Comments by "Adam Bainbridge" (@AdamMGTF) on "The Drydock - Episode 075" video.

Excellent addition as always Sar Jim :) I always thought the pt boats really summed up the American way of waging war. A microcosm of the men and the nation. I cant imagine many RN servicemen being quite so resourceful or many officers approving of the throughly unofficial modifications! With one exception. The early Q boats in ww1. They were organised and built in very much the same spirit.
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Used throughout the war. I've read of accounts as early as 1939 in one of Hastings books. Obviously long before there was a pacific theatre,😂
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It was a pretty out their hypothetical scenario. The person asking the question sort of gave him an impossible scenario. I reckon the answer was more a case of humouring the questioner.
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They will be. Skip bombing was a tactic developed before the war even started. Used against merchantmen as early as 1939 :)
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@28:00 a bit (OK a lot) of additional info which is really worth thinking about. (sources at end) At the time the Germans were well behind on payments they owed the Soviets for food and raw materials. The German economy had been built on a foundation of sand. They'd pulled off their 'economic miracle'. But the economy was fundamentally weak and they had little in the way of hard capital to buy things on the world market. So basically they really had sod all else to pay the Soviets with. Add to this that they were well aware of the fact that they were now seriously dependent on the soviets as the blockade was in force*. And there was little option but to give the soviets the ship. That's the main economic factor. The other often overlooked# factor, were in diplomacy and geopolitics. At this time and shortly before. There were huge efforts from the allies to fix Russia into an alliance. That had narrowly been avoided due to ribbintrop/molotov pact and the criminal- laxidasical attitude of the allies in getting the Russians on side (sending their envoy via SHIP! Not aircraft or even train, at a time when days mattered, they sent an envoy via ship via the Arctic circle for god sake... Sigh). Because of this, stalin knew he was in a strong position to get as much as he could out of Germany (German accounts all note how shrewd a negotiatiator he was). AND the Germans knew they were at the mercy of stalin in many ways and Ribbintrop had orders from Hitler to really lay it on thick (there was a bit of a feeling of "we have to make up for all the anti communist stuff")... So when there was a chance to give the Russians a half completed ship instead of hard gold. They jumped at the chance. Not paying at all wasn't an option. Germany needed russian raw materials and they REALLY needed to keep Russia happy so that they didn't join the allies. To emphasise how important this was to Hitler. He even condemned Finland and withdrew support for them in the winter war. In spite of a huge backlash domestically for doing so. In every way. Keeping Russia on side in 39-40 was worth one half finished cruiser. If pushed I think they would have given up the whole class. So for the patron who asked the question and mentioned Germany surely wanting ships... The answer is yes. You'd be right if your only thinking militarily. But considering everything. There were more important things happening. History isn't about weapons it's about people after all. *(Hitler for all his faults when it came to learning lessons from history... was well aware of what this did in ww1. He was obsessed with not loosing the 'home front' which meant keeping the people (and industry) fed. # especially among people who think of historic stratagem in terms of computer games lol Main sources: W. SHIERER (obviously), some Kershaw and Hastings
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Your forgetting politics. The ships had been started already and Congress was pretty set on a conversion of them rather than new hulls. Plus. The treaty allowed for their tonnage because they would be conversions. Economics played a part as well. Given the various domestic political, economic and geo political (treaty) factors involved. The USN managed to come out well ahead. Yes your theory may fit nicely into a ideal fleet or what not. But the conditions at the time wouldn't allow it. History isnt about ships after all. Its about people. And all the comicated reasoning there involved.
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I think by that point he was humouring the questioner as the question itself was impossible to give a real answer to
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Drach mentioned this in a previous dry Dock. Your both right. Also. Note a similar signal by the Japanese Admiral just before the battle of tsushima.
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I'm pretty sure that was discussed in a earlier dry Dock :)
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The question was about what could be done by Japan in 1944. By that point there was no way jaapn could build such a submarine arm
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@f1b0nacc1sequence7 can't fully agree there. There was still the possibility of buying oil on the open market. Not enough to operate the full navy to full potential (training etc). But they could have kept their economy going. They also had a land war on the go in China etc. This you'd think would sake their lust for expansion. But obviously not. The navy would not be able to do as it liked thanks to the oil embargo. But a lack of oil doesn't sink ships. Though of course this sort of thinking was a foreign idea to the Japanese at the time. The underlying point is. Until late 41 and the attacks on the British empire and the US. They hadnt lost their navy and japan's destruction was far from a forgone conclusion.
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@f1b0nacc1sequence7 I had Russia in my head as the source. But probably because I still had my head in a different question about the state of german/Russian relations in 39 and pre war. It is 6am and I've been awake all night 😂 should have remembered that Russia were in no position to facilitate supply to Japan at the time. I still stand by my general point that Japan hadn't lost until they attacked GB and the US. As everyone knows. They were still negotiating with the US right up until PH. They still had options until the opening of hostilities closed thoes options. The problem of course was that the phrase "Jaw, jaw is better than war, war." was utterly alien to the Japanese leadership at the time.
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Can't?... Your talking about a military that used suicide aircraft as a core of their attacking arms at the time. Even though they weren't that effective I may add. When your entering a scenario where your side accepts that they are all going to die... What's considered sensible is largely irrelevant
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What do you call 3 sheep tied to a lamppost in Wales. A brothel.
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As an aside. You could well ask. Why the hell did stalin really want the ship? Two answers I can posit. Shierer has a good account of the trade deals done in the pre war nazi Times. He points out that Germany was being free with its technology and military knowlage at a time where both were stagnating in Russia (purges, the downsides of communism etc) and were effectively trading smarts for substance. Ie their knowledge for raw material. In essence the Germans giving a state of the art ship (and more importantly her plans) to the Russians was basically just an extension of a policy that had been in place for years. Secondly. I think it was something of a trophy for stalin. Large naval units carry a certain prestige after all. And given his post war obsession with the idea of having cruisers etc... It was probably a bit of vanity creeping in. Finally. The Germans hadnt been paying their bills. They had missed several payments. And a ship is something. Which is better than nothing lol.
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@SonsOfLorgar the point is not where they trained them. It is that with more carriers. There is a demand for more pilots. With a demand for more pilots. They would train more pilots.
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The question did state in 1944. The reality was the best thing that could have happened for Japan and the Japanese people at that point. Would be for some sort of revolution to brake out and the new government to surrender. Of course there was no way either thing would happen. For endless reasons. But anyone who thinks that there is a plausible way the Japanese could have done xyz to win or even force a favorable peace in 1944 is kidding themselves. It just wasn't possible. Real life doesn't have cheat codes. It's one of the few times in history we can say for certain that it was always going to end in one way. The only thing the Japanese could do was either prolong the war or shorten it. The end result was always going to be the same.
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It is on his special list. Along with about 4 years worth of content. If you want a special moved up the list. You can become a patron and vote for it. Otherwise he does things in the order they were asked (I think this was first asked for over a year ago). I mention the patron thing as he isn't like other you tubers. He doesn't bang on about it. Doesn't ask for patrons or support or anything. He does this with no expectation of reward in his own time.
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Ironically I think this is the subject of a soon to be released special.
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