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

  1.  @kemarisite  wrt to the 1.1" jamming issue: there is a color film about Midway that was produced by the Navy. In that film are 2, maybe 3, good shots of a pair of 1.1s firing. In the first shot or two, the guns look very formidable. In the last shot, on the mount in the foreground, only the right side gun is firing. As you said, the loading machine was designed so that the guns could be reloaded while firing, so 3 out 4 guns on that mount have stoppages for something other than a reload. So, in maybe 5 seconds total, of those two mounts, a total of 8 guns, firing, the camera caught 3 stoppages. The early 1.1 mounts were made by Ford Electric. While faster than the 96 mount, they were also unreliable. Later 1.1 mounts made by GE were reliable, and retained for use with Bofors guns when the 1.1s were discarded. It's a hard choice between the two, because of the 1.1's unreliability. A couple drydocks back, someone asked Drac what he would do if he was in charge of USN procurement in 1935. I added to his response that, as BuOrd had already been working on the 1.1 for a few years, and it still wasn't satisfactory, and the 40mm Bofors was in production in 35, I would be sending a cablegram to Sweden, inviting Bofors to send a demonstration team over, pronto, followed by production orders for mass numbers of Bofors to be installed on everything from DEs on up. iirc, The Navy finally did have a shootoff, between the 1.1, Bofors, the 37mm the Army was using and the Vickers, which the Bofors won, but valuable time had been lost.
    3
  2.  @dcbanacek2  my first thought is Scapa is too deep for easy salvage. Much of it seems to be about 100 feet deep and some close to 200 feet. Pearl is only 40, so the ships sank only to the point of their decks being awash. or less. which made salvage much easier. Same thing with the QE and Valiant in Alexandria. The ships were badly damaged/sunk by Italian manned torpedoes, but their decks were still above water. The Brits even carried on normal weatherdeck activities on them to fool Italian reconnaissance planes that the raid had failed and the ships were undamaged.
    3
  3.  @brendonbewersdorf986  sure armored cruisers could have continued into WWI. Don't go to battleship sized guns on them, as they step up the speed. The battlecruiser concept might have survived, if they had kept gun caliber significantly lower than that of battleships. Think in terms of the Scharnhorsts, or the US Alaska class,with their 12" guns, or the Deutschlands. Notice that these three classes existed outside of the jurisdiction of the naval limitation treaties. You could argue that Jackie Fisher's putting 12" guns on the invincibles put armored cruisers in their coffin, and the WNT, by legislating a gap in armament between 8" and 16", nailed the lid on the coffin.
    3
  4. I got excited when I saw the question about the da Vinci in the index, but, at that time mark, in the audio, is a second question about bulbous bows. I have been looking into the attempted salvage of the da Vinci, the RM's wish list for how it was to be rebuilt, and the resulting cost escalation, due to the feature creep.
    3
  5.  @danielregnard882  I would put a camera on Captain Leach's head, looking where he was looking. The objective to either confirm or dismiss his testimony that he saw something hit Hood near the main mast, then a moment later, a pillar of fire erupt from the same spot.
    3
  6. Yes, I can see the usefulness of that approach. The objective of the magnetic torpedo pistols was to detonate a torp set to run under a ship, rather than hit on the side. A ship running over a depth charge would have the same effect as a torp with a magnetic pistol.
    3
  7.  @johnshepherd9676  yes, and Marionette is also building the Constellation class frigates now. It appears that, unlike the benighted Freedom class, Lockheed does not have it's fingers into the Constellations. Marinette's parent company, Fincantieri, based the Constellations on the Bergamini class FREMM Fincantieri builds for the Italian navy.
    3
  8.  @gregorywright4918  Besides Friedman, and other books on the subject, I have found newspapers of the time make for fascinating reading, and the papers will report all the debates in Congress. The Library Of Congress has a keyword searchable database for papers of that era. The annual reports of the Secretary of the Navy, which include the annual reports of the individual bureaus, are another great resource. I have even found the full text of some naval appropriation bills on line. Did you know that the appropriation bill that funded Langley, appropriated more money for zeppelins than for the carrier? I posted a question about the Langley vs zep funding for Drac in Guide 264, so maybe we will hear his views on that topic. While the Navy was considering another collier conversion before the treaty, I'm pretty sure they would have changed their mind after the treaty. The treaty decreed any carrier in service or building, which included Langley, as "experimental", and not subject to the 20 year replacement cycle of the treaty. Converting a second collier after the treaty would doom the navy to having a ship with zero combat value occupying part of their displacement allocation for the entire interwar period.
