Youtube comments of Steve Valley (@stevevalley7835).

  1. wrt the main armament, in my reading, it was head of BuOrd, Admiral Strauss, previously known for being the father of the superimposed turrets on the Kearsarge and Virginia classes, that was advocating for the 14". As Drac said, Strauss maintained that engagements would always be at 12,000 yards or less. At that range, the 14" could penetrate well enough, and, being lighter, more could be carried. In a newspaper article speculating whether the Tennessees would have 16" rather than 14", there was some FUD injected into the debate, claiming the 16" had an alarmingly high wear rate, and claims that the British 15"/42 also had a very short service life, while the 14" had an excellent service life. Strauss held the line on the 14", until the summer of 1916. Jutland made it clear his 12,000 maximum engagement range was unrealistic, and, that summer, Daniels announced, with the agreement of the General Board, the next class, the Colorados, would be armed with 16" guns. In his annual report in the fall of 16, Daniels said this decision was made "over the objection of some officers". Strauss requested sea duty. There was no movement on his request for sea duty for a month or two. Late that year, in Congressional testimony, Strauss, again, rolled out his talking points for the 14", publicly pushing back on the decision made months before by Daniels and the General Board. President Wilson moved the next day to appoint then head of the Indian Head test range, Ralph Earle, as head of BuOrd, and Strauss was given command of the Nevada. The SecNav annual reports from 15-16 and newspapers of the same period made for some fascinating reading about this debate.
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  2. We thought Michele Bachmann was nuts. We thought Sarah Palin was nuts. They keep exceeding our expectations.
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  3. As Drac noted, these were the first USN battleships mounting the new 12"/40, which was specifically designed to use smokeless powder. As mentioned in response to another question a week or so back, when the 12"/40, and the 8"/40, were designed, the designers did not fully understand the dynamics of smokeless powder. As a result, these guns had a tendency to blow off their muzzle and chase, due to higher than expected pressure in the tube. The Navy instituted a modification program that encompassed installing a heavy nickle steel liner inside, and hooping the barrel to the muzzle on the outside to reinforce the barrel. The Maines also used the Mk IV turret, which was the first balanced large turret used by the USN. The preceding Illinois class was the first the use the Mk IV, but pared it with the older 13"/35. As Drac said, by WWI all the Maine and Illinois class ships were relegated to the reserve squadron, spending the bulk of their time tied up in a navy yard with a skeleton crew. On March 6, 1915, Maine was being used as a receiving ship in the Brooklyn Navy Yard when a sea cock burst and the ship sank at the pier.
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  4. There was a loophole in the Washington treaty the Brits could have exploited. According to the treaty, any carrier in commission or building, at the time of the treaty, was regarded as experimental and exempt from the treaty's replacement schedule, meaning they could be replaced with new carriers at any time. Argus, Eagle and Hermes all met that criteria. Eagle wasn't that bad. It had a bit of speed and a bit of size. It could cruse with a division of QEs and provide CAP and recon. But Argus had no speed and Hermes had no size. Argus and Hermes could both have been reclassified as something non-carrier, like sub tenders, and free up enough tonnage to build a second Ark Royal.
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  5. I not only live in the US, but in metro Detroit, so goings on at the big three are local news. The North American market is a global oddity, due to the popularity of cars so huge, and expensive, they are irrelevant in much of the rest of the world. GM and Ford have progressively withdrawn from most markets around the world. Both companies have withdrawn from India. GM withdrew from the EU, while Ford's market share in the EU has shrunk from 10-12% in the late 90s, to only 3.3% in 2024. Ford's EU share will take another hit this year, as it discontinues the Focus, which accounts for 20% of Ford Europe's volume. Over the last ten years GM's share in China has fallen from 15%, to 6.8%, and the company has written off much of it's Chinese operation. Ford's share in China is only about 1%. Ford withdrew from all of South America. I foresee the future US market looking, not so much like the Russian market today, but the Soviet Union market of the 1960s: a handful of companies that have withdrawn from the rest of the world, hiding behind tariff walls, producing huge, expensive, but poor quality, ICE powered vehicles that are irrelevant in the rest of the world.
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  6. The Essex class Lexington: CV-16. The Lex was claimed sunk so many times, reportedly 4 times, by the Japanese it became known as "the blue ghost", blue because it entered service with an experimental blue paint job. When I was on the Lex many years later, I noticed it's C-1 sitting in the hangar, with a blue ghost painted on the aft fuselage. When Drach said Birmingham was cruising with the Lex, I knew it was in for a rough time.
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  7. I have read that the triple flight deck arrangement was considered for the Lexingtons as well. Consider it pure luck that the Lexingtons ended up built as they were. The USN was so short of money that three-decked Lexingtons may not have been rebuilt as Akagi was, and entered the war in that obsolete configuration.
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  8. Not long ago, I reread "Fifty Ships That Saved The World" about the destroyers for bases deal, and service of the ships in the RN. HMS Ludlow, that Drac mentioned at the end of his piece, had an interesting incident at the start of it's RN service. Ludlow, the former USS Stockton, was one of the earlier Caldwell class ships, significantly shorter ranged than the later classes. She had made it to France in 1917, so she should have been able to make the trip again, if everything went smoothly. Ludlow, in company with several other destroyers, was making her way to the UK, when radio traffic was picked up from Jervis Bay, which was engaging the Scheer, desperately asking for help. The USN had turned over the ships with full magazines and torpedo tubes. so the destroyers rang up flank speed and rushed to Jervis Bay's assistance. They arrived at the scene too late to help. But that flank speed run had tossed Ludlow's fuel consumption calculations in the dustbin. According to the book, Ludlow's burners went out, from lack of fuel, just as she dropped anchor in Belfast. Reports of Jervis Bay's action say that Scheer's reconnaissance plane had spotted the convoy, and reported it as completely unescorted. Can't help but wonder, if the destroyers, iirc, about six, had been steaming from Halifax with the convoy, would Scheer have attacked? If Scheer had attacked, what would the result have been, with six destroyers firing their large loads of torpedoes at Scheer?
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  9. Argus was one of the carriers classified "experimental" by the Washington Treaty. That meant she could be replaced at the Admiralty's convenience, rather than waiting until she was 20 years old. I have read that the Admiralty had a plan to replace Argus, Hermes, and Eagle with new carriers in the early 30s, as they were all classified "experimental". Going by the standard displacements listed in Wiki, the carriers in service in the late 20s displaced a total of 118,830 tons, of the UK's 135,000 ton quota. Not enough displacement remained of the quota to build Ark Royal. Even though laid up, Argus was still classified as a carrier. She was taken in hand in 36 for conversion to a mother ship for target drones, which included removing her armament. As an unarmed non-combatant upon recommissioning in August 38, her tonnage became available for Ark Royal, which commissioned in December, 38. This was the same scheme the USN adopted for Langley, converting her to a seaplane tender, to free the tonnage for Wasp. Unfortunately, budget constraints in the 30s prevented the Admiralty completing their plan, replacing Hermes and Eagle with additional Ark Royal class carriers.
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  10. I was reading some old newspaper articles about Greece's search for replacements for the Hydras in response to the Ottomans buying the Brandenburgs. There were reports of Greece trying to buy pretty much anything from the USN, including one proposal floated by a US shipyard: the yard was to buy five old US battleships, the Indianas and Kersarges, then resell two of them to Greece, if Greece contracted with that yard for one new battleship. As we know, Greece ended up with the Mississippis, the red-headed stepchildren of the USN, which had been forced on the Navy by Senator Hale, head of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee. The most hilarious part of the entire affair is that Greece was so desperate that SecNav Daniels extracted from Greece the full cost the USN paid to have the now hopelessly obsolete Mississippis built.
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  11. On the steering dreadnoughts question: in the film "The Wreck of the Mary Deare", the ship in question being a coal fired tramp steamer. there are brief views of the steering gear in action: a steam driven engine driving a gear on the rudder shaft. On the Lexington (CVT-16 in my day), there was no "feel" to the steering at all, just a bit of friction in the mechanism. On the wheel post itself was a mechanical indicator showing the rudder angle I was calling for. In front of me was a round dial with an arrow showing the actual rudder angle. I could spin the wheel to call for a specific rudder angle, then watch the indicator as the rudder responded. There is a WWII vintage LST preserved in Muskegon, Michigan, which I checked out 3 years ago. Rudder actuation is by motor, driving a capstan which pulls steel cables on the tiller. The capstan has handles so it can be cranked by hand.
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  12. I saw some bits of interviews with Walz from the recent past. In one, he was lecturing Vance on what "family values" are: like free school lunches, and paid family leave. When Walz gets rolling, he is a force of nature.
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  13. Russian treatment of loaned ships brings to mind the old phrase "beat it like a rented mule".
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  14. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to have Jackie, as a young officer, as a messmate, on a long, boring cruise. I think I would enjoy it.
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  15. When the Franklin went to the breakers, in the 60s, one of the US TV networks produced a documentary about it. Besides the archival footage, the show had several members of the crew from that day, talking about what they were doing and how they survived.
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  16. Not only were the Elenas retained by the Washington Treaty, the treaty also listed the da Vinci as a serving battleship, when it was in reality nothing but a refloated hull. My dislike of waste says another party to the treaty should have been able to transfer a couple ships, that otherwise would be scrapped for treaty compliance, to Italy, for scrap value, to replace the Elenas, but Italy probably would not have wanted the cost of running them.
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  17.  @rob5944  correct, FDR had to make the deal palatable for Congress, by the US gaining something for the ships. In a transatlantic telephone call, the parties were trying to work out a deal. At one point Churchill said "Empires don't bargain". iirc, it was the US Secretary of State who replied "but republics do". This story was also relayed in "Fifty Ships That Saved The World".
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  18. wrt the question about gas ejection systems in guns, the incident on Missouri that Drac mentioned produced several changes in USN turret design. At the time, the gunners were supposed to inspect the gun chamber for embers or flames, before ramming the next shot. Missouri was on a gunnery training exercise on April 13, 1904. After firing, the crew began ramming the next shot. When the first two bags were rammed, they immediately ignited. Inspection of the turret after the fire found the rammer still fully extended. Flames shooting out of the breech ignited the two bags still on the hoist, because the hoist was completely unprotected. Burning propellant fell from the hoist car in the turret down the barbette, igniting more charges in the handling room at the bottom of the barbette. Thirty six men died that day. The navy decreed that air injections systems be installed in the guns, and that hoists be completely enclosed in trunks with flash proof shutters.
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  19. We have the Greeks to thank for keeping a WWII vintage LST in commission until 1999. In 2000, it was purchased by a preservation group, which brought her back to the US. LST-325 is now based in Evansville, Indiana, still in her WWII configuration, still fully operable, and makes river cruises in the fall. I haven't been to 325, but I have toured LST-393 in Muskegon, MI. 393 was used to ship new cars across Lake Michigan for years, so, unlike 325, all of 393's original armament was removed long ago.
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  20. Not only was Ark scrapped, Bulwark suffered fires in her hangar (November 1980) and boiler room (March 1980). Damage from neither was repaired, and she decommissioned March 27th of 81. The Argies invaded the Falklands on April 2.
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  21. As luck would have it, I recently read the Friedman book on aircraft carriers. In 1918, with zero experience with carriers, the pro-aviation faction of the USN had decided that it wanted carriers 825' long, displacing 24,000 tons with 140,000hp. By 1920, their ambition had grown to 35,000 tons, 180,000hp and they wanted six of them, now! Sounds like they were eying the Lexington class battlecruisers for conversion before they were even laid down. Not surprisingly, when the Washington treaty resulted in the cancellation of the battlecruisers, the pro-aviation faction was ready with a proposal to convert two of them to carriers, committing nearly half of the US' allowable carrier tonnage, while the USN still had little first hand experience in building and operating carriers. The Lexingtons were horribly inefficient carriers, which particularly mattered in the post Washington Treaty environment they were built in. Yorktown and Essex each have hangar decks 200' longer than Lexington, on lower displacement. It the 2 Lexington's had never been built, that would have freed up tonnage to follow Yorktown and Enterprise with 3 carriers of near Essex size, or 4 more Yorktowns, putting the USN in a much better position at the end of 41 with a net gain of 1 or 2 fleet carriers.
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  22. wrt the Torpedo strike on Gneisenau, that operation is covered in detail in "Torpedo Bomber" by Ralph Barker. The book was also published in the UK as "Ship Busters". As Drac said, the raid was botched quite badly. iirc, from reading the book a few years ago, one other Beaufort did make it to the rendezvous point outside the harbor and was waiting for the other Beauforts to arrive. As that Beaufort orbited, the pilot saw Campbell arrive, and roar past, into the harbor, instead of forming up with the other Beaufort. Reading how that raid had been planned, the thought that occurred to me was that, had the bombers shown up as planned, all the AA gunners would have been awake and at their posts when the Beauforts tried to penetrate the harbor, and would probably have been shot out of the sky. As it worked out, Campbell took everyone by surprise and successfully reached the ship. The Germans recovered the plane and crew from the harbor. Apparently Campbell had been hit moments after dropping the torpedo, because the Germans reported a Canadian, I don't recall the man's name at the moment, was in the pilot's seat, when the plane was recovered.
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  23. So the Germans were interested in quad turrets? That explains why, when the Germans overran the Fives-Lille works, which was working on components for the Normandie class quad turrets, the turret parts found their way to Krupp.
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  24. Interesting ships. Combined with the radically rebuilt earlier battleships, Italy had a fleet capable of stirring up a lot of trouble. Would have been interesting if the oil in Libya had been discovered and produced with the technology of the 1930s, giving Italy and Germany a much larger incentive to defend North Africa, and providing the Italian fleet with an unlimited fuel supply.
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  25. Fascinating discussion. Not long ago, I speculated on a triple main armament. Even found a speculative drawing of Bismark with a three-triple main armament. Like you, I wondered why they did not go triple, as, having built the Deutschlands and Scharnhorsts with triples, they should have been in their comfort zone with them. The only concern I had was that, with the horizontal sliding breech, the barbette would need to be larger, which might cause a problem for Anton, given the width of the hull at that point. However, with only three turrets, seems the superstructure could be moved aft, so Anton and Bruno would be where the hull is wider. I posted about this thought on a Navy group on Facebook. Knowing that you lurk that group from time to time, what did you think of that discussion? As for the 105mm DP secondary, iirc, Jackie Fisher was an advocate of a greater number of 4", vs the 6" secondary the RN was going to in the run-up to WWI. The two classes Fisher had a direct hand in, Renown and Courageous, had the infamous triple 4", while QE and Revenge had 6". Can't help but wonder why the RN did not go with the QF 4", rather than the BL. With the QF's fixed rounds, both the bag man and rammer could be eliminated, reducing the crowding that plagued that triple mount. wrt the triple screw design, I have read that the Germans found a triple screw layout made it easier to negotiate the turns in the Kiel Canal. Looking at how they have the rudders laid out: one either side of the center screw, I wonder if they were going for a thrust vectoring effect. I speculate the drill when transiting the canal was to make the trip on the center screw only. With only the center screw providing thrust, it would be running faster than if all three were turning, producing a stronger stream. With the twin rudders, whichever way the helm was turned, the broad side of one rudder or the other would be turned into that high speed stream from the center screw, vectoring the thrust. Really enjoyed this post. Thanks!
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  26. Trivia bit about the photo at 59:36, in the question about aviators and brown shoes: That pic was taken at NAS North Island during production of "Hell Divers" in September, 1931. From left to right: (actor) Cliff Edwards, Lt John Thatch, (actors) Clark Gable (before he grew his trademark mustache) and Wallace Beery, and Lt Herbert Duckworth.
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  27. I would dispute the characterization of the Essex class as "non-treaty restricted" ships. The treaty limit for carriers through Washington and First London was 27,000 tons. The Essex, according to Wiki, came in at a standard displacement of 27,100 (close enough). I submit that Essex was based on a design the USN had been developing through the 30s as a treaty-max concept, that had been shelved when Second London reduced carrier tonnage to 23,000, then quickly dusted off and updated when the treaty system collapsed and Congress authorized two new carriers. I would say the Audacious class is closer to a Midway in being a completely post-treaty, clean-sheet, design.
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  28. Thanks for your reply to my question about Courageous. I am satisfied that Furious was intended as a test bed for the 18". The design was in hand, could be built quickly, and, was large enough to carry the 18" guns. Since posting that question, I found a letter on The Dreadnought Project: Fisher to d'Eyncourt, saying words to the effect that the Baltic operation was "the story we will use to sell them to Cabinet", which makes it sound like the Baltic op was not what Fisher really had in mind, but only an excuse to build them. In that letter, Fisher also says having the draft be 22 1/2 feet or less was imperative. The draft was the only parameter laid out in that letter that Courageous missed, by a wide margin. Renown's draft was some 5 feet less than Revenge, but Courageous' draft was only some 14 inches less than Renown, so hardly seems worth the bother. I tried redesigning Courageous in SpringSharp to see if I could get to that 22 1/2 foot draft. Could not make the hull any flimsier, so replaced the two twin 15" with three twin 9.2" turrets borrowed from Lord Nelson pre-dreadnoughts, to reduce weight. Only reduced the draft to 24 1/2 feet. It could be a matter of Fisher seeing those unused 15" turrets and deciding he would see them used, for something, other than a monitor, and Courageous was what he came up with, to have the turrets put to use, much as the construction of Vanguard was due to the availability of those same four turrets.
