Youtube comments of Sar Jim (@sarjim4381).

  1. I got my masters in biological psychology in 1976, and the Monkey Mother experiment was still a matter of hot debate. The study, which had hundreds of hours of film and photos associated with it, was almost impossible for most humans to properly evaluate because most of us would have done the same thing as Mr. Difficult would have done - try to comfort the lonely and sad monkeys because it was just too heart wrenching not to. Watching the films of monkeys and the scary objects with no cloth mother to comfort them was just too much for some of my fellow students to watch. It was nearly impossible to write up unbiased study summary because some of the monkeys were treated so badly. The study gave us some insight into the importance of a mother's love and comfort, but the need to raise some monkeys without that love just overwhelmed the study's positive results. It is a good example of why many behavioral researchers use things like rats instead of monkeys. Monkeys just look and behave too much like us.
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  2. Amazingly, the Swordfish ended the war as a radar equipped, rocket firing, antisubmarine and antishipping bomber. This one ancient and obsolescent outlived two other more modern types meant to replace it. No other British carrier plane sunk more Axis shipping than the Swordfish.
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  3. How did he ever get in a peer reviewed journal without out disclosing his sources and data? Who reviewed his study? Something stinks here.
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  4. Holy Crap. This gun sold for $132,250! That's a nice boat for the soldier who picked this up off the battlefield.
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  5. The French Resistance forces were well known for executing any Germans that fell into their hands. US Army forces also freed German prisoners from the French to prevent an all out massacre of POWs.
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  6. While the Panther was inferior to the MiG in almost every flight characteristic, the two things it had going for it was better fire control and better guns. The 37mm Nudelman cannon was a bomber destroyer and not something useful in fighter to fighter combat. Its rate of fire was only 40 rounds per minutes and it only carried 40 rounds of ammunition when fully loaded. It was a devastating if it hit, but the chances of hitting a Panther tearing past you at 570 mph was slim to none. The Nudelman 23mm cannon were much better suited for dogfighting.but the engineering evaluation of the MiG showed it was overweight. To reduce weight, the number of cannon was reduced from three to two, and the ammunition per gun to only 60 rounds. The gun was very fast firing at 850 rounds per minute, a good feature in jet combat, but the MiG carried a mere 60 rounds per gun. A pilot had about 10 seconds worth of shooting before he was empty. The Panther had four 20mm AN/M3 cannon. They fired at the slower rate of 700 rounds a minute, but the Panther carried 190 rounds per gun. All four cannon could fire for about 23 seconds before the Panther ran dry. The Panther also had the advantage of a computing optical gunsight compared to the less sophisticated and less accurate gyroscopic gunsight carried by the MiG. Combined with a rugged airframe and superb Navy pilots, the Panther managed to bring down seven MiGs for the loss of two Panthers during the Korean War. With the arrival of the Cougar, a much more capable aircraft developed directly from the Panther, the Panther continued on in the fighter-bomber role. The last Panthers weren't retired until the mid to late 60's.
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  7. Good heavens! I don't mind getting shot, but I didn't sign up to get eaten.
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  8. Gunfire and rats running around the alleys. Welcome to Detroit.
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  9. My guess is that British and American officers and crews would have fought to the last man if they had any idea what lay ahead for them as prisoners. I know I would have.
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  10. This was really a classic type of Japanese operation. Overly complicated, dependant on split second timing, not enough manpower or weapons, no back up plan, and using a kamikaze type attack rather than the parachute assault the soldiers had actually been trained to carry out. Japanese intelligence of American strength on Okinawa was nearly non-existent, and the numbers of troops and fighters already on the island was far in excess of their estimates. A largely nuisance raid like Operation Gi-gou could never seriously impair America's ability to continue bombing the home islands. Some historians believe Operation Gi-gou was simply an army demonstration of how they too were willing to engage in organized suicide attacks. Operation Ten-Go, the doomed suicide attack of the Yamato and her escorts headed to Okinawa, happened five weeks before Operation Gi-gou, and there was great pressure on the army to show they were fully committed to the defense of the homeland. This operation was to answer the criticism of the army that Japanese soldiers, while they fought to death in defensive battles, had no offensive plans, especially for suicide attacks, while the navy and air force were losing thousands of men a week in such attacks. The fruitless Operation Gi-gou would seem to have been a political response on the part of the army to save face and show the emperor they were also fully committed. On such things did the last days of the war turn for Japan.
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  11. US pilots knew the Russians were flying the MiG-15 since all the pilot chatter was in Russian.
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  12.  @sadwingsraging3044  141 US soldiers were executed in WWII, all except one for murder, rape, or both. The sole exception was the rather famous case of Eddie Slovik, executed by shooting on January 31, 1945 for desertion. The military had long =feared an outbreak of murder, rape, and/or looting as the military began to take over enemy countries. They used the executions and a way to underline the military's resolve not to let this happen. Given the millions of troops involved with the invasion and occupation of Axis countries, the number of US servicemen who were involved in such crimes was far lower than would have been expected, but the idea you'd be executed if you committed such crimes, or at least would if you were caught, seemed to have a salutary effect in diminishing such crimes.
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  13. Churchill was always ahead of other allied leaders in understanding what the Soviets might do at the end of the war to consolidate control over new territory. He could use the newly occupied lands as bargaining chips for areas Stalin really wanted. Denmark was one such area, and Churchill was convinced that Stalin was going to seize Denmark. Kremlin plans discovered after the fall of the USSR showed that Churchill was mostly right. The remnant nazi government under Doenitz lasted just long enough to frustrate Stalin's plan.
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  14. As usual, it take a number of failures happening in just the right order to cause a disaster. This is also why airplanes crash.
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  15. Most of those guns were carried in parachute packs as a survival weapon. They weren't carried as a sidearm. It was the weight limits of early ejection seats that made the overall weight of every item in the pack important.
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  16. First, the U-571 probably had no deck gun, or at least a large caliber deck gun. They had been removed from almost all ocean going boats by the start of 1945 or earlier as it was far too dangerous to try to sink enemy ships by gunfire. She carried a quad 20mm flak gun and a twin 37mm AA gun. Throwing the ammo and torpedo detonators overboard was part of the surrender order sent by Doenitz, so that's not out of the ordinary. Some boats even jettisoned their antiaircaft guns as well so there was no armament above decks. Firing off the torpedoes to lessen weight and give the men more room for the voyage also makes sense. Throwing the logbook, ship's documents, code books, and the men's identification overboard was part of normal Kriegsmarine policy if a ship knew it was going to surrender and had time to jettison these items. Sabotage of the engines ensured the boat wouldn't be of immediate use ot the enemy. It's unlikely that Wermuth was the boat's commander before the surrender. He was the equivalent rank of a Lieutenant (j.g.) in the USN. No submarine would normally have such a low ranking officer as captain. Even that late in the war, a full Lieutenant was the lowest rank to command a sub. My guess is they learned of the surrender during the unexplained two days in port at Skagerrak, Norway. I suspect they were actually in port on May 8, the date of surrender, not the March 5 he told interrogators. Disagreements between Wermuth and the actual captain broke out about what to do after the surrender. Wermuth wanted to make for a neutral port while the captain wanted to surrender and then return to Germany. As was the case with several other subs in Norway at the time, those who wanted to stay left the boat to make it back to Germany on some other German vessel while Wermuth and the remaining crew started out on their long voyage. He may have taken on some German sailors also wanting to make a breakout to flesh out the crew. Wermuth stated they travelled 66 days underwater using their snorkel. I assuming they were alternating engines, something they would have done to extend the life of at least one of them. Wermuth stated he was originally going to try for Spain or Portugal but allied air patrols were constant and he didn't think he could make it to either port unharmed. The other alternative was Argentina. Wermuth may not have known that Argentina had declared war on Germany since it would have happened while he was enroute to Norway, and he was presumably a busy man after that. He knew that Argentina had a large German population and the government had Nazi sympathizers. If my guesses about what happened are right, an underwater voyage of 66 days would have been about right running underwater at no more that seven knots for most of the voyage. Wermuth hated the Americans and the British. He was an ardent Nazi and expected to be tortured and imprisoned if he fell into allied hands. Some or all of his crew may have expected the same given Nazi propaganda about the brutal way German POWs were treated. I've never been able to find out where Wermuth was born, He was said to have no friends and never discussed his family with his men. It's possible his home was now in the Soviet area of Germany, and he didn't relish being welcomed home by the Soviets, who had a special distaste for U-boat captains and officers. Whatever the reason, it appears Wermuth and his men decided to take their chances in Argentina. His epic voyage still remains clouded in mystery, but no evidence has ever been brought force to support any of the many conspiracy theories about the U-530.
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  17. My brother served in the Delta from 1968-69 and tells me some of the M37E1 guns in 7.62 were mounted on convoy escort jeeps and supply trucks to keep the heads of the VC down when traversing dicey spots. He was an artillery gunner at a firebase, and he took one off a damaged truck and mounted it on an ARVN M1919A2 tripod for firebase defense. The guys liked it better than the M60 because it could fire all night long while never needing a barrel change, and all they had to do was dump a bucket of water on the barrel when it started glowing red.
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  18. Thankfully for the Frey Bentos crew, the panzerfaust had not yet been invented.
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  19. It became pretty clear by the mid-30's that the 8" guns of the Lexingtons were a lot of weight and space for something that was unlikely to have ever been used in battle. There were plans to replace them with 5"/38 guns after their outstanding trials successes in the first postwar destroyers. However, the one good thing about the 8" guns was they received the then experimental FC (Mk3) radar fire control director. The Lexington received two of these in late-1941 and participated in trials of the first radar directed surface gunfire. It turned out to be accurate enough that it was able to get a fix within 50 meters on the range and direction of a surface target. It worked particularly well on the Lexington due to less local interference by the superstructure compared to a battleship, and the operators on Lexington were able to confirm distance to target by being able to track her own shell splashes, using lobe switching. The FC (Mk3) was installed on a number of battleships in late 1941, and the lessons learned from the Lexington were used to improve accuracy with the FC (Mk3). One of the first FC (Mk3) battleship units was installed on the USS Washington, and her radar operators, trained by the Lexington operators, were able to straddle the Japanese battleship Kirishima on her first salvo during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, probably saving the South Dakota by doing so. In a way, the Lexington actually did participate in surface action almost six months after she was sunk.
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  20. "Queen Mary was somewhat more performance impaired, as it exploded..." Nothing like the dry and sardonic humor of a Brit.
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  21. The Germans never thought that the British could have developed the cavity magnetron for microwave radar at the end of 1943. They understood the concept of the cavity magnetron, but they used the klystron tube as a more stable source of UHF radar signals up to about 750 MHz. The British vessel's true microwave radar transmitting at 3 GHz was never seen by the Germans, since their radar warning receivers only went up to about 900 MHz. British radar receivers were able to pick up the German radar signals from about 50 miles out. The Germans also needed about 4 kw of power to get only about half the range as the British obtained with 1 kw of power. This was a big deal in ship's electrical systems never constructed to handle these additional power demands. The Battle of the North Cape demonstrated once and forever the primacy of ships that had the most advanced radars and best trained radar operators. Before this, many senior naval officers considered radar as little more than a technological toy developed by the big brains back home. The other radar lesson from the battle was the need to develop smaller radar antennas that were less prone to battle damage and the overriding importance of redundant cabling so a lucky hit couldn't sever the one cable set used operate the radar.
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  22. "Ghost Riders" is an amazing book that tells an amazing story. Everyone that fancies himself as a WWII historian should read it.
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  23. Well, Mauser is much easier to spell and pronounce, so there's that.
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  24. Just don't let Argentina find out about this. :-)
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  25. I visited the Texas last year. She is not being neglected. A large crew of volunteers supplemented by paid contractors when needed was hard at work when I was there sanding and painting rusted surfaces and reinforcing the interior of the hull in preparation for dry berthing. The money for this project is already in place, raised by the Battleship TEXAS Foundation and Texas state bonds. The problem had been required environmental impact reports that have sucked up a lot of money and delayed the project by over two years. The results of the reports were supposed to be finished by 2015. As any of you who have ever worked with environmental engineering consultants know, they never finish on time. The report was finally submitted, all 600 plus pages worth, and another year has been consumed addressing the results of the report. Of course, another round of responses to the responses was needed, and the vast majority of issues have been mitigated. Another impact to the project schedule has been hurricanes and tropical storms. The last two years in the Gulf of Mexico has been a time of intense hurricane and tropical storm activity affecting Houston and, as a result, the Texas. The storms caused the workers on the Texas to be evacuated, and flooding in the Houston area delayed any work on the ship and the dry berth project by months. It was hoped that the project could be completed y 2018, but now it looks more likely that it will be before hurricane season in 2020...assuming the Gulf behaves itself in 2019. All the preliminary engineering and construction planning is done for the dry berth and the sitework was started. We'll see what happens going forward. The bottom line is the ship is not just rotting away at anchor now and there's hope for the future.
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  26. LOL. Youtube's closed captions thinks Admiral Doenitz's real name is Admiral Donuts. The are all sorts of funny things coming from this system.
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  27. Even your cat wants to listen to your history stories. ;-)
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  28. This was a great discussion of the alternative outcomes. I suspect this was the last battle the Japanese would have had any chance of winning, as long as winning means "we sunk more ships that you did". In terms of the overall outcome of the war, the shipyards were pouring out huge numbers of the Fletcher class and their bigger and more dangerous brothers, the Sumner and Gearing classes. Vast numbers of Cleveland light and Baltimore heavy cruisers were still coming down the ways, not to mention the fearsome Iowa class. US carriers, from escort to fleet types, were also being commissioned and stationed in the Pacific, so any Japanese warship could count on meeting not only generally superior US surface ships but being swarmed by hundreds of US aircraft. As a final blow, the British Pacific Fleet shows up in January, 1945 with four more modern battleships, six fleet carriers, fifteen light carriers, and eleven excellent cruisers. This doesn't even take into account all the other smaller ships. The combined US and British logistic trains meant almost any ship damaged in battle could either be put back in service in a few days or made ready to sail to a rear repair area for heavier work. Japanese ships damaged really depended on whatever a crew could scrounge for repair work, all the while trying to remain camouflaged and dodging constant air attacks. By early 1945, very few ships were able to run the gauntlet of US subs to get back to mainland dockyards, and most of those they did were further damaged or sunk by allied air attacks. One can only wonder about the state of morale of many Japanese sailors in 1945. The Japanese were well and truly stuffed long before the events of August, 1945.
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  29. I've never understood why Watson was the one reprimanded. He was sent to sea with only 75% of the normal training for sea duty. The ground crew had failed to check the radios before takeoff, and the radios on that aircraft had been marked up as inoperative after the last landing. Watson couldn't check his radios, as he would have normally done before getting out of sight of the carrier, since he was under orders to maintain radio silence. He had less than 100 hours of flight time on the Harrier, and I suspect many more experienced pilots than him couldn't have done a better job trying to set the plane down on a couple containers on the pitching deck of a civilian ship smaller than the average frigate, all the while avoiding the ship's rigging. I'm sure the embarrassment of the Admiralty combined with being forced to pay out £570,000 in salvage fees to the Spanish shipping company were the real reasons Watson was forced to take the fall.
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  30. Those Soviet babes were deadly!
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  31. The Coast Guard cutter was the USCGC Modoc (WPG-46). She really played a more critical role in running down the Bismarck than she is often given credit for. She was on Greenland ice patrol and had responded to an SOS from several torpedoed ships from a convoy in the Bay of Biscay, along with her sister Northland and the much smaller USCGC General Greene. While rescuing survivors, she was amazed to see the grey outline of a large battleship loom up out of the gloom. The Modoc's radio operator had copied the British message ordering all RN ships to intercept the Bismarck. The captain was therefore aware of the rough position of the Bismark, but never expected to find herself this close to the path of the ship. She signaled Bismarck with signal lamps and radio but received no reply as she steamed past in silence. The Modoc's radioman immediately got on the aircraft radio the Modoc carried, raising that American piloted Catalina. She was able to give the Catalina the last seen position of the Bismarck. The Catalina was able to locate the Bismarck within fifteen minutes of getting the message from the Modoc, and was then able to notify Coastal Command. Thus, Modoc played an important part in the final location of the Bismarck. The three cutters continued to rescue men in the sea, all the while frantically signalling the Prince of Wales of their identities as Norfolk prepared to lob eight inch shells toward what it presumed to be a German destroyer. The Bismarck was already past the cutters, and the PoW was able to relay the cutter's friendly status to the other British ships and stop the Norfolk from opening fire, helped by a timely jam of her forward turrets. The three cutters patrolled the area looking for survivors but found none, only wreckage, floating corpses, and body parts, before making way again for Greenland. It was the closest to a major historic battle ever witnessed by Coast Guard Cutters
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  32. Andre the Giant's pocket gun.
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  33. The good old days. Just step out the factory door and start shooting up a historic structure.
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  34. Well, the good thing with the Kamchatka was she was only armed with 47 mm guns. That limited the damage she could cause to other Russian ships.
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  35. The main advantage the US had at the time of the Berlin Airlift was we had the bomb while the USSR didn't. Stalin knew he could only push the US so far before the threat of nuclear retaliation became a certainty. That was communicated to Stalin by multiple diplomatic and media sources as the situation became more tense. The USSR didn't know about the size of our nuclear arsenal, but they also knew the B-45 Tornado was coming online in increasing numbers, and that the B-45 was probably nuclear capable. The F-84G was also coming online. While it wasn't nuclear capable at the time of the airlift, the US spread the disinformation that it was, and we had developed a tactical nuclear weapon deliverable by single seat fighters. The Soviets also knew we were working on developing nuclear artillery. In fact, the "Atomic Annie" M65 cannon and thermonuclear rounds wouldn't be ready for another five years, but the Soviets didn't know that, and we made sure not to disabuse them of the notion it might be ready. In the end, Stalin blinked due to fears that any further pushing would result in an attack to which the Soviets didn't have a response. The nuclear ace up our sleeve probably saved the world from what would have become the start of a conventional WWIII.
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  36. The French always loved the concept of huge, multi turret tanks. This was probably a result of having naval architects also working on land tanks. The concept of a land dreadnought seemed perfectly reasonable to them. In addition to this WWI monstrosity, the French designed the WWII version, an even more useless FCM F1, a 140 ton tank that thankfully never got beyond the wooden mockup stage.
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  37. I can only imagine how miserable the crew of U-862 must have been patrolling in tropical waters. German subs had no air conditioning, and their ventilation systems were built for heating the ship in the North Atlantic, not dealing with 90 degree waters in the Pacific. The log of another U-boat, U-195, tells of condensation below decks so bad that green strings of moss hung from every horizontal surface and water ran down the interior hull, along piping, and dropped in the men's faces while they slept. It was rare for a German sub to reach Penang with any working radios because the condensation had shorted them all out. The Italian subs weren't obsolescent. In many ways they were superior to the German boats for Pacific operations. Because they build to operate in the warm Mediterranean, their ventilation systems were far better than on U-boats. They had higher surface speeds and marginally higher underwater speeds. The Italian boats were just too large and clumsy to operate successfully against Atlantic convoys. Their size and long range (more than 10,000nm) made them ideal transport boats between Europe and Japanese ports for a two way trade in strategic and scarce minerals and supplies. Two Italian boats became the only Axis naval vessels to serve under the flags of all three Axis powers.
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  38. As our time machine transports us back 40 years ago. The old man just finished cutting the front lawn. The kids are playing cowboys and indians with the other neighbor kids in the back. Mom is inside getting snacks and drinks together because it's their night to host the bridge club. The most important news is how the Tigers are doing this season. Now the big social event for the week is standing around watching the cops as they clean up the remains of four fatal shootings. How many people want to get a ticket on that time machine?
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  39. Considering this was all done from 13,000 feet with a Mark I Eyeball bombsight, the results were pretty good.
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  40. I'm sure you were just being ironic about the wreck, but it's no longer radioactive...or at least that's what we were told when our party dived on it. This was in 1990, and I'm still alive at age 72, so I don't think effects were two bad. There are so many wrecks to dive on within five miles of Kwajalein that it would take months to dive on them all. In addition to the Prinz Eugen, we dove on a couple of good sized Japanese transport ships, a subchaser, and a number of aircraft, including a group of B-25's and a remarkably intact PBM Mariner. We only had seven dive days although we spent eleven days in the islands. It wasn't cheap, but it was the trip of a lifetime.
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  41. I can't imagine being a German sailor having to coal up every week in the tropical heat and humidity. Life must have been hell for them even without the risk of enemy action.
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  42. Terrible accident. I had to undergo hazmat response training for my job, and the SL-1 accident was used as an example of a nuclear reactor accident that would require local resources. The control rod design was always an issue with these small reactors since there was no way to restart a cold reactor without someone manually withdrawing a fuel rod by hand. The need for portability precluded any kind of machinery to do the job. Then reactor only contain 40 of the normal 59 fuel rods since the reactor was only being used for power and not to test providing steam for space heating. as part of the specs for the reactor. The fewer control rods meant the withdrawal of the control rod would make the reactor critical much faster, and that's just what happened. As to why Byrne decided to withdraw the control rod as far as he did, we will never know. The best guess, minus the suicide idea, is the rod was stuck and, in the process of yanking on it. it came free faster than assumed and caused the accident. The Army CID and Atomic Energy Commission investigators along with the Idaho State Police spent quite a bit of time investigating all aspects of the three men's lives as well as lives of their families. Byrnes' wife was having an affair with another man, prompting the divorce case. It was not with Richard McKinley however. Could it have been suicide on the part of Byrnes? It's possible, but the stuck fuel rod, something that happened six times in the previous year, seems a lot more likely of an explanation. My training was mostly that if I saw steam coming from a reactor building, get back in my vehicle and hightail it out of there.
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  43. Forget my lousy AK for home defense. I need a 37mm cannon!
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  44. It's not just rich white guys having fun with these. I have a Coastie friend that was involved in drug interdiction while working with the Colombian Coast Guard. There were sections of the coast they made sure they stayed at least 3,000 yards offshore because some of the drug cartel soldiers were using Barrett rifles to discourage naval vessels from investigating too closely. That was when there were actual drug running subs in use. He was on an 87 foot patrol boat armed with two M2 50's and engaged in a two hour running gun battle with a position onshore armed with at least one and possibly two Barrett rifles. The problem was solved when a Colombian Navy frigate arrived and ended any opposition with its 76 mm gun.
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  45. And fast forward to 2018 and planes and submarines are the battleships of today. Although Brazil once again had a second hand carrier, this time French rather than British, the worn out condition of the carrier combined with several major fires since being brought on strength in 2000 led to her decommissioning in 2017 and probable scrapping. Given the need for the Brazilians to have something that looked like a carrier in the fleet, she scrambled to make the British and offer they couldn't refuse and purchased the ex-HMS Ocean, renaming her the Atlantico. Since she is a mere 20 years old, the youngest major ship purchased from another navy since the Brooklyn class light cruisers in 1951, there's some chance that she may remain in service for another 15 years or so as a helicopter carrier. The dreams of Brazil to operate a true fixed wing carrier appear to be dashed at the moment. Argentina and Chile are no longer major players in South America. Argentina is in deep financial trouble, and her surface fleet has been relegated to possibly a few corvettes. Chile maintains a much more effective navy, but the youngest combat ships are the ex British Duke class frigates at 28 years old with other classes now being 30 years old or or older. Chilleans now seem content to control the Pacific coastline of her long borders while maintaining a navy strong enough to dissuade the Argentine and Peruvian Navies from any mischief. Speaking of Peru, while she wasn't part of the early 20th century arms race, she has now modernized most of her vessels and is probably the equal of Chile and much stronger than Argentina. The newest race is for submarines and naval aircraft. The Brazilians are still talking about building a nuclear sub, and Brazil, Peru, and Chile will all have air-independent submarines sometime in the 2020's. AI subs will be the new Dreadnoughts of the 21st century. Brazil is looking toward Embraer to build a new maritime patrol aircraft that would be the equal of the P-3 Orion, as well as maintaining their current fleet of upgraded Skyhawks, aircraft that don't have a carrier to operate from after a long battle with the Air Force to allow the Navy to operate fixed wing combat aircraft. There are rumors that Peru is in talks with Russia for a new maritime patrol platform as well as new SU-35s that could serve as maritime strike aircraft. Chile may cooperate with Brazil and Embraer in purchasing a new maritime patrol aircraft while continuing to upgrade its considerable fleet of F-16s. The Dreadnought race may be over but the arms race in South America continues unabated.
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  46. Good for him. Pollock's flight is the stuff of legend among pilots worldwide. It has been said by some uncharitable types it was unfortunate that the Hunter wasn't bombed up and gave Parliament a proper beating up. Wilson and Labour were disasters for more than just the RAF.
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  47. The prohibition against members of the former royal family serving in the military is no longer in effect. Georg Friedrich, the Prince of Prussia, is now 35 and served a two year commision in the alpine troops of the German Army, and was commissioned a major in the reserves at the end of his service. He is reputed to be a top notch skier and was able to outski most others in his company. He's also an expert mountain climber and was considered to be an asset to his unit. He is also the last heir to the throne so the royal line will die with him.
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  48. In addition to the Hipper being attacked by a blazing zombie ship headed straight for it with siren wailing, another strange incident occurred with one of Hipper's Arado Ar 196a float planes. It had taken off on a scouting flight on the morning of April 9, 1940. Due to the damage to the Hipper from the ramming, it was unable to return to the Hipper before it ran out of fuel. The crew then landed off the village of Eide and paddled ashore in their emergency raft. They posed as tourists trying to buy gas for their stranded car. Even though the locals didn't know Norway had been invaded, they were suspicious and called the local police - all three of them. After a short tussle, the identity papers on the two men (Ltn Polzin and Obit Techam) revealed them to be German navy pilots. This was shortly confirmed when a fishing boat towing the float plane returned to harbor. The crew were arrested and the aircraft turned over to the Royal Norwegian Navy Flying Service. They hastily painted out the German markings, substituted Norwegian insignia, and flew off to repel the Germans. The Norwegian Navy had a relatively large number of floatplanes. They were familiar with flying them, and several Norwegian pilots that understood German were recruited to fly the plane since they could understand the gauges and German instrument labels. The Arado flew several reconnaissance missions for the Norwegians and British, eventually ending up in an as hoc squadron of two British twin engine Walrus float planes, a Norwegian M.F. 11 floatplane, and the captured Arado. The British were eager to examine the Arado since it was the most modern float plane in German service. The British wanted to return to Britain before their planes were lost in the deteriorating situation in Norway, and the Norwegians wanted to fly to Britain to get modern planes and return to Norway to fight to the end. Plans were hastily made to fly this motley flotilla to a British seaplane base in the early morning of April 18. The two Norwegian pilots were not to return until 1945. The hazardous five hour flight went off without a hitch...until they got close to the British base. The Walrus's crew didn't have current radio codes or frequencies, the Arado had a German radio that couldn't operate on British frequencies, and the M.F. 11 didn't have a radio at all. The flight was picked up on radar and Gloster Gladiators were launched to intercept what was assumed to be an enemy flight. The two Walrus were faster than the Arado or M.F. 11 so they were ahead them on the flight. When the British fighter pilots spotted them, they knew the Arado was German and assumed the M.F. 11 was an unknown German type, since they appeared to be chasing the Walruses. They moved in for the kill, downing the M.F. 11 before the Walruses circled back, frantically wagging their wings, and the attack ceased. The pilot of the M.F. 11, a Lieutenant Diesen, was able to crash land on the water uninjured, and he and his crew were rescued. The story of the Admiral Hipper's float plane doesn't end here. The British started testing the Arado immediately, and personnel of the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment (MAEE) started to catalogue all the parts and make blueprints. A Fleet Air Arm commander was given flying duties to report on the attributes of the plane. All went well until April 26. The Arado landed safely after its fourth test flight. What happened next is a little murky, but it appears a strong wind gust got under the wing of the plane and, despite frantic efforts to save it, the fated Arado tipped over and sank in 150 feet of water. It was raised several days later but was too damaged to fly again. The engine fuselage, and instruments were examined and provided valuable data to the MAEF, and some of the features made it into later British float planes. Some bits are still left at the British and Norwegian navy's museums.
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  49. De Ruyter was still a fighting admiral ten years after Medway. He fought in the Battle of Augusta (or Agosta) in 1677 while fighting the French to an inconclusive outcome, mainly due to his death after being hit by a cannonball. De Ruyter is considered one of the greatest admirals and tacticians of any era and any country. He is a national hero in the Netherlands. Since 1677, and to this day, the Dutch fleet's flagship has always been named the De Ruyter.
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  50. I was involved in dam safety work for almost 20 years. Completion bias is probably the biggest enemy of good engineering that exists, but this is especially true for dams. There aren't many locations that meet the geologic, geographic, and financial conditions needed to construct a dam, so once a location is chosen and work started, it's nearly impossible to stop it. The concept of "sunk funds", the amount already expended before a problem is found, just drives a project forward so the whole thing doesn't turn into a complete waste. Even more unfortunate is the ones who know the true dangers of a dam are project engineers who have the least amount of input into the safety and suitability of a project. Trust me, there are more disasters out there ready to happen when all the right conditions are met.
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  51. Those soldiers must spend a huge amount of time drilling to be able to march with that kind of precision. I'm not sure it makes for a better army but it sure makes for a better parade.
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  52. Montana looks like it will finally break its naming drought for a major warship. The Virginia class submarine USS Montana is under construction and due to commision next year. In an ironic twist, this Montana will be many times more powerful than the BB-67 Montana battleship if it had actually been built.
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  53. It's unfortunate that the surrendered German general's name that set all this in motion has been lost to history. Col. Reed had met with with this German general over breakfast, and he told Reed about the location of the Lipizzaner stallions as well as the location of 400 allied prisoners and 25 Russian deserters in Hostau. The US probably wouldn't have arrived at Hostau in time to save the stallions if not for this chance meeting.
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  54. The doomed Blucher was in service for less than six months when she was sunk. The Oscarsborg fortress had guns manufactured by Krupp in 1893 and torpedoes that were nearly 40 years old. The commander of the fortress was Coronel Birger Eriksen. an officer just six months from retirement. Most of the fortress gunners were reservists activated just days before the attack. He had been the fort commander since 1933 and knew the 28 cm guns and torpedoes intimately. The torpedo tubes failed about 50% of the time when they were used infrequently in practice engagements. The 28 cm ammunition was almost 40 years old, and the only practice gunners got was firing very low power blank rounds. They had never fired a full power armor piercing round before that fateful morning of April 9, 1940. To make the battle even more improbable, Eriksen was unable to reach defense headquarters in Oslo and had no orders to open fire. His standing orders were to only fire warning shots. Rather than let the Germans sail past after a few warning shots, Eriksen and his soldiers were determined to stop them, orders or not. The guns worked perfectly that day, as did the torpedo tubes, with the combination of gunfire and torpedoes sending the German Navy's newest cruiser to the bottom in the space of fifteen minutes. The secondary battery of 15 cm and 57 mm guns raked the escorting German destroyers, damaging them and causing the full scale retreat of the rest of the invasion fleet. When the Germans returned in full force four days later, their main target was the fortress. After two hours of heavy shelling, German paratroopers were landed behind the fort. After a brief period of skirmishing that sometimes included hand to hand fighting, Eriksen could see that the 80 soldiers manning the fort were no match for the might of the German army and navy combined and ordered the fort's surrender. To show that no good deeds go unpunished, Eriksen was actually court martialed in 1945 for surrendering the fort too easily! Two military commissions, one in 1945 and the other in 1946, cleared Eriksen of all charges and ruled he had acted according to orders.As you might imagine, this left Eriksen a broken man, and he died in 1958 as a hero that always had a black mark next to his name.
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  55. The sinking of Royal Oak so close to home really galvanized the attitudes of the British public that it really wasn't just a war to be fought over in France.
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  56. If Remington made a reproduction in .22LR with four or five rounds, I'd buy one. Neat little gun.
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  57. My uncle fought with the Seventh Army from D-Day to the Rhine. He was one of the assigned guys in his company to carry a Thompson. After about two weeks of humping that around, the firing pin broke and he was able to get an M2 carbine. He never took his eyes off that gun until the VE-Day. He never told me how the firing pin broke but i suspect it wasn't an accident.
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  58. The USN's fleet train was the thing most responsible for the more varied and palatable food served on most USN ships. Whole ships were devoted to refrigeration and freezers, and those fresh foods were broken up into ship size loads for everything from minesweepers up. My dad's PT base in New Guinea and Solomons was visited every several weeks by these supply ships, who offloaded the food package to their tender. They would then be distributed to the individual boats. He'd get fresh milk, eggs, and frozen meat of all kinds, including turkeys for the holidays. His tender, the USS _Mobjack_, had added refrigeration space to hold all this food, but each PT also had a refrigerator. Not very big, but enough for five days of refrigerated food before they had to visit the tender for another load, generally needing to rearmed anyway. Each boat had a tiny galley, with one member of the crew being designated as the cook. This was pretty good duty on PT boat since they didn't have to do all the repetitive tasks like swabbing the deck and cleaning out the below decks spaces. A good cook was second only to a good skipper in terms of fighting effectiveness and morale. My dad's boat's Cookie (they were all called Cookie) was particularly good, turning out bread, pies, and even breakfast cinnamon rolls. He remembers his hams, steaks, and turkeys as being particularly good. When the boats were at base for heavier repairs and general shore duty, they had to eat at the base mess, and his memory of the food at these messes was nowhere near as good as they ate on the boat. Cookie and the skipper were both good horse traders, and they almost always ended up with a couple cases of cokes, a couple cases of beer, five or so gallons of ice cream, and some fresh vegetables. When they were at advance bases, they were stuck with C and K rations and whatever fish they could catch from the back of the boat. The best day he remembers from advance bases was when his boat sailed over a reef with about a foot of water under the keel. The sharp eyed lookouts didn't see just the reef but also a huge lobster colony! The boat immediately dropped anchor, and a couple of the good swimmers (my dad couldn't swim at all) dove down to start grabbing them. They managed to snatch about twenty of them before the squadron commander called on the radio and wanted to know why they were stalled in the lagoon. They "fixed" the engine problems and got underway again. That night they had the lobster feast to end all feasts. Cookie was even able to work some kind of magic with margarine to make it kinda taste like drawn butter. He said he didn't know if it was all the lobster or just being exhausted after having no nights off for almost three weeks, but he said it was the best night's sleep he ever had while in the Navy. :-)
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  59. I grew up in Ohio and remember watching this film in driver's ed in 1962. I strongly doubt these films did any good in reducing accidents. All the kids in class just thought those that were killed were stupid and it wouldn't happen to them. 15 year olds are immortal, and they would never die. I later became an EMT and then a paramedic. It's instructive to see how on-scene care has changed in the 50 years since this film was made. You can see no one wears gloves. Just pick up the bodies, dust of your hands, and you're done. Those Cadillac ambulance may have given the injured a smooth ride to the hospital but you sure couldn't do any medical care on the way. Most of the ambulances were run by funeral home, and most of the attendants didn't have any more training than standard first aid so I guess it didn't make any difference that the old Caddy's were so cramped. No IV's, no portable EKG's, no defibrillators, no CPR. If you have to be stupid enough to drive like the people in this film, at least you have a better chance of coming out alive than you did in 1959.
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  60. I take three 30 mg morphine pills a day and now, after begging and pleading for a year, one 10 mg hydrocodone pill a day for breakthrough pain. which generally happens several times a day. Before the DEA went on its killing spree, I got my 90 mg of morphine and had four 10 mg hydrocodone a day. That didn't make me have no pain, but the pain was bearable. The DEA has doctors terrified that, if they don't prescribe exactly within the DEA guidelines, they'll go to jail. They are solving a non-existent problem on the backs of patients that need opioids to make it through a day.
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  61. There have been many more pilotless private aircraft that have presented problems to civilian authorities. I was involved with chasing one Piper Cub that actually took off without a pilot, climbed to about 2500 feet, leveled off, still with no pilot, and flew west. It crossed over six counties before it became our problem. My department had a helicopter, so we were detailed to get in the air and try to find the plane and follow it. It took a while to find it because we only had weather radar, and the FAA was only able to give us partial radar tracks since a Cub without a transponder is actually a great stealth aircraft, being mostly canvas over a collection of steel alloy tubes. There was only about an hour of daylight left when we spotted it, still flying straight and level. Our first issue was it was headed directly toward a range of mountains with 3,000 foot peaks. While we thought the Cub would not make it over the mountains, it somehow flew through one of the few passes that was less than 2,000 feet and continued on its merry way. Now we really had problems, since the plane was headed toward an urban area of the county. Norad was still trying to find a fighter to scramble, and the FAA wanted to know if we were able to shoot the plane down. Sure. Between myself and the other observer, our armament consisted of two Glock .40 caliber pistols, and it was quickly decided that our air to air combat training wasn't adequate to attempt that stunt. As the Cub flew over various cities, we now had police cars and fire departments from I don't know how many jurisdictions that had joined in the ground chase. The pilot of the Cub, which had landed at a small private airport to answer the call of nature and had left the engine running while he did , was finally able to update the FAA with the amount of fuel he "thought" he had onboard, and they calculated that the plane should have about 25 minutes of fuel left. It was only flying at 65 mph, and our Long Ranger was able to easily fly at 120 mph, so we were able to get out ahead of the plane to alert the now considerable number of ground units where the Cub was likely to be in the next five minutes, and then zip back behind it. We had a great pilot that flew Hueys in Vietnam, and I think he was actually enjoying this. The Cub eventually flew over 11 cities in our county before heading toward the sparsely populated coast. It was now nearing sunset as the Cub flew directly into the setting sun. The Cub had its newly installed anti-collision strobe light on, and that allowed us to follow it at that point. Now this ghost plane started to descend, and the Coast Range of mountains presented our next problem. There are 1,500 to 1,900 foot peaks there, and the Cub had reached about 1,000 feet before approaching the mountains. We put some distance between our aircraft and the Cub, and waited for the inevitable crash. To our surprise, the next thing we saw was the Cub flying through a 600 foot pass, missing those rocks in the sky again. We were able to follow the Cub with our FLIR now, and almost at the second the plane was over the coast, the prop stopped spinning, and the poor old Cub was finally out of fuel. It went into a steeper but still level decent, making contact with the water about four miles offshore. The Cub was a beautifully restored 1940 model J3 that we had seen at various airshows, and it was a sad thing to watch her sink. Still, we were glad that ordeal was over with. In my 27 years with the department, that was one of my more exciting days. :-)
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  62. The 1969 sighting has now been discredited, so it seems a sighting in 1962 is accepted as the last reliable report of Baychimo. When the crew finally abandoned the ship in November, 1931. They reported she was frozen fast in a large ice field. Her hull had already suffered crush damage from the ice, the reason why the crew decided not to try wintering over on her, building a hut instead. The damage was severe enough that the decision was made she was not salvageable and she was therefore abandoned. As long as Baychimo remained frozen fast in the ice, she was supported by the hundreds of feet of ice beneath her hull. If there was a thaw sufficient to break up the ice field so the ice beneath her was no longer solid, Baychimo, with many hull breaches, would have filled rapidly with water and sank. The summer of 1963 was exceptionally warm in northwestern Alaska. Many areas of pack ice melted and broke up enough for regular freighters to make the trip to Barrow (now Utqiagvik) in summer from ports further south. It's thought this is when when the ice loosened its grip on Baychimo and sent her to the bottom. The state of Alaska has mounted several searches for her since 2006 and done detailed analysis of satellite photos in areas she'd likely be with no trace of her. She will remain another mystery of the sea, perhaps awaiting another chance sighting of the ghost ship.
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  63. The Germans knew that aircraft carrying perhaps 4,000 to 6,000 pounds of conventional bombs could never mount more than nuisance raids against the US. The real plan was that atomic bombs would have been ready at the same time the Amerika bombers were proven and flying. As we saw with Japan, even a couple atomic bombs dropped on major American cities would have had a devastating effect. The bravery of several small teams of Norwegian commandos and resistance fighters, conducting enough sabotage attacks on the Vemork hydro/heavy water plant, made production grind to a halt by mid-1943. Attempts to transport the surviving heavy water supplies to Germany ended when another team of Norwegian commandos and fighters sank the ferry being used to transport the barrels of heavy water in February, 1944 in the deepest part of Lake Tinn. This put paid to German plans of constructing an atomic bomb, and removed any strategic reason for an Amerika bomber.
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  64. Another excellent video. I had heard of this one before but didn't know the details. I wonder whatever happened to the crew? Another event lost to the mists of history. Edit- After a little more reading about the L-8, the most likely explanation appears to be a faulty latch on the gondola door. Adams, leaning against the door, probably while searching the ocean for signs of a sub, fell out when the door opened unexpectedly. Cody maneuvered the blimp down to near the ocean's surface in an attempt to get Adams back aboard. The fact the mike of the loudhailer was found dangling outside the door is the best clue of that. Cody would have used it to call out instructions to Adams about what line to grab below the cabin so he could be pulled back aboard. It was strictly a muscle power method, and Cody wasn't a big man. He was either unable to get Adams back in and fell out trying, or a wave washed him out of the cabin and overboard. We'll never know for sure since the crew never returned. The ship probably drifted back to shore on the typical west winds off San Francisco. Another strange aircraft mystery.
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  65. Bezos isn't a capitalist. He's a manipulator of public benefits to get him to build warehouses and distribution centers in certain cities, all of which are ruled by Democrats. Bezos knows who he has to please to keep those subsidy dollars flowing.
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  66. I think you mean the M26. Not only did the M26 have better armor and a better gun, it had a superior fire control mechanism. That allowed it to score many more hits that a T-34 could have in the same period of time.
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  67. Sorry, Drach, but you can't win with this one. We all know it's pronounced Ay-Jacks because that's how the scouring powder of the same name is pronounced, and we heard TV ads for decades telling us the right pronunciation. We're not about to let go of all that conditioning for some Brit coming along telling us Ajax is really pronounced like some asthmatic wheeze!
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  68. The USN fleet of just underway replenishment vessels now numbers 16, and a replacement fleet of 20 is already under construction. There are fourteen 41,000 ton dry cargo/ammunition ships and well over 150 other special purpose, support, and supply ships. No other navy has the ability to supply such large numbers of ships at sea with virtually anything needed, from bandaids to new power plants, as the USN. The lessons of the long distances remote from any land base supplies in the Pacific during WWII were well learned.
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  69. Because the battle damage to West Virginia was so extensive she wasn't recommissioned until September of 1944. As a result, she was fitted with the most modern radars available. A combination of her SO-13 and brand new SK-2 radars allowed her to detect the Japanese fleet sailing down the Surigao Strait at a distance of 34 miles against the clutter of the many small islands in the strait, long before the other vessels in the task force. When the Japanese came in range. the West Virginia, using her improved Mark 8 fire control radar combined with the SO-13 was able to fire her first salvo at almost 13 miles from her target, the Japanese battleship Yamashiro, scoring a direct hit with at least one round. It is reputed to be the longest hit by one ship against another in the dark during the entire war.The other two slightly longer range hits during the war both happned in daylight.
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  70. Rats! I should have tried harder to convince my dad to spend the $49 for a Solothurn from Hunter's Lodge when I asked for it for Christmas back in 1962,
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  71. Thank your lucky stars you never smoked. I did from when I was about 16. I'm now 73 and quit five years ago, but it wasn't soon enough, so I'm now suffering from COPD. I first visited Russia in 1992, right after the collapse of the USSR. I brought in five cartons of Marlboros, the maximum allowed at the time. I didn't sell them. I gave them to friends I met and used them for tips to taxi drivers and tour guides. It was nearly impossible to get real US made Marlboros, and a pack of 20 was appreciated even more than getting dollars as a tip. Almost everyone smoked, and people smoked almost everywhere. We went to the Moscow Circus, and every seat had an ashtray in the arm rest, and almost everyone was smoking. Now that I think about it, the only places I didn't see people smoking was in museums and churches. I tried some Russian smokes, including Apollo, Kosmos, Diplomat, Crest, TU-144, and Belomorkanal. The last were the weirdest I've ever smoked. They were in a cardboard tube and burned in an uneven way and produced an acrid smoke from the cardboard. They had the strongest tobacco I've ever smoked. I was so dizzy from one drag I had to sit down for a few minutes. The Kosmos and TU-144 were about the closest to a US smoke, but even they were a lot stronger than a Marlboro. I liked the TU-144's because I was a private pilot, and it's the only cigarette brand I've seen named after a plane. The pack was beautifully printed with the gold panel and color picture of the aircraft on the front. I still have an unopened pack as a souvenir of that trip. I never saw the TU-134 brand or I would've gotten one of those too. The Moldovan made Marlboros were pretty good, but still didn't taste like a US made Marlboro.
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  72. Thanks, another excellent video. Have you seen the Wikipedia article on this? It appears to have been written by a Russian with orders to show the Soviet army took extreme precautions with the troops, everything came out fine. and stories about soldiers and villagers getting cancer were alarmist and conspiracy theories. It has all the hallmarks of coming out of the St. Petersburg disinformation bureau.
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  73. With proper legal protections, we need to have a place to do extended treatment of the most severely mentally ill. Szasz was right in 1960 and 1970. We weren't treating people, just warehousing them. We threw out the baby with bathwater. We can treat people with severe mental illness much better now than in 1970, especially with behavioral therapy combined with appropriate medications. Leaving people with no ability to care for themselves has proven to be far worse than reasonable hospitalization.
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  74. Many German units surrendered to the Allies rather than waiting to see if their positions would be overrun by the Soviets from the east. Most German soldiers knew the war was lost and they did what they could to firm up the Allied lines to keep out the Soviets.
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  75. The kind of gun you prowl around pawn shops looking for in hopes someone's grandfather left one behind.
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  76. Pickled herring was a relatively popular dish in the US in the early 1900's, and it's still popular in places like Jewish delis. Many popular foods from the turn of the 20th century have faded from most menus now. Things like like scrambled calf's brains with eggs, pig's feet, sweetbreads, boiled cow's tongue sliced for sandwiches, liverwurst, corned beef....all kinds of foods our grandparents used to eat but are now rarely seen on a menu.
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  77. There are even more WWII ships in the Philippine Navy, including one LST serving as a marine base in the Spratly Islands, at least one LSU, a number of small freighters and tankers, and probably a few others still floating around. It's current flagship, the Gregorio del Pilar (ex-USCGC Hamilton (WHEC-715)) is 54 years old and must be the oldest flagship in the world. The Navy has one of the few presidential yachts that was built from keel up to be a presidential yacht. The Navy is slowly modernizing, but it will be 2020/21 before it gets its first brand new major surface combatants ever, everything else having been second hand. The crews of the Philippine Navy deserve nothing but praise for keeping these museum pieces in running and fighting order.
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  78. The Salton Sea was created in 1905, not the 1950's, as flood waters overtopped a pair of floodgates into the Alamo Canal. It took the Southern Pacific railroad almost five years to stop the flooding, Slab City is not an "abandoned city". It was never a city. It was a Marine base named Camp Dunlap. It was a WWII training base with hundreds of concrete slabs used as foundations for Quonset huts, . It was officially abandoned by the Department of Defense in 1956. The DOD signed a quitclaim deed to the State off California in 1961. The concrete slabs are used as RV slabs for snowbirds during the winter. Contrary to the idea there are NO LAWS, the state provides fire protection through the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, ambulance service is provided from the town of Niland, four miles away, and police protection is provided by the California Highway Patrol and the Imperial county Sheriff's Department. At least do some research before you post a video.
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  79. John Paul Jones was probably the most unlikely person to end up as one America's greatest naval heros. Even more strange, he only managed to reach the rank of Admiral by joining the Russian Navy. The book "John Paul Jones: America's First Sea Warrior" (Joseph Callo) is a great book about his life, not only his well known naval achievements, but also his personal life, which was almost exciting as his naval battles. I believe it's now available as an ebook and in print for about the same price. There are several other books about Jones with deceptively similar titles, but none are as comprehensive as Callo's tome.
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  80. Thanks, Jim. You are doing a real public service exposing these scammers.
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  81. "Give the crew something to do in case of air attack..." So true for the 25mm guns
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  82. All the money spent on daggers then they all just slinked away. Never trust the concept of a personal bodyguard. It only works as long as you remain otherwise in power.
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  83. The problem of telegraph decoding precedes navies. When telegraphs first started to be used commercially, messages were charged by the letter. This was very expensive, especially for transatlantic cables, and prompted various commercial entities, including Western Union, to come up with number blocks and code books so entire phrases could be transmitted using a single code block of five numbers or letters. This didn't provide signal security since codes books were widely available. However, large business soon developed their own encoding techniques and private code books so competitors wouldn't be able to read their messages if they were intercepted. This was the beginning of using codes for operational security.
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  84. Mexico and Brazil both contributed air squadrons to the Allies during WWII. Colombia and the Dominican Republic contributed air assets based in Panama to help defend the Canal.
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  85. Helena was a good example on how long it took some admirals to understand, or at least appreciate, the critical difference radar made to fighting the Japanese. A bit if trivia. Look closely at the 5"/38 turrets on Helena and then compare them to any later ship with the same turrets. The Helena had the first twin 5"/38 turret, and the style was more curved and svelte, in keeping with the rest of the ships's design. However, it served no practical purpose and actually slightly reduced gun crew space. For the remainder of the over 2,700 twin mounts that were produced, cost and speed became the important factors, with aesthetics a distant third.
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  86. Well, I can certainly see why the clerks are behind bullet resistant glass. That dude you gave the 67 cents to looked like he was going to try relieving you of more french fry money.
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  87. Excellent video, and fair coverage of all sides in this one. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the operation. anyone with an interest in military aviation history still stands in awe that this operation was successfully carried out. In later US war games, it only succeeded 10% of the time.
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  88. LOL. Those deer mst be pretty used to people. the best thing that can happen to some areas is demolish the few remaining structures, cut all the utilities, especially water, block off the streets, and let it revert to nature. Detroit could even open up some nature reserves as tourist attractions. Really, there's not much else that can be done with these areas now.
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  89. @Natasha Yes, it was really too much for me as well, and I remember arguing about this with our own ethics department. All he was doing was torturing animals to prove what already knew. Infants of any species always want their mothers when they are scared by anything.
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  90. Minor slips? You asshole. I'm 75 years old, and he was lucky not to tumble backwards down those stairs. I had two falls last year that nearly killed me. This type of thing is a real issue in a 78 year old, especially since he didn't just stop after the first fall to regain his balance. He want ed to show everyone he was still a spry old guy, even though he's not. He resumed the charge to the top after the third fall, as if to say "I'm fine, it was that damn wind that did it". That's how you turn a minor fall into a major fall.
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  91. I have never seen a "reporter" spend so much time crying during her story.
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  92. I don't know why it would have surprised anyone that nuclear weapons were stored at RAF Lakenheath. Lakenheath had the igloos built and high security fencing installed in 1952, and the work was clearly visible to anyone outside the fence line. The British were unable to produce atomic bombs in any quantity, having made only 14 by 1956. As part of Project E, the US agreed to supply the RAF with Mar 5 nuclear bombs, one mark older than the Mark 6 bombs used by the USAF. Since the bombs were US property, they retained control of them and stored them in dedicated storage igloos, but in RAF Bomber Command igloos.on RAF bases like RAF Marham. These were not accessible to the RAF, and they were managed and guarded by the USAF. The idea was the USAF would pass the bombs to Bomber Command in the event of a "hot" launch. This was clearly not a viable long term strategy since it added an unacceptable extra ten minutes loading time into Vulcan and Valiant bombers. This strange relationship finally ended in 1961, by which time the British had produced enough hydrogen bombs to have their own independent nuclear deterrent forces.
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  93. The butcher bird raids prompted the RN to convert a couple of merchant ships into radar pickets in an attempt to pick up German raiders flying at low levels. Because the ship's radars were only 50 or so feet off the sea surface they had a better chance of picking up low fliers than land based stations. The state of radars then was such that ships only added about two minutes warning time compared to land based radars so the experiment wasn't continued. It did lead to the British converting older destroyers of the Battle class into so-called aircraft direction ships in the early 50's, fulfilling some of the radar picket tasks as first tried during WWII.
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  94. And we complain about how hard it is having to spend our time lying on the couch watching Netflix.
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  95. I was 11 years old in 1957. The family had decided to use our two weeks vacation to make a tour out west. We had stopped in Tonopah and stayed at the Mizpah Hotel ("Home of the Atomic Steak", according to the neon sign out front), and 60 miles west of Frenchman Flats, inside the area of what was then known as the Las Vegas Bombing and Gunnery Range, where atomic tests were being conducted. Once such test was set off during the evening of what must have been some time in June. All the hotel guests were invited to observe the test from the roof of the five story hotel, the tallest building between Las Vegas and Reno. When the bomb detonated, I saw a small version of the light show observed in Honolulu. It was quite impressive and, according to the experts, perfectly safe from where we were. That was probably true for Tonopah since the prevailing winds were from west to east. None of my five brothers and sisters or me have ever gotten any kind of cancer that usually results from atomic fallout, but that little excursion into atomic bomb history has always had a nagging place in the back of my mind.
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  96. While the hedgehog was a far superior A/S weapon over the stern discharge depth charges and the K-gun launcher. However, Hedgehog caused the Germans to start on a crash program to develop acoustic homing torpedoes. These could be fired just before a Hedgehog attack started, the torpedo homing on the sounds of the ship attacking it. These so called "down the throat" shots sank or seriously damaged a number of US DE's before an acoustic decoy was developed, once again by the British, called Foxer. It was towed several hundred yards behind the destroyer, the long cylindrical body having large parallel gaps to let water rush through. This generated cavitation noise about ten to one hundred times that of a ship's propellers. Since the acoustic system on the torpedo was set to home in on the loudest cavitation noises, Foxers were used very successfully to decoy Zaunkönigs on North Atlantic convoys, with only an estimated 77 hits from over 700 Zaunkönigs fired. Foxer came late to the war for some DEs, since production problems initially limited the numbers available for non-convoy escort DE's. USN captains developed their own brute force decoy system, firing off a salvo of charges from their K guns just before firing the Hedgehogs. This provided enough noise to decoy off any Zaunkönigs fired their way. Hunter killer groups centered around an escort carrier and three to five DE's were especially at risk from the Zaunkönig torpedoes since most of their attacks were on subs diving after being caught on the surface, and the DE's had to race in and fire off a Hedgehog salvo before the sub could escape. The K-gun diversion mostly stopped those "down the throat" attacks that sank about 14 DE's during the War. Interestingly, no US destroyer class carried Hedgehog during the war. In USN doctrine, the destroyer was a fleet unit whose main role was protecting the battle fleet. This required a much larger torpedo loadout than a DE, generally two quintuple tube mounts compared to the single triple tube mount on a Buckley class DE. A Hedgehog mount required about the same space and weight as another triple launcher, and US destroyers were already at their weight limits. DE's were able to handle the weight because they less overloaded to begin with, so they could usually retain their triple tube launcher while mounting a Hedgehog. During the late war period, threats from aircraft were greater than subs, so most US destroyers lost at least one set of tubes, and sometimes both if they were assigned radar picket duty. It's not hard to see the weight problem when the average Fletcher went from an AA armament of seven 20 mm cannon and a single 1.1 quad mount to ten 40mm and 10-12 20mm cannon. This increased on the Sumner and Gearing classes to 12-14 40mm guns and as many as 17 20mm cannon, some in twin mounts. The destroyers did finally receive Hedgehogs after the war, generally at the expense of the B mount 5" guns and a much reduced antiaircraft suite, usually six 3"/50 guns in twin mounts. Hedgehogs survived several attempts at "improving" them, lasting until the early 60's, with the advent of ASROC, finally ending a long service life.
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  97.  @Sheehan1  My guess is some of both. He had long shown himself to be incompetent in almost everything he did, right up to his accidental electrocution. Stories from those he served with and his own statements show his sadistic streak as well.
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  98. I was an LAUSD police office in the '80s. I know some of those locations and, believe it or not, many of them actually look better now.
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  99. Only in the world of guns do have things that are "rare" and "exotic" because using one can give you a black eye and maybe some broken bones!
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  100. We have dirt roads in Alabama in way better shape than most of Gary's "paved" roads.
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  101. "A few quiet drinks..." So many adventures start with just that event.
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  102. Another excellent video. The biggest problem for Germany was not the actual invasion. There's a reasonable chance that could have succeeded with some luck. The biggest problem would be supplying the troops once they got onshore. Even a small salient would have been nearly impossible to supply after the first week. The Kriegsmarine just didn't have the experience or planning to maintain a supply conveyor, and it's doubtful that they could have mobilized enough merchant shipping to carry the volume of supplies needed.
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  103. The Komoran had a year's experience at sea, sinking ten merchant ships and capturing another. Captain Detmers drove his crew mercilessly in gunnery practice, fast unmasking of the guns, and torpedo drills. Detmers was satisfied her could take on any British merchant cruiser he might run across. In addition to her heavy guns and torpedoes, he had what was probably the deciding advantage in having five 20mm guns to rake the superstructure of the Sydney while the Sydney's three quad .50 machine gun mounts, of which only two could be trained on either beam, weren't manned before the Kormoran opened fire. The interrogation of surviving Kormoran crew revealed that Australian sailors running to man the light guns were cut down "by the hundreds" according to one 20mm gunner. It's possible that was correct, and that many of the Sydney's crew lay dead or wounded as a result of the raking fire, the damage to the turrets and superstructure from the 5.9" hits and then from the torpedo hit. It's likely that a large percentage of her 650 crew were dead or dying before the engagement was broken off and the Sydney, ablaze from stem to stern, drifted away. At some point, the fires got to one of the magazines and caused the explosion dimly seen on the horizon by the Germans from their lifeboats. The ship probably sank within minutes. Given everything that happened before the ship began to sink, it's not difficult to believe the few surviving crew, having no lifeboats, since all had been destroyed in the fighting, got in the water and quickly succumbed to sharks and hypothermia since there were no attempts being made to rescue them. [Edit: I misspoke about a magazine explosion. It was more likely a boiler explosion, but even that is debatable. The most likely cause of her sinking was the heavily damaged bow finally detached from the rest of the hull allowing enough water in to sink her. As Chris Richards pointed out in his comment below, it's inaccurate to describe the Sydney as drifting away. She wasn't under control, but was still making some headway. That probably helped to eventually detach the damaged bow from the hull and increase the amount of water getting in the hull so she sank faster.]
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  104. The sinking and subsequently botched rescue effort, combined with the mendacious and scurrilous effort to save the navy brass on the back of a single captain, was one of the most shameful incidents to have taken place in any modern navy. This was the final incident in the long and rotten career of Admiral Earnest J King, a person who deserves his special place in Hell. There were also many stories of heroism in the rescue, from the PBY pilot alighting on the sea after seeing men in the water being attacked by sharks, machine gunning every shark the crew could see, and then strapping men on the wing to prevent more attacks. The pilot's frantic radio calls bought the USS Cecil J Doyle and her captain, W Graham 'Claytor (later famous as an American railroader) at top speed to the scene, all without orders. The Doyle was a John C Butler class DE, theoretically capable of a top speed of 24 knots. According the the engineering officer, the ship averaged between 28 and 29 knots during the high speed run, surely a record for the class. She was able to save 93 survivors and recover 21 of the dead, all the while towing the PBY and her survivors until the men could be transferred and the PBY was cut lose and sunk by gunfire. In the worst stories of incompetence, stupidity, and lying, a few men shine thorough that uphold the finest traditions of naval service.
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  105. The Occupation of Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971 might be another good Forgotten History segment.
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  106. Happy Thanksgiving Mr. and Mrs. History Guy!
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  107. Well, when I saw "M8 Greyhound vs King Tiger" I couldn't click fast enough.
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  108. A stroke of luck it could be, but postwar interviews and Japanese naval records do indicate that I-26 was there at the time and did indeed do the shelling. The idea that a USN submarine was the one doing the shelling and that the entire crew had remained silent all these years is just laughable. Japanese submarines were well known for their poor performance in surface actions. They gun itself was noted for excessive dispersion, and the I-26 didn't carry a director, since the ones in use by the IJN were too heavy to mount on a submarine mast. Aiming was done using telescopic sights on the gun mount, put them too low for reliable long distance shelling. Japanese submarine tactics were to rely on their excellent torpedos, only using their deck gun on vessels judged too small to waste a torpedo on. Since these were generally merchant vessels that were either unarmed or poorly armed, Japanese submarines would come to nearly point blank range to sink the vessel. In at least 50% of the attacks, the shells either missed or hit non-vital parts of the target. The Japanese sub would then dive to escape an attack, assuming her shells did sink the merchantman. Japanese submarines were just not very capable when it came to attacking land targets several miles away, something their gun crews rarely practiced for. Japanese sub commanders felt these attacks put their boats at unnecessary risk for very little benefit, so they rarely pressed home an attack, preferring to mount a mostly symbolic shelling. Cdr Yokota, captain of I-26, was noted as being a particularly unaggressive skipper, as shown by the poor war record of 1-26 while under his command. By June 26, 1942, US and Canadian antisubmarine forces had been fully aroused. This was particularly true with the attack by I-26, since Cdr Yokota was aware of the invasion of the Aleutian Islands starting on June 3. The main goal of the attack was not the lighthouse, but the radio station, one of the most important on the Pacific coast for both its long range transmitting capabilities and its RDF (radio direction finding) broadcasts used by merchant ships for locating their positions. Japanese intelligence on the exact location of the radio station was only approximate at best, and the radio towers weren't lighted, making them hard to see in the fading light, especially with the reported rough seas and two mile visibility in haze reported that night. The lighthouse keeper put out the light immediately after the first shell was fired, making locating the radio station that much harder. The radioman on the sub monitored the Point Estevan station as it continued to send out SOS signals, and the sub continued to shell, hoping that one would hit the radio station. Instead, the Japanese gunners were using the elevation of the light as their aiming point based on information the radio station was being the lighthouse, so their shell went harmlessly long into the uninhabited area further inland. I-26, fearing an attack by aircraft, moved back out to sea on the surface, using her high top speed of 23 knots to put distance between her and the likely point of of attack by arriving aircraft. In fact, it took nearly 90 minutes for the first RCN (Royal Canadian Navy) Catalina patrol bomber to arrive over Point Estevan. Four other aircraft showed up in the next half hour, but the first Canadian subchaser took over four hours to arrive. By that time, I-26 was long gone. This was an acute embarrassment to the RCN, which had assured both its citizens and the USN that it was fully able to protect its coastline. The attack was reported as merely a bub firing a few shells and then submerging due to aircraft attack. This false report by the RCN has helped fuel the ridiculous conspiracy theories about an attack by a USN sub or even a Canadian cruiser. All the evidence points to the attack being exactly what it seemed - a Japanese sub shelling a relatively unprotected coastline. This is one of those continuing conspiracy theories second only to the sinking of the Australian cruiser Sydney , but being supported by nearly zero evidence. Ironically, the attack by I-26 caused far more sinkings than her torpedoes and deck gun. All the Canadian lighthouses went dark and the RDF stations stopped transmitting after the attack. It's estimated that at least 15 merchantman were lost by running up on the many rocks and reefs along the Canadian Pacific coast with no lights or RDF stations to guide them.
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  109. The weakness of all all these large submarines was the poor torpedo loadout. The I-19 was 45 longer than a Gato class sub and 1,000 tons heavier surfaced and 1,200 tons heavier submerged. They also needed a crew of 94 officers and men compared to the average of 70 on a Gato. Even with all that extra tonnage and length, she was only three knots faster on the surface and a knot slower submerged than a Gato. She carried 17 torpedoes with no stern torpedo tubes compared to six bow and four stern tubes on a Gato. Her one superior trait was range, 14,000 miles at 16 knots and about 20,000 miles at 10 knots. The Japanese just added too many roles to one sub.
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  110. The French gave it the old college try with dual purpose armament, weighing down this class with nine six inch guns that were designed to be dual purpose. The weight saved by removing these and replacing them with either more 100 mm guns or, as the Americans proposed, the standard 5"/38 guns in twin mounts, would be an obvious benefit to the Richelieu class. The British understood that value and proposed replacing the Nelson class mixed armament with ether six or eight such twin mounts, although the limited availability of such guns saw WWII run out before this could happen. The French, however, still wanted their supposed dual purpose 6" guns, even though they never worked as intended before the war. They would spend even more money after the war trying to make these guns work in the AA role without any more success. The French wanted French weapons, working or not. The USN, not learning from the French example, went ahead and built the Worcesters, the heaviest class of "light" cruisers in any navy, armed with 12 of the supposed 6"/47 DP guns, and expended large amounts of scarce resources trying to make these work in the AA and surface roles, having little more success than the French. The class lasted only ten years in service and had guns that were not effective in the surface or AA role compared to the reliable 5"/38. The only two times she fired her 6" guns in anger in the AA role were both off Korea. The first was at an unidentified aircraft headed toward the ship. After three rounds of 6" fire that missed, the target was identified as a British Short Sunderland flying boat, and fire was checked. The second was the "Battle of the Geese", when Worcester, Helena and four destroyers opened up on an unidentified radar target that was later determined to be two large flocks of geese. It's unknown the number of geese casualties, but more than 300 rounds of 5" and 6" were fired at the poor creatures.
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  111. Cleveland had about 920,000 people in 1950, the top of the population count. In 2017, it's down to about 335,000. a 64% collapse. Cleveland has so many vacant houses that demolition companies are the fastest growing business in the city. So many houses have been demolished that areas of a half mile square and more are nothing but urban prarie. Deer and coyote now roam freely in sections of what used to be neighborhoods. Cleveland's unofficial slogan is "At least we're not Detroit".
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  112. The Atlanta class antiaircraft escorts really came into their own when the quad 1.1 guns and .50 machine guns were replaced with the more capable 40mm and 20mm guns in late 1942. The introduction of the proximity fused round, or "VT" round, for the 5" guns made the Atlanta class the most useful antiaircraft escort in any navy. What the Atlanta class wasn't was a light cruiser, even though they were classed as such initially. They were really very large destroyers, and the original group of ships with te 5" rear wing turrets were very unstable in rough weather as too much armament was attempted on an enlarged destroyer hull. Their lack of ability to fight in a antisurface role was tragically shown by the loss of the Atlanta and Juneau during the Guadalcanal Campaign. The Oakland subclass removed the wing 5" turrets and replaced them with additional 40mm mounts, which improved stability and added much needed close-in fire. The designers of the class back in 1936 could hardly have foreseen the massive growth in electronics, directors, and radars that, while they increased the effectiveness of the ships, also exacerbated their topweight and stability issues. This was mostly solved with the introduction of the Juneau class, but they commissioned just too late for service in WWII. In belated recognition of their true role, all the surviving Atlanta/Oakland/Juneau class ships were reclassified as CLAA, Anti Aircraft Surface Escorts. Most never saw action again after WWII with only the Juneau in commision during the Korean War. The time of the gun based escort ship had passed, and all the survivors were decommissioned from the reserve fleet in 1965 and scrapped during the following two years. The Falklands War of 1982 caused a renewed interest in guns for antiaircraft protection of the fleet.
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  113. The biggest difference between RN and USN rations was the amount of refrigerator (cold room) and freezer space available. The USN built almost all ships from about 1934 forwards with enough cold room and freezer space available that the crew could have mostly fresh food available for the first 8-12 days (depending on climate) at sea and frozen meats and vegetables for about 20-23 days. By 1942, it was the goal of the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts (later Bureau of Logistics) to retrofit every ship with enough cold room and freezer space to have enough room for food based on the above plan. Each ship also needed to have about twice that cubic footage available for dry stores like flour, rice, and potatoes. The USN prepared a tremendous amount of dry store products. Loaf bread was the most popular, but men from the South wanted biscuits and grits while men from the North generally wanted oatmeal and toast or sliced bread. They all wanted cakes, pies, doughnuts, and coffee cakes. On destroyer size ships and up, one night was usually steak night, and every meal had some kind of meat product, with bacon, chicken, turkey, and some types of fish being common. The main meal in the Navy was called dinner, and that meal had the most food. Supper was served in the evening and was generally the lightest meal of the day, even lighter than breakfast. Breakfast was often eggs, bacon or sausage, griddle cakes, French toast, dry cereal, grits, or oatmeal along with fruit, fresh or canned. A pot of soup with bread, butter, and coffee as almost always available in the galley for men who missed a regular meal or were just hungry. Men out on the gun line during regular meal hours were brought out trays of sandwiches along with coffee, milk (if available), and fruitaides. Surprisingly, peanut butter and jelly was the most popular sandwich, followed by the aforementioned spam slathered with mustard and ketchup, and sometimes cheese. The fleet train could generally resupply ships with dry and frozen foods at sea, but they obviously couldn't do so when the ships were under constant threat of attack from kamikazes, and that's when the cook's talents (or lack of the same) would come to the fore. A good cook knew twenty ways to prepare food men would grow to hate, like spam or Australian lamb, and make it tasty enough the men would eat it. He could make dry eggs and dry milk taste like the fresh products, and knew how to substitute one ingredient for another and still make food that mostly tasted good. It's said that ships with the happiest crews had good cooks, and captains often horse traded with other captains for cooks and kinds of foods. Bad cooks could find themselves reassigned from a cruiser to something like a minesweeper just so a captain could get a good cook assigned to his ship. There are numerous stories of good "cookies" given anything they wanted by officers and crews, from women to vodka, as long as they could keep them on their ship. I'm sure being an admiral was good, but it seems like being the most popular cook in a fleet was even better. Well, rats, I've done another "War and Peace", but I now realize I have no idea how things went in the RN. From everything I heard and read, British and Commonwealth (especially Australian) ships didn't fare as well in the food department. Anyone here who knows how food service went in the RN?
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  114. Thanks for remembering this important date. That fact the USS Ward didn't make it through the war deprived us of one of the most historic ships of WWII, the ship that fired the first shot before the war had even officially started.
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  115. Don't ask me why, but Mackinac is actually pronounced "Mac-en-naw".
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  116. The best kind of naval war is one where the opponents anchor in harbor and then glare at each other. :)
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  117. @J G Correct, he had made a verbatim transcript of what Goebbels said and then essentially read back the response in English. A good translator, rather like a good court reporter, can use a form of shorthand to take nearly real time notes.
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  118. St. Elizabeth's Church in Marburg is a fine example of medieval and almost pure Gothic construction. Even without the tombs of the Hindenburg's,, it's one of the few examples of a monumental 13th century church in Germany that survived the war intact. The church and nearby Marburger Schloss castle shouldn't be missed of you're a fan of medieval structures.
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  119. The Me-163 was built as a bomber destroyer, streaking through the formations in hope a few rounds would hit a bomber and bring it down. According to German testing, just four to five 30mm HE shells would cause fatal damage to an allied bomber. The problem was the 163 had very poor gunshights to begin with, and closing speeds of near 800 mph made hits as much a matter of luck as anything else. The Me-163 was never meant to be a dogfighter, a role excelled by the P-51. Most P-51's would just loiter above the bomber stream, wait for the 163 to run out of fuel, and jump it as its sink rate began to increase and maneuverability decreased. Somewhere between nine and eighteen allied bombers were lost to the 163 while at least 10 163's were shot down by the bombers themselves or escorting fighters. As far as I know, no 163 ever shot down a fighter in combat. The rocket fighter was a technological dead end, and Germany spent a lot of money, manpower, and resources it didn't have just to put a technically advanced plane in the air. It was not the only type of expensive weapon of doubtful utility developed toward the close of the war while looking for the wonder weapon that would win the war.
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  120. And after all that, the Poles were stabbed in the back by later British, US, and Soviet actions.
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  121. She was pretty hot in college. How much you wanna bet she knew even less about politics then.
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  122. I was the search and rescue coordinator for my county sheriff's department. It was in an area with lots of 2000 to 3000 foot peaks, but a few of them got to 4500-5000 feet. Those were the ones the planes always crashed into, and the ones most remote and hardest to search. I don't know exactly how many plane crashes I worked in my 27 years. It must have been at least 25. Of that, one had any survivors. That one was a weird story, too long to go into here, but we had to take out a lot of remains from the other crashes. I've seen death in almost every form, but nothing compares to the violence done to a human body from a plane flying full speed into that rock in the clouds.
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  123. Growing up in Cleveland, we probably learned more about the various battles on the Lakes, especially Lake Erie. It always seemed odd ot me that we were going to somehow conquer Canada, especially with our rather pitiful forces. The fact we even came as close as we did was quite amazing.
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  124. It's a great story. I'm not convinced it's actually true, but a great story nonetheless. Her firing certainly broke up a force of three dozen LXXXVI Corps panzers attempting a counterattack near Caen at the extreme range of 32,000 yards, but I've never been able to find good evidence of her gunners chasing an individual tank. I'd be interested in a link if you have one.
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  125. Singapore is a good example of a modern navy that started with almost nothing. Even Singapore as a independent country didn't exist until 1965. It has gone from a navy with a few small ex-RN and USN ships to one with a growing and modern submarine force, six large missile frigates, six missile corvettes, numerous offshore patrol craft, and four large modern amphibious transport docks. They established all the naval schools and logistics depots needed to man and supply the ships almost from scratch into a system admired by most other navies. It's been quite a feat to get it done in the space of slightly more than fifty years.
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  126. Seems like having the facility surrounded by residential areas wasn't a good idea.
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  127.  @kenibnanak5554  Yes, that why I wrote "the Delta". It was the common shorthand for the Mekong Delta in 1969. I really hate that we have so many people on here that are 16 years old and only know what they get from video games. I just got off the phone with him and my description of "glowing red" was me not remembering correctly. He said it was the barrel shroud that glowed, and it was more white than red. That's when they dumped water on it, waited for the steam to clear, and resumed firing. There were nights when there were firing every weapon they had on base, including beehive from the 105's to keep from being overrun. The M37 was the one machine gun they trusted to work all night. Meow Mix, he is indeed still alive after suffering a pretty serious heart attack two years ago. He's pretty tough, and the best brother a guy could have. I'll relay your thanks.
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  128. Amazingly, the Enigma machine was patented in 1918 by Arthur Scherbius, a German electrical engineer. It's first successful use was by the German Army in the late 1920's as a method to communicate among German manufacturers. The Germans were forbidden to rearm under the Versailles Treaty, and Enigma offered an ideal way to communicate between the Army and manufacturers that were illegally building tanks. Even though the encoded text was transmitted over normal shortwave frequencies, it was assumed the that massive number of key combinations would make it impossible for the Allies to know what the resurgent German Army was up to. The first successful attempts to break the Enigma code wasn't done by, as might be expected, the British or the Americans, but by the Poles, starting in the mid 30's. The amazing math described by Drach gave the Poles what they needed for their "Bomba", the first brute force machine to decode Enigma messages. It was the first of many built by the British and Americans.
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  129. As shown by the Hopkins , the US 4"/50 was a hard hitting and deadly gun in the hands of a well trained Crew. The naval armed guard was led by Lt. (j.g.) Kenneth Martin Willett, and he drilled his crew constantly in loading and firing. He also trained volunteer merchant mariners in ammunition passing and as backup loaders. The standard rate of fire for a well trained crew was nine rounds a minute. According to one of the gunnery officers on Steir who was directing fire from the forward 5.9" guns thought its rangefinder, and was closely observing return fire from Hopkins , that ship fired 16 rounds in the first minute, an astounding rate of fire for a hand loaded weapon. Even as more and more men were being mowed down by the 20mm cannon aboard Steir , others ran to take their place, most of them being killed after getting off a few rounds. Finally, after the intense six minute battle, there were no more left to man the still intact gun, with the few survivors taking to a single lifeboat. The German ship moved in closer to asses the situation, sure that resistance had ceased. They didn't count on Merchant Marine Cadet Edwin Joseph O'Hara. The survivors in the lifeboat watched in amazement as the mortally wounded O'Hara somehow dragged himself to the gun. There were still three shells in the ready rack. O'Hara dragged all three shells over to the gun, hiding behind remnants of the shot up gun tub. He must have been in great pain as he lifted the first round and rammed it home. He was able to reach down to the firing pedal and pressed it home with his hand. The first round was on its way before the Germans knew what hit them. OHara repeated the feat with the second round in about nine seconds. He had the last round loaded and either fired the gun and it exploded, or the gun emplacement was hit by a 5.9" round from Steir . Either way, when the smoke had cleared, neither O'Hara nor the gun were to be seen. Although this is disputed, it's possible O'Hara's last round may have severed the steering controls of the Stier . Drifting and unable to respond to the helm, the captain realized his ship was doomed. With the supply ship standing by, the crew was moved to the supply ship in lifeboats, then Stier was sunk with scuttling charges. Merchant Marine Academy Cadet O'Hara, only along for a training cruise, was awarded the Merchant Marine Distinguished Service Medal while Lt. (j.g.) Kenneth Martin Willett, USNR, was awarded the Navy Cross for this action. Very few ships, naval or merchant marine, have ever fought such a gallant battle in the finest naval tradition of sink the enemy or be sunk trying.
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  130. The USN officially received nine Flower class corvettes from Canadian dockyards and ten directly from RN service in 1942 and early 1943, all to fill in dire shortages of convoy escorts across the Atlantic and from the Caribbean to New York and Canada. The British built ships served as transatlantic convoy escorts through early 1944. Eight Canadian built vessels actually served in the USN while one, USS Beacon, assigned to the USN and commissioned as a USN ship, never actively serving. She was transferred the RN as the HMS Dittany in May, 1943. These modified Flowers were classed as patrol gunboats in USN service, a role the Canadian built ships actually performed. All eight vessels escorted coastal convoys up and down the US coast, to and from the Caribbean and sometimes as far north as Newfoundland. The British built ships were taken in hand as soon as they could get to a US dockyard. The British 4" was replaced with US 4"/50 and the aft Vickers 2 pdr pom pom or twin Lewis guns replaced with a 3"/50. The other Lewis guns were either replaced or augmented with 20mm Oerlikons. The Canadian built ships came with a standard armament of two 3"/50 and 2-4 20mm guns. The USS Pert, maintaining the USN tradition of placing a gun everywhere there was an empty space, had, in addition to the 3" guns, at least seven 20mm, three twin Lewis gun, and a single Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun mounted on top of the bridge. There was a good reason for all these gun, beyond the enjoyment US sailors took firing guns. Coastal convoys were often attacked by U-boats running on the surface. Because the PGs retained their British Type 271 radar, the rest of the war up to about 1944, they were able to detect submarines up to 3,500 yards, or about 2 miles. This was often more than the U-boat lookouts could see in the typical haze and fog of the coast, especially at night. Once detected, the PG would call for flank speed and charge the U-boat with guns blazing, the hail of fire forcing the U-boat to dive with alacrity. Once it was down, the PG would track the sub with its ASDIC (also British) and hold it down until faster escorts could arrive to attack it. The PG would then sprint back to the convoy and take up the escort role again. U-boats attacked East Coast convoys in wolf packs, and each PG would often have to perform their cavalry charge attacks five or six times during a single escort voyage. The little PG/Flower class corvettes were roundly hated by US sailors for the rolling Drach mentioned, lack of berthing accommodations, and the constant wetness of the ship. Since the ships were built with North Atlantic duty in mind, one can only imagine the torture of being below decks in tropical waters. Nevertheless, the plucky little ships plugged a hole in US escort capabilities during the first two years of the US war, and their presence saved many a merchant ship and the lives of many merchant sailors.
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  131. We moved to California from Ohio right after we got married in in the spring of 1965.It was like a paradise. The weather was good all the time, it never snowed, taxes were low, housing was cheap, and college cost almost nothing. It was easy to find good jobs, gas was 28 cents a gallon, many stations were open 24 hours a day, grocery stores were open 24 hours a day, and even K-Mart was open 24 hours. The bad thing was the smog, so thick that you couldn't see a mile on hot days. Now everything else is way more awful, but the air is cleaner. Seems like a a hell of a trade off.
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  132.  @ForeLab  The problem wasn't extinguishers,it was fire detection. The soda acid extinguisher was in common use by 1895, and an interior picture of the armory would undoubtedly show many of them hanging on the support posts around the plant. The reason for so many fires back then was the lack of anything but the eyes and nose of a night watchman to detect and report a fire. The concept of firewalls didn't exist, and many of these old plants were timber framed with brick infill. Once a fire got into the attic area, it was nearly impossible to extinguish before the structure burned to the ground. The motto of many fire departments back then was "We've never lost a foundation".
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  133. There was considerable apprehension with the flight of this MiG-23 since NATO intelligence believed it could carry a nuclear tipped air to air missile. When the F-15's confirmed there was no underwing ordinance, things were slightly more relaxed. The original hope was the aircraft would crash into the sea, but it was all guesswork without knowing how many pounds of fuel the aircraft started with. NATO air traffic controllers frantically contacted their Polish counterparts, but they had no information about the movements of Soviet fighters flying out of Poland. NATO tried contacting the Soviets by phone, teletype, and on all the international aeronautical emergency radio frequencies. It's now know that Soviet controllers heard these calls, made in English and Russian, but they certainly couldn't communicate with NATO without authorization from their superiors. The many layered and convoluted command system of the Soviet fighter command meant no one was found that would authorize communications with the west until well after the MiG had crashed. Luckily for the Soviets (although not lucky for the occupant of the farmhouse), the plane crashed in Belgium and not France. France was prepared to make a much larger diplomatic stink than Belgium.
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  134. My cousin served aboard the New Jersey from 1986 to 1989. The two "resort pools" on the New Jersey were retrofitted to the former 40 mm gun tubs because of rulings from the brass. Back before they got involved, swimming in tropical waters was a way to cool off during long deployments to the Pacific. Given the freeboard of the New Jersey, some sailors got injured diving from her decks. It was mostly things like a few broken arms, but those in charge of fleet safety weren't having it. No more swimming, and morale plummeted. Even though living spaces were air conditioned, working space weren't, and place like workshops and the engine rooms could get over 110 degrees in the tropics. Captain Katz solved this by having his engineering staff rig up a portable swimming platform that was only about five feet about the sea surface. Morale returned to normal as the guys could once again get in some swimming. This worked until the medical staff in Washington got involved. With reports that some men were picking up various tropical parasites from swimming in the Persian Gulf, swimming was banned completely to save the three cases that had ever showed up from the New Jersey, all easily cured. For those that have ever sailed in tropical waters, not being able to swim so you could cool off from the oppressive tropical heat just seemed impossible, and crew morale immediately suffered. Captain Katz once again called on his engineering staff for a solution. Once of the Machinist Mates was a swimming pool installer in civilian life. He came up with a vinyl over foam covering that could be used to line the two forward abandoned 40 mm gun tubs. They were filled from portable pumps that ran through a filtering system devised by engineering to make sure those nasty parasites couldn't get on board. The crew was able to at least paddle around and cool off, and morale soared. Thus, the New Jersey came to be the only USN combat ship to ever have two swimming pools.
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  135. It wasn't just surface search radar. It was also radar fire control systems, something the Japanese completely lacked. The Yamato's radar was only a surface search set. All the "old" battleships and most of the cruisers and destroyers were equipped with varying numbers of Mark 37 GFCS directors tied back into the Ford 1A computer and Mk 6 Stable Element, all being controlled through the plotting table in the Combat Information Center. The only hope for the Japanese was to drive into as close a range as possible. The US GFCS radars were only about as effective as Japanese optical directors at close range. The further the range, the more rapidly the Japanese would be smothered by the radar controlled gunfire from US fleet. Even the Long Lance didn't have the advantages they did two years earlier as improvements in sonar and radars on the US were able to detect the firing and path of the torpedoes while broadcasting the data to the other ships in the fleet. Even this advantage was negated by rainge, so closer range on the part of the Japanese gives them their best chance of survival wile damaging and sinking US ships.
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  136. "Trial had dragged on two whole days..." I wonder what Hamilton would think of our trials today?
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  137. The original 37mm/C30 gun was a pretty terrible antiaircraft weapon. It was the only weapon of its size that was single shot and hand loaded. The practical ROF was no more than 30 RPM, totally inadequate for antiaircraft fire. The mounting was hand operated and very slow to train and elevate. The M42 was a far superior gun, fully automatic and fed from a five round clip, much like the 20mm, but it wasn't available until 1944. The M43 gun was the first with the option of a power twin mounting but changed the clip to an inferior 8 round strip loading, lowering the practical ROF to 180 RPM compared to 250 RPM for the M42. Unfortunately for the Germans, the development of single and double wet mounts of the 37mm M42 and quad mount 20mm guns gave Doenitz false hope that U Boats so armed could successfully fight it out on the surface against allied aircraft and transit the Bay of Biscay safely. The first couple boats armed with these weapons did have some success as at least five Coastal Command aircraft were lost flying into this unexpected wall of flak. Coastal Command was quickly able to work out the types and locations of the weapons through photo reconnaissance flights. The countermeasure was to always attack in groups of three and from the bow if possible, since no boat had more than a single 20 mm mounted forward. Even the few U-Flak boats armed with two quad 20's and two twin M42's mounted fore and aft were not able to fight off the swarms of Coastal Command aircraft that set upon surfaced U-Boats from mid-1943 on. The real answer was a Dutch invention, the schnorkel, so the boats never had to come to the surface at all.
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  138. The fleet train Mount Hood was a part of was, in no small part, one of the most important cogs in the Navy's drive to to defeat Japan. The USN was able to do everything but the heaviest repairs at forward bases using floating drydocks. They were able to keep the advancing fleet supplied with everything from fuel, ammunition, right down to ice cream and fresh vegetables instead of having to return to bases further east or even back to Pearl and the West Coast. The lost souls of Mount Hood were part of a great and often little remembered but seemingly never ending stream of supplies that allowed the US to defeat Japan. [Edited to correct the name of the ship and my usual typos. I blame the bat flu. :-) )
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  139. This flight remained top secret for many decades
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  140. CopperCab is back doing the same amount of trolling as ever. He thinks he's a comedian, and some people actually believe what he says has anything to do with what he really believes.
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  141. I was 11 in 1957 ang got a subscription to Popular Science for Christmas so I was able to follow along with Vanguard's progress from refit to reserve to scrapping. I thought the scrapping proposal would surely be shelved by the Prime Minister. Little did I know at the time about the fatal combination of Eden and MacMillan for the RN. I thought Vanguard was the best looking, even while being utilitarian, battleship of the era.
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  142. I've heard of this operation before, but your explanations are lot more interesting and entertaining than just dry military history.
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  143. Once again, the most important assets of the USN was its training in damage control. It saved more ships than any kind of armament. Marblehead was just one heroic story out of many as damage control teams struggled to save what the enemy thought was already lost.
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  144. All of those streets used to be densely packed with houses, apartments, stores, schools, churches, factories, all the things needed for people to earn a living and have a decent life. Between the tremendous increase of industrial output from the auto factories and two world wars, Detroit had to constantly annex more land and open up new areas for residential and industrial development. The population rose in an almost unbroken line from 993,000 in 1920 to about 1.9 million in 1955. It was a city of wealth almost beyond compare, second only to New York City. Since then, the population has declined an an equally unbroken line to the 670,000 of today. Detroit has all that vacant land because it's a city that was built to hold almost three times more people than it does today.
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  145.  @bobsemple3268  Yes, it was the single 5"/38 gun mounted on the stern sponson of USS White Plains . . It was meant to discourage a pursing destroyer during a stern chase, not for a long range gunnery duel. The gunnery officer had been drilling the 5"/38 crew for weeks, using radar data passed from the bridge by sound telephone. White Plains was nearly disabled by a near miss that exploded under her hull, knocking out the starboard engine and cutting all electrical power. The plume of black smoke coming from the sudden influx of air into the disabled boilers convinced the Japanese they had scored a direct hit. They shifted fire to other American ships, and this gave the damage control teams time to restore electrical power and once again get the radar operating. Again manually adjusting range using the radar data, the 5"/38 gun crew poured out a furious stream of fire, estimated at 20 rounds per minute for about six minutes. This would be a near record for a pedestal mounted gun without an integral ammo hoist. The gun crew claims they scored six hits on the Japanese cruiser Chōkai , and they continued fire based on the fires and explosions observed on Chōkai as her deck mounted torpedoes continued to explode. Postwar Japanese records claim it was a bomb from an aircraft that set off the torpedoes. Chōkai was only about 6,000 yards from White Plains_, and given the training and use of radar data by the gun crew, it's plausible they did in fact score the hits they claim. _Chōkai sank in 17,000 feet of water, right at the edge of the Philippine Trench. The wreck was discovered in 2019, and an ROV dived it in May, 2019. They are scheduled to dive it again in 2020, and pictures brought back may enable the experts to decide if it was White Plains or an aircraft that caused the fatal damage. Regardless of how that works out, it's a great war story.
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  146. Fantastic! I've been waiting for a PT boat guide. My dad was in Ron 10 on PT-124 from January 4, 1943 until it was disbanded in November, 1945. The Lewis guns and turrets were long gone when he arrived. They only carried two torpedoes by mid-1943, and they spent the vast majority of their time shooting up those barges, by then being used for attempted resupply of isolated islands. The Japanese barges kept adding bigger guns, and the squadron kept scrounging bigger guns of their own. It was an arms race in tropics, and the Navy, with the exception of the 40mm Bofors, never approved any of it. Dad's boat did have some ad-hoc armor. One of the guys was a metal worker, and he crafted a pair of 3/8" sheet steel plates from a scrapped P-39, and the crew installed them around the refrigerator/freezer. It used ammonia for refrigerant, and a stray round going through the refrigerant line filled the boat with ammonia fumes. Even worse, it meant the refrigerator was out of commission, and that meant no cold milk or ice cream, things they got from their monthly visit to the USS Mobjack, the squadron's tender. No one much cared about armor for the crew, but they wanted their ice cream and milk! Oh, I forgot to mention that no one in the squadron thought very highly of Cdr. Bulkeley. He got to be a big celebrity because of the daring rescue of McArthur, and pretty soon he became the Navy's version of him. He was apparently an intrepid sailor, and the guys felt like he wanted to make sure everyone knew it. His book "At Close Quarters", written in 1962, got an even frostier reception, since most of the guys felt like it was a self promotion book, but also a promotion for JFK and the PT-109. A lot of other heroic actions by PT boats got short shrift in the book.
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  147. Thanks for covering what's a generally little known class of coastal defense ships. I've always thought they were an attractive looking class, and they gave the Finns the chance to poke the eye of the Russian fleet. It's unfortunate the Russians and Finns couldn't come to an agreement on returning the ship to the Finnish Navy. She, along with the Chinese Zhongshan, would have been the last survivors of a once numerous type. The Väinämöinen and Zhongshan would have been interesting bookends to the nominal type of coastal defence ships. (Edited to correct error in ship names)
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  148. There are some of the most ignorant comments in this thread I've ever read. I sailed and flown in the so-called Bermuda Triangle extensively over the course of 30 years, especially from the Bahamas through the Turks and down to the Virgin Islands. Without a working compass, you're doomed. There are hundreds of small islands scattered about between the Bahamas, Turks, and Keys, the great majority uninhabited. With rare exceptions, there aren't landmarks on these islands that would tell one from the other. Lt. Taylor's major mistake was not letting another pilot with an apparently working compass take the lead once Taylor realized (or believed) his compass wan't working. The lack of clocks in the planes wasn't uncommon as they were constantly in the clock shop for repair. They were in essence high quality pocket watches attached to the instrument panel of a vibrating airplane. Each pilot going up would have had his Navy wristwatch and the time would have been synchronized between the pilots at the preflight briefing. All the pilots in Flight 19 were experienced fliers, and it was Taylor's not letting go of command which doomed the flight. It was also Navy discipline that kept the flight together even when at least some of the pilots knew they weren't making it home again. Today we train in human factors and flight deck management, and every pilot knows they have the right and obligation to take over if the pilot in command is making bad decisions. This simply wasn't the case in 1945. Finally, there's no evidence Lt. Taylor was late for the preflight because he was drunk the night before. Lt. Taylor was rarely seen in the officers club drinking and he was regarded as rather standoffish by other officers. He had been working a heavy schedule of training flights, and the best evidence is he was simply tired and overslept. He had even asked to be relieved of this flight, but was informed no other instructor pilots were available. Another issue for the flight was the radio technology of the day. All the voice communications were on HF radios on frequencies somewhat higher than AM commercial frequencies of today. They were bulky tube (valve) radios known for their short range, propensity to quit working or work poorly, and being subject to tremendous static interference, something commonly experienced in the subtropical climes of south Florida. Even when the weather was good, aircraft radios weren't reliable for transmitting information from base to multiple aircraft at the same time. Some would either not hear the messages or only get parts of them. Under the stressful conditions of being lost and facing a probable ditching at sea, it's not surprising that so many messages were garbled or just not received.
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  149. Japan had the AA guns she needed when she captured British examples of 40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon guns when Singapore was captured. Japan was never able to master the close tolerances needed for both weapons, although she continued to produce evaluation copies to just about the end of the war. The IJN knew the 25mm gun was not the best weapon for fighting off allied aircraft, but she had been making various models of Hotchkiss guns since the early '30s and had mastered the tolerances required for them. Later types like the Bofors required better materials and machine tools, things in short supply by the time the first preproduction samples of the Japanese Bofors were ready in 1943. Japan was producing about 1,500-2,000 25mm barrels a month in 1943, and even the most optimistic estimates for the 40mm Bofors was 5-10 barrels a month. It was a matter of fighting with something rather than nothing.
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  150. Another illustration of what emergency power meant was the the 3.5 hour dash of the RMS Carpathia to reach the sinking RMS Titanic. Captain Roston ordered all possible steam diverted to the engines, including most of the steam for heating the ship, collecting passengers to several of the public rooms that remained heated. Carpathia made 15.4 knots on trials in light condition but had never exceeded 14 knots at full load. According to the chief engineer, Carpathia actually ran at 17.2 to 17.5 knots for the final two hours of the dash. The engines were more or less wrecked, with the ship only able to make nine knots to New York City. After emergency repairs in NYC, she was able to limp back to Liverpool for a complete engine rebuild. Sailors who served on her after the epic race to save lives said the ship had developed a persistent starboard side vibration and the engines never quite ran right again. Unfortunately, she was sunk by the U-55 only six years later. However, 218 of the 223 aboard made it into the lifeboats and survived, partly due the additional lifeboats required in the wake of the Titanic tragedy.
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  151. Darn. Small correction. The official USN name for this battle is "The Battle Off Samar". This was done to differentiate it from the land battle of Samar occuring at the same time.
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  152. I was a police officer for 27 years, retiring in 2005. I fought the "War on Drugs" all those 27 years and drug use is certainly no less now than when I started in 1978. the types of drugs have changed, but there is always an irreducible minimum of people who will take drugs for a plethora of reasons. We tried prohibition for 15 years, and we know the results of that. I've never been comfortable with the idea we should make drugs like heroin legal, and there are some drugs like flakka that present a clear public threat. I don't know the answer, but I know what we have been doing hasn't worked.
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  153. I'd also add that the Americans had faith in their overwhelming industrial capacity to turn out more than enough carriers to replace any that were lost, something amply proved by the production and launching of 23 of 24 Essex class carrier during WWII, not mention the nine Independence class light carriers and vast numbers of escort carriers produced for the USN and RN. The number of ships of all types produced during WWII was so breathtaking that I wonder if the Americans could ever do it again.
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  154. Back in the days when there was a California State Police. They were absorbed by the Highway Patrol in 1995. They did a lot of dignitary protection, and this was back in the days of a lot of political kidnappings.I assume this film was made for the use of their department, other law enforcement agencies and civilians that were responsible for high value targets.
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  155. I apparently should have invested in guns instead of stocks.
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  156. It took the USN until 1912 to start constructing 300+ foot, 1,000+ ton, 29.5 knots destroyers with the Cassin class. They had the general outline of the hundreds of four pipers in succeeding classes. Since the US only had a few scout cruisers, the "Thousand Tonners" had to serve in that role, and had a fairly long range of about 4,000 nm, all on oil fuel. The armament was four of the new and very effective 4"/50 gun, standard destroyer gun until the first Farragut class vessels of 1932, armed with four or five of the new and even more effective 5"/38 DP guns. From the Cassin class to the Farragut class, the basic layout and armament underwent very few changes for about 20 years, surely a record for major fleet classes of vessels.
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  157. Just make sure Quebec lays in big supplies of white bedsheets...you know, just in case they need them for something.
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  158. The only really effective role of US PT boats in the Pacific was preventing Japanese resupply of isolated island garrisons. It was all gun battles between the PTs and Japanese barges to starve out these garrisons. The torpedos had no aiming system except point the boat in the right direction, fire, and hope for the best. Even with the improved Mark 8 torpedoes, the firing mechanisms weren't built for the exposed position of the torpedoes on a PT in the tropics. The electric firing black powder charge often leaked water and the firing mechanism shorted out. Most boats actually engaged in a torpedo attacks had men standing by with a large sledgehammer to hit the exposed trigger and fire the torpedo. The boat had to slow down to an even keel before firing or the gyro wouldn't be able to get a good position and the torpedo would run off in surprising directions, including circling back on your boat. The tubes were packed with grease and oil to ensure the torpedo didn't get stuck in the tube. The black powder charge would sometimes ignite all this grease, causing a huge cloud black smoke that immediately gave away the position of the boat. My dad was on PT boats from late 1942 until May, 1945. By mid 1943, the tube were landed and the torpedoes were carried in simple shackle mounts. To fire the torpedo, one man popped the shackles while another yanked a lanyard to start the torpedo motor. Both guys then pushed to torpedo overboard to start the attack. As you might imagine, this was even more inaccurate then firing them from tubes, but at least the torpedoes would run once they got in the water. My dad's boat made eight torpedo attacks. Seven missed, and the one that hit was a dud. The boat went from carrying four torpedoes to two and, by early 1944, none, with the weight and space saved devoted to more 20mm and 40mm guns. Most boats after 1943 functioned as motor gunboats. They were successful in that role, but some of the romantic stories about the PTs charging in on torpedo attacks and sinking a major surface vessel were more propaganda than reality.
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  159. And yet Melissa can't hold a cell phone sideways.
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  160. I've seen a certificate created on board the Wisconsin at the time of the sinking of that KC-97 Stratofreighter. I think the plane floated around off the Azores for something like 10 days, but all the crew were rescued. It detailed the hunt for the plane as it took evasive action (the wind blew it faster to the south than predicted), and the heroic resistance by the aircraft (it was actually used for target practice), with a total of something like thirty 5" and a couple thousand 40mm rounds required to sink her. This lead to her being named an honorary US Navy vessel, the "USS Curtis LeMay". Some artistic scamp even made up a ship's patch showing the KC-97F with a large cigar being chomped on (LeMay was an inveterate cigar smoker) by the teeth in the mouth that replaced the cockpit windows. Given that LeMay and the Navy were locked in a battle royal at the time about which would be the service to provide nuclear deterrence (the Navy ultimately winning), I suspect neither the Air Force nor LeMay were amused.
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  161. How many total rounds of any caliber naval ammunition was produced, how many were expended, and how much it all cost during WWII is devilishly difficult to find out at this late date. I did manage to come up with one very preliminary estimate from six different sources for 40 mm rounds. It appears that about 17 million rounds were produced in 1942, 89 million in 1943, 130 million in 1944, and back down to 15 million in 1945. That's a total of about 251 million rounds. The total spent on 40 mm ammo ranges from about $600 million to $700 million. Just choosing the midpoint, I'll assume a reasonable amount was $650 million. Given that, $650 million divided by 251 million means each round cost $2.58 in 1945 dollars. A single 40 mm gun had a practical rate of fire of 80-90 RPM, so let's choose 85 RPM. $2.58 per round multiplied by 85 equals a cost of $219.30 per barrel per minute, or $877.20 per minute for a quad mount. Now we know why there were so many ads about buying war bonds! Now, just getting this admittedly imprecise data was about two hours of trawling the net and a splitting headache, so anyone wanting to try to come up with the same figures for things like five inch rounds, have at it. :-)
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  162. Good morning to the usual suspects. Excellent topic! Destroyers and their development is not a common topic. Those little guys just don't have the appeal of battleships or aircraft carriers for most people but they have quite story to tell.
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  163. What a complete waste of resources on the part of the Germans. Just as the British realized the islands were indefensible from anyone occupying the French mainland, The Germans must, or should have, realized, they would just as indefinable for the Germans once the coasts behind them were occupied by the Allies. The sufferings of the British civilians and German occupiers when they were cut off from supplies is one of the little known stories from the war. Still, Churchill made the right choice by doing the same kind of island hopping campaign the US did in the Pacific. There were enough German troops and defenses than any opposed landings would have taken many lives on other sides.
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  164. The Cook brothers are considered two of the heroes of the Confederacy. Even though they were both from England, they adopted the Confederate cause after they moved to New Orleans in the 1850's. Ferdinand married a New Orleans woman, Mary Jane Wilcox, described as "one of the fairest belles of the City", in 1852. He moved to New Orleans after the marriage and was later followed by his brother Francis some time in 1855. Athey were representatives of Novelty Iron works of New York City, where they worked from about 1850 until the outbreak of the war. The company manufactured mostly cotton and sugar machinery, so locating in New Orleans was a logical move. Both brothers learned engineering and metalworking at Novelty, then regarded as one of the finest machinery companies in the nation. There was also another brother, Frederick, who ended up in New Orleans, and Francis and Frederic established the Belleville Iron Works in Algiers, outside New Orleans. They made mostly agricultural equipment, but also spent some time making prototype rifles in hopes of selling them to the US Army. They even wrote to then US Secretary of War Jefferson Davis in 1856 about establishing an arms factory in the South since none then existed. Of course, that suited the Union fine, so nothing ever came of it. When the Civil War began, Ferdinand resigned his position with novelty and it appears Frederick made his way back to New York since he was a Union sympathizer. The remaining two brothers, Ferdinand and Francis, set to work immediately converting the Belleville company to producing rifles. The company was renamed Cook and Brother and a new factory, initially the Nashua Iron Works, was established in New Orleans. Although I don't know for sure, I assume the Belleville factory was sold to help finance the new rifle company/ The removal of the rifle company to Athens had some of the same heroics as the Russians removing their factories in the face of the advancing Nazis. I could write a book on that alone, and this is already getting close enoough to a book. The brothers had no intention of going through that turmoil again. They reserved at least 250 of their rifles for a local defense company to defend the plant and the Athens area when it was clear that the Union forces would make their way through Georgia. They even made a few small artillery pieces. The plant defense force did fight the Union forces as part of a larger local militia at Griswoldville, GA and Hardeeville SC, and several factory workers were killed in the battles. As Ian said, Ferdinand gave his life for the Confederacy on December 11, 1864, stuck down by a Union sniper during the Hardeeville battles. After the War ended, Francis managed to get a Federal pardon after spending some time in Union custody because he was a Confederate officer. Because he was a British subject, he managed to escape imprisonment as a traitor. Even though he managed to stave off several years of attempts by US Marshals to seize the factory, the local sheriff auctioned it off in 1868 to pay of the company's substantial debts that were never made good due to the collapse of the Confederacy. The buildings and grounds were purchased by the Athens Manufacturing Company and used as a cotton mill. To the best of my knowledge, the factory burned to the ground sometime in the 1890's. Ferdinand gave his life and Francis gave his fortune, both for the Lost Cause. The only reason I know some of these details is the brothers are distant relatives. As far as I can tell from my genealogy program, they would be cousins six times removed. I found out some of the information while researching that line of the family. As you might imagine, I'd love to have one of the Cook and Brother rifles. Unfortunately, I don't have a spare $30,0000 readily at hand.
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  165. Studying the design and construction of this bridge is probably the one universal case study done by all civil and mechanical engineering students. If not for her galloping motions and ultimate collapse, Gertie would have toiled along in relative obscurity instead of being the engineering landmarke the bridge, or at least remnants of the bridge, she is today. BTW, when watching the films of the motion, set YT to show it at half speed. The conversion of the original Kodachrome film to B&W shows Gertie galloping with about 50% more motion than reality.
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  166. We could go in some of the interior spaces without a problem. They were marked with green circles while the prohibited ares were marked with a big red X. I think the "safe" areas were exposed to the air and rain long enough before she sank to disperse at least the radioactive dust particles.The divemaster always had a geiger counter with him just in case. There are a lot of compartments that aren't accessible due to structural collapse anyway so most of the dive is hull and deck. Still quite an amazing dive. We were down for less than an hour so I don't think we could have had much exposure. I was able to get into the radio shack (I"m also a ham radio operator) and, to my surprise, it looks like most of the German radios were left in the ship before the Bikini blasts. They are, of course, completely encrusted in marine growth now, but I sure would have heisted a couple of them if I was a sailor preparing the ship for the tests.
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  167. This just started and, even though it's 4:00 in the morning here, I can't wait to spend 42 minutes with Drach presenting the most amazing naval battle of WWII.
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  168. This kid was the prototype of a mad scientist. He's also the prototype of a messed up kid after the divorce of his parents, with neither one looking after him properly. If David had driven to the area of Moab, Utah, he would have found plenty of uraninite free for the digging. It would have just taken a shovel, geiger counter, and a strong back to collect it.
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  169. Another Democrat that only knows what he thinks is wrong but has no plans to change any of it.
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  170. Those look like happier and more prosperous blacks that one would see in Harare ( Salisbury) today.
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  171. I remember my dad telling me the story about the Uganda and her crew "refusing" to fight against Japan. That wasn't exactly true, of course, but he and the hundreds of thousands of other USN sailors had signed up "for the duration", and just the idea you could decide you wanted to go home while your allies continued the fight caused a lot of hard feelings between the USN and RN crews in the Philippines and the crew of the Uganda. It got to the point liberties had to be arranged so Uganda crew members were the only ones ashore due to constant fights breaking out. Even though the sailors on the Uganda continued to crew and fight the ship right up until the end of the war, it was a sad end of the war for a Navy that carried more than its fair share of burden during that war.
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  172. Thanks for another interesting video. Syria was only in the Six Days War because of false reports that the IDF had been crushed and Egyptian forces were advancing n Tel Aviv. Not wanting to be left out of the division of territory after the war, the Syrian Army went into action. In addition to poor maintenance of its armored vehicles, they also had a plethora of types, from the Panzer IVs, Churchills, Shermans, and various Russian types, including the T-34 and T-54. Even though the Syrians had over 1,000 tanks on strength, less than 300 were operation on the first day of the war. Israel swifty destroyed two thirds of the Syrian air force on the ground, ending any hope of close air support. Israel's aircraft were free to roam the Golan Heights, and any tanks that showed themselves were quickly attacked. There were a few hard tank vs tank battles when the Syrians were able to mount an armoured attack before the Israeli planes showed up, but many Syrian tanks were either abandoned by their crews or swiftly withdrew behind Syrian lines. The infantry was poorly trained and led, and it tended to break and run at the sight of Israeli tanks. The constant attacks by aircraft, while not really doing much damage to the Syrian defense lines, demoralized Syrian soldiers and caused many units to surrender en masse, sometimes killing their own officer trying to prevent the surrender. Syria had gotten itself in a war based on lies, and in a war it wasn't prepared to fight. All the Panzers in the world couldn't have helped them in 1967
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  173. The reason why the electric razor trick could have worked was razors of that time only had shielding so they didn't interfere (much) with the medium wave AM broadcast band from about 550 KHz to 1550 KHz. This was the only band used for commercial broadcasting at the time, FM and higher frequencies still being in the future. An unshielded electric motor emits tons of spurious RF signals, and that's why the razors (may) have worked. As it turned out, the Fritz-X and HS-293 receivers operated at a frequency of about 50 MHz, quite high for 1943. The Americans and British spent a lot of time trying to discover the guidance frequencies so they could develop transmitters to jam those frequencies. They sent a total of 40 radios to sea on two DE's off Italy in hopes of being able to pick up the frequencies of glide bombs actually in use. Through a combination of faulty intelligence and bad luck, the frequency pairs chosen were in the 17 MHz to 20 MHz range. After deploying some hastily built jamming transmitters, the results were...nothing, since the jammers were nowhere near the correct frequencies. Through one bit of luck, a single guidance transmission at 50 MHz was picked up, opening up the possibility that all the previous work had been for naught. A twenty-three year old US second lieutenant was part of the team trying to decode this knotty problem. He was also an amateur radio operator and had built a number of his own ham radio transmitters. He calculated that a 50 MHz receiver would ideally operate with a 3 KHz intermediate frequency in a single conversion circuit. Without getting into all the complexities of an IF circuit, the main advantage is the IF, operating below the transmitting frequency of signals the operator wanted hear, made it far easier to design band pass filters. These were then able to filter out frequencies outside the desired range. A frequency of 3 KHz was ideal because there were no commercial broadcasters operating in that range. Anything being received above or below the IF could be removed with high or low band pass filters. A 3 KHz signal couldn't be removed as it was needed for the IF to work. A number of Hallicrafters ham transmitters were modified to operate at 100 watts at 3 MHz, a powerful signal that would swamp an IF in that range. They were tested off Florida and then sent to Italy. No ship with the jamming transmitter was successfully attacked, and glide bombs could be seen going wildly off course as soon as the jammer was turned on. The project to modify the radios received an AAA1 priority since D-Day was less than four months away. Between British and American radio manufacturers, over 500 jammers were built in about a month. It didn't take long for the Germans to figure out we had come up with some kind of radio jammer, but it took them until after D-Day to come up with their answer, a wire guided missile that couldn't be jammed Now, about the electric razors. In theory, an unshielded electric razor motor is one of the dirtiest electric devices around. It will put out spurious emissions on almost any HF frequency, including 3 KHz. However, the RF energy has to be tiny, like in the tenths of a watt. Because the path from a shaver to the glide bomb is line of sight, the power output isn't quite as important, but I'd need to be convinced that the electric razor defense ever really worked. The HS 123 and Fritz-X bombs only had about 1 hit for every 20 launched, and having them just go out of control through a guidance failure wasn't uncommon. Having a guidance failure for reasons other than guys waving around electric razors seems a lot more likely to me. I've scoured all the books I have and and online resources and, although I've found numerous instances of the electric razor story, I've yet to find evidence of any kind of controlled test to show it would work IRL. Unless I can find something, I remain skeptical.
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  174. There were 24 large ferrocement barges constructed by the US, mostly being used by the Army during WWII, with several being taken up from USN service as floating refrigerator/freezer craft. They were 265 feet and about 3,000 tons and were used mostly to transport frozen meat, chicken, eggs, and milk between Pacific bases to improve the diets of the men as the war dragged on. The most famous was the Ice Cream Barge. It's only job was to manufacture, store, and distribute ice cream to the fleet and shore bases. To do the job it had 14 ice cream plants capable of turning out 12 gallons of ice cream per minute in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. The facilities were so overtaxed by demand that another ice cream barge was about to build when the war ended. It was towed from island to island by two Navy tugs. The role of ice cream as a morale builder was so valued that Navy Secretary Forrestal gave standing orders that the barge was not to leave port unless Navy meteorologists could guarantee there was no bad weather on the way for at least twice the period of the next voyage, and an aerographer's mate was on board to take readings and observations during the voyage.
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  175. A high capacity 12 gauge shotgun firing 00 buck shells will wound and kill more people in the same amount of time that any "fully semiautomatic" rifle.
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  176. The initial 3"/50 was also capable of antiaircraft fire, but it was a terrible gun for surface action, with a shell weight barely adequate to penetrate the hulls of larger merchantmen, let alone a warship. They were armed with this inadequate gun specifically to discourage surface action. The Pacific war changed from mostly using torpedoes to actually needing an effective deck gun by late 1943. The remaining Japanese shipping was mostly shallow draft sampans and coasters that couldn't be sunk with a torpedo. The 3"/50 was generally swapped out with a 4"/50, a very effective gun for surface action. Many skippers wanted to retain their 4"/50s when the official armament became the 5"/25. They avoided enough yard time to allow the gun to be changed and generally did whatever subterfuge they could to avoid losing the 4"/50. A few managed to retain the 4"/50 right up to the end of the war. Most skippers did come to recognize the hitting power of the 5"/25 gun, especially when a director was mounted in the last year of the war. The 5"/25 needed no preparation for diving, unlike the 4"/50, which needed a muzzle plug and the telescopic sight removed. Although the 5"/25 was theoretically capable of antiaircraft fire, the Mark 40 mount only allowed a maximum elevation of 40 degrees rather than the other marks of 5"/25 gun mounts that allowed an elevation of 85 degrees. This made the wet mount submarine gun a single purpose antiship piece. Even if it had been capable of antiaircraft fire, it's doubtful a submarine would have chosen to fight it out with an aircraft 10 miles away flying at 15,000 feet rather than diving to avoid the fight. The 40mm gun(s) was an effective antiaircraft weapon at the 3 to 5 miles range a sub might have to fight off an aircraft that jumped them at the surface. It was also found the gun did a good job of shooting up and sinking many of the lightly built Japanese merchant shipping remaining toward the end of the war.
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  177. Yes. Georg Friedrich Prince of Prussia, 35, and his fiancé, Sophie Princes of Isenburg, 33. He's the great great grandson of Wilhelm II. They were married on August 25, 2018 in the German equivalent of a royal wedding.
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  178. So you could get a Datsun or Fiat with immediate delivery. If you were a real "executive" (only the British would come up with such a term), you'd wait 1-2 weeks for a BMW. If you were a loyal British car buyer, you'd have to wait between 10 weeks and 4-6 months for your car to show up so it could be reassembled with all the missing parts at the dealership. Gee, I can't imagine why 1977 wasn't a great year for British cars.
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  179. You could still buy the 1795 musket that was "sporterized" and mostly converted to shotguns from the Sears catalog in the 1920's. They were a cheap hunting gun and were apparently pretty popular at $5.00 to $8.00 each. If nothing else, using a 130 year old converted musket as a shotgun in 1928 shows the durability of the musket.
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  180. Admiral King was an alcoholic, womanizing, and constantly pissed off desk sailor. He seems to have developed his Anglophobia sometime during WWI when he was a staff officer assigned as liaison to the British Home Fleet. He apparently got into several battles with British officer over antisubmarine tactics, and is rumored to have only just escaped sacking when discovered in the bed of a British admiral's wife, although I have never been able to learn the name of the admiral or his wife, so that's really hearsay at this juncture. After that, he seems to have developed a loathing of all things British, and the RN in particular. He refused to allow convoys off the US coast for the first six months of the WWII. While his stated reason was we didn't have enough escort ships, others suspect it's because the convoy was a British invention. He also fought the Army's plan to fly B-24's to fly from Greenland and Iceland to close the Iceland gap to German subs. He felt the Navy's next flying boat, the Coronado, could handle the task, even though the Coronado turned out to be a failure as a long range patrol bomber.  On the plus side, King was the main advocate for the invasion of Guadalcanal in the face of fierce Army opposition. While it was a long and bloody campaign, history has proven King's strategic thinking correct. Guadalcanal was the first retaking of conquered Japanese territory in the war, and it proved the Army and Navy together could use amphibious operations to take islands from the Japanese. He was also instrumental in seeing that enough naval strength was available in the Pacific in 1942 to protect supply lines to Australia and prevent the Japanese actually invading the country. By far his most egregious decision was his role in the court-martial of Charles B McVay III, captain of the USS Indianapolis. He overturned Admiral Nimitz's letter of reprimand as a result of the sinking of the Indianapolis and instead demanded a court-martial, and carried his demands all the way to Secretary of the Navy Forrestal. Forestall gave in because he didn't want to start an open battle between him and King so soon after the end of the war. The court-martial eventually convicted Captain McVay in November, 1945 of failing to zigzag as an antisubmarine measure. Even though Forrestal overturned the sentence, and McVay had an essentially honorary promotion to rear admiral just before his retirement in 1949, the court-martial was the end of the career for a promising and honorable Navy officer. Indianapolis's survivors came together and tried for many years to have the court-martial removed from what they consider "their skipper's" record. McVay spent many years in self recrimination over the deaths of so many of his men, even though most (but not all) the survivors tried to rally around him. His family stated he received hate mail and telephone calls from some survivor's families for many years after the court-martial, particularly as each anniversary of the sinking approached. McVay suffered from mental health problems for years after the court-martial. His family reported he would wake up screaming from nightmares he was back in the water with his shipmates, trying to fight off attacking sharks. Finally, he lost the battle and, in 1968, committed suicide using his Navy service pistol on the back steps of his Litchfield, Connecticut home. After all the attempts to clear McVay's name, it was a 12 year old schoolboy's class project in 1998 that finally bought the miscarriage of justice to national attention. Hunter Scott testified before Congress and turned over the voluminous notes he took from interviews with almost 150 Indianapolis survivors. Congress passed a resolution in 2000 asking the Navy to exonerate Captain McVay. President Clinton, to his credit, signed the resolution the same year. The Navy finally, after fighting tooth and nail not to, exonerated Captain McVay in July, 2001, with Secretary of the Navy England ordered McVay's Navy record purged of the court-martial and of all implication of wrongdoing on his part. Why was King so intent on seeing McVay convicted? The evidence implicates King carrying a grudge all those years because McVay's father, Admiral Charles B McVay Jr, had ordered a letter of reprimand be placed in King's file in 1922 because he and others were caught sneaking women onto a Navy ship. He apparently decided his best revenge was seeing the career of his son destroyed, and this is exactly what Admiral Charles McVay Jr thought was the reason. King has been accused of the death of many US Navy sailors and merchant sailors because of his refusal to initiate convoys. That can be argued, but one death can be laid squarely on King's shoulders, and that was the death of Captain McVay.  I'm sorry for the length of this, but I couldn't let the mention of Admiral King pass by without telling this story. Like Hunter Scott, I was a 16 year old schoolboy in 1963, and my junior history project was the sinking of the Indianapolis. Captain (then Rear Admiral) McVay paid me the honor of speaking to me for almost three hours over two days about him, his ship, and the sinking. He told me of the heroism of not only his own crew but what survivors would call the Angel of the Sky and the two Angels of the Water. Many more of the crew wouldn't have survived without them. The rescue was more a result of them and their amazing efforts than the Navy. Look them up to find out what they did or this will become more of War and Peace than it already has.  Even in 1963, McVay still bore the full responsibility for the sinking if his ship. My school project didn't stir anything but one newspaper story, but it left me carrying Charles McVay in my heart. My heart sank on that terrible day of November 6, 1968 when I heard of Admiral McVay's death, and not a November 6 goes by that I don't think of him.  There are only two villains in this story. The first are the unknown naval bureaucrats that denied the Indianapolis a destroyer escort and then delayed rescue for days because they didn't have a system to alert them when a single ship was overdue. The other is Admiral Ernest King.
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  181. Can you imagine what it must be like at night for the family in that one last decent home (0:26) surrounded by a sea of derelict homes?
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  182. As has been mentioned by Joanne, Khrushchev established the Patrice Lumumba University in 1960. Its stated intention was to offer higher education to Africans who were unable to obtain it at home. The Soviets made a big deal about how they were practicing racial equality at a time when many blacks were not being admitted to de facto white universities in the US. In reality, the Soviets built the the school in an isolated section of Moscow specifically to isolated them, and black students were not permitted to go to the city centers unaccompanied. Students complained of being segregated from most Russians, and that Russians treated them like a colonial power. The university was admitting students from sub-Saharan Africa that didn't even have a secondary education all the way through students from places like Libya and Tunisia that had educations comparable with most European schools. This not only caused a very high dropout rate, but the more highly educated students, who were generally light skinned, demanded that the black students be segregated to a different section of the university so their lack of education wouldn't hold them back. Although the University started out mostly offering education in engineering and construction, all the students were required to take courses in communist theory and third world liberation. As the school became more political, more and more of the students went back to their countries to become political agitators and revolutionaries. Almost all African countries were dictatorships at the time, and even avowedly Marxist countries like Ghana stopped allowing students to study at Patrice Lumumba. The university started admitting more students form Central and South America to keep up enrollment, but the political education caused the same issues when they returned home, and more racial clashes broke out. There were actually demonstrations by African students in the late 60's and early 70's demanding things like a bus line that would allow them to get to the city centers, the end of prohibition of interracial dating, and more education in science and medicine with less political indoctrination. Over time, the university "social agencies", the ones that really ran the place, gave into these demands after the western press started reporting on the demonstrations. This was the start of African students being able to mingle with the Russian population and the incipient antiblack racism you talked about started to emerge. It was easy to be for racial equality until your daughter started dating an African or Africans demanded the same public accommodations as Russians. There were near riots in Moscow and other cities when Africans were allowed in the same bars as Russians and alcohol fueled fights broke out. Soviet police were rumored to use street beatings as a non-judicial punishment for Africans they felt "got out of line". Some African students left because they felt their treatment was no better than what they would have gotten in the US and the quality of the education was worse. Soviet leadership was aghast at the lack of gratitude when these student returned home ad started criticizing the USSR. The end for Patrice Lumumba U came along with demise of the USSR. The university was renamed The Russian Peoples’ Friendship University, or RUDN. It still exists, but mainly serves students from Russia's minority regions, other former Soviet republics, and a smattering of foreign students. Educational standards have declined dramatically, and, even within Russia and the former CIS republics, an RUDN degree isn't accepted in many places. There have been moves in recent years to increase standards, but that would mean not admitting many of their preferred students, so the battle between education and ideology continues.
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  183. Great story. Many people in the US are somewhat familiar with the exploits of the LRDG due to the 1960's TV show "Rat Patrol". However, the producers decided to have three of the soldiers be Americans and only one British. This didn't sit well with British viewers, and even less well with Australians and New Zealanders, since the actual makeup of the LRDG was about half Aussies and Kiwis. The BBC pulled the show after six episodes. Australian TV showed it on Saturday afternoons. the traditional time slot for kid's shows. The show typically had three jeeps as a raiding party, far too few in real life, and they were armed with single M2 .50 caliber machine guns rather than the plethora of twin Vickers K and Lewis guns they were typically armed with, only having an occasional M2. Of course, being only a 30 minute show, there wasn't much time to develop historically accurate plots, even if the producers wanted to do so. It was primarily popular with kids who liked the shoot em up atmosphere of the show, and the show only lasted two seasons.
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  184. Miasma was still a current theory for through the 1880's for all sorts of disease outbreaks in the American South, but especially malaria. Given the prevalence of swamps in the South, the theory was that it was the rotting vegetation from the swamps that caused the diseases, but not because of water consumption. The cause was breathing the "night vapors" from the common foggy nights in swampy areas. The cure was to have your house be just slightly above these fogs, or going to a "resort" that was in a drier area when an outbreak of disease had begun. People would close themselves up inside their homes to prevent breathing the night air, and doing so also prevented many mosquito bites, the real cause of malaria. A coincidence of the miasma theory was draining the swamps would prevent miasma, but doing so also gave mosquitoes less places to breed. Since the swamps were greatly decreased, and malaria also decreased, the miasma theory was reinforced rather than debunked. Even in the early twentieth century, when transmission of malaria by mosquito bites was well proven by the construction of the Panama Canal, it was still common to see real estate sold with a location above the "vapors" as a desirable feature.
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  185. Thompson's mother was right. I was a semi-professional poker player for a couple years after my retirement from "real" work. It was enjoyable at times, but it was work,, and I gave it up to really retire. The one rule I had was never drink while gambling. I always knew my chances improved depending on the number of drinks I saw on the table.
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  186. If she had been built as such, Georgios Averof would have been an almost ideal convoy escort in areas that might see enemy raiders show up. A fast enough turn of speed to be able to go off and investigate sightings while still being able to rejoin the convoy afterwards, large enough guns and good enough fire control to be able to engage raiders outside the range of their ~ 6" guns, and sufficient armor to be able to fight off and probably survive an encounter with enemy cruisers. She may have been old, but she still had value.
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  187. I have a Forehand & Wadsworth British Bulldog (actually Forehand Arms by then) in .38 S&W from 1901, just before the company was sold to Hopkins & Allen. It is a quite well made little revolver with much of the bluing still intact. It doesn't have much of a collector market since F&W sold these by the thousands, but the gun still shoots well today. It's surprisingly accurate at 25 yards for a gut buster carry gun.
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  188. One of the potential advantages of the Montana class postwar was for midshipmen cruises. The term "midshipmen" In this regard is a little misleading, since the postwar Navy had summer cruises for not only Annapolis midshipmen but for naval cadets from the various colleges and university, midshipmen from the Coast Guard and Merchant marine academy, plus quite a large number of petty officers being trained for specialized roles like electronics and engineering. While a Montana required a large (2,400 crewmen) manning in war, she could get by with about half that number in peacetime, especially with the trainees filling in some roles. That left a lot of berthing space for midshipmen of all types, something that was lacking in the cruisers normally used in that role. Not only could they have accommodated between 500-600 midshipmen, their 15,000 mile range at 15 knots would have allowed them to visit any part of the world with one fueling, an expensive proposition for smaller ships with less range. The class also had expansive flag accommodations, useful for training command staff, as well as the largest Combat Information Center afloat, allowing more training opportunities. The fact the flag accommodations would have also been the most comfortable in the Navy for admirals tagging along on training voyages wouldn't hurt, since their recommendations were important for deciding what ships remained in active service. They would have been carrying modern 5"/54 guns, and probably would have had their 40 mm guns replaced with the 3"/50 guns that became standard postwar, allowing trainees experience on a wide range of modern weapon types. Of course, all this assumes that at least a couple of the class would have been built and commissioned by war's end. If they had been, their best postwar use may have been as the world's largest training ships.
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  189. Vought produced two world beating fighters and two dogs. You mentioned one dog, the Cutlass, that actually made it to squadron service. At least one could argue the Cutlass failed because it used too many new features at once with and underdeveloped engine, but it did have potential. The other Vought dog was the F6U Pirate. It used a thoroughly conventional layout of straight wings and various aerodynamic bits and pieces in an attempt to wring out maximum performance from the largest turbojet available at the time, the Westinghouse J34 with an afterburner, a first for carrier aircraft. Unfortunately, US engine designers were still working out how to make powerful turbojets that would fit in small naval fighters, and the J34 wasn't the engine designers hoped for. It was seriously underpowered for sea level use, although the Pirate did have a top speed of nearly 600 mph at 20,000 feet. At sea level, however, it could be outrun by the speedy F8F Bearcat prop fighter, leading to the nickname "Groundhog". Given the straight wind design, it had no real development potential, so only 33 were built. On the plus side, it was a docile aircraft to fly and never killed any pilots, something that couldn't be said for the Cutlass, with 320 produced, in which 25 pilots died and 28% of the airframes were destroyed in accidents. Amazingly, in an attempt to win public favor for an aircraft already being being denigrated as a widowmaker, the Cutlass was ordered into use by the Blue Angels. I've never been able to find out what admiral made that decision, which is probably just as well for him. While trying to make full power take offs, the aircrafts experienced multiple serious flameouts, total hydraulic failures, engine fires on the ground and in the air, and a landing gear door falling off into a crowd of spectators, miraculously not killing or injuring anyone. The last straw was Lt. Lewis "Whitey" Feightner experiencing a total hydraulic failure in the first Cutlass Blue Angels flight while attempting to make a full afterburner takeoff. After clipping some trees at the end of the runway and losing one of the two engines, Feightner contemplated ejecting but was afraid of the risks to the people on the ground. He stayed with the plane long enough to get the backup hydraulic system on line so he could make a hard left turn, get the gear down, and safely get back on the runway, all the while a huge blue flame of hydraulic fluid trailed behind him. The crowd cheered, assuming it was part of the show. During a straight and level flight on the way to an airshow in Chicago,, the other Cutlass in use also experienced a flameout, forcing Feightner's wingman, Lt Harding MacKnight, to make an emergency landing at Naval Air Station Glenview. Being short on fuel, Feightner had to make an emergency landing at what was then Orchard Airpark, plowing through rows of peach baskets place on the new runway to keep vehicles off, thereby landing on what became the first runway of what we now know as Chicago O'Hare Airport. The Blue Angels brass, deciding discretion was the better part of valor, had the two aircraft dismantled and trucked to NAS Memphis, where they served for many years a maintenance instructional airframes. Ironically, both were eventually destroyed while being used for firefighting training.
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  190. Now you've opened the Pandora's box of a ship class! Enough to keep you occupied making videos for about the next year at least. :-) One indisputable fact about the Essex class is they are the best examples of US industrial ability and logistics of any class of naval vessel anywhere. Building 24 Essex ships while building two even larger Midway class carriers at the same time is a feat that still boggles the mind today.
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  191. No one ever expected the Revenge Inquisition!
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  192. Stalin arrived at his dacha for the summer. After the first night, he discovered his brand new bed was infested with bedbugs. The local pest exterminators tried to kill off the bedbugs but they kept biting Stalin anyway. Finally, a professor who studied bedbugs at the university in Tbilisi was called. He had a simple solution. "You just organize them into a collective farm" he said. "Half of them will flee and the other half will starve to death". Badaboom, badabing!
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  193. Ironically, it was the two ships sold to Peru that showed how the Daring class could have had much longer and more useful lives in the RN if not for persistent budget problems. Better radar, an improved and enclosed foremast, replacement of the troublesome STAAG mounts with simpler standard 40 mm mounts, and finally, in 1977-1978, with the far more effective two OTO Melara Twin 40 L70 DARDO compact gun mountings, giving the ships some protection against sea skimming missiles. The major addition was eight Exocet missiles during the 1970-1973 refit in Britain before delivery to Peru. Combined with the deletion of the Squid on the stern with a helicopter deck, the two ships really did meet or exceed the reach and firepower of any WWII light cruiser. It's a shame that most RN members of the class had a service life of only about fifteen years.
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  194. The Nevada's 14" rifles had a tested range 19.89 miles. Luckily for the troops ashore on D-Day, Nevada had been refitted at the start of 1944 with the most modern fire control radars. She was able to provide danger close gunfire support better than an any other battleship that day. As she moved closer to shore she was able to bring her ten 5" guns to bear as well. So many 5: shells were fired that some sailors from the gun crews from the 5" turrets on the non-beach side of the ship had to be used to toss enough empty brass overboard so sailors could actually walk on the decks. She then stayed offshore shelling other German positions until the end of June before proceeding to New York for a reline of her worn out gun barrels. After her refit and adding even more modern gun direction radars she proceeded to the Pacific and continued her gunfire support role off Iwo Jima, shelling Japanese positions within 100 yards of advancing Marines. After Iwo, she then proceeded ot Okinawa and again shelled Japanese positions. She was struck by a Kamikaze on March 27, 1945 and was hit by five armor piercing shells from a Japanese shore battery on April 5. She was able shrug off the damage to continue on the gunline until April 19 before proceeding to Pearl Harbor for a quick repair and barrel relining again. She was back at Okinawa by early June and was then assigned to shell high value targets in coastal Japan. She was able to destroy everything from steel plants to shipyards in preparation for the invasion of Japan. It's possible Nevada may have been the last battleship to fire her main battery guns in anger for WWII. She was offshore from Japan firing at a Japanese airfield. Word of the surrender came just as full broadside was on its way. As far as I can find out, no other battleship had a gunfire assignment that day. She fought from the very first to the very last day of the war. She survived sinking at Pearl Harbor, being hit by German and Japanese shore batteries, and shot down at least 17 Japanese planes before and after being hit by a Kamikaze. She fired 5,028 14" rounds, 18,297 5" rounds, 23,333 40mm rounds, 13,311 20mm rounds.over the course of the war. She was then used as the ground zero target for the air dropped during the first Bikini atomic bomb test, as second bomb that was exploded underwater about 300 yards from Nevada. Not only did Nevada survive both bombs but, if she wasn't so intensely radioactive, her boilers could have been fired up and she could have proceeded under own power. She was then towed and anchored offshore Pearl harbor until late July when she was towed about 200 miles offshore to be sunk as an ordnance target. On July 31 she was subjected to almost six hours of naval gunfire from 3" to 16" guns and being hit by at least five aerial torpedoes. Only after this battering did the old but reliable Nevada slip below the waves to her final resting place about 1900 feet deep in the Pacific Ocean.
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  195. This was also the last use of gliders by the Germans. Only 12 of the 22 gliders dispatched against Vassieux-en-Vercors actually landed in the right place, with the rest either landing too far to the north or crashing upon landing. Thus, the actual numbers of German troops (who were mostly Russian or Ukrainian) were combat effective upon landing numbered only about 150 of the 400 dispatched. It showed once again why glider operations were just not effective, especially in terms of the numbers of troops lost as part of the operation, and the difficult of piloting gliders to a specific spot. The biggest problem for the Marqui was their almost complete lack of heavy weapons. Air dropping artillery and the attendant ammunition was impossible in 1944, but the air drop operation did include at least 14 British 3" mortars and somewhere between 2 and 5 4.2" mortars, along with at least 150 bombs for each mortar. These should have provided enough mortars to stop or significantly delay the German advance up the Massif. Unfortunately, all those containers, dropped from one B-17, landed among the Germans, who retrieved them and turned the mortars against the Marquis and the civilians in the villages on the plateau. On such events does the turn of many a battle come.
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  196. Secondary armament for the Wichita was going to be 6 dual 5"/38 guns in a similar layout to those of the Baltimore and Cleveland classes. The overweight and poor stability issues instead had her carrying the same number (eight) five inch guns as the rest of the earlier Brooklyn class, albeit the more capable 5"/38 instead of the 5"/25 gun. Since the twin 5" turrets were out, the next plan was to mount all the guns in single Mark 30 enclosed base ring mounts that were coming into use on the first Fletcher class destroyers. However, even those proved too heavy, so half the guns were in single open Mark 24 mounts. Thus, Wichita was the crossover ship when it came to secondary armament. She was the first US cruiser with enclosed 5"/38 mounts and the last cruiser with open 5"/38 mounts.
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  197. Yes, there were police hats at the time. It was common for police officers, mostly in California, to wear helmets at all times as a safety measure. By the mid-80's it was decided wearing a helmet as part of the duty uniform made us look too militaristic.
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  198. Indeed, and her sixth torpedo almost hit Wasp. Having our only two surviving carriers in the Pacific sink at one would have been a devastating blow. I-19 had a colorful and amazingly effective career for a WWII Japanese large submarine. She used her floatplane to reconnoiter Pearl Harbor before and after the attack, conducted war patrols for the Aleutians to near Australia, made four successful supply runs to Guadalcanal without detection, and was one of the few large subs to continue to use her floatplane right up November 20, 1943, the day of her sinking after eight successful war patrols. She would be a worthy boat to have her own "Five Minute Guide".
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  199. English capitalists offered the best defense against US trading with the Germans. They essentially offered to buy up everything the US could produce, even things they didn't really need. They'd also convoy all the good across the Atlantic while offering at least partial compensation for the ships and lives lost while engaging in this trade. On the US part, offering credit in the form of lend lease, commercial loans, and outright gifts through the Marshall Plan made sure that the postwar UK would be using US industrial machinery and other equipment while manufacturing export goods to help pay back the US loans. The whole thing worked spectacularly well. The UK was able to pay back most of the loans, and the US and UK arguably had their greatest prosperity ever from about 1955 to 1970.
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  200.  @shaku2182  Maybe, but it kept working for eight hours.
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  201. Ah, back in the days when Youtube allowed we peasants to go directly to a gun auction website. Thank goodness the Trust and Safety Team prevents such shenanigans today.
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  202. "The Liquor Palace". The last kind of palace the hood needs.
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  203. Wow! My brother was in Vietnam and stationed in that area in 1969-70. He told me that story when he came back. I just wrote it off as the usual Marine scuttlebutt. I guess it wasn't.
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  204. Don't know but, according to him, a crate of the first M-2's were delivered to his unit sometime in early August, 1944. He was able to get one, and used to all the way up to VE Day. I know they were used during WWII, mostly in the Pacific, but his story was that some got to delivered to Europe in hopes of getting some testing in winter conditions. He passed on in 2007 so all I have left is the memories of what he told me.
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  205. One has to wonder how many other things could have gone wrong if this had been a real attack from the east. The British sometimes had problems getting onto a war footing when the worst happened in the Falklands as well. The loss of HMS Sheffield showed this kind of confused thinking compared to the battle readiness of the captain and crew of her sistership, the HMS Glasgow, operating in the same task force. The Agave radar of the two Exocet carrying Argentine Super Etendards was detected at more than 40 miles out, and before the missile launch. As per policy, Glasgow sent out an urgent warning of the hostile aircraft to all ships of the task force over HF and UHF radio. The Sheffield's radio operators hadn't been monitoring the HF radio since that was a long range radio, and all ships of the task force were within 10 miles of each other. It never heard the UHF warning because Sheffield and HMS Coventry were carrying out idle chitchat on the UHF radio. The Sheffield's captain had decided that a submarine attack was the greatest threat and was zigzagging every 90 seconds, making the ship's radars less effective against an air threat. In addition to all this, the radar jamming transmitter on the Sheffield was non-functional All this confusion, failure to follow procedures, non-operative equipment, and general lack of situational awareness on May 25, 1982 caused the loss of an aircraft, and the loss of an irreplaceable destroyer and the deaths of 20 crew on May 4 of the same year.
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  206. Those were some great anecdotes, particularly about Brezhnev. I can clearly remember when Khrushchev was removed in October, 1964. I listened to the English service Radio Moscow almost every night to catch up on the latest news and propaganda. Every news section of the broadcast always had some mention of Comrade Khrushchev making a speech or visiting a collective farm or factory. For two nights straight, there was no mention of Khrushchev so I figured something was up. There wasn't the usual 24 hours of sad classical music when a leader died so I knew that wasn't it. The nest day, mention was made of Comrade Kosygin making a major address to some organization, and the next night it was Comrade Mikoyan making another big speech. No one knew who was running the Soviet Union. It wasn't until five days had passed that Khrushchev's regular mentions on Radio Moscow were replaced by Comrade Brezhnev, and then we knew Brezhnev was in charge of the Soviet Union. I was only 18 at the time but I remember thinking how strange it was the no one knew who was really in charge of the largest country in the world except by how he was mentioned in radio broadcasts.
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  207. "What do Instagram models think of GMO"...lol, so true. Amazing when you ask for a link from one of these people and they link to Instagram.
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  208. "...largely for morale purposes..." Great description of the tertiary armament of US battleships before the arrival of the Oerlikon 20mm gun. It's striking how huge those bridge wings are. I think the Floridas were the apex of huge bridge wings.
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  209. @John Fulghieri You're thinking of the Second Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. It was not really a good demonstration of what radar would become, except for Washington's surface search set acquiring the Japanese task force 31 miles from the entrance to the Strait. After that, Washington lost the Japanese in the clutter of the many small islands in the Strait. South Dakota's radars and pretty much all her communications facilities were destroyed by battle damage early on in the battle. When Washington found the Japanese again, it was done mostly visually. GFC radar helped with return fire but it wasn't integrated, even on the Washington, since the Combat Information Center concept was in its infancy. The Battle of Surigao Strait almost two years later, or the Revenge of the Pearl Harbor Battleships, was probably the best WWII example of radar integrated into a CIC during a surface engagement.
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  210. At least Chicago can still afford streetlights and snow plows.
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  211. While the evidence of dazzle or disruptive camouflage being effective against submarines is still controversial, what's not controversial is the effects of painting ships when it came to keeping convoys together and handling them in port. The same disruptive effects that made it hard for a sub to estimate range and heading did the same when escorts had to try to keep such ships on station in convoys. Many escorts had a hard time telling which ship was which and if it was on or off station. Books of dazzle painting schemes were issued to escorts and convoy commanders to help identify ships, and the use of semaphore signals was often needed to confirm a ship's speed and heading. Even so, there are reports of collisions between dazzle painted ships because of these issues. Since dazzle painting was expensive to apply and maintain, it was generally only applied to ships of 3,000 or more. German submarine commanders reported they didn't bother with non-dazzle painted ships, assuming they were too small and less valuable targets, so dazzle painting was a signal to a submarine of which ships to attack firsFt. The same problems were even worse while ships were in port, since the ships were packed in together under conditions of poor visibility made it hard for tugs to know what ship they were trying to maneuver and where they should go. This too led to confusion and some collisions. There have been humourous reports of sailors returning from a hard night of of drinking while on liberty. They'd climb onto the wrong ship because they all kind of looked alike through bleary eyes. Sometimes a tottering sailor would sneak past the officer of the deck and just crawl into an available bunk to sleep it off. The realization they were on the wrong ship didn't happen until morning muster. :-)
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  212. The 20mm Oerlikon was produced in absolutely massive numbers during the war. somewhere between 125,000 and 150,000 barrels, and some variation of the original gun are still being produced and in use in 2020.
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  213. Quite a modern looking rifle for 1899.
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  214. The Marine contingent and about 100 sailors of the ship were put under arms and deployed to the streets. According to various news accounts of the time, the huge sword-like bayonets used on the SMLE rifles of the time had a salutary effect on giving the rioters second thoughts.
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  215. It also depends on the type of antiaircraft guns mounted on a sub. The quad 20 mm mounts on U Boats did a good job of sending enough metal downrange that attacking aircraft, if not shot down, were at least thrown off the accuracy of their bomb runs. As you say, once Coastal Command figured out the limitations of those mounts and changed their routes of attack, being attacked by three or more aircraft was almost always a death sentence for the sub, even if they shot down one or two of the attacking aircraft. In addition to bombs and depth charges strafing was a killer for surfaced subs. Since the AA guns had very little in the way of splinter protection, strafing would disable or kill many of the members of the gun crews, and they couldn't be replaced fast enough to drive off all the attackers. The idea of the Flak U Boat (U-flak) was only tested on four boats. While there was some limited success by the first two U-flaks (U-256 and U-441), they and the other two that were actually converted suffered heavy damage and lost 10-20 crew during the attacks by the RAF. Once the U-flaks were repaired, they were returned to service as normal VIIC boats when it was obvious that the idea was a failure. The US experience in the Pacific was quite different. All the fleet boats had at least one 40 mm Bofors, and many had two. The most heavily armed boat I've been able to find was USS Balao a boat whose captain seemed to delight in collecting guns. It had two 5"/25 guns, two 40 mm, at least two and sometimes three 20 mm cannon, four .50 Browning machine guns, and, although I don't know how many times this loadout was used, stanchion mounts for another four or five .30 Browning machine guns. In the case of the USN, this wasn't really in response to Japanese air attacks (although somewhere around 100 aircraft were shot down during the war) but to strafe Japanese armored barges that were resupplying stranded Japanese troops. Their draft was too shallow to sink with a torpedo, so subs often teamed up with PT boats to use their radars to locate and attack these barges. All the boats would use their smaller guns to keep Japanese gun crews away from their heavy armament until the sub could bring it's 5" guns to bear. It was the only weapon in the absence of a destroyer that could sink a barge, and most barges kept to shoal waters where the destroyer couldn't follow them. My dad served on a PT boat, and his boat was involved in these "combined operations". Being a much braver guy than me. he said it was the most fun he'd ever had during his service while he was still vertical. :-)
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  216. Unfortunately, it was the first of many blue on blue incidents of the war, and on all sides. No matter what technological fixes we come up with, misidentifications are still bound to occur, and fighter pilots aren't the type to sit on their hands and wait for a 100% ID before every engagement.
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  217. Seems like the Settsu, while not having a long history as a dreadnought, at least served in some useful roles up until the end of WWII, and managed not to blow herself up in port.
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  218. I hate to pile on about this, but it's something we must remember. When we fear the government more they they fear the people, we are already on a nearly irreversible path the tyranny. The last hope a free people have to maintain their freedom is the force of arms, something that's now denied to the long suffering people of Australia. Unfortunately, the Australian people thought they were doing the right thing by making access to arms more difficult for the law abiding, and they are now paying the price. Those wanting to secure their freedom have now become the defacto criminals.
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  219. Imagine having to know Latin, Greek, French, German, Italian, and English just to read a part of Dee's books.
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  220.  @BHuang92  The Swordfish survived for many of the same reasons the Grumman Wildcat/Martlet and Douglas Dauntless were in use after more modern and presumably more effective aircraft were available. They were planes that filled a role on small carriers or in specific circumstances that made them the best plane of the task. I don't think anyone could make a successful argument that the Swordfish was a better plane than the Avenger or the Wildcat/Martlet was better than the Hellcat or Corsair, but they were better planes in those limited circumstances that made them the best for the job at hand.
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  221. They are so lucky I wasn't that elderly gentleman in the car. I'm 72, so it could have been me. All alone in my car, being assaulted by hippos and other zoo animals. Well, I wouldn't have been alone. I always travel with my two friends, Smith and Wesson. I'm sure a couple of those civic minded people would have liked to meet them.
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  222. The idea that night was to simulate a mission calling on DesRon 11 to make 20 knots to relieve other destroyers under attack. If they had depended on the RDF readings and stayed even just a mile more offshore, the squadron would have passed the rocks without incident. Since part of the reason for this exercise was to practice with the RDF, ignoring the data was ignoring the whole reason for the exercise. I don't buy the whole Japanese Earthquake theory. It was a failure in standard navigational techniques that the RDF was supposed to compensate for. 20 knots on a cloudy, foggy night with rough seas was already a risk. The Commodore should have slowed his ships and headed west until they could determine why the RDF readings were so much different than the positions provided by dead reckoning.
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  223. The USN survey team that looked over the Milwaukee after its return from the USSR loan stated the Milwaukee was the filthiest ship the team had ever seen and recommended its immediate scrapping. Anyone know what condition the Royal Sovereign was in when it was returned?
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  224.  @stevehagen9804  I saw their YT video on the Grievance Studies. It was hilarious. I tried to read this study but it's located behind a paywall and I don't have $42 laying around just to read this tripe. He has written and published many other studies about mass shootings. The boards of the journals that published his studies should be looking at the data behind them. I suspect this isn't the first time he's just made things up.
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  225. Japanese subs sank about 75% of all merchant ships sailing from the west coast in the first month of the war. Her subs were the largest and fastest in the world in January, 1942, had the longest range of any sub, and had the most reliable torpedo with the largest warheads of any navy at the same date. Japanese sub skippers were more than willing to go after merchant ships. It was only orders from Tokyo that changed the targets to prefer warships. Captains that sank the most warships were also the most liberally rewarded by the Admiralty with promotions, so it didn't take long for sub commanders to fall into line. The USN would have had to devote many more resources to antisubmarine warfare, and supplies to the South Pacific would have taken much longer to arrive. While it wouldn't have changed the overall outcome of the war, it was a real missed opportunity on the part of the IJN to cause some real havoc here.
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  226. I was eleven years old when the hearings were being broadcasted. We had a broken down old 10 inch TV and y dad got a brand new nineteen inch model so we could watch the hearings without having to sit six inches away from the screen. It was really quite riveting.All this crime and corruption going on all around me in Cleveland and I had no idea anything was amiss. That was a time when people were actually ashamed of being criminals and didn't have instagram to use to become public figures about how smart they were.
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  227. They Croydon Crash was nearly the death knell for single engine commercial passenger aircraft. It was also the start of using paved runways for commercial airports. The same public distrust of single engine airliners spread across the Atlantic, and an indirect outgrowth of the Corydon crash and other similar crashes was the growth in the early 30's of twin engine all-metal monoplanes like the Lockheed Vega, Boeing 247, and Douglas DC-2. The stage was set for the beginnings of civil air transport as we know it today.
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  228. Good morning/afternoon, fellow naval history lovers.
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  229. The USS Narwhal and Nautilus with their pair of 6" (152mm) guns proved to be surprisingly useful in the Pacific once their difficult and unreliable MAN diesels were replaced with the slightly less powerful but infinitely more reliable GM engines. Their great size, large fuel tanks, and great interior volume allowed both boats to conduct war patrols of 70 days. They were the first submarines to have "cold rooms" (refrigerators) and freezers, so fresh vegetables and fruits were available during the first two weeks or so of a patrol and frozen meats available for almost the entire time, something only dreamt of by earlier submariners. Both boats received partial air conditioning to make things less onerous for passengers and crew for their new roles of being a general workhorse for many special operations, carrying everything from commandos to evacuees from occupied islands, including women, children, and at least one infant. They carried ammunition and other supplies to island outposts and the occupied Philippines, did shore bombardment everywhere from the Aleutians to the Japanese mainland, and landed various Army personnel as liaisons and advisors to local guerilla groups in the Philippines. In between, both boats sank a surprising number of enemy vessels with deck guns and torpedoes while withstanding a several severe and prolonged depth charge attacks. They were really more successful than the Navy ever expected them to be. Both boats were completely worn out from hard service at the beginning of 1945 and were decommissioned in April and May of 1945, stricken days later, and unceremoniously sold off for scrap before VJ Day. The only remnants are the two 6" guns of the Narwhal functioning as the Navy equivalent of gate guards at the submarine base in New London, CT.
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  230. The Stephen Hopkins was also armed with two .50 caliber and two .30 caliber machine guns. It was these guns, plus the two 37mm guns at the bow, and the sailors who manned them that allowed the single 4" gun on the Stephen Hopkins to cause such damage to the Steir. The machine guns kept up a heavy and accurate fire on the ship, killing crew members trying to get to the 5.9" guns that were concealed on the Steir. The steel plates concealing those guns had to be dropped before the main battery could fire. Every time gunners saw a head pop up to do so, they were shot. Eventually, one German 5.9" gun got in action, and the first round hit and destroyed the bridge of the Stephen Hopkins, the location of the all four machine guns. The machine guns were destroyed and the gunners were killed. The next round hit the 37mm gun tub at the bow, killing their gunners as well. Their combined fire stopped return fire from the Steir long enough for the 4" gun to fire off 20 rounds and fatally damage the Steir. Lt. (jg) Kenneth Willett USNR, had exercised his gun crews mercilessly, knowing the 4" gun was their only hope for a real defense. He practiced for exactly what happened when his ship met the enemy, using the 37mm guns at bow and the machine guns on the bridge to keep the enemy away from their guns while his crew could fire the 4" gun as fast as they could load the shells. With a well trained crew, the gun could fire 6-8 rounds a minute. In about a minute and a half, the gun crew fired off those first 20 rounds before the Stier could answer, a rate of fire that was probably the fastest ever attained with a 4" gun. Even though this single gun couldn't save his ship, the constant training done by Lt. Willett did assure the destruction of a German raider that had already sunk four other merchant ship and was just at the beginning of her voyage. Not only was the SS. Stephen Hopkins the only American ship to sink a German surface ship in combat, she was the first US ship to sink a German surface ship in WWII. [Edited to replace "Hoskins" with "Hopkins" and "Steven" with "Stephen". I was apparently having a bad day. ]
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  231. Tank you for the subtitles. Max speaks better English than I speak Russian, but his Russian accent still makes it difficult for me to keep up at times without help.
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  232. No problem with social distancing there when you're the only person living on the Block.
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  233. Swedish? It was a Korean artist and two Iranian hucksters. The second crowdfunding campaign has been cancelled and the Iran brothers have escaped to Iran with $600,000, far from the long arm of the law. I don't know what happened to the Korean kid. Maybe he got a split or maybe they killed him. Hard to tell with this pair. Stop giving your money to these crowdfunding campaigns. Pick a real charity where your money would do some real good.
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  234. A small correction. The shore battery guns were 5 inch 51 caliber guns, usually noted as 5"/51 guns. That may be where the confusion of "5.5 inch" came from. The US never used a 5.5" gun. The 5"/51 guns wee the hardest hitting medium caliber guns in the navy. Even though they had been removed from the Texas, they were in excellent condition, as shown by the results of their shooting. What Marines needed was a battery of 5.25" dual purpose guns rather than the mixed battery of 5"51 and 3"/50 guns. The 5"/25 could have shot down the high flying Japanese bombers and still have sunk the two destroyers. Unfortunately, the serious preparations of the defense of Wake only began about six months before the attack so they had to use what was available.
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  235. The Russian have an active disinformation campaign going on that targets various forms of digital media, and Wikipedia gets hit a lot by them. Since all the original sources are in Russian, and many of them were written for the express purpose of denying Russian responsibility for any bad effects of Soviet policies or events, they tend to get away with it without some pretty difficult and tedious research by non-Russians. Now people are reading the Wikipedia article about Totskoye and coming away with the impression the Soviets were really good about protecting everyone from radiation and pollution, even though Western militaries in 1954 didn't have a clear idea of how badly radiation could affect people. Just another reason to be cautious about using Wikipedia as a source without confirming it from other sources.
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  236. Yesterday has become today!
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  237. You never served in the military, did you? We don't develop war fighters by having daily social justice classes.
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  238. I used to live in the area of the Pacific NW that was a major target of these balloons. Most of the area in 1944 was covered in dense forest, and it rarely rained in summer. By September. most of the area was bone dry and, as we still see today, huge fires can break out from things as simple as lighting strikes or discarded cigarette butts. We were lucky the winds were unfavorable until November, when most of the area had received rain that put an end to the threat of large fires. We don't really know how many balloons reached the area since the population was sparse and the only evidence would be if they had started a small fire that forest rangers saw from their fire towers. Even today, there are occasional finds of remnants of the balloons, some which probably did explode, just not starting a fire large enough for anyone to see before it went out. It would have been big trouble for the US and Canada if the Japanese had decided to use chemical or biological weapons, but even worse trouble for the Japanese. There would have been a massive response by the US, and the immediate and long term results would have been horrific,
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  239. Poor guy. You sound like your head has been filled with Elmer's Glue. I hope you start feeling better by Christmas. And Merry Christmas to you and your family.
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  240. As usual with scary nuclear accidents in the US, the results of which we were all going to die, no one was directly killed as a result of the "meltdown" and radiation. The only directly caused deaths related to the incident itself were two volunteer firefighters responding to the plant. Their engine hit a slick spot on the road, the engine overturned, and the two firefighters died from the impact. Since it has now been forty years since the accident, many longitudinal studies have been and are still being conducted. With the exception of one dubious study, not one has show a higher that expected level of deaths that can be linked ot the accident. The results of the studies have been frustrating due to the fact the 16 counties surrounding TMI have the highest natural levels of radon of any of the 38 states surveyed. As a result, some cancers have always had a higher than expect level of cancers than areas with low radon levels, and that continues to this day. For many people in the area, spending time in a basement recreation room is far more dangerous than any result of the TMI accident. The one area of deaths that have shown a consistently higher than predicted level is from diseases caused by stress. Due to the poor public communications. many people in the area were convinced the results of the accident was covered up, and many lived in great fear of getting cancer from the plant. While it's hard to quantity deaths not directly related to the plant. at least two large studies have identified an increase in illness and deaths usually due to long-term stress, and the term "radiation phobia" was coined to identify this stress syndrome. The same kind of thing occurred after the Fukushima accident in Japan. The combination of TMI, Fukushima, and Chernobyl, while in total being responsible for a relatively low number of deaths and illnesses, have lead to many countries, Germany being the most extreme among them, to close down functioning nuclear power plants and switch to coal and natural gas plants, even though both sources of fueling power plants are well known causes of deaths, running into the thousands annually world-wide.
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  241. The Dante Alighieri was the first battleship built with triple turrets. Due to the slow building speeds of Italian ships, the honor of first first battleship with triple turrets actually commissioned belonged to the Austro Hungarian Viribus Unitis, commissioned on December 5, 1912 compared to the Italian ship not commissioning until January 15, 1913. I believe the Viribus Unitis was also the first battleship with triple turrets all on the centerline and with the turrets superfiring.
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  242. The British Empire and mercantile establishments of 1859 were as close to pure capitalist as it was possible to be. 160 years later, what remains of the British Empire has somewhat changed.
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  243. Vary sad that none of these light fleet carriers were saved for preservation.
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  244. Looks like the major form of recreation in DC is hanging in the streets after a hard day's work...
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  245. I don't think I'd want to the crew of a German/now British tank driving around on the British side. There were a lot more allied tanks than German in Italy by 1944, and many crews didn't have a lot of combat experience. They knew the silhouette of a Panther though, and I'm surprised there was no blue on blue shootout.
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  246.  @puppetguy8726  Not at all. Look up Sanborn Fire Maps. Even back in 1895, they detailed all the fire protection available, both in and around industrial buildings. You couldn't get and keep insurance unless you complied with the local and national fire prevention laws, plus the requirements of the insurance companies. A lot of insurance companies had their own fire overhaul departments that sent trucks to the scene of any major insured fire to preserve, to the extent possible, the interior and contents from water damage. Many plants installed their own cisterns and fire hydrant systems. Most insurance only paid for the actual structural loss, not for the inventory or business interruption. Fires were a major cause of businesses failing back then. Any place that handled gunpowder or other explosives had a lot of rules they had to comply with. I think we have this idea that turn of the century America was kind of a Wild West when it came to fire prevention rules. Nothing could be further from the truth.
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  247. One of the few times a single ship, and not even a warship, that saved a British Island and changed the course of a war. One small correction. The HMS Welshman, the ship converted to carry emergency supplies to Malta, was a fast minelayer, not minesweeper. She and her sisters were among the fastest warships in the war at nearly 40 knots.
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  248. Wow, this one just has random videos and stills of aircraft having nothing to do with the B-45, along with errors and goofs in almost every line of narration. Seriously, if you don't have time to do it right, just don't do it at all.
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  249. Phil is still around at 83. Vladimir Posner is also still around at 84. I became familiar with Posner from listening to his nightly commentary on the Radio Moscow North American Service on shortwave in the 1960's. He was a very smooth and engaging personality, and much different than the usual stolid Radio Moscow presenter. My assumption always was that he was a KGB agent, and, with his native English speaking ability and casual delivery, was able to spread Soviet disinformation so smoothly you almost didn't realize it. I don't think he's ever admitted he was in the KGB, but he has admitted his role as a Soviet apologist. He must have been considered an exceptionally reliable Soviet agent to be able to travel between the West and East so freely. He was even able to engage in some mild criticism of the Soviet government in ways that wouldn't have been tolerated from any other public figure. I quite enjoyed listening to him on my shortwave radio, but I also never forgot his real role as part of the Soviet media.
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  250. What a spaghetti armed flamer. He seems to have no clue about how Soro's "rescue" ships work.
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  251. US PT boats had dedicated deck mounted smoke generator cylinders from about 1939 on. Some boats had one and some had two, all mounted near the stern. They were made from standard 33 gallon tanks of a design made for ammonia storage. They were generally filled with titanium tetrachloride which, when ignited, produced a dense white smoke cloud all out of proportion to its size. My dad's boat had two cylinders so they could lay down smoke while beating a hasty retreat after attacking Japanese supply barges. Some of these were armored and had guns up to 3"/25 size so they didn't want to hang around, given the biggest gun they carried was a single 40mm Bofors.
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  252.  @dogofthedesert6642  Good points. I think Drach was just modeling the slugfest, but, even with Taffy 3, it was the aircraft from the escort carriers of Taffy 1 and 2, responding to the calls for help from Taffy 3, and their near suicidal attacks, that helped convince Kurita he was under attack by the main US fleet. It was the aggressiveness of the DD's and DE's that helped convince Kurita that he was under attack by cruisers of the main US fleet and the battleships would be just over the horizon. While the US had technological advantages, it was the training, morale, and fighting spirit of the USN that turned that battle. Kurita was trying not to lose the war in a day while the men and ships he was opposing fought like they were trying to win it in a day. Had Kurita actually been opposed by the entire force of Admiral Oldendorf, the slaughter would have been horrific.
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  253.  @perperson199  British intelligence wanted to make sure "Schmidt" disappeared under an assumed name to protect his family remaining in Germany from retribution. To this day, no one is sure exactly the real name of the pilot.
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  254. I've always wanted to go down to my basement and find a tank. :-)
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  255.  Alexander Challis  Indeed, and even worse for the Germans, it was an offhand remark from a captured British airman that stopped them from using Metox on submarines. He pulled a prank of his interrogators by telling them British planes were able to home in on the incredibly weak RF radiation from the Metox receiver's local oscillator. Since the Germans couldn't believe that the Enigma code had been broken, they had long believed the British had some kind of submarine detector that allowed Coastal Command planes to attack a surfaced sub without warning. As a result of this prank, Doenitz ordered all Metox units turned off on July 31, 1943. In addition to Enigma intercepts, the British had developed airborne centimetric radar, something the Germans believed impossible. It was this higher frequency radar that was the cause of more attacks, not planes detecting a Metox receiver. The USN wasn't immune to this silliness. A single experiment at Princeton "discovered" the signals from local oscillators of shipborne receivers could be picked up by a German sub 20 miles away. The Navy spent millions developing "radiation safe" radios and ordering all non-safe radios to be turned off when out of port. After the war it was discovered that the scientists involved had cooked the books and stretched the distance this signal could be received by using exceptionally poorly tuned radios with leaky LOs and huge antennas to pick up the LO signals. The distance using an average radio and average antenna was really about 75 feet. The test was paid for by a radio company named EH Scott, a name familiar to modern stereo buffs. I'll bet you can't guess which company was ready with compliant radios. :-)
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  256. "Stay in school..." God advice for anyone. Good luck, guys. Not as bad as Chitown, but bad enough when the shoutouts are to your dead homies.
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  257. Great video and retelling of this accident. At least 100 computer simulations have been done of this accident that I'm aware of. In not one of them was the aircraft able to land safely. All had the aircraft either break up in the air or upon landing. It was just one more incident that took everything to happen wrong for the accident to occur and everything to go just right to get the aircraft safely on the ground. Hats off to the pilots, crew, and passengers, and a good illustration why you should keep your seatbelt on as long as you're in the seat.
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  258. My wife of 38 year died of acute myelocytic leukemia in 2004, in part because the FDA was so slow releasing a drug that had the potential to at least slow the advance of the disease. Once they finally did release it under "compassionate care", it was only available at six different medical centers around the country. We lived in northern California, in an area with several renowned leukemia specialist, but we had to travel to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and stay for over a month at great cost so she could finally get the drug treatment. I have nothing but good things to say about the Hutch, but it turned out it was just too late in the disease for the drug to really help. The doctors at the Hutch gave it their best shot, and she did live probably a month longer due to the drug. If she had been allowed to get the drug sooner, she might have lived a year longer, and that was when every minute more life was worth more than everything I owned or ever would owned. It my times of deepest despair after her death, I fantasized about hunting down the bureaucrats in the FDA that dragged their feet on releasing the drug and killing them. I've recovered from that kind of hatred, but what the FDA does or doesn't do is more than numbers entered in a database. Let patients that are fatally ill make the decision to a try a drug, not a bunch of faceless doctors at the FDA.
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  259. LOL. Marty looked like he was run over by a bus after Knut's first presentation. He knows damn well that we avoided almost nothing, but at a tremendous cost in lives and and to society. Then he uses a statement from a mayor of a medium sized city with no actual numbers to bolster his case? Give me a break.
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  260. Thanks, Mark. As diver myself, I know what risk these Italian divers took every time they went out. They had a lot more guts than I would have had.
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  261. The US had operational Sikorsky R-4 helicopter squadrons in 1943, and they operated from ships and land. They were in Burma, the South Pacific, Burma, Britain, and Europe as the allies advanced. The Coast Guard gained a lot of experience flying the Navy version, HNS-1, on rescue and patrol flights along the US East Coast in 1944-45. The USN and RN flew R-4s from shipboard landing decks as early as 1944, and the USN was regularly flying the first vertical replenishment flight in the Pacific by late 1944. United Aircraft, Sikorsky's parent company, had built 100 R-4's by November of 1944. They were already building the R-5 (also named Dragon), a much larger and more powerful machine, by March, 1944, and the first went into service by February, 1945. So, just to be clear, the Germans were not ahead of the allies when it came to helicopters in general. What they were ahead on what was the first heavy lift helicopter, the Fa 223. Even the Fa 223 was a dead end in terms of heavy lift birds as the the widely separated rotors required a plethora of chains, wires, and gears shafts, a fatal flaw that caused most of the Fa 223 crashes. Some of the design details were used in experimental US helicopters that led the CH-37 Mojave, largest helicopter in the world at the time of the first flight in 1953, and the first large enough a vehicle could drive onboard.
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  262. By 1941 it was clear that the 1.1" AA guns were not going to be the standard armament for the USN. Many of the early bugs with the mounts and feed system had been worked out by Pearl Harbor and they were considered to be reliable guns. The problem was testing and the results of battles in the Med showed a 1.1" (28mm) was just too light to reliably bring down more modern planes, the Zero being a prime example. Consequently, planners revised the armament plan for DE's to have 8-10 40mm and DD to mount 10-14 of the same guns. Because of the space and weight available on the Fletchers, the final loadout on Fletchers by the end of 1942 was a minimum of 10 guns, with a quad mount in place of the previous quad 1.1" between mounts 53 and 54, and twin mounts on either side of the aft stack. A way was found, by adding a pair of gun platforms, to add another pair of twin mounts on either side of the forward bridge level. That was a total of 12 barrels and was the most common package by mid-1943 when there were finally enough Bofors guns to go around. The 16 gun ships landed turret 53 and added a platform for another quad that was superfiring over the existing quad mount, giving a total of 16 guns. 20mm guns carried for 7 to 18 depending on build date and the number of twin mounts available. The 40mm and 5"/38 guns were all radar directed, and the 20mm sights were constantly upgraded during the war. There really was no other platform with the speed, maneuverability, firepower, and electronics of a Fletcher. The Japanese recognized the danger of the radar equipped early warning Fletchers and concentrated their attacks on such ships, especially off Okinawa. It was only their heavy AA armament that allowed most of them to survive in that role, with several having downed five or more Japanese aircraft unassisted in a single day.
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  263. Count me in the "Large Cruisier" camp, but with some planning and work, these could been instead CBAA class ships. The concept of the Atlanta class enlarged to twenty-two 5"/38 twin mounts for a total of 44 barrels, eighteen 40mm quad mounts for a total of 72 barrels , and somewhere between thirty-six and forty 20mm twin mounts for a total of 72 to 80 barrels would have made these ships a nightmare for Japanese aviators. Deleting the 12" guns and their magazines would have freed up space for installing all the PPI radar screens and plotting tables to enable the Alaska class to be the USN's first true fighter control ships. They could have also been more easily converted to antiaircraft missile ships postwar. [Edited to correct some mistakes between mounts and barrels]
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  264. I guess this proves it. Given enough time and destruction, every place will look like Detroit with nicer streetlights.
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  265. You can still see some of the impressions from tank treads in the streets on both sides of Checkpoint Charlie. I didn't get to see it until 2000 when it had become a tourist attraction. Standing at the guard shed and looking east is still a rather grim prospect today. It must have been terrifying for a 19 year old soldier in 1961.
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  266.  @lgee9027  I imagine they can't sell the house and don't have the resources to pick up and move. A lot of these are elderly people who paid off their house and thought they'd have a nice place to live out their remaining years. Now that's all gone and they're stuck. Just very sad.
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  267. Alcolu is one of many towns left behind by the closing of the lumber and textiles mills and their ancillary businesses. They are are scattered all over the South. The population Alcolu is down to 429, and it will become more and more of a ghost town as its aging population dies off
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  268.  @carriertaiyo2694  The Japanese had a much different strategy than the US. They viewed their fleet submarines as literal submerge member of the fleet, and their role was to hunt down and sink warships. There are stories of Japanese sub commanders letting merchant ships pass when they were down to their last six or so torpedoes to conserve them for warships. They didn't build enough subs to replace losses and never envisioned a role for smaller subs to defend the home islands. The Japanese believed the war would be won with one gigantic fleet action, and submarines were just another part of the fleet.
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  269. Arming merchant ships was one of the turning points in submarine warfare. Having each merchant ship armed and with trained gun crews made it difficult for subs to surface near a target and sink the ship with gunfire from their deck guns. A sub could carry at least several hundred artillery rounds while only having 8-12 torpedoes. Sinkings were drastically reduced once U-boats had to rely on just theor torpedoes.
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  270. "Unintentional" two and three round burst. Right.
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  271.  @Agentcoolguy1  It sounded to me like he thought some of these might have been carried as normal sidearms.
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  272.  @Mugdorna  I wouldn't be surprised. My dad served as a motor machinist mate on PT boats in the Pacific. In theory, he was supposed to be spelled every two hours so he could get off sitting on those three big Merlins and recover. This wasn't always possible when they were in combat while barge hunting, and there were several times members of the crew had to drag him out nearly unconscious from heat exhaustion. I have no idea how he stood it.
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  273. Another Excellent video. /the Constabulary also established the first highway patrol, mainly to police the autobahns and cut down on stolen US vehicles and black market smuggling. They were generally well regarded by German civilians, but the one thing that West Germans couldn't forgive was establishing speed limits on the those autobahns. They were one of the first things to change after West German independence in 1949.
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  274. All speech that doesn't condone specific acts of violence or the violent overthrow of the government is free speech. Period. Hate speech, by definition, is free speech. If we don't defend this principle now, the only free speech we'll have is speech that agrees with me.
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  275. Surcouf could have been a fairly successful cruiser submarine if she had survived long enough to actually reach the Pacific. Her nominal diving depth wasn't exceeded until the much later nuclear attack submarines of the USN. She would have been useful for attacking merchant shipping while operating as a normal sub and warships on the surface using her main battery. She was relatively immune to depth charge attack since her great diving depth of almost 600 feet (183 meters) exceeded the capability of Japanese depth charges in early 1942, and she probably could have gone to 900-1000 feet (274-305 meters) without serious risk to the hull, making her effectively immune to underwater attack, at least from the surface. With the addition of some radars and additional night fighting equipment, she could have done a good job of shore bombardment on the many small Japanese outposts in the Pacific, as well as landing raiding and reconnaissance parties using her small boats. All that potential came to nought on the night of February 18 or early morning of the 19th, 1942, while enroute from Halifax to transit the Panama Canal and on to the Pacific. About all we know for sure is the last thing heard of her was a routine position message sent at 1600 on the 18th. The SS Thompson Lykes reported colliding with and running over an underwater object. Unfortunately, this was very early in the war for the US, and there was an unreasonable fear of U-Boats infesting the Caribbean. The crew of the Lykes reported men in the water yelling for help, some in English. Assuming she had hit a U-Boat and not wanting to fall prey to the other German subs assumed to be in the area, she continued on, sending a signal to the Panama Defense Frontier base at Panama City on the night of the 18th. The actual time of the message is still a little murky, but it seems to have been at about 2200. What the Lykes actually hit is still a point of much debate. The damage to the Lykes was described as being not serious enough to have hit a sub the size of Surcouf, and the crew described the object as much smaller than the Surcouf. Postwar records proved no German sub was within hundreds of miles of the point of the collision. Merchant ship crews had virtually no training in warship recognition at that time, and how accurately the crew could have estimated the size of what she hit on a moonless night is open to considerable doubt. Even if Surcouf's main radio antenna had been damaged by the collision, she would have only been about 80 miles (130 km) north of Cristobal, Panama at the time of the collision. Assuming she could remain on the surface, the crew could have rigged up an emergency antenna carried for just such a purpose. She was plenty close enough to Panama that a mayday sent on any of the several longwave and HF emergency channels of the time should have been picked up by someone. In particular, the HF emergency frequencies at night could have been picked up hundreds if not thousands of miles away. Hams and shortwave buffs on the East and Gulf Coasts avidly monitored these bands at night, yet not one reported receiving a mayday that night. Theories abound as to what happened to the Surcouf, and they are easily found on the net. They range from the possible to completely fanciful. I won't get into them here or another book will result. The most likely fate of the boat was she was jumped by a PBY Catalina on routine patrol over the Gulf of Panama. Tropical waters are noted for ships leaving bright luminous wakes, the result of the billions of photo flash plankton that abound in the warm waters. A boat the size of the Surcouf would have left a long, bright, and attractive wake to any patrolling bomber. The crew of the Surcouf was probably maintaining an active surface watch, but there were no enemy aircraft reported anywhere in the Caribbean, so an aerial watch was either not maintained or was very relaxed. The PBY, seeing the wake from many miles off, came in low to attack what it believed to be a large Japanese sub. Stories were current at the time of Japanese subs that exceeded 400 feet (122 meters) and 5,000 tons. While the I-400 class was indeed in this size range, construction didn't even begin until 1943, so none were in the Caribbean. Some ideas of what the Japanese had then came more from "Popular Science" than any official naval briefings. The huge wingspan of the PBY allowed it to cut back power and approach a sub at 100 feet (30 meters) above the surface. The crew of the Surcouf probably never saw or heard the Catalina until is was on its attack run. There were no internationally agreed to recognition signals at the time, and IFF systems were still in the future. The boat's only hope was to dive quickly enough that the PBY would lose it. Diving time for the Surcouf was about three minutes, actually quite fast for a boat of her size and top hamper, but nowhere near fast enough to escape the incoming attack. The PBY was probably carrying four 500 pound (227 kilogram) depth charges and several 100 pound (45 kilogram) bombs. The usual method of attack was to drop the depth charges set to 25 feet (8 meters) first to keep the sub on the surface. If the depth charges didn't sink the boat, the plane would return to attack with bombs. The depth charges would have been devastating to the Surcouf if the attack was accurate, exploding just below the hull of the boat as she attempted to dive. Many German and Japanese subs were sunk during just such attacks. and my guess is the PBY crew, with the Surcouf not taking evasive action on the surface and not having the time to fight back with antiaircraft fire, was the victim of just such an accurate attack, and sank quickly as she was attempting a dive. Many such attacks were reported in the early months of 1942. The PBY, seeing nothing on the surface after she circled back, and seeing no wreckage, probably patrolled the area for a short while, then resumed her patrol after reporting the attack by radio. The vast majority of such attacks in the Caribbean turned out to be schools of dolphins, a whale basking on the surface, and even vast schools of anchovies being herded by predators. I imagine the report was written off to just such an occurrence, one of many logged but never further investigated. The Surcouf was never heard from again, even after a fairly extensive sea and aerial search. The wreck site has never been identified, so all we have left is the theories and the lost souls of about 120 sailors. The wreck would lie below about 9,000 feet (2743 meters). Perhaps, as our underwater detection and exploration improves, we may yet have answers as to what happened to the Surcouf.
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  276. Crap. Charlie, I was getting butterflies in in my stomach just ridin around those alleys inside your camera with you. Make sure you keep your friend close to you on nights like that. Scary place late at night with all the snow and ice on top of it.
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  277. I see you've done a reupload to include a link to the Kindle version for all of us In the colonies. thanks! Kind of destroyed my previous post though. ;-(
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  278.  @Nastyswimmer  Oh, yes, there's no doubt that ships from destroyers upwards destroyed tanks during shore bombardment missions. The question here wasn't that Rodney destroyed tanks during D-Day. It was if there was any evidence that a single tank was chased all over the countryside while Rodney fired salvo after salvo at it.
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  279. PT Boats got more standardized armament as the war progressed, but they were pushed out ASAP from 1940-1942 as a force in being. Since the assumption was their four torpedoes would be the main offensive weapons, a pair of dual .50 caliber machine guns was included, mostly to keep the heads of enemy gunners down. By early 1943, it was clear the role of the PT was going to be to stop small vessels from resupplying Japanese islands as we hopped over them. These Japanese boats were mostly very shallow draft barges, and torpedoes were useless against them. Many were quite heavily armored against PT boat attack. This started an arms race between Japanese and USN crews about which would have the most effective armament. PTs never returned to anything larger than forward floating dry docks or small shipyards established by the SeaBees on conquered islands. There wasn't much formality when it came to adding or deleting equipment from boats. It was pretty much up to each skipper what he could scrounge. The arguably best Japanese barge buster was the Pontiac M4 37 mm cannon taken from crashed or salvaged P-39 fighters. P-39s were plentiful in the Pacific, and more M4s became available as the P-39 was taken out of service for replacement by more modern aircraft. Every boat in my dad's squadron was eventually equipped with a bow mounted 37 mm gun, and most of them were installed by the crews with the help of the few shipfitters available. They next started scrounging every 20 mm oerlikon they could find and nailing them down anywhere there was deck space. One of the few authorized additions was a stern mounted 40 mm from mid 1943 as the kamikaze threat increased. By end of the war, my dad's boat had three 20 mm cannon, one astern of the 37 and one each on the deck next to the charthouse, and the Bofors gun at the stern. Two more twin 50s were installed athwartships of the charthouse, and eight 5" rocket launchers were bolted on just ahead of the charthouse. My dad said the rockets, that were supposed to be used for shore bombardment, were usually fired at barges as the boat first ran into attack. They weren't accurate at all, and dad doesn't remembered any barges sunk with them. They were pretty terrifying coming at the Japanese at night with all the flames, smoke, and noise each rocket created. Many of the barges were manned by Japanese fishermen, and he says several barges just ran up the while flag rather than enduring any more of those things headed at them.
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  280. One of the reasons for the superfiring height aft mount in the Littorio class was to work in hangers for their three seaplanes. The hangers had a track leading out to the stern catapult that allowed fairly quick mounting of the aircraft while protecting the aircraft from weather and blast effects from the main battery. US battleships using catapult storage of their floatplanes suffered repeated damage to the catapults and even had the aircraft blown overboard when the aft turret needed to fire mostly astern. It was actually a pretty good idea without having to result to the below decks and elevators used in the Cleveland class cruisers. These seemed like a good idea as well, but they had never ending problems with leakage through the elevator doors when they shipped water over the stern, and even from the torrential rains tajhat were a feature in the tropics. Mechanical problems with the elevators and even shock damage from near misses were also continuing problems.
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  281. Neither the L-29 or the l_39 could have created sonic booms. The L-29 Delfin was a straight wing trainer with a top speed of 510 mph. The L-39 Albatross was a higher performance version of the Delphin, but it was still straight wing and had a top speed of about 600 mph. Both are far below supersonic speed at any altitude. My guess is you were hearing (and feeling) Mig-25 fighters from Vasylkiv air base. Given the dates, they were mostly likely Mig-25RB reconnaissance bombing versions flying nap of the earth training missions at supersonic speeds. Low level breaking of the sound barrier sounds like bombs being dropped nearby, and the sonic wave can cause some real damage, like breaking the windows out of structures and causing cracks in weak, old homes.
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  282. Problem: Watermelons cost $1.5 and we're selling them for $1.00 Solution: Get a bigger truck to deliver more watermelons This has never been the road to business success.
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  283. Interesting concept, but you just know the losing side is going to be looking for revenge, and a wider war will always develop. There have been a few instances of this kind of thing, and it only works if there's a strong cultural imperative that the small battle will be the only battle. Some Native American tribes that couldn't risk all out war because of their small number of warriors settled disputes of honor or territory with small battles, but traditions were strong enough that the battle didn't expand to the rest of the tribes.
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  284. Good picture of the four Fletchers and Tamandare, ex-St. Louis, sailing out in 1961 to confront the French "fleet" that consisted about 25 fishing boats. The French were sending the 2750 ton destroyer Tartu to look after the fishing fleet after two Brazilian corvettes drove the French fishing boats out of the area of the Continental Shelf. The Brazilians and French were deadly serious about their fishing rights so DeGaulle sent Tartu as a show of force. Unfortunately for Tartu, the Brazilians responded with their aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and seven destroyers, and their air reconnaissance located Tartu when she was still 200 miles away from the fishing fleet. When Tartu discovered the Brazilian fleet looming up on their radar, discretion became the better part of valor. She cruised outside the territorial waters of Brazil while a Brazilian corvette captured the French fishing boat Cassiopée to raise the stakes. Given the weakness of the French fleet trying to fight a war off the Brazilian coast, cooler heads prevailed, and the dispute was settled by the World Court. It would certainly been an interesting war game, and President João Goulart was quite prepared to give the French a bloody nose.
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  285.  @Boxghost102  Well, no one had a/c in 1915, but they also didn't have to shovel tons of coal every week. I don't know if men were stronger then or just used to more hard work, but I would have died the first week.
