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

  1. Enjoyed your comments on the Lexingtons. One observation I would make wrt armor, they had armor roughly equal, or better, than anything that could catch them. Their armor is roughly equal to the Kongos, 7" inclined at 11.5 degrees according to Friedman, a bit inferior to Amagi's, but Lexington's guns could punch through Amagi's armor as readily as a Kongo's. Lexington's armor is probably adequate against any 8" cruiser. Reducing armament is one thing I would not do, as the Amagis were designed with 10-410mm guns, so cutting the Lexingtons from 8 to 6 would put them at a further disadvantage, in a battle where the first one who scores a solid hit will probably be the winner due to the vulnerability of both ships. I think the final iteration of the Lexingtons was pretty decent, considering the mission as a scout. Only change I would want to make is get rid of the casemate mounted 6", in favor of the twin turrets used on the Omahas,.
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  2.  @BrigadierBill  iirc, Germany was trying to get on the Naval Treaty system, as it would supersede the limits of the Versailles treaty. The allies were trying to find some way to prevent the construction of the Deutschlands, which complied with the letter of the Versailles treaty. A switch to the Naval Treaty system would manifest itself one of two ways: the Deutschlands would be classified as cruisers, with gun size limited to 8", which would make them slow, underarmed, heavy cruisers, or the ships would be made larger/more expensive, mounting guns up to 16". So, presume the allies allowed Germany to join the treaty system early enough to forestall construction of the Deutschlands, what happens, is the question? I would expect that Germany would go straight to the Scharnhorsts. Without already having the 11" gun in hand, because the Deutschlands were not built, Germany would probably go straight to 15", buying the technology, if not the guns themselves, from Italy, if need be, to advance the construction schedule. The knock-on effects would be interesting too. If Germany was allowed to build 35,000 ton battleships, pleas to France to build the Dunkerques below treaty limits would probably fall on deaf ears. Without Strasbourg clogging up the St Nazaire drydock. Jean Bart could have been laid down at the same time as Richelieu, so they both would have been commissioned just as France fell, and escaped to French West Africa. As Dunkereque and Strasboug would not exist, the Mers el Kabir attack would probably not have happened as all that would have been there would be two hopelessly obsolete battleships and a handful of DD.
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  3. Very interesting interview. Thanks for offering it. A couple observations: no-one is ever fully prepared for war. I have yet to hear a General or Admiral not say "if we had had another year (or two), to prepare, we would have been in a better position". As a wise man once said "no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy". wrt the USN figuring out that a thrust across the Pacific to defend the Philippines or Guam would run a gauntlet of Japanese held islands: the Marianas and Carolines had been Spanish colonies prior to 1899. With the US having paid Spain to give up it's claims to the Philippines and Guam for payment of some $12M, Spain sold the Marianas and Carolines to Germany for about $4M. Japan, as an ally of the UK, rolled up these German colonies in WWI, and continued to hold them under a League of Nations mandate. The US could have avoided that situation by buying all the Spanish colonies in 1899, rather than cherry picking the two properties they did, thus preventing any potential enemy sitting astride the supply lines to the Philippines. wrt the US having bases in the Caribbean: I did some back of the envelope calculations of the value of all the UK held islands, plus British Honduras, by extrapolating what the US paid Denmark for the Virgin Islands in 1917. As it turned out, the total value of the West Indies colonies was just about equal to the debt the UK owed the US after WWI. At the same time, Arthur Balfour wrote a note to the French ambassador to the UK saying that, if it was up to the UK, it would forgive France's debt to the UK, and forego reparations from Germany, but, as the US was demanding repayment in full, with interest, in cash, the UK needed the cash from France. If the UK had signed over the colonies to the US, it would wash out the UK's debt to the US. Then the UK could follow through on Balfour's proposal and cancel all the debts owed it by it's allies, because, again, allied debts to the UK were almost exactly what the UK owed the US, so, again, the debts wash out. Then the Caribbean becomes essentially a US lake. This colony for debt swap was widely discussed in the press at the time, but Lloyd-George and President Harding both said "no". On the USN's severe shortage of scouts: this became glaringly evident in a pair of exercises in early 1916, when the weather was less than ideal. The DDs that were supposed to do the scouting were forced back to port, while the BBs plowed ahead, with no idea what lay over the horizon. It did not go well for the "attacking" force. Shortly after the US entered WWI, capital ship construction was given much lower priority, so that resources could be focused on addressing the US' deficiency in scouting and ASW forces. Three of the Colorado class, which had not been laid down, were postponed until after the war, and work on Maryland, Tennessee and California was slowed to a crawl. Maryland and Tennessee were laid down in April and May, respectively, of 1917, days or weeks after the US' declaration of war, escaping the postponement that delayed the other three Coloradoes. Germany had resumed unrestricted submarine warfare Feb 1, announcing it's intention to sink without warning neutral flagged ships, including those from the US, in the designated war zone, reneging on a promise made in 1915. As if that was not enough of a defacto declaration of war on the US, the Zimmerman telegram was a further provocation. Bottom line, unlike 1941, the US' declaration of war in April was not a response to a surprise, but a culmination of a long series of provocations that afforded the US plenty of time for planning prior to making the declaration. I can't help but wonder if there was discussion in the Wilson administration and the Navy Department to take a page from the Admiralty's book of 1914 and cancel the Tennessees and Coloradoes outright, for the same reasons, before Tennessee and Maryland were laid down, and scrapping California on the slipway (a photo from March of 17 shows all that had been assembled of California was the keel and bottom of the hull), so that three more slipways, steel and manpower would be available to address the USN's critical shortage of smaller ships.
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  4. Both the submarine. USS Silersides, and the LST in Muskegon, MI host overnight groups.
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  5.  @MrFlak188  I have read, somewhere along the line, that, once clear of port, the submariners did open up the torpedoes and disable the magnetic detonator. Command decreed that the access covers be sealed with a particular green paint, to expose tampering by the sub crews. So the men in the torpedo workshops in port would give samples of the green paint to the sub crews to reseal the access covers after the unofficial modification. Unfortunately, the impact detonator didn't work either. I don't know if that is true, or not, but I recall reading that.
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  6. wrt the Lexington's protection. As Drac said, USN Scouting Group doctrine was 35kts. The 1919 Lexington design was better protected than the earlier designs. From what I have read, the need for better protection was acknowledged, but the reduction to 34kts to gain the protection was only grudgingly accepted. The ship could easily have been better protected, but TPTB were not willing to accept a further reduction in speed. The alt history possibilities post-Treaty are interesting. Reportedly, the UK was willing to accept a single ship maximum of some 42,000 tons, because of Hood. If the other powers had dug in their heels and demanded that each was entitled to build a 42,000 ton ship, because of Hood, what would the US have done? If they completed one South Dakota, it would have been a red-headed stepchild as no other US battleship could keep up with it. With two Lexingtons being converted to carriers, a new mission for the battlecruiser emerges, as consort for the carriers. Seems most likely that, if the US had been allowed one 42,000 ton ship, it would have been a Lexington, not a South Dakota.
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  7.  @JohnSmith-of2gu  There were horizontal, reciprocating, steam engines in paddle wheel driven ships. On a mid 19th century stern wheeler, typically two cylinders, each driving a connecting rod attached to the corresponding end of the paddle shaft. The side paddle steamer Sudan, built in 1921, is still carrying passengers on the Nile. I saw some film of the engine running some years ago. It is a triple expansion, and it looked like it was installed horizontally with the paddle shaft being, effectively, an extension of the crankshaft. As you said, getting the power turned ninety degrees to drive a screw would involve some very large gearing. Of course, if there was a compelling need for a horizontal TE and the ship was wide, you could do a horizontal opposed engine. Then the engine could be mounted longitudinally with the crankshaft on the ship's centerline.
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  8. Exactly what I was thinking. Not only would the pressure in the crew compartment rise to an unbearable level, the CO2 would also build up. There had to be a means of venting the cabin air, to both control pressure, and vent the CO2.
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  9.  @Segalmed  fwiw, I saw a movie many years ago about the passengers from a ship that had been sunk, in a lifeboat. Instead of oars, the boat was propelled by a screw driven by the passengers pushing and pulling on vertical levers that extended from the bottom of the boat. A Google search yielded a few photos of such a lever driven screw propelled lifeboat being demonstrated at the King George V dock in London in 1925.
