Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Drydock - Episode 048" video.

The other problem with commerce raiding in a conventional war today is the much faster speed and greater size of the most important merchant ships compared to previous years. Most container ships cruise at 22-24 knots, and some carrying priority cargo at over 25 knots. Even the huge T1 supertankers can cruise at 16.5 knots, and their gigantic size (1246 feet overall, over 500,000 tons, laden) would make them exceptionally difficult to sink. Combine faster speeds and the much larger size of almost all merchant ships today would mean a submarine would have its work cut out for it.
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I rather doubt political correctness and ecological considerations will be paramount in an all out conventional war like WWII. Remember, we rounded up the Japanese, including US citizens, and put them in concentration camps, flattened and starved Germany, then flattened and starved Japan, then flattened two more cities with atomic bombs. The reaction of most Allied civilians was "Serves 'em right". Since the other option is all out nuclear war, the problems in a conventional war pale by comparison.
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The Admiral's family name is pronounced May-han, at least according to our midshipman tour guide when I was an Annapolis. However, Muh-han is the more common pronunciation in England. Any USN ship named after Admiral Mahan should use the May-han pronunciation.
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Quite so. Each sinking would have a more deleterious effect on a country's supply line than sinking even four Liberty ships, which were actually relatively large for 1942. However, a larger ship has more columns and would be correspondingly more difficult to sink than a Liberty ship. It would be interesting to see how convoying would work out. I'd think you'd still need convoys for all the ships of <15 knots while the fast container ships would probably do better sailing indepently.
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@niclasjohansson4333 Correct, but that only helps with catching up to the merchant ship. The firing solution for a torpedo against a ship moving at 25 knots is orders of magnitude more difficult than than hitting an 8 knot freighter.
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@AdamMGTF Most torpedo technology really hasn't changed since WWII. The amount of explosives in the modern tornado has actually decreased because the torpedo need high speeds to catch that ship sailing off at 25 knots. I know there are modern torpedoes with better sensors so they could theoretically detonate only under the hull close enough to break the keel. Let's just say the new technology of magnetic pistols didn't work out too well at the beginning of the war. Most torpedoes don't undergo extensive testing because the torpedoes themselves are expensive, and finding hulls to practice on is expensive. A lot of the work that's done is by computer simulation. I'll take it all wit a gran of salt until I see it in action. The other issue is it's unlikely you can sink a 1,000 foot long, 200,000 ton vessel with a single torpedo hit. The ships have better survivability just because of the large internal volume, and many modern container ships have much better compartmentation than Liberty ships. Almost any sinking would require multiple hits, and each additional torpedo becomes mathematically less likely to score a hit as the ship is moving off at 25 knots. Sinking merchant ships in a 2019 war is a much different proposition than in 1945.
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