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  286. Design work on the North American AJ Savage series had begun just after the atomic bomb attacks on Japan. The Savage was a considerably larger aircraft than the B-25. Wingspan was 75 feet over tip tanks, measuring 50 feet with the wings folded compared to 67 feet for the B-25. Empty weight for the Savage was 27,558 with maximum loaded weight of almost 51,000 pounds compared to 19,480/35,000 pounds for the B-25. The outstanding difference for the Savage was a bomb load of 12,000 pounds compared to 4,000 pounds for the B-25. The Savage was operated successfully from modernized Essex class carriers, but it an aircraft rushed into service to preserve the Navy's role in the atomic era, that large size and load carrying ability due to the 10,000 pound weight of early atomic bombs. The Navy had even larger bombers built in the 50's as the A-3D Skywarrior and huge A-5 Vigilante to defend their role as a nuclear deterrent, but all carrier aircraft were knocked out of that role by the ballistic missile submarine.
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  287. The bad guy's car was obviously a detective unit as well.
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  288.  @Drachinifel  Well, Thursday is Thanksgiving Day here in the US, so the video gives us something else to be thankful for. :-)
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  289. The Graf Zeppelin II came close to revealing Britain's early warning Chain Home system. It was used on several electronic reconnaissance missions in early 1940 to discover what all those big towers scattered along the coast were there for. The officer in charge of what we'd now call electronic warfare was certain this was a radar system, and he confirmed it by monitoring the radio traffic between the radar stations as his airship nosed in and out of what the presumed to be the range of the radar. To confirm your judgement that Goering was a moron, the radar report went all the way up the line to our corpulent hero. He believed the British were not able to produce a radar system in early 1940...because the Germans weren't able to. A couple of Goering's "experts" wrote their own report stating those big towers were really used for long range radios to communicate with ships on colonial stations! Consequently, Goering believed they presented no threat to Germany. The German air force did stage a few minor attacks on the Chain Home towers but were called off on direct orders of Goering. He stated later the Germans would attack the towers when Japan came into the war since he believed the towers were only a threat to Japan. It was Goering's jingoism that saved Chain Home from attack and arguably saved Britain as well.
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  290.  @juststeve5542  Indeed. The Soviets initially didn't want women in combat because of their WWI experiences. Between all the men lost in combat the female non-combatant deaths, plus Uncle Joe's purges, it was impossible to grow the population. Stalin wanted women at home to produce babies when Igor came on his infrequent leaves, It was only after the Soviets grew desperate that they allowed women in specialized combat roles like the snipers and a few fighterb regiments. BY 1944 it was obvious the Germans were going to lose, and Ivan was able to get more leave than in 1942. Stalin ordered almost all the women withdrawn from combat so they could fulfill what Joe felt was their natural function instead of shooting at Nazis.
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  291. This is a great idea for a WWII naval series. I'm looking forward to the late entering allied naves and neutral navies. One small correction however. The introduction to the British of the Hazemeyer stabilized 40 mm Bofors mount was when the Dutch minelayer Willem van der Zaan arrived in Portsmouth after the fall of the Netherlands. She was newly commissioned at the time, and the Hazemeyer mounts weren't yet fully developed. In particular, the Dutch version of the later British Type 282 radar wasn't mounted at the time of her escape, and the Dutch crew had to do the mounting and integration of the radar to the mounts with no written specifications, those having been left behind at the Dutch dockyard that was going to do the work just before the country was overrun by the Nazis. The cruiser De Ruyter did have a fully developed battery of five twin Hazemeyer mounts, certainly one of the most effective light antiaircraft systems of 1940. The RN was duly impressed with the performance of the guns during practice with the Dutch navy in the prewar period, and the plan was to have her system fully documented while De Ruyter was in refit at Singapore in February, 1942. We now know the fate of both De Ruyter and Singapore during that disastrous month. Some of the details of the Hazemeyer mounts still weren't known to the RN even postwar, since the plans of both the Hazemeyer company and its German parent, Siemens-Halske, were destroyed in the ensuing fighting. Hazemeyer had planned to move the radar and the optical sights to an off mount director somewhat similar to the US Mark 51 director, but the war was over for the Dutch before that advanced beyond the planning stages. The RN struggled for years with the STAAG and Buster systems, but by the time the mounts themselves would operate reliably, the 40 mm gun was considered obsolete. A few were hastily repossessed from museums for use aboard British landing ships during the Falklands war. Several Argentine aircraft were claimed damaged or destroyed by these guns, but I've yet to find confirmation of this. The gun crews used the weapons enthusiastically, firing off hundreds of rounds during the air attacks, so it's certainly possible at least one aircraft was hit by one of them.
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  292.  @BrenBrenMartin  Correct name of book is Clear The Decks! and you can get it from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Clear-Decks-Daniel-V-Gallery/dp/B0007J0QT4
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  293. It really was an amazing landing, and probably one that the pilot couldn't duplicate again. Plane crashes are always enough things going wrong in the right order, and a landing like that is the same thing, just with enough things going right in the right orders.
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  294. First elevation dewing shown is that of a B-36...
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  295. I consider myself pretty well versed on aerial combat during WWII and this is one I've never heard of before. Great job finding these stories. Is this the only verified instance of an enemy aircraft shot down (or at least forced down) using M1911 pistols?
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  296. Considering the original spec was for a weapon with a service life of one year, the old M3's have done pretty well for themselves. I was in Belize in 1998 hiking in the jungle near the Guatemala border when we ran across a Belizean army patrol. They took a break for a while and, after swapping smokes, they let me take a look at what they were carrying, It was a six man patrol, and three of them were carrying original M16A1 rifles, one was carrying an M3A1, one was carrying a Sten, and the last had an M14. Talk about ammo logistics problems.
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  297. Probably the smallest vessels with dedicated admiral quarters were the 327 foot, 2000 ton Erie class gunboats. Not only did they have admiral quarters, which were quite sumptuous for a ship this size, there were two additional cabins for the admiral's staff or other guests. The Erie class were spoken of as floating embassies due to the number of times US ambassadors to Central American countries were carried on various inspection visits of the host countries. Ambassadors from the host countries were also frequently carried, and the afterdeck was specially set up to serve as a very large dining room for state dinners. Given the lack of air conditioning in the 1930's and the tropical areas the Erie's patrolled, an open air dining room under canvas was considered very comfortable. Diaries from sailors that served on the vessels before the war spoke of how much they liked their ships since they were among the first to have bunks for each crew member, and the crew mess and heads were much larger than average. Petty officers had their own three person cabins, and each CPO had a private cabin. Very pleasant vessels to serve on.
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  298.  @Legitpenguins99  We for sure will never know what really happened. The Navy investigation is about the only factual thing to go on and their findings were they didn't know the answer either. If the two crew ended up in the ocean in the days before survival suits and rescue beacons, and in 48-50 degree water, they would have lasted about a half hour before hypothermia made them two weak to stay in what were probably loosely strapped life jackets. That would have been the end, and kapok life jackets of the day didn't stay afloat for long so searchers searchers had to be there in time to spot them. All the evidence is long gone, something the alien abduction mob has really latched onto, since nothing can disprove their ridiculous theories.
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  299. I don't know if this was also true in the USSR, but Slovenia had two casinos, and no Slovenians were allowed to enter. You had to show your passport or the temporary ID card you got if your hotel kept your passport. One was the Grand Casino Portorož, located in the Grand Hotel in that beach resort city. The other was in Nova Gorica, but I don't remember the name. When I first went to the Grand in 1988 it had a strict dress code. Long pants and collared shirt during the day and jacket and tie at night. Women had to wear pantsuits or dresses. It was a very classy place, but minimum bets for blackjack was $5 during the day and $10 at night. You had to change at least $100 in hard currency for chips. The bar was very nice. I was there in the low season and had a very attractive female bartender all to myself. I think I was the only non-Italian there. We stayed at the Grand in 1995 and got a two bedroom suite for $105 for five of us. I doubt I could get one now for that price.
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  300. Thanks, Mark, for another interesting and little known aspect of the Cold War. In the days before GPS, knowing exactly where you were on either side of an imaginary line was as much a matter of luck than precision. Note the model of a Bf-109 on the desk of the West German officer at 2:18. I don't know when that snippet of film was made, but it's surprising that would have been allowed. West German law was rather draconian about the display of any Nazi memorabilia, in particular any display of the swastika. I can't tell what marking was on the tail of that model, but the correct marking would have been a swastika. All I can see in this low res film is a black smudge on the tail. I wonder how historically accurate that model actually was?
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  301. I wonder how many pairs of shoes and sweaters are buried still today? :-)
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  302.  @LucioFercho  No, I'm American. I refuse to get drawn into this kind of nationalistic pissing match when I have no dog in the fight. I was merely relating what I've read from other reasonably authoritative sources like Janes. You may draw whatever conclusions you like. I really don't care.
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  303. Almost all the newer looking abandoned houses were part of North Pointe Village, a project in Highland Park started in 2005 that was going to revitalize the city. There were going to be 153 factory built homes built with government and (supposedly) private money from various agencies and financiers. The project was plagued from the start with corruption, mismanagement, and no one seeming to understand the housing market in HIghland park or Detroit. The houses were poorly built and assembled, were all around 1100 square feet, and were supposed to sell for between $135,000 and $155,000. No houses of that size were going to sell for those prices in Highland Park. The project was financed by a guy named (((Aryeh Schottenstein))). He was on parole for mortgage fraud from federal prison while he was supposed to be financing these new homes. He is a liar and a thief. He was helped along by Fred Durhal, a state representative and feeder at the public trough who has managed to avoid prison while being elected to the state house in 2014 to succeed his father, who had served three terms before him. He received 94.8% of the votes, and this was long after his role in North Pointe was made public. Voters who live in a district and can't recognize mismanagement and thievery are pretty much doomed from the start. The houses were so poorly constructed that many didn't have back doors, and those that did had the door open onto a three food drop with no stairs. Basements regularly flooded, and the sump pumps were installed in such a way that they pumped the water back into the basement. Windows fell out of the houses, and the substandard aluminum wiring regularly caught on fire. As we can see from your video, not only did they not have garages, they didn't even have driveways that extended beyond the front porch. Art Blackwell, the emergency manager for Highland Park at the time, and since convicted of fraud and mismanagement of city funds, was also part of this criminal conspiracy. Loans were made with no money down to people who couldn't afford the mortgage payments. Despite promises by Blackwell to provide security to the vacant houses waiting to sell, scrappers were breaking into the homes within the first week and stealing everything from the appliances to the plumbing. Those homes rapidly became unsaleable and were boarded up. People who thought they were moving into a nice neighborhood found themselves in area with no streetlights, vacant homes, and an increasing amount of arson fires. Almost everyone who bought a home left within the first year, mostly because the home was going to be foreclosed anyway. It was a disaster almost all the way around, and, except for the few occupied homes, they are all being demolished. Its the same old Detroit story - corrupt Democratic politicians, financial managers that were thieves and couldn't manage their way out of a paper bag, and fraud by criminals way smarter than the those from the state and city who supposed to oversee the project. Detroit and Highland Park will never come back if we can't do better than this.
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  304.  @michaelsanderson6968  I can make a more or less reasonable defense of most of King's actions, even though some of those turned out to be clearly wrong. What we knew about U-Boats attacking an area as large as the whole Atlantic coast and into the Caribbean all the way to he Panama Canal was quite different in early 1942 compared to mid-1944. The technology, number of escorts, and indeed the whole strategy of coastal convoys had yet to be worked out. His idea of single ships traveling at speed being less exposed to attack by individual U-Boats, compared to large, slow convoys with inadequate escorts along the coast may have seemed like it had some merit in early 1942. Contrary to what has been written about King, he gladly accepted a group of ten Flower class corvettes from the RN in early 1942 under reverse lend-lease, followed by another ten built for the USN in Canadian yards. Once King felt he had enough escorts from the USN, RCN, and RN, he started convoys with alacrity. As it turned out, any convoys, even lightly escorted, incurred less losses than lone ships, but we didn't know that in January, 1942. What I can't forgive him for was the court martial of Captain Charles B. McVay III, commander of the USS Indianapolis . He was the driving force behind the trial, even as his other senior officers urged him not to go ahead with it for the good of the service. It now seems pretty clear he was so insistent on a court martial that would essentially drum McVay out of the service to get back at McVay's father, Admiral Charles McVay II, for a reprimand given to him and two other officers in 1921 for sneaking women onboard a ship. This only resulted in a letter of reprimand being placed in King's file that would have zero effect on the rest of his career, but King was known as never forgetting a grudge, and now he had his chance for revenge on McVay's father through his son. He never admitted he was wrong and never apologized. Captain McVay never got over the shame and humiliation of being court martialed nor some relatives blaming him for the deaths of their loved ones. The depression after his wife died of cancer and constant harassment from relatives finally drove Captain McVay to step out onto his back porch on the chilly morning on November 6, 1968 and shoot himself with his Navy issued .45 pistol, ironically while clutching a toy sailor he had received as a child from his father, a toy sailor he used as his good luck charm. No, there is no forgiveness for King for such an evil and despicable act. It showed more about his character than any other act in his career. If there were such a thing as a posthumous court martial for murder of a fellow officer, I'd be all in favor of it.
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  305. You're right, never noticed that juxtaposition of dates. Just the idea of fighting a war in the Finnish/Russian winter makes me cold.
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  306. Even if the Germans had managed to build more Type XXI boats even a year earlier, they would have been descended on hordes of allied escorts and destroyers. Even worse, part of the horde would have been an increasing number of Saipan class light carriers with 35 aircraft armed with depth charges, and Mark 24 "Fido" and Mark 27 homing torpedoes. Sonars on the escorts were constantly improving, as was airborne search and attack radar. There would have been enough aircraft available to fly the equivalent of a combat air patrol over any convoy. The better that the Mark XXI would have performed, the more it would demanded a huge response from the allies. If anything, the German Navy would have lost even more boats because of the umbrella formed looking for what still would have been a relatively small number of Type XXI boats. No matter how it worked out, it would have been a slight setback to the allies followed by a much, much larger setback to the remnants of the German Navy.
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  307. Dang. JC has really gentrified sine I was there in in 2001. Looks like they've torn down a lot of the abandoned homes and built a bunch of urban pioneer houses. Many of the apartment buildings that were abandoned in 2001 have been rehabbed and actually look pretty good. They must be doing something right there.
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  308. These man eating tigers of Nepal are not only feared because of their killing ability but for the mystic powers given to them. Nepalese villagers still think tigers have that ability to transform into other forms, including other humans. To this day, villagers still fear tigers, even though their numbers have dramatically decreased.
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  309.  @GlamStacheessnostalgialounge  Assuming Ian has misspelled the name and it's really Schlegelmilch, buttermilk is a good name for a rifle, just like Buttermilk was a good name for Dale Evan's horse.
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  310. Queen Mary had quite a heavy armament added during her refit in during January, 1942 in Boston. She was stripped of her sparse British armament except for two of the questionable Unrotated Projectile rocket launchers mounted near the aft funnel. The rumor is Churchill himself wanted the UP mounts retained, so orders were dutifully followed. Otherwise, she was outfitted along the lines of a merchant cruiser, albeit a very large merchant cruiser. She mounted four 6" guns, two forward and two aft, six 3"/50 DP guns singly mounted fore and aft, five twin 40 mm mounts sited along the superstructure, and rounded off with twenty-four 20 mm cannon mounted wherever space could be found in typical USN fashion. Unusually for a merchant cruiser, she was fitted with directors for all her guns excepting the 20 mm cannon. Roosevelt and Churchill both realized what a catastrophe the sinking of Queen Mary would have been, both to the thousand of troops onboard and to British morale. She was actively hunted by German U-Boats and the German surface fleet, and escaped several close calls with shadowing U-Boats. Queen Mary mostly relied on her speed to evade attack when sailing unescorted, but the Admiralty wanted her to have the ability to fight it out with attacking aircraft or surface ships if it came to that.
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  311. The Germans would have done much better relying on merchant raiders, as they had during WWI. The Merchant Raiders used in WWII were cheap to put in service since it was just a matter of adding equipment to existing ships. They had the advantage of surprise since they were merchant vessels to begin with, not warships, and became masters of disguising their ships as neutral vessels. They had the ability to far outrange warship like the Graf Spee dueto their very large bunkerage, and a major warship would attract the attention of a large part of the RN. Merchant cruiser only attracted a major fleet effort as individual ships became too successful. The Germans were able to put 13 merchant raiders in service over the first three years of the war compared to two ships of the Graf Spee class. If the Graf Spee's had a role at all, it was as part of the fleet as large cruisers. Sailing the seas alone in such a large and distinctive vessel just made it that much more likely they would be tracked down and destroyed. The raider Atlantis, for example, sank more than 162,000 long tons in her 602 days at sea while the Kormoran sank over 100,000 tons of enemy shipping before sinking the cruiser HMAS Sydney in a mutually destructive battle. Merchant raiders were often commanded by officers who enjoyed the role of legal pirates operating far from the formal oversight of the Kriegsmarine. These raiders tied down far more RN forces that the two ships of the Graf Spee class ever could, and sunk far more tonnage. If the Germans had 20 merchant raiders in service at the outbreak of war, they would, along with the U-boats, have put Britain's survival in serious doubt. [Edited for typos]
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  312.  @michaels.5878  Not very good. The were set up for power operation, but the turrets proved to be not watertight, so the systems shorted out whenever there was water over the turrets, and even very heavy rain. The basic concept, with the turret and gun stabilized in four axes, but the actual operation showed the concept was too advanced for 1940. The ROF was low compared to, for example, the US 5"/25 or 5"/38, and the Italians didn't have a good light AA gun to back it up. The same 90mm gun was developed for use by the Italian Army, and it performed well on land, where all that stabilization wasn't needed.
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  313. There are no B-52 pilots now flying that are older than the B-52 they are flying. Even more amazing. the Air Force expects the upgrades performed from 2013 to 2015 to allow the aircraft to remain in active combat service until at least 2050, when the youngest plane will be about 85 years old and the eldest near 100 years old. No other aircraft has even come close to these records.
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  314. One of the advantages of a totalitarian government is you get to decide on the enemy and then mobilize the populace against them. Excellent video about an obscure but important part of Chinese history.
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  315.  @TheArgieH  LOL. I'll bet some crews figured out how to make a boiler powered by the engine. Swordfish were also used to land agents behind enemy lines and drop supplies to resistance fighters in France and Norway. There really wasn't another low and slow plane that could carry a 1500 pound loadout, so it got used for tasks not even dreamed of by its designers.
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  316. "Half baked idea" is a charitable description of this thing...
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  317. Too bad the Typhoon wasn't armed with rockets at the time. He could have done a lot more damage. I don't know where the photo of the aircraft attacking Gestapo HQ came from. It's either a composite or a much later photo since the aircraft has "invasion stripes" painted on the wings, something not done until 1944. The baron typifies the old saw that there are bold pilots, old pilots, but no old, bold pilots.
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  318.  @RedXlV  It's not being done by the state. All the work is being done by the Foundation. The state bonds have already been sold for the major part of the dry berthing expense and the Foundation has raised another million dollars. I rather doubt the aggressive project schedule will be met but, if the weather cooperates, I think we'll see the Mighty T in her new home by 2021.
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  319. The only thing I have in my garage are some rusty yard tools and some half dried up paint cans. Dang!
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  320. It must have been a joyous day for Muscovites until the reality of living under Stalin sank in again.
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  321. Even if they had sufficient fuel, the Germans could only advance as long as bad weather kept allied air power grounded. Once the skies cleared, most of the German armored vehicles were destroyed in concentrated air attacks. What the Battle of the Bulge proved was no modern armored offensive could succeed without air superiority. This proved again - twice - in the battles for Kuwait and, later, Iraq.
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  322. LOL. I guess Cuban has never had to buy an NBA ticket if he wants to see price gouging. What a complete scumbag.
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  323. I don't think anyone but Fisher would have had the combination of vision and just giant steel cajones to retire 150 obsolete ships in just one year (1904). This reduced the fleet numbers by almost 20% and gave the impetus to start constructing modern ships in their place. There was tremendous opposition to this move, and it was only Fisher's influence and pugnaciousness that allowed him to pull it off, thereby positioning the RN for the war with a modern fleet.
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  324.  @andrewszigeti2174  Who exactly do you think is the largest industrial power in the world then? It's certainly not China, which is just now working up its first domestically produced conventional fuelf aircraft carrier. The US produced three of the largest nuclear powered carriers in the world during same time period the Chinese were struggling to restore an old Soviet era carrier to operation. The US is still a $20.4 trillion economy compared to China's $14.4 trillion, with all other economies magnitudes of order less. Don't confuse outsourcing with a company not still being a US corporation. As the Chinese are seeing now, outsourcing as a basis for an economy can be disrupted almost overnight. The nature of a corporation is to maximize profit so they can pay shareholders and stay in business. If they can make more profit producing in the US, they will. In a time of national emergency or war, the whole concept of outsourcing become moot. I don't have a lot of faith we could ever reproduce the production miracle of WWII, but another WWII is just as unlikely.
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  325.  @SamsonCheung  Yes, all the Pearl Harbor battleships with the exception of Mississippi got a chance to get their licks in that day. She had the oldest fire control radar of the group and was unable to come up with a firing solution until seconds after Adm Olendorf ordered a ceasefire. Even though her single 12 gun salvo didn't hit anything, it was the last salvo ever fired at another battleship. Seems somehow fitting that this was the last battleship versus battleship fight in history.
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  326. Thanks for debunking some of these rather ridiculous urban legends about Porter. As you said, simply the torpedo launch in error toward a battleship carrying the US President should have been enough to cement her place in naval history without all the other bits of drama that ended up making her the supposed unluckiest destroyer in the navy.
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  327. I like the song, but it shows the difference between the RN and USN. When the British get together at the pub, a song typically breaks out. When US sailors get together at the bar, especially if there are Marines about, a fight typically breaks out. :-)
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  328. Start recording your dad's memories now. I did it with my dad, a PT boat sailor in the Pacific, and he still lives through his words.
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  329. Cleavage and machine guns. The thirsty will be emerging from the woodwork.
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  330. Seems like the British version of the USN destroyer escorts, although they were about three knots faster. Many also gave the same good postwar service. An unremarkable class that did remarkable work far beyond their modest displacement and weaponry.
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  331. Wow! Thanks for the shoutout, Drach. I apologize to the other subscribers for droning on sometimes. After 55 or so years of studying naval history and spending a small fortune on reference books, many of your topics set off the "Oh, I've read about that before" response. Add in the USN and RN as my favorite navies, nuns forcing me to learn touch typing, and we have the ingredients for my mini "War and Peace" comments. :-)
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  332. The French must have had a sizeable squad of industrial spies that were sent to the other major navies. Everything they brought back made certain that the French would never have the same things as other navies, the turret layout being an example. I swear they were translating words like "weird" or "ugly" to "better" and "handsome". :-)
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  333. "Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil" by Rear Adm. Worrall Reed Carter. While editing to correct the title, The rest of my post disappeared. Rats! At any rate, it's the best book on WWII logistics, and that's now the correct title.
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  334. Fleccas, I'm glad to see you back on the street. No more ghost hunting, please. This is your real talent.
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  335. By about 1800 it became nearly impossible to reclaim slaves the had fled to New England. There was a groundswell of opinion against slavery in states like New Hampshire, and an even greater resistance to having any now free slaves being removed by force. Even when slave recovery agents arrived with warrants to seize the slave, no one in local law enforcement would cooperate. In some case, the recovery agent himself would be arrested and thrown in jail, allowing the slave he was seeking to flee. One of the reasons the Underground Railroad worked was the collusion of local authorities with the "conductors ' of the railroad to move slaves north to free states and Canada. Ohio became a hotbed of opposition to slavery and support of the railroad. It was also the main route across Lake Erie to Canada for former slaves wanting to leave the country. Southerners were initially baffled by this. Slaves were their property, and why would another state refuse to help return their property? It was looked at then much as a stolen car today, where other state cooperate to recover the property. I obviously don't believe that slaves really were property, but the stolen car analogy is used to show how slave owners viewed the situation. The trickle of 1805 turned into a flood by 1850 with over 100,000 slaves successfully fleeing north to freedom. Southerners believed that this was going to drain the South of all its labor when even the federal government refused to help. Seeing the ruin of the plantation economy not far around the corner, the Underground Railroad was one of the proximate causes of the Southern states decision to secede and go to war if it came to that.
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  336. I can assure you the unfaithful wife story wasn't just in the USSR. We have tons of them in the US. I'll give you one. A guy and his wife want a son, but their first two children are girls. After trying again, his wife delivers a son. It was the ugliest baby he ever saw, and he was really pissed. "How could this happen?" he said to his wife. "Look at our two beautiful daughters! Have you been fooling around on me?" he asked. His wife hesitated, smiled her sweetest smile, and said "Not this time, honey."
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  337. Thanks, Mark. This is a great example of why there are bold pilots but sometimes not old pilots.
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  338. I enjoy seeing your longer videos lately, and the Berlin Airlift is sure a subject than can occupy an even longer video. Good job.
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  339. Don't be fooled. She's warning you that things won't go well when she's off script.
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  340.  @callmegary2622  I think these were used by the BBC as part of their scam documentary, so he didn't want to release them until after the Indian police arrested these people.
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  341. Most of the sniper rifles used in the Falklands War were the L42A1's, but these were conversions of the L1A1 with a new, heavier barrel and firing the 7.62 NATO cartridge. All the wood forward of the barrel band was removed to lighten the rifle and a few more detail changes, like a new magazine suitable for 7.62 were added. These weren't quite the rifles of the Mark 1 (T) in the video, but they still used a lot of the original parts. Some were still being used by the SAS during the first Gulf War. Quite a life span for one basic rifle.
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  342. Six Tambor class submarines were armed with 5"/51 wet mount guns. The decks required enlarging and strengthening to accommodate the the much greater size and weight compared to the 3"/50 gun they replaced. They were reportedly popular with gunners. More subs would have been so equipped except for the objections of Admiral Thomas Hart. It was his belief that submarines should spend their time off our coasts torpedoing enemy b=vessels. To support his beliefs, he initially forbade planners to arm a submarine (except for the large minelayers) with anything larger than 3"/50. This was because a larger gun would encourage submarine commanders to battle it out on the surface, thereby leading to the loss of more submarines. He never seemed to understand the need for a gun large enough to sink merchant ships while having enough range to avoid the usual 3" and 4" self-defense armament of the merchant ship. He was on the General Board that recommended adopting the Mark 6 torpedo exploder, the one that caused almost all the troubles with US torpedoes. He was the commander of allied naval forces in Java, and his hesitant and incompetent leadership lead to loss of almost every allied naval vessel in the the Battle of the Java Sea. Fortunately, he was relieved of command in February, 1942 before he could do further damage. Admiral Hart easily makes by list of worst admirals.
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  343. The Fermilab Research Center near Chicago has radiation shields that contains steel and armor plate from 10 light and heavy cruisers and five aircraft carriers. Even though submarines had no armor plate, they did have large quantities of high quality lead sheets used for ballast, and three Gato class submarines contributed their lead ballast sheet for protection against stray particles showing up while protons.strike their targets, interfering with the high speed photography used to determine the path of an accelerated proton. The accelerator tunnels can stretch for a mile or more so lots of lead was needed. I believe more lead was salvaged from an additional four submarines in the 70's. The lab has stockpiled large amounts of cruiser armor plate to use in new construction since there are obviously no more steel armored cruisers being made. The Lab has expressed interest in salvaging armor plate from the Iowas if they are ever scrapped. To my knowledge, none of the armor plate used in the Lab comes from a battleship.
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  344. The Nineteenth Century version of the rail gun! Both have had about the same level of success so far.
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  345. There's a reason why the ship's owner's manual's always says don't fire forward gun astern no matter how tempting the target .:-)
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  346. Very informative video. WWI German vessels aren't my forte so I always learn something from your High Seas fleet presentations. That is a beautiful model of the Derflinger. Having built a few naval models in my life, the quality of paintwork, detailing, and rigging on this one is really outstanding. Are there any more pictures or videos of Speedbird's models I can feast my eyes on?
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  347. It's been a long, long time since I played a naval themed board game of any type. I was never a big fan of any board game other than Risk, which my friends and I used to play for days straight sometimes. It was the first time I learned of a place named Kamchatka and where it was located.
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  348. Well, there's a good chance that sailing past Somalia, even now, is likely to involve pirates. :-)
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  349. The lamb ragu is more like what the French call "ragout" , also pronounced "ragu" . The ragout is more of a thick meat or fish based stew. Ragu is a pasta sauce that contains tomatoes and sometimes ground meat. This is the one that's closest to the Ragu in a jar.
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  350. 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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  351.  @cranki6316  The Air Force has 5,396 aircraft compared to 3,900 for the Navy. The Army is close to the Air Force at 5,117 aircraft, but the Air Force generally maintains a small lead in total numbers but a much larger lead for fixed wing aircraft, with about 80% of US Army aircraft being helicopters.
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  352. Wows. It is amazing that you've now gotten to three years. Seems like it was only about a year ago I started watching your videos when you had maybe 10k subs. Congratulations.
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  353.  @micnorton9487  You're welcome. I had an uncle that was a Coastie who served on the Modoc. Pretty exciting stuff!
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  354.  Russ Gallagher  Unless it was making a port visit, how many people ever SAW a battleship either? Of course it's the same. People see ships in port, rarely on the high seas.
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  355. Just one more reason to be grateful you're born in the modern Western world.
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  356.  @shaggybreeks  I was living in the Bay Area then and it became the most drawn out police action in history.It started out with the Red Power movement, a mostly native American group of Berkeley students with communist leanings as a way to start seizing property that they thought they could claim belonged to them, even though there was no evidence native Americans ever occupied the island for the same reason the occupation finally wound down -there was no water on the island. As the occupation dragged out hippies, street people, and assorted criminals and drug addicts were getting ferried over every weekend by sympathetic boat owners. The numbers grew from 89 to over 400. Women were getting raped, people were being robbed, and a general sense of lawlessness prevailed. It was a good example of why anarchy won't work. One of the leaders, Richard Oakes, had his 13 year old daughter fall to her death from a wall in early 1970. This was the beginning of many of the original occupiers. Many of the Red Power students, showed their commitment by leaving with the excuse they didn't want to flunk out of Berkeley. The vast majority of occupiers were then just street people and drug addicts. The few native Americans left got into intertribal battles that sometimes ended in bloodshed It still took another year and a half before the Feds finally decided to end it in June, 1971 after an arson fire destroyed a large number structures. By then, only 15 people remained to be removed by a force of 300 federal officers. It was sad thing and should never have been allowed to go on as long as it did, but it was a poster child of how the country was descending into anarchy at the time.
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  357. The weird thing on the screen is called a test pattern here. They were commonly shown for an hour when regular broadcasting ended, usually midnight or 0100. Most TV's in the 50's and 60's had instructions on how to use the test pattern to adjust how sharp the picture would be and how well the regular shows filled the screen. Early color TV's also used test patterns to get the RGB color mixing right. By the mid 60's in the US, most TV's in the US were all solid state with no tubes, and it was the drift caused by tubes wearing out that made a test pattern useful. Soviet TV's were mostly tube types until the mid-70's, so I imagine that's why the test pattern survived so long there. The last test pattern I remember was in about 1968. Is this chapter a revision of an earlier one due to the copyright problem? I remember you talking about the travel shows in an earlier video. EDIT: Never mind, I should read down further for the answer on the copyright issue.
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  358. Thanks, another great detail video of a small but significant battle. As much as we like to talk about the superiority of individual German tanks, large numbers of almost good enough with a real combined arms attack will almost always prevail.
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  359.  @bkjeong4302  The worst part was the Japanese had both the 20mm Oerlikon and 40mm Bofors by 1940. The IJN deluded themselves into believing that the 25mm was better than the Oerlikon and at least equal to the Bofors, even though their own testing had shown neither claim to be true. The Italian 13.2mm machine gun even showed better results in testing than the 25mm. The 25mm gun was just a development of the French Hotchkiss, but the Japanese developed it as their own to the point that the NIH aspect of the other three guns overtook common sense. The IJN was the only navy in WWII to not develop, or at least use, a light AA weapon larger than 25mm, and they paid dearly for it during the last two years of the war.
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  360. A proviso for the Littorio being able to hit a target at extreme ranges is that this was only true for fair weather daylight engagements. The Italians had developed a very effective radar called the Gufo as early as 1937. It was actually ready for introduction by 1940, but budget cuts and a general lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Italian high command for radar stalled introduction until 1942, after heavy Italian losses . By the time the Gufo was introduced to enough Italian warships to be useful, the armistice intervened. It's probable that more ships equipped with the Gufo would have stiffened the Regia Marina's resolve to engage in night battles rather than retiring before dark.
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  361.  @jackbharucha1475  While the battle had Anime Fletchers doing their parts, let us not forget the DE Samuel B Roberts, the redoubtable "Sammy B". A ship meant for convoy escort, with primitive fire control compared to the Fletchers. A ship with a mere single triple of torpedo mount because it was only supposed to fire them unopposed at a submarine. A ship that had a design speed of 24 knots yet achieved 28.7 knots while chasing shell splashes. Even more than the Fletchers, the Sammy B was the real hero of this battle.
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  362. Your camera has great night vision, Charlie. I'd love to travel back in time to Christmas, 1966, the last one before the riots. I'm pretty sure that, unlike now, there would be more than one house lit for Christmas, and most of them would at least have a small tree in the living room window. These are the years I grew up in, and it's hard to imagine I'm actually looking at the same places.
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  363. It was sure a good test of the fail safe concept of not loading pits until it's ready for a real drop. Too bad for the cow though.
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  364. Good luck ever trying to get a direct answer out of an attorney. The spent their whole time in law school learning how to do anything but that.
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  365. I still have the hospital bill from when I was born in Ohio in 1946. My mom was in the hospital with me for four days and the total bill was $19.60. Oh, and an additional $2.00 for the anesthetist. Not exactly free, but pretty close. In 2018 dollars, that still only 27.36 for the anesthetist and the hospital bill is $268.14. You can't even get a room in Motel 6 for four days for that.
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  366. It was the job of the Japanese to silence opposition and take over the rest of Shanghai. They had a foretaste of what would happen to them from Wake Island if they didn't go in with overwhelming forces.
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  367. LOL. I'm glad to see the video is back. I was watching the first one when it disappeared halfway through. The Maus was a good example of German desperation as the war drew to a close, looking for the superweapon, from the V1 and V2 to the Maus, hoping one thing could break the back of the allies. It showed a complete misapprehension of the strength of the enemy they were fighting.
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  368. I've never found Steve to be creepy. He and Ian are doing two different but somewhat related things. Ian, who I believe is a mechanical engineer, is taking apart old guns and showing us how they are made and how they work. That's a very mechanical thing, as it should be. Steve is taking apart old food and trying to give his audience an idea of how it was made, how it looks and feels, and how it tastes. That's a much more subjective thing than showing us a firing pin. Steve gets much more excited when he finds a rare ration or is able to eat a 65 year old ration that's still good. Ian is a cool, methodical engineer. I enjoy both of them, and I'd bet they'd get along great in person.
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  369.  @Taistelukalkkuna  I know. I should have kept chewing on the old man's leg until he coughed up the forty-nine bucks! RIP Dad.
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  370.  @Edax_Royeaux  You need to take a look at a map of the supposed "Bermuda Triangle" again. While there's disagreement about the exact area of this, no map has the apex of the triangle any further west than south Florida, and the westerly extent then continues down the Caribbean islands. Surcouf was 70 miles north of Cristobal, in the Gulf of Panama, far away from the Bermuda Triangle.
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  371. While there were no dedicated PT boat carriers I'm aware of, the story of the SS Stanvac Manila, a tanker that was torpedoed with six PT boats from the second division of Squadron (RON) 10 being carried as deck cargo, may be as close as the USN got to a PT boat carrier, albeit from a ship never designed for such a role. Stanvac Manila was torpedoed May 24, 1943, off Nouméa, New Caledonia. While the merchant crew abandoned ship, the senior PT officer, and senior officer onboard, Lt. (jg.) Russel W. Rome, belayed the abandon ship order, and the PT crews started to free the boats from their cradles. The naval armed guard remained aboard, and they, plus the PT crews, fighting from their boats, were able to keep Japanese planes at bay while the tanker slowly sank. I won't write another book here, but check out the story at http://www.pt171.org/PT171/writeups/stanvac.htm. RON 10 was my dad's squadron, and he was aboard the Stanvac Manila that day. Amazingly, my dad's boat, PT-172, was able to motor into Nouméa harbor under its own power, and three of the remaining five boats floated free and were towed into harbor. No better example than this of the fighting spirit of green PT boat crews encountering their first taste of combat.
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  372. I'm glad to see you got the "werewolves" story mostly correct. There's hardly any WWII story more sensationalized and generally filled with complete bullshit. Your telling of WWII stories is improving. Thanks.
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  373.  @albino3360  The crack epidemic had really set in during the 80's. Thankfully, I was able ot get out of LA and go to a smaller, calmer place.
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  374. You're welcome. I don't miss the days of the Soviet Union, but it was interesting to listen to Radio Moscow and try to guess what was really happening then. What made it more interesting was to then listen to Radio Warsaw amd Radio Sofia to see how fast any change in the partly line from Moscow was picked up by the radio broadcasts from satellite countries. Some, like East Germany, were in lockstep with Moscow while others, especially Czechoslovakia and Romania, took longer to fall in line. I heard a good KGB joke recently - Why do KGB agents always work in groups of 3? One can read, another one can write and the last one is there to keep an eye on those two intellectuals.
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  375. The Soviet Hydrometeorological Service had troubles with inaccurate forecasts for a long time. They were so bad in the early 30's that Stalin had almost all the top leadership purged. It's one reason why the Red Army had such trouble getting out a good forecast for Soviet attacks during WWII. Stalin was so pissed off with the poor quality of the forecasts that he believed there were saboteurs and spies were causing the problem. No one had the courage to suggest that maybe Stalin was the problem. In 1946, he had one of his top political allies, Voroshilov, take over the weather service, root out those anti-Soviet spies, and sent most of the top meteorological talent to the Gulags. There was a joke in the USSR that the only good forecasts were for Siberia because that's where all the weathermen were stationed. As you might imagine. there weren't a lot of college students in the USSR who decided becoming a meteorologist was a good career since they might end up in Siberia with too many blown forecasts. It's not surprising the purging all the technical talent of the weather service, and keeping the remaining meteorologists terrified, didn't result in good forecasts. Since the collapse of the USSR, forecasters no longer keep a bag packed for a quick trip across the border into Finland, and the accuracy of forecasts have improved quite a bit.
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  376. First a new book and now mag dumps from 5.56 and 7.62 machine guns. You won't have very many more better days in the rest of your life, Ian. Enjoy it.
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  377. The Laconia Incident was particularly despicable in that the Germans and Italians were doing all they could to rescue survivors, British sailors and Italian POWs alike, of a troopship they had sunk while the British were shooting and bayoneting Italian POWs and a US B-24, seeing submarines engaged in rescue work, and with one having a large Red Cross flag draped over the deck gun, still attacked, killing many men in the water and preventing the rescue of others. It was a war crime that should have been investigated with those involved prosecuted at Nuremberg. It is a stain on the history of the RN and USN.
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  378.  @LucioFercho  I already told you my nationality and how I arrived at my conclusions. I don't know any Peruvians. You'll have to find a Peruvian to fight with. As I said, I really don't care.
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  379. The human voice fleet increases still further. :-) Given Ottoman/Turkish maintenance standards and manning, it's surprising even one made it to 1938 as a hulk without sinking at her moorings.
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  380. No, we panicked over outliers rather than the usual. Hubei, the province that contains Wuhan, has 58 million. The total deaths there have been 4850. Even if we assume the PRC was under reporting by 100 times , that still would have been a death rate of .008%. We listened to scare stories from China and Italy, the media amplified the stories, and if we didn't close down everything and lock everyone up, we were all going to die. We knew early on this wasn't true and this was, in fact, a low morbidity virus. Our problem was, once the narrative started rolling downhill, there was nothing to stop it but time. Global hysteria is a lousy way to manage public health.
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  381. How the hell are the Marines supposed to make an amphibious landing on a contested beach with no armor? Call the Army and hope they aren't busy and have some extra tanks available? Another dumb thing coming from the Joint Chiefs that we will have cause to greatly regret at some point.
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  382. The RN, USN, and, I believe, the French used range clocks, large clock like round structures with a pair of hands, generally mounted high up on the main and fore masts. They could communicate the range when found by the lead ship, or indeed any ship, in the line, allowing the following or leading ships to use that range without resorting to all the tables. There were still some small adjustments made to compensate for their place in line and any variation in direction, but range (or concentration, in RN terms) clocks allowed all the ships in the line to set their guns to a known range and get into action rather than each ship having to find their own ranges.
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  383. Just a slightly more violent way to engage in carpet munching.
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  384. Geez, Charlie, I thought you were going to be trapped in the projects all night! Those gates open from the inside automatically if you roll up on them and wait about five seconds.
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  385. Hey, Charlie, did you get a new camera? Your video is very clear and detailed. I was watching this full screen on my new 55" TV Santa brought. It was so realistic I had had to grab my nine and put it my lap, just in case. :-)
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  386. When black women start yelling, clapping their hands, and flipping the bird to the cops, it's time to clear out.
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  387. He had to learn how to not sound black to get on TV, but then he kind of went overboard.
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  388. My uncle was an expat working for Maraven, the Shell oil company concessionaire in Venezuela. The Venezuela of today started in 1976, when Carlos Andrés Pérez, the first socialist president of Venezuela, decided to nationalize all the foreign oil concessions. The country was very well off at the time relative to the rest of South America, with a strong social and education program. The nationalization was the beginning of the end as oil revenue became a giant slush fund for future dictators to steal from while spending almost nothing on upkeep and modernization of the oil fields. Today, oil production is at levels not seen since the 1950's. Yeah, socialism has worked great for Venezuela.
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  389. The Argentine Air Force was another major user of Lincolns. I remember reading a report of Argentine crews also reporting similar strange noises at night in the aircraft. How many aircraft were " haunted" I don't know, and there was speculation that all this was picked up from RAF reports of the occurances aboard 398.
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  390.  @aixamagr2897  Right. Working at your parent's business doesn't mean you know squat about to run a business. She's merely less insane about some thing the Dems support while being on board with spending even more money we don't have.
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  391. Merry Navymas to all the ship lovers here. It's always the high point of my week when Drach fights his way through Rain, snow, and the gloom of covid to bring us another Drydock.
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  392. I was reading an article about the challenges of hand loaded guns like the six inch models used as secondary armament on British battleships and proposed for the never built South Dakota class. Compared to the 50 pound projectile weight and 25 pound propellant weight of 5"/51, a 6"/53 had a propellant weight of 46 pounds and projectile weight of 105 pounds. A six inch crew could load enough rounds to maintain the maximum ROF of about seven to eight rounds per minute for between three and four minutes before the crews were completely exhausted. A five inch crew with appropriately muscular loaders could keep up a maximum ROF of nine to ten rounds per minute almost indefinitely. In weight lifting terms, loading the six inch gun was like curling 100 pounds every seven seconds. Not hard to see why gun crews couldn't keep up the maximum ROF for very long. While the six inch gun fired a round with more range and armor penetration than a five incher, the throw weight of the two guns was about equal after the second minute of an engagement, and that throw weight could could be continued almost uninterrupted for the whole time of engagement. Those calculations were part of the reason why the USN generally stuck with five inch guns as secondary armament for battleships.
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  393. Small correction. At 11:14 you call the guns on the Gwendolyn "six inch" when you meant to say "six pounder". A six pounder is a 57 mm (2.2 inch) weapon so it's a substantial difference.
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  394. My understanding of the history of Andaman Islands is that Arab slave traders used the islands for fresh water and wood supplies as they plied the trade routes from Somalia to India and even on to China. The trade may have been going on since the tenth century, and certainly from the twelve century. Slave traders apparently took what they could from the islands, including the native peoples for slave trade. The Arabs looked upon them as black Africans that had somehow escaped to the islands. This went on for at least five centuries before there were any shipwrecked sailors from Europe on the Islands. The treatment of the various tribes by these slave traders seems to have predisposed the Andaman peoples to judge all outsiders as dangerous and needing to be killed before they could kill them. The British added their own layer of hostility to the mix while building convict colonies in the Andamans. One last colonial irony affected one of the VC winners from Arracan. William Griffiths was still a private in the British army in 1879, itself quite a feat for a solder 13 years after getting the VC. I haven't found much about him except for the fact he was apparently an alcoholic, and it was only the VC that stopped him from being drummed out of the Army. He was still with the 24th Regiment of Foot on January 12, 1879 at Battle of Isandlwana, the first major battle between an organized army of Africans, now know as the Zulus, and the British army. Griffiths, along with the rest of the 2nd/24th Regiment of Foot battalion, fought to the literal last bullet, and they ran out of bullets before the Zulus ran out of men. Everyone in the battalion was killed that day as their position was overrun by Zulus.
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  395. Very interesting. Once again, quantity wins over quality. I'd sure hate to be the German crews who were stuck operating the last enemy tanks in Paris against the onslaught of Free French forces primed for the kill.
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  396. I think there were two main innovations from the US Civil war, one a game changer and one a dead end. The game changer was Monitor's use of a turret. It was clear from the Monitor vs Virginia battle that a much smaller number of large caliber guns in a turret was able to cover all aspects of a broadside ship without the need to actually turn to attack. This was a significant tactical advantage for a turret ship, and pretty much all ships by the 1880s had at least one turret. The dead end was ramming. The inability of Monitor's guns to sink Virginia (which was due to reduced charge due to a training barrel explosion rather than a defect in the shell) led other navies to believe that any gun would have great difficulties battering its way through thick enough armor. However, the lucky success of the Austrian flagship SMS Erzherzog Ferdinand Max sinking the Italian Re d'Italia at Lissa in 1866 by ramming led to a revival of the long dead ramming craze. Most capital ships built from 1870 until the early 1900s had some form of ram bow as a result. Cooler heads finally prevailed, and once again the concept of ramming other than a desperation technique fell out of favor again, hopefully never to be revived.
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  397. My dad joined the Navy in July, 1942, and had no idea how to swim. He went through basic at Great Lakes and they had no time to teach men how to swim. As you said, the assumption was you'd have a life jacket, and that would hold you up until you got into,a raft and were then rescued. Luckily for dad, he decided to volunteer for PT boats, and the staff at Melville were under no illusions that crewman could depend on the normal naval precautions once a man was in the water. Every crewman was taught to swim or had their swimming ability improved. This probably saved his life, since he was thrown overboard on one occasion, and had to tread water for about half an hour before his boat was able to find him in the gathering dusk, thanks partially to his ever present, ever reliable Zippo lighter.
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  398.  @1Korlash  Your nitpick is well taken. :-) South Dakota, given the circumstances of the battle, probably wouldn't have sunk. What Washington's timely intervention did was save her superstructure from getting any more shot up, so SD was able to restore power and get underway while still an effective combat unit. I can only imagine the consternaton and fear as Washington was able to straddle Kirishima with her first salvo while those aboard Kirishima had no idea where the salvo even came from. Probably the first and still best example of how beating the other guy in the war of electrons was even more important than with your big guns.
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  399. There are already 62 Arleigh Burke class in service. They can carry between 90 and 96 missiles, depending on the Flight variant. The Navy's goal is to have at least 70 always in service with 10 in refit, building replacements plus some additional ships as the earliest ships reach about 30 years old and retirement. Even if we only allow 90 missiles and assume only 50 Burkes would actually be available for combat, that's still 4,500 missiles. As you say, having 10 in a battle fleet is at least 900 missiles. The Burkes are also able to defend themselves pretty well against submarines, and they do have an effective gun for surface action or shore bombardment. It's difficult to see how any battle is going to need more than those 900 missiles, and the USN can just keep adding Burkes until the job is done.
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  400. The EM-2 weighs 7.7 pounds. The M-16 weighs 7.17 pounds. Not enough weight difference to prompt such an ignorant vulgarity. If the EM-2 adopted plastic furniture the weight would have been nearly identical, or maybe a little less.
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  401. I've never understood why virtually all navies in the Dreadnought period thought casemate guns mounted at the extreme bow and stern positions were a good idea. Not only could any practical gunnery officer have told them that such positions were nearly impossible to fight in anything other than nearly calm seas, they were a positive menace to the ship's safety. It was nearly impossible to seal any casemate position from incoming seawater. Positions located at such extreme positions were subjected to battering seas from the bow and following seas at the stern. Nevertheless, battleships and battlecruisers continued to be built with such gun positions right to WWI, when experience showed why they were such a bad idea. This led to almost all of them having to be refit, with the positions plated over, thereby losing six to eight guns of their secondary battery. I just shake my head every time I see an armament layout for ships like the Von Der Tann.
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  402.  @Dave_Sisson  If I was freezing in the North Atlantic, I'd take rum. If I was sweating my butt off in the South Pacific, I'd be mighty happy to see the ice cream barge.
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  403. The picture of the three battleships shows Indiana (BB-58), Massachusetts (BB-59), and Alabama (BB-60) tied up at the Embarcadero in San Francisco on March 17, 1946. I believe this is the first and last time all three battleships of the class were together for a port visit. The Massachusetts was decommissioned less than a year later so the occurrence was unlikely to have ever happened again.
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  404. MY late wife was Slovenian. These battles are still remembered as if they occured yesterday. People have relatives that were in the partisans or Ustasha, and sometimes both. It's not the kind of thing ever discussed in public, especially among people that have been drinking at a bar or party of some kind. People are still being killed over what happned during the war there. It's hard for people outside the former Yugoslavia to understand. The breakup of Yugoslavia allowed these battles to be fought all over again. You did as good a job telling the story as could be expected.
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  405. It looks like an abacus. I don't know if Russia still produces and uses the abacus but it's widely used in China,, and they make millions of them every year. They have a whole bunch of different ones on Amazon.
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  406. There were two more electroboats on patrol at the surrender, the larger and more potent Type XXI versions. The U-2511 made a practice attack run on a British cruiser on May 4, according to the skipper, right after the surrender message was received. He stated he was never detected and could have easily torpedoed the vessel and escaped. It was lucky for the Allies that Germany didn't realize their plight until too late to get more boats into service.
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  407. Where's the rest of the review? You've been doing this lately, cutting things off in the middle. Why?
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  408.  @chloekit4861  Yes. Back then, there was an assumption that we weren't such snowflakes that we'd have PTSD from seeing the results of a traffic accident, and maybe seeing the IRL blood and gore from an accident might even get us not to have those kinds of accidents ourselves. IKR, weird!
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  409. According to Rock Island, this rifle uses a standard M-14 magazine. Is this incorrect? It would be kind of downer to spend $25,000 to $40,000 plus fees to end up with a machine gun you can't fire because it uses a magazine that's unavailable.
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  410. Russ G, is there a joke there I missed?
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  411. Of the 2,710 Liberty ships produced, only 10 sank due to brittle cracking propagating enough to cause the hull to break in two, or nearly so, typically in hogging seas, as the maximum stresses were being experienced amidships. A major cause of the propagating cracks was the decision to use square hatches to speed production, and make welding easier for the army of inexperienced welders swarming the Kaiser shipyards. Cracks formed right at the junction of each hatch corner, and there were enough hatches on a Liberty that it didn't take many cracks to cause catastrophic damage. The answer in later Liberties and subsequent Victories was the use of rounded hatch corners. Ten years later, the catastrophic failures of Comet airliners tragically taught the lesson again. My dad, who used the GI Bill after he mustered out of the Navy to later become a mechanical engineer, drilled into my head that only four professions can kill you as a result of their normal duties. Those are doctors, police officers, architects, and the various permutations of engineers, and all four needed to keep that awesome responsibility foremost in their minds while doing their work. He became one of the leads on the design team for the main landing gears for the Boeing 747. I vividly recall as a kid seeing a light coming from the den late into the night . I would peek in to see him hunched over his desk with his slide rule and stacks of specs, checking and rechecking the calcs. Things like that taught me ot practice what I preach. I was a lucky kid to have a dad like him.
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  412. Thanks for answering my question about fighting whatever the Kirov is called now. Yes, I meant a Java Sea type battle, with a scratch force of vessels fighting a Kirov class ship and her escorts. I think you've identified the best role for an LCS - a decoy and sacrificial target. :-)
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  413. When I was 14 years old, my uncle, who worked for the Cleveland Plain Dealer during the war, presented me with a complete bound volume of all the 1942 editions of the paper. I was bound with some sort of wooden or very heavy cardboard covers, had over 1,000 pages of the various editions, including the color Sunday funnies, and weighed about 25 pounds. I devoured those papers from then right up until today. The poor thing is pretty dogeared now, but the one thing that really struck me was how dark the first five months of the war was. All of Europe was under Nazi control and the Japanese were running rampant in the Pacific. There was real doubt that we could win the war, with some commentators saying we;d end up being the last remnants of democracy once Britain fell. That civilians were able to maintain morale by throwing themselves into their work of producing more war material was really a miracle itself.
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  414. It's like living crammed together in a giant hamster cage.
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  415. Palmer Woods is a beautiful area of Detroit where residents ech pay a monthly fee to provide a 24 hour security patrol in hopes they can stop the local criminals from carrying off all their stuff. They had to start doing this because Detroit PD is so underfunded and undermanned that residents have to go to the police station to fill out paperwork for a report if they need one for non-violent crimes. This relatively small area is about 1/4 mile from the intersection of Bauman and Annin streets. Enter that in Google Streets and you'll see why Palmer Woods needs full-time security. I'm surprised Charlie didn't get stopped. [EDIT] The first five minutes is in the University District, south across 7 Mile from Palmer Woods. It's another beautiful area of Detroit, but nowhere near as wealthy as Palmer Woods. You can tell when you enter Palmer Woods because of the decorative post streetlights, something the residents pay for as well, since Detroit only has streetlights at intersections or the middle of long blocks. You can see how relatively dark it is on the University District streets by comparison.
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  416. He did. This must be a reupload for some reason. I imagine someone got triggered by the sight of all those swastika.
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  417. Canal boating looks like a pleasant way to spend a holiday. Are there still boats there today? 1974 doesn't seem like that long ago to me until I start counting and realize it's almost 46 years now!
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  418. There is a good display of USS Nevada artifacts at the Nevada State Museum in Carson City. One of the things they seem most proud of the Japanese couldn't sink her, and she put up a fight all the until the end when the US tried to do the same. :-)
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  419.  @micnorton9487  I wrote "Didn't he once say he had relative in the Coast Guard?" Form that, you took that I wrote he was in the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard is not "loosely affiliated with the Navy" in time of war. The Coast Guard is transferred to and becomes part of the Navy during wartime. 170,000 men and women served in the Coast Guard while under the command and control of the Navy in WWII.
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  420. At least it's 0600 CDT instead of the previous normal 0400, so I can get a little more sleep between Drach videos. And whoever thought we'd eventually have cruise ships with more displacement and length than even the biggest US carriers?
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  421. Geex. It's 0400 here, I'm just getting ready to turn off the computer, and then this shows up. So much for sleep right now...
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  422. In addition to the problems preserving warships, the process for storing auxiliary ships was even more troublesome. Firstly, there were about four times more of them than there were warships. As WWII showed, vessels like amphibious warfare and fleet transports had a far longer useful life than a warship as technology made warships become obsolescent even more quickly. In addition, auxiliary craft had many of the same electronic systems as a warship during and after WWII, and they also needed to be stored or maintained. Many of these auxiliary craft became obsolete not because of any basic material problems like we saw between WWI and WWII but because their electronics were not only obsolete, they just didn't work with the modern fleet. As an example, every piece of electronic equipment, from the lowly morale receiver to the most sophisticated radars and analog computers were powered by tubes, or valves, as they were know to our British cousins. They not only had a very limited lifespan without constant maintenance and replacement, the manpower with the expertise to do those things was slowly being drained away from the Navy. Tube powered equipment was being replaced by solid state electronics, so an entire new set of skills was needed compared to even a few years previously. Radios and radars operated on progressively narrower and narrower bandwidths and higher frequencies, something tube types just weren't capable of doing. Analog electronics of all types were being replaced with digital, and more and more of that equipment needed to be updated, replaced, or more pieces of equipment need to be added. Older ships either ran out of space or just weren't worth the expenditure. Fleet type auxiliaries now needed to cruise at 20 knots, beyond even the top speed of older units. The need for space and facilities to operate helicopters for vertical replenishment and just transport between ships while underway was also beyond the abilities of ships that were only ten to fifteen years old. Probably at no time since the Civil War did the Navy scrap as many ships as it has since the decade after WWII, and that process just accelerated as the 2010's drew to a close. While active fleet numbers declined rapidly from about 1300 to 900 after WWII, numbers stabilized between 800-900 due to Korea and the Cold War between 1951 to 1970. The active fleet further declined once again with the fall of the Soviet Union to about 600. As scrapings began to increase again at the close of the 20th century, numbers fell to about 400. By 2017, the active fleet was down to 270. The USN has now fallen to number two numerically behind China. If things continue as they have, and there's no reason to think they won't, we willm fallen to number three, behind...India How things change.
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  423. Take a look at Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert Massie. It's more of a look at overall command and control of the first world war war at sea rather than details on individual ships, but it's quite an interesting read nonetheless.
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  424. What could have caused this? Was it just someone on his way to choir practice? Perhaps someone coming back from adult education classes where he's learning how to be a butcher, and that's why he had a knife? Maybe he's an alt-right troll of some kind. Gee, this is so confusing. Let me check with CNN.
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  425. BTW, the 201st squadron still exists as part of the Mexican Air Force. With the retirement of the last F-5E fighters in 2017, there are no longer any jet fighters to fly. The 201st flies T-6C+ armed turboprop trainers, but there are moves afoot to replace the engines of the three F-5Es in storage and return them to squadron service. Even though Mexico has no real need for jet fighters, the history of the 201st almost demands that at least that squadron still fly fighters, even in a ceremonial role.
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  426. Ah, yes, Andy Jackson and his threats to anyone who said a bad word about his wife. When he made a death threat, he wasn't kidding.
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  427.  @gordonlawrence4749  Really? No clue about what happened at Yalta then? No idea of what role Clement Attlee and the communists that infested the postwar labour government and trade unions did after WWII to Polish soldiers and their families? Poles that had fought to protect Britain in her darkest days and who were now being abandoned by British communists? Never heard of any of this? Read https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28979789.
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  428. Good morning or afternoon, depending on where you are. This one should be interesting.
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  429. We had it. It was called the Hong Kong Flu of 1968 and it was many times more deadly that this one. It was my first year as a respiratory therapist and we had patients stacked up in the hallways on cots. These dancing nurses today have no idea what a real pandemic is like.
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  430. The Dutch East Indies had a separate government and purchasing arm from the mother country. They were ordering non-standard equipment compared to the Dutch Armed Forces all the way back to 1938, including aircraft, guns, and even tanks. While they were naturally concerned with the Netherlands falling to the Germans, it had no effect in the Dutch East Indies, who were preparing to fight it out on their own against all comers.
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  431. I remember seeing an ad for this in (I think) American Rifleman when I was about 13, so that would make it 1959. The entire outfit, including all the spare parts, accessories, cleaning tools, about eight wood cases full of stuff was, as Ian said, something like $189. Ammo was around a buck a round, although I remember you could get it down to about fifty cents is you bought fifty rounds. I pestered the Old Man about the Solothurn for months but he wouldn't spring for it. Looking back, I can't blame him. He was an industrial engineer and was making something like $800 a month so the idea of spending $189 on something as wildly impracticable as a 20 mm cannon was out of the question. The good thing was he did buy me an M-1 Garand from the OCM program for $20 just to shut me up.
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  432. I have a Ruger 10-22 with a serial number of 40000. Mine must be worth...uhh...I don't now, maybe $300?
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  433.  @LucioFercho  Well, I have to assume you're Chilean. I'm not about to get into a pissing match with you about relative strengths of the two navies except to say the Peruvians have embarked on a modernization program encompassing all six of their Type 209/1100 and 1200 submarines, modernization of all their guided missile frigates, and have taken delivery of two new Korean built 11,000 ton landing platform docks. If you think that's the sign of second rate navy in South America then your nationalism is overcoming your rationalism.
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  434. Thanks for another great video on a very important class of boats. A small correction though. The correct pronunciation is GAH-toe. It comes from the Spanish name for a class of catsharks, with gato being Spanish for cat.
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  435.  @therealsenorisgrig  Thanks. I got about 50 hours of interviews with my dad in his last year of life, when he was finally willing to talk about the war. Before that, he just want to live a normal life and not think about it.
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  436. Unfortunately, it was their weak antiaircraft armament that contributed to the loss of many of the Tribal class ships.
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  437.  Robin John  Depends on the definition of "thriving", of course, but the Detroit Riots of 1967 are generally a convenient dividing line. Before the riots, average incomes were still high and there hadn't been any sustained decrease in population numbers. After the riots, the middle class, black and white alike, fled in increasing numbers, and population and incomes began their inexorable declines to the numbers of today. Whites as a percentage of the population in 1967 weren't as high as many people probably think they were, with non-Hispanic whites making up about 55% of the population. Interestingly, blacks as an absolute number of Detroit's population has barely changed since 1967. There were about 660,000 blacks then and about 608,000 blacks today. The difference was many more whites than blacks could afford to leave, so rather than becoming more black, it's really just become less white.
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  438. The Brazilian Air Force flow close air support in their P-47's for much of that period. They were some of the most effective ground attack squadrons of the entire war.
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  439.  @amadeusamwater It could have been one of two things. Either Lt. Holz misremembered the name or our own POW records are wrong and Lt. Holz got it right. The Army was taking tens of thousands of prisoners a day as German positions were overrun or they just surrendered in the face of advancing Russian troops. Things were pretty hectic, and soldiers were routinely giving false names if they were afraid of being found out for their criminal activities. At this late date, historians haven't been able to figure out who this general really was, so his name is lost to history pending any new information.
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  440. Neil Wilson  You're welcome. Eriksen has always been a personal hero of mine. A man who was looking forward to nothing more than a quiet retirement who stepped up and did his duty to the country when it was in peril. The way he was treated immediately after the war was despicable.
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  441. My dad served on PT boats for three years in the Pacific. As much respect as I have for PT's, they just didn't have the fighting capabilities of the E-boats. They were low, fast, had small armored wheelhouses, and had superior torpedoes and torpedo launchers. They weren't built for Pacific fighting, where their bases would be primitive affairs, and they had to keep moving as new islands were taken. The E-boats were home every day in prepared bases, generally slept in barracks ashore, had their mess on the same land bases, and repairs were carried out by base mechanics. Because of this, an E-Boat needed a smaller crew and didn't waste space on things like a galley, bunks, or carrying a supply of repair parts. I hadn't heard of this operation, but i know E-boats were used to insert agents by the Nazis in Norway before the invasion. They should have been ideal for this operation too, as they proved to be. Excellent video as usual.
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  442.  @ChevyChase301  By the end of 1944, more than half the remaining strength of SS Panzer units were conscripts that had no other choice but to serve when called up. Some of these were formerly in the Wehrmacht before being ordered to the SS units to try to get them back to at least half strength. About 25% were foreign "volunteers", particularly Russians, who joined to escape POW camps, fight communism, and hopefully get better treatment for their families in German occupied Russia. The remaining 25% were stereotypical aryan and loyal Nazi SS members. Without knowing anything more about the crew of that tank, there's a three out of four chance you're wrong, and a nearly 100% chance you know nothing about the composition of SS units in December of 1944.
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  443. Thanks for another epic late WWII armored battle story.
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  444.  @michaelmanning5379  Yes, although the movie has enough historical inaccuracies to make it a poor choice for actually learning about Slovik's life before the military. He's one of many unfit men drafted in 1944 when it was obvious the size of Army would need a drastic expansion to be able to handle the defeat and occupation of Germany and Japan in 1945-1946.
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  445. Once the socialist protesters show up, a scuffle will always escalate. Even the 1886 version of Antifa was trying provoke a riot, and this time, they succeeded.
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  446. Well, I couldn't sleep anyway, so now I have Drach and an Enigma machine to lull me to sleep, I hope.
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  447. By 1945, the Japanese spoofing of allied IFF systems no longer worked. The Mark III IFF was then in use. It operated on three different bands, and the interrogator and responder would only return a radar signature if it was matched by a coded signal, and those codes were changed on a regular basis. The Japanese couldn't even receive a signal from the Mark III because they were operating in the gigahertz range, a frequency band Japanese radars were incapable of using or monitoring. Even though Japanese radars were generally considered something of a joke, it's only because the IJN considered radar would take too long to develop for a war expected to last two years at the most. All the early victories of Japan over the allies just reinforced that idea. The Japanese had done some important work on radar in the 30's, and they may very well have been at least able to keep up with allied radars if they were given a higher priority. By the time they realized their lack of radar was giving the allies a gift in terms of sinking Japanese ships, they started an all out program to develop and produce effective radars, but it was just too late. Bizarrely, the Japanese army did their own work on radar, didn't share any of the information with the navy, and actually treated the navy as the enemy in terms of stopping espionage by navy operatives. If all branches of the Japanese armed forces pooled their work on radar, there's no reason to think they wouldn't match the allies tit for tat in new radars. Their postwar work in electronics showed that they had the talent, but the interservice rivalry is right up there with the top reasons for Japan's defeat.
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  448. Good thing gI was in bed before this episode was posted. I would have passed out at the computer trying to stay awake. Youtube is so messed up. I was about to whine because there was no time stamped list with this episode, but I thought Drach wouldn't do that to us with a three hour plus episode. I refreshed Youtube and, sure enough, there was the list. I hate Youtube sometimes.
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  449.  @barleysixseventwo6665  No, only some capitalist countries of 160 years ago endorsed chattel slavery, and the UK wasn't one of them. They outlawed chattel slavery in 1834, and the US outlawed chattel slavery a few years after 1859, in 1865. The only places that have chattel slavery today are non-capitalistic totalitarian theocracies. Nice try though.
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  450.  @jamesnickell5908  Yes. He was Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto. Hashimoto, captain of the submarine I-58, testified at the court-martial that it wouldn't have mattered if McVay was zigzagging. It was a clear night with a calm sea and the moon was behind the Indianapolis. It was perfect attack conditions, and Hashimoto felt he would have sunk her regardless of any evasive action. He was found and brought to Oakland at the behest of Admiral King, and Admiral Nimitz and many other naval officers felt this was an attempt to rile up the public against McVay, Even though Hashimoto was testifying for the prosecution, his testimony not only didn't help to convict McVay, but many observers felt it exonerated him. It didn't matter. It was either the Navy admit the errors it were made that led to the sinking and then the long delayed rescue, or they needed a fall guy. McVay was the fall guy. Hashimoto shared with McVay some of the burden of guilt over the loss of so many men. He later became a Shinto priest, and actively assisted the survivor groups trying to get McVay's conviction overturned. He wrote a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1999, at age 90, when the committee was hearing testimony about the case. He repeated what he told the court-martial in 1945. He wrote that Captain McVay was not responsible for the sinking of his ship, he was, and he asked forgiveness for himself and forgiveness for Captain McVay by our own navy. He passed away on October 25, 2000, just five days before the congressional resolution exonerating Captain McVay was signed by President Clinton.
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  451. "Hey,there's some kind of disease going around that might kill us. Let all flex up together and fight!"
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  452. Crime does disproportionately occur in minority areas. That's why the prison population is also disproportionately minority. He may be wrong about a lot of things, but not that.
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  453. "I showed her my ass...". LOL. Sometimes all you could do was laugh in the Soviet Union.
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  454. It was commonly called the Phony War in the west because neither side made advances on the other. Both sides were hoping for a negotiated peace, but Germany was the only willing to go to full war if the negotiations failed. The French and British paid the price for all those months of sitting instead of deciding they were really prepared to go to war.
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  455.  @emintey  Preserving a ship for museum use has everything to do with history and nothing to do with how obsolete a ship might be. Given your way of thinking, the USS Constitution and HMS Victory should have been broken up for firewood because they were "obsolete".
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  456. There were many more deserving of court martial over this incident. I'm hoping Drach will get into some of the details in an upcoming video.
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  457. The story I've read was the "the World Wonders" message to Halsey not due to the decrypt officer but due to a rookie clerk. Once a message was decrypted, everything in the message was included so a message could be verified if a question about it came up. It was then passed on to a clerk typist to type up the message before it went to the recipient(s). IN this case, the rookie didn't realize "The World Wonders" was actually padding so he typed up everything, stuffed it in an envelope, and handed to off to a messenger for delivery. Thus began the small nuclear explosion on the New Jersey .
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  458. I had the privilege of meeting Admiral O'Kane at a book signing for his second book about USS Wahoo. I had come to the bookstore just before closing and thought I was too late to get my copy of "Clear The Bridge" signed as well but, luckily of me, Admiral O'Kane was still there, and he spent about 25 minutes chatting with me after I let him know I was a great admirer of submarines in general and him and "Mush" Morton in particular. One subject we talked about was his ability to pick officers that performed so well during his command of the Tang. He said he had two criteria - how well the officer played cribbage and bridge. Playing the candidate a game of cribbage, and having him be his partner in a bridge game gave him immediate feedback on his ability to think tactically, plan strategically, go in for the kill at the right time, and remain pleasant for the whole game. Since I play both games, that struck me as a brilliant employment test, and there were a few times I surprised people applying for management positions in my own firm when I hauled out a cribbage board from my desk drawer!
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  459. Amazing. Zeppelins the length of a heavy cruiser. It seems like the very size of the R class should have made them an easy target for antiaircraft guns, and that was the case as directors improved their accuracy.
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  460.  @johnanon6938  Actually, you're right. My dad was pro guns and my mom hated them, so getting any kind of gun before I moved out at 19 was always a battle. Once I moved out, that changed real fast!
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  461. Great job. Imagine awakening from being knocked out by enemy fire and finding yourself surrounded by loaves of bread.
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  462. Bill, where the greatest radiation contamination of the wreck is above my pay grade. I just followed the markings and went where the divemaster told us to go. I'd guess there have been hundreds of divers on the wreck and, as far as I know, there haven't been any problems. Kwolfx, the wreck does slope down from the stern to bow. The stern is sticking out of the water with the props and rudder above water as well. It's a great place for non-diver snorkelers to explore while the divers from the group head down to the rest of the wreck. Open water divers can get down to the "B" turret without any problems as it's less than 90 feet. I'd recommend a wreck diving course for anyone attempting a dive on Kwajalein. You're a long way from any critical care hospitals if something goes wrong, so knowing how not get the bends is really important. Advanced open water divers should be able to go the bow if they really want to. The bow, such as it is, is mostly buried in sand at about 125 feet, and there's not much to see forward of the "A" turrent anyway. The visibility is good enough you can hang at 100 feet and get a good view down to the bow. It's sure a dive I'd like to do again...but not at 72 years old. Rats!
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  463.  @melwinge9154  RDF was far from new in 1923. It had been used on the longwave frequencies in common use since 1913. The problem in the Honda Point Disaster was Lt. Cmdr Donald T. Hunter, the captain of Delphy, and the acting navigator for the entire squadron. His disdain for anything electronic when it came to navigation was well known. He believed all the electronic aids to navigation made navigators "soft", and he welcomed the chance to show dead reckoning worked just fine, even in the terrible weather conditions of that night. He ordered his own navigator to ignore the RDF readings. At the same time, Commander Walter G. Roper, in charge of Division 32, relied on the RDF, and could see the squadron was making a serious navigation error, ordering the four ships in his division to slow and then stop to avoid running up on the rocks. RDF was plenty reliable in 1923, it was the humans in charge that weren't. Radar wasn't the problem for the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. It was Admiral Callahan's defective understanding of radar. Five of his ships that night were equipped with the excellent SG radar. It was Callahan's decision not to use any of them for his flagship, and not to have any of the SG equipped ships in the van of his formation, that caused radar not be as effective as it otherwise could have been. He didn't provide any kind of preliminary written plans to the rest of his fleet, and the difficulties of reliable radio communications, when that's all there was for the fleet, doomed his own ship and caused his death, in addition to a lot of other deaths that night. Radar wasn't the problem. SG radar was good enough that it was in use all the way to the end of the war and beyond. Poor human planning and intership communications were the problem.
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  464.  @rickmoreno6858  While the snorkel had some problems, most were solved by early 1944. Engineers learned how to run the diesels with a minimum of smoke, and the fuel quality was improved so combustion was more complete. Very few uboats were discovered because of exhaust smoke. A bigger problem was when allied radar was improves os it could detect a snorkel. That was solved late in the war with a coating of Turnmatte, radar absorbent materiel that was claimed to reduce radar signature by 90%. The success of the schnorkel is shown by the fact that Germany was losing 25% of its uboats to air attack while running on the surface returning to or leaving the Bay of Biscay. In June, 1944, not a single schnorkel equipped boat was sunk. Right up until the loss of French bases, schnorkel equipped boats were able to transit the Bay of Biscay in relative safety. While the electroboats were developed, and 120 hulls were built, the tremendous logistic and material problems caused by constant allied bombings meant only two boats made any patrols, and those were just a week before the surrender. Neither boat sunk any ships, although both skippers said they made dummy attacks undetected but didn't fire due to receiving the surrender message. Even if the war has continued, it would have been many moths before a significant number of electroboats got in service. Schnorkel equipped uboats would have remained the backbone of the submarine fleet.
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  465. OMG! Four hours and eighteen minutes and it just turned 0300 here. Holy cow! I'm doomed, but I'll stay on deck until I fall overboard!
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  466. Thanks for another great video. It's too bad the British didn't pay closer attention to the class when it was being built. In terms of length, tonnage, speed, and armament, they could have served as the basis for a fast escort class of well armed ships for the RN, something the British sorely lacked in the first two years of the war.
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  467. Great story. Bannack and Bodie in California are the two of the best ghost towns preserved in a state of arrested decay rather than made into a tourist attractions like some "ghost" towns. Both are dry, high, and off the beaten track, but both are well worth a visit for anyone interested in Western history and lore.
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  468. It's now 12:22 pm CST and there's now 2 dislikes. Rather than cat owners, my guess is they are criminals caught by a dog. :)
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  469. I was lucky enough to travel to England on the SS United States in 1956 when I was 10 years old. It was in the pre-jet age, and transatlantic flights on prop planes were long and tiring. It was a lovely trip on the United States by comparison. I've taken several cruises, going port to port in the Caribbean, but not making a real sailing voyage. Those days are gone for good. Now we go to sea on ships transporting human cattle.
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  470. A mystery indeed. We know that 13 of the 14 clinker built lifeboats were launched successfully and made it to the Carpathia. At least two of the Englehardt collapsible boats and the two smaller cutters also made it to the Carpathia. The one boat that didn't make it was possibly smashed due to improper uses of a davit. The sad thing is at least 40% more passengers could have been rescued if lifeboats weren't launched until they reached capacity, and each one could have safely carried at least 10% more passengers than the rated capacity. The crew had received very little training on the new davits installed on the Titanic, davits that could launch the boats even in the face of a considerable list. The"Women and children first" call also led ot lifeboats being launched at less than capacity in the rush to get the women and children off the ship. The passengers were scheduled to have their one and only lifeboat drill on the day of the sinking. No one to this day knows why the drill was cancelled or who gave the order. Yet another Titanic mystery.
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  471. Walter E Williams was also a national treasure who went to his final reward on December 2, 2020. Tom Sowell just turned 90. Where are the next generation of great black voices coming from? It sure as hell isn't from BLM.
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  472. I took American history in the late 50's up to my graduation in 1964. It may be the period I took history compared to later times, but we were taught all about commanders like John Paul Jones, David Porter, and Oliver Hazard Perry. Given the size of the Continental Navy, and the rather pitiful force we put together in 1812, we didn't have a lot of early American naval heroes, so our history lessons spent some time on them. I credit Mr. Harrison's seventh grade history class, with his riveting tales of John Paul Jones, as being responsible for the start of my lifelong interest in naval history.
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  473. Before I went diving at Kwajalein, I thought seriously about also doing Bikini. Unfortunately, it's about 30 hours by dive boat from Kwaj and then 10-14 days on the dive boat diving most of the wrecks. With the exception of the Nagato, the are all extended range dives, and getting my normoxic trimix diver certificate so I could dive the deeper (60 meters) and more interesting wrecks. The total cost for the trip would have been about $6,000. I just didn't have the cash or time to do it. Rats!
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  474.  @josephkugel5099  Firstly, no battleship could equal the 1,500 mile range of a Tomahawk. Secondly, it's classified how many Mark 48 torpedoes have nuclear warheads and what boats they might be on, but there's no doubt some boats have them. Thirdly, Tomahawks now have a newly developed nuclear warhead. Again, it's classified how many and what boats might carry them, but some will. A Montana, even if firing Tomahawks and Harpoons, would probably have been retired by now, and may have been retired before the Iowas, since they only offered the advantage of three more 16" rifles, but at a much higher operating and manning costs. The Montana will be a platform for Tomahawks and Sub-Harpoon missiles, not to mention torpedoes for fleet and self defense, for at least 30 years in the future.
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  475.  @nath9091  While the RN facilities turned over to Singapore at independence were sufficient for a relatively short time, Singapore built three brand new naval bases starting with Brani in 1972, Tuas in 1994, and the huge Changi naval base, opened in 2004 and expanded several times since. A new 3.9 mile long berthing area suitable for the largest US carriers is the latest expansion. None of these bases were or are used commercially and are not "cost neutral".
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  476. Warning! This is going to be another of my "War and Peace" type posts. :) The plan, as I understand it, for covering landings on the Japanese mainland from air attack would have mainly been assigned to massed squadrons of Fletcher, Sumner, and Gearing class destroyers. There was a rushed refit of most of these units from mid-1944 to right up to August 1945 for every ship of these classes to have at least twelve 40mm Bofors guns with fourteen and even sixteen on the Gearings. This was done by landing all the torpedo tubes and, in typical USN fashion, covering the available deck space with twin and quad mount Bofors, supplemented by 20mm mounts wherever they would fit. Another goal of these refits was to install completely up to date radars and fire control equipment to allow every vessel to use VT rounds in their 5"/38 guns. Magazine spaces previously used to store torpedoes were given over to gun round storage. Many of the Sumner and Gearing class ships would also have been radar pickets, much like we saw in the earlier campaigns. The destroyers would have been backed up by the various permutations of Atlanta class cruisers, any of the three British Dido class that could have been spared from carrier screens, and masses of Cleveland and Baltimore cruisers. Most of these ships had increased AA guns fitted along with the requisite radars and fire controls systems. The Canadian Prince Robert, a former passenger vessel converted to a merchant cruiser and later as an auxiliary antiaircraft cruiser, had performed well in the Mediterranean. It was expected her main role in the planned invasion of Japan would be covering landings and escorting supply ships. Many British, Australian, and New Zealand destroyers, corvettes, sloops, and frigates would have been assigned to cover landings of British and Commonwealth troops. The major push with the British ships, in addition to increased AA defense, was adding air conditioning and stores refrigeration equipment. Ships built for the North Atlantic would have been much reduced in combat effectiveness in the tropics without these additions. The accounts of men serving on some unconverted warships serving in the Pacific are quite harrowing in terms of below decks temperatures and humidity. The 31 RN submarines were expected to play a major role in patrol and reconnaissance offshore from Japanese naval bases, rescuing downed carrier pilots, and attacking any remaining Japanese warships foolish enough to sortie from port. A little remembered ship was the HMS Ariadne, an Abdiel class fast minelayer, and one of the first RN vessels of the later Pacific Fleet, joining the US Seventh Fleet in January, 1944. Her very high speed was put to good use landing many US Army raiding forces on various islands as well as laying over 1,000 mines. The other two Abdiel class minelayers assigned to the British Pacific Fleet (BPF) would have been equally useful if they had been ready for BPF use before the war ended. In addition to the better known roles of the battleships and carriers of both navies, a major role for the British was the Fleet Train (BFT). The BFT had 54 large ships, from oilers to ammunition ships, and well over 100 smaller ships assigned. The RN had extensive experience supplying their ships while underway. Many of the ships were Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) vessels, and some were mostly manned by merchant seamen. It was expected the British Pacific Fleet would be sustained by their own Fleet Train with enough excess capacity to also supply some USN ships. It didn't quite work out as planned, with some USN supply ships needing to be added to the BFT. Nevertheless, the ships and crews performed magnificently under sometimes horrendous condition, since many BFT vessels didn't have a/c or refrigeration. The high intensity work of underway replenishment and island supply without the help of even one air cooled space onboard tested the mettle of the crews, and they stood up better than could be expected. A humorous sidelight described by one of the RFA crewmen was when a special alarm sounded, and the men rushed up on deck. The men weren't carrying helmets and life vests that you might expect with most alarms. This alarm had men carrying soap and towels, since the alarm let men below decks know of a passing rain squall so they could cool off and get in a shower, both rare experiences on most RFA ships. As usual, a combined British/American operation couldn't go off without politics getting in the way. It started with Churchill want to use British forces to recapture lost British territory like Burma and Hong Kong and leave the Pacific islands to the Americans. Strong protestations from the Chiefs of Staff eventually overcame Churchill's objections. The RN chiefs rightly believed that not participating in the eventual conquest of the Home Islands of Japan would decrease British influence in the Pacific and rob the RN of valuable experience participating in fleet operations and amphibious landings larger than any they had done in the past. BPF experience was part of the planning for the Suez operation and, indirectly, gave the RN confidence they could support amphibious landings in the far off Falklands. Things on the American side were no better. The Commander-in-Chief United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations was Admiral Ernest King. He was a well known Anglophobe who saw the British as coming in after most of the battles were over and then claiming part of the prestige of helping to defeat Japan. He raised so many objections to the offers of help from the British that Roosevelt himself had to intervene and essentially order that King accept the offer of a BPF. It appeared to the public that allies were cooperating in the defeat of Japan when the reality was the USN was dragged kicking and screaming into accepting the offer. King, after grudgingly accepting, set down a requirement that the BPF be totally self-sufficient. Try as they would, the BPF wasn't capable of that, and later USN aid was freely given, sometimes over the objections of Adm. King, and some BPF supply ships aided USN ships. Admiral Nimitz had more pragmatic objections based on the differences in British aircraft, carrier operations, and a myriad of logistical problems, from incompatible radios to completely different guns and ammunition between the two navies. To the credit of both navy's operational staffs, most of these problems were overcome in a matter of six months. Adm. Nimitz became an enthusiastic supporter of the BPF carrier forces after seeing their performance at Okinawa, when the armoured decks of the fleet carriers and well trained damage control teams allowed RN carriers to absorb Kamikaze attacks and continue to operate. All in all, and ignoring the political interference, it was quite a performance from two fleets that had to learn to work with each other in a matter of months.
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  477. It was indeed.
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  478. Thanks, Charlie, but I liked the news station in background better than this...uh...music.
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  479. Humberto, my dad was an engineer who worked on the landing gear for the B-52 and 747. Both were the most complicated gear ever devised to that time and, as you say, were all done with pen, paper, and a slide rule. Some primitive CAD programs running on mainframes were just coming in at the end of the 747 project, and my dad hated them. He thought a slide rule was all you needed, and used one until he passed away in 2005. Looking at the results, it's hard to argue with that.
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  480.  @TheHistoryGuyChannel  If I remember correctly, she also ate several of the floral decorations at the anniversary dinner. One of the women took off her rather massive three orchid corsage and laid it on the head table when she went to dance with her husband, a general and...you guessed it...when she got back to her seat, the orchid corsage had vanished.
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  481. I'm glad you have given a reasonably balanced overview of the Corp. As usual, nothing in history is all good or all bad.
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  482. Michael, the Carson City Mint dollars came from the Treasury Department. They were being held in reserve for those exchanging silver certificates for silver dollars. That's how I got started collecting them back in the late 50's. Hard to imagine now, but a common date silver dollar was worth exactly one dollar. Convertibility of silver certificates to silver dollars ended in 1964 as the price of silver was rising above the value of .77 ounces of silver in the dollar. Treasury still had almost 3,000 $1,000 face value bags of silver dollars in 1964, and this supply was shipped to the West Point (NY) Bullion Depository until a decision was made on how to dispose of the coins. The process started in 1970 when GSA employees, with the guidance of a committee of professional numismatists started separating the coins into grades from uncirculated to circulated. It was decided to offer these in mail bid sale in 1972 with a minimum bid of $30. Almost all were CC coins, and the date and quantity lists sent shockwave through the collecting community. Some of the most expensive date like the 1879 and 1882-1884 were considered rare because so few were available, and the assumption was most had been melted in great silver melts of the 1920's. In fact, they were rare because Treasury was holding enough of them to make it seem like so few were left. CC dollar prices collapsed almost overnight once the lists were released. Without knowing how many more of each date were left in the hoard, many collectors left the CC dollar collecting hobby in disgust. Bidding was much less than had been anticipated. Only 700,000 of the 1.7 million offered were sold. It took the rising price of silver, six more sales, and renewed collector interest before all the silver dollars were finally sold in 1980.
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  483.  Leonard Chornomaz  I understand that, but the breakfast with Reed was the chance meeting.
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  484. johno, I don't think so. Most private aircraft already have three point belts, and all commercial aircraft use five point belts for the crew. Belts in aircraft are more for preventing turbulence injures than surviving a crash. Airbags have been looked at but there's really no room in most private aircraft for them. More seriously, there hasn't been a method found to prevent accidental deployment in turbulence. Accidental deployment when you're driving your car is bad, but you can usually pull over. There's no place pull over upstairs. All these kinds of safety measures are to help the pilot in a survivable crash. However, imagine what happens if you drive your car straight into a rock wall at between 150 mph and 500 mph. That kind of crash just isn't survivable no matter what kinds of safety measures the plane carries. The only safety measure that works are systems that prevent controlled flight into terrain.
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  485. Soviet era electric trains were never sold in stores. They were used as gifts to the children of high ranking Party members, military men, a foreign notable visitors, and and as awards for high performing Young Pioneers. The train sets were almost always one diesel engine, two passenger cars along with three streetlights, three signal lights, station, bridge, and set of crossing gates. Other than paint schemes, the "state" trains remained the same up until the end of production in 1969. The only major change was as DeStalinization got underway. All the trains produced before 1960 has Stalin's initials on the side along with a five pointed Soviet star. Khrushchev ordered the initials removed in 1960 as well as the star. The star was replaced with the state railroad logo. Sets were apparently produced until about 1969 since there's no evidence of sets made after that date. They were probably still used as giveaways for a few years after that, and it seem like the set given to the Polish ambassador in 1973 was one of the last. Trains sets were no longer all that special as one could buy much better sets from the DDR and Hungary after 1970. The tracks and transformer were close copies of US O27 Lionel parts. There was no attempt to model a specific Soviet diesel engine. Indeed, there was no attempt to copy any engine except for the general outline of a double cab engine. It seems the most important things was to make them beautiful. They used an exact replica of American Flyer couplers, and oddly included buffer plates on both ends of the engine. Oddly because Soviet engines never used buffer plates or screw type couplers, just American style automatic couplers. The assumption is the train should have a vaguely European look to it. The engines were all hand built and hand painted, and some of the variations in paint schemes may come down to the individual doing the painting that day. The freight and passenger cars are also vaguely Soviet in design but they too include buffer plates. Some parts of the set were copied directly from other manufacturers. The crossing gates is an exact copy of a Marlin set. The operating crossing gateman is an exact copy of a Lionel #45 accessory. The Soviets copied other companies products at will with no worries about patent problems. I have seen a few of the engines at train shows but just don't have enough money to get one since they start at about $800 for an average condition example all the way up to $5,000 for an as-new model in the original box. Cars range from $85 to $200 each, and the beautiful -station that came with each set generally goes for about $750 for a decent example. A set in the original wooden crate these were all packaged in is a near impossible thing to find. One sold at auction a few years ago for $28,000 and I'm sure one would bring even more today. There was no record kept of production, but estimates are about 4,500 sets were made from 1951 to 1969. The engines and cars I've seen have been of a high quality mechanically while the paint job quality varies by individual model painter and, I suppose, how rough a weekend he may have had. :-)
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  486. Another amazing bit of history dug up by Dr. Felton. I don't know how he does it, but each one just goes to show me I don't know as much about the war, especially the Eastern Front, as I thought I did.
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  487. Correct. Assuming that restaurant was successful, one of the reasons why was free child labor, something she'd never support otherwise. It has nothing to do with an concept of running a business. As far as I can tell, she has never held a private sector job in her life.
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  488. Well, Rats! I'm just finally getting ready to lay down and a Forgotten Weapons video shows up. That will be another six minutes and thirty-five seconds lost sleep today.
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  489. Ranger was always considered kind of developmental carrier, a step between Langley and the Yorktowns. US wargames of the 30's showed flush deck carriers presented few advantages compared to the operational efficiency of having an island, and stacks exhausting through the top of the island were far superior to the side mounted exhausts of Ranger. She could have been a better carrier if the stacks could have been changed when the island was added but, this still being in the depths of the Great Depression, the money wasn't available for that drastic of a redesign. Nothing could be done to improve her low (for a fleet carrier) top speed, and the flight deck and hangers all required strengthening to cope with the demise of the biplane. For the rest of the war, other than a few relatively low intensity periods of combat, Ranger worked out what was to become an increasingly important carrier task - transportation of and flying off fighters to reinforce AAF aircraft and crews in Africa and Europe. After a disastrous start to this task that caused the loss of ten aircraft on her first mission, she was able to fly off more AAF P-40s from the deck to supply badly needed replacements in North Africa. As far as I know, these are the only instances of P-40's flying off from a carrier. She settled down to her transport task until 1944 when she returned to the East Coast to operate as a training carrier. Given the flood of new carriers and pilots coming online, this was probably her most important role. Her role as a training carrier continued until October, 1946 when, being well and truly worn out, she was struck off the naval register and sold for scrap in January, 1947.
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  490. Radford was one of only three Fletchers to receive a FRAM II overhaul. This was a more austere overhaul than the complete reconstruction of the FRAM I ships. The original intention was reconstruction almost all the surviving Fletchers. However, the experience with the three that did get the modernization was they were far overbudget as the inevitable feature creep added more and more electronics and other equipment, and the increased crewing demanded by all the new equipment made the Fletchers intolerably crowded. The main reason for the FRAM II upgrade was so the ships could handle the DASH drone helicopter. While derisively known as the Down At Sea Helicopter by some captains and crews, those that operated the drones in strict accordance with the Gyrodyne (makers of the QH-50C drone) procedures found the drones to be both controllable and effective. The Radford was one such ship, making more than 500 flights, including launching two torpedos while being fed dummy targeting information while the drone was over the horizon. The DASH helicopters developed a generally poor reputation in the USN due to the lack of command support, general laziness of the crews in not making enough practice flights, and poor adherence to maintenance procedures. In contrast, the Japanese Marine Self Defense Force, with I will call the Japanese Navy to save my fingers, operated sixteen DASH drones from the decks of seven destroyers. The Japanese Navy, known for their adherence to both command instructions and maintaining their equipment, operated the QH-50D drones with nearly complete success, losing only three drones from 1969 to 1977. This is compared to losing well over half the drone fleet in the USN. The Japanese were well satisfied with the DASH drones, and only decommissioned them in 1977, due to the USN abandoning the program the previous year, leading to fears of parts and spares shortages after that date. The Japanese Navy flew their Dash helicopters every single day, at sea or in port. The program had a command officer assigned that stayed with the ship and the program from the date the drone was introduced until he retired or the DASH drones were taken out of service. Compare this to the USN, which had some ships flying the drone only twice a month, the absolute minimum demanded by regulations, and some ships having only a Petty Officer Third Class being in charge of the drones on his ship. The program, while being chronically underfunded and undermanned, did lead directly to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) now carried by by many USN combat ships. Believe it or not, the UAV program of today is underfunded and undermanned, and naval aviators don't like the current crop of UAVs any more than they liked the Gyrodyne DASH helicopters.
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  491. From the days when bacon was not Denmark's most important product.
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  492. The difference in habitability is well illustrated by conditions on US subs at the beginning and end of the war. The S Class was the most numerous class of subs available at the start of the war. They were small, noisy, had unreliable diesel engines that blew a fine film of oil over the whole interior, insufficient electrical capacity to run more than very small refrigerators, and the distilling plants were subject to frequent breakdowns and only large enough to allow a bucket of freshwater a week for a sponge bath. Canned food was the order of the day after a week or so at sea. They were nearly uninhabitable for more than a few hours submerged in the Pacific due to the heat and humidity of tropical waters. The ventilation system was undersized and subject to frequent breakdowns. Temperatures in engine rooms reached 110 F, and even 100 F in the conning tower wasn't uncommon. The humidity was near 100% and condensation caused dripping water from every horizontal surface, with short circuits and damage to radios and other electronic equipment as a result. The crew had to hot bunk since there were only enough for about half the wartime crew. Some of the most unlucky had to use hammocks strung in the torpedo rooms. Fast forward to 1945 and the Gato class. They were positively spacious compared to the S class. Almost the whole crew had their own bunks, The entire boat was air conditioned, keeping temperatures at no higher than 80 F and humidity below 65%. Electrical capacity was large enough to not only recharge a battery bank over twice the size of the S boats, but it was enough to run meat freezers, fresh food refrigerators, and a distilling plant that provided each man with an actual shower every three or four days. They even had crew washing machines, a few had ironing machines, and boats with the most clever engineering section even rigged up ice cream freezers! Frozen meat rather than canned was available for the duration of most patrols, and refrigerated fresh food would be available for the first three weeks of a patrol. Some captains allowed enough refrigerator space that the crew could have two cold six ounce bottles Coke a week. According to some crew memoirs, this was the greatest boost to morale during even difficult patrols. Some veteran admirals viewed all this as making the crews soft, but there's no doubt Gato crews were more alert, better fed, in better health, and had better morale than any other sub crews in the war.
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  493.  @bombvoyage5686  I'll be darned. I thought I had watched just about every Drach video by now, but it seems like there's always one that got away. Thanks, I'll check it out.
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  494. Thanks for another well made video. I have always thought the Oyodo was an early look at what later helicopter and missile cruiser conversions looked like. It seems the Japanese didn't really understand how valuable her radar and communications suite and aircraft, combined with her high speed, could have been to the fleet. After expending materials and time the Japanese didn't have converting a large part of her hangers to flag accommodations in early 1944, her days as a flagship only lasted four months before Admiral Toyoda wisely decided he'd have a longer lifespan by commanding an underground bunker in Yokohama rather than a warship. That left the Oyodo to be nothing but a large and fast transport until her inevitable sinking. The Japanese, if they had had started sooner and spent less time from launching to commissioning, had the chance to develop a class of cruiser that saw later iterations in the Tiger class and ships like the Jeanne d'Arc
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  495.  @whirving  I don't think any service member is "thrilled" to have the enemy shooting at him.
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  496.  @novatopaz9880  That would be true if the Treaty limited the construction of destroyers, but it didn't. The reason why no new classes were built was the US had hundreds of perfectly serviceable destroyers after WWI and didn't need new ones until some of the older classes became obsolescent by 1932.
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  497. The 2 pdr pom poms gave endless jamming problems in the tropics as gun crews didn't realize how heavily they'd have to oil the ammo and belts to prevent jamming. Tracer ammunition had just started to be issued by the end of 1942 ad it;s not likely the ship would have been carrying more that a few hundred round in the magazines. Most of the tracers would have come from the 20mm Oerlikons hurriedly mounted on November 20-21, 1941 in Cape Town. The crews had very little practice before the attacks and no experience in handling the early versions of the Oerlikons. They'd jam easily if charging the gun was done too briskly when a new magazine was mounted. It wasn't hard to clear the jam, but the PoW didn't have the time to spare as fire slowed down due to jams in the 20 and 40 mm guns. The 5.25" guns were almost useless without their directors since crews hadn't been adequately trained in how to use them under local control. The gunhouse were cramped to begin with, and having to hand pass and load shells after the dynamos failed made ROF no more the four rounds a minute, and that's when they didn't jam. The PoW just wasn't ready to provide adequate AA fire. The Repulse had adequate AA guns and better trained crews but wasn't able to fight off the air attacks without the full support of PoW. PoW's dynamo failures made the 5.25" guns and octuple 2 pdr mounts unuseable. Even if both ships had been operating at top efficiency it's unlikely they could have escaped the attacks. It was a sobering moment for the battleship admirals.
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  498.  @USSAnimeNCC-  Ah, so it's a Q Ship style carrier then...
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  499. It is the New Orleans class with "S" not being silent. An engineering study was done as a graduate paper by three Anapolis students. The conclusion was that the seam welding between #1 and #2 turrets was slightly less reinforced than it should have been. Combine that with some lucky torpedo hits and we get those blown off bows. As you said, the combination of excellent subdivisioning and damage control saved those same ships to fight another day.
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  500. Turn on closed captioning for a real hoot. YT's translator doesn't understand ghetto.
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  501. Indeed, the DC-3/C-47 has now been in service for for nearly 75 years. It's doubtful any will remain in military service more than the next 20 years from now just because so many surplus twin engine turboprops and jets will be available at attractive prices. Still, that would put them at 90-95 years old. However, I was careful to protect myself by stipulating combat aircraft. Transports tend to live more sedate lives than combat aircraft, and the idea of a combat aircraft that might be 90-100 years old and still in effective military service is really astounding.
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  502. Another great video about what really is forgotten history. I've heard of the Saxtown murders but never knew all the twists and turns you've detailed here. There sure were plenty of people who didn't like Stelzriede so there was no lack of suspects.
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  503. Another excellent video. After the Turkish crash, the cargo bay door was finally redesigned to make it nearly impossible for a cargo door failure of the type that occured on AA 96 and THI 981 and there was never another cargo door failure on a DC-10 to this day. Using a non-plug door and electrical rather than hydraulic latching were both cost savings measures. If ground crew followed instructions exactly, the door wouldn't fail. Any significant deviation and failure was certain. The famous Applegate memo, written by Convair engineer Dan Applegate in 1972, detailed failures that occured in ground testing and predicted an in-flight failure was going to happen. From what I've read, the design change to make the door less expensive saved MD about $90,000 on the initial production aircraft. The fixes cost about $4 million, lawsuit costs were at least $18 million that we know of, and it cost 346 people their lives.
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  504. I seem to recall a time in the late 70's or early 80's when the USSR announced that there were no homosexuals in the USSR because communism had eliminated such base instincts. Does that sound familiar to you?
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  505. We can't forget about the Zil/ZiS line of classic Soviet limousines. The first models were directly reversed engineered from the 1940 Packard line because Stalin though that Packard's (he had three of them) were the best engineered cars in the world. He wanted the first truer Soviet limo to show the world they could build a Packard, and build they did. Even thoough the line stopped taking design and engineering features from the Packard bu 1960, they continued to lean on American car designs like the 60's Cadillac Fleetwoods and Mercuries. By 1980, big American cars were passe, so ZiL started to copy the look and engineering of the Mercedes. Due to the low production numbers and revocation of state subsidies in 1990, the ZiL started to cost more than a "real" Mercedes. It was the beginning of the end for ZiL. Just like Packard, they have now gone out of business, and the great era of Soviet built limos is gone forever.
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  506.  @nickcohen4900  It was a sternly enforced law for US and British soldiers. It was also the law for Soviet soldiers, but a lot depended on the unit. Guys that had been fighting the Nazis for four years and had seen some of the atrocities committed by German soldiers against Russian people were a lot less interested in the law and more interested in revenge. If the unit had good officer that were enforcing the law, things stayed under control, but that wasn't the case with more than a few Soviet units.
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  507.  @markdavis2475  You're welcome. I just hate this kind of nonsensical conspiracy theory when there's plenty of evidence to understand the most likely story.
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  508.  @nirfz  There were certainly individuals who stole, mostly for their own use. That hasn't changed since then. What I'm saying is there was no organized black market for stolen firearms. The first reason was almost no one wanted to buy a current production gun marked for the USN. That was a big time crime in 1895 and, unlike today, people actually did go to prison for it. Secondly, as Ian said, you could buy almost the exact same rifle by going into any place that sold guns and saying "Give me that". No ID or background checks, just the cash and maybe your signature. Hell, you could send your order off to Francis Bannerman for field artillery and Gatling guns and get them by return freight. Black markets only exist when there's an artificial scarcity of a good. There was no scarcity of firearms in 1895.
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  509.  @kimjonglongdong3158  Nagging in that, after reading of the deaths in St. George due to fallout from the testing, if it might affect me too. That's a different question from an unreasoning fear of atomic power. I was a project manager of a two year refit job in one of the biggest nuke plants in the county. That job required me to be in various parts of the plant almost every day, so fearing nuclear power itself obviously wasn't an issue. You might have a better understanding of what I wrote if you had ever seen an atomic test that wasn't on film.
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  510. I'm sorry to hear about you losing your great uncle on the Royal Oak. I remember reading about Gunther Prien and the Scapa Flow raid when i was just a small kid, maybe nine or so. I was shocked then, and am still still shocked now, that U-39 was able to sneak into what was the most heavily defended naval base in England, sink the Royal Oak, and sneak out again unscathed. Talk about a wake up call for the RN defenders.
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  511.  @CSSVirginia  Indeed. Add in tanks, artillery, and over 300,000 aircraft of all types. Even more amazing is that 90% of this production in took place less than four years. No other country has been able to produce things on this scale, and I seriously question if we could do it again.
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  512. There were more news stories of kids shot just in this one drive than my town might have in ten years. What really frosts my cookies is how we get a riot if one black man is shot by the police when actually committing a crime but no one will be marching in the street for these innocent children shot by idiots.
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  513. That's Dallas fer ya. The hood and horses.
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  514.  @DavidSmith-ss1cg  David, you are absolutely wrong. The Rosenbergs weren't just nice people caught up in a red scare. Look up the VENONA project for absolute proof from the Soviets themselves that they were guilty of everything they were charged with and more. This is a history channel. The next time you want to virtue signal about the failings of the US and the glories of socialism, at least do a little research first.
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  515. Indeed, one of the few airborne operations that went off exactly as planned and didn't suffer 50% casualties.
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  516.  @brucesmith54  Depends on how you measure it. Most rankings are based on imprecise measurement of things like "diversity and inclusion". Based on measurable outcomes like GDP per person, the US is #11 at $57,804, while Australia is #15 at $52,487. Conversely, the cost of living in Australia is #11 compared to the US at #16. Australia has a more expensive cost of living on less income. Hard to maintain a better standard of living on that.
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  517.  @fire304  Indeed, that and convincing one of the last horse loving generals as well. The whole story is one of happy coincidences as some men of of the Second Cav made the US Army's last mounted operation.
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  518. Your editor in chief has purple hair and that problematic fire engine red lipstick? This series has nothing to do with libertarianism. It has everything to do with radical feminism, normalization of the destruction of the family, and the kind of leftist politics we see today. I can't believe Reason doesn't see this...or maybe I can, with the person in charge looking like she does.
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  519. What makes you think that? There are many Germans, amateurs and professionals, looking for war material that spend weekends across the border in Denmark looking for war material left behind.
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  520.  @bbgun061  I looked up the journal that published this study and it's a well cited and reputable journal. The first thing I look for is if it's one of those pay to publish "journals". Indeed, the biggest problem I see now is these studies get out into the wild with no replication and then become truth. Way back when I was doing studies, you never publicized one except among your peers until another author had replicated it. Now that seems to have gone right out the window. How do scientists expect the average person to believe study findings of big picture things like climate change with sloppy standards like this?
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  521. I'm surprised to see Oxnard carrying Colt 1911 semiautomatic pistols in 1973. I started with another California department in 1978 and we were carrying .357 revolvers. We didn't switch to semi autos until about 1985. This was typical for all the surrounding agencies as well.
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  522. While two battleships were ordered by the Ottoman Empire, only one of the seized vessels, Reşadiye, was from that order. Fatih Sultan Mehmed, the second ship, wasn't even ordered until April, 1914, and laid down in June, just before the outbreak of war, so there was no chance it would even have been delivered. The second ship was the Brazilian Rio de Janeiro, sold to Ottomans in 1913 and renamed Sultan Osman I. She was just finishing sea trials and was ready to be turned over to a Turkish crew when Churchill decided to seize both Turkish vessels. This almost led to open warfare on the docks of Newcastle, as the Turkish captain and 500 crewman threatened to take the ship by force. Churchill ordered the ship held by force if necessary, and it was only the Turkish lack of arms that allowed a negotiated settlement. The Sultan Osman I was renamed Agincourt and added to the Royal Navy. She was an impressive looking ship, which is what the Brazilians wanted. Her seven 12" twin turrets had the most main battery turrets of any dreadnought, and the twenty 6" guns of her secondary battery were the heaviest of any dreadnought ever built. The seizure of these ships, especially since they were both paid in full, caused an uproar in Turkey, and was one of the events that saw the Ottoman Empire declaring war on the side of the Germans.
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  523.  @Flapjackbatter  Good heavens, no, not a firefighter. I run out of burning buildings, not into them. I was a deputy sheriff. For reasons that remain a mystery to me to this day, our county board of supervisors gave hazmat responsibility to the sheriff's department. I had to take a bunch of hazmat courses. The bottom line was run like hell until you think you're far enough away, and then run like hell some more. :-)
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  524. The original Fletcher class also had problems with forward visibility. The bridge was low to begin with, being barely higher than the superfiring B turret. Visibility wasn't helped by the bridge windows just being a series of relatively small portholes. The bridge was raised slightly just before Fletcher itself was laid down, but it was a source of complaints from the bridge crew for most of the war. The bridge wings were truncated to the bridge sides to give the AA guns a better arc of fire. The addition of twin 40 mm mounts just ahead of the bridge didn't help side visibility. the combination of truncated bridge wings and the forward AA guns were a big enough problem for underway refueling that several collisions and near collisions resulted. The original flying bridge was completely in the open, so it was a friendly place in heavy weather. Late war and postwar, the bridge was was successively raised and enclosed with large windows canted inward to help with downward and side visibility. The Sumner class had many of the same issues made even worse by the larger twin 5"/38 turrets, and it was only the Gearing class that more or less solved the problem with a bridge slightly higher, slightly set back from B turret, and angled off instead of rounded.
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  525.  @whatsoperadoc7050  I was long before the days of standardized testing. It seems like the goal now is for students to know a little about more things but not learn any one thing in depth. Back then, teachers made up their own tests, and teachers like Mr. Harrison's tests went into a lot more detail about naval history because he really liked naval history. He probably taught less about the other military phases of the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, but I like the idea that teachers were allowed to teach about what they liked best. It made the classes a lot more interesting when the teacher was invested in the subject rather than helping the students pass a standardized test.
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  526.  @WALTERBROADDUS  This is what happens if you live long enough. You become your father's age. It's actually pretty weird. My dad was 80 when he passed away so I still have a couple years to go.
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  527.  @Drachinifel  Indeed. I've written several papers about this and it always takes a week to calm down afterwards.
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  528.  @Wafflepudding  LOL. Perhaps.
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  529. One of the better puns I've seen lately, and it doesn't rely on a bunch of stupid fake dialog.
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  530.  @rahbaralhaq  Apparently the Vikrant's material condition deteriorated markedly during her time at dock from 1997 to 2012, as the Indian government expected the state of Maharashtra to be responsible for all maintenance costs. Without some private partners to keep the museum ship in decent shape, corrosion set in, and the ship had constant leaks that required 24 hour pumping. It's the same sad story that has affected so many other museum ships being run on shoestrings.
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  531. Just to show what an idiot I am, I spent 15 minutres watching this before I finally figured out these models have no relationship to reality as I understand it.
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  532.  @HighlanderNorth1  The Navy had the advantage of being able to prepare food for their men most of the time rather than resorting to prepared rations. Submariners did get the best of foods available, and the skipper was generally able to modify some of the standard Navy menus if he was able to find things like fresh beef or frozen chickens in the stocks ashore. PT boats had some of the same advantages, as each boat was able to use pretty much any food they could find or scrounge. The Navy realized early in in WWII that their procurement was a hopeless mess of different bureaus. The Secretary of the Navy established a new department, the Office of Procurement and Material, and put Admiral Samuel Robinson in charge. He became the czar for all procurement and ruled with an iron hand. Decisions came through is office instead of seven different bureaus. He was one of the primary reasons for the fleet train, and was vitally interested in procuring the best food the budget would bear. He standardized the Navy cookbook and how galleys were set up on new and refurbished ships. For the first time, cooks became an occupational specialty rather than just the newest guys in the crew. Every ship had an officer designated as in charge of the mess budget and food quality, and the medical officer was in charge of mess inspections for cleanliness. The best food combined with standard menus and trained cooks is why the Navy got (and has kept) the reputation as best fed of the services. Robinson ordered that all officers had to eat only the food that came for the enlisted mess. They could eat in their own wardrooms, but they were eating the same food as the rest of the sailors. As you might imagine, the captain and other officers gained a rapid appreciation for serving the best prepared food the ship could provide.
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  533. Charlie, is this Palmer Woods?
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  534. He may not have been a test pilot before he took off but he surely was when he finally managed to land. Holden had flow more than the Tiger Moth. He qualified on the Harvard, or T-6, a much more powerful airplane, although still a tail dragger. He was qualified on the twin engine Airspeed Oxford, yet another tail dragger, and had flown as the co-pilot on the P-2 Neptune, a much larger twin engine aircraft, and one which finally had tricycle landing gear. He had flown as a second seater in the Javelin, a subsonic British fighter, and the Canberra bomber, but only assisting other qualified pilots. The whole concept of safely taking off and landing an aircraft like the Lightning is like a ten year old being able to successfully drive a Formula One car. One bit of correction. Holden didn't spend two years in the hospital. He spent two periods of a couple weeks each in the hospital over a period of a couple years getting psychiatric help for the extreme anxiety of that 12 minutes of flight. [Edited to correct my usual typos]
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  535.  @TheArgieH  Yes, and Fairy also produced the Barracuda, an all metal monoplane that, except for the closed cockpit, was hardly an advance of the old Stringbag. The Fulmar and Firefly were both tough but pedestrian aircraft, and the Firefly finally convinced the FAA that British industry wasn't going to produce a carrier fighter better than the Corsair. It wasn't until the Gannet that the FAA got the plane it really needed. A massive, three place, tricycle geared, jack of all trades, able to perform all the roles of the Grumman Tracker, but with turbine power and more endurance. Unfortunately, management decided the Rotodyne was the aircraft of the future. It wasn't, and, by 1960, Fairey was gone, merged into Westland.
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  536. Your videos are absolutely not too long. There are times I wish they were longer when you're talking about things like what a certain coin would buy. That's the kind of information a non-Russian like me can't easily find.. As for your supposed lack of focus, you're a storyteller. Storytellers do a pretty poor job when they feel like they can only read from a script and watch the clock.
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  537.  @chrisneedham5803  135,000 rubles in 1945 for a T-34/85. Best I can determine, the exchange rate was about 20 rubles to the pound, so about 6,750 pounds. Since I'm a Yank, it's easier for me to work with dollars. The exchange rate to the dollar in 1945 was $4 to the pound, so the tank would have cost $27,000 to produce. By comparison, the cost of a Sherman was about $33,000 at the same time. The T-34 was cheaper, but not a whole lot cheaper.
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  538. The A20 Churchill was a modernized version of the Mark VIII tank of immediate post-WWI vintage. It was supposed to be the "No Man's Land" tank, produced to cope with WWI battlefield conditions. The all round tracks and eleven road wheels enabled the Churchill to carry relatively thick armor while still being able to cross large obstacles and climb steep hills. The Churchill had many flaws but hill climbing ability was not one of them. If the British had been equipped with Shermans or, even worse, Grants, they never would have made it up the hill.
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  539. Maybe to arm Vopo's with a semiautomatic rifle that was easier to carry and less menacing looking than an AK?
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  540. I'd love to go but since i'd be traveling by myself, $3375 plus a $580 supplement for a single room on a seven day tour is completely out of my price range. Dinner is only included on the first night. Breakfast I'm sure are the typical continental breakfasts included with the hotel charge. There's no mention of the star rating of hotels, just "first class accommodations". That can mean a wide range of things in Europe. Most tours will say something like two or three star hotels so you have a better idea of what to expect. Mycost would be $565 a day not including lunch or dinner. That will easily be another $25 euros per day in any kind of decent neighborhood restaurants, and a lot more in tourist places. I'd have to add air fare from the US to Brussels and then back from Paris. There's an 11 day tour at the end of June covering many of the same points but with two days in Paris and more time at some of the battlefields. It's all inclusive at four star hotels, unlimited non-alcoholic drinks on busses and at meals with a glass of beer or wine at lunch and dinner. The cost is $5,250, or $480 day. The minimum cost for your tour with meals is $507. Even the single room supplement is $52 a day on the 11 day compared to $82 for your tour, and September is the low season in Europe. I'm retired on a mostly fixed income. I'd really like to go, get to meet you, and hear your narration, but the cost is just too high for what's essentially a budget tour.
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  541. A combination of extreme nationalism, racism that continues to this day, and the wrong lessons from the Russo-Japanese war. The Japanese routinely lied to their own people about what would happen when war came. An example is the continued Japanese insistence that the population of Japan in 1935 was 100 million. That number was used over and over, all the way to the end of the war. We now know, and the Japanese bureaucracy knew then, the population never exceeded about 80 million, and that number never grew, as war dead exceeded new births. That 100 million number had some kind of magical effect on Japanese war propaganda, as the "100 million shattered jewels" was the Japanese plan to resist the invasion by sacrificing the entire population if need be. The "gyokusai" (shattered jewel") concept led to the first human wave attacks of 1905, continuing up until the end of the war. The Meiji Restoration and bushido helped doom Japan as much as any external enemy.
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  542. Q&A Why did Germany continue with twin turrets when it was clear that triple turrets could have reduced the overall length and increased armor protection over the shorter area? Triple turrets for 16" guns goes all the way back to 1927 with the Nelsons. Why did the Germans persist with the 5.9" single purpose guns? The mix of SP and DP 4.1" guns again increased length and decreased armor protection. DP armament featured on US cruisers from the 1929 Pensacola class onwards, plus the Washington/South Dakota battleships, all completed or under construction by the time of the H class designs. Did the Germans not have the capability build large caliber triple turrets? Did they tactically not understand the value of DP armament?
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  543.  @AtomicBabel  You're welcome. The IJN did develop some Ward-Leonard electrical power controls systems for the triple mounts late in the war. This enabled the mount to follow the much faster attack aircraft than the Japanese had encountered early in the war, but there were still problems matching up the pointers to the target before it moved out of the telescopic range finder field of view. The Ward Leonard remote power control was certainly better than manual traversing, but the lack of any kind of radar fire control meant they were still dependent on the Mark 1 eyeball looking through telescopic sights on a heavily vibrating mount while being wreathed in smoke from the gunfire. The USN found out how difficult this was while developing the much more advanced Mark 14 gunsight on the 20mm Oerlikon mount. The same vibration issues affected them until better shock mountings were devised. Once the Mark 14 was integrated into the Mark 51 director, there was a marked increase in the accuracy of 20mm fire, to the point that the 20mm was the AA gun that shot down the most Japanese planes in the last year of the war. Even if the 25mm gun had a faster rate of fire and wasn't so prone to jamming when used at elevations over 60 degrees, the whole system was hopeless without some kind of radar directed and RPC fire control. The Japanese had been working such a system but, as usual, squabbling between the Army and Navy over funding and what system was best meant no system was put in use before war's end.
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  544. Certainly had a long a relatively useful life.
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  545. @Charles Yuditsky Yes, the RN strapped a bunch of L1A1 LMGs to ship rails and pipe mounts during the war in an attempt to throw up some kind of fire since most RN ships had very little in the way of AA guns at the beginning. Even if some of the ships had the original Block 1 guns in 1982, they wouldn't have been very effective against the low flying Argentine attackers since the Phalanx was only optimized for sea skimming missiles at the time. The introduction of the Block 1A and particularly the Block 1B models have allowed the Phalanx to respond to everything from small fast boats, low flying aircraft not using radar, to supersonic missiles. The Dutch Goalkeeper system has many of the same abilities, and both are installed on RN ships today. Perhaps in recognition of the Falklands problems, even the most modern RN ships, like the Type 45 "destroyers", in reality the size and displacement of a light cruiser, go to sea with a pair of Oerlikon 30 mm guns, a pair of 7.62mm miniguns, and mounts for six of the ubiquitous 7.62mm GPMGs, in addition to a Block 1B Phalanx. If another shooting war develops, you can be sure RN sailors will be on deck throwing up all the lead they can, in addition to the Phalanx.
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  546. Pretty versatile ships as well, operating everything from Fulmars to Tracklers to Skyhawks. Not bad for a design supposed to only last three years and built with scantlings made from old bully beef tins. :-)
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  547.  @jballaviator  One of the reasons why my dad joined the Navy was he heard the food was good, and he loved food! The guys flying the Hump lived on K and C rations for sometimes months at a time and lost an average of 25 pounds. There weren't enough calories in the earlier rations like the C ration, and some of the food just didn't taste good, so they didn't even finish the inadequate meals they were given. Things started to improve about mid-1944 when rations started to include a greater variety of food (K rations expanded to 12 different menus, four each for breakfast, dinner and supper, the military terms for the more common lunch and dinner.) The greatest morale boost for the troops wasn't food, even the much loved hot chocolate drink. It was the four cigarettes that came with each meal. For smokers, it was a familiar way to finish off a meal. For non-smokers, it gave them something to trade for food they liked. I'm not aware of any other military that included cigarettes with each ration. Not PC today, but it was a big lift for soldiers right up until 1975, when the busybodies and pearl clutchers got them removed.
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  548. I first read about this in an old Popular Mechanics when I was maybe 10 years old, ao that would have been about 1956. Even then, I thought this had to be the most unworkable and improbable idea I had ever seen.
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  549. No, I meant 40 years ago. Detroit still had 1.2 million people, down from its 1950 peak of 1.8 million, but about equidistant from the decline setting starting to set in and the total collapse we see now. Detroit is now at 672,000, almost exactly half of the 1980 population. Detroit (and many other Rust Belt cities) still had a lot of nice neighborhoods, and people could still live decent lives. A lot of people seem to think Detroit was a good place to live only in the far distant past. Like any large city in 1980, Detroit had its problems, but it wasn't bankrupt, wasn't half vacant, and wasn't leading the list of cities with the worst crime rates. Detroit really falling off the cliff started in 1980, not 60, 80, or 100 years ago.
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  550. And now all the Uber like companies are threatening to start new taxicab wars. As usual, history repeats itself.
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  551. There are always trolls that follow around a number creators and vote down their videos. In most cases, they don't even understand what's being shown. The only reason they show up is to downvote videos.
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  552. MacLean was supposedly part of the inspiration for the James Bond character in the Ian Fleming books. He was a fervent anticommunist but stuck to his mission to find out what force could kill the most German, and that was Tito's partisans.
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  553.  @amadeusamwater  I have read that but the POW records don't show a general of that name near western Czechoslovakia at the time of the rescue. There were several generals with similar names as POW's but none of them would have been involved with the horses. The feeling among historians is we just don't know for sure who this general was.
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  554. There were same kinds of beer kiosks in Slovenia when I first visited in the early 80's. Being an American, it was a weird experience since we had nothing like it. The right to run the kiosks was sold to private individuals. Slovenians were always basically capitalists, so some owners fixed up the area around the kiosk by planting some flowers in containers, adding a few tables and some chairs, and increased revenue by selling thing like hot dogs and potato chips. It was a kind of workingman's sidewalk cafe, and they were always packed on warm summer evenings.
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  555.  @alastairward2774  Yes, and so much for the meme of Italians being cowardly in war.
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  556. Toby McElhinney Don't come to a history forum and make things up. Eisenhower not only never said such a thing, he said to his dying day the US stand during the Suez Crisis was the correct one. If not for the British and French delays in finally getting Operation Musketeer rolling, Eisenhower would have sided with the British and French. It was launching the attack against the background of the Hungarian Uprising he couldn't contenance. He didn't see how the US could be opposed to Russian imperialism while at the same time supporting the imperialism of his allies.
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  557. I'm so fucking tired of seeing these internet tough guys. Go find bearing and beat him up if you're able to and stop making idle threats. What a punk.
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  558. These kinds of tailing dam ruptures have happened many times in the past. This was just one of the biggest of them and affected the most countries. Tailings dams are a necessary part of mining, but we need much better oversight and regulation of them to stop this kind of disaster in the future.
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  559. Great video. Both of those scientists sound like they were more than a little unstable.
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  560. @PoorMans Chemist That's big talk for a guy whose hobby is making "wildly poisonous" chemicals in his backyard. Have you informed your neighbors about this, even though they are probably too stupid to understand?
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  561.  @micnorton9487  Sorry, Mic, you happened to be the third guy in the last three comments telling me something I wrote that I never did write, so you got nailed. I apologize. The Coast Guard in now part of Homeland Security, so they cooperate more with agencies like the DEA and local jurisdictions more than the Navy. Their primary work with the Navy is for search and rescue after a ship casualty or downed aircraft. In the course of an average month, I doubt there's another federal agency that works with such a wide variety of other federal and non-federal agencies as the Coasties.
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  562.  @Raptor747  That really wasn't the issue. The Japanese were able to produce good reverse engineered copies of the 40mm. They just couldn't do it without a lot of hand work, didn't have the kinds of steels needed, and weren't able to produce them in numbers that would have made any difference. Remember that US, with a complete set of working drawings, several examples of the 40mm gun, and the vast industrial ability of the country in early 1940, still took almost two years to produce the first twin mount in January, 1942, and over two years to produce the first quad mount in April, 1942. The Japanese just didn't have the industrial capacity to produce the 40mm gun in any numbers regardless of the ROF or muzzle velocity.
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  563.  @Alpostpone  Oops. you're right. I'm not good at keeping Finnish ship names straight. I've edited my comment to get it straight now.
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  564. I think you meant four 5"/25 caliber guns rather than 4" guns. She received an additional four 5"/25 guns in early 1941 in gun tubs surrounding the bridge, thus bringing her secondary armament into line with the other US Heavy cruisers of the time.
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  565. Hard to imagine that Gary was still a thriving city of 179,000 and 84% non-Hispanic white in 1950. The estimate is Gary was down to 75,000 in 2018 and about 5% of those remaining are non-Hispanic white. Detroit had a population 1,879,000 in 195o with 83.6% of those being non-Hispanic white. By 2018, it was down to 672,000, and the non-Hispanic white population had decreased to about 6%. Back in 2000, Gary had the largest percentage of black residents of any city over 100,000. Since Gary has now fallen considerably below 100,000, Detroit has gained the number one spot. Both cities had massive population declines between 2000 and 2010. Gary lost about 22% of its population then, but Detroit got top honors, with 25% of the population fleeing. Both cities have been vying for the number one spot in fastest population decline and highest murder rate. Both cities have about one-third of all structures vacant and abandoned.
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  566. I'll bet everyone im Zimbabwe except for the die hard black racists would like to go back to 1976. The problems then seem minor compared to today.
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  567. In addition to Adrian, Friedrich Schwerd and Dr. August Bier, inventors of the German Stahlhelm helmet, should also share in the honors for helping to protect soldiers from splinter wounds. I'd argue they were the most important since the design elements Stahlhelm helmet, in its many revisions, continues to be used today by most western armies. The Adrian helmet was really a technological dead end by comparison.
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  568. I mean, how could we ever have history that deserves to be remembered if we couldn't talk about pirates, hardly the most virtuous of historical figures.
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  569. I'm pretty sure it should have been a combination of the B-17 and B-24 bombers. The B-25 was a tactical bomber and rarely flew in formation with those four engine bombers.
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  570. I do think the alternate explanation that the messages were an attempt to raise VALP - Valparaiso Airport - is about equally likely, but an error copying the Morse in Santiago is also plausible. Whichever one is right. the plane certainly wasn't snatched by a UFO.
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  571.  @T4SelNiNO  Okay, a little economics lesson. There is no free healthcare, no free college, no free anything. You either pay for healthcare up front by buying insurance or you pay on the back end with taxes. No one builds a hospital for free and no doctors or nurses work for free. Where exactly do you live?
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  572. It's just unfortunate that his lions didn't eat him when they had the chance.
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  573. Thanks for this video. Another piece in the little known race to save Europe's art and culture. In an ironic twist, the Nazi looting of art and storage in central locations like Neuschwanstein Castle may have saved a lot of art that would have been destroyed by the massive allied bombings of French and German cities. There is way more to this story, involving everyone from Martin Bormann to the local Austrian Resistance fighters. A book called "Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece" was written about the cat and mouse game of trying to recover all the art in the last days of Nazi rule. It's quite a gripping story, and it's available as an e-book from the usual sellers.
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  574. A static defense along the Rhine would have been useless. There weren't enough prepared positions or manpower to hold the entire length of the River. The allies would have used a combination of air strikes and superior troop and armored strength to destroy weaknesses in the line and pour across the river. Once they had enough strength across the river they could turn and destroy the Germans left isolated along the river since they had no escape. Once the D-Day landings succeeded, Germany was doomed. A more interesting question is what would have happened if Hitler had not attacked the Soviet Union? With a much greater ability to resist attacks in the west and the Soviet Union not part of the Allies, the outcome would have been much different.
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  575. It's difficult to imagine that any military would want a rifle that was loaded with single cartridges when stripper clips were so well establish in major militaries. Certainly a nice sporterized appearing gun.
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  576. If the Germans had developed the "Kurier" radio system earlier in the war they would have been able to communicate with their subs and not be detected. It was able to send coded messages at 600 words per minute while using a form of single sideband radio. The first radios on subs weren't installed until late 1944 and only about 20 boats were so equipped by the end of the war. The USN admitted after the war ended that a Kurier transmission was never DF'd. They never even knew the system existed until it was found on some surrendered boats,
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  577.  @micnorton9487  It's ok, very few people outside the Coast Guard know anything more about it other than it has ships and vaguely naval uniforms.It started out as part of the Lighthouse Serves. It was then put under the Treasury Department Revenue Service since it was enforcing tariffs and tariff smugglers. It was put incharge of immigrants and quarantines, piracy spression, regulating the slave trade, stopping general smuggling and then liquor smuggling during prohibition, safety inspections of ships and cargoes, rescuing ships and sailors in peril...almost any task the Navy wouldn't or couldn't do. It was under the Department of Transportation from 1967 to 2003, when it became part of Homeland Security.
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  578. Ya know, my eyes are kinda tired. I could swear this Drydock said it was almost 6 hours long? Holy crap, that is what it said. It's almost midnight here. I don't think there's enough coiffee in the house to get through this video in one sitting.
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  579.  @ObviusRetard  Warrior was decommissioned on 1978 before being donated for preservation, so she was 117 years in service. Caroline was in commission until 2011, so she became the second oldest ship after Warrior was decommissioned, although she was "only" in commission for 97 years.
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  580. The USN development of the 1.1" antiaircraft guns and quadruple mounts began in 1928. The Swedish development work on the 40 mm Bofors, Swiss, Oerlikon 20 mm, and the British 2 pounder single and then octuple mount guns all began work or even prototype testing in the mid to late 20's. You could certainly argue the interwar years saw feverish development of various rapid fire antiaircraft weapons as navies reached the slow realization that four hand loaded 3" guns wouldn't be quite enough for the next war.
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  581.  @sharlin648  Do you realize that Miyazaki (note correct spelling) thinks this whole steampunk obsession with weird early 20th ships and guns is otaku? He can't stand most of today's anime and manga, especially this whole thing with military anime. He thinks it's all a fetish, and I tend to agree. If you're over 21 and still continue to be fascinated with this, don't invoke Miyazaki's name to justify it.
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  582. The U Boat attacks were generally confined to the waters of the Gulf of St Lawrence, the only part of the St Lawrence riverway wide enough and deep enough to allow U Boats to have the operational space they needed. As it turned out. the attacks on allied shipping in the Gulf turned out to be an advantage to Canada and the allies. Rather than convoys having to all assemble at Sydney NS, some of which were taking many days to navigate up the St Lawrence, shipping was diverted to the Canadian National Railway lines to Halifax, and convoys formed up there. The harbor was better, as were the defenses, and the removal of most of the convoy traffic from the St Lawrence decreased the U Boat targets and caused German to abandoned operations in the St Lawrence by mid-1943. U Boats did try to insert spies and pick up escaped POWs from the region, but none of those operations ever succeeded.
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  583. If more people voted for Trump we wouldn't be in never ending wars. He's the first modern president not to engage in new warfare for four years. Joe, however, is a completely different story.
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  584. This is what happens ot a city goes from 1.67 million people in 1960 to 672,000 people in 2018. The city has about 2.6 times more of everything than it needs - roads, houses, commercial buildings, and entire neighborhoods. There's no lack of poverty, ignorance, arson, and killing one another though.
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  585.  @spencers4121  It was a terrible thing and I'm paying for it now. I was one of those kids that loved the high from the first cigarette I ever smoked. That's why it's important to encourage kids to never even try one. If nicotine turns out to be your drug of choice, you've picked up a lifelong habit.
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  586. I noticed that deer in the headlights look as well. Of course, this was in 1974, and diesels were still being touted as being less of a polluter than petrol engines, and the EU had a near universal program to encourage people to buy diesels. Turned out we were trading one kind of of pollutant for ones with a far higher impact on human health. Diesel fuel also now costs more in the US than gasoline, so any savings from more MPG is eaten up in cost per gallon. Back in 1974, diesel fuel was significantly cheaper that gasoline. Just another example of a government program attacking one problem by creating two more.
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  587. This kind of takeover of British labour unions and the British Labour Party by outright communists was the beginning of the end for British industry, especially the auto industry.
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  588. The important thing is to deal with the most dangerous and violent persons. The only way to do that is reopen or build new secure treatment facilities with two levels of care. One is a temporary confinement until a patient gets the right medication and shows they will continue to take their medication. For those whom medications don't help and remain violent, or those who consistently refuse to take their medication and remain violent, they will need confinement until a medication is found, or some psychiatric treatment is found, that will make them not a risk to the public. In some cases, that will mean lifetime confinement. The only other option is these people roaming the streets assaulting, injuring, and killing people. Enough is enough.
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  589. Talk to Tito and the Partisans about organizing civilians into an effective fighting force. It can be done with the right motivation.
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  590. All the banging, whistling, talking, and crashing in the background made it hard to understand the Swedish guy at times. From what I could understand, I'm sure glad I don't live in Sweden, and the gun bureaucracy is just one reason.
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  591.  @davidmeyer3795  Probably so, but Germans have had car liability insurance for a long time and still have trouble with Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung.
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  592.  @baneofbanes  He apparently wants to let us know that nothing in North America is old enough to be truly historic, or at least not Euro-historic, because those of us over here don't understand history.
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  593. I was never concerned about it. As you say, it has been long enough now that being on the wreck for 45 minutes is less than the radiation I picked up flying there. Radiation is just one of those scary things ot a lot of people, so any radiation is bad to them. I don't know that I'd like to spend a couple days on the wreck but it's not a possibility we need to worry about. I did notice the wreck is festooned in marine growths., and there are thousands of marine creatures that do spend a good portion of their lives on the wreck I didn't notice any three eyed fish.
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  594. Nova Topaz  I don't know where you came up with the idea the 8"/55 guns on the Des Moines class were ever claimed to be dual purpose guns. They were built to be rapid firing guns for surface action and shore bombardment and succeeded admirably. The rate of fire was 10 rounds a minute, at least twice as fast as any other 8" gun ever used, and it could fire at this rate for hours. Contrary to the failed 6"/47 guns on the Worcester, their automated shell loading worked almost perfectly for the entire time they were in service. The problem with the Worcester guns was the automatic loading didn't work properly. The need for a dual projectile hoist system to cater for AA and AP shells was a constant source of jamming. The design rate of fire was 20-25 rounds per minute in an attempt to best the 5"/38's ROF of 15-22 a minute. Instead, the poor performance of the dual lifts and constant jamming meant the real ROF never got above 12 rounds per minute. The jamming was partly due to the requirement for all elevation loading, something not actually achieved in automatic mode until the 5"/54 Mod 1 in 1980. Even then, the ROF was still only about 20 rounds per minute, but that was offset by the drastic reduction in manpower for these all automatic guns. 20 rounds per minute has continued to be a barrier for even modern automatic loading systems on medium caliber dual purpose guns
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  595. There was Project Hulu, the transfer of 149 vessels to the Soviet Union from Cold Bay, Alaska in 1945. The Soviet crews under training were under the command of the USN base commander, an arrangement made clear by Admiral Kuznetsov. Hew told all the Soviet sailors they were under the command of the Americans, and their orders were to be obeyed instantly. USN and Soviet sailors made up mixed crews of most of the transferred vessels before the formal transfer, and several of the first large ships, like the 34 patrol frigates, had mixed crews all the way to Kamchatka to make sure the Soviets really understood how to operate the ships. The transferred ships were then convoyed part of the way by USN ships, and some Soviet officers were transferred from the escorting ships back to the new Soviet ships by highline transfer. So, while this wasn't really a formal mixed crew ship, many of these ships in effect were mixed crews, at least for part of their service. It was certainly the largest transfer of vessels from one navy to another in WWII.
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  596.  @Drachinifel  Or top weight. :-) Sheffield was kind of an experimental ship in terms of radar. She usually had the latest British (and later American) radars and gunfire control systems. She was a good example of ship that massively increased her lethality over her time of service.
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  597. Modernized Fletchers also had two dual 3"/50 mounts, and those could have joined in if the Fletcher could have closed to within the effective range of all her guns. Very few modernized Fletchers kept all five 5", but a combination of the 5" and 3" would have been devastating to an Independence LCS. Even with just four 5" guns, each mount could maintain a ROF of 20 RPM, so that's 80 rounds per minute. Each 3" mount could maintain a ROF of 50 RPM. That adds another 100 rounds per minute, for a total of 180 RPM compared to the much smaller 57 mm gun's ROF of 200 RPM. We have good evidence of a Fletcher's ability to withstand battle damage by having had a lot of them tested to destruction. We really have no idea of the survivability of an Independence class. My guess in the end result would have the Fletcher sustaining a fair amount of non-fatal damage while the Independence class vessel would have been sinking or sunk.
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  598. Holy cow! Three in a row. What an embarrassment of riches today. Thanks, Drach.
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  599. To my knowledge, the current crop of Littoral Combat Ships are the only major US vessels to have aluminum hulls. All other major USN ships have steel hulls. Some use aluminum in the superstructure, but none below the waterline. The current crop of aluminum hull LCS shows we still don't know how to control galvanic corrosion when aluminum is in contact underwater with dissimilar metals. It's something of myth that aluminum in the superstructure is a fire hazard. The RN did extensive studies after the Falklands War regarding the use of aluminum as contribution to fires. Their conclusion was that the use of aluminum contributed little to nothing in shipboard fires.
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  600. The British fleet in the Med was there to fight surface actions with the Italian fleet. Let's face it, compared to Germany, Italy was always considered a second rate navy, and the RN was confident it could fight in the Med with some of its older but still powerful ships. What the RN didn't appreciate initially was the role of air power and how poorly equipped the fleet was to fight off air attacks. The found to their consternation that a couple of 3" guns and some quad Vickers machine guns just weren't a sufficient AA armament by 1940.
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  601. Let's all start calling this the DemocraticVirus. That should make the media happy.
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  602. Most of them have good alarm system, big dogs, and well armed homeowners.
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  603.  @kevinmarsh5101  Correct. The Brazilian Army supplied a full division of about 16,000 troops. They were involved in some of the hardest fighting on the Italian front, including Monte Casino. It was the largest non-Commonwealth, non-European contribution to the war other than the United States.
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  604. The PPK was notorious for jamming with ammunition the feed system didn't like, and it took some shooting to determine what type of ammunition was reliable. Even then, it was easy for an inexperienced shooter to get his finger on the side of the slide as a round was trying to eject, causing the gun to jam. It's one reason why many protection agencies in 1974 carried revolvers rather than semi automatic pistols. The Secret Service, for example, carried .357 magnum Smith & Wesson revolvers before switching over to the Sig Sauer P228 9mm pistol in 1992.
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  605.  @CaptainBones222  Uh, dude, I'm a boomer. The youngest boomer is now 56 years old. I can guarantee you from my rather extensive contacts with the FDA that most of those making decisions are younger than 56. There's nothing special about any generation wanting to control us. The same thing happens with student "leadership" at colleges like Evergreen to the AARP advocating for dump truck loads of money for those of us on Social Security. It's just what happens when people get too much power. I agree about leaving things like vaping alone, but dropping boomer insults doesn't help your cause, any more than me ragging on millenials.
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  606. About $291 million in gold at today's price of $1400. Someone in the SS got really rich with this one.
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  607. +yourjoking Right I don't know for a fact he has autism. I have an M.A. in psychology and a son with autism. From my observations of his behavior in public, I believe he does have autism. Regardless, he's obviously painfully shy and should be left alone by the likes of Rosie O'Donnell.
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  608. It didn't take those in charge to recognize this idea. A broken leg generally wasn't enough to do more than get you sent to a rear area hospital. Once you were discharged, you were immediately courts martialed and ended up in the brig for a couple months on bread at hard labor or Leavenworth. Most guys didn't want that to be the end of their service since they knew they'd get no GI benefits and have a lot of trouble getting a job.
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  609. Matt, I'm sure that's true. Ian says that the standard M-14 mag won't fit while Rock Island says they will. I'm just trying to ascertain which is correct.
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  610. Thanks a lot of for answering my questions about the Vanguard. As a Yank, I don't always understand British thinking about what ships were built and what weren't. All your reponses make sense. It's unfortunate that the British government never saw the possibility of the Vanguard being more than the world's largest and most heavily armed royal yacht, her main use until she was placed in reserve in 1955. It's unfortunate that she never participated in the Korean Conflict. The RN might have gained a new appreciation for the need for shore bombardment even without another world war After a fairly comprehensive and expensive refit, and being placed into reserve in 1955 , Mountbatten and Anthony Eden came to power and seemed to be bent on disposing of half the RN fleet. After just four years in reserve, the decision was made to scrap the Vanguard and, by 1960, she was gone. The USN/US government maintained many ships in reserve postwar, some of which were war weary and completely obsolete, like the USS Wichita, for fifteen or more years before the mass scraping program set in from 1960 to 1962. I guess the end of empire, in some people's minds, also meant the end of the need for the RN beyond nuclear submarines, and that the USN would become the protector of the UK itself. It was a decision that would come back to haunt the British in 1982.
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  611. If it had been a few decades later, the Turks could have saved more money by issuing a painted KFC bucket instead of a fez.
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  612. Only true until about Summer, 1943. By then. most Mark 15's were ether retrofitted or newly manufactured to correct the early war problems. The Battle of Vella Gulf in August, 1943 showed the problem days were mostly over.
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  613. The USN had about 600 PT boats as well as all those Fletchers, Sumners, and Gearings, plus a crapload of DE's. The Japanese never developed the kinds of sonars and radars that could have made large numbers of coastal patrol craft useful. By 1944, Japanese ships were being sunk at a rate between two and three times the capacity of Japanese shipyards to replace them. The Japanese Navy was pretty well doomed by 1943 no matter what they did.
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  614.  @nath9091  The USN is paying docking and port fees so It makes sense for Singapore to build docks that can handle the largest ships the USN has. However, the USN didn't pay for the facilities. It was constructed by Singapore. The fees paid by the USN helps offset part of the cost of the base construction and expansion, but that still doesn't make the facilities cost neutral.
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  615. Ya know, one of the ways I know I've passed into geezerhood is when half the comments about the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal refer to a video game, some kind of anime, movies, and weird Japanese comic books, none of which I know anything about. I guess it happens to us all.
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  616.  @russg1801  Yes, when I was there, a lot of work was being done below decks to stabilize the structure and generally paint and clean things up so visitors can see the lower three decks. There was also a lot of cosmetic restoration being done to the engines.
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  617. I remember reading a series of letters to the editors to the London Times from an "anonymous" Royal Navy officer during the Spanish-American war expressing surprise that Oregon successfully made it around the Horn , that the ship was able to survive the storm Drach mentioned, and was then made ready for battle relatively quickly once she arrived on scene. He had expected her low freeboard to sink her in any kind of weather, the quality of American seamanship so bad he was surprised Oregon didn't end up in Australia, and the quality of her construction was so poor that drydocking would show a fractured keel. The RN had very little respect for the upstart USN in those days. :-)
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  618.  @bkjeong4302  I don't know that facts would agree with your premise. Two Cleveland class light cruisers combined had 24 5" barrels compared to 20 on an Iowa. That's a slight win for the Cleveland's but only about the same number of combined barrels could be unmasked for either combination when used for antiaircraft fire. The combined Clevelands don't even come close when it's light fire being counted. Two Cleveland's by the end of the war were carrying 56 40mm barrels while an Iowa had at least 80 and, in a few ships, 96. Conomed 20mm guns on the Cleveland's was between 20 and 30 barrels compared the 49 carried by an Iowa, rising to 62 when twin mounts were added. Combined crews for the pair of Clevelands was 2510 while it was around 2700 for a single Iowa. That relatively small difference was pretty much negated when you look at the extra manpower and shipping needed to replenish two smaller vessels at sea compared to one large one. One Iowa was able to concentrate a truly horrifying stream of fire toward aerial attackers. When escorting a carrier, and there are many stories about a single Iowa breaking up an attack by 20-30 Japanese planes on a carrier. I think it was Admiral Nimitz who said the only ship he wanted ot see next to his carriers was an Iowa.
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  619.  @HighlanderNorth1  That sums it up. I don't think the war in the Pacific would have gone so well without Admiral Robinson in charge. When it comes to fishing, that worked on ships with relatively low freeboard and ones that spent a lot of time dead in the water. It was hard to catch much from a cruiser making way at 25 knots. :-) PT boats were ideal for fishermen since they had the freeboard of a cabin cruiser and spent a lot of time at idle waiting to jump Japanese resupply barges. My dad said they even fish on moonlit nights when they could see their lines and the fish swimming by made luminescent wakes. The skipper was an inveterate fisherman. He'd spend time at the stern tending a couple lines while the XO kept an eye on the radar and yelled for him if there were any hits. By late 1943, there were only the occasional Japanese floatplane around so they didn't much have to worry about air attack. The old man was a motor machinist mate, so he spent a lot of his time with the engines. The heat was suffocating in the engine room so he'd come up on deck to spell gunner's mates so they could get some chow. He was manning the stern 20mm one time when one of those floatplanes came right up over the hill at them with no radar warning. He just happned to be watching that part of the sky when it happened, and he had it in his sights in a heartbeat. He opened up on it and tracked it right across the boat, the safety rails saving him from shooting up the bridge. The plane burst into flames and splashed a couple hundred feet off the bow. One of the other guys had to light his cigarette afterwards because he was shaking too much to hold the match. It was the one and only time he ever fired a weapon in anger during the war. It was also one of two planes the boat was credited with during the war. I still have the picture of him standing behind a piece of the vertical stabilizer they had fished out to make sure they got credit for the kill.
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  620.  @steveshoemaker6347  The "skeleton passenger plane" is complete fiction. It was first "reported" by the Weekly World News, a supermarket tabloid, in 1989. Nothing in the story is true, but I still see videos occasionally from paranormal and time warp fans about it.
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  621.  @caesarillion  Combat deafness was a huge problem right up to and through the Vietnam war. It wasn't just the 5" guns that were used for shore bombardment and antiaircraft defense that caused deafness, it was the smaller guns like the quad 40 mm mounts and 20 mm cannon. These tertiary guns fired millions of round during the Kamikaze attacks, and even long term exposure to rifle fire without hearing protection could cause later loss of hearing. The same issues applied to artillerymen ashore. My brother was was assigned as a battery captain to a 105 mm battery in the Mekong Delta and has profound hearing loss on his right ear from all the firing his battery did during the ten months he spent in the Delta. It was only all the VA medical claims for deafness that finally convinced the military to provide hearing protection starting the late 80's.
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  622. Wing root engines are terrible if you're a passenger. Those seated next to the engines could only communicate with the person next to them by writing notes. The noise was that bad. Wing root engines also cause constant vibration to the connection of the wing to the fuselage. These are just two reasons why those buried engines were not a good idea.
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  623. Ohio delivered the oil and aviation gas that the RAF needed to keep flying from Malta. There's almost no question that Malta would have been lost without the fuel for Ohio. The real value of Malta was as an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
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  624. The He 277 never was more than a paper design. The He 274 may have done better if work was started at least a year earlier. By the time the prototypes were completed, the B-29 was in service and the 274 was already obsolescent. The 177B probably had the best chance of being a successful bomber once the Luftwaffe got past the coupled four engine design and produced a proper four engine design. Once again, it was too little and too late in terms of Germany developing a long range heavy bomber. None of the three rate more than a passing mention in the race to develop a good four engine bomber.
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  625. It takes a long time to tell the story about a larger than life character like Stalin. I was in high school so it must have been 1962 or 1963 when Radio Mosco's English service broadcast a ten part series on the "Great Patriotic War". I have always had an interest in history so I listened faithfully through the static to see what the Soviets said about WWII. You'd think the Russians pretty much did it single handedly listening to that program. You'd think the allies just parachuted into Germany after Russia had mopped up almost all the German troops. There was no mention of the war with Finland, the three Baltic republics asked the USSR to join with them, no mention of the Soviet-German non aggression pact, and, of course, no mention at all of the millions of Russian POWs who returned to the USSR but never made it back to their homes. US lend lease aid got mentioned only in passing, and I think only because of all the pictures of the hundreds of P-39 fighters with the Red Star and the tens of thousands of Studebaker trucks hauling around all the Soviet troops. The reason why Japan surrendered was because of the USSR declaration war against Japan, a whole six days before Japan surrendered. The two atomic bombs were just imperialists testing their weapons of death on the helpless Japanese. Our own history can be somewhat distorted for political gain, but listening to that series was like being Alice going down the rabbit hole.
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  626. Thanks for this video. The East Germans were well aware of the tactics of the Soviet troops and their looting of almost anything movable after the occupation. I have read that the original East German army units actually used surplus Wehrmacht uniforms because they were produced in the east and available. I don't know if that's true, but it's not hard to see that the East Germans wanted their army to tweek the noses of the Soviets, or at least as much as the could get away with. Soviet leadership always viewed the East Germans with suspicion and considered it the least reliable member of the Warsaw Pact. The 1953 East German uprising did nothing to qualm their fears. .
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  627. Little Jimmy, real life isn't a video game.
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  628.  @Muckylittleme  Firstly, the claim was it was an attack on Canada by a US submarine, so it wasn't "our own population". What has happened at some point in the past has nothing to do with what happened to cause this attack. Nice attempt at a straw man though. Yes, it is laughable that the entire crew of a submarine could carry such a secret to the grave. Someone always talks, and that's how we know about attempts to keep military secrets in the past. If no one ever talked, how would we ever know? Your own argument defeats you.
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  629. The show would have been much better if that presenter would have just sat there and shut up.
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  630. SF's system of "beat special" police was probably unique in the nation. They were were what would normally have been private security that was trained to police standards and supervised by SFPD. A beat special paid a fee to "buy" his beat. The business owner could hire an officer well trained on police procedures, use of force, and firearms to fill in the holes in what the city police officers didn't have the manpower or time to cover. This system went back to the turn of the last century. I left that hellhole in 2005 and didn't realize beat specials had had been discontinued. Just another reason for San Francisco's descent into madness.
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  631.  @spicycracker7828  You might want to read more than one Forbes article before coming to a conclusion. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/01/04/solved-why-poor-states-are-red-and-rich-states-are-blue/#67c8b4701d60) Just because California, for example, may have a higher average annual income than a place like Alabama doesn't mean much unless you're a very high income earner. You pretty much have to earn a high income in California to live a decent life. In Alabama, your income might be lower, but you can buy more with that lower income than you can in California with a higher income. That's one reason I can walk around town here and not see block after block of tents on the sidewalks and not be confronted with drug crazed psychotic panhandlers.
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  632. +A Typical Youtuber You mean like Question Time in Parliament? Fist fights in the Japanese Diet? A new government every year in Italy? Persistent brawling in the South Korean legislature? Where do you live?
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  633. Kris, because she was there to tell a personal story, not dispassionately report on a problem. I don't know her, and she ma be a really good reporter, but this was a story she should have never taken.
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  634. Harrington & Richardson still makes a line throwing gun that's basically a sawed off shotgun converted with a very heavy barrel and using a 45/70 black powder blank. It will throw a line out about 150 yards and is the first step in establishing a breeches buoy between ships. I had the misfortune of firing one of these and, even though I've fired a lot of full power rifles, the bruise from this one took about a week to heal.
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  635. Cue up the G36 fans!
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  636. Usually I want one of each of every gun on Ian's show. In this case, I'll just stand aside and let someone else have mine.
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  637.  @nirfz  There wasn't any kind of "black market" in the US in 1895. Even then, arson investigators were pretty good at their jobs. Most such fires were set to collect on the fire insurance, mostly for the structure, but sometimes to cover inventory at an inflated cost. Arson was considered a capital crime in many states in 1895, and you could hang if it was proved you set the fire. Not saying it didn't happen, because it obviously did, just saying it was less common than we might suppose today, and many of those who did it were caught and aptly punished.
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  638.  @bcoop1701  And that wasn't anywhere near close to the maximum range of 43,000 yards. It would have still been traveling at 48 knots. That speed alone would have been enough to hole most hulls, not to mention the 1080 pound high explosive warhead of the Type 93. There are been very few weapons of war that remained an almost complete secret from the enemy, but it was an almost complete shock to the USN when an intact example was recovered at Guadalcanal in 1943. In fact, the Type 93 was a touchy weapon that would sink Japanese warships when they were caught in a bombing attack before the could jettison the torpedoes. Nevertheless, the type 93 remained a dangerous weapon for the USN, sinking its last ship in December, 1944, and that only because very few submarines and surface ships capable of handling the Type 93 remained afloat.
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  639. They were also lacking in good quality anti aircraft batteries. The original C/30 20 mm guns were very poor guns with a small magazine of just 20 rounds. That made them have a practical rate of fire of only about 120 rounds a minute. The C/38 models was a much improved gun, especially when used with the sophisticated quad mounting. It had a 40 round magazine and doubled the rate of fire per barrel compared to the C/30. Allied airmen soon learned to give German vessels used to escort submarines in and out of the Bay of Biscay a wide berth to avoid the fire of these guns. However, it was only when the German Navy started manufacturing Oerlikon 20 mm guns reverse engineered from army models that they had a truly effective single barrel hand swung model. It had a rate of fire of 450 rounds a minute, twice as fast as any German designed gun. As usual,, there were too few produced too late to make much difference. The 37 mm SK C/30 guns were hand loaded with very slow rates of fire and a poor mounting with a failed triaxial mount. The later KM 42 and KM 43 37 mm FLAK versions were much improved but came very late in the war when most of the surface fleet had been lost or decommissioned. The 105 mm guns had the potential to be excellent antiaircraft gun but, once again, they were in a triaxial mount that was too difficult to manufacture and just didn't work well in practice. The gun housing was poorly designed, being open at one end and allowing water to get in and ruin the electrical systems. Too few were manufactured to replace war losses as the war wound down for improvements in the 105 mm gun housing and fire control system to make any difference. In addition to luck, the Prinz Eugen survived as the only large surface vessel of the German navy by continuing improvements in her anti aircraft batteries. All the 37 mm guns were replaced with the German version of the Bofors 40 mm gun and the earlier C/30 and C/38 20 mm with the FLAK 28 and 29 models covering any empty spaces on the deck. While operating in the Baltic in the closing moths of the war, she was able to do impressive shore bombardment missions against the advancing Russian army while fighting off hordes of Russian aircraft due to her much improved anti aircraft batteries and radars.
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  640. Drach, you're welcome. I was really excited to see the PE come up in the list. I would have liked to have seen her in all her glory after she was surrendered to the British in 1946, but that was the year I was born, so the wreck will have to be second best. Oh, I forgot to mention that, for anyone who's nervous around sharks and barracudas, this is a dive to skip. I counted six oceanic whitetips that obviously called the wreck home and more barracuda than I cared to count. They never really bothered us, but the whitetips did give us a close inspection. Since most of the wreck is sitting hull up, you can see the sharks from quite a distance, and then just swim to other side of the hull to get away from them. I can see how it would freak out divers anxious about swimming with sharks though.
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  641.  @WALTERBROADDUS  No, not at all. Rolls Royce designed the best engines of the first ten years of jet flight. My objection was the Soviet sympathizing Labour government of the time just passing on the family jewels to the Soviets for a pittance.
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  642. Randy, her material condition was so poor, and the financial position of Britain was even worse postwar, that preserving her wasn't a realistic option. Unfortunate, since she was one of the best examples of an attempt to have the greatest firepower while still not cheating the Washington Naval Treaty.
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  643.  @knutdergroe9757  Thanks. He was a great dad. God bless your father as well. From everything my dad told me and from what I've read, that sounds like that was a pretty good description of Bulkeley. No one can doubt the man's bravery, but some people use that as currency.
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  644. Amazing how the Dayton shooting has completely dropped off the MSM news cycle, replaced with "El Paso, El Paso, El Paso..."
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  645.  @bebebj137  The other brown guy got out from behind the table before the chunky chick got all ratchet on his ass.
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  646.  @brucesmith54  Even the "small towns like Chicago", a city with a population almost twice the largest city in Australia, Sydney. Your country is one with only five cities with a population of more than a million. We have fifty-three with more than a million and 361 with more than 100,000. Australia has seventeen. do you think that may be a factor in murder rates? You keep moving the goalposts while adding in more snarky shit to bolster yourself. Wollongong and Cairns have the third and fourth highest crime rates in Oceana...which proves what? Bodies laying the streets. You can't even get your own country right. Adelaide is not now nor has ever been the murder capital of Australia. A story from the ABC, (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-15/why-cant-adelaide-bury-murderous-capital-reputation/9249142) as left as you can get there, proves this. The place with the highest murder rate in the Northern Territories and it has a murder rate equal to the US. Any kind of similarities between there and Detroit or Chicago? No place in the NT that would be kind of like a war zone? And then you want to tell me about US cities and school me about how they really are because, you know, I really might not live in one. I've lived in three of the four largest cities in the US, all way larger than Sydney. You, however, being Australian leftist who I doubt has spent as much time in the US as I have in your country, shows me you don't know your ass from your elbow about the US. GTFO.
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  647.  @brucesmith54  You really have no idea about the US besides whatever left wing sources you seem to use. Most Americans don't have a gun at arms reach. Even CBS, not usually known as a right leaning outlet, reported the actual numbers (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/despite-mass-shootings-number-of-households-owning-guns-is-on-the-decline/) that show less than 30% of US households have even a single gun, and over 65% don't have even one, and thee number of gun owning households has been on a constant decline sine . About .02% of people own an automatic weapon of any kind, and almost all of them are collectors of obsolete weaponry. I'm sure you meant semiautomatic, but your unfamiliarity with firearms means both have that same word in them, so close enough. Kind of like a Kia and Ferrari being the same thing since they both have an engine and four wheels. US males don't commit suicide with guns more often than Australian males hang themselves. Ironically, given your penchant for making things up, the number of hangings has increased as the supply of guns has decreased. Apparently, having to go to the store to buy rope hasn't stopped men from hanging themselves. Maybe you and the other leftists can start a movement to make any rope with more than a 100 pound test illegal too.
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  648. There really isn't a need for precision beyond 15 cm, 150 mm, or 5.9", all of which were used to describe the deck guns on the U-156. Only those companies manufacturing the ammunition needed more precision than that. The HMS Swift only carried a single 6" (15.24 cm) gun for a short time, and then as replacement for her two weak 4" guns. The RN hoped the 6" gun would be able to lob shells into German destroyers armed with 105 mm guns at ranges safe from German hits. The Germans has been shelling the Dover coast and the RN needed a large destroyer that could stop the smaller German vessels. Unfortunately, the additional strengthening need to resist the recoil of the 6" gun took a knot off the top speed of the Swift, making her 1.5 knots slower than the German destroyers. Even more unfortunate, the six inch gun wasn't provided with a good fire control mechanism or a crew experienced with the large gun. In her one battle with German destroyers in the Dover Strait, the Swift fired off 50 6" rounds without a single hit while sustaining several hits for the handier and more accurate German 105 mm guns. The Germans were able to outrun the Swift and made it safely back to German ports. The 6" experiment was deemed a failure and the Swift was rearmed with her original weak 4 " guns. She was the only large destroyer leader type ship of the RN in the war, was judged an all around failure, and was "swiftly" scrapped immediately after the war. Sorry, couldn't resist the pun. :-)
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  649. Our department set up a couple of different "You've won a prize" stings. It was the most fun I had in my 27 years on the street.
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  650. There is no way we are going to do contact tracing for tens of millions of people. Contact tracing is only useful at the start of a pandemic. It's an expensive, intrusive, and useless thing to be doing now.
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  651.  @cravinbob  Kiss my ass. I was reserve deputy who didn't get paid a dime for my work. You know, a volunteer. In addition to knowing nothing about drug pharmacology, you know even less about the law and police work. Time for you to give something back to the community. Sitting in front of the computer and spewing out cop hating bullshit doesn't count..
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  652.  Rob M  Another failure in reading comprehension. What I wrote was "The Kriegsmarine just didn't have the experience or planning to maintain a supply conveyor, and it's doubtful that they could have mobilized enough merchant shipping to carry the volume of supplies needed." The Germans had very little experience in opposed amphibious landings and, as we saw in Norway, things didn't always go very well when they attempted it.
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  653. Have you ever actually been to the United States?
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  654. It's called the Aswan High Dam. The US and Britain were supposed to give Egypt loans to build it but cut Egypt off after Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in 1956. Egypt then turned to the Soviet Union, and they financed the dam a low interest $1.2 billion loan. Construction started in 1960 and the dam was finished in 1970. I visited it in 1992. A monument to the the Soviet Union was on the crest of the dam when I visited. It's an absolutely massive structure, almost three miles wide and 360 feet tall. The hydroelectric plant supplies about half of Egypt's power.
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  655.  @garybuck6535  What do I mean about what? My first post is a warning that otherwise attractive women who think purple hair looks good may have some psychological problems that will make your life miserable. See Anita Sarkeesian as an example. My second was implying that she's not 300 pounds yet. Purple hair and morbid obesity tend to go together.
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  656.  @Mishn0  So that means it wasn't historic then?
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  657. All that for a little more than a month before the end of the war.
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  658.  @frantisekmakovicka1660  The world has never been at peace because there were always regional conflicts. With the exception of conflicts caused by religion, we are at a historic low when it comes to regional political conflicts.
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  659.  @s.sestric9929  It was somewhat similar in that original thought was that Byrne and McKinley were having a gay love affair and the Mckinney broke up with Byrne, thereby leading to the murder suicide. That line of inquiry was abandoned pretty quickly as was the story of the affair with between Byrne's wife and McKinley. It is a sign of how we think as a society but, after 27 years as a police officer investigating such cases, the first suspects in a murder are the spouse or significant other, regardless of adultery or sexual orientation. We followed that line of investigation first because it turns out to be true in a surprisingly large number of cases.
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  660. Although the USN has officially been "dry" from 1914 to 1980, sailors are still sailors. Even ignoring the proliferation of "torpedo juice" stills, some skippers were very creative about sneaking beer and wine onboard and using the medicinal alcohol supply for purposes other than those intended. Eugene Fluckey, captain of the USS Barb, was famous for finding places in the limited confines of his sub for 30 or so cases of beer, with each man getting one beer after a significant sinking and two beers for Christmas and Fourth of July. Even though Fluckey was the subject of several investigations for his violation of Navy alcohol rules, it was a tribute to the love of his men for their skipper that not one officially admitted to ever having alcohol onboard until after the retirement of Admiral Fluckey in 1972. The USN did allow alcohol after the end of Federal prohibition in 1933, but only on shore. This was originally at the navy clubs on base. The Pacific war was such that many ships didn't see a proper Navy base of periods of a year or more. The rules were bent by having "recreation days" on various semi-deserted tropical islands, and one of the main attractions, in addition to swimming and baseball, was two warm beers per visit. Navy Secretary Edward Hidalgo finally allowed crews in 1980 to have two beers on board after 45 continuous days at sea. This decision was supposedly prompted by Hidalgo's experience as a young officer on the USS Enterprise. A kamikaze attack on May 14, 1945 destroyed the whole task force's supply of beer. While the attack itself was a blow to morale, that only increased when word of the destruction of the beer supply began to spread. Only an emergency run by a Navy transport put things to right before the next recreation day.
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  661. Since my dad served on the PT-171 in the Pacific, I'll put in a vote for a closer look at these valiant little vessels.
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  662. "15 days to flatten the curve...err, 15 weeks....err, 15 months...err, 15......"
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  663.  @paulhinds4840  You're thinking of the US 28mm (1.1") guns. The Japanese has a 25mm gun. They did gain a rudimentary form of fire control toward the end of the war. In addition to the training being too slow, the laying was equally slow since it was all done by hand. The 25mm round was too small for any kind of explosive flak type charge, and it had the same issues as the US 28mm guin - the charge was just too small to reliably bring down an aircraft, even after multiple hits. The other major problem was the poor effective AA ceiling. It was less than 10,000 feet compared to the US 1.1" ceiling of 19,000 feet. One of the reasons why our aircraft attacks against Japanese ships were so effective was dive and torpedo bombers could orbit around five miles out at 15,000 feet until they saw an opportune time to attack and be out of range of Japanese light AA.
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  664.  @7thsealord888  I've read different accounts of the explosion vs underway hypothesis. According to several of the officer survivors of the Kormoran, it appeared the Sydney wasn't under control when she drifted slowly SSE away from the Kormoran. I don't know what survivor would have seen the Sydney when she was sinking since she was below the horizon by then. It appears the bow section forward of the ASDIC compartment was partly torn away from the rest of the hull by the torpedo hit. It's just my own inexpert speculation that a warship on fire for over 6 hours will eventually have a magazine or boiler explosion.
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  665. I don't think it would have been as bad as you might think. Over 100 were built for US pre dreadnoughts, and many of them were removed and converted to shore defense guns. Using the removed gins for a class of cruisers wouldn't have presented a problem. In addition, the Army and Marines quite liked this gun for shore batteries, and at least another 70 guns were ordered for this purpose. The guns were used all they way through WWII so ammunition production and supply also wouldn't have been a problem. The 7" gun seems like an oddball today, but it was the heaviest gun the could be hand loaded by very strong men using separate ammunition, so they hung around for a long time.
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  666.  Erik Heath  No, U-Boats almost never transmitted unless it was short range coordination of a wolf pack. They were never required to submit sinking reports unless something very much out of the ordinary happened. U-Boat headquarters transmitted many messages to U-Boat but the boats only listened so there was nothing to DF. They believed that Enigma still make those message secure from decryption. The Germans used DF to establish the location of convoys so they were well aware of the dangers of transmitting while at sea. They developed the answer by a system called Kurier in 1944. It broadcast in a high speed burst mode that lasted less than ten seconds, and it used far off frequency sidebands. No allied vessel was ever able to DF a Kurier transmission.
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  667. One of the reasons she still capable of getting underway is she's spent most of her life in freshwater on the Lake. The typical corrosion problems of saltwater have been avoided so the hull is in excellent shape.
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  668. Or torpedoed...
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  669.  @fortusvictus8297  Firstly, thanks for your service. The US has always been the best fed country in the world, in war or peace. One hand, it's a matter of luck that we can grow about any kind of food the exists on the face of the earth, but is also something that many successive governments have understood - that a well fed people are also generally contented people. A full belly tends to quench a lot of revolutionary thoughts. When my dad's squadron was in New Guinea, many of the advance bases were run by the Australian Navy. I don't know if it was a matter of wartime shortages or just the need to ship as much food as they could to the mother country, but Australian rations tended to be less in quantity and calories than what the Americans got. The rations were also less diverse and more monotonous, with many of the Aussie complaining they were right sick of a constant diet of canned lamb, bully beef, and biscuits. The K rations generally had some small cans of fruit, usually peaches or pears. By 1943, it had been years since the average Aussie had seen canned fruit except maybe for the holidays. Tobacco of any kind, and cigarettes in particular, were not only had to get, but Australian sailors had to buy their own at the canteen, when there was one at a base. They were eating dinner with sailors from an Australian minesweeper, and they refused to believe American sailors got free cigarettes withe every meal until one of our guys opened up a K ration and showed them. Now, one thing the Aussies tended to get in abundance was beer, something US sailors were only rarely allowed to get in the war zone. As you might imagine, that set up some pretty active bartering for cigarettes, canned fruit, and beer. The Aussies did have two other things Americans wanted - tea and blackcurrant jam. US rations never had tea, amd Australian rations almost never had coffee. Those that favored the non-available drink on either side set up a pretty active bartering market. Some sailors seem to develop an almost unnatural craving for Australian blackcurrant jam. I've never had it, but my dad described as the best thing on a biscuit he ever had. He didn't smoke much, so he bartered away many a pack of smokes for some of that jam.
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  670.  @swedishchef8631  Hot, smoggy, and violent.
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  671.  @John77Doe  The 1st Fighter Group of the Brazilian Air Force was deployed to Italy in September, 1944, flying 445 fighter-bomber missions from November 1944 to May, 1945. They flew the same types of P-47s as the Mexican Air Force. The Air Force also flew constant patrols from the long Brazilian coastline, assisting in the sinking of one U-boat and rescuing thousands of survivors of sinkings off the coast.
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  672.  @orangelion03  Amazing all the planes that have taken to the runway themselves. Taildraggers liek Cub and Auster are pretty much set to fly in neutral trim so, if they can get up enough speed in mostly calm or light wind. they are up and away.
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  673. We trekked to Everest Base Camp in 1995. Our Sherpa guide's great grandfather was one of the Pundits, something considered to be a great honor among the Sherpa people. We spend many a night around the campfire while he regaled us with tales of the mapping of Nepal and Himalayas. I'm kind of a map nerd, so I found it all fascinating. You did a great job accurately retelling the story.
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  674.  @sandybarnes887  Or kinda like when a Congressman from another party was afraid the Guam could "tip over" if we had too many Marines there.
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  675.  @TermiteUSA  Thanks. I lived in Nevada for a number of years and grew quite fond of the old girl. The Nevada State Museum in Carson City has an excellent exhibit on her.
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  676. Just when I think the dumpster fire that's Reason and the Cato Institute can't get worse, the millennial libertarians that run both outfits manage to drive them off the cliff a little faster.
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  677.  @Gamer1st1  18th Amendment passed - 1919 21st amendment, repealing the 18th amendment, ratified - 1933 1933 minus 1919 equals 14 years, but just less than 15 years by dates ratified. Do you post things like this just to make sure your keyboard is still working? Your calculator isn't and your understanding of historical dates obviously isn't.
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  678.  @gibbletronic5139  It's an interesting concept. I'm not sure where a battalion sized outfit would be able to hid by day since their landing wouldn't have gone unnoticed, and the RN and RAF would be pounding them around the clock. Given what happened with attempts to resupply in AFrica using lumbering Ju-52's would have an almost impossible time getting to the beachhead and back again. I think the only chance would have been landing in force and then holding enough area to allow resupply by ship and planes landing at airfields. Holding airfields would have allowed the Luftwaffe to get in the fight with the RAF without having to fly cross channel.
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  679. The difference between Mers-el-Kébir and Alexandria was Gensoul. While he may not have been outright nazi sympathizer, he was certainly a diehard anglophobe. Churchill knew Gensoul and didn't trust his loyalty to the allied cause against Germany. If Sommerville had the good sense to send another admiral to handle negotiations rather than a captain, Gensoul would probably have shown him the secret orders from Darlan to scuttle the remaining ships of the fleet if Germany moved against them. That may have changed the outcome of the operation. However, the persistent rumour is Churchill wanted the "battle" as a way to show Roosevelt Britain was serious about doing whatever it took to stay in the war and defeat nazi Germany. Whatever the real story, Roosevelt was impressed enough to conclude the ships for bases negotiations less than two weeks later, giving Britain 50 overage but still useful destroyers to the British for bases it turned out we'd need once the US got into the war with Germany.
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  680. Lockheed Air Force Base? There was a Lockheed Air Terminal in Burbank that became the Burbank Air National Guard Base at the former Lockheed Air Terminal, but there has never been a Lockheed AFB.
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  681. Cool. I never heard of this series so I look forward to watching it. Between the USSR and Nazi Germany, there were thousands of double, triple, and quadruple agents between the two countries. The Russians had most of the details of the German nuclear program and the Nazis knew most of what Stalin was thinking and planning. It's hard to run a big war without spies.
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  682.  @HowardLeVert  I turn 73 next month and live in the US. I have purchased nine new cars in my life starting with a 1966 MGB (in British Racing Green, of course) and my what i presume will be my last, a 2006 Suzuki Grand Vitara. You'll note I have a penchant for buying orphans. I had to wait two weeks for the first one and two weeks for the last one. All the others, American, German, and Japanese, took a week or less. No matter how much I wanted some of them, circumstances were such that I couldn't wait 10 weeks to get the car. The first of August holidays are a huge deal in Britain, especially for the working class, and there's no way I'd wait 10 weeks either. The British car industry was not able to organize itself to deliver a decent quality product in a reasonable waiting time for the customer right at the time that Datsun and Toyota were managing to ship cars 6,000 miles to Britain and have them ready when the buy wanted one. This is the kind of thing that kills any industry, and it was certainly a contributing factor to killing the British car industry.
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  683. For someone in the US, this was a real hoot to watch. The amount of bureaucracy just to tow a trailer (caravan) was mind boggling. Here you just got a hitch installed, hooked up the trailer, and away you went. I don't know if speed was still in MPH then or KPH. I'm assuming MPH since, even in in Britain, I can't imagine towing being restricted to 31 mph. In the US, except for a few states like California (the closest we have to British bureaucracy) that restricted towing vehicles to 55 mph, you were allowed to tow at the legal limit. You didn't need some special plate on the back of the trailer. I suppose those triangle tail lights were to warn other drivers they were about to crash into a slow moving caravan. That wouldn't have been an issue if the caravans were traveling at the same speed as the rest of traffic. Trailers here just had normal tail lights like the rest of traffic. Is that still required there? A 22 foot trailer is nearly as small as you can get here. I did have a 14 foot Cardinal in the same time period as the show but it was barely adequate for a weekend with just a stove, icebox, a manual water pump and a sink, a couple of interior lights, and a table that converted to a very cramped bed. I towed it with a 1970 Toyota Corona and it was barely able to handle it. I moved up to an International Scout SUV and 26 foot trailer in 1976 and things were much better. Even had a shower and a loo. The first thing you do when backing a trailer is take off your dang seatbelt! I suppose there was some regulation about that too. The program didn't include any actual tips about how to back. Once you got used to only using the bottom of the wheel and turning in the direction you wanted to go it wasn't all that hard. I've backed 35 foot trailers without much difficulty. And that periscope thing! I can't imagine what use it was in backing a trailer, and it doesn't seem like anything that could be used on the road. In almost 50 years of towing trailers I have never seen a periscope. Seems like another wacky British invention. :-)
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  684.  @khalilali2450  You mean *yet*...
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  685. No, the autobahn was first engineered and some construction begun in the mid-20's under the Weimar Republic. The first public autobahn between Cologne and Bonn opened in 1932, a year before Hitler took power. Many more miles of these roads would have been built in the early 30's if not for the Depression. Hitler was an enthusiastic supporter of the concept. He supported the building of more autobahns, mainly as a way to put the unemployed to work. Nazi Germany did not build the world's first autobahn and Hitler had nothing to do with the idea.
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  686. Yeah, it seems like everytime he pops up, some anti feminist channels will go haywire about the guy, giving him tens of thousands of views he wouldn't have gotten otherwise. At least Bearing gets the joke.
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  687. Seems like it was designed to have a grip and trigger assembly that mimics a Colt 1911.
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  688. Up to 2 dislikes now. Probably two people who don't like any revolvers.
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  689. The lack of surface wind was caused by a combination of the anticyclone and the lack of a low pressure system close enough to London to cause a pressure gradient. An anticyclone by itself doesn't cause a lack of wind, it's the difference in pressure between a high and low pressure system. As seen in the weather map, the broad high pressure ridge (as shown by the "H" symbols) stretched from the UK all the way to European Russia.
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  690.  @propellhatt  The USN would appreciate not having the Zumwalt mentioned, thank you.
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  691.  @stanleyrogouski  I don't know about the last time, but Jones was in command of a force in the Russo-Turkish war when kept the Turkish navy near Ochakov on the run and provided shore bombardment for the invasion of Kinbern and laid siege to Ochakov. He was under Admiral Potemkin's command, and Potemkin and other Russian admirals feared Jones was going to rise in command, given his known abilities and the rumor that he and Catherine II had more than a professional relationship, if you catch my drift. Potemkin was constantly sending back action reports with filled with lies about Jones's supposed cowardice in the face of the Turks. He was finally recalled to Moscow under the pretext of being transferred to the Baltic Fleet when, in reality, he was put in a staff position Potemkin knew he would hate. Even though Jones was awarded the Order of St. Anne in June, 1788, he knew he was being forced out, and returned to Paris just before Christmas of the same year. He learned his lesson about serving in a foreign fleet from this, turning down the offer of command of the French revolutionary fleet in 1790.
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  692. The growth of the pagoda structures reflect the Japanese faith in their optical rangefinders. As their weight and size grew, they needed ever taller and stronger structures to support and make best use of them. This also reflected how little faith the IJN had in radar, since their doctrine was their rangefinders would be more than adequate day or night. It wasn't until late 1942 that the Japanese realized how much USN surface search and radar fire control was mauling their ships. That set off a furious pace of development for their own radars. UNfortunately, it did the same for the army, with many identical types being developed in tandem with no coordination between the two services. If some miracle would have occured and the talented men for all services worked together, the IJN may have had effective radars by late 1944, but even that would have been too late. There are very few cases in the history of warfare where the types of circular gunfights engaged in by the Japanese armed services so badly impacted their chance of survival, let alone victory.
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  693.  @paulmanson253  Wikipedia is your friend - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_H._Watson#Post-Honda_Point_career_and_retirement
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  694. There are many times as I prepare to retire for the night that this prayer comes to mind. Between my apparent angering the same God is English, there were times when He was prepared to let me know my transgressions in no uncertain terms.
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  695. Thanks for answering my question about enclosed gunhouses. It makes sense that the semi-automatic loading of 5"/38 guns and the associated electrical and hydraulic mechanics led the USN to adopting enclosed gunhouses earlier. Another question, if you'd be so kind. Why was the Vanguard completed? The US had cancelled the Montana class in 1943, and it seems pretty clear that the day of the battleship was over by 1944, when work resumed on her. Given Britain's financial condition in 1946, why commission a ship whose usefulness was demonstrated by the fact she only remained in commision for nine years? The RN already had the four reasonably modern battleships in the King George V class, so why one more? I suppose national pride is one answer, but do you know of other reasons?
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  696. @Jurassic Aviator In the event of war, China's lack of carriers will be a tremendous handicap. Even as they build more carriers, it will take decades to reach the USN's level of proficiency when it comes to carrier and flight operations. The PLAN is building a second carrier now and has a goal of commissioning six carriers by 2030. They apparently don't have better things to spend their money on.
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  697.  @andrewszigeti2174  Corporations are only loyal to their shareholders. They produce products in whatever locations maximize their profits, some of which they return to shareholders. Do you think the tens of thousands to millions of shareholders of large manufacturing companies would be happy with the idea that won't get the dividend check this quarter because they had to produce at loss to remain loyal to a country? A nation needs to have conditions that allow companies to function without being overwhelmed by costs not directly associated with their product. The US is finally getting that idea now, and some manufacturing is returning. Tariffs that punish countries like China for dumping product below coat to expand their market share are long overdue. American manufacturing can compete with any country as long a we have a level playing field.
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  698. I think you need to read the history of each raider and the tonnage sunk by them before 1943. British merchant cruisers were uniformly sunk by German raiders when they encountered them. They were a true waste of money. Prior to 1943, the German raiders sank 141 vessels for a total of just under a million tons. They sank more tonnage for dollar spent to outfit them than any German asset. They were certainly a better value than building more Graf Spee class ships considering all other German surface vessels only sank 60 ships for a total of less the 400,000 tons. The raiders were sunk by allied warships and submarines, although one also sank an Australian cruiser in a mutually destructive battle. Another, the Stier, was sunk in an improbable battle with the Liberty ship SS Stephen Hopkins during another mutually destructive battle. The advent of the escort carrier played no part in the loss German raiders. It was the advent of more strongly escorted convoys, including the carriers, that put an end to the usefulness of the merchant raider but, while there were lone ships sailing unescorted, the German raiders were the terror of the seas.
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  699. Typhoon Cobra was actually quite accurately located and forecast about ten hours before it got to the Third Fleet. The problem with the reports of the storm were twofold. The first was the reports came from the Army Air Force forecasting center in Saipan. There was the usual interservice rivalry that tended to downgrade AAF forecasts compared to that from USN forecasters. The USN didn't have a forecast center like the AAF. Observation were reported ship to ship, and aerographer's mates were expected to create their own weather map. That meant that each ship or squadron depended on the reports and forecasts of other ships without ever getting an overview of all the reports. The second problem was AAF reports and warnings were issued using different codes and radio frequencies than USN weather reports. That meant USN radio operators had to monitor these "foreign" frequencies and then had to accurately transcribe details like the long/lat of the storm, That of course didn't happen, so there were multiple reports of the location of the storm, and no one knew which one was accurate. All of this was bad enough, but the size and speed of Cobra made things even worse. Cobra was only about 65 miles across compared to the usual several hundred for a Pacific typhoon. It was also moving at 25 to 30 mph compared to a more typical 10-15 mph, and had peak winds of 170-180 mph compared to the usual 100-110 mph. This meant that the usual "seaman's weather eye" only recognized that a typhoon was bearing down on them about four hours before the storm hit. Halsey's orders about what ships were to do were also inconsistent. He'd issue one order that ships should scatter and then another one ordering the destroyers to stay close to the oilers so they could refuel as soon as the weather calmed down. Halsey was totally out of the loop when it came to Cobra. The first US ship to sink was USS Spruance at 1110. Halsey had no idea any ships had been sunk until about 0215 the next morning. To be fair, no one knew how violent and fast moving Cobra was, and Halsey assumed that ti was just a garden variety typhoon. So many ships had their radio equipment or antennas destroyed that it was many hours before surviving ships with equipment that still worked could string emergency antennas and report the situation. The upside from all this carnage was the Navy finally recognizing how poor their forecasting system was for Pacific typhoons. This led to the establishment of what today is the USN's Joint Typhoon Warning Center, generally recognized as the premier tropical storm warning center today.
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  700. Well, rats! The time changed to daylight savings here so it's 5:00 instead of 4:00. But, what the heck, it's all psychological anyway.
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  701. @rpr6.5 creedmoor Yes, but the idea then was to have enough radar equipped ships that at least one would be able to cover any blind spots. The complete loss of power on South Dakota showed the weakness of that plan, and all capital ships would have at least two sets of radars and antennas after that.
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  702.  CommandoDude  A couple passengers were interviewed when Carpathia got to port and commented that coffee cups and saucers wouldn't stay on tables due to the vibration. Still, they were all kind of excited to be part of rescuing the passengers of the Titanic, so there really weren't much in the way of complaints. No one told them they were racing through the same ice field that sunk the Titanic or they probably would have been really scared about that. Captain Roston had every man he could spare to stand as lookouts, and Carpathia managed to avoid all the bergs during the 58 mile run.
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  703. Thanks for the video. I've always thought the G class was a particularly sleek and uncluttered design. Q & A: What determined building a stepped versus continuous line hull as used for destroyers? I've noticed that the USN went to unstepped destroyer hulls with the Fletchers while the RN kept the stepped design for much longer. IIRC, the first British destroyers with an unstepped hull were the Type 42's, ignoring the County class and Bristol, which were really light cruisers masquerading as destroyers. I'm sure the was a naval engineering and architecture reason for this, but I don't have the expertise to know what they were.