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  29. North Dakota's turbines were the source of considerable consternation. She was equipped with Curtis turbines, which broke down, often. Newspapers of 1916-1917 reported North Dakota being laid up, and ongoing discussions whether to scrap her, or replace the turbines. The US' entry into the war motivated the decision to replace the turbines. iirc, when North Dakota was scrapped, the relatively modern turbines were recovered and installed in Nevada, when that ship was modernized.
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  30. First time I ever heard of RN monitors was reading "HMS Saracen" in the mid 60s. On the flap of the dustcover was a short piece on HMS Roberts, which, at the time, was the last surviving monitor.
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  31. I was pondering Erin a week ago. Seems that it would have made a good substitute for Almirante Cochrane when Chile was looking to repurchase it's battleships after the war. It should have been feasible to regun Almirante Latorre with 13.5" guns from RN inventory, so that Latorre would share both main battery and 6"/50 secondary battery with Erin to ease logistics. The three destroyers Chile bought instead, appear to have been nearly worn out at the time.
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  32. Actually, it was confusion. The Beauforts were ordered to follow the Hudsons and the Hudsons had apparently been ordered to follow the Beauforts. The Beauforts tried radioing to the airbase they were circling to get it straightened out, but the Beaufort's radios were on the wrong frequency.
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  33. Decades ago, I read about a USN ship at the breakers. It must have been the Edward H. Allen, a Butler class DE, When the wrecking crew opened a storage locker, they found it full of life jackets from the Andrea Doria.
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  34. wrt the question about the TBD. The aviation museum in Kalamazoo, MI, which has gained a good reputation for restoring WWII Navy aircraft salvaged from Lake Michigan, is involved with a project to attempt salvage of several of the TBDs in the debris field around Lexington. Another target of the mission is salvage of an F4F in that debris field that was flow by both Thach and O'Hare. When I last talked with anyone from that museum's resto shop, last winter, the expedition was scheduled to set sail for the Coral Sea in May. I will probably make my annual visit to the museum this fall, so will inquire about any progress made.
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  35. wrt the question about barrel life, Drac didn't touch on the issue of relining worn barrels, which was routinely done by WWI, if not sooner. There is a 1915 edition USN Midshipman's text book on Google books that describes the process. Initially, guns were built without liners, so the barrel had to be bored out to provide room for the liner. In the boring operation, we are talking about a feed rate for the boring head of about 6" per hour. On a USN 14"/45 from a Pennsylvania class BB, with a bore length of 630", that means that one operation takes 105 hours, or a bit under 4 and a half days, running continuously, and several cuts are made before reaching the finish dimension. The gun factories changed to building new guns with liners already in place. Then the process for refurbishing the gun was to put the gun in an oven heating the outside, to make it expand, while running cold water through the bore to cause the liner to shrink, to loosen it. Then a hydraulic press was used to push the worn liner out. Then a new liner was fitted the same way. Initially, liners were made with the same outside diameter their entire length, but it was found that sometimes they refused to come out, and had to be bored out. Then they hit on the idea of putting a slight taper on the liner, which eased removal.
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  36. France and Italy were allowed to improve vertical armor. and upgun main armament. As you say, those improvements were verboten to everyone else.
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  37. wrt the question about Mutsu, as Drac said, there was no way of knowing how useful Mutsu would be twenty years in the future. The original plan was for Japan to retain Settsu. Her sister, Kawachi, was sunk by a magazine explosion in 1918. With Mutsu, Japan was nearly 14,000 tons under her treaty quota. With Settsu instead, Japan would have been 26,000 tons under quota. Settsu would age out in 1931, but Japan would still only have 47,000 tons of headroom under their limit, not enough to build two treaty max ships. My favorite plan, as it makes the math the easiest, is to stick to the 5:5:3 ratio in "post Jutland" ships, and parity with the UK having one 42,000 ton ship, The IJN to have Nagato, Mutsu, and Tosa, while the US completes all four Colorados, plus one Lexington to act as consort to the carriers, and the UK builds four Nelsons to complement Hood. But the objective of the treaty was to stop spending money building ships. From what I have read, the Japanese had a lot of national pride tied up in Mutsu, and were determined at the conference that they were not going to give her up. What they ultimately did was probably the best possible outcome, with minimal waste for both Japan and the US, and minimal extra construction cost for the UK.
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  38. Yes, it is the laughter I hear, not gasps, through many parts of that interview. As soon as Harris got the nod, I figured we were in for the most blatantly racist GOP campaign of my memory, and I'm 70,
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  39. re ships running out of fuel, one of the USN destroyers that was transferred to the RN in 40 came very close. The episode is recounted in "Fifty Ships That Saved The World". The ship was a Caldwell class, shorter ranged than the later Wickes class. There was concern about her short range, but, it was reasoned, she made it to France in 1918, so should be able to make it across the Atlantic again. Her group of six destroyers were en route from Halifax when they picked up radio traffic from Jervis Bay, which was engaging the Scheer. As the USN had handed over the ships with full magazines and torpedo tubes, the destroyers rang up flank and rushed to Jervis Bay's aid. They arrived too late, but the flank speed run had used up a lot of fuel. According to the book, the burners in the Caldwell class went out from lack of fuel, just as she dropped anchor in Belfast.
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  40. wrt the question about Delaware's turret sighting hoods. Initially, the USN had the sighting hoods on the roof of the turret. When the USN adopted superfiring turrets, the sights were moved to a position low on the sides of the turrets, to move them away from the muzzle blast. The sight hoods are clearly visible on the pic Drac shows of the forward turrets at 21:13. They are exactly at the same level as the guns themselves, on the forward part of the turret. This change had a second benefit. The top mounted sights were connected to the guns via a complex linkage. No matter how precisely the components of the linkage were made, there was always a small amount of slop, which became more important as ranges increased. When the sights were moved to the sides of the turret, they were rigidly bracketed to the trunnions of the guns, so there was no lost motion between gun and sight. re the engines in Delaware's sister, North Dakota. ND was originally build with Curtis turbines. Besides being very inefficient, the Curtis turbines broke down, often. There was considerable discussion, reported in the newspapers in 1917, about whether ND should be scrapped, or reengined. When the US entered the war, the decision was made that it would be faster to reengine ND, than to build a replacement, so new, geared, turbines, were installed. When ND was scrapped, the new turbines were removed, and installed in Nevada, when that ship was modernized.
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  41. On the question of relining large guns, as Drac said they used an oven to heat the outside of the tube. At the same time, they would run cool water through the bore, to increase the temperature differential to loosen the liner. After a few years, the USN figured out that if the OD of the liner and the ID of the tube were made with a slight taper, it would facilitate liner removal. If the liner refuses to budge, it has to be bored out. Each cut of the boring tool would take 3-4 days, so boring out a stuck liner would take a matter of weeks.
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  42.  @fearthehoneybadger  the Japanese barges that were used for shuttling men and supplies between islands were designed to be armored if the threat environment required. The armor was heavy enough to limit the effectiveness of the 50 cal and 20mm PT armament, hence the search for something heavier, like the 37mm that was carried by the P39. A tactic often used against barges was to maneuver behind the barge and shoot at the helmsman, as his armor shield only protected against fire forward of the barge.
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  43. 13:30 mark, SecNav Daniels did assent to the Tennessees having 14" guns, but the driver in that decision was the head of BuOrd, Admiral Strauss. This was one of the more bizarre episodes at BuOrd. Strauss was of the opinion that engagements would always be at 12,000 yards or less, the 14" could penetrate at that range well enough, and, being lighter, more 14" could be mounted. There was public discussion whether the Tennessees would carry 14" or 16" in 1915, but disinformation about the 16" was being fed to the press. In one lengthy article about the Tennessees, there are a couple paragraphs about how the 16" was subject to extremely high barrel wear, and claims that the British 15" was also subject to very high wear, with a barrel life of less than 100 rounds. So, the Tennessees were ordered with 14". Jutland disproved Strauss' talking points in favor of the 14" and, in July of 1916, SecNav Daniels announced that the next class, what we know as the Colorados, would carry 16" guns. In his annual report for that year, Daniels says that the decision was made over the objections of some officers. Strauss offered his resignation and requested sea duty, effective upon appointment of a successor. A few weeks passed, and Strauss seems to have been dissatisfied with the pace of selection of his replacement. Strauss trotted out his talking points in favor of the 14" again, in a public Congressional hearing, months after the General Board and Daniels had decided on the 16". President Wilson nominated Ralph Earle, then commander of the Indian Head test range the next day. The Senate approved Earle that day, and Strauss was gone from BuOrd. The Tennessees appear to have the same diameter barbette as the Colorados, 31ft. The twin 16" turret is slightly lighter and the part of the turret that extends down into the barbette is about 6" smaller diameter, so it certainly appears feasible to have regunned the Tennessees while under construction. After commissioning, when the dispersion problem with the triple 14"/50 mounts was discovered, if it crossed the Navy's mind to regun with the 16", it was quickly dismissed, as the WNT prohibited increasing gun size, except for France and Italy.
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  44. Rather than paying exorbitant prices for OOP books, I would urge people to check their public library. The library in my township is small, but it can transfer in books from other libraries around the state, and I can access books on line via Hoopla. The library transferred in "Warships of the IJN" for me, among others, and I have accessed books on German battleships and Friedman on Naval Weapons via Hoopla. And it's all free. Some of the information on Japanese ships can be fragmentary. For instance, there are just enough gaps in the narrative for me to not be entirely sure whether the Kiis were intended to be a distinct class of battleships, or a proposal to up-armor the Amagis on the slipway. The only time I came up entirely empty at the library was in trying to learn why Nuffield chose the Liberty engine for the Cruiser tanks they built.
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  45.  @bkjeong4302  Long range multiplies the challenges. The torpedo plane pilot, or sub commander, has to estimate distance to target and target speed. While a sub commander has some technical assistance, a pilot had to eyeball everything. This was one of the problems the Brit torpedo plane pilots had hitting the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in the channel as they were used to shooting at freighters steaming at 10kn, while the warships were steaming at 30, and the pilots didn't lead the ships enough. Another problem is how slow a torp is. The Brit Mk 12 ran at 40, the USN Mk 13, only 33kn. The slower the torp, the longer the time to target, amplifying errors in range and speed estimates and the more time the target has to maneuver. I suspect another factor is the pilot's ability to press on through intense AA fire. Consider the USN's success at Coral Sea vs the Shoho vs the same pilot's lack of success against the more heavily defended Shōkaku. It is harder to get in close when your plane is being shot to bits around you.
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  46. France had some appalling old tubs still in service in 1940. Pondering how the Brits came to be allowed to build two new, clean sheet designs, (Nelson and Rodney) by the treaty, when the treaty was supposed to be about stopping spending on capital ships, it occurs that the US was crying a river about having 3 treaty compliant ships at 75-80% complete (Washington, Colorado and West Virginia) and the enormous waste of scrapping them, to which the Brits might have replied "everything we have in process exceeds treaty limits, so if you want to complete the Colorados, we insist on being allowed to build new, treaty complaint, ships too, but we only want to build two, so you should only be allowed to complete two of your three." France had four Normandies in the water, in an advanced stage of construction. Seems France could have used the same forbearance offered to the US and UK and had two Normandies completed. But France reportedly took one look at the 28kt BBs Italy was working on, looked at what it would take to push the Normandies to an equal speed, found the cost exorbitant, and that was the end of it. It might be interesting to ponder, if two Normandies had been completed, as originally designed, replacing two of the Courbets, then rebuilt in the 30s to the degree the Andria Dorias were rebuilt.
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  47. Over 50 years ago, I read a book about the battle of Savo Island. As the US destroyers came along side Canberra to take the crew off, they discovered the Aussies were wearing pajamas. That was a surprise, as Americans sleep in their underwear.
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  48. The Regia Marina built a lot of destroyers in the 20s. Somewhere in my notes, I have some rough calculations of how many destroyers they would need to forego to put together enough money to complete Caracciolo. At the time of the Washington Treaty, renovation of da Vinci was still under active consideration. The Treaty treated da Vinci as an active unit of the fleet, rather than as a hulk, raised from the bottom of Taranto harbor. The Washington treaty allows for replacement of ships lost due to accident. Italy could argue that the da Vinci should be replaceable, as it had blown up. Seems that, if Italy had wanted a battleship, means could have been found to complete Caracciolo.
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  49. wrt to Dr D M Platt's question about replacing guns, expanding a bit on gun refurbishment, since he mentions whether a gun has a liner or not: To replace the liner the gun was placed in a pit, and the outside tube heated, while cool water was flushed through the bore to cool the liner, with the difference in thermal expansion between the cool liner and hot tube hopefully loosening the liner so it could be pressed out. Initially, the USN made liners with a uniform outside diameter, but then realized if the liner's outside diameter had a slight taper the chances of successfully pressing the liner out were improved. If the liner refused to be pressed out, then the procedure is the same as refurbishing a gun that was not originally made with a liner: the inside of the gun would need to be bored out to entirely remove the stuck liner, or to prepare a gun to have a liner fitted for the first time. Boring out a gun would take several weeks. I may have a more specific number in my notes somewhere, but I recall reading that the boring time was a matter of 3-4 days, for each cut. I just found a piece on youtube by Ryan, the curator of Battleship New Jersey, talking about 16" gun construction and maintenance. He says the refurbishment process, if all goes smoothly, took about 2 months.
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  50. On the question of the KGVs being built as Lions, the treaty would not have allowed it, in the same time frame. The treaty required the parties to negotiate a displacement escalator, when it was determined that a non-signatory to the treaty was building a larger ship. The US and UK did not finish those negotiations until mid 1938. so, at the very least, KGV and PoW would have been laid down a year and a half later. Being laid down in the second half of 38, neither would have been in service when Bismark attempted it's breakout. I looked up where all the other RN capital ships were on the day of the battle in Denmark Strait. If the KGVs were not yet in service, the RN would probably have kept the Nelsons close to the UK. How would they be deployed to catch Bismark? How would Denmark Strait play out with both Nelsons, or Nelson plus Hood? If the Admiralty had decided to leverage existing material on hand, to speed construction, there were actually 8 twin 15" turrets in hand: the four from Courageous and Glorious, and the four that were on the Erebus and Roberts class monitors. Laying down only two Vanguards in late 38. rather than 5 KGVs would put less of a load on industrial capacity, so might result in a faster build. but I would not bet the farm on both being in commission by May 41. If they did make it into commission by late 41, then scratch one of only two modern battleships with Force Z. A Vanguard may not have had the same vulnerability that PoW had, but the Japanese would probably have kept beating on it until it sank.
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  51. A friend of mine is retired career Canadian military. He got bored with the infantry (Princess Pat's) and, thanks to the merger of the services, transitioned to aircrew as AESOP. He was training in S2s in the expectation of being embarked on the Bonnie. He said he looked at the tiny escape hatch for his position and decided if the plane ever went in the drink, he would drown before he could wriggle out of the hatch. Fortunately, the Bonnie was paid off just as he was about to complete his training in S2s, so he was switched to Sea Kings, ultimately doing 4 tours in Sea Kings and 2 in an Argus, sniffing Russian subs. Given his long service, he has more sea stories than most people.
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  52. As sales agent for Vickers, Basil Zaharoff really got around. If you ever come upon a DVD set of the early 80s production of "Reilly Ace Of Spies", Zaharoff is played well by Leo McKern.
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  53. As Drac said, wrt the 14" armed Tennessees vs 16" armed Colorados, the question came down to USN expectations of engagement range. Head of BuOrd Strauss insisted that engagements would always be fought at 12,000 yards, or less. The 14" could penetrate well enough at that range, and, being smaller and lighter, more could be carried. Jutland drove the final nail in that theory. In the summer of 1916, the General Board, and SecNav Daniels, agreed 16" was the way to go, and overrode Strauss' recommendation. In his annual report that year, Daniels discussed the switch to 16", and said the change was made over the objections of "some officers". Strauss was very proud of the 14"/50, ordering it into production off the drawing board, with no testing. Can't help but wonder, if testing had been done, and the dispersion problems these guns experienced been discovered, would the 16" been selected for the Tennessees, by virtue of the fact the 16" can actually hit what it is aimed at?
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  54.  @robertf3479  yes, the volume of gas was a major issue. The Lexingtons could have easily been designed like the Kaga, with huge ducts along the sides of the hanger. The USN also looked at having the forward end of the hangers open for additional aircraft launching, as was done in the original layout of Kaga. Aviators were pressing for the Lexintons to have no obstructions at all on the flight deck, no island, no funnel. Ranger tried to address the gas issue by placing the boilers aft of the turbines so the gas could be vented near the aft end of the ship without long ducts. Given the minimal experience with carriers at the time, it is pure luck that they turned out as well as they did, rather than looking exactly like Kaga's original configuration. iirc, the original 1916 design for the Lexintons had 24 boilers, located on 2 decks, with 7 funnels.
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  55. And probably the tight turning radius award too?
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  56.  @shawnc5188  the Gannet is the major difference. With airborne AEW, they would have had more advance warning of inbound strikes. iirc, Sheffield was on radar picket duty, due to the lack of AEW, when she was hit. Tristram and Galahad might not have been caught flat-footed either.
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  57. Here in the US, the end of year holidays seem to be a favored time to cut staff. After months of assuring everyone in my department we were all "vital parts of the organization", management called an "all hands" meeting for the department in mid December to tell us we were all on the street New Year's Eve.