    3
  9. QE and Valiant received new powerplants in their modernizations. I'm thinking there was an interpretation of the treaty that the UK observed that prohibited uprating the QE powerplants. Or, could be, that the assertion that the QEs could be uprated enough to hit 28kts was hooey. The only upgrades the WNT explicitly allowed were for torpedo protection, AA armament, and deck armor.
    3
  10.  @stanleyrogouski  I would say the Iowas are North Carolinas without treaty restrictions. The SDs are simply misbegotten tubs, but that's only my take. When it looked like the US was heading for war at the beginning of 1917, I would have cancelled all the Coloradoes and Tennessee before they were laid down, and broken up the little bit of California that was on the slipway, for the same reasons the Admiralty cancelled their 1914 battleship building program, because I think they are misbegotten tubs that not only had been passed by technology, but USN decision making in going bigger and faster with the 1920 South Dakotas had rendered the Tennessees and Coloradoes obsolete.
    3
  11.  @stanleyrogouski  That opens up an interesting line of inquiry: given the displacement limits the US accepted with the naval treaties, and given how fast the USN's carriers were, should the North Carolinas and SDs have sacrificed armament or armor for speed to keep up with the carriers? When they were designed, the USN didn't know that battleship duels were pretty much a thing of the past, but having some major fleet elements being 5kts faster than the others seems a formula for frustration. Sticks in my mind I read somewhere that, by the end of the war, the engines in the SDs were worn out, because they had to be run so hard to keep up with the rest of the task force at cruising speed.
    3
  12.  @genericpersonx333  I generally agree with your take on pre-war USN doctrine. Seems that US spies would have reported on the lengthening of the Kongos in 35-36, early enough to influence designs for the North Carolinas, giving the US an idea of the speed the IJN was going for. A difference of 2-3kts/hr sounds trivial, but multiply that difference over 24 hours/day, for several days, and it starts to add up. I can't help but wonder how much fuel it took to push an SD into the high 20s, vs a finer hull.
    3
  13. wrt the US looking at acquiring Almirante Latorre, that idea sounds utterly daft. Latorre was British built, that means British replacement parts for everything and British cordite for the guns. The Rivadavias were US built, that means US sourced replacement parts and US smokeless powder for the guns. Did the US have a moment of rationality and approach Argentina about the Rivadavias, or was the US so size obsessed that Latorre's 14" guns, vs the Rivadavia's 12", was the only thing that mattered?
    3
  14.  @kemarisite  Adding to what Frank said, later pre-WWI design battleships would have a double bottom, and maybe a single torpedo buikhead. As torpedoes grew, this system was woefully inadequate. Royal Oak and Barham both had large torpedo bulges installed between the wars, and both fell to torpedoes anyway. The last couple of classes of USN standards had an internal TDS of 4 or 5 bulkheads, with the spaces between alternating between air and oil filled. West Virginian's TDS was overwhelmed at Pearl and she sank. Torpedo bulges were added when she was rebuilt. Torpedoes are deadly, which is probably why Jackie Fisher was so enthusiastic about them.
    3
  15. wrt the question about the WNT not having the clause preventing sale of ships. iirc, navies of the dominions were regarded as part of the British Navy. I am sure a Philippine navy would be regarded as part of the USN. There could be some potential customers in South America. Chile did buy back Latorre. The UK did offer the two surviving Invincibles to Chile, at 200,000 Pounds each, plus some 600,000 Pounds each for renovation, but Chile declined. Argentina and Brazil did not have the money for more battleships. Greece had the incomplete Salamis sitting in the Vulcan yard in Germany, but did not want it. Litigation over the fate of Salamis ran through most of the 1920s. The Dutch abandoned their pre-WWI battleship plans. Italy, France, and Russia abandoned battleships that had been under construction before the war, so they are unlikely to be interested in buying more. The only other power of any size that comes to mind is China, but it's navy at the time appears to have been a shambles. So, I don't think there would be a market for old, war-worn, ships with no torpedo protection, no deck protection, and coal fired.
