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

  1. 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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  2. Thanks, that was very interesting. .
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  3. Very well done. .
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  4. 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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  5. 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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  6.  @bkjeong4302  He's thinking about Wasp . .
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  7. 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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  8. 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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  9. The full skit from G&P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY3sM0jtwaA .
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  10.  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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  11.  @mahbriggs  They shouldn't have been - but they were. .
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  12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_96_25_mm_AT/AA_Gun .
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  13. 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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  14. 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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  15. 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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  16.  @shawncarroll5255  Thanks! .
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  17. Thanks. That was really interesting. .
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  18. 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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  19. Remembering Pearl Harbor. .
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  20.  @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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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. Some of my old friends from playing the Avalon Hill "Jutland" game in High School. .
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  25. Yeah ... the US sure built one hell of a navy .... .
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  26. 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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  27. 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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  28. 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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  29.  @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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  30.  @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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  31.  @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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  32. 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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  33. 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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  34. 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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  35.  @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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  36. 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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  37.  @simonwaldock9689  I think we've all had moments like that ... WTF!!!!!! ... oh ... .
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  38. 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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  39. 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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  40. Yeah ... you have all these fascinating machines that ... are born ... live and then die in a scrap yard ... .
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  41.  @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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  42.  @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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  43. 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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  44. 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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  45.  @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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  46.  @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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  47. 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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  48. 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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  49. 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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  50.  @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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