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  58.  @genericpersonx333  a higher velocity shell, for a given range, will travel in a flatter trajectory, so it's chances of hitting are better because the distance between where the shell would hit the top of the hull and where the shell would hit at the waterline is longer because the shell drops less per unit distance. (there is a name for that zone, but it isn't coming to mind right now) If you want to go for a deck hit, then you want to fire at a lower velocity so you can fire at a higher trajectory. But, with a higher trajectory, the chances of a hit are lower because the shell sinks at a higher rate. The travel time to distance is listed in the gunnery tables. A USN 16'/45 firing with a reduced charge yielding a muzzle velocity of 2000fps at a target 23,500yards away: angle of departure from the gun 33 degrees, 20.4 minutes. Time of travel: 58.25 seconds. Angle of fall: 42 degrees 58 minutes. Firing the same gun with a full charge, yielding a muzzle velocity of 2600fps. at a target at the same range of 23,500 yards gives the following trajectory: angle of departure from the gun 15 degrees, 35.4 minutes. Time of travel 38.44 seconds. Angle of fall 22 degrees. 24 minutes. As you said, firing at a higher velocity makes it easier to hit the target, but, if the ship has heavy deck armor, and you hit on the deck, at 22 degrees, the shell may ricochet off. Drop a shell on the deck at 42 degrees and it punches through.
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  59. The US has been going through this for 30 years. Mexican autoworker pay is a tenth what US autoworkers are paid. It would be impossible to live in the US, on what a Mexican autoworker makes, because everything else, from housing to medical care, is so expensive. So there has been a steady flow of industrial jobs to Mexico and the Pacific rim. The offshoring of decent paying industrial jobs has resulted in social upheaval in the US, with some very ugly aspects. Now, the debate in the US is whether having a lower price on a new car, or TV, is worth the cost to US society. And Indian autoworker pay is so low, it makes Mexicans look rich.
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  60. Trivia bit that I didn't see anyone else mention. The troubles with the Mark 14 inspired a 1951 John Wayne movie "Operation Pacific". When Wayne's sub makes it back to Hawaii from patrol, some of the crewmen manage to be picked up by the SP. When Wayne goes to the brig to bail them out, the SP officer starts complaining about all the trouble he has with sub crewmen. He says "if it isn't Thunderfish (the fictional sub in the movie), it's the Tang, or the Wahoo, or the Silversides". So the Silversides got a mention in a Hollywood movie. The sets in "Operation Pacific" look exactly like the inside of Silversides. I wonder if the studio bought a surplus Gato and cut it up to build the sets? Most sub movies show the periscope viewing station in the control room. "Operation Pacific" shows the scope station in the conning tower, as it is on Silversides. Can't help but wonder if all subs of that era had the scope station in the conning tower, and putting it in the control room is "artistic license" so the captain actor can interact with the control room crew actors? The first time I visited Silversides, I didn't know there was a museum at the location. Didn't budget enough time to explore both in detail. So, on a later trip, when I visited the Milwaukee Clipper, I then drove around the bay to the Silversides, and gave the museum a more detailed exploration.
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  61. The amusing thing about the casemate mount question is, the USN moved the hull mounted casemate guns into the superstructure of the New Yorks, Nevadas, and Pennsylvanias, during their modernisations in the 20s, but still in casemates. The British Renowns, Courageouses, Hood and Nelsons all had deck/turret mounted secondaries by then. Why move the guns, but retain the obsolete style of mount?
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  62. The RN's situation, in the eastern Med in May 41, adds to an alt history scenario that I worked on a few years ago: after overrunning Greece and Crete, Axis forces land in Vichy controlled, Axis leaning, Syria, and drive to the oil fields in Iraq, which was then ruled by an Axis friendly dictator. That scenario fell apart, when, by chance, I heard an audio recording of Hitler talking with a Finnish General. In that recording, made in 42, Hitler says that his meetings with the Soviets in late 40, during the preparations for the invasion of England, left him with the impressions the Soviets wanted a war with Germany, and were looking at overrunning Romania, threatening a major source of oil for Germany. Hence Hitler pivoted from trying to invade England, to invading the Soviet Union in June 41. So much for my scenario of Axis occupation of Syria and Iraq, to get at Iraqi oil production.
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  63. On the question of a world without Bofors: in the 1920s, John Browning designed a 37mm AA gun for the US Army. Due to lack of funding for the Army, the design sat on the shelf for several years, then was refined by Colt, and put into production in the late 30s. If USN BuOrd got over it's "not invented here" syndrome and adopted the Browning, instead of developing the 1.1", they would have gotten along quite well without the Bofors. The initial design of the 37mm, the M1, was fed with rigid clips from the left side, which would complicate multiple gun mounts. The M9 development switched to metallic link belt ammo, and was redesigned so both right and left feed versions could be built. I suspect that, fundamentally, any multiple mount designed for the Vickers could be adopted to the Browning, due to the similar ammo feed systems. The Browning had significantly more range than a Vickers, but a somewhat smaller shell. In US Army service, the Browning was replaced by the Bofors, starting in 43, as the Bofors offered advantages of longer range, larger shell, and somewhat more reliable operation.
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  64. I saw "Hell Below" years ago. At one point, the destroyer is blown in half, and there is a shot of "crewmen" running up the passageways from the stern and diving into the water from the broken end of the ship, and I thought "hey, that looks real", vs the models you see in other movies, like "The Enemy Below" or "In Harm's Way".
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  65. wrt the Anglo-Japanese alliance, the version I have read was that the alliance was intended to use Japan as a counterbalance to both the Germans and Russians in the Pacific. Germany purchased the Spanish colonies in the Pacific that the US had not rolled up in 98, including the Marianas, less Guam, the Carolines, and Palau, adding them to their existing colonies in the Marshalls, New Guinea, and other islands around the Bismark Sea, in 1899. The Anglo-Japanese alliance was formed in 1902. Japan rolled up the German colonies in WWI, and was given a mandate to hold the former German colonies north of the equator by the League of Nations. So Germany was no longer a threat to UK interests in the Pacific. The Soviets were still securing their position in Russia, so they were not much of a threat to the UK in the Pacific. I am thinking the Anglo-Japanese alliance had outlived it's usefulness to the UK. Additionally, having rolled up the German colonies, there were not many directions Japan could further expand it's empire, without bumping in to European interests. China was about the only independent nation in the area, and even there, the Japanese ran into European business interests. What was there in eastern Russia that would attract the Japanese? There is significant oil and coal production in eastern Russia now, but what was there in 1920, that would attract Japanese interest?
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  66. A friend of mine happens to be retired career Canadian military; first as infantry in the Princess Pats, then air crew in 443 Squadron. He is also critical of the Clemson gift, but I remind him that the USN still had a lot of them in commission too, and they saw a lot of front line action, because that is what we had.
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  67.  @bluemarlin8138  in a newspaper article reporting Daniels' move to 16", and the long running argument in the Navy about the issue, the article mentions the Navy went through the same argument when it went from 12" to 14".
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  68. blink off topic, but I didn't know Furlan had died too. The number of B5 cast members that died way too young is getting exceptionally long.
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  69. Akagi was also originally completed with three decks. A three deck arrangement was considered for the Lexingtons. The Couragouses were built with two flying off decks.
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  70.  Baron Von Grijffenbourg  Most likely, each thought it was the other that was wrong, and waited for the other to realize their mistake.
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  71. Sounds like an analysis of most of the companies I worked at, in the US private sector. Management always built an echo chamber around itself, and filled it only with people who would only tell management what it wanted to hear. I was astounded at the delusional, self-aggrandizing nonsense that came out of management's mouth, but the yes-men were right there to tell the honchos how brilliant they were. Anyone who dared "tell truth to power", better start updating their resume, because, like Bill Barr, when he pushed back on the "rigged and stolen election" narrative, they would quickly be pushed out of the company.
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  72. wrt standard fleet speed: this is one of the things that really makes we want to jump into the WABAC machine to 1920 and say to the USN General Board "You guys have been banging on for years about the need for all the battleships to make the same 20 knot speed, but you are about to convert a collier that can barely make 15 into a carrier. How in the heck can the Navy develop joint air/surface tactics if the carrier can't keep up?"
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  73. The Italians being able to develop the Libyan oil fields in the 30s is a nightmare scenario. First, the Germans would have recognized that their war effort would be greatly aided by that oil, and Libya would have been far more stoutly defended, as João Rita posted. For openers, imagine an Italian fleet with unlimited fuel and aggressively lead, with cover from land based air. Early in the war, the RN was still trying to defend their interests in the far east, as well as patrolling the North Atlantic against German capital ships, so the odds against the Italians are not as overwhelming as they would appear on paper. The choke point between Sicily and Tunisia could have been one intensively defended point of obstructing Brit supplies to Egypt and squadrons of torpedo and dive bombers could have been based in Italian occupied Ethiopia to make supplying Egypt via the Red Sea equally problematic. I can see the Brits pushed/starved out of Egypt. A defensive line from Aqaba to Gaza looks appealing, but, with the Italian fleet dominating the eastern Med, that line could easily be outflanked. The Brits would probably have to pull back to a line from Basra to the Turkish border to defend the Iranian oil fields, where were being developed at that time. The Germans would probably move to preemptively occupy Algeria and Morocco to vigorously oppose any attempted landing, which would make the Libyan oil fields immune to air attack from the west. Axis occupation of all of North Africa would also make the Ploiesti oil fields out of range of air attack.
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  74. wrt Brenden's question about armored cruisers, I was reading about British capital ships a couple weeks ago, and one piece talked about the armored cruiser/battlecruiser decision. An armored cruiser would cost a few hundred thousand Pounds less than a battlecruiser, but not enough less to enable more of the ships to be built for the same amount of money in the annual budget. The Admiralty was considering building another generation of armored cruisers, after building the Invincibles, as a budget cutting option, but then got wind of Von der Tann being built with battleship grade guns, so the Admiralty dropped the armored cruiser idea and proceeded with the Indefatigable class. Bottom line: 9.2" armored cruiser would cost almost as much as a battlecruiser, but could not stand up against a battlecruiser, nor could serve as an adjunct to the battleline. I was reading about the Courageouses in particular, and read that Fisher was specifying a maximum draft of 22.5 feet. The Courageouses failed that parameter spectacularly, drawing nearly as much as a Renown. I used SpringSharp to try to redesign Courageous to meet the 22.5 foot spec. By going to three twin 9.2" turrets taken from Lord Nelson class pre-dreadnoughts, to meet the cost and availability parameters of the Courageous, I could reduce the draft to 24.5 feet, which still missed Fisher's requirement.
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  75. Indeed, iirc, the second torpedo incident shorted out the electrical control system for the engines, leaving the Sara dead in the water. But the turbo-electric system looked good on paper because it allowed tighter compartmentalization.
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  76. On the ship launching issue: Is there a general rule about when the boilers and turbines are installed, before or after launching? In "The Battleship Builders", power plant installation is said to be done during fitting out as that makes the hull lighter at launch. In the Wiki entry on the 1930s North Carolina class BBs, there is a pic of boilers being installed in NC dated 16 January, 1939, but the ship didn't launch until June of 40. I have seen an aerial photo of Washington launching, and midships appears to be decked over, indicating that the power plant has already been installed. So, what is the usual sequence of power plant installation vs launching? Thanks!
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  77. The amazing thing, to me, is the Muslim mayors of Hamtramck and Dearborn Heights, MI, have endorsed Trump. Trump, who, in 2016, advocated banning Muslims from entering the US. Do they really think their endorsements of Trump will protect them?
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  78. wrt the collapse of the naval treaties, Japan gave formal notice in 1934 that they would drop out of the treaty system at the expiration of First London, at the end of 36. Italy did not participate in the Second London treaty, due to the other parties being upset about Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. The Washington Treaty had licensed France to build up to 70,000 tons of battleships, beginning in 27 and 29, and that license was good until used, not subject to the continuation of the freeze on BB construction in the first London treaty. Dunkerque and Strasbourg used some 53,000 of the 70,000 ton allotment, so, when Richelieu was laid down in October of 35, it put France blatantly in violation of the treaty. Bottom line, by the time the Second London conference started, the US and UK were the only powers trying to comply with the treaty at all. The US insisted on the gun size escalator, to be triggered in April 37, if any party to the treaty system had not signed on to the Second London treaty. As Japan had given notice two years earlier that it would drop out of the treaty system, it was a virtual certainty that the escalator clause would be tripped. The tonnage escalator was nowhere near as clear. It would be tripped if it was determined that a power that was not a party to the treaty began construction of a ship that was not treaty compliant. When the clause was tripped, the powers participating in the treaty were to confer and agree on a new tonnage limit. Yamato was laid down in November 37. Intelligence reports regarding the amount of material being ordered for Yamato made it clear the ship would significantly exceed 35,000, so, at the start of 1938, the US and UK conferred on where to put the new tonnage limit. From my reading, the UK wanted a 43,000 ton limit, as that was the largest the RN facilities could support, while the US wanted 45,000. Negotiations continued for about six months before the US got the 45,000 ton limit it wanted for the Iowas. So, the short answer is the treaty system died a death of a thousand cuts, over a period of several years, starting in 1934.
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  79. You forgot the press gangs.
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  80. As soon as Harris got the nod, I expected we will see the most blatantly racist GOP campaign in my memory, and I'm 70.
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  81.  @AsbestosMuffins  in a newspaper article on the decision to go to 16", the long running debate was recapped, with the note that the Navy had the same argument when it went from 12" to 14". Soon after the decision was made on the Colorados, there was discussion of changing the New Mexicos and Tennessees to 16". A Navy spokesman was quoted that the New Mexicos were too far along and such a change would have been prohibitively expensive. The barbettes on the Tennessees, from what I have found, were the same diameter as those on the Colorados, 32 feet. The twin 16" turret is slightly lighter than the triple 14", and the part of the 16" turret that extends down into the barbette is 6 inches smaller in diameter, so seems to me the 16" turret should fit a Tennessee fine. Neither California nor Tennessee had been laid down yet. I wonder how close they came to issuing a change order on the Tennessees to go to 16"? What probably made their decision was that the guns and turrets were on order and there would probably be cancellation charges if they made the change. Would they have made the same decision if they knew of the dispersion problems those tripe 14" mounts would suffer? Imagine the impact on the Washington Treaty. With 16" guns, the Tennessees would have been regarded as "post-Jutland", so, with them and Maryland, the US would have it's three "post" ships, and West Virginia and Colorado would be broken up. If the US completed West Virginia and Colorado, it would have five "post" ships, so the Japanese would demand to complete Tosa, to be it's third "post" ship, meeting the 5:5:3 ratio, while making a good argument they could built one ship over treaty limit, because of Hood. Then the UK would need to build four Nelsons for parity.
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  82. wrt the question about the portability of floating drydocks, USS Dewey, YFD-1 was built in Maryland in 1905. In December, 05, her tow began, across the Atlantic, through the Med, through Suez and the Indian Ocean, arriving in the Philippines in July 1906. At the time, that was the longest tow every successfully completed.
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  83. Mercedes, BMW, and VW each have one assembly plant in the US. I have not looked at the content labels on a US built Merc or BMW, but would suspect that many of the internal components, engine, transmission, and such, are imported. In VW's case, the engines are imported from Mexico. Stellantis only imports a handful of Alfas, Masers, and Fiat 500es. Ford imports nothing from Europe. Based on what happened when Trump was last in office, and imposed a protectionist tariff on Korean built laundry washers, US made cars will see their prices increased to match the tariff inflated prices of imports, so there will be no net loss of competitiveness for imports, unless Trump also imposes a limit on the number of cars imported, before the tariff is stepped up to a wholly impossible level. Trump's washing machine tariff had two steps: 20% and 50%. Once the 50% level was reached, Korean washers were no longer available. The other variable is the incoming Trump administration is openly, proudly, anti-EV.. My theory is Musk has lost interest in Tesla, beyond using Tesla owners as beta testers for his AI systems.
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  84. A year or two back, I was looking in to the design choices made on the KGVs, and found that armor production was one of the bottlenecks. Some of the armor was subcontracted to a Czech firm, to ease the bottleneck. I looked at the armor produced for the cancelled South Dakota class in the early 20s: 13.5" vs 14.7" for the KGVs, and both were flat sided designs, rather than inclined. The greatest difference was, after the KGV design was revised, it's belt extended one deck higher. Cranked up the alt history generator, to create someone in the Navy Department, in 1922, suggesting to SecNav Denby " The Washington treaty will allow us to build battleships again in ten years. Let's keep all that very expensive armor that has been made for the South Dakotas, so it can be used in the future". When the future arrives, the North Carolinas are designed with sloped armor, so the armor that had been stored for 15 years can't be used. So FDR sends a note to the British naval attache at the DC embassy, asking if the Admiralty might have use of a large quantity of battleship armor, suitable for flat sided installation. Unfortunately, such a thrifty minded person did not seem to be in the Navy Department in 22. The SecNav annual report a few years later reported that the last of the armor that had been made for the :South Dakotas had been sold as scrap.