    3
  16.  @Iron_Blood_Enjoyer1933  I would say no. The Lexington conversions exceeded the treaty limits, exceeded the special provision, in reality, exceeded the special provision even with the allowance for torpedo and aircraft protection. The G3s were even bigger than the Lexingtons, I doubt anyone could say a converted G3 was within 33,000 tons, with a straight face. A converted Admiral class might have been close, but the Admirals had already been broken up.
    3
  17. The question of why only two Nelsons vs three Colorados and two Nagaots was discussed at length in another forum recently. No really satisfying answer had been determined. The WNT divided ships into "pre-Jutland" and "post-Jutland" groups. Hood was placed in the "post-Jutland" group, in spite of being a pre-Jutland design, with a few modifications. But the US Tennessee and California, both laid down after Hood, were deemed pre-Jutland, but the Colorados, essentially repeats of the Tennessees. except for the upgrade to 16" guns, were deemed post-Jutland. One of the participants in that other forum is a professional historian, who has the minutes of meetings held at Secretary Hughes' home, between some of the delegates. Materials from that era quote British officials as saying outright that Hood was not really post-Jutland. Hughes talks about "efficiency" in the meeting minutes, without really describing what he means by that term. There apparently was very little discussion of technical issues. Running the math, the throw weight of the 12-14" battery on a Tennessee is almost identical to that of the 8-16" battery of a Colorado. The 16" guns have more penetration at range, but the larger number of 14" guns give a greater probability of a hit. This was the subject of a titanic argument in the Navy Department in 1915-16. My seat of the pants suspicion is that Hood was officially deemed post-Jutland as a piece of diplomatic art, because the UK needed three "post-Jutland" ships, because of the Nagatos, but did not want to pay for a third Nelson.
    3
  18. wrt the carrier only USN in the 30s, the first problem is that Wasp consumed the last of the US' treaty allotment for carriers. Once the treaty system collapsed, Congress authorized two new carriers in 38. Of those two, one was built to the existing Yorktown design, which was, by then somewhat outdated, while the second carrier, Essex, was delayed while the new design was drawn up. The North Carolinas could be laid down when they were, because of the expiration of the treaty battleship construction moratorium at the end of 36. There was no treaty mechanism that would allow more carriers to be laid down at that time. So, even if the US had not been laying down BBs in the late 30s, they would not have started the war with more carriers, due to the Navy's preference in 38 to wait for a new, more capable, design, rather than building obsolescent Yorktowns to infinity. The Navy ordered 11 Essexes in 1940, one year after Hornet was ordered, but the war was upon them before they were completed.
    3
  19. As another reply noted, the Colorados, and Nagatos, were 1916 designs. The Nelsons were an entirely postwar design, incorporating the lessons learned from the war, and a qualitative leap ahead of the 1916 ships.
    3
  20.  @GaldirEonai  OK, nightmare scenario: the Army gets total responsibility for the Asian continent, China/Burma/whatever else is on that land mass, land and air assets. The Navy gets everything offshore, including land based bombers attacking offshore, like the Navy bomber groups that attacked Force Z, and island garrisons. The IJN had a land force, so expand that to handle all the offshore invasions and occupations. Unified command in each theater.
    3
  21.  @SPR-Ninja  the promoters of 14" always base their position on the ships being able to close to a range where the 14" can penetrate. During 1915-16, Admiral Strauss at BuOrd kept insisting that engagements would always be fought at 12,000 yards, or less. SecNav Daniels and the General Board overruled Strauss in the summer of 16, after Jutland proved it was practicable to engage at longer range. Admiralty fighting instructions that the KGVs were designed for also dictated engagements be fought at relatively short range, less than 16,000. An Admiralty analysis of a KGV with 14" guns and a hypothetical 15" KGV showed the 15" gunned ship would have a penetration range advantage on the order of 1,000 yards. There was another factor one book brought up about those Admiralty fighting instructions: the instructions were, in part, based on the assumption that the remote gun directors would be knocked out, so the ship would need to be close enough for the guns to hit anything under local control. Apparently, Bismark's remote directors were knocked out. Scaling off of the map of the engagement I find on-line, KGV and Rodney appear to have been following the fighting instructions and been within 16,000 yards, but Bismark couldn't hit anything with turrets under local control, so the premise of the fighting instructions, that you could hit anything under local control at that range appears to be wrong. But the "why 14"?" question, and why change the treaty limit, as nothing prevented the KGVs being built below treaty limits, are still there. Raven says the UK pushed the treaty change to prevent the US and Japan building 16" ships, but, by going to 14", the UK handed the French, Italians, and Germans, gunnery superiority with their 15" ships, so that makes no sense. The only thing that makes sense is someone clinging to the "more smaller guns equals more hits" theory and everything else is excuses, intended to obfuscate embrace of a theory that had been discredited twenty years earlier. Bottom line, I figure the KGVs did OK. Three of them squared off against other capital ships, and survived. (there are some claims that Lindemann wanted to finish off the PoW, but was overruled by Lutjens) The only one to be defeated, was defeated by aircraft.
