Comments by "GWTPict GWTPict" (@gwtpictgwtpict4214) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. Animation on the Swordfish was sheer genius, took me a few seconds close watching to realise it actually was moving. Well done Sir!
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  2. I do like the fact that a lot of Drach's answers to what if, or why not, questions are basically, 'because physics'. Hopefully this will encourage some people to to some reading and learn a little.
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  3. No problems here with sponsorship, I've been a military history nerd for years and your content has, on a number of occasions, caused me to go back and reassess my opinions on Naval history. Well done that man :-)
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  4. HMS Penolope, though she was finally sunk by a U-boat in 1944 she earned the nickname HMS Pepperpot for the number of holes punched into her during her service in the Mediterranean
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  5. I have heard that currently the Flat Earth Society is concerned that social distancing rules, ie staying at least two metres apart, is pushing some of their members over the edge.
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  6. To use modern terminology, HMS Africa was bad ass. Got a bit lost but, in the finest traditions of the Royal Navy, sailed in the direction of the sound of the guns while exchanging fire with the entirety of the van of the Franco Spanish fleet until she arrived where she was supposed to be, and then got stuck in. Legend.
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  7. Yup, de-activating the fuzes rapidly became part of the abandon ship drill.
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  8. On the legendary naval dressing down question, thirty plus years ago I was doing a guided tour of HMS Victory. The bloke leading the tour was ex Royal Navy. For those who don't know, on HMS Victory's quarterdeck there is a a highly polished brass plaque mounted on a piece of wood attached to the deck. The plaque simply reads "Here Nelson fell" along with the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Having confirmed that there were no French in the tour group the ex RN bloke related the following story. A few years before a fellow tour guide, again ex RN, was leading a tour and getting to the plaque was explaining what it was when a French exchange student on the tour decided to jump onto the plaque, thrust a fist into the air and shout "Vive la France!". The tour guide, a burly ex CPO punched him in the face knocking him to the deck. Much hilarity ensued, apparently you're not supposed to punch the tourists. Ex CPO finds himself up in front of the commander RN dockyard Portsmouth. As Drach said, details of this sort of thing are generally not recorded but the gist of it was the ex CPO was given a thorough bollocking, being an ex CPO he just stood there and took it. Bollocking delivered the commander RN dockyard Portsmouth stood up and shook the tour guides hand while mumbling about the finest traditions of the Royal Navy. As the story goes the tour guide didn't have to pay for a pint in the pubs around Portsmouth dockyard for several years. I have no idea how true this story is, the RN have a long reputation of spinning yarns, but I think I can believe it :)
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  9. On pronunciations, at university I knew a lass whose Dad was Polish, escaped to Britain during WWII and continued the fight. She just got on with the fact that her surname, Zowada, was generally in Britain pronounced phonetically, Zo-wa-da. She explained how it should be pronounced, my best attempt at writing that down would be Zzva-da. So, once informed by her that's how we, her friends, pronounced her surname. Pretty much the rest of Britain stuck with Zo-wa-da. Props to those Eastern European immigrants to Britain who generally got a lot closer.
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  10. I've been a military history geek for nigh on fifty years now and that was bloody fascinating. Well done that man :-)
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  11. Regarding the "What makes a good Naval historian" question, many years ago I had a lightbulb moment. Never stop learning. What you "know" is fact today may turn out to be obsolete tomorrow. Bearing that in mind has served me well over the years. Please keep doing what you do because it's fascinating :-)
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  12.  @charliepayne4033  Wrong, the early videos used a computer generated voice but he started using his own voice ages ago. Where you see 'Human voice', or something like it, is where he's redone computer generated audio in his own voice.
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  13. I've gone quite teary at Judy's story, well done that dog.
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  14. I really don't get the "was Bismark sunk or scuttled" thing, the scuttling argument seems to come from assorted wehraboos of the "Bismark bestest battleship ever" school. It's weird, there is evidence that all four Japanese carriers lost at Midway were actually finished off by their own side, but I've never heard anyone argue they weren't sunk by the USN. At its simplest the RN put Bismark down, whether at the end she cut her own throat to end the misery or just drowned is irrelevant, she was never getting home. That said, I'm looking forward to Drach's dissection of the argument :-)
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  15. I think several hundred years covered in two hours could be considered brief?
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  16. Don't sweat it, you were close :-)
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  17. Bloody good effort on both sides, trying to work out a solution that could work while both being bombarded by frankly silly orders from their respective senior commands.
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  18.  @M_Northstar  No such thing as a British 'Royal' Army. Royal Airforce and Royal Navy yes, but it's the British Army. Supposedly because the modern British Army has it's roots in Cromwell's New Model Army of the English Civil War, and they were definitely not on the Monarchist side.
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  19. Got a bit dusty here at that point. Excellent stuff Drach.
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  20.  @Charlesputnam-bn9zy  Admiral Hipper was a heavy cruiser, not a battle cruiser but still, a roughly 1500 ton destroyer against a nominally 10,000 ton beast, brave brave men.
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  21.  @YoloSwagNinja  I offer you the war of 1812, America declared war, had some initial success at sea with it's big frigates but was still blockaded by the RN which eventually did considerable damage to the American economy. On land America invaded Canada and was then kicked back over the border, British troops followed up and captured Washington, burning down the Capitol. There's a reason it's called the Whitehouse today. Ok, as a Brit I may be biased but I'd call that a win for us :-)
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  22.  @jimtaylor294  She was launched as HMS Heartsease. Heartsease is also known as Wild Pansy.
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  23.  @frankbodenschatz173  Having knocked down a couple of FW200 Condors while flying off HMS Audacity, the first RN escort carrier, he spent several hours floating around in the Atlantic after she was torpedoed and sunk by U-751 before being picked up by a Royal Navy corvette. As you said, the man was a machine.
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  24. That makes sense, even if you could compensate for minor differences between individual guns, you're still dependent on the consistency of your ammunition. Look at Italian battleship gunnery in WWII.
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  25.  boris boris  Well, for your sake I hope you're never on the losing side in a conflict. We're not talking Himmler, Heydrich and co here, we're talking Matrose Hans Schmidt who joined the Kriegsmarine to earn a living 80+ years ago.
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  26. The Flower class corvette HMS Pansy didn't happen, she was renamed HMS Heartsease before launch. Someone was determined to sneak a pansy through though, heartsease is a plant also known as wild pansy in the UK. So Mr unterseeboot Kapitan, you were actually rammed by a wild pansy. Don't mess with British flora.
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  27.  @knutdergroe9757  FFS! First rule of the 'hidden bottle of single malt' club is that we don't talk about it, Ok?
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  28. Instant thumbs up just for the title.
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  29. Can't remember where it comes from, but I do remember a quote, "English doesn't so much borrow words from other languages, rather it follows them down dark alleys, hits them over the head and then rifles their pockets for anything useful." HTH :-)
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  30.  @davidpnewton  For 30 knots I'd go with 'steady on', we're speaking English here so understatement is the key.
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  31.  @LordInter  Assuming you're talking about the proposed HMS Habakkuk built from Pykrete, it wasn't sand, it was some form of woodpulp,sawdust or even paper.
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  32. Does sound like she did a damn fine job. Though I do like the idea of her rocking up somewhere to request something and someone staring down their nose at her and saying "And you are Madam?" to which she could answer "Admiral Cunningham's wife". In the Med in 1940 that's a win the game card 🙂.
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  33. Love that story, mm thinks someone, HMS Zulu's stern has been blown off by a mine and HMS Nubian's bow has been wrecked by a Hun torpedo. Hold my pink gin and bring me my welding torch! Genius.
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  34.  @cogitator1213  We're not. We lost more ships, we lost more men. We know that. We also know we retained control of the North Sea which was what mattered. The High Seas Fleet attempted a few hit and run style attacks against British targets post Jutland, but buggered off sharpish at the first hints of the Grand Fleet coming out to play. When told that they were going to sea to attack the RN in October 1918, the High Seas Fleet mutinied and the operation never happened. Post the armistice in November 1918 most of the High Seas Fleet was interred at Scapa Flow where they scuttled themselves.
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  35. The Royal Navy, trolling people since 1660.
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  36. I suspect the Italian Navy at Taranto, the Bismark and around 20 U-boats would disagree with the 'miss' bit.
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  37.  @admiraltiberius1989  From memory the Commander of the USS Maine had a bit of a history of poorly maintaining the ships he commanded. At the time the fact that coal bunkers could overheat was known so surely the temperatures should have been monitored. They weren't, or at least not properly so I'd argue that human error was involved.
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  38. Badges? We don't need no stinking badges! Erm, hang on, belay that, yes please :-)
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  39. Yes, but as Drach pointed out, they already had been explicitly ordered to ignore that type of order.
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  40. Mine does have very nice hands, also watching them during the game was quite fascinating for the body language. Psychology graduate so bits of human behaviour grab my attention :-)
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  41.  @Genessyss  How about videos on the US genocides and massacres? You could start with the Native American tribes.
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  42. Come on ladies, time to go home :-)
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  43.  @bytesback.  Actually we can survive for extended periods of time without tea, though we do tend to get a bit miffed. @JIM the heliophobe, my commiserations, though I must admit to feeling a bit smug as I picked up a box of 160 this morning.
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  44. Last time I was this early floaty log was state of the art.
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  45. That was his wife, giggling at her idiot husband.
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  46. Two instances I can find, in one the bomber got home, http://ww2today.com/7th-july-1941-jimmy-ward-climbs-out-on-the-wing-mid-flight Second case it didn't. http://ww2today.com/27-april-1944-fire-fighting-on-a-lancaster-bombers-wing Both men were awarded the Victoria Cross.
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  47.  @Aelxi  Fairly sure they were there to let the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica know not to bomb them.
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  48.  @matchesburn  Pusser's rum claims to be the only rum blended in exact accordance with Royal Navy specifications. Woods Navy Rum claims to be made from an original RN recipe dating back to 1887. Both are distilled in Guyana.
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  49. He also shot down two FW 200 Condors flying off HMS Audacity and spent three hours in the water after she was torpedoed and sunk in late 1941.
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  50. See that tugboat over there? Well for today we're calling it a light cruiser.
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  51. Correct, though that was changed at some point during the war. I do wonder at what point in the journey back one of the lads on the San Demetrio went "hang on, we abandoned ship as per the Captain's order, now that we've re-boarded her and got her under way that's got to mean salvage rights? Woohoo! Beers all round when we get home lads!"
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  52. From answers he's given in various videos already, basically what @Voron Agrrav has already said. Add in politics, copyright issues etc and he sticks to nothing later that the Korean War, some lea room given for ships launched in his time frame but continued to serve after it. If you want his opinions on more modern Naval history check out the Bilgepumps podcast series he contributes to.
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  53.  @ComradeBenedict  You can't brew tea on a hot gun barrel. Replacing the galley on an RN warship with a twin 4" mount is not going to happen.
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  54. I remember a case here in the UK when some bloke rocked up to a supermarket and bought its entire stock of toilet paper, apparently his idea was to make a killing selling it on e-bay. A week later everyone had calmed down and nobody wanted to buy his toilet paper on e-bay so he decided to return it to the supermarket for a refund. As there was nothing wrong with said toilet paper the supermarket smiled sweetly and refused the return as they were legally entitled to do. Bloke was not happy.
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  55.  @drrocketman7794  Absolutely no long term memory.
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  56.  @micnorton9487  Swings and roundabouts, you're exchanging one set of pros and cons for another. The fact that we're all still using electric light etc says the pros outweigh the cons. That said, Navies don't like fires, I know everyone in the RN has basic fire fighting training, you see a fire, you attack it with available kit* while screaming for assistance. Think the USN has the same approach and assume any half competent Navy does the same. *Attacking a fire with available kit may be as simple as pissing on it. Catch it while it's small.
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  57.  @darrellsmith4204  "Besides, Manchester City/ Manchester United- what's the difference?" Runs away screaming.
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  58. L1A1 SLR. A brief exposure in the early 80's while playing soldiers at university led me to believe this was/is potentially the solution to all my problems. I loved that thing.
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  59.  @eoyguy  Well in some ways we're obviously not separated by language, because 'sheeps' and 'mooses' cause the same twitch as 'math' for me. May I suggest we ignore the 'aluminium' versus 'aluminum' debate as that's a very deep rabbit hole?
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  60. I feel a BOC binge in my near future...
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  61.  @jon-paulfilkins7820  Yup, the RN is big on heading towards the sound of the guns and joining in.
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  62. The shells were designed to punch through belt armour which is considerably thicker that deck armour so I don't have a problem with the Japanese having done the maths and concluding that the impact velocity would be sufficient to penetrate the deck armour.
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  63. Take a look at the Java Sea Campaign of early 1942. American, British, Dutch and Australian ships operated together against the Japanese in attempt to stop the Japanese advance. It did not go well for the Allied forces.
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  64. And then you have a nice lie down.
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  65.  @nate6386  Taking HMS Glowworm ramming the Admiral Hipper as an example, USS Johnston would have sunk and Yamato would have taken some damage.
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  66.  @theleva7  I've had worse.
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  67. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYHnUROHgas&t=3438s. Over the years I've read many accounts of this action, thank you Drach, this is the first time I've actually heard something from the after action report. Stunning, I think my favourite bit was the reference to the locals when they landed (sea-ed?) providing them with cocoa and cake, just so damn British.
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  68. Spent today at work correcting data migration issues for the Shiny New System that will Solve All Our Problems. Knowing there was a Drydock waiting for me when I got home made it do-able. Cheers Drach :-)
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  69. Fairly sure it's just him, with assistance from Mrs Drach.
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  70.  @chrissouthgate4554  Exactly, if they won't come out and fight then you have to go in after them.
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  71.  @mercocfo  Drach does have a very soothing voice.
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  72.  @Wildeye13  The comfy chair is used as a torture implement in the Monty Python Spanish inquisition sketches.
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  73.  @SamFirthDesigner  3 lb of carrots and a turnip, obviously.
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  74.  @keefymckeefface8330  Ooh, good point on the Abdiel class. I'd go with 'quite sprightly?'.
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  75. Pretty much expected behaviour for Royal Navy destroyer officers.
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  76. Nobody "sent" Warspite anywhere, rather 25% of her main battery took a short break from its primary task and swatted an irritant.