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  85. wrt the question about ships being repaired in a neutral US, there were two cases of German ships coming to the US for fuel and repairs in WWI, which both turned into a preview of the Graf Spee's situation. The commerce raider Prinz Eitel Friedrich steamed into Newport News Virginia on March 10, 1915 for fuel and repairs. It became quite an event as, in a hot second, there were British and French warships barely outside the US' 3 mile limit waiting for the Friedrich to attempt a breakout. US shore batteries were put on alert and a USN battleship patrolled to enforce US neutrality in case the Brits or French tried to attack the Friedrich in US waters. Ultimately, the Friedrich's captain opted for internment, rather than try to elude the British squadron. Then, on April 12th, the Kronprinz Wilhelm steamed into Newport News, also for fuel and repair, and the dance was repeated, until the Wilhelm's captain also chose internment. I would say the difference between the two incidents in Newport News, and the Graf Spee's, and British ships refitting in the US, is, in the case of the British ships, the Germans did not have the naval force to try and trap the ship as it left the US.
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  86. Regarding Drac's Canada trip, and crossing the US border to visit "The Sullivans", the ship sank at it's moorings a few weeks ago. Some temporary repairs were made and the ship pumped out, but I don't know as it would be open to the public next month.
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  87. wrt the question about secondary armament mounted on top of the main turrets, I have seen a cutaway drawing of a two level turret on a Kearsarge class. The drawing shows internal ammo hoists serving the upper 8" mount, along side the hoists for the 13" on the lower level. The superimposed turrets were the brainchild of Joseph Strauss, during his earlier stint at BuOrd. The problem was the glacial reload times of the 13". The idea was to use the greater rate of fire of the 8" on the upper level to keep up fire while the 13" were reloaded. After Strauss had his way with the Kearsarge and Virginia classes, someone else figured out that, if the navy worked on the ergonomics of the 13" mount, and trained the crews a bit, rate of fire could be improved dramatically, rendering the superimposed 8" mount redundant.
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  88. Drac, I'm up for a deep dive in the design and construction of the Hoods. Conventional wisdom says the Admirals were conceived as a counter to the Mackensens, but all but Hood herself were suspended, before the UK knew the Mackensens were suspended. My suspicion is they pressed on with Hood herself, so that she, combined with the Renowns, made up the losses from Jutland, which offers an interesting alternative if Resistance had been reordered as a third Renown, rather than Fisher diverting into the Courageouses.
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  89. A friend of mine was AESOp in Canadian SeaKings in the 70s and usually embarked on ships. He has talked about those beer vending machines, but, as the aircrew was on call 24/7 he could not indulge. On one occasion there were some USN people on his ship, One guy could not stay off of that beer machine, and became quite a problem.
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  90. The Colorado class has provided hours of entertainment speculating on alternate treatments of the class. Drac didn't really note it, but the Colorados were a 1916 design. Maryland was laid down only days after the US entered WWI, but the other three were delayed until after the war, being laid down in 1919-20. This delay had the result of three of the class still building at the time of the WNT. West Virginia and Colorado were completed, in exchange for the two Delawares being scrapped/demilitarized, while Washington was used for target practice. One alternate scenario: the USN takes the same path as the Admiralty in cancelling outright the Colorados, for the same reasons the Admiralty cancelled their 1914 BB program. The same decision would also result in Tennessee never being laid down, and possibly California, on which little progress had been made, being cut up on the slipway to clear it for higher priority ships. Where would that leave the USN in 1922? None of the Tennessees or Colorados ever completed, and all the postwar South Dakotas and Lexingtons exceed treaty limits. Another avenue of inquiry is how could the Washington have been saved? It appears that the money spent modernizing the Floridas in the 1920s, equaled or exceeded the money it would have cost to complete Washington. So the US completes Washington, and scraps the two Floridas. If the UK complains, give them a license to build a third Nelson, but, as the RN is still well over it's tonnage limit, building another Nelson would require two Iron Dukes be scrapped. Similarly, if the Japanese demanded to be allowed to build another Nagato, they would have to scrap a Fuso or Kongo to make the tonnage available, so, net, they would gain little for all the money spent.
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  91. It has crossed my mind that the covid diagnosis is a cover story, while Biden goes home and reconsiders his candidacy. But then, I though he would use the interview a few weeks ago to announce his withdrawal. The narrative about the attempt on Trump has shifted from "he's so brave!". "he's so strong!" to "Trump is chosen by God". I hear variations on that theme at the convention repeatedly "protected by God", "spared by God", "he is part of God's plan". Anyone of strong faith, who believes that everything is God's will, regardless whether an independent or Democrat, will have a hard time arguing against the God narrative about Trump. The GOP is weaponizing Harris, saying words to the effect "Biden will never make it through another term. Do you want Harris for a President?". I expected a more blatant, racist, dog whistle, like "you don't want another of those people as President", but she is being used against Biden. And the Democratic party is tearing itself apart. The election was probably over last Saturday, the moment Trump got off the floor and pumped his fist, so the rest of it probably doesn't make any difference.
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  92. Seems that Trump knows his target audience. And his target audience doesn't grasp economics. He tells them what they want to hear, which is bigotry. The TV ads almost exclusively pound Harris about the border, the border being a dog whistle tuned to attract racists.
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  93. iirc, the QE2 was reengined from steam turbine to diesel during it's major refit after the Falklands war.
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  94. Jerry Doyle, another B5 cast member gone too soon, died at 60.
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  95. Can't help but wonder if the recent string of sub videos was related to the visit to the Cod, a week ago. I enjoyed meeting Drac, and the rest of the bunch. Thanks to Drac, and the staff of Cod, for serving us lunch!
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  96. On the question about having wing turrets, and Drac's note that Fisher liked the idea of more armament being able to fire forward: I have read that on the Dunkerque and Richelieu class ships, all the main guns were placed forward so they could all be used to fire at Italian ships as they ran away. Now, I have only read that in one place, have no idea if that was the author's attempt at humor, and freely acknowledge that some Italian forced acquitted themselves well. I will further note that ships with 3 main, centerline, turrets usually have 2 forward and 1 aft, except for the French Normanie class, that had one quad turret forward and two quads aft. Of course, the Normandies look to me like the designers were expecting a drydock 100' longer to be available for construction, and, when such a facility was not built, simply erased A turret and cut the bow off the thing.
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  97. wrt the question of the Washington treaty being delayed for 3 years. That puts the start of the conference at November 24, during the US election. President Harding died in August, 23, so Coolidge is POTUS, running for a second term. From my reading, the US called the Washington conference because there was a sense that Congress would withdraw funding for the current construction program, regardless what other countries did, so Harding decided to try to get other countries to limit construction in sync with the US. In that light, Washington would have been completed, but all the Lexingtons and South Dakotas could very well have been cancelled and cut up on the slipway, regardless what anyone else did. In reality, Coolidge would probably have started the conference a month or two earlier, as a campaign ploy. In Japan, the quake was in August, 1923. Amagi was laid down in December 20. Without the delays due to the treaty negotiations and conversion to a carrier, Amagi would have been in the water, and safe, when the quake hit. The second pair of Amagis were scheduled to be complete in December 24. There would have been an argument that the second pair of Amagis needed to be scrapped. Both Tosas would be complete. None of the Kiis or 13s would be complete. So, net, the IJN gains the two Tosas and first two Amagis. As the US would have unilaterally scrapped the Lexingtons in 22-23, there would have never been a clause allowing conversions that exceeded the treaty 27,000 carrier limit, so the second pair of Amagis, and the Kiis, are all broken up, rather than be converted. In the back of my mind is the thought the G3s and N3s were a bluff. When the US and UK were negotiating the tonnage escalator in 37, the UK was looking for a limit around 42,000, because that was what their facilities could handle. As the G3 and N3 exceed that displacement, I suspect they were not intended to actually be built. Of course, a 1924 Washington conference could very well have failed, entirely. In February 1927, Coolidge called a conference in Geneva to limit total tonnage of smaller ships, as the original Washington treaty limited capital ships. The conference failed. I have read the British were making comments to the effect "the US is trying to buy parity on the cheap". The US would probably walk in to a 1924 Washington conference with the same idea: force other nations to draw their naval strength down to what the US had. The other nations would probably react the same way they did in 27, and, effectively, tell Coolidge to take a flying leap.
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  98. wrt the KGVs being built with 15"/42s. During the design process, the Admiralty's own technical analysis branch determined that a 9-15" armament would give the best combination of firepower, protection, and speed. Someone, I think First Sea Lord Chatfield, clung to the "more smaller guns equals more hits" theory, and pressed for 14". Just as raising the height of the armor belt caused B turret to be reduced from 4-14" to 2, I would expect the same increase in armor to result in B turret being reduced from 3-15" to 2. The switch from 16" to 14" in Second London appears to have been pressed for by the UK. Without someone in the Admiralty pushing for 14", the gun size limit would probably have been left at 16". First London had extended the construction moratorium, so it would not have been possible to start the KGVs any earlier than they were historically. KGV and PoW were laid down on New Year Day in 37, the first day after the First London moratorium expired. Guns were not the only bottleneck in the construction of the KGVs. British production capacity for armor had also atrophied since the end of WWI. I have read that some of the armor for the KGVs had to be contracted out to a Czech firm. When most of the Iron Dukes, and Tiger, were scrapped in the early 30s, many of their 13.5" guns were retained. I have read that the KGV's 14" was designed to fit the same mount as the 13.5". In the back of my mind is the thought that, had there been a shortage of 14", the Admiralty had a contingency plan to mount 13.5" in their place on the KGVs.
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  99. This was a fascinating time for carrier development. I have offered, from time to time, that the USN was nuts building the Lexingtons. The USN had so little experience with Langley, and a bit of advice from the Brits, that they really didn't know what they were doing. It's a miracle the Lexingtons came out as well as they did. On the other hand, without the Lexingtons, there would have been enough tonnage in the treaty quota to build three more Yorktowns, with enough left over to build Wasp as another full sized Yorktown, or enough tonnage to build three 27,000 ton proto-Essexes, while refusing to go along with the Brit's push to cut carrier tonnage to only 23,000.
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  100. Better yet: doomed when the Lexingtons were converted, as they used so much of the US' tonnage quota that the Navy was forced into a lot of compromises. The USN had intended to use the rest of the tonnage to build 5 the size of the Ranger. Once they had Ranger built, they realized that wasn't a good idea, so built the 2 Yorktowns. Decent carriers, but that only left enough tonnage for another under sized, under powered, under protected ship. Yes, three torpedo hits would do a lot of damage, but Hornet took 3 aerial torpedo hits, 3 bomb hits, and 2 Kamikaze Vals, then a spread of US torpedoes, 400 5" gun hits, and 4 Long Lances from Japanese destroyers before sinking. Now there is a tough ship!
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  101. I am wondering when Ford will write off it's investments in China. Ford is doing a lot worse there than GM. Ford reportedly only had a 1.8% market share in China last year.
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  102. wrt the ships Chile acquired after WWI, I hope they didn't pay too much for those destroyers. The first two of the class, which Chile received new, just before the war, lasted through WWII. The three that the RN had requisitioned, had apparently been run hard (HMS Broke had a couple particularly lurid engagements), as they went to the breakers in the early 30s. The subs Drac refers to are probably the six British H class boats built in the US by Fore River. Those subs were part of the order the Admiralty placed with Bethlehem Steel in 1914. With the US being neutral at the time, the Wilson administration impounded the subs. The Admiralty hit on the idea of signing over the subs to Chile as partial payment for Latorre and Cochrane, when those unfinished battleships were requisitioned. As Chile was not involved in the war, the Wilson administration approved of the sale. The sub's departure from the US, bound for Chile, was reported in US newspapers at the time.
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  103. wrt retaining the Courageous class as "large light cruisers", given the WNT's classifications, anything over 10,000 tons or with guns larger than 8" is a "capital ship", the Courageouses would count as capital ships. That being said, the treaty says, wrt the tonnage quotas for each power: " The total capital ship replacement tonnage of each of the Contracting Powers shall not exceed in standard displacement,..." it sounds like the tonnage limit only becomes a factor when a power starts replacing older ships. The original UK retention list totaled some 580,000 tons. When the two Nelsons were built, they replaced four older ships, and reduced total UK tonnage to 558,950 tons. Sounds to me that, in principle, the RN could have retained as many ships as it wanted to, but had to draw down the fleet to the 525,000 limit as those older ships were replaced. As for the Courageous' mission in WWII, I'm thinking convoy escort/raider hunter in the Atlantic or Indian Oceans. Before being attached to Force Z, Repulse was performing that mission in the Indian Ocean.
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  104. wrt the question about 1939 AA upgrades, iirc, one of the issues with the Vickers Pom-Pom was that no-one in the US made cordite, and the Vickers did not work right with USN smokeless. My preferred alternate would be the Browning designed, Colt refined, 37mm, that the US Army used. Add the refinements that were added later in the war: ammo feed from either side, and ammo in metal link belts, rather than clips, and the 37mm could have been used in the same style of mounts as the Vickers. So the USN could have had a locally produced Pom-Pom, that had better range than the Vickers.
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  105. wrt basing battleships in the Philippines, at one time, the Mississippi and Idaho, the two undersized ships that were sold to Greece, could have been based in the Philippines, as they were small enough to be accommodated in the Dewey drydock. That would also solve the problem of those two ships lacking the speed and range to steam with the Connecticuts, as they would be steaming by themselves. Realistically, as Drac said, anything sent to the Philippines in 41, would be going to it's doom. The US could not forward deploy enough force to really be a deterrent. Drac reviewed USN pre-war battle plans some time ago. The plans seemingly imply that the Philippines would be written off if they were attacked. To get to the Philippines, from Hawaii, would have required steaming through thousands of miles of ocean, populated with islands the Japanese had held since 1918.
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  106. wrt Yorktown and Enterprise being built to a treaty-max 27,000 ton design. My hunch is, with a more capable and survivable design in hand, it would have been used for both Hornet and Essex, so Essex would have been in commission in December of 41. re "survivable", the weakest point in the Yorktowns was, to save weight, they did not have staggered boiler and engine rooms. The lack of survivable powerplants lead directly to the loss of both Yorktown and Hornet. The 27,000 Essex design eliminated that vulnerability.
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  107. I have no problem with the SCOTUS deciding this issue. I am also reminded how fast the SCOTUS can act, when it wants to. In Bush v Gore, Bush turned to the SCOTUS on December 8. Justice Scalia granted a stay of the Florida court's order for a recount on the 9th. SCOTUS decided the issue on December 12th. So now, on an issue of at least equal importance and urgency, the court needs over a month to even hear arguments, and we don't know how long to issue a decision, when Bush v Gore was settled in 4 days.
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  108. Some years ago, I mused about what it would be like to have a young Jackie as a messmate, watching his mind work. Now I am looking forward to the next installment with greater anticipation. I have been reading the Raven book, and the way the gestation of the Renowns and Courageouses, Jackie's last projects, are laid out, makes no sense. There is more to that story, somewhere.
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  109.  @anantr99  some years ago, I came across a newspaper article that mentioned Dreadnought had been sold for scrap, and noted the price. Scrap value of a ship is a tiny portion of construction costs. The Elenas and the hulk of da Vinci would probably not bring anywhere near enough money to complete Caracciolo. The only realistic way to fund the battleship would be to forego building a large portion of the 1920s destroyer program. Applying the accidental loss provision of the treaty, retroactively, to 1916, would be controversial, but so would counting a hulk as an active battleship. The US and UK were allowed to build new "post Jutland" battleships by the treaty. I can't imagine Italy being denied, if they really wanted to complete Caracciolo.
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  110. wrt the North Carolina switch from 14" to 16", a nugget I picked up in b-school, more decades ago than I care to contemplate, is "failing to plan, is planning to fail". Given that the US is credited with the inclusion of the gun size escalator clause in Second London, and given that Japan had already given notice it was withdrawing from the treaty, it was almost certain that the clause would be triggered. I expect that the clause being triggered was what the US was planning for, designing the ships for 16", with a set of mods to be implemented if they were surprised by Japan rejoining the treaty system.
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  111. No pix of Bearn's last mission before France's surrender, picking up aircraft in Canada? Interesting pix of French sailors, in uniform, helping wheel SBCs down a country road. Then the SBCs and Curtis Hawks, moldering away on a hillside in Martinique.
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  112. During WWI, both the Greek and Ottoman navies had German built Destroyers with turbine powerplants. The French took over the Greek fleet and ran their DDs through most of the war, while Greece was neutral. From Greek and Turkish sources, I have been informed that those German turbine plants were so troublesome that the ships were disposed of soon after the end of the war, while other DDs, in those same fleets, that were older, served into the 1930s. Maybe it's something endemic to German turbine plants that they are so fragile and finicky that no-one could keep them running.
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  113. Italy and Greece both added former Austrian and German destroyers and cruisers to their fleets, but seems no-one wanted the battleships. Italy was allocated a Tegetthoff, and scrapped it. France used it's Tegetthoff for target practice. Given the state of French capital ships at the end of the war, I wonder if anyone considered claiming the Mackensens as reparations, towing them to France, and completing them, using the guns that had been built for the Normandies.
