Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "Drachinifel"
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Drach: In the late 1960's, the Australian Navy, the British Navy, and the US Navy bought virtually identical guided missile destroyers (DDG's). In about 1982 following a joint exercise, a DDG from each navy was tied up in our harbour (in Australia) and open to the public. I went aboard each one and struck up conversations with crew, and so got detailed tours not everyone got. Now, the Australian ship was just the ship, maintained, but showing its age. The British ship was in better condition and had all sorts of weapons stored in different places and some ship systems parts. The American ship, although more than 15 years old and having steamed far more sea miles than the others, looked factory fresh and, as well as weapons, had stored in all sorts of nooks and crannies, lots of large toolkits, spare parts and power tools ranging up to a toolroom lathe. If the Australian ship got some damage in a fight, they would have to go back to port for repairs. To a large extent this was also true of the British ship. But not the American ship - as well as their stores, they could make quite a range of parts themselves, at sea. And if the DDG crew couldn't make it, their aircraft carrier in the task group probably could.
How would the WW2-era Japanese navy stack up in this regard? Level of maintenance care, spares on board, and ability to make parts? Not too good at all I suspect.
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Drach: I've enjoyed your informative Rum Ration videos. I have some comments on this one:-
1. In the Human Factors section at 8:52 you state that anyone can use a spanner or wrench. Don't discount this factor. My generation of males (1940's born) and the previous generation. in western countries, were familiar with spanners and tools and our primary interest as children was in mechanical things, just as today's youth are interested in computers. When I was at university doing engineering, there were a few girls on the course. The girls were smart, just as good as us males in math and physics etc, but their lack of familiarity with hand tools slowed them down considerably in lab and workshop tasks. We also had some central African chaps studying under some international aid scholarship programme - they had been plucked from native villages and sent over. They were really smart guys, the village swots, but again, their lack of familiarity with hand tools made getting the lab work done and passing some subjects difficult. Some lab setups I could get set up in under a minute could take them half an hour, simply because they had never used tools before.
2. I think you need more emphasis on Japanese culture. There is something about Japanese culture that inhibits innovation and learning from experience, and this permeates everything they did. It persists today. Every technical and management breakthough in Japanese industry has been imported - quality management, electronics, nuclear power, whatever. In WW2 this meant that they started the war with 1930's technology and military strategy, and they ended it with the same strategy. As you said, the US learnt from their experience - but in all aspects, not just damage control.
3. Just as important, if not more important, was the American way of doing intensive civilian research to find better and better ways, just because of the principle that there must be a better way, if only we go look for it. Don't wait for a problem in the field, go do research anyway. The Japanese never even thought about looking. Apart form nuclear weapons, the most notable and well known consequence of this was radar: The British thought that if only they had a compact way of generating huge amounts of pulsed ultra-high radio frequency power, they could have decent radar, and they found it in the cavity magnetron - a 1920's Japanese university invention. Which the Japanese military and military contractors remained totally ignorant of, even at the end of the war. No doubt this difference in thinking influenced damage control technology and process as well.
4. The Japanese were absurbly bad planners, in all aspects requiring planning. That's why they started a war they could not win. It's why their experienced (supposedly crack units from China) troops and officers, outnumbering the Australians by more than 4:1, most of whom had only completed half their basic training, lost in New Guinea. Because of totally incompetent planning, the Japs had no appropriate logistics and starved, were unprepared for jungle diseases, and even had death and serious illness from eating poisonous food, because their officers were too stupid to tell them not to eat it. And that sort of bad planning will have affected damage control.
5. As early post-war books such as "Destroyer Captain" by Tameichi Hara made clear, stupid at-sea drinking customs and alcoholism amongst Japanese navy officers was a serious problem. You can't expect to make immediate decisive and correct orders if you are drunk on sake or suffering from a serious hangover. Especially when an enemy is making holes in your ship and things are going rapidly bad.
(In WW2 Japanese navy, a junior officer could at any time propose a toast to his superior. The superior had to accept (you and him drinking a cup of sake) and make a counter toast, or he would loose face/respect. This meant that the higher in rank a Japanese officer rose, the more alcohol he consumed each day. And if as a junior officer, you are not in the good books, what better way to avoid punishment than to arrange for you and your friends to keep making toasts and get the old so-and-so legless.)
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