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  704.  tamenga88  It was only the propellant charges that were hand carried from the lift. The projectiles were loaded and rammed automatically. The problem with the Worcester's guns was the dual lifts for AP AA rounds. The plan was the turret crew could quickly switch from on type to another as the situation demanded. The design of the loading machinery placed the two so close together that a call for one type of projectile could sometimes cause the other to roll into the loading tray, thereby causing a jam and stoppage. These jams weren't easy to clear since the automatic rammer would jam on both projectiles, and the turret had to be shut down until the jam was cleared. Only having one loading machine with projectiles solved that issue as a workaround, but Worcester off Korea faced an air threat while doing shore bombardment. Then both type of projectiles had to be kept loaded in the trays so the jamming problem came back. Any other light cruiser, British or American, would have performed better than Worcester fore shore bombardment because they didn't have DP guns. Worcester's guns were accurate, but the jamming with two loaders in use dropped her actual ROF to about half of cruisers like Belfast. Even with the great size of Worcester (larger than a Baltimore class heavy cruiser), there still wasn't room to accommodate automatic loaders without interference. The British ran into the same problem with their Mark N5 gun on the Blake and Tiger, even though the largest turret with widest gun separation possible was installed. It seems the six inch gun was one size too much for a reliable automatic DP mounting. These problems could have been worked out, as seen with the excellent 8"/55 automatic guns on the Des Moines class, but they were too expensive and required too much manpower for a role that was seen as obsolete.
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  705.  @bkjeong4302  I see you didn't take the time to read the report. All battleships were built to take on other battleships if need be. The high speeds of the Iowas were planned, even in 1939, with the idea the fleet carriers would need protection from surface and aircraft threats. It wasn't an either/or proposition. At any rate, I'm not going to waste my time. Read the report and then tell me where and why, in your expert opinion, the Navy was wrong in their conclusions.
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  706.  @Drachinifel  It took the USN about 10 years to finally split this action off from the Battle of Leyte Gulf and then another five years to finally call it Battle Off Samar. Even now I still see articles calling it Battle of Samar. One of the more confusingly named battles for sure.
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  707. While the crews of British submarines suffered greatly from heat of the Indian and Pacific oceans, the biggest issue was the buildup of humidity and consequent buildup of condensation on the hull interior. This caused drips and streams of water to run down the surface of every space while the boats were submerged. This had a disastrous effect on the electrical and electronic equipment onboard in the days of everything being tube (valve) operated, especially in the later stage of the was as things like radar, radios, jammers, and sonars. The moisture even got into periscopes, making them almost useless until they could be dried out with time on the surface. The Amphion class finally solved the problem with effective air conditioning, but only two were completed in time for Pacific service. The time and expense put into the design of the boats served the RN well postwar, with the Amphions being the equivalent of the USN Gato class in long service, some being modernized rather like the GUPPY program, and the last not being decommissioned until 1974. The importance of air conditioning in tropical waters was well demonstrated by the experience of the HMS Turbulent in the Indian Ocean in 2011. The boat was running on the surface in 120 degree air temperatures when the air conditioning failed due to the intakes being clogged with large numbers of crabs and barnacles. Repair crews were unable to clear the intakes because the hull was too hot to touch. The only fresh air ventilation possible was the two hull hatches since nuclear subs are almost completely sealed vessels. The crew was progressively getting sicker due to heat exhaustion when the captain decided the only answer was to dive into cooler waters at 200 feet until the hull and interior cooled to manageable levels, allowing the intakes to be cleared.
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  708.  @CSSVirginia  Yes, it was the biggest single factor in their naval thinking. The writings of Alfred Mahan and the outcome of the Battle of Tsushima were the two stepping stones to developing the Kantai Kessen Doctrine (literally, "naval fleet decisive battle") that helped to seal the fate of Japan before the first bomb was dropped at Pearl Harbor.
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  709. The Soviets always had a love for huge planes, ships, and tanks, none of which had any hope of actually being used as weapons. They did, however, look impressive in parades, flyovers, and fleet reviews. Stalin never went down as one of the great military minds of history, partially because of stunts like these.
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  710. I hope the M1 (now known as QLine after Quicken Loans bought the naming rights) helps encourage people to move back into Detroit. There are a lot of vacant buildings along Woodward that could be converted to lofts or work/live places if the demand is there. $150 million is a lot of money to spend on a 3.3 mile streetcar line. I hope it works as the city hopes and can pay for itself.
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  711. Looks a helluva lot better than Detroit. At least Chicago can still afford streetlights.
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  712.  joetyer  I thought about this for a minute, and then realized you don't actually know what ancillary means, do you? It's "providing necessary support to the primary activities or operation of an organization, institution, or industry". In other words, it was things like gas station, repair shops. log haulers, and grocery stores, the things the mill and its workers need. No mill and all those businesses disappear. As to your racist comment, I'll assume you are just as ignorant about racism as you are about the English language.
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  713.  @crazybrit-nasafan  The war against the Japanese by the US had not been in progress before the Ward fired those shots. We had been participating in neutrality patrols and lost the USS Reuben James, another 4 piper, to a German sub, but we weren't in the war. Given that the Ward sank an enemy combatant in US waters a few hours before the aerial attack began, it qualifies as the first shots for the US. Hard to tell if the damage inflicted on the Betty by the Ward's gunners caused the plane to waver off course and hit the ship or if was a deliberate move on the part of the pilot. According to the after action report filed later, the Betty was shedding part of her starboard wing before crashing into the vessel.
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  714.  @michaelmccarthy4615  You're welcome. About 80% of the coins were sold to people for things like Christmas or birthday gifts. The vast majority of the coins were 1881-1885. They weren't rare, but were uncommon before the sale, and carried a pretty good premium. After the sale, they were dead common. Many serious collectors lost a bundle, especially those that paid a hefty price for the 1879 coin. As you say, a good lesson in supply and demand, especially when the real supply is unknown.
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  715.  @Liberty4Ever  The average person reading my comment won't think a shotgun or rifle is perambulating itself around firing at people. The idea that inserting "a person with" changes anything is specious. It's like saying "A chainsaw can kill or injure people" makes it less true because I didn't say "A person using a chainsaw can kill or injure people".
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  716. The US economy is the largest based on nominal GDP while China is the largest based on a purchasing power parity GDP. China will probably overtake the US in nominal GDP by 2025. Russia is the 12th largest economy, higher then before 1991. The major problem is Russia is widespread corruption. Russia can't grow a middle class until that problem is solved.
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  717.  @T4SelNiNO  I see. You actually believe state enterprises in the USSR ever generated enough "surplus labor value" without direct taxation to pay for healthcare at the levels of that available in the US? You know that's not true. Healthcare was provided at only the most basic level, and it was scarcity that that rationed healthcare rather than money. You think the USSR didn't also dispense its share of imperialist pain and suffering? Since you have spent so much time studying Marxist economics and theory, you hate the US, and you hate England, there's a simple cure. Planes leave every day for the worker's paradise. I suggest you take the chance to live there for a couple years and see what your attitude is then. I don't think the Jeremy and the rest of you Labour Marxists are going to succeed in turning Britain into the kind of place you want to live.
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  718. I guess a lot of tourists coming back from their trips overseas must have looked like the Michelin Man when they got off the plane. :-) There must have been a fair bit of bribery between the tourists and border guards. No black market survives without it.
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  719. You were lucky to have left before the explosion of private cars occured. A combination of poor car maintenance, poor driver training, poor roads, and too much vodka has caused a road death rate in Russia of 18 per 100,00 compared to Europe in general with a rate of 9 per 100,000.
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  720. The English Electric Canberra was one of the few British military aircraft purchased by the USAF. It was designated the B-57 Canberra, albeit modified by Martin and later General Dynamic into a number of variants, including the WB-57 "weather" reconnaissance and RB-57 strategic reconnaissance aircraft. Both were used for checking on Soviet nuclear tests and deep penetration flights over the Soviet Union. Like the RAF flights, they remain classified, but at least one was shot down by SA-2 missiles in 1965 while flying a mission from Turkey. Some flew with the Pakistan Air Force to snoop on Indian nuclear tests and radar installations, once being shot down by friendly fire from SA-2 missiles operated by the PAF. The Republic of China (Taiwan) Air Force also operated RB-57 flights over China, only being intercepted and destroyed by a MiG-17 in 1958 with another shot down by yet another SA-2 over China. More RB-57's,, B-57, and Canberra B.20s of the RAAF flew in various phases of the Vietnam war, some as tactical bombers and others in all sorts of electric reconnaissance missions and night attackers. The ultimate version of the RB series, the RB/WB-57F, flew mission from Japan, Germany, and RAF Mildenhall, all involved in some kinds of strategic reconnaissance, most of which are still classified. Even though the RB-57 is long out of service with the USAF, three WB-57 versions remain in service with NASA as scientific test beds, although rumors are they were also flying reconnaissance missions over Afghanistan, and at least one of them was flying out of Mildenhall to test equipment later deployed to Afghanistan. There's some doubt about how long these aircraft will continue to fly, but the civil registration of aircraft was renewed in 2018. Since the three NASA aircraft are still flying in some military roles, the service ceiling remains classified as "over 60,000 feet" it's rumored they can actually fly at 75,000 feet. Pretty amazing for an aircraft that first flew in 1954 while the EE version's first flight was 1949.
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  721.  @mattconnelly3867  So if those Japanese and Italian cars were so terrible, the British car industry had a golden opportunity to deliver their superior cars in a timely manner. If that was the case, why was it taking 10 weeks to 4-6 months to get a car? That was a really shocking situation. Someone that needs a car can't wait that period of time but, even worse, what the heck was wrong with a company like BL or Ford that they couldn't produce as many cars as could be sold?
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  722. The best thing to ever happen to Britain was the closing down of the coal mines. It was rough for the miners, but burning coal for industry, home heating, and cooking was causing levels of pollution and health problems far in excess of the value of the coal mined. The North Sea oil and natural gas discoveries free Britain from a 19th century energy supply and moved it into the 20th century.
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  723. Airplanes and moving vans leave everyday. The money you earn in a place like that costs too much. I got out of California in 2005 because I could see where things were headed. The real estate bubble has maybe two more years to run. Get out while you can. You'll be amazed at how much more pleasant it is to live in a city that's not an open air insane asylum.
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  724.  erik r  A lot of guys here are spending too much time looking at her body and not enough time listening to what she says.
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  725. This is a lot better than Youtube Rewind 2018.
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  726. It's also likely that a Poland resisting both Germany and the USSR for even six months would likely bring French and British allies into the war much sooner, with both militaries being less fearful of moving in troops by sea and air. The role of Polish radar directed AAA fire and AAA missiles and manpads would likely be greater than the more numerous but only optically aimed German or Soviet defenses. UAV's, orders of magnitudes better communications systems, and access to satellite recon would have a greater effect than maybe you have given the Poles in this scenario. It's all conjecture, of course, but Stalin, knowing Germany presented the greatest threat, would probably have come to some kind of armistice agreement with the Poles, especially with German forces not taking much part in the remaining war, and Poland not being the walkover the Soviets expected.
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  727.  @TheRealInky  Thanks. I had covid, congestive heart failure, and a small stroke, all this on top of my COPD. If that didn't kill me, I figure I still have a functioning immune system that will get me through most things. A bad fall will undo my progress pretty fast, so I'm careful to know where each foot is coming down and on what. That's what Joe didn't do, and why he fell three times. He's lucky that Kamala didn't get him...this time!
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  728. France, a country which spent four years trying to find any kinds of weapons to fight against tyrannical occupiers, now wants to make sure it's as difficult as possible or impossible for citizens to get any kinds of weapons. The EU, an organization with a long history of fighting a guerilla war, is "helping" with the regulations. Makes sense to me.
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  729.  @dzejrid  And this is in Canada. Anything else valuable to add?
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  730.  @PurityVendetta  First, I've not seen this thread for a year. This is the kind of thing that happens when you have a pilot in command who's been lost before and always made his way out of it. I assume Lt Taylor was doing as many dead reckoning pilots do - fly five minutes more and on the same heading, hoping he saw something familiar. He got panicked as darkness approached, and never got back a reciprocal route so he at least knew where he started out. On an overwater flight, pilots were trained to stay in formation so, if ditching was necessary, there would at least be more pilots and equipment in the water to help them survive and attract the attention of rescuers. In this case, the tragedy was compounded by the fact the PBM-5 rescue aircraft sent to fly a course that may have located the flight apparently exploded in mid-air before it reached the right area. The PBM-5 had a problem wit leaking fuel tanks,and mid-air explosions weren't uncommon. As usual with any aircraft incident, a bunch of things have to go wrong in just the right sequence before fatal results occur.
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  731. Yes, it is. The Deer Isle-Sedgwick Bridge was similar in design and construction to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. It survived the stormy winter of 1942-1943, although just barely, It has some of then same stability issues as Gallopin Gertie, and was retrofitted with extensive longitudinal and transverse diagonal stays. So far, at least, the fixes worked.
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  732.  @its1110  Indeed, although the Poles had a secondary driver for trying to decrypt the Enigma output. They were hoping to come up with their own version of Enigma that the Germans couldn't read, and starting with the existing version of Enigma gave them a start.
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  733.  @minarchist1776  The inflatable vest I always wore while on deck and underway did indeed have a water sensor that would inflate the vest after a couple seconds of immersion. I was on a sailboat, so I wouldn't have to jump from more than about 2 meters, but being unconscious in the water will cause rapid drowning. With an inflated vest that has neck support, you still have a chance of survival even if unconscious.
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  734.  @tomriley5790  There are several Nimitz class carriers that are now over 4 years old, with the name ship approaching 50. As long as ships are regularly overhauled and modernized, the are kind of like B-52's that are now over 60 years old, and some will still be serving at 75. There's not much left on them from 1958, but there's no reason you can't keep, older equipment in good shape with regular maintenance and equipment upgrades. The cost of new weapons systems with anywhere near the capabilities of an upgraded system at a fraction of the cost means we'll see lots of older vessels still in service in the future.
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  735. I must make a mild objection to the characterization of the 5"/25 gun as "single purpose AA". In fact, the 5"/25 was used many times as a surface to surface weapon during those fleet probllems, often with impressive results in terms of accuracy. While the short barrel compared to the 5"/51 gun did result in a lower muzzle velocity, many gunnery officers thought of the 5"/25 as a DP weapon, and they were used as such by the older light and heavy cruisers as well as the BB's during WWII. They were the "heavy" gun on all the later US subs, and this AA gun sunk tens of thousands of tons of Japanese shipping on the surface. They were even used for shore bombardment of Japanese island bases, and at least a couple of them got their licks in doing shore bombardment on the Home Islands. I won't argue that the 5"/25 was desisgned as a DP gun, but WWII showed that it was still quite useful in that role.
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  736.  @bushyfromoz8834  You might be thinking of the Neptune. She got herself into an Italian minefield and hit two mines. One caused no material damage, but another struck the bow and almost took it off. She was reversing out of the minefield but struck a third one that blew off her props. While drifting, she struck a fourth mine and capsized almost immediately, taking all but one sailor with her. I don't know of any other Leander class vessel that reversed her way to port though. The HMNZS Leander was hit by a torpedo in July, 1943, just abaft of A boiler room rather than at the bow, but the damage was severe enough that repairs took over two years and were only completed in September, 1945. All three Australian Leanders suffered bow damage due to torpedo hits in the vicinity of the A turret. It does seem as if the ASDIC compartment and aviation fuel tanks created a weakness in that section of the ship. Sydney and Perth were both lost to torpedo attacks. Perth, however, was hit by four torpedoes, so it's hard to attribute the bow hit alone as being fatal. Hobart was hit by a torpedo in the same area of the bow, but it was just far enough aft that the bow wasn't severed. Only by heroic damage control work was the Hobart able to limp into Espirito Santo for temporary repairs, but she did so bow first. I think it's fair to say that any Leander hit by a torpedo near the A turret was in big trouble. [Edited for my numerous typos]
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  737. IvS did play an important role in helping Germany keep up with more modern submarine developments by using this Dutch front corporation. Beyond that, it didn't play any real role in surface ship design. The Project 1047 design did use some of IvS's work. but most of it came from scouring such sources as Jane's Fighting Ships. Given the problems with Dutch light cruiser size ships building 15-20 years late and the difficulties keeping much smaller ships like the Sumatra running, it was probably good thing that the start of the war cut off any more spending on a plan that had very little chance of success. The one area that the 1047 was a real leader in was the use of dual purpose armament and a much more effective light antiaircraft battery. If the ship was built in a timely manner, it would have taken the Japanese longer to sink her, but her sinking would have happned anyway. A lot of money and manpower at the bottom of the sea from a country which couldn't afford the loss of either.
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  738. I don't see a Q&A post, but I'd like to put in a request for the Treasury class Coast Guard cutters, among the longest serving of all interwar ships.
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  739. McMorris was probably the best US ship captains at having almost a sixth sense for following shell splashes. However, it was only the fact that Salt Lake ran out of AP shells and had to start firing high capacity rounds in desperation that saved the task force. HC rounds are used for shore bombardment, generally are set for a low altitude air burst. and go off with a tremendous explosion. An HC shell effectively mimics a 2,000 pound air bomb. Admiral Hosogaya always seemed to have an unreasonable fear of air attack, and the constant explosions of the HC shells convinced him his fleet had been located and was being bombed by the then dreaded B-17 bomber. He broke off contact and retired from a battle he had effectively won. Hosogaya, lucky to escape execution for cowardice once the facts become known, was retired to administrative duties, ending the war as governor of the Japanese South Pacific Mandates.
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  740.  @paulmanson253  I've got about 90 hours of tapes where I interviewed my father and the five surviving members of his crew at the last PT boat convention we went to in the year before my dad passed away in 2005. Not one of them ever thought of anything they did as heroic. They just had a job to do. It might have been a rotten job, an uncomfortable job, or even a dangerous job, but the main things was to do whatever it took to defeat the Japanese and go home. They were a bunch of civilians trained to be fighters. They didn't want the job, but they did it to the best of their ability.
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  741.  @gloworms3592  I'm hoping that they or some other crew of deep sea mappers will find the wreck. The loss of the Surcouf has been the subject of so many really bizarre conspiracy theories, perhaps second only the the sinking of the Sydney. The location of the wrecks of the Sydney and Kormoran have finally put many of the crazy theories about the loss of both ships to rest. Maybe the location and exploration of the Surcouf can do the same.
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  742. Yes, she and another ex-USN boat, SS-791 Hai Shih , ex-USS Cutlass . The Taiwanese (Republic of China) Navy had announced in 2017 yet another service life extension program for the Hai Shih that was expected to be completed by the end of 2020 that will extend her service life to at least 2026. at which point she will be 80 years old, by far the oldest submarine in commission, and possibly the oldest combat vessel still in commission. Plans for the same kind of SLEP for the Hai Pao haven't been announced, but Taiwan generally doesn't announce such things until the program is underway. There's no reason to think that won't happen since each veteran represents one quarter of the ROC's submarine strength. President Trump authorized the licenses needed for US companies to sell the technology needed for the ROC to begin construction on a new submarine fleet, and indications are that construction is underway as of 2019. The sfirest of the six boats probably won't be commissioned until 2026 so the two veteran boats will probably be refitted with modern electronics and combat systems while using US Mk 48 torpedoes.
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  743.  @neniAAinen  The infrastructure problem in the French navy was constant design revisions that put them far behind the curve even before new ships were launched. There was nothing more restrictive about Normandie than there was about USS Nevada . Both were designed and laid down at about the same time. BOth were almost identical in dimensions and tonnage. Normandie was the last battleship to have submerged torpedo tubes, and would have been the only battleships that had the odd combination of turbines and triple expansion power plants. In service, it's doubtful this maintenance nightmare of a power plant would have given Normandie more range than _Nevada_, and her top speed was theoretically identical. They had 13.4" guns at the time other navies had already switched to 14". They went back and forth constantly between twin, quads, and twin over quad turrets at the same time Nevada had only two less guns but in five turrets, twin over triples. They didn't have to worry about blowing off half the superstructure if they actually fired a full broadside, a distinct possibility when firing on any targets slightly abeam of broadside. There's no reason the French couldn't have also produced 14" guns if they made the decision while she was still in design stage. Her armor scheme was a generation behind when she would have been commissioned, in particular her deck armor. On top of that, she was launched at almost the same time as Nevada but would have taken about two years longer to complete, assuming the schedule was actually adhered to, something not common with French warships. There was nothing incredible about Normandie compared to Nevada . She wasn't any faster, had poorer armor, and poorly distributed main armament. She was defeated by the French navy taking way too long to come up with a final design (and stick to it once they did) and sluggish construction. This only got worse in the interwar period.
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  744.  @DornishVintage  It wasn't for lack of trying the Hedgehogs lasted so long. The Navy spent a lot of money trying to come up a lighter mount and better warheads. The first attempt was the Mousetrap that turned out be less reliable than Hedgehog, and the Weapon Alpha. It met the requirement for a larger warhead of 250 pounds compared to the Hedgehog's 35 pounds. It was rushed into service just after the end of the war and never had proper operational testing. It was unreliable, only fired 12 rounds a minute, and had a ready service magazine of just 22 rockets. After they were expended, it took about a half hour to reload the magazine using a crane, and Weapon Alpha couldn't be fired while the operation was in progress. Hedgehog fired 24 rockets in a single salvo, and empty cells could be reloaded in a couple minutes in between firings. Weapon Alpha hung around with Hedgehog until the 60's until both were replaced by the much larger but more effective ASROC, a rocket launched torpedo.
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  745. Rats!. I knew that a notification would show up at 0430 CDT, just as I was finally going to be about to get to sleep. Oh, well, time for a cup of very strong coffee.
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  746. This would be a very interesting topic, at least to me. The switch was easy for the US since we had what seemed like an unending oil supply after the various oil strikes in places like Oklahoma, Texas, and California by 1900. The RN, having very little in the way of domestic oil, stuck with coal firing, albeit with some ships using oil spraying systems, until mostly after WWI. The RN saw a graphic demonstration of the advantages of oil when 34 destroyers, being sent to join the Grand Fleet in 1917, were refueled at sea on the trip from the US using just four oilers. I don't know much about how the switchover went for other navies but I'd like to find out.
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  747.  @michaelt4706  LOL. Put-In-Bay has a year round population of about 135. The full time police department consists of two officers, the chief and a lieutenant, along with one part timer. Come Memorial Day and the island has a population of 5,000 on some weekends. The department has to hire 15-20 seasonals to deal with all the drunken revelers. At one time, none of the seasonals had any training, and their main job was to give guys that got too out of hand a good thrashing and make sure they were on the next ferry out. The seasonals are all certified peace officers now and have to be nicer, since they have body cams, but I understand they sometimes get turned off while someone right over the top still gets a good thrashing. :)
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  748. Once all of us in the South get a more detailed itinerary, it's possible we could set up a shuttle from, say, Atlanta to Charleston and then Charleston over to Mobile. I'm about halfway between Charleston and Mobile, so I can handle the Mobile leg if someone can handle the Charleston leg. At least you won't be a prisoner to airline schedules if we can make that happen.
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  749. Oh geez. It's 0405...Okay, gotta hear this one. Who needs sleep?
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  750. Anytime you see the police with long guns out and a fur missile ready to go, it's a good idea to do what you did - put it in reverse and watch from a safe distance.
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  751. Wow. A repaved block with new curbs and sidewalks at 9:03. No houses, but it looks like there's a lawn and landscaping plus a walking path. I'm sure a bunch of people can't wait to get out and jog in the neighborhood.
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  752. Humberto, Thanks. My dad wanted to be a pilot but, like you, he was washed out because of his eyesight. He spent his three years in the Pacific as a motor machinist mate on a PT boat. That's cool that you managed to get all the way up to your commercial transport license and are flying a later model of the plane that my dad helped to engineer. He started working on the 747 gear when it was still a design project for a military transport. When that contract went to Lockheed for what became the C-5 Galaxy, he thought he was done with that project. He would have been if not for Juan Trippe having the vision to see this monster as a viable airliner. I believe the basic structure and hydraulics of the gear is still the same as it was on those original Pan Am 747-100's. Ironically, the best flight I ever had on a 747 was six days after 9/11 on an Air New Zealand flight from LA to Fiji for a dive trip. We had planned the trip for a year, and we were going as long as they could get the flights restarted. IIRC, there were a grand total of 18 of us on that almost brand new 747-400, all of us in free first class seats and eating free first class food. The number of pax's must have been close to the number of flight attendants on the trip since it seemed like I had my own personal attendant for the flight. Marilyn was her name...but I digress. It's a long ass haul to Fiji but, with the main cabin virtually empty, we all had our own beds, stretched out across that whole center row of seats. Marilyn bought me blankets and extra pillows to make sure I was comfortable. What flight that was!
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  753.  Danger Bear  You can read Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil , The Story of Fleet Logistics Afloat in the Pacific During World War II at https://books.google.com/books/about/Beans_Bullets_and_Black_Oil.html?id=HglIAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. It's a book written by Rear Adm. Worrall Reed Carter, the officer commanding Service Squadron Ten, the largest of the fleet train squadrons. It''s over 400 pages, and can be slow at times, but it's overall a great story of the USN going from zero to 100 in less than a year to get the fleet train up and running. The concept was tested a little in war games during the 30's, but no one would have ever thought it would grow to the largest naval force afloat by 1945. Well worth a read if naval history is your interest.
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  754.  @brucesmith54  That's unfortunate for you, waiting all that time for mental health care. Perhaps you should consider emigrating to Australia, where there's never a wait for healthcare. However, I have private insurance so, assuming I needed mental health care, my waiting time would be about three days. The VA is a fine example of what a single payer healthcare system could be for all of us.
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  755.  @brucesmith54  No, 'only money" isn't the only determinant of what affects a person's life, but it's a pretty huge part. Not having enough disposable income to have some freedom to make your own decisions in life can suck pretty bad. However, if you feel that money isn't all that important, feel free to follow the AOC path of sharing your money with those who'd rather not work. I don't know what you mean by "American males and females are killing themselves at a higher rate" but if you mean compared to Australians, the standardised rates per 100,000 compared to the US are nearly identical and fluctuate from year to year. There are also significant differences in how suicide is recorded in Australia compared to the US. The ABS tends to underreport suicide because it only classifies it as suicide when the the cause is incontrovertible compared to US more often classifying it as suicide when the evidence is such any other means of death is unlikely. Nevertheless, rates are close enough that they don't tell us much about either country. Suicide rates are higher in Finland, Japan, and Belgium than the US, so does that mean people there are even more unhappy than the US? Hardly any statisticians are willing to use suicide rates as a sign of anything since the reporting rates vary so widely around the world, and a rate of even a couple people per 100,000 higher or lower is just noise. But sure, go ahead and make up statistics as if they are real and telling us anything.
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  756.  @glenchapman3899  The Navy has always said the every sailor is a member of the damage control team. They did have some damage control experts, but their job was mostly to direct the other crew on how to control the flooding and fires from the damage. I don't know if it's still the case but, at one time, every crew member of every warship spent at least a couple hours a week learning about and practicing damage control measures. Combined with the generally high quality of materials, workmanship, and subdivision of each ship, many more Navy warship survived attacks and many more sailors lived than if damage control wasn't such an important part of Navy training.
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  757. And it still happens today. Much less frequently with the advent of radio and better weather forecasting, but there are still ships that go out but never return. Being a sailor will never be a safe job and, just like being an airline passenger, your life is in the hands of others who should know how to do their jobs, but there's still an element of luck, both good and bad.
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  758.  @ohlawd3699  The Coast Guard operates 210 aircraft so I guess it's like the Army's second cousin.
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  759. Oh, please. If he had written down the same things in a blog, book, or even social media posts, they'd also be used in a trial to show his state of mind and his threats against other gangs and gang members. Now we have this old white liberal arts professor type trying to convince us that everything in their lyrics is just "art". GTFO. Don't make songs either threatening to kill people or glorifying killings you've actually been involved in and you won't run afoul of the law.
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  760.  @shaggybreeks  What part of the country do you live in? Those kinds of organ meats are more popular in the South than anywhere else, and pickled fish in the Northeast. I never had tongue until my mother bought one for me when went to a kosher deli in Cleveland called Corky and Lenny's after a show. I don't know if it's still there but it had great food. The tongue is really great in a sandwich, as long as y9ou don't think about being part of a giant tongue.
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  761. Ironically, many of the before and after pictures of Pripyat could be duplicated by very similar views of Detroit. One was caused by a scientific disaster while the other was caused by a cultural disaster.
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  762.  @T4SelNiNO  It's a little hard to tell what the real industrial output was in any year under Stalin due to well known issues of corruption and data manipulation. It absolutely didn't surpass the combined output of the US, UK, France and Germany in 1933. The only reason it even came close to Germany was the effects of the Depression hit Western countries before it affected the USSR. I'll need your citation to discuss that further since I can't find any data to back up that claim. We know for certain that the USSR's GNP, a much better measure of economic health than industrial output, didn't surpass Germany before WWII, and the Soviet's GNP of $75 Billion in 1938 was 20% less than the combined numbers of France and the UK. Add in the US and the GNP is about 60% less. I think you'd do better abandoning the Stalinist economic position that the USSR of 1939 was somehow orders of magnitudes better than the Western powers. We have enough real numbers since the fall of the Soviet Union to know that most of those claims were pure Stalinist propaganda. The chart at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union#/media/File:Soviet_Union_USSR_GDP_per_capita.png gives a relaistic picture of the historic Russian and Soviet economy. Bernie doesn't really understand what democratic socialism means. He has never been in favor of state ownership of the means of production except in limited cases. That's a bedrock principle of socialism. and anyone skirting the issue either doesn't understand socialism or is trying to sneak it in through the back door. He's really in favor of wealth redistribution without any of the precursor things needed to make it even slightly equitable. He just hates the wealthy and thinks taking their money and giving it to people who "need" it is reasonable. Rather ironic for a guy who lives in a million dollar house and has a net worth between $3 and $5 million. He has never held a private sector job. He has been a member of Congress for 28 years. In all that time, he has had exactly two bills he sponsored become law, and one was renaming a post office. I think he's a decent guy, but I doubt he'd be any more effective as president than he has been as a legislator.
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  763. There have been A LOT of mass shooting in Russia, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Russia_and_Soviet_Union
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  764. He didn't forget anything. He mentioned the Gladiators that helped defend Malta. He just didn't use their propaganda names. Try to pay attention next time.
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  765. Another great story you've dug up. It was only the Australians that really appreciated the capabilities of the F-111, keeping 24 examples flying until 2010 by using the aircraft retired by USAF in 1996 as sources for spares. It's only the introduction of the F-35 into Australian service that will restore just some of the capabilities the RAAF had with the F-111.
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  766. More wasted time and resources coming up with a bizarre craft with almost no chance for success. The Germans already had a war winning submarine in the Elektroboat. They would have been far better off devoting their resource to producing more of them and less time on these wacky inventions.
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  767. Thanks, Mark. A rather early (0300 central daylight time here in the US) visit but, what the heck, I have nothing to do but eat like a pig, watch videos, sleep occasionally, and repeat! The Japanese were infamous for these grand, overcomplicated plans to throw the best of their military into battles that only they thought there was a chance to win. Actually, I don't think they really did think they had a chance to win anything but a chance to die honorable for their emperor and country and fulfill the dictates of bushido . Look up the story of Admiral Matome Ugaki for some insight into how deeply ingrained this one last gesture of defiance was ingrained into the Japanese psyche.
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  768.  @liverush24  Indeed. It's hard for me as a foreigner to understand how chaotic and out of control Britain was in the 70's. It seemed like nothing worked right and the country was descending into anarchy. Unfortunately, it looks like it's happening again.
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  769. The eight hour day agreement of 1915 was supposed to be a maximum eight hour day, not that you got paid for eight hours if you didn't do eight hours work. BR management also demonstrated they were incapable of managing a company without the employees hating them. Parliament was never capable of managing a railway company. It was a bad deal all the way around.
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  770.  @M6GOF  I've watched that video, and it made me very sad. Britain went from being second in the world in terms of manufacturing cars in 1950 to fifth in just 30 years. It's now down to #13 behind Thailand. Friggin Thailand, for Cripes sake.
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  771. This is a good example of why I don't listen to livestreams. Half of it is just people talking over one another, and the other half is usually poorly developed ideas that don't get any better after three hours of drinking and toking.
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  772. Time to double up on magazine purchases.
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  773. LOL. I'm afraid my cat is starting to do the same...
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  774. The 5.25" gun was easily the longest ranged AA gun of the war. Where they fell down was cramped turrets, too much shell handling, especially having to do fuze setting before loading, and generally cramped turrets. These shortcomings were all overcome with the guns and turrets used on HMS Vanguard , but she never fired he gins in anger, and really rarely fired her guns at all. A case of getting everything done right just when it was no longer needed.
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  775. The amount of water that can come over a ship's surface is quite amazing. SS Edmund Fitzgerald Was easily the largest Lakes ore boat when launched in 1959 at 728 feet. Her freeboard to the deck level was 35 feet while the bridge added yet another 18 feet. During the 1975 storm that sank her, the water not only topped the deck, it even topped the bridge during ~ 80 mph winds..
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  776. For those who may not have seen it, there's an interesting postwar summary about the 40mm Bofors from the Bureau of Ordnance at https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/Admin-Hist/075-Ordnance/075-Ord6R.html. While the 2 pdr was the finalist in the USN medium AA gun along with the Bofors gun, it was the continued British use of cordite powder that caused the Bofors to be the winner. Muzzle velocity was indeed important, but the fact the 2 pdr was already using inch measurement compared to the known problems of adapting metric to inch for the Bofors was an important variable that probably would have led to the 2 pdr's adoption if not for the cordite issue. Since it was a powder no longer in use in the USN, it would have required an entirely new manufacturing and supply line for the round, or a total dependence on Britain for supply. Neither one was considered desirable and, after September, 1940, it was considered that British supply might not even be possible. All the other issues could have been worked out, but cordite powder did the pom pom in for the USN.
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  777. They are anti-torpedo nets. Made of material resembling very heavy chain link fence, they were deployed when a battle developed or when there was a submarine risk. There's a good article about them along with some pictures of the nets deployed at http://www.gwpda.org/naval/nets.htm.
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  778. Victor, you're welcome. I've always like the peripheral events that swirled around the main and better known battles. In this case, I think this is the only German aircraft to effectively change hands to the Norwegians and then from the Norwegians to the British. It's also a good indicator that the Norwegian armed forces were not rolling over and playing dead, as some of their larger and better equipped counterparts in Europe did. When they had the equipment and, most importantly, any kind of air cover, the fought bravely and effectively. As an example, the Dutch only lasted four days with an armed forces of 280,000 men while the Norwegians lasted a little over a month with forces of about 60,000 troops. The Norwegians were also the only Allied force other than the British to sink a major German surface ship.
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  779. As I understand it, the plane was recovered about five days after it sank and was then torn down as part of the investigation into how it was constructed.
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  780.  @micnorton9487  That's unfortunate. The Coast Guard is one of the few uniformed services that has civilian law enforcement authority, and it enforces laws in any state or territory. They are kind of the federal police on the ocean but also ashore.
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  781.  @mongolike513  The story would make a good episode for him. Didn't he once say he had relative in the Coast Guard?
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  782. You've got the FRAM upgrades a bit wrong. The FRAM I upgrade was the most comprehensive and involved stripping most of the superstructure down to the main deck level, completely rebuilding the engines, adding all the modern radars and sonars, mostly removing the "B" forward 5" mount, although some kept two mounts forward and none aft, and then rebuilding the superstructure with a new and roomier bridge, an ASROC deck and launcher, and the DASH hanger and landing deck. Automation helped reduce crew size, habitability was improved, and they were given full air conditioning and NBC protection. This upgrade was performed exclusively to Gearing class ships. The FRAM II was a more austere upgrade, with the original superstructure forward of the stacks kept, engines rebuilt but only to the extent need to extend service life by seven years, no ASROC, although deck space was reserved for a later installation, and some ships having te B mount replaced by a pair of trainable Hedgehogs. Not all ships received full NBC protection. Some kept all three 5" mounts while some had one fore and aft like the FRAM I ships. Almost all the FRAM II ships were Sumner class, but sixteen were Gearing class deemed to have less service life available than other Gearings. Four Fletcher class ships were involved with FRAM II upgrades, but only three were part of the official program. One, USS Hazelwood, had the DASH landing deck and hanger added in 1957, and she served as a trials ship for the DASH program. She never received any other FRAM upgrades but had the largest DASH landing deck of all the FRAM type destroyers. She was decommissioned in 1965. The bottom line is every FRAM ship got a DASH deck and hanger. Other than that, there was wide variability in retained guns, superstructure, ASROC, torpedo tubes, and Hedgehogs.
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  783.  freebeerfordworkers  Regardless of her use, she was never formally decommissioned from the navy. Even a hulk like Warrior in later years, when she was just a misc yard craft, still counts as being in commision. It's not like ships that are decommissioned into reserve. She was still part of the active fleet.
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  784.  @willrogers3793  Thanks. This is one of those excursions into "What If" land that I enjoy doing and at least some people (like yourself) like to read, but it's kind of a narrow subject, and pretty wordy (sorry about that). Some people just don't have an interest in this kind of thing and others don't like wading through a lot of words. I understand both points of view, but I am glad you enjoyed it.
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  785.  @themadhammer3305  Yeah, I've seen those pictures. They are mostly on tankers at least one generation earlier than current ships, and they were huge because the crew had no other way to be able to monitor tanks and the hull for leakage without them. They caused a lot of problems for ship designers and sailors. The overhanging wings caused excessive vibration in the superstructure. I can only imagine how much fun it was standing a watch on the extremities of the wings in heavy weather. New tankers have color CCTV cameras that have taken over the monitoring and made those huge bridge wings a thing of the past. Even some of the older tankers are being updated with cameras and getting the wings removed.
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  786.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Yes, it was really a more difficult time than we realize at this late date. We went from 350 mph fighters to 600 mph almost overnight, and over 700 mph by 1950. The really good German data and German engineers were seized by the Soviets when they occupied east Germany. The expertise in swept wings and the area ruled fuselage combined with the communist traitors in Britain literally selling the Soviets the Rolls-Royce RB.41 Nene, the premier jet engine of 1947, allowed the MiG-15 to be produced in time for the Korean War. In what can only be described as horrific. the MiG-15, using a reverse engineered Nene, was killing British pilots and troops in Korea when the British and Americans had no answer for the MiG for almost two years.
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  787.  @WALTERBROADDUS  There was certainly no doubt that Captain Kennedy knew it would be a fight to the death. Kennedy had been involuntarily retired since 1921 but had voluntarily returned to service in 1939 at the outbreak of the war. I think he knew the Rawalpindi would be his last command and, in those dark days of November, 1939, he was determined to fight his ship until he couldn't fight any longer. I've alway been a little miffed that Kenedy, who made of the more heroic last stands of any RN officer, never got more than a "mentioned in despatches". As I understand it, he managed to crank off a lot of Labor ministers during his retirement political work as a Conservative party agent. That may be why he was never considered for any higher honor.
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  788.  @brockpaine  Indeed. almost all navies have a couple "must haves" when it comes to ships in commision. The British Kings and Queens, US Enterprise and Constellation, Brazilian Riachuelo, and Italian Garibaldi are just a few that come to mind. Navies in general are nothing if not for tradition.
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  789.  @agentepolaris4914  See my rather lengthy reply to @AtomicBabel several posts up. Not only was the 25mm gun slow firing and prone to jamming, there was no medium AA at all, and the heavy AA was gnerally even slower, had poor muzzle velocity, and a low ceiling for AA use,. The only heavy AA weapon that can be ranked with some of the best allied guns was the Type 98 10cm. The gun was proved and put into service too late to make any difference, and less than 200 were ever made, half of which were installed in land fortifications.. .
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  790. For once I was actually in bed when this video came out. It's kind of weird watching this after I have awakened instead of trying to stay awake. The most effective nuclear naval ordnance would have undoubtedly been the nuclear depth charge. A lot of USN nuclear depth charge testing is still classified, but what's available shows a single Mark 90 nuclear depth bomb could have destroyed any submarine within a 5-7 NM radius of the ship or aircraft that dropped the bomb, and the damage radius was about 10-12 NM. There's a good film about Operation Wigwam, which included a test of a Mark 90, at https://archive.org/details/gov.doe.0800018.
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  791. That "Specialist Athlete" referred to the Specialist A,  Athletic Instructor. This was petty officer rank that only lasted from 1942-1944, replaced by the Physical Training Instructor specialist position. In addition to these specialists keeping the crew fit and healthy. the various professional coaches for the ship's teams, like baseball and boxing, fell into this position.
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  792. Acronym for Spanish navy ship.
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  793. Thanks for this video. I had only a superficial understanding of the voyage of the Russian fleets and knew it was terrible but your video really illustrated just how terrible it was. Just the fact the fleet made it all the way around the world under such appalling conditions mostly intact is pretty amazing. I really shouldn't be laughing at the inhumane conditions on the Russian fleet, but I just couldn't help it. :-) EDIT: The laughing part got more prolonged as the video proceeded. Given that I was eating a sausage biscuit for breakfast while watching this, the hilarity led to several choking incidents and near death moments, one caused by the thought of crocodiles and venomous serpents roaming the decks at will. From now on, please include a trigger warning about choking hazards when you do another one like this.
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  794. Nice! Three thematically related video of three planned battleships from three different nations. I like this concept!
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  795.  @bkjeong4302  I just showed you that two light cruisers are barely, if all, equal in antiaircraft firepower to one Iowa with just plain statistics, yet now you seem to have ignored that to go back to your narrative. What does the South Dakota's record at Santa Cruz in October, 1942, when she was still armed with primitive communications and fire control compared to 1945 ships, 1.1" guns, and before VT fuses, have to do with the performance of an Iowa in the antiaircraft role? South Dakota was still an effective escort for Enterprise, shot down at least seven attacking aircraft, and protected the Enterprise from the fate of the Hornet. An Iowa would have required less stores than two Clevelands per man and gun simply because of economies of scale. Rations alone would have required less because there's less wastage on one ship that two. It's one of the reasons cruise ships have become so gigantic. The Iowas were always built as fast carrier escorts, hence their high speeds. The assumption was their main role would be antiaircraft protection and shore bombardment with antisurface being secondary by late 1943. The 40mm gun was a very effective gun, shooting down about 35% of total planes downed in the Pacific. The 20mm gun was even more effective, shooting down about 39% of all planes and 42 of all suicide planes downed when the planes were in range. Rather than continuing to debate with a person who has his own notions about what happened, I'll quote something from a postwar Navy report about the effectiveness of antiaircraft guns and fire from a report you've clearly never read. "Thus, in suicide actions, battleships appear to have shot down twice as many planes as would have been expected on the basis of their opening ranges, the amount of ammunition they fired, and the average success attained by all ships under similar conditions." http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/rep/Kamikaze/AAA-Summary-1045/index.html#V Read the report and others like it before you come back again.
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  796. How about the Russian icebreaker Arktika? 173.3 m (569 ft) long and a gargantuan 33,540 tonnes. Nuclear power so no worries about fuel, 22 knots top speed, and thrusters all over the place for quick turns. It could even chase ships into water as shallow as six meters after deballasting. She'd probably happily sail around all day crushing any wood hull that got in her way at the cost of some scratches to the paintwork.
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  797. How would one judge history except in hindsight? What exactly do you object to about Drach's conclusions? A comment like yours is so free of any details it borders on trolling.
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  798. The USN was is a somewhat similar situation with the South Carolina class. When placed in service in 1910, it was the first dreadnought with all the 12" guns in super firing service on the centerline. If the building pace for the class wasn't quite so leisurely. the class would have been in the role now given to Dreadnought . Like Dreadnought , the South Carolina didn't see much action in WWI and had only a little over ten years useful service before falling victim to the Washington treaty.
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  799.  @emptytube  She seems to have no idea that the best way to remain in poverty is go to college and still talk like you on da corner rappin' wif Quinesha and Laquisha.
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  800.  @april_dawn  SOME people in Chicago will disagree... SOME even say Gary is "worser" than Chi... SOME even call Gary "Little Chicago...and from that brilliant nugget of thought you have lol'd your way over to I know nothing about Gary. Did you even listen to the two guys Charlie was interviewing?
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  801. First time I've seen one of your hood during the lockdown videos there were no people flexing up in the street or hanging around in crowds outside the bodegas. The few people out that I saw all had masks, but maybe that's a rule in PA. At least even some of our more defiant citizens are finally getting the idea.
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  802. I'm 71 years old. I think I was 16 when I first heard that one. To call it an old joke wouldn't do it justice. :-)
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  803. Turn on the closed captions to see what a robot translator thinks is being said.
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  804. Small error. Wikipedia's picture of the HMS Glasgow and USS Quincy at 3:25 has the two ships swapped. The Glasgow is actually the ship that only has the stern showing on the left while what's identified as Glasgow is really Quincy. If you look closely, you can see the US flag flying from the foremast of the Quincy. It's really an error on the part of Wikipedia, not yours.
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  805. Bridges served in the Coast Guard during WWII and joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary in 1955. He did a lot of promotion for the Auxiliary and was appointed as an honorary commodore for his work. Ironically, he was blacklisted for a short period during the same period for his membership in a 1940's actor's organization with links to other Communist front organizations.
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  806.  @martymethuselah  Never mind. I thought for a split second I was dealing with a rational person.
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  807.  Steve Lyden-Brown  What a complete moron. Hoover stole an FW-190 that was being used as a parts donor for other FW-190's that were still able to fly. The plane was not armed, and he was lucky to nurse it to a forced landing in the Netherlands. He went on to become one of the greatest test and airshow pilots in history. He only passed away in 2016 at age 94. He's a legend among pilots and lived along and useful life.
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  808.  @michaelfruitticher616  I have read the explosion aboard the Mount Hood had about 75% of the explosive power as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It must have been terrifying yet awe inspiring. My dad served on PT boats during the war, and his squadron had departed from Manus two days before the explosion, after some refit work for the boats and R&R for the crew. The first they heard of the explosion was some chatter between other ships on the TBS radios that had been in harbor at the time of the explosion. His crew assumed most of what they heard was the usual sailor scuttlebutt about how big the explosion was. Little did he know until much later that it was even worse than what they had heard. Thank the Lord both our fathers made it back from the Pacific.
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  809.  @1pcfred  That's more than a little hyperbolic. A grand total of three Liberty ships out of the 2,710 built were lost due to breakup caused by brittle fracturing. Nine ships of other classes suffered the same fate. The problem was the type of steel and cold water temperatures, not the welding. Once some reinforcement was added around hatches and some hull plating. the problem went away. Only a little over 200 Liberty ships were sunk from all causes during WWII, a loss rate of about 9%, and one of the safest merchant ships ever used in combat.
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  810.  @jafinch78  There was no microwave radar in April of 1942. Radar on a blimp was of the VHF variety, operating at frequencies a little higher than today's FM broadcast band. Cavity magnetrons, necessary for microwave radar, was still in test labs. The whole microwave theory is being put forth by people who don't understand radio or radar.
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  811.  @Ugly_German_Truths  Many neutral ships carrying compledtely innocent cargoes were attacked and sunk. Before the advent of unrestricted warfare, such ships were stopped searched, and either sent on their way after inspection, seized, or sunk after taking off the crew. Any enemy flagged vessel was fair game, but unrestricted warfare led to innocent ships being sunk without warning.
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  812.  @cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647  Yes, my dad served on PT boats in WWII and always complained the aircraft carriers got all the attention. Just the way the military and war goes.
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  813. A small correction. All the PBYs with the exception of one that were destroyed at Pearl were PBY-4 and PBY-5 flying boats. The PBY-5A was the first amphibious version that was just entering service in November of 1941. One 5A was at Pearl as an evaluation aircraft and it too was destroyed in a bombed out hanger at Ford Island. One of the things that made the JRS-1 so valuable in those early days of the war was it could land on the water or a runway. It could land on water and then quickly scoot out of the water into a camouflaged position onshore. It took about a half hour to install the beaching gear on a PBY, and the Japanese were trained to look for PBYs at seaplane bases. Even though the JRS-1's never had anywhere near the defensive armament of a PBY, I remember reading the story of a couple Marine armorers that rigged up a system of pulleys and cables that were clipped onto a pair of Browning Automatic Rifles (BARs) that could fire, one per side, from the aftmost portholes on the aircraft. The BARs were rifle caliber machine guns that used 30 round magazines, not an ideal setup for an aircraft machine gun, but it beat using bolt action Springfield rifles. Each gun had a large round spider sight bolted onto the barrel to give a gunner at least a vague hope of being able to hit an enemy aircraft.
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  814.  @markfryer9880  Quite so. It would have been difficult to nearly impossible to conduct naval or air operations in the Med without Malta.
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  815.  @KuK137  Go back and read the part where I said "it's doubtful that they could have mobilized enough merchant shipping to carry the volume of supplies needed." My point was that they may have succeed in getting troops ashore but would not be able to supply them and would ultimately fail. You simply paraphrased what I wrote, just in more juvenile way.
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  816. It should have been possible for the Norwegians and their allies to hold northern Norway except for the critical lack of close air support. The British learned nothing from the defeat of Poland and the Low Countries and still didn't understand the importance of aircraft in holding ground. The Germans could not have won without their close air support and aerial resupply, things the British could have stopped with enough air assets in Norway.
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  817. Now I know, when watching one of the many Russian car crash videos, why drivers yell "suka, blyad!" all the time. :-)
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  818.  @FLJBeliever1776  In addition, radar equipped and rocket firing Swordfish patrolled the Channel and attacked every submarine detected by their radar. Because they were able to attack from less than 100 feet, the low and slow Stringbags were hard for subs running on the surface to detect while the Stringbags radar was able to see even a periscope at five miles, The combination of rockets and strafing was fatal for a number of U-boats. As long as there were no modern fighters to oppose them, they were very effective in the air to surface role.
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  819. Another great historical video. Even God hated the castle, as shown by the lightning strike and fire. :-)
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  820. The Mosquito wasn't close in bombload, even on paper. Although the theoretical maximum bomb load was 4,000 pounds, that was for a mission of less than 700 miles round trip. A more typical bombload was 2,500 pounds. The B-17 carried 4,500 pounds over ranges three times as long as the Mosquito, and had an internal bombload of 8,000 pounds over a 1,400 mile radius. A maximum bombload with external racks for a 700 mile mission was over 17,000 pounds. The B-17 was a slow but heavy strategic bomber while the Mosquito was a light but fast bomber, and later one of the first true multirole aircraft.
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  821. Just to show how nutty this project really was, the thickest part of the turret armor, the turret face, on the US "Baltimore" class heavy cruisers was 8" (203mm) and the thickest part of the belt armour was 6" (152mm). The Germans were essentially constructing a vehicle with as much (or more) armor as a heavy cruiser while trying to use it on land. Why this was ever considered workable by Porsche, otherwise a brilliant designer. is still a mystery.
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  822. Heavy Gustav and his sister Dora were cool in a kind of a "lets all play army" video game way, but it seems like spending the same amount of money and time could have resulted in developing the blockbuster type bombs of the RAF. The 12,000 pound version had nearly the destructive capability of one round from our boy and could have been delivered in larger numbers while Germany still had air superiority in Russia.
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  823. Wow! All the way up to 30 channels!?! As an American, I've never unstood British television. By 1982, an average size American city had 8-15 over the air (OTA) channels. There were three main networks and then a bunch of local channels and second tier networks, as Fox was when it first started up. There's just no concept of a national TV channel like BBC, and certainly no concept of paying for a TV license. Unfortunately, most places have only one franchise cable company, so we became more like Britain in that regard. This kind of monopoly has lead to some cable providers to charge $50-$70 per month for just basic cable of 30-40 channels, and those that are real addicts can spend hundreds per month for hundreds of channels. The good thing is the switch to digital has allowed any OTA channel to have 2-4 subchannels, so now there can be more than 50 OTA channels. As the number of channels expanded, we have been inundated with home shopping channels, weird religious programming, and movies no one would ever want to watch again. It's interesting that the concept of an internet at a line per second was looking into the hazy future.
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  824.  @video99couk  Really? So that means all 66 million people in the UK will never be able to buy another car unless the EU says they can? Toyota isn't made by an EU country. Nissan isn't made by an EU country. Kia and Hyundai aren't made by an EU country. Tata isn't made by an EU country. China isn't an EU country. Mexico and Brazil aren't EU countries. They are all in the top ten of car making countries. The only EU countries in the top 10 are Germany and France, and France just barely. There are now more cars and companies outside the EU than in it. Not that it would happen, but do you think the UK would collapse if no more Beamers or Renaults were ever sold there again? You think everyone who's turning a profit making cars in the UK will just put the lock on the plant gate and walk away? The UK can't source parts from the country of origin outside the EU? There's no reason, except for French, German, or Italian cars, that any parts have to come from the EU. Britain was still the fifth largest car maker in 1969 when the UK joined the EEC. It's now #13. You actually think things can get worse outside the EU? You have followed the remainer mantra hook, line and sinker.
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  825. The beginnings of 24/7 outdoor surveillance of everyone in Britain's large cities, and this doesn't count the tens of thousands of private cameras. Next step is for just one camera inside your home...just for safety, of course, and just one...for now. The water around.the frog continues to heat up.
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  826. Why did you post this as reply to a totally unrelated question?
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  827. "Bundle of sticks", to be more precise.
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  828. I'm always amazed at how well you learn disassembly for the hundreds of guns you've reviewed. I have a hard enough time with my AK.
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  829. Don't forget Western Auto, once one of the biggest sellers of .22 rifles and 12 gauge shotguns, all made for them by other companies under contract.
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  830. Yep, my Century conversion has slamfires and stuck cases. I always thought this was just a Century problem so I'm interested to find the same issues plagued the French conversions as well.
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  831. By heavy weapons in this case I mean light to medium mortars. There was no way to get heavier artillery on the massiv and very few fighters with any training on how to use them anyway. You're correct about the quality of "troops" fighting the Germans. Many of them were excellent guerillas but terrible infantry. The two skill sets are much different. It would have been much better for France, the Allies, and those that died in the battle if they had remained guerrillas. However, that would not have given De Gaulle the propaganda victory he so desperately needed.
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  832. Emmanuel, in the early years of the war, the French Milieu was the main source of weapons, just as they had been for all organized crime groups before the war. By mid-1944, the main source of weapons was from dead Vichy and German troops plus raiding police stations and isolated arsenals. The Americans and British dropped many thousands of containers of small arms, mainly Sten guns, plus thousands of pounds of plastic explosives. The problem for the Marqui fighters at Vercors was not a lack of small arms, it was the lack of heavy weapons, as I wrote above.
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  833. @FREN Well, there is the bell tower of San Miguel Mission, built between 1610 – 1626, El Morro, from 1539, and Jamestown Church from 1639, not forgetting Bacon's Castle in Virginia, built in 1665, plus the Newport Tower in Rhode Island from at least 1670, so we do have a few things here.
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  834.  @AdamosDad  The Newport News was a great cruiser. She and other members of the Des Moines class were the most effective heavy cruisers in any navy. It's just too bad that she fired over 60,000 rounds in combat with no major problems and had to suffer that barrel detonation while on yet another fire mission in 1972. The Navy's biggest mistake was not repairing her and retaining her in service. The time will come when we need those big guns for another war and now she's gone.
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  835. Flo and his team should have been kept on for the WWII series. Compared to the Great War series, the WWII one, apparently being run by Indy Nidel, is really terrible by comparison.
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  836.  @Deadtileyedie  It's pretty sweet for such an old gun. Well cast and machined with a nice finish. Probably looked even nicer when it was new and sitting in the showcase. It was my first handgun I bought when I was 18 (that's how old you had to be in 1964). The dealer had two of them, and this one cost me $2 more than a ratty looking one. I summoned up my courage and plunked down my twelve bucks. :-) I keep hearing conflicting information about if it's strictly black powder or will handle smokeless. Just to be safe, I handload my own ammo for it with a 10% decrease in smokeless powder charge . It handles this load fine, but I don't think I want to try a 118 year old gun made on the cusp of smokeless powder with a modern round.
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  837. Yes, please do more railway disaster videos. Road transport accidents like fog or snow pileups would also be interesting.
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  838. I heard Qxir was kind of a narcissist though...
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  839. Thanks. I was vaguely aware of this one but it's nice to get some details.
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  840.  @gunther_hermann  I don't think the disguises made much difference in this battle. It was unlikely anything as large as the Cap Trafalgar would have had any innocent reason to be lying in the small harbor of Trindade Island alongside two colliers. The Carmania had been sent to the archipelago specifically because the Admiralty suspected the Germans had set up a base there, and it was known the Brazilian Navy had no ships in the area. It was quite a furious battle between the two former liners, and one that went on for hours. Considering how outmatched Cap Trafalgar was, it's amazing that she nearly sunk Carmania, with only two 4.1" guns compared to the eight 4.7" guns of her British opponent. It was a battle at close quarters not seen in the age of steam before or after. It would make, as the British would say, a cracking good tale of two passenger liners fighting each other to the death, and a great episode for Drach to present.
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  841.  @colinwhaley244  Right, but that's not the sole purpose of the bridge. Visibility for side maneuvering by the captain or XO is important, and someone needs enough aide and forward visibility to pass orders to the helmsman. Keeping track of aircraft executing a bow on attack, or a surface ship crossing your "T" is also kind of important. There were many reason why good visibility from the bridge was important other than just steering the ship.
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  842. It's always seemed odd to me that mast positions compared to stack locations was a constant problem from the start of the age of steam until (in some cases) right up to WWII. Naval architects and engineers knew how air moved across the decks and which way smoke would go. They also know that fire control and lookout positions too near a stack could not only make both positions less effective, the great clouds of smoke under a full head of steam could actually asphyxiate crew members in those position. Regardless, ships kept coming out that would be partly crippled in battle due to the issue. It's like using square wheels on cars long after it was apparent that square wheels didn't work. :-)
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  843.  @TEHSTONEDPUMPKIN  Good heavens. Judging a real battleship by if it appears in any Japanese anime/busty school girl games. I've never understood the kawaii thing among Westerners.
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  844.  @jamestheotherone742  No, he's not correct. There weren't "many" men who refused orders from a drill sergeant, presumably during basic. Those that did ended up in the brig and in penal units, but they were a very small percentage of those drafted. The percentage of those that were malingerers was always small, varying from 1% to 5%, depending on types of units, type of service, and what war was being studied. Most of the real behavior problems were weeded out during basic and given dishonorable or less than honorable discharges, many after some time at Leavenworth. There's a good study about this subject at https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/178/1/50/4210902. It makes a lot more sense to learn actual facts about this rather than repeat garbage from people who have an axe to grind and essentially make things up.
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  845.  @AdamMGTF  You're quite welcome. First time I've seen this thread in a bit. As usual, there are always a few folks in these threads that have their own axe to grind. I just try to tell stories based on 50+ years of studying naval history. I like the small details and interesting stories of the periphery of the big battles we always hear about. I'm 73 so I have a few years on you, and Youtube is it when it comes to social media for me as well. I started watching Drach's videos way back when it was the robot voice and really was five minute histories. He has developed his channel into what o consider to be one of the best naval history channels on Youtube, or really anywhere. I don't know that I've watched all his videos but it's a large percentage of them, and his conversion of many of the early videos into his own narrations make them just that much better. Thankfully, you and he are much younger men than me, so I expect you to start doing that legwork and digging up some of these interesting small stories. I know Drach enjoys them because he kindly gave me a shoutout a few videos back saying so. You can be doing the same thing long after I've shuffled off this mortal coil.
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  846. Thanks, Drach. The Battle class were very pleasant looking ships, and I liked them at first sight when I first saw them as a kid. Of course, this was long before the internet, and ship pictures were only found after many a Saturday afternoon poring through every book with pictures I could find. I assumed that, much like the USN Allen M Sumner class, these had another twin turret aft, and all the pictures were of such poor quality they just didn't show the aft turret, hidden among the top hamper of all the Bofors guns. I must have been about 15 before I found a really good book about WWII British destroyers, something not easy to find in small town Ohio in what must have been 1959-1960. It was then I found out this class really didn't have any aft main battery turrets, but it had a single open 4" mount instead. Since the Sumner and Battle classes were of roughly equal size and displacement, it really didn't make much sense to limit the heavy DP guns to forward mountings only. To this day, I'm still somewhat baffled by that design decision on the part of the Admiralty. Maybe someone who knows more about British destroyers than I do can explain it for me. Admiral Cunningham hated these ships. He rather famously said, after his first voyage on HMS Solebay that the ship was too big and "had every damned weapon and gadget except guns". Cunningham was an old-time destroyerman and believed newer destroyers should match the "Greyhound of the Seas" design philosophy of older destroyers. Cunningham, as great an admiral that he was, just didn't have much appreciation for the need to accommodate all the new electronics and weapons of modern naval warfare. He wasn't wrong about the Hazemeyer mounts though. At six tons for a twin mount, and even heavier as more on-mount radars were added, they really were the first of what we now call a close in weapons system. The design and requirements were just too advanced for the times they were built. They were excellent mounts when they worked but, with the vacuum tube technology of the day, that wasn't very often. Combined with the mass of gears and valves needed to maintain the triaxial stabilization, it would have been a good mount if it was introduced in 1950 instead of 1940. Unfortunately, the RN decided the way forward was the STAAG mount, an even heavier and more unreliable mount, but that's a story for another day.
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  847. Back in the days where there really were a multiplicity of guns on USN ships. the Marines provided gun crews for at least two 5"/38 mounts and a couple of quad 40mm mounts. They not only provided the crews, they became the experts on repair and and maintenance on their mounts. They'd assist Navy ordinance men at those tasks when asked, and they provided a far bit of training for the FNGs that were assigned to gunnery roles. With far fewer guns on Navy ships now, Marines still man some of the free swinging light weapons like.50 caliber M2 machine gun and 25mm Bushmaster cannons. They are the landing force in being if a small target needs to be attacked and secured, and they provide ship security for nuclear weapons compartments and various top secret areas of the ship. Marines are responsible, along with the Navy Master At Arms, for the overall protection and security of the ship while in port and at sea, with Marine NCOs often acting as the Officer of the Deck. They were generally in charge of the brig, and moving prisoners between the Captain's Mast and place like sick bay. What Marines really practice for is an attack of the ship while it is in port. If the SHTF and the ships is under fire from attackers attempting to seize the vessel, the Marines are the ones that turn out with weapons locked and loaded, ready to fight off the threat or die trying. In between such feats of derring do, Marines also swab the decks and do KP, so it's not all fun and games.
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  848. Except for the commie sailors at the end, at least the Slava went down as a good fighting ship, unlike so many other Russian capital ships.
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  849.  @kemarisite  Indeed, and eventually the Seafire finally gave the RN a modern fighter capable of taking on the Zero and most later fighters. It took quite a while to build up Seafire strength, only finally being speeded up to equip the British Pacific fleet to intercept the expected hordes of kamikaze attackers during the invasion of the Home Islands. Even with its unreinforced narrow track undercarriage, it performed surprisingly well as a naval fighter, only being topped by the excellent Sea Fury, developed just too late for the war. The Corsair was an even better naval fighter, and the Avenger, a better torpedo attack plane than the venerable String Bag, which had very little chance of survival against the better Japanese fighters. Ironically, it was mostly the British demonstration of using the Corsair on even their smaller carriers that finally convinced the USN that the Corsair might also be the war winner that it eventually turned out to be.
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  850. It was the innovation of the combat information center right down to destroyer class ships that made more difference than just the ability of any individual radar in the USN. The ability to combine radar inputs to gunnery fire control systems and fighter control systems into single outputs took away a lot of the confusion of using just radar. The USN was forced into something like a CIC due to the proliferation of different radars (surface search, air search, ranging, height finders, aircraft direction, and fire control) inputs overwhelming the commanders to the point decision making was being made worse.
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  851. The Clemson class were not only very uncomfortable due to constant rolling in any kind of sea, but they were also unsafe for her crews. The very finely pointed stern made the depth charge racks hang perilously over the stern, and the four props that were completely exposed killed a number sailors lost overboard while engaged in depth charge operations. This was in spite of the massive prop guards clearly visible in any stern photo of a Clemson . The design was chosen in a bid for the highest speed on the least possible displacement because, as usual, our Congress refused to provide the funds for a larger design with higher output engines on about a thousand tons more displacement.
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  852.  @fastmongrel  My comment had nothing to do with which class launched first, only that both type of ships had the same kind of utility to their respective navies.
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  853. OLDCONTEMPTABLE  As with so many things in Japan, the navy got a lot of their ship design and training through Britain, and a lot of British doctrine was in use. One of those was main battery barrage firing. I'm just going from memory here but there was at least one time a US torpedo bomber attack was broken up by barrage firing from three battleship all firing together. They weren't aiming at the planes but aiming at the water in front of them. At least one plane was destroyed by the shell splashes and the others broke off the attack. I t as to have been frightening to fly directly into 14" and 16" shell splashes let alone form an 18'1" splash. The problem with barrage firing was it took practice to get good at it, and battleship size ammunition wasn't cheap.
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  854.  @Hardcase_Kara  The death tolls from the Arizona and Oklahoma were massive compared to the Utah. The 1,177 men that died on the Arizona was nearly half the total death toll at Pearl Harbor with the 429 men killed in the Oklahoma coming in second. Then we have the iconic film of the Arizona's huge magazine explosion, something that has become emblematic of the entire attack. As much as I want all those that died during the attack to be remembered, ships like the Utah just didn't enter the public consciousness like the Arizona. I've heard the story about the supposed urn of a child of one of the sailors aboard the Utah at the time of the attack. All my attempts to verify this story have landed at dead ends. I'm not saying it couldn't be true, only that the story, along with several others about some aspect of the attack, appears to be apocryphal.
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  855. Thanks, Drach, and entertaining and informative story of one of the few campaigns where luck on both sides were the major operational factors. Churchill must have been ready to bite the head off a tenpenny nail over that one. I wonder if there was any chance of engaging Norway in some kind of secret alliance where they would at least share more information? I know Norway had always been a neutral nation, but my reading of a couple of Norwegian diplomat's biographies indicated they knew the peril they were in after the German invasion of Poland and didn't believe Germany or England would permit them to stay neutral. Maybe a couple of English diplomats with Norwegian connections could have convinced Norway to accept an RN shield against German attack, thereby leading to less RN sneaking around and into Norwegian waters and the attendant diplomatic flurry each time it happened. Norway wouldn't have to join Britain in war in September, 1939, just look the other way as the RN kept an eye on German operations.
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  856.  @Johnnycdrums  No, the Blues went from Panthers to Cougars to the F-11 Tiger. There were only two Cutlass aircraft with the Blues and they were only flow as demonstration aircraft before they were dismantled. The F-11 was a fairly large slightly supersonic aircraft with pleasant flight characteristics and ability to perform almost any aerobatic maneuver without tearing the wings off it. It was much too slow and the engine had too many teething problems to make it into long term squadron service, but all the characteristics I mentioned made it an ideal Blue Angels plane. The Blues flew the Tiger until 1969, long after it had been otherwise withdrawn from other naval service. uch of the technology from the Tiger was used in the hugely successful McDonnell Douglas F-4J Phantom II, the Blue's next mount.
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  857. Illustrious started life as one of the most heavily armed British aircraft carriers, long before there was any American influence. Increases in AA armament up until early 1945 primarily consistent of replacing existing single mount 20mm guns with twins. Even for Pacific service, only one of the six octuple pom poms was replaced with a twin Bofors mount. It wasn't until 1946, when the RN in general was rearming with Bofors guns, that more of the pom poms were removed, and it wasn't until 1948 that the last pom poms were removed and replaced with Bofors guns. This is one ship that wasn't a Second Amendment version of a British vessel.
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  858. How about a t-shirt with a drawing of the fully rebuilt Hood? I'd buy one of those, if only just to get other warship aware friends to ask "What's that?"
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  859. I hope your cold lets go soon. I have been plagued with allergies all my life so I can sympathize with being stuffed up.
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  860. Dang! Just about to hit the power switch and head off for bed at 0316 CDT and a notification for the Drydock pops up. So much for the sleep plan!
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  861. I agree on the issue of battleships. Too big and too expensive. However, the problem with ships like Burke class when it comes to shore bombardment is the single 5" gun will have a limited barrel life if there's a small war (but bigger than the Falklands) that requires guns rather than missiles. Having some vessel with multiple turrets with multiple guns seems like it would make sense. Traditional 8" guns able to use rocket assisted rounds makes a near ideal shore bombardment gun with ranges out to 100 miles. I suspect the single gun main battery will be found to be a mistake at some time in the future.
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  862. Holy crap! Five hours today? Time to get out some extra coffee and a couple fresh chair cushions. Great combination of Christmas, Boxing Day, and New year's presents for all of us naval fans. Thanks, Drach!
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  863. Thanks for this series. Now. my "what if" question - What if Germany had completed and put into service the Electroboat submarines a year before they actually did?
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  864. To be fair, one of the reason why almost all scouting and scout bomber aircraft were two place is so the observer could use a pretty good set of optics to give them more details than the Mark I Eyeball. As Drach pointed out, in less than ideal conditions, accuracy of identification deteriorated rapidly. The RN not only recognized this problem earlier than other major navies, they treated finding a solution as an emergency. Consequently, they used Identification, Friend or Foe (IFF) systems on their ship and aircraft earlier than other countries. As usual, you can identify the pioneers by the arrows in their back. The original IFF system depended on a passive system using a vertical dipole, and the only receiver sensitive and wide banded enough was a superregenerative type. I won't get into all the technical detail since I'm sure most you don't really care about them, but the super regen receiver was extremely difficult to tune sitting at a desk on dry land. Doing so in a Swordfish, while being buffeted by rough air and rapid changes in altitude, required an observer that was both skilled and lucky. The passive dipole system was unreliable even if the receiver was working correctly. Yet another British invention allowed the radar signal itself to actively interrogate a receiver on a ship or another aircraft. The IFF was then transmitted as a coded part of the radar return. That meant no fiddling with receivers on an aircraft, and it was also more difficult for the enemy to compromise the system. By the second half of 1944, about 75% of RN ship and aircraft and nearly 100% of US ships and aircraft were equipped with IFF. The extremely time consuming teaching of ship and aircraft recognition from models, photos, and drawings became much less important. A pilot merely had to interrogate the IFF receiver on a ship. If it was one of ours, a spike on the radar screen would show a positive return. In later iterations, the return could even tell a pilot the name and type of a ship or the type of aircraft being interrogated. While this greatly reduced blue on blue attacks for a time, it didn't eliminate them. Imagine seeing an unidentified ship, interrogating on the correct IFF channel, and getting no return. Enemy ship, attack away...except what happens if the IFF on the ship was broken and not working? With pilots given less recognition training and early electronics subject to frequent failures, the number of mistaken attacks on friendly ships actually increased for a short period of time in late 1944. A crash program to make IFF more reliable and getting pilots trained in better visual recognition reduced the blue on blue attacks to much lower levels by early 1945 than those seen earlier in the war. IFF systems in use today, although much more sophisticated and reliable, are still based on the same principles as used in the late WWII systems.
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  865. Hang in there, Paul. We need your voice.
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  866. Another spurious Jefferson quotation. It's not hard to look these things up. https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/if-law-unjustspurious-quotation
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  867.  @robertsmith7667  It was her job to "snatch" the mike. It was Acosta's job to give up the mike, sit down and shut up when he was told to, not wrestle a WH employee for the mike. Don't let your MGTOW philosophy get in the way of truth.
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  868. "...incredible abandoned city.." From the first line of the description, Then he said "It used to be a military base...". It can't be both an abandoned city and a former military base. Abandoned city sounds spookier though.
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  869. More successful public housing projects...
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  870. They are all biking to a party...and they aren't peaceful.
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  871. It's useless, and what would the police be able to do? Maybe take a report for insurance purposes and not much else. My guess is you'd be told to come to the station Monday and get a report there. Police in Detroit don't really have the time to take a property damage report with no suspects.
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  872. Boston-Edison has some really great houses. It's getting a little shabby around the edges, and the resale value of the homes reflects the risks. There are a lot of 1-3 million dollar homes you can buy now for about $350,000 or less, depending on the condition and how close it is to the edges of the community.
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  873. There is not a more dreary looking place than the hood in January.
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  874. Tipper, I would give my left testicle...hell, maybe both, to fly a B-52. I'm just a GA pilot. Well, it's past tense now, since age and blood pressure got me, so I'd probably end up putting the plane into the ground, but it sure would be fun for as long as it lasted!
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  875.  @deadfreightwest5956  "Did you see the cow? It was clearly racist...and xenophobic...against brown cows. She deserved it!" - Ilhan Omar, spokesMuslim for The Squad..
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  876.  @christineparis5607  I was a sailboat sailor for about 30 year and have been put in the drink a number of times by rogue waves or just unexpected movements of the boat. I imagine falling overboard from a blimp maneuvering near the surface would be even easier. There are great whites in the ocean off the California coast, but hypothermia would probably have killed them before a shark even knew they were there.
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  877.  @brucesmith54  Buddy, I'm 73 years old and have had to use my insurance a lot of times. It works every time, unlike the VA. I hope you get the chance to go back Australia and live the good life away from all the problems here.
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  878. Right, I put in battalion when I should have written company. I just thought it was just another interesting footnote on a forgotten chapter of history.
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  879.  @andyp29  Thanks. I'm doing okay for a geezer. I turned 74 in February and am spending my time indoors watching Youtube videos. This is not how I thought I'd be spending my declining years! :-)
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  880. I was a police officer form 1978 to 2005. I stopped making drig arrests when it was only for personal uses by about 1985. We were ruing people's lives with felony records when they were doing exactly the same kind of thing as people wh9o wen thome and a couple of drinks after work. The War on Drugs never worked and will never work. Just decriminalize all drugs. Those that want to use things like meth, crack, and heroin will continue to do so until they get some kind of drug treatment, and many will continue to do so regardless of treatment. We need to take sales off the street and away from criminal cartels. We already have a model in the way we sell alcohol. Sell all drugs the same way. We'll all be a lot better off, yes, even the users. They won't get mugged on the street for the drug money they stole from us, and we won't have four year old kids getting killed in drive by shootings.
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  881.  @Artessnow  The EMB 314 has an ordnance load less than half that of the Skyraider. Just it's built in armament of four 20 mm cannons is devastating compared to 314's two 12.7 mm machine guns. The 314 is a good light attack plane but it's nowhere near the equal of the Spad. A redesigned turbine powered Skyraider would be the only real replacement of the old girl.
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  882. And the video starts with a clip of a B-36...
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  883. While the Do-335 may have been the fasted Nazi fighter, the de Havilland Hornet was at least as fast, as was the North American P-82. Several versions of single engine aircraft like the Supermarine Spitfire, Spiteful, and the F8F Bearcat had a nearly or slightly greater top speed, depending on altitude. This was another example of wasted money, time, and materials spent by the Nazis looking for the miracle weapon that would win the war for them.
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  884. I was about to ask why you didn't take a train. I visited Russia in 2006 and took trains and busses, I much prefered the trains. Faster, more comfortable, and I got to see a lot of the "backyards" of Russia. I will look forward to your train programs. One of my goals is still to ride the Trans Siberian Ralway.
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  885. Martin, that was more than a joke. If anything was discovered or newly made in the west, I could count on Radio Moscow coming on the next night with a story that Soviet scientists had discovered it first or Soviet factories could make them cheaper or better.
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  886. The Bears make good snoopers and aircraft to test British/Nato radars and countermeasures. The Tu-160 flown at combat ceilings and speeds represent a real threat.
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  887. The Japanese had used small scale banzai charges as far back as the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 and during the Sino-Japanese war in 1930's, but most of those were against troops armed with slow firing bolt action rifles and only a few machine guns. The first massed banzai charge against well armed modern forces was on Attu in the Aleutians in 1943. After all night repetitive charges by Japanese soldiers mostly using bayonets and swords, 2,600 of them were wiped out by massed machine gun and artillery fire, with only 29 soldiers too badly wounded to commit suicide captured. The US lost 549 killed and wounded, but the ratio demonstrated the futility of such tactics. Still, this last stand was in line with the Japanese bushido code of warfare, and the defense of Attu was romanticized in Japan as each soldier assuming the role of a samurai, something previously limited to officers and nobility. This set the stage for the tremendous waste of soldiers on Saipan. As the war grew ever closer to the home islands, banzai charges were discouraged, since it was possible to evacuate some surviving troops from doomed islands to others to fight again. There were still some smaller scale banzai charges, particularly on Okinawa, but the Japanese high command came to recognize that Americans weren't going to break and run under massed banzai charges. The bushido code really didn't work in modern warfare.
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  888. It wasn't exactly a fight with a P-51. It was Cavalier TF-51D, the Cavalier conversion of a P-51D single seat fighter to a two seat training version. It was much slower than the F4U and much less maneuverable. The more interesting fight was later the same day, when an FAH F4U shot down two FAS FG1's, the last dogfight between propeller driven fighters of about equal performance.
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  889. Pinpoint bombing had a somewhat different meaning in 1918.
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  890. Fantastic. I never heard of these two tenders before. I sure wish I lived near Belfast so I could see Nomadic in person. That was quite an amazing restoration job.
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  891. Great story.
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  892. Little Jimmy, flying in a large formation would have made them more liable to be detected by radar, and detected further out. Given that New York City wasn't on high alert for enemy air attack, the first flight of however many aircraft the Germans could muster may have made it through. That would have been the end, however, as the US had more than enough aircraft, light aircraft carriers, early warning radar, and radar directed high altitude anti aircraft artillery by mid-1944 that it's unlikely any further aircraft would have made it through.
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  893.  @johndrake2729  I sure hope getting out of the EU will get Britain back as a sovereign nation again. Any economic union talking about starting their own army scares me. .
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  894. Except for all the Cleveland class and Baltimore class cruisers, all built during WWII. They had below deck hangars in the stern portion of the ships. These were used to store up to four float planes that were bought up by elevator and then mounted on the catapult using the crane visible over the stern of the ships. There are two basic reasons why this was abandoned by the US Navy.The main deck hangers generally provide more room than a below decks hanger, and the big hole in the stern weakens the ships structure. At least one of the cruisers mentioned had the hanger doors blown off as the result of a bomb landing near the hanger. The second major reason was water ingress. There was never found a way to seal the hanger doors sufficiently when the ship was taking water from a following sea. I can't imagine that Kirov wouldn't have the same problem. .
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  895. Sorry, brother. I've had a bad ear infection before and it was miserable. I hope your hearing has returned to normal.
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  896. Slaw, that was the most amazing rewriting of Polish WWII history I've ever seen.
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  897. Nice looking guns, but no apparent advantage over all the other 9mm parabellums flooding the market in the 50's.
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  898.  Matt Eagle  No reason to believe me at all, but those that served can tell if I'm being truthful.
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  899. Sold for $28,750, so that would have been quite the return on investment for $150.
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  900.  @Agentcoolguy1  I'm glad I wasn't the only one.
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  901. I bought one of the Century Arms 7.62 Nato conversions in 1991 for $220. The bore was well done, and armory had redone the parkerizing and refinished the wood. What Century didn't do was enough testing after the conversion. Apparently they shortened the barrel so they could cut new metal for the 7.62 chamber, shortened the gas tube to match the 9/16" barrel offset, and left the original French springs and recoil system in place. A friend of mine ordered one at the same time. I think these were among the first Century conversions. Mine would never fire a full mag without a jam of some kind, some of which got stuck so badly it required a rod and rubber mallet to free it from the chamber. My buddy's rifle would happily go through multiple mags without a problem. Type of ammo didn't matter in mine, but his could fire cruddy surplus ammo all day. Mags for the 7.62 guns are also crazy expensive now, $50 and higher last I looked. Unless you can confirm from the owner his gun is a shooter, avoid the Century conversions. I've heard of slamfire issues with the 7.5 guns, but they can be fixed with a change ot the firing pin, again from what I've heard. I will say mine was a good shooter when it was feeding rounds properly, about equal to a Garand in accuracy. Unless you're like Ian and just an aficionado of French guns, there are many better shooters than the 56/49.
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  902. The US Navy developed the Mark 57 Gunfire Control System late in the war. It wasn't really a better optical control system than the original Mark 51 director, but it added radar for use in reduced visibility conditions. One Mark 57 then controlled four Mark 51 directors. The Mark 51's were still useful in good visibility, but any massed gunfire lasting more than a minute or so caused the targets to be obscured by gun smoke. That's when the Mark 57 took over and controlled the four 40 mm quad mounts instead of the four separate Mark 51 directors.
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  903.  @johnfisk811 Quite true. Concrete floors were in their infancy in 1895, so wood block flooring was about the only thing strong enough to support heavy machinery. These did tend to get oil soaked over time, and the older the factory, the bigger the issue. In many cases. the first outside sign of fire was the structure was fully involved, hence the old saw about never losing a foundation. This is why night watchmen were so important then. It wasn't primarily to keep out burglars. They were the only hope of getting fire equipment and men there soon enough not to lose the whole factory.
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  904. Of course there wouldn't have been as many lost charging handles if not for the rather silly rule about removing the bolt.
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  905.  @GigsTaggart  Correct, but that presupposes a stable footing for the dam. If things keep moving, the bentonite cracks again.
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  906. The USN at last was concerned about a cold war version of the Washington Conference. It was going ot be easier to get permission for modifications of current vessels rather than getting new build ships approved. There were also many, many vessels that were less than a decade old with mechanical and electronic systems that were going to be reasonably modern for an additional decade with some minor upgrades. Congress had some sharp questions about putting such ships straight into reserve while they Navy proposed building new ships. It was impossible to justify to Congress building a large new class of guided missile cruisers when when we weren't even sure what kinds of missiles we needed and if they'd even work. Conversions work on some Cleveland and Baltimore cruisers into combat capable "experimental" ships was a wise move at a number of levels.
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  907.  @jamespfp  They also invented Kurier, a system of flash messaging the could send 600 WPM. NOt only was it fast, but the messages were sent on a deviation from center frequency of as much as .200 MHz. That made it difficult to detect the transmission with a standard AM receiver. A Navy study of German submarine communications after the war found out about Kurier, but they never knew it existed during war, so it was never DF'd. As the study noted, if Kurier had been in operation earlier in the war the Allies would have been in serious trouble when it came to knowing where U Boats were.and what they were up to.
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  908. Once the US Mark 14 torpedo's problems were worked out, it became as reliable and effective as any other unguided torpedo. They continued in USN service until 1980, in part because there were 13,000 in inventory at the end of the war, and in part because they had become a well understood weapon that generally went where it was aimed and sunk almost any ship it hit. The RN's Mk VIII torpedo had a similar but even longer service life, first being used in 1937 and finally being declared obsolete in 1985. Enough time has passed that guided torpedoes have become the norm in most navies, but smaller navies used the British and US WWII torpedoes well into the 1990's. The latest I know of for the Mark 14 was on the last Gearing class destroyers of the Mexican Navy. They carried Mark 14's until their retirement in 2003 and 2009. I believe the last use of the RN Mk VIII was with India on their
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  909. The main addition to the German navy would have been French destroyers and submarines, supplementing the most needed types of vessels in the German fleet.
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  910.  @stanleyrogouski  He was actually 45 in 1792, the year of his death. You might be thinking of his age when he was in Russian service. Jones had pretty much burned all his bridges in the US Navy and knew he had no chance for promotion there. His Russian service was strictly a business proposition, much as his service in the US Navy had been. Jones wanted tow things - to be in a fight and be in command of a fleet. I've read of Kościuszko's advice to Jones about foreign service. It's not clear why he turned down the French offer, but I suspect he didn't want to choose what might be the losing side in another civil war. I think Spain was also interested in Jones, but he had developed the reputation, using an American football metaphor, of being a top quarterback, but not being much of a team player and hard to work with. His chance of a top command in a stable navy was just about zero, even with his acknowledged talent. Sad end to what could have been a very successful career as admiral of the fleet somewhere.
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  911. There are two basic reasons, Oil is more energy dense that coal, pound for pound.It has a higher BTU rating and can therefore drive turbines at a higher boiler pressure. Higher boiler pressure equals more speed. A second reason is the ship was lighter per BTU carried. It required about 20% more coal than oil to achieve the same boiler pressure. That meant the ship could be lighter, and that translated into higher speeds. A lesser but not insignificant factor was the decrease in the black gang. Firing a ship using coal was very labor intensive, and a coal fired ship required about 50 more men than an oil fired ship. Each man required space, water, food, and equipment to deal with the coal.The estimates I've read is an oil fired ship had about 100 tons less displacement than a coal fired ship just due to less crew and supplies. The decrease in fuel needed to haul around all these extra crewmen increased speed. I won't even get into all the logistical issues of coal firing compared to oil. The Navy published an excellent report on the switch from coal to oil, available at https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524799.pdf
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  912. Three guides in one day and it's not even my birthday! I've never found an answer to this one. Was there a weakness in the forward scantlings in this class? It seems like almost any torpedo hit from the bridge forward caused the bow to be blown off.
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  913.  @Betrix5060  There were many economic alternatives to war that could have been used if not for the communists in both the State Department and British Foreign Office doing everything they could to make sure the Soviets didn't suffer any economic repercussions while flouting the terms of the Yalta Agreement. The full extent of the damage done to US and British interests by Soviets spies and homegrown communist agents has yet to be fully revealed. McCarthy may have been hyperbolic in his rhetoric, but his understanding of communist infiltration in Western governments wasn't far off.
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  914.  @philperry4699  The Poles made a lot of important contributions to the successful prosecution of the war. To show our thanks, Churchill and Roosevelt turned them over to the communists. It was a shameful period of our history..
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  915.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Nothing of which has anything to do with King's role in the Indianapolis debacle.
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  916.  @sooline3854  Yep, that was him.
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  917. The wholesale scraping of useful RN WWII ships hadn't even begun in 1956. You weren't betrayed by the US. You were betrayed by Anthony Eden and Louis Mountbatten. You were betrayed by vacillation about how to seize the canal that lasted for over three months, thus putting the invasion at the same time as the Soviet invasion of Hungary. You were betrayed with the appointment of Stockwell as task force commander. You were betrayed by an operation with insufficient amphibious craft to quickly seize the canal and carry forward Operation Musketeer before any other protests mattered. The US warned Britain and France that they didn't support military force in regaining control of the canal. Regardless, the British, French, and Israelis secretly planned to do just that. After not supporting the operation to begin with, and being put in the position of supporting an operation to reimpose British and French colonialism on one hand and oppose Soviet colonialism on the other, the US had no other choice to oppose both. The British didn't "stand" with the US in Korea. It was an operation of the United Nations, and they were required to assist in Korea. The combined numbers of troops from the much smaller Commonwealth countries of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand equaled the number of British troops that served in the conflict. The number of US troops committed was 326,000 compared to the British contribution of about 40,000. The only aircraft on the ground from the Commonwealth came from Australia and South Africa. The RAF didn't contribute any aircraft except for a single Sunderland unit. The RN was the only service that had a major British commitment of aircraft. Your understanding of history seems to be colored by your vitriolic hatred of the United States. Given the fact you could write unironically that the US only gave Britain a "little help" from 1939 to 1942 suggests your hatred of the US runs deeper than the just the Suez incident.
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  918. BTW, the weirdly marked up Banshee in the picture at 51:15 is the result a naval pilot making his worst mistake - landing on the wrong carrier. In this case, it was a plane from Squadron 62 (VF-62) "Gladiators" from USS Coral Sea (CVB-43) after it had landed aboard Wasp (CV-18) in 1952. Deck crews of the "receiving" ship used chalk and water soluble paint to mark as many various humiliating words and phrases on the plane that would fit, forcing the errant pilot to fly back to his "home" carrier marked up so all could revel in his humiliation before his evidence of his mistake was removed. While this was all done in good humor, it was an effective lesson, since an extra plane aboard a loaded carrier in combat could be a real problem, especially a type of aircraft not normally part of the air group. This continued up until the days of low visibility paint and markings, as it was nearly impossible to remove the markings from that style of dull paint compared to the gloss blue of earlier fighters..
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  919.  @micnorton9487  Yes, places like Alaska, the Caribbean, and our Pacific islands depend on the Coast Guard as about the only emergency services. When it comes to orders about going out but not necessarily coming back, I think that apples ot all our uniformed services.
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  920. @UCdSarc1n55L1pgS__510qlA I agree. While it's fashionable to trash the RN as a shadow of its former self, it's still a powerful shadow. When Prince of Wales is completed, the RN will have two carrier task forces, something only the USN can match. How effective Chinese carrier task forces will be remains to be seen. The RFA has the training, ability, and experience to support all of the RN at sea. This is also something that can only be matched by the USN. I'd even posit that today's RN is the most effective since shortly after the end of WWII. [EDIT] I don't know why Youtube keeps trashing your name. This seems to be happening a lot lately but with no rhyme or reason.
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  921. Of the eight preserved US battleships, all but one (Texas) is a "modern" era ship. The Iowas were always considered ready reserve ships up until the mid-2000's. They were in excellent material condition when they were finally retired. The Navy knew that any plan to scrap the ships was unthinkable so they actively worked with the states and ultimate museum anchorages to preserve the ships, even to the point that the agreements with the museums was the ships had to be maintained in "as-delivered" condition and were subject to repossession by the Navy at a time of national need. Even though only one of the four was the namesake of a coastal state, the value of preservation as tourist attractions was already well in place by the 1990's Of the four South Dakotas, the two preserved ships (Alabama and Massachusetts) are named for coastal states that fought for their preservation. The two that were scrapped (South Dakota and Indiana) are inland states with nowhere to display the ships. Both states preserved many pieces of the ships before scrapping, and they are now displayed in suitable monuments in their respective states. The name ship of the North Carolina class is displayed at Wilmington NC. Starting from 1960, when the donation fo $331,000 collected by schoolchildren to purchase the ship, to being a self-supporting museum today, North Carolina has done a remarkable job of preserving her "Showboat". North Carolina was a donor ship for parts needed to renovate the Iowas when they were being refurbished in the 1980's. Unfortunately, many of her mechanical systems were removed at the time, along with the barbette of turret #1, but the parts live on in the Iowas. North Carolina is still a cosmetically beautiful ship and well worth the visit. This brings me to the shame of the state of Washington. While other states were already preserving or taking steps to preserve their ships, Washington simply didn't seem to care. At the same time that NC school kids were collecting pennies to buy their ship, the Washington legislature seemed to think the same $330,000 was an outrageous price and refused to fund the purchase. Vets attempted to get the same kind of schoolkids campaign going but, once again, no one seemed to care. The ship was decommissioned in June, 1960 and towed away for scrapping in May, 1961, probably a modern record between the two events. The ship's bell and a few other mementos are on display in the Bremerton Naval Museum, and that's only because of the efforts of the late Helen Devine, museum curator, digging through crates and boxes in a dusty warehouse in Olympia to find them and bring them to the museum. Other than this one corner of the museum, there's no real memorial to the ship, and certainly no memorial commensurate with the ship's historical value. Another move is underway to construct a proper memorial, but most of the ship's crew have passed on, and only some lonely naval historians and buffs have taken up the cudgel. The last Ship's Reunion was in 2005, and even the ship's website (http://www.usswashington.com/) is now mostly a mass of broken links. As you may be able to tell, I'm more than a little ill with the state of Washington and the shameful way they have treated "their" ship and the veterans who sailed on her. I've visited all the other battleships, and just thinking about the fate of Washington sets my teeth on edge.
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  922. :Lend Lease equipment of all kinds lost in combat was simply written off as the cost of making war, The only repayment expected was for equipment surviving the war. For example, we built and lent a large number of patrol frigates to the UK. Those that survived the war were completely worn out and built with British equipment, so the US didn't want them back. An agreement was worked out allowing that the UK was only responsible for 10% of the build cost of such ships. Demand for payment was deferred for many years to help the British rebuild their economy, and repayment plans were set up requiring only a small amount of what was owed being repaid each year. There were a number of conferences about setting prices for Lend lease goods, and they generally wrote down even more the cost. In the end, the US was repaid about 8% of what was lent, some through reverse Lend Lease and some though cash payments. IIRC, Britain repaid the last of the loans in 2006.
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  923.  @fernandomarques5166  There was also another major fire that caused casualties in 2012.
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  924.  @comandercarnis  They did the reverse engineering in 1942. The problem wasn't that it was too late, it was they didn't have the machine tools to manufacture parts to the tolerances demanded by the gun. They made something like 25 guns a year in 1943 and 1944 as test guns, but they mostly stopped trying by 1945 because they couldn't get them to run reliably. If they had, Japanese vessels would have had Bofors guns by late 1943.
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  925. I hope everyone is tolerating their time in prison as well as can be expected. I'm looking forward to a gradual opening up of at least the US economy over the next month. The high here in S Alabama reached 90 yesterday, so maybe the heat will at least make life difficult for the virus. The big issue in using the so-called "Persian Corridor" was expanding the marshalling yard capabilities and then constructing hundreds of miles of double tracks and increased length sidings to haul enough freight to come close to Arctic convoy tonnage, even with all the sinkings. When the British first took over operations of the Trans-Iranian Railway in 1941, the entire line had the capability of moving one 60 car freight train a day. Due to mostly the superhuman efforts of the Royal Engineers, the line was expanded to the point where it was handling up to 10 80 car freights a day. The most important problem once the line itself had sufficient capacity was where were the locomotives and freight cars (wagons) going to come from to move all the freight. Between the British and Americans, over 15,000 freight cars were built, 310 steam engines were constructed or diverted from British and American sources, and over 100 diesel-electric locomotives from the US were supplied for use on the difficult northern division. It was an engineering wonder, going over three mountain ranges, through 100 tunnels, with blasting heatmost of the year, and very little water. Diesel operations on the Trans-Iranian proved the efficiency and economy of the internal combustion engine. While this was great for the war effort, it was also the beginning of the end for our beloved steam engines.
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  926.  @gordonmac3616  Okay, I'll change it to the United Kingdom then. As far as I know, Scotland still isn't an independent country. And a spelling lesson for you. It's "Flow", not "Flo".
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  927. 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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  928. The stories of Japanese submarine have been thoroughly discredited. Postwar examination of Japanese naval records showed no sub within 900 miles of the battle. The Australian Navy never found evidence of any gunfire that didn't come from the Komoran.
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  929.  @Johnnycdrums  The Colt Mark 12 20mm cannon was designed for aerial combat and did fine in aircraft other than the Crusader. No other jet could pull as a high a G force maneuvers a Crusader, and the cannon feed mechanism couldn't keep up. It would have done better with a M39 revolver cannon since the feed wasn't subject to high G failures like the Mk 12, and the heavier shell was less likely to get sideways in the feed tray. Nevertheless, the light, high velocity round, with its larger bursting charge, was devastating to opponents when it scored hits. With its 1,000 rpm firing rate, a five second burst generally enough to bring down an opposing fighter. Its main weapon was the Sidewinder and HARM missiles, with only four air to air kills with the cannon. The Phantom's main advantage was its fighter-bomber role. There was no other naval aircraft with the load carrying ability of an F-4. Its biggest problem, ironically, was the lack of a built-in cannon and lead computing gunsight. This was finally solved with the F-4E carrying the excellent Vulcan cannon.
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  930.  @Cragified  Awnings are still in use today with naval vessels. Even with a/c, the sun in places like the Persian Gulf will rapidly heat up the hull without the help of awnings. It's also common to see sail-like structures mounted in front of hatches leading to non air conditioned spaces like engine rooms. These act as air scoops to direct more ventilating air below and at least reduce the tropical heat.
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  931.  @kemarisite  The US did a great job of propagandizing not only the B-17, which actually was in service at the outbreak of the war, but also the B-19, the Global Bomber. It too existed, but only one of them, and it was on show all over the country in the fall of 1941. We made quite a show of the Norden Bombsight as well, mostly by making sure there were many photos of B-17's guarded by heavily armed troops, and showing bombardiers taking the bombsights off the plane in heavy locked bags while being armed with .45's. There were even special bombproof magazines to store the bombsight when it was off the plane. The Norden Company itself engaged in intense self promotion while attempting to keep the bombsight itself secret. The US certainly believed its own hype. On December 2, 1941, the acting chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics enthusiastically wrote to the secretary of the Navy, “The Norden bombsight is considered to be the principal single factor of superiority which the air forces of this country possess over those of potential enemy countries.” By 1944, enough had fallen into German and Japanese hands from shot down wrecks that it was finally shown to the American public while still blurring out certain features. Most level bombing of moving ships was conducted from 12,000 to 15,000 feet since few Japanese antiaircraft weapons had accurate effective ceilings above about 12,000 feet. When the bombsight was working right and with a well trained bombardier, the Norden was no slouch. Out of a dozen bombs dropped in practice, ten could be placed with 50 feet of the center of the aim point. This may not have been accurate enough to always put a bomb on the deck, but it was close enough to cause damaging and sometimes fatal near misses. The problem was the Norden was so complex that, in the days of vacuum electronics, it needed constant maintenance and adjustment. It was just as difficult to train comptent bombsight maintainers as it was bombardiers, both requiring eighteen weeks to learn the trade. As the war intensified, those training periods went from 18 to 14 to 12 and finally to 10 weeks. Consequently, bombers were flying with improperly maintained bombsights and poorly trained bombardiers. It was that situation that contributed the poor reputation of the Norden at the end of the war. After the war, with improvements to the Norden and time to properly train maintainers and bombardiers, the Norden was able to achieve that 50 foot CEP again. It was still our standard bombsight in the B-47 and b-52, not being retired until 1967, when radar bombsights that were more accurate and easier to use had been developed. The Norden was neither magic or junk, and the Japanese did indeed fear the combination of the B-17 and the Norden, right up until the aluminum storm of B-29's, each dropping nearly the weight of an empty B-17 worth of bombs, over the homeland.
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  932. I don't know that there will ever be a 100% answer to this question. With so few survivors from the Bismarck, the usual answers from the surviving crew are gone, so it comes down to the observations of the torpedomen and gunners of the Rodney. On the plus side, Rodney reported no other salvoes fired with and arrival time matching the explosion observed on the Bismarck. on the negative side of the question, King George V was firing on a trajectory that was bringing plunging fire into the Bismarck. Her rounds were not being registered quite correctly due to a plotting table problem, so the exact time of arrival oln the Bismarck may have been within a few seconds of a torpedo hit, and plunging fire would resemble a torpedo hit. Drach is the expert on the RN, not me, so he may have better references than I do. My inclination is to believe the reported torpedo hit due the ability of the Rodney's radar to accurately register shell hits, and the lack of any salvoes fired with the same arrival time as the torpedo.
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  933. Thanks for answering my casemate question. An additional issue with casemates was the risk of flooding as ship speeds increased. Many navies had to move casemates up to main deck or even superstructure level to obviated flooding. I think it was the increasing use of heavy dual purpose batteries like the USN 5" and RN 5.25" guns that finally put an end to the casemate.
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  934.  @Drachinifel  I've done so much worse late at night. :-)
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  935. Holy Crap! Five hours this time? We need to have Drach and all of us quarantined more frequently. :-)
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  936. Wait, what date is this again...?
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  937. Yes. It was a hoax. None of the urban legend stuff ever happened.
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  938.  @rogerhwerner6997  Yes, just like the "dynamite" gun, it has looked far better on paper than it has as an experimental weapon. There are laws of physics that are against the rail gun, and the chances of it ever becoming an operational weapon is becoming less and less likely. As you say, there are other less costly and less risky weapons that will probably go into service long before the rail gun.
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  939. I think some ships do have either an unlucky name or events surrounding it, or were involved in an action where the ship had leadership problems that led to its sinking. The Indianapolis is one example. Given that it suffered the greatest loss of life on any single USN ship, one would expect that another cruiser would have taken her name in short order. Given the high level command bungling that was responsible for her sinking, the scapegoating and court martial of Captain McVay, and his subsequent suicide, it seems her name was best forgotten by Navy brass. It has only been the constant publicity and pressure on Indianapolis survivors and relatives that finally forced the Navy into commissioning another Indianapolis. The Navy then spat in the eye of these groups for a final time by bestowing the name of the Indianapolis on a Freedom class LCS, a relatively small and insignificant warship.
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  940.  @Ron52G  LOL. The RN could have used that concept when it came to arming the Tribals. They believed the original quad pom pom and two quad .50 Vickers mounts would be enough. This was actually a fairly heavy close in armament for the late 30's. It was let down by the slow practical rate of fire of the Vickers guns of only 150 to 200 rpm compared to the significantly more powerful water cooled Browning M2 at 450-500 rpm. Both were found to be near useless against the faster aircraft of 1942 and rapidly replaced by 20mm Oerlikon guns.. The quad 2 pdrs turned out to be not very effective as well. The original mounting only fired low velocity shells and there was never any tracer ammunition produced for the low velocity guns. The quad mountings required one crewmember to constantly turn a crank to fire the guns, somewhat like a Gatling gun. The British called this "controlled fire" as the crank mechanism only allowed one barrel at a time to fire. The RN was concerned that allowing the guns to fire freely would lead to them all firing simultaneously, causing mutual interference in flight and an unacceptable amount of vibration on the mount. The crank firing was their answer to this perceived problem, but it caused a rate of fire of only about 95 rpm per barrel. A quad 40mm Bofors firing automatically had a practical rate of fire of about 120 rpm per barrel while firing a heavier round at higher velocities. Some of the issues with the 2 pdr pom pom were more or less solved by 1942, but it was obvious the Bofors was a superior weapon by then. The RN would have replaced the 2 pdrs with Bofors guns but the rate of production in Britain was too low, and the US didn't have excess production capability until early 1944.
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  941. ​ Don White  Agreed, Don. I am constantly gratified at the well informed and articulate naval history buffs Drach consistently attracts. Well, except for one here, but there always has to be "that guy", it seems.
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  942. THanks. Another interesting video. I believe I've watched most of your videos now and haven't seen an episode covering the Sumner/Gearing class yet. Given the size of their class and their lifespan it seems like a good one to cover.
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  943.  @bkjeong4302  I said she served in useful roles, the main role being a target ship. I never said anything about her being necessary, nor did I mention fake radio signals. Do you have difficulty understanding written English?
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  944. You're lucky, Fluffy. I haven't even found enough to pay for the porthole glass. :-) Great name, BTW.
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  945.  @johngregory4801  Indeed, plus constant improvement in radars and fire control systems. One of the big advantages of a battleship compared to a light cruiser is the the length, space, and displacement to add new weapons and sensors without having stability problems. The battleship as a floating artillery platform saved tens of thousands of allied lives during the war, not to mention its role as a floating antiaircraft fortress as well. The Ibiblio site has hundreds of battle reports, after action details, and authoritative narratives of what happened during the war. I've read a bunch over the years and have a bunch more to go. It's a gold mine for anyone with an interest in naval history.
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  946.  @MattCellaneous  Excellent summary of the War of 1812 and the outcome.
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  947. I can only imagine the effect on German morale seeing these weird looking airplanes coming into cities and blowing up with no idea where the heck these things were coming from or what they were. Goring would have been in trouble with Hitler a lot sooner.
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  948. I have written about the Laconia incident previously. While the results of the sinking of Laconia and the later attack by a USAAF B-24 was terrible, and I'm in no way defending the ultimate decision to attack made by the pilots, there were a number of "fog of war" issues surrounding the entire incident. Please take the time to read The Origins of the Laconia Order at https://preview.tinyurl.com/sybm439. It gives a much clearer picture of what was happening before, during, and after the attack than most accounts. Drach, I have a read a lot about the Laconia Incident, as I know you have. I have never read in anything authoritative that the U-156 was attacked by a B-25. As far I know, it was that one B-24 that was the only US aircraft to attack her. An A-20, one of four flying escort for a Stratoliner carrying a British admiral, reported the day previous to the sinking of the Laconia , being fired on by two surfaced U-boats. None of the five B-25's dispatched to look for the U-boats made contact, and they were at the extreme end of their range in any case, so could not loiter in the area to look. The B-24 that ultimately carried out the attack was dispatched to try to find those two U-boats because it had the range to conduct a useful search. The pilots had no idea Laconia had been sunk or that she was even in the area. If you have more information on this B-25 attack, I'd like to have a link.
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  949.  @admiraltiberius1989  I'll put in a vote for Ching Lee. He's an underappreciated Admiral whose leadership and seamanship at Guadalcanal, threading his way through the burning wrecks of both navies while recognizing the near fatal risk to South Dakota, while taking on most of the Japanese fleet at Guadalcanal. He is my favorite because he was the only admiral in 1942 that really appreciated the tactical uses of radar. He took several radar courses with his enlisted men in 1940 and understood the SG radar as well as his specialists, down to being able to suggest what tubes to replace when the SG was acting up. HIs being able to look at a PPI and make a decision in seconds probably saved South Dakota when she was effectively blind. He remained a competitive rifleman right up to the start of the war, and his understanding of marksmanship helped him with naval gunfire as well. His death at age 57 in 1945 cut short what would have likely been a distinguish postward career.
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  950. Nuno, that is the biggest load of socialist claptrap I've ever read. rationalism above the actual wants and needs of the people is exactly how we arrived at this juncture. You have swallowed the hook of Cultural Marxism whole from your communist professors. I hope you come to your senses someday. In the meantime, I hope this comment s preserved as a memorial to you for any employer looking to hire you as architect.
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  951. Rua 178, you can now go to sleep in New York City and wake up in London and not be sure where you are because the architectural styles are so similar. It;s only the bizarre and ugly buildings that have become the icons of both cities.
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  952. Harold, no they aren't. Palmer Woods has constant security patrols that will identify anyone driving or walking through the neighborhood. This started because of a spike in burglaries and muggings. Some of what Charlie showed in the second half started about three blocks from Palmer Woods. Sherwood Forest isn't as wealthy as Palmer Woods and I don't think they have the same kind of neighborhood association as Palmer Woods. What they do have is homeowners, primarily black, who will call the police if they see someone who doesn't belong in the neighborhood. Police respond a lot quicker because they know those people will show up in court to testify if needed. In Detroit, it's a battle between the law abiding and law breakers more than black vs. white.
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  953. Imagine living in public housing next to the El tracks in Brownsville in winter with snow piled up and people parking wherever they please so you can hardly drive down a street. I'd rather just swallow a bullet.
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  954.  @Wëpälkatar  We live in a world with less poverty, better education, more political freedom, fewer wars, and generally better housing than at any time in human history. Before the coronavirus hit, more people were employed than at any time in history. Yes, not everyone shares equally, and some people will always suffer regardless of what system we live in, but, in general, all of us as a general rule are much better off than we've ever been. We have the ability to communicate with people almost anywhere in the world. Many have electricity, clean water, and generally have access to healthcare that has never been better at any time in our history. Most people have access to some form of transport, and many, even in the second world, own a car. That allows us to live and work almost anywhere we choose. What time in human history would you rather live in? If there's not such a time, stop whining and start making things better for those who don't have all the things you have.
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  955. Are Paris police still armed? Seems like that might be answer to rioting and the lack of social distancing.
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  956. I remember reading an article in Strategic Studies Quarterly that the 2013-2015 upgrades were a total skin off rebuild so they can examine frames parts for corrosion or cracking. We have 76 B-52's in service, and a surprising 80% still have the original frame members. There were some cracking problems in the early 00's so every frame component that needed it got replaced. Even after the rebuilds, the majority of frames are still original. The combination of overbuilt components from the 50's, before bleeding edge computer designs, and the relatively few hours each flies during a typical year, are why they are still in the air. The other issue is the cost of a brand new bomber. A B-2 cost $6 billion compared to an average of $500 million for each B-52. $500 million is still a lot of money, but not bad considering we are getting what are, in essence, 12 new bombers for the price of one B-2.
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  957. Yet my brother drag raced his '73 Vega with the original engine for fours years without a single significant failure and no rust. I guess it was the luck of the draw.
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  958. My dad's relatives are from Pulaski County, next one over from Carroll. It's a poor area, and a man's honor was about all he had. Cross him on that and things end up like the courthouse shootings. I still heard people talking about the Allen's when I was visiting, and a lot of it was that they did what they had to do. Not a good place to go around kissing girls that don't belong to you.
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  959.  @bigblue6917  I don't think a simple word will fuel ISIS, but i agree it's just ignorant, and probably coming from someone who does this on every video he comes across.
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  960.  @martymethuselah  The Germans had no idea what the cargo was of any ship n Bari harbor. They launched the attacks to damage allied shipping being used in the invasion of Italy. The allies had no intention of preemptively using the mustard gas bombs being carried in bombs along with other ammunition on the SS John Harvey. It was being shipped to Europe due to reports the Germans would use gas to stop the invasion of France and Germany. Roosevelt had already stated the allies would respond in kind to any German use of gas, so the bombs were being stored in Italy in case such a response became necessary. It was despicable that wartime secrecy prevented doctors treating victims from knowing about the mustard gas released by the destruction of John Harvey, but this is the kind of thing that happens in wartime. The reports of what happened at Bari were declassified in 1959 and a book was written about it in 1967
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  961.  @Jay-vr9ir  If you were in third class then accommodations were a lot more sparse. Even second class was a big step up, with most cabins having at least shared baths, and many having en suite baths. My parents weren't rich, but my dad had been saving money for this trip since he had mustered out of the Navy in 1946. He liked the ocean but, after serving nearly 3 years on PT boats, he was never going to sea again without sailing on the best.
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  962.  @brucesmith54  Hurry over to NowThis, Bruce. There's another installment of "Orange Man Bad" coming on. Since Bruce is depending on the VA for healthcare, I just hope Bruce makes it to 73. Don't worry about those Nigerian nurses and Pakistani doctors. They will take good care of Bruce.
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  963.  @eamonnprunty  You don't "get" 57mm from six pounder. It's not a direct conversion, but based on knowing the shell weight, bore of a gun, and type of service, and then looking at a chart. There's a handy chart at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_standard_ordnance_weights_and_measurements. You'll notice several like the 76.2mm guns where one is a 15 pounder and one a 17 pounder. That was done because, even though the bore and weight of shell is the same, the two shells don't have the same length and are not interchangeable. Giving one a "pounder" weight different than the other obviates mixups in the supply chain.
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  964. The Cavalla was one of the first WWII submarines to have a periscope mounted version of the SJ radar. This allowed Cavalla to only have the periscope above the sea surface about 20 seconds before finding an accurate fix on the Shokaku. It was able to enter the fix data in the TDC and have a more accurate fire control solution that in earlier subs. Because the position of the Shokaku was so accurately fixed by radar before the torpedoes were fired, Captain Kossler was able to use the radar again when he searched for the Shokaku. When the ship was nowhere to be seen in any of the predicted ranges from the radar, he could be fairly confident the carrier had actually sunk. It was the first time in the war that a submarine wasn't solely dependent on visual ranging through the periscope to find and sink a ship. Later improvements allowed the radar to work as far as 3 meters below the surface so there was no need to have the periscope break the surface and leave a distinctive "feather" behind.
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  965. Even assuming the PPK was a reliable gun, the two most common versions, in .32 ACP and .380, were just not powerful enough rounds to have sufficient stopping power for police use. I don't know why British police continued use them for so long. The .32 has a muzzle energy of just 133 ft pounds while the .380 has 200 ft pounds. By comparison, the .38 special, the standard police round for decades in the US, has 249 ft pounds of energy, while the .357 magnum has a whopping 624 ft pounds. I carried a gun for 27 years as a police officer and felt the switch from .357 revolvers to 9mm semiautos was a giant step backwards.
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  966.  @peterk3130  Since I linked the article, there's a good chance I read it. There are many more about this shameful time than this one. Atlee was about to do more than "suggest" the Poles return. There were active plans to force them to return to the waiting arms of the Polish communists and the troops of the USSR. There was more than one trade union harrasing the Polish troops, calling them fasciitis and threatening their families. It was only the uproar caused by the rest of the decent British people that stopped this plan and more less forced Labour into letting them resettle in Britain. The US and Britain had already decided by the time of Yalta to let the Stalin establish hegemony over Eastern Europe. It wasn't because "there was little that we could do". It's because communists and communist sympathizers in the US and British delegations had convinced Roosevelt and Churchill there was little we could do. The same crowd convinced Truman not to use the threat of the atomic bomb at Potsdam to bring Stalin into line over Poland. There was plenty we could have done. We just didn't do it.
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  967. No, you're not. Reason just seems to attract people that have been self isolating long before coronavirus.
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  968.  @af146983  Trump is just not libertarian enough for Reason. Actually, no one is.
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  969. Thomas Jefferson, 1787. It was his assumption we should have at least small revolutions once every 20 years. We are past our expiration date on that.
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  970.  @brenthunter5078  Spent a lot of years on the job did you? 27 years for me. Let me give you some real life realities of police work. Vagrancy isn't a crime and hasn't been for about twenty years now. Same with loitering except in very specific instances. Like around schools or other places children frequent. Do you think cops carry around tape measures so they can tell if you're exactly 100 feet, one inch away from that doorway? Open container laws on the street? Never, not one. I've written tickets for open containers but no one goes to jail for that alone. You actually think cops can circle the block and randomly pick out someone to frisk, black or white? The first question from the defense is going to be "Officer, what was the articulable suspicion that caused you to stop and frisk my client?", and you'd better have a good answer. The reason why less "richies" to use your term, get stopped is they aren't doing anything suspicious. It's as simple as that. In the hood, there's a good chance we know the guy we're stopping because of his past criminal record and he did something suspicious, like toss something behind him when he saw the cops or started reaching around in his waistband. It might be because we've had a call that a person matching the person we stopped was doing things like checking car doors or engaging in retail transactions in the middle of the street while blocking traffic. "Richies" don't do things like that. We don't "stick our hands in your pockets" We pat it down from the outside. How big a joint do you usually carry? The chance of feeling a normal size joint in a pat down is near zero. Frankly, even if we did, we didn't give a shit. We had way better things to do than arrest someone for that. In many jurisdictions, it's only a citable offense anyway, just like a traffic ticket. And we patrol every area looking for people who are doing suspicious things. It's our job, and it's a metric ton more likely there are people doing just that in the hood than out there on Ritchie Street. I don't know why you're trying to run cover for criminals, especially minority criminals. Okay, yes I do, it's the old internet virtue signaling again, and who better to show you dislike than cops? You'll get about 50 likes compared to one old fart like me trying to set you straight. Seriously, you have no idea what you're talking about. Here's a way to get an idea. Go to your local police department and sign up for a ride along. Spend eight hours watching what it's like doing actual police work. And yes, there are bad cops and times things go wrong but, in the time of body cams, dash cams, and every bystander within shouting distance pulling out their cell phone in hopes of a viral video and big money from some thug website, do you think every cop on the street doesn't know his name and what he did can't become a household name in like eight hours?
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  971.  @gibbletronic5139  I guess the concept of a raid rather than landing in force might have had a chance although what happened in Dieppe might have been the same fate in England for the Germans. If there were specific objectives like blowing up bridges or dams, that may have been doable with planning and good luck. I suspect the Germans didn't have much faith in their skills at amphibious landings, and the experience with paratroopers at Crete in may of 1941 would have put paid to the idea of large scale deployment of paratroopers. It's an interesting concept, and one that may have worked if the Germans had the like of Admiral Yamamoto on their staff.
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  972.  Rob M  You can take your degree in military history and go somewhere that people believe you. I sure don't. I'm done with you.
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  973. Tore Østgård  Thanks for the correction. Indeed, it should have been HE rather than AP. I was temporarily think HC shells instead. My understanding was the secondary batteries inflicted damage on the destroyers, and that damage, along with the sinking of the Blucher, is what led to the retreat. I imagine the fear of sailing into a minefield also played a part.
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  974.  @johnharker7194  I don't know they squandered it all on the NHS, but the UK wobbled between socialist/outright communist governments ], back to conservatives, and then back to labour/socialist governments again. The British people wanted to play both sides against the middle, appealing to socialists to give them stuff and to the Conservatives when Labour was about to get totally out of control. It worked up until the late 70's, and then the piper want to get paid.
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  975. It looks like the meter did have a cable connection, so I'm sure the meter did measure mileage, just like your speedometer. How exactly did a person get a job as a taxi driver? Sounds like it was a plum job, so I assume there was competition for the job, It sounds like Soviet taxi drivers were the same as taxi drivers the world over, All of them can do a lot more than just drive from one place to another.
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  976. Hundreds of helicopter pilots and crews were sickened, and some died, so a temporary cask of sand and a concrete slurry could be built. There was no other way to do this, and most of the helicopter crews actually volunteered. They were told that dropping the mixture from helicopters was the only way to prevent a much bigger disaster. It wasn't a lie, and these men sacrificed themselves as the true heroes of the Soviet Union.
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  977. The change in value form 10 "old" rubles to one new ruble was really a tactic to try to punish the "Fartsovshchik", those involved in the so-called second economy of Russia. All the transactions were in cash and, as you say. most rubles were converted to West German marks. Some were held out for purchases just in country, and some were held out for blat, the system of favors that really ran the economy. When the new money came out, many Fartsovshchiks were bankrupted. Being a Fartsovshchik in the Soviet Union was dangerous, especially under Stalin, who regularly had some of them rounded up and shot. It was also profitable, and the Soviet consumer economy really couldn't run without the black market. The official exchange rate was just a number that could be published in Pravda and talked about on Soviet radio and TV. Almost no one ever got dollars or marks at anywhere near the official rate. BY 1980, the second economy was operating as a dual economy with the state run economy as Soviet leadership decided it was better to regulate and tax it rather than continue to run it underground. .
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  978. That is a great video. How old were when your parents and grandparents passed away? I can tell by tone of your voice you really loved them and they loved you. We tend not to spend a lot of time on the parents and grandparents now. They just show up part way though our lives then pass on.
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  979. The West doesn't have the tradition of grand spectacles like the Moscow May Day parades. It seems as if these things only survive in a tightly controlled authoritarian regime. Given the choice, how many people would like to spend their holiday marching around Red Square waving flags? North Korea is about the last country on earth that can still pull off this kind of thing.
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  980. Stalin was terrified that Tito would end up as the leader of the "Non-Aligned" countries, leading already rebellious countries like Hungary and Czechoslovakia away from the direct control of Moscow, forming a third power bloc in world affairs. The story is that Stalin was preparing to invade Yugoslavia just before his death.
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  981. Or maybe even the "Led Zeppelin Raid"?
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  982. It wasn't overreacting. What wasn't mentioned is the USSR issued an ultimatum in November, 1958 to the three western powers to withdraw their troops from West Berlin. The date of ultimatum was pulled back several times but reissued for December 31, 1961 after a tense summit in Vienna in April,1961. The wall was built in August, 1961, and tensions between the west and the USSR had never been higher. We had been increasing tank and troop strength in West Berlin since 1959 and had over 400 tanks available compared to less than 100 in 1960. The Soviets actually sent 33 tanks to the border with Checkpoint Charlie because they knew we could face off with them with many more if we chose to.
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  983. You are quite incorrect. General von Choltitz was a Francophile that had spent time in France and Paris between the wars. He had a genuine affection for France and the French people. In addition, he believed Hitler was insane, and his orders were no longer operative. He had 17.000 troops in Paris and could have done great damage to Paris if was in the mind to do so. Instead, he surrendered to prevent more deaths on both sides and save Paris from destruction.
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  984. The Nazis had collected so much loot, and conditions in immediate postwar Germany and surrounding Axis countries were so chaotic, that it was inevitable that Allied troops would be involved in looting. For accounts I've read from US and British soldiers involved in looting, their view was so much loot was available that a few things stolen here and there would hardly be missed. That would have been true if looting was confined to troops in direct contact with the loot and they just pilfered a few gold coins or some silverware. That wasn't the case, however, as the US and British commanders in the region did little to stop the looting. The supposed reason was this was all Nazi owned loot, and troops deserved a little of it after risking their lives fighting against the Nazia across Europe. No one took into account that a large portion of the loor was stolen from civilians.That evolved into a full scale theft and racketeering operation, with Army assets being used to transport stolen goods from Germany and Austria to more friendly neutrals like Spain, extending across the Channel to England and Ireland, and then transshipments on to the US. Bribes were being paid all the way from top commanders down to black stevedore troops to keep the operation going. The whole operation lasted almost a year before finally being shut down by special investigators from the Inspector General's Office, although even some of them were later arrested for at least aiding the operation. There are persistent rumors the bribery extended all the way to Eisenhower's staff if not to Eisenhower himself. It was and is a shameful organized crime operation within the Army, and one that still needs further investigation.
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  985. Great video. I've never heard of this incident before. I'd sure hate to be the hastily assembled crew of a Cromwell going up against a trained crew in a Centurion.
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  986.  Steve Barclay  Yes, well, it would be nice if you had a PM with balls, at least figuratively. If she had held the EU's feet to the fire the UK would be getting a lot better deal. Regardless, a hard Brexit is better than no Brexit. I've already been through the "If we elect Trump we'll all die" thing here, and my take on the remoaners is they are cut from the same European leftist cloth.
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  987. So what actually did happen to this building?
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  988. Jesus H Christ on a Skateboard. The women with purple hair have even invaded Stossel TV...
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  989.  @OneTrippin  LOL. Did you ever work in a family business? I kind of doubt it. My family owned a bakery. I was mostly paid in donuts and pocket change until I was 17, when I got an actual paying job elsewhere.
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  990. Conductors don't "toot" the horn, Mr. Mayor. The horn is sounded by the engineer. The amount of traffic goes up and down on the Lakewood line, but 6 trains a day would be a lot. Back when the Nickel Plate owned the line, it was double tracked, used steam engines until 1961, and had about 40 trains a day. The railroad was there before the houses. People in previous generations learned to live with train noise. In the days of steam engines and jointed rail, the noise was much worse. Some of you sound like snowflakes that just noticed there was a railroad crossing next to your house. Grow up.
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  991.  Mary Murdock  I looked up psychotic person and, son of a gun, there was your name and picture. You need to lose about 50 pounds and stop shopping for clothes at the Goodwill.
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  992. Jeinho, reread my post and see if you can guess who my two friends are. I always do carry pepper spray so I can show a continuum of force before using deadly force. A taser in this situation is worthless. It's only useful against one person while pepper spray can disperse a crowd.
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  993. Pepper spray, the great equalizer....
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  994.  @Weekenday  I hope she'll be okay. A fractured hip at 91 is a tough deal.
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  995.  Hoghs  I have a Norinco copy of an Ithaca 37 bought before the Norinco ban. It's a very well made and finished gun. I've put at least 500 rounds through it over the years with no failures or breakages.
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  996. Dang. Do you have guards around that display when it's in public? Very professional looking execution.
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  997.  @Schmidt54  My high school German is pretty rusty but Schlegel is usually something like a chicken drumstick and Milch is, pretty obviously, milk. How that combines in German seems to not have a direct English equivalent.
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  998. Amazon is selling the book for $30 plus $4 shipping, not a bad price for a niche book like this one.
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  999. No, buying guns is like any other collectible. You concentrate on what you know and buy those rather one each of every collectible gun. All collectibles will have a volatile price action so they shouldn't be more than 20% of a portfolio. I could buy an MP43 for about $500 in 1960, a brand new Colt .45 for $52.50, or a Boys anti tank rifle with all the accessories and seven extra mags for $110. Not a bad investment for any of them.
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  1000.  @bikecommuter24  S&W Model 10 revolvers were standard Air Force issue from about 1950 until the early 90's. Everyone from pilots to the Air Police carried them. The Aircrewman wasn't a sidearm. It was a survival pistol packed in parachute packs, later replaced by the AR-7 .22 caliber takedown rifle.
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  1001. Dunno. I'm just looking for an authoritative answer.
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  1002. It's quite a chestful. Actually typical for Russian generals, just that Zhukov had more than the next general down the line. The top generals actually had orderlies that did nothing but get the uniforms cleaned and pressed and put the medals on whatever dress uniform the general would be wearing if it was some formal occasion. Generals didn't haul around that chestful of decorations every day. For soldiers with the amount of medals and awards Zhukov received in his long career, that was a four or five hour job. It wasn't just a matter of pinning them back on, they had to be arranged in a precise order and lined up with the most important medals and awards first. The orderlies were chosen because they had an eye for detail, had learned the Soviet medals and awards system, and, presumably, because they had strong fingers.
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  1003.  @PurityVendetta  Yes, the rule was to fky to the setting sun. Once you're over the Atlantic, the only large landmass is Florida to the east. The problem this time is Lt's Taylor believed the island chain was the Keys when it was most likely the Bahamas Flying to the setting sun if he was over the keys would just put him out in the Gulf. A few minutes of map calculation of fuel and time would have shown him he couldn't have flown as far south as the Keys, but he was responsible for five other pilots plus his own career, so panic set in. With enough panic, all reason goes out the window. It was a sad event, but it wasn't the first, and it won't the last, at least until everything flying are robotic drones.
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  1004.  @jwenting  The video at 1:10 would suggest otherwise. Tokaimura was established in 1889, long before the JCO plant.
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  1005.  @jamespfp  Pretty amazing for the 20's, and led directly to FSK and PSK for we amateurs. The only problem was the large bandwidth and slow speeds. Attempts to send faster speeds really hogged the bandwidth, but it was only system that could remotely print out a message. I'm sure there were many errors when messages were sent by CW under poor conditions and we had to depend on humans operators to get it all right while it was in code. I know I couldn't do it.
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  1006.  @michaelmoorrees3585  I will bow to your superior knowledge of titanium tetrachloride. I had to look up the stuff to begin with. :-)
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  1007.  @williammurdoch468  My first ten years were in Catholic schools, back when they had the deserved reputation offering a superior education, at least to those planning to go to college. Public schools back then still offered a good education, just not expecting students to perform at the same levels demanded by the nuns. I was lucky to have Mr. Harrison, a "lay" teacher and a navy vet, as my history teacher for two years. If he was around today, God rest his soul, I suspect he'd be doing the same sorts of videos as Drach. They would have been a heck of a collab.
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  1008.  @Drachinifel  Indeed, and it seemed to take the USN longer than most to to discover this obvious fact. It wasn't until the 1913 Pennsylvania class that the casemates were finally raised to a position where they could be fought in most seas and were less of a danger of flooding the ship. It was also the first USN dreadnought that came off the ways without that most ridiculous of casemate positions, directly over the stern, looking for all the world like some misplaced simian proboscis. :-)
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  1009.  @lawrencewestby9229  You have to look at on overhead plan view of the ship to understand cross deck firing. From the side, it appears the superstructure obstructs the rotation of the wing turrets more than it really did. The structures were sharply angled as they got closer to the deck edge and the barrels of each wing turret. Even with that, the forward turret usually had to elevate the barrels ten or so degrees to clear the forward superstructure as it swung to the cross deck position. The opposite turret was only effective through a range of twenty to thirty degrees before the barrels either fouled the superstructure or blast damage was intolerable. Wing turrets were an attempt to save on armor weight and hull length, but actual experience showed the whole concept was unworkable, so they rapidly fell out of favor.
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  1010. Although it didn't cause their ships to explode, the poor quality of propellants and poor manufacturing tolerances of Italian ordinance procurement before WWII essentially made Italian heavy units worthless during the war.
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  1011.  @photoisca7386  I'm pretty sure you have more to contribute to this topic than I do with the amount of time you spent in research and your visits to Bletchley Park. I'd give my eye teeth to go there. Unfortunately, living across the pond and reaching the age where overseas travel has gotten increasingly difficult, it's not something that's going to happen. Continue to take advantage of all the things that are available to you there.
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  1012. Dang! I must have gone to bed about five minutes before the Drydock came out. Outstanding content as usual. As to the the Japanese naval defeat, I'd add a few additional reasons; 1. Lack of effective radar actually getting into service. The Japanese did develop reasonably effective radars between the Army and Navy. The problem was the Japanese military realized the pivotal role of radar for fire control, in particular, much too late. By the time they did, the homeland was being reduced to rubble by air attack, so newer radar was only being produced in small numbers, and the number of ships that could use them was being reduced to a smaller and smaller number, 2. Lack of understanding of centralized fighter control and combat air patrols. The IJN never developed an effective equivalent to the Combat Information Center, and the lack of effective radar and poor understanding of how to conduct a CAP caused Japanese ships to be constantly jumped by allied aircraft. 3. Never developing a decent light AA gun. The 25 mm gun was, by far, the worst light AA weapon of any navy in the Pacific, and it was never significantly improved over the course of the war. The IJN knew of and had samples of the Oerlikon and Bofors guns quite early on in the war. Japanese industry never had the machine tools capable of sufficient tolerances to develop the Bofors gun into a reliable weapon. The IJN believed, quite wrongly, that their 25 mm gun was equal to the Oerlikon gun, and they had the manufacturing of the 25 mm gun down pat. It was a classic example of fighting a war with what you have, not what you wished you have. The lack of radar gunfire control and off-mount directors just made things even worse. 4. Rapidly improving quality of allied air carrier aircraft. The development of the F6F gave the USN at least a comparable aircraft to the IJN and, once the Marines finally proved to the USN the F4U was a good carrier aircraft, had a plane far superior to anything available to the IJN. If the war had gone on for another six months, the IJN would have faced the F8F Bearcat, a truly fearsome aircraft compared ot anything the IJN had. Add in the Seafire once the British Pacific Fleet got involved and the IJN lost any chance of being able to overcome allied air attacks. 5. Never having an understanding of the problems if supplying all their many island outposts, and assuming the allies would attack every one of them. That caused large amounts of soldiers and sailors dedicated to maintain these non-strategic islands, combined with the US adoption of island hopping, maent large numbers of Japanese just slowly starved to death as their fortified islands were bypassed and eventually were left far behind enemy lines. 6. Never understanding why attacking merchant shipping was of prime importance, and never understanding convoy warfare. Right up until the end of the war, Japanese subs continued to allow merchant ships to pass so they could conserve torpedoes for warship attacks. Most Japanese shipping was still unescorted single ships until late in the war, and by the time the Japanese did start convoying merchant ships. most of their large merchant ships had been sunk. They were then stuck trying to use large numbers of coastal freighters as oceangoing vessels, making convoys that much more difficult. On top of that, the IJN never developed very good escort ships, and never had enough of them in any case. These are just the issues I could think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more.
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  1013.  @bcoop1701  I need to dig out my book on Japanese fleet submarines. I remember reading this, and I think it was in that book, but many of my books are still packed away in boxes, so I need to find it. As soon as I do, I'll post a reply, either with a reference, or as just another sign I'm slowly losing my mind. :-)
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  1014. While a lot of the theoretical work on an atomic bomb was done in Britain, the industrial work needed to come up with a workable bomb was far beyond what the British could do at the time without affecting their conventional armament programs. It was the same issue with testing. The UK didn't have a lot of land where they could test bombs, and it wouldn't have been easy to do it in the secrecy achieved in the US. Even with the massive resources thrown at the project by the US, it was a close run thing, with only two workable bombs produced by August 1945. If the Japanese didn't surrender, it would have been at least another year before two more bombs could have been produced and put in service. I haven't seen any kind of timeline for the British producing their own bombs, but I imagine it would have been at least 1947 for the first one.
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  1015.  @Temp0raryName  I understand the myriad causes of the unreliability of the Mark 14 torpedo when it was fired from a torpedo tube. My point here was none of those causes was the warhead itself and, given the right physics of incoming shells, they blew up just fine.
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  1016. They were the infamous Mark 14, but they had no trouble exploding with the proper amount of impact. It was the pistols in the warheads that were defective, not the warheads themselves. It was only by shear luck they she could take a hit directly on her torpedo racks and not suffer a devastating and probably fatal explosion.
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  1017. Was this class the first to have four triple turrets located on the centerline? I can't think of an earlier one, but I'm probably forgetting something.
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  1018. The Florida was long scrapped by the time of Pearl Harbor. The Utah had most of her antiaircraft weapons covered by wooden and steel boxes to protect them from the effects of practice bombing being done to the ship. Since it wasn't meant to be a combat ship, the most important thing was to protect the weapons so they'd not be damaged and last longer in training. All the machine guns were dismounted and stored below. What little ammunition there was for the machine guns was in locked magazines, and the CO and XO were both ashore on leave. The first torpedo hit the ship at 0801, only one minute into the attack, with the second hitting almost simultaneously. The deck was covered in two layers of loose 6" x 12" timbers for protection against practice bombs. By 0805, the ship had already taken on a 40 degree list, and the officer in charge ordered the crew to the high side of the list so they wouldn't get trapped under all these falling timbers. By 0812, the ship was lying on its side, and the only thing the surviving crew could do was get off the ship as quickly as possible. Ironically, even though many crewmen couldn't get to life jackets, all those now floating timbers acted as liferafts and saved many lives. Japanese aircraft were still strafing the ship while all this was going on. Not a single gun was ever brought into action.
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  1019. @Jurassic Aviator You know that carriers have other roles than anti shipping, right? Those missiles don't do you much good when you have troops on the ground and they need close air support. And what do you think is the longest range shipborne anti shipping missile in active Chinese service? Control of the South China Sea will require carrier task forces, and the PLAN is nowhere near ready to work those up. They need carriers at least as good as what India has, and they are starting to build up their force. They face threats from Japan, with two 27,000 ton helicopter carriers being converted to operate the F-35. Their historical enemy Russia now has one carrier in service with plans to build at least one more. China has more than the US to worry about..
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  1020.  @Cragified  Indeed, we had several Brooklyn class cruisers that lost or nearly lost their bows and were saved by the armored raft. However, any additional hits doomed the ship a shown by the sinkings of the Helena and General Belgrano (ex USS Phoenix). It seems that the three turrets forward created a hull weakness much like the ASDIC compartment did in the Leanders. Any torpedo hit in that section of the ship was likely to cause catastrophic and sometimes fatal damage. Your guess about the last hours of the Sydney are as good as mine. I've seen those pictures before and am still amazed at the marksmanship of the German gunners. Three of four 6" turrets must have been hit and put out of action in the first minute or so of the battle, and it appears that 4" guns were hit within the same time period. The Komoran was large enough to carry two rangefinders and an early type of director control on the bridge and poop deck. These may have accounted for the rapid and accurate shooting from the ship.
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  1021.  @Johnnycdrums  The whole concept of naval air defense has undergone wholesale changes since the days of the Crusader. That major threat now are incoming missiles, not aircraft, so antimissile systems combines whit theater ballistic missiles for offense are how a real war will be fought. Aircraft like the Hornet are ordinance delivery systems with a secondary self-defense capability. The one area where aircraft still play major role is defense of amphibious landing areas since attack by aircraft is the mostly likely problem. Close air support of troops within range is the second major job. The Super Hornet excels at these roles while at the same time serving the same "bomb truck" role as the Phantom. Even when the F-35 overcomes all its teething problems, it will never displace the Super Hornet from the tactical roles at which it excels. Certainly no one in 1959 could have anticipated that 60 years later, a single seat aircraft with good air to air performance would be carrying a bomb load greater than a B-29.
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  1022. I had a very old DOS computer naval gunfire simulator called Action Stations! that I ran on an original PC-XT running under DOS 3.3, as vaguely recall now. It was one of the better naval warfare game that used the mathematics from the USN Maneuver and Fire Rules papers from the interwar period right up until the end of WWII. You could thus use fire control protocols from right after then end of WWI onward. I think the game was published in 1989 or 1990 and was loaded on a grand total of three double density floppy disks. It was fiendishly difficult, but you could simulate the results of something like a Texas class battleship engaging the IJN Kirishima using the fire control tools from 1925 right up to the Iowas fighting the Yamato in 1945. One of the criticisms of the game was the hit percentage was too high but the author (whose name I've completely forgotten) stated he had to "fudge" the results for a typical eight hour engagement or a single ship wasn't likely to ever achieve a hit probability of more than 5% during an interwar game. Thus, you always attacked with every ship you could lay your hands on or engagements would always end with both sides breaking off the engagement due to battle damage and each expending all their ammunition. It wasn't until the advent of radar GFCS and mechanical firing computers that the 5% hit probability ever got substantially higher. It was a great game that allowed you and other players to fight each other in a much more sophisticated form of the old Battleship board game. My friends and I wasted many a man month playing that game.
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  1023. I also can't locate a picture right now, but I believe the USS John S McCain got a temporary coat of white paint when she made a number of port visits in 2008 to commemorate the centennial of the original voyage of the the Great White Fleet.
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  1024. I wish Drach had been the one that did arrive rather than our Chinese visitor...
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  1025. As long as the Bismarck didn't strike her colors, what else would you expect the RN to do? She was still making way, and the British couldn't just sail off and leave her. All the lookouts were ordered to report any sign of Bismarck's colors being struck or the showing of a white flag immediately. She had reported to German by coded message she was going to fight until the last shell, and that's exactly what she did.
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  1026.  @Drachinifel  The best original source I've been able to find is at https://maritime.org/doc/label/index.htm#pg27. Section 20 lays out exactly how port and starboard mounts are to be numbered. It's from 1936, but USN numbering hasn't changed since then. There is more information from original sources at https://maritime.org/doc/guncat/cat-0018.htm and a secondary but generally reliable source athttp://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/Gun_Data.php. You are probably aware of these. From the same Navweaps source there's a diagram of German battleship main battery designations at http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-062.php.
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  1027. A correction to the USN mount designations. The way they are pronounced are the opposite of what i think you said. A 51 mount was always pronounced "Five-One", not "Fifty-One". The secondary mount numbers were even numbers to port and odd numbers on the starboard side. It was a handy shorthand since Mount 51 would always be the most forward 5"/38 mount on the starboard side. Once the USN developed the 3" semi automatic twin mounts, the same scheme applied to them with a "3" rather that a "5" as the first number.
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  1028. Poor guy. I hope your chest is feeling better Q&A Please tell us about the relatively obscure RN class of Ocean Boarding Vessels. Depending on how they're counted there were either 18 or 19 of them, and most of them didn't have much success. Why so many ships and what was the reason why the RN thought they needed these?
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  1029.  @bskorupk  The only real difference between an unprotected cruiser and a destroyer before WWI was the cruiser was designed more for overseas colonial service while destroyer was designed for fleet protection. By the time the destroyer had grown to the size of small light cruisers, the term "unprotected cruiser" had fallen out of favor, and large destroyers started to be called sloops, frigates, and leaders. The USN recognized the crossover had really occurred in 1943 when the French Destroyer " Le Fantastique" at 434 feet, 3,500 tons, and five 5.4" guns was large enough to earn the light cruiser designation when it was refitted 1943 with eight 40mm Bofors and ten 20mm guns before being added to USN fleet.
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  1030.  @AdamMGTF  You're welcome, but don't sell the average RN bloke short when it comes to inventiveness. MTB/MGB crews operating out of Bombay and Malta were renown for how quickly they could strip a captured merchant ship clean of supplies and weapons like the Breda 13.2 mm machine guns much prized by RN crews. I have no doubt RN crews left to their own devices in the Pacific could have become just as adept at scrounging. We also can't forget that without the purchase of that first Scott-Paine motor torpedo boat from England for the "Plywood Derby", it's doubtful the USN would have had more than a few inferior quality PT boats available by the outbreak of war.
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  1031. The captain (and naval commanders in general) had two big problems with the design. The worst was the ship carried 30 shells composed of "desensitized blasting gelatin", a combination of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin. The were only desensitized to the extent this volatile mixture was somewhat protected by their brass or steel shells and fired using compressed air. The ammunition was carried in a magazine with about an inch of "armor" which was really just sheet iron. Estimates from amorers were even a near miss by a large shell like one of eleven or twelve inch shells Drach talked about would be enough to set off the nitro in at least one or two shells. Once that happened, the propagating shock effect would have set off the entire magazine. As was said at the the time, the upside to this was neither rescue efforts nor funeral expenses would be involved for the crew, since the resulting explosion would have been rather like a miniature HMS Hood blast. In addition to the dangers of sailing a ship filled with poorly protected and only marginally stable explosives into action, it doesn't take many measurements of the hull and freeboard compared to average wave heights, even in the Caribbean, to realized this vessel was much more like a coastal yacht than an ocean going warship. The vessel took green water over the bow in even moderate seas due to the low freeboard, and much of that water would go directly down the gun tubes if the barrel plugs weren't in place. This is a pretty obvious issue for a ship that would need to be pointed toward a target with the barrels unplugged during combat. The very fine curve to the stern was needed to achieve the relatively high speed of 20 knots in a 252 long vessel with only 3,200 horsepower worth of engines The stern shape caused large waves to backfill over the stern in a following sea, This made the stern 3 pounder gun unusable and flooded the below decks spaces through the large ventilators on the stern section of the main deck. While it wasn't the worst naval vessel ever built, it's usually on top ten lists for these and other faults.
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  1032. Both of these cruisers belied their Italian origins in their turret designs. They suffered the same excessive shot dispersion problems as the Italians due to the barrels being mounted too closely together. Swedish 6" ammunition was better quality, and some changes were made to how a salvo was fired. One barrel fired a few hundredths of a second sooner than its opposite barrel. That helped, but it never totally solved the problem. I'm not aware of any Swedish results of using the main armament as dual purpose, but I suspect it wouldn't have been any more successful than what was seen in the USN Worcester class DP cruisers. The Tre Kronor class were constructed to a budget rather than to maximize their lethality. The goal was for a 33 knot vessel, with the same SHP as a Brooklyn but only powering two shafts rather than the Brooklyn's four. Even though the length of the Tre Kronor was virtually identical to the Brooklyn, the hull was more finely designed, with a beam seven feet narrower than a Brooklyn. While that meant the goal of a 33 knot top speed was accomplished on two shafts, it had other undesirable effects. The narrower beam meant the Tre Kronor could carry less armor per foot of length as any more armor would have reduced top speed. Some of the weight of what was available for armor had to be allocated to the ice strengthened bow. Consequently, she only had a 2.8" belt and a total of 1.2" of deck armor. This compares to the 3 1⁄4–5" of belt armor and 2" of deck armor of the Brooklyn. Turrets were even worse, with Brooklyn having a 6" turret roof and not more than about 4.5" on the Tre Kronor. Conning tower armor was the one place the two ships were more or less equal. It's probably a good thing that the ex-Tre Kronor never met the ex-Brooklyn in combat. The armor disadvantages combined with a weak seven gun broadside compared to the ex-Brooklyn's fifteen guns wouldn't have contributed to a good outcome for the ex-Tre Kronor.
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  1033.  @Pilotmario  We should get a petition started to rename one of the "B" seas so it doesn't keep confusing Drach.
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  1034. Very informative video. The Russian Navy has never been one of my favorites so I really don't know much about their older ships. I have never understood why they persisted in ordering warships from France. They were slow to build, expensive and, in most cases, supremely ugly. There must be something I'm missing.
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  1035.  @Arthion  Other nations did not have extra time to spend working on their stuff. They had either started working sooner on correcting faults with guns or manufacturing new kinds of guns. The Italians didn't. They either behind the power curve, and their manufacturing capacity just didn't let them ramp up once they figured it out. Instead, Mussolini decided to blow over a year and half of lead time to make those improvements by staying out of the war until Germany declared war on the US. Instead, I though Germany had the war wrapped up, so he decided not be late to the party and declare war on France in June, 1940. The Gufo radars is a good example of Italian foolishness. They had developed the Gufo as a workable surface search radar back in 1937, but the RM refused to fund development until the Italian naval defeats of 1941. Even with a crash program for developing Gufo, there were something like ten actually in service at the time of the surrender in 1943. Even that program wouldn't have developed if not for the Navy's defeats in night actions. No, it wasn't a matter of Italy needing more time. It was a matter of needing better strategic vision and the ability to stop shooting themselves in the foot.
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  1036.  @captainloggy140  It would be hard to be more unlucky than having a brand new cruiser on its first combat voyage run into a Norwegian fortress manned by old men using even older torpedoes and guns and still find yourself on the bottom of a fiord. It there was ever a pinata version of a Blucher, the 1940 model was the best representative.
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  1037.  @tomriley5790  The RN knew as soon as they tested it the Oerlikon was far superior to the Vickers machine guns. To their credit, they adopted it in 1939, as soon as the Swiss made changes to simplify the gun and raise the muzzle velocity. Only about 150 guns had been obtained from Switzerland before the fall of France cut off the supply routes from Switzerland. These Mark 1 guns were parceled out among aircraft carriers and capital ships so none were left for any smaller vessels. It took until late 1941 before British industry was able to ramp production enough that 20 mm guns started being installed on ships in the shipyards. They were able to produce about 55,000 guns by the end of the war, and this gun followed the USN plan of installing the gun on any empty space on a ship. The Bofors gun was a different story. The RN recognized the superiority of the gun over the 2 pdr gun. It took the British being able to test the Hazemeyer 40 mm gun mounts aboard the Dutch minesweeper Willem van der Zaan that arrived in Britain in May, 1940, after the fall of the Netherlands. The Dutch guns were water cooled were much better in the sustained fire role than the air cooled Bofors guns produced in Britain. As usual, Britain's war industries were overwhelmed, and only about 800 guns were produced by the end of the war. It was US lend lease of 768 mounts in 1944 that allowed the British Pacific fleet to have a creditable air defense against kamikazes. The Bofors gun was incredibly difficult to produce in quantity due to Sweden's use of the metric system and hundreds of hand fitted parts. It was only Chrysler's all out efforts by hundreds of engineers and designers, and sharing the techniques with Britain, that enabled a gun to go from taking about 125 hours to produce in 1942 to about 10 hours in 1944. It wasn't really that Britain dropped the ball. They kept up with AAA developments. They just didn't have the industrial capacity. Producing more AA ships just wasn't possible until very late in the war.
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  1038. The C/41 gun was never built and we only have conjectural construction details. The Japanese Type 98 equipped classes of aircraft carriers, cruisers, and destroyers, with about 100 of the total 169 built used for shore batteries. The Japanese considered it their best AAA gun and, given the limited exposure of the gun to USN aircraft so late in the war, most pilots agreed. Almost all major Japanese ships used shells designated "Common Type 3" for AA use. These had a range of submunitions, most being incendiary filled tubes that were supposed to be detonated some distance from the muzzle. US fliers who saw these rounds in action described them as great Fourth of July show, but not good at shooting down airplanes.
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  1039.  @BrassLock  Thanks. I like all naval history, but I have made a particular study of the Titanic and all the events surrounding her.
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  1040. As usual, the role of shore bombardment is always overlooked. It's boring compared to those cool new missiles. As you say, a non nuclear war between the US and China, or even the US and Iran, might require a lot of shoe bombardment. The Newport News, the only heavy cruiser to participate in the Vietnam unpleasantness, fired over 59,000 rounds during her three periods of deployment, a single ship record. It was the last deployment , on October 1, 1972, when a defective detonating fuse caused a premature explosion in the center barrel of B turret, killing 19 and injuring 10. That was the end of heavy gunfire support for the USN. Did the defective fuse come from old ammunition being used in guns that needed an overhaul, or even replacement? I don't know, but firing 59,000 rounds of ammunition is always a risk. Now imagine we only have the Burkes with their single 5" gun as the Ticonderoga class starts running down with no replacement in sight. With the failure of the rather costly and bizarre Zumwalt class, the USN is faced with a fleet with no cruisers for the first time in the modern navy, and having, at most, 50 Burkes available for shore bombardment duty in any conflict. No problem though. We'll use lasers...and rail guns...and flying jeeps with lasers.
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  1041. It's not just the radar top hamper we can see that contributes to the weight devoted to radars. In those days of vacuum tubes (valves), even a surface search radar display could run to a ton. Once larger plan position indicators (those sweeping oscilloscope type screens) and associated electronics could add another 4-8 tons. In order to coordinate all those radars and fire control systems, something like the USN combat information center (CIC) was now required, with hundreds to tens of thousands of pounds of electronics, radios, phone systems, plus the people to man all of those gadgets. That meant about ten officers and NCOs and another 20 or so enlisted in a cruiser sized vessel, and about half that requirement for a destroyer. Once fighter direction was added to the CIC, another five to seven people had to be crowded into an already inadequate space. The only good thing about being crammed into a small space like a CIC is they were generally one of the first spaces to be air conditioned. Lest you think the Navy had gone soft on the crew, the a/c manual made it clear that it existed mainly to decrease the humidity in the CIC, since all that moisture caused the electronics to break down. Even the so-call plotting tables were in reality large primitive vacuum tube powered analogue computers, each weighing another 3 to 6 tons each. Space also had to be found to accomodate all these men and equipment. The next problem was all the additional bunk and messing space, plus stores for the extra crew, and that could easily add up to another several thousand tons per mission just for stores. But we're not done yet. Something had to make all those all power hungry vacuum tubes light up, and that meant larger steam and diesel generators along with things like dynamotors and sundry other things needed to keep all those screens lit and radar antennas turning, such as additional miles of very heavy electrical cabling, and coaxial cables for the radars themselves. it's hard to find estimates for all the weight added to ships for all these electronics and ancillary things like the CIC. The only seemingly accurate one I've read was in the July (or maybe August) 1945 issue of Combat Information Center magazine, a Navy publication that attempted pull together the best practices from men all over the fleet about how to makes a CIC run efficiently. That estimate included the weight all the electronics and mechanical equipment needed to run all the radars and the CIC itself, plus the CIC staff, but not including some of the engine room generators or radar antennas. That estimate was about 78 tons for a cruiser, 107 tons for a battleship, and an astounding 138 tons for an aircraft carrier, and that didn't include the weight of all the radar antennas. A cruiser size CIC required a minimum of 480 sq ft, a battleship 740, and an aircraft carrier about 950 sq ft. All of this gives some indication that radar was a lot more than slapping a radar antenna on a mast. The next time you look at a late war picture of a USN or RN vessel with those antennas everywhere, just remember that, like an iceberg, a lot of what was required to make them useful was below decks.
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  1042. 15th! This Channel Admin section is the best ever!
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  1043. Almost all turrets do have safety stops built into the rotation mechanism. Free swinging guns like 20 mm Oerlikons usually have safety rails above the gun tub to prevent the gun from shooting into the ship. The problem is that, like anything mechanical, the stops can fail, and safety rails often get shopt away by splinters during battle. It's the job of the mount captain to prevent the gun going where it's not supposed to, but the heat of battle sometimes interferes with that as well.
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  1044.  @BenSTA09  Just for the heck of it, I googled dieselpunk ships. The majority seem to be where someone photoshopped the superstructure of a battleship on top of pictures of various dirigibles. I guess the idea is somehow something like that would really fly? There was also the usual admixture of buxom Japanese schoolgirls and space nazis, just to spice things up.
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  1045.  @BenSTA09  I don't have much interest in a CB&Q E-5 with an airplane propeller on the front.
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  1046.  @5kehhn  I have that book in my collection, although I haven't read it in quite a while. The author was Herbert Werner so he must be the one you're thinking of. What I do remember of the book was quite terrifying. It was enough I'd never want to enter the silent service. There was a considerable amount of testing needed for the acoustic torpedoes because the first ones had a nasty habit of circling around and sinking the boat that fired it. They were able to adjust the acoustic sensor to make it less sensitive to the loudest noises, and the sub that fired the torpedo immediately went to 250 feet so hist cavitation noise was less than the DE bearing down on him. The US developed a similar type of torpedo, the Mark 24 "Mine", so named to keep its purpose secret. It too had circling problems that were mostly solved by changing the way the passive acoustic system was "aimed" by the torpedo so it was less likely to get in a circle leading back to the sub or destroyer that launched it. However, the problem wasn't solved completely, and we lost several subs to circular runs by the Mark 27 and Mark 18 electric torpedoes.
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  1047. The modification of the standard USN periscope to use a miniaturized ST radar completely enclosed in the periscope was a real advance in terms of torpedo aiming. The ST periscope could detect a BB size target up to 5 miles away while it could "see" a DD size vessel up to 3 miles. This was enough to give much more accurate bearing, distance, and speed data to the torpedo data computer (TDC). Before the radar periscope, most of those numbers were estimates from the captain or XO, depending on which officer was the better estimator. The ST radar could almost instantaneously feed original estimates into the TDC, and the ST could update any changes before firing as the target vessel took evasive action. The combination of the ST periscope and TDC meant that, by late 1944, almost every torpedo fired would hit the target. This accuracy, along with torpedos that actually worked, allowed US subs longer patrol times by not having to fire as many salvos. The ST was one of the primary sensors that led to the USN sinking nearly all the larger Japanese merchantmen and most IJN warships still able to leave port by June, 1945. Even more formidable to the Japanese were seven US subs fitted out as gunboats, armed with two 5"/25 guns and two 40 mm guns. The big advance was the addition of the Mark 6 fire control system and plotting room, along with SJ surface/air search radar, all feeding data to the guns, meant the Japanese small, sampan type freighters were no longer able to escape sinking due to their draft being so shallow that torpedoes went under them rather than hitting them. The estimate was that these gunboats, which were going to be converted from about 30 additional Balao class subs, would have swept the seas clear of any remaining Japanese merchant shipping by January, 1946, just in time for the main invasion to begin.
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  1048. Q&A - Why did the US (as well as most other navies) persist in having their secondary battleship armament in casemates?. In the case of the USN, that was through the Colorado class, commissioned in the early 20's. eE had the example of the Lord Nelson all the way back in 1906 yet the mounting of secondary batteries in turrets didn't really start until 1927 with the Nelson class. I don't think the Japanese abandoned casemates until the Yamato's, and the 1920 South Dakota class still featured casemates.
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  1049.  @paulboy9101  Part of it was familiarity, part because it was the hardest hitting gun available in 1942, and part because the 4" round was considered the largest that could manhandled on a sub. Many sub commanders started out on destroyers, and the interwar period was primarily 4 pipers armed with the 4" guns. The round weighed about 63 pounds compared to 80 for the 5" gun. The 4" mount was relatively easily swung and trained for a manual gun. The accuracy of the 4" was well known and liked by skippers and crews alike. The downsides were a very long barrel that interfered with training abaft of the beam, having to be prepared for diving with a muzzle plug, and a recoil of about 28 inches, more than twice that of the 5"/25. Crewmen needed constant practice to avoid that recoil. If being hit by the recoiling gun didn't kill you, even a brush by would knock you overboard. The 5" gun had twice the rate of fire and considerably more penetrating power. Even though the rounds were heavier, it took less rounds in a shorter period of time to sink a target.
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  1050.  @davidkaminski615  I was writing about the late war period in the Pacific. Submarines were spending the vast majority of their time hunting on the surface. The biggest danger was being jumped by a Japanese aircraft before they had the chance to dive. At that point, a pair of 40mm guns were pretty potent weapons against aircraft.
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  1051.  @Peorhum  The original Bofors 4.7"/50 was a better dual purpose gun than the British 4". They were removed because the British had no ammunition for those rare guns, not because the 4" was superior. The British 4.7" guns used on the Tribals and other classes up to the C class weren't dual purpose weapons, and were pressed into service as such because the admiralty considered the 4" gun too small for main armament. It wasn't until the superb 4.5" DP gun started being standard on RN destroyers that there was a true DP main gun. Sustained top speed was an important asset for that last dash to Britain by troop convoys in the first three years of the war. It wasn't the top speed of the large liners like the Queen Mary that was the issue. It was the fact that they could maintain 29 to 30 knots in almost all weather and could do so while zigzagging. A destroyer had to be faster to keep up through the zigzags while maintaining her station. The Błyskawica was better able to do so because of her few extra knots of top speed, and could do so on a sustained basis. If the RN had recognized the importance of a fast antiaircraft destroyer, a class like the Błyskawica could have been valuable, not only for the Atlantic, but even more so in the days of the Malta convoys.
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  1052. Yes, a lot of us have done the same. Best naval history channel on Youtube.
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  1053.  @Wardads1  I think the soldiers and sailors in the south Pacific certainly appreciated the food from Australia that could be spared for shipments to Britain. The US also had rationing, but not as stringent as that seen in Britain and the Dominions. The US shipped over massive quantities of dried, canned, and dehydrated food, dried eggs from the US being almost the total supply of eggs in Britain by 1941. Spam was the big S contribution to the south Pacific. Not only did service members from all countries prefer it to things like Brazilian corned beef, civilians were able to get tons of it from US stocks. To this day, you can accurately estimate the number Pacific Islanders living in the trading area of a grocery by observing the different flavors of Spam on the shelf. The more kinds of Spam, the more Pacific Islanders trade there.
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  1054. What a great video history! An interesting side story with USN destroyers were the experiments with mounting seaplanes. The first attempt was with the USS Charles Ausburn (DD-294) mounting a TS-1 floatplane in 1923. The fixed platform was inconveniently mounted directly in front of the bridge. This not only obstructed vision from the bridge but also greatly interfered from the field of fire from the forward 4" gun. Several successful flights were conducted, but the inadequate crane capacity, being needed to lower the plane and retrieve it, and the fragile nature of these early seaplanes, made the experiment generally a failure. The seaplane and platform were removed in early 1924 with the Ausburn being restored to the configuration of other Clemson class vessels. The next attempt was aboard the US Noa (DD-343), yet another Clemson class. I realize this is slightly outside the 1939 limit of the discussion, but the plans for the seaplane mount were started in 1938, and Noa was originally scheduled for recommissioning in 1939, so close enough. Frank Knox, then Secretary of the Navy, was a great believer in the idea of using destroyers as seaplane carriers to extend their range for fleet protection and commerce raiding. To test this concept again, the Noa was taken in hand when she was recommissioned in April, 1940. She had an XSOC-1 seaplane mounted this time on a rotating platform, displacing the aft bank of torpedoes. She also had a boom with a much greater lifting capacity, and the XSOC-1 was a much more robust aircraft than her predecessors. This time the experiment was more successful, with many flights, and the ability to retrieve the plane while underway, a difficult task for a relatively small Clemson class ship. Noa retained her seaplane until November, 1941, and the generally successful experience with Noa led to Knox mandating the construction of six Fletcher class destroyers with seaplane capability, this time with catapults (!). However, as Drach would say, that's a story for another day.
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  1055.  @admiraltiberius1989  Yes, another of Lee's largely underappreciated talents was his use of radar directed AA fire that was able to break up many incoming attacks in the Philippines and Okinawa. He drilled his gun and radar crews much like he did his rifle teams, and they were undoubtedly the best AA crews anywhere by mid-1944. If not for Halsey's stupid mistake. Lee and his fast battleships could have sunk most of Kurita's battlefleet long before they could have reached Taffy 3.
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  1056. Jay and Tom, there's no doubt blacks were discriminated against for jobs and housing in the past. However, 1964 and 1968 are now 50 years in the past. Two generations had been born and grown up during that period. These same people continue to elect corrupt, incompetent mayors because they happen to be of the same race as the vast majority of Detroit voters. Kwame Kilpatrick, quite possibly the worst mayor of any American city, was elected twice while he was stealing millions from a city spiraling into bankruptcy. He's now spending 28 years in prison for his crimes, but Detroit will never see the vast majority of that money back again. He was stealing tens of millions at a time when Detroit couldn't afford to repair their ambulances because of his theft. Still, he was reelected by appealing to the tired old saw that Detroit's condition was the fault of whites. Detroit seems to be moving beyond it's mantle of black racism by electing a white mayor. I hope he will be able to start Detroit on a better path, but allegations of bid rigging in demolishing some of Detroit's worst abandoned homes are already surfacing. He is attracting billions of new dollars into the city. Mostly white individuals, foundations, and companies are pouring billions into the city. It's going to take the approximately 85% of Detroit's black residents to finally get involved with how money in their city is spent and elect people who are honest and understand business, regardless of race. This is probably Detroit's best chance since 1960 to become a great city again. If it doesn't work, Detroit is doomed.
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  1057. BTW, if you haven't done so yet, take a ride through East Cleveland. It makes Cleveland look good. Hell, it makes Highland Park look good.
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  1058. Detroit was at the center of a perfect storm, Things were already bad due to all the industry that left from about 1975 to 2000. A lot of homeowners lost their jobs and just couldn't keep up the payments. There was probably enough demand for homes that a lot of them would have been absorbed by other people coming to buy the homes and speculators. Starting 2005, the mortgage lending crisis hit, and many more people were in homes that had lost so much value they couldn't sell so they walked away. The resale market collapsed. The banks couldn't resell them so they sat abandoned. Scrapers came in and finished them off. Many of the homes could have been rehabbed if they had been properly boarded up, but the banks didn't do that, and the city didn't require it. so we have Detroit as we see it today. Everyone from the feds, homeowners, banks, the city, and the scrapers share in the blame.
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  1059. Madison, Oxford, and West Point are much safer towns than Meridian. Meridian has consistently come in among the top five mast dangerous cities in the state, particularly for violent crimes, although property crimes are also high. It's not as bad as Jackson or Pascagoula but it's near the worst. There are many cities more pleasant to live in than Meridian. It also has one of the highest rates of fatal tornadoes in the state.
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  1060.  @brandonbutchart5576  Out in one alley means...what? What a stupid comment.
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  1061.  huey.p. newton  He "stood for his kind"? The kind that get in shootouts, murders a cop, embezzled money from his own organization, shot and killed a woman, pistol whipped his own tailor, thought the totalitarian regimes of China and North Korea were examples to the US, fled to Cuba rather than face charges for the killing and assault, and then returned only after arranging to have the eyewitness to his murder killed. His gang members botched the assassination, going to the wrong house. It turned out it was a heavily armed member of a rival gang. He returned fire, killing one of the assassins and driving off the other two. Newton then decided to add to his body count, ordering the two assassins whacked. His boys botched that one too, shooting one of them three times in the back, not killing him, but paralyzing him from the waist down, and burying him in a shallow grave outside Las Vegas. Two park rangers, looking for an unrelated missing person, ran across what was supposed to be is grave, pulled him out, and got him to a hospital in enough time to save his life. When his tailor testified in the assault trial, he kind of "forgot" who pistol whipped him, and Huey was aquitted. Amazingly, after this killing rampage against other witnesses against Newton, the key witness against Newton for the murder of the 17 year old girl refused to testify. It was ten years later, after deciding that Newton knew too much and might be talking to the cops, that Tyrone was recruited to kill him and, for once, an assassination attempt succeeded. You mean the kind of guy who stood for his people...except the ones he killed or ordered killed? That guy? Like I said, your screen name tells me something about you.
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  1062. Right, and that's why my very first sentence said "no great suburbs within 10 minutes", something you claimed in your post. Virtually none of the cities in list are within 10 minutes of downtown unless you have your own helicopter or have a special lane where you're allowed to drive 100 mph. Every one of the cities you listed is at least 75% white, and most are 90% or more. The closer they are to Cleveland or the greater the percentage of blacks, the more the population has declined since 1970. People with money are moving to places like Pepper Pike, which more like a gated community than a normal city., and even that is a half hour from downtown on a good day.
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  1063. This is the area I grew up. A lot of the housing was built by the railroads and mills and sold tom their workers. They were packed in as close as they could get them with almost no yards. You can see how the same house plan was used on whole streets, one after another of the same front exacly the same distance from the street. It was never the best area when I was a kid in the 50's but working poeple needed a place to live. People with a little more money bought a bigger two family so the rent would help pay the mortgage. Now most of those houses sell for $30,000 or less.
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  1064. Thanks Charlie. It really is a beautiful area. There are some amazing deals on historic homes there for people willing to take a risk. I haven't figured out why they have all the white rocks on the curb lawns though.
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  1065.  @cameraman655  Dang autocorrect. Sorry about that. I edited my comment to reflect the correct spelling.
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  1066.  @DavidSmith-ss1cg  Ah yes, the last part of the communist play book. Once you've been found out, use ad hominem attacks, make appeals to your own superior intellect, while the cover of rationality is thrown off and your hatred of America is finally revealed. Planes leave every day for Cuba and Venezuela. Be on one.
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  1067.  @martymethuselah  I suppose you have links to sites that support your assertions, right?
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  1068.  @jwenting  So true. The best vessels and best sailors in the world come to nothing without the supplies and maintenance they need to wage war.
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  1069.  @johnanon6938  I don't know how two Navy blimp crewman would be exposed to any microwave radiation on the ground. I've need ot see some evidence of this experimental radar being used at a blimp base in April of 1942. Airborne radar at that time wasn't common, and the ones that existed were all HF or VHF since the amount of power needed to produce microwave radiation before the cavity magnetron was way more than any kind of operational aircraft could carry then. I'll go with Occam's Razor. A blimp with a defective door hinge over the ocean and the two crewman never returned is a lot more likely to be a man overboard situation than some conspiracy level theory of microwave radiation injury.
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  1070. I can't imagine why this program should have been demonetized. If anything, you tend to bend over backwards not to violate any of the terms of service. Maybe pictures of nuclear bomb explosions are just too scary for some Youtube snowflakes.
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  1071. You could get 50 lashes just for possessing a deck of playing cards in Puritan America.
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  1072. If you're ever in Casper, make time to visit the Salt Creek Museum. It has fascinating displays that bring the history of the Salt Creek oil field to life. The amount of lawsuits and employment for attorneys was the big production in the oil fields until 1908, when the first big gusher was brought in. It wasn't until 1930 and a new federal law mandating consolidation of the thousands of placer claims in the area that drilling could be done on an economic basis. By 1930, of course, it was well known that oil had uses beyond liniments for horses and humans. The museum also details the second big oil field near Casper known as Teapot Dome. As history buffs know, Teapot Dome became known far and wide as something more than an oil field.
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  1073.  @TheHistoryGuyChannel  Good deal. In terms of military history, there aren't many things that have been as influential for the foot soldier as the stahlhelm.
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  1074.  Lassi Kinnunen  I hadn't thought of that, but it's certainly a possibility.
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  1075. The Bathurst class minesweeper/corvette, of which the HMIS Bengal was a member, were really awful vessels. She was poorly armed, as shown in this battle, and too small to be effective ships operating in the Pacific. They were built to an Admiralty design for ships that, would serve in the Atlantic, not in the tropics. Below decks spaces were cramped and poorly ventilated with ratings often suffering from heat exhaustion. The ratings had to sleep in hammocks slung in what also operated as 10 man mess decks, the ships having more subdivisions than a normal corvette to help them survive a mine hit, a perpetual danger to a minesweeper. Because of all the subdivisions, it was impossible to ventilate any of the subdivisions adequately. There were no showers and only one head, the ratings having to use a buckets and sponge to try to keep clean, and a seat slung on either side of the ship as toilets. There were only two iceboxes That had ice enough for about a week for provisions and no freezers. Men would often take their bedding on deck, as it was nearly impossible to sleep in the stifling heat below, doing the best they could beneath moth eaten canvas awnings as their only protection from frequent nighttime rain showers. Several crew members wrote in their memoirs after the war that men went weeks never getting more than five or six hours sleep. The six to ten officers had individual or two man cabins at main deck level with things like bunks, electric fans, portholes, and desks. They ate better food than the ratings and had their own steward to serve them in the officer's wardroom. The ratings had their typical two cups a day of watered down rum while the officers enjoyed their own bar. The Bathursts replicated the worst of the British class system, but on a modern warship, and morale and discipline suffered as a result. Good captains did what they could to improve conditions, bringing onboard better provisions when they could be found and having officers and men eat the same food. Some allowed the engineering staff to modify the deck air intakes to bring more air below decks and having cots built for sleeping instead of hammocks. Other officers were either incompetent or just cruel, this treatment leading to four mutinies aboard the Bathursts, the most of a single class on the allied side. Most were small scale revolts but one, one the Pirie while in port, was serious enough that the captain had the main gun spiked and called on Australian army troops to surround the ship and arrest the men involved in the mutiny. Ten men were later sentenced to prison for their part in the mutiny, the men testifying to incompetent and cruel behavior of the captain at the courts martial. Amazingly, he wasn't relieved of command until six months after the mutiny, when he barely averted another mutiny.
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  1076.  @janicestevenson7109  Yes, I guess as a kid, I had no idea that this kind of thing was going on in my city. Even worse, I had no idea how corrupt those in charge of the city had become.
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  1077. Try looking things up before you spread such a long discredited quote : https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/04/al-gore-lincoln-quote-fake/
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  1078. Thanks for your kind words, Joe. I don't think most people realize all of us on opioids for chronic pain are addicts. The only difference is I need the drugs for pain while others seek it for recreational pursuits. Methadone was supposed to solve the problem of the recreational user. Now it's used for pain relief (although it never worked for me) and is a street drug just like heroin. There were suspects that told me about all these great highs using narcotics. All I feel is some relief from the never ending pain. My body is so tolerant of narcotics now that they don't even impair my ability to drive. I had one of the guys I trained give me a field sobriety test after I retired and I passed with flying colors. Frankly, I'm in favor of just legalizing all drugs. Let those who want them for getting high get them with the same laws we have now for alcohol. Those who want to will get drugs somewhere. We have created a huge crime industry with no decrease in addiction, not to mention the death and sorrow that goes with it. No more people will dies of overdose then that do now. If anything, once we have USP quality heroin, we'll have far fewer deaths, since the dosage will be controlled. I took the oath in 1978 and retired in 2005. I was fought the "war on drugs" the whole time, and we were putting more people in jail for narcotics when I retired than when I signed on. I've tried weed several times. Unfortunately, it doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't seem to relieve pain and I don't seem to get any psychoactive effects. All it does is make me cough like crazy. Since I also have COPD, the last thing I need is more irritants ending up in my lungs. For those of you who are heavy dope smokers now, you're going to end up with COPD if you keep it up. Your lungs are just not built to take that kind of insult on a daily basis.
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  1079. Opioids are a problem everywhere. What the DEA needs to do is target the illegal sellers of drugs and stop trying to enforce the law on the backs of chronic pain patients. I'm 71 and a retired police officer. I don't fit the profile for a drug dealer. Stop scaring my doctor that he's going to have his license suspended if he increases my dose of hydrocodone. Let my doctor practice medicine and the DEA go after the dealers.
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  1080.  @Mit852  As I said, not libertarian enough for Reason and, then again, no is. If you think Trump is not libertarian in any real capacity, you are beyond a lost cause. One of the reasons why libertarians can't get any traction is the proclivity of one so-called libertarian to throw another so-called libertarian under the bus because they fail the Murray Rothbard purity test.
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  1081. Crankwerk  Nygardsvold certainly did nothing to put the country on a war footing, but he was hoping strict neutrality would keep Norway out of the war. France had not yet been invaded, and he was hoping the Germany would be fought into the same kind of stalemate the was seen from 1915 to 1917. leaving both Britain and Germany too preoccupied to bother with Norway. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see how wrongheaded some his decisions were, but things looked different in the beginning of 1940.
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  1082. I grew up in Cleveland so all those Michigan jokes applied to there as well. There used to be a fair number of Soviets, East Germans, and Hungarians that went Croatia for vacations. The beaches had more sand and less rocks than most Black Sea resorts, and the Adriatic got quite warm in summer. Croatia in Tito's time was more liberal than the USSR and the satellite states. People were able to buy western goods at prices way lower than in the USSR, even if they were available there. Several Croatian resort hotels also had casinos, something you never saw in the USSR. People would come to gamble and work on their tan. Really, it's only hot in Michigan for maybe 10 days out of the year. Come down South in the summer, where the high is never below 90 from June to mid-September if you want hot. There are many people with a second house in places like Michigan and Wisconsin to escape the heat, and then they come back south to escape the snow. Not a bad life if you can afford it.
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  1083. I like your long and boring videos. This one isn't quite as boring or long enough, but it's okay anyway. :-)
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  1084. Hess was one of the sad cases of war. He was a great believer in astrologers and seers, and his trip to England may well have been inspired by a dream interpretation by one of them. He was Hitler's closest confidant until early 1941 and was responsible for signing the Nuremberg Laws, the beginning of stripping some Germans of their rights and the blueprint for the rounding up and imprisonment of "undesirables". There's no doubt he deserved his prison sentence. I wonder what would have happened if the British just moved him to another prison or some kind of halfway house? Certainly by 1980, the Soviets had bigger and more pressing problems, and weren't likely to do more than protest.
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  1085. I'd think German infantry must have seen the Pershing and finally realized the jig was up. After watching most Shermans get manhandled by Tigers, the Pershing represented the spearhead of tanks that were at least equal to the Tiger, especially for their ability to shoot at longer ranges than the Tiger and do so on the move. For the remaining few months of the war, German armor attacks were more and more from ambush and less from frontal assaults. In addition, each German tank lost represented an irreplaceable asset, not the least of which was the crew. The Allies were pouring a never ending stream of tanks like the Pershing, M4A3E8 "Easy Eight", and Firefly. While these were not in detail better than late war German tanks, knocking one out just meant more pulled up to get in the fight.
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  1086. I wonder how long "Excellent" would have lasted if the Germans had invaded? It seems he had a great heart, so I imagine he would have put up a heck of fight.
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  1087. I'm not aware any airborne operations took place over anything but small towns. However, Operation Market Garden showed that church steeples of even small towns could be a hazard.
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  1088. What the US found out from that risky mission was, except for the airframe and some basic weapons, the Hind-D/Mi-25 bore almost no relationship to the Soviet Mi-24. As usual, the Soviets were happy to sell the Mi-24 to countries like Libya for a healthy cash payment and some cheap oil, but there was no way they were going to have an unstable third country lose their latest systems and weapons. The Air Force found out the Hind D/Mi-25 had almost everything on board at least one generation behind Soviet systems, and almost all of them were known to the US. Hard to tell if there were any actual secrets found, since the whole operation is still secret, but it seems doubtful that the US learned anything commensurate with the risk.
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  1089.  @stevekaczynski3793  No, Slovik committed crimes as a juvenile and as an adult. He wasn't paroled until April, 1942, when he was 22 years old, after his last bout of criminality committed when he was 19 years old. The Army needed men for the invasion and occupation of Germany, and then the much larger invasion and occupation of Japan that was still to come. Slovik was a criminal, but not a violent criminal, and tens of thousands of others with backgrounds similar to Slovik's were drafted and served honorably. Slovik was a coward. He was not the only one, but he deserted multiple times so as not to serve at the front. His execution was meant to serve as a warning that cowardice and desertion wasn't going to tolerated. Seems harsh now, but now isn't 1945.
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  1090. I agree it does apply to all groups. What I've seen with anti-feminists/anti-SJW's however is that there isn't a leader that's immune from criticism. Look at the rising up of fans against Thunderf00t over Brexit. I'd argue he's as much of a leader as we've had. and people have no qualms calling him out when they think he's wrong. There was no pouting, no turning off likes and dislikes, and no stopping comments. This is a big difference compared to the opposition.
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  1091.  @pneron2032  I'm American. Britain has allowed this to happen, and the British have allowed this to happen by voting in Labour and the socialists for so many years. The British people have allowed the dole to go on for so long and be so generous that multiple generations of people live in these council, estates like they own them instead of getting jobs and moving out. This is not something that we've allowed. By first allowing this for British whites, it has now just automatically been allowed for the Muslim hordes YOU have let in. Stop whining and vote all these socialists/communists out. Stop having anxiety attacks because someone calls you a racist. Get your schools and institutions back. Letting white people stay or not stay in a council estate is the least of your problems.
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  1092. You can't have a healthy construction and housing industry when most of the money is coming from the taxpayer in on way or another. Not letting the industry work out the problems on their won just prolongs the organic problems that won't and can't be be solved by the government.
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  1093.  @Landie_Man  You can thank China and India for a large part of the increased cost of diesel. About 75% of the vehicles in India and 80% in China are diesel powered. As more cars hit the road, demand for diesel skyrocketed, and so did prices. In the US, it was also a combination of taxes and phasing in ultra low sulphur diesel really jacked up the cost in the US. All this started in about 2000, so it has also been 20 years here. Diesel prices have been coming down as the cost to convert refineries to the ultra low sup[her fuel has been paid off along with a continuing decrease in over the road diesel. At one time, the price differential was almost 40 cents a gallon, and that has now come down to 10-15 cents. I've even seen a few stations with diesel at the same price as mid-grade gasoline.
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  1094. Thanks for all your hard work, Jim, exposing these rats. I don't think it's too much to say we should let people know that anyone with an Indian accent you talk to about a supposed computer problem is a scammer. .
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  1095. Bedford used to be a nice suburban town when I lived there in the early 60's. Now Bedford and Maple Heights are being dragged under by the black undertow coming out of Cleveland. Probably at least one of the reasons Walmart closed.
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  1096. I highly doubt he'd throw away a cell phone on the off chance a cop might start looking at videos on it. A more likely explnation was a stash bag, and that's exactly what it looked like. This cop was an asshoile, BTW, and deserves to be fired.
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  1097. This is a repeat of what happened in the late 60's Neither side backed down, and ended with two students dead in California and four dead at Kent State. I wish we could come to some common ground and ratchet down the violence. Bearing is right about this. As someone who lived through the student uprisings of the 60's, I don't we will find common ground, and I fear a lot more dead this time before this tsunami exhausts itself
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  1098. I bought a Model 30P in 1983 for off-duty carry. At 15+1, it was the highest capacity 9mm carry gun at the time. It was big enough it just barely qualified as a carry gun but it gave me a good feeling knowing I was carrying the equivalent of a mag and a half in any other 9mm carry gun of the time. It was a fine gun, well built and accurate. I traded it for a Llama .45 Colt revolver Model 29 look alike with six inch barrel and $100. I don't regret the trade but I would like to latch on to another Model 30P if I could find one.
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  1099. Woo Hoo. How do I sign up to work with Ian!
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  1100.  @erikdingman9806  Why? What exactly was a poor display of our appreciation of history? 80,000 of these muskets were produced, and many of them were converted to percussion long before they were declared surplus. All the ones that were converted to shotguns were these previous percussion conversions. There are over 100 of the originals flintlocks still around and thousands of the percussion guns. What do you think should have been done with them?
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  1101. Indeed, it would have been. The Old Man has passed on to his well deserved reward now, but I'm sure he must roll over a little seeing the prices those cannon fetch now.
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  1102. As long as you have a self directed IRA or pension plan, investing in some scare but not rare guns is a good kind of 30 year investment, kind of like gold and silver coins. There's a good chance that scarce guns will become at least semi-rare in 30 years, as will numismatic coins. Unfortunately, my pension plan didn't become self directed until late in my career but, for young guys, it's worth looking into.
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  1103. I'm almost sure it's an MGL or Hawk MM1. A Manville gun would probably not be in very good shape if it was in normal use because the winding spring would have broken and they aren't replaceable unless a new part is machined by hand. They would also be worth too much money on the resale market to use in ordinary police work. I saw an original Manville gas gun in our armorers office when I first became a peace officer in the early 70's. It disappeared shortly afterwards and I imagine it was sold to a firearms dealer or collector.
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  1104. Destroyed planet? Your parents and grandparents spent most of their lives working like dogs while they hoped the USSR or the US didn't start a war that would actually destroy the world. They worked 50-60 hours a week so you'd have a better life than they did. You are a classic ungrateful millennial. This is why everyone hates you.
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  1105. I have no idea how to edit anything on Wikipedia. If you do, you're welcome to give it a shot.
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  1106. Interesting video. I hope you're doing okay. You don't sound quite as animated as usual but, then, with all this crap going on, who does?
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  1107.  @buddymoore6504  I don't think so. The reactor was strictly an Army project from the start. They were using the DOE reservation in Idaho because it was far enough away from any population center that a catastrophic failure like what actually occured wasn't likely to contaminate a lot of people..