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  114.  @gregorywright4918  the USN had no choice with Wasp. They only had 15,000 tons available under the treaty, because Langley was the only one old enough to be classified as "experimental". All the treaty carriers were compromised. I have read comments that Ark Royal was lost due to inadequate compartmentalization, to save weight. The Yorktowns were compromised by not having staggered boiler and engine rooms. If Yorktown and Hornet had had staggered boiler and engine rooms, like the Essex did, they might have been able to limp away, rather than sitting, dead in the water, until the Japanese arrived to finish them off. Of course, that brings the alt history question, if Yorktown and Enterprise were built to the treaty limit at that time, 27,000, about the same as Essex, they could have had staggered boiler and engine rooms. Then we don't get Wasp, which made itself useful in the Atlantic, but was too vulnerable to survive in the Pacific. But, with a 27,000 ton design in hand, the USN may have laid down two carriers as soon as Congress authorized them in 38, so they would both be completed in 41, rather than Hornet being ready, but Essex delayed, due to the need to design from a clean sheet.
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  115. It was the slow burn rate that USN BuOrd did not fully appreciate when they switched to smokeless. The USN switched from a 13"/35 to a 12"/40 to take advantage of the slower burn rate, but the new 12"/40s, and the 8"/40s started blowing their muzzles and chases off. BuOrd found chamber pressures were as predicted, but pressure in the chase was far higher than expected. A rebuild program was instituted where the guns were given a strong liner and hooped to the muzzle to reinforce them.
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  116. The British Mk XVI 4"/45 and the Mk XIX twin mount, got me working on a hypothetical where the USN deploys the twin low angle 4"/50, which was developed during WWI, as the battleship secondary, in place of the single 5"/51 used historically. Then, developing a twin 4"/45 and a DP mount like the British Mk XIX, to take the place of the combination of the low angle 5"/51 and high angle 5"/25 that the USN standards were equipped with in the 1930s. The increase in rate of fire and weight of fire offered by the twin 4" is thought provoking. I have read that Jackie Fisher favored more 4" as secondary, vs fewer 6", and that was what he had installed on the Courageouses and Renowns. My analysis indicates he may have been right.
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  117. After rolling around the news of Ford's investment in the EU in my mind, I came to the same conclusion: Ford it getting itself off the hook, so the EU operation can collapse. In addition to the sales drop in 2024, Ford will drop the Focus this year, which, iirc, accounts for 20% of Ford's EU sales, so that would drop Ford's market share under 3%. The two EVs Ford builds in Cologne are on a VW platform, so I would not be surprised if there are licensing fees paid to VW, adding to the car's cost. While Ford attempts to sell cars in many countries, their production base is rapidly shrinking. They closed all of their plants in India, Brazil, and Australia. Germany is clearly up for the chop. Their Chinese operations are far weaker than GM's, and GM already wrote down their Chinese operations. As Ford retreats to being a North American company only, and only selling the largest, most expensive, trucks and SUVs in that market. recall than 100 years ago, half of the cars in service in the world were Fords.
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  118.  @robertf3479  Langley also had folding funnels on the port side of the flight deck. Jupiter's boiler and engine rooms were located well aft, so the funnel location was an easy adaptation. Ranger replicated that funnel location, but had more funnels because of the greater boiler capacity. That approach was not an option on the Lexingtons because the boiler room location had already been set closer to midships, same as Kaga. The options with the more midships boiler room location were an island with a funnel, which the aviators opposed, or entirely flush decked, with the stack gas trunked aft. and directed away from the flight deck. Furious had the stack gas trunked aft and exiting from grills on the aft corners of the flight deck, which was a particularly bad location and the ducting inside the hanger turned the after part of the hanger into an oven from heat soak. Argus had a similar setup, but, less powerful engines, so less hot gas to vent. As I said, it was luck that the Lexingtons turned out as well as they did. With the US' lack of experience with carriers, they could easily have used the same solutions as Kaga. Unlike the Japanese, Italians and Brits, the USN, for whatever reason, did not do major reconstructions on it's older ships in the 30s, so, if the Lexingtons had been built like the Kaga, they would have entered WWII with the same configuration, while Kaga had been rebuilt with a small island, full length flight deck and a downward curving funnel midships in place of the long ducts.
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  119. In the question about WWI subs torpedoing battleships, Drac excluded pre-dreadnoughts. The British sub E-11 slipped into the Sea of Marmara in 1915 and hit the Ottoman pre-dreadnought Barbaros Hayreddin with a single torpedo. The battleship capsized about 7 minutes later, then sank within a few more minutes.
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  120. wrt the question about RN secondaries, seems the reversion to 4" on the Renowns and Courageouses was due to Jackie Fisher's involvement in the design of those classes, as he believed that a quick firing 4" was a better choice than a casemate mounted 6". As soon as Fisher was no longer involved in designs, the RN reverted to a heavier secondary on the Nelsons. I did a bit of comparison between the USN 5"/51 and the dual 4"/50 that was experimented with on a few USN destroyers. The guns had the same rate of fire, but the 4" was a twin. The 5" had slightly better armor penetration, but the DDs the secondaries were intended to fend off were not armored. They had virtually the same range. The single 5"/51 and twin 4"/50s, guns plus mount, weight virtually the same. Creating a hypothetical USN DP 4" mount, cutting the 4"/50 down to 45 caliber to reduce the moment of inertia, and mounting them on a copy of the RN DP mount used with the British 4"/45 Mk 16 in the mid 30s, would give a twin mount that weighed less than the combination of a 5"/51 and a 5"/25 that modernized USN standards were equipped with in the 1930s, while providing twice as many guns in each role, while leaving the 01 deck clear, for installation of additional light AA.
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  121. 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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  122. An acquaintance of mine is retired Canadian military. He spent most of his time in the crew of a Sea King helo embarked on a variety of ships. He says there were several times they had USN personnel on board, both officers and enlisted. What the Americans could never get over was that the Canadian ships have beer vending machines on board. He tells of one American enlisted man, who had absolutely no self-discipline and was in that beer machine constantly.
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  123. I live in metro Detroit. Smuggling traffic across the river from Windsor was rampant at the time. The bridge and tunnel to Canada did not open until 1929, so the smuggling was all via boat, or over the ice in winter. The smuggling was done by organized crime, so they probably would take a dim view of any freelancers trying to get a piece of the action.
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  124. One other bit about prohibition: Hiram Walker started his distillery in Detroit in the 1850s. Michigan went "dry" before the rest of the country, so he moved his distillery across the river, founding the small town of Walkerville, around the plant. Eventually, he established the "Canadian Club" whisky brand. So, there was an abundant supply of whisky, right on the river bank, for enterprising mobsters to bring across. Walkerville was annexed by Windsor some years ago, but that big distillery is still there.
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  125.  @EliteF22  Yes, the midships elevator, in particular, was so small it was nearly useless by 44. Elevator size was a function of her age. When built, the designers had to guess how large aircraft would get during her lifetime. That elevator could have been enlarged, but, for whatever reason, the USN did not go in for major rebuilds of it's older ships in the 30s.
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  126. iirc, Franklin was also laid up after the war and never modernized. I remember seeing a documentary about Franklin in the 60s, when she went to the breakers, which featured many of her crewmen recalling how they survived the attack as they retraced their steps through the ship.
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  127. wrt the flash door question, I read somewhere along the line (perhaps "The Grand Fleet" by D K Brown) that after-war tests done showed that the flash doors were too weak, blowing open when there was an explosion on one side of them. So, whether the doors were in place on the ships lost, or not, might be irrelevant, because they could not do their intended job anyway.
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  128. Expanding on the question of treaty cruisers being a good idea, for anyone, the objective of the treaty was to limit costs. If some navies chose to build a large glass canon, vs a smaller, but better balanced, design, that was their own decision. The parties to the treaty had already seen the direction cruisers were taking. The USN built the Tennessee class, starting in 1903: 10" guns, 504 feet long, displacing about 14,500 tons. In 1906, the RN started on the Invincibles, 12" guns, 567', 17,250 tons, evolutionary growth from the Tennessees. By the time of the Washington conference, the benchmarks for a cruiser larger than a "scout" had evolved to Hood, Lexington, and Amagi, each at an eye-popping cost. If some of the Hawkins class had not been building at the time of the conference, the treaty could just as easily have limited cruisers to 6,000 ton, 6" gun "scouts" only. Actually, thinking on the topic, it might have been better for all concerned, if the two Hawkinses that were still fitting out were scrapped, and the limits set at scout cruiser size, so a Dido class, for instance, does not need to worry about being wildly outgunned by a Hipper or a Zara.
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  129.  @deanroberts2021  there was indeed a Axis plan to capture Gibraltar: Operation Felix. The plan was to persuade Spain to come in to the war on Germany's side. Aircraft from France would then refuel in Spain after bombing Gibraltar and ground forces would advance through Spain to assault Gibraltar. Franco declined to join the war, so the operation never came off.
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  130.  @99IronDuke  My sense is adding Indomitable would make Force Z an even more attractive target. The Japanese had reportedly had enough time to move additional bombers to Saigon and train the crews specifically for attacking Force Z. Indomitable's air group at the time apparently included a mix of Sea Hurricanes and Fulmars, which would be effective defense against unescorted medium bombers. The battle location would be at the extreme end of range for either Zeros or Ki-43s based in Saigon, but Ryūjō was in the general area, it's air group attacking a US base on Mindanao on December 8. Ryūjō was equipped with obsolescent A5M fighters at that time. If Ryūjō was intended to coordinate a strike on Force Z with the IJN bomber groups in Saigon, the A5Ms may have been replaced with A6Ms, and the ship positioned to quickly divert from the Philippines to Malaya as soon as Force Z left Singapore. A dozen Zeros from Ryūjō would tie up the Indomitable's fighters, while Ryūjō Kates would add their punch to that of the land based bombers. The Brits could have lost 3 big ships that day.
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  131. wrt the question about the Omaha's casemate mounts, best use I can think of is replacing the four upper casemate mounts with AA guns. The footprint looks adequate to take a quad 1.1" early in the war, or a twin Bofors later in the war.
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  132. wrt the attack in Alexandria, Valiant was not hurt as badly as QE because the mine was not placed ideally. The Italian mines were suspended on a cable under the ship. The cable was supported by clamps on the ship's bilge keels. In the case of the QE, the mine was placed ideally, only a few feet under the hull. In the case of Valiant, the pilot of the "manned torpedo" the frogmen were riding lost control and it jammed into the mud below the ship. The back seater passed out from difficulty with his rebreather. The pilot could not manhandle the mine and cable system by himself, so set the timer and surfaced, with his backseater, where they were captured by the Brits. The mine was something like 20 feet below the hull, so did not do quite as much damage as it would have if placed correctly.
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  133.  @genericpersonx333  Strauss would have been right, ten years earlier. The turrets on the Tennessees were designed for 30 degrees of elevation, vs 15 for the New Mexicos. Strauss scoffed, said the ships would never need that much range, but it didn't cost anything to build the mounts for greater elevation, so he did not oppose the design. At Dogger Bank, January 1915, Lion commenced fire at 20,000. Jutland was merely confirmation that Strauss' thinking was outdated regarding engagement range. To penetrate battleship belt armor at longer range, you need a heavier shell that hits with more kinetic energy. The piece Drac did a while back about Admiralty engagement doctrine echoed this debate in the USN twenty years earlier. Admiralty doctrine was to close to 16,000 or less as rapidly as possible, at which range, the 14" on the KGVs could penetrate well enough, hence, it was called "decisive range".
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  134. wrt the question about armament alternatives for the KGVs. I have read that the RN was fundamentally dissatisfied with the 16" used on the Nelsons due to their high barrel wear, and were looking for a lower velocity, more durable gun. Why in the world the RN did not buy US 16"/45s is beyond me, other than the possibility that they simply were not available yet, when the KGVs were fitting out. From time to time, someone floats the idea of stripping the 15"/42s off of the R-class and installing them on the faster KGV hull, in place of the 14" I found some estimates, at 1915 prices for RN 13.5" guns and twin turrets. Assuming those prices would be close to those for a 15", I adjusted for inflation to 1937 prices. Dismounting the guns from the Rs, and installing them in new build triple turrets for the 5 KGVs would only save about 1M pounds, far short of the amount needed to pay for an additional KGV, and the RN loses the use of the Rs. Using four of the original twin turrets would require a longer hull, pushing displacement over the treaty limit, as we see with Vanguard, so that is a non-starter. Using three of the original twin turrets would fit in the 35,000T KGV hull, but the ship, with only 6 heavy guns, would be outgunned by any other battleship it would likely run into, and the total savings for the five KGVs would be a bit over 3M Pounds, still less than half the cost of building an additional KGV, and they lose the use of the Rs. Other than buying the US 16"/45, what the RN did was the best option.
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  135. After rolling the "which rebuild to sacrifice to rebuild Hood" question for a few hours, and foregoing future knowledge, I think I would have sacrificed Renown. The question is which rebuild results in the most satisfying result? QEs can go toe to toe with other battleships. So can Hood. Renowns are too thin skinned. Give both Renowns a modest update changing out all the low angle 4" secondaries for DP twin 4", and several Pom-Poms. with an eye to making them fast escorts for carriers, able to fend off aircraft and attacking destroyers and cruisers.
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  136.  @mattwoodard2535  I drive a VW. Entirely happy with it, but I noticed an oddity: just about every other gas engine car on the road uses manifold vacuum to run the power brake booster. My VW has an engine driven vacuum pump, to make really, really, sure there is enough vacuum. For several years, when that engine first came out, it had an oil leak issue. The source of that oil leak? The vacuum pump, a device that no other automaker thought was necessary. And it was a very expensive repair too. Remember the words of Lt Commander Montgomery Scott "the more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain".
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  137. The policy of building battle cruisers as derivatives of an existing battleship class, rather than reinventing the wheel every time, would appear to make sense. If the US had followed along, then CC1 and 2 would have been ordered as developments of the Colorado class, been more sound ships than the 1916 battlecruiser design. and potentially, make it into commission before the treaty went into effect as Maryland did. Then CC3 and 4 would have been broken up on the ways with the South Dakotas, that is assuming that any battlecruiser based on the SoDaks would be so huge that the waiver would not be written into the treaty the way Saratoga and Lexington were waivered. Without that waiver, Akagi and Kaga would not have been built as carriers either. Meanwhile, not having Lexington and Saratoga as carriers would free up enough tonnage under the treaty for the US to built 3 additional Yorktowns.
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  138.  @erikgranqvist3680  it was pretty routine for the liner to stretch as the gun is fired repeatedly, so the end of the liner would stick out of the muzzle of the gun. That was not a big problem as the exposed end of the liner could simply be sawed off. You have probably heard of "copper choke" where material from the driving band of the shells builds up in the bore to the point where it impeded the shell. The effect of the shell being impeded was excessive pressure in the barrel, eventually leading to the muzzle and chase being blown off. Tools were developed to scrape the buildup out of the bore. A more serious problem on some of the early guns was "steel choke". In some early guns with liners, as the liner stretched, it would form a ridge in the bore. Eventually the ridge would grow to the point where it impeded the shell, and do it suddenly enough to initiate the fuse in the shell. Early liners were machined straight, and changed by heating the barrel while cooling the liner so the difference in thermal expansion would loosen the liner enough for it to be pressed out. Sometimes, the liner would not come out, in spite of the heating process and had to be machined out. Each pass of the cutting head would take several days, so it was a matter of weeks to completely machine out a stuck liner. Gun factories learned to machine the OD of the liner with a slight taper so it would be easier to press out.
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  139.  @mattdill8090  that is a fun story. Nearly out of fuel and provisions, she steamed into Newport News, in April, 1915, as the US was, at that time, neutral. In a hot second, UK and French warships were steaming just outside US territorial waters, should the Wilhelm attempt a breakout. A battleship from the USN reserve squadron was dispatched, as soon as a full crew could be assembled by pulling men off other battleships of the reserve squadron, as a neutrality patrol, should anyone have ideas of steaming into Newport News to attack the Wilhelm. The US newspaper accounts of the incident make for fascinating reading.
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  140.  @EinhanderSn0m4n  you do need to admit it's odd. Seven people who played major characters gone and Furlan was the oldest at 65. Biggs was only 44.
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  141.  @Drachinifel  one of the books I read, when I looked in to this issue, two years ago, said 12,500 tons of armor where ordered from Czechoslovakia. Where that specific armor went is probably immaterial. The point is how capacity limited British industry was. That same book says that British capacity to build mounts and fire control equipment was also limited, to the point where the armor was not necessarily the only impediment to completing the ships. I think other sources have said Anson and Howe were specifically delayed waiting on fire control systems. From what I have read, the UK was the driver of the move to 14". The decision on gun size needed to be made by the end of 35, before the conference started, to meet completion targets. It was the US indicating that it would accept 14", if Japan agreed, that was the green light for the UK to commit to 14" for the KGVs. I don't know which book that information came from. It was not Friedman, or Raven. All I have is photographs of the pages, that I took when I had the book in hand.
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  142. Interesting how, being heavily damaged was a life saver for ABDA ships. Boise and Marblehead were both retired from the theater due to damage, and lived to fight another day. The ships that stayed, died.
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  143. wrt saving/extending the life, of Titanic. Given the sort of damage she is assumed to have suffered: hull plates stove in and seams opened. the best measure would be collision mats. Lacking that, I wonder how many large tarpaulins and hatch covers were in ship's stores, that potentially could be combined to make a facsimile of a collision mat? Apparently, if the leaks could have been stemmed in two compartments, the ship could have stayed afloat.
