Comments by "Frank DeMaris" (@kemarisite) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1.  @bkjeong4302  it's only inefficient if you actually have a more efficient unit available. Letting those enemy units get away is the least efficient thing that can be done.
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  2. The general understanding of the time is that battle line strength is based on the square of the number of (competitive) battleships. Pre-war, 15 battleships vs 10 would have seen a relative strength over 2 to 1 (225 to 100), for a clear US advantage. This scenario is 7 to 5, for a ratio of 49 to 25, almost 2 to 1. However, the fact that one battle line is twice as strong as, and should easily defeat, the other does not mean the victorious battle line will not take damage and/or losses. Why volunteer to take damage to expensive battleships that will take months to repair (if not sunk) when you can use air power with cheap attrition units that will be replaced by the next few day's production?
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  3. Neeeiiigh! (Thunderclap!)
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  4. One thing to keep in mind is that the Overlord planning was obsessed with tactical surprise, so even though the minesweeper would be visible the evening of D-1, the shore bombardment mission was limited to 30 minutes. This was to be followed up by heavy bombers , which were supposed to provide the real softening up of the beach defenses while the ships preserved their ammunition for on-call fire support after the troops hit the beaches. However, the bombers came in perpendicular to the beach, bombing through overcast using radar. Afraid of dropping short and hitting landing craft, the bombers instead dropped late and scattered their bomb loads a couple miles inland, contributing precisely nothing to the success of the operation. Note their fault, they were just being used to do something they physically could not do.
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  5. Note that Kirishima's damage control officer described a total of twenty 16" hits from Washington. Some of these were close together and, if from the same salvo, would appear to Washington be a single hit, while others were below the waterline and would appear to Washington to have fallen short. Literally (literally, Mr. President!) nothing would have shrugged off those hits below the belt armor, and according to Robert Lundgren's article on navweaps.com there were about seven 16" hits below the waterline.
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  6.  @1Korlash  actually, while Kirishima did use bombardment rounds initially, she also scored at least one hit with 14" AP to SoDaks #2 barbette. While the hits SoDak took were not life threatening, if Washington had not interrupted them it is extremely likely that the accompanying cruisers would have scored a number of torpedo hits that the torpedo defense system (designed for 700 lb warheads) would not have resisted well.
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  7. Worth keeping in mind that armor plate, particularly face hardened armor like US Class "A" armor, is terrible for use in the torpedo protection. It is too brittle and does not flex enough under blast pressure, as the South Dakotas and Iowas found by tying the armor belt into the torpedo defense system, and then having to reinforce it later.
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  8. Note Kinugasa's hit on Boise is about the only known "proper" hit by the Japanese Type 91 AP shell, the infamous "diving" shell design used in guns from 6.1" to 18". There are, of course, many direct hits on ships, but this is one of the few, if not the only, occasions when the shell hit the water short of the target and punched through the shell below the armor belt as designed.
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  9.  @ivanstopmotion1  and since the entire point of the battleship was to be the primary combat power of the fleet, BK_Jeong has more of a point than many on these boards give him credit for. I think he overstates his case, but for the vast majority of what the fast battleships did during WW2, cruisers would be just as effective (especially at a 2:1 ratio to keep the crew requirements the same) and substantially cheaper. The gunfire support argument is mooted by the existence of the standard type battleships which accompany the invasion fleet, assuming that the target in question needs a battleship shell or battleship gun range. My primary disagreement with him lies in a narrow window in the late 30s when the UK and US can't build more cruisers under the treaty but can start new battleship classes to replace, say, the Revenges, Texas, New York, and Arkansas.
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  10. As far as New England goes, that makes perfect sense (Puritans vs Anglicans).
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  11. That's my reasoning. Renown and Repulse are battle cruisers and nobody seems to disagree. The Kongos have thinner armor and two more, but smaller, main battery guns.
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  12. How can we mention Pyrrhus of Epirus without tying him to the concept of a Pyrrhic victory? "A few more such victories and I am lost".
