Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. It sounded like you had two narration tracks, one on top of the other with a normal voice quieter in the back ground and then Ug speaking more deeply in the fore ground. Because of the over laying nature of the narration - I couldn't understand either one. .
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  2. As to the "torpedo's" detonation not being in the Eagle's log ... it would depend on how far down the river it was and which way the wind was blowing. Given the speed at which a Design like the Turtle would move - I would not be surprised at a fairly lengthy fuse. Eagle Crewman #1: - "What was that?" Eagle Crewman #2: - [shrug] .
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  3.  @genericpersonx333  Actually ... had not Hitler and the Nazi's taken control of Germany ... such an alliance of Germany and the UK against the Soviets - who OBTW - may have taken Poland as well as the Baltic States ... might have been a real possibility. .
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  4. Yes. Exactly what I was thinking. It doesn't matter how thin it is - if the drill can't penetrate it. If you look at the Spar Torpedo on the Hunley it had the force of the submarine's ten man crew driving it through the water. Given the Turtle's design - it seems barely sufficient to drive it through the water - much less enough to punch a hole in anything. Any time I've had to drill through something like metal - I had to exert a good bit of force on the drill to get it to penetrate. I can't see how the sole operator of the Turtle could exert any force on anything. I'm amazed he was able to propel it through the water with a design like that. What is truly amazing about the Turtle is that it was able to actually try and attack a Warship. That was an incredible accomplishment. At least the Turtle didn't kill several of it's crews the way the Hunley did. The History of Submarines is replete with subs killing their crews. As a child - I saw the Thresher launched and knew one of the kids whose father was a Civilian Technician on it when it went down. .
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  5. "And where are these ships going, Pluskatt?" "They' are coming for ME!!! DIRECT!!!!" .
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  6. "For they have sown the Wind and shall reap the Whirl Wind!" Thanks for doing this. I knew what the general trend was but seeing the figures graphically displayed was interesting. I once attended a presentation on the money Spent on WWI, WWII and WWIII. The presenter displayed a graph with three giant spikes in it representing US Defense Spending in the 20th Century. He put his pointer on WWI. "This is World War One. We didn't spend the money - so we had to fight the war." He then put his pointer on the second vastly greater spike. "This is World War Two. We didn't spend the money so we had to fight the war." Then he put his pointer in the even larger (in raw dollars) third Spike. "This is World War Three. We spent the money so we didn't have to fight the war." .
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  7. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me. Isaiah 6:8 .
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  8. "We're thinking Outside The Box!!!!" .
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  9. If you are a destroyer escorting something - and an enemy surface combatant comes along - you throw yourself at that enemy combatant or combatants - to give the thing you are escorting a chance to run away, all the while screaming on the radio for help. That is what you do. If you get sunk - you get sunk but that is your job. Even if you can't actually hurt the enemy combatant you are attacking - while they're sinking you - they aren't sinking the thing you are escorting. And - it is for this reason that you carry torpedoes. Your "main" armament may not amount to much but there are no surface combatants who want anything to do with a torpedo. So - even if you don't carry enough to make getting a hit a probability - the very threat of your torpedoes may well be enough to get the enemy to turn away to avoid them. The enemy can of course try to comb the wakes of your torpedoes by heading towards them but this increases the closing speed so much that it cuts down on their ability to comb those wakes successfully. If they head away from the torpedoes that cuts down that closing speed to give them a much better chance of combing the wakes. Getting them to turn away - increases the chances of the thing you are escorting to escape. Of course, this doesn't always work. The Glorious didn't get away and in the Battle off Samar - none of Taffy 3 should have. But - the Japanese commander got wounded - and that may have distorted his judgment ... as it has a tendency to do ... so he seized on a false report of the Americans being some where they were not ... then left. His cruisers were closing in on the baby flat tops and would have probably sunk them, like they did the Gambier Bay - but they were recalled and the sacrifice of the American destroyers - paid off. Of course the fact that the aircraft of like 9 small carriers were all attacking the Japanese surface combatants, was a factor in the confusion as well. .
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  10.  @JerrySeriatos  Barham .
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  11. HMS Compass Rose .
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  12.  @robertf3479  After the North Carolina got hit - she increased speed and left the area. The hit was supposedly actually serious but she was not limited in her ability to perform. She did take a while to fix though. This was part of the most successful torpedo spread ever. It sank the Wasp., damaged the North Carolina and sank a destroyer - all the way across the fleet from where the torpedoes were fired. .,
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  13. I remember these ships from the Avalon Hill Game "Midway" Oh ...and OMT ... once again it is The Battle OFF Samar ... . It IS as big an error to say "The Battle Of Samar" as it would be to say "The Battle OFF Trafalgar" ... .
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  14. HMCS Lockeprt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Lockeport Yes - the really did that with the sail. .
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  15. I read The Cruel Sea when I was 14 years old and can't see one of those Flower Class Corvettes with the mast in front of the bridge with out thinking about the Compass Rose and all the men IRL who died serving on such vessels. .
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  16. My Dad was in the Marines and eventually I was myself. I read a young persons history of the Marines from the school library when I was 10 and that transitioned me from wanting to be a Cowboy to wanting to be a Marine. During my High School years - Robert Leckie was my favorite author. I read Guadalcanal Diary and a number of Morrison's books. Eventually I read Franks book on the Campaign and also read a History of Marine Aviation in WWII - among other works that I can't recall just now. So I've been studying this campaign or parts there of for longer than most of you have been alive. And - it was truly joyful to listen to 3 well informed people talking about this campaign. I drank beer with a group of other history buffs for over 20 years and this reminded me of that. The Guadalcanal Campaign in 1942 was the last chance Japan had of avoiding utter disaster in the war, even if it wasn't much of a chance. I disagree with Jon that the Japanese ever could have won the campaign. Even after the shellacking Henderson received you will note - that the attempt to unload supplies the next day from the Japanese Transports - which in desperation were run aground - utterly failed. The airfield had been put right back into operation and those transports were sunk and their supplies destroyed. Here - the thing was - the Japanese Navy couldn't operate in daylight against the airfield and even if they had had spotter planes that survived American Air - it's uncertain they could have so destroyed the field as to take it out of operation for anything but a short period of time. The Americans had all the equipment there that had been used by they and the Japanese to build the air field - and could rapidly repair any damage done to it. As to New Guinea - the main factor (as I understand it) that prevented American Transports from supporting the Buna-Gona Campaign was a lack of charts for those waters. The "Rag Tag Fleet" MacArthur's people put together - was of much smaller ships - many of which may well have already operated in those waters so that even if they didn't have charts (and they themselves may have had them even if the Navy didn't) the crews of these ships might have been familiar enough with these waters to operate in them. The thing with the Kongos was that they were the only Japanese Capital Ships that were fast enough - due to their Battle Cruiser History - to operate with the carriers. And so - once again - we have that excellent researcher - Jon - whose conclusions are completely out to lunch. Yes - they may have been escorting a crappy little carrier at the moment - but - there were not going to be any more of them - and when they got some better carriers - using all the Kongos in the Guadalcanal Campaign they could lose them all the way they'd lost half of them in a few days. The decisive moment in the campaign was when Nimitz replaced Ghormley with Halsey. Whatever his later faults - Halsey, like Grant, would go right at the enemy regardless of his own losses - as each of these men understood - that their enemy could not replace his losses - but they could replace theirs. This point is well made in the discussion of that last battle. The Comment I loved the most was about people who stopped reading Mahan after the Decisive Battle. That was the Japanese to a T. They had all their submarines out chasing warships. They had some very notable results but - submarines are much more effective against merchant ships. One Japanese characteristic - is that they tend to develop their plans based on group consensus - but then - if they need to change their plans they tend to be inflexible. The best example of that is their attempt to avoid becoming a colony by becoming a colonial power. They just didn't seem to realize that that time had passed when they went about conquering China. They also don't seem to have noticed - that none of the Colonial Powers had let any of the other Colonial powers take ALL of China. Thus the Americans stopped supplying them with the oil they were using to rape Chinese cities. The big thing here though - is that you train the way you are going to fight - because you WILL fight the way you train. The Americans practiced Daylight Gunnery before the war and the Japanese practiced night battles. The thing with firing guns in a night battle - besides the fact that everyone can see you - is that after you do - the flash destroys your Night Vision and you can't see anyone else - unless they are on fire. Catch on fire - and EVERYONE shoots at you. Torpedoes were the weapon of Night Warfare - before Radar. You could fire your torpedoes without the enemy knowing you'd done so or even if you were there. The Americans had no torpedoes on most of their Cruisers and the torpedoes they had on their destroyers were horrible - in contrast to the Japanese - who had the best torpedo in the world. Very good points about the CIC and Radar especially that the Americans could actually field all of them they wanted. One of the things about the American/British Technological Team - was that things the British thought up - the Americans (besides the things they thought up themselves) could mass produce. The Germans were the only other participant that was on a par with the Americans and British Technologically - and they - couldn't come close to the Americans ability to mass produce things. Webster's remark pretty much sums up the Axis forces in WWII: "You have horses! What were you thinking?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyZK8k4gzyg No one else - not even the Russians - could touch that. .
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  17. Thank you. There's nothing that furthers the study of History better than sharing your sources. One suggestion though - write down Who you lend stuff to (and make sure you have their contact info ....) What you lent them When you lent it to them Guess why I say that ... .
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  18. First off - thanks for this. I knew a bit about the aircraft but learned some more. My personal summation would be that the UK took what it had and even if it wasn't really suited for it - made the best of it that they could. One thing this made me wonder about - was if that long nose on the Seafire - helped them develop the curved landing approach which they applied to the F4U's and which the US adopted when it decided to make a second effort at putting the Corsairs to sea. .
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  19.  @dboi1656  The goal of Sailors and Airmen it to destroy the enemy's equipment. The goal of the Infantry - is to destroy the enemy's bodies. .
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  20. The thing to remember about early developments like this - is that no one knew what they were doing with these things yet. It was from these early designs that they learned what to do and as importantly - what not to do, as well. .
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  21. These ships saw a tremendous amount of action early in the war. As to the removal of the torpedoes ... On the one hand - as the Japanese showed - Cruisers that are going to be in night engagements - should have torpedoes. On the other hand ... these ships, during the height of early war surface fighting (almost all at night) - would have been equipped with American ... not Japanese ... torpedoes ... so ... it may not have actually made all that much difference. Later in the war when they had fixed the American Torpedoes - American Radar was so good and Japan's Navy so reduced in capability that ... again ... it probably wouldn't have made much difference. .
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  22. Yeah. Those magnetic influence detonators could not take into account the fact that the earth's magnetic field was not consistent and might be different at the location the torpedoes were fired than it was at the place the detonator was calibrated. Since these torpedoes were designed to run below the ship so that it would detonate right under it's keel - if the influence exploder failed to set it off - it ran harmlessly beneath the ship and on into oblivion. The other possibility was that the torpedoes would detonate to soon and explode before they were close enough to damage the target. I don't know about the German Torpedoes but the American one's also had faulty depth gauges so that they ran deeper than set and fragile contact detonators that would break if they hit the target squarely instead of setting it off. A glancing blow though would set them off - which contributed to the mystery of just what was happening. For the Americans the fact that the Admiral running the submarines had been the one to play a large role in the development of these torpedoes also hindered investigations as he didn't want aspersions being cast on his torpedoes and he blamed the sub commanders for lack of aggressiveness. .
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  23. Yeah, you did see some Gallantry from the Germans early in the war. There was even an attempt by some Italian and maybe German submarines to tow some British survivors to an area where they could be rescued - but the British attacked them. The British were much more concerned about losing yet more ships and crews to submarines than they were about the survival of crews that had already been put in the water. Read "The Cruel Sea" for a lot of incidents involving the deaths of allied sailors. The book is a novel but it is based on the author's experiences in the war as related in some non-fiction books written before it. There is one incident where a merchant ship had been torpedoed and sunk. The British escort ship the characters in the book are on at the moment is looking for the submarine - and picks up a contact - right under the surviving crew - so - it attacks it with depth charges - killing those survivors. Afterwards, they realize - to their horror - that the sonar contact they had picked up - was the sinking hull of the merchant ship - not a German submarine. When the Bismarck was sunk - British warships were pulling survivors from the water - when there was a report of a submarine periscope - they broke off rescue efforts and the only survivors of the Bismarck's crew were the ones picked up before the report. This was in reaction to an incident in WWI when four British Armored Cruisers were sunk by a submarine because they thought that the first ship hit - had hit a mine - and were all stopped picking up survivors. They never did that again. Sometimes there were dedicated small ships detailed to rescue survivors and sometimes the escorts would do it - but a lot of men were left to die in the water because of fear of submarine attack. .
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  24. It was the depression. Testing costs money. "The More Money You Save In Peace Time - the More You Bleed In War." -Cracker Jack .
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  25.  @TTTT-oc4eb  Your arguments are irrelevant Bean Counter. When all these Capital Ships were designed - no one knew how things were going to shape out. You are also ignoring the fact that had Halsey left his Battleships to cover San Bernardino Strait things would look much differently than you have depicted. It wasn't the fault of the Iowa's designers that Halsey was stupid. Also - Halsey having been stupid not to leave them to guard the strait - THEN - he pulled them and sent them down there after it was to late - just as they were about to make use of those big guns on the Japanese decoy fleet. THEN you are ignoring the fact that the Japanese COULD have chosen to employ their main fleet off Guadalcanal - back when it could have made a difference - and the fleet actions we might have had then could have been much different. As to the slower classes of battleships before the Iowas - 1 knot can make a real difference over time. Yes - those classes could and did escort Carriers - but - the Iowa's were better at it - if for no other reason than they were faster. The speed of the Fleet Carriers - (Carriers being fast so they could get as much wind over the deck as they could) - was not the limiting factor if their escorts couldn't keep up with them. Also - as I believe I have pointed out to you in the past - there are only so many ships that can be fit in a fleet formation and still be in range of the ships they are protecting using WWII technology. Cruisers take up about the same amount of maneuver space as a Battleship. Thus - you can better fit battleships in a fleet formation to protect carriers with their AA than you can Cruisers. The closer they were - the more 5"/38 guns could participate and closer still more 40mm guns could participate. Fleet Defense is conducted in layers. First the Destroyers, then the Cruisers and then the Battleships - and then the Carriers. Trying to use Cruisers to protect the Carriers - is penny wise and pound foolish. You want as much protection as near the Carriers as you can get - and THAT - is what you get with Battleships in that role. The other thing is - those Cruisers had to come from some place - and them being used in the Center of the Formation - takes them away from the next layer out. Lastly - Battleships can take more punishment themselves - and not have to withdraw or be left behind because of damage than Cruisers. Smart Asses like yourself are not nearly as smart as they like to think they are. There are reasons why the term Bean Counter - is a pejorative. .
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  26. Yes. All these old friends from my days playing Avalon Hill's Jutland . I was in Jr. ROTC in High School and me and my friends played a lot of Avalon Hill Games. For someone who would go on to get a MA in History these games were fascinating in their display of historical maps, units and equipment. .
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  27. What? Thunderchild merely acted as expected of the RN. Just as did the Colonies Destroyers Off Samar. Do your job lads! Do your job! Why? Because you're there - and nobody else. .
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  28. At the end of WWII the US was awash in ships. So they sank a bunch of them @ Bikini, put some in moth balls and scrapped most of the rest. They scrapped the Enterprise ... if EVER there was a ship that should have been preserved as a memorial - the Enterprise should have been. Scrapping that ship was a crime. .
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  29. Thanks. That was interesting. Yes - they should have used her off Guadalcanal. .
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  30. Yes. That was nice to see another North Carolina video. As I mentioned last time - I was born in North Carolina and my father returned to Camp Lejeune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Corps_Base_Camp_Lejeune for his last assignment (which included sitting on a boat off Cuba in 1962). The day he retired we went to the North Carolina memorial on our way out. This was also the second model ship I ever built. So - I've always had an attachment to this ship and it's nice to see another video on it. One thing. As I mentioned last time - I dropped dimes in a can when I was 9 years old to help buy the North Carolina . I can understand why South Dakota didn't buy their ship as it would be somewhat difficult to get her there - but - I can't excuse Washington for not buying there's. .
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  31.  @rutabagasteu  That's not true. It's not like they had an easy time of it - but their reputation was worse than they deserved. Their real problem was poor tactics on the part of their pilots for fighting Zeros and being heavily outnumbered. In any case - they were certainly better than nothing - and were more than good enough to do some serious damage to the bombers the Japanese were using against these two ships. .
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  32. Good thing Elon Musk got interested in space ships ... .
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  33. Their problem, however competent their Navy was - was that as a nation - they were in over their head. Mikawa didn't engage the transports - which was what he should have done - because he knew that if he lost any of his ships - they could not be replaced. The Americans made mistakes and lost ships - but they were more than able to replace them. .
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  34. My and my war gaming buddies always thought that there was a certain logic to the turret placement. If you were winning - then you could chase your opponent with your full main armament. If you were losing - you could try to run way with all your secondary guns shooting back at any enemy destroyers trying to catch you. .
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  35. It is sad but these navies were way to big and the ships way to expensive to keep but a tiny bit of them. What I see as really sad - was the likes of the Enterprise going to the breakers. That ship was essential to the early war efforts of the US and it is a travesty that it was not preserved. Think what it would be like to walk the decks McClusky's dive bombers took off from at Midway. CV-6, USS Enterprise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CV-6) I think the problem with the Enterprise - was that she didn't have a sponsor - like the Battleships named after states. They were going to make her a memorial in New York - but somehow the biggest city in the USA could not come up with the money ... When I was 9 I chipped in my dimes at school to buy the USS North Carolina and got to play on her July 1st 1963, an experience I've never forgotten and to this day - I have a USS North Carolina Souvenir pocket knife I bought that day at her gift shop. .
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  36. Yeah. Leave it to the British to come up with Cool Ship Names. HMS Battleaxe at your service, Sir! .
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  37. Yeah ... I look at such a big, powerful ship - and it's so hard to believe it was utterly destroyed. .
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  38. Another would be the St. Lo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_St._Lo The St. Lo was one of two Casablanca Class Escort Carriers to be renamed because of the new, larger carriers coming out after the Essex class - these ships giving up their names for the larger vessels. Here's a list of the ships of this class - showing the names of those that were changed. These two ships were originally going to be named Midway and Coral Sea but - when the Navy preferred to have more substantial ships named after these two battles - these ships were re-named the St. Lo and the Anzio Curiously - the new Midway Class carriers (the largest in the world for some time) also had a ship re-named. The second ship of the class, which was going to be named Coral Sea was re-named the Franklin Delano Roosevelt because of that Presidents death - with the name Coral Sea going to the third ship of the class. So - there were TWO aircraft carriers which were going to be named Coral Sea which ended up being named something else. None of the other ships were lost besides the St. Lo but ... the FDR had a somewhat troubled life and was scrapped 13 years before the actual Coral Sea with the Midway becoming a memorial ship in San Diego Bay. Of coarse ... the St. Lo had also previously been named the Chapin Bay so ... maybe it's really unlucky to have a ship re-named twice ... Just found out as I was researching this that the Anguilla Bay had been renamed the Salamaua ... was damaged - but repaired. .
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  39. Yeah, there's a lot to Anglo-Dutch history. The Dutch had a trading company in India as well as the colony of Indonesia. The Cape of Good Hope - was Dutch - which is where all the Boer's come from. And - that story about some guys buying the island of Manhattan from the Indians for $24 in beads ... those guys were Dutch and it was New Amsterdam then - not yet New York. .
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  40.  @0_1_2  "Of the 24 ships of the line that the Spanish fleet had, seven entered into combat, losing four, and it could even have lost its flagship had it not been for the actions of Cayetano Valdés, commanded by Infante Don Pelayo, who came to his rescue when he had already lowered his flag. It is said that he threatened the Spanish flagship with shelling it too if he did not immediately raise his flag." Courtesy of Google Translate from the Article: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batalla_del_Cabo_de_San_Vicente_(1797) Which is in Spanish. .
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  41. Glad to hear no one got hurt. The USS Saratoga was participating in NATO exercises with a Turkish Destroyer sailing along side her when, through a misunderstanding of the terms used - and that it was supposed to only be simulated ... the Sea Sparrow Launcher was fired on it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Saratoga_(CV-60)#The_TCG_Muavenet_incident So ... things could have been worse ... The USS William D. Porter accidentally fired a torpedo at the USS Iowa while it was carrying President Roosevelt aboard ... https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2022/10/12/that-one-time-the-us-navy-torpedoed-fdr/ Fortunately, this being an American WWII Torpedo - it detonated on it's own before it hit the ship the President was on. .
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  42.  @sergarlantyrell7847  Fletchers were not designed to be AA Destroyers or Picket Destroyers - they were always General Purpose Destroyers and the US just built so many of them (175) - that they used them for everything. .
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  43. Thanks. I was aware that it had occurred to the Navy that Carrier Attacks on Pearl Harbor might take place - but - not to the extent that they had taken place in practice. Attacking Hawaii seems to have been common place. These exercises did not however prepare the American Military for the fact that - yes - it could really be attacked. You look at the frequent reaction of individuals at Hawaii and it was disbelief that they were being attacked. Time and again reports of Enemy Forces were discounted as them being Friendly Forces or a mistake. There was no urgency to our response and no coordination between combat elements. The Transition between a Peace Time Military and a War Time one was brutal. .
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  44. Yeah. On those AA guns, when I was twelve years old we visited the North Carolina and the most fun I had was when I and my brother operated the 40mm Quad mounts. One of us manning the elevation and the other the traverse. That and playing with the 20mm mounts along the bow of the ship. Seeing the breeches to the 16" guns inside the turrets was impressive but ... you, as a visitor, couldn't rotate those turrets and elevate the guns. So - yes - the AA guns were the most fun as you could literally PLAY with those. .
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  45. Japanese Doctrine had their Carriers Operating in 2 ship Carrier Divisions. Here - their doctrine can be described as "One ship - with two hulls" . The Carrier Division would launch a single strike made up of planes from both ships. One Carrier would launch Dive Bombers and a few Fighters. The other Carrier would launch Torpedo Bombers and a few Fighters. This allowed them to get off a balanced Strike Group very quickly. Then - they would get off a Second Strike Group - with both ships launching the Dive Bombers and Torpedo Bombers they had not included in the first Strike Group. Now - one of the problems with this - was that these two ships were organizationally tied to each other. Thus - when Shokaku was heavily damaged at Coral Sea and Zuikaku lost much of it's Air Group - both ships went back to Japan and neither was a Midway. In Contrast when Yorktown was heavily damaged and it's air group shot up - they managed to fix it well enough to operate in a few days - and gave it Saratoga's Air Group - and it was at Midway. This is a very accurate illustration of Japanese Thinking. They come up with a very clever way of doing things - but - when that won't work because things have changed - their response is less than ideal. The Japanese Carrier Divisions that made up Kido Butai were Kaga & Akagi Hiryu & Soryu Shokaku & Zuikaku By combining all six of their Fleet Carriers - with over 400 aircraft - they just waltzed about the Pacific Stomping On People. The problem was that, trying to do to much at the same time, they didn't keep it together. If they had had six carriers at both Coral Sea and Midway - each would have been a different battle. .
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  46. And we thought things had just turned to shit ... when they really turned to shit ... .
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  47.  @genericpersonx333  Yeah. Nobody knew that. The other thing about the way the Americans did things - was that they were the richest most powerful industrial country in the world - and if they wanted to build all those 16" gun Battleships - they didn't care how much it cost. They weren't choosing between Battleships and Aircraft Carriers - they were building both and as many of each as they could. Other nations couldn't do that. I had some guy tell me once that the Four Engine Bombers the Americans built - took more resources to build than they destroyed. My response was - that, first off I doubted that - but - even if it was true - the Americans had the resources to use - and the Germans didn't have the resources to lose. Bean Counters think like that ... I'm retired now but when I was working ... I had to deal with RL Bean Counters and ... don't like the stupid sons of bitches .... The simple fact was - that the money they saved on things was going to be paid for in blood by the people using them ... I had been one of those people, my friends were some of those people and I worked with those people. So my enmity towards the little twits I encounter on YouTube is well earned ... At least no one is likely to die because of the little twits on YouTube. .
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  48. Thank you both and especially Matthew for a fascinating glimpse into a "bye gone era". The thing with history like this - is that you don't just see the story of a ship - but - of the people of it's time. This ship was part of the end of the Victorian Era that WW I brought about. People then had much different ideas about life and our place in it. Some of which are very much a loss that they are gone. I can remember the way the US was when I was a child in the years right after WW II - and we are sadly not the same people we were then. Some things were changed for the better but so much was lost for the worst. Here - we can see a time when - some ... people thought very differently than we do today. I wouldn't want to over do that as the past was certainly not all sweetness and light at any time - but - there were good things in the past that we have very little of today. That's the thing about History that is so fascinating. It's the "yes ... people really did that ..." aspect of it. I'm afraid my USNI Membership, along with my memberships in a lot of other things had to lapse when I went from being a well paid computer professional to being a ... retiree ... One of the somewhat inevitable aspects to how things really are ... along with the scrapping of so many historical ships ... including some now that I worked on. It's sometimes hard to believe that such massive, powerful ships are just ... gone ... Again - Thank you both. .
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  49. From my days of reading about the age of sail - I read that the Spanish and French Ships, on which more care had been spent - were actually better made than the British Ships - which were being cranked out to try and keep the RN's number's up. Thus - capturing one of these ships would end up giving the RN a pretty good ship to use themselves - and they were preferred by their crews. .
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  50. Thanks. One thing you could do - that would be supremely useful to other historians - would be to post a list of each of your books. Something sort of like the Card Catalog you would have access to in a Library. Author, Title, Subject, Publisher and a brief description would be priceless for a historian. With that information - a Historian could make a stronger effort to find and achieve access for themselves to such books. One thing they could do - besides the obvious use of such as Amazon - would be to visit their local Libraries for their Cities and Universities and see what they had access to. Some of these books could be available through Inter-Library Loan - where one Library would Lend the book to another Library - for you to access. One thing about right now - is that it is my estimation - that there are still far more books in Libraries than are accessible Online. The Internet, I believe, was in existence when I was researching my Thesis but - only a relatively few had access to it. So - all the research I did - was through my University Library - and the Library of another Local University. .
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  51. Thanks. I'd been aware for some time of the general nature of the battle but this very much added to my understanding of more of the details of what had gone on. As with the Japanese scouting bad luck at Midway - that kind of thing does happen. And yes - there is a vast difference between people trying to recreate a battle where they know what is going on and people in the real battle NOT really knowing what is going on. History is replete with examples of people making decisions based on what they thought was going on - rather than what was - much to their misfortune. What would have happened at Waterloo - if Grouchy had ridden to the sound of the guns? .
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  52.  @BB.61  Eh ... I think most of us just assumed that it couldn't take off again with all those people but since some people were asking about that I thought I'd be specific about it. I also posted a comment off the main link on this with the link to the Wikipedia Page on the Indianapolis loss - where I mentioned that this type of thing was done on other occasions by float planes that landed but then had to many people they were getting out of the water to take off again. There's some other incident where a PBY landed in rough seas to pick up a downed pilot but couldn't take off again in the current sea state. So the pilot and the PBY crew just sat in their Flying Boat which had a toilet and a kitchen and rode it out until the ocean flattened enough for them to take off again. All in a days work for that PBY crew. Sadly - that's one capability that has been lost with the end of Flying Boats in the USN & Coast Guard. .
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  53.  @deeznoots6241  Tactically - sending Force Z was ... not a good idea. It was two Capital Ships in the face of all of Japan's Navy. They were clearly not enough to protect British Interests. Anyone - including Churchill could see that. So - why did he send them? He sent them to send a message to the Japanese - that the days of the Chamberlain Government's Appeasement (as with the Burma Road) - were over. He sent them to let the Japanese KNOW that the UK WOULD fight them if they attacked. This is the same reason the Americans sent their battle fleet to Pearl Harbor from San Diego. Now - both these strategic moves by the US & UK - failed to deter the Japanese. They either had to pull back in China, to get the US to restore oil exports to them - or - run out of oil. The Japanese KNEW that going to war with the US & UK was tantamount to committing national suicide - BEFORE - the war started. They KNEW that. Yet - they chose national destruction over backing down to a colonial power - which in their eyes - was a slippery slope to becoming a colony. Committing these military forces strategically - was all that Roosevelt and Churchill could do - to try and dissuade the Japanese from doing something that both they and the Japanese KNEW would lead to Japan's destruction. It was all they could do - but it failed - and a lot more people died in that war than aboard those Capital Ships that were lost. So - these American and British Capital Ships were lost off Malaya and at Pearl Harbor - for Strategic Political Reasons. To paraphrase von K - war is politics by other means. How do you measure the loss of these ships and the men that were killed against the CHANCE that it might cause Japan to back down? That's one of the problems with being a President or Prime Minister. You get to make decisions like that - and people die because of them. .
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  54.  @deeznoots6241  The Choice seems to have been between Halifax and Churchill. Chamberlain wanted Halifax but Halifax didn't want the job and there might not have been support for him in Parliament. Thus - the GREAT thing about Churchill - was that he kept the UK in the war when Halifax wouldn't have. So - don't belittle those speeches. Yes, Winston was a pain in the ass about a lot of things and didn't know half as much as he thought he did - but - he kept the UK in the war and that was a MONUMENTAL contribution to ultimate victory. .
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  55. Yeah ... sometimes things like that can make a real difference ... .
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  56.  @kentamitchell  Yes. When the Russians did land troops in Japan it was AFTER the Japanese had surrendered. There is no way they could have conducted combat landings against an opposing force - unless - the USN did the transportation. The Japanese were ready to fight to the death - but - the Atom Bombs gave Hirohito the impetus to ask his nation to lay down it's arms. The Japanese Emperor's were much like the British Queen's and Kings of recent times and really mostly figure heads - but - they carried immense prestige. If they had interfered with the running of the country on a routine basis ... that would have diminished their prestige but - they didn't - so Hirohito had it there at the end and used it the one time - to stop his people from being killed. Americans and Japanese alike owe this one man an immense debt for all the lives he saved. .
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  57. Yeah ... My and my friends used to Play Avalon Hill's - Jutland - game a lot when I was in High School so I'm fairly familiar with a lot of the ships that were in it. Same with the larger ships that were in the Midway game. So - it's always cool to see something about the History of my old friends. .
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  58. Yeah ... we had a jury let O.J. Simpson off ... can't say much for that ... .
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  59.  @oceanhome2023  Argentina at the time was having some economic difficulties and it's leader took the islands to distract the public from that - which worked - but then they lost them and he wasn't around that much longer. .
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  60.  @marseldagistani1989  Eh ... not battleships but they did have some catamaran designs. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=navy+catamaran .
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  61. "Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_6#Verse_8 .
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  62.  @rutabagasteu  Hmmm. Is that in reference to normal targeting procedure - or on how to avoid breaking the detonator? My understanding was that it was the dead on shots that broke the detonator but that the glancing shots might not break it.
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  63. That PBY was NOT able to take off again, even after the survivors had been taken off by a destroyer - so it was destroyed. .
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  64. The problem with losing guns is obvious but there were advantages If they were winning and the enemy running away - they had all their main guns up front to shoot at them. If they were losing and running away themselves - having the secondary armament on the stern put it in a good position to engage any enemy destroyers coming after them. .
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  65. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! "Manger to Counter Three. Discharging Karenade." .
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  66.  @sarjim4381  As to Coastal Defense Ships ... I don't believe the purpose of such ships was to stand up to major navies - so much as to simply have ... something ... so that such as pirates or other small powers didn't take advantage of a nation that was defenseless against any sort of naval power. Some form of Costal Artillery is fine as far as it will shoot but you need ... something ... that can go out to sea and protect your sea lanes against minor powers or criminal threats. A purely hypothetical example would be - suppose a small nation like Latvia and Finland got into it - and Finland had NO navy but Latvia had a small one. Latvia would have been able to blockade the Finish ports and that would have had an impact on negotiations to end the spat. Again - that's just a hypothetical example of what I mean - not something that was ever going to happen (as far as I know). And - pirates have always been a threat to any naval power vacuum. Often consisting of nothing more than opportunistic fishermen, out there on the open sea ... if there's no one around to stop them from doing it ... people with any sort of power over other people ... have a history of using it. Thus, pretty much all nations with a coast - have a navy - and some that only have rivers as well. Any where there is a power vacuum of any type - if some government doesn't step up to fill it - someone else will ... .
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  67. Thanks. That was very interesting. I was aware of some of it but not all. Probably the best investment in Torpedo Bulges was to Saratoga ... There was actually a cartoon that was drawn where in a torpedo was headed towards the Saratoga , a destroyer was racing to intercept the torpedo and an exaggerated illustration of the Saratoga's Captain leaning out of the Bridge Yelling at the Destroyer "I've got it!!!" ... American Naval Humor ... .
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  68. ​ @SonsOfLorgar  You are completely out of touch with reality. What all human interaction is about - is people doing what they perceive to be in their self interest - at the time. Little or no value is placed on being Moral. People have done what they did - mostly because - they could. Here - no one is any better than anyone else. Your snobbery is silly. You cry and whine about how the Indians were treated - so what? How did they treat each other? By and large the Indian Tribes treated the Whites the same way they had been treating each other for hundreds of years. Think about it. How can you be a Warrior Culture - if you don't have someone to fight? Every now and again - the Braves of a Tribe would get together and for a War Party. They'd go off looking for trouble. They'd come upon a situation and make a judgment call. Can we take them? If we can - how much will it cost? No. These guys are not worth it. We'll go find someone else. And off they'd go. They'd find some one else and it would be: Can we take them? Yes. And we can do it on the cheap. They'll be easy pickings. Then - they'd attack. They'd kill the enemy males, steal their animals, rape their women and then kidnap those of their women and children they thought they might take into their own tribe - putting the wombs of these women to work making babies for THEIR tribe instead of their enemies. The others they didn't want - they'd kill. That is how the Indian Tribes had been treating each other for HUNDREDS if not thousands of years before the Whites ever showed up. Once the Whites did - they treated them no differently. The problem for the Indians - was the Whites were better armed and better organized. That - and Europe was bursting at the seems with people to whom - Owning their own land - was an impossible dream. Those people flooded the New World and died in droves - but more kept coming. These people brought with them a level of technology that the Indians could not hope to match - PLUS - diseases the Indians had less resistance to. Those diseases killed large numbers of the Indians. This was not a plan. These people didn't think this up. They COULD NOT come over here and NOT bring their diseases with them. The other thing about this - is that these people hated each other. Tribe and been victimizing Tribe as far back as any of them could remember. Here - in this hatred - the Whites were just another Tribe - and they hated the Indians who had victimized their families and loved ones and friends and neighbors. So - yeah - they took to slaughtering the Indians when they got the chance - the same way the Indians had been slaughtering them. And - was this anything the Whites here in the New World were only doing to the Indians? No. This was no different than what the Whites had been doing to each other in Europe for thousands of years. Akkadians, Sumerians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Franks, Alans, Huns, Goths, Britons, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Angles, Saxons, Normans, Vikings, British, French, Dutch, Germans - they'd all been killing each other since the dawn of time. They were no different than the Indians about that. Look at how Cortes Conquered the Aztecs. Do you think that a few hundred Spanish were enough to conquer a nation the size of the Aztecs? No. Cortes conquered the Aztecs - because their neighbors all hated them. The Spanish were Shock Troops for an Alliance of Indian Tribes who - HATED - the Aztecs. During the American Indian Wars - the Lakota and Cheyenne had ganged up on the Crow and taken their land from them. The Crow - hated - them and allied themselves with the Whites. There was an American Army Officer who was trying to create Peace with the Lakota and Cheyenne. A number of their Chiefs came to his Camp to talk to him. The Crow on that base saw these Chiefs - and they killed them. Black Kettle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Kettle summed it up fairly well. He said that there were good White Men and Good Indians and that there were Bad White Men and Bad Indians but the Bad People kept getting the good people killed. At the Battle of the Washita a war party had attacked an Army Communications unit. Captain Benteen of the 7th Cavalry - under Custer - tracked the War Party to Black Kettle's Village, which it has passed through on it's way to it's own village. Whether or not they had done that to throw off the Army - is unknown. Benteen reported back - and the 7th attacked the Village - where Black Kettle was killed. Twice as many Whites were killed in the American Indian Wars as Indians - it's just that that didn't make a mole hills difference. At Little Big Horn, there were 6,000 Indians total with about 1500 Warriors. Custer had about 500 guys total - but only about 235 with him when he was killed. At Gettysburg - there were over 70,000 guys ON EACH SIDE . This isn't the poor victimized Indians being mistreated by the evil, vicious Whites. This just just people being people. The reason the Indians were forced onto Reservations - was to try and stop them from attacking each other and the Whites near by. As long as they were free to migrate north and south with the seasons - they could not be stopped from attacking people - Indian or White. The peoples of the New World were less technologically advanced that those in Europe, had less resistance to European Diseases and were vastly out numbered. Once European Naval Technology became advanced enough for them to begin exploring the World - the Indians of the New World were doomed. Stop being a silly little twit - and see the World the way it really is. .
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  69.  @sarjim4381  - Eric Bergerud said in Touched With Fire https://www.amazon.com/Touched-Fire-Land-South-Pacific/dp/0140246967/ref=sr_1_5?crid=980J35JO60ET&keywords=touched+by+fire&qid=1578507270&s=books&sprefix=Touched+by+Fire%2Caps%2C216&sr=1-5 That immediately after a unit was committed to the Jungle - it would begin to kill it and after 90 days - whether it had seen any action or not - the unit had to be withdrawn. Jack Kennedy, after the sinking of PT 109, was given a second boat and spent a good bit of time chasing barges and supporting the Marines - but - his medical condition got so bad that he was sent home and put in the hospital. When he was well enough to leave the hospital he was released from the Navy. In Africa, while the southern most portion wasn't that bad in the Central area Westerners died like flies from diseases the locals had become immune to. So - yeah - it could be pretty rough having to do a lot of strenuous stuff in an environment that was more than capable of killing you without all that. .
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  70. Right after 9/11 - there was a British Warship that was passing an American Warship - and almost the entire crew of the British Ship Manned the Railings and Saluted. So - the gestures were not always competitive. .
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  71. And - 3 years to the day later. .
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  72. And about 50 years ago I spent many hours commanding this ship - and the rest of the High Seas Fleet playing Avalon Hill's - Jutland - about the same amount of time that had passed at that time, since the real battle of Jutland. .
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  73. Yeah ... thanks. Learned some things I didn't know. I played the Avalon Hill Game Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_(1964_game) dozens of times with my High School War Gaming Buddies. We graduated to compass and protractor games of people playing in different rooms with moves put on vellum and sent to a judge. So ... seeing Kaga has some nostalgic value for me as many, many times I was either her commander or the opponent of her commander. With six fleet carriers and over 400 aircraft - Kido Butai was an extremely powerful naval strike force in the early months of WWII - that just went around stomping on people. Midway really changed things. .
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  74. Except for once again wrongly referring to The Battle OFF Samar as The Battle of Samar - this was well done and very interesting. You don't hear that much about these ships after 12/7/41. .
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  75. It's also a fact that the Dutch were up against the main German Army and not amphibiously landed troops. After Holland fell though - the Dutch fought on from exile and tried to resist the Japanese when they took their Asian Colonies. So - I'd hold my contempt for Holland. Regardless of what some informant had been telling them - they HAD sat out WWI and therefore had reason to believe that it could happen again - unlike Belgium. Belgium is the reason the allies lost in 1940. The Belgians had had previous discussions with the British and French about a future war with the Germans. There were plans for them all to cooperate - but - when Britain and France went to war with Germany after it attacked Poland - instead of inviting the British and French in to set up for the attack everyone knew was coming - they didn't. When a German staff aircraft on it's way to a planning meeting got lost and came down in Belgium - with the German plans - the Belgians gave those plans to the British and French. When asked if they wanted the British and French to come in and set up the Belgian response was "What?!? and violate our Neutrality?" IF there had been a line of French Infantry Corp through the Ardennes linked to the northern end of the Maginot Line (and IF the RAF had made a full commitment of it's fighter force to protecting the battlefield rather than Britain) the allies could have stopped the Germans. Before going into denial - Belgium had raised as large an army as it could support - but that wasn't large enough. They had all their main units in the north with but two cavalry divisions in the Ardennes. The Germans barely noticed them as they raced to Sedan. Then - the Belgian Army, holding part of the line next to the British - surrendered - exposing their position. Did the Belgian government go into exile and fight on - NO - it did not. Neither did France. So - compared to some of the other participants - at least the Dutch fought on while larger nations that should have been much more prepared - quit. Denmark and Holland were indefensible compared to Norway. I'd not however denigrate Norway's efforts. They were yet another small nation overwhelmed by the Germans. As to sitting back and depending on neutrality - that did work for Sweden and Switzerland. .
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  76.  @ottovonbismarck2443  Yes. Ajax was a Greek Warrior at the battle of Troy (according to the movie - killed by Hector though not so in the IIliad) - NOT the Greek God of War - who as mentioned - was Ares. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_the_Great .
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  77. Well ... there were elements of both factors. There were people who claimed that no Battleship underway had ever been sunk by aircraft but there were also people who did recognize that things had changed. You should also remember that these ships actually did really well in defending themselves - it's just that the Japanese had over 40 aircraft. If the Japanese had had fewer aircraft they might have gotten away. These two capital ships were NOT just sent off without any attempts to provide them with air cover. First off they were supposed to have an aircraft carrier with them when they went to Singapore - but - it ran aground. Then - they were supposed to coordinate with the RAF at Singapore to provide air cover and that got fouled up. So, what I would say, was that the people involved in the decision making of the day - DID realize that things had changed - but - they didn't take that change seriously enough. It could have been decided to NOT send the surface ships unless they could come up with a Carrier to provide them with air cover - and - they COULD have made damn sure that the plans to provide them with land based air cover were better carried out. The trouble with that last is that it never seemed to work that well. The land based air was always to far away and communications were never good enough, that, and there wasn't enough time between the realization that they were under air attack and the time at which land based air could have gotten there. The only way to do that - would be to dilute your air cover by sending in small numbers to constantly patrol above the ships they were protecting and the coordination of something like that - wasn't something the people involved had ever really practiced a lot. The other factor in the losses suffered by the Western Allies was that ... they were in Japan's back yard and it could bring to bear the full weight of it's Armed Forces on whatever they had there. If the only criteria were the preservation of human life - then all the Westerners should have been evacuated. A lot of dependents, women and children - were - evacuated but politics was a factor here. If they had just evacuated EVERYONE that would have assured that there would have been an attack on their holdings. By keeping a military force there - they hoped to send a message that they WOULD fight and hence the Japanese should know better than to attack them - as ultimately the Western Powers DID have the strength to not only defeat Japan - but to destroy it. On the one hand - there were Japanese who DID know that and tried to prevent the war but there were others who felt that they had no choice but to attack - unless - they wanted to become yet another Western Colony. So - they did. .
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  78. Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie also has a nice treatment of this. .
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  79.  @smokey1255  Yes - that occurred to me too. Actually though - they picked up the Japanese just after 0702 and they did report it. They'd just gotten a phone line installed and called the information center just like they were supposed to. The officer on duty though - knew - that there was a flight of B-17's coming in from the main land and figured that these were what they had picked up. That flight of B-17's did in fact come in during the raid and some of them were lost to the Japanese attacking the airfield. Watch the movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!" which has a good depiction of this incident. The 2001 Movie does to but it's not as good but I couldn't find that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5alr8yLZtI8 This is the Radar that made the detection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR-270 This is the officer who said it was B-17's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermit_Tyler This is a report from someone who knew the operators who did feel that they were ignored. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hz81I_3_AQ I don't doubt that the people this guy knew felt they had been ignored. They HAD tried to give a warning but - the system failed them. The officer making the decision was new and not well trained. The whole radar defense system (there was more than one radar - this is just the one that picked up the raid) was new and poorly trained. The military had sent officers to be trained by the British but didn't do a good job of trying to implement what they were taught. Basically - it comes down to the US having a Peace Time Military - that just wasn't Mentally ready to go to war. The USS Ward had attacked and sunk a Japanese Submarine trying to sneak into the Harbor - but - when they reported it - the officer who got the report thought it was yet another false report and didn't do anything. Despite repeated warnings Admiral Kimmel and General Short - failed - to have their commands ready and both were court marshaled. MacArthur who had 8 hours of warning AFTER the Pearl Harbor attack - also - failed in his defense of the Philippines was not court marshaled. .
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  80.  @philipjooste9075  Yeah. I'll bet that's it. "Engagements in Leyte Gulf and OFF Samar" is probably what did it. .
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  81.  Jonny B  Uh ... no. China and Russia becoming a political block ... I don't see that. The Chinese - yes - depending. When Europeans complain about the Americans I tend to tell them to just wait until the Chinese are running things and see how they like that - but not in cooperation with the Russians. The thing is - Russia and China really don't have that good a history working together. The Russians tended to look down on the Chinese and the Chinese - look down on EVERYBODY ... We'll have to see how things shake out. Putin is running things now ... but ... he's not going to be running things forever - and given the somewhat iffy state of Russian Democracy ... I sure as hell don't know what's going to happen there in the future. The Chinese Communists have adopted a policy of having a Capitalistic Economy under Communist Political Rule but as seen repeatedly since the revolution - any time they started thinking they had a chance - the Democratic ideas of the population have come out. What happened in the Soviet Union was that a number of generations after the revolution - no one believed in it. The Party didn't believe in it. People joined The Party to advance their own lives - not to serve the "People". So - in contrast to the lives of people in the West - which they were aware of - the population was ready for the Soviet System to collapse. That was in fact the policy of Containment advocated by the NATO powers. After WWII as the Cold War became seen for what it was - rather than fight yet another major war - NATO adopted the strategy of making sure the Soviets never thought they could win - while waiting for the obvious flaws in their system to cause it to fail. And they were right. The thing that is different about China - is the acceptance of Capitalism in the economy. As long as they are able to meet the rising economic aspirations of the population ... they might last longer than the Soviet System did. We'll just have to see. If the Communists screw up big enough ... they could demonstrate that they have lost the Mandate of Heaven ... and find themselves undone. We'll see ... . .
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  82.  @WojciechP915  Ah yes. One of the joys of being a history nerd is the appreciation of the realizations of other history nerds. .
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  83.  @bluemarlin8138  Yeah. It's hard to say what might have happened if that runner hadn't made it from one bunker to the next - or - gotten to one a little sooner or left the other a little later ... .
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  84. This is why Actors hate to be type cast. Get typecast as a conversion specialist and it just never ends. .
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  85. The Magnetic Influence Exploders - like Magnetic Influence Mines - would detonate when a large metal object - like a ship - would create a disturbance in the Earth's Magnetic Field. The problem was - that the Earth's Magnetic Field - varied in strength at different places. Sometimes it would set the torpedoes off to soon - other times it wouldn't set them off at all. The idea - was to use the MIE's to set off the torpedo - UNDER - the target - so - they were set to run below their targets. Thus - if the MIE didn't se the torpedo off - it was already set to run under the target - so the contact exploder wouldn't have a chance to work. The thing was - that IF the Earths Magnetic Field was the same at the location of the target - as it was where the torpedo was calibrated - THEN - it would work. As anyone who has ever tried to deal with intermittent problems knows - they are a real pain in the ass to figure out. The only thing really wrong with the British and German Torpedoes - was the Magnetic Influence Exploders. They figured out right away that these did not work. When Warspite entered the fjord where it would sink all those German Destroyers - it sailed right by a U-Boat that fired 4 torpedoes at it. All four of these Torpedoes detonated prematurely because of the MIE's. On the way out of that fjord - the same U-Boat fired another 4 torpedoes at it - with the exact same results. When he got back to Germany - the Captain of that U-Boat went into headquarters and was literally pounding on a desk with his fists screaming at the top of his lungs - that he would NEVER use those MIE's again. Not only had the Germans missed a chance to sink a British Battleship - but - that ship had sunk 10 of their destroyers. All because the MIE's had failed to function properly. They stopped using them. Once the British and Germans stopped using the MIE's - their contact exploders worked fine and their torpedoes ran at the depth they were set at. Sometimes the MIE's worked. One sub had a destroyer bearing down on it and fired a torpedo at the destroyer. The MIE worked and broke the Destroyers back. Getting a contact hit on such a slim target as the bow of a destroyer was not likely. The MIE saved that sub. Still, the MIE's were deemed much more trouble than they were worth. The Mark XIV's also had problems with their depth settings and their contact exploders. Having multiple problems served to cause confusion as to what was wrong. Sometimes they did sink ships with them. Sometimes they didn't. Entirely due to the independent initiative of local commanders - they gradually came to figure things out - all in the face of instructions from above - not - to do so. Another problem they had - was that one of their Submarine Fleet Commanders had been in charge of the Torpedo Facility that designed and built the Mark XIV's - and refused to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with HIS torpedoes - even after the other Fleet Commander had shown that there was. The Mark XIV's had been tested two times against an obsolete sub used as a target. They failed one of those times. So - the US went into WWII - with a Torpedo with a 50% failure rate in the only testing it got. The reason they were not tested further - was the Depression. The Navy didn't want to spend the money on further tests. For one thing - torpedoes were expensive and they didn't want to expend them on tests. This was a very poor decision. .
