Comments by "Dave Sisson" (@Dave_Sisson) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. After the war the Australians built their own Daring class destroyers and named them Vendetta, Vampire and Voyager. Another vessel was named Stuart and a shore installation was named Waterhen. So the names of those ships were carried on.
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  2. The 19 year old daughter of a postman and a seamstress. That has to be the most unlikely background for someone who changed the war so profoundly, but I guess in wartime, talent is often recognised regardless of someones age, class and gender. In later life she went on to be a gardening historian and lived to the age of 92.
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  3. Hopefully we will get a history of the First Rates built at the same time which included HMVS Nelson, which was sold to the cashed up Colony of Victoria and thus became the only First Rate ever to be owned by a colonial navy.
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  4.  @stamasd8500  But Bismark and Tirpitz were just the equal of British and American battleships, not really superior to them. And of course both those countries had dozens of battleships while the Germans only had two. At least the two Japanese megaships were superior to any thing else in the world and they were backed up by other conventionally sized battleships in the IJN.
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  5. Having a group of navy ships named "Cabbage Class" is almost as amusing as having a ship named HMS Pansy.
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  6. That would make a great opening scene for a film about the subject. While "Sir" is drinking his cuppa, he can relate the history of the Glowworm to his offsider and the whole story could be told in flashbacks, interspersed with the life of the offsider which would break up the naval action into 15 minute chunks, making a film more palatable to people other than dedicated navy buffs.
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  7. I was confused. At first I thought it was another channel that does quality naval history like Historiograph.
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  8. I suspect the Boer War name Drach was struggling with is Colquhoun, which is usually pronounced car-hoon.
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  9. There was a battle cruiser in the Royal Navy called HMS New Zealand, but the Kiwis themselves never had an HMNZS New Zealand.
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  10. It's amazing how many ships the British built for foreign powers that were then used against them, including Mesudiye, Kongo and a few Argentinian ships.
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  11.  @davieturner339  The V class destroyers included HMS Violent, Vendetta, Vesper, Vampire, Vehement, Vanquisher, Venonous and a bunch of other over the top names.
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  12. When Drach began reciting the ships names, Lion... Tiger... I was guessing which other big cat the third ship would be, perhaps Leopard? or Jaguar? or Puma? ... then he said Blake of all things. I realized just how inconsistent and unpredictable Royal Navy ship naming actually is.
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  13. I and five million other people live in a city founded by a topsail schooner named Enterprize (with a Z). So we have an especial fondness for ships with that name in Melbourne.
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  14.  @sarjim4381  No American colonies at the time? What about Guam, Hawaii, Alaska, Philippines, Puerto Rico, plus the client states of Panama and Liberia. That's a respectable colonial empire by any standard.
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  15. Nice to see you there Drach. As someone born in Castlemaine, I was astonished to discover this well preserved ship named after my home town, when I moved to Melbourne.
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  16. It probably helped that they were mainly named after the most aggressive and warlike tribes from across the British Empire, except for HMS Cossack whose Ukrainian namesakes were never in the Empire and HMS Eskimo which was named after a not particularly aggressive tribe, although a lot of Eskimos did live within the Empire.
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  17. The British also had the Insect class sporting names such as HMS Gnat and HMS Moth, but it could have been worse, they could have copied the Yanks and started naming their ships after the lowest of all creatures... politicians.
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  18. It's sad that many other countries, especially the Yanks, name them after politicians when their ships could have far less divisive and more inspirational names.
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  19.  @theawickward2255  British carriers had armored decks, so the kamikazes barely hurt them. Sadly US carriers did not have armored decks. 😞
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  20. And the 5th biggest city in New Zealand.
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  21.  @richardm3023  Belgrano is also the only ship in action to be sunk by a nuclear submarine.
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  22.  @jermainerace4156  I thought "upsetting the French" was a prime objective of British armed forces for the past 1,000 years?
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  23.  @Warmaker01  I more or less agree with that. When the war started in 1939 either the Americans or the British could have beaten the Japanese navy in a few years. They both had carriers and a lot of old battleships and a few new ones as well. Likewise either ally could have beaten the combined German and Italian fleets (and the Italians did have good battleships). The way it turned out it was an overwhelmingly British force that beat the German and Italian navies and when the Americans entered the war, they were mostly responsible for taking on the Japanese (except in the Indian Ocean) until the European theatre was won when the British sent a lot of ships over to help out in the Pacific.
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  24. When someone announces Good News in a tone like that, I always expect to hear something about the Dacia Sandero. . . (I sort of assume James May has the copyright on that phrase?}
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  25.  @sarjim4381  I suspect your definition of what constitutes a colony or client state comes down to branding, or what a country chooses to call an extra territorial chunk of land they control. But if something looks like a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck. If America annexed former independent countries like Hawaii, won colonies in war from Spain and Germany (their quarter of Samoa) or bought them from Denmark or Russia, and they administered them the same way as other countries administered their colonies then the Yanks definitely had colonies. That's why Rudyard Kipling addressed the Poem "White mans burden" to the US after they became the colonial power administering the Philippines.
