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

  1. Very interesting. I was going to give this post a thumbs up, but it is in all bold so I had to down vote it.
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  2. Back around 1899? the Boers had besieged a city (Ladysmith I think?) and the only way the British could lift the siege was by dismounting large naval guns from ships, transporting them inland and firing them at the fortified Boer positions.
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  3.  @kkkkkkkkggggggg5934  The destroyer HMS Glowworm actually rammed the German heavy cruiser Hipper, causing a lot of damage. Most of Glowworm's crew went down with the ship, but the Hipper's captain wrote to the British Navy recommending that they get medals for bravery.
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  4. Or the Americans could have learned from British practice and armoured their carrier decks. Then cleaning up after a kamikaze hit involved nothing more than sweeping the wreckage over the side.
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  5. Some of his ship profiles are unnumbered like HMAS Sydney (published Dec 12, 2018 ). They should probably be on the list too.
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  6.  @philvanderlaan5942  and (bad Australian accent) the front did NOT fall off.
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  7.  @michaelkovacic2608  I know a lot of Australian skiers who head to Canada for the northern hemisphere winter, far more than people who go to Europe or the USA. I'm not sure why, but the safe and friendly atmosphere may be one reason?
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  8. I was sure Drach would have included John Byng and Ernest King in his list of worst Admirals. After a court martial Byng was executed by a firing squad for incompetence and King should have been.
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  9. The Australians have just commissioned a new HMAS Sydney. It's a 6,300 ton destroyer that is the size of a small cruiser. I wonder if the new Emden and Sydney will want to have a rematch?
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  10. The world was very different back then, people lived differently and had different values. As a writer of popular histories, I keep coming up against people who are outraged that historic characters did not think or act as people do in the 21st century. I find it very frustrating.
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  11. In Drach's video on HMAS Sydney, he tells us that when the cruiser was in the Mediterranean Sea, it fired a lot of AA at the planet Venus in the mistaken belief it was a German plane. So if a ship can attack a planet, I see no reason why a typhoon should not be fair game.
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  12. At least that one was spared a nukeing.
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  13. I see that Drach has her predecessor, the Cerberus scheduled in a couple of months. That monitor was a year or two older but lasted even longer until about 1920 as a store ship.
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  14. The tradition of a monarch knighting people on the battlefield definitely lasted into the 20th century. I heard somewhere that King George V knighting General Monash on the Western Front circa 1917 was the last time this happened, but I later heard that there might have been a later instance.
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  15. The entire empire of a dozen nationalities was split into two kingdoms, one run from Vienna and the other run from Budapest. So Hungary had territory on the Adriatic coast, although it wasn't populated by ethnic Hungarians.
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  16. You may not believe it, but Icelandic patrol boats won the Cod Wars against the might of the Royal Navy.
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  17. If you look at the Falklands 40 years ago the people were entirely of British and Chilean descent and there is no way to justify their invasion by an especially brutal military dictatorship. Today the population is much larger and more diverse, they are fully self governing and have started to call themselves a nation. The average income is 1.6 times higher than the British and the place is absolutely booming. Stats show the Falklands is one of the richest and happiest countries on earth. None of that would have happened if the Argentiian junta had got away with the invasion.
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  18. Not to mention the Australian ships complete with ski jumps up the front that are slightly bigger than the Japanese ships. They are definitely not aircraft carriers either, the ski jumps are just there for aesthetic effect and they honestly weren't added to the ships to assist planes to take off.
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  19. I have trouble believing that an American admiral of the time would take orders from a superior officer of any other nationality. On the Western Front US generals were infamous for their unwillingness to be directed by UK or French field marshals, so in this battle I can imagine the Americans are more likely to wander around doing their own thing rather than being integrated into a British squadron like the Australians were.
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  20. It's a story nearly as strange as the CSS Shenandoah. Not that it had as many owners, but when it docked in Melbourne for repairs and resupply, the Victorian government did the work in a government owned dock, hosted a huge reception for the officers and the crew got free train trips and accommodation in nice country hotels. Meanwhile the ship was repaired to a high standard and the skeleton crew not on vacation made a tidy profit providing guided tours of their warship. They also recruited extra crew from adventurous locals. Shenandoah then went on to sink about 16(?) Union ships and was the last Confederate unit to surrender, in Liverpool, England of all places. The USA then sued the British government on the basis that their ships would not have been sunk if not for all the work done in Melbourne. The British pointed out that Victoria had "responsible government" was quasi-independent and that they had no control over what their so called colony actually did. However an international tribunal forced Britain to pay compensation for the lost ships, so they sent the bill to Melbourne and asked for a refund. Needless to say, the Victorian government never paid up.
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  21. Gosh, Drach narrated this one at lightning speed compared to usual and I had to pause a few times to absorb what he said. I wonder if he was in a hurry to do something else?
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  22. There are a few good videos on the Emden's wild adventures already. HistoryMarche did an excellent 17 minute one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlcRnS-lXhU The Great War also did a pretty good 10 minute one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51FXgQOoppw
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  23. 🎵 Soon may the Drach-man come, to bring us Sugar and Tea and Rum ♫ ... well perhaps not tea with the rations he's issuing us.
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  24. Agreed, but perhaps a splash of colour to indicate which country each model represents. So obviously a red dot (or even a red hull) for British Empire forces, blue for French, etc.
