Comments by "" (@BobSmith-dk8nw) on "Drachinifel" channel.

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  5.  @bkjeong4302  Bean Counter ... Bean Counter ... There was no competition between Cruisers and Battleships - for resources, man power or anything else. They were building as many of both as they could as fast as they could. As I said. Why can't you get that through your thick skull. We built a gigantic Navy as part of a gigantic military and we did it in 4 or 5 years if you count our prewar efforts. We were the world's richest country with a large population - and didn't have any trouble doing any of that. There was a lot of effort involved but nothing we couldn't do. There was absolutely no need to not build Battleships so we could build more Cruisers and Destroyers. We had plenty of all of them. If you weren't stupid - you would see that. You just can't seem to get it through your Bean Counters Brain - that we had all we needed to do anything we wanted. We just needed to get it done. What was important when they began designing their fleet - they wanted a balanced fleet using all they knew about. The Wisconsin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wisconsin_(BB-64) - was the last battleship completed. It was ordered in 1940 and laid down in January of 1941 before the war even started. It was not in competition for ANYTHING that came after it, Cruisers, Destroyers or anything else. You are acting, first, like you are right - which you are not - but also like the people who ordered these ships should have known that the Air Plane was going to dominate the war to come. They didn't. They couldn't have. All the Air Power Advocates - like Billy Mitchell - were full of shit. Yes - Aircraft would be vastly more important than anyone thought - but not as important at THESE people thought. I get tired of people like you. You've read some books and think you know something - but you don't. You just have silly little ideas that you cherish and cling to - refusing to see how silly they are. Your last paragraph is the perfect example. It seems real to you but it isn't. (The Japanese fleet escaped from Midway because they had Battleships and the Americans didn't). Were you ever in the military? Have you ever participated in activating a new ship? Do you count the time you've been studying History in decades? I was, I have and I do. I've explained all this to you - and in your stupidity - you keep arguing with me as if you know something - when you don't. The correct thing for you to do at this point - is thank me for making you aware of how silly and irrelevant your ideas are (that's what I do when I'm wrong) - but don't worry - I'll not be waiting on you to do that. You seem very much like yet another Internet Wannabe who's read some stuff and thinks he knows something - but (again) doesn't. .
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  10. Well ... the thing is ... Lee was responsible for real, live human beings and not in the least bit interested in satisfying the wants and desires of future Naval History Nerds for a fight between all those battleships. You don't play the other guys game. The Best thing the Japanese could do - was - Night Surface Action and why the hell could Lee possibly want to expose his ships to all those Long Lance Torpedoes - when he didn't have to? Off Guadalcanal - Lee had a reason for taking his battleships in and exposing them to potential losses. In the Philippine Sea - he had none. The American Carriers were going to devastate the Japanese - with the Japanese having little recourse and little in the way of harming the Americans. This is vastly different than the case during The Battle OFF Samar where Halsey should have left his battleships to guard the San Bernadino Strait in case Kurita turned around - like he did - to protect the Landing Areas off Leyte. There - Lee would have had a REASON for engaging the Japanese in a surface action - day or night. You don't give the enemy a chance to hurt you - when you can just slaughter them with impunity. Giving the Japanese the opportunity to do what they had demonstrated time and again that they could do very well would have been a mistake. Even if the Americans hadn't lost any ships - they may well have had some damaged - and those would be ships that were NOT available in the near future to escort aircraft carriers - which had become the primary function of surface combatants. .
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  13. Before he war - the US Navy had practiced Daylight Gunnery. The Japanese Navy had practiced Night Combat. For most of the war - aircraft - dominated the day - so much of the Naval Surface Combat that took place - took place at night. Night Naval Combat in WWII was an ideal environment for torpedoes. The Japanese Navy had - head and shoulders above EVERYONE ELSE the absolute best torpedoes in the world. The American Navy - had the worst (that I'm aware of). Japanese Night Vision was Excellent. American Radar got better - but - most of it's Command Level had no idea how to use it. Japan had been at war with China since 1937. They also understood that, they being an Island Nation, needed an excellent Navy to protect it and exert power outwards. The Americans had been heavily influenced in their actions by Isolationist sentiments and until 1940 neglected it's armed forces because of the Depression (though the Navy fared better than the Army). During the early days of WWII the Germans and Japanese Armed Forces were better prepared for war than the Allies. The Americans were utterly unprepared for war and spent most of 1942 paying for it as they learned things their enemies already knew how to do. While the Americans had people who knew what they were doing - much of that was often undone by bureaucratic military procedures that put ignorant, incompetent people in command. Ultimately though - the Americans did learn and their incompetents were replaced. The thing about the Guadalcanal Campaign is that over all - the Japanese and Americans took about equal losses but - the Americans could replace those losses - and the Japanese couldn't. .
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  24.  @whyjnot420  Unlike this one - my comment, though it followed right after yours - was more a comment on clocks in general than a reply to you. As to "24 hour" clocks - most of the ones I saw - were really just 12 hour clocks that had two sets of numbers on them. So for 2 p.m. they would have a "2" and then below it a "1400". So for these clocks the only difference between them and a standard clock was the printing of the hours on the clock face. Internally - they were identical. The ones that were real 24 hour clocks were extremely rare. I've seen them - but they were very few in number and mostly located on a ship or something. As to them being cheaper - the standard office clocks were cheaper because they were mass produced in vast numbers, whereas the pseudo "24 hour" clocks I saw - which merely had two sets of numbers printed on them but were mechanically the same - were made in smaller numbers. Civilian and military office buildings all over the world used those standard "12" hour clocks whereas, I would imagine, it was mostly military functions or maybe some other organization that used "24 hour" times, that would be a market for the "24 hour" version. As to those centrally controlled clocks - yes - I remember that from when I was in grade school! Twice a year when they changed over from Day Light Savings Time to Standard Time - or if there had been a power outage - you could see the clock hands moving on their own. That Grade School - which was on a military base - was the only time I saw that though - the rest were just standard office clocks that had to be adjusted manually. One of the things about those office clocks - was that when they designed the office - they had a little power plug right there on the wall where the clock went that you could plug it into. I have grown to really hate battery powered clocks ... We had one of these Bird Clocks where a different bird would "chime" the hours for each of the 12 hours (and it was photo sensitive so it couldn't "chime" after dark). The trouble was - as the batteries wore down - it ran slower - and you had to replace them - and the batteries for that clock ran down every few months. I finally just got tired of changing the damned batteries and it's just been sitting there unmoving for ... over a decade ... as something decorative rather than a clock. This is one of TWO battery powered clocks that are now wall ornaments, though the other never kept accurate time. It had a function for adjusting the rate it ran at - but that did not work. Of course - this is something that is different now. I bought this cheap, throw away little digital clock with a liquid crystal display for which you could not change the battery - but - it's been running for years now ... so ... it would depend on the technology as to how big a pain in the ass the batteries are. Ha! Ha! You can tell what type of people are fans of videos about Naval Logistics by their ability to delve deep into the minutiae of different types of clocks! Ha! Ha! .
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  26. Cool. It helps having someone around who actually speaks the language with these ships names. I have a nephew whose mother is Japanese - so one day I'm like "Oh! Hey! Tell me if I'm pronouncing these names right!" I actually was doing pretty good ... As to those Italian names - one of the things I noticed is that I would have emphasized the wrong syllables on several of them. One thing about that though - is that Google Translate has a sound function. The only thing I've used it with - was hearing how Brie Larson's real name was pronounced (according to Google Translate). Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers (click on the little speaker below the name to hear the pronunciation) https://translate.google.com/?oe=utf-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&client=tw-ob#view=home&op=translate&sl=fr&tl=en&text=Brianne%20Sidonie%20Desaulniers Of course - not speaking French - I have no idea what so ever how accurate that pronunciation is but - lacking anyone who does speak French to tell me ... Anyway - while I can't vouch for it's accuracy - I have gotten a lot of use out of Google Translate. I was playing this online game and when the tutorial came to the spot about joining that games equivalent of a "Guild" - I let the game pick one for me - and it put me in a Spanish Language Guild ... Speaking no Spanish either I used Google Translate a lot - and - here on YouTube I've translated comments people posted in Russian and Chinese and ... got something understandable out of it. So ... it does seem to be better than nothing in the absence of a native speaker.  .