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  1108.  @kemarisite  The USN used Cordite N flashless propellant during WWII for cruiser and battleship main guns. The US didn't manufacture flashless propellant at the time because it required huge amounts of electricity to make, and the power plants on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls was the only place in North America with the required power while still being reasonably close to shipping ports and ammunition factories. The Bureau of Ordinance considered it dangerous because it was brittle and contained unstable nitroglycerin, the cause of many RN magazine explosions. Because it deteriorated and became even more unstable in the presence of heat or moisture, the first uses of shipboard refrigeration plants was for magazines. They had to be inspected at least once per watch for any temperature or humidity variations outside regulations. If conditions got too far out of spec, the propellant case had to be dumped overboard, something that could cost a ship's captain a promotion, so magazine inspections were quite rigorous. For night fighting use, we had nothing better than Cordite N, so we imported about 250,000 tons a year from 1943 until late 1944. The BuOrd developed their own smokeless charge, Alabanite, which contained no nitroglycerin and produced even less flash than Cordite N. The only downside was shells using Albanite were about 10% heavier than those using Cordite N. The USN was willing to accept this tradeoff for a more stable and less flammable propellant. Albanite started being used in 1945, but it didn't really get into mass production until the very end of the war. So, the short answer is, even though we didn't make Cordite N, we imported large quantities of it until it could be replaced by Albanite.
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  1109.  @stanleyrogouski  Lafayette believed above all else in the idea of public order. Those disturbing public order, regardless of if they were royalists or Jacobin, soon earned his wrath. He believed nothing could be accomplished without order, and it's hard to argue with that. He was actually a central figure in the early revolutions, just not on the side of the revolutionaries. It wasn't until the revolution of 1830 that he was persuaded that sometimes a disturbance of public order was needed if people were to earn more rights. Lafayette was a far more complicated figure than most people understand.
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  1110.  @stanleyrogouski  I think you can have a form of democracy on ship and land, as long as it's in peacetime. We've seen what happens to our rights in war. The French had the right idea wanting to replace inherited positions with the working and middle class. The problem was throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Not all members of the nobility were corrupt and incompetent, and not all members of the working class were noble and competent. Any time we start selecting any type of leadership based on class, we're headed for trouble. Meritocracy always produces better results than an idiocracy.
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  1111.  @stanleyrogouski  Jones was certainly no believer in democracy, and he did run his ships like an absolute monarchy. Nelson was 47 at the time of Trafalgar, and Jones would have been 58. Both Jones and Nelson would have been considered elderly at a time when the average life expectancy was 34. The last thing Jones wanted to do was die peacefully in bed, so I imagine he would have envied Nelson's death if he had still been around.
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  1112.  @jagerbombasstic  You're welcome. I read it just after it came out in the early 90's, and it was a real page turner for me. I've read several other biographies about Jones with those similar titles and, while they weren't bad, they weren't as historically complete as Callo's book.
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  1113.  @adamdubin1276  I don't think there was any doubt about his courage and heroism...as long as he was in a battle. His behavior at other times was the kind of thing that gets left out of our jingoistic history books.
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  1114. Very useful guide. I've been pronouncing about half of them wrong all these years.
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  1115.  @Drachinifel  I have the same problem. The gunfire in the intro is painfully loud. It may be because I have a medical condition that affects my hearing, so it may be okay to others. Regardless, I have to turn down the sound for the intro then jack it up again for the narration so there is a balance problem
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  1116.  @its1110  I turn 74 in a month. My biggest international problem has been battling my available bank balance. Combined with COPD and arthritis, sitting on an airplane for 10 hours to London just isn't in the cards.
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  1117. For anyone interested in Carely Floats, this Australian report (https://www.awm.gov.au/sites/default/files/encyclopedia/hmas_sydney/carleyfloat.pdf) has just about anything you'd ever want to know about them. One survival item added to many Carley floats later in the war was tobacco and rolling papers in waterproof containers. These were built with a waterproof lid so they could keep the tobacco and paper dry after being opened This may seem to be a weird kind of survival item, but studies done with sailors that survived on Carley Floats or liftboats/rafts showed that maintaining morale was second only to fresh water when it came to survival. During WWII, smoking was nearly universal among men, and facing some unknown period of time fighting the sea with no smokes cause an immediate drop in morale from the physical effects of withdrawals and just not having the psychological benefit of something associated with normal life. Even with only enough tobacco for one smoke a day, sailors reported they felt better, there was less disagreements among the other crewmen, and they all worked better together toward the shared goal of getting rescued. Yes, I know smoking is bad for you, but life was different 80 years ago.
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  1118.  @deplorablemecoptera3024  Yes, we'll make it through this. It's being made more difficult by the hoarders and "worried well" now, bu that will drop off in time as we get more retailers limiting purchases of some items and more testing available to those who are symptomatic. The best advice from what I learned from my ten years as a respiratory therapist is self-isolate to the degree possible, maintain social distance when you can't, and avoid anyone coughing or sneezing. Wash your hands, but it doesn't need to be obsessive. If you can't get hand sanitize, you can make your own. There are a bunch of recipes online, mostly consisting of 99% isopropyl alcohol and a little aloe vera. If you can't get isopropyl, buy some straight Everclear from the liquor store. It's 200 proof, or 100% ethanol alcohol. Works just as good, and you can always use it in mixed drinks to calm you down as well. :-)
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  1119.  @rogerwilco2  I understand what you're saying, but I have studied what happened to Holland in some detail. The Dutch were being fed very accurate information by Colonel Oster of the Abwehr for over a year before the invasion. Even though not all the invasion dates were totally accurate, he passed information about the invasions of Denmark and Norway that were accurate almost ot the hour. If the Dutch had taken heed of those warnings they would have had a month to mobilize. Instead, the Dutch chose to trust in neutrality against a German government that had already violated the neutrality of the two previously mentioned countries. The fact remains that most of Holland lasted five days, and all of Holland was in German hands in seven days.
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  1120.  @jamestheotherone742  I was referring to this "Merry Christmas" character. He seems to pretty clearly have an axe to grind with references to "many" US troops as "dickheads" while stating "their daddy was 'rich' they should be generals" as common sentiment. Then you came in saying he is correct. Makes me wonder about your axe as well.
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  1121.  Marry Christmas  How many "americanos" do you know who fought in WWII? Do you think men could just refuse to do what their drill instructors told them to do with no consequences? That's why God made the brig. "Many dickheads". Right, you would know about that.
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  1122. OMG! 0400 CDT and now an hour and a half Drach opus shows up. What to do, what to do...?
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  1123.  @maxchan2452  Because the Germans never called them that. Their official name was Panzerschiffe, or "armored ship". By 1940 the two survivors were classified as heavy cruisers. The British press invented the term "pocket battleship". No member of the Kriegsmarine would ever have used that term.
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  1124.  @Dave_Sisson  And I suspect you're attempting to come up with some kind of moral equivalence between the British Empire and United States "empire". At the time of the building of the C class, the population of the British Empire was 458 million, one quarter of the world's population. The population of all US territories was about 15 million in the same year, the vast majority of which lived in the Philippines. The US was never dependent on the territories for resources, in contrast to the British. Rudyard Kipling wrote his poem before the US had decided to retain control of the Philippines, and was written as an exhortation to the US to assume the same "white man's burden" already borne by Britain. Regardless, this is all a strawman. My comment was that war may have been a greater driver than empire in building the C class, using the Cleveland and Baltimore classes of a navy with nowhere even remotely near the colonial responsibilities of Britain as examples. I await some evidence that disproves this.
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  1125. ​ @timengineman2nd714  You lost me on this one. USS Wichita was a heavily modified version of the original Brooklyn . She was only constructed because the USN still had about 10,000 tons of excess treaty tonnage available. Constructing Wichita as an 8" gun cruiser would use up that tonnage, something that can't be said for a 6" cruiser. Wichita was laid down and launched about a year before any of the other members of the Brooklyn class. Unfortunately, trying to use up all the excess tonnage created a top heavy ship that had to have all kinds of modifications done to maintain stability. The mix of enclosed and open 5"/38 gun mounts were just one of the things tried to solve the overweight problem.
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  1126. I'm not aware of the UP rockets ever having been used in actual combat. It had its first indication of why itw was a dangerous weapon for the ship launching it when the first demonstration firing in Scapa Flow with practice bombs saw the wind change direction with the aerial bombs drifting back into the HMS Orion, getting caught in the rigging, and some of the small charges actually exploding. The practice mines were too small to do much damage to the ship in this case, but the 8 ounce bursting charge was large enough to at least bring down some of the rigging and radio antennas. Each empty 10 cell mount weighed over four tons compared to 8.5 tones for a quadruple 2 pounder mount, and the 2 pounder was an actually effective antiaircraft weapon. They had to be reloaded by hand, a process that took about 15 minutes, and aiming was point it in the right general direction and fire. They were all landed by the end of 1941, not the least because of questions about the UP being part of the reason for the sinking of the Hood. It wasn't, but it was a reasonable suspect at the time. There was a land version using two and three inch rockets that were assigned to Home Guard units when there wasn't much else available. At least one Home Guard unit claimed a kill of a low flying bomber using the rockets. If nothing else, it tended it keep low flying aircraft up higher, making their bombing less accurate, so it was effective in that role.
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  1127.  @dernwine  I can't imagine why anyone would have made such a claim. The RN was desperate for a single seat high performance fighter. Even though the Sea Hurricane and Seafire were better fighters than the obsolescent Fulmars and Skuas. It was the RN that recognized the potential of the Corsair early in 1943, at a time the aircraft was only used as a shore based fighter by the Marines. The USN considered the Corsair too "hot" to use on carriers while the RN set out to make it work. The did some airframe modifications, like clipping the wings to fit in smaller hangers, that made the plane easier to land on a carrier. The bulged Seafire type canopy improved visibility while landing, and the RN practiced maneuvers like lazy left hand turns to line up on the deck. It did cost them some planes and pilots initially in accidents, but they perfected the use of the Corsair on even escort carriers at the same time the USN wouldn't fly it from our largest carriers. Anyone claiming the RN wouldn't use it because armored deck carriers were too small is pulling things directly out of their butt.
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  1128.  @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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  1129. 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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  1130. Nova Topaz  I think the part where the guns were used against the aircraft must have been some type of barrage fire. Large caliber guns using HC ammunition have been used in that role before. The RN were actually great believers in using barrage fire for their battleships to break up torpedo plane attacks. As a concept, it worked, but it almost never did in real life. Because of the rapid fire of the 8"/55, they may have had a better chance than most other cruisers but there were never any antiaircraft rounds produced for that gun, so my guess is that segment was for propaganda values rather than showing any real use for a gun that big against aircraft. What was a waste of money was the postwar idea of the navy that next war would be fought with high level bombers using nuclear weapons against the fleet. In order to engage them further from the fleet so they couldn't get close enough that a blast from an atomic bomb would sidable or sink ships, they wanted a larger caliber gun that could reach out to 15 miles at 30,000 feet. If the 6" guns of the Worcester class could have reached their planned ROF of 25 rounds a minute, the 12 guns of the ship may have been able to put up a sufficient volume of fire to accomplish the task. Close in aircraft would have been dealt with by the 24 barrels of the semi-automatic 3"/50 guns firing at 50 rounds per minute per barrel. By the time the navy realized the 6"/47 was never going to be a reliable weapon, they realized that missiles fired from other ships were the main menace, not high flying bombers. I'd argue the dual hoist system was a complete dead end and was a total waste of money, except possibly to show what didn't work. It was only when the single hoist system with ammunition changed out before it got the hoist that we developed the superb 5"/54 in all its marks. Then we started down the road of extended range ammunition to make the destroyer into a battleship, but that's another whole story of failure.
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  1131.  @themadhammer3305  After the supertanker spillages of the 70's, governments demanded that there be a system of keeping the hull under surveillance at all times. Because the bridge was set so far back on the hull and centered, the sides of the ship couldn't be seen from there. Maneuvering these huge vessels in ports was also a problem since tugs near the bow also couldn't be seen from the bridge, and dock clearance was a big problem. In the days before color CCTV, the monster bridge wings provided the only answer. I'd still hate to be the sailor or officer assigned to the ends of the wings as they vibrated like a washing machine gone wild. It was a long way back to the bridge, and a long way down to the deck or sea surface, if something failed.
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  1132.  @РоманБекиров-с4м  No, it wasn't only used by the Americans and wasn't just for the Pacific. The first all or nothing battleships were the British Nelson class and French Dunkerque-class. The US, starting with the Nevada class, used a modified all or nothing scheme due to the lessons of Jutland. There was nothing about the Atlantic or even the Channel outside the Strait of Dover that would obviate the possibility of long range plunging fire.
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  1133.  @jamestheotherone742  The grand total of German merchant raiders in WWII that made it to the open ocean was eleven vessels. There were never more than six in service at one time, and there were an average of only four in service somewhere in the world at any one time. To sink 141 ships with this small force is quite credible. As with the rest of German ships, including submarines. there were just never enough of them.
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  1134. I'm not sure the Didio class was equal to the Atlanta class for some antiaircraft roles. It wasn't until the Bellona subclass that the 5.25" turrest finally remote power control (RPC) and the High Angle Control System (HACS) Mark VI combined with the type 275 radar with blind fire capability that the 5.25" gun was able to achieve the role that it did best the Atlanta's, that of firing at very high altitude aircraft. The RPC reduced the turret crew from 12 to 10, allowing more room in a cramped turret. Combined to the maximum AA ceiling of over 40,000 feet compared to the 5"/38 of about 37,000 feet, and having a higher bursting chage and weight of explosives, and an increased one minute 10 RPM, the HMS Black Prince was able to hit Japanese bombers flying at 36,000 feet and drive off Japanese snoopers flying at 40,000 feet while she was off Okinawa. This was a major shock to the Japanese, who had been able to fly safely at high altitude, out of range of the 5"38 guns.
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  1135. Captain von Tegetthoff to his chief gunner's mate. "You had one job..."
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  1136.  @sharlin648  24.5" actually, but much heavier than a typical destroyer torpedo. The story goes that the Japanese overhead a barroom conversation about an oxygen enriched engine carried by this torpedo,and the general weight and type of engine was the inspiration for the famous "Long Lance" torpedo. What the Japanese didn't know was the oxygen engines of the 24.5" torpedo were a source of never ending trouble, so no other oxygen engine torpedoes were ever again used by the RN. The Japanese, working from a clean sheet of paper, developed an excellent and trouble free oxygen engine. The rest, as they say, is history.
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  1137.  @MasterOfDickery  Naval gun salutes go back to the earliest days of sail. In those early days a salute was fired as a means to let ships of another navy know that you weren't a threat since you were firing just black powder charges with no shot. All naval vessels of cruiser or above size carried specially made or converted saluting guns up until WWII. The most popular was the French Hotchkiss 3 pounder (47mm), a gun that was an operational piece in some small boats right up until the end of WWII. On larger ship, the gun was too small for anti-surface work and too slow for antiaircaft use against fast planes. The 3 pounder was made in the tens of thousands so there were many left in storage in the US, Britain, and France. A lot of them were remounted for use as saluting guns. Almost all of them were made before 1910 so they were getting worn out, even from just saluting use. We didn't mount 3 pounders on the Iowa class when they were recommissioned. There were no small artillery pieces onboard so we were forced to fire salutes required by custom using the five inch guns. That was obviously not a very good alternative. We had tons of 40mm guns as surplus, so a number (I don't know the exact amount) were remanufactured as single pieces to mount on, of all things, the original 3 pounder mounts. They fire black powder charges so they make a lot of smoke and noise. The mounts never wear out. I don't know what happens next with saluting guns. The Ticonderogas will be our last class of cruisers as that force winds down. I believe at least two of them that normally ae equipped as flagships have two or more 40mm saluting guns, since the salutes are given and returned for high officers. Those crazy Zumwalts are the same size as the postwar Fargo class light cruisers in length and are actually about a thousand tons more displacement. The Zumwalts, even with their massive size, are officially classed as guided missile destroyers, and destroyers are normally not required to give salutes except for a president or former president. With the US and Russian navies being the only ones with designated cruisers, the use of fixed saluting guns has been declining. Will their places be taken by ships like the ROK Sejong the Great-class destroyers and Chinese Type 055 Destroyers, both the length and tonnage of WWII light cruisers? Stay tuned...
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  1138.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Both ships were in the Reserve Fleet from 1947 until being stricken from the Naval Ships Register in 1964 and 1966. Both were then sold for scrap. I think the confusion is because the USN reclassified ships in reserve based on perceived new roles, even if the ships never left the reserve fleet. This probably happened to unmodernized carriers more than any other class of ships.
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  1139. It was Churchill's enthusiastic support that led to the adoption and installation of the Unrotated Projectile launchers being installed on many British ships at the start of WWII. Churchill's ability to understand weaponry was shown by the hundreds of thousands of pounds wasted on the material, production, and installation of these useless weapons.
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  1140. YT will run their own ads. They just won't share the revenue with creators, and they really don't care about the same silly criteria they apply to creators. This is why I use adblock for any demonetized video. I'm not going to give them a dime if I don't have to.
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  1141. Nice. This is one class I hadn't heard of. It sounds like she did what she could in joining the Allies and fighting until she was sunk. In looking the class up, her sistership also had a fighting career but, unfortunately, it was for the Germans. She was first sunk after the floating drydock she was was in was either sunk by German aircraft or scuttled by the Greeks to prevent capture. She was then raised and sent out to perform many of the same roles of her sister, but for the Germans. She became a constructive total loss after attacks by Allied aircraft only a month after the sinking of her sister by the Germans. A lot of tit of tat with this small class.
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  1142. Interesting read, thanks for the effort that went into it. It's just difficult for me to see a hypothetical short of some sort of British version of Pearl Harbor that the American public would have supported a war against Britain. There are just too many people of British descent in the US and no racial or political animus against Britain. As you say, there may have been a heightened naval tension between the two countries, but look at all the tensions the US resisted from about 1938 to 1941 before the US has no other real choice but to enter the war.
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  1143.  @andreww2098  That's what I meant by the laws of physics. You just can't miniaturize the generators needed to provide power for the railgun. Size and weight of generators will first need to be overcome before things like barrel wear become important.
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  1144. I guess that paymaster was lucky it was just his trousers that were blown off!
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  1145. Excellent. My cat Marty already thinks he's my ship's cat, even though I haven't had a boat in about 15 years now. He supervises every operation in my home, from unloading the groceries to cleaning his litter box. He's only about nine months old, so he's still learning the ropes, so to speak, but woe to any mouse or rat that would dare show up here. He will spend hours chasing down a bug and torturing it before I finally grab it and throw it outside out of sheer pity. I can't imagine how he would treat a mouse, but it wouldn't be pleasant. I've come to the conclusion that cats, in addition to being natural hunters, have an inborn streak of sadism as well. :-)
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  1146.  @gloworms3592  Indeed. I will be long gone when that happens, but I hope the young historians now will have the chance to put paid to yet another of the great naval mysteries of our time.
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  1147. A single battleship of any nation and any class with no electrical power, no radar, and no functioning fire controls systems is always going to be sunk, even with a smaller force than the Japanese had that night. The real power of a modern US battleship with fully functional systems was shown by the performance of Washington by comparison.
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  1148.  @Cbabilon675  It's hard to tell since the stabilised mount of the C/33 guns defeated the guns in the AA role. A 127mm gun, other things being equal, will always be a more effective surface gunfire weapon just because it has a higher payload than a 105. The single mount C/32 105mm gun was used in primarily surface roles on ships like torpedo boats, minesweepers and U-boats since most of these were in low angle mounts not suited for AA use. Some had modified DP mounts late in the war, but it's hard to judge their effectiveness since they didn't see much use. Some indication of how well they performed was that almost all U-boats had the C/32 wet mount guns removed by mid 1944 in favor of more light AA guns. The Norwegians, OTOH, liked the 105 for shore battery use, with some ex-German guns remaining in use into the 21st century, before the forts were taken out of commision.
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  1149. What a great sternwalk. Must have been good to be andmiral back then.
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  1150. ​ @f12mnb  Indeed, as was the difference between fighting when you're the last line of defense compared to the first line of offense. There were now enough US carriers to bring an overwhelming number of planes into any daylight battle. Admirals no long had to husband carriers so some would remain in the fight. The technological advances in radar and fire control in the two years between Savo Island and Leyte Gulf had improved by orders of magnitude. They were better hardened against battle damage, more reliable and less prone to breakdown, and our radar and sonar operators became world experts in interpreting the signals. Our TBS radio and fighter coordination were second to none. We finally had torpedoes that would run where they were aimed and explode when they hit something. All of this negated the night fighting skills of the Japanese and exposed their ships as if they were fighting in daylight. The Japanese, now worn down after continuous defeats, were the ones back on their heels. In their hearts, the Japanese knew the Navy was doomed, and that affected their fighting spirit. Never underestimate the effect of morale, good and bad, on the outcome of battles.
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  1151.  @Drachinifel  It will be neat to see more of them. I was lucky to be able to build models without paint and glue slopping over the edges, so I appreciate someone with the talent to do it right.
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  1152.  @workingguy-OU812  You're quite welcome. I like these little details of naval history.
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  1153.  @bkjeong4302  Carrier battle groups are used for power projection. A carrier by itself is just an airplane transport. There is no other ship or combination of ships that could fulfill the three roles of a single Iowa, e.g., surface warfare, antiaircraft protection, and shore bombardment as effectively as an Iowa. Of course a country, even the US, can't build unlimited Iowas. That's why it built 14 Baltimore class heavy cruisers and 29 Cleveland/Fargo class light cruisers. None of that has anything to do with the strategic value of a battleship. Only one Cleveland class ship was reactivated for Korea. Not a single Baltimore class lasted in all-gun configuration for more the 18 years after commissioning. At least one Iowa has either remained in commision or been recommissioned for every conflict since WWII. The four Iowa's were commissioned in the 80's specifically for their strategic (power projection) value. Assuming any were still around in 1984, what do you think the value of recommissioning four Cleveland's or Baltimore's would have been by comparison? And you should reread your definition of strategic value. All you did was restate the definition of tactical value and tack strategic value on the front of it.
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  1154. I can't imagine the maintenance requirements of an inflated rubberized flight deck. How well it worked depended on the system used to keep the landing surface inflated. All it took was one bad landing and some fire and your whole deck could be burning. After you got rid of the debris, you then needed to repair the deck in such a way the inflation system still worked. If you've ever seen a tire fire, you have an idea of what a burning rubber flight deck could look like. From what I've read, the RN and USN didn't really think the system could really work, but it was an interesting experiment.
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  1155.  @chanman819  Generally true, especially on ships from cruiser size up. The captain didn't have a lot of time to get involved with the food selected, although the good ones still did regular food inspections just to make sure nothing was moving in the food that shouldn't have been and it was all the right color. On smaller vessels, a lot of of the skippers were reservists, and many of them had civilian jobs that were at least as important to them as their Navy training, Some came from the food service business before the war, and they used that experience to select the best food from that available for the ships. They could buy local meat and produce when none was available from the normal fleet supplies, and they'd also swap items back and forth with other skippers for food their crews liked better. The classic is American smokes and RAN ships. Apparently, the RAN didn't supply cigarettes at all to their ships, just loose tobacco, and that was reputed to be not very good. When a US ship was in port, they could trade almost any local or Australian food for smokes. My Dad's PT boat had a skipper that ran his own restaurant before the war, and he was a past master at horse trading. One of their favorites was lobster, something the Aussie guys knew how to catch when they were in port, with the going price being a pack of cigs for one lobster. He'd also swap Australian mutton, which everyone hated but the Aussies liked, for sides of beef. The skipper knew how to trim those to get some pretty tasty steaks, with the leftovers used as stew meat. Every couple weeks, the crew would set up a charcoal grill on the fantail and cook up a meal of surf and turf. The smell brought Aussie forces from the army to navy to air force down to the dock, and the price of a meal was two bottles of beer. The skipper was able to keep the squadron pretty well supplied with things that made life in the South Pacific a lot more tolerable. Everything he did was, of course, contrary to regulations, but he made sure any visiting brass was well fed and had some cold beer from the tiny fridges on the PT's. He never got in any trouble for his "creativeness", and my Dad said that, except for the fact the Japanese kept trying to kill them, serving in New Guinea and the Solomon's wasn't half bad.
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  1156.  @jballaviator  K-rations had undergone some improvement by late 1943, with the much hated pork loaf being replaced by a pork and beef somewhat similar to Spam, and replacing the even more hated bitter lemon drink powder with fruit drink powders like grape and orange drink powder, and substituting a chocolate bar for the tasteless dextrose tablets, and a couple of pieces of candy coated chewing gum were added. They increased the calorie count and palatability of the K-rations, but men weren't supposed to subsite on them for more than 15 meals. Unfortunately, that could easily last a month or more in places like Burma, and men lost 20-30 pounds a month on them.
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  1157. Tell us about "fire ships". I've heard of them but know nothing about them.
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  1158.  @admiraltiberius1989  It was actually a little of both. The plans should have have called for more reinforcement to begin with, and the yards didn't do an adequate job even within the specs.
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  1159. Halsey was a great public relations guy. He was never involved in a battle that he didn't win. and he won it because he was in command. He got the nickname "Bull" not only because of his imposing bulk but also because he was like the bull in the china shop. Up until his death, he never really took responsibility for the Battle off Samar or his predilection to sail into typhoons. He was a prefect admiral for 1942, when a no fear attack was the only way to survive. By 1944, he was one of the worst admirals the USN could have in charge.
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  1160.  @admiraltiberius1989  Considering Spruance was literally thrown into the role of commanding aircraft carriers only days before Midway, he not only seemed have a visceral concept on how aircraft had changed the role of the battlefleet, He also had Captain Miles Browning by his side to advise him, and was smart enough to listen to and act on his advice. Unfortunately, Browning was also a very unstable and irresistible officer, and Spruance has said he could never work with him again after Midway.
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  1161. General Short rightly bears more responsibility for the success of the Japanese attack than Kimmel because he was in charge of the defense of Hawaii, including the ships of the fleet anchored at Pearl Harbor. He didn't use the patrol aircraft he had available, didn't send the ones he did use in the right directions, had most antiaircraft batteries unmanned with ammunition in secured lockers, and made almost no attempt to integrate his radars into the air defense system. However, no one expected the Japanese to make an attack on Pearl Harbor with the Japanese fleet apparently fully committed to the attack on Thailand. The assumption was that there was insufficient Japanese intelligence before the date of the attack. That's why the war warnings issued during November emphasized securing the territory from spies and protecting military installations from sabotage. Those warnings also emphasized the overriding importance of not causing panic among civilians or interfered in normal commerce, so that limited how high of an alert Short could have declared without causing those problems he was warned against. It was considered that an attack against the Philippines or Panama Canal would be the first, and Pearl Harbor would only come after the initial operation (s) were successful. While we always look for scapegoats after a disaster like Pearl Harbor, putting the entire blame on the shoulders of Short and Kimmel isn't in concert with the facts.
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  1162. The Japanese and Britain were jittery allies. Neither one wanted the other to get any close up views of their latest warships, and the Japanese were already busy starting to fortify German islands in the Pacific before they were even given "legal" possession of them. The Japanese also didn't want to be of any help to Russia coming out of the war any stronger than when they went in. The Japanese wanted to do the absolute minimum that would allow them to get possession of the German mandates and have a seat at the treaty talks.
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  1163. Yes, not the first Soviet plane crash caused by amateurs in the cockpit.
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  1164. I'm glad to hear Candace Owens' message. I'm not so sure I trust Candace Owens herself. Time will tell.
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  1165. No, Churchill was no friend of Dyer. He wasn't so much opposed to the shootings as he was having Dyer do it when he did and make India much harder to govern. He thought not warning the crown was an ungentlemanly thing to do as well.
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  1166. Cool video. Thanks for the FAQ on lighted ghetto bikes. They must go through a crapload of batteries. EDIT: Somewhere on the second guy's bike there's infrared receiver for the light set. That's connected by wires to the actual lights. I have floodlights on the front of the house that can change colors using the same kind of infrared transmitter that he was holding in his hand.
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  1167.  @contactwide  And the woman at the gas station decided that twerkin for justice was the order of the day....
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  1168.  @tayzonday  I've read plenty of books. The first goal of socialism is to tax the rich and upper middle class out of existence. Eisenhower's 91% marginal tax rate was his attempt to raise more money for weapons to fight the cold war. It has nothing to do with fighting or not fighting socialism. We had a huge hole in the budget due to everyone cashing in war bands in the 50's. Eisenhower was merely keeping the same marginal tax rate in effect since 1940. He offset the effect of those taxes (which very few people earned enough money to pay) by reducing long term capital gains tax to 25%. The rich earn the vast amount of their income from capital gains, not getting a paycheck. You'd know that if you read more books.
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  1169. Gunshots at 2:45 to 2:50 as well.
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  1170. There is no East St Louis Missouri, only East St Louis, Illinois. Why add something to the title when a city by that name doesn't exist in Missouri?
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  1171. Population of Windsor 1950 - 120,000 Population of Windsor 2016 - 217,000 Population of Detroit 1950 - 1,849,00 Population of Detroit 2016 - 673,000 Black population of Windsor 2015 - 21% Black population of Detroit 2010 - 82.7% These are a couple of reasons Windsor and Detroit don't look the same.
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  1172. Where all the drones yelling at people about social distancing? That concept doesn't seem to have caught on in the hood. Up next - "More blacks die from coronavirus due to racism!"
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  1173.  @wolfhauzer3178  You must have missed the boarded up houses and commercial buildings plus all the holes in the neighborhoods where abandoned houses had been demolished along with at least one street where the demolishing was in progress. Other than that, sure, just a regular neighborhood.
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  1174.  huey.p. newton  Naw? You know that Huey P Newton was a real guy, right? And Huey got shot to death by a guy named Tyrone, right? Kinda weird you decided to use the name of a murderous street thug as your screen name, but it does tell me something about you.
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  1175. ​ huey.p. newton  Huey? I thought Tyrone blew you up in that drive by back in '89.
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  1176.  @fritolay001  About 50% of the adult population in both cities is functionally illiterate to the point of being unable to fill out a simple job application.
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  1177. Charlie, all the stuff you've got hanging off your key ring is eventually going to tear up your ignition switch bouncing around all those bad roads.
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  1178. Dang. Unless I missed it, not a single boarded up house, and some of the public housing looked better than the apartments here. No clumps of urban "yutes" blocking the streets, and no swathes of urban prairie. The demographics tell the tale. The population is 40% white, 40% black, and 20% all other races, including 7.5% non-white hispanics. While Detroit lost 25% of its population between 2000 and 2010, Greensboro clocked a gain of 21%. The percent of households with a family but no husband present was 16% in Greensboro in 2010. The figure for Detroit was 31.5%. Greensboro has 22.7% of its population under 18 while it's 31.1% in Detroit. The median family income in Greensboro is $41,628 while it's 25,787 in Detroit. The percent of those employed or actively looking for work in Detroit is 53.4% while it's 68.8% in Greensboro. It's a good demonstration once again that the way to stay out of poverty is graduate high school, get a job, don't have kids until you're married, and do your best to stay married, at least until the kids are out of high school.
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  1179.  @model-man7802  I have yet to understand why German U-bats made so many attacks against then neutral Brazilian shipping. The best explanation I've read is that Brazil was actually supplying enough raw materials to the US and Britain that risking war with Brazil was worth it if the U-boats could cut off the supply lines to the allies. In point of fact, Brazil lost very few merchant ships once they declared war and began the convoy system with the assistance of the US and Britain. She was losing and average of six ships a month to U-boats, not to mention over a thousand Brazilian seamen, while they were sailing individually and unescorted. Brazil's declaration of war in August, 1942 also allowed Brazil to drop her technical position as a neutral and break up some very successful diplomatic and military spying operations by the Germans and Italians. Putting Brazil in a position of having to declare war to preserve her national honor was a very grave mistake.
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  1180.  @imverysalty7472  You're quite welcome. I've found that Latin American contributions to the war effort are little known facts today.
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  1181.  @andon_RT  The fact the gun disappeared behind the parapet was not mostly for camouflage but ease loading, especially with muzzle loaders. Gunners could reload the guns without being exposed to direct fire, and parapets could be made higher to give better protection to the gun and crew. Once a gun fired, the enemy knew where it was located, so the disappearing advantage rapidly disappeared. The gun pits offered no protection from plunging fire and, later on, aircraft bombs. Most modern shore batteries had their breech loading guns in armored casemates or turrets to give better protection that just a parapet.
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  1182. Great story. I was the search and rescue coordinator for my sheriff's department for 20 years. We used scent dogs like Bloodhounds and area dogs like German Shepards. Bloodhounds were great as long as they had a scent article to work with. Area dogs would alert on any human in the area while Bloodhounds ignored everyone once they were on scent unless they matched the scent from an article of clothing or something similar. The best picture I have from all those years is me giving a briefing to search teams while one of our Bloodhounds was behind me happily slobbering on my pant leg. I have never seen a mean Bloodhound, let alone a vicious one. I'm retired now, but those dogs were some of the best search assets we had and made many amazing finds.
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  1183.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  Possibly, but I suspect there would have been a sufficient outcry from the American people to cause the Ward to be set aside from scrapping, at least for a bit. If that would have led to preservation is another matter. She was a post WWI member of her class and had been lightly used in the interwar period. She had never been damaged in battle until that fatal day in 1944. Going against her was her APD conversion, so she looked completely different than the Ward of December 7, 1941. Unfortunately, we will never know what might have happened to her.
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  1184. Paul, the US military has some of the same traditions. It's is not required, but many officers in the Army and Navy do serve their men dinner. The idea of a holiday dinner is so firmly set in the American military that we have been known to parachute in hot turkey dinners to remote outposts. During WWII the Navy had refrigerated cargo vessels that did nothing but transport frozen turkeys and hams with all the trimmings, fresh vegetables, and most importantly to the sailors, milk, Cokes, and smokes. The transport crews became experts at transferring all of this to vessels while underway, and it was a rare sailor on Thanksgiving or Christmas that didn't get a hot traditional American feast. [Edited for my usual typos]
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  1185.  @steveshoemaker6347  Steve, I don't want to get into a pain olympics, but my eldest son died at 19 in a car accident, my wife died at 58 from leukemia, my baby sister passed away two years ago at age 52 from a heart attack, my baby brother died last year at age 47 from a fall, my only remaining and favorite sister in law died in June from a rare form of pneumonia following surgery for breast cancer, and my late wife's twin sister died the next day on the table from complications during a routine heart valve replacement. I nearly died three years ago from complications after a routine cataract removal. Life can be pretty rotten at times. I have faith everything happens for a reason, and death will be the time I get to see all my relatives again. Be happy, brother.
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  1186.  @steveshoemaker6347  Steve, I'm also old enough that many of my relatives have died. I keep working on my family genealogy so that history doesn't die with me. It helps me maintain a connection to those that have gone before me. You might try that if you're not already doing so. Merry Christmas, Steve. At least we are still alive to celebrate it.
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  1187.  @DavidSmith-ss1cg  They were part of the number of Americans who dabbled in Communism because it opposed racism Yeah, you did argue they weren't really spies, just communist dabblers because the Rosenbergs were anti racists and all, even though there's zero evidence of that. The Rosenbergs, Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, Harry Gold, and Klaus Fuchs were part of spy ring that passed on secrets that allowed the Soviet Union to develop their first atomic bomb at least five years ahead of schedule. They gave away secrets about the performance of the F-86 that made it easier for MiG-15 pilots to shoot them down. The Rosenbergs were the recruiters and organizers of the spy ring. You are now using the communist story that, while they might have been spies, their execution was just too brutal. That argument, also used by their communist children, was modified from the decades lone "they were totally innocent" when the secrets of Soviet spying were revealed by Soviet documents in 1995. Now the line has switched to Ethel's reputed smoke from the top of her head. Maybe Stalin's favorite form of execution would have been better - a bullet to the back of the head. I don;t know if you're actually a Soviet communist sympathizer or just a useful idiot. It's one or the other. People like you are really good at playing the reasonable humanitarian when your goal is a new communist state, but this time "doing it right". You are as transparent as cellophane.
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  1188.  @BoskoBuha99  Randolph was the kind of speaker that could motivate people. I think you're right about Churchill wanting to elevate Tito's position as the leader of postwar Yugoslavia as long as his forces would keep lots of German forces pinned down. He rightly thought Tito could keep all the disparate parties in Yugoslavia under control, something he did quite well while he was alive by force of his personality and an efficient secret police. Given your grandfather's close experience with Tito and the partisans during the war, I think you'd find Eastern Approaches an very interesting book. It's available for less than $15 on the US Amazon site so I assume it;'s also available from the UK site. No Kindle version though. I still enjoy a book in my hands, so at least this one is still available at a reasonable price. I paid much more for the hardcover version I bought in 1970.
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  1189.  @BoskoBuha99  According to the book Eastern Approaches, Randolph could be an inspiring orator like his father...assuming he wasn't drunk. According to MacLean and others, he caused the other Brits and partisans nothing but grief while he was in Yugoslavia.
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  1190. Great video, and another lesson about why putting your faith in someone who talks to God is a bad idea.
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  1191.  @1pcfred  I can see you're a real expert on things naval. Firstly, the 9% rate was for ships sunk, not number of men killed. The number of merchant sailors lost from all causes in WWII was between 8,000 and 12,000 while about 1,500 ships of all types were lost due to all causes. There were about 14,800 ships in the merchant fleet by 1944. As you can see, the average number of sailors lost per lost hull was about 8 at the highest estimate, and that from an average crew of 38 to 50. If we were losing 10% of every crew that left port we would have rapidly lost the war. The 9% rate was hulls lost from all causes, including submarine and aircraft attacks, not men lost. These were ships that, in first three years of the war, spent a lot of their time either under attack or damaged by enemy action. About 30% of merchant sailors killed due to enemy action were killed without their ships sinking. By comparison, the casualty rate among WWI merchantmen was over 20%, and that was from virtually no aircraft attacks and much less efficient and deadly submarine attacks. Better antisubmarine warfare and convoy techniques in WWII saved a lot of merchantmen that would have been lost in WWI. Merchant sailors face risk every day from things like weather, grounding, and collisions, yet men still go down to the sea in ships. Luckily, you don't have to do that if you don't want to.
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  1192.  @jimtalbott9535  Almost all aircraft communications in early '42 were conducted on high frequency (HF) using Morse code. HF is good for range but bad for voice due to a lot of terrestrial and atmospheric interference. Morse code can be heard and copied when a voice signal would be drowned out in static. As you might imagine, radio communications weren't a casual affair. One of the reasons why most aircraft of the time had two crew was one was needed to listen to and send radio messages using Morse code. I was a private pilot for a little over 30 years before old age and bad blood pressure grounded me. One of the questions I often ear was "Why didn't the pilot send out a mayday before the plane crashed". The reason is he was flying the plane, or blimp, in this case. You're trained that your entire mental and physical being had to be directed at flying the plane and doing everything you could to avoid a crash. Nothing should break concentration on that task, and that includes operating the radio.
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  1193.  @actionman9357  And my hat's off to you. Controlling a material thing like dice is way beyond me. At least I have a good handle on poker probabilities. You never know with a roll of the dice unless it's someone like you.
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  1194.  @dopaminecircuit  "Prevalence of gambling addiction"....This covered 13 states and province of Ontario. Got some links that show this supposed gambling addiction is more prevalent there than the rest of the US and Canada?
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  1195. I was 12 years old at the time and I remember how shocking it was to have such high official attacked in the street. Our leaders just weren't treated like that in 1958. I really thought we'd at least launch an airstrike on Communist Party headquarters or something else symbolic. In retrospect, I think it was a mistake not to have responded in some way, and the the beginning of further troubles around the world, as other countries perceived us as weak.
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  1196.  @brucesmith54  What, you go to a special VA with nurses and doctors licensed in the Tennessee? If not, where do they come from? Don't have Bruce play games with me. I mentioned "diversity and inclusion" because it was mentioned in one of the best countries to live in lists. My point was that's impossible to measure for an entire country. It obviously means something different in Tennessee than in NYC. Classy of you to try the smear thing without any understanding of why it was written.
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  1197.  @trevoncowen9198  British designation for a 37 mm gun. They used to classify guns based on the weight of their shell rather than bore diameter. They finally joined the rest of the world and used metric designations after WWII.
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  1198.  @dleland71  I agree. I mostly collected Morgans and some Peace dollars. The peace dollars are beautiful in their own way but were too "modern" for my taste. Morgans are a classic and timeless example of coin design.
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  1199. Daniel, not to mention the cost of digging up NYC just to bury power lines. In addition, buried power lines wouldn't have made any difference. The outage was caused by four lightning strikes with a half hour on a critical substation and high voltage transmission lines. This caused Con Ed to shed load on the affected part of their grid. They then tried to bring in power from parts of the Northeast Power Pool outside NYC, buy the power demands were too high and in too short a time. Other operators began to automatically disconnect to save their own equipment from damage. This started a cascade of Con Ed trying to shed enough load that other operators could bring in power from outside the city but not doing so fast enough. Within an hour of the first lightning strike, Con Ed finally shut down to allow other pool operators to begin staged reconnections and bring in enough power to offset load capacity from Con Ed. Given the damage that occured to Con Ed facilities from the lighting strikes and resulting overloads, it was an effort of almost heroic proportions that restored power in only 25 hours. I can see the OP has never worked for a power company, or possibly has had lead poisoning himself.
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  1200. Commander Cody was rather late to the game with "Hot Rod Lincoln". It was written and recorded in 1955 by Charlie Ryan and The Timberline Riders. Note the similarity between that name and Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen. The biggest hit version was by Johnny Bond in 1960, and this is the one I listened to as a ninth grader. The Cody version was considered by many of us who liked country music as a group of dopers rerecording the song to more or less make fun of country bumpkins. It did gain a lot of popularity with other dopers back than.
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  1201. Edited my posts to get Hopkins in the right places. And no, I meant Willett, the lieutenant in charge of the Hopkins Armed Guard, and posthumous winner of the Navy Cross.
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  1202. Senator Barry Goldwater was also a Reserve Major General in the Arizona National Guard and accomplished pilot. He was the author of many bills advancing the causes of veterans and Native Americans, the recognition of the "Hello Girls" being one of his veteran's bills. I was a little young to vote in 1964, but I worked on his campaign, this at a time when every other 20 year old was a flaming liberal. Goldwater was roundly trashed in the 1964 campaign as being crazy, but I think he would have made a much better president that Johnson ever turned out to be.
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  1203.  @TheAspiringNerd  And I see your brand of libertarianism makes you blind to culture and politics. Interesting.
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  1204.  @steveperreira5850  The natural human inclination towards fear needs a kicker, either evidence that something really is scary, or something that scares people regardless of evidence. As humans, we are prone to be the least fearful ow that's likely, like being killed in a car crash, while fearing being killed while flying in a modern airliner. We brush off fears for things like heart disease and cancer, two likely killers, and relieve those fears by panicking over unlikely killers. In the case of Covid-19, it was a combination of left wing media, incompetent doctors, and an inept government response. All the ingredients were there for a global hysteria, they just had to come together in the right order.
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  1205. And the left wing voters burning and looting? I find the supposed right wing voters a lot more forgivable.
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  1206.  @ChucksSEADnDEAD  Reining in regulations, getting us out of bad trade deals, starting get NATO countries to pay their share, increasing school choice, decreasing taxes, appointing judges who may stop federal overreach, not getting us into new wars, basically telling the Philippines to pound sand over their threat to end joint basing, off the top of my head. Compared to the other choice (and let's not pretend Gary Johnson was any kind of libertarian), I'll take it.
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  1207. Except for the one black council  member who seemed to understand why two moths for a sign is ridiculous, the rest of them don't seem to get it all, especially Mr. Snappy Dresser. Clevel and remains a doomed wasteland.
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  1208. Oh, okay, i get it now, Crankwerk. Neither one of these men was anxious to support the resistance or British and Norwegian commando raids. I think part of what motivated them was to stop German reprisals on Norwegian citizens but they came anyway. I'm sure they thought they were doing the best they could for the people of Norway, but both became more and more out of touch with the people's attitude toward resistance. They are good examples why politicians shouldn't be in charge of military campaigns.
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  1209. Unless it's some bullshit about a spray painted polar bear. Worst video he ever did.
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  1210.  @kevingonzalez9191  Most students were from Africa when the university first opened,. You must have missed the part where I said they started filling in the student population with non-Africans in later years. Not actually reading what I wrote is also super wrong.
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  1211. Yeah, me too. How did you get enough vodka in to make it worthwhile?
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  1212. You've got to love that old Soviet iron. It seems as if adding chrome covered many other defects. I was a kid in the 50's and early 60's. We were outside every day in the summer, riding our bikes off somewhere to swim or fish. We played baseball in the summer, football in the fall, and hockey in the winter. Except for watching cartoons or the few TV shows that appealed to me, I couldn't imagine being stuck inside. Even as a young adult, I was still outside whenever I could be. I went to school to be a respiratory therapist and my wife was an RN. We had two children but were still able to buy a house by the time we were 26. It was a better life from the 50's to the early 70's. Things started to decline after that, but this is still the best country on the globe to live in.
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  1213. We still have "cable radios". A lot of cable systems also carry local AM and FM stations. If you hook up the coaxial cable to your FM tuner you can use the better signal of cable FM compared to trying to pick up distance signals off the air. One of the things that Soviet people with the money and technical skill was use shortwave radios to pick up stations that weren't controlled by the Soviet government. Overcoming all the jamming is one of the things that demanded skill when using a shortwave radio. The jamming signals were called "woodpeckers" because that's what the jamming sounded like. To my knowledge, there wasn't much restriction about owning a shortwave radio (except for the price, which was quite high), and the government would control who listened to what by the use of jamming.
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  1214. Many of us in the West were quite surprised that the central committee would chose Andropov. Given his long leadership of the KGB, he was better known than many of the the members of the central committee before he was elevated to General Secretary. Even though he wasn't old compared to other Soviet leaders, there were many rumors about his fragile state of health, so Andropov seemed like a poor choice. I doubt he would have made it to General Secretary without knowing where all the skeletons were in what closets due to his KGB work.
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  1215. The Yugoslav government allow people to keep what was called "family land". That was an acre or two that a family had to prove had been owned by members of the family going back to about 1800. Other than those plots, all land was owned by the government, and all farming was done on collective farms. If anyone doesn't believe capitalism is the only system that assures the maximum supply of goods to the people, they should have visited Slovenia in the 70's and, I imagine, the Ukraine at the same time. People who lived in the city would always go out to the country and work their family lands. Estimates I've read is those plots produced almost 40% of the food grown in Slovenia. Family plots produced food from literally even square inch of soil while the collective farms always looked half empty, and the plants looked half dead.
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  1216. I'm a big wimp so I want water temperatures of like 26C (80F) for swimming. Looks like the Russian area around Sochi is the really warm spot on the Black Sea coast. Looks like the water is even warmer on the Georgia coast. Did your family ever go there? It appears the Turkish coast is the warmest but I imagine you weren't allowed to go there. I'm must say laying around on all the rocks on the "beach" didn't look like much fun.
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  1217. That's a massive garden for one person. How many times a week does she have to water? My garden is about a tenth of that size and it takes a couple hours of work each day. All the marigolds really do produce a natural insecticide. Does she still cook with wood like it appears the neighbor does? A pension of $50 a month doesn't leave much left over to buy appliances like washing machines. This reminds me of the village in Slovenia that was in the same state. My late wife's relatives live there, and all of them have large gardens like this. During the Tito era, the state spread factories out to the villages so an invasion couldn't wipe out all the industry at once. The village had a chair factory that employed about 75 workers so the village was able to maintain a population of about 350. After independence in 1991, the factory no longer got subsidies like it did in the communist era. The machinery was old, and the chairs were very poorly made. The factory went out of business by 1996 and all the men had to try to find jobs in the surrounding villages. Last I looked, the population is down to about 100 and the village is slowly dying.. Most the sons and daughters of the mostly pensioner population still come out from the city to plant and tend the gardens so they can get good quality fresh vegetables. The produce sold in supermarkets is not good quality, and the kids were used to better.
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  1218. The Belomorkanal cigs were pretty awful. the tobacco could give you a sore throat for the first one, and I just about passed out smoking one of them. They must have had a nicotine content many times higher than even the strongest US cigarette. There were lots of guys I saw smoking them in 1992 so I guess it's all what you're used to.
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  1219. I'm glad yo hear your parents are still doing well. I'm 71, and my parents died within a year of each other in 2005. It was really quite a shock, even at my age. I was very lucky that my maternal grandmother and fraternal grandmother and grandmother lives into their late 80's so I was able to spend some time with them when I was an adult. We in the US don't really pay much attention to our grandparents. They are just old, and it's time that they moved on. It's one of the reasons we are really kind of a mess as a country. The USSR didn't have a lot of material wealth but they did have, and still have, the wealth of respecting their elders.
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  1220. You grow tired because it seems like the stories of your grandparents on the farm are getting old? From how you write, it appears you understood almost nothing about the USSR and the lives of average people. I feel like the videos so far have barely scratched the surface. Maybe you should be watching videos about people stopping off at the casino on the way out of town to their dachas.
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  1221. The best thing we could do in the US is once again outlaw advertising prescription drugs directly to the public. It wasn't legal until 1983, and it provides no benefit to patients but lots of costs, since the patient pays for all those ads. It also leads to prescription shopping, where a patient wants a drug they saw advertised, and they will go to enough doctors until they find one that will prescribe it. The patient also pays a huge cost for promotion prizes and benefits, with prizes like new cars and luxury vacations for doctors who prescribe the most of a certain drug. We need to get back to the days when prescriptions were written for the medical benefit of a patient and nothing else.
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  1222. Finland never became truly independent until after the collapse of the USSR in 1981. They were occupied by Sweden and Russia until 1918 after which they became theoretically independent but in reality still under the economic domination of the USSR. The Finns, really for the first time, decided they weren't going to knuckle under to any more Soviet demands and fought. While the Finnish Army performed better than anyone thought they could, the outcome was inevitable, and more demands by the Soviets had to met as part of the ceasefire. The Finns decided to use the support of Germany in 1944-1945 to eject Soviet forces from Finnish territory. Once again, the Finns were on the wrong side, and another armistice and accession ended the war in 1945. This was the start of a period of enforced neutrality and economic domination by the USSR until the collapse of communism in 1981. For the first time in its history., the Finns were truly free to choose their own path. Thanks for this series, Sergei. It;s too bad more people didn't more people didn't seem to find this interesting, but I thought this was a fascinating trip into the mind of a Soviet citizen in the later period of the USSR.
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  1223. @InfiniteMushroom "We Teh Sheep" means what? The deliberate misspelling of "the" must have a deep meaning to you tinfoilers. Let me guess. All caps names, the color ink you use to sign something, and fringe on the flag also have deep and mysterious meanings. The "Organic Act of 1871" Is properly called the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871, the second one after the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1801 created the district. I know you've never read the act, but please quote the part where it had anything to do with the this mystical "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, INC." Don't respond with usual SC diversion off into something new. Just quote the section of the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 that has anything to do with your assertion. I'll wait....,
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  1224.  @TapOnX  Europe at 9, Belarus at 8.9, Poland at 9.7, and the US at 12. At 18, Russia has the highest road death rate in Europe. How is that rate honestly not that bad again?
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  1225. What a great story! The FW-190 was never a good night fighter, and Beaufighters and Mosquitos made short work of them.
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  1226. They were blackout headlights. Most of the light was covered, with the slot providing just enough light for the driver to see the road 50 feet ahead but not enough for the car to be seen from the air at night. They were used on almost German vehicles during the war.
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  1227.  @FLJBeliever1776  The Admiralty credits the Swordfish with 22.5 U-boat sinkings, hardly "tens of dozens". No need to exaggerate the successes of this useful aircraft.
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  1228.  @derrinpickett9948  Look where the US is today? Yeah, we don't have Stalin in charge. You Soviet apologists really set my back teeth on edge.
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  1229. Merry Christmas, Mark, and my fellow history buffs. Thanks for this video. This was the topic I chose for one of two of my senior history papers. In addition to the most famous 1914 Western Front Christmas truce, small versions also occured on the Eastern Front. It seems this sprang from truces of several hours that happened regularly so both sides could retrieve their dead and wounded from no man's land. By Christmas, the men were fed up with the war that was going nowhere, and these short truces around Christmas expanded to the men of both side coming out of the trenches and fraternizing in no man's land. This only happened on small portions of the front, and the ones that succeeded did so because most officers above lieutenant were on Christmas leave. When some high officers came rushing back on word of the "mutinies", it was too late. One English colonel reportedly ordered his men to open fire and was instead shot himself. Christmas and Easter truces occured on various portions of the front in 1915 as well. Unfortunately, by 1916, the animosities of war on both sides made a repeat of 1914 impossible.
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  1230. A small correction. The ship shown at 2:47 is actually an Admirable class minesweeper, the USS Pivot (AM-276). She served with the USN until 1948. She was then sold to Taiwan (Republic of China) and recommissioned as the Yung Shou (AM 49). She served with the ROCS Navy until she was scrapped in 1970.
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  1231. Thanaks, Mark. The Battle of Los Angeles is the one I used for my college history/psychology paper. It was to demonstrate how fear, hysteria, and panic can create their own reality, even to the point that we'd say that things actually happened when all the evidence was it didn't, and "deniers" would denounced as unpatriotic. I never expected to see a modern demonstration of the same kind of hysteria, by this time on a global scale. Ironically, we've even chosen the same way to deal with threat, just as they did in 1941 - lock people up until the threat goes away. I never expected Americans to ever again meekly surrender their constitutional rights, but here we are.
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  1232. Also luckily for the RN, the Argentines didn't really understand they needed to re-fuse their bombs for zero height contact triggers rather than the usual delayed fusings. Because of this, not one RN ship that was hit by a bomb had the bomb actually explode when dropped. They all went through the decks carried by their own velocity and weight, and the explosions on the ships were caused by fuel and ammunition aboard ship. Many more RN ships would have been more heavily damaged or sunk if the fuses worked.
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  1233. It looks like most of the ground scenes came from a movie staged after the event. By 1933 the use of superchargers was well known. The Fairy Fox, for example, had been flying since 1926 with a supercharger and had a service ceiling of 33,000 feet. The real feat of the flight was getting over that part of the Himalayas in good enough weather to get the pictures and not getting lost on the way up or back if the weather closed in.
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  1234. I saw the new unified German Army detail at the Neue Wache in 1996. I was surprised to see the soldiers armed with Kar98k rifles from WWII. There's clearly some kind of symbolism to this. The Wehrmacht used M1 Garand rifles when it was reformed in 1955, and it seems as if using M1s for ceremonial purposes would have made sense if they wanted to make a clean break with the past. The fact they reverted back to Kar98s still makes me a bit nervous. A united Germany, for the past 150 years, has never been good news for the rest of the world.
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  1235.  William Myers  Thanks. I enjoyed search and rescue for 27 years...well, mostly enjoyed it. :-) Now at least I can go to sleep without having to hear a page out on the radio or the phone ringing.
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  1236.  Katrina S  How so? Are British trains performing worse than they did in 1982? Are there still constant strikes? Do they still have engines that are 50 years old? Baggage rooms being flooded when it rains?
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  1237.  @video99couk  And the reason for all those manufacturers making money selling parts to the UK will stop doing so is what, exactly? That they'll have to go through customs? In the real world, Thailand makes a greater number of those complicated cars than Britain. So does Brazil and Mexico. Do you think the UK can't figure out a way to produce even the same number of cars that they do in Thailand? If so. you have a very low opinion of your country.
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  1238. Looks like up around Salmon Creek in Sonoma County, CA. It looks pretty, but it was always cold and windy, and nice sunny days, except for in the fall, were rare.
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  1239. Tesla didn't win any court case against Marconi. His 1915 case was finally thrown out because Tesla never pursued the claim. A 1943 case ruled that the patents of Oliver Lodge, John Stone, and Tesla only for the claims the US government infringed on all three inventors patents, although only Marconi was suing. The Supreme Court was careful to say in their decision that the ruling had no effect on Marconi's claim to have invented the radio. You Teslafags are a hoot.
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  1240. And now it's 2019 and the US is almost self sufficient in oil. The Arabs did us a huge favor by cutting off the oil. It lead to us prospecting and developing new source of oil that we wouldn't have done without the embargo. So thanks a lot, Saudi Arabia, Have fun trying to sell all that sand.
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  1241.  @video99couk  I was the logistics manager for a large public utility managing hundreds of thousands of SKUs from 10 penny nails to huge transformers. But, you're right, I don't know anything about JIT manufacturing. Brexit, which will happen, won't be utopia, but neither will staying in the EU. At least Britain will have the chance to thrive again rather than just wither on the vine like its car industry did under the EEC and EU.
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  1242. Couldn't agree more. I was the search and rescue coordinator for my county's sheriff's department from 1978 to 2005. We had several very high profile child-stranger abduction cases in the early 90's. These got national attention and were the start of every parent thinking there was a perv around every corner ready to grab their child. We never had a true stranger abduction before that two year period in the 90's ad we never had one afterwards. I don't know what was going on in America in that period that caused this spike in child abductions, but it seems as if it had run its course by 1996. We have now terrified generations of children and parents over a risk that's vanishingly small.
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  1243. Norway has the largest merchant fleet in the world. That's a lot of bottoms to carry troops and supplies. Norway's nearly brand new frigates and submarines would also be a problem for Russia.
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  1244. It takes a long time to plan, build, and commission a ship. The 075 class LHD's, for example, first started planning no earlier than 2011, and the first was probably building starting sometime in 2016, launching in 2019, and commissioning just this month. No navy, the Chinese included, builds a navy based on who's in power today. It's done based on guessing who will be in power ten years from now. The real world in not like a video game.
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  1245. The Germans developed a high speed single and double sideband submarine radio system called Kurier in August, 1944. It replaced the conventional code signals with high speed bursts of 10 words in less than a second, then switched to another frequency and sideband for another burst, and so on until the message was complete. We have examples of the transmitters but no receivers have survived It is presumed that the last character of each transmission was a data burst telling the receiver what frequency and sideband to switch to for the next message part. All German reports were this was a highly effective system, and none of the Allies ever reported being able to successfully D/F a Kurier signal. The RN and USN weren't even aware of the system until war's end. If the Germans had developed this system two years earlier it would have crippled British efforts to locate German submarines by D/F.
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  1246.  @OneTrippin  Far more use their kids for free or low cost labor than pay them the same as other employees. You apparently worked in an unusual grocery store.
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  1247.  @homewall744  Sure. That explains why the ten fastest growing cities are are all blue like these, right? Boise City, Idaho Greeley, Colorado The Villages, Florida Odessa, Texas Lakeland-Winter Haven, Florida St. George, Utah Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina-North Carolina. Midland, Texas Provo-Orem, Utah Unless you are also among the richest people living in Seattle or Silicon Valley, having all these millionaires around is a positive detriment to your quality of life. If you're even upper middle class, you have to run ever faster in the hamster wheel just to stay in the same place.
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  1248. My brother was a 105 gunner on one of those barges. He liked it a lot better than typical must and dust of a fire base. However, they still had excavate out hooches so they had a place to run when the VC opened up with their usual mortar and rocket barrage. INterestingly, he was told before he left that the 105 was an obsolescent gun, and the smallest artillery piece of the future would be the lightweight 155. So much for that idea, I guess.
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  1249. I'm not a tinfoil hat kind of guy, but you're absolutely right about this. The Democrats know the only way to defeat Trump is to first crash the markets, then the broader economy. The coronavirus has a low mortality rate. We know this from people in western countries who've gotten the virus with a mortality rate of less than 3%. The 2012-2013 severe flu outbreak was also from a novel virus. It also spread around the world, but the overall mortality rate was 5.1%, and 42,500 people died in the US alone. We didn't shut down the whole country and go around wearing masks because the media's goal wasn't to terrify people then. It is now, and Trump needs to get on TV and tell the people the government is handling this, the markets aren't going to zero, and we're not all going to die. This is a time for soothing words, not the usual crap about Mini Mike and Sleepy Joe. This is a bigger threat to his reelection than any Democratic hopeful.
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  1250. Troll...
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  1251. australianews, the comment you're having a fit over was clearly sarcasm. In addition, a maid didn't make any claims and you can only hear if you are here.
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  1252. If you have to confine yourself to Paris, the best resistance/liberation museum is  Le Musée de la Liberation de Paris - Musée du Général Leclerc - Musée Jean Moulin. There are several others that I think there are better, and devoted only to the history of the resistance, but none are near Paris.
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  1253.  @mp40submachinegun81  Okay, so you wanted it, and you were willing to pay the price to get it. Nothing wrong with that, but you have to admit that's different than "needing" it.
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  1254. "I feel like Ian is way, way less creepy, though. Like 100% less creepy" iatsd, I was responding to what Mike Lilienthal wrote. That's a quote above. You either think I was responding to someone else or your reading comprehension is sorely lacking.
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  1255. Very unpleasant looking guns. They remind me of a Sten gun with a vertical magazine.
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  1256.  @michaelscott8567  And you have lack of reading comprehension. All my ancestors came from Europe. I am, however, not European. I'm an American. My ancestors came here to be Americans, not remain German or British. My remark was about some people presently living in Europe, not a general remark regarding everyone from the whole of European history. Seriously, this is one of the dumbest comments I've ever read
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  1257. @FREN So it would seem. It's people like him that make many of us not fond of Europeans.
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  1258.  @MichaelBerthelsen  Shh...quiet...I'm now asleep.
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  1259. Cinnabun, I think it's very unlikely that collector quality bolt actions or semiautos are ever going to be seized. There's no registry of many of these weapons as there is for machine guns so seizing them would be a logistical nightmare. I have...err, a friend has four rifles, one bolt action and three semiautos. They were never registered anywhere and were bought either before any federal checks or by private sale. How would the government ever seize those guns?
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  1260.  @Grimenoughtomaketherobotcry  These guns were inside a pack that was one of two attached to the straps of their parachute. 12 rounds of the low power ammo was also in the pack. I imagine most of those guns were never fired. Pilots at the time generally carried a four inch S&W Model 10 as a sidearm.
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  1261. Hard to beat the Browning M1919 for longevity. Introduced in 1919 and still inservice with countries like Columbia and South Africa. Not bad for a weapon celebrating its centennial this year.
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  1262. The link to the article on Ian's website doesn't work for me. (8:00 CDT, 8/20)
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  1263. Amazingly, the .45 Colt round is still in use today, albeit with some modern changes so the round will eject reliably from lever action rifles. It's now at 146 years old and still going strong. It's one of the few patented rounds that survived until the expiation of the patent and became a widely used round in its own right. I have an Astra .45 Colt revolver that, at first glance, appears to be a copy of the S&W N frame guns, including the "Dirty Harry" .44 magnum. The internals are completely different, and the fit and finish certainly rivals the best N frame revolvers produced by S&W. Comparing target work with an S&W Model 10 I own that's in like new condition, the Astra will consistently shoot better groups at 50 yards. The.45 Colt is still a hard hitting round, and it's a great combination with the Astra 6" barrel revolver. These guns show up fairly regularly and sell for $250 to $450. If you're in the market for a modern .45 Colt revolver, you won't go wrong with an Astra.
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  1264.  @PlainlyDifficult  I believe it. Keeping Baby Plainly asleep is way more important than getting too animated on a video. :-)
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  1265. Take a look at the Stanford Prison Experiment if you haven't already done so. EDIT - Never mind, I see that's already coming up. A much darker result than what Milgram did.
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  1266.  @ashkebora7262  Yes, I put "meltdown" in quotes because the core only suffered a partial melt due to a high-temperature chemical reaction between water and the zircaloy metal tubes holding the nuclear fuel pellets. This was not a meltdown of the core, and they hydrogen bubble that formed was the thing that could have released some radiation into the surrounding area. That didn't happen, and the core, while damaged, remained intact. I have to be careful about the words I use in regards to TMI because of the ridiculous notions put in people;'s minds by "The China Syndrome" movie, one of the most dishonest antinuclear screeds ever created. Even though TMI was never mentioned in the movie, everyone knew what Jane Fonda meant, wink, wink.
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  1267. There aren't many combinations of ships and crews that can be truly described as heroic, but the Sammy B must be near the top of that list.
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  1268. The term actually has nothing to do with the ship per se. The most important meaning was that cargo had to be arranged so it couldn't break loose and cause damage to the hull in rough seas. When that was accomplished, the CPO in charge of stowage reported to the captain the holds were now "shipshape". A secondary meaning, but most commonly used today, is the tidying up of a sailor's quarters. Even this meaning has its base of making sure a sailor's belongings wouldn't be strewn around in rough seas.
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  1269. I have the notion in the back of my mind that Drach did a relatively short segment on WWI commerce raiders, but it seems like quite a while ago. I agree with the suggestion though. WWI and WWII commerce raiders and merchant cruisers could easily occupy an hour segment each. I must confess a soft spot in my heart for the last of the pirates.
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  1270.  @irondarknessdarkness8900  I had to look that up since I'm not a wargamer. It's apparently the sound of rapid gunfire or multilaser masturbation from someone called an Ork? You kids today are such scamps. :-)
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  1271. Indeed, a great book and, unlike so many other naval history books, it's available used in hardcover at a reasonable price. It has plans for almost all the ships mentioned in the video. I had to pause the playback and go dig it out of the boxes most of my books are stored in so I could follow along. It also has some beautiful halftones of some of the ships, and is one the last high quality coated stock naval history books the average person can still afford.
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  1272. I'm an NHS patient living in the US. I normally get a monthly delivery of my meds, and they arrive about 6 days after being shipped through Royal Mail. My last delivery took slightly less than a month! I got an extra delivery at the start of this mess in March, and that enabled me to have enough medication to make it to the much delayed delivery, although just barely. Since I have COPD and asthma, some of these medications keep me out of the emergency room. I suppose I could have gone to an urgent care clinic here and gotten some of the items, but some would have been coming from England or India anyway, and I'm sure there still would have been a delay, not to mention paying three or four times the small amount I normally pay. This global lockdown has caused way more problems than many people realize. I hope we're less hysterical about things like this in the future.
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  1273.  @spookyshadowhawk6776  Yes, my dad's boat had the torpedos landed shortly after he arrived in March, 1943. The navy was having 37mm cannon made new for PT boats by about mid-1943 with a standardized mount since each boat's crew was making their own when using the the onew from crashed P-39's. His boat got a new manufacture gun on a reworked 3 pounder mount. His boat didn't have an aft 40mm until sometime in late 1943 so the 37mm gun added some real firepower to the boat. The combination of the new 40mm firing AP and HE for the 37mm was enough to start sinking barges (which were really motorized landing craft) by late 1943. The Japanese responded by uparmoring the barges with 5/8" sheet steel on both sides of the hull and with cofferdams filled with concrete. The ends had the least armour, and that's where the boats attacked. They'd go out in three boat flotillas at dusk and spend the night searching for the barges. The addition of radar to his boat shortly after he arrived made that easier and more efficient. They'd lie off from the shore along likely routes with one engine at idle while the radar operator searched. They could pick up the group of barges at about seven miles. They'd wait until the barges had just passed their location and then dash out to shoot them up. Some had 37mm guns of their own along with 25mm AA guns and machine guns so it was quite a fight. The Japanese started using heavily armoured and armed barges as escorts in 1944, some armed with 75mm field guns and multiple 25mm and 37mm guns. His boat got a pair Mark 50 eight cell rocket launchers at the end of 1944. They fired a 5" spin stabilized rocket that could sink a barge - if they could hit it. The launchers could only be aimed by pointing the boat at the target using a sight on the bridge. The XO was supposed to turn the boat into the sight until both were lined up with a barge and then fire the rocket. He said they hit one barge for maybe every 25 rockets expended, but they made a huge flash and plenty of noise, so they kept the heads of the Japanese gunners down. This went on night after night off New Guinea and then the Solomons until, between them and Army fighters, the Japanese had no barges left by 1945. They were ordered to the Philippines in March 1945, and his boat spent most its time doing the same kinds of patrols but without as much excitement. He got 30 days leave in May, 1945 because he was due to be married, his first leave of the war. He came down with malaria shortly after the ceremony and didn't get back to his boat until July, with VJ Day coming shortly after. He was in the Philippines until October, and watched his boat being burned in Milne Bay. I asked him how he felt watching it burn. He said he felt great since it meant he'd soon be mustered out and be able to get back to his pregnant wife. Malaria don't slow the old man down! I was born in February, 1946, the first of seven. Dad went off to that big squadron in the sky in 2005.
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  1274.  @zacharywiedner327 Quite true, and many Continental Navy officers were quite happy to return to their pre revolution jobs, be it as farmers or merchants. Jones, of course, wasn't just any other naval officer. If there was a battle anywhere, Jones wanted to be in it, hence his Russian service.
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  1275.  @stanleyrogouski  One of the reasons why the revolutionary French Navy, in addition to his well known command ability, was his modest beginnings. The revolution decimated the royalist navy, with about 70% of the noble officers executed or exiled. Command then had as much to do with your working class background as it did ability. The French just swapped mostly incompetent noble officers, some of whom had command ability, for almost totally incompetent proletariat officers, almost none of which had command ability. Not the way to win battles. :-)
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  1276. "U-571" was one of the worst naval dramas ever made. It not only rightly pissed off the British over the idea the US somehow captured an Enigma machine before they did, they showed it happening in a completely unbelievable way. The really aggravating part is they had the chance to make a film about a heroic capture of U-Boat and Enigma machine by the USN that really happened with the capture of U505. Why they chose to make up this story that put together every bad bit of pseudo history is beyond me
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  1277. The USN continues to use optical fire control today. Since the largest gun in use are various marks of 127mm, long range HDTV suffices now compared to a bunch of lookouts with binoculars.
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  1278. I'd argue that 21 July 1943 represented the exact date of the demise of the battleship and ascendancy of the carrier. That was the date the Montana class ships were canceled without ever being laid down. The cancellation was a direct result of the decision that resources needed to be directed toward the building of more Essex class carrier, and that the USN had all the battleships they'd need for the rest of the war and for the foreseeable future.
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  1279.  @f12mnb  It's interesting to see ads for businesses in the late 19th century listing a couple different commercial codes the business subscribed to so their telegraph communications would be more secure.
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  1280. I was also planning on being in Mobile, but it looks like we'll have to postpone that. Too bad, but it will come off in good time. Now that I'm spending all my time at home, the upside is I have time to dig into the pile of naval history. books I haven't gotten around to yet.
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  1281. There in one day. Nice! Thanks, Drach. The modernized Gangut class had their own version of pagoda masts, but they all had quite good fire control systems that were continually upgraded into WWII. It would have been interesting to see how they would have fared in a gun duel with a _Scharnost_.
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  1282. Mainland United States is a very large country. I wonder what the Kaiser's plan would have been if he had actually been able to seize NYC? While NYC was the important financial center of the country, inland cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh were much more important to the material survival of the country. This would have been like the dog chasing a car who actually catches the car. Now what?
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  1283. Dang it! Ready for bed and Drach shows up! Will Sar Jim actually stay awake for the entire hour? Stay tuned...
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  1284.  @slavkovalsky1671  Try having it start at 0400. Made it all the way through though.
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  1285.  @Dave_Sisson  It would be if it was actually a colonial empire. The Philippines were already scheduled for independence in 1946 when the the two classes were being built. Alaska and Hawaii were territories that were already on track to become states. Liberia and Panama were independent countries that were provided military protection by treaties. Puerto Rico and Guam were the only sizeable territories the US possessed that weren't going to move on to statehood (although Puerto Rico still may if the people vote for it). We hardly needed classes the size of the Clevelands and Baltimores to defend either territory.
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  1286. Holy cow! Two hours with two of my favorite historical storytellers? I've got appointments all day today, but I've laid in an extra supply of hot chocolate and cookies for later tonight! :-)
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  1287. No voice is able to do snark as well as an English voice!
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  1288. I wonder if there was any class of ship with only three members that differed from one another more than the Colorado class after rebuilding? They also may have been the unluckiest battleships and, in the case of the West Virginia , the most expensive battleship rebuild ever, while the other two class members retained their lattice foremasts right up until the end of the war. The class really had many superlatives, almost none of them good.
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  1289.  @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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  1290. The main advantage of the Fulmar was it was available when there was a desperate need for a semi modern aircraft compared to the biplane fighters in use, had a devastating forward firing armament far heavier that other naval aircraft at the time, and the structure was such that it was very difficult to shoot down. It had almost no development path to improve the plane but, for the period 1940 to mid-1943, there was no better aircraft available.
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  1291.  @mr.harvey6310  You are welcome to make this estimate as simple or as complex as you think fits your needs.
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  1292.  @phinix250  Okay, I get it now. Imagine the cost today with the outrageous price we have to pay for 5.56 rounds.
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  1293.  @themadhammer3305  Indeed. I've never been on board a supertanker, but I did spent a summer as a swabbie on a Great Lakes ore boat. They are tiny compared to a supertanker, but the tugs seemed like they were a long way off in port, and that was with a forward bridge and maneuvering station in the stern, and us talking on the radio all the time. Manueving a supertanker in port, even with the help of thrusters and tugs, must be a real nail biter. I've read a couple of blogs about being on a supertanker with huge bridge wings, and they felt pretty fragile when you were out on the ends in heavy weather with all the rolling and vibration. At least from those stories, the Chinese built tankers were the worst, and some did have additional supports added during their lives to deal with those issues. I think I'd take another summer on an ore boat instead, even with the crappy crew quarters and rats running all over.
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  1294.  @grumpyoldman-21  From the official RAN reports and later location of the wrecks, it seems impossible that Sidney could have made 12 knots after the battle. She sank only 11.4 nm from Komoran and was probably making way at more like 1-1.5 knots using the remaining steam in possibly one boiler. Sailors on Komoran reported seeing the glow of Sydney on the horizon until about 2000, nearly four hours after the end of the battle. If she was making way at even 10 knots, she would have been far below the horizon by 2200, and some of the Komoran crew reported seeing flareups from the fires until nearly midnight. It's a lot more likely that propulsion stopped maybe a half hour to forty-five minutes after Sydney moved off, and she just drifted until the final explosion that sent her to the bottom. The crew remaining alive were either trapped below decks or were mortally wounded, and the chances of any crew functioning well enough to raise steam and get the ship under control are vanishingly small. This remains such a compelling story of naval warfare because what should have been the superior combatant was lost with all hands against a supposedly much weaker opponent. The suppositions about the battle have swirled for decades, generating books, movies, supposed documentaries, and conspiracy theories almost from the day of her loss. To Australians. The sinking just couldn't have happened in a "fair" fight, there fore some darker explanation of Sydney being ambushed by Nazi and/or Japanese perfidy and war crimes were the only acceptable explanations. The idea that lack of experience, foolishness, incompetence, and just plain bad luck were dismissed out of hand. In particular, it was assumed that Komaran survivors constantly lied about what really happened to cover up their won crimes and throw the Australians off the true story. Given what we now know, the survivors, after some initial attempts to falsify accounts, generally gave in during interrogation and were usually truthful. Using their accounts is what allowed the wreck hunters to find the wreck of Sydney so rapidly once Komoran's wreckage was located. I don't know how many books, official reports, survivor accounts, and papers I've read about this, but it has been a lot. If another one comes out, I'll read that one too. This is such a classic mystery of the sea that it has held my interest for almost 60 years, and it will continue to do so until I shuffle off this mortal coil.
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  1295. ​ @jcgamer892  I understand that, but they also had the advantage of the Abwehr, a well developed intelligence network, from 1921 forward. They certainly knew what the Americans, British, and French were building in terms of battleships, and their future plans for more battleships. The inability to build new battleships hampered some technological improvements, but the Deutschland class and Scharnhorst class ships all had triple 11" turrets so the concept wasn't a mystery. Why did the Bismarck and H Classes revert to twin turrets?
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  1296. Good summary, and all true. Coastal defence ships look pretty cool, and it seems like they could have been useful vessels, but very few proved to have any real utility when faced with actual combat, other than a few shore bombardment sorties.
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  1297.  @Johnnycdrums  I too am concerned that so called stealth technology is not all it's cracked up to be. The Serbian shootdown of an F-117 using exactly the radar methods you wrote about should give the planners pause.
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  1298.  @Johnnycdrums  I always thought the Tiger was one of the best looking jets of the 50's too. Just too bad the Navy didn't go for the Super Tiger with the GE J79 engine. It was the first naval jet to exceed Mach 2, and did so in 1957. They instead chose the Vought F-8 Crusader, probably a better all around airplane, but nowhere near as good a high altitude interceptor.
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  1299.  @jamestheotherone742  Indeed, the Nazis built warships to primarily appear to be as powerful as possible as individual vessels. The Deutschland-class cruisers weren't built just as commerce raiders. They were built to be as powerful as possible within the supposed 10,000 ton limit limit imposed by the Versailles Treaty. As commerce raiders, they were failures since the RN would always sent as many task forces as needed to hunt them down and destroy them. Merchant raiders, OTOH, just blended in with the other thousands of merchant ships plying the oceans. As I pointed out in my previous post, the German merchant raiders sank 141 vessels for over a million tons total. How you think that's strategically insignificant is beyond me. This doesn't included ships captured with valuable cargoes and sent back to Germany to be offloaded and added to Germany's merchant navy. The introduction of convoys made the raider's jobs more difficult, but ships sailed from allied ports every day that weren't part of convoys up until late 1943. After that, the allies finally had enough escorts and crews so the vast majority of shipping was part of convoys.
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  1300. Only loaned in the same way US battleships and cruisers were "loaned" to the Home Fleet before Pearl Harbor. Allies commonly operate their ships within the command of another ally's fleet.
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  1301. I can relate. It's oh-dark-30 here.
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  1302. The Le Fantasque class was a weird hybrid that was built to engage the Italian Condottieri class light cruisers. They were much larger and more heavily armed while being about as fast as the French ships. Le Fantasque 's only advantage was more torpedoes while having the speed to close with the Italian ships, none of whom could probably out run the French ships. Succeeding members of the Condottieri class added a more reasonable tonnage of armor while still retaining their high speeds. They probably would have severely mauled any Le Fantasque they ran across. In reality, there were only a little larger and not as well armed as a Fletcher class destroyer that was capable of about same real speed. From what I've read, the move to reclassify them as light cruisers after their US refit was a combination of the USN not having ships in a similar class and a nod to Free French sensibilities, since no French cruisers survived to serve with the Free French, and listing them as destroyers would not have been politically expedient.
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  1303.  @sharlin648  Her Type 279 radar was a combination of surface search and antiaircraft radar, but the RN found that combining her Precision Ranging Panel and HACS allowed her to register when a large caliber shell hit, using a combination of inflight shell timing and the radar's ability to "see" the large splash or hit of a shell. It wasn't really a gunfire control radar, but it was able to be used for some of the abilities of such a radar. Rodney was the first battleship to have radar, a Type 79Y, in 1938, with the it being replaced by the much more advanced Type 279 in 1940. The "pip boys" of the Rodney had more experience with radar than almost any other ship in the fleet, and she used it with good effect in this battle.
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  1304.  @polygondwanaland8390  Perhaps. I don't know the dimensions of the barbette of a Montana but, having walked around a 61 cell VLS launcher aboard the USS Lake Champlain, it was pretty huge. I haven't had the chance to see a 90 or 96 cell VLS in person but it must be even bigger. I'd need to be convinced with some engineering data that the removal of just one turret would leave space for a VLS much if any larger than the 96 cell launchers on the later Burkes.
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  1305.  @schiefer1103  You actually think it would have been "cooler ' in the tropics 100 years ago that it is today? Even assuming climate change is happening at anywhere near the rate that's alleged now, we'd be looking at temperatures fractions of a degree less hot than it is today. That's hardly enough for German sailors to start looking for their parkas. You really need to look into the facts of temperature change over time before you're buffaloed into believing the next crisis, and that will be "climate change".
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  1306. Admiral King's greatest stain was his campaign to humiliate Captain Charles McVay, commander of the USS Indianapolis at the time of her sinking. He demanded a court martial and wanted him drummed out of the service. When the court martial found him guilty on the single charge of failure to zig zag, Admiral Nimitz tried to short circuit by recommending a letter of reprimand, but he was overruled by King and the court martial went ahead. McVay was the only ship commander court martialed in WWII over the loss of his ship. There's plenty of information online about this shameful affair so I won't go into a long winded explanation here, but Admiral King's actions led directly to the chronic depression of Captain McVay and his ultimate suicide.
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  1307.  @seanmac1793  Probably not. The reason why the Mark 27 and FIDO were air dropped was the Navy hadn't figured out a reliable method of having the acoustic torpedo not circle round when it picked up the noise of the launching vessel. In post war testing, a sub was able to decoy the torpedo back to the launching vessel by just running at top speed toward it after they detected the torpedo launch. One of the DE's involved in the tests was almost sunk when the practice torpedo followed the sub back to the DE. The unarmed but still fast traveling 1500 pound torpedo hit it and holed it below the waterline. It took the Navy until 1950 to come up with a new acoustic system where the active scanning phase was able to differentiate cavitation noise of a surface ship compared to a submarine. It was an amazing small (for the days of tubes and point to point wiring) little computer, called a logic circuit back then. Amazing how it always takes war to make rapid progress in electronic.
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  1308.  @WildBillCox13  You're welcome. Weather, particularly tropical weather, has been one of my hobbies for almost 60 years. Ironically, Halsey sailed his task force directly into another typhoon (now known as Typhoon Connie) in June, 1945. Connie was actually a worse storm than Cobra, but some of the lessons learned in the earlier storm helped Task Force 38 survive in a battered condition but with no ships lost. Only 8 sailors lost their lives compared to 760 from Cobra. There was even more accurate forecasting about Connie, but many of those forecasts were held up awaiting decoding and didn't reach Halsey and Admiral McCain. the task force commander until it was too late. Many of the ships hove to and put out their sea anchors before being hit, others ballasted their near empty fuel tanks with salt water. That stopped the fatal yawing and heaving that caused the loss of many ships during Cobra. Halsey wouldn't allow either action during Cobra since it would take his ships out of action for too long. Halsey was once more subject to a court of inquiry about his orders for the task force. The blame for sailing into Connie was placed, somewhat unfairly, on the shoulders of Halsey and McCain. If not for Halsey's heroic status among the American people, he probably would have been relieved of command. McCain, who was also Halsey's chief of staff during Cobra, received no such consideration, and was relieved of command on July 15. A worn out sailor with many medical problems, McCain passed away from a heart attack on September 6, 1945, just four days after the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Ba,y at the age of 61.
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  1309. Quite true. The worst thing that can happen if you're getting chemotherapy for cancer, as an example, is for you to come through it feeling pretty well. You must have a powerful immune response to covid, Drach, which I suspect was, although unpleasant for you, a good thing for Mrs. Drach.
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  1310.  @Slaktrax  Thanks very much for the kind words. Drach far outweighs me in his knowledge of naval history but I add whatever small bits I can. I'm glad you enjoy them.
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  1311.  @obelic71  The last ex-USN DE , BRP Rajah Humabon, was retired from the Philippines Navy in 2018 at the ripe old age of 75. The last of three ex-Coast Guard Hamilton class cutters that was acquired in 2016 stepped into her role as an APV. The tow remaining WWII vessels in the Navy are two ex-Auk class minesweepers, with the RPS Quezon having reached 76 years old in 2019, while her "younger" sister, is a mere 74 years old. Both vessels will probably not last more than a year or two longer in Philippine service as more modern patrol vessels come on line. Both vessels served long periods in reserve before being acquired by the Phillipines navy so neither would qualify as oldest in continuous commission. Even the Humabon served nearly ten years in reserve, so she technically wouldn't qualify either. Very few ex-USN warships transferred to foreign navies didn't serve some time in reserve before being transferred. It was, however, a good guess.
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  1312. I'll follow along again - 1. HMS Hood - If nothing else, the greatest "show the flag" ship ever built. 2 - USS Omaha - Destroyer leaders classed as cruisers. Nevertheless, they were were useful ships in WWII and, as Drach pointed out, none of them were lost in the early days of the war, and that wasn't bad for US cruisers. 3 - HSwMS Gotland - Her conversion to an antiaircraft ship in 1944 was really what the ship should have always been. 4 - French cruiser Duquesne - Not a good ship except for speed. It was lucky to be interred for the war. 5 - Deutschland class - Designed as commerce raiders but were too lightly built and too expensive for the role. 6 - Condottieri class - Too many ships to all be "worst warships". By the time the Italians got to the Duca degli Abruzzi class they had a very good light cruiser design. 7 - Japanese carrier Ryujo - She was carrying far too many aircraft for her displacement which played a large role in her loss. Other than that, she wasn't a "worst" warship. 8 - Mogami cruiser class - Would have been more useful as light cruisers. 9 - Yamato class battleships - World's most expensive floating artillery barge. If she had been built and put in service by 1942, the class would have been much more effective. 10 - Bismarck class battleships - The Tirpitz became the most important ship to the RN and RAF for almost four years. She tied down more resources than any single ship I can think of. Should not be in this group of worst warships. 11 - Implacable class aircraft carriers - Once they got effective fighters and attack aircraft, these were quite effective ships. I don't understand why Preston included this class. 12 - Hydrogen peroxide subs - They were a dead end, but gave some experience with high underwater speeds. 13 - Alpha class Russian subs - Main advantage of this class was scaring the RN and USN and getting both navies to concentrate on better streamlining and more powerful nuclear power plants. 14 - Type 21 frigates - Compared to the Leanders, these were a poor design. For getting 8 ships into service at a time of strained budgets, they were about the best the RN could produce in numbers. 15 - La Combante class - Dumbest inclusion in the book. There was nothing particularly outstanding about the class, but they were excellent offensive ships for smaller navies and gave those navies at least a credible deterrent to other smaller navies, or even larger navies. They also made huge amounts of money for France.
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  1313. It's very early here so I thought my ears were playing tricks on me.
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  1314. The postwar USN conversions of (mostly) Fletchers and Sumner/Gearing class destroyers to DDE's were a decent simulation of a "razee" conversion. The main gun armament was generally reduced to a pair of 5"/38 guns and no light armament, or one/two pairs of 40mm Bofors. They usually lost their torpedoes as well, the tonnage added back in with the then secret hull mounted sonar. That was quite a significant decrease in surface capabilities compared to four, five, or six 5"/38 guns, anywhere between twelve and sixteen 40mm Bofors, and four to eight torpedo tubes. The general failure of those conversions was demonstrated by the number converted back to normal fleet destroyers after only a few years.
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  1315.  @WALTERBROADDUS  It wasn't a junk either. It was the 70 ton picket boat Nittō Maru. Her purpose was to patrol the approaches to the home islands and report any threats. She did her job that day, as the USS Nashville straddled her before actually hitting the ship, giving the radio operator time to send off the message to the Naval Communications Center in Kagoshima. Luckily for Doolittle, it took so much time to decode the message and send it on to Fleet Headquarters in Tokyo that the raiders were already on their attack runs when the message arrived.
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  1316.  @spyrosvassilakis4212  I don't blame you! I mean, look at the wages we pay this man! :-)
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  1317.  @ThePalaeontologist  Indeed, but considering her length of service, many admirals other than Nelson must have spent many a pleasant day out there.
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  1318. Well, there goes another 49 minutes of sleep shot. :-)
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  1319. It's another Drach videos just as my insomnia was about to let go. Oh well, just another hour to stay awake today.
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  1320.  @lamwen03  You must mean the Devastator since the Dauntless was a scout and dive bomber, but, yes, flying a Devastator on a torpedo run must have been horrific. They couldn't drop their torpedo at speeds above 115 mph, and the sight used to aim the torpedo demanded it fly straight and level at 100 feet above sea surface maximum, at less than that 115 mph speed for almost two miles. Once the torpedo was dropped, the airplane was too underpowered and lumbering to be able to get back to altitude quickly, becoming easy meat for AA fire and Zeros. Thankfully, Douglas took over Northrop in 1937 and was able to quickly develop the Northrop BT-1 into what became the Dauntless. It was able to use its superb dive bombing abilities to fill in for the USN's poor torpedo bombing until the faults with early torpedoes were finally fixed in 1943.
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  1321.  @lamwen03  I was an advanced airplane when it was first starting design in 1932. Part of the problem was the leisurely pace of testing and production, with the first plane not being delivered until 1937, almost three years after it was ordered. In addition to carrying a defective torpedo, its main problem was poor build quality. By 1940, the small fleet was worn out after only five or so years of service. There were stories of sailors policing the deck after a Devastator flight landed to look for parts that had fallen off. Combined with poor armor and an excruciatingly slow torpedo drop speed, the early success of the type were more surprising than the failures.
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  1322. thank goodness the Dauntless dive bombers were in service in numbers by Midways and the USN was no long dependent of the Devastator. If it had been all they had, Midway may have gone much differently. Douglas didn't build too many bad airplanes, but the Devastator was a real stinker.
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  1323. There is a collection of what may have been the first sound recordings made aboard a submarine, in this case, USS Sealion during the WWII attack on the IJN Kongo at https://maritime.org/sound/#sealion. They record the attacks on a fleet oiler as well, and give a good picture of the controlled chaos that took place during such attacks.
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  1324.  @neniAAinen  The Nevada , like all warships, had faults, but it was overall a better balanced warship. We'll never know how Normandie might have done in combat, but most naval architects and engineers expected substantial damage to the superstructure if she ever fired a full broadside, That's a pretty substantial difference between the two ships. Depending on where the target was, Normandie could only fire four or eight guns compared to five or ten for Nevada . All twelve guns would only have been useful in firing at a target plus or minus ten degrees from a straight on broadside. The 13.4" was a fair bit less powerful than the 14". The French AP shell weighed about 1200 pounds compared to about 1500 with US shells. That's a 20% increase, so nothing to sneeze at. It was the same with range, with the French gun having a range of about 18,000 yards and the US model went out 23,000 yards, about a 22% increase. We'll never know what the 13.4" range would have been if the planned elevation to 30 degrees had occured, but it boosted the range for Nevada to 32,000 yards. I'm going from memory here but I believe Normandie was going to complete with at least one bow TT while Nevada had either two or four (no one seems to agree) submerged beam TT's. I should have been clearer that I meant bow TT's. That's an interesting question though. Was there ever a confirmed case of a dreadnought battleship sinking another warship using submerged TT's? I've never heard of it, but I don't know much about battleship torpedoes. I assume they weren't considered of much value in the USN since they were all removed during the 20's. Normandie with a twin/triple turret arrangement fore and after would have been a much more useful ship. She still would have had a twelve gun armament so she could throw as much weight as a 14" ship with ten like Nevada but could have used her full broadside without the same kind of damage the amidships turret would have caused. That, and the snail-like pace of French ship building, are her biggest faults.
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  1325. thanks, Drach. I've never studied this action in any detail, and your narration and timeline makes things a lot more clear. The Russians actually comported themselves with much bravery, and with much more effect on the Japaneses fleet than just a bare reading of the battle results would lead one to believe. It's not hard to understand the fear that Russia entering the war against Japan in 1945 caused in the HIgh Command. The Russians had a lot of revenge to mete out and, this time, the outcome would have been much different than it had been forty years earlier.
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  1326.  @QuadinarosLS  I was relaying what I was told by several volunteers and a member of the Foundation on the day of my visit plus what I've read from the Foundation and other articles I've read online. It seems there has been a fair amount of bickering between all the parties involved. I have no idea who is right so I will let your post stand without comment.
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  1327.  @oceanhome2023  The K gun was an explosively fired smooth bore launcher for a standard depth charge. It was a way to have more depth charges fired simultaneously and at a greater distance from the ship. This allowed the ship to make a slower attack without the fear of damaging the stern of the vessel. The depth charge itself was no different than the standard over the stern model. The pictures you see with two circles of Hedgehogs entering the water were postwar, when standard destroyers were converted to escort destroyers. This involved reducing gun armament to one or two turrets and replacing the guns with Hedgehogs. Some got two ahead launchers and others were tested with a forward launcher and another mounted in place of one of the stern gun turrets. Testing showed the two ahead launchers gave the best results, and that's what ended up on postwar escort destroyers. Because of the relatively small warhead of the Hedgehog (40 pounds of torpex by about 1943) compared to the much larger charge of a standard depth charge (500 to 1000 pounds of TNT or torpex), even a hit on a sub might not sink it as long as nothing vital was hit. The double hull of the larger German U-boats wasn't easily penetrated by an individual Hedgehog warhead, so it took a lucky single hit, or multiple hits over time, to disable or sink the sub. That was the driver for the development of the Mousetrap and Weapon Alpha systems - to put larger warheads into the water that would virtually guarantee one-hit destruction of the sub. The 180 degree switch was generally used for torpedoes with propeller rev counter. The torpedo wouldn't arm itself until enough prop revs had occured that the torpedo should have been safely away from the sub. As you say, that system gave the sub a chance to try to get a hot run launched or under control before the warhead was armed and a catastrophic explosion occured. POnce the torpedo was far enough away from the sub, and the sub should have had enough time to dive to a safe depth, the skipper wanted the torpedo to freely circle so it could chase down an attacking escort that was itself using a series of violent maneuvers to escape the homing torpedo. This still left the sub at risk if it had to make a surface attack or couldn't get deep enough fast enough, but that was usually because the sub was somehow disabled, and a "down the throat" attack was a last ditch attempt to save itself from almost certain destruction anyway. My understanding of the Kursk disaster was an in-tube failure of a Type 65 torpedo. The Soviets had decided the only way to get the high speeds desired for such a large torpedo was through the use of a hi-test hydrogen peroxide (HTP) engine. These work well as long there is no way for seawater to come in contact with the HTP. Since a torpedo is a cylinder held together with a series of welds, and HTP is corrosive, even a tiny leak will eventually enlarge enough to allow the ingress of seawater. When that happens, a massive explosion is inevitable. This means the torpedo has to be constantly xray inspected between mission and while underway for a typical months long deployment. Even now, allied intelligence isn't 100% sure the HTP was the fuel used for the torpedo the day the Kursk sank. It seems to be the only explanation for the sinking, since there was no actual torpedo firing, and the explosion was contained inside the boat. Both the UK and US experimented with the first air independent sub using the Walther HTP system, but constant problems with leask and small explosions doomed the projects. HTP is dangerous stuff to be using underwater.
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  1328. What a deal. Two episodes in less than an hour and it's not even Christmas!
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  1329.  @Raptor747  Correct, and that's why they should never have been classified as light cruisers to begin with. Flotilla leader or antiaircraft escort is how they should have been classed but the USN didn't have such classifications in 1941. It took until 1949, when most were already paid off to reserve, before they got classed as AA ships. If something says CL on your task force plan it's inevitable they will get used as a CL, and that was the problem.
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  1330.  @paulboy9101  Subs from the early 30's generally had two .30 caliber Lewis guns. Immediate prewar classes like Sargo usually had two water cooled .50 machine guns carried in pressure proof cases on the cigarette deck. There were mounts in the sail and generally one on the deck once the guns were switched to PT boat type short barrel air cooled Brownings. The .50 guns had to be unlimbered from their cases, heaved onto a mount in tossing seas by three crewmen, and at least two more were required to go below to get more belts, since the ready use belts were only 100 rounds each. As you might imagine, this was not a popular activity. Many boats still carried a pair of .30 guns until the end of the war. The standard gun was an air cooled M1919 Browning, but some skippers prefered their Lewis guns. They both fired the same ammo and the Lewis gun had the advantage of not having a belt flopping around the deck, a definite plus in the tight quarters of a sub. They used simple pipe mounts, and at least four were welding onto the sail and various rails around the deck. The Lewis and M1919 guns were relatively light and handy, easy to sling onto their pipe mounts. Their main use was for covering boarding parties late in the war and keeping Japanese heads down before the main battery came into firing. The boat's armory also include at least two Thompson submachine guns. six 1911 pistols, and maybe a dozen M1903 Springfield rifles to be used by landing parties. That didn't happen often, but aggressive skippers like Commander Fluckey and the crew of the Barb could and did empty out the armory for shore operations. I'm pretty sure the Barb had the only sub armory that also included hand grenades and plastic explosives Once they became available and mounts were designed, boats rapidly switched over to 20 mm and 40 mm cannon for antiaircraft defense,.but most boats retained at least some of their smaller caliber machine guns. Like the rest of the USN, their philosophy was any empty space should be filled with a gun. :-)
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  1331.  @JohnHill-qo3hb  I don't think so. Unless you live in one of the states affected like Ohio or Michigan, it's just considered pretty much a backwater compared to DC being burned and British troops taking over the east coast ports. As Drach pointed out, British control of the lakes and the border states would have put the US in a pincer by the British, and the Treaty of Ghent would have turned out much less favorably for the US.
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  1332.    I agree. Listening to an articulate Brit with those dulcet tones is like a tranquilizer to me. :-)
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  1333. A neighbor who served on the USS Cod always pronounced it "Gah-toe" so that's the way I've always pronounced it too.
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  1334.  @nosretep1960  Thank you. One of my uncles was a very young jg and staff member for Rear Admiral Carter in the Pacific from 1943 to 1946. Carter was the commander of the justly famous Service Squadron 10 during that period, and became one of the great organizers of logistics for the Pacific Theater. Uncle Fred gave mea copy of Admiral Carter's book, "Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil" when I was an 11 year old in 1957 after asking him "What did you do in the war?". That insight into his role in the war and how logistics was a major factor in our winning the Pacific campaigns started an interest in how a fleet could be kept at sea for months at a time, an interest I still hold today.
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  1335. The war order sent to Kimmel emphasized defense against sabotage as the most important criteria with not causing panic among civilians as the second. The biggest failing that was under his control was not expanding the range of his maritime patrol further north and west. He had enough PBY's and B-17's on hand to do that, and the chances of discovering the Japanese task force would have been much better. In his defense, lamost no one believed the first blow would be against Hawaii and Pearl in particular. The expected first strike was against the Philippines, Guam, or Wake. There were some strategists who thought a strike against the NEI and Mayla would happen first so Japan could get their resources in line before they moved against the US. Some in the Navy actually thought Pearl was just too far away for the Japanese to get close without detection. Most believed the Japanese didn't have the resources after being worn out by the war in China to attack all three countries at once. If there was one person really responsible for Pearl Harbor, it was Yamamoto.
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  1336. The USN 5"/38 gun was also one of few true dual purpose heavy caliber guns. It could drive off snoopers at 12,000 feet from 10 miles away. Combined with the Mark 37 GFCS, the gun could deliver accurate shots at a rate of fire unmatched by any other dual purpose gun.
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  1337. Gensoul, Somerville, and Churchill all bore varying responsibility for the attack. Gensoul because he was possibly the most stupid and intransigent admiral ever in command of a fleet. He must have been aware that his ships could not fight off the British, and not complying with one of the clauses of the memorandum could only lead to the sinking of his ships and the needless death of his sailors. Somerville because he knew Gensoul was a haughty officer who wouldn't take kindly to having to negotiate with a mere captain, even if he was a French speaker. He should have at least sent his XO along with Captain Holland as translator. There was no point in continuing to sent Holland back for negotiations since Gensoul took each visit as an even great affront. Churchill because the war had reached a critical point, with the US not certain Britain would or could continue to fight Germany and Italy. Given that uncertainty, there were moves within the War and State departments to stop supplying Britain with any more war material since it was just a lost cause, and those materials would be needed in the very likely event of a Japanese attack and, sometime in the indeterminate future, Germany. Churchill knew this, and felt a strong show of force against the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir was his only hope to convince the US that Britain was indeed in the fight until the end. In fact, the attack did result in a stiffening of US resolve to help Britain stay in the fight regardless of the outcome.
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  1338. While a battleship is a lot better than a mobile home to ride out a hurricane, Katrina in 2005 did quite a bit of damage to the USS Alabama. She's still a floater and, even though she got extra lashings before the storm hit, she shifted almost 75 feet within her anchorage and shipped enough water to develop an 8 degree list. That list is still slowly being corrected today as the water is being pumped out. Her masts, radar antennas, general upperworks had quite a large amount of superficial but still expensive damage. The large hanger and outdoor aircraft display was nearly totally destroyed. There was a volunteer crew and their families aboard, and they describe it as pretty scary experience. If you're anywhere near Mobile, a visit to her is almost mandatory for ship nerds. You can see more sections of the ship and more of her equipment than any other museum battleship.
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  1339. I think you remember the cards that were included as a premium in cigaret packets. I'm assuming you're in the UK since cigaret cards were never as popular here in the US. I've never found a site where these cards are collected since they were spread out through the whole population and vast majority were discarded with the packet. Most of the collectors through the 60's were actually young boys, and many of their albums are still in an attic somewhere waiting to the discovered. They are a form of naval and other military ephemera that's slowly being lost to deterioration with no plans for preservation. The best places to see the cards are the various action site like EBay and Etsy. There are a few auction houses that specialize in cigaret cards. The best one I've found in the UK is The London Cigarette Company, LTD. They sell tens of thousand of these cards in all subjects annually. The military section is at https://www.londoncigcard.co.uk/products.php?list=58. They also have a collectors club, with 100 sets a month at a discount. Unfortunately, cigaret cart collecting has really taken off over the last 20 years, and prices have rapidly priced small collectors out of business. London Cigarette does a good job displaying pictures of the cards for sale, and they do allow you to download pictures of the cards for your own use. Good luck and good hunting.
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  1340. It was just a matter time before Youtube started attacking you since you talk about guns. The only answer is for large and popular channels like yours to abandon this platform which is now being set upon by hall monitors and pearl clutching leftists.
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  1341.  @admiraltiberius1989  I suspect Spruance may have been given credit for some of Browning's work. His scandalous affair with the wife of another naval officer and ability to piss off the brass and subordinates made Browning pretty well hated by Midway, and his post Midway antics made that worse. Even Halsey refused to cover for him any longer by 1944, and he was banished ot a shore job. There are some who think Halsey wouldn't have been decoyed by the Japanese at Leyte if Browning had been with him.
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  1342.  @admiraltiberius1989  When it came to taking on Kurita's battlefleet, I'll take Ching Lee's theoretically inferior battleships , or even Olendorf's "old" battleships over the Iowas any day. With the exception of speed, the four Pearl Harbor survivors were effectively new ships, and Lee's ships had the crews and an admiral to take on all comers. Olendoff's crews had been itching to take on the Japanese again. I think he and crews would have been more than happy to take on Kurita rather the Nishimura. Olendorf was a well known poker player at Annapolis, and his gambler's instincts would have served him in good stead at either battle. The only thing that would keep him out of my top 5 was his decision to end the bombardment of Peleliu a day early, even though his instincts were the Japanese held a full house and were trying to bluff the result of the bombardment.
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  1343.  @MajinBuuButtercup  Well, in that case, why not attribute it to Joe the hobo? I care about fake anything, whether it's fake news or fake quotes.
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  1344. Emotional septicemia....great turn of a phrase.
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  1345. No, Toilet, as I said, I spent five winters there. He managed to share all kinds of misinformation about Slab City, as well as use completely wrong clickbait title. Correcting the mistakes is not to make me look smart of these guys look stupid. It's just to correct misinformation.
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  1346. Wow! I can't believe it! A Journeyman video that doesn't blame whites and capitalism.
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  1347.  @gogrape9716  Because the child was heard talking on the radio shortly before the crash.
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  1348.  @fridge6668  If a McDonalds' application seems hard to you then I'd propose you either went to a bad university or spent four years not paying attention.
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  1349. No, it gets you Detroit. It has some of the highest property and income taxes in the state. People with money don't just give it up voluntarily. They move to places run by more efficient and less corrupt governments. There were plenty of rich people in Detroit at one time. They left because of socialists like you.
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  1350. Somehow, I have the feeling the guys fighting and the beater Chevy pickup with the 26" rims are all connected.
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  1351. 601, except New Mexico, Wyoming, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Kentucky all have a greater percentage of mobile homes than Mississippi. I know it's more fun to beat up Mississippi though.
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  1352. The whole town of Shaw is a hood. It only has about 2,000 people, and about 94% of them are black. The total number of college graduates are eleven. 37.8% of households are headed by women with no husband present, one of the highest figures I've see in a town over 1,000. About 42% of the population is below the poverty line, and the per capita income is only slightly over $9,000. The average income for an entire family is $19,393. I can't think of a town over a thousand poorer than Shaw.
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  1353. At least the bright LED lights at the intersections and most mid-block locations help light up the neighborhoods some compared to what thing used to be like. Big storm coming in this weekend (1/19-20), so you'll soon have a chance to do some snow videos, Charlie, assuming you can get out of your drive.
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  1354.  Green Future  There have actually been an increase in factory openings in Detroit over the past three years for the first time in 50 years...until the bat flu hit. That has caused a collapse in the auto industry and more layoffs again. Detroit just can't catch a break.
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  1355. People in the hood have more to worry about than chemtrails.
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  1356.  @bkbrown7489  Ah, yes, the urban version "We wuz Kangs!" It'/s also possible black babies were poisoned by space aliens, or that Catholic nuns were poisoning the water. I have just as much proof for those statements as you have for yours. Liquor stores in black areas would go out of business without customers. Drug dealers would go out of business without customers. The hood would begin to improve if people spent time getting their GED or or going to trade schools instead of sitting on the stoop with a 40 or waiting for the other deliveries of, and using, substances that are also poison. The hood would begin to improve if lack men developed some responsibility at stopped laying down with every thicc hoe that walked by. The hood would begin to improve if black women stopped laying down with every bad boi that walked by. The hood would begin to improve if black people got married and waited to have children until they were. The hood would begin to improve if strong families were instrumental in improving schools and making sure that their kids went to school and weren't carrying knives and guns. Places like Detroit and Gary have over 40% of households led by single, primarily black women. You can't have strong families and kids with a future with those kinds of numbers. Stop pining away for the days of Black Wall Street. Most of those ended 100 years ago. If you think resegregation is the answer, place like Detroit and Gary, with 80%+ black populations and nearly 100% black political leadership should be thriving. With few exceptions, majority black large cities are disasters. Work on what can be done today, not what should have been done in 1920. Stop waiting for the while savior to fix all your problems. They have been "fixing" things since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the beginning of the "Great Society" in the same time period. It's now 55 years later. Do you think things have gotten better or worse? Do you think another dump truck load of money dropped off at the feet of leaders like Kwame Kilpatrick will make things better or worse?
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  1357. Funeral homes and florists are two of the highest grossing black owned businesses in the hood.
    4
  1358. It's really stark in winter when there are rows up rows of apartment buildings without one footprint in the snow.
    4
  1359.  @daquanmcdonald7104  Just another reeason not to live in Detroit.
    4
  1360. Chil, that's a good idea. You should never live somewhere you hate. Our loss will be Atlanta's gain. Just hope you don't carjacked while you're trying to get some gas in Adamsville or similar high infrastructure neighborhoods.
    4
  1361. Sure, I do, poopie head. Just send me $100 and I'll mail some right back to you. You impress me as stupid enough to do it.
    4
  1362. Some remedial English with an emphasis on punctuation wouldn't hurt as part of your studies.
    4
  1363. Unless it was one of the properties that's now part of the hundreds of acres of vacant lots
    4
  1364. There are a lot of corporations based in Detroit, and managerial workers for the city and county are well paid. The school district has some of the highest paid administrators in the nation. There's lot of money in Detroit for the educated and ambitious.
    4
  1365.  @connorrobertson280  The US doesn't suck. Certain parts of the countyr suck, but this is a big place for such a broad generalization. The riots of 1968 were the start. The heads of the large auto companies as well as thing like steel and railroads pretty much ran Detroit through the 70's. As theystarted to move out and racial integration became a goal. people got appointed and elected due to the their culture and the color of their skin. The heads of big companies kept corruption down to a dull roar. Detroit was now being tun by people with no training and no outside influences about when to stop stealing. Each and=ministration got worse and worse until Detroit ended up with Kwame Kilpatrick. Things have finally started to u=improve under Mayor Duggan, not because he's white, but because he has the business and political experience to run the place. He also seems to be less personally corrupt than many of the mayors who came before him.
    4
  1366. That's the Chicago El, not a train trestle. They were driving under the El in the movie.
    4
  1367. Much different housing stock in Flint than Detroit. Very few brick homes and very few two families. Many more tiny (about 900 square ft) single family homes on tiny lots. This really limits the resale possibilities of Flint homes, even if they weren't in Flint.
    4
  1368.  @wellingtondosanjos4784  I'd have to be convinced that this THOT was ever defending capitalism.
    4
  1369. It's a friggin' dust storm. You live in the desert. There are always dust storms in the desert, Just shut up before you scare the kids to death.
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  1370. And in a few years it will happen all over again.
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  1371. "Ripping yarn!". I haven't heard that one for awhile. :-)
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  1372. James, the only thing I'm close to is an Army helicopter base. Hearing them all day is not the same as some big turbojets hanging from "real" aircraft.
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  1373. I was flying from Los Angeles to Fiji in December 31, 1999. We hit the Dateline just before midnight and we were already at January 2, 2000 after we crossed. The captain announced it as we crossed and everyone onboard was relieved we had escaped Y2K. :-)
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  1374. My dad gave me my first shortwave radio for Christmas when I was ten years old. Once I put up a crude antenna, the first station I heard was BBC with an identifier using the Westminster chimes. It took me about 40 years but I was finally able to see and hear the chimes in person.
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  1375. I wonder if you were quartered in the JS Cain house? Last time I was there it was being used for seasonal rangers. I wish I could have gone this summer. There were three nights the town was open until 10:00 pm, and the staff did walking tours of the Standard Mill and the town. I was stranded there overnight after a big monsoon storm in 2001 that washed out a couple of bridges. They let me unroll my sleeping bag in the stable that's now used as a vehicle shop. It was perfectly clear by midnight, and the stars were just amazing. Best night sky I have seen anywhere
    4
  1376. I don't know if it's already been covered, but the whole history of LORAN in the Pacific deserves to be remembered. The Coast Guard took over operation of the 72 widely dispersed and lonely atolls in the Pacific from the Aleutians into Canada, down the West Coast into Mexico, and then across the Pacific to Japan, South Korea, and over to Australia. The stations were difficult to keep in phase with the early tube type receivers and transmitters, and the station equipment needed constant testing, maintenance, and repair. Some stations were only visited by a resupply ship once a month, or even once every two months. The Coast Guardsmen had to learn not only the LORAN radio equipment, but normal radio communications gear, the generators that supplied power, and desalinization equipment on some islands. They had to become experts with just about everything a base required, as well as learning enough medical skills to care for each other in case of sickness or accident until they could evacuated. Almost as important was having one guy that was a good cook with the monotonous diet of canned and dried foods. My uncle served at a couple bases as a replacement when waiting for the rest of a new crew to be delivered, and he said it was great duty for a guy who just didn't like a lot of people around, fishermen and divers, or for someone escaping from a wife he didn't want to be around. :-)
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  1377.  @peterstickney7608  As I remember, the pilot had gotten out the chocks, but the call of nature had gotten...well, extreme by then. He threw down the chocks and yelled to one of the tarmac lads to chock the gear while he ran off. He apparently never heard him, and he emerged from the restroom to see his beautiful plane becoming a bird.
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  1378.  @steveshoemaker6347  Thanks, Steve and same to you. I like to think that whatever smarts I've gained I pass it along to other before I kick the bucket. Maybe we are only meant to get so smart or so wise before we drive everyone else nuts! :-)
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  1379.  @jameshickok2349  He was indeed, Very few pilots have had the accomplishments of Bob Hoover. I'm just a not that great GA pilot, but watching him fly his Shrike at airshows was absolutely amazing.
    4
  1380.  @johnanon6938  Has nothing to do with radiation? There are two types of radiation, ionizing and non-ionizing, sometimes called high energy and low energy respectively. Ionizing radiation is the type produced in x-rays and nuclear bombs. Non-ionizing is the kind produced by the sun and radio wave radiation. Radio had been in use for over 20 years by 1942. The dangers of radio wave radiation were well understood, especially as we went up the spectrum. Radios and antennas had a lot of shielding to prevent stray radiation from escaping. It was understood that would reduce range and cause human effects like burns. The microwave oven's idea came from a Raytheon engineer who was working on an improperly shielded cavity magnetron radar in early 1945. He noticed a chocolate bar melted in his pocket, put two and two together, and Raytheon ended up filing one of the most valuable patents ever for a microwave oven in October, 1945.
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  1381.  @stuartpaul9995  Sounds like you know a couple not very pleasant gamblers. I have no ulcers, no stomach trouble, and I enjoy spicy Korean and Mexican food. The only time I get ill-tempered is when someone bluffs me out of a pot. Other than that, I think I'm pretty calm, and not snappy.
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  1382. Another great and interesting video. Even the pigeons are in your debt now. :-)
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  1383.  @Jay-vr9ir  Yes, all modern ships have devoted more space to cabin sizes, one of the reasons they grown to such monstrous proportions. A sink in the room in 1950 was considered a pretty good perk, and many people lived in apartments with toilets down the hall. I did, and that was in 1966. Things change.
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  1384. This is the second time in the past two weeks I didn't get a notification of a new video. Yes, I have that stupid bell rung. Is anyone else having this problem?
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  1385. It was a little of both. Not putting in hydraulics for the door was the big money saver. Once some people inside MD were asking for a door redesign, it was going to delay the introduction of the plane against the Lockheed L-1011. Adding the little window to the door helped those that could read and follow instructions, but it's the kind of fix you know will ultimately fail. The DC-10 was one of those airplanes rushed into production. By 1979, most of the initial problems had been fixed. There hasn't been a crash since attributable to problems with the airframe or systems, and it went on to a successful career with the Air Force as a tanker. If it had been properly engineered and built from the beginning it may have been one of the most successful airliners. Instead, it almost dragged McDonnell Douglas to bankruptcy and caused the deaths of hundreds of people.
    4
  1386. Michael Free  I was just thinking about Holden's feat again today, trying to decide how many times I would have been hollering "Oh Shit !!!" during that twelve minute flight.
    4
  1387. Indeed, although I would have needed at least two years in the hospital to get over that. Some guys are just natural pilots, and Holden seems to have been one of them.
    4
  1388.  @brucesmith54 No, I don't use them, but I do have I have a friend who spent 25 years in the Navy and now has Parkinson's and can't drive. I've taken him to appointments in four VA facilities in three states. I have no difficulty in reading name tags and listening to accents and making a good guess about where someone is from. Maybe you get confused by that. I don't. We've now gotten to a place all leftists seem to end up - ad hominem attacks. I'm done. I know you will need to have the last word so go right ahead. You can't make yourself look worse than you've already done.
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  1389.  @charlesharper2357  Um, sure, okay, but I never mentioned healthcare in Australia. Maybe you meant to respond to Bruce Smith's current post about his problem.
    4
  1390. The other issue with a non-retention toilet was the risk of detection using the toilet in an area with known enemy patrols. Waste and the paper products associated with it would float to the surface and alert patrolling enemy vessel to a sub's presence. Using even a properly functioning high pressure toilet was often not possible because of this issue so the use of buckets continued right up until the end of the war.
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  1391. Seems like Josh has some work to do so the audio gets properly synced up to the podcast. Just dead air until 4:31.
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  1392. Lordsummerisle87, I thought I had already replied but now I don't see my comment. I know some plainclothes types were using S&W and Colt snub nose .38 special in the 60's and 70's. I think a fair number of uniformed armed police were still using Webley 38/200 revolvers, and some had started adopting the Browning Hi-Power 9mm by 1970. Colin, I think these were the same as the Browning Hi-Power, and I think the armed police started using them right after the military got them. Almost anything was better than a .7.65mm PPK.
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  1393. His leadership dragged Congress into funding the interwar navy we'd later need to defeat Japan. His leadership dragged Congress into maintaining funding for the navy after the war instead of letting the fleet run down as we had done after WWI. is leadership dragged Congress into funding the nuclear navy we have today. He was a major supporter of many of FDR's New Deal programs. He was also a staunch segregationist, something I'm sure you're really getting at.
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  1394.  David Single  I can't tell if you're trolling, but New Zealand has nothing official to do with American Samoa. Auckland is the capital of New Zealand while Pago Pago is the capital of American Samoa.
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  1395. Please put up a page on SubscribeStar. I'd like to support you, but I refuse to support Patreon, a platform that censors creators rather than simply acting as a payment platform. Accurate history can't exist without hearing from all sides of an issue.
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  1396.  @BrianSmith-yn2zg  Just quit while you're ahead. You have no understanding of the import of the Yalta Conference or history in general.
    4
  1397.  @Nathan_Whaley-g8m  I'm quite certain that not having eastern Europe endure 43 years of communist bondage would have been well worth throwing our atomic bomb weight around.
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  1398. @Richard J Roberts The Russians didn't have an atomic bomb until 1949. This was in 1946. How exactly would leveling Russia have started WWIII? It's a lot more likely that Stalin would have been less imperialistic if he knew Truman might use the bomb on him. Oh, yeah. They wouldn't have developed the bomb for at least five more years beyond 1949 if not for US and British communist and communist sympathizer spy rings passing atomic bomb information back to the Soviets.
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  1399. Already available. Check out the Cirrus Aircraft at https://cirrusaircraft.com/innovation/airframe-parachute/
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  1400. A virulent virus like Covid-19 will always moves through the population, infecting people opportunistically. The only thing that stops a virus is when enough people die, in the case of a highly morbid virus like the 1918-1919 flu or, with a low morbidity virus like this, when enough people get it and recover. That's when herd immunity sets in, and there just isn't a big enough pool of the naive left to allow the virus to continue to spread. Every single virus in human history has followed the same path, and so will Covid-19.
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  1401. So how do you get your Tesla repaired under warranty without some kind of dealership network? Are you expected to ship it back to California? I don't much care about car dealership monopolies, but I do care about getting my car fixed.
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  1402.  @ssunkite1  Thanks for the kind words. Things do improve with time. The pain never goes away, but I've learned to live with it. At least I don't fantasize about being a mass killer now. :-)
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  1403.  @Liberty4Ever  I think you have it completely backwards. The anti gun people people believe it is the type of gun that makes it dangerous, not the person using it. If the same person shooting into a crowd with an AR-15 had a Daisy air rifle instead the toll would be considerably less. We should be stressing that all guns are just tools, just like steak knives and chainsaws. There is no gun firing the same caliber of ammunition that's more dangerous than any another of the same caliber. They are selected by the buyer as the best tool for the job, whether it's hunting, target shooting, or self defense. A criminal using the same kind of gun doesn't make the gun more dangerous, it's the intent that makes it more dangerous. Stopping criminals and the deranged before they can get a gun that should be our first priority, not trying to convince people who hate guns that we're the good guys with a gun, so they should cut us a break. It just doesn't work.
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  1404. The story of the SS Ohio is well told in "At All Costs: How a Crippled Ship and Two American Merchant Mariners Turned the Tide of World War II", the story of two US merchant mariners and how they almost single handedly fought off German and Italian aircraft after boarding Ohio when their own ship was sunk. The two sailors were determined that the Ohio was going to make it to Malta, and the story is a real page turner. It's available from Amazon as an e-book.
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  1405.  @wolfshanze5980  Right. Sure. That's the problem...
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  1406. Not hard to see all the Frod styling cue in the Volga. Head on, it's a near duplicate of a '53 Ford Mainliner. The rear styling seems to a lot more Soviet, although there are touches of early 50's Plymouths there. The problem with the automatic was it was a hydromechanical unit. The hydraulic assist was needed during the long and bitter cold winters if the bands weren't to just freeze in place. Soviet planners also didn't take into account the need for high quality transmission fluid, something unavailable at the time. It took almost three years of testing and manufacturing set up before the fluid could be produced n quantity. Because of that, a car that was supposed to have the transmission fluid changed every 1000 kilometers drove 20,000 or 30,000 kilometers still using the inferior original factory transmission fluid. This contributed greatly to the reputation of unreliability of the transmission. There was nothing wrong with the design of the transmission, but Soviet industry at the time didn't have the machine tools to produce such a close tolerance unit on a mass production scale. It required a lot of hand fitting, and Volgas would sit on the line for weeks waiting for their transmissions. Productivity at the Volga plants was also very slow, with a production rate of about five cars per Day. There was no concept in the socialist economy for incentive payments for workers that were fast workers, so work settled down to a tepid pace, with as much time spent around the samovar chatting with one another as there was car construction. The Soviets hoped the Star could be a foreign exchange earner in the export market, but too many quirky features needed in a car traveling on what the time were atrocious road conditions of the country demanded truck side leaf springs on all four corners, huge drum brakes instead of using disks, a center kingpin with recirculating ball steering that could survive hits from all the potholes in the roads but also required the arms of weightlifter to park, and even a 300 pound steel weight under the trunk floor to help with snow traction. The included radio had wave bands only used in the Soviet Union. The car was literally built more like an army truck than a passenger car, and it rode like one. It weighed in at over 5,000 pounds, was painfully slow because of the low compression ratio demanded by poor quality Soviet gasoline, and only had a 65 HP inline four. The V-8 was reserved for NKVD cars used as escorts for official VIP convoys, a common sight in those days. Needless to say, the dreams of export success were dashed.
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  1407. LOL. I love these anecdotes developed over the decades. I didn't see the punchline with Georgian college student coming.
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  1408. My wife was Slovenian. There were many, many Slovenians in Cleveland. I think it was the largest Slovenian city outside Slovenia in the 70's. It seemed like we were constantly shipping things like jeans and small radios of various types to her relatives in Slovenia. There was an electronics store downtown that specialized in SECAM and PAL TVs and VCRs to send back home. Slovenia used PAL, but her relatives sold SECAM items to Russian tourists. Everyone hustled to make that extra buck or dinar back then.
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  1409. We should make the minimum wage $25. Why not $50, or $100? The minimum wage ultimately will have exactly the same purchasing power as the minimum wage does today. Prices will simply increase to match wages. Businesses always have to pay exactly the wage that will attract the workers they need to staff their business. A low skill, low requirements job will only be worth the minimum wage. A company like Costco has less staff per thousand dollars of good sold. A Costco employee has to work harder and be more productive than a Walmart employee, hence Costco can afford to pay more. Just watch a Costco checker compared to a Walmart checker if you don't believe me. No one will work for less if if they have the skills, the work ethic, and abilities and another company is paying a higher wage.
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  1410. And now St. Petersburg has the first building in Russia over 400 meter. The Lakhta Center in St Petersburg topped out at 462 meters on January 23 of this year. It's now the tallest building in Russia and the tallest building in Europe as well. Staling got the massive structure he want. It just isn't in Moscow, doesn't have a giant statue of Lenin, and was built about 80 years later than he wanted it done.
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  1411.  @joek600  First, the 2008-2009 economic crisis wasn't caused only by Lehman. The crisis was already in progress, and they happened to be the weakest link in banks lending on subprime mortgages. The US certainly has an economically inefficient healthcare system today, but universal healthcare carries its own burdens of inefficiency. Spreading the cost to all means the young and people otherwise healthy subsidize the care of the elderly and unhealthy. The really poor already have free care. Medicaid covers some of the costs, and doctors and hospital eat the rest. The economically well off can pay for their own care. It's the people in the middle we need to cover. Rather than change our entire system, something Obamacare has shown is fraught with peril, we can do some simple things we aren't doing, like allowing health insurance to be sold across state lines. We'd introduce real competition, drive down costs, and provide better coverage, much like what happens with auto insurance now. I'm in favor of trying things like that before we get into rationing healthcare through scarcity, the inevitable result of single payer systems.
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  1412. That was quite an introduction to the US. Americans really are generally friendly.
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  1413.  @zdub8438  Asian cigarettes in general seem ot be like that. Thai cigarettes just about made me faint after two puffs. Nepali smokes, which I think actually come from India and China, were even worse. Yet our Sherpa porters happily puffed away on them at 17,000 feet while I could hardly breathe when I wasn't smoking. I guess it's all what you're used to.
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  1414.  @ldg508  I visited about 20 different countries back when I was smoking and even local Marlboros tasted different from the US variety. I assume they use local tobacco in some places so it's bound to taste different. You'd be in trouble in some places if you're menthol smoker. Except in places like airports, no one in Thailand carried menthols. When we were on our Everest trek, one of the women in our party was menthol smoker. She gave a pack of Salem to one of our porters, who all smoked up a storm while carrying 80 pound loads at 13,000 feet. He tried one and gave her back the pack. He said he had never smoked anything that awful in his life. About half of a Nepali local brand cigarette would make me just about pass out, so it's not like he wasn't used to strong smokes.
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  1415.  @Tappettava  Well, you're a better man than me. One cigarette and I'd be right back at it. Like any addiction, dancing with the devil can be dangerous but, as long as it works for you, I'm glad.
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  1416. There you go. You should have snatched up all the old abacuses you could lay your hands on before you left. You'd be rich now selling them on ebay!
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  1417. Your dad was slightly younger than me. I was born in February, 1946. The Soviet army stationed soldiers from places where there was any sort of unrest or anti-Soviet feeling far enough away that they wouldn't be anywhere near their home country in case of "counter revolutionary" activity. This was especially true with soldiers from the western Ukraine, where armed resistance to the USSR continued into the mid-50's. Even though Lithuania was also a hotbed of resistance, the assumption was Ukrainians would be less likely to support an uprising in Lithuania while their own country remained occupied. Khrushchev became really paranoid about the possibility of a successful revolution anywhere after the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, and that carried through to Brezhnev's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. At least he was discharged in July of 1968 so he missed having to be sent to Czechoslovakia in August. His AK-74 was probably replaced with an AKM, the modernized version of the AK-47. The AKM was introduced in 1959, but it took awhile before they had enough to issue them to second line units like your dad's.
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  1418. Name me one mainstream Western documentary the either doesn't mention Russia or downplays its role in the war. The destruction of German Army Group Center and South, the pivotal point of the Eastern war, didn't even begin until after D-Day. German destiny was not already sealed unless those two operations were successful. The Allies had a hard fought struggle to get through France, the Low Countries, and the western half of Germany. It wasn't a race to Berlin considering it took eleven months. The three Baltic republics had the "help" of the Soviets like a man taking your wallet at gunpoint is "helping" you. When it comes to Russian POWs and how they were repatriated, I suggest you look up Order 270 and how that was carried out by the NKVD. By 1946, only 20% of repatriated POWs were freed. The rest were executed as traitors, went to the gulags, or were redrafted to labor battalions or reserve formations. The majority of those still alive were not freed until the general amnesty of 1955. This is well documented in declassified Soviet documents that are available on the net. The history you were taught in Serbian schools and is written in Serbian histories about the war are not accurate. You obviously have access to the web, and the real information is out there. Up to you if you want to remain in ignorance.
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  1419. I don't understand. If she only had $32, how did she have 40 pounds in Britain? That doesn't add up. I don't understand why these cruise videos would lose you subscribers. It's a chance to get kind of inside view of how Soviet elites thought about Western countries before the fall of the USSR. Being written by a disgruntled homesick wife gives a lot different insights than someone who was just a normal tourist.
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  1420. @InfiniteMushroom As usual, you need to set up a strawman for why you quoting the law is irrelevant, therefore you had to quote the law. Just answer my questions. What has gone way over your head is that you know you can't answer my questions. You quoted Lawrence Berg, not me. Who is he, where is he from, what does he believe, and exactly what is the source of your quote? If you can't answer those questions, you reveal yourself as a paranoid fraud.
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  1421. Martin, I think that joke actually is of Russian origin. The Russian people were told the same lies they fed to the West, and the people there knew they were lies. It's the kind of ironic observation I'd expect from a Soviet citizen. Sergei would know better than me. All these Russian/Soviet jokes do illustrate that humor is sometimes used just to get by and have a chuckle at your tormentors..
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  1422. You're welcome. There was a show on either Radio Free Europe or one of the smaller anti-Soviet shortwave stations that had a weekly roundup of political stories, jokes, and anecdotes. I don't think it was on Voice of America because some of the jokes were a little raunchy, and that would be below the dignity of VoA. This was back when I was in high school, so 1960-1964. Those were the years I was really into ham and shortwave radio. The show had a funny title in Russian but I can't remember it now. The English language broadcast later the same day would translate a couple of the jokes and anecdotes they thought English speakers would understand. As you said, some didn't translate well unless you were living in the USSR at the time. Some made no sense at all unless you were really familiar with Soviet politics and the economy.
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  1423. Ah, those swingin' 70's. I remember them well, but not always with much affection. I was the one with question about the currency math. I kind of assumed there must have been some trading and sales of things she bought with her just so she'd have enough money to do the shopping she actually did. That's a good point about her writing this for her 15 year old daughter. She wouldn't want to get into the bleak details of how she got the money she needed. She may also not have wanted to write much about it in case the KGB may have gotten it when she came back to the USSR.
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  1424. I've often wondered why German forces in the west fought so fiercely when all they were doing was allowing the Soviets to advance further into Germany and establish a 45 year reign of terror in their occupied section of the country. If they just started surrendering enmass to the British and Americans, they could have helped the allies establish a zone of occupation much larger than what was ultimately allowed.
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  1425.  @binaway  Yes, Senator Albert Borah, a strange combination of Republican, FDR supporter, strict isolationist, and progressive, although that term didn't mean the same in 1920 as it does now.
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  1426.    Well, no, the war didn't start until nearly three weeks after the deciding match between El Salvador and Honduras, which was won by El Salvador. Angry pilots there may have been, but just like with any other air force, you couldn't just jump in a fighter and fly off. Tensions had been building for over a decade, and the results of the playoffs were just another provocation in the eyes of Honduras. El Salvador believed Honduras was about to attack and launched their own preemptive attack. It succeeded at first, but the poorly trained and equipped Salvadoran military soon lost ground to the larger and better trained Honduran forces. The attack by El Salvador was a tactical mistake, but both countries suffered thousands of casualties in the 100 hour war, mostly among civilians.
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  1427. What a great story! I thought i had heard about all the strange stories from WWII but this is a new one on me. Probably a good thing they were going up against the Italians though. I don't think a German pilot would have had a bottle of red wine in his kit.
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  1428. Republic of China (Taiwan) has well over 600 M-41 tanks of which at least 400 are operational in first line service.
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  1429. It's disgusting that a country that gave the world the Dreadnought never saved even one of them. Thank goodness I can still spend a long vacation touring preserved battleships in the US. Those of you playing World of Warships have no idea what you're doing with a battleship until you can see one in the flesh, so to speak.
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  1430. Did the Germans publicize the "capture" of the plane? The Hurricane was approaching obsolescence by September, 1941, and there wasn't much about the plane that wasn't already know to the Luftwaffe. A Czech pilot as a turncoat may have had propaganda value in occupied Czechoslovakia but I've never heard of the incident being publicized. There must be more to this story.
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  1431. The RN never were able to locate San Luis , even after the torpedo attacks. Her performance highlighted the dangers from these relatively low tech but very quiet Type 209 submarines. It was the start of a renaissance in the construction of new diesel-electric subs. Now, with more and more having air independent propulsion, they have many of the same advantages as a nuclear sub without the noise of the reactor. The Argentine Navy had always planned to use the shallows to deny the RN subs from getting close enough to sink the carrier, and 25 de Mayo just made it before she would have been attacked and sunk by Splendid . I'm pretty sure she would have attacked 25 de Mayo if not for the danger of shoal waters regardless of if she was in Argentine waters.
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  1432. Chris, just like a ship at sea. One member of the party was an expert with a map, compass, sextant, and celestial navigation. As long as you had sun during the day and the stars at night, the usual conditions in the desert, navigation was actually reasonably easy.
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  1433.  @bens1972  You leftists just seem to make things up to bolster your argument. The UK has been the world's fifth largest economy since at least 2007. That hasn't changed since Brexit because none of the trading schemes have changed. You are still a member of the EU as of today. The UK has been one of the world's sickest economies among developed nations. Debt per capita is one of the highest in the world, government borrowings is one of the highest in the world, and productivity has been stagnant since 2014. The GDP has been falling since 2014. None of these are signs of a healthy economy. My knowledge of the English language is good enough to tell me the first definition of word is not the only one. The definition that applies to you is "Magical thinking: Narcissists see themselves as perfect, using distortion and illusion known as magical thinking. They also use projection to "dump" shame onto others." It's people like you that feel so special and entitled that you can pass justment on the majority of your countrymen because you think your level of understanding is so far above all the "little people". You know, like the ones that voted for Brexit. Finally, we get the last refuge of today's leftists - Trump Derangement Syndrome. The "people" (your quotes, not mine) are so ignorant and stupid that they voted for someone you don't like. Because of this, the whole concept of democracy is now in question. Well, unless your ilk manages to get a do-over for Brexit and enough "people" vote to stay. Then, since they voted the way you wanted them to, democracy is now good again.
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  1434.  @thomasingram7146  Thanks for that. My impression was many of those old tenement blocks were pretty awful places to live. One of the problems of living in council housing is you're at the mercy of the government.
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  1435.  @bens1972  No, narcissistic is exactly the right word for someone who believes you know that 53% of your countrymen are "disgruntled, envious, racist and ignorant". Also a apt description for someone who's ignorant enough to believe Britain had a healthy economy except for that one vote that killed everything.
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  1436.  @bens1972  That would otherwise be known as the majority, wouldn't it? What a narcissistic and revolting view you have of your fellow citizens.
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  1437. Couldn't agree more. Britain has gone from one of the most admired countries in the world to a nearly third world country in less than two generations. It does make think this couldn't have happened without some high level planning. I'm just hoping that we in the US can escape the fate of our Mother Country.
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  1438.  @niteriderevo9179  Thanks. That confirmed for me you have no idea what an actual Taser is like or how it's used. Good job using Wikipedia though.
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  1439.  Katrina S  I see. The old Tories vs Labour thing. What party was in power for almost 13 years after privatization (sorry for the yank spellings), could have reversed it at will, yet never did? Why did the former Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen general secretary Lew Adams moved to work for Virgin Trains, and said on a 2004 radio phone-in programme: "All the time it was in the public sector, all we got were cuts, cuts, cuts. And today there are more members in the trade union, more train drivers, and more trains running. The reality is that it worked, we’ve protected jobs, and we got more jobs. Railroads in the US created their own problems with bad management and militant unions constantly at war, rather like we saw in the UK. The railroads got better management, unions became more realistic in their demands, and now mainline railroads are thriving. Yes, there are less employees than in 1948, but that's a natural byproduct of increased automation, longer trains, and less switch with containerized freight. Still, the numbers of railroad employees, once we factor out the years of recession,, especially 2008-2010, when the severe recession of those years drastically cut freight car loadings, has been steadily rising since 1999. 1997 was deepest trough of railroad employment, with 220,000 employees on the payroll. It had risen ever since, with 246,000 employees in 2018. Most of these are high paying jobs, and many are union..Employment has been rising due to increased demand, but revenue per employee continues to climb. they have better equipment, more effective computerization and automation, and improved track and grades, all paid for with revenue from railroad operations. Our railroads have never existed to provide jobs, They exist to provide service at a profit. We have the most productive railroad employees in the world. They are a positive benefit to the country, paying tens of billions in taxes to the federal state, and local goverments and spend tens of billions for supplies and capital improvements. We continue to have the lowest freight rates in the world while providing more jobs a better return to shareholders.A large portion of business lost to trucks in 70's and 89's has been won back, reducing the numbers of trucks on the road, decreasing accidents, decreasing fuel consumption, and decreasing air pollution. One of the reasons why Amazon and other companies can promise two day delivery to anywhere in a country about 37 times larger in area then the UK is the fast freight services the railroads provide. All this was accomplished without government ownership and without costing taxpayers a dime. I realize that, as a socialist, you want the utopia of government ownership of the means of production. Give me the performance records for British railroads between 1948 and 1995, when they were nationalized. If they are just as good, I'll sign up for your utopia.
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  1440.  @pit_stop77  There was actually. The 60's and 70's were kind of the golden age if US television. We had everything from comedies Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners and Lucille Ball, variety shows like Ed Sullivan, and serious programs like 20th Century and Hallmark Theater. We even adapted some British programs to become shows like All In The Family, and I watched Fawlty Towers and Monty Python religiously. I was a kid/teenager in the 50's and 60's and it was rare not to have at least a couple programs of interest every evening. There were also local programs like Ghoulardi and his terrible but funny science fiction movies from my hometown of Cleveland that became regional favorites. Every station put on local news and weather. The idea of tuning into one channel for the news of the entire country followed by maybe two minutes of weather for the whole country was completely foreign to me. Local news generally lasted a half-hour followed by a half-hour of national news from one of the Big Three networks. Fox and CNN got their starts by providing news programming to non-network statons. My impression from watching reruns of BBC news, even into the 90's, was the British were satisfied with maybe 20 minutes of a just the biggest national and world stories and maybe a story or two that was local to their service area. Americans, by comparison, wanted detailed local news as well as national news. In particular, we wanted detailed local weather, with some weather segments running fifteen minutes, and weathermen becoming local celebrities. Stations commonly competed on the quality of their news and weather, and people would watch programs before or after their favorite local news, thereby selling more ad time. Most US station were operating until about 0200 in the 60's, and almost all were 24 hours by the 70's. It was mostly really old movies or cooking shows late night, but at least you had something on that would put you to sleep if you had insomnia. :-)
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  1441. Sorry, Gabbi, but it is hypocritical to decriminalize use while maintaining the war against drugs, which has always been primarily against sellers. She's not any more honest about many of these issues, including giving out free money to everyone who bellies up to the bar. There are an awful lot of thirsty incels supporting her just because she's a babe, but she's no better than the rest of the Democrats.
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  1442. The USN is desperate for a replacement frigate, so they will hold their nose and buy the Italian design. Let's face it, the USN designed ships of the past 20 years have been pretty sorry.
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  1443. Back in the days you could still say "Merry Christmas".
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  1444.  @mohnjayer  I agree. Redistribution of wealth by the government owning the means of production is the definition of socialism. Taking over healthcare and health insurance are the first steps down that road.
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  1445. The Prowler was hardly a "small" aircraft, but it was only standing next to one that gave you the full picture of that. The EA-6 had an empty weight only slightly less than a B-24, Its length was only seven feet less than a B-24 as well. For a twin engined jest, it was really an impressively large airplane.
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  1446. I don't think a T-34/76 really qualifies as an MBT today. The l/70 version of the Bofors has been in service for 70 years now. It has been the subject of many upgrades for naval and land service. With the advent of the proximity fused round and increased muzzle velocity, the L/70, when combined with radar and laser fire control, is still a decent weapon against low flying fast jets. The British rounded up every L/60 and L/70 gun it could get, including some from museum ships, to mount everywhere there was space and strength available before ships headed south to the Falklands. The RN, which had pretty much scrapped light AA armament by then, got a new found respect for guns that would put up enough metal to either shoot down a low flying attack aircraft, or at least worry the pilot enough that his aim may have been just a little off before he dropped his bombs. The 40mm guns have now all been replaced with 30mm guns in the RN, but all her major surface vessels retain a light AA/asymmetric threat armament of 30mm, 20mm, 7.62mm miniguns, plus .50 caliber HB BMG and 7.62mm GPMG machine guns strapped to almost every lifeline upright on the ship. It's a lesson the USN will someday learn the hard way.
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  1447. I don't know anyone who passed away. How many of the rest of you do? Don't you get this Scott? You are now part of the fear factor.
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  1448. Those of us with chronic pain are being killed by the DEA because it's getting harder and harder to get the pain medication that allows us to lead a normal life. The "opioid crisis" is not being caused by people who need these life saving drugs. It's coming from China and illegal drug labs. Since the DEA seems to be totally incapable of stopping those sources of supply to street users, they attack those of us with chronic, debilitating pain, threaten doctors with losing their licenses if they don't get us off opioids regardless of the consequences to their patients, and declare victory. This whole thing is nothing but a moral panic, and everyone from President Trump on down is buying into it. .
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  1449. he kind of person that does that, nosering boy, is someone with a sense of humor.
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  1450. When is Donald Trump going to pay my air conditioning bill? It's been damn hot for January here and I'm sick of having to pay for this sexist air conditioning. And a teacher who doesn't like white males? I hope she's teaching in all girls school. Actually, I hope she's not teaching anyone
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  1451. Herb, not exactly. They would have to attempt to make entry to the car, not just slap at it as it went by. Even in Florida, you still have to show a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm before using deadly force.
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  1452. A shotgun will do a good job of protecting his business.
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  1453. Ya Man, yes, indeed, the best reporters of the past (think Walter Cronkite, Edward R Murrow, and many others) were trained in journalism school that their job was to report news, not shape the response to news. They were also trained not to damage their credibility. If they had a personal interest in a story, they should decline the assignment and let another reporter take the story. There was actually a thing called a code of journalistic ethics. I guess that's kinda silly now though. At one time, in a past you're probably too young to remember, there was a difference between news and opinion pieces. That line has now blurred to the point that people like you think a "passionate" reporter with a deep personal interest in a story is really reporting news.
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  1454. Blitz, that was a little self deprecating humor. Look it up, you too could develop a sense of humor.
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  1455. Thank goodness I wasn't a a male born in France around 1895. The chance of surviving WWI made any other war look like a good risk. The general collapse of fertility rates after wwI in Europe affected France more than any of the other major powers, and it meant that the Great Depression affected them more and they went in WWII with a greater "shortfall" of men of military age. This led directly to the surrender of France in 1940 and all the aftereffects of that action. .
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  1456.  @legionitalia309  Yeah, I had a buddy with one and his worked great. I know several other guys from the range that had ones that worked like mine.That's what makes these rifles so frustrating. You can't tell just by looking at them which one will work and which one won't.
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  1457.  @MFGordon  Indeed, I remember these converted flintlocks still going for less than $50 from mail order houses like Kleins up to the late 70's. They were neither scarce nor collector's items. To some degree, unconverted flintlocks were even less desirable than the converted muskets since they were so difficult to use in modern times. There were plenty that were bought for the collector value though, but prices and supply don't stand still until a person who wants one shows up today and still wants to pay the prices we did 50 years ago.
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  1458.  @michaelscott8567  Yeah, I proofread my own posts just fine. Everything in the US is of European origin or made by Europeans? WTF has that got to with disliking the current state of many European countries? I'll ignore the fact you think Christianity, gunpowder, and lithium-ion batteries came from Europe.
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  1459. I've never understood why the US was (mostly) fully equipped with self loading rifle by Pearl Harbor, at the end of 1941, yet it took the British sixteen years to accomplish the same thing. Why this gap? There must be a reasonable explanation.
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  1460. My Kel Tec P-11 is not a Devel by any stretch of the imagination, but it shows how materials have advanced since 1980. The P-11 weighs 17.1 ounces and has a 12 + 1 capacity. I've shot about 500 rounds through it and it has been totally reliable. It cost a heck of lot less than Devel as well.
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  1461. Rats! Fat fingers did it again.
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  1462. Thanks for giving us the realized prices. It's always fascinating to see how much (or little) some of these guns go for.
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  1463.  @Kampfhamster81  They are already kept under lock and key in stout gun safes. If just removing the bolt makes the gun useless, why bother going through all that? Where's the bolt stored? In another safe? If a thief can get in one, he can get in the other. It's silly.
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  1464. I swear I remember Springfield selling these in the early 90's for something like $200, and there seemed to be a fair number of them in stock. I wonder why there are only 12 known today?
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  1465. I have a wonderful brother who gave me a generous monetary gift for Christmas. Part of it just went for this book. Thanks, Bud!
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  1466.  @mavenmanion  LOL. And you know nothing about me and have mischaracterized my arguments. I'm 72 years of age. I earned a master's degree in atmospheric science. I actually never mentioned climate change in my comments, did I? The fact the world is less polluted is provably true. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it's a naturally occuring gas. There's no question that it has been put into the atmosphere in increasing amounts by man. There's no question the earth has been heating up as combination of that carbon dioxide and solar flares. What I don't believe is we actually the have scientific knowledge to predict life as we know it will cease to exist in 100, 200 or 500 years. Even assuming a steady state increase in carbon dioxide doesn't give us such a short timeframe. I'm confident, or at least hopeful, that industrial processes invented and applied in the last 25 years, less carbon based pollution from power production with increasing amounts of solar, wind, and hydro sources, and the increase in electric vehicles and even cleaner internal combustion engines will lead to at least a leveling off in the rise of Co2. This doesn't even take into account other options like carbon sequestration. If you want to believe you have inherited a bleak and dystopian world, have at it, but that kind of thinking is not good for your mental health.
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  1467.  @mavenmanion  Define "overindustralization". Do you know the world is less polluted today than is has been at any time since the 1950? There is less poverty in the world, and more people are literate, than any time in history. People are healthier, live longer, and have less acute and pandemic diseases than any time in history. By any objective measure, the world is better off now than it has ever been. What has happened is we have an entire generation of young people who have grown up with the 24 hour news cycle. You have stories thrown at you around the the clock of how bad things are. Some of the stories are incomplete or outright false. All this has caused millennials to have the highest rates of depression of any age group. Negative biases or interpretations of events tend to be more pronounced in people with depression. People with depression have a predisposition to interpret even ambiguous events negatively, and positive events of the same type still tend to be interpreted negatively. The problem with the world, my young friend, is you. Turn off the TV. Get off the twatter, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. Stop reading things like the Huffington Post, Reddit, and Tumblr. None of that is real. Get outside and grow things, see things, travel. The world is not going to hell in a handbasket.
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  1468. Total spam. Don't click on the link.
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  1469. Good heavens. Radiological leukemia is nearly 100% fatal, especially with that poor worker's long time of exposure. India is just not a safe place for nuclear material. Rules are followed more in the breath than by the letter. The fact that they and Pakistan have nuclear weapons is really quite scary.
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  1470. Thanks for the compilation. I'm locked up in coronavirus prison. Even though I had seen these when they first came out, it was enjoyable watching all of them a second time.
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  1471.  @-szega  Have you heard of the term "straw man"? It's intentionally misrepresenting my arguments because it is easier to defeat than responding to my real arguments. (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman} That's what you just did. I never said it wasn't a significant accident. I wouldn't be that foolish. Now, if you have an argument against any of the facts I posted, I'd be happy to hear them. Just don't try to set me up again.
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  1472. Thanks for this documentary. As you asid, a much longer film would be required to show both how it happened and then the effects of the gas releases to the surrounding population. Another mass industrial accident similar to this is almost inevitable as more and more plants are being built in countries where corruption and negligence are endemic to the culture and political systems.
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  1473. It's amazing how the French can produce such beautiful cars and such ugly battleships.
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  1474.  @richjageman3976  With Alabama close behind. BOth states are much bigger than they appear at first glance on the map. In terms of size though, the largest US county, San Bernardino CA, is half as big as all of Britain. It's only when you get out West that you get counties the same size or larger than many entire European countries.
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  1475. One of the reasons for the Bismarcks being such heavy ships is the lack of dual purpose armament. The Bismarcks needed a combination of 28 gun barrels for the secondary and tertiary armament. Even with the increased displacement of the Bismarcks, the total number of either anti surface or heavy antiaircraft guns was less than the twenty 5"/38 guns on the later US battleships. It also required two different fire control and radar systems. These systems require space and weight but, more critically, they require manpower. The Bismarcks had a wartime crew about 200-250 enlisted and 25 officers more than a North Carolina. Each additional crew member requires a surprising amount of resources, like food water, and bunk space, fuel oil needed to move and heat the ship, even the planning for sick bay space. The figures I've read is about 100 tons of consumables per man per three month mission, and that doesn't take into account the fixed weight requirements like the weight of the plethora of guns and mounts.
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  1476. I hope today has been a better day for you.
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  1477.  @neurofiedyamato8763  I was responding to your post when you said "Now the US military spend the most on its military." My response was that, sure, the US spends the most in absolute dollars because we have the world's biggest economy. Unless Canada suddenly finds a way to be the defender of the West, how could it be otherwise. Very few military economists would agree with your assertion % of GDP doesn't really matter. We're looking at developed economies where the total spent as % of GDP is both a big number and totally flexible, spending on the political and military will of the government. The smaller the economy, the less in % of GDP a country can spend because things like infrastructure and social programs will demand a larger percentage of GDP. That will always limit the spending by % of GDP compared to absolute dollar total. Another reasonable way to look at military spending is amount per capita. Saudi Arabia leads again, with the US second. First place is because of massive government revenue available for a relatively small population. The second is because of a much larger population but still a very large revenue stream. Next on the list are Singapore, Kuwait, Oman, and Norway. Kuwait and Oman are also because of large revenue streams vice a smaller population while Singapore and Norway have made conscious decisions to spend more money per capita than other countries with similar populations and GDP. What I'm suggesting is there is no one "best" way to have an informed read of military spending. Spending in absolute dollars is certainly not one of the best. Your last paragraph is a strawman I often see in terms of US military spending. Simply because we have some failed programs doesn't mean that military spending in general is spend on failed programs. Two things can be true at once. We can spend money on poor systems like the LCS while also being world leaders in other systems. China doesn't "have way better priorities" simply because that's what you believe based on flimsy evidence. It has taken them over 30 years and the expenditures of huge amounts of money to finally commision a class of SSBNs that are at least one, and more likely, two generations behind USN SSBNs, and the Chinese only have seven in service. It has taken the PRC well over 30 years and huge amounts of money to develop its first domestically produced carrier of a size and capability roughly similar to a US Midway class carrier of the Vietnam era. It has taken the PRC 50 years and huge amounts of money to finally develop a cruiser size ship just entering service, and it's still not as capable as a USN Ticonderoga class ship that first entered service in 1978. None of this even takes into consideration the massive logistical capabilities and experience of the US compared to the PRC. The Chinese are now developing a creditable blue water navy, something the USN has had for over seventy years. "Way better priorities"? I'd have to strongly disagree with that.
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  1478.  @Tevildo  This is what happens when I post late at night! Yes, 3 MHz is correct. The source of the 3 KHz figure was my poorly functioning brain and fingers. :-)
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  1479. Strangely, the 1918-1919 influenza, popularly known as the Spanish Flu, caused many fewer deaths among USN sailors than the Army, with about 5,000 sailors dying and nearly 23,000 in the Army, about twice the number per capita among soldiers. Only about 1,000 died aboard ship with the rest dying in shore stations. Reasons offered include liberty restrictions or avoiding ports with raging infections altogether, better diet and medical care aboard ship, and the Navy only using replacements from shore stations for sailors that actually died. The one ship that went against the trend was the USS Pittsburgh (ACR-4), with 663 sailors sick, some for a month or more, and 58 dead. The captain, George “Blackjack” Bradshaw, was a notably poor commander. He allowed working parties ashore and normal liberty while in port at Rio de Janeiro. Rio at the time was in bad shape from the flu, with bodies stacked in the streets and buzzards picking at the corpses. So many sailors died that it took nearly five months before replacements could be sent and Pittsburgh could get underway for New York, and she was held in quarantine for nearly a month offshore.
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  1480. So the original plan was for Eagle to be the world's largest and slowest torpedo boat that could incidentally operate a few aircraft. Makes perfect sense to me...
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  1481.  @TheTrueAdept  Wow, a simple request for proof of your assertion evades you? If you had any an understanding of how offshore geography works, which you don't, you'd know the Intracoastal Waterway (not intercoastal highway) is an inland or just offshore system of mostly artificial canals and extensions of existing rivers, bays, and inlets. It provides a route for freight to move up and down the coast mostly without the hazards of the open ocean. Barrier islands play almost no role in the canal. Since most of the route only has a maximum depth of 12 feet, and many places 9 feet or less, the primary traffic is barges and pleasure craft. Do you think supertankers, container ships, and aircraft carriers use the Intracoastal Waterway to sail up and down the coast? Sounds like you must to make such an incredibly ignorant comment.
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  1482. Just to clarify, the centimetric radars that the cavity magnetron made possible still required tubes (valves), and lots of them. The cavity magnetron required a much lower transmitting power and hence a smaller and lighter power supply. Miniature and multifunction tubes also allowed what was a small package for 1942 onwards.
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  1483. I'm about 250 miles from Mobile (yes, you pronounced that right) and I'd sure like to be part of any meetup we can get organized there. How many others are there here that are close enough to Mobile to think they might be able to join up?
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  1484.  @57thorns  I'd generally agree about commercial codes. There were two types of codes in general use around 1900 though, and I didn't make myself very clear. The first were the commercial like the the ABC and Western Union. I don't remember them carrying a higher rate than plain language telegrams, but I could be wrong. The second were cipher codes like Law's and Whittinghams. These were subscription codes that served the dual purpose of shortening telegrams and making them unreadable to someone not having the correct key. The receiving station had such a key that was usually mailed from the sender and was good for something like a month. The originating station got their codes mailed from the subscription company, and each recipient got a differently keyed table, the idea being that the chances of two companies with the same code was small. Large, highly competitive companies like steel and meat plants even paid for custom codes since, even back then, industrial espionage wasn't uncommon, and knowing the standard cipher code in use made it so the cryptanalysis of the day could rapidly learn to decode those messages. Cipher codes were charged at a higher rate, since they were pure gibberish compared to straight commercial codes. Many operators handling commercial business actually did have popular commercial codes mostly memorized, so they could sent them about as easily as plain language telegrams.
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  1485.  @KarlBunker  Yes, it did happen, but usually to ship's passengers with no experience in abandoning ship. Sailors were trained to use both arms across the chest with the hands used to haul down the top of the vest. From what I've read, this was a fairly safe way to enter the water from height with a cork block vest, but I can see how an untrained person could get hurt.
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  1486. I can't imagine that you'd have a good trip, Drach, even if you can make it here. Now that travel from the UK is suspended, you'd have to spend fourteen days in quarantine if even you did get here, many of the ships/museum are closing, and more and more hotels, restaurants, and any places of public accommodation are also closing. I'd like to think we will regain our sanity in three weeks, but I doubt it. If it was me, I'd just cancel and reschedule for maybe the summer, when there's a better chance this thing will have blown over.
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  1487. I think you meant to say the Firebrand had a tailwheel rather than tricycle landing gear. Blackburn went on to produce an even worse strike fight after the Firebrand, the Firecrest. Test pilots reported the Firecrest made the Firebrand feel downright sprightly. This time, the RN realized Blackburn was never going to produce a decent strike fighter and canceled the Fircrest after two prototypes. Blackburn didn't really hit its stride until the superb Buccaneer flew, just in time for Blackburn to be caught in the "rationalisation" schemes of the government, so the name disappeared in 1963.
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  1488.  @tomriley5790  It's not just carriers. The Arleigh Burke is already almost 30 years old and is expected to serve until about 2040. Most Oliver Hazard Perry ships served for 35 or more year before being transferred to other navies, where they are probably good for another 20-25 years. A stupidly designed ship like the T23 or the USN disaster, the _Zumwalt class, will retire early because they have no utility. Well designed and maintained ships are routinely going to serve 40-50 years as long as we only have low intensity conflicts to fight,
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  1489.  @Zephyrmec  Great story. It seems sailors will always find a way to get a drink, even at sea. My dad was on PT boats, and he told me stories that, no matter how primitive and forward their bases of operations, it was only a matter of time before someone got a still operating. They would goose the mixtures with some small amounts of pure alcohol pilfered from the torpedo fuel stocks. The results, using sugar, water, some local fruit, corn meal from the galley, and coconuts, available in unending supply, made a mixture he thought was about 175 proof. On their rare rest days, everyone had a shot or two, and it was enough that most of them caught up on some much needed sleep.
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  1490.  @RedXlV  Indeed, one of the downsides of that innovation. If one battleship built before 1920 struck another, there was a good chance one of them would sink. If they collided with a smaller ship, even something as large as cruiser, only luck or top notch damage control would save the smaller ship from sinking, usually with a great cost to life.
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  1491.  @bkjeong4302  True, although these pagoda masts were built to increase the height of radio antennas as well as optics. The low powered, regenerative circuit radios of the 20's required as much height as possible if they were going to get any kind of useable range, especially in the Pacific. The early USN radars were primarily mounted on carriers and battleships for the same reasons. It was the development of superhet multiple stage receivers and higher powered transmitters that made absolute antenna height less important during the late 30's onward.
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  1492.  @CharlesStearman  That was certainly one of the reasons. It allowed an aircraft to put a devastating payload of up to eight rockets into (relative to dropping bombs) a small circle on the target, do it in less time than a bomb, and be able to do it outside the enemy's light AA gun range.
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  1493.  @Ron52G  Developing the A bomb was a somewhat more daunting task than developing a variant of SMS radio. If the Germans had realized that Enigma was compromised they could have developed Kurier fairly early on. It was their trust in Enigma and their lack of understanding about allied DF methods that did them in.
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  1494. Good morning, fellow Drach fans. Sitting here watching the radar to see if I get any tornadoes in the next couple of hours so a Drydock episode is just what i need.
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  1495.  @neilwilson5785  It would make quite an interesting diorama...as long as you could get anyone to believe it wasn't made up. :-)
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  1496. Rats! I went to bed like a half hour before this was posted and then I decided to finish paining the guest room when I got up. I only started that six months ago, but no one can call me a procrastinator. One good thing about the Wu Flu is you start looking around the house for things to do so you keep occupied. One of the biggest contributions to winning the war in the Pacific was a command hardly anyone has h=ever heard of. It was officially call the At Sea Logistics Service Group (ASLSG)., commonly know as the Fleet Train. It was a complete self contained command with everything from floating drydocks to escort carriers to destroyers, all to support the hundreds of oilers, supply ships, ammunition ships, and fleet tugs, along with refrigerator ships, frozen store ships, and even the famous ice cream barges. It came about due to a study in the 20's that sowed ships lost 10% of the combat efficiency for every thousand miles traveled as supplies of everything ran low and they were faced with a port call. There were no ports in the Pacific, so the supply train ended up replacing the fleet's stocks with everything from those floating drydocks, aircrew and aircrew replacements, fuel, oil, ammunition, food, almost 80,000 cartons of cigarettes, and over 40,000 bags of mail. There were 10-12 trains in operation at all times, some of which only existed to resupply the supply ships. It was really an amazing operation, and planning for it started back in the mid-20's. If you have an interest in fleet training and logistics, read HM 18: To Train the Fleet for War: The U.S. Navy Fleet Problems, 1923-1940 . It can be downloaded at https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/historical-monographs/18/. It's 424 pages, some of which can be a little dry, but it's a good read overall.
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  1497.  @kiloalphasierra  That concept may have held more weight except for the fact the much later and smaller Gato/Balao classes were armed with 5"/25 guns, so ammunition storage wasn't much less of problem than with a 5"/51 gun. The 5"/51 gun wasn't very handy on a sub, and as soon as the wet mount 5"/25 was in production, the 3" guns were replaced with them or 4"/50 guns until enough 5"25 guns were available. The point of a deck gun was to sink a freighter that had already surrendered and not waste torpedoes. By the time you had pumped enough 3"/50 rounds into a even a small freighter to sink it you had had used up more storage then using the larger and more effective 5" or 4" rounds. They weren't for the sub to wage a running gun battle unless there was no other choice. The 3"/50 was the brainchild child of Admiral Hart, and submariners hated that gun.
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  1498. Halsey was great admiral - but only in 1942. Halsey went into the Pacific war with the idea the war his to win, and he'e win it or die. His aggressive actions and superior tactical planning caught the Japanese off guard. It was dangerous, but he had no choice if we weren't to lose our entire fleet. By 1944, he was the one with the superior fleet, but he continued to operate as if his back was to the wall.
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  1499.  @billbolton  LOL. Yes, we have a good bunch of regular contributors here. If we could get a few 12 year old WoW players to grow up, it would be perfect. :-)
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  1500.  @Zephyrmec  Yes, Brookhaven is other major lab I couldn't think during my fatigue induced stupor this morning, thanks. I believe there is some from a couple earlier capital ships out at the Hanford Reservation in Washington as well.
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  1501.  @TraditionalAnglican  I don't know where you're getting your information, but it's wrong. The Mark 14 was the standard US surface and submarine launched torpedo all during WWII, and it remained in service until 1975-1980. The Mark 18 was an electric torpedo that left no bubble wake and was hence prized by submariners. It had even more initial problems than the Mark 14. It was a hastily designed copy of the German G7e electric torpedo but was slower, had many failures to detonate and, even worse, had circular runs that sank several subs after firing one. By the end of the war, the Mark 18 was revised and good enough that it sank 30% of Japanese shipping, but it was never judged to be an excellent torpedo, and was taken out of service by 1950. It supplemented the Mark 14 in subs but never replaced it, and the Mark 14 was almost the exclusive torpedo for surface ships. A Gato class sub generally carried a load of 16-18 Mark 14s, 6-8 Mark 16s, with a few Mark 27 "Cuties" and Mark 24 "Fidos" when they were available, substituting for the Mark 16s. The Mark 16, a modified Mark 14 running on hydrogen peroxide, was considered the replacement for the Mark 14, but the Mark 16 served alongside the Mark 14 right up until 1980 and never replaced it. After its initial problems caused by lousy testing in the 20's, the Mark 14 became the star of US torpedoes.
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  1502. I'll just knock over the hornet's nest by asking that wargaming be part of a separate channel. I may be the last geezer that doesn't do wargaming, but I come here for actual naval history rather than game simulations.
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  1503.  @mikecimerian6913  Indeed. As I said, military forces have been "dealing" with these issues for a long time. Some militaries had somewhat more severe methods for doing so than others. :-)
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  1504.  @Sarsol1989  Neither the Soviet nor Russian navy had/has official ship prefixes. This has lead to a plethora of made up prefixes to help identify naval vessels. My suggestion would be USSRS for Soviet ships and RFS for Russian ships.
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  1505.  @sjonnieplayfull5859  Yes, almost everything from attack transports to LST's to LSU's were manned by Coast Guardsmen for much of the war. The peak levels of USCG manpower came just before D-Day with nearly 170,000 serving, and over 250,000 serving cumulatively during the duration. The USN could not have conducted amphibious landings in Europe or the Pacific without the participation of the Coast Guard.
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  1506.  @AdamMGTF  So far, so good. I turn 75 in two weeks, an age I never thought I'd attain. I'd be happy to do a stream with Drach on US fire control systems if he decided he wanted something like that for his channel. Unfortunately, I think it would an almost instant sleeping pill for most people. :-)
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  1507.  @xt6wagon  That's true except the only role for the AA version of the Alaska wouldn't be just gunfire. It would be as a fighter control ship to vector in fighters to destroy the enemy before they can break through the CAP. A ships needs size and volume to fulfill that role while still being able to keep up with the carriers. Two smaller ships can't do that. The USN kind of used this concept with their "Sea Control" ship of the 60's that never got built.
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  1508.  @enscroggs  Let me repeat. I remember reading that several members of the Type B-1 class, including 1-19, were modified to operate type 93 torpedoes. I need to find the book on Japanese fleet submarines that was the source of this, but it's packed away in one box out of about 20 of my naval history books, and I don't know which box right now. As soon as I find it, I'll either give the pages of the book as reference or write it off to a hazy memory.
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  1509.  @ovk-ih1zp  Yes, the USN has a long and storied history of controversial ship names. See https://news.usni.org/2013/04/23/twenty-six-us-navy-ship-naming-controversies for a list of just some of them.
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  1510. Rats! Just about to finally go to bed and Drach comes on at 0415 CDT. Oh well, thank goodness, I'm retired so I can afford to lose out on another hour of sleep. :-)
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  1511.  @RedXlV  I think I'd vote for war as the main driver, as shown by the Cleveland and Baltimore classes of the USN. No empire or dominions to maintain, but it was like once the ship building started, it wasn't able to stop any better than a freight train.
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  1512. Of course, the Navy had some very efficient radar by the time of Ten Go as well, so even bad weather doesn't protect the task force from that. As you said, even without aircraft, the Yamato is going to be pulverized with everything from5" guns up to 16" guns. Reportedly, this whole operation was in response to the Emperor asking why, if the army was planning to have so many kamikaze attacks to defend Okinawa, why wasn't the navy doing the same? From this remark, this whole crazy plan grew.
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  1513. 2 am here in CST time. It never fails. I'm just getting ready to shut things down and then there's a notification from this Drachinifel guy. That means a 47 minute delay in sleep this morning.
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  1514. I imagine the obvious advantage of superifing guns wouldn't have been possible without an armored gunhouse for at least the lower guns. Armor and weather protection for the gun mechanism and crew also had obvious advantages. Just the size of blast shields needed for superfiring 4" and 5" guns gives an idea what would have been needed for guns of 12" and larger.
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  1515.  @chocolatecatdad  Fisher was quite an amazing man, and his vision of what the next naval war would be like was spot on, except for his ideas about how the battlecruiser would perform. His single minded obsession with speed allowed the concept of the fast battleship to take hold. He was the first Admiral of the Fleet to start making promotions based on merit rather than just seniority. The heavy cruiser concept died out in the 30's, except for the USN. The RN didn't build a heavy cruiser after 1930 while the USN built them from the 20's right through the end of the war. I think the USN envisaged the need for heavy and sustained shore bombardment in the Pacific and felt the heavy cruiser was the ship for the job. In reality, the Cleveland class light cruisers could put more explosives on target in less time and battleships were superior for attacking inland and heavily fortified positions. The main contribution of the Baltimore class was to provide a platform for the first postwar missiles ships.
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  1516.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I don't know, Walter. I'd need to sit down with a spreadsheet to see if running a single Montana was more expensive than a couple of cruisers. Summer cruises were (and are) a big deal, for all the reasons I mentioned. Having all the participants and instructors together on one ship has some pretty good aspects.
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  1517.  @CSSVirginia  West Virginia is one I'm certain was a total waste. It was a hullup rebuild that took three years (including the time to raise her and make her seaworthy enough to get to the mainland), making her the equivalent of a slow South Dakota in terms of secondary armament and electronics. In pictures, except for the four twin 16" turrets, she is a near twin of South Dakota . She then proceeded to damage a prop and shaft by grounding and get hit by a kamikaze, all within her first six months of recommissioning.. We got less than a year's use out of her before she was sent into reserve, never to sail again. I suspect her rebuilding was a way for the USN to shake a fist at Japan rather than a rational decision.
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  1518.  @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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  1519.  @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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  1520.  @Krieg-ch8ot  Yes, but compare a 1940 picture of Bismark with a 1944 view of Tirpitz. Like all of the world's warships, from destroyers on up, bridge wings got progressively cut back as the need for clear sky arcs for antiaircraft fire became more important that the benefits of large bridge wings.
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  1521. The biggest problem, even if her weapons weren't cover by the wooden sheds, was crew. The number of men aboard her at the time of the attack is shown by the relatively small death toll of 64 compared to the 415 men lost on the Oklahoma, which capsized under similar circumstances. It was also common practice to only load the number of rounds needed for a practice gunnery voyage to reduce the number of crew that would have been needed to maintain the magazines between training sessions. It's not very likely Utah could have done much better at antiaircraft defense than the other US battleships that day.
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  1522. Holy crap! I just got to this Drydock to find it's over six hours long! Now I need to schedule time over the next three days to listen to this one.
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  1523.  @7thsealord888  Yes, the possibility the German prisoners were intentionally misleading the Aussies played right into some of the later conspiracy theories about a Japanese sub or two raiders. After the discovery of the location of the two ships, I recall and Australian naval officer and historian going back over the statements of each prisoner in light of being able to place the events more precisely. IIRC, in all but two cases, the prisoners were being truthful about the battle, how long it lasted, the direction that the Sydney was last seen heading, and when she disappeared over the horizon. They were mostly evasic=ve or just kept silent about their ship, equipment, mission, and the history of their voyage. I get the feeling that the sailors from the Kormoran thought there was a chance that some of the sailors from the Sydney might have survived, and they were giving accurate information about events that would help the Australians rescue them.
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  1524. I don't know how I missed this. I guess I'll follow along and give my thoughts. 1. US monitors - The only ones I'd class as really bad were the later ocean going types like the Amphitrite-class monitor. 2. The Captain - Well, who can disagree with this one? 3. Russian Circular Warships - They weren't great ships since they were basically just weird looking monitors, but they weren't terrible. 4. USS Katahdin - Kind of non-submerging submarine that never reached her design speed of 17 knots, had no torpedoes, only four small guns, and was a pure ram. She lasted less two two years before she was decommissioned when the USN realized the rams were a dead end technology. She's definitely up there in the list for me. 5. Rurik - Don't know enough about this ships for an opinion 6. USS Vesuvius - A completely nonsensical ship, although the few times she fired her air guns in anger, she did scare the crap out of Spanish. 7. Powerful Class - I don't understand this one. She was a bit too large but would have made good commerce raiders if they had been designed a few years later. 8. - Borodino Class - They had very good directors, a reasonable armament, and decent turn of speed. They would have performed much better if not for their poor leadership and poor material condition at the Battle of Tsushima. 9. HMS Swift. This one we can lay at the doorstep of Jackie Fisher. Other than top speed, she had nothing to recommend her. 10. Viribus Unitis class - Well armed but her almost complete lack of underwater protection does put her on the list. 11. Normandie-class battleship - Designed too slow, built too slow, hybrid power plant would never have been reliable, but it's hard to put these on the list since they never entered service. 12 - AA-1 Class Submarines - First and acknowledged experimental attempt at a fleet sub. The lessons learned were well used in later fleet subs. I don't buy this one. 13. Flush Deckers - Many as modified remained in service until 1946 and served as everything from minelayers to command ships to fast transports. This was a really poor choice on the part of Preston. 14. - RN K Class subs - Submarines with destroyer power plants, destroyer speed, destroyer size, and destroyer armament. Not a good destroyer or a good submarine. 15 - Courageous Class - Other than representing Jackie Fisher at his most crazed, not much to recommend about these as actual battlecruisers.
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  1525.  @themadhammer3305  The Luftwaffe used the FW-200s quite successfully for convoy raiding. They sunk over 300,000 tons of shipping by the end of 1941. The problems for the Condors was the same as for the merchant raiders. The allies developed countermeasures like the CAM ships and escort carriers and Germany couldn't afford to lose many Condors.They weren't very well built, and hard usage led to them to literally collapse on landing or even in midair. German military doctrine caused them to neglect long range bombing for sea or land, and by the time they figured out the war wasn't going to be over in two years, it was too late to correct the Condor's many faults and build them in any numbers. The main value of the Condor was as a long range transport on the eastern front, a role they performed well. They just didn't hold up to the stresses of low level bombing, and Germany had developed flying boats that were better at maritime reconnaissance than the Condor. Germany didn't produce enough Condors to make a difference.in the war. The total built from 1937 to 1944 was 276. The B-17E, an early model, had 512 built between February, 1941 and January of 1942, and that was just the beginning of a flood of more than 10,000 produced during the rest of the war. The B-24 was produced in even greater numbers. Germany was just too far behind the power curve on bombers.
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  1526. The Almirante Grau at 380 feet must have been one of the smallest vessels to have a full on stern walk.
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  1527. Why did it take so long for RN destroyers to feature enclosed gunhouses for their main battery? I believe the 1943 Battle class destroyers were the first RN class to use enclosed gun houses while the USN began using them in 1933. Having partially open gun shields and hand loading must have made things difficult for RN destroyer gun crews in WWII.
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  1528. Compared to the prices the British were asking for refitted and somewhat modernized Colossus class ship like HMS Venerable, almost new when sold to the Dutch in 1948, there was no way a two ship class like Siapan could have competed, even if the USN wanted to sell them. The low cost enabled the Dutch to afford a complete modernization in 1955-58, including a new island, angled deck, and steam catapult. The cost for this modernization was helped by the fact the cost was spread to the same modernization done to the Brazilian Minas Gerais, ex-HMS Venerable, another Colossus class vessel. Even after a serious boiler room fire in 1968, boilers from the never completed HMS Leviathan, yet another Colossus class carrier, were available to replace the damaged boilers, and, although the Dutch were near to discarding their carrier, it was still repaired well enough (and cheaply enough) to sell to Argentina in I969, where it stayed in service until 1986 until various problems rendered her unserviceable until her scrapping in 2000. Still, she had some useful service in the Falklands War of 1982, nearly 40 years after the war she was built to fight.
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  1529. Looks like there's another patch of white-out toward the stern on that vessel as well. Maybe another casemate?
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  1530.  @mitchelloates9406  Same for me, but in the early 60's. Clacking away on those old Underwood uprights was pure torture at times. If i typed too fast, the type bars would stick together, and I'd have to stop and untangle them. Then, no matter how careful I was, out would come the White Out to fix the inevitable mistakes. I remember buying an Atari 800 and daisy wheel printer for something like $1400 in 1979 just so I'd never need White Out again.
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  1531.  @mbryson2899  Thanks for the kind words.
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  1532. Good morning, everyone. Nice to see you.
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  1533.  @oml81mm  Corect, the whole idea of the original salutes was to let another ship know that you didn't present a risk to them. Most salutes on land are fired from obsolescent artillery pieces like the US 105mm howitzer. There are even a few navy bases with their original 3 pounders in firing condition. The salute on board ship is now complicated by the lack of saluting guns and the fact the vast majority of US naval vessels are classed as destroyers or smaller. Destroyers have never been required to fire salutes, but that comes from back in the day when a destroyer may have been 250 feet long, had a tonnage of 1500 tons or less, and just didn't have space for things like saluting guns. Now that we have "destroyers" that weigh 15,000 tons and are 610 feet long it will be interesting to see if saluting duties are transferred to them eventually.
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  1534. Matthew, it must have more than a bit unnerving watching a ship the size of an Essex carrier taking green water over the bow from a Gearing class destroyer! Let's see, only about 33,000 tons heavier and 480 feet longer than your tin can. You're a braver man than me, Matthew, and thanks for your service.
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  1535.  @treeshakertucker5840  Morning indeed. I have no idea why I'm still up at 0445, but that won't last much longer.
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  1536.  @TraditionalAnglican  It was a really dishonorable thing for King to do, and apparently in a case of revenge. McVay's father, an admiral in 1927, gave King a letter of reprimand because he and a couple other officers were caught sneaking some women onto a ship. I really believe King was an alcoholic, and some of his worst behavior occured when he was drinking.
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  1537.  @tomhumphries912  No, I haven't . I had a small stroke in September that I'm still recovering from. Maybe 2021 will be my year for that.
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  1538. OMG! Just getting ready to go to bed and this Drydock shows up...and it's two hours long! Need coffee. Lots of coffee.
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  1539. The national prefixes I've seen you use mostly make sense to me. Maybe you could publish a list of the ones you use and make it a sticky at the top so we can see the ones you use. We can then look up ships based on those. As long as we all understand them, the fine points of nations like Russia and Japan really becomes less important for purposes of the channel.
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  1540.  @bluemarlin8138  I generally agree, although an Independence class ship was designed to fight other ships, only ships from the fast attack category up to mid-size offshore patrol vessels. The Navy now recognizes the Independence class has no role other than that of an expensive and overgrown speedboat. The Navy will try to get it right with next class rated as frigates with armament that might be able to defeat a Fletcher.
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  1541. I've never understood the USN's step backwards with unprotected AA mounts from during WWII and then postwar. They entered the war with the typical .50 caliber and 3" guns just mounted on decks in totally unprotected mounts. War experience rapidly showed why that was a bad idea, so most mounts were at least enclosed in gun tubs rising to about chest level, the tubs protected by a combination of steel and so-called "plastic" armor. That was really a layer of common asphalt, offering decent protection while being easy top roll out, even for ship refits. 20 mm guns almost always had a forward gun shield in addition to the tub while 40 mm Bofors went from no protection except for the tub to a very stout, nearly wraparound, shield by war's end. Postwar, they went backwards, with the 3"/50RF Marks 27, 33 and 34 back to generally unprotected mounts except for the gun tubs. Because of the height of gun's base, the crews were exposed mostly above the protection of the tub. A few classes did have the guns enclosed in a turret when they were the main armament. An example were the Courtney class DE's of the 1950's, with the forward 3"50 guns enclosed in a turret while the aft guns were once again only protected by a gun tub of inadequate height.
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  1542.  @bkjeong4302  Yes, I wrote the White Plains never actually scored a hit on the torpedoes. You're right that the landings and already taken place, but some ships continued to offload supplies until October 25 and were just beginning to disengage when the Japanese fleet approached. Kuritas task was to sink as many supply and troop ships he could find and then shell the American positions, some of which were still only a few miles inland. Of course Kurita had no chance of success even if he had pushed past Taffy 3, but he could have sowed enough confusion to at least split the Seventh Fleet. While attack by aircraft did the most damage to Kurita's ships, he said in a 1954 interview that it was the savagery of attacks by what he believed to be some US cruisers and destroyers, plus the number of aircraft attacking, that helped make his decision to withdraw. He believed the attacks were a way to draw him into combat with the entire Seventh Fleet. He thought they were setting a trap for him further up the strait. Hearing of the destruction of the Northern Fleet, he knew his attack couldn't succeed. He knew the war was lost for Japan, and he wanted to return as many ships to Japan for what he assumed would be the last stand of the navy. He was sick of fighting battles that only turned into defeats for Japan, and didn't want to see any more sailors killed for nothing. He had lost all of his cruisers and many of his destroyers and knew he'd be lucky to retreat and not lose the whole fleet. Just my feeling, but I think it was a combination of ship attacks, air attacks, and Kurita's own war weariness that caused him to retreat.
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  1543. Correct. I was a GA pilot for about 30 years. Except for the rare single engine aircraft with prop turning counterclockwise, every clockwise turning prop will cause the plane to yaw left on climb out. It was one of the first things I was taught in ground school and had to practice - a lot - about using the rudder to counteract the yaw. Same thing happened when applying full power to a climb once the angle of attack changed toward vertical. I did have the chance to fly in the backseat of a Yak-52 Soviet trainer. It has a two bladed counter-rotating prop. There was a big sign in the cockpit in English warning of the counterrotation, and it felt really weird having the aircraft constantly wanting to yaw right. It's an aerobatic trainer, and the pilot took us inverted for about 90 seconds. I rarely even got queasy on a flight, but I was glad to get back upright on that one. The pilot told me to only have coffee and a croissant for breakfast, and that turned out to be excellent advice, :-)
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  1544. I'm sure you're right. Every succeeding pre-dreadnought and dreadnought was built in Russian yards with the exception of the Retvizan, built by Cramp in the US in 1898. This was built in the same time period of the Tsesarevich so I suppose the Russians were getting ships from as many countries as they could to use ideas from them to build their own ships. It was all for nothing since the Russians only built two classes of poor quality and obsolescent dreadnoughts and then more or less gave up. She was the only major power not to have built a modern battleship after WWI.
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  1545.  @Arthion  Well, the single barrel model RM 39 was a decent gun because it included an equilibriator, so the severe vibration problems with the twin mounts didn't affect the accuracy like it did with the 1932 and 1938 models. By the time of the Italian surrender in 1943, moist of the more serious problems with allied antiaircraft guns had already been worked out. The Italians may have been able to improve what they had if they weren't being bombed around the clock. Two more years would have just meant that much more bombing. The time for the Italians to work out the kinks in their guns was prewar, or certainly no later than the middle of 1942. After that, the tide of war was going to prevent Italy from making any substantial improvements, and they didn't have the industrial capacity to come up with any replacements.
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  1546.  @InLoveWithCities  I think you meant to say that the emperor has no power as of today. The Japanese not only have never come to terms with the war and the role of the emperor, even today Japanese students are taught outright lies about it. The Izumo-class "destroyers" being converted to aircraft carriers will be about 30,000 tons and 830 feet long. No a Nimitz class but a pretty big "light carrier". Given that Japan is buying at least 135 F-35's, it seems reasonably likely these will not remain the largest ships in the fleet for long. As for your claim the US has never defended Japan, it most certainly kept the USSR at bay from 1945 until 1990 at least. We have had between 50,000 to 100,000 troops in Japan during that whole period. During most of that time, China was never much of an issue. The US has its own interests everywhere in the world, Japan being no different.
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  1547.  @Cbabilon675  You're more than welcome. Your grandfather was lucky enough to crew what was undoubtedly the best all around gun of the 20th century. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours as well.
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  1548. Thanks a lot for doing this video. It's no wonder men had to be shanghaied into naval service. I can't imagine the noise and smells below deck as try to get in you hammock in rough seas, hoping you don't get tossed out tonight. Even if you you are securely in your hammock, the snoring and other guy tramping up and down the deck must have made sound sleeping a hit and miss thing. I rather doubt the meals were much to look forward to either. The stories of having to pick maggots out of the meat would do me in.