    3
  22.  @jarmokankaanpaa6528  I agree with everything you say, in general. There are circumstances where a deck hit might be easier or preferable. In the case of Hood, iirc, Hood was heading, more or less, toward Bismark, so the target presented by the hull would appear smaller, a shell would hit at an angle, limiting it's penetration, and there was no way to mitigate the angle of impact. But the deck target area offered would be the same as if Hood was on a parallel course. The armor penetration table for Bismark's guns doesn't go below 20 degrees, because a hit at that angle would ricochet off, but there is a way to mitigate that angle of impact issue on a deck hit: use a reduced charge. My theory is that Bismark's gunners knew their business, only loaded the main charge in the guns, fired at a higher angle, going for a deck hit, and the eyewitness testimony by Captain Leach of a deck hit is correct. Unfortunately, the extracts from USN gunnery tables that I have access to are partial, so I can't find the exact angle of fall at the range, approx 19,000 yards, where Hood was hit, and the characteristics of Bismark's guns would be different. As close as i can come is a USN 14" at 14,500 yards: angle of fall at full charge 12 degrees, 5 minutes. For a reduced charge: 20 degrees 53 minutes, which is getting to the angle where a shell could punch through Hood's deck armor. The actual shot being at a longer range, the angle of fall on Hood would be greater. On the side hit issue, the term I could not recall last night was "danger space". For that same USN 14" the danger space with a full charge and a 20' high target was 31 yards. From the drawings and pix, Hood appears to have had between 25 and 30 feet of freeboard midships, so the side hit danger space would be correspondingly larger. Hood's beam was 104ft, or a bit over 34 yards. Given the angle Hood was at, the effective range difference between the near side and far side of the deck would be quite a bit larger than 34 yards. Captain Leach testified that Bismark was firing half salvos, and two hit short and one long, or one short, two long, he didn't recall which, and he had an "impression" the fourth shell landed near the mast.
    3
  23.  @baileyd5210  It seems the Axis had eyes on Iraqi oil. Vichy was allowing the Luftwaffe to operate from airfields in Syria. The Germans and Italians supported a coup in Iraq that put an Axis friendly strongman in charge. Iraq, at that time, was producing 3.438MT/year. Not a huge gusher, but it would be helpful, and there was an existing pipeline from the Iraqi oil fields to the Med. The pipe forked in western Iraq, with one branch going into British held Palestine, and the other fork going into French held Syria. The Ottoman built rail line from near the Iraqi oil fields to the Med would probably have been problematic, as it wandered across the Turkish border in a couple places, which might cause the Turks to object to the Axis shipping oil by rail. With the fall of Greece, and abandonment of the invasion of the UK, Germany had the resources to invade Syria and Iraq, but, as you said, invaded Russia instead.
    3
  24.  @baileyd5210  Spain holds a slice of North Africa, on the south side of the strait, so, with Spain in the war, the strait could effectively be blocked to Allied surface ships. Gibraltar itself would be reduced to the same status as Corregidor, and, eventually be starved out.
    3
  25.  @insignificantgnat9334  there is another reason Great Lakes combatants would be small: access. The Welland Canal that was in service in the 20s was only 14' deep with locks 270'x45'. The Canal in service now was not open until 1932, and not fully dredged to 25' until the mid 30s. Of course, the US would not have access to the Canal, so everything deployed by the US would need to be built on the lakes, so envision a lot of Coast Guard cutters and ice breakers with newly installed, larger, guns on the US side.
