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

  1. 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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  2.  @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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  3.  @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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  4. Who contributed their DNA to you? .
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  5. 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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  6. 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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  7. 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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  8. 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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  9. 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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  10. I think it was Forestall , Oriskany and Enterprise that suffered flight deck disasters during strike launches during the Vietnam War. .
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  11. 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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  12.  @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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  13. 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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  14. "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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  15. 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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  16. 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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  17.  @captbumbler5356  Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Portchester_Castle_(K362) .
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  18.  @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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  19.  @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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  20. Well done. The audio wasn't always smooth but it was always understandable - which is what counts. Thanks. .
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  21. 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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  22.  @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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  23. 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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  24. 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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  25. 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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  26. 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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  27.  @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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  28. 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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  29. 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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  30. 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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  31. 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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  32. 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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  33. 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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  34. 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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  35. 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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  36.  @rupertboleyn3885  Of course ... given the way the Mark 14's Mark 15's worked .... .
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  37. 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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  38.  @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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  39. Agamemnon was also used as a ships name in such as the Babylon 5 TV show. .
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  40. 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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  41. Hunh ... well ... these ships actually were much longer lived than I would have expected ... .
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  42.  @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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  43. 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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  44.  @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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  45.  @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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  46. 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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  47.  @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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  48. 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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  49. 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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  50. 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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