Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 257 (Part 1)" video.

wrt the question about USN green aviator uniforms. iirc, the 1941 movie "Dive Bomber" gives a very good look at them, as well as pre-war air ops on the Enterprise, all in Technicolor. Regarding the issue of enclosed cockpit aircraft being flown with the canopy open, having the canopy open both improves visibility and makes it easier to get out of the plane if something goes wrong.
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@LucioFercho I think it was in Brown's "The Grand Fleet" where I read of post-war testing that showed the flash doors used in British capital ships were too weak. If the doors were closed, an explosion would blow them open, defeating their purpose. Why does the story persist that the safety features had been intentionally defeated by the crew? It may be true, or maybe not. The dead can't tell us. It is easier for the higher ups to blame the victims, than to admit that maybe their design was not fit for purpose. When the turret on Iowa suffered an explosion in 1989, the Navy was very quick to blame one of the men in the turret, floating a story that he had decided to commit suicide, and take everyone else in the turret with him, by placing a detonator in the gun to ignite the charges before the breech was closed.
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@themanformerlyknownascomme777 the F4U could carry a large payload, and be an effective fighter. That might have demonstrated that the concept was viable. As for being official DoD policy, my seat-of-the-pants hunch is the policy could be attributed to SecDef Robert McNamara. iirc, the F-111 was supposed to be a fighter, carrying a load of Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix, and a bomber, with an internal bomb bay, as well as wing hardpoints, and be used by both the USAF and USN, and McNamara was the one pushing it's development.
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@vikkimcdonough6153 Jackie sold them as "light cruisers". A 2-3" belt is consistent with the C Class light cruisers of the same era. The Wiki entry says that belt armor was high tensile steel, ie structural steel, rather than the typical hardened steel. The plan may well have been for the belt armor to act as a structural member of the ship.
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@geofftimm2291 the KGVs were originally designed to have three quad turrets. Then the Admiralty decided to raise the armor deck one level, which increased the height of the belt armor. To compensate for all the extra armor weight, something had to go. The quad B turret was reduced to a twin to reduce top weight.
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@themanformerlyknownascomme777 by it's designation, F-111, the plane was intended as a fighter. During it's development in the early 60s, dogfighting was considered passe. The idea was to stand off and shoot the other guy down with a missile. iirc, the Hughes Phoenix system the F-111 was designed for could guide six missiles to separate targets, simultaneously. Turned out the 111 was too big and heavy for carrier ops, so Grumman designed the 14, to use the same Phoenix system. As for a replacement for the 111, we now have the "Strike Eagle" version of the 15, and people have been strapping bombs on the 16 for decades as well. The USAF also had the F-117. which, in spite of it's "F" designation, I never heard of being used as an air superiority fighter, only as a bomber.
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@geofftimm2291 The justification for the regression to 14" was the "more guns equals more hits" narrative. As originally intended, a 12 gun KGV would send 50% more rounds down range, than a QE, or a Bismark. Given the RN fighting instructions that required the ships to close to 16,000 yards or less, rather than standing off at greater range, the 14" could penetrate well enough and the greater number of shells would, all other things being equal, result in more hits and faster degradation of the enemy ship. The problem was, the KGV had to be well enough protected to survive until it closed to 16,000, which resulted in the increase in armor, which required the reduction from 12 to 10 guns, which partially defeated the rational behind regressing to 14" in the first place.
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@Thirdbase9 Drac, and others. have, from time to time, mentioned the RN's use of "supercharges", which were larger than standard charges to increase the range of large guns. USN gunnery tables from the 1930s provide trajectory tables for both "full charge" and "reduced charge" shots. I have been offering that Bismark penetrated Hood's deck, as Captain Leach said he saw, by use of a reduced charge, to provide a lower muzzle velocity, resulting in a steeper angle of fall, but I have received withering pushback, insisting that reduced charge was never, ever, used in combat....but the data was readily available, Bismark's gunners would have known what angle of fall was needed for a penetrating deck hit, reduced charge made that angle possible at that range, and no-one else has offered a scenario that fits with the eye-witness accounts.
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@JohnRodriguesPhotographer the Dewey drydock was built on the east coast of the US and towed, in one piece, across the Atlantic, through the Med and Suez, across the Indian Ocean and to the Philippines, in 1906. I would suspect the WWII floating docks were towed around the same way.
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wrt the question about boring out the 15"/42, the Washington treaty prohibited improvements in the main armament. Italy was given special allowance for improvement because her battleships were so obsolete. The newspapers of the time reported a general consensus among conference participants that 12" guns were obsolete. The treaty also prohibited changes in the type of mount. When the USN started modifying the mounts to increase elevation, there was considerable discussion among treaty members whether that was allowable, or a prohibited change in the type of mount.
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