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  10. Nicely done. I have fun rewriting ship building decisions and the naval treaties, but lack the facility to construct alternate battles in anything approaching this level of detail and plausibility.
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  11. @Ranari's Brawling Channel oh, goody! Another alternate history question. OK, so the US goes to the Washington treaty committee and snivels that the Japanese have 4 battle cruisers and the Brits have 4 battle cruisers, but the US doesn't have any. After much discussion, the committee settles on breaking out BCs as a separate class of capital ships, with a quota of, say 120,000 tons total, with that tonnage deducted from the allotment for BBs. Lets further say that the same mechanism used for carriers is used for BCs, so that 2 currently under construction that exceed the 35,000 ton limit can be completed. That gets the US two Lexingtons built as BCs, and two built as carriers. So, what would the USN do with them prior to the war? Occurs to me that with crazy fast CVs and BCs, the USN could develop tactics for a fast raiding force: planes find and assess the target, maybe soften it up, then the BCs finish them off. They could influence USN tactics to favor speed to the point where the North Carolinas and South Dakotas aren't built, unless they are lightened and lengthened enough to top 30kts. How would the Lexingtons be updated? I have seen models built by people speculating on that question, and they came out looking very much like Iowas. How would that work out? USN architects look at the speed and armor requirements, and the 35,000 ton limit, in the mid 30s and declare it "impossible", so nothing is laid down, while they wait. Japan gave notice they would no longer abide by the naval treaties on Dec 19, 1934, so the USN architects pull out a clean sheet and start working on a design assuming the collapse of the treaties. With the conclusion of negotiations with the Brits on June 30 of 38, setting the displacement limit at 45,000 tons, which is what the US wanted, contracts for the Iowas are issued on July 1, 38, one year sooner than historical. Iowa and New Jersey laid down Nov 1, 38, because North Carolina and South Dakota are not clogging up the ways. Both launch in June 40 and commission in April/May 41. Two more Iowas are laid down in 39 and commission in 42, because the South Dakotas aren't clogging up the ways at Newport News and Fore River. Then the last pair of Iowas is laid down in Brooklyn and Philly the day after Iowa and New Jersey launch, commissioning in 43. The question then is are the Montanas laid down, or is all the capital ship material used for the Essex swarm?
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  12. Among the top 5 films about naval service, one of my picks is "The Enemy Below". Cracking good USN DE vs U-Boat film. There are a number of scenes of the crew interacting with each-other that ring true to me, including how everyone wakes up in their racks when they feel the vibration of the engines at high speed when the DE first charges after the U-Boat.
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  13.  @cvproj  Yes. I noticed "Balance of Terror" followed "The Enemy Below" almost plot point by plot point. I'm not sure if the film is based on the Borie incident. It is based on the book of the same name by D A Rayner. Rayner spent the war as captain of a Corvette hunting subs in the North Atlantic. The book is inspired by Rayner's experiences. I did read the book, but that was about 50 years ago, so I don't remember exactly how events unfolded there. It would not surprise me if the movie producers took some "license" with the material in the book, possibly including other bits, like the Borie's action.
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  14.  @Pavlos_Charalambous  that would really be the only practicable reply to the two new Dreadnoughts that would have been on their way to Constantinople within a week if Churchill had not ordered them seized. The USN had several little used torpedo boats in the early 1910s. It has crossed my mind that they would have been better value for money than the Mississippis. Even both Mississippis against either (Agincourt) or (Erin) alone would probably be a slaughter of the Mississippis. Greece may as well go for a torpedo boat swarm and Jeune École the daylights out of the Ottoman ships. Send a formation of 20 torpedo boats. If 15 are sunk before they reach firing range, that is still 5 boats/10-20 torpedoes being fired at two ships built before the days of torpedo bulges.
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  15.  @hgh425  at the time of the Washington Treaty, the hulk of the da Vinci had been raised from Taranto harbor and was actively being considered for renovation. The treaty treats da Vinci as an active unit of the fleet. There could be a lot of hair splitting in interpretation of treaty provisions by France and Italy. The treaty allows for new construction to replace ships lost by accident. da Vinci blew up. Exercising the accidental loss clause, retroactively, would be controversial, but then counting a hulk as an active battleship is also questionable.