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  86. Yes ... the Americans tended to name their ships for political reasons - unless - they weren't considered important at the time. The important ships (at the time) - Battleships and Cruisers were named respectively after States and Cities - thus - hopefully from the Navy's point of view - gaining political support from these places for the Navy. However - aircraft carriers and submarines (before they were proven) - had some fanciful names early on like Wasp and Hornet or were named after previous ships (Enterprise) and battles (Saratoga). The Submarines were named after fish. But as these ships came to be seen to be important ... that changed after WWII. The first crack in the wall was naming a carrier after Franklin Roosevelt when he died then Forrestal after he died. You still had some of the older names like Saratoga, Ranger and Independence, then Kitty Hawk and Constellation, then Enterprise and America. Then you had the Kennedy after he died and that was the end of naming Carriers after anything but political figures. Rickover - changed naming the submarines after fish because "fish don't vote" - and began naming them after Cities, States and People. Thus - the American ships had good names for a while - but now anything of any importance is named after a person or a place. Those named after medal winners and such - also are intended to get support for the Navy from friends and relatives of the people they name the ships after - was well as their communities. .
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  87. Yes. I noticed that too - thought not which class it was. This one being a heavy cruiser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Helena_(CA-75) as opposed to This one which was the light cruiser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Helena_(CL-50) .
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  88.  @7thsealord888  Don't forge HMS Glowworm, HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Glowworm_(H92) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Acasta_(H09) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ardent_(H41) .
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  89. It seems that Essex lost to Phoebe for a combination of two primary reasons. First - Phoebe was a little faster (which the loss of her main-topmast by Essex before the battle only made worse). Second - Phoebe had a lot higher percentage of long guns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valpara%C3%ADso In contrast, Constitution survived largely because she was faster and like a Battle Cruiser - could run away from anything she didn't out gun and out gunned anything she couldn't run away from. .
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  90. Yes. That is the 59 boat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrol_torpedo_boat_PT-59 In the movie PT 109 the incident where JFK participates in rescuing a Marine Diversionary Force - that had done it's job well and drawn Japanese Forces to attack it - was actually done with the 59 Boat. It's just that the name of the movie was PT-109 - so ... they simplified things - and had this mission happen before the 109 was sunk. Considering all the things Hollywood has done - this is far from the worst. Yes - the Navy had a policy of granting Survivors Leave for 30 days - to anyone who had been on a ship that was sunk. Kennedy - took a pass on this leave - and was given the 59 boat. His back was part of the reason he was sent home but the primary reason was all the tropical diseases he had. He'd lost 20 lbs and only weighted 145 lbs which isn't much for someone 6 ft. tall. They sent him to a local medical unit and from there they determined to just send him home. This was common place in that theater. In his book "Touched With Fire", Eric Bergerud mentioned that if you put a unit into the Jungle - the Jungle would start to kill it. Whether or not the unit saw any combat - in 90 days - it was used up and had be withdrawn to be reconstituted. After Kennedy got back home - he spent some time in a Hospital Recovering. When he was healthy enough to be released from the Hospital - the Navy determined that he was NOT healthy enough to resume duties in the Navy - and he was given an Honorable Discharge. This was not uncommonly done with casualties who - while no longer needing to be in a Hospital - were not ever going to be fully recovered - and were not people the Navy wanted to send into a Combat Zone - where they might just have to end up being sent back. Military Service is hard - and they wanted people sent out to at least be fully healthy at the start of their deployment. A modern example of Military Policy towards individuals health - is Joe Biden. When his deferments ran out - he was drafted. When he reported in for his medical exam - they determined he had Asthma - and they sent him home. .
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  91. Yeah ... it doesn't pay to get to excited ... There was a ceremonial gun crew in New Orleans maybe 50 years ago - where the didn't swab out the gun properly - and the guy ramming the powder charge in - had the rammer blasted from his hands - taking part of them with it - when said powder charge encountered a still burning ember ... How Not to Lose Your Hand While Firing a Cannon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0yjU7Z05A4 Another example of getting to exited - is in Band of Brothers where one guy throws a grenade through a window - then charges in through a door before his grenade had detonated ... .
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  92.  @Solidboat123  Your comments on the age of the F-4's are irrelevant. All that would matter was if they could take on the aircraft the Argentinians had - not if they were as good as F-14's. As to the capability of the Harriers - you are aware I trust that ( many ) some of the Harriers they had were lost in operational accidents to the point they were trying to replace their losses ( with Army ) by putting Sidewinders on Gr3 RAF Harriers? And - VSTOL Being superior to CATOBAR because of weather? What reality are you in? That is pure bull shit. .
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  93. The impression I got of Mahan's thinking was the observation that the important ships - were not your warships - but your merchant ships. The purpose of the warships - was to protect your merchant ships and attack the enemies - but - warships were in and of themselves ... not that useful to a nation. Thus - if you didn't have a merchant fleet or trade using others ships to protect and you didn't have an enemies merchant fleet to attack - you didn't really need a Navy - but if you did - then you did need one. Here - the Japanese did not really understand Mahan. They were amongst those who got the idea that what was important - was the Decisive Battle. Because of this - during WWII - they preserved their main fleet for that Decisive Battle - at the expense of losing earlier battles which the commitment of that fleet might have let them win. More importantly though was their neglect of warfare against the enemies lines of communication and a relatively weak attempt to protect their own. Thus the Japanese commitment of their submarines to trying to sink enemy warships. Here - they did have some major successes - but in contrast to the Germans - made insignificant efforts against Allied Convoys. On the flip side - Japanese ASW was woefully lacking. Here - at the beginning of the war when US torpedoes sucked - this didn't matter so much. Later on when the US got their various torpedo problems sorted ... US submarines were able to eviscerate their merchant ships and largely cut off Japan from the rest of the world. This last resulted in their not merely having a lack of fuel for their war machine but a lack of food for their people. I don't know enough about Mahan to say if this is in line with his thinking but my opinion of nations - is that Maritime Nations such as the US & UK are better strategic thinkers since Naval Warfare is inherently strategic. Land powers tend to lack that quality of strategic thinking. Thus - you have Germany in WWII driving all the way across Russia trying to get to the Oil in the Caucuses (yes I know it's more complicated than that) - when if they'd not attacked the Soviets - but turned the Med into an Axis lake - they could have gotten all the oil they wanted from the middle east - and then - at their leisure - attacked the Caucuses from the south ... In WWI - building the High Seas Fleet - made them a concern to Britain - which responded with a building program they couldn't match. To what end? Just what was it that the High Seas Fleet was going to do? There are those who think that if Wilhelm could have chosen between being Kaiser and being an Officer in the RN - he'd have chosen the RN. Of course, they weren't going to let him do any such thing so it was never a consideration - but - since he was Kaiser and he could just build his own Navy ... he did ... Then - going into Belgium was certain to bring Britain into the war. France by itself - they could beat as they had in 1870 but with the British (whom the French were begging to come in) they were not able to win. Then - they began unrestricted submarine warfare (not to mention that stupid telegram) - which they knew would bring in the Americans. Building the High Seas Fleet made Britain a potential enemy. British entering the war because of Belgium stopped them from winning. Americans entering the war guaranteed their defeat. And ... don't get me started on Ludendorff ... this is long enough. The Germans were fairly good operationally - but strategically - they were imbeciles. .
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  94. The Mark 14''s were American Torpedoes. They would have used British Torpedoes. Now - the Americans, British and Germans all tried to get Magnetic Influence Torpedoes to work - but - they all gave up on it. The thing is - the Mark 14 torpedoes the Americans used had more problems than the Magnetic Influence Detonators - where as other than their failed Magnetic Influence Exploders - the German and British Torpedoes - were fine. .
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  95. The actual fight (iirc) didn't go much better. The way I heard the story ... (this isn't - intended - to be a joke - as the way I was told the story - it was like this literally happened). The Iraqi Commander drives up in his tank to the Syrian HQ and goes in side. "What do you want me to do?" he asks. The Syrian Commander grabs his arms at the shoulders and looks him dead in the eyes. "Fight!" he says. The Iraqi Commander Salutes, about faces, goes out to this tank and gets in it, then he and his men ... drive on down to the battle. The problem was ... the Syrians there didn't know who these strange tanks were - and the Israelies didn't know who they were - so both sides shot at them. The Iraqi unit was quickly wiped out .... and with it Iraq's contribution to the Yom Kippur War. [Note: Subsequent research has indicated that the Iraqi force was not indeed wiped out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur_War#cite_note-335 ] .
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  96.  @Drachinifel  One of the causes of the War of 1812 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_1812 was the pressing of American Sailors - at sea - who the British Believed to be British Sailors - into the RN. The stopping of American ships and pressing of members of their crews was not appreciated by the Former Colonies while the ex-Mother Country tended to claim the men were deserters. A number of American Sailors had experience with the RN - but - claimed to have completed their service. Each side disputed the reasoning of the other. .
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  97. Yeah. Most people don't realize that WWII started in 1937 at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident .
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  98.  @genericpersonx333  OK. I see it all the time where you have people who cling to some theory partly because they believe in it and party because they don't want to be proven wrong. For the rest of it - yes - as mentioned here - there were some highly intelligent people wrestling with these issues and - some of them came up with solutions that were different than others. Here - one issue that deserves more thought - is that each of these groups of people were deciding what they were going to do - based on their nations priorities. The British, Americans, Japanese, French and Italians all had different perceptions of what they needed to prioritize. Italy, for example, never built any aircraft carriers because they considered their large boot of a nation, sticking right out into the middle of the Med. a sufficient aircraft carrier for their needs. They were wrong about that - but they weren't just being stupid. As with Force Z - land based air and naval forces just ... never were able to work together that well. In the '30's - you had all these people with all these theories ... and most of them were wrong. If you look at what those Air Power guys like Billy Mitchell and Douhet actually said - they were horribly wrong. Yes - Air Power turned out to be fantastically important - but NOT in the way these people had thought it would be. Some people have wondered about the naming the B-25 after Mitchell - since it being a Medium Bomber - it was just the kind of aircraft this Four Engine Minded Air Power Advocate hated (according to the person making that remark). [shrug] .
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  99. Thanks. That was interesting. There were any number of ways and reasons for attacking the enemy. The Americans were focused on getting to where they could attack Japan Directly. Japan's Strategic Defensive Plan - was to create a series of Island Barriers - for Air Bases - that would screen Japan from being approached by enemy forces. The Americans were focused on penetrating those chains and capturing bases and anchorages from which to move on. One thing that the Allies wanted to do - was cut off Japan's supplies. Japan had launched the war to gain access to materials it didn't have. There were 3 ways to cut them off. Attack the Source of their Materials. Take bases astride their route home. Attack their shipping. The American Navy used submarines to attack their shipping. MacArthur took the Philippines. The British Empire attacked the Source. I knew a little about what the Australians had done but nothing about those carrier raids on the refineries. Thanks again. .
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  100.  @MUSIC7052  Don't let Elon hear you - he might just do it ... .
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  101. Thanks. This was excellent. Like much that is Historical, when you get down into the wee details of things it is amazingly complex, convoluted and confused. And with the major acts of History, as with the average human being, we tend to blunder through our existence doing what seems to be a good idea at the time. Then - with 20/20 Hindsight - sit in judgment of those that came before us. .
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  102. Yes. The FAA did some very valuable development work on the Corsairs. One thing about the USN though - was that they had a perfectly good fighter in the F6F so they didn't really need the F4U's whereas the FAA, after being stuck by the RAF with ... not such good Carrier Aircraft - was much more interested in developing the Corsair. Even after the FAA had figured out the Corsairs glide path solution it was also the modification to it's landing gear the USN had undertaken, that took more time to implement. Here the Corsairs were used as land based aircraft for a long time - partly because they didn't want to have double the logistics by supporting two different fighters aboard the carriers. It was with the advent of the Kamikazes - that the USN very much wanted the additional speed of the F4U's in order to intercept them as far from their ships as they could. .
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  103. Thanks. That was interesting. I was aware that they'd added more fighters but not how much more and not exactly when. One thing about Santa Cruz - was that the US had sent one of it's Carriers and her escorts off to be refuel - the Japanese had two smaller carriers - and thus a significant number of aircraft more than the Americans. Also - the presence of extra hulls really mattered - as it was in attacking these smaller ships that the US expended some of their effort in several battles. As to the VS units carrying 500 lb. bombs - I would expect that this was true of them WHEN they were flying Scouting Missions - as they could have been fitted with the larger bombs when used as Strike Aircraft - I just don't know if they were. .
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  104. There was a cartoon at the time depicting an American Destroyer racing to intercept a torpedo headed towards the Saratoga. An exaggerated depiction of the Saratoga's Captain is shown leaning out of the bridge and yelling at the destroyer: "I'll take it!" This is the best thing I could find on the Wake Relief Effort http://www.cv6.org/1941/wake/wake_2.htm As best I can tell, it was attempted to bring Enterprise, Lexington and Saratoga to support Wake but the ships were scattered and to far away to get there in time. Had Kimmel issued different orders before he was replaced by Pye ... ??? Who knows? The impression I got - wasn't that Pye was afraid of Hiryu and Soryu - but of the entire Kido Butai - as he didn't know where it was. The Japanese responded quickly to their first defeat at Wake - faster than the Americans responded to reinforce it. It is a theme of the early war that the Japanese were acting faster than the Allies responded. For example - Langley and a transport were trying to bring aircraft intended for the Philippines to Indonesia. They had about 50 aircraft, some intact on the Langley (which couldn't launch them) and some in crates on the transport. Langley was sunk before it could unload and those aircraft the transport unloaded had to be destroyed to prevent their capture by the Japanese when they over ran the port. Also a theme of the early days is Western Forces surrendering to Japanese they might have done better against than they did. As to Midway - the Saratoga had been sent out from the West Coast with a large number of aircraft, many as cargo. Meeting up with Enterprise and Hornet - most of these aircraft were handed over to these ships to replace aircraft lost and damaged in the battle. .
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  105. Yeah ... there are a lot of sad stories about the men trying to defend against the Japanese at the beginning of WWII but then there are a lot of sad stories about Japanese trying to defend their homes against us at the end of it. These of course being bookends to all the sad stories occurring in between. As Yamamoto said "I shall run wild considerably for the first six months or a year, but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto He did run wild for the first half of 1942 but the second half turned into a slug fest between Japan and the Western Allies. At the end of that year both Japan and the Allies had lost a lot of men and machines - but - the Allies could replace them - and Japan could not. .
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  106. Yes. There may have been other ships with names as ironic as Vanguard but not more so. .
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  107. IIRC ... Germany finished paying her WWI Reparations in 2010 ... .
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  108. Thanks. That was interesting. I had no idea about the Naval War in the Adriatic during WWI. .
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  109.  @mryhdy6266  We'll never know. Their plan was to do what the North Vietnamese did in Vietnam and just outlast us but things were different in WWII. The press in WWII - was on our side - whereas in Vietnam they turned against us. Different people - different times. We should have won WWII no matter what - but - then again - we should have won in Vietnam too. .
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  110.  @DavidBowiesCock  Oh! OK. Well that explains that. .
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  111. Of course - if you already have this in digital format - the OCR part of it may not be needed. It would depend on whether or not you have something that can process the digitized version of the Japanese into English. Having a human translator do it all manually could be your best option. .
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  112.  @WALTERBROADDUS  This might have to do with the comment in the video about bulkheads that were supposed to be water tight - not being water tight ... .
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  113.  @Drachinifel  Yeah ... my buddies Naval Rules were something like that. We'd all played Jutland so we were used to moving around little bits of cardboard on the floor with maneuvering gauges. My contribution at the time was to the torpedo rules ... lot of beer spilt over that ... We did a round robin of the worlds navies, French, Italian, British, German, Japanese and American. That's the order they finished in, except the Americans beat the Germans and the Japanese. Of course - these were "balanced" scenarios so each side had the same number of ships (and of course no aircraft). We also fought a game of Great Naval Battles on my Lan. Two guys were the Germans and the guy who did the Naval Rules and I were supposed to be the Americans ... but he didn't show up ... so I was a very, very busy boy ... Americans were limited to Pearl Harbor type ships. Tirpitz took a steering hit early on though ... and that scuppered the Germans plans to use their speed. I had 3 16" gun battleships and one 14" and those 16" guns just took the Germans apart. We meant to do that again but ... somehow ... we never did ... All that was like 40 years ago ... .
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  114. As to Kaiser Wilhelm II and the British Royal Family - Willi's Mother was Queen Victoria's oldest Daughter - making him - her first Grand Child. Willi spent a good bit of time in Britain and absolutely loved the RN. My personal opinion is - that had he the option (which of course he never would have) of choosing to be an Officer in the RN - or Kaiser of Germany - Willi would have chosen the RN. Having had one of his arms ruined in birth - and his mother having the British devotion to Horses - she MADE him learn to ride. Given the number of times he fell off - Willi hated riding. But he loved the sea and had his own personal yacht where he preferred to spend his time. Given his being an Officer of the RN - not a possibility - Wili seems to have decided to build a Navy of his own and doesn't seem to have realized that the British would not be happy about this. This rather useless High Seas Fleet was in fact something of Germany's undoing. Besides the men, materials and money lavished upon this Navy - it was the mutiny of it's Sailors that played a real part in Germany losing WWI. In High School I played the Avalon Hill Game - Justland - a lot. I lent my game to someone who never returned it - but - in recent years bought a copy off EBay. I liked playing the Germans and the ships of the High Seas Fleet are old friends of mine (in the game). Still - it would have been better had the Germans kept their Navy on the smaller side - and not violated Belgian Neutrality. Had they done so - they would probably not have had - as in 1870 - Britain as an enemy - and won WWI against Russia and France. .
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  115.  @royquigley2594  What he no doubt meant - was the when FDR said the Doolittle Raid had come from Shangri La - that was really the Hornet - so the Hornet had two ships named after it - one for it's real name and the other for the euphemism FDR used in referring to it. .
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  116.  @OhSome1HasThisName  No. Decolonization got started long before WWII - and in fact was caused by WWI. Your mistake is seeing the end of the process as when it got started. The reason for Colonialism was commerce. It was merchants that wanted colonies - not governments. The Governments didn't want them because they knew what they would cost. Nevertheless - the merchants - sometimes by doing things on their own (such as with the British East India Company) would get their nations roped into things. After WWI bankrupted most of Europe - Governments attitudes towards their colonies changed drastically and they became much less willing to continue to support the structure that had let all those merchants make all that money. After WWII - they just didn't care about anything but cost cutting and their Empires were on the block. Some nations, such as France, tried to hold on to parts of their Empire but were in the end unwilling to spend the money it would take to do so. As to some nations having other nations backs? Well there are none who can be counted on in all situations. The presence of some Labor Governments in the UK led to some things that were not helpful to the US - such as giving the Soviets Rolls Royce Nene engines to put in their Mig-15's ... .
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  117. I recently posted something else where that it is ironic that Thatcher came out of the Falklands War a big hero - when a lot of this was her fault. The thinking of her government was - that the UK could not afford to keep both a Conventionally Armed and Nuclear Armed Navy. In order to stay in the Atom Club - she had elected to largely forgo a Conventional Navy and just retain the missile boats. With this in mind - the Invincible was to be sold to Australia and the Hermes to India. There was even another Amphibious Support Ship which they were going to sell to Argentina. It is a tragedy and a travesty that the Eagle and Ark Royal were scrapped without CATOBAR replacements. The same can be said for the way the new Queen Elizabeth Class were built. Ski Jump Carriers are the choice of 3rd rate powers. The RN deserved better. Harriers or VSTOL F-35's are great for what they are able to do - and let such as the US Marines operate fixed winged aircraft from their Amphibious Assault Ships - but they are no match for catapult launched aircraft with full ordnance loads. And of course - AEW aircraft would have made all the difference in the Falklands. With Phantoms and Buccaneers if the Argentinians had invaded - which they would have been stupid to do - with two real aircraft carriers in support of them a lot fewer British Sailors would have had to die. .
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  118.  @maxkronader5225  Uh ... no. There was no other day. There was never going to be another day - and - the Japanese under Kurita KNEW that going in. Japan's strategy for he war - was to make the Americans bleed so much - they would quit. Pretty much the same strategy used by the Vietnamese Communists during the Vietnam war. So - the purpose of the Japanese military was not over all victory - they were NEVER going to WIN the WAR. You were never going to see the Yamato sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge. Their purpose was rather to make defeating Japan so costly to the Americans - that they would reach a negotiated settlement. If they could do that by winning battles - that is what they wanted to do - but even if they lost the battles - they hoped to bleed the Americans until they would negotiate a peace. Because of this - the entire Japanese Battle Plan for Leyte Gulf - was to bleed the Americans - not win. They were NEVER going to win the battle. And - THIS - was their last shot. The Japanese Navy needed two things - naval maintenance, supplies and equipment - which they got in Japan - and fuel - which they got in Indonesia. Because of the American Blockade of Japan - they couldn't get parts to Indonesia and they couldn't get fuel to Japan. So - the survivors of this battle mostly just sat in harbor until US Carrier groups came along and sank them. The Yamato was given enough fuel for a one way mission - but never got her guns in range of anything before the Carrier Aircraft sank her as they had Musashi. At Leyte Gulf - she was ALREADY in range. She was ALREADY engaged and her guns WERE in action. The Japanese plan HAD WORKED!!!! They had occupied the southern American force - with a force that sacrificed itself to do that. They had drawn the main American battle fleet off - with a force that sacrificed itself to do that. And - despite losing some of their ships - the main striking force - the Center Force - HAD come in contact with the Americans and was attacking them. Kurita threw away the sacrifice of all those men and ships when he pulled back and then retired. Now - here - you have him falling back on what he was used to doing. For much of the war the Japanese had kept a Fleet In Being - held in reserve for the Final Battle. This Final Battle was their sole hope for actually getting a negotiated peace by winning something - rather than just tiring the Americans out. Well ... the Final Battle was in the Marianna's and the Japanese lost very, very badly there so by Leyte Gulf they were down to just trying to bleed them. But - Kurita got injured himself - that effected his thinking and he went back to trying to preserve his ships - when there was no longer a reason to do so. There was NOT going to be Another Day - and he KNEW that going in. He just forgot why they were there. The worst thing that can happen to a Naval unit - is to have it's Commander injured - but not killed. Their judgment is distorted - as they are personally feeling their ships pain - but - those guys will never give up command. So - they make bad decisions ... As to saving Japanese lives? Yes. Finally, Hirohito, with the impetus of the Atom Bombs - stepped in - and used his prestige (something he could get away with ... once) to ask his country to stand down - and they did. Without THAT - Japan would have fought to the death and millions up on millions of them would have died. .
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  119.  @epl803  Yes. Lexington and Saratoga looked so much alike they put a big stripe down the sides of the Funnels on Saratoga - which you can see in that picture of all the American's Carriers. .
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  120. Yeah. There was a lot of stuff they did with Ranger that the stopped doing with Ranger . Wasp was another smaller carrier. They had a bit of Treaty Tonnage left over after the Yorktown's and they made a smaller Yorktown out of it. The didn't want to send it to the Pacific because it was to lightly built - but with other carrier losses - they did - and it was lost too. .
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  121. Yes. As travesties go - the failure of the State of New York to do something the states of North Carolina and Alabama (states not known for their wealth ...) managed to do - is right up at the top of the list. They have since created memorials from several other ships - but to lose the Enterprise ... never should have happened. .
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  122.  @bkjeong4302  You do understand that the term "Bean Counter" is a pejorative - don't you? And - that using the term "cost-ineffective" - makes you a Bean Counter? The thing with the guns on a battleship is that they are capable of destroying more heavily fortified positions than the guns on a cruiser. To the men who might be assigned to take out such a position - that matters a lot. It may cost more money to take out those more heavily fortified positions but - how much are their lives worth? These guns also had a lot more range than the guns on a cruiser - enabling them to hit targets farther inland. Yes - aircraft can hit those targets with very heavy ordinance but they come, drop their bombs and leave - not to return for hours. The Battleship can just sit right there and pound it's target as long as it has ammunition and it can carry a large amount of that. The thing here - is that you can't know in advance just what kind of operations you will need to conduct and ships like Battleships took years to build - and - will never be built again. So - losing their capability permanently - is a serious problem, especially for the men who might die because they are not there. With my Father having been a career Marine and serving myself as a Marine - I may just have a different attitude towards your cost savings than you do. Another is that all the Gun Cruisers were gone anyway the last time the Battleships were activated. So your argument about a couple of cruisers being more "cost effective" is moot. The other thing about that - that you may or may not have taken into account - is that you have to have two hulls, each of which must have all the things such as engine rooms and crews for those hulls as opposed to having a single hull and crew for a larger ship. So there is the cost of the basic ship - and then there are it's operating costs. Yet another factor would be the concentration of a Battleships fire power - as opposed to the dispersal of the fire power of two cruisers. In a fleet formation - each of these ships (Battleships and Cruisers) has to have about the same amount of maneuver space (so you don't have collisions). Thus - you can concentrate more fire power in a smaller amount of maneuver space with a larger ship. For the WWII Anti-Aircraft Role - you needed to have your AA Ship within a certain range of the ship they were defending to matter at all. If you can only fit ... say ... four ships around the ship you are escorting - you will have a lot more fire power if you have four Battleships in those positions than if you have four cruisers. This fact made the Battleships much more effective than cruisers as AA ships. There are trade offs, such as having more flexibility with more ships - but - these are trade offs. It's not like there are NO advantages to having the larger single hull. Bean Counters lose track of things like that - because all they see is money. Losing track of those aspects of such things - such as how many Marines are going to die in order to save some money - is one of the reasons people whose lives are on the line think poorly of Bean Counters who only see things in terms of how much money they cost. It is a bitter pill for these men to swallow thinking about how many of them are going to die because some Bean Counter shit canned something that would have kept them alive. .
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  123.  @SvenTviking  The problems with the lights was that if they had to fight a more heavily armored ship - such as Ajax and Achilles fighting Graf Spee - those six inch projectiles wouldn't penetrate their armor - where as 8" guns like those on the Exeter would be able to do some damage. Thus - your heavy cruisers could assist your capital ships in taking on an enemy capital ship (like Prinz Eugen assisting Bismarck) but your light cruisers couldn't. The light cruisers on the other hand made great destroyer killers - if the enemy was trying to launch a torpedo attack. So ... you build some of both and hope you have what you need when you need it. .
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  124. Yes. .
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  125.  @rhino1207  Nope. China and Japan started fighting in 1937 - and kept right on fighting until Japan surrendered in 1945. Now - Japan and China were not fighting any European powers in 1937 - but then - Germany, France and Britain were not fighting any Asian powers until 1941. So - if you were to exclude China and Japan from WWII in 1937 - by that same logic - Britain, France and Germany would not have been fighting WWII in 1939. By that logic - for it to be a World War - there would have to be a war in Asia that the Europeans were involved in and a war in Europe that Asians were involved in - which didn't happen until 1941. This certainly is a criteria that could be argued - but that logic would begin the WORLD war in 1941 not 1939. BUT - if you are using the criteria - when did the first Major Combatants begin fighting - that would be 1937 between Japan and China. Germany, France and Britain didn't start fighting until 1939 almost 2 years later. The only reason the start of WWII is listed as Sept.1, 1939 - is because of a European Centric Point of View. Trust me - if you ask someone from China - they're going to say it started in 1937. Now - the Italians invaded Ethiopia in 1935 but that war was over by 1937. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italo-Ethiopian_War So that is why WWII did not start in Ethiopia. The other thing here - is that Ethiopia would not be considered a Major Combatant - and as far as it goes - neither would Poland for the same reason Czechoslovakia wouldn't either. Since the British and the French didn't do anything about Germany's invasion of Czechoslovakia - it's not considered the start of the war. The same would be said for Japan's invasions of Korea and Manchuria - which were also not major combatants. The Major Combatants of WWII were the Soviets, Germans, Japanese, British, French, Chinese, Americans and maybe the Italians. Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Norway and Hungary (and anyone of their stature I've left out (like Albania and Yugoslavia)) were all participants but not major powers in how things turned out. It gets hard to try and place the importance of The Netherlands, Denmark and Luxembourg. The same would go for the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Now here - what happened in these smaller countries was very important TO THEM - but not so much to the world as a whole. .
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  126.  @genericpersonx333  So - do you think he really believes his own bull shit - or - that he's just a Troll? .
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  127.  @mgt2010fla  First off - paragraphs are your friend. Next - yes - they were trying to drum up support for making the Enterprise a memorial in New York - and that was probably a mistake. The battleships that went to coastal states as a memorial had more support in their name sake states. I can remember putting my dimes in a can for the North Carolina - and - got to go play on her once. Bet toy an 11 year old boy ever had. As to the last four - memorials were seen as money makers - AND - at least initially - the memorials were required to keep these ships capable of being recalled to service. So - they were much more popular. The Missouri being moored right next to the Arizona made a fitting book end for WWII - with the war beginning with one and ending on the other. .
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  128. Once upon a time ... Lee and his Battleships were off Guadalcanal - when a couple of US PT boats - who were not used to seeing American Battleships in Sea Lark Channel ... had the effrontery to challenge him. They didn't seem to believe who he was so he responded with something like (I'm going from memory here) "I'm Ching Chong China Lee! Now get out of my way. I'm coming through". The PT boat skippers - not being of an age where they ever would have heard of his nick name - were confused by it but ... they recognized when they were being yelled at by an American Naval Officer of superior rank - and got out of the Battleships way ... The American Battleships went on that night to add yet another chapter to Why You Don't Fight Battleships With Battle Cruisers ... .
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  129. Thanks. It's always interesting to listen to Historians talking about their works. One of the things mentioned that I've said myself on more than one occasion was that you don't really know how something is really going to work until you actually try and use it - in a situation where the other side has significant capabilities as well. .
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  130. One thing about the different militarizes involved - was that there were people in those militarizes that were very much aware of where things were strategically and where they might go. For one thing - the American Navy had repeatedly attacked Pearl Harbor itself during Fleet Exorcises. The Island was very well defended. It had the 24th and 25th Infantry Divisions garrisoning it. It had Army, Navy and Marine airfields. It had 64 PBY Catalina's. It had 4 radar installations - one of which picked up the incoming raid from the Kido Butai. They had received War Warnings that Japan was going to attack us. The problem - was incompetence on the part of the military commanders and inexperience on the part of the men. The British had trained Americans on how to use Radar at a training installation in Panama. The operators knew how to use the equipment and coordination centers had been set up. They just didn't have experience using it all. The United States was completely unprepared for war in 1941 and suffered for it terribly the first year. .
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  131. Uh ... one more thing ... It's "The Battle Off Samar" ... .
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  132. The fact that she had some of the Kamikaze's hit her guns may have saved her. Guns are pretty sturdy things and while the guns were destroyed - they may well have kept those aircraft from doing deeper, more signficant damage to the ship. .
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  133. At one point in time in my youth - me and my War Gaming Buddies - held a Round Robin of the Worlds WWII Navies. We had all played the Avalon Hill Jutland game but one of the guys in the group had created his own set of Naval Rules. Each side would have several Battleships, Cruisers and Destroyers. This was surface combat and Airplanes Ruined that - so no Carriers. . The First match up was between the French and Italians but I don't remember the details of the ships involved. It's to bad I can't remember any more about the French ships used as these may well have been among them. The Italians won - and went on to fight the British - who went on to fight the Germans - who went on to fight the Americans - who went on to fight the Japanese where they won as well. Of course - this wasn't just ship quality that determined the winner - as the players would be the major determinant. I don't believe we had any fixed teams. We'd just have a match at someone's house and choose up sides then. We all drank beer together every Friday Night (unless we had a date) and sometimes played War Games Saturday Night. Sadly, like most groups of young men - ours was destroyed by women. .
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  134. Because of all that - Battleships tended to carry a LOT of ammunition. .
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  135. Thanks. That was very interesting and the footage of all those old ships and planes was great. I've been looking at video footage of ships and planes for over 60 years and it is pretty rare for me to see something I haven't seen before. One thing here - was that it showed that the 8" guns on CV-2 and -3 were not a stupid idea. Given the range of the aircraft they actually had - their chances of running into enemy surface craft were very real. By WWII - things had changed and removing the 8" guns from CV-3 to be replaced by dual DP 5.38" guns was warranted. .
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  136. OK. An Engineer (Naval Engineer (Architect?)) living in his nations capital. Yes. As to the Monitor and the Warrior ... people are always asking questions about miss matched ships that were designed for entirely different purposes. It isn't really which ship is "better" it's how well did these ships do at what they were designed for. Neither of these ships could have done the other ships job. The Monitor would have just sunk - as it did and the Warrior would have run aground - or - not been able to do the job. .
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  137. Thanks. I was familiar with much of this but there were a lot of details I was not aware of. One thing about storms ... they'll do a job on whatever is in their area based on how strong the storm is and how resilient the ships ... regardless of how many ships are in that area. Most storms only claim a few ships - but - one of the risks of getting a large group of ships together - was that if they hit a bad storm - they'll all have to deal with it. There are any number of storms throughout History that have sunk entire fleets. .
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  138. Yeah. I commanded the High Seas Fleet a number of times playing Avalon Hill's Jutland so there's some real nostalgia here to see them as more than over head prints on rectangular cardboard counters. .
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  139. Yeah. Shipyard corruption could be pretty bad. There was a Sino Japanese naval fight where people had replaced the powder to launch Chinese projectiles - with Coal Dust ... That wasn't the sole reason the Chinese lost but - it didn't help ... .
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  140. Well ... that was a somewhat odd video ... but then ... Goeben had a somewhat odd career ... The impression I got from Robert K. Massie's "Castles of Steel" https://www.amazon.com/Castles-Steel-Britain-Germany-Winning/dp/0345408780/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Castles+of+Steel&qid=1591367387&sr=8-1  was that it was in fact the Goeben that, by attacking Russia, got the Ottomans in the war. Massie also made a remark about the influence having a German Battle Cruiser sitting a few hundred yards from their Capital may have had on the Ottomans. He goes on to make the point that doing just that was the whole point of the Gallipolli Campaign. Which ... had the Army been willing to participate before the Turks new what they were going to do - might have worked ... .
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  141. My understanding is that there were Luftwaffe fighter units assigned to protect it. I think the problem was getting them airborne in time to intercept the attackers. .
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  142. Yeah. Those ships really saw some shit. .
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  143. This was outstanding. I was aware of much of it but not the degree to which these early subs had mechanical and electrical problems. Having worked on ships in ... parts of the ship where the a/c didn't work so well ... and ... in parts of the ship where it worked too well ... plus various computer labs - I can attest that - yes - Computers Like it Cold and Dry ... I first read one of Admiral Lockwood's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_A._Lockwood books (possibly Sink 'em All ) when I was 13 years old in 1962. While much of the American Military was cursed with Peace Time Officers that had to be gotten rid of before they got any more people killed for nothing, we were fortunate enough to be able to replace some of them with men of Lockwood's caliber. .
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  144. Jan de Hartog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_de_Hartog based on his own experiences wrote a number of novels about Tug Boats involved in war. Normally used as rescue boats at one point in one of the novels (iirc) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captain_(novel) someone gets the bright idea to put depth charges on them ... which, even though they are not the Jellicoe Hand of God type - come close to blowing the stern off the tug. Here's a clip from The Key - with William Holden and Sophia Loren (who is not in the clip) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFMUPd7m504 .
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  145. Not at that point. Later - once Henderson Field was activated - then they had aircraft that could and did hit the Japanese (like Hiei) if they were caught in Daylight within range - but here - the only American aircraft in range would have been from the Carriers. They did have some B-17's in the area but they'd never have been able to hit those ships. .
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  146.  @augustosolari7721  If the Japanese had truly understood Mahan - he would have taken out the transports - but they didn't. If you look at the RN - whose resources weren't all that great either - THEY - with centuries of Naval Tradition - understood how to use a Navy. When they went after Bismarck - they went all out. They lost the Hood - but - they made a good hit on stopping the Germans from Commerce Raiding with their surface fleet as the Cargo Ships -were what it's all about. But - the thing with the RN was - all their Captains knew - that if they took on the enemy and hurt them - even if they lost their ship - Britain would build another one. The Japanese could never say that. Do you have a source for the exact wording (translated to English) of his orders? And - how would he know what the Army thought? Had the Army thought anything at the point at which he received his orders? The Japanese Army and Navy weren't known for talking to each other that much. Another factor in all this is the Japanese dogma (from the Battle of Tsushima) of The Decisive Battle where in their fleet would take on the US Fleet in this one big battle that would decide the war. That big battle had actually already come - at Midway but they continued to pursue that strategy and preserved The Combined Fleet at Truk - when committing it to the Solomon's could have made the difference. 1942 was the year the Japanese stood the best chance (and not a good one) of winning the war and the time to go all out with all their forces to defeat the Americans. However they persisted in this strategy of preserving their ships and lost. .
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  147. Yeah. An interim design between the Essex Classes and the Super Carriers beginning with CV-59. As I heard it, the FDR's angled flight deck, which was something of an experiment, was so large they filled the starboard empty spaces in the hull with concrete to counter balance it. I think it was the Midway that was the carrier home ported in Japan for so long it was nick named the Midway Maru. The US definitely got their money's worth out of these ships, with them (iirc) "soldiering" on long after the last of the Essex Classes were gone. They were big enough to use the F-4 Phantom's when the older Essex classes couldn't. .
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  148. Brazilian Expeditionary Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Expeditionary_Force .
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  149. If they were off Anzio ... I don't know what the hell they were doing at anchor ... Those German Radio Controlled Missiles were deadly. They sank an Italian Battleship that was changing sides with them and really caused a serious problem off Anzio. The thing is - the Allies figured out how to jam their radio signals and that was the end of that. .
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  150. These battles were where Halsey was very important. He sent his ships in and took the Japanese on. His ships suffered a lot of casualties - but - as the video stated - the USN could replace what it lost - and the IJN could not. That - and he kept Henderson Field from being bombarded - again. Here it should be remembered - that Henderson Field had been bombarded by Battleships in the past - and still managed to bring itself back on line. So - IF the Japanese had managed to bombard it - again - there is no guarantee how much damage they would have done. Still, having NO damage done to that airfield was much batter and their aircraft would wreak havoc on the Japanese. For the four ships that beached themselves - they were also in range of American Artillery - which blasted them and the area around them so that while a number of the troops they carried got off - even the supplies that were unloaded from the ships - were vulnerable where they sat on the beach. The end result being - that Guadalcanal would go on to become known to the Japanese as "Starvation Island". Later, when Halsey would have trouble with the weather and the source of his nick name ... these battles kept him from being relieved. .
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  151. Thanks for doing this. I've been reading about F4F's for over 50 years and learned a good bit that I was unaware of. As to pilots not being happy with it ... First off - they had to pump the damn landing gear over a couple dozen times just to get it up and down. I cannot imagine there was a single pilot who liked that particular aspect of the plane. The fact that if you didn't really put some force into that last pump - the landing gear might not fully lock - well that was just one more thing not to love about the process. Next - you have the narrow track of the landing gear. Now - if you are landing on a Carrier - IT is headed INTO the wind - so you don't have to worry about cross winds - but - if you are landing on land - say at Henderson Field - then you DO have to worry about cross winds. And the F4F's were notorious for ground loops. Yet another thing pilots might not like - was that the reason they were flying an F4F - was because they were on one of those smaller flat tops ... which they might also not be to happy about. Of course - one of the main factors in the experience of flying an F4F against A6M's in 1942 - was that they were still going against the cream of Japan's aviators. Whatever anyone may have to say about the P-39's P-40's and the F4F's - THEY were the ones who defeated the Japanese in 1942 and much of 1943. By the time the P-38's, F6F's and F4U's became the dominant aircraft used by the Allies - the P-40's and F4F's had killed most of the best the Japanese had. The Japanese had gotten their licks in but - they could not replace their losses - and we could. The guys flying the P-38's, F6F's and F4U's - not only had better aircraft than the Japanese - they were also not flying against the highly trained aviators the Japanese had in 1942 - because those guys were dead. .
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  152.  @bigblue6917  They had a Peace Time Mentality and a basic disbelief that something was really going to happen - which is actually fairly common in situations like this. It is why the Japanese achieving surprise was so important. .
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  153.  @iatsd  When it comes to the predictability of waves - YOU have no idea - do you? I don't know how much time you've spent on or near the Ocean - but you are talking out your ass. It isn't that there aren't differences between the times between individual waves - but there IS an average and there ARE patterns. The Ocean is not doing what it's doing randomly. There are various factors involved but - over a period of time - you can get an idea of the sea state you are in. My experience with waves comes from body surfing - which I did a LOT when I was in High School. You go out and start looking at what the waves are doing that day. After a while - you can pick up the patterns - and those patterns ARE predictable. Typically you'll have like 3 big waves - then a certain period of smaller ones - and then here come 3 more big ones. You can also make judgments about which of those 3 big waves should be the biggest. Given that your ability here to judge what the Ocean is doing is going to have an effect on which waves you are going to catch - and which waves you want to look out for so they don't dump you onto the bottom - you have to PAY ATTENTION to what is going on around you. Your statement asking if someone should sit there and count the screws - is an indication that you have no idea of the kinds of things people are routinely assigned to do aboard Naval vessels. You're damn straight someone might well have been assigned to sit there and time how much those screws were spending out of the water. They may not have been able to precisely calculate exactly where they were - but they SHOULD have known that there could have been a serious error in their calculations. Given that they were getting indications from the radio beacons that their position was off - they should have been going slower and paying more attention to what was going on around them - just like that other unit DID do. .
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  154. Who contributed their DNA to you? .
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  155. Yeah ... no radar and no aircraft carrier ... That ... and the British had Ultra ... and 19 year old code breakers using it ... .
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  156. One of the things me and my war gaming buddies used to talk about was the philosophy behind the design of these ships. Basically the idea seemed to us to be: 1) If you are winning the battle and the enemy tries to run away - you want all your main guns up front so you can chase them. 2) If you are losing the battle and trying to run away - you want your secondary batteries on the stern - to kill the enemy destroyers trying to run you down. The problem, of course, with a design like this is that if you take a hit to one of your turrets, regardless of it's internal design - you stand a chance of not only losing that turret - but the one next to it as well. So in one case - you might lose half your battery - in the other you lose all of it. Thus designs that spread the turrets out and have 3 or 4 of them being the norm. .
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  157. Yep. This was not of course limited to various Navies. One of the reasons veteran units were so superior to new units is that these veteran units ... over time ... had ... augmented ... their weapons and had a lot more fire power than they had been designed to have. Of course - these were veteran units which were in normal supply as well and had received replacements for their losses - not - veteran units which were still all shot to hell. Still, even shot to hell - they had more fire power than they otherwise might have had. A flip side of this though was that if a ship was about to be inspected - and it was going to be discovered that it had ... items it was not supposed to have ... sometimes those items made their way over the side prior to said inspection ... .
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  158. Yeah. I read that 50 years ago and just recently bought another copy. Yes. That is one of the best books I've ever read. To my mind it is much better than the commando books but no one ever made a movie about it. Of course I'd have mixed feelings about what Hollywood would come out with. The Trailers I've seen for "Greyhound" don't fill me with a lot of confidence as to what they've done to C.S. Forester's "The Good Shepard". THAT is another really good book. Then there is Nicholas Monsarrat's "The Cruel Sea" which was made into a movie long enough ago that they didn't butcher it. Based on the lack of action most of the Words Navies had seen in WWI (other than the likes of Jutland) there was an idea amongst young men facing service in WWII that it would be safer for them to go into the Navy ... .
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  159. In the first case, the real problem with the question was "who won?" This is often a horrible question as it presumes that someone did. One example would be a Pyrrhic Victory. Yes - one side could be said to have "won" the battle but - at what cost? Mostly - you have a situation where there would be advantages and disadvantages to various parties - rather than saying that someone "won". One of the things about the Washington Naval Treaty - was that each side was NOT given the same number of ships. The Japanese, who only had one body of water to deal with - were given fewer ships than the British or the Americans. For the Japanese though - who believed that they could - as they did - end up fighting BOTH the British and the Americans - (who were very unlikely to have fought each other) - this gave their potential opponents in a future war a substantial advantage. Regardless of who "won" - this POV would have Japan the "loser". Thus - you have a number of Real World factors that may or may not have been actually considered by the terms of the treaty - but - would in fact be influenced by it. Thus - the issue is often really to complex to try and be settled with a simplistic "Who Won?" question - pretty much like "which is Best ..." .
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  160. I think it was Forestall , Oriskany and Enterprise that suffered flight deck disasters during strike launches during the Vietnam War. .
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  161. Yeah ... not fun to be part of the guys being sent out to try and stop the Japanese Juggernaut. Land, sea and air a lot of guys got expended on that, things just turning to shit faster than you can do anything about it. Not fun. Not fun at all. Those guys did get a few licks in though - and the Japanese sank a few of their own ships with torpedoes aimed at them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-British-Dutch-Australian_Command .
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  162.  @ajalvarez3111  NO! There were NOT two Essex class ships named the "Hornet". That would have been 3 ships named Hornet and there were only two. There were two ships named "Hornet". The Yorktown Class CV-8 and Essex Class CV-12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJauHydQofM What had happened was FDR was asked by a reporter where the American Raid came from - and FDR, not wanting to tell the Japanese the details of the raid, joked that it came from "Shangri-La" which was a Paradise that was in a popular novel Lost Horizon . This was a JOKE when he said it. Everyone knew that Shangri-La was a fictional Paradise in a novel - and - he was NOT saying it came from the Hornet. He was saying that the raid had come from this fictional Paradise. It is a real stretch to say that he was calling the Hornet - Shangri-La but some people obviously think so. These people would be WRONG but being wrong doesn't stop people from doing things like that. FDR's joke having become very popular. Subsequently - in a major departure from it's naming conventions - the Navy decided to name CV-38 - an Essex Class Carrier - "Shangri-La". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Shangri-La It would be more accurate - to say that CV-38, the USS Shangri-La, had it's name inspired by the Doolittle Raid than that it was named after CV-8 the Yorktown Class - USS Hornet. Saying the USS Shangri-La was one of two carriers named after the Hornet - would be another joke - not something that was literally true. .
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  163. Two things. First off - the reason for the excess numbers of Officers - was the ability to expand the military in the event of WW III. In WW II they could draft enlisted men en-mass and give them a few months of schooling in their MOS and likewise crank out a bunch of 90 day wonders to fill the junior officer ranks - but - they didn't have enough senior officers to lead them. It takes decades of experience to become a General Officer or an Admiral and they just couldn't do that over night. So - to avoid what happened in WW II - they planned ahead - and had more senior officers than they needed - at the moment so that if they did need them to command a greatly expanded military - they'd have them. At one point in time in WW II the Army was taking Managers who had run a business with a thousand people in them - and making them Lt. Col.s without ever having been Lieutenants, Captains or Majors. So - having all these people who could function as Admirals and Generals - with the experience to know what they were doing - was a good idea. As such - each one was rotated in and out of actual command positions, alternating with positions on someone's staff or sitting in an office pushing paper. Since the end of the Cold War - they don't do that as much as they did. Second - the problem with technology - is that no one knows how well it will really work - until they try to use it against a real technological enemy. Examples of that from WW II would be of Airplanes and Tanks. There had been all kinds of theories between the wars but much of that turned out to be wrong. If you take a detailed look at the Air Power Enthusiasts like Mitchell and Douhet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giulio_Douhet they were WRONG about most of the things they had theorized about. Air Power was very important - but the actual implementation of it - bore little resemblance to what the Air Power Advocates of the '20's and '30's thought. One of the most egregious example of which was the Bomber Mafia running the American Air Force (I know AAC/AAF) which fought any idea that there could possibly be a need for Fighter Escorts and things like Drop Tanks. A lot of Bomber Crews died because of this attitude and how long it took them to fix it. The Americans have been in a number of low level wars against weak opponents but none against a technological equal like Germany. Of course - it hasn't had a real technological equal since WW II but even so - if the Warsaw Pact had tried to come through the Fulda Gap - we do not know what would have happened on land, in the sea or in the air. NATO and the Warsaw Pact were both geared up to fight each other - but - they hadn't actually done it - so they didn't know just what would really happen. We have had a number of Games about WW III but the people making those games do not have full access to each sides real technological information - so - all that they are doing is reading - Jane's Fighting Ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane%27s_Fighting_Ships and Combat Fleets of the World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Fleets_of_the_World and guessing. .
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  164. "Aftermath of WWII" ... (restarts video) wait ... (restarts video) what ... (restarts video with Close Captioning On) There's no note in the video description ... There's no note in the pinned comments section ... What ... (restarts video) ... that IS the Lexington ... OK ... He just screwed up ... OK. .
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  165. Yeah ... I've always kind of wondered if the failure of American Torpedoes early in the war - caused the Japanese to not put as much effort into their ASW as they might have. As it was - it would seem - that just about the time the US got it's torpedoes sorted - they'd also gotten a lot of submarines built - and ... suddenly ... Japanese ASW was simply over whelmed by US Submarine Attacks. There were other factors. The Japanese tended to put their less capable officers in their ASW forces for one thing. I just don't know enough about Japanese ASW to say what they might have done ... besides building a lot more Escort Vessels - which they may not have been able to do. .
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  166. Yeah ... part of the joys of being part of a military at the start of a war - is the real possibility that you won't be around for the end of it. .
