Comments by "" (@VersusARCH) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. [The space between the rear funnel and the rear mast] "The Americans would put AA mounts there, the Germans would add a catapult, and Japan would put another turret... While the British made sure the Hood has the best tea-making facilities ever put on to sea" xD
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  2. Helfrich predicted the Japanese would start the war by attacking Pearl Harbor. He probably deduced it from the the fact that the Japanese began the Russo-Japanese War with a surprise attack on Port Arthur.
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  3. This class, as impressive as it might have been, was too little to Leyte.
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  4. British Royal Navy: "So what should I call you? Should I call you a battlecruiser... fast battleship...?" Hood: "You can call me Susan if it makes you happy."
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  5. All planes borrow ideas from others more or less. Zero was certainly not a direct copy of any plane in the world, and was a design compromise VASTLY different than anyone else decided to make (um - 1500+km range!!!). It only borrowed some concepts pioneered on other planes (some of them Japanese, notably A5M). It was a monoplane with NACA cowling, monocoque design, retractable landing gear, arrestor hook, enclosed cockpit, directed exhaust, radial engine, cannon armament, radio, light aluminium alloys, drop tanks, could carry bombs... Other planes featured some of those earlier, but Zero was a unique combination of it.
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  6. Off-the-shelf spare parts battleship 😅
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  7. Midway and Philippine Sea helped too...
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  8. Sweden: Vasa Coles: "Hold my beer..."
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  9. A very Entrepreneurial officer indeed.
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  10. I bet during the Korean War quite a few pilots who had to bail out of their Gloster Meteors shot up by Mig-15s had similar comments to the whole "Mig-15 uses a copy of the Rolls-Royce Nene engine" propaganda spin...
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  11. So the naval arms race that led to the Battle of Jutland was driven by two admirals who wanted to avoid a war by means of deterrence?
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  12. All gangsta until their battleships encounter some torpedo boats...
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  13. 1917; High Seas Fleet: Pre-dreadnought? LOL, a five minute ship. Slava: Hold my vodka.
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  14. It helps that you have an overwhelmingly superior force at hand and the enemy has no chance to win or escape (as was the case in Alexandria). The significantly more powerful French force in Oran (both in absolute and relative terms - compared to the threatening RN force) did have a chance (and a sizeable portion of it did escape)
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  15. I think they used clockwise-counterclockwise on those two.
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  16. Russia was at war at the time. The US was not...
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  17. Secondary guns: ARE WE A JOKE TO YOU?
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  18. 1:44:09 The Mary Celeste: The ship had been rebuilt not long before the fatal trip: another deck had been added to increase her cargo hold. Her center of gravity had thus been raised and consequently she rolled more than before and, perhaps more crucially - took longer to right herself. The crew of the Dei Gratia (the ship that found the abandoned Mary Celeste) found a significant amount of water in the hold and critically - a pump which had been dissassembled while being repaired - a process which was not completed. What most probably happened is this: the Mary Celeste was in a storm, she rolled considerably, it was difficult for the crew to measure the amount of water she took, as it constantly rocked with the ship, and then the pump, that was critical for removing the said water, broke down. The crew tried to repair it but was being unsuccessful, and as time passed, for all the captain knew, the ship's hold was filling with water, the danger of ship rolling over and capsizing, killing most if not all on board becoming ever greater. So the captain at some point decided to evacuate the crew to a lifeboat, taking the basic navigational equipment to find land in case the ship rolled over and sank (had that happened the crew would have cut the rope) but, since the ship might also ride out the storm-tied the boat to the ship to re-board her if all ended well after all. Unfortunately, the crowded boat ended up being more prone to being rolled over by the storm waves than the abandoned ship - especially because the former was being steered by the latter via the rope, rather than by its occupants. When the boat rolled over, its drag increased significantly and the rope snapped. The boat then sank and its occupants all drowned in the storm. The abandoned ship, however, rode out the storm, to be found by the Dei Gratia. This is the only explanation that fits all the evidence for me
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  19. 00:48:01 An example of sacrificial fire support mission by a ship was the old Italian armored cruiser San Giorgio that was left anchored and heavily protected with torpedo nets in the port of Tobruk that the Italians attempted to defend against the British offensive in Operation Compass in late 1940 - early 1941. The ship was not beached and was already there, but was ordered to stay and fight until bitter end instead of sailing out. The ship provided fire support and moral boost to the Italian defenders, survived 39 aerial torpedoes by British aircraft (take note, KMS Bismarck...) and was scuttled once escape became impossible and the fall of Tobruk imminent. Most of the crew were captured except a boatload of crewmen who sailed to Italy carrying her battle ensign.
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  20. The Japanese scout floatplane pilot from the Chokai deserves a major credit for the Japanese victory at the Battle of the Savo Island. Apart from invaluable info he provided to Mikawa he fired his flares at just the right time in just the right manner to provide a major help and visibility advantage to his fleet. (edit - not one but several floatplanes from Mikawa's cruisers were involved).
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  21. At that range the 16in sporting US ships were within range of Type 93 torpedoes, they were lucky the Japanese did not score any hits with them (see the Battle of Tassafaronga for reference of what might have happened). At greater ranges the Japanese would have had no means to reply.
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  22. The French ships saw action in WW1.
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  23. 11:00 - Montenegro did not quit the war because of a naval raid but because of an ongiong overwhelming Austro-Hungarian land invasion, and because an overwhelming German, Bulgarian and Austro-Hungarian force had just managed to conquer its northern, stronger ally, Serbia. The situation was untenable for the Montenegrin government and army. Their options were simple: capitulate or retreat with the Serbian Army into exile to continue the fight. They chose the former option.
