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

  1. I think the biggest issue the RN has in this situation is that the Fleet Air Arm stinks on ice until the Seafire and Lend-Lease US aircraft come into play.
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  2. 3:10 correction, while USS Ranger did conduct some aircraft ferry runs atound Africa, it did not participate in convoys to Malta that I remember. USS Wasp did ferry fighters yo within launch range of Malta in Operations Calendar and Bowery.
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  3. My first thought, probably because my educational background is in industrial engineering and understanding human foibles, is "define 'win'". Checks out.
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  4.  @Alex-cw3rz  which probably shouldn't surprise us, because the captain of Iron Duke at the time was one Frederick C. Dryer. Dryer was a gunnery expert who was heavily involved in the development of the Dreyer Table, the centralized fire control computer that had been installed on most RN capital ships by the time of Jutland. I imagine Iron Duke's "pact with the higher powers" as being a lot like USS Washington's in 1942, the result of a very senior officer who is a gunnery expert and intimately understands the system being used.
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  5. I knew a fellow in explosives ordnance disposal who had an interesting knickknack. It was his "first IED", a 122 mm shell that had a low-order detonation and basically just split into three broad leaves from nose to base.
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  6. Although Tokyo is a coastal area also, the simple fact is that the bulk of Japanese naval assets and infrastructure were concentrated further south around the inland sea between Shikoku and Hondhu, around Hiroshima and the shipyards at Kure.
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  7. Always hilarious to look back at how often New York wanted to conquer Canada. On the other hand, having grown up in Oregon, I well remember the slogan "54-40 or fight!"
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  8. I find myself wondering where the devil Cornwall and Dorsetshire are for these potential night actions, since we began by presuming the Val strike went after Force A.
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  9. Of the five major surface actions off Guadalcanal, each side indisputably won two and the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal is just a near-death mess. At Cape Esperance, the US lost a destroyer and had two cruisers damaged (Boise heavily so), while sinking a cruiser and a destroyer and heavily damaging a second cruiser. Balance of damage is a bit in favor of the US, and they held the field. At the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, the US lost two destroyers sunk and two crippled, with South Dakota heavily damaged but withdrawn succesfully, while sinking Kirishima and a destroyer. Balance is again slightly thin the US favor. Savo Island and Tassafaronga were far more disproportionate losses for the US, which sank a destroyer and scattered damage to other ships in exchange for five cruisers sunk and three more heavily damaged (between the two fights, all but one of the sinkings at Savo Island). At First Guadalcanal, almost the entire force of five cruisers and eight destroyers was expended (sunk or crippled) to sink a couple Japanese destroyers and set Hiei up for the Cactus Air Force to kill during the day. Even when the US won, they did so by doing slightly more damage and turning the Japanese back from their objectives, not by any kind of crushing tactical victory.
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  10.  @Kromaatikse  pretty effective against the Germans and Italians too. Indeed, the transition to cannon wouldn't come for another decade or so, helped by the unreliability of early US 20 mm cannon designs and the lack of heavy bombers to shoot at.
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  11. When discussing US super heavy shells, it is important to keep in mind that the US designed a whole range of super heavy shells and, in same cases, used them in the same guns as some standard weight shells, allowing a clear basis for comparison. In particular, the US 8" gun cruisers up to Tuscaloosa used the standard weight shell only, while Tuscaloosa and onward had exactly the same guns but the ammunition feed accommodated the longer super heavy shell. Looking at the armor penetration tables for the two shells, it is clear that the super heavy shells offers better penetration at any realistic range. The lighter shell is good for 10" of armor at 9,000 yards while the super heavy shell pushes that range out to almost 11,000 yards for the same penetration. A similar comparison can be made for the 16”/45 guns of the Colorado class with standard shells vs the almost identical (but lighter) guns on the North Carolina and South Dakota classes with super heavy shells. The comparison would not be valid for Arkansas and Alaska because, although the guns are almost identical, Arkansas never received a modern AP shell for WW2. Similarly, it isn't really valid to compare the AP shells used in the 14" guns because the lighter shell was of an obsolescent design with only a small AP cap head and the increase in weight was not as large as for a super heavy shells.
