an island nation (Lookin' at you, Russia). It also converted a bunch to Fleet Snorkel, Guppy 1, Guppy 1A, Guppy 1B, Guppy Ii and Guppy III's. The Guppy 1's were a hurried conversion in 1945 - streamlined with more powerful batteries but no snorkel - designed to prove the concept and soon relegated to serving as ASW targets. The Fleet Snorkels were caused by a lack of funding to convert the number of subs desired to Guppy configuration. It removed the guns and installed a streamlined sail and snorkel. They retained their original batteries and unstreamlined hull, so had considerably reduced performance underwater compared to the Guppy's. Unconverted Fleet boats ended their careers as dockside trainers replacing the prewar boats and were eventually replaced by Fleet Snorkels and some Guppy's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Underwater_Propulsion_Power_Program 3) DE's were called by Freidman a perfect example of a WAR ship and demonstrating the folly of building a ship of limited capability to perform one mission - ASW in this case. By WAR ship, he meant a ship that had value to a war time navy, but either none or limited value in the missions navies perform in peace time. In addition to the DE's, he also included the Vietnam "Brown Water Navy", the RN's Hunt class, which disappered after WW2, and its Coastal Forces. Maybe the Danes and Germans needed them to fight in Baltic, the RN didn't. They were a waste of money for Britain (Tip of the hat to Jackie Fisher and his reforms of the early 1900's). The USN's DE program was huge - 1005 (!) ships were authorized. Of that number, 564 hulls were completed with 94 (of a planned 100) being either converted or completed as APD's (a huge over-strength compared to need) and two suspended at the end of the War being completed in the Fifties as the only steam powered Radar Picket Destroyer Escorts (DER) - part of NOARD's network of radar stations in the Cold War. As early as the Autumn of 1943, the Vice CNO reported that the battle they were designed to fight - the Battle of the Atlantic - was won and there was going to be huge over supply of escorts, when what the USN needed was amphibious shipping. There was considerable debate (including the impact on morale at shipyards where workers had been told the ships they had been building were vital and were now going to be told were unneeded) as to what to do with a large number of seaworthy hulls and eventually the decision was made to complete the last as APD's. I know that may hurt some families who had relatives serve on DE's and APD's but I refer you to Friedman https://www.amazon.com/U-S-Destroyers-Revised-Illustrated-History/dp/1682477576
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This is a remarkable analysis. As a French born American who has served in the French navy in the 70s, I can say that the Mers-el_Kebir episode has remained to this day a sore subject in France.
I totally agree with the conclusion that the ultimate responsibility falls on Gensoul although Somerville also bears some responsibility. One thing to know is that when the British fleet appeared at the horizon, the French sailors got excited. "The British are coming. We are finally going to join with them and fight the Germans". The crews had no idea what was
going to take place higher up. They were all ready to go and fight alongside the British.
They were never informed at any time of any kind of ultimatum or negotiation. Thus, when the British fleet opened fire, it was complete incomprehension on their part. When general quarters were called on the French ships it was interpreted on board as the indication that the fleet was going to sail alongside the British ships.Then it turned to anger, as a great number of fellow sailors died under the British bombs. The French fleet was not ready to fight. It was "peacefully" moored in the harbor. The engines were not under pressure,, the crews were not on high alert.The French never sensed that the British fleet was a threat, quite the opposite.
On the PR front, it was a disaster for the British government.
That attack was used by the German propaganda machine to show the usual behavior of the "perfidious Albion". England could never be trusted and was the real enemy of France.. it turned a part of the French opinion against England and probably hampered efforts to turn the Vichy government around to collaborate with the allies (if that was possible). Gensoul was the product of a certain arrogance on the part of many French superior officers. To his defense, the French translation of the British ultimatum was a word for word translation into French. Many words are common to French and English. However, a number of them are "faux amis". They have a slightly different meaning, and for some of them, convey totally the opposite from what they would mean in English.For example, the word "demand" (demande) does not carry the same notion of urgency and ultimatum in French as it does in English. it would be more equivalent to a request. On the other hand, part of Somerville message which sounded straight forward in English, as translated into French was unfathomable to the Gallic pride.
However, the fear of the French fleet falling into German or Italian hands was not the only motivation for Churchill. He needed the Americans in the fight. He wanted to prove to them the toughness and the resolve of England, ready even to sink the French fleet to show that England would never surrender and would be the last defense against Nazi Germany.
The thinking was accurate. The attack proved to the Americans, and to Roosevelt in particular that England would fight to the bitter end and that Churchill meant what he said.
One point that has been raised by historians is that neither Germany nor Italy had sufficient capabilities to man and operate the French fleet, had they seized control of it.
The German navy was never that strong and did not have the personnel necessary to crew all the ships, to master their complexity, to maintain them, to train the crews.
It would have taken them a very long time to even manage to get the fleet operational. And it was a known fact among French sailors that the French would never allow the fleet to fall into Axis' hands. Of course, history proved that the Germans could not be trusted since they tried to seize the fleet, invading Toulon. And it is unfortunate not to have trusted the French, since the entire fleet scuttled itself except a few ships that escaped and made it to British ports. Gensoul died in the 70s. He had explained many times during his life why he had taken the decision not to negotiate with the British. I don't buy his arguments.
The French Navy at the time, at least its superior officers, were for their most part obedient to their hierarchy. Those were trouble times. The French fleet was extremely powerful and had not been beaten by the Germans or the Italians. There was real incomprehension and appreciation of the political and military situation. There was also a lack of leadership in the part of people such as Gensoul. Where did his loyalty lay? He only thought about his amour-propre, not of his men. He was put in an impossible situation partially by his fault.
It is a very sad story.
DeGaulle had a hard time forgiving that attack, He was even more upset to the extreme when the French fleet scuttled itself. I don't think those responsible were totally exonerated.
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Howdy,
Subscriber here. I do enjoy your delving into the abyss of naval history and specific vessels...
As a landlocked, secretly dedicated navy man, I have read, watched and listened to anything regarding deep water ships. To me, some of the stories concerning a few of these vessels and their crews are utterly staggering in their valor... And, yes, their sometimes difficult times of simply getting out of dock.
The Greeks during the second Persian invasion. The British during the ongoing battle to repel the Spanish Armada. And, my countrymen aboard the Tincans at Leyte Gulf, and so, so many others ...
I also wanted to emphasize with your feelings towards the HMS Warspite. I absolutely loved the original USS Enterprise aircraft carrier that endured the entire war to only end up being scrapped unceremoniously afterwards. Ships such as Warspite, hold some unknown spirit within their steel bones, and I personally mourn their passing. Keep up the great work and take care...
QUESTION: What do you think would have been the effect, if any, if the German carrier, Graf Zeppelin had been finished out and sortied with Bismark or any of the other German heavy raiders..? Thanks again from VA
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wrt the question about models vs drawings, in some applications, the model was built first, because of the difficulty of rendering 3-dimentional objects on 2-dimension drawings. When I worked in fluid handling in the 70s, it was routine to build a model of a refinery or chemical plant first, to work out all the pipe routing, then make up drawings from the model. It was routine to build full scale mockups of new aircraft for the same reason, to work out all the hydraulic and electrical conduits and possible interference with bulkheads. The Boeing 777 was the first aircraft to be designed entirely in computer, in the early 90s, because, 3D computer modeling had finally advanced enough.
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Dracs thank you, a marvellous account very well related
The French have a saying, "to see a Spanish ship is to capture her".
It's part a joke and unfair as your story here proves.
The disastrous Armada or the Trafalgar Battle are often mentioned as examples of Spanish failure, unfair I think.
The Spanish Armada was never going to be a winner, a bad idea and it's commander said as much.
I lived in Plymouth for 25 years so know more than a bit about The Armada and Drake in particular, some of which is not in the regular histories. You can see my painting 'Drake 400' in the member's lounge of the Royal Plymouth Corinthian Yacht Club.
Trafalgar, as you brilliantly related in the 'Battle of Trafalgar' video, many of the Spanish ships had raw crews, the regional coastal communities with their experienced sea men having been decimated by plague so the landsmen performed poorly.
There were also Spanish ships engaged that fought with as much courage, bravery and gallantry as any men can. This in the full knowledge that they were going to loose.
By the way I'm English, now live in France and had the honour of being 'Official Artist' to HMS Victory during the preparation for Trafalgar 200.
My research adventures took me to many achieves of England, France and Spain including to Cadiz as a guest of the Uni and Spanish Navy and Cape Trafalgar.
You can discover my Trafalgar adventure by googling for my marine website and 'Nelson & Trafalgar", profit, enjoy.
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I miss more on smaller ships, so I have the following suggestions, though I understand you have enough "stuff" for the next decade....
- The Insect class gun boats.
- Evolution of gunboats, including Danish-Norwegian in the Napoleonic Wars, through late 1900s (HNoMS "Rap"...?), and up to MTBs, MGBs, S-Boots and riverboats.
- Opreations on the Norwegian coast, including the "Shetland Buses".
- Soviet operations in the Arctic.
- The Lake Tanganyika Expeditin during WWI.
I would also like to hear about the Naval Divisions in WWI; and the development of armoured cars, though not strictly maritime....
I really appreciate your channel, though personally, I am not too fond of "what if"-discussions, mainly because it is purely hypothetical. Still easy to skip in the "Drydocks"....
Keep up the good work!
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In general, there still aren't any left-handed military rifles, aside from a few of the modern bullpup-style ones that can swap the ejection port to the other side (for obvious reasons), and most modern rifles have ambidextrous controls, but those are all added on as an afterthought. Y'know that bump behind the ejection port of an M16A2/M4? That's to bounce the empty case, the original M16 and A1 without that bump would send the brass straight into a lefty's face. But for the vast majority of military history, you were forced to learn to shoot right-handed, there were no Brown Bess muskets with the lock on the wrong side, or lefty SMLEs. As Drach said, you CAN buy left-handed versions of many sporting rifles (and a left-ejecting Remington 870 shotgun) for twice the price of a normal one, but I just deal with the normal 870: https://jkbaker.com/SA/dmshotty.jpg )
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Much of the problem seems to be the narrowness of the areas of expertise of the various people involved with the design. Each thought his area was important and somebody else could sacrifice some of their needed design parameters to allow him to get his, so in this case when the toothpaste was squeezed out of the tube into a design too small for all of the needed material, the belt armor over the magazines got emptied before the tube was squeezed completely. It could have been some other important design requirement instead.
A similar thing happened with US Navy late-20th-Century aircraft carriers and the three that had installed a TERRIER Mark 76 AAW Guided Missile System twin-radar battery (well before SM-2ER was developed). While a good long range anti-aircraft system for area protection from various destroyer- and cruiser-sized support ships in a task force, it had a number of features that made it totally unfit to put on an aircraft carrier:
(1) It was very bulky, taking up a lot of room for the radar directors, the launchers, and the control stations aboard ship. Poor return for the weight and volume needed for the system.
(2) It had a slow rate of fire, being able to handle only one target per director from firing to intercept, so the protection it afforded, even if working perfectly, was very limited, considering that the aircraft carriers would be the main targets of any enemy attack on the task force. Poor return on investment.
(3) The directors and launchers needed wide arcs of free space where friendly aircraft could not go if the missile system was to acquire and fire against enemy aircraft. An aircraft carrier was the w9orst possible place for this requirement of all warships ever built, by design. Very poor return on necessary function use.
(4) Due to the large boosters used with the TERRIER/SM-1 missiles, the system had a rather large minimum range, since the missile guidance could not be activated until the boosters had been dropped off. This made the system completely useless as a point-defense protection system. Even worse return on usefulness when needed.
The TERRIER systems on those ships ended up non-functional most of the time when they and aircraft needs conflicted. Eventually they were removed.
All is different, but all is the same...
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A couple of points. Water tube boilers have their feed into the upper drum...circulation is so important.
There must be two safety valves, the primary is on the output of the superheater....you must keep a flow through the sh, or tubes will burn.
Get a sheet of paper, fold it into an open top cube, fill it with water, and put a blow lamp against the wetted area. The water will boil, the paper will not burn...you can run steel pipes at a very high temperature...so long as you have a powerful circulation!
My tutor said that they had to "plug off" a leaky pipe, and when the docked, etc, the leaky pipe was gone!
The steamship I worked on ran at 600 psi, with a superheater output of 900 F. After all the pre-heats, the water temp into the economisor was only 2 degrees below the uptake waste temp.
Very interesting video, thank you.
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Refits, Radar, especially early sets, and additional AAA are not light, thus in many cases a ship would need to lose something in order to free up displacement for the new equipment. This would especially be the case in ships designed during the treaty period when their displacements were more or less rigorously controlled (at least theoretically), so had less room when it came to refits than ships designed without the Treaty constraints hampering them. While I could not confirm this as absolute fact, I suspect that she lost a turret for that exact reason, to free up displacement. She was completed with four triple turrets though, I suspect the Blueprint drawing was for a refit that involved the removal of the rearmost turret to gain the aforementioned weight, and not of the ship as she was intially completed. Major refits are complex jobs, so blueprints would be drawn up for them just as they would be drawn up for the initial building of the ship in the first place.
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A-6s weren't deployed on Essex class carriers, they were too heavy. A-7s were however, and according to their first flight in 1965 would be the most recently developed airframe. I'd go with avionics fit rather than date of first flight for advanced, in which case I'd say it would be the A-7E for aircraft from classes that fought in WW2. For developed during WW2, I'd say F-18s from the Midways on both date and avionics, unless you consider the Sea Harrier a different aircraft than the Harrier I, which I don't*, in which case it would 'win' for first flight. However, if you go by date it entered service, we are back to the F-18 with 1984.
*I can see both arguments for the AV-8B Harrier II since it's a new airframe, but I'd argue the Sea Harrier is an alternate version of the Harrier rather than a new aircraft.
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Drach, you mentioned that you believed that Montana was the only U.S. state not to have a battleship named after it. You are, of course, correct. A review of DANFS confirms this. Oh, Alaska and Hawaii missed out too, but they did not become states until after battleships went out of fashion.
A shorthand list follows; should be easy enough to figure out.
Alabama BB-8, BB-60 museum Mobile, AL; Arizona BB-39 memorial Pearl Harbor; Arkansas BB-33; California BB-44; Colorado BB-45 class ship; Connecticut BB-18 class ship; Delaware BB-28 class ship; Florida BB-30 class ship; Georgia BB-15; Idaho BB-24; Illinois BB-7 class ship, BB-65 incomplete; Indiana BB-1 class ship, BB-50 cancelled, BB-58 class ship; Iowa BB-4 class ship, BB-53 cancelled, BB-61 class ship museum Los Angeles, CA; Kansas BB-21; Kentucky BB-6, BB-66 incomplete; Louisiana BB-19, BB-71 cancelled; Maine 2nd class BB class ship, BB-10 class ship, BB-69 cancelled; Maryland BB-46; Massachusetts BB-2, BB-54 cancelled, BB-59 museum Fall River, MA; Michigan BB-27; Minnesota BB-22; Mississippi BB-23 class ship, BB-41; Missouri BB-11, BB-63 museum Pearl Harbor; Montana BB-51 cancelled, BB-67 class ship cancelled; Nebraska BB-14; Nevada BB-36 class ship; New Hampshire BB-25, BB-70 cancelled; New Jersey BB-16, BB-62 museum Camden, NJ; New Mexico BB-40 class ship; New York BB-34 class ship; North Carolina BB-52 cancelled, BB-55 class ship museum Wilmington, NC; North Dakota BB-29; Ohio BB-12, BB-68 cancelled; Oklahoma BB-37; Oregon BB-3; Pennsylvania BB-38 class ship; Rhode Island BB-17; South Carolina BB-26 class ship; South Dakota BB-49 class ship cancelled, BB-57 class ship; Tennessee BB-43 class ship; Texas 2nd class BB class ship, BB-35 museum Houston, TX; Utah BB-31 memorial Pearl Harbor; Vermont BB-20; Virginia BB-13 class ship; Washington BB-56; West Virginia BB-48; Wisconsin BB-9, BB-64 museum Norfolk, VA; Wyoming BB-32 class ship
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Hello Drac.
Even though I am one of those 'uppity colonials' (American), the facts of Harrison's genius is still felt today, since all ships, even those with GPS navigational systems, still have ship-board clocks to do the same job 'the old-fashioned' way. Also, I note that George III, King of England is not well looked upon by Americans in general, and it is good to see that the King did something 'good', besides piss off 'those uppity colonials' in America.
Now that I have thoroughly stuck my tongue in my cheek about it all, I would like to thank you for such a good and well-spoken video on the topic.
I note that your video is more to the point, with less confusion, than the movie: Longitude, which was my 'benchmark' for informative layman's knowledge of the topic until your video. And having said that, I still recommend that people watch that movie in any case.
Keep on making videos, Drac. I find them fascinating, and interesting.
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Your shell size versus type comments are right-on!! Bigger shells with a similar percentage of filler have the bigger blast and fragment effect -- the US Navy WWII 2700-pound 16" Mark 8 AP shell at ~20% heavier than the more conventional 2240-pound, shorter-length 16" Mark 5 AP shell (COLORADO Class due to handling limitations) had a similar increase in both filler (both had 1.5% ammonium picrate very insensitive filler -- "Explosive 'D'") and fragments created. Heavy-cased AP rounds, though they have less nearby blast power than HE or, with moderate penetration ability and intermediate filler size, SAP shells, do create lots more fragments due to having more steel to shatter on detonation, so there is a trade-off between blast power going down, but fragmentation going up when using AP rounds. Thick-nosed SAP and AP shells also have these break up into relatively few large pieces that can tear through a rather long distance inside a ship due to their greater momentum, with some chance of doing more widespread damage than the high-power, but tiny, fragments of the shell's middle body mostly confined by even rather thin bulkheads (the base plug can bounce around too, but usually is more like a single shot-put confined to the space the shell blew up in). Getting through the armor to damage the important internal areas hit is the most important thing against heavily-armored enemies, as the many but non-penetrating hits on SOUTH DAKOTA by an entire Japanese squadron, including the battleship KIROSHIMA, demonstrate conclusively..