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  144. 3:20:40 the question about a 14" armed Florida class. As Drac suggested, without the pushback that existed in the USN to the move from 12" to 14", which was repeated in the move from 14" to 16", resulting in moving to larger guns sooner, I can think of a significant impact. The Washington conference engaged in some political art in discriminating between pre-Jutland and post-Jutland ships. In their art, Hood was deemed "post-Jutland" even though it was designed before the battle, while Tennessee and California, laid down after Hood, were deemed pre-Jutland, while Maryland, which was laid down before Tennessee, was deemed post-Jutland. As the Colorados were largely a repeat of the Tennessees, with the exception of the 16" guns, if the Tennessees had been armed with 16" guns, which was openly discussed in 1915, defining the Tennessees as pre-Jutland would be even more problematic. If the Tennessees were armed with 16" guns, and therefore deemed "post-Jutland", then, for parity, the US would not have been allowed to complete Colorado and West Virginia. That would result in the US retaining the Delawares as "front line" battleships. In the fleet drawdown in First London, the Delawares would go, and one or both Floridas and both Wyomings would be retained as "front line" battleships.
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  145.  @scarecrow2097  newspaper reports of the time make for fascinating reading. The Naval appropriation bill the House passed had funding for more Connecticuts. Senator Hale demanded the Navy buy smaller ships, on the order of 12,000 tons, rather than more 16,000 ton Connecticuts, and he held up the appropriation bill until the appropriation for two Connecticuts was changed to the smaller Mississippis. The backstairs chatter the newspapers were reporting was that Hale, who represented Maine, was trying to get the contract for Bath Iron Works. At that time, Bath was building one of the 15,000 ton Virginias, having difficulty with a ship that size, and the Navy was very dissatisfied with Bath's progress. As it turned out, the Navy could not design a ship of less than 13,000 tons, which still exceeded what Bath could comfortably build. Newport News was low bid, for one Mississippi. The William Cramp yard bid a price that exceeded that of News for one ship, but bid a lower price for building both of the Mississippis. In the back of my mind, knowing the contracts for the Mississippis were entirely politically motivated, I will observe that the Cramp yard is in Philadelphia, One of the Senators from PA had a lot of juice, was the head of the state party machine, and also sat on the Naval Affairs Committee, so I would not reject the proposition that the Senator advised Cramp how to bid for the contracts. The ships were a failure for the USN because of their small size. They were a bit slower, and had significantly less range than the Connecticuts, so were mostly relegated to coastal patrol, separate from the rest of the fleet. And yet, being obsolete pre-dreadnoughts, and of little use to the USN, SecNav Daniels still exploited the Greeks to a horrendous degree. iirc, the newspapers were reporting the price Daniels extracted from Greece was about double what the ships were worth. From the Greek perspective, the Mississippis might have come in handy in 1912, but in 1914, if the Ottomans had received the two new Dreadnoughts building in the UK, the Mississippis would have been dead meat. One positive note, the Mississippis fit in the drydock in Piraeus. A Connecticut would have been too big.
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  146. wrt the USN building 16" armed battleships, the "more smaller guns vs fewer bigger guns" argument raged for some time in the Navy Department. Head of BuOrd, Joseph Strauss was the main driver of the "more smaller guns" school. When Jutland demonstrated the need for being able to penetrate at greater range, Strauss was overruled by the SecNav and General Board. In his 1916 annual report, SecNav Daniels said the decision to go to 16" was made over the objections of some officers. When the decision to go to 16" was made in the summer of 1916, there was speculation in the press about the New Mexicos and Tennessees being upgunned to 16" during construction. A Navy spokesman said that the cost to make the changes would be prohibitive. The article did not make clear if the Navy spokesman was talking specifically about the New Mexicos, which had been laid down the previous year, or the Tennessees, as well, which had not yet been laid down. The 14"/50 was ordered into production, off the drawing board, with no test program. Having taken that shortcut, the first production 14"/50 was test fired at about the same time as the prototype 16". Strauss' 1915 report speaks glowingly, at length, of the virtues of the 14", and briefly mentions the 16". If the 14"/50 had been subjected to an in depth test program, the dispersion issue that dogged these guns may have been discovered before production started. Given the timelines of events, I think the most probable situation would be the New Mexicos built with 14" and Tennessees built with 16". The two Tennessees, and three Colorados, would give the USN 5 16" armed "post-Jutland" ships. At the same time, the Japanese could argue they were entitled to a 42,000 ton ship, because of Hood, and complete Tosa, as well as Nagato and Mutsu. So, then the RN is allowed to build four new ships, so that, combined with Hood, the RN has parity with the USN at 5, and the IJN has 3.
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  147. Returning to the question of the UK selling it's West Indies colonies to the US in exchange for the US canceling the UK's debt from WWI, which I brought up in the Q&A on the shore bombardment video of May 12th, I have done further reading on the WWI debt issue. The UK had made substantial loans to it's allies prior to US entry in April 1917. From that point on, the US bore the financial burden. As it worked out, the amount owed to the UK by the other allies was almost equal to the amount the UK owed to the US. On August 1, 1922, Arthur Balfour wrote a note to the French ambassador to the UK, words to the effect that the UK did not want to lean so heavily on France, and the other allies, for repayment of their debts. The UK would rather cancel all the debts owned to it, and forego reparations from Germany, but, as the US was pressing the UK so hard for repayment, the UK needed the cash. The content of this note was publicly published by the UK government, which, to me, gives the note the color of an official offer by the UK government to cancel the war debts owned to it, if it is relieved of it's debt to the US. As noted in my May 12th question, extrapolating the price the US paid Denmark for the Virgin Islands to the total land mass of all the UK held islands, plus British Honduras, comes out to $4.15B, which equals the $4B of principle owed, plus a portion of accrued interest. What a different world it would have been, had the UK, effectively, paid it's debt to the US with dirt, rather than gold, and, in accordance with the Balfour note, then cancelled all debts owed to it, cutting the debt, and corresponding drag on the economies of the other allies, in half.
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  148.  @Thomas-gs4yq  iirc, Iron Duke still has some of her 13.5" guns, but the armor had probably been removed for treaty compliance when she was downgraded to a training ship. The same was done with Wyoming. Secondly, I'm not sure the Duke was ever converted to oil fuel, so fueling her may have been an issue in some locations. You would think an additional old battleship would have been useful as long as there were German surface raiders around. I recently reread "Fifty Ships That Saved The World", about the destroyers for bases deal. There was no mention of Churchill asking for battleships, only destroyers. As it happened, a group of those old destroyers were making their way to England, when they picked up radio traffic from Jervis Bay, when she was in her battle with Scheer. The USN had handed over the destroyers with full magazines and torpedo tubes, so they rang up flank speed to rush to Jervis Bay's aide, but arrived too late.
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  149. There are drawings around of the early iterations of the design. Bizarre things with boilers on two decks, seven funnels, and 14" guns in twin turrets with the superfiring turrets being triples. They were ordered as part of the 1916 Navy Act, but promptly suspended, then redesigned to the configuration Drac showed after Navy Department officials got a look at Hood in early 1919. The 14"/50 guns of the original design had been put into production however, so the USN ended up with spare 14" guns coming out of it's ears.
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  150.  @cmck472  iirc, from "Fifty Ships That Saved The World", it took until spring of 41 to get them into service. Luckily, for the UK, the Germans were critically short of U-Boats over that same period. By the time the U-Boat fleet had been rebuild, the Towns were in service.
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  151. From my reading, it was the amount of material being ordered for Yamato that tipped off British and US intelligence that the Yamatos were going to exceed the 35,000 ton limit. Just how much the ships exceeded the limit was significantly underestimated by western intelligence, resulting in the Second London tonnage escalator being triggered, but the new limit being set at only 45,000 tons. If the IJN had gone with a more modest design, say 45,000 tons, western intelligence may not have twigged at all, and the treaty tonnage escalator not triggered until 1940, when the completed hulls were launched, too late to design the Iowas and Lions.
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  152.  @RedXlV  early studies in carrier design found that, when a pilot messed up his approach, he tended to turn left to go around. That preference for a left turn is probably due to the engine's torque making it easier to turn left. A port side island gets in the way.
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  153.  @davidford85  I would suspect the shift in thinking came in the late 30s. Kaga and Akagi were both originally built with both hangars open at the bow, so, in theory, they had three decks that planes could be launched on. That feature was eliminated in favor of a full length flight deck on both ships in late 30s reconstructions.
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  154. Always enjoy your ship videos. How much did the Tennessees, and Colorados, benefit from analysis of Jutland? The oldest copy of Jane's at the local library is the 1958 edition, which lists the deck armor of both classes, presumably after their WWII updates, as 3 1/2" on the upper deck and 2 1/2" on the lower deck, with the more extensively reconstructed West Virginia having 9" of deck armor. Other than West Virginia, this amount of deck armor is far short of the later classes that were built in the 30s, and short of the British N3s, which were designed after the analysis of Jutland. It's interesting that, while the RN pressed on with construction of Hood, the other three ships of that class were suspended, and ultimately cancelled as it was reportedly deemed not feasible to update them. Yet the USN pressed on with laying the Maryland down a year after Jutland, and her three sisters, three years after Jutland, while the RN was going back to the drawing board. For that matter, the final design of the Lexingtons appears comparable to the Hood, but they were laid down after the RN knew it didn't want any more ships as thin skinned as the Hood. Seems that the USN would have been well advised to finish up the Tennessees as they were already building, but cancel the Colorados and Lexingtons before they were laid down, and go straight to the 1920 South Dakotas. What are your thoughts?
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  155. Found your video on the SoDaks. Very interesting, especially the chart comparing armor with the preceding classes. Found a new book I will need to read "The Battleship Holiday"
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  156.  @afx935  I have read that the guns on the Majestics had another issue: "steel choke". Apparently what happened was that, as the gun was fired and the liner stretched, a ridge would form in the liner. Eventually the ridge would grow to the size that the shell would be jolted enough when it hit the ridge to start the fuse. This became more of a problem when guns from the Majestics were remounted on the Lord Clive class monitors, due the heavy use the guns were subjected too. iirc in one case a monitor in the Gallipoli campaign fired, the shell detonated just after leaving the muzzle, and a nearby French destroyer was showered with shell fragments. "Steel choke" was suffered by some other guns as well as those from the Majestics. It was a matter of a learning curve, how to design the liners so they would not develop that ridge.
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  157.  @hughgordon6435  To a degree, ship types could be recognized by their rig. A two masted ship would be a brig or snow, so probably relatively small. A two masted ship with a gaff rigged mainmast was a brigantine, probably civilian. A three masted ship with gaff rigged mizzen, was a barque, with gaff rigged mizzen and main, a barquentine, most likely civilian. All masts gaff rigged, a schooner, most likely civilian. Three square rigged masts, with nothing for size comparison, could be a ship of the line, frigate, sloop of war/corvette, or a civilian ship.
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  158. I chewed some of the alternatives in a comment a couple hours ago. The South American powers didn't have the money. The two surviving Invincibles were offered to Chile. Chile declined. Agincourt was offered to Brazil. Brazil declined. The only reasonably possible buyer would be the Dutch. They would want a ship that was "turn key", not something they would need to pour a lot of money into. They would want something oil fired, because that was the fuel they had in abundance, on Borneo. iirc, the RN did not put a Farthing into the Iron Dukes and Tiger in the 20s. They were never given torpedo bulges, never converted to oil fuel, no supplemental deck armor added. The USN however, did pour millions into modernizing Florida and Utah, only a few years before Florida was scrapped and Utah converted to a target ship. They received new oil-fired boilers (surplus from the North Dakota program), bulges and deck armor (also surplus from the ND program). But they still carried 12" guns and plodded along at 21kts. Would the Dutch want them, in the early 30s?
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  159. Last thought, on Biden's fractured speech patterns, Packman has made Trump's fractured speech patterns a routine feature of his pieces, for a few years. I think the implicit message that attracts Trump voters is he will make America white again. And Biden's implicit message is that he isn't Trump. Forget about soaring rhetoric. Politics in the US has been distilled down to the level of a person with an IQ of 50.
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  160.  @timothyschmidt9566  you made me look it up. :) The Des Moines class used Mk 16 guns, which Navweaps says were apparently the first mark that used a "loose liner", secured by a liner locking ring, rather than the usual shrink fit. That would explain how the liners could be removed with less temperature differential and force to break the liner loose than was the case with earlier shrink fit liners. I learned something tonight. Thanks!
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  161. wrt the question about Marine detachments on USN ships, the Marines were long gone when I was on the Lex, but I did notice one head that was tagged for Marines, so there was some separation of facilities. With the Marines gone from the ship, "G-Division" had custody of all the small arms, as well as the line throwing guns.
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  162. wrt the question about casemate mounted secondaries, I noticed that the battlecruisers that Jackie Fisher had a hand in, tended to have deck mounts, rather than casemates. I found the text of a letter Jellicoe is supposed to have written when he raised his flag on Iron Duke. The letter was hilarious in it's description of the amount of water shipped by the casemate mounts. I can't help but wonder if Jellicoe had some input on the immediate post-war British designs in pushing away from casemate mounts, due to the problems he had directly experienced with them.
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  163. The 12" was an attempt at reducing weight and cost. The USN did not switch to smokeless until after Iowa was built. Iowa had a major role in schooling BuOrd about the differences between black or brown powder and smokeless, with, iirc, one 12" and two 8" blowing their muzzles and chases off.
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  164.  @janwitts2688  yes, most people are obsessed with size. RN torpedo boat defense went from 12 pounders, to 4". then 6" on the Iron Dukes. But Jackie Fisher held forth on the 4", saying that rate of fire more than made up for the smaller individual shells. The ships that Fisher had a direct hand in designing, the Renowns and Courageouses, had multiple 4", rather than casemate mounted 6". On the USN example I worked out, the only advantage the 5"/51 had was in armor penetration, but the DDs and torpedo boats the secondaries were intended to shoot at typically are not armored, so does the 5" armor penetration really make a difference?
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  165. There is a sequence in the film "The Bridges at Toko Ri" that show the ship being turned by thrust from aircraft lined up on deck.
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  166. Thinking on this a bit more, the Washington treaty allowed France to lay down a new, treaty compliant, BB in 27 and 29. With two of the Normandie class hulls at 65% complete, France could have pressed to have the 1927 and 1929 construction windows revised to allow for completion of existing, unfinished, hulls as an alternate to laying down new hulls. Then France could have closed up the hulls of Normandie and Flandre and laid them up for 5-7 years, while a new, longer, drydock is built. When construction resumes, as their original displacement was only 25,000T, there is plenty of room for doing the work considered in 1919 to make them 28kt ships, along with building a modern superstructure with modern secondary armament. Then scrapping two of the Courbets in 30-31 A Normandie built to late 20s standards, could easily defeat a Deutschland, so the Dunkerques would probably never have been built.
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  167. Ah-Hah! In the 16"/50 heavy vs non-heavy shell question, Drac mentions the tactic of firing with a reduced charge to change muzzle velocity and trajectory. He may have seen the question I put in January about how using a reduced charge was SOP in the USN, with the trajectories calculated and included in the published gunnery tables, and whether Bismark could have done the same to score a deck hit on Hood.
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  168. For Ninja, the KGV 14" armament seems to follow the "more smaller guns means more hits" theory. I have been looking into that issue, as most of the justifications offered do not make any sense. The Admiralty produced a wide variety of designs for the KGVs with 14", 15", and 16" guns. In the fall of 35, the alternatives were analyzed by the Technical Division of Naval Staff. Their conclusion was that a 9-15" armament provided the best balance of hitting power, speed, and protection. The analysis said "The 14" gun ship should be ruled out, unless required by treaty." The Sea Lords agreed to go 15". Then, the US said it would be open to the upcoming Second London treaty imposing a 14" limit, contingent on Japan agreeing. A year earlier, December of 34, Japan had withdrawn from the treaty system. At that time, Japan said it's withdrawal was due to it's demand for parity with the US and UK. Japanese representatives said at the time, they were open to a new treaty, as long as the new treaty gave Japan parity. The US and UK were not going to give Japan parity, so I don't see how anyone could have taken the US offer of 14", contingent on Japan's agreement, seriously. The designs for KGVs with the different armament schemes show the 9-15" armament weighs less than the 12-14" under consideration. As the 15" armament has fewer guns, the lower parts count would indicate the 15" armament would cost less. Clearly, someone wanted the 14" armament badly enough to go against the Technical Division's analysis, against the issue of weight, and against the issue of cost. The only reason I can think of is adherence to the "more smaller guns equals more hits" theory.
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  169. wrt the question about the Axis having adequate fuel supplies. The Vichy government was increasingly accommodating to the Axis. Luftwaffe aircraft were operating out of fields in Vichy held Syria. The Germans and Italians supported a coup in Iraq that put an Axis friendly regime in power. Oil was being produced at that time in Iraq. A 12" pipeline was operating, which ran between Kirkuk and Haifa. After the formation of Israel, part of that pipeline was repurposed for a new line to Baniyas, Syria. A rail line had been built by the Ottoman Empire from northern Iraq to the Med, but, after WWI, part of that rail line ventured into Turkey, which was neutral in WWII. In April 41, the Axis could have landed on friendly beaches in Syria, driven into friendly held oil fields in Iraq, and begun construction of rail and pipeline connections to bring the oil to friendly ports in the Med. The British invaded Iraq to reinstall a friendly regime in May 41, then invaded Vichy Syria in June 41, closing the window of opportunity the Axis had to secure a major oilfield. Can't help but wonder why Hitler decided invading Russia in June 41 was a better idea.
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  170.  @3vimages471  "superfiring" means the gun is mounted above, and fires over, another gun.
