Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The Drydock - Episode 044" video.

There were so many reports from all navies in WWI and WWII of how ship's mascots contributed to the crew's morale that it just seems like modern foolishness to outlaw them, particularly cats, which serve a useful purpose aboard every ship. Sometimes things were so bad that passing around the ship's cats and dogs for a good petting were the only thing that kept the men going. I hope we don't have to go through another major conflict to find out the truth of this.
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The US navy's goal by mid-1944 was to have all destroyers assigned the Pacific theater that retained their twin quad torpedo launchers to be be fitted with at least ten 40mm barrels, those with a single quad launcher to have at 12 barrels, and the complete anti-kamikaze ships with no torpedo launchers were fitted with between 14 and 16 barrels. The most heavily armed were some Gearing class ships with a pair of quad 40mm mounts amidships in the same positions as the landed torpedo launchers, a pair of twin mounts opposite the bridge, and another pair of twin mounts aft ahead of the depth charge tracks replacing the previous three to five single 20mm mounts at the same location. This was a total of 20 barrels. At the same time, all the remaining single 20mm mounts were replaced with twin mounts. Most of these ships were used as radar pickets that were heavily attacked by Japanese aircraft once they realized ot importance of their early warning role. The ability of these ships to send up a hail of antiaircraft fire was a surprise to Japanese pilots and caused many suicide attacks to be broken up, especially when there were enough destroyers available to assign pairs to a radar picket station. The problems with this kind of heavy armament was not the stability issues that have been written about, it was where to berth and feed all the extra crew. Each quad mount required a crew of 8-10 and twins 4-5. that was a total additional crew just to man the mounts of 32-35 men compared to the original three twin mounts. This doesn't count the additional crew needed for ammunition handling, magazine manning, and machinist and gunners mates to repair and maintain the mounts. The additional electronics and Combat Information Centers already required an additional ten to fourteen men before the armament changes, so even the Grearings were hard pressed to find space for these crew, and it was even worse for the converted Fletchers and Sumners. Even the amount of extra provisions required was estimated to add some thirty tons to the displacement, not to mention the additional cooks and stewards needed. The USN before the kamikaze threat prided itself on every crew member having their own berth. By April, 1945, hot bunking, hammocks, and even deck sleeping was the norm. Many more complaints by the men centered more around the difficulties of getting a hot meal than the rough berthing. Letters home from Pacific theater destroyer crews told of waiting for up to two hours to get through the mess line, only to have that disrupted by general quarters for another air attack. Some gun and CIC crews ate nothing but sandwiches and coffee for days on end. If you want to start sailors to bitching, don't feed them hot meals, and the bitching from crews extended from letters to their families all the way to letters to their Congressmen and Senators.
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The Zumwalts. Easily the most disastrous class of USN naval vessels in modern times. A ship built to be armed with guns before the ammunitions had been proven, and the ammunition supplied never worked. Each ship has two 8" guns that take up space and weight and have no purpose. Due to the design of the guns, they can't even use the same ammunition as the 8"/55 guns on the Des Moines class. The only functioning gun armament are currently two 30mm chain guns. The ship is nearly the same size and tonnage as the Des Moines class while having less offensive capability than a Flight II Arleigh Burke. The three ships out of a planned thirty-two are the only ones that will ever be built as the other twenty-nine have been cancelled. The total program cost for these three ships is already at $23 billion and will probably add another $50 million before the final ship, the Lyndon B Johnson, has finished fitting out. The USN could have built ten Virginia class submarines for the same cost as these three white elephants.
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@TraditionalAnglican Yes, that's what I meant about cats also being useful aboard any ship. There's no ship of anything over 100 feet that's not infested with rats, and the good old tabby is the best control mechanism. You can't pass around the Orkin Man for a good petting either.
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@RedXlV I guess our modern navies don't get this. Poisoning rats is better than having some allergic cats around. Idiots.
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@WALTERBROADDUS Not this time, Walter. Congress pulled the plug and some admirals and civilian project managers st Bath Iron Works got early retirement or outright fired, a rare thing with naval procurement debacles. The Navy is now proposing to spend another $90 million to increase remote networking capability of the Zumwalts so these ships can use their stealth capabilities to somehow sneak out in front of the fleet and shoot down incoming missiles or aircraft with their paltry supply of missiles. Even worse, a Zumwalt has no ability to defend itself from enemy subs, so at least one non-stealthy destroyer would have to escort a Zumwalt, which kind of defeats the whole concept. The Navy is desperate to find some role for these ships, and will spend any amount of money they can get away with to do so. We wouldn't even have a third ship if not for Senator Susan Collins and her supporters doing a lot of behind the scenes arm twisting to keep Bath Iron Works shipbuilders working. It would have been cheaper to give each one of them a golden handshake rather than building another one of these floating holes to pour money into. Drach was certainly right to name this class one of the worst ever.
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@johnpjones1775 Well, there were a lot of dogs and cats that did just fine when their ship was under fire. Some of them even had little helmets and flak jackets. Back when my dad was in Navy (42-46), he didn't have a choice either. He was drafted. He wasn't able to make a choice not to go, so you'll have to excuse me if I don't feel a lot of moral pangs about having a mascot on a ship. I also can't think of one mascot killed under fire.