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  16.  @liladoodle  the UK was trying to sell surplus ships. The two surviving Invincibles were offered to Chile, in place of trying to reconvert Eagle back into a battleship. Agincourt was offered to Brazil. The timeline would be very tight. Agincourt was placed in reserve, while the government was trying to sell her, in March of 19. Jupiter's conversion to a carrier was authorized July 11, 19. Of course, all it would take is someone with enough influence to say "what use is a carrier that is too slow to keep up with the battle fleet?" There was a consensus, post WWI, that 12" guns were obsolete. It would be a stretch, but someone could argue that Wyoming could be converted to a carrier, the Wyomings being the largest of the 12" armed battleships, and redundant when the 1916 building program was completed.
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  17. I have seen drawings of an proposed 10,000 ton cruiser for the RAN, with three triple 8" turrets, and 12 casemate mounted 5" secondaries. The drawing bears a stamp from the Cockatoo Island Dockyard dated 8 August. 1924. What lead the RAN to select two Counties over this design?
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  18.  @brendonbewersdorf986  the Greek Hydra class ships were still in service during WWI. According to Wiki they were restricted to coastal defense.
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  19. I made that same observation on a navy FB group a few days ago. The advent of V/STOL aircraft have made carriers affordable for far more navies.
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  20.  @Dave_Sisson  The US taking over all the West Indies colonies would require some artful spin. The US had prohibition at the time, and a significant industry in the West Indies, particularly Jamaica, was rum production. Puerto Rico had been defined as part of the US, and Puerto Rican citizens as citizens of the US by the Jones Act, so Puerto Rico had prohibition, but the US apparently did not impose prohibition in the Philippines. The Caribbean was pretty much an American lake anyway. The US invaded Haiti in 1915, and invaded the Dominican Republic and Mexico in 1916. Cuba? The US invaded a second time in 1906. The US intervened in Central America so many times that British Honduras would have been an exceptionally handy base. Besides, from my readings, by 1920, British Honduras had more trade with the US than with the UK. The West Indies were not particularly of strategic value to the UK, as most of the UK's colonies are around the Indian Ocean, but the West Indies are on the US' doorstep, and control access to the Panama Canal. I added a postscrip to my question in the post last month: there was a lot of chatter in US newspapers at the time about what a great deal it would be for the US to swap the IOUs the UK had written for the islands, but Lloyd George said no, Harding said no and the Prince of Wales said no. I wish I could jump in the WABAC machine and ask why they were against it. It's not like the UK never gave up a territorial claim before. There was a lot of trading real estate back and forth when the border between the US and Canada was set at the 49th parallel. The US had been buying land from other powers since 1803. I don't understand what the problem was. I would jump at the chance to pay a debt with dirt, instead of gold.
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  21.  @austin0351  I have wondered the same thing. The New Mexicos were upgraded, new engines and superstructures, in 31, but nothing was done with the Tennessees and Colorados. The Italian ships were much more extensively updated than the New Mexicos. Reportedly only about 40% of the original Italian ships remained after the rebuilds. iirc, a clause of the treaties was that the offensive capability of ships could not be increased, only defensive, like torpedo protection and AA armament. Maybe the US did a more literal reading of the treaty, while the Italians were more liberal in their interpretation. Maybe lengthening the US ships, the way the Italian ships were lengthened, would have put them over the 35,000 ton treaty limit, as the US ships started out roughly 10,000 larger than the Italians. Bottom line is probably the US ships could have received new superstructures and modern AA armament, ending up looking like West Virginia in 44, but they would still be 21 knot ships, because the treaty limit would have prevented the lengthening, until the treaty system collapsed, and, by then, the US was building entirely new BBs.