    3
  26.  @jsl985  from my reading, the USN wanted the same rate of fire per mount, as the single .50 cal machine guns they were replacing. NavWeaps gives a rate of fire for the .50 machine gun of 450-600rpm. The 1.1 cycle rate was 150rpm. with a practical rof of 100rpm, so a quad 1.1 mount throws 400-600rpm. same as a single M2. Their insistence, in the early 30s when the 1.1 was being developed, on rof, was probably based on the guns being aimed by the Mk 1 eyeball, so the more rounds the better, in the hope that a few would hit. The 1.1" shell weighed .416kg, vs 48.5grams for the M2, so the rounds that did hit would do a lot more damage. For comparison the 25mm Bofors of the mid 30s threw a .25kg shell, the Japanese 25mm fired a .26kg shell. On paper, the 1.1" looks good, heavier shell, higher altitude capability. If only BuOrd had done the work to make it reliable.
    3
  27.  @vikkimcdonough6153  from my reading, the torpedo that hit PoW broke the "A" bracket that stabilized the free end of the shaft. The bracket being gone allowed much greater shaft runout, and the runout broke the shaft seal in the hull. I used to work for a company that made seals for chemical and petroleum pumps, and shaft runout was always a danger to the seal.
    3
  28. From time to time, my Canadian friend whines about how old the DDs that the US gave to the UK were. I point out that that was what the US had in quantity, and the USN was still using them too. The first WWII USN loss in the Atlantic was a four piper, the first USN win in the Pacific was by a four piper. Then I wind him up about the shabby way the Brits treated the former USS Buchanan, ramming her into a drydock and blowing her up.
    3
  29. wrt completing Francesco Caracciolo, I did some back of the envelop calculations several months ago. Italy was building a lot of destroyers in the 20s. If Italy had canceled a number of those destroyers, that would have freed up enough funding to complete Caracciolo. Another problem was the armament. The guns were built by three different contractors, to three different designs. The guns were supposed to have the same ballistics, but I would want all the guns on the ship to match. By 1918, Terni had only built 3, and two had been installed in a shore battery near Venice, leaving 1 additional Terni. Two Pozzuolies had been installed at Brindisi, an additional pair of Pozzuolies installed on a monitor that had sunk, and two more Pozzuolies were installed on improvised monitors, leaving six. Of the nine Ansaldo built guns, seven were handed over to the army, which converted four of them to railroad guns. An additional pair of Ansaldoes were installed on a monitor. Three of the Ansaldoes turned over to the army appear to have never been used. So there were not eight guns of any single manufacturer that were unused, for installation on Caracciolo. In addition, the installations at Venice and Brindisi look like battleship turrets, so they may have been taken from the battleship program as well. Beyond the lack of guns, the Caracciolo design has been criticized as not having enough torpedo protection, nor enough deck armor, by post-WWI standards.
    3
  30. wrt Daniel's question about steel shortages, I think he might mean the steel shortage immediately after the war. Part of the problem was the steelmaking facilities had been run very hard through the war and many facilities were simply worn out. Another part of the problem was, during the war, the industry had been optimized for producing the sort of steel needed for war production, rather than peacetime consumer goods. One example: Kaiser tried to get into the automobile business after the war. Kaiser owned several steel mills, but they were set up to produce steel plate, for ships, not the coils of thin, rolled, steel, needed for car production. The Kaiser auto plant had to buy steel coils on the spot market, at exorbitant prices, and air freight them to the plant.
    3
  31. wrt the question about ships being scrapped by a nation other than the one who built and operated her, I went through the list of Essex class carriers as an example. Bennington was scrapped in India. Shangri-La was scrapped in Taiwan. I remember seeing a photo in a newspaper, probably in the 60s, of a couple of carriers under tow. The caption said they were being towed to Japan for scrapping. I did not see any Essex or Independence class ships listed as scrapped in Japan. I don't have time at the moment to wade through all the CVEs.
    3
  32.  @AdamMGTF  the pro-air faction in the USN had been sketching out what they considered to be the "ideal" carrier, without having any operating knowledge of carriers. The conversions fit their "ideal" perfectly, so they pushed for it. The maximum carrier tonnage allowed for carriers in the treaty was 27,000. An extra clause had to be inserted to allow for two conversions. There is considerable debate whether the USN lied and the ship's displacement actually exceeded even the additional tonnage the extra clause allowed. Japan used the same clause to build Akagi and Kaga. Without any direct operating experience, it is a wonder the Lexington design came out as well as it did, rather than looking like the original configuration of Kaga.