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  1549.  @ThePalaeontologist  And jovial is how I took it. Just imagine a warm evening out there with your rum and the steward bringing dinner while you watch the sunset. I was a sailor for a number of years on my very much smaller boat in the Caribbean. I had no steward to bring me dinner but, after cooking up whatever vittles I could scrounge, it was still a magnificent experience out on deck watching the sunset. I even saw the fabled green flash once. I'm too old ot sail now but, I suppose like many retired sailors, I still have many fond memories.
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  1550.  @MrTScolaro  OI'm not confusing anything. The Japanese radar, even though it was the most advanced in the fleet, was still no match for the SJ and ST radar on the Sealion. However, the Japanese radar was capable of seeing Sealion running on the surface. the problem was the IJN had long ago run out of experience radar operators, and picking out the tiny pip of the Sealion, running with her decks mostly awash, would have been difficult for an experienced man, and impossible for the hastily trained operators on the Nagato. The radar on the Kongo had broken down before the sinkings so she was basically blind, only realizing and attack wa suderway because of the explosions heard from the Nagato. the attack was successful mainly because the Japanese ships weren't zigzagging. If they had been, it's doubtful that any, or more than one, torpedo would have hit Nagato. The second salvo at Kongo missed because her lookouts saw the torpedoes and turned hard away. The sinking of the Urakaze was a lucky accident as the salve aimed at Kongo ran on and hit Urakaze. So, to be clear, I was never claiming that Japanese radars were superior to those carried by the latest US subs like the Sealion. They would have been good enough in the hands of experienced operators, something the Japanese didn't have by late 1944. Japanese radars were also fragile and constantly breaking down, not unlike our own. The difference was Japanese operators didn't know how to fix them when it happened. We did, and they had plenty of spare parts to work with. Japanese ships had almost no spares. One bad tube with no replacement and the radar was out of service until they could reach port, assuming there were any of that tube available at all. Late war US subs not only had superior radar with the best operators in any navy, and had also developed superior attack tactics. Combine that with a Japanese fleet sailing at just 16 knots and not zigzagging and the stage was set for a Japanese disaster.
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  1551.  @EdMcF1  As much as the British were grateful to Chile for their assistance in the Falklands war, I still can't imagine an RN ship with a Chilean name, even if Admiral Cochrane was himself British.
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  1552.  @tartagliathewigsplitter3880  Yeah, Kaga was a weird looking ship, although she looked not quite as weird after modernization. Since Kaga (and most Japanese carriers) didn't have islands,. their choice of funnel arrangements was pretty limited. The idea behind the giant tube was to gather the exhaust gases, bring them aft, and do it in as big a "funnel" as they could fit in. That was supposed to cool the gasses so they would sink from the exhaust outlet onto the sea surface. Apparently the designer with this idea was the son of some Japanese prince, so he got what he wanted. All the other engineers said it wouldn't work, and they were right. Not only didn't the exhaust gasses cool, there was no way a tube that big could be 100% leak free. When the ship was being driven hard, like launching planes in a calm wind, the crew quarters were uninhabitable due to the leaking gasses.
    4
  1553. There's a video on here about naval gunfire support at Iwo Jima. It's fascinating to see how accurate battleship gunfire was inland to 20 miles using the relatively crude aiming methods of WWII. Imagine what could be done today. Well, assuming we had any ships with the armamnet to do that.
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  1554. At least the USN is realizing that a 378 ft 3,400 ton vessel is really a poorly armed frigate. Maybe the upgrades will help it to be a real combat vessel rather than some weird combination of a PT boat and a helicopter carrier. I don't think there's any doubt that the entire DDG 1000 program is an utter failure by comparison to the LCS.
    4
  1555. Well, they gave it their best shot with the failed Advanced Gun System. The Zumwalts were going to have this really great lightweight 155 mm gun that could fire Long Range Land Attack Projectile (LRLAP) out to 100 miles at 12 rounds a minute with a CEP of just 20 to 50 meters. Nice try, but the first 45 rounds tested had a CEP of about 150 meters. Then the ROF was adjusted down 10 rounds a minute to improve accuracy, and it did...to a CEP of 100 meters, still far off specs. Then someone sat down with a calculator and figured out that each round would cost somewhere around a million bucks. Opps. The navy finally abandoned LRLAP in November of 2016. That means those weird looking Zumwalts are sailing around with a main gun that has no ammunition, since the gun can't fire anything but LRLAP rounds. The navy is now scrambling around trying to adapt the Italian 127 mm Vulcano round for the now useless 155 mm guns on the Zumwalts. I'm sure it will work first time at very low cost. Seriously though, all the money spent on this and the previous 8"/55 mm gun failure could have probably paid for the refitting of any of the Des moines class cruisers....maybe even all of them.
    4
  1556.  @DavidSiebert  The Devastator was a good plane in 1934 when it was ordered. It was an okay place when it first entered service in 1937. It was obsolescent by 1940. It had many of the faults of the Swordfish and almost none of its good points. The Devastator had a shorter range than the Swordfish, had a cruising speed that was almost the same, didn't carry any more ordinance that the Swordfish, didn't have the maneuverability, and wasn't able to fly the dive and release profile of a Swordfish. The Devastator "looked" more modern, but it wasn't able to perform the task of torpedo bombing with the abilities of a Swordfish. The lousy Mark 13 torpedoes didn't help matters, but it doesn't much matter if the aircraft never makes it to a drop. The Devastator entered service in 1937 compared to the Swordfish entering service in 1934, yet the Devastator was worn out by 1940. The Swordfish was produced until 1944, stayed in service until the end of the war, and sank more Axis tonnage than any other Allied aircraft. That probably says it all.
    4
  1557. The Egyptians tried that after seizing control of the canal in 1956 and after the 1967 war. What they found was it took a lit of ships to actually block the canal, and each one needed to be sunk at exactly the right locations. f the ship doesn't sink upright and where you planned that it would, it creates a large enough gap that the smaller ships of that era could just sail right around the obstructions. The use of mines worked much better , and to that end, the Egyptians liberally sprinkled tens of thousands of Russian mines throughout most of the canal's length. That caused major problems for the main clearing operations of 1974-75, and showed how impossible it would have been to sweep those mines in the face of determined opposition.
    4
  1558. It's good that these French pre-doughnuts never had to face something like Typhoon Cobra. The results would have been rather drastic.
    4
  1559.  @alecblunden8615  The high freeboard issue makes sense given the normal RN operations in the Atlantic and North Sea. Interwar SN ships were expected to operate in the Atlantic as well so they had had the same need for freeboard. Starting with the Fletchers and then really being carried forward with the Sumner and Gearing classes, USN destroyers were more optimized for Pacific conditions where the need for high freeboard isn't as constant. A hull with more volume was also needed to carry what weight of additional weapons and equipment. The combination of the Manchuria and wider China campaign by the Japanese was the reason the US applied pressure to Japan for withdrawal from 1936 forward. However, the Japanese note of December 7 was no more a declaration of war than the Hull note to Japan of November 26. Both can be viewed as ultimatums with the next step being war, but the Japanese were hoping to use their note as a reason why a state of war existed between Japan and the US just before Pearl Harbor. The Hull note did not mention war as the next step nor give any time period before war would commence. The Japanese didn't break off diplomatic relations in their December 7 note nor did they give a time period before hostilities would commence. Both countries were bound by the Hague Convention of 1907, and the Japanese note didn't meet the requirements of formal declaration of war. I understand the military reasons why Japan militarily felt the need for surprise attacks against not only the US but Britain as well was their only chance of securing resources. Still, the decoding of the December 7 note would not have met the requirements of international law as a declaration of war regardless of when it was completed.
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  1560.  @Nuke89345  Let me make a reply to you and B.K. here since my fingers are being worn to nubs with all the typing. There seems to be some confusion about my position on battleships. From mid-WWII onwards, the carrier was the capital ship of the fleet with most other major units having the role of trying ot prevent the massive numbers of light and fleet carriers coming down the way from being sunk. I'm not arguing that the Iowas play any kind of pivotal role with the exception of helping to protect some of those carriers. As B.K. brought up, Spruance going off the rails during Operation Hailstorm and taking over tactical command of a battleship task force while preserving some damaged Japanese ships for sinking by the two Iowas in the task force was the literal end of the line for battleships in a surface action role. Spruance was old battleship admiral, and the Truk attack was 8is last chance to get back in the saddle and charge. The requirement to hold two Iowa's ready for reactivation ended in 2005, and all four have been stricken from the Navy register. They will never again be reactivated. However, the assertion that the reactivation expenses were too high compared to the value of the ship is absolutely untrue. The cost to reactivate a single Iowa was about the same as building and commissioning an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate. I leave to both of you to decide which ships provided greater value to the Navy.
    4
  1561.  @bkjeong4302  Still haven't read the report, eh?
    4
  1562.  @mitchelloates9406  A lot of AAA fire is to disrupt attacks rather than shoot down planes. All the 5" bursts and tracer fire was enough to scare off even kamikaze pilots. Even 40mm rounds were filled with just enough black powder in the TNT to make a nice black puff when it reached its self destruct range. Didn't help shooting anything down but, the more black puffs in the air, the more pilots, especially inexperienced pilots that were the norm in the last year of the war with Japan, would be thrown off course trying to avoid them.
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  1563. Remember the days when some guides didn't have enough content to even make it to five minutes? What a difference a few years makes!
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  1564.  @timberwolf1575  I wasn't thinking of using the high speed during an attack, more like transiting, getting in for an attack, and then hightailing it after the attack. The biggest problem for diesel subs was being able to travel fast enough underwater to shadow a convoy or run it down to make an attack. Being able to do either at 30 knots changes everything in submarine warfare. The pump jet subs are still fairly quiet underwater, even at high speeds.
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  1565. Depends on the sea state. Almost any nuclear powered ship from modern subs to destroyers/cruisers to carriers are probably capable of a sustained 30 knots in sea states 3 or less. At Sea State 4 and above, hull size and reserve power are of increasing importance. All else being equal, the great power and hull size of a carrier enables the highest sustained speeds in any sea state, but some modern nuke subs can probably sustain 30 knows and do it underwater. That's what I'd call a really solid performance. :-)
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  1566.  @bdockett  Rumor is this has been discussed a number of times. The challenge is getting a big sub like an Ohio class down the St Lawrence Seaway without being spotted by satellite. They'd have to transit the several canals and lock on the surface since none are deep enough to allow a submerged transit. Assuming the subs are kept fairly close to US shores, It would be nearly impossible for enemy naval forces to attack one without being destroyed first. Given the range of modern ICBMs, how much would we gain by having the boat another 800 or so miles further away? This is not to mention the cost and difficulty of constructing a Scapa Flow type of nuke base. From my reading of these ideas, the cost/benefit analysis just doesn't pencil out.
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  1567. The Iowa turret explosion is a good example of why the Navy, and in particular the NIS, should never be permitted to perform a major investigation that involves the death of crewmen. The Navy abandoned the homosexual murder/suicide explanation by 1991, but that wouldn't have happened without the involvement of the Senate, especially Senator Sam Nunn, and Sandia National Labs. It was only the involvement of Sandia that showed the Navy's explanation couldn't be true, and that some combination of overram and powder defects was the only reasonable explanation for the disaster. However, the Navy fell back on a "cause unknown" finding when it was clear their preferred explanation was no longer tenable. The Navy did everything they could to obstruct and discredit the Sandia investigation when it became clear that it was going to find unauthorized powder experiments by Master Chief Skelley was the most likely cause of the explosion. Under the command of Captain Moosally, Iowa was a ship with very poor command and control, very poor morale, and a marked tendency for sailors like Skelley to convince Moosally he could do something that would bring positive publicity to Iowa and Moosally. In Skelley's case, it was to have Iowa go down in the record books with the longest range conventional shot ever fired. It was Skelley's "experiments" that most likely led to the premature open breach detonation that killed the 47 members of Turret 2. The ship's command staff allowed evidence in the investigation to be contaminated and destroyed right from day one. The NIS, rather than operating as an independent investigation force, did as they were told by the command staff of the ship and of the Navy. There have been changes in the NIS to allow it to be more independent of pressure by those in command, but it's not possible that any unit that's part of the Navy to do a truly independent investigation when the results of the investigation could reflect poorly on the Navy. Any investigation of a serious incident in any service should be conducted by a new criminal investigation agency not in the line of command and not beholden to that branch of the service for promotion or retention.
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  1568. The latest picture I could find of the Paraguay apparently in service with all her electronics and secondary guns intact was 2014. A picture of her in 2016 showed those stripped, her stack covered, and some rust streaks showing on the hull. There wasn't anything obvious showing she was being used for storage, but she looked pretty forlorn. She was still flying the naval ensign on the stern so, while still in commision, it obviously needed work to get her back in service. That was supposed to be completed in 2015 but, like most projects in Paraguay, time to completion is an elastic concept.
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  1569. Gee, I wonder why the Japanese built the Mogami class a full four years before the Brooklyns with a near identical main battery? I wonder what Japanese ship class the Brooklyns were meant to counter, ehh....?
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  1570. Your question is a little hard to understand, but I'm assuming it's what did the Argentine crews think about serving on such a relatively old warship? I'm not Argentine so I only know what I've read, but the Argentine Navy had a lot of faith in the Belgrano. She had gone through several comprehensive refits, and it was expected that the combination of Sea Cat missiles installed during one of her refits, plus the 127mm and 40 mm guns would protect it from air attack. There was also the assumption that the Type 42 destroyers purchased from Britain in the late 1970's would be able to protect the battle fleet from British submarines. Unfortunately for Argentina. the Type 42's were protecting the carrier task force, and the ex-USN WWII era destroyers weren't up to the task of detecting the Conqueror.
    4
  1571.  @dropdead234  Back when the US still had military bases, I had the misfortune to be a deputy sheriff in an area with two Navy bases, an Air Force base, and two Army bases. That combination never got tired of fighting. The only advantage was there were enough SP's, MP's, and AP's around that the drunks were usually pretty worn out fighting with them before we rolled up.
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  1572. I won't get into Trudeau the First since, as an American, nothing good will come of it. However, I really doubt the validity of the rumor. Taiwan had no jets capable of carrier work in 1971. The first helicopters really capable of being safely operated from a carrier were the Blackhawks received in 1986. Given that the US was really Taiwan's only source of military equipment, it seems unlikely we would have seen some evidence of it, and we wouldn't have been pleased if Taiwan had tried to pull a stunt like that. Finally, most of the steam catapult equipment was removed before Bonaventure was towed off to help repair the catapults on HMAS Melbourne. Canada does need to make some decisions about her airpower soon. As you say, the Cormorants are about worn out, the Cyclone deliveries are much slower than forecast. The Aurora fleet is being nursed along with reduced flying hours until the structural rebuild program is completed, and even that program is unlikely to extend the out of service date for more than six years or so. My understanding is the Arcturus fleet has already been retired. The Hornet fleet has suffered a fairly high attrition rate, and the total is now down to about 85 aircraft, and some of them are already over 30 years old. Compare this to the Royal Norwegian Air Force, a country with about 20% the population of Canada, and a GDP only about 22% that of Canada. They have an air force with 46 much more modern F-16's and 19 F-35A's, soon to increase to a total of 33. Canada does have NATO obligations, and it's starting to fall behind on those due to the shrinking size and general aging of the air fleet. I hope you finally get a government that pays more attention to defense than the current one. On the plus size, however, Canada does have two of the last Hawker Hunters still in service, albeit being flown by a contractor.
    4
  1573.  @spatsky  C'mon. He received a war warning on November 27, 1941. Rather than disperse his aircraft, order constant air patrols, and order his large fleet of submarines out to perform reconnaissance patrols, most were still in port or on the ground on December 8. MacArthur's decision not to send out reconnaissance flights toward Formosa at dawn, as advised his air force commander, was disastrous. If he had sent out flights at dawn he would have had at least six hours to disperse his aircraft and mount an attack from safety. Even though he was warned, he seemed to have no understanding that Clark Field was within range of Japanese aircraft from Fornosa. By the time he did order reconnaissance aircraft aloft, they were met by incoming Japanese aircraft. The bombers and aircraft at Clark Field were fueled and armed up for an attack on Formosa that came too late. Japanese fighters and bombers destroyed half the combat aircraft and most of their fuel in the Far East air force in less than an hour. He did a terrible job preparing and stocking a redoubt in Corregidor and Batten. There were only half the supplies in the tunnels as there were supposed to be, and it was the Navy that extended the tunnels when MacArthur had decided not to use Army troops to do so. MacArthur had decided by July of 1941 that the Philippines could be defended with his B-17's, and that Japan would be deterred from attack because the B-17, which had never been used in combat, was such a formidable aircraft. Nothing MacArthur did would have staved off the eventual defeat in the Philippines, but better planning and tactics could have extended the time of resistance and not had his troops in near starvation at the end. You seem to have a rather starry eyed admiration for MacArthur. You really need to read "MacArthur and Defeat in the Philippines" to understand some of the blunders and mistakes MacArthur made in the defense of the Philippines. If not for the flowery and self-serving dispatches he sent after the attack and his effective public relations team in the US he would have been sacked. American needed a hero in the dark days of early 1942, and MacArthur made sure he was primed to fill that role.
    4
  1574.  @soulsphere9242  Yess, the B-66 was the heaviest aircraft to operate regularly from a carrier, although A-5 was a close second depending on the loaded weight of each plane. It was the Savage that operated from Essex class carriers, not the Skywarrior. There was no operational reason why the F-4 couldn't have operated from an Essex class. The RN operated F-4s successfully from HMS Ark Royal_, a ship roughly equivalent in length and deck area to a modernized _Essex . The Navy chose not to because they had plenty of larger carriers, so there was no need to subject their pilots to the nail biting experience of operating from the smaller carrier.
    4
  1575. I gave it my best shot but had to give up at 32 minutes. I'm already deaf in one ear, and the constant change in volume and pitch from Mr. Lowrey just gives me a massive headache. Pity, because it's an interesting subject. I'd happily listen again if there was better audio.
    4
  1576. I think you meant the Pensacola proposal was carrying twelve eight inch guns in four triple turrets. I suspect non-treaty cruiser growth would have been a much increased secondary battery. The same US proposals for new cruisers were had secondary armament for everything from sixteen 5"/25 guns in twin turrets to twenty 5"/51 guns in casemates at deck level. The deletion of the fourth eight inch triple turret and reduction of secondary armament all the way down to four or eight 5"/25 guns in single open mounts were the first effect of the treaty.
    4
  1577. My dad spent almost three years on PT boats in the Pacific. He never mentioned anything as being "fun", but he got a Magic Carpet ride back to San Francisco aboard the Saratoga. It was quite a shock to him to relearn saluting and standing inspection in full uniforms when he hadn't worn anything but shorts or dungarees and a t-shirt for most of his time in the Pacific. He did get one liberty in Manila after his boat was burned. He had to borrow a pair of black leather shoes since he had lost his and wore nothing but canvas shoes for his time on the boats. He said the best thing about being on PT boats was the highest ranking officer was generally a USNR lieutenant (jg) who only became a skipper because he went to college and sailed small boats. The skipper was serving "for the duration", just like the men, and he wanted to get back to The World as much as his men. The only time he remembered saluting was one time when the squadron commander came onboard for an inspection, and he still didn't have to wear a regular uniform. From what he said to me, the best part of PT service was this lack of formality.
    4
  1578. This should be a good one. I have to run and get my coffee so I can settle in.
    4
  1579.  @eplekake3870  There's also more deck space for things like aircraft catapults and antiaircraft guns. American cruisers from the Brooklyns on certainly illustrate that point. Just moving a catapult from amidships to the stern simplifies aircraft handling. A transom stern allows space for a below decks hanger (although US cruisers had constant problems with elevator door leakage in following seas), and isolates volatile av gas from the rest of the ship. It also helps open up sky arcs for the anti aircraft guns.
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  1580. The "Empire of the Seas" BBC miniseries is available on Youtube and well worth watching. If nothing else, it's a reminder of the time when the BBC produced good historical documentaries,
    4
  1581.  @mbryson2899  Thanks. I appreciate the kind words.
    4
  1582. It's unfortunate, but I doubt this will calm down in the next 30 days. Your airline will cancel the trip within the next several days so just sit on the tickets. Most airlines here are allowing people to reschedule with no penalty for up to a year, so maybe that will be an option. This will pass. It will take several months before new cases start going down enough to end some of the travel restrictions. And better a cheery announcement until you had more information than adding any more doom and gloom to an already tough situation for us all. We will all make it through this. Hell, I'm 74 with other health problems, so I'm theoretically one of the most at risk, and I'm just staying home except for weekly food shopping I can't avoid with things from Amazon. I wash my hands whenever I can and keep my hands away from my face. I'm confident that's enough to keep me from getting the virus. I lived through the Hong Kong Flu of 1968, back when I was a respiratory therapist actively treating patients hacking and coughing in my face. That flu killed one million people worldwide and about 600,000 in the US. We had patients lining the hallways on cots and had to rent a refrigerated truck to hold all the dead bodies because the county morgue was full and we had run out of coffins to bury people. I never even got a sniffle. Until I see something that starts rivaling the 1968 outbreak, I'm pretty sure that vast majority of us, now that we are taking the same precautions we should take every flu season, will not only not die, we won't even get it.
    4
  1583. I agree, Essex (1) was a very pleasant looking ship. Hanging banners all over it taunting the RN didn't hurt any.
    4
  1584. Good one. It does look like a ship you'd see in a dream, then wake up and realize it was just a nightmare.
    4
  1585. @Jay Thompson Hmmm indeed. I was actually watching the CNN live news feed die once it got out that the Dayton shooter wasn't a skinhead nazi racist white supremacist Trump voter, that he actually shot and killed his sister as one of the victims, and once it became clearer that this was a suicide by cop rather than just a mass shooting.
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  1586. Sorry, honey. You made a bad choice and now you should have to live with it.
    3
  1587. Name me one military base with a municipal government.
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  1588. Dave, of course not. These guys have every video with the same formal for titles. Something SCARY and with something else scary FOUND. In answer to some of the inane posts I've read here, I lived full time for seven years in my RV and spend five winters in Slab City. I do know what I'm talking about.
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  1589.  @nudetaynehatwobble  You caught me! Time to scamper back to the Dark Side!
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  1590. Once, just before the craft was destroyed in a gigantic, but very impressive, space explosion.
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  1591. Do you have a link for this claim?
    3
  1592. I think he's changing a tire on the black trailer. Either that or he's taking a pavement nap.
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  1593.  @johnmynn1207  And have fun robbing you to buy even more lights so they can have even more fun.
    3
  1594.  @Wëpälkatar  I suspect I've been on this earth a lot longer than you have. I have no problem seeing past the end of my nose. The end of your nose is a different issue.
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  1595. Holy Jesus on a skateboard. Even the dry cleaners have bulletproof glass.
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  1596. Great night for some arson and drive bys
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  1597. Why does Detroit bother with streetlights in blocks where there's no occupants? Detroit is already one of the literally darkest large American cities after dark. Take those streetlights and put them on streets that still ave residents. One of the reasons people leave is they are afraid to go out at night, and night lasts a long time in winter.
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  1598. Too bad. Picked Detroit as the city to end it all.
    3
  1599. Looks like everyone got off work early that day....
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  1600.  boogy313rd  I don't have to. I understand how cell phones and radio frequency energy works. You don't, and neither do the people at the Atlanta Black Star or whatever problack sites you get this bullshit from. Anything other than accept responsibility for your actions, I supposes.
    3
  1601.  boogy313rd  You don't know much about radio frequency energy, do you? Do they use different vibrational frequency signals that send signals right across the line into the Pointes that tell the men there to graduate from high school and get jobs while also vibrating the women not to have five kids and no husband?
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  1602. You know things are bad when this happens - "East Cleveland police officer working off-duty security carjacked in police car" https://privateofficernews.org/east-cleveland-police-officer-working-off-duty-security-carjacked-in-police-car/
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  1603. It sure worked last time we tried it!
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  1604.  @silversword4428  Well, I knew someone like you would show up. You call squatting in burned out houses or ones with no paint, no electricity and infested with rats and other vermin "affordable housing"? I'm certain there are subsidized rents for some the poor people still there. The working poor can get by with that safety net. People who are disabled for some reason and can't work also have social programs to house them. When it comes to those who refuse to work, rob, steal, deal drugs, mug people, do home invasions, and make responsible people feel so afraid they leave then, yeah, they can become homeless. Maybe some time on the street will help reorient their way of thinking to become less predatory.
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  1605.  @fridge6668  So you're telling me you spent four years in a university and came out with English skills so poor you can't fill out a McDonald's application? If so, you are afflicted with a disorder something like autism or you have an agenda to promote.
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  1606. WTF are you talking about? Meridian had 49,000 people in 1960. It's now down to 39,000. The city is 62% black. Look up how many cities of this size that are more than 50% black that are still growing. There is no chance for Meridian to grow without an influx of middle class whites or black, and that's not going to happen. The city is always in the top 5 for Mississippi's most dangerous cities. Drugs and gangs are already taking over Meridian. If you don't mind that, Meridian has some of the cheapest housing in the country. I'm going to assume you were on some kind of mind altering substance when you wrote that.
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  1607. Sherwood Forest has some beautiful homes, as does Palmer Woods. These are owned primarily profession blacks and their families that can afford nice housing and can afford to send their kids to private schools. No one with the resources would ever send their child to a Detroit public school. The problem is you can drive out to Woodward, one of the main streets on the edge of Sherwood Forest, and then turn right on Carmel. Within two locks, you're right back in the hood. This why places like this have had hire private security to patrol their neighborhoods. The Detroit PD is chronically understaffed and is tied up responding to shootings, stabbings, and armed robberies happening all the time the hood. The response time can be up to 20 minutes on an emergency call, so private security is the only answer. It's one more hidden cost of living in a nice neighborhood in Detroit.
    3
  1608. From the NWS tornado database. Note I said fatal, not the number of tornadoes. And of course how dangerous depends on where "u" (Phew. Saved two keystrokes there) live. Even Detroit, rated as the 2017 city that was the most dangerous in the country, has nice neighborhoods
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  1609. He's wearing a type of body cam. He doesn't stroll into a ghetto convenience store holding up his iPhone 7 and telling people to smile for the camera. That, and his friend he brings along on every ride, are why he's still alive. I swear, some people just don't have much understanding about the hood.
    3
  1610. Maybe Michael knows what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.
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  1611. At least the hood isn't quite so dark and threatening looking since they've put up the LED streetlights. I see a couple guys are getting a free ride to choir practice. The Michigan State Police ave to be the last agency in America to still only have that big red gumball light in the center of the roof. They are now LED lights that are much brighter than old sealed beam lamps, and they can six different flashing patterns to help make them more visible. Still, I wouldn't like to have a patrol car with just that one light. The MSP has really stuck with a traditional look for their cars.
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  1612.  WORDto BIGbird  I was pointing out the reasons and results of Shaw being what it is today. How about this. Find me a town that's 94% white anywhere outside Appalachia that's as poor as Shaw. It's an unfortunate reality that towns or sections of towns that are overwhelmingly black are, with few exceptions, poor, not well educated, and have a majority of births to unmarried mothers. The fact that you would rather not have it be true doesn't change the fact it is.
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  1613. Just another 14 year old GTA 5 playing dipshit with no clue what happens outside his basement.
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  1614. Are all the three story houses three family units? I don't think I've seen that before. The structures are really too big for the lots. Gives those narrow streets a really hulking and not very attractive look.
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  1615. I'm 71. I left Cleveland in 1967 to move to California. Best decision of my life. I still have relatives in Cleveland.
    3
  1616.  @PassifloraCerulea  Just because the government "only" stole 20% of the guns, it doesn't mean you have the use of them like you do in the US. From what I've read, even showing a firearm to an intruder is a prison sentence, let alone actually using one.
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  1617. It's unfortunate that so many ANZAC troops had to die in the poorly planned and tactically doubtful Gallipoli Campaign.
    3
  1618.  @TheHistoryGuyChannel  As did Michael Palin and those of us who remember those ripping yarns of yesteryear.
    3
  1619.  @aaronanderson7619  Indeed. My dad was a mechanical engineer that worked on the landing gear design and construction of the B-52 and 747 during his career. The B-52 was mostly build in the pre-computer age, so they'd come up with their load factors and then add 10% for safety. I think the longevity of the aircraft is a testimony to the job all the engineers did that most of the aircraft will be 90 years old at retirement (assuming that really happens in 2050). There are still 78 B-52s left in service today By comparison, only 21 B-2 bombers were ordered due to spiraling cost and only 20 are left after one crashed on landing in Guam. The B-21 Raider, the supposed replacement of the B-52, is now projected to cost $550 million per airframe. Since the B-21 is expected fulfill many more roles than B-2, which wound up costing $1.2 billion per airframe. The probability one will really cost $550 million and the Pentagon will really be able to get the 100 aircraft it wants are both near zero. The B-52H, even with all the many upgrades done in its lifetime, only cost $60.1 million in 2018 dollars. Anyway, Merry Christmas to you as well.
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  1620. I should never have started chopping onions before watching this episode....
    3
  1621. Thanks, HG. The story of the late Pharaohs was such a strange period of history that very few ever learned, and those that did don't remember,
    3
  1622.  @TheHistoryGuyChannel  True, but the Mexicans still want to have some jet fighters for the 201st. Like I wrote, it's as much for a ceremonial role as any operational need.
    3
  1623.  @pmvaldez1  And how do you "know" this? What does being a truck driver have to do with gathering statistic on drinking and auto accidents? It's pretty clear you have your feet in cement when it comes to your ideas about the government so I won't pester you any longer. Enjoy your world of conspiracy.
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  1624. They Type VIIC had an "operating depth" of of 220 meters, or 722 feet. That was the German designation of the depth a sub could sink to as long as it was going to sit on the ocean floor and not move in an attempt to escape detection. It was not considered a safe depth normally operate at since any prolonged time at that depth would start popping rivets and generally scare the crap out of the crew. General orders were for Type VIIC to not go deeper than 400 feet unless it was their only option to escape a depth charge attack. There were, however, several of these type that ended up at 900-950 feet, either because the boat was out of control or commanders decided it was worth the risk to escape certain destruction from depth charging. Of those that managed to make it back to France or Norway, the boats had to be totally rebuilt due to the seams and rivets being wracked and bent.
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  1625. How many "gringos" were in an isolated area of Bolivia in 1908 when there just happened to be a mine payroll holdup? Occam's Razor may not provide proof, but it can help disprove fanciful stories. This is even more true when those stories were told by people who could make money from their stories.
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  1626. Where did you get the idea was apologizing for anyone? I was merely writing what I heard when I was there. These people were not like Hell's Angels. The were mostly regular folks, and nothing was going to happen to you, especially if you were a stranger. It was the people who had deep roots that had things to be worried about.
    3
  1627.  @bastogne315  Thanks. Closest I ever got to that was as a reporter on my high school newspaper.
    3
  1628. @Brian Savage I prefer not to reveal too much of my identity online, but it was in California.
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  1629.  @robertgift  I think it was just above idle. It was a rough grass strip, and the throttle cable was just loose enough for the ground to bump it up. I never got the chance to talk to the pilot so the sequence of events is what i was told by others.
    3
  1630.  @julieenslow5915  Indeed. I do hope that people watching The History Guy's channel might have a broader view of things, but I do have to keep in mind this isn't a naval history channel. There are still sailors out there today, still sailing ships full of dangerous things, still taking those same kind of risks that brought Mount Hood to such a tragic end. They are all way braver than I've ever been, so here's a virtual glass raised to them all.
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  1631.  @julieenslow5915  Yes, it was a joke. I guess that's what another poster meant when he hoped I'd feel better. I don't have the Chinese virus from China yet, but a friend and I did eat out at a restaurant for the first time in 51 days. Just going by what the media says, I should be dead in about 5.45 days. :-) (It's a joke. I don't really expect to be dead in 5.45 days). Telling jokes online in the time of the Wu Flu has been harder and harder, but that's why I put the smiley in there.
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  1632.  @markrozenberg7959  What? When did I mention anything about how I'm feeling?
    3
  1633.  @actionman9357  Yes, there's really not a more exciting game in the house than craps when there's a hot shooter. By comparison, poker is like an English club room. :-)
    3
  1634.  @actionman9357  Thanks. It's just a different talent than being able to make dice behave the way you ant them to. I do consider myself pretty good as knowing when someone's bluffing, and that's about half of winning when you play poker. Craps, much like video poker, is you against the house.
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  1635.  @P_RO_  You're right about us being self loading freight. I just returned for a flight from RVO to ATL via SLC. The first leg was on a Canadair Regional Jet. I used to like CRJs when they had 2+2 one class seating and those comfortable leather seats. Now Skywest has a CRJ700s with 2+3 seating with six "first" class" seats, which are just the old 2+2 layout. The aisle has to be the narrowest on any commercial jet and you have to make a big curve coming out of "first class". I'm 72 with some range of motion problems, and that plane was a challenge. It was nothing compared to the SLC to ATL leg though. I was stuck in a middle seat of an Airbus A321. Horrible. It was so tight you couldn't move your arms enough to turn the pages of a book. The distance between rows was so small that the woman next to me dropped a water bottle and it just disappeared into a black hole. I was never so glad to get off an airplane. I had ordered a wheelchair in ATL because I knew what that was going to be like. I had rented a car for my last leg home the SE Alabama. It took 45 minutes to finally get to the rental car place and then another five minutes to actually get to the cars. There's no way I could have made it walking, not to mention getting hopelessly lost. Once I finally got my car and negotiated two gates with big steel barriers and spikes, I was finally able to spend two hours driving back home through rain and fog. It was not my best trip ever.
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  1636. Mike, the fixes put in after the Turkish crash was pretty much a complete redesign and replacement of the door, so it really wan't an issue after that. Another AD required placing a vent in the rear cabin floor to prevent a collapse after an explosive decompression. A further AD requiring more changes so the aircraft could sustain flight and hull integrity in the event of losing up to 20 square feet of fuselage was pretty much the end of the door fiasco.
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  1637. Indeed, although this one was pretty major, and pointed out by the chief engineer of their subcontractor. Just penny wise and pound foolish.
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  1638. What a chance for world peace and progress was lost with the Marshall Plan. Truman offered economic aid to all nations of Europe regardless of what side of the "iron curtain" they were on. The idea of any Soviet satellite countries accepting direct US aid was just too threatening to Stalin, but there was a brief window of time in 1947 where it looked like the countries of the world might have nuclear technology regulated by an international body and economic aid and cooperation would be extended to all of Europe. Alas, it slipped through our fingers, and I spent part of my school days learning how to imitate Bert the Turtle, waiting for what seemed like the inevitable atomic attack.
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  1639.  @texasyojimbo  Yes, I read that study. The results are questionable though. When you remove the 2011 super outbreak, that shift is within the margin of error for location and frequency. The outlier events like 2011 tend to disrupt averages and show things happening that may just be a statistical anomaly. It will take at least another 50 years of data to say with any confidence that the shift is really happening.
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  1640. I was 10 years old when a lot of those dogs and monkeys were launched and remember how bad I felt for the poor things. I didn't really understand why those animals had to die. I can understand the scientific reasons for it now but I still don't feel any better about it.
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  1641.  @cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647  Sailors out in the middle of the Pacific would do just about anything for a good stiff drink. :-)
    3
  1642.  @cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647  Maybe he heard stories about torpedo juice. Torpedoes in the firs part of the war used alcohol motors. They required 180 proof alcohol and, of course, sailors would siphon off the alcohol fuel to make navy moonshine. The navy put in all kinds of things to make the alcohol anything from unpleasant to downright dangerous to drink, but resourceful sailors always found a way to set up stills and distill the additives out of the alcohol. The problem was solved later in the war when most PT boat torpedoes used electric motors.
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  1643. It wasn't exactly song about Henry VIII as much as a Cockney music hall song that used Henry and his wives as the foil for the lyrics. It was composed in 1910 but was later made famous by Herman's Hermits in 1965. This is the song heard in "Ghost".
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  1644.  @dawulpertingerofstarland5257  Yes, I forgot about Fort Casper. It's an interesting reconstruction of what life was like for soldiers on the frontier in 1859. I've been to Casper twice, once in August and once in January. It was a little warm in August but cooled off nicely at night. I spent three days in January for what was supposed to be a six hour trip. I flew in at 8:00 for a 1:00 meeting. The snow started just after I landed and turned into a blizzard by noon. There was already five inches of blowing snow by then, and the airport was closed at 3:00 due to limited visibility. It finally reopened three days later. The people of Casper were very kind and took good care of all the stranded travelers. The Red Cross lady handing out coffee and sandwiches said it wasn't the first time they had been to that rodeo. :-)
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  1645. Of all the history courses I took in college, Russian history was the most baffling. It was near impossible to tell who was in charge when, and which pretender to the throne was the one who really won in the end. My only hope was rote memorization and hoping I'd pass the tests.
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  1646.  @chinesesparrows  Say what? 15 A-12's were built. They remained in service from 1963 to 1968. The service ceiling of the A-12 was a little higher than that of the SR-71 although both were probably within couple of thousand feet of each other. We don't actually know the real numbers since they are still classified.
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  1647. The Dahlonega GA and Charlotte NC mints, operated from 1838 to 1861, only minted gold coins, and generally using gold mined from the SE United States. The first gold in the country was mined in Alabama, Georgia, and North Carolina. Both were taken over the Confederate states and operated as mints for the CSA until it became clear there just wasn't enough gold being mined to keep the mints operating. Neither mint was reopened after the war, but Charlotte was operated as an assay office from 1867 to 1913, when the supply of gold from the SE US slowed to a trickle, and the assay office was no longer needed. Both mints, along with Manila, are the least remembered of the many mints that operated at one time.
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  1648.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Walter, the Swiss Army knife would be another interesting story for the History Guy to delve into.
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  1649.  David Single  You must be thinking of Samoa rather then American Samoa. The county of Samoa became independent from New Zealand in 1962. They are a member of the Commonwealth so I suppose NZ does give them a hand with things, but the capital is Apia, not Auckland. It seems you need to look things up rather than listen to whatever Samoans you've been listening to.
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  1650.  @studinthemaking  Well, yes, but that was after surviving two atomic bomb explosions at Bikini and a pounding by gunfire from three battleships for six hours two years later when used as a target again.. That's when the torpedo bomber was called in to try to finish her off, which it succeeded in doing. Given the massive damage she had already received, it's hardly surprising it only took one torpedo.
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  1651.  @AFO1  No, Nevada was indeed sunk. She was initially beached to prevent her immediate sinking, but the ebb tide displaced the hull enough she slid off the beach and settled on the shallow floor if the harbor. Because the crew had corrected her list by counter flooding before that happened, she appeared to still be upright in the water .If this had happned in deeper water, she would have sunk out of sight. She was allowed to remain in her position until refloated on February 12 to both act as a stationary antiaircraft battery and fool any Japanese reconnaissance flights that Nevada was still in service and not sunk. Remember also that Nevada and her sister Oklahoma had two twin upper turrets. It was these two barrels in her twin #3 turret that were relined and replaced by the twin barrels from Oklahoma , not Arizona . It was much easier to replace the relined barrels and cradle from the same type of turret than it would have been to try to refit them with from one of Arizona's triples.
    3
  1652.  @tarnishedknight730  I've been a weather nerd for over 50 years and part of a volunteer Skywarn amateur radio network for about 20 years. I have my own weather station and use some fairly sophisticated radar and model tracking tools. I bring all this up just to say I'm pretty familiar with how the NWS does things. It's exceedingly rare for them to track a storm all the way across the country and not update the forecast for a storm. It's also exceedingly rare for the NWS to sensationalize a storm. If anything, their forecasts tend to be too conservative, e.g, they predict 3 inches and we get 6 inches. What I have seen over and over again is networks like The Weather Channel and local "forecasters" constantly harping on the worst case scenarios. The NWS might forecast 3-5 inches with isolated amounts of 12 inches, but the public sometimes just hears the "12 inches part". That's the kind of thing that sets off the bread and milk panics. Forecasting snow totals for any one place is still not easy, and sometimes the NWS will get it wrong. Still, the models and computers have improved so much over the past 15 years that a complete bust one way or the other is getting to be a rare thing.
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  1653. I'm sorry for the loss of your father. No matter how old he or you are, it's always a shock. I spent a lot ot time studying these rat and mice experiments when I was a biological psych major in the 70's. I always thought the 1:1 idea of how these rodents behaved and how humans behaved was a big mistake, and Erlich made that worse with his book. He, of course, has been proven wrong, because he never gave any weight to the human's ability to adapt and overcome. It's something to keep in mind when each new supposed crisis comes along in the popular press.
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  1654.  @Mondo762  And the "notable part of the story", as you put it, turns out not to be true. This is something you could have found out with a little basic research rather than depending on something you read decades ago.
    3
  1655.  @Nathan_Whaley-g8m  The utter lack of historical understanding and narcissism of your comment is breathtaking. Most breathtaking is your tradeoff of abandoning the 83 million people of the Eastern Bloc to two generations of tyranny and millions of deaths against some theoretical future threat of nuclear war that didn't even exist in 1945. Truman had the Big Stick of atomic weapons for four years that no one, not even our allies possesed. Rather than use at least the treat of our atomic power, the communist operatives in the State Department convinced him that we should just trust Stalin to do the right thing, knowing all the while that communist spy rings were busily passing our secrets to the Soviets, and we'd soon be at real risk of nuclear war. We lost a four year window when we could have forced Stalin to back out of eastern Europe and could have made the world a safer place. Instead, we did nothing, and thus began 40 years of the Cold War and MAD.
    3
  1656.  @BrianSmith-yn2zg  Wow. It's not often I meet an actual moron on here, yet here you are. The Yalta Conference, when we gave away eastern Europe to Stalin, happened from 4 to 11 February 1945, two months before Roosevelt died. Pro tip - if you have no idea what you're talking about, Wikipedia won't help.
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  1657. Randall Smith fucking dipshit.
    3
  1658.  @kennethfharkin  Cue the butthurt millennial libertarians. Sorry the truth hurts, boys. Very few Americans will ever agree to the proposition in the title of this video.
    3
  1659. Aaron, they do a better job than most car maker's service centers. Because there are so few of them, the common complaint I heard was they were too busy and it too long to get an appointment. That's not surprising seeing that the whole state of Texas only has three of them.
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  1660. Lineman - The voice of young man with NO chronic pain issues who thinks veganism is the answer to every question.
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  1661. The main purpose of a mask for non-healthcare personnel is just to serve as a barrier for airborne droplets. Civilians don't need to N95 masks. And no one will be doing mask inspections in hospitals, for heaven's sake.
    3
  1662.  @Gorrgrim  And I don't think many who are not involved in the actual crimes they rap about are just creating "art", and they won't go to jail for that. There's a reason why so many rappers die in drive bys and shootouts, and it's not because of "art".
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  1663.  @kennythekid130  I'm 74 years old and have been retired for fifteen years. Before that, I ran my own consulting firm for ten years. I made my own rules. If, however, I had to go back to working for someone else, they made the rules. Try this - next time you go for an interview, let them know that working remotely is one of your top priorities. Let me know how that works out for you.
    3
  1664. "Where do we go?" How about back to where you came from?
    3
  1665.  @kennythekid130  Right. Just have the right unicorn skills and find the right unicorn company and you can get paid the big buck for working in your PJ's for ten solid years. Why haven't you already quit and joined that firm too?
    3
  1666.  @Mit852  What's your option? Vote for the greater of two evils? Don't vote at all because that'll show 'em? Have you ever actually been to an authoritarian hellhole? Didn't think so. My late wife was from the former Yugoslavia, and I was there several times before and after the breakup of the country. We have a long way to go before we end up like them, and Yugoslavia was one of the better authoritarian hellholes.
    3
  1667.  @kennythekid130  No, your boss would have that option. No employee gets to independently work from home. Do you work somewhere that allows you to make those kinds of decisions? I'm getting the feeling you don't have a lot of real world job experience.
    3
  1668.  @TheArgieH  The Sea Fury, while still developed initially as the "Light Tempest", and entering service just too late for the war, finally gave the FAA a really modern carrier borne fighter capable of taking on and beating any other carrier borne (and many land based) fighters of the day. It was so good that it lulled the RN into a false sense of confidence about how long it had to develop a jet fighter, so the FAA started Korea with the Sea Vampire and, later, the Supermarine Attacker as their only jets.
    3
  1669.  Rob M  I see. So you actually think the German navy had wide experience in opposed amphibious landings then? Like when?
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  1670. Same with calling the C-46 a failure. They were bigger than a C-47, had a bigger payload, higher service ceiling, and better range. They were the only twin engine transport that could operate reliably over The Hump. The C-46 would have been used in greater numbers if Curtis had been capable of ramping up production faster. The C-46 continued in freight service in South America, Africa, and Alaska, with a number remaining in service well into this century.
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  1671. Your number of 10 million dead is absolutely wrong. The most pessimistic totals for the war, including civilians killed on both sides, is between 4.5 and 5 million. 10 million would've been about 12% of the whole population, something no unbiased historian claims. And what "United States Intelligence organization" did your father work for? Where were you born. The lower double quote is not used in English, so it seems you are bringing this in deliberately. Why?
    3
  1672.  @kl0wnkiller912  Not true. The full story of this 1940 version of "fake news" is laid out in the book Heinkel He 177-277-274 by Griehl and Dressel. I don't know if it's still in print, but I'm sure your library can order you a copy. Other than drawings and few scale models, nothing was done on a prototype He 277.
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  1673. This was not an issue with the aircraft being obsolete. It entered squadron service in 1954 and was pulled out of service in 1959. No other Navy jet fighter had a service life that short, and it was because so many planes had crashed and pilots had been killed the the plane was considered positively unsafe for any further service.
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  1674.  @ParaglidingManiac  No, it was never called "ejecting". That concept was in the future. It was called "bailing out". He tends to make small errors like this in most of his many videos.
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  1675. At least you got Othias to shut up in a reasonable amount of time. He knows a reasonable amount about weapons but the just can't stop rambling. The average video on his channel for one weapon is over an hour. It doesn't help that he gets progressively more drunk in some videos.
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  1676. I'm familiar with Slovenia since my late was from there, and from the days that Slovenia was part of Yugoslavia. Most of the Russian bread is the same type sold in Slovenia before the revolution in 1991. The ring type bread was usually sold as a bagel, and a lot of pastries were sold, probably influenced by w=how close Slovenia was to Austria. One thing I never saw in Slovenia was cornbread. Bread there was various forms of rye and wheat. I think the revolution would have started a lot sooner if Tito had attempted to sell only cornbread.
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  1677.  @JohnnyAmerique  I understand it just fine and, yes, you communists don't understand basic economics. Things wouldn't have gone so badly in every communist country on earth if you did. Just post your sources instead of being a typical snarky communist.
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  1678.  @finol6127  Russia's GDP in 1989 was $506.5 billion. The GDP in 2017 was $1.578 trillion. The GDP was over three times higher in 2017 than in 1989. The GDP per capita was $3428 in 1989. It was $10,349 in 2017. That's a decline from a little over $16,000 in 2013, almost completely due to sanctions on the economy by the EU and US after the invasion and occupation of Crimea. Still, the GDP per capita in 2017 is over three times what it was in 1989. You may feel the economy is worse now than in 1989 but the figures don't agree.
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  1679. Has that area been effected at all by Russia-Ukraine war?
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  1680. Ushanka Show, you are correct. The USSR outnumbered Germany in almost every military resource on the day of the invasion. Germany and her allies (Finland, Hungary, and somewhat later, Italy) had about 3.5 million men available. They had between 2500 and 3000 tanks, and the Luftwaffe had 2500 aircraft committed to the invasion. By comparison, there were over 5 million men on the front or had moved there in the first few days of the invasion. They had 23,000 tanks. Only about 30% were effective tanks like the T-34 and KV-1, but that was still over 6,000 tanks. It was the same with aircraft. There were about 22,000 combat aircraft available of which about 5,000 could be considered modern. The problems that caused the near loss of the war were myriad. The immediate problem was Stalin ordered the army not to respond to the attack. He believed that they were just border incursion and he didn't want to provoke Germany. Because the Germans cut almost all means of ground communication, Stalin wasn't getting current news about the scale of the invasion, and it took 40 hours before the army was told to counterattack. The long term problems were poor leadership all the way down to junior officers, poor logistics and communications, poorly trained troops, and poorly maintained equipment, leading to what should have been effective resistance turning into routs when tanks failed to work, trucks broke down, and artillery ammunition was found to be about 70% defective.This all showed up during the invasion of Finland, but Stalin refused to believe the performance of his military was poor, and actually purged more of his best generals in reprisal. By 1942, Soviet propagandist began to write history the way they wanted it written, portraying frail Russia fighting back against overwhelming odds. American communists who, right up until the day of the invasion, were engaging in antiwar marches and trying to stop lend lease to Britain, changed their signs to say the US should immediately send aid to the USSR, and the war had suddenly become a great anti-fascist crusade rather than war of British imperialism. Many of these communists were university professors, and they were ordered by Moscow to write histories of the valiant Soviet struggle against the fascists. Many of their histories influenced other non-communist historians. By the end of the war, the Soviets had succeeded in the literal rewriting of history. Just google The Historians’ Group to see how effective the communists were at shaping history post-war to the needs of the Soviet Union in Britain alone.
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  1681.  @dzonikg  My late wife and her now late twin sister were Slovenian. I visited Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia a number of times from 1985 on. I'd sure be a subscriber to anyone wanting to do a Yugoslavia series like this one.
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  1682. Good article. I think it was a shame to destroy a historic piece of art just because people didn't want it on the main street of Kiev. I'm no fan of Lenin, but the statue could have been removed in one piece and then displayed in a museum. It's a piece of history now smashed and gone.
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  1683.  @nickreyes3604  Facts are not facts just because of a hashtag. Link me to some actual studies that show what you claim. Simply the decreased lung cancer risks of vaping make your assertion ridiculous.
    3
  1684.  @Tappettava  I hope you can eventually stay off tobacco altogether. I still vape because it satisfies the psychological habits of smoking, but it will be five years July 20, so I'm good with vaping compared ot tobacco.
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  1685.  @TheJunnu  No, it's not. The original Russian title was "Leningrad Evenings", produced in 1956. The title was changed to "Evenings in the Moscow Suburbs" at the request of the Ministry of Culture. I have no idea why they wanted the change and picked such a lousy title. Most of us in the West know it as "Midnight in Moscow", made popular by a UK band, Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen. It was recorded in 1961 and became, up to that time, one of the few songs to hit the UK and US Top 10 charts during March, 1962. It is a much more upbeat version of the song than the one used here. The Chad MItchell Trio recorded the song with the Russian lyrics, also in 1962, on their "At The Bitter End" album, and that became a hit as well. It was the only Russian song in the Top 10 during the Cold War.Radio Moscow' English language shortwave service has used the instrumental version of the song for the hourly ID and lead in for each frequency change segment. You knew you were listening to Radio Moscow when you heard that song.
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  1686. "Belligerent idiot". Did it take of lot of thinking to come up with that one? It must have, since you chose not actually address any off my points. It's tough, I realize, since your knowledge comes exclusively from Wikipedia.
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  1687. Your tonsils got healed by Dr. Time. Almost everything you get will be healed by the passage of time. The important thing was to keep you occupied until enough time passes that you feel better. That why a lot of home remedies get a reputation for working. Most of them are harmless, but mustard plasters can cause serious burns if the strength of the mustard plaster isn't standardardized or the amount of time it's applied isn't accurately times.
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  1688. Antonov has been kept busy retrofitting turboprop engines into piston powered AN-2 airframes. What's more amazing is that Antonov is about to restart production of a new version of the AN-2. Still a biplane, it will have a five blade turboprop engine with some of the body panels made of carbon fiber composites. There are supposedly several hundred orders for this new version. Not bad for an airplane first flown in 1947.
    3
  1689.  @vihavoittamaton849  From the written history of Finland. Where did you get yours lol?
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  1690. The Soviet Union was invoiced for Lend Lease aid at $1.3 billion, about ten cents on the dollar of actual cost. The Soviets offered to pay $170 million. The settlement talks went back and forth until the Soviets agreed to pay $722 million in 1972. The last payment was made in 2006 as Putin cleared the books of foreign debts. The cost of materials sent by the Soviets was fully considered in the total. Your statement the US didn't lose a penny is absolutely false. The Soviets did indeed lose millions of men, something every American schoolboy learns in history class. However, those losses were incurred while defending the Soviet Union, not the US. If the Germans had been able to invade the US, our losses would have been equally great. Russia is in an unfortunate place when it comes to geography. You can argue with the ghost of Marshal Zhukov about how important lend lease was to the Soviet Union. The second front was not deliberately delayed. It needed large numbers of US troops, aircraft, merchant ships, and naval vessels. Those don't appear by magic. It wasn't until near the end of 1942 we started building more merchant ships than the U-boats were sinking. There was zero chance of an invasion succeeding any earlier, and some Allied military leaders thought June of 1944 was too early. Indeed, if Churchill and Roosevelt had only their interests at heart, they would have sat back and let the Soviet Union be destroyed by the Nazis and then invaded France. The fact they didn't showed the recognition of the importance of supporting Stalin, even though the communists weren't particularly loved by either leader. The British even foolishly allowed 55 Rolls Royce Nene jet engines to be sold to the Soviets in 1947 on a commercial contract. The Soviets were then supposed to pay for a license to manuface the Nene. They reneged on the deal and reverse engineered the engine instead, making tens of thousand of them over time, and never paid a dime for the rights. They even charged China for a license to produce their own copies. The MiG-15 would not have been ready to fly in 1950 if not for this theft of the Nene engine. Everything I've written is easily confirmed on the web. You say I'm indoctrinated, but I read Soviet and Western version of everything. You read only Sovet and Serb versions of history. I'm done with this conversation, since it's clear you will just keep moving the goalposts and never answer the points I bring up.
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  1691.  @madisntit6547  The video covered the Battle of Britain use but also every significant use after that and outside Britain by foreign air forces and in places like Greece and Malta. He didn't miss any uses of the Gladiators with the sole exception of not giving much time to their U-boat sinkings, one of the important uses of the Sea Gladiator for nearly the entire war.
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  1692. The Megaroc and Bristol Barbizon, Britain two postwar attempts at being the first and biggest in the field of aeronautics.
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  1693. Thanks, Mark. The biggest problem with the Zero until after mid-1943 was its weak armament. The A6M2 was armed only with two fast firing rifle caliber machine guns mounted in the engine cowling and two very slow firing 20mm cannon mounted one in each wing. This gave a very unsatisfactory convergence as the nose mounted guns were so fast (but light) that several hundred rounds were typically expended, using the machine gun tracers as aim points, before the first cannon shells would reach the enemy plane. This still worked as long as enemy aircraft weren't faster than about 200 mph. The introduction of higher performance USN fighters like the F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat along with the Japanese inability to produce a reliable engine of more that 1,350 horsepower doomed the Zero to obsolescence by mid-1943. Since the Japanese had nothing better, production continued at high rates all the way through the end of the war, with some of the highest production totals occuring during the last four months of the war. Since the Japanese were not producing replacement pilots at anywhere near the rate they were being lost, the last of these once world beating aircraft were used in kamikaze attacks or destroyed on the ground by Allied air attacks.
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  1694.  @sisyphusvasilias3943  Really? Were you alive during Stalin's reign? How about your mother or father? Grandparents? Did any of them live in the Soviet Union under Stalin? Have you heard about the "Great Purge", where somewhere between 600,000 and a million were killed on Stalin's direct order? Where in heaven's name did you learn history?
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  1695. You're quite welcome. I've just discovered your channel and have been binge watching the videos. First rate work on subjects that aren't general knowledge for most of us. I'm more than a little peeved at Youtube hiding a couple of your Hitler videos when they are simply history with no attempt at advocacy one way or the other. I know there's nothing you can do about it, but this kind of censorship makes it impossible for WWII historians to do their work. I downloaded the book but haven't started reading it yet. I have to get some sleep sometime. :-)
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  1696. Mark, take a look at the US search and rescue operations in international waters after the downing of KAL flight 007 in 1983. It was another incident that almost caused the cold war to go hot. The straying of flight 007 over the Soviet border also opened up the US GPS system to the world free of charge and made such incidents much less likely.
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  1697. Helium wasn't a matter of money in WWI. It just wasn't available. The US was the only producer of helium at the time, and even they couldn't produce enough to actually fuel any balloons before the end of the war. After that, the US refused to sell any to potential enemies like Germany. That's why the Hindenburg disaster occured. The zeppelin was filled with flammable hydrogen gas, and even though the Germans took many safety precautions while working with the gas, all it took was a small leak and an ignition source to have the craft go up like a torch.
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  1698. Lyme Bay was one of those military disasters that, while it cost lives, ultimately saved many lives when the actual landing took place. There is reasonably good evidence that D-Day would have failed if we hadn't learned the lessons of Lyme Bay. RIP to all those who died, including my uncle, to secure freedom for us.
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  1699. The destroyers, known as the "1200 ton type" as a whole, of which the Reuben James was a member_ , have been given a bad rap by the Royal Navy. They were not "old" at a mere 20 years, especially considering the average age of British destroyer was around 23 years old. They did need some repairs and refitting because they had been sitting in reserve for about 15 of their 20 years in reserve. Some of the US equipment and armament was removed and replaced with equipment that more nearly matched that of an RN escort vessel. Once they had been refitted, the RN had the equivalent of a newly commissioned vessel in a couple months of refitting compared to the year or more it would have taken to construct a new vessel, not to mention it would have required materials the British just didn't have on hand. The RN, even for all complaining they did about the class, were lucky to have them available, since this came at low point in the Battle of the Atlantic. These admittedly less than perfect ships allowed the British to free up newer and better vessels.
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  1700. Couldn't click fast enough on this one. As a Falklands War aficionado, I'm looking forward to this one. It would have been a close run thing for the RN if those Skyhawks had been able to sortie on schedule.
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  1701.  @bigblue6917  I don't think so. Carl Foreman's "The Victors" from 1963 showed the execution of a US deserter in a scene deliberately reminiscent of Slovok's execution, but it was fictionalized.
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  1702. Thanks for another interesting video. The Japanese had plans for a really huge submarine on the drawing boards in 1944. It would have been nearly 500 feet long, have a submerged weight of about 9,000 and, except for two torpedo tubes and as many as fourteen 25 mm machine guns for self defense, it was strictly a cargo submarine. It had two eight foot hatches and disappearing 10 ton cranes to handle the expected load of nearly 1,000 tonnes of cargo. The Germans badly needed tungsten, tin, rubber, and opium for making morphine. Due to the active fighting on the Eastern and then the Western front as well, the Germans were going through morphine faster than they could produce opium poppies. The Japanese needed the high quality aluminum and steel the Germans were producing, plus plans for the Tiger tanks, propeller and jet aircraft, and German radar. I doubt the idea of shipping a complete Tiger tank to Japan was ever a serious proposition with the I class subs. Needless to say, the Japanese cargo submarines were never built. The Japanese did have one success transporting cargo when they converted the I-351 from a seaplane carrier to an oil tanker. She made a successful transit from Singapore to Japan carrying 500,000 gallons of high octane aviation gas. This could only be produced by former British Singapore refineries because Japanese refineries were built to produce larger quantities of lower octane gas. This was fine for earlier Japanese planes, but not for the larger, higher horsepower liquid cooled inline engines being built from German plans. The I-351 was headed back to Singapore on July 14, 1945 when she was sunk by the US sub Bluefish. I'm sure you already know this, but the only navy to produce pure cargo subs in WWII were the Italians. Only having some antiaircraft machine guns for self defense if caught on the surface by allied aircraft, these 2,100 ton R class boats were built for trade between Italy, Germany, and Japan. They could carry 600 tonnes of cargo and could travel 14,000 miles unrefueled. They were potentially valuable transports, but the only two completed boats were sunk, one by the British sub HMS United and the other by allied aircraft within days of each other in July 1943 before they could complete any missions.
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  1703. More wasted time, effort, and materials much too late in the war. As Mark said, some of the work done by von Braun helped the US effort to build workable ICBMs themselves.
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  1704. There were quite a few Italians tried for war crimes, but Nuremberg was established only for the purpose of trying Nazi war crimes, not for that of their allies. Italians were tried by separate tribunals by the British, Americans, Greeks, and Yugoslavs. Some were also tried by the Co-Belligerent Italian government shortly after the end of the war. A number were also executed under battlefield "justice" as they were seized by those they committed the crimes against, Mussolini being the most famous example. The Russians were quite infamous for executing Romanian and Hungarian Nazis.
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  1705.  @calif1mc  Indeed. I lived in Sonoma country for 30 years and have been up the coast to Mendocino many times. Like I said very scenic, but you'b better have a heavy windbreaker for most days in the summer, and that's after the fog clears. I could always tell the tourists in places like Bodega Bay or Point Arena because they'd be freezing in t-shirts and shorts. Of course, all they had to do was drive ten miles inland and it would be 90 degrees. Most tourists didn't anticipate the drastic drop in temperatures and increase in winds at the coast after being in places like Hopland or Ukiah.
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  1706. Looks like a very pleasant (and cheap) way to spend a holiday. What exactly has improved since then?
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  1707. Looks more like a taser. A stun gun doesn't usually provoke that kind of reaction.
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  1708.  @Tmuk2  Muh oh. Internet slap fight about to begin. Muh oh. Internet bofetada pelea a punto de comenzar.
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  1709.  Katrina S  Ah, so the Labour during that 13 years wasn't real Labour. Kind of like Stalin. Mao, and Castro weren't doing communism right. Corbyn impresses me as pretty near a real communist, so maybe he'll do it right. However, my question was how have US railroads done so well compared to British railways. You seem to have ducked that whole part.
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  1710. Real nice. That Stalinist, brutalist use of concrete to suck the last ounce of joy out of living.
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  1711. That rear wheel lift at 0:20 is quite pronounced.
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  1712.  @omkr0122  Okay, so does some someone not trolling know what actually happened?
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  1713. "Can't we get a socialist government to nationalise the tire business and then only allow maybe five types to be produced?"
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  1714.  @JamesSmith-dn8lb  Yep and there are still lots of values still around in real estate now. A six bedroom, five bath 5,000 sq ft house down the street from me just sold for $299k, and that's an expensive house here. YOu can buy a nice 2,000 sq ft house in a nice neighborhood for $100k or less, and that's in town. As you say, country property goes for even less.
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  1715. You were obviously really pissing her off. You violated the green rule and the woman rule. No mater how stupid the argument, as long as it's green and coming from a woman, she wins.
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  1716. The TDS is really strong with you. Go out and take a nice walk. You'll feel better.
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  1717.  @MegaTeeruk  Yep, the highest rates of utilization are seen with Medicaid patients or aliens using the ER who know they'll never have to pay. Every single transaction should come with a cost, even if it's only a dollar. These Dems, including Gabbard, know in their heart that medicare for all is totally unworkable and will bankrupt the country. They are just hoping to sucker enough people into voting for them before they tell you this is really obamacare 2.0. I always expect politicians to bend the truth while on the stump, but this is the first time I've seen the entire field telling outright lies.
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  1718. It may not be a lot of fun breathing that stuff in, but it's a lot better than being seen by mujahideen fighter that wants to kill you.
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  1719. It was both. Many of the dealerships worked off flat rate estimates but independents were usually parts plus hourly labor Even flat rate shops had to charge additional hourly labor if the job was more difficult that shown in the flat rate book. Really, nothing much has changed since then in terms of shop charges. What changed is the simplicity of how cars were built. Almost every part of a car could either be cheaply replaced or was able to be repaired in the shop. For example, it was rare to actually replace a whole generator unless it had some kind of physical damage like from a collision Everything from the generator case to the windings could be rebuilt in the shop or from some inexpensive parts kept in stock. When I was a helper in the early 60's, I don't remember us replacing a whole generation with a new one. Now, if the right error shows up, you alternator gets trashed and is replaced with a new one. The days of the shade tree mechanic are just about gone.
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  1720. Where's the rest of the commercial?
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  1721. The reason for an armored shield on a crew served weapon is to protect the crew members from splinters. Even small rounds hitting the ship throws off splinters, and those will disable the crew, mostly due to leg wounds. This was well proven in WWII as quad 40 mm mounts went from being unprotected to an armored shield the surrounded the mount on three sides. The guns were mounted in armored tubs about 3.5 feet tall to protect gunners from those splinters. Apparently the Navy will have to learn this lesson again.
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  1722. A real masterpiece of literature there. Maybe you'll learn how to act when you reach puberty.
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  1723. This 14 year old "analyst" who's clearly a partisan Democrat, is the best Bloomberg could come up with? I can remember a time when Bloomberg actually offered valuable financial insights. That was before it became a left wing hack outlet like it is now.
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  1724. ᛋᛋ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) マンコぺろぺろᛋᛋis just another weeaboo troll that knows how to use ASCII characters in a user name.
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  1725. Good grief. If you work for a law enforcement agency, stay the hell off facebook. There are groups whu spend their time trolling through all the post b anyone who identifies and law enforcement officer looking for things that give the slightest hint you're not down with the cause. Don't do it.
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  1726. Jerry "Tinfoil Hat" Nadler.
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  1727. I knew I had seen this before. She says she's 41 at the time of the filming, but she's now 45 according to the Wiki. Bearing, you're really digging down into the woodpile for some of these.
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  1728. Where were the police? These fuckers should have been tasered, pepper sprayed, dragged out, and then beaten with nightsticks.
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  1729. If I have to listen to this guy say "ah-boot" and "ooot" one more time I'll reach right through the screen and slide that knife across his throat. Why can't Canadians learn how to pronounce these simple words properly?
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  1730.  @jayzenitram9621  Form Wikipedia - "The characteristics of a quick-firing artillery piece are: Buffers to limit recoil, so the barrel can quickly return to position after being fired. A breech mechanism which allows rapid reloading Single-piece ammunition, e.g. a cartridge containing both shell and propellant, also called fixed ammunition. (This criterion was sometimes taken as the definition of quick-firing, but many quick-firing guns dispensed with it, using separate ammunition in which the shell and propellant case were loaded separately). The use of 'smokeless powder' - nitrocellulose, nitroglycerine or cordite - which created far less smoke than gunpowder, meaning that gun crews could still see their target.
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  1731. Another example of how the framers of the Second Amendment weren't thinking of just single shot muskets.
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  1732. Sounds like there's a primer activated kid spewing in the background.
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  1733. There was some resistance to the self loader as being nothing but an "ammo waster" in British service. The problem with the Farquhar-Hill was it really was it was too long and too heavy to be an infantry rifle. It was closer to a semiauto BAR than an infantry rifle. If the war had continued, I'm sure the gun could have been further developed with a useable magazine and had the size cut down to something closer to a Lee-Enfield in size. With the war over, the British had millions of service rifles in inventory and no pressing reason they could see for a self loader. They always viewed infantry tactics as skilled riflemen backed up by Brens and machine guns. With that mindset, training riflemen in accurate shooting was more important than a lot of lead downrange and most of it not hitting anything.
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  1734. Considering the direction of the Nazi government in 1936, Walther may have concluded that the next Olympics might not include Germany. Little did they know it would actually be twelve long years until the next Olympiad, an even longer 16 years before West Germany in was once again allowed to compete. Form then, it was another 40 years before a united Germany was finally represented in the 1992 games, something I never expected to see in my lifetime.
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  1735. Probabily. A lot hunters in that time period would take a train or stage to their hunting grounds. The shotgun would have to be carried in their "grip", or suitcase. It was an obvious advantage not to have both ends of the gun sticking out your luggage.
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  1736.  @s1n1stersixsgaming8  Makes sense. We have plenty of those in English too. Archer, Baker, Brewer, Butcher, Carter, Clark, Cooper, Cook, Dyer, Farmer, Faulkner, Fisher, Fuller, Gardener, Glover, Head, Hunt or Hunter, Judge, Mason, Page, Parker, Potter, Sawyer, Slater, Smith, Taylor, Thatcher, Turner, Weaver, Woodman, and Wright are all family names derived from the occupations of the first families in that occupation. The occupational name eventually become the family name.
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  1737.  @matthias1031980  Actually, English is one of the few major languages that is completely genderless. All the major European languages use gender except for Italian, but even they have some bits of gender. I think it all stems from Latin. Having gone to Catholic school for 12 years, Latin was another one I was forced to learn. Many gendered words in Latin make no sense, so I just had to memorize. Of the ones I remember, a pair of standouts are garden, which is male, and tree, which is female. Seems like a tree in a garden should be female too, but not in Latin. I'm kind of glad I did learn Latin now because it makes me a better English speaker. I was a respiratory therapist for a number of years, and knowing Latin made it way easier to at least guess at the meanings of many of the medical terms we had to memorize. Other students who never took Latin were lost. Same with making good guesses about the meanings of other English terms I had never seen before. I sure hated it at the time though.
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  1738. Mac, I was only referring to the first wave. All the sources I've read say it 12 or 13 gliders that landed close enough to be effective in the inituial fighting. I've seen pictures of several wrecked gliders so they were apparently not all really nice landings. As for the rest of details, I don't really care.
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  1739. Slaw, let's start with a source that the Polish command, after beating the Germans, was going to then attack the Soviets.
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  1740. The point I'm trying to make is an organization like the EU, which has no law enforcement or military experience, is providing all the mandatory umbrella firearms regulations to member states like France, and France has to find ways to comply with them. France should be making their own laws that take into account their experiences in WWII.
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  1741.  @Jorvard  I'm just going from memory here but, having lived through the time of the Berlin Wall, I recall at least one picture of a vopo running across to the west while discarding an SKS. The vopos (Deutsche Volkspolizei) were not a typical police force. They were paramilitary, their members had military training, and they were equipped with APCs and artillery.
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  1742. Ian, the link to the auction goes to a Mosin Nagant rifle rather than this unicorn.
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  1743. Yeah, I have a Model 94. Maybe it's me, but I spend more time dropping rounds than I do loading them.
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  1744.  @erikdingman9806  There are tons of them in museums. It would be difficult to go to any museum that covers early US history. and not see at least one example of the 1795 or its many variants. There are also a fair few of them available on the collector's market, just not at prices you probably want to pay. Gun collecting is like that, and the market is higher today in relative terms than in any time of my 55 years as a collector. If you want one, scare up the cash from somewhere and buy one. 50 years from now, you'll have a tidy profit.
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  1745. Bo, I don't know if this is really worth discussing with you, but stocks are not a "legal pyramid scheme". With good stocks, almost no one loses money. Everyone involved, from the company to the investor, makes money over the long term. Unless you just hate capitalism, which I suspect is the case, studying up on the stock market can help you make some money instead of whining about the people who do.
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  1746. LOL. You get a plus for that one, :-)
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  1747.  @johnfisk811  "Cocked it all up" is a term that makes it sound as if Churchill's decision was capricious. The British had just gone through a war with their major ally using ammunition that wasn't used by the British. That created massive logistical problems, since ammunition showing up at the front might be the wrong types for most of the guns in use at that front. Churchill was determined, and I think rightly so, not to repeat that mistake, since both countries were adopting new ammunition at about the same time. Churchill hope the US would adopt the .280 round and even the EM-2 rifle. The US was adamant the an intermediate round was not powerful enough for a battle rifle, and Canada had already committed to adopting whatever round the US chose. Australia wasn't far behind on that decision, so it was clear that the 7.62 NATO round was going to be the winner. We can argue id the round itself was really the right one but, for the first time in history, the armies of what would be major allies in war would be carrying, if not the same rifles, at least the same ammunition. It may be hard to realize looking back over seventy years what a big deal that really was. While interesting, none of this answering my original question. Why did it take so long for the British to adopt a self loading rifle? Even if we use the adoption date of the EM-2 as benchmark, that was still fourteen years after the M-1 was adopted in 1937.
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  1748. One does not think of a Model 1911 as being a .22 with a shoulder stock.
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  1749. Good enough if a big guy is running straight at you and you don't try using it as a carbine..
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  1750. Good for you, brother. Now it's just a matter of waiting around for Youtube to decide that all channels even mentioning a gun are verboten.
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  1751. They are only offering to arrange a flight. It's not included in the price. If it's like other tour companies I've dealt with you won't get a cheap fare from them either.
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  1752.  @rogerwilco2  I agree. I've looked at several tours of both WWI battlefields and WWII Normandy to the Rhine tours. This tour is in September because it's the low season with rock bottom prices. Everyone else is back from their August holidays and hotels, restaurants, and museums are mostly deserted. For what's really six days with only hotel breakfasts and just one dinner, food and drink will be a not inconsiderable extra expense. As I said in another comment, there's no star rating for the hotels, something you always find with European tours. Just a phrase like "first class accommodations" doesn't mean much. The single supplement is way too high compared to other tours, and that's not affected by the quality of the tour guide. I get the feeling Battlefield Tours set this up because they knew there would be at least 35 Gun Jesus fanboys that would pay what's about a 20% surcharge so you can pal around with him for a couple days.As long as people have the money, and spending that kind of money to be with someone you like is worth it, more power to them and the tour company. I just know I can't spend that kind of money no matter how much I like and respect Ian.
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  1753. BTW, "British Bulldog" describes a generic style of revolver. It wasn't a trademark of Forehand & Wadsworth. It was a trademark of Webley, but there were hundreds of thousand of unauthorized copies made made, including this one. It became the Kleenex of revolvers in the 1890's though about 1920. Unless it's a name brand like Forehand, H&R, or Iver Johnson, I wouldn't be shooting it. Some of the copies were well made, but some were terrible and downright dangerous with anything but a weak black powder load. Trouble is identifying which non-name brand was any good isn't easy.
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  1754.  @GlowRiderzEntertainment  It This isn't the Old Army pictured. It's the much smaller British Bulldog. I just tried it with a dollar bill as an indicator and the only things that stick out beyond the edges of the bill are a small portion of the barrel and small part of the swell of the bird's head grip. It was built and sold as a pocket pistol, and it feels fine in a jeans pocket. It's smaller than most modern snubbies.
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  1755. There is no way in God's green earth I could complete these evolutions. Maybe 45 years ago, not today.
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  1756.  @franzschmid9079  Understood, but if someone's in the house and can find the rifle he can probably ransack the place and find the bolt. It just seems like a false sense of security.
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  1757.  @ladam836  Could be, but they still wouldn't make a profit.
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  1758.  @mavenmanion  And neither are you. I rather doubt you have the education in climate science I do yet you're willing to rant and rave about climate change. Enjoy your dark life. It will probably last longer than mine, but it will seem way longer.
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  1759. @Zoomer30 A total of 55 people died in two major accidents involving the Titan. The first, and bar worst, was in 1965 when the Titan was first being placed in service in Arkansas. A welder's torch set off fumes from hydraulic fluid being transferred to the missile in violation of safety rules written to prevent exactly this kind of accident. One crewman died in an accident in the Rock, Kanas when am oxidizer transfer line ruptured and created a toxic orange cloud. The third, also cost one life, was the Damascus accident. It was yet another violation of safety rules rather than a general fault with the Titan family. Set this against a background of 368 missiles deployed at 54 missile sites from 1961 to 1987. After retirement from military service, LGM-25C Titan II missiles were used in 108 launches of satellites as well as the Gemini manned orbital missions, all with a perfect safety record. They remained in service as long as they did because no other US missile in inventory had the ability to lift the large MIRV warheads until the long delayed and overbudget MX "Peacekeeper" finally started coming online in the mid-80'. Obsolete and dangerous? Considering the job it had to do, it had an amazing record. Replacing it was a major engineering and technological development that only highlighted how well the technology of the 60's was made to work for 25 years, and for another 20 years carrying increasingly heavy payloads into space. While any loss of life is lamented, the Titan was probably the single major weapons system that prevented the world ending up in an all out nuclear war.
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  1760. "I fart in your general direction..."
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  1761.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Bugatti, Delahaye, some Citroens, Renault Alpine, some Peugeots, Facel Vega....the list goes on.
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  1762.  @jamespfp  Indeed. I wonder what else the nazis were working that we've never found out?
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  1763.  @santiago5388  You're welcome. I've made it to 73 through some very tough times by remembering that advice. You're still young and, believe me, you have some great times ahead of you.
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  1764.  @santiago5388  That's good. The best piece of advice I ever got about how to handle troubles is try to remember your biggest worry from exactly one year ago. If you're like most of us, you've long forgotten what that was, and it's a good idea of what today's troubles will seem like a year from now.
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  1765. Why were gun decks painted on the hull as a contrasting color to the rest of the scheme. i.e, a white stripe on a black hull? Some kind of psychological warfare, or was there an operational reason I just don't get?
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  1766.  @neurofiedyamato8763  A more accurate way to look at military spending is percent of GDP rather than absolute spending. Because the US has the largest economy in the world, our military spending seems huge. On a GDP basis, the US is fourth in spending behind Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Russia, with Turkey, India, France, and China not far behind. Our naval spending over the past seven years has been flat while Russia and China have had increases of 2% and more annually. The USN has come up with some pretty bad projects, Zumwalt being a prime example, but a lot of our spending in on aircraft carriers, carrier aircraft and carrier technology, areas we we lead the world by a large margin. Looking at Russia and China, it's not hard to see why we still need to spend on new technology. Unfortunately, part of developing new technology means some stupid technology.
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  1767. Also known by the less flattering term "hulk", it was cheap way to add to barracks space for new sailors. Some also served an important purpose as a naval hospital, and these were used right up through WWII.
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  1768.  @stevevalley7835  It did get as far as several design sketches, but it was clear early on that conversion costs were going to be about 20% of her new build cost, and the naval budget just couldn't handle that. The 29 knots was trials speed in her original displacement of 16,9000 tons. By 1944, her displacement had crept up to 19,900 tons, and top speed was down to 26.1 knots. She was still useful as a fleet carrier early on in the war, when fleet speeds in general were only about 27 knots, but that changed rapidly once the Essex class, Iowa class and the Cleveland/Baltimore classes came into commision. All these ships could easily exceed 30 knots, and they became the determining factors for what ships could work with the main task forces. Ranger was still quite useful as a fast aircraft transport.
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  1769.  @Cailus3542  Musashi was the only other battleship equal to Yamato in your list. Musashi survived air attacks for over eleven hours and was still making way when flooding reached her final functioning boilers. She was only about an hour away from being able to beach herself on Sibuyan Island to become the kind of unsinkable fortress visualized for Yamato when she lost power, then capsizing and sinking. The large number of survivors gave an accurate picture of the cause of Musashi sinking, part of the reason Yamato drilled so intensively in damage control procedures before her final voyage. The large number of survivors also gave some hope an equal number from Yamato could survive to become land troops in the Philippines, even if Yamato was sunk. The goal of Yamato wasn't sailing back to Japan since she didn't have enough fuel to do that in any case. It was to do the maximum amount of damage to the the Americans before she met her fate.
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  1770. While Ten-Go itself was a failure, what it did do was confirm that the new capital ships would be carriers, not battleships. There some doubt among some admirals on both sides if a modern battleship capable of sailing and maneuvering cold be sunk solely by aircraft. This battle put that question to rest. One small correction though. The light antiaircraft guns on Yamato were 25mm rather than 23mm. Even with the huge numbers of the triple 25mm guns, the lack of a good antiaircraft direction system, particularly radar directed, made the vast majority of ammunition expended by those 25mm guns wasted. Even the best antiaircraft defenses wouldn't have saved Yamato, but better guns and better directors would have cost the USN more aircraft and pilots before the inevitable happened.
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  1771. That's an excellent question. My own take is the Bismarck would have made good her escape if not for that lucky torpedo hit. The Luftwaffe would have been up in force to protect the Bismarck. They had aircraft with the range to do it. and I think the British would have decided the chances of sinking her weren't worth risk of aerial attack. As to what use the Germans would have made of her, the biggest problem was she sustained significant damage in the battle. Could she have been repaired in Brest or some other French port? Could she have operated from French ports without ever getting to Germany? Where would ammunition have come from and her other stores? And how would she have been protected form RAF attacks? It seems no matter the results of the first battle, she would have been sunk, either in a second naval battle or by the RAF, just like her sistership. Her only value was a force in being, also just like her sistership.
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  1772. It was completely fictional. There was no British or American exploits. The whole things was made up. It's things like this that stops my brother from wanting to go to "historical" movies with me. :-)
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  1773. Nice early morning gift of this episode here in the US.
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  1774.  @j.e.v.5016  Thanks. I've always felt that the DASH helicopter was never given a fair chance to succeed by the USN. Part of it was money and part of it was naval aviators not wanting to see an alternative to their flights succeed. Sadly, nothing has changed today.
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  1775. Not the most distinguished ship to have served in the French or, perhaps, any other navy. At least the French had finally abandoned the "floating hotel" look.
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  1776.  @TheTrueAdept  I'm going to have to press X to doubt on that one. Do you have a link that supports the idea the whole of the US east coast is protected by barrier islands, more than any place IN THE WORLD?
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  1777.  @rogerwilco2  I'm not sure I buy that. It's not like the US doesn't have a long Atlantic coastline. I think the seas off Nantucket are about as rough as anything you'll find in the North Sea, as most fishermen can attest to. I sailed extensively in the Atlantic and Caribbean sides of the Windwards, and the passage between Barbados and St. Lucia had some of the roughest seas I've ever been in. I think the USN's plethora of casemate guns were just a design consideration, a crossover between the old ship of the line days and modern battleships. The more guns coming out the hull, the more powerful the ship. The USN before WWI didn't really expect to be fighting any European navy. Their designs were, to a certain extent, meant to impress South American countries, some of which were in a naval arms race with each other and the USN. The USN also had zero experience with fighting at battlecruiser speeds. Look at how quickly the RN abandoned hull mounted casemates once they had battlecruisers that could fight at speeds above 25 knots. It's also not like the USN was the only navy that had all the low and extreme mounted casemate guns. All the major navies before WWI had them, again because the more 5" to 6" guns in the hull, the better. It was only the combat experience in WWI, with trying to fight these guns at the higher speeds of modern dreadnoughts, that showed them to be largely a waste of space and displacement. As Drach said, fighting these mounts at 15-17 knots was a much different proposition than at 21-23 knots, or even higher, in the cases of RN and German battlecruisers. Casemates in general, and low and extreme mounted casemates in particular, were just leftovers from a previous warship era.
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  1778. Goodness. I slept late and find a visitor that's going to take five and a half hours of my day. Better get more coffee!!
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  1779.  @Zarcondeegrissom  The Chain Home radars operated in the HF band at 15 meters, rising to 6 meters by war's end. This was well within the shortwave broadcasting spectrum and required hugely powerful transmitters to gain sufficient range, starting out at 100 kW at the start of the war to over 1 MW by the end. You needed a building and mains power to generate that much transmitting power. Airborne radar, even at HF frequencies, required much less power since the platform was able to operate at thousands of feet compared to Chain Home towers at 350 feet. Airborne intercept (AI) and airborne surface vessel (ASV) radars were actually in some RAF aircraft at the start of the war. Even those miniaturized (for the time) sets still required a twin engine aircraft to carry them. The invention and application of the cavity magnetron allowed radio transmitters to operate in microwave ranges, thereby allow a much smaller transmitter using less power and a much smaller antenna. This was the huge revolution in airborne radar.
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  1780.  @TEHSTONEDPUMPKIN  Ironic or not, it still seems weird. I don't play either game, and all i can judge them on is their websites. Azur Lane, in particular, seems to have way more to do with the depiction of incredibly busty anime chicks than anything to do with realistic portrayals of warships.
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  1781. The Indianapolis was Roosevelt's favorite "yacht". When ever he had to travel by sea, hoe chose the Indianapolis when he could. Consequently, Indianapolis was given the best and most modern of refits and upgrades of any prewar cruiser class. She had undergone at least three major radar refits. the Indy, as she was known to her crew, had about twice the usual numbers of radio, including one of the first radio teletypes installed on a USN ship. this allowed Roosevelt and his staff to keep up with the news and issue directives while at sea. She had eight addition barrels of 40mm guns over other prewar cruisers and many more 20mm, including a number of twins. There were plans on her next refit to replace her 5"/25 DP guns with eight 5"/38 DP guns in four twin turrets. She was also due to have sonar installed but, alas, the one thing that might have saved her was still one refit away on that fateful morning of July 30, 1945. The rest of her story is too well known for me to repeat it here, but at least Roosevelt had already passed away by then so he didn't have to hear of the loss of his favorite ship. I've often wondered if the outcome for the survivors would have been different if the USN was still treating her as a VIP ship. Perhaps she would have gotten the destroyer escort Captain McVay requested, and maybe the Navy would have noticed her missing earlier and launched rescue operations before so many of her survivors died in the sea. All conjecture at this late date, of course, but history is full of these "what ifs". When rescue finally started, it was quite a heroic story in its own right. Drach, I don;t recall if you've done a video on the USS Cecil J. Doyle and her later quite famous captain, along with the PBY-5A Catalina that was the first "vessel" to engage in rescue operations. If not, it's a story well worth telling of bravery in the finest traditions of the Navy.
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  1782.  @bkjeong4302  True, but it was inevitable that someone would bring up a space battleship thingy, probably because their waifu doll was mad at them...
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  1783. This would have worked if the world of fantasy, physics, Japanese industrial capacity, and US bombing would have all changed overnight.
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  1784.  @MFitz12  I'm aware of the design specs of the Nimitz class. My point was not how long they were designed to serve but that many of them will be serving 70 years and maybe longer. You're going to use two Mexican Navy destroyers as an example of why a destroyer can't serve longer than 20 years? Both those vessels were 37 years old when purchased by Mexico. One lasted 57 years, and the very last surviving Gearing, Netzahualcóyotl , made it to 69 years, still doing useful work cruising the west coast as a training ships. She was still reliable enough that she visited San Francisco annually and Seattle every couple years until the year before her retirement in 2013. Neither of these ships ever had a comprehensive overhaul since their transfers, just normal maintenance and upkeep.
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  1785.  @shawnbauman5463  I don't find snarky backhanded attacks on the country humorous.
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  1786.  @Ron52G  No, it's not. There are still technical limitations and advances as part of history, and it's only fair game within those limitations. What if the Roman Legions had tanks? See what I mean?
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  1787.  @Luke-tm5oy  You're quite welcome. I had forgotten about this thread until I got a notification about your post. Like I said, I like the the small parts of the big battles that are often overlooked but are nonetheless really interesting. I just find the idea of two bedraggled German pilots wandering into a Norwegian village trying to look like tourists hilarious. :-)
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  1788.  @AdamMGTF  Thanks very much. I enjoy these little corners of history and like telling people about them. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
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  1789.  @Sturminfantrist  No problem, and you're right, Goering made sure he kept a tight grip on all German aviation. The pilots and crews of float planes aboard the capital ships and raiders, even though they were nominally a part of the Luftwaffe, were under operational control of Kriegsmarine officers. Since flying float planes took a considerable amount of shipboard training and service, pilots came to identify more with the navy than the air force. Some of them were instrumental in establishing the Marineflieger after the war.
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  1790. I'm completely biased, given my dad's PT boat service, but two of these boats are preserved in excellent condition. One is inside a museum Germantown, Tennessee. The PT-617, an 80 ft Elco boat, has been restored to her late WWII appearance with some parts cut open so it's easy to see the below decks spaces.The other is the best restored boat still capable of getting underway, the PT-658. She is the most authentic example of a Pacific war 78 foot Elco boat, the most common type produced. The 658 boat is docked in Portland, Oregon. You'd have to check their summer schedule for 2020 when their guest cruises are scheduled. It's an hour or so ride around the harbor and well worth the cost.
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  1791. Did rolling back the Windows update work for you? Whatever did it, at least you were able to get the upload done. Hooray!
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  1792.  @CTXSLPR  Thanks, that's the location of another part a US ship used in the nuclear test program that my sleep deprived brain couldn't remember. The turret was removed the USS Louisville in 1957 as it was being scrapped and shipped to the test site. I was lucky enough to get on one of the first tours in 2005 and saw the Louisville's turret, although I didn't know it belonged to the Louisville at the time. The damage for her last kamikaze hit was still plainly visible. The Sedan Crater was certainly the highlight of the tour. Too bad they don't allow cameras. I didn't realize the agency had also stockpiled surplus naval rifles. You must have an interesting job. :-)
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  1793. Completely due to the treaty. Cruisers were limited to a maximum gun size of 8" and a 10,000 ton limit. Any ship with more tonnage or larger guns was counted against the battleship allocations, obviously something the navies wanted to avoid.
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  1794.  @s.31.l50  The Achilles, although commissioned as an RN ship, was always part of the New Zealand divons and crewed mostly by Kiwis. She was formally transferred to the Royal New Zealand Navy in September, 1941. She was transferred to the Indian Navy in 1948, serving there until 1978.
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  1795. It was still under renovation 2007 when I was in Hungary. I'm glad to see the restoration is now complete. Looks like excellent workmanship.
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  1796.  @Charlesputnam-bn9zy  I'll have to look this up as well, but I think the USCG was put under USN control at the time of the establishment of the Greenland Ice Patrol in 1940. Regardless, USCG armed cutters have always been classed as warships, subject to the same rules of the sea and warfare as other warships.
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  1797. The strange thing about the IJN and its use of AA guns was they had one of the best heavy AA guns, the Type 98 100 mm gun from 1940 onwards, but they armed only a few classes ships by 1945, the majority being diverted to land AA use. Prewar, they had purchased British 2 pdr pom pom guns in several batches, with at least 500 examples being on hand by 1935. These were used in single and twin mounts. The Japanese considered them only useful in smaller ships like subchasers and minesweepers after 1935, judging their 25 mm Hotchkiss design to be superior. They had also purchased examples of German 20 mm and 37 mm guns as well as Oerlikon 20 mm types. They captured at least one hundred fifty 40 mm Bofors guns after the Fall of Singapore. Even more of a windfall, they had captured another sixteen examples of the Dutch 40 mm, the most fully developed Bofors guns in the world in 1940. It's not a matter of the Japanese only having 25 mm guns, it was a matter of the IJNs laser focus on torpedoes and torpedo warfare. The Japanese economy had been shattered by the Great Depression and the military spending required by the war in China. Given their limited resources, the IJN rightly decided that having the world's best torpedo, among the best torpedo mounts, and large destroyers and cruisers carrying lots of the Type 93 torpedoes was a war winning strategy. The results of such thinking in 1942 through early 1943 showed that they weren't wrong, especially combined with the IJN's almost obsessive training in night fighting. However, that was only true for surface warfare. Even though the Japanese had been among the first navies to understand the theory and use of aircraft carrier, they developed very little understanding of how to defend against the enemy's aircraft. Their limited resources didn't allow them to develop three or four different types of AA weapons, so the decision was made to mass produce the type they already had and understood how to produce. After 1942, they knew the 25 mm gun was marginal at best and started working on reverse engineering the Bofors and Oerlikon guns. By 1944, their industrial infrastructure was being cut to ribbons by US bombardments, the merchant fleet they needed to bring in steel and other critical materials was increasingly on the bottom of the sea, and they were running out of time. From postwar US reports, they had working prototypes of Bofors and Oerlikon guns ready for production, but not until June, 1945, and they didn't have the material needed for mass production in any case. It was the IJN's narrow vision of how naval warfare would develop in what became WWII that left them without an effective AA gun, not they couldn't have developed one.
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  1798.  @paulhinds4840  You lost me on this. They were designed as scout cruisers with a secondary flotilla leader role. Their main role was always antiaircraft protection for the fleet. They were fitted with sonar, depth charge tracks, and depth charge projectors for a short period of time in early 1942, with the projectors removed by June, 1942 to save weight in a ship of already marginal stability, only retaining two depth charge tracks. The only two lost were because of bad luck being hit by Long Lance torpedoes and gunfire from superior ships. They were never built for a surface ship to ship combat role against anything other than destroyers. Their value as AA cruisers was shown by the Juneau class. They were never fitted with any antisubmarine equipment but had their secondary antiaircraft battery much improved compared to the Atlanta class. There's no question that USN found them far more valuable for their antiacraft role than any antisubmarine role.
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  1799.  @bcoop1701  My understanding is the I-19, along with a few other of the Type B-1 class, were outfitted to fire the Type 93, and that the torpedoes fired in the salvo against the Wasp were Type 93's. I'm going from memory, however, so I could be wrong.
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  1800. The Allies were very lucky the Japanese didn't have radar. A long range shot at 32 knots could travel 25 miles. A long range shot depended on optical spotting, but even their excellent optics were only good out to about 15 miles. They had to launch long range attacks based on where the enemy vessels were last seen, generally less than 15 miles away. That meant using a lot of math and experience to set a long range course, and a lot of luck about actually hitting something. The Japanese actually hoped they were attacked by a large fleet, since a failure to hit the first ships in the line still meant there was a enough range left to hit ships in the secondary line. If the Japanese had radar or developed homing technology, the Type 93 would have had much better success.
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  1801.  @chrisbruce5711  Olympia was a protected cruiser, not a battleship. Next time, learn something about a ship before you comment.
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  1802.  @blackcorp0001  No homo, but his voice really does sound smoother with the new mike.
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  1803. Yes, and so has navy ship designations. In an earlier time, ships like the Daring and Spruance classes would have been given their proper designations as light cruisers. However, it's much easier to extract money our of Parliament or Congress to build some destroyers than it is to build cruisers, and easier to get the money to build a "through deck cruiser" than it is an aircraft carrier.
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  1804. The Italian Navy had quite a large submarine fleet at the beginning of the war, variously estimated at 105-112 subs of all types. If those, 32 were based in France after 1940 as the passage through the the Strait of Gibraltar were too dangerous for the large and slow to dive submarines. They contributed quite a bit to the sinking of allied ships, with 665,000 tons sunk. They also sank 18 convoy escorts so the numbers weren't bad for a fleet that never had more than about 23 subs active at any one time. SEveral of the large long range submarines made successful voyages to and back from the East Indies carrying vital wartime cargoes like rubber and quinine. The Italian submarines were much less successful in the Med as the relatively large and noisy submarines were either caught on the surface or sunk by British destroyers and sloops.
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  1805.  @themadhammer3305  Many merchant vessels could operate as ad hoc carriers, but their ability to withstand battle damage would be a real issue. Any ship built to merchant standards lacks the subdivisions and damage control facilities of a ship constructed to naval standards. As long as the carrier was kept out of the range of the enemy, it all works. If the merchant carrier is exposed to determined attack, losing a lot of men and material along with your ship rises to near certainty.
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  1806. Japan forcing a stalemate in the Pacific has two reason why it wouldn't have happned. The first is American public opinion. Much more so than with Germany, the American public was seething with anger about Pearl Harbor. They wanted revenge, and just fighting to a stalemate would never have been an acceptable solution. Germany had the advantage of a large population of first or second generation German immigrants in the US. There was no single event, much less a sneak attack, that set off the same kind of anger Americans had toward Japan. Combine that with longstanding racial animus towards the Japanese and the population just wouldn't have stood for some kind of negotiated peace. Secondly, a Pacific stalemate assumes the US production machine would have just shut off, or that Japan could have somehow sunk more ships than the US could have produced. Neither assumption is true, but both would have to be true to induce a settlement. By the start of 1943, Japan was already being drowned in a growing tide of new US ships and aircraft. We had barely touched the manpower we could muster with total mobilization. No. there was zero chance of a stalemate in the Pacific
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  1807. I've read all sorts of numbers for this supposed stockpile of avgas in Japan in advance of invasion but I've been able to find no real sources to back them up. Most of it seems to come from various Japanese propaganda outlets to reassure the population and make the allies think they were better supplied with fuel than they really were. By early 1945, Japan was desperate for 92 octane leaded fuel that can't imagine the Army or Navy letting large stocks of it sit untouched in some kind of reserve. I've written this off to Tokyo Rose type propaganda until someone comes up with a real source. Given the amount of storage needed for this kind of reserve, there should have been something written about it if it really existed. There's a very interesting paper written by a Japanese economics professor, Munehiro Miwa, who has specialized in WWII production of aviation gas in Japan. His paper is at http://www.worldbhc.org/files/full%20program/A5_B5_MunehiroAviationGasolineTechnologyTransfer.pdf. He details a way Japan may have been able to produce more and higher quality avgas if they had accepted the technology transfer available from Germany instead of insisting that Japanese methods be used. The twin fatal flaws of "Not Invented Here" and the services not working together doomed many possible solutions to problems during the war.
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  1808. According to my dad's diary, the crews of his PT squadron got a full day's instruction on damage control on May 14 or 15 (the ink has run so I'm not sure of the exact date), 1944 at Mios Woendi , the largest PT base in New Guinea, and the only one with full repair facilities. The Navy flew in damage controlmen instructors and displays on damage control on two C-47s (actually, R4D's in Navy parlance). Attendance was brisk since every guy who completed the course got two beers after supper. Most of the guys, although they paid attention, didn't really think they'd use much of the training since PTs that were hit generally either rapidly sank or were able to limp back to base. The training turned out to be more valuable than the Navy could have imagined. The USS Kalk (DD-611) was attacked by Japanese aircraft on June 12 directly offshore from and in full view from Mois Wendi. It was hit by one bomb that damage the torpedoes, causing a major explosion with many casualties. Every crew at base ran to their boats and roared out to the Kalk to assist, including my dad's boat. The base CO organized a train of boats to remove the wounded from Kalk while other guys clambered on board and set to work, grabbing everything available to start plugging holes. Two of the boats sped back to base to load several portable fire pumps, and those boats off loaded some pumps and used the others to fight the fires onboard Kalk from their decks. The explosion scattered torpedoes around the deck, and who better than PT Boat men to know how to detach the warheads and make them safe. After several hours, the fires were out, Kalk was no longer listing, and she was able to retire to Hollandia for emergency repairs. Some PT boats crews remained on board to fill in for her wounded crew, and she was escorted to Hollandia by four more PTs. Sometimes trainings work out even better than planned!
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  1809.  @lfbq1935  Makes perfect sense to me. Investing in air independent subs rather than nukes and a creditable surface fleet fits in more with Brazil's needs as the largest country in South America. Nuclear subs and carriers aren't a lot different in terms of real naval need than the vast amounts of money spent on battleships at the turn of the last century.
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  1810. I'll join in on offering both sizes and letting the customer decide. I don't think a shipping delay is that big of a deal.
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  1811. The other problem with commerce raiding in a conventional war today is the much faster speed and greater size of the most important merchant ships compared to previous years. Most container ships cruise at 22-24 knots, and some carrying priority cargo at over 25 knots. Even the huge T1 supertankers can cruise at 16.5 knots, and their gigantic size (1246 feet overall, over 500,000 tons, laden) would make them exceptionally difficult to sink. Combine faster speeds and the much larger size of almost all merchant ships today would mean a submarine would have its work cut out for it.
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  1812.  @Achates72  Yes, you're right, they were Mark 8 torpedoes. However, my point wasn't the type of torpedoes, only that any ship taking a significant hit in her torpedo racks is liable to a huge explosion, a fate Stewart was lucky to escape.
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  1813. How were orders passed to the gunner's mates on ships during the age of sail. I assume the noise and smole as a result of 40 or 50 cannon firing at once must have made it impossible to do it by voice. Was there some system of semaphores, horns, what? There must have been a system for firing only certain guns rather than full broadsides.
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  1814. 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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  1815. 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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  1816.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Firstly, the Wildcat and Fulmar were airplanes designed for different roles. The Fulmar was a typical two seat light bomer and dive bomber of the period, later to roles expanded into reconnaissance and observation. The second crew member and relatively spacious rear cabin allowed the installation of radios, and the Fulmar was able to radio back detailed sightings of enemy forces. That was a nearly impossible task with the single seat fighters of the early war period. Secondly, the Wildcat just wasn't available in July, 1940, when the Fulmar went into service. The FAA recognized the Wildcat was a better fighter, but Grumman was struggling fill a French order for 100 aircraft, a Greek order for 30, a Belgian order for 10 more, plus USN orders for at least 200. Those were huge numbers in early 1940. The Martlet MK 1, which were those other orders taken into British use after the fall of those countries, were useless for carrier operation due to non-folding wings. The FAA had ordered 100 MK II's, but it took Grumman almost eight months to perfect the Sto-Wing system, so the first carrier capable aircraft didn't get into service until August, 1941. From July, 1940 to August, 1941, the only monoplane sort of fighter available, other than a small number of Sea Hurricanes, was the Fulmar. It was either take the Fulmar or try to fight with Gloster Sea Gladiators. You fight a war with you have, not with what you want.
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  1817.  @phinix250  So this some kind of fictional 40 mm minigun? I'm sorry, I'm just not a war gamer. If you're using my figures, remember that those are in WWII dollars. A dollar from 1943 is worth about $39.00 today, so each round would cost about 19 times more today.
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  1818. Part of why I like history is pondering the what if's. What if those pilots and crews were on the MS Sea Witch instead of the USS Langley? What if the 27 crated P-40's were able to be assembled before the Japanese overran Tjilatjap? What if they could have flown in support of the ADBA task forces? Probably, not much. We needed a carrier with dive and torpedo bombers. We needed the submarines, of which we had about 20 in the general area, to have functional torpedos. We needed the Dutch to have better trained and equipped troops. The most important thing we needed was less of a defeatist attitude. The US viewed the Netherlands East Indies as way too far away to be a tactical issue. The British were tied up trying to save Singapore. The Dutch knew they couldn't hold an area as large as the NEI with what they had in the way of forces. The Australians were trying to fight off the Japanese for the purpose of saving Australia, not the NEI. The Pearl Harbor debacle and the Singapore debacle demoralized the US and British leadership, and the Japanese seemed to be a race of supermen instead of the weak midgets we had envisioned them. It's really hard to imagine how dark the dark days before Midway really were.
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  1819.  @gregorywright4918  I'm not sure about SAP rounds, but I've never heard of AP rounds made for these guns. They had HC rounds for shore bombardment, and there were a number of mods made to the rounds from the mid-30's forward, but I don't know the details.
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  1820.  @Hardcase_Kara  Perhaps, but the problem of crewing and ammunition supplies remains. She hasn't been forgotten by the Navy. She has a memorial at Pearl Harbor with a concrete walkway that leads to the front of the ship. It's certainly not a memorial like that of the Arizona, but it's probably about right considering she was no longer a battleship when sunk. I think the Utah has less of presence in the public mind since the Navy took pains to describe her as a mere auxiliary at the time of the attack to decrease the impact of the sinking on public morale.
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  1821. I've never read anything from any naval expert that the South Carolinas weren't "real" dreadnoughts. Do you have a link for your assertion?
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  1822. Indeed, proper bunking and messing facilities, starting with many war built ships, has been one of the biggest changes in Navy life. Now we have ships where the privacy of bunks, mess decks that look rather like a restaurant instead of just long tables, and sufficient space for recreation has become part of the planning for all new ships now. All those things help the crew feel more like humans and less like numbers. However, I think the most important change of the past 75 years has been effective whole ship air conditioning. Having spent a lot of time sailing in the tropics. trying to stay effective in a non-air conditioned ship becomes nearly impossible the more time you spend in the tropics. My dad's description of his time on PT boats is positively horrifying. He'd regularly pass out in the engine room from heat exhaustion. Since he was the only motor machinist mate, the boat couldn't answer to the helm without him. They'd drag him out the hatch, pour seawater over him until he'd revived, and down he went again. This would happen a couple times during a patrol. There's no doubt in my mind that he'd rather have a/c than a South Sea maiden in his bunk. :-)
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  1823.  @blueeyeswhitedragon9839  I've seen these kinds of figures before and wonder where they come from. China and and Japan own about an equal amount of our foreign debt at $1.1 trillion each. Our entire national debt is about $22 trillion, of which about 70% is owned by US nationals. China's foreign debt is only about $6.8, about half of which we own. As shown by recent trade talks, we have much more leverage over China than vice versa.
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  1824. @Jurassic Aviator You keep jumping from one subject to another when you never wrote about the first subject. You're making a lot of rash assumptions on how the US would fight China. Any shooting war would involve strike aircraft and missiles with nuclear bombs and warheads. The US has the ability destroy any Chinese air or naval base within 1500 miles of the coast while lying 800 to 1,000 miles off the coast. Assuming any Chinese aircraft survived the first strike, the combined PLAAF and PLANAF could only strike back with obsolescent bombers that have enough range to make it to the fleet. It would be a suicide mission for those pilots. This wouldn't be WWII 2.0. It would be WWIII.
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  1825. @Jurassic Aviator Look, you can't just keep moving the goalposts to have things come out the way you want. You were just mentioning anti shipping roles. Now you say the PLAN has the ability to attack land targets from ships while surviving in hostile airspace? You should just sit this one out until you do some more reading and research into PLAN capabilities.
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  1826. Another factor that influenced the US Navy's decision not to armor the deck was the belief that their damage control procedures and training were so good that most damage to a carrier could be fought with non-fatal results. Given that only four fleet carriers were sunk in WWII, there was reason to believe that the damage control theory worked The Yorktown may have repairable if not sunk by the U-168 while under tow, so it may have been just three fleet carriers lost with some luck.
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  1827.  @bushyfromoz8834  It was even worse. The captain ordered that only the fire control radar be used and the only once every half hour. As you say, he was under the mistaken impression the the Japanese could home in on his radar. The interval between the half hour sweep was when the Japanese snuck through. You're thinking of Admiral Samuel Morison, the Navy's official WWII historian. He wrote in his book that an RAAF Hudson not only didn't report the sighting of the Japanese by radio, they waited until they landed and had tea before they made the report. It was totally false. They reported it by radio but, getting no response,the turned around, landed at Milne Bay, and made tne report in person, The Navy was trying to cover for their incompetence in not forwarding the report to Guadalcanal. The Navy did apologize...in 2014. The County class were stood in good stead by their massive freeboard. The Canberra took more damage from the USN in an attempt to scuttle her and possibly put one torpedo into her by mistake during the battle. I'm not aware of any major damage to the Cumberland.
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  1828.  @bushyfromoz8834  I've never known what to call the First Battle of Savo Island. Two radar equipped destroyers sitting right in the path of Mikawa's force and they don't pick him up. Another destroyer get within a mile of his force and doesn't see. No one thinks unidentified aircraft flying over the US transport anchorage is any big deal. Friendly fire incidents galore, a captain fleeing with his cruiser rather than fighting...I guess a huge cluster f**k would be the best description. As Admiral Turner wrote. our main problem was "lethargy of mind", the idea that we were superior to the Japanese, and we wouldn't have to expend much effort to defeat her. If nothing else, this battle taught us we had a long way to go.
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  1829.  @Cragified  As I wrote, it seems a Brooklyn could take one hit that tore off the bow but any further hits, as in the Helena, would doom the ship. Very few ships are able to take multiple hits and survive, but the Brooklyns clearly had a weakness exposed with bow hits. Helena was the only standard type light cruiser sunk during the war, the other two being anti aircraft cruisers. Like most warship sinkings, something has to wrong. Inexperienced crew, poor watchkeeping, not keeping Condition II when in enemy waters, inadequate damage control, and sometimes just being stupid. Bad luck and being overwhelmed by superior forces also plays a role, but just following the rules has prevented many a vessel from being attacked or sinking.
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  1830.  @bushyfromoz8834  You're quite welcome. Yes, the loss of the Perth and Houston in the Sundra Strait in those pre-radar days showed the well trained Japanese ability to night fight and the use of their superb torpedoes. The RAN and USN had no night fighting experience and relatively short range and unreliable torpedoes. It was to cost us many ships and lives before we learned.
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  1831. Useless ship? And it's Leander class.
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  1832. Hooray. This time the episode hit on time change Sunday. That means it now "only" 3:45 instead of 4:45. I feel so much more awake than I would have without that extra hour. :-)
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  1833.  @diestormlie  It must have been something along these lines. I know they had issues with the the width of the Kiel Canal. I don't know if the H class battleships were designed to conform to that width or if they had abandoned the concept by then,
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  1834. The Gato/Balao classes were by far the best tropical submarines of WWII. There were just no other class of submarines that had amenities like air conditioning, food freezers and refrigerators, access to adequate medical care onboard, individual bunks for each crewman, heads that generally worked, and enough water making capability that each crewmember could get a five minute weekly shower. Most had galleys and mess decks where sailors could eat in shifts at real tables rather than at their bunks. Those spaces also used for recreation, and late war additions were a refrigerated scuttlebutt, or water fountain, and a miniature gedunk, or ship's store, that even had an ice cream machine. A few admirals even worried that all this gold plating would make submariners too soft. Still, it's hard to argue with the fact that USN submariners were healthier than their opposite numbers in other navies, better fed, better rested, and more alert. All of this contributed to USN subs being the primary force that swept the Japanese naval and merchant fleet from the seas, sinking 540,192 tons of Japanese naval vessels, and 4,779,902 tons of merchant shipping during the course of the war, the total accounting for 54.6% of all Japanese vessel losses. Just to add another indicator of what some of these fleet submarines could become, six were converted to "gunboats" in 1945. The number surface targets worth a torpedo was nearly zero. Japan was carrying troops and supplies in sampans and junks, and their draft was so shallow they couldn't be torpedoed. These six boats, including Ronquil (SS-396), had their torpedo load reduced from 24 to 10, and the space freed up was used for deck gun ammunition. Two 5"/25 guns were mounted fore and aft, and a Mark 51 fire control director was added to a stub mast on the sail. The Japanese small craft did carry 25 mm and 37 mm guns for self defense, and the addition of the director and a small plotting table in the conning tower enabled the submarine to shell a sampan or shore facility from a safe range and have a better chance of scoring hits. She also carried two 40 mm guns and, depending on the skipper, two 20 mm guns and between two and four .30 caliber machine guns. They were used to finish off a ship already damaged by the main battery since the boat only carried 150 5" rounds. One sub even mounted a 12 cell 5" rocket launcher for use in shore bombardment. There are reports of using abandoned and derelict sampans for target practice, with each member of the crew that could be spared getting their chance to get familiar with the 40's and 20's and just generally having fun with the .30 machine guns. Some of the crew were trained for boarding and got the chance to try out their Thompsons, .45 pistols, and M-1 carbines. While it does sound like a good time was had by all, these boats would have been fearsome opponents for what remained of Japanese surface vessels if not for the events of August, 1945.
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  1835. Yes, due to her slow speed and lack of torpedo tubes, a Fletcher could have dashed in to deliver a torpedo attack and dashed back out before the gunners on the Väinämöinen class ships could have delivered an effective counter attack. Given the results from her sistership hitting a floating mine, the sinking wouldn't have taken long.
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  1836. @Bill Carson I think you're trolling, but the residents and governments of Spain and Portugal might have objected to Hitler trying annex them. Given that Gibraltar is a British possession, I'm sure that wouldn't have gone well.
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  1837.  @standard_gauge  Read the service history of Task Force 19 and the occupation of Iceland six months before Pearl Harbor. TF19 included two battleships (Arkansas, New York) and two Brooklyn class cruisers (Nashville, Brooklyn) as well as nine of our most modern destroyers. The destroyers for bases agreement was signed ten months before TF19 started operating. While the US wasn't technically "loaning" and ships to the RN, TF19 operated under the "suggestions" of the RN in Iceland.
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  1838. I don't really understand the question about the Avengers at Midway. Is he asking about the Avengers that flew from Midway somehow alerting Hornet about the location of the Japanese carrier of the Striking Force? This would have been in violation of the rules of radio silence unless the aircraft was specifically tasked with finding the carriers and reporting to the fleet of their location. Hornet was holding at a point about 325 miles from Midway. Midway Avengers would have had to find the Japanese carrier and then been able to radio Hornet. Avengers had two radio sets, one VHF and one HF. VHF sets were uncommon in other aircraft simply because there wasn't room or weight available for them in smaller planes like the Dauntless. They were also in short supply at the time of Midway, so Avengers were about the only single engine aircraft that had them. Regardless, a VHF set at 325 miles wouldn't have had the range to reach Hornet. They were good for about 125 miles at 15,000 feet, with maybe 200 miles on a good day with some kind of atmospheric ducting going on. That leaves HF radio. It would have had the range under ideal conditions. but transmissions were in Morse code. The radio operator had to first convert a message from plain language to Morse, then to the security code of the day, then transmit the message. Receiving was the same thing in reverse. It was a slow and tedious process, and one prone to errors as individual characters were covered by atmospheric noise, and HF was very prone to that kind of noise. If the receiving operator noticed the error, the snder would have to repeat the whole message. Sometimes errors weren't noticed because a vital piece of something like the lat/long got copied wrong, and that error just got passed along. That's how the Hornet's air group ended u in the wrong place to begin with. Even if everything went perfectly, Hornet would have had to rebroadcast the location and hope all the planes got it, a highly unlikely happenstance. In mid-1942, pilots relied a lot mor on the wingman and what the squadron commander was doing rather than worrying about the radio.
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  1839. Since I'm an amateur radio operator, I imagine I have more than the average amounts of wires and cables running around. My cat Marty does indeed enjoy chewing things from my shoes to some of my cables, but you can train a cat not to do that. Just a spray bottle of water works wonders since Marty doesn't like getting hit in the face with a stream of water. He learned withing a month of him coming here to leave wires and cable around, and I can't imagine a cat aboard ship couldn't also be trained the same way. My impression is that current naval brass would rather pander to the small number of sailors that have a cat allergy serious enough to interfere with performance compared to the overwhelming number of sailors whose morale is improved by having a cat around to pet and play with. Especially with warships that now spend months at sea, having a buddy around who's not in a uniform is kind of a big deal.
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  1840. I'll second that motion. Just twentieth century mutinies could occupy a full hour. Unfortunately for Drach, this one would require a lot more research into events the navies of those countries would best like forgotten.
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  1841. Holy cow, three hours? Time to lay in more coffee.
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  1842.  @whatsoperadoc7050  Thanks very much. I have a hard time stopping myself, so I guess I'll wear out another keyboard. :-)
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  1843.  @paulmanson253  Indeed. I suspect many of the younger readers here have no idea what a nun is or why our knuckles were involved in getting an education. While I didn't much like it at the time, I know now that the work of Sister Margaret and many other nuns are the reasons for whatever writing ability I have now. [Edited to correct grammar and spelling mistakes that would make Sister Margaret reach for her ruler]
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  1844.  @tyronedlisle4412  I don't think we were "preparing" for war with the UK or Canada. War Plan Red was used more as the base for Naval War College war games than any serious plan for war. We certainly made no moves like fortifying the Canadian border if we thought there was a serious threat of war. Every navy develops war games to exercise staff officers in responding to what we'd now call asymmetric threats. War Plan Orange, on the other hand, was a serious plan for war with Japan, and that included fortifying possessions and moving to troops and ships to meet the perceived threat.
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  1845.  @DanielWW2  True, although, counting the RCAN Tribals, there were still seven in service in July 1943, so enough for at least a small flotilla.To be technical, ten of the sixteen RN Tribals were already at the bottom by the time the first Fletchers would have shown up in European waters so there wouldn't have been much of a flotilla either way.
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  1846.  @seanmac1793  No you're not going crazy. The Mark 27, commonly called the "Cutie" by sub crews, was a development of the Mark 24 FIDO for launching from submarine tubes. My mind apparently got the coronavirus for a short period of time while I was typing. :-) The Cutie was essentially the FIDO with some wooden guides stud mounted on the torpedo body so it would be centered in the tube.
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  1847. I think you meant these were meant to serve on the Black Sea. I wonder what the plan was to stop a couple of small craft with heavily armed troops sneaking up on this thing and just boarding and capturing it? At six knots, it's not like it could outrun anything larger than a rowboat.
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  1848. OK, Sempill sounds like a fascist, a Japanophile, and someone deeply in debt who needed money. He was protected in part because prosecuting him would reveal the British had broken the Japanese codes and in part because of the class and noble system at that time. It's one reason why I'm glad that kind of system doesn't exist in the US. I suspect, like most good diplomats, that he also knw about skeletons in the closets of those who might have had him prosecuted, including Churchill. That, however, is only guess. What none of this shows is exactly what kind of secrets he was passing to the Japanese and how damaging to the British and/or the US. The Japanese had very little interest in British aircraft after about 1930 beyond flying boats. They knew the US was their real enemy and the one they would have to defeat before they ever took on the British. The Japanese developed carrier aircraft far superior to anything Britain possed in the 30's. There were very few British FAA fighters that were superior to the Zero in the whole of the war, and a majority of planes were either things like the ancient Swordfish, or US aircraft like the Wildcat, Avenger, and Corsair. Actually, I can't think of a single British aircraft type on British carriers of the Pacific Fleet. They were all American made. I don't think information passed on to the Japanese in 1941, the latest year he could have had access to secret data on British naval aircraft, would have been have much help to the Japanese.
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  1849. Excellent explanation why one battleship sometimes emerged from 20 or more designs, even some that look ridiculous today. Also a good explanation for why theBrtish wan'ted to hold to, or even lower, treaty tonnages for all ships covered by the treaties. not just battleships. I don't think the British ever took the Japanese navy seriously, or understood the threat they were to their Pacific colonies. I think they thought the Pacific was the US Med, and we would handle things there. Ultimately, of course, we did, but not for almost three years, and not before Britain lost everything but Australia and New Zealand. It's said the the fall of Singapore nearly gave Churchill a stroke, and he thought it was worst British defeat in the history of the Empire.The British Pacific fleet arrived only in late 1944, when naval power became less important in the war with Germany, and the US was beginning to liberate former British territories with no care if the British got them back again. The BPF served as what was hoped to be a trump card against US territorial appetites and a power in being to put down those pesky attempts of the colonies to become independent. Once again, the British seemed to have no idea how radically the tides of politics had changed since 1939. The BPF was costly and never had any real influence on regaining the colonies nor the outcome of the war.
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  1850. Ray must have been one tough guy to make it to 98 with an obviously severe case of COPD and shortness of breath. I'm 75 and oxygen dependent due to COPD. While my shortness of breath isn't as bad as Ray's was, it is progressive, and I have little doubt I won't be around in another 23 years. As Ray said, sometimes it comes down to good old fashioned luck, and I'm happy he had a an overload of that. RIP, Brother, There are few who will step forward to take your place.
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  1851.  @f1b0nacc1sequence7  I don't think more people know that the Japanese had a way out of a resource war almost all the way to Pearl Harbor. The US was offering them all the oil they could buy and all the scrap steel they could buy. All they had to do was agree to halt operations in China and agree to leave China at some point in the hazy future. If Japan had accepted and called off expansion in China for even a year and a half, they could have stockpiled all the oil they'd ultimately use through the end of 1944. They really weren't doomed until the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor and Manila.
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  1852.  @f1b0nacc1sequence7  Before the US or Britain entered the war? I don't think they were doomed then.
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  1853.  @WALTERBROADDUS  They did manage to bring the Heinkel DB 601A engine into production, and they were used in the Ki-61 "Tony" fighter. It was the only inline, fuel injected engine used by the Japanese, and it completely outclassed the P-40, and was at least equal to the P-38. The problem wasn't a lack of R&D. The Germans supplied the Japanese with examples and engineering drawings of almost all their advanced engines. The problem was manufacturing tolerances. The DB 601A already required close tolerances to achieve the standard 1100 horsepower, but the Japanese made the problem worse by shaving off weight wherever possible and boosting the engine to 1159 horsepower. After 1943, the supply of steel needed for correct heat treating and tolerances started to dry up, and Japanese companies like Kawasaki just didn't have the machine tools and expert machinists need for the close tolerances required. It wasn't so much that they needed German help to design better engines, they needed better materials and machines to build them.
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  1854.  @WildBillCox13  I know. I've been a pleasure sailor for decades, but that picture still terrifies me. Connie's waves were actually measured by a seabee crew on one of the transports while the waves during Cobra were only estimated. There were three waves taller than 70 feet, with the tallest being a few tenths less than 75 feet. Saying Connie was worse than Cobra was probably the wrong way to out it. Connie was just better documented as being possibly worse.
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  1855. The Atlanta class only made sense until the Cleveland class started to be turned out like pancakes at a church breakfast. The Clevelands carried as many 5"/38 guns as an Atlanta (once they lost their wing turrets), carried twelve 6" guns that were much more effective as a surface weapon, and was able to carry a better light AA battery and a full range of directors before the the Clevelands also ran up against the same stability issues as the Atlantas. The designers of the Atlanta class were operating in an environment a full two years before the Clevelands, and that two year period from peacetime to total war, was somewhat like the progress made in maybe ten years of normal peacetime designs. No one in mid-1941 could foresee that the USN would be turning out light cruisers at a rate that was equal to destroyers in many navies. It's a mistake to evaluate the Atlanta class in isolation in the 1943 and on period. They were a reasonable design in 1940.
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  1856.  @Drachinifel  That was my impression as well. As I'm sure you know, there was a lot of politics involved with the UP program. Churchill, as First Lord Of the Admiralty, was influenced by his friend and political ally, Frederick Lindemann, to develop this aerial minefield weapon, and Churchill rushed the UP program through and more or less ordered they be mounted on capital ships, including Hood. It was an ineffective weapon, and could be dangerous to the ship firing it, since nothing stopped a low altitude barrage from drifting back on to the ship that fired it if the wind shifted. I guess the UP keeps showing up in stories of the Hood because a launcher was observed to be on fire just before the massive explosion. Churchill's political enemies were only too happy at the time to blame the UP for the Hood's sinking since it damaged Churchill's reputation and provided a reason for why the Hood blew up.
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  1857.  @andreww2098  That's like saying a Daisy air rifle uses compressed air and has a projectile so they are sort of the same. While a torpedo is launched with compressed air, the comparison then fails, since a torpedo is self propelled once it reaches a certain distance form the launch tube, The projectile from a "dynamite" gun totally depends on the force of the compressed air for locomotion. That's why "dynamite" guns faded quickly from the scene while we still use torpedoes.
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  1858. Heinrich Hertz was already at work on a primitive radar in 1887. If the Kriegsmarine had bothered to recognize and support Hertz's work, there's a good change the German could have had a working surface search radar with a range of ten or so miles by the time of Jutland. One can only imagine the results of that.
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  1859.  @glennricafrente58  I don't know that Drach really needs anyone's help, but I'd be happy to give it a shot if asked.
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  1860. There really was no diminution of lifesaving capacity on USN combat ships during the war. There were less rafts visible on board for a couple reasons. The first is the standard raft went for 10 persons to 25 over the course of the war. It was found that the larger rafts increased survivability due to its increased ability to carry supplies, and having enough men on board that a viable command structure usually emerged. Good life raft leaders were the single most important factor for crew survival. Secondly, rafts were carried in less visible place. They were mounted in three and four raft stacks on the turrets of battleships and cruisers, and more were mounted horizontally on deck in any available space rather than being mounted on the blank sides of the superstructure as was common in the early war period. As one might imagine, a vertically mounted raft was much more subject to battle damage than horizontally mounted rafts somewhat protected by other parts of the superstructure.
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  1861.  @joehayes9933  LOL. The Japanese never considered a plan complete without five different scenarios that required splitting the fleet. Even the Aleutian invasion was a good example. They decided to try three things at once. Attack Dutch Harbor, but without enough planes to do much damage, while landing on Attu and Kiska. I know some historians say it was a diversion, but I don't think so. It was part of their overly complicated plan to eventually take the west coast and knock out the bases and shipyards there. They had nowhere near the resources to do that, but that never stopped the Japanese from coming up with yet another plan.
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  1862.  @joehayes9933  I'd argue the Japanese Naval General Staff got set back on its heels by the Doolittle Raid. That really started the ball rolling on Midway and the Aleutians as land bases useful to attack US carriers. The Battle of the Coral Sea, while a tactical victory for Japan, showed how poorly naval antiaircraft fire and their planes were integrated. It was the beginning of them losing pilots they couldn't replace. The Midway and Aleutian operations were hastily planned to extend the defensive line westward to prevent another attack on the home islands. The problem for the Japanese was they always planned operations for how the Americans were supposed to act rather than how they could act. They also had an unrealistic belief in the their superiority over the Americans. For example, they believed the naval codes were uncrackable when a realistic assessment of previous American movements should have set off alarm bells. It was our ability to read their messages that was a critical aspect of Midway.
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  1863. The R class, and British destroyers in general, didn't carry 3" guns as their main battery. The R class had three 4" Mark IV guns while the USN had four 4"/50 guns. They both had an elevation of 20 degrees in WWI, but the 4"/50 far outranged the Mark IV guns at 15,920 yards compared to 9,600 yards for the British gun. Even with the elevation raised to 30 degrees in WWII, the range only increased to 11,580 yards. The 4"/50 is usually considered the most effective secondary gun for surface action in any navy. The gun layout was because of different operating conditions. The British preferred greater broadside firepower due to the likelihood of having to fight the Germans in fleet actions in the North Sea and Baltic. The USN doctrine was the destroyer would have to operate unsupported, chasing down other destroyers and merchant ships. That also meant the possibility of having to run from superior units. Since the four pipers didn't have the displacement available for superfiring, mounting two 4"/50 guns amidships in wing positions allowed three guns to bear for forward or astern fire. Different requirements led to different layouts, both adequate for the assumed job at hand.
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  1864.  @RedXlV  At long as it can't use missiles, that is it's only chance for survival. The 57mm can't outrange a 5"/38, so the LCS has to turn tail and beat feet out of there. However, a Fletcher with a rebuilt power plant and using maximum steam is capable of 37-38 knots. The Independence has had trouble with leaky turbines and hull corrosion, and it's not likely her aluminum hull would hold up well in pounding seas at maximum speed. It would really come down to which ship sees the other first. In theory, Independence should be harder to spot on radar while a Fletcher sticks out like a sore thumb. Still, if a Fletcher manages to sneak up on Independence before it's able to open the distance beyond gun range, things won't end well for Independence. Just ask the Japanese at the the Battle Off Samar.
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  1865.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Right, but the DDE experiment showed you can go too far in vessel specialization. The DDE conversions were done in the early 50's, when the threat from Soviet aircraft hadn't gone away, and surface action was likely to be with guns since SSM's really hadn't become common. War games in 1q954 and 1955 showed the DDE's were likely to be overwhelmed and sunk by either aircraft or other surface vessels, since they didn't retain enough capability to deal with either. Some of tonnage from the deleted gun mounts was given over the Weapon Alpha, not our most successful antisubmarine rocket system. The development of ASROC showed the Gearing class was about the only one with space and tonnage available to mount one, and then only after the hugely extensive FRAM rebuilds. Even most of the FRAMs only lost one twin mount, and some retained all six. The other DDE's were quickly restored to standard destroyer configuration
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  1866.  @patricklenigan4309  Considering that Hai Shih is getting some of the most modern electronics installed along with much improved radars and sonars, I'm pretty sure she will at least be able to hold her own against other PLAN diesel subs. According to foreign observers, ROC submarine crews have always been trained to high standards, and their maintenance and upkeep of even their obsolete equipment has always been first rate. I wouldn't be too quick to write off the old girl when she comes out of the shipyard.
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  1867.  @trooperdgb9722  Did you notice the part where I said "the oldest submarine in commission, and possibly the oldest COMBAT vessel still in commission"? I'm well aware of Constitution and Victory but neither one are combat vessels.
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  1868. They did indeed, but each escort carrier had only one stern mounted 5"/38 DP gun. USS White Plains claimed six hits on the Japanese cruiser Chōkai, disabling her because her Long Lance torpedoes exploded and cause fatal damage. The claim of the first hit from the 5"/38 on the cruiser was verified by other ships and later the Japanese. That hit was at about 17,000 yards, nearly the maximum range for the gun. The Japanese postwar claimed the torpedo damage was the result of a bomb, but a hit by White Plains, given her excellent gunnery, is still possible. The USS St Lo kept up a torrent of fire from her gun, claiming at least three hits on a Tone cruiser. She kept firing until a Zero crashed on the flight deck, inflicting fatal damage and causing the ship to be abandoned. USS Kalinin Bay scored a direct hit on the No. 2 turret of a Nachi-class heavy cruiser at 16,000 yards, and that may be longest confirmed hit by a 5"/38 gun. She continued to fight a gun duel with Japanese destroyers for the next hour while occasionally shifting fire to straddle Japanese cruisers to keep them at bay. She claimed shifting an incoming torpedo off course with a 5" round while one of her Avengers exploded two other torpedoes by strafing gunfire. Whatever the truth of all these claims, the hail of gunfire from the escort carriers and escorting destroyers convinced Admiral Takeo Kurita he had run into the Halsey's main battle fleet and carriers. The fear of being outgunned by such a large fleet caused Kurita to withdraw just at the point Taffy 3 was nearly destroyed and the way would have been open to attack the troop and supply ships moving toward Leyte Gulf. It was a truly epic last naval last stand by ships who's only thought was attack.
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  1869. Yes, please use your own voice rather than irritating text to voice software. You have a very pleasant English accent and can actually correctly speak naval terms.
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  1870.  @billyclark4564 Unlike WWII supply ships that had an average speed of around 16 knots, today's supply vessels all fall into the fast support category, with seeds averaging 34 to 30 knots. As such, they will fall right in the battle fleet and be protected by the destroyers, cruisers, and carriers of a task force. They will be protected like any other fleet unit, and some of the fast ships have an impressive self-defense capability, with RAM missiles and light AA guns. Thse ships should suffer fare fewer combat losses that the ships of WWII.
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  1871.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Yes, Walter, really. I've been to Japan five times so let's abandon the "Ugly American" thing. The US doesn't maintain 50,00 troops for purely political reasons. Part of the reason is because Japan is a strategic location but part of it is to make sure North Korea, Russia and China don't get any ideas. We have bases in Taiwan and didn't need Japan to defend Taiwan. The Vietnam war ended in 1975. If that was our only reason for being there we would have picked up and left a long time ago. Given the strategic position of Japan, there are certainly good reasons we'd want to maintain bases there, and the Japanese government wants us to be there. When it comes to the more militant residents of Okinawa, they view both Japanese and US troops as colonizers. Nevertheless, Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan. If the Japanese government wanted us to to vacate, we would, just as we did in the Philippines. As of now, that's not the case. It's no different than the people of California don't get to decide how many military bases there in that state.
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  1872. I must say the Japanese having carriers and the general state of their rearmament makes me uneasy. Militarism in Japan has never really been supplanted by the concept of democracy, and there still is an emperor. OTOH, the US can't pay for the defense of the world's third wealthiest country forever. It's a fine line.
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  1873. Another interesting video. Symonite vessels were a new one on me so I'm glad I'm not quite as ignorant about them as I was before.The USN before WWII was really quite conservative, and convincing the admirals that the monoplane was going to become the dominate aircraft type over biplanes was a hard sell. Once the realities of war, especially the Japanese, hit, the USN embarked on whole lines of aircraft that had successful transitions from carrier to land based, The F4U Corsair, A1D Skyraider, and F8F Bearcat are three that come to mind. The RN did it more in reverse, adapting land based planes like the Spitfire and Hurricane. I can't think of a single FAA plane that made the transition to RAF service. The Blackburn Firebrand with a proper engine may have made it to an RAF strike fighter role but that's the only one I can think of
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  1874.  @horatio8213  You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Show me a link that says the Yamato radar was "obsolete". The 13 GO Dentan radar,while not quite as as sensitive as US radars, was still sufficient for the joab, It could detect a battleship from 20-25 km and a target as small as a surfaced sub at 7 km. It detected the Olendorf's battleship squadron at nearly 50 km. The 22 GO fire control radar could detect a BB at 30 km with a bearing error of 0.5 to 3 degrees. Again, not as good as US FCS, but good enough. The Japanese were constantly monitoring our radar emissions. They had excellent electronic knowledge and developed transmitters in the VHF and UHF ranges specifically to jam our radars. It wasn't until the introduction of centimetric radar that the Japanese, like the USN, weren't able to produce effective jammers until the end of the war. Unlike the USN, the factories that were going to produce the jammers were being bombed into oblivion, so very few ever reached the fleet. The chief Japanese limitation wasn't the quality of their radar, it was that lack of a good PPI and CIC. That didn't allow the Japanese to take advantage of their radars in combat conditions. Do some actual study about WWII radar systems before you post any more made up stuff.
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  1875.  @horatio8213  Yamato had the most advanced radar in the navy at the time. She wasn't blind unless it was knocked out by battle damage. I guess your anime Fletchers could swarm Yamato, but they never did in the Battle off Samar, or any other battle, for that matter. Yamato was only ever hit by a submarine torpedo. All the surface ship torpedoes fired at her missed. Aerial torpedoes are smaller and carry less explosives than a surface ship or submarine torpedo, but that is irrelevant when you can launch waves of a hundred Avenger torpedo bombers to really swarm a ship.
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  1876.  @horatio8213  No Fletcher was able to rape anything when it came to Yamato. No torpedoes came close to her off Samar and she withdrew with the only damage being three bomb hits the previous day that put her down by the bow but still fighting. She never fired another shot at a surface ship after that, being sunk by a combination of bombs and torpedoes. The skipper of the Yamato was a lot more concerned about seeing a swarm of Avengers than Fletchers.
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  1877.  @gokbay3057  I haven't read about a Fletcher being misidentified as an Atlanta. There are enough spotting differences that it would take some inexperience lookouts to make that mistake. There were problems when the Sumpters showed up since their three twin 5" turrets on the centerline, and arrangement that did lead to misidentifications with the Atlanta class. I assume by DDE you meant the 5" gun armed DE classes like the John C Butler class. Their gun arrangement was such that they were occasionally misidentified as DDs. One such instance was the Battle off Samar.
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  1878. 0400 cst...time for a Drach upload!
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  1879.  @CleveAneki  Yes, the Brooklyns, while useful ships, were nowhere near as useful as a Cleveland. Clevelands were commissioned with the latest in radars and fire control equipment while the Brooklyns had to wait until they went in for major refits. The Boise didn't get modern radar and GFCS installed until 1945. Phoenix was mostly upgraded during post battle damage overhaul during 1944 but still didn't have the latest directors. She did, however, have eight 5"/38 guns in twin turrets, a big improvement over the eight single 5"/25 she had previously. As you said, shell handling was improved in the Cleveland class, they had faster and more powerful rammers, and the turrets were able to traverse and elevate more quickly. All that meant a rate a fire fast enough that the broadside of a Cleveland was 120 rounds a minute with 12 barrels, the same as the Brooklyn with 15 barrels. They had 12 5"/38 guns compared 8 5'/25 guns on the Brooklyn, much better close-in AA armament, and the modified superstructure gave them better fields of fire. People get seduced by the Brooklyn having five triple turrets compare to the Cleveland's four, but almost any admiral would take a Cleveland over a Brooklyn when it came down to a fight.
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  1880. Sleek looking ships, but just not enough turrets, and the single large funnel made them look unbalanced.
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  1881. Indeed, much like the hybrid battleships/carriers of the IJN that became AA ships when there were no planes and no pilots left to fly them. The Ise, IIRC, had about 150 barrels of AA guns of various sizes but 1945, and they was able to fight off air attacks that had sunk other battleships and carriers. She wasn't sunk until the very last days of the war. She accomplished this with far inferior light anti aircraft armament and very poor radars and gun fire control systems. Imagine what she could have done with 5"/38 guns, 40 mm and 20 mm guns instead of the horrifically bad 25 mm guns, and SCR-584 radar combined with the M-9 GFCS. A formidable ship to any aircraft that got near here. Of course, these ships were being designed in the early '20's so the threat of aircraft really hadn't sunk into the brains of most navies. The designers of the G3 seemed to get it earlier than most with a designed AA armament of six 4.7" heavy guns and four quad 2 pounder mounts. This was a t a time where a couple 3 inchers and some machine guns were thought to be adequate.
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  1882. The problem with the N3 is she would have been much too slow to operate with the fleet and escort carriers, and too large and expensive to waste on just convoy escort or shore bombardment duties. As we saw with the rebuilt old US battleships during the war, they made fine shore bombardment platforms. The Colorado class, even though the West Virginia was the only one rebuilt to almost modern battleship standards. showed their ability to fight a ship to ship confrontation at the Battle of Surigao Strait. With the addition of heavy anti aircraft armament and good radar and fire control, most of the old battleships were also good AA platforms for protecting the fleet during invasions in the Pacific. The N3's, had they been built, would have assumed the same roles, but at a great cost to the British taxpayer. Modernization of ships like Queen Elizabeth class would have made a lot more sense.
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  1883. In the US vs German battleship questions, it really comes down to which vessels are able to keep their radars intact. By late 1941, radar for sea search and fire control was so vital that having it knocked out in poor visibility conditions or night action was almost the hand of death. All the WWII ship to ship questions are also dependent on which side had the most effective air cover.
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  1884. The high here in SE Alabama today will 36c. That's a considerable cool down since last week when the high were 38.5 to 38.8. Somewhere around 33 to 34 is normal. My overnight lows are sometimes not below 26. Thankfully, I do have air conditioning, but the bill this month will require me to take out a second mortgage. However, with the choice between that and death, I just have to dig up more cash from somewhere.
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  1885. I like the idea of looking at naval art while you explain the finer points of what we're seeing. Makes the whole thing cpme top like in ways that just looking at the piece in isolation can't do. The one suggestion I'll make is to use an onscreen pointer to show what we should be looking at.
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  1886. The main issue with Japanese AAA fire was really the available guns. Even if more effective radar was available, the Type 89 12.7 cm (5"), the best heavy DP gun of the war, had a very low rate of fire, slow rates of train, and low muzzle velocity, which limited range and usefulness in the AAA role. The Type 5 12.7 cm (5") was about the equal of the USN 5"/38 in terms of ROF and power training and elevation, but only one experimental mount had been produced by war's end. Even assuming an effective heavy AAA gun had been available, the Japanese were the only major power to not deploy an intermediate caliber AAA machine gun during the war. The 25 mm Type 96 gun was based on the French Hotchkiss 13 mm machine gun, and it retained the smaller caliber's 15 round magazine reduced the effective ROF by half due to the stoppages need to change magazines and jamming at the elevations needed for effective AAA fire. Even if it was able to maintain the theoretical ROF of 220-260 RPM, the range was low and shell weight just too light to be effective destroying allied aircraft as the war went forward. The Japanese knew of the 40 mm Bofors since they had captured a number of specimens from the British at Singapore. The IJN had to do a reverse change from the inch measurement of the British to the metric used by Japan, and the Japanese discovered the very close tolerances needed to make the Bofors gun work reliably. Japanese machine tools weren't capable of these tolerances on a production basis although the Japanese did experiment with them until war's end. The biggest problem was resistance by the admirals of the IJN to any changes to the light/intermediate battery since they believed the 25 mm gun was quite good and effective, and they knew what rate of production Japanese industry could turn out. That was actually a reasonable decision in 1940, but it showed the inability of the Japanese high command to assume they were in for a long war and what that would mean for the abilities of enemy aircraft to attack their ships. There was no need for any new AAA guns if the war was going to end in victory, or at least negotiated peace, in a year or less.
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  1887. Yes, all that noise and static on the HF (2 MHz to 29.995 MHz) led to the British developing, with the assistance of ham radio operators, VHF (30 MHz to 40 MHz) radios. These were smaller, lighter, and more immune for manmade and atmospheric noise. The US Signal Corps then improved the British radios, because that's what we always did. The British has their VHF radios in operation by mid-1940, but it took the USN until early 1943 to equip most of their planes with VHF radios because we certainly couldn't just copy a British radio. To be fair, the Signal Corps did make some significant improvements in miniaturization and tube (valve) longevity, as well as a single unit transceiver control panel with only two dials for the pilot. One was for the channel, of which there were four, and all crystal controlled, the other being for volume. By contrast, Japanese pilots had a separate HF receiver and transmitter. They had to find the right frequency on the receiver while tuning up the transmitter on the same frequency, something that took two hands and a trained monkey on the ground. It's not surprising that some Japanese pilots pitched their radios. Things were going swimmingly for the RN and USN with their VHF radios, since pilots could have a better chance of hearing each other and their carrier. The radios had an added benefit of only having a range of about 20 miles, so that meant the Japanese couldn't hear our transmissions...or at least that's what we thought. All the VHF test were conducted at labs located inland. The concept of thermal ducting of VHF signals over water was unknown until the invasion of the Philippines. Because there were so many carriers and carrier aircraft scattered all across the islands, there was a lot of VHF traffic, mostly pilots jawjacking. It was soon discovered that, when conditions were right, pilots in North Luzon were able to talk to each other and to carriers located off the southern tip of Mindanao, a distance of nearly 500 miles! Panic soon spread across the fleet. Since VHF traffic was unencoded, it now looked like the Japanese could be monitoring our transmissions. There was an immediate clampdown on chatter between pilots, and the Signal Corps rushed to design UHF radios, since those signals really didn't travel further than 10-20 miles. The first UHF radios weren't completed until after the end of the war. To our relief, postwar interviews with Japanese radio officers revealed that the Japanese never monitored our traffic. They didn't develop reliable and sufficiently sensitive VHF radios until just before the end of the war. They too believed their planes or ships wouldn't get close enough to our fleet to monitor our VHF traffic, so they didn't put any effort into doing so. Now, did those new UHF radios solve all our airborne communications issues? Well, that's something for another post. I'll just leave you with a teaser that the answer involved a beautiful move star and a Prussian xylophone player. :-)
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  1888.  @BenSTA09  http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/12/dieselpunk.html The link from the picture of the Japanese aircraft carrier "Kaga". Buxom schoolgirl and space nazis.
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  1889.  @sharlin648  I'd say it's more than a bit disturbing. This is what Miyazaki was railing against, that his early art has now become part of paedophile world he has no interest in and specifically disavows. Morphing early warship drawings to other warship drawings is one thing. Doing what you describe and, even more revolting drawings that I've seen, is something else. That's why I said anyone over 21 needs to reconsider what they are involved in, since laws in the United States and Japan can carry heavy penalties if some of the even worse examples I've seen are found on your computer as part of another investigation.
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  1890. I was lucky enough to find a 1957-58 edition of "Jane's" at a reasonable price. This was the peak of WWII ships still in commission or reserve and the new build ships like the first nuclear cruiser and submarines, while the change to guided missiles from guns as heavy armaments was starting. Just the shear numbers of US Navy ships at the time was quite overwhelming. Vessels like the Brooklyn's, the pinnacle of immediate prewar design, as Drach said, were now considerd to be of such lowly worth that their main value was selling them to South American navies on the cheap to head off another Latin American arms race. Just the idea the US had hundreds of cruisers of various types and classes, most of which were less than 15 years old, that were now considered obsolescent at best showed how rapidly naval technology was changing. "Jane's" is, of course, a British publication, and this was probably the best edition to show just how Anglophilic it was. The advertising pages were still filled with the names of British shipbuilders makers of naval gear, most of which have now vanished. The Royal Navy had already discarded or were in the processing of discarding all her battleships except Vanguard, and it was rather shockingly revealed that, even after an extensive refit in 1955, that she was about to be placed in reserve rather than remaining the fleet flagship. The cruiser fleet was being rapidly run down, and many of the destroyer fleet used in the war were worn out and needed extensive refits. With Anthony Eden as PM and Lord Mountbatten as First Sea Lord. it was clear that the Labour government had neither the money nor desire to rebuild the Royal Navy at a time when the Empire was running down, perhaps even more quickly than the RN. I write all this only as a prelude to the amount of space given to the RN in "Jane's". I haven't counted the relevant pages yet, but my guess is there were at least twice as many pages devoted to the details of the RN compared to the USN. In some cases, as many pages were used to cover a single RN warship as for a large class of USN ships. Even minor ships like net tenders had at least a couple paragraphs whilst several USN ships of the same classes were little more than footnotes. Just by page count alone, the uninitiated might assume the RN was still the world's largest navy. I write all this not as a swipe at "Jane's" or the RN, only to show that "Rule Britannia" was still a thing in 1957 and in contrast to how different things would look in not more than ten years or so later. As a long time Anglophile myself, it was a sad thing to see, but 1957 was nearly the last stand of the RN as the premiere navy of the world, as the sun has begun to set on the British Empire.
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  1891. I'll nominate role of the sea mine in determining the outcome of modern naval history.
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  1892. Luka, you may be right. I don't know if the Fletchers were designed with a Pacific war in mind. They may very well have been, since six of the class were originally fitted with a catapult and two float planes. I just have no expertise in ship design to do anything more than guess.
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  1893.  @AdamMGTF  You're welcome. I'm an extra class amateur radio operator, and anything electronic has fascinated me since I built my first radio kit in about 1957. WWII electronics represented a watershed period between the Mark I Eyeball and analog calculation days of 1938 to the transition nearly 100% electronic control of things like fire control systems and detection of enemy ships by 1950. All of this was accelerated by probably 20 years due to the needs of war. Almost all the systems we use today, although now solid state and able to handle prodigious volumes of data compared to the primitive days of 1940, still have as their cornerstone all those late WWII radars, communications, and fire control systems. We owe a lot to all the unsung heroes able to keep those tube (valve) powered monsters working.
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  1894.  @AdamMGTF  Actually, oil and gas in the North Sea was discovered in the 1850's. At the time, extraction was just too costly and difficult, and most of the oil was located offshore beyond the then three mile limit of national sovereignty. The Dutch discovered oil within the three mile limit in 1938 but there was obviously no time top develop the field before the war. It was the combination of the UK Continental Shelf Act in 1964 and discovery of the very large Forties and Brent fields in 1965-70 that changed everything, as Britain at last had a dependable source of oil and natural gas close to home. Ironically, these discoveries were controlled by National Coal Board, and they fought tooth and nail not to have these discoveries exploited in any large manner since it meant thousands of coal miners would be unemployed, and all the industries and services around coal would be put out of business. It took another ten years before the oil fields were allowed to compete with coal on level playing field basis. It's possible that more RN ships would have been oil fired if the fields were able to be exploited 20 years earlier, but it''s not likely the UK could have gotten its act together in time anyway.
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  1895.  @russg1801  No,, I was trying to say it was the first and only time that all three battleships of the class had been in port together. I wasn't implying that the entire class was there or I would have said so.
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  1896. Nova and Johnathan, those answers certainly make sense. Let me reverse my question then. What did the Lord Nelson designers see as the value of the secondary turrets while almost everyone else didn't see any value? Casemates were cheaper, and you could squeeze in more guns, yet every navy had experienced the problem of trying to fight casemate guns in any kind of rough seas.
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  1897.  @josephdedrick9337  The largest ships the RN got under lend lease I know of were some escort carriers, and I don't believe they ever had ice cream machines. They did rip out some bunks and put in hammocks because RN sailors generally preferred them, at least according to the Navy. I haven't heard of them taking out washing machines so I'll need a link for that one. The RN did set up ships so they would more match their own fleet. Tacoma class patrol frigates are one example. They were delivered with three 3"/50 guns but some had those replaced with two British 4" guns. As delivered, they had two twin 40mm Bofors gun mounts, and some of those were replaced with 2 pounder pom poms. Many had additional 20mm guns added as well since the British liked the 20 mm guns more than the 40mm Bofors. I guess I don't find it surprising that they would do some refits to more closely align with the rest of the Navy.
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  1898.  @frederickmiles327  The April 1968 deck logs at https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6596074 show the New Jersey's full power runs fully loaded with standard ammunition, crew, and provisions at 31.09 knots. This was when the turbines had defective parts replaced but the engines and turbines had otherwise only received an austere rebuild from her WWII condition. I haven't had any luck finding WWII deck logs for New Jersey or the other Iowas but I'll keep hunting. The iowa class could certainly steam all day at 30 knots in appropriate sea state conditions with flank speed in combat with a reasonably clean bottom of about 32 knots. The Iowas were the only US battleship that ever claimed a sustained speed of 30 knots. They and the Alaska's were the only two large ships with hull forms that could comfortable cruise at whatever speed a carrier task force maintained. The Des Moines class were undoubtedly the finest heavy cruisers ever built. They were able to cruise at 32 knots, their automatic 8" guns could maintain a 7 round per minute ROF, and her combination of 12 5"/38 and 24 fully automatic 3"/50 guns, all capable of firing VT rounds, provided a level of surface fire and gun antiaircraft fire never equaled. The downside was the large hull (714 ft long) and tonnage (over 20,000 tons full load) needed for the large magazines needed to supply all the automatic guns and space for the proliferation of electronics and crew needed to man them. This made them very expensive ships, with costs running at 80-85% of an Iowa, and crew size only about 200 less than an Iowa. With four Iowa's and two Alaska's already available or in reserve, building more than three of them wasn't seen as economically feasible in the 1950's. By contrast, the Worcester class was a total failure. Their 6" automatic guns never functioned reliably, the ROF was at best 8 rpm, barely better that Des Moines 8" guns. The ship was built as an antiaircraft cruiser, and the hull was designed around the guns. The large loads of ammunition required a "light" cruiser longer and heavier than any WWII heavy cruiser. All her electronic systems and barely functional "automatic" main armament required 330 more crew than any previous heavy cruiser. The 6" guns were ineffective AA weapons because of the slow ROF and constant jamming when attempting to increase the ROF. Because the ships were optimized for the AA role. the correct directors and GFCS were never fitted, and she was shown to have poor accuracy and range when used in the GFS role off Korea. It was an expensive ship that couldn't perform anything well, and both were decommissioned in the late-50's. It's hard to judge the Sverdlov class cruisers. They were large and impressive ships, and the main role they performed during lifetime was showing the flag to demonstrate the USSR had a bluewater navy. She would have been a carrier escort had the Soviets built any during their lifetime. The Soviet Navy tried a couple missile ship conversions that were not successful. The Soviets judged their main role to be gunfire support platform, a role they never got the chance to demonstrate in combat. They were well liked by their crews for the relatively spacious quarters and, for the first time in any Soviet surface ship, air conditioning. The downside was the turbines and other mechanical systems were based on German practices, and the high tolerances required were difficult for the Soviets to achieve. Consequently, they required a highly trained engineering crews to maintain the engines. The lack of such training was shown by the sad experience of the Ordzhonikidze, sold to Indonesia in 1962 and renamed Irian. Irian lasted only three years in service before being returned to Vladivostok for a complete rebuilding of the turbines. Irian returned to Indonesia in late 1966..The ship lasted only another three years until 1969, when the ship's turbines were out of service and she was being used as an accommodations hulk, finally being towed to Taiwan for scrapping, slipping her tow enroute and sinking.
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  1899.  @theswordguy5269  It's only nitpicky when your assertions are challenged, I guess. Telling me to Google all your assertions provides no evidence they are true. Once again, arguments from authority while making yet more assertions with no evidence. You are the one that claimed Juneau had a broken back from the first torpedo hit, not me. Now you modify that assertion with "maybe" she had a broken back. Now you make the assertion that "other ships have survived stressed or shattered keels" Stressed wasn't the issue. A broken back was the issue. I asked you to name me one making 13 knots on one screw for 10 hours with a broken back. Surely you can provide one example to support your assertion. It was nine simple questions to provide evidence.based on your assertions. "Google it" is not evidence. It is a good way to pick a fight by inferring I'm an idiot.
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  1900.  @theswordguy5269  Uh huh. I asked for responses to my questions for evidence of your assertions, not arguments from authority. I've read Friedman and many more sources. I know all about DANFS and have read many of the damage reports from NARA, including those for the Atlanta and Juneau. I've been doing naval research of over 50 years. My reading of the damage and battle reports doesn't support your assertions of the cause of either ship's sinking. Please answer my questions rather than making another ad hominem attack. I'm not looking for a fight. I'm looking for evidence of your assertions.
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  1901.  @keptinkaos6384  In the case of Atlanta, the XO was a competent officer who took over command. Losing the bridge crew can affect a ship's fighting ability for sure, but a well trained crew can still take over command, and it didn't cause the Atlanta to sink.
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  1902.  @keptinkaos6384  Loss of a bridge crew does not lead to the sinking of a ship. Getting torpedoed and losing all engine power leads to the loss of ship.
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  1903.  @jamesricker3997  The Atlanta was fatally damaged by a torpedo from either the Inazuma or Ikazuchi, not by the mistaken gunfire of the San Francisco. If her forward engine room wasn't knocked out by the torpedo, her pumps may have kept up with the flooding and she could have continued underway. The torpedo sunk her, not the San Francisco, whose shells passed through the superstructure without detonating.
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  1904.  @Nuke89345  I have no argument with missiles being effective against known targets far inland. Even assuming they could get input from UAVs flying over the battlefield in time to reprogram the onboard targeting systems for shore bombardment use, how many missiles equal the destructive power as a single 8" round? By my calculations, two' rounds equals the destructive power of a single Harpoon. A Harpoon class missile comes in at $1.2 million each. A standard 5"/54 round is about $1200 each, so I'll double and round it up to $2500 for an 8" round. That's 480 8" rounds for the cost of one Harpoon. It's not for lack of trying by the Navy, especially since it's OPM they're spending. They have been working on a ~50 mile range guided missile fired from a Harpoon launcher with a suitable warhead for shore bombardment since...oh, about 1980 now. I can't find any information about development costs, but, before this project, like so many others, was shelved, was coming in at about $75,000 to $100,000 per missile. I expect that Raytheon or McDonnell Douglas will soon be trotting out another proposal that will develop a really cheap missile that will work this time. This incestual relationship between defense contractors that need Navy money to be profitable and admirals who need defense contractors to save their careers when yet another design by their department goes down the crapper is why our defense costs so much money for so little in return.
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  1905.  @Nuke89345  Indeed, no large naval vessel is cheap today. See the Zumwalts as prime examples. However, it's an unfair comparison to add up all the non-capital and long term costs for an Iowa and not do the same for an OHP frigate. Even if we accept that the all in cost of an Iowa recommissioning was equal to four OHP frigates, and we pretend you were going to make an amphibious landing against a defended target, would you rather have four OHPs or an Iowa at your disposal? They were reactivated primarily because the the USN had run down its entire fleet of 152mm and 203mm gun cruisers, so the shore bombardment capability was limited to 127mm guns or, in the case of an OHP, a single 76mm gun. The Iowas represented the only ships, no matter how old and crotchety they may have been, that could provide any meaningful shore bombardment from the mid-80's through the 90's. I'll have to dig up the article, but the bombardment of Iraqi troops in the first Gulf War probably represents the only time entire bodies of dug in troops surrendered solely due to those 2,000 pound shells hitting their positions. Don't hold me the numbers now, but a 10 man SEAL unit was put ashore before bombardment began. After a couple hours of that, hundreds of soldiers emerged waving anything white they could find. This was observed by a UAV doing spotting, and the SEALS moved up to take about 1,000 thoroughly demoralized soldiers prisoner. I rather doubt that four OHPs popping off 76mm rounds would have had the same effect.
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  1906.  @bkjeong4302  Okay, so now that you've read the report, you understand your basic concept of one BB vs two CL was wrong. That's not enough, however, because you now advance the specious argument about baskets when no Iowa or Cleveland was lost during the war. The Iowas were simply superior antiaircraft ships. That's not open to question. Now we're going to move the goalposts by coming up with something about the strategic vs tactical value of antiaircraft battleships. There never was such a thing, of course, but is that even supposed ot mean? The only strategic value any ship has is power projection. It's hard to imagine any class of surface ships as effective at that as the Iowas. Do you think the Argentines might have thought twice about invading the Falklands if they knew a couple of Iowas would e coming? That's why they were reactivated, as strategic assets. That never negated the tactical value. Once a ship is in the water, it's tactical value that matters when the guns start firing. You'll have to explain your concept of strategic vs tactical.
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  1907.  @Kromaatikse  Great summary of the various diesel power plants on non-nuclear subs.
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  1908.  @paulmanson253  I had a friend whose dad served on Bluefish so I was always used to hearing the Spanish pronunciation of Gato. I never really thought about it until I heard the alternate pronunciation last night, and then I wasn't sure which was right. The USN history site does say the correct pronunciation is the Spanish version of Gato.
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  1909. The biggest problem with the Buffalo wasn't the aircraft itself, it's that it was built by Brewster. Brewster Aeronautical Company had designed several decent aircraft for their time, including the Buffalo. The company was being run by a couple of salesmen instead of engineers or industrialists. They were never able to organize the firm to actually meet their promised schedules. and there's pretty good evidence the two salesmen, Alfred, and Ignacio Miranda, were actually stealing from the company. Jimmy Work, the nominal president, was just not able to get anything organized, and the two brothers managed to piss off most of the workers and unions working at Brewster's biggest plants in New York and New Jersey. As a result, there were constant work slowdowns and strikes. If the company was well run, the Buffalo could probably have been improved along the same lines as the Wildcat. Instead, construction workmanship got worse and worse, and Brewster was the only WWII aircraft plant taken over in the middle of the war by the Navy due to incompetence. They were given a make work contract to build the Corsair, and that turned out to be the biggest disaster of all. The plant was in the hands of the Navy by 1944, and it was out of business by 1946.
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  1910.  @Peorhum  I never said the Bofors 4.7" was as good an antiaircraft weapon as the 4" gun. I said the Bofors was at least as good as the British 4.7". Dual purpose means about equally as good against surface targets as aerial targets. The later British 4.5"/45 was one of those types, along with the US 5"/38. The 4.7" was a surface weapon that had a very limited antiaircraft role. The RN recognized this but it was about the only heavy gun with any antiaircraft capability they had available at the start of the war. It's the reason so many 4.7" armed destroyers had 4" AA guns added to them during refits. Indeed, it was the perfection of 4.5" and 5.25" guns that gave the RN the near equal of the 5"/38 as true dual purpose guns. After getting a chance to judge the performance of the 5"/38 guns and Mark 37 fire control system that armed the refitted Delhi, the RN asked the US for at least 85 sets of guns with accompanying FCS. The US just didn't have the capacity to fill the orders. If they did, destroyers like the Tribals would have been much more useful, especially in the Pacific. Alas, that wasn't to be, so the British were stuck finally developing the 4.5". If the British could have developed the 4.5" gun early enough, they would have had the equivalent of the Sumner/Gearing class destroyers and would have done much better shooting down aircraft.
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  1911. I'm not an engineer so I only know what little I can understand from reading about this issue. Wasn't the temperature difference ductility also an issue in the sinking of the Titanic? As I remember, I think that this was confirmed from examination of the wreck photos.
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  1912. Isn't the Paraguayan vessel "Paraguay" older than the Parnaiba? It's still in commision awaiting replacement of her steam propulsion plant with diesels. Her keel was laid in Italy in 1928 and she was commissioned in 1931.
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  1913.  @phoenixjz4782  Yes, the South Carolinas were the first with an all centerline superfiring layout. However, I was writing about ships with triple turrets on the centerline, so ships with twin turrets are irrelevant in this context. What does the fact the Italians were building three Conte di Cavour class ships have to do with anything? The Tegetthoff class of four ships were building at the same time, and they all commissioned in time for WW1 and were in combat for the duration war. Only two of the Italian vessels completed before the war, and one of those managed to blow herself up in harbor due to a magazine explosion. The other two saw no combat and spent most of the war tied up to their docks. You certainly can't be arguing that somehow the Conte di Cavours had any value as warships during WWI, are you?
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  1914.  @mattf4u-496  Sorry, I meant 127mm guns. The 152mm guns never had more than a slight chance of shooting down modern aircraft, and that only by barrage fire. so mostly luck if they hit anything.
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  1915. Depends on what kind of AA ship you'd want. With only 8 152" mm guns compared to 12 or 14 on an Atlanta The had more room for light AA guns that the Atlanta class, but the Clevelands were much closer to a true surface/AA ship
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  1916.  @canuckled  That story would require a major bend in the space-time continuum. Vikrant was tied up at dock from June, 1970 until March, 1971, her boilers cold as the Indians waited for replacement parts for the water jackets to arrive from Britain. She was then towed to Anchorage at the Naval Dockyards at Bombay for the sole purpose of lighting off the boilers at reduced pressure to exercise ship systems like the catapults since the ship had been cold for over seven months. While doing so, the Indian Navy considered that war with Pakistan was becoming more likely. The order was given to repair the boilers the best that could be done. This was complete by mid-June. After further testing and sea trials, she was declared able to participate in operations in mid-July, and the next two months were spent working up her Seak King and Sea Hawk squadrons, along with her Alizé strike/AS aircraft. She needed further work on her radars and communications before she was deemed fit for fleet operations in September. All this was happening while the Bonaventure was being towed to Taiwan in June, 1971. Taiwan s a long way from Bombay. I'm assuming that Vikrant somehow sailed to Taiwan at the same time as the Bonaventure was being towed there. How they could have met in mid-Pacific is beyond me and, if they could have, did the story propose that the Vikrant was somehow refit using Bonaventure parts while both vessels sailed (or were towed) around in circles in the middle of the Pacific or, more geographically likely, the Indian Ocean? Even more damning to this rather fanciful tale is the Vikrant was still restricted to 14 knots for the three weeks of the war and returned to port in even worse shape than when she left. It took almost another year to get the parts from Britain and complete repairs. I think we can pretty firmly plant this one in the tinfoil hat section of naval stories.
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  1917.  @therake8897  Indeed, must have just been two small boys a hammer each working on that one. :-) The Australians left most of the deck landing system and steam catapults intact when it was sold, along with quite a lot of what was considered obsolete electronics. The Chinese set about reverse engineering everything, and there's a better than average chance the catapult system on the next generation of PLAN carriers may have parts that look familiar to an old salt from the Australian Navy.
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  1918. The Japanese had samples of the 20mm Oerlikon gun as early as 1935, before the US started to evaluate them. About 45 40mm Bofors fell into their hands at Singapore and Hong Kong in early 1942. The had enough time to produce the 20mm for sure, and the 40mm with some work. The IJN didn't want either weapon. They believed, quite wrongly as it turned out, that the home produced 25mm gun was superior. The staggering losses of Japanese warships to air attacks was at least partially due to their weak antiacraft defenses. The 25mm may have been at least passable if the IJN had developed radar gunfire control earlier, but very few of those systems were deployed before the surrender. I just don't think the Japanese understood that fighting the US would be a series of overwhelming aircraft and submarine attacks, so the Japanese didn't prepare well for those eventualities.
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  1919. ​ @Drachinifel  Well, it figures that's a book I don't have. I'll have to see if I can get a copy at reasonable cost. I generally use the two volume Hitler's U-Boat War by Clay Blair as a reasonably reliable source for details of the war. I was flabbergasted to find both volumes in hard cover and in good condition for $5 at a yard sale! I wish I could find deals like that every day. :-) Blair, in volume 2, pages 64-66, states it was not only a B-24, but it was the same B-24, again flown by Harden, that attacked U-506 the day after the attack on U-156. However, take a look at http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-506A/U-506INT.htm, the interrogation of survivors by the RN after the sinking of U-506 on July 12, 1943 by yet another B-24. Oberleutnant Hans Schult not only survived the sinking, he was on the bridge during the Laconia incident. Confusingly, Schult reported the first attack had British and US aircraft involved. The timeline given by Schult, or at least as recorded by the unnamed interrogator(s), doesn't help matters, as it appears the attack on U-506 may have occured later on the same day. Schult reported the order came after the first attack to take as many survivors on the U-boat below as wouldn't interfere with the combat capabilities of the boat, put the rest in the lifeboats, and cast them off. It was apparently hoped the lifeboats would attract the attention of the planes away from the U-boat. When an aircraft did return some three hours after the lifeboats were cast off, no one was on deck, and the lifeboats were some distance away. All the attacking aircraft saw was a surfaced sub so it attacked. It dropped two bombs after U-506 was already at 130 feet after a crash dive. The bombs (which may have actually been depth charges) exploded but were not close enough to cause damage. U-506 apparently continued toward a rendezvous with French warships and never saw the lifeboats again. She met up with the French "a few days" later and handed over her survivors. Schult never actually mentions the type of aircraft involved in the attacks, so I suppose it's possible one was a B-25. In general, the B-25's were conducting patrols closer to Ascension Island, then a top secret base, in an attempt to keep U-boats away from the island. The B-24's were used for patrol further offshore due to their greater range and ordnance load. At this late date, I don't think we'll ever be able to say for certain. What does seem to be certain is there were no survivors on the deck of the U-506, and no lifeboats visible to the pilots of the attacking aircraft. At this point, I have a splitting headache from trying to figure all this out. Time for another cup of coffee and some ibuprofen.
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  1920.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Thanks, Walter. I always try to tighten up the wording but, try as I might, it still comes out like a book. :-)
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  1921. I suppose Nagato vs Hood also depends on time of day as WWII approaches. As shown in the early 1942 period, the Japanese superiority at night fighting would confer an even greater advantage.
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  1922. With their high freeboard, they must have been very pleasant ships to serve on in heavy weather compared to most cruisers. Two question for those of our RN experts here. What was the reason for the unequal funnels, and why did it have such a pointed stern? My guess is either weight savings or speed, but I have never read the actual reason.
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  1923. Klobi, USN ships mostly made their own freshwater from distilling units on board the ships. Most of the water was used for boiler feedwater with the crew needs getting what was left. Ship logs from WWII had constant exhortations for the crew to decrease water use with a running report of number of gallons used each day. These early distilling units were limited in capacity, so it was always battle between the boilers and crews getting the occasional showers and enough water for cooking needs. Almost all oilers also carried freshwater to top up the tanks of larger ships and transfer water for the tanks of smaller ships that didn't have distilling units. Ships would also top off their tanks when they were in ports with approved water supplies. The USN Medical Corps were aware of the diseases spread by impure water, and they trained hundreds of doctors and technicians in testing and treating water supplies. Some ports, particularly in the Mediterranean, never developed potable water supplies that met the Navy standards so crews on liberty were forbidden to drink unboiled water or shower with the native water. This wasn't always obeyed, and sailors did get sick from breaking the rules. When it comes to kitchen and human waste, well, they had the whole ocean, so over the side it went. Human waste was collected in tanks and then emptied when they were in a location away from the shore and the enemy since floating waste was a pretty good indication of enemy vessels in the area. Kitchen waste was collected in standard garbage cans and dumped over the side under the same restrictions as emptying human waste tanks. Ocean life generally made short work of kitchen waste.
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  1924. There were also various diffused lighting schemes to help ships blend into the background lighting at sea. While the experiments, especially with the RCN, were effective, the ship needed several hundred small light projectors scattered around the ship, the lights didn't survive heavy weather well, and made excessive demands on the ship's electrical system. All of these schemes became more or less moot with the advent of radar, and camouflage moved on to that problem.
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  1925. An an early morning hour with Drach and Nelson. It's the start of a good day!
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  1926.  Tom Sanders  It was, but the performance of the Italians was poor, and ships and ammunition had numerous faults.
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  1927.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Yes, good opportunity to catch up on postponed household chores like finally getting all the wash done and some painting on the front porch where the sun beats down on it all summer. I can't move very fast now, but I just go slow and steady until it gets done. I'm really confident this will be a manageable outbreak this time. I would have been a lot happier to see these steps being taken ten days ago, but it looks like we're on the right path now. Thank goodness this isn't a repeat of the 1918 "Spanish" influenza. Then we'd at least have a reason to running around with our hair on fire. :-)
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  1928. Confusingly enough, there was another Type 92. This was the Imperial Japanese Navy standard flexible mount gun used in multiplace aircraft. It was indeed a direct copy of the Lewis gun. The IJN and IJA used separate procurement processes but used the same Kōki date numbering system for both services. That's how we ended up with two Tpe 92's. Thwy were referred to as the Army or Navy Type 92 to lessen the confusion.
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  1929. That would be great if you can make it over there, Tiberius. I have about the same drive, but coming from the opposite directions. I'm hoping Drach can avoid the bad luck of arriving during an active period during our spring tornado season!
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  1930.  @leops1984  Yes, when I'm asked about Halsey I reply "1942 Halsey or the 1944 version of Halsey?". They were different enough a casual observer could be forgiven for thinking they were two different persons. The 1942 model was was able to spin bilge water into gold, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and stopping what seemed to be the inexorable advance of Japan by late 1942. He ran over or irritated anyone who got in his way to get to the goal of saving the allies. Every second counted, so there was no time for elaborate planning or getting permission from those far away in Pearl or Washington. Unfortunately for Halsey, he continued to operate the same way into mid-1944, when the allies were no longer on the knife's edge of defeat, and time was no longer as important as it was two years previously. This was also the time when the bills came due from all the officers run roughshod over in 1942. Halsey continued to make mistakes, and it took higher and higher level; of brass to get his butt out of his scrapes. The end of the war came none too soon to save what remained of Halsey's battered reputation.
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  1931.  @Nuke89345  It was to Halsey's credit that he was not only able to work with Browning but the pair seemed to have a genuine fondness for each other. It was also a highlight of Halsey's own personality defects that they were able to work so well as a team. The were both able to use each other's weaknesses to best advantage because Halsey had many of the same antisocial tendencies as Browning. My biggest beef with Halsey was his overly aggressive style of leadership and combat. Early in the war, he was exactly what was needed to prosecute a war with limited resources. He was willing to take a punch to the jaw as long as he could hit the other fighter first. His style as a fullback at the Academy was trying to injure as many players on the opposing side while still running the ball in. Even though the other players were able to exact their revenge on Halsey, he was tough enough to take it and still keep running. That's how he ran the early campaigns of the war too. He was willing to lose ships, even carriers, as long as he could knock out more Japanese carriers at the same time. Japanese doctrine was almost the exact opposite of Halsey so it took them a full year to get a handle on how Halsey thought. His weakness in 1943 on was he wasn't able to curb his aggressiveness. Even though he could tolerate Browning's insubordination, he didn't brook it with other subordinates. He'd ask their opinion and then, more often than not, just ignore it. His intelligence officers at Leyte told him the threat was coming down San Bernardino Strait, but he thought he understood the Japanese mind well enough to know center force was really a decoy. That's why he went sailing north. The other team was going in for a touchdown, and he had to stop them. We had to sink the carriers, but it didn't have to be done today. We had the ships and fleet train to pick a time of our choosing, not get into an all out brawl like he had to in 1942. He just couldn't stop himself, even to the point of ignoring the calls for help off Samar. It's why he ignored his own weather forecasters of the perils of Typhoon Cobra. Those damn Japs weren't going to sneak in for a touchdown, and the boys would just have to take one for the team. He was lucky not to get relieved of command after "Halsey's Typhoon". Then, to make matters worse, he did the same thing again with Typhoon Connie. There was no reticence this time on the part of the Court of Inquiry. They wanted him relieved, and it was only the personal decision of Nimitz not to follow their recommendations that he he kept his command into Tokyo Bay. Halsey really fought two wars, the one in 1942 and the one in the following years. He was superb in the first and dangerously awful in the second. Where he places on a list depends on what war we're talking about.
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  1932.  @thefilthycasual516  I can't see how anyone can complain about Midway when Fletcher has never commanded a carrier task force before the battle and was just thrown into the fray. Where Fletcher fell down was at Guadalcanal. His job was to protect the transports until they had all the Marines and their material ashore. The Japanese only had ot sink the transport while offloading at the beach for the invasion to fail. is overcautious decision to withdraw his carriers, even when intelligence reports said most of te Japanese fleet was back at Rabaul refueling and reprovisioning. He also withdrew each night further offshore than was prudent for being in a position to oppose Japanese planes coming in to attack the Marines each day. The Marines were especially pissed off because they were Navy too and felt like the brothers in arms abandoned them. This was a period in the war where we needed a commander willing to take risks so an invasion force of Marines could get ashore and capture what became Henderson Field, thus reducing the treat to the marines and Fletchers own ships from air attack. Fletcher wasn't an incompetent commander by any means, but he didn't understand carrier or amphibious warfare. He didn't understand the risks of the invasion failing, tactically, strategically, and to the national morale, was greater then the risks to losing some of his ships. Fletcher was a fine commander overall, but he just wasn't the right commander to have at Guadalcanal. In his defense, at that early stage of the war, I'm not sure there was a "right" commander, and there certainly was no one that understood both carrier operations and amphibious landings. The fact he has spent most of the interwar period in mostly staff positions ashore made it easier for other Navy and Marine officers to snipe at him.
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  1933.  @Wolfeson28  Let's not start by poisoning the well. What I actually wrote was "Now, I defy anyone to read that war warning and pretend they see any indication that Pearl Harbor was at proximate risk of being the first attacked." It was always possible, even likely, that Pearl Harbor would be attacked by the Japanese. My point was no one thought the first strike in the war would be against Pearl. If you read the article in my link you'd see the final order of November 27 was the fourth in a little more than a month that an attack was just around the corner. Everyone knew the contents of the letters and general orders. As each warning period passed, a certain sense that this just another drill set in. Kimmel and Short were taking reasonable actions for how they perceived the threat. The Navy PBY's and Army B-17's were being stretched to the limits looking for the fleet. 10 or PBY's and 10-11 B-17's just weren't enough aircraft effectively patrol even the areas where the command staff believed a strike would originate. There were no extra planes to patrol north of the island, an area that those in charge thought was an unlikely route of attack, but it was the route the Japanese ultimately took. The Chief of Naval Operations didn't believe the Japanese could effectively refuel at sea, something they'd have to do to get to Pearl. That's why the assumption that Pearl was safe until the Japanese took Guam or Manila to use a refueling base. Naval intelligence had been spoofed by radio traffic from the home islands that indicated the North Pacific fleet was at base. The South Seas fleet was enroute to attack Thailand. That led to the belief the Japanese were not enroute to Pearl for an attack. Almost everything, from scattering aircraft to putting a carrier task force to sea would have been done if the belief was Pearl was at imminent risk of attack. Let me ask you a question, Without the value of hindsight, would you have believed Pearl was the imminent target of attack? That's what I meant. It's not that Pearl wouldn't or couldn't be attacked, it's that probability that it was going to be attacked on December 7 seemed exceedingly low. Both Kimmel and Short took defensive actions with the idea that the Japanese would come, but not for a couple weeks, but also to prevent enemy sabotage, something that was believed to be a real threat. While those fears were overblown, the Niihau Incident did show there were disloyal Japanese on the islands willing to assist the Japanese if they could. Kimmel and Short's judgement tuned out to be wrong, but I suspect almost any commander in charge would have made the same errors in judgement.
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  1934.  @kemarisite  The problem was it was Short that was responsible for the air defense of Hawaii, not Kimmel. The two didn't particularly like each other, and their staffs had no liaisons serving on the opposite staff. The "60 or so" PBY's is a misleading number. Two squadrons had only arrived on November 23 for training before being assigned to outlying areas. Almost none of those crews had training beyond basic aircraft operation. The real number of PBY's with regular crews was 15, and only 10 or 11 were available at any one time because of maintenance and breakdowns. Those crews had been flying several patrols daily six days a week since October, when the first warnings of impending war were issued. The tactical error was almost no patrols extended north of the island, since that was considered the most unlikely route of attack and, with so few aircraft available, they were concentrated west and south of the island, the routes an attack was expected. Short had 12 B-17's, 33 B-18's and 12 A-20's available, all appropriate for patrol work. The B-17's were the longest range aircraft on the island. They were used in the patrol role, but their pilots were also worn out due to the constant flying schedules. The squadron commander just happned to choose December 7 as their one rest day in the past 10, so all were caught on the ground with only four undamaged. The B-18's were almost never used for patrol work, the same as the A-20's. Short thought the B-17's were sufficient, and Kimmel never asked for more Army patrols. The failure to plan and communicate falls equally on both commanders. Both commancer received a message on November 26 reading, in part"...Prior to hostile Japanese action you are directed to undertake such reconnaissance and other measures as you deem necessary, but these measures should be carried out so as not repeat not to alarm civil population or disclose intent. Report measures taken…" From this message, and the November 27 message, it was pretty clear that Pearl wasn't considered the likely place of first attack. Whatever methods of detecting an attack were left strictly to the judgement of the two commanders. Sabotage by Japanese living on the island was considered the most likely threat, so protection of the island's aircraft on the ground was a top priority. Whatever alert measures that were taken had the top priority on not alarming the civilians and not tipping our hand that we were able to read parts of the Japanese code. This is not the kind of message that would be sent if war affecting Hawaii was actually considered imminent. There were certainly steps that might have been taken to detect the attack before it was underway. Was there any realistic assortment of steps that would have actually stopped the attack? Doubtful at best. There's an excellent article of the military domestic steps leading up to the attack at https://www.americanheritage.com/pearl-harbor-who-blundered. I suggest you read it to get a good overall view of what things were actually like at Pearl before the attack.
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  1935.  @Wolfeson28  Let this serve as answer to several posts in the same vein. This is the text of a top secret message sent to Admiral Kimmel by the chief of naval operations on November 27, 1941, with a similar message sent by the Army to General Stark: This dispatch is to be considered a war warning X Negotiations with Japan looking toward the stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days X The number and equipment of Japanese troops and the organization of naval task forces indicates an amphibious expedition against either the Philippines Thai or Kra Peninsula or possibly Borneo X Execute an appropriate defensive deployment preparatory to carrying out the tasks assigned in WPL46. This was the last general warning sent before Pearl Harbor. Neither Kmmel nor Short had sufficient clearance to see any of the fragmentary decrypts from the Japanese Purple code, so this is all the ind=formation they had in terms of a war warning. Both Kimmel and Short recognized the seriousness of the message. Neither had ever seen a message for their chiefs of staff labeled a war warning before. Now, I defy anyone to read that war warning and pretend they see any indication that Pearl Harbor was at proximate risk of being the first attacked. Almost no one in the US military even thought an attack against Pearl from the home islands was even possible. The assumption was Manila and Guam would need ot be taken first to provide a springboard for an attack on Hawaii. The common assumption in the Navy was ships inside Pearl were safe from torpedo attack because the anchorage waters, at 45 feet, were too shallow. Sure, the British had staged a similar attack at Taranto the previous year, but they were the British, not the Japanese. We "knew" the Japanese had inferior aircraft, inferior flying skills, and just weren't skilled enough to carry off a Taranto style attack. We were guilty of going into war assuming the enemy was what we had dreamed up rather than seeing how the Japanese fought from the point of view of Japan. There is plenty of blame to go around for the attack on Pearl, from FDR down to the lieutenant that told the two radar operators on top of wind swept Opana that had actually spotted the incoming attack to shut off their radar and go get breakfast. To put all the blame on the two commanders of Pearl Harbor that day is ludicrous.
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  1936. The New Orleans class ships would have still had the same issues as the Brooklyns in terms of range differential. It would have depended on either luck or one of the San Francisco's sacrificing itself so her two sisters would have been able to pound the Graf Spee into submission.
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  1937. Moore is engaged in abetting a crime in states that also have criminal penalties for being a faithless elector. He should be indicted for his crimes.
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  1938. And here I thought eating glue was weird.
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  1939. A year and a half later. NO death camps, Jade Helm didn't lead to martial law...the only thing that happened is thousands of posts from people who think martial as in martial law is spelled marshal, like Marshal Dillon. You morons will be on to some other half baked tinfoil hat conspiracy as I write this because what's life without a whacky conspiracy theory, right? Watson is right. Knock it off with this crap if you ever expect anyone to believe us.
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  1940. You left out the part where the Roof Korean brained the antifa bitch with his metal water bottle after trying to kick him in the balls. Whatever it called itself then bravely ran off, bleating for the cops she hates to protect her...they...it...whatever.
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  1941. Another excellent PJW video capturing our slide into anarchy. Time to unlimber the machine guns.
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  1942. The thing with the mouthwash is fake. You can't just walk up and open the bottle. It's sealed up too well.
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  1943. Jennifer, this is a voice from the future. Nothing is going to happen. No "Marshal Law Trucks" are really driving around. Ebola didn't kill anyone in the US, Some idiot at AT&T hit the wrong button. There is no reason to be afraid. Oh, and don't buy gold. Trump is going to be elected president and gold is going to tank.
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  1944. Places that get no rain for months and have temperatures at 40C or or over for months are going to burn a lot more and a lot faster than the same arsonist lighting a fire in a place like a rain forest in the state of Washington.
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  1945. 1955 Chevy x 2 for Lt. Whipkey.
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  1946. Hitting one another in mid-flight and crashing is just one reason why you'd never see that kind of formation from the battlefield.
