Comments by "Gregory Wright" (@gregorywright4918) on "The Drydock - Episode 139" video.

  1. The phrase "Obviously..."
    6
  2.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  The Iowa has 212,000 shp, and an LM2500 does 33,600 shp. The math comes out at 6.3, but you would have to round up. A single Wartsila RTA96C diesel will do 107,000 hp or 80,000 kW, so you cold try a pair of those and two or four LMs to boost. The real problem you'll face is that you would have to basically rip the guts out of the ship to get the old boilers and engines out and the new ones in - through multiple armored decks. Might be easier to build a new ship.
    2
  3.  @kemarisite  Look at what it replaced - 5"/51s in casemates plus single unshielded 5"/25s for AA. One gun does the job of two, not as well as each individually but saving half the weight. Take some of that savings and add a powered turret and world-class fire control, and you have the best compromise possible.
    2
  4. Seems like rebar is a necessity with concrete walls, so that should initiate fuze action.
    1
  5. They must have captured some details on that to understand the codes...
    1
  6. "Guns to the front" means you are charging; "guns to aft" means you are retreating?
    1
  7. Yes, on the battleships before the 30's & post-Pearl refits. Combining them using a "compromise" gun saved weight to add deck armor, radar & fire control.
    1
  8. Read my other reply on this topic; JFK was more of a "realist" defending a "buying time" kind of argument. He disagreed with Joe's defeatism, but was aware that his dad was a force to be worked with, not opposed. He was also the "second son"...
    1
  9. Plus there was the problem that most of the new US fleet would not be ready until late in 43...
    1
  10. Re: 46:45, I read a while ago about one or more British captains who brought significant crew members as "volunteers" when they went to work for other navies, such as Latin American navies in their wars for independence, and possibly Greece in the 19th century. Might have been a bio about Cochrane.
    1
  11. In the early 30's Britain was waking up from the "no war likely for 10 years" policy to recognize that Japan (even before Germany) was making warlike moves and upsetting the balance in the Far East, and Britain had given a "moral promise" to send a fleet to cover her colonies there if things got serious. Moves were already underway by '35 to make up for the weaknesses that had been allowed to grow by over a decade of neglect, but that was easiest to do with army forces, moderately harder to do with air forces, and required the longest lead time for naval forces ("Naval Policy Between The Wars, Vol II" by Roskill). While Joseph Kennedy supported Chamberlain's appeasement policies, JFK seems more to be taking the "buying time" position, which is probably closer to what was really happening. What we did not know until after the war was how much of Germany's mid to late 30's apparent strength was actually staged propaganda, and how stretched their economy was with Hitler's orders for armaments. The ironic side benefit of his early arms building compared to Britain's later arms building is that a lot of his earlier equipment was becoming obsolete by the beginning of the war, like the Panzer I and IIs. Excellent training and tactics covered up for that early on, but meeting the T-34 and KV-1 was a shock.
    1
  12. They were selling them high-quality iron with few questions asked; why join when you can make a profit from being "neutral"?
    1
  13. It was much wider than "a few guys in the development department"... Leaders of BuOrd, Congressional penny-pinching, Q&A oversights, incomplete testing, etc.
    1
  14. I think there was some story about the Sims class being very top-heavy, and the Fletchers were made wider for stability.
    1