Comments by "Big Blue" (@bigblue6917) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. A bit of film trivia. The actor who played the captain of the Prince of Wales in the film Sink The Bismarck, Esmond Knight, was a gunnery offices aboard the Prince of Wales and saw Hood explode. Just after that he was wounded by shrapnel which resulted in the permanent lose of sight in one eye but he received a series of treatments from Dr Vincent Nesfield designed to restore sight to his remaining eye. The treatment was a great success, restoring much of Knight's sight in that eye.
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  2. Some years ago the Royal Navy and the US Navy were taking part in a joint exercise when one RN ship went to refuel with a US ship. The captain of the RN ship got a message from his admiral as to why he was using a US ship and replied that they gave Green Shield Stamps.
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  3. The British man and his shed. Wife: what did you do today, dear. Husband: I was in the shed and I just knocked up a couple of monitors for the Royal Navy. Wife: that's nice dear. Husband: got one up to 8 knots. Surprised all them who were sailing their little boats in the boating pond.
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  4. There is a rumour that the Japanese were preparing to launch a kitchen sink at the Birmingham, the only thing they had not thrown at her, when the Birmingham herself blew up Japan's only remaining kitchen sink before the plan could be carried out.
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  5. Antony Preston should have outlined his criteria and then measured his choices against it. Imagine if this had been a thesis he had done for his university. They would have thrown it out so fast it would have burst into flames from the friction with the air.
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  6. Not only do you get an education about naval ships and warfare you get an education about the British sense of humour
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  7. The Italian navy and the Italian airforce were not on speaking terms. The German navy struggled to get anything out of the German airforce and the Japanese airforce and navy were openly hostile to each other. Makes you wonder why they needed to involve anyone else.
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  8. As soon as I heard it was for the Baltic Fleet I realised she was being up armoured to make her binocular proof.
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  9. Nelson and Rodney always looked to me like very aggressive supertankers.
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  10. I wonder if they considered a shore bombardment version calling it HMS Trebuchet. Now that would be old school.
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  11. Hit by a torpedo. Captain: Anyone hear anything. First Officer: No sir. Just our guns firing. Captain: Good. Well keep shooting then. Later First Officer: I say, sir we seem to be taking on water and it means we can no longer hit the enemy. Captain: Can we not sail a bit closer. First Officer: Not really, Sir Captain: Well we had better head for home then.
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  12. A Russian warship that escaped the Japanese. Worth preserving just for that
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  13. Ironically once Charles II was dead and his brother James chased off we ended up with the Dutch William of Orange as king. One of Britains better periods of history.
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  14. Well at least he was constant.
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  15. I have read something of these pirate slavers. For many piracy was a side issue with slavery being the main reason for the attacks. Apparently they raided as far north as Iceland, enslaving an entire village. They did the same in Ireland taking most of the population of a village into slavery. Only two of those taken made it back home. In the 16th century slave ships in the English Channel were taken with attempts to raid towns and villages on the English coast. And, of course the Mediterranean islands such as Malta were frequently raided along with European countries with a Mediterranean coastline. None of this was new. Piracy in the Mediterranean had been a huge problem for the Romans and remained so until they sent out their navy to kill, capture or drive off the pirates. The irony here is that many of the slaves taken by the pirates were actually sold in Roman slave markets.
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  16. How do you get into a fight with a destroyer and it ends up absconding with a large piece of your armour?
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  17. On 4 July, Roosevelt told the French ambassador that he would have done the same as Churchill.
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  18. Unless your Japanese in which case it's a small torpedo firing a smaller torpedo. Then they and the Germans just dispensed with the submarine and sat in the torpedo. I mean. I have heard of simplifying things but next step is a dingy, a paddle and a very stern letter.
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  19.  @AdamMGTF  In the UK and America when you bought petrol, gas in the US, you were giving stamps which could be exchanged for items in a catalogue. Things like drinking glasses and such. In the US the were called Green Stamps and when the idea came to the UK the were called Green Shield stamps. They were normally given out with each gallon of petrol, so you can imagine how many you would get if you filled a warships fuel tanks.
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  20. Brings a whole new meaning to just taking it out for a spin.
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  21. I can just imagine the scene in the shipyard. Foreman: Boss I think there is a problem with these guns. The're a bit big. Boss: Just hit it with a hammer. Foreman: We did that. Boss:And Foreman:We broke the hammer. Boss: Oh. Well it's the navies problem now. We did all we could.
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  22. There is a rumour that at one point they put the captain in front of a firing squad and missed.
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  23. These videos are like British buses. You what for ages and then three turn up at once. 😄
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  24. Many fish were extremely pleased by the none appearance of the binoculars of doom.
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  25. as is often said, don't all good stories include pirates.
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  26. We've all heard of something being a bullet magnet, but, with the possible exception of Admiral Halsey, you don't usually get a storm magnet.
