Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "RHS Hydra - Guide 244" video.
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@scarecrow2097 newspaper reports of the time make for fascinating reading. The Naval appropriation bill the House passed had funding for more Connecticuts. Senator Hale demanded the Navy buy smaller ships, on the order of 12,000 tons, rather than more 16,000 ton Connecticuts, and he held up the appropriation bill until the appropriation for two Connecticuts was changed to the smaller Mississippis. The backstairs chatter the newspapers were reporting was that Hale, who represented Maine, was trying to get the contract for Bath Iron Works. At that time, Bath was building one of the 15,000 ton Virginias, having difficulty with a ship that size, and the Navy was very dissatisfied with Bath's progress. As it turned out, the Navy could not design a ship of less than 13,000 tons, which still exceeded what Bath could comfortably build. Newport News was low bid, for one Mississippi. The William Cramp yard bid a price that exceeded that of News for one ship, but bid a lower price for building both of the Mississippis. In the back of my mind, knowing the contracts for the Mississippis were entirely politically motivated, I will observe that the Cramp yard is in Philadelphia, One of the Senators from PA had a lot of juice, was the head of the state party machine, and also sat on the Naval Affairs Committee, so I would not reject the proposition that the Senator advised Cramp how to bid for the contracts. The ships were a failure for the USN because of their small size. They were a bit slower, and had significantly less range than the Connecticuts, so were mostly relegated to coastal patrol, separate from the rest of the fleet. And yet, being obsolete pre-dreadnoughts, and of little use to the USN, SecNav Daniels still exploited the Greeks to a horrendous degree. iirc, the newspapers were reporting the price Daniels extracted from Greece was about double what the ships were worth. From the Greek perspective, the Mississippis might have come in handy in 1912, but in 1914, if the Ottomans had received the two new Dreadnoughts building in the UK, the Mississippis would have been dead meat. One positive note, the Mississippis fit in the drydock in Piraeus. A Connecticut would have been too big.
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@Pavlos_Charalambous iirc, the British naval advisors to Greece were recommending they buy more torpedo boats and destroyers, instead of sinking so much money into one or two big ships, but seems the politicians had other ideas. I read about how, when ordering Salamis, the Greek PM authorized a ship with three turrets that, iirc, could fit in the drydock. As soon as the PM was out of the country for a few days, a handful of movers and shakers in Parliament sent Vulcan a change order for the larger, more expensive, more heavily armed version that was actually built. When the PM arrived back in Greece and saw what they did, he tried to reverse the change order but Vulcan refused to allow the reversal. Vulcan really tended to play hardball with Greece. In 1912, Greece needed new destroyers desperately. They bought two V-class ships that Vulcan had built for the German navy, but, to compensate Vulcan for having to schedule two more Vs for the German navy, Vulcan required Greece to buy more torpedo boats. That is something I noticed about the battles of Elli and Lemnos: the Greek torpedo boats were a non-factor. I gather the Aetos class had empty tubes. The Niki and Thyella class ships must have had torpedoes on board. But the only Greek torpedo attacks I see mentioned are a couple raids in harbor, sinking an Ottoman ironclad that had been pretty much reduced to a hulk, and a gunboat, and the torpedo boats used on those occasions seem to be the oldest ones in Greek inventory.
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@tomaseidtner8116 the foremost problem Greece has to consider is the size of it's largest drydock. The Averof and the Mississippis barely fit. As for "merchants", do you have in mind Basil Zaharoff? Zaharoff did contribute a huge pile of money, far in excess of the Averof bequest that covered the down payment on the armored cruiser, to the Greek intervention in the Turkish civil war, but apparently not anything for the Green Navy. Where Zaharoff could have made a difference with a well timed donation was a few years earlier. Drac mentioned the battles of Elli and Lemnos. The Ottoman cruiser Hamidiye had broken out into the Med and was raiding Greek shipping. The Averof was the only ship in the Greek navy that had the speed, armor and firepower to chase down and kill the Hamidiye, but, if the Averof took off to chase down the Hamidiye, there would not be enough of a Greek force remaining near the Dardanelles to keep the rest of the Ottoman fleet bottled up. iirc, the commander of the Averof defied orders to pursue the Hamidiye and stayed on station at the Dardinelles, waiting for the Ottoman attempts to break their fleet out. Where Basil could have made himself useful: the preceding Ottoman Sultan had ordered a new protected cruiser, essentially a repeat of Hamidiye, from Ansaldo. When that Sultan was overthrown, the new Ottoman regime refused to pay for the ship, so it sat, unfinished, on the slipway, until Italy went to war against the Ottoman Empire in 1912, whereupon Italy seized the ship and completed it for the RM. Seems to me that if the Greek PM, who was well acquainted with Zaharoff had sent a well timed wire "Bas old buddy, the Averof family has made a wonderful contribution to the Royal Hellenic Navy for a new cruiser. There is another cruiser sitting on the slipway at Ansaldo that the Ottomans defaulted on. Maybe you could see your way to help us out with the purchase of that ship?", then the RHN would not have been in a bind when the Hamidiye broke out, because it would have a second capable cruiser.
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@tomaseidtner8116 before the war, Greece had ordered the Salamis from Vulcan in Germany. Salamis was to be armed with 8 US built 14" guns, so a credible threat to Goeben. They bought the Mississippis because the Salamis would not be ready when the two Ottoman ships building in the UK were complete. After the war, the incomplete hull of Salamis was still at the Vulcan yard. Vulcan wanted to complete it and deliver it to Greece, and get paid. Greece didn't want it as, first, being a pre-war design, it was obsolete, and, second, Greece didn't have the money. The issue was in court for several years. iirc, Greece ended up paying cancellation charges to Vulcan to get out of the contract, but I forget how much. Another path would be for Greece to demand the two surviving Tegetthoffs as war reparations. iirc, what actually happened to them is one went to Italy, which was scrapped, and the other went to France, which used it for target practice. Greece would still have the running costs of the two battleships. The really low cost alternative is to prohibit Turkey retaining Goeben. Turkey kept Goeben because the Turkish Republic had displaced the old regime and the new Republic was not seen as a threat.
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