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  167.  @captbumbler5356  Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Portchester_Castle_(K362) .
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  168.  @bkjeong4302  No. The Fast Battleships were superior to Cruisers in every case - and the choice was NOT Battleships or Cruisers. That's a stupid persons idea. It wasn't just money that was the factor. Cruisers could be built in shipyards that couldn't build Battleships - so that is not a consideration. If there was a ship type that was in competition for ship yards with the Battleships - it was the Aircraft Carriers - not the Cruisers. During WWII they were building as many Cruisers, Destroyers, Aircraft Carriers and Battleships as they could. If they needed new ship yards - they opened new ship yards - and - it was a lot easier to open a new ship yard that could build smaller ships than bigger ones. So it was NEVER a case of them choosing to build Battleships INSTEAD of Cruisers. They were ALWAYS building BOTH. Your ignorance here is appalling. The primary reason they stopped building Battleships and canceled some of those under construction - was that the war would be over by the time they were completed and in a Post War World we were going to have a vastly smaller fleet. You are WRONG about having more ships in the circle. This isn't a time when these ships have missiles with a range of 100 miles. You have again ignored the point I made about maneuvering space. You can only fit so many ships in close to the ships you are defending - or they will collide with each other - and THAT is more important than how many rings of ships you can have. 5" .38 cal. and 40mm AA guns have a limited effective range. What WAS important was to have as many of them as close to the ships they were defending as possible. The farther out an AA ship is from the ships being attacked the less effective it's fire is going to be. If the aircraft are coming in from one side of the ring - ships on the other side of the ring will not be able to engage them effectively - or - at all. The ships that will be MOST effective are the ones that are closest to the ships they are defending - and THAT is why they had the Battleships closer to the carriers rather than farther out. You are still assuming that the attacking aircraft are going to have to fly through the fire of this whole ring of ships - when that is not the case. Weather can shield aircraft from observation. Although WWII Radar is less effective alone than in combination with visual siting - you can in cases of poor visibility use radar only to fire on aircraft if you KNOW they are enemy aircraft but that often isn't the case. Even in modern times Rules of Engagement often require visual identification to try and avoid Friendly Fire incidents. There were times when there were massive raids with a large number of enemy aircraft all approaching from one direction which were easily spotted - but that was not always the case. Often times there would be a few aircraft that would not be coming in from the anticipated direction. These aircraft would go after your high value ships - and you might have only a short period of time to engage them before they attacked. So - you always wanted to have most of your AA firepower as close to the ships you were defending as possible. The Franklin was attacked by ONE enemy aircraft that came out of the clouds undetected and so severely damaged the ship that it never saw combat again. Here - no one saw this aircraft before it came out of the clouds and attacked - but - the point is - that such attacks did happen - and if they did - it was better to have your AA Fire Power concentrated closest to the ships you were trying to defend as the amount of time you were going to have to engage aircraft like this was very limited. The idea that it was better to have more barrels in a bigger circle - is just silly. The number of guns in your whole fleet isn't what mattes - the number of guns and their ability to concentrate their fire power - close to the ship you are defending is what matters. And - WHAT alternatives to leaving TF 34 behind? Not going after the Japanese Carriers? No one would have done that. How could anyone know that they had already expended all their planes? Not to mention the fact that however many planes they had lost - they could at least theoretically have gotten more. We had hardly ever been as hurt by Japanese Battleships as we were by Japanese Carriers - so - Halsey was more worried about them than the Center Force that seemed to have turned back after the loss of the Musashi. OF COURSE they sent our fleet carriers after them. That is why the Japanese did it. They sacrificed their carriers because - without aircraft and pilots they weren't worth anything any more anyway - and they KNEW it would draw off our fleet carriers. Halsey was not being stupid for going after the Japanese Carriers - he was stupid for not leaving TF 34 behind. I can see why he might have wanted the Battleships as escorts for his carriers but - they weren't going to do that - they were going to run down the Japanese Carriers with the Battleships and blow them out of the water ... They should have left - someone - behind to guard that strait in case the Center Force turned around - as it did - and the Battleships were the most logical force. They could be split off - they were strong enough to deal with the enemy - and - the Taffy's could provide air cover. As to our fleet carriers running away as the reason they would have been safe ... that would not have been a consideration. Their escorts - which of course would have included the Battleships - were more than sufficient to engage the enemy. So - while they would have avoided engagement by the Japanese Battleships - they wouldn't have had to just turn tail and run. Besides which ... the Japanese Cruisers were not slow ships. So - while the fleet carriers were certainly faster than the Escort Carriers - I don't know how fast they were compared to those Japanese Cruisers - which did in fact do a lot of the damage to Taffy 3 - and were about to catch it ... So - the ability of our fleet carriers to just run away ... is not something I would have considered a factor in anything - and it is a mark of your ignorance that you even mentioned it. I've known a lot of silly people like you - who get some theory and get really adamant about defending their silly idea - and as I said - it IS just an academic discussion. You can't KNOW how something they didn't do would have worked out - all we do know - is what they DID do - and that worked out very well. So - your silly little idea - is IRRELEVANT . .
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  169.  @bkjeong4302  First off we need to be clear on something. Your argument is that they should not have built ANY Battleships for WWII. My argument is that while Battleships are certainly more expensive than Cruisers - it was advantageous to have them - so that when their advantages over Cruisers mattered - you would be able to use those advantages. If you didn't need those advantages then a Cruiser would do. But - as I said - you cannot predict what you will need and what you won't. Given the amount of time it took to build those ships - you couldn't just wait until you needed one to build it whereas you could be more flexible in building smaller ships like Cruisers since they took less time to build. You have spoken like a true Bean Counter. I have NOT "massively over estimated the effectiveness of Battleships". As is typical of people like yourself - you twist what others have said to your own meanings - rather than respond to what they actually said. Thus - much of the problem here is your failure at reading comprehension. If you paid attention to what I was saying - I was talking about situations where the differences between their guns and Cruisers DID matter. For those in situations where the Battleships would have made a difference - your cost analysis doesn't mean a damn thing compared to the cost of their lives. You blandly shrug off as "situational" those occasions as if they did not occur, would not occur or could not occur. For those whose lives are on the line in those situations ... that logic doesn't matter. The logic that does matter is - "if we had been able to destroy these targets - I would not have died." And then of course - there is the interpretation of the data you have put on it - which I would dispute. Those who are Bean Counters tend to juggle the facts to suit their purposes. What was it? "There are lies ... there are Damn Lies ... and then ... there are ... Statistics ..." which anyone can juggle any way they see fit. Now - I'm not accusing you of lying - most Bean Counters are so wrapped up in their Bull Shit - that they really believe it. It's just that - just because they believe it - doesn't mean it isn't Bull Shit. As to the concentric rings of AA ships - yes - that is what they did - because they didn't have enough Battleships. The more Battleships you have in your concentric rings - the more effective they will be - especially the closer to the ships they are defending. We are not arguing here over having only Battleships vs. only Cruisers. In your concentric defense they would have the Battleships closest to the target, then Cruisers and then Destroyers. If they had not had the Battleships - which is what your logic is saying - they would not have had the concentration of fire power closest to the ships they were escorting that they did. Thus - the reality is - that it was better to have Battleships AND Cruisers - than just Cruisers alone (which is what you are saying). The other thing about your dismissal of the Battleships - is that at the time most of them were built - no one knew just how effective aircraft were going to be. No one knew just what kind of dominance aircraft would come to have. And yet - there were still a number of times when Battleships really mattered. The other factor there - is the influence of Radar - which was unknown at the time. The Bismarck was after all sunk by Battleships. A torpedo bomber got lucky - and got a steering hit - or it would have gotten away - but - this was getting lucky. Then you have the night time surface engagements that took place where the guns of Battleships did matter. Not to mention the Battle Off Samar - where despite the amount of air search capability the US had - the Japanese still got their Battleships in range of our lighter forces - specifically because - Halsey didn't leave any Battleships to guard the San Bernadino Strait. So - we have two things going on here. One is an academic argument about how effective Battleships were vs. cheaper alternatives. Your argument that they shouldn't have built them - cannot be proven - since they DID build them. The other is the History of what actually happened. Here - your arguments that they shouldn't have built Battleships and your dismissal of them is irrelevant - since they had built them and did have them. .
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  170. Well done. The audio wasn't always smooth but it was always understandable - which is what counts. Thanks. .
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  171. Thanks. It's interesting to see what these small navies did with their small budgets. And here - one of their ships played a part in a major event. Things could have gone much differently if the British had not known Bismarck was coming out. .
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  172.  @alganhar1  The thing was - even though the Germans made massive investments in Synthetic Fuel - they never had enough fuel for the vehicles they did have - and every now and then would de-motorize a unit. .
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  173. Glad they made a memorial out of her. Shame to see these ships scrapped. I got to go on board the North Carolina July 1, 1963. .
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  174. Lee died aboard the USS Wyoming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wyoming_(BB-32) which was and had been the training ship for US Navy Gunners. It had trained 35,000 of them during WWII. .
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  175. First off - it is "Battle OFF Samar". This battle is somewhat unique in having been named this way, it is believed because of the wording of an early report on the Battle from one of the senior Naval Officers involved. Next - habits die hard. Halsey was still fighting the ghosts of the early war Japanese Carriers in the Battle of Cape Engano. Just as the Japanese had hoped - he was going after those carriers despite the fact that their naval aviators had become ineffective and severely reduced in numbers. In fact, the air strike launched by these carriers to attract the USN's attention - was mixed up with a land based attack and not even noticed. It was only later when US recon spotted them that Halsey went after them. Kurita was still in the mode of preserving a fleet in being. Japan, throughout the war, was worried about losing ships - because they knew they couldn't replace them. At Pearl Harbor and Savo Island - they had withdrawn when they had achieved an ascendant position - out of worry for losing their ships. After Midway - when their worst nightmare occurred they were even more concerned. So - here - Kurita goes into the battle KNOWING that it is the IJN's last fight BECAUSE THEY DON'T HAVE THE FUEL FOR ANOTHER ONE - yet - in the end - he withdraws to preserve his force - when there was no longer any point to doing so. Another factor here - is the importance of communications. Halsey had Lee create a battleship force to guard the San Bernadino Strait but - didn't tell them to do it. Everyone else thinks he's done it but he doesn't leave ANYONE there. The Japanese Southern Force was split into two, rather than combining into one force under one Admiral - and these two guys didn't like each other - so they never said a word and went into battle individually. Of course it wouldn't have made much difference ... but ... The other thing is - and this I have not seen mentioned any where - why the hell didn't Kurita have SOME kind of recon reports on the position of the American ships? The Japanese had been attacking the US for some time with aircraft - so they had them - why the hell didn't they have dedicated recons reporting to Kurita so he had some idea where the US ships were? Of course - a factor in that could be that they were getting shot down ... but I've heard nothing about any attempt to provide such recon. .
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  176. I remember reading a novel about a monitor when I was in high school. Sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of ships. Can't remember the name though. Found it: H.M.S. Saracen by Douglas Reeman https://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=H.%20M.%20S.%20Saracen%20by%20Douglas%20Reeman&index=blended&link_code=qs&sourceid=Mozilla-search&tag=mozilla-20 A few more links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Reeman Author's Web Site: https://www.douglasreeman.com/index.html https://www.google.com/search?q=H.+M.+S.+Saracen+by+Douglas+Reeman&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1 .
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  177.  @UthurRytan  The American Torpedoes were not the British Torpedoes - so - the things that were wrong with the American Torpedoes were not wrong with the British Torpedoes. They were two different pieces of machinery. The British Torpedoes only had one thing wrong with them - the American Torpedoes had three things wrong with them. The Germans didn't have to look at a captured British Torpedo to see what was wrong with theirs. The Germans and the British BOTH had problems with their Magnetic Influence Exploders - and they both solved their problem - by not using them any more. Each of them was able to figure out from their own experience what the problem was. Neither needed any help from the other doing that. Don't be an Anglophile Twit. The British had any number of things they did very well - and do not need help from Twits - claiming things they didn't do. .
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  178. The thing his - Japan had only really made a decision to stop being a Feudal Nation in 1870. Because of this - there were a lot of things during WWII - where the Japanese really didn't know what they were doing. Try as they might - and they did try - you just can't make up for hundreds of years of Organizational Experience in a few decades. So - their pilot training program was horrific. There was a way pilots got rotated - but it was very hit and miss so that most of their pilots got sent out to die. If they became injured or wounded - THEN - they might get sent back home. A bullet in his head from an American Tail Gunner first day of Guadalcanal saved Saburo Saki. Because he was sent home - he was not there to be consumed by Japans failed air assault on Guadalcanal. Even in their assigned combat units - the veteran pilots were so certain they would be left there until they died - that they had very poor morale. So - instead of having the veterans teaching the new pilots the ropes - the command isolated the new pilots from the veterans so they would not be infected by their defeatism. Then of course - they had fuel problems ... .
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  179. There was a reason Halsey was in command of these ships. During the Guadalcanal Campaign - he replaced the previously, ineffective commander, Ghormley - and committed his ships to engage the Japanese. The result was that the Japanese and Americans tore each other to pieces - but - the Americans could replace their losses and the Japanese could not. Here, Halsey is somewhat analogous to Ulysses S. Grant during the American Civil War. Grant's forces suffered terrible losses battle after battle - but he didn't retreat as previous Northern Generals had - he just kept coming after the South - and like the Japanese - it could not replace it's losses - but the North could. This type of blind, bull headed aggression on the part of Halsey - was exactly what was needed in 1942 - but - did not stand him in good stead when he might have spent more time thinking about what he was doing later in the war. Nimitz was known for his intelligence - Halsey for his aggressiveness. The thing is - you don't get to just turn these things off when that's not what's needed any more. .
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  180. As with the Monitor and the Warrior - with the Virginia and the Warrior we have the same situation where you have different ships designed to do different things. During the American War Between the States - you had a number of different ship designs (or uses of ships already able to fill a function). You had unarmored blockade Runners which were mostly merchant men designed to be fast so they could out run the ships of the Union Navy. You had unarmored blockading ships - which some times were literally (or at least so it seems to me) to be physically blocking the routes into Southern Harbors and sitting at anchor as they did so. You had the armored Virginia which was designed to sail down the river from it's base to destroy the unarmored blockading ships. And you had the armored Monitor that was designed to deal with the armored Virginia. The Warrior - iirc - was designed to fight other warships (specifically The Gloire). If either the Virginia or the Monitor had come out into the open ocean - the Warrior should have beaten them (if they didn't sink first). But - if the Warrior had had to sail up a river to get at the Virginia ... the results would be more problematic. For one thing sailing up a river like that - for which they may not have had any current charts showing sand bars and such might also expose it to shore batteries and "torpedoes" designed to keep the Union ships from doing the same thing. If the Warrior had tried to come up a river to engage the Virginia (which I can't imagine her Captain would be foolish enough to do (about as foolish as they would have to be for either the Monitor or Virginia to go out on the open ocean to engage the Warrior)) and it had run aground - then what would have happened? If the Virginia could just sit off the Warrior's bow or stern and not be hit, where she could pound the same spot on Warrior's armor - could she have gotten penetration? After all - the bow and stern were not armored. So - once again - we have these meaningless comparisons of ships not at all designed to confront each other where each would not have fared well in the others environment. Virginia was in fact destroyed to avoid capture when it was judged that she (though fully fit) was never the less, unfit to take out on the open sea where she might escape. Suppose - to perform a similar exercise - the Enterprise had fought the Yamato? Which ship would have won? Well ... the Yamato did in fact fight some small aircraft carriers where we can see about how such an engagement might come off. IF the battleship could get within gunnery range of the aircraft carrier - advantage battleship. IF however the aircraft carriers aircraft spotted the battleship before it's guns were in range - then you have a case much more like that resulting in the sinking of the Yamato. .
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  181. Thanks. That was very interesting. I knew that there had been fleet exercises but not that there had been that many - and the details were fascinating. It's probably not possible - but - a treatment of the exercises the Japanese, German and British Navies conducted would also be interesting. Then - extrapolating on that - could be a judgment as to how well each of the Navies involved understood what was really going to happen. As with everything from tanks and airplanes to logistics - what really happened was of little resemblance to what the participants had previously thought was going to happen. A point I have made elsewhere is that until they are actually trying to kill each other for real - they don't really know how all this stuff is really going to work. The thing here - is that regardless of how effective they would prove to be in the real world - the human beings running things were in fact trying to under stand what was coming. .
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  182. So ... let me guess ... Naval Battle of Guadalcanal - is going to take up more than one video? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Battle_of_Guadalcanal .
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  183. THANK YOU!!!!! That was fascinating. From WWII - I was aware of the value of the Scheldt Estuary but not in a Historical Sense. One of the things about European History is that you've been killing each other over there for thousands of years and over the same ground time and again. Here - this points out how much emphasis the British placed on the holding of these areas - and why the Germans were such fools as to implement the Schlieffen Plan. Of course - reversing the Schlieffen Plan - illustrates why Monty wanted the Northern Flank so he'd be advancing over all that flat terrain - and - could take Antwerp and the Scheldt and then of course there would be Market Garden. Seeing all these things in their Historical Contexts is fascinating. I liked the comment about the taking of small bits of land for their strategic value. One of the things about Naval Power - is that it is inherently Strategic - and thus Naval Powers more advanced in their Strategic thinking - in contrast to, again, the Germans - who while Operationally Brilliant - were Strategic Morons ... Can you imagine anyone emphasizing the Oil in the Caucuses rather than the Oil in the Middle East - when they had Land Access to it? Again - Thank You! .
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  184. Just a note to say thank you for all your hard work educating us on some part of the vast number of ships men have gone to sea in and killed each other. Though I did spend a year working with a ship as it worked up to deploy, I've only spent a couple of weeks aboard that combatant at sea - as a civilian technician - but it did give me some appreciation of what the kids - and they are kids - aboard those ships go through. They're "On Call" 24 hours a day - 7 days a week when they're deployed and just flat work their asses off. When watching one of these videos - I imagine the crews of these ships as they're scattered about the world and Thank God - cannot imagine the courage and horror of being aboard a combatant being torn apart so the enemy of all sailors - The Sea - can fill their ships and kill them. As with many videos where ships survived long enough to make it to being scrapped, I can imagine the tears shed by the men who served on them and put so much of their own lives into keeping them afloat. It makes me sad to know - that the combatant I worked on - has gone that way - along with so many of her sisters I may also have worked on, if only remotely and not at sea. Again - Thank You. .
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  185. One thing about early war Japanese Carrier Divisions - was that the Japanese looked at these Divisions as One Ship - Two Hulls. The problem was - that it took to long to get a full - Balanced - strike launched from one ship - the way the Americans did it - so they'd break their strikes up into two strikes, first launching one strike and then the other from one Division. They also, of course - might have multiple Divisions. Thus - for their 1st Carrier Strikes from a Division - they'd have one ship supply the Torpedo Bombers and the other the Dive Bombers - while both contributed Fighters. For the 2nd Carrier Strike from a Division, the Carrier that had provided the Torpedo Bombers - now - Provided the Dive Bombers and the Carrier that had provided the Dive Bombers provided the Torpedo Bombers - with again - both Carriers contributing fighters. The Americans ended up sending out independent squadrons of different types and - they didn't have enough fighters to always provide a separate escort for the Dive and Torpedo Bombers - as well as their CAP. The thing the Americans did - was split up their Carrier Divisions into separate Task Forces so that when the Japanese found one of them - they didn't necessarily find the other. Of course - this further hurt the Americans ability to operate a single, large Strike. One of the things about Midway - was that the Americans committed their aircraft in largely unescorted separate squadrons that all kind of dribbled in - letting the Japanese CAP deal with them one or two at a time. With 4 Carries to provide CAP at Midway they largely slaughtered these separate American Squadrons. It was only pure luck that had the Enterprise and Yorktown Dive Bombers both show up while the Japanese - suffering from Target Fixation - had all their CAP down attacking VT-3 and VF-3. At the Battle of Santa Cruz - the Americans had Enterprise , Hornet and Wasp - but - had detached Wasp to refuel so she and her Air Group missed the Battle. At the beginning of the war the Japanese Carrier Forces - and their Navy in General - were superior to the Americans - but - the Americans gave as good as they got over all - and the Japanese could not replace their losses. So - as the war went on - the Americans got better and the Japanese got worse. .
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  186.  @rupertboleyn3885  Of course ... given the way the Mark 14's Mark 15's worked .... .
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  187. Yeah. I had a small model of the Fletcher and a large model of the Melvin when I was a kid. The Fletcher was in a lot of the Guadalcanal fighting but came off without a scratch. .
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  188.  @skylongskylong1982  It was also the Labor Government that gave the Soviets a license to build the Rolls-Royce Nene Engine that went in the Mig 15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15 .
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  189. Agamemnon was also used as a ships name in such as the Babylon 5 TV show. .
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  190. Thanks. I've studied some of this but more information is always very welcome. The Information on the decisions being made about the Marshals was something I knew little of. .
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  191. Hunh ... well ... these ships actually were much longer lived than I would have expected ... .
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  192.  @helbent4  From the later movie on the Charge of the Light Brigade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S93lvQ4Ukg8 Trooper Returning from the Charge to his officer: "Go again, Sir?" .
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  193. First aircraft to find them was a Ventura. One of the PBY's that tried dropping rafts lost a raft in the drop and the others were to far away for the exhausted men to swim to - so the pilot landed the plane and brought 56 survivors aboard. The plane could not take off in this condition and had people sitting on the wings but it did get them out of the water and they were able to be aided by the PBY crew until a destroyer came along to pick them up. They couldn't get the PBY back up though so it was destroyed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indianapolis_(CA-35) Landing and using their float plane as a life raft for survivors or downed air crew was something done on more than one occasion.  .
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  194.  @johnbuchman4854  Here's a list of the ones that still exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_surviving_Consolidated_PBY_Catalinas .
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  195.  @balistik4901  Yes. But - I'm not sure what you meant by "The First Incident", whether that was the story from The Cruel Sea or the incident where the Italian Submarines were towing British Survivors. In the case of the Italians towing the British Survivors - the British knew that - but were not going to pass up a chance to attack any submarines. In the case from The Cruel Sea - yes - that was a very tragic misjudgment. There were a lot of very well done Novels to come out of WWII written by participants based on their experiences. The Cruel Sea is among the best and one with a most appropriate title. In one haunting incident, a Convoy was sailing along - when ahead of them they saw a lifeboat - under sail as some of them could be - headed right towards them. As the boat got closer they were able to see that the crewmen at the tiller was a skeleton. They just watched the boat sail on by and off into the vastness of the Atlantic. .
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  196. Yeah ... her sister ship the Scharnhorst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Scharnhorst was considered a lucky ship by her crew ... which in comparison to their sister ship can be understood. The Scharnhorst's luck ran out though when she ended up engaging Duke of York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_North_Cape and a number of cruisers and destroyers. She might have gotten away again but a long range hit from Duke of York took out part of her propulsion and she didn't. Though British Destroyers tried to rescue her crew in the stormy seas where their ship was lost - most of them perished. Here though - once again as with Bismarck detaching Prinz Eugen the German Commander detached his escorting destroyers to try and find the convoy they were after - and those ship were not available to fend off the British Destroyers that put a number of torpedoes into Scharnhorst or threaten Duke of York with torpedo attacks. And so the Germans lost yet another Capital Ship while swanning about unescorted. .
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  197.  @sadwingsraging3044  Yes. And now - via the MAGIC of the Internet - I own a copy. The downside to this - is that this isn't even close to being the first or the 10th time I've done this, buying books I'd read 40-50 years ago ... I really need to stop doing this but ... there are so many good books I've read in my life ... and now ... I can have them all ... I just have to pay for them ... .
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  198. As to mines - one of the things the US Subs did to get into the Sea of Japan - was install sonar on top of the sub - which could locate mines for it to avoid. IIRC (which I may not) what they did - was sneak several subs in (like 6-8) - and only then began attacking ships. They had a field day. .
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  199. This is a comment about Japan and a certain Japanese way of doing things. My First post was long enough - and YouTube will truncate them - so this is done as a separate post. Different nations tend to have different characteristics or "personalities". The US for example - has - after a long war - abandoned it's allies and quit. We did that in Vietnam and we are doing it again now in Afghanistan, abandoning people we promised to protect to the tender mercies of the people they had joined us in fighting. We should all hang our heads in shame for that - but there you are. This characteristic - BTW - was what the Japanese were counting on in their hopes for a negotiated settlement. So - it's not like the Japanese were completely out of line in thinking they could outlast us - they just weren't able to do it - and we had better leaders than Johnson, Nixon, Obama, Trump and Biden. So - with that introduction - I studied Asia a good bit when getting my MA and came to a few opinions about the way the Japanese tended to do things. Here - Rigidity - is the word that comes to mind. Pretty much - once they make up their mind to do something in a certain way - they need a 2x4 across their face to make them realize that what they were doing - doesn't work any more. Historically, when the West first began to get ships able to sail to Asia and back - one of the things that came on them - were Missionaries. In Japan - political groups formed around the Western Religion the missionaries brought with them - which the Shogunate crushed. They then made the decision that since these Westerners and their religion had caused a problem - that they should be excluded - and they were. 200 years later ... they got the 2x4 across their face when such as Commodore Perry showed up and demonstrated the advancements that had been made in Naval Bombardment Technology during those years. Seeing that Exclusion ... didn't work any more ... the Japanese got together and thought about what they were going to do. The rest of Asia had been colonized by the West with Japan being left out because ... it didn't really have anything but mountains, rice paddies and Japanese ... which no one wanted. China was (at that time) relatively rich and ... the Colonialists were busy chowing down on it. So - given that their objective was to avoid becoming a colony - they decided that - If You Can't Beat Them - Join Them . And thus Japan set out to become a Colonial Power. They started off with Korea - then took Manchuria and then ... long after everyone else - they began to really go after China. The problem here for them - was that Colonialism ... was a passing fad ... that ... and the original Colonial Powers (since they didn't want to fight over it) had divided China up into Spheres of Influence - rather than trying to take it over. When Japan invaded China - that was going a bit to far for the West. First, they were more sympathetic to the Chinese than they themselves at one time had been - but also - just as they had not wanted any one of them to have the whole pie - they didn't want the Japanese to have it all either. Thus, when the Japanese got the Germans to impose on the Vichy French to let them come into Indochina to interfere with Chinese Supply Routes - the US, Britain and what was left of the Dutch - cut off their oil. Now - how these guys could think that this would result in anything else but Japan attacking them ... well ... they just didn't seem to know the Japanese very well. Reading John Toland's The Rising Sun I got the impression that the more moderate men making up the Japanese government were caught between a rock and a hard place. They believed that if they ever backed down to a Colonial Power - they were on a Slippery Slope to becoming a Colony - but - they knew that if they went to war with the US and Britain - they'd be destroyed. So ... what to do? What to do? Become a Colony or Be Destroyed! What to do? Pressured by more radical people the moderates threw up their hands and said in effect "All right. YOU do it" and let these more radical people take over. These people then found themselves in the same position - become a colony - or be destroyed - and they were being pressured by people more radical than they were. So - finally - they threw up their hands and said in effect to these greater radicals "All right. You Do It." When they got to Tojo - he did. Here I've always seen this as the Japanese choosing to commit National Seppuku. Basically - it was more honorable to be destroyed than become a colony. What's odd though - was to watch them start to bull shit themselves once they'd made the decision to be destroyed. They started thinking - that if we just bleed those soft, decadent Americans enough - they'll quit. Now ... as history has show us - if they had been able to do it - that might have worked ... but they couldn't and it didn't. Now - where this rigidity of thinking is displayed in the Midway Campaign - where the US slapped the Yorktown back together and put the Saratoga's Air Group on it - the Japanese pulled both ships in the Shokaku and Zuikaku Carrier Group back to Japan. The Japanese way of thinking about carriers - was that a Carrier Group consisted of one ship - with two hulls. Both ships were integral, inseparable parts of the whole - which worked very well for them. But between the Shokaku's Air Group and whatever else they could come up with - they could have had Zuikaku as a 5th carrier at Midway. Maybe if I get farther along in Shattered Sword I'll find out if any of them even thought of doing that. One of the things about that rigidity of thinking though - is that ... that hasn't changed ... .
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  200. Yes. I've begun reading Shattered Sword but only just. I liked the touch of the young Japanese Sailors washing down their anchor chain - oblivious to what was a head of them. I've been studying Midway since High School in the late '60's when I read Lord's Incredible Victory . I also played the Avalon Hill Midway game repeatedly with my buddies, which if nothing else made me familiar with the ship names. I was also well aware though of the two light carriers the Japanese had - as the player in the game could use those as well. One thing you guys failed to mention about Fletcher - was that he was in command of the Relief Mission to Wake Island - that turned around - so the Marines blame him for THAT too. Here though - Kimmel was the one who made the plan - which sent the Lexington to do a diversionary attack - rather than sending it and Saratoga to relieve Wake. The stupidity of that I'll not go into but - it was the decision of Admiral Pye - who relieved Kimmel - to abort the relief effort (which he hadn't liked anyway). I went to church as a teenager with a guy who had been on Wake and spent the war as a POW and the Marines there were mad as hell - as far as they were concerned - they were winning the battle. I've read that the numbers of Japanese would have been more effective once the sun came up - but - we'll never know about that. Here - though is an interesting aspect of the battle that you see at Corregidor and Tarawa as well. The American Command, consisting of the Naval and Marine Commanders - had lost touch with a number of their positions and thought those positions had fallen - when it was just that the comm wire to them had been broken - and this had an impact on their decision of the Naval Commander to report "Issue in doubt" and then later to surrender. This - much like Singapore (though with far fewer men) was a defeat that may well have been avoided. So - I was one of those who initially blamed Fletcher for a lot. I have however, over the years come to have more respect for the man - and the fact that he did seem to learn from his experiences. As to the Hornet - it certainly could have been saved and I believe they did attempt to take it in tow but - we lost that battle - and the decision was made to not risk the loss of more of our ships trying to protect CV-8. I said in an earlier post recently - there is a tendency in history to go from one extreme to the other in a lot of judgments. Thus - something is either great or it's shit. Here - I think a more balanced judgment of the contribution of the American Torpedo Bombers would indicate that they did make a contribution to the success of the dive bombers. Here - what you have is not merely the Torpedo Bombers - but ALL of the American Attacks that day which preceded the Dive Bombers - and their cumulative effect on Japanese organization. The Japanese CAP had been bouncing back and forth between high level patrols and low level attacks like a Yo-Yo all morning long. Taking the time of the different attacks and saying that - because the Japanese CAP had time to climb back to Altitude - doesn't mean that they did - or if they did - that they resumed their proper patrol positions. In fending off repeated American Attacks - this would, to my mind - have resulted in fatigue of the pilots and a continuing need to rearm and refuel (if not replace) those aircraft making up the CAP. An argument can be made - that the repeated American Attacks - somewhat - wore down the Japanese CAP. I've read that the last actions of the CAP were focused on the Yorktown's VT3 and VF3 aircraft where it was said the Japanese CAP had become Target Fixated. Here - having to deal with Fighting 3 rather than unescorted torpedo bombers added to their difficulty. In addition to all that - these continued attacks would have disrupted Japanese Naval Operations as well - and had their look outs looking for more torpedo bombers instead of up into the sky. The final point though - is that when the Diver Bombers showed up - there was no CAP up there and the Japanese, without radar, were surprised. Lastly, two things. Both the Brewster Buffalo and the Douglas Devastator were roundly condemned after Midway. Again, we have the It's Great or It's Shit syndrome. While these aircraft were both justly replaced by better ones - they weren't as bad as people make out. The TBD's had done better at Coral Sea. The F2A's had been employed in situations the first half of '42 that would have gone badly for better aircraft. They were heavily outnumbered and going against some of the best Aviators in the world. So - yes - replacing them with better aircraft was the right thing to do - but they weren't as bad as they were made out to be. As to another item mentioned - if Air Group 3 had done better than Air Groups 6 or 8, one thing to note would be the difference in the group numbers and what that may have meant for the experience of these Air Groups. The Saratoga and Lexington had been around for almost 20 years and that institutional depth of experience could have been a factor in their Air Groups performance. ?? .
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  201. Yeah ... before the war - the USN practiced Day Light Gunnery - and they were really good at it. During the Battle of the Komandorski Islnds the Salt Lake City was able to hold her own against a numerically superior force by chasing shell splashes. Because of Aircraft though - most other battles were fought at night - which is where those torpedoes ruled. .
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  202. Thanks, that was very interesting. .
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  203. Very well done. .
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  204. Thanks. That was interesting. I was aware of the Canada but thought there were more that were taken over. The Agincourt was the former Rio de Janeiro. After it had been sold to Turkey, while still under construction, when WWI started it was taken over by Britain along with a ship they were already building for Turkey which became HMS Erin. .
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  205. Yes. One of the things the Americans really don't get enough credit for - was going from a relatively small military after our Civil War - to one of the largest militaries in history in a very short period of time starting around the turn of the century. To a large degree, the small nature of the American Post Civil War military - was in fact sufficient to American needs of the later half of the 19th Century. The Country was largely preoccupied with assimilating what had become the western half of the nation and didn't face any real threats. The thing with the RN and it's hundreds of years of service is that the mind set which that produces is very difficult to reproduce. In fact I would submit that to this day - no one - has quite achieved that mind set, including the USN. It isn't that the Americans aren't the worlds most powerful Navy - they are - it's just that there is still ... a less developed mentality about what they are doing. With the RN - they KNOW what they are doing. With the USN ... to a degree - they're still working things out as they go. The point made about the USN not having a set doctrine - but relying on individuals to work things out for themselves - is still pretty much there. There is an advantage to that - in that the Americans adapt rapidly to changing circumstances but ... then that adaptation still needs to be made. With the RN - there really isn't much that they haven't already seen - any number of times. The problem with the RN - is that they've been impoverished by the loss of their Empire and the two new carriers bring that in focus. These ships are not nearly what they should have been. The RN will make the best use of them they can but ... the decision by the UK Politicians to not make them CATOBAR Carriers in the first place was imbecilic. .
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  206.  @bkjeong4302  He's thinking about Wasp . .
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  207. Gas fumes were what sank the Lexington and the Wasp. One of the problems they had was the aircraft fueling system where the pipes fractured and released fumes over a large area. What they learned to do - was to flush this system and fill those pipes with fire fighting foam if they were expecting an attack. That would be one of the problems with being torpedoed by a submarine - is that the ship would not have known it was about to be attacked as it would have if radar or observation had reported in coming enemy aircraft. Both ships crews were experienced at ship handling and knew their jobs - they just didn't have that much damage control experience - so they were able to evacuate both ships in an orderly manner once it was determined that they were lost. The Taiho really shouldn't have been committed to battle as it's crew was NOT ready. The Japanese SHOULD have had better damage control experience than this but this crew may not have. I would just sum it up as reflecting the desperation of the Japanese at that point in the war that this ship was committed to the battle. Another Japanese carrier lost to a submarine and poor damage control and construction was the Shinano. The Japanese were trying to move this not yet fully ready ship to avoid it being bombed when a submarine got it. Having seen this submarine the ship should have been able to avoid it but though it did maneuver - it failed to do so and was hit. Of course - this is an example of how badly Japan was losing the war when it couldn't even protect a ship as valuable as a carrier sailing right off it's coast. The ships detailed to protect it had themselves just returned from the Leyte Gulf and were not ready for sea again with unrepaired damage from the battle.  .
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  208. Don't under estimate the influence of the admiral in charge of submarine operations who didn't want anything bad said about "his" torpedoes ... .
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  209. The full skit from G&P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY3sM0jtwaA .
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  210.  joanne chon  Idiot much? These were professional Naval Officers - they were supposed to KNOW not to run a half squadron of ships aground in the fog. .
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  211.  @mahbriggs  They shouldn't have been - but they were. .
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  212. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_96_25_mm_AT/AA_Gun .
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  213. Yeah ... me and 2 of my war gaming buddies played a scenario with Great Naval Battles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Naval_Battles where the US had the 3 Colorado's and a Pennsylvania - and the Germans had the two Bismarcks and the Scharnhorsts. I don't remember the cruisers. The problem for the Germans was that Tirpitz took a steering hit early on - and they had to either abandon her to use their speed advantage or hang with her and tough it out. The 16" guns really made a lot of difference. .
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  214. Yes. Very well done. Each Navy designed their ships for the environment they would operate in. Ship design and aircraft development were still in their early stages. RAF control of RN aircraft - was not a good thing but those types of mistakes were common amongst the worlds nations in what was the infancy of many such weapons. The US still has problems with that in that the Air Force won't let the Army have fixed wing aircraft and regards such planes as the A-10 and ground attack as a chore they'd as soon not have to support. So the Army has to make do with Rotor Wing Aircraft. A few more comments. First, with wooden flight decks, for some levels of damage the US flight decks were easy to repair - as with the Yorktown at Midway after the first attacks. Second, one of the big things about an open hangar is that it's more conducive to working on aircraft as you can run the engines more easily (without as much need for forced ventilation) without killing everyone from the exhaust. Third - all that extra space comes in handy for working on aircraft too, just from it easing moving things around inside a less cramped hangar. Fourth, since the USN knew that it's primary enemy would be Japan - it was more important to sink Japanese Carriers than it was to preserve our own - since we could always build more and they couldn't. Fifth - storing aircraft on deck and losing them to weather and such - when we were producing such vast numbers of aircraft and had the smaller carriers there to restock the larger ones (their original purpose) was considered a small price to pay for the extra striking power when we chose to use it. Sixth - towards the end of the war - Allied Carriers off Okinawa and Japan - operating as part of massive fleets that had such as destroyer radar pickets were able to defend themselves against massive Kamikaze attacks. The radar controlled vectoring of fighters to intercept incoming aircraft allowed us to shoot down most of the Kamikazes before they got near the ships, otherwise the use of such Guided Weapons would have been as effective at the Japanese wanted them to be. And yes - all of this was a part of the evolution of Carrier design. They are still changing things up today. They've moved the Island position several times, they have armored doors on the hangar decks that can be opened or closed depending on the situation, armored flight decks, angled flight decks and decades of cumulative experience in what they're doing. Today - the biggest reason behind Carrier Design - is cost. The Americans are the only ones producing or operating full on Super Carriers but then the Americans are the main western power defending the western world. How long we'll be able or willing to keep doing that remains to be seen. I am not a fan of ski ramp/VSTOL Carriers. They're in use - because they're cheaper - not because they're better. One of the things people don't think about from the Falklands - was that the Argentinian Aircraft had been ordered NOT to engage the British Aircraft - which were suffering such high operational losses they had to start using RAF Land Based Harriers as the naval versions were running out. If the Argentine Aircraft had engaged and shot down even a few of the Harriers - instead of just trying to run away and being shot down themselves - the RN task force might well have run out of planes. The United States is not the same Nation it was in 1940. For one thing - most of that Texas Oil is gone. Our people are different as well and not always for the best. We're scrapping our older Super Carriers instead of preserving them - and in the event of another major war where we start losing them - are going to wish we hadn't done that. .
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  215. Yeah ... The consequences of both not doing that Flight of the Goeben https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_of_Goeben_and_Breslau and doing that Battle of Coronel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Coronel can be seen at the beginning of WWI .
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  216.  @shawncarroll5255  Thanks! .
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  217. Thanks. That was really interesting. .
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  218. The Germans had a very serious problem to over come and I don't know if they could have done any better. Their basic plan from the start was to try and catch parts of the Grand Fleet and do damage to them but - they needed to be able to just abort these operations as soon as it became evident that they were dealing with the main British Fleet. So - several ideas they had - revolved around catching and destroying the British Battle Cruisers and trying to get the British to cross a line of U-Boats and take hits that way. To have any real success at such attritional strategies - they needed to conduct vastly more operations than they did. They needed to come out - a lot - especially since they needed to be always aware of the road home - and taking it the moment things looked like they were going to go unfavorably. IF they could have kept up operations like that - and had some success - then they MIGHT not have had the morale problems they did - from to many sailors sitting idle to much of the time. Areas that might have helped them would have been in coordinating things with the Zeppelins and U-Boats, using them as both scouting forces and methods of attack. The thing here - is that they needed to be in the Baltic practicing these things where the British couldn't get at them. Here they could have trained against the Russians - which would have gotten them more experience and helped develop coordination with Zeppelins and U-Boats. In any case - since all the U-Boats actually accomplished was bringing the US into the war having them working with the fleet wouldn't have hurt their overall war strategy. Submarines are much more effective against commerce than against warships - but again - NOTHING was worth bringing the Americans into the war. As long as the Americans weren't in the war - Germany stood a chance. With the Americans in the war - they were doomed. Now - alternatively - the Germans could have done several things that could have won them the war: 1) Do not build the High Seas Fleet. It accomplished nothing but alienating Britain - and - if the war had just been against Russia and France the Germans and Austrians could have won that. All those men and all that steel could have been used to better effect by the Army - and wouldn't have mutinied in 1918 causing Ludendorff to panic, the Kaiser to abdicate and Germany to lose the war. 2) Do not go through Belgium. Again - just as nothing was worth bringing the Americans into the war - going through Belgium guaranteed bringing the British into the war - and nothing was worth doing that. 3) Holding on the western front against France while coordinating attacks with the Austrians against the Russians. This is pure speculation but might well have worked out better than what they did do. The Alternate Strategy for Winning the war being - keep the British and Americans out of the war - and just fight Russia and France. Without the High Seas Fleet - Germany is just another continental power the British might have worked with and not someone seen as a threat. There is a possibility that with the Hight Seas Fleet - even if the Germans hadn't gone through Belgium - the British might have answered the French pleas to join them. Without the High Seas Fleet - it's much like 1870 again. The big thing here - is that France would not have as big a fleet as the British and would have had more trouble trying to blockade Germany. If Germany were not blockaded their agriculture and food supplies would have been better and they'd not have had the starvation problems they had. Their submarines, could work as the Confederate States tried to use them, to torpedo any French Ships trying to blockade Germany. The whole thing with the High Seas Fleet - was the silly fact that Wilhelm II loved the Royal Navy and wanted to have a navy of his own. Really. THAT IS the reason the High Seas Fleet was built. There was no National Plan - the Kaiser simply wanted to have a fleet of his own. He didn't have a use for it - he just wanted one. It really is as simple and silly as that. It just didn't seem to occur to him that the British might be upset about it. .
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  219. Remembering Pearl Harbor. .
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  220.  @Dannyedelman4231  This is his obituary: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/austin-tx/james-hornfischer-10217895 All it says is "Throughout the past two years of his illness, Jim continued to be productive, wasting no time on self-pity." .
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  221. If you compare the two TBD Devastator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_TBD_Devastator TBF Avenger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_TBF_Avenger The Avenger is a much more capable aircraft being much faster and carrying about twice the bomb load. Here - while American Torpedoes were still defective for much of the war - in doing Shore Bombardment - the Avengers would make a real difference. I doubt though that the replacement of the TBD's with TBF's would have made any difference in the way they carriers that used them would have been thought of. Before and after - they would simply use whatever they had to accomplish their missions. The thing with the TBD's was that they had not been bad aircraft when they were first deployed - but - aircraft technology was moving ahead by leaps and bounds so that there were a lot of other aircraft in the same boat as the TBDs when the war started. .
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  222. A few things ... First off - I was aware of the Victorious's working with Saratoga though not aware that the Admiral went to such lengths to move aircraft back and forth between the two ships. The reason you don't hear about Victorious being with the US Fleet is - there were no carrier battles while it was there. The same fighting that had reduced the US to one carrier in the Pacific had reduced the number of Japanese Carriers as well - and they had committed their carrier air groups to the Air Campaign against Guadalcanal, basing them in Rabaul. Both sides had bloodied the other and each was hesitant to lose the last carriers they had. The US began to resume major carrier operations once the Essex class carriers began to come on line but the Japanese never did. They expended the air groups assigned to Rabaul - and never recovered from that either. The USN could have transferred the Ranger to the Pacific as it had the Wasp - but didn't and the Victorious was sent instead. As to various nations tooting their own horn - yes - every nation has them - and the Americans doing that have absolutely NOTHING on the Anglophiles ... .
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  223. Part I On the subject of Midway Might Have Beens ... There are a couple of different approaches that can be taken to re-fighting battles ... When I was in High School and College me and my buddies were war gamers and did in fact refight Midway any number of times. As such - we stretched the rules as much as we could get away with - **so we could win the game**. There was one engagement where the Japanese managed to get Betty's to bomb Midway and the Americans stripped all the P-40's out of Pearl Harbor and all the P-38's out of Alaska. The Japanese team justified what they had done to the games judge some how and we justified what we were doing because "the Americans KNOW". When you're doing that - you're playing a game - not recreating history. The Real Japanese and Americans NEVER would have done the kind of things we did because both teams knew with absolute certainty that the Japanese were going to attack Midway and that the Americans were going to be there. I mean ... that's why we all showed up. We KNEW what was going to happen. If the judge had said - "Oh ... there was a Typhoon ... the Japanese aren't coming ..." we all would have shaken up our soda's and sprayed him with them. Doing things like this was a lot of fun - but - thinking that there was any relationship between what we were doing and historical reality - would be silly. So - the other approach is a historical one - where you look at the options the real people involved had based on what they would or would not have done and what they did or did not know. The Japanese and Americans were - different. You can't predict what an individual will do based on a group - and you can predict what a group will do based on an individual - BUT - you can notice tendencies. The Japanese tend to be big on consensus. They'll get together and thrash things out - then - once they come up with a consensus on what they are going to do - they'll carry that out. They tend to over plan things down to the smallest details. They train very hard and each person in the effort knows what their job is and is determined to do it. Their problem is that they tend toward a certain rigidity in their thinking - and that makes it difficult for them to respond flexibly when things don't go according to plan. The Americans tend to be more individualistic. They can be "team players" but ... they also have a tendency - if the team doesn't have a plan and a leader with a strong enough personality to enforce it - to go their own way. This can result in a fragmentary effort - unless - they have leadership and training that can focus it. But - when the plan falls apart - they are much quicker to adapt to change. Now one thing not mentioned enough - though the Japanese have talked about it - was the attitudes the two sides brought to the battle. The Japanese had what they called Victory Disease. They had won so much in the early months of the war that it didn't really occur to a lot of them that they could possibly lose. This had an effect on the way they did things. When they needed to be drastically changing what they were going to do - they tended to just go along with their normal methodical way of doing things. Here - I need to talk about the way the Japanese did things with their carriers - as this had an impact on WHAT they did. The Japanese did not operate in Air Groups - they operated in Carrier Divisions. For the Japanese a Carrier Division was like one ship with two hulls. The air crews of that Division trained together and coordinated the operations of the two air groups together - as well as coordinating the actions of the individual squadrons within each air group. As such - they were very, very efficient and doing things in 1942 that the Americans weren't doing until 1944. But it was more than that. Different parts of the fleet each had their roles. Carrier aircraft did not search for the enemy. That was done by scout planes from the cruisers. This preserved the aircraft of the Carrier Divisions for fighting. But - when the sun came up and they launched their search aircraft - there was a problem with the one from the Tone. Now - if they had been more flexible - they could have had another aircraft take that plane's patrol sector - but they didn't. They got the plane off eventually but - it was late - and it was the one whose search sector the Americans were in. Now - there is a problem that all carrier aviation has to deal with - which is that it takes longer to launch aircraft from a carrier than it does from an airfield on land. Because of that - the first aircraft to take off - have to loiter while the others join them and hence are burning fuel the whole time. Because of this - there was a tendency to launch the aircraft with the most range first but there was also a tendency to send aircraft off in smaller groups to increase the range at which they could strike. I need to truncate this here or YouTube will do it for me. .
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  224. Some of my old friends from playing the Avalon Hill "Jutland" game in High School. .
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  225. Yeah ... the US sure built one hell of a navy .... .
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  226. Wikipedia says the Bunker Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bunker_Hill_(CV-17) and the Franklin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Franklin_(CV-13) were ironically never recommissioned BECAUSE they had just been repaired. They had in mind conversions to these ships that never ended up being done. The Bunker hill sat in San Diego Bay for a number of years where it was used as an electronics test platform and as I understand it - for office space. And yes - with so many ships in this class that did so much a more in depth look at some of them would be welcome. .
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  227. What ... unlike Warspite? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC4NJcFjqgQ and wasn't here one of the KG V's that rammed and sank one of it's escorts? The USN and RN were both large navies and as such - BOTH - had a number of incidents where they rammed or fired on their own ships.   .
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  228. The color picture of what is supposedly the final version of the design has only 3 screws. The North Carolina's had four. For the significance of this - see what happened to the Bismarck ... .
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  229.  @OhSome1HasThisName  And you would be wrong there. The Decolonization of the world was a result of the end of the Colonial Empires and those Empires began to end for the reasons I listed. Thus - again - what you saw in Africa and the Caribbean - was the end of a long process - not the beginning of it. .
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  230.  @zopEnglandzip  That is the exact opposite of all I've heard of operating these aircraft. They are and have always been inherently unsafe to operate. As to the number of US Carrier aircraft lost per year - while I don't know what that is (and discredit your figure) - the fact that the US has vastly more aircraft than the number of VSTOL aircraft in the rest of the world would make your argument irrelevant. The fact that you can land a VSTOL aircraft vertically - pretty much anywhere - is the reason these aircraft exist. Of course you couldn't land an F-4 the way you could one of them. Aircraft launched from Catapults can carry a lot more than aircraft that have to trundle up a ski ramp. Because of that - they have much more endurance and can carry much heavier loads of ordnance. VSTOL aircraft have only one thing over conventional aircraft - and that one thing is the amount of deck space they need to land and take off. .
