Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "Drachinifel" channel.

  1. Italy and Greece both added former Austrian and German destroyers and cruisers to their fleets, but seems no-one wanted the battleships. Italy was allocated a Tegetthoff, and scrapped it. France used it's Tegetthoff for target practice. Given the state of French capital ships at the end of the war, I wonder if anyone considered claiming the Mackensens as reparations, towing them to France, and completing them, using the guns that had been built for the Normandies.
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  2.  @gregorywright4918  the USN had no choice with Wasp. They only had 15,000 tons available under the treaty, because Langley was the only one old enough to be classified as "experimental". All the treaty carriers were compromised. I have read comments that Ark Royal was lost due to inadequate compartmentalization, to save weight. The Yorktowns were compromised by not having staggered boiler and engine rooms. If Yorktown and Hornet had had staggered boiler and engine rooms, like the Essex did, they might have been able to limp away, rather than sitting, dead in the water, until the Japanese arrived to finish them off. Of course, that brings the alt history question, if Yorktown and Enterprise were built to the treaty limit at that time, 27,000, about the same as Essex, they could have had staggered boiler and engine rooms. Then we don't get Wasp, which made itself useful in the Atlantic, but was too vulnerable to survive in the Pacific. But, with a 27,000 ton design in hand, the USN may have laid down two carriers as soon as Congress authorized them in 38, so they would both be completed in 41, rather than Hornet being ready, but Essex delayed, due to the need to design from a clean sheet.
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  3. It was the slow burn rate that USN BuOrd did not fully appreciate when they switched to smokeless. The USN switched from a 13"/35 to a 12"/40 to take advantage of the slower burn rate, but the new 12"/40s, and the 8"/40s started blowing their muzzles and chases off. BuOrd found chamber pressures were as predicted, but pressure in the chase was far higher than expected. A rebuild program was instituted where the guns were given a strong liner and hooped to the muzzle to reinforce them.
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  4. The British Mk XVI 4"/45 and the Mk XIX twin mount, got me working on a hypothetical where the USN deploys the twin low angle 4"/50, which was developed during WWI, as the battleship secondary, in place of the single 5"/51 used historically. Then, developing a twin 4"/45 and a DP mount like the British Mk XIX, to take the place of the combination of the low angle 5"/51 and high angle 5"/25 that the USN standards were equipped with in the 1930s. The increase in rate of fire and weight of fire offered by the twin 4" is thought provoking. I have read that Jackie Fisher favored more 4" as secondary, vs fewer 6", and that was what he had installed on the Courageouses and Renowns. My analysis indicates he may have been right.
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  5.  @robertf3479  Langley also had folding funnels on the port side of the flight deck. Jupiter's boiler and engine rooms were located well aft, so the funnel location was an easy adaptation. Ranger replicated that funnel location, but had more funnels because of the greater boiler capacity. That approach was not an option on the Lexingtons because the boiler room location had already been set closer to midships, same as Kaga. The options with the more midships boiler room location were an island with a funnel, which the aviators opposed, or entirely flush decked, with the stack gas trunked aft. and directed away from the flight deck. Furious had the stack gas trunked aft and exiting from grills on the aft corners of the flight deck, which was a particularly bad location and the ducting inside the hanger turned the after part of the hanger into an oven from heat soak. Argus had a similar setup, but, less powerful engines, so less hot gas to vent. As I said, it was luck that the Lexingtons turned out as well as they did. With the US' lack of experience with carriers, they could easily have used the same solutions as Kaga. Unlike the Japanese, Italians and Brits, the USN, for whatever reason, did not do major reconstructions on it's older ships in the 30s, so, if the Lexingtons had been built like the Kaga, they would have entered WWII with the same configuration, while Kaga had been rebuilt with a small island, full length flight deck and a downward curving funnel midships in place of the long ducts.
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  6. In the question about WWI subs torpedoing battleships, Drac excluded pre-dreadnoughts. The British sub E-11 slipped into the Sea of Marmara in 1915 and hit the Ottoman pre-dreadnought Barbaros Hayreddin with a single torpedo. The battleship capsized about 7 minutes later, then sank within a few more minutes.