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  77. Drydock tomorrow and I've still yesterdays Fun Friday to catch up on. Recently retired early, life is good 🙂
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  78. I'm sorry to hear that, never had a dog, always been a cat person. That said I've pretty much had cats* continually for over forty years so I've been where you were this week on a too many occasions, so you have my condolences. *Desdemona was twenty five when her kidneys finally packed in and it was time. She was probably the hardest to cope with.
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  79.  @francoistombe  15th September 1940 Flt Sergeant Ray Holmes attacked 3 Do 17 bombers over London, his attack on the first left him with oil on his windscreen, the second with a German airman attached by parachute to his starboard wing, he managed to shake the chap off. He ran out of ammunition while attacking the third one so he rammed it using his port wing, taking it's tail off. As he could then no longer control his damaged Hurricane he bailed out.
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  80.  @dejangabrovsek6534  Straight of the top of my head, Cape Matapan. The Italian cruisers were lit up and then basically blown out of the water by Cunningham's battleships. They had the enthusiastic assistance of the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable, who had to be told to stop it and drop out of the line of battle as that wasn't her job.
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  81. And you expertise can be assessed where?
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  82.  @NickJohnCoop  Sorry, but at least in my opinion, Mark Felton is not top tier. I'm no expert but there areas where my knowledge is pretty good, and I've spotted fairly obvious errors. His presentation is too "The most dangerous", "The most daring" etc etc for me. On top of that I've seen a number of people making a pretty convincing argument that at least some of his output is basically a copy and paste of other peoples work. I gave up on him a while ago.
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  83. Battleship versus a light cruiser? Not going to go well for the Belgrano.
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  84. No, his dismissal was based on the fact that the IJN was not trained and had no doctrine for flying carrier strikes at night.
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  85.  @jangosau1120  There's also the issue of actually finding your target. Even if you do find something, ship recognition in daytime is tricky enough, at night and with no training there's a chance they'd hit their own ships. Also kamikaze attacks didn't start until October 1944, so four months after the Battle of the Philippine sea.
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  86. I agree, his presentation skills are not great, but you're getting free content from a SME in an obscure area of naval military history. I think the failure here is yours.
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  87. Drach, I feel your pain on what has happened to many museums in the UK.
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  88.  @TheBrainSpecialist  Prince Andrew flew helicopters during the Falklands war while second in line to the throne, and Prince Harry, third in line, served two tours in Afghanistan. Got to show willing you see. Edited for typo.
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  89. Yes destroyers used them, their primary purpose in fleet engagements was a high speed dash in, launch torpedoes at the enemy capital ships and then bugger off rapidly before someone landed a big shell on them. Using the Benson class as an example, three of them could put 24 torpedoes into the water effectively simultaneously.
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  90. Sounds fine here.
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  91. We don't know, there was nothing left afterwards.
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  92.  @Liberty_or_Ded  Just did a bit of checking, USS Chesapeake was not moored, she was at sea. Though not at war with Britain it was very careless of her commander not to be a bit more cautious when sailing in what was, due to the blockaded French ships, effectively an active war zone. Also cowardice doesn't come into it, HMS Leopard was ordered to board the USS Chesapeake and search her for RN deserters which she did. Note, I'm not addressing the rights or wrongs of those orders.
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  93. Feel free to do it again.
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  94. He did point out that replacing existing machinery with more efficient machinery for the same speed, would save displacement and volume for other uses. So, although not explicitly stated, I think I can argue that he did cover the potential for additional cheese and wine magazines and possibly an upgraded bakery for the baguettes.
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  95. Fairly sure that if the French Navy had agreed to the West Indies or USA option the RN would have offered a refuelling stop at Gibralter.
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  96.  @ScienceChap  As a lad I lived in Fareham, so on the west end of Portsdown Hill where Palmerston's follies ended. There was one backing onto woods near where I lived which housed a small industrial estate at the time, if you came through the woods you could sneak through the (modern) fence and get into the tunnels and barrack blocks. Spend many hours in there with a torch. From memory one of the reasons they where called Palmerston's follies was they faced inland and surely the French would come from the sea? From what I learned later this was because they were built in response to developments in artillery that gave guns a range of 8,000 yards. Portsmouth dockyard is 8,000 yards from Portsdown Hill. Got to keep an eye out for what those damned Frenchies might be planning.
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  97.  @seasirocco3063  Count the number of fighters in the US strikes, they might have knocked a few planes down but they'd fairly quickly end up as free kills for the US aviators. It was a death ride.
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  98.  @Deevo037  She was actually launched as HMS Heartsease, a flower also known as wild pansy. Don't think she ever sank anything which is a bit of a shame.
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  99. You're missing the point, it's about tradition, history and living up to the name of the ship, regiment or squadron you serve under. An example, the 59th Regiment of Foot was raised in 1775, renamed the 57th a year later. It served in the American Revolutionary War fighting at Charlestown in 1776 and Halifax in 1783. It became known as The "Diehards" after the Battle of Albuera on the 16th May 1811 during the Peninsular war. Albuera was a particularly bloody battle that the British should probably have lost, but didn't The nickname "Diehards" comes from the commanding officer at Albuera, Colonel Inglis. His horse had been shot from underneath him and he was later seriously wounded by canister shot in the chest and neck, things were going badly but he refused to be carried off the field, instead shouting "Die hard the 57th, die hard!". Well they did, of the 647 officers and men who took the field 428 were killed or wounded. Marshall Soult, in command of the French forces on that day later said, "There is no beating these troops, in spite of their generals. I always thought they were bad soldiers, now I am sure of it. I had turned their right, pierced their centre and everywhere victory was mine—but they did not know how to run!" The 57th also fought in the Crimean war, the Indian Rebellion and various other minor conflicts. In 1881 The 57th merged with the 77th Regiment of Foot becoming the Middlesex Regiment (Duke of Cambridge's Own). Under that name they fought through WWI and WWII including landing in Normandy. The regimental nickname was still the "Diehards". As the British army has shrunk over the years regiments have been amalgamated on many occasions, The battle honours of the 57th sit with the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment (PWRR). Serving in Afghanistan in 2004 members of that regiment won a Victoria Cross (Pte Johnson Beharry), two Distinguished Service Orders, ten Military Crosses and seventeen Mentions in Despatches. The point I'm making is that, at least in the UK, it is not "lame" to retain the battle honours of your forebears, rather it gives you a history to live up to.
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  100.  @Raptor747  She was afloat, under power and with part of her main battery still functional, so not combat ineffective. Also running away from a major fleet engagement just because you've taken some hits would probably not do your career any good.
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  101.  @mattwoodard2535  Yes to the cat noises, I ended up checking the house to ensure our cat hadn't got himself stuck somewhere.
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  102.  @mattwoodard2535  Yeah, many years ago I was heading for the loo in the middle of the night. Hadn't put the light on because I knew the way. You really don't want to stand on a small, cold, dead wet rodent in your bare feet. I think the crunching noise as its rib cage gave in just put the icing on the cake.
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  103. I think you'll find a fair number of u-boats succumbed to RN ramming attacks in both WWI and WWII.
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  104.  @mitchm4992  In terms of turbulence I think nothing, but from reading about this in the past memory says pilots, generally right handed, in an emergency want to push the stick across the body, hence plane goes left, rather than pulling to go right. So put the island on the right and give them the space to recover the aircraft / embarrass themselves in front of everyone watching.
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  105. 42
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  106. If you can find an old school librarian, cherish them. They will hunt stuff down, it's their thing.
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  107.  @philvanderlaan5942  No, it's not going to work, you need to get your water up to a nice rolling boil, then add to the teapot, stir and allow to brew to your preference. There's a reason the British Army's armoured vehicles are equipped with a BV (Boiling Vessel).
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  108. Interesting point, as a 60 year old Brit I can remember my Mum dosing us up with it for a dicky tummy. A quick Google suggests it's still available.
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  109. Did you actually watch the video? As Drach clearly explains 15lb was a full powder charge for the 11" Dalgren at the time of the Battle of Hampton Roads, it was only later after development and further proof testing that the Dalgren was rated for 30lb of powder as a full charge.
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  110. I'd say good, tells a different story to most of the earlier books but does a good job of justifying its interpretation.
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  111. The torpedoes that hit the Belgrano were old contact fused types. The RN did have a modern torpedo at the time, the Tigerfish, but it was regarded as unreliable and also had a smaller warhead, the Belgrano, as a WWII cruiser had a chunky main armour belt, 5.5 inches thick. Modern warships don't have that. Basically the RN used a WWII era torpedo design to sink a WWII era cruiser.
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  112.  @WALTERBROADDUS  A sizeable chunk of the Royal is rocking up in full on "Kill, Maim, Disfigure" mode. I think the Prinz Eugen would have been sunk too, if she's towing a crippled Bismarck she's slow and unmaneouverable. Game over.
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  113. As you said, he is British. Therefore his English is not strange, it is correct. Just saying 🙂
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  114.  @michaelblaszkiewicz7283  It had a lot of success, Swordfish flying from Malta were credited with around 500,000 tons of Axis merchant shipping sunk. Yes it was an old and slow design but it was very effective.
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  115.  @admiraltiberius1989  Most kind of you sir :-)
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  116.  @muttman325  Probably the most highly polished bit of brass you will ever see.
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  117. Even so, if your 6" magazine cooks off you've lost either the bow or stern of your ship. Potentially survivable but you are best out of the fight, at worst sinking.
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  118.  @bengrogan9710  I had a big black cat called Wolfgang. He absolutely loved pigeons.
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  119.  @bholdr----0  A torpedo boat destroyer was indeed originally intended to destroy torpedo boats. As they got larger over time it became possible to equip them with torpedoes as well as guns so they essentially became dual purpose, the torpedo boat destroyer could also act as a torpedo boat, resulting over time in the name being shortened to destroyer.
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  120. A wise decision.
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  121. What do you mean lost? They both survived WWII and were scrapped shortly afterwards.
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  122.  @Wtdtd  A scummy Digital Rights Management company putting in copyright claims despite Drach having the right to use the music. Sometimes it's easier to just walk away rather than get bogged down in endless bickering.
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  123. First read about this as a lad, must be well over forty years ago now, thanks for the reminder :-)
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  124. The LST's were not intended to be used during the 'contested' period of a landing rather they were for landing armour and vehicles once the initial beachhead had been established. While the fight was going on the infantry's armoured support came from DD tanks or LCT's, Landing Craft Tank, plug LCT 7074 into Google for more information. LCT's were much smaller than LST's. LCT 7074 is preserved as a museum ship at Portsmouth's The D-Day Story museum on the south coast of England and put nine tanks ashore on Gold beach on D-Day.
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  125. He does have a very relaxing voice. I sometimes struggle between wanting to listen to the content while trying not to drop off.
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  126. I think it's more of a compass than a ruler, if your central fire control is down, but lets say 'A' turret is landing rounds in the right area, then you can at least read the bearing off and point your other turrets guns in the right direction.
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  127.  @gordm3527  Armoured flight deck and good damage control?
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  128. Dumbest internet comment of the day I think. Anyone else have any contenders?
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  129.  @jonathanwhite5132  Drach has covered older stuff, you'll need to dig through the back catalogue.
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  130.  @ДжонПартлов  Your name doesn't look to be, but are you by any chance Australian?
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  131. Let there be sounds, let there be guitar! Sorry, having a bit of an AC / DC moment there.
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  132.  @georgekraft8605  Because the Falkland Islands are a British overseas territory, ie we are responsible for their defence. South Africa gained independence from Britain in 1910, Rhodesia in 1965, having been self governing since 1923. So basically, we may have been friendly to those nations but not our problem.
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  133.  @c0dy85  No, HMS New Zealand is correct as, though funded by New Zealand, she was part of the Royal Navy. HMNZS did not come into use until the 1st October 1941 when the New Zealand Navy was recognised as an independent force, separate from the Royal Navy.
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  134.  @johnivkovich8655  Another Englishman commenting on spelling, it's Worcestershire :-)
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  135.  @lloydknighten5071  I believe the relevant quote from Nelson is something along the lines of, "No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy. Horatio Nelson ". So yeah, he'd have approved :-)
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  136.  @michaelkovacic2608  I would argue that yesterday's video did provide strong evidence that a number of people have misrepresented the Cameron report to further their own ends. Worth it for that alone. As for the Narviks, yes, powerful warships on paper or a millpond. The North Sea is not often a millpond.
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  137. Nearly, they are booms that could be deployed to hang torpedo nets from.
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  138. From memory Nelson originally wanted "England confides that every man will do his duty" to be flown by HMS Victory at Trafalger, but agreed to his flag lieutenants suggestion of substituting "expects" for "confides" as expects existed in the code book whereas confides would have to have been spelled out letter by letter.
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  139. I will disagree that the point of a capital ship 'was to deal with other capital ships'. I would say its primary purpose was power projection. HMS Warspite, being a good example, of her service life only around 25% was spent at war, in peace time her duties were mostly showing the flag, ie 'look at the might of the Royal Navy' , often in the Mediterranean which was vital to Britain's maritime interests. Look at HMS Hood and the state she was in at the Battle of the Denmark Strait, why hadn't she had her much needed refit? Because she'd spent most of her life showing the flag, projecting British maritime power.
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  140. But if there's no breech then does it count as a gun?
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  141. (Human Voice) indicates that the video was originally released using the robot voice, and the audio has now been redone with his own voice. So no, not pointless.
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  142. On a warship? Clean or a very shouty CPO is going to want to know why not. Good hygiene is vital, you can't fight the ship if everyone is down with the shits.
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  143.  @CharitonIosifides  My mental arithmetic is fairly good, but I was always in awe of my Dad. The man could multiply and divide fractions in his head.
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  144. Samuel Thompson raised the same issue 45 minutes ago, Drach replied 35 minutes ago, and I quote, "Indeed, I covered that more extensively in the third part of my video series on the Battle of Jutland :)". So 10 minutes before you accused him of 'pussyfooting around it".
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  145.  @dougfoust117  They didn't, I think WALTERBROADDUS is referring to salvage methods.
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  146. The Naval term is straddling.
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  147. Where would you put them all and who's paying for their upkeep?
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  148.  @wierdalien1  Known as temperance bars in the North West of England. Fitzpatricks in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, opened in 1890 and I believe is still in business, at least up until Covid struck, anyway.
