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

  1. If it worked King would commend him.
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  2. (conveniently forgets hundreds of US aircraft constantly attacking the Japanese surface fleet which had no air cover during the action)
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  3.  @QuizmasterLaw  Yup - range is one thing, combat radius is another but they are in proportion. With drop tanks and when flown from land bases Zero had 500-600 miles combat radius (I assume the range was shorter from carriers due to the need to search for the carrier on the way back and the possibility the carrier could sail away thus increasing the distance for up to 100 nm).
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  4. Fun fact "tone" means "(she is) sinking" in Serbian, yet ironically, unlike almost the entire IJN, she survived almost the entire war and was only sunk in the shallow harbor of Kure at the end of the war (she was potentially salvageable).
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  5. Regarding the commerce raiding. RN was the silent deciding factor of WW1. Sure the enormous French and Russian land armies contributed significantly, but they were matched by the Central powers' land armies. It was the RN blockade of commerce to the Central Powers that tipped the scales by: 1) slowly starving the Central Powers out of the industrial pairity with the Entente in the long run, 2) Diverting all US cargoes bound for Germany or neighboring neutral countries to UK where they were bought by UK with US loans - thereby effectively ensuring US support, and, when necessity seemed to arise, active participation in the war on the Entente side. Regarding commerce raiding today - the only two navies capable of seriously endangering the US-controlled worldide maritime trade, the Russian navy and the Chinese navy are both under siege in geostrategic terms. Russia's Black Sea fleet (submarines included) cannot sortie through Bosphorus without being detected by NATO, their Pacific fleet is under watch from Japan, South Korea and Alaska, their Baltic Fleet would be spotted at Oresund and their Northern fleet would be spotted at the UK-Greenland SOSUS barrier. The Chinese navy is under siege by US bases in Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam and I believe if worse came to worst the US would absolutely make sure they are back on the Philippines. So neither of the two navies could do more than briefly interrupt the maritime trade with any SSGs they had in the open ocean prior to commencment of hostilities that were, for any reason, not tailed by NATO forces.
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  6. You mean that war which started with Israeli sneak attack against Egypt and Syria and ended with them occupying the entire Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights? I don't blame the Arabs for ignoring the rulebook after that and starting the long and undeclared War of Attrition.
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  7. Just as Mahan figured it out - a comparably cost-effective alternative to sea transport in the form of RAILWAYS was invented and began to be widely used...
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  8. Depends largely on the size and type of the bomb... Actually, Shokaku's survival at Coral Sea, Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz is even more impressive since she was hit with greater weight of bombs than Enterprise in any of her incidents...
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  9. He also believed that the biggest wooden cupboard in the world could take off from water and carry stupendous cargo if it only had wings and some engines...
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  10. 5:33 Japanese carrier sunk at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons was RyuJo, not Ryuho (which also existed and survived the war).
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  11.  @guaposneeze  Kaga hit a reef at Palau on the 9th of February 1942. and thus missed the Indian Ocean raid.
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  12. De Ruyter was good, but the trully underappreciated Dutch admiral was the dilettante Jacob von Wassenaer Obdam. A freaking army colonel who was put in charge of a large but otherwise ragtag Dutch fleet only because he was apparently the only politically acceptable candidate. It was actually him, with his out-of-the-box mindset who devised the basis for the tactics that De Ruyter later, as a competent admiral and with some new and bigger ships successfully put in practice against the English: engaging with artillery from the leeward position at longer range at which the British, from the windward side could not effectively reply.
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  13.  @Christian-mt5jx  Gensoul behaved as any disciplined soldier would in his position. Had he agreed to any of the British demands Germany would have invaded Vichy france there and then, probably the French North Africa too (from the Italian Libya). If the latter were the case Operation Torch would have actually been much more difficult. Mers El Kebir was Churchill's supreme stupidity and a war crime (attack without a declaration of war).
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  14. That claim is repeated on and on by the British propaganda trying to both overestimate its achievements and importance in WW2 as well as justify this action of outright agression. Drachinifel at least didn't buy it (he mentions that consideration being of secondary importance at best to the British decision makers at the time).
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  15. This programme had been brought to you by British-American Tobacco...
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  16. Blessed are the countries with boring histories. Same goes for ships.
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  17. There were major disagreements on whether to attack the western powers (Navy opposed it, Army, not wanting to back out of China due to fuel starvation insisted on it), but once the course was set they cooperated as best they could. Their lightning conquests in 1941-2 would not possible wothout a good army-navy cooperation. The navy made a great effort in the Guadalcanal campaign to land, supply, support and ultimately evacuate the army. The army air force fought alongside the naval air force when both were present. Sure there were logistical and coortinational problems as well as disagreements on strategy but it was similar in USA. Navy argued against the entire Philipines reqonquest effort as wasteful. USN/USMC and USAAC also used different planed (with the exception of SBD/A-24)...