    3
  33.  @themanformerlyknownascomme777  , there is something about that switch to 14" that doesn't seem right to me. Reportedly, the US opposed it, demanded the escalator clause, which would certainly be tripped, as Japan had given notice two years earlier they were dropping out of the treaty system. There was no mystery about the North Carolinas, as they were undoubtedly designed for 16", and the chatter about 14" was nothing but a Kabuki dance. I have set my project for the winter as sifting all the information I can get my hands on about Second London and the KGVs to figure out what the real reason for the 14" is. It can't be for cost, as the 9-15" armament weighed less than 12-14" originally planned for the KGVs, implying less material, and the lower number of guns reduces piece count. With less material and a lower piece count, I can't see how the 9-15", could have cost more. It seems that the "more smaller guns" school of thought had been discredited by 1920. The decision that 16" was superior had been made in the USN in 1916, and the RN was on the same track, escalating to 15", 16" with the Nelsons, and 18" with the N3s.
    3
  34.  @ricardokowalski1579  A piece I read recently indicated that USN thinking by the start of WWI was 100% about the care and feeding of battleships. Even the destroyers were primarily for protecting the BBs from torpedo boats. A couple exercises in 1915 and 16 showed the weakness in fleet composition: the attacking force tried to use DDs as scouts, but sea conditions were not ideal, and the DDs, which ran around 1,000 tons at the time, could not even keep up with the BBs, let alone run out ahead and look around. Then conditions worsened and the DDs had to return to port, so the BBs steamed ahead with absolutely no idea what laid ahead of them, just over the horizon. Things did not go well for them. That experience started the development of the Omaha class CLs.
    3
  35.  @redaethel4619  probably not. :^) The entire can would probably do an imitation of the "crumple zone" on cars today, absorbing the impact by being crushed. If I was going the brute force route, I would pick some decrepit old tub, like Arkansas or Nevada: slower, but a lot more mass and much more stoutly built. Only critical factor is how deep the water is around the fort.
    3
  36. wrt saving Hornet. The only thing that could have been done to Hornet after the battle, would be if they had some large collision mats premade to lash over the holes in the engine room. That might control the flooding, but I wouldn't want to be in the engine room, if they try to make any speed, with nothing but the collision mat between me and the ocean From my reading of the Friedman carrier book, the Yorktowns had a fatal flaw in the design, all the boilers were grouped together, and all the turbines were grouped together. They could take a real beating, anywhere but in the boiler and engine rooms. Hornet was hit in the engine room, twice, leaving her dead in the water and unable to exit the area. The design flaw was corrected in the Essex, where boiler rooms and engine rooms were staggered, so a hit in one engine room would not leave the ship dead in the water. I don't know why such an obvious vulnerability was designed in to the Yorktowns, unless it was the same reason an entire list of vulnerabilities were designed into Wasp: to save weight. Prior to the second London treaty, the tonnage limit on carriers was 27,000. The Yorktowns only displaced 20,000. The tonnage that had been "saved" to build Wasp could have been divided between Yorktown and Enterprise to make them both 27,000 ton carriers as robust as the Essex. Hornet was built after the second London treaty collapsed, so could be built to the same 27,000 ton design.
    3
  37. Italian battleships, fascinating topic. The Washington treaty allocated the same tonnage to Italy and France, but the list of ships retained, while having both over their 175kt quota, allowed nearly 40kt more to France. Both retention lists included several pre-dreadnoughts. Hypothetically, lets assume the RM decided to help fund construction of Caracciolo and Colombo, as the two on which significant progress had been made, by an aggressive scrappage program of everything older than the Cavours and abandonment of the attempted salvage of da Vinci, immediately after the war. Neither ship would have been completed at the time of the treaty, however, only having 4 BBs in commission, Italy would cry a river that it was vastly short of it's allowed tonnage, and, as the new BBs were under the 35kt treaty limit, work would be allowed to proceed. Meanwhile, the drawings for the class would be retained, and updated periodically. in anticipation of the new construction as allowed under the treaty, with Colonna being laid down in 27 and Morosini laid down in 29, with the Cavours and Andrea Dorias scrapped, rather than rebuilt, with the funds thus made available used to update the Caracciolos and Colonnas to the latest late 30s standard and expedite construction of the Littorios. Very potent force of fast, modern, ships, only needing fuel and leadership to create havoc for the RN in the Med.