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  13.  @charlesadams1721  Arizona, I think you mean. West Virginia was recovered and fought at Surigao Strait, among other actions.
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  14. I am clearly too used to USN vs IJN fights in the Pacific, because I took the first action (Battle of the Bay of Biscay) like this: Drach: "Two cruisers versus 11 destroyers and torpedo boats" Me: "That sounds bad for the cruisers." Drach: "After lunch ..." Me: "Oh, in daylight and with room to maneuver. That's much better."
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  15. 13:31 note that the US Mark 13 is a fairly fat torpedo at 22.4", allowing it, by the end of the war, to have a warhead about as large as the German G7a, both just over 600 pounds.
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  16.  @Inquisitor6321  the Scots? No, not the Scots.
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  17. "Shake loose a few cents ..." Another analogy is that it's finally worth the effort to go through the metaphorical couch cushions to find the loose change for this thing.
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  18. I always like to remind people that, following the battleship match of the 14th-15th, the destroyer USS Meade was the undisputed master of Iron Bottom Sound. It came out of Tulagi harbor in the morning, conducted a 40 minute gunnery exercise against the grounded Japanese transports, and then pulled several hundred American survivors from the sunk destroyers (Preston and Walke) from the water.
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  19. One quick note about the lethal does of radiation. 500 or so rem (5 Sv) is about the lethal dose for 50% of the expoaed population within 30 days (LD50-30). Lower doses will kill fewer people in that time, while higher doses will kill more people and more quickly. By about 10 Sv the radiation is affecting the central nervous system and killing everyone within a few days. Naturally this assumes whole-body exposure to penetrating radiation as happened in this test.
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  20. What was it like in the Imperial Japanese armed forces? One of the rare occasions where "The beatings will continue until morale improves" is entirely appropriate.
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  21. Its worth mentioning that a number of early WW2 carrier aircraft (Aichi D3A "Val" and Douglass SBD, for two examples) do not have wing folding mechanisms because of the need for aircraft like dive bombers to have strong wings and the possibility that a folding mechanism will weaken the wing too much.
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  22. Because "France can't have nice things" has been British foreign policy since ... forever. (From a video by History Matters)
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  23. On the opium question, this puts me in mind of something Jerry Pournelle wrote in his Codominium series: "There is no regulation against drinking or being drunk on duty. There are very firm regulations against rendering yourself unfit for duty."
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  24. At least Lansdowne succeeded in scuttling Wasp despite the Mark 15 torpedoes. Mustin and Anderson expended nine torpedoes and over 400 round of 5" ammunition attempting to scuttle Hornet a month and a half later, and still had to leave the job for Makigumo and Akigumo to finish after they had inspected Hornet's wreck from a distance and noted her hull number for positive identification.
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  25. waves hand this is not the Essex swarm you're looking for.
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  26. 23:06 I'd argue that, given the time element of the question the Japanese also suffer in the sense that the big Kido Butai loses 2/3 of its strength six months after starting the war. Therefore, the strategic threat presented by the Japanese navy doesn't last nearly as long as that presented by the Italian fleet.
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  27. When in the Puget Sound area, it would be a shame not to get across to Port Townsend at the early 20th century fort that guarded the entrance to the Sound.
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  28. One point about the Shinano armor plate test is that, even though the shot was fired at point black distance, the propellant was reduced to yield a muzzle velocity of about 1700 ft/sec for one shot and 2000 ft/sec for the other. This is the impact velocity at about 20,000 and 11,000 yards, respectively, so not the equivalent of firing a full charge round at contact distance.
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  29. As an Evangelion fan, I can admit that this class came to my attention through the character KATSURAGI Misato.
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  30. Closest the air group might come to "just being passengers" is likely to be the air crew of Hornet en route to launch the Doolittle raid, since the bombers on the flight deck prevented any other flight ops.
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  31. I've seen quotations from US officers stating that it is impossible to reconcile the combat reports with enemy torpedoes with similar speed-range characteristics to our own. They then concluded, not that the enemy had better torpedoes, but that the Japanese had submarines intervening in the night surface actions.