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  22.  @NaomiClareNL  as an exercise, I considered the impact of the French claiming the three Mackensen class hulls that were in the water as war reparations, towing them home and completing them, with the guns built for the Normandies, rather than trying to lengthen and upengine the Normandies to be competitive with where the Caracciolo class had raised the bar. The end result was Mackensens completed along those lines would be, by 1930 standards, undergunned, with an obsolete armor layout and inadequate torpedo protection. Additionally, if France had completed the Mackensens, they would have lost the two battleship construction licenses granted by the Washington treaty that they used for the two Dunkerque class ships. I wouldn't give the time of day for the incomplete Bayerns as they were 21kt ships, that had diesels for cruising engines, when big diesels were not yet quite ready from prime time. If it was the Dutch doing all that acquiring, the Netherlands were neutral in WWI, so would have had to pay for the incomplete ships, where France could get them for free, then the Dutch would be paying to complete them and paying the running costs for the next 20 years. I suspect the Dutch would not be considering the 1047s, because the Mackensens would have burned up all their money.
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  23. wrt Beatty and flash protection systems, some years ago, I read "The Grand Fleet". The book describes tests done after the war, which showed that the flash doors the RN was using were too weak. Test explosions blew the doors open. So, at Jutland, the crews could have been doing everything by the book, and been let down by inadequate design of the safety systems.
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  24.  @harrisonrawlinson5650  the rule of thumb on air launched torps was to allow a minimum of 500 yards to allow the torp to come up to running depth after the plunge from the drop, and arm itself. That run would probably need to be done in daylight for visibility to be good enough to judge the drop. An RAF Beaufort penetrated the harbor at Brest and torpedoed Gneisenau. The Beaufort was shot down and all three crew killed before it cleared the harbor basin. The Brit Mk 12 aerial torp only had a 388lb warhead. Campbeltown carried 4.5 tons of explosives. Probably a hole or a dent in the gate from a torp could have been patched pretty easily. Campbeltown pretty well wrecked the gates, and the inrush of water carried the wreck of the ship into the dock. Meanwhile, the commandos had wrecked the pumps and valves that operated the dock. Repairs were not completed until after the war.
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  25. wrt the WNT and ships with 16" guns, I addressed that in the Q&A section of yesterday's post about the Maine. The entire uproar over Mutsu reminds me of guys with a severe case of size envy. Nagato and Mutsu, were only two ships. The other ten capital ships in IJN inventory had 14". The RN had 13 capital ships with 15" guns, so the bulk of the RN already had larger guns than the bulk of the IJN.. As for the IJN trying to stretch a point about the state of Mutsu's completion, the time span from it's being laid down to commissioning in October 1921, a couple weeks before the conference started, is very similar to the time to completion of Nagato, so I doubt it was a matter of Mutsu being incomplete to the point of no guns or armor or engines. My take is trying to force the Japanese to scrap Mutsu created a lot of acrimony over something that really did not make much of a difference.
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  26.  @bkjeong4302  the thought crossed my mind that, had the Navy gone with the North Carolina option of 725' with a 13.5" belt, 9-14" guns and a 30kt capability, at the 35,000 ton limit, would they have been deemed fast enough and well protected enough, to render the Iowas redundant and thus never built. The story goes Admiral Reeves rejected the 30kt concept as too slow to work with 33kt carriers, so they went with the 28kt version, presumably in the expectation that the BBs would operate separately from carriers, so they went for bigger guns instead. Of course, the irony of Reeves' assessment is that the 28kt BBs did operate with carriers, so the 30kt option he rejected would have been fine, and the extra 10,000 tons, months wasted arguing with the Brits to get the 45,000 ton limit, the ludicrous amount of power and cost, to get 3 kts, was all unnecessary, and the Iowa concept would have been tossed in the dustbin with the Lions. A decision that a 30kt battleship was good enough might have prevented the Alaska class cruisers seeing the light of day as well.
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  27. Timing is everything department. In the armor piece a few days ago, I proposed an alt history where the US retains the belt armor made for the South Dakotas, then sells it to the UK for the KGVs, when the North Carolinas are designed with sloped belts. One objection was that the US armor would be inferior to the armor that the KGVs were designed with. The solution to that problem would be to replace the US armor with new, British armor, when it became available. Today, Drac addresses that question: the feasibility of replacing an armor belt. Photos of KGV and Prince of Wales launching shows their external belts were not installed when the ships were launched, answering the question whether the armor was structural or not. Would the South Dakota armor fit KGV? In December 1918. Repulse went into refit, which included removing her 6" belt, and replacing it with the 9" belt armor that had been made for Almirante Cochrane, which was now surplus. The only detail I am hazy on it how the armor was made to fit the different hull? There must have been means of using shims, or reshaping the more ductile back side of the armor, to fit.
