Comments by "Abraham Dozer" (@abrahamdozer6273) on "The Drydock - Episode 161" video.

"How exactly would a navy go about selling used warships?" At the end of WWII, the Royal Canadian Navy demobilized faster than the Kriegsmarine. A small population with a resultant small tax base could not have maintained such a huge navy without a good reason. Hundreds of Trans-Atlantic escort vessels that had no utility in the conflict with Japan were laid up as soon as they returned from their last convoy and turned over to Crown Assets Disposal. All sorts of Third World Navies (primarily in Latin America) ended up with squadrons of used Canadian Corvettes. One of the weirdest cases were a group of Canadian Castle Class Corvettes that made it into service with Chang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Chinese Navy. These were all captured and folded into Mao's navy and they served in the People's Liberation Army Navy until the early 1970's which forewarned Canada to not sell used warships to anyone, anymore (see: ex-RN ships in Argentinian Armada service). Now they either scrap them or sink them as dive wrecks/artificial reefs. By far, the most interesting sale was of the Montreal-built River Class Frigate HMCS Stormont to Aristotle Onassis who turned her into his luxury yacht Christina O. She still plies the Med (minus her steam power plant and Hedgehog projector).
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Fun fact: 834 Curtiss Helldivers were built at Canadian Car and Foundry at (what is now) Thunder Bay, Ontario for the US Navy. Canada never flew those and they were all for export. The factory was literally at the end of the line, at the edge of the vast Boreal Forest in a safe, wartime factory location.
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@silentotto5099 They were already building aircraft there ... Hurricanes for the RCAF and RAF among others (10% of all Hurricanes Built). This was a well established factory complex that made railroad cars, locomotives and ships. They were a busy operation that turned out Convoy Escorts as well as a whole range of armaments. Don't forget that Canada had already been at war for 2-1/4 years when Pearl Harbour was bombed and war production was already in full swing in Canada. As I said, the railroads and Great Lakes freighter production was already therefor decades before they got into aircraft production.The Helldivers were just another contract to bid on. It sounds as if they built them well, too. Some manufacturing was located in the "hinterlands" intentionally, though. A good example is the Canadian Aluminum industry that was built up in Kitimat BC and Arvida Quebec partly for their strategically safe locations and the proximity to cheap hydroelectricity. (This is the aluminum industry that Trump went after as some up-start that was setup to steal American jobs, despite is having been there for nearly a century). I live in a town on Lake Ontario called Oakville which had a Flower Class Corvette named after them. HMCS Oakville was constructed by the competing Port Arthur Shipbuilding Company. HMCS Oakville went on to later fame when she sank U-94 in Guantanamo Bay while escorting a convoy up the Eastern US Coast. It is a fascinating action (do Google) which included Oakville's crew fighting it out with the Germans on the dock of the U-Boat as they tried to capture it intact. It's like something from the Napoleonic Wars.
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@silentotto5099 Canada had to build all of that and process the raw materials, too. Except for some lend-lease finished goods, the rest was off-limits to Canada because of the Neutrality act. Canada spent 10 years two months at war with Germany during the 20th Century while the US spent 5 years 4 months at the same. That and the railways is why Canada became an industrial nation. Bombardier still builds train cars there at that plant location. Most Americans get zero Canadian history, especially Canadian Military history. That's just the way it is.