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  18. Shorter distance from airfuelds to targets. Also the ground clutter by mountainous landscape of Japan would mask a part of the the approach to USN radars - all in all - less response time for USN fighter directors. Many more airfields compared to mostly small islands invaded by the US thus far (with exception of the Philippines) - far fewer Japanese planes could be destroyed in pre-invasion strikes percentage wise. Greater numbers. Japanese also planned to strike the more vulnerable transport ships rather than warships this time to maximize damage. Toss in Shinyo and Fukuryu suicide explosive speedboats as well as kaiten suicide torpedos and the invasion of Japan would have been far costlier than even Okinawa. USN was aware of this and there were proposals to send a fake invasion fleet of empty ships bristling with AAA to bait the kamikaze into wasting themselves on them before the real, loaded invasion fleet was finally sent in...
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  19. A suggestion for the intro music: A part from Two Steps From Hell (Thomas Bergersen) - Magika Eproves says: Monetization will be prohibited or blocked in some countries But you can find a no copyright version
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  20. More like: MN: "37kts" Shipyard: "Ok. Here's your 45kts ship" MN: "8D"
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  21. 4:30 that's Hiryu, sunk only later that day.
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  22. Few carriers were armored.
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  23. About the epidemics on ships in the age of sail there is a nice representation of a naval quarantine in one of the early episodes of the Hornblower TV series of historical fiction set during the Napoleonic wars. An episode which I ominously saw for the first time just before the Covid19 outbreak before flying abroad to do some work. https://youtu.be/tyQvWwwIsM4
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  24. 2:51:35 Civilian (non-commissioned) coastwatchers in WW2. Not really a fighting force per se, but very important Allied intelligence/reconnaissance force on some of the Pacific islands.
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  25.  @elloo98  You want to check the Black Tom explosion of WW1 or the Brandenburgers in WW2 for a more informed assessment.
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  26.  @jermainerace4156  The US battleships at Surigao Strait at best actually saved many, if not all, of Shima's ships that retreated - by scaring them off. Otherwise Shima would have pressed on and been fed some additional US destroyer torpedoes for his troubles... It was the superior sensors that were decisive in that battle. Not the US battleships.
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  27.  @Laotzu.Goldbug  1) “With regard to the Japanese Government’s message accepting the terms of the Potsdam proclamation but containing the statement, ‘with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler,’ our position is as follows: “From the moment of surrender the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms. ^^^ In the very note by which the US sent via the Swiss to Japan (which has still not yet ordered its forces to stop fighting) US secretary of state James Byrnes is clearly stating that the Emperor shell be kept (albeit subordinate to the US commander of the occupying forces). Therefore it was not post fact, but indicated before the cessation of hostilities (US wanted the war to end ASAP so as to grab as much of Korea as possible instead of the advancing Soviets). 2) "if the United States had decided to depose the emperor, the Japanese could not have done anything about it." If the US went back on its promise to keep the emperor, check Vietnam or Afghanistan for references of what the Japanese could have done about it.
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  28. "I agree" - Lancaster crewman exiting Norwegian airspace.
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  29.  @bkjeong4302  War was started by the Japanese, and the first act was a surprise torpedo boat attack in Port Arthur. . They had the initiative. They could have pre-positioned ships just in case the Russians decided to send their Baltic fleet (and since the Russians had actually pulled off a successful similar redeployment to the Mediterranean and consequently achieved naval superiority in a Russo Turkish war in the past, the Japanese could be expected to assume the possibility of redeployment to the Pacific too) or had some on secret orders from before the war. It is altogether possible to keep such things secret (hell in WW2 the Japanese kept secret launching of two biggest battleships ever built, and during the Russo-Japanese war managed to conceal from the Russians the loss of Hatsuse and Yashima, 1/3 of their first rate battle line to mines.). Many new technologies were being developed at the time and commanders had to account for increased number of possible threats. Admiral Makarov even considered a possibility of the Japanese discharging a large amount of oil just outside of Port Arthur when the tide was sure to carry it into the harbor and seting it alight to attack his fleet at anchor and devised countermeasures for such a scenario, even though it may sound a bit ludicrous in hindsight.
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  30. Some Italian submarines took part in the Battle of the Atlantic.
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  31. Apart from planes recorded by the Japanese as shot down and those lost in the Yamato's explosion there could have been damaged planes that flew away from the eyes of the Japanese but couldn't make it back and were lost. Hence I am fairly sure that of the 10 US planes lost, apart from the 3 recorded as shot down by the Japanese not all 7 remaining planes were lost in the explosion. Not even close. PS after all - 4 escorting destroyers returned to Japan and would have reported on the number of aircraft lost in the explosion.