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  7. wrt the question about RN secondaries, seems the reversion to 4" on the Renowns and Courageouses was due to Jackie Fisher's involvement in the design of those classes, as he believed that a quick firing 4" was a better choice than a casemate mounted 6". As soon as Fisher was no longer involved in designs, the RN reverted to a heavier secondary on the Nelsons. I did a bit of comparison between the USN 5"/51 and the dual 4"/50 that was experimented with on a few USN destroyers. The guns had the same rate of fire, but the 4" was a twin. The 5" had slightly better armor penetration, but the DDs the secondaries were intended to fend off were not armored. They had virtually the same range. The single 5"/51 and twin 4"/50s, guns plus mount, weight virtually the same. Creating a hypothetical USN DP 4" mount, cutting the 4"/50 down to 45 caliber to reduce the moment of inertia, and mounting them on a copy of the RN DP mount used with the British 4"/45 Mk 16 in the mid 30s, would give a twin mount that weighed less than the combination of a 5"/51 and a 5"/25 that modernized USN standards were equipped with in the 1930s, while providing twice as many guns in each role, while leaving the 01 deck clear, for installation of additional light AA.
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  8. I can understand how that could have been a problem on Nevada, as she was nearly 25 years old on December 7th, plenty of time for slack maintenance and modifications to compromise the ship's watertight integrity. Audacious had only been in commission for a year when she sank. Doesn't seem likely that Audacious would be in as poor condition as Nevada was. More likely due to inadequate below waterline protection and not having an adequate "material condition" set for the threat that materialized.
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  9. An acquaintance of mine is retired Canadian military. He spent most of his time in the crew of a Sea King helo embarked on a variety of ships. He says there were several times they had USN personnel on board, both officers and enlisted. What the Americans could never get over was that the Canadian ships have beer vending machines on board. He tells of one American enlisted man, who had absolutely no self-discipline and was in that beer machine constantly.
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  10. I live in metro Detroit. Smuggling traffic across the river from Windsor was rampant at the time. The bridge and tunnel to Canada did not open until 1929, so the smuggling was all via boat, or over the ice in winter. The smuggling was done by organized crime, so they probably would take a dim view of any freelancers trying to get a piece of the action.
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  11. One other bit about prohibition: Hiram Walker started his distillery in Detroit in the 1850s. Michigan went "dry" before the rest of the country, so he moved his distillery across the river, founding the small town of Walkerville, around the plant. Eventually, he established the "Canadian Club" whisky brand. So, there was an abundant supply of whisky, right on the river bank, for enterprising mobsters to bring across. Walkerville was annexed by Windsor some years ago, but that big distillery is still there.
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  12.  @EliteF22  Yes, the midships elevator, in particular, was so small it was nearly useless by 44. Elevator size was a function of her age. When built, the designers had to guess how large aircraft would get during her lifetime. That elevator could have been enlarged, but, for whatever reason, the USN did not go in for major rebuilds of it's older ships in the 30s.
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  13. iirc, Franklin was also laid up after the war and never modernized. I remember seeing a documentary about Franklin in the 60s, when she went to the breakers, which featured many of her crewmen recalling how they survived the attack as they retraced their steps through the ship.
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  14. wrt the flash door question, I read somewhere along the line (perhaps "The Grand Fleet" by D K Brown) that after-war tests done showed that the flash doors were too weak, blowing open when there was an explosion on one side of them. So, whether the doors were in place on the ships lost, or not, might be irrelevant, because they could not do their intended job anyway.