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Your discussion on HE explosive in naval ammo is mostly correct, in that the range of power using TNT (trinitrotoluene, the "standard" commercial explosive -- replacing the more dangerous nitroglycerine-based Dynamite -- also used in a number of various naval shells by some nations, though not the US Navy unless using Army ammo, such as in its 40 mm Bofors AA guns) as the baseline to compare against, you get prior to WWII the very impact-sensitive Lyddite (picric acid or chemically trinitrophenol) at roughly 10% more powerful than TNT and, at the other extreme for impact insensitivity, US Army/Navy Explosive "D" or, earlier, "Dunnite" (after the inventor) (ammonium picrate) at roughly 90%. Shellite, that replaced, Lyddite in the post-Jutland Greenboy shells and through most of British Navy APC shells through the end of WWII (and its French close equivalent "Mn.f.D.") was roughly the same power as TNT or perhaps slightly weaker. Thus, after WWI the power of shell explosives used for armor-piercing was in the 90-100% TNT range and blast power took a low second place to being able to withstand an armor impact and allow the shell delay-action fuze to give a maximum-power explosion afterwards. Non-AP shell fillers were not so limited and during WWII, especially for the larger AA gun shells, the new extra-high-blast-power explosive RDX or "Cyclonite" was used in mixtures to increase blast power (such as "Composition A-3" in the later VT-(proximity)-fuzed 5"/38 AA Common shells) by up to 40%. RDX was also used as much of the mixtures in new torpedo warheads in some navies, such as the US "Torpex" (with added powdered aluminum for even more blast energy) of similar extra power, especially as to its "brisance" or concussion effect, the most dangerous effect from underwater explosions from mines and torpedoes.
The one odd-man out in this explosive system after WWI was Japan. Their Navy personnel who made decisions about explosive fillers for their AP shells had a "Good enough for Grandpa" fixation on the powerful "Shimose (their name for Lyddite) shells" that they used when they beat the Russians in 1904-5 and they simply refused to allow any weaker explosive in any of their ammo. It was not until 1931, when they finally got it through their heads that Shimose could NEVER allow delay-action fuzes to work when hitting thick enemy armor on cruisers and battleships, that they relented and stopped trying to use Shimose in any new AP shells (though they did not replace Shimose in any old AP/Common shells still in use. Only the new cruiser guns after that time and the battleship guns got new ammo with a replacement for Shimose that could allow thick armor penetration and remain intact, the explosive "Type 91 Explosive" (trinitroanisol), named after both the year 1931 it was introduced and the same name of the new AP shells for new cruisers introduced after that year and for the old and, eventually, new (YAMATO Class) battleships. This explosive was almost as sensitive and as powerful as Shimose (roughly 105% TNT) and to keep it from detonating on impact just like Shimose, the AP shell filler cavities had to be as large as the 4% used in US post-WWI cruiser Common projectiles and the 2.5% used in the British Greenboy APC shells, BUT with a 33-40% of inert wood, aluminum plate and cement-type cushioning around the filler that the weight of Type 91 filler in the shells was only about 2.5% for the smaller cruiser Type 91 AP shells with no AP cap (essentially very-weak-filler-weight Common Shells by US Navy standards) and only 1.4-1.6% Type 91 filler in its battleship-sized, capped Type 91 AP shells (almost exactly the same size as the Explosive "D" filler weight used in the new, extra-rugged post-1935 US Navy capped AP shells). By having such large filler cavities for such small filler sizes, the shells were somewhat weaker than most US shells of similar designs were (Common or AP), having less thick steel bodies for AP performance with no gain as to explosive power. How the Japanese could think that Type 91 Explosive in such reduced quantities of explosive in their nominal "AP" shells (whether true British-type AP for their battleship ammo or US Common filler cavity sizes for their cruiser ammo) could be made up in the slightly more powerful blast power (only 5-15%, at most, over all foreign WWII AP projectile filler types in blast power), I have no idea. This worship of the results of the Russo-Japanese War to the point that they compromised their AP ammo so badly is both amazing and, to me, somewhat pitiful. Ships are devices that are the result of engineering and should not have obvious engineering requirements overridden by emotional burdens, especially here, where the lives of your sailors and, eventually, some of the responsibility for the keeping or losing of your entire government in a future war depends on having the best possible equipment to perform whatever needs to be done in such a war. It was not that Japan could not make the best things for arming warships, within its technical expertise, since things like the extremely advanced and powerful Type 93 "Long Lance" torpedo demonstrate this thoroughly. Indeed, a couple of experimental VH (YAMATO side armor type) armor plates developed during WWII -- after such armor was no longer being made for ships -- turned out to be in post-WWII US and British firing tests, to be the best face-hardened armor plates that these two nations HAD EVER TESTED (!!!!) of their thicknesses! No, Japanese engineers were top-notch, when allowed to work without interference.
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It is interesting that the French introduced most forms of metal ship armor: wrought iron, mild steel, and nickel-steel, with the final kind, the very strong and tough chromium-nickel-steel, as the only one not French, being introduced by the German Krupp Company in 1894, four years after Schneider & Cie., the large French iron and steel manufacturer, introduced nickel-steel and ended all prior kinds of metal armors, these being very thick chilled cast iron (land fort dome-shaped turrets), wrought iron (general purpose), French mild steel, and British Compound Armor (hardened steel layer bonded to a thick wrought iron back).
The major post-nickel-steel contributions in improved armor types, not compositions, were Harveyized (very thin cemented or carburized surface layer hardened to an extremely high level) to shatter projectiles on nickel-steel or, later, mild steel plates (otherwise the armor was unchanged), in 1891, and Krupp's deep-faced Krupp Cemented (KC) armor, also introduced in 1894 just after the new chromium-nickel-steel allowed it to be made, that much more thoroughly could shatter even the largest shells thoroughly (some later forms skipped the Harvey-type cemented surface, but most added it too, for even more shell destruction against weaker shell types -- "bett4er safe than sorry", I assume).
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wrt the Lexington's protection. As Drac said, USN Scouting Group doctrine was 35kts. The 1919 Lexington design was better protected than the earlier designs. From what I have read, the need for better protection was acknowledged, but the reduction to 34kts to gain the protection was only grudgingly accepted. The ship could easily have been better protected, but TPTB were not willing to accept a further reduction in speed.
The alt history possibilities post-Treaty are interesting. Reportedly, the UK was willing to accept a single ship maximum of some 42,000 tons, because of Hood. If the other powers had dug in their heels and demanded that each was entitled to build a 42,000 ton ship, because of Hood, what would the US have done? If they completed one South Dakota, it would have been a red-headed stepchild as no other US battleship could keep up with it. With two Lexingtons being converted to carriers, a new mission for the battlecruiser emerges, as consort for the carriers. Seems most likely that, if the US had been allowed one 42,000 ton ship, it would have been a Lexington, not a South Dakota.
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First, nice pronunciation of ‘Nevada’ but you lapsed into the more British pronunciation later in the video:) My uncle was in the crew of destroyer ‘SHAW’ (DD-373). As you correctly report she lost everything forward of her forward funnel - foremast, bridge, forward 5-inch guns, magazine, and all hull structure, from the explosion following fires set by hits from high-level bombers early in the attack. The photo of the enormous fireball explosion of SHAW detonating, at from cross the harbor, has become one of the icons of the attack. SHAW received a jury bow, jury bridge and foremast, and conducted speed trials off Oahu. Relieved of all that weight forward, she essentially became a power plant afloat and there are photos showing her practically throwing a rooster tail. She was cleared to proceed to Mare Island independently and set a speed record returning to the West Coast. Her crew had suffered the highest killed and wounded as a function of vessel size than ARIZONA. Repaired with new structure, guns, bridge, mast, and radar, she served the rest of the war in a number of campaigns and had to sink destroyer PORTER after it had been crippled by Japanese torpedo attack. In 1944 the fleet was levied for transfers; my uncle was transferred to battleship MISSOURI. He was aboard to witness the surrender of the Japanese aboard in Tokyo Bay in 1945. After I returned from my second tour as a combat infantry officer in Vietnam in 1970 I thought I had enough ‘creds’ to ask him what his wartime experiences were like. He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Well, I guess about all I can say about it is the food was a lot better on the battleship.’
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Hello Drachinifel, with all due respect, The USS Cod SS224, does not have propellers, never got her propellers back, and has no batteries, Unless you are referring to her water tight integrity which is correct, she never did have her pressure hull compromised for museum duty, as for her sea readiness is some what of a stretch as with aforementioned situations as where factory when she was moth-balled back in the fifties after her stint in war games during the cold war era, I am a volunteer on board her and figured your a knowledge seeker, so I thought I would help in anyway possible.
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Disclaimer: These are not so much questions, as remarks with respect to this Drydock video.
4:00 - Are you referring to the shape of the hull sections, or the buttock lines? I presume the latter, in which case you are somewhat correct, however, parallel middlebody, when properly faired, does actually decrease resistance, as it is in part, a function of the L/B ratio. To that same end, a fuller bow would actually decrease the resistance of the hullform. Only if the parallel middlebody was required to be of a length wherein the fore and aft portions could not be faired adequately whilst maintaining the desired prismatic coefficient would you then need to abandon that desired Cp and make her bow fuller, but at that point I'd simply recommend a longer vessel.
52:28 - As it happens I do have some of that "lovely, really complex hydrodynamic modeling software." I don't have access to CFD software, as I don't have several thousand dollars a month burning a hole in my pocket, but I do have software capable of doing various regression techniques which are more accurate than something like springsharp. I would need either a proper hull model or at least her lines from which a model can be made (or a table of offsets if you are really determined), plus her particulars and figures with respect to her engines and machinery, but if you would like to answer any questions like this or do more detailed designs for your hypotheticals or custom vessels in the future, I would love to have a chat.
A quick rundown of my first comment, the picture shows the relationship.
(https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/s/ship-shapes-anatomy-and-types-of-naval-vessels.html page 21)
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19:00 -- I was happily listening along when you said "There is a 5-hour watch system," and I started to chuckle.
24 hours is, indeed, a highly divisible number, and with good reason : 2x3x4 = 24
So -- what happens if I multiply 24 hours by 5? Suddenly, there's a nice round number to be divided, 120. That's how a 5 hour watch system would work, by designating watch periods over the space of 5 days rather than 3. But, what most people might not notice about this, and why it is effective, is that Ships don't always stay stationary, nor remain in the same time zone. So yes, while the 5 hour watch period is +1 or -1 hours in length, when compared to 4 or 6 hour watches, timezones change +1 / -1 for every 15 degrees of longitude. 120 hours at an average speed of only 10 knots quickly adds up.
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@Drachinifel Well, it figures that's a book I don't have. I'll have to see if I can get a copy at reasonable cost. I generally use the two volume Hitler's U-Boat War by Clay Blair as a reasonably reliable source for details of the war. I was flabbergasted to find both volumes in hard cover and in good condition for $5 at a yard sale! I wish I could find deals like that every day. :-)
Blair, in volume 2, pages 64-66, states it was not only a B-24, but it was the same B-24, again flown by Harden, that attacked U-506 the day after the attack on U-156. However, take a look at http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-506A/U-506INT.htm, the interrogation of survivors by the RN after the sinking of U-506 on July 12, 1943 by yet another B-24. Oberleutnant Hans Schult not only survived the sinking, he was on the bridge during the Laconia incident. Confusingly, Schult reported the first attack had British and US aircraft involved. The timeline given by Schult, or at least as recorded by the unnamed interrogator(s), doesn't help matters, as it appears the attack on U-506 may have occured later on the same day. Schult reported the order came after the first attack to take as many survivors on the U-boat below as wouldn't interfere with the combat capabilities of the boat, put the rest in the lifeboats, and cast them off. It was apparently hoped the lifeboats would attract the attention of the planes away from the U-boat. When an aircraft did return some three hours after the lifeboats were cast off, no one was on deck, and the lifeboats were some distance away. All the attacking aircraft saw was a surfaced sub so it attacked. It dropped two bombs after U-506 was already at 130 feet after a crash dive. The bombs (which may have actually been depth charges) exploded but were not close enough to cause damage.
U-506 apparently continued toward a rendezvous with French warships and never saw the lifeboats again. She met up with the French "a few days" later and handed over her survivors. Schult never actually mentions the type of aircraft involved in the attacks, so I suppose it's possible one was a B-25. In general, the B-25's were conducting patrols closer to Ascension Island, then a top secret base, in an attempt to keep U-boats away from the island. The B-24's were used for patrol further offshore due to their greater range and ordnance load. At this late date, I don't think we'll ever be able to say for certain. What does seem to be certain is there were no survivors on the deck of the U-506, and no lifeboats visible to the pilots of the attacking aircraft.
At this point, I have a splitting headache from trying to figure all this out. Time for another cup of coffee and some ibuprofen.
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For my money the best books on the Kriegsmarine is a three volume set by M.J. Whitley, "German Capital Ships of World War Two" (includes the Deutschlands and the aircraft carriers), "German Cruisers of World War Two", and "German Destroyers of World War Two". He covers all the design and technical elements, with charts and details I've not seen elsewhere in English texts; then he moves on to the full operational history, in a very easy to read format. If I had to rebuild my library, those three would be my top priority to find again. The reason Drach didn't cover them is that they are old books that you can only find second hand; but they are well worth it if you can find them.
The Koop & Schmolke set is fairly similar to Whitley with a lot of overlap, but I prefer Whitley's writing style, particularly in the operational histories. K&S have a lot more pictures but they are smaller pictures. I believe the K&S set is a re-print and you might be able to find the older volumes (1980s?) which would be much of the same content but in a larger physical size book. That being said the K&S are cheap and easy to find so they are a good set to start with.
M.J. Whitley also published a three volume encyclopedia on Battleships, Cruisers, and Destroyers of all navies of the world - this is a great set that covers the basic technical specifications and a brief operational history of each ship. Notably it covers the minor navies and some navies like Japan that can be hard to find the operational histories of certain ships.
The other resource that should be mentioned is the "Warship Pictorial" series which has several volumes on Kriegsmarine ships and are packed full of large clear photos of the ships. There are books on Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, Prinz Eugen, U-boats, Schnellboats, and at least two volumes that cover all four German battleships again. Some of these books are out of print and more expensive, but some are still in print and can be had for about $18 in the US. Highly recommended if you're looking for large picture books. They also have a couple of volumes now on WWI German battleships and battlecruisers which are pretty cool.
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Hi and good day, i live in Barbados and have heard my Dad speak quite a few times on the war days, he was born in 1933, he spoke of the rationing with rice being very hard to get and saying that the only really readily food was English and Sweet Potato, he said that they had learned to eat them in just about every possible way to cook them, said that there was a pretty heavy presence of German spying on shipping as some convoys used to form up in Carlisle Bay before crossing the Atlantic, he did say that for a few nights after the convoys leaving you could see the fires from the ships being sunk at night with lifeboats and sailors being returned to Barbados after their ship being sunk. As for the other rationing that you mentioned, he did say that people got very adept at packing grass into car and truck tyres to keep them usable. There were i understand 3 or so 'Sub chasers' stationed in Barbados and Trinidad and that at one time with them laid up for repairs on dry dock the U514 i think it was attacked and sunk the CNS Cornwallis in Carlisle bay but with her in shallow water she rested on the bottom and was patched up and sent for repairs , this was on the 11 th of September 1942, yes, our own 9/11, Dad spoke of feeling the concussion from the explosion from where he was in Worthing, some 8 or so miles distant . https://www.bajanthings.com/cornwallis-torpedoing-carlisle-bay-1942-75th-anniversary/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Cornwallis https://uboat.net/allies/merchants/ship/3382.html
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Congrats Drach on reaching 500k subscribers 🙂
Excellent video on a highly dynamic period in the RN's history. There is, however, a need to correct your reference to the ironclad Nelson 'replacing' a predecessor with the same name.
The ironclad Nelson in this video replaced the wooden screw corvette Wolverene as the Australia Station flagship in 1882 and was relieved by the armoured cruiser Orlando in 1888: clearly, the RN wasn't necessarily sending its First Eleven to Australia if it could be helped :-)
The previous Nelson you referred to was a 120-gun three decker built for the RN in 1814. However, having been razeed the first time and receiving a screw engine in 1860, she never entered RN service: instead, she was gifted to the colonial Victorian Naval Forces (as their flagship) in 1865 as a harbour defence and training ship, for service in Melbourne's Port Phillip Bay. She was razeed again the late 1870s before she was laid up in 1891 and sold in 1898. She was cut down again for use as a coal lighter on the Tamar River in northern Tasmania until she was slowly scrapped in the late 1920/early 1930s.
Although clearly pedantic, the point to make is that besides the RN Squadron, four of the six Australian colonies had their own mostly part-time naval forces (although NSW more often than not didn't actually have any ships :-)) Even so, the RN and the locals didn't have much to do with each other until the RAN was established in 1911: colonial prejudices aside, to be fair the RN didn't think much of its own reserves during this period either!
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Re highest deck, as an FTG3 [Gun Fire Control] on the New Jersey in 1969, I was assigned to paint on the highest 011 deck. The Paint Locker is a hatch in the deck on the bow. So for paint, go from 011 to Stores for brushes and chit to below deck #6, then to bow for paint, then back to 011, and by now it was time for lunch meal call. PS, altho enlisted, I had just received my degree in Engineering - Civil/Mechanical, with two courses in metallurgy, but never studied fluid flow of deformed metal - very informative. Looking forward to your fire control of New Jersey - I was assigned to 5" mount 5-2, I've heard the fire control computer was essentially the same for the 5" and 16" guns.