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  32. I heard a few times some people in early 1940s USA, who first saw a photo of the Zero, jumped to conclusion that it was a copy of Seversky P-35 because of superficial resemblence from some angles of view and also the fact that the Japanese purchased 20 of them before the war for evaluation and study. Once the war began the poor Alexander de Seversky (who later designed the P-47) decided to change the name of his company from Seversky to Republic Aviation due to all the bad press he received that included opinions that the Zero was based on P-35. But that's it.
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  33. Japan had a war with China (First Sino-Japanese war) before it fought Russia and Chinese fleet was actually superior to the Japanese, but gross incompetence of the Chinese personnel both active and support enabled the competent Japanese to win.
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  34. His railway motive power solutions in general were atrocious. The pneumatic railway was a trully stupid idea.
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  35. Reasons why Japan lost the Guadalcanal campaign: 1) Midway. Without Midway full strength Kido Butai would have, with a bit of luck, had enough planes to overwhelm USN at, say, the Battle of Eastern Solomons and neutralize Henderson Field and even raid Espiritu Santo, thereby cutting supply lane of the Americans on Guadalcanal while protecting their own and thus enabled the army to retake the island. But had Midway not happened, the US would probably not have invaded Guadalcanal in the first place (although had Coral Sea not happened either, they probably still would have invaded). 2) Given that Midway did happen: lack of engineering equipment made the Japanese overextend - they should have built airfields on Bougainville and New Georgia before Guadalcanal. Instead they found themselves trying to win air superiority over Guadalcanal from faraway Rabaul (grueling 8 hrs round trip with about 30 mins of fighting time at max - making effective air cover for transport ships an impossibility with the number of fighters available) 3) USN early warning system (air-search radar + coastwatchers) 4) Intelligence provided by ULTRA that enabled the US to parry every Japanese attempt to win air superiority over Guadalcanal using their remaining carriers. 5) USN surface radar enabled the USN to fight the Japanese in night surface engagements on overall equal terms. 6) Low fuel stocks made the Japanese reluctant to commit their battleships to shell Henderson field (they only comitted the Kongo-class battlecruisers).
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  36. I agree with your picks for the first 4 RN losses, but I'd put in the Battle of Beachy Head instead of the comparatively inconsequential Battle of Zanzibar. I would also consider putting in the battle of Texel instead of Chesapeake as Britain already had terrible problems subduing the 13 colonies on land and I doubt that a victory at Chesapeake would have changed the overall outcome, but given that a hundred years later the Netherlands WAS occupied by France yet is alive and kicking, a decisive British victory at Texel would have hardly had long lasting consequences either.
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  37. I'll see your HMS New Zealand and raise it HIJMS Yukikaze... KMS Prinz Eugen was rather lucky too, but although it did have a varied and active career, it wasnt as active as Yukikaze's. USS Enterprise is also up there, but it did suffer some serious hits, and faced fewer threats than the prior two ships.
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  38. I cannot praise you enough for the way the questions are organized within the video (with the times etc). The only possible improvement would be to somehow have all of them ever answered (all videos included) listed somewhere (an Excel sheet?) with links, so that, when someone asks a question that you had answered before in a different video, you can send him the link easily or he can easily find it himself. I assume YouTube does not offer a solution to that problem.
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  39. Drug cartel with a country.
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  40. Indians name people "Stalin" (I met one), and Brazillians name people "Hitler" (bonus if surname is "Mussolini").
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  41. Have you seen the HMS Belfast moored in London? If yes you might have noticed how few visitors are there. Now a battleship is far more expensive to maintain, not to mention this one was in pretty bad shape at the end of the war. We have pictures, drawings, history accounts etc. Life goes on. Nuke equilibrium is a single biggest reason why world wars ended at 2, the ship was used rationally.
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  42. 24:40 Clouds worrked both ways at Midway at least. With the Japanese having poor radios no radar it was essential for the Japanese to visually detect incoming strikes, but the clouds concealed the high flying SBDs from both the ships and the CAP that busied itself with the TBDs and the Thatch flight that flew in low, under the cloud cover and were thus detected by both the escort ships and the CAP.
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  43. Haha ha USS Mountain Dew.
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  44. Not only Spain but the entire Spanish-speaking world. Here is a photo of an Argentine Navy Super Etendard: https://www.airteamimages.com/dassault-super-etendard_0764_argentina---navy_141905_large.html
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  45. Drach: "Creditable" 😎
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  46. Ah, the San Giorgio. The all-time torpedoeat champion.
