Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Drydock - Episode 075" video.

  1. PT Boats got more standardized armament as the war progressed, but they were pushed out ASAP from 1940-1942 as a force in being. Since the assumption was their four torpedoes would be the main offensive weapons, a pair of dual .50 caliber machine guns was included, mostly to keep the heads of enemy gunners down. By early 1943, it was clear the role of the PT was going to be to stop small vessels from resupplying Japanese islands as we hopped over them. These Japanese boats were mostly very shallow draft barges, and torpedoes were useless against them. Many were quite heavily armored against PT boat attack. This started an arms race between Japanese and USN crews about which would have the most effective armament. PTs never returned to anything larger than forward floating dry docks or small shipyards established by the SeaBees on conquered islands. There wasn't much formality when it came to adding or deleting equipment from boats. It was pretty much up to each skipper what he could scrounge. The arguably best Japanese barge buster was the Pontiac M4 37 mm cannon taken from crashed or salvaged P-39 fighters. P-39s were plentiful in the Pacific, and more M4s became available as the P-39 was taken out of service for replacement by more modern aircraft. Every boat in my dad's squadron was eventually equipped with a bow mounted 37 mm gun, and most of them were installed by the crews with the help of the few shipfitters available. They next started scrounging every 20 mm oerlikon they could find and nailing them down anywhere there was deck space. One of the few authorized additions was a stern mounted 40 mm from mid 1943 as the kamikaze threat increased. By end of the war, my dad's boat had three 20 mm cannon, one astern of the 37 and one each on the deck next to the charthouse, and the Bofors gun at the stern. Two more twin 50s were installed athwartships of the charthouse, and eight 5" rocket launchers were bolted on just ahead of the charthouse. My dad said the rockets, that were supposed to be used for shore bombardment, were usually fired at barges as the boat first ran into attack. They weren't accurate at all, and dad doesn't remembered any barges sunk with them. They were pretty terrifying coming at the Japanese at night with all the flames, smoke, and noise each rocket created. Many of the barges were manned by Japanese fishermen, and he says several barges just ran up the while flag rather than enduring any more of those things headed at them.
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  2. The USN had about 600 PT boats as well as all those Fletchers, Sumners, and Gearings, plus a crapload of DE's. The Japanese never developed the kinds of sonars and radars that could have made large numbers of coastal patrol craft useful. By 1944, Japanese ships were being sunk at a rate between two and three times the capacity of Japanese shipyards to replace them. The Japanese Navy was pretty well doomed by 1943 no matter what they did.
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  3.  @AdamMGTF  You're welcome, but don't sell the average RN bloke short when it comes to inventiveness. MTB/MGB crews operating out of Bombay and Malta were renown for how quickly they could strip a captured merchant ship clean of supplies and weapons like the Breda 13.2 mm machine guns much prized by RN crews. I have no doubt RN crews left to their own devices in the Pacific could have become just as adept at scrounging. We also can't forget that without the purchase of that first Scott-Paine motor torpedo boat from England for the "Plywood Derby", it's doubtful the USN would have had more than a few inferior quality PT boats available by the outbreak of war.
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  4. OMG! Just getting ready to go to bed and this Drydock shows up...and it's two hours long! Need coffee. Lots of coffee.
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  5.  @f1b0nacc1sequence7  Before the US or Britain entered the war? I don't think they were doomed then.
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  6.  @f1b0nacc1sequence7  I don't think more people know that the Japanese had a way out of a resource war almost all the way to Pearl Harbor. The US was offering them all the oil they could buy and all the scrap steel they could buy. All they had to do was agree to halt operations in China and agree to leave China at some point in the hazy future. If Japan had accepted and called off expansion in China for even a year and a half, they could have stockpiled all the oil they'd ultimately use through the end of 1944. They really weren't doomed until the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and Manila.
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  7. What kind of fire control system was there on an 18th century warship? Was it just point and shoot, or were the some kinds of sighting and aiming devices?
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  8.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I realize that. I wasn't asking about a centralized fire control system. I'm asking about was it point and shoot or were than any other systems used,
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  9.  @f1b0nacc1sequence7  Since we are now in the time of quid pro quo, I think an astute Japanese government could have taken the the offer seriously. In reality, it was a rump government in China that was making threats about what it was going to do if not allowed free reign. The source of oil the Japanese expect to use was the Netherlands East Indies, not US or Saudi oil. In 1940, the amount of oil in the NEI was thought to be second to the US with Middle East oil a distant third. The government knew that the Dutch wanted to keep selling oil to Japan to finance their war in Europe. There were many inside the civil government who knew the US offer was their best hope for later victory, and plans were already afoot to cut off supplies to China to the point the military could sustain itself there but not expand. This idea the the ultranationalist military was in charge of everything and others had no choice but comply was used as a defence in the Tokyo war crimes trials. It didn't fly then, and I doubt it was really true in 1940. The struggle between the civil and military side of the government was still ongoing, and the emperor had not yet come down on the side of a military government. It just wasn't a foregone conclusion the civil and not-crazed leaders of the military could not have reigned in the ultranationalists if they committed to do so.
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