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First, I want to say I think you did a lovely job of answering the title question clearly and I'm entirely comfortable referring to both Hood and Iowa as battleships of the faster sort. On the other hand, would I be fair in saying that you regard the term "battlecruiser" as poorly defined, and maybe a definitional bridge you'd prefer not to cross? You hinted that the US tendency to refer to the Kongos as fast battleships irks you somewhat, which I think is pretty reasonable. (Though that is indeed what I tend to call them.) That said, I can easily imagine that quite a lot of people over here would be entirely comfortable referring to Revenge, Repulse, and even the splendid cats as fast battleships for the simple reason that the US Navy really never fielded a unit it called a battlecruiser, maybe creating an institutional tendency to think of ships by their role. "Does it belong in the battle line? Okay, it's a battleship of some stripe. Is it really incapable of safely operating in that capacity, but still useful as an independent deterrent in secondary markets? Then let's call it a cruiser." (Note: I am a composer and not a sailor of any sort, so take all that with a grain of salt. I play wargames, build models, and order fancy books from your sponsor once in a while, but that is all.)
The term of art, battlecruiser, may well be something that only makes sense in the context of the incredible supremacy of the Royal Navy on a global scale at the dawn of WWI, since virtually any other navy in the world would have been mightily tempted to think of such a large and capable ship as a primary combatant, particularly if it had any chance at all of successfully surviving an encounter with another such. (Which most any well built, designed, and commanded "battlecruiser" almost certainly did, even if no battlecruiser, or battleship for that matter, would ever be able to hope to stand toe to toe with all possible opponents for very long. But hey, nobody gets to be biggest and baddest forever unless you artificially restrict it to built by Brown or some such. Them's the breaks, as they say.)
Anyway . . . I wonder if the combination of the rarity and extreme expense of the originally conceived role, perhaps coupled with some lingering distaste for the term after the misfortunes of Jutland, led to some navies avoiding the term for a time. Add to that a perhaps natural desire for multirole combatants, particularly in navies a little less able to afford the expense of such extreme specialization as a dedicated cruiser killer, and it makes sense to me that you would see the two types converging towards one another at least to an extent, which I think is pretty evident even in RN design. (Apart from the cancelled Lexingtons, which were probably a bad idea anyway, and the late war Alaskas I’m genuinely having a difficult time thinking of a non-UK example of a ship that truly had the clear role “cruiser killer.” “Battlecruiser killers” were a bit more common, but if the only thing that can kill a “battlecruiser” is a battleship . . . well . . . there’s not really much need for a special term, is there? You just need to make your otherwise perfectly ordinary battleship fast, which is useful anyway.)
This is all a bit long and rambling for a speculation on why people prefer different words in different corners of the English speaking world for ships which were clearly designed with the same role in mind. And sure, I sometimes call Hood a battlecruiser, but in my defense I’m just quoting British accounts. I more or less always say “though she was really basically just a fast battleship.” (Bismark got unspeakably lucky. She really had no right to escape that battle, let alone win it.) That said, are you trying to start a fight by implying Iowa might properly be called a battlecruiser? I dare you to say that in an Annapolis bar on a Saturday night. And please do invite me to watch. ;-)
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Good to see the mosquito fleets getting some coverage.
Although the PTs were indeed faster than the RN's big Type D MGBs in the Mediterranean, the only S-boats deployed in that specific theatre were in fact the smaller and significantly slower-than-normal 'S-30' type.
These were originally eight boats on order for China, which were requisitioned by the KM at the outbreak of war in 1939. Completed for in mid-1940 for service with the new (and soon to be S-boat hallmark) raised forecastle arrangement, as seen on the four larger contemporary boats of the 'S-26' type, the S-30s were far less powerfully-engined and capable of a maximum speed of 36 knots - even without the added weight of a 2cm cannon mount in the bow as new. Their larger cousins could reliably make about 39kts, flat out.
Being slightly narrower and shorter than the S-26 & S-38 types, the slower S-30s could thus be stripped of armament and transferred through canals all the way to the Mediterranean Sea. There, they formed the 3rd Schnellbootflotille and, joined by eight new sisters, would receive various armament upgrades as they performed admirable service.
Ultimately, the S-30s type boats of 3SF were joined by the even smaller and slower still eight boats of the 'S-151' type (which lacked a bow gun throughout their careers), forming the '1st Schnellboot Division'. These were the boats seen in the photos surrendering at Ancona and interned post-war in Malta, prior to their scuttling at sea.
Up-armed early on with the classic 2cm bow gun, later with the addition of twin or triple 15mm machine-gun mounts behind the bridge and, by war's end, sporting either a twin 2cm flak or a 3.7cm M43 flak in place of the original single aft 2cm cannon - as well as field-modified armoured wheelhouses - these were definitely good gun combatants, if you ever happened to see them at least.
But, at just 36 knots (and 35 for the smaller Type 151), they were no match, speed-wise, for a Higgins PT.
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On the other hand, the S-boats serving in the Channel and North Sea were of the 38-39 knot 'S38' type, or the even more impressive 100-ton and 42 knot 'S100' class boats. And the short-ranged, smaller-hulled RN motor gunboats developed to fight these craft closer to home were the incredible British Power Boat Co 71.5-feet type; fully capable of 40 knots at just 40 tons, while still toting a power-operated 2-pdr pom-pom and twin Oerlikons. These boats were absolutely incredible and we have one restored to running condition (although not with the original 3600hp engines) - the beautiful MGB 81.
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@Drachinifel Understood thanks, but Cordite exuding Nitroglycerin isn't mentioned as a problem in my 1922 edition of "Service Chemistry, being A Short Manual of Chemistry and Metallurgy and Their Application in the Naval and Military Services." The authors are Vivian B Lewes and J S S Brame, who were respectively Emeritus Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.
It's a technical book and appears to be accurate on other topics, though it does caveat "The composition of most Service Powders in most countries is constantly undergoing modifications and improvements..."
Explosives and Propellents get 67 pages of moderate detail. After describing how to make and test Black Powder, Nitroglycerin and Guncotton a chapter is devoted to Smokeless Powders. Commercial propellants are reviewed briefly, but it concentrates on military types especially British. What was wrong with Mk1 Cordite (mainly barrel erosion) and the advantages of M.D. Cordite are discussed in detail, but attention is also paid to the virtues and shortcomings of foreign propellants.
Couple of insights, Flash is often mentioned. The book explains that burning cordite produces large quantities of Carbon Monoxide, and it is the secondary ignition of this that causes flash. This is rather different from the jet of flame coming from bagged propellant, igniting other bags in the turret, which inflame yet more bags in the handling room below, and so on down into the magazine. It is said HMS Lion did not explode at Jutland because Q turret's armoured roof blew off allowing the low order explosion to vent out of the ship. If so, perhaps the ship was saved by 'dust', not destroyed by it (I'm joking)! Another is mention of Cordite fires on board Revenge, Perseus and Fox. Revenge I knew about - only 3 cartridges caught fire, but not the other two ships.
On the plus side, the book is contemporary (1922), contains a good basic overview of the state of the art at that time, and is authoritative in that it was written for the education of British Naval Officers. Negatives, are although "official", the book was in the public domain, not a BR or CB, and thus may not be completely open, up to date, or accurate. For example, it says "The German propellant for large guns contains 23% Nitroglycerin.", which doesn't accord with any other source I've seen. Nonetheless worth a read I suggest!
Norman Friedman's "Naval Weapons of World War One" also has some useful information.
The most recent British turret incident involving burning propellant I know of was in 2017. It was in a Challenger Tank, not Naval, Official report here https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/727954/20180823-Challenger_SI_Castlemartin_Redacted_RT.pdf
May I congratulate you on a truly first class series of videos. Lost count of the number I've watched and this is the only one to raise my eyebrows!
Regards,
Dave
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Have you any info on HMS Ascension, which I believe was the first stone frigate. I lived and worked there for three years and have some photos taken during the first world war by my grandfather, the prints being made by my mother, so I am the third generation of my family to live there. You mentioned Gannet and her role in controlling the slave trade. On the side of Cross Hill, just behind where I lived, stands the Redpoll memorial, commemorating the sloop? sunk by a slaver off the island.
Much enjoyed your Chatham talk, my father worked there for over 40years from KS to Oberon's and I saw the launches of Oberon, Onslaught, Ocelot and the three Canadian boats.
Thanks, Geoff.
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Hello, USN vet here, can offer (a more informed guess) insight on the aye/aye aye difference. Still colored by my personal experience, might be different across different ships/with different leadership.
"Aye aye" tended to be used in response to a specific order with no ambiguity, either a very short one or one where the given order was explicit and self-evident. "Sweep this deck up".
"Aye" was used in the context of "[read back a complex instruction], aye, Sir/Ma'am". For example, "check the gauges in space X and report back with what they say" response "Check the gauges in space X, aye, Sir". For example, I wasn't in Deck Department/really on the bridge, but I believe standard verbiage for courses to the helmsman would be something like "make my course 040, aye, Sir."
It wasn't really codified, and I think specifically "aye, aye" was technically always correct, but as you said, it came down to a brevity thing, especially with read-back type stuff as described. And again, this was only my experience, might have been different for other people.
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Just found this channel and subscribed. This is really great stuff. As a former submariner (LA class boats), I can't imagine what it must have been like to serve on these old fish boats. I had the opportunity to ride in a Korean diesel boat once, and "cramped" doesn't begin to describe it. And of course I've toured the Bowfin when I was stationed in Pearl...and again the idea of living on something like that is nuts. As bad as even modern subs are they might as well be the Ritz Carlton in comparison. These old submariners were truly made of tough fiber.
I do find it funny how most people's concept of submarines in warfare is based almost completely on these WW2 boats and to a lesser extent the few Cold War based movies/books that don't really show the capabilities of modern submarines. Even when I read expert analysis on potential conflicts in the future, such as US vs China or the like, the modern submarine is either forgotten in the discussion, or is relegated to a role more in line with WW2 boats.
The reality is that modern submarines, especially nuclear powered submarines, would render nearly all surface naval action obsolete, the same as what the carrier did to battleship fleets, as battleships and dreadnoughts did to Ironclads, and what Ironclads did to wooden Ships of the Line. For all of the problems with early US torpedoes, like the dreaded Mk14, the US made up for it since, with the Mk48 and the 48 ADCAP being nearly perfect weapons making no surface ship or even less capable submarine safe in the water. And the VLWT as a countermeasure weapon that can kill an incoming torpedo, along with the tremendous speed and depth LA, Seawolf, and Virginia boats can accomplish makes them nearly invulnerable.
And then you have modern diesel boats with AIP backup that can really extend coastal defense and are quieter than anything in the water...nothing is safe from these. Yeah, the Germans never gave up on submarine engineering.
If we ever see major naval warfare again, it will quickly be made clear to all that the Age of the Submarine has come. And it was these guys back in WWII that gave nations a glimpse of that possibility that spurred development to what it is now. As a kid in the Navy, I didn't understand at the time what kind of insane weapon I was serving on. But just thinking about what one little boat could do...well let's just hope we never see a big war again.
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@Drachinifel The French General commanding the infantry on the Driots de L'Hmme (Humbert), and who both captured the English prisoners and later freed the prisoners as the ship wrecked, was notable for leading a list of successful actions under Napoleon, for leading a somewhat whimsical defeat of the English at the Battle of Castlebar in Ireland, for having an affair with Napoleon's sister. If Napoleon had succeeded, Humbert would have continued to play a high-level role in France.
As it was Humbert went on to fight the English again one last time in the Battle of New Orleans, where he was notable for wearing his old French general's uniform and, as the British infantry reached the barricades, going down to meet them with a bayonet. He ultimately settled in New Orleans as an educator, and later died there in old age. Humbert was another remarkable story from the Age of Revolution /Age of Sail.
On the other hand, the Captain of the Driots de L'Homme (La Crosse) later became infamous as a Carribean Governor for crafting, ordering and participating in the excessively brutal torture deaths of 1,000's of slaves and others he deemed miscreants. There is dark symbolism in his having earlier commanded the inspirationally-named ship "The Rights of Man".
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(FROM COMMENT BELOW)
Having been burned by this failure, BuORD went back in 1939 to develop and test a somewhat simpler (though not in its safety measures prior to firing) base detonating fuze with a fixed delay (nominally 0.035 second, but 0.033 second average in practice), the Mark 21 BDF. It was based on a modified form of the recently-introduced Mark 17, Mark 18, and Mark 19 BDF used in the new HC and existing base-fuzed Common and AA Common shells then being introduced. These BDF all had the same forward-moving on impact firing pin hitting the primer, with only one of them for the large 14" and 16" HC shells having a short (0.01-second) delay with a second detonator after the delay to set off the boosters; the others had the booster set off directly by the primer blast. All of these non-AP fuzes were very reliable and were designed to take hitting up to medium-thickness armor at up to 30 degrees or so obliquity when used to penetrate targets a short distance before exploding and still almost always work. BuORD also had added a very tough oblique impact requirement to all of its new AP shells, 35-40 degrees against roughly 0.75-caliber Class "A" (face hardened) armor plate, the toughest such requirement of any nation ever. The fuze had to remain functional even under such distorting forces.
They decided to make this fuze work regardless of the spec, no matter what. First, the Mark 19 BDF lipstick-can body was reinforced. Second, it was decided that firing the fuze with the firing pin would occur at first impact, not be delayed until after the armor was penetrated, as with the Mark 11 BDF, since damage to the fuze during the armor penetration could make the firing pin not move properly. The delay had to already burning when the armor was being penetrated, reducing failure points. Third, the internal fuze path of the flame from the delay element to the detonator to the two Tetryl boosters should be as short as possible with all possible aids to make sure that the flame hit the inner end of those boosters and thus make the full-power blast of the shell more likely. To do this, they made the primer somewhat more powerful and had the delay element and detonator be mounted into a movable steel block that the pressure of the primer blast would move upward just behind the boosters and jam into the final locked and fully armed position with all of the passages from the delay to the boosters now aligned and immovable (another extra safety measure prior to firing). Fourth, they filled the gap between the detonator and the boosters with tiny TNT pellets, so that when the detonator went off after the delay, the blast would be enhanced until it was absolutely impossible for the Tetryl boosters not to go off maximum-power into the main Explosive "D" (extremely insensitive ammonium picrate) filler charge. Thus, on initial impact prior to the projectile moving more than at most a couple of inches into the armor, the primer blast would move the active part of the fuze into the upper end inside the filler charge, being a locked and immovable block, so that damage from the bending/breakage of the base and base plug would have minimum chance of stopping fuze action during and after the delay. Angled impacts would have less of an effect with this, also. A large number of tests also showed that the short distance between the firing pin and the primer used in this design to blow the primer as soon as possible after impact to lock the mechanism also made the fuze more sensitive, so that it would go off on a 0.07-caliber steel plate at right-angles, getting even thinner as impact angle increased and the forces generated lasted longer.
The Mark 21 BDF seemed to be fine until the 1942 Operation TORCH against the French in North Africa when the USS MASSACHUSETTS had a dual with the incomplete battleship JEAN BART and sank the French ship at its dock. After the battle, it was discovered that a much higher-than-acceptable number of the US 16" Mark 8 AP shells had fuzes that did not work properly, being duds or partial explosions instead of full-power detonations. An immediate trouble-shooting effort was set in force to fix this. (BuORD fuze people were NOT BuORD torpedo people!). Many tests later, by the middle of 1943, they had found the culprit: Corrosion. Older fuzes had no really tight tolerances for the movement of the inner parts during arming and firing and the fact that Explosive "D" corroded steel was fixed by simply adding a layer of lacquer to any steel that touched the filler. However, nothing was done to stop FUMES. The blast of the primer to seat and lock the delay/detonator block required a tight interlocking fit, now though and any corrosion could and did interfere with said locking. After some trials, it was found that simply dipping the completed fuze into a vat of liquid Bakelite (hard when dry) plastic created a fume-tight covering. All future fuzes were so dipped. End of problem. Not all BuORD people were fools...
I worked for 41 years for NAVSEA, the successor to combined BuORD and BuSHIPS, and today the person aboard ship who has ANY problem is #1 and has to be responded to ASAP and his problem investigated and fixed, also ASAP. I was sent from California to Virginia twice to solve two different ship-related problems the ship couldn't figure out. "Tomorrow you will be in Virginia. Pack your bags tonight." And, POOF, I was...
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Terrific program as always, proud to be a patron. I must admit, I stopped this program and move to one of your older efforts as the topic is extremely aggravating to someone who sailed on board and actually for on board all four Iowas.
People are certainly entitled to their opinion, although it seems ridiculous to state that this or that is the “most beautiful battleship ever,. “, It just seems too presumptuous.
I’m afraid I’ve left many Facebook groups that allow these discussions to go on ad infinitum. Patriotism is one thing but some of our French, German, and even Russian compatriots, to go a bit too far, for anyone who knows the detailed capabilities of their favorite ships.
I do hope that you will not stop your own analysis of fleet to fleet and even ship ship battles, your video on Willis Lee engaging the Japanese battle line off of lite, is the best analysis I’ve ever seen of the topic, including all the US and reports which were available to me during my 25 years of service.
While I would never bet against the British navy, I worked with many of their ships in my time , I shudder to think of them facing the Nazis without US yards available , or the Japanese fleet , without the USN in harms way.
I am old enough to have climbed all over the standards after the war, and, Prince Eugene, to say nothing of my many ships didn’t the career. The Newport class cruisers, the Long Beach, middle shooting CLs and CAs, etc. The technology was incredible but nothing topped BB61 class for me. Having watched Kentucky sit for years over 80% finished and then having to surrender her bow, was very difficult.
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Concerning aimed torpedoes: You mentioned wire-guided torpedoes that were manually controlled from shore launchers for short-to-medium-range protection of important naval facilities. Later, acoustic homing torpedoes were developed during WWII and eventually became the primary type of torpedo used by submarines and torpedo-armed surface ships -- mainly for anti-submarine attacks -- today.