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  15. Expanding on the question of treaty cruisers being a good idea, for anyone, the objective of the treaty was to limit costs. If some navies chose to build a large glass canon, vs a smaller, but better balanced, design, that was their own decision. The parties to the treaty had already seen the direction cruisers were taking. The USN built the Tennessee class, starting in 1903: 10" guns, 504 feet long, displacing about 14,500 tons. In 1906, the RN started on the Invincibles, 12" guns, 567', 17,250 tons, evolutionary growth from the Tennessees. By the time of the Washington conference, the benchmarks for a cruiser larger than a "scout" had evolved to Hood, Lexington, and Amagi, each at an eye-popping cost. If some of the Hawkins class had not been building at the time of the conference, the treaty could just as easily have limited cruisers to 6,000 ton, 6" gun "scouts" only. Actually, thinking on the topic, it might have been better for all concerned, if the two Hawkinses that were still fitting out were scrapped, and the limits set at scout cruiser size, so a Dido class, for instance, does not need to worry about being wildly outgunned by a Hipper or a Zara.
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  16.  @deanroberts2021  there was indeed a Axis plan to capture Gibraltar: Operation Felix. The plan was to persuade Spain to come in to the war on Germany's side. Aircraft from France would then refuel in Spain after bombing Gibraltar and ground forces would advance through Spain to assault Gibraltar. Franco declined to join the war, so the operation never came off.
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  17.  @99IronDuke  My sense is adding Indomitable would make Force Z an even more attractive target. The Japanese had reportedly had enough time to move additional bombers to Saigon and train the crews specifically for attacking Force Z. Indomitable's air group at the time apparently included a mix of Sea Hurricanes and Fulmars, which would be effective defense against unescorted medium bombers. The battle location would be at the extreme end of range for either Zeros or Ki-43s based in Saigon, but Ryūjō was in the general area, it's air group attacking a US base on Mindanao on December 8. Ryūjō was equipped with obsolescent A5M fighters at that time. If Ryūjō was intended to coordinate a strike on Force Z with the IJN bomber groups in Saigon, the A5Ms may have been replaced with A6Ms, and the ship positioned to quickly divert from the Philippines to Malaya as soon as Force Z left Singapore. A dozen Zeros from Ryūjō would tie up the Indomitable's fighters, while Ryūjō Kates would add their punch to that of the land based bombers. The Brits could have lost 3 big ships that day.
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  18. wrt the question about the Omaha's casemate mounts, best use I can think of is replacing the four upper casemate mounts with AA guns. The footprint looks adequate to take a quad 1.1" early in the war, or a twin Bofors later in the war.
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  19. wrt the attack in Alexandria, Valiant was not hurt as badly as QE because the mine was not placed ideally. The Italian mines were suspended on a cable under the ship. The cable was supported by clamps on the ship's bilge keels. In the case of the QE, the mine was placed ideally, only a few feet under the hull. In the case of Valiant, the pilot of the "manned torpedo" the frogmen were riding lost control and it jammed into the mud below the ship. The back seater passed out from difficulty with his rebreather. The pilot could not manhandle the mine and cable system by himself, so set the timer and surfaced, with his backseater, where they were captured by the Brits. The mine was something like 20 feet below the hull, so did not do quite as much damage as it would have if placed correctly.
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  20.  @genericpersonx333  Strauss would have been right, ten years earlier. The turrets on the Tennessees were designed for 30 degrees of elevation, vs 15 for the New Mexicos. Strauss scoffed, said the ships would never need that much range, but it didn't cost anything to build the mounts for greater elevation, so he did not oppose the design. At Dogger Bank, January 1915, Lion commenced fire at 20,000. Jutland was merely confirmation that Strauss' thinking was outdated regarding engagement range. To penetrate battleship belt armor at longer range, you need a heavier shell that hits with more kinetic energy. The piece Drac did a while back about Admiralty engagement doctrine echoed this debate in the USN twenty years earlier. Admiralty doctrine was to close to 16,000 or less as rapidly as possible, at which range, the 14" on the KGVs could penetrate well enough, hence, it was called "decisive range".