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  231.  @Solidboat123  Well ... first off ... if you've had so many people take what you wrote in a manner you didn't intend - then perhaps the problem is with what you wrote - or didn't include - rather than the people coming back at you. If you had conveyed what you just did here the first go around - you and I would not be having this conversation. As to losses - there were RAF Harriers that went down there with the Navy ones - and their total losses were 10 - out of 42 between both types. The intent was just as you said - for the RAF ones to do ground attack while the Navy ones did air defense. While some of those losses were to ground fire - most - of them were operational. While the Harriers shot down 20 aircraft - that would have been a lower percentage of the aircraft available to the Argentines than the losses to the British as a percentage of aircraft the British initially had on hand. And - the Argentinians had been ordered NOT to engage the Harriers - but - to run from them. Why? I have no idea (range?) - but the author of the book I read on it - seemed to feel that had they engaged the Harriers - after so many other losses - the British might well have had their air defense severely reduced. Given the generally poor showing of the Argentine military, despite the bravery of some of their personnel, trying to conduct such an operation with such limited air power - as opposed to what the Ark Royal and Eagle would have had - may have had a much worse ending than it did. As to STOVL being superior to CATOBAR in any way (other than the amount of space required to land or take off) - I have NEVER seen any indication of that - SO - if that is YOUR contention - then I'll rely on YOU to come up with a source for that. And yes - you may well have run afoul of the nature of comments and replies here - where a reply closely tailored to one comment - may be open to misinterpretation when viewed in isolation. With comments and replies - not nested past one level - your reply may end up a dozen further comments down the line from the one you were replying to. That's one of the less well done parts of the YouTube Remarks Format. I constantly have to scroll up the screen looking for the person being replied to by someone in order to try and understand what the hell they were talking about. .
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  232. Britain had to name a lot of ships over the centuries and they got pretty good at it. Yes. Really good names. .
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  233. My MOS in the Marines was 2131 Artillery Weapons Repair and I went to Ordnance School in Quantico for that. One of the things they taught us - was about the Charges used to fire shells. These Charges could be adjusted so that in addition to elevation - you could use a specific charge to control how much power was behind the projectile. They had tables they used for combinations of charges and elevations for where they wanted the rounds to go. The Artillerymen would write down EVERY Single Round an artillery piece fired - the type of round and - the Powder Charge that was used. Artillery tubes were authorized to fire a certain number of shots - but - that varied with the Powder Charge used. If they used Charge 7 - which was all the little powder bags - this significantly cut into the number of rounds that piece was allowed to fire. As you might imagine - igniting gun powder in a tube - is going to create wear and tear on said tube. Mostly what would happen as the tube wore out - was that it would become less accurate - so that the margin of uncertainty about just exactly where the shot might go - increased with the wear on the barrel. They were also very much aware that an artillery piece could fail catastrophically - giving anyone in the vicinity a really bad day. So - as I said - they recorded every single round they fired and the powder charge at which that round was shot. When a tube reached a certain number based on the effects of the different combinations of powder charges it was taken out of service and replaced by new tube. During WWII - there were several Battleships - that had to have their guns replaced from having fired so many shots of Shore Bombardment in support of troops. All this stuff is taken very seriously. If you make mistakes with Artillery - you can get people you didn't intend to kill - killed - including your self. .
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  234. Yes. Friendly fire has been endemic to all battles. One other factor is that as weapons ranges have increased units at a distance have become harder to identify. One other factor is that - once one person or unit starts shooting at something - there is a pile on effect where everyone starts shooting at it. In the night battles off Guadalcanal one of the things that would happen is that if a ship caught fire - everyone would shoot at it. .
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  235.  @tonyjanney1654  Did the Americans have any land base air yet? I didn't think they did - but - other than that you're mostly right., The Japanese were not followers of Mahan though or they wouldn't have been sending their submarines after American Warships instead of merchant shipping. The thing is with a Fleet In Being - is you have to make it credible as a threat - and the Japanese couldn't do that any more. This was their last chance to do something with their fleet. They later sent the Yamato on a Banzai attack - where it was ignominiously caught and sunk before it got near a target. There - at Leyte - it was in range of targets right them. Yes - the Japanese Navy would have been expended and it's effect would not have been permanent - but - that was their last chance to do anything at all - and more importantly here - they knew that. Their whole plan was conceived of as a last ditch chance to use their Navy to bleed he Americans some. Japans End War Strategy consisted entirely of Bleeding The Americans. They weren't going to win. They weren't going to even prevent the Americans from taking anything they wanted to take. All they could do - was bleed them in the process. This was the last chance they had to do that with their Navy. Here though you have an example of the vulnerability of a Naval Force to it's commander being wounded or injured - but not killed. This is the same thing that happened with the Graff Spee. The Commander is injured - and it distorts his thinking - that is what happened with Kurita when he had his flag ship sunk out from under him. Their plan had worked. Their Northern Force and Southern Force had done their jobs - especially the Northern force. They had expended their carriers to lure Halsey out of position - and it had worked. But then ... just as they had at Savo - instead of expending their force to go after the transports - they chose to preserve it. This did make some sense after Savo - and preserving their ships because they couldn't replace them did make sense then - but here at Leyte ... no ... this was the last good they were going to get out of their ships. The ships in Japan could be repaired, maintained and armed - but they had no fuel. The ships in Indonesia - had fuel - but they couldn't be repaired, maintained or armed. This was their last chance to actually do anything with their Navy and Kurita lost track of that - and fell back on preserving his fleet - but to no purpose. .
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  236. Yeah. My understanding is that the HFDF Hight Frequency Direction Finding (or Huff Duff) would detect a radio transmission from a U-Boat. This would give them a bearing from the ship picking it up. This Bearing could be compared to the bearings of other HFDF units which picked up that transmission - and where the bearing lines crossed - THAT - is where the U-Boat was. Using their Radios had been a prime factor in the coordination of U-Boat tactics and the reporting of Convoy Sightings. HFDF turned that against them - and a Hunter Killer Group could be dispatched to the location of the U-Boat HFDF detected. .
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  237.  @simonwaldock9689  I think we've all had moments like that ... WTF!!!!!! ... oh ... .
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  238. Another example of time of day and light being Troubridge and the Goeben. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pursuit_of_Goeben_and_Breslau The thing with a lot of people wanting ship vs. ship comparisons - is they want to know "which one is the best?" My usual response to that is "Best at what?" Sometimes, the thing something is best at - was being there when nothing else was ... Now - this doesn't mean it isn't sometimes fun to throw together a couple of theoretical fleets and have at each other. The thing is - that is all about having fun - not making a Historical Determination. One of the things here about naval warfare - is the importance of Critical Hits ... ala HMS Hood . Me and two of my buddies used Great Naval Battles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Naval_Battles to play a game on my LAN. The Americans had 3 Colorado's and a Pennsylvania while the Germans got the two battleships and two battle cruisers. Both sides had Cruisers as well. Here - what the Germans had going for them - was substantially greater speed ... but ... Tirpitz took a steering hit early on and they had to choose between abandoning her and maneuvering. They chose to stay with her and those 16" guns tore them up. Scharnorst almost go away from Duke of York but a very long range final shot - got a Critical Hit on her - and slowed her down so the British caught her. Hiei and Bismarck were both lost because of steering hits. Without those Critical Hits - you have substantially different results. What those results might be - given that fact that there could be OTHER Critical Hits ... is not possible to determine. Of course another factor in all this - is the decisions made by the people involved. Change the people involved and you also might well substantially change the results. .
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  239. Duplex Drive Tank https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XuSneN1W8U The Americans had two Battalions, (one for each Division) with over 100 total tanks aboard LCT's. The Commander of the 2nd unit looked at the sea state and realized they had to deliver the tanks to the shore. To their horror - they realized the 1st unit was going to launch. Most of those tanks sank. The ones that survived were commanded by men with small boat experience - who knew to head their tanks into the swells - rather than let them be hit from the sides. The other tank commanders - did not have any small boat experience and didn't know to do that. The thing was - the current off Omaha was especially bad and hitting the tanks from the side. This current had more than a little to do with the failure of the artificial harbor off Omaha later on. The real problem that caused the loss of that harbor - was that the people running it had been given an inaccurate weather report - so they had not pulled in all their little boats and such that were out sailing about - which the British - with an accurate weather report - HAD done. These loose small boats were what crashed into the causeways and destroyed them. It was NOT as is commonly reported - that the American Harbor was improperly anchored that caused it's damage - but - the small storm driven boats smashing into it that did the harm. The Harbor could have been repaired - but the Officer who was in charge of the evaluation wrote it off and that was the end of it. Chapter XII: "Outlook Wednesday to Friday Little Change ... " p. 189 Force Mulberry by Alfred Stanford https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015034330186&view=1up&seq=189&skin=2021 .
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  240. Yeah ... you have all these fascinating machines that ... are born ... live and then die in a scrap yard ... .
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  241.  @PalleRasmussen  Yes. Just watched this one: "Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942" by Dr. Robert Citino https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNDhswF1GKk Very well done. .
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  242.  @torpedo58  Ah! Thank You! First off - the Wikipedia page for the movie says the model of the ship used in the movie was that of a Farragut Class Destroyer https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/USS_Farragut_%28DDG-37%29_underway_in_the_Atlantic_Ocean_on_2_July_1982_%286349812%29.jpg Which images from the movie confirm. https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d-zpNXX2j5E/W-U82b8zLaI/AAAAAAAAFpk/gn0LEgBbJKgN4G1JH6E5Q01qxZ3YncctgCKgBGAs/s1600/Bedford00037.png Here is a Charles F. Adams Class https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/USS_Charles_F_Adams_%28DDG-2%29_underway_c1973.jpg Those 5" 54's are what I was mainly thinking of - but they were used on a lot of different ships. One thing though - in the book - that ship ... might ... have been an Adams class. I don't have the book ... so I can't say if the author was specific about which class ship the Bedford was. But ... the impression I had - was that at the end of the book - the Bedford NOT having been sunk by nuclear torpedoes from the sub - the German Advisor, seeking to avoid WWIII if word gets out that the Bedford sank the Soviet Sub - climbs up onto the ASROC launcher and detonates one of the war heads with his pistol, blowing up the ship. Now - on a Farragut class ship - as you can see in the pictures - the ASROC Box is on the front of the ship in the #2 position. On the Adams class, the ASROC Box is amidships - where I thought it was in the book ... If the ASROC Box was right in front of the bridge ... some one climbing around on it might be a little more obvious than if it were located amidships ... One thing I've been doing a lot more than I should because of things like this - was going on Amazon and buying books and movies I'd read or seen a long time ago. The problem with doing that - is that after a while ... it gets expensive ... We'll see .... Thanks again for pointing out my error! .
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  243. In fairness to those favoring large guns on aircraft carriers ... you have the Glorious and the circumstances of her sinking. No amount of 8" guns she could have carried would have saved Glorious from the two German Battle-cruisers but ... you can see how this was the type of engagement that those favoring a large gun complement had in mind. Thus - they weren't just a bunch of silly people envisioning something which simply wasn't going to happen, it did happen to Glorious . Of course, there were a number of things that Glorious could have done which might have improved her chances but - the errors which caused these things to not be done - did bring about a situation where a carrier would have gotten to use a set of heavier guns. Thus - eliminating the surface engagement capabilities was more a case of making better use of the tonnage while stressing the need to make sure you didn't need it than it was stupidity on the part of the designers of the Lexington & Saratoga . Carrier design was evolving and not having them engage enemy surface forces was determined to be a better solution to the problem than equipping them to do so. Here - at Midway - knowing that the Japanese might try to engage them at night if they tried to pursue the Japanese survivors - the US abandoned the idea of such pursuit. This was a good thing as that is exactly what the Japanese tried to do - up until they determined the Americans weren't coming and began putting distance between their forces for when the sun came up. .
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  244. All these little ships that came and went. Men ate on them, tried to stay awake at watch on them, slept on them and shit on them, all wrapped up in their metal bodies. On a routine basis, those on watch saw the sun come up and go down, it's light stretching out over or receding from the oceans surface and coloring the clouds. They did their jobs on them in the heat of the day and the cold of the night, sweating or shivering in their bunks depending on if their compartment was an ice box or an oven. Men stood watch on them them with the rain pelting down and the sea in an agitated state. They pitched about inside these tiny ships as the ocean pitched their ship about. They threw up in her and on her and over the side. They missed their wives and girl friends, their friends and their families and they waited out the days until they could come home again and get off that damned little ship. Then ... on occasion ... they tried to kill the men on other ships and risked being killed on theirs. Ships broke up, men burned, men drowned and men were taken to the bottom of the sea trapped in little compartments as their ship sank. All these men on all these little ships ... that came ... and went ... .
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  245.  @williammagoffin9324  Hōshō (I copied the "ō's" from you(!!) survived? Hunh. Yeah - this is a Ranger video and we've just been discussing US Carriers. As to survivors - this is also, so it seems, just about Fleet Carriers. There were scads of Light and Escort Carriers. Don't know if any of those were Pre-War Carriers though ... and ... I'm to lazy to look it up ... .
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  246.  @glennricafrente58  That and team sports. Team sports was always the best training for being in the military. Gets people used to being in a hierarchical structure, obeying orders, understanding having a specific role in a larger unit and working as part of a team to accomplish a goal. And of course there's the fitness side of that too, that and getting banged about a bit. Other things that help are Scouts and High School Jr. ROTC. Then there's Marksmanship, Hunting, Hiking and Camping. And of course - not being stupid ... .
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  247. Yeah ... that's one thing about those Americans ... they did love to increase their fire power ... and ... weren't shy about doing whatever they thought they needed to do - to do it ... Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines they augmented what they had when they could. I wonder though sometimes ... if there's been a decline in the level of amateur mechanics that existed under the car culture of the '30's, '40's, '50's, '60's and '70's. Back then - all the schools had an Auto Shop Class and there were all these cheap, old cars that could be had for a song - that you could fix with a screw driver and socket set. Now ... there are no more Auto Shop Classes ... insurance rates on boys are to high for them to drive - so their girl friends do it and the engine systems of today's cars are controlled by computers you need a factory interface to talk to ... .
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  248. The true story of what happened here - is that Marty McFly went back in time with a copy of Ultimate Admiral and ... the rest is ... History! .
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  249. My first thought as I was watching this was - how many of these ships were 3 screw ships? It looked like a lot, if not most of them were, though sometimes it's a little hard to tell from the drawing. I remember one of the RN officers commenting on the Bismarck, "Leave it to the Germans to produce a 3 screw ship ..." Now ... the next thing is - how stupid was this? The answer is - pretty stupid. The thing was - the Germans knew something about using submarines but they NEVER had enough ships able to go to sea at the same time during war fare - without getting chased right back into port - that they could learn anything about really sailing their ships, much less managing a fleet. Essentially, the Germans knew nothing about surface ships. A telling characteristic of the Germans High Seas Fleet - is that the crews slept in barracks ashore - not on board their ships. Now - what does that say? So - all the German heavy ships, Battleships, Battle Cruisers and Cruisers - were a waste of time - except as a "fleet in being". The German surface navy was able to cause the RN some trouble - just by existing - but that was about it. Now - all that said - I am somewhat understanding about the German fixation with commerce raiding. For one thing - given the amount of ships they had - it was about all they could do. Though some of the plans for having all their ships come out at once might have been interesting - but - you notice they couldn't pull it off. The thing with Commerce Raiding - was that it wasn't going to work any more in the age of aircraft. Now, navies had been engaged in commerce raiding for hundreds of years. They'd give privateers Letters of Mark - and go harass the enemy's merchant ships. But - all that worked because of the vastness of the sea and the insignificance of even the largest ships on it. Once you had air planes though - all that changed. It took a while. During WWI they could still have some success for a while if they could stay away from the enemies combatants. Even in WWII, right at the beginning, the Germans had some success with it. So - because no one really understood the real impact of aircraft at sea, I can understand why the Germans were so fooled into thinking they could still do commerce raiding when the war started. All in all though - even the submarines were a failure. The biggest indicator of the utter failure of the German Navy though - was it's virtually complete lack of amphibious ships. Before 1941 - when Britain stood alone - the Germans stood a real chance of winning the war. The only way they were actually going to bring it to an end though - was to invade Britain. The only way they were going to successfully do that - was with a navy that could pull it off - and they didn't have one. Trying to use converted river barges was a recipe for a lot of drowned German Soldiers. Again - I can see why the Germans weren't even thinking about that when the war started. Their experience was WWI and - if you ask me - they were as surprised as everybody else by their success. So they have this opportunity - but had not foreseen it happening and were totally unprepared for it. .
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  250.  @Gustav_Kuriga  If I'm not telling a "story" I try to be as accurate as I can - but - no one is perfect ... The key here - in studying things - is to look at THEIR references. So - if you see something referenced on Wikipedia - go to the end of the article or note their references (you can click on them) - and see if you can get further information there. It's sometimes a little difficult - as if you click on a reference (footnote) number you may only get some short hand version of the citation and a page number. Then you have to scroll up through the references to the first citation of that source - and that - should get you the name of the book or article - which you can THEN - google to see what you get. Wikipedia gets a lot of crap from people who are being snobbish about it - but - that's just them being snobbish. It's a good INITIAL/QUICK reference - but - if you want to do serious research - you need to go to their sources and check them out - plus - of course - doing your own research. This may seem like a little bit of work but ... compared to me standing at the card (and I do mean CARD) catalog in the library in 1978, digging around with these 3x5" cards looking at their cryptic references - then - going to the stacks, finding the book, sitting down at a table and looking through it to see if it's worth checking out from the library - and if it is - taking it home and reading it - THEN - doing that AGAIN several dozen times ... THEN going through these Translations of Newspaper Articles ... I spent a year researching my Masters Thesis ... and then another year writing it ... with a type writer ... Computers and the Internet vastly speed up that process - which is why - all the great advances in human civilization - have come after a major upgrade in Communications - like the Printing Press that made possible such as the Gutenberg Bible. One word of warning though ... if you start buying books from other peoples references ... it can get expensive - fast ... Which is why supporting the guys doing these videos through Patreon - really helps. I'm just to poor to do it and I have to pay for my own books ... Which ... for the serious researcher - is why Libraries are still really important. One of the things I did - was buy a Life Time Membership ($600) to my schools Alumni Association - specifically because THAT would give me access to their library ... though I've not done any serious research since then ... There being no jobs in the field of History I - began studying technology and had a good career there. .
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  251. There's no telling. Promotion paths can be really twisted and confused. .
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  252.  @zhoufang996  That type of thinking is lame. Kamikaze attacks were not prolonging the war - Japan's refusal to surrender prolonged the war. Japan was trying to get a negotiated treaty - and - the way they were trying to do it - was by bleeding the Allies. They thought that if they bled the Allies enough - they could keep from being defeated. This was their plan from the beginning of the war. This was what they had ALWAYS planned on doing. They knew they couldn't win before they attacked us - but - they thought that if they bled us enough they could keep some of their gains. They hadn't always planned on using Kamikazis but their use was practical. Anyone attacking the Allies at that stage of the war was probably going to die - so - if you were going to die anyway, as a Kamikazi at least you stood a better chance of getting a hit. You win wars by making the other side quit. The Japanese wanted to make us quit - but we didn't. So - finally - Hirohito decided to end the war and end the suffering of his people. THAT was what had to happen to end the war. .
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  253. Pound's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Pound#Resignation_and_death career was mixed but his health problems could have effected his judgment. Part of the mixed nature of his career was a tendency to "micromanage" things from afar rather than leave things to the people on site who were actually involved with what was happening. As with Biden - recently - you have these people that really should step aside - but won't until they are forced to - or they die. Scattering that convoy on the basis of the information at hand was a monumentally mistaken decision. Pound really should have known better than to do that. .
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  254.  @bkjeong4302  1st Paragraph - all bull shit 2nd Paragraph - more bull shit 3rd Paragraph - still more bull shit No. The Americans had enough aircraft to go after the Japanese fleet - but - they would have had to chase them in the dark. The Americans were afraid the Japanese would send their battleships against them in the night (which they did) so they just fell back and let them go. Worn out air groups were NOT the reason. The Japanese - realized the Americans weren't coming - turned around and left. THAT is what happened. Also - at Cape Engano - the American Battleships WERE about to run down the remnants of the Japanese fleet and put them under with gun fire - but - they got the word of what had happened Off Samar - and turned around. Now - I've pissed away enough time on your stupidity. I actually do have other things to do. So if you have a reply to this - I'll not be reading it for a while. .
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  255.  @bkjeong4302  Bean Counter ... Bean Counter ... There was no competition between Cruisers and Battleships - for resources, man power or anything else. They were building as many of both as they could as fast as they could. As I said. Why can't you get that through your thick skull. We built a gigantic Navy as part of a gigantic military and we did it in 4 or 5 years if you count our prewar efforts. We were the world's richest country with a large population - and didn't have any trouble doing any of that. There was a lot of effort involved but nothing we couldn't do. There was absolutely no need to not build Battleships so we could build more Cruisers and Destroyers. We had plenty of all of them. If you weren't stupid - you would see that. You just can't seem to get it through your Bean Counters Brain - that we had all we needed to do anything we wanted. We just needed to get it done. What was important when they began designing their fleet - they wanted a balanced fleet using all they knew about. The Wisconsin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wisconsin_(BB-64) - was the last battleship completed. It was ordered in 1940 and laid down in January of 1941 before the war even started. It was not in competition for ANYTHING that came after it, Cruisers, Destroyers or anything else. You are acting, first, like you are right - which you are not - but also like the people who ordered these ships should have known that the Air Plane was going to dominate the war to come. They didn't. They couldn't have. All the Air Power Advocates - like Billy Mitchell - were full of shit. Yes - Aircraft would be vastly more important than anyone thought - but not as important at THESE people thought. I get tired of people like you. You've read some books and think you know something - but you don't. You just have silly little ideas that you cherish and cling to - refusing to see how silly they are. Your last paragraph is the perfect example. It seems real to you but it isn't. (The Japanese fleet escaped from Midway because they had Battleships and the Americans didn't). Were you ever in the military? Have you ever participated in activating a new ship? Do you count the time you've been studying History in decades? I was, I have and I do. I've explained all this to you - and in your stupidity - you keep arguing with me as if you know something - when you don't. The correct thing for you to do at this point - is thank me for making you aware of how silly and irrelevant your ideas are (that's what I do when I'm wrong) - but don't worry - I'll not be waiting on you to do that. You seem very much like yet another Internet Wannabe who's read some stuff and thinks he knows something - but (again) doesn't. .
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  256. Just a word on those air groups. At the start of the war - each Air Group had the number of the ship it was based on. Thus Air Group 5 for the Yorktown, Air Group 6 for the Enterprise and Air Group 8 for the Hornet. The thing is - air groups would get all shot up. To a large degree, Carrier Warfare consisted of each side shooting air planes at the other - with the airplanes being, to a large degree, expendable. So - the carrier would come back to port, with it's Air Group all shot to hell - and they'd put on another one. Thus - at Midway, the Yorktown had Air Group 3 on it. Air Group 5 was all shot up from the Corral Sea and the Saratoga was on it's way back from the US and not going to get there in time for the battle - so the Americans - took Saratoga's Air Group and put it on the Yorktown. The Japanese in contrast tended to use their carriers in pairs. There's a saying ... something about ... One Ship. Two hulls. That is how they looked at them. So - when the Shokaku and Zuikaku came back from Coral Sea - one of the ships was damaged and the other's Air Group all shot up. The Japanese COULD have cobbled together an Air Group for the undamaged ship - and had 5 carriers at Midway - but they didn't. Enterprise spent a good bit of the Guadalcanal Campaign with (iirc) Air Group 10 and the association of matching Air Groups with ships of the same number - was over. .
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  257. That's one thing about the RN. They had this vast job with ships all over the world and all these different ships to perform different tasks. .
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  258. Here's another version of the video with captioning in English https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZnnj3J4Lw8 .
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  259. Ha! Ha! Ha! (I made this up) .... If ... as it has been said ... a boat - is a hole in the water into which you pour money - a computer - is a hole in space - into which you pour time ... That's my only boat joke and it's really a computer joke ... Eh ... .
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  260. Well ... the thing is ... Lee was responsible for real, live human beings and not in the least bit interested in satisfying the wants and desires of future Naval History Nerds for a fight between all those battleships. You don't play the other guys game. The Best thing the Japanese could do - was - Night Surface Action and why the hell could Lee possibly want to expose his ships to all those Long Lance Torpedoes - when he didn't have to? Off Guadalcanal - Lee had a reason for taking his battleships in and exposing them to potential losses. In the Philippine Sea - he had none. The American Carriers were going to devastate the Japanese - with the Japanese having little recourse and little in the way of harming the Americans. This is vastly different than the case during The Battle OFF Samar where Halsey should have left his battleships to guard the San Bernadino Strait in case Kurita turned around - like he did - to protect the Landing Areas off Leyte. There - Lee would have had a REASON for engaging the Japanese in a surface action - day or night. You don't give the enemy a chance to hurt you - when you can just slaughter them with impunity. Giving the Japanese the opportunity to do what they had demonstrated time and again that they could do very well would have been a mistake. Even if the Americans hadn't lost any ships - they may well have had some damaged - and those would be ships that were NOT available in the near future to escort aircraft carriers - which had become the primary function of surface combatants. .
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  261. Yeah. He certainly has some written a good bit on that era. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=John+Lundstrom&ref=nb_sb_noss Couldn't find a biography of him other than something short on the Naval Institute site along with a couple of articles he did. https://www.usni.org/people/john-lundstrom Found this lecture he did on Coral Sea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cbtFBZxTqE .
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  262.  @Harry.said.so.  You have different parts of the ship that serve different functions. The primary purpose of the external parts of the ship have to do with it's functions as a ship sailing through water. The armor was not always where you could see it though sometimes it was. From the diagrams I've seen showing the placement of the armor within the ship it does seem like the angle of it is sometimes part of the defensive design - but I'm not an expert on that and it would depend on the ship. It's difficult to determine what was effective and what wasn't since you'd have to be looking at the placement of armor to achieve a specific purpose - and then - have the thing it was designed to protect against - hit that spot. Ships are much more complicated than tanks so their armor placement can reflect that. Here's a link on Belt Armor with some diagrams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belt_armor This link is about the idea of All or Nothing Amor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_or_nothing_(armor)  .
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  263. Before he war - the US Navy had practiced Daylight Gunnery. The Japanese Navy had practiced Night Combat. For most of the war - aircraft - dominated the day - so much of the Naval Surface Combat that took place - took place at night. Night Naval Combat in WWII was an ideal environment for torpedoes. The Japanese Navy had - head and shoulders above EVERYONE ELSE the absolute best torpedoes in the world. The American Navy - had the worst (that I'm aware of). Japanese Night Vision was Excellent. American Radar got better - but - most of it's Command Level had no idea how to use it. Japan had been at war with China since 1937. They also understood that, they being an Island Nation, needed an excellent Navy to protect it and exert power outwards. The Americans had been heavily influenced in their actions by Isolationist sentiments and until 1940 neglected it's armed forces because of the Depression (though the Navy fared better than the Army). During the early days of WWII the Germans and Japanese Armed Forces were better prepared for war than the Allies. The Americans were utterly unprepared for war and spent most of 1942 paying for it as they learned things their enemies already knew how to do. While the Americans had people who knew what they were doing - much of that was often undone by bureaucratic military procedures that put ignorant, incompetent people in command. Ultimately though - the Americans did learn and their incompetents were replaced. The thing about the Guadalcanal Campaign is that over all - the Japanese and Americans took about equal losses but - the Americans could replace those losses - and the Japanese couldn't. .
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  264. There is an old book Where Away: A Modern Odyssey George Sessions Perry; Isabel Leighton (1944). Where Away: A Modern Odyssey. Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Incorporated. ASIN B0007DKZ0U. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Marblehead_(CL-12) detailing the voyage of the USS Marblehead from Indonesia to Brooklyn via South Africa, after being damaged in a Japanese air attack. For much of this journey the ship was steering with her engines because of damage to the rudder(s?). Hard cover and Kindle versions are available on Amazon, though the hard cover is fairly expensive. .
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  265.  @douglasstrother6584  Yeah. I lent my copy of Jutland to this guy who never returned it. So I looked it up recently on e-bay and bought another copy off of there. It was nice to have that again but ... it didn't have that "New Game Smell" I remember from those old games. .
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  266. The Hunley had a screw propeller turned by a crank shaft operated by the crew. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunley_(submarine) .
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  267. Of course - those would be Hatches - right? .
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  268.  @JonathanSchattke  A faster cruiser would make a more effective commerce raider ... .
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  269.  @NKP73  Yeah, I've read that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Silent,_Run_Deep Edward L. Beach Jr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_L._Beach_Jr. .
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  270. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tennessee_(ACR-10)
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  271.  @genericpersonx333  Yes. .
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  272.  @whyjnot420  Yes. Yes indeed. .
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  273.  @whyjnot420  Yeah. Things change and some of it is amazing. I prefer to use military time with people who know what it is - but - most of the people I deal with don't. There was a ... time ... when we would set our clocks by the phone company. Something like 853-1212 ... something like that. This was the source of the Joke "For a Good Time call ... " Phone company stopped doing that but I'm sure the joke wasn't the reason. Now I get my time from my computer. I can remember back when I had a program that would access an Atomic Clock somewhere and set my computers clock from that - but now - it seems to set itself automatically once I get it set as to what time zone it's in. Automatically resets for Day Light Savings. The other thing is - in Windows - you an set several different times that it will display in addition to the primary time. I've played a lot of computer games that use UTC and so I have one of them set to that and the other to Japan where my brother lives. We live in such a new world now. I can remember watching the very first Network broadcast of a Satellite transmitted program and now we think nothing of it. And yet - I cannot call my Brother in Japan any more on my land line - because all the circuits are always busy and I'm told by the robot voice lady to try again later - at which time they will also always be busy. If I want to talk to him - I have to use my mobile phone. That works. Things change but not always for the best. .
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  274.  @whyjnot420  Unlike this one - my comment, though it followed right after yours - was more a comment on clocks in general than a reply to you. As to "24 hour" clocks - most of the ones I saw - were really just 12 hour clocks that had two sets of numbers on them. So for 2 p.m. they would have a "2" and then below it a "1400". So for these clocks the only difference between them and a standard clock was the printing of the hours on the clock face. Internally - they were identical. The ones that were real 24 hour clocks were extremely rare. I've seen them - but they were very few in number and mostly located on a ship or something. As to them being cheaper - the standard office clocks were cheaper because they were mass produced in vast numbers, whereas the pseudo "24 hour" clocks I saw - which merely had two sets of numbers printed on them but were mechanically the same - were made in smaller numbers. Civilian and military office buildings all over the world used those standard "12" hour clocks whereas, I would imagine, it was mostly military functions or maybe some other organization that used "24 hour" times, that would be a market for the "24 hour" version. As to those centrally controlled clocks - yes - I remember that from when I was in grade school! Twice a year when they changed over from Day Light Savings Time to Standard Time - or if there had been a power outage - you could see the clock hands moving on their own. That Grade School - which was on a military base - was the only time I saw that though - the rest were just standard office clocks that had to be adjusted manually. One of the things about those office clocks - was that when they designed the office - they had a little power plug right there on the wall where the clock went that you could plug it into. I have grown to really hate battery powered clocks ... We had one of these Bird Clocks where a different bird would "chime" the hours for each of the 12 hours (and it was photo sensitive so it couldn't "chime" after dark). The trouble was - as the batteries wore down - it ran slower - and you had to replace them - and the batteries for that clock ran down every few months. I finally just got tired of changing the damned batteries and it's just been sitting there unmoving for ... over a decade ... as something decorative rather than a clock. This is one of TWO battery powered clocks that are now wall ornaments, though the other never kept accurate time. It had a function for adjusting the rate it ran at - but that did not work. Of course - this is something that is different now. I bought this cheap, throw away little digital clock with a liquid crystal display for which you could not change the battery - but - it's been running for years now ... so ... it would depend on the technology as to how big a pain in the ass the batteries are. Ha! Ha! You can tell what type of people are fans of videos about Naval Logistics by their ability to delve deep into the minutiae of different types of clocks! Ha! Ha! .
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  275. Well ... actually ... 24 Hour Clocks are the exception - depending on where you are - most of the clocks are standard civilian office clocks - because they are cheaper. .
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  276. Cool. It helps having someone around who actually speaks the language with these ships names. I have a nephew whose mother is Japanese - so one day I'm like "Oh! Hey! Tell me if I'm pronouncing these names right!" I actually was doing pretty good ... As to those Italian names - one of the things I noticed is that I would have emphasized the wrong syllables on several of them. One thing about that though - is that Google Translate has a sound function. The only thing I've used it with - was hearing how Brie Larson's real name was pronounced (according to Google Translate). Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers (click on the little speaker below the name to hear the pronunciation) https://translate.google.com/?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&client=tw-ob#view=home&op=translate&sl=fr&tl=en&text=Brianne%20Sidonie%20Desaulniers Of course - not speaking French - I have no idea what so ever how accurate that pronunciation is but - lacking anyone who does speak French to tell me ... Anyway - while I can't vouch for it's accuracy - I have gotten a lot of use out of Google Translate. I was playing this online game and when the tutorial came to the spot about joining that games equivalent of a "Guild" - I let the game pick one for me - and it put me in a Spanish Language Guild ... Speaking no Spanish either I used Google Translate a lot - and - here on YouTube I've translated comments people posted in Russian and Chinese and ... got something understandable out of it. So ... it does seem to be better than nothing in the absence of a native speaker.  .
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  277. One of the things to remember about the RN - is the way it has historically, going back several hundred years - done so much with whatever the government deigned to spend on ships for it. As recently mentioned - this led to the happy crews assigned to the well made ships captured from the French and the Spanish. It's most recent aircraft carriers - were supposed to be able to be back fitted as CATOBAR ships - but - when it was decided near the end of their construction to actually do what the contractors had promised - the cost of tearing up what had already been done and replacing it with new equipment - was prohibitive and you now have two large ships that were fully capable of being REAL Aircraft Carriers that didn't need a ski ramp on the bow and the ability to land vertically for the aircraft that would operate from them ... The FAA misses their F-4 Phantoms. .
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  278. Yeah ... I had the top on a can of black pepper come loose and dump half the contents of the can on my still powdered grits ... I tried to spoon it out and got a lot of it but - that was one hot bowl of grits ... .
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  279.  @mgt2010fla  Well fuck you too ass wipe! Yes - I use dashes as punctuation. Works really well. And - adds to the clarity of what I'm writing. A wall of text - does not - but if you want to make it difficult for your readers - go right ahead. As to my military service - USMC 1970-1972. I was also employed by the USN as a civilian computer programmer - and - have two catapult launches to my credit though no arrested landings. One of the guys I worked with - had two arrested landings and no cat launches. [shrug] As to History - I have a Masters Degree (which there were no jobs for - hence the computer programming) and have been studying History since the first book I read on the Marines when I was 10 years old - close to 60 years ago. I got a 1938 copy of this when I was 14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bluejacket%27s_Manual It is always amazing to me how people make judgments about others they know absolutely nothing about. But then - there's just no accounting for dumb shits like you. So - once again - fuck you ass hole. .
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  280. Hmmm ... that's interesting. I had been under the impression that the poor safety practices were the result of training competitions to have the greatest rate of fire. .
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  281.  @billbolton  They did have reports from Pearl Harbor from agents they had there before the attack. I don't know what happened to them but most of the rest of the Japanese were interned - and they probably didn't have that many white agents. Actually operational security is a high priority. Things could slip but - detailed fleet compositions and lists of ships by type? No. Japans intelligence was terrible. Japans military consisted of little fiefdoms. The Army and Navy hated each other. They didn't talk - they didn't share - they didn't communicate. The Meiji Reformation took place in 1870. Prior to that - Japan had a real, true, literal Feudal Society. You don't change things like that in 70 years. Pilots took Samurai Swords with them in their cockpits. Not that they had a use for them - but because they saw themselves as Samurai and a Samurai can't go into battle without his sword. In the Mitsubishi factory during the production of Zero Fighters, the fuselage would be carried from one part of the factory to another on an ox cart. Modern technology was a facade covering what was still LITERALLY a feudal society. They had no idea what they were doing in the modern world. They had scientists. They had technicians. They had trained personnel. They could USE the tools of a modern society but they WERE NOT a modern culture. They were a feudal culture with modern weapons. They took away their spears and gave them machine guns - but they were still feudal warriors. I'm sure they did have some type of systems intelligence that tried to break codes. The nations they copied everything from had them - so the Japanese were bound to have them too - but that doesn't mean they understood cryptanalysis. They were learning. They were taking things from western cultures and making them Japanese - but 70 years wasn't enough time. It just wasn't. The Japanese Navy - as excellent as it was at using it's weapons - didn't understand what they were for. They never understood that the warships weren't what was important - that it was the merchantmen that counted. The Warships were just there to protect theirs and kill the enemies. There are a lot of things they COULD have done. They COULD have had land based recon flights to find what US ships were where and what they were doing - but for whatever reason - they didn't. Of course - US Air was shooting down Japanese aircraft left and right - so it's hard to say if there actually were recon flights that were supposed to inform Kurita - but whatever the reason - they didn't. They thought that they were engaging fleet carriers and cruisers - so they were using Armor Piercing Ammunition - that, since they were in fact engaging escort carriers and destroyers, went right through their targets and out the other side. It poked a hole in the US ship - but those shells didn't explode. They did, as they closed the range realize the true nature of their targets and some of their ships switched to High Explosive shells - and THESE were the ships that sank the Gambier Bay and the Roberts. All those Japanese cruisers were supposed to have float planes ... but they obviously didn't get any intelligence from that source - for whatever reason. .
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  282. Erroneously - Naval Battles tended to be named for a near by land feature - such as Trafalgar or Jutland. Of course - since the battles did not take place AT Trafalgar or AT Jutland but took place on the water OFF these landmarks - they REALLY should have been named The Battle OFF Trafalgar or The Battle OFF Jutland ... but ... historically that is not what was done. So most battles are like The Battle of Trafalgar or The Battle of Jutland. For this battle though - the officer who wrote up the report for the battle - titled his report "The Battle Off Samar" and that was the name the United States Navy chose to use for THIS battle. The Navy that fights the battle - gets to name it - should they choose to. Thus - the CORRECT name for this battle - is the one the United States Navy gave it - which is - The Battle OFF Samar . The Japanese would also be entitled to name this battle as well and probably did - but - they would have named it in Japanese. Those of us who might read and speak Japanese might know the name the Japanese use but those of us who don't speak Japanese probably don't. I don't. But - for those of us who speak English - if we fancy ourselves Historians - we SHOULD all know the CORRECT name of the battle - and use it. But - some people - persist in saying the name of this battle wrong - even though they KNOW better. They have been told repeatedly by any number of people such as yourself and myself - and yet - they persist in saying the name of the battle WRONG. Now ... with some battles ... they were named by a nation whose language one might not speak - even if it is written in English and it is understandable why one might have difficulty in saying the name of such battles correctly. However - anyone who speaks English - should have very little trouble when choosing between the words "Off" and "Of". .
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  283. Yeah. One of the impressions I've gotten of Lincoln - was that he tended to interfere in his Generals Running of their Armies. So - while he had some complaints about some of his Generals - some of his Generals had complaints about him too. Another odd thing - is that - "The South" did not secede as a whole. Each State in what became the Confederacy seceded for it's own reasons which were not the same from State to State. It's my understanding that when Virginia had voted on secession - it voted NOT to secede. Then - Lincoln demanded that Virginia, among other states raise troops to go suppress South Carolina. While Virginia had decided not to secede itself - sending it's troops to attack another State - was not something it was going to do - and it was at that point - because of Lincoln demanding that it do so - that it voted again - and this time did vote to secede. If Lincoln had simply let South Carolina go ... can you imagine an economically or politically viable Confederacy without Virginia? The other thing about this - was that Virginia was not the only state to secede for this reason. One last comment about post Civil War use of the Rivers by the Army. The Missouri River, one of the major tributaries of the Mississippi, goes west as far west as Western Montana https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Missouri_River_basin_map.png and has among a plethora of other rivers, the Yellowstone feeding into it. So - River Traffic was fairly important to this area of the West and was used by the Army during the American Indian Wars. .
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  284. Very well done ... but for two minor things It's more like: Min-Dan-Ow https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/En-ca-Mindanao.oga and Buck-Lee .
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  285. Yes! Found it just as you were posting! .
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  286. The Japanese just really have a problem in any of these type engagements. The Americans just have so many ships that are so much better than most of the Japanese ships that the Japanese seldom stand a chance - outside of early war night battles ... Here - the Japanese desperately needed Mutsu and Musashi to - not be destroyed. Except for Yamato and Musashi - ALL - of the other Japanese Battleships were basically WWI era ships. No matter what had been done in the '30's to upgrade them - these were upgrades to - old - ships. Even the Nagato class had started construction in 1917. .
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  287.  @metaknight115  Yeah ... I forgot about that ... Ha! Ha! Ha! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sunda_Strait#Main_action .
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  288.  @SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands  Ah! Didn't know that. Thank you! .
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  289. There's a line from The Cruel Sea where the Captain of a Destroyer sends a message to (I believe) the Compass Rose something like "We shall now do our impression of a Greyhound of the Fleet" then proceeded to tear off towards where ever they were going. So - it was the Destroyers that were the Greyhounds - but - your Father may well have said that. Of course - he may have said it in jest - or - he may have served on a Destroyer rather than a Corvette. .
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  290. Having, in High School, played the Avalon Hill board game Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_(1964_game) numerous times as both the Japanese and American Commanders - I have a certain feeling of nostalgia for the ships that I became familiar with as little rectangular pieces of painted cardboard. .
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  291.  @derekrohan9619  Yeah ... except - like I said - they do that partly to honor the guy - but also - for the political support from the community he was from. They had a ship named after Dorie Miller (which he truly deserved) but - naming that aircraft carrier after him - is pure politics. .
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  292.  @danielharnden516  Yes. .
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  293. As to submarines engaging warships - yes - the speed of the submarine was very much the problem - but - they did have some success. As to operating as part of the fleet ... no ... for one thing - there was to much danger of them being rammed by a friendly ship that didn't see them. The main thing though was that they were simply to slow to keep up - so it just wasn't possible for them to sail with the main fleet. However while their speed did limit them in catching warships - the did have some notable successes when warships blundered into them. The Nautilus at Midway did in fact torpedo one of the Japanese carriers - the torpedo just didn't go off ... but - it was the Japanese vessel sent to keep Nautilus down while the Japanese fleet turned towards the US Fleet - that led McClusky to find the Japanese carriers. The cruisers Juneau and Indianapolis were sunk by Japanese submarines. One Japanese submarine sank the Wasp, damaged the North Carolina and sank a destroyer with a single spread of torpedoes. One also got the CVE Liscombe Bay off Tarawa. The Question about that is - given the amount of resources they committed to chasing warships - would the Japanese have been better off having their submarines going after targets they were better able to catch such as the supply convoys to Australia and the US Island Bases? The US, once it got it's torpedoes to work ... had more success against the Japanese warships but - this wasn't at the expense of going after their merchant fleet. Here - the US was able to make good use of Submarines as a scouting force on more than one occasion. The Japanese had tried to do this at Midway - but the fact that the US had broken their codes - meant that the US ships had passed the point where the submarines set up their line before the submarines got there. .
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  294. There's a thing ... That Nations tend to have their smart people gravitate towards their most important service. Thus - with the British the smart people went in the Navy and the ... not as smart people went in the Army. With the Germans the smart people went in the Army and the ... not as smart people went into the Navy. With Israel - the whole country is in the military. As the British had the Channel - we in the US - had two Oceans ... so - you can guess where our smart people were. This isn't to say that there weren't any smart people in the "Junior" service so to speak it just seems that the dummies made more trouble. One thing, if you look at their attitude towards Aviation, the Navy was a lot more realistic in their appreciation of what aircraft could and could not do - where as the Army was all wrapped up in this Air Power Bull Shit. The thing with the Army Air Power Advocates - was that their ideas for what Air Power would become and the way it would be used - were wrong. Time and time again in looking at what the Air Power Advocates actually thought - it was over blown horse shit. Thus - you had Bomber Harris in the UK stating that they could win the war with Air Power alone. They'd just bomb the Germans until the people rose up and over threw Hitler - which never happened. In the US - you had the Bomber Mafia - who were so concerned with their Bomber Doctrine - that the bomber would always get through - that they worked to reduce the use of Fighters. The very idea that Bombers would require Fighter Escorts was Anathema to the Bomber Mafia and the only way things like Drop Tanks could be developed was by creating some fiction as to the reason for them - like extending range for Reconnaissance Aircraft. Of course here - the Air Power Advocates - couldn't say that they wanted to develop Bombers to go attack someone's industrial centers - they had to say that these aircraft were Anti-Maritime Aircraft - to defeat enemy Navies that would cross our oceans and attack us. The problem with this - was that Heavy Bombers - which could attack factories - were largely useless at attacking ships. They had to fly high to avoid the flak and the ship could see the bombs drop and just steer away from them. Air Power was very important in WW II but none of it's use turned out to be what the Air Power advocates of the '30's had anticipated. With at least the US Navy (which I know enough about to comment on) they would seem to have had their ideas about Aircraft in line with the actual capabilities of the aircraft they had to use. Thus - when aircraft were weak, short ranged and fragile - they saw them as such - but - as the aircraft got better - their attitudes towards them changed. Anyway - this is all a very simplistic POV on this but something I've noticed and thought was interesting. [shrug] .
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  295. Thanks. That was fascinating. .
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  296. Their jobs. People who do things like this tend to be really busy ... if only for a short while ... .
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  297. It's "The Battle Off Samar". .
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  298. Gallery actually got in a bit of trouble for capturing it. The thing was - they didn't want the Germans to know that we just might be able to read their codes ... .
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  299.  @georgehughes8698  Yeah and into the 2000's too. I would imagine that they are still doing it and will continue to do so. There's a lead up time of several years. They'll announce a future exercise - and then - anyone interested in having their technologies participate can request to be included. There's a lot of preparation and practice that goes on before the period of the actual exercise which might include participation by some in smaller or partial exercises. They'll have the exercise - and then there's a substantial review process that follows onto that, including judgments about the different technologies that participated. So - these things are still a really big deal. They don't always have cross service participation or - it might be on a greater level for some services than others. It just depends on what they want to do on a particular exercise. .
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  300. OK ... here's where you were right and are now wrong. You have Destroyers, Cruisers, Battle Cruisers and Battleships. That's it. If it is bigger than a Cruiser and smaller than Battleship - it IS a Battle Cruiser. You have people who want to take things like machine guns - and create these non-existent categories and then shove things around in them to make further refinements in their classification. Thus - what you really had was Light Machine Guns, Medium Machine Guns and Heavy Machine Guns. Rifle Caliber Machine guns are all Light Machine Guns whether they are magazine fed or belt fed. Heavy Machine Guns are larger caliber Machine guns of about 13mm. Medium Machine guns are typically Light Machine Guns with some qualification - such as being water cooled. See? Nice, simple categories. None of this bull shit about Universal Machine Guns, General Purpose Machine Guns where people are purposely creating new categories just so they can create new categories and further refine them - when it isn't needed. Just as further ship categories - just to have more highly refined categories - isn't needed. Why? Because it isn't worth while to just make up new categories just so you can shoe horn different ships into them. Why? Because at this point - if what you are trying to do is come up with is a further refinement of their definition - it is more accurate to simply refer them them not by their category - but by their individual designations - that is - their Class. Why come up with a more refined definition of their category for a two or three ship class? I mean - how many "Large Cruisers" were there? Why come up with yet another class to refer to the Deutschlands? In both cases you could just call them Alaska's or Deutschlands? If you want increased accuracy - don't make up some new category - just refer them by their class. Thus A Scharnhorst, An Alaska, A Kongo, A Deutchland, A Dunkerque, A Renown and THE Hood could all be lumped into the Battle Cruiser class if you wanted to. You could also say - that there were no WWII Battle Cruisers other than the Renowns which were of course - a WWI design. Many of the former Battle Cruisers such as the Lexington and the Courageous classes - had been converted to Aircraft Carriers. The Kongo's were converted to Battleships and the Hood was always a fast Battleship. Now - another factor in this - is that their guns do not have to be considered relative to the guns on contemporary Battleships. They could just be absolute categories. Thus - anything with an 11" gun or better that wasn't a Battleship in it's day - WAS a Battle Cruiser - regardless of when it was built. After all - 11" and 12" guns - were still used during WWII. The Scharnhorsts were certainly NOT Battleships - although - they are called Battleships. These ships WOULD have had larger guns if the larger guns had been ready and it was ALWAYS planned that they would get larger guns. It just never happened. The Kongos should never have been reclassified as Battleships - since they really ... really ... were not ... as Washington demonstrated. As to the Iowa's ... they are more like the Queen Elisabeth's were in their day and rightly considered more Fast Battleships than Battle Cruisers. The REAL reason for all this arguing about what's a Battle Cruiser and what isn't ... is that Naval Nerds love to argue about things and this is a subject so sloppy as to be Irresistible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Irresistible_(1898) to argument. .