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  31.  @billbolton  They did have reports from Pearl Harbor from agents they had there before the attack. I don't know what happened to them but most of the rest of the Japanese were interned - and they probably didn't have that many white agents. Actually operational security is a high priority. Things could slip but - detailed fleet compositions and lists of ships by type? No. Japans intelligence was terrible. Japans military consisted of little fiefdoms. The Army and Navy hated each other. They didn't talk - they didn't share - they didn't communicate. The Meiji Reformation took place in 1870. Prior to that - Japan had a real, true, literal Feudal Society. You don't change things like that in 70 years. Pilots took Samurai Swords with them in their cockpits. Not that they had a use for them - but because they saw themselves as Samurai and a Samurai can't go into battle without his sword. In the Mitsubishi factory during the production of Zero Fighters, the fuselage would be carried from one part of the factory to another on an ox cart. Modern technology was a facade covering what was still LITERALLY a feudal society. They had no idea what they were doing in the modern world. They had scientists. They had technicians. They had trained personnel. They could USE the tools of a modern society but they WERE NOT a modern culture. They were a feudal culture with modern weapons. They took away their spears and gave them machine guns - but they were still feudal warriors. I'm sure they did have some type of systems intelligence that tried to break codes. The nations they copied everything from had them - so the Japanese were bound to have them too - but that doesn't mean they understood cryptanalysis. They were learning. They were taking things from western cultures and making them Japanese - but 70 years wasn't enough time. It just wasn't. The Japanese Navy - as excellent as it was at using it's weapons - didn't understand what they were for. They never understood that the warships weren't what was important - that it was the merchantmen that counted. The Warships were just there to protect theirs and kill the enemies. There are a lot of things they COULD have done. They COULD have had land based recon flights to find what US ships were where and what they were doing - but for whatever reason - they didn't. Of course - US Air was shooting down Japanese aircraft left and right - so it's hard to say if there actually were recon flights that were supposed to inform Kurita - but whatever the reason - they didn't. They thought that they were engaging fleet carriers and cruisers - so they were using Armor Piercing Ammunition - that, since they were in fact engaging escort carriers and destroyers, went right through their targets and out the other side. It poked a hole in the US ship - but those shells didn't explode. They did, as they closed the range realize the true nature of their targets and some of their ships switched to High Explosive shells - and THESE were the ships that sank the Gambier Bay and the Roberts. All those Japanese cruisers were supposed to have float planes ... but they obviously didn't get any intelligence from that source - for whatever reason. .
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  32. Erroneously - Naval Battles tended to be named for a near by land feature - such as Trafalgar or Jutland. Of course - since the battles did not take place AT Trafalgar or AT Jutland but took place on the water OFF these landmarks - they REALLY should have been named The Battle OFF Trafalgar or The Battle OFF Jutland ... but ... historically that is not what was done. So most battles are like The Battle of Trafalgar or The Battle of Jutland. For this battle though - the officer who wrote up the report for the battle - titled his report "The Battle Off Samar" and that was the name the United States Navy chose to use for THIS battle. The Navy that fights the battle - gets to name it - should they choose to. Thus - the CORRECT name for this battle - is the one the United States Navy gave it - which is - The Battle OFF Samar . The Japanese would also be entitled to name this battle as well and probably did - but - they would have named it in Japanese. Those of us who might read and speak Japanese might know the name the Japanese use but those of us who don't speak Japanese probably don't. I don't. But - for those of us who speak English - if we fancy ourselves Historians - we SHOULD all know the CORRECT name of the battle - and use it. But - some people - persist in saying the name of this battle wrong - even though they KNOW better. They have been told repeatedly by any number of people such as yourself and myself - and yet - they persist in saying the name of the battle WRONG. Now ... with some battles ... they were named by a nation whose language one might not speak - even if it is written in English and it is understandable why one might have difficulty in saying the name of such battles correctly. However - anyone who speaks English - should have very little trouble when choosing between the words "Off" and "Of". .
