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Gregory Wright
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Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "The Drydock - Episode 150" video.

It is when a Long Lance pokes a hole in your forward magazine...
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Just poking a hole in the gate does not do much that cannot be patched quickly. You need to do serious damage to the gate mechanisms. Note that when the Campbeltown hit, commandoes swarmed out of her and attached explosives to all the nearby gate mechanisms and machinery. THAT did serious damage, and was not easily replaceable.
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@DFWTF The USS Enterprise was returning from Wake after transporting a Marine fighter squadron; she had already launched one squadron of dive bombers to land at Ford Island when the attack began. The USS Lexington was returning from Midway on the same task, but she was further away. The USS Saratoga was near San Diego, about to fly on her squadrons after a refit in Bremerton, and the Yorktown and Hornet were in the Atlantic.
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@readingrailroadfan7683 Availability of the type of ships, speed and size of the ships (you want as close to 20kts as you can from a merchant ship), and enough dockyard space and manpower to do the work. The Clevelands were altered during building, so they did not have to raze an existing ship, but most of the lower hull was kept as it was (it was mostly engine room anyway). The first classes of escort carriers were built on freighter and oiler hulls, also with minimal changes to the lower hulls, with the tanks or holds repurposed for storage of aircraft parts, weapons, and extra crew (one class of oiler kept most of her tanks, and was used to refuel escort vessels as well). The superstructure was cut down to main deck level and a hangar and flight deck built over it, with provision for trunking the engine gasses along the side. A single elevator was added at first, but later, larger purpose-built CVEs had two. The first ones also had no island, but that was found to be a problem so later ones had very small islands added. Aside from the existing armor in the Clevelands, little or no provision for armor was made, except in some which enclosed the avgas tanks in concrete.
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They did, but there were a lot of bodies and noxious gases in those areas.
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At the beginning of the video he lists where the questions come from. Each of these previous videos have their first "comment" pre-set by Drach with the text "Pinned post for Q&A". Open the comment list and add a question. He's usually working a week or so ahead, so just choosing the next one in order might mean you get skipped over.
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@chrissouthgate4554 Start here: https://www.usni.org/press/books
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@Colt45hatchback A red paint would make your sub more visible when it is cruising just below the surface, like at periscope depth.
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Check the price on "Japanese Cruisers of the Pacific War" by LaCroix...
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@randomperson4l4l4 They are sister ships from the same class, why do you think one would have an advantage? It would depend on crew and captain.
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@senecanero3874 For smaller vessels, yes...
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@mattmopar440 Aside from U-571, what other movies are you thinking of? I can think of several in the Pacific, such as Run Silent Run Deep, Operation Pacific, Up Periscope, Destination Tokyo, Torpedo Run, and even Gung Ho.
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@paulpeterson4216 The IJN task force Kido Butai was on the north side of Oahu during launch, about 200 miles distant. The Enterprise group was approaching Oahu from the southwest, also about 200-300 miles distant. The IJN launched a few recon planes, two of which flew over Oahu to report on weather and alert level. The rest went southeast and southwest looking for US ships north of Oahu. The "two strikes" of the Pearl Harbor attack were each halves of the full striking power of Kido Butai, roughly 170-180 in each. About two dozen fighters were kept back for fleet air defense, but no attack planes were held back. So nothing could have been done immediately, unless the fleet could make contact with the second wave commander and redirect him (very unusual, hardly ever done). The earliest the force could have responded to any recon report would have been after the "first wave" was landed and rearmed, so maybe around 11am. By that time the Enterprise was already aware of the attack and tasked to search southward of Oahu due to a mistaken RDF indicator.
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@jeffrey8847 A "third strike" would have been delayed at least two hours from the end of the second strike, and in that time the Enterprise learned of the attack and was given the task of searching to the south (due to a 180 degree error in RDF tracking). She deliberately did not enter harbor until after dark, and then only to refuel before departing before daybreak.
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@kemarisite You could not pay me enough to consider taking the Ryujo into the North Pacific in December. The Hiryu and Soryu had enough troubles dealing with the seas. The Zuiho might have made it, but as you mentioned she was already tasked with replacing the carriers in the Philippines.