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A lot of splash distinguishing was done using a "scotch tape" range scale on the PPI scope, or the typical radar display we've all seen. The CIC crew knew how far their shells would travel within a range of about 30 meters. They also knew how far the target was from their ship, also within about 30 meters for a cruiser and above size target. They literally used a piece of scotch tape with that data in pencil on a piece of tape and paste it on the screen. That served as a visual marker between the range of a splash and range of the target, and a new tape was made fr each salvo Since no other ship could have been firing at exactly the same time at the same target, shell splashes for your ship could be pretty accurately determined by watching the flight of your shells as pips on the PPI along the scotch tape scale. A range difference between a splash and the target that didn't match your scotch tape scale couldn't be yours, only the ones that matched your scale. It's really quite a simple concept once you understand it, but one that wasn't part of the normal radar features at the time. The Navy crewman who first came up with the scotch tape scale is lost in the sands of time, but the scale was in wide use in the Pacific by the middle of 1944. These innovations were distributed to the fleet and the Allies using the Combat Information Center Magazine starting in July, 1944. These are mostly available online at https://maritime.org/doc/cic/ and make fascinating reading for electronics nerd types like me. From reading the magazines, it seems the scotch tape scale was already known by July 1944, so some early electronics nerd sailor had already worked out the general concept by then. The scale was added electronically to postwar radars, so the the vast supply of scotch tape needed in a CIC faded by then.
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Well, this was a first. I was actually asleep before the Drydock posted for once. I get to watch it rested instead of nearly passing out the entire time. :-) The Texas isn't in the best location to attract tourists so moving it closer the Houston would probably be a good thing. No one outside the project management team knows where Texas will be moved and how it will be moored, but at least there's now going to be enough money available for extensive repairs.
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@WALTERBROADDUS Good idea. They would make very impressive deep sea fishing boats. I'll bet guys would pay big money to fish off a flight deck with the helicopter available to lift the marlins and sharks from the water for fishermen too lazy to go through the typical long battle it takes to land them. Put out a floating target shaped like a pirate ship and let them take a few shots with the 57mm for a hefty extra fee.
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@cassandra8984 My guess is there were hundreds of cats on the ships of various navies in WWII. While some were kept as mascot, the majority were kept to do what cats have historically done well - kill rats and mice. Rats may not be as big a problem as they were in the age of sail, but anyone who has spent any time on a modern ship, whether it be a commercial vessel or warship, knows that rats are still aboard today. There wouldn't still be the need for rat shields like those seen at https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-rat-shields-fitted-to-the-mooring-lines-of-a-ship-the-discs-attached-111662093.html if they weren't.
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@stevevalley7835 Indeed, but we at least got mostly functional aircraft with the B-2, F-22, and F-35. Sure, the Independence class LCS (now classed as fast frigates) had massive cost overruns and can't defend themselves in high intensity combat. Sure, the Freedom class ships had massive cost overruns and has an armament more typical of a patrol boat on the displacement and overall size of a Gearing class destroyer, but at least we got vessels that have a working main gun, even if it is a 57mm popgun. The Zumwalts bring all these issues to a whole new level, leaving us with a heavy cruiser size ship unable to defend itself from almost any threat and a flank speed that is 3 knots slower than the 1948 Des Moines class heavy cruisers, a ship with actual offensive and defensive armament that all worked. We ended up three really cool looking admiral's barges. As you say, this should be a scandal of epic proportions if the population wasn't already numbed by other scandals.
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@kemarisite My mistake. The original plan was to have 203mm guns but they couldn't make it work with the guided munitions because of blast effect. They went down to 155mm and found out firing guided missiles from big rifles still didn't work. My understanding is the barrels are only nominally 155mm. They are something like 147mm at the muzzle because the barrel was pinched to increase muzzle velocity and range, so standard 155mm rounds won't work. I don't know if the Navy even has any 155mm rounds left in storage considering the last ship with that gun was the Oklahoma City, and that was decommissioned in 1979. 40 year old shells would probably have some serious ballistics issues if they were used. The Army 6" guns would be 6"/45 in Navy parlance compared to the Cleveland class having 6"/47 guns. My understanding is there were enough differences in the projectiles and bagged charges between the two guns that ammunition was not interchangeable. Since the Navy no longer has any 6"/47 guns, the easiest way to give the Zumwalts some kind of offensive gun would be to use the Army 155mm "Long Tom". The problem is...well, it's from the Army. The Navy had enough heartburn over using single mount air cooled Army 40mm Bofors guns when there were no Navy Bofors guns available. The idea of a main battery coming directly from the Army is just unthinkable to the admirals. Have you ever seen the Army mule and Navy goat go at it before the Army/Navy game? No, an Army gun is logical, but not possible.
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@kemarisite Indeed, but that would also mean admitting failure. All they have to do is say they are still doing research on the problem until all three ships are scrapped. I'm sure the admirals hoping against hope no major conflict breaks out before they find a way to park them in some quiet reserve fleet while research continues.
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@WALTERBROADDUS Kind of like closing the barn door after the horses have left. The whole point of the Zumwalts was they were going to be replacements for the battleships and gun cruisers we no longer had. We still have no NGF support ships and will have to rely on large numbers of Burke class destroyers and their 5" guns with a range of 9.5 miles. Even the surface warfare role depends on destroyers to escort these "stealth" ships since they have no antisubmarine defense, which defeats the whole purpose of a stealth ship.
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