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  33. Yeah. One of the impressions I've gotten of Lincoln - was that he tended to interfere in his Generals Running of their Armies. So - while he had some complaints about some of his Generals - some of his Generals had complaints about him too. Another odd thing - is that - "The South" did not secede as a whole. Each State in what became the Confederacy seceded for it's own reasons which were not the same from State to State. It's my understanding that when Virginia had voted on secession - it voted NOT to secede. Then - Lincoln demanded that Virginia, among other states raise troops to go suppress South Carolina. While Virginia had decided not to secede itself - sending it's troops to attack another State - was not something it was going to do - and it was at that point - because of Lincoln demanding that it do so - that it voted again - and this time did vote to secede. If Lincoln had simply let South Carolina go ... can you imagine an economically or politically viable Confederacy without Virginia? The other thing about this - was that Virginia was not the only state to secede for this reason. One last comment about post Civil War use of the Rivers by the Army. The Missouri River, one of the major tributaries of the Mississippi, goes west as far west as Western Montana https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/Missouri_River_basin_map.png and has among a plethora of other rivers, the Yellowstone feeding into it. So - River Traffic was fairly important to this area of the West and was used by the Army during the American Indian Wars. .
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  43. As to submarines engaging warships - yes - the speed of the submarine was very much the problem - but - they did have some success. As to operating as part of the fleet ... no ... for one thing - there was to much danger of them being rammed by a friendly ship that didn't see them. The main thing though was that they were simply to slow to keep up - so it just wasn't possible for them to sail with the main fleet. However while their speed did limit them in catching warships - the did have some notable successes when warships blundered into them. The Nautilus at Midway did in fact torpedo one of the Japanese carriers - the torpedo just didn't go off ... but - it was the Japanese vessel sent to keep Nautilus down while the Japanese fleet turned towards the US Fleet - that led McClusky to find the Japanese carriers. The cruisers Juneau and Indianapolis were sunk by Japanese submarines. One Japanese submarine sank the Wasp, damaged the North Carolina and sank a destroyer with a single spread of torpedoes. One also got the CVE Liscombe Bay off Tarawa. The Question about that is - given the amount of resources they committed to chasing warships - would the Japanese have been better off having their submarines going after targets they were better able to catch such as the supply convoys to Australia and the US Island Bases? The US, once it got it's torpedoes to work ... had more success against the Japanese warships but - this wasn't at the expense of going after their merchant fleet. Here - the US was able to make good use of Submarines as a scouting force on more than one occasion. The Japanese had tried to do this at Midway - but the fact that the US had broken their codes - meant that the US ships had passed the point where the submarines set up their line before the submarines got there. .