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  32. Yep. When people talk about Spruance making a mistake, things like taking a couple of Iowas forward to run down escapees from Truk come up. Mistake? Probably. Major mistake? Can't hold a candle to Leyte Gulf or the two typhoons.
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  33. ​ @TooLateForIeago technically, the Mark 15 for destroyers, with all the same family dysfunctionality.
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  34. Epie Kake, no different guns. There was a plan to move the 11" SK C/34 guns from the Scharnhorsts to the next generation of panzerschiffs when 15" guns were available for the former.
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  35. Primarily because, having been extensively damaged at Cape Esperance, she was the only participant of that victory that could be named for security reasons.
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  36. At least his chicken got cold and wet. ;)
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  37.  @paulbaker847  I dunno, can chrome plate to unobtanium?
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  38. This puts me in mind of a passage in one of Steven Brust's novels, but I had to wait for the weekend to look it up and cite it correctly: "War consists of missed opportunities alternating with narrow escapes, and it usually ends when someone, somewhere, fails to commit a timely error." And another, the one I was really looking for: "Battles are decided when timing and momentum and courage all come together and, at just the right moment, someone fails to make a critical mistake and doesn't manage to miss a vital opportunity."
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  39. Train story: I once carpooled with an air quality inspector who became famous for a similar incident. He was inspecting facilities in the port area and stopped his vehicle to check his map for direction. Unbeknownst to him, he had parked straddling the train tracks, and while consulting his map the train came along and made a low-speed, 2-3 mph, impact with his vehicle. He was not yelled at by four supervisors into a fetal position, and the last I checked was now a supervising inspector himself.
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  40. I work in hazardous waste at a military R&D installation. I spent most of the video nodding vigorously.
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  41. It occurs to me (because of all the discussion of Italian duplicity below) that the US can also be criticized for its entry into WW1. Wilson, like Roosevelt, would wait until after he'd been safely reelected before taking the country to war. The casus belli, the Zimmerman telegram, was the emptiest of empty words in promising to support Mexico (currently embroiled in a civil war) in retaking Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. How? Germany is on the other side of the Atlantic with the entire Royal Navy in the way.
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  42.  @ringowunderlich2241  or just more sausage for the meat grinder in the east.
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  43. So that teak backing has basically been replaced with kevlar spall liners.
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  44.  @alessandrorizzuti7857  the "usual" blood libel against FDR is that he knew about the attack ahead of time and let it happen to get into the war. There is no evidence to support that claim either. FDR was a focused on the war in Europe and trying to provoke Germany into the first overt act of war, either a declaration or something that could not be ignored. (Apparently sinking the Reuben James didn't cut it). The notion that the US killed several thousand of it's own people in order to get into a war in the wrong theater is bat-guano insane.
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  45. 8:53 "simplification", of course, just like production of the T-34 tank was streamlined at places like Factory 183, leaving out things like work hardening, turret seals, half the fuel tankage, some optics, etc.
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  46. You're so early, Roshestvensky's binoculars hadn't been invented yet.
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  47. Is there an Argentine version of the Commieboo?
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  48. Battle of Tassafaronga, aka, the US Conga Line of Death.
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  49. Very likely. Scharnhorst has almost 6" more armor on the belt than a Kongo, so there are practical battle ranges where the Scharnhorst is protected against the 12"/50 Mark 8 gun. There is no practical range where the Kongo's armor really resists the Alaska's guns. Add in US advantages with remote power control for the guns and the Mark 8 fire control radar, allowing it maneuver a lot more freely without throwing off the firing solution, and that fight is the Alaska's to lose.
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  50. In "Armageddon", chapter 4, Hastings says "Good commanding officers broadcast frequently, telling their crews everything they knew about what the ship and the fleet were doing. This was especially important in action, to hundreds of men imprisoned in steel compartments far belowdecks. For their very sanity, they needed to know what a huge, unseen detonation meant; whether their team seemed to be winning; sometimes, whether damage to their own ship was as grievous as concussions, screams, smoke pulsing through ventilators made it seem."
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