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  171. American AA guns on Yamato. imho, would not have made a difference, due to the number of USN aircraft used in the attacks. The Japanese Type 89s on Yamato and Type 98s that were probably mounted on most of the escorts don't give up that much to the 5/38. The Type 96 topped the Oerlikon in both projectile weight and range, but had a much lower rate of fire. The only gap in the Japanese AA capability was a midsize autocannon. Building the Italian Model 1938 37mm under license, while not as good as the Bofors, would have filled that gap. But none of this would matter due to the weight of the USN attack. RAF Wing Commander Pat Gibbs DSO DFC & Bar worked out the principles of successful air attack against ships. during the war. The RAF didn't have dive bombers, so relied on torpedo bombers. Against a single ship, like Bismark, torpedo bombers did well enough. Against escorted ships, where the torpedo bombers had to fly over a destroyer screen, the aircraft were torn to shreds by AA fire. The tactics refined by Gibbs while commanding a Beaufort squadron on Malta were, first, use an overwhelming force to saturate the defenses, and second, bring along aircraft, in his case Beaufighters, to strafe the ships to suppress AA fire. Accounts of the attack on the Yamato show the pilots were following Gibbs' book.
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  172.  @sirbollocks609  you may recall the "laminated safety glass" that used to be used in cars, at least in the US. The glass was made by laminating a sheet of clear plastic between layers of glass, so, when the glass was broken, the plastic would hold it together, rather than shards of glass flying everywhere.
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  173.  @michaelkovacic2608  well, Drac has not gotten up to answering questions from guide 334 yet, and guide 334 was posted May 6th. so the lead time, right now, looks to be about five months.
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  174. wrt the question about carrier conversions if the Washington treaty occurred a few years later. I agree with Drac that the Japanese would have been looking at converting the Kiis. wrt to the USN, SecNav Daniels had proposed another building program to follow the 1916 program that included the Lexigntons. But Daniels was gone with the change of administration in 1921. A four year delay in the treaty would put the conference during the Coolidge administration. Coolidge was even less interested in defense spending than Harding had been. As Drac said, given the attitude in the US during the time, I doubt the USN would have had a big capital ship program in the 20s. It was apparently the US that proposed the battlecruiser conversion clause of the treaty. Without battlecruisers under construction, the US would not have proposed the clause. If the UK has a G3 follow-on under construction, it might propose the conversion clause, but why would the US agree to it? I am not sure the conversion clause would have existed at all. Without the special clause, conversions would be limited by the treaty's general carrier specification of 27,000 tons. Or, the conference could fail entirely, as the 1927 (Coolidge administration) conference failed. There may not have been a successful naval conference until First London, in 1930, motivated by the depression.
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  175. wrt the question about USN green aviator uniforms. iirc, the 1941 movie "Dive Bomber" gives a very good look at them, as well as pre-war air ops on the Enterprise, all in Technicolor. Regarding the issue of enclosed cockpit aircraft being flown with the canopy open, having the canopy open both improves visibility and makes it easier to get out of the plane if something goes wrong.
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  176.  @davidb6576  the one from the 60s, is "USS Ben Franklin; The Ship That Wouldn't Die". There are others about Franklin, and there are films about Laffey with similar names.
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  177.  @Knight6831  If the Ark had not been sunk in November of 41, it probably would have been sunk by U-73 on August 11th of 42. That was the date Eagle was sunk. Eagle had been deployed to Force H to replace Ark. So, if Ark had not already been sunk, it probably would have been where Eagle was the following August.
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  178.  @solutionless123  the arms trade in general has always been a bit shady. Basil Zaharoff, an agent for Vickers, had a tendency to oversell their products. An incident relayed in "Reilly Ace Of Spies", pitted Riley, a British spy, against Zaharoff, for contracts for new ships for Russia. Riley maneuvered himself into position as the representative in Russia for Blohm und Voss. Reilly then advised British Intelligence, that, if B&V won the contract, he would forward full sets of drawings of the ships to the British government, giving the British government an incentive to hobble Zaharoff's efforts, cost Vickers a fortune in profits, cost thousands of British shipyard workers their jobs, to gain intelligence about German ship design. meanwhile, Reilly would pocket a massive sales commission from B&V. The US government made sizeable trade concessions to Argentina to aid US yards in winning the contracts for the Rivadavias, even though the Curtis turbines the ships were equipped with were considerably inferior to British Parsons turbines. The Admiralty bought some 14" guns that Bethlehem Steel had built for the Greek battleship that was building in Germany. The Brits discovered the gun design was defective, the guns tended to droop. I have not seen specific numbers, but I have read that the price Chile paid for Latorre and the destroyers was at a significant discount to their original contract price. Latorre was no longer a new ship, and was becoming obsolete by 1920. The destroyers were from an order for six Chile had placed before the war. Chile received two destroyers just before the war started, but the other four were requisitioned by the Admiralty. One of the four was sunk at Jutland. The other three were very active during the war, with HMS Broke being involved in two particularly lurid brawls. The two ships that Chile had received new from the builders in 1914 lasted until 1945, but the three that had been with the RN during the war went to the breakers in 1933. I wonder how serviceable those three had been for several years before they were scrapped, as Chile rang up Thornycroft in 1928 and ordered six more destroyers.
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  179.  @sharlin648  the "high velocity" version was not a cure. The LV round had an MV of 1920fps, vs 2400fps for the HV round, which provided a ceiling of 13,300ft. The Bofors MV was 2800, with a ceiling of 23,500ft, meaning it could start plinking dive bombers before they started their dive.
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  180. If you look at the actual data, the per-capita murder rate in Chicago is well below that of several other cities. Two factors lead to the media hype and hysteria: Chicago has a large population, so there are more murders in total, and many members of the media have offices in Chicago, but not in the other, more violent, cities, so it is easier for them to cover violence in Chicago. So far, for 2023, Chicago ranks 10th in per capita murder rate, behind such garden sports as St Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis, and others. No, I am not a Chicago resident. I live in the burbs of Detroit.
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  181. Friedman has a negative take on these ships. They were unsatisfactory in several ways, including a low metacentric height, but, as Congress had ordered them, the Board felt obligated to start construction of something.
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  182. wrt to the question about the Washington treaty prohibiting fortification of Pacific islands, The UK had already had decades to fortify Singapore. The US had already had decades to fortify the Philippines, particularly Manila Bay. The Japanese were awarded the former German colonies, the Marianas, Carolines, and Marshals, which sit astride the US communication lines between Hawaii and the Philippines, after WWI. Japan had not had time to fortify these new possessions, various points of interest like Truk. I'm thinking the ban on fortifications was aimed at Japan.
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  183.  @kingswagii1607  the ships that were designed from the outset for TE drive had a layout intended to take advantage of the drivetrain. The boiler rooms were located along the sides of the hull, to act as a secondary torpedo defense system, with the turbine/generator sets inboard, along the centerline. There was only room at the inboard end of the prop shafts for the motors. To rebuild the ships to take 1930s vintage geared turbines would require a complete rearrangement of the boiler and engine rooms so that all four turbines could be installed in line with the prop shafts. Secondly, the WNT only allowed defensive improvements in ships: armor, torpedo protection and AA armament. Drac has mentioned that, if the QEs had been built with small tube boilers, they could have made 28kts. Several of the QEs were modernized in the late 30s, including new boilers, but still only made low 20s speeds, so I would assume that the Admiralty's interpretation of the treaty was it was illegal to significantly increase their speed. Italy was granted more leeway in improving their ships as they were so obsolete to begin with, and Japan dropped out of the treaty system, so was no longer constrained.
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  184.  @captainobvious9233  I have read that it crossed the Japanese commander's mind, but between the damage to the ship and the distance it would need to be towed, he decided it wasn't worth the risk and effort.
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  185. Interesting speculation about the RN facing down the IJN. As Drach said, it would come down to the aircraft. Navalized Hurricanes and Spits had their shortcomings. The biplane torpedo planes were achingly slow, which gave AA and intercepting fighters more opportunity to chop them up. Buying more suitable aircraft from the US would be the first thing to come to mind. The Dauntless could carry a larger payload than a Skua and had a longer range. The Devastator was hobbled with the unreliable early Mk 13 torpedo, and the Brit aerial torp was significantly longer. The Avenger did not come into service until mid 42. The Brits would have difficulty using their favorite offensive weapon, the torpedo.
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  186.  @Philistine47  I had not heard of the UK wanting out of the alliance with Japan, but, seems to me, the alliance outlived it's usefulness. iirc, the UK wanted to use the Japanese to keep an eye on Russian and German ambition in the Pacific. With Russia defanged by the revolution, and all the German colonies forfeited after the war, the only possible seaborne opponents for Japan were the UK and US.
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  187.  @Moredread25  iirc, the rail guns were not captured by the Austrians. After the war they were put in storage in La Spezia, and not used again.
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  188.  @liladoodle  I have thought about what the USN could have used besides a collier. Washington was not available until after the Washington treaty. the same time as the Lexingtons were available.. After the war, the UK was looking to dispose of some largish hulls, particularly the surviving Invincibles, which were offered to Chile. The US was given SS Vaterland as war reparations, while Vaterland's two sisters were given to the UK, one going to Cunard and the other to White Star. I could imagine the US offering a swap of Vaterland for one of the Invincibles, or Agincourt, both of which have the advantage of being fast enough to keep up with the battle fleet, and being a bit longer than Langley. The US didn't want to spend much on carriers though. Congress appropriated more money for zeppelins than they did for Langley. Before Lexington and Saratoga became available, the USN was considering converting another collier to a carrier.
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  189. Problem is, some adversaries have the bad form to not get within 16,000 yards. During 1914-1916, the head of BuOrd, Admiral Strauss, kept pushing 14" guns because they could penetrate any existing BB at 12,000 yards. But Dogger Bank was at about 20,000 and Jutland was at more than 15,000. In WWII, West Virginia opened up on Yamashiro at something over 22,000. What do you do when the opponent doesn't want to fight the fight the way that is optimal for you?
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  190.  @Alex-cw3rz  from what I read, seems Yamashiro wasn't sunk by gunfire, but by the five or six torpedoes it caught. The point is, the upgraded 16"/45 could punch through any part of Yamashio at that range. For that matter, the upgraded 14"/50s on Tennessee and California could punch through at that range too. The battleships would probably have shot Yamashio to bits if the torpedoes had not killed her first. According to the tables on Navweaps, a Bismark class could punch through KGV's belt up to 24,000 yards, and could use it's speed advantage to control the range with KGV. This debate raged in the USN during WWI, with Strauss arguing that more 14" guns could be mounted than 16", and, as long as you bought his assertion that engagements would never occur beyond 12,000, the 14" provided more firepower. By the summer of 16, the General Board and SecNav had seen enough long range gunfights between the Brits and Germans to realize that Strauss' argument was not valid. I haven't had time to watch Drac's video yet, but I will be watching with interest to see if the Admiralty reenacted the argument that raged in the USN twenty years earlier.
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  191. Meanwhile, here in the US, VW management is squawking about the impending tariffs on Mexican cars. VW is particularly exposed as two thirds of the cars they sell in the US are built in Mexico. VW gas models are already expensive here, for what they are. Adding a 25% tariff will make them extremely uncompetitive. The thought has crossed my mind that VW may simply abandon the US, and pivot the two plants in Mexico to building for the EU, while further reducing production rates in the EU.
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  192. wrt the question about navies having dedicated fuel reserves, at one time, the USN did have dedicated oil reserves, at Elk Hills in California and at Teapot Dome. In the early 20s, SecNav Denby transferred custody of the oil reserves to the Department of the Interior. The Secretary of the Interior then proceeded to grant oil production licenses to whichever oil companies paid him the largest bribes, igniting the best known case of corruption in the Harding administration.
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  193.  @HMSFord  I will second that nomination. During the war, my grandfather was a civilian worker in the Bremerton Navy Yard, and helped build those sub chasers. They were gasoline fueled. On October 9, 1918, SC-219 was being refueled by USS Chestnut Hill when a fuel tank exploded. Chief Gunner's Mate Oscar Schmidt Jr, of the Chestnut Hill, dove into the water and saved the life of one of the sub chaser crewmen. Schmidt was awarded the Medal of Honor.
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  194.  @ivanmonahhov2314  from the activity information I have read on Royal Sovereign, it went into the Philadelphia Navy Yard for refit in late 42. It was there through most of 43. The 15" ammo hoists were worn out, but the USN wouldn't touch them. So it went back to the UK without the hoists repaired. The RN looked at it as a candidate to provide fire support for the Normandy landing, but rejected her, because the ammo hoists were worn out. So they fobbed her off on the Russians. Seems that, by the end of 43 the only R-class that was still serviceable was Ramillies. Malaya was worn out too, and also retired at the end of 43.
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  195.  @lio5624  The monitor class ships were for shore bombardment. The RN started out using obsolete battleships for bombardment, but found them restricted by their deep draft, and vulnerable to torpedoes. The monitors were very hastily and cheaply built, with very shallow draft and huge torpedo bulges. The Erebus class used surplus new twin 15" turrets. The Abercrombie class used new American twin 14" turrets. The rest of the monitors used guns and turrets taken from obsolete RN warships, particularly the Majestic class battleships and the Drake and Cressy class cruisers.
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  196.  @TheKingofbrooklin  Yes. Chapter 1, Article 18: "Each of the Contracting Powers undertakes not to dispose by gift, sale or any mode of transfer of any vessel of war in such a manner that such vessel may become a vessel of war in the Navy of any foreign Power."
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  197.  @whispofwords2590  I commented on the general carrier history post that the Lexingtons were horribly inefficient as carriers. The Navy compounded the mistake by building them after the tonnage limits of the Washington Treaty were known. The Yorktowns had hanger decks 200' longer than the Lexingtons, on a third less displacement. The two Lexingtons could have been replaced by two Yorktowns, with enough tonnage left over to build another Yorktown, and still have enough tonnage available to build the Wasp as another 20,000 ton carrier. Additionally, the Navy was in a dilemma designing the Yorktowns because every ton added for capability or surviveability took a ton away from the Wasp, edging the Wasp closer to uselessness. Without the Lexingtons hogging tonnage quota, the Navy would have been able to design in more capability and surviveability into Yorktown, Enterprise, Wasp and, ultimately, Hornet, because Hornet was built to the best available design, even though the Navy knew of the compromises made in the Yorktown design.
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  198.  @tomdolan9761  from my reading, the calculus in the Harding administration was that Congress was going to cut off funding for the building program, regardless. So Harding called the conference to try and talk the other powers into halting construction as well.
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  199.  @michaelsnyder3871  intelligence operations always involve a degree of guesswork. Remember the conversation between Charlton Heston and Hal Holbrook, as Rochefort, in "Midway"? Heston asked how much of the IJN correspondence they could actually read. Holbrook said words to the effect "we don't really read them. we see a hint here, a glimmer there". Heston says "you're guessing!" That is about it, educated guessing. The Admiralty designed the Admiral class battlecruisers, based on their best guesses about the Mackensens. The Alaska class cruisers were designed based on best guesses about an IJN class of heavy cruisers. The 1938 conference between the US and UK regarding where to set the new displacement limit, was based on their best guess about the size of the Yamato, and their own facilities. Reportedly, the UK wanted a limit of 42,000 due to limits of facilities around the empire (which really makes you wonder if the G3 and N3 were intended to be built, or a bluff, only bargaining chips to be traded away for concessions by other parties to the treaty), while the US wanted 45,000, because that was what was needed to achieve their goals for speed, protection, and firepower. The only thing the US and UK could be reasonably sure of was that Yamato was going to be considerably over 35,000, which triggered the escalator clause. The estimates of how much over 35,000 could have been colored by the parties own agendas. I have read that the assessment was Yamato would be 45,000, which was what the US wanted. I wonder if British Intelligence was saying 42,000, because that was what the Admiralty wanted? The actual data in hand was imprecise. As we saw with Bismark and Littorio, you could be significantly over the treaty limit, without the UK and US catching on. That is why I suggest that, had Yamato not been so far over the limit, but closer to Bismark and Littorio, the US and UK might have not had the confidence to call the IJN on it, and increase the displacement limit.
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  200. wrt the modernization of Warspite, vs QE and Valiant, can't help but wonder why all of Warspite's 6" were not removed and replaced with the twin 4" DP mount. By the numbers on Navweaps, twin 4" vs single 6", the twin 4" has double the weight of fire per minute, and greater range, because the casemate mounts are limited to about 14 degrees of elevation.
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  201. wrt the New Yorks using VTE power, the Wiki entry gives a somewhat different answer to that question. The Floridas and Wyomings used Parsons turbines, from the UK. When the New Yorks were ordered, there was apparently pressure to "buy American", but the US turbine manufacturers could not meet the Navy's performance specifications, so the Navy reverted to VTE. Of the next class, Oklahoma still had VTE power, while Nevada used Curtis turbines, then the Pennsylvanias were a head to head comparison of Curtis and Parsons turbines. It is entirely possible that Parsons understood something about turbine efficiency that Curtis did not. There had been earlier head to head comparisons, where the USN would build one BB with VTE power, and it's sister with Curtis turbines and the Curtis powered ships were horribly inefficient. The range and coal capacity for the two classes is incomplete in the 1919 edition of Jane's and somewhat divergent in the Wiki entries, but there is some indication that the Parsons turbines were quite competitive with VTE. The 1919 edition of Jane's also reports an inability/unwillingness of US turbine manufacturers to meet USN specifications motivating the reversion to VTE.