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@stevevalley7835 Torpedoes do not detonate when they hit the nets; the nets slow and deflect them. The leaders of the Japanese strike realized on the way that they had not dealt with the possibility of nets, and decided that the only possible last-minute solution would be to have a few planes crash-dive into the net floats. They were very relieved to hear from the spy and recon that there were no nets deployed. Kimmel, despite knowing about Taranto and previous US wargames that surprise-attacked Pearl, felt that the water was too shallow and the use of nets hindered maneuvering in the narrow channel as well as easy sorties from Battleship Row.
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@hs5312 Yes, the US and UK had 18" naval guns, though after testing the US decided the margin of improvement over the 16" was not worth it. The UK put a couple on the Furious class and a monitor, but it did not see much action. I believe the general expectation in the US was only a 10-20% improvement, which was not really worth the added weight and more difficult ammo handling over the 16"/50.
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@stevevalley7835 Good point; I have read about Long Lance detonation in ship wakes, but the Kates could not carry Long Lances, they were 24" while the Kates carried 18" torpedoes. Blowing a hole in one part of the nets would not help the next torpedo, as it most likely will impact another part of the nets. I did read about the panic Fuchida and Genda had when they realized they had not thought about what to do if there nets, and their relief when they heard there were none. They thought nets would seriously jeopardize the torpedoes, and were willing to crash-dive the nets to solve the problem.
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@indplt1595 To take Gibraltar they would have had to send troops through Spain, which Franco would NOT have liked. And he probably would have demanded the Germans give it back to him right away. A semi-friendly Spain was probably better for Germany in the long run, as it could trans-ship vitally needed raw materials from South America as a "neutral".
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@blinds1649 The problem of sharing the flight deck between take-offs and landings was understood fairly early, but the idea of angling the flight deck had not occurred to anyone until after WW2. In the 1920s they experimented with multiple decks (the Akagi and Kaga had three initially), but that did not work very well with larger aircraft. In the 1930s the emphasis was on streamlining the operations on the flight deck to minimize the time for launching and recovering groups of aircraft, and later in the decade the focus was on building and training as many carriers as possible for the upcoming war. Only after the war did they have the time and large surplus carriers to experiment with different ways to arrange the deck. The exterior elevator that was added to Wasp and developed in the Essex may have been a stepping-stone to the idea of cantilevering an angled deck, but there needed to be developments in dynamically adjusting a ship's roll as well as learning how to land a plane at an angle on a moving ship.
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@crimson005 There were rebuild plans during the 1930s, and some of the ships had been in already for additional armor, AA guns, and improved torpedo bulges. In fact the USS Colorado missed Pearl because she was at Bremerton getting her upgrades. But each of the ships damaged at Pearl was a special case because their damage varied, so each got different levels of rebuild. Most of the more extensive rebuilds followed the pattern of the new battleships in rebuilt superstructure and addition of twin 5"/38s. Even in the flooded ships, though, the engines were able to be reconditioned so they did not need to do a complete engine room replacement.
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@deonmurphy6383 The UK had multiple colonies & commonwealth allies around the world, from Canada to South Africa, India, and Australia, plus handfuls of small bases like Bermuda, Jamaica, the Falklands and Ceylon. Backup plans were already in place, and Churchill had given FDR assurances that the RN would "never surrender". A secret plan was already underway in 1940-41 to move all the tangible wealth of the UK to Canada (lookup Operation Fish) as well as that which was in their possession from the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and France. The US was also supplying and repairing RN ships in 1941, as well as building new ones for transfer.
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@cjknoll4440 The US did have nets, they just did not feel like using them (except at the mouth of the main channel, which impeded the mini-subs somewhat). Chalk that up to Kimmel, who did know about Taranto as well as several US wargames where Pearl was successfully "surprised" by an air raid. The nets would have impeded the torpedoes, but the Arizona and a couple other ships were hit by heavy Armor-Piercing bombs dropped by level bombers (secondary role for the torpedo-carrying Kates), so that would still happen. But if all the battleships still suffer moderate to severe damage, it sounds like the outcome is pretty similar to what happened in reality. The battleships would still be moved back to the US for repairs, and the carriers would take over the role of protecting the lines of communication and leading the counter-attacks.