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  21. wrt the question about armament alternatives for the KGVs. I have read that the RN was fundamentally dissatisfied with the 16" used on the Nelsons due to their high barrel wear, and were looking for a lower velocity, more durable gun. Why in the world the RN did not buy US 16"/45s is beyond me, other than the possibility that they simply were not available yet, when the KGVs were fitting out. From time to time, someone floats the idea of stripping the 15"/42s off of the R-class and installing them on the faster KGV hull, in place of the 14" I found some estimates, at 1915 prices for RN 13.5" guns and twin turrets. Assuming those prices would be close to those for a 15", I adjusted for inflation to 1937 prices. Dismounting the guns from the Rs, and installing them in new build triple turrets for the 5 KGVs would only save about 1M pounds, far short of the amount needed to pay for an additional KGV, and the RN loses the use of the Rs. Using four of the original twin turrets would require a longer hull, pushing displacement over the treaty limit, as we see with Vanguard, so that is a non-starter. Using three of the original twin turrets would fit in the 35,000T KGV hull, but the ship, with only 6 heavy guns, would be outgunned by any other battleship it would likely run into, and the total savings for the five KGVs would be a bit over 3M Pounds, still less than half the cost of building an additional KGV, and they lose the use of the Rs. Other than buying the US 16"/45, what the RN did was the best option.
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  22.  @mattwoodard2535  I drive a VW. Entirely happy with it, but I noticed an oddity: just about every other gas engine car on the road uses manifold vacuum to run the power brake booster. My VW has an engine driven vacuum pump, to make really, really, sure there is enough vacuum. For several years, when that engine first came out, it had an oil leak issue. The source of that oil leak? The vacuum pump, a device that no other automaker thought was necessary. And it was a very expensive repair too. Remember the words of Lt Commander Montgomery Scott "the more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain".
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  23. The policy of building battle cruisers as derivatives of an existing battleship class, rather than reinventing the wheel every time, would appear to make sense. If the US had followed along, then CC1 and 2 would have been ordered as developments of the Colorado class, been more sound ships than the 1916 battlecruiser design. and potentially, make it into commission before the treaty went into effect as Maryland did. Then CC3 and 4 would have been broken up on the ways with the South Dakotas, that is assuming that any battlecruiser based on the SoDaks would be so huge that the waiver would not be written into the treaty the way Saratoga and Lexington were waivered. Without that waiver, Akagi and Kaga would not have been built as carriers either. Meanwhile, not having Lexington and Saratoga as carriers would free up enough tonnage under the treaty for the US to built 3 additional Yorktowns.
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  24.  @erikgranqvist3680  it was pretty routine for the liner to stretch as the gun is fired repeatedly, so the end of the liner would stick out of the muzzle of the gun. That was not a big problem as the exposed end of the liner could simply be sawed off. You have probably heard of "copper choke" where material from the driving band of the shells builds up in the bore to the point where it impeded the shell. The effect of the shell being impeded was excessive pressure in the barrel, eventually leading to the muzzle and chase being blown off. Tools were developed to scrape the buildup out of the bore. A more serious problem on some of the early guns was "steel choke". In some early guns with liners, as the liner stretched, it would form a ridge in the bore. Eventually the ridge would grow to the point where it impeded the shell, and do it suddenly enough to initiate the fuse in the shell. Early liners were machined straight, and changed by heating the barrel while cooling the liner so the difference in thermal expansion would loosen the liner enough for it to be pressed out. Sometimes, the liner would not come out, in spite of the heating process and had to be machined out. Each pass of the cutting head would take several days, so it was a matter of weeks to completely machine out a stuck liner. Gun factories learned to machine the OD of the liner with a slight taper so it would be easier to press out.
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  25.  @mattdill8090  that is a fun story. Nearly out of fuel and provisions, she steamed into Newport News, in April, 1915, as the US was, at that time, neutral. In a hot second, UK and French warships were steaming just outside US territorial waters, should the Wilhelm attempt a breakout. A battleship from the USN reserve squadron was dispatched, as soon as a full crew could be assembled by pulling men off other battleships of the reserve squadron, as a neutrality patrol, should anyone have ideas of steaming into Newport News to attack the Wilhelm. The US newspaper accounts of the incident make for fascinating reading.
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  26.  @EinhanderSn0m4n  you do need to admit it's odd. Seven people who played major characters gone and Furlan was the oldest at 65. Biggs was only 44.