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@gregorywright4918 The Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario is a MUST. The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa is too as well as the Canadian Aeronautical and Space Museum. again in Ottawa. If you want to learn about earlier conflicts, try Fort Henry in Kingston Ontario. There are battlefield sites all over the Niagara Peninsula. Fort Erie (near Buffalo) is good. Fort George right across the river from Ft. Niagara is too but try to hit it when an event is going on there. Not a lot of Canadian warships were preserved but a couple of Cold War submarines were and they are very interesting. One, HMCS Ojibwa is at Port Burwell on Lake Erie within reach of the US border. The biggest battlefield memorial by far for the Canadians ... you could call it Canada's Gettysburg battlefield isn't even in North America. It is in France on the Plain of Douai at Vimy Ridge. It is the highest ground in the area around Arras and the Western Front went right over it's spine. The French and Brritish lostsufferedd 150,000 casualties over two and a half years fighting trying to take the ridge and the 100,000 man Canadian Corps took it in a matter of hours against Bavarians and Prussians. The Canadians took it on the day that the Americans joined the war and you can be sure that the German General Staff would have been spooked to look at a map, see where Canada and America was with the prospect of millions more troops like them. The Canadian and American armies were very different and it wasn't like that in the end but it must have been sobering for them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMJ_yjchLrc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Ab4Crf7cU
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@dgansz705 It was a voluntary military and Canada made a voluntary declaration of war a week after Britain and after considerable internal debate. About 20,000 were conscripted at the very end of the war (out of 1,100,000) to cover the horrendous losses of men in Normandy, Italy, Holland, Belgium and the Rhineland. Of those draftees, only a couple of thousand made it over to combat theaters in Europe. The Army didn't want them. The men didn't want them in their units because they had to be forced to fight and can you really trust someone like that with your life? Draftees were known as "Zombies" in the Canadian Army, not fit for combat and most of them ended up guarding shitters on the Alaska Highway and the like.
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@dgansz705 No. I knew many war veterans. Virtually all of the fathers, relatives, men in my life from school teachers to possess to Scout leaders were WWII veterans. ... army veterans and they all to a man told me how they loathe having Zombies in their units. I even heard that MacKenzie King and Ralston were roundly booed in England by Canadian troops when they announced they were going to go ahead with conscription. I didn't read it in a history book. I was told that by a couple of veterans. Yes, the Quebecois were against conscription and it slowed it by about a year (it still echoes politically in Canada to this day). When the Quebecois volunteers served, they did so with distinction. Unfortunately, that has become lost at the bottom of the soup bowl of Soverentistim.
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@dgansz705 I remember the switchover from the Red Ensign. I still lives on as a couple of Provincial flags. Most Canadians have long since forgotten about it or were born afterwards. Anyway, the "pot flag" is some foreigners idea of a joke. The Maple Leaf started out as part of Canadian military insignia. Almost every battalion badge in WWI had a maple leaf base. The tunnels and saps around Vimy are full of maple leafs carved in the chalk by soldiers about to meet their doom. My wife's Great Grandfather was an RSM in a Canadian highland regiment and he had the imprint of his maple leaf beret badge branded into his skull by a shell concussion until the day he died. The Maple Leaf military logo goes way back into the 19th century. Pull up any photo of an RCAF training aircraft from WWII or any at all post war (or RCN Fleet Air Arm) and you will see a nearly identical maple leaf at the center of the roundel. That was a quarter century before it went on the flag. I'm proud to have this 100% Canadian military emblem on our flag, to have served under it and I sure wish that the young had clue in general about the origins of all things Canadian because they surely don't. "Pot flag"? Please study the history. 106,000 of our young Canadian men lay buried under headstones with your "pot plants" on them in France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Hong Kong ... it really is quite offensive, you know. If you are Canadian, shame on you. If you are not, shut the FU lest others piss all over your sacred national symbols.
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@dgansz705 I'm 65 and I am a CF Veteran. The "pot flag" incorporated military insignia that directly dates from 170 + years ago. The Red Ensign does no such thing. The Canadian Coat of Arms part is ours but the rest is someone else's heraldry. Before you get into a racist thing, my origins are 100% British but some of my people have lived in what eventually became Canada for 240 years and I am extremely proud of that heritage. Some of them even served in the militia during the War of 1812. The Red Ensign? Yup. Nice flag. It's the flag they flew from their tanks while they closed the Falaise Gap ... and proudly wore Maple Leafs on their berets and possibly stencilled on their tanks ... It is OURS. No one else on the planet fles a maple leaf. It is uniquely Canadian with 100% military origins. BTW, No one at Vimy served under the Red Ensign but ONLY the Union Jack. Check it out. The Red Ensign wasn't around very long.
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If I start driving West from the Easternmost edge of Ontario, I won't leave it at the next Manitoba Provincial border until 22 hours of non-stop driving (not even a pee break)
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