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  27. Thanks for the video. I have seen photographs of German tanks after the D-Day bombardment. Sixty ton Tiger tanks laying upside down like they had been thrown around by some giant toddler. Not a place you would have wanted to be at the time.
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  28. How about Graf Spee. The admiral was killed at the Battle of the Falkland Islands while his namesake ship sank in the River Plate. Not far from the Falklands. Interestingly one of the German ships sunk at the Battle of the Falkland Islands was called Scharnhorst.
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  29. Not only was she in many of the battles of WW1 she survived with barely a scratch, metaphorically, when others around her were lost. If any ship deserved the epithet 'Lucky' it was certainly HMS New Zealand.
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  30. War is hell. Cake or no cake.
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  31. With speed like that you half expect a photograph of the ships captain water-skiing behind her. It would be interesting to do a counterfactual special were France and Italy fight each other in the Mediterranean unsupported by any allies set in the mid to late 1930s.
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  32. I'm just surprised that the Russians did not use it as target practise. It's not that they didn't need the practise.
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  33. A ship designed by a committee. Avoided WW1 then sunk by both sides in WW2. All things considered maybe the new name should have been the Prodigal Son
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  34. I think the fact that there was a discrepancy between his dead reckoning and the navigation beacons should have alerted him to the fact that there was a possible problem. And, like squadron 12, he should have slowed down to assess the situation. The fact that he dismissed the beacons information because he believed it was unproven technology was, I believe, the wrong decision. For one thing he could have provided useful information to help prove that either the technology worked or that it needed further work. As it turned out it did work and men died because of poor decision making.
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  35. Actually not the first nor last time. An American pilot shot down a Japanese pilot during WW2 while he, the American pilot, was floating down to earth in his parachute. This was the same Japanese pilot who had had shot him down and was intent on finishing the job. The Japanese pilot flew up next to the US pilot and was hanging in midair so he could take a look at the man he was about to kill. The US pilot pulled out his pistol and fired at the Japanese pilot and killed him. When taken prisoner the US pilot was given the opportunity to take his own life by his captors because they had a good idea what would happen to the pilot but turned it down. As it turned out he did survive being a POW and went back to the US. So I see your balloon and raise you a parachute.
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  36. To be fair the big names were matched with big ships. You could hardly have a minesweeper called Iron Duke while having a battleship called Sweet Pea.
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  37. At Jutland. Every captain on both side. 'So, how do we get hold of the Maori kit then.
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  38. The fact that the explosives failed to go off when they should have done had a much greater impact than Britain could have hoped for. Then there is the drain on German resources which were much needed elsewhere.
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  39. I had read about the battle before and I seem to remember watching a documentary about it. But I very much enjoyed hearing about it again. Two of my late fathers old brothers sailed on those Arctic convoys. Not a place I'd choose to be. To the best of my knowledge neither of them was torpedoed. The irony here is that my fathers eldest brother was and he was in the army on a troop ship.
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  40. Sounds like he'd do well today.
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  41. The trawler was manned by trawlermen from Hull. There is a monument on Hessle Road in Hull to those who died on the trawler. Hessle Road was where most trawlermen came from.
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  42. I once heard someone on the radio say that no small dog thinks it's a small dog and that they all think they are big dogs. Turns out the same applies to small warships.
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  43. Just imagine flying off the G6 and losing power just as you came off the end and landing on the turret with your full bombload.
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  44. Nice of Nelson to support HMS Africa's battle with the Franco-Spanish fleet.
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  45. Amongst the photographs taken in Normandy there is one I particularly remember. It was a 60 ton Tiger tank resting upside down on its turret like a discarded toy. This was curtasy of one of the battleships taking part in the shore bombardment.
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  46. Somewhat ironically it was the threat of a invasion of Norway in 1944, led by the British 4th Army, that tied up a quarter of a million Germans, many of whom could otherwise have been used in France. But in 1944 the 4th Army did not exist. Except as part of a planned deception to make the Germans think the Allies were going to invade Norway.
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  47. That was excellent. It filled in a number of gaps in my knowledge of the Royal Navy in the 19th century. I knew the first steam ship predated the Battle of Trafalgar. It was built in Scotland and was used on a canal I seem to remember. It's effect was such that there was talk of Richard Trevithick building number of steam ships to tow fireships which would be used to attack the Franco-Spanish fleet. The plan was stopped because Trevithick did not think it was viable at that time. I remember reading about an incident which happened in 1821 when a ship approaching the Isle of Mann was spotted with smoke billowing skyward. Realising there was a fire onboard a number of ships set sail to go to the rescue only to have it sail straight passed them. The smoke was from a steam engine.
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  48. On the upside you can catch your supper and wash your laundry at the same time.
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  49. A couple more Mogami's and the US Navy could have stayed at home.
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  50. Depth charges on a battleship? I bet the crew who manned were not over worked.
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