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  25. He started in the navy early. Prince Phillip of Greece escaped from his homeland during one of its many revolutions as an infant hidden in a fruit box before being taken to safety in a Royal Navy ship.
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  26. Did one of your ancestors serve on HMS Gloworm?
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  27. Somehow I feel that a ship named "Eskimo" would be naturally better suited to Arctic convoys rather than sweating it out in the tropics
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  28. They also made a series called Tugs and Thomas has occasional guest appearances from Tugs characters in port scenes. That is the nearest you will get.
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  29. One of the most deadly German merchant raiders was originally a banana boat called Pongo.
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  30. To be fair, in 1917 no one knew what a carrier should be as they were just inventing them.
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  31. The British also used place names as seen in two Town classes, the County class heavy cruisers and the Crown Colony light cruisers. They also had royal themes and distinguished admirals for their ship names. The USA named a lot of ships after politicians, which would be shocking in other countries, but the US has far more respect for politicians than other countries have.
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  32. Perhaps you should look at the large fast catamarans invented in 1990. The biggest ones are 400 feet long, can go over 50 knots, carry 1200 passengers and 400 cars and trucks, although there are smaller models too. They have been successful all over the world except in North America. The only problem is the companies that make them, Incat and Austal are both Australian, so the Jones Act may prohibit their import?
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  33. You have to see things through French eyes. The English and later the British had been regularly sinking their navies for a thousand years. These ships were designed when some old people could still remember the Battle of Trafalgar. So the French decided to "think outside the box". Ironically they were on the same side as the Brits in the First World War, but they still kept well away from the Royal Navy in case the Brits destroyed their ships out of habit. Then the Second World War comes around and... the Royal Navy sinks most of the French navy in one action. You have to wonder why the French persist, because when another war comes around we all know who will use the French Navy as target practice. No matter what side the two countries are on, the Royal Navy won't be able to stop themselves fulfilling their traditional role.
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  34. But remember the Americans never completed any battlecruisers. That's right, officially the Alaska Class were just very, very big cruisers with very very big guns. That sounds silly to me, but for some reason they had a phobia for the word battlecruiser and absolutely refused to use it.
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  35. Hollywood likes to make films about American subjects, so while they could recast the corvettes as American, maybe the USA didn't have such small ships?
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  36. Nearly every post of his is slagging off battleships. He seems to be obsessed, so he wouldn't be happy with any response except for all battleships are bad and none should have been built ever,
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  37.  @Drachinifel  I think it's a Scottish name. I've also heard it pronounced col-hoon which is slightly closer to the spelling.
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  38. After the war Australia had a desperate shortage of shipping, but they were keen to establish bases in Antarctica and nearby islands. So they used a LST left over from the war to establish a base on ice covered Heard Island. The journey from Melbourne through the stormy Southern Ocean almost broke the flat bottomed LST's back a few times, but they arrived and set up a base near Antarctica in December 1947. However after the LST made it back to Australia, it was a write off.
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  39. So much for the legend that overly enthusiastic Vickers gun salesmen had the early 20th century export market stitched up for their company.
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  40. The Olympics were not such a big deal around 1920, they became better known in the 1930s, but they only became ultra popular in the 1950s with the mass adoption of television.
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  41.  @stephenconnolly3018  Mate, there is a time and place for partisan politics and it is NOT here. I dislike Trump and everything he stands for too, but I come here to hear Drach's wisdom and I don't like people looking to start a fight.
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  42. Excellent vid, more on hard working little corvettes please. Perhaps you could do the Bathurst Class soon? There's a preserved one named after my home town, I'm happy to take photos for you if you want them.
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  43. The biggest modern cruise liners are larger than any warship, but photos like the one of HMS Hood being built convey a sense of awe and power that no cruise liner will ever get close to.
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  44.  @nurgle11  To be fair, the United States is a fairly insular country they don't have the tradition of travelling all over the world in their youth like Australians do. So you can't expect an American to be used to understanding even the accents of other English speaking countries. In Europe, the Australians usally cope fairly well without help but the Americans tend to have difficulty. So don't be too hard on "Seppoes" as Australians call them, dealing with unusuual accents is not something they are used to.
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  45. I thought he was King of Hungary and Emperor of Austria? ???
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  46. To be fair the navy pronounces it slightly differently to the army, it's more like a slightly muffled lert-tenant, but still a long way from the Yankee 'lootenant'. On the first day of recruit course in all Commonwealth armed forces, the newbies are informed "There is no Looting in our armed forces, we are too civilised to loot".
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  47. 25th of April is Liberation Day on South Georgia. It's a public holiday for the few dozen people that live there. ... But it is also ANZAC day in Aust & NZ.
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  48. They had the best optical range/target finder thingys in the war. But luckily for the British, they also had the worst shells and did not have radar.
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  49. That's why Drach would need to be camouflaged, I doubt the notoriously Anglo-phobic King would tolerate an Englishman in his presence unless he received a firm order from above.
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  50. By the time of the Belgica Antarctic expedition in 1898, scurvy was so rare that the ships doctor did not not recognise it when half the crew were suffering from the disease. After a few months when he realised that it was scurvy, the only thing they had with vitamin C in it was raw penguin meat. His prescribed scurvy cure was not popular.
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