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  26.  @GrahamCStrouse  @GrahamCStrouse In relation to ship building, it's more that areas specialize. East Asia does container ships and bulk carriers, Europe does 95% of passenger ships and Australia has a near monopoly on those large, 40 knot, catamarans that take up to 2000 passengers and cars. As we all know, sadly the United States largely excludes itself from the civilian ship market by a bunch of protectionist regulations including the Jones Act.
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  27. Two contrasting approaches to improving crew morale. The Royal Navy gave their sailors a booze ration, the U.S. Navy gave theirs ice cream. I wonder which approach most sailors would prefer?
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  28. I usually call it "The American Mutiny", but perhaps I'm just being grumpy?
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  29. The wonderful 2 minute sketch can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM&t=2s
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  30. I think the problem is that Americans name their carriers after politicians, who are not the most respected people in any country, while the Brits usually give their carriers and capital ships inspirational names. What America needs to do is agree to not name anything after politicians or cities ever again and then go through the Big Book of Names for long retired Royal Navy ships and recycle some of them.
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  31. Oars for when they run out of coal.
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  32. The fourth allied power, albeit smaller than Britain France and the Ottomans, was Piedmont-Sardinia. Did they send any war ships to Crimea?
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  33. As someone who writes (non naval) history that reflects my experience. You order a file of documents that has a title that sounds potentially useful and when you visit the massive archive building to go through the file, it reveals very little. But after you publish the article or book someone points out that valuable info is contained in a file that you never considered inspecting.
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  34. Thanks for the tips on scanning century old photos. I write Australian mountain history and I often get photos sent to me of ski scenes, mountain huts, mines, etc. to identify. I use much the same technique of identifying the time period and then eliminating possibilities that Drach uses.
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  35. Just what I was thinking. That flying boat looks like something from a Hayao Miyazaki film.
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  36. Australia has a couple of slightly enlarged versions of that design, complete with ski jumps. But they're not allowed to call them "aircraft carriers" because that would upset a certain huge country that they never actually name. But if a war ever broke out, absolutely no one would be surprised if the Australians admitted they were really carriers.
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  37.  @MyVanir  Not really, the only carrier that ALL destroyers feared was HMAS Melbourne. It developed quite a taste for snacking on destroyers.
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  38. I suspect the term 'Destroyer' for a naval vessel was in use long before 1860. There is a biography of Matthew Flinders, a Napoleonic era Royal Navy captain and explorer called 'My own destroyer', which is allegedly a quote from him when he got his first command. Were ships of circa 1800 ever called destroyers? https://www.amazon.com/MY-OWN-DESTROYER-Biography-Navigator/dp/B0010ZID80
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  39. Thanks for that information. In one of the first Drycocks I asked Drach why almost all carriers were right handed and he gave a similar answer to you, but with less detail on the aeroplanes and didn't mention the wind tunnel. But that was in the days of 30 minute Drydocks and the detailed answers we now get in 260 minute Drycocks were a luxury I never dared to dream of.
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  40. Based on the absurd American classification that the Alaska's are just really, really big cruisers with enormous guns, then so are the Kongos.
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  41. I saw Drach in Melbourne filming on board HMAS Castlemaine today. I thought it best not to interrupt him and his extensive entourage, so I chatted to the very informative crew instead. 🙂
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  42. Especially as they those men and boys were sailing around in HMCS Rainbow.
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  43. The Australians used a bright yellow LST to establish their first Antarctic base. There was still a shortage of shipping in the late 1940s, so when Australia wanted a ship with a lot of storage that didn't need a dock, an old LST was all that was available. They loaded it up with building material, painted it high-viz yellow and sailed it to Heard Island. Being flat bottomed, the ride was horrendous in the rough seas, but the LST got to Antarctica and back. However the crew reported that the long thin ship was visibly bending in big seas, so it was deemed unfit for further use and scrapped when it returned to Australia.
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  44.  @GoranXII  Okay, I thought it was the British were bankrupt after 6 years of war, so they trashed most of their carriers to save money when the war ended?
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  45.  @SZKARLUPIEN  Thanks for that link, the last view of the explosion shows just how devastating the Tall Boy was, 75 years after it was dropped.
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  46. Nice work. Is there any chance of adding HMS Upholder and the U Class subs to your long list of projects to do in the distant future?
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  47. He / she will be devastated when Drach eventually gives up and just calls him Fletcher no matter what he calls himself.
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  48.  @camenbert5837  Thomas would be a corvette, or a frigate at most. Gordon would be the battleship. But I do like the idea of "The Fat Admiral".
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  49. The battlecruisers Australia and New Zealand as well as the battleship Malaya had active lives in t he First World War with barely a scratch.
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  50.  @Tepid24  He is known amongst viewers of naval channels for his fanatical dislike of battleships and his enthusiasm to take down anyone who thinks they have some redeeming qualities.
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