It turns out that a very interesting patent for a fully-acoustic-controlled or, probably much more likely if the torpedo was kept just below the surface with a radio antenna sticking up, radio-controlled manually-directed torpedo system, with no wires and thus theoretically with no speed or range restrictions (other than how loud the controlling source was, if used) was patented on August 11, 1942. Amazingly, it was authored by the the famous female actress Hedy Lamarr and a music composer George Antheil. To keep it from being spoofed by the enemy, once the torpedo system became known, it was designed with a fantastic new concept in radio control: A pseudo-random frequency hopping system using a player-piano-type revolving key on both the transmitter and synchronized torpedo receiver to make trying to jam it almost impossible, other than brute-force making the torpedo not hear the transmitter, This is US Patent #2292387
While the mechanical coded transmit/receive system described to prevent jamming was rather impractical, it was a truly amazing breakthrough in radio transmit/receive systems for far more use than mere one-to-one control purposes. Indeed, for use with interlacing many separate transmit/receive channels being simultaneously output interlaced from a single radio tower which do not interfere with each other, it was the fundamental baseline design for essentially ALL FUTURE MAJOR RADIO SYSTEMS USED TODAY!! This includes call phones, radars, or encrypted communication systems of all kinds, essentially all kinds of many-channel or private/encrypted communication schemes that need to be broadcast out in the o0pen but are still virtually impossible to listen to unless you have the correct code for the interlaced frequencies being used for the channels.
In other words, this patent was the basis for the greatest advance in communication theory and practice ever made!! Miss Lamarr and MR Antheil were geniuses far beyond most people who ever lived in a fundamental technical system that will most probably be used FOREVER, no matter what technology is involved. Now THAT is something!
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On the topic of most Modern Aircraft, Drach is slightly off on the Sea Harrier vs Legacy Hornet (which, well, it's beyond the point of time he does most of his research in.) as the F-18 first flight is actually later (late 1978) than the Sea Harrier first flight (mid 1978). However, while the basic Sea Harrier itself is an older aircraft, the Indian Navy kept Hermes (as Viraat) long enough that their later updated iterations of Sea Harrier would become the most modern, as Midway decommissioned without ever receiving the F-18C.
As for the actual WW2 participants, the answer depends. For combat use, this is most likely actually the A-7 Corsair, as the last combat Essex was the Oriskany which had later (for the era at least) model A-7s aboard on her last combat cruise. If testing counts, then the answer possibly becomes the T-45 Goshawk trainer, which I believe was tested aboard Lexington before her decommissioning, but did not enter proper service until Lexington retired.
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Short version of my question: is the conventional wisdom that Admiral King bears a lot of blame for the losses of the American coast in early 1942 fair, or does the criticism demand that King take certain actions that were outside his authority?
The Timeghost WW2 channel recently touched on the Second Happy Time in early WW2, leading to posts repeating the conventional wisdom that Admiral King bears a lot of responsibility for the ships lost and crews killed because he did not organize convoys, did not black out cities, lighthouses, and other aids to navigation, and rejected British advice to this effect because of his Anglophobia. I find myself having to question this conventional wisdom for a couple of reasons.
First, what authority does the US Navy and its Commander in Chief/Chief of Naval Operations have to order a civilian ship captain to refrain from sailing once his cargo is loaded? If the ship has been chartered by the Navy to carry a particular cargo somewhere, then sure the Navy has a say in when and how that cargo is delivered, and the Navy also operated some of its own cargo ships later in the war, but I'm talking about Captain Harvey of the SS Farquarth with a load of lumber going from Portland, Maine to Charleston, South Carolina. I don't believe the Navy has the authority to order Captain Harvey to wait a week for the rest of the ships in the convoy (although the Coast Guard might have that authority). Was there any law or regulations giving the Navy that authority, and when was it adopted?
Second, the lighthouses and aids to navigation are under the authority of the US Coast Guard, which was part of the Navy Department since WW but under its own chain of command under Admiral Russel Waesche (during WW2), who would be answerable to Secretary of the Navy Knox. It seems to me it would be up to the Navy Secretary and Coast Guard to black out the lighthouses and shut down aids to navigation, in addition to possibly having the authority to regulate civilian ship sailings and form convoys.
Third, blackouts for coastal cities is completely outside the Navy's authority, or anyone else in the federal government. Even after the Office of Civil Defense was established, the blackout "orders" are actually requests signed by the state governors and local military post commanders.
Finally, King was notoriously impatient with fools, officers who did not measure up to his standards in carrying out their assignments (part of the infamous "He hated everyone" legend). He had prior experience in WW1 in the UK and I don't see any way he could have been ignorant of the importance of the UK having adopted the convoy system in 1917. His career included a number of postings associated with submarines following WW1, including a couple of operations to salvage submarines that had sunk in accidents (S-4 and S-51), so even if he never commanded a submarine himself its hard to see how some institutional knowledge about convoys making life more difficult for submariners would not enter into his awareness.
I see that Michael Gannon blamed King for failing to take British advice, and it appears other historians have accepted Gannon's portrayal of King, but for the reasons given above I have to wonder if this is really a fair criticism. It seems to me that much of the criticism, even accepting a mindless Anglophobia, blames King for not doing things that he had no authority to do anyway. The Coast Guard had authority over lighthouses and aids to navigation, and may have had the authority to prevent civilian ships from sailing outside of convoys, and no one at the federal level had the authority to order coastal cities to be blacked out. King could obviously have suggested to Knox that the Admiral Waesche should be ordered to shut down lighthouses and impose a convoy system, but I can't imagine King being able to do so with sufficient diplomacy to not raise questions about what the CNO is doing that he has time to worry about how the Coast Guard is doing its job. I've been a department head and have some idea how fine a line that can be to walk. I'm open to being persuaded that King had the de jure authority to do some of these things, but at this point it appears to me he is criticized for respecting the limits of his authority and expecting others to do their jobs as diligently as he does his.
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Not really. With guns this big, the weight of the projectile and its ability to retain velocity becomes a huge issue. The Nelson's 16"/45s fire a shell of just over 2,000 lb at a muzzle velocity of about 2,600 ft/sec, while the 16"/45s of the North Carolina and South Dakota classes fire a 2,700 lb projectile at 2,300 ft/sec out the muzzle. At 20,000 yards, both projectiles are down to 1,600 ft/sec, but the heavier shell retains more energy and will (if the construction is the same) penetrate more armor, although the angle of fall will be slightly steeper and claw back some of that advantage.
Edit: admittedly, at the same 40 degree elevation the Nelson's guns get an extra 2,000 yards of range. As noted though, firing at a moving target at that kind of range is pure optimism.
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While I did enjoy the Midway movie, I think you're mostly right on with your criticisms. It almost does feel like there were two separate teams producing different parts, because there was good historical research for some scenes, but clearly not for others. And I agree that, when they clearly could depict the ships accurately enough that I had no trouble telling the four Japanese carriers apart, it seems to just be a case of laziness that they didn't extend that attention to detail to all of the ships.
The Lexington-is-a-Yorktown thing can be chalked up to the producers just not wanting to spend more money on a ship model that would show up (half of it anyway) for a single 3-second shot (of course, they could have just not shown Lexington at all, simply let the following dialogue establish what happened, and solved both Coral Sea issues all at once 🤷♂). For the Midway and Pearl Harbor battle scenes, I feel like their biggest issue was that they just didn't plan the sequences out holistically. All they needed to do was just lay out a diagram of Pearl Harbor or of the Japanese Midway fleet at 1020 and take their time planning out the different shots based on that. Then they could have easily said, for example, "Alright, here's the Japanese fleet heading northwest at 1020. So if McClusky and Best's bomber formation is approaching from this direction, and we're building a shot looking over the bombers' shoulders from this angle, what part of the Japanese fleet would show up in the background?" Just a few models on a table and a cardboard tube to look through, and you have a cohesive picture of what ships should show up in which shots. To me, that feels less like bad historical research, and more just poor cinematic techniques.
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Subtitles, please! (even if only English ...)
And 100,000 compliments for the good pronunciation of the "Austro-Hungarian" words. More focus on the accent of Italian names (otherwise excellently pronounced), eg. 19:41 "... Santo Stefàno military base and railway station ..." should be pronounced "Stéfano", with the accent on the "e", not on the "a".
A lesser known episode of the First World War, which Italian historiography obviously minimizes, but which the Austrian propaganda itself strangely did not emphasize (in my family, which had 3 men in the Austrian army and one in the fleet, I have never heard of it ). Good work, thank you sir.
P.S. against the Ancona base there was also a second raid (a commando at do-it-yourself level ...) on April 5-6, 1918: will this be your next engagement?
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Drach, very good analogy of societal differences in familiarization of technology between Japan and the U.S.
except for one point. Americans from "fly over country" as you call it were, and still are, far more familiar with machine technology than they're urban counterparts. It's a necessity of life to know how to operate and repair cars, trucks, tractors, combines, swather's, balers, crop harvesters, grain elevators, seeders, soil preparing implements, water pumps and irrigation equipment, livestock hauling and feeding equipment ect, ect. Urban dwellers in the 30's and 40's rarely owned a car and used public transportation. If they had any mechanical familiarity it was generally limited to operating factory machines.
Americans from that era all had one thing in common, they knew how to take the initiative.
In the society of today, generally only the "fly over" population retains that.
The city and urban dwellers don't even know how to change a flat tire.
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I used to think the hidden torpedo boat was a cool idea, for that time. Then I looked at some (admittedly incomplete) diagrams of the Caio Duilio and how the torpedo boat was positioned within the ship and thought the idea through. It was a clever idea, but it had almost no chance of actually working and had some serious downsides.
In the late 1870's and early 1880's, the top speed of a first class torpedo boat was about 21 to 23 knots; turbines wouldn't exist for another twenty or so years; so, not exactly blindingly fast speed. The torpedo boat carried by the Duilio was a second class torpedo boat and perhaps it could make 20 knots, but that's not the real problem. The Caio Duilio's torpedo boat wasn't like some WW2 torpedo boat, something fast and responsive. For example, an American PT-Boat of late 1942 and 43 would be powered by twin V-12 Packard marine engines that put out at least 1,200 HP each and would start up in a few seconds. The Duilio's torpedo boat had a steam engine and It probably took an hour or more to get up to full power. Not launching the boat at full power means you have something like the African Queen trying to close with a warship and that only worked in the old Humphrey Bogart movie. From the drawings I've seen it appears there was a ventilation system for the torpedo boat compartment in the stern of the ship. They would have needed it to fire up the torpedo boat's boiler and get the power up, otherwise the torpedo boat crew would have choked on their own smoke. Even if the torpedo boat could be brought up to full power, such small craft are only useable in the open ocean in calm seas. Then, add in the danger of carrying a flammable and potentially explosive craft and the one or two torpedoes she carried, above the waterline in an unarmored compartment just in front of the rudder and directly over the shafts and screws of the vessel, and then you begin to realize what a bad idea this was and why no one else copied it.
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At 36:44- time fuse shells. Supplement to Drach's discussion of time fuses. One must be careful not to confuse the fuse arming mechanism and the fuse detonation mechanism. Variants of both can involve timers, for different purposes. I don't recall the date, but coincident with rifled gun barrels came the fuse arming mechanism which operates using the centrifugal force of the projectile spinning as it exits the gun barrel- at a design-determined threshold of centrifugal force or rotational speed, the fuse physically is enabled to function and awaits its detonation trigger. This arming mechanism was used with both contact and proximity fuses. With contact fuses, an added timer could set a detonation delay to allow the projectile fractions of a second to penetrate armor and/or penetrate into the target's interior space, and so this combination could be used against varied armor protection simply by setting the delay time from 0 to various fractions of and whole seconds, with the delay time chosen based on expected armor type and thickness, or lack of- hence was used on various projectiles including but not restricted to shipboard and land-based HE and armor piercing shells. My guess would be that it was developed after purely time-based fuse arming, which was developed after straight up delayed detonation fuses lacking any arming mechanism. The arming mechanism was introduced to render explosive projectiles and their very sensitive fuses safe to store and handle without unexpected detonation. The arming mechanism is why you can drop a projectile even from great height and not get a detonation, something which can't be said of projectiles manufactured before arming mechanisms were invented. That said, even the best arming mechanism can't stop an unusually and overly sensitive primer, fuse or main charge explosive from going off, which is another discussion point on specific explosives, manufacturing quality control, storage conditions and duration, and environmental hazards such as high heat, high-frequency vibration, and EM fields, radiation and discharges.
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Drachinifel ,thank you so much for your mention of U-505 located in "a museum in Chicago" ( of all places, haha ). That is properly: The Museum of Science and Industry ( MSI ) in Chicago, Illinois. The U-505 is now displayed and toured via a full in ground building now. I am from Chicago and can remember taking the tour when the sub was located outside, good times. The U-505 was floated to Chicago by sea, then through the St Lawrence Sea Way, over the Great Lakes and down to Lake Michigan, finally rolled on shore to her first display location on a tiny rail line that crosses the Outer Drive.
U-505 was captured by an escort carrier on patrol in the Atlantic, commanded by Adm Gallery. He was also a large part of getting the submarine to Chicago, also writing a book about the history of it being captured. Good to see the U-534 is still in existence, hope it goes well for all.
Thank you for a fun and informative video!
☺
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Defenses of the Canal Zone
(Battery Name/Number/Caliber/M = Mortar RY = Railway DC=Disappearing Carriage PM = "Panama Mount" P = Pedestal Mount BCLR = Barbette Carriage Long Range CBC = Casemented Barbette Carriage AMTB = Anti Motor Torpedo Boat)
Panama Mount
"The term Panama Mount describes a gun mount developed by the U.S. Army in Panama during the 1920s for fixed coastal artillery positions. Panama mounts were widely used during the buildup to and during World War II by the United States military.
The mounts could be constructed as either full, 3/4 or half circles of steel rail set in concrete with a diameter of approximately 36 feet (11 m). A concrete column with a diameter of ten feet (3.0 m) was constructed in the center of the circle to support the gun and carriage. The concrete column was connected to the outer concrete ring by concrete beams for alignment/stability. Originally traverse was accomplished with several men and prybars to move the trailing arms around the steel ring. Later installations included a geared steel ring just inside of the outer steel rail for improved traverse. The Canon de 155mm GPF, designated 155 mm gun M1917 (French-made) or M1918 (US-made) in U.S. service, was often married with Panama mounts; these were the primary weapons of the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps' tractor-drawn mobile units 1920-1945."
The Harbor Defenses of Cristobal, Panama (Panama Canal Zone, Atlantic side )
FORT RANDOLPH / Margarita Island / 1911 to Panama, 1979; commercial development / KK
Webb /2/14″/ DC /1912-1948
#1/2/14″/ RY / 1928-1948 / 2 guns for Panama, 4 empl. (#1 & #8) 1 empl. destroyed
Tidball /4/12″ / M /1912-1943
Zalinski /4/12″/ M /1912-1943
Weed /2/ 6″/ DC /1912-1946
X(4A) /4/155 mm / PM /1940
2C / 4 /155 mm / PM
5A / 4 /155 mm / PM
FORT DeLESSEPS /Colon / 1911 /to Panama, 1950s /KK
Morgan/2/ 6″/P /1913-1944/modified casemate mounts M1910
AMTB #3b/4/90 mm/F/1943-1948/Cristobal mole, built over
FORT SHERMAN / Toro Point / 1911 / MD, MC /to Panama 1999/KK
#151/2/16″/CBC/NB
Mower/1/14″/DC/1912-1948
Stanley/1/14″/DC/1912-1948
Howard/4/12″/M/1912-1943
Baird/4/12″/M/1912-1943
Pratt/2/12″/BCLR/1924-1948/Iglesia Pt., casemated-WWII
MacKenzie/2/12″/BCLR/1924-1948/Iglesia Pt., not rebuilt
Kilpatrick/2/ 6″/DC/1913-1946
W/4/155 mm/PM/1940
Other sites / ?
U/4/155 mm/PM/1918/Tortuguilla Point
V/4/155 mm/PM/1940/Naranjitos Point
Y/4/155 mm/PM/1940/Palma Media Island
Z(1A)/4/155 mm/PM/1940/Galetta Is.
1B/4/155 mm/PM//Galetta Is.
The Harbor Defenses of Balboa, Panama (Panama Canal Zone, Pacific Side)
FORT KOBBE (ex-Ft. Bruja)/ Bruja Point /Howard AFB to Panama 1999/ KK
Murray/2/16″ /BCLRN/1926-1948/Bruja Pt., casemated-WWII
Haan/2/16″ /BCLRN/1926-1948/Batele Pt., not casemated, empl. buried
AMTB #6/4/90 mm/F/1943-1948
Z (3A)
FORT AMADOR / Balboa / to Panama, 1997; commercial development /K
Birney/2/ 6″/DC/1913-1943/buried
Smith/2/ 6″/DC/1913-1943/buried
FORT GRANT /Balboa /to Panama, 1979 private development /MD, MC /KK
Newton/1/16″/DC/1914-1943/Perico Is., filled to loading platform level
Buell/2/14″/DC/1912-1948/Naos Is.
Burnside/2/14″/DC/1912-1948/Naos Is./
Warren/2/14″/DC/1912-1948/Flaminco Is., empls. filled to parapit edge
Prince/4/12″/M/1912-1943/Flaminco Is.
Merritt/4/12″/M/1912-1943/Flaminco Is.
Carr/4/12″/M/1912-1943/Flaminco Is.
Parke/2/ 6″/DC/1912-1948/Naos Is.
#8/2/14″/RY/1928-1948/Culebra Is., empl (see #1, Randolph), covered
T/2/155 mm/PM//Flamenco Is.
U (10A)/2/155 mm/PM//Flamenco Is.
V(10B)/2/155 mm/PM//Culebra Is.
Other sites /?
W (1B)/4/155 mm/PM//Taboquilla Is.
2B/2/155 mm/PM//Taboquilla Is.
unnamed/4/155 mm/PM//Paitilla Pt.