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  12. Max Hastings (Retribution) observed "[i]t was a sore point in the navy that officers received a disproportionate share of medals - they accounted for less than 10 percent of personnel, but received almost two-thirds of all decorations. They were the ones in the spotlight if a ship was deemed to have done something good, while their men remained 'bit players'." So, to a large extent the awarding of medals to Scott, Kidd, and Calaghan is the usual institutional bias, which I expect is present in the Royal Navy as well; how many more Teddy Sheeans or Jack Cornwells might there be given perfect knowledge and objectivity? Note that Kidd, Calaghan, and Scott having to die in action to receive the Medal of Honor represents an enormous tightening of standards (and creation of lesser awards) compared to a generation before. The occupation of Veracruz in 1914 resulted in the awarding 56 Medals of Honor, many of which simply say it's for "distinguished conduct". Rear Admiral Frank G. Fletcher received one simply for directing the occupation, while his nephew Frank J. Fletcher was one of the numerous "distinguished conduct" MoHs. All of which points to the US Navy not quite having gotten the memo of a couple decades previous, that the Medal of Honor is not supposed to be an attendance award or good conduct medal, but only for those who exhibit bravery above and beyond the call of duty in the face of the enemy.
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  13. I think you've overstated the contribution from US Army AA guns on Japanese casualties at Pearl Harbor. According to Nofi and Dunnigan (Dirty Little Se rets of WW2), very few AA batteries on shore managed to engage the Japanese, because the ammunition was under lock and key at comparatively remote ammunition bunkers. For the ships, the ammunition is right there in the magazines and ready lockers, and there are hammers and prybars and other damage control equipment readily available for break the locks off and get to the ammunition. I also think the questioner may have missed an assumption on Nimitz's part. The US lost seven of eight Pacific fleet battleships in various degrees (Pennsylvania was in drydock and only damaged, Nevada was run aground to ensure it did not sink in the channel) but six of them were refloated and repaired to participate in WW2 later. If those same ships are sunk in deep water engaging the Japanese (or trying to), then they are definitely not coming back and casualties are much further from medical facilities in Hawaii then they were in the harbor. Hence, material losses would have been permanent and crew casualties would have been much greater.
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  14. Except that the mathematicians are too kinky to torture (this way).
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  15. Where would the 12" guns from the Alaska class score using this system, considering their position as supposedly more powerful than the 14"/45 guns from WW1? (Edit: perhaps no surprise to see this question repeated at least half a dozen times.) Also, is there any kind of rule of thumb for evaluating scaling of bursting, say a square function? In other words, to get twice the damage you need four times the weight of the same explosive, or possibly a cube function needing eight times the weight of the same explosive to do twice the damage? Or is it so complex that no one has really tried to develop such a rule?
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  16.  @MrNicoJac  if you're not familiar with it, YouTube loves videos of what it does. It's used for cleaning laboratory glassware, and is a 3:1 mixture of sulfuric acid and fairly strong hydrogen peroxide.
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  17.  @mpetersen6  that Type 3 incindiary shrapnel shell is available for guns all the way down to 8". BK_Jeong and I agreed in another video thread that this type of round might actually be useful against a night attack, suddenly robbing every pilot of night vision.
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  18.  @daydev2599  well, we do have these twin 20 mm Oerlikon mounts ...
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  19.  @estoyaqui5386  you seem to be using a curious definition of the word "work". You acknowledge that Rodney scored a torpedo hit, but argue that it didn't "work", why? It certainly wasn't a dud. Is it because the torpedo didn't make a big difference in the charnel house that Bismark had!d already become? By that standard, the last few score 14" and 16" hits did not "work" either, as Bismark was already utterly ruined and slowly sinking, with gun hits merely rearranging the wreckage and blasting the bodies into smaller kibbles.
