Comments by "Steve Valley" (@stevevalley7835) on "The Drydock - Episode 203" video.

  1. I can understand how that could have been a problem on Nevada, as she was nearly 25 years old on December 7th, plenty of time for slack maintenance and modifications to compromise the ship's watertight integrity. Audacious had only been in commission for a year when she sank. Doesn't seem likely that Audacious would be in as poor condition as Nevada was. More likely due to inadequate below waterline protection and not having an adequate "material condition" set for the threat that materialized.
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  2. wrt the question about reusing existing guns to expedite battleship construction, the first option that crosses my mind is to have the Admiralty retain all of the 13.5" Mk V heavy shell guns when their original ships were scrapped. By my figuring, that would be 80 guns, plus whatever spares were in inventory to support the ships originally built with them. Using the 13.5s would also comply with the reduction in gun size to 14" in Second London. Alternately, the USN apparently had ordered 14"/50s for the battlecruisers at the same time as the guns were ordered for the Tennessee class BBs, then the battlecruisers moved on to the 16"/50, leaving the USN with a large, surplus inventory of new 14" guns. Reportedly 119 14"/50s were built, to support only 5 BBs that used them. Even allowing for 24 spares, 2 complete sets of replacements, to support the USN BBs, USN need would be 84 guns, leaving 35 available for potential sale to the UK, enough for 2 KGVs, plus a full set of spares. The problem with using the US guns would be powder, as they would need to be fed USN smokeless, rather than cordite, for optimal performance. During WWI, the RN used US built 14"/45s on one class of monitors. They experimented with cordite in them and, reportedly, suffered a significant loss of range. The problem with any existing 13.5" or 14" gun would be turrets, which are also time consuming to build. Salvaged 13.5" would have twin turrets. USN 14" would require new turrets to be built. Twin turrets are not weight or space efficient, which becomes an issue when complying with the treaty displacement limits, and the displacement limit was not increased until mid 1938. The gun size escalator triggered in April 1937. The return to 16" guns a year before the displacement limit increase makes me want to cast a lustful eye on the triple 16" turrets on the Nelsons, moving them to more capable hulls.
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  3.  @RedXlV  Yes, I was thinking of using the twin 13.5" on something along the lines of a Scharnhorst. Of course, any scenario using 13.5" would depend on the Admiralty retaining the gun and turret sets and armor when the Iron Dukes were scrapped in the early 30s. I read somewhere they did retain some of the guns, but I don't know about the rest. Once the gun size escalator triggered in April 37, the Admiralty could do something with the 8 twin 15" turrets that were in inventory: the 4 from Courageous and Glorious, the two on the Erebus class monitors, the one on Marshal Soult and one new one in warehouse. Again, prior to the displacement escalator triggering in June 38, they would be looking at a Scharnhorst. After June 38, they could build two Vanguards. As Drac noted, armor would be an issue, as they were already making the armor for the five KGVs, unless it was feasible to strip the armor off the Revenges. That brings us back to the Nelsons: triple gun and turret sets, and armor. wrt the 2,375lb shell, my concern would be overpressuring the tube by going to such a heavy shell, but if the 2.250 had proved out, use that. Using the Nelson turrets would enable building something along the lines of a North Carolina, and, as the turrets had been debugged, they might not have the issues that were experienced with the KGV quad turrets early on. But, stripping two serviceable battleships, even if to build two much more capable ones, on the eve of war, would be controversial.
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  4. Mechanical stokers were developed for railroad locomotives shortly after 1900. Some used an auger to move coal from the tender, into a crusher, then the pulverized coal was sprayed into the firebox by a jet of steam or a mechanical slinger.
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  5. The Mississippis were sold to Greece in the summer of 1914. As a quick path to a USN scout cruiser, they could have pulled the 7"/45 tertiary battery off of the Connecticuts. Historically, most of those 7" were removed from the Connecticuts during the war with the intent of deploying them as field artillery. Most of the Maine class predreadnoughts were in the reserve squadron by then. Their 6"/50 secondaries could have been used on scout cruisers as well. The British were clearly desperate for serviceable guns for monitors. The Lord Clives used 12"/35s pulled off Majestic class pre-dreadnoughts. As an exercise, I looked at what the US could have sold the UK for monitors, if FDR was making decisions, rather than Wilson. Settled on the 12"/40, after modification to resolve their habit of blowing their muzzles off. There were 6 twin 12"/40s on the three Maine class ships, and 4 more turrets on the Arkansas class monitors. The guns on all these ships were expendable by 1914: the Maines were in reserve, and most of the monitors found a new use as sub tenders. The Illinois class was also in reserve, but it gets complicated. The Illinois had an early mod of the same Mk IV turret, but mounted 13"/35s. According to my pre WWI US Naval Academy gunnery text, everything in the turret was mounted to the turntable. The turntable was made of common steel plate and angle iron. So the drill would have been to make a new turntable for the turrets from the Illinois class to accept 12"/40s, then pull the guns, mounts, and lugs from three of the Virginias to equip the Mk IV turrets. That would give the RN 16 gun and turret sets to build monitors around.
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  6. One additional thought, USN 12" turrets prior to the Mk 7s used on the South Carolinas were not suitable for new warships. The earlier turrets had the man training the turret and the men elevating the guns standing in cupolas on the roof of the turret. The sighting scopes were attached to the guns by a complicated linkage. No matter how precisely the linkage components were made, there was always some slop. As engagement ranges increased, the error caused by the slop in the linkage became more significant. And, when firing directly ahead, the men would be standing in the muzzle blast from a superfiring gun. The Mk 7 solved both of those problems, by moving the sights to the front and sides of the turret. The elevation scopes were rigidly attached to the gun trunnion, so there was no slop, and moving the sights got the men out of the muzzle blast of a superfiring turret. A Mk 4 or Mk 6 turret would be fine for a monitor, but not a warship.
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  7.  @colbeausabre8842  yes, I have read those criticisms of the Nelson mounts. The task was to find what was readily at hand to expedite new BB construction, not what was ideal. Given a choice between twin 13.5" mounts plucked off an Iron Duke, twin 15" plucked off a Revenge, USN surplus 14", for which mounts and turrets would need to be made, or the Nelson turrets, I would go with the Nelsons to get 9-16" guns on a modern hull, rather than 6-13.5".
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