X/2/155 m/PM//Urara Is.
Y (1A)/4/155 mm/PM//Taboga Is.
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Hey Drach, first off, you get a nice round of polite golf applause for all the videos you've posted. They are very well done and I'm trying to work my way through them all.
I have a strong interest in history, and recently moved to the Chesapeake Bay, where I have been sailing for many years.
One thing I've learned about history is local historians can be quite valuable. There are some sweet maritime museums here.
In the little town of Deltaville, at the mouth of the Rappahannock River, the Colonial Seaport Foundation is building a replica of an 18th century sloop, fitted out to be a privateer. They already have some nice cannon and expect to launch in a couple of months.
These ships were the workhorses of the colonies and in early American history. Most trade and travel was by water and these small ships would sail up rivers carrying goods offloaded from larger, square-rigged merchant ships.
A quick look at a map will help explain.
Ships sailing up the Potomac and Rappahannock go in a roughly west-northwesterly direction, and the prevailing winds come out of the northwest, creating problems for square-rigged vessels.
They could take as much time sailing up the Potomac as it took them to cross the Atlantic.
Piracy was rife on the Chesapeake Bay well into the 19th century, as well as smuggling.
Here's a link to the project to build this privateer sloop:
https://www.facebook.com/ColonialSeaport/
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Thanks for a nicely done video on my boyhood hero JPJ. Query, the origin of the dance bearing his name?
In September 2016, I made a pilgrimage to Flamborough Head to see what remained of the battle. It was a beautiful drive from York to the Head, where a strong wind blew off the North Sea making the cloudless day even more bracing . I asked the lady manning - can this be possible in our enlightened, if increasingly ungendered, age? - the nearby cafe if she knew the location of any memorial or monument to the battle or its participants, but she'd never heard of either. Schade!, as the crew of any passing bombarding German cruisers might have said in December 1914!
Undeterred, I roamed about the cliffs - it really is a spectacular site! - and found a monument and a marker. I've tried to attach the photos I took of them to this post, but apparently can't do so, though I'd be happy to attach them to an email to Drach if given the means to do so.
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19:17
Hey Drach, the IJN literally had tanks floating around, Type 2 Ka-Mi, Type 3 Ka-Chi, Type 4 Ka-Tsu(tho more a boat with tracks than a floating tank here) and Type 5 To-Ku. Maybe those could be mentioned in a more detailed follow-up video.
Also bit of a ramble but you're really not giving the poor little Ha-Go enough credit for the time it was developed, for comparison around 1935 the Americans were still high on the cult of machine gun with tanks upwards to 8 machine guns, the soviets were still doing the multi turret brain poison (tho granted the T-28 is a pretty good tank for the interwar time), the Germans were still on the Panzer 2, the French were too busy fighting their own government and the Brits, well light cruiser tanks and Medium Mark II. Oh and ofc the Italians are just having their first taste of desert after making "tanks" designed for mountain warfare.
Yes the Type-95 wasn't the best interwar tank (The engagement at Khalkhin Gol might give a hint who could claim that title), but for an interwar light tank in the role of being deployed by ship it was good.
And as for usage later than its original time frame you have to consider the opponent it was mainly facing, no not America, China. The actual Japanese tank units were in China at that time, most the Americans faced were small garrisons of tanks.
Also ofc while it was the most numerous Japanese tank you also have to consider that there were other models made in actual numbers like the Chi-Ha and Chi-Ha Kai.
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@Drachinifel Adobe Speech Enhancer (AI background noise reduction) lets you upload audio clips to be processed for free, as well a number of paid Adobe products (Lightroom, Audition, I think Premier) all have built in AI sound clean up functionality, and it works very well, give it a try.
Also, as someone else mentioned lav mics are omnidirectional, meaning they pick up sound from every direction, while shotgun mics pick up sound from the front primarily, and a bit from the back, which is why you'll see the audio guy in a film crew holding one above the person speaking on a boom so that 1. it's close to the speaker 2. not in camera view 3. so that the front points to a quiet place (the floor) and 4. the rear points to another quiet place (the ceiling/sky).
That's tough to do without a crew, but for close shots you can mount a small shotgun mic on the camera, and/or use a handheld shotgun mic held in hand like a news reporter.
Hope that helps, cheers 🍻
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Re: the combustibility / explosive behavior of Cordite / Poudre B dusts, there is already a fair body of knowledge collected and published in English by various fire protection professional organizations such as the NFPA and the US Bureau of mines and US Dept. of Energy regarding explosives and fuels. Various chemical engineering societies also publish papers on these topics.
The issues of combustible dusts and gas mixtures are fairly well known, if not as widely dispersed as should be the case.The chemical and oil & gas industries try to educate engineers on how to prevent such incidents, and, should that fail, how to safely vent the resulting over-pressure to protect lives and equipment.
You cannot have an explosion without ignition (an explosion is a case of the pressure wave of rapid combustion being constrained to force compression) and combustion only occurs in the vapor phase, so your combustible dust has to sublime before it can burn / explode.
Mixing dusts really only effects the combustibility to the extentof the minimum ignition energy / minimum combustion temperature of the most readily ignited material in the mix... once it lights off, you're pretty much assured to ignite all of the others...
One notably low ignition temperature is for carbon dust films / thin layers. These ignite at ~155 C, which is significantly lower than most gase mixtures, even with a significant portion of hydrogen depressing their ignition temperature. (The behavior of combustible / explosive gas mixtures is an entirely separate, parallel, conversation.)
So, if your ship's compartment having a thin layer of combustible dust on things like pipes and electrical conduits and boxes gets exposed to a temperature of around 150 C, whether through hot shards from a penetrator, spalling, or from compression heating due to a shock wave from the impact of a projectile, you are pretty much guaranteed to have a flash fire.
Depending upon the brissance / flame velocity, if those combustion gases form their own shockwave that exceeds the capabilities of the enclosed space to vent them, you are going to have some sort of an explosion, as those hot gases will create their ventilation path by ripping holes in the steel.
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27:13
I’m going to say that anyone who criticized your original pronunciation of Yokosuka is just WRONG. It was perfectly fine. The “proper” one you were told actually causes confusion since it’s changing what you’re pronouncing. If you didn’t mention your original pronunciation I wouldn’t have known you were talking about Yokosuka.
Technically, even the supposed “correct” pronunciation is still incorrect and the original pronunciation is way more correct, I honestly don’t know who suggested it was as ‘yakoozka’ is such a strange way to pronounce it, as that is basically saying Yakuzuka which is, ….yeah, no. Plus ‘zu’ doesn’t normally have a silent ‘u’.
Yokosuka is normally pronounced “yo ko ska” (ie: with the IPA system, this would be /ˈjəʊ.kəʊ.skə/). Ironically, the original pronunciation is not only more correct and could also be considered technically correct. All of it was pronounced correctly except the ‘u’ in ‘su’ is usually silent in Japanese, as well as the ‘u’ for ‘tsu’. But, in Japanese this isn’t always the case, there are times where the ‘u’ in ‘su’ and ‘tsu’ IS pronounced, but it is usually pronounced for certain speaking styles and dialects, the largest example being when the speaker is young and/or speaking in a cute way of speaking. It is especially frequent about children. So, technically your original was actually correct, it’s just the more common one is that same pronunciation but with the ‘u’ in ‘su’ being silent. Confusingly, in Japanese when the ‘u’ IS silent isn’t always consistent.
Yeah a lot of people get bothered by stuff like Yokosuka being pronounced as Yoko*su*ka instead of Yoko*s*ka, but it doesn’t bother me because both are actually correct, and for the English language, the former is how it would be pronounced. Japanese pronunciation itself isn’t consistent BECAUSE the pronunciation changes depending upon things like your age group, gender, emotion, speaking style, and also your dialect as well. So latter is pronounced that way for certain speaking styles in Japanese which isn’t something the English language has, so it makes sense why the former would be more common.
TL;DR, your original pronunciation WAS the correct one and the “proper” way is WAY more incorrect. Generally, pronouncing Japanese names as they are written in English is going to be way more correct than with most other languages. And in all honesty, the silent “u” in “su” and “tsu” literally don’t matter for the English. At its base pronouncing the u IS correct.
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Very informative, let down only by the mispronunciation of Iéna, named for Napoleon I's victory at Jena - ye-na, the "i" being pronounced like the "y" in yes (or indeed the German "j"). Remember nobody else pronounces "I" like the English first-person pronoun, it's always "i" as in hit, a shortened "ee", or "y" as in this case.
I hadn't given much thought to French tardiness in embracing the all-big-gun concept, but it's indeed remarkable that pre-dreadnoughts were entering service as late as 1911. Perhaps part of the answer is that while necessarily prioritising land defence after the disaster of 1870, France potentially faced a bewildering variety of naval threats, from Britain's capital ships to nifty Italian smaller craft, with Germany and Austria-Hungary along the way. The waters may have been further muddied as the Entente of 1904 lessened the danger of a long-range duel with the biggest navy of all, just as the advantage of big guns became more evident. So the sluggishness may not have been entirely unfounded.
Britain of course had its moat, but its supplies were accordingly reliant on sea power: France wasn't so protected, but could feed itself, so the urgency of projecting naval power on the high seas was of lesser rank, and differing threats in the north and the Mediterranean perhaps justified the dogged attachment to secondary armament at the expense of long-range firepower (at least once the shambolic early mix of gunnery had been resolved in favour of a more coherent assortment of weapons).
It's easy in Britain to see rivals lagging abysmally, but the island realm had its own imperatives, hence the "two-power standard" in the first place which no rival sought to emulate. Britain just couldn't afford to be outgunned on the oceans, but for Continental powers it was less existential, so sit back, pour yourself another glass of wine and don't get too flustered, the issues will resolve themselves in due course. :)
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In another comment, I made reference to War Plan Orange, the US's plan for a war with Japan. Back in the early 90's, when the submarine I was on made a week-long port call in Pearl Harbor, I had the opportunity to visit the Arizona Memorial. In the gift shop, I found a rather lengthy hard-cover tome that covered the history of War Plan Orange, from it's inception under Admiral George Dewey, how it evolved over 4 decades with the changes in technology and the world situation, and how the US followed most of the basic concepts and strategy laid out in it until the end of WWII. No idea if it is even still in print, or still available in the Memorial's gift shop, after all these years. Very interesting read. Such as, MacArthur's "brilliant" tactical retreat into the Bataan Peninsula - actually, that had been the ORIGINAL plan for over 3 decades, upon outbreak of war, to move as many troops and supplies in as possible and fortify the peninsula, to hold out for upwards of a year, denying the Japanese the use of Manila Bay and waiting for a relief force from the US. In the late 30's, MacArthur scrapped that plan and instituted his own, planning on fighting the Japanese head on and on the beaches, and using submarines, PT boats, and his air force to disrupt any invasion force. When he made a complete cock-up of that plan due to his own failings, and finally reverted to the original "Fortress Bataan" concept, by then it was too late to prepare adequately, and his troops were left woefully unprepared and undersupplied. There was good reason many of the troops gave him the derisive nickname "Dugout Doug".
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@Drachinifel You must be talking about Caldwell. Not all of them were novices though, the RAF Squadron that was there had several pilots with experience from the Battle of Britain as well as some RAAF pilots who had experience from North Africa. One of the other things too were issues with the Radar "network", where the set run by the airforce was long range but less accurate while the one operated by the army for the AA batteries was short range but more reliable, so there were several instances where the notification came in late, or there were delays in locating the enemy, meaning the interception was often performed over water at the limits of endurance. There was a famous case where the wing lost multiple aircraft in a single action, but they were nearly all due to fuel exhaustion and prop failures. The RAAF had wanted Mustangs or P38's due to the range issue inherent in operating in the pacific (or Australia in general) , so its no surprise they were building P51K's in Melbourne by wars end. Spitfire is an an amazing airframe, but it could be argued was not the "right" air frame for that environment. Personally, i hate Darwin, the Japanese could have bombed it off the map and no one would miss it ;)
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Concerning problems finding things at National Archives.
I discovered a document at the US National Archives in the US Navy BuO)RD files that was entitled "The Mark Twain Scrapbook" (one of the famous author Samuel Clemens' business ventures making 3x5" photo albums}. No other ID. I asked the personnel there what was in it and they had no idea. As I was visiting the Washington, D.C. main archives at the time, I asked them to send it to my table so that I could look at it and they did. It was indeed a photo album. Inside the cover it stated that it was a set of annotated pictures made at the US Naval Proving Ground, Indian Head, Maryland in 1917. (This was the last year that the NPG was there, moving to Dahlgren, Virginia, its final location, in 1918.) It had no other information, so I looked through the pictures to see what it contained. It was filled with Carnegie Steel Company Class "A" (face-hardened) naval armor plate photos that had been fired on by US Navy 12" and larger AP projectiles, carefully annotated concerning the test striking velocities, plate thicknesses, and other test conditions, including photos of the projectiles after th3e impacts, many of them reduced to a pile of broken pieces. Many such pictures were included. I suppose that it once had a label on the cover that had fallen off and now there was nothing to identify its contents unless you looked inside yourself. This document is one of the most important resources in identifying in detail what really happens to AP projectiles of that time period when they hit face-hardened armor, allowing the investigator to sort out the details concerning the different kinds of damage inflicted on US AP shells by such impacts -- descriptions from observers at the time were markedly lacking in such details (test personnel comments like "the projectile broke" or "the projectile broke badly" are maddingly lacking in needed information!).
There seems to be a need to go through the files one is sorting through at the building itself by personal inspection rather than just look at catalogs, if this is an example of what kind of files are there...
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@Drachinifel This is question I´ve been pondering on a lot myself: the in barrel ´ballistics´ of a smoothbore cannon/musket. Sure, a rotating shell with good conducting copper driving bands in a rifled barrel would indeed create a very high temperature due to friction... But during the Age of Sail we´re talking about windages of 10-20% for small arms (1,5 to 2mm standard windage for a 18,75mm/0,75 inch calibre muskets) and likely slightly lower for the cannon. The bigger the cannon, the lower the windage (gap between projectile and barrel) but still, there´s no source of heating in a smoothbore gun except the powder... Admitted, this does create only 45% gas and about 55% white-hot solids being spewed out (so you don´t want to be in front of cannon loaded without a ball either) but these cool down very fast. In fact, it´s one of the mysteries of smoothbore guns I haven´t found an answer to yet: does the ball really bounce up/down trough the barrel as everybody assumes it does? Or does inertia of the ball mass cause a high-pressure gas ´cloud´ in front/behind the ball, where it flies in, basically unguided?
If we assume the ´bouncing down the barrel´ hypothesis for smoothbore guns, than the vibrations on the big naval guns in the Age of Sail must have been enormous, since imagine a 32pd cast iron ball slamming into metal 2-4 at 1.5x the speed of sound... That would make some rattling noise! Are there any sources out there that mention anything about gun vibration in the Age of Sail? Sadly enough it´s illegal to use high doses of gunpowder, X-rays and very fast cameras in combination with old cannon to make pictures of what´s going on inside of the cannon during firing, so... We´re stuck here :-)
Thank you EU, who thinks that we, Lovers of History are planning a terrorist attack with black powder weaponry of the Napoleonic Era... Sigh.
But yes, there would be residual particles of powder sticking on the metal, especially if fired at short range. This was also noted by doctors at the time, that musket balls tended to carry bits of burned powder into the wound, not helping with the issue of infection ofc.
But that´s another story, I´d be quite interested if you´ve got any first hand accounts/impressions of firing these muzzeloading monsters.
Regards,
Thomas
PS. Love this Channel since the first time mate, keep up the good work!
PS 2. We´re slipping into that Black Hole that you tried to avoid in the video lol
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Drach, safety first! You got lucky here.
First off, eye protection! If you add no other protection, add eyepro.
Next, you almost got splashed by burning, sticky liquid twice. I'd want better head/hair protection and I really hope nothing you were wearing was remotely flammable. That includes shoes and underwear.
Next up, think of the venue. You're testing out stuff that, if you get it right, can't be put out by water. It doesn't matter if everything was wet from recent rain. Did you have a bucket or two of dry sand handy? Consider doing your next test somewhere like a parking lot - concrete doesn't burn. Above all, do it somewhere where an ambulance can get to quickly.
You need a way to apply an ignition source at a safe distance. A facefull of flame is bad, especially with sulfur in the mixture. Work on your mixing technique, you spilled flammable liquid next to an open flame. The alcohol in the burner came much closer than is comfortable to igniting.
Most serious accidents involve one or more issues lining up to cause injury or death. Reduce the number of holes and add layers of safety. Also, wear eyepro.
And a suggestion. For a test on water, consider an inflatable kiddie pool. They're cheap, portable, and you can just leave it out to fill up with rainwater.
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Of the three ways you said “Nevada”: first is how idiots who don’t know how the state’s name is pronounced say it, second is correct and how everyone living in the state itself says it (making it correct), and the third… I’m guessing whoever said that audibly to you was five sheets to the wind and chewing on a brick of cocaine for good measure? I am literally from there: grew up and raised, lived there until my mid 20s (or 24 years of my so far 33 years of life), so I can with full proper qualification honestly tell you that every time someone says it the first way, several million people stop and cringe as our ears are grated worse than hearing Quint’s nails on the chalkboard in the movie Jaws as the name is grossly mispronounced. An example I can use of another place facing a similar problem is “Lima” Ohio, pronounced “Ly / Lie (like “Tie” sound) + Ma”, as in it’s pronounced like the bean, but geographically half of the country (mostly west of St. Louis) mispronounces it like “Lee + Ma”, like the capitol of Peru. So, yeah… your first effort was a cringe failure (sorry, but true), second was correct (wonderfully said!!!), third was… what the actual heck was that supposed to be?!?! No one in the US short of being bludgeoned so hard that their gray matter is hanging outside of their head or being high after hugging paint thinner has ever said it that way… Oof!!! >.<
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2:11:23 - Funnily enough, though, even the Spanish Armada is still close enough to the present to be reachable without too many degrees of separation; it's entirely within the realm of possibility that there are (admittedly quite old) people alive nowadays...