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  20. From what I'm seeing, the armor extensions toward the bow and (to a lesser extent) stern are contrary to the "all or nothing" concept. An additional 130 mm belt extending another 35 m forward from the citadel. There also seems to be 70 mm of plating enclosing the hull space above the armored citadel up to the weather deck. At a rough guess that could be 500+ tons of extra armor doing little except ensuring that the fuse on the AP shell activates correctly.
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  21. Note from a hazardous materials/hazardous waste guy: asbestos must be respirable to be dangerous, i.e., it must be in small enough particles to be inhaled into the lungs. For example, a boiler guy scrapping/chipping/grinding a gasket seal (made with asbestos) off the face of the flanged pipe connector might be exposed to respirable asbestos. Those asbestos fire fighting suits cannot be inhaled until you start shredding them, whether that's from shrapnel and explosions or because you're shredding them for disposal.
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  22. The issue of fighter numbers is an important one. They would rise from 18 per fleet carrier at Coral Sea to 27-30 at Midway and Eastern Solomons, then to 36 at Santa Cruz, and on into the 40s a couple years later at Phillipine Sea in addition to the practice of pairing fleet carriers with light carriers having another two dozen or so fighters and a few TBFs.
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  23.  @gregorywright4918  Japanese mini subs used 17.7" torpedoes, not the 24" Type 93 Long Lance. Examples of the Type 93 do not appear to have been recovered for investigation until 1943.
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  24. Ersatz food, mentioned in All Quiet on the Western Front, is bread made from turnips. Ersatz ersatz food is also mentioned, bread made with sawdust.
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  25. I think the way to look at the Japanese 25 mm Type 96 and 1.1" Chicago Piano is that both were the medium AA gun from the 30s, with the light role being filled by heavy machine guns around 12.7 or 13.2 mm. Then aircraft in the 40s were faster and more capable so the light and medium AA guns both had to inflate to be useful, and the US kind of lucked into the Oerlikon and Bofors guns thanks to their alliance with the British and their war experience. Then the US did the "guns manufacturer goes brr" thing and was able to put lots of these guns on everything afloat, compared with the Japanese manufacturing a few hundred copies of the Bofors gun.
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  26. One thing to bear in mind about Normandy is that the primary pre-invasion bombardment was to come from heavy bombers and medium bombers in the 20-30 minutes before the landing craft hit the beach. Unfortunately, the bombers didnt want to drop short and wound up dropping their loads a couple miles inland, leaving the beach defenses largely intact. Then there is the fact that, in addition to the normal troops manning the beach defenses, the 352nd Infantry Division was available to reinforce the defenses.
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  27.  @darkarima  hey, I think I just failed a spot check!
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  28.  @TheEdge91  between the Yellow Sea and Ulsan in August 1904, which severely damaged and bottled up the entire Far East fleet, the Japanese already had a major naval victory, and they won the war as well.
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  29. "The allies wanted more out of Norway than they were getting from these raids", of course. They wanted those 20 or so German divisions to stay in Norway and off the battlefield. 😁
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  30. Note that, with the loss of Kinugasa on the 14th, all ships of Cruiser Division 8 (veterans of Savo Island) have been crippled or sunk: Kako torpedoed just short of its base in August, Furutaka sunk and Aoba crippled at Cape Esperance in October, and Kinugasa in November. Chokai (Mikawa's flagship in August) would continue much longer, of course, being sunk off Samar in October 1944.
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  31.  @robertsantamaria6857  thumbs up for Steam updates
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  32. ​ @marcm.  A YouTuber called LaserPig talked about smelkalka in his video on the T-14. One of his examples was how Russian school children are making trench candles to send to the soldiers at the front because their generators keep getting bombed or something and they still need light to see. Of course, no one else is Russian so no one else can demonstrate such ingenuity and creativity in problem-solving.