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  301. Very, very, very well done. I especially liked the reading of the reports. These were competent, intelligent officers who were dealing with problems with the system and trying to get them fixed. Thank You, .
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  302. The Crew may have surrendered but the ship didn't ... .
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  303. One thing about the Japanese Cruiser Float Planes - they really made use of those. The idea was that they would do all their search patterns with the Cruiser Float Planes so that all the Carrier Planes could be saved for combat. .
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  304. The first years of the war - when Germany was Ascendant - were the most interesting - because - anything could happen. After 1941 - when the Germans had gone to war - by choice - with the Soviets in June and the Americans in December - they were DOOMED and nothing they could do was going to avoid that. So - with the end determined and only the route there to be decided - the rest of the war was much more predictable and therefore - less interesting than it had been (for Historians that is ... not for the people who were at that time - getting killed ....). This is not to say that it wasn't interesting - it was - just not as interesting as the first years when France Fell and Britain was desperate. So desperate in fact that they were glad to get 50 old destroyers - and were converting ships designed for hunting whales to hunt submarines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Pride Now - there's some desperation for you. Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Churchill got his best night's sleep in a long while ... .
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  305. Leave it to the Russians to provide us with interesting history ... .
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  306. Yep. Escort did their job. An interesting account of the Battle. .
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  307. Thanks. It's interesting to see what they had in mind. .
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  308. One thing .. It's The Battle OFF Samar. Other than that you're right. Battle Cruisers. I base that primarily on the fight between Kirishima and Washington . Yes. Very much a Battle Ship tearing a Battle Cruiser apart. .
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  309. Another small ship with an interesting history. .
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  310.  @kidpagronprimsank05  You are of course - correct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_15_torpedo Thanks for catching my error. .
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  311. As a perspective on the fates of the pre-Essex class Carriers .... CV-1 - sunk CV-2 - sunk CV-3 - Survived the War - Seriously Damaged time and again CV-4 - Survived the War - to fragile - kept in the Atlantic CV-5 - Sunk CV-6 - Survived the War - Seriously Damaged time and again CV-7 - Sunk CV-8 - Sunk CV-9 on - though several were heavily damaged - no more Fleet Carriers were sunk CVL's - several were sunk and many seriously damaged CVE's - several were sunk and many seriously damaged Of course - none of the Japanese Carriers survived. .
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  312. Excellent. .
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  313. Yeah. They had all this stuff left over from WWII and were wondering what they could do with it. IIRC ... one thing they did was experiment with missile launchers on various ships including Submarines and Escort Carriers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic-Ford_JB-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSM-N-8_Regulus And Kentucky was considered as a Missile Battleship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Kentucky_(BB-66)#Guided_missile_battleship A lot of the benefit of such projects could be summed up as "They learned a lot ..." . .
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  314. Yeah. If ever there could be said to be a Winner to the First World War - it would be Serbia. They started it and millions died because of the war - but Serbia got to control what became Yugoslavia - (i.e. - The Balkans) which lasted a good long time (sort of). The Austro-Hungarian Empire was gone with nothing but tiny little Austria and tiny little Hungary in existence. Is it any wonder that most of their citizens welcomed union with Germany? .
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  315. It should be remembered why the torpedoes were so bad. The problem - was that it wasn't just one problem. 1) The Torpedoes ran deeper than set. 2) The contact exploder would break if hitting the target at a 90 degree angle instead of detonating the warhead. If the torpedo hit at an angle - then it ... might go off. 3) Torpedoes with Magnetic Influence exploders were designed to pass under the target and detonate there - doing the most damage. The problem here was the Earths Magnetic Field was inconsistent so that sometimes it would set the torpedo off before it reached the target and sometimes it wouldn't set it off at all. With the Torpedoes depth set for them to run under the ship for the Magnetic Influence Torpedo to do it's work - if the Magnetic Exploder didn't set it of - it was already set deep enough that it was intentionally passing under the target and the contact detonator wouldn't get a chance to work. Because of all these different problems - they were getting inconsistent results and had trouble recognizing what was happening. Also - at one point in time - the Officer Commanding the Submarines in one area - had been the Officer who had supervised the Torpedo Program that developed these Torpedoes - and refused to hear anything bad said against them. The crews of the subs were forbidden to modify the torpedoes but would do it anyway. One common trick was to disable the Magnetic Influence Exploders. There was a mark painted on the screws sealing the innards of the torpedo - but - the crews would repaint the ones they hadn't used when they came back to port. The problem here - was that the Torpedoes were still running deeper than set. This was determined by placing a harbor gate net out - and firing torpedoes through it. The holes made by the torpedoes showed how deep they were really running. Here - the crews would just set the torpedoes to run shallower - to get them to run at the proper depth. The faulty contact exploders were determined by winching torpedoes up with a crane - and then dropping them nose first onto steel or concrete (without of course any explosives). This showed that the contact exploders were breaking. These Torpedoes - because of budgets and lack of suitable targets - were only tested twice - and - one of those two torpedoes ran right under the old submarine that was the target. So the Americans entered WWII with a Torpedo that during testing had a 50% failure rate. The magnetic exploders had been repeatedly tested but without explosives so the torpedoes could be recovered, examined and used again. All these tests had been done at a part of the Earth where the Magnetic Field in the testing area was the same as that where they had been calibrated. The British and the Germans both tried to use Magnetic Exploders as well and neither of them could make them work either. One U Boat Captain fired multiple torpedoes at the Warspite as it was entering the Fjord to Narvik and they all exploded to soon. He then repeated the same thing as the Warspite left with the same results. My understanding - is that this Captain was literally pounding his fist on someone's desk when he got back and adamantly refusing to ever use Magnetic Influence Exploders ever again. Fortunately for the Germans and the British - their contact exploders worked and their torpedoes ran at the depth they were set at ..
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  316. Read "To War In A String Bag" https://www.amazon.com/War-Stringbag-Charles-Lamb/dp/0553136542 .
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  317. I like that picture at the end of Nimitz and Eisenhower. They're looking at each other as if thinking "Thank God. Someone I have to deal with who isn't an idiot." A few other things. Kimmel had ordered, I believe Lexington , act as a "Diversion" while Saratoga tried to relieve Wake. If_Lexington_ had been with Saratoga they might have had a better chance to deal with the Japanese there. As to MacArthur - it just made sense that the Army was in command in New Guinea since it's a pretty big island and a lot of what happened there was land based. Also, much of the Allied Troops on New Guinea were from the Australian Army. Another part of the problem the Navy had - was that they didn't have good charts for that area - and were concerned about sending ships into waters where they might have a problem. Here, MacArthur's forces organized a large number of smaller boats that were more suited and to some extent more familiar with the waters around New Guinea to carry their supplies and reinforcements around the island to the north side of it, in addition to the ships the Navy did provide. Much of what acted in support of the Army - was it's Air Power. As to the Army on Guadalcanal - it was on Guadalcanal. Recently arrived Army troops from the 25th Infantry Division - were in fact employed in defeating one of the Japanese offensives. In addition to reinforcing the Marines - the Army also eventually relieved them. The Jungle tends to use units up - and after a while - the 1st and 2nd Marine Divisions had been largely used up and needed to be withdrawn. It was the Army which finished the occupation of the island. .
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  318. Thanks. It's interesting to hear about these ships - that you seldom hear about. .
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  319. You have two things First you have a general category of Destroyer, Cruiser, Battle Cruiser, Battleship Then you have a Specific Class Scharnhorst, Lexington, Invincible While you do have subcategories for Destroyers, Cruisers and Battleships - there weren't enough Battle Cruisers to create a sub category - other than the specific class of the ship. Pretty much anything bigger than a cruiser and smaller than a battleship - is lumped into the Battle Cruiser category - where making category distinctions that are more granular a waste of time. If you're going to get more granular - you may as well simply refer to the class of the ship because the distinctions that would put a ship in a more granular category are going to, by and large, be reflected by the specific class the ship was in. Thus the Alaska's with their 12" guns are as much Battle Cruisers as the Scharnhorsts with their 11" guns and yet so are ships like the Repulse with 15" guns. Ships like the Graf Spees are really just their own class but can be lumped into the Battle Cruiser category by their 11" guns which they have in common with the Scharnhorsts. Then you have one off ships like - The Hood. How can you get more granular than - The Hood? The primary criteria that made something a Battle Cruiser was Speed, Size, Armor and Fire Power. These could vary with their era - so that early Dreadnought Battle Cruisers were no comparison to the later Battle Cruisers. These later ships would often have more Speed, but Armor and Fire Power more like the Battleships of earlier era's. Thus the Hood and the Kondos being Battle Cruisers despite Hood's attributes and the re-classification of the Kondos as Battleships. The Kondos weren't Battleships ... .
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  320. Yeah ... had a friend who had been on the Gambier Bay Off Samar ... those guys were in the water over a day, even though there were a lot of friendly ships about. I failed the water survival test in boot camp. They had this thing where you were supposed to take a big breath and go limp, then just float with your face in the water. Then, when it was time to breath, you'd use your arms and legs to push yourself up through the water as you were breathing out. You'd get a lung full of air, then go limp in the water again. I had bronchitis in boot camp so - I couldn't hold my breath but I didn't try to swim to the side - as they'd just kick you back out into the water if you did that (which is how people drown every now and again during these water survival classes when the instructors misjudge someone's condition ...). But - the next time we took the class it was on a pleasant summer's day - when I could actually hold my breath and I passed it with ease. I wasn't trained to tie off my pants legs but my ex-brother in law was when he went through Navy boot camp. Most of us will never be part of the sinking of a warship but - being involved in a boating accident is much more likely as in addition to oceans and seas, there are lakes and rivers every where and a lot of people have small boats. One thing you want to do as a parent - is make damn sure your kids take swimming classes. My Dad was in the Marines so - with the exception of the time he was stationed in Waterloo, Iowa - we were very close to the water and as kids spent a lot of time in it. I've had a little experience with turned over boats and being familiar with the water - makes these things into problems rather than emergencies. As a ten or eleven year old we were playing with this aluminum boat out on the river when we over turned it. I can remember we could swim up inside it and breath. We tried to turn it right side up, there were about six of us - but we couldn't do it and just towed the boat back to shore. When I was in High School I took a sailing class and turned my Sabot over. Had to swim underneath and get the mast out of it's slot because it was sticking in the mud. After that I just towed the boat back to shore and hosed the mud off the sail. You really see what a difference messing about in the water as a kid makes in the story of Jack Kennedy and PT-109. He grew up on the water and so - he just took charge of his crew - had them make flotation devices to attach their stuff to, then towed his badly burned crewman by taking a strap from the guys life vest in his teeth and towing him along. They'd swim several miles from the boat to one island and another - then he and the other officers alternated swimming out to where they thought their units would be patrolling with a battle lantern. You can see all that in the movie PT-109. He really did all those things. Again - familiarity with the water turned his situation into a problem rather than an emergency ... which if your boat has been cut in half by a destroyer - is something of an accomplishment in and of itself. His brother, Teddy, after driving accidentally off a pier and drowning this girl he had in the car with him then swam across the river to get home. So - there's a lot to be said for learning how to swim. .
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  321. Didn't see a Thumbnail for this one. Just 3 dots. Yes. One more in the long list of Ships That Never Were. .
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  322.  @pommunist  Well ... since it probably would have run aground first - quite a bit ... .
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  323.  @dovetonsturdee7033  Ha! Ha! Ha! Yeah ... Tora! Tora! Tora! which was one of the best of the "Great Battles" movies ever made but it was a box office flop, whereas this thing did really well and made a lot of money(!). [shrug] Pearls before swine. .
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  324. U571 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-571_(film) .
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  325. I was just looking at a video on the SBD Dauntless in European Waters and saw one of the same pictures - of SBD's on one of the Escort Carriers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbG5bkzdH8Q .
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  326.  @redjive_industries3760  And - which branch of the military did YOU serve in? Or ... Are you one of those non-vets who think they know anything at all about being a Veteran - when they don't? Restricting the Franchise to those who have actually DEMONSTRATED a sense of responsibility to the Nation by serving it - is actually a really good idea. Look at the silly little shits you have running for President in the US now. Of course - it would never work - because to many greedy, silly little shits would resent being told what to do by those who knew something about what they were doing. The last thing a silly little shit is every going to admit - is that they are a silly little shit. It could however hardly be worse than what we have now. Oh ... and for myself that would be USMC 1970-1972. .
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  327. Tactics aside - Lawrence's biggest mistake was taking on Shannon in the first place. The RN had lots of Frigates - it didn't really matter if they lost one - if they could damage a Commerce Raider and have them being repaired - as long as they were not out there Commerce Raiding - the RN had won. If they beat the Commerce Raider - so much the better. That is why Brooke was issuing those Challenges. It wasn't important whether or not he won - it was important that he do enough damage to send the Commerce Raider back to port for repairs. The RN had lots of Frigates. What it wanted to prevent - was Commerce Raiders harming it's Shipping. The American Navy did NOT have lots of Frigates so each one it lost was a significant part of it's Navy - and - a significant blow to it's ability to Raid British Commerce. .
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  328.  @bkjeong4302  Well that's where you are wrong. The issue of Aircraft Ascendancy was NOT demonstrated until 1942 during the great carrier battles. THAT is when the change over was demonstrated. THAT is when aircraft really showed what they could do. Before that it was just a theory. AND Surface action still ruled the night and bad weather. Aircraft may have ruled the daylight hours but surface forces still ruled the night - and would throughout the war. Serious night time carrier strikes were not something that was seen until the Vietnam war and even then - only with a small number of aircraft designed to be Intruders (like the A6 ... Intruder). After the big day at Midway - Japanese forces tried to catch the Americans at night - and - because the Americans did not have sufficient surface forces to engage the Japanese at night - Spruance elected NOT to pursue the Japanese fleet - and - they got away. So - if Battleships - which the Japanese had at Midway and the Americans did not - could dictate night time actions - they were still a very relevant naval force. There were two series of Great Naval Battles going on concurrently in 1942 - one during the day by the Aircraft Carriers - the other at night by surface forces. The main ships doing the fighting and taking the losses during the day - were the aircraft carriers themselves - and each side whittled the other down to the point that both sides were afraid to use what carriers they had left for fear of having none at all. Submarines also played an important role against warships during the day light hours, inflicting losses on all types of vessels, Carrier and Battleship alike. The vast majority of the approximately 50 ships SUNK during the night time engagements were primarily due to surface action. Some ships - such as Hiei - were in fact sunk during the day light hours by aircraft - BUT - it was a night time surface action that crippled them and made them easy pickings for the planes once the sun came up. Conversely, Bismarck was crippled by an aircraft - but - it was sunk by other battleships. So - your contention - that the only time that mattered - was the day time - is demonstrably wrong. On average, depending on where you are and the time of year - it is dark half the time - and when it was dark during WWII - aircraft were severely limited. As to those Battleships you listed as having "no clear purpose" the fact that Surface Forces still ruled the night - and Battleships were still Top Dogs of the night - shows that you were wrong. Also - 1943 - saw a lot of surface action as well, (though on a smaller scale than '42) and it wasn't until late '43 and into '44 that the American Carrier Forces regained the strength they'd lost during '42. The Japanese Carrier Forces NEVER regained their strength and the Japanese surface forces never recovered either. Because of what had happened during the early war - it had NOT been demonstrated that there was no need for these ships. A number of ships WERE canceled but those that were near completion were finished and did see a lot of use during the war. Some of the Iowa's would have been off San Bernadino Strait when Kurita came through there - if Halsey had left them there to guard it like he was supposed to. I'd say that alone would demonstrate a "clear purpose". Then of course you have the last battleship action in history at Suriago Strait - at night. So - your contentions - that people should have known what was going to happen in the late 1930's are preposterous. .
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  329. ​ @bkjeong4302  OK ... we should identify just what it is that we are arguing about. My understanding - is that we are arguing about whether or not the people who designed these WWII Navies - were stupid. Your contention seems to be that they were stupid - mine was that they were not. We are not arguing about the Aircraft Carriers coming to replace Battleships as the main Capital ships of the fleet. We both agree that that is what happened - and for good reason. In denigrating the Battleship though to try and make the people who built them seem stupid - you have dismissed some of the very real contributions that they did in fact make - even though these were NOT the missions they were designed for. Each time I point out something the Battleships did - you reply that it could have been done in a more cost effective way by something else. My arguments here - has repeatedly been - that the Battleships had already been built, though for a different purpose than they were mostly used for - so that it didn't matter how much it cost to build them - because they had already been built. Your argument for the stupidity of these people was that they SHOULD have known that Aircraft Carriers were going to replace Battleships. My argument is that this is all 20/20 Hindsight on your part. When these Navies were designed - it was not as clear then that Aircraft Carriers were going to replace Battleships - and therefore - that these people, operating with what they knew at the time - were not stupid people - they just couldn't predict what was going to happen in the near future. If you look at what these ships were originally designed to do - the Battleships WERE cost effective in their role - AND - the Cruisers WERE cost effective in their role. Battleships were designed to be the Capital Ships of a Naval Gun Fire Fleet. If you look at the $100 million cost of the Battleships and the $40 million cost of the Cruisers - you get 2.5 Cruisers for each Battleship. But - the Main Gun weight of fire per minute of the one Battleship would be 5400 lbs per min whereas the Main Gun Weight of fire of the 2.5 Cruisers would be 1,340 lb. per min. Then if you look at the Secondary Weight of fire - that used for Anti-Aircraft Defense - you get For the Battleship 20 × 5 in (127 mm)/38 cal 80 × 40 mm/56 cal anti-aircraft guns 49 × 20 mm/70 cal anti-aircraft guns For the 2.5 Cruisers 30 = 12 × 5 in (127 mm)/38 cal guns x 2.5 120= 48 × Bofors 40 mm guns x 2.5 55 = 22 × Oerlikon 20 mm cannons x 2.5 So - what does that tell us? It tells us that for the money - as designed - Battleships make better Capital Ships than Cruisers and Cruisers make better Escorts than Battleships. So - the people designing these ships to full fill their roles - knew what they were doing. They were not stupid people. The REASON that they weren't able to see the future - is because they were caught in a transition period between one technology and another. If you look at the capabilities of aircraft at the beginning of WWII - as I have tried repeatedly to point out - it was not that clear what would happen during the course of that war. It was only in the early battles of the war - that people could see what aircraft were really capable of - even if, early in the war, what they were seeing was things these aircraft were barely capable of. As aircraft technology - and the techniques their crews developed to use it - improved, aircraft became much, much more capable. It is common place for people looking at history to judge historical characters with 20/20 Hindsight - when such judgments are bull shit. They weren't stupid people just because they couldn't see what was going to happen. Think about it. Say you've spent your whole life learning how to do something and you have become very, very skilled at using the tools you had to do that. Then - something changes. New Technologies evolve and the knowledge you had accumulated over a life time - is now marginalized. How quickly would you adapt? .
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  330.  @bkjeong4302  1) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 2) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 3) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 4) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 5) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 6) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 7) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 8) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 9) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 10) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 11) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. 12) The expense didn't matter because they had already spent the money. Have I said that enough times that you will stop talking about the expense entailed in something that was already built? What does it take for you to realize that? Or is this some kind of uncontrollable Bean Counters Reflex action? The Expense! The Expense! The Expense! You know what was a complete waste of German Resources? The whole German Navy - U-Boats included. In WWI all the U-Boats did was bring the Americans into the war and in WWII - that is where things were headed in the Atlantic. The American public wanted nothing to do with yet another European War. The very worst thing the Germans could possibly do was antagonize the Americans. Maybe - YOU being a genius and all - YOU would have figured out that Aircraft Carriers were going to replace Battleships sooner - but - THEY DIDN'T and everything I said was an explanation as to why they might not have realized that. And - even with Aircraft replacing them - there were still some fights between surface warships - some of it - including Battleships. Now - YOU being the one that is insistent that they continued to build Battleships long after they should have quit. YOU look it up and tell me just how many Battleships were LAID DOWN after 1941. Go on. Look it up. I'm not going to bother but since YOU are the one insisting that these people were so stupid that they kept building Battleships - YOU tell me how many were LAID DOWN after 1941. Oh ... and at Leyte - most of the troops had been landed - but - they still needed to be supplied. Surely you are not stupid enough to think that it wouldn't matter if their transports supplying them were driven off or sunk. And - just what the hell do you think their objective was? To stop the landings? They weren't going to do that. To ... sink the American Navy? They weren't going to do that. JAPAN's objective - was to bleed the Americans. Their whole strategy from before Pearl Harbor - was that they would bleed the Americans - and the Americans would quit (like we did in Vietnam). So - Kurita's mistake was saving his ships. He couldn't supply the ships where the fuel was with ammunition and he couldn't supply the ships where the ammunition was with fuel. After Leyte Gulf - the Japanese Navy played no real part in the war. So - what he should have done was expend his ships there. We won't ever know what would have happened but - we do know what happened when he left. As to Battleships not playing a part in the Med? If they were so useless why did the British go after them at Toronto and why did the Italian swimmers go after them in Alexandria and hit Gibraltar as well. You have been wrong in all your characterization of the Battleship usefulness - why should I accept anything you have to say about the role they played in the Med. .
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  331.  @bkjeong4302  You are operating with 20/20 Hindsight. As I tried to say - the people at the start of WWII didn't know how much things had changed. If you look at some of the things that were done at the beginning of WWII - they are rinky-dink compared to what was done later. As I said - look at what those two Battle Cruisers did commerce raiding at the beginning of the war. Anyone seeing that - would think that - "Hey - that worked really well." Look at the Bismarck. It almost got away with it. If it hadn't been for it being stupidly designed with 3 screws AND taking a steering hit AND having detached it's Heavy Cruiser - it might have made it back to port. Look at Prince of Wales and Repulse. They might well have survived but for poor coordination with the RAF and - the fact that the carrier that was supposed to be with them had run aground before they left for the Pacific. Those bombers that sank those ships had no fighter escort. Look at the British and the Italians in the Med. There were a lot of engagements between their surface ships - and - surface ships that survived a lot of air attacks by the Italian Air Force. So - all of this isn't as obvious as you might think. As to Samar - yeah - the Japanese were heavily engaged by the Taffy's - but - it was Kurita's mistakes that kept the Japanese from doing more than they did. Here's a Might Have Been Video on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJJWG0viaZQ. The mistake YOU are making is thinking these people were stupid for not seeing all this. They weren't stupid and you aren't brilliant. YOU just have the benefit of 20/20 Hindsight. And - Bean Counters are stupid ass holes who want to save money at the cost of peoples lives. Let's just be straight about that. And - the cost comparison between Cruisers and Battleships AS escorts is a false one. What you really had - was big expensive Battleships being escorted by Cruisers replaced with big expensive Carriers being escorted by Cruisers. There was NEVER a case where someone was making a financial choice between having Cruisers as Escorts as opposed to having Battleships as Escorts. As I have said repeatedly - the only reason you had Battleships acting as escorts - is because they already had them. No one EVER built a Battleship to BE an escort. Battleships were built to BE escorted. Battleships were Capital Ships. Aircraft Carriers were Capital ships. You could have one Capital Ship Escorting another Capital ship - but no one had built it for that purpose. So - not building Battleships had NOTHING to do with how many Cruisers you built. Not building Battleships - translated into building more Aircraft Carriers - not Cruisers. .
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  332. ​ @bkjeong4302  No. That's just more bull shit. It's like this: 1) They Built Battleships to fight each other - and they had a bunch of them. 2) They could also use them for other things - and so they did. Get your head out of your bean counting ass. Quit talking about the cost of things - because that didn't fucking matter during the war. It mattered BEFORE the war. It mattered AFTER the war - but it was fucking meaningless DURING the war. Once the war got going - they mostly fought it with what they already had - or what was building. At the beginning of the war they were still building Battleships because - NO ONE knew that air power was going to become ascendant. You had Air Power Prophets like Mitchell and Douhet - but those guys were as full of shit as the people who said Air Power was worthless. The Air Power Prophets were claiming that Air Planes Could do EVERYTHING(!!!!!) I mean - actually read some of the shit these guys wrote and it's all just bull shit that NEVER happened. And - get the idea out of your head that you know something about how carrier operations are supposed to be run. At the beginning of the war - no one knew how they were supposed to be run - so they just made things up as they went along. Look at the Second Night of the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The Americans had been using South Dakota and Washington to escort their carriers - so - they needed surface ships to protect Henderson Field from another bombardment - and had all their cruisers and most of their destroyers all shot up from the first night. So - they detached the two Battleships and sent them in. After the battle South Dakota was shot up - so it left - but Washington went right back to escorting the Carriers. The other thing they did was escort Convoys - a lot. At the beginning of the war - the Germans did a lot of surface raiding. The same ships that sank Glorious had a fairly successful run. Then they tried it with Bismarck and things didn't go so well - thanks to aircraft ... But they didn't give up. Scharnhorst was sent to attack a convoy - and that convoy had Duke of York as an escort so it sank her. YOU DON'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. So this idea that - "Oh ... well ... we're smart and not stupid and so we won't ever let the enemy surprise us with a surface action" is bull shit. You don't know. People make mistakes. D'Oyly-Hughes - made some mistakes - but - if he'd had a battleship as an escort - his mistakes wouldn't have cost the UK his ship. Look at The Battle Off Samar - Halsey had made plans to leave his battleships to guard the San Bernadino Strait - but - then he didn't do it. The Japanese turned around - came through the Strait where Halsey's battleships weren't - and fell on Taffy 3 ... with THEIR battleships. Here - Kurita made up for Halsey's mistake with a bunch of his own. Talking about the cost of Battleships vs. Cruisers - is irrelevant. It didn't matter what the Battleships cost - because they had ALREADY spent the money. Since they had already spent the money - they may as well use them. Trust me - no one was thinking "Well ... we could just leave our Battleships in port so we don't take them out and scratch the paint ... But NO! We need to show a return on our investment!! Lets go find a use for those Battleships!!!" They had plenty of uses for those Battleships. They stopped building them - and did just use Cruisers as escorts for Carriers After the war - but - as long as they had them - why the fuck NOT use them? Stop looking at this like an accountant - and look at it like a historian. WWII was a transitive period. Battleships were still seen - with reason - as powerful ships. Carrier aircraft and operations were nothing like they were at the end of the war - at the beginning. So the people who didn't KNOW what was going to happen weren't stupid people - they just hadn't seen how all the things developed in the inter-war years would shake out. Look at tanks. Who at the beginning of WWII really knew how they would work out? Yeah - a few guys had some idea - but even those guys learned things during the course of the war - so that armored operations at the end of the war were nothing like they were at the beginning. .
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  333.  @bkjeong4302  Unh ... bull shit. Glorious was only 1 knot faster than Scharnhorst (because of boiler problems) and 1 knot slower than Gneisenau. So it couldn't just turn a way, fluff it's skirt at the two Battle Cruisers and leave. The Germans, not deterred by the escorts smoke, were able to get radar controlled hits on the ship and after that it couldn't launch. Then it's speed fell off, it took a steering hit and that was the end of that ... . Her escorts were sunk and so was she. Regardless of the wisdom of it's Captain - if it had had a Battleship Escort instead of just two destroyers - it probably would have survived. As to AA Support - it is going to depend on which ship you are talking about as the Kongo class were never going to have the AA of a ship like the South Dakota - but - all the American Battleships had substantial AA - more so than cruisers - that - and they had the AA support of cruisers - and - destroyers too. American Cruisers had 10 or 12 x 5"/38 dual purpose guns. American Battleships had 20 5"/38 dual purpose guns. As to Battleships not living up to expectations - perhaps it was the expectations that were to high. That - and the stage of the war at which things happened. Once they got proximity shells that concentrated AA fire was more effective. So - the Battleship could provide BOTH escort against fast surface ships and air craft. Now - escorting Aircraft Carriers was not the reason Battleships were built - they were built to fight other Battleships - and sometimes they did but as long as they had them - carrier escort and shore bombardment were mostly what Battleships did. As long as you had the Kongo Class and they could keep up with the Carriers - why not use them? .
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  334. Yes. These ships, because of their speed, saw extensive service in the early days of WWII as carrier escorts and shore bombardment. They bombarded Henderson Field on Guadalcanal because they were fast enough to run down the slot, do their bombardment and then run back up out of range of it's aircraft before the sun came up. The second time they tried that the Hiei sufferend a steering hit - thus the picture of her steaming in a circle and wasn't able to clear the area - and was eventually, after a number of attacks, sunk. The next time Kirishima got into it with South Dakota - where, after an 8" shell hit from the cruiser with Kirishima, a damage control man threw the wrong switch that killed the South Dakota's power. They fixed that - but South Dakota took a lot of super structure damage while that was going on. This does NOT mean that the Kirishima would have won a one on one duel as South Dakota still completely outclassed her once power was restored. The issue was moot though as Washington (unknown to the Japanese) was there and when her sixteen inch guns opened fire they simply tore Kirishima (yes - she was still a Battle Cruiser) apart. .
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  335. Good job. .
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  336. Ah yes ... yet another story of Communists not having any idea what they were doing but pressing onward nonetheless ... Well ... at least they didn't kill between 15 and 50 million people by accident like the Chinese did during the Great Leap Forward ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine .
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  337. (IIRC) the maritime aviation at the Battle of Jutland consisted of a number of Zeppelin's out looking for the British Fleet and a British Float Plane Carrier out looking for the Germans. They found each other. So - (myself not recalling where the carriers float planes were) - the Zeppelin which found the Float Plane Carrier proceeded to try and bomb it - but wasn't having much luck hitting the moving ship. The Zeppelins crew was however bemused by the fact that the British had a lot of Riflemen out on deck shooting at them. This was funny until the Zeppelin began to lose altitude due to all the bullet holes put in it's gas bags. At that point - it was time to leave. .
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  338. Thanks. I was aware of that in general but not in a graphical presentation. Yes ... here we have the Greatest Industrial Effort in History. .
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  339.  @solus48  You might want to adjust your punctuation and spelling here. The thanks at the end is probably enough for people to realize you are NOT cursing him but some might be confused. I would suggest something like: "Damn! It's The Nathan Okun! Thanks for the information." Something like that ... .
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  340. For what it's worth ... In my old group of beer drinking and war gaming buddies - there was one guy who had developed his own set of naval combat rules - which we used - and he was in agreement with you about those 18.1 inch guns vs. the 16" guns on the Iowas. .
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  341. There's a human thing that goes - "if you aren't the best - you are shit" that the Italians have a problem with. Of course - this is bull shit but - there are a lot of things about human beings that are bull shit. A more balanced look at the Axis Powers was that Italy rated about as good at the Japanese and better than the Hungarians, Romanians and Bulgarians. The Japanese had a much better Navy than the Italians but a much poorer Army. All of them were poorly equipped. The biggest problem all the Axis powers had was that they were allies with the Germans instead of the Americans. The Americans could not only nearly fully motorize their own army but contribute substantially to the motorization of the British, French and Russian Armies and - supply them with fuel. The Germans weren't capable of motorizing even a majority of their own Army - much less all of it - and did in fact have to de-motorize units as the war went on because of a lack of equipment and fuel. It's not like the Germans ever gave their allies anything - it's just that in comparison with what the Americans gave their allies - it really wasn't much at all. The thing is - none of the Axis Nations was ever prepared for WWII and none of them should have engaged in it. Of chief importance was the fact that not one of them had anything like enough oil to be going to war with anybody like who they did go to war with. The other thing is - that none of the Axis Powers was able to replace their losses. As the war progressed their enemies got stronger and they got weaker. While there was some real competence exhibited by some of the Axis Militaries much of their success was due as much to political bungling by their opponents as it was to their own prowess. In the West - the Belgians acted like utter imbeciles. The Dutch had some reason to believe that they could sit out WWII since they had been neutral in WWI but EVERYONE knew that the Germans were going to go through Belgium because they HAD gone through Belgium in WWI. For the Belgians to not beg the British and the French to come into their country to defend it the moment the Germans went into Poland was the height of stupidity. And yet, even after a lost German communications air craft came down in Belgium WITH the plans to attack Belgium - while they did show the plans to the British and the French they still idiotically clung to their neutrality. May 1940 could have been vastly different if there had been a line of French Infantry Corps going through the Ardennes instead of almost nobody. Once the British were by themselves and the Germans controlled the continent - then - until the Germans threw it all away in 1941 they were winning the war. So ... here's Italy, trying to play technological catch up and not having the ability to do it. Their stuff ... "wasn't that bad" ... but it was never the equal of the people they were fighting. They were always ... just a little bit behind. They improved - but by the time their improvements were deployed - they had become obsolete relative to others and the Italians were still behind the curve. As with the other Axis nations, after Taranto - the Italian Navy was never able to recover. Not having Naval Radar was a decisive disadvantage. Not to mention not having sonar!!!!! I had no idea about that! Hydrophones? My God ... As to not having Aircraft Carriers, the problem with the Italian Air Force's idea about all those bases it had - was that - Army/Navy Air Cooperation - NEVER worked. Ask Force Z. The British had fighter planes to try and protect Force Z from the unescorted bombers that sank the Prince of Wales and the Repulse - but - they weren't where they were needed when they were needed. A force that might suffer enemy air attack MUST have a Combat Air Patrol above it at all times. It also must have reinforcements for that CAP that can immediately launch and they MUST launch from a base that is WITH the ships about to be attacked - NOT some distance away. Even if they get the word immediately, scramble and launch - they'll never get there before the attack is over and the damage done. As to a land based CAP? While they may be able to reach the ships they are supposed to defend ... assuming they can find them ... they are going to spend the majority of their time in transit - rather than on patrol. The British, American and Japanese Navies knew that - the Italians didn't. As to Force Z not having air cover ... well ... it might have if the ship hadn't run aground ... but ... they were promised land based air cover ... As with the other Axis nations - the soldiers and sailors of Italy should be respected for doing what they could with what they had. .
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  342.  @Charlesputnam-bn9zy  Whatever. I just don't like to leave bad data behind - so I fix it. .
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  343.  @Charlesputnam-bn9zy  Eh ... If I've made an error - I want to correct it so I don't pass on bad data to someone else. So - I try not to leave that bad data laying about - and thus I edit my posts. .
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  344.  @Charlesputnam-bn9zy  The thing is - people would have to read and remember all the other comments to note that you'd been corrected. What I do ... is to edit my post ... noting that I had been corrected IN that post. That way - anyone seeing the post that caused the correction - would know that I'd been in error and see the correct information. .
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  345. Yes. Throughout the war the citizens of some of these nations fought fiercely, tenaciously and selflessly against the Axis on the land, the sea and in the air. Sadly ... for some of these people ... after the war - they went home to nations occupied now by the Communists and not as heroes ... And yes ... the Free French forces ... pretty much cooperated with the allies when they felt like it ... and not when they didn't. The Americans, who had equipped their ground forces and in whose area they operated ... after initially tearing their hair out some, gave up trying to direct them and just let them do whatever they wanted, with the faint hope that they would tell the Americans what it was. This continued after the war with France (a nuclear power) "cooperating" with NATO (when it felt like it) but not committed to it. This is mixed with some very sincere gratitude to the Allies for liberating their nation on the part of many French individuals - which - considering the large number of French civilians killed by Allied Bombing - is something. At the time of the Movie - The Longest Day - the theme song from that movie was #1 on the French charts. .
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  346. ​ @Akm72  If you call them anything other than Battle Cruisers no one is going to have any idea what that means. The most USEFUL term - is to call them Battle Cruisers. The term that is least useful is Large Cruiser - as - what the hell is a "Large" cruiser? Large? Larger than what? If you look at the development of the "cruisers" one class was typically "larger" than the one before it. Heavy Cruisers were generally "larger" than Light Cruisers. Was a "large" cruiser bigger or smaller than a "heavy" cruiser? How would anyone know? None of these terms is really hard and fast. Some ships classified as "light" cruisers were little more than "large" destroyers - others were of a similar tonnage to "heavy" cruisers but with six inch as opposed to eight inch guns. Then you had those Atlanta Class cruisers which were really AA Cruisers but used right along side the other light and heavy cruisers. So it's not like you can't have ambiguous terms. As I tried to point out before - if you want to start dividing up ship classes into more and more arbitrary classes - you may as well just refer to ships by the name of their ship class. Are there actually ANY other ships that would go in the "Large Cruiser" class? If not - then why not just use the term Alaska Class? Anything other than the name of the ship class - is going to be a generalized term. So making all these little arbitrary distinctions between generalized terms - is pointless. You have a General Term such as Battleship or Cruiser or Destroyer that something fits in - and then you have the name of the ship class - and finally the name of the ship. Eh ... Oh ... and why would the American Navy call them Large Cruisers? Because the term Battle Cruiser isn't bureaucratic enough .... The term Battle Cruiser conjures up images of Fast (!), Powerful (!) ships sweeping across storm tossed seas with a big bone in their teeth, turrets blazing with fire from their large caliber guns as they chase down a smaller ship or flee from a larger one (!!!!). Bureaucrats hate things like that. .
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  347. OK ... We have a good idea what a Battleship is. We have a good idea what a Cruiser is. Battle Cruisers are anything in between. Does this make for a very diverse class of ships? Yes it does - but so what? You could just call each of these ships by the name of their class if you really wanted to be specific about what they were like but why not just lump them all together? Battle Cruisers could be defined as "Ships larger than a Cruiser but smaller than a Battleship - that were designed for various purposes they were not in fact used for." . . .
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  348. Yeah ... the sound is pretty bad. Did you consider dubbing it? .
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  349. Thanks guys. That was fascinating. .
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  350.  @sadwingsraging3044  I was already at the point where some rooms were ... approaching their cubic capacity full of stuff ... so this is all just more of it. I have purged my stacks a few times though. I gave a lot of books to a local library once and I had worked with some of the crew on a ship that was deploying - so - I gave them several Xerox Paper Boxes worth of Paper Backs. That's just as well though as those things yellow really badly. One Damned Island After Another is available but the price fluctuates drastically. Nothing cheap on Amazon - but not to bad on e-bay. As to electronic books ... not for me. I like to be able read hard copy. You're right about all the problems. One problem a lot of the world has now - is that a lot of it's archival records are stored electronically on media where there just aren't that many things able to read it - so while you can probably still get at most of it ... if you really want to ... it won't be easy. I was always impressed by the technology of the spinning disks Rod Taylor was able to use in The Time Machine . What a clever way to access the data with no dependence on a "reader" of any kind. The Talking Rings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NRMYUpgyJ8 .
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  351. IIRC - the full complement included the aircraft mounted on the catapults - which would be destroyed in heavy weather - so they didn't do that. .
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  352.  @mandogaming1313  Thanks, not familiar with that one. .
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  353. Thanks. That was interesting. As to the destruction of the Spanish Armada - that was because of a miscalculation by the Spanish of currents in the North Atlantic. The Armada took some damage from the British during it's run up the channel - but - then they panicked because of the fire ship attack. They couldn't turn back and anchor again because they had cut their anchors in their hurry to get away. Now here - the winds caused a problem in that the couldn't just sail back down the channel. So - what they thought they'd do - was sail up through the North Sea, around the British Isles into the North Atlantic - and then back south to Spain. Their problem was that when they made their turn in the North Atlantic they hadn't gone out as far into it as they thought they had - because of the current - so that they were to close to the coast of Scotland. A storm pushed them INTO that coast and a lot of them foundered on the rocks, those men who survived being killed or captured by locals ashore. Some of the ships made it back and there was a determination by the Spanish King to try it again - but - with one thing and another - it didn't happen. .
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  354. As to the pronunciation of the word Ajax ... If you look at any of the older languages and their pronunciation - even "Old English" is pronounced nothing like "English" is pronounced today. And - throughout today's languages there are some letters which are just not pronounced the same way in different languages. In German the letter J is mostly pronounced the way the English would use the letter Y - but sometimes as "Ai". In English the letter J is pronounced as "Juh" and in Spanish J is pronounced "Hay". Now - for example - if you were speaking German - you would pronounce Jaeger - "Yaeger" (which is in fact the English spelling used by such as Chuck). So - if you're speaking a language such as German - then it may well be pronounced "Ai-axe" but if you're speaking English - it is more likely to be pronounced "Ay-jacks". I knew a German Girl in college whose name was Maj which she pronounced "Mai". She really hated it when people would read her name - and call her "Majuh". If you are speaking Spanish - and call out to someone named Jesus - you will be saying "Hay-sus" because that is the Spanish pronunciation of the letter J. If you are speaking English and pronounce it "Ai-axe" then - (almost) no one is going to have any idea what you are talking about. .
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  355. Those Yorktowns were tough ships. CV-5 survived Coral Sea and would have survived Midway if a submarine hadn't gotten her. Hornet might have survived as well - if we had won that battle too (assuming an absence of Japanese submarines) - but as we had lost it we had the ignominy of having one of our carriers torpedoed and sunk by enemy destroyers. And of course Enterprise survived a number of hits. Good thing for the CV-8's reputation that she launched the Doolittle raid and was immortalized because of Torpedo 8. How much of that could be put at the door of being rushed into service I can't say. Maybe if she'd had more time to work up her crew and air group she'd have done better. Perhaps her air group commander would have been relieved ... .
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  356.  @theswordguy5269  Sources? .
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  357. This is a link to a very, very detailed set of videos on the Wasp. Sort of the opposite of the five minute guide. This is the first of seven videos on the Wasp which go from it's construction to it's commissioning. USS WASP (CV-7) Guided Tour 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAhuuoeE1HQ This is the guys Channel The Warshipologist https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOgFDI_31P4Wuv8MVJQLtwA/featured .
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  358. Thank you! That was excellent. .
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  359.  @ironmantooltime  A few things. The Repulse and Prince of Wales were supposed to have an aircraft carrier with them - but it ran aground ... They were supposed to have air cover from the RAF but ... that never really works ... Here - though - all the battleships that had been sunk by aircraft - had been at anchor - so they still didn't know that aircraft could sink fully alert, maneuvering battleships. The other thing was there - was that the Japanese had like 40 aircraft. The original plan for Gallipoli wasn't that bad and might have worked. They were going to have the Army land at the top of the Peninsula, then the Navy would use battleships they were already going to scrap to force the straits. The idea - was that if they could put a battleship a hundred yards off the coast of the Turkish Capitol - it might surrender. But - the Army didn't want to do it. So the Navy tried to force the straits by themselves - but - the mine sweepers they had had been civilian boats before hand that still had their civilian crews. The moment they took fire - the mine sweepers fled. The Navy was making arrangements to crew the mine sweepers with Navy crews - but - then the Army got pressured into participating. At that point - the Navy's plan - which could have worked with Navy Personnel in the mine sweepers (none of their crews had been killed) was abandoned to support the Army. The Problem was - that those nice beaches at the top of the Peninsula were now heavily guarded - so - the Army elected to land at the bottom of the Peninsula - and fight their way up it ... And we all know how that worked out ... The odd thing here - is that the Navy Plan - still could have worked. Churchill DID have a lot of squirrely ideas but people were able to talk him out of most of them (which is more than can be said for Hitler). .
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  360. Prince of Wales and Repulse were supposed to have a carrier with them - but it ran aground ... didn't make the trip and wasn't replaced. So - the ships were dependent on Land Based Air - and that just never seems to work - does it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Indomitable_(92) .
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  361. Oh the joys of being caught in a time of transition ... .
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  362. I'll do that! .
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  363. Thanks. I've done extensive reading on this campaign and you had a lot of details I was unaware of. Good job. It can't be emphasized strongly enough how much peace time standards and attitudes hurt the USN at the beginning of WWII. Of course - such incidents as Kasserine Pass show - this attitude was not confined to the Navy. There were a lot of people who simply didn't cut it and had to be replaced. Mikawa should of course have gone after the transports - but - at this point in the war it can be understood that his attitude towards preserving ships and men that could not be replaced was justified as well. Here - the ingrained idea that they had to preserve their ships - caused the failure of the Japanese at Leyte Gulf - when Kurita preserved his ships - to no purpose what so ever. The Americans learned, promoted people who performed, got in the habit of using their technical advantages over the Japanese - such as radar - and thanks to a pre-war surge in American Ship Building - were able to replace all their losses and more. This series of engagements were WWII for the Japanese. Here - in 1942 - they were able to compete with the Americans and win. After that - no. The reasons it had been suicide to attack the Americans - as they knew - came to bear and they were doing nothing but trying to stave off the inevitable. .
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  364. One thing - it is my understanding that a B-17 also filed a report that wasn't relayed on the Japanese ships as they came down the slot. .
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  365. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! .
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  366. I remember a lot of comments in the Dutch version of this video about how foolish such a plan was. In the light of what happened it doesn't seem that useful to develop 3 such Battle Cruisers but - if you think about it in other terms (not dependent on 20/20 foresight) it makes more sense. IF you look at is as The European Colonial Powers Against the Japanese - Holland contributing 3 capital ships to safeguard their Colonies - in conjunction with ships from France, Great Britain and the USA - it makes a lot more sense. The Dutch just don't seem to be taking into consideration the possibility that the people they were about to buy all those parts from would invade and occupy their country. Now - one thing about Holland here - is that the Dutch sat out WWI as a Neutral Power - so - they might be forgiven for thinking that in the event of another war - they could sit that one out too. They also might be forgiven for not realizing that not only themselves but Belgium, France, Norway and Denmark would also be invaded and occupied. Additionally they also didn't anticipate that the US Pacific Fleet would have a good bit of it's tonnage sunk at anchor at Pearl Harbor. And finally - they - like a number of other nations - failed to anticipate the full degree to which aircraft would supplant surface ships as the prime determiners of Naval Combat. But - looking on the bright side - at least they hadn't given all that money to the Germans before all this happened. .
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  367.  @TTTT-oc4eb  Bismarck was bigger but she also had much bigger engines thus having more power that could be put to her screws. If there were other factors - why hasn't someone in all this time mentioned them? The thing that IS mentioned is the fact that she had 3 screws. I am hardly the only one to notice this and while YOU may not think it mattered - there are a LOT of other people who did - such as that British Naval Officer who made that comment about the Germans building a 3 screw ship. With a 3 screw ship - the center screw contributes NOTHING to maneuvering the ship - and you have ONE prop to port and ONE prop to starboard. With a 4 screw ships - you have TWO props to port and TWO props to starboard. That is TWICE the propulsive force on each side of the ship that can be employed in maneuvering it. What I do know - is that trying to steer with their propellors - WAS - something I am sure Tirpitz and I assume Bismarck tried to do during trials. If it wasn't something they cared about doing - they wouldn't have had that in the trials. I assume that the did TRY and do it. Bismarck WAS sunk because she couldn't steer. We will never know HOW much difference it would have made because she didn't have 4 screws. IF she had had 4 props and still couldn't steer THEN we would know that trying to steer with her engines was something that didn't work. But since she did not have 4 screws - we can't ever know exactly what would have happened if she had. It would seem to be logical - the reason (almost) everyone thinks of it - that IF she had had 4 screws - it would have made SOME difference. No one really disputes the fact that it would have made SOME difference - the only question - is if it would have made ENOUGH difference for her to be headed towards France instead of towards the British Fleet. As to using the propellers to steer a ship - this is something that was commonly done - even with the rudder, especially in port. It was a common place method of maneuvering the ship. You have to have some water flow past the rudders for them to have any effect - but - if a ship is sitting still - and you wish to change her facing - you CAN do that with the propellers alone by backing one side awhile the other side pushes forward. Aircraft Carriers at one point in time - would lash their propeller driven aircraft to the flight deck - and then rev their engines to help maneuver the ship. There is an example of them doing that in the movie The Bridges At To-ko-ri . If they could help maneuver an aircraft carrier with the props of it's aircraft - I think they just might be able to help maneuver it with it's engines. My expectation would be - that in pulling the aircraft carrier up to the pier - they were using whatever they thought they needed - including of course tug boats to do that. .
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  368. Eh ... I don't know where you got your attitude that going from 3 screws to 4 might not have made any difference. Marblehead - despite have her 4 screws fairly close together WAS able to steer the ship once the Rudder was centered through the cross currents of a narrow channel and a defensive mine field when her tow line snapped. Yes - she had some trouble doing it - they have rudders for a reason - but she was able to do it. I read NOTHING indicating that she was helpless in any of these currents. Yes - her steering was somewhat erratic - but that is far from her being not able to steer at all. Then off Ceylon - they restored some use of her rudder and after that they were fine until they could get to South Africa. This ships primary method of steering until she reached Simonstown - was with her engines for 8,000 MILES!!!!! The fact that Bismarck was built with only 3 screws was a major flaw in her design. I am dumbfounded that you trivialize that. Her complete inability to steer with her engines was what caused her destruction. _"Leave it to the Germans to build a 3 screw ship." - was said by one British Naval Officer. Here - we have the difference between 20/20 Hindsight and Competent Naval Design. Modifying her Anti-aircraft batteries is - 20/20 Hindsight. At the time of her loss - most nations had little understanding of the importance of aircraft in Naval Warfare - so that even Prince of Wales AA Battery was relatively ineffective. So - yes - YOU with all this time to study the alternatives and the knowledge of what happened to Bismarck and how ineffective her AA was - and - how it might be fixed - are doing something the people at the time could not have foreseen. The same can be said for "All or nothing" design. Not everyone was doing that. These are all things hobbyists have little computer programs to play with that were not available to people in the early 20th Century. Having 3 SCREWS??? That is pure incompetent design. The British and the Americans were the worlds leading Naval Powers - and they didn't do that with Capital Ships. This is something the Germans SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!!!!! . Of course - the idea that they would take the sole escort Bismarck had and send it off to do Commerce Raiding instead of Escorting Bismarck home is pure idiocy. If Prinz Eugen had been there she could have taken Bismarck in tow and at least kept her heading in the right direction. One of the things about the British - is that they had destroyers with their Capital ships but the Germans didn't do that either. .