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  202.  @t.r.a.e.3218  That bracing, iirc "diagonal riser", was a discovery during Constitution's last restoration. Large frigates had an issue with "hogging", where the bow and stern sag, due to the weight of the ship and guns, where the hull forward and aft is too narrow to provide enough buoyancy to support the load. The diagonal braces direct the loads from the gun deck toward the keel amidships, where there is enough buoyancy to support the load. Apparently, those braces were removed somewhere during the ship's life. The restoration crew was reviewing the small amount of documentation that has survived from the ship's construction and saw mention of "diagonal risers" in the documents. The British had captured USS President, a sister of Constitution, and, per usual Admiralty procedure, made up a set of drawings for her. Those drawings still exist in the Admiralty archives, so the Constitution restoration crew was able to review the drawings, which showed those diagonal braces. Seeing them on the drawings it became obvious how critical they were for the ship's structural integrity, so they were recreated and installed during the restoration.
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  203. My two cents worth, from an English perspective, the Canadians were helping convoy supplies to England, while the UK had temporarily abandoned the Pacific, so the RCN was more important. The RAN was working the same Pacific area as the USN.
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  204. With regard to Dunkerque and Strasbourg, I was reading Garzke's "Allied Battleships" recently. Garzke claims Strasbourg, with it's increased armor, was in fact a response to Littorio. The first two Littorios were apparently ordered June 10, of 34. The Italian government was openly talking about building 35,000 ton treatymax ships, which was widely reported in the press. Strasbourg was ordered July 16th, with increased armor, as a reply, according to Garzke. At the start of the 1930s, France had the 70,000 tons of capital ship tonnage as offered by the Washington Treaty, plus an additional 23,500, due to the France finding a rock in Quiberon Bay and sinking, in 1922. Given the replacement tonnage available due to the loss of France, Richelieu, combined with the two Dunkerques, did not violate the fleet tonnage limits of the treaty. France publicly renounced the fleet tonnage limits of the treaty and proceeded with Jean Bart, which did put France over the fleet tonnage limit. It occurs that, if France had decided an uparmored Dunkerque was not an adequate reply to Littorio, and gone directly to the Richelieu and Jean Bart, they would have been very close to being within the treaty displacement limit, and, without Strasbourg occupying a drydock in Saint Nazaire and consuming production resources, Jean Bart could have been laid down at the same time as Richelieu, and both would have been complete by the fall of France. Your thoughts?
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  205.  @someuser7501  I envisioned a GM, several years ago, where the only Americans employed by the company were the honchos at the HQ in Detroit. All vehicles would be entirely designed and built in China. Of course, now we have a government that is eager to erect tariff barriers. So, now, the plan would be to offshore all the engineering, because foreign engineers are cheaper than Americans, transmit the design information to the US over the same fibre that brings us all those telemarketing calls, to duck tariffs on physical goods, then build here. Thing is, with the US going all in on ICE, the skill set to design ICE powertrains, and the huge vehicles that the industry wants to sell in the US, will atrophy in places like China and India. The engineering will probably become a primary application of AI, or become entirely static, like US automotive engineering was from the 50s, into the 70s, before safety and emissions regs forced changes.
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  206.  @dejangabrovsek6534  The ships with low quarterdecks tended to be wet aft when steaming at high speed. Hood always had a reputation for being wet aft. Must be something about how the water flows around the hull at high speed. I was reading about the German Mackensen class battlecruisers and the article said they were designed flush decked to make them dryer aft.
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  207.  @leshalles9282  I read a book about that battle decades ago. It said the Japanese force was coming down the slot and saw Blue. According to the book, Blue had air search radar, so it did not show surface ships. The Japanese lookouts watched Blue, ready to pounce if Blue gave any sign on seeing them. But Blue went on it's way without a twitch, apparently not seeing them.
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  208.  @pedenharley6266  In the late 30s, several old C Class (older than Delhi) cruisers were tagged to be converted into AA cruisers, with, first, single, then twin 4"/45s. That work seems to have been suspended when the war started. Navweaps says that, no matter how many 4"/45s were built, the Admiralty never had enough of them. The USN's supply of 5" guns was probably as tight. I have read about how the USN ramped up production of 4 and 5 inch guns during WWI, farming production out to a large number of companies, but never had enough to arm all the convoy ships, and escorts. I would expect the situation to have been the same in WWII.
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  209. Imagine what it is like inside Silversides in July. The LST in Muskegon also hosts scout groups, but only in the summer.
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  210.  @garychisholm2174  not unheard of. USS Monadnock, a monitor, was decommissioned and sold at Cavite in 1923. USS Monterey, another monitor, was towed from Cavite to Pearl Harbor, to act as station ship, in 1917. Monterey was then towed to Oakland, CA for scrapping in 1921.
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  211.  @MrNicoJac  wrt: "with regard to". WNT: "Washington Naval Treaty".
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  212.  @psychologicaltirefire8190  how far back do you want to go? The Battle of Lake Erie was fought on September 10, 1813. Not technically a "Great Lake" but battles were fought on Lake Champlain during both the revolution and War of 1812. During WWI, Ford Motor produced Eagle Boats at the Rouge complex in Dearborn, MI. During WWII a variety of subs, LSTs, tugs, and more, were produced around the lakes, which then made their way along rivers and canals to the ocean.
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  213. The WNT has provided hours of covid isolation entertainment. The Steve plan of tweaks: first, set the battleship maximums at what was already in commission. Setting gun size at 16" forced the Japanese to lie as the Nagatos had 16.1", so I would set the maximum at 16.1". Hood was far above the 35,000 ton limit, so I would set the individual ship tonnage where Hood was, according to treaty measure, 41,200. Because I hate waste, I would allow ships already in the water to be completed, provided that a corresponding tonnage of existing ships were eliminated. The cutoff date for what is "in the water" would be the same as the cutoff date for "experimental" aircraft carriers, November 12, 1921. This was done with Colorado and West Virginia, in exchange for the two Delawares. I would extend it to allow completion of Washington, at the cost of the two Floridas. I would give the UK the stink eye for crying about not having any 16" gun ships as the RN had a large number of ships with 15" guns while the bulk of the USN and IJN were armed with 14". The Japanese would feel pretty ill-used as Tosa and Kaga missed the "in the water" date by one month and by five days, respectively, so I might offer them the choice of scrapping the Tosas, or completing them, and scrapping three of the Kongos instead.
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  214. I see Ranger as the true heir to Langley, with the same sort of aft boiler room and swiveling funnel arrangement. To my thinking, the Lexingtons should never have been built, with carrier development proceeding directly from Langley to Ranger. Yes, I hear the cries. The Lexingtons are big, and they look nice, but they were horribly wasteful of displacement for the air group they carried. Reading newspaper reports of the time, the cost overruns on the Lexingtons were horrendous, with the ships ending up costing twice as much as originally claimed. The Lexingtons also had an excruciatingly long build time, evidence the USN didn't know what it was doing, and was changing the design frequently as experience was gained with Langley. And, without the Lexingtons, the USN would have had displacement available to build three Yorkowns, with enough left over to build Wasp as another full size Yorktown.
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  215.  @theatagamer90  yes, you are correct, outside and inside diameter. As for the Seahawks, I live in metro Detroit, so am used to the Lions living down to the lowest expectations.
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  216.  @Adam-ns3gg  OK, 28kt QEs from the start, then the rebuilt QEs could maintain that speed without any treaty issues. What does that do for the case for building the Renowns and Hood? The QEs would be as fast as Tiger, and all the preceding battlecruisers. The KGVs would not offer any speed advantages over rebuilt QEs either. The KGVs are better protected, but could they modernize Malaya and Barham, and bring Warspite up to 1939 standard for the price of one KGV?
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  217.  @janwitts2688  iirc, the US paid Spain some $20M to give up it's claims on the Philippines and Guam. The balance of the Marianas and Carolines were also Spanish colonies, but, with the crown jewel, the Philippines, gone, Spain had little interest in the rest of it's Pacific holdings, so sold the island groups to Germany the next year, for some $4M. Japan, being allied with the UK, overran the German held islands in 1914, and continued to occupy the former German colonies north of the equator, after the war, under a League of Nations mandate. As for the US forcing the citizens of the Philippines to submit by force of arms, that was what imperial powers did at the time. Kipling wrote "White Man's Burden" around the turn of the century to try and make a moral case for imperial conquests.
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  218. Speaking of the WWI battlecruiser situation, some accounts I have read say that, in spite of the press of other priorities, construction of Hood proceeded as Hood, combined with the two Renowns then building, would make up the battlecruiser losses from Jutland. What if Fisher's salesman skills were just a bit better and the contracts for Agincourt and Resistance were also converted to Renown class battlecruisers? With four Renowns building, would Hood have been proceeded with, or any of the Admirals laid down at all? Then, in the late 1930s, with the KGVs and fast carriers under development, the other three Renowns receive rebuilds comparable to Renown's, because they can keep up with the new ships, while QE, Warspite and Valiant remain in their 1930 form, similar to Malaya and Barham. Would anything really change in WWII?
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  219.  @Blandge  I can see a US pre-war heavy cruiser being mistaken for a "California type" BB, because of the USN's affection for "clipper" bows. I don't know about the most egregious case. How many times did the Japanese claim to have sunk Enterprise? The second Lexington, CV-16, was claimed sunk by the Japanese so many times it became nicknamed "the blue ghost", blue for the camo paint color it was painted, and ghost because if was claimed sunk so many times. When I was on the Lex, some 50 years ago, I noticed a blue ghost mascot painted on the ship's C-1. The Wiki article says sinkings were claimed following actions on Dec 4, 43, March 8, 44, June 11,44, November 5,44
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  220. The British 18" torp was developed though the war too. The Mk XII had a 388lb warhead, but the MkXV, in service in 43, had a 575lb warhead, and the MkXVII. in service in 45, had a 600lb warhead. In the back of my mind is the thought the US Mk13 had it's short, fat, dimensions due to the TBD's eccentric way of carrying it's torp.
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  221.  @VinylScratchBass  That is CV-16. When the Lex first commissioned she was wearing a blue paint job. She gained the "ghost" part because the Japanese claimed to have sunk her so many times. When I was on the Lex, I was looking over her C-1 in the hangar one day and noticed a little blue ghost mascot painted on the fuselage. There are several photos on the net of the Lex's C-1 with various mascots that look like Casper the ghost, but that is not the paint job I remember.
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  222. I have read that PTs were also very handy attacking German "F-lighers" which were widely used in the Med the same way the Japanese used their Daihatsu barges. Watched a documentary a number of years ago, where a former PT Captain showed the smashed binoculars he had been wearing one night, when they deflected a bullet fired from an F-lighter, saving his life. When my dad landed in France in 44, he saw PTs off in the distance, guarding against any E-Boats that might try to take a shot at the transports. He was with me when I saw "PT 109" in the theater, and he commented he had not know they were as large as they were, because he had never seen one up close.
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  223.  @collinwood6573  considering how elderly the TBD was by 42, it was OK. It was considerably slower than the other USN aircraft, when loaded. That low cruising speed, I put down to the drag from the unorthodox way the TBD carried it's torpedo: hanging down at an angle, rather than cinched up tight under the fuselage. The reason the TBD was slaughtered at Midway was the attack was fatally botched. At Coral Sea, the TBDs, SBDs and F4Fs, made coordinated attacks. At Coral Sea, a few SBDs and F4Fs were lost to the Japanese CAP, but not a single TBD was lost to Japanese action. The only difference between Coral Sea and Midway was the SBDs and F4Fs all went in the wrong directions, leaving the TBDs exposed.
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  224.  @michaelkovacic2608  Another reply on this post made me think for a moment. By the time Bismark was launched, in 39, the US and UK had, by mutual agreement, increased the treaty displacement limit to 45,000. and the gun escalator had also been triggered, so Bismark was treaty compliant.
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  225.  @brendonbewersdorf986  not quite up to the Bofors standard, but John Browning designed a 37mm AA gun for the US army. Originally clip fed, from the left side, it was modified to take chain link belts, and feed from either the right or the left. I proposed, on another page, that, given a proper water cooling system, the Browning gun could have been used in a quad mount very much like that used on the PomPom, instead of the USN trying to get he 1.1" working. Of the two, the Browning 37, and the Bofors, the Bofors is the better gun. I have my notes somewhere, but, iirc, it comes down to the Bofors having a slightly larger shell, and a higher ceiling. The US Army used the Browning gun well into 42, gradually replacing it as Bofors became available.
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  226. iirc, the Lord Clive class used 12" turrets scrounged from some very old pre-dreadnoughts. Due to their age, these turrets were subject to frequent breakdown. They were not the sort of thing to rely on. The Admiralty was probably right in scrapping the Lord Clives, and only keeping the monitors that had the new 15" turrets on them. Additionally, any monitor would be immediately recognized as not German.
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  227. wrt the alt history of no allied intervention in Greece, the Axis was working on getting access to the oil fields of Iraq and Iran. The Vichy government was increasingly accommodating to the Axis, allowing Luftwaffe units to operate in airfields in Syria. Italy and Germany had backed a coup in Iraq, April 1, 41, which removed the pro-British regime and installed a pro-Axis regime. The Iranian regime was also regarded as Axis friendly. Without Allied intervention, Greece may have been defeated sooner, enabling an amphibious operation from Greece to Syria. British troops invaded Iraq May 2, 41, closing the door on the possibility of unopposed Axis access to Iraqi oil, before the Germans could secure Greece and Crete.
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  228.  @gregorywright4918  Lexington's forward flight deck was squared up in 37. I don't think Sara had it's forward deck squared up until early 42. The last of the old BBs to be rebuilt were the New Mexicos in 1930-31. The Tennessees and Colorados received minimal updates, until damage from December 7th offered an excuse to rebuild some of them. Yorktown, Enterprise and Wasp were built with money from an industrial recovery program, as they required all new steel, all new machinery, and the work was contracted to private yards. That money would probably have not been available to modernize existing ships in Navy Yards, because modernizations would not require as much new material, so would not do as much to get industry moving again.
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  229. Sweepers weren't totally ignored. The USS Caine was a minesweeper, specifically a DMS, in the book a converted 4 piper, in the movie they used two Gleaves class DDs that the Navy had also converted to sweepers. There is one sequence in both the book and movie where they practice deploying paravanes. I looked in a 1945 edition of Jane's and found a class of converted 4 piper DMSs, exactly as described in the book. Curiously, there was a 1 digit gap in the hull numbers listed in Jane's, with no corresponding entry in the war losses section. That missing number was the one Wouk used for the Caine.
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  230. wrt to the question of Revenge being a downgrade from the QE, and other cases of following ships being less capable, another glaring example are the USN Mississippi class BB-23 and 24. The Mississippis were of smaller displacement than the preceding Connecticut class, and so short on speed and coal capacity that they were incapable of keeping up with the rest of the battle line. The Mississippis were the product of Senator Hale, the Chairman of the Senate Naval Affairs Committee, who refused to pass the Navy appropriation legislation the House had passed to the Senate floor until his two small battleships were funded. Press criticism of the Mississippis at the time was blistering and there were charges that Hale was insisting on the small ships for personal reasons. Hale retired from the Senate in 1911, making the ships expendable. The Greeks showed up, with checkbook in hand, in 1914, desperate for battleships to counter those the Ottomans had building in the UK. Even then, the US held Greece up for some $12M+, what the US had paid for the the undersized, and by 1914 obsolete, ships, when new.
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  231. My two cents worth: a navy can call a ship whatever it wants. The RN called the Courageouses "large light cruisers". That classification appears to have been accepted by the Washington conference, as the Courageouses are not listed among capital ships on either the retention or disposal lists. So the Courageouses appear to have been grandfathered, as were all the other cruisers that exceeded treaty limits for cruisers. That opens the door to the possibility that, if the RN had continued with the classification of "dreadnought armed cruiser", all of the ships now regarded as "battle cruisers", would have been recognized by the treaty as "cruisers.
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  232. wrt the question on relining guns, I happened to read a US Naval Academy gunnery textbook from 1915 last week that describes the process in detail. At the turn of the century, a lot of guns were initially built without liners, and had to be bored out to make room for the liner when the gun was refurbished. The feed rate for the boring operation was about 6"/hour, so boring a 12-14" gun would take 4-5 days, running continuously, per pass, and it would take several passes to bore the gun sufficiently to allow insertion of a liner. Initially, the liners were of uniform diameter, which simplified the boring operation. The liners were inserted and removed by placing the gun in an oven and heating it, to cause the metal of the gun to expand, so the unheated liner could be inserted. Removing an existing liner amounted to heating the outside of the gun, while running cold water through the bore to keep the liner cool so it would not expand with the heated gun. Then pressing out the old liner with a press. Sometimes, the uniform diameter liners did not want to come out, and had to be bored out, consuming a great deal of time and expense. So the shift was made to boring the gun and turning the OD of the liner with a slight taper, so they would separate more readily.
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  233. wrt the question on the F2A, as Drac said, the first problem was weight. The early models were quite agile. "Pappy" Boyington praised it's handling. But the Navy wanted armor, self-sealing fuel tanks, more guns, more ammo, and weight grew. Besides a disastrous impact on performance, the increased weight lead to more landing gear failures. In Aussie hands, the planes were put on a diