Comments by "Frank DeMaris" (@kemarisite) on "The Drydock - Episode 122" video.

@giauscaesar8047 would that he had explicitly and affirmatively detached 5th BS. As far as I've seen, it was more a matter of losing track of 5th BS and leaving Evans-Thomas to rely on intuituon for instructions.
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That can't be a picture of USS Boise in the discussion of magazine explosions, because it doesnt have the number 3 forward turret. Probably should have been given the hit she survived at Cape Esperance in 1942.
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Some navies install their turrets with retaining clips which are strong enough to prevent the turret from falling out or being blown off its mounting. Other navies just rely on the weight of the turret to keep it in place, and those will fall out when the ship is sinking and rolls over.
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@bkjeong4302 keep in mind that many of the early encounters also used early radar sets that weren't well understood by the officers relying on them. Metric-wave SC search radars had entered the fleet in the fall of 1941, while dramatically superior centimeter-wave SG search radars were first fitted in April 1942. On August 9, 1942 lookouts on Chokai spotted USS Blue at over 10,000 yards with Blue's radar obviously not spotting them. The southern cruiser group was spotted at about 13,000 yards and the USS Vincenes in the northern group at 18,000 yards at the same time the Japanese opened fire on the southern group. Even on November 15, Japanese optics had detected and tracked the enemy from shortly after 2200, with the subsequent time spent maneuvering to allow a sweeping unit to clear the path for the bombardment group to proceed unmolested. Washington's SG radar picked up the Japanese at about 18,000 yards some time around 2300, after the turn to the west that started with the destroyers at 2252. This is all from Richard Franks book on Guadalcanal where, in the conclusions, he clearly states that Japanese visual spotting saw the Americans before radar saw the Japanese at both Savo Island and the Lee-Kongo battleship match.
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@bkjeong4302 training yes, plus outstanding optics that on some occasions allowed them to spot US ships before the US radar detected them.
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The Japanese captured 40 km Bofors at Singapore too, and had manufactured several hundred barrels by the end of the war.
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@Colonel_Blimp a colloquialism. A signaling issue appears to have caused 5th BS to not receive the signal to turn around 1430, while Evans-Thomas had not been briefed that the Battlecruiser Squadron expected ships to use their initiative while keeping station with the flagship. Hence "misplaced", as opposed to affirmatively signaling Evans-Thomas to take his squadron off to the north and maneuver independantly.
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I believe that is correct. Japanese night air activity off Guadalcanal was limited to harrassment and spotting, and by the end of that campaign their core of experience air crew had been eviscerated. The US wasnt doing night carrier operations until the Enterprise converted to a CV(N) in late 1944.
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Andrew Crews well, there would probably have been quite a bit of damage to the superstructure, but nothing at all below the armored deck.
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@nunyabidness674 not remotely. V2 is a thin steel casing containing 2,200 lb warhead, engine, 19,000 lb of fuel and LOX (at launch), etc. It only has to be strong enough to keep all those components together through acceleration and flight. Tallboy is a very thick and hard steel casing with over 5,000 lb of explosive, with the casing designed to punch through hardened concrete or armor plate. Impact of a V2 on a thick armor deck would be more like a HESH shell, with the impact smashing the rocket casing all over the deck and (hopefully) keeping the fuze and warhead together long enough to detonate.
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@WALTERBROADDUS yes, but show me a battleship 1,000 yards from the beach, which some of the destroyers off Omaha beach did.
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@WALTERBROADDUS until you really need to get that close, as in the destroyers coming in to rifle range of the beach to save the landing and spot their own targets.
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@giauscaesar8047 certainly 5th BS was instructed to fall in at the rear of the line. However, the course change around 1430 was apparently not received by 5th BS, and certainly no specific signal telling it to maneuver independently was sent.
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That British 14" shell is about 5.5" longer than the US 14" shell, so probably too long for the ammunition hoists. It's also about 90 pounds heavier.
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Claim 1 is generally made by Bismark fanboys but either ignores some important issues (armor scheme, mixed secondary battery, the ridiculous single shot 37 mm AA guns), takes British propaganda at face value, or is trying to be clever by finessing the dates. On the last point, King George V is comparable but commissioned two months later. So if we ignore Hood then at best Bismark's claim is true for two months.
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You must mean USS Spence, not Spruance, which wouldnt exist until the early 70s.
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