Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 261 (Part 1)" video.

@ernestcline2868 the first thoughts that come to mind: cruisers and battleships could take the extra top weight of cat, hangar, and aircraft better than a destroyer, and fleet auxiliaries could not keep up with the battlefleet, often plodding along at a maximum of 15kts. I suppose they could try the treaty work around the Japanese tried, by building aircraft carriers under 10,000 tons, to carry a dozen, or fewer scouts. But it was probably cheaper to mount the cats on the battleships and cruisers, than build new, dedicated, ships. Full on aircraft carriers were limited by the treaty in number, and expensive.
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@321gman3 first question: Yes, the USN had follow-on designs in progress. Chief designer Admiral Taylor was not happy with the SoDak design, feeling the metacentric height was inadequate, for one thing. Taylor drew up a design he liked much better, which was also a bit bigger, and a bit faster, but also more expensive. SecNav Daniels rejected it on cost, for the SoDaks. However, Daniels was proposing another large building program, which may well have used Taylor's bigger, faster, design. Second question: I would not say the Nevadas were particular damage sponges. Okie probably only stayed upright long enough to take 9 torpedoes, because they all hit in close succession. Nevada took a lot less damage at Pearl, but, after grounding, slowly settled as the ship progressively flooded. iirc, Drac talked about how Nevada had progressively lost the ability to maintain watertight integrity over the interwar years. When Nevada was being used for target practice, I would expect all the WT doors to be closed. Were the ventilation ducts also sealed off, making the ship tighter than it could have been with a crew on board?
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@WALTERBROADDUS iirc, the issue with Britannic was that the weather was hot, and a lot of portholes were open. As the ship settled from the mine damage, open portholes were pulled below the waterline, making widespread flooding inevitable. Titanic might have been able to survive a mine or torpedo, in cold weather, and the damage was limited to one compartment....though I recall HMS Audacious sank from a mine hit. Did Audacious have the remote control WT doors that Titanic had, or did each door need to be closed manually? Were some WT doors left open on Audacious? Some accounts I have read of the sinking of PoW say that several WT doors on the port side were left open when the engagement started, as they were on the ammo passing route for the AA guns. Then the crewmen abandoned their posts, leaving the doors open, assisting the progressive flooding on the port side that doomed the ship.
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@WALTERBROADDUS the largest change I recall being made for Britannic was to raise the WT bulkheads one or two decks higher than Titanic. That didn't matter in Britannic's case however, due to all the open portholes, which gave the water a way around the bulkheads. What other refinements were made in Britannic?
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@AtholAnderson read up on "Operation Creek", a British commando attack on the Ehrenfels. That ship, along with three other Axis ships, were interned in the neutral port of Goa. British intelligence traced radio transmissions about British ship movements to Goa harbor. Of the four Axis ships in the harbor, British agents, had gotten on board Ehrenfels, at another port, before the war. Their inspection revealed the Ehrenfels was of particularly stout construction, and the decks were clearly reinforced for gun mounts, so the ship, from inception, was designed for easy conversion to a Q-Ship. Based on that assessment, the Ehrenfels because their target for the raid. They were right.
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@iancarr8682 I have read several of the annual reports written by the US Secretary of the Navy in the immediate post WWI period. Each year, there was a brief update on the status of cancelled orders. The cancellation charges were settled on a case by case basis by negotiation between the Navy Department and the vendors. The Greek battleship Salamis had been under construction in a German yard when the war broke out. After the war, the yard wanted to complete it. Greece didn't want it, partly because the design had been rendered obsolete, and partly, Greece could not afford it. The ship was the subject of litigation through much of the 1920s, before a settlement was reached and the ship scrapped.
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@WALTERBROADDUS technically, propellants burn, rather than explode. Actually, explosives burn too. The difference is the velocity of the combustion. "High" explosives, like TNT, have a higher velocity than gunpowder. About a year ago, I was trying to do some recoil calculations and needed the velocity of a particular form of British cordite. Could not find it anywhere. Found the velocity of black powder, but came up empty on cordite. Posted the question on Quora, but have not received an answer.
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@WALTERBROADDUS yes, warped bulkheads would interfere with the WT doors. Still, Britannic was designed to stay afloat in the scenario that sank Titanic, so would be tolerant of more flooded compartments. As for the captain trying to make land, knowing of the flooding caused by the open portholes, the captain was probably right, as staying dead in the water meant sinking was a certainty.
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@WALTERBROADDUS I was not addressing the gin thing. The gin thing, I would file under "well, I read it on the net". Flames and expanding gasses go hand in hand. Ever see cordite burning in the open? It simply burns, quietly and cleanly. Black powder burns much faster, going up in a poof, with a lot of residue.
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