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@kemarisite None of those "lighter" IJN carriers had anywhere near the speed, sea-keeping or fuel tankage as the six that made up the Kido Butai, and the Shokaku and Zuikaku where practically green crews.
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Fletcher was "promoted" to command the North Pacific region after his injury and shore leave after the torpedoing of the Saratoga. He had been in the front lines for eight months straight, and in his memoirs sounds like he was pretty tired. That put him in technically an equivalent command level to Nimitz, although his area was considered a secondary area and had much fewer forces, but still managed to retake Kiska and Attu and attack the Kuriles. After the war he was "promoted" to the General Board, becoming senior member and Chairman. He retired in 1947 with the rank of full admiral. I agree with you that Navy-politics within the intel and war planning departments led to unfair treatment of Rochefort. I am surprised Nimitz did not intervene for him.
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Addendum: Kimmel sent Halsey and Newton in Enterprise and Lexington respectively to ferry Marine planes to Wake and Midway Islands. Enterprise was on her way back; Lexington had not gotten close enough to fly the Marines off yet, but turned around anyway.
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The Enterprise was a couple hundred miles southwest of Oahu (toward Wake), the Lexington was a couple more hundred miles northwest of Oahu (toward Midway), the Saratoga was off San Diego flying on her air group, and the Ranger, Yorktown, Wasp and Hornet were in the Atlantic along the East Coast.
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@jamesb4789 I would like to know where you saw a reference to attacking the drydocks, because I have read quite a lot on Pearl and not seen anything like that. Perhaps it might have been a "crazy idea" during the early planning stage, but a look at a map of Pearl would show you why it would be dropped, aside from lack of doctrinal or training issues. The drydocks could only be attacked by torpedoes by flying over Ford Island and Battleship Row, then dropping into position quickly in the narrow channel between the battleships and the shipyard for very little time to line up correctly. The other problem is that you would be flying right across the path of the torpedo bombers lining up on the battleships, leading to a good chance of mid-air collision. As far as the mini-subs were concerned, we only know for certain about one that was on the NORTH side of Ford Island, where it was rammed and sunk by the Monaghan. Theories about one on the south side don't make sense - that was where the Kates were launching torpedoes at the battleships, so it would have been asking for a friendly one in their butt. The others are accounted for outside the harbor.
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@WALTERBROADDUS The evidence for a minisub hitting the West Virginia does not make much sense. Mostly it is based on a photo taken by a Kate looking backward at the torpedo drops in the channel, but the splashes they point to look more like torpedo drops than a supposed periscope. And maneuvering your sub into that channel would have been begging for an air-dropped torpedo in your butt from your own forces. The only minisub that is documented to have been inside the harbor was rammed and sunk on the North side of Ford Island.
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@calvingreene90 At that point in the war, I'd rather have a couple Fletchers than a rebuilt Oklahoma...
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@the_mighty_cornflake3858 Drach covered that in a previous Drydock. By weight the ships were each equal to two large carriers (say the Taiho class), but the two bigger problems were large empty slipways and trained aviators to fly off them. Freeing up all that special armor would have allowed for more cruisers as well.
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@kevin-pk6hd From where, the Philippines?
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It would have taken at least two, probably three hours to get a "third strike" rearmed and back to Pearl. In that time the defense would have been a lot better. The losses would not have been worth it, particularly when Yamamoto's primary mission objective had already been achieved and the strategic focus was on the oil of the Dutch East Indies.
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@WALTERBROADDUS So you are presuming that 1) the minisub commander was an idiot, for putting his boat in the way of about 40 air-dropped torpedoes, begging to get one in his own butt, and 2) he was also an idiot for wasting a shot at one of the two battleships that was going to get most of the air-dropped torpedoes anyway? I don't buy it, no matter how much you blow up that Kate photo. Conspiracy theory that makes NO sense.