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  47. 10:00 What a cute, compact naval base :)
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  48. So fireworks was suddenly proposed by the RN to boost the celebration but was eventually cancelled on HSE grounds. :)
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  49. 0:58:03 Goeben was sent to the Mediterranean during the 1st Balkan War (1912-1913) and the reasons are a bit complex: The Balkan League (the anti-Ottoman alliance of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro in that war) was backed by Russia which was hoping for it to chase the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans and hopefully from the Bosporus strait (as kinda proxies or at least small countries easier to bully or bribe than even the declining Ottoman Empire). Bosporus was (and still is) to Russia a hostile-held bottleneck that was shutting their Black Sea fleet in the Black Sea in case of war. Even if the League failed to take Bosporus it would still be a bite and hold step towards it - it was a long-term plan. Other European powers were for a long time doing their best to maintain the balance of power in Europe (although Germany managed to get away with the unification but the late response materialized during WW1). Earlier Russian moves towards Bosporus were countered with direct intervention in the Crimean War and a joint threat of intervention in 1878. which was diffused at the Berlin Congress (1878). During the 1st Balkan War the European powers agreed to throw the wrench into the League's plan (and indirectly Russian plans) by agreeing to form an "independent" country of Albania (in reality it was to be a kinda international protectorate mostly in the Austro-Hungarian and Italian spheres of influence). According to Balkan League agreements Albania was to be split between Greece, Serbia (thereby finally giving it a long coveted access to the sea) and Montenegro (a small part). The Balkan League quickly defeated the Ottoman field armies, failed to conquer the heavily defended Bosporus and besieged the several remaining holdout fortified towns. The poor, mountainous Albania was very poorly connected overland with Macedonia (where the decisive fighting of the Serbian theatre of that war took place) at the time and supplying a large conquering army via the existing roads was difficult to impossible.Therefore, Serbia agreed with Greece that the Serbian army which just conquered its part of Macedonia was to be ferried and supplied with Greek merchant ships from Salonika to Albanian ports to conquer its part of Albania and help the poorly equipped Montenegrin Army conquer the besieged Ottoman stronghold of Scutari (Shkoder) in their part. This was opposed by the other European powers who insisted Albania be made a separate country, The first batches of Serbian troop transports were already sent and arrived (disembarkation of one was interrupted by the Ottoman protected cruiser Hamidiye, sent to harass the Greek shipping in hopes the Greek armored cruiser Georgios Averoff would be detached from the blockade of the Dardanelles to catch her but to no avail - the Ottoman cruiser sank several ships in the shallow harbor of San Giovani di Medua but was prevented from sinking more still by the Serbian mountain guns firing from the deck of the merchant ship Trifimia which forced her to sail beyond range and the geography of the harbor, abysmal Ottoman accuracy and limited shell supply did the rest). Anyway, to stop the Serbian troop transports and ensure the creation of an independent Albania, the big powers (Austria Hungary, Germany, Italy, France, UK) sent a joint fleet to blockade the Albanian coast and prevent further seaborne transport and threatened direct intervention. That is why Goeben was originally sent there. The top left photo on the infobox montage is showing the flags of the intervening powers over the Shkoder fortress after it fell, note the German one in the foreground: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Scutari_(1912%E2%80%9313) Serbs, Greeks and Montenegrins persisted and eventually conquered the whole Albania overland including Shkoder (via bribery) but agreed to evacuate it after the war at Russian advice. (note the heavy Serbian and Montenegrin casualties during the siege of Shkoder, a testament to difficulties of properly supplying the besieging army in 1913 Albania overland) With most of the Serbian and Montenegrin armies fighting the Ottomans in 1913, Austro Hungarian army could have easily overrun Serbia and Montenegro (the League members with the greatest Russian influence) if it decided to intervene and with UK and even its ally France also backing independent Albania, Russia (and its proxies) would be defeated if they tried force their agenda. The Russians however got their Serbian proxies to intensify stirring Slav nationalism in Bosnia hoping to create national uprisings in Austria Hungary (the same tactic was used on the Ottomans by all the Balkan League Allies just before the 1st Balkan War) - which later resulted in the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. The creation of independent Albania led to a dispute among the Balkan League countries about the division of spoils taken from the Ottomans, now when the total was reduced at everyone but Bulgaria's expense which resulted with the 1913 2nd Balkan War and the dissolution of the Balkan League. Goeben stayed in the region along with other ships to protect German interests during that conflict too and beyond - until WW1 started. Serbia and later Yugoslavia continued to attempt to assert its influence over Albania by supporting factions within the newly formed country and was opposed in those efforts chiefly by Italy which had the same goals and methods - that game continued until WW2.
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  50. She wasn't captured but handed over as stipulated by the provisions of capitulation of the Royal Yugoslav Armed Forces. One other, smaller Beograd-class destroyer, the Zagreb, was blown up in Kotor naval base, after the capitulation was signed, but before the Italians arrived, by two of her junior officers (a Serb and a Slovene) who went down with her - to prevent her from being handed over to the Italians.
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