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  27.  @Drachinifel  one of the books I read, when I looked in to this issue, two years ago, said 12,500 tons of armor where ordered from Czechoslovakia. Where that specific armor went is probably immaterial. The point is how capacity limited British industry was. That same book says that British capacity to build mounts and fire control equipment was also limited, to the point where the armor was not necessarily the only impediment to completing the ships. I think other sources have said Anson and Howe were specifically delayed waiting on fire control systems. From what I have read, the UK was the driver of the move to 14". The decision on gun size needed to be made by the end of 35, before the conference started, to meet completion targets. It was the US indicating that it would accept 14", if Japan agreed, that was the green light for the UK to commit to 14" for the KGVs. I don't know which book that information came from. It was not Friedman, or Raven. All I have is photographs of the pages, that I took when I had the book in hand.
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  28. Interesting how, being heavily damaged was a life saver for ABDA ships. Boise and Marblehead were both retired from the theater due to damage, and lived to fight another day. The ships that stayed, died.
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  29. wrt saving/extending the life, of Titanic. Given the sort of damage she is assumed to have suffered: hull plates stove in and seams opened. the best measure would be collision mats. Lacking that, I wonder how many large tarpaulins and hatch covers were in ship's stores, that potentially could be combined to make a facsimile of a collision mat? Apparently, if the leaks could have been stemmed in two compartments, the ship could have stayed afloat.
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  30. 3:20:40 the question about a 14" armed Florida class. As Drac suggested, without the pushback that existed in the USN to the move from 12" to 14", which was repeated in the move from 14" to 16", resulting in moving to larger guns sooner, I can think of a significant impact. The Washington conference engaged in some political art in discriminating between pre-Jutland and post-Jutland ships. In their art, Hood was deemed "post-Jutland" even though it was designed before the battle, while Tennessee and California, laid down after Hood, were deemed pre-Jutland, while Maryland, which was laid down before Tennessee, was deemed post-Jutland. As the Colorados were largely a repeat of the Tennessees, with the exception of the 16" guns, if the Tennessees had been armed with 16" guns, which was openly discussed in 1915, defining the Tennessees as pre-Jutland would be even more problematic. If the Tennessees were armed with 16" guns, and therefore deemed "post-Jutland", then, for parity, the US would not have been allowed to complete Colorado and West Virginia. That would result in the US retaining the Delawares as "front line" battleships. In the fleet drawdown in First London, the Delawares would go, and one or both Floridas and both Wyomings would be retained as "front line" battleships.
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  31.  @scarecrow2097  newspaper reports of the time make for fascinating reading. The Naval appropriation bill the House passed had funding for more Connecticuts. Senator Hale demanded the Navy buy smaller ships, on the order of 12,000 tons, rather than more 16,000 ton Connecticuts, and he held up the appropriation bill until the appropriation for two Connecticuts was changed to the smaller Mississippis. The backstairs chatter the newspapers were reporting was that Hale, who represented Maine, was trying to get the contract for Bath Iron Works. At that time, Bath was building one of the 15,000 ton Virginias, having difficulty with a ship that size, and the Navy was very dissatisfied with Bath's progress. As it turned out, the Navy could not design a ship of less than 13,000 tons, which still exceeded what Bath could comfortably build. Newport News was low bid, for one Mississippi. The William Cramp yard bid a price that exceeded that of News for one ship, but bid a lower price for building both of the Mississippis. In the back of my mind, knowing the contracts for the Mississippis were entirely politically motivated, I will observe that the Cramp yard is in Philadelphia, One of the Senators from PA had a lot of juice, was the head of the state party machine, and also sat on the Naval Affairs Committee, so I would not reject the proposition that the Senator advised Cramp how to bid for the contracts. The ships were a failure for the USN because of their small size. They were a bit slower, and had significantly less range than the Connecticuts, so were mostly relegated to coastal patrol, separate from the rest of the fleet. And yet, being obsolete pre-dreadnoughts, and of little use to the USN, SecNav Daniels still exploited the Greeks to a horrendous degree. iirc, the newspapers were reporting the price Daniels extracted from Greece was about double what the ships were worth. From the Greek perspective, the Mississippis might have come in handy in 1912, but in 1914, if the Ottomans had received the two new Dreadnoughts building in the UK, the Mississippis would have been dead meat. One positive note, the Mississippis fit in the drydock in Piraeus. A Connecticut would have been too big.