...who, when they were small, met and talked to a much older person...
...who, when they were small, met and talked to a much older person...
...who, when they were small, met and talked to a much older person...
...who, when they were small, met and talked to a living veteran of the battles against the Spanish Armada.
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The French APC shell defects that blew up a RICHELIEU gun was not a jamming problem. It was a base plug manufacturing defect. The shells had deep holes drilled into the base plugs for inserting poison gas "cans", that were never actually used, to my knowledge. However, in drilling those holes (two per base plug), the manufacturer for some reason -- misreading a spec perhaps -- made them too deep so that when the guns fired, some of the holes blew out their inner ends and allowed the propellant blast into the main explosive cavity and KABOOM before the shell moved very far down the barrel. JEAN BART seems to have found out about the problem and welded thick steel coin-shaped inserts onto the inner surface of the base plug over the holes, fixing it, since none of its shells ever exploded, to my knowledge.
As for the US battleship turret explosion, whatever caused it was a major fluke since too-fast ramming of powder bags had happened many times before over decades of such ship loading --from well before WWI to the turret explosion on a large number of US battleships with NO problems like that ever happening before and with no more problem than crushed bags that had to be replaced. Something happened that was completely unexected, no matter what the situation was. A strange fluke by any measure.
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First, I only discovered this channel a few weeks ago, and I am very, very impressed. The range and depth of our host’s knowledge is amazing.
A few naval architecture comments follow.
First, another advantage of twin rudders, on a twin shaft ship, as opposed to a single rudder, is that as shown in the photo at time 4:55, each rudder can be placed directly behind a propeller. The “prop wash” impinges directly on the propeller, greatly increasing the effectiveness of the rudder.
Second, the video comments that a disadvantage of a large single rubber is that it might increase the ship’s draft. Technically, no. A ship’s “draft” is the vertical distance between the waterline and the bottom of the hull (keel). Anything protruding BELOW the hull (bottom of the rudder tip or a sonar dome, for example) increases the ship’s “navigation draft.”
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Hello, for you and your honored guest, there is indeed some information available in Russian. Specifically, if you put this: "Мирослав Морозов о действиях немецких подлодок против СССР" into youtube search, you will find two videos with this title (part one and part two). They are in Russian but you can switch on auto-subtitles and have them auto-translated, which does a surprisingly decent job. Some details might be missing but you'll understand basically everything. This video is dedicated to U-boats acting against USSR in general, but it does talk about the Black Sea too. The author gives a different version of events as to who was pushing for U-Boats to be transferred to the Black Sea - I don't know who is right here, presumably your German-speaking colleague has a better idea although Morozov's version makes more logical sense. Otherwise his narrative broadly matches this video, although I think his opinion is that U-Boats were least effective in the Black Sea (at least in terms of directly sinking ships, presumably they had an impact by forcing the Black Sea Fleet to be more careful). He said Black Sea U-boats sank no warships, no submarines, and only 5 cargo ships of notable size (the collapse of Soviet Black Sea cargo shipping in the later part of the war was largely related to near-complete inability to repair cargo ships, and then various enemy action of which UBoats were a small part).
He also has some very interesting data on the effectiveness of torpedo attacks of both German and Soviet subs (see infographic at 34:30 of the second video). IIRC in 1941, Germans were ~28% effective while Soviets were only 8% effective owing to very little training and poor equipment due to typical Soviet shoestring budget issues. However, by 1943, the difference is sharply reduced to about 20% for the Germans and 17% for the Soviets; Morozov attributes this to much lower attrition in the Soviet submarine force, so many/most of the Soviet sub commanders (and crews) were pre-war career military with extensive experience, whereas a lot of German crews didn't actually have much combat experience at all. Over the entire war (Black, Baltic, and north seas), Soviet and German subs made roughly ~700 and ~750 torpedo attacks respectively, of which 112 and 163 respectively were successful. He also presents scans of quite a few documents to illustrate his data (it's primarily based on Soviet archives, German documents captured by US after the war, and ULTRA intercepts).
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As always is a wonderful program. Even though I served as a surface warfare officer for 25 years, including service on board all for Iowa class, I would still be interested in any information you had to provide, especially since it’s so extensive and so entertaining.
I also had six tours in the Pentagon and used to spend my break reading historical documents. I wish to add a couple of points here. The small size relatively, of the carrier air group raised serious questions in the office of CNO about the ability of the British carriers to fight in the van so to speak, to attack and defend themselves , without American carry air groups being in proximity. However, Ernie King may have hated the British more than he did the Germans and that must always be kept in mind. Also, the British carriers withstood kamikaze attacks and did quite well, operating on the flank so to speak , in the final battles.
I would like to offer three points, much more limited stores availability, the range of course, perhaps a bigger problem than the size of the air group and the fact that so many damaged British CV units had to retire to the United States for repair and refit. How many carriers would have survived had they had to wait for yard availability in the UK and then survive possible air attacks while there?. There was also an addendum to the Yamato after action summary that hypothesized the British groups might not have been able to put up enough strike aircraft and protect themselves , to sink the Yamato. I guess in the final analysis , the combination of strategies by two great allies was the answer.
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30:11 Imagine being stationed in that foretop position when travelling in seas causing any significant roll. A 10 degree roll would have you travelling through 20 degrees of arc at that height. Yikes, LOL.
Here's a variation you could do: Hood and Iowa, the most attractive big-gun ships ever built?
That could possibly be an even more contentious subject, LOL.
The real issue with this discussion as I see it is the term battlecruiser became increasingly irrelevant as naval technologies advanced. It used to be the case that if you wanted battleship guns and battleship armour then your speed would necessarily be compromised, it being all but impossible to achieve with any sort of sane design.
Once you get reliable, efficient high pressure steam turbines with oil fired boilers, however, that changed somewhat.
The performance of guns, or perhaps more correctly the shells they fired, their mounts and the fire control systems governing them, became so potent that armouring against your own weapons if they were state of the art meant you'd have to carry pretty gargantuan levels of armour, and even then the concept of the "immunity zone" would apply only at considerably long ranges and would be only several thousand yards/kilometres in size.
KGV's design, if I remember correctly, decided to push up the armour and have more guns to compensate for those guns being less than the absolute best available around the world. The argument being she'd be able to deal with incoming fire down to a range where her more numerous guns would score more hits AND be able to defeat her enemies' armour. That makes sense in the Atlantic especially, when it's entirely likely ranges could be somewhat shorter than technically possible given the likelihood of poor weather, which would make fire control and especially radar integration important, something the RN was very much at world class levels. I've read that expectation of shortened ranges is one reason Bismarck didn't have the all or nothing armour scheme, too. They screwed up with her armour scheme in how they implemented it IMO (too many important things exposed, insufficient turret/barbette armour), but they did have reasons for choosing it.
USS Iowa is arguably the exemplar of all these coming together, as the USN quickly decided that trying to armour her against the 'super heavy' 16" APC rounds except in a fairly narrow and distant 'immunity zone' meant ridiculously vast amounts, and thus weight, of armour. Speed gave her the ability theoretically to dictate engagements, so also theoretically allowed her to keep opponents at that range. Her fire control with radar was likely the best of any system in WW2, or at the very least the equal of any other.
Even so, she essentially 'spent' 10,000 tons of displacement for the same armament and protection scheme as the preceding South Dakota class while gaining up to about 5-6 knots speed, and even that wasn't really available in anything beyond moderate seas at best.
The final definition of BC you gave sounded very much like what Fisher had in mind, wanting a few BCs that reflected the latest iteration of BBs. Was that where it came from?
Anyway, the term BC made sense when the trade-offs between firepower, armour and speed were much more hard lines than blurred. Once tech advanced to the point you couldn't effectively armour against your own guns at anything other than fairly narrow range bands at quite long distances, however, those choices were somewhat different as you weren't going to build a BB armoured against its own guns over a WIDE range band as it would compromise speed, let alone cost, to the point the ship arguably would be entirely too constrained in its usefulness.
Hardly matters what they're called, what they can do is what's important. Hood was clearly diabolically unlucky in her battle with Bismarck. I suspect in at least 60% of cases the Germans would've ended up in serious trouble had Hood not been destroyed. The damage done to Bismarck proved rather disastrous operationally, and that was with a clearly compromised Prince of Wales as her only opponent.
Iowa undoubtedly ought to have been able to dictate terms against any opponent, and her 16"/50 guns and heavy shells were the equal even of Yamato's 18.1" in most respects. Her fire control, as already mentioned, was at least as good as anything else, and likely better than nearly all opponents.
In that sense one could make a case for her being the ultimate example of a very flexible in endurance and speed, hugely potent, large gun warship.
Cheers
p.s. haven't reached the end, but I consider both of them are very clearly fast battleships. They can and ought to fight contemporary BBs, and have speed advantages to give them options.
Sure, Hood vs modern 16" was debatable indeed and her fire control systems were very much less than state of the art by WW2, but then one can argue the fast BBs of the USN in WW2 aren't contemporaries but next generation.
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Here's another site with information about USS Olympia: https://www.historynet.com/uss-olympia-symbol-of-a-sea-change.htm
What struck me as interesting was the position of the officer's wardroom and the captain's stateroom in the extreme stern of the ship. Back in the days of wooden ships and iron men, the stern was always "officer country" with the enlisted crew berthed anywhere else there was space for them, which was convenient for the captain since the ship's steering, tiller or wheel, was within a few feet of where he slept and dined. However, in Olympia, the pilothouse is two or three decks higher and about 150 further forward than the captain's quarters. This could not have been convenient. Another notable feature of Olympia is the location of her 5" rifles, which live in the same spaces as used by the crew as their living space. The guns are intermingled with the crew's mess tables, just as in an 18th-century ship-of-the-line. I also noticed that the crew slept in hammocks rather than bunks, just like in the RN right through to the end of WWII. Traditions die hard in the Navy.
A number of British warships that saw service in 1939-1945 started their lives with stern walks, a feature that should only belong on 16th-century galleons. Even Nelson's Victory didn't have a stern walk. I fail to see what a 20th-century RN admiral would do with a stern walk except get very wet and develop tinnitus. It least Olympia didn't bother with such a silly appurtenance.
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PART 2
Here is what seemed to have happened (simplified), from my study.
When the first armored seagoing warships came into being in 1859-1850 (British WARRIOR and French GOIRE) and, very shortly thereafter, were a huge part of the naval battles in the US during its Civil War of 1861-1865, the armored warsdhip made the old wooden warships totally obsolete in a "flash". New armor-piercing ammunition had to be devised to punch through the heavier ship armor of the enemy warship's gun mounts and hull, since it quickly became obvious during the US Civil War that the old spherical cannot balls of either cast iron or wrought iron no longer "cut it" (literally in many cases). The elongated cylindrical projectile, originally with a flat nose but rapidly that changed to oval or, more often pointed for better drag reduction and longer range and better thick armor penetration performance, replaced the cannon ball, and the improved metallurgy and heat treatment of cast iron (Palliser and Grüson chilled cast iron) projectiles and, later, steel projectiles, which were stronger. So now you had projectiles that could punch holes in the enemy armor much like the old cannon balls could punch holes in the thick wooden sides of the old sailing "Ships of the Line". Also, chilled cast iron projectiles and, originally but less and less as steel-manufacturing expertise improved, any shells that penetrated the thicker armored regions would be broken into pieces while going through the plate. Then, in the 1890s, the French invented the much-stronger and less brittle nickel-steel armor, the US invented Harveyized (cemented/carburized on a thin, but extremely hard, face layer using mild or, better, nickel-steel) and, finally, German Krupp created an even stronger nickel-chromium low-carbon steel of maximum strength (even after WWII it was not improved much) that could be deep-face-hardened (plus in most cases the Harveryized surface added too) forming Krupp "Type 420" (test plate number in 1894) armor steel and "Krupp Cemented" (KC) armor, the basis of heavy naval side armor until the end of the Ironclad Era circa 1945-1950. These face-hardened armor and even, when very thick, homogeneous, ductile armors could again break up impacting projectiles whether they penetrated or not, much of the time. The invention of the "AP Cap" (thick, originally soft-steel, nose protection that could keep projectile intact, sometimes at least, when penetrating face-hardened armor at a low angle from right-angles impact -- 15-20 degrees was about maximum originally, though some improved soft-capped designs could handle 30 degrees against thinner face-hardened plate) again allowed intact penetration of even face-hardened plate and the use of moderately large (up to maybe 4% by weight in some cases) high explosive fillers to be added with some hiope that the fillers would increase the internal damage to the enemy warship (for example, Germany used solid shot in its AP shells until adding AP caps in 1902 since they realized that any explosive filler was almost useless and just made the projectile body weaker by making a huge interior hole in it.)
As such, during the latter part of the 19th Century, an AP projectile (effectively AP shot, no matter what filler might have been used, that broke up during penetration) had its primary purpose to punch holes in the outer armor of the enemy target and send fragments of the shell and armor into the target as shrapnel radiating from the back surface of the hole just made (quite effective against gun mounts!). Ship hulls countered this by adding internal thinly-armored "protective/splinter plating" bulkheads and "protective decks" to soak up these fragments, including putting coal bunkers behind the belt armor, which worked extremely well at this. As this was the typical result, there was no reason to try to make an HE-filled AP projectile that could penetrate more than the outer armor and, hopefully, remain intact just long enough for a non-delay base fuze (circa 0.003-second due to inertia) to blow up during or just after penetrating the outer armor, increasing the damage there, though not doing much better deeper into the enemy warship behind its internal light layers of protection.
END OF PART 2
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Drachinifel, thank you for touching on this much misunderstood, worthy subject in which I have a long time interest.
A question please, do you know of and where I could find more about the ships involved in particular the schooner HMS Pickle, (often confused with the schooner Pickle famous for racing with the Trafalgar dispatch to London) built if I recall well, 1820 at Bermuda and the third R N ship to have this name?
At least as far back as the time of Francis Drake born c. 1540–43, Devonshire, England—died January 28, 1596, there has been a convention Among English (later British) sea men that any slave who set foot on an English (British) ship was immediately a freeman.
This did not always happen.
However, crew lists and other sources confirm there were often African men among British crews where "if a man was a sailor he'd get along fine, if not he's sure in hell".
Note, the reference is to competence not colour.
There was a famous African listed as Able Seaman and Assistant Surgeon on HMS Racehorse when the very specially prepared and crewed only by experienced volunteers Racehorse sailed (1773) as part of the Royal Navy's first voyage of science and discovery to the Arctic Circle.
His name was Olaudah Equiano although listed as Gustav Weston.
One of his shipmates was a young man named Horatio Nelson.
For anyone wishing to learn more about the British and slavery Olaudah's story make a very good read.
He is well covered all be it in brief in the book 'Nelson's Arctic Voyage' by Peter Goodwin.
One of the illustrations was painted by me and if you look carefully you will see 'A B Gustav Weston' working with his shipmates (Racehorse is also on my website under 'Nelson & Trafalgar').
Born a prince in Africa after numerous adventures, in England he wrote a book that helped the abolitionist campaigns to stop slavery.
Olaudah's time as a sailor was not exceptional, many Africans became British seamen about which I could tell you much more.
I think it important to conclude by adding, underlying this is a very long tradition of Englishmen including before William of Normandy's conquest, feeling 'uncomfortable' about slavery.
The Doomesday Book (1085) itself confirms that compared to most other European nations in England there were relatively few slaves.
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The 14" experimental AP ammo of 1910: The US Navy had the first 14" naval guns manufactured for testing in 1910. They advertised for bids for 1499-pound (684 kg) AP projectiles with a new test requirement. Instead of right-angles tests against circa-12" (30.5 cm) Class "A" (KC-type) side armor, the impact angle would now be 10 degrees from right-angles, making the test requirement slightly more difficult, but also somewhat more realistic for a true naval battle impact. (Later this would be upped to 15-20 degrees and in WWII, 35-40 degrees, so 10 degrees was virtually miniscule.) Three companies responded, The Midvale Company, which was the smallest steel-maker that made both AP shells and armor for the US Navy, Bethlehem Steel Corporation, the largest steel-maker that made both AP shells and armor for the US Navy (Carnegie Steel Company, which was the largest armor manufacturer, did not make AP projectiles), and Crucible Steel Corporation, a relatively new at that that time steel-maker that decided to make AP projectiles for the US Navy (and eventually made the best naval AP shells in the world during WWII).
When the three three lots of test shells were delivered and tested by the Navy by the end of that year, the results were as follows:
(1) Midvale shells passed with no failures at all, as would be expected from the superior results of prior tests of its AP ammo made previously and, within six years, its introduction of the much superior "Midvale 1916" or "Midvale Unbreakable" (up to 15 degrees test angles) that caused the US Navy to change their tests to require that test angle and minimum shell damage from then on through the early 1930s.
(2) Crucible AP shells passed all tests with a few failures, but each test allowed two shells per test and no pair of shells failed in any given test. Pretty good for a new manufacturer.
(3) ALL Bethlehem AP shell failed this test. It seems that this company took quality control as a suggestion, not a requirement. Class "A" armor plates taken from USS OKLAHOMA after that ship capsized at Pearl Harbor included three 13.5" (34.3 cm) belt plates and they were examined and tested using new WWII 1500 pound (733 kg) Crucible 14" Mark 16 AP shells showed that not one of those plates had similar metallurgical properties or similar penetration test results, with only one plate having resistance similar to the Carnegie-Krupp Cemented (CKC) Class "A" plates made at the same time for US Navy battleships. I do not know when or even if Bethlehem started to make reliable AP shells or armor prior to 1930, but it was definitely not doing so circa-1910.
