Comments by "Bk Jeong" (@bkjeong4302) on "The Drydock - Episode 038" video.

  1. Given that it now seems airpower won the battle at Samar more than anything else, probably.
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  2. William Stall They scrapped her on that sandbar.
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  3. Jevin Liu Believe it or not, the Italian 15” gun actually rivalled the US 16” gun and the Japanese 18.1” gun in AP capabilities due to high muzzle velocity. This came at the expense of a flatter firing trajectory that made plunging fire hard (that and the entire concept of a BB being obsolete in WWII, but that also applies to the Yamatos and the American fast battleships)
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  4. Just Some Guy Ok Tell that to the British.
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  5. Best WWII BB is no BB.
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  6. The Japanese would only get two more carriers; they didn’t have the dock space for 7-8 more carriers. Still far better than two battleships though. But honestly, why is it that this idea of “get rid of them and build carriers” is said only for the Yamatos? Literally every battleship built around that time (late 30s-40s) was unnecessary. I would like to see an alt-history idea about the USN stomping the IJN even harder by not building the four Iowas and building four more carriers. Or a scenario where Nazi Germany skips big-gun ships and builds the equivalent number of carriers-even a badly designed carrier is far better than any big-gun ship.
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  7. Most active by far, easily, but I would argue that they (and every other big-gun capital ship of WWII) were still an inefficient use of resources that shouldn’t have been used. Judging warships as being effective for doing things they are unnecessary for is extremely misleading when it comes to their actual usefulness, IMO. Aside from the time one damaged SoDak they didn’t do anything smaller units couldn’t have done more cost-effectively.
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  8. AHoboWithALaptop It was training more than anything else. - IJN had specialized DamCon crew with everyone else being useless; the USN also had specialized DamCon but they gave basic training to everyone just in case. If the DamCon team died in action, the IJN ship lost 100% of its DamCon, not with the USN. - IJN doctrine focused on keeping the ship in the fight, not getting the ship home. So they would do DamCon in ways that allowed the ship to go down in action, rather than to survive. - use of handheld pumps, etc for the USN.
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  9. Joke Franic - they specifically trained and developed tactics for it - best optical equipment on the planet (which was an edge they lost once the USN figures out how to use radar to effectively nullify this advantage) - long lances are deadly *if you can keep yourself hidden from the enemy before launching them*.
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  10. Muffins O' Fun Mismatch in favour of the Kirov. The guns are useless against an enemy that can engage the enemy beyond their mechanical range, and only serve to take up space needed for missiles. And the missiles of a Kirov WILL punch through any battleship armour-they have the size and speed for it.
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  11. Another factor is: even if the ship did something, was it the best way to achieve that? Remember that most action for BBs in WWII involved things that you don’t need BBs for: the only time you really needed one was if you needed another capital ship dead and carriers couldn’t operate due to environmental factors. And there were just not enough such situations to justify the existence of battleships (Guadalcanal, North Cape and Surigao being the only examples, at least for the Allied side, but caused by Axis misuse of BBs). By that metric no battleship really justified her costs in WWII, so IMO none of them would qualify as the best (though you could argue that the ones that came the closest to justifying their costs were the best)
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  12. paul manson The problem with a fleet in being is that it only works if your enemy takes you seriously: what would have happened if Britain realized that the Kriegsmarine surface forces were effectively defanged after Bismarck was sunk due to political factors? Then the Brits would have realized that trying to eliminate the Kriegsmarine surface ships was a wastes of effort, and Kriegsmarine surface units would never have caused as much harm to the British as they did historically. In WWI you arguably needed battleships to counter enemy battleships, but this was just plain not true in WWII. Naval aviation was more effective at doing a BB’s job than any BB. If your enemy was building BBs in WWII, the smart thing to do would be to build a fleet carrier, so you can torpedo the BB without ever getting your ship anywhere near its guns. But absolutely nobody seems to have realized this until it was too late. Re: Samar, a lot of people ignore that Taffy 1 and Taffy 2 were also launching planes at Centre Force, and actually rearmed with torpedoes for the latter parts of the battle (a good chunk of the sunk cruisers were done in by airstrikes). The airfields that had been set up by the US Army also launched planes, at first with whatever was around, but later with anti-ship weapons. If Kurita had pressed on he would have lost even more ships due to these airstrikes. Samar was never winnable for the IJN: even if Kurita managed to identify and quickly eliminate the DDs and DEs, and maybe even all the CVEs of Taffy 3, he would still lose to Taffy 1 and 2, and well as land-based US aircraft. He did well to get out just as the aerial threat was turning deadly. It was really yet another case of surface ships being no match for airpower.
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