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  1947. While the T-42 was only a project, look up the T-35 and T-28. The T-42 wasn't the only Soviet heavy multi-turreted tank, it would have just been the heaviest of these types of tanks the Soviets had already built. I do agree that calling this one of the top 5 Soviet disasters was pretty silly.
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  1948. I believe the missile failure explanation. I used to live about 100 miles from Vandenberg's missile test facility. Even normal launches at night could create weird patterns, depending on atmospheric conditions, but a missile that failed or blew up would create huge circular displays that could be seen many hundreds of miles away. Of course, the true UFO believers still think it's aliens.
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  1949. Fleccas, the most loveable Nazi ever. :-)
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  1950. The fact the AG didn't chose to indict Cuomo tells me this whole thing is an attempt to get the bad news out at once so it can blow over before 2022.Cuomo won't be going to jail and I doubt he'll even resign. Remember, Ralph Northam survived as governor of Virginia after he was tossed under the bus.
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  1951. And here it is two and a half years later and Trump still hasn't become "worse than Hitler". As usual, communists will take over while masquerading as anti-fascists.
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  1952. MH-53E Sea Dragon, USN variant of the CH-53E Super Stallion.
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  1953.  @josephmccarthy6098  Correct. I read about this in eighth grade history and then again in senior high school history. Being a history fan even then, I was surprised the US had been so involved in the Caribbean and Central America, but I was able to see both sides of the question after studying the matter. Most of my friends, however, memorized enough to pass the test. I suspect some of those bitching about US history not covering this were among some of those people.
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  1954. +Fourth Hokage - Downtown Detroit is about three square miles. That leaves about 135 square miles that's not downtown. You got some tours that show how nice those are?
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  1955. Well, damn, I guess you never hear of Erin Brockovich. She won $333 million in court against PG%E for causing cancer in kids. You see, you can sue companies that cause harm and win a shitload of money for the victims. You're not going to get much out of suing thugs that shoot and kill kids. As to your comment about the police, it doesn't make much sense. I wasn't comparing the police to a criminal. I was comparing the reaction of certain members of the black community to a criminal being shot by the police while they were committing a felony. You have heard of Michael "The Gentle Giant" Brown and Ferguson, Missouri, right? I don't know what your anger management issues are, but the whole world isn't against you.
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  1956. No, I left California 12 years ago because it is headed in the same direction as Cleveland. I now live in a much smaller state and life is a lot better. Everytime I go back to Cleveland for a visit I'm sad. Downtown and a small ring around the center is the only part of the city that doesn't look like it was hit by a nuclear bomb.
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  1957. Jay, inner city schools have some of highest costs per student of any schools in the country. Detroit schools cost $15,459 per student, and only about 45% of students graduate high school. ACE Academy, a charter school in Detroit, spends $14,975 per student and 100% of their students graduate with higher GPA's than most MIchigan schools. Is the problem money or the Detroit teachers and their union, who fight tooth and nail to prevent more charter schools? Do you think we can already see an answer to the failed Detroit public school system or would you like to pour more money into it? If companies can't look at the inner cities as a good place to invest, ow will anything change? Do you think money will simply fall from heaven like manna on the plains? The "wounds of oppression" are over. Was there anyone alive in Detroit who was more hurt by whites or by Kwame Kilpatrick? Whatever role anyone played in Detroit arriving at the place it's in now is done. We either move forward and stop looking back for excuses or nothing will change. White guilt hasn't built a single home or provided a single job.
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  1958. Reminds me a lot of some places in the Caribbean. Some nice fixed up houses amid rubble.
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  1959. Well, at least spring has finally arrived.
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  1960. No, you don't need to. Woodward and Seven Mile have some decent sections, and Palmer Woods and Sherwood Forest aren't far from the freeway, so you don't have to drive though the real hoods.
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  1961. Dang! The power was still on at that first building? I'm amazed the scrapers hadn't gotten all the wiring and electrical panels yet.
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  1962. It's kind of a trademark of Palmer Woods streets. I think Josh is right. There aren't any curbs, and the rocks are to keep people off the curb lawns.
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  1963. You may also notice that Sherwood Forest has a lot of what most Detroit neighborhoods have very little of - streetlights. Those decorative lighting standards are paid for by the residents, as is the electricity to run them. If it was like the other neighborhoods Charlie typically drives through, there's one streetlight at midblock and then no others unless it's an exceptionally long block or you come to an intersection. Streetlights not only cut down on crime, they contribute to the social cohesion of a neighborhood. Unfortunately, Detroit is broke, so even paying for the few streetlights they have is a burden, even after replacing most of them with LED lights that are much cheaper to run.
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  1964. What has that got to do with the streets Charlie was driving on? It wasn't on main streets. It was on streets through the worst parts of town. I'll guarantee that Freeman-Brown didn't have those streets paved because Charlies showed them on Youtube. Look, I know she's a black woman, and you're a black woman, so you'd like to put her in the best light possible, but try to respond to what's actually being shown in the video, not new bus stops somewhere else in town.
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  1965. Well, Charlie can answer better than me, but his videos are rarely more than a week or two old when he posts them. The state of the trees and other foliage is consistent with late spring. Regardless of how good a job you believe Freeman-Wilson has done, she didn't get every street Charlie drove over repaved in two months.
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  1966. Prices for homes in Palmer Woods go for about $400,000 to $1.5 million. The lower priced homes are foreclosures and generally need work. Ten years ago, some of the current $500k to $600k homes in good shape were going for $1.5 to $2 million. Nice neighborhood to take a chance if you think Detroit is coming back.
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  1967. If Detroit wants to be nothing but downtown and maybe 50,000 people living in a few neighborhoods they are spending money in exactly the right way. Detroit may become the first city that only exists for people to go into but not live.
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  1968.  boogy313rd  I see. So you're hypnotized into drinking T-bird, downing those 40 ouncers, and spending the money you don't have playing the lotto?
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  1969.  D B  How about San Diego, Mesa AZ, Fresno, Tulsa, Omaha, Colorado Springs, Fort Worth, Miami?...the list goes on. But there isn't one city on the list as poverty stricken and half destroyed as Detroit.
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  1970.  @Wëpälkatar  I'm going to assume you're not a native English speaker. It's all that could explain such a word salad that made no sense.
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  1971. Looks like Charlie got himself an undercover bodycam. Needs to set the date right though.
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  1972. Yes, the street with the white painted rocks is in Palmer Woods. From 9:11, it's the University District. At 10:22, he's back in Palmer Woods. Both areas have beautiful homes, but they are within a couple blocks of some of the worst of Detroit
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  1973.  @likedayummm9303  And who exactly would pay to demolish all that "shit"and build those better houses? Who would have the money to buy all those new houses?
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  1974. How long do you plan on living?
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  1975. Green strobe light to attract the night creatures.
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  1976. Palmer Park and the University District.
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  1977. There are almost no apartment buildings in East Cleveland that have survived intact and occupied. It's terrible.
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  1978.  @mookdatruth1996  That's what it looks like just seeing the windows compared to rooflines on the third floors.
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  1979. It's siding scrapers peeling off the aluminum to sell. Between stripping siding and debricking houses, it goes on every day in Detroit.
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  1980.  @alcindorbennett1971  There's a lot of crime happening in Detroit, but I rarely see that many police officers in one place there.
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  1981.  @dalemcnamee2427  I see very few three story houses in Detroit. Two story, two family homes are the norm.
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  1982.  @silversword4428  Since when was anyone guaranteed an "affordable" home? Even worse, when were they assured they'd never have to wait for something in high demand? You either qualify for government programs like Sections 8, get a job that pays more money so you afford to buy or rent your "affordable" home, or move to a place where housing is less expensive. The vast majority of the working poor are in low skill jobs that are available in most parts of the country that are a lot less expensive to live in than places across the river from NYC. Gentrification saves cities from the fate we've already seen in Detroit. Is that your preferred alternative to gentrification?
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  1983. They are. The city has demolished thousands of structures. Last I read, they had about 18,000 to go. Each house costs between $8,000 and $10,000 to demolish. Before you ask, when you have a housing stock built for 2 million people and only 700,000 people are left, renovating a nearly destroyed house in a nearly destroyed neighbor will not encourage people to move back.
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  1984.  @fridge6668  Choose a proper article? You have me confused for yourself. You were the one that said you a McDonald's application really hard to fill out, not me. Way to set up a strawman and then try to knock it down with an ad hominem.
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  1985. Compared to a drive out Kercheval once you leave downtown all the way out to Grosse Pointe, the DC hoods look positively prosperous. They also seem to have plenty of cops, something Detroit sorely lacks.
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  1986. It does cost more to demolish than any property is worth. However, if the abandoned and valueless structures aren't demolished there's no chance for that property to ever have some value. Detroit is getting state and federal money to help demolish these abandoned structures.
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  1987.  @mookdatruth1996  Dang. Makes me wonder hot tall the ceilings are on some of those third floors. I live in a house with 12 and 14 foot ceilings. I think I'd feel like I was in a cave in one of those.
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  1988.  @hubhub27  Sure. What?
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  1989. 601, I live in Alabama. We have some depressing hoods as well, but they are not all of Alabama. I live in a town with more historic homes than anywhere in the South than Mobile. We actually have more historic homes per capita than anywhere in the country. Jackson is a depressing city, but the hoods are not all of Jackson, and certainly not all of Mississippi. Jackson has had the misfortune of having two mayors since 1997 who were lunatics, and one of the lunatic's sons is now mayor. Neither of them cared about white flight from the city, and the white population dropped from 60% in 1970 to about 18% in 2010. Unless a way can be found to bring in more middle class people, black and white, and convince businesses that those in charge know what they are doing and aren't thieves. If it can't be done, Jackson rapidly on the road to the Detroit of the South.
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  1990. Dere's a new sheriff in town...
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  1991. Mostly a bunch of antifa shitheads at work. It had nothing to do with George Floyd at that point.
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  1992. At this rate it won't be long until half of Detroit is back to dirt roads and forests. Was the white girl at the gas station hookin'? She sure was staring your down, Charlie.
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  1993. Charlie obviously knows the people who have the chickens. He didn't just "go on other people's property". I swear, Charlie's videos attract some of the dumbest shits I've ver seen.
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  1994. First time I've sen one of your videos without crowds of "yutes" having around on the streets. At least there should be less driveby shootings. I guess they do still have to come out an find you why the cops and ambulance are down the block though. I guess street retailing is one of the "essential" businesses.
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  1995. Sounds like spring is returning to the hood. That usually means one more giant snow storm as the last gasp of winter.
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  1996. My favorite thing about this year's holiday is being 75 and surviving covid. God is truly merciful to let me have another Christmas.
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  1997. Yep, I've been unsubbed from five different channels, none of which are related to any other. I'd be tempted to say it's some kind of Youtube censorship thing, but two political channels, a travel channel, one ham radio, and now Kent leads me to believe it's just some kind of Youtube glitch. Never attribute to tinfoil what is more easily explained by incompetence!
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  1998.  Oggy  More likely about eight years worth cocaine and various other drugs. She lived in quite a posh NYC suburb.
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  1999. After a long day doing some kung flu fighting, this was a very relaxing and inspiring video to watch. It should remind us of what we have to look forward to as the virus is being defeated. God bless us all.
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  2000. Local news in the US rarely report misdemeanor crimes. There are just too many (and they aren't that interesting in a news sense) to squeeze into a half hour or hour's worth of news. They report on felony crimes, and generally violent crimes at that. Surely they can't be suggesting the "news" stop reporting the ID of a suspect running around their community shooting people, do they?
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  2001.  @koekjekoekje2089  You, sir, are a complete moron. He was hit in the leg by cannonball, hardly a sure way to assassinate anyone. It took him a week to die after a raging infection from the leg amputation. Again, pretty hard to plan for as part of a plot. I have never read anywhere any serious research into such a preposterous idea. I'm going to assume you are a 14 year old who felt the need to practice typing when you dreamed that one up and leave it at that.
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  2002.  @xxOmponxx  The drinking age has changed how many people under 21 die in alcohol related accidents. I don't know where "here" is, but this is provable true on a nationwide basis. Some other countries have a lower drinking age than the US, although some only allow under 21 drinking when the alcohol is purchased by an adult and the consumption is monitored by an adult. There are also cultural differences between some countries and the US that make under 21 drinking more traditional and supervised. Many of the countries that allow under 21 drinking also have laws that the legal blood alcohol limit for those under 21 is either .04 or none. That is a big factor in decreasing underage drunk driving. I absolutely believe the voting age should be 21 again. Many of the comments I read from people between 18 and 20 I read here convince me of that. The Constitution allows age 18 voting because the 26th amendment was passed in 1971 giving them that right. Just as with the repeal of prohibition, another amendment could change that again. There's nothing sacrosanct about an amendment.
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  2003.  @RTmadnesstoo  I understood the sarcasm, but maybe you're too dense to understand California was a poor state to use as an example.
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  2004.  @rutabagasteu  Yes, and the same was true in most states for the Cold War, Korea, and WWII. What's your point? That Vietnam was somehow special, so we should have changed the voting and drinking laws because men were being drafted again? That's not a very solid argument.
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  2005. No, I don't think the drinking age should 18. 18 year olds can already drive and vote, and those tow privileges have already caused us enough problems without adding booze into the mix..
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  2006. If only there was a way to change basic human nature, Linda. The probability of success isn't high.
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  2007. Dogs are smart, but some horses are smarter.
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  2008. BTW, History Guy, I noticed the skull under that cap on your right. :-)
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  2009. You can tell if a street scene was pre or post elevators by counting the number of stories in the buildings. If the maximum height is five stories, it's pre elevator, since five stories was considered to be the most a building could have and still rent offices on the upper floor. Buildings higher than five stories almost always contained some kind of elevator.
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  2010. Aah, okay, I know the house now. Never got the chance to see inside of of the park staff housing but it was reputed to be pretty decent for being in the howling wilderness. The Standard is one of the few intact 120 stamp mills still more or less complete. As you say, it's a really fantastic structure, and all the more since the all the building material and stamps had to be brought in by wagon. The mill alone is worth trip. I never saw any ghosts. I was allowed to wander pretty much at will that night, and the wind came in fits and starts. The sound of the wind rising and falling through the mill was actually pretty frightening. It was made worse when something set off a couple of packs of coyotes yowling at something. I scurried back to the mill and decided that was enough exploring for one night!
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  2011. Another excellent video about an event which is little known, even in the UK. In addition to management problems, a bigger problem in this accident was the British reliance on vacuum brakes long after the US and other countries had adopted air brakes as standard. Vacuum brakes required a stopping distance of almost twice as long for each ton of weight than air brakes. Air brakes would probably not have prevented the first collision with the standing goods train, but they may have given enough stopping power to the second express to have prevented that collision.
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  2012. I'm old enough to remember when this was still called Decoration Day. It was indeed on May 30 rather than always on a Monday of a three day weekend. A howitzer fired a salute at dawn as the flag was raised and then lowered, and another howitzer salute fired as the flag was raised again at noon. Both salutes were fired by the honor guard of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. We had a town parade in the morning to the cemetery where school children (myself included) put a small US Flag on the grave of each service member's grave. We had a picnic, swimming at the lake, (assuming it was actually warm enough, not a sure thing in northern Ohio) and sometimes a town BBQ in the afternoon, but having the observance before any other fun things took place helped fix in my mind that some people died so I might enjoy an otherwise enjoyable and free day.
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  2013.  @craigkdillon  True. I'll modify it to "In the direction of the setting sun" then.
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  2014.  @franksmith6683  An interesting concept!
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  2015. Agred. It would be nice to have someone sort out the truth from the fiction about what happened at Athens.
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  2016. You forgot to mention (or maybe ran out of time) the reason why the Russian Pacific Squadron was forced to take their round the world voyage. As the squadron sailed into the North Sea, they had received reports of the Japanese torpedo boats laying in wait for them. These bogus reports may have been placed in Russian hands by Japanese intelligence, but how Japanese torpedo boats could have gotten to the North Sea undetected was never explained. The Russians were on high alert while passing through the area of the Dogger Bank, off the northeast coast of England. Somehow, British fishing trawlers commonly in the Dogger Bank, were misidentified as Japanese torpedo boats, and the Russians opened up with everything they had. They not only sank one fishing boat and damaged at least seven others, they also damaged two of their own cruisers and killed a number of Russian sailors. It took Admiral Rozhestvensky almost 20- minutes to get everyone to cease firing due to the poor communications of the fleet, something that would later haunt them again. The fact that so few trawlers were sunk or damaged and no British fishermen were killed was solely due to the horrible gunnery skills of the Russians, another thing that would later haunt them. The British were furious, and it was only the intervention of France that stopped the Royal Navy from sinking the the Russian fleet in the English Channel. The Russians had to leave behind several high ranking officers to answer for the outrage and agree to pay reparations for the lost and damaged boats. The whole mess cost the Russians about two weeks time, and alerted the Japanese that the Russians were headed their way. The British, who almost entered the war on the side of Japan, believed something amiss was up with the Russian and forbade them the use of the Suez Canal. That lead to the necessity of sailing all the way around the Cape of Good Hope. The amazing thing about the battle of Tsushima was not that the Russians lost, it was that the Russians showed up at all. The Russians only had four recently built battleships of the Borodino class, the first built in Russia, although they were fairly close copies of the Tsesarevich. The Tsesarevich was a design with a heavy roll when doing fast turns or in cross running seas. The Borodino class made several changes to the armament that made that worse, and there were several times on the epic voyage where it was feared one or more of the vessels would capsize. The older vessels were even less seaworthy, and the whole squadron never averaged more than seven knots through the stormy seas around the Cape. All the Russian ships consumed prodigious amounts of coal due to their leaky stacks and boilers, and they had to be rebunkered a grand total of 65 times during the voyage. This was all done by the sailors on each ship transferring coal a bag at a time from accompanying colliers, and many ships just loaded the coal on the decks, shoving it down into the bunkers as needed. That's why the Russian ships's decks were covered in coal when they met the Japanese. The Russian sailors had already heard of the Fall of Port Arthur, and that meant an even longer sail to try to get to Vladivostok, the only remaining Russian port in the Far East. The material condition of the ships was poor after sailing for 16,000 miles and almost four months at sea, and the Russian sailors were demoralized and exhausted. The Japanese has been training and refitting their ships for the previous three months, and they were in top form by the time the Russians showed up. The outcome of the battle was never in doubt.
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  2017. My department wore fiberglass helmets like the one at https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/1113/14/vintage-bell-toptex-police-motorcycle_1_57b915faec32924a176f782371936537.jpg for a few years in the 70's as part of our normal patrol uniform. They were hot, heavy, and really uncomfortable in summer weather. Around 1979, a new sheriff wanted a "softer" look, so the helmets went in the trunk and only came out for crowd control situations. I complained about them as much as the next deputy, but that old Bell helmet did save my life when a "friend" of the suspect we were chasing dropped a brick on me from top of a three story building. The helmet cracked down the middle, and I was in a daze for awhile, but I was otherwise uninjured. It would have been my skull cracked open if not for that helmet. Needless to say, I never complained about helmets again. :-)
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  2018.  @steveshoemaker6347  LOL. I imagine we drive some people nuts without ever trying. Ex-wives tend ot be a little nutty anyway.
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  2019. Very interesting. I always wondered how those sun (pith) helmets came about.
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  2020.  @DeadPixel1105  Yeah, although Chaz took place in Seattle, not Portland. Young adults are always looking for fantasy worlds of living without being controlled by mom and dad while at the same time being supported by their money. You can find examples of this going all the way back to ancient Greece. Never worked then either.
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  2021. The balloons were target balloons, not weather balloons. Target balloons were used for antiaircraft practice throughout the fleet during the war.
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  2022.  @andrewlubanski9915  You're welcome. It's a good read for anyone interested in naval logistics.
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  2023.  @julieenslow5915  You're welcome. Smiles are indeed in short supply since the arrival of this virus in...I don't know, some researchers are now saying last November. I read a poll yesterday saying 68% of people are afraid to go into a store, and 78% are afraid to go into a restaurant! I'm 74 with COPD, one of the supposed targets of this virus. I had zero fear because the restaurant was cleaner than most surgical suites, and they were more careful about infection control than most nursing homes. It was more than a little depressing watching people in their twenties all masked up and rushing into the place to get their takeout order and then rushing back out, eyes darting back and forth, looking for any signs the bug might spring in them from hiding. The latest death rate I've seen is that people under 40 have a death rate from the Wu Flu of about two in ten thousand. I mean, for heavens sake, they had a better chance of serious injury or death just driving to the place. We have turned into a much more fragile place than I ever imagined we would. And, yes, it's vessels like Mount Hood and the crews that served aboard them that deserve a lot more recognition, but she wasn't a battleship or aircraft carrier, so not many people are interested. Sad. :-(
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  2024.  Ultimate Keyboard Warrior  Interesting theory, but there are a few problems with it. First, a Navy blimp was basically a big non-rigid bag of gas with very little steel framing. The only steel was in the engines and control car. Second, it would have taken a huge electromagnet to grab that small amount of steel, and no submarine had the generating capacity to run that kind of electrical system. It's highly unlikely the Germans would have spent any money to develop such a system since it would only work in the very limited circumstances.
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  2025. Just as an aside, there's a jarring change in audio between the recorded and live sections of the video.
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  2026. Ah, you're right, I had that backwards.
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  2027. Another great video, and a "friendly" bombing I had never heard of...until now.
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  2028. eryeland Information coming from a website where data is transmitted from Zetas (which don't exist) and their "emissary", Nancy Lieder, who had her Zeta cell phone implanted in her brain as a girl, is hardly something any sane person would believe. Lieder is a liar, fraud, and scam artist that has been predicting the pole shift and end of the world as we know it since 2003, most recently in 2017. On her first go round in 2003, she advised pet owners to have their animals euthanized so they wouldn't suffer. She and her ZetaTalk sycophants have predicted the pole shift at least four times since 2003 and, since we're not yet history, she was wrong again...and again. By copying and pasting this garbage here, you must either be one of the most gullible persons ever, or a liar and fraudster like your mistress.
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  2029.  @bentnickel7487  Bent, i'm in the same position as you. I find videos of which I should been notified but never have, only because it see it on the recommended on the side panel. I have to pay attention or I'll miss it. You might be right about YT just not being able to handle their business since the ones I have problems with seem to span different political and social venues.
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  2030. The Norden bombsight earned an undeserved reputation of not being an effective sight. Postwar testing proved it was accurate within about 100 meters from 20,000 feet. That accuracy was only obtainable with well trained bombardiers, and the need for bombardiers was so great by 1942 that htye were only getting half of the previous nine months training and, for a period in 1943, bombardiers were pushed out of bombardier school in less than three months. The same was true for navigators, and the need for aircrew was at least partly responsible for these kinds of navigational failures, and the need for area bombing instead of precision bombing.
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  2031. EF5 tornadoes have occurred nearly every year since 1950. Super tornado outbreaks usually happen about every 30-40 years. The next super outbreak was in 2011, so 37 years, so we can say twice to three times a century. However, detailed tornado records only go back to about 150-200 years, so we are making guesstimates about the real frequency.
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  2032. Poor guy. He lived a famous but terrible short life at a time when we didn't know how to treat pituitary hyperplasia.
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  2033.  @tonyduncan9852  I'm glad you found a place that meets your needs. Given that you've apparently found Spain to your liking for 19 years, why haven't you become a Spanish citizen?
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  2034.  @tonyduncan9852  I'm well aware of expatriate means. Maybe we can try an exercise in clear, concise writing this time. Are you a British citizen living in the US or a US citizen living in Britain? You can be an expatriate either way.
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  2035.  @tonyduncan9852  Well, good for you. People that hate the US should all go somewhere else and be happy there. Britain has more than a few skeletons in its closet when it comes to killing people. Kinda like the pot calling kettle black.
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  2036.  @tonyduncan9852  Nope, not a clue. I never killed anyone. Exactly what country are you from?
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  2037.  @tonyduncan9852  Is that compared to murdering people you do know?
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  2038.  @brucesmith54  Yes, Bruce, the one you go to must be special. All the ones I've seen have had foreign staff. Every single one. Now read what I wrote this time instead of adding a leftist spin. I said "you can't measure diversity and inclusion for an entire country". Do you seriously think you can? It jumped out at me because my education is in statistics, and that seemed like the most immeasurable thing you could ever use to decide if a country was in a top 10 list. Let's not get into some racist shit here.
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  2039.  @dawulpertingerofstarland5257  Come on down, brother, we have room for everyone...well, as long as you're not a member of antifa. That wouldn't be good. :-)
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  2040.  @dawulpertingerofstarland5257  We have an excellent VA hospital in Montgomery with a clinic in Columbus GA, right across the state line. Our public schools here are not great but we have good private schools that aren't too expensive. Math is the drug of choice here but things like cocaine and heroin are rarely seen. This is still the bible belt, and there is a sense of morality when it comes to things like crime and drug use. I'm originally from California and things are different here. No one really cares if you're from somewhere else as long as you learn and have respect for Southern culture. We have hot summers, but the rest of the year is pretty mild. Even a typical winter day sees highs in the upper 50s and low 60s with lows in the mid 30s to mid 40s. We see an inch of snow once every five years or so. The cost of living is what makes this area the most attractive. As I said, you can still buy a decent house for $100,000, and $250,000 buys a literal mansion. A gallon of regular gas is going for $2.09 today. It's certainly worth a look if you're considering moving.
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  2041.  @dawulpertingerofstarland5257  Unfortunately, almost everywhere has those problems. It's just a matter of how large the problems are. I'd suggest you consider the South before you end up in high cost states like Colorado and Oregon. Salaries aren't as high but the cost of living more than offsets that. I live in Alabama, and the smaller cities here have much less crime, provide some decent jobs, and you can still buy a house for $100,000 or rent a two bedroom apartment for $600.
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  2042.  @dawulpertingerofstarland5257  Yes, my impression of Casper is it's an interesting place for a tourist to spend a few days, but it must get old fast for residents. Casper isn't close to any large city so it's pretty isolated and self-contained. It's supposed to be a good place to raise a family, probably because a lot of the big city temptations are absent from Casper. Look at this way though - at least you don't live in Rock Springs. :-)
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  2043. The rearseater in the F-89 wasn't a radio operator, he was a radar operator.
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  2044. And how exactly did these hip hop "artists" acquire the equipment they needed? Donations from wealthy charities? Abe Beam dropped them off at their cribs? Oh, wait, you actually meant they acquired them by looting, but you're afraid you'd look like a racist if you actually spoke the truth. This was not your best episode, History Guy
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  2045. No doubt, the PPK survives on cultural fame. The .32 ACP version is probably the worst for failure to feed/failure to eject problems and it takes some work and money to go through enough different kinds of ammo to make the gun run. The worst part is the ammo the works in one PPK may not work in the next gun.
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  2046. Excellent presentation about the last of the dreadnoughts. HMS Dreadnought was launched in 1906, the ship's name being used to describe an entirely new class of vessels. It's hard to imagine that any naval officer present at the launch would think any navy would voluntarily decommission the last of her sisters just 85 years later.
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  2047. It would certainly be a good way to show how a city prone to damaging earthquakes can rebuild a city in a way that will maximize quake damage today. An incredibly stupid decision.
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  2048. An entire nation held in the grips of a foolish superstition to this day.
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  2049. Great video. As usual, a crisis will bring out the best and worst in us.
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  2050.  @michaelbrennan6123  Yes, I do, although the Constitution wasn't the operative law about returning slaves, it was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Most jurisdictions in the North simply refused to comply with the law, and at least two states, Vermont and Wisconsin passed their own laws nullifying the Federal law. Unfortunately, this set a new nullification crisis in motion that resulted in the south declaring their right to also nullify Federal laws. The issues of the Civil War were firmly set by the middle of the 1850's.
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  2051.  @studinthemaking  Do you mean wg=hen she was a target at Bikini? If so, she was struck by at least five torpedoes during that operation. If you mean Pearl Harbor, it was a combination of that one torpedo and at least six and possibly ten 250 kg and 500 kg bombs.
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  2052. Seems as if Goya may have come down with Meniere's Disease. It's from unknown causes but afflicts the sufferer with recurring and disabling vertigo and causes hearing impairment from just a little to total deafness. It's caused by an imbalance of the chemicals between the inner and outer ear and has no cure. I've had it for the past 20 years and am deaf in my left ear from it. It can make you a little crazy not knowing when the next attack will come.
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  2053. Chichén Itzá is an amazing archeological site to visit, but it's a good idea to hire a guide if you're not going with a tour. You'll learn more about you're seeing, but the main advantage of a guide is his ability to get the hundreds of vendors to stop harassing you. These vendors are ruining the experience of many visitors. I don't know why the state government of Quintana Roo can't eject these vendors, since they are breaking the law by being there.
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  2054. Pirates of the Caribbean!
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  2055. The NWS still gets it wrong occasionally, but not as spectacularly wrong as the "Light rain" forecast of March 11. 1888. It's still a cautionary tale for forecasters today
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  2056. I stopped in Deadwood on a cross country tripe in March, 2005, and ran into similar, although not as extreme temperature. I stopped at about 8:00. There was about three inches of snow with a temperature of 22F. When I came out two hours later, the snow was gone, the ground was bare, and it was 58. It was like I had been transported to some other place. I'm kind of weather nerd, and enjoy changes in the weather, but that was a little much, even for me.
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  2057. Take a look at the Cleveland Clinic fire in 1929 when a fire started in the basement storage vault for nitrate x-rays. It spread throughout the building due to the same series of mistakes made in the 1978 fire. The difference with this fire was 123 people died, mostly from poison gas inhalation.
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  2058.  @Mondo762  Getting a little butt hurt I see. You made an affirmative statement about O'Hara making the "final kill shot on the Steir", not just that he was involved in the fighting. Everyone on the ship was involved in the fighting. Your assertion was not correct, and then you were the one making the condescending crack about me making no mention of what he never did. I've been a historian for 55 years. This is a history forum. If you can't take the time to check to see if a story you're posting is factual, you can expect someone who does know the story to set forth the facts...and facts don't care about your feelings.
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  2059.  @Mondo762  Probably because I chose not to mention him and make the post longer than it already was. However, if it makes you happy, I'll do so now. The person you're referring to is Engine Cadet Edwin Joseph O'Hara. He was a Midshipman from the US Merchant Marine Academy. He fired the last five rounds from the 4" gun after already being wounded. It was a heroic action, but there's no evidence any of those rounds was the "Kill Shot" of the Steir. Although at least four hit (the final round may have caused the gun to explode), the Steir was already a wreck and in a sinking condition. We don't know if any of the 35 rounds fired caused fatal damage to the Steir because Commander Horst Gerlach, captain of the Steir, ordered scuttling charges set before the crew abandoned ship. The immediate cause of the sinking was the effect of those scuttling charges, not shells fired from the Hopkins. O'Hara's role in the sinking has been fictionalized by several authors, but the US Merchant Marine Academy makes no claim that any of O'Hara's shots was fatal. It's always good idea to look for original sources rather than believe the word of one author about anything historical.
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  2060. Whoopsie. I don't know how Hoskins got in my head rather than Hopkins.
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  2061.  @Nathan_Whaley-g8m  While Britain aided in the development of the atomic bomb, the main effort was still by US and refugee German scientists. There is no doubt it was America's industrial capacity that allowed the bombs to be produced. Britain not only wouldn't have been able to build a bomb more quickly if they somehow would have felt threatened by the US, it would have taken them at least as long as France without US help. The problem all along in this discussion is you mulling things over from a position of historical ignorance. What you don't seem to understand seem to understand is how the communists and fellow travelers in Attlee's Labour government and our own State Department were the ones putting forth exactly your arguments. It would be bad form for us to use the bomb against a a former ally, we'd be setting the stage for future nuclear wars, ad infinitum. All they were doing was trying to delay a US response until the Soviets had the bomb and they could threaten us. I doubt you are are old enough to have lived for any significant time as an adult during the cold war. I was born in 1945. My entire life was living in fear I'd die tomorrow. There's no doubt in my mind that immediate action threatening the Soviets and Chinese Reds with an attack from which they couldn't respond in 1946, and clearing out the communist and fellow travelers spy rings in the US and Britain, would have positively changed the outcome for the entire world's population.
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  2062.  @Nathan_Whaley-g8m  When it comes to history, we can start with the idea you think any of any of our allies had the bomb. The British didn't develop their first atomic bomb until 1952, and they were only able to it then with US help. It took France until 1960 going it alone. China, even with Soviet help, didn't test their first bomb until 1964. I know exactly what happened in eastern Europe from 1945 on. It's called history. What you believed would occur doesn't trump what actually did occur. We had four years to use diplomacy backed up by the biggest stick in history. Instead, we did nothing. The reason no nuclear war occured is we could each destroy each other so no one would win. How about if you had a WoT game where you had Pershing tanks and your opponent only had Bren gun carriers. Would you just park the Pershing's in fear of your opponent also someday developing a Pershing? Your narcissism is being willing to thrown 83 million people under the bus because of your fear of such a scenario.
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  2063. So now you have to be a simp and approve of simpism to be a Reason level libertarian? Time to find another channel.
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  2064. This is a good deal for me while the taxpayers of Alabama (which would also include me) get screwed. I happen to live in a town only a mile from the Georgia state line. Georgia allows any licensed retail establishment to sell liquor. As you might imagine, the guys in Georgia can sell booze a lot cheaper than going to a state store here. Consequently, everyone flocks across the state line while the local ABC store employees sit and twiddle their thumbs. As a result, Alabama sustains higher costs to run the ABC, so they have to raise prices. Then even more people flock across the state line. It is technically illegal for someone for Alabama to do this, but illegal in the same way we all report the lost sales tax when we buy online. It's a stupid situation, but one that's propped up the churches and their undue influence on what state government does.
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  2065. There must be some totally cranked off FBI agents tonight. You could tell his entire speech was damning Clinton by faint praise. The bottom line was Comey was told not to go after an indictment, and he didn't All we can hope for now is a whistleblower agent to come forward with the truth.
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  2066.  @f__kyoudegenerates  Was that directed to me? Read what I said about the PRC again and see if you understand what I said about the PRC stats this time.
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  2067.  @Cacowninja  That's a nice libertarian position and all, but there are some drugs, like flakka and spice where the proportion of users become so violent is so high that trying to remove the drug from users before they get it has clear public safety implications. There are a few other drugs in the same class that still need to be outlawed because they are just too dangerous to the public and police. If you'd ever been in a 20 minute fight with someone ripped on flakka you might have a better understanding of what I'm talking about. I'm uncomfortable with heroin being sold at the corner store because I've seen what a life destroying drug it is. I've seen 20 year olds that have a life ahead of them dead by the time they reach 40 after spending their second 20 years only looking for their next fix. This has nothing to do with it being legal or illegal, it's the nature of the drug. I'd point out the authors of the first article are both economists. The author of the second article is a law professor who is an activist against bail and so-called mass incarceration. None of them have any experience in street level policing. I presume you don't either. It would be a good idea to get the views and experience of those of us who do before you decide to start advocating for changes in laws.
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  2068.  @kennythekid130  And my point is you didn't have his unicorn skills, so you couldn't just demand to work at home. My point is many people, for many reasons, don't want to work from home. There's pretty good evidence that you're not going to get promoted or promoted more slowly if you're not working face to face with your boss. The same is true if you don't see your coworkers at least 50% of the time. You guys that aren't unicorns will give less than glowing reports about that colleague, either through jealousy or just because they don't know you very well. You actually pay a pretty heavy price for more the 50% of your time not being in the office. Work is still a social as well as professional activity, and taking part in the social part is pretty hard when you live thousands of miles away. Remote commuting is a lot trickier than it first appears. If you want to get promoted and make more money, you're taking a wiser path than your unicorn mate
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  2069.  @SETHPCAMPOS  Ron Paul is pretty much loved by everyone? Define "everyone".
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  2070. There will never be a second lockdown . People simply won't put up with it. We will have to expect that more people will get sick and more people will die once the restrictions are lifted. The lockdown was never to stop everyone from dying. It was to flatten the rate of infection so hospitals could handle the influx. We will never get herd immunity until we have a sufficient number who get the virus and recover. We can never get back to where we were if we remain totally risk adverse. And before I'm accused of wanting to kill grandpa, I AM GRANDPA ! I'm 74 with COPD. If I get sick and die, I probably would have died within several years away. I don't want to survive only to lose the country I knew five minutes ago.
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  2071. First, they needed 10,000 mask and then, just a day later, the same hospital needed 100,000 masks. This is a great example of hysteria in action. We are going to end this worldwide panic with a ten times lifetime supply after all the production is done, with the path to the finish littered with bankrupt companies and broke entrepreneurs. This kind of production only works when you have a willing wholesale supplier (the government), a customer with an unlimited appetite for product because it's either at cost or free, (The Healthcare Industry), and unlimited pool of investors (the terrified taxpayer) to fund the products. Have any one of those three legs fold up and the whole thing grinds to a halt.
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  2072. It's great these people have set up this charity to help Venezuelans. My question is why would anyone get pregnant in that country today? Seems like it's hard enough to just feed your non-pregnant self.
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  2073. Sara, I quit smoking almost exactly two years ago. I have used vaping as my substitute and it has worked. I'm down to 6 mg nicotine juice after starting with (whew!) 48 mg. The most important thing is get good vaping hardware and test enough vape juices to find ones that work for you and don't make you short of breath. Get your vape kit from a vape store with staff that understands vaping and can help you with recommendations. Don't get your first kit online and try to save money. It's going to cost you about $200 up front for good hardware and about $50 to get enough juice to test. Some juice has chemicals that do affect my lungs. They might be fine for you. I'm older than most on here and my COPD is more advanced so I have to be more careful. If you're still young and haven't been diagnosed with COPD, vaping is the way to go if you can't quit altogether. The other thing about vaping is it gives you something to do with your hands that mimics cigarette smoking. That's an important psychological thing for many smokers.
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  2074.  @pete1853  The truth that most Americans don't support the premise of the title of the video. Do you actually think the average American looks at this impeachment as "no big deal"? There's a reason libertarians have still not won any major elections.
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  2075. Jeff, oxy is a semisynthetic while morphine is not synthetic. Regardless, both have their main source as the Persian opium poppy. I am presently on MSContin 30 mg. It is the extended release version of morphine. I have also been on oxycodone 30 mg. My experience was the pain relief wasn't much different but the oxy was hugely more expensive than the morphine, like $500 a month compared to $50. Most insurance won't cover it because MSContin is the preferred generic. I would have paid the price if it had some amazing pain relieving qualities but, for me, it didn't.
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  2076. Not only doesn't Cleveland have many business advantages, it also has about the worst climate in the lower 48. Spring, while, it can be beautiful, lasts about 2 weeks before a late frost kills the blossoms or the heat and humidity of summer sets in. Summer lasts for about 2-6 months, depending on the year. It can be incredibly hot and humid for months or rarely make it above 70. No matter what, it will rain when you are supposed to go on a picnic. We had some beautiful falls but, most of the time, it lasts three weeks before the leaves turn brown, fall off, and that's it. Then we have winter. It usually starts around Halloween and  goes on until Easter. We went weeks without ever seeing the sun. There's just enough snow to make things miserable but not enough to make it fun. The weather is not only cold but it's a damp cold when it's above zero which, for some winters, isn't much of the time. If you're suicidal, don't come to Cleveland in the winter.
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  2077. I just looked it up for Texas. There's one in Houston, Austin, and Dallas. I assume that's enough the catch all the likely Tesla buyers in Texas. God forbid you live in someplace like El Paso. Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, Columbus OH, or Minneapolis MN. These are all cities with a comparable metro population to Austin that do not have a Tesla service center. I know the concept of flyover states is sometimes said jokingly, but Elon Musk really believes it. If you live anywhere between Indianapolis and San Francisco, you can forget about getting warranty service without a long. long drive. I used to own stock in Tesla, and one of the reasons why I sold it is their stark number and distribution of service centers. I don't think Tesla has a snowball's chance in hell of meeting its sales goal without opening more service centers.
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  2078. Corruption in Cleveland? No way! I left in 1966 because I could see where Cleveland was headed and, unfortunately, I wasn't wrong. Cleveland will never take any initiative until it shrinks by another quarter million. Even then, it will take some big crisis we don't yet see coming. On top of everything else, Cleveland has some of the worst weather in the nation. There's nothing anyone can do to change that. 
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  2079.  Bullets Forteeth FULL AUTO  So I guess there was no M2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle then. Nor SOCOM's Precision Sniper Rifle program. When say there's no such thing as a military sniper rifle called a SNIPER RIFLE you are just revealing your own ignorance of military rifles. I won't even get into the rest of your tinfoil hat rant.
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  2080.  @Volcanares  I've never read of any family relationship between Cunningham and Godfroy. I've also never seen anything that said Gensoul actually showed a copy of Darlan's order to Holland. All the negotiations were carried out by his lieutenant, Bernard Dufay, and there's no evidence he even had access to the original order. Gensoul deliberately left out the option of his ships sailing to the French West Indies for interment by the US Navy in his cables to the French government, only saying the terms were surrender or fight. Darlan's order even included sailing the fleet to US waters for interment if a foreign power attempted to seize the ships, an option the British would have taken if they had seen the original order. Gensoul was spoiling for a fight, and he got one. Godfroy had heard of the results at Mers-el-Kébir before negotiations began at Alexandria. He had a much weaker squadron than the one at Mers-el-Kébir and wisely decided that neutralizing the ships was the wisest course.
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  2081. I'm glad to hear that. Norway has too few modern heroes to allow any to be forgotten.
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  2082.  @Justanotherconsumer  The Mitchell was a medium bomber that flew one long range mission only by removing all the normal equipment, armor plate, and all the defensive guns except for the top turret. Fuel cells were stuffed everywhere in the plane where space could be found, and the bomb load was limited to 2,000 pounds. This was repurposing a medium bomber into the long range strike role, not making it into a strategic bomber.
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  2083. Hitting rocks in clouds is one of the most common causes of mountain flying crashes. The "mysterious" last message has already been logically explained as an operator not copying Morse code correctly. Did you do any research on this? Even reading the Wikipedia article gives more answers than this. Just terrible.
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  2084.  @DraftySatyr  I wish he's reduce his output some and spend the time doing some more research so these errors will stop creeping into his videos. I don't believe he ever reads the comments anyway. Just get us here with a click bate thumbnail and title so he gets his AdSense money.
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  2085. Any time you read about things like "free energy" or "perpetual motion", you should take them with a large grain of salt.
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  2086. > @emilyp6904  Sure. Do you have a link to this published study that says what you claim it does? I'm 75 years old so I don`t have 10 years to wait.
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  2087.  @barmherzigsein3259  Look, I was in Vietnam carrying an M-16 in the Mekong Delta during the war, 1968-1970, so don't go on and on about what your father did when you only have stories, not experience. You have no way to determine with any precision the total number of casualties in the war. All we have is best guesses by people who actually one what they're talking about, and not one of them, not one, claim 10 million died. How many US troops were in Vietnam when Truman was president? The current population of ALL of Vietnam is 96,208,984. The average population during the years 1954-1972 was about 89,465,000. 10 million dead would 11-12% of the country, and that simply didn't happen. I don't know what axe you're trying to grind but it seems pretty clear you have some serious psychological issues about your father and the war.
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  2088.  @Kevin-mx1vi  The idea of coupled engines had been the dream of many designers, but this was particularly the case with Heinkel. Several other abortive models had been produced before the He 177, but the 1277 was the only one that probably could have performed well as a strategic bomber. Many of the problems with the engines were a direct result of the Luftwaffe's ridiculous requirement for a heavy dive bomber. I assume the Germans were seduced by the success if the Ju 187 in that role, and thought an even bigger and faster dive bomber was just what they needed. In the process of trying to get a square peg in a round hole, they ended up with a very expensive aircraft that wasn't any good in any of its assigned roles.
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  2089. The Buccaneer and Buffalo would have been difficult to build successfully if the company was run by experienced builders and the management was involved in ongoing bribery and organized crime dealings. Unfortunately, the Buccaneer was being produced by militant ex-- auto workers with a reputation for striking on a dime. Brewster had two brothers that served as their marketing team. Both had been involved in fraudulent sales contracts and aircraft smuggling . It's only surprising that the Buccaneer/Buffalo weren't bigger failures. The Finns actually liked their Buffalos, model B-339, and considered them to generally be the equal of most Soviet fighters flown against them. It was only their use against the Japanese in the Dutch East Indies that showed how obsolescent the B-339 actually was against better aircraft flown by experienced pilots. The final blow was Brewster being awarded a contract to produce and early versions of the much more advanced Vought Corsair. Not only was the workmanship horrid, but the Miranda brothers fell back on their old ways, cheating customers and lying about the products. It was only the Navy seizing control of Brewster in 1944 that finally put the company out of its misery,
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  2090.  @neriksen  1946. Why?
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  2091. Set the playback speed to 75% and you'll be able to understand much better. It also helps if you turn on closed captioning. I'm a native English speaker and still do both so I can actually follow some of his videos. You're wasting your time asking him to slow down. It comes up with almost every video, and he simply ignores pleas such as yours.
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  2092.  @orim298s  There's an excellent summary of Soviet amateur radio done in 1965 and sponsored by the CIA at https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/651559.pdf
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  2093. What kinds of trees got planted around those newer buildings? You can tell by the uniform height they were all planted at the same time, but they really filled in the spaces between the buildings. Thare must have been a massive amount of leaves to rake up in the fall.
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  2094.  @ИванШиробоков-в7ы  First, the GDP numbers are inflation adjusted. (https://data.worldbank.org/country/russian-federation) Second, a dollar in 1989 is worth $2.04 today. (https://westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi) Third, the highest GDP for Russia was $2,297 trillion in 2013. (https://data.worldbank.org/country/russian-federation) The GDP of the USSR is irrelevant. There is no more USSR. We're comparing apples to apples for what's now the Russian Federation. I know that some of you communists long for the old days of the USSR, and you have no problems just making things up to support your delusion that things were better back then. If you're going to tell me I'm wrong, first understand what I'm comparing things to and then provide me your sources.
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  2095.  @steliosarvanitis5606  Apparently it wasn't close enough for color, especially SECAM IV, the Russian system that wasn't even compatible with the French SECAM system. We had to know where TVs were going before we sent one over to the relatives. Now it just about no longer matters as Russia, like all of Europe, is (or has) migrated to the digital DVB system. I think Russia finally switches sometime this year.
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  2096. Thanks, I thought that was the case. I think most Russians would prefer to take a train instead of the rattletrap local busses.
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  2097.  @thotslayer9914  No, I'm a left leaning capitalist. I'm only a libertarian in that I don't want the government running my business. Otherwise, I am pragmatic as long as whatever system we come up with doesn't violate anyone my or anyone else's personal freedom. My problem with socialism is that it always does so, no matter how it starts out.
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  2098.  @thotslayer9914 Sure, if you mean the Marxist theory thereof. I'm all in favor of the employees getting to share in surplus value (profit) as long as they share equally in losses. Equal risk and reward is a great class arbiter. Believe it or not, employees in each of my three businesses were totally in favor of profit sharing, but they balked at loss sharing. This is just one of the ways that Marxist theory falls down. If there are no capitalists, who absorbs losses?
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  2099.  @richb.1484  You can call bullshit all you want but you are doing so from a position of pure ignorance. It's not difficult to find the amount of sales per hour of labor for any of the major stores. Costco consistently has the highest sales per labor hour. Do you think that all happens by magic, or do you think someone has to work harder to get the goods on the shelves. I realize you're a leftist that would like your narrative about the exploited workers to be true, but it's not. Businesses always pay employees what their labor is worth to the company. If they didn't, everyone would leave to go to better jobs. At least in the US, no one has to stay in a job they don't like.
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  2100.  @richb.1484  Yeah, they do. My son was a stocker at Walmart and then Costco when he was going through college. He was moving and stacking about 20% more stock than he did at Walmart and he had the muscles to prove it.
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  2101.  @joek600  You don't think the government aren't past masters at "corruption, inefficiancy and criminaly high rates"? The difference is private insurers are always looking to expand market share by cutting prices and improving coverage and services, and something like the NHS has no incentive to any of that, just get by on whatever the government says they have to do. My complete physical last year was $5, and I pay an extra $37 a month for a gold plated medicare plan that covers almost everything. Even the NHS isn't completely free. There are treatments and medications you still have to pay for, but the chief method of cutting costs is to have long queues for your free care while having an inadequate staff of doctors and other professionals see as many people as possible every day. Up to you if you like that system. And of course i want the cost of defense spread to every taxpayer, just like the cost of police fire protection. Those services could be needed at any time by almost everyone, there's no means testing, and you don't get better or worse service based on health conditions or age.
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  2102.  @T4SelNiNO  I have the data that's behind that graph. I can find it if you want it. The data comparing one country to another, although it may not be exact, shows clearly the differences in relative GNP over the years. In a country like the USSR, industrial output isn't a good measure of the real economy. Five year plans dictated the output, not need or demand, so you could have massive increases in materials and finished goods because workers that would otherwise be put on more productive jobs were switched to ones to meet the goals of the plan. For example, there was a goal to produce a million caterpillar type farm tractors in 1935. That was about 700,000 more than had ever been produced in a year. Stalin made it clear this was "really" important goal, s workers from the gulags and other political prisoners were marshalled to make tractors. They reached the goal, but some were wooden mockups for photographic purposes and about 30% of them ran around the factory long enough to be filmed before the engines seized from poorly ground valves, bad pistons, and just general build quality failures. They all had to repaired over the next two years, and the repaired units were counted as new. Now, do your really think counting industrial production in a country like Stalin's USSR should be done uncritically? BTW, I hope I'm not talking with an unrepentant Stalinist. I don't particularly like Trump but, compared to Hillary, he's not out to sell the country down the river, start a war with Russia, and I do think he's a patriot that can get things done. I'm sympathetic to Bernie for some of the plans he thinks are socialist and really aren't, but I just know he won't accomplish anything. Trump is 71 and will be five months away from 73 in January, 2021. Bernie is 77 so he'll be about eight months from 79 in the same month and year. I've been to both of their rallies. Trump is very energetic for his age for the one hour timespan he was on stage. Bernie...well, Bernie looked like he was ready for a nap after about 10 minutes. Corbin isn't far behind at 69. We have a bunch of old politicians to choose from. Lest someone think I'm ragging on old people, I turned 73 four days ago, and I know what my energy level is like. :-)
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  2103. The statue of Lenin was first at the 1939-1940 World's Fair in New York City. It was removed back to the USSR after the fair and stored until after WWII. It was erected in Kiev in 1946 and lasted until 2013 during the the Euromaidan demonstrations. That statue was pulled down and replaced by a golden toilet, a good joke itself. The really huge monument at the World's Fair wasn't Lenin. It was a 79 foot stainless steel statue on top of a 188 foot pedestal. The statue was of a man with a lighted red star held in his raised right hand. It got the nickname of ""Joe the Worker", much to the dismay of Stalin. It too was removed back to the USSR, but it was never seen again. It's presumed it was melted for its steel at some point during the war.
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  2104. Seems like all the major countries in the world tried jet powered rail cars at one time or another in the 50's or 60's. I have no idea why they thought those would work. US Pullman sleepers had what was called open sections. Each section had two or three person accommodations with an upper and lower bed. The porter would pull down the upper bunk and make up the lower couch into a bed. The Pullman company took great pride in the cleanliness and comfort of the bedding. There were heavy curtains you could pull across the beds at night for privacy. Pullman compartments always had the beds that came out from the top outside walls of the cars. Sections were on both sides of the trains but facing forward and aft, not sideways. You didn't have people sticking out of the sections like you saw on Soviet trains. In theory, you could fit tow persons in the lower and one person in the upper. Unless you were travelling with a small child, hardly anyone used the lower for that extra person, and they paid the small fee not to have a second person in the compartment. These were the cheapest sleeping car accommodations, with an upper being the cheapest (and least comfortable) on the train. You could buy various kinds of compartments and rooms, but at a higher price. You could take a chance that a room wouldn't be sold before the train left. If so, you could buy it from the conductor at about half the regular price. This was Pullman policy, so the conductor wasn't getting rich on it. The other option was to sleep in chair cars. Seats reclined about 70 degrees with integrated footrests. You could rent a pillow for 25 cents, and they were always spotless. You brought along your own blankets. The seats were quite wide, and you could just about sleep sideways if you were young and flexible. They were nowhere near as comfortable as laying flat in a bed, but they'd do for one night. I traveled several times like this before I decided that a sleeping car was a lot better for my aching back.
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  2105. Youtube just came back up at 1938 PDT after a one hour and 10 minutes outage. Long time for Youtube. Probably why no comments yet.
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  2106. As has been pointed out, Khrushchev not only thought Kennedy was weak, he believed that, as a child of the bourgeoisie, he wouldn't risk the destruction of the industrial might of the US over a few missiles in Cuba. Khrushchev had several run ins with Nixon during his time as vice-president, and he thought Nixon actually was a war monger, looking for an excuse to go to war with the USSR. It's doubtful if Khrushchev would have risked taking on Nixon so far from home, when the only answer would have been an all out nuclear strike. Khrushchev was actually quite surprised that Kennedy not only didn't back down, he was making credible threats to destroy the missiles anmd Soviet shipping in the area.
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  2107. From `99` on, the rouble became convertible on the world market. Before that, it only had value inside Russia. with convertibility came a rise in counterfeiting, so that's why the bills became more complicated looking.
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  2108. One last thing. My late wife was Slovenian. I have traveled the length and breadth of the former Yugoslavia and then again after the break up. I spent a fair amount of time in Serbia. I don't claim to be Serbian or even understand all of Serbian history, but I'm also not completely naive on the subject. I didn't approve of the NATO bombing of Serbia and have loudy protested it ever since. It's terrible that it happened, and it's something Bill Clinton will carry the responsibility for it happening to his grave. Nevertheless, it's now history, and Serbia will have to decide which direction the go in. Sadly, Serbian history books now are more anti-Western than when Tito was alive
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  2109. Oh, I forgot Lend Lease. The total was $130 billion WWII dollars and thousands of allied lives lost on merchantmen and warships trying to get the convoys through to the Soviets. However, I'll let the words of the noted Russian general Georgi Zhukov make my point for me, as he wrote in 1946 - "Now they say that the allies never helped us, but it can't be denied that the Americans gave us so many goods without which we wouldn't have been able to form our reserves and continue the war," Soviet General Georgi Zhukov said after the end of WWII. "We didn’t have explosives, gunpowder. We didn’t have anything to charge our rifle cartridges with. The Americans really saved us with their gunpowder and explosives. And how much sheet steel they gave us! How could we have produced our tanks without American steel? But now they make it seem as if we had an abundance of all that. Without American trucks we wouldn’t have had anything to pull our artillery with."
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  2110. @InfiniteMushroom The court cases you cite all have to do with combining the city of Georgetown and Washington into the single federal District of Columbia, which still exists today. The long title of the act is "An Act to provide a Government for the District of Columbia." Once again, quote me any part of this act that applies to anywhere outside the District of Columbia. Now, let's see if you can tell me anything about Lawrence Berg, the guy you quoted at the end as if anything he wrote means something. Who is he, where is he from, what is his job, what are his beliefs, and where exactly did this quote come from? If you can't give me those answers, and I know you can't, you're just doing a copy and paste job from some sovereign citizen website with no understanding of what you're quoting. You are the one begin deceived. You are letting other people who have no idea what they are talking about tell you what to think.
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  2111. They were writing off credit card interest, not the actual amounts charged on a credit card. Up until the mid 80's almost every form of interest was deductible. You could write off any kind of purchase legitimately needed to run your business, and that's still true today. Business and personal deductions have been decreased every year while the rates we pay, up until this year, hadn't decreased. That was a sneaky way to implement a tax increase. The worst thing we could do is go back to those high marginal tax rates and the thousands of deductions in place to make sure no one ever paid it. The government won't collect anymore in taxes but we'll have an army of accountants, tax lawyers, and tax collectors breathing down our necks.
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  2112.  @garynelson5231  What?
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  2113.  @MrRaptor2x  You're welcome. Most countries in WWII had some variation of that blackout scheme. You could even buy light bulbs in the US with that kind of slit on the bottom of an otherwise blacked out bulb so you could see the floor but not show any light to aircraft when you opened the door to your house.
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  2114.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Oh well, it won't be the first time. It's not like I even said anything bad about the Swordfish. It was a fine airplane for what is was good at, and the British managed to come up with all kinds of mods to make it better. Just the fact there were still Swordfish squadrons in frontline service at the end of the war is pretty amazing.
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  2115.  @FLJBeliever1776  Jesus, what set you off? You made a claim that's not substantiated by Admiralty statistics. If you believe every claimed kill by any kind of aircraft then the entire German Navy and air force would have been destroyed several times over. You have zero experience with the Swordfish, as do I. If you don't accept official figures, you are now in the land of make believe. As I said, the Swordfish was a very effective aircraft, but there were a few more assets involved in sinking U-boats. That's why the official figures have that point five at the end. This channel is about history, not stories about what you wish happened. Grow up.
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  2116.  @owensteam  I think someone is trolling us. :-)
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  2117.  @madisntit6547  Oops, got crossed up between the Gladiator and the Swordfish. I have corrected that now, thanks.
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  2118. 8:45 "...in an effort to save money.". Anyone else hear the tone of disgust in Dr. Mark's voice?
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  2119. @Redsand Yes, he did. Where did you go to school and learn history? I can give you a ton of links about Stalin's murders. Or do you object to the million number? How about if it was a mere half million then? Do you have a link saying he was a good boy and didn't kill anyone?
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  2120. @Redsand They lived there under Stalin, who died in 1953? What kind of jobs did they have? Did they happen to be party members? Regardless of that, you realize Stalin ordered about a million people killed, right? Do you think that your assertion that your grandparents didn't get killed cancels out the million who did?
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  2121. Thanks, Dr. Felton, for debunking these outrageous charges genocide against the allies. There's no doubt there were individual cases of war crimes against captured German troops, but the idea there some deliberate program to starve to death a million men. The fact this didn't become known almost immediately after the end of the war is good evidence that this genocide never happened.
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  2122. Do you have a link to your War Stories channel? I don't see it here.
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  2123. Many successes in armored combat have more to do with surprise, tactics, and crew experience that just the technology of a specific tank model. Many superior German tanks were knocked out by Shermans where the crews were experienced enough work around the German flanks and attack the German tanks from the rear. M41 Walker Bulldog tanks were successful used by South Vietnamese crews were used knock out better armed North Vietnamese T-34 and T-54 tanks in the closing days of the war using the same tactics. Training, combat experience, and luck are the best force multipliers in armored warfare
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  2124. Just as an indicator of how huge the R.VI was for 1916, the Boeing 707, rolled out in 1958, has a wingspan of 131 feet compared to the R.VI's 138 feet.
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  2125. Yes, and he says so at 1:42 of the video. How did you miss the picture of the big shiny B-25?
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  2126. Another excellent story. The bridge did its job for the Americans before it finally gave up the ghost.
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  2127. Not really a battleship but a good story nonetheless. The amazing thing is the Adm Sheer survived as late in the war as she did. She was the last German capital ship of WWII.
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  2128. Thanks, Mark. The story of the last great German defensive stand before it was over. While there is still controversy about Zhukov and some of his tactics, there's no doubt the encirclement and destruction of the German Ninth Army meant the last intact German fighting force couldn't fall back to defend Berlin, leaving the city defended only by the young boys and old men of the Volksturm . It must have been a hellish two weeks ahead for those that died and those that survived.
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  2129. I can't say I wouldn't have joined in. Sometimes instant justice is demanded by humanity.
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  2130. The tank that ended it's career as a troll.
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  2131.  @ujustgotpwned123able  0220 hours in the CDT time zone.
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  2132. The problem with the Spitfire was never it's excellence as a fighter. It was a lack of range. It simply couldn't fly bomber escort mission from England to deep into Germany, even with drop tanks The P-51 and, particularly, the P-47, had the range to fly these missions, so that's why the US reequipped from the Spit to these two types as soon as they were available in numbers. It was the opposite with the Mosquito. The US would have taken many more on strength, but there weren't enough that were surplus to RAF requirements.
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  2133. Great story. Thanks for digging this up.
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  2134. It's hard to imagine a worse choice for low level bombing than the Ventura. They were slow, had an inadequate bomb load, and the GR.5 had very poor defensive armament. The stepped rear fuselage contributed to extreme buffeting at low levels, and just getting the plane to the target demanded skilled pilots. As fast as Britain could build Mosquitos, the Ventura was taken out of service as a bomber. Some were even returned to the US as reverse lend-lease. They weren't all bad thought. Coastal Command turned them into very effective maritime patrol aircraft, the fuselage having enough room to carry bulky early radars. They were used extensively by the USAAF, mostly as trainers and transports, but Venturas and Harpoons play a pivotal role in the island hopping campaign against the Japanese.
    2
  2135. At this late date, Rommel's reputation as a tactician has been rehabilitated. Such was not the case in 1944. He was fresh off the disastrous loss of the North African campaign, and Hitler was aware of Rommel's growing anti-nazi and anti Hitler sentiments. Rommel's assignment to the Atlantic coast was something of a sop and a way to keep an eye on him since no serious invasion was expected before elate summer of 1944 or spring of 1945.
    2
  2136. They aren't captured as a result of aerial combat. They are are bombed on the ground and damaged badly enough they can't be flown off but not so damaged a flyable example can be reconstruct from various parts. In the early part of the war, US airfields were being overrun so rapidly that we weren't able to totally destroy damaged aircraft.
    2
  2137. Another great video about a little known aspect of the war. I've often wondered what the average German soldier thought after the breakout and with the allies rolling east toward Germany. Did they think Germany still had a chance of winning? Did they realize the war was already lost? How many of the Germans surrendering to the allies on the western front did so because they knew what awaited them to the east?
    2
  2138.  @daneaxe6465  I'm in no way a bomb expert, but that's exactly what I've read. A few Argentine bomb techs figured it out, and more bombs began to explode on contact. As I understand it, most of the bombs had delay action fusing, and that was apparently what was hard to fix.
    2
  2139. First I've heard of British tanks anywhere in Berlin. I rather doubt anything useful could have been done with them in the final desperate days in Berlin, but it's an interesting story nonetheless.
    2
  2140. By far the most successful interceptor against the V-1 was the old twin engined wooden Gloster Mosquito with any non-essential equipment stripped and carrying four 20mm cannon and four 12.7mm machine guns. It could fly at 420 mph, within the cruise envelope of the V-1. Mosquitos would take off from RAF bases carrying 2,500 pounds of bombs and rockets. They would attack any identified V-1 launch sites in France or Holland with their bombs and rockets. Once they were gone, the Meteor had the endurance to loiter over France, looking for the telltale plume of black exhaust from a V-1. Once one was spotted, the Mosquito pilots would accelerate to maximum speed and wait for the point the V-1 started to level out. It was at it slowest (350 mph) speed then and its most unstable. The Mosquito would come right up on its tail and fire a three second burst. THe combination of the armor piercing 20 mm rounds and incendiary 12.7 mm rounds was generally enough ot bring the V-1 down. Several kills were made by the same wing flipping technique as used by the Meteor when the ammo was exhausted. The Meteor was the glamour place of the fight against V-1's, being the world's first operational jet interceptor. However, it shot down or otherwise destroyed only 13 V-1's due of the issues Mark described in the video. The sturdy Mosquitos, taking on yet another new role, was the almost unsung hero, destroying 623 buzz bombs. Unfortunately, no aircraft could help once the V-2 ballistic missiles started falling on the UK.
    2
  2141. De Havilland was working on a duralumin version of the Hornet, the successor ot the Mosquito, at the end of the war. The engineering calculations showed it would have been the fastest piston engine aircraft in the world at the time with a top speed of about 550 mph. The work was overtaken b De Havilland's own Vampire jet fighter and never got into the prototype phase. Still, not bad for an aircraft that could trace it's roots back to 1938.
    2
  2142.  @cgee2224  I'm sure you have a link to even one of these supposed grossly underreported facts, right?
    2
  2143. If you haven't already done so, check out the very successful use of Italian submarines over similar routes from France to the Far East.
    2
  2144. You can read a copy of the USN interrogation report of the crew of the U-977 at http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-977A/U-977INT.htm. At this late date it's impossible to say what did or didn't happen on the voyage except that the fantastic stories of it carrying Hitler or gold are clearly untrue. Given that the boat left Norway with just 85 tons of fuel and still had 5 tons left when it got to Argentina, the boat could not have made the voyage unless it traveled at very slow speeds. Doing the math of the distance from Norway to Argentina, it would have averaged 2.7 knots. That's not unreasonable given the overriding need to conserve fuel. The captain and remaining crew believed German propaganda that Germany would be turned into a "goat pasture" and that all German men would be enslaved and castrated. An even greater fear was being repatriated into the hands of the Russian. The crew felt Argentina would be their best hope of escaping a destroyed future in Germany. I think I might have taken the same chance if I had been them.
    2
  2145.  @HowardLeVert  LOL. And here I thought it was when you all cleared out and went on holiday. Why are plates only issued twice a year? When I buy a car here, I get a new plate that is just next in line and then get a new sticker for the year and month of my birthday. I never get new plates unless I sell the car, just new stickers for the year at renewal. They are issued each month, and registration renewals are due by my birthday. There's no rush to beat some kind of plate deadline.
    2
  2146. As long as the registration and plates are valid in the home state, they are just as valid in any other state. I assume there's some kind of tax beef between NJ and NY that might cause people to get fake plates.
    2
  2147. @Hitogokochi When did I say I wanted to help you? You've dug your own hole, so you have to dig your own way out. BTW. there are British forces in Iraq as well, so let's nit get too smug.
    2
  2148. No, all white people aren't racists. It's garbage like this that is tearing our country apart. This show may have been true in 1950, when NBC wouldn't have had the courage to put it on. It's not true in 2018, when it serves no purpose other than to stoke white guilt and remove responsibility from blacks.
    2
  2149. Stupid
    2
  2150. So one two second shot of what may or may not have been a Baltimore police car driving away from us was the "Baltimore Police" of the title? YOu couldn't get more lazy.
    2
  2151. In three years that first caravan will have fallen completely to pieces.
    2
  2152. Germans are now a race? Is there anything you leftists don't see through the lens of race? Amazingly, you still don't seem to have a clue why Labour was thrown under a very large bus and then backed over several times.
    2
  2153. Was there a speed limit then? The vehicle looks like it's going really fast in some of those shots.
    2
  2154. And now their children and grandchildren are anitfa and black bloc. These communists and anarchist were full of crap in 1968 and they're still full of crap.
    2
  2155.  @jusb1066  What paperwork is involved in renewing a lifetime license?
    2
  2156. A lifetime driving license? Here in the US, my license expires every five years. That minister was a twat. Public transport thrives when it's faster, more convenient, safer, and cheaper than driving a car. The minister, with his posh accent, seemed like he was fine with taxing the crap out of cars and petrol to force drivers out of their cars. Compulsory seat belts are now a feature in all of the western world. I'm sure much to the minister's dismay, Wales now has motorways, allowing the lower classes to get London and see the Queen.
    2
  2157.  @theaccidentalcaravanner5404  The sound at 0:50 sounded more like an ignition being switched off. I stepped through the video up to 1:43 and that's the first time I can see the whole gas cover. The dent is there, but i can't tell if it was there before the segment started or not.
    2
  2158.  @MokkaMatti  You seem to be living in a different country than me. Which would you rather be living in, the country today or the country in 1859, when we were about to fly apart? The dangers of thinking you live in a terminally unique time without any historical perspective.
    2
  2159.  @Tegelane5  This concept seems to be a hard one for the hard left to understand. Of course, these same people believe the problem in the Soviet Union was the just weren't doing socialism right. We'd be a lot better at it this time.
    2
  2160.  @nkt1  I don't know. If there's a large enough market for 9 amps fuses, and they can be produced and sold for a profit, then you'd be able to find them. Socialism would be to require these fuses be made regardless of demand or profit because you want one or somehow feel that those in need of 9 amp fuses are entitled to them.
    2
  2161.  @niteriderevo9179  Can you explain to me how a taser is a type of "stun" weapon? What taser type rounds are used in "certain other weapons"? Can you let me know where I can buy a "stun" gun that causes an immediate loss of consciousness and muscle control that's not a taser? How often have you actually used a taser against another person. I used one on the job for about 15 years, so I'm pretty familiar with how a taser operates.
    2
  2162. The Big Chief has to stand for more meth and some more beer. NBC, you are the worst bunch of people on earth.
    2
  2163.  @filipelimartins  So Joker didn't take place in crime and chaos ridden Gotham City? Justice League wasn't based in crime ridden Central City?
    2
  2164.  @MegaTeeruk  Or at least allow health insurers to compete across state lines like car insurers do now. That alone would decrease the cost of insurance with no federal government intervention.
    2
  2165. Good Lord! I've never seen so many jump cuts in a single video.
    2
  2166. My deepest sympathy, John. Thank goodness for you and Tom. You've both helped change the world.
    2
  2167. Makes you wonder if "Nancy" has a mother or if she's just a spawn of Satan.
    2
  2168. Congratulations, Jim. You've done great work and well deserve the million subs. All the changes look great.
    2
  2169. Libertarians don't want to take my money and hand it out to everyone who wants it. Don't confuse a less insane Democrat with a libertarian.
    2
  2170.  @gabrielfraser2109  Once again, you have no idea what you're talking about. We barely have people pulling their own weight when it comes to paying for healthcare now. Medicaid and other public insurers pay for nearly 25% of hospital care and doctor's visits. Nearly 40% is paid for by employer provided health plans. Gabbard and the rest want to stop employer paid plans for public insurance. How is this "the few who fall through the cracks"? It's a government takeover of one of the largest sectors of our society. Are you in college or something? You don't seem to know much about the real world.
    2
  2171.  @gabrielfraser2109  You have zero idea what you're talking about. There is no "state managed health insurance" in Switzerland. It's compulsory to buy insurance, but it's provided by private companies. Switzerland has made basic health insurance available across cantonical borders at a fixed non-profit price, but those companies can sell supplemental insurance at a profit, and they do. The government doesn't buy health insurance for anyone. Everyone pays minimum of 8% of their income for insurance. If that's not enough to pay the premium, the government give a cash subsidy so a person can still buy the insurance. Healthcare insurance in Switzerland and what Gabbard and the rest of the Dems are proposing couldn't be more different.
    2
  2172. Yes, the "expert" that was doing science in between shagging his mistress.
    2
  2173. Just an amazing amount of work you've done with this gang. Jim, you have my undying admiration.
    2
  2174.  @filipelimartins  I understand how mathematics works. I see you're from Brazil, so your understanding of a large city is different than those in the US. Nevertheless, the fastest growing large city is Phoenix AZ, currently at 1.66 million. Second is San Antonio TX at 1.53 million. None of the rest of the fastest growing cities exceed a million, although Fort Worth TX and Charlotte NC are close. Rounding out the top five large cities is Seattle, the only red city, at 746,000, and that experienced a paltry growth of 2%, almost all of which came from annexations. No city outside of Texas or Arizona with a population of a million or more experienced even a small population growth, and many are losing population.
    2
  2175.  @filipelimartins  Maybe because there are 17 cities over a million in Brazil while the US has ten, even though we have about 120 million more people? Maybe because every one of those 17 has a growth rate of over 9% and many are growing at 20%? Maybe because we have only one large city outside Texas or Arizona with a growth rate of more than 5%? It is more than rocket science if you understood the American economy and housing market. Places like New York City have rent and price controls on most real estate that artificially inflates the cost of housing. Cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have "growth control" ordinances that makes it nearly impossible to build more homes in the city limits. This artificially increases demand and prices for the existing housing stock by people already living there, not from people emigrating to those cities. These aren't organic price increases, they are created by the government. Name me a single city in Brazil with those kinds of laws. I wouldn't try to school you about the housing market in Brazil, or the economy there. I suggest you stop trying it with me.
    2
  2176.  @filipelimartins  lol no, what offends me is someone from another country feeling like they need to explain supply and demand in the US to me, and then ending with a snarky comment about me needing to get out of my bubble. You came into this discussion setting up a strawman about superheros, and you have proceeded to set up and knock down a new strawman with each reply. My mistake for not recognizing it sooner. I'm done with you.
    2
  2177.  @robertlockey75  Dude! This is what every presidential candidate in modern times has said. It means nothing. The most important things are what she says here policies are now because you can bet they will only get worse the longer they are in office. With the exception of her at least saying she wants to get out of foreign wars (even though she had no problem going overseas to fight in one), the rest of her policies are no different than Bernie's. She was an early and vocal Bernie supporter in 2016.
    2
  2178.  @gergc4871  She is attractive, but my experience is that purple hair is hiding something in her brain that's not so attractive.
    2
  2179.  @gergc4871  I endured three of the worst years of my life by letting an attractive face and nice smile override my creep alarm. As the Jews say, Never Again!
    2
  2180. You seem to have completely overlooked mine laying and minesweeping. Minefields and barrages played a crucial role in WWII, and there's no reason to think they won't do so again.
    2
  2181. Establishing bases in the Arctic is still incredibly difficult. Climate change, such as it is, doesn't make the Arctic into a place like Oslo or Toronto. The idea of China using the Arctic as some kind of trade route is laughable. I'm getting the feeling this was a one off to get your ad campaign going rather than the serious videos you usually produce. As such, I won't be using Tab for a Cause.
    2
  2182.  @MegaTeeruk  Well, I'll take small. And the market price is not totally fixed. We have hospitals and doctors now that will either pay part or all of a deductible for patients ot increase their patient counts and census. However, in my ideal world., we'd all be private pay, with an increasing amount of required catastrophic coverage for older patients and lower income patients.
    2
  2183.  @MegaTeeruk  I was a nursing home administrator so I'm only too familiar with federal reimbursement. Costco also only has a tiny profit margin. They make a profit by spreading that margin over hundreds of stores. You're not seriously saying my car insurance would cost the same if I was forced to buy it from Blue Cross, are you?
    2
  2184.  @MegaTeeruk  Another ball of wax that may be, but it's the easiest and most effective way to reduce insurance costs.
    2
  2185.  @hertzair1186  Cool. Nice to find an honest commenter here.
    2
  2186. What we really need is a more modern version of the CH-46. Battlefield transport is one thing the Army doesn't have enough of while it does have enough recon and attack helicopters that are good enough. This is one of those fantasy projects that the Army just can't afford.
    2
  2187.  @markhenning148  It would have been reassuring to me as a soldier to just disappear into a smokescreen like that. It's a techniques used for centuries on land and sea, and no less useful today.
    2
  2188. RIP to Captain Casey and I hope for a quick recovery for Captain MacDougall. I'm sure there will be a complete investigation into the cause of the crash, but flying a 55 year old aircraft, even though they have relatively low hours and are well cared for, just becomes a bigger and bigger risk for some kind of age related mechanical failure that inspections don't pick up. We'll see what the accident board has to say, but it's really past time for the RCAF to acquire some more modern aircraft for demonstration flying.
    2
  2189. It was a construction collapse, not a hotel collapse. The hotel isn't complete and no guests are inside. Kind of clickbait title for this one.
    2
  2190. When he says he's looking at things "very strongly" or things will happen "very quickly", that means it won't be strongly or quickly. It's time for action, not more words.
    2
  2191.  @Dihorse371  Are U unable to write 2 sentences w/o a bunch of abvs n single letters substituting 4 whole words? Is ur keyboard broken? Ur thumbs don't wrk right on ur phone? This looks like it came frm a 12 yr old girl.
    2
  2192. Trumps "buddy". LOL, just keep living in your TDS world. Epstein was buddies with a heck of lot more Dems than Reps, including Clinton.
    2
  2193.  @osric1730  You transfer staff from nursing homes and acutes to care for the elderly in places like the Javits and the USNS Comfort. Acute hospitals had imported staff from out of state to care for a tidal wave that never came, so they can do the subacute care needed by some of the elderly. It's not like RNs, LPN,s and aides have no training caring for the elderly. They did it every day before Covid showed up. The problem is Cuomo had his own answer - send them back to nursing homes. These were patients already diagnosed with the virus, not just elderly requiring ADL care. There were answers unless you're a hammer. Then, everything looked like a nail.
    2
  2194.  @coreycannon6590  So I shut it down, yet here you are as the 49th reply to this thread. do you see even a minor inconsistency in that? My "perfect solution", what ever that means, is your characterization of something I just don't do, since we have no perfect solutions. Now, if you want to discuss the facts you think you have right and I have wrong, I'm happy to listen.
    2
  2195. Jerry Rivers, the master of obfuscation and rambling.
    2
  2196. Right. Ivanka Trump with 151 subs to an account just set up July 3, and has no content at all. Sure.
    2
  2197. Luckily for society, he's just a larping COD player with an airsoft pistol. He also lives in Canada, where it's a lot harder then in the US to legally purchase any kind of handgun. If he did get a real gun, I suspect he'd be the target of a SWAT team within a short period of time. If he did decide to start shooting people, this is one time his family can't claim they had no idea he was nuts.
    2
  2198. Isn't this the same scumbag that made up an elaborate hoax about his non-existent Japanese girlfriend so he could get more diversity points?
    2
  2199. Even the wind hates this bitch.
    2
  2200. The only good thing about this is I now know who I'll never watch again.
    2
  2201. I'm pretty sure that Shia was doing more than drinking that night.
    2
  2202. Sorry, but I don't feel the weight of any original sin. My ancestors never owned slaves and I have two great great uncles that fought on the side of the Union to help free the slaves. I don't owe blacks a dime, and blacks alive today don't deserve a dime.
    2
  2203. She's lying. All the little laughs and sighing every time she's asked a tough quation is typical of people lying their way out a situation. He whole paypal story sounds completely made up. You're not out of contact with everyone important to an event you organized for two weeks because you and the kids had the flu. You do it because your plan is blowing up in your face and you hope getting in bed and pulling up the covers over your head will fix it.
    2
  2204. These people are losing ground rapidly in the US, especially after their outbreaks when Trump won the election. I don't think Trump gives one fuck about this crap, and will make sure these people don't get one dime worth of government money. Their time is over here.
    2
  2205. I guarantee this game will not get a good review from Anita or Steve.
    2
  2206. Good thing your workers haven't organized a union yet.
    2
  2207. That moment when you know "Shit, I've been caught lying".
    2
  2208. It's single shot. The gunner doesn't stand behind the gun to fire. The gun layer sights the gun, gets off to the side, and it's fired using a lanyard by the gunner standing to the left hand (facing forward) side of the gun.
    2
  2209. It appears from the comments that I'm one of the few people here today that doesn't play shoot em up video games and is older than fourteen.
    2
  2210.  @SwitchAndLever  You're welcome. The result of spending too much of my adult life reading about naval history. :-)
    2
  2211. That gun seems to share a lot of things with the H&R Model 700 .22 magnum I had when I was a kid in the late 1950's. It was a sweet gun for varmint hunting and I wish I still had it.
    2
  2212. I'm getting a feeling of deja vu for some reason...
    2
  2213.  @merryweather3713  Give me a break. You have no idea what a pawn shop is? Do you live in the US? No, it's not a specific chain. Learn to use Google and drive from town to town. You'll find plenty of pawn shops.
    2
  2214.  @smartacus88  You're generally right, but I've had success finding shops that have been around a long time and asking owners to let me look at their old and ugly inventory, since I'm a gunsmith and like fixing up old stuff. You'd be surprised what some shops, especially those in small towns, have had on the back shelves for 30 or 40 years.
    2
  2215.  @mp40submachinegun81  Why did you "need" to have one? Or was that same as you "wanted" to have one?
    2
  2216. The Russian progressed from some of the simplest to the most complex firearms in the last 60 years.
    2
  2217. Looks can be deceiving when you don't even take the time to look anything up. But, I think we both know you're just trolling anyway.
    2
  2218.  @Schmidt54  You're more than welcome. I've always been amazed at how well many Europeans under about 35 can speak English. All I had to do was stand around for five minutes looking confused and someone who could speak English would come up and ask if they could help. I've visited 36 different countries and always took the time to learn about 20 of the most used phrases so I could communicate, at least a little. The country that was the hardest was Thailand. It has its own alphabet, and the language has nothing to do with any romance language. I did manage to learn things like "Do you have a room tonight?" or "Where is a good restaurant?". Thai's are naturally a courteous people, but knowing just those few phrases got me a room when there were none to be had or a table in restaurant when other tourists were told it would be a two hour wait. It doesn't take much, and most people are just pleased you've even made the effort.
    2
  2219.  @matthias1031980  LOL. I often thought as much trying to remember if a table was male or female. The biggest problem for gendered language is figuring out what gender a new noun should have. There was quite a battle in France while "purifying" the language from mostly English invaders. One such word was "computer". There were many suggestions about a translation, but it was IBM in 1955 that came up with "Ordinatrice électronique". That's feminine. Most French dictionaries now have it as just "ordinateur", so now it's masculine. However, most French speakers still call it a "computer". So much for forcing people to use the "official" word.
    2
  2220.  Mississippi Ditch Fisher  My knowledge of German was about enough to ask for directions to the john when I was visiting there. My dad's relatives were impressed I even knew that much.
    2
  2221.  @Schmidt54  Indeed, things like that are the reason I switched to Spanish class. My dad was German, so I thought I should learn the language. I gave up after two years. I just don't have a German speaking mind. There are still a few funny ones I remember though, like a hospital ambulance being a krankenhaus krankenwagen. I just chuckle every time I say it. I used to drive my wife crazy yelling out "It's a krankenwagen" when an ambulance went past. :-)
    2
  2222. I have seen his book, "Témoignages sur le Vercors Drome Isere". Are you saying his book has all these errors he only corrected in the museum? How did he do that? Did he do some kind of addendum in writing? Is there a way I could get a copy? Can write to the museum? What is the name of the museum? [Corrected typos]
    2
  2223. Mac, has your local museum done any kind of publications or outreach to French historians regarding your and their data about Vercors? What's the name of the museum? Why haven't these rare photos of the battle been published by now? How exactly are you able to do excavations showing the position of landing of every glider 74 years after the event? Are you an archeologist? Since you believe that all books have mistakes based on them using the first book written on the battle (and what is the name of that first book?), what are you doing to correct what you believe is misinformation about the battle? As you can see, now we have another commenter who thinks he has the right information and you don't. We are never going to get anywhere with the history of this battle until we can all agree on which sources have the true and correct information.
    2
  2224. Very strange gun to be produced in the 1920s when Winchester and Remington pump guns and Browning semiautomatic shotguns dominated the world. I wonder what they thought was their target market?
    2
  2225. A variant of this gun was used on the German Navy commerce raiders of WWII and crews reported it was a very successful weapon.
    2
  2226. Air Force pilots rarely carried 1911's. They were too big for the survival vests and the ammo and magazines weighed too much. Up until the Beretta 9mm, the standard gun was a S&W .38 Special of several different models, but primarily the M&P and Model 10. The standard sidearm of the Air Police also remained the .38 until the introduction of the Beretta.
    2
  2227. Mostly FM Model 1922's along with an assortment of various Tokarev pistols.
    2
  2228. Makes me wonder if the former owner knew the effect of standard FMJ ammo and wanted it that way. Talk about a lot of lead downrange.
    2
  2229. I remember when the first Action Arms .308 Galil rifles showed up for sale in the early 80's. They were crazy expensive for the time, something like $800 when you could get a G3 for $500. I can see from the Rock Island price estimate that I should have bought one then. Rats!
    2
  2230. I have an 1895 Hamilton 23 jewel railroad pocket watch that has guts about half as complicated as the clockwork of the G11. I still wouldn't want to carry it it into battle with me. The downside is it doesn't look like a space gun.
    2
  2231. There were a couple guys who bought this thing for backup since we were carrying Colt Pythons at the time. I had a chance to use it once at the range. I was never a great shot, but I could usually hit a target somewhere at 20 yards. I managed one hit is this hot mess. I don't know if it even had an ejector since I had to dig out the spend rounds with a knife blade. This one was just about the worse gun I've ever seen in person.
    2
  2232.  @dennisspencer1113  The Solothurn was the Cadillac of anti tank rifles then. Several wholesalers were selling them in the same time period (1960-65) for $150 to $200 including everything - case, optics, bipop, tools, cleaning kit, a couple extra barrels, ten mags, a few practice rounds for dry firing.IIRC, you could get 20mm rounds for about $40 per 50 live rounds. I don't remember the shipping weight, but I know it had to come by truck so there was no chance sneaking it up to my room. I used to sit there panting away over the ads, but I could never convince my mom or dad I HAD to get a 20mm cannon for some reasonable purpose. Back then, you could buy a six year old Ford for $200, and I sure wasn't going to get a cannon that cost as much as a used Ford. Rats!
    2
  2233. Kiwi, that's a good point. However, you also take the risk that a machine gun won't be legal forever so you have the risk of confiscation, much as we saw with gold coins in 1933. Semiautos and bolt actions don't have the same risk.
    2
  2234.  @tonyverdechi9157  The original M1921 was the water cooled version of the .50 cal machine gun. It took another 10 years to come up with the M2HB, a reliable air cooled version for ground use.
    2
  2235. Goodness me. I'll change it right away.
    2
  2236. The North Vietnamese and Vietcong used MAT-49's captured from the French. Ian says this in the video.
    2
  2237. Interesting and mechanically weird gun, but I think I'll stick with my Ithaca 37. Nothing headed back toward my face or potentially attacking my fingers.
    2
  2238. Just and FYI. Every time you fire a round, your audio drops to about zero.
    2
  2239. The Brits got close to just using a removable magazine but just didn't want to abandon the charger concept.
    2
  2240. Looks like it's fixed now.
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  2241. My neighbor's dad had two of these when I was a kid. He was one of the soldiers in a unit tasked with inventorying remaining German rifles and other small arms right after the war. As a reward for his work, he was able to bring back two of these .22 rifles. One was a Walthers that, from memory, looked and performed identically to the Walthers model single shot rifle shown in the video. The other was a stripper clip fed semiauto version made by BSW. It had a tiny clip that held, as I remember it, either seven or eight rounds, and it performed the same as the KAR98K stripper clip. I know he had at least 10 of these stripper clips, and my friend and I shot both the single shot and semiauto versions in Boy Scout target matches to get our target shooting merit badges. Both were in excellent condition, never having been issued, and they were great shooting guns. Unfortunately, both my friend and his dad are no longer with us, and I have no idea what happened to these rifles. At the time, we had no idea that these weren't just cooler versions of our JC Higgins .22 rifles.
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  2242. So, n to even a picture of the guns? We need to buy the book to see it?
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  2243. I'll take two - one for the bow and one for the stern.
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  2244. You're posting to the wrong video. This about a battlefield tour next September.
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  2245.  @clamum  No, everything isn't included. The only meals are hotel breakfasts except for dinner the first night. There's no mention of providing any kind of beverages on the bus, and you will surely need some. I don't know what the plan is for handling lunches. Most tours like this provide some kind of box lunches so people don't get scattered all over looking for restaurants. There's no mention of including them, and certainly not at the price quoted. You'll be too tired to want to look all over an unfamiliar city for a restaurant so you'll end up eating at the hotel restaurant. That can be a pretty price choice and I see nothing about at least providing a fixed price dinner option for tour guests. If you think all you have ot do is pay your airfare and that's it you'd be in for a rude shock.
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  2246.  @Deadtileyedie  A lot of BB's were in .44 since so many repeating rifles were also in that caliber. I've handled a folding trigger example of a no-name BB and it felt distinctly fragile compared to mine. A gun like the one you had was a good display piece but shooting it...I think I'd only do with the gun in a vise and a 30 foot lanyard. :-)
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  2247.  @Deadtileyedie  I've probably shot 200 rounds through it over the years and the lockup is still tight. It seems like the light smokeless load works safely. The casting quality and workmanship gives me confidence the guin was built to conservative standards. I wouldn't mind a modern gun in the same size and style in .38 Special to stick in a shorts pocket when I'm out for a walk during the summer.
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  2248.  @rickansell661  Having the guns kept in armories if there was really some major problem with Swiss soldiers committing suicide with them makes a lot more sense than having bits scattered around the house. However, this study (https://smw.ch/en/article/doi/smw.2018.14646/) seems to find differently, and many more suicides were associated with a military weapon after the soldier was no longer in the reserves than while he was. I just think we tend to come up with knee jerk solutions that really don't solve the apparent problem.
    2
  2249.  @Longfang91  Indeed, although so was the BAR. I've never had the "luck" to be able to actually fire a Chauchat, but I've shot with the BAR a fair few number of times. Only going by what I've seen in Ian's videos, the Chauchat had a much much heavier and more abrupt recoil. The long moving barrel recoil system of the Chauchat seems to make the already heavy recoil of the 30.06 that much worse. The 8mm Lebel was also no slouch in the kick department.
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  2250. Same with people from Yugoslavia.
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  2251.  @chrisplunkett2814  As I wrote, " HF radios on frequencies somewhat higher than AM commercial frequencies of today", not that they were higher than later VHF aviation frequencies. HF radio was used almost exclusively for comms in the Keys, firstly because it was good training for using HF radios for comms in real operations and secondly because the distances involved demanded longer range radios than the VHF radios of the day. VHF radios were used around airbases but otherwise it was generally HF radios.
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  2252.  @absalomdraconis  I don't know for sure since Japanese census records I can find online only go back to 1964, and the first section of the plant was built in 1956. The plant had several additions, even as the population around the plant continued to grow. The section of the plant involved in the accident was constructed in 1988. It was considered a reasonably safe activity because the uranium oxide was dissolved in dissolution tanks, and that prevented criticality. Three years previous to the accident, an unauthorized change to the use of stainless steel buckets instead of the tanks to speed up fuel production was the cause of this accident. After some large fines and damages paid to the families of the two dead employees, the injured workers, and surrounding community, the dissolution tank method was reinstituted and new safety measures were put in place. The plant continues to operate, although at a much reduced production, since many of Japan's reactors were taken offline after the Fukushima accident.
    2
  2253. Very cool and, yes, I'd love seeing more space videos, especially those early years, with all their technical challenges and human cost. I grew up during the whole space age, and I well remember all the those nail biting US and Soviet missions.
    2
  2254.  @tylercafe1260  I counted three sentences where you didn't use cursing or profanity. Why do you do things like this? Rather than show how smart and empathetic you are, it shows your lack of writing skills and limited vocabulary. It's really kind of disgusting.
    2
  2255.  @PlainlyDifficult  OTOH, I'm not unsubscribing, so it's not all bad news.
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  2256. All of us taking our geology coursework at colleges in the Los Angeles area would visit the Baldwin Hills site at least once and, in my case, several times, since we were part of the manpower doing a foot by foot inspection of the failure site and surrounding earthworks. We discovered small and apparently insignificant micro faults that crisscrossed the face of the dame site. The existing ravine was probably there because rainwater over many thousands of years was using microfaults to erode the toe of the ravine away from the surrounding surface. Los Angeles, and really most of California, is laced with these kinds of faults, and the vast majority just sit there and don't cause any problems. The difficulty for geologists is accurately predicting which ones may cause problems. It's just one of the risks we have to accept if there's going to be enough water to serve 10 million or so people.
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  2257. Thanks for this video, Drach. I really haven't followed the development and use of the various small underwater attack craft. I now feel at least least slightly more educated about the subject. Given that many of the missions of these craft were near suicidal, it's a wonder the different navies were able to find crews to man them.
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  2258.  @TraditionalAnglican  Now add to that many of the design decisions like single purpose armament and armor distribution came directly from the WWI designs of the Bayern class, that many of the design decisions were done in secret, and it was impossible for the Bismarcks not to be inefficient compared to those countries that had the chance to openly look at the WWI results and could design their vessels accordingly.
    2
  2259.  @jamespfp  Yes, the Nazis had tons of paper projects that were either impossible or just couldn't be done in time. The had plans for a ballistic missile with a 6,000 mile range that, if they had unlimited strategic materials and two more years, they may have actually been able to make it. Desperation is the mother of many inventions. Probably shouldn't get into this here, but I suspect Hitler would have been happy to be part of our current environmental movements, and he would have been a leader in the antismoking campaign.
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  2260.  @scottgiles7546  Well, you could, but since receiving ships are almost always in a home port far from the fighting, an enemy firing on one is the sign of much bigger problems for a country than just a ship like that being fired on.
    2
  2261. I can see I would have been better off with a piupiu than the hot and heavy body armor I had to wear! :-)
    2
  2262.  @scottgiles7546  LOL. It may not just be your glasses though. I use Arial font in Chrome, and pom and porn look virtually identical. It's only that little space between the "r" and the end that sets them apart.
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  2263.  @stevevalley7835  The cordite loading of the 2 pdr was a real mark against it. As you say, the guns had to sit loaded in the tropical heat, sometimes for days if there were no aerial attacks. The magazines were huge in terms of capacity, but that also meant they were heavy and time consuming to reload. Lack of high velocity rounds and no tracers until late in the war were more problems when the gun was operated in local control. The whole question about which gun did the job better should have been solved when the Vanguard was built using only Bofors guns for the medium AA battery. I believe it was the first major ship in the RN completed with no 2 pdrs.
    2
  2264.  @kemarisite  I think you're confusing standards with practice. All the other non-nitroglycerin powders were adopted as standard for new and remanufactured guns, but there were still guns on older battleships that could only use cordite. I believe the same was true for some earlier 5"/51 and 6"/50 guns as well. As I've already written, we imported hundreds of thousands of tons of cordite during WWII for use in all capital ship guns because it gave less flash than any of the adopted standards. Night fighting with the Japanese, who were using almost 100% cordite propellant, demonstrated why we needed to rapidly reduce the flash from our own guns. The BuOrd didn't like it, but we really had no choice. It was only with the invention of Alabanite that we had a propellant that could replace all the others on a one for one basis.
    2
  2265.  @kemarisite  We were also using cordite ammunition in WWI, and there's a good chance we may have had the same magazine explosion problems if our capital ships had been involved in a Jutland type battle. In the days when cordite was the only true smokeless propellant, starting about 1895, the increase in visual range without all the smoke was considered an acceptable risk. It required meticulously following anti-flash precautions to prevent fires and explosions, and that's what the British weren't doing.
    2
  2266.  @kemarisite  Yes, it did, since the use of cordite ammunition was something the BuOrd was 100% against. There was an accumulation of reasons why the Bofors won, but the use of low velocity Cordite propellant was one of the main ones.
    2
  2267.  @bkjeong4302  I never said anyone thought that Ten-Go would work, only that battleship admirals on both sides thought it might be possible that a large, fast, and well armored battleship could still survive for some period of time without air cover. In this case, could it survive long enough to do any damage to the landing fleet, and how long would it take to destroy it once it became a beached fortress? Ten Go showed that any vessel without air cover against an enemy with almost unlimited attack planes was not going to complete any mission.
    2
  2268.  @Betrix5060  Yes. guided by wires, uncoiling from the rear of the missile body. The Germans had already been using wire guidance with the Ruhrstahl-Kramer RK 344 air to air missile and were working on a wire version of the Fritz-X at the end of the war,
    2
  2269. I thought I was late but, at three and a half hours, it's still in progress.
    2
  2270.  @spookyshadowhawk6776  Thanks, and for dad and uncle as well. I miss him too, as well as my seven uncles that served in WWII and Korea. They came from a generation the likes of which we may never see again.
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  2271.  @spookyshadowhawk6776  LOL. That pilot must have learned a hard lesson from that. The Japanese called them barges for some reason. I guess they didn't have the same translation from English that a barge meant unpowered vessel. The rocket launchers were made especially for PT boats. They were carried inboard until ready to fire when they were flipped outboard of the hull. Rocket exhausts wouldn't have been a good thing with a wood hull. The rockets themselves were modified high velocity aircraft rockets. My dad's boat had two additional .50s mounted abaft the bridge where the torpedo tubes had been mounted, but they were running out of deck space, hull capacity, and room for any more crew to serve the weapons. The rocket launchers were relatively light considering their firepower and didn't require any more crew so they were considered ideal weapons for PT boats. They might have been too, if they had trainable mounts, but trying to bring them to bear while the boat was bouncing around at 40 knots made hitting something as low as a barge more a matter of luck than skill. He said they did score one of their few hits on a barge turned to be an ammo carrier. Everyone hit the deck as the XO got the boat out at top speed. The bridge was the only place with any armor so the machine gunners dove from their mounts into the bridge. They spent the next day patching up holes from all the splinters. My dad was a much braver guy than I could ever be,
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  2272.  @whatsoperadoc7050  You seem like you have a good command of the language and understand a lot about naval history. It's a little disgusting to suggest otherwise.
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  2273. I've never understood the concept of these massive "recoilless rifle" guns on an aircraft. Assuming these weapons were ever really useful and effective, why not mount them on e-boats or German torpedo boats? It would be much easier to modify a naval vessel than try to hang these on modified existing aircraft.
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  2274. Really? Boy, Time really flies when you're having fun!
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  2275.  @AdamMGTF  Well, thanks a lot. It would be an honor if Drach ever asked me to participate.
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  2276. A Newport News class cruiser could pour down 90 8" rounds and 240 5" rounds a minute on any target within range. It's not like the Volkswagen Bug size 16" shells zooming over my head, but it would be plenty to scare the snot out of me. :-)
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  2277.  Jimmy De'Souza  First, echelon turrets are different than plain wing turrets think of a formation of geese compared to two people walking side by side. Second, I didn't read you were talking about the plan view of the Colossus. Look at the overhead and side view at https://www.the-blueprints.com/blueprints/ships/ships-uk/49161/view/hms_colossus_(battleship)_(1911)/. Do you see the cutouts in the boat bridges? Those we so the guns could go to maximum elevation and clear the structure before coming back to normal elevation for cross deck firing. If it still doesn't make sense to you, maybe someone else can explain it better.
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  2278.  @bkjeong4302  I'm not ignoring anything. I'm saying that how these things were viewed 75 years ago was much different that how the USN looks at things today. The cost of an Iowa compared to the overall war effort was chicken feed. We needed fast ships that could make sure a minimum of carriers were sunk while not getting sunk themselves. In 1944, that meant something like an Iowa. It's not that hard to understand. I'm not commenting on the rightness or wrongness of their views. Unless you own a DeLorean that can time travel back to 1944, how you think about a battleship today compared to 1944 is irrelevant.
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  2279.  @bkjeong4302  Your 2019 views about the strategic and tactical advantages of battleships as carrier escorts didn't mean much in 1944. The Iowas were fast enough to keep up with the new carriers, had enough space and displacement to mount more antiaircraft guns of all types than any other naval vessel, and were able to be used for shore bombardment when not escorting the carriers. I'm not sure why you're using present tense about battleships roles. There are no more BB's, nor will there ever be any more of them, and I don't know of anyone inside the USN advocating there should be any built today.
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  2280. Lucky dog! I hope a bunch of us Southerners can make it over for a meetup.
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  2281.  @emintey  I guess I just never assumed that not scrapping an obsolescent capital ship would mean it would just hang around at its moorings until it rusted through and sank. I'll try to be more precise next time.
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  2282.  @TEHSTONEDPUMPKIN  Indeed, and I guess that's why I don't understand having the Vanguard appear or not appear makes much difference or should make you feel bad, since it looks like it would only represented by the name and maybe a turret on an anime girl. I do have the perverse idea that something named "Iowa" should at least vaguely resemble its namesake. Weird, I know. As I said, I only know what I see on a website. I have never played either game and have no interest in anime. But, to coin a phrase, whatever floats your boat.
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  2283. Dang. 100th guide, and some of the best naval history on the net. You should have at least 500k subs.
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  2284. Is your space bar broken? When you use a dot instead of a space, YT attempts to make a link out of it.
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  2285.  @wavepool4501  No, I've nevere seen them among recreational boaters. The problem is you really need a full face helmet to keep you from being knocked out. As you might imagine, it's impossible to wear one when your shield is constantly doused with spray. Your best defense is a good life jacket that will keeo your head above water combined with a stout lifeline.
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  2286. Damn it! Somehow, my notification's to Drach's channel got turned off! I never missed a Drach video and now I have about a month's work to catch up with. Oh well, I guess there are worse things that could happen, but I'd still like to know why it happened.
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  2287.  chris younts  He did, but he used both about equally, since one or the other weren't always available. He said many times over that Indianapolis was his favorite. Augusta really became Truman's boat as he didn't want to show disrespect to Roosevelt by continuing to use Indianapolis which, sadly, never had enough time to become a real issue.
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  2288. Drat! Too bad the Netherlands is about 4,000 miles from me.
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  2289.  @Drachinifel  Yes, it was only the introduction of radar fire control that allowed something like a 99% probability of a ship being able to identify the flight of their own shells. However, this still didn't obviate the problem of identifying all the other shell splashes. It was only the perfection of each ship sending analog data packets to all the other ships firing that allowed a high probability identification of every shell splash. Digital data packets, the ultimate perfection of shell splash identification, were introduced at just about the time it no longer mattered, capital ships and their guns having disappeared from the general naval scene.
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  2290.  @HaydenLau.  Hence why I wrote "ramming other than a desperation technique". I'd class the ramming attempt against Admiral Hipper a desperation technique.
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  2291.  @AWMJoeyjoejoe  I'll agree with that title!
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  2292.  @williamchamberlain2263  Go to navsource.org and you'll find hundreds of pictures of US subs. Then go to navweaps.com for a rundown on submarine mounted guns, including the 5"/25 wet mount.
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  2293.  @shawnbauman5463  So the British, French, German,, and Japanese also had cruiser subs, with the French even having heavy cruiser (8") guns. Was that because France? GTFO.
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  2294.  @John-ru5ud  Yes, once the RAF figured out the types, arc of fire, and total number of guns, it was just a matter of having one more aircraft that the U Boat could target at once. The combination of machine guns, air dropped depth charges, rockets, and worst of all for a U-Boat, the Mk 24 "Fido" homing torpedo, sunk hundreds of U-Boats.
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  2295.  @Ron52G  Sure, as long as it's clear which it is we're talking about. I still think the Roman Legions would have done way better with a few tanks. :-)
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  2296.  @iffracem  Where in anything I wrote could you reasonably infer I thought Dutch troops weren't exactly what you said? I have the greatest respect for the fighting men of the Dutch armed forces. The problem in the Netherlands was not fighting men, it was the pacifists, communists, and anarchists that infested the Dutch government in the 30's that were the problem. If the Dutch army, navy, and air force had been allowed to get and/or build the weapons they wanted, all the problems of the Dutch topography would have been much less. If they had been allowed to mobilize when the Dutch High Command wanted to, they would have been ready to meet the invasion at their border, not in the cities. The forts would have been fully manned and stocked. The Dutch were trying to fight WWII with WWI weapons, and with a government that wanted them to just roll over and play dead in hopes the Nazis would leave them alone.
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  2297.  @thhseeking  Absolutely false. There was no naval "task force" at Ascension Island, the then secret US base. Ascension wasn't even aware of all the details about the Laconia sinking since they had not monitored any of the radio traffic. A series of poorly composed messages from the British at Freetown sent two days after the sinking made is seem like the Laconia had just been sunk that day. All Ascension knew was the British were requesting air cover for two British merchant ships being sent to the rescue of Laconia, and Ascension wasn't even aware of the correct location of the sinking. The B-24 that attacked only discovered the U-156 while on routine patrol, and the plane captain and crew were on their first combat mission The only naval vessels being sent to the scene other than the German and Italian subs were two Vichy French warships sent from Senegal and Dahomey. These were the vessels that eventually met up with the subs and took off the rescued. That actions of the US pilot and Ascension duty officer were already bad enough without you falsely claiming the USN sent a "task force" with the express intention of sinking ships involved in a rescue.
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  2298.  joanne chon  Maybe they can get a job in sewer maintenance or as a roofer in July or January so they can understand working at home isn't so awful.
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  2299. I'm having to break up today's videos into even smaller hunks so my tiny brain can mull them over and absorb it all. This must have been a major effort for you to put together, Drach, and it's been a real treat so far.
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  2300.  @sundiver137  Most authentically restored boat on earth. Enjoy yourself!
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  2301.  @kiloalphasierra  Think about what you just wrote. Early in the war, when there were more large merchant ships around, we only needed a small gun, but later in the war, when there was hardly anything larger than a sampan still afloat, we needed a larger gun? There was only one reason the USN was stuck with the 3"/50, and that reason was Admiral Hart. You're attempting to find prewar tactical reasons for this when there were none. US submariners had to sneak in the 5"/51 trials with the Tambor class, and the only reason they could was Hart had previously ordered the same guns removed from the Barracuda class. They couldn't have snuck procurement of new guns past the admiral's staff. It was only his forced retirement in July, 1942 and the looming Mark 14 disaster that the USN sub force was finally able to rearm subs with effective deck guns, first the 4"/50 and finally the 5"/25.
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  2302.  @cvproj  I've read that too but I don't know enough about how atomic testing affected steel production to know if that's true. The Newport News was laid down in late 1945 and wasn't commissioned until 1948. I don't know when the armor plate was rolled in comparison to above ground testing though. It became a moot point after the Des Moines class anyway since they were the last capital ships new built with armor plate.
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  2303.  @raygiordano1045  Yes, I have. The Russian fleet of 1904-05 was a comedy of errors right from the start. Why anyone in the Russian government though a Baltic fleet in such poor material condition, led by by such incompetent admirals, and captained and crewed by such inexperienced sailors could sail halfway round the world and defeat the Japanese is beyond me. The one thing this voyage accomplished was increasing the dissatisfaction of them men of the Russian navy, leading to near constant rounds of strike and mutinies, culminating in the communist revolution of 1917.
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  2304.  @cvproj  It's an interesting concept though, and one well worth covering. The range and endurance of some WWII German raiders and Japanese and German subs was truly astounding. Even our modern nuclear ships, while their operational range is virtually unlimited, still have to deal with the limitations of endurance.
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  2305.  @cvproj  The GE turbines only cost the Rosie about a knot in speed. She was still capable of 32-33 knots, plenty fast enough to keep up with a carrier task group. The biggest problems were the constant breaking of turbine blades. GE changed the metallurgy of the blades several times, with all the turbine blades being replaced during her SCB-110 refit in 1956. This reduced, but never eliminated, the problem. After the astronomical cost overruns during the Midwa reconstructions, the last thing the Navy wanted to do was spend that kind of money on a ship with troublesome engines. The austere refit of 1968-69 was good enough to keep her in commision until 1977. The admirals wanted new Nimitz class carriers, not rebuilt WWII era ships.
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  2306.  @TraditionalAnglican  You have to remember that at least 320 Mark 14s were lost in a series of spectacular explosions at the Cavite Naval Yard on Dec. 10, 1941 as a result of Japanese air attack. This was 10% of our entire stock of torpedoes in inventory in the entire Navy. It was well over 60% of the torpedoes in the Pacific. MacArthur had demanded an increase in the paltry numbers of torpedoes available in the Philippines in early-1940, and Gen. Marshall and the USN pulled out all the stops to do so. There were 48 torpedoes at Cavite in March 1940 and well over 380 by December 10, 1941. This far exceeded the amount of torpedo magazine space available so torpedo were dispersed in ordinary warehouses in an attempt to limit losses in a sneak attack or sabotage, the latter being expected by MacArthur. In a stroke of bad luck for us and good luck for the Japanese, Self-Propelled Lighter YF-181 was hit by a single bomb dropped from a level bomber flying at 20,000 feet. The YF-11 was loaded with over 200 torpedoes due to be transported to Corregidor for storage in one of the many tunnels there. She never made it, nor did her load of torpedoes. Another 100 or so torpedoes were destroyed in fires that consumed much of the Navy Yard that fateful day. Given the magnitude of this disaster, about the only torpedoes left in the Philippines were those in the tubes of those subs on patrol, PT boats being loaded for patrols, and few scattered torpedo aircraft supply depots. Any other craft other than destroyers that had torpedos were stripped for use on the subs, of which we had twenty-seven at Manila, and PT boats, of which we had six. Orders were sent back to the US and Europe to ship every available torpedo to the Pacific double quick, since the large force of subs, destroyers, and PT boats originally available was expected to be able to hold the line against the Japanese for nearly six months, by which time help from the Pacific fleet would arrive. The plan may have had some hope of success if the torpedoes had actually arrived and they actually worked. Neither happened, so it's no wonder orders were sent out to husband the existing supply of torpedoes. The "wasting of torpedoes" you may have read about came from memos about not using them against low value targets when a surface gun action would succeed just as well. All sub commanders were aware of the acute shortage of torpedoes in the various Pacific bases. There was no prohibition against launching spreads of torpedoes against high value targets, and that were a number of times in the first few weeks of the war when that happened. Some subs launched half their torpedo loadout at one ship before a single torpedo exploded. This made skippers wary of firing so many torpedoes when it only revealed their position and didn't cause the sinking of the warship they were fired at. This became a big enough problem that some skippers were relieved of command for being insufficiently aggressive.
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  2307. The Mark 14 became one of the best allied torpedoes after mid-1943, once the firing mechanism and depth gyro problems had been worked out. The Mark 14 gets a bad rap due to its early war problems.
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  2308. How did it go badly? Other than a few scattered Japanese units putting up some resistance for a couple hours until superior officers ordered them to surrender, several hundred officers committing suicide in Singapore rather than surrender, and maybe 50 Japanese soldiers taking to the hills with communist guerrillas, everything I've read said it went pretty much according to plan.
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  2309.  @spikespa5208  You're welcome. No, worst mistake is a landing you don't walk away from but, in the Navy this is a close second. For a few weeks after the landing, it will be his worst mistake. Navy pilots are savages.
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  2310. LOL. The Goeben was the same as the world's fastest pelican. :-) I can't imagine being the engineering officer and crew responsible for maintaining and deploying those torpedo nets lining the hull.
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  2311.  @TraditionalAnglican  Did you read the study in my link? Military forces have been dealing with malingerers and the just plain lazy since before the time of the Roman Legions. At least in the USN during WWII, the numbers of men reporting for sick bay and the numbers reporting other injuries was closely monitored by the fleet command staff. When those numbers started to creep up, a "flying squad" was sent to the ship or installation to see what was happening. They had the authority to do everything from increase rations to recommend removal of a CO. Something like this may have changed to outcome with Uganda, but I suspect the RCN was too small and the Pacific just too far away to implement such a policy, even if they had wanted to. There's a good article about everything that went wrong when the Uganda arrived in the Pacific at https://navalandmilitarymuseum.org/archives/articles/controversies/the-uganda-episode
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  2312. The Tashkent was built in Italy as the single member of what was supposed be a four ship class, with the last three built in Russian shipyards. It was a much different ship that the Storozhevoy class, nearing the length and tonnage a small light cruiser. At 43.5 knots in light condition on trials, she was probably the fastest large ship ever constructed.
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  2313.  @sprucezeus  The Flying Tigers weren't technically a violation because the US pilots had all resigned their commissions before signing up. Lend lease was really the big violation since it was direct aid to a belligerent. Let's face it though, by mid-1940, FDR really didn't care about fine points of the law. The British were being starved to death, and he was willing to do anything short of war to keep them going. He knew the more Germans the British killed now was that many fewer we'd have to kill later, and he knew war was inevitable. Drach, if you're still reading this gigantic thread, I'd vote for a blockades and neutrality video too.
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  2314.  @sprucezeus  Quite correct. A neutral vessel like Modoc was allowed to broadcast all ship locations for maritime safety purposes like preventing collisions, especially in fog. As long all messages were in the clear and all ships were treated equally,, it wasn't considered an act of war. In fact, the British, Germans, and US all knew our neutrality was a polite fiction. I remember reading, but don't have the reference in front of me, that US and British warships had worked out a code that, when certain ship names were used, it was a sign that a German warship was on the bearings given in the broadcast. This would be a great subject for a video, since blockades and how to treat "neutral" shipping has been a problem going back centuries.
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  2315.  @Charlesputnam-bn9zy  I'll need to get some of my books out to check pictures, but it wasn't common to have national flags painted on the sides of warships on the high seas. You'd see it occasionally on ships in the Yangtze patrols, but warships generally depended on their ensign flying from the mainmast and a hull number. There weren't tens of thousands of warships about like there were merchant ships, and it has always been incumbent on an attacking vessel to positively identify the nationality of the other vessel before opening fire. The Coast Guard did carry and some very large national ensigns, and would sometimes light it at night with floodlights when in dangerous waters, but I think that was the usual procedure.
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  2316.  @sjonnieplayfull5859  You're welcome. One of my uncles served in the USCG during the war as a crew chief on an LST. The Coast Guard didn't get a lot of publicity about their role in amphibious operations. He was always a little miffed about, especially since he signed up for the Coast Guard with the idea he'd spend the war maintaining lighthouses. It didn't quite work out that way for him. :-)
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  2317.  @bkjeong4302  YOu're right that the Japanese were focused on the "decisive attack". I don't think that was ever their exclusive plan for dealing with enemy air attacks. If it ever was, that plan was dashed after Midway. Nevertheless, the Army and Navy continued to fight about who'd develop things like radar first. There was no serious attempt to reverse engineer the Bofors gun until 1944. Rather than evacuating men from isolated islands for use in strategically more defensive areas, they continued fruitless attempts to resupply those troops, apparently believing that the US would somehow double back and attack them. By the time a decision had been made to withdraw them, it was too late, and many of those poor guys slowly starved to death. They didn't put serious efforts into developing more powerful aero motors for fighters than the one that already existed in the Zero because of the "decisive battle" delusion. With the appearance of the Hellcat and, worse, the Corvair, it was a mad scramble to develop in 1943/44 what should have been done in 1940, when they still had resources and manpower to do it. The Japanese plan for the "decisive battle" was not the destruction of the US fleet, just to cause enough damage and deaths that US would sue for an armistice. Yamamoto knew the only hope for such an event was a series of bold strikes early on. If the damage to the US fleet in 1942 wasn't enough to bring America to its knees, he knew only a long, protracted war would have an chance for the US suing for peace. He had been advocating for a defensive plan since before Pearl Harbor but he was generally ignored. The IJN never seemed to understand that unrestricted submarine warfare against US merchant shipping was the only hope for weakening the fleet and the troops ashore. By the time even the Army and General Staff were convinced that no "decisive battle", or at least not one in favor of the IJN, was going to happen and defense was the only option, it was far too late for any defensive plan to work.
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  2318.  @bkjeong4302  The real plan was to develop such a strong defensive line that the Americans couldn't break through without being destroyed. It wasn't just carrier aircraft that they had to defend against. From Guadalcanal forward, they had defend against our occupying islands that became unsinkable carriers. They just didn't have the fleet or resources large enough to prevent this. Every island we seized became an airbase that attacked the next island in our plan while striking at Japanese shipping. AA gunnery on ships and land became more and more important, yet the Japanese didn't seem to pay it much attention. The fighting between the Army and Navy over strategy and resources became almost as important as fighting the Allies. Regardless of how many of our carriers they could sink after the Coral Sea, we could build them faster than they could sink them. It seemed as if only Yamamoto realized what dire straits the Japanese were in by 1943, but even he couldn't convince the General Staff of the necessity of a defensive war after the disaster at Midway.
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  2319.  @AdamMGTF  Thanks for the good wishes, Andrew. I actually have some Yorkshire tea in the house, so I'll brew up a cup with you and your fellow colonial overlords in mind. :-) I'm never sure how much technical subjects like electronic fire control systems interests the average person. I'm an amateur radio operator, so things like this are a natural interest for me. For people whose knowledge of things electronic ends at the location of on/off switches, maybe not so much. I think there are ways to explain it that makes it interesting and won't bore the socks off your feet, but it seems like the major challenge would be to get people to listen to that first minute and not click off somewhere else.
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  2320.  @paulhinds4840  They were originally designed as flotilla leaders but the role was changed to an antiaircraft cruiser. They were designated as scout cruisers in the early part of the design work because there was no USN classification for a flotilla leader or antiaircraft ship. However, antiaircraft was seen as their main role from before they were laid down. You don't need eight turrets and sixteen 5" guns to be a flotilla leader. In 1949, the ships were finally given their correct designation as CLAAs. At no time was the class given any type of destroyer designation. The CL designation already set them apart from destroyers. The issue was not the number of 5"guns, apart from stability issues. It was that that the directors were just coming into series production and were behind schedule. The Atlanta and Juneau were scheduled to get the Mark 37 and Mark 51 directors as well as replacement of the 1.1" machine gun batteries with 40mm Bofors on their next overhaul in January, 1943. Regardless of that, the armament of the Atlanta and Juneau played no role in their sinking. Once all the Atlanta, modified Atlanta, Oakland, and Juneau classes got their 40 mm guns along with their Mark 51 directors, and all the ships had the Mark 51 and, by mid-1943, the proximity fused 5" rounds, they proved to be excellent antiaircraft ships. Admiral Mitscher remarked that, other than an Iowa class battleship, he'd rather have a couple of Atlanta class ships protecting his carriers than any other ships.
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  2321.  @bigblue6917  Thanks. I fixed it so I wasn't mixing mounts and barrels. The Alaskas could have been really formidable antiaircraft ships if if was recognized early on that a large cruiser platform could have been more effective than the enlarged destroyer types of the Atlanta class.
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  2322. Germany also doesn't have anywhere near the number of U-boats she'd need in 1938 to be effective. They barely had enough by the end of 1939, and submarines would have been their only real opposition.
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  2323.  @bigbigmurphy  It would be as long as you could find someone willing to pay the operating costs. My guess is just sailing it up and won the coast would be in the $45-$55 million range per year, and that doesn't take into account any costs to make the vessel seaworthy again.
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  2324.  @kemarisite  True, but Drach being English, no need to further confuse him with regional dialects.
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  2325.  @YouTubemessedupmyhandle  Yes, I am discounting that notion. What became the United States was colonized by every European power that had a navy. The history of the world is one of conquest and colonization, so that guilt trip won't work on me. If I have selectively used statistics, I'm all ears for your to tell me about it.
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  2326.  @Dave_Sisson  It seems like you're really reaching on this. The US in 1939 had 147,500,000 people. All the colonies had a population of slightly more than 16 million. Holland in 1939 had 8.7 million people. The colonies had about 70 million. Belgium had a population of 8.4 million and a colonial population of over 14 million. Even Portugal had a population of 7.6 million with a colonial population of almost 11 million. There was simply no other colonial power with as few colonial subjects as a percentage of home population.
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  2327.  @johnshepherd8687  Are you reading the same comments I'm writing? "The Ticonderoga class had its classification changed from DDG to CG before the first keel was laid because of the additional capabilities of the Aegis system and the addition of flag accommodations." The Aegis system was supposedly upgraded with better range and target designation than the original design before the first keels were laid. These changes and the addition of flagship accommodations were the reasons given for the change from DDG to CG. Now, given that the Navy was trying to convince Congress they were getting more for their money with cruiser rather than a destroyer, I have no doubt there may have been some hanky panky with the specs, but this is the Navy's official story for the change in classification. I have no idea what the admiral said at that presentation, but I suspect there would be some in the Chief of Naval Operations staff that would dispute the allegation it was merely a marketing move. Given that he retired in 1985, I can only assume he was retired when you heard the talk and no longer had to worry about upsetting the brass.
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  2328.  @johnshepherd8687  I didn't say the Ticonderoga's didn't have the Aegis system before the change in classification. I said they had additional capabilities added before the keels of the first two ships were laid. The 15.5k tons is the full load tonnage. Standard is 14,798 tons. Again, this varies by the weapons and electronics fit. I would have had no argument with what you wrote if you had said close to a Baltimore. You wrote they are bigger, and that's not the case in length or tonnage.
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  2329.  @lizardb8694  Thanks for that information. I knew Marines were no longer stationed on ships, but they were still deployed, particularly on amphibious ships. That makes sense, since some of the first ground troops to go in are Marines. Some are still regularly deployed on carriers and cruisers in area like the Persian Gulf. The proliferation of light weapons bolted to the decks in WWII fashion while transiting "hot" zones still needed trained artillerymen, and here the Marines have been able to fulfill that role again in the modern Navy.
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  2330.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Big subject, Walter, so it would be a major commitment on Drach's part. Of course, I have a dog in this fight, so seeing a history of PT boats would have my vote.
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  2331.  @grahamariss2111  It certainly was more difficult to manufacture a uranium bomb compared to plutonium, but scientist were still battling one another as to which bomb would produce the most devastating results per pound of bomb. This was a big deal, since it appeared that Fat Man would produce better results but, at nearly 800 pounds heavier and three feet more in diameter than Little Boy, it was about as much as a heavily modified B-29 could lift. Dropping our one uranium bomb over Hiroshima and our other plutonium bomb over Nagasaki was considered to be the best way to force Japan out of the war as well as do real world testing of both types of bombs. It was clear after this that plutonium bombs were good enough and easier to manufacture...until the Wigner Effect showed up in mid-1946 and cut the available supply of plutonium to near zero. The plans for Little Boy were redrawn nearly from scratch since they had been ordered destroyed after the end of the war, since it was assumed we'd have no need to produce more uranium bombs. We ended up making 6 more uranium assemblies at Sandia and 25 were built for the Navy Bureau of Ordnance before the Wigner Effect problem was solved. There's a lot that today seems simple, but it wasn't simple in 1944, and we went down a lot blind alleys before we were done.
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  2332.  @Drachinifel  Indeed. They were given the chance to get all the oil and steel they wanted in mid-1941 as long as they first pulled out of China. A less nationalistic and less narcissistic might have taken that as a chance to build up their stockpiles for a year or more before an attack on some US possession. If, for example, they had only attacked the Philippines, would that have aroused the kind of nationalistic fervor that was caused by Pearl Harbor? The Philippines were considered a far off US possession. Hawaii was a territory, almost a US state in many people's minds. To compound their error, they then decided to not only attack but occupy part of Alaska. That was it. We were bound and determined to fight until Japan was defeated. Japan's chance had any kind of negotiated settlement vanished.
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  2333.  @KB4QAA  I'm very far from an expert on avgas, but Professor Miwa wrote in the paper I linked to that it was the antiknock properties of lead that was the problem. The Japanese had no domestic supply of lead, and they were cut off from overseas supplies by mid-1944. They came up with a number of schemes to raise the octane rating of their low quality gas to get around the knock problem, but none of them were very successful.
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  2334. Excellent schedule. It looks like it will work. My offer still stands. If we can get another subscriber to get you from Charleston to Columbus GA or Dothan AL, I'll be your taxicab over to Mobile. I haven't confirmed it yet, but i suspect a flight from Charleston to Mobile will involve flying backwards to Atlanta with a change of planes there, and it will undoubtedly be an expensive fare. I hope we can make this work for you.
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  2335. The only way to deal with antiship missile is with another missile, CIWS, reliable electronic countermeasures. There's no armor that can reasonably defeat something like the Silkworm, and there are antiship today with much better and larger warheads. If we ever get into a naval shooting war again with modern missiles, it's not likely and ship will survive an enough missiles to saturate the electronic countermeasures, and the antimissile missiles needs to be fast enough and able to launch them in great enough numbers to take on all the incoming missiles. The probability of all that working perfectly in real combat is somewhere near zero.
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  2336. Well, Dang! I guess I don't need another book anyway....
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  2337. I rather doubt political correctness and ecological considerations will be paramount in an all out conventional war like WWII. Remember, we rounded up the Japanese, including US citizens, and put them in concentration camps, flattened and starved Germany, then flattened and starved Japan, then flattened two more cities with atomic bombs. The reaction of most Allied civilians was "Serves 'em right". Since the other option is all out nuclear war, the problems in a conventional war pale by comparison.
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  2338. I recall reading an article about at least the research work going on with US torpedoes in a late 1920's Popular Mechanics article, all of which are available online through Google Books. It seems as if the idea wasn't very secret even then. In addition to the Congress's usual parsimony, the Mark 14 is a good illustration of the reason why developing and testing any new weapon during a worldwide depression will usually run up on the rocks.
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  2339.  @PaulfromChicago  But why? We have a brand new CV coming on line. Why not name it the America rather than screwing up the LHA naming?
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  2340. Ok, okay, I get it now. Yes, it would be a great ship for a profile.
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  2341. It's gone. It was run ashore on North Keeling island after after the Battle of Cocos late in 194. Wave action had almost completely broken up the damaged ship by 1919. What remained was removed by Japanese scrappers in 1950.
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  2342. Wow, what a great idea. I haven't read "War of the Worlds" in about fifty years, but I still remember the Martians attacking London. What has happened to English literature since the days of HG Wells? The RN to at least a temporary rescue, but all for naught.
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  2343. Dang it!. I forgot about watching this on Patreon. Now I'm not only not first, I'm 9,047th.
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  2344. My understanding is the STAAG mounts on the Battles were temperamental and not very reliable. The USN was never a fan of on-mount directors due to the same problems experienced with the STAAG and the Hazemeyer. The biggest advantage of a Battle class ship compared to a Gearing was the Battle wasn't pushing the weight limit of the ship that same way we saw on the Gearing . The main disadvantage was the concentration of main battery armament forward so stern firing wasn't possible.
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  2345.  @serjacklucern4584  What's a "trinate" turret? Do you mean a triple turret? If so, the real battle for first triple turret on the centerline is between Dante Alighieri and the Russian Gangut. They were both laid down within two months of each other, and it appears Italy and Russia did some industrial espionage to get data on the Austro-Hungary ship's triple turrets. All three ships were laid down within a couple months of each other, but an all out effort by Italy allowed their ship to be launched about six months sooner than Tegethoff.
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  2346. ​ @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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  2347.  @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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  2348. Ah, yes, I wasn't thinking RN. If only Indomitable hadn't run aground while working up. She probably couldn't have made it to Singapore in time to join Force Z even without the grounding. There were several escort carriers in service that could have been in East Indies in the three month gap if Illustrious was needed elsewhere.
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  2349. Considering the amount of manpower, planning, and practice that went into HMCS Oakville'Canadian
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  2350. The New York class was 573 feet long compared to 521 feet for the Floridas. The longer hull allowed a better turret arrangement.
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  2351. Thanks goodness I didn't notice this post before I went to bed. It's now 1:20 pm CST and I'd just be dragging myself off to bed now. AS it was, I only got about five hours sleep, since we elderly don't sleep as much as you whippersnappers, but I still have four hours ahead of me now. Good heavens!
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  2352. @Jurassic Aviator Sure, okay. A navy that doesn't need carriers has two in service and another on the ways. I'm done with you.
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  2353.  @chrisrichards2544  Yes, it's probably better to describe the Sydney as being not under control rather than drifting. She was probably making way at one or two knots given her final resting place and the amount of time elapsed from when the survivors of the Kormoran last saw evidence of her from below the horizon.
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  2354.  @7thsealord888  It does seem that some of the Komoran sailors, like all sailors, were good at telling sea yarns. It was only after the discovery of the wreck that we knew for sure no surviving crew member of the Komoran could have seen her sink. I've read conflicting accounts of the cause of the bow separation and the probability of a boiler explosion. When I have a spare $75, which unfortunately doesn't happen often on my pensioner's income, I'm going to order "From Great Depths: the wrecks of HMAS Sydney II and HSK Kormoran", a book covering the wreck itself, computer reconstruction, and and forensic engineer opinions of Sydney's last hours before sinking. Maybe I'll have a better understanding of what happened then.
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  2355.  @derekhenschel3191  The USN expended hundreds of rounds firing at some radar anomaly that was possibly a large flock of birds in the Battle of the Pips. Every navy has done something like that.
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  2356. Assuming I really one the big money, I'd reproduce a somewhat smaller version of the USS Erie. She was handsome with her raked bow and cruiser stern, yet still modern looking. Much of the internal space was devoted to large admiral's and captain's cabin as well as staterooms for visiting dignitaries to complement her role as a floating embassy. That would make her a comfortable vessel for almost any reasonable size party. She was also built to allow canvas to be spread over the entire length of the ship, a necessity for comfort while sailing the tropics, and that's sure where I'd be. Maybe reduce her to about 200 feet from 327 feet since the need for armament is, unfortunately, obviated, but still have space astern for a helicopter deck and hanger. What kind of proper megayacht today doesn't have a helicopter?
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  2357. I could forgive or overlook King for all his shortcomings and peccadillos except for his need for revenge on anyone he felt had bested or crossed him. This burning need in his personality led directly to the USS Indianapolis incident and the death of a good captain. I can never forgive him for that.
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  2358.  @chocolatecatdad  The Iowa class had to fit through the Panama Canal. The narrowest lock was 110 feet wide so the Iowas had a beam of 108 feet two inches. They managed a 16" turret on that beam. The Bismarks had a beam of 118 feet. It's hard to reconcile beam limitations as a reason for not having triple turrets in German battleships. Something else was going on.
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  2359. @UCmbHqxwMGFUma3tcg0IUsYw And US cruisers were designed at the same time and they all had dual purpose armament. The 11" guns were supposed be used on opposing warships while the 5.9" were supposed to be used on merchant ships. My point was weight and space could have been saved and devoted to armor by using 105mm guns as the secondary armament. The 105's could have easily defeated merchant ships while still being effective against escorting destroyers, most of which didn't have any weapons larger than a 105 anyway. I just don't think the German understood the need for DP guns, whereas the USN was equipping all of its cruisers destroyers, and rearming many battleships with 5"/25 or 5"/38 DP: guns.
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  2360.  @jcgamer892  By confused, I meant that i think you're confusing a question /drach answered about triple turrets that;s different than the one I'm asking now. When it comes to know how, the RN never built a triple 16" turret until 1927 with the Nelsons. The USN never built a triple 16" turret until the 1938 North Carolina class. The RN and USN solved this problem, the RN much earlier that the Tirpitz class. Maybe it was an issue of building speed and just being able to reuse the design of the Baern class dual turrets rather than design a new triple turret..
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  2361.  @eplekake3870  No, they had treaty limits to worry about, even though they did routinely cheat on them. The Deutschland class large cruisers/"pocket battleships" were supposed to be built to the 10,000 ton limit of the Versailles Treaty. Even here, they waisted both space and tonnage on eight 15cm (5.9") guns. They were really too heavy for most commerce raiding purposes. If the Germans had developed the 105mm triaxially stabilized twin mount into a properly weatherproofed turret they would have had the space and weight on the Deutschlands for a balanced DP armament of 12-16 105mm guns with more than sufficient weight of shell and range for commerce raiding while having a far superior armament for antiaircraft use. As it was, they had to rearm the surviving units with six 88mm guns to replace to inadequate original three, and then six 105mm guns to replace the 88's. As the war progressed, they had to mount 20mm, 37mm, and 40mm antiaircraft guns where space was available while still carrying around the now useless 5.9" guns. It just seems to me the Germans never appreciated the value of dual purpose armament. They didn't just demonstrate this on their capital ships. They were the only country to arm destroyers with a gun as large as the 5.9" as well. They had excellent medium caliber dual purpose weapons in the 88mm and 105mm weapons so it's not as if they just didn't have the guns they needed. They just didn't understand why dual purpose guns were a better compromise than taking up space and weight for both SP and DP guns.
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  2362.  @jcgamer892  Wait...what? We are posting on Drachinifel's channel now. Why would I need to check it out? He answered a question I posted about turret designs for British ships and another on triple turrets generally, but I don't recall anything about triple turrets for the H class.
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  2363.  @reluctantbias8508  See my reply to James296. I agree that things like armor schemes and fire control systems were a generation behind, but that doesn't explain twin turrets when Germany had already built capital ships with triple turrets. It had to have been some manufacturing limitation for large turrets not related to treaty restrictions.
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  2364.  @BrassLock  Funny how sleeping habits are so different for people. I've always been a night owl, more so now that I'm retired. I usually hit the sack about 0300 and get up again about 1000. As I've gotten older I find I only require 6-7 hours sleep compared to the 8-9 I required when I was younger. Of course, being a retired bum now, I can always sneak in a nap when i need it. Today is shaping up to be one of those days.
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  2365.  @rnrailproductions5049  Good morning as well. Drach always posts these just as I'm about to finally retire for the night, and then there are questions raised by the video, and then answers to questions...and then it's 0542 and I still haven't gone to bed. Thank goodness I'm retired and single. No work I have to be at and no wife harping at me to come to bed. :-)
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  2366.  CipiRipi00  Yes, they were the interwar version of HDW, designing submarines for all comers.
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  2367.  @aperson1139  I don't think you're going to get information in that level of detail. Awnings were used in almost all ships that were stationed in hot climates, and many of them even had pipe structures secured to the decks and superstructures to support the awnings. These varied from class to class and even ship to ship. The use between navies was about the same, and the concept goes back to Roman and Egyptian sailing ships. Air scoops were generally non-standard and rigged wherever the crew could find supports. Obviously, awnings and air scoops interfered with the arc of fire or even movement of some guns. See the picture of USS California at http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/014429.jpg with the forward 14" guns raised through the extensive awnings at the bow in an attempt to rip off the awning so machine guns could be brought into action against Japanese planes at Pearl Harbor. This gives you an idea of the strength of these canvas structures. Awnings weren't used when a ship expected to be in combat. After the attack, portholes were plated over and awnings were prohibited almost everywhere in the Pacific. The intolerable heat below decks was a major driver for the perfection and installation of air conditioning in USN ships.
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  2368.  @timclaus8313  The Tennessee had some work done at PH and Puget Sound to to rpeair her plating and wiring plus some 1.1" and 20mm AA guns were added. She did have a CXAM radar added as well. She worked betwwen the West Coast and Hawaii doing some escort work and training, being held there on the chances the Japanese mu=ight attempt and incursion, she wasn't sent on with the3 other task forces due to her well known problems of excess fuel oil consumption, and not enough tankers to service the aircraft carrier task forces and the old battleships. Once California had been raised, she and Tennessee were sent to Puget Sound for a complete reconstruction, the Navy feeling it was faster and less expensive to have both class members done at the sane time. That took more than a year, from October, 1942. The Colorado class had a different path As the only 16" gun existing battleships, it was feared they would be our only units that could fight the Japanese Nagato class on an even footing. Because of this, neither the Colorado nor the Maryland could be spared for enough yard time for the type of reconstruction seen on California, and both ships received piecemeal upgrades until 1944, by which time it was clear that a complete reconstruction like that done for California was not needed and not cost effective. Both ships had improved AA protection and radar, but Maryland didn't finally get her eight 5"/38 dual turrets until early 1945 after a kamikaze hit, and Colorado never got them, being the only USN frontline battleship to finish the war with her original eight single 5"/25 AA guns. As I said, reconstruction of the old battleships was much more complicated than you have made it out to be.
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  2369.  @timclaus8313  I understand what you're saying, but I think your point is just not correct Looks at Colorado awes an example. she wasn't even at Pearl yet she maintained he cut down cage masts and single mount 5"/25 AA guns right to the end of the war. Pennsylvania had much more modernized secondary armament and radars up until 1944. Some ships like Colorado were just not available for more extensive refits She was the only slow 16" battleship available for shore bombardment duties, thereby not tying up the small number of fast battleships needed for carrier escorts. I'm just saying what ships got what when was more complicated than you're making it out to be.
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  2370.  @timclaus8313  Sorry, I just saw this now. Pennsylvania did get off quite a number of rounds at Pearl. according to the action report at https://www.history.navy.mil/research/archives/digital-exhibits-highlights/action-reports/wwii-pearl-harbor-attack/ships-m-r/uss-pennsylvania-bb-38-action-report.html. she fired 650 rounds of 5"/25, 350 rounds of 3"/50, and about 60,000 rounds (!) of .50 caliber. The ship was only getting power and steam from shore connections and, although the machine guns were manned, none had anything more than some ready rounds available. In a typical example of Yankee ingenuity, the sailors proceeded to knock the locks off ammo lockers and magazines and set up ammo passing lines. It's likely that most of what was shot off was ineffective, especially machine guns shot at high altitude bombers, but I imagine it was at least a boost to morale. All the relatively undamaged or completely undamaged battleships were hastily given some additional 20mm and some 1.1" quads and sent back out to patrol , escort convoys, or actively try to hunt down the Japanese fleet. Pennsylvania had her bomb damage mostly repaired, she escorted convoys from the West Coast to Hawaii. She was given a refit in late 1942/early 1943 that added eight 5"/38 turrets and a number of quad 40mm guns while landing all her casemate and .50 cal guns. She was also equipped with CXAM-1 radar, state of the art at the time, but she did fall behind on electronic updates, as it was decided to concentrate those on the 16" ships. She served a useful life doing shore bombardment, but she was kept away from engagements that might lead to a real fleet battle.
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  2371. Cool! Sounds like Drach will be eating some hardtack and spoiled bacon to show us what life was like in the age of sail. It was a noble sacrifice, Good Sir, and Steve 1989 would approve.
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  2372. One example of a deliberate attack on a lighthouse was the shelling of the Estevan Point light complex by the I-26 on June 20, 1942. Estevan Point was one of the most important lighthouses on the Pacific Coast, and her RDF navigation radio station had one of the longest ranges covering the same area. Although the attack didn't cause any damage to the lighthouse, the subsequent decision to turn off the outer lights did cause several ships to run aground on the rocks in the area, so the ultimate goal of the attack was at least partially fulfilled by Canadian authorities.
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  2373.  @jimmiller5600  There were many more naval mutinies in the twentieth century than just Invergordon, from Russians to Austrians to Germans all the way up to the US and Canada. Some had to do with pay, some the treatment of the sailors, and some due to political events outside the navy itself. Just the shear number of international mutinies and the varied reasons would make a good segment.
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  2374. Why didn't more navies adopt the transom stern? Almost all naval vessels today have transom stearns, so why not earlier ships? It seems the USN was the only navy that routinely used transom sterns in the late prewar period.
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  2375.  Nguyen Johnathan  I was responding to your comment regarding Swedish 152mm guns. They had many of the same problems as the USN 152mm guns.
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  2376. Well, she did serve a long time, but really never as an aircraft carrier. She did more as a gold transport, then aircraft transport, than acting as a carrier. Her refit in the US, after getting rid of her pro-Vichy crew, modernized her enough to serve as an aircraft transport. While in her first convoy loaded with aircraft for Britain, she collided with a US troop transport and had to stop off at the Azores for temporary repairs. Limping back to France, she received enough repairs to make her seaworthy again, but she missed the rest of the war. She departed in October, 1945 for Indochina, once again loaded with US Lend Lease aircraft and supplies, reaching Saigon in late October. She did useful service there, repairing aircraft and converting ex-US landing craft into river patrol boats. Almost all her systems were worn out by June, 1946. She was able to make it back to Toulon on her own power, but only by sailing at 10 knots, since her engines couldn't produce enough power for a higher speed. It was to be her last voyage. There was some thought given to doing a complete refit, but France was in the midst of yet another postwar financial crisis, so she was only given enough repairs to her systems to make her liveable for the 600 or so sailors that would use the berths installed in the former hanger decks. She served from 1948 to 1966 as a barracks ship because there were no shore facilities to house sub crews while their ships were under repairs or refit. She did that job well since the sailors had what was considered to be spacious accommodations at the time. There was even enough room for a cinema and ship's store, so sailors who lived in her hull considered the Bearn as pretty good duty. By 1966, she was well and truly worn out, and land based accommodations had finally been constructed. Not trusting that the Bearn's engines were still serviceable after her sale to an Italian scraper in 1967, she was towed to Italy and cut up for her metal value, an ignominious end to a ship that, while never serving in her intended role, did good service for the French at a time when there were no other alternatives .
    2
  2377. Near the end of the war, the USN finally started giving 40mm gunners more protection with the "turret" design (http://www.kagero.pl/images/nicewatermark/occnvai296the-battleship-uss-missouricati96navyiti686-02_missourishopk1.jpg) of steel plate all around except the the rear of the mount. The height of the gun tub and armoring of the tub was also increased. The USN never came up with a full enclosed mount for the quads, but the late war design was better than the previous mounts. They had zero protection from even splinters except for the gun tubs. Inexplicably, the successor 3"/50 mounts reverted to zero protection again. The guys on the 20mm guns, except for the totally inadequate forward shield, were pretty much on their own.
    2
  2378.  @sugarnads  Thanks, Mr. Mongoose. I have seen some good ones from you too.
    2
  2379.  @simonwaldock9689  Just for you, I shall continue to wear my fingers down to nubs. :-) Thanks.
    2
  2380.  @spyone4828  LOL. I'll have to give you that one.
    2
  2381. Your voice and rendition are so smooth (and so English) that ever using text to speech was a real tragedy. :-)
    2
  2382.  @tyronedlisle4412  Do you have a link to this supposed airfield built along the Canadian border for the express purpose of bombing Canadian cities? This should be good.
    2
  2383.  @alexanderhartmann7950  Description? Why, who ever reads those things? :-)
    2
  2384. Okay, fine. I'll have to eat more dog food, but I can see you need some money for models and paint, so I've raised my membership to $10. Those models are a pretty cool way to illustrate the fleet positions.
    2
  2385.  @davidkaminski615  It took awhile for most navies to understand that a dual purpose armament was heavy enough for most close in surface actions but, more importantly, provided the high altitude fire needed to drive off bombers and snoopers. It also took awhile to develop the directors and radars than made heavy antiaircraft fire effective. There haven't been many wars where the method of attack and fighting it off underwent the changes it did in the fiver years between 1940 and 1945.
    2
  2386. Teddy Roosevelt wrote a great book called "The Naval War of 1812". He was only twenty-three when he wrote it, but he was already showing his grasp of naval history and contemporary naval warfare. He covers the pivotal battles on Lake Erie in some detail, and he shows how lake weather affect the engagements, with either everyone becalmed or caught in roaring storms. It's now available on Amazon for a mere 99 cents for the Kindle version. It really should be read by anyone with an interest in the Lakes battles.
    2
  2387.  @Digmen1  Right, so his committee came up designs as bad as the unrotated projectile. It still has nothing to to do with him having any part of the design of the tank named for him. As he said to Jan Smuts when he first saw the A20 design in trials, "That is the tank they named after me when they found out it was no damn good!".
    2
  2388. or the Midmalt....
    2
  2389.  @AdamMGTF  Yes, there's still a lot of space and low population density in the UK. If it wasn't for London, you'd have a low number of cases and deaths, just like NYC is responsible for about a third of ours. These megacities come with a price tag, and we're paying the bill now. Luckily, I live in a town of 14,000, and any even moderately large city is at least 50 miles away in every direction. My county had one case, which has since recovered.
    2
  2390.  @AdamMGTF  Thanks, I'm doing fine so far. We are actually doing fairly well as a country as long as you lop off NYC and make them another country! Our numbers per capita are some of the lowest in the West without the big spike in the NYC area. I'm sure hoping the numbers are on the other other side of the mountain and we can finally stop living like prisoners in our houses (and countries) soon.
    2
  2391. I rather enjoy the musical intermissions. All I need is someone passing through the crowd (staying six feet apart, of course) selling popcorn.
    2
  2392. @Mark Robinson That's an interesting idea I've read a fair bit about. Roosevelt questioned the Any about if we could drop the bomb on Germany after the Battle of the Bulge so that kind of offensive didn't happen again. Of course, it wasn't ready in early 1945, but there's no doubt Roosevelt would have used it if it was. The biggest problems were logistical. The B-29 was the only aircraft capable of carrying the bomb, and even that large of a plane had to be specially modified to make it fit. All the work on the bomb pits and storage had been done in the Pacific, and it would have taken at least a month to duplicate it. There were no B-29's in Europe, and getting ones modified for the bomb from the Pacific to Europe would have also taken some time, as would the infrastructure and manpower needed to support such an unfamiliar place The Army's fear was the bomb wouldn't detonate, and Germany could recover it. There was an assumption that Germany was close to developing the bomb as well, and the Germans getting an undetonated bomb may have given them the technology needed to finish their own and use it against us. We now know Germany was nowhere near close to finishing their own bomb, but we didn't know that then, so it wasn't an unreasonable fear. The biggest issue was getting the bomb to the target. The modifications to the B-29 made the B-29 a slow, lumbering beast, and Germany's highly developed antiaircraft systems would have been able to pick it off. Its ceiling wouldn't have been more than 25,000 feet, and German interceptors could have shot it down. By contrast, Japan had almost no antiaircraft system, and Japanese interceptors had been mostly swept from the sky. Finally, German weather was frequently overcast, and the bomb had to be dropped through mostly clear skies. Japanese weather in summer was generally clear, and just right for dropping a big bomb on target.
    2
  2393.  @seanmac1793  That's a pretty good summary of why the Germans were defeated by mid- 1944. It wasn't even just the navy that was defeated. After D-Day. The army was fighting a war on two fronts against an enemy that could poor men and material on the continent while the Soviets were building an even larger offense on the eastern front. No single country was capable of fighting off the largest and best equipped military forcers the world has ever seen. It's really quite tiresome to read about Germany's supposed miracle weapons, fearsome tanks, and the new Elektro Boats as if they could somehow stop the allied advance and force a negotiated peace.
    2
  2394.  @themadhammer3305  Ah, I missed that part then. The British 3"70 was a good antiaircraft weapon, but the mount was almost as large as the 5.25" turrets. The US 3"/50 as installed on HMS Victorious would have been a better choice since Vanguard could carry 5-6 twin mounts per side compared to only three 3"/70 mounts par side. The 3"/50 also didn't suffer from the reliability and maintenance issues of the 3"/70.
    2
  2395. I assume you meant the radar directed gunfire of the twin 5.25" guns on Vanguard being used against Argentine planes. BTW, Argen-teen, Argen-tyne, and Argentinean are all correct. Unfortunately, all her 73 40mm guns were removed by the end of 1950 so, except for some hastily added 40mm or 30mm guns and the ubiquitous 7.62mm GPMG machine guns mounted almost all the rail stanchions, she wouoldn't have a tertiary armament . The RP10 MKII turrets and power control of the 5.25" guns should have been able to perform well against the Argentine Skyhawks that did most of the damage, assuming the autoloading problems had been worked out. If she still had her radar directed 40mm guns aboard, she could have put up an almost impregnable wall of steel around the fleet.
    2
  2396. Check out the history of the PCE(R) class (http://www.pullman-museum.org/main/exhibits/pgtw/pgtwpcer.htm) for the UN|SN's dedicated rescue ship. The acted as both fleet escorts and a small hospital ship with 65 beds and an eleven man medical staff. They engaged is rescue operations from damaged ships, fought fires, picked up downed airmen, and performed generally useful duties that didn't tie up larger fleet vessels. Some were converted to communications command ships on order of General MacArthur so he and his staff would be able to control operations ashore from the Philippines to the planned invasion of Japan. They were only 183 feet long and lightly armed, although several Japanese planes were shot down by these vessels, and a number took serious damage from kamikaze attacks.
    2
  2397.  @johanlundstrom1561  I doubt the people writing those scripts really understood PT boats. Very few PTs carried radar through late 1942. After that, most radars were some variant of the SCR-517A airborne search set. The range of the SCR-517A when scanning from the usual 5,000 foot height of a searching aircraft but considerably less when used on the sea surface and relatively short mast of a PT. The PPI was really only large enough for use by one operator, and there was no way to communicate findings up the kline for the fleet. The SCR-517A and variants did a good job in terms of acting as a self defense system for a squadron, but that's about as far as it went in terms of being radar pickets.
    2
  2398.  @Drachinifel  LOL. The trouble with Europe is you guys just have too many seas to deal with. Over here, it's easy. Atlantic, Pacific, done and dusted. :-)
    2
  2399.  @Drachinifel  Well, they both begin with "B", so close enough. Given the shape of these and the slow speed, you'd almost need to have the antitorpedo boat guns manned 24 hours a day, plus and armed guard standing at station. It would be almost too late to ring battle stations when a small fast boat was spotted. Imagine a low freeboard boat of maybe 40 feet that could do even 10 or 11 knots loaded with 20 marines and a Maxim gun sneaking up on them. Knowing the Turks, I'd bet they already had that kind of raiding party worked out if one of these monstrosities ever showed up on their shores.
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  2400. No, that was the Battle off Samar. The battle of Leyte Gulf was much larger than that one engagement. While it was certainly a heroic fight, the idea that a couple of destroyer escorts fought off the whole Japanese fleet is just wrong. The order of battle was 3 destroyers, 4 DE's, and 6 escort carriers with 400 aircraft. The Japanese had a mere 13 floatplanes. It was the aircraft from the escort carriers that really saved the day for Taffy 3. The destroyers and DE's radar fire control that gave the US vessels such accurate gunfire, especially from the five inch guns of the destroyers and even the single five incher's from the escort carriers, harried and even sunk a few ships, with aid of down the throat torpedo attacks. Brave as they were, only one of the seven DD's and DE's wasn't sunk or badly damaged when the battle was broken off. Still, without those aircraft from the escort carriers making such sustained and effective attacks, it's unlikely Admiral Kurita would have broken off the attack.
    2
  2401.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I realize that. I wasn't asking about a centralized fire control system. I'm asking about was it point and shoot or were than any other systems used,
    2
  2402. What kind of fire control system was there on an 18th century warship? Was it just point and shoot, or were the some kinds of sighting and aiming devices?
    2
  2403.  @WALTERBROADDUS  The biggest issue for the Japanese was their inability to produce reliable engines of greater than about 1,000 horsepower. They developed airframes that were broadly capable of taking on the best of allied fighters except for contant mechanical faults with the engines. They also never developed effective superchargers for their engines, so B-29s flew with relative impunity during their bombing raids. Poor and fluctuating metallurgical supply as well as difficulties with high tolerance machining were the downfall of the Japanese aircraft industry when they finally started building higher performance fighters.
    2
  2404.  @bearsamoyed  Nah, we'll all sleep a long time when we're taking our inevitable dirt nap. Might as well learn about naval history now. :-)
    2
  2405.  @kemarisite  Sorry, you're right. My brain apparently went into vapor lock on that one. I'll correct my post now.
    2
  2406. Almost three and a half hours? Thank goodness my coffee refills arrived from Amazon yesterday.
    2
  2407.  @TraditionalAnglican  According to my UTC calculator, 0800 PDT is 1500 UTC. 1300 UTC would be 0600 PDT. I use the calculator all the time in my ham radio work so I'm pretty confident it's right.
    2
  2408.  @Drachinifel  It sure would for me, and I suspect it may get you more first day views. Something like 0900 EDT/1300 UTC would get the Drydock into North American time zones at a reasonable hour while not being too late in Europe. I don't know how everyone else feels though.
    2
  2409. The Argentine junta just misread Margaret Thatcher. She was not going to be pushed into losing one more part of the Empire, and the Falklands was going to be the line in the sand. I've often wondered what the Argentine response would have been if they had correctly understood "The Iron Lady" was no mere passing phrase.
    2
  2410.  @andresmartinezramos7513  LOL. My only hope is more coffee!
    2
  2411. James Ricker replied: "The pneumatic Dynamite gun is still in use today on submarines." You apparently wrote this and immediately deleted it. Can you tell me why you deleted it, and where I would find a dynamite gun in use on a submarine today?
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  2412. I was the search and rescue coordinator for my county sheriff's department for 27 years. We had an aviation department with two helicopters and one fixed wing. We assisted the CAP with their missions and then CAP provided support for our missions like missing person searches and criminal searches. They were a tremendous asset to us. We could get air searches organized in a couple hours. I really enjoyed my time working with them, and they still provide critical services today.
    2
  2413.  @Drachinifel  And, to be technical about it, the first pom pom was not the 2 pdr but the 1 pdr 37 mm gun used during the Boer War. The story is the name came from native Africans when they first heard the gun fired on full auto.
    2
  2414. Presumably you meant "tugs", although there are such things as Navajo rugs. :-)
    2
  2415.  @Gingerbreadley  Great question. For the end of the war, it would have to be as many Gearing class destroyers as I could lay my hands on. Light cruisers would be a toss up between the HMS Superb if the British could have built more than one or the Fargo class if the USN could have built more than two. Baltimore class heavy cruisers seem to be the clear winner there. Iowa's for battleships, although the Vanguard would have been a close second if she had been completed. Essex class for carriers or possibly Malta class, if they had ever been built. For fleet submarines, nothing was better than the Gato/Balao class, if nothing else because there were 197 of them.
    2
  2416. Have you ever done a segment on Jack Nissenthall and the Dieppe Raid? You may have and I've just missed it. If not, it's quite a story of heroism and the quest for the technological lead in WWII
    2
  2417. A River class frigate, the HMCS Carlplace served as both the presidential yacht and then kind of a party boat after the overthrow of Presidente Trujillo. Her correct name would have been Carleton Place after the city in eastern Ontario of the same name, but the RN said the name was too long, so Carlplace it became. In between some apparently lavish parties for the naval elite, she did some shore bombardment in support of several coups and a civil war in the 1960's. From 1970--1974.She became the flagship of the Dominican Navy because she was the only large vessel capable of going to sea. She was offered to Canada as a museum ship in 1998. Her condition was what one would expect after an all-night party in mom's basement, so Canada politely refused the offer. She hung around the main navy base in Santo Domingo until 2003 as an accommodation ship, at which point she was the last River class frigate still afloat. She was once again offered to any taker as a museum ship but no one, including the Dominicans, would bite, so she was sold for scrap in 2004.
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  2418.  @joehayes9933  No doubt. The Japanese, after taking the "big risk" for Pearl Harbor, were always waiting for the one decisive battle where supposed Japanese superiority would win the war. Not only was their Naval doctrine inflexible, but only Yamamoto and few others seem to understand the danger that lay ahead for Japan if the war lasted for more than a year. Throwing everything they had at the Americans before 1943 was the only chance they had, but even Yamamoto became much more conservative as 1942 progressed.
    2
  2419. Woo Hoo! 2 hours and 22 minutes! Have to run and get more coffee!!
    2
  2420.  @hothoploink1509  From reading several other posts here, some seem to think the cost includes salvage rights. There aren't many divers qualified to dive the wrecks. With the very cold water and crazy strong currents of Scapa Flow, only the very best divers could safely make the trip to the bottom and back. I was a diver for many years before age and medical problems got me out of the game. Even though I was technically qualified to make dives like that, Scapa Flow would have been outside my comfort zone, not to mention the costs involved. In terms of making a profit, owning diving rights to the ships would be largely symbolic anyway.
    2
  2421. Just to be clear, the money only gives you the right to either dive on these wrecks yourself or own the rights to scheduling other divers and companies. The vessels are scheduled monuments and nothing can be removed from them.
    2
  2422.  @armchairwarlord  A dozen modernized Fletchers? Yes, well, we "expired old salts" do enjoy this kind of speculation. If you don't, I suggest you pass these kinds of threads by.
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  2423.  @AtomicBabel  Bull Halsey couldn't stand Hoover and made sure he was court martialed. However, he was exonerated at court martial because his force had only badly damaged cruisers remaining, the captains of those ships felt there couldn't have been survivors given the complete destruction of the Juneau by a massive explosion from a torpedo that caused her to sink in 20 seconds, and there was not even a single destroyer to hunt the Japanese sub that had just fired two torpedos, one of which sank Juneau. Gilbert rightly feared another attack and did his best to get the rest of the fleet out of danger. It was a tragic event, but war has many tragic events. He retired honorably in 1947, and was awarded three Navy Crosses. There was only one officer that should have been brought up on charges, and it wasn't Gilbert.
    2
  2424. Given that "Galena" is also another name for the mineral lead, this was an unfortunate choice of names for the ironclad. How well did naval engineers on 1860 understand problems like negative stability and buoyancy? I'm sure they understood the concepts, but how well were they able to calculate the effects of heavy iron armor? Given that all the calculations would be by hand with only the assistance of a slide rule, how much time could they devote to detailed calculations before the ship would never get launched? It must have been a pretty difficult task for naval engineers of the time, and ships like Galena show that there was either an inadequate understanding of things like tumblehome affecting stability, or there just weren't enough hours in the day to make all the calculations.
    2
  2425.  @TheSportCompact  Reading comprehension seems to a fading thing nowadays. I wrote "oldest COMBAT vessel still in commision". I wrote it again in the reply right before you decided you decided you needed to tell me about Constitution , and after another poster just before you did the same thing. Do you think she's still a vessel ready for COMBAT ? Geez....
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  2426.  @bakomusha  Indeed. One of the most inspiring last stands in naval history. It was a combination of training, technology, and just plain guts. Now that you mention it, I don't recall any movie about this battle, but it sure deserves one. In these days of CGI, it would be a lot easier to make compared to older battle movies.
    2
  2427.  @fernandovaldez5118  It's a nice green concept, but the only "renewable" energy I'm aware of the would have any chance of working would be solar. For solar to work, you'd need huge (and heavy) battery banks capable of driving a fleet train ship at 20 knots for days on end when there's no sun, a not uncommon problem in many of the world's oceans. Solar panels don't tend to stand up well to rough seas, and cleaning them would be a full time job for the crew. If you have some ideas about how this would all work, I'd be interested in hearing them. I've yet to see a workable plan.
    2
  2428. The Argentine Navy tends to get glossed over because it was a neutral country, but her two modernized US built battleships, two modern heavy and one light cruisers, and 12 very modern British built destroyers was certainly a contender in terms of the minor navies. Argentina's Anglophile naval culture also led to RN-like standards of training, and kept operational with the same traditions of ship upkeep.
    2
  2429.  @boreasreal5911  I'm done with you. Go talk to someone who believes your nonsense.
    2
  2430.  @boreasreal5911  Two wrongs never make a right. You're using the "look over there" argument about others doing bad things to diminish what you did bad. Your country was responsible of tens of millions of deaths in the twentieth century. Come to grips with reality.
    2
  2431.  @boreasreal5911  I'm not about to keep arguing with you when you distort facts to suit your narrative. I have watched the Great War channel from beginning to end so stop trying to bullshit me. For the first 45 years of the twentieth century, Germany was the big bad wolf of Europe. It's German like you that make me nervous about the future.
    2
  2432.  @boreasreal5911  Bull. Germany demanded that Russia demobilize in 12 hours. It was an impossible demand and Germany declared war on Russia. They were following the Schlieffen Plan by demanding free passage through Belgium. When Belgium refused, they invaded Belgium with no declaration of war and declared war on France the same day. It was Germany's moves in the west that expanded the war and made what we now know as WWI inevitable. Declaring war on Russia did not bring France and Britain into the war. Prussia effectively became the German Empire at the outbreak of war. It was the German Empire that fought the war not just Prussia. Are you German? What history books are you reading?
    2
  2433.  @Dave_Sisson  They'd need a lot of changes to operate F-35s. They don't have the jet fuel tankage or ordnance magazines need to support fixed wing fighters. The deck and elevators would need structural reinforcement and the spots would need heat treating to resist the vertical thrust of an F-35. Even with modifications the ship is too small to operate more than six fighters, and four would be a more likely number. The RAN already looked at this when the ships were building and dropped a proposed plan to operate F-35s. The ship are useful for their designed role of amphibious assault, not as aircraft carriers.
    2
  2434.  @boreasreal5911  Sorry, but you don't get to rewrite history. Germany was the first to declare war on August 1, 1914. It then launched an unprovoked attack against Belgium and declared war on France.The attack on Belgium brought Britain into the war under its obligations to the 1839 Treaty of London. Prussia incorporated almost all the states of the German Empire after the war broke out. It was unified under Bismarck. It contained the vast majority of the population of modern day Germany and most of its territory. It was close enough to what we know as Germany today.
    2
  2435.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Not exactly. He's telling Germany to increase its defense spending to the 2% of GDP required by NATO. That being said, a resurgent Germany makes me even more nervous than Japan. A strong and united Germany has been the cause of of every European war for the past 148 years.
    2
  2436.  @WALTERBROADDUS  No, but it does mean rearmament is going apace. More alarming is the Diet's approval of the reinterpretation of Article 9 of the Constitution Allowing Japan to go to war if an ally is attacked. It also allows the military to provide material aid to any ally anywhere in the world. The interpretation of Article 9 has been held in the past to prohibit any aircraft carriers or bombers. The conversion of the two Izumo class ships to full carriers was also approved by the Diet, and the F-35 with air-to air refueling and 18,000 pounds of ordinance makes a pretty good bomber substitute. Article 9 has been chipped away through reinterpretation for the last 20 years, and Abe has a set a deadline to have Article 9 revised by 2020. There are lots of people on the bandwagon for expansion. Other than the Communist and Socialist parties, all the other major parties are on board with it. One of the reasons why Abe wants to have Article 9 revised to allow a proper military is to "restore national pride". I don't know about you, but that kind of thing gives me the heebie jeebies.
    2
  2437. Terrific and well deserved. There's no one doing naval history on YouTube like you do.
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  2438.  @RCAvhstape  This is another Falklands War myth. Sheffield was an all steel ship. She was sunk due to negligence and stupid decisions on the part of the command staff. HMS Antelope, Ardent, and Sir Galahad were three of the nine ships sunk that happened to have aluminum superstructures. None had aluminum hulls. There's no evidence that the aluminum burned or played any part in the sinkings. Any ship hit by enough bombs, or a bomb that hits the right place in a ship, is going to sink, regardless of materials in the superstructure
    2
  2439. 0200 CST squad here, and like two minutes before I was about to shut things down and hit the rack.
    2
  2440. Admiral Callaghan was, by all accounts, an excellent naval commander that inspired the  confidence of his men and his superiors. He seemed like a natural choice for command of Task Group 67.4 in time for this battle. What Callaghan showed, however, was the dividing line between this naval officers who used and understood radar and those who thought radar was a kind of flash in the pan that would never last and really didn't work. If Callaghan had understood what radar could do for him, he would have positioned his ships so the best radars and crews would be in the van of the attack. Instead, he tried to fight in more of a WWI type of battle than one on the cusp of clear USN superiority due to nothing but a collection of vacuum tubes and wires. Unfortunately,
    2
  2441.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  Let me know if you hunt up the title. I'd be interested in reading it. The Japanese had many problems understanding and building reliable radars so I wouldn't be surprised if the story was true. I will say that they were making great strides with radar by August 1945, and it's one of the reasons they became so successful with consumer electronics in the 50's and 60's.
    2
  2442.  @richardlinter4111  You are correct. t was the Ford Mk 1 in use until the end of the war ans was upgraded to Mark 1A postwar. The Mark 1A reference was both slip of the finger and slip of the mind.
    2
  2443. In addition to all the technical and tactical aspects of trying to us an old small, and slow ship for a carrier, the Luftwaffe controlled all aviation in Germany. I can't imagine they would have wanted to add planes and pilots to any German ship beyond floatplanes. Without a naval air arm, it would be nearly impossible for any navy to have a successful carrier force.
    2
  2444. Take a look at the construction plans for the battlecruiser Lexington and the dimensions of the two massive funnels. It will become immediately apparent why the space needed for funnels on the aircraft carrier version was equally massive.
    2
  2445. Not only did the no. 1 Vickers 2 pounder (40 mm) guns have problems with failure to fee stoppages at high elevations, they also only had low velocity ammunition, and no tracer ammunition had ever been developed by Vickers or the RN. The guns were fed by a fabric belt of 25 rounds each, and the whole gun was essentially a scaled up Vickers .05/62 machine gun. Unfortunately, the fabric belts deteriorated rapidly in the tropical heat of the Netherlands East Indies, causing rounds to fall out of the belts at high elevations. Combined with the failure to feed issues, the 2 pounder guns on the second group of Admiralen class ship were never reliable guns. A fix was found by 1939, but events overtook the ability to supply the stiffer mounts and feed pathways before any of the Admiralen class ships could be refitted. More seriously in terms of effectiveness was the lack of tracers. There were no directors for the guns so sighting was done through spider sights mounted on the guns. Even with smokeless powder, the guns gave off a tremendous amount of smoke, so seeing which direction the rounds were going was difficult without being able to follow them due to the lack of brightly glowing tracers. What was difficult during daylight was impossible after dark or in gloomy weather. The second group of ships were equipped more as minesweepers than traditional destroyers, since the Dutch assumed war against the NEI would be a protracted one of blockade and mining, so the small number of torpedo tubes and anti aircraft guns was considered acceptable. The Japanese, however, had different plans.
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  2446. Drach, Steve1989 is proud of you!
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  2447. This all makes sense to me. It's unfortunate Hood happened to be in a turn when the fatal shell hit.
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  2448.  @jimtaylor294  The Richelieu class was certainly the most impressive looking of the French battleships. It's a stretch to compare her to the fast battleships of the USN though. Her main armament wasn't well arranged except for targets ahead or slightly abeam, and Richelieu sinking from a single torpedo hit in Dakar doesn't inspire confidence in her torpedo protection scheme. The class would have been much better ships if they had built to the Gasgone layout with turrets fore and aft, something that would have been possible with Richelieu if she didn't waste space and tonnage on her single purpose 6"guns. Yes, I know the 6"guns had been designed for DP fire, but they were never successful in that role, and using twin DP 130 mm guns would have given better results for less weight. Nevertheless, Richelieu and her sister were the best the French had in 1940, even in their incomplete states.
    2
  2449. I had nothing but a black screen fro 54:42 onwards to just before the end. I don't know if that was a fault or a feature.
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  2450.  @AdamMGTF  Hi Adam. This is one time a good book is available cheap. Several sellers have the paperback version at $4.00 on ebay! Even the higher class bookstores have it for $15 or less, so buying one of these shouldn't be a problem. I'm still recovering from a nasty COPD flareup. Anyone that's not sure if they should quit smoking should look to my example. Quit now so you're not sick during your declining years.
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  2451. Excellent summary of an important part of the Kriegsmarine surface force. I'm looking forward to your "Five Minute Guide" to each one.
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  2452. I don't know if there was espionage from one side or the other or just coincidental development, but the T-6 Texan and the A6M Zero shared a lot of airframe characteristics, The length, wingspan, wing loading, empty and loaded weight, and even the wing placement in the fuselage were all very close. The T-6 also had a "greenhouse" canopy, and even the tailwheel placement and construction was very similar to the Zero. The T-6, being primarily used as a trainer, had a much smaller engine (600 HP vs 1,000 HP), but armed versions of the T-6 were capable of carrying nearly the same weight and types of armament as the Zero. I wonder if there's any information about how these two aircraft became so similar?
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  2453.  @sharlin648  No, you said " a lot of his military designs on Pre WW1 French kit." His name is one you brought up, not me. I'm just repeating what he's said about this whole gun and ship obsession. He has said he used a wide range of military equipment in his early drawings, the French ships only being a part of it. And I don't give a fuck about you and anime. That wasn't my point, but you sure seem to feel the need to justify why you don't give a fuck about it.
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  2454.  @Drachinifel  Indeed, it couldn't, and I'm content for you to take all the time you need to really cover a subject. I doubt many subscribers think "Oh, no, 30 minutes? That's way too long for me."
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  2455. lovely new intro. Looks like the "5 minutes more or less" is going to end up being a lot more, something that's fine by me.
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  2456.  @AdamMGTF  Thanks very much for that offer, Adam. At 73 and living on social security and whatever the stock market deigns to give me this month, my travel budget is sadly shrunken from what it used to be. At age 73, I also don't get around as well as I used to. Within those limitations, however, the Mother Country is at the top of my list. This colonial enjoys a proper cuppa Twinings, although I'm one of those heretics that has tea with my milk. A rousing RN vs USN discussion would make for an enjoyable weekend. I'll save this post and contact you as my schedule gets firmed up. One of the things that makes Drach's channel so enjoyable is the chance to meet people like yourself.
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  2457.  @alecblunden8615  I agree that the Japanese were warning war was the next step, but generally that doesn't mean an hour from now, even if the note was delivered on time. The US knew war was imminent, just not how imminent and where. They also knew that cutting Japan off from scrap metal supplies would also lead to war. Roosevelt recognized the risk of attack on British and Dutch colonies by the Japanese. He was trying to get the Japanese out of China to make it less likely they would need to immediately attack Singapore and the Dutch East Indies. As you say, the US didn't seem to understand there was no way the Japanese could lose face by pulling out of China, and they continued to push them closer to the edge. However, once the Japanese signed the Tripartite Pact, the Japanese became a belligerent rather than a neutral. If we were to support Britain and the Netherlands, we had to slowly tighten the noose on supplies to Japan. The Roosevelt administration foolishly believed, even with warnings to the contrary, that the Japanese didn't have enough oil to mount a major offensive campaign outside SE Asia. We felt that restricting their oil supply further would make them pull out of China in return for relaxing the embargoes. We lurched our way to war rather than planned for it, something we've seen in recent history as well The language of the December 7 note was deliberately written so those who saw it as the opening0 of war would and those that thought it was just another negotiating tactic would. Japanese diplomats after the war wrote that they didn't make a clear declaration of war because they foolishly believed the implied threat would be enough to make the US pull back.We would no more do that than the Japanese would make any plans to leave China. Both sides had national prestige on the line, and neither one was going to blink. Yamamoto was the one who birthed and pushed through the plan to attack Pearl Harbor, and his greatest fear was there would be a last minute diplomatic breakthrough and the attack would be called off. He didn't need to worry about that as it turned out.
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  2458. I'm no expert on the M Class. I remember reading the gun was taken from a older class of battleship, and the barrel was not chrome lined or otherwise resistant to seawater damage. A waterproof combination of heavy cardboard and canvas was used to seal the barrel. It was frangible enough that a round could be fired through it, but the cover had to be put back over the barrel before it submerged again. It's the reason the gun had to be loaded on the surface since the barrel was subject to damage from seawater if the barrel wasn't sealed. I haven't seen the picture you did, but maybe the muzzle cover being shot off gave it the fountain effect?
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  2459.  @kemarisite  I have no argument with what you have written. My reply was to explain the actions of the US cruisers not taking any evasive action before they were hit. The type 93 were a constant danger ot allied ships before 1943, when we recovered an intact specimen at Guadalcanal. Japanese strategy was to fire all their torpedoes before opening fire with guns. The US strategy was just the opposite, use gunfire first and torpedoes only when the ships had closed the range. I don't know what the effective percentage of Type 93's that were fired, but the important thing is the Japanese strategy was such that US ships were more likely to be hit by one salvo than was true with US ships firing the same way. US torpedo strategy was seriously flawed going into WWII, and we assumed the Japanese actually had slightly less capable torpedoes and would withhold firing until they had targets at close range. US ships weren't withholding torpedoes as a threat. It was a basic part of the strategy. The Japanese used an asymmetric strategy using a weapon we didn't know existed.
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  2460.  @billbrockman779  Probably so, but the range differential remained about the same no matter what, so the Brooklyns would still have needed a lot of luck to be able close range and be able to sink or disable Graf Spee before the same fate awaited them.
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  2461. It would really depend on if the cruisers got able in range or the Graf Spee being able to stay out of range. The number of guns doesn't mean much if you can't get close enough to hit the enemy. At maximum elevation of 40 degrees, the Graf Spee would have a range of about 40,000 yards while the US ships maximum range was about 26,000 yards. That's a huge disparity, and one unlikely to be overcome before they were all disabled or sunk.
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  2462.  @jacobwerner274  Two doors up and on the right. :-)
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  2463.  @Alobo075  LOL. Once I started learning about naval history, I realized how much more Kamchatka meant as a real place, rather than just a place on a Risk board.
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  2464.  @josephdedrick9337  I'm pretty sure the British Pacific Fleet in WWII had developed at least grudging respect for the USN.
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  2465.  @josephvalvano829  Thanks for the kind words.
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  2466.  @theswordguy5269  " The Chief Engineer was quoted as having said that in his opinion the keel had been broken by the torpedo hit." This from the one of the ship's doctors. The Chief Engineer was quoted by whom? On what basis did he say this, if in fact he said it? The doctor's report is replete with errors about courses and speeds for the Juneau. This is all pretty flimsy evidence for asserting the ship was operating for 10 hours with a broken back. And you can stop with the continued attempts to make it look like I haven't read any of this before. I've read essentially everything at the Atlanta site years ago. The recently declassified action report of the USS Helena at https://bloximages.chicago2.vip.townnews.com/wcfcourier.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/8/72/872c634b-7920-5702-9d2e-6a5dd310feb2/59f73a3d0a4fd.pdf.pdf contains many more details of what happened ot Atlanta and Juneau.
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  2467.  @theswordguy5269  Please provide me with any links that support the following assertions - 1. The Atlanta's main armament was only designed for surface warfare 2. Admiral Callahan "blundered" into Japanese forces as compared to his confusing order of "column left". 3. Evidence that the Atlanta was steaming under her own power after the torpedo hit and before San Francisco opened fire on a ship that was beyond the planned van of the destroyers. 4. Evidence that fear of Japanese surface attack caused Atlanta to be scuttled rather than the inability to get underway with the main power plant and the ship was drifting out of control toward Japanese held Cape Esperance. 5. Evidence a ship with only backup generator power, under tow by a fleet tug, with power only to a single turret could be considered "combat effective". 6. Any evidence the gunfire of the San Francisco caused the fatal damage to Atlanta. Not asking about crew casualties, but actual damage to the ship that later caused her to sink. 7. Any evidence that Juneau's first torpedo hit "broke her back", and how a ship with a broken back could maintain 13 knots on one screw for 10 hours after the first torpedo attack. 8. Any evidence the second torpedo attack, with the hit occuring in about the same place as the first, wasn't the one that actually broke her back, considering she broke in two and sank in 20 seconds. 9. Any evidence of an Atlanta class ship ever engaging in surface warfare after the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal that would prove how durable they were in that role.
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  2468.  @keptinkaos6384  You are an idiot. BTW, stay in school and learn the difference between "there", "their", "were" and "we're". Learn how to write complete sentences with correct punctuation. Once you stop being an idiot, people might take you more seriously if you write above a sixth grade level.
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  2469.  @Nuke89345  Do you really think a hail of missiles against those Iraqi bunkers and trench lines would be anywhere near as effective, either operationally or cost wise, as artillery shells? There's a reason why the Army has many more artillery pieces than missile launchers. Nothing is as cheap or effective at moving dirt as an artillery round. The challenge for the Navy is to produce an enlarged Burke with 203mm lightweight guns, just like the Major Caliber Lightweight Gun (MCLWG) trialed way back in 1975 on the USS Hull, before we got so deeply into the guided munitions silliness. The tests were reportedly successful in meeting all the specs with the exception of some accuracy issues at extreme ranges out to 17 miles. However, the Navy decided this throwback was no longer needed because we'd soon have 5"/54 guns firing RAPs with way more range...and that failed too. The challenge for the Navy is not producing another version of the 8"/55 firing convention munitions. That part's easy. The hard part is to admit that artillery shells just don't lend themselves to delicate electronic things or other parts hung on them as they explode out of a big rifle. Admirals generally don't like to go before Congress to explain the, at least for now, they've decided for the good of the service to revert to a tried and true gun solution and, BTW, sorry about all that money. -)
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  2470.  @Nuke89345  Yes, if you're soldier undergoing bombardment 14 miles inland where you thought you were safe, the ability to inspire fear while having VW Bugs flying overhead is quite real. I don't think any of those Iraqis knew or cared if the big guns were supposedly obsolescence. Cruise missiles are effective weapons for striking 600 to 1000 miles inland. Firing them 15 miles inland is not only ineffective, since it GPS guidance system doesn't know the location of a bunker, it's also hugely expensive. I think, between Missouri and Wisconsin, about 600 16" rounds were fired. If we want to look at costs, multiply the costs of firing 600 cruise missiles (or any missile, really) with much less destructive power to the cost of those 600 16" rounds, and that doesn't count about 1600 127mm rounds fired. By now, the USN should have been in tall cotton when it came to gunfire support. We have 50 or so Arleigh Burkes firing those amazing ERGM rounds...no? Okay, then, we have BTERM...no? Well, we still have those 152mm LRLAP guns on the Zumwalts...no? My somewhat snarky point is the USN has shown no, and I mean zero, ability to design a working guided long range artillery round. They have now been at it since about 1955 and have wasted hundreds of millions, maybe billions, by now with nothing but scrap metal to show for it. I don't share your optimism that amphibious landings against defended beaches are a thing of the past. It will happen again. What the Navy needs is a multipurpose warship that can escort carriers, provide protection against attacking aircraft and ships, and provide gunfire support to amphibious landings. You know, kind of like a battleship, but not like an Iowa. A smaller, cheaper ship with say, four or six 203mm guns. Just haul out the blueprints for the Baltimore's main guns and start building and, for the love of all that's holy, no more Star Wars ammunition.
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  2471.  @mitchelloates9406  Ironically, considering their success in marine applications, they didn't do well in what was to be their main market, diesel electric locomotives. Without the dedicated engineers of the Navy at hand to baby them, the OP engines gave no end of trouble. FM tried some fixes to make the engine more bulletproof, and some worked, but the engine had developed a bad enough reputation that sales went into a long decline after 1950, with the last American locomotive produced in 1958. EMD's introduction of 567 engine sealed their fate
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  2472.  @Jon.A.Scholt  Sounds fabulous. I miss my sailing days.
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  2473. It even moved New Year's Day two days later on. :-)
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  2474. Walter, you're right about the main role of the Iowas being gunfire support. They were commissioned as the centerpiece of their own Surface Action Group. That doesn't mean they no longer had a role as carrier escorts, as shown by Battle Group Alpha, with the Iowa serving and an escort to the Midway. Their main role was envisioned as distant escorts for carrier groups as counters to the Soviet Kirov class. Once the USSR collapsed, that role went with it.
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  2475. The North Carolinas and South Dakotas were all kept in reserve and never recommissioned. They were all removed from the Navy list by 1962, and those not retained as museum ships were scrapped. They had the same problems as the rebuilt old 16" battleships - Inadequate armor against 16 inch shells, a main battery of 16"/45 guns rather than the much more potent 16/50 guns of the Iowas, and, most of all, slow speed. 27-28 knots just wasn't enough to keep up with fast carrier battlegroups. The Iowas were the only ships in reserve considered "true" battleships by the Naval Board.
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  2476. Ah, okay, I knew that cold water was somehow involved but I didn't know if it was the steel or the welding that was implicated. What did the shipbuilders do to overcome this problem, and how widespread did it turn out to be?
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  2477. Did that continue to be an issue up into the age of steel? Didn't welded Liberty ships have cracking issues the were somehow lined to the kind of steel used in construction? I think I remember reading that, at least.
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  2478.  @VintageCarHistory  I obviously never met Skelley either, so all I know is what I've read about him. He was apparently a brilliant gunnery chief, but he was also a battleship advocate and obsessed with extending the range of the main battery as a reason for the Navy to retain the battleships in commission. Safety was merely a secondary concern, and he was involved in several other near accidents. The powder was all from WWII, and some it was caked in the bag. I haven't been able to find an independent evidence for the beating of the bags to loosen up the powder, but I don't doubt it was part of Skelley's plan. He had no authorization for his experiments. and instructions to the gun crews was mostly word of mouth. The plan for the day of the explosion was a 1900 pound shell and five powder bags rather than the normal six. This was another experiment in extending the range of the gun. Almost no one in the turret crew that day was experienced with 16" guns. Hartwig had been brought in as part of last minute assignment to supervise the less experienced men. The rammerman had never fired a live shot before then. The power rammer had issues in the past with running out of control and going too far up the breach into the gun barrel. We'll never know if it was human error on the part of the rammerman or the rammer running out of control again, but there's no doubt the powder bags were forced too far up the breach under about 2,000 pounds of pressure. That was enough to cause the black powder that was at the end of the last of the five bags to ignite, and the ignition jumped from bag to bag until there was a massive explosion. Even though the gun had reported ready 14 seconds before the blast, the breachlock was still open. If that had been closed, it would have caused a premature firing of the gun, but the explosion wouldn't have happened. As usual with any accident, it takes a number of factors happening in the right order for the accident to happen. In this case, almost all those factors go back to lack of training and mechanical issues. At least on that day, there's no evidence the bags contained additional detonators. It was the pure physics of too much pressure meeting explosive materials. Coming up with the crazy story about a gay love affair gone wrong was just the easy out for the Navy.
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  2479.  @Johnnycdrums  Oh, okay, I never thought of it from that point of view. The USN has held several memorial services after the sinking so I guess there was still the feeling the Phoenix was one of theirs, even after being sunk in combat while serving in a foreign navy. By my hasty math, an 18 year old sailor serving on board Phoenix whe she went to reserve in 1946 would be 91 now, so there's probably not much in the way of first hand opinions we'll get today.