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Hi,
I’m the guy static healed my broken ankle binging on your first hundred fifty Drydocks. Thank you dearly. Remember me? Argentine victory in the Falklands, simply by parking its DD CL Navy there? How the Japanese could have delayed their defeat at least another half-dozen time, for at least another decade, despite Yamamoto’s defeat conviction and infection of his staff?
Call me Iain’t M. Banks. I have two questions:
In ships from light cruiser up, why did no-one casemate 2-4 additional main guns adjacent to fore and aft magazines along the hull? Stability issues? Nothing but the barrels beyond the hull itself. Compromise the citadel howsoever designed? You tell me. Seems to me proper geometry could work. There is a limit to your off-center artillery allergy. 2-4 more barrels, shit!
Why did the Royal Navy not hammer the Channel Port anchors of the German trench line during WWI? Sweep ALL its mines. Raid it often with commando operations at division scale? Stage land-artillery erasures by battle line capital ship fire? Wipe out coastal resupply by mine, gunfire and torpedo? Force the Boche port anchor to the next one North and its defense reconstruction while the UK attack fleet remains active in full force? If the Belgian Army won’t apply the necessary ground pressure, replace them with Mons to Somme throw-aways. I let you imagine optimal scenarios, given superior UK construction of special craft (minelayers and sweepers, gunboats, rapid assault landing ships, monitors, marines, six months or more ahead of the Boche industrial reply). Deploy the French fleet close inshore at even greater sacrifice. Vive la France ! The Channel runs red with Iron Bottom Sound blood just like the trench line out to Switzerland. The Grand Fleet dares the Boche navy to sortie against serious threats. Many more cruiser/destroyer battles. Submarines, yours and theirs? Why not?
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It's interesting that you have a picture of the Sultana, the worst maritime disaster in American history. The steamboat was carrying Union soldiers returning north after the end of the Civil War, and due to corruption was terribly overloaded. One boiler was temporarily patched, but the boat's owners wanted to get in on the business of transporting returning troops and skipped having a proper repair done by a competent boiler shop. Sure enough, the patched boiler ruptured, causing some of the adjacent boilers to rupture, and over 1,100 people were exploded, burned, or drowned. Even worse, nobody was really held accountable for it. I've actually got a book on it, if you'd be interested.
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1:25:30 It also depends on whether the term you are using is specific to that object, or is a general term. "The Volvo broke free" is correct, because 'Volvo' in reference to cars could be any vehicle manufactured by Volvo; 'the Volvo' identifies it as a specific vehicle that was manufactured by Volvo. On the other hand, 'Warspite broke free' is correct because 'Warspite' is a specific warship identified by that name. So you would use "Iowa broke free" if it was the USS Iowa that broke free, but "the Iowa broke free" if it was an individual but unnamed Iowa-class battleship. Large warships, though, are generally built in small enough numbers that they are generally referred to by their own names, while you might more readily use "The Fletcher broke free" if you had a group of different destroyer classes and weren't able to identify the Fletcher-class DD any more specifically than by class. You would also use 'the' if you were using the collective class, rather than naming individual ships, as a group of different vessels at full speed, and "the Fletchers outran the rest of their group".
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US Navy BuORD in WWII. The totally abominable way it failed to handle the Mark 14 submarine torpedo problems (and those of any other torpedo with major "improvements" at the beginning of WWII) had impact (literally) for decades afterward since submariners had long memories and were REALLY "pissed off".
On the other hand, the WWII BuORD division that handled the new AP projectile base fuzes (all AP shells from the new 6" and 8" to the new 14" and 16" were supposed to use the same fuze at any given time) was quite good and fixed serious problems rapidly. There were two new fuzes developed by this organization, the first, the Mark 11 Base Detonating Fuze (BDF), introduced in the late 1930s and, replacing it, the Mark 21 BDF, beginning in the year 1040 through well after WWII.
The Mark 11 BDF was a radical design to allow the fuze to be cocked on impact using a powerful spring holding the firing pin that was pressed forward by the deceleration of the projectile after its initial impact, whether on the water surface or when it hit a steel plate. Only when the force due to deceleration of the projectile stopped would the firing pin be thrown forward into the primer, setting it off and beginning the fuze delay before detonation. It also had an extra- strong and complex arming system to prevent the fuze firing until after fired from the gun, as with all post-1930s. This part of the fuze was not specifically designed for high-angle impacts, however, and theoretically could be caused to malfunction due to sideways fraction if the projectile went through heavy armor, though it was better than most designs in this regard since the final firing pin motion did not occur until the spring-cocking forces had dropped considerably. This design concept was what the Japanese Type 88 and Type 91 "diving" AP projectiles -- and the French AP designs that they were based partially on -- should have been equipped with. This part of the fuze seemed to work fine.
However, the Mark 11 BDF design were "a bridge to far" in its design by trying an additional somewhat useful delay-action-portion change, also unique. It was this part of the fuze that failed when mass production was attempted. When the fuze hit a thick armor plate, it could be assumed that the target was a battleship or battle-cruiser, which were large ships roughly 100 feet (30.5m) in width and roughly 30 feet (9m) of underwater hull). But if the fuze hit a thinner plate, the ship would be smaller, down to an even smaller ship if a steel plate just barely thick enough to set off the fuze was hit (circa 0.1 caliber, I estimate). At the full 0.035-second total fuze delay after the spring had fired the primer when the fuze exited the inside of the thickest expected armor plate and, if used, backing hit, the projectile at close range might still be going close to 1000 feet/second (305m/sec) and, at 0.035 second, go 35 feet (10.7m). (There would be a moderate variation from shell to shell by about 10 feet (3.6m)) around this spec distance for the expected 90% of the fuzes that functioned properly on impact.) This distance would make a shell that hit thin armor on a small ship pass right through it as a solid shot projectile in many cases, causing minimum damage unless it by sheer chance hit something important. This was considered something to correct since, at this time, the US Navy had not yet finished its design of the new large-caliber nose-fuzed High Capacity (HC) HE-type projectiles with multiple fuze options for use against other than armored targets (HC shells were used in considerable numbers during WWII, most especially for shore bombardment). To shorten the fuze delay if the shell directly hit a lightly-armored (assumed small) ship, they came up with a unique idea. (Note that the AP shell would move rather far underwater in more-or-less an upward-curving line -- the minimum angle of fall to stay underwater with a pointed shell is about 12 degrees -- due to the still-pointed US AP shell (the windscreen required a strong impact force to knock it off and usually ocean hits were not enough) moving less than 50 feet (15.2m) before yawing wildly and flipping into a stable base-first orientation, which would allow the spring-loaded firing pin to set off the primer then.) The black-powder delay was put into a tuber with a hollow needle connecting the primer to the base of the needle and the needle free to move forward into the tube, but with a thin layer of black powder in the gap between the needle outside surface and the inside of the tube as the needle moved forward and forward (no black powder would fit into the narrow inside of the tube). The deeper the needle went into the tube due to higher, longer-lasting deceleration forces (thicker armor). The primer blast wend down the inside of the needle, hit the far end and set off the black powder, which then burned backward in the gap outside the needle -- the less armor hit, the the less the needle had moved forward and the shorter the delay until about a 0.003-second or so minimum with no black-powder delay at all -- and into the detonator, which set off the two rocket-nozzle Tetryl boosters on each side of the fuze tip and thus the main filler. At least in theory. Unfortunately, severe impact forces on armor made the mass-produced Mark 11 BDF distort or break the thin needle/tube mechanism and many duds or non-uniform delays occurred.in later testing so the fuze was considered a failure. The rather large number of already-made fuzes were declared non-serviceable and put into storage. (CONTINUED ON NEXT COMMENT ABOVE)
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"That leads to a scenario where the US Congress orders the USS Congress to do something and the Congress will have to obey the Congress"
Actually, no. As the commander in chief, the President is the only member of the civilian government that could order the Congress, regardless of the wishes of the Congress. While the Congress might state its wishes for the Congress and its actions, the Congress would really only hold power over the budget appointed to the military, and thus the Congress, to push it and the Navy to subject the Congress to the will of the Congress. In wartime the Congress would be even more removed from the Congress in practice and the Congress would have to accept and likely support the actions of the Congress to better the aims of the overall campaigns. After such a hypothetical war, however, the Congress would likely be in a position of incredible power of the Congress, controlling much reduced funding that the Congress would need for repair, refit, and so on, regardless of the possibly heroic and legendary actions of the Congress.
The Congress could thus have the final say over the fate of the Congress, and thus the Congress could end the Congress......something some will likely never forgive the Congress for!
Congress
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1:22:40 In the USN Enlisted pay grades or "Rates" are for example Fireman Recruit /E1, Fireman Apprentice/E2, Fireman/E3, these at called non-rates. Petty Officers for example would be BT3/E4, BT2/E5, BT1/E6, BTC/E7, BTCS/E8, and BTCM/E9 where BT is for the "Rating" of Boiler Technician. The nor-rates depending on what category the "Rating" they were striking for feel could also be Seaman, Airman, Hospitalman, Dentalmanor Constructionman.( As per 21st Edition of the Bleujackets' Manual) The "E" and "O" pay grades did not come about until the approval of the "Career Compensation Act of 1949"; however, for comparison purposes, the 1st Grade, is the same as today's E-7; 7th Grade is the same as E-1. E8 and E9 were added in in 1958.
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@Drachinifel Hey, thanks for the response. Btw I believe I was a bit stingy on praises in my comments on your videos thus far since I commented almost exclusively about the things I disagreed with you about, but I should say: whatever I did not comment about I either mostly agreed with or simply learned from :) So kudos, a great effort! (I've been a subscriber for a while)
The reasoning in my comment above is based on the following historical examples:
1) Polish pilots: they trained extensively on their PZL fighters in the 30s expecting to face the Soviets sooner or later, but once the Germans attacked with more numerous and technologically superior aircraft and mostly rush-trained pilots (there weren't all that many Spanish Civil War veterans), they won. Sure the Poles proved elusive targets and shot down some planes but it was futile. But once the survivors got up-to date Hurricanes in the Battle of Britain - they shone. You may check the "Bloody Foreigners" - The Untold Story of The Battle of Britain (available on youtube) 17:59-18:37 the testimony of one of the Polish fighters from the RAF 303 Squadron (Polish) who fought both at home and in Britain about how easy it all was in a Hurricane vs the old PZL-11
2) The Soviets. They got massacred in the beginning although they had veterans as well as the Germans - from Spain, Finland and Khalhin Gol. They also had the numbers. But most of the aircraft were outdated (I-15, I-16) sub-par (LaGG-3) or poorly suited for the battle ahead (Mig-3). So by late 1942. the rookies held the line and the training was the most basic. But then they got Yak-9s, and La-5s which were a match for the German fighters in Eastern Front battle conditions. And by mid-1943. they turned the tide.
3) The Japanese vs US historically, mid 1943. Just watch Dogfights: Zero killer (available here on youtube) from 12:00 to 15:00 - how a US rookie in a new Hellcat easily killed a Japanese 9 kill ace in an A6M3 Zero in a 1:1 dogfight just thanks to the superiority of his aircraft. Sure there were accounts of skillful Japanese pilots being a headache to hit for the green Americans, notably the Japanese ace Saburo Sakai, blind in one eye by this point in the war, in an A6M5 Zero evading an attack of 15 green Hellcats in late 1944. off Iwo Jima, but one needs to hurt the enemy badly enough too in addition to surviving in order to win a war.
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wrt rangfinding, as Drac said, estimating range tended to be the more difficult problem. That lead to advocacy of higher velocity guns, as their flatter trajectory increased danger space at the target. But, when the fighting instructions say to head directly toward the enemy to bring range down to 12-16,000 yards, that offers the enemy a danger space, ie allowance for range finding error, the full length of the ship, 600-800 feet, to shoot at, if they fire in a high ballistic trajectory, rather than fire in a flat trajectory. Drac noted in his piece on one of the USN battleships he visited, the USN provided reduced charges for it's guns, so they had the option of firing in a high trajectory to better penetrate a deck, turning decades of gunnery theory on it's head.
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Yeah, I just watched Drach on another channel called "History Undone." And I do really hope they paid him well to to be on their show BECAUSE, I had NEVER seen Drach interrupted by a commercial UNTIL I seen him on this other channel. And he got interrupted about 6x during an hour long video! And I don't think that even happened when I watched him on the US Navy channel! Although that video had commercials, he wasn't speaking when they interrupted the video & it NEVER happens on his OWN CHANNEL!!!! THANK YOU FOR THAT DRACH! To be honest, now that you have a child, one ad after maybe 30 mins wouldn't really get in the way of your videos! And if it would help you to start saving $ for Mini-Drach's College Fund, say a 5 second ad & then you can skip it, would be worth enduring for your kid to get a good education! Plus, if that $ goes directly into a college fund account, not positive about the UK, but I know in the US that money does NOT get taxed. So you could save money for your kid & partially stick it to the Gov't at the same time!
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Briefly, as this is old, there is also Survival Floating. Obviously dependent on sea conditions. In calmer conditions, you stretch out your torso and allow your arms to dangle down, helping your torso to remain more flat. Now you have a bit more of your torso out of the water, helps with the water temperature. It also helps reduce energy loss from exertion. You just dangle your arms and legs, facedown, until you need a breath, then gently roll your head to one side to take a slow-ish breath, then back facedown. You can keep this up in warmer waters, for a very long time. Try it.
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The best account of the Armada battles I've heard although there are a few details missing.
The most famous of which is a question often asked, Did Drake say “there is time to finish the game and still beat the Spaniards”?
While planning on of a series of paintings about Drake, I'm a marine Artist as you can see via my website, I checked with the help of Plymouth Uni Planetarium, the state of the moon (thus the tides) for the day and time the Armada was sighted.
Accounts written by those present tell us there was a calm that day in Plymouth and the Uni Planetarium staff confirmed a flood tide.
I used to keep my engine-less yacht “Music Maker” moored at the mouth of The Cattewater, river Plym, Plymouth, where the English fleet were moored awaiting the Spanish Armada.
From my own considerable experiences with my yacht moored off Mount Batten on The Cattewater I can assure you there is no way that in light airs with a flood tide that an engine-less vessel can leave The Cattewater, not even with towing by oared boats or warping out.
There was time to finish the game and Drake, a Plymouth man and one of the all time finest navigators, knew that.
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It's your list, so you are absolutely free to use whatever criteria you prefer to choose whatever battles you like. For myself, however, I don't think I could ever put the Egyptians vs. the Sea People on such a list. The main reason being, we have no real idea what happened as far as I am aware. The lone source that I'm aware of is basically a proclamation in which the Pharaoh is bragging about his great victory. The problem with such a source is that we have similar instances in which such things are either made up or grossly exaggerated. From the Pharaoh's report, you'd be expected to believe that the Egyptians single-handedly wiped out the Sea People...except that much, at least, we know to be untrue. They were still raiding after this supposedly epic thrashing at the hands of the Egyptians. The Sea People are less likely to be a unified invading force, but rather a collection of peoples fighting independently or as parts of shifting alliances based on the time and targets being considered. So, we have no real understanding of the threat that the Egyptians may have faced at the time. It might have been an epic battle that saved Egypt and prevented even further incursion by the Sea People, or it might have been a medium sized (if that much) raid on a port city.
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Ty for dispelling some negative Myths about Italian Navy during WWII, putting things in to perspective and paying respect to those who fought there and their efforts.
Just a few clarifications:
- To say Italian Navy didn't navigate as well as the British Navy "because they didn'ìt navigate so much" is kinda a prejudice itself. Italians had, in fact, navigated the Mediterranean for centuries and certainly wouldn' thave any trouble to par their British counterpart under this aspect. They were perfectly able to manouver as well as the British did. The problems were due to the mentioned appalling leadership, meaning Italian admirals never enjoyed the tactical freedom the British ones did; they were never able to completely exploit tactical advantages and favourable situations because of Supermarina (Navy High command) interference: more than once they had their fleet ordered back by the overcautious High command, when they were more than willing to fight or pursue. On the other hand some of their admirals had very poor judgment (see Iachino at Matapan) and suffered from outdated doctrine (see night fighting unpreparedness).
- Recent, thorough studies by former Admiral and Artillery specialist Marco Santorini, brought to light the problems with Italian gunnery were not due to defective munitions, at least, not in the common interpretation of it: Italian projectiles were over-stabylized, which produced disturbancies in the trajectory. At the time it was not possible to undertsand this because at the time, aerodynamic science was not as advanced as nowadays. To get the correct stabylization was a matter of try and trial, which the British and Germans did a lot, while Italians did not: because, that's true, they didn't have money so they didn't fire that much. It's in Italian, but just in case someone is interested here is the link to Santorini's talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3L3pQrzJZE
(Minute 1.22.48)
-The Italian Navy, although at a heavy cost in terms of attrition, did indisputably won the battle of the convoys: when it comes to data, 85% of materials and almost 92% of personnel both Italian AND German were safely brought to Afrika. One has to keep in mind the Italians had planned for 1 convoy per month, before the war, and ended up running roughly 1 per day. Even in the worst phases, such as middle 1941 crisis, they still managed to land more than 70% of Materials. If one focus on the few infamous blunders such as the Duisburg convoy sinking, it is easy to get the impression the convoys were blocked and didn't pass through. But those major setbacks were few and far inbetween, not enough to compromise the supply line strategically. The real problem was that supplies were not there: Italy simply did not have the resources - fuel particularly - to adequately sustain the war effort.
- the Fleet in Being Myth. Another misconception about the Regia Marina: the Regia did in fact sail its capital ships (cruisers, Battleships) quite often along the war, and far more than their German allied did. The one thing that truely kept the Battleships in port, in the later stages of the Mediterranean war, was lack of fuel, not a British blockade or "moral ascendancy".
This said you did a great job in explainin the overall context, the Italian Navy goals, the hindrances and the challenges and it had to face. Once again, Thank you for It!