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  28.  @DC.409  I'm not sure armored flight decks were decisive. The RN had significant carrier losses too, mostly to torpedoes. Yorktown and Hornet were disabled by aircraft launched torpedoes and finally sunk with more torpedoes. The internal fires that doomed Lexington and Wasp were due to damage from torpedo hits. On the other hand, the British carriers tended to have a lower overhead in the hangar. That was not a problem for Grumman built aircraft, as their wings folded parallel to the fuselage, the same as a Skua or Swordfish. It was a problem for other US carrier aircraft that had wings that folded upward. The Brits had to clip the wingtips of Corsairs for them to fit in the hangar of some carriers.
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  29.  @brendonbewersdorf986  "odd" gun calibers abounded in fleets of nations that use the metric system. France had 13.4" guns. The Nagatos had 16.1" guns. "Odd" only in Imperial measure. The French guns were 340mm, and the Japanese were 410mm. The German 13.8" guns were 350mm. To the rest of the world, the US and UK 16" guns, at 406mm, would be "odd".
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  30.  @genericpersonx333  indeed. After North Dakota, the Floridas and Wyomings went to Parsons. The New Yorks reverted to VTE, due to US turbine manufacturers inability to meet Navy specifications. Nevada reverted to Curtis, while Okie continued with VTE. In her modernization, Nevada's original Curtis turbines were swapped out for the newer models salvaged from North Dakota. According to Wiki, Pennsylvania had Curtis turbines, while Arizona had Parsons. Both received new turbines in their late 20s modernizations. (after the cancellations for treaty compliance, the USN had a lot of new boilers and turbines laying around) The New Mexicos apparently had Curtis initially, which were switched out for Westinghouse in their early 30s modernizations.
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  31.  @JosephOlson-ld2td  George H W Bush was on the San Jacinto. I remember seeing a documentary on TV about his service, and, if I recall correctly, he used the Angelo pronunciation, of a "J", when talking about the ship, or, alternately, calling it the "San Jack".
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  32.  @The_New_IKB  and more oil to keep the Luftwaffe flying. It would be up to the Allied bombers to destroy the German industrial base, so the fuel would be irrelevant because there were no vehicles or planes to use it. Of course, the Germans could move production to Italy, out of range of UK based bombers. Ultimately, Germany would run out of young men before the US and Russia.
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  33.  @sgtkmy2184  most insignificant and inconsequential class of warship of WWII? First thing that comes to mind is the US Alaska class. Big, expensive, with no mission that could not have been performed just as well by cruisers half their size.
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  34. wrt the good gun, bad mount, question: it wasn't just the Italian 8", their 6" and 4.7" also apparently suffered excessive dispersion from the guns being mounted too close together. You would think they would have learned from the first misadventure?
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  35.  @brucewilliams1892  a book was published by Ballentine, in the 60s, that covers the work of the British Department Of Miscellaneous Weapons Development "Secret Weapons of WWII", by Gerald Pawle. Besides the Panjandrum, and the Mulberry Harbors, they developed the Hedgehog, the lesser known Hedgerow, a floating bridge known as "Swiss Roll", and scores of other devices.
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  36.  @greenbean7853  convince the USN to stay with 14" at which point in time? There was a titanic debate, 14" vs 16", in 1916. Adm Strauss, head of BuOrd at the time, favored the 14", as more could be carried, and more guns equals more hits. The same thinking dominated at the Admiralty in the mid 30s, driving the reversion to 14" in the KGVs, before Second London mandated that change for everyone. The case for 14" always hung on the range that engagements were likely to be fought at. Adm Strauss insisted that engagements would never be fought at more than 12,000 yards. In the late 30s, Admiralty fighting instructions said to close, as rapidly as possible, to 16,000 yards, or less, before fully engaging. At those ranges, a 14" could penetrate well enough. What convinced the US SecNav and the General Board to override Adm Strauss' recommendation was Jutland, as ships successfully engaged at greater ranges, where a 14" might not penetrate, but a 16" would. The SecNav and General Board decided to go with 16" for the Colorado class in the summer of 1916, after analyzing Jutland. In his annual report that year, SecNav Daniels said the decision was made "over the objections of some officers". Strauss requested to be relieved at BuOrd and given sea duty. So, for the USN to stay with 14" would require every attempt to engage at greater ranges to fail miserably, which would validate Strauss' position, and the late 30s Admiralty fighting instructions.