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  369. Just thought I'd mention, today as this was starting - I was thinking how much I loved the video of those old Battleships. .
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  370. One thing about the American Navy - is that it has seen a lot of use during and since WWII. Here - there were lessons learned - and lessons forgotten ... One of the things that happened was the lesson about EVERYONE knowing how to be a firefighter. There's film footage of John McCain walking down the nose of his A-4 Skyhawk so he could jump off at a point that didn't have a fire underneath it - and the Fire Fighter in the silver suit that helps him off the deck - then goes back to fight the fire. Then the first bombs went off - and this damage control party was wiped out. Of course - people immediately pitched in to fight the fires - but they did not know what they were doing. One of the things about fighting fires on ships - is that you can use Foam or you can Use Water - but - NEVER both. If you use Water and Foam - the Water will wash the Foam away and it can't do it's job of smothering the fire. These replacement fire fighters didn't know that and were using Water and Foam at the same time. After that - the Navy went back to making sure EVERYONE knew how to be a fire fighter. The other thing they did - was to ban beards. At one point the Navy, trying to recruit people from the hippie generation - had allowed sailors to have beards. During these Vietnam Carrier Fires - those beards interfered with the sealing of the Oxygen Masks they had - and so ... no more beards. Thus - there is the learning of things - and then the preservation of that learning and then the re-learning of things that had been forgotten. This is a problem with all militaries that experience a long period of peace. .
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  371. Yes. Outstanding. One thing I emphasize about the Americans as opposed to most other nations - is Henry Ford's Model T. The thing was with this early mass produced car - was that there were enough of these things scattered about during the 1930's that a large chunk of American Youth - had one - or had a friend who had one. Their parents or grand parents had gotten something better - and passed this old thing down to boys who were just ecstatic to have their own car (or work on their friends). Because of that - you had all these teenagers - that COULD work on their own (or their friends) car. What that meant - was that the young American man going into the armed forces who DIDN'T know something about working on machinery - was rare. Other countries, especially those that used a lot of animal transport ... did NOT have that almost universal level of mechanical ability. There's a scene in the movie The Sand Pebbles where Steve McQueen is teaching Mako - not just HOW to operate a steam engine - but WHY it works. There was (without any racist intent) a lot of "monkey see - monkey do" on the part of people raised as peasants using animal transport, in their armed forces training. They were taught HOW to operate a piece of machinery - but they maybe didn't know WHY it worked. As mentioned in the video - there certainly were people who DID understand HOW and WHY it worked - but there were also varying levels of former peasants - who didn't. The thing with a kid who may not have had a car of his own - but helped his buddy out with his - was that he wasn't AFRAID of it - or of breaking it. You didn't want to break a machine - but if you did - it was just one more thing to fix. You compare that to a former peasant who if they are not terrified of the machine itself are horrified at the idea that they might do something wrong - and break it. Indications of the level of youthful mechanical ability might be gleaned from the fact that only the UK & US had fully motorized armies. Everyone else was still using animal transport to a greater or lesser extent. An odd comment on today's youth - is that because of the insurance costs for young male drivers, the fact that many schools have dropped such electives from their curriculum as Band and - Auto Shop - as well as the increasing levels of complexity of modern cars - is that you have fewer and fewer young men who know how to work on cars. When I was young - we ALL did - today ... not so much ... What that will say for future young males going into the military and their adaptability to what they encounter ... I can't say.  .
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  372. The problem with building ships - is if you've really screwed up - you may not have any idea until it's actually done - and you try to used it. Then ... ships being somewhat expensive ... .
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  373. Ya know ... if you wrote a novel and just made all this stuff up - no one would believe it ... .
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  374. The OP's post here also occurred immediately to me ... .
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  375. Those carriers are actually pretty fast. They list their speed as 33 knots but ... that's a lie ... Still - the Coral Sea was a WWII ship ... so yeah ... they might have been able to pass her. Of course - the idea that the US ships were increasing speed to lose the RN Cruiser ... may have been more in the minds of it's crew than their real reason for doing so. It's not like they weren't going anywhere where they'd prefer not to be late ... For that - you'd have to ask the Captain of the Coral Sea at the time. But then - having someone tailing them was hardly anything not done on other occasions. The Russians used to routinely assign a warship to just follow the American Carriers around. I knew a guy who served on one of the later models of CV's. He told this story about how - something happened somewhere and they wanted his ship there lickity split. So they put the pedal to the metal and the Russian warship just gradually fell further and further behind. Some time after they arrived at their destinations the Russian showed up belching a lot of smoke that indicated something was wrong ... Eventually (according to this story ... ) the Russian had to be towed away. I'm not sure a WWII RN Cruiser would have been able to keep up with that ship either ... .
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  376.  @micnorton9487  He said "Shipping" you twit. That means Merchant Ships. Yes - the Japanese sent their submarines after WARSHIPS - not Merchant Ships. That was their mistake. Yes - they got a few Warships - but - they made no impact on logistics which is what submarines are good at. Look at what the Germans were trying to do in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Germans knew how to use their Submarines - the Japanese didn't. .
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  377. HMS Glorious on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Glorious Captain of the Glorious at the time of her loss https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_D%27Oyly-Hughes Yes. The man seems to have been a poor choice for this Command. .
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  378. Hunh. I was aware that India had been conquered by the East India Company using native troops led by British Officers - but - I was not aware that the East India Company had ships ... And yes ... the British Government had mixed feelings about this whole colonization thing ... sounded like the merchants were going to get themselves into trouble with the natives - and then expect the Empire to come bail them out ... and pay for it ... Trouble was ... all those rich Company Men had relationships with men of the aristocracy in Parliament and these people very much wanted the Empire involved in these things ... and ... paying for it ... .
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  379. There's this thing in Historical Novels where you take a fictional character - and have them ... just happen ... to be at all these historical events to tell the tale from their POV ... If anyone were thinking of writing a Historical Novel about the Japanese Navy in WWII, Yukikaze would seem to be the ideal vessel to carry such a character about. For anyone interested in such a series on the American West - those written by Terry C. Johnston https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_C._Johnston are excellent. .
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  380.  @sirboomsalot4902  Ha! Ha! A "Good Will Present" !!! Ha! Ha! Ha! .
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  381. Thanks. Most interesting details added to what I knew. .
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  382.  @jarmokankaanpaa6528  Thanks! I wondered about that. .
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  383. Yeah ... 1942 - the Japanese were still a deadly enemy 1943 - the Japanese were on their back foot 1944 - the slaughter had begun .
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  384. Very well done. .
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  385. History consists of a chain of events - which - if you tried to make them up - no one would believe. .
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  386. Joe Kennedy Jr. flew Patrol Bombers in the Caribbean before going to Britain - where he was killed. .
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  387.  @robertmanfredthurrigl9424  Now - why the damn hell would that have kept it? They were awash in ships. Look at all the US ships they nuked during those tests. If they hadn't nuked it, it just would have been scrapped, just like all the US ships they scrapped. If they had kept it - what would they have done with it? They didn't have any need for a German Cruiser. We didn't need most of the US Cruisers we had. If they were going to keep another ship - it would have been a US ship that they could get spare parts for and that we had people trained to operate. "Over engineered and to complicated" - like it would have been to hard for us to operate - bull shit. It was just different. Why keep an odd ship like that, that was different than all the other ships you had? Why? Why keep it? Why nuke it? Because it WAS engineered differently, because it WAS built differently. By nuking it - and such as the Nagato - they could see how nukes behaved against ships of Japanese and German construction. THAT was THE most useful thing they could do with it. Don't be a twit. .
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  388.  @jamesberlo4298  Yeah. Disgrace is right. The Battleships were different being named by States so the people of a particular state would get behind preserving their ship - but the only ones of those preserved - were those named after States with a Sea Coast. I remember when I was in 4th Grade in North Carolina putting my dimes in a can to buy the ship. .
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  389.  @thewaywardwind548  Uh ... DNA determines what bullfrogs can do and what they can't but the guys who designed the Bismarck could have fucking given her 4 screws. .
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  390. Prinz Eugen should have stayed with the Bismarck as an escort. If she had - she might have been able to assist it when it took that steering hit. Of course ... if the Bismarck had had 4 screws instead of 3 - she might not have needed that assistance - or at least could have been assured of making port had it been available. The German Submarine arm knew what it was doing but their surface force had little idea. .
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  391. Outstanding. For those not in the know - this - is EXPECTED behavior for a Naval Vessel, especially the smaller ones and there are any number of historical examples - as mentioned in the comments below - doing exactly this IRL (though - not against Martians).  .
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  392.  @LordElpme  Right you are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Spitfire_(1912) .
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  393.  @a_Minion_of_Soros  In deference to food products ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%BCr%C3%BCm HMS Barham Blowing up (colorized in 4k ...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTZ-R4QM1E .
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  394. The effectiveness of bombardment in general is uncertain. Sometimes it does more than others. If you look at WWI and other cases where the enemy is in bunkers ... bombardment is much less effective than if your rounds are dropped on an enemy advancing out in the open or who at least is not in bunkers. If you are engaging enemy gun positions that you have identified - it can have a very good effect in taking those guns out - and - as mentioned in this video - occupying the enemy gunners with the ships shooting at them rather than the troops landing on the beach. One thing though - is that communications can suffer from enemy fire. In the landings on Wake, Tarawa and Corregidor enemy action indirectly led to a loss of communications resulting in the defenders not being able to respond with their full force, doing so slowly or determining that things were worse than they were (not in that order). .
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  395. This is actually similar in some respects to what happened to the Spanish Armada. They got attacked by some fire ships, panicked and took off. Given the wind at the time they thought what they were going to do - was to sail up North of the British Isles and then come down West of them until they were clear before sailing home. What they didn't realize - was that there was a stronger current coming from the west than they thought there was - and it pushed them into the land where a lot of them were wrecked. THAT was the disaster that befell this fleet. The British warships didn't hurt them badly, the fire ships didn't hurt them badly but they were a lot farther east than they thought they were when they came down - and that is what got them. .
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  396.  @conservativemike3768  I had a project where we were doing Optical Character Recognition 25 years ago or so ... and the thing with that - is that you have to have some one read the original to make sure the OCR software did it right - which it will NOT do 100%. Things might be - I would assume they are - much better now - but still - you need to have someone read the output and compare it to the original. I would simply never trust the computers to do it right. Here - one problem - is that you actually need to have this done several times to make sure you caught all the errors the Humans Made ... AND this was all done in English ... what you really would need to do that was a Japanese Company that Specialized in OCR. There may well be commercial Japanese Companies doing this - but - that will be expensive. The American Contractor I worked with doing OCR was. This is a chronic problem for all English Language Historians and one Parshall and Tully comment on in their work. One problem they had - was in trusting the Japanese version of things too much. .
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  397. Yeah. I was a civilian technician on a couple of ships for a short period of time and ... it's hard to believe that those giant pieces of machinery - are gone now ... .
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  398. Thanks. That was interesting. .
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  399.  @simonpitt8145  Yes. .
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  400. Hal Lawrence (and propaganda poster) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Lawrence .
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  401.  @alpearson9158  The YouTube Search I did had numerous listings for The Cruel Sea - Full Movie But none of them had the full movie ... This original trailer was the best I could find. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joUDAD3GB3g If you watch the movie or read the book ... there is more to these scenes ... some of which is very ... very sad ... The best thing about the trailer - is Jack Hawkins face as he talks about the war. .
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  402. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_South_Dakota_(BB-57)
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  403. Yeah ... those Tribals really saw some shit ... Also - one of the better naming conventions. I use that all the time for destroyers in computer games. .
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  404. Very well done. Thank you. His daughter said something to the effect that her father didn't hate the British - he hated everybody. .
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  405. Yes. They were both Fast Battleships. And yes - for Historical Purposes - if someone wants to refer to The Hood as a Battle Cruiser - that's fine. The thing that really hurts Hood in trying to refer to it as a Fast Battleship - is that it blew up. By and large - you don't think of Battleships as blowing up. Of course - Arizona and Barham blew up ... as did Mutsu ... though ... that wasn't in combat ... Now - while Barham blew up as she was rolling over while sinking - Arizona was hit by a bomb converted from an Armor Piercing Naval Shell ... so ... to a large degree - Arizona was sunk about the same way The Hood was sunk - and - Arizona WAS a battleship. The Hood really should not have blown up - and she stood a very good chance of taking on Bismarck - but ... she did. One of the things about Naval Warfare - is that Critical Hits count for a lot. .
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  406. Thanks. .
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  407. Jack Kennedy's PT-109 was sunk during the 2nd Battle of Blackett Strait https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrol_torpedo_boat_PT-109#Battle_of_Blackett_Strait This Battle pitted 15 American PT Boats against 4 Japanese Destroyers and some Float Planes. Japanese Float Planes could - as mentioned - see the luminous marine life churned up by the PT Boats Wakes - which pointed right at them. These Float Planes were a real danger to the PT Boats and some of them were lost to them - though apparently not in this battle. Now - the thing here is that Destroyers were originally called Torpedo Boat Destroyers so the Americans were engaging a ship type that had been originally designed to sink the types of craft they were using. The night was pitch black and only some of the PT Boats had radar. The PT Boats - did not do well. Their torpedoes were horrible - as most American Early War Torpedoes were and despite having 60 Torpedoes - the got no hits on any of the Japanese ships with the 24 they fired. The speed and maneuverability of the PT Boats (I believe) kept all of them but one from being lost. That one boat - was the 109. The leader of the Division the 109 was in - had radar the 109 lacked - and had seen targets on it which it attacked - but Kennedy, not receiving orders to leave his station didn't and was then alone. The American Tactical Control of their Boats wasn't the greatest in this battle. One reason for that - was that battles like this were exceedingly rare. This was the largest fight they were in during the Solomon's Campaign. The name of the PT boats stood for Patrol - Torpedo - and they did a LOT more patrolling than they did Torpedoing. One of the Japanese Destroyers - after completing it's mission - was returning - when (Japanese Night Vision being excellent) they spotted the 109 and intentionally rammed it. The Crew of the 109 had about 10 seconds after they spotted the Destroyer before it ran them down. Because of Henderson Field Aircraft - the Japanese couldn't get their Cargo Ships - to Guadalcanal. They tried. They tried hard as the Japanese on Guadalcanal had come to call it "Starvation Island" but - they couldn't do it - and most of the Transports that tried - were sunk. So - what the Japanese Army had decided to do - was use barges. Small boats - the barges could sail at night - and hide during the day - camouflaged next to small islands. Aircraft from Henderson looked for these barges during the day. The PT Boats - would go looking for them - by day and night. Kennedy's Second Command - the 59 Boat - had all it's torpedoes and depth charges taken off - and was seriously up gunned to operate against barges - with it would seem - some success. .
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  408. Very interesting - and that's a great thumbnail pic with all the guns elevated to the same degree. .
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  409.  @WandererRTF  OK. That's interesting. Here's what I found on that: Here's the Wikipedia page on the author in Finnish: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tauno_Niklander Here's the Google Search I did that produced the above page WITH the option of translating it: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Tauno+Niklander I tried to link directly to the translation but ... it just gave the previous link - so - if someone wants to read this in English - they'll have to use THIS link and select the option on their own to translate it. I did note however that as with a lot of Google Translations - there is something to be said for someone (such as yourself) who actually speaks the language doing the translating rather than a bot. Here - they translate Armor as "tank" - and thus they translate the title as "Our Tankers" - which would be in error since there are ships which are tankers and which are not what the book is referring too. This search turns up some other references to the book - but - at least one of them gave me a Warning that the page was being used to trick people ... so ... pursue things like that with care ... I was not able to find much on the book itself - Amazon wouldn't link to it. Here's the rather sparse list under Google Books - perhaps you'd like to be the first to write a review? https://books.google.com/books/about/Meid%C3%A4n_panssarilaivamme.html?id=XuihAAAACAAJ I was able to find two pictures of the Cover though - here's one of those: https://asiakas.kotisivukone.com/files/kampinkirjakauppa.kotisivukone.com/kuvat/tuotekuvat/historia/sotahistoria/merisota/3619.jpg And thus - I have failed anyone wishing to purchase a copy of the book for themselves. Sometimes I can find Amazon links or others but not this time. Sorry about that. As to the Finnish Coast Guard - Apparently that has been combined with the Finnish Border Guard https://web.archive.org/web/20070927192652/http://www.raja.fi/rvl/home.nsf/pages/index_eng In defense of my statement though - I would submit - that while what you have set forward as the Theory behind these ships - that was not the way they were actually used. They seem to have actually been used more as general Naval Vessels - and that was more in line with what I was saying - though on reflection I could have done a better job of saying it. As to Piracy - my remarks were not specific to Finland - as you will note the reference to land locked nations that still had piracy on their rivers. In most cases there aren't actually any ships specifically designed to fight piracy - so much as if there are incidents of it - whatever ships are available might be employed. If it were to seem that there was no piracy - it would be because it was on such a small scale as to not be noticed. Though - yes - the Patrols of the Finnish Border/Coast Guard would be more involved in suppressing criminal activity off the Finnish Coast - such as smuggling. During Prohibition in the United States and today with Drug Interdiction - it is our Coast Guard that does most of the maritime anti-smuggling and Drug Enforcement work - though they would call on a Naval vessel if one were available and they NEEDED one. The Anti-Piracy work the US Navy does - is more in places such as off Somalia than off our own coast - though we DO have Pirates off the Coasts of Southern California & Mexico - for one. I know people who have been robbed by them and were happy to have not been killed. It is however the kind of thing I mentioned - opportunistic fishermen - who see a situation where they can rob some one on such as a family outing - so they do. The ships that would normally be patrolling the area would be Coast Guard Vessels but - USN vessels could be called on. Piracy NEVER goes entirely away ... it is just suppressed to the point where such as the opportunistic fisherman ... don't see a lot of opportunities and aren't in the habit of it. Oh - and not to forget - thank you for your comments and knowledge here as I for one am now more knowledgeable on the subject than I was.  .
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  410.  @WandererRTF  Hmmm ... I don't have a source for my opinion. Do you have one for yours? .
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  411.  @flattblackcopper4558  Thanks. That's what it sounded like. Another name on a very long list ... God Bless His Soul and Comfort His Family. .
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  412. The Wikipedia page on HMS Royalist has some interesting comments on the history of the ship and it's times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Royalist_(89) .
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  413.  @Drachinifel  Just doesn't seem right w/o the old music. .
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  414. One thing that most of the Commanders managed to do - was have their aircraft find the Japanese where they actually were - rather than where the initial contact report had indicated they were going to be. By the fact that some of the Commanders did not manage to find the Japanese but did manage to put their fighter planes in the water - this was not a forgone conclusion. Here - one thing I have always not understood - was the role the radios on these aircraft did not play in letting everyone else know when and where they had actually found the enemy. I had assumed - that once one element of the attacking force had found the enemy - they would let everyone else know just exactly where they really were. I don't know how much if an of that happened. .
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  415. During WWII there were a number of Hunter Killer Anti-Submarine Warfare Carriers but they were much smaller ships. As the Essex class ships moved from being 1st line combat ships this gave those type of task forces much more substantial ships. Given the importance of rushing troops and supplies to Europe during WWIII - and the numbers of Soviet Submarines allocated to stop that - having such ships would seem a good thing. As these Essex Class ships were retired the Navy stopped calling it's Super Carriers CVA's and went back to calling them CV's as they began to carry a complement of ASW Aircraft and Helicopters in addition to their fighters and strike aircraft. .
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  416. On my second viewing here I realized you'd left out the Bunker Hill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bunker_Hill_(CV-17) which was used as an Electronics Test Platform anchored in San Diego Bay off the North Island Naval Air Station for a few years before being scrapped. .
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  417. Part II OK ... now to discuss how the way the Japanese did things impacted Nagumo's decision making when it came to launching his air strikes. Prudently - he wanted to have a reserve in case there were American ships there but - he also wanted to hit Midway as hard as he could. Now - how to do those two things? Well ... the Japanese plan was BASED on the idea that the Americans wouldn't know they were coming. Thus - he didn't need to take half his carrier divisions and hold them in reserve - but could launch a full strike from both divisions. That is what he did. Now - could he have kept one carrier in reserve - with aircraft sitting on it's flight deck - ready to launch against American Carriers if they were found? Well ... that would have broken up a Carrier Divisions aircraft - which was not the Japanese way of doing flight ops and - with a strike group on deck - they would be vulnerable to being hit by the Midway aircraft attacking - and - not able to launch - AND - recover the CAP. So he op's to have the second strike - from both carrier divisions equipped with anti-shipping weapons - torpedoes and AP Bomb's rather than HE Bombs and that is waiting for the order to launch if they find any American ships they want to attack. THEN - Midway is a tough nut to crack ... they haven't found any American Carriers yet ... and there is need for another strike on Midway - so he has the strike - from BOTH Carrier divisions - rearmed with HE Bombs. THEN - that late search aircraft from the Tone's report comes in - that they've spotted American ships. Now - Nagumo is in a quandary. The Plan - has just gone out the window - he has planes with the wrong weapons on them ready to launch - and a returning strike group he needs to land - and he's still getting attacked so he has to service his CAP. There are those who have said he should have sent his strike at the Americans no matter what they were armed with. HE would be very effective on the Wooden flight decks of those American Carriers. The thing is - sending aircraft to attack enemy warships with HE was NOT what the Japanese did - they sent them with torpedoes and AP. So - that is what he was going to do. But - by the time they were rearmed - he'd be dealing with his returning strike and have to land them. So - since Victory Disease told him that he couldn't lose - he opted to recover his first strike - then launch the aircraft reequipped with AP & Torpedoes. He just never got the chance because the American Dive Bombers showed up and ... we all know what happened there. The thing is here - that saying "Oh! Nagumo Should have done THIS!" or "Nagumo Should have done THAT!" doesn't take into account the mentality of the Japanese and the way they were trained to do things. So - saying things like - "well he should have put fighters on all those light carriers" and had them participate in defending the fleet - wasn't something the Japanese were going to do. The light carriers the Japanese had with them at Midway - were each assigned to one of the support groups. Midway was to be an amphibious invasion only AFTER which would they have to deal with American Warships. The air groups on these ships were fixed. They couldn't just snap their fingers and rearrange their fighter forces to put all fighters on these ships. Those other fighter aircraft - wherever they were already had a job doing whatever it was they were already assigned to. Besides Victory Disease told them they were going to win and The Plan - said the Americans weren't going to be waiting for them. Now - whether the Aleutians operation was to keep the Americans from launching attacks from the Aleutians against Japan, a diversion or both - it pretty much was a waste of resources - except for the aspect of things where there were Americans it kept busy dealing with it. But for Midway - they could have used those ships - and gone to the Aleutians later. But Victory Disease was telling them they didn't need to concentrate those ships at Midway - and The Plan said the Americans weren't going to be there anyway. The Shokaku - Zuikaku Carrier Division, that had fought at the Coral Sea - had the Shokaku damaged and the Zuikaku's air group shot up. If they'd been Americans - they'd have put the Shokaku or someone else's aircraft on the Zuikaku and could have had it at the battle. But - the Japanese operated in Carrier Divisions - and half that division wasn't going anywhere so they didn't send the other - the way the Americans did with the Yorktown and Saratoga's Air Group. Now - I should deal with the Americans here and if this was like a real balanced treatise I would but this is long enough so I'll just summarize them. The Americans started with a really, really big advantage. Then their air operations were (especially compared to the Japanese) a complete cluster fuck. But - they got lucky - the Enterprise and Yorktown dive bombers found the Japanese at the same time - with the Japanese CAP diverted - and the Japanese lost 3 carriers in just a few minutes. Never was a book better titled than Walter Lord's Incredible Victory. The point of all of this is - all this 20/20 hindsight - Monday Morning Quarterbacking - about the Japanese ignores the fact that the Japanese did what they did for reasons having to do with their doctrine, their training and the mentality of the day. Having Surprise on your side - makes a big, big difference. The other side has to adjust their thinking and hurry their decisions ... which if they aren't flexible in their thinking or ways of doing things - can be a problem. .
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  418. As to British Ship naming - I believe - that one factor there was that the British had a lot of ships and had to come up with a lot of names. .
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  419.  @ausintune9014  One thing about an enclose gun is that you don't have to deal with the weather. .
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  420. Yes! .
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  421. Thanks. Yes. There were a lot of small unit actions which took place where ships were sunk and people got killed. This again show German Strategic Stupidity. If they had no invaded Russia but gone after the Med instead - and were only at war with Britain - they could have had a lot better results getting materials from abroad. I was aware of their use of Blockade Runners but hadn't heard of any of the engagements. As for the Americans - pre-war hey had practiced Daylight Gunnery - and the Japanese practiced Night Actions. With Aircraft precluding most daylight surface engagements the Japanese were at an advantage. .
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  422. Yeah ... those 16" guns can really do a lot of damage ... .
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  423. Battle Cruisers ... You have general categories such as Destroyers, Cruisers, Battle Cruisers and Battleships. Then you hae Ship Classes such as the Scharnhorsts, the Alaskas and the Kongos. Battle Cruisers are anything between a Cruiser and a Battleship. It's a catch all category for ships that mostly appeared in very small numbers. Because these ships appear in very small numbers - taking their categories and trying to be more granular with them is a waste of time. Because there are so few ships of each of these types of Battle Cruisers - they are BEST dealt with by speaking about their Class if anyone wants to be more granular. Why call an Alaska a "Super Cruiser" when that tells you nothing. Just call them "Alaska's". That tells you all you need to know. What you have here - is a Sub-Category being created - and then ships being shoe horned into it. Do we really need yet another category here for such a small number of ships? A category so small that you're reaching out to other categories to draw ships into it? The Scharhorsts were certainly Battle Cruisers - but - they had 11" guns. The Repulse was certainly a Battle Cruiser but it had 15" guns. The Alaska's WERE certainly Battle Cruisers but they had 12" Guns. The Hood was certainly a Battle Cruiser - that fit into a One Ship Class. The Hood. Why try and create a special sub category for one ship? The Hood - tells you all you need to know. For other categories - like Destroyers and Cruisers - you got dozens if not hundreds of ships in the sub-categories for these ships of Destroyers, Destroyer Escorts, Light Cruisers and Heavy Cruisers. For Battleships, during WWII you had a wide range of ships - which had subcategories based on their age. WWI era, Inter-Wars era and WWII era battleships all of which could hurt each other even though the different subcategories had increasingly greater power. Different powers tended to develop different Battle Cruisers. The Germans all had 11" guns. They were supposed to get bigger ones but that didn't happen. The British Battle Cruisers were all WWI era ships with 15" guns. All the earlier non 15" gun WWI era British Battle Cruisers were gone and they stopped building them with The Hood. After Jutland the British didn't build any more.
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  424. Better Fate than Langley ... I suppose ... .
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  425. Yeah. I had a friend who was on the Gambier Bay when it was sunk off Samar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gambier_Bay I bought him this book but it wasn't as expensive then. https://www.amazon.com/Escort-Carrier-Gambier-Anatomy-Ship/dp/1557502358/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1543186348&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=The+Escort+Carrier+USS+Gambier+Bay .
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  426.  @steveconrad1525  Yes. You see this phenomena with any emerging technology. Look at all the Car Companies you had early on. As with Tanks and Planes - there are far, far fewer of those companies and their cars today than there once were. Computers would ... to a degree ... be the same way though there - what emerged was standards in hardware. In Software though - you really do see that. There were all these Software Companies that were "King of the Hill" for a while, made a mistake ... and were replaced. These were the major players though. There are still any number of minor players that pop up, try to survive and then ... mostly ... don't ... .
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  427.  @Shaker626  No. Not really. Just because a few things have been done doesn't mean that these things would be more important than the overt weapons we have. .
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  428. The thing about Modern Warfare - is that until there actually is a war - everyone is talking out their ass. No one has any idea how all this stuff is REALLY going to work. Thus - in the interwar years - you had all kinds of theories about tanks and planes and ships. Then you had the real war - and a lot of the things people thought were going to happen - didn't - and a lot of things they never expected - did. Every time they have a war - if there's something new about - it may make a difference and it may not. One example from WWII - was Radio Controlled Missiles. At first they had some real success and the Germans sank the Italian Battleship Roma when Italy switched sides. For a while there they did pretty well with the Fritz X - but then - the American Navy off Anzio - figured out how to jam it - and that was the end of that. Joe Kennedy took off a flying bomb that would be radio controlled attacking the target - they just didn't trust it enough to try and take off the heavy bomber with everything removed that could be spared - and it being stuffed to the gills with explosives. The problem was - there was a radio signal to detonate the aircraft - and - as soon as they armed the explosives and turned it on - it seems to have picked up a stray radio signal that set it off. In these two incidents they had two problems. In the first - the enemy was able to jam their signal so that they couldn't control the bomb any more. In the second - they couldn't isolate the device from stray radio signals that just happened to be on the same frequency. Here - they didn't anticipate what could happen - until they actually tried to do it - then it was "Ooops ..." This is true of everything - not just war. The thing about everything else - is that you don't always get people killed when you make a mistake ... though ... sometimes you do. .
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  429. If you look at the long time it takes to construct a ship like that - that is why I believe they are making a horrible mistake in scrapping those old super carriers. If we ever get in a serious war with Russia or China - we could lose carriers and they are not easy to replace. During the Cold War we had a somewhat sensible attitude towards our military - but since then - it's beginning to look more like the previous pre-war periods when the US didn't give a shit about anything but saving money and then it's service personnel paid in blood for it when a war did come. .
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  430. Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie https://www.amazon.com/Castles-Steel-Britain-Germany-Winning/dp/0345408780/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30PHXDGJCOB50&keywords=castles+of+steel+by+robert+k.+massie&qid=1578508367&s=books&sprefix=Castles+of+%2Cstripbooks%2C224&sr=1-1 is a history of the Naval War during WWI and has a number of chapters on what happened to some of the German Fleet, such as the German Far Eastern Fleet and the SMS Goeben. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Goeben .
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  431. And then ... the maritime technology of the Europeans got to the point where - if they really wanted to - they could sail anywhere in the world ... and they did. Some time after that - they ruled the world. .
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  432. Yeah. There were a number of air, land and sea developments at the end of the war that didn't much make it into service before it ended. Development continued to a degree - but not the headlong pursuit of new technology that had existed during the war. .
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  433. Thanks. When My Dad was stationed in New Hampshire, I went on one of these when I was about 8 years old. It looked pretty much like this. It was some kind of a Navy Day or something where they were letting civilians tour the ships. My Mom was not happy about having to climb down the ladder to get in the sub - in a dress. The crew was right there. They were friendly and somewhat amused by us. They had the sail of one sub as a memorial at one of the local sub bases. We saw the Thresher Launched and I knew a kid whose father was aboard as a technician when it sank. There were a lot of the people who lived in that area employed by the ship yard and the Navy. That loss hit them hard. I wasn't living there any more but one of my friends sent me a letter. One thing about that area in the 1950's was that WWII had only been over for about a dozen years and everyone there remembered it very well. When the movie Sink the Bismarck came out that was something that had been very real at the time too. It wasn't going to happen - but people who lived there were speculating on the Bismarck taking on our Coastal Artillery Batteries. People who live in areas like that - where they can look out their front door and see the Atlantic Ocean - have imaginations about what actually could happen - even if it wasn't ever going to. I mean - the US wasn't even in the War then but people will imagine all kinds of things. After all - this is something the Germans could have physically done - even if they weren't going to. There was a "disappearing" Costal Artillery Battery near our house - and this tower from the war of 1812. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Portsmouth_nh_martello.jpg That was our house in this picture. It was about 200 yards from the river on one side and another couple of hundred yards from the Atlantic on the other. You can imagine what people living there during WWII felt about German Submarines. It was really something for an 8 year old boy. Ships went up and out the Portsmouth River all the time - and we'd see WWII Attack Transports with all the little LCVP's training off the coast. Big and small Coast Guard Cutters. There was a light house off the coast that painted our house every night. Fog horns. The North East United States isn't drenched in History the way certain parts of Europe are - but - compared to most of the rest of the US - there's a lot of it. Just past our house was a Coast Guard Base that had been a British Base before the Revolutionary War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_William_and_Mary We used to go into that gun battery position and play. The guns were gone and no one was there - but my Father warned us about going into any rooms where we couldn't see - because there were Ammunition Hoists in the Fortifications from the Magazines down below. My parents were not happy about us playing around old fortifications like that but - kids do all kinds of things they aren't supposed to. I climbed the Water Tower at Camp Pendleton when I was six years old ... .
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  434. Eh ... one thing about this AA mania ... the USN & IJN carriers shot the shit out of each other in 1942 (not to mention Pearl Harbor) - and that did leave a lasting impression on the Americans. Then - in 1945 - came the Kamikaze's and they were really, really happy they had them. So - with the amount of air attacks they received - the idea that they couldn't have to many AA guns was entirely warranted. .
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  435. Well ... I had this big long thing written up ... but decided not to post it. What I will say - is that you don't know a damn thing about me - what I know - and how I know it. I just hope we don't ever find out just how right I am. .
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  436.  @gregorywright4918  About those carriers - that is what the bean counters would have you believe. It's like the LHD they just shit canned. They determined that it would take up production capacity from the ship yards that were building new ones and hence set back construction schedules - and - since we weren't at war - money was the only thing the bean counters cared about. The thing with those carriers is that if they were moth balled - and we needed them because we'd lost some - they could be brought back on line faster than building new ones regardless of what had to be done to them. If we were at war - and the issue was production capacity - then it would have been - add production capacity - which was NOT something that was going to be done for the LHD that caught fire in peace time. The thing was all those carriers were running when they were were decommissioned. They weren't decommissioning non-functional ships. So - they COULD be fixed well enough to serve better than no ship at all - which is what they'll have now. The real issue - is that it cost money to moth ball these ships as they were - and that is what the Bean Counters cared about. To a Bean Counter it's - why "waste" money mothballing a ship that's worn out? If we bring it back on line - how much longer can we use it before we have to do major rebuilds of it? This is non-economical. Any time you hear something from a bean counter - it's bull shit. All those ass holes ever see - is money. They don't see combat effectiveness. They only see how much something costs. Thus - the shit canning of the F-14's - which were better aircraft than the F-18's - but - because the 18's were newer and had been specifically designed to be cheaper to operate - they were. That was all the Bean counters cared about. And then - some bright boy out of fear that Iran would somehow get some of the parts from these aircraft if they were sitting in a bone yard - they had them all destroyed. We live in a nation run by idiots. It isn't the conservatives or the liberals - it's the Bean Counters that are the real problem. They will ALWAYS have a reason not to do something because of money. The number of people who will die because of their decisions doesn't matter. The Bean Counters count coins - not blood. Blood doesn't enter into their calculations. .
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  437. Yes. There was never a doubt in my mind that had the Germans actually tried to implement Plan Z the RN would have responded. One thing I was not aware of - though perhaps I should have been - was the loss of capability in the wake of the Washington Naval Treaty for making large naval guns in the UK. I am curious as to how such a thing could have happened. I would wonder if there was ever consideration of buying the guns from the US as it could still make them. One factor in using the turrets and tubes of older decommissioned ships - to build new ones ... is that - once war came - those tubes could and did wear out. It is my understanding that a number of ships wore out their tubes supporting Overlord. I also ... think ... I'm not sure but I think ... the US had produced extra tubes for this very reason for it's 16 in. ships - which I do believe it still has. ??? It reminds me of the scrapping of the USN's earlier Super Carriers - instead of moth balling them - as in the event of a War with China and/or Putin's Russia if we lost Carriers they take a very long time to replace. The one thing that has been done though - is continuing to produced Carriers, Submarines and MBT's in excess of requirements - just to keep from losing the ability to make them. They have at least done that ... so far ... .
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  438.  @brucetucker4847  Yes - the avgas was a problem. One of the things they did - was to develop a system whereby the avgas distribution system would be filled with fire fighting foam in anticipation of an attack - but - if the avgas storage tanks were hit ... that could really cause a problem. One other factor here though - was that a number of the earl carrier losses were because of torpedoes. The carriers hit by kamikaze's had severe fire damage top side but their hulls were whole - and they survived. The other thing is - severely damaged ships like the Yorktown and Hornet were lost because the Japanese were able to get to them. Yorktown could have been saved but was torpedoed by a submarine and Hornet torpedoed by Japanese destroyers after they chased off the American Destroyers trying to sink her. Had the US not had to abandon the Hornet because they had lost the battle - she might have been saved. As it was (iirc) ideas to tow her were abandoned because the rest of the fleet could not stay to protect them and the likely result would have been the loss of the ship attempting the tow. The larger carriers hit by kamikaze's were all able to exit the battle area under their own power - though some of the smaller ones were lost. .
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  439.  @danielsummey4144  Yes. It left a 30 foot gash but it shrugged it off. The ship increased speed to clear the area and that was that. The ship was never in any danger of being lost. The problem was that it did have to go in to have that gash repaired. I think the Saratoga got torpedoed 3 different times but it's Torpedo Defense System was good - and it survived them all - only having to go in to have the damage repaired. They just couldn't fix damage like that over night and it took it out of service for a while. The Wasp was much more vulnerable and was lost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wasp_(CV-7) .
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  440. The significance of the torpedo damage is exaggerated. .
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  441. Thank you for all the work you put into making this. .
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  442. I had no idea. Thanks. That was very interesting. .
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  443.  @gregorywright4918  Yeah. I wouldn't be doing any better - it's just that at first I thought he was going to be talking about things after WWII ... and then ... that didn't make sense ... My first inclination is that there's something I'm doing wrong ... but then it's ... "Ah ... no ... it's not me ..." .
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  444. Yeah ... if you compare the daily lives of the infantry and the sailors, the sailors slept in beds, ate hot food and were not living our in the weather ... but ... if that ship got sunk ... things could be very hard for it's crew. .
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  445. Thanks. I knew a lot of that but not in as much detail. Fascinating. My MOS in the Marines was 2131 Artillery Weapons Repair. I went to Ordnance School in Quantico, Virginia for that. This was really interesting and they showed us all kinds of things about working on Artillery Pieces. One thing - was that the Artillery Unit wrote down every single round they fired - and - the charge at which it was fired. Those fired at Charge 7 - using all the little powder bags in side the casing for a Semi Fixed or Semi Fixed Separate Loading round - counted for like 3 rounds at the lesser charges. When the "count" had reached a certain number - the tubes were to be replaced. One thing they showed us - was Magnafluxing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_particle_inspection which could detect little cracks in the metal of the gun tube. About those Breech Blocks The Germans - used Sliding Wedge Breech Blocks on the Bismarck and Tirpitz which meant that they had those giant brass casings to deal with after every round fired. I graduated 3rd in my class and they sent the top 4 people to 5th Echelon Repair Depots where they could do everything but cast the tubes. There I was told that they were transitioning to Civil Service Mechanics - so they didn't need any more Marines - and I was going to assigned to the Provost Marshals Office. And so - my contribution to the Vietnam War - was being a Sentry in California for 15 months ... I did get to use my MOS one time. They had a pair of old 3" Salute Guns on this Parade Ground - that they wanted to fire some Salutes with - so they needed someone to clean the leaves out of the barrels and I was it. Before I went to Ordnance School - I was assigned to Maintenance in ITR and one of the things we did was clean the 106mm Recoilless Rifles. We'd unscrew the breech block then lift the tube out and lower it into a long vat of solvent. They had a dozen of us picking up those tubes and ... man ... were those things heavy ... .
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  446.  @richardvernon317  Well - the Americans did not "give" the B-29 to Soviets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-4 - air crews concerned that they couldn't make it back to their bases across all that water - landed in the Soviet Union and were interned. The Americans demanded the return of the aircraft but were ignored. The Soviets then reverse engineered the Tu-4 from these interned B-29's. That is much, much, much different than the Labor Party of Clement Atlee intentionally GIVING the Soviets that engine. Yes the soviets designed the air frame but that Rolls Royce engine was much better than what they had to put in it. They had German information on a more advanced engine but they didn't have an engine developed from it that could be produced and put in their aircraft. To Stalin's amazement, the British Labour government and its Minister of Trade, Sir Stafford Cripps, were perfectly willing to provide technical information and a license to manufacture the Rolls-Royce Nene. Sample engines were purchased and delivered with blueprints. Following evaluation and adaptation to Russian conditions, the windfall technology was tooled for mass-production as the Klimov RD-45 to be incorporated into the MiG-15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15 As to the Tu-4's being a greater concern than the Mig-15's ... Yes the fact that the Soviets had B-29's was of great concern to both the US & UK as before that neither were impressed with Soviet Strategic Bombing capability. The Soviets built 847 Tu-4's while they built 13,000 Mig-15's. The Tu-4's were obsolete when they were first built due to the lag resulting from having to reverse engineer them - the Mig-15's were not. The only reason the Tu-4's would have been a greater concern would be if they were carrying nuclear weapons. .
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  447.  @richardvernon317  (IIRC) they were given a tour of the factory where in one of the Russian Guests wore spongy shoes. He walked around where some grinding was going on - stepping in the shavings on the factory floor. When he got back they took the metal out of his shoe soles and analyzed it. .
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  448.  @OhSome1HasThisName  Ha! Ha! Would if I could ... would if I could ... .
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  449.  @OhSome1HasThisName  No. YOU are concentrating on the end phases of Colonial Empires - NOT - what brought them about. The End Phases would not have existed without the root cause. Thus - these End Phases were NOT the beginning of decolonization - THAT began with the root causes. Again - get it out of your head that you are talking about the beginning of decolonization in these areas. AGAIN there would have been NO decolonization in these areas - without the root causes that made the Colonial Powers willing to give up on their Colonies. By the time the Colonial Power decided to leave - the process was very much nearing it's end. Do you think for one second - that the Colonial Powers couldn't have just suppressed these rebellions and kept their colonies - if they had wanted the expense of doing so? It was the bankruptcy of the Mother Countries - caused by TWO world wars - that made them shed themselves of the financial burden of governing their Colonial Empires. YOU are being simplistic in talking about "Africa" and "the Caribbean" when each and every "country" went through it's own individual process. Each of these processes was different depending on which Colonial Power had controlled the colony - and - how it had regarded them. For France - Cochin-china and Algeria were PART of France. There were no British Colonies with that type of a connection to the Mother Country. And - of course - all of this was complicated by the fact that the boundaries of these "countries" had been drawn by the Colonial Powers with no regard to the various Tribal Territories these boundaries cut through. And - in Africa - each of these tribes was different and each had it's own relations with the Colonial Power. For the Americans, BEFORE WWII, they had promised the Philippines their independence in 1945 . That was the reason that when the Japanese invaded, the Philippines had their own President and their own Army - all in preparation for becoming an independent nation. The War in fact delayed their independence but - they did get it. And yet - the Americans kept a large military presence in that country for decades afterward. And - had a very special relationship with the people of that country. Eventually one of their governments decided they didn't want us there any more - and then we left. Soooo ... you could say ... that Decolonization in the Philippines began shortly after they became an American Colony - and didn't fully complete the process until decades after they had officially been granted their independence. And that is how things were - there. Each and every one of these Colonies had their own story. OF COURSE things were more nuanced than I'm describing. You could write BOOKS on each of these Colonies/Tribes/Colonial Powers. What do you expect from a YouTube Comment? Oh ... and ... if you're afraid to tell someone they're wrong ... you have a lot more regard for social niceties than I do ... but then ... I'm a nerd so ... eh ... One of the hall marks of Nerds - is that they a care a lot more about accurately analyzing data - than they do about peoples feelings. .
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  450.  @Solidboat123  As to their reliability, more would have had to be done than just - not scrapping the Eagle and Ark Royal. They would have had to be maintained in a useful state. Unwillingness to do that would - I would assume - being the reason for the scrapping. .
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  451.  @stephenchappell7512  Yes. I can see what you mean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0ykxM3w2MU .
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  452.  @stephenchappell7512  That would be Operation Journeyman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Journeyman I didn't seen any indication that this cost Callaghan the election. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Callaghan There is speculation though that if Thatcher had done something similar Argentina might not have invaded the Falklands. .
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  453.  @richardvernon317  As to the "Army" mistake - sorry about that - I thought I'd fixed it. Someone else corrected me saying it should have been RAF. As to the number of aircraft lost - the book I read on the Falklands Campaign some time ago I remember as indicating that there were a number of operational losses. This book indicated that the Argentine pilots had been told NOT to engage the Harriers - which was a mistake. If they had engaged the Harriers, even a few more losses would have helped lessen their Air Defense capability. All in all the Argentine air operations were largely incompetent with only their Naval Aviators really having any idea what they were doing. The UK would have lost several more ships if the Argentine Air Force personnel had known how to properly fuse their bombs. If they'd used mass attacks with fighters escorting their attack aircraft - things would have been harder on the Harriers. Also - me and my buddies were war gamers at the time - and we tried to recreate the Falklands War - as it was being fought. I was commanding the Argentine Air Force. Our victory conditions (our gaming rules not including ground operations - just ships and planes) were for the British to deny the Argentinians the use of the Port Stanley Airfield. Since the Argentinians did not base fighter aircraft there - by our rules - they forfeited the match ... The idea that they tried to protect the islands from the mainland ... is just so stupid it is beyond belief. If they'd had any competence at all - they would have gotten that airfield modified to handle jets All in all - you had a ... not so good military going against a NATO power - even if an impoverished one and the end results were about what we would expect. The UK won but it's military paid in blood for the money it's government had saved. This link indicates that there were 9 Harriers lost out of 42 - which is about 21% total losses - it indicates that 3 of these were operational https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/av-8-ops.htm It is my understanding that these losses resulted in Sidewinders being mounted on the Gr3's so they could be used in Air Defense. As to the Phantom's - I don't ever remember anyone complaining during Vietnam about the Phantom's radar. So .... I don't know what to say about the low serviceability of their Radar's with the FAA. The complaint during Vietnam - was the Sparrows not tracking - but - Phantoms worked fine with the Sidewinders and it was the Sidewinders that got a lot if not most of the kills for the Harriers in the Falklands. So - if the UK had kept or replaced it's CATOBAR Carriers as it should have, not only could they have had aircraft with a lot more range and E-2 AEW aircraft instead of helicopters - they would have had at least as good a missile as the Harriers were using - and - the radar missiles if that radar was working. With E-2's to vector the F-4's they could have engaged the Argentine aircraft beyond the range at which the Argentine aircraft could engage their ships. As I have repeatedly said on this subject the RN and FAA did a superb job with what they had to work with - but they deserved better and a lot more of them would not be dead if they'd had it. .
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  454.  @richardvernon317  Yep. The problem being that the wind direction can change without warning - especially in bad weather - and then the pilot has to be quick to adjust or he's in trouble. .
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  455.  @zopEnglandzip  Yes. I believe you may well be right on both counts. This is the reason why military people tend to be fairly conservative in their outlook. Experiments get people killed. .
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  456.  @zopEnglandzip  The QEC's are only crappy compared to what they might have been. Had they been designed as CATOBAR carriers from the get go and used steam catapults - they'd be much better ships than they are now. Of course - they may have had to do something different with their power plant to get the steam ... Yes - as they are now - they are better than anything anyone other than the USN has - but - they could have been much better and that pisses me off. The problem is that people argue "but we couldn't afford it" - like that's real. The real issue - is can they afford NOT to do it? They canceled and scrapped their CATOBAR carriers prior to the Falklands and ended up with a bunch of dead people because of that. If Argentina had been more competent - they could have lost the war. If you really care about the effectiveness of your Navy and the lives of it's sailors - you can find a way to pay for it. You raise taxes or cut something else - but you give your military weapons that are not going to cause any more of them to die than need be. God Damn Bean Counters ... believe me ... we have our share over here ...