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  44. There's a thing ... That Nations tend to have their smart people gravitate towards their most important service. Thus - with the British the smart people went in the Navy and the ... not as smart people went in the Army. With the Germans the smart people went in the Army and the ... not as smart people went into the Navy. With Israel - the whole country is in the military. As the British had the Channel - we in the US - had two Oceans ... so - you can guess where our smart people were. This isn't to say that there weren't any smart people in the "Junior" service so to speak it just seems that the dummies made more trouble. One thing, if you look at their attitude towards Aviation, the Navy was a lot more realistic in their appreciation of what aircraft could and could not do - where as the Army was all wrapped up in this Air Power Bull Shit. The thing with the Army Air Power Advocates - was that their ideas for what Air Power would become and the way it would be used - were wrong. Time and time again in looking at what the Air Power Advocates actually thought - it was over blown horse shit. Thus - you had Bomber Harris in the UK stating that they could win the war with Air Power alone. They'd just bomb the Germans until the people rose up and over threw Hitler - which never happened. In the US - you had the Bomber Mafia - who were so concerned with their Bomber Doctrine - that the bomber would always get through - that they worked to reduce the use of Fighters. The very idea that Bombers would require Fighter Escorts was Anathema to the Bomber Mafia and the only way things like Drop Tanks could be developed was by creating some fiction as to the reason for them - like extending range for Reconnaissance Aircraft. Of course here - the Air Power Advocates - couldn't say that they wanted to develop Bombers to go attack someone's industrial centers - they had to say that these aircraft were Anti-Maritime Aircraft - to defeat enemy Navies that would cross our oceans and attack us. The problem with this - was that Heavy Bombers - which could attack factories - were largely useless at attacking ships. They had to fly high to avoid the flak and the ship could see the bombs drop and just steer away from them. Air Power was very important in WW II but none of it's use turned out to be what the Air Power advocates of the '30's had anticipated. With at least the US Navy (which I know enough about to comment on) they would seem to have had their ideas about Aircraft in line with the actual capabilities of the aircraft they had to use. Thus - when aircraft were weak, short ranged and fragile - they saw them as such - but - as the aircraft got better - their attitudes towards them changed. Anyway - this is all a very simplistic POV on this but something I've noticed and thought was interesting. [shrug] .
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  50. OK ... here's where you were right and are now wrong. You have Destroyers, Cruisers, Battle Cruisers and Battleships. That's it. If it is bigger than a Cruiser and smaller than Battleship - it IS a Battle Cruiser. You have people who want to take things like machine guns - and create these non-existent categories and then shove things around in them to make further refinements in their classification. Thus - what you really had was Light Machine Guns, Medium Machine Guns and Heavy Machine Guns. Rifle Caliber Machine guns are all Light Machine Guns whether they are magazine fed or belt fed. Heavy Machine Guns are larger caliber Machine guns of about 13mm. Medium Machine guns are typically Light Machine Guns with some qualification - such as being water cooled. See? Nice, simple categories. None of this bull shit about Universal Machine Guns, General Purpose Machine Guns where people are purposely creating new categories just so they can create new categories and further refine them - when it isn't needed. Just as further ship categories - just to have more highly refined categories - isn't needed. Why? Because it isn't worth while to just make up new categories just so you can shoe horn different ships into them. Why? Because at this point - if what you are trying to do is come up with is a further refinement of their definition - it is more accurate to simply refer them them not by their category - but by their individual designations - that is - their Class. Why come up with a more refined definition of their category for a two or three ship class? I mean - how many "Large Cruisers" were there? Why come up with yet another class to refer to the Deutschlands? In both cases you could just call them Alaska's or Deutschlands? If you want increased accuracy - don't make up some new category - just refer them by their class. Thus A Scharnhorst, An Alaska, A Kongo, A Deutchland, A Dunkerque, A Renown and THE Hood could all be lumped into the Battle Cruiser class if you wanted to. You could also say - that there were no WWII Battle Cruisers other than the Renowns which were of course - a WWI design. Many of the former Battle Cruisers such as the Lexington and the Courageous classes - had been converted to Aircraft Carriers. The Kongo's were converted to Battleships and the Hood was always a fast Battleship. Now - another factor in this - is that their guns do not have to be considered relative to the guns on contemporary Battleships. They could just be absolute categories. Thus - anything with an 11" gun or better that wasn't a Battleship in it's day - WAS a Battle Cruiser - regardless of when it was built. After all - 11" and 12" guns - were still used during WWII. The Scharnhorsts were certainly NOT Battleships - although - they are called Battleships. These ships WOULD have had larger guns if the larger guns had been ready and it was ALWAYS planned that they would get larger guns. It just never happened. The Kongos should never have been reclassified as Battleships - since they really ... really ... were not ... as Washington demonstrated. As to the Iowa's ... they are more like the Queen Elisabeth's were in their day and rightly considered more Fast Battleships than Battle Cruisers. The REAL reason for all this arguing about what's a Battle Cruiser and what isn't ... is that Naval Nerds love to argue about things and this is a subject so sloppy as to be Irresistible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Irresistible_(1898) to argument. .
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