Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 127" video.

@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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@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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wrt the largest naval shell loaded by hand, the USN Connecticut and Mississippi class battleships used a 7" gun that was judged by the USN to be the largest gun that could be loaded by hand. The shells weighted 165 pounds.
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In June 1912, in the run up to the First Balkan War, the Greek navy bought two V-1 class destroyers from the Vulcan yard in Germany that had been completed for the German Navy. At the same time, Greece ordered six 120 ton torpedo boats, all new construction, that would not be delivered for a year, thus of no help in the situation Greece was in in 1912. Given that the torpedo boat concept was largely obsolete by 1912, Greece had not bought any torpedo boats since the 1880s, and the boats were slow, only 24kts, so they could be run down and sunk by any destroyer of the time, this deal doesn't quite smell right. The thought occurs that, as Vulcan then had to build two more V-1 class ships for the German navy, and the German navy had to wait an additional year for delivery of their order, were those torpedo boats the price Greece was compelled to pay to get it's hands on the desperately needed V-1s?
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wrt the Buffalo, the type was widely used by RAF, RAAF and Dutch forces in the far east. The Buffalos used were of the later type, but the RAAF and RAF pilots implemented a weight reduction program. The planes retained their self-sealing fuel tanks and armor behind the pilot, but the rest of the cockpit armor was removed, the .50 cal wing machine guns were changed out for .303 Brownings and the radio and life raft were discarded. (apparently the radio installed by Brewster was poor performing, to the point of uselessness) The lightened Buffaloes did fairly well against the Japanese, until the Japanese brought later model, more capable, aircraft to the theater.
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@lukedogwalker In WWI, the RN monitors were purpose built, but generally used guns scavenged from obsolete battleships and armored cruisers. The one advantage the monitors had over the battleships, other than the huge blisters, was they were shallow draft. I would think the Germans could have achieved the same thing by pulling the 11" turrets off of the pre-dreadnoughts they had been allowed to keep, for new build monitors, or, simply install huge bulges on the pre-dreadnoughts. WWII was fundamentally different from WWI, as it did not have the static battle lines that were within range of seaborne artillery long enough to bother building specialized ships. That would argue for just putting one of the pre-dreadnoughts, as is, at the head of the column, and, if it runs into shore batteries or a mine field and sinks, small loss.
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The Miranda boys were pretty sketchy characters by most accounts. Small scale international arms dealers before hired by Work. They did time in Federal prison for violating an arms embargo on some South American country. I question Work's ethics too. I have seen articles that say Work owned the farmland in Warminster that the Navy bought for the plant. I wonder how much he gouged the Navy for that piece of property? The Buff really wasn't that bad when first introduced. The Buff used the Wright Cyclone engine, as did the DC-3. A lot of the new Buffs that the RAAF received didn't have new engines in them. They had worn out airline discards that had been "refurbished" by Wright. I don't know whether to blame Work for that, or the Mirandas, as, being an export order, the Mirandas would have had their fingers in it.
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