Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "The torpedoing of USS North Carolina - 15th September 1942" video.

  1. The joys (to creators) of YouTube release-on settings...
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  2. Yes, after much experimentation they managed to reduce it some by changing propellers.
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  3.  @jetdriver  One note I saw elsewhere - the Lansdowne fired two torpedoes at first, but neither exploded. They then disabled the magnetic exploders, reset the depth for 10 feet, and fired 3 more. All three then hit and exploded, but it took another hour before she sank.
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  4.  @vikkimcdonough6153  I think there was some attempt to try that idea on merchant ships in the Channel, but once the ship gets going the balloon tends to follow behind the ship a bit and would be very easy to avoid in any air attack. Plus launching and recovering requires some clear space that won't poke holes in the fabric. After reading my response, I realized I was assuming you were referring to ships at sea, but upon rereading your question I realized you did not specify that. Ports like Dover and Portsmouth did use barrage balloons around the harbors. I found this quote on a page about balloons: "An attempt by the Luftwaffe to break through defences at low level over Dover in 1940 was thwarted by balloons, and one source has Balloons responsible for “102 aircraft crashes in the cables, resulting in 66 crashed or forced landings.” Does that answer your question?
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  5. That was late August. This was between that and Santa Cruz in October, when they were reinforcing Guadalcanal with troops and supplies.
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  6. I think they came from a book called Battleship North Carolina by Ben Blee.
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  7.  @Valorius  She was sunk off Makin Island in November 1943 by destroyer USS Radford.
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  8.  @nsd935  Long Lance torpedoes were not carried on capital ships, but on cruisers and destroyers.
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  9.  @wildkarrde3370  They were recovered when the ship was at Tonga, and burial at sea is only done if the ship is steaming in deep water away from land. People prefer to have a grave to visit if possible.
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  10.  @gagamba9198  The drydocks in Australia are smaller and would struggle to fit a battleship, plus the repair facilities are optimized for RN ships and parts. The US forward-deployed several repair ships to the south Pacific at New Caledonia and Fiji to handle intermediate level repairs, if things were more difficult they could patch them up and send them on to Pearl. Note also that Pearl sometimes patched them up and sent them on to the US West Coast, like when the Washington collided with Indiana.
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  11.  @timgosling6189  The lean out may be momentum; the lean in may be the pendulum effect in reaction to the lean out.
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  12.  @nathanzylla4961  Different guns, different targets, different environments, and different histories. The navies usually used 6", or 152mm. The armies, when they got to guns that big, used 155mm or 6.1". Guns that big in armies were usually shooting HE shells indirectly, like howitzers. Navies were using them for direct fire to kill destroyers and other ships. Then there is the issue of salt contamination at sea, which the army does not face on land. Plus the idea of army-navy commonality is only a recent invention; throughout history they have been very different, often opposing services that developed their own weapons for different needs and competed for funding against each other from a common civil government. So up to WW2 there was not very much movement toward "joint" weapons or ammunition.
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  13. The NC kept going at speed, as there still was a sub (and others) in the area. Not direct attack, but not able to slow down or stop either. Plus if we are comparing to the Bismarck we should note that it was a 21" version of the Long Lance that hit NC, compared to the 17.7" version the Swordfish used, and had a warhead about double in explosive.
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  14.  @bebo4807  The repairs lasted until November, so she missed Santa Cruz.
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  15. The Loss of Force Z video has some detail on PoW's hits, including a flooding layout chart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7dqxBdYBZI
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  16. Thanks for reminding me about that hit. Wasn't that when she had to steam backwards to Pearl?
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  17. No - sunk off Makin Island in November 1943. In May she machine-gunned survivors of a cargo ship she sank off Fiji. She was also the beacon ship for the second attack on Pearl Harbor in Operation K.
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