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Suggest you read Zimm's Pearl Harbor book for some in-depth analysis on that assertion.
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@JesseOfCat Check some of Drach's older Drydocks, search for keyword Tillman. This has been a popular question over the last year.
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@paulpeterson4216 What kept Kido Butai from detection was their north Pacific track and approaching from the north; the Lexington was to the northwest of Oahu and the Enterprise was to the southwest. The few PBYs that Kimmel had out were searching westward and southward, not northward or eastward. Approaching or launching from the west or south would have been a guaranteed way to get them discovered before launch. As for the subs, at the least Halsey was proceeding on a "sink anything Japanese" mindset that weekend as he returned from Wake. There were a few IJN subs in Hawaiian waters, but they were on the south side of Oahu near Pearl waiting for a fleet sortie, or scouting the Lahaina anchorage. On the other hand, the Enterprise was originally expected in Saturday night, but bad weather delayed refueling her escorts so she was behind about 18 hours. Had she been there, in one of the carrier berths on the north side of Ford Island, she would have gotten the torpedoes that were wasted against Utah and Raleigh instead. I think that was a string of Soryu Kates.
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@hisdadjames4876 After an ELE (Extinction Level Event) like a worldwide flood there was probably not many trees left, so it was probably disassembled for wood to build houses and animal enclosures for Noah's extended family.
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@glennsimpson7659 The problem that we can read about in the Japanese memoirs is that they did not think about nets till they were on the way, at which point they were proposing to crash-dive them to open large enough holes.
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The Japanese and the US went out of their way to make sure they did not hurt Russian shipping, as they needed to keep the neutrality agreement intact and we wanted to keep the alliance undamaged. The Nazis did have to worry about neutral shipping in the South Atlantic, as there were several South American nations (like Argentina) that they wanted to keep friendly or neutral. The US and the UK did have a difference of opinion between their military and their civilian governments in the 20s and 30s over "gentlemen's agreements" and the expediencies of war, which sometimes flowed both ways. There was a great deal of pacifism interwar, and yet the RAF in particular was promoting the long-range city bomber as the "war-winner" with the tacit approval of the government which regarded it as "cheap deterrence". US submariners were aware of how close the Germans came to seriously hurting the UK in WW1, and how much more the Japanese nation was dependent on imports for its economy. With the sudden surprise attack at Pearl the mood of the nation swung 180 degrees, hence previous moral/ethical restraints were dropped.
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They learned that lesson the hard way off Guadalcanal...
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(most sailors call that the bow...)
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There is more documentary evidence for St. Paul than for Odysseus.
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Well we've got the Harvey Milk and the Sojourner Truth.
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Putting a torpedo in the middle of a drydock gate (if you could, as no one had ever trained for it and the ingress route is lousy), would just make a large, easily-patched hole. It's the gate mechanisms that are harder to replace. And they were already digging a second and third drydocks next door, so they probably had gates and mechanisms on hand (the second drydock was finished and in operation within weeks). The other issue is the ethos of the IJN aviator - hitting non-warrior targets was beneath them. Despite their orders to spread the second-strike bombs amongst cruisers and auxiliaries, they all ganged up on the battleships like the Nevada. No one even strafed an "infrastructure" target - the oil tanks and the repair yards were undamaged (despite what you see in the movies...). They took out the airbase hangars that they could see aircraft in, but left several others undamaged.
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Not much "Rudeltaktik" in the US Pacific campaign until much later in the war (1944-45), and wolfpacks were usually directed by an on-site commander in one of the subs. Doenitz relied on Enigma to keep direct control of subs from HQ, and was late to recognize how RDF led to increased losses.
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after being conquered by the Japanese.
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You could make a 900% profit now...
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Do you mean the LHA class? There is no LST named Tarawa.
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@rolfs2165 In hindsight, the problems of the UK defense of the Channel were probably similar or perhaps even a little worse a year before, but note also that you are talking about May rather than February, when the weather did help reduce recon success. There may have been more ships closer to the Channel in '41, since there was still a small possibility of invasion before Barbarossa.
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