Comments by "Not shaped for sportive tricks" (@notshapedforsportivetricks2912) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. A very graceful tribute to the Duke, Drach. Well done.
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  2. How on earth did that cute little engine (3:47) at Chatham Dockyard manage to get off the island of Sodor?
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  3.  @dgthe3  I hope that she got a bloody big bonus for doing that. Pregnant or not, the sentence "We're sorry our cannon destroyed your house." does little to turn aside wrath, I suspect.
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  4. I'm not saying that it would have been totally impossible for von Spee to make it to the Jade estuary, but in ships with fouled bottoms, tired engines and low coal supplies, I know where I'd put my money.
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  5.  @paulb6326  Lord Mountbatten, apparently. At least, Mountbatten charmed Rickover sufficiently to get him to hand over a nuclear reactor for HMS Dreadnought. Mountbatten must have put in a hell of a lot of spadework to achieve that.
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  6. You consistently produce high qualiry, entsertaining and informative videos; but with this trio Drach, you have totally knocked it out of the park. These are a fine tribute to the men who died in that fleet and the men who raised them. Simply outstanding. Bravo Zulu.
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  7. I nominate HMAS Canberra (1), not as a cruiser too angry to die but rather as a cruiser in too foul a mood so to do. Let's face it, after being disabled by Mikawa's force; having to then put up with your american allies taking 263 5" shells and five torpedos to scuttle you would be enough to put anyone in a vile state of mind.
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  8. Hi Drach. As a meet-up in Sydney, I strongly second both the Lord Nelson and The Hero. The food at the Lord Nelson used to be pretty good, but I haven't been there for a couple of years, so maybe anothe Sydney local can provide an update. I hope to see you when you're here.
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  9. Intestingly, Cerberus was semi-submersible. Compartments could be flooded so that only the breastwork , turrets and superstructure remained above water, making her an even smaller target than she was naturally. I wonder if this gave someone the daft idea for the M-class submarines?
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  10. What a pretty little ship. The square rig really suits her.
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  11. A fascinating tale of engineering silliness. Putting U-boats on an autobahn is right up there eith dragging motor launches through the jungle to fight a naval battle on Lake Tanganyika. You KNOW that there must have been a wager involved at some point in both cases. Actuallt, a Rum Ration on Spicer-Simpson's adventures would be good for a laugh.
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  12. A suitable subject for a three hour tour.
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  13. Ah, but can you spell "BOOBS" with it when you hold one upside-down?
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  14. The RN tends to be a bit more thoroughgoing about these things than the USN.
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  15. It IS nice to have a regular enemy who you get along with. Much more cozy than fighting with strangers.
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  16. I actually like the appearance of the Nelrods. They're a bit like an English Electric Lightning. Not the prettiest girls at the dance, but you don't want to get on the wrong side of them.
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  17.  @jonathanhill4892  Well, considering the Algerian War and its aftermath, maybe even then.
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  18. HMS Boyne, I heard.
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  19.  @TheNecromancer6666  I think that Grant was the single person of whom you could say that the war would probably have been lost without him. He won the war in the west ànd after a somewhat shaky start was the master of strategy in that theatre. His reputation has been unfairly tarnished as a butcher after he moved east, and I think that this happened for three reasons: 1. The battles before Richmond happened in a cockpit and simply didn't offer the scope for movement that was present in the west. Even Lee was severely hampered after Grant started applying pressure to unbalance him. 2. The culture of the Army of the Potomac was extremely hierarchical; nothing ever happened quickly and initiative was actively discouraged. This meant that formations would arrive late and would not react quickly to hanging circumstances, which lead to heavy casualties. 3. The lost cause myth. For this to work, it required that the gallant southerners could only be overcome by the northern steamroller which depended on numbers, not skill. As Grant was already unpopular due to his support for reconstruction, it required only a small step to tar him as an unthinking butcher, even though Lee's losses were often as great as his own, and far less sustainable.
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  20. I knew about some of the princely states retaining control of their own military formations, but the navy as the national armed organisation had never actually ocurred to me. Thsnk you for the insight.
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  21. Just a minor note Drach; Diomede and Dunedin were assigned to the New Zealand Division of the RN in 1924. The RNZN didn't come into existence until October, 1941. Both were reassigned back to the RN proper in 1936/37.
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  22. ​ @blshouse  I bet that all the other Admirals said you were daft to build an airstation on a swamp, but you built it anyway. Just to show 'em.
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  23. Forget about Raiders, it will be more like Yes Minister. In one episode the Minister, Jim Hacker, was about to be embarassed by a petition that he himself had lead when his party was in opposition. He instructed Bernard, his personal secretary, to get rid of it. Innocently, Bernard asked if it should be filed or shredded. Hacker, in near panic, emphasised that no one should ever see it again. Bernard then replied "In that case, I'll file it Minister".
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  24. Wow! Talk about being able to hold a grudge.
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  25.  @DeltaV2TLI  Yeah, the NZ would come out without a scratch; but Jutland proved that you don't want to be standing near her.
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  26. Another reason to have a non-combatant vessel as your flagship is that they often have a lot more room to host staff facilities. Which makes them nicer places in which to live, not to mention in which to host cocktail parties.
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  27. I bet that there was quite a queue of volunteers to serve on Menestheus.🍻
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  28. In cricketing terms, the 17.7" torpedoes launched from the Oskarborg Fortress had the best strike rate of any WW II torpedo. One delivery. One hit. One sink. A 100% success rate. OK, it was a short innings.
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  29. Can we all please agree that Scheveningen is actually just pronounced "Dave"? 😉
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  30. And the complementary tale of a shoe factory that was ordeŕed to increase its production to a certain number of shoes annually, and so simply switched to making baby shoes.
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  31. Actually, Bolivia does have a navy to stir Drach's salty blood. Admittedly it's mostly based on Lake Titicaca, so I can't see how it can get to Lake Lugarno for a face-off against the switzers . Well, not without considerable help from FedEx parcel post. Incidentally, do NOT look up Bolivia's naval ensign as it has been known to induce seizures in small children.
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  32. The designers were probably making allowances for pilfering.
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  33. We have a new hunter/killer group to win wars; HMS Warspite, USS Enterprise and Sunderland EJ234. Broken up on the beach, you say? Bah! 'tis but a flesh wound.
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  34. As my father used to say when faced with a piece of uncooperative machinery ... "Don't force it. Use a bigger hammer."
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  35. Steve1989 is a very brave man. And must have a digestive system of cast iron. 🤮
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  36. To be fair, they probably weren't Mk 14s.
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  37. So Mitchell's air advocacy was merely another installment of the annual Army-Navy game? Who whould have thunk it?
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  38. I remember Drach back when he was a robot. Congratulations, Sir. Now on to one billion!
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  39. I remember a cartoon in Punch back in the days when Soviet "trawlers" would shadow NATO fleets. This one featured a trawler canted over at an alarming angle while its crew rushes about frantically. A watching RN officer remarks "Looks like they're in trouble, Sir. I think that they've caught some fish by mistake."
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  40.  @demonicsquid7217  I think that your granddad's sister's brother would have enjoyed that role more during Clinton's presidency.
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  41. The only ship that has spent longer than Oregon in a drydock is HMAS Supply. (A joke for australians.)
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  42. Good call.
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  43.  @bostonrailfan2427  Thanks very much for taking the trouble of finding that, but I'm afraid that its not the photo I'm thinking of. The one that I remember is a profile shot of a monitor with a single turret forward with most of her nose buried in a swell. Mind you, in either case, I'd be sleeping on deck in a life jacket. 😵
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  44.  @TheKingofbrooklin  That might work for some of the protected cruisers, especially if their captains were imaginative like von Muller, but the armoured cruisers would have practically no chance short of internment in a neutral country. The thing is, I'm not sure how the scatter and run tactic would have sat with the german naval ethos of the time. Flying from the face of an overwhealming enemy is one thing; disguise in cruiser warfare is acceptacle, but I'm not convinced that scattering an intact fleet would fit the prussian mind set.
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  45. Councidentally, it was 100 years ago this week that a man walked out of his newspaper office in Bunbury and 3 months later arrived in Sydney; becoming the first man to walk solo across Australia; so nice timing, Drach. Unfortunately, he was apparently writing a serial thriller and quit before handing in the final chapter. Somewhere in Bunbury there is a very old and very angry newspaper subscriber.
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  46. ​ @katrinapaton5283  You really should stop haning around journalists and other such "educated" types. I feel your pain, my kiwi cuz.
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  47. Almost as impressively named was a US naval officer (an ADC to George Bush I, from memory, named Captain Dick Pound.
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  48.  @mikecimerian6913  He had some very genial traits with ordinary people indeed. Just ask the ukranians. Woops! Now where did they go? And that was only the start. The bastard was a meglomaniac and psychopath. The end.
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  49.  @francoistombe  Lots of italian POWs were kept in the camp at Cowra during the war. In contrast to the japanese, the italians were guarded very lightly and the officers apparently weren't guarded at all. They could wander into town, visit the pubs and drink coffee in the cafes. They just had to give an undertaking not to try to escape and to close the fly-screen door behind them when they returned to camp. A marked contrast to the way the japanese had to be handled.
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  50. I certainly hope that the expenditure of pistol ammunition was preceeded by Captain Novotny whipping out his Luger, pointing it at Italy and drawling "Hands up, pardner. This is a stick-up". In any of the empire's eleven languages.
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