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  457.  @Solidboat123  OK. Cool. Thanks for the references. You certainly have people here who think that VSTOL is safer than CATOBAR in bad weather. I don't believe them but this isn't just you saying that so - good job on the references. When I challenge other people to do that - I usually get nothing ... not even a reply ... in response. So again - good job. One thing that is confusing for me about that is this quote from the Cats and Traps article; "The first tentative F-35B SRVL trials were successfully conducted last year but there are still questions about the safety of the manoeuvre in anything but the most benign weather conditions." I know this is a different manner of landing but ... why would the weather make a difference here ... or is it just that they've never tried it in heavy weather? My understanding of the maneuver was that it allowed them to return with their ordnance instead of jettisoning it. As to the Paul Adams article you have the opinion of someone who is biased in favor of VSTOL that CATOBAR operations in the Falklands area would have been "impossible" - yet - they also mention that the greater range of catapult launched aircraft would let the carrier operate from better weather - such that he considered the issue a wash. Since there were no NATO CATOBAR carriers down there ... we don't know if it was really "impossible" for them to launch. The Argentine Carrier ... well ... it was a CATOBAR carrier but ... it was so old it couldn't get enough wind across the deck to launch aircraft with ordnance ... so ... For myself - (I was a computer guy) but having worked with people involved with Navy and Marine aviation ... I don't ever remember anyone saying that VSTOL was safer in any way - ever. So ... this isn't just me being obdurate - I've got experience with people working in this area. Sadly ... having been retired now for ... sixteen years ... I don't know any of those people any more and cannot ask their opinions. My personal experience is limited as I've only spent two weeks at sea (on separate occasions) and only have two cat launches - with no arrested landings. For the QEC's ... I would say that the big problem here - was that they were not designed to be CATOBAR carriers in the first place. Apparently the UK's Government was sold a bill of goods when they were told that the carriers would be convertible to CATOBAR - but then - when they actually decided to do it - found out that the cost of the CONVERSION from VSTOL to CATOBAR was not going to be cheap. Here - also - having been designed in their CATOBAR configuration to use EMALS they've got that thing to deal with ... and we can not (to my knowledge) yet get the thing to work reliably enough for the ship to deploy. Here - the article seems to act as if the ship needed Nuclear Power to generate steam - when all the previous non-nuclear carriers in the USN were able to do it. The general consensus of the article seems to be that while the QEC's won't be as capable as a USN CATOBAR carrier - they will be much more capable than the Falklands carriers - which were after all - taking ships that had been intended to be Helicopter Carriers and putting jets on them. If they'd never had to do anything but land troops and fly ground support they'd have been OK ... but trying to use them for Air Defense was a disaster. I also noted that while they mentioned the use of V-22's as tankers - they did not mention they would be used as AEW aircraft. They're going to use another Helicopter ... something I regard with disgust ... .
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  458.  @zopEnglandzip  Just heard that one of them blew up on take off. The thing about launching aircraft off ships - is that this is inherently dangerous. The thing with flying VSTOL aircraft - is that it is inherently dangerous - where ever you are. You are balancing your aircraft on it's thrust - and if something happens that disturbs that balance ... you have a problem. Has it occurred to you that in bad weather you have some very strong wind gusts - that can come from any direction? What's that going to do to someone balancing on their thrust as they try to land? What's going to happen when you cut your thrust as you're about to land - and the ship drops away from you? And yes - most of the accidents occur during training. It is a testament to the skill, professionalism and training of the FFA Pilots that more of these VSTOLs haven't crashed. As to 2 for 1? That's two crappy ships for the price of one good one. Far, far better - to have two good ones. If you can't afford them - then you are reduced to the equipment of a 3rd rate power. The RN & the FAA - deserve better. As to accidents? Again - I would point out the thousands upon thousands of take offs and landings on CATOBAR carriers. Of course you're going to have accidents and ramp strikes are nothing new. As to fewer deck crew? Well then - you can't really have very many deck crew around a VSTOL aircraft with it's thrusters violently shoving air in all directions - now can you? If they'd had CATOBAR ships at the Falklands - there would be a lot of British people who would be alive now that aren't. There is also the very real possibility that Argentina would not have attacked the Falklands had they known they would be facing RN CATOBAR Carriers. Yes - there certainly is a use for VSTOL aircraft - but - to have these your primary aircraft? No. Things are going to be fucked up if you do that. And as has been pointed out again and again - the AEW capability of aircraft launching off these ships is restricted. At the Falklands - that may have made more difference than anything else. At least for the Queen Elizabeth's they are talking about an AEW V-22 Osprey. One of the things about these ships - is that they are at least big enough to operate an aircraft that size. I just don't know if they've done it yet. .
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  459. Yeah ... I remember playing with these ships when I was the Japanese Commander playing Avalon Hill's Midway game ... There - they key to victory was to just wait on the edge of the game board until all the Japanese ships had come into play - including the other light carriers providing air cover for the other fleet elements (who were now with you) - and then go crush the Americans ... .
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  460. The Cruel Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cruel_Sea_(novel) The most aptly named novel ever written it was based on the wartime experiences of it's author Nicholas Monsarrat. Once upon a time ... Lifeboats sometimes had sails and as their convoy was steaming along - ahead of them - sailing right for the center of the convoy they saw a life boat under sail. Happy and eager to welcome the men they were about to save - they watched as the convoy and lifeboat approached each other. As it got closer - they could see that the man manning the tiller for the sail boat - was a skeleton. With the other skeletal occupants of the boat huddled under blankets it sailed right down the middle of the convoy and off into the distance behind it - the skeleton steering it looking off into the eternal distance. The Battle of the Atlantic amongst others - would prove to be horrific for all concerned. .
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  461. Most of the nations of WWII were somewhat incompetent when they first started out - but then - at the very beginning they were all incompetent at the same time. The Americans incompetence came after the British, Japanese and Germans were all veterans - who really made the Americans pay for it - one way or the other ... For the Americans - the first year of the war was to a large degree a rolling disaster - but for a good bit of luck at Midway. The big change - was Halsey coming into command. He was still afflicted by the incompetence of such a Callahan but just throwing his ships at the Japanese - had the effect of making them take casualties too - which they - unlike the Americans - could not replace. The other thing the Americans benefited from was the Japanese failure to understand Mahan. They only took "The Decisive Battle" from it - and not the fact that the important ships were NOT the Warships - but the Merchant ships and the cargo they carried. What good is a warship - except to protect it's own Merchant ships and destroy the enemies? What is it carrying that the nation needs? They're really expensive and they create no wealth - unlike Merchant ships. The Japanese NEVER got that - and thus sent their submarines after American Warships - rather than trying to cut Australia off the way the Germans tried to cut off Britain. Yes - they had some notable successes but made little or no effect on Allied Sea lanes to Australia. .
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  462. Pecos is pronounced Pay - cOs (long O on cos). https://translate.google.com/?hl=en&sl=en&tl=ru&text=Pecos&op=translate click on the speaker icon. .
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  463. USS Langley CV-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Langley_(CV-1) The Japanese were moving to fast for the Allies. The Langley and the Sea Witch were trying to transport a P-40 fighter group and it's 59 aircraft, pilots and mechanics to Java. Langley was caught on the approach and lost. Sea Witch was able to unload it's crated P-40's then depart with 40 refugee soldiers but these aircraft had to be destroyed on the dock to keep them from being captured by Japanese Ground Forces. The Langley's survivors and the men of the 13th Pursuit Squadron (Provisional) were lost with the USS Pecos and Edsall before they could exit the battle area. The Allies had tried to form their ships together in the ABDA Command https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-British-Dutch-Australian_Command but most of their ships were lost at the Battle of The Java Sea. .
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  464. "The Battle of the River Platte" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXGz8Ql4G4I It's odd here - in that the British ships have actually got the original ships in some cases playing themselves - but - for the Graf Spee - they've got the USS Salem which of course - looks nothing like the Graf Spee ... Of course ... I can't think of any other ship they could have used that would look more like it ... .
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  465.  @w8stral  Yeah. St. Lo was a big one. There were over a hundred friendlies killed there including a General - Leslie McNair . .
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  466. Yeah ... there's a lot of tragedy in the stories of the personnel of these nations that were over run. There at the beginning of the war they really saw some shit and so many of them fell by the way side. At least the Greeks didn't have to come home to a nation occupied by the Communists ... though that wasn't without effort ... So many of those from such as Poland and Czechoslovakia that had spent the war fighting against the Nazi's as part of Britain's forces - came home to be put in jail by the Communists running the country for having fought for the west ... Of course ... then you have China ... horror up on horror for 3/4's of the 20th Century ... so things could be worse ... and ... though it's not as bad as it was ... China is still run by Communists ... .
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  467. On the question of fighting the last scenario out. This is a year and a half on so - I'd imagine anything anyone came up with has long been done. But - me and my buddies DID do something like this. As to a simulator for the DKM / RN fight - the old Great Naval Battles games which could be used by teams - would have done that. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Great+Naval+Battles+Game&ref=nb_sb_noss your biggest problem here is that these are DOS games ... and I just don't know how well you could get them to run. I have no doubt that some dedicated people could do it though. I did set up a game where me and two of my buddies did a fight like this (I had a LAN in my house) - but with the Americans and the Germans. We were running DOS so that gives you some idea about how long ago we did this. The main German ships were of course Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau. The main American ships were Colorado, Maryland, West Virginia and a 12 gun 14" ship. Each side also had a set of cruisers but I don't remember if there were destroyers. The guy who was supposed to help me run the Americans - didn't show up ... so I was a very, very busy boy. I was so busy trying to manage ships I had no idea how the battle was going until the Germans conceded. Here - the REASON the Germans lost - was that Tirpitz took a steering hit early on ... and that pinned the German Fleet to trying to defend her - and all those 16" guns just tore them apart. Now - in addition to this - one of the guys in our group (the one who didn't show up above ...) had developed his own set of Naval Warfare Rules. This was something that had been inspired by the Avalon Hill Game - Jutland and you played with little pieces of card board on the floor. This guy owned a military hobbies shop at the time (in the same strip mall where we drank beer Friday Nights) - and we would sometimes gather there after it closed for the day Saturday Night and play war games - or - at some house where some of the guys were room mates. We did stuff like that all the time ...like ... weekly, though with different games, board games like SSI stuff and miniatures. So - using this guys rules (which were really good - though *I* (he said pridefully) made a contribution to the torpedo rules) - we fought a round robin of battles between the different navies. French vs. Italian -> Italy Italian vs. British -> Britain British vs. German -> German German vs. American - > America American vs. Japanese -> America So - we did actually fight this out - and it would have been similar ships though I don't remember which ones (this was before computers - hence crawling around on the floor with rulers and turning gauges ...). We would typically have 4-8 guys playing on two teams with each guy assigned responsibility for a specific group of ships but with one guy on each side designated the fleet admiral. The thing with all these fights - was they really could have gone either way. There was some match making done in the order of the fights so you didn't have the Italians fighting the Japanese or the Americans. The Italians and the French had specifically designed their navies to fight each other - and so - were a close match and the British and Italians did fight each other a few times. But - equally as important for the outcomes - were the decisions the teams fighting the battles made - and - Random Chance - like Tirpitz taking that steering hit in our computer game fight - or Hood at the Denmark Straits ... .
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  468. Castles of Steel https://www.amazon.com/Castles-Steel-Britain-Germany-Winning/dp/0345408780/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Castles+of+steel&qid=1582391797&sr=8-1 has a good discussion of the Gallipoli Campaign. As at Gallipoli there would have been serious mine field problems. The thing is - they couldn't just clear them once - they would have had to keep doing it. And they could find themselves bottled up with mine fields behind them. One of the problems at Gallipoli was that the mine sweepers had civilian crews. The RN tried to force the channel several times and each time the civilian mine sweepers - ran away. They had replaced the civilian crews and were going to go again - when the Army said they would participate and the Navy called off it's show. The basic idea behind Gallipoli - came from what the Germans had done - with the Goeben sitting off their capital - the Turks had done what the Germans wanted them to. The British felt that with some British battleships sitting off the the coast of Istanbul - they could knock the Turks out of the war. The original plan was to land the army at the base of the Gallipoli peninsula - cut it off - and then go down it taking the forts. The Army refused so the Navy tried to do it on their own. They were going to use old battleships that were going to be scrapped anyway so - if they lost some it wouldn't matter. They'd have done it - but the Civilian Mine Sweeper crews kept running away, despite the fact that they took NO casualties. Once they'd replaced them with RN personnel they just might have pulled it off. When the Army said it would participate - by then the Turks had realized the danger and fortified the beaches at the base of the peninsula so they couldn't land there. The places they did land were going up the peninsula - with the Turks supplied and able to get reinforcements - and it was like the western front all over again and they couldn't advance - so they eventually just gave up. At that point the Army was calling the shots and the Navy was just helping out. If they had reverted to the Navy's plan it still might have worked but by then the Turks had had the chance to increase their defenses and they didn't try the Navy plan again so we'll never know. .
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  469. On the question of the Japanese invading Hawaii - the Americans had a full division there - there's no way the Japanese could have hauled enough guys there with their fleet to take the island. .
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  470.  @Warspite1  You forget the original context of these comments. This was talking about in comparison to WORLD WAR II to which EVERYTHING since then was a relatively low key conflict. Thus - the Entire Korean and Vietnam Wars were Low Key Conflicts compared to World War II. But - Insurgencies are even lower key conflicts. Why do I have to repeat myself? The insurgency part of the Vietnam was WAS a Low Key Conflict in any sense. Now - here - we are simply arguing about YOUR version of a Low Key Conflict and mine. I do not see all the requirements of defeating an Insurgency as being as extensive as you do. It depends on the level of the insurgency. If you compare the troop levels we had in Vietnam prior to 1965 they were much lower than they were later. Even our initial commitments were not that great. Initially, we had only advisors in Vietnam. I knew some of them. What happened was as we committed more troops to combat the Insurgency - the North Committed more troops. Once we were fighting PAVN units - this was NOT an Insurgency - this was an INVASION. The Battle of the Ia Drang Valley which took place in 1965 - was against PAVN troops. Not Vietcong. The Insurgency continued alongside the Invasion by PAVN troops until the Tet Offensive in 1968 - at which time - the Vietcong were destroyed. After Tet - the Vietcong no longer played a serious role in the War. The fighting at Khe Sanh and in Hue (I knew people at both) was against PAVN troops. All our subsequent serious fighting was against PAVN troops. Also - I referred to the North Vietnamese Year of the Rat Offensive in 1972 - NOT the Tet Offensive 4 years earlier. There was a vast difference between the number of US troops involved in these two Campaigns. By '72, the year I got out of the Marines - there were almost no US ground troops involved. There were a few advisors still who did participate but the US contribution was mostly in the Air. Operation Linebacker took place over the North and during the Christmas Bombing resulted in a "Peace Treaty" - which was Nixon's way to cut and run. If you read Kissinger's book The White House Years you will see that Nixon never even tried. So - having demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge of the Vietnam War - it would be better if you chose to not comment on something you obviously know NOTHING about. Yes - I know - you THINK you know something - but you don't. THAT is the theme of this discussion. You THINK you know something here - but you don't. Don't worry - you still know more that most people ...that just isn't saying much. As to "peer conflicts" as opposed to "Insurgencies" - you are correct about what you said. But - I am still correct in the point I was making - in that we aren't going to be getting involved in ANY other conflicts after cutting and running in Afghanistan. That is NOT what happens when you cut and run. THAT is NOT what happened after we cut and ran from Vietnam. Having had to give you a lesson on the Vietnam War ... this is getting overly long so I'll simplify my response to the rest of what you said. You don't win a war by killing all the enemy - you win by making them quit. So ... You stay until you win. No matter how long it takes. No matter what the cost. You stay until you win. Why? Because if the enemy knows that at some point you will quit ... then that's all they have to do - is just hang in there until that happens. If they KNOW that you will never quit - then they will. If they think that you have some stupid idea that a war should only last so long or cost so much in blood and treasure - you've already lost. THAT was the Japanese Plan for WWII - they said so. THAT was also the Plan for the North Vietnamese - they said so. THAT was also the Plan for the Taliban - they said so. The Japanese were fighting my parents generation - MY ORIGINAL POINT - while the Vietnamese were fighting my generation and the Taliban my parents great grand children. THAT is why we defeated the Japanese - and lost to the North Vietnamese and the Taliban. Because we stupidly thought that a war should only go on for so long or cost so much - and then it was time to quit. THEY FUCKING KNEW WE THOUGHT THAT. THAT IS WHY WE FUCKING LOST YOU STUPID SHIT YOU are just as stupid as Obama, Trump and Biden because you idiots think there are limits to how much you should do. THAT type of thinking is why we lost. A Historical example would be Rome and Carthage where they fought three wars. The Carthaginians were businessmen who thought that only so much blood and treasure should be invested in a war - and one of the reasons they primarily used mercenaries - was so they could all be laid off when the war was over. They were unprepared for the Romans. Time and time and time again Hannibal defeated the Romans but - the Romans never quit. "Carthago delenda est" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est "Carthage Must Be Destroyed" That was the Roman way of thinking. Think like the Romans - and you (can) win. Think like the Carthaginians - and you lose. People like YOU - ARE the reason we lost. You think you're wise and intelligent and reasonable ... which is a recipe for defeat. Wars are not about being reasonable. Wars are about winning. If you don't see that - you're a fool (just like Johnson, Nixon, Obama, Trump and Biden).. .
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  471.  @Warspite1  And ... one more thing ... would not your name sake be ashamed of you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warspite_(03) .
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  472.  @Warspite1  Yeah ... now here - you have responded exactly the way I thought you would - because - the arguments are not new. And - the very fact that someone such as yourself would repeat them - is just one more indicator of why we lost. We lost - because of people like you. I'll correct a few of your mistakes. I said: "Fighting an insurgency is a low key war" The insurgency part of the Vietnam was was low key compared to the rest of it. Insurgents - don't have artillery. The part that wasn't low key was the part played by the PAVN (North Vietnamese Army). The South Vietnamese Army was not defeated by Insurgents. They were defeated because the Soviet Union continued to supply them when our Congress cut the funding for the south. What do you say to the mothers of the Vietnamese boys who died because we quit? What do you say to the children of parents that were sent to re-education camps? What do you say to the 2/3rds of Cambodia's population that were NOT killed by Pol Pot? What do you say to the little girls in Afghanistan who only want to go to school? Tell me. What do you say to those people? Do you tell them that they were not worth our fair haired boys dying for? That is your argument after all. That these people were not worth us spending our money or our lives to protect them. It's OK for us to have 50,000 people killed on our highways every single year of the Vietnam War - but it wasn't worth 58,000 of us dying in the whole war to protect them. How many mass demonstrations have their been to denounce the carnage on our Highways? Cutting the speed limit to 55 saved 5,000 lives a year - but - what happened to that? Fortunately, cars are safer now - so that we only have 45-50 thousand people die on our Highways EVERY SINGLE YEAR. What do you say to the relatives of those people? You don't have to say anything because they just accept it as a normal part of life. It's OK for us to spend a fortune on drugs - and enrich the most terrible people in the world - but it wasn't OK for us to spend the money to protect the Vietnamese from those that would enslave them to an 19th Century Utopian bunch of horse shit - used by the Communists to take power - and stay in power. The money we are spending on illegal drugs sure seems to be sustainable. Did my parents generation do things like that? No but their parents in the Roaring Twenties did - with Alcohol. Ha! Ha! For the current events stuff you're just completely full of shit. We hardly had anyone in Afghanistan by the time we quit so the idea that having those troops available else where really made me laugh. As did the idea that we might use them for other insurgencies. No. That's not how that works. You don't quit one war just so you can go join another one. Come on. You can't be that stupid. The US has never been ambiguous about Taiwan - and in the past - every time there was any question about it - we sent a carrier task force to steam though the Straits of Taiwan to make the message clear. And - we have sent ships sailing right through the National Waters China Claimed to have around those islands they built in the South China Sea. Those are things we DID do in the past ... what will we do in the future ... seeing as how we abandoned Afghanistan? As to Biden's other things he might just do - what a laugh. Sanctions have NEVER stopped ANYONE from doing ANYTHING. You meet force with force - that is the ONLY thing that works. As to explaining staying in Afghanistan to "Joe Public" - how stupid can you be? Were there college kids demonstrating in the streets over Afghanistan when we quit? No. Was Afghanistan even a nightly news story? No. Afghanistan had long since retreated to the back burner of the US attention span. No one would have notice that we stayed - because they were used to us being there. There was no call for us to leave. Lastly ... it's people like you - and Obama - that just didn't get this in the first place. There was nothing going on there that hadn't been going on for a very long time, long before we got involved. We had been attacked by terrorists time and time again before 9/11 - it's just the that galvanized us to do something - because it pissed us off. This was NEVER just a one war thing. Go in - fight it - win it - go home. No. That's not what it was before 9/11 and it wasn't afterwards. And - the things we did were great. We precipitated the Arab Spring. All those millions of people who had just been used to being run by dictators stood up and did something about it. If they could have some semblance of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan - those people thought they could have it too. Of course - just as with our history - democracy - the acceptance that it's better to deal with rather than kill each other - doesn't come over night. Thus all Libya's problems were not solved once THEY got rid of Ghdafi. But - WE freed Iraq from Saddam Hussein ourselves - and - freed Afghanistan from a government run by the Taliban. The things we accomplished were great - and then Obama, Trump and Biden threw it all away. You know ... in the Year of the Rat Offensive (1972) by the North Vietnamese - it was the South Vietnamese Army that stood up to them with the aid of American Air Power. The Afghan National Army was able to stand up to the Taliban as long as they had us there in support - and - the Iraqi Army was able to deal with ISIS until Obama pulled our advisors out. We were winning. We were winning - and - we quit. Oh - and every war is different - the point about Korea and Germany - is that we went in and stayed there doing what needed to be done in each place. And - we still are. Here's the deal. You don't know anything like what you think you know. The basic facts of the matter are that we just don't give a shit if a bunch of people somewhere else in the world are enslaved or all die horrible deaths. We don't give a shit because - we are not good people - you know - just like everyone else? .
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  473.  @Warspite1  You are right about everything you said - just wrong in your conclusion. Fighting an insurgency is a low key war. All you have to do to win - is to not quit. All we had to do to win in Vietnam and Afghanistan - was to not quit. We were winning those wars right up until we quit. So winning can simply mean that you stay there until you have accomplished your objectives - such as a stable, safe national government for the side you are on. We had promised the South Vietnamese and the Afghan National Government - that we would protect them. Then - we were not militarily driven from those conflicts - we simply quit and went home. What we did was despicable. I am ashamed to be an American. As a child I was proud of my country but in my life time we have abandoned two groups of people we had promised to protect. I'm proud of my personal military service, though my contribution to the Vietnam war consisted of nothing more than being a sentry in California and I am proud of our Armed Forces because they did what their Civilian Commanders ordered them to do. But my contention - that if we had been a stronger nation whose children had understood what life was really like from growing up in poverty - like my parents did - to being the spoiled brats that my generation was - that then we would have stayed and we would have won. So - yes - everything you said was correct - except the conclusion you drew from it. We have been in Germany since WWII and we have been in Korea since the Korean War. Our presence in Germany kept the Warsaw Pact from invading it. Our presence in South Korea had kept the North from invading it. We should still be in Vietnam and we should still be in Afghanistan. Millions of people died in Southeast Asia when we abandoned them. Now - we have left the little girls in Afghanistan to the tender mercies of the type of people who would put a bullet in a little girls head because she wanted to go to school. These were not wars we couldn't sustain. These were wars we quit. Oh ... and whatever Biden might or might not have been able to do about it - it was Donald Trump who signed a separate peace with the Taliban. Oh ... and to the consequences of quitting ... We paid for quitting in Vietnam in Africa, Asia and Latin America right up until the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait because he figured we wouldn't do anything about it - just as Hitler had figured after the Rhineland, Anschluss of Austria and Czechoslovakia - the British and French wouldn't do anything if he went into Poland. This is what happens when you let Dictators think you won't do anything. Same thing with Britain and the Falklands. Vladimir Putin is a dictator now. He has troops massed on the border - right now - with the Ukraine. China is run by the Communists. Right now - they are harassing Taiwan with continual intrusions into their air space. What's going to happen if Putin and the Chinese get the idea that "we won't do anything" if they invade the Ukraine and Taiwan? Why shouldn't they think we won't do anything after we just quit in Afghanistan? The next time someone mentions 9/11 to you - remember - that the Terrorists Won - because we quit. .
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  474. It's been 40 years but I believe my reference for this is John Toland's The Rising Sun . IIRC .... one of the things that happened in Japan was that it had largely avoided colonization because it didn't have anything that anyone wanted. But - with such as the attentions of Commodore Perry - Japan realized that it's policy of isolation - that they had employed for the last 200 years - wasn't going to work any more. So - they had decided that - "If you can't beat'em - join'em" and they had decided to become a colonial power too. Their problem - was that they were coming to it late in the game. Here - they had come to believe - that if they ever backed down to a colonial power - they were on a "slippery slope" to being colonized. But they had been successful in creating a modern military and in defeating the Russians in 1905. They colonized Taiwan, Korea, Manchuria - and then - began working on China as a whole. So - here the Americans are - supplying Japan with the oil it is using to conquer China. After such as the Rape of Nanking ... those watching the news reels who knew - knew that the oil the Japanese were using when they raped Nanking - came from the United States. Thus the US came to try and do something for the Chinese. When the Japanese got the Germans to prevail upon the Vichy French to let them into Indochina - that was to much for the US and they demanded that the Japanese not only pull out of Indochina but out of China as well. Here - the Japanese Government is faced with a problem. They KNEW that if they went to war with the US they would be destroyed. But ... if they backed down to a colonial power they were on a slippery slope to becoming a colony. Their decision was - become a colony or be destroyed. Caught between a rock and a hard place - they didn't know what to do. They were being pushed by more radical elements to attack the US - so they finally threw their hands up and said in effect "OK. YOU do it." Then - when the more radical elements came into power they were faced with the decision - become a colony or be destroyed - and they found that they didn't know what to do either. They in turn were being pushed by even more radical elements to attack the Americans so eventually they threw up their hands and said "OK. YOU do it." This went on until they reached Tojo - and he did it. Then - one of the things you see after they had knowingly opted for destruction over colonization - was they started to bull shit themselves that there was a way for them to avoid it. The basic idea - which is what the North Vietnamese and Taliban did to defeat the United States - was to just bleed them and outlast them. Eventually they figured these soft, weak Americans would just quit. They were fighting the wrong generation though. They were fighting a generation that didn't piss around - but ended up fire bombing their cities and then dropping Atomic Bombs on their heads. If we had fought the Vietnamese Communists and the Taliban anything like we had fought the Japanese - we would have won. (IIRC) ... .
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  475. Yes. .
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  476. Yeah. My introduction to Covettte's was the HMS Compass Rose in Nicholas Monsarrat's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Monsarrat The Cruel Sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cruel_Sea_(novel) This is one of the best novel's and movies on the War in the Atlantic. .
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  477. To bad you didn't cover today. They are scrapping hand over fist all the early super carriers. If we get into a war with China over the South China Sea - or a resurgent Russia - we could start losing carriers and those things take forever to build a new one. In the Wikipedia list of carriers, of those listed for the United States you find this entry: "Reserve (none currently in reserve)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers#United_States Here - in the wake of winning the Cold War - the US fell back on it's time honored tradition of throwing away billions to save millions, like it has for most of it's other wars. One factor here - is that as with submarines and tanks, they have to keep building them or they'll lose the facilities that can do it - and then won't be able to build any in the future. As with the bases that were closed - that land would be re-purposed - and even trying to create a new facility would become problematic. The Bean Counters are running things and as I said to people during the Draw Down when they would be aghast at what was being done: "The mistake you are making is assuming that things being all fucked up is an unacceptable state of affairs." .
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  478. Thanks. That was interesting. .
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  479. Yeah ... submarines do not like aircraft in enemy coastal areas. What would be interesting is if there were any mention in U-Boat logs as to how often they saw aircraft and dove to avoid them. Once they realized that these aircraft carried bombs or depth charges - I would imagine that they would take them very seriously. Having a hole put in your submarine off the enemy coast on the far side of the Atlantic doesn't sound like something they would want to happen. The other thing is - just because they may not have actually sunk any submarines - does not mean that they never attacked any of them. Some of the things they attacked could well be whales but that doesn't mean they all were. During World War II, CAP's coastal patrol reportedly flew 24 million miles and sighted 173 enemy U-boats, dropping a total of 82 bombs and depth charges throughout the conflict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Air_Patrol .
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  480. Yeah. Those ship yards are something. I lived in a house at the mouth of the Portsmouth River and saw the Thresher launched. I went to school with kids whose fathers were on it when it sank. They had the sail of a Gato Class submarine there - which in 1958 was only a decade and a half or so from the end of WWII. When the movie Sink the Bismarck came out - it created a lot of interest locally - as the people there (my house was 100 yards from the Atlantic Ocean) were very much aware of all of that - when it was happening. About 200 yeards from my house was the concrete remains of a Disappearing Battery of Heavy Coastal Defense Guns. (This was my house) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Portsmouth_nh_martello.jpg The Brick Martello Tower there was built by the Patriotic Ladies for the War of 1812 (it's nothing but rubble today). That gun battery would have been to the left of the tower and closer to where the picture was taken from. So - that was an interesting area in which to live, especially for an 8 year old boy. We had all kinds of ships going in and out of that river mouth every day. That and we had a sledding hill! That was a lot of fun in the winter. Out of all the places I lived while my Dad was in the Marines - that was the place that was the most fun. .
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  481.  @Drachinifel  OK. I thought it might be something like that i hadn't noticed but was to busy counting turrets to pick up on that. Maybe if I'd been paying more attention to what you were saying (instead of counting turrets) I'd have figured that out. .
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  482. I seldom have cause to find fault with one of your videos - but here - I'll make a comment. Since - from a comment you made - the X Turret was removed - that might have been mentioned in the video - and - the pictures accompanying the words - might have been adjusted so that all or at least most of the pictures of the ship with 4 turrets came first and those with 3 came last. (I am assuming here that the ship was initially constructed with 4 turrets and 1 was removed - but - that this turret was not taken off and then put back on at any point). As it is - the pictures alternate somewhat between the ship having 4 turrets and 3 - so that the viewer is - counting turrets and comparing hull numbers trying to figure out if all the pictures are really the Sheffield - or one of it's sisters that only had 3 turrets ever installed - and not listening to the video. Possibly there was some other reason for the pictures alternating between 4 and 3 turrets ... that I'm unaware of ... ??? .
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  483. "Invasion! Sie kommen!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzdleJarI0 .
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  484.  @BadSkeelz  "Vive le France!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhH6yCQU5fI .
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  485. Two of the greatest crimes against history - was the scrapping of Warspite and Enterprise ... .
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  486. Oh ... This is about ONE ship named the SMS Kaiserin und Königin which in English would be the Empress and Queen . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Kaiserin_und_K%C3%B6nigin_Maria_Theresia I thought it was about two ships - one named Kaiserin and the other named Konigin ... OK ... Now in my defense - since there was an SMS Konig class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6nig-class_battleship and a SMS Kaiser class (including SMS Kaiserin ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6nig-class_battleship I did have reason to believe that could be the case. .
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  487. Yeah ... these weapons coupled with Radar and Proximity Fused Shells ... yep ... When the Radar Vectored American Combat Air Patrols are added in .... If you think about it - it makes people volunteering to be Kamikazes ... much more understandable. You were already committing suicide just by getting into the cockpit of an aircraft you were going to try to attack the Allies with ... why not do all you can to see if you can get a hit - seeing as how you were in all probability going to die anyway? .
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  488.  @PalleRasmussen  Thanks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Citino .
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  489. Thanks. That was an interesting history of this ship. .
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  490.  @albertoswald8461  You should watch The Bedford Incident . .
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  491. The Americans lost submarines to their own aircraft attacking them. Also, different commands had different procedures and transiting from one to the other could be a problem. If the local commands were not used to Allied Submarines transiting their areas - they could well have simply assumed that any submarine they saw was going to be a German one. Given the horrors of the Battle of the Atlantic for the Allies in 1940, '41, '42 and the first third of '43 any Allied unit detecting a submarine - ANY submarine - probably WAS going to attack it. Anyone getting a look at it would almost certainly not recognize it as a Free French submarine and with a Captain and Crew that were not native English Language Speakers you would have another problem. Given the amount of coordination between the Allies that would be needed to safely accomplish the Surcouf's transit ... and ... past examples of the level of cooperation usually received from the French ... it would actually be surprising if it HADN'T been sunk ... Whoever issued the orders for the Surcouf's transit - really should have known better. Blue on Blue incidents have always happened. The P-38 had some problems - Lockheed sent out a team that identified them, several hundred kits were made to refit the P-38's in Northern Europe, they were flown to Britain in a C-54 - the RAF thought it was an FW-200 - and shot it down ... Nothing new about that kind of thing at all. In fact - the very first aircraft shot down by the RAF in WWII - were British Aircraft. Night battles? Off Guadalcanal Admiral Scott was killed by friendly fire. Being as big as she was the Surcouf could have survived repeated attacks but eventually succumbed. As to picking up survivors ... you had to stop to do that ... and stopping to do that could get you sunk so ... unless there was a small ship designated to pick up survivors - from their own ships - that might not have been done even for survivors from KNOWN friendly vessels. For the crew of what had been thought to be a German submarine ... their chances weren't good - and of course - it's harder for aircraft to do that - though the Catalina could have I haven't ever heard of them doing it (which doesn't mean they didn't - I just don't know). .
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  492. Yeah. The U Boats had had things going their way until Spring of '43 - after that - things went worse and worse for them. ASW Technology improved and was in use by more and more ships and more and more planes, land based and on escort carriers. Germany's U Boat arm had, by the end of the war, a 70% casualty rate - where most of them were dead. .
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  493. The Allies were scattered about in small numbers that were individually over whelmed by the Japanese at the beginning of WWII in the Pacific. The Indian Ocean, Indonesia, The Philippines, New Guinea and a lot of small islands in the Central and South Pacific were scooped up. The American's first aircraft carrier was also lost during this time, trying to deliver fighter planes to Java. .
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  494. The thing that gets lost sometimes is that initially it was something of a shock that the American's beat the British at all. Britain obviously had the best Navy in the World and the very idea that any ships of this new nation could beat any of her ships was unheard of. Then - you have this silly expectation that "If we can win once we should win every time ..." which is just idiotic. Over all the US Navy did well to do as well as they did. The Case of the Chesapeake and Shannon - was that the Chesapeake had been blockaded in harbor and as with the French Navy - crew training had suffered. Then - it came out and engaged one of the best of the British Captains - and lost. This had happened to the French time and again when under blockade by the British. It is part of the reason for a blockade. The whole thing with Commerce Raiding by an inferior naval power on the ships of a superior naval power - is that while they might have some success - eventually, luck turns against them and things go badly for the raider. It's all the inferior naval power can do - they can't take on the might of the superior power - but it's something that's only going to work so far. Luck - is THE dominant factor in EVERYTHING. No amount of intelligence, competence, prior planning or superb equipment can make up for abysmally bad luck. Those things all count and other things being equal, (such as luck), really make a difference but it you have really, really bad luck .... it can go badly for you no matter what you've done. The best example I have of this is Barbarossa, Frederick I, The Holy Roman Emperor. He'd gathered a large powerful army for the Third Crusade - then he fell off his horse while crossing a river, had a heart attack and drowned in waist deep water. Most of his Army went home. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor The US Victory at Midway is another example of things suddenly turning to shit. If the US carrier strikes had shown up a few minutes later - the Japanese carriers flight decks would not have been covered with bombed up air craft - and those aircraft would have been on the way to attack the US ships. Though there were a LOT of other factors that influenced this battle - the fact that two converging strike forces showed up over the Japanese fleet at just the right moment insured a devastating US victory that the Japanese Navy never recovered from. Here, also, luck played a factor in the Japanese's favor. The Hiryu was covered by a rain squall - the Attacking US planes didn't see it - and it was able to launch aircraft that hit the Yorktown. A subsequent US strike sank the now outnumbered Hiryu. The Yorktown was heavily damaged, repaired, then heavily damaged again - and abandoned - but it didn't sink, so they re-boarded it and were making progress on getting the ship running again - when a Japanese submarine found and sank it and the destroyer Hammann which was sitting along side supporting the recovery. Had that rain squall not protected the Hiryu - it might have been sunk along with it's fellows and the Yorktown never would have been damaged. Had the Japanese submarine not been able to find it - it might have been repaired and sailed back home. Luck - if only the absence of Bad Luck - plays a part in everything. The Cosmic Players roll the dice and ... "Oh ... a six ... Attacker Eliminated ..."  .
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  495.  @robertsneddon731  Sara & Lex were conversions of Battle Cruisers. .
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  496.  @kwad8  Yeah. They wanted to make it easy to see I guess. My understanding is that they were having people from one ship land on the other a lot so that's what they did. .
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  497. Thanks! That was interesting. .
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  498.  @huntermurphy2148  Yeah ... in most units there's a "Go To Guy" that knows how to do something - so if you want that thing done he's the guy you go to. It's just that in the old day's they were all mechanics. I just don't know about today ... whether THAT has changed. .
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  499. That was interesting. Thanks. .
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  500. My guess is that the Americans used Island Bases like Ulithi for such purposes. .
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  501. I recently read some where that one of the reasons that the Romans one the first Punic war wsa because the Carthaginian Business Men who ran Carthage decided ships to to expansive to operate ans so they began laying them up. .
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  502.  @krisk4613  Yes, I was discussing various parts of the whole German Navy in WWI. I would tend to agree that they would have failed if they'd tried See Lowe. .
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  503.  @Gustav_Kuriga  That book on the Yom Kippur war isn't something I've ever read - just the source for that guys article. This is my favorite book of all time Fire In The Sky https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Sky-Air-South-Pacific/dp/0813338697/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3CDKWVS1I6UV7&keywords=fire+in+the+sky&qid=1577176744&sprefix=Fire+In+The+%2Caps%2C224&sr=8-6 This is an analysis of the air war in the South Pacific in 1942 and 1943. I've read this like 8 times, worn out one copy and bought another. The same guy wrote Touched by Fire https://www.amazon.com/Touched-Fire-Land-South-Pacific/dp/0140246967/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/147-5957729-6999763?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0140246967&pd_rd_r=cc450600-a902-4dd2-bba0-00c6dbac767f&pd_rd_w=f2JB0&pd_rd_wg=vmt6W&pf_rd_p=5873ae95-9063-4a23-9b7e-eafa738c2269&pf_rd_r=H7YBP27M4PRCHWNZ2WDM&psc=1&refRID=H7YBP27M4PRCHWNZ2WDM Which is about the ground war in New Guinea and on Guadalcanal. This is really good. There was a rumor that he was going to do a third book on the Naval War but he said that there was already enough stuff done on that - so he didn't do another one. .
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  504. Thanks! https://www.amazon.com/Thirty-Years-War-C-V-Wedgwood/dp/B002RODAMM/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=The+Thirty+Years+War+by+C.V.+Wedgwood&qid=1577164887&sr=8-2 .
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  505.  @Gustav_Kuriga  It's hard to say how much of this is true and how much isn't. The thing about History is there are all kinds of things just like this - which really did happen - but ... there are also so many things which have been distorted. This is the reference I was able to find: " Iraq sent 6th Armoured Brigade, 8th Mechanized Infantry Brigade and 3rd Armoured Division piecemeal in the heat of the battle. 12th Armoured Brigade arrived on 15 along with a Special Forces Brigade (3 Battalions). This just added to the confusion. There was no planning of how to use these troops and no coordination. Iraqis were simply told to ‘go forward and fight’" https://web.archive.org/web/20090116071541/http://www.defencejournal.com/2002/nov/4th-round.htm O,Balance, Edgar. No Victor, No Vanquished: The Yom Kippur War (San Rafael, California & London: Presidio Press, 1978) p. 195 "No Victor, No Vanquished: The Yom Kippur War by Edgar O’Balance. A well balanced account of the events of 1973 war, not biased towards any party. O’Balance visited the battlefield three years after the war and met many officers on both sides who participated in war." - Hamid Hussain No Victor, No Vanquished: The Yom Kippur War Hardcover – June 1, 1991 by Edgar O'Ballance https://www.amazon.com/No-Victor-Vanquished-Yom-Kippur/dp/0891410171 So, while there is a reference to the basic point of my story, I do seem to be in error about the whole of the Iraqi contribution to the war being wiped out and have noted that error in the post above - but - I couldn't comment for sure whether or not individual Iraqi units - such as the unit in question - were wiped out - or seriously depleted. And - that is the trouble with incidents recited in YouTube posts - from memory. The thing to do with any YouTube post if you have a serious interest in it - would be to research it yourself. After all - I DID say it was a story.  .
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  506. Thanks. Very interesting. .
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  507. July 1st 1963 my family and I toured the USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial - where I got a souvenir pocket knife I carried for the better part of 60 years. You were also allowed (at that time - don't know about now) to man the 40mm quad's. My brother and I teamed up on tracking and elevation. On the bow there were all those 20mm's and I had a lot of fun playing with those and pretending I was fighting off Kamikaze's. Certainly the biggest toy a boy ever had ... .
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  508.  @nicholasconder4703  That would have something to do with it during non-war times ... but ... yeah even during a war - it certainly could be a factor. .
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  509. It's always hard seeing a ship you served on (even for a short period of time) going to the breakers. You remember it as a living city afloat with purpose and commitment. .
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  510.  @evensgrey  Yes. The USN did tend to operate them as pairs - but not the way the Japanese did. For the Japanese - these pairings - at least at the beginning of the war - were something regarded as being of a permanent nature - thus the failure to get (iirc) Zuikaku to Midway with Shokaku's air craft. The American pairings were less strict. The advantage for the Japanese was that the people of the two carriers in a division knew each other very well and operated together very well. With the ad hoc nature of the American pairings the carriers didn't work together as well. One thing about Enterprise though when she was the only American Fleet Carrier in the Pacific - was the British lent us a carrier for her to operate with - and there was some real effort put into the two air groups operating as a team. There were no major carrier battles that I'm aware of in 1943 because both sides had largely expended their carriers. They both still had some left but not enough that they were being committed to campaigns the way they had been in 1942. The Japanese took their carrier air groups and put them ashore at Rabaul - where they were expended in offensive air operations in 1943 against Guadalcanal. Japanese Naval Aviation never recovered from them doing that. One thing about that - is that while Naval Air Groups were deadly against ships - they had trouble being used on long air campaigns. Single Engine Aircraft did not have the toughness of multi engine aircraft and so the loss rates of these carrier aircraft were higher than those of multi engine land based bombers. It was one thing to lose an aircraft in putting a hole in a ship that might sink it - and another thing to lose one putting a hole in a runway that might be filled in within the hour. Where carrier raids were highly successful - was in destroying enemy aircraft - rather than suppressing operations from their air fields - and in sinking ships in the harbors of such as Truk and Rabaul. Rabaul as a base - while raided several times by carriers - was pounded under by land based bombers flying mission after mission against it. .
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  511. In the Atlantic - WWII started off with no one knowing what they were doing but the most competent part of the Kriegsmarine was the U Boats. So - there was a giant Flail Ex - for the first couple of years. The Germans became highly successful in sinking Allied ships - and - Britain felt it was in danger of starvation. So ... the Americans and the British both took ASW very seriously and began - with the Germans - to wage a High Tech War with both sides doing all they could to improve their technology and tactics. Because of this - the Allies in Spring 1943 - began making real progress against the Germans. The Japanese never knew what they were doing with their Submarines - trying to use them to sink warships. While they had so success at that - they were much less successful at doing what Submarines did best - which was attack enemy logistics. Meanwhile the British had most of their military in European Waters and the American Torpedoes were execrable. Thus the Japanese lacked being scared shit less the way the Allies were - and did not devote anything like the energy and resources to ASW that the Allies did in the Atlantic. The Americans then - having continued to build submarines as fast as they could - despite their failures - got their torpedoes sorted ... and the Japanese were in deep shit. Completely lacking the ship building capability to replace their losses and at a disadvantage technologically - it was far to late for them to try and counter the sudden devastating effectiveness of the American Submarine Arm. With almost all their oil coming in via sea ... their ability to even fuel their ships and aircraft became severely hampered and Japan did begin to starve. American Submarines in the Sea of Japan were sinking their fishing fleet. The Russians were not really a factor. The only amphibious capability they had - was from the ships the Americans had given them under Lend Lease. So what landings they did make - were after Japan had surrendered and were unopposed. They didn't so much defeat the Kwangtung Army in Manchuria - as it surrendered to them when Japan surrendered. Fortunately for all concerned - the the Americans dropped Atom Bombs on two Japanese Cities. Since the Shogunate - the Japanese Emperor - though worshiped as a Living God - Reigned - but did not Rule - much like the Royal Family in the UK today. However - he had IMMENSE Prestige. I cannot emphasize enough that to his people - he was A LIVING GOD that they devotedly worshiped and - he loved them. Shocked by the Bombs - Hirohito took the step of asking his nation - which was very much ready to all die for him - to stand down and an Invasion that could have been the most horrific in human history - was peaceful. Hirohito does not get enough credit for ending WWII. That man saved millions of lives on both sides. Compare him to Hitler - who felt that the German People had let HIM down - and deserved to die. .
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  512. "Carthago delenda Est" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est That pretty much sums up the difference between Rome and Carthage. The Carthaginians were essentially business men - the Romans were essentially soldiers. Yes - their Generals were not "professional" in that they didn't hold their commands for long times the way the Carthaginian Generals did - but - most of the Roman leadership HAD been in the Army. They didn't hold their commands for a long time - because they had to give someone else a turn. It was part of the Roman Cursus Honorum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursus_honorum that their Senators served in the Army. Carthage was a Trading Empire - Rome was a Military Empire. Carthage was hiring Mercenaries to fight for it - while the Roman Ruling Class - was there - fighting in the battle lines - themselves. You look at the number of Senators that got killed in these battles the Romans lost and it was a lot (for Senators). It's human nature to think that everyone else thinks the same way you do. This is WRONG - but it is common place. Thus - the Carthaginians just didn't understand what they were dealing with with the Romans. The Barcas' did - but not many others. .
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  513. My comment last time didn't include what I would have done. If I had been the American Admiral ... First, I would have had my Fleet Fall back onto the Battleships. Three battle lines - Destroyers - then Cruisers - then Battleships. Next I would have had my destroyers maintaining a smoke screen between the US ships and the Japanese ones. Sit back behind the smoke screen as the Japanese try to blindly penetrate it and slaughter them as they come. The way to win a naval battle is to eliminate the weaker ships first - and take their guns out of the equation. Thus the American Battleships would target the two Battle Cruisers in pairs, then the Nagato and then the Yamato. Your biggest problem here would be not wanting to have to many ships fouling the range on any one target. Here, because of this - you might want to target the Yamato by the 16" gun battleships right away. Another real world problem you might have here - is whether or not you could tell which target was which ship from your radar returns. Then - another factor could be the float planes anything but the destroyers might be carrying - which could theoretically report the fall of shot to their ship. Then you'd have AA from the ship and possibly jamming to consider. Now - the biggest problem with all such plans is the unexpected. Naval Engagements are often decided by Critical Hits. Hood, Bismarck, Scharnhorst and Hiei were all done in by critical hits. Hood blew up, Bismarck & Hiei took steering hits and Scharnhorst was about to get away when she lost speed because of a hit - and was caught - not to mention the early loss of her radar. Of course, as I mentioned last time - this is all just setting up an arbitrary battle to game out - as the Americans would have had all those small carriers and their air groups - which actually did a lot of damage to the Japanese Center Force in the real world *OFF* Samar. .
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  514. OK ... first off - thanks for doing this. I found it very interesting. For myself I probably preferred the discussion oriented format to the Battle Report format for what would have been an artificial and hence varying result. That is to say - a Historical Report - is based on what we believe actually happened and other than discussing what did really happen would pretty much come out one way. Doing an Alternate History Scenario - could come out a lot of different ways. Next - (once more) it is The Battle OFF Samar. Yes that is a historically odd reference, probably due to the method in which an American Admiral referred to the battle - but that IS what it's called. Your first mis-statement of this in the historical video is one thing but - here - this is the second time you've done it and after all the scolding you got in the first one - you really should have said it right. Now - that was a serious criticism but it is based on the fact that your efforts are other wise scholarly - and hence more is expected of you. For a slightly less serious one - "But what about the Torpedo boats??? You left out the PT Boats!!!" Ha! Ha! I was part of a group of war gamers 30-40 years ago that did a lot of things like this with tiny rectangular pieces of card board moved about on the floor, using a set of Naval Warfare rules developed by one of the guys in the group. We had all played "Jutland" from Avalon Hill and using Mike's Rules did a round robin of the worlds WWII navies, French, Italian, British, German, American and Japanese - so - I've got some experience in trying to do things like this and do appreciate the effort involved and the vagaries of the results. We also fought some computer scenarios using the Great Naval Battles Computer Game on my LAN. We never did merge Surface and Air Combat scenarios with either of these rules - though we did have the Warship Commander Rules for more modern scenarios that merged them. Of course, in war gaming a scenario you have to limit it somewhere - such that it is by definition - artificial. If viewed as part of the over all situation existing in Leyte Gulf - all those small carriers would have been there too and with none of them being attacked by Japanese surface forces, they would have been free to attack the Japanese Center Force with better armed and more organized strikes. So, while the Japanese Force might win some limited scenarios, over all, they would have little chance of prevailing over the American forces present in Leyte Gulf. .
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  515. Eh ... I'm more with the USNI on Callahan. "Odd ships fire to starboard, even ships to port." (or which ever it was) when it had not been decided before the engagement who was odd and who was even. The ship Captains are counting back from the lead ship in the formation trying to decide if they are odd or even. If he had driven his column into the Japanese on purpose you'd have thought he would have said something before hand. This, to me - is more like he's just blundered into them - and is winging it. The fact that Callahan was on Ghormley's staff before being given that command also doesn't recommend him. He may have been Captain of San Francisco but had he ever been in combat? Scott had been in charge of the 3rd task force during Savo Island. Scott had led the Americans to victory. Scott should have been in command - but - stupidly - they went by Seniority and Callahan led them into disaster. The thing is - Nelson talked to his Captains before Trafalgar - so they knew what he was going to do. Did Callahan? Not that I've ever heard. You can speculate on what a Commander was thinking - I've speculated on what Lee was thinking at Gettysburg - but that doesn't mean you're right. .