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  24. And yet... Lexington, Wasp... And yet... Shokaku, Kumano...
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  25. During the desperate defense of the fortified town of Negotin in early 19th century against the attacking Ottomans, the Serbian revolutionaries, short on ammunition for their cannons, used even coins as impromptu grapeshot.
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  26. Narrative in postwar France, (up to today, but more forcefully in the early days) was staunchly De Gaullist, with the man himself actually either ruling or being a major influence in the country. No wonder Gensoul kept quiet on the subject.
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  27. Still a far cry from what France did for the USA during their war for independence. And the outcome showed.
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  28. The reasoning was: since the carriers need surface escorts anyway (to augment AAA and protect from submarine or surface attacks during the night or bad weather when planes could not fly), so why waste some of your carrier strike force on scouting when you have floatplanes on the escorting cruisers and fast battleships? Of course the critical question was just how many scout planes is sufficient. Also using strike planes for scouting paid nice dividends for the USN when a scouting pair of SBDs discovered and taking initiative immediately proceeded to attack and damage the Japanese light carrier Zuiho at the opening stages of the Battle of Santa Cruz forcing her to retire from the battle.
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  29. December 1941 was a really bad month for Allied battleships... Pearl Harbor, Force Z and the Alexandria Raid. 4 lost for good and 7 knocked out of the war for months (sometimes years).
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  30. For one thing I don't buy into the Baltic scheme being serious. Having the Kiel canal, German navy could always respond to such an invasion in force and, together with army intervention, defeat it - even if the climatic battle happened to be unsuccessful: the brigdehead supply route would be the perfect target for submarines. I suspect that the whole scheme was really just a misinformation campaign made to hopefully trick the Germans into wasting their limited resources on shore defenses in Pomerania (laying naval mines and building coastal batteries that could otherwise be used for offensive mining and on the Western front respectively). And that these 3 relatively inexpensive ships were built mostly just to add substance to the deception.
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  31. Yugumo, Akizuki, Hatsuharu...
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  32. Captain Vasily Fersen of the fast protected cruiser Izumrud disobeyed the order and broke through the Japanese blockade but wrecked his ship in a night while approaching Vladivostok.
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  33. 00:11:53 The absolute champion of self-inflicted damage by means of blastwave of its own guns only (so barrel and turret explosions excluded) was the German-built Chinese ironclad battleship Dingyuan which collapsed its own bridge and incapacitated the admiral commanding the fleet with her opening salvo at the battle of the Yalu river.
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  34. What kind of errors the World Wonders? 😂
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  35. Some words of wisdom which received confirmation (yet again) at Honda point: 1) Good judgement comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgement. 2) A true expert is a professional who has commited every immaginable error within his field. 3) If you don't pay the toll on the bridge you will pay it on a ferry 4) War requires 3 things: 1. money 2. money 3. and money.
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  36. He was in command of the unsinkable destroyer with plot armor. He could afford to give such suggestions.
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  37. German raiders carried floatplanes in both world wars (SMS Wolf in WW1 and most of them in WW2) and they did carry bombs but not torpedos. But interestingly the KMS Michel carried torpedo boats. There were torpedo carrying floatplanes like the M6A Serian.
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  38.  @1968gadgetyo  The fact that Washington did not fire earlier cost the US three destroyers sunk and one battleship as well as one destroyer heavily damaged.
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  39. "LOL, hold my sake and watch this!" Captain Takakazu Kinashi about to end an entire carrier task force with a single torpedo salvo.
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  40. In WW2 perhaps the most succsessful application of the anti-torpedo nets was on the old Italian armored cruiser San Giorgio at Tobruk. Those stopped something like 39 British torpedoes.
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  41.  @TheTutch  Btw a group of Japanese destroyers took part in the operations in the Mediterranean in WW1 (notably guard duty at the Otranto barrage) with one being lost.
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  42. "Use a gun... And if that doesn't work - use more gun... And damn the torpedoes!"
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  43. Lack of air search radar on the Japanese side combined with improper radio set magnetic shielding in the Zero fighters was decisive. Otherwise, the mostly unescorted US bombers would have been savaged by the Japanese CAP. Lack of air search radar was also the reason why the Japanese escort ships were spread out (to provide early warning) and too far to contribute to the carrier's AAA. Of course, something as simple as a sufficient cloud cover could completely ruin such an early warning system (which is what happened at Midway).
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  44. Yup, instead of trying to lease Port Arthur they should have made a huge heating plant in St Petersburg and layed heating pipes along the bottom of the Baltic sea to prevent it from freezing over the winter...
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  45. I think Shinano's top speed of merely 28 knots was a no less important factor. First rate Japanese carriers, with the exception of Kaga, were all 30+ knots.
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  46. Nothing stops the mail...
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  47. ​ @bkjeong4302  It would not have mattered 1) USN was master of logistics and worked it out during the war irrespective of the opening move of the war 2) USN expansion began before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor 3) Japan was on the defensive after Guadalcanal. War of attrition was coming to Japan in any event.
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  48. Outstanding video. PS while listening through the entire video I managed to clean half of my apartment almost as meticulously as Jiro Horikoshi designed the Zero and it was fun :)
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  49. They needed the icebreaker to make it through the Baltic sea. It was never intended to accompany the fleet beyond the Baltic (and that is why it was sent home). Btw the icebreaker was the "Yermak - the first icebreaker ever and one of the longest actively serving ships ever. A very busy ship that was essential to Russia's maritime trade via St Petersburg.
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  50. "How can you be a US state and NOT have a battleship named after you?"
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