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  32. wrt the USN building 16" armed battleships, the "more smaller guns vs fewer bigger guns" argument raged for some time in the Navy Department. Head of BuOrd, Joseph Strauss was the main driver of the "more smaller guns" school. When Jutland demonstrated the need for being able to penetrate at greater range, Strauss was overruled by the SecNav and General Board. In his 1916 annual report, SecNav Daniels said the decision to go to 16" was made over the objections of some officers. When the decision to go to 16" was made in the summer of 1916, there was speculation in the press about the New Mexicos and Tennessees being upgunned to 16" during construction. A Navy spokesman said that the cost to make the changes would be prohibitive. The article did not make clear if the Navy spokesman was talking specifically about the New Mexicos, which had been laid down the previous year, or the Tennessees, as well, which had not yet been laid down. The 14"/50 was ordered into production, off the drawing board, with no test program. Having taken that shortcut, the first production 14"/50 was test fired at about the same time as the prototype 16". Strauss' 1915 report speaks glowingly, at length, of the virtues of the 14", and briefly mentions the 16". If the 14"/50 had been subjected to an in depth test program, the dispersion issue that dogged these guns may have been discovered before production started. Given the timelines of events, I think the most probable situation would be the New Mexicos built with 14" and Tennessees built with 16". The two Tennessees, and three Colorados, would give the USN 5 16" armed "post-Jutland" ships. At the same time, the Japanese could argue they were entitled to a 42,000 ton ship, because of Hood, and complete Tosa, as well as Nagato and Mutsu. So, then the RN is allowed to build four new ships, so that, combined with Hood, the RN has parity with the USN at 5, and the IJN has 3.
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  33. Problem is, some adversaries have the bad form to not get within 16,000 yards. During 1914-1916, the head of BuOrd, Admiral Strauss, kept pushing 14" guns because they could penetrate any existing BB at 12,000 yards. But Dogger Bank was at about 20,000 and Jutland was at more than 15,000. In WWII, West Virginia opened up on Yamashiro at something over 22,000. What do you do when the opponent doesn't want to fight the fight the way that is optimal for you?
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  34.  @Alex-cw3rz  from what I read, seems Yamashiro wasn't sunk by gunfire, but by the five or six torpedoes it caught. The point is, the upgraded 16"/45 could punch through any part of Yamashio at that range. For that matter, the upgraded 14"/50s on Tennessee and California could punch through at that range too. The battleships would probably have shot Yamashio to bits if the torpedoes had not killed her first. According to the tables on Navweaps, a Bismark class could punch through KGV's belt up to 24,000 yards, and could use it's speed advantage to control the range with KGV. This debate raged in the USN during WWI, with Strauss arguing that more 14" guns could be mounted than 16", and, as long as you bought his assertion that engagements would never occur beyond 12,000, the 14" provided more firepower. By the summer of 16, the General Board and SecNav had seen enough long range gunfights between the Brits and Germans to realize that Strauss' argument was not valid. I haven't had time to watch Drac's video yet, but I will be watching with interest to see if the Admiralty reenacted the argument that raged in the USN twenty years earlier.