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  149.  @istvansipos9940  Bow or stern chasers were common in ships of the age of sail, but from memory they were standard guns, so a frigate might carry a couple of 12 pounders mounted to fire forward and aft, a ship of the line might carry 24 or 32 pounders in the same role.
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  150. If a ship was retired from service, or went into dock for major overhaul, modification, repair etc the crew would be 'paid off' ie given any owed back pay and released for service on another ship.
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  151. I'm working the rest of the week :-( and then off until after the new year. There will be much eating and drinking commencing Friday evening :-)
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  152.  @thehandoftheking3314  Definitely used in WWII. Swordfish operating off small MAC ships, MAC being Merchant Aircraft Carrier, basically an oil tanker or grain ship with a flight deck slapped on top, would use rocket assisted take off when carrying heavy loads. Hurricanes on CAM ships were launched from a catapult using rockets.
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  153. I've had worse.
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  154. And a cheese cellar. Don't forget the cheese cellar.
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  155.  @xxnightdriverxx9576  I think his point was that it's a compromise, the longer the barrel is the heavier it is so the more effort (machinery) is needed to elevate and traverse it. Again, more weight, and that's important in ship design. So yes, a longer barrel gives you more velocity and that is good, but if you can't track you target you won't hit it.
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  156. By building 'faster and lighter' the Americans lost their Mulberry to the weather. Before any decent sized port in France was captured and put back in working order to replace it. I'd call that an error.
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  157.  @wolfsoldner9029  You may not be aware of this, but in warfare it's generally held that organising things so that the odds are in your favour, and you can achieve your objective with a minimum of losses to your own side is considered the correct way of doing things.
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  158.  @georgekraft8605  Well there's a loaded question if ever I've seen one.
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  159.  @michaelblaszkiewicz7283  Make your mind up please, to quote you "Oh , like in baseball: a bit of wood, thrust into the air, that misses it's target". Now, "I'm not saying it was useless". As for the Devastator it was out of service as soon as something better could be found. The Swordfish remained in service in 1945.
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  160.  @michaelblaszkiewicz7283  Oh I agree, at Midway the Swordfish would have done just as good a job of making Zero pilots aces as the Devastators and Avengers used did. Did Devastators ever sink a battleship unaided? No. Did Devastators sink around 20 submarines? No. Were Devastators credited with sinking 500,000 tons of enemy merchant shipping? No. Were Devastators in frontline service all though WWII? No. Yet you insist it was a better aircraft. I really don't think you've thought this through.
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  161.  @michaelblaszkiewicz7283  I understand that your original post was a joke, if a little weak. I just thought I'd stand up up for the poor old Swordfish, after all it was, by its service record, a very effective and versatile aircraft. You then suggested the Devastator would have performed better and that the Swordfish was just "lucky". I disagreed. Then you brought Midway into it(WTF?) I pointed out that the torpedo bombers present didn't perform any better than the Swordfish would have. To your final post, was the Avenger a better aircraft? Yes. But then you spoil it all by insisting that calling the Swordfish a a strike aircraft was a joke. Look at its service record Michael, the Swordfish may have been many things, old, slow, freezing cold to fly and vulnerable to fighters but it killed ships up to battleship size, sank multiple U-boats, served as a gunnery spotter, defended Atlantic convoys in weather in which no other serving aircraft could fly, the list could go on. Face it Michael, the poor old stringbag was not a joke. Oh, and regarding canvas, one advantage was that it didn't detonate 20mm cannon shells, they just went straight through, left a hole that was easy to repair. Regarding wood, look at the de Havilland Mosquito. Anyway, I'm off to bed now, night night :-)
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  162. Also date back to the robo voice days, still here because why wouldn't anyone with an interest in naval military history not be?
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  163. Nelson knew that once the battle had started there was little he could do to affect the outcome. The signal 'Engage the enemy more closely' basically meant get stuck in and batter the bastards into submission. He relied on his Captain's to do the job once he'd brought the Franco-Spanish fleet to battle.
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  164.  @bwyseymail  What are you actually on about?
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  165.  @matehavlik4559  Really? On what basis are you making that claim?
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  166.  @bsolutions525  Currently working from home, long may it last.
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  167.  @toveychurchill6468  Ships officers would wear dark blue (Navy blue) coats, can't tell you offhand what the rest of the crew would wear, but it's not red like the army. The only red uniforms you'd find on board would be those of the Royal Marines contingent.
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  168.  @tomhath8413 Early radar may have been able to see to the horizon, that doesn't mean it would produce a useable return.
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  169.  @NoobLord98  You raise another set of colours on whatever else is left standing.
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  170.  @tturkeybaster  Fair point, but I don't think I was harsh. If you're not interested enough to get past the poor presentation skills that's fine, move on, why complain? If you are interested then pay attention and concentrate, work past the presentation style. If you can usefully provide criticism then do so, but 'I couldn't deal with this guy's speech patterns' is not useful criticism.
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  171. Mistaking ship types at a distance happened all the time, look at Taffy 3 where the Japanese were pumping battleship AP rounds straight through destroyers because they'd identified them as cruisers.
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  172.  @KestrelOwens  Wooden ships are rather hard to sink, and battle ranges were much less, so you'd batter your opponent into submission and then board it. By WWI-WWII battle ranges were measured in miles and everyone was throwing high explosives at each other, so by the time you'd battered your opponent into submission and then got close enough to board it's probably sinking anyway. Just a thought :-)
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  173. Maybe they were getting echoes form the sides of the fjord? If so German sonar operator reports 'Multiple contacts Sir, bearing unclear, sound like destroyers plus something really big'. U-Boat captain considers popping up for a look and decides no, the bloody torpedoes don't work anyway, and we might get dive bombed by a Swordfish. Just a thought.
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  174. He is indeed English.
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  175. There are some very understanding ladies out there. However, do remember if they allow you your interests you must allow them theirs. Apparently three antique Singer sewing machines are necessary, even when you have two modern ones for when you want to actually make stuff.
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  176.  @chemputer  'Fine if you're just talking to someone'. Which he is. To repeat and expand, sounded fine here on a PC with on board sound and an ancient pair of cheap speakers. If I want Hi-Fi quality sound I'll go downstairs and listen to an old Arcam Alpha6 amp through a pair of floor standing tannoy speakers. I would also point out, 'both of you can clap at about the same time' won't work for syncing the audio, the clue is in the 'about'. I do wonder why people who are getting high quality free content moan about the sound quality, seems somewhat entitled. Maybe you could buy him some better kit?
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  177. Fairly sure he didn't, but as I need to do the pots right now I don't have time to rewatch the video.
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  178. Taken it, possibly. How would you hold it? The IJN was pretty much at the limit of it's reach when they hit Pearl Harbour, I don't believe they could have supplied and maintained a garrison on Midway.
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  179. You have to understand that we didn't actually open anyone's mail, rather we came across something broadcast to the world in general in an unknown format that presented us with an interesting intellectual exercise. Was a complete surprise when the answer turned out to be of use to the war effort. Another G&T old chap?
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  180. @ Excellent!
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  181.  @beedrillbot121  Regarding your second question, I can only refer you to the signal Nelson flew after 'England expects....'. 'Engage the enemy more closely.' The Royal Navy. You win or you go down fighting. I think that's the general idea anyway.
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  182.  @HK417A1  Any weapon design is a compromise, in a torpedo you want range, speed and explosive bang. However, you also have to design your torpedo to fit your launch system and that will limit its dimensions including weight. So your design spec will say 21" torpedo, maximum length so much, maximum weight so much. Those are your design parameters into which you have to fit the required range, speed and explosive goodness. The explosive weight tells you how much weight is left over for propulsion, fuel, guidance systems etc. So warhead weight is a relevant parameter. You can consider TNT as a baseline explosive as it was so commonly used in WWII torpedoes, however you have to allow for the other explosives used hence Drach gives warhead weight and then TNT equivalent. Torpex is the easiest example, your Mk1 torpedo is rocking a chunky 600lb TNT warhead. Your Mk1* replaces TNT with Torpex and without changing anything else you now have effectively a 900lb TNT warhead but without the weight penalty. Remember, at the end of the day Drach is an engineer, this stuff matters to him :-)
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  183. Dark Docs. Prepare to be offended.
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  184. HMS Formidable was told, quite firmly, to stop playing silly buggers and get to the disengaged side of the battleships.
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  185. Thanks for the explanation on your use of 'The HMS' when referring to Royal Naval warships. I must admit it bugs the hell out of me but I see your point, damn fine channel by the way, only just discovered it and will be following it now. Please keep up the good work, I'm enjoying learning new stuff :-)
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  186. Yamato carried purpose designed AA rounds for her main battery. Don't think they were particularly effective.
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  187.  @mikeynth7919  Quite likely, YouTube doesn't like links to anywhere other than YouTube.
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  188. If you have fresh mackerel just fillet it and grill it with salt and pepper. Dash of lemon juice then serve it with steamed veggies and potatoes in your preferred style. Nom.
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  189. Zero. Think the Australians have Vegemite instead.
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  190.  @questionmark05  Exactly. Englishman here, can't stand Marmite. Never tried Vegemite but happy to take your word that it is terrible 🙂
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  191. On the last question re swords, not naval or japanese, but Lt Col "Mad Jack" Churchill, DSO and bar, MC and bar, is reported to have said during WWII that "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed." He made several opposed landings, in Norway and then in Sicily and at Salerno equipped with broadsword, long bow and bagpipes.
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  192. I believe Drach has said in the past the Hipper's suffered from the same problems design wise as Bismarck and Tirpitz in that they were inefficient in terms of what they brought to the table for their tonnage. A result of Germany not being able to build large ships post WWI due to the Treaty of Versailles, so they didn't have the design experience. Other navies managed the same capability as them on smaller displacements. Also I believe that their machinery was overly complex so they were prone to unreliability and maintenance issues.
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  193.  @Desmosoom  Happy to help, but I was working from memory so you may want to check and verify what I said 🙂
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  194. Why not? lots of ships so lots of names required. I believe Levant was an historic name for the Eastern Mediterranean? After all there was an HMS Pansy in WWI.
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  195. Yup, as an Englishman the American use of 'Math' always sounds wrong, it's perfectly understandable but it always induces a twitch.
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  196.  @rando685  Bismarck over on the Military Aviation History channel did a video on the Fritz X and Hs293 guided weapons, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gf-zdZW2fE
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  197.  @zoranocokoljic8927  HMS Conqueror says 'yes please' 🙂
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  198. Try this from the Historigraph channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbWGRNoxGt8
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  199.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Fairly sure I've seen your name pop up in Dr Clarke's channel, I give you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7HXc7t1fUI, titled "How was British Night Fighting Doctrine developed for and then practiced during WWII?". Carrier operations are mentioned. I will repeat, night operations were part of RN WWII carrier doctrine. @Kelvin Neodama's comment is factually incorrect.
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  200.  @WALTERBROADDUS  A point to argue, but irrelevant to the point I was making. As I've stated, @Kelvin Neodama said, in relation to aircraft carriers, 'they cannot operate at night'. I provided an instance where they did, very successfully operate at night, and pointed out that it was part of RN doctrine. To repeat myself, he was factually inaccurate. Is that a problem?
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  201.  @BHuang92  You'll not get an answer on this channel, basically nothing post 1950. However should you check out the The Bilge Pumps podcasts you may gain some enlightenment.
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  202.  @The_Real_Quantum  Basically a dedicated stove/oven with a chimney where all hot food was prepared. The fire in it would be doused before going into battle or in bad weather, fire being a big fear on a wooden warship.
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  203. Design convergence, you're trying to solve the same problem at the same time with similar technology, it's not surprising if you come up with a similar solution.
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  204. Make your own, it'll be cheaper and taste better.
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  205. Room 40's job wasn't to blast out signals willy nilly shouting 'U Boats!!!', even assuming it had that capability. It's job was to decode German signals and pass that information up the chain of command. it was someone else's decision to choose what was done with it. There is a reason they're called conspiracy theories, and a large part of that is that they bear no relation to reality.
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  206.  @brucewilliams1892  Fairly sure it was somewhere for the Captain and other senior officers on board to chill out with a large pink gin.
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  207. I think you're conflicting the pronunciations of Worcester, "Wuster" the town, with Worcestershire, "Wustershire", the county in which it sits.
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  208.  @bkjeong4302  The battleships, like the cruisers, destroyers etc where there to provide fire support to the landings. USS Texas was available so she provided the required fire support. Sniper gone. On top of that can you imagine the morale effect on any other defenders in the vicinity, assuming they weren't taken out by the overkill? Something along the lines of "F*ck this for a game of soldiers, I'm out of here."
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  209.  @thehandoftheking3314  Depends on what you're trying to launch. A swordfish's take off speed was sufficiently low that on occasion, when pointing into the wind, they were launched from stationary carriers.
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  210.  @stunleyandwin3649  As a flagship you're commanding the fleet / squadron so basically an Admiral and his attendant staff for planning, communications etc. The Captain of the ship is already busy captaining the ship.
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  211.  @Aelxi  Think that designates a unit, not the ship, 21st Flotilla maybe?
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  212. You're going to have to make a big enough hole in the ship to get the old machinery out and the new machinery in. I'm thinking you'd have to remove the superstructure above the machinery spaces to do that, and then replace it afterwards, so a major rebuild.
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  213. Behind? It depends on what you're designing your carriers for. British carriers were designed for survival and operation in the North Sea, North Atlantic and Mediterranean. I agree that similar sized American and Japanese carriers carried larger air groups than RN carriers, but they were a lot more fragile. As to operations, the USN learnt a lot about fighter control from the RN when they borrowed HMS Victorious in 1943.
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  214.  @johnsmith-kd8br  Yup, once they'd worked the kinks out of the design they built ships that lasted a lot longer than their intended design life.
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  215.  @PeteCourtier  No hate man, today I've learned a bit more about the history of Palmerston's Follies :-)
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  216. To some extent the British continued using weight right through the Second World War, the 2 pounder, 6 pownder and 17 pounder anti tank guns and the 25 pounder artillery piece.
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  217.  @cogidubnus1953  Probably, cats can really shift when they have to. This is normally followed by a nonchalant groom at a safe distance from whatever spooked them. Me? Running away? I think you are mistaken.
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  218.  @Ugly_German_Truths  It wasn't an entirely serious comment. Sorry about that.
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  219.  @Ugly_German_Truths  No, but I am having to explain to Catboy that your last comment was a joke. His limited feline intelligence is seriously pissed off.