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  516. Thanks. I was aware of a little bit of this but not much. .
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  517.  @jerrymccrae7202  It would seem that ... the greater impact random chance had on one's life - the more superstitious one might be ... .
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  518. Early developments are always interesting as there are so many different ideas that are tried. Once a technology's become more mature they've worked through all the things that didn't work out and there's not as much variation. .
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  519. The German Navy had one big problem in WWI and WWII - the Royal Navy. There was NOTHING the German Surface Navy was going to be able to do that was going to change things. So ... they had one aircraft carrier they never completed. So what? If they had completed this one - they'd had two ... Look at all the Carriers the British and Americans lost. You just are not going to be able to do much with one of them - before it gets sunk - and you have NONE. Now that doesn't mean you can have fun speculating about what the Germans could have done but that's just speculation about Might-Have-Beens. Yes - it's fun to think about - what would have happened if the Germans had come out all at once with Bismarck , Tirpitz , The Twins and The Carrier - and some destroyers. Me and my War Gaming Buddies used to make up scenarios about things like that - but - that's all just fucking around with History. The biggest error the Germans made - was in trying to use Capital Ships as surface raiders. The Graf Spee and it's sisters - they were the right size for that. The thing is - Surface Raiders are pretty much always going to eventually be caught and sunk. So - you don't want to use to expensive a ship for that. The other thing - is that Surface Raiders are most effective - against Single Ships. A convoy with escorts - no. The Twins encountered one convoy - with a Battleship as an escort - and wisely just left. Graf Spee should never have engaged British ships in combat because - if they were damaged - they could be repaired - but what was the Graf Spee going to do? What it did - scuttle itself. The other thing was - aircraft. During the Age of Sail - where they also didn't have radios - a ship out on the ocean was incredibly difficult to find - but even in WWI they were able to track down ships like the Emden . The German's East Asia Squadron won at Coronel but ran out of luck at The Falklands ... The RN just had vastly more capability than anything the Germans could float. They didn't even have a chance at Jutland. Germany - had enemies on both sides of it - and had not choice about being a Land Power. The only thing they were able to do - was with submarines - and that was a technological battle they eventually lost. .
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  520. This would follow the cause of the Hood's demise that has been most favored by those analyzing the ships loss - that the 4" magazine detonated - and set off the aft 15" magazines. There has been some speculation as to just how the 15" German shell (or the force of it's explosion) arrived in the 4" magazines but the consensus of opinion was that however it did that - that is what sank the ship. .
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  521. A few thoughts 1) Radar doesn't seem to have been mentioned as much as I thought it should be. 2) Things like this are somewhat futile given the importance of Critical Hits in Naval Warfare. 3) How about the importance of a ships ability to withstand steering hits? Bismarck and Hiei were both lost because of steering hits. Factors in this might be the number of screws and the number of rudders. A question here would be how common it was for a ship to have more than one rudder. .
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  522. I was born in North Carolina when my father was stationed there. When he returned to that base I was in 4th Grade and my 9 year old self dropped dimes in a can to help purchase this ship - so - I may well be a "part owner" of it. The Day my father got out of the service - we traveled to the Memorial - and it was the biggest toy I had ever played with. My Brother and I manned a Quad 40 mm weapon with one of us manning the elevation and the other the traverse. Later I manned one of the bow 20 mm's. On my way off the ship - I purchased a USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial Pocket Knife - which I carried with me for over 50 years. I used the small blade on that knife to turn Phillips Head screws - and on one trip to a Computer Lab in Puerto Rico I was laying on my back with a Pull Out System hanging from it's rack above me - using that knife as a screw driver ... Because I'd been sent there to Train some people - which never happened - I hadn't brought my tools - but I did work on a lot of computers. Fortunately I was eventually able to get a real screw driver - but until then - as so many other times - that pocket knife was pressed into service - the USS North Carolina - still preserving her nations freedom. .
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  523. Yeah. That was interesting. .
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  524. Hmmm ... this could have been a much, much, different battle had those German Torpedoes worked. I would imagine that the Germans stopped using those magnetic exploders right then and there. If they did - that would be the one redeeming part of this engagement. Without such a clear indication that these things were a mistake - the Americans took a lot longer to realize this was a failed technology. Of course - the American torpedoes had other problems as well ... Anyway - thanks! This was a very interesting review of these series of battles. .
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  525.  @ramal5708  The aircraft of the Taffy's were available to give TF 34 air cover off San Bernadino Strait. .
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  526.  @justinpyke1756  Well ... I used to go to a book store like once or twice a year and buy like $300 worth of books so I wouldn't ever run out ... but ... now ... I'm not reading as much as I used to (habits change) and with the advent of the internet I've found all those old books ... .
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  527.  @justinpyke1756  Yes ... one day ... I know what you mean ... .
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  528.  @justinpyke1756  Ah ... I can see your point about the size of the A6M - as a smaller aircraft it's structural supports would be smaller - and hence more easily destroyed - even though they provided the same level of structural safety. Yes. Language is so important in being able to do original research. I had 5 semesters of Chinese but ... I have no facility for languages and for my MA had to rely on CIA and Rand Corporation Translations of Chinese news paper articles - which - leaves one open to criticisms that the CIA might just be biased - though not that I could tell. The people I knew from my language classes who really learned how to speak it - lived there for a while. But as a historian ... my lack of audial skill is a real limitation. One of the Sci Fi Writers I really envy - is David Drake. He translates Latin. It was such a joy to read the Penguin Classics translations of Caesar that ... I'd just be in History Nerd Heaven if I could read them in the original Latin ... For PhD. candidates - original research in the native language is a requirement. Eric M. Bergerud has a PhD. and is a professor but I don't know what he did his dissertation on - so I don't know what languages he's studied. Penguin has him listed as "professor of military and American history" so ... if he did his dissertation on American History - he'd been cool in the language requirement. I did note that someone by that name commented in the Pinned Q&A thread for this video, who seems to have a historical background but whether or not it's the same guy I couldn't say. I wrote him once asking if he was going to do Oil On The Water but he said he felt that this area had already had enough done on it (and that the idea that there was a book coming was someone else getting over eager). The thing I really loved about his books Fire In The Sky and Touched With Fire was that they weren't just histories but an analysis. Fire In The Sky has got to be my favorite book of all time - I've read it like 8 times and had to buy another copy because I wore the first one out. I tell you something about this video though - it has proven a gold mine for references. Thank You for that. Just from the research I was doing to make my comment ... I thought to do a search on Amazon for: Robert Sherrod's History of Marine Corps Aviation in World War II (Hardcover – 1952) And found it ... I read that book like 50 years ago (not an exaggeration) and now - I'm going to own a copy. I have got to stop doing that though ... buying up old books I read decades ago ... like the first book I read on Marine Corps history when I was 10 years old ... is going to put me in the poor house ... I keep saying that but I keep doing it ... Oh ... one more thing. If you are interested in looking at War Diaries and such. The U.S. Government had a lot of those that it captured at the end of WWII. If you can access a Federal Depository - at such as a University Library - they might be able to get you a list of the War Diaries the US Government has - and then - you might be able to find a way to access those War Diaries. Whether they would do an Interlibrary Loan or not - I do not know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Depository_Library_Program Nick has talked about physically visiting archives in order to access their material but I do not know exactly which archives he was accessing. One thing about Nick - he actually gets paid to do this! Ha! Ha!  .
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  529. First off - let me say that this was an excellent presentation that broadened my understanding of the aircraft and the context in which it was used. That said, I have some comments to make. My primary, though far from my only source would be: Eric M Bergerud's - Fire In The Sky: The Air War In The South Pacific (available on Amazon (!!)) Boom & Zoom Japanese Naval Aviator Tactics: As to dog fighting vs. Boom and Zoom - Boom and Zoom is an offensive tactic whereas dog fighting, on the part of the Japanese Naval Aviators could be seen as a defensive tactic. If they were in a position to do so - then the Japanese might attack using Boom and Zoom tactics - but - if they were jumped - they would very commonly use the defensive loop tactic or if they were slow enough to do it begin turning fights. There are a couple of defensive moves aircraft favoring Boom and Zoom tactics might employ - one of which would be to turn into their attackers and take them on - head on. The more rugged Allied Fighters could do well here - but the Zeros could not. Also - another defensive tactic used by Allied aircraft would be the dive away. Here - Allied Aircraft tended to dive well - Zeros did not. It's not like the Allied Aircraft couldn't turn or loop - or that the Japanese aircraft couldn't dive - it was just that different aircraft were better at some things than others and better in some contexts than others. Good pilots knew when to do what - and bad pilots died. While the Chinese did start using I-15's and I-16's - they also had a number of biplane fighters, which you would expect to be more maneuverable. This may be one of the reasons for the Boom & Zoom tactics. As to Chennault's tactical acumen - he was a leading fighter proponent in the Army Air Corp before resigning and he DID start working with the Chinese Air Force as a trainer and an advisor to Chiang before becoming involved with the AVG. He would therefore have been familiar with what the Russian "Volunteers" were doing in engaging the Japanese - as well as what the Chinese pilots were doing. Rather than saying that it was really the Russians who came up with the "don't dog fight the Japanese" determination - it might be more accurate to say that they all had access to the same information and could form opinions together or on their own. Chennault then WAS the person who passed on this bit of information to the AVG pilots he recruited and trained. This information was available to Allied military's but these military's also had the combat experience of their own pilots in engaging the Japanese - so - the development of boom and zoom tactics to be used against the Japanese wouldn't have come from any one source. It was a tactical response by all concerned to the maneuverability of Japanese aircraft. Structural Integrity: It is my understanding that because the available engine wasn't powerful enough that armor and self sealing fuel tanks were known about but not used - but that the supporting structure - not just the skin - was also lightened. Here saying that it wasn't something that would fall apart at the slightest touch is one thing - but - how did it compare structurally to the F4F, P-40 and P-39 - or the Spitfires? We are not just talking about structural failures due to maneuvering - but battle damage. Something that is structurally stronger - can sustain more battle damage.  It is my understanding that the A6M and Japanese aircraft in general did not stand up structurally to battle damage as well as Allied Aircraft. Range: As to the reasoning behind the phenomenal range of the A6M & the G4M - it is my understanding that Japanese strategy for defending against the Americans was to take a number of islands where they could have land based aircraft, which was why the Japanese Navy had so many of them. The idea was that they could support each other, to defend Japan and attack American naval units trying to penetrate through this web of island bases. It was in support of this strategy that they wanted such long ranges for their aircraft - and - for the G4M to be such a fast bomber as well. Early Warning: As to the Philippines - the Japanese attacks were scheduled to come in early - just as the Americans suspected they would and had launched to deal with them. But - there were weather problems over Taiwan where they were launching from that delayed the launch - so that by the time they arrived over such as Clark Field - the Americans had all run out of gas and had to land. There were two American radar sets at Clark field that did detect the Japanese coming but all their planes were out of gas so they couldn't do anything about it. The Japanese knew exactly where those radar sets were and bombed both of them. One bit of info on this was that the sun came up in the Philippines before it did on Taiwan (by a bit) and MacArthur's air commander wanted to attack the Japanese air fields on Taiwan - but MacArthur wouldn't let him. In China - Chennault had developed an extensive early warning network of Chinese Observers who called in reports of Japanese Aircraft. Thus - the AVG aircraft had time to climb to altitude to make their interceptions with an energy advantage. Japan's Operations in the Solomon's: This was a horrible mistake on the part of the Japanese. What they should have done was let Guadalcanal go and concentrated on New Guinea. But - even after they lost Guadalcanal - they conducted an Air Offensive against Henderson Field that had a severe impact upon their losses to no good effect. The G4M's were flying to high and carried to small a bomb load to actually do any damage - so Japan squandered the cream of it's air power for nothing. Attacking targets at long range was exactly what they had planned on doing before the war even started - but it was a mistake. More so than the carrier battles - it was this air offensive that drained Japan of it's aerial strength, especially since the Carrier Air Groups were put ashore to take part in it - and were emasculated. Japans lack of a rotation policy deprived their new pilots of the experience of the veterans and these men were left on the vine to die - which impacted their morale. .
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  530.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Eh ... he was just asking a question. People afraid to ask questions never learn anything. .
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  531.  dimapez  That was actually fairly common with Tracer rounds, thus it was better to engage targets at close range so the divergence wouldn't be that great. Someone else just posted a comment that said that the purpose of those HE rifle caliber rounds - was to mark hits rather than to do damage. The person firing could see the light from their detonation and know where their rounds were hitting ... or at least that was the idea. The Russians - (iirc) actually referred to these rounds - as Tracers - since that was the purpose they served. .
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  532. Thanks for that list of references. .
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  533.  @tomriley5790  Self Sealing Fuel Tanks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sealing_fuel_tank .
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  534. I've watched this through entirely at least twice now and parts of it again researching specific points several times in addition to that. So, I just wanted to say Thank You again for doing this. Along with watching videos of girls playing in the snow in their bikini's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KruXTkUdgA discussions like this are one of the best uses I've seen for the Internet. .
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  535. Hunh ... I guess that's like Miniatures for Naval Wargaming. From High School thru College I had a number of different Wargaming Buddies. We played a lot of board games and miniatures of mostly land battles. In College we'd all meet at this Hobby store on Friday nights - then walk a couple doors down the strip mall to a bar where we drank beer until closing and solved all the worlds problems. Saturday night we'd play War Games at someone's house or the Hobby Store. For Naval Warfare, we mostly all started on Avalon Hill's Midway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_(1964_game) and Jutland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jutland_(board_game) And moved on to a system one of the guys developed and we all contributed to (my contribution was the torpedo rules). Here we played with little pieces of cardboard about half an inch in length. The guy who developed the rules owned a hobby store and after hours we'd play on the floor - though on occasion we'd play on a table. We had a round robin of the Worlds Navies: French vs. Italian Italian vs. British British vs. German German vs. US US vs. Japanese US won. We also played Great Naval Battles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Naval_Battles:_North_Atlantic_1939-1943 on my LAN at least once. We intended to do it a lot but ... never did ... One thing all that showed me ... was just what a major difference an inch (usually) was in guns ... Other forms of games we played just used just a compass and protractor Warship Commander (and a sister game) were for Modern Naval Warfare from '67-'97. https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/21387/warship-commander-1967-1997-present-day-tactical-n We'd have 3 search maps. One (or more) for each side and the the Judges Map. Each side would plot their moves on Velum - give the Velum to the Judge, who would transfer the move to his Velum - then report back to each side what they'd seen. They'd then issue orders. The orders would be executed on another smaller map with small pieces of cardboard if there was a battle. That was all a lot of fun but gradually life inflicted casualties among us - mostly through women - and our numbers thinned out to nothing. But - we did drink beer at that bar for over 20 years before the end ... Good times. .
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  536. A few things ... First off - this was very well done. Next, it's the "Battle OFF Samar" which you adamantly refuse to say to the point where it is obviously an intentional mis-statement of the name of the Battle. YOU don't get to name the Battle. Your continuing refusal to say the name correctly is something you SHOULD be ashamed of. One thing about the Japanese - was there were a few battles - such as Savo - where they could have done much more than they did - but then they left. Here - you have Japanese Admirals reluctant to lose their ships. It isn't that they are afraid of being killed - it's that they know - that if they lose a ship - it can't be replaced - and they were right, it couldn't. The Americans on the other hand - once under Halsey - were not in the least bit afraid of losing ships (though much more reluctant to have their people die than the Japanese) since they knew - that any ships they lost - could be replaced - and - replaced by newer better ships. Thus - 1942 was an utter disaster for the Japanese. To be sure - they inflicted serious, painful losses on the Americans - but - all those ships the Americans lost were replaced whereas few of the Japanese ship losses were ever replaced. The most glaring of these incidents is the Battle OFF Samar - where Kurita elected to preserve his fleet - to no purpose. The entire operation was conceived of as a Death Ride for the Japanese Navy. Their objective was to destroy the American Invasion Fleet off the Philippines and they expected to sacrifice their fleet to do so. Given that the ships in Japan had no fuel and the ships in Indonesia that had fuel could not be maintained - their Navy was becoming impotent - and this was SUPPOSED to be it's Last Hurrah. Yet - having his ship sunk from beneath him and being somewhat injured in the process - Kurita seems to have lost track of what he was there for - and fell back - when there was little between he and the Invasion Fleet. So - here - these Northern Islands - which were not worth keeping - were not something the Japanese Admiral wanted to take a chance on losing any ships over. Once he was sure he had protected the transports - he and they retired. .
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  537. IIRC ... in addition to it's service in Electronics Testing - it was also used for office space. .
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  538. Yeah. There are a multitude of problems with all of this. One is the storage of the data files. One problem some financial institutions had with their back ups - was that as time went by - the equipment that could access the files - would go away. Here - there are companies that for a fee can - hopefully - transfer your data to another format. Another problem is that the media that data is stored on can degrade over time. People get the idea that once they've digitized or backed up data to something - that this something is going to last forever - and it's not. Online storage puts you at the mercy of whoever controls the servers. If they go under financially - their data files may go with them. Another factor here - is that if they have system failures - what is the status of their back ups? At one point in time there was an effort to digitize large numbers of books in print but I don't know what happened to that. Then there's access to the data. You have problems with Web Sites simply going away. There are sometimes automatic archives of these things but sometimes there is not. The point is - that there is a tremendous amount of effort that goes into not merely digitizing things - but - the access to them over time and the maintenance of the data and the systems it is stored on. One thing that should never be done - is to assume that, since the data is digitized - that it is not as important to preserve the original hard copies it came from. What we have today - compared to what I had when I was researching my Masters Thesis (literal CARD catalogs) is fantastic but the vast majority of the information out there - is NOT digitized and you can't use a search engine to look for it. The other thing about digitizing things - is that you have to have power to be able to access it - and not everyone does. I just saw a video the other day of the Rolling Black Outs in South Africa. Throughout History there have been catastrophic data losses - i.e. The Library of Alexandria ... Today we have the likes of Putin threatening the west with Nuclear Weapons and the fact that sooner or later - some big rock is going to plow into the planet if we don't do something about it before hand ... One thing to be said for using a Reed Stylus to write on little Clay Tablets (about the form factor of a mobile phone) was that they survived thousands of years in such as ancient basements until some Archeologists found them and learned how to read Cuneiform. i wonder about the survival of data captured or created today and it's ability to survive the destruction of it's civilization and the ravages of time the way those little Clay Tablets did. .
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  539. "Practice Makes Perfect." .
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  540.  @awuma  Yeah. South Dakota, Indiana and Washington were scrapped. For the states of South Dakota and Indiana it might have been difficult to get the ship there to be a memorial - but the State of Washington has no excuse. Fortunately by the time the Iowa's reached then end of their careers - people wanted them. The Missouri - another ships whose state would have been hard to reach by a Battleship - went to Pearl Harbor where she is moored near the Arizona. With the Arizona sunk during that attack that started the war and the Japanese Surrender signed on board the Missouri - it makes a fitting tribute to the beginning and end of WWII for the US. .
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  541.  @Pangora2  Of course they weren't going to invade the United States. OF COURSE THEY WEREN'T does that really need to be said? I can understand your logic about the Russo-Japanese War - but - no - that is not what they thought. They did have as part of their doctrine the Decisive Battle - which is what they got at Tsushima Strait - but they did not think that they could defeat the Americans Militarily. 1940's America was not 1905 Russia. It is my opinion - that the mistake you are making is in not realizing that Tsushima Strait and their plans for WWII - were all part of the same Doctrine. Thus - their Doctrine in 1905 and their Doctrine in 1941 - was the same. The Decisive Battle. So - they were not doing things because of 1905 - they did things in 1905 because they were using the same Doctrine. Unlike 1905, what they were relying on in 1941 - was taking a series of Barrier Islands that they could fortify - and which they believed the Americans would have take back in order to reach Japan. These Islands would have airfields as part of their defenses - and - as a part of their nature as barriers. This is the primary difference between their strategy in 1905 and in 1941. In 1905 they attacked the Russians at Port Arthur. In 1941 - they planned on having the Americans attacking THEIR fortifications - where the Yankees would suffer the kind of losses the Japanese had suffered going against the Russian Fortifications. The Japanese designed their aircraft in pairs with very long range. The first pair was the Mitsubishi G3M (Nell) bomber and the Mitsubishi A5M (Claude) it's fighter escort. These were to be replaced by the Mitsubishi G4M (Betty) bomber and the Mitsubishi A6M (Zeke) fighter escort. Both these pairs of aircraft had, for their time - extremely long ranges. With the idea that these Island Barriers could be mutually supportive. The Decisive Battle their Doctrine had called for would take place in defense of this Island Barrier. They would bleed the Americans on these islands, sink their ships and cause the Americans to quit. This was the same strategy that the North Vietnamese and Taliban succeeded with. So - it wasn't stupid - it's just that they were not able to hold out as long. If the US had been forced to Invade Japan ... we would have taken a lot more casualties but - at that point - I can't see the US ever negotiating a peace with them and giving back all their land we had paid so dearly for. The thing is - many if not most of the Japanese Leadership KNEW they would fail. Yamamoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto knew they couldn't win. He was the one who talked about having to take Washington to win - as an impossibility. Tojo thought they could win - but - as is common in Army/Navy disputes - the Navy is more often strategically correct. My source for my opinions here - is John Toland's The Rising Sun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rising_Sun They had some very real success during the first months of the war but when they took loses - could not replace them. The Americans isolated their Island Fortresses, taking only the ones they thought they needed for THEIR airfields. While the US certainly was bled on a number of these islands it was not enough to make them want to quit. .
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  542.  @Pangora2  Your first sentence is right but the rest is off. They KNEW they would be destroyed before they did it. As I said - they were faced with the prospect of either being colonized or destroyed - and they chose destruction. It's just that afterwards - (after they chose destruction) they tried to bull shit themselves that they could bleed the Americans into a negotiated settlement. Here - what they didn't count on was how pissed off we were about Pearl Harbor. Even then - it was Hirohito who saved Japan. If he had wanted to fight to the death - the rest of the nation was ready to do that. After the nukes though he wanted to spare his people that. The odd thing was - they very much ended up being colonized by the Americans ... at least for a while ... .
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  543.  @ULTRA_2112  The Japanese chose to become a colonial nation on the premise that "if you can't beat them, join them". Then they took on the Russians to show that they were powerful enough to be included in the club. They colonized Korea, Taiwan and Manchuria. Then they went to war with China and eventually the US cut off their oil. Now - at this point - they had to make a decision. They firmly believed that if they ever backed down to a colonial power - they would become a colony. They also KNEW that if the went to war with the US they would be destroyed. What to do? Become a colony or be destroyed? Being destroyed was more honorable so that is what they did. After they were committed to it they started bull shitting themselves - that they could get a negotiated peace by making the Americans bleed - but - they had pissed us off to much with Pearl Harbor - so that wasn't going to happen. .
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  544.  @Frost-01  Yes. We do agree. I just wasn't sure before. .
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  545.  @Frost-01  I'm not sure what you mean by that. It was meant to be in the Main Battle like the Yamato, Nagato and Musashi but it was in the Guadalcanal fight that it - and they - could have made a difference. .
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  546.  @gregorywright4918  Yes. Like all the other ships that were held for the "Main Battle" - which ended up being a Carrier Battle (Marianna's) they didn't matter in. .
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  547.  @rhino1207  DON'T READ ANY OF THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT TO Ah! OK. If you are Japanese you wouldn't have a Euro specific out look yourself - but - you would have been convinced by everyone else always saying that WWII Started in 1939. Now - if you don't want to read some thing I wrote - that's fine - but you may be missing out on the logical case I'm building. I'll try again but don't feel obligated to read any of this if you don't want to. This is pretty much a Logic Exercise for me and of no value to anyone else - unless - they want to take part in it. There are four ways of looking at this. 1) That it became a World War - when ALL the major participants were in it - which would be 1941 - not 1939. The United States and the Soviet Union were BOTH brought into the war in 1941 - and both of them were certainly major powers. 2) That it was a war - that Started when the first major combatants got involved, in 1937 - that eventually became global. So it may not have started as a World War - but - it was the SAME war that became a World War once all the Major Combatants were in it. For the Americans - it was our involvement in trying to help the Chinese (by cutting off Japans Oil unless they backed down) that got us into the war when Japan attacked us. The US only became involved in the European War - when Germany Declared War on us after Japan's attack - which it did not have to do. So - what brought the US into the war - was the war in China - and only after we had been brought into THAT war - were we brought into the European Part of it by Germany's declaration. This war that had started in 1937, when Japan attacked China, then ended - in 1945. 3) That WWII Started Sept. 1, 1939 - because the British, French and Germans SAY that's when it started. This IS when the War is generally accepted to have stared - but - my contention - is that this is in error - as this IS a very Euro Centric POV. 4) That there were two wars - one in Asia between Japan and China - which started in July 1937 and one in Europe that started in Sept. 1939 and expanded into the USSR in 1941. These wars merged into one war in 1941 when Japan attacked the United States, Britain and The Netherlands Colony of Indonesia. Arguments can be made for all these interpretations. #3 is going to remain the accepted date for the start of the WWII - but I can say this with absolute certainty - the war the Chinese were in in 1937 - did not end until 1945. Here's a description of how the wars got their names https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_war No one called World War One - "World War One" - until World War Two. Before that it was called The Great War. It was only when they could see that another was about to start - that they started referring to any of them as World Wars. .
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  548. Thanks. That was the most complete version of those tests I've seen. The thing with Mitchell, Harris and Douhet - was that they were all Theorists. There was a lot of that going around between the wars - with such as Armor as well. I've got a copy of Guderian's Achtung Panser! somewhere and - it's all interwar theory. These people were essentially fanatics for their Causes. True Believers - but - they had only very limited experience to go on. At the Battle of Jutland - the Air Campaign part of it - was Zeppelin's cruising around trying to find the British. What they found I ironically - was the British Sea Plane Tender. So (iirc) the Zepp was trying to bomb the ship and the ship had it's crews out shooting at the Zepp with rifles. Initially the crew of the Zepp - laughed at the sailors shooting at them with rifles - but then - their Air Ship began to sink in altitude. The Rifles had punched so many holes in the Zepp's Gas bags - that it was becoming a real issue and the Zepp - had to head home. So much for the Air Battle of Jutland. But that's the type of things these people had to go on. Look at Tank Destroyers. Things were different with Commerce Raiding Submarines - and escorting against them. The British and the Germans had a good deal of real experience with that. But tanks and planes? Not so much. One thing I will say about Mitchell is he was loyal to his Fliers. The Military had saved a lot of money buying used British aircraft after the war - and the people managing Air Ships - didn't know what they were doing. Those Senior Military People were getting a lot of Fliers killed. Mitchell was intentionally Insubordinate - Forcing them to Court Martial him - for the express purpose of exposing their incompetence to the public. One thing about True Believers - they know how to use the Press. They are fanatics - and not hesitant about bringing on their own destruction. Mitchell intentionally sacrificed himself for his men. Whatever the mans faults with theory - he stood up for his men when it was real. There has been speculation about the Naming of the B-25 the Mitchell - because - Mitchell hated that kind of aircraft. Strategic Heavy Bombers yes - Tactical Medium Bombers - no. It's hard to say not knowing the intent of the people who named the plane. Where they Honoring him - or - making fun of him? IDK. .
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  549.  @Yamato-tp2kf  Truman abandoned Nationalist China. It was corrupt and he termed the supplies sent to it "Sand down a Rat Hole" . The Communist Chinese - supplied by the Russians - won and millions upon millions died from Communist malice and incompetence. .
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  550. Yeah ... I think those people who find wrecks like this have learned not to tell anyone where it is ... A sad end to a noble ship. .
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  551.  @davidtuttle7556  Don't forget Desert Storm. USS Missouri Gulf War Tomahawks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Eevs2IL7y8 Of course - that was in addition to the guns ... which had Iraqi troops trying to surrender to the Wisconsin's drone ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE42jDFBlWE .
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  552.  @williamgoin139  But - do they still do that? It was one thing for a conventional carrier to share it's fuel oil with it's escorts - but - it is another for a nuclear carrier to be carrying all that fuel oil solely for their escorts. I suppose they could - I just don't know if they do. .
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  553. Yep. As I understand it, one of the things the US Carriers would do - is provide oil for their escorts, so that the Carrier itself became a supply ship. I don't know how exceptional this was or if it was a matter of routine. I also don't know if they supplied things other than oil. I also am unaware whether the nuclear Carriers still do that or not since they would have no other reason to carry all that fuel oil. One thing you failed to mention was toilet paper. I've seen massive pallets of toilet paper being loaded aboard a ship ... Oh ... and I'd mention that the men crewing the ships of this supply chain have not been completely ignored. The film Mister Roberts details the comings and goings of the USS Reluctant as it sails "from tedium to apathy and back again". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_Roberts_(1955_film) .
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  554. Thanks. I knew that she was right next to the Arizona and knew that she was "sunk" but nothing beyond that. Very interesting to hear about her service. Yes - handy little ships to have around. They and the various Tenders gave good service. Some of my Uncles served on (I believe) a Destroyer Tender. I used to know the name but have forgotten and those Uncles are gone now. .
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  555. Yeah. There's a reason Ships Mascots exist. .
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  556. Thanks. That was interesting. .
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  557. First off - the link to the music gave me a 404 error. Second - Wikipedia Page on 1047 Dutch Battle Cruisers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_1047_battlecruiser Next - I was able to get the auto translate set to English and understand the basic gist of it though the translation was about as poor as it usually is doing that. Last - that was interesting. I'd no idea Holland had any ideas about building their own capital ships. There are those who would say that these ships would have been doomed - but - if deployed in conjunction with the Navies of the other colonial powers in Asia - France, Britain and the USA their deployment to protect Indonesia makes a lot more sense. Here - the assumption would be - that these powers were dealing only with Japanese aggression and - not that of Germany. I can only wonder at the thoughts of the Germans negotiating the construction of these ship with the Dutch - who knew their nation was about to invade Holland, the last exchanges taking place about 3 weeks before the attack. .
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  558. What was the advice in Piece of Cake about Tail End Charlie? .
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  559.  @ShizukuSeiji  Additionally ... the term Blooker - was a nick name for the M-79, 40 mm. Grenade Launcher used by the Americans during the Vietnam war. The sound the weapon made when firing was approximated as "BLOOK!" There were other nick similar names also approximating the sound of the weapon firing. .
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  560. The thing is - climbing into a Japanese Aircraft and going off to fight the Americans was a very nearly suicidal act near the end of the war so - if they were going to die anyway - they may as well try and get a hit. .
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  561. Via YouTube Search https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=uss+sable .
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  562.  @richardlinter4111  Thanks for those links. I don't speak French but I was able to use Google Translate: https://translate.google.com/ to read some of it and can come back later when I have more time. YES. It is always good to be able to read things in the original language of subject. David Drake - the author - can translate Latin ... I am so envious of his ability to read Caesar in the original ... but I suck at languages. As to Doenitz and Raeder - yeah - they weren't guilty of the kinds of war crimes others of the Japanese and German leadership were. They were lucky though that they had someone like Nimitz to stick up for them. Other countries and other people would have just hung them all. .
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  563.  @adamdubin1276  Maybe that is how they figured it out. Some of them, including Nagato - did figure that out and switched to HE. Or maybe the torpedoes made them take a closer look. .
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  564.  @billbolton  I doubt seriously they had any idea. The thing is - WE were breaking THEIR code - so we had a lot better idea what they were doing and working with. They weren't breaking out code so they were entirely dependent on tactical observations and those were terribly unreliable. .
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  565.  @Kwolfx  Yeah and he has to find pictures too. One of the good things about Wikipedia is the notes. Some of them have links in them but some of them cite hard copy sources. Amazon is a good place to search for books as they have links to other book sellers and you can buy books from them through Amazon. Another source for books of course is Libraries. They may have the books but they may also have an Inter-Library Loan program where other libraries that have a book will lend it out to them. It's probably better now that they have electronic searches as going through card catalogues and guessing if there's anything relevant in a source from it's tiny descriptions ... was a very hit or miss process. .
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  566.  @Kwolfx  Yeah, the guys advocating unrestricted submarine warfare were in good company - and in the course of WWI & WWII - they prevailed. .
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  567.  @Kwolfx  Found this on Jeune Ecole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeune_%C3%89cole This is the closest thing I could find mentioning Admiral Aube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Martel-class_ironclad .
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  568.  @user-rk3yb6nd1n  This is the closet thing I could find doing searches for "Naval Shellfire Dye Marker" This is NOT for a Shellfire Dye Marker but for a Rescue Dye Marker but it does list the contents which might be similar to that of the material used in the Shellfire Dye Marker: https://archive.org/details/milmanual-tm-43-0001-37-ammunition-data-sheets-military-pyrotechnics/page/n93 The salient point here is : "The this marker consists of a heat-sealed plastic laminate bag filled with uranine, a dye composed of soluble sodium salt and fluroescein ..." Sorry I couldn't find anything better. Maybe someone else can come up with something better. .
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  569.  @adamalton2436  They fucking hated each other. Before the war - they on occasion killed each other. Yamamoto was partially moved to command of the fleet to keep him from being killed by the army ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Yamamoto .
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  570.  @handlebarfox2366  Rip & Tear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZMg9ryeWOw .
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  571. Yes it is. .
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  572. The thing is ... all these guys were doing here at the Battle OFF Samar - was doing their jobs. It was part of their jobs ... to do things like this. .
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  573.  @AdelineLowry  The Answer to that is we don't know. There have been a number of War Gamers who have gamed this out and in those games the US didn't do well. However a lot of this would depend on just what forces the US committed. If you had the entire US Navy - things might be a lot different than if you just had the Pacific Fleet. Another factor would be what the US might have done before hand about re-enforcing it's bases in the Far East - and - whether or not the British and Dutch made a full commitment. Since this is an entirely fictional scenario - everything is going to be weighted on how it is initially set up. Then - you have the execution. The Japanese certainly could have won at Midway - but they didn't. If you gamed this out - with varying forces involved - you might get different results. Finally - if the US had really done this - a war game based on that campaign - could easily turn out differently than it did - because of the decisions made by the Players. These things can be fun to game out - but we should be under no illusions about actually determining what really would have happened. We aren't going to. .
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  574. Yes. The odd career of an odd little ship. .
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  575. Best scene from They Were Expendable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiaTbp2bfJA .
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  576. Didn't include this last time. Best scene from They Were Expendable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiaTbp2bfJA .
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  577. Novel based on this ship - HMS Saracen by Douglas Reeman Online Book https://books.google.com/books/about/H_M_S_Saracen.html?id=NT1hD3hoOHsC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false Various forms on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/H-M-S-Saracen-Douglas-Reeman/dp/1491572868 .
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  578. IIRC Singapore fell because the water purification plant was on the land and when it was lost the British gave up. There's probably more to it than that but that's all I remember. Of course ... if it had still been there it could have provided pure water. .
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  579.  @tominiowa2513  That's actually a good point. Here - you will notice though that The Battle of Leyte Gulf - is named correctly - since the battle did take place IN Leyte Gulf. The traditional method of often naming Naval battles for a nearby bit of land as in The Battle of Trafalgar - is in fact in error for just the reason you stated. The Battle did not take place AT Trafalgar (which is on land) - it took place on the water OFF Trafalgar. So - the battle should really be named - The Battle Off Trafalgar - but I'm not stupid enough to go around telling people that we should all change the names of these Historical Battles. That would be really stupid. Just as stupid as saying The Battle of Samar - when it is The Battle Off Samar. And once again - for anyone thinking this is Nitpicking - that's what Historians do. If don't you believe me - try getting a Graduate Degree in History and using the WRONG name for something in one of your papers ... See what happens during Peer Review ... All I'm doing here - is a holding Drachinifel to the standards he set for himself when he labeled himself a Naval Historiographer. If he was just another stupid YouTuber doing Reaction Videos(!!) I ... might ... not bother. Normally - his videos are excellent - so I expect more from him than some YouTube Reactionary. .
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  580.  @gwtpictgwtpict4214  Not really. Look at my reply to your message in the other thread on German Panzer Grenadiers. I've just got GOMS. Grumpy Old Man Syndrome. Guys like me are dealing with the failures of our bodies due to age and - a life time of having to put up with other peoples bull shit. Whatever tolerance we may have had in our youth is gone. In each case though - you will note that I'm responding to someone who has chosen to give he shit about something. Look at the tone and content of the messages I'm replying to. The use of the word "triggered" cracks me up. It's like ... you are some how not supposed to get pissed off at assholes giving you shit about something. Fuck that. Someone gives me shit - I'm going to give it right back to them. If I'm wrong - and someone points that out - I thank them. None of us is perfect and we all fuck things up - but if someone chooses to be a smart ass and give me shit - and is wrong themselves - I don't owe them the least bit of politeness. A lot of that though - is a Nerds way of looking at things. For the Nerd (like me) what is important is the accuracy of the information being exchanged - not someone's feelings. Someone's feelings don't count for squat (for Nerds) - and that is how they talk to each other. And - here's a clue - there are a lot of nerds studying History ... Most of the ones you see here though are still young men whose bodies are not yet failing them and have yet to put up with a lifetime of other peoples crap. .
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  581.  @mitchelloates9406  Obviously - you are not a History Nerd (like me). Ah ... but perhaps - you are one of Drach's Fan Bois? .
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  582.  @gwtpictgwtpict4214  Yes - there are a number of other battles which have multiple names. And - there are many battles such as The Battle of Waterloo - which use OF - even though the battle took place NEAR Waterloo - rather than IN it. What if I decided to call it The Battle Near Waterloo? Hunh? That would be silly - wouldn't it. Just as silly as incorrectly referring to this battle as The Battle of Samar. That isn't the name. Why are you people so stupid you can't get past that? As with the last poster - as with Drachinifel - YOU do not get to decide what the name of the battle is. The Unites States Navy GOT to decide what the name of that battle is. There are no alternate sayings - there is the correct name - and there is being wrong. My understanding of the source of the name - is that in an early report on the battle - it was referred to as - The Battle Off Samar - and the name stuck. History is full of little things like that. Yes - this is different than what is commonly done. That is why a lot of people fuck it up. But - they are still fucking it up when they say it WRONG. If you have ambitions to be a Historian - you should use the CORRECT name for the battle. If you just want to be yet another stupid YouTuber who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground - the go ahead - feel free to be wrong. As to calming down? My first post was calm. Then this twit and you - who know absolutely NOTHING about what you are talking about - see fit to argue with me. If it was just a couple of twits like you - I wouldn't care. Drachinifel though - SHOULD - know better. In fact I am certain he DOES know better. Yet for some reason - he persists in saying the name of the battle wrong. Oh ... and ... I don't know how many historians you know - but this is how they talk to each other. If you fuck something up - the other guys are going to let you know about it. This is NOT the first time he's done this. It's the second third. I said something the first time - but he's chosen to ignore that. And as to my knickers being in a twist - maybe you wear knickers but I don't. .
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  583.  @tomdolan9761  No - it isn't - WHICH is why you don't call it that. It would be just as incorrect to say - The Battle OFF Trafalgar as it is the say The Battle OF Samar. THE BATTLE OFF SAMAR is the correct name for the Battle. YOU do NOT get to decide what the battles name is - that was decided a long time ago. This is not two YouTube Commenters arguing - that is the Official Name of the Battle. To say The Battle of Samar - is INCORRECT. Given that this is a Channel devoted to Naval History - it should be using the CORRECT name of the battle. That is what the US Navy calls it: https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/world-war-ii/1944/samar.html That is what the National WWII Museum calls it: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/eyewitness-battle-samar-and-loss-uss-st-lo That is what the United States Naval Institute calls it: https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2019/october/navys-aerial-arsenal-leyte-gulf Google this and the ONLY links that say The Battle of Samar - are Drachinifel's (!!!!!) Why the damn hell he persists in calling this battle by an incorrect name - is beyond me. Yes - he's a very good YouTuber - but all the other HISTORIANS use the CORRECT NAME. YOU and HE should stop being twits about this. .
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  584. It is The Battle OFF Samar . Come on. You should know this. THAT is the name of the battle. It's not like you weren't corrected on this last time. Why the persistence in mis-naming the battle? I can't believe that you don't know better. .
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  585.  @karthus006  Ah! At least there were some ... .
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  586. I suppose that the type A's were to emphasize ASW ... or not ... .
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  587. I should say - that all the other Combatant Powers were inexperienced when they started the war - it's just that by the time the US was involved - it's enemies had been at it for some time - and knew what they were doing. .
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  588. Reminds me of the Connections Series ... .
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  589. To me - the significant factor in the Battle - was Callahan's inexperience (and/or utter stupidity). Scott - had already won one of the few engagements between the Japanese and Allies in Iron Bottom Sound - while Callahan had been on the Staff of Halsey's predecessor - which if anything - counted against him. But he was a few days senior to Scott and in one of the worst cases of Military Bureaucracy Run Amok - because of that - he was made the Task Force Commander instead of Scott. "Odd ships fire to starboard, even ships fire to port" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Battle_of_Guadalcanal - was one of the stupidest Naval Battle Orders Ever given. He had his Captains literally trying to count back down the column to see whether they were an odd or even ship. Further more - like Kurita's "General Attack" order off Samar - this order Abrogated His Command of his ships and would seem to be a major factor in all those cases of Blue on Blue that caused Scott's death. He made NO use of the Radar his Ships were fitted with - either as a Flagship - or by position in the Task Force. I've seen no indication in this video that Callahan was anything but the primary source of the American's losses. The thing that mattered the most though - was that as poorly commanded as they were - the Americans inflicted losses on the Japanese which they could not replace - whereas - the American Losses were not only replaced but reinforced with Newer - Better - Ships. The Americans won the Campaign for the same reasons they won the war. They could replace their losses - and the Japanese could not - and - they LEARNED and the Japanese did not. You got that last bit right. The Japanese were really good at the beginning of the war - but failed to learn the lessons the Americans did. Lexington was lost because of damage to the piping for the aircraft fueling system that caused gas vapors to accumulate - and then detonate. They didn't make that mistake again. Those fuel lines were filled with fire retardant as part of their Battle Stations Drill. The Japanese lost Taiho for very similar reasons - in 1944 . The Americans never lost another Fleet Carrier after Hornet and they wouldn't have lost her - if they'd won the battle. Yorktown wouldn't have been lost if that sub hadn't found her. .
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  590. Differing opinions https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzMxMDgzMy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwOTE2MDMxMX0.iycXsRWyCiFF9Cahr2GIXtPDpArxf0WcTYLV_Vujqns/img.jpg?width=980 As to being stationary - in fact moored - having the water tight doors open and lacking a full crew ... wait ... what about that sounds like Pearl Harbor? .
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  591. Yeah. It's not a surprise that they had gun boats like that. The thing with that land mass - is that it is really big and has rivers flowing both north and south to the Baltic, Black and Caspian Seas. In fact ... The early Vikings would enter a river mouth on the Baltic - take the river down as far as they could - and then Portage their boats to a south flowing river. Here - since what they were doing was moving from the tributary of a North Flowing River to a Tributary to a South Flowing River - it was more common for them to make connections than you might think. I read a story once where these Vikings had come down a north flowing river into a south flowing one - entered the Black Sea - then crossed it to Constantinople. As the city came into sight - they began to attack it - rowing hard to increase the speed of their boats. The thing was - as more and more of the City rose up into sight - they realized they were farther and farther away from it than they had thought - and - it was much bigger than they had ever imagined. When they reached the Harbor - the Harbor Police gave them directions to where they could apply for a job as mercenaries. .
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  592. Well ... thank YOU very much for your efforts here. Glad you were not harmed or arrested. That was very impressive. Whether or not you have stumbled up on the actual recipe for Greek Fire - we can't of course know - but - I would say that some such formulation would have been very efficacious in dissuading people from attacking them at least for some time. That's one thing about the Ancient World - where civilizations were time and again subject to conquest and destruction with untold amounts of knowledge lost in the process. .
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  593. The North American Trainer known to the Air Force as the AT-6 Texan - was known to the Navy as the SNJ. So - the aircraft in these pictures would probably be SNJ's. I am under the impression that the AT-6's did not have Tail Hooks like the SNJ's. I am unaware whether ANY of the AT-6's ever had a tail hook or not. I simply do not know. I did a little bit of research on it and did spot a picture on Wikipedia stating that the SNJ did have a tail hook. This would be a given - since it could hardly be used as a Naval Trainer without one. .
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  594. Very well done. .
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  595. Thanks. That was very interesting. I knew about all this on a more superficial level but was very pleased at the level of detail added to that understanding. .
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  596.  @spookyshadowhawk6776  The Yamato actually was given a lot more fuel for it's final voyage than it was supposed to get. The guy doing the fueling just didn't have the heart to send it out with so little. Of course, this didn't make any difference in what happened. But yes - the Japanese navy should have expended itself at Leyte Gulf as it never had the fuel to do anything after that. I'd not care to speculate on the value of having Bismarck in a French Port. The British would have had to keep an eye on it where ever it was and deal with it if it came out. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau never managed to do anything until scuttling back home through the channel - where Gneisenau suffered damage she never recovered from. Given the loss of the dry dock in that area I'm not sure how well Bismarck could have been repaired but since it sank we'll never know. Additionally, I would expect that sitting in a French port these ships would have been more vulnerable to air attack than back in Germany - though it was in Germany that Gneisenau was badly damaged by air attack - she was hit several times in Brest before that. .
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  597. Hunh ... compressed air ... wouldn't have thought of that. At least no mention of it killing it's crews ... It would be hard to have a worse record than the Hunley ... which killed ALL of them ... even if it did actually manage to sink a ship - the Husatonic . Like the American South in the Civil War - being Blockaded was something the French had to deal with - and on more than one occasion. So - the concept of a Anti-Blockade vessel does make sense and it wouldn't have to have that much range. So - I can see why it was developed. They just didn't seem to think of control planes ... you know - like the fins on a fish? .
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  598.  @drakron  Here's the Wikipedia article on these tests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell#Project_B:_Anti-ship_bombing_demonstration There was a tremendous amount of Politics involved here. The Bomber Mafia in the Army wanted to convince people that they could win a war BY THEMSELVES - by destroying the enemies industry. The thing was - that this was an Offensive Strategy and Congress wanted nothing to do with Attacking Anyone. HOWEVER, they would pay to defend the United States. We had nothing to fear on our borders from Canada and Mexico - and - we had these two large oceans to shield us from Europe and Asia. So - the Navy - was the Senior Service here. We had a joke for an Army - but our Navy wasn't that bad. The Army - had it's Army Air Corps - run by the Bomber Mafia - and since they couldn't get the money to buy B-17's based on Strategic Bombing - they were determined to sell the idea to Congress - as an Anti-Maritime Aircraft that would protect us from enemy ships. This was something that B-17's turned out to be really bad at but it got them the money for the planes. Airpower was extremely important during WWII - but - all the Air Power Advocates in the pre-war years were full of shit. They ALL vastly over claimed what Air Power could do - believing that it could win wars all by itself - something it has NEVER done. The irony here - is that Billy Mitchell was NOT Court Martialed for advocating Air Power - he was Court Martialed for telling the truth - that American Political and Military Leadership - were responsible for the deaths of a lot of people because of their policies. Calling his Superiors "Traitors" - was in fact Insubordination - and that is what he was Court Martialed for. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell#Court-martial .
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  599. The Axis Powers did not have the resources to take on the UK & the USSR at the same time. They were winning the war the first half of 1941 - but in the 2nd half - they went o war with the Russians and the Americans - after which they were doomed. If they had concentrated on Defeating the British - and not gone to war with the Russians - they could have won and turned the Med into an Axis Lake. Here - only fighting the British - they could have spent more of their resources on their Navies. If they had waited until they had a balanced task force - the Germans would have had some air cover and maybe Bismarck would not have taken a steering hit from an air launched torpedo. Instead - they expended their Capital ships as Commerce Raiders or the threat of Commerce Raiding. .
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  600. Yeah ... The Coast Guard sees daily examples of the fact that if you fuck up at sea - it will kill you. .
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  601.  @boobah5643  Yeah. .
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  602.  fus149 Hammer  I think that whoever tries might have a problem ... .
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  603. Wow. If this is just part of your library - you have more books than I do - AND - most of them seem to be hard bound (!!!!!!). At one point in time - I worked in a Library - and they would periodically purge the stacks of duplicates - and give the histories to me. I lived in this studio apartment and one whole wall was cabinets below and shelves above. Unfortunately - I had to move and no longer had that much shelving space - so - I donated a lot of my books (boxes and boxes) to local Libraries. Later on - a ship I was working with was going on deployment - and I gave them boxes and boxes of novels, mostly Sci Fi and Fantasy. However - with my career in computers - I then accumulated a LOT of books and magazines on hardware and software. Then there were the Subscriptions I had to the Naval Institute, National Geographic and various and sundry (!!!) Computer Magazines (Byte and PC Magazine) and ... stacks of the news paper Info World ... When I retired - so did my ability to support so many subscriptions and they all went. I've still got rooms full of ... stuff ... though ... Did I mention my storage unit? Boxes of model ships, planes and vehicles ... boxes of notes for my thesis (which cost me a pretty penny to photocopy ...) ... and my drum kit ... Oh ... and then there are all the computers I own ... I don't know how many computers I own ... The oldest goes back to '83 ... and I just bought another one yesterday ... .
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  604. Well done. .
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