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  37.  @keab42  I don't know if there is a record for being captured. One that comes to mind along those lines is HMS Fox. Completed in Portsmouth in 1776. Captured by two US frigates June 7, 1777. Recaptured by the British July 8, 1777. Captured by the French in 1778. Irrecoverably grounded in 1779. USS Hancock, one of the two frigates that captured Fox, was captured by the British the same day that Fox was recaptured. Hancock, in British service, was then captured by the French.
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  38.  @connormccue2353  Looking at a web site that gives Argus' movement on a month by month basis, seems her trips to supply Malta were nearly continuous in 40-42, about 9 trips. Sometimes, she would transfer the planes to a faster carrier in Gibraltar. Sometimes, she would carry the planes to their launch point for Malta herself. She also made aircraft deliveries to West Africa and Russia. Larger aircraft could fly directly to Malta. For a while, twin engine Bristol Beaufort torpedo bombers would routinely take off from Alexandria, attack a Libya bound Italian convoy, then land to refuel and rearm at Malta, then attack another Italian convoy on their way back to Alexandria. Hurricanes and Spits were short range, so seems all of them were given a lift partway to Malta by carriers. USS Wasp made a couple of those delivery trips too.
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  39. Several of the standards were reboilered with boilers left over from the cancelled South Dakota program, so would have been state of the art circa 1919. I know that the New Mexicos were reengined with new geared turbines in the early 30s. New Mexico herself had been built with turbo-electric drive, but the hull arrangement had not been specifically designed for TE drive, so it was possible to retrofit geared turbines. North Dakota had been built with Curtis turbines, which were a failure, so she received new geared turbines in 1917, When North Dakota was scrapped, those newer turbines were reinstalled in another battleship. wrt gun elevation changes, the WNT prohibits altering the "general type" of existing mounts. When the USN wanted to increase elevation, there were, lets say vigorous discussions between the US and UK whether that violated the treaty clause prohibiting altering the "general type" of mount.
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  40.  @JSremus  given the constraints of the treaties, First London added fleet limits for cruisers, destroyers and subs, to the WNT's limits for carriers and battleships, there was not much that could be done earlier than the end of 36. KGV and Prince of Wales were laid down new year day of 37, with all the rest of the KGV class laid down by July. All four Illustrious class carriers were laid down in 37. The one possibility is the UK could have used the provision of the WNT that excluded carriers in existence prior to the treaty from the 20 year replacement cycle, and built modern carriers to replace Eagle, Hermes and Furious. Reclassifying those three old ships as something other than carriers would free up enough tonnage for two more Ark Royals.
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  41. KGV turret faces are an interesting topic in themselves. Since the turn of the century, a sloping turret face had been the thing, to better deflect an incoming shell upward. The KGV turret face is near vertical. According to some of my reading, the thinking was that a shell coming in on a high ballistic trajectory would hit a sloping face near square, increasing it's chance of penetration. So the KGV turret face was designed vertical, so the high angle shell would strike a glancing blow, decreasing the probability of penetration. But, to get the vertical face, while keeping the trunnions where they needed to be for turret balance, required the front of the turret to be very short. The quad turret front on the KGVs is so short it doesn't cover the top of the barbette, so the turret has an armored skirt in front of the turret face, to cover the barbette. So, instead of an inbound shell penetrating a sloping turret face, on the KGV, the high shell hits the vertical face and is deflected downward. iirc, angle of incidence equals angle of deflection, so the shell would probably hit the deck, not that skirt that covers the barbette. To hit the skirt, the shell, or bomb, would need to fall vertically. But Admiralty fighting instructions said to close to 12-16,000 yards, where trajectories are flatter. At 16,000 yards, the angle of fall of a shell from Bismark is only 10.4 degrees, nearly square to the KGVs vertical turret face. So, seems they built a turret optimized for 20,000+ yards on a ship that was supposed to engage at 16,000 or less.