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  2480. My favorite would have to be the Monitor v Merrimack (CSS Virginia). Since I had relatives that fought on both sides, I can find the battle interesting without picking sides.
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  2481. I'm a little confused about the feature you're asking about. Do you mean the insets about halfway up the bow for the anchors or the area around the ski jump at the extreme forward bow?
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  2482.  @tomriley5790  I'm not saying it didn't happen. All kinds of things outside regulations happen in wartime. If was the ship's supply office, he may have been able to get it aboard and on the menu. It is still hard to believe that sausage filled with sawdust made it to the cooks. That supply officer would have cut some open to inspect them, and a story of sawdust sausage getting back to the captain would have landed a supply officer who was supposed to inspect them, in big trouble. It might be true, but I'll still put my money on just a story.
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  2483.  @iansadler4309  I've read several stories of men serving aboard those trawlers, and the worst were the ones captured from Germany and sailed back to Britain as prizes. As you wrote, just a small coal stove, very little fresh water except that needed for boiler makeup water, no toilet facilities, no refrigeration, and all the food came out of a can. It's hard to imagine worse duty at sea.
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  2484.  @therake8897 True, and while the increased height helped the class handle the later jets like the Skyhawk, their low top speed was a bigger hindrance than a somewhat lower hanger height. If Veinticinco de Mayo could have done 30 knots like a larger and more powerful carrier, the strike package of Skyhawks waiting on deck could have been launched against the British fleet in the Falklands. The possible outcome makes an interesting speculation.
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  2485.  @spatsky  First, I don't despise MacArthur, but accuracy in history is more important than who anyone likes or dislikes. Hong Kong was never a fortress. Churchill and the general staff consider Hong Kong a mere outpost and actually reduced the size of the garrison on 1940. It wasn't until September of 1940 that a token Canadian force of 1975 troops were dispatched to Hong Kong, not arriving until November 16. Singapore and Malaysia were part of the same campaign. It was a failure of British planning that assumed now army could traverse the whole of Malaysia on the ground, assuming the Royal Navy could sink any troop convoys that were close enough to threaten Singapore. The Malay Command never received the equipment it needed to defend the Peninsula and Singapore, with the British not having a since tank in the whole command. Percival didn't do a good job in defending Singapore, never allowing his large force of engineer troops to set up roadblock and defenses that would have slowed the Japanese advance. His battlefield intelligence was defective, and he believed an entire Japanese corps was attacking rather then the 38,000 troops under Yamashita's command. Percival surrendered an army of 138,000 men to a much smaller force, and better planning and execution should have allowed the British to hold out for far longer than they did. The Phillipines lasted longer because we had the redoubt of Corregidor, something the British didn't have. We were able to fight a retreating action on Bataan that lasted until April only because the Japanese had foolishly assumed the battle had been won by early January. They had withdrawn their best troops and almost all their airpower to fight in the Dutch East Indies, leaving second line troops to mop things up. It's doubtful we would have lasted a month in Bataan if we had still been facing the Japanese 48th Division. The 10,000 remaining troops lasted until May 8 only because the tunnels provided shelter from the bombings and artillery fire. If the tunnels had been properly provisioned with food, ammunition, and medical supplies, the defender may have been able to hold out for another month or 45 days.
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  2486.  @spatsky  That guy who had a grandfather and father who were two of the top generals in the army? The guy who, even with the intervention of his famous relatives, was turned down twice for appointment to West Point due to lackluster scores on the entrance exam? The guy who needed nearly a year of special tutoring and coaching to finally pass the test with an outstanding score? He was certainly an outstanding student in the Academy because of his hard studying and capacity for getting by on three hours sleep a night. However, even MacArthur admitted that book learning was hard for him, and he'd much rather ride or shoot than study. I guess it depends on how you describe brilliance. He was a brilliant tactician and organizer, a man of unquestioned bravery in battle, but I don't think he was a brilliant student. If you haven't done so, read "American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 - 1964". It gives a lot of insight into MacArthur's accomplishments and MacArthur the man. As one famous quote said "The best and the worst things you hear about him are both true."
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  2487.  @bkjeong4302  Take a look at the US Naval Technical Mission to Japan report O-47(N)-2, available online at the Navy Historical Center. They interviewed some Japanese gunnery officers in this report or another of the Mission reports about the effectiveness of the 25mm gun. I don't have the exact link, but it's all there in the Mission reports. The Japanese compared the triple 25mm mount to the twin Bofors, the only multiple mount they had access to at that time. Although there were things about the Bofors that were superior, particularly weight of fire and better ammunition supply, the conclusion was it wasn't enough better to interrupt production of the 25mm, and the Japanese just didn't have the industrial capacity produce both. Except for some experimental attempts to reverse engineer the Bofors gun, the Japanese didn't put any serious effort into making it into a standard weapon. The best they managed was 5-10 guns a month by the end of 1944 for evaluation purposes, and then only single air cooled guns and single mounts. In addition to industrial capacity, they found they didn't have the machine tools to meet the fine tolerances demanded by the gun, so a lot of hand fitting was required. Given the heroic efforts of the US to convert the Bofors plan to inch measure and then get the guns into mostly automated production in a little less than a year, it's doubtful Japan could have ever produced an workable gun. The samples examined by the Mission postwar showed many flaws in machining and quality control, causing numerous instances of jamming and failure to feed. It's not like the USN couldn't have followed Japan's path with the 1.1" gun. It was broadly similar to the 25mm, already in production in quad mounts, and was slated to become the main AA armament on US ships by 1938. Take a look at the armament of the Erie class gunboats. They were one of the first USN vessels designed with at least the space and weight for the 1.1" quad, four of which were to serve as the AA armament of the ships when they was commissioned in 1936. While the USN was fully invested in the 1.1" gun, tests against the Bofors showed it was such a superior gun that work on correcting the initial problems with the 1.1" was ordered halted in 1940, with all efforts put to the design and production of the Bofors. The Japanese could have done the same but chose not to.
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  2488. Gah! It's far too early over here in the US to make my brain work this hard!
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  2489. The Colorado and Maryland retained their lattice foremasts right up until the days they were scrapped in 1959. Their lattice mainmasts were cut down and later replaced with stub masts as the war progressed. The Maryland, which suffered considerable battle damage from torpedo and kamikaze attacks, was the most rebuilt of the pair, receiving eight twin 5"/38 mounts and a general rebuilding of the superstructure, including many new radars and directors mounted on the foremast. Both ships were part of the gunline throughout the Pacific war and fired off thousands of 16" rounds. The Maryland had her lattice mast closely inspected after her bow was nearly blown off by as Japanese aerial torpedo on 22 June, 1944, and again during kamikaze damage repair and general overhaul during July and early August 1945. In both cases, engineers judged the lattice mast still in sound condition except for some splinter damage repairs. Neither the Maryland or Colorado suffered any storm damage to the lattice masts. It seems that the strengthened lattice masts retrofitted to at least these two ships were capable of absorbing considerable blast and weather impacts. Engineers writing on lattice masts postwar were of the opinion that smoke corrosion was the biggests problem for these structures, hence part of the reason for their removal from the mainmast position. Todd Shipyards, which won the scrapping bid for both ships, commented on the difficulties demolishing the lattice masts.
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  2490.  @alganhar1  There's a difference between the material (pykrete) being a feasible solution and Habakkuk being a feasible ship. The amount of spruce pulp required for the ship would have seriously disrupted Canadian paper supplies and required at least a thousand additional lumberjacks and other trades to produce. manpower the Canadians couldn't spare from other war production. Dissipating the heat generated by the steam plant required to operate the turbogenerators for the 26 power modules mounted in external nacelles along the sides of the hull was never solved. The mounting and operation of the 100 foot tall rudder was never solved. Internal volume for berthing and messing facilities for the estimated 8,000-11,000 crew and air personnel was never sufficient. Armoring and reinforcing the flight deck alone would have required as much steel as three escort carriers. There was never a workable to plan to power pumps required to evacuate the inevitable leakage that would result in such a large vessel. The problem of creep causing deformation of the hull was turning out to be more serious than originally thought, and the amount of steel and insulation needed was going to be about 30% more than original estimates. Even if Habakkuk was built and launched, the problem of a vessel this large only able to travel at six knots and being incapable of manueving in more than wide, easy turns would have presented an irresistible target to German aircraft and submarines. Even with such a thick hull and deck, any holes large enough to admit even a relatively small amount of water would have affected list of the vessel. There was no way to provide workable watertight compartments so enough torpedo and bomb attacks would e=n=inevitable hole the ship. The vessel was already somewhat unstable, and admitting more water to the hull would have exacerbated the problem. HA control of the 20 4.5" twin turrets was also not worked out since the guns would be mounted up to 2,000 feet apart and directors at the time couldn't handle that many guns that distance from each other. No accurate studies had been done on the effects of human heat and the heat generated by the vast amounts of vacuum tubes needed for the ship's electronics had ever been done. Since Habakkuk would have been far too large for any existing harbor, supply logistics had never been worked out, but were expected to be severe. All of these issues are just some of the problems never worked out since the plan was abandoned before the need arose. The Habakkuk and Pyke himself have become the Nikola Tesla of the shipbuilding world. Somehow, pykrete was going to be this miracle material that would have solved many of the world's problems, and it was stopped by evil governments and corporations. No objective study of the ship or the material would show that to be true. Pyke and Perutz, both fellow communists, were able to gain Mountbatten's ear though the efforts of yet another communist, JD Bernal. It was Mountbatten's almost shooting Admiral King in the leg during his impromptu demonstration of pykrete that started the whole project in motion. Without this network of communists and communist sympathizers, Habakkuk would never even have had a name.
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  2491.  @Zarastro54  I don't think "pacify" is quite the right term, since it was four years of bloody, brutal warfare before the Confederacy was worn down enough to surrender. It's rather like saying the Allies pacified Germany or Japan in WWII.
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  2492. Excellent. The Atlantis and Pinguin are two of the great sea stories of WWII.
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  2493. I think I've watched most of your videos now but don't recall any about German raiders. How about one on the Wolf from WWI and either the Atlantis or Pinguin from WWII?
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  2494.  @klobiforpresident2254  You're welcome. I know submarines were very careful to only dump waste at night and then to sail away from the area. During the days of sail, lookouts were instructed to keep a weather eye out for jetsam, anything cast over the side of a ship. I don't know of any specific instances of floating food items leading to the discovery of a ship, but the Navy was worried enough about it that it devoted numerous pages in ship instruction manuals about how and when to fling yesterday's dinner over the side. .
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  2495. Very cool idea for a medal "Steady On" is a good motto as well. Surprisingly reasonable price as well, so you will have another to pack up and ship across the pond.
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  2496.  @spikespa5208  I'll need to go back and look it up again, but I'm fairly certain it was "The Japanese Submarine Force and World War II". The actual details of the sinkings came from a Hyperwar document, and I need to go back and dig that one out as well. You can probably find it faster if you search for Japanese submarine sinkings at Hyperwar.
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  2497. And it's narcissistic hipsters like this why Trump won and your candidate lost. We're sick to death of you profane people, with no actual talent just bloviating about your entitlement. You couldn't connect with an ordinary person if your life depended on it. You'd literally die if you had to go to someplace without sidewalks and streetlights. Get bent.
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  2498. A working home production handgun would have held obvious advantages for countries with international arms embargoes against them. Why they chose stainless steel castings for a gun that was not going to have much in the way of sales outside the area is a mystery. Selling a gun with poor rifling as a feature is kind of an uphill battle in the best of times.
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  2499. Even though the base pay isn't much, I understand the overtime pay is pretty good. -)
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  2500.  @glennricafrente58  Thanks. I agree about Admiral Jack Fletcher. Even though he won a Medal of HOnor at the same Battle of Veracruz as his uncle Admiral Friday Fletcher, he always seemed to live in his shadow, and that was only made worse by having the most numerous class of destroyers in the navy being named after his uncle. He did finally get a ship with his name on it with the DD-992 commissioning in 19080, but his never writing his own memoirs and refusing to be interviewed by Morrison postwar has left him as the forgotten admiral while being responsible for the sinking of six carriers.
    2
  2501.  @Nuke89345  In my small and worthless opinion, Halsey was directly responsible for the lives lost off Samar. His fleet was more than sufficient to handle any Japanese fleet while leaving Lee's task force to cover the landings and escort carriers. His own reconnaissance aircraft reported the powerful center force in San Bernardino Strait. It was his ego alone that sent him steaming off north in search of ghost fleet that he was certain was there and he wanted to destroy. Even worse, he refused to turn back to relieve the ships being pummeled by the fleet he want to catch in the first place. Then he had the famous temper tantrum because a radio operator forgot to remove length padding. It was only Admiral Carney giving Halsey the equivalent of a verbal bitch slapping that got Halsey back on course, only hours too late. It was only the heroics of the pilots and sailors in that desperate battle that prevented much greater losses. As you can probably tell, Halsey would never make my top five list.
    2
  2502. We wuz Kangs!
    1
  2503. And now it's mid-January 2018 and nothing happened.
    1
  2504. The only studies with even slightly positive results are that masturbation may help prevent cancer in men over 50 but may increase cancer risk for men in their 20's and 30's. Taken as a whole, these studies are contradictory and shouldn't be depended on to change behavior for health.
    1
  2505. Absolutely. Chuck Grassley has been the biggest jerk in this one. He could have called for a vote at any time and Kavanaugh would have been confirmed. The creepy porn lawyer will keep pulling women out of the woodwork, and this will go on for weeks. End it now, Grassley. Do your job as the chairman of this committee. This shows why a doddering old man of 85 shouldn't have these kinds of positions.
    1
  2506. Those Horrible Boomers Invented or improved upon almost everything you use to get to work, do your job, and have food on your table. Those Posh Millennials Invented or improved upon...uh...bongs and, uh,...emojis!
    1
  2507. Ethiopia is the only African country never colonized, just like Wakanda. Unlike that fictitious place, Ethiopia is still a shithole.
    1
  2508. No arguement from me. This is a horrible blunder on the part of Trump. There was plenty of time to bring this issue to Congress and lay out his evidence for the need for the US to attack a sovereign country. I support ideas, not leaders, and this si the wrong idea.
    1
  2509. You can all the opinions you want as long as you clear them with the chunky babe with the blue hair sitting behind the screen.
    1
  2510. Oh for cripes sake. It's never been easy to grow up. It's always been easier to just cling to childhood and never face adult responsibilities. The difference now is we have parents and a society that aids and abets this behavior with a million excuses about why things are just too tough now. Newsflash, snowflakes. It;s always been tough. It just used to be that parents didn't tolerate unemployed 28 year olds living in their basement, and we didn't have a society that invented terms like "adulting" to cover this kind of childishness.
    1
  2511.  @interlinkplus8236  My guess is you didn't really hear about this before her death. Do search on deaths of anyone named Betts in Dayton in the last month. Other than the shooter and his sister, there was no one. Maybe someone with a similar name?
    1
  2512. Paulo, you don't exactly look white. Let's ship you out somewhere.
    1
  2513. Our Walmart parking lot is littered with gloves all the Karens take off and throw wherever they like. I'm 74 and will not wear a mask. I have COPD, and a mask reduces my oxygen intake by 5%. I don't have 5% to spare. In addition, once a mask gets wet from your own breathing, it becomes dangerous -- to you! We all have viruses that live in us but are kept under control by our immune system. Once you reduce your oxygen intake and start rebreathing your own exhalations, you run the risk of activating those viruses and making yourself sick. Wash your hands, use hand sanitizer, and stay away from people the best you can. There's nothing magic about six feet. Just try not to get in front of people's faces. Wear gloves and a mask if it makes you feel better, but don't kid yourself that they are offering you any real protection.
    1
  2514. The reason home ownership rates were falling was people who did own homes up until 2007 getting those homes they couldn't afford foreclosed. That is mostly over now, and home ownership rate in the US have been rising again since 2016. The expanding job market has increased salaries in real terms and allowed man to start saving for a down payment again. Top Ten States for Home Ownership 1 West Virginia 2 Mississippi 3 South Carolina 4 New Hampshire 5 Vermont 6 Utah 7 Kentucky 8 Wyoming 9 Delaware 10 Michigan There you go. North, South, Midwest, West. Beaches, mountains, cities, rural areas, just like those expensive states with poor rates of home ownership like California and New York. Stop bitching about how unfair life is and move! There are good jobs available in all those states.
    1
  2515. There is always a lot of excitement among the tinfoil hat crowd here at Youtube. In addition, it's now more than two years after this video was made, and the only black swan events were Brexit and Trump. Brexit did not cause an immediate collapse of the British or European Union economies and Trump's election has sent the US markets to record or near level record levels. In the meantime, gold prices are down to levels not seen in a year and over $800 below those of 2011. Keep all this in mind the next time you read something from a website claiming to predict the future.
    1
  2516. Bill Mitchell had this one nailed seven days before the election.
    1
  2517. I moved ot California in 1967. It was like a paradise then. I left in 2005 because it was already turning into a shithole. Those who stay now are going to get what's coming to them.
    1
  2518. I'll bet this is more performance art...
    1
  2519. You realize this kind of mandated courtesy is exactly what Paul would oppose, right? No amount of meetings will change narcissism. No amount of legislation will change pricks into nice people. I think the message was to change what you can in yourself, not make rules or laws for those who won't obey them anyway.
    1
  2520. Lax drug laws. I'm 73 and have advanced chronic degenerative disease with narrowing of all the parts of my cervical spine that are impinging on the nerves. My cervical spine is essentially collapsing. The condition is inoperable at my age, and epidurals help for about a week. I'm in constant severe pain every single day. The answer from American medicine today? Constantly reduce the amount of painkillers I'm on because the DEA can't stop illegal use of drugs, so they go after the people in verifiable chronic pain and declare victory. Paul, you need to do a bit more research on this before hopping on the "opioid crisis" bandwagon.
    1
  2521. TWERKIN' FOR TRUMP!!!
    1
  2522. It's okay to be Paul Joseph Watson.
    1
  2523. The next time I see that "OK Boomer" bullshit, I'll just provide a link to the 71 YEAR OLD BOOMER who took out the church shooter with a single headshot from about 20 yards away across a crowded sanctuary. Time to hit the range, millennials.
    1
  2524. And here it is in 2016 and nothing has happened. They are a bunch of stones commissioned by who knows who but now owned by Elbert County GA. They are a bunch of rocks that show some physical and astronomical guides. I've been there and seen these stones. They are just stones with inscriptions about some fruitcake world that's not going to happen. They are just stones. I think the mostly likely explanation is that they were done by the granite company claiming there was a Robert Christian that commissioned them. As such, they serve as an enduring advertisement for the company and a continuing troll for all the tinfoil hat conspiracy buffs.
    1
  2525.  @interlinkplus8236  I did a little more digging myself, and it appears this "story" came from the Clover Chronicle site, well known for spreading poorly sourced conspiracy theories. If you see anything on FB from them, there's a good chance it's false or at least misleading. They were also spreading the story that Connor Betts actually died in 2014 based on an obituary from Hartford Ct of a completely different person. The conspiracy nuts jumped on it because he also had a sister named Megan. Even though she had a different middle name and birthdate than the one killed in Dayton, this was evidence of reprogramming person to become not only a shooter but to also reprogram someone else to be his sister and get killed. You just can't reason with these people.
    1
  2526.  @EsotErikka  Check out the link. The closest match is MLK.
    1
  2527.  @interlinkplus8236  I have never heard that the sister was murdered before the mass shooting. Do you have a link for that? Her name is included on the coroner's list of victims, so it seems highly unlikely she had already been dead for several days.
    1
  2528. "Right?...Right?...Right?" I'm sorry, I know there's a bunch of you thirsty 22 year olds out there hoping that some day you might get laid by someone like RM. Still, she not very bright, gets destroyed in every debate I've seen her in, and generally only parrots things she's heard other people says first. Let's face it, if she looked like an average fedora wearing guy out there, how many subs would she have?
    1
  2529. In other words, Watson, Bill Mitchell is just better than you. God, what a narcissistic, idiotic blowhard.
    1
  2530. How have we stopped Assad from using chemical weapons? A single strike on airbase that's already back in operation did nothing to stop that from happening again, unless you think we've just somehow scared Assad away from doing it again. Mitchell's a guy spent most of life running employment agencies. He was a essentially a nobody until he decided Trump was his way to fame and fortune. He went from 150 Twatter followers a year ago to over 25,000 today partly because he started relentlessly tweeting and retweeting, sometimes up to 75 a day, stuff about Trump. He predicted Trump would win and he's now calling himself a polling expert. Mitchell doesn't understand anything about geopolitics, and it shows in this interview.
    1
  2531. If you wonder why grandma died in ICU, it's because the doctors and nurses were doing important things, like rehearsing their Tik Tok video. Fun Fact: - Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance, which has former Chinese army officers as directors and management.
    1
  2532. No, not 1944. Italy announced an armistice with the allies on September 8, 1943, although it was signed several days earlier in secret. The new government under King Victor Emmanuel declared war on Germany on October 13, 1943. After Mussolini was rescued from government custody by German paratroopers on September 12, 1943. He was then taken to the north of Italy to establish a rump government, the Italian Social Republic. In reality, the Nazis were in control of the remaining territory of Italy and Mussolini was their puppet ruler. The war in terms of Italy having control of its territory and fighting the allies was over in 1943.
    1
  2533. One of the things to do is train yourself and your children not run unless is to flee actual danger you can see. Some of these people died because it was a stampede. Once you're in a stampede, you are not able to control what happens next.
    1
  2534. Good grief, Paul. These kinds of witness are really worth less than nothing. We have no idea what she saw or was even inside the arena. Stop using such an unsupported statement as any kind of "evidence" of a second person.
    1
  2535. Amazon didn't pay zero dollars in taxes. The paid no federal corporate income taxes because the Trump tax cuts rebated to Amazon the federal taxes they would have paid. They paid almost $400 billion in state and local taxes. Don't get on the AOC bandwagon about this. Amazon is one of the few major companies that is totally dependent on consumers voluntarily spending their money with them.
    1
  2536. I don't think things in the US are this bleak. It's the people who can't live without Starbucks and Whole Foods and people who spend way too much time on the internet that are feeling this dark. Folks in Nebraska, Alabama, and Montana have lives to lead and they get on with. We are doing entirely too much navel gazing.
    1
  2537. I don't think Lenny Bruce would have a snowball's chance in hell if he tried to start his act today.
    1
  2538. Who would have thought that Big Brother would turn out to be something we voluntarily signed into?
    1
  2539. The reason you have to get vaccines to go to school is so your bad choice about vaccines don't allow you to spread a disease around the school. You can always home school if you don't want to get vaccinated.
    1
  2540. The only way we'll have widespread rioting is to have enough blacks shot by police for "no reason" that the BLM gets all worked up. There are not enough left wing or right wing whites to get nationwide rioting going.
    1
  2541. Cool to see you including some NPC University footage. He makes some good stuff.
    1
  2542. Toilet, it must be tough to read two paragraphs and a psentence. They managed to share a bunch of errors while using a clickbait title to draw people in. If you think sharing things that are wrongs is OK while people who read and watched their stuff became stupider when it was over, fine by me.
    1
  2543. Sonora isn't out in the desert and doesn't look like that. There is a major pass though the Sierras that runs west from Hawthorne and exits about 15 miles from Sonora. It's possible the concussions could travel through the pass and be heard (or felt) by people in Sonora. Some of these are massive explosions. Why not just set up a counter battery radar in Sonora where these booms are heard since it happens so regularly. Station someone in Hawthorne to let the operator in Sonora know when there has been a detonation. If it's heard in Sonora about seven seconds later and picked up by the counter battery radar, you have your answer.
    1
  2544. You were "told" once by whom? How are they "somehow" disabled before leaving the atmosphere? Do you know where the atmosphere ends? Kinda sounds like you made this up unless you have a link.
    1
  2545. Well, the Soviets would have certainly had more money to spend on something useful so, in that respect, the world would have been different.
    1
  2546. There's absolutely no evidence for that. The working assumption was an attack on the Philippines, not Pearl Harbor.
    1
  2547.  @brett8770  But this is the internet. Doesn't that make every wild speculation about things you know nothing about true?
    1
  2548.  @Goldleader469  I'm well aware of Prang's book. I read it when it first came out, right at the end of 1981, and have reread it several times since. I don't agree with your assertion about the planning for the attack. Both the US and Japan used attacks on Pearl Harbor as part of their annual war games, but only going back not about 1930, when both countries had the aircraft carriers and aircraft to carry out such an attack. None of these involved planning an actual attack. Planning for the actual attack was really a rushed affair that only started a year before December 7. One of the reasons why Yamamoto had such a hard time convincing the Navy High Command to go ahead with the attack is such attacks uniformly failed in war games. Yamamoto was convinced that the US expected Japanese strikes at Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, or possibly the Philippines. Pearl Harbor was considered to be the least likely due to distance and the defenses the Japanese thought the US had at the base. Strategically, securing the oil of the Dutch East Indies made the most sense, and an attack on Pearl would only destroy part of the American fleet at best. Of course, Yamamoto was right about our preparedness, and we were caught defenseless. I don't know what Billy Mitchell had to do with Pearl Harbor. Although a general promoter of air power and aircraft carriers, he believed that high level bombing should be used to sink ships, while the ships at Pearl were sunk almost exclusively by torpedoes and dive bombing. To my knowledge, he had never offered any opinion about an attack on Pearl, and died over four years before the attack in any case. I don't believe Prange ever made any claim the people in Washington knew any specifics about the attack before it happened. It has been a number of years since I read the book, however, so if you can tell me the page number(s) of where such a claim was made and give me a quote, I'll be happy to take a look and correct myself if I'm wrong.
    1
  2549. Sorry, but I'm pressing X to Doubt on the Nazi Bunker story. Horrific tales like that with almost no details or any way to confirm it are almost always made up.
    1
  2550.  @radikaali  I don't have to explain any of it until you can prove it happened. Since there were multiple news articles about it, I'm sure you can provide a link for at least one.
    1
  2551. "Suky, suky...five dolla sucky, sailor...." Her mother, before she was a refugee...
    1
  2552. A blast from the past! You need to get back on the street, Austin. We miss you!
    1
  2553. The pro blacks just can't even admit that one of their own is a really terrible person. That bitch in the leather jacket needs a good slap up the side the head.
    1
  2554. I left California in 2005. What you'll find is the non-coastal states have actual sane people living in them them. There's also a lot fewer vegetarian restaurants and way better barbeque.
    1
  2555.  @devinw5150  So you're aware of what her views were and what she was doing in 2015? Does "Social Autopsy" ring a bell with you?
    1
  2556. How does that female cop manage to shoot a gun or handcuff a suspect with those nails? She's allowed ot have facial piercings and a nose ring? When she gets into a knock down drag out with a suspect, she's going to learn the hard way why that's a bad idea. Her supervisor needs to have a chat with her.
    1
  2557. I hope she enjoys cats. She'll need them to keep her company in her declining years.
    1
  2558. I retired in 2005. I could see the direction were headed and just didn't want to be a police officer any longer. It's now about 100 time worse. I can't imagine how agencies are retaining peace officers today. Just go get a job at Amazon packing boxes. I'd still carry concealed though, because you never know who's going postal.
    1
  2559.  Junior Mudd  Seriously, he's the coolest guy on the right we have.
    1
  2560.  Junior Mudd  I do too, yet there are people that can't see the difference between him and David Duke. Identity politics at its worst.
    1
  2561. The real reason for a lot of these people is they don't have to acknowledge anyone they know if they don't want to, and other people won't recognize them. It's been going on in Japan for decades, where basement dwellers can just move out in public like they are on a desert island.
    1
  2562. Why does that women in the 1960's glasses constantly have that shit-eating grin? It looks like she's on some heavy duty psychotropic drugs. And does she have some kind of things stuck in the sides of her noise?
    1
  2563. Look up carbon sequestration. It's the real answer to decreasing carbon in the atmosphere without wrecking the whole economy.
    1
  2564. Apparently the colored gentleman in the store thought all sentences end with the word "nigga".
    1
  2565. Shit, Charlie, stay out of those public housing parking lots. That's where you get carjacked.
    1
  2566. Eight units for some ghetto hoes doing some sassy clapping and yelling "bitch" at each other. Looks like the opening act of the Saturday Night Knife and Gun Club.
    1
  2567. Upgraded?
    1
  2568.  Enceladus  What's you plan to stop it, because it's pretty clear that's what's about to happen.
    1
  2569.  @Brave_New_Trump_World  It makes NYC more expensive, but it's much better overall. NYC has nearly full employment. the numbers of people reflect the relative prosperity, and the city is not in danger of bankruptcy. On a per capita basis, NYC doesn't even come close to the levels of violence and hostility seen in Detroit. If you really don't like NYC, you can always leave. I suspect you have a reasonably good paying job so you're reluctant to leave, just like all the other people you see occupying those sidewalks. Some money just costs too much.
    1
  2570. Happy New Year, Charlie. Keep y9our head down in 2019.
    1
  2571.  @ThfCypher  No. I used to feel them in Cleveland. That was bad enough.
    1
  2572. Baddie, Charlie was there in May. Are you saying there has been a near miraculous improvement in Gary streets in two months?
    1
  2573. I have yet to figure out why there are so many boats in the hood.
    1
  2574. This looks like a much colder version of Port Au Prince.
    1
  2575. Retail farewell in Buckhead - "Thank you, and have a nice day" Retail farewell in da hood - "Get da fuk otta here!"
    1
  2576. Hurry, pharaoh, the other kangs are meeting on the other side of the street. I may sound stupid, but at least I learned how to use punctuation and sentences.
    1
  2577. HOLY SHIT! You're wearing a shirt! About time you decided to grow up.
    1
  2578. Geez, Charlie, keep your doors locked. You don't want to have to use your two friends to get you out of trouble.
    1
  2579. Other way around. It was officially a merger but Burger King was into a Canadian company that is mostly run by Tim Horton executives.
    1
  2580. Davey, the videos on you channel suggest you are a conspiracy theorist as does the whole "you're going to be dragged off to a FEMA camp" thing. I'm more prepared for about any eventuality than you realize, but FEMA camps are not high on my list.
    1
  2581. Davey, you sound like a conspiracy theorist that believes in chemtrails and sees faces in clouds....oh, yeah, you do.
    1
  2582. Theurban prarie returns to Detroit. There are locals making money shooting pheastants and selling them.
    1
  2583. A lot of the people who left were upside down on a mortgage for a house that couldn't be sold at anywhere near the mortgage balance. At that point, you just walk away and start over somewhere else.
    1
  2584. She looked real disappointed when you didn't stop by for a chat.
    1
  2585. I wish Detroit would close off the streets where there are no occupants. Leaving them open just provides a place for construction companies and people from the suburbs to do illegal dumping. Block the streets and stop all the electrical service to the block. Provide a way for fire trucks to get in when the houses are torched but keep everyone else out. A lot of the money for clean up is going to remove all the crap dumped on these vacant lots.
    1
  2586. I live in a hick town in Alabama. Except for some fireworks and the sound of one semiautomatic rifle that fired off maybe five rounds, it was totally quiet here on New Year's Eve. I always like how people use Alabama as some sort of excuse why cities like Detroit really aren't so bad. I grew up in Cleveland, and yes, they are a hell of a lot worse. And, Karama, people in Detroit aren't allowed to shoot a firearm in city limits except in self-defense. It's also against the law to rob gas stations, sell heroin, or murder someone. Understand the problem now?
    1
  2587.  @susanhurst3292  I didn't see it. I think he was a couple streets over.
    1
  2588. I escaped from the Bay Area in 2005. It was clear then the direction things were going, but the high cost of housing and living just couldn't be sustained. The Eastmont area of Oakland, anchored by Eastmont Mall, was still a decent place in 2005. Eastmont Mall is now a center for people to get WIC, Social Security, sign up various welfare agencies, get an abortion from Planned Parenthood, and check out the largest police station ever located in a mall. Yeah, real nice place.
    1
  2589. Not just Florida. I'm in Alabama, and we have alligators show up roaming the downtown streets on occasion. There's even a guy who specializes in alligator removal. Most of us think the whole thing is kind of humorous.
    1
  2590. NYPD has to be the last major agency still using halogen Federal Vision and Vector light bars. Those things used to drain our battery in 15 minutes flat if the engine wasn't running. They sure are still attention getters though.
    1
  2591.  @luisss.2142  gp? Are you able to speak English? I hope not, just so you have an excuse for your writing.
    1
  2592.  @fridge6668  That's why I was careful to say simple. Think a McDonald's or Walmart application. I think you'd be able to fill in the blanks.
    1
  2593. Damn, the street in Flint are just great...
    1
  2594. Interesting to see all that infill housing being built in an older neighborhood, and nice housing at that. The streets don't even have curbs so this must have been a middle of nowhere suburb a couple of decades ago. It must be considered close to the Loop now so that would explain the upscale housing. I see it's right on a METRA line now so getting to either Chicago or Aurora would be doable. A town located in just the right place.
    1
  2595. Yes, there is, You can mail your traffic ticket to his home address.
    1
  2596. Sure, as long as I have my two friends with me.
    1
  2597. Utilice los traductores disponibles en la web para que el resto de nosotros no tenga que hacerlo.
    1
  2598.  @seanmack7903  On every floor? That seems difficult to believe looking at the windows and the clearance between each floor.
    1
  2599.  @seanmack7903  It sounds like you know a lot more about residential construction that I do so I'll defer to your judgement. Still, almost every two and three family home I've been in has the tallest ceilings on the first floor and decreasing clearance as you went up. These were homes generally owned by the first floor occupant, so the first floor was a little nicer than the other floors. I don't know if those were also owner occupied.
    1
  2600. Most of them have so many DUIs that they'll be going to prison for a long time if they get popped again. Instead, they sell the Crown Vic or Caprice, sell the 26ers, and put the money into lowrider bikes, led lighting, and giant battery packs to run the stereo and all the lights..
    1
  2601.  @kim_fd8938  Go drink some tummy tea to tighten up that flab. u feel better.
    1
  2602.  @kim_fd8938  u still stupid? u can't get over that.
    1
  2603.  @kim_fd8938  Let me help you with what I think you meant to write - "Oh, I'm sorry, let me clarify. All my teachers were white, but they were from the backwoods". My teachers were also white, and many were from the so-called backwoods. I still learned how to write coherently and use punctuation.
    1
  2604.  @kim_fd8938  So you didn't have a white teacher? Too bad, you might have learned to write a couple of intelligible sentences...or even a few words.
    1
  2605.  @kim_fd8938  Did you graduate from high school? Learn anything about spelling or punctuation?
    1
  2606. Shows you don't hangout on the east side at night much. Probably a wise idea.
    1
  2607. It is risky but a lot of the business are owned by recent immigrants like Pakistanis, Sikhs, and Koreans. They can provide employment for the whole family, thereby making it easier to get relatives over here. Many of them are on more or less permanent welfare once they do arrive, and living seven or eight to a two bedroom apartment over the store makes it relatively cheap to live, The store provides cash they can pocket and increase their income without paying taxes.
    1
  2608. Use Google street view and just drive the neighborhood. You'll know soon enough.
    1
  2609. I see a nuke plant cooling tower in the distance so Charlie must have been in Oak harbor, Ohio, about halfway between Detroit and Cleveland. These kinds of drive through stores are pretty common in northern Ohio. They were started as any easy way to get milk and bread in bad weather and later as an easy way to load a keg or case of beer in your trunk. I wonder if Charlie ever wins anything from all those lottery tickets he buys?
    1
  2610.  @shellylarue9661  No one is safe when you put down your skittles and start pounding a man's head into the sidewalk. It happened at night, BTW, not during the day. There was a whole trial about it and the Hispanic guy was found innocent of murder. You must have missed it.
    1
  2611. @Josh Wallace So it would seem.
    1
  2612. Flashing LED lights pointing outside a window helps a security camera get better pictures? Those must be different cameras than I've ever worked with.
    1
  2613. What's the deal with the places that have the LED light's around the windows? We just had a gas station in town add them. From the issue at that place, they seem to be a code for "We got more than gas here, nigga".
    1
  2614. I notice Charlie keeps moving right along in this video. No dwaddling around and sightseeing this time.
    1
  2615. Crack and bath salts is a bad combination.
    1
  2616. Shan, the casinos are in Atlantic Beach. It is on the beach and, no, Newark is nowhere near there. The Boardwalk itself is fine. Within three blocks off it, it makes Newark look good. New Jersey is either upper middle class and above or people who are dirt poor.
    1
  2617. Jay, I'm 72 years old. I rode the Hounds down to Mississippi in 1964 as part of the Freedom Riders. I slept on dirt church floors, got the crap beat out of me, and was shot at twice while working on voter registration drives. Don't pontificate to me about the right wing. We're talking about the reality of black kids who are getting a worse education in Detroit in 2018 than the kids I saw in Mississippi in 1964. At least most of them could read and write. Charter schools have been a tremendous success in the inner cities. Kids who couldn't read or write when they entered them graduated high school. They don't need as many charter schools in the suburbs because parents have the money to send their kids to private schools if the public schools don't do their jobs. Parents in the suburbs are much more frequently from two parent households that go the PTA meetings and raise a stink if the schools is underperforming or there are bad teachers. Do you think a Detroit parent does this and, even if she does, who will listen to her or do anything about her complaint? In 2010, The Detroit School Board President was a functional illiterate who spent his time during meetings with female colleagues fondling himself under his desk. You think all this is some kind of right wing issue? Charter schools depend on children attending voluntarily. I don't need to to research public education to know that. The concept of accountability in public education terrifies inner city schools and teachers because they are failing so miserably. I'm sorry you're such a supporter of unionized public education, but it just doesn't work in Detroit.
    1
  2618.  @luhai556  I take it you're unaware of the ghetto meaning of pavement nap.
    1
  2619.  @connorrobertson280  Yes, the war on poverty has been a resounding success.
    1
  2620. Top three religions....Muslim, Christian, and Catholic. Real religious scholar there...
    1
  2621. Poopie, I never said you're a cop. By your writing abilities and general use of the English language, I'll guess you aren't old enough to be a cop, and it's doubtful you could pass the academy entrance exam. Still, I told you the few simple steps you need to do to score a plug from mah homies. Any Saturday night in the hood around midnight would be a good time.
    1
  2622. Unfortunately, Detroit has schools to serve the 1.3 million people who once lived there and have now fled.
    1
  2623. And to think we have done this to ourselves over very low mortality virus. Heads will roll for this when we regain our sanity.
    1
  2624. Okay, poopie, you name the place, as long as it's somewhere in da hood. You know, somewhere where a white boy will look real out of place. Make sure you bring nothing but $10 bills. Just walk around the neighborhood waving the cash and yelling "Which one of mah niggas gots da weed?". You have to sound like a real whigga when you do it or mah niggas won't sell to you. Make sure you drive mom's Beemer too. We just like looking at Beemers. I promise not one of mah niggas will have a gat and try to rob you or anything.
    1
  2625. This was what most oc Cleveland looked like when I was a kid. The houses aren't very big, most around 1000 sq feet, but a decent place to raise a family. Everyone had a job so they were able to keep the houses in repair, send the kids to school, and maybe take a summer vacation. It's the kind of neighborhood that factory workers aspired to. Now it's part of an ever shrinking area with crippling property taxes, horrific schools, now snow plowing, street lights only at street intersections. and the residents paying for their own lawn lights in an attempt to keep the criminals away from the houses at night. God forbid they leave the house for more than a couple hours to go do needed shopping.
    1
  2626. This only affects people on SSDI who have a person managing their affairs who has been diagnosed as a having a serious mental health condition. This does not affect the vast majority of people who are SS or SSDI.
    1
  2627. The audio is way out of sync with your video.
    1
  2628. I'm lucky to live in a historic district surrounded by smaller but decent homes. We don't even eve a hood, jsut a few streets with some shitty houses. The city will be in tearing things down if they get too bad because they know the effect of letting things deteriorate, no matter how nice some of the houses are. I was having a "discussion" with a back racist on a video of how Highland Park, Michigan looks. It's called the Detroit of Detroit since it's surrounded by Detroit. It's a really horrible place, and most horrible for those who are stuck living there because they can't sell their homes and move elsewhere because they'll have no credit if they just walk away from their homes that still have a mortgage. It was his thesis that, because there are still a few nice neighborhoods like Boston-Edison that happen to be a couple of miles for Highland Park, he should have done a video on them because he was just making all us dummies that live in trailers and shanties happy y showing a burned out city. If the title was "Nice Neighborhoods in Detroit" and then he only showed Highland Park, the racist would have had a point. Instead, he thought the best way to fix Highland Park was to make sure no one knew what it looked like because we were obviously racists ourselves, and it wasn't the fault of anyone who lived in Highland Park that it looked the way it did.. These African apologists never cease to amaze me.
    1
  2629. If you say so, but you sure wouldn't be selling my house. If you make me sign a binding contract ON ME not to sell, it will cost you something if you don't find a buyer. Why would I take all the risk of the house not selling within your "due diligence" period with no earnest money or no cancellation fee? It's capitalism, and I'm all for people buying and selling as they see fit, but I'll be darned if you'd have anything on my house without skin in the game.
    1
  2630. A couple of cops with their shotguns could have ended this real quick.
    1
  2631. I can't understand an owner who would sign a sales agreement without a cancellation fee. I really don't have a problem with wholesalers as long as there's a time limit and cancellation fee.
    1
  2632. How old is this thing?. We've heard this all before.
    1
  2633. Nokia did not invent Symbian. It was a Psion software product, and the best in the world in 2000. The problem was that Symbian was over a decade old when Nokia bought it. It would need a major update to keep up with wifi, bluetooth, and connectivity. Nokia didn't have the money to do this, and it should gone with Android. Just another NIH decision.
    1
  2634.  Martin Samoylov  Yeah sure, Now tell me where you park if y9ou happen to have a car or, even worse, two cars. Most people would also like to have a tree in the front of the house as well, to at least somewhere on your street. I didn't see many of them either.
    1
  2635. Do you live in the United States? Why would you think the police would torture him? Where do you live that has a problem with police commonly torturing people?
    1
  2636. Ted Kaczynski (The Unabomber) killed three and injured twenty-three. He's a good example of what happens when insanity meets anarchism.
    1
  2637.  @leeleebee1598  Google is a wonderful thing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6qGwmXZtsE
    1
  2638.  @leeleebee1598  I believe they call pickup trucks "utes" in Australia. I only use quotes for things that I'm using in a kind of ironic way different from the normal definition. Street retailing is a commonly used name for what you see happening all the time in the hood.
    1
  2639. You're absolutely right. Detroit is on the road to becoming a downtown for people to work in and visit. The only residents of Detroit that are benefiting in the long term are the wealthy and young hipsters who are moving into rehabilitated lofts and new construction near downtown. The money being spend on the M1 rail line alone could have helped demolish all the abandoned houses and rehabbed other houses in neighborhoods that could still be saved. That's not the goal, however. The goal is to drive the poor out of Detroit and into the first ring suburbs so they can deal with the problems.
    1
  2640. Nope, went on until 2003.
    1
  2641. Just another example of the left brainwashing children so they can be used as meatshields to advance their agenda.
    1
  2642.  @CowboyKentRollins  Thank you Kent. I'm kind of housebound for awhile now, and your shows are one of the things that keeps my spirits up. Thanks for all you do.
    1
  2643. Thanks, Kent and Shannon. No one deserves success more than you two...oh, yeah, the Beag and Dookie too!
    1
  2644. Can you give me a clue what you're talking about?
    1
  2645. Aloe vera mixed with Everclear makes the best hand sanitizer you can use. The Everclear is 100% alcohol so it kills any virus, and the aloe vera will help offset the drying effects of the alcohol.
    1
  2646. Three masks work good, but you have to wear the last one upside down and covering your eyes and ears since we know covid hides there too. Soon we'll all have to wear bat radar to navigate around Walmart, a place we know is fatal to the bat flu because someone said so.
    1
  2647.  @YouT00ber  Okay, so why unsub me to Kent Rollins? I can't imagine a reason why he'd be on any ban list. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that sometimes it's just a glitch.
    1
  2648. You need to make one (or several) segments that are nothing but outtakes. Get Andy to workin' on that. It would be so hilarious!
    1
  2649. BWAHShahahaha...you never give up on this do you, Pakman. Hillary is the only one who overall lost Electoral votes. You haven't gotten anything righ in a long time, dude. Time ot get off Hillary's clit.
    1
  2650. Hay, Pakman, you lost, dipshit. No one was viciously beaten. I lost all respect for yu when starting posing crap like this.
    1
  2651.  @Duckless23  Indeed, and it showed once again the dangers of letting politicians plan military campaigns. Churchill did learn somewhat from his mistakes in Gallipoli, yet he still sent the Revenge and Renown to Singapore right after Pearl Harbor with no air cover, and several thousand sailors paid the price with their lives. He was a great leader in terms of rallying the people to fight the war but was a lousy tactician.
    1
  2652. The Robin was actually a good plane to use for his flight. It was a strong craft, with steel tube construction for the fuselage and a wooden wing made primarily from California redwood. It had a roomy three person cabin, ideal for all those extra fuel tanks. The wingspan was almost double the average single engine plane, giving more lift and increasing the range. Curtiss built a long range version that was supposedly Corrigan's inspiration on how to modify his Robin. Corrigan assembled his own engine from two castoff Wright Whirlwind engines that gave him almost double the horsepower of the standard engine. It's hardly surprising that federal CAA inspectors were more than a little skeptical about giving him permission for a transatlantic flight.
    1
  2653.  @JoseRamirez-yi5if  I had heard they aquired rebuilt engines for three F-5s but hadn't heard they were actually back flying. They will only be useful for parade flying, but that's an important thing for Mexico.
    1
  2654.  @Full_Otto_Bismarck  Well, you can read the stats at the link I posted. If that doesn't change your opinion about 18 year olds being legal to drink, so be it. Even libertarians need some laws to limit behavior.
    1
  2655.  @Full_Otto_Bismarck  LOL. Nice try, but I assure you I'm not the only that thinks lowering drinking ages is a bad idea. And your liberty ends right at my front bumper when you're 18 and driving drunk.
    1
  2656.  @RTmadnesstoo  No, I didn't. My point was to use a state that actually increased the drinking age for 18 to 21 if you're going to make up a complete lie.
    1
  2657.  @pmvaldez1  Well, Harry, that's your story. Others have different stories with some foundation in fact. I'm done with you now.
    1
  2658.  @Full_Otto_Bismarck  That's true, but it has nothing to do with the drinking age and drunk driving deaths. You are erroneously attempting to make a reasonable argument into an absurd one by taking the argument to the extremes.
    1
  2659.  @pmvaldez1  Did you actually read the study in my link from the National Highway Safety Administration about drinking age? No, of course you didn't, which would be appropriate for a guy with a screen name of buttwhisker. I'll play along though. Give me a link to your study showing those statistics are false. Just calling it false without evidence isn't an argument.
    1
  2660.  @Erin-Thor  California raised the minimum legal drinking age to 21 at the end of prohibition in 1933. Since then, it has never been legal to drink at age 18 in California. The evidence is overwhelming that when the MLDA was raised to 21 in those states that allowed younger drinking that both alcohol related traffic death and overall consumption of alcohol declined. See https://one.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/research/feweryoungdrivers/iv__what_caused.htm for details.
    1
  2661. Watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omd9_FJnerY. It shows all the US overseas cemeteries with the background music by John Williams, "Hymn to the Fallen". I couldn't get through it without shedding a tear.
    1
  2662. Myoko was a lucky ship in general. She participated in almost all the major naval engagements of the war. She sank or damaged several Allied warships while escaping any serious damage until the Battle of Leyte Gulf, when she was hit in the stern by a torpedo fired for an American destroyer. She had survived multiple attacks from US subs, none of them managing to hit Myoko . After breaking off from the battle, she was able to make it Singapore for temporary repairs. She was enroute to Cam Ranh Bay in what was then French Indochina for more repairs and fuel, which was in short supply at Singapore. When a portion of her already weakened stern was blown off by a torpedo from Bergall her stern bulkhead held, as the weakened portion of the stern happened to be after of strongest stern bulkhead. All Japanese heavy cruisers converted from light cruisers were dangerously overloaded, and some cruisers, including Myoko , were refit with stronger stern and bow bulkheads as well as antitorpedo bulges. Myoko was one of the last cruisers to undergo such an extensive refit, completed in April, 1941, as the course of the war interfered with most further refits of that class. In a postwar examination of the remaining stern of Myoko , it was found that three of her four propeller shafts were blown away or broken by Bergall's torpedo. It was only by the shearest of luck the one shaft held long enough to make it to Singapore for repairs to that shaft. As the video said, there were insufficient materials at Singapore to repair all the ships needing repairs after Leyte Gulf. The IJN had decided first priority for repairs would go to destroyers. Cruisers were no longer needed for the set piece battles the Japanese had assumed would decide the war since submarines and aircraft had sunk most of her major surface units. Even if she could have been repaired, there was insufficient fuel at Singapore for a large vessel like Myoko to make it back to Japan. Myoko was one of the few major surface ships that survived repeated attacks by British midget subs and air attacks at Singapore. She was damaged by still afloat at the time of the Japanese surrender, a testament to the damage control skills of her crew.
    1
  2663. It wasn't just the machine guns with which the Pigeon was armed. Hawes scrounged every gun he could get, including a pair of 3" antiaircraft guns removed from a damaged submarine and minesweeper, along with the fire control equipment to make the guns effective against high flying Japanese bombers. His men fashioned mounts for the larger guns, added four more machine guns to the original two, and used boiler plate salvaged from the damaged shipyard to construct splinter shields for the guns and armor the bridge. Even though his men as no experience with 3" guns, they obtained a manual for one and, after only a few days of study by those who volunteered to man the guns, put them into action on the very next air raid. They shot down at least three bombers and perhaps as many as six over the following days and damaged at least two more, while the machine gun crews shot down at least two planes foolish enough to fly within range of what had been assumed to be a fairly inoffensive ship.
    1
  2664. The Indians may not have had much of a baseball team but they did have a lot of beer stands. I lived in Cleveland until 1967 and had season tickets. A lot of fans were noted for getting drunk when beer sold at its regular price of a quarter. When I heard about the ten cent beer night,after the Rangers brawl, my first reaction was this was going to be a big mistake. As it turned out, "big mistake" was an understatement.
    1
  2665. I had read that article previously, and it contains the same ambiguous wording about what "activated" meant. Yeltsin was in the runup to the 1996 election, and he made the statement during a press conference to show he was the guy in charge. Yeltsin was prone to being a little hyperbolic at times. I agree that the biggest risk during that period was the deterioration of the old Soviet systems as result of the general decline of the economy. People were no longer joining the army, because civilian pay was so much higher, and there weren't sufficient replacements to fill in as other ranks retired. Soldiers working the radar systems sometimes had to stand 24 to 36 hour shifts and were dead on their feet. It was a system ready for trouble in 1995. Putin, like him or not, has improved the situation with the army, and the dire times of the economic collapse have turned around. I don't know if you've heard about a guy named Stanislav Petrov. He was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Army in 1983 and was the duty officer for the Oko early warning system on September 26, 1983. His actions truly saved the world from all-out nuclear war, and he's largely forgotten today.
    1
  2666. Do you have a link to something showing Yeltsin had the briefcase open with a key inserted? Yeltsin denies that ever happened. An aide bought the briefcase to his office, but I haven't seen any reliable evidence it went further than that. Yeltsin has even said he was willing to see one rocket impact Russia rather than launch an all out retaliation, assuming a single rocket was a mistake, or a scientific rocket like this one, rather than risk armageddon. The Russians were well aware of Black Brent rockets and their radar and satellite signatures. I'm not saying your assessment is wrong. It's hard to get at the truth when both the Russians and some in the US are doing their best to play it down or play it up. Russian General Vladimir Dvorkin is part of the former group while guys like Bruce Blair are part of the latter. After reading and listening to multiple accounts, mostly from people with axes to grind, my own assessment was it was one of the many small crises we've had throughout the nuclear age. I come from the duck and cover age, and how we made it this far seems like a miracle to me.
    1
  2667. I don't buy the idea that this was the closest we ever came to nuclear armageddon. I can think of at least five incidents when both Russia and the US were preparing to launch and came within minutes of doing so. I also don't what evidence we have except for some murky CIA reports that Yeltsin was prepared to authorize a launch, and Yeltsin denies it. Global tensions were low in 1995 compared to the previous decades, and neither the Russians nor the US were seriously thinking a nuclear strike by either side was possible. A single rocket, even if were to contain an EMP weapon, would not be enough to blind all of the Russian's defense radars. By 1995, satellite detection systems were becoming more important that radars ass exemplified by the closing of the DEW Line in 1993. The Russians were able to see the launch from Norway by satellite, and they know it wasn't coming from a ballistic missile sub within the first minute. They also knew we or the Norwegians didn't maintain even short range missiles in Norway let alone anything long range. There are reports that the main Russian computers used to analyze missile tracks were offline for software updates. That meant it took longer to analyze the launch longer than usual. I've the accounts of this before, and it appears the main problem was the operators of Russia's radar system were never notified of the Black Brant launch. That was the core of the crisis, and these kinds of lajunches now can't be done without return messages confirming that everyone down the line knows about.
    1
  2668. Great story, and one I hadn't heard before. The aircraft shown at 3:25 preparing for takeoff is an SR-71B. It was a trainer used to prepare and evaluate pilots for what was a grueling task, and can be recognized by the second cockpit in the bulge over the lower cockpit. Flying the SR-71 required men who could essentially not move for 12 hours while sitting in a confining pressure suit, and could feed themselves using toothpaste like tubes of food-[like material through holes in their visors using a mirror to see if the tube nozzle was going to the right place. .The only survivor of the two SR-71B's built is on display at the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
    1
  2669. Wait a minute. Olive Ann was responsible for many of the financial decisions that kept the company going, but she had almost no role in any of the design or engineering functions of Beech. It was Walter that was the designer of the Staggerwing. She was so naturally conservative in business matters that it was her decision not to produce jets until after the Learjet was introduced, after making the decision not to buy the Learjet company. That decision almost did Beech in before she was removed and less conservative management took over. I know it's women's month, and Olive Ann was a good business leader from the 30's to the 50's, but she didn`t design airplanes and made some really poor decisions about things she knew little about.
    1
  2670. The San Francisco harbor area has probably the most preserved forts and shore batteries, including a couple that were repurposed as Nike missile launch sites in the 50's. The are administered by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA). They provide a map of all the fortifications and short history of each. The last time I was there, about twenty sites still existed, the most of any area I know about. It will take you about two days to visit all of them, or a day to see the best preserved fortifications.
    1
  2671. There was no parade to rain on. Cunningham was the officer in charge, and Devereux did as he was commanded to do. What neither could know, because all the phone lines has been cut and radio transmissions were being jammed, was that Marines and civilian workers that had become infantry on Wilkes Island were doing much better than the apparent situation on Wake and Peale Islands. Cunningham had assumed that Wilkes had fallen since nothing had been heard from the island in almost 12 hours. Contrary to that assumption, Second Lieutenant Arthur A. Poindexter's men had not only stopped the Japanese advances, they were counterattacking toward the airfield. The Japanese were falling back in front of the counterattack when the word came of the surrender. That's why the Marines on Wilkes considered it a bitter blow. No Marine questioned Cunningham's order. They just didn't like it.
    1
  2672. What happened to any mention of Major James P.S. Devereux, the Marine commander of Wake? Cunningham only showed up 10 days before the invasion and had almost nothing to do with the defense plans. Devereux had drilled and exercised his men constantly since he and his detachment arrived on Wake in January, 1941. It was Cunningham that ordered the surrender against the advice of Devereux. The Marines were still fighting successfully on Wilkes Island and had almost ejected the Japanese from the island when the word came down of the surrender. Even though the final outcome was never in doubt, Marines do not surrender, and the order to do so came as a bitter blow to them. Later interviews with surviving Marines did not paint a picture of Cunningham as a respected commander.
    1
  2673. Great video. It's one of those events we look back on now and say "That just couldn't happen" ...but it did. This was a combination of incompetence, malfeasance, and just general bad luck. It left a hole in the middle decade of the country which still hasn't been filled. To make things even worse, some of the 1880 records were also lost or inadvertently destroyed. I've been doing my family history for decades. I'm now up to over 900 people in 14 different countries. The lack of records causes me to have about 75 relatives who have lost records of their lives from 1881 to 1900. It was a disaster still being felt to this day.
    1
  2674.  @knutdergroe9757  Yes, that's exactly what I said.
    1
  2675.  @paulroberts8946  Paul, no need for apology, No offense taken. Thanks for your story about the British military Christmas traditions.
    1
  2676.  @peterk8909  Thanks, Peter, and, and Tiny Tim said on that Christmas Eve of 1843, "God bless us, every one". :-)
    1
  2677. Isn't coffee also a fruit? I'd guess the total value of coffee sales far exceeds that of bananas.
    1
  2678. And they say crime is bad today...
    1
  2679. To her credit, the Willie D had one of the highest aircraft kill totals of any destroyer arriving in the South Pacific after the actual invasion of Leyte. She shot down somewhere between ten and fourteen aircraft, depending on which count is to be believed. She had one other unlucky incident while serving in the Aleutians before being deployed to the South Pacific. On June 13, 1944, while assigned to shore bombardment duty against Matsuwa Island in the Kuriles, her radar picked up what the operators identified as an enemy PT boat closing at 55 knots. No visual identification was possible in the early morning gloom and fog, but Willie D opened up radar directed fire with every gun on the ship that could be brought to bear. After about five minutes of firing, the target disappeared from radar, and the crew believed they had sunk the enemy ship. Postwar records show no PT type craft were ever in the Kuriles, and there were no Japanese ships of any kind within 300 miles of the Willie D on June 13. It appears she was a victim of the "Battle of the Pips", something that plagued a whole task force a year earlier in the Aleutians. Radar was still rather primitive, and about all it could do was show reflections from anything on or over the ocean. There's a bird in the Aleutians called the dusky shearwater, a type of albatross, and a large bird at that. They would appear in large flocks when huge schools of anchovy would appear near the surface. Their hunting pattern as they flew a foot or two above the water in unison would show up on radar with the same kind of return as a warship zigzagging to evade incoming fire. When the anchovy school went deeper to escape the birds, the flock would break up and start searching for fish on their own, and the supposed ship would seem to have disappeared from radar, just as if it had been sunk. It looks like the Willie D was shooting at birds, just another unlucky incident in the history of an unlucky ship.
    1
  2680. The meteorological characteristics of a blizzard are either large amounts of falling snow or blowing snow, winds greater than 35 mph, and, most importantly, visibilities of less than 1/4 mile for at least three hours. Many of the things called blizzards in the popular press are actually just heavy snow since they don't meet the technical qualifications of a blizzard. The public also has the idea that blizzards have large amounts of falling snow. You can have a blizzard, commonly called a ground blizzard, when there's no falling snow at all. Those winds pick up snow already on the ground and blow it around to reduce the visibility to that 1/4 mile or less, and generally pile up the moving snow into huge drifts. Some of the worst blizzards we've had in terms of their effects on human and animal life have been ground blizzards. Since no or very little snow falls with these blizzards, they don't tend to make it into the record books that only look at total snowfall.
    1
  2681. What? Al Capone? He never served in the Navy. He spent the war at his home at Palm Island, Florida, suffering from late stage syphilis. He was one of first patients treated with penicillin to stop the damage for the syphilis, but the disease was too far advanced for the new antibiotic to help. He lingered on as a barely conscious invalid until his death in 1947. I don't know who this supposed son was but his "research" was entirely false.
    1
  2682.  @johnanon6938  Okay, you're obviously a lot smarter than me on this one. So a search on the Popular Science and Popular Mechanics archives available online from Google books and tell me when the first detailed schematic of radar was published.
    1
  2683. Halsey was totally responsible for the loss of so many men and ships to Cobra. He knew that the storm was getting bigger and more intense. It could be seen on ship's radar up to 150 miles away, so it didn't just sneak up on them. Halsey was intent on getting his ships refueled to resume air operations. If he had called off the refuelling and ordered his ships to sail on a 90 degree path across the approaching storm. his should could ave escaped with very little damage or loss of life, It was only the intervention of Admiral Nimitz that saved Halsey from being court martialed. Almost unbelievably, Halsey sailed the Third Fleet right into Typhoon Connie in June, 1945, even though he had the command ship USS Ancon as part of his fleet. She had the most advanced radars of any ship off Okinawa, and her radar was able ot see Connie a75 miles away. If he had liaison officer aboard her, the flett could have turned away from the storm in time. Instead, Ancon had to send a coded radio message that took five hours to decode, and the storm was on top of them by then. Luckily, it wasn't as bad a Cobra, so no ships were lost (although many were damaged) and only six men were lost. Once again, Nimitz stepped in to save Halsey from sanction and reassignment, and he kept command of the fleet until December, 1945. Halsey had turned from the best admiral we could have in 1942 into a disaster by 1945.
    1
  2684. There's some evidence that these massive flocks of passenger pigeons didn't just provide food for humans and animals. One of the favorite foods of pigeon was white oak acorns. The massive overfeeding on these acorns are one of the reasons for the decline of white oak numbers in the 19th century. Another side effect was the decrease in the numbers of deer mice, whose favorite food was also the white oak acorn. With the numbers of passenger pigeons in rapid decline. the supply of acorns available increased. So did the number of deer mice, and deer mice are the main reservoir of Lyme Disease. A particular variety of tick feeds on both deer mice and deer, but it doesn't generally feed on humans. Another variety feeds on deer and humans, thereby transferring Lyme Disease from deer to humans when the human is bitten by the tick. Lyme disease was almost unknown as a medical condition before the turn of the century, and the disease was only poorly understood until 1981, when the bacteria that causes the disease was first isolated. The increasing numbers of baby boomers hiking and backpacking in the woods was responsible for the massive increases in reports of a disease first recognized as a collection of otherwise vague symptoms among a group of patients in the early 70's in Lyme, Connecticut. We now see that the decline of the passenger pigeon led to an increase of acorns that finally ended up with the outbreaks of Lyme Disease we see today. On the plus side, the white oak is making a comeback as more of their acorns sprout and grow.
    1
  2685. Excellent dramatic reading from "The Raven", one of Poe's greatest works. We had pick a passage for the elocution part of my speech class, and it was the first four stanzas of that poem that I picked.
    1
  2686.  @allangibson8494  Indeed. I was a police officer for 27 years and was lucky only to be shot at three times. The last one was a 13 hour standoff with an ex-Marine sniper who seemed to take a fancy about trying to kill me. I was a little faster than he was so he obviously didn't accomplish his goal. The last thing I can imagine is trying to drop a bomb on something at the same time. Radar bombsights took a long time to develop, even after the war. The British were hoping the H2S could replace visual bombing, but it wasn't until late in the war that the 10 GHz model was available in numbers. Once the cavity magnetron was fully developed and power supply problems were overcome, the H2S developed into a very dependable bombing system, but right when manned bombers were about to be deemed obsolete, at least in Britain. It still flew in Canberra and Vulcan bombers until (I think) just after the Falklands War. Do you know if it was used by the Vulcans in the famous Black Buck missions?
    1
  2687.  @allangibson8494  Yes, the Navy decided dive bombing was the way to go and rapidly lost interest in level bombing by 1940. That left the Norden to the air force. The Fritz X and Hs 293 were both successful guided weapons, with the 293 sinking far more tonnage, but the Fritz X had the more spectacular successes against warships. After Anzio, the allies, and the British in particular, figured out how to make automatic jamming transmitters. Once that happened, both guided weapons lost effectiveness. The Norden and SABS were about equal in accuracy with a well trained pilot and bombardier. As I said, however, that only held true in straight and level flight. With the Norden being tied into the autopilot, it could follow the movements of the plane automatically, something a British bombardier had to do manually, so the Norden became more accurate under those circumstances. In reality, it was the training and experience of the crew that had more to do with accuracy than either bombsight.
    1
  2688.  @allangibson8494  The SABS was generally a more accurate bombsight, but only when the aircraft was flying straight and level. Since it had no connection the aircraft's autopilot, it quickly lost accuracy if the plane had to take any evasive maneuvers or was thrown off course by wind buffeting. The biggest problem was they were all built by hand and required considerable adjustments after they were built. As a result, less than 1,000 were available by the end of the war. In contrast, somewhere around 80,000 Norden units were built. The right thing to have happen was the British and Americans would both use the same bombsight. The British tried for over three years to get a license for the Norden but the US stupidly wouldn't do it, mostly because of the Navy, which owned the license. As you say, the Norden was only a secret in the minds of the Navy, which had an unreasonable fear that one would be recovered by the Germans from a crashed British bomber. What they didn't know was German espionage agents had already stolen a complete Norden in 1939 and were busily working on a reverse engineered bombsight of their own. They also never were able to figure out how to hook it into the bombers autopilot or initially how to mass produce the sight. Consequently, they were also built by hand until they could go into mass production by late 1944, when it really didn't matter much. There were at least a thousand unused Lotfe 7's in the Carl Zeiss factory by the Russians. They also had very little success trying to reverse engineer the bombsight. If the British and Americans both were using the Norden, it would have been improved more rapidly, and crews from both air forces could have been cross trained. A good example of foolish US isolationism, and something Roosevelt should have stepped in to solve.
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  2689.  @FriedrichHerschel  Yes, or Italy would have backed down and we could have flown out with the hijackers and Abas. You're making the assumption that Italy was strong enough in 1985 to have dumped NATO and struck out on its own. It was already in the grip of Palestinian terrorism and revolving door governments, with Craxi's being one of the weakest. I have no idea what the outcome would have been either but, as I wrote, it's an interesting historical speculation.
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  2690. The Italian "troops" at Sigonella consisted of 20 local police and 30 VAM, what would normally be classified as the base defense force in the US Air Force. The police were poorly trained and equipped mostly with sidearms. The VAM troops were better equipped but not much better trained, VAM forces at the time being considered the lowest rung of the Italian air force. There's very little question the 80 US special forces at Sigonella could have quickly disposed of this opposition if push came to shove. Combine this with the regime of Prime Minister Benito Craxi, a weak and corrupt socialist that maintained close ties to people like PLO leader Yasser Arafat and other leaders of terrorist supporting dictatorships in the region. The US rightly feared that the hijackers and their leaders would never receive an adequate punishment under Italian justice, and that's exactly what happened. It's certainly an interesting historical speculation as to how things would have gone if the special forces at Sigonella were never told to stand down.
    1
  2691. The Cleveland Clinic Disaster of 1929 killed 123 people. It was a direct result if the flammability of nitrocellulose x-ray film and the toxic gasses given off by combustion.
    1
  2692. Correct. The 2011 event was the largest and most deadly outbreak in modern times. While the deadliest tornadoes generally occurred in the Southeast, the storm system set off tornadoes all the way up into New York and Ontario. Although the storm system lasted three days, the most intense part of the storm happned on April 27, when a record 217 tornadoes occurred from midnight to midnight, of which four were rated EF-5. The 317 deaths on April 27 were the most in a single day since the devastating Tri-State tornado outbreak of March, 18, 1925, when 747 people lost their lives. It's hard to compare these super outbreaks since the records, even from 1974, are not as complete as 2011. While the 1925 outbreak killed more people, it appears the 2011 outbreak had more long track intense tornadoes, but there are a lot of guesses in anything before the satellite and radar eras.
    1
  2693.  @Jivolt  Well, yeah, that's what I said in the third sentence of my comment.
    1
  2694.  Andrew Ongais  There are, but my experience is the really cheap radios don't have the sensitivity to receive some stations unless you live close to a transmitter. Generally, the name brand radios like Midland and Sangean perform better and hold up better, given that the radios have to be designed and built to stay on 24 hours a day. There are some areas that do weather radio giveaways to people who meet certain income criteria so it's worth checking into if you qualify for food stamps.
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  2695. No one should be depending on tornado sirens today. We have weather radio warning receivers available for less than $50 that will wake you up in the middle of the night and warn you with details of the tornado and its path. Not all warned storms will actually be headed toward your location. Smartphones all have weather apps that also warn you of tornadoes by relaying the same information that comes from a weather radio. While having your phone give you warnings when you're out of the house or business is much better than relying on sirens, you should have a weather radio while you're indoors. The worst tornadoes will also take down cell towers so your phone won't give warnings. Except in the most extreme cases, the weather radio will continue to function.
    1
  2696.  @johnshepardson7459  "pituitary hyperplasia can lead to precocious puberty, acromegaly, and giantism in children. https://www.pituitaryworldnews.org/pituitary-hyperplasia/ I studied it in college. You don't need to have a disease to know what it is. You, on the other hand, claim to have it and don't know what it's called. Gets the old noggin joggin.....
    1
  2697.  @johnshepardson7459  No, it's hyperplasia, an excess of human growth hormone that caused his amazing growth. It's good to look things up before you decide to correct someone. [Edited for typos, as usual]
    1
  2698. The training film "Ditch and Live" was made because so many crews forced down over water were dying only after three or four days on a raft. Realizing this, the Army Air Force had their film unit produce a training film starring Arthur Kennedy as Captain Scott H Reynolds. After a previous ditching where he was the sole survivor when the rest of his crew died at sea, he decided to train his new crew mercilessly in ditching procedures and survival techniques. As bad luck would have it, Captain Reynolds and his crew were forced down at sea and were able to put their training to good use. There was one scene where the men were rolled out of bed at 3:00 in the moring to practice on a derelict B-17 so the men would be used to having to ditch in the dark. Several of the men, while getting dressed to head out to the plane, remarked that they'd live longer than Reynolds if they ditched just so they could throw him in the dunk tank when they got back to base. This was an obvious play on what Rickenbacker's crew said about him. He later found out about what the men had said. In reality, it was more like they wanted to live so they could kill him. The producers, not being sure of Rickenbacker's reaction, showed him the script with the more sanitized version of what the crew had said. He approved it without comment. Many of the survival procedures were adapted from Rickenbacker's harrowing experience, and he contributes=d to the script. It became mandatory viewing for bomber crews, and the amount of time men lived at sea more than doubled for crews that had seen the film. Rickenbacker's experiences helped many more men than just the crew he went down with.
    1
  2699. What an ispiring story. I kind of teared up at the end, History Guy. I have a feeling you did too..
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  2700. What happened in Poland also emboldened the White russians and the allies to think the Red Army wasn't really capable of fighting and winning. Even though the White Russians were the ones who eventually lost, the performance of the Red Army helped convince Hitler that the Red Army was weak and disorganized. He also believed the anti-Bolshevik left over the Russian Civil War would come over to side of the Germans when he invaded the USSR.
    1
  2701. Oh my. My best friend, Rick, just lost his best friend of 15 years, Gizmo. Rick is a big guy, 6'3" and 220 pounds of muscle. Gizmo was a tiny guy, maybe seven pounds soaking wet, but he was as big a guy as Rick in so many ways. I loved Gizmo too, and Rick and I both shared a good cry as Gizmo breathed his last. If there's a heaven, I have no doubt that, before I see God, I'll see Gizmo, barking his friendly greeting, and waiting for his usual treat.
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  2702. Brasilia went through the same thing as Washington. It too was carved from a wilderness to be the capital city of Brazil. Except for the Federal buildings, nothing was there, and no diplomats wanted to be stationed there. Because of its altitude of over 3,400 feet it has a somewhat more pleasant climate than some sections of Brazil, although it can get quite chilly in winter. It has now grown to a fairly wealthy city of over three million.
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  2703. Jim Allen  Very few firefighting companies had the equipment and technology in 1855 to put out a fire. Most fires burned the structure to the foundation. What was insured was mostly the contents, so many fire companies concentrated on salvage and overhaul techniques rather than firefighting, since that's how they got paid by insurance companies. It wasn't until municipal hydrant systems and steam fire pumpers came into widespread usage that firefighters were actually be able to stop structure fires from burning buildings to the ground.
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  2704. What a great story. It was more than just pride for a fire company to be first on the scene, it was a matter of financial incentive. Fire insurance companies would pay for the service of the fire company that first put water on the fire. Brawls between fire companies weren't uncommon in many places in North America. Volunteer fire departments until quite recently didn't have to meet any standards and were always more a social club than professional firefighters. Some even had bars in the back of the stations, and weekend barbeques and drunken parties were part of why men joined the fire company. Changes in how fire insurance companies reimbursed fire departments for putting out fires and the implementation of national fire codes transformed most volunteer fire departments into unpaid professionals. I'm old enough to know some volunteer firefighters who still lament the passing of the social aspects of being a fireman.
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  2705.  @briangarrow448  Indeed, it would have been a losing bet. The US wished it could have intervened to stop Chile from seizing the rich nitrate territories in Peru, but our weakness only led to a failed peace conference aboard the USS Lackawanna. That effort failed because the US had no forces strong enough to threaten any of the warring nations, and we were in no position to get into a fight if the Royal Navy decided to intervene. That was about as close as a US naval vessel got to the War of the Pacific
    1
  2706.  @davidharris6581  I wouldn't do too well as the Accounting Guy either. I can't even get my checkbook right without Quicken.
    1
  2707.  @TheHistoryGuyChannel  I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who does things like that. :-)
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  2708. Look, Mujangga, you wrote the Japanese had surrendered before Barbarossa. That started on June 22, 1940. Your statement was clearly wrong. The war didn't end with the surrender of Germany. Thus, the Japanese fought the Russians during the war. What does the fall of Nazi Germany have to do with it?
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  2709. That Japanese surrendered to the Russians before Barbarossa? They didn't fight Russia during the war? The USSR declared war on Japan on August 9, 1945, with the war lasting until September 2. They lost at least 21,000 killed during the short campaign before the surrender. This is a channel on history that deserves to be remembered, not history you've made up.
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  2710. The Japanese didn't have to "work their way up" from anything. They were allies the same way the Russians were when it came to carving up Poland. They happened to be in a different part of the world so they weren't a threat...yet. As Hitler said on learning of Pearl Harbor “We can’t lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years.” That's why the two were allies. Japan kept Russian forces tied up in eastern Russia while Hitler invaded western Russia. Hitler was content until such time as he was strong enough to take on the "yellow peril", as he called the Japanese in "Mein Kampf".
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  2711. Mujangga  Hitler felt an affinity to the Japanese from his youth. They were not a threat to his expansion plans and were a valuable source of supply for things like rubber and chromium. He knew that war between Japan and Britain would tie down lots of RN ships and British army soldiers in the far east. In a sense, the Japanese became "honorary Aryans".
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  2712. And here I thought this was yet another but late April Fool's day video.
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  2713.  @cornbreadfedkirkpatrick9647  Yes, I'm very familiar with the history of the PT boat, but I have no idea how they are connected to NASCAR
    1
  2714. Gee, Sally, I'm sure sorry I upset you.
    1
  2715. It was the air to south of the cold front that was warm and humid. It would be easy to show that if you used a real weather map, easily available from the NWS page on this flood, rather than hand gestures and brow wrinkling.
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  2716. I worked with CAP crews a lot in missing and overdue aircraft cases. CAP pilots are reasonably well known, but the most CAP members are "ground pounders". Members are trained in and practice conducting ground searches for those missing planes, and they also assisted in missing person cases. It was usually unsung cold or hot, muddy or dusty, and always exhausting work. They were a great bunch to work with.
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  2717. Grenada, the island nation in the south Caribbean, produces the finest natural vanilla in the world. There are several vanilla plantation you can tour and sample various types of vanilla while on your tour. Don't miss it if you get to Grenada, also know as the Spice Island, since it also produces several types of high quality spices like saffron,
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  2718.  Yahir Fernando  More friggen spam! At least update your algo so it's not posting on two year old comments, ya giant dope!
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  2719.  @phil4826  Yes, it was even more amazing in 1945. It obviously didn't have anywhere near the range compared to being six feet above water but, by manually focusing the SJ radar screen and increasing the output power, it could search about 15 degrees for about two miles at six feet below the surface. Once a target had been spotted with the periscope radar, the separate SJ was able to track it as long as the target was within that two mile range. Obviously a pretty handy thing compared to having to constantly raising the periscope and expose your position. Since the SJ was centimetric radar, the frequency was far above any kind of detector the Japanese had until about a month before the end of the war. Because of that, our subs had no fear of being detected by the radar emissions. The Japanese had the technical ability to develop more advanced radar and sonar. The constant infighting with the army over who would develop what kind of technology plus the IJNs seeming inability to understand why such technology was necessary doomed the Japanese fleet. [Edited for my usual typos and grammatical errors]
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  2720. There's a video of RA-8568 taking off on a snow covered runway on Mar 24th 2011 on the return ferry flight to Samara at https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=9-fgoH3TBzw. Pretty amazing aircraft, and pretty amazing repair job for being done more or less in the woods.
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  2721.  @bigblue6917  The 1948 Key West Agreement and the Johnson-McConnell agreement of 1966 limited the Army to non-combat and unarmed fixed wing aircraft. The Army started crossing that line with the armed OV-1 Mohawk, and the Air Force and DOD put their foot down on further expansion in that direction. The last OV-1 was retired in 1996 and all the fixed wing aircraft in service now are VIP transports and small transport aircraft designed to move parts and equipment around the various bases worldwide. The vast majority of Army aircraft now are helicopters and UAVs.
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  2722. The Army still has some seagoing vessels left under its command. The largest are the General Frank S. Besson class Logistic Support vessels. They can transport and beach land everything from 82 standard 20 foot equivalent unit containers to 15 Abrams tanks. They are used for fill-in shipping and landing when the Navy's main landings are over, and are able to change loadings with less hassle than a comparable Navy ship. At 273 feet, 4200 tons, and a range of 6500 nmi loaded, they have a true global reach. There are 8 in service and another 8 on order. Just these Army landing and logistics ships have a greater capacity than most of the world's navies.
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  2723. That ship would be the SS Illinois. A USS ship would have been one owned by the US Navy.
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  2724. Hey! I saw a History Guy in that last photo!
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  2725. It still irritates me that they changed Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), a useful term that was 300 years old, was changed in 1967 to "Coordinated Universal Time". Instead of the acronym now being "CUT", it became "UTC" to keep the French happy.
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  2726. Kind of like reading "news" on Buzzfeed today.
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  2727. Are sure that was an LVT? A Landing Craft, Vehicle is a tracked vehicle that kind of looks like a tank. There's,a picture of one at https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-P4fxJxLl2KM/Tz50tPJC_uI/AAAAAAAABLI/m5H-mXSX28Q/s640/IMGP0424.JPG. The one you show in your picture, and the one listed as carried by Glacier, was an LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel), and looks like this -  https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/015/715/834/large/janus-buch-render06.jpg?1549372742. An LVT is not a very stable vessel in open water and seems like an unlikely craft to send off in search of a missing helicopter, even if Glacier actually had one on board.
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  2728. The first extensive use of the CRT was for the oscilloscope, a way to visualize electrons being transmitted over the air or excited in a piece of electronic gear. US amateur radio operators developed the panoramic adaptor in the late 1920's, using an oscilloscope to show a series of peaks and valleys representing radio signals within a couple hundred KHz of the center signal. It was this panoramic, or panadapter, that first gave the idea for using the CRT for television and, in the late 30"s, to show the same peaks and valleys representing the return radio signals of what became radar.
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  2729. Excellent video as usual. One small correction. The F4U had a maximum bomb load of 4,000 pounds, and that only at the expense of useful range. Most F4U flew off carriers with about 2,500 pounds of bombs, three napalm containers, or eight 5" rockets. The Corsair, originally designed as a fighter, so it didn't have the lifting capacity to carry even two of the three typical underwing loads at once. I see some viewers have already made the correction about the type of gun armament carried. Nevertheless, these are small details in a much larger and more important story of trying to save a friend and fellow pilot. Lt. (Later Captain) Hudner continued to serve in the Navy until retiring in 1973. He worked with various veterans service organizations until the time of his civilian retirement in 1999. He was one of the few living persons to have a major warship named after him. He passed away quietly at his home in Concord, Massachusetts in 2017, living to the ripe old age of 93, especially for a combat pilot.
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  2730.  @TheHistoryGuyChannel  And here I thought I had seen all your videos by now. I should have known better. :-) I've been a coin collector most of my life, and I don't know how that one slipped by me. Thanks.
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  2731. I remember reading that book and thinking what an inventive guy he was. It's worth a read just to get some more details on how he managed to fly below the radar for so long.
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  2732. Looks like the History Guy is now running Shark Tank. :-)
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  2733.  @lizj5740  The population of Samoa is 202,000. The number of Samoans living in NZ is 65,000. There are obviously more So moans living in Samoa than NZ.
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  2734.  David Single  No, you never mentioned any slaves and a Samoan politician until your last post. You only asked about if Auckland was the capital of American Samoa and if is was part of NZ. I have no idea how my answer was rude or insulting. I just gave you the facts. If you have information anything I wrote was wrong, I'm all ears.
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  2735. At least one book, "Mrs Sherlock Holmes", was written about her and is available at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Sherlock-Holmes-Detective-Captivated/dp/1250072247). She really revolutionized the investigation into how immigrants were treated and how the cases of missing persons, especially women and girls, were treated. For example, it turned out Coochi had been paying off the beat officers in his block to leave him alone since he apparently was involved in some underworld crime. It was these payoffs that made sure his shop was never properly searched. No one is quite sure why she came forward with what are now regarded as some pretty fanciful stories about girls being kidnapped to various WWI Army bases to be sexually abused. She never provided any corroborating evidence to support her claims, and the Army pushed back hard on the accusations, allowing the Department of Justice and state police to search bases where the abuse was supposedly taking place. No evidence was ever found to support her claims, and Grace rapidly fell from public favor. There was a war on, and Grace was suspected of harboring more sentiments for her immigrant clients than the United States Army. Was Grace right and the whole thing had been yet another cover up, or had Grace really gone off the deep end this time? At this late date, it's impossible to tell, but Grace closed the People's Law firm and retired from public life by 1920. We'll never know the true story, but Grace, regardless of the Army accusations, had certainly showed that women attorneys and crime investigators were as good as any men at a time when the concept was rarely even thought of.
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  2736. After the centerline, the next most important invention was the so-called fog line on the edge of the road. It was first suggested by well known chemical engineer, John Van Nostrand Dorr, and first applied to one four mile stretch of highway on the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut in the mid-50's. From there, it has slowly spread throughout the country. It has saved countless drivers from inadvertently running off the road, both day and night. I find it very difficult to drive on roads without fog lines as I have gotten older.
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  2737. Sorry, Beak, I think I screwed this up. The launch site was indeed on the grounds of Fort Sheridan, just southwest of the cemetery. You can see the concrete pad that still remains in a Google maps view at https://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/c-98l-nike-missile-site/view/google/. I don't know how this matches up to your soapbox derby hill since most of the post has been obliterated
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  2738. There was indeed a Nike site at Ft. Sheridan. The radar and control base was on the west side of Forest Way Drive two blocks north of Tower Road. The missile site itself was located near the lagoons adjoining the Edens Expressway. Both of the sites are part of the forest reserve.
    1
  2739. There's some understandable confusion here. I grew up in Cleveland, so I'm familiar with most of the sites. One communications site was located not far from my home in Garfield Heights. It controlled the actual missile site in Independence. It was the only site that was that far separated from each other, mainly because the missile site didn't have enough room for the complete base and communications facility. The original missile was the Nike Ajax. These were relatively small and were not capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The Nike Hercules was much larger and carried a nuclear warhead to increase kill probability. The first ones were deployed in the Chicago area in 1958, and it took until 1963 to convert most of the Nike Ajax sites to the Nike Hercules. There were eight Nike sites in the Cleveland area, but only three were ever converted Nike Hercules missiles before the program began shutting down, most in the late 60's to early 70's. The decreasing likelihood of bomber attacks and increasing probability of ICBM attack made the Nike missiles obsolete. Most US Nike sites were closed by 1975, but sites in Alaska and Florida lasted until 1979. The Florida and Alaska sites lasted longer because there was still a possibility of bomber attacks there from the Soviet Union or Cuba. The effective periods of these missiles and their sites was less than ten years on average, not much of a return for the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on them. [Edited for typos]
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  2740. Great stuff. I must say Cicero's life was little hazy to me. Since I last took Ancient History almost 50 years ago, it's not the kind of thing that remains in memory long. Your episode brought it all back again though. When's the exam? :-)
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  2741.  Ken Hudson  Ken, Meniere's Disease and Syndrome are just variant names of the same thing. I have had all the symptoms you've had. Surgery is almost never effective. I lost 90% of the hearing in my left ear in the first week after my first symptoms, vertigo and vomiting. I had returned from a diving trip and my doctor thought I had a case of barotrauma of the inner ear. That usually clears up in about ten days, and this didn't. The hearing loss sent me to an ENT doctor who thankfully was also an Meniere's expert. He did a few tests, listen to my symptoms, and declared it to be Meniere's in the space of an hour. I really had all the classic symptoms. My really bad attacks have been controlled with valium, and I take a diuretic every day to get rid of excess fluid. I've been in a burnout phase for the past five years and haven't had a serious attack. Like you, my main hearing loss has been in the human voice ranges, and a hearing aid only amplifies sound in my one more or less good ear. I have constant tinnitus, sometimes so bad I can't use a hearing aid. Still, I'm able to drive, and my work as a consultant before I retired allowed me to catch up with tasks in between attacks. I've been retired for about ten years so I at least no longer have to worry about Meniere's making me unable to work. It's a terrible condition with no known cause or cure, and every few have even heard about it. It's a tough life, but at least it hasn't killed us.
    1
  2742.  @tarnishedknight730  Well, those stations live and die by ratings, and your ratings won't improve if your weather person says "Things won't be that bad". :-) It is especially bad down here on the Gulf Coast when we get hurricanes. With the breathlessness of some of these men and women I'm surprised they don't require on-air oxygen. There's usually one local station that has a competent meteorologist. I'd pay attention to him or her and the local NWS. That should give you the best combination of forecasting and gut feels. It was really quite amazing watching our hurricanes make landfall this year within 25 miles of the predicted location and within 10 mph of the predicted intensity, all the while predicting the formation of the hurricanes seven to ten days out. It's the kind of thing we could only dream of as recently as ten years ago. Predicting continental storms in winter regarding how much snow will fall where, how windy it will be, and how cold it will get is orders of magnitude harder than hurricanes. The scientists are getting there, but predicting big winter storms with the accuracy of hurricane forecasts is still another ten years away.
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  2743. Black Hand gangs operated in almost every city with a large Italian immigrant population. Anthony "Tony" Milano got his start with the Black Hand in Cleveland from the start of the twentieth century onward. He hand his brother Frank were also active in the largest Mafia gang, the Mayfield Road Mob". Tony profited from prohibition, the numbers, racket, and gambling. He was also an accomplished counterfeiter and spent time in the federal pen for that pursuit in 1911. It is said Tony was never got into in drug dealing or prostitution, two things he promised his mother on her deathbed the gang wouldn't be involved in. He eventually had business interests in Las Vegas when gambling was legalized in Nevada. He had money in some of the first casinos in Vegas, including the Desert Inn and the Hacienda, and he used his experience racketeering unions in Cleveland to make sure casino unions in Vegas were "compliant". Unlike many of his contemporaries, Tony died in a hospital bed at age 89 in Cleveland in 1978, and he died from natural causes rather than the standard lead poisoning.
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  2744. Things like this almost always end one of two ways. The killer is either killed by the police or some other person, or the killer is convicted of another crime and locked up for life in prison or a mental hospital. The idea the Austin murderer and Jack the Ripper were the same person seems very unlikely.
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  2745.  @Mondo762  Excellent exposition of what butt hurt looks like. Now maybe you can tell me which of my "projections" have all been dead wrong. I kind of doubt you'd get too far in an engineering meeting by telling everyone they are all dead wrong and a bunch of bullshitters without at least one example.
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  2746.  @BuzzLOLOL  Croatia declared independence in 1991. The USSR never set foot in Croatia. The Partisans killing about 100,000 Croatian Ustase while the Chetniks, Germans, and Italians killed another 50,000. The Yugoslav communists killed another 10,000 Croats after WWII and "stabilized" the country by brutal dictatorship and terror. Once independence was declared, Catholic/Serb violence broke out anew, only ending after a military victory by Croatia and the expulsion of at least 200,000 by 1995. Your beloved USSR was long gone by then. The Nazis and Hitler weren't Catholic or Christian or even religious. Hitler himself was violently anti-Catholic, and only used the German Protestant church when it suited his political goals. Saying Hitler was "Catholic Christian Religious Terrorist" only got one thing right.
    1
  2747.  @BuzzLOLOL  "Normal people"...that's the best you could come up with? There were way more people in Croatia that not only sided with Hitler, they went and fought on the Nazi side. How come none of your "normal people" wanted to stabilize Croatia?
    1
  2748.  @BuzzLOLOL  Define "a lot". Who said it needed to be "stabilized for a while"?
    1
  2749.  @donsharpe5786  They had inside information on construction details. The Soviets hadn't been able to penetrate the US military, especially the Army Air Force. They could only guess about how many bombs we already had and how fast we could build more. The information from Kremlin records after the Soviet Union went away was Stalin was convinced the US would have at least ten bombs by the end of 1946 and cold build at least 20 a year by 1948. That's one of the reasons for the high speed development of a Russian bomb. Truman, to his credit, refused to share any information with the Russians, even as the State Department communists were urging him to do so.
    1
  2750.  @donsharpe5786  As long as your opponent doesn't know the real situation, it's not an empty threat. That's why gas stations get held up every day by crooks with realistic looking fake guns.
    1
  2751.  @BrianSmith-yn2zg  Go read some books and you won't have as many haters.
    1
  2752. I would note, however, that the present British height requirement is because they recruit women, not to allow bantam men to serve.
    1
  2753.  Bullets Forteeth FULL AUTO  The US Army calls them sniper rifles and the programs that developed them are called sniper rifle programs. A designated marksman rifle is not the same as a sniper rifle. A designated marksman rifle doesn't have the same specifications for MOA at range as a sniper rifle. You are absolutely wrong about this, and it just diminishes whatever case you're trying to make, although all the CAPITAL letters for things and frothing about treason don't help much either.
    1
  2754. And how many of these vehicles of all type were made by 100% British owned companies?
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  2755. Jesus H Christ on a Skateboard. The women with purple hair have even invaded Reason TV..
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  2756. Joe, there's no need, but sometimes it just feels good anyway...
    1
  2757. And, Mr. Cartoon Character, you know about the efficacy of oral morphine how, exactly? The thread is now attracting bottom feeding trolls.
    1
  2758. Alex, I don't think you need my morphine pills.
    1
  2759. +John Harrison They're right about what? What does Romney have to do with Trump getting the nomination? They got on the wrong train and now they're having a group cry because they arrived at the wrong station
    1
  2760. Boys, I hope you're following the up vs down vote count. No, it's not some mythical trolls voting you down. It's generally loyal viewers who think you've let getting on the wrong side of this cause this 6+ minutes of petulant whining. A good lesson to learn from this is to take defeat gracefully. There are a lot worse things than Trump, and one of them is Hillary. Are you guys going to start attacking the real enemy now?
    1
  2761. I generally like Reason, but you guys have gotten Trump completely wrong. People aren't voting for him because they agree with all his views. They see it as our last chance to get the party hacks out of Washington and send in a guy who'll break up the furniture. It's the same reason that Bernie has been giving Hillary an assraping. No one outside DC and NYC wanted to see another Bush or Rubio. They've all been tried before. Trump will go to Washington beholden to almost no one. He's also not going to be cosying up to all you millennial bloggers either. There will be a new sheriff in town, and I can see you guys profusely sweating all the way from my house.
    1
  2762. Well, that was three minutes and one second of my life I'm never getting back.
    1
  2763.  @Liberty4Ever  Believe me, if your style and brands of shotguns start getting used in mass shootings, those same nuts will be after them too. My point in my original post was going after assault rifles is illogical when there are other long guns that are, or can be, just as deadly. I wasn't writing my post in response to some leftist, it was on a post about why assault rifles get banned because they look scary on a channel that not many leftists care to read. The comparison between the friendly looking Ranch Rifle in the video and the scary looking AR-15 is the same as between my friendly looking Ithaca 37 and all your tactical shotguns when the shit hits the fan.
    1
  2764.  @dexter131  Right. The chances of ten libertarians in the same place agreeing on the same things is why libertarians never get anywhere. The two things libertarians and communists have in common is the quest for Ideological purity and doing the idea "right" this time.
    1
  2765.  @dexter131  Say what? Yes, the libertarians represented in this video believe something that most Americans don't. Do you believe most Americans are libertarians or what?
    1
  2766.  @dexter131  Being legitimate libertarian organizations and supporting the idea that impeachment is no big deal are two wildly different things.
    1
  2767. Realistically, how many are ever going to get sold without a local service center? This is a huge problem for Tesla. Opening service centers are very capital and labor intensive operations, but there's no way for Tesla to expand their market without them.
    1
  2768. No, it's 350 vans, and they only travel within 100 miles of an existing service center. This is still not an answer for people who live in the flyover states.
    1
  2769. I read three press releases. They all said these were replacements and additions for their previous flat tire vans. I certainly could be wrong, but these vans are still not an answer to the people in the flyover states who have no access to a Tesla service center.
    1
  2770. There's a reason I left both Cleveland and California and now live in Alabama. We can't run a deficit, and that automatically keeps the size of government within the control of the taxpayer. Is is perfect? No. But it's still a lot better than what I saw in Cleveland and California.
    1
  2771. Just one more reason I left California in 2005. It was headed down the dumper then and has only gotten worse.
    1
  2772.  @dexter131  Kids? I turn 74 in a month. I was involved with the Libertarian Party mostly likely before you were born.
    1
  2773. I smoked for 50 years but was able to quit four years ago thanks to nicotine pills (which I notice are never mentioned by these busybodies) and vaping. I would probably be dead by now if I continued to smoke cigarettes. Vaping is not safe, and no should start who isn't already a nicotine addict. For those of us who are, it's a potential life saver. And to you young punk vapers trying to outdo each other in a public place to see who can make the biggest and most obnoxious cloud of vapor - grow up and stop it! Do it in your house or some place private. You are giving the pearl clutchers more ammunition.
    1
  2774.  @raymondwelborne4998  You have won the internet prize for the most useless post of the day.
    1
  2775.  @Rockyboxing  I have no idea who or what you're talking about. What "facts" exactly did you check?
    1
  2776.  @homewall744  No, mental illness is not curable. We do have medications and therapy that allow some mentally ill people to still live a normal life, but the profoundly mentally ill still need to live in some kind of supervised environment.
    1
  2777. I couldn't agree more. My late wife and I had to battle for over a year for her to try an experimental drug that might have worked on acute myelogenous leukemia. She, along with other AML patients finally got that right. As it turned out, the drug didn't work, but enough terminal AML patients tried the drug to prove it didn't work and get it removed from any further trials. That can be just as valuable as finding out an experimental drug actually does work.
    1
  2778. This is just one of the reason I left the Bay Area in 2005. It's like an open air mental asylum with the Board as the one with the keys. That place is doomed.
    1
  2779.  @michaelpearce8661  Umm, what choices are we free to make here? The auditions to sing "Imagine" are down the hall.
    1
  2780.  @michaelpearce8661  I don't know where you live, but you need to move to Detroit right away. There's a huge market for what you're doing there. As the economy improved (or at least did until the shit hit the fan with the virus), there were lots of investors buying up abandoned houses and fixing them up as rentals. They need guys with tools to help do the work and house sit while it's going on so all the new appliances don't walk out the back door. Seriously, check that out. You can make some good money in Detroit.
    1
  2781.  @michaelpearce8661  I feel you. I turned 74 in February, and nothing works on me as well as it did either. Unfortunately, what I fear is going to turn into another wave of defaults and foreclosures as a result of our shooting ourselves in the head may be an opportunity for you, since I think California will be the hardest hit. Start talking to banks, real estate companies, and mortgage lenders now.
    1
  2782.  @brutustantheiii8477  You are also showing your age, and that's not a compliment.
    1
  2783. You realize the majority of people still have to make things with their hands, right? Even for those that are "knowledge workers", have you ever tried to figure out how well your presentation is going over when you get zero body language feedback? I was able to work from my home office as a construction project management consultant for over ten years, but I still had to get out and make sure things were being screwed together in the right places or concrete was being mixed properly. Meet formen and other engineers face to face so I had a better idea of how their personality was influencing the job. Doing things remotely when it consists of things like cranking out project plans and gantt charts works fine, but not being on site for a real overview and understanding of the project progress...well, not so much. I think you're vastly overestimating the place of the cloud in business.
    1
  2784.  @kennythekid130  That has already happened. I really don't think were going to see more than a small percentage increase in that once this insanity ends. People still need to go to work sites regardless of how well collaboration software works...or doesn't.
    1
  2785. With all this public interest, I wonder how many 3D printed AR-15 style "ghost guns" have ever been successfully assembled and fired? I suspect very few. It's a heck of a lot easier and cheaper to just get an AR-15 on the street if, for some reason, you can't legally buy one, than to buy a 3D printer and machine tools. The feds and states are chasing a ghost in more ways than one.
    1
  2786.  @gorgthesalty  Ah, the required Boomer insult comes out, something cranked off millennials just can't seem to avoid. Do you have a link to any study that shows "...that illegal drug use is, in many cases, equal to or greater among those white suburbians, but it's the black that get to do the time at 5 to 1 ratio."? Just one that shows white people who live in the suburbs have a drug use rate as high as inner city residents. You claim you have statistic that show that, so let's see them. I was a deputy sheriff, so I could be assigned patrol anywhere in the county. Sometimes that was in the hood and sometimes among those drug besotted white "suburbians". Do you think I couldn't tell the difference between those two areas? It seems as if you subscribe to the ACAB school of dealing with the police, so let's try a thought experiment. For one month, police departments cease patrolling all areas of a "diverse" county. All the cops just stay in the station, playing pinochle and checking out the latest at PornHub. At the end of that month, do you think there would be any difference between the hood and white suburbs in terms of crime related stats like shootings, murders, assaults, arson, burglaries...that kind of thing? Be honest now. If there would, why do you attribute the differences, which already exist on a day to day basis, as being the fault of the police instead of the culture of people who live in those areas?
    1
  2787. Bloomberg is not a boomer. He was born in 1942, four years before the first boomers.
    1
  2788.  @hymospheir989  And he would be if he had actually done that. Nice try with the strawman though
    1
  2789. I don't know if thise has been covered before the E-4B cannot stay in the air for weeks at a time. It could last a about a week, assuming the refueling tankers weren't destroyed, a highly likely possibility. The engine oli and hydraulic fluid would have to be changed after about seven. There's no way to change them while in the air. Without the tankers. it might last 16 hours with a full loadout of fuel and operating at super economic cruise speed.
    1
  2790. I don't know who this guy is, but I can tell he's never been a real police officer in a real riot.
    1
  2791. Jeff, one of my best friends has had Crohns since he was in his late 20's. It's a terrible disease. I guess if there's an upside for you it's that you don't have to worry about the constipation that plagues so many on narcotics. He ended up with a colostomy and, from his experience, I'd urge you not to have it done unless there's no other way to bring what's left of your bowels under control. It has been a continuing nightmare for him. Didn't fix the problem, and he's had several near fatal infections.
    1
  2792.  @TheArgieH  LOL, yes it was. The FJ-1 was named Fury over the objections of the RN, and it's one reason why the Sea Fury always has the "sea" part in front. The FJ-1 was a rare airplane though. It was a naval fighter first developed from a land based fighter, the p-51. Thah aircraft served as the basis for the F-86, and the F-86 was later developed into the FJ-2 Fury. I can't think of another plane that went from land based fighter to naval fighter back to land based fighter and the back to s naval fighter again.
    1
  2793.  @TheArgieH  It was actually named after River Exe, but it also could have been a portmanteau from both the river and X shape of the block. The working name was Boreas for the god of the north wind. I assume because this was the first RR air cooled aircraft engine, so naming it for a wind god seems appropriate. The only other air cooled X block engine during the war was the 24 cylinder Isotta Fraschini Zeta, a not very successful unit, since it was two V12's on a single crankshaft, something totally beyond Italian production standards of the time. The Exe was only ever installed in a Fairey Battle, an airplane otherwise best forgotten, as a test bed. It apparently flew for a number of years as a station hack with various squadrons until at least 1942 or 1943, depending on the source. It was noted as being docile, dependable, and easy to work on and repair. It never had the horsepower needed for high performance work, but it could have been a good relatively lightweight engine for communication and liaison craft if it had been developed.
    1
  2794.  @TheArgieH  LOL. Yes, it's a nice day here so I'm going to go out and pick branches downed by our last storm before the next storm get here. I forgot about the Vulture also being an X block. Probably an engine best forgotten anyway. The Boreas name was before RR had come p with any gas turbines so it seems like to was a one off that wasn't repeated. Napier was great designing very high output engines but not so great at making them work reliably without a workshop full of staff and parts. The Sabre was a good example of this. While it became the highest horsepower piston engine ever, I doubt it would have survived in production if not for English electric taking over Napier in 1942 and fixing the cooling issues. If jest hadn't come along for a few more years it would have been interesting to see if a reliable 5,000 version of the Sabre could have really been developed and what it could have been used in. Imagine eight of those things in a Bristol Barbizon!
    1
  2795.  @kdrapertrucker  I wouldn't be too hard on the British. At least they didn't come up anything like the Brewster Buccaneer, an aircraft so terrible it's always in the running for the worst aircraft of WWII. We built 771 of those dogs at a time the the US and its allies were desperate need of good planes. Not one ever saw combat, spending most of their time as target tugs.
    1
  2796.  @L4r5man  Indeed. And not only didn't the British seem to understand the need for air support, the best aircraft the RAF could provide were a few Hurricanes and the almost worthless Gloster Gladiator biplanes. The Gladiator pilots fought bravely, but they were overcome by better German aircraft and pilots, with most of their planes destroyed on the ground before they could even get in the fight. Fourteen more Gladiators were delivered on May 21 but, with the battle all but lost, the ten surviving planes and crews were embarked on the Glorious for a return to the safety of Britain. Ironically, almost all the pilots and all the aircraft were lost after surviving the fighting in Norway, when the Glorious was sunk while sailing for home with an escort of just two destroyers, both of whom were also sunk. In my book, Norway goes down as one of the worst British defeats of the war, a battle that could have been won except for poor planning, poor tactics, poor cooperation with the Norwegians, and a lack of material resources.
    1
  2797.  @HingerlAlois  Yes, and it continued for almost a month afterwards, and hence why I said the British learned nothing from the rapid overrunning of of the Low Countries in relation to their ultimate defeat in Norway.
    1
  2798. It comes down to this in every war ever fought in world history - it's hard to kill what won't stand still. As long as infantry trucks, AFV's, and MBT's can keep on the move, they have a good chance of not being killed. Dig in your tanks as a static defense like we saw in iraq and they will all get killed. Even if you're an individual solder and you don't have good cover, keep moving when the other guy is shooting at you. The moment you stop, you're dead.
    1
  2799. Of all US ships, it was Cleveland class cruisers, Fletcher class destroyers, and Gato class subs that really doomed the Japanese navy, and, in turn, Japan.
    1
  2800. As the Japanese found to their sorrow, level bombing only works well when there is little high altitude AAA fire and when they had air superiority.
    1
  2801.  @cyrilchui2811  The answer is they almost never did. From about 14,000 feet, above an accurate range of most antiaircraft fire, and against a non-maneuvering target, a very well trained crew has a small chance of a hit or near miss close enough for serious damage. Above that altitude, hitting an moving target was nearly impossible. Hitting a violently maneuvering target like a naval vessel is impossible. I'm not aware of any level bombers that scored such a hit during the war, wartime claims aside.
    1
  2802. @Peter Lorimer Thanks. I wasn't sure if Buffalo was still flying them or just had them on the roster. It's unfortunate that Curtiss wasn't able to get better organized and build more of them in 1940-1941, when they were so desperately needed. If Curtiss wasn't spending so much time playing catch up with just producing enough planes, they may have been able to fix most of the early teething problems that all large and complex aircraft have, especially in those early days.
    1
  2803.  @bbrut3332  Was there a mention of Travis in this video I missed?
    1
  2804. Ya know, I could have just read the Wikipedia article myself. You need to do some original research for these videos.
    1
  2805. The most highly skilled pilot we had in docking an XF-85 was only able to accomplish the manuever three of seven times. Only something like the US military, with what was effectively an unlimited amount of money compared to a private business, would think continuing this project was a good idea.
    1
  2806. A 1200 TON bomb load? Pretty doubtful.
    1
  2807. The Vindicator didn't deserve much love. Other than its place in the record books for being the first monoplane carrier aircraft, it was slow, had poor range, and carried a small bomb load. As an indication of how pilots felt about it, the Royal Navy withdrew theirs in November, 1941 after six months in frontline service and replaced then with the biplane Fairy Swordfish.
    1
  2808.  @soonerfrac4611  The Air Tractor beast is a worthy airplane in many respects. It's unequalled in load carrying. survivability, and STOL. As befits its ag background, it has a long loiter time and is relatively cheap to fly. Its setbacks are a slow top speed and limited cross country range. The Air Force really hates fixed gear combat aircraft, so that would need to be fixed. It's main handicap is cost. Building these as a low volume production aircraft really raises the cost compared to a Super Tucano. Now, if we could convince the Air Force to settle on some variant of the 802 for FAC and light attack, the cost issue would go away with an initial order of a couple hundred aircraft, and none of the other problems are insolvable. In most ways, it's the most efficient and versatile FAC and light attack bird flying today. Imagine these as flying helicopter escort if nothing else.
    1
  2809. The B-17 could carry 10,000 pounds of bombs on medium range missions, and regularly carried 15,000 to 17,000 pounds in overload condition. The Skyraider had a standard load of 8,000 pounds, but even in overload condition, the Skyraider never carried more than 12,000 pounds. She was a good airplane but she was still no B-17.
    1
  2810. We already had an aircraft that would do most of what the Moonbat was supposed to at a tenth of the cost and athree month development time. It was the Lockheed P-38L Lightning, and it was a much better development platform than an aircraft with unproven engines. The Moonbat is a good example of what happens when aeronautical engineers and air force officers have too mucxh money to spend and an emergency to prevent a new aircraft from ever getting properly tested and developed.
    1
  2811.  @iustinr3221  Yes, and the Do-335 never flew any combat missions. My reference was merely to aircraft that made their first flight before the end of the war.
    1
  2812.  @gort8203  Let me rephrase that. The Luftwaffe was looking for a fighter that could successfully attack allied bomber formations. The Arrow, originally a bomber, was supposed to be used as a fighter, but it never happened. All German aircraft manufacturers were starved for engines, so it was the need for yet another kind of engine that was a waste of money and material.
    1
  2813.  @5co756  Let me repeat. These were aircraft that had their first flight before the end of the war. Nothing to do with combat. The Do-335 never engaged in combat of any kind if you want to use that as some kind of cut off point. Very simple concept. I made no statements about any jet aircraft. That's why the video was about piston engine fighters. Is English not your first language? Do you have trouble reading and comprehending English?
    1
  2814.  @steveh1792  I noticed that, and a few must be reversed, as it appears the refueling probe is coming out from the B-50.
    1
  2815.  @stillsalty947  In this case, he never even left the aircraft. He flew it back and managed to land it safely, even though grievously wounded. There is such a thing is accuracy when you're making a history video.
    1
  2816. Have you forgotten about the Falklands War? Desert Storm? There have been lots of conflicts that involved jet fighters and conventional arms.
    1
  2817.  @Mug_Brand3407  No, you're thinking of the CF-104. The CF-105 was a completely different aircraft. Do a search and you'll see what I mean.
    1
  2818.  @kevingonzalez9191  The vast majority initially came from Africa. Show me where the Cambridge paper denies that. They only started adding students in numbers from non-African countries when African governments either stopped sending or drastically cut back the numbers of students sent to the university.
    1
  2819.  @kevingonzalez9191  Where does any of that disagree with what I wrote?
    1
  2820.  @kevingonzalez9191  This paper is part of the Journal of Global History, a journal with a decidedly left wing bent. Whoever, you're going to have to show me exactly the parts of what I wrote when you think I'm wrong. It's more than a little disingenuous to just say I'm wrong with no examples.
    1
  2821.  @kevingonzalez9191  What is all false? The Cambridge paper was one of the sources I used when I wrote my post. Is the lockdown making you all testy or what?
    1
  2822. LOL. Too bad there were no cell phones and videos then. Watching you guys hop from one leg to another would have been hilarious. When I was a kid in the 50's, eating oranges from California were only available in the month around Christmas. They weren't cheap, and getting a couple oranges in your Christmas stocking was quite a treat. Now I can walk in the grocery store and buy oranges almost any day of the year. Familiarity really does breed contempt.
    1
  2823.  @UshankaShow  So it seems. Not much of what used to be popular in the old Soviet Union is surviving.
    1
  2824. In English, it would be a spa for the places with health treatments. Resorts generally have no medical treatments as part of the regimen, although some things like massages might be available. Closest I can come up with "places of rest" all-inclusive type hotels that includes everything including meals and entertainment. The place with the A frames would probably be closest to a hostel. I was just reading an article about Yalta. It was doing pretty well until the 2014 Russian annexation and creation of the rump Autonomous Republic of Crimea. About 20% of tourists to Yalta were from EU states before the annexation. That has almost dropped to nothing now and the economy has really been blasted.
    1
  2825. I've often wondered if guys like Brezhnev had pros that handled all his medals and got everything pinned on straight and in the right places. It seems like a regular guy just couldn't do it repeatedly.
    1
  2826. LOL.Yes, it seems Russia has gone from one of the poorest debtor nations to one of the wealthiest in the space of 35 years. What could have changed? I'm not a great fan of Putin, but one of the things he understands is the value of private property and getting out of the way of people using it. The amazing thing is the number of people in the West who are still admirers of Soviet socialism and think the problems with socialism is the Soviets just didn't do it right.
    1
  2827.  @joek600  There's also a difference between how one person feels and how the larger economy is doing. Most adults understand their situation may not be reflective of the entire country.
    1
  2828. Were people like doctors allowed to go overseas for training? I know there were some types of operations and procedures that were only taught in Europe or the United States.
    1
  2829.  @thotslayer9914  Nope, not me. Hardshell capitalist, but I did take the time to learn other political systems.
    1
  2830.  @caseycu  What? How does the gap between the middle and upper classes affect wage inflation? Rising prices affects all classes, but affects the least well off the most. Purchasing power for everyone is diminished by inflation, and the more inflation the more agitation there is to raise wages. The periods of inflation following both world wars and the disastrous Fed caused inflation of the 70's proves that too much money chasing too few goods will always cause trouble.
    1
  2831. My grandma still had her water well in the backyard that was very similar to the one your video. Even though the water district had laid water pipes to her area and she had pressurized water in the house, she still only drank the water from the well. It tasted weird to me when I was you son's age, since I was used to chlorinated city water. Unfortunately, she passed on in 1993, and I've never been back to the old home place since it was sold shortly afterwards. I'd like another taste of that well water if it still exists to see what it tastes like now that I've got some years under my belt. The one thing I do remember was how cold that water was, even on a hot summer day. It must seem like traveling across generations when you go back to Michigan from the Ukraine.
    1
  2832. Does she just use a watering can or does she pressurized water so she can use a hose? That's a huge garden to water by hand. We in the US so easily forget all the things we take for granted - running, clean water, electric power, and machinery like washers. I worked on a run of the river hydro project for nearly a month in Nepal. The 5 megawatt turbine was able to supply enough power for one bulb per house in a village of 400 that had never had electric power before. The people of the village did most of the work, and some of them, particularly the older ones, sat and stared at that one bulb for hours. This was one time I really did kiss the ground when I got back.
    1
  2833.  @mezenasuga  Oh my. Thank goodness I live in the sunny South. Nice talking to you too, and sleep well.
    1
  2834.  @mezenasuga  You won't regret the time or money to visit. I think we foreigners come there all hyped up about the best places to visit while you are just working to make a living and not thinking about tourism, especially at your age. Do it now though, since you don't know how things will be when you're older. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, nowhere near as dark or cold as Finland in the winter, but way colder and darker than I liked. On top of that, it was commonly cloudy when the sun was up, so we went weeks never seeing the sun. It's the kind of weather that would make me suicidal now.
    1
  2835.  @mezenasuga  I try not sound like an old geezer on here. I've been using the internet from back in the telenet days and Compuserve so at least I understand the net and computers in general, so I have a leg up on other folks my age. As I said, your English is excellent. I'm rather embarrassed to say it's really quite a bit better than some of the native English speakers I encounter here and have no excuse for not writing well. You've never been to Kemijärvi ? Oh man, you have to take the trip up there. It's an easy overnight trip on the sleeper train from Helsinki. Unfortunately, it was one of the towns leveled by the Germans during their retreat, so the historic buildings from the Sami time are gone, but the town was beautifully rebuilt. Lake Kemijärvi, next to town, is one of the prettiest lake anywhere, and the fishing was great. Considering the relative isolation of the place, it looked quite prosperous. The residential sections have well built, typically Finnish houses, and it looked like a nice place to live. Nice at least, until winter comes. Highs of -25c, sunset at 1510, and sunrise of 0938 in late January would be more than I could take. The reindeer were pretty neat. I was there in summer, so no sleigh rides, but the reindeer themselves are really fluffy, and the shape of their head and mouth give the look of a perpetual smile. I can see why Santa chose them for his sleigh. :-) I don't know if you're into astronomy, but that area is one of the darkest sky places in the world. Really spectacular and, if you make the trek up there in winter, I understand the chances of seeing really incredible displays of the aurora during the long hours of darkness are really good. I was there in September, and there was a small display on my second night there, but there was still too much daylight for a long lasting display. Anyway, thanks for the welcome back. I'd love to go, but international travel is just too hard on my old bones now. I lived very frugally when I was younger (still do, actually) just so I could travel to places like Finland, and I'm sure glad now that I did.
    1
  2836.  @mezenasuga  No, I'm prone to making repeat typos once I make the first one. I think it's some kind of aging effect. I turn 74 next month, and I make many more of those mistake now than I used to when I was 40. This is a good example of the problems with written international communication. I assume English isn't your first language (although your English is very good) and I know about three words in the Finnish language. We have to use English as the lingua franca, and that causes both of us problems. If we were sitting across from each other over a beer I'm certain we both would have had a better idea what that other guy was talking about. I have only been able to get to Finland once, but I really liked it. Even did the tourist thing and took the overnight train to Kemijärvi to see the reindeers. :-) Beautiful place. The country has survived war and destruction to become the prosperous place it is now. Finns seem to have a fighting spirit when it comes to business (see Nokia, for example), and that came from the same spirit fighting the Soviets to a standstill twice. It's a very admirable country.
    1
  2837.  @mezenasuga  1. Yes, that was a typo 2. The agreement was signed in December but Finland wasn't really exercising it's governing power until January. It's a pretty minor point in any case, 3. After many border incidents with Russia, Finland had to do all it could to no longer worsen relations. Right wing and anti-communist groups were ruthlessly suppressed. Finland tried to improve relations with France and Poland to counterbalance the influence of the USSR, but the Soviets were their biggest trading partner. The Soviets tightened their policies against the Finns trade with nations other than themselves, constantly restricting navigation by Finnish merchant ships from 1930 on before stopping navigation from Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland in 1937. It wasn't the kind of economic domination that occured after WWII, but it to say Finland wasn't under the forced influence of the USSR is wrong. 4. I don't understand this one. I said the Finns were ejecting the Soviets from territory lost in the Winter War. You said the same thing. What's in dispute here? 5. Perhaps I wasn't clear. The Lapland War was indeed to get German troops back into Norway. That war had been ongoing on a desultory basis since Germany occupied Petsamo in 1940. The war was more a withdrawal under fire by the German troops, with relatively light casualties on both sides. Unfortunately, the Finnish armed forces were not strong enough to prevent the German destruction of Lapland while they withdrew. The Lapland War ended on April 27, 1945 because that's when the last German units withdrew to Norway. Germany surrendered to the Allies on May 7. 1945, a difference of ten days. Finland hadn't signed any separate armistice or peace with Germany, so their with Germany war also ended on May 7. 8. How many times would you like to set your hair in fire over a typo? Do you think I didn't actually know the correct date?
    1
  2838. The high here today was 98 F. Watching the video of the frozen river and the ice sculptures gave me a chill, even in this heat. I grew up in Cleveland, and I left partially due to the terrible winters. However, even Cleveland was nothing like Omsk. We'd get to minus 25 C sometimes but that was just for a couple days. I looked up the weather in Omsk for January. The average high is -12 C and the low is -20. The record low is -45 C. Even worse, they get snow on 28 days out of 31, and the total hours of sunshine is just 68, or about eight days in the month. On December 20, the first day of winter, the sun doesn't rise until 9:28 am and sets at 4:39 pm. I guess you learn how to make ice sculptures to keep from going crazy.
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  2839.  @jeffw1267  The test patterns remainjed on those stations in smaller markets where, as you say. they didn't have 24 hour programming. The test pattern was more for benefit of station technicians while making adjustments to the the transmitter, although knowledgeable users could also use them to make adjustments to their own sets. Once tube type TV's disappeared, there were very few adjustments a consumer could make to his set, all those adjustment knobs on the back of the set went away along with the tubes. Even now, if you happen to be watching some early morning infomercial or old movie st the right time, a test pattern will pop up for a few minutes while a tech tweaks some adjustment to the transmitter. It always gives me a a bit of nostalgia when I happen to catch one.
    1
  2840. Ah, okay, I didn't know there were two things both called Superchannel.
    1
  2841. Are you talking about the Canadian service called Superchannel? If so, it was never taken over by NBC. It has filed for bankruptcy twice since 2010, the last time in 2017. There's some serious question about it continuing as a going concern. Even NBC hasn't been stupid enough to put money onto Superchannel.
    1
  2842. I'm living in Alabama, USA, but a native of Ohio.
    1
  2843.  @UshankaShow  well, something's weird about her story. A pound was worth about $2.00 in October, 1978. If she had 40 pounds to spend, that means she had to come up with more than $80, accounting for the foreign exchange fee. She writes about buying at least some meals without when she was in these foreign countries, and it's hard for me to believe she wouldn't have bought at least some cheap souvenirs of the countries on the tour. That outs her near $100 total. As you've talked about your other videos, people with the right jobs could have money the state didn't know about. Just the boombox she talks about buying would have been more than $32 in 1978. Unless they stri serached her before she got on the ship, I can't see how they would know exactly how much money she really had with her. Something is fishy about her story when it comes to money, but that probably wasn't unusual in the days of the USSR.
    1
  2844. @InfiniteMushroom "...my comment is 100% accurate...". That is surely the most inaccurate comment I've read in a long time. Ignorance is certainly a good description of your knowledge of history and law.
    1
  2845.  @UshankaShow  LOL. No, better if you don't...
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  2846.  @manchagojohnsonmanchago6367  So Russia would classify one accident with four deaths as one death. That;s nonsensical. Do you have a link for that assertion?
    1
  2847. The fairest tax is a purchase tax on all products, from gasoline to groceries to houses. The rate can be different for each product within, say, eight broad categories, but no more complicated than that. No one, rich or poor, can escape a purchase tax. This is not a VAT, with all kinds of arcane calculations for the amount of tax, but a straight purchase tax. We can make it fair by having it apply to new goods only and have a program to rebate purchase taxes for those below a certain income level. People can control how much they pay in taxes by buying more or less used items and making more things themselves. The wealthy will automatically pay higher taxes because they purchase more goods and generally higher priced goods. We will also capture at least some of the estimated $100 billion black economy, since no one can escape a purchase tax. At the same time, we must eliminate all income taxes. We can then save even more money by laying off 75% of the federal, state, and local income tax authorities. It's the only way for a truly fair but non-progressive tax system I know about.
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  2848. The war before the invasion by Germany was the secret war planned with Germany for the annexations of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and parts of Romania. Those were seized without much military resistance. The secret plan alo allowed the Soviets to seize a mot of Finnish territory along Lake Ladoga as a buffer to help protect Leningrad. It was expected that operations, later known as the Winter War, would take about three weeks at the time the Red Army invaded on November 30,1939. This was about three months after the start of WWII and it was assumed the allies would be too tied up with German troops to send aid. That assumption proved to be correct, so Finland had to fight on its own. Finland did not roll over and play dead.. Instead of three weeks, the Finns fought on for three months. They fought the Russians to a standstill on almost all fronts and actually gained some Russian territory. Finally, the reorganization of the Russian Army , aided by executing a couple high level Russian Army generals, opened a crushing offensive ont the Finns. Driven back on all fronts but still capable of resisting, the Fins had almost no ammunition left and what remained of the air force grounded for lack of fuel. Finland signed an armistice on March 12, 1940/ The finns would get their revenge starting on June 22 when, as allies of Germany now, they launched and attack against Russian troops of Finnish soil. That, however, is a war for another time. The resistance of the Finns stands in stark contrast to the almost total lack of effective resistence the the Nazis as they moved west.
    1
  2849. Excellent video about a sketchy mission. It's possible Task Force Baum could have succeeded with enough close air support. Patton didn't give the air force enough time to come up with a coherent plan to cover the operation so what air support Baum did get was mostly ad hoc, mostly gotten through frantic radio calls. Very few infantry carried either the M1Ai or M9 "Bazooka" anti tank rockets so their ass was really in the wind once their armor was knocked out. Just an ill advised and poorly planned mission, and the failure was all on Patton's shoulders.
    1
  2850. The capture wasn't happenstance. Captain Gallery was bound and determined his task group was going to capture a U-boat intact. He had boarding parties trained and drilled them so they could board quickly and disable any scuttling charges. His men trained in shooting targets in the body center mass so as not to damage any instruments or important equipment with stray bullets if a gunfight broke out. They also trained with bayonets and, at least in one case, a cutlass . The escorts all practiced depth runs that would do the most apparent damage to a sub without actually sinking it. His gun crews worked on firing patterns that would stop the Germans from manning the deck guns. They trained their fire just above the deck so the hail of gunfire would force sailors overboard without causing further damage to the sub. The fast action of Gallery's men allowed the capture by boarding of the first enemy ship captured by US sailors in combat since 1789. A combat photographer was on board the Guadalcanal, so that's why we have such a good record of the capture. Admiral King was first going to court-martial Captain Gallery for towing the half sunken sub instead of getting the code books and sinking it. Admiral King rightly feared the Germans would find out about the capture and then change all their codes. Gallery had also drilled the men of the task force in secrecy. letting them know anyone who broke silence before the capture was announced would be spending the rest of the war guarding a lighthouse in the Aleutians. It worked, and not one man ever spoke of it until released by the Navy to do so. Gallery escaped a court-martial once those above King heard the story and saw the films. They knew they had the makings of the greatest Navy war bond drive ever. After the end of the war against Germany, that's exactly what happened, the U-505 visiting various East Coast cities during June, 1945, and raising millions from the sales of war bonds, with each bond purchased allowing the purchaser a tour of the boat, while the film of the capture played in an endless loop on the fantail. This notoriety and the work of Captain Gallery and his brother, Father John Gallery, to convince the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry to take the boat for display saved the U-505 from being sunk as a gunnery and torpedo target. As the video notes, the U-505 remains there to this day and is well worth a visit.
    1
  2851. Yes, the interrogation of those U-boat crews a touch more aggressive than waterboarding. The German T-5 torpedo, knows as the GNAT to the allies, was designed especially for a down the throat kind of attack used against USS Frederick C. Davis by the U-546. Even though the allies had developed countermeasures for the T-5, and Frederick C. Davis deployed one of these Foxer decoys, it wasn't fast enough against a target only 650 yards away. T-5's were used to sink about 50 escort vessels throughout the war, and USS Frederick C. Davis was probably its last victim.
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  2852. That siren off in the distance was a pretty weird thing to have happen while your were examining what used to be an air raid shelter. We have sirens in the US used for tornadoes and other severe weather warnings, but it doesn't look like there was any bad weather that day. Did you ever find out anything more about it?
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  2853. My late uncle was among the first of the US troops to occupy the Obersalzberg. They were part of a technical unit tasked with documenting Hitler's residences. Being a bunch of capitalists, they looked around at what they could take home with them that wouldn't technically be theft, but still give them something to sell back home. They decided on about 50 pounds of shattered marble pieces from the fireplace of the ruined great hall in the Berghof. They split it up between six guys and manage to get it back to the US in late 1945. One of the soldiers was a lieutenant, Arthur Weatherhead, president of Weatherhead Company, maker of aircraft parts. I don't know which one of them had the idea, but I assume it was Weatherhead. The company made a casting that was a replica of the Berghof fireplace with a small piece of the marble insertion at the top. My dad was a machinist that was an expert witt castings before the war, and Weatherhead hired him to make the fireplace castings. It was some kind of copper color, very heavy metal. At the top was the phrase, "Flick your ashes on Hitler's hearth". There's was a piece of paper glued to the back with a summary of how the ashtrays came to be. The last time I saw this ashtray was when I was about ten years old, so that would have been 1956, but that phrase has stuck with me all these years. I have no idea what happened to the ashtray. I had forgotten all about it before my dad passed away, but there were at least several hundred made. He moved around the west several times and I assume it was lost or discarded in one of those moves. To my knowledge, none were ever sold. They were given away to good customers and VIPs. My dad got his as a thanks from Weatherhead for making the castings. That temporary job turned intro permanent employment with Weatherhead. He was first a glassware washer in the lab. He went to college at night, got his engineering degree, and became an aeronautical engineer. He worker fro Weatherhead from 1945 until 1975. It was a great company, and they had employee picnics every ear where they rented Euclid Beach for the day, and all the kids had free run of the park, riding on as many rides as they could get in before barfing. There were tables laden with every kind of food you could imagine, and everyone got a steak, cooked by volunteer employees. He loved working for Weatherhead, but the aircraft industry recession of the mid 70's hit the company hard, and he was laid off, along with a thousand other employees, in 1976. My dad was an inveterate inventor, and he started a second career manufacturing a report binding machine of his own invention. He passed away in 2005. He was a great father and I miss him every day. Sorry for the length of this but, as you might imagine, I was pretty excited to see the subject of this fine video. I wish I still had that ashtray. I remember it and the story so well from my youth. I wonder if there are any left? Seems like they'd have some collector value if there are.
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  2854. I have yet to see any actual evidence to support this claim, but the British claimed massed fire by troops with bolt action .303 SMLE rifles were effective in the antiaircraft role. It was doctrinal to the British, and every infantryman learned how to use the SMLE sights in the antiaircraft role. You can see a British infantry squad at 7:07 headed for the foxhole to plug away at the Luftwaffe fighters sweeping in on the deck at 300 mph. The whole concept seems of doubtful effectiveness to me.
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  2855. The Piukara was a singularly unsuccessful aircraft during the Falklands War. The Argentine Air Force (AAF) deployed at least 24 aircraft to the Falklands and at least another 20 from mainland bases. Since the aircraft were designed for close air support and interdiction of ground forces. the RAF viewed them as a real risk. Instead, at least 11 were destroyed on the ground by a combination of air attack, SAS radis, and naval gunfire. The AAF conscript ground crews apparently had no training in dispersing and camouflaging the craft on the ground, so they were found neatly lined up in rows on airfields. Only a few were dispersed to hastily prepared landing strips, something the Pukara was supposed to be able to handle. One of these craft shot down a Marine Scout helicopter, the only Argentine air ot air victory of the war. Another Pucara, flying from one of these outlying strips that was unknown to the British, attacked troops advancing toward Goose Green. It was promptly shot down by small arms fire. It was the only known attack by a Pukara on British troops. In the defense of Argentine pilots, they were limited to only a few hours flying a month due to Argentine budget restrictions, and the aircraft didn't carry the kinds of radar and navigation instruments needed for low level, nap of the earth flying. This deficiency led to one Pukara being brought down by a Stinger missile. In the end, eleven Pukaras were captured by the British. The AAF still has faith in the Pukara, although it probably doesn't have much choice. Other than a dozen A-4M FightingHawk attack aircraft and a couple IA-63 trainer/ground attack aircraft, the Pukara is the only combat aircraft available, and the only counterinsurgency craft. 20 have been taken in hand to upgrade their electronics and weapons fits and add modern engines. They should be much more effective aircraft when the upgrades are finally complete. With typical Argentine budget problems and bureaucratic meddling, a program that was supposed to be complete by 2017 is still dragging on today. It's expected the upgraded aircraft will soldier on until 2045, the last survivors of the Falklands War.
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  2856. The final report to the Luftwaffe on the electronic reconnaissance mission stated that the RAF was using coded communication frequencies that were scattered in the same 10 to 12 meter bands as those used by the Luftwaffe. 10-12 meters (24 -29.950 MHZ) was a common frequency band used for air to ground communications in the 1930's, but the Germans thought even 12 meters (24.890–24.990 (1.800 MHz, just above standard AM broadcasting)
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  2857. I've never understood why the Russians just didn't take the area around the Reichstag and then just lay siege to the Reichstag and starve out the Germans. I realize there were political considerations about taking the capital, but leaving the Germans to die on the vine would have saved lives on both sides.
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  2858. Very timely episode for me since I got my first kitten about six weeks ago. There's no doubt in my mind that Marty will make short work of any vermin that does shows up. Marty will live in more modest digs compared to the British Chief Mouser's palatial home, but I'm certain each will be equally valuable.
    1
  2859. If the crew had been better trained in lifeboat handling and the passengers had at least one lifeboat drill during the voyage, many more lives could have been saved.
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  2860. @Redsand No, I don't need to know the name of your school. I guess I should have asked what country it is in. So we agree the number of people Stalin murdered is somewhere above half a million but lower than a million? If so, what did the experiences of two people in the Soviet Union have to do with that fact?
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  2861. The French had more tanks than the Germans and a far larger army. The French, which would have been backed up in weeks by Britain, could have defeated German in a matter of months if they had prosecuted the attacks like they were in a real war.
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  2862.  @timonsolus  The term around because land forces on both sides pretty much stayed within their own lines and no battles of any size took place. The war at seas was far from phoney right from Day One, wth Royal Oak being sunk just into the second month of the war, and U-boats German raiders getting into action against British shipping even earlier. The end of the "Phony War" was marked by the invasion of Norway in April 1940, with the German and British navies being heavily involved.
    1
  2863. Thanks very much for the segment. It's the first time I've seen some of the videos. This had to be one of the few times beached landing craft used their 20mm and 40mm guns in the role of direct fire support.
    1
  2864. Mark, I thought I'd let you know that your link only goes to Amazon UK. We lowly Yanks can't buy from there. I found it after hunting around a bit on the US Amazon site but you might think about adding the US link to your description. The link I used to purchase the book is https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GZWV5DT/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
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  2865. fazole, I see you are deep in the "Hitler escaped to South America" fantasy. The one Ju 390 V1 was destroyed on the ground in Dessau on April 25 when there are many witnesses that Hitler was still in Berlin. There's no evidence Ju 390 V2 ever flew. Professor Heinrich Hertel, the technical director for Junkers stated that the V2 was never completed. The only claim it flew comes from one author who says he saw the logbook of test pilot Oberleutnant Joachim Eisermann, nd the log has two flights for the V2 on February 19, 1945. No one has ever seen this supposed log book. Even if true, the total flying time was 70 minutes. In any event, the V2 had a projected range of about 9500 km with maximum fuel. We will never know if either version could have achieved this range since neither ever took off with more than a half load of fuel. The story about the Japan flight comes from one author, James P O'Donnell, who claims Albert Speer told him of a secret flight over the pole sometime late in the war. Speer never mentions this in any of his other writings nor is mentioned by Kössler or Ott, two reliable Luftwaffe historians. No one in Japan has ever been found who knows of this supposed flight, and there's no mention of the plane ever getting back to Germany if such a flight occured. As to your idea in another comment that a "secure air corridor was formed from Berlin to Denmark in the last days", well, I guess I'd need more proof than a film presenting yet another theory. The Luftwaffe was barely able to get a plane off the ground without being attacked by allied aircraft in the last days of the war. The whole idea of a secure air corridor is just laughable.
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  2866.  @jadeharvey1265  First, learn how to spell. Second, of course I don't have the same opinion about the Germans. Genocide was a state policy of the Nazis, and they left behind mountains of evidence of it in use.
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  2867. Excellent video. Hardly anyone in the military history community has presented much information on Flight 777 until now. There may have been another reason for 777 becoming a target. Despite Leslie Howard's reputation as a ladies man, there have been persistent rumors that he was secretly gay, or at least bisexual. The Germans supposedly had compromising photos of him. If they existed, they would have been devastating to his career and, by extension, the British war effort. An Abwehr agent was going to meet with him in Lisbon to threaten him with exposure if he didn't turn and become a double agent for the Germans. Churchill got wind of this from yet more decrypted Enigma transmissions. Howard was the most popular British male actor of the period, and he served as a spokesman for the British cause. Churchill and MI6 believed Howard had become too big a risk to MI6 operations since he knew many of the British spies operating in neutral Europe. They were also planning the Churchill deception on flight 777. It was going to be a much better outcome for MI6 if Howard was aboard 777, since he would go down in flames as a hero, and his death would cause yet more anti-German feeling in Britain. All this is just one part of a swirl of rumors about 777. I've never been able to find any solid proof for any of this. All the information supposedly came from people now long dead, and who had good reason to try to remain anonymous. It's a good example of how intelligence agencies in WWII, and I'm sure up until now, plan tissues of lies until no one knows the real truth.
    1
  2868.  @hddun  LOL. Things were different in WWI.
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  2869. The problem for the British was the standard aircraft armament was one or two Vickers .303 machine guns. They had a rate of fire of only about 450 rounds per minute. The R.VI's four MG14 guns that fired a larger 7.92mm round and did so at 550-650 rounds per minute. Sine there's only a few seconds to score hits during aerial combat, four guns firing 2400 rounds per minute will always put more holes in an enemy plane that two Vickers guns firing 900 rounds per minute. This was something the RAF had to learn again in WWII.
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  2870. Not like NYC. It's the location of Newark Airport compared to Manhattan that has resulted in a number plane crashes. The normal approach at one time was within a few miles of Manhattan. That was changed after the 1946 crash to take incoming flights furter from Manhattan, but flying in instrument conditions with no instruments means you still need to get low enough to see the ground before landing. All it takes is being a few miles off in a high hazard location like Manhattan.
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  2871. I wonder why the British and French didn't just do an amphibious assault to start with? It seems the Port Said "fortress" really had no defenses against a seaborne invasion, and even a half hour's worth of pre-landing bombardment would have demoralized the essentially second line Egyptian forces into being ready to surrender. Between the British and French, there more than enough carriers to provide air cover and cruisers and destroyers for shore bombardment. I understand the RN felt they were too short of landing craft, but the Port Said area was geographically a small target and, as shown by the light casualties suffered on both sides, also not a heavily defended target. An amphibious assault still seems much less risky than using paras that hadn't participated in airborne assault in over ten years. I wonder if the British received faulty intelligence on how heavily Port Said was defended seaward?
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  2872. British and American airborne radar was more advanced that German technology for the whole period of the war. The Germans never developed an operational series production version of the cavity magnetron centimetric radar used by the Allies. The Germans had to use VHF and UHF frequencies for their radar, resulting in the mass of yagi type of antennas littering the nose of the Ju-88s. The aerodynamics of the plane were so degraded by the need for long range FuG 220 and short range FuG 202 antennas that the top speed was reduced by at least 30 mph, and jamming these lower frequency signals was much easier for the Allies. It wasn't until the development of the FuG 240 Berlin radar near the end of the war, reversed engineered from a crashed British plane, that the Luftwaffe finally had a centimetric radar, but it never went much beyond prototype testing before the war ended. HItler's assumption that airborne radar wouldn't be needed after the early capitulation of Britain caused him to direct resources be put elsewhere. It was a disastrous error for the Luftwaffe.
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  2873. Thanks, Mark, excellent selection of interesting contents as usual. At the rate we're going, I hope our current civil airports don't end up looking like those wreck sites, with no one flying anywhere and planes just end up being grounded.
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  2874. It wasn't the subs that failed, it was their weapons. Many boats staged attacks where they fired four and five torpedoes, all duds. Firing off a quarter of your torpedo loadout with no effect except attacks by Japanese depth charges can make a captain a little timid. Most skippers had never fired a fish in anger so it would take time for them to get good, even with good torpedoes. Time was one thing they didn't have. To top it off, all the boats with the exception of a few S class boats had a gun armament of a single 3"/50 and a Lewis gun. The 3" gun was specified because the submarine command didn't want the boats to be tempted to slug it out with enemy patrol craft on the surface. Unfortunately, the deck gun was all they had left, and some commanders fought it out on the surface anyway. The Sculpin is one example, sinking at least two and maybe four merchant ships on the surface in the opening days of the war. Many subs were tied up transporting Filipino and American treasure and taking "important" people to Java and Australia. When caught on the surface by an air attack, the single Lewis gun and, if the commander was lucky and got it set up on the conning tower in time, the single water cooled .50 caliber machine gun, didn't stand much of a chance shooting down Japanese bombers.
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  2875. The four 7.92 mm MG 81 machine guns were specially designed to be demountable. They could be mounted on the lightweight tripods carried for each gun. With enough time and a well trained crew, the results could be devastating against enemy troops not expecting a fight.
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  2876. I'm getting a sense of deja vu today...
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  2877. Some parts for the crashed German aircraft were secretly provided by Spain. Parts and some manuals were also provided. In return, the British smuggled in replacement parts for some machine tools and raw materials unavailable is Spain during the war. This has only been revealed in the last couple of years.
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  2878. Not quite. The Argentine Air Force is still operating the twin turboprop Pucara, a modernised version of the original Pucara close air support aircraft flown in combat during the Falklands war. The Argentine Navy operates 10 T-34C-1 armed versions of the turboprop T-34 trainer, also flown in combat during the war. The US Air Force, Navy, and Marines also operate hundreds of the T-34C. Although this is the unarmed version, there's no reason it couldn't be converted to carry underwing loads if the occasion demanded it. Several hundred Embraer Super Tucano turboprop ground attack aircraft are also flying today. None of these can hold a candle to the largest turboprop combat aircraft ever, the Russian TU-95 bomber, also still flying.
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  2879. Thanks. I kind of pride myself on knowing the history of the Nuremberg trials and this was the first I've heard of retrained Waffen-SS soldiers as part of the guard force.
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  2880. The shelling of the English coast was yet another proof that long range artillery attacks are just not very effective for the amount of effort expended. The Channel Dash also showed that shore batteries aren't very effective at hitting moving targets either.
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  2881. Great story. Saturn sure had the alligator equivalent of nine lives.
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  2882. How cool. I thought I'd hear just about everything from the Korean war but this was a new one on me. Goog research.
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  2883.  @Simon_Nonymous  IIRG, the Mosquitos that flew the blockbuster missions had an extra tank in the forward part of the bomb bay and two slipper tanks on the iwngs. That was enough to get them to Berlin and back, as long as the jet stream wasn't against them on the way home. There was always a weather recon Mosquito or Lightning flying ahead of them to check on the winds, and it was always a close run thing. While they could fly two missions a day, the plane did require refueling before the second mission. English Electric produced some fine aircraft before becoming just part of BAC. The Canberra and Lightning were two world beating aircraft, but BAC just wasn't the right combination for English Electric.
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  2884.  @brianmoore1164  What's an old lie? I have no idea what you're referring to.
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  2885. Another interesting video. Good example of what happens to any armor trying to advance without air cover. The slow speed of the Churchill made escape once they discovered the German ambush.
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  2886. And, even if the E-100 had ever been built, there would have been no fuel to run them anyway. It's another example of late war German engineering taking the place of serious designs.
    1
  2887. Thanks, Mark. This is the kind of story that puts the risks of coronavirus into perspective.
    1
  2888. Jack Northrop's N-1M was first powered flying wing. The Horton was the first jet powered flying wing, but it was almost four years later than the N-1M.
    1
  2889.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Ah, well, since I'm a retired bum, I no longer have to worry about resumes. Must be a difficult job market now with no one knowing what's going to be locked down and when. I turn 75 next month (assuming I make it that far) and I never thought I'd see our country more or less destroyed in less than a year. I've never gotten into Star Trek. My late wife loved it, and I'm sure she would have been a great player at the game. I don't think a lot of MP games are written for straight history nerds like me. Probably none, actually. :-)
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  2890.  @WALTERBROADDUS  LOL. I'll take the extra credit from you. I haven't seen you around much lately. What have you been up to?
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  2891. The Argentine Air Force was the first in South America with jet fighters after buying at least 100 from Britain, starting in 1947. It also had a large force of Lincoln and lancaster strategic bombers and I.Ae. 24 Calquin fighter bombers and English Electric Canberra jest medium bombers, the first jet bomber in South America. The Argentine Air Force was easily the most powerful in South America and one of the largest in the world. The air force never again achieved that strength again, and the Argentine Air Force today is but a shadow of its former self, never having recovered from looses in the Falklands War. It's sole jet combat aircraft are a theoretical 24 A-4 Fightinghawk fighter bombers, with perhaps 4-6 still operational, the rest being in storage. It also has a small force of IA 63 Pampa jet trainers with a secondary combat capability. It no longer includes any supersonic aircraft, pure fighters, or bombers. Even its transport fleet has run down to a force of six C-130, two of which also serve in the aerial tanker role.
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  2892. I need to look it up, but I'm reasonably certain the US Army had a full size remote control tank by 1938, being used in war games in that year. I'm not aware of any being used in combat.
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  2893. The retaking of South Georgia will make a damn good video. One of those operations were not much went according to plan but it all worked out anyway. It even involved rescuing two women filmmakers who had been evading the Argentine troops for over a month.
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  2894. @Joo Idiot troll.
    1
  2895. The Swiss killed more allied airmen than Allied bombings killed the Swiss. There's zero solid evidence these bombings were anything more than mistakes. There is evidence that the Swizz permitted Luftwaffe intelligence to inspect interred US bombers, a clear violation of their supposed neutrality. The s=Swiss din't have clean hands on almost aspect of the war. We knew that German aircraft were being allowed to deliberately fly over Swiss territory, most often in pursuit of damaged bombers, but also as an air bridge between Italy and Germany. We should have sent the Swiss an ultimatum to stop attacking allied aircraft that strayed over Switzerland or their aircraft and airbases would be destroyed.
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  2896.  @Argentvs  That's what I read as well. It took the Navy awhile before they understood the problem and corrected it. I don't think any navy would have been expecting the extreme low level attacks that the navy and air force was making. I saw one report from a navy A-4 pilot who could barely see to land because his windscreen was coated in spray from the waves as he came in to attack. The army may not have thought this was a real war, but air force and navy pilots sure did.
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  2897.  @KB4QAA  Okay, arming the fusing, which can and was changed by a couple of the bomb techs that knew how to do it. Yes, it was dangerous, but they wanted to sink RN ships. Returning pilots reported the hits with no detonation, and going in at 10 feet was the only way to evade the CAP and AA missiles, and going in with zero altitude arming was the only way to do it. I guess I should amend my statement about detonating bombs to there were two that did explode when hitting Coventry , but the after action reports states the third unexploded bomb is what caused the fatal damage. I'm sure you know of Antelope sinking after attempts to disarm an unexploded bomb. My point, without making this into a book, was if all the bomb hits actually detonated, the damage to the task force would have been far greater than the six ships that were sunk.
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  2898. Other than the USN, every navy WWII seemed to think human torpedoes ot very small submersibles were a cheap ad easy way to sink ships in harbor. It was also seen as a good way to spread terror and confusion around the anchorage. In reality, about as many submarineers were lost as enemy personnel, and, with a few notable exceptions, The ships that did get sunk were small and inconsequential to the outcome of the. A couple generations have now passed since WWII, and everyone around then is either retired or dead. Therefore, I expect to see a renewed interest in these craft, as modern navies can do them "right" this time!
    1
  2899.  @PU8698  0630 where I live.
    1
  2900.  @haljohnson6947  I just happened to see this. To anyone else who might be thinking of posting, this thread is up to 425 replies. Everything is long loat in these masses of posts. If you have a thought on the subject, post a new thread rather than adding on to this already too long mass of replies.
    1
  2901.  @edoedo8686  Goodness. Ten years at hard labor in Leavenworth would indicate he had done more than just being AWOL for the first time.
    1
  2902. Not any longer. All the ex-USN LST's have been retired. One, the ex-RHS Syros, ex-LST-325, was given to The USS LST Memorial, Inc, a group made up of mostly retired LST sailors. They made an epic voyage in the now officially renamed USS LSt-325, sailing her back to the US from Greece under her own power, starting on December 15, 2000 and arriving in Mobile AL on January 10, 2001. With the exception of one "youngster" of 52, the average age of the crew of 29 was 71. They made all the underway repairs and solved numerous mechanical faults to bring their ship back home. It's quite a story for anyone interested in naval history, and one impossible to read without a few tears.
    1
  2903. Otherwise known as a "station hack". The Bf.108 were three of hundreds of obsolescent or war weary aircraft that were pressed into the communications and personnel transport. They were also a way for the station commander and command staff to keep up their flying hours, so many missions were flown by high ranking personnel. It must have been quite a shock to the line guys at some distant airbase to see a little plane descend and have a wing commander or even group captain step out of the pilot's seat.
    1
  2904. The Lightning was a world beater of an interceptor, but that was also its downfall. By the mid-60's, air forces wanted multirole fighters. The Lightning could initially only carry a load of air to air missiles. 30 mm cannon packs were developed oce it became clear that dogfights were still going to occur, and attempts were made to add a ground attack capability, mainly for export. Try as they might, BAC was never able to successfully convert this thoroughbred to a bomb truck. The Lightning continued to serve as the RAF's main air defense fighter until the last ot them were retired 1988, not because they were obsolete, but because they were just worn out.
    1
  2905. Cool story. The US did the same with tanks ranging from Shermans to M-60's, plus some captured Soviet tanks. The details were about the same. The crews would have died but, as soon as monitor repairs were done and new crews obtained, the tanks could have been put back in service again. How likely all that would have been on an atomic battlefield is open to question, but is showed tanks are hard to destroy without direct hits. It did lead directly to the doctrine that tactical nukes would have been needed to break up Soviet tank concentrations rather than large area effect weapons.
    1
  2906. Another part of this story is the heroic rescue carried out by a Martin PMB-R Mariner flying boat. She was the transport version of the armed patrol bomber. She happened to be in Fiji on a refueling stop on the way back to Hawaii. The naval commander in charge at Fiji, having heard of the Cape San Juan sinking and being in possession her last known position from the RNZAF Hudson, asked if the Mariner could help. Neither Captain William W. Moss Jr., the plane's commander, or his crew had any training in ocean rescues. They were merely freight pilots, flying supplies between Hawaii and our Pacific outposts. Still, Capt. Moss, a Pan Am Clipper pilot before the war and pressed into service at the start, was an expert at handling big flying boats in rough water, so he was willing to give it a try. He gathered his crew together to tell them of the mission. He said they may never find the sinking ship and, if they did, he might not be able to get the plane safely down in the huge waves out there. Getting the plane back in the air was even more doubtful. He was only asking for volunteers, Not only did his entire crew raise their hands, several other naval officers also wanted to risk it. Knowing the capabilities of the Mariner, Capt Moss was forced to turn down these offers as well as leaving being three of his own crew so there would be maximum room for survivors. The crew hurriedly stripped everything from the plane not absolutely needed for flight to give them their best chance of getting back in the air if they made it safely down. After getting as much fuel as possible into the main tanks and two auxiliary tanks, the Mariner lifted off shortly after noon Fiji time. After a rough five hour flight through tropical rain squalls, they were at the last known position of the ship. They could see nothing through the squalls until there was what one crewman called a "miraculous break in the clouds" and right below them lay the Cape San Juan. Capt Moss could see many men in the water with very little hope of survival in the 15 foot swells. At the time, he didn't know about the shark carnage beneath him. Two more RNZAF Hudsons were circling about eight miles south of the Mariner, vigorously wagging their wings. Moss decided to investigate and found the Hudsons pointing out an eight mile long streak of floating oil, the slick reducing the waves from 15 feet to "only" 5 feet. After checking with his copilot, First Officer Frank Saul, they decided that the oil slick was their best chance and prepared the crew for landing. As he got closer, he could see black dots floating the slick, the dots being survivors in the water. He managed to set the plane down at the head of the slick and bounced along wave crests for almost the full length of the slick before finally settling down on the ocean.  A quick check showed the boat was not significantly damaged, so the next task was rescue. The crew threw out a liferaft at the end of a 100 foot line of rope. They taxied to the area where they had seen the most men in the water and killed the engines, fearing some men could be killed by the spinning props as the plane was coming down into the trough of a wave. For the next two hours, Capt. Moss kept the nose pointed into the wind as the plane surfed the waves.The survivors grabbed the lifeline and then pulled themselves into the raft. When the raft was full, Mariner crew hauled the raft to the plane and unceremoniously dumped the men into the plane. They repeated this five times until they had taken 48 survivors onboard. The plane was far over the normal maximum takeoff weight by then. One of the Hudsons fired two red Very flares. Moss didn't know what they meant, only that red meant danger, and there might be another sub in the area. Since the plane was already overfilled anyway. Moss ordered the auxiliary tanks jettisoned and prepared for takeoff. The helpful Hudsons once again circled the best slick, and the Mariner taxied over and pointed the nose into the wind. Spooling up the engines to full power, the takeoff run began. It took a full 50 seconds by Saul's watch. The plane once again was gyrating wildly from wave to wave, one time almost dipping the port wing into the sea. Finally, one more collison with the top of a wave tossed the Mariner 50 feet into the air, and the Mariner started to fly. After another five or so miles of flying in ground effect 100 feet above the top of the waves, the boat was finally able to climb and turn for Fiji. A last minute addition to the crew was Pharmacist’s Mate A.C. Burress, and he treated the injured men, some with shark bites, on the way home. In addition to bandaging wounds and setting broken bones, some got morphine and some got swigs of Admiral Halsey's whiskey, pressed into Moss's hands by one of the officers that had volunteered but had to be left behind. The rescued men were grateful for both types of medicine. The men were further treated at the naval hospital after a safe and relatively easy landing in the Suva lagoon. Capt. Moss and First Officer Saul were both technically civilians so not eligible for medals. The best they got was a commendation letter from the Navy. Moss had a half bottle of whiskey left which he intended to share with the crew. By the time he got to his quarters, it was near midnight. As he sat at the end of his bunk, he started to take a swig of the whiskey, but ended up downing the entire half bottle. He then fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, yet another unsung hero from that war so long ago. Sorry for the length of this, but I felt like this was a story that needed to be told.
    1
  2907.  @MarkFeltonProductions  Sounds like another one of your books I need to buy then. You write great history books without seeming like a history book, if you know what I mean. The Italian submarines acting as freighters for the Germans would make a great video.
    1
  2908. Seems like every country needs some kind of aliens to keep them occupied. It sounds like Holt was more invested in this thing than a deputy commander should be. Maybe it was Santa making late deliveries in his new CIA Super Sleigh. What it was was, a Merry Christmas to you and the rest of the subs of this fascinating channel.
    1
  2909. An even better choice would have been another Chadwick design, the Avro Lincoln. It was a cleaned up and more powerful variant of the Lancaster, and it had the top speed and service ceiling to make a safer drop of the bomb. Range, at only 1,500 miles with an atomic bomb, was nearly 1.000 miles less that a B-29, and the rate of climb was about 200 feet less. That still meant air to air refueling, and getting above the blast fast enough would have still been close. Still, the Lincoln would have been a better choice if it had come to the Silverplate not doing the job.
    1
  2910. The fact that British didn't seem to understand why they might need tanks to repel an attack from an enemy invoicing from the north is one thing. The lack of anti personnel and anti tank mines is what really cost the British the chance to stop the Japanese advance. Things would have gone much slower if the Japanese were forced to demine that road rather than being able to just drive down it. Anti tank guns and artillery are useless unless they can get into a semi-prepared position ahead of the line of march, and mines would have given them time to do that. The British didn't lack weapons except for those critical mines and tanks.
    1
  2911.  @Muckylittleme  Firstly, your need to insult everyone who disagrees with you is juvenile and tiresome. Second, you can't prove one case by using similar cases that aren't identical. Your assertion that something happening on a different submarine somewhere else is the very definition of a strawman. If you're going to accuse others of failures in logic you need to examine your own statements first.
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  2912. Am I the only one who first hear the name as BeBop?
    1
  2913. Space Nazis! This will attract some views. The V-2 was a lot better as a space vehicle than it was as a weapon. I don't think many pilots would have survived their A-9 trips.
    1
  2914. The Italian Co-Belligerent Navy was made up of men that almost all went over to the allied side. It had nine cruisers, 33 destroyers, 39 submarines, and a number the excellent Italian motor torpedo boats. Most were used in the Mediterranean, although at least three submarines were part of allied invasion of D-Day, and a larger number were used in the invasion od southern France. The cruisers and destroyers were valuable ships for convoy escort and shore bombardment. The submarines sunk a number of German vessels during the southern France campaign as well as in Italy for the mopping up of German forces still in Italy after the armistice. The navy in general was considered the least loyal to then fascist government, and Mussolini was always careful to have at least one political officer that acted essentially as spies to report any disloyalty or possible mutinies. Several were shot after the armistice as the Italian crews hated them and turned on them the first chance they got. There were active plans to integrate the Co-Belligerent Navy into allied forces for the final push into Japan, plans not carried out due to the surrender of Japan. Three of the four Italian submarines stranded in Japanese waters after the armistice. The crew of the Ammiraglio Cagni heard of the armistice by radio on September 9 and managed to evade Japanese and German patrols by heading south. The boat surrendered off Durban, South Africa to the Flower class corvette HMS Jasmine on September 20. Crews of the other. three subs were interned by the Japanese after the armistice and were turned over to the German Pacific command. The Reginaldo Giuliani was sunk on February 17, 1944 by the HMS _Tally-Ho_. The other two made a few patrols with mostly German crews before the German surrender. The two subs were seized by the Japanese after the surrender, and about twenty Italian sailors agreed to fight for the Japanese while rest chose to be POW's. The last Italian submarine still in combat for s facist power may have been the last enemy vessel to shoot down an allied aircraft when the _Luigi Torelli_, unaware of the end of the war, shot down a patrolling B-25 off the coast of Java on September 30, 1945.
    1
  2915.  @MarkFeltonProductions  Sorry, Brother, we Yanks sometimes have a hard time agreeing on how to pronounce things. The pronunciation I gave comes from two sources. The first is from a presentation on the Waco glider at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, given by the grandson of one of the founders of the Weaver Aircraft Company, the designers of the gliders. Waco comes from an acronym of the company name, and he pronounced it as "Way-coo" during his entire presentation. I'm just making the presumption he heard the company name many times in his life. He was about 80 when I heard his talk. Secondly, at least in the US, the company name pronounced "Whacko" would have an unfortunate connotation, meaning nutter or mad. Hardly the kind of thing you want guys about to get into an aircraft with no engine thinking about. :-)
    1
  2916. Merry Christmas, Dr. Mark, and everyone watching another fine video. A small correction, however. The Waco glider is pronounced "Way-coo".
    1
  2917. Clement Attlee, as British PM from 1945 to 1951, was a vehement anticolonialist when it came to the French. He felt betrayed by the French armistice In WWII and was determined that the French could have their colonies back as long as they got no help from the British doing so. Attlee had no interest in having British soldiers die to protect French interests. Things may have turned out differently if Churchill was still PM.
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  2918. Sounds interesting. Lord knows we could use a good military history channel, and I suspect Dr Felton's offering will be top notch.
    1
  2919. That's a large and famous luxury hotel in Paris commandeered by the Kriegsmarine for use as headquarters in France. The actual Kriegsmarine headquarters in Berlin was not quite so large or impressive.
    1
  2920. 10,395 likes/10,876 dislikes. on 4/20 at 0730 CDT.
    1
  2921. Thank God for the US Constitution. If I feel like it, I can say things to you that you don't like, and I'm protected by the First Amendment. No, it's not perfect, but at least I don't have to worry about the cops showing up if I decide to teach my dog to do some silly salute.
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  2922. The local oscillator became a big deal for the US Navy during WWII. Some engineers were convinced that radion for the LO could be picked up by enemy ships and sub and used to home in on their position. The superhet made this worse since there was more radiation from the LO compared to older tuned RF and regenerative receivers. Companies like Hallicrafters and Scott played off those fears and designed "low radiation" radios that were supposedly safe from detection. Such "radiation safe" receivers used things like an extra RF amplifier with an additional coil catacomb and tuning condensers to reduce LO radiation below the 400pW (picowatts) limit required by the Navy. The Navy prohibited anyone bringing onboard a radio not marked as being low radiation, and the typical superhet available to sailors was always a high radiation radio. Ships installed radios like the Scott RBO model in radio shacks and then fed programming out to different areas of the ship through the ship's distribution system. They were commonly known as entertainment or "morale" receivers since they could be used to pick up news and entertainment stations from US broadcast band and shortwave transmitters. They were only supposed to be used to listen to US or British stations. Nevertheless, they were commonly used to pick up Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally since both services had the most up to date music on them. The sailors didn't care about the propaganda being broadcast, just the music Although LO radiation was real, how far it could be detected is another matter. Radio companies and some Navy radio engineers convinced the Navy that German shore stations could pick up LO radiation from as far was 1000 miles away! Tests done after the war showed that even under ideal conditions, radiation detection wasn;t possible for more than half a mile away, and it was usually no more than a 100 feet. The Navy spent a lot of money to buy the radiation safe receivers that, as it turned out, really weren't needed, The upside was the radios were also shielded from stray incoming signals and could operate well in a radio
    1
  2923.  @bootchop88  Holy shit! Did you have to think a long time before you came up with that or did it just pop out?
    1
  2924. Being an American, I have no idea what most of these kids are saying. I don't know if that's a good thing.
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  2925. I agree. I can hardly understand it at all.
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  2926.  @mobilechikane8574  In 1973, when the UK entered in the EEC, the British auto industry was still the third largest in the world. In 2019, the British auto industry was the #13 after Thailand. With the exception of a few small companies, there no more British owned car companies. There are no British aircraft companies. Now, not all of this industrial decline wasn't due to the EEC/EU, but Britain certainly wasn't helped by them.
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  2927.  @pneron2032  Guess what? When you don't own a place, it's not your choice if you want to stay put. Life is hard.
    1
  2928. What a waste. Show the whole thing or nothing.
    1
  2929.  @nkt1  So why bring up a product that has zero demand except as a strawman? Do you think the numbers and types of tyres available today are any less than in 1977? Any problem getting a tyre today, even for long obsolete cars, from a dealer or available online? I rather doubt it, so something obviously changed. There was a temporary shortage of certain types of tyres, but the gentleman from the tyre dealer's association said they could get them with enough notice. Doesn't seem like a big crisis.
    1
  2930.  @nkt1  No, but the idea there should be some kind of law to limit the types of tyres smacks a wee bit of socialism, eh?
    1
  2931.  @MrThecarebear  And? We have GP7s and GP9s still in service that are now between 65 and 70 years old. What has this got to do with running a socialist or capitalist railroad?
    1
  2932. And, at least on this side of the pond, we have Carfax. Tells you the last time someone spilled a coffee on the carpet or if it was ever totalled. Is there not something like that over there now?
    1
  2933. He couldn't have dented the caravan. The worst he could do was put a ding in the fiberglass cover over the propane tank, and I didn't even see evidence of that.
    1
  2934.  @indiekid74  Possibly, but one two second shot of a police car not even a single police officer just talking to all those people on the street...well, they could have just as easily been "patrolling" from a taxi.
    1
  2935.  @richardtheeighth4431  That usually the kind of licensing demanded for commercial use. An outlet like The History Channel, for example, that wanted to show a complete episode would have to pay, the amount generally predicated on the size of audience. I don't think this is for individuals. They have shown complete episodes of programs like TV Eye. Maybe these are just 30 second commercials to attract outlets that might license them. If so, I wish they're say that in the title, although it's hard for me to understand how silent 30 second clips with no context for the complete show would attract anyone.
    1
  2936.  @richardtheeighth4431  Fremantle owns the rights to all of the former Thames programming. Why would I have to pay them a license to watch what they already own?
    1
  2937. Thirty seconds? You couldn't find more that 30 seconds worth of this program?
    1
  2938.  @gmg9010  Right, but title wasn't "Mount Snowdon Scenery", was it? I'd expect to see mostly what was in the title.
    1
  2939.  supernumery  Do you think I wasn't a fully sentient human being in 1982? Do you think I wasn't actually watching TV then? We had 12 VHF and 69 UHF channels available. Do you think that combination wasn't enough to provide 8 TV channels. There were actually 16 Los Angeles channels on the air on October 1, 1982. That doesn't count a couple more channels from places like Santa Barbara and San Bernardino that were receivable with a good antenna system, and even XETV out of Tijuana that I was able to get when conditions were right. Just as a suggestion, the next time you want to type a lot of nonsense you know nothing about, open up Notepad and have at it. It's better than looking like an idiot on here. (https://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?486992-RETRO-LOS-ANGELES-TV-Friday-October-1-1982)
    1
  2940. You mean 20 seconds of a 59 second clip that's silent. A steam train with no sound isn't much worth watching.
    1
  2941. All those prices sound cheap today.
    1
  2942.  @kamrankhan-lj1ng  Everyone looks like they are going too fast at times. I can't tell if that's real or an artifacts of the camera though.
    1
  2943. These things are just getting worse. Cammers that are causing the problems they report on, showing "almost" accidents", brake checking for no reason. Seriously, this has become like a bunch of 16 year olds who shouldn't be driving.
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  2944. @BMC And you still don't understand the difference between production and exports. You expect me to believe the export of oil went from 30% of GDP to 1% is less than six years? Maybe you should ring up the embassy and ask them. There is no point in discussing this any farther with a nationalist who will not accept any evidence that contradicts your fantasy. Goodbye.
    1
  2945. @BMC Your combination of defective understanding about what the GDP measures and misplaced nationalism has caused you to lie about oil's role in the UAE GDP not once, but twice. The article you linked to mentions nothing about a 1% oil contribution. However, since I don't rely on Wikipedia for anything, how about numbers right from the source - The UAE Embassy in DC? "As a mainstay to the economy, oil exports now account for about 30 percent of total UAE gross domestic product." https://www.uae-embassy.org/about-uae/uae-economy With that, I'm done with you. Anyone calling me a racist for a simple recitation of facts is not worth any more of my time.
    1
  2946. @BMC You must be reading a UAE economic report, otherwise known as you're full of shit. Oil and gas are still 26% od GDP. The same sectors contribute 36% of government revenues, and the introduction of VAT added another 6% UAE population is 9.5 million, but only about 11.5% of them are native Emiratis and citizens. Except for a few select people, it's nearly impossible to become a citizen and enjoy the benefits the UAE extends to citizens. Another significant source of government revenue is the taxes levied on remittances by non-citizens. The UAE imports everyone needed for manual labor, and most Emiratis either don't work or will only stoop to white color jobs. As a result of this, Emiratis are some of the most obese people in the world, with 32% of the native population classed as obese. Non-citizens are not allowed to join labor unions and have no protection under UAE labor laws. Finally, the UAE us seventh richest country in the world by GDP per capita, coming in right after Ireland. Not much of a prize for a country with the seventh largest oil deposits in the world. Now get lost until you decide to quit lying.
    1
  2947.  @RockMonster1000  I blame coronavirus...
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  2948. Okay, I'm out of here. Do you just show every "near miss" video every 18 year old driver sends in? Most of these weren't even more than what most of us see in normal driving. It's like feminists that complain they were "nearly raped". This channel has really gone down the dumper.
    1
  2949. Did you ever make the video of the superheterodyne radio? If you did, I can't find it on channel. The superhet was critical to radio being an everyday item in the home.
    1
  2950.  @dougbrowning82  True, the TRF was a major advance in terms of sensitivity and selectivity, and made giant outdoor longwires not as important, except for DX fans. The addition of the LO and fixed IF is what really made radios popular, since it eliminated most fiddling and retuning while proving a superior signal with just a short loop or loopstick antenna.
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  2951. That could just as easily be the telephone company or some civilian call center trying to sell you a vacuum cleaner warranty. I would be helpful if you'd provide some context to things that were happening almost 60 years ago now.
    1
  2952. He said tubes were called valves in Europe. He didn't call them valves otherwise.
    1
  2953.  @79devo  Although filming it on a sunny day would have helped not make it look like an abandoned factory site.
    1
  2954. Yeah, another black woman who says conservative sounding things but isn't really a conservative. She should know there isn't some kind of SS trust fund beyond paying out the next six months worth of benefits to people who already qualify. Opening it up to raids by anyone else just makes the time we run out of SS money come that much sooner. If this won't become an entitlement program, does she or these Republicans propose you can only take out what you've already put in? So a 20 year old WOC with an infant who works a minimum wage job will only get six hours paid leave because that's all she's paid in? Sure , that will work. Get ready for the Now This videos with the sad music in the background.
    1
  2955. What an incredible dumbshit millennial. It's a cheap 30 year old car that wasn't meant to be a basic car for people who couldn't afford a more posh car. It worked, it lasted, and it did what it was supposed to do. Dork.
    1
  2956. She's just as irrational as the other Dems on most issues, just less irrational than some. It's like saying a person isn't insane because they only do crazy things on weekends.
    1
  2957. Uh, yeah, show the thug at the end skidding to a stop really helps.
    1
  2958.  @sebastianwurtz5294  I should have said Norway has the largest merchant fleet under the control of a single country where that country isn't a flag of convenience....lol.
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  2959.  @micasa8421  The Chinese military won't be fighting Trump or Biden. It will be be fighting the US military, so the only thing they care about is relative strength. They know that, unlike China, there can be a complete change in leadership every four years. It makes a lot more sense for them to try to influence an election where their candidate is in favor of cutting US military expenditures than worrying about mean tweets. They wanted to see Biden win not because he was soft on China but because his social justice spending isn't going to leave much left over for military spending. If they can spend a lot on their military while we cut back on ours, they are in favor of whoever will make that happen.
    1
  2960. I hope you staying safe and surviving your time in the pandemic prison camp
    1
  2961. Is it ever sunny there?
    1
  2962. My sister got taken by one of these scammers for $2800 last year. My brother and I have many years working with computer networks and the internet and know most of these scams. We've told her to never allow anyone to get her bank account details without calling us first. This guy, and it may have been one of them from this nest of vipers, browbeat her until she let them have access to her computer and then her bank account. She's a trusting and gullible person, and she was told not to tell anyone until she transferred the money since many people were in on the supposed scam. She never called me or my brother, so that's on her, but these guys are good at telling who's gullible enough to fall for their scam and keeping them engaged until they have their money. The whole thing only took about 45 minutes. When she saw her money was gone from her checking account, she finally did call me. I told her to file a police report, but I was certain "Paul from New Jersey" wasn't really either of those things. She was able to recover part of her money as a theft loss on her taxes, so anyone who has fallen victim to one of these scumbags should make sure they talk to a good tax preparer about it. I'd like to think this has taught her a lesson, but I rather doubt it.
    1
  2963. @William Kiene Really? Why? I mean, other than she's not old and wrinkled up.
    1
  2964. See https://hide.me/en/blog/5-ways-get-around-video-not-available-country-youtube-issue/ to hide your country from Youtube.
    1
  2965. Bernie is the only one who's an outright communist. All the others are just trying to catch up as the Democratic party tries to emulate the worst years of government in the USSR.
    1
  2966.  @filipelimartins  Maybe you'd better restate you point then. I thought it was about superheroes and those problematic cities.
    1
  2967. That opening was great! Happy New Year, and I'll look forward to a continuing parade of idiots.
    1
  2968. Good on you, John. You've been my favorite reporter, even back in the days you were a liberal.
    1
  2969.  @gabrielfraser2109  Yes, and...??? That's somewhat different than providing free or mostly free healthcare for 327 million people.
    1
  2970. Allow health insurance plans to sell across state lines just like every other type of insurance. We will reduce insurance costs rapidly and dramatically if we do this.
    1
  2971.  @filipelimartins  Decades ago? Like the lastest Death Wish from last year? Like the Bad Ass series? Almost everyone living in and being subject to the bad side of urban life has a secret fantasy to become an urban vigilante. The problem with these ambitious young people is they wake up one day and find out they're not young but they are still arricted the money they think they can't live without.
    1
  2972. I don't often wish a person would just up and die, but I'll change my mind for Al Green and Hank Johnson.
    1
  2973.  @hamobu  You are speaking from a position of absolute ignorance. You are not worth my time.
    1
  2974. It's unfortunate both the media and the American people don't know just how worthless the Paris Accords really are. A country like India can now claim to be in compliance with the accords by doing nothing because that's all they ever promised to do. Of course, a leftists press and politicians sensing an anticapitalist issue while at the same time promising a way to raise taxes is a toxic brew.
    1
  2975. Good job, boys. The utility wiring in India is positively scary.
    1
  2976. An absolute moron. He will defend any crap published in his "journal" as long as it advances his gay, trans, and communist narratives.
    1
  2977. It's screwed up she can't be a cosmetologist, but also I see there was no mention of marriage or a husband. I also note she said she was only arrested for a DUI, but her lawyer was careful to say that was "the last time she had been in jail".
    1
  2978. FHT is Fhtpay (http://www.fhtpay.hk/index.jsp). It's a payment processor out of Hong Kong that's using a server in Canada. It seems legit on the surface but some reports are that it's now being used by Indian scammers.
    1
  2979. It's unfortunate the British police can't give you a commision as a reserve officer. I don't even know if the British police have such things but it might be called an auxiliary officer or special officer. You would instantly have some credibility when you are calling people without having to explain your work on Youtube. I was a reserve officer in the US for 27 years. It was essentially a volunteer position, but I had all the training of a regular officer and was a commissioned peace officer. If you could be appointed with some kind of limited status so you didn't have to go through all the training but you could act as an officer when you are notifying victims, it would be a great help. I would think whatever agency handles cyber crime would snap you up given your proven knowledge of these scammers and your computer skills.
    1
  2980.  @JimBrowning  Even back 15 years ago, I put on gloves when I could before going hands on with anyone, and for sure if I was moving a prisoner. And why the heck did they bring these two outside? I'm sure the lights in the building were bright enough to record a video. If I was either of those two, I would have been hightailing it as soon as I got out of the door. What are they going to do, shoot me?
    1
  2981. Fantastic work, Jim, and fantastic generosity from Rory. As a former US police officer, it's more than a little hilarious seeing those unarmed Indian cops walking hand in hand with suspects like they're out on a first date. :-)
    1
  2982. I couldn't agree more. I'm a Trump supporter, but that doesn't mean I don't notice when he shoots himself in the foot.
    1
  2983. You can show the cursor even better on any Android above version 4.0. Just go to Settings > Developer Options > Show Pointer location (or Show touches, whichever works) and toggle that on. Note: If you don't see the developer options, you need to go to Settings > About Phone and tap on Build number several times.
    1
  2984. Maybe call the bank and see if you can set up a three way call. Really, though, some people just can't be saved. You always do the best you can so don't beat yourself up over one failure. EDIT: Find out if he belongs to a church. If so, get the number and see if you can talk to his pastor.
    1
  2985. This is the only kind of student lending that makes any sense. No matter what your major, the amount od months you have to pay back a loan is capped, and that cap bears some relationship to the projected earning potential to your major. The ones taking the real risks are students in high paying. high employability majors like engineering. They may have to pay back more than they borrowed, but only because the income is so high compared to the average in their profession. For those who chose a low paying, low employability major like gender studies, you can get out from under your loan by paying back much less than your borrowed. It teaches students the risk/reward ratio of their major before they ever get out of college.
    1
  2986. This will be studied in history as the Great 2020 Global Panic in much the same way as we study the Tulip Mania of 1637. The difference this time is there has never been a real global outbreak of fear and hysteria like the one we're seeing now.
    1
  2987. @ Flodgeshploff The way you type confuses me. I hope you're not involved in roundabout engineering.
    1
  2988.  @PumpkinEater-dm1xx  You must mean Helge Ingstad sunk after the collision with a Maltese registered tanker. Poor commanding and the angle of collision causing seven out of thirteen watertight bullheads to breached. Human error combined with pure bad luck, but Norway still has four left.
    1
  2989. I see LAPD was right on the job. Getting your crap on the net is the most important thing now.
    1
  2990. I just knew this would bring out all the anime boys. The Japanese, maybe more so than any other major power, have never been much of a tank producing country. Their lack of even mediocre medium tanks in WW!! hurt them badly during fighting the the Pacific. They were forbidden to produce any kind of AFV after the war, and what was views as the minal defence needs of Japan was met by the US supplying Sherman and Chaffee tanks, both thought to be the most adaptable to Most Japanese terrain. It was only after the outbreak of the Korean war that Japan was given permission to produce an MBT and AFV. With a requirement to attempt to produce a Japanese designed and sourced tank. The Type 61 was the result. It didn't enter service until 1961, and the US T-48, which was the broadly similar US tank used as the basis for the Type 61, was already considered obsolescent at best as an MBT. It had a 90 mm gun at a time when almost all western MBT's had transitioned to the 105 mm gun. The Type 74 was another attempt to build a mostly Japanese sourced modern MBT, starting in 1962. IN an attempt to speed up design and production, the decision was taken to obtain a license to built the then ubiquitous Royal Ordnance L7 105mm cannon rather than repeat the same error made with the 90 mm gun of the Type 61. The JGSDF could have purchased the Leopard 1 or M60 Patton tanks in any numbers required, but the desire to produce a true Japanese MBT caused slow production and spiraling costs, and it took almost fourteen years to produce just 870 examples, far below the originally envisaged 2000 required. It was another Japanese MBT that was obsolescent by the time it entered service in numbers in the late 1970's. The Type 94 continued on this path, using a foreign 120 mm smoothbore gun but producing most the test of the components in Japan. While the result was a tank that at least wasn't obsolescent on entry to service, the usual spiraling costs combined with the Asian financial crisis and collapse of the Soviet Union, meant a mere 341 examples would be produced. It remains to be seen if the Japanese Type 10 will finally be the one produced at a small enough cost and with enough technology to break this downward spiral of Japanese tank design.
    1
  2991.  @X.Y.Z.07  Absolutely. You want gunners at the gun shooting, not ducking with every incoming round. Even if it's a relatively minor use of armor plate like that seen on most 20 mm guns aboard ship, it at least gives gunners the feeling they have something to duck behind while still shooting.
    1
  2992. @tvercetti1 No, everyone is not going with RWS, as seen in video. A lot of auxiliaries and Coast Guard ships used manned mounts. Even the main armament seen on those minesweepers has a manned function in case of a power or control failure. In addition, an unprotected RWS mount can be damaged by splinters. As I said, the Navy will have to learn this lesson again.
    1
  2993. If it was my air force I'd be buying the IA-58 Pucara. Relatively cheap, twin engine combat survivability, twin seat, good armour, and about the same range and weapons load as the Super Tucano. It performed well in the Falklands War and Sri Lanka Civil War.
    1
  2994. Considering the Canada only has 60 of those things, it would be a good idea to treat them a little more gently. :-)
    1
  2995.  @ArmouredPhalanx  My numbers come from Wikipedia, FWIW. 62 of the 2A4/4M's and 20 of the 2A6M's. Regardless of the exact number, my serious point was throwing around this tank like that has the chance of disabling or destroying ~1% of the Canadian tank force. I wouldn't think it was a good idea using one of the US Army's ~6,000 M1 Abrams tanks, and the potential damage to combat readiness would be a lot less.
    1
  2996.  @ArmouredPhalanx  There are at least 3,000 in active service, so the point remains. It's not exact numbers, it's the ratio. If I have a garage full of 20 cars, taking one out of service for repairs hurts less than if I have two cars. It's fun to watch, but I'll bet there were some brass on the horn after that video came out.
    1
  2997. I wouldn't like to try to discredit any military based on one failure. What was interesting to me is the use of the Marshal Shaposhnikov for this oublic publicity test. The ship was commissioned in 1985 and had `quite a serious fire while inder refit in2018. The Russhians have neve publically stated the cause of the fire, but the combination of the refit and fire repair was iver three years, so the combination was a lot of work. The Kalibr missile launch was apparently part of her post refit sea trials. Fire repairs and refit have now stretched to over four years. This is on top of it being a vessel more than 35 years old. I have no idea if any of this contributed to the launch failure, but almost all the missile fire control electronics were replaced as part of the refit and upgrading. If I was the admiral in charge, I'd want to be having a very serious talk with all my engineering and weapons officers to make sure this kind of failure never happens again.
    1
  2998.  @jennyhardman5494  Unless you have inside information I don't, we really don't know how much of the failure was due to the missile, the electronic systems onboard the missile, or the electronic fire control systems on the ship that control the missile launch, do we?
    1
  2999. That was about the most poorly dubbed movie ever. I don't think that 55' Chevy wagon was a real police car. The siren mounted on the front fender with the wires still hanging out and no other kind of warning light anywhere on the vehicle. Even in 1955, they usually did a better job with these kinds of details. Of course, it looks like the budget for this one was maybe two grand, so that didn't leave much money left for movie police cars.
    1
  3000. It was a dummy, not a real person.
    1
  3001.  @RomanHistoryFan476AD  It's not a high horse. It's a combination of being a prisoner in my own home and then having kids like you write things that just aren't true because, I guess, you just felt the need to write something. There's nothing wrong with being young and still needing to learn things. There is something wrong with being young and thinking it's okay to just make things up. I have made and will continue to make many mistakes of fact. What I don't do is write anything that I don't have sources for.
    1
  3002.  @RomanHistoryFan476AD  No, you wanted to let us know that the smoke was coming from a "smoke canister", something that doesn't actually exist, and you assumed it was "made to be safe for infantry" when you had no idea if that was true or not. You didn't even know the smoke was coming from manifold injection until you were told, and even now insist on calling that "engine fumes' when it's no such thing. You just wanted to exercise your fingers by telling us things you basically made up as if it was knowledge we all needed to hear. As I said before, read more books, watch more documentaries, don't assume things in video games are true, and don't post anything until you can back it up.
    1
  3003.  @RomanHistoryFan476AD  It's been done this way since the advent of diesel fuel and tanks. These no other method that will generate as large and dense a cloud of obscurant as the injection method. It's cheap, fast, and a tank carries an almost unlimited amount of the smoke generating fuel onboard compared to ten or twelve smoke canisters. The troops aren't going to be hurt by a short term exposure, and they carry gas masks if it looks like a longer time will be spent in the smoke. As I wrote, this is the best way to cover the positioning of troops or vehicles so the enemy won't see it. What's a bit of a weakness is your, what?, 15 or 16 year old self, who's learned everything you know about tanks from playing some video games and watching YT videos, now here to teach us. I doubt you're ever read a real book about tanks. From that fount of knowledge, you then want to pop in here and educate us about how a Challenger 2 makes smoke when this was clearly the first time you ever run into the idea of injecting diesel into a manifold. Learn to read, watch, and get educated. Leave the typing for later,
    1
  3004.  @RomanHistoryFan476AD  It's not engine fumes. It's diesel fuel injected into the exhaust manifold. Here, go to https://www.technology.org/2019/05/29/challenger-2-main-battle-tank-is-able-to-inject-diesel-fuel-into-its-exhaust-manifolds/ and learn something before you further embarass yourself.
    1
  3005.  @RomanHistoryFan476AD  Did you read the description? It's a smoke generator with added smoke from injecting diesel fuel into the exhaust manifolds.