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  33. Armor is the wrong kind of steel for torpedo protection. It is hard but brittle until face-hardening heat treatment allows it to be both. What torpedo defense requires is depth, with material that deforms and then tears rather than shattering. It would actually be a minor mistake, decades later, to extend the armor belt (a thinner section, anyway) of the South Dakota and Iowa class battleships down near the bottom and would require reinforcement when the weakness was revealed.
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  34. Does Boise make the cut for surviving a shell in the magazine at Cape Esperance, or do there have to multiple incidents?
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  35. Drach has explained in another video that the American designers couldn't duplicate what the British were claiming for the Nelsons because they assumed that the armor belt would cover a set percentage of the ship's length. The Nelsons then came in with a shorter length of armor belt.
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  36. 18:40 "surviving B-29", I'm privileged that "Doc" came off my base and periodically comes back to the local civilian airfield for tours.
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  37. With the glut of scrap steel after WW2, and the remote location of the Emden's wreck, that wouldn't surprise me at all.
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  38. 39:14 I am reminded of USS Meade engaging in gunnery exercises against the beached Japanese supply ships during the morning of November 15, 1942.
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  39.  @johngregory4801  look, if you aren't already familiar with the story, at Edward "Teddy" Sheean of HMAS Armidale, VC.
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  40.  @seafodder6129  or if there's a woman. Or if I'm getting paid. Mostly if I'm getting paid.
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  41. Torpedo hits to the stern area arent surprising simply because the standard defense against torpedo attack is to turn away and "comb the tracks", presenting the smallest possible target and potentially outdistancing the torpedo.
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  42. On the subject of flight ops, it sounds like the carrier would turn into the wind and begin running up to high speed at about the same time as they begin spotting and warming up the engines on the strike package. Except for US carriers with their more open hangers where they can warm up the engines in the hanger without much danger of CO poisoning. And those heavily-laden torpedo and dive bombers would be the last to take off anyway, because they need the additional flight deck length for their takeoff run in addition to possibly needing the additional few knots of effective takeoff speed.
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  43. On tanks vs ships, I remember an episode in Vietnam around 1967-68 (recorded in a book called Tank Sergeant) of a platoon of five M48 Patton tanks being used for coastal interdiction of smuggling using small sampans.
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  44. "Two hotels with similar names in the same city" in Perth, I did this once in San Diego. I thought I had picked out and reserved a room at the traditional hotel right across the street from the County offices where our meeting was, but instead I had picked out another one of the same name about a mile north along the waterfront. Nice walk.
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  45. Interesting how far the observations and memories of the ordinary sailor deviate from the historical record of Cape Matapan. "Cunningham was retiring with the battleships rather than get into a night action" when Cunningham was, in fact, deliberately stalking Pola and the assisting cruisers with his battleships in a navy that had been training for night actions since being embarrassed in 1916.
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  46. 30:21 "fortunately erroneous", correction: USS Albert W. Grant, a Fletcher-class destroyer, suffered 22 hits during the action, many from 6" guns which were not common in the Japanese force (Yamashiro had 7 on each side, Fuso was already gone, while the US light cruiser line had 54), resulting in 38 dead and 104 wounded.
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  47. Ambrose specifically mentioned one destroyer that, on it's own initiative, used the fall of shot from a tank on the beach to designate its targets despite having no communication with the units ashore. In other words, the tank crew would find a target and fire at it, then watch as a volley of 5" shells smash into the target area from 1,000 yards offshore.
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  48. Most criticism is directed at the Mark 14 because that's better known than the problems with aerial torpedoes (Mark 13) and destroyer torpedoes (Mark 15).
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  49. 10:39 this passage, and the earlier mention of the pilot's role, put me in mind of a message from Nimitz to the entire Pacific Fleet cited in Rich Frank's book on Guadalcanal. In part: "Suitable targets present themselves only rarely to our guns, bombs, and torpedoes. On those rare occasions our tactics must be such that our objective will be gunned, bombed, or torpedoed to destruction."
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  50. I was just reading a three part series about Nevada gunfire support for Operation Overlord and it includes pictures of these casemates and their damage, including the dud round. From when it was dug up in the 90s.
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