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  35. Returning to the question of the UK selling it's West Indies colonies to the US in exchange for the US canceling the UK's debt from WWI, which I brought up in the Q&A on the shore bombardment video of May 12th, I have done further reading on the WWI debt issue. The UK had made substantial loans to it's allies prior to US entry in April 1917. From that point on, the US bore the financial burden. As it worked out, the amount owed to the UK by the other allies was almost equal to the amount the UK owed to the US. On August 1, 1922, Arthur Balfour wrote a note to the French ambassador to the UK, words to the effect that the UK did not want to lean so heavily on France, and the other allies, for repayment of their debts. The UK would rather cancel all the debts owned to it, and forego reparations from Germany, but, as the US was pressing the UK so hard for repayment, the UK needed the cash. The content of this note was publicly published by the UK government, which, to me, gives the note the color of an official offer by the UK government to cancel the war debts owned to it, if it is relieved of it's debt to the US. As noted in my May 12th question, extrapolating the price the US paid Denmark for the Virgin Islands to the total land mass of all the UK held islands, plus British Honduras, comes out to $4.15B, which equals the $4B of principle owed, plus a portion of accrued interest. What a different world it would have been, had the UK, effectively, paid it's debt to the US with dirt, rather than gold, and, in accordance with the Balfour note, then cancelled all debts owed to it, cutting the debt, and corresponding drag on the economies of the other allies, in half.
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  36.  @Thomas-gs4yq  iirc, Iron Duke still has some of her 13.5" guns, but the armor had probably been removed for treaty compliance when she was downgraded to a training ship. The same was done with Wyoming. Secondly, I'm not sure the Duke was ever converted to oil fuel, so fueling her may have been an issue in some locations. You would think an additional old battleship would have been useful as long as there were German surface raiders around. I recently reread "Fifty Ships That Saved The World", about the destroyers for bases deal. There was no mention of Churchill asking for battleships, only destroyers. As it happened, a group of those old destroyers were making their way to England, when they picked up radio traffic from Jervis Bay, when she was in her battle with Scheer. The USN had handed over the destroyers with full magazines and torpedo tubes, so they rang up flank speed to rush to Jervis Bay's aide, but arrived too late.
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  37. There are drawings around of the early iterations of the design. Bizarre things with boilers on two decks, seven funnels, and 14" guns in twin turrets with the superfiring turrets being triples. They were ordered as part of the 1916 Navy Act, but promptly suspended, then redesigned to the configuration Drac showed after Navy Department officials got a look at Hood in early 1919. The 14"/50 guns of the original design had been put into production however, so the USN ended up with spare 14" guns coming out of it's ears.
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  38.  @cmck472  iirc, from "Fifty Ships That Saved The World", it took until spring of 41 to get them into service. Luckily, for the UK, the Germans were critically short of U-Boats over that same period. By the time the U-Boat fleet had been rebuild, the Towns were in service.
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  39. From my reading, it was the amount of material being ordered for Yamato that tipped off British and US intelligence that the Yamatos were going to exceed the 35,000 ton limit. Just how much the ships exceeded the limit was significantly underestimated by western intelligence, resulting in the Second London tonnage escalator being triggered, but the new limit being set at only 45,000 tons. If the IJN had gone with a more modest design, say 45,000 tons, western intelligence may not have twigged at all, and the treaty tonnage escalator not triggered until 1940, when the completed hulls were launched, too late to design the Iowas and Lions.
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  40.  @RedXlV  early studies in carrier design found that, when a pilot messed up his approach, he tended to turn left to go around. That preference for a left turn is probably due to the engine's torque making it easier to turn left. A port side island gets in the way.
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  41.  @davidford85  I would suspect the shift in thinking came in the late 30s. Kaga and Akagi were both originally built with both hangars open at the bow, so, in theory, they had three decks that planes could be launched on. That feature was eliminated in favor of a full length flight deck on both ships in late 30s reconstructions.
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  42. Always enjoy your ship videos. How much did the Tennessees, and Colorados, benefit from analysis of Jutland? The oldest copy of Jane's at the local library is the 1958 edition, which lists the deck armor of both classes, presumably after their WWII updates, as 3 1/2" on the upper deck and 2 1/2" on the lower deck, with the more extensively reconstructed West Virginia having 9" of deck armor. Other than West Virginia, this amount of deck armor is far short of the later classes that were built in the 30s, and short of the British N3s, which were designed after the analysis of Jutland. It's interesting that, while the RN pressed on with construction of Hood, the other three ships of that class were suspended, and ultimately cancelled as it was reportedly deemed not feasible to update them. Yet the USN pressed on with laying the Maryland down a year after Jutland, and her three sisters, three years after Jutland, while the RN was going back to the drawing board. For that matter, the final design of the Lexingtons appears comparable to the Hood, but they were laid down after the RN knew it didn't want any more ships as thin skinned as the Hood. Seems that the USN would have been well advised to finish up the Tennessees as they were already building, but cancel the Colorados and Lexingtons before they were laid down, and go straight to the 1920 South Dakotas. What are your thoughts?
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  43. Found your video on the SoDaks. Very interesting, especially the chart comparing armor with the preceding classes. Found a new book I will need to read "The Battleship Holiday"
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  44.  @afx935  I have read that the guns on the Majestics had another issue: "steel choke". Apparently what happened was that, as the gun was fired and the liner stretched, a ridge would form in the liner. Eventually the ridge would grow to the size that the shell would be jolted enough when it hit the ridge to start the fuse. This became more of a problem when guns from the Majestics were remounted on the Lord Clive class monitors, due the heavy use the guns were subjected too. iirc in one case a monitor in the Gallipoli campaign fired, the shell detonated just after leaving the muzzle, and a nearby French destroyer was showered with shell fragments. "Steel choke" was suffered by some other guns as well as those from the Majestics. It was a matter of a learning curve, how to design the liners so they would not develop that ridge.
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  45.  @hughgordon6435  To a degree, ship types could be recognized by their rig. A two masted ship would be a brig or snow, so probably relatively small. A two masted ship with a gaff rigged mainmast was a brigantine, probably civilian. A three masted ship with gaff rigged mizzen, was a barque, with gaff rigged mizzen and main, a barquentine, most likely civilian. All masts gaff rigged, a schooner, most likely civilian. Three square rigged masts, with nothing for size comparison, could be a ship of the line, frigate, sloop of war/corvette, or a civilian ship.
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  46. I chewed some of the alternatives in a comment a couple hours ago. The South American powers didn't have the money. The two surviving Invincibles were offered to Chile. Chile declined. Agincourt was offered to Brazil. Brazil declined. The only reasonably possible buyer would be the Dutch. They would want a ship that was "turn key", not something they would need to pour a lot of money into. They would want something oil fired, because that was the fuel they had in abundance, on Borneo. iirc, the RN did not put a Farthing into the Iron Dukes and Tiger in the 20s. They were never given torpedo bulges, never converted to oil fuel, no supplemental deck armor added. The USN however, did pour millions into modernizing Florida and Utah, only a few years before Florida was scrapped and Utah converted to a target ship. They received new oil-fired boilers (surplus from the North Dakota program), bulges and deck armor (also surplus from the ND program). But they still carried 12" guns and plodded along at 21kts. Would the Dutch want them, in the early 30s?
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  47.  @timothyschmidt9566  you made me look it up. :) The Des Moines class used Mk 16 guns, which Navweaps says were apparently the first mark that used a "loose liner", secured by a liner locking ring, rather than the usual shrink fit. That would explain how the liners could be removed with less temperature differential and force to break the liner loose than was the case with earlier shrink fit liners. I learned something tonight. Thanks!
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  48. wrt the question about Marine detachments on USN ships, the Marines were long gone when I was on the Lex, but I did notice one head that was tagged for Marines, so there was some separation of facilities. With the Marines gone from the ship, "G-Division" had custody of all the small arms, as well as the line throwing guns.
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  49. wrt the question about casemate mounted secondaries, I noticed that the battlecruisers that Jackie Fisher had a hand in, tended to have deck mounts, rather than casemates. I found the text of a letter Jellicoe is supposed to have written when he raised his flag on Iron Duke. The letter was hilarious in it's description of the amount of water shipped by the casemate mounts. I can't help but wonder if Jellicoe had some input on the immediate post-war British designs in pushing away from casemate mounts, due to the problems he had directly experienced with them.
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  50. The 12" was an attempt at reducing weight and cost. The USN did not switch to smokeless until after Iowa was built. Iowa had a major role in schooling BuOrd about the differences between black or brown powder and smokeless, with, iirc, one 12" and two 8" blowing their muzzles and chases off.
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