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Though I appreciated the video and know the comparisons you made at the beginning between the British Empire and Gondor etc were made all in good fun and not entirely seriously, I just wanted to explain a few things anyway, for the sake of it. Please note that I'm aware you weren't trying to make a complete comparison in a fully realised manner, and that I understand why you'd compare them the way you did for the purposes of the video. Well, here is what I have to say.
J.R.R. Tolkien regarded:
Gondor as:
- ITALY (in a letter in July 1955, regarding a then upcoming trip to Italy for him in that time)
The comparison was probably not a comprehensive one, as far as I can tell, and maybe just a nod to the Roman Empire of old (if he would compare the Gondorians to the Eastern Romans/"Byzantines" - and he did - then he would certainly compare the Gondorians to the ancient Romans and the Western Roman Empire too)
Obviously 20th century Italy was not the Roman Republic or Roman Empire of yesteryear, and Italy had taken a long time to form after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire. He would, however, have recognised a lot of the faded grandeur of the ancient world, the classical world, in Italy's history. It would be hard not to see the comparisons there.
As a more specific comparison with Latinised/Italian influenced cities and regions, Tolkien wrote, in that same letter to Jennifer Brookes-Smith in July 1955, that he considered Venice to be Pelargir.
Pelargir is a major port-city in Gondor, the main harbour in fact of Southern Gondor and the largest in the entirety of Gondor; a large and thriving city.
Tolkien also compared the Gondorian region of Lossarnach, in Southern Gondor (South West of Minas Tirith but North of Pelargir) to the Italian ''comune'' (administrative division/municipality) and town of Assisi in the verdant region of Umbria in central Italy.
- ANCIENT EGYPT. Regarding the Egyptian comparisons, it was mainly concerning the monolithic, large-scale building works they had endeavoured on, including the Sphinx and the Pyramids of course, among other gigantic stone constructions they achieved. He also compared the ancient Crown of Gondor (in letter 211 from October 1958) to the ancient crowns of the Pharaohs of Egypt. He wrote, "I think the crown of Gondor (the S. Kingdom) was very tall, like that of Egypt, but with wings attached, not set straight back but at an angle".
- EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE. The "Byzantines" (they never referred to themselves as that, and it is more of an exonym, an external, sometimes romantic name, for a people and place)
Regarding the "Byzantine" comparisons, Tolkien did acknowledge the similarities himself. He referred to Minas Tirith as a "Byzantine city" (the best possible comparison, we can infer from this, of course, being Constantinople itself; and I'm sure that is what he had in mind, no other Eastern Roman cities came close, and the triple layered Theodosian Walls of Constantinople are immediately reminiscent of the seven tiered walls of Minas Tirith)
The way Gondor was pushed to the limit of survival by Mordor under Sauron, is also comparable to how the Eastern Romans were beleaguered by the Ottomans under their Sultans. However, unlike the Byzantines, Gondor survived.
The Gondorian King Eärnur (the 33rd and last King of Gondor prior to the return of the Kings, after his disappearance in Minas Morgul; probably killed by the Witch-King of Angmar personally, though this is unknown - he'd set off on a challenge with his Royal Guards, against all advice, after years of being goaded by the Witch-King, to fight the Witch-King personally, accepting the challenge and never being seen again, nor any of his men; presumed dead in TA 2050; his death seeing in nearly a thousand years of the reign of the Stewards of Gondor before Aragorn II Elessar became King) is somewhat comparable to the last Eastern Roman/and Byzantine Emperor, Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos.
Emperor Constantine XI, remained long after his death in the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, as a legendary figure of folklore. The fabled, ''Marble King'', to the Greeks. Said to return when Constantinople is retaken, in messianic fashion, returning from the heavens with silver trumpets sounding; his return, signalling the return of the Empire. The comparison, being made in that both men had mysterious ends (nobody is recorded to have seen either die, because; Earnur fought and died out of sight and sound of Gondor, and Emperor Constantine XI, was said to have taken off his Emperor's robes, and charged into the street battle as the city fell, looking like a common soldier, never being seen again)
As another connected comparison to this matter, is how Gondor experienced a long interregnum period after the death of King Earnur - the time of the Stewards of course, with Gondor lacking a King entirely though still respecting the throne of the King and keeping it around, without letting the Stewards get too powerful or arrogant; at least, for most of the time with exceptions to the rule *cough Denethor cough* lol
The manner in which Gondorian culture still spoke of and seemed to eagerly hope and pray for the fabled, ''Return of the King", somewhat parallels the way the "Marble King" legend of the Greeks anticipated the messianic return of the fallen Emperors (though I do not think the Gondorians literally thought King Earnur was ever coming back lol they gave up on that dream centuries and centuries before Aragorn II Elessar came to the throne of Gondor and Arnor in the Reunited Kingdoms)
Furthermore, one could point out two more (connected, distinct) things comparing the Romans generally (not just the Eastern Romans, but including them)
Firstly, that originally, Elendil's original Numenorean Kingdoms in Exile (Gondor, the Southern Kingdom, and Arnor, the Northern Kingdom of the Numenorean Dunedain) had been necessarily divided into two administrative regions. This is somewhat similar to the Roman Empire at it's height of power. Although this isn't a completely parallel comparison, because the Romans only fragmented into their Western Empire and Eastern Empire AFTER they had grown so extensive and expansive over a long period of growth, taking centuries, the comparison still works in a mirrored sense (just back to front) As in, the administrative division came first for the Numenoreans and later for the Romans.
The geographical comparison in this overall comparison, on the map, in terms of orientation North/East/South/West, is also perpendicular; whereas the Western Roman Empire would, in this comparison, be the Kingdom of Arnor which is the Northern realm of the Numenoreans (both Arnor and Gondor are generally Western in their geographic locations, including in relation to one another) the Eastern Roman Empire would, in this comparison, be the Kingdom of Gondor which is the Southern realm.
Therefore:
- West (Western Romans) = North (Arnorians)
- East (Eastern Romans) = South (Gondorians)
Obviously North and South face each other N-S on a vertical line/stacked line, and obviously East and West face each other on a horizontal/adjacently shared line. In truth, Arnor is North West of most of Gondor in a purely directional context, but in a generic context it is true to say the entirety of Arnor, is North of Gondor (and that the entirety of Gondor is South of Arnor; whereas it is mostly positioned to the South East of Arnor - though this doesn't matter because NW-SE face each other on their own linear dichotomy anyway)
Point being, that just as Rome in the West could be considered the equivalent of Annúminas the ancient, historic capital city of Arnor, founded by Elendil himself, then Constantinople could be considered the Minas Anor/Minas Tirith of the East (however, in a fairer straight up comparison between the original Gondorian and Arnorian capitals, it'd be better to compare Annúminas in Arnor with Osgiliath in Gondor; Osgiliath was Gondor's capital-city for a very long time, many centuries, with Minas Anor/Minas Tirith as it was later renamed, only becoming the capital after Osgiliath was rendered uninhabitable on repeated occasions until it became little more than a frontier war-zone and military outpost over time) That aside, the comparison holds up. The division of the Roman Empire being something forced upon them by necessity, the division of the Numenorean Kingdoms in Exile, being more of a practical, strategic choice by Elendil.
Secondly, is that this comparison is not just geographical - historically, the Western Roman Empire became broken and dissolved, long before the Eastern Roman Empire did. Comparable to this, is how the Kingdom of Arnor was eventually dismantled and destroyed by the Witch-King of Angmar (after a very long campaign lasting many centuries) and his forces (which took the final stronghold of Fornost Erain, the regional capital of the subsidiary realm of Arthedain, one of three within a fractured Arnor)
An Arnorian King once had three sons whom all desired the throne of Arnor and would not resolve their difference; as a result, their father bequeathed upon them a smaller realm each; Rhudaur, Cardolan and Arthedain (when the dread-Realm of Angmar led by their terrifying wraith of a warlord, emerged further North of Arnor, and descended upon them, Rhudaur, soon defected to Angmar, already being prone to bad behaviour and attacking their kin in Arthedain and Cardolan) This left just Cardolan and Arthedain. The Witch-King slowly overran the Kingdom of Cardolan, reducing Arnor to it's last subdivision, Arthedain, the strongest of the three.
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Regarding the question about the deployment of Royal Marines, they could be ferried ashore in the ship's boats and/or RIBs. Again I have an example of this (I'm starting to sound like there was nothing I didn't do in the RN!). Late in 1975, Guatemala started flexing its muscles along the border with Belize and Eskimo was diverted from it's intended deployment to Iceland on fishery protection duties to the West Indies station, supplementing the ship(s) already there to keep a presence on or near where the border met the sea. We spent a lot of our time anchored at that position. We had a platoon of marines permanently on board, I think is was 22 in total; Officer Commanding, a Sergeant, two Corporals and 18 Marines, so any landing would not be as you would imagine and certainly not on the scale of Overlord or even St. Nazaire. They were sent ashore to carry out a number of week long border patrols, however when they were delivered to shore I was not on the upper deck to watch what was going on so I can only surmise that they were taken in on the ship's cutter and whaler. That being the case, the boats would probably have been driven in with their bows up onto the beach and then pushed back off again once marines, food and equipment had been disgorged and then would have been picked up in the reverse manner on completion of their stint ashore.
Marines did have other purposes on board ship. Firstly, as you have pointed out in the past, they were trained to man the aft 4.5 inch gun (on the Tribals, some tatty old relic from the second world war in a mounting the same as on the C class destroyers, which is probably where they came from) along with it's magazine and handling room. They could be used to carry out riot control duties ashore in places we were alongside or anchored. They could assist local disaster control officials in the event of such occurrences as earthquakes, as I believe happened later on that deployment, paradoxically enough in Guatemala - I parted company with the ship about two months in as I was due to be transferred anyway so I cannot really confirm this. The other more interesting duty they would have had to perform was suppression of any disturbances or mutiny on the ship they were aboard and I very distinctly remember this function being tested - with unnecessary vigour on their part, when we were on our work-up at Portland. Finally, we had an leading hand onboard who was a skilled cartoonist and they often provided a figure of fun for him!
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@Drachinifel You have me doubting now, at least about the weight of naval versus military bombarding. The books (in Danish and possibly biased) are not with me, with luck I can dig them up during easter. Detailed open access accounts in english seem to be hard to come by, and what i have seen this far is surprizingly non-specific as to the naval or military responsibility for carrying out the bombardment itself, even if the city clearly was invested by Wellesley and a very large expeditionary force (30 000 soldiers and 5000 sailors). In Glenthøj and Ottesen 2014 (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780230302815) it is twice stated that the sea defence of Copenhagen had been strengthened since 1801, on p38 specifically claiming the fleet was hindered from carrying out a bombardment from the south (which does not rule out the north, of course, though my impression is that shallow waters at that time made it difficult to get close), on p41: 'the british fleet was kept at a suitable distance from the city'. On p42 Congreve is instructing soldiers how to fire the rockets, but this may be unclear terminology or even correct terminology for ship board bombarders, you'd know better than me. Then again, with the walls closely invested and Copenhagens defences against the sea unbreached, would ships be preferred as the place to launch these rockets? In Marinehistorisk Tidsskrift 1990 Henrik saxtorph goes into detail about the naval combat up to the bombardment. Several minor and not so minor actions were fought, though none matched that of 2d of april 1801. Some were Danish seaborne attempts as attacking 'batterier' (batteries) or supporting the garrisons (unsuccessful) attacks on those, others unsuccesful British attempts to neutralize the defenses towards the Sea and a possible landing of the island of Amager to the south of Copenhagen. The only direct mention in the article of naval action during the bombardment itself (2d to 5th september, there is no doubt about the duration), bombard ships attack on the fort 'Trekroner' is mentioned. This should be the triangularish feature you can see in the bottom right on the map in the wiki article on the invasion and bombardment. Caution is always wise when it comes to wiki, though this article may be valid enough, if again not specific on which direction the bombardment came from. I wish I could be more helpful, and promise to return to you after Easter if my books prove useful.
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wrt the question about alt history, I enjoy speculating about the repercussions of a pivot in a decision, but do not go in for magical thinking. I have never seen, nor have any interest, in seeing "The Final Countdown", as a for instance. The fun ones are where one person changes his mind: Admiral Strauss at BuOrd accepts the 16"/45, instead of pushing the 14"/50, so Tennessee and California are built with the 16", making them "post-Jutland" in the treaty, so Colorado and West Virginia are never completed. Or, when Congress is demanding, in June 1918, that the navy make a start on all the ships authorized in the 1916 Act, SecNav Daniels talks common sense to Congress, that the South Dakotas have rendered the Colorados obsolete, so cancel West Virginia, Colorado, and Washington, before they are laid down, and proceed with the South Dakotas, then the treaty intervenes to prevent the South Dakotas being completed. How does the non-existence of Colorado and West Virginia vibrate through the next 25 years?
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Robert Andrews
Iowa was more accurate but nowhere near to the extent people claim: as mentioned on NavWeaps, testing in the 1940s show that at 30,000+ yards even Iowa had a poor hit rate (less than 4% in peacetime conditions while firing at a stationary broadside Iowa-sized target....), so in reality Iowa’s effective range isn’t much (if at all) better than Yamato’s despite having superior fire control.
This also mean that Iowa can’t actually get any benefit out of plunging deck hits with superheavy shells, because the 16”/50 gun is designed to make plunging hits at over 30,000 yards and, as mentioned above, fighting at those ranges isn’t viable due to poor hit rate. And the theoretical penetration capabilities of the 18.1” actually matched the theoretical penetration capabilities of the 16”/50, so they’re tied in this regard-both of them can penetrate the belt armour of the other in close range and neither can reasonably hit the other at long range.
Iowa’s ACTUAL advantage in this fight is her superior speed, not better effective range or penetration. She probably wins this, albeit after taking serious damage herself.
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00:55:17 On USN airships, and everything you suggested that the USN do with them... the USN did, with their non-rigid airships. Heck, they kept the blimps around into the '60s, and where building them into the late '50s for ASW and AEW, but even during the war they where refitting their extant classes, the 134-strong K class as one example, with surface search radar, dipping sonar, sonobouies and MAD equipment for subhunting. Cant find much about how the follow-on class was kitted out, but there where only 4 M-class blimps, but the 18 N-class blimps where used for ASW and as flying radar towers to fill gaps in the various offshore radar networks
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In early August 1954,I started my first job,it was an apprenticeship,to become a Marine Electrician,I was 15 years old. To get me from under his feet,the foreman sent me out, with the van driver,to the Gladstone Dry Dock,in Liverpool,to deliver equipment, when we arrived there,it was to see the magnificent Battleship,HMS.KING GEORGE V. What an amazing sight! I went aboard her,the driver told me,that she was being readied for her last journey,to the ship breakers,on the Clyde. I’m in my 86th year now,and I’ve always thought I was privileged,to have said goodbye to her.There can’t be many people around now,who can say they’ve been aboard her.
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Superb video Drach! Informative and entertaining, with your trademark 'slightly sarcastic' sense of humor (e.g., "...it didn't eject brass onto my legs, which is always a plus", "...Britain's a small island, so everything is scaled down: Xeroxed 95%", "...it was about as reliable as a British railway network", etc.). It was also great to see you having so much fun (it was contagious for the viewer). So, these weapons are just a tad different from the Air-Soft, eh? I also noticed your hand-shaking increased with each successive weapon demonstration (understandable), and your aim became far more deliberate when you knew the target would be on-screen! Overall, a truly enjoyable production.
Technical observations: My only s-l-i-g-h-t criticism would be, other than the C&Rsenal into/outro, the OS and VO narrations sounded like they were both fueled by Irn-Bru (it's a documentary, not a Formula 1 race). ;-) That said, the flow was very well organized, the editing was seamless, ALL of the audio was high-quality and the camerawork was pro ...all the way around! To borrow from the Apostles John, Paul, George and Ringo, your field productions are "getting better all the time".
Splendid job by all involved (bravo)!
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Inclined belt armor in 20th Century battleships. This armor was always a form of Krupp Cemented (or, in a few cases such as the YAMATO's Vickers Hardened armor, non-cemented) face-hardened armor. There are significant differences between KC-variant face-hardened armors and the similar homogeneous, soft, ductile nickel-chromium-steel forms without face-hardening (British Navy Non-Cemented Armour, US Navy Class "B" armor or STS, and Japanese New Vickers Non-Cemented, Molybdenum Non-Cemented, and Copper Non-Cemented WWII armors, among others). The homogeneous armors are less brittle and have less scaling effects reducing resistance against larger AP projectiles than the homogeneous types. Also, homogeneous armors do not gain much from tilting them until at and above 45-50 degrees from right angles. It is better by weight to just keep the soft armor at right-angles and thicken it than try to gain resistance by merely tilting the plate; only above the 45-50-degree tilt does the softer steels resist impacts better than the thicker right-angles plates of the same total weight.
With face-hardened armor this is different. Tilting by itself does not cause a large gain in resistance up to 45 degrees due to thickness increase to an undamaged projectile, but the hard, deep face layer causes greatly increased projectile damage effects as impact angle increases. This damage can reduce the ability of the shell to penetrate, but it also has major negative effects on the post-penetration explosive ability of the shell due to breaking of the shell body and/or fuze degradation. Above 45 degrees the armor starts to fail badly due to brittle fracture, which decreases resistance compared to soft armor, though the projectile damage effects stay in force -- highly tilted face-hardened armor messes up the projectile badly, but it allows huge holes throwing major chunks of armor through the plate at the same time.
Thus, use face-hardened armor for low-angle tilting and softer armor when high angles of impact are expected.
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So I have a question drach. To summarize; They contacted you, told you they will give you access to the last active type IX u-boat in the kriegsmarine, and one of only two survivors in the world, plus all the documents, artifacts, and other bits collected. All you have to do, is travel over there (expense paid) and shoot videos talking about a World War II era submarine….
My question is, has modern technology invented a timekeeping device capable of measuring the small amount of time it took for you to think about the offer and say yes? Or was it one of those instances where they told you one part, you excitedly screamed yes, and then they said “wait, there’s more!”
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