    3
  38. Yes, using the miniatures to lay out battles is excellent. You get no sympathy from me about the labor involved in laying them out :^) As I mentioned in the Jutland video comments, in the 60s, I had the Avalon Hill produced Jutland game. The game had cardboard tiles representing each ship in both fleets. To play out a battle, I and my opponent laid out the tiles as our fleets entered the combat area. The game included distance scales to move each ship as time passed, and gunnery range scales and hit probability tables to calculate the damage inflicted on the opponent with each salvo.
    3
  39. Regarding the South American battleship race, having reviewed your previous videos, a question comes to mind. Both HMS Canada and Erin were derived from existing RN battleship classes, but Agincourt was not. Agincourt's design, with the two widely spaced funnels, with two center-line turrets between, is unique among British ships. What Agincourt looks like, more than anything else, is Rivadavia. If someone had approached Fore River for a second generation Rivadavia, it would have looked like Agincourt, with the two midships turrets pulled in to the center-line. Is that what happened? Did Brazil go to Armstrong and say "we want a ship like Rivadavia, but with one more turret, to one-up Argentina"?
    3
  40. Ever notice how the US defense establishment wants all of it's bright ideas built and it wants to build it's own version of every shiny thing it sees any other country build? The French and Germans build, and the Dutch consider, undersized, undergunned, battlecruisers, and the US gives birth to the Alaskas. All the resources that went into them, laid down weeks after the Pacific battle line was sunk by carrier aircraft, less than three years in commission, and off to the breakers.
    3
  41. I think you are referring to "angle of fall". It varies depending on both velocity and range. for example a USN 16"/45 Mk 1,. fired with a full charge and a muzzle velocity of 2600fps will show an angle of fall at 10,000 yards of 5 degrees, 55 minutes, while the same shell at 20,000 yards will fall at 17 degrees, 4 minutes. At 25,000 yards, firing that 16"/45 with a full charge will produce an angle of fall of 24 degrees, 54 minutes, but firing the same gun with a reduced charge and muzzle velocity of 2000fps will produce an angle of fall 48 degrees, 35 minutes.
    3
  42.  @thehandoftheking3314  As I understand, you are asking about a WWI scenario similar to the WWII scenario of recycling the turrets from the WWI Courageous class battlecruisers on HMS Vanguard as a time and cost saving expedient. These are some of the issues to run into recycling guns and turrets from the 1890s on new-build ships circa 1914: First, the turrets are 20 years old. Turrets from the 1890s vintage Majestic class battleships were installed on monitors during WWI to provide fire support. First issue was the turrets needed to be modified to allow much higher elevation, so they could fire to a greater range. The second issue, discovered after the monitors were in use, was the systems in the turrets, like the hydraulics, were old and brittle and frequently broke down. Another issue was that the older guns, being designed for short range, were only 25-35 caliber, so inaccurate at longer range. Another problem was some pre-1900 guns were designed for black or brown powder and performance was sub-optimal with smokeless or Cordite. The USN had a particularly bad run in the early 1900s as their designers did not understand the dynamics of smokeless and the 8"/40s and 12"/40s that were, supposedly, designed for smokeless blew their muzzles off with disturbing regularity, requiring an extensive rebuild and reinforcement program be implemented. Then there was the safety issue. Early turrets were designed with single stage hoists operating in the open. There was a disastrous incident on USS Georgia in, iirc, 1904 where an ember in the gun from a previous shot (they didn't have air purge systems in the guns then either) touched off the first bags rammed for the next shot. The flames shooting out of the breech ignited the other bags sitting on the hoist, Burning chunks of propellant fell down the open hoist and ignited more bags in the handling room at the bottom of the hoist, next to the magazine. Probably the only reason Georgia didn't go up like a Roman candle was USN smokeless is a bit less volatile than Cordite. Some 35 men died. They retrofitted trunks and shutters around those open hoists, but later turrets, with two stage hoists, are much safer. Then there is the simple issue of size. Early pre-dreadnought guns were typically 12". By WWI, 14-15 inch guns were the thing.