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  220.  @x42brown  Fair point and well made.
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  221. Flak. FLiegerAbwehrKanone. So yes the Japanese had flak, it's any gun intended for defending against air attack.
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  222. My better half's sister served in the Royal Navy in the eighties as what was known as a "crusher", ie Naval police. Officially She was a Regulating Petty Officer Wren, Regulating being her branch, Petty Officer her rank and Wren indicating she was of the female persuasion.
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  223.  @chocolatecatdad  There is also no continuity between the men of the 57th who fought at Albuera, the men of the Middlesex regiment who fought in WWI and WWII or Pte Johnson Beharry who fought with the PWRR in Afghanistan in 2004. Decades, if not centuries apart. I don't believe your point stands. To repeat what I said earlier, it's the history in the name that matters, that's the standard the modern descendants are aiming to uphold. It seems to work for the British. Full disclosure, I am British, though my military experience is limited to UOTC at university. You got paid, got to play with guns and the mess bar was cheap :-)
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  224.  @iansadler4309  Possible I suppose but I'm not convinced, the idea that the Royal Navy would avoid a ship name because the Indian Navy had one named the same just doesn't ring true. interesting idea though, do you have any sources?
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  225. Lots of practice, and as was pointed out in the video, no modern H&S requirements. Obvious example, the powder charge would have been waiting basically next to the gun so no wandering off for several seconds to collect it. If you don't know the term look up 'powder monkey' often a boy seaman, so rough age 12 - 14? His job was to ferry powder charges from the magazine to the gun in action. Point was to always ensure the gun had a charge available, but not to build up an excess of charges on the gun deck because of the obvious hazard that entailed in a battle.
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  226.  @joshthomas-moore2656  Able Seaman William Savage, a pom-pom gunner on MGB 314 is your man.
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  227.  @hattrick8684  It tells you the barrel length, for a 16”/50cal gun multiply 16 by 50 to get 800"
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  228. Sorry to hear about the job situation Drach, I'm in a similar if less immediate situation. My employer, Manchester City Council, has told me that as I'm over 55 I'm in scope for Voluntary Efficiency Retirement. Basically bugger off, and you can have what your pension would be worth at normal retirement age now. I'm still doing the sums, it's a bit of a mind f*ck. Best of luck.
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  229. He was a big fan of 'lucky' generals too.
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  230. Revenge and Glorioso sit down for a drink. Every other ship in the bar edges nervously away...
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  231. It makes nice dumplings, so yes, it is food.
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  232.  @mpetersen6  Can't give you a source for it but I do have memory of reading of destroyers etc dumping their depth charges over the side before going into a surface action. Take that for what it's worth, a memory from some random on the internet :-)
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  233.  @brendonbewersdorf986  I'd guess not by now, water is actually fairly good at absorbing Gamma radiation so I suspect you could get pretty close to the wrecks safely. But then my Physics education stopped at A level so take my advice with a pinch of salt :-)
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  234. War + spite as in this video.
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  235.  @davidharner5865  Definitely a tree in the UK, grows to about 60 ft tall, it's what medieval long bows were made from.
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  236. At this point US forces were green and large scale naval assaults were basically untried. So your plan would involve, at the same time, making landings on an enemy countries homeland and against a bunch of battle hardened veterans on the other side of the Med. Yeah.
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  237. From a gunnery perspective, if the rounds aren't on target that's bad. If they still had a beneficial effect, that's a bonus but you still have to fix the accuracy problem.
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  238. There's also Fort Fareham, Fort Wallington, Fort Nelson, Fort Southwick, Fort Widley and Fort Purbrook built along the ridge of Portsdown hill to the north of Portsmouth. They actually face inland as they were intended to defend against any French attempt to flank Porstmouth, take the ridge and shell the dockyards from there.
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  239. It doesn't, unless you're a Wehraboo.
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  240.  @davidlavigne207  When HMS Victorious was loaned to the Americans in early 1943 the assessment of the US Admiral that commanded the carrier division was that we did fighter control better, but performed less well with the Avengers because they were bigger and heavier than the aircraft types we were used to. Basically both sides learned from the other.
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  241. Ok, got ridiculously drunk last night, woke up, found this, brilliant, feel the need to drink more. Bye bye.
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  242. At around 24 minutes, bkjeong4302 is going to seriously disagree with you.
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  243. I don't know how the Americans did it but the first case I'm aware of was HMS Zubian in WWI. She was built from the front end of HMS Zulu and the back end of HMS Nubian, tribal class destoyers that had been heavily damaged in 1916. So Zulu + Nubian gave us Zubian. She was credited with sinking the mine-laying U-boat UC-50 in early 1918.
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  244.  @nopenope8418  I think, and I'm happy to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable, that they enabled you to reef the sail, ie reduce the area exposed to the wind by basically folding part of it up so making it smaller and allowing you to control your speed. Should you wish to go faster again, just take the reefs out and you're back to full sail.
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  245.  @kemarisite  Was just about about to comment the same, but scrolled down first to check if anyone else had. I've decided to use the time you saved me for another glass of claret :-)
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  246. If your masts were shot away you raised your ensign on the tallest bit left standing or jury rigged something instead. Ensign up, I'm in the fight, ensign struck game over.
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  247. 'No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.' Good words for any Navy.
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  248.  @longlakeshore  Depends where you hit, the heavy armour was put around the engine rooms, magazines etc. Think Drach has mentioned this in a number of videos. Put simply why armour an unimportant part of the ship so it detonates an SAP (Semi-Armour Piercing) shell when you could just let it go through leaving a couple of holes?
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  249.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I see where you're coming from, but I still think the end result would have been the loss of the Prinz Eugen. If the RN have lost contact then you want to get out of there fast, which you can't do towing a crippled battleship. Remember, anything flying the White Ensign with even a faint hope of getting there in time is heading your way, the RN wanted the Bismark badly. Yes you've more AAA to throw at the stringbags but again, you're slow and hampered by towing Bismark. One decent torpedo hit on the Prinz Eugen and the Kriegsmarine is looking at losing two major units instead of one.
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  250.  @TheEDFLegacy  Basically a wall that runs across the ship. Generally fitted with watertight doors to enable ease of movement.
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  251.  @michaelblaszkiewicz7283  If you look at its service record it was demonstrably an effective aircraft. Modern monoplane torpedo bombers were introduced, for the FAA the Fairy Barracuda, US supplied TBM Avengers etc. The Swordfish remained in service because, as I've said, it was effective. A major use was aboard escort carriers and MAC ships on convoy in the North Atlantic. You could fly off a Swordfish in weather conditions that would have been impossible for your modern monoplane.
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  252.  @shellshockedgerman3947  I think his approach is to use whatever was used at the time by the nation in question. Makes sense to me but then as an Englishman in my late 50's I likes my Imperial measurements :-)
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  253. Care to provide us with your primary source for the number of marines on a quinquereme being 120 not 40? We're looking at the sources that have survived roughly two thousand years here, and maybe the numbers changed over the time period that quinqueremes where in use?
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  254.  @matthewhain1483  I'll not disagree, but I'll argue that sanity checking your calculations as you work through your problem can save your arse. Never forget, automation, a computer, will do exactly what you told it to do. That may not be what you intended. Ok, a joke. Programmer is popping out to do some errands. Partner says 'ooh, could you pick up bread please, and if they've got eggs could you get half a dozen? Programmer returns with six loaves of bread. I was a programmer for nigh on forty years before I took my pension and ran 🙂.
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  255. Isle of Wight.
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  256. Agreed, once I recognised it it stopped being a problem.
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  257. +1 pedantry. Have a pink gin.
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  258.  @tomhath8413  Agreed, but I'd argue that on a clear day a trained observer with top end optical equipment could probably give you more information on a specific contact than early radar could.
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  259.  @rafale1981  For the Royal Navy in the age of sail, rum and water. Apparently lemon juice, sugar and spices such as cinnamon were sometimes added, sources vary.
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  260.  @Drachinifel  Toured her a good few years ago with my girlfriend at the time. It was a quiet day and we were down looking at the engines and got chatting to one of the guides, an ex RN stoker. Girlfriend mentioned that her father went to join the RN in 1939 as a stoker as that was his job in a Manchester factory. Got told "No thanks, we've plenty of stokers." He then pointed girlfriends dad at the Royal Marines recruiting team saying "You could try that lot". He did, and was demobbed in 1946 as a sergeant having fought Italians, Germans and Japanese. The guide was highly amused as one of his neighbours was a retired Royal Marines Colonel and (in a friendly way) used to take the micky about how marines were better than stokers. Guides actual words were "Just wait until I tell him one of his marines was actually one of our rejects." Guide then pressed the button to make all the complicated mechanical bits move (hidden electric motors) and gave us a guided tour of the engine room areas. Bloody good day.
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  261.  @BobSmith-dk8nw  Damn but you're easily triggered.
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  262. Yes, it's just you.
    2
  263.  @jacksargent2925  Short answer, her Captain was an idiot who was in a hurry to get home to Court Martial an officer who had pissed him off. He also didn't really understand the requirements of naval aviation and ignored the recommendations of his officers who did, and so Glorious was not flying regular reconnaissance sorties that may have spotted the beastly Hun before they appeared on the horizon. Survivors being left in the water, no idea.
    2
  264. "Change my mind" is not an argument, it's a cop out. If you've a case to make, then make it, and we might end up with an interesting discussion.
    2
  265. A rare recommendation by the YouTube algorythm that for me actually made sense.
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  266.  @ericfeatherstone  I do like how polite and informative the comments are on Drach's videos :-)
    2
  267.  @kemarisite  It would be glorious though, wouldn't it :-)
    2
  268.  @MrSiameseCat  Well if you've done that level of reading why haven't you presented your counter arguments? Otherwise you too have said nothing.
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  269.  @MrSiameseCat  Really? You presented counter arguments? Must have been so subtly disguised that I missed them. All I saw was 'Hur, I disagree, you're wrong'. Do feel free to enlighten me.
    2
  270.  @abrahambrown3063  I used to do archery, using a modern recurve bow with compound arms. Advice was never to shoot the bow without an arrow knocked, point being without a projectile all the energy ends up in the arms, and that's potentially damaging. Your primary sources for dry firing Greek and Roman artillery please?
    2
  271.  @MrSiameseCat  "Virtually every sentence the guest mutters is a generalisation. When he tries to go into depth on specifics of artillery he is wrong". It's a generalisation because we don't, and can't, know the specifics of artillery of that time. We are dependent on interpretation of the available textual and artistic record. As you have pointed out yourself the best we can manage is to attempt a modern reproduction of what we think the original was. A clue, that is at best an educated guess. As to why I commentated on you? You disagreed with him (no problem with that) but completely failed to provide any argument as to why you were right. That's a fail. Still waiting to be enlightened.
    2
  272.  @MrSiameseCat  If you bothered reading the thread then the only insult was the original 'a bit dim' which I will admit was unnecessary, but I have not been carrying on with insults, I've been arguing my point. You are not doing a very good job of refuting it. As to your 'very good modern reproductions' the point is we don't know they're very good, they are the best we can do with the available historic information, they may or may not reflect the original weapons. As to 'You now talk arty farty drivel “We are dependent on interpretation of the available textual and artistic record.” '? This may be news to you but we don't have any extant artillery weapons of the period so yes, we are dependant on textual and artistic descriptions of these items, that's not 'arty farty drivel', that's a statement of fact.
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  273.  @MrSiameseCat  No, I've being arguing a point which you have failed to answer. Can't be bothered counting them up, but I'm confident you have thrown far more insults and abuse around than I have. Now, can you respond to the points I've made above or are you just going to sulk in your bedroom?
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  274.  @MrSiameseCat  66 years old and can't take someone disagreeing with you? Show me the evidence that modern reproductions are 'very good'. We can't know that, all we can manage are our best interpretations of the 'arty farty' textual and artistic information available. Sorry if that's news to you.
    2
  275.  @MrSiameseCat  Buttons successfully pressed :-). Textual = the written text that has survived. Artistic = the images that have survived. Not actually that difficult I would have thought.
    2
  276. I suspect it was more of a case of decided not to. Take a hit to a mount containing oxygen fueled torpedoes and you are going to have a really impressive explosion amidships. The Japanese decided it was worth the risk, other Navies thought 'Nah, maybe not'.
    2
  277. Tricky one as Navies aren't keen on publishing the exact performance of in service warships. That said most sources I can find report 30+ knots for a Nimitz, Abdiels 40+ knots so no difference.
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  278. Yeah, but Warspite gets bonus points simply for the name. Metal as f*ck
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  279.  @matchesburn  Volume of metal in the .50 Browning rounds versus volume of metal in the target ship, can't see it having an effect. Does rather depend on the efficacy of the magnetic fuse in use.
    2
  280. Well done that man, thumbs up for the python reference.
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  281.  @sarjim4381  When in doubt, Ramming Speed :-)
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  282. A tactical victory to Germany, yes. It was however a strategic victory for Britain. The Grand fleet was ready to sail again in days, for the High Seas fleet it was months, and it never happened.
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  283.  @VersusARCH  So over thirty percent down. The High Seas fleet was outnumbered at Jutland, and was still outnumbered after Jutland. As I said, a tactical victory for Germany but a strategic victory for Britain, much though it hurt. The High Seas Fleet never attempted to engage the Grand fleet again. 16th August 1916 two battle cruisers, all that were operational, along with three battleships sortied, it was a raid, not an attempt to engage the Grand Fleet. Scheer was warned of the Grand Fleets approach and retreated. A second sortie was attempted 18th October but abandoned due to bad weather and the torpedoing of the Cruiser München. Again, not an attempt to engage the Grand Fleet, but a raid. Britain retained control of the North Sea.
    2
  284.  @VersusARCH  By your argument, ie casualties inflicted, the German army won every battle it ever fought in WWII against the Russians, up to and including the Battle of Berlin. Whose flag was flying over the Reichstag on the 2nd of May 1945?
    2
  285.  @VersusARCH  Barbarossa was unquestionably a German victory? It was intended to defeat the Soviet Union, it didn't.
    2
  286.  @VersusARCH  So, as I said, tactical victory to Germany, strategic victory to Britain. The High Seas Fleet never challenged the Grand Fleet again. Britain was (and is now) an island nation, survival requires command of the seas. The German navy challenged that, wreaked serious damage but suffered heavily itself, and never challenged again. As I said, tactical German victory, strategic British victory.