    1
  3006. I think the basic problem was they were using a transporter built for a wheeled vehicle, not tracked. It too too many RPM's to get the front of the tracks over the loading lip. Once it finally got aboard, all that excessive power had to go somewhere, and in this case that meant enough speed to lose control and power the tank right off the transporter. This kind of thing is a huge risk when they are using a transporter meant for civilian equipment instead of a military transporter. This is a problem in many armies, where they go with a cheap alternative compared with single purpose tank transporters. A good example of trying to something on the cheap instead of doing it safely.
    1
  3007. Cripps was an avowed Marxist who was only too happy to help his friend Stalin get the Nene engine. On top of that, Cripps thought they'd buy a license to make the Nene. Once the Soviets had those drawings. they simply reverse engineered the engine, and Britain never saw a dime in revenue from the USSR. Cripps was not only a Marxist, he was a stupid Marxist.
    1
  3008. Back in the days when civilians were allowed to wander around accident scenes wherever they wanted to.
    1
  3009. Here's what's going to be an unpopular question. The Canadian army has 23,000 regular soldiers. Including reserves and rangers, the total is about 40,000. The population of Canada is about 37.5 million, The NYPD has about 45,000 sworn regular officers. If the NYPD was the Canadian army, you'd increase the number of personnel per 1,000 citizens by almost 18%. Except for NATO requirements and peacekeeping missions, both of which Canada does very well, what's the need for an army as now constituted? Norway, by comparison, has about 5.4 million people and an army of 8,800 regulars and 30,000 reserves. Norway has about one soldier for every 139 people compared to Canada having one of every 913 people. Would Canada be better served with amsal core of say 10,000 professional soldiers that can be used to train reservists when the need arose? Could the rest of the manpower be better used beefing up agencies like the RCMP? I don't know the answer since I'm not Canadian, but armies are expensive while policing agencies are a lot less so. I realize politically the whole idea is a non-starter but, as an army, there are too few people for the size of the country and population while it's too militarized to operate as a police agency. There must be a middle ground/
    1
  3010. Spit on anyone lately, Jimmy?
    1
  3011. Depends on the state, but I only really know California law. You'd be guilty of PC 148 for fleeing an officer conducting an investigation, e.g., attempting to identify you and find out why you were in the area. If you actually did nothing wrong and the officer had no reasonable grounds to detain you, you might not be guilty of anything. However, in my time on the streets, I didn't chase people because I didn't get my morning jog. I chased people I had seen commit a crime or had a reasonable suspicion they committed or were about to commit a crime. Just staying put and dealing with the officer has the least amount of undesirable consequences.
    1
  3012. Listening to a guy with zero medical knowledge talking about coronavirus, and it's from yesterday at that. I think I'll pass.
    1
  3013. OMG! Hot Lips Hoolihan, what the hell happened to your face? This shows the danger of one too many face lifts.
    1
  3014.  @coreycannon6590  Okay, I didn't read your response as agreeing with me. I really don't have time to go through all the comments now to track down what I said about the hospital ship. My feeling at the time, based on what I know about how hospitals in crisis run, was that most hospitals in NYC weren't in crisis, and some judicious moving of patients would generally relieve the stresses on those that were near a breaking point. Instead, Trump got bamboozled by Cuomo into sending him free hospital beds. No governor in his right mind would turn that down, need or not. The utter waste of an emergency activation of two hospital ships now falls on Trump's shoulders, not Cuomo or Newsom.
    1
  3015. Morons. It's Cleveland with the Chef Boyardee, not Coumbus, and there;s no petition about a statute of Boyardee in Columbus. At least get your won headlines right.
    1
  3016. Maybe the tornado also have coronavirus. Cripes, don't you people ever get off the virus train? Fox has turned into one of the biggest spreaders of FUD about this. Are you trying to outdo CNN or what?
    1
  3017. That would be *Piers". It's important to get the name right if we're going to support a person.
    1
  3018.  @osric1730  The question was nursing home patients that were transferred to acute hospitals with medical problems other than Covid, who got Covid at the hospital, and were then discharged back to nursing homes before they had cleared the virus. They were the ones who were patient zero in NY nursing homes, as they would have been in any state if the governor told nursing homes they had to accept the patients or get their licenses pulled. Elderly patients testing positive with no symptoms should have been sent to the Javits Center facility for the fourteen day isolation period. Acute hospitals have had the training and had the equipment to care for infectious patients. With very few exceptions, nursing homes don't.
    1
  3019. Page 72 from the Democratic Socialist little red book of talking points and buzz words. Get ready for more liberal tears in 2020.
    1
  3020. Correction - those are not facts. They are statistical projections based on very little data and a lot of assumptions. It would be a lot better if the White House stopped making these kinds of projections before we end up with the statistical problems of climate change.
    1
  3021. Leftists always do what this bitch did. If you keep holding their feet to the fire they eventually throw up their hands, give you that "you're stupid" sigh, and tell you they just don't want to discuss it any longer. Get bent Kirsten, and all your ilk.
    1
  3022.  @turnne  Really? Tell me about those "standard drugs". Give me some names. Of course narcotics get you habituated. That's how they work. It's a choice between sitting in a chair or layinging in bed all day because the pain is so bad you can't do any normal activities or being habituated. People like me don't have to turn to the streets, at least not yet. The ones getting narcotics on the street, and it's mostly heroin and fentanyl, do so to get high. The only effect I get from narcotics is enough pain relief to make life tolerable. When we can no longer get enough narcotics for effective pain relief we'll just die from things like pneumonia and general wasting. That's part of the plan. The more of us who die, the longer Social Security and Medicare will last.
    1
  3023.  @turnne  You really have no idea about chronic acute pain, do you? Anyone with insurance will continue to get any narcotics prescribed by a doctor paid for. That''s not an issue at all. Where did you even come up with that idea? The problem is the constant pressure being placed on doctors by the DEA and their own liability insurance carriers to take their patients off narcotics regardless of the patient's subjective reporting of pain. If some people turn ot illegal sources, it won't be because of addiction, it will because of unbearable pain. That's the difference between addiction and habituation. Addicts want to get high. Habituated chronic pain patients want to be able to stand up or turn their neck without excruciating pain. As I wrote in my original comment, narcotics cause habituation in chronic pain patients. It's the way narcotics work. That's not the same as people who have the disease of addiction with no other medical condition.
    1
  3024. Wallace and Cavuto, two of the most dishonest reporters that don't work for CNN or MSNBC.
    1
  3025. This is what happens when you elect an outright communist as mayor. Knowing New Yorkers, they will elect another communist. This goofball Rose is only saying what he thinks all these small business owners who vote and contribute to his campaign. We don';t need the SPA to make more PPE's for small businesses. People will naturally stay away from each other. We don't need everyone wearing fear masks and gloves. That's pure virtue signaling.
    1
  3026. Millennials as the greatest generation? Give me a break!
    1
  3027. Sounds like the Marine force at the embassy was smaller than it should have been,
    1
  3028. What's he supposed to do? Hide under the desk signing executive orders all day? We all need to get out in the sun and exercise more. He's no different than the rest of us, wanting to do something normal again.
    1
  3029. eight or ten cops dragging this guy, all getting exposed, just to "save" people on a bus. We are becoming communist China. I was a police officer for 27 years and I would quit before I participated in this arrest. There must be some other item of importance to the police where their time could have been better used. OTOH, don't resist arrest like that. It will be the main charge in court. Argue your case before a judge, not on a bus.
    1
  3030. And why would he do that?
    1
  3031. Wit all due respect, IDPA and ISPC don't teach controlling suspects, they teach shooting. The officer had his gun sideways so it would be out of the holster but also so he could see the suspect's hands and motions. You saw him switch to a two handed grip as soon as thought he'd have to take a shot. Having the gun up obscures your view of the suspect. I've had to do this many times in 27 years on the street.
    1
  3032. You can't buy back what you never owned. "Buy backs" usually do nothing but remove non-functional and obsolete firearms from the streets that were never a problem anyway.
    1
  3033. Spit on anyone today, Jimmy?
    1
  3034. vanillaexplosion99 You take this month's moron award hands down assuming you're not a straight up troll. Not once in 27 years did I have someone run because they were "afraid" They had or were about to commit a crime. If you made a practice of fleeing, you're a criminal. Just the act of fleeing is a crime. Total numbnuts.
    1
  3035. This is more than a "health scare". It was a heart attack that required two stents to bypass some significant blockages. Depending on the seriousness of his heart damage, he may be out of the race completely.
    1
  3036. I had to listen several times to make sure I heard you say the cigarette actually originated in the Korean War? If I did hear it right, you're quite wrong. The cigarette goes back to at least the ninth century, and cigarettes in war to the Turks. Machine made cigarettes were common by the 1880's and they went along with soldiers everywhere. Cigarettes were thought to be be so necessary for US soldiers in the field that, starting WWII, a four pack of smokes was included in every military ration produced in the US. This continued through the Korean War and Vietnam, free smokes not being removed from rations until 1972. I don't think any other country went as far as the US in providing cigarettes to its soldiers. It was certainly the most widely used psychoactive drug in military history.
    1
  3037. Nothing will happen to Fritz. He will just explain it away and move on. This is not a big deal to an outfit like the the WSJ.
    1
  3038. Christmas has always been a little problematic everywhere. I think I broke at least one toy every Christmas.
    1
  3039. Oy, do ya have a license to be able to view your internet, buddy?
    1
  3040. There's an interesting video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xpHLRrGoD0 showing {GASP!} male tennis players being disqualified, but it also shows our favorite guy, Serena, for the 2009 US Open, getting tossed because she was arguing with the crowd. Look at her then, when she still looked more or less female, and now, where she looks more like an ookie lumberjack, and tell me she's not on any roids.
    1
  3041. OK, this my public coming out. I'm now an AK-47kin. Everyone else has to pay the tax.
    1
  3042. Look, you fat fuck (I'm allowed to use that insult because Ana said it was OK). just don't buy his book. If you and all the other fat fuck SJW's are the army you think you are, his book won't sell and it will be withdrawn. OTOH, it you and your ilk are a tiny minority, Milo's book will sell like hotcakes. Why not let the market decide instead of promoting pre-publication censorship, ya fat fuck.
    1
  3043. It's Jabba the Hut's gay brother!
    1
  3044. Watch the video of Trump's speech when he won the election. Barron was right out front and seemed to have no idea about clapping or when to do it. I'm sure being shy or bored has something to do with it but his behavior was quite striking.
    1
  3045. Why did you speed up the audio so much. I can't understand parts of it, and it just annoying.
    1
  3046. "Right, right!". Gotcha, bitch!
    1
  3047. My resolution for 2018 is to hate Joy Sparkle even more than 2017.
    1
  3048. Bearing, unless you also link the poll in the description, those of us with annotations turned off can't participate.
    1
  3049. Thanks. I've been thinking about starting to upload videos so this will save me some work.
    1
  3050. This was in January, 2017. I get a feeling of a deja vu here...
    1
  3051. Soy Boy...SOY BOY!
    1
  3052. Anonymous, I suppose you're right. I don't do either so it gets quite oppressive after about 45 minutes.
    1
  3053. "Somehow, I'm still straight" I sense a great meme in the making from this one...
    1
  3054. "Fuck Cars! In The Ass!" Your best line ever....
    1
  3055. I'm planning on heading over to that site now and buy all the black leadership at Evergreen State and Mizzou a massage When they are nice and relaxed, I'll sneak in and shoot them.
    1
  3056. It is fun to use that tactical size super range pepper spray on the black bloc gang.
    1
  3057. You can't just walk into a police station in California and get a restraining order, even if regressive feminists think they could.
    1
  3058. 2017 - The year everyone else told SJW's to go fuck themselves.
    1
  3059. I thought the kid's name was Hugh Mungus?
    1
  3060. I wonder how many times Jacob's mother dropped him on his head as an infant? I'll bet it was a lot judging by the quality of thought that went into this article.
    1
  3061.  @unncommonsense  She asked for what?
    1
  3062. That's great news. You'll find, I hope, as I did, that having children was the high point of your lives. Then the kid starts irritating you, but that's a small thing compared to watching them become a responsible adult.
    1
  3063. Typical livestream. Boring and no one can figure our what;s going on. Guess the narcissistic rush of seeing yourself in a video is enough to make it interesting.
    1
  3064. It would be really nice to see what those two are laughing at.
    1
  3065. Howe come whateverthefuckhernameis someitmes sounds like she;s for a white suburb and then comes on like she's from somewhere south of Mexico City? Oh, never mind, how stupid of me...she's making this all up.
    1
  3066. Or it was a gay fish hatchery.
    1
  3067. Fourth!
    1
  3068. I fear Carl is in even worse trouble now...
    1
  3069. Yep, he's an absolute psychotic liar. He's a guy I expect to to see in a headline someday.
    1
  3070. Yeah, well, we also gave you the computer you're using to spew forth your ignorance too.
    1
  3071. Fst people will always blame everything else but that fork in their hand about why they're fat, hence why they like tackling other things they can't change instead
    1
  3072. Petition signed. I hope the people of Victoria and all of Australia wake up to this left wing attempt to take over the schools
    1
  3073. David Leyonhjelm is the highest class bogan in Australia.
    1
  3074. All those white people in the Senate including Di Natale, except he's some kind of ally, so he's kind of honorary non-white.
    1
  3075. Didn't last long. It's already been pulled.
    1
  3076. Okay, that makes sense. Cigarettes existed well before the Crimean War, but that was the first time British soldiers were exposed to Turkish tobacco. They liked it a lot and were soon rolling their own. Tobacco companies had machines to roll cigarettes, and the Turkish tobacco made that a profitable enterprise.
    1
  3077. Why would anyone assume that an event run by a couple of anonymous Youtubers with no apparent experience running events is going to turn out any different than things like the Tumblr convention? The amazing thing is people actually contributed to yet another crowd sourced piece of shit.
    1
  3078.  @cupcake_whale  Thanks. So far, so good. I hiked rim to rim across the Grand Canyon at 55 and to Everest Base Camp at 60 so maybe all that ahs helped me now.
    1
  3079. Frenec, thank you for your enlightening contribution to the conversation.
    1
  3080. That thing looks more steampunk than yesterday's weird pistol.
    1
  3081. Thanks for these WWI fortification videos, Ian. I can't imagine any war in the past three centuries that was worse to fight for the common soldier. Hunkered down inside that concrete and steel with hundreds of artillery rounds landing every minute with no place to run. If you survived the initial bombardment, you knew the next thing coming were waves of the enemy and hand to hand combat in the trenches. I think I would have thought seriously of suicide and getting it over with.
    1
  3082. If I was actually concerned about carrying the most effective round in a semiautomatic pistol, it would be a .357 Sig, not a ,50 that only offers an increased bullet weight.
    1
  3083. Having only telescopic sights make sense for a civilian hunting rifle. I don't know that it makes much sense for the security market. Most shots in that environment will be snap shots at fairly close range, an ideal situation for iron sights with maybe some tritium sights. A telescopic sight would be a liability in that circumstance.
    1
  3084. An additional problem was the political situation in Czechoslovakia. The Czechs were already ruled by a socialist dictatorship right after the war, and the Soviets clearly had designs on the county. By February, 1948, the Soviets staged a coup and installed a pro-Soviet government. I imagine no other country wanted to risk their rifle production a country that unstable.
    1
  3085. Apparently there were metallurgy problems with the gun. The would break extractors and firing pins regularly, but only in below freezing weather. The raid on Columbus occured on March 9, 1916. I don't know what the actual weather was that day but Columbus is relatively warm in winter. The average low for March is 39. The guns may have run well because the weather was more to their liking.
    1
  3086. Send a message to PewDiePie. I'm sure he can help you out.
    1
  3087. Akshay Anand  umm, yes, you do. I'm not going to elaborate on Ian's channel since his goal is to keep it non-political. There are hundreds of videos about the current situation in Sweden if you really are this ignorant.
    1
  3088. Akshay Anand  I'm pretty sure you understand the other reasons m8.
    1
  3089. Hans Muller  Hans, thanks for the rundown on Swedish gun laws. It may seem to you that the rules are pretty simple and uncomplicated. To me as an American, they are overly complicated, must cost quite a bit of money to comply with, and seem to have a certain amount of difficulty that's there to discourage gun ownership without jumping through a lot of hoops. You say you don't have a need for guns for personal defence. I find it difficult to believe that being Swedish somehow has changed basic human nature, so people there don't try to rob, assault, and murder other people. That's why I own weapons. So far, after having guns for over 50 years, their only use has been at the range. I hope it stays that way, but owning guns, to me, is no different than owning homeowner's insurance. I hope the house doesn't ever burn down, I have fire extinguishers to help stop that from happening but, should the worst come, I want to have enough insurance to make sure I can go on with my life.
    1
  3090. He wasn't kidding. Infowars actually sells that crap. Watch any Alex Jones video and there's usually a five minute commercial for this kind of thing at the end.
    1
  3091. Trevor, did you happen to feel a breeze blowing past your head when you wrote that comment? There's a movie called "Dr. Strangelove that will explain everything in this thread.
    1
  3092. The Ton Ton Macoute wasn't part of the army, more like Papa Doc's private mafia. All the pictures I've seen of them in action, they are using Mauser pattern rifles. By 1957, the army was equipped almost exclusively with M1 Garands with a smattering for various submachine guns, including Thompson's, Grease Guns, and Masdens. Maybe this was a purchase made for the Ton Ton Macoute and not the army.
    1
  3093. It's videos like this that got you a million subs. Congratulations.
    1
  3094. I imagine the weight and swing of the bipod doesn't help when shooting from the shoulder.
    1
  3095. After a couple hours of combat, you could build a defensive position just out of ejected links.
    1
  3096. Yeah, but eye protection works pretty well with wood. Not so much with flying gun parts.
    1
  3097. If an experimental rifle had cost me an eye, I think i would have gone into woodworking, or anything but experimental guns.
    1
  3098. ​ wingracer 16 Steve starts arranging extra mags while shouting "Nice!".
    1
  3099. The FRA is pretty clear with a May, 1986 date for an automatic weapon to be legal for possession or ownership. There are exceptions for some classes of dealers and manufacturers, and there may be other exceptions I'm not aware of them. Unfortunately, machine guns are a bit out of my price range.
    1
  3100. Anything made after 1986 isn't legal. That's why this one is semi-auto. There seems to be a general idea you can buy any full auto weapon with just a $200 NFA transfer stamp. It's not true.
    1
  3101. Ian, you are one lucky SOB! :-)
    1
  3102.  @ForgottenWeapons  It also doesn't show them if you have annotations turned off. It's a lot more reliable to put a link in the description.
    1
  3103. It would be nice if you would provide a link to that previous video you mentioned.
    1
  3104. Well, everyone has their own idea of a fun way to spend the weekend. :-)
    1
  3105. I'm glad you're one of the authors, Ian. While i don't dispute Larry Vicker's gun knowledge, I find his writing in books where he was the only author were not easy to follow.
    1
  3106. Dang! 2000 videos. That is a heck of a lot of work, and well appreciated.
    1
  3107. I own an Astra revolver that's an identical copy of the Model 29 with a 6.5 " barrel. It's so identical that some parts like the grips and parts of the trigger control group are interchangeable. In my younger cop days, I also owned a real Model 29, and the Astra workmanship, fit, and finish is almost identical to a Model 29. It's chambered in .45 Colt, and the weight and barrel length make it quite a pleasant and powerful gun to shoot. Astra made these as kind of a poor man's Dirty Harry gun, and about 4,000 were produced in several calibers from .38 Special up. I think they made a limited run of .44 Magnums as well. They aren't rare, but also not common, and examples in excellent condition got for $500-$600. It's a nice alternative to the Model 29 in price and shootability for most people.
    1
  3108. Wait,, what date is it?
    1
  3109.  @ramjb  I don't know how I ended up on such an old video, but I've been studying naval history as a hobby for about 60 years now. My other hobby is amateur radio, for with I hold an extra class license. I take particular interest in radar history. and the technical aspects of radar. The Graf Spee was equipped in Fumo-22 radar, not Seetakt. That radar set was on Deutschland, and both ships were used as sort of test beds for each type of radar. The Fumo 22 could have been used for gun laying, but the radar only had better than 50 meter circular probability of error out to about 8 kilometers, and German optical rangefinder had similar results out to about 14 kilometers in clear weather. The Kriegsmarine was interested in radar only for surface search and range estimation in 1939, so Graf Spee's gunnery accuracy was the result of superior German optics and crew training, not radar. The Admiralty actually did display a keen interest in the radar on the Graf Spee, and sent an experienced radar engineer to the River Plate to inspect the radar and electronic systems that remained. Unfortunately, his report has never surfaced. If and when it does, it will answer a lot of questions about exactly what kind of radar the Graf Spee actually had. Photos of the relatively small mattress radar antenna on the AGS had the British worried that Germans had a working microwave radar or, even more alarming, had perfected the cavity magnetron the British were working on. What they did find was the Fumo-22 operated at 600 MHz, a far higher frequency than the radars in use by British warships at the time, which operated in the 43-75 MHz range. The British were unaware that the Germans had developed an Ultra High Frequency (UHF) radar, and the knowledge gained from the Graf Spee allowed the British to develop jammers in only a few months. The British Type 79 operated at 43 MHz. Since higher frequencies required much higher power input, and the transmitting tubes of the day were incapable of high power inputs, the Fumo-22, with an input of only about 150 watts, had a range of about 20 kilometers on a good day, and usually about half that. The ranging when a target was located was far more accurate than a Type 79, but it was not far enough out to make it practical for any kind of radar gun control. However, the Type 79 operated at 20 kilowatts, so it could locate ship size targets out to an average of 60 kilometers. It was a tradeoff between range and accuracy in 1939, but the problem was solved with the British perfection of the cavity magnetron and the type 271 radar in 1941. The Germans never even came close to catching up after that.
    1
  3110. Seems like an ideal starting place for a good machine pistol. Not the heaviest bullet but you could throw a lot of lead down range and not run out of ammo very quickly.
    1
  3111. It's too bad the extractor didn't operate when the gun broke apart like what we see with a Webley. It may have been more successful without the extra extraction step. Still, it was a very modern revolver for the times.
    1
  3112. The problem is few corporations want to support a firearms channel in this climate. Once the firearms related companies are tapped, the well will be dry.
    1
  3113. Maybe it just doesn't matter with this series, but the auto translate does a terrible job. I hope this makes more sense to Russian speakers.
    1
  3114.  @axelpatrickb.pingol3228  None of those survived beyond 1945? None of the men born in 1910 were casualties in WWII. Sure. Right.
    1
  3115. "Not interesting, terrible video". Feel better, Maybe?
    1
  3116. Oh, no. Anyone but C&Rsenal. Not hour long videos where we can't get Othais to shut up except for some cleavage shots from Mae. Not hour long videos regardless of subject. Ian, this is going to be a disaster.
    1
  3117. Even at this late date, most police officers still want a Remington 870, Ithaca 37, or similar pump shotgun. There's a calming effect on suspects when you rack a round in the chamber, and we prefer a shotgun with as few trick parts as possible. Some of the guys would spend hours tricking out their patrol rifle but wouldn't want Franchi shotgun. We wanted a shotgun that looked mean but was as simple as possible to get into action. You'll never be under more stress than having to use a shotgun in combat, and the last thing I would have wanted was two weird safeties and magazine disconnect.
    1
  3118. Given the jungle environment of SE Asia, something like the AR would have been invented. It may have been an FAL carbine in some kind of intermediate cartridge, but we wouldn't have spent almost 20 years in SE Asia flailing around with a full length 7.62 rifle going up against the AK.
    1
  3119. Thanks for posting a timeline of the questions and answers. I'm not equally interested in all the topics, so the timeline helps me jump ahead to the questions I'm most interested in.
    1
  3120. I used to teach map reading. the easiest way I found to teach people how to read a topo map waws have them use cardboard and glue to construct a 3D model of the a map. GPS and satellite photos aside, knowing how to read a topo map is still basic to being able to navigate off concrete.
    1
  3121.  @zombieranger3410  "to move around quietly in a place trying not to be seen or heard, such as an animal does when hunting" In this case, it's hunting old guns as prey without letting on to the owner the real value of what he may have in stock.
    1
  3122. Very cool. I had no idea any of these were still around and operating.
    1
  3123. I'd really like to see some testing on the various type of surplus 7.62x39 ammo. There must be more of that available as surplus than all the other surplus combined.
    1
  3124. Smurf, there are times when being dickish is appropriate.
    1
  3125. This was made when the S&W Model 3 DA revolver was already an international success. This is one of those guns designed by an engineer to show he could do it. It seems like it never had any realistic hope of sales, it was too large, too complicated, and, I'm sure, too expensive. The only thing I can assume is this was made to get around S&W and Colt revolver patents.
    1
  3126. Colt had metallic cartridge revolvers out by 1871. I really don't understand how a double barrel pistol could have sold well in 1877.
    1
  3127.  @gustavmeyrink_2.0  At least Italian isn't stuck with genders for everything like we see in French or German. That's interesting that you say English is the easiest language to learn. Of my non-native English speaking friends, about half agree and half say it;s really terrible to learn. English has more non-standard spelling, pronunciation, a grammar rules then almost any major language. The only way to learn those is memorize them. I suspect those good at memorization think English is an easy language to learn.
    1
  3128.  @Schmidt54  You write better and have a better command of English than 99% of the native speakers I know. You're right, it is personal investment of time, talent, and sweat that really determines how good you'll be at any language. I think the difference in Europe is you can drive eight hours and be in three different countries speaking three different languages. Learning different languages is almost a necessity. Over here, I can drive for five days and still be in the same country and speaking mostly the same language. People in the US don't see it as necessity to learn another language, and they are the poorer for it.
    1
  3129.  @Schmidt54  Well, English is no walk in the park for a non-native English speaker to learn either, and English can be a very convoluted language. One of the reasons I like Spanish is most of it is straightforward, except for the things they have imported from English, except for that whole gender thing, something that gave me no end of trouble with German too.
    1
  3130. I have no idea about the history of the gun but, having bought and sold a few Webleys in my time, it has a nicer finish and nicer grips than any Webley I've ever seen. Webley was never good at that kind of bright mirror finish bluing. Makes me wonder if it was a custom job for one owner.
    1
  3131. You lucky dog!
    1
  3132. Okay, now we have badweetabix coming up with a completely different set of numbers than Mac couy. Bad, I'll ask you the same thing I asked Mac, what is your source for this information and provide me a link.
    1
  3133. Ah, so four gliders didn't have a real nice landing then. Your post made it seem as if every one came in nice and soft and all landed exactly where they were supposed to land. As for the rest of the details, I have never seen an order of battle for the forces that landed at Vacours that was that detailed. What is your source for those details?
    1
  3134. The hammer price was $21,750. The buyer had to pay an extra 10% auction fee so about $23,500 all together. I suspect two people wanted this real bad and there was a bidding war. While the gun is fairly rare, that's still a very high price for a current service military rifle. If its just going in a collection, the follow on cost is nil but, as a shooter, you're looking at $40 mags and steel case ammo that's about twice as much as standard .223 brass. As Ian said, using the 62 grain brass case ammo was a prescription for failure to feed and extract problems. Compared to the Steyr Aug with optics for about $2,500, this is a pretty finicky and expensive piece as a shooter.
    1
  3135. To Bias, have you ever been told you have difficulty understanding satire?
    1
  3136. I know that cameras don't have great sound systems but it still seemed awfully quiet compared to firing the same rounds from a Beretta 92.
    1
  3137. And so it starts. Instead of Ian giving us compact and knowledgeable videos about guns and gun history, we will have Othais rambling on enough to make this a one hour and fourteen minute video. This collaboration is going to be a long term disaster for Forgotten Weapons.
    1
  3138. The General Motors FM-1/2 version of the Grumman F4F Wildcat was used on escort carriers to hunt and kill German subs. The number of .50 caliber guns was reduced to four from six since the Navy found four guns was more than sufficient to seriously damage or sink a sub. The main advantage was so many more rounds could be carried with four instead of six guns, and that gave the aircraft enough ammo to continuously engage a surfaced sub, cause enough damage to keep it on the surface, and then sink it with a combination of machine guns fire and the six rockets carried by most FM's. Gun camera films of them attacking a German sub with "only" four guns shows the power of the Browning .50.
    1
  3139.  @jamesjanson6129  That may be it. I'll look it up. My memory is obviously not as good as it could be, but the last time I saw that picture was at least 50 years ago, and I remember a vopo escaping with his SKS, but i could very well be wrong.
    1
  3140. Dang, the muzzle climb on full auto seems pretty bad for 5.56, but at least the gun works.
    1
  3141. No. The shotgun shell that worked with the LeMat is about half the length of a typical 20 gauge shell. There's not enough room between the hammer and loading gate on the revolver for a full size shell to fit. I rather doubt the barrel could safely fire a modern 20 gauge shell in any case. I've personally never seen one, but I'm told a company n France still makes LeMat shotgun shells.
    1
  3142. Much too expensive for an average shooter to buy
    1
  3143. 楊程鈞 I meant other experimental intermediate round guns. Was it difficult to infer that missing word?
    1
  3144. Most intermediate caliber rifles of the period used stripper clips and five round magazines. I can't imagine there would have been much of a question about that round performing in the same manner, It was just an obsolete loading method the Swiss used when most other countries had long abandoned it.
    1
  3145. Side loading and tube magazines had been around for at least 35 years in 1928. It wasn't a new feature.
    1
  3146. Ian was about a hundredth of a second away from a negligent discharge with the S model.
    1
  3147. This all sounds very complicated. Probably a better marking system than the French ever had for their rifles.
    1
  3148. The most reliable magazine I've ever uses is the rotary mag for my Ruger 10-22. I bought mine in 1964 when I turned 17, and I've run at least 5,000 rounds through the rifle since then. I have two mags I swap out every so often, but they are the original two mags I bought in 1964. I've recently supplemented them with a 30 round Ruger magazine. In all that time, I've never had any failure associated with the magazine, and both my original mags still run today just like when I shot my first rounds through them.
    1
  3149. Sure seems like the suppressor didn't do much.
    1
  3150. Well, that sucks.
    1
  3151.  @therideneverends1697  Given the BSA's current financial problems and pending bankruptcy, I imagine teaching teenagers how to make black powder is the last ting they's want to do.
    1
  3152.  @therideneverends1697  In 1950's America, it was a valuable skill. In 2018 America, I'd sure never be doing it as part of the Boy Scouts, and I'd probably labeled a terrorist for even tryng it.
    1
  3153. It's not all that difficult to make black powder. You just need saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal. Saltpetre, or potassium nitrate, is available in fertilizer and is used in food preparation and storage. You can generally get it at a drugstore just about anywhere. Same thing with sulphur. It's widely used as a pesticide known as "dusting sulphur" and is pure enough for use in gunpowder without grinding up matcheads, a good way to burn down your house. Believe it or not, I made black powder when I was 13 years old as part of my Boy Scout firearms merit badge. How times have changed.
    1
  3154. It has no feed ramp and no extractor. There's no way that a Ruger rotary mag will work reliably. My Ruger 10-22 will fire hundreds of rounds in a session, but that's because the rifle was built to handle the tricky feeding of the rotary mag. Without an extractor, the case won't get out of the way before another round tries to get in the chamber. I've seen the same thing with cheap aftermarket mags in the 10-22. The choice of magazine was the real downfall for this gun...well, in addition to all the other weird "features".
    1
  3155. A heavy, not very accurate, and not very comfortable semi automatic copy of an MP-38 for $5000 and up, depending on country. I think I'd spend the money on a real historic firearm instead.
    1
  3156. What the heck are all those white stripes for? Disassembly reminds me of trying to get out the motherboard in an old HP laptop I used to own. It really looks like it was supposed to be a high tech rendition of a zip gun made in a garage somewhere.
    1
  3157. Technically innovative but much too late and much too complicated. I suspect it was also much too expensive.
    1
  3158. Talk about going from a guy who.just liked French rifles to real celebrity! Congrats, Ian, AKA, "Gun Jesus".
    1
  3159. My former department had one of these specifically for breaching, as Ian said. The SWAT guys were the custodians, and it was used at least four times that I remember. This was back in the 80's and early 90's when we had clandestine drug labs all over the county, and some of them had two or even three door systems to prevent a typical raiding team from getting in. Unfortunately, I was just a grunt, so I never got he chance to fire one, but I did see the results of using it. Our armorer was a top notch reloader, and he came up with round similar to the Hatton. It had a slug made with frangible aluminum in some kind of binder. The details were on a need to know basis, and grunts didn't need to know. They raided a house modified by a well known speed "manufacturer", and he had set up three steel doors with six hinges each, all chrome steel. After our raid, the hinges were not only destroyed, but the slug tore the underlying sistered wood door frames apart. They went through eleven of the twelve rounds before they were in. It was a very impressive performance.
    1
  3160. LOL Rowboat = launch Floor = deck
    1
  3161. The G11 Weebs are out in full force for Christmas!
    1
  3162.  RocketSurgeon  I can see you've never fired one of these. Just watch the problems Ian had trying to reload.
    1
  3163. I remember the days in 1965 when I could buy a complete Boys outfit including wood case, a couple mags, 20 rounds of ammo, a cleaning kit, tool kit, the bipod, and the skids, all for about $100. How I wish I would have picked up one then
    1
  3164. There is also a Dutch police pistol that Ian did a previous video on that has a safety. I think the idea was that a revolver with a safety is more "safe" than a revolver without one.
    1
  3165. Laird, Rockhumper is mostly correct about gun values. Guns don't always gain value any more than other commodities. S&W model 29 is a good example. It's the "dirty Harry" .44 Magnum, and S&W couldn't keep up with demand in the early to mid-70's. The list price was $750 but many new in the box guns were going for $2,000. Those same guns can be bought for $850 to $1,000 in good condition, not much of a return from an investment held 45 to 50 years. Good guns will generally at least keep pace with inflation, and buying truly rare variants quickly before it becomes generally known can bring a nice return.
    1
  3166. Yeah, do it, Ian. I'd love to learn more about movie prop guns, and you are best guy on Youtube to give us the straight dope.
    1
  3167. I'm glad there are subtitles.
    1
  3168.  @GeorgiaBoy1961  The US had studied the SMLE when they were looking at an SLR. The idea of a 10 round capacity was one of the goals, but having the entire 10 rounds loaded from a single enbloc clip. This worked with the original .276 round, but the 30.06 was just enough larger the designers couldn't find a way to make enough room in receiver for ten rounds without having to make the floor plate extend below the bottom of the rifle, something they wanted to avoid, since a smooth lower profile made it easier to shoulder and stack the rifle. Thus, the eight round clip was the compromise
    1
  3169.  @ScottKenny1978  Whoa, wait a minute. The RN didn't have fire resistant bulkheads on ships in 1982? I've been an amatuer naval historian for about fifty years and never heard of such a thing. And how exactly would a bulkhead be made fireproof? The nature of a steel bulkhead is such that it's already about as fireproof as it's ever going to get. Every RN warship in service in 1982 had steel bulkheads. The only aluminum in use was for some superstructure components, and there's no evidence the they contributed to the sinking or fires on any of those ships. I'm going to need a link before I buy into that. The uS Congress was famous for being the most penny pinching legislature on earth. They never wanted to spend money when there was any way to avoid it. The M-1 was also not a cheap gun to make, especially when compared t the 1903. To some extent, this was part of the many make work programs initiated during the Depression, but the Army was able to convince some of their powerful friends on the Armed Services Committee that a self loading rifle could save money if we had to enlist few men, with each man having the firepower of two riflemen carrying the 1903. Maybe the British never made that pitch to the government? The British saw war as closer in the horizon that the US since we expected to remain neutral even if war broke out, yet we had the better battle rifle in terms of firepower. I've still yet to see a cogent explanation for this.
    1
  3170.  @ScottKenny1978  At least as many people were unemployed in Britain during the Depression as in the US, so I find that explanation hard to accept. As far as a walking fire rifle, that must have had appeal to every army, so why was the US the only one adopt the self loader as standard before WWII? I keep reading why the M-1 was invented, not why is was the only issued as standard to a large army. I'm still interest in particular why it took the British so long to come to the same conclusion, even as they started fighting guerilla wars against opponents armed with the likes of the AK-47 and surplus StG 44s.
    1
  3171.  @ScottKenny1978  I understand that, but the US had millions of 1903 Springfields and 1917 Enfields on hand as well. That didn't stop the Army from standardizing on the Grand in 1937. I also realize the Axis armies mostly had bolt actions in service most of the war. Again, that doesn't explain why the US took the jump and the other countries, but especially Britain, did not.
    1
  3172. I wonder what Marston would think of the whole concept of "steampunk"?
    1
  3173. Not surprisingly, it would appear the server is getting hit pretty good. I have yet to get any of the sections to download successfully. It will probably improve in a few days.
    1
  3174. One nice thing about owning an AK is that once you understand it you also understand about half the other select fire rifles in the world/
    1
  3175.  Superdude70  Why do you bring up a thread from 11 months ago? Get bent.
    1
  3176.  @jamesrae5351  I haven't posted on this thread for eight months. You've NEVER posted on this thread until now. What exactly is your problem?
    1
  3177. Holy Cow! Rock Island is valuing the first example up to $16,000 and the second at up to $12,000! Those seem like amazing prices for unidentified rifles with zero provenance.
    1
  3178. ROF from the magazine sounds almost identical to the belt feed.
    1
  3179. The biggest problem with water cooled MG's was the tank getting holed by a stray round or shrapnel. Without the water jacket, the gun was reduced to firing nothing but short bursts before the barrel overheated. The other issue is water supply itself. Even in areas where water was available, it had to be put in cans and lugged to the gun since it boiled off about two gallons an hour with intermediate rates of fire and more like five gallons with continuous fire. Even in areas with plentiful water, it was common for the soldiers to urinate into water tins and use the urine for cooling since it obviated lugging cans down to the water supply and back In desert areas, urine was the primary coolant supply. One of the upsides in areas where water was used as a coolant was each gun provided about a gallon of very hot water when the action was over so the guys were able to do some washing up and shaving with hot water that didn't require a fire with the attendant smoke that gave away a position.
    1
  3180. Sometimes staying inside the box isn't such a bad idea...
    1
  3181. Thank you, Ian, very educational.
    1
  3182.  @mfree80286  Indeed. I wasn't trying to say the British should have gone to a removable magazine then, only that they were taking steps that were leading to one. By 1949 the result of British and Belgian engineering produced two world beating rifles, the FN FAL and the British EM-2. Both had removable mags and the EM-2 had what should have been the standard NATO round. It was US resistance to an intermediate round that produced the less than ideal M-14 and stuck Britain with a semiautomatic battle rifle in the L1A1 SLR
    1
  3183. It's seem like your noise cancelling mike is getting overwhelmed by the blast so we don't hear your first sentence or two when you stop shooting.
    1
  3184. Ian, I'm sure you're aware of the situation with Patreon. I've cancelled my account with them so they are no longer an option for me to support you. Given that your channel is concerned with a currently unpopular subject, I hope you can find an alternate payment platform that will pass on our money without trying to determine the content of the channel.
    1
  3185. This is what happens when a bunch of soldiers are sitting around wondering what would happen IF....
    1
  3186. It looks cool but, in the real world, I'll still take my 870
    1
  3187. Mobius, if this can only fire a .38 special blank, I think it wouldn't be considered a firearm at all, at least for what most laws say about firearms.
    1
  3188. I'm a ham radio operator. That harpoon gun would be fantastic for launching a wire antenna over the biggest branch of the tallest tree in your vicinity. I wonder if this would count as discharging a firearm in city limits?
    1
  3189.  Superdude70  Okay, then it's your understanding of the word "production". Simply because it was never put in series production doesn't mean it was never made at all.
    1
  3190.  @davidlatorre9829  Which is not the same as none were ever produced. Since I shot one in 1957-58, I know at least some were produced.
    1
  3191.  Superdude70  That's not what he said. You need to listen again.
    1
  3192. The ammo even sounds too hot. I guess the Turk's idea was just to deafen the opposition.
    1
  3193. So we have a gun designed to look like something it's not for people that just have to have one.
    1
  3194. At least every sergeant's unit would need one of these. In a large department, that's potentially millions of dollars worth of rounds. My department trialed these when Taser was developing the round. It did a good job, having enough force to knock a suspect down, or at least to make it hurt like a bitch, even if the the electrical connection failed. It had a lot of innovative ideas, but the cost was going to be astronomical, and Taser hadn't even yet developed a training round. This kind if thing will return someday in light of the widespread rioting this year.
    1
  3195. https://www.ammoland.com/2017/06/7-62-nato-vs-308-winchester-ammo-whats-the-difference/#axzz5aa9hRQHR
    1
  3196.  @semirzerzour9966  No problem. Your English is far better than many Americans who have it as their supposedly first language.
    1
  3197.  @Punisher9419  I'm about to be 73 and I can't afford it. I think it's lot more likely to be filled with trust fund students, software millionaires, and 50 year old stockbrokers than old people.
    1
  3198. Ian has already said just him.
    1
  3199. The problem is that many of the people that could afford the tour couldn't tolerate the altitude and many of the people that could tolerate the altitude don't have the kind of money a tour like this would cost. Kind of a Catch-22, and it's one of the reasons Italian WWI tours aren't very popular.
    1
  3200.  @1Notten  It does include lodging but you have to share a room. Unless you have your wife or friend going (and they have to pull the full cost as well), you'll have to bunk in with a stranger or pay the $580 private room cost.
    1
  3201.  DeVon Taruex  Damn autocorrect. You'll be sorry when I can come back from the grave 25 years from now and go on a shooting spree!
    1
  3202. What a great video, Ian. I can't imagine doing this kind of work. For silver engraving, soaking the area with Coca Cola and then blotting it off will remove most of the oxidation without changing the silver color.
    1
  3203. I swear my Ruger 10/22 has more recoil than the Type 96 Nambu, If the gun does that well with soft points it should a really outstanding job with FMJ ammo.
    1
  3204. And just when I thought I'd have seen just about every useless variation of a gun ever made, along comes a steampunk Sten gun.
    1
  3205. How about "Street Sweeper" as a dumb name?
    1
  3206.  @franzschmid9079  It seems long past the day that 500,000 Swiss soldiers streaming out of their houses with a rifle and 50 rounds of ammo are really going to be fighting off invaders anyway. Keep them at an armory or some other base where soldiers will have to go to pick up other equipment anyway. It seems like a Swiss tradition that just won't die.
    1
  3207.  @Kampfhamster81  I'm not Swiss so I only know what I read. My understanding was the rifle had to be kept somewhere in the house under lock and key. Maybe that's some kind of closet rather than a safe. The question remains - where is the bolt kept? If the rifle isn't secured against theft, how is the bolt any more secure?
    1
  3208. What a handful that thing must have been trying to hit the attacking tiger.
    1
  3209. I think the biggest problem with caseless ammo is always going to be production costs and replacement of existing ammo stocks. We have about 125 years of experience producing cased ammo and and have gotten production costs down to ridiculously low prices. That's a big deal when a production contract for 40 million rounds ins't unusual. Having to tool up for producing caseless ammo and cucking the hundreds of millions of 5.56 rounds we have in inventory just isn't cost effective when caseless ammo is one of those "gee whiz" kind of solutions to a problem that doesn't exist.
    1
  3210. Well, I've been watching Ian long enough that I did recognize it as a French carbine. Not much else though.
    1
  3211. It was introduced in 1935 as the gas gun version shown here. There was a machine shotgun and a 37 mm introduced just before WWII.
    1
  3212. That rifle has more and bigger springs than any two other guns I've ever seen. I can't understand how SIG ever thought this could have been a military or commercial release.
    1
  3213. BWAHAhaha... April Fool!
    1
  3214. And here I thought the BAR kicked a lot. Given the slow rate of fire combined with the horrendous kick, it's not hard to see why the Chauchat wasn't exactly loved by US troops. •
    1
  3215.  @johnandrews586  Do you have a link to that data? Considering I'm old enough to be your father if you're less than about fifty, I'm a little doubtful about that "fact" According to the the Federal Reserve Bank, average hours worked over the pas ten years have been just about 34 hours. Average in 1988 was 42.4 hours.
    1
  3216. One result of the disaster is firefighters now don't attempt to directly fight fires in in plants with explosive materials. They withdraw and set up a defensive perimeter at least twice the radius where an explosion could cause significant damage. Firefighting at the plant would only resume once experts arrive on scene to assess the situation and draw up a fire fighting plan.
    1
  3217. This is a good example of what can happen when what was essentially a rubble dam was built and grew like Topsy in an area subject to prolonged torrential rainfall. To make matters worse, it was a dam too small for federal inspection, and the state of Georgia had no dam safety program for state jurisdiction dams. One of the positive things that happened as a result of the disaster is Georgia established a dam safety program in 1978.
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  3218. No, it wasn't, but your welcome to be ignorant if you chose.
    1
  3219.  @jwenting  Possibly, but I wasn't answering that contention, only that the plant was there first and the town grew up around it. However, the population of Tokai in 1995, four years before the accident, was 32,727, compared to 37,885 in 2015. It obviously was nearly as large then as it is today. Continuing to guess doesn't help your case.
    1
  3220. It seems unlikely that all nine of them were in one tent. What happened to the rest of the tents?
    1
  3221. There were already atomic artillery rounds and tactical nuclear missiles available or in the late stage of development. They could be used to actually target enemy concentrations without having to hope the enemy would congregate around your nuclear bomb/chicken coop. This seems like the kind of thing developed in some defense establishment where the employees had no idea what was already available or on the drawing board for the army.
    1
  3222. The whole history of North Korean infiltration into the south would make a good episode.
    1
  3223.  Silently Sceptical  This episode was fine, just different. I just prefer his somewhat more excited sounding, pre-Baby Plainly narration. :-)
    1
  3224. I used to live not far from Santa Susana in the 70's. In addition to dodgy nuke plants, it was the home to all kinds of weird cults, from Charles Manson to Krishna Venta. There was a movie ranch called Corriganville with hundreds of western movie sets. Many western moves and TC series in the 50's and 60's were filmed there with Rin Tin Tin being the most famous TV series and Gunfight at the OK Corral probably being the most famous movie. The more populated western half of Santa Susana voted in 1969 to merge with the city of Simi Valley while the eastern area, including the remnants of the nuke plants, remain sparsely populated. There are still some rocket motor tests being carried out in some deep canyons near the site of the Field Laboratory, and that has been the site of some pretty spectacular explosions. I was creeped out by the whole feeling of the area and left by 1970. Simi Valley is now a sprawling LA suburb of 125,000 and contains the Ronald Reagan Library.
    1
  3225. Interesting video. I'm quite late, but It really depends on the type of combat proposed. If it was pistols at 20 paces, I'd probably take that since i can hold my own against most pistol shooters. If it was swords and armor, I'd probably decline the honour.
    1
  3226. Sure, let's have the government run the railroads. They did a great job with car companies, hospitals, the BBC, and London Transport. Oh, and, amazingly, Channel Four Television. No fake news here.
    1
  3227. Dang, missed this one when it came out. Another issue for big gun (6" and up) accuracy is dispersion caused by mutual interference from guns in multiple gun mounts. The Italians were big believes in the idea that speed was paramount over all other considerations for cruisers. The Italians insisted on a trial speed of 35 knots, a speed many destroyers couldn't hope for. The only way to achieve high speeds was to install a massive power plant or have a long, narrow hull. The Washington naval treaty limiting heavy cruisers ot 10,000 made it impossible to install a large enough power plant so the only option was a finely detailed narrow hull. This meant the main battery guns had to be installed in narrow turrets with single cradles and the guns mounted closely together. Eight inch mounts had barrels a mere meter apart. The single cradle meant a turret couldn't engage more than one target, and the closely mounted guns, combined with the poor quality control of Italian ammunition, caused shot dispersion of over 50 meters at 9,000 yards. All sorts of tricks were tried to reduce dispersion including reducing muzzle velocity, especially in 6" guns. None of the tricks worked very well, and shot dispersion remained a problem right up to the Zara class. In addition to the Washington naval treaties leading to conversions of battle cruiser hulls to aircraft carriers, it also directly led to advances in submarine technology. Since the numbers and size of submarines wasn't limited under the treaties, all the major powers diverted funds from building major warships to larger ocean going submarines. The technology needed for these vessels led directly the fleet type submarines of WWII. German research into submarine technology led to higher underwater speeds and the Walthers hydrogen peroxide power plants.
    1
  3228. There were only two important considerations for a battleship - speed and fire control. Speed because escorting fast carriers was going to be their main role and fire control, because accurate shooting with the main and secondary batteries was the most important job they had. Whether they had 16", 18", or 20" guns was relatively unimportant. Superior radar fire control that allowed the first salvo to be on target was the most important. If your opponent had bigger guns but took five or six salvos to get your rain. the 16" gun battleships would have already destroyed all your upper works and fire control equipment and put some pretty big holes in your hull. As an example, the Japanese battleship Kirishima was reduced to a flaming wreck by the USS Washington in seven minutes because of superior radar and fire control. Accurate main battery fire control allowed you to destroy shore targets with a single salvo. There were many occasions when onshore fire control teams called in targets like gun emplacements that were totally destroyed with a single salvo. Our battleships and cruisers were able to offer accurate suppressive fir only 300 to 400 yards ahead of advancing Marines, and were able walk that fire ahead the same distance and they advanced. Lastly, and most importantly, it was the battleship's ability to put a huge volume of controlled antiaircraft fire that saved many battleships and the ships they were escorting from aerial destruction. Your armor doesn't matter unless you can fight off enemy bombers and torpedo planes. Radar and director control of the 5" and 40mm batteries was the difference between shooting down those aircraft or being sunk yourself. Of course, designers in 1913 would have no idea about radar, fire control, or any kind of antiaircraft battery beyond a couple of uncontrolled 3" guns. Instead of turret mounted dual purpose secondary guns, we would have been stuck with yet more battleships with the secondary battery being single purpose and in casemates.Thank goodness none of those ships were built. It would have taken money away from the construction of the fast battleships and carriers that actually won the war for the US.
    1
  3229.  @spikespa5208  Where exactly is this most north easterly point in TN? I'm still having trouble working out that distance.
    1
  3230.  @toddwebb7521  I'm going ot have to press X to doubt on that one. Bristol TN, the furthest eastern point in TN, is 502 miles to Memphis. It's 565 miles from there to Windsor, Ontario. Unless there's some esoteric combination of cities I don't know about, I still think it's further to Canada.
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  3231.  @StonedDragons  And you don't hit a kangaroo...or dingo. :) I've never had the chance to get to Australia but my brother was there on business about eight years and took that very drive. It took him four days, and he's no slouch when it comes to long distance driving. He took videos of te drive and it mostly just blue sky stretched right to the horizon. I was having a hard time staying awake just watching the videos let along taking that drive.
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  3232.  @TraditionalAnglican  Never said that the Bismarck was just a scaled up Bayern. What I said was that the Germans didn't and couldn't start with a clean sheet of paper. They weren't able to make the shipyard visits that were the inspiration of many new ships. They were prohibited by treaty from being able to share information from other builders or get proposals from overseas builders for a battleship. They were constrained by time and lack of experience in building a modern battleship. There's a good post about this at https://www.quora.com/How-true-is-it-that-the-Bismarck-class-battleships-were-just-enhanced-WW-I-Bayern-class-battleships
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  3233.  @johnshepherd8687  Can't argue with the basic assumptions there.
    1
  3234.  @johnshepherd8687  Right, but South America was nonetheless a concern. The US couldn't look at Europe alone as a threat.
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  3235.  @johnshepherd8687  The US also had South America to keep an eye on. Brazil and Argentina were both rich countries in the last half of the 19th century, and both countries were building up their fleets. Trying to enforce a blockade on the very long coastlines of Argentina and/or Brazil would have been difficult task.
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  3236. I like the small models for big battles like Jutland. Knowing the formations being described, I don't have a problem know which fleet is which. If that does turn out to be an issue, maybe some small color dots of each model could make it more clear.
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  3237.  @hermitoldguy6312  Understood, but several navies had fleets in different parts of the world. The RN is the only one I know with such large freeboards for its cruisers. Why?
    1
  3238. Okay, two questions I haven't had answered in any of the Drydocks. First, why was the freeboard on British interwar cruisers so large. I know it probably helped with seakeeping in the Atlantic, nut the ships must have stuck out like sore thumbs. It also seems like it would require more armor to maintain hull protection compared to a more typical freeboard. Second, why did British interwar cruisers stick with three funnels for so long? I'm sure it was easier to construct than trunking funnels, but the interference with the sky view of her antiaircraft guns seems like it overwhelmed any constructional savings.
    1
  3239.  @mpetersen6  You lost me on that one. Between 59 and 75 what?
    1
  3240.  @dr.potato76  You're welcome. How many years do you have on the clock?
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  3241. Happy Birthday, Dr. Potato!
    1
  3242. Breakfast for me, but the same sentiment otherwise. :-)
    1
  3243.  @Exkhaniber  LOL. I just wish I had Drach's smooth delivery and posh accent.
    1
  3244.  @bkjeong4302  We know that because we have the advantage of hindsight. While Admiral Toyoda Soemu knew this was a kamikaze mission, he believed there still a chance Yamato could fulfill at least part of the mission before joining thousands of others who had died in service, and in obedience to, the Emperor. Many of those in operational control of Navy and Army air units were just as opposed to the wasting of planes and pilots as were Navy surface fleet commanders, but giving their lives for the Emperor and nation was more important than any tactical considerations. This was far more than just PR purposes.
    1
  3245.  @Betrix5060  That was just beyond the technical abilities of German scientists, but they were working on it. They had the TX torpedo, a wire guided torpedo that was only launched from shore batteries and truck mounted launchers. They only built 300 of them and, although we have records of them being installed cover English Channel invasion points. I haven't been able to find anything about them being used in actual combat. The electronics of the day were just too fragile to survive being launched from several hundred feet deep with high pressure compressed air from a U-Boat. They were also working on television guidance, so there wasn't much they hadn't thought of. Getting it from experimental to service was the big challenge, made worse by the fact the manufacturing facilities were being bombed constantly and rail lines were being slowly destroyed.
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  3246. I can't imagine how much it would cost to build a sailboat today using copper nails.
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  3247.  @pekkamakela2566  Like I said, I've never heard of it being done as a tactic.
    1
  3248.  @pekkamakela2566  Yes, you could, although you then start decreasing the field of fire of your forward turrets. I'm saying I don't think that was ever done as a battle tactic. I'm willing to be convinced if you have a link to show that every happened.
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  3249.  @pekkamakela2566  I'd have to be convinced any captain would ever turn his ship off broadside when when all his guns could be firing at the enemy to bring it 15 degrees off the centerline because of a supposed armor benefit. Armor protection is there for when you can't sink or disable the enemy first, and more rounds effectively does that.
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  3250.  @pekkamakela2566  It wasn't a 15 degree increase in angle of armor. It was the rear turret being able to revolve and fire more than 15 degrees off the centerline towards the bow without damaging the ship. Part of your theory is somehow the rear turret could be brought to bear on ships in front of your ship. I'm saying that was impossible for almost all capital ships.
    1
  3251.  @pekkamakela2566  I've never seen a battle between capital ship where ships didn't try to bring their main battery into a broadside against opponents or, even better, cross the T, where the battle line was able to bring a full broadside to bear and opponents could only respond with their forward guns. It was exceeding rare that any capital ship had a rear turret or turrets that could fire at more than 15 degrees toward their own bows without causing considerable damage to their own vessel. It's an old adage of naval warfare that the side with the first shots on target would win, so all naval maneuvering was done with that in mind. I guess it's possible in a ship on ship engagement that it could have been done the way you say. I've just never heard of it.
    1
  3252.  @pekkamakela2566  I'm not sure tank fighting and naval warfare are really the same thing, but what happens with a Tiger I tank when it had two opponents at once, firing from different directions? I don't think tank commanders were really worried about that supposed benefit of an angle helping with armor penetration. They were worried about keeping the frontal armor toward opponents and knocking them out before they could take a shot. Now extrapolate that to the Graf Spee taking on three cruisers at once, attacking from different directions at once. I rather doubt Langsdorff was worried about the fine points of armor at that point.
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  3253.  @pekkamakela2566  You lost me on that. How would horizontal armour be sloped? Generally, ships maneuver to bring the most weight of fire to bear on an opponent. Tanks pretty much do the same thing. Changes to armor to make it harder for shells to penetrate are more of a passive thing than anything a ship or tank commander thinks about in the heat of battle.
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  3254. Sloped deck armour was used in armored ships from about the time of the Dreadnought forward. Given the long range of fire and the size of a battleship it was impossible to predict where a shell might land. One place that naval architects did use tank type armor shaping was in the main battery turrets. The sloping turret faces were commonly used in similar ways to tank turrets.
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  3255.  @normanbraslow7902  Thankfully, the covid lockdown is over here in Alabama, so I can actually go out shopping again. The book is also available on Amazon if you want to go that route.
    1
  3256.  @normanbraslow7902  You're welcome. I'm not sure I'd assert Callo's book "beats" Morison's, but I think they tell essentially the same story in a different way. The two books together gave me a better understanding of such a complex character as Jones than I would have gotten from reading just one of them. I'm looking forward to your assessment. I'm constantly impressed with the depth of knowledge of Drach's subs.
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  3257.  @normanbraslow7902  Have you read Callo's book? You might change your mind about "gold standard" if you do.
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  3258. Warning, Drach. The Grammar Police are on duty today.
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  3259. There's an excellent summary of US logistics in the Pacific during WWII available online called "Beans, Bullets, and Black Oil". You can find it at https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/b/beans-bullets-black-oil.html. It's really an amazing read if you're at all interested in logistics. Considering they were handling the equivalent 5 million of today's SKU's running on a completely manual system is really quite amazing.
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  3260.  @westcoaststacker569  No, not quite. The Mosquito Mk XVIII had a 6 pounder (57 mm) gun installed in part of the bomb bay. It wasn't recoilless, just a standard cannon with a few extra extra recoil bits to reduce fuselage stress. It was obviously not like the 14" monstrosity the Germans wanted to use. While that one really wasn't practical to use on an airplane, it may have worked on small naval craft
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  3261. I'd advocate that the difference between light and medium AA is the weight, size, and contents of the round. Medium AA shells can be used with an explosive filler, a quick acting fuse of some type, and a self-destructing fuse so those on the surface aren't under a rain of spent solid shot. The Japanese 25 mm didn't have these characteristics, so it fell in the same "light" category as any other machine gun with solid shells. The 1.'! had all three of the above characteristics, so it should be the smallest of the "medium" guns.
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  3262.  @jrd33  The key word in my post is casemate guns. I understand the torpedo boat threat, but having guns mounted generally low in the bow and stern casemates meant they were unworkable at speed or in rough weather. The casemate openings were impossible to seal against the ingress of the sea and presented serious flooding risks, and bow and stern casemates presented the greatest risk. It's why most navies removed the guns and plated over the openings after a few years of service, replacing them with deck guns.
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  3263. The "Manxman/Abdiel" class of fast minelayers turned out to be nearly ideal fast transports once their roles as fast minelayers became less important. Same with the rebuilt WWI flush deck destroyers modified especially for the fast transport role. Even with the loss of two boilers, they were still capable of nearly 30 knots, and the former boiler spaces provided a surprisingly roomy space for up to 200 troops or several thousand tons of supplies. 31 ships were eventually converted, and the Navy was generally satisfied with their performance if not their material condition. The US Navy continues to have an interest in high speed transports with the currwnt 14 "Spearfish" class vessels.
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  3264. Habitability has proven to be one of the main factors in an efficient ship, but it took the world's navies a long time to recognize that and cater for it in design. For example, it took until late in WWII before air conditioning was added to USN subs in the Pacific, something technically possible by the early 30's, and then only because al the new electronics kept shorting out due to the overwhelming humidity and resultant moisture buildup. What was found in postwar studies was air conditioning not only improved the performance and longevity of the electronic gear, it eliminated many of the minor sick calls seen in non-air conditioned units, improved the men's appetites so they lost less weight out on patrol, improved alertness, especially while having to stand lookout and man deck guns in the heat, and even decreased the number of captain's mast hearings for fighting and insubordination. The results of the studies changed the design of new surface ships as well as subs, and ships already under construction had air conditioning added. USS Newport News was modified just after the start of construction in 1946 and emeged in 1948 as the first fully air conditioned ship in the USN. Every frigate size up ship has had air conditioning built in ever since. I don't know when the RN started adding air conditioning. I know a few submarines had US Carrier self contained units added before they were transferred to the Pacific fleet, but I don't know when air conditioning was added to surface ships other than it was sometime in the 50's. I'm hoping someone with more RN knowledge than me can fill in the blanks. Interestingly, some senior officers were totally against adding a/c, feeling it would make the men "soft". It was to the point in at least one case where a captain ordered the air conditioning turned off except for equipment spaces while on patrol in the Persian Gulf, or possibly the Indian Ocean. I forget the exact location now. Wherever it was, the air temperatures during the day rose to 110F, the sea surface temperature was in the mid 90's, and crew space temperatures rose to over 100. Men were passing out from the heat at their stations and the sick bay was swamped with cases of heat exhaustion. It was only the strenuous objections from the medical staff and senior CPO's that got the a/c turned back on.
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  3265.    Have you ever read Admiral Doenitz's memoirs? No, I didn't think so. He would also join with Eisenhower about the importance of Enigma decrypts in winning the war for the Allies. But, hey, they were only commanders on their respective sides, what would they know?
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  3266.  @alecblunden8615  Yes, all countries media have done things like that from time to time. Chauvinism is a thing everywhere. However, channels like this generally set that kind of thing from individuals pretty fast.
    1
  3267.    I don't know if you're trolling or what, but Dwight Eisenhower said the Ultra operation, including getting a four reel machine, was decisive in beating Germany. That's good enough for me, and should be good enough for you.
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  3268.  @johnshepherd8687  And I gave my opinion that it was a movie made of of unbelievable elements strung together, therefore not entertaining for me. I'm glad you liked it.
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  3269.  @johnshepherd8687  That's why I called it a drama, not a history. What's your point?
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  3270.  @steveb6103  Certainly is was the power of the Long Lance that played its part but, as I just pointed out, a typhoon caused the same thing.
    1
  3271.  @AdamMGTF  LOL. I've seen the "front fell off" sketch. It doesn't translate to American humor very well, but I liked it. Of course, I also liked Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, so that should tell you something. :-) It wasn't just the older cruisers with weak bows, and it wasn't just from torpedoes. USS Pittsburgh, a Baltimore class heavy, lost its bow in a typhoon in June, 1945, although the still floating bow was rounded up by a Navy tug and towed to Guam. I've never read a complete report on the all too frequent bow failures, but it seems the extensive use of the still not well understood challenges of naval welding contributed to it. There were also problems with the speed of the work and inspections not always carried out. The same kinds of issues plagued Liberty ships, made even worse by the intramural competition for bonuses based on how fast a ship was built.
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  3272.  Jimmy De'Souza  HMS Neptune was the first class with echelon wing turrets rather than wing turrets located directly across from each other. Echelon turrets allowed all the main battery to be brought to bear (within a limited arc) rather than losing the fire of non-echelon wing turrets. Echelon turrets were an attempt to bring a larger broadside without increasing metacentric height and thus stability. What plans are you looking at with echelon turrets without at least some cross deck capability?
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  3273. Oh, gosh darn it....it 0300 CDT and I now I won't get to bed until 0400. Yes, I'd appreciate a slightly more civilized hour.
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  3274.  @bkjeong4302  Four of the six Iowas were completed because they were already launched or underway at the time the Montanas were cancelled, and the Navy did need fast carrier escorts with the ability to fight off Japanese aircraft. Two of the completed Iowa's were launched before the decision to axe the Montana class, and the remaining two were launched shortly thereafter. The last two Iowa's were suspended after the Montana cancellations, having been laid down in 1942, pending postwar decisions about the best uses for the large hulls. My post was only about a strategic recognition that the days of the fast battleship were numbered. Taranto, Singapore, and Pearl Harbor were tactical operations that lead up to the strategic reassessment.
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  3275.  @mattblom3990  No more Patreon for me after what they've been up to with Sargon and a bunch of other youtubers. I'll use SubsribeStar until the leftist mobs manage to topple that ttoo.
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  3276. I don't know who your guest is, not having a real interest in early artillery, but it sounds like some of his his answers are knitted together from some other podcast, His pauses seem quite unnatural, and it seems like some words get dropped in between pauses. The throat clearing thing doesn't help either.
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  3277. Back in my days of sailing the West Coast and Caribbean, I spent an awful lot of money to help survive if I was involuntarily taking a swim. Long immersion life vests, shelter life raft, emergency radio, strobe lights pinned all over the life vest, survival suits...you name it, I had it. After several close calls, the real lesson I learned was never leave the boat unless you have absolutely no other choice. Vessels that aren't on fire and severely listing can stay afloat for a surprisingly long time. It's also a lot easier for rescuers to spot a ship than you bobbing around by yourself in the ocean. I wasn't afraid of being in the water after dark when my boat had sunk though. Nuh uh, not me....
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  3278. Dang, I'm not five hours late this time! Maybe all our stupid lockdowns will be over in time for Episode 100.
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  3279.  @WALTERBROADDUS  The Argentines did indeed have two Type 42 destroyers. They were only commissioned about two years before the war and had a radar and electronics fit that was an almost exact match to the British Type 42's. The Argentine navy and air force pilots flew training missions against the ships to determine the right mission profiles to assure that at least one plane got through. They found the Sea Dart missile radars couldn't target more than two low flying planes as long as they were no more than 10-15 meters above the sea surface and were flying at 350 knots or more. A number of three plane formations were flown during attacks against British shipping. Of the three pilots that took off, they knew there was nearly a 100% chance that two of them would not be returning. That's what I mean by bravery.
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  3280.  @WALTERBROADDUS  It illustrated the gunfighter versus gunfighter aspect of war. Missiles were handicapped by radar clutter and CIWS by the proximity of the ships in a crowded anchorage. The guys on those "obsolete" weapons, everything from 7.62mm LMG's bolted into rail stanchions to the 20mm and 40mm guns aimed with the Mark 1 Eyeball gun sights, broke up most of the attacks and brought down most of the attackers.
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  3281.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I don't know, Walter. There's no ECM or any other system that will defeat a pilot flying a fast jet armed with a couple of iron bombs. The stories of some of the Argentine pilots are absolutely terrifying. Bravery and skill were the two big differences between those air force and navy pilots and the bulk of the Argentine forces on the Falklands.
    1
  3282. Pilot skill and bravery will overcome any antiaircraft system. If enough pilots are willing die to achieve their goals, whether Japanese or Argentinian, some will get through any kind of screen designed to stop them.
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  3283.  @gwtpictgwtpict4214  Probably, but it depends on the actual size of the legs. I don't remember Wells giving specs for a tripod, and I think later artists have assumed the legs must be skinny things. I don't know that modern engineering analysis would agree, but who knows?
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  3284. Seems like a very reasonable idea of what HMS Thunder Child may have looked like. It's been a long time since I've read the original Wells novel. Did Thunder Child at least attempt a torpedo attack on the tripods? If not, why not? It seems like the "real world" use of the ship was to use her guns to cause enough damage to the enemy, or at least enough of a diversion, to get in close and fire her torpedos. As I remember, Thunder Child only used her guns as tactically assumed for real torpedo rams, but then never carried out a torpedo attack. It seems this portion of the novel had the last moments of the attack as Thunder Child and the tripods just disappearing in a vast cloud of steam and smoke. So what do you think, Drach fans? Was Thunder Child able to carry out a torpedo attack in her last heroic minutes, or was it only gunfire and ramming? BTW, this is the kind of thing I ponder as I sit welded up in the house, looking forward to my big event of the week.....grocery shopping. :-)
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  3285. The USN developed a sort of monitor in the LSM(R) class vessels. They were landing ships rather than landing craft and were fully seagoing vessels with a range of 5,000 nm. At 1194 tons and 203 feet, they were fairly large vessels and capable of 13 knots. The LSM(R) 501 class was the most effective and built in large numbers, 62 having been constructed by the end of the war. Firing 10 automatic loading spin stabilized rocket launchers firing at 30 rockets per minute as well as having a 5"/38 gun, they were capable of completely blanketing a landing area in fire over the course of five minutes. Some remained in service right through the Vietnam war.
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  3286.  joanne chon  Did you read my entire post? The allies weren't even aware a comms system like Kurier existed. They.were obviously unable to do traffic analysis on a system they couldn't DF or monitor. As I wrote, the USN admitted they were never able to monitor traffic on this system. Please do some research on this before you waste my time and the time of the readers again.
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  3287. @WTF Again? Thanks. We did get tornadoes but none as close as what we had last week. Just wind and rain this time. We got through it all again Thursday. Springtime in the South. :-)
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  3288. ha, do you brits have any sort of limit on your inability to comprehend English? You must, since you missed the part where I wrote "in some people's minds". Some people's minds included those in the Admiralty and 10 Downing Street. Maybe reading the story at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uk-military-navy-commentary/commentary-what-the-u-s-should-learn-from-britains-dying-navy-idUSKCN10L1AD will enlighten you to the current situation of the RN vs the UN.
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  3289.  @willrogers3793  The US treaty cruisers solved the interference problem by having the center barrel fire about a tenth of a second after the the two outer barrels. Since the American guns were fired electrically, this was a fairly easy fix. OTOH, I've never read any convincing evidence that this theoretical problem was ever a real life issue. Even the poor dispersion with French and Italian ships that had closely spaced guns were better explained by poor quality ammunition and deficient crew training.
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  3290.  @kemarisite  The 8" gun and 10,000 standard for cruisers was something the US pushed for. What became the Mark 9 8"/55 gun was already under design by the 1922 conference. The British 8-inch Mk VIII was only designed after the conference as a response to US and Japanese 8" guns. The RN would have been content to have 7.5" guns be the cruiser standard as no other navy had guns of this size.
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  3291.  @TraditionalAnglican  I agree the NTS shares a large part of the blame for the problems of the Mark 18, but those that held the purse strings for the Navy and the Great Depression are also part of the mix. I'd need a link to say US sub commanders were encouraged to return to port with torpedoes on board. Some did only because they gave up in disgust when firing most of their torpedoes only have them miss or fail to explode, and those torpedoes were used by Admiral lockwood for testing in Australia, but I'd need to be convinced that the rule was to fire only torpedo at a target and return to port with torpedoes still in the tubes. There were memos about torpedo shortages, and some subs had their 3" deck guns replaced with the hard hitting 4"/50 to better take on surface targets rather than use a torpedo, but that's about it. I've ready many accounts of a full bow launch of six torpedoes against a high value in the hopes one or two might hit the target and explode. As I wrote before, I don't know the source of your torpedo information, but is seems to be defective.
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  3292. I'm fully awake again now,.just waiting for a special. :-)
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  3293.  @DimoB8  I have one eye and one ear awake. Everything else is asleep. Well, also my hands, obviously.
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  3294. ​ @jamestheotherone742  What the post started out with "Correct: there were plenty americanos who got drafted but dinna wanna fight...", whose troops exactly do you think he was talking about? Bt feel free to not comprehend what was actually written and keep making your elaborate strawmen.
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  3295.  @gamarus0kragh  There's an account of the trials run of Le Terrible in a book called French Destroyers: Torpilleurs d'Escadre & Contre-Torpilleurs 1922–1956. It's an excellent book that covers all the French destroyers during that period. It's available for about $40. Last I looked, the Kindle version was more expensive than a new hardcover book. All of the Fantastiques had sustained cruising speed of 37-38 knots depending on how overloaded they got after refits. Full power flank speeds were around 40 knots, again depending on when they came over to the allies side and got extra guns and equipment installed. Any speed above 40 knots was highly unlikely for a true in service vessel.
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  3296.  @gamarus0kragh  There was a top speed "war" between the French and Italians in the years leading up to WWII. Each country tried to convince the other that their so-called super destroyers were the fastest. There was a fair bit of manipulation on trials runs with fuel and water reduced to the minimums needed for the run. Crew were also reduced to the minimums needed for the runs along with ammunition and provisions. The Italian Capitani Romani class vessels were the Le Fantastique competitors, and their trial runs weren't quite as manipulated. The Italian vessels had a top speed on trials of 43 knots while the fastest Le Fantastique, Le Terrible, reach a little over 45 knots. In reality, the placement of the aft turrets and machinery on the Fantastiques meant they trimmed down at the stern by almost two meters at top speed. Running at that speed for more than about 15 minutes created a following wave that washed over the stern and caused damage to some the equipment. The realistic sustained speed of the Le Fantastiques, Capitani Romanis, and Tashkent were all between 37 and 38 knots, still very fast for large ships.
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  3297.  @TheAngelobarker  Maybe Drach will weigh in here on the subject. As I said, the Italians appropriated some French ideas, especially the high power to weight ratio, but the design was Italian from everything I've read. His library is considerably larger than mine, so he may have a source I don't.
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  3298.  @TheAngelobarker  Okay, I guess I didn't understand your point. First you said it was based on a French design and now you say it was actually a copy of an Italian cruiser. My point was the Tashkent was not based on any French design. She had a few elements of French design, but the Soviets went to OTO for the design and build because the French were unwilling to share any ship design details with them.
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  3299.  @TheAngelobarker  No, it was designed and built in taly. It had some French elements that the Italians incorporated in the design, but the ship was definitely an overall Italian design.
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  3300.  @benwilson6145  You can find a detailed report of the action written by two Coasties (to retire as a Rear Admiral and the other as a Captain) who were crew members of the Modoc at the time of the action. They will answer your questions better than I can.
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  3301.  @japhfo  You'll have to refresh my memory. When did I mention anything about H.M. Coast Guard? What does this have to do with the sinking of the Bismarck?
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  3302.  @cliveengel5744  Read through the replies to find out where this took place. It wasn't in the Greenland-Iceland Gap.
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  3303.  @sprucezeus  "Old Leatherface" was common and apt moniker for Chenault, a side effect of too much sun in open cockpits and smoking three packs a day. Chenault fought with almost everyone, from Stillwell down to ground mechanics. There's no doubt Chenault was one of our major architects of modern pursuit flying, but he was also a little nuts. He fought with everyone over his crazy plan that he and maybe 30 bombers could end the war with Japan singlehandedly. That provoked yet another war between himself and Stillwell. Fights between Chenault and Boyington while in China were almost legendary, including a barroom brawl after Chenault and Boyington got in a physical fight over Boyington being drunk again when he was supposed to lead a major raid the next day. As you say, he wanted to court martial Boyington after that fight but no one knew if it would be legal to imprison him since they were both essentially contract employees of Chiang Kai-shek, and Chiang didn't want a public feud between two of his top men. He had a great respect for Chiang and wouldn't do anything against his wishes. I still haven't found anything about him wanting to demote Boyington to second lieutenant, but the two hated each other, so I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't yet another of Chenault's crazy ideas that never came to pass.
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  3304.  @sprucezeus  They Flying Tiger pilots were all commissioned in the ROC Air Force so there was no legal problem with them being considered mercenaries. The Japanese always considered them to be mercenaries and weren't signatories to the Geneva Convention. A pilot down near Japanese lines had very little chance of rescue and even less chance of humane treatment at the hands of Japan. Boyington and Chenault clashed because Chenault was a teetotaler and Boyington was an admitted alcoholic. Many of his successful missions were flown while he was drunk, something "Chenault detested, but Boyington was to popular and well know in the US for him to do much about it. I hadn't heard about any draft issues with Boyington. He was given a major's commission when he rejoined the Marine Corps, something that seems unlikely if there was any serious consideration about drafting him as a second lieutenant. Maybe this is part of his story I haven't read yet.
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  3305.  @hugmal37  It's the Denmark Strait rather than just Greenland, but not having the plotted path of the Coast Guard vessels, it's like asking how long would it take to drive from the Lower 48 to Alaska. What part of the Lower 48 to what part of Alaska makes a huge difference. I'm sure you can come up with some position reports and plot it if the information is important to you.
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  3306.  Jack Tangles  LOL. No it's not. Geographers now seem to favor calling it the Greenland Strait, which makes a lot mmore sense, since it's between Greenland and Iceland.
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  3307.  Jack Tangles  Thanks, and let me know what you find out. I only know what I've read in several Coast Guard histories of the prewar neutrality patrols, and I assume their narrative for what Modoc did that night, while perhaps somewhat inflated, is still about right when it came to where she was and what she saw.
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  3308.  @georgettewolf6743  Please don't add comment #56 to an almost year old post. I have no memory of what I said about the CG being part of Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, and I'm not about to trawl through all those comments to find out. If you feel you have something important to add make a new post so we can see it. However I'm a little doubtful about what you wrote since Her Majesty's Coastguard exists and has nothing to do with with the RN. In addition, no CG vessel has had a 5"/38 gun since the last one was removed for the Hamilton class cutters in the late 80's, over 30 years ago . Currently, no cutter has a main armamnentl larger that an OTO Melara Mark 75 76 mm/62 caliber gun, with the largest cutters, the Legend class, only having an incredibly weak 57mm gun for main armament. With nothing other than a Phalanx and some crew served machine guns as a secondary armament, no antisubmarine capability other than her single helicopter, and no missiles, they are the most poorly armed new build 4,500 ton warships in the world.
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  3309. Ah, the Albacore, Swordfish's bastard brother. At least Fairy partially redeemed themselves with the Barracuda, possibly the most ungainly looking aircraft to ever reach modern service. She was at least able to top 200 mph and carry a respectable ordinance load. She was only "modern" compared to the Swordfish and Albacore, but certainly not modern for an aircraft flying in 1944. She was still too slow to escape enemy fighters, had no forward facing defensive armament, and had a hydraulic system containing ether that regularly put pilots to sleep from even a minor leak in the hydraulic pressure gauge. After a rather disastrous performance in Sumatra, with the aircraft unable to reach even 200 mph in the thick tropical air, the RN wisely decided that switching to the Grumman Avenger was the better part of valor for the remainder of the Pacific campaign.
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  3310.  @neniAAinen  Guided AA weapons in 1943? New on on me. At any rate, you don't seem to understand that the two ships that became the Alaska class were already laid down near the start of the war. At that point, the Navy needed any ships it could get. The still weren't sure if the Japanese had any of the battlecruiser these were built to fight, but build they must. The only question was would they be carriers. 12" gunned large cruisers, or antiaircraft cruisers. The guns and turrets were available so that was the choice once the "carrier panic" of 1942 subsided. The 5"/38 was still the b est heavy AA gun in the war. Until the advent of the 5"/54 Mark 42, they were still the best postwar. The Worchester class was the attempt to build an AA "light" cruiser with heavier AA armament that grew to be larger and heavier than a heavy cruiser and had a main armament that never worked right. The only successful replacement of the Bofors 40mm AA armament was with the automatic 3"/50, and no light armament would ever be used again. By about 19o50, it was clear that missiles were the way forward, but everything looked very different in 1941. You seem to be hung up on looking at things back then through the 20/20 hindsight of today.
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  3311.  @neniAAinen  The 5"/54 did have a theoretically higher A/A ceiling at about 50,00 feet compared to the about 38,000 feet of the earlier gun, but both had ranges far higher than and reasonable attack altitude of aircraft attacking the fleet. The main reason for the development of the 5"/54 was for two sided automatic feed. However, that requirement plus the larger size of the gun itself made the weight of a dingle 5"/54 about as heavy as a dual 5"/38. The complex nature of the feed system required a,manning of 12-20 men depending on mission, also about the same as a dual 5"/38 mount, so the original 5"/54 turned out to be a disappointment. That improved somewhat with the Mark 42, but it wasn't until the Much different Mark 45 that the gun finally came into its own. There wasn't time in WWII to develop some new AA gun. It's a good thing that the 5"/54 wasn't on any ship that served in the war as it wasn't a good gun compared to the 5"/38, with constant jamming problems until the ROF was lowered. The thing with the Alaska class was the keel was already laid by early 942. There was stalk of converting them to carriers, and it was only the very fast building program of the Essex class and all the escort carriers available that caused that plan to be abandoned. Her 12" guns would only be useful for shore bombardment, and we had a multiplicity of BB's and CA" already available for that. They would never have been laid down if the Navy knew in 1941 what 1945 would look like. The 12" guns had already been built and in inventory when the class was under construction. If they hadn't been, a conversion to a carrier or a large CAA may have happened, but the Navy still liked ships with big guns, even if they had no apparent reason to exist. They were not needed to tear apart anything still floating by August 1945. They did serve as de facto CCA's anyway, but they would not have been built in any form if not for the naval panic of 1942. Things change fast in a war.
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  3312.  @neniAAinen  You think a 5"/38 gun is a short range weapon? The Atlanta class was already dangerously overloaded in the ships with 8 mounts on 7,400 tons fully loaded. The biggest problem was finding space for all the crew needed to man these Guns. Atlanta class vessels were already know as some of the most cramped and uncomfortable ships in the modern navy. Using a hull with size and available tonnage of an Alaska would produce an AA cruiser with about twice the firepower of an Atlanta with enough space available for the crew, supplies, electronics, and ammunition, as well as improved armor, something almost totally lacking in an Atlanta . They would only have been valuable in the event an invasion of the home islands took place, but they may have saved a number of our carriers in that event.
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  3313.  @keenanmcbreen7073  and it wouldn't just have been the number of barrels. Deleting the 12" turrets would have allowed an arrangement of the 5" mounts so that 20 or 21 of the mounts would have had a clear field of fire from almost any direction of attack. That says nothing of the concentration of 40 mm guns being at least equal to the Iowas while having the space and excess tonnage available to mount all the radars, and space available for fighter direction facilities. Such a ship may have saved at least a few other from kamikaze attacks.
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  3314. Admiral Horton's concept of a convoy rescue vessel was the seed planted in the USN for and escort vessel converted for rescue work. The PCE was a hull previously used in minesweepers,but enlarged in length and beam. The tonnage rose from a standard minesweeper of 650 tons to nearly 1,000 tons for the PCE, with a beam of about 33.1 feet. The ship had nothing but square corners, and the interior volume was much greater than almost any other ship of just 185 feet long. They had two operating rooms and recovery suites, and could care for 55-60 patients, depending on causality type and layout. They were capable of carrying 800 rescued personnel, and there were reports of South Vietnamese PCE(R)'s carrying over 1,000 people to safety in the Philippines while fleeing the fall of Saigon. They had a complete electronics fit of radars, sonars, and communications gear. . Each had two depth charge tracks and two depth charge throwers. Ships were capable of providing antiaircraft protection for a convoy with a 3"/50 DP gun, two to four 40 mm guns and four to six 20 mm guns. Unfortunately, because of their roles as both rescue and command ships during the invasions of the Philippines through Okinawa, they became prime targets for kamikaze attacks. Even though several were heavily damaged, not one was sunk, and they showed a remarkable ability to resist battle damage. The only PCE that was sunk in combat was the South Korean Danpo_, ex _PCE-842 ,sunk by a North Korean shore battery on January 19, 1967. Ironically enough, she was the "name" vessel for the entire 68 strong PCE-842 fleet.
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  3315. I don't remember the specific ship, and it may have been USS Washington, but at least one USN battleship, having to fire at a target directly astern, blew off one and, with the second salvo, the other of their floatplanes, along with the catapults and aircraft crane. There were multiple occurrences of 5"/25 guns and 20 mm guns, in the heat of battle, putting shells into adjacent gun mounts or the superstructure. Pipe rails around the guns to act a limit stops were added to prevent this, but battle damage to these still allowed some guns to fire into their own ships. The turrets of dual 5"/38 guns had limit stops built into their power laying systems, but there was at least one case on a ship, the name of which doesn't readily come to mind, where the stops failed, and the mount pumped four or five rounds into their own ship before frantic calls over the sound powered telephones to the gun captain finally got him to cease firing. From the accounts I've read of men manning the AA guns, when the ship was under fierce air attack, job one was destroying or driving off said aircraft, and anything else could be rectified once the ship was no longer in danger of sinking.
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  3316.  @bf9142ftw  It was just a free standing sign and not very big so it may have gotten moved around. My understanding is the interior of the turret is just an empty shell, but there was no viewing of it available when i was there about six years ago.
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  3317.  @bf9142ftw  Pretty much. One of the Iowas (I'm not sure which one) had a damaged barbette that needed replacing. It would have taken about a year to build a new one, so taking one from the North Carolina was the fastest way to get the ship back in service. Lift off the gun house, extract the barbette, and set the gun house back down on the rotating ring mount. I never would have known it happened if there wasn't a sign next to the turret with the story.
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  3318.  @bf9142ftw  Not a dumb question at all. The barbette is a fixed armored ring inside the rotating gun mount. It's what protects the interior of the turret and shell hoists above deck level from incoming shells. Since the barbette is completely enclosed inside the turret ring, a missing barbette wouldn't be noticed with a ship that's permanently anchored with the gun house sitting on top of the rotating structure. Since the weight of the barbette is what holds the gun housing in place, you wouldn't want to put to sea with a missing barbette.
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  3319.  @chrisbruce5711  I thought my first sentence about preserved battleships was pretty clear. It's why I didn't mention the USS Constitution either. At any rate, I accept your apology.
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  3320.  @bigbigmurphy  Yes, there's a reason why the PRC and ROC have been facing each other down for the last 70 or so years and nothing has happened. At this point, I'm not sure the PRC really wants to invade Taiwan anyway. They are getting all the trade and technology advantages of Taiwan with none of the associated costs.
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  3321.  @bigbigmurphy  The Navy really isn't taking the role of shore bombardment to support landings seriously. The assumption is future landings will all be done by helicopters and hovercraft so shore bombardment doesn't matter now. I hope we never really have to test that theory.
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  3322.  @bkjeong4302  Oh, okay, we have been talking past each other then. My comments were addressing using aircraft for fleet defense, including attacking enemy surface ships when that was part of the mix. The Navy really hadn't considered how will air power and surface ships could work together when attacking enemy surface ships. Most of the experience was air power attacking the enemy while surface units were never part of the mix. From that point of view, Samar was a unique operation, and one that succeeded because commanders on the scene were able to improvise tactics and win.
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  3323.  @bkjeong4302  The last fleet problem before the Pearl Harbor attack was one that assumed all the battleships of the Pacific fleet had been sunk or were too far away to be of any use and only two carriers were available. The centralized command and control facilities at Pearl and Manila were also assumed to be out of action. Any actions would have to be fought with a small number of cruisers, a larger force of destroyers and subs, and PT boats. The entire purpose of the problem wa sot make each commander do his own plan of attack attack while being able to also communicate with other fleet units, including aircraft. By the time of Samar, many USN aircraft had IFF units, and aircraft flying CAP over the fleet during kamikaze attacks got good at avoiding antiaircraft fire, while the fleet got good at prohibited zones that aircraft were supposed to avoid as free fire zones from the ships, and communicating those zones to the aircraft. The continuing perfection of CIC's did a lot to allow the fleet to control fighters and bring them into the attack when needed. Not saying that a lot of lucky circumstances, some due to the training from that last fleet problem, didn't combined to make Samar an unusual battle, but I also think you're not giving the Navy enough credit for being able to combine aircraft and surface action, sometimes on an ad hoc basis, when it was needed. We would have lost many more ships to kamikaze and conventional attacks to Japanese aircraft of all types if that hadn't happened.
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  3324.  @bkjeong4302  No doubt, it was the combination of air and surface power that made the Battle off Samar a tactical victory. It wasn't just the damage caused by aircraft either. The number of planes and the ferocity of their attacks helped convinced Kurita has was being attacked by a much larger force that included fleet carriers. Probably the best single battle of the war to show how air and surface power could work together for victory.
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  3325. The %'/38 was superior to the 5"/25 for antiaircraft work. The 5"/51 was superior for surface fire but had no utility for antiaircraft work. As shown at actions like the one off Samar, the combination of the 5"/38 gun and superior ranging radar and fire control showed it was a gun able to inflict damage all out of proportion to the size of the gun itself.
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  3326. @Jurassic Aviator That's another blurring of the lines between destroyers and cruisers now. The Ticonderoga class only has a few patches of kevlar armour around the bridge and magazines. The Burke's, in addition to being all steel except for the stacks, have over 70 tons of kevlar armor protecting vital areas, and thicker steel around the magazines than the Ticonderoga's.
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  3327. @Jurassic Aviator ...powerful and reliable despite being fragile You're going to have to explain that one for me.
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  3328. @Jurassic Aviator The line between destroyer and cruiser have blurred so much as to become meaningless. Technically, only the USN and Russia operate cruisers, although the Chinese Type 055 "destroyers" would be classed as cruisers in most other navies, as would the Sejong the Great class "destroyers" of the South Korean Navy. Ironically, the only modern what should be cruisers are the Type 055 and Sejong the Great classes, since the Russian and US ships all date from the late 70's to the 80's. The Burkes are close to what used to be called cruisers, with the Flight III ships approaching 10,000 tons. They carry a missile loadout only slightly inferior to the Ticonderoga's, and they have room to grow, so the Burke's are going to be what the USN spends its money on over the next 15 years at least. When it comes the Zumwalt's, the USN was trying to build a class that was comparable to a cruiser in size and seaworthiness while reducing the manning to the complement of a typical destroyer. It was never supposed to have all the armament of a typical cruiser because its stealthiness was supposed to compensate for the lack of other weapons systems. Unfortunately, the planners tried too many new systems on an unproven hull design so they got the worst off all worlds. The main battery was probably the worst example, with a new 6" gun and new ammunition, and the gun could only fire the new ammunition, even though the USN had tens of thousands of earlier 6" ammunition still in storage. Even though the LRLAP ammunition performed mostly up to specs, there were so many other issues with the rest of the ship's systems that the class was cut from 32 to 3. This increased the cost of each round from about $40,000 to nearly $1 million. With a requirement of 350 rounds per ship per mission, and another 2,500 ready rounds per ship in depots, each ship would have required ammunition that cost $2 billion, even assuming they could have kept procurement cost at $800,000. That was the cost of one complete Burke, so the whole contract was cancelled, and the ships have two decorative main battery guns with no ammunition. In essence, they have become the world's largest, fastest, and most expensive offshore patrol vessels, with the only functioning gun armament being two 30mm chain guns and four .50 caliber machine guns.
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  3329.  @johnshepherd8687  Whatever, dude.
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  3330.  @johnshepherd8687  Sunshine? You believe whatever you want. I'm just relaying what the official story says.
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  3331.  @johnshepherd8687  Not quite. The Zumwalt is 610 feet and between 15,100 and 15, 700 tons, depending on equipment and weapons fit. The Baltimores were 673 feet and 17,000 full load tons. They are pretty huge for something labeled a destroyer with almost no offensive capabilities. The Ticonderoga class had its classification changed from DDG to CG before the first keel was laid because of the additional capabilities of the Aegis system and the addition of flag accommodations. They were never classed as DD's because of their guided missile weapons. The Navy had actually been looking for a way to change the classification to cruiser, since it was easier to get that kind of money out of Congress for a cruiser than anything with destroyer in the classification.
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  3332.  @WALTERBROADDUS  It was an Elco boat. There were a couple Higgins boats in his squadron, and my dad didn't like them. First issues is they were six feet shorter than an Elco. Every foot was important when it comes to a 78' (or 72') boat. His tactical issue was the placement of the machine gun mounts. They were directly across for each other in the Higgins boats while they were offset on an Elco. That allowed both pairs of machine guns to be used on broadside, an important; advantage when you're doing barge busting and shore strafing.
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  3333. I wonder what the total weight of canvas carried by these two ships was? I've never seen a naval vessel with so many decks covered with awnings.
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  3334. @ZebsFrend Pt Boats operated in some very dangerous areas of the Pacific, just not the same kind of concentrated danger that was encountered in the Channel and North Sea. 69 boats were lost during the war. The RN wasn't able to match the speed and armament of the E Boats until 1943, with the introduction of the Fairmile D variant. The RN finally had an MTB with the speed to match the E Boats, and the semiautomatic 57 mm ( 6 pounder) Molins gun was the weapon needed to breach the armoured deckhouses of the E boats. Additional 20 mm and 40 mm guns also cut the losses to German aircraft, but nothing could stop the chief cause of MTB sinkings, mines. The USN was lucky that the vast reaches of the Pacific made effective minefields impossible outside of ports or coastal installations.
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  3335. @ZebsFrend I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to assume you're not a native English speaker, and you don't know "having (or not having) a dog in a fight" is a common metaphor that has nothing to do with an actual dog. It means I do (or don't) care about the outcome of some issue. It's not hard to look this up on the net before you start frothing at the mouth. Just to show how wrong your distance viewing is, I'm 73 years old, have a medium length haircut, Don't have a beard, my weight is appropriate for my height, and I have never been a Marine or a Navy Seal, nor ever claimed to be one. Due ot a medical condition called Meniere's Syndrome, I can't drink alcohol of any kind, including beer I did spend 27 years a police officer, some of which was woking special operations with Animal Control and the Humane Society raiding dog and cock fighting dens. I made it a special goal to arrest people for animal cruelty of all types. My wife of 37 years passed away in 2004 after an almost three year battle with leukemia. My dog companion of 14 years passed away last year, and my companion now in my black kitten, Marty. Accusing those you don't know of such vile things based on a single phrase says a lot about your character, none of it good.
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  3336. Thanks, Drach, another interesting ship. Has any country successfully merged all their armed forces into one command? I think Canada is the only one other than small African and Central American countries merging all the rebel fighters into one supposed government force. I see there is now talk of creating one large EU armed force from the collection of smaller countries in the Union, and even some talk of merging German and French armed forces. I don't think anyone can factually claim the unification of Canada's forces was a success, so I'm surprised to see such talk emerge again.
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  3337.  @USSAnimeNCC-  The Juan Carlos I was built as a multipurpose amphibious assault ship rather than pure carrier. One of the hangars is used for aircraft and the other generally for vehicles, but both can be joined together to make one large space if needed. It only has a top speed of 21 knots, your first hint this is not a purpose built carrier. By contrast, the now discarded Príncipe de Asturias was built as a carrier, and could at least get to 26 knots.
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  3338.  @themadhammer3305  The Independence class CVLs are a good example of what you're thinking. Fast enough to operate with the fleet cna could be built fast enough to substitute for a real fleet carrier for about ten months. It's there that the good points end. They cramped, and hanger space was too long instead of wide. The conversion process cost nearly as much as building a proper small carrier, and seakeeping with the extra topweight was poor. To try to compensate for these deficiencies, the Saipan class was built. These used the hulls of Baltimore class heavy cruisers rather than the light cruiser Cleveland class hulls as in the Independence class. These had better seakeeping because they were designed for keel up as carriers, but they were even more expensive and slower to build. Neither of the two that were competed got in service before the end of the war, and both took over two years to commission. Compare that to the Essex, laid down in April, 1941 and commissioned in December 1942, and the diminishing returns of "almost carriers" becomes obvious. I will admit to some foot dragging on the part of the Navy. The brass hated these light carriers, and it was only President Roosevelt's insistence that got them built.
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  3339.  @themadhammer3305  The Bogue's were good examples of this kind of conversion. If the Germans had aircraft carriers and the aircraft needed to strike at these ships, the number of losses would have skyrocketed. Since that didn't happen, using them as hunter/killers against German subs was their best use but, even then, three were lost to U-Boat torpedoes. It's hard to see a 500 foot/17,000 ton conversion being done today. In addition to the speed issue you raise, the increase in aircraft size and weight would make carrying a useful air group impossible. One of the reasons these escort carriers succeeded was the availability of the relatively tiny FM-1/-2 Wildcat, big enough to use as an attacker and even occasional dive bomber, but small enough so you could get 12 of them on the ship, backed up by a smaller group of 8 or 9 TBF Avengers to carry the depth chargers and homing torpedoes that killed the subs. I really can't think of 20 fixed wing aircraft today that could fit on a Bouge. That means larger and more expensive ships to use for conversions, and you start spending as much money on conversions as you would to build small carriers more useful in war. I will say the increasing capabilities of UAVs might entirely change the equation.
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  3340.  @chrism7969  The original question seems pretty clear to me, but we are apparently talking past each now. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
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  3341.  @chrism7969  Go back and read the first post again. It's about Britain developing an atomic bomb on their own if they didn't hand over the project to the Americans in 1940 to 1941. There's nothing about the Americans not entering war. The post says "...handed over in total in 1941 to the Americans when they entered the war." The Americans and British were partners in developing the bomb as far back as 1939. The British recognized it was unlikely they could develop an atomic bomb without the participation of the Americans in any timeline that wasn't likely to see either the British or Germans otherwise defeated. I'm sorry, but I've read your post three times now, and you seem to going off to refute things I never wrote. Sure, the British could have developed an atomic bomb and used it to defeat Germany...assuming the war lasted until about 1949. Maybe they could have done it with sharks that had frickin lasers strapped on their heads for all I know, but none of this has anything to do with the point I was addressing.
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  3342.  @chrism7969  What? The US embargo on oil and steel was before Pearl Harbor. If the Japanese didn't leave China, the embargo would have continued. This was an embargo on US oil, and we were the biggest oil producers in the world in 1941. The Japanese had to seize Dutch and British oil fields to offset the loss of American product. Do you think the Japanese could have done that without a response by the British? The British declared war after the attack on Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Do you think they wouldn't have done so regardless of what was happening Europe? Send a bomb to Australia on a cruiser because there was little risk? Are you aware of how the gun type mechanism that contained half the US supply of enriched uranium for Little Boy got to Tinian? How about what happened on the return trip? You seem to be stretching for some way the bomb could have been built in the Empire. Even with the determined push of the Manhattan Project, it was clear early on no bombs would have been ready before mid-1945 at the earliest. Once Germany surrendered, the only reason for the British to continue to push for the bomb is that they were at war with Japan. There's no way to untangle the allies in this war. Britain would have had to respond to the Japanese attacks, and they barely had the resources at that time to challenge Germany. Roosevelt could not have stood by and watched Britain try to fight a war in the Atlantic and Pacific alone. Once Japan decided to attack US, British, and Dutch territories, that was it. The World War was underway, and Germany and Japan would both be destroyed.
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  3343.  @chrism7969  I understand that. The key part is post WWII . It was obviously a little safer to send a bomb by ship in 1953 than it would have been in 1944.
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  3344.  @polygondwanaland8390  Did you forget you need a lot more than that to build an atomic bomb? There's plenty of empty land and uranium, but Canada didn't have the industrial capacity to carry forth the Manhattan Project unaided. Much of the uranium for the Little Boy bomb did come from Canada, and some universities there aided in the research work, but it's a little silly to suggest Canada could have built the bomb by itself, or even with British help.
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  3345.  @grahamariss2111  BUt there wasn't plenty of land in the British Isles, and transporting a bomb from Britain to Australia in wartime may have been seen as a bit...risky. :-)
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  3346.  @darwinism8181  I made no argument about Germany except as how the American public viewed Germany compared to Japan. What would happen in the Pacific was a whole different issue, and I was saying the American public wouldn't accepted any kind of stalemate with Japan. I will say Germany should have had every chance to defeat Russia. The rest of Europe had already fallen for over a year, and Germany wan't under sustained attack from any allied force. The fact they couldn't do so gives me no confidence they should have somehow succeeded later.
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  3347.  @KB4QAA  There's a very detailed report of Japanese research into improving their late war avgas at http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/japan/USNTMJ-X-38_N-2.pdf. It was conducted by the immediate postwar Naval Technical Mission to Japan, with the report submitted on February 18, 1946. It just struck me that not only is that my birthday, it was my actual date of birth. Kind of a strange crossing of dates for me. I don't have anywhere near the technical knowledge you have so you may get more out of the report than I can. My understanding is it was more than just poor quality fuel. A plane will fly with 85 octane gas, but it will never perform up to specs, the pilot had better be well trained in watching manifold pressure and when to use water injection to boost speed, and there better be good mechanics and repair depots to take care of engines that were constantly being slogged to the point of burning up. By the start of 1945, a plane like the Nakajima Ki-84, arguably as good a plane as anything possessed by the allies, could rarely attain the altitude needed to attack B-29s due to the poor quality of the fuel, some of which was being stretched using pine root aromatics. They couldn't fly fast enough to attack the speedy P-47N, partly due to fuel and partly due to poor engine manufacturing skills. They were flown by pilots with minimal training who often damaged engines trying to wring the maximum speed out them. The ground crews were sparse and ill trained, and spare parts often didn't reach the airfields which needed them. There was almost no operable heavy equipment to repair damaged runways, so planes were often damaged just taking off or landing. Poor quality fuel, to my understanding, didn't keep planes on the ground, but they didn't allow the aircraft to perform up to specs, and there just wasn't enough of it. The Japanese, especially the Navy, had so many possible points of failure when it came ot aviation that it's remarkable they were able to keep fighting as long as they did.
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  3348.  @ulaanbataar4479  Your English is just fine, no need to apologize. It's certainly better than my Italian. which consists mainly of how to order food and find a toilet. :-) How well the Empire could have done on its own comes down to mobilizing parts of it like Africa and Asia, where most efforts were directed toward minerals rather than manpower. Could the British Empire have stopped the bombing of England itself? Could the Empire have grown and transported the food the home islands would have needed to survive? Would colonies in Africa really have contributed the manpower and training to essentially offset the numbers provided by the US Army? How would the hundreds of merchant ships built by the US been built in the Empire? Pretty thorny problems to work out.
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  3349. The 5"/54 Mark 16 guns on the Midway class were never considered really satisfactory weapons. The had power controls for the turret and shell handling, but final loading was by hand. At 70 pounds per projectile and another 13 pounds per cartridge case, crew fatigue set in rapidly, reducing rate of fire to below the former 5"/38 gun. The sponsoon mountings were also a problem, as heavy seas moved the mounts around enough to cause some worrisome cracks. The long barrels also overlapped the 40mm quads mounted below them on the same sponsoon causing blast interference and, in some cases, damage to the mounts and the men in them if they didn't get out before the 5"/54's were fired. The Navy was willing to accept these issues as a war emergency measure, but the end of the war brought a rapid landing on the 40mm guns and gradual removal of the 5"/54 guns. With each mount and gun weighing about 35 tons, and poorly positioned weight at that, they had to go to make up for the weight of other systems added during the carrier's long lives.
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  3350.  @tulsatrash  You're welcome. I thought it was a great story of training that most guys thorough was worth only a few beers being put to good use when the time came.
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  3351. There's a good paper at http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a258520.pdf that addresses that question.
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  3352. Mine shows 15 views and your comment.
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  3353. I was actually asleep when this started. That was a first!
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  3354.  @AdamMGTF  Most torpedo technology really hasn't changed since WWII. The amount of explosives in the modern tornado has actually decreased because the torpedo need high speeds to catch that ship sailing off at 25 knots. I know there are modern torpedoes with better sensors so they could theoretically detonate only under the hull close enough to break the keel. Let's just say the new technology of magnetic pistols didn't work out too well at the beginning of the war. Most torpedoes don't undergo extensive testing because the torpedoes themselves are expensive, and finding hulls to practice on is expensive. A lot of the work that's done is by computer simulation. I'll take it all wit a gran of salt until I see it in action. The other issue is it's unlikely you can sink a 1,000 foot long, 200,000 ton vessel with a single torpedo hit. The ships have better survivability just because of the large internal volume, and many modern container ships have much better compartmentation than Liberty ships. Almost any sinking would require multiple hits, and each additional torpedo becomes mathematically less likely to score a hit as the ship is moving off at 25 knots. Sinking merchant ships in a 2019 war is a much different proposition than in 1945.
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  3355.  @niclasjohansson4333  Correct, but that only helps with catching up to the merchant ship. The firing solution for a torpedo against a ship moving at 25 knots is orders of magnitude more difficult than than hitting an 8 knot freighter.
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  3356. Quite so. Each sinking would have a more deleterious effect on a country's supply line than sinking even four Liberty ships, which were actually relatively large for 1942. However, a larger ship has more columns and would be correspondingly more difficult to sink than a Liberty ship. It would be interesting to see how convoying would work out. I'd think you'd still need convoys for all the ships of <15 knots while the fast container ships would probably do better sailing indepently.
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  3357. The Admiral's family name is pronounced May-han, at least according to our midshipman tour guide when I was an Annapolis. However, Muh-han is the more common pronunciation in England. Any USN ship named after Admiral Mahan should use the May-han pronunciation.
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  3358.  @alexsis1778 Half a dozen is really too high. They had three major flaws not found in most other torpedoes. The first was a conceptually advanced but poorly designed and tested magnetic influence exploder. If it had worked correctly, having a torpedo explode while under maximum magnetic influence of the hull would have caused a lot of broken backs and ship sinkings. There were just a host of problems with the exploder, some of which were related to the depth problem discussed next. Once the crews started disabling the magnetic exploders, the torpedo started to perform as expected. The second major issue was running too deep. It took testing in the field that should have been done in preproduction to discover and correct a hydrostatic vent problem. The third big issue was the contact exploder was never updated for the much high speeds of the Mark 14 compared to the Mark 10. The same perpendicular trigger and spring was used with no testing at all. It took almost a year to discover that the high impact forces of the Mark 14 hitting a target was causing the firing pin springs to bind on the the firing pin, only making a light strike on the primer. The existing trigger was replaced by assembly was replaced with aluminum parts to decrease mass, ultimately replacing it all together with a ball switch and electric detonator rather than a mechanical firing pin. There were some problems with circular runs, but those weren't uncommon with any nation's tornadoes. The basic cause for all of this was a depression era lack of money to do much more than just produce torpedoes (and painfully slow at that), most of the testing being down is shallow static pools. If there had been enough money for some real live fire testing, the problems would have been discovered and corrected before the war. The Mark 14 torpedo ultimately turned out to be a fine weapon, responsible for sweeping the seas nearly clean of Japanese shipping. The Mark 14 continued in service in many subs until the early 1960's, and much longer in some allied navies. It's just unfortunate that the frugality brought on by the depression of the 30's combined with a stubborn and incompetent submarine fleet admiral just made a bad situation worse.
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  3359.  @kemarisite  Look, a rack of torpedoes carrying any kind of warhead, from TNT to Torpex, were subject to exploding when hit by incoming rounds. Many ships were sunk by explosions from their own torpedoes. You have wandered way off into the weeds from my original rather simple point.
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  3360.  @PaulfromChicago  The Wasp is an LHD. The Essex is an LHD. The Kearsarge is an LHD. Stop mixing apples with oranges.
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  3361.  @PaulfromChicago  The USN hasn't had a CVL since WWII. The America is an LHA, not a CVL, and all other LHA's have been named after historical battles.
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  3362.  @kyle857  Not the LHA's. They were always named after US battles from various wars until the America.
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  3363. Even that has gotten mucked up when the decision was made in 2008 to name the LHA-6 USS America.
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  3364. I used to live not far from Honda Point, or Point Pedernales, as it was more commonly known to the locals. I just can't describe how dark it was on the coast during a moonless night and in the fog. As usual with new inventions, the RDF gave them correct information about where they were, but it was generally disregarded because of known problems with atmospheric conditions, especially on a cool, foggy night like that one. They were lucky that ranchers in the area made a pretty good supplementary income salvaging vessels that ran into the rocks, a not uncommon occurrence. Their skills with breeches buoys and small boat handling helped save many lives that night.
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  3365.  @MrTScolaro  The West Virginia was the only old battleship to mount the Mk 8 fire control system, a more accurate main battery radar than the Mk 1 used by the other battleships. She got this most advanced radar because she was the last battleship to be completely reconstructed after Pearl Harbor. While California and Tennessee also received the Mk 8, her crews were still undergoing training. the Wee Vee crew having been trained ashore while the reconstruction was carried out. I guess the more accurate way to have made my point was no only did they have the most advanced FC radar, they had a crew that knew how to use it, particularly at night, while the other two ships were still working up with it at the time of the battle. The Wee Vee was essentially a brand new battleship except for machinery when she was put back in service. California was similarly rebuilt (although with slightly less advanced GFCS radars), and I'd make the same point about her. It was a huge aniubt of money to spend on a ship that, with the exception of one engagement, was used only for shore bombardment and fire support. With the large numbers of Baltimore and Cleveland class cruisers available, not to mention the cheaper and more austere rebuilds of Wee Vee's sisters, that we just didn't get much return on investment from her. There were also the ten modern battleships available at the time. Did we really need West Virginia ? I'll let you be the judge of that, but my two cents is no, we didn't, and the money could have been better spent on aircraft carriers.
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  3366.  @MrTScolaro  West Virginia had the most advanced fire control radars of any ship in the navy. She also had well trained radar operators and gunnery officers that understood radar and how to use it. Not to diminish their marksmanship, but if any ship was going to make that kind of hit, it should have been West Virginia .
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  3367.  @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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  3368.  @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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  3369.  @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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  3370.  @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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  3371. I was happy to see this request comes from a rando naval "historian" rather than someone worth more reply time than we'd normally see with a guy writing from mom's basement.
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  3372.  @guidor.4161  Thanks!
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  3373.  @ieuanhunt552  What weapon? Certainly not true for a 40 mm gun.
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  3374. Unfortunately, the Allies actually had local air superiority at the beginning of the Battle of the Java Sea, but it was foul weather that kept both sides grounded. When the weather cleared on March 1, the last surviving destroyer, the USS Pope, was sunk by a combination of gunfire and aerial attack, as the weather had finally cleared. Much too late for the Allied air power to do anything useful. Given that US only had only three carriers available for the Battle of Midway three months later, I don't know that the USN would have risked them to save the Java Sea ships. They certainly didn't want to risk a carrier to save Wake.
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  3375. I suspect that two more ships in the ABDA force would have made only temporary difference. It wasn't battleships that made the difference, it was carriers and aircraft. Neither of these two ships would have been any better protected from air attack than they would have been in the battle that ultimately sunk both of them
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  3376. @UCW7JzqaM4HFFdCuDFh2lXgA They were not operated as pre dreadnoughts. They were assigned to convoy escort duties because of their low top speed compared to newer vessels, but they were also unreliable vessels, as both ships had problems losing screws and excessive vibration at speed. Even if they had a higher speed, it's doubtful these ships would have been considered as main battle fleet units due to their mechanical problems. Dreadnought herself spent most of the war operating with pre dreadnoughts. There were certainly design faults with the South Carolinas, but that doesn't negate their place as the US Navy's first dreadnoughts.
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  3377. @UCW7JzqaM4HFFdCuDFh2lXgA I suggest you read https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2010/february/south-carolina-sisters-americas-first-dreadnoughts by Norman Freidman, a world renowned naval historian. There is zero doubt the South Carolina class were true dreadnoughts. They introduced the innovation of superfiring turrets, which were later adopted by all the major navies. Their low top speed was a tradeoff for better armor protection and relegated them to operating with older ships during WWI, but that doesn't make them not "real" dreadnoughts. Who's the author of the book you're citing? Assuming it's the book by Ian Sturton, I have it, and can find nothing in it that states the South Carolina class were not real dreadnoughts.
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  3378.  @benwilson6145  I don't think it's a matter of how effective they were as sea boats. It was a matter of how well the crew could operate the vessel, and making them walk outside on the pitching, wet, heaving decks to get between the bridge and other parts of the ship made them less effective as escorts. Enclosing passageways made it faster and safer for men to move around, and gave them some protection from the weather and observation by the enemy when they were under attack. I'm rather surprised these are difficult concepts to understand. Do you think the RN would have made a fairly major modification to the superstructure without some significant benefits?
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  3379.  @blueeyeswhitedragon9839  Once again, what country are you from and where do live now? The is conversation isn't going to continue without some answers from you.
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  3380.  @blueeyeswhitedragon9839  Certainly being in a place like China, Russia, Cuba, or Venezuela will give different answers than if you are doing the search from an area with less censorship. Again, what country are you from, so I have a frame of reference?
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  3381.  @blueeyeswhitedragon9839  Okay, but those activities increase their domestic debt as a percent of GDP. Those "unsinkable" aircraft carriers also can't run away. Those kinds of fixed fortifications don't have a good record in battle.
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  3382.  @blueeyeswhitedragon9839  You tend not to trust US debt figures? Even though calculating US debt within a few percent is possible using using public domain data? Chinese debt is a black hole, and only government data gives us a glimmer what it might be. For full disclosure, I'm an American. What horse are you riding in this game? Personal debt of Americans may affect each individually, but it has nothing to do with foreign debt. Public debt includes foreign debt so I'm missing your point with that.
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  3383.  @rickslingerland1155  I've read Shattered Swords, and it's a great book about the details of Midway. I think it really came down to Japan's infection with "Victory Disease". It made them sloppy about planning overly complicated operations and sloppy in their execution. What they couldn't have known was how thoroughly their code had been broken, and how the now famous water distillation hoax message sent from Midway sealed any chance they had for a surprise attack on the US fleet and Midway.
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  3384.  @ScienceChap  You are correct. This was a typo on my part.
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  3385.  @derekhenschel3191  Say what?
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  3386.  @alecblunden8615  RN conservatism has nothing to do with the occasional aggressive commander. RN technological innovations are now few and far between. Read https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/the-decline-of-the-royal-navy for a perspective on the modern RN and https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0968344515580492 for some perspective on turn of the 20th century problems and issues.
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  3387.  @RonJohn63  Not old doctrines, just their philosophy of organization, equipment, and battle tactics. The army and navy pretty much ran their own shows with almost no coordination, and the air force didn't much care for either of them. For example, the navy had more of a traditional RN style of conservatism when it came to battles while the army was more of a blitzkrieg force. Put those two different ideas together along with an almost complete lack of coordination and cooperation and you stand a good chance of losing a war.
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  3388. Yes, the Argentine Navy always patterned itself on the RN, trained with the RN, and had a modern fleet heavily tilted toward British ships. This split in tactics between how Germany or Britain would conduct a battle was one of the predisposing causes for the loss of the Falklands War.
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  3389.  @frankwittner1979  That's certainly possible. The German had experience with twin turrets during WWI, and that concept probably carried over in WWII. It still seems odd that the Deutschlands and the light cruisers all had triple turrets though. It seems likely that the experience with twin turrets in 8" and above ships during the pervious war, Krupp's preference for building twin turrets, and the innate conservatism of the naval staff pushed the designers toward twin turrets.
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  3390.  @michaelkroger899  And you know Mr. Friedman can't read German and no German book has ever been translated to English. You go ahead and get your facts in ways only you understand.
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  3391.  @michaelkroger899  Yes, and I'm 73 and have been reading on this theme for 60 years. So what? I still know there are people that know a lot more about naval technology and naval history than I do. Norman Friedman is one of those people. If you think you know more than a world renowned author and expert on the subject then your ego knows no bounds.
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  3392.  @michaelkroger899  Did you bother to read the post and summary of what Norman Friedman wrote? He's a long time naval analyst with the US Naval Institute with a PhD over 30 books to his credit on naval subjects from all over the world. His summary makes perfect sense. There no reason you need to be German to understand German shipbuilding anymore than you need to be American to understand US shipbuilding.
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  3393.  @michaelkroger899  This thread is getting insanely long, but read Nguyen Johnathan's post about halfway down. I think he has the best answer. Krupp was the only turret builder for the navy, and their innate conservatism and dislike for the idea of anything other than twin turrets is how the battleships ended up with twin turrets. Not any inability to manufacture them, technical limitations of shipbuilding or canals, just that Krupp didn't want to build anything other than twin turrets. Since they had the monopoly, they ruled.
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  3394.  @michaelkroger899  Crew size for four turrets more than three...no more armor for twin turrets than triple...rate of fire has nothing to do with number of barrels...one less shell hoist and magazine with three than four...one less magazine with three than four...8 guns compared to 9...ship needs to be longer, engines more powerful for same speed...More armor for same protection...
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  3395.  @calvingreene90  Indeed, the Brits have always been the best at spying, but I'm pretty sure even a fair to middling industrial espionage agent could know about British and US plans for building battleships, especially because it would mostly only require reading the morning papers over a spot of tea.
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  3396.  @jcgamer892  No problem. I believe you're confusing a question of mine about triple turrets in general with my specific question about the H class. I'm sure Drach can tell us.
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  3397.  @rnrailproductions5049  BTW, I meant to say I have been watching and enjoying some of your videos but had failed to subscribe. Bad boy, but I have since corrected that.
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  3398. I wonder, if the climactic battle really came about, would the French had any role to play? Maybe just mopping up at the edges, if nothing else. It seems from the ships that were assigned to the Channel (http://www.naval-history.net/xGW-FrenchNavy1914-1918.htm) in November 1918 that there were enough destoryers and submarines to have been useful if the British had decided to use them. Since they didn't, I assume there was a good reason, but I'm not conversant enough with the situation to know why.
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  3399. So what happened to the French fleet? It certainly wasn't the RN in terms of ability or power, but the French fleet wasn't inconsiderable. She couldn't have contributed much in the way of capital ships but, even assuming that half the fleet was deployed to the Mediterranean, a large number of destroyers and particularly submarines would have been available.
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  3400.  @richardpentelow655  This post and thread is going on two years old. I have no idea what you're talking about with captured ships taken into the "German marine". I'm not going to go trawling though all the posts looking for it either. Please quote what I said that has you "interested".
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  3401.  Daniel Large  Did you not read my reply? I wrote exactly what you wrote.
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  3402. Geez. Four in the morning and Drach shows up. Have some pity on us poor Yanks!
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  3403.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Equivalent perhaps but not the same.
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  3404.  @gamewarrior010  Yes, there's one for the Norfolk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_aB1ym8Qc
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  3405.  @gamewarrior010  I can't find any evidence he has when I search his videos. She is mentioned in several battles she was a part of but no separate profile.
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  3406. 1898 Have an affair, get caught, shoot yourself Today Have an affair, get caught, go on TV to explain why it wasn't your fault, write a salacious novel about said affair...Profit!
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  3407. Another great video!
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  3408. Drach, I'd suggest laying out a multiple leg trip in Google maps. The driving times are usually pretty accurate, but I add 10% to the time for the inevitable contingencies. Distances between destinations are not as important here as in Britain. It's travel time that feeds the bulldog. You should also plan at least one rest day between locations or you'll be too exhausted to enjoy your visit. I'm sure some of your fans here are also strategically located near and between destinations and could offer your the hospitality of the house. For example, I'm almost exactly halfway between Charleston and Mobile, have a large guest bedroom with ensuite facilities, wifi, and all the normal modcons. I'd be pleased to have you spend the night, and you'd have that much more money for all books you know you want to buy at every museum. :-)
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  3409.  @brisktea64  You're welcome.
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  3410.  @sharlin648  LOL. Indeed. One has to wonder how things may have turned out if it had been the British that had developed the reliable and effective oxygen enriched engine, and they were the ones with a Long Lance. Those early Pacific battles might have had much different outcomes.
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  3411. Amazing how long the French stuck with the idea that a triple 152 mm DP arrangement would have ever worked. It would have been hard enough just to produce a single 152 mm gun with fast enough loading and training to have been useful against even the relatively slow prewar aircraft they already knew about. I'm sure there was a concept that aircraft would be getting faster, and some kind of autoloading and powerful hydraulic or electric power control would have been needed to be effective against them. Of course, it's not easy to have been too hard on the French when the USN said "Here, hold my beer" when they decided they could make six twin 152 mm DP turrets work with the 1948 technology available. So much for that plan.
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  3412. Thanks for another interesting video. It must have been a great time to be a ship's captain. You cabin occupied most of the stern at the main deck level with enough windows to outstrip a cruise ship. All this and you got that prize money and were allowed to flog any sailor that irritated you.
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  3413.  Nguyen Johnathan  The biggest problems with 152mm (6") DP guns is the amount of magazine space required for enough ammo for sustained periods of air attacks and the weight of the shell itself. The 127mm shell at ~55 pounds (~25 kg) was at about the upper limits of what could still passed and loaded by hand if all else failed. The 152mm shells weighed in at 105 lbs. (47.6 kg) for AA Common rounds. just too heavy to be manhandled except by a few weightlifters and, even then, not for long. Navies generally plan for worst case scenarios, and 152mm AA guns would have been useless without the hoists and power loading and ramming they needed to work. You also needed a much larger ship to handle the equipment needed for training and elevating the 152mm turrets and guns as well as magazine space. There's a reason the Worcester (CL-144) "light" cruiser class was longer and heavier than most heavy cruisers. In the end, at least with the USN, it was decided the 127mm gun was sufficient for AA use compared to the complications introduced with the 152mm gun.
    1
  3414. The UJSS Cleveland could have been considered a pre-WWII cruiser since it was laid down in 1 July 1940 and launched 1 November 1941. She wasn't commissioned until 15 June, 1942, so that would remove her from consideration if commision date is the criteria. Assuming the Cleveland was in the mix then I don't there's much doubt about the best pre-war cruiser.
    1
  3415. I just can't see the Americans going to war with Britain at any point in the 20th century. We were allies in the Great War", hadn't been in a shooting war since 1814, and shared a complete common culture. The US wasn't going to war without the support of her citizens, and it's difficult to understand how that could have developed. I think Britain and the US knew that our common enemy at some point would be Japan. There was no point in exhausting ourselves even further and leave the field open to Japan.
    1
  3416.  @williammagoffin9324  William, I vaguely recall that as well. I think the Italian Navy used 76mm guns for saluting that also fired starshells. I just don't follow the history of the Italian Navy so I could very well be wrong too.
    1
  3417. Just woke up and found Drach and Jutland was going to entertain me for an hour and fourteen minutes. Life is now worth living again. :-)
    1
  3418. The Ise class hybrids never operated anything but floatplanes. The Navy was trying to develop the Yokosuka D4Y dive bomber to operate from the hybrids but they couldn't get the catapult launching gear developed before the end of the war. The also had to revise a fast plane with a high landing speed with enough flap area to slow the plane down enough to land on the tiny 229 foot flight deck.
    1
  3419. Thank goodness April 1 only comes once a year.
    1
  3420.  @Digmen1  You mean the tank that was named after Churchill but that he had no part in designing or bringing into service?
    1
  3421. As well the Myoko class should have been better fighters than the US treaty cruisers. They were at least 1,000 tons (and later 5,000 tons) over the limit and carried much more effective torpedoes.
    1
  3422. Your new opening is very pleasant and professional. I'm fine with some non-obtrusive ads. You need some money just to buy some more reference books!
    1
  3423. Something seemed to have gone haywire with your audio starting at 3:21:54.
    1
  3424. Sadly, the French actually developed a good 127 mm/54 DP gun immediately postwar. That availability of USN 5" ammunition influenced part of the design, but there's no reason this gun couldn't have been ready prewar if the French had abandoned the idea they needed a triple turret secondary battery that was going to equally useful in the surface and AA roles. It was a bridge too far for the USN, with much more technical and material skills than the French, so the idea the French could ever have made this work was far fetched at best. As shown by wartime experience, the 5" gun was more than adequate in the surface role and superb as an AA gun. The French had just developed a blind spot for big triple and quad turrets, and it retarded their ship designs until they finally got it right with the 127 mm/54 gun, just at a time when they were actually no longer needed.
    1
  3425. There's no such things as classes among US battleships. The difference was the South Dakota class and North Carolina's were considered slow (< than 30 knots) while the Iowas were fast (> than 30 knots). The only real difference between the two earlier classes were length. Both had comparable armament and tonnage. The South Dakota class was an experiment to see if reducing the superstructure and only having a single funnel would allow better armour over the vitals and increase the arc of fire for AAA armament. They turned out to be too cramped and limited in speed so the experiment was not repeated with the Iowas
    1
  3426.  @f1b0nacc1sequence7  Since we are now in the time of quid pro quo, I think an astute Japanese government could have taken the the offer seriously. In reality, it was a rump government in China that was making threats about what it was going to do if not allowed free reign. The source of oil the Japanese expect to use was the Netherlands East Indies, not US or Saudi oil. In 1940, the amount of oil in the NEI was thought to be second to the US with Middle East oil a distant third. The government knew that the Dutch wanted to keep selling oil to Japan to finance their war in Europe. There were many inside the civil government who knew the US offer was their best hope for later victory, and plans were already afoot to cut off supplies to China to the point the military could sustain itself there but not expand. This idea the the ultranationalist military was in charge of everything and others had no choice but comply was used as a defence in the Tokyo war crimes trials. It didn't fly then, and I doubt it was really true in 1940. The struggle between the civil and military side of the government was still ongoing, and the emperor had not yet come down on the side of a military government. It just wasn't a foregone conclusion the civil and not-crazed leaders of the military could not have reigned in the ultranationalists if they committed to do so.
    1
  3427. GrayPanther, do you mean pre WWI or WWII? Since there were no US battleships built in the interwar period except for the South Dakota and Washington classes, both limited by treaty to 35,000 tons, the Panama Canal wasn't really an issue. For pre-WWi ships, I don't think any were even proposed that would have exceeded Panama Canal limits, and I doubt any exceeding those limits would have been built, even without the Canal as an obstacle. Biggest problem without the Canal was range, so US battleships would have been longer than the last standard type ships of the Colorado class. In order to achieve something like the 12,000 mile range needed to go around the Horn, those shops would have needed to be about 100 feet longer.
    1
  3428.  @davidhunt1947  And that begs the question then. Why did the IJN have so many apparently incompetent commanders?
    1
  3429. The Japanese had a consistent problem with collisions, sometimes with other navy ships and other times with passing civilian ships that happened to get in their way. I've never understood why a country with a long seagoing tradition had such problems.
    1
  3430.  @dropdead234  Good question. Their pay grade was the same as equivalent petty officers but they were also called out as enlisted ranks in the table of organization. They are not called warrant officers, but it seems like that's what they were anyway.
    1
  3431.  @TraditionalAnglican  No problem. It usually takes me about a week to figure out the right time after we do this stupid time switch. :-)
    1
  3432. Has the unrotated projectile mount and ammunition been found innocent of contributing to the fatal explosion. It seems the UP comes and goes with time as being the cause, or at least contributing the cause.
    1
  3433. Electro boats put in service a year earlier and in numbers certainly had the chance to prolong the war. The two that made it into combat areas in March of 1945 remained undetected until the end of the war. If construction had begun in 1942 instead of 1943, not only could more boats have been able to put to sea, they would have been manned by better trained crews and more experienced officers. Maybe the most important point is German crews, instead of being demoralized by their inability to get into convoys and sink ships and essentially waiting until their boat was sunk, would now be able to slip undetected in a convoy, sink some ships, and sprint away from the escort vessels. Germany still would have been in extremis trying to fight off the Russians, but gaining maybe another year would have seen a a new range of guided weapons in service. Electro boats are the only thing I can see that might have prolonged the war enough for that to happen.
    1
  3434. Indeed. It is sometimes forgotten that the extensive oil resourced of the Netherlands East Indies were by far a greater prize to the Japanese than Hawaii. A reliable supply of oil was vital to the Japanese conducting any kind of fleet operations far from home. There was sufficient doubt among the High Command about being able to take and hold all of the NEI without throwing Hawaii into the mix. If all the 29 US submarines present at Manila on December 8 had reliable torpedoes, the NEI campaign may have had a different outcome.
    1
  3435. On the question of the Japanese invading Hawaii, the main question is define Hawaii. If it really means Oahu, the island with Pearl Harbor, that's one thing. However, the Hawaiian island chain is about 300 miles across, and trying to occupy and hold all of the seven main islands would have been impossible without the Japanese moving something on the order of 45,000 to 60,000 troops and all their equipment and supplies while conducting amphibious landings on all the islands pretty much at once. The Japanese tried this with the Aleutians and succeeded, but only for a relatively short period of time. They had to dig in and hope they could repel the invasion they knew was coming. Their best hope with Hawaii was to occupy the largest mostly undefended islands of Maui, Hawaii, and Kauai. Once they had established air bases by using the existing civil airports, and naval bases using the existing harbors, they could bomb and starve the Americans into submission, the same tactics they used in the Philippines. The Japanese also would have needed a victory at Midway instead of losing four carriers. They would have had to wiped out the American carrier fleet and then occupied Midway to protect their flanks. The estimates I've read is that it would have taken until August of 1942 to replace the aircraft and crews needed for an attack on Hawaii. Oahu wouldn't have been a walkover either, with 100,000 regular Army troops and the ability of American convoys with more aircraft, man, and equipment to reach Oahu for the almost seven months after Pearl Harbor, largely hindered by the Japanese. Even if all this would have succeeded, the problem of logistics remains unsolvable. Just as in the Aleutians, the Japanese may have succeeded for a short period of time, but the idea of foreign troops occupying American territory would have galvanized the American public and American production. The Japanese Navy and Army would have been destroyed even faster if they had attempted an invasion of Hawaii.
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  3436. Good Heavens! I enjoy sailing, but the idea being in the French or British navy in the 17th century would have made me immediately desert and run away. Those were tougher and braver men than I could have ever been.
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  3437. The Steamship Historical Society of America is well worth supporting. It is dedicated to the preservation of the history of all non-warship engine powered vessels. It has a special concentration on passenger liners. The website is https://www.sshsa.org/, and they have thousands of ship's pictures there. They have several classes of membership, but all include a subscription to Powerships magazine, the society's publication.
    1
  3438. It was indeed. Sydney closed to within 4,300 feet, possibly as close as 4,000 feet. This was well within the killing range of not only the four 5.9"guns in Kormoran's broadside but also within range of her 37mm and 20mm guns. The secondary guins were able to rake the decks of Sydney and cut down men trying to get to her secondaries. Her twin 4" guns and machine guns could have done much more damage to Kormoran had her guns been fully manned.
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  3439.  @orangelion03  You're welcome. As I wrote, I can't find any information in my books or online to confirm it, but the launchers are too small to be anti-submarine rockets, so illumination rounds are the only thing that makes sense to me. They could also be dual purpose chaff/illumination launchers.
    1
  3440.  @orangelion03  You're welcome. I can't confirm this, but I believe the are an early version of a Bofors 103 mm illumination round launcher. Later versions were turret mounted on several Canadian destroyer classes.
    1
  3441. Portals/10/AUPress/Books/B_0168_BLAZICH_AN_HONORABLE_PLACE_IN_AMERICAN_AIR_POWER_CIVIL_AIR_PATROL_COSTAL_PATROL_OPERATIONS_1942_1943.PDF This the actual link to the book.
    1
  3442. For those as baffled as I've been by all the various FRAM modifications, go to https://www.gyrodynehelicopters.com/fram.htm, a site run by former employees of Gyrodyne, the makers of the DASH drone helicopters. They also do a good job of explaining the undeserved bad reputation of DASH, and how they led up to the many types of UAVs in service today.
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  3443. Here's a newspaper article from the Newcastle Sun (https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/163396638) about the Hermes and the attack against the Bias Bay pirate base. She was part of an impressive force that included Hermes, the cruisers Delhi and Frobisher, a minesweeper, and a sloop. Just why such a large force was needed isn't detailed in the article, and it seemed to be rather a holiday for the Chinese pirates, coming down after hiding in trees and then lining the nearby hills watching the smoke rise from huts, junks, and sampans being set afire by the landing force of 300. Luckily, there were no casualties on either side, and instructions not to harm building of a "religious character" was scrupulously followed.
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  3444.  @bkjeong4302  She was commissioned in December 1941 but wasn't considered effective until shortly before Midway In June, 1942 due to her many mechanical and armament faults. She mostly shuttled between repair stints at Truk and the other smaller bases from most of 1943 into 1944. Faults with her gunfire control systems, radios, and radars were well illustrated by her performance in the battle off Samar. I don't think the Yamato class was ever cost effective, just like the Bismarcks. No smaller navy can effectively fight off a large navy just because they have a few theoretically superior ships. At least Japan recognized the value of carriers and naval aviation early on. If the fleet had more competent and decisive leaders they may have lasted a year or so longer, but numbers would have overwhelmed them in the end anyway.
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  3445.  @wardaddyindustries4348  Drach does do a great job. That being said, he wouldn't own a dreadnought, only the right to dive down and look at the remains.
    1
  3446. Sign me right up. The Lion would definitely be my most favorite. She would have been the true fast battleship the RN needed for WWII in the Pacific. The proposed hybrid battleship carrier would have been a most interesting ship if he had been built.
    1
  3447.  @matthewrobinson4323  You're welcome. Sailing on a Gearing must have been a great experience.
    1
  3448.  @armchairwarlord  LOL. Many of us are. It's all speculation, but it keeps me from getting a worse case of Alzheimer's.
    1
  3449.  @armchairwarlord  Watch the video starting at 01:24:30 so you can see the question I (and Drach) was responding to.
    1
  3450.  @AtomicBabel  It's over the top to say Halsey didn't care about the lives of destroyer crews. He had been a destroyer man most of his career and had a genuine care and affection for destroyer crews. However, Halsey was also a gambler. That was an vital attribute until mid-1943. We didn't have the intelligence or resource to take on Japan head on. Halsey was good at taking ijut pieces of their fleet was taking rational risks with his ships. Everything had changed by 1944. We had the material and resources to take the war to the Japanese. Halsey continued to gamble like it was 1942. He was out guessed by Kurita and Center Force, too unnecessary risks to remain on station and got hit by Typhoon Cobra, and then bumbled his way into Typhoon Connie only six months later. He was spared being drummed out of the service by personal intervention of Admiral Nimitz due to his previous war record. When it comes to naming a ship Halsey, the name is for the Halsey of before mid-1943, when he was a brilliant admiral. His later mistakes and bumbling shouldn't make him a nonperson in the Navy.
    1
  3451.  @AtomicBabel  Gib? Why don't you let us know what YOU think of it?
    1
  3452.  @lizardb8694  Bode was indeed a perfect scapegoat, since his leadership had already been called into question, and his rather haughty character had made him intensely disliked by his officers and crew. His accusation that his entire command staff was drunk when Chicago opened fire on a Japanese midget sub while in Sydney Harbor was a good example of his arrogance and constant problem of jumping to conclusions. Nevertheless, he had fought his ship well in the Battle of Savo Island, and there's no evidence that any of his command decisions led the the loss of Chicago. Bode is a sobering example of what happens when you crank off enough people that can make decisions about your future. McVay was almost a prototype naval officer, yet it still took over 40 years to get his name cleared. I expect it will take another couple generations of naval command staff before Bode gets his name cleared.
    1
  3453.  @MagnusVictor2015  Once we left the biplane era, attacks with 50 pound bombs just didn't happen. Even 100 pound bombs were generally limited to planes like the Wildcat and others that had a limited bomb capacity. Dauntless dive bombers routinely carried 1,000 and 1,500 pound bombs, and the Helldiver could carry a 2,000 pound bomb in the internal bombay and two 500 pound bombs underwing. Corsairs could carry 4,000 pounds of bombs. Japanese planes were carrying carrying repurposed 8" and 16" shells as bombs. Bombing by naval aircraft wasn't just a bunch of tiny bombs. A lot of our ships did take hits from 1,500 to 2,500 pound bombs, not mentions kamikazes. The big risk today is antiship missiles, but the person I'm writing about is postwar into the late 50's. The types of aerial shipping attacks then weren't any different than the late war period.
    1
  3454.  @MagnusVictor2015  You lost me a bit on this one. There was no reason to expect that ships wouldn't have been subjected to the same kinds of strafing and bombing attacks that happened during the war. The biggest change was adding air to surface missiles to the mix. I think you misunderstood Drach. Adding armor shields or turrets to exposed gun positions was never because falling remnants of AA rounds was a huge problem, although they did kill and injure crew on occasion, especially in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign. The splinters we're both talking about are from the remnants of those larger shells and falling bombs. As they hit decks and superstructures, they broke the steel into hundreds and sometimes thousand of small pieces ranging from several hundred pounds to little bits the size of a sewing needle. These were the big risks to gun crews. The splinter shield were not just the thin sheets of steel you apparently think they were. They had to be capable of defeating these sometimes large and heavy "splinters", something of a misnomer, since most of us think of splinters as something you get from a piece wood. The name does originate from the days of sail, when cannon balls shot the superstructure to pieces, sending wood splinters flying.The wraparound shield used on late war 40 mm quad mounts weighed about 4 tons, nearly half the weight of the actual guns themselves. Even the front shield on a 20 mm gun was half inch thick steel that weighed nearly 200 pounds. It was even thicker and covered more of the mount once power operated twin mountings were introduced, since shield weight on the single guns was limited by the need to make them free swinging due to their manual operation. The goal of the combination of gun tubs and shields was to keep those splinters from getting into the mount and injuring and killing crews. Many of the injuries to exposed crew wasn't from direct hits from bombs or shells, it was those splinters flying around. If you could protect gun crews from those, it was more likely they'd continue operating their guns rather than being flat on the deck avoiding splinters. If it's apparent to you I really didn't understand your question, please restate it and I'll give it another try.
    1
  3455. The Balao (SS-285) through the Crevalle (SS-291) were that last seven US subs with the 4"/50 gun as standard equipment. Later boats had the newer Mk 17 Wet mount 5"/25 guns at commissioning. The first seven boats were supposed to be armed with the 5"/25 but they weren't ready when those boats went into service. Most of them received a 5"/25 during upkeep periods from tenders at forward baes. Most, that is, except for Balao . Her skipper, Captain Marion Frederic Ramirez de Arellano, and gun crews felt the 4"/50 was a better gun for sinking the sampans and sea trucks that Japan still had left by 1944. The shell were lighter, and the smaller size of each shell allowed more rounds to be carried and allow a higher rate of fire on the often pitching deck of a sub. The range of the 4"/50 was almost the same as the 5"/25, and armor penetration was no longer an issue. The Balao somehow evaded the addition of a 5"/25 until sometime in early 1945, when word came down that all the Balao class would be uniformly armed with the 5"/25 gun, like it or not. Captain Ramirez de Arellano still continued to be something of maverick when it came to deck armament. Balao was the first to be armed with two 40mm guns on the sail as Ramirez de Arellano thought the twin 20mm gun was useless for attacking surface shipping. The 40mm guns were used to lay down covering fire as the 4"/50 came into action. As the Balao moved in closer to finish off her prey, she used her four .30 caliber machine guns on non-standard stanchion mounts attached just aft of the sail plus two more .30's on the bridge to respond with a hail of lead to last ditch resistance, particularly from sea trucks. She may have also had yet another 40mm gun mounted on the former strong point for the 4"/50 aft of the sail as the new 5"/25 gun was mounted forward of the sail. That appears to have lasted less than three months. I assume a desk skipper somewhere up the line started questioning the excessive amounts of 40mm ammo being taken aboard Balao . Captain Ramirez de Arellano was born in Puerto Rico and was the first Hispanic submarine captain in the USN. How much this may have deflected problems with the brass is unknown to me, but he was detached from Balao in February, 1945 for some well deserved shore duty after spending all of the war up until then in combat aboard submarines. He had been awarded an impressive number of decorations until that point, so he may have had a bit more leeway than some other captains in designing his own weapons fit. Whatever the case, it was apparent that the good times for Balao being the most heavily armed submersible gunboat in the Navy were over, as an April, 1945 photo shows her restored to the then standard armament of a single 20mm, a single 40mm, and a single 5"/25. Those non-standard .30 caliber mounts were still just barely visible in the photo but, alas, no longer carrying machine guns.
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  3456.  @patricklenigan4309  She's certainly not be able to fight one of the PLAN's AIP subs, but she's at least equal to the Ming class and only about four knots slower than a Kilo boat, so a lot depends on what sub she meets and the training of the crews. The ROC Navy knows they are grossly deficient in submarines, but it's only in the last couple of years that she has been able to buy the technology, plus have developed the domestic capacity, needed to start building her own subs. The plans are for a fully modern AIP submarine, so I guess the ROC Navy can only hope that, if war comes, it waits about ten years. :-)
    1
  3457.  @ajpoulos  Why would it be cheating?
    1
  3458.  @kemarisite  Never got a multi cert but just thinking about that makes me break out into a cold sweat. I had a buddy with a Beech Model 18, civilian version of the C-45. With both engines running flying straight and level, it was easy to fly. However, even a sharp bank made the plane a handful with its non powered flying surfaces. I can only imagine an engine out takeoff.
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  3459.  @HoverLambo  Are you sure of that date and the cause for Gorizia having to be dry docked at Gibraltar? This is what I found online, and it's the only information I can find about her being in Gibraltar - On 19 August (1936), Gorizia departed Kiel and steamed to Tangier, arriving five days later. After a short stop, the ship left the port, bound for Italy, but that night her forward aviation gas tank exploded, causing serious damage. She was forced to return to Tangier before proceeding to Gibraltar on 25 August for temporary repairs. While in dry dock, British officials examined the vessel and concluded that she exceeded her nominal 10,000-ton displacement, though they lodged no formal complaint for Italy's violation of the Washington Naval Treaty. The repairs were completed by 9 September, allowing Gorizia to leave Gibraltar for La Spezia, where permanent repairs would be effected. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_cruiser_Gorizia It was this drydocking where the British discovered she was well over the treaty weight limit, but they chose not to raise a complaint. I can still find no evidence of her ever being involved in a collision with any other ship, merchant or naval.
    1
  3460. "Naval Accidents 1945-1988" https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/NavalAccidents1945-1988.pdf doesn't list an Italian cruiser in a collision with any ship postwar.
    1
  3461. That would be one heck of a book, though. "An illustrated guide to every naval antiaircraft ever used in WWII". It would probably cost something like $300, but I'd use part of my rohna money to buy a copy. :-)
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  3462. Thanks for another great video of a real fighting ship. Having never been in combat, I often wonder if I could display the bravery of Captain Evans and his crew.
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  3463.  @WALTERBROADDUS  You too, Walter. Once again, we have failed to settle the world's problems. :-)
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  3464.  @FirstDagger  The US has no strategic interests in the Spratly Chain and should stay out of it. China, Vietnam, and the Philippines have the best claims to various parts of the Spratlys and it's up to them to settle the claims.
    1
  3465.    Idiot. If you had bothered to search the channel, you'd find https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGaGBImx62A.
    1
  3466. Book
    1
  3467.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Unfortunately, we're now starting to see the results of antivaxer parents as diseases that used to be obsolete now coming back. Measles has also started to show up again in dorms across the country. Some of it may be coming from foreign students, but the outbreak couldn't become widespread without unvaccinated native kids to get it.
    1
  3468.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Goodness. I had mumps as a kid so I should be immune. I wouldn't want to get anything worse than what i have now.
    1
  3469. I sure hope you aren't getting a case of acute bronchitis like I've had for the past eight days. I just now feel like I'm rejoining the human race. Ugh.
    1
  3470.  @1IbramGaunt  I guess so. I suppose conditions back home for many of the sailors from working class families wasn't much better, and at least they knew they'd get food and shelter. Still, people back then could stand privation better than we softies today. Not having the internet available would kill many.
    1
  3471.  @seanmac1793  Seriously, it was an abscessed tooth. He was waiting for his dentist to get flown in so the tooth could get pulled and he could construct a bridge. He was apparently in a lot of pain from it, but his corpsman made sure he had enough morphine in him so he wasn't feeling it. How much all that contributed to his bad judgment I don't know, but other historians who know a lot more about what happened than I do put partial blame on the tooth for our poor performance on Guadalcanal. .
    1
  3472.  @seanmac1793  Yes, when Turner and Fletcher nearly came to fisticuffs over their differing interpretations of the orders from Admiral Nimitz. If Ghormley was there and acting like a proper task force commander. the other two may not have gone off to fight their own version of the Battle of Guadalcanal.
    1
  3473.  @seanmac1793  Maybe, but Callaghan was kind of on his own with this one, and he never took the time for a proper meeting with his commanders. The real problem was Admiral Ghormley, whose abscessed tooth was apparently to blame for his never even showing up in Guadalcanal. He did a very poor job of coordinating his naval forces, not surprising since he was 900 miles away. His lack of leadership made his commanders interpret orders from headquarters on their own. Callaghan may have done better if Ghormley did better. The whole battle was a mess, and we were lucky this didn't turn into another Savo Island.
    1
  3474.  @kimleechristensen2679  I agree. As long as they get a grounding in the actual history of an event, any kind of multimedia thing will help kids (and a lot of adults) learn, or want to to learn, even more about it. The folks I have problems with are the ones that tell me things like they managed to sail the Bismarck out of danger in WoW so the real life captain should have been able to do the same.
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  3475.  @johntillman6068  Who mentioned Sherman's? What context was in mentioned compared to Gearing's? This thread is over two years old with 21 replies, so some detail is helpful.
    1
  3476. Boy, what I would have given almost anything to be in my 1963 Am History class and being able to sneak watching a Drach video instead of listening to Mr. Blake drone on...and on.
    1
  3477. She was tentatively named Almirante Cochrane for service with the Chilean Navy, but she was always known as Eagle in RN service. There was really no reason why the RN would leave an RN ship with a Chilean name.
    1
  3478. IronDuke (what a great British name, BTW), the 4.5" gun was a success in the Falklands but not because of the 4.5" gun itself. The shore bombardment missions were never more than about 12 miles inland, and the missions were mostly attacking things like non-hardened emplacements and airport runways. The weight of explosives in the British 4.5" and USN 5"/62 is the main difference, with the 4.5" round carrying about 46 pounds of explosive and the 5"/62 about 69 pounds. The RN should catch up with the new 5" gun, but even 69 pounds worth of explosive is pitiful compared to the super heavy 6"/47 round on the Cleveland class with 130 pounds worth, and that pales compared to the super heavy 8"/55 with 335 pounds of righteous indignation. Yes, railguns may "someday" be displacing conventional explosive firing guns but we've now been working in these since 2006 with no real progress on a way to provide the massive amounts of electrical power needed and a way of dissipating the tremendous amounts of heat used with each shot. We'll need ships with extremely well armored electrical systems as well, since one shot disrupting electrical power means a ship would have no railgun or guns. Given the survivability of electrical systems with much lower outputs in combat, that's a significant problem. Given the USN's failures with the much more conventional 8" AGS, I think the 2030's may be an optimistic goal.
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  3479. ​ @BB.61  CXAM is a good example of both the promise and limitations of radar in general, but early radars in particular. The CXAM radio frequency operated at 1.5 meters, or 200 MHz, a very high wavelength in 1938, when CXAM was being tested. The antenna resembled a very large inner spring mattress - very large. The CXAM was 15 feet wide and 16 feet tall, and just the antenna weighed 5,000 pounds. At the time, the most sensitive receiver type was a superheterodyne (superhet), but 200 MHz was such a high frequency that only a superregenerative (regen) receiver was the only type that could provide enough signal amplification to make the return signal visible on a horizontal oscilloscope. It was hard enough to tune in a regen signal sitting in the radio shack on dry land let alone doing so on a rocking, pitching ship. It also required a powerful transmitter on the order of 1,000 watts, something that just didn't exist before 1938. When the radar was on, about 10% of the 10% of the ships power had to be diverted to the CXAM to obtain full transmitting power. Mounted at the very top of a battleship mast, it had a range about 14 miles on a large ship target and 50 miles on a bomber size target. Even with these rather primitive sets, the range was well beyond human lookouts, especially in poor visibility. Luckily for the USN, Admiral Nimitz was something of an electronics tinkerer, and he put himself through a three week radar instruction course in 1938. When he became C in C, Pacific Fleet, he speeded up the number of trainees being sent through radar schools, and he ordered his captains to provide a weekly report of radar usage and issues. He knew too many of his hidebound captains didn't trust radar, and he needed to find a way to make sure it was in use at all time. After a shaky start, it didn't take long for radar to start proving itself, and British and US researchers kept turning out better sets. Radar is generally credited with being among the top three weapons of WWII in the Pacific.
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  3480.  @glennricafrente58  My remarks had nothing to do with if the Crown Colonies were adapted into acceptable ships. not does involve hindsight. The issues with the vessels were known and discussed as the ships were being designed. Trying to duplicate a Town class cruiser in 1,000 tons less displacement was something designers object to 1936, and most of those objections came to pass, with the inferior armour protection compared to the Towns still not being enough to offset the topweight of the overly large main battery, excessively cramped crew space, and weak antiaircraft protection. Most of these objections were only improved by removal of X turret, removal of their aircraft, and adding more, but still insufficient, antiaircaft guns. My question remains - would the RN have been better off devoting the tonnage ot more destroyers rather than building a class of cruisers that had known problems before they were even laid down?
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  3481.  @glennricafrente58  I never said they weren't modified to become useful ships. My point was that most never really served in the role of a twelve gun main battery cruiser because of the continual battle with topweight, Jamaica being one example. My question was if the RN would have been better served by an equivalent displacement in destroyer rather trying to fit Cleveland type armament into a such a relatively small hull.
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  3482. The Crown Colony class is one I've never understood. Even as the RN was trying to be honest about following through with naval treaty limits, how was a Colony class ever going to be an effective ship when the USN Cleveland class had the same main battery but was 53 feet longer overall and had a beam over four feet wider. The Clevelands were designed with a wink and a nod to treaty limits, and were still plagued with topweight problems their whole service life. It didn't take a first rate naval architect to tell the Colony class wasn't going to be a success in almost any role. Since the UK could build lots of light cruisers and lots of destroyers, but didn't have the resources of the USN to do both simultaneously, the resources put into Colony class seems like it could have been better spent building more destroyers.
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  3483. Sorry, Drach. I went through a similar layoff back in 1992. It prompted me to start my own project management firm that was successful for 13 years and made me double the amount of money I ever made as employee. I did most of my work working from my home office and enjoyed it immensely. Go with your idea of starting a consultancy, and don't underprice your time.
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  3484. In modern parlance, King was a much better bully than Fisher, and King had no limits when it came to trying to get his way. The thing that was the same between them was their idea they were both ladies' men except Fisher was a little more circumspect about it.
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  3485.  @WALTERBROADDUS  LOL. Sorry, Walter, great minds think alike, and I didn't read far enough down in the thread to see your post.
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  3486.  @jeroenmutsaars618  I think your asking about the semicircular framework just aft of the rear turrets. If so, those are propeller guards, placed there because a prop or props extend beyond the hull line. Their purpose was to catch a man overboard before he could hit the water and get drawn into the props. Look at the stern of US four stack destroyers for a most exaggerated set of those.
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  3487.  @unlimitedx53  Would this have happened pre or post French armistice?
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  3488. Yes, but my thought was surface ships. I'll change my question now to clarify that.
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  3489. True, but I was asking about surface ships/
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  3490. Vary cool video. It's always interest do do what ifs when it comes to ship battles. On a more recent ship to ship question, what combination of USN surface ships would be needed to defeat the Russian battlecruiser Kirov?
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  3491. Indeed, but we're talking about 1941, and 1945 was like night and day by comparison. I'm not sure the North Carolina could have had such success then at night or in poor visibility with the radar shot away.
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  3492.  @jimtaylor294  The stern turret isn't just useful in the event of a stern chase. It's to provide better all around fire. The Richelieus were blind to to anything more that about 20 degrees of astern fire. The meant a lot more maneuvering around to unmask the turrets, time your enemy is firing on you. Having all the main armament in one place certainly allowed thicker armor, but that didn't count for a lot if your superstructure, including all your antennas and rangefinders, were being shot to bits. It was those interwar treaties that promoted the forward armament idea, something almost every admiral hated, but it was the best way to get the best armored citadel, but no navy would have ever built a battleship with the all forward main armament layout without that artificial push. The US and Japan both considered the idea, as you say, but then rejected it as being too tactically restrictive. It's one of those ideas that arose to deal with a legislated problem, not because it was ever a good idea to being with.
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  3493.  @neniAAinen  Ah, I get it now. From a pre-1916 perspective, then both ships are more equal, although Normandie being finished and in commision by even 1916 was pretty unlikely. I'm curious why you think Normandie- couldn't have had a _Gastogne type layout. Nevada was nearly identical in length and tonnage with a superfiring pair of somewhat heaver guns aft and those didn't overstress her stern. Surely that arrangement must have been at least as heavy as a quad, but I haven't calc'ed that out. The navy's own Technical Board was against any amidship turrets due to blast damage from the fire of earlier pre-dreadnoughts. Normandie had about as good a layout for the amidship turret to be able to fire nearly astearn, but doing so probably would have caused damage to what little superstructure she was forced to have astern. The requirement for nothing but a small stump mast on the after section of the superstructure would have had a very negative effect on her radio antennas. The single mainmast would have had to be much taller than on most battleships to try to overcome the inability to string longwire antennas between the usual fore and main masts, and her one longwave antenna would have had to be immensely strong to support itself between the mainmast and all the way down to the bow and stern ends of the ship. I haven't seen any details on the they proposed to do that, but it's highly unlikely the aft section would survived the repeated blast of eight main battery guns, and it's even less likely the whole thing would have made it through a really bad storm. Thanks for the stimulating discussion as well. It's nice to essentially agree to disagree without a bunch of the name calling I so often see on here.
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  3494.  @johnmorrison2226  LOL. Well, a few of us had ot learn them as part of a meteorology course I had to take to get my private pilot's license, and all the aircraft weather data is in centigrade, pressure is in millibars, and distance is in kilometers, so it just, sort of stuck with me. I will admit to a fondness for fahrenheit when it comes to heat. 32 still just doesn't sound like a very hot day. :-)
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  3495.  @gustavbonow5416  Thanks. Do you have a link about the supply of Fritz-X bombs? I've read that there plenty of Fritz-X and Type 239 bombs available, but the British Type 650 jammer was so successful that no attacks were launched since the bombs were not able to be guided toward targets. Germany was working on a new guidance method to defeat the Allied jamming, moving the radio frequency from the 50 MHz range to the 150 MHz range. They had also identified the allied jammers disrupted communications on the receiver's IF frequency so they went to triple conversion receivers to defeat jamming on the IF frequency. Unfortunately for Germany, the new guided bombs weren't available until the end of 1944, and there was no time to fit aircraft with the new electronic equipment before the end of the war. Allied air superiority over the beaches would have certainly made guided bomb missions dangerous but, if it wasn't for the jamming, some would have gotten through. The Allies were lucky once again that German technology was just too late to have any effect on the war's outcome.
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  3496. Q&A Given the success to the German radio guided bombs during the Sicily campaign, why weren't they used during the D-Day invasion?
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  3497.  @AdamMGTF  Ah, a good kip. I'd like that too if my cat would stop biting my toes and waking me up. :-) Things being "a long way away" mean different things to a Brit than a Yank. We think of a long way as maybe a couple days drive or a four hour flight. We don't even have the option of a train trip to many places and, if we do. Amtrak manages it by the most roundabout way imaginable. I'm a railfan or, as you might say, a train spotter, so some train travel would be part of the experience for me. There are so many places I want to see, and Portsmouth is number one. Bovington and the IWM are tied for second. As you say, the number of places of historic interest is almost overwhelming. Id love to see some of the historic homes and castles as well. I live in a home on the National Register of Historic Homes, and my house is noteworthy for its age. I was built in 1895. Just as we have a different idea about distance, we also have a different idea about age. :-) It sounds like you have a lot of interests for your age, and at least most it has nothing to with playing GTA 5! I'm sorry to hear about your being unwell as a child, but it sounds like the upside to it was your love of history and reading. Those are two things that will carry you a long way as an adult. Sounds like we could have a wonderful time traipsing about the countryside. I was thinking about how Drach's channel has brought together a number of like minded people. I'd sure like to live closer to a lot of the viewers of the channel so I could attend some of the meet-ups. that may be an idea when I'm over there. Thanks again for your extremely kind offer. I'm also on FB under the nom de plume of Jorge Wilson, just to maintain my man of mystery subterfuge. :-)
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  3498.  @chandlerwhite8302  Yes. That's exactly what I said, but be my guest if you want to repeat it.
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  3499.  @kemarisite  Good point about the training. The British weren't any better at defeating the Japanese in the early stages of the war, and they had plenty of combat experience. The chief advantage of torpedoes was it that it's a "fire and forget" weapon. In a fight like the one at the River Plate, you rush into range of the enemy guns, fire the torpedoes, and rush out again, hoping for at least one lucky hit from a salvo, and that enemy gunners aren't good enough or fast enough before you get out of range. Even when torpedoes do not material damage, lookouts spend more time looking at the sea surface than they do at enemy surface ships. To some extent, a torpedo is also a "terror" weapon like the V-1 rocket. You create enough fear in the crew, from the command staff down, that things won't run as well as they would about a silent killer stalking you. I have no doubt that at least having torpedoes on USN cruisers would have created fear that the enemy would have to change tactics compared to a straight up gun dual. When the Booklyns were built, the Navy wasn't even away of the many problems of US torpedos. There were torpedoes on our "scout" cruisers, so it's not like they didn't understand the value of them. I think the USN felt that the Brooklyns would operate with fleet, screened by the scout cruisers and destroyers. It was just faulty intelligence,. more than anything else, that lead to the losses at Tassafaronga. We had no idea the Type 93 even existed, and the ships getting back on base courses was because it was assumed enough time had passed and range opened that torpedoes were no longer a risk. We had no clue that a torpedo could be fired from 25 miles away and be in the water for 40 minutes while still being on track. The oxygen enriched engine, leaving almost no telltale track, even at night in the tropics, when almost anything moving through water created a phosphorescent wake, was a complete shock. It was such a shock that the force at Tassafaronga assumed at first they had blundered into a minefield or were being attacked by submarines. It wasn't a matter of poor training. If the captains of those cruisers knew of the existence of the Type 93, they would have used much different tactics.
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  3500.  @kemarisite  The lack of recent combat experience would be a strike against the Brooklyns. I think a bigger problem was the lack of torpedoes. Graf Spee had to spend a lot of time avoiding torpedoes from all three cruisers. If Graf Spee knows it's fighting ships with no torpedoes, it's just a matter of lying out of range and plastering any ship trying to close. The faster speed of the Brooklyns would have made that a harder task, but not as hard as dodging torpedoes. One of the lessons the USN should have gotten out of the engagement was cruisers, light cruisers especially, need to carry and be able to fight using torpedoes. Their encounters with the Japanese two years later drove home the point in a more violent fashion.
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  3501.  @kemarisite  The late 1939 Brooklyns had no radar. The March 34 FCS was strictly a fair weather optical rangefinder that didn't get radar added until late 1941. As such, their chance of scoring long range hits were no better than the Graf Spee. It could be argued that the Graf Spee, with its superior German optics, had a better chance to score those low probability hits. The Graf Spee straddled the Exeter on her third salvo from over 18,000 yards. Exeter was struck seven times, destroying most of her guns and upperworks. Luckily, none of the shells penetrated the engine room so she was still able to make way, but only with one 8" gun and one 4" fun available in local control. Graf Spee turned her guns on the two light cruisers and caused considerable damage. Graf Spee retired in good order to Montevideo with the most critical damage being a single hit on the oil purification system. Without that being operative, she one had about 16 hours of fuel left, so Captain Langsdorff was hoping the system could be repaired in time ot resume the battle and break out back toward Germany. The two light cruiser were pretty much helpless against a properly functioning Graf Spee. Even Captain Parry of Achilles later remarked that, not knowing the fuel situation of Graf Spee, he didn't know why she didn't finish off Achilles and Ajax. There was a lot of luck on both sides in the battle, particularly the use of torpedoes by the British, helped to break up the Graf Spee's attack on Exeter long enough for her to escape. The US cruisers had no torpedoes, no radar, and no better rangefinding than Graf Spee. The had a lot more six inches guns, but the matter of range would still have to be overcome. It's all speculation how ships that never meant in battle would have fared, but my guess is three Brooklyns would have needed a lot of luck to survive.
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  3502.  Russ Gallagher  This thread is over a year old. I explained why I posted what I did. It's really not worth going into again.
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  3503.  @jaspergood2091  Yes, it is. Drach so states during the video.
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  3504.  @Nuke89345  The fact that the Missouri was nearly hit by two Silkworms and really only saved from being hit by one because it was intercepted by a Sea Dart from HMS Gloucester shows the missile threat wasn't zero. I don't think being hit by a Silkworm would have been considered minor. Shoulder fired MANPADS fired at any ship not over the horizon was a very real threat. Boeing, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin pretty much own the defense business for the Navy. This is part of our problem. We used to have about 20 big companies doing defense work for the Navy but they's all been swallowed by the Big Four. I don't know what happened ot antitrust laws. Swarm missiles are still mostly the thing of space movies. The sole exception are Block IV Tomahawks. They can be programmed in flight so they all arrive on target at almost the same time. 50 Tomahawks arriving at once is sure to get your attention.
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  3505.  @Nuke89345  No, I read they were "permissible", different to me than "more effective". We will certainly be using combinations of aircraft and missiles to take out deep targets. Once they have been suppressed, aircraft and the fleet will soften up the immediate landing area. At least not since the debacle at Dieppe, no nation will attempt an opposed landing without air and naval superiority. Last I looked, McDonnell Douglas was still a named subsidiary of Boeing for some defense work, especially naval missiles. It's been a couple years now, so Boeing may be the corporate name now. A small, cheap guided missile for shore bombardment use as been the Holy Grail of developers since WWII. As usual, you can have small, cheap or effective, but you can only chose two, and one can't be effective.
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  3506.  @stevevalley7835  Yeah, it's not that Brewster couldn't design and build a good airplane, they just couldn't do it with that bunch at the helm and a workforce that hated coming to work every day. There was a considerable amount of questionable profit making with many defense companies during the war. The war department was spending money so fast it wasn't until 1945 that there was any idea where some of it went. That's an open door to corrupotion and thievery, and very companies didn't engage in some of it. The difference with Brewster is that were running an airplane plant as an excuse to steal, not as a side effect. The Buffalo could have been developed into a more effective aircraft in much the same manner that Grumman developed the Wildcat. It's just that the war department didn't want to give contracts to the company to do so since so much money would be stolen and the product would be substandard. By the time the Navy was fed up and seized the plant in 1944, there were already better planes in service, with jets on the horizon, so even a well built Buffalo was obsolete.
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  3507.  @mancubwwa  The big noise maker in Nukes are from the hydraulic pumps needed to circulate coolant in the reactors. While the actual noise levels produced by US subs is considered top secret, the informed rumor is a Virginia class sub is about as quiet as an AIP sub when making way underwater at 20 knots, generally near the top endurance speed for AIP subs. The difference, of course, is a Virginia can make way at 30 knows surfaced and "at least" 35 knots submerged, again another informed guess, since speed is also top secret. That's not important to a country that uses their subs for mainly costal patrol, but it's a big deal for a sub that has to transit several thousand miles to reach a trouble spot, and then need that speed to shadow and attack surface warships
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  3508.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Plus or minus 50 knots depending on power plant.
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  3509.  @Peorhum  You apparently run into a different bunch of Americans that play video games than the Americans I know. I'd certainly be reluctant to make any kind of judgements about how Canadians think based on things like Youtube comments. I don't think either should be used as basis for judgments about an entire nation. Most Americans I know respect and like the British as our cultural forebears.
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  3510.  @Peorhum  It's difficult for me to see how you weren't talking to me and apparently having me represent Americans, since your reply was directed to me. I'd expect you to explicitly exempt me from your rant about Americans if that's what you really meant. Following it up with "Don't take it so personal" is a passive aggressive way of denying what you really meant.
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  3511.  @Peorhum  Can you show me where I put down the RN? Did you not even read the last several sentences of my last comment? And your "hey, thats Americans for you" crack isn't earning much respect for Canada. I don't think the RN was as second rate navy. I've only stated facts about it. If you can prove my facts are wrong, have at it. The RN and Britain don't need you or me to defend it. It exists on facts, good and bad, as does the USN. Facts don't care about your feelings one way or the other.
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  3512.  @Peorhum  The Mark 37 FCS was the best in the world during the war. The British used the Fuse Keeping Clock on destroyers. It wasn't a bad system, but it did require manual setting of nose fuses, something that slows down response to fast moving aircraft. It wasn't until the Daring class that the RN had an effective FCS with the Mark VI combined with the Type 275 radar. They were the first to have semiautomatic loading and firing and the first to be fitted with a remote power control that could keep up with early jet aircraft. The RN was finally able to ditch the heavy and ineffective 2 pdr and replace it with 40 mm Bofors guns on remotely controlled STAAG Mark II mounts. Although effective, they proved difficult to maintain, but they were the most effective intermediate AA system in the world when they went into service in 1949. It has been said, with some justification, the the RN finally had a destroyer equal to the USN Sumner class, just seven years late. Given the conditions in Britain during the war, the strains on industrial capacity, and the need to replace many lost ships, it's really quite remarkable that the RN came as close as it did while the war was still on. [Edited for my usual typos]
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  3513.  @admiralsirrusty3465  Whoops!. My brain apparently went into vapor lock on that one.
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  3514. The reason why the Iowas survived in reserve while the rebuilt "old" battleships were scrapped by 1960 was speed. The Iowas had a top speed of 33 knots and could effectively operate with fast carrier task forces. The best of the old battleships could only make 24 knots. In terms of armament, a ship like the rebuilt West Virginia was only slightly inferior to the Iowa in most things but speed, but that turned out to be the critical difference.
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  3515. Jay Lozier  Thanks a lot for the explanations. Indeed, the Liberty ships did last many years after the end of the ar so the problems with cracking couldn't have been that widespread. The same welding issues arise from time to time, the Falklands war being one example. Problems with frame cracking showed up in welded connections of steel frame buildings after the 1994 Northridge earthquake,
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  3516.  @Lassisvulgaris  Thanks for your service as well. BTW, your English is excellent. I have always been an admirer of the Norwegian armed forces for their last stand against the Nazis while the rest of Europe was falling apart around them. Of course, the story of Oberst Birger Eriksen and the old men of the Oscarsborg Fortress is one that will stand forever as a classic of success against all odds. I think the military is the military, regardless of country, and regardless of the society of the country. It's a kind of a self healing entity, where nothing is really its fault, and they will go to any lengths to make that happen. The Iowa disaster led to some changes as well, but more to prevent an accident than make an investigation of an accident more fair. As long as the military can investigate itself, just like in that avalanche, the outcome will always be it was either someone else's fault or just an act of God. The Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Safety Board investigates all aircraft accidents, including military accidents, and they are completely independent of the military. If the cause was the military, it's going to come out. Until we have similar types of investigative agencies for the Navy and Army, self serving conclusions about accidents will continue to be the norm.
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  3517.  @Lassisvulgaris  This was a much different incident. Since it was a collision with a civilian ship, all the usual maritime safety agencies were involved. No one died in the accident, and there were only minor injuries on both sides. There were too many independent investigations for the navy to maintain control of the findings. The same result would have occured in the US. "Open society" has nothing to do with it. The explosion on the Iowa was a completely navy involved accident. Those that died were Navy sailors. Blame for the deaths was going to be placed, and the navy's goal was to make sure it didn't reflect badly on the navy itself. Since those conducting the investigation were also navy, they were able to keep control of things until the Senate Armed Services Committee got involved. I guarantee you that a similar incident in the Norwegian Navy would have involved the same kind of stonewalling and coverup.
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  3518.  @Johnnycdrums  I don't recall reading any such stories at the time of the sinking, but maybe there are some out there.
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  3519.  @ShadrachVS1  Country indeed. Mobile to Galveston by road is about 100 miles longer than London to Edinburgh, and we don't have any Virgin high speed trains to go between the two points either. A bigger issue is when will Texas be reopened to the public. A ship's survey is still underway, and having any work completed by next April is beyond doubtful.
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  3520.  @tomriley5790  It was okay with the RN if sausage contained sawdust? No wonder the guys complained about the food so much.
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  3521.  @tomriley5790  Except for fish caught in the open ocean, it was absolutely forbidden to bring food for the mess onboard until it was inspected by the supply and medical officer. You'd also need a good reason to be bringing anything local and outside the normal mess menu to feed the men. My guess is the sawdust sausage story is apocryphal. Some Australian and New Zealand lamb and beef was used for South Pacific ships, but they were purchased from approved sources, and they still got inspected. The USN had plenty of bad experience with food borne diseases, and they were really paranoid about anything that could affect the fighting abilities of the crew. One of the reasons they constantly increased the capacity of their desalinization plants was using local water was one of their biggest disease vectors.
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  3522.  @tomriley5790  The closest would be corn meal or hominy porridge.
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  3523.  @spatsky  I gave you the link. Go argue with the Navy historian about it.
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  3524.  @spatsky  Ok. Sure, except the US Navy doesn't agree with your story. The official name is the The Battle Off Samar. https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-pacific/leyte/samar.html
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  3525. I can remember my 11 year old self devouring the latest Popular Mechanics , Popular Science and magazines like that at the local library. There were multiple articles about the latest in naval technology, and one of them was the quest for fully automatic 6" and 8" guns that would really be dual purpose. Even though this was in 1957, it was clear that the problem being solved was the Invasion of Japan, 1946. If the Japanese would have been able to continue, or worse, increase, their rate of kamikaze attacks, the USN would have had a loss of vessels and crews rising to near catastrophic levels during the invasion. Even more alarming were the results of the survey of Japanese air power still available directly before the surrender. Rather than the assumed 3,000 to 4,000 aircraft still airworthy, the Japanese had been husbanding virtually every kind of aircraft produced since the start of the war. These ranged from biplane trainers to the hundreds of Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka human guided rockets, commonly known to the USN as the "Baka" (Fool) flying warhead. It was a name that demonstrated the US misunderstanding of why Japanese pilots were willing to sacrifice their lives to forestall an invasion of the home islands. It turned out there were nearly 50,000 aircraft that the Japanese were willing to lose in kamikaze attacks, and the number was a real shock to USN planners. With this background, it's easier to understand why the concept of large caliber guns under radar direction and firing proximity fused shells was important. The concept was to put up a nearly impenetrable wall of flak that would splash even the most determined attacker. The Navy went back and forth on the best way to defend the fleet would in the next war, with the gun admirals battling the missile admirals. AA missiles were still in their infancy in 1957, and a dual path of guns and missiles was generally considered the right concept. Work on the 6" and 8" automatic guns went forward together, but the 6" gun turned out to be the hardest to bring to service. The basic problem was not the gun, which was the same 6"/47 gun that had been in use by the USN since the Brooklyn class cruisers of the 1930's. The main stumbling point was the size and weight needed for the automatic loaders, as well as the need to be able to use dual loaders for switching from surface fire to AA rounds, and to load the separate powder charges and cartridges at any angle. Even though the resulting Worcester class was the largest "light" cruiser ever built, with the length and tonnage of a Baltimore class heavy Cruiser, but using dual mount turrets. Even this immense size didn't provide enough room in the turrets for the dual feed system to operate properly, with the initial tests showing many jams and failures to feed. In keeping with the quest to provide the heaviest AA gun armament possible, the ships were also to mount the new dual 3"/50 automatic AA guns to replace the quad 40mm guns then in use. The development of the 3"/50 automatic guns was taking place at the same time as the 6" automatic gun, and it had its own teething problems. As a result, the Worcester class came into service with advanced guns, but none of them worked reliably. Work continued on and off to correct the problems of both types of guns. The 3"/50 gun's problems were mostly corrected by about 1950, but the feed system 6" guns, while experimentally showing success as the feed problems were more or less corrected by 1956, would need to have a completely new turret and feed system built on a hull that was already carrying more weight than designed. New sketch designs showed the follow on to the Worcester class would need to be about 700' in length and about 18,000 tons standard displacement. This was going to cost too much in money and time compared to the guided missile cruisers already under design, and it becoming increasingly clear that the guided missile would be the new AA defense going forward, not the gun. Both ships of the class, USS Worcester and USS Roanoke were retained on active duty until late 1958 since they were the last all-gun light cruisers in the Navy, but the role of light cruisers was thought to be over with by then. They were decommissioned to reserve and finally sold for scrapping in 1972. The technology used for the automatic guns of the Worcester class was used much more successfully for the 8"/55 armament of the Des Moines class cruisers, with the USS Newport News being the last of the proud line of US gun cruisers, decommissioned in 1975, stricken in 1978, and finally scrapped in 1993.
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  3526.  @PaulfromChicago  Thanks, that's a good explanation. I assumed there had to be some kind of drone thing using human sailors so the fireships actually ended up among the ships they wanted to set on fire. Given the vagaries of the wind, it seems like a risky proposition. Did any of the fireships end up sailing back among the fleet that launched them?
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  3527.  @rimmipeepsicles1870  Really? I'll bet there was a little more to it than setting random ships on fire and hoping for the best,
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  3528. Yes, they did, and they showed the basic concept of the lattice mast was sound, just not the way it was carried out on the older battleships.
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  3529. A small addition on the PT boat torpedo tube question. They were mounted at about a 10% outboard angle to allow the torpedo to run straight as the PT boat was turning away. This allowed the boat to flee from its opponent after firing and make it less likely that a turning torpedo was going to hit the PT boat.
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  3530.  @verticallogic5909  It's "you're". Let me know when you find some references to Britain teaching the Japanese night fighting.
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  3531.  @verticallogic5909  Let me know when you find some references to Britain teaching the Japanese night fighting.
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  3532.  @verticallogic5909  Let me know when you find some references to Britain teaching the Japanese night fighting.
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  3533.  @verticallogic5909  Tell you what, dipwad. Why don't you you look up the Japanese Red Books and see if you can find a mention of Britain there.
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  3534.  @verticallogic5909  I made no claims. You did, and you can't back it up. Since you are unable to prove your claim, my assumption is you were just exercising your keyboard.
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  3535.  @verticallogic5909  Ah, okay, just a troll then. I've been studying naval history since I was about 12. I'm now 73, so don't try to impress me with your claims. "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence".
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  3536.  @verticallogic5909  I have. Give me a link to where the British taught the Japanese night fighting. You can't just make a claim like that with no evidence.
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  3537.  @verticallogic5909  Really? You got a link for that?
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  3538. You can find out all about the Mark 14 problems plus a lot of other data about other ordinance from the ebook "U. S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance in World War II" by Buford Rowlands. It's available at https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b671188;view=1up;seq=10. It's 529 pages and will keep you occupied for quite awhile.
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  3539. Why didn't RN monitors mount more than two man guns? Was it the need to have the minimum draft, not enough spare guns, need to reduce overall length, something else I haven't thought of? It seems like four rather two main guns could engage more targets while not increasing the crew by the same amount as the increase in firepower.
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  3540.  @eplekake3870  It was built a time of transition from traditional cruiser sterns to transoms. The US Omaha class had the same kind of pointed stern as the County class but the Northampton class had a semi-transom while the Brooklyn class had a full transom, as did all US ships after about 1935. It would seem a transom stern would increase the amount of usable space on a ship, but I suppose some of the designs were just what a shipyard and navy were used to.
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  3541. Correct, but close enough for a non-Union historian. :-)
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  3542.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Indeed. He had some shipboard trials aboard the New York in late 1944 with R-4 that were pretty successful. The R-4 had been used in small numbers by the Coast Guard starting in late '42 and the successful shipboard trials for the R-4 cleared for full scale production starting in February, 1945. The first examples reached the Pacific fleet in June for more testing before it was scheduled for operational use by most capital ships ammo ships, hospital ships and high value transports by 1946. To its credit the Navy recognized early on the value of a helicopter for what would become vertrep and casevac.It was just a gnat's eyelash too late to see operational service during the war, but we all know what's happened with helicopters since then.
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  3543. For web images, using Google photo search can also help narrow down a ship name. Just right click on the image and choose "Search Google for Image". One the search is done, then choose "All Sizes" you get the best chance for a match. It doesn't always work, but it can quickly narrow in what you're looking at when it does work.
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  3544.  @veljkostevanovic7597  https://www.bismarck-class.dk/hilfskreuzer/kormoran.html
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  3545.  @veljkostevanovic7597  I know Kormaran carried at least one LS-3 that had two torpedoes and laid several effective minefields off Australia. You're right about Michel. She only carried one LS-4, named the Esau by von Ruckteschell. I don't know how I got that confused. I'll have to check my records, but I'm pretty sure at least one other raider carried these speedboats. Using them, just like the floatplanes, was dependent on the captain understanding their tactical uses.
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  3546. Most German raiders carried one or two torpedo boats. They weren't the size of a PT boats, being only about 50 feet long, but they rode low in the water and could do 35 knots. When used by captains like von Ruckteschel, along with their aircraft, the reach of a raider was extended way beyond just the visual distance from their ships. The torpedo boats were also very successful minelayers.
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  3547.  @John-ru5ud  The IJN had a run of incredible luck plus good torpedoes for those sinkings. It was also before the USN had improved their ASW capabilities, making it nearly impossible to get close enough to a US task force for a repeat of those attacks. As we saw with the sinking of Indianapolis however, Japanese subs and unescorted ships were a fatal combination for the USN right up until the end of the war.
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  3548. The new opening makes me want to grab a wrench and get to work. :-)
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  3549.  @MichalSoukup1995  Yes, lucky shots often change battles, but war gaming is not naval combat. At 33 degrees elevation, the Graf Spee only had about a 2,500 yard advantage over the 8" guns of the Wichita. That's a distance almost impossible to maintain against a maneuvering opponent. The 6" guns of the two light cruisers at 44 degrees had a range of 26,000 yards compared to the Graf Spee's typical maximum engagement range of 34,000 yards. With three well armed and armored opponents maneuvering against you they will always find a way to cut off your range and get their guns in range. Once that happened, thirty 6" guns and nine 8" guns would cause tremendous damage to the Graf Spee compared to the British firepower of sixteen 6" guns and just six 8" guns.
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  3550. Two St. Louis or Modified Brooklyn cruisers had thirty 6" and sixteen 5" guns between them. The Wichita bought the 5" gun total to twenty four while adding nine 8" guns to the mix. With just two turrets, having armor protection mostly inferior to the Brooklyns/Wichita classes, and at least four knots slower, the Graf Spee would have simply been overwhelmed with massed fire. She probably would not have made it to Montevideo.
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  3551.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Yeah, that is a pretty scary prospect. Thing is, it's still out there, and we've still never been able to develop an effective vaccine because it's such a fast mutator, so we will get another pandemic at some point. We have better medical care than in 1918, so the mortality rate won't be as high, but it will still be in the hundreds of thousands. I really have to wonder if many people today can even handle something liked that without melting into a pool of butter. We seem to be living in a fragile society.
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  3552. I don't much like Chunk, but he's spot on with this analysis. We need a strong two party system for this country to thrive, and I'm not in favor of a Republican dynasty and more than I'm in favor of a Democrat dynasty. This loss is going to reverberate for the next 20 years, and it's going to take some serious getting in touch with people who live in the flyover states and voters outside the big cities if the Democrats ever expect to win again.
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  3553. So I guess the Young Turds are now going to double down on their brilliant political crystal ball gazing after their stunning success with the 2016 election. Here's the thing, Chunk. You and your merry band of liars are done. Everyone knows what you are like and how limited your knowledge is about any of the stuff you pontificate about. You're a dinosaur, and your time is ending. See ya!
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  3554.  @troopertrooper8925  There times I don't think people are actually reading what I wrote. As I wrote, the Japanese did the minimum the British requested in terms of complying with the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty. They searched for German raiders but, even with a substantial number of ships, never managed to find or sink one. The Japanese were hoping to learn British convoy and antisubmarine techniques, so assisting in the Mediterranean was beneficial to them. Even with two divisions of modern destroyers, they didn't sink a single sub, but they almost lost one of their own to a torpedo attack. Who cares if the British thought Japanese sailors were good seamen? That had nothing to do with bigger picture. Most of their effort in hunting down German vessels in the Pacific Ocean was to make sure the Germans couldn't interfere with their seizures of German held islands. The Japanese, far from helping Britain, devoted nearly all their naval assets to the seizures of these islands. They seized every German held island in the Pacific north of the equator in only two months. Many of those islands, like the Marianas and Gilberts, would become familiar names only 20 years later. The British knew what was going, but they thought exchanging some insignificant German possessions was a small price to pay to stop Japan's expansion in China. They knew Japan was an expansionist empire and wanted to see the latest in British warships. The British made sure the Japanese fleet wasn't invited to naval bases in Britain and that the Japanese assignments in the Med didn't bring them into contact with any of the main fleets. The Japanese had just started building their own battleships and were looking for any ideas they could get their hands on. The Japanese were formal and polite, as were the British, much like boxers before the fight sizing up the opposition. Understand the "jittery allies" comment now?
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