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  42. The Washington Treaty left the French navy with some pretty obsolete BBs. The MN, perceiving that 21kts was no longer sufficient for a battleship, considered lengthening and up-engining the Normanies to attain a more competitive speed, but the cost was excessive. Was any consideration given by France, to claiming the three launched, but unfinished Mackensen class battlecruisers as war reparations, towing them back to France and completing them, with French guns and machinery, for the MN?
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  43.  @toddwebb7521  or even replace a twin turret with a triple. Sure, it's possible. It's not as easy as simply lying about the displacement. The ship would probably be in the yard for months to make all the mods, so it wouldn't surprise anyone.
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  44.  @gregorywright4918  I agree that Repulse got the nod because it could keep up with PoW. Sending two QEs, not PoW or Repulse, solves the speed differential issue. Some accounts say that it was considered to add Hermes to the force as Hermes was in South Africa at the same time that PoW rounded the cape, so she could have joined the force, but Hermes could not keep up. Hermes could keep up with QEs though. The issue hangs on Churchill's insistence, apparently over pushback from the Admiralty, that a new battleship be sent. The RN didn't seem to be put off by the QE's speed, or lack thereof, as they had all of them in the Med, facing off against the 27kt Italian rebuilds and the 30kt Littorios. Some material I have seen says that, once in Singapore and looking over the situation, Phillips requested the Rs be sent to Singapore. But, by the time Resolution and Ramillies had made it to Ceylon, it was March, Force z had been sunk and Singapore had fallen to the Japanese.
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  45.  @alexmoskowitz811  the USN did have a naming convention, initially. Carriers were named after previous ships, or battles, a convention carried over from the Lexington class battlecruisers. When I was on the Lexington, CVT-16, there was a mural on one of the bulkheads in the hangar, of all the preceding USN ships named Lexington. If I recall correctly, there were five preceding ships. That started to fall apart with the FDR, then Forrestal. Now, they all seem to be named after people, same as DDs.
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  46. That thought has crossed my mind too. If the money, labor and material used on the four rebuilds had been applied to the Littorios instead, they may have completed all four. By US/UK standards, the time needed to complete the first two Littorios was exceptionally long.
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  47.  @themightynanto3158  if we replace a golden BB hit on the Hood with a golden BB hit on the PoW, the PoW would have sunk from the vulnerability exposed by the torpedo hit off Malaya, where the prop shaft flailed around, tearing up bulkheads and allowing extensive flooding.
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  48.  @bkjeong4302  which always made me wonder why the Germans didn't send a purchase order to Italy for the 15", instead of undergunning the Sharns with 11", then reinventing the wheel to put their own 15" on the Bismarks. Was that renowned German efficiency overridden by Deutschland Uber Alles?
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  49. wrt the question about Hood. The USN had very detailed information. An Admiralty engineer named Goodall had been seconded to USN Bureau of Construction and Repair. where he both provided information on Hood, and advised on the redesign of the Lexingtons. The US SecNav and members of the General Board had gone on a European junket in the spring of 1919, which included a stop to look over Hood. As soon as they came back from the trip, they redesigned the Lexingtons based on their examination of Hood. Yes, everything the Americans were shown on Hood, and everything Goodall said could have been disinformation, but the information appears to be fairly accurate. Goodall's input on the Lexingtons included decent armor, which the USN declined in favor of more speed. I have read that, during the treaty negotiations, the British were open to an individual ship displacement limit of some 43,000 tons, the same as Hood. I give the Brits points for intellectual honesty on that point. The US declined, and insisted on the 35,000 ton limit.
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  50. wrt rangfinding, as Drac said, estimating range tended to be the more difficult problem. That lead to advocacy of higher velocity guns, as their flatter trajectory increased danger space at the target. But, when the fighting instructions say to head directly toward the enemy to bring range down to 12-16,000 yards, that offers the enemy a danger space, ie allowance for range finding error, the full length of the ship, 600-800 feet, to shoot at, if they fire in a high ballistic trajectory, rather than fire in a flat trajectory. Drac noted in his piece on one of the USN battleships he visited, the USN provided reduced charges for it's guns, so they had the option of firing in a high trajectory to better penetrate a deck, turning decades of gunnery theory on it's head.
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