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  287.  @VersusARCH  You can dribble on all you like about 'nibbling away'at the Grand Fleet, the fact is that didn't happen, The High Seas Fleet never again challenged the Grand Fleet. The Royal Navy retained command of the sea which was its job.
    2
  288. Can't beat having the facilities for a comfortable dump. Major morale booster.
    2
  289. There isn't room to swing a cat in here. Does that help?
    2
  290.  @ericdickison7995  They would probably be aware yes, but I think at that point in the war you really needed to get a visual on your target to develop a firing solution on it, I don't think what we call now call sonar was precise enough.
    2
  291. Hit pause and come back later. It's not difficult.
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  292.  @kimleechristensen2679  Thanks, but I know, I was trying to let @Cogitator down gently, I suspect s/he's a wehraboo and they seem to be quite fragile.
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  293.  @cogitator1213  So, having "won", why did the High Seas Fleet not take advantage of that victory and move on to control the North Sea? A clue, because they couldn't. This may come as a shock to you, but warfare isn't a game of top trumps. If we're going to decide the victor on the basis of casualties inflicted then Germany won the battle of Berlin in 1945 because they inflicted more casualties than they took. Maybe think about that?
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  294.  @LordChesalot  Thank you Sir, I'm old enough to have learned that 'live and let live' is a pretty good starting philosophy.
    2
  295. Wheraboos. German military bestest eva! German technology bestest eva! RN couldn't have sunk the Bismarck because Bismarck bestest battleship eva! Similar sort of mindset to the recent Russian claims that the Moskva sank due to an unfortunate accident, rather than Ukrainian action. Some people are really committed to what they believe, the facts are irrelevant.
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  296. You could argue it goes back to the age of sail, a 'ship of the line' being a contraction of a 'ship of the line of battle', ie a ship fit to serve in the line of battle, hence a battleship. I may be playing with words here.
    2
  297.  @dylanwight5764  Erm, you are aware that HMS Victory was launched over 30 years before the USS Constitution?
    2
  298. HMS Hood, HMS Valiant and HMS Resolution all carried 8 15" guns in 4 twin turrets.
    2
  299. Right, just finished this. I should probably do some work now...
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  300. Kamchatka is not allowed, binoculars have become a serious maritime pollution issue.
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  301.  @nazamroth8427  During the Napoleonic wars the Royal Navy generally didn't rename ships it captured, though it did happen. When the French Formidable was captured the Royal Navy already had a ship of that name, so she was renamed Belleisle.
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  302.  @eviper1054  The Oscarborg torpedoes were late 19th century Whitehead torpedoes, so slow, short ranged and with a small warhead. They were effective because they were defending a fjord, Blücher sailed past them at point blank range and was given the good news by a bunch of pissed off Norwegians. I doubt any other use of torpedoes of that vintage was made in WWII.
    2
  303.  @eduarddoornbos2409  The SS Ohio was not a Cimarron class ship.
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  304. You're just replacing one set of problems with another, the hull is designed to be supported by the water it's sitting in, take that away and over time you're risking deformation of the structure as it's not being supported as it was designed to be.
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  305. I've got a piece of paper somewhere that says I'm PADI open water certified. Not dived in 15, maybe 20 years? No way would I currently consider going diving today without a refresher course first. Skills are perishable and I'm not suicidal.
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  306. That's what miscellaneous funds are for.
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  307. Drach did say that he was only picking a few operations due to the number of night carrier actions that occurred in WWII. Not intending to be jingoistic here, but as per the video the Royal Navy was flying night carrier actions in 1940, the Battle of Leyte Gulf was in 1944.
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  308. HMCS Haida. I iz launched, what happens now? Some Random Naval Deity. You are a Tribal class destroyer, go forth, kill, maim and disfigure. HMCS Haida. Em, sounds a bit rude? Some Random Naval Deity. Do it politely then. HMCS Haida. Ok.
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  309.  @christophersmith8316  No, when I use the word "physics" I am referring to a branch of the sciences. "Physic" is an archaic term for medicine which you won't hear in normal usage.
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  310. Good luck getting back into that museum if they discover you lied to them first time.
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  311. HMS Victory will never admit she is no longer a front-line fast battleship. That's why we keep her in a drydock, we need plenty of warning if she tries to escape.
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  312. And you point about naval gun design is what, exactly?
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  313. Going to have to disagree with you on range being somewhat irrelevant, at least if you want to get your air wing back. To take your 2000 yds example, fine if your target is just carrying 20mm Oerlikons as their effective range is roughly 1600 yds*. Unfortunately your opponents start mounting 40mm Bofors with an effective range of around 4000 yds. Oh dear, now you're losing aircraft. Range matters.
    2
  314. Ad you trust YT to understand that?
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  315. Among many other musical highlights, The Blues Brothers is worth a watch for Cab Calloway's rendition of Minnie The Moocher.
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  316. Royal Naval aircraft carriers could operate at night, it was part of their doctrine. Look at Taranto for an example.
    2
  317. Anything it fancies.
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  318.  @toothedacorn4724  Lindybeige has a totally different approach to his videos, and can be shaky on the details, but I do enjoy them. I think of them as rambling dissertations that I may or may not agree with. In some ways the ones I disagree with are the best, because they cause me to go away and reassess my opinion. Sometimes I think "No Lindy, you're wrong on that", other times I think "Mm, interesting point...". I'm happy both channels exist.
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  319.  @toothedacorn4724  Fair enough, we agree then :-)
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  320.  @franciscocisneros4904  Basically a ship of sufficient power to serve in the line of battle, in the Napoleonic era the standard ship of the line was a two deck 74 gun ship mounting at least 24 pounders on the main gun deck though some carried 32 pounders. in Royal Naval service these would be a third rate ship. Second rates would carry around 90 guns while a first rate, HMS Victory for example, would be 100+ guns. Anything smaller was considered not to be up to the job of slugging it out broadside to broadside in a major naval engagement. That said the Royal Navy at Trafalgar did use a few small 64 gun third rates. Smaller ships such as frigates sloops etc were used for scouting, carrying dispatches, commerce raiding etc and at battles like Trafalgar would mostly sit back and watch once the main battle fleets engaged. They may try and tow disabled ships, rescue survivors etc but wouldn't get directly involved as a well delivered broadside from any ship of the line would cripple them. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that but I think it's a decent summary :-)
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  321. It is difficult remembering what day it is at the moment.
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  322.  @joestendel1111  For a laugh, HMS Victory's at Trafalger. That gets you 800+ assorted matelots, marines and officers all handy in the the use of boarding pikes, cutlasses, axes, knives, muskets and flintlock pistols. I wouldn't want to face them inside the Capitol :-)
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  323. Me too, Lindybeige's take on the WATU wargaming can be found at https://youtu.be/fVet82IUAqQ
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  324. We're English, therefore we assume you're pronouncing your own language incorrectly. My apologies for that.
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  325.  @jasonlupo4117  Also for some reason submarines are always referred to as boats. No idea why.
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  326. You are indeed.
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  327. Fairly sure his Naval history is self taught, his degree is, I think, in civil engineering.
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  328. Source please? Everything I've read gives it to either HMS Warspite against the Italian battleship Guilio Cesare or the Kriegsmarine's Scharnhorst against the carrier HMS Glorious both being at about 26,000 yards.
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  329. Dried them, they keep a long time.
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  330. Did you miss the bit where they said 'well, that's not good' and fixed it?
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  331.  @barbaradyson6951  No, he lives in England.
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  332.  @Bennettjohnson09  Saratoga and Lexington were conversions of battle cruiser hulls in the mid 1920's as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty. At the time radar wasn't a thing and carrier based aircraft were short ranged so the theory was they might need to fight enemy surface ships, hence the 4x2 8" turrets they were originally built with. The gondola mounted guns were dual purpose weapons to engage aircraft or lighter enemy surface ships. Lexington was lost at the Battle of the Coral Sea, but if you look at Saratoga her 8" turrets were replaced by dual purpose twin 5" mounts later in the war. Basically by that point surface defence was the job of the task force screen, not the carrier.
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  333. Not if you're sat in the wardroom.
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  334. Budget cuts mean we can only use helicopters where absolutely necessary. 34 minutes is ample time to send some local chaps round in a car.
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  335. Similar to the RAF Coastal Command Short Sunderland flying boats, the Luftwaffe apparently referred to them as flying porcupines as the crews were in the habit of cramming any machine gun they could find in to back up the designed defensive weaponry of nose, dorsal and tail .303 Browning machine guns. Don't know how true it is but I remember a story about a USAAF General showing up at a Sunderland base in his Jeep, complete with pintle mounted .50 in the back. When he came out after his meeting it was gone.
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  336. German boats would indeed sneak into the middle of a convoy before letting torpedoes go, what they wouldn't do is open up with their deck guns which I think is what Drach is implying here, even though he doesn't explicitly say it.
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  337. @UNSCForwardontodawn No idea, but basically not worth the candle.
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  338.  @tgsachris  It's not the calibre that matters for Samar, it's the type type of shell. High Explosive shells are designed to detonate on impact, so very effective against unarmoured ships. Armour Piercing shells are designed to detonate after penetrating an armour belt. At Samar the Japanese were firing AP rounds which weren't detonated because there was no armour on the light carriers, destroyers and destroyer escorts so most hits just punched a hole straight through, rather than going BANG. If you fired AP at at a ship of the line you'd have the same problem, just punching a hole through it. HE on the other hand would, depending on the sensitivity of the fuse, blow a big hole in it.
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  339.  @thehandoftheking3314 Tank guns are designed to defeat armour, as destroyers and smaller don't have armour I'm pretty confident that even 50 mm and 76 mm tank guns could happily punch AP sized holes in any destroyer. Use HE rounds and you could make a serious mess of the upper works etc. On the other hand your destroyer guns have the fire control systems and elevation to hit a target far beyond what a tank could do, and a 4.5, 4.7 or 5 inch destroyer shell is going to ruin a tanks day with a hit. Then again, your destroyer is sitting off a coastline and fairly visible, your tanks however could be being sneaky and hiding behind things hull down. It's an interesting idea. Off the top off my head the destroyers best option would be to sit out of range of the tanks and plaster the area the tanks are in with HE.
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  340.  @Cbabilon675  At a guess because that propeller has to be able to move not just the tug but whatever it's towing. Tugs also have enormously powerful engines for their size, for the same reason.
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  341. Google was my friend here, https://saoceast.com/blog/?p=126
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  342.  @lonjohnson5161  Gun Captain would probably push him through the gun port after it with a terse instruction to retrieve it. That said, spares were carried, the most convenient one probably being opposite your gun, on the hopefully unengaged side of the ship.
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  343. Tactical loss, strategic victory. The High Seas fleet never challenged the Grand Fleet again.
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  344. HMS Indefatigable. From the Cambridge dictionary, "Always determined and energetic in trying to achieve something and never willing to admit defeat". Don't think you can beat that, though Warspite is pretty good.
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  345. I think Drach has answered that in one of the Drydocks, unfortunately I can't remember which one :-(
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  346.  @vernonfindlay1314  Yep, two engines, one behind the other in each wing nacelle. As @johnfisher9692 has said, very prone to catching fire. Requirement was also that it should be capable of diving bombing which just complicated things even further...
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  347.  @billdaley1714  No, renamed HMS Heartsease before launching. A flower also known as wild pansy.
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  348.  @bytesback.  So, as I said, you got a bit miffed 🙂?
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  349. I seem to remember references in the Napoleonic era to RN gun crews tying scarves and the like around their heads and over their ears before going into action.
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  350. I took it to mean dismounting and setting up the guns of the inshore facing broadside in a battery onshore so every gun can bear on the attacking ships. Obviously means you've got to get them back on board before you can sail, but if your purpose is to defeat an attack from the sea you may decide that risk is worthwhile.
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  351. Looks real to me, cats do like a vantage point when somethings going on.
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  352.  @nicholasglieco2155  Doesn't matter, I think the point stands. I think my favourite comment on this, and I've no idea who made it first, goes along the lines of 'England, a place where 200 miles is a long way. America, a place where 200 years is a long time.
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  353. My thought too, a .22 range.
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  354.  @michaelimbesi2314  Fine for me too.
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  355. I think the Steward rating fits the bill.
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  356. Sink burn and destroy is what you want to hear your Admiral signal. It's basically kill everything and we'll sort the details later. As @VintageCarHistory has already posted, 'three years to build a ship, three hundred years to build a tradition'. Cunningham new that, understood that, and trusted his men to sail towards the sound of the guns. I'll give you HMS Africa at Trafalgar. Got lost, headed toward the sound of the guns, although being only a 64 gun third rate, so being one of the smallest ships of that rate at Trafalgar, exchanged broadsides with the front third of the Franco-Spanish fleet before dropping into place were she was supposed to be and getting on with the fight. Mean bitch. Consider your options because she'll probably die trying and may take you with her. It's the The Royal Navy, we've some history with this shit.
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  357.  @caiushughlanus2070  Basically building a reliable gas tight breech mechanism was a problem with early British attempts.
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  358.  @jakemillar649  If you include the secondary battery in counting turrets a fair number of WWII era battleships will beat ten.
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  359.  @datonecommieirongear2020  That's the one, Drach has covered this somewhere, basically Congress wouldn't approve funding new warships, but would fund refits for existing ones. So the USN 'refitted' ships by essentially keeping the name alive, and then building new ships incorporating a few bits from the old one, new ship had the same name. 'It's a refit guvner, honest.'
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  360. I was thinking training weapons for baby sailors.
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  361. The point behind using cups as a measure is that the size of the cup doesn't matter. As long as you use the same cup the ratio of the ingredients will be the same.
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  362. Snowing here.
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  363.  @super44lover  From memory the First Lieutenant's action station was not on the bridge but somewhere aft, partly because of the possibility of a hit taking out the bridge and the Captain. In this situation he would then take command. If he goes down the next senior lieutenant takes command, etc, etc. So periods of confusion could and did happen when a ship was taking a battering but procedures were in place to minimise the chances of them occurring.
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  364.  @shoootme  I suspect you're thinking of WWI rotary engines, where the entire engine rotated, so a Sopwith Camel would turn a lot faster one way rather than the other. I think by the time you got to inline or radial engines this effect had basically gone away. That said, it's late and I'm mildly pissed so no guarantees re my memory :-)
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  365.  @MHEmpire1  First amoured flight deck in US service, they were standard on RN carriers in WWII.
