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

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  17. wrt the question on the F2A, as Drac said, the first problem was weight. The early models were quite agile. "Pappy" Boyington praised it's handling. But the Navy wanted armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, more guns, more ammo, and weight grew. Besides a disastrous impact on performance, the increased weight lead to more landing gear failures. In Aussie hands, the planes were put on a diet: all the armor, except that directly behind the pilot, was removed. The wing 50 cal machine guns were replaced with .303s. Besides the reduced weight of the .303 guns and their ammo, putting the weight reduction out on the wins would also reduce rotational inertia, which improves roll rate. The life raft and Brewster provided radio, which did not work worth a hoot, were also removed. As modified, the Aussie Buffs apparently pretty much held their own against the early Japanese army fighters. Another problem was the engines installed on the Aussie and far east RAF Buffs. There was apparently a shortage of Wright Cyclones, so the planes built for export were fitted with worn out airline castoffs (the DC-2 used the Cyclone) that had been 'refurbished" by Wright. Whether due to the engines being refurbs, or the fundamental design of the engine, I don't know, but the Buffs in far east service also tended to overheat and blow out their oil. Given that the Cyclone was also used in the SBD and B-17, I would lean toward laying the engine's ill temper in the export Buffs on their state of wear, in spite of being "refurbished". Best moves to improve the Buff, besides the weight reduction program the Aussies gave them, would be actual, new, Cyclones, or Pratt Twin Wasps, like the earlier, Grumman-built, F4Fs had. Or, take the entire program away from Brewster and give it to someone who knew how to run an aircraft factory, and had capacity available.
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  20. Drac, I started looking in to the Courageous class "large light cruisers" some days ago. There are two narratives about them that I see repeated over and over: 1: they were built with shallow draft to operate in the Baltic. and, 2: they were converted to carriers because of the Washington treaty. I can't find any support for either of those narratives that makes any sense. As you point out in your piece on the Courageouses, the Germans could send any capital ships into the Baltic that they wanted via the Kiel Canal. If the Courageouses were the only big gun ships the RN could get into the Baltic, they would be dead meat when the entirety of the High Seas Fleet came over the horizon. If the RN could get other capital ships into the Baltic, there is no reason to build the Courageouses. The WNT appears to not regard the Courageouses as "capital ships". The Courageouses do not appear on the capital ship disposal list, nor the capital ship retention list, nor is there any verbiage that I can find in the treaty compelling their conversion. Why were the Courageouses built? One person on another forum has offered a scenario that makes sense: the Courageouses were built as cruiser killers that were small and cheap enough, in relative terms, to build in large quantity. That scenario has the virtue of making sense. The Courageouses cost a third less than the Renowns, and used fewer of the limited inventory of twin 15" turrets per ship, allowing more of them to be built. Have you ever heard of this alternative to the generally accepted scenarios?
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  29. USN procurement choices in 1936. That is a "target rich environment", especially BuOrd. It wasn't just the ineffective Mk 14 detonators. The air launched Mk 13 torp suffered multiple failure modes including the motor not starting, sinking, running too deep and running erratically. In a live fire exercise in the summer of 41, of 10 Mk 13s fired, only 1 ran hot, straight and normal. Once BuOrd was convinced the failures were not all pilot error and went to work, the faults were corrected and the Mk 13 was an excellent weapon, by late 44. Then there was the 1.1" AA gun. Looked good on paper, liquid cooling and an automatic ammo feed system so it could fire continuously, with a larger shell and greater range than the 25mm AA guns then available. But the 1.1" had multiple jam modes, plus the human factors issue of not having adequate room for the loaders to do their job. The Navy produced a color newsreel film about Midway that has several short looks at a couple 1.1s, firing. In the first 3 looks, the 1.1" in the foreground is blasting away with all 4 guns and looking very formidable. In the 4th glimpse, only the gun on the right end is firing, the other three are all stopped. The 1.1's faults were never corrected. If BuOrd was not going to conduct adequate development programs and deliver reliable weapons, they should have overcome their "not invented here" bias and bought weapons from other services. so we would have gone into the war with Brit Mk VIIIs in subs, Brit Mk XIIs in aircraft, and Bofors AA guns.
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  37. wrt the question about the 14" guns on the KGVs, British cordite seems to be considerably less dense than USN smokeless powder. While the weight of the charge in the British guns is less, the chamber size of the British guns is significantly larger. This is also true of the 16"/45 used on the Nelsons vs the 16"/45 used on the US Colorado class. The muzzle velocity of the British guns is a bit lower, but a lower muzzle velocity results in a higher trajectory and steeper angle of fall, which is better able to penetrate deck armor. The debate about whether to stay with 16", or having more guns by downscaling to 14", was a long standing debate. The USN had had exactly the same debate 20 years earlier. The head of BuOrd insisted that engagements would always be fought at 12,000 yards or less, a 14" could penetrate well enough, and, being smaller, more 14" could be carried. The USN General Board looked at the engagement ranges at Jutland, overruled the head of BuOrd, and made long range gunnery the priority. As Drac said, the choice for the KGVs was dependent on the same condition that the head of BuOrd had specified in 1915: engaging at short range. I have another theory about the move to 14" guns. UK industry's capacity to make large guns had atrophied since WWI. The guns for the KGVs had to be ordered by late 35, before the change to 14" was specified by the Second London Treaty, to meet the construction schedule for the ships. I have read that the new 14" was designed to fit in the same cradle as the earlier 13.5"/45. When Tiger and most of the Iron Dukes were scrapped in the early 30s, the Admiralty retained many of the 13.5" guns. Navweaps says 54 of those guns were in inventory in 1939. It may be possible that the Admiralty designed the KGV gun mounts for backward compatibility. If there was a development or production problem with the new 14"/45, I think it is possible the Admiralty was looking at completing some or all of the KGVs with the 13.5" as a stopgap.
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  48. wrt the question about the RN pushing for the reduction to 14" guns in Second London. Nothing prevented the Brits using 14" guns in the earlier treaties, if they wanted to do that to provide, what in their assessment, was a better balanced ship. The French had built the Dunkerques well below treaty maximums in both guns and displacement. Seems it's more a matter of the RN trying to use the treaty to force everyone else to build what the RN wants, rather than everyone else working their own design within the original parameters. This was done again wrt carriers. Seems the Brits did a survey of their repair facilities around the empire and found that some facilities could only handle a carrier of 23,000 tons, not the 27,000 tons the earlier treaties had allowed. So, Ark Royal was built to 22,000 and the Illustrious class built to 23,000. And, Second London cut the carrier tonnage limit to what the Brits wanted to build, not what any other party was capable of building. The "escalator clause" of Second London only covered the gun size increase from 14" to 16". It did not include the displacement increase. The displacement increase was negotiated between the US and UK in early 38, and, again, the Brits tried to limit the increase to the 41-42,000 ton range, the largest British facilities could handle. The US held out for 45,000, which they finally got in mid 38, enabling the Iowas. Without so much time wasted due to British obstruction wrt the tonnage increase, the US could have skipped the slow, cramped, South Dakotas and gone straight to the Iowas that they really wanted.
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