    3
  43.  @thehandoftheking3314  I understand the thought process. Then you get into the details. The 12" guns on the Canopus class were only 35 caliber. Those on Dreadnought were 45 caliber. Longer gun means more time that the shell is in the gun, so more time for a bigger charge to burn, giving the shell a stronger push, so you get more range. Muzzle velocity on the 12"/35 was 2367fps. MV on Dreadnought's 12"/45s was 2700fps. Pulling old guns off obsolete ships to install on cheaply built, disposable, monitors, during the war emergency was fine. The monitors with old guns on them were all scrapped shortly after the end of the war. The RN only kept the monitors that had state of the art 15"/42s on them. Putting already obsolete guns on new build capital ships with a 20 year expected service life is a different matter. I also understand your point about income from scrapping, but the scrap value of a ship is tiny compared to the build cost. I found a newspaper article about Dreadnought being sold for scrap in 1921. The article cites a cost to built Dreadnought of "almost" $10M, and sold for scrap for $200,000.
    3
  44.  @coyotehater  Good question. the UK had been at war with Germany for two years, but was not officially at war with Japan until Dec 8, 41, so the US declaring war on Germany would not automatically put us at war with Japan. Good question, would being at war with Germany cause more naval assets to be moved from the Pacific to Atlantic? The US Asiatic Squadron based in the Philippines amounted to the Houston, Marblehead and 13 four pipers. If the entire force had joined Force Z, they probably would not have enough AA to save PoW and Repulse, and someone would have objected to all the US surface force taking off for Malaya, leaving the islands with only subs and PT boats for defense.
    3
  45.  @coryclemett5569  I remember reading of a case of a Spit taking off from, iirc, Wasp for delivery to Malta. Once in the air, the Spit pilot found there was something wrong with the feed from the auxiliary fuel tanks on the plane. Without the aux tanks, he could not make it to Malta, so he successfully landed back aboard Wasp.
    3
  46. Odd that they didn't think of this armament arrangement until making the same mistake twice, with both Dunkerques and again with both Richelieus. It's like they didn't realize the issues with the Dunkerques until they were in service, and, by then, the Richelieus were too far along.
    3
  47. wrt to the question about DD guns with fixed or semi-fixed ammo at 56:37, eons ago, I saw a training film on the 5"/38, with it's semi-fixed ammo, in the all singing, all dancing, enclosed turret with integral ammo hoist. iirc, there were two men: one drops the propellant in the loading tray, the other drops the shell in the loading tray, then the rammer pushes both in together. The film explained the choice of semi-fixed ammo: crew fatigue. By breaking the load into two pieces, they kept the weight of each piece down, so the loaders could keep loading longer without becoming exhausted. 5"/38 shells weigh about 55lbs and the propellant about 30lbs. I pity the guys that had to load a 5"/25, because it's fixed rounds weighed 80lbs.
    3
  48.  @vikkimcdonough6153  if the US fleet was in harbor, they would still be sunk in shallow water, and salvageable, while the land based US air would sink the IJN force in deep water. My nightmare scenario, for the US, is Japan doesn't go anywhere near Hawaii, but invades the Philippines, maybe even giving the US forces there safe passage if they go away. If a lot of Americans were killed in the invasion, and public pressure forced FDR to launch a reinforcement mission. any force dispatched to the Philippines would run a gauntlet of Japanese held islands and subs, and suffer significant attrition before they reached the islands. If the US public feels the Philippines are sufficiently remote, and US casualties in the invasion are minimal, there may not be any pressure on FDR to engage in a war. Then, Japan is free to take anything it wants.
    3
  49. Said it before. I'll say it again. Aubrey Fitch should have been in command in Halsey's place, not Spruance. Fitch ran the strikes at Coral Sea, and they were properly coordinated, with low losses from Japanese action.
    3
  50. re Greek capital ship purchase after WWI, the first two alternatives that come to mind would be HMS Erin or HMS Agincourt. Both were new ships in 1914, and both were placed in reserve in 1919-20, so were surplus to the Admiralty's needs. Seems either would be an insult to the Turks. Another alternative would be Courageous and Glorious. They offered more speed than Yavuz, a state of the art powerplant with geared turbines and oil fired, small tube boilers, and their relatively shallow draft could be an advantage in the Aegean. Additionally, I don't see them listed in either of the capital ship lists in the WNT, implying that the WNT respected the RN's designation of the ships as cruisers, meaning the UK would not be prohibited from selling them after the treaty was signed. But then probably Greece's most generous benefactor would have been Basil Zaharoff. Zaharoff saw conflict of interest as a feature, not a bug. He was an agent for Vickers, and Vickers had built Erin. Having Greece buy Erin, bundled with a fat overhaul and modernization contract with Vickers, would probably sound like a good idea.
    3