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  366.  @wierdalien1  The temperance movement was quite big in the North West in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. You can still buy Mr Fitzpatrick's cordials such as blood tonic, sour cherry red grape and hibiscus and a favourite of mine, dandelion and burdock.
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  367.  @zap265  Wrong, it's food. As a human being (unless I'm mistaken?) you are an omnivore. Fats are a rich source of calories, useful when you're not living in a nice modern heated home. It also contains calcium, potassium, iron and vitamin B12. Note vitamin B12 is necessary for human health, but not present in plant foods. I wouldn't recommend anyone to try and live on suet alone, but then I wouldn't recommend anyone to try and live on celery alone. A balanced diet is the key.
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  368.  @zap265  Lack of calories = starvation. Lack of nutrients = malnourishment. Personally I'd rather avoid both.
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  369.  @zap265  Which bit of 'contains calcium, potassium, iron and vitamin B12' did you miss in an earlier post of mine? Whether you like it or not, suet has nutritional value, it's food.
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  370.  @zap265  Erm, actually it does, by definition. If it has nutritional value then it's food. It might not be food that you like, but it is food. Also I thought we were discussing suet, not lard? They are two different things. However since you've raised it I'll point out that that lard, like suet, is a good source of minerals and B vitamins.
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  371.  @zap265  Good luck trying to eat them. Whether you like it or not suet and lard are both edible and have nutritional value. Therefore, they are food.
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  372.  @ezap9158  No idea. You're still wrong by the way.
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  373. We didn't have one available in the area at the time and so sent an officer who spoke fluent French. Note a Royal Naval Captain is not, as in the British Army, a fairly junior rank, he's two promotions away from Rear Admiral.
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  374. Most Drydocks are one part, roughly an hour long. The last each month are marathon five to six hour two part jobs.
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  375.  @TermiteUSA  I gave the 12 pounder as an example, the choice of what to use as a bow or stern chaser would be down to the Captain and what was available. If the rest of your armament doesn't include 9 pounders you're not going to waste magazine space for a munition you use once in a blue moon.
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  376. She needs a little u-boat silhouette painted on her hull somewhere.
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  377.  @kelloggswag  A neutral country is free to trade with anyone, whether or not they're involved in a war.
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  378.  @grahameandrew5510  Put simply you can see more and hence better control the fight.
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  379.  @pexxajohannes1506  So inaccurate fire is ok, and collateral damage is not a problem? I'm not arguing that the fire wasn't effective in calming things down, I'm pointing out that from a gunners point of view there are good reasons to want to be accurate.
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  380.  @pexxajohannes1506  And sometimes less accurate fire lands on a school, or a hospital. That's not good.
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  381. Regarding the V1 question, HMS Warspite, in the extremely unlikely instance that she actually took a hit, would probably just say ouch, not again, there were some tanks that you wanted to go away?
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  382. No idea what Drach's conditions of employment are, but in the UK there are legal minimal requirements around making someone redundant regarding notice and money. From memory you have to have been in a job for a couple of years before they apply.
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  383.  @Tevildo  Thanks, sounds about right :-)
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  384. Yes please :-)
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  385. I'd really like to see your source for the statement "If HMS Victory faced Constitution 1V1 her orders were to avoid combat". I very much doubt you have one. USS Constitution is a big tough frigate, but she's exactly that, a frigate. HMS Victory is a big tough 1st rate ship of the line, USS Constitution is going to lose, and lose badly.
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  386.  @HoverLambo  From memory it wasn't just her water plant, she had diesel engines and a fuel processing plant that could take cruder fuel and turn it into something the engines would take. That was knocked out. Basically she wasn't getting home without it.
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  387.  @alphonsolinguini9501  Designing the recoil system to take a full charge doesn't tell us what a full charge was so I don't understand your point, was that full charge, at the time, 15lbs or 30 lbs of powder?
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  388.  @Bird_Dog00  I thought that was a Forgotten Weapons Q&A?
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  389.  @Bird_Dog00  Hadn't seen the Chieftain's take on it, found it now :-)
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  390.  @seanwoods647  Yes, near Chester there are old salt mines that were big and deep enough to be used as secure storage in WWII.
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  391.  @gustavchambert7072  The point behind using cups as a measurement for cooking is that the size of the cup used doesn't matter, the ratio of the ingredients will remain the same. So, perfectly feasible that cups could be of different sizes.
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  392.  @gustavchambert7072  You have your measuring cup, from experience you learn how many cups of oatmeal are required to make burgoo for, let's say ten people. Bingo, you're sorted. Another cook may have a different size cup, but similarly he will know from experience how many to use. I'm a 58 year old Englishman and I'm not aware of a cup being a standard Imperial measurement. I could of course be wrong about that.
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  393.  @gustavchambert7072  Interesting, I'd not heard of the British Imperial cup before. Couple of further points though, the Britannica article points out that the British system used the same cup for wet and dry measurement unlike the American one, and the Imperial system wasn't introduced until 1824, so roughly 20 years after the period Drach said he was attempting to replicate. I wonder if the Royal Navy of Nelson's time had a standard cup, and if so what size was it?
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  394.  @theemporersnewclothes  I don't think that's likely, it's outside the time period the channel covers.
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  395.  @talthan  Deterring an enemy. Though the ships may have never seen combat, it is possible that just their existence meant conflict was avoided. War is very expensive and people die. If your shiny new warship means that your aggressive neighbour decides not to attack, then it's probably paid for itself several times over.
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  396.  @nimbusshadow-wings  They rammed wadding down after the powder and before the heated shot.
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  397. Off topic a bit, but how the hell am I supposed to reprogram my brain to read HMS as His Majesties Ship rather than Her Majesties Ship? Not handling change well these days. God bless you Ma'am, Rest In Peace, and give Phil the Greek a nudge from me when you see him.
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  398.  @rickansell661  Used to mess around in Fort Fareham as a youth. The inner courtyard area housed a small trading estate but if you approached through the woods that had grown up to the North over time you could get through the fence and explore some of tunnels and rooms. Nothing of any great interest in them but it was fun.
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  399.  @mikemcghin5394  It's the weight of the shell.
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  400.  @hoangdungnguyen7892  Thanks, 1,000 marines on 20 ships would be 50 marines per ship, or you could interpret it as 1,000 marines per ship of which there were 20? The point I was trying to make was that with 2,000 thousand year old history you are relying on the sources that survive, and how accurate / dependable are they?
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  401.  @markkringle9144  My maths teacher in the late seventies, your calculator is no use if you fat finger your inputs. You should always have a rough idea of what the answer should be, an example, 27.2 x 8.7 is roughly 30 x 9 or 25 x 8, Take your pick or do both. So your answer should be between 200 and 270. Oh look, it's 236.64. Thanks Mrs Patterson, your advice has served me well for nigh on fifty years. Also, what happens if you forgot to charge your phone?
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  402. She was never on the winning side in a battle though, was she?
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  403.  @bertbaker7067  You'd have to hope your opponent didn't have ASDIC/Sonar because you'd be a sitting duck for depth charge attacks.
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  404. You're on the internet, it really isn't that difficult to have a tab open that will let you do the conversions quickly and simply. Also as this is a historical channel it makes sense to use the measurements of the time.
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  405. Canadian shipyards probably could have built them, but how many corvettes could you build for the cost of one Abdiel class? Early in the war there was a desperate need for convoy escorts and corvettes were the answer, quick and cheap to build. Remember, killing a U-boat was a bonus, driving it off was your actual mission, if you achieved that you'd done your job. Later in the war when the shortage of escorts had been overcome you would see the emergence of hunter killer groups with bigger faster ships. They didn't escort convoys, that was the job of the close escort, but they were available so if a convoy came under attack the close escort would defend while loudly shouting 'U-boats! we're being attacked!' and the hunter killer group would sweep in to well, hunt and kill the U-boats. While that's going on the convoy buggers off into the distance.
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  406.  @leftcoaster67  Indeed, but a luxury I think.
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  407. Well he also wants the Baltic states and various other places "back". He's not getting them either.
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  408. Very high quality optics, specially selected and trained lookouts, up against early and primitive radar. Six months prior to this Pearl Harbour had an early experimental radar. All it could say was "there's something out there, roughly in that direction". Radar operators passed this on and it was decided it was an expected flight of incoming B17s, even though the direction was wrong. Whoops.
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  409.  @VieneLea  He did.
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  410. Depends where you live, I'm in Manchester and this winter we've had an inch or so of snow maybe three times? It was never around long enough to actually freeze. That said rock salt is easily available if you want it and in the areas where snow freezing is more common you'll often find council maintained rock salt bins at the side of the road.
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  411. Theatre, The-a-tre. Three syllables. Mind you I do find the way he stresses the 'a' a bit weird.
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  412.  @maggnus87  There were dozens of ramming incidents over the course of the Cod Wars, who rammed who is still disputed. As a ball park figure Royal Naval frigates of the time would have been 2,500 - 3,000 tons displacement so generally a lot bigger then the Icelandic coastguard vessels.
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  413.  @BobSmith-dk8nw  There are plenty of examples of battles with more than one name in use, look at the American Civil War for example. The battle of Jutland is often referred to as the battle of Skagerrak. Calm down and stop getting your knickers in a twist. Who gets to decide what's the correct name anyway? I'm not aware of any organisation officially tasked with this.
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  414. Fair point, but then modern submarines, even diesel electric boats, don't spend much time on the surface.
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  415.  @personthing88  A special case indeed, but fair point, well made!
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  416. Known to some English types too. We do tend to quite like insulting names applied by old foes, they rather confirm that we've pissed them off. Kitchener's 'Old Contemptibles' being another favourite.
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  417.  @kemarisite  Yes, I've heard that too. Wherever it came from it was in common use though.
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  418. I'd be careful about the pilots (officers) and crews (enlisted) distinction, at least in the RAF you could have a bomber crew with a sergeant pilot and a commissioned flight engineer, navigator etc. In the air the sergeant pilot was in command even if on the ground military regulations required he deferred to his flight engineer, navigator.
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  419. The picture you use to illustrate the Kreigsmarine shore bombardment question at https://youtu.be/NXK-SBgcOvc?t=8813 appears to have no guns in what I think the Germans referred to as Anton turret, do you know why that is he case?
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  420. The guy from Military History Visualised is Austrian, the guy from Military Aviation History is German, don't know about the others.
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  421.  @Drachinifel  Oh dear, yes...
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  422.  @whydoyougottahavthis  Timing, Guadalcanal was over by the beginning of February 1943, USS Alaska wasn't commissioned until June 1944.
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  423.  @lonjohnson5161  A Midshipman is/was basically an officer in training. Pass your exams and you would become a lieutenant and your Naval career was up and running. That's the case for the Royal Navy of Nelson's time anyway, other Navies and times the definition may vary.
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  424. Right, I'm happy but confused, it is Thursday isn't it?
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  425. Possibly you're a bit dim?
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  426.    Why? Different people will see different ads, that's how YouTube works.
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  427.  @danlee5138  The Royal Navy razeed several 64 gun third rates as they were considered too small to continue fighting in the line of battle. They were classified as 44 gun frigates so yes, their role changed. They were also heavily armed for frigates, they generally retained their original main gun armament, so you've got a frigate mounting 24 pounder guns in it's broadside.
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  428.  @bkjeong4302  On the plus side you've always got your AA weapons, fighter cover depends on someone else.
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  429. A thought, faster response to course changes coming from the flag ship? HMS Hood orders the turn to port and Prince of Wales follows, If Prince of Wales is leading Hood has to wait for her to acknowledge and start the turn before she can then follow. Think Drach said in the video that it could take 10 seconds before a ship of that size started responding to the rudder, so Hood probably put the rudder over as the order was given, a few seconds for the order to be passed, a few more seconds for the flags to be raised so Hood could have been beginning her turn as Prince of Wales saw the signal at which point all she has to do is follow.
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  430.  @hughgordon6435  Purely from memory, but in the RN at the outbreak of WWII I think there was a definite degree of regular RN officers looking down on the RNVR, the Wavy Navy, as being below them. I think that changed considerably over the course of the war and that change started early on, the Dunkirk evacuation being a start. Don't have a problem with being corrected on this, as I said, I'm going on memory from many years of reading military history.
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  431.  @suzylstanton  I'm English so Beatty gets it. Curious as to why you included Nelson?
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  432. Can't see you having much chance of hitting the legs on a tripod with a torpedo.
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  433. If you're talking about the WWII Tribal class they were designed and built for the Royal Navy, some were also built for the Canadian and Australian Navies. An early war example of an RN Tribal class in action would be HMS Cossack boarding the German supply ship Altmark in February 1940 releasing around 300 merchant navy prisoners captured by the Admiral Graf Spee. Technically rather naughty as this was done in Norwegian waters when Norway was still working hard on being neutral.
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  434. HMS Penelope, a RN light cruiser that served in the Mediterranean in WWII was nicknamed HMS Pepperpot due to the huge number of bomb shrapnel holes in her after a series of air raids while she was docked in Malta.
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  435. Well that was a teaser finish 🙂
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  436. Basically yes, if you're manhandling and firing guns that recoil violently and weigh in the tons range you want good grip under your feet.
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  437.  @scottgiles7546  I'm the Royal Navy would have loved them to try :-)
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  438. Regarding the MK 14 in 1942, sometimes, if you got lucky.
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  439. Today Manchester is not doing rain, it's doing fog. Quite well actually.
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  440. Regarding the accuracy of the Tallboys dropped on the Tirpitz, I would add that 617 and 9 squadrons were elite units, not just anyone got to drop Tallboys.
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  441.  @agnostic47  He may not be a cricket fan.
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  442. A submerged U-Boat was slow and only had limited battery life. They spent most of their time at sea on the surface. It was only later in the war that the Germans built snorkel fitted boats that didn't have to actually surface to recharge their batteries.
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  443.  @SennaAugustus  Ah, the Fairey Swordfish, or Stringbag, as she was commonly known. HMS Warspite launched her float equipped one at Narvik for reconnaissance and spotting purposes. Not wishing to be left out of the general mayhem the Royal Navy was dishing out she dive bombed and sank U-64 before getting on with her assigned job. An open cockpit, bi-plane, sea-plane, dive bombing in WWII. Don't mess with the Fleet Air Arm, they will use what they've got to ruin your day.
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  444.  @firstnamegklsodascb4277  Make it hollow, metal may be heavier that water but air is lighter.
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  445. Excellent.
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  446.  @eshafto  Fair enough if that's your experience of the video. For me there were some minor glitches, but nothing that stopped me understanding what was said. I do wonder if people forget that it's not just the quality of the source or the kit you're listening / watching on, the route across the internet also plays a part.
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  447.  @chemputer  I can absolutely tell the difference between him and Dr Clarke and my PC setup is adequate, hence the fact I can follow the content without whining that 'it's barely watchable because...'. I'm in my fifth decade so fairly confident I have grown up. I have my doubts about you on that score.
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  448.  @chemputer Any particular reason you felt the need to get abusive? Sounds like you have major issues with people disagreeing with you. That's a bit sad.
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  449.  @micnorton9487  No intention to start an argument here, just trying to expand on the question. Obviously introducing electricity to a ship introduces it's own issues, but as @michaelimbesi2314 states above it also introduces massive benefits. So, as I said, swings and roundabouts.
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  450.  @insignificantgnat9334  Google does tailor search results so your search history, location etc will affect what is returned.
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  451. We've always been batshit crazy, we just hide it well under a smooth, suave, tea drinking veneer of respectability. It's how we got away with the Empire for so long. For a modern example of British batshit craziness I give you cheese rolling. Been going on for hundreds of years, generally happens annually though modern Health & safety types do try and stop it now and then. Held at Coopers Hill in Gloucester which is nice and steep. A 7 to 10lb round of Double Gloucester cheese is released down the hill with a one second head start before the competitors can chase it. In theory you can win by catching the cheese, though as it can reach 70mph that doesn't happen, so the winner is the first person to cross the finishing line after the cheese. Prize is the cheese. Note, the hill is too steep to run down, you will fall over and finish your run bouncing arse over tit down the hill. Much beer will be drunk post the cheese rolling, possibly a fair amount before, including the competitors. Bruises, contusions and friction burns are expected, broken bones, concussions etc also happen. Don't think anyone has actually died though. To finish, a quote from the Wikipedia article and a link, 'Canadian competitor Delaney Irving won the ladies race in 2023, despite finishing unconscious, and only learning of her victory in the medical enclosure.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdKRx30s6sk Batshit crazy enough for you? 🙂 ETA youtube link.
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  452. Ok, this is purely from a vague memory. If your guns are loaded with fragmentation rounds for shore bombardment and then the USS South Dakota rocks up, the quickest way to unload the frag rounds is to send them. You're not going to pierce the main armour belt but if you get a hit on the superstructure you might take out a fire control system, set fire to ready use AA ammunition etc. Then you start feeding AP into the ammunition hoists. You may still be stuck with a few frag rounds in the hoists but again, quickest method is probably to just load and fire them until the AP rounds arrive. With luck the frag rounds will allow you to determine range, if so when the AP arrives you may need to adjust for a different ballistic arc but you're basically on target. Not a gunner but I think this makes sense? Happy to be corrected by those with more knowledge.
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  453. @ For the Royal Navy everybody had/has a job when the ship goes to action stations. For those not directly involved in fighting the ship you'd be in a damage control party, mustering to the sick bay, assisting in ammunition handling etc etc. The cooks would probably stick with doing their day job, if the ship was at action stations for any period of time nobody is getting fed at the usual times so the galley is churning out brews and butties that can be delivered to the fighty people while they're doing their steely eyed dealer of death thing.
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  454.  @Concealed1911  I do remember reading that it was the absence of engine noise that woke people up, if you're at sea and the engines stop then you have a problem.
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  455. Captains name was spelled Pellew.
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  456.  @bkjeong4302  You can make a fair argument for HMS Hood (32 kts)being a fast battleship. Obsolete at the time she entered service you say? She commissioned in 1920. Big carrier threat in 1920 was there? She died doing what she was meant to do, fighting other capital ships. The King George the Fifth class, 28 kts, all ordered and laid down and in service, at least some of them, before the Kido Butai demonstrated that well handled carriers were the new Big Kids On The Block. Your 20-20 hindsight may allow you to pronounce that battleships were a waste of time in WWII, which you frequently do, but the point is nobody knew until the end of 1941. I'm with @jacobdill4499 and @Cailus3542 on this. Can you not just leave it?
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  457. Hi Eddie.
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  458. Lol dude, everyone I've heard in England says bi UUURN munich.
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  459. Ass-cold would not be embarrassing to an British person, as ass being a member of the horse family. Arse-cold however, could be considered somewhat vulgar.
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  460.  @Drachinifel  As someone who has worked in IT for over thirty years that makes me feel really happy. Now can you confirm that at least one of those drives is off-site? If so I shall proceed to ecstatic and go for a lie down.
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  461. Ideally yes, but Lambs Navy is a lot easier to find.
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  462.  @Jayne22  You will. Also the related binocular throwing jokes. Have fun.
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  463.  @scottsmith4612  It can be done, but as I said it brings it's own problems. HMS Victory has been out out of the water for just over 100 hundred years now, during that time the structure supporting her in the dry dock has had to be changed when it was realised the hull was sagging around the original supports. IJN Mikasa's hull is encased in concrete up to I think the waterline in Yokosuka, Japan. So, it can be done, but whether it's a better idea than maintaining the hull and keeping a ship in the water probably depends on the state of the ship in question, available funds, both short and long term etc etc.
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  464. Sheer genius. By the way, what were you drinking/snorting/inhaling when you came up with this?
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  465.  @pyronuke4768  You're not being trolled, the M class submarines of the Royal Navy built in WWI carried a 12" gun. I think only three entered service.
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  466.  Kabuki Kitsune  I think weight is an issue, the higher up it is the less stable your ship.
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  467.  @danieltaylor5231  Thank you, plan for tonight is a base of pearl barley cooked off in stock with fried onions and mushrooms, served with grilled black pudding and a fried egg on top. I'd cook it now but the Mem Sahib's daily drugs mean we can't eat for another couple of hours. or so :-(
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  468.  @danieltaylor5231  Sounds like a plan, a good plan. Now you've got me wondering what's in the freezer that's stewable...
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  469. You'd end up with a Navy that never left port in case someone got hurt.
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  470.  @murderouskitten2577  Well done in not addressing my point that hanging officers who got people killed would result in a Navy that never left port. I will point out that the ships who didn't run aground were the ones at the back who had time to to see it was all going wrong and react appropriately. As to arrogance, humility, incompetence, brains etc. Intelligence, I'm going to assume the guy wasn't a dribbling half wit, he had risen to a rank that let him command a destroyer squadron. Arrogance? You could argue that's not necessarily a bad thing in a military commander, your job is to make decisions after all. Incompetence? He chose to trust standard operational procedure over a new idea he had no or limited experience of. Turns out he was wrong, well that happens to all of us. Humility? He held his hand up and accepted the blame. Enjoy your 20-20 hindsight.
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  471.  @billmuller6133  The inputs to the FCS included your best estimate of your targets range, course and speed which you would amend as necessary depending on your observed fall of shot.
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  472.  @DonDueed  Ah, thank you. I wondered what the idiot was on about.
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  473. Bourbon? Johnnie Walker Black Label is a blended scotch whisky.
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  474.  @lambastepirate  Bourbon is distilled primarily from corn. Scotch whisky is primarily distilled from malted barley, though a 'single grain' Scotch whisky may be made from corn. As Johnny Walker Black Label is a blended Scotch pretty sure you'll find there's a lot more malted barley in it than corn, if there is indeed any corn involved. It's not a Bourbon.
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  475. Locomotives were sent around the world by sea at the end of the nineteenth century so I can't see a problem with battleship engines, if necessary you could send them as parts to be assembled at the receiving end.
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  476.  @TheArchaos  Your original question states aircraft, not aircraft carrier. May be you should learn to proof read before hitting send?
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  477.  @TheArchaos  Ah you found the edit function and corrected your error. Who's a clever boy then?
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  478. I've now got a 'Crazy World of Arthur Brown' earworm.
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  479.  @joshthomasmoorenew  A fleet carrier is a big, expensive and relatively rare asset, well rare unless you're the USN in 1944 - 45. HMS Courageous in her aircraft carrier form displaced around 25,000 tons and carried an air group of about 50. HMS Audacity, the RN's first escort carrier in contrast displaced around 5,500 tons and carried an air group of 6, she was a converted captured German merchant ship. When she was torpedoed and sunk in 1941 it was a shame, but no huge loss to the RN. When HMS Courageous was torpedoed and lost in 1939 that was a major loss to the RN. In short, your fleet carriers are too valuable to go looking for U-Boats in.
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  480. Ah, but if you keep building castles eventually one stays up.
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  481.  @adamalton2436  Absolutely, it's called trial and error. Might not be the most efficient method but eventually you'll get there. Look at cannon, in Western Europe you'll see them showing up in the 14th century as siege weapons to bring down castle walls. Encircle the castle, bring up the guns, emplace them. Load gun with gunpowder (having thoroughly stirred it first), then a huge iron bolt, then pack the muzzle with clay to confine the blast. Wait for the clay to dry off, then fire the gun. BOOM. Rate of fire measured in rounds per day. A few centuries later and we had cannon you could tow into battle behind horses, deploy, and have rates of fire you could measure in rounds per hour, with the added benefit that they were unlikely to blow up in your face. Progress :-)
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  482. Ask your self how much time was spent in battle against time spent just getting from point A to point B.
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  483.  @scottmason2557  You captured it and took it home with you :-)
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  484.  @d675ose7  The blast effects are outside the turret, the crew are inside the turret.
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  485.  @jamesbugbee6812  In my world it's 22:11 on the 22/12/2021 as I post this. The fridge is stocked with cheese, pate and cooked meats for the upcoming festive weekend. Fresh bread will be picked up on Friday and a case of wine was delivered yesterday. You have time sir, you have time.
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  486. It would need to last months if not years in the RN of the age of sail.
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  487. They did all sorts of silly shit, Beatty seemed to have a fetish for rate of fire, because it worked for Nelson! Yes, but Nelson's preferred range of engagement was about 10 feet, not several thousand yards.
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  488. Japanese Long Lance torpedoes were fueled with liquid oxygen. Made them very explody. Other nations torpedoes, not so much.
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  489. Unlikely, to get 'British' on them they're probably just 'a bit of a dick'. I'll leave it there.
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  490. White squalls. You can Google it.
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  491. We play football, America plays something that can best be described as hand egg.
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  492.  @calvingreene90  A contraction of 'Association football' I believe.
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  493. It's a spider plant. It's what they do.
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  494.  @shadowwolf2608  The French built The Surcouf in 1935 which had two eight inch guns in a turret placed at the front of the conning tower. She didn't achieve much before being lost in early 1942 while serving in the Free French Navy, cause of loss still debated.
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  495. Do like the ramikin food dye experiment around suction and sinking, the man's an engineer, 'well we should model it and see what happens'. Bloody good effort.
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  496.  @Rammstein0963.  Sort your education system out then.
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  497.  @parrot849  That is a level of stupidity I find difficult to comprehend. Best of luck with sorting it.
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  498. He's selling off duplicate books from his stash so the amount of a given book available is probably going to be one.
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  499. Yes.
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  500.  @Dave_Sisson  I do like his stuff, just wish he had the time to do more!
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  501. HMS Rodney enters the chat and coughs loudly.
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  502.  @scottgiles7546  Can't make chips, mash, roasties etc if you've thrown all your spuds at the Hun😁
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  503.  @babamukuru666  It's an unexploded munition that has punched through the side of your ship, it failed to go off but you don't know why so you get rid of it in case it changes its mind. Even if you did decide to keep it where would you put it?
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  504. I thought the idea with a punt gun was to take the birds when they were on the water rather than in the air?
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  505. 1. Resounding defeats of the enemy at Trafalger and the Nile. While commanding HMS Captain at Cape St Vincent in 1797 took the San Nicolas, and then used her to capture the San Josef. You can only fight what the enemy put up against you, these are undisputed facts so where is the propaganda? 2. Yes we know, and I'm fairly sure Drachinifel has never claimed he did, in fact he's mentioned in the past that other RN Admirals had already done this. 3. Not sure what your point is here, other than you're not a fan of Villeneuve.
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  506.  @scottmason2557 They'd be sailing down the North Sea heading towards the English Channel. I can't see the Royal Navy putting up with that. The Dover Straits are what, 20 miles wide? Is the German invasion fleet turning left or turning right once through the Straits? It's a non starter I think.
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  507. No, not Germany, it's Liverpool, in the North West of England. I assume laser scoring is a cleaning method.
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  508.  @Genessyss  Show us where the nasty empire touched you? Just about every nation in history is guilty of bad behaviour.
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  509.  @nickdanger3802  I don't, I did respond to @Genessyss in the same vein as @dogloversrule8476 stating that pretty much every country has its dirty secrets but it's gone so somebody / something didn't like it.
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  510.  @ДжонПартлов  👍
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  511. As I understand it, for a 32 pdr 12 men would be assigned per pair of opposite guns, one port, one starboard. As the video showed, in terms of loading and firing you could serve a gun with just three crew, the gun captain and the two lads clearing it and feeding it at the front. However, once it's loaded you need to run it out before you fire it, hence some additional brawny lads come in handy. A 32 pdr weighs around 3 tons. If the ship is engaged on one side only then some of your 12 crew could be off forming a boarding party, fire fighting, damage control etc. If you're engaged on both sides then you've 6 men per gun, so the 3 who know what they're doing plus another 3 for muscle. By this point you're taking casualties, guns are being dismounted, significant emotional events* are being experienced. Hopefully the junior lieutenant, midshipman or PO in charge of the gun deck is moving his available bodies between functioning guns to keep the maximum possible number in action**. * With thanks to The Chieftain for the phrase. Good YT channel if you like tanks. ** Defence of Outpost Snipe, 26/27 October 1942. Obviously not a Naval engagement but the point stands, NCO gunner putting rounds down range while another NCO and a Lieutenant fed his gun.
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  512.  @Drachinifel  Yes, no theoretical basis to them, simply the result of the French education system deciding it needed a method to identify the thick kids from the average kids from the bright kids. Binet and Simon decided asking the teachers to rate their pupils intelligence, and then building a test that would replicate those assessments was the way to go. Voila, the IQ test.
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  513. It's lockdown, I'm in my dressing gown.
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  514. "How could you put something with that kind of heat content in a gun barrel loaded with a propellant charge?" Carefully.
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  515. HMS Warspite at https://youtu.be/WYHnUROHgas?t=3360. Oh, FFS. Not again.
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  516.  @spudgamer6049  Thanks for that, every day a school day :-)
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  517. If you're into military history and visiting the Victory then in Portsmouth historic dockyard you've also got got HMS Warrior (first Royal Naval ironclad) and the Mary Rose. Venture down Southsea front you've got the Royal Marines museum, the D-Day museum and fort Southsea from where Henry VIII saw the Mary Rose sink. Across the harbour in Gosport you've got the Royal Navy submarine museum (HMS Alliance). If you fancy some land based military history then up on Portsdown Hill there is Fort Nelson, the Royal Armouries artillery museum.
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  518. The law in England does not stop you buying edged implements, whether kitchen knives or swords. What it does do is ask you why you're walking down the road carrying one. I'm a chef on my way to work, or I'm part of the medieval reenactment in the park, would generally be acceptable answers. Self defence isn't, you'd probably get arrested for carrying an offensive weapon. However, you just need to think a little out of the box. An ex of mine was a housing officer on some very dodgy estates. She carried a 12" bladed screwdriver in case she needed to get into any boarded up properties. Tools of the trade.
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  519. If you're in the area Portchester castle is worth a look. It's at the top of the inlet that Portsmouth harbour sits at the entrance to. Basically just a keep at one corner of a roughly square curtain wall enclosing an area of land including a chapel. It's sat in one corner of what was originally a Roman fortification. Built by the Normans.
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  520. Secure your fuel supplies. Also sort out your ammunition quality control issues.
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  521.  @michaelblaszkiewicz7283  If USS Constitution charges HMS Victory then she's coming in bow first, and gets raked. HMS Victory is fine, USS Constitution is not.
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  522. A yard is slightly shorter than a meter, multiply yards by 0.9144 to get the meter equivalent.
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  523.  @vojtechslezak4553  Your video points link points out that only in 2019 was the kilogram defined precisely, rather than being the weight of a particular chunk of metal. The Imperial system worked fine, ie, was accurate enough, long before the metric system existed. Your argument, 'sistem doesn’t even work without the metric sistem' is therefore invalid.
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  524. The language is called English because that's the country it originated from. So, as English men and women we get to define how it's pronounced. Basically, you're the one who's wrong here. Have a nice day 🙂
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  525.  @scottdrone-silvers5179  Think it's basically that, the higher up the ice forms the greater the impact on stability for a given weight of ice.
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  526. It's a balance between need and risk, as an example lanterns were safer than candles so lanterns were used where light was needed. Before an engagement the galley fire would be doused so it wasn't a danger.
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  527.  @SSN515  Check with Nurse. You may be off your medication.
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  528.  @davegoodridge8352  I'm guessing here but she was a one off, hence Unicorn? This was the Royal Navy Navy remember, just shy of 300 Flower class corvettes were comissioned by WWII's end, they wouldn't win the war for us, but they made damn sure we didn't lose it. Lots of ships, you need lots of names. There were only so many we could steal from the French :-)
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  529.  @EdAtoZ  I'm sure Drach's covered this, they did indeed feed the shells to the upper turret through the lower turret. Didn't work particularly well hence the idea of mounting turrets on top of turrets didn't last long.
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  530. From his mention of the fire control systems at the end I think there will be 🙂
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  531. @UNSCForwardontodawn Suspect that would be down to YouTube, they seem quite happy to allow links to other YouTube content, anything outside of that, not so much.
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  532. Royal Navy having no aircraft? I'm sorry but what planet are you on? They may not have been the best aircraft in the world but the Fleet Air Arm definitely had aircraft at the beginning of WWII and continued to do so throughout the war.
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  533.  @skywise001  ABDA = American, British, Dutch, Australian. A combined naval force put together to fight the Japanese immediately after Pearl Harbour. It didn't go well.
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  534.  @destroyer6869  Argentina invaded the Falklands Islands, the UK responded to force with force. The Belgrano was a warship in a combat zone so no, not a war crime irrespective of of any opinions on the rights and wrongs of the Falklands conflict.
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  535.  @Niels_Larsen  I'll have a go. 1# I'm sure Drach has said that 8" guns are something of a sweet spot for heavy cruisers as you still get a better rate of fire than a battleship. Also a quick Google comparing a county class cruiser to HMS Warspite shows a crew roughly two thirds the size. 2# Main guns are too big to be effective as AA. Same point applies to the 6" guns of a light cruiser, both ships, in the Treaty era anyway, are limited to 10,000 tons so both have the same issue regarding space for AA armament. 3# Well, if a heavy cruiser won't scare off other cruisers as a convoy escort then neither will a light cruiser. Not going to address which is the better option, but I think his arguments as you've described them are faulty. :-)
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  536. Cambridge dictionary, 'directed towards or interested in something'
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  537.  @thehandoftheking3314  Destroyers are basically unarmoured so 4" shells could definitely ruin their day, and enough hits could sink them.
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  538.  @Xenophaige_reads  Heavily armed icebergs.
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  539.  @mcduck5  I give you HMS Warspite. Prince of Wales was a new ship with new technology, the quadruple turrets, and from memory still had civilian workers on board working out the problems. A modernised QE may not have altered HMS Hood's fate but could well have hit Bismarck a lot harder than Prince of Wales managed.
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  540. Warspite, no r.
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  541. A short summary if I may. Right lads, we'll lower the boats and then row in, quietly, at night, while armed to the teeth. When we get to the French ship we'll sneak aboard, kill anyone who objects and then sail off with it. Any questions? That said, it would make a nice episode 🙂
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  542.  @murderouskitten2577  Correct, Royal Naval tradition requires you to go down fighting, preferably against ridiculous odds. See HMS Glowworm, HMS Jervis Bay, and the list goes on.
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  543. As Drachinifel has just pointed out, maybe save your outrage until he's actually covered the battle? I'm afraid that right now you just sound like the sort of idiot who infests YT comment threads, while not watching the video, who has preconceived ideas THAT SHALL NOT BE SHAKEN, because someone else on YT said something else, that Drachinifel didn't. I think. I'm not sure. Could you clarify?
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  544.  @arslanxelan9606  I was out of order there, my apologies.
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  545.  @johnsmith-kd8br  Fairly sure their magazines would have been emptied and they hadn't been refuelled, so I don't think they'd have got very far.
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  546. Fortunately I'm 5 hours ahead of you so the video was watched with the assistance of gin :-)
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  547. In the RN of the age of sail, it was common for older or crippled seamen to be employed as cooks, you may no longer be nimble enough to dance through the rigging, or you'd lost a leg in battle, but you understood the sailors life and nobody was handing out Michelin stars so put the beef on to boil.
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  548. Altmark involved violating Norwegian neutrality, not Swedish. Pedant mode off.
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  549.  @seanmac1793  Portsmouth Historic Naval dockyard. That gets you HMS Victory, HMS Warrior, the Mary Rose plus assorted other stuff. Just north of Portsmouth is the Victorian Fort Nelson (one of Palmerston's Follies) which contains the Royal Armouries artillery collection. West across the harbour from the Naval dockyard you'll find the submarine museum at Gosport. Going east along Southsea front you'll find Southsea castle, built by Henry VIII to protect Portsmouth from the perfidious French. Supposedly he actually watched the Mary Rose sink from its battlements. Further along the front you'll find the Royal Marines museum. There is also a D Day museum. Basically if you like military history with a Naval bent you can't beat Portsmouth.
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  550. £ worth.
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  551. Umm, unless I'm missing something here, 45 degree elevation when launching a projectile, at least in a vacuum, will give you maximum range. Practically speaking when air resistance etc is taken into account something less than 45 degrees is optimal for range. Firing at 50 degrees is only useful if you wish to lob rounds over something that's between you and your target, you're sacrificing maximum range to do this.
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  552. I think someone naming RN warships was going for HMS Die M**herf**ker Die.Then some one had a sense of humour failure.
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  553. Drach doesn't mention 'biggest gun mounted' on a destroyer, he describes the usual weapon sizes for destroyers. One Russian destroyer, the Engels, had one fitted for trials. The fact that no other ship was fitted says it didn't work, if you Google images of Engels it's fairly obvious why not. So, no, not a correction, just an experimental outlier.
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  554. Work on your attention span.
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  555. We put the kettle on and break out the biscuits.
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  556.  @BPLColddawg  The US ships job was to defend the landing forces, the Yamato's job was to attack them and then beach herself. If she stands off to maintain range then the US standards just dodge like maniacs while lobbing rounds at the Yamato. While this is going on the other six standards have time to rock up and join in. twelve to one. Even if the US ships can't penetrate the Yamato's citadel they can wreck enough of her upperworks for a mission kill. At that point she may be afloat but she can't achieve anything and is just target practice for anything that fancies a go. The US ships don't need to close the range.
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  557.  @BPLColddawg  My point is they didn't have to close the range to achieve their mission, they just had to stay afloat to protect the landing force and let the rest of the US Navy turn up, basically buy time.
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  558. Early access is a fairly common Patreon perk.
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  559.  @supsup335  Suspect the US Navy could have killed the Yamato with far fewer CVs than were involved. The point being we have the capacity so let's use it, no point in a fair fight unless you have no other option, kill the threat as quickly and cheaply as possible.
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  560. Portsmouth Historic Dockyard for a start, that gives you the Mary Rose, HMS Victory, HMS Warrior and the monitor M33. You'll also find the Royal Marines museum a short walk from there and Southsea Castle, an artillery fort built by Henry VIII. You'll also be close to the submarine museum in Gosport where you can take a wander around HMS Alliance of WWII vintage. Head up to Portsdown Hill and you'll find Fort Nelson, built in the Victorian era to defend Portsmouth, it's now the home of the Royal Armouries artillery collection. There is also the D-Day Story, complete with LCT 7074 in Southsea. Basically enough military history to get lost in for a good long while :-)
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  561. I think circular error probability can be thought of as the naval gunfire equivalent of a rifle / pistol shooters group size. Sorry if that doesn't help :-)
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  562.  @jovangrbic97  Aw diddums, did the nasty man not confirm to your expectations of a presenter? Never mind, go and tell Mummy, I'm sure she'll give you a hug, a glass of milk and and a biscuit.
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  563.  @aurora4xabo665  LST(R), Landing Ship Tank (Rocket). Used for shore bombardment during the Normandy landings.
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  564.  @jakemillar649  Wikipedia gives it's rate of fire as '1 round every 30–45 minutes or typically 14 rounds a day'. Assuming that's correct, not effective at all.
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  565.  @rolfs2165  Ratio is the same whatever cup size you use so the recipe should work, just the final amount may differ, depending on your cup size.
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  566.  @rolfs2165  I believe it dates a long way back when people may not have had scales.
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  567. Yes, but they were training carriers on the Great Lakes. Nobody was considering taking them into combat.
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  568.  @nitsu2947  HMS Rodney claimed a torpedo hit on the Bismarck, though by WWII torpedo tubes on battleships were I think quite rare.
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  569. Pretty standard in the UK.
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  570. All that weight no longer available to carry the stuff an aircraft carrier needs to do it's job, stuff like aviation fuel, bombs, torpedoes, aircraft etc. Sorry but it's a dumb idea.
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  571. I quite like the intro.
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  572. Whatever citrus fruit was available, which included limes.
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  573. I'm confused, it's Friday, what's going on? Not complaining you understand, a video from Drachinifel is always welcome, but it feels a little like launching an attack on British forces during afternoon tea. Unexpected, and could you come back in an hour when we've tidied up the biscuit crumbs?
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  574. Happens every Saturday.
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  575.  @44R0Ndin  I don't think it makes you unusual, simply identifies you you as some someone comfortable with mental arithmetic. If you're comfortable with maths you understand that there is more than one way to parse a calculation. Honestly for me it's almost second sense, 27 * 4. 25 *4 = 100 2*4 = 8 Total 108. 27 * 2 = 54 54 * 2 = 108 Yes? I just see the easy calculation. If I look a little harder, 27 * 4. 20 * 4 = 80 7 * 4 =28 80 + 28 = 108. Being 62 so taught maths before calculators may have helped, but I just see the easy options. Now, if someone wants to know the answer to 1274 * 64 I'm probably going to ask for a pencil and paper, but I'm confident I'll get it right.
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  576.  @smilingnid4276  Frigates are smaller, faster, more maneuverable and have a single main gun deck. Used for scouting, commerce raiding etc. A ship of the line is designed to fight in the line of battle (hence the name), is heavier built, slower and will have two or three main gun decks. A razee frigate such as Indefatigable was usually a smaller/older ship of the line rebuilt with the upper main gun deck removed. So she is now considerably lighter, but as she retains her original masts and sails she's now more nimble. As they tended to retain the original lower gun deck battery they were also heavily armed for a frigate with a main battery of 24 pounders, where a normal frigate would have 12 or 18 pounders.
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  577.  @bkjeong4302  Yes, but if you have an even halfway decent AAA suite those low, slow, straight flying torpedo bombers are going to have a really hard day. Now, if you're going against merchant ships, maybe in the Med? Or ships at anchor, I'll mention the Med again because Taranto, you're good. At Midway the USN torpedo bombers were basically target practice, the AAA suite plus the CAP, the dive bombers did the damage. Now, I'll admit, at Midway the five carriers lost were all finished off by torpedoes. For Japanese losses they were launched by warships from their own side because they were unrecovarable. For the USA it was a Japanese submarine that put USS Yorktown down, taking the destroyer USS Hammann with her.
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  578.  @bkjeong4302  Sorry? Make your mind up. Your post that I was responding to stated "The real issue was the fact torpedo bombers far outranged battleship main guns.". Now in response you're saying "A good AA suite only helps you stay afloat. It doesn’t actually let you control the battlefield by attacking the enemy carrier.". So are we talking fighting battleships or carriers? Either way, a good AAA suite will help you stay afloat, at which point you have the potential to "control the battlefield" because you're still in the fight.
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  579. At a guess YouTube's algorythms didn't like it.
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  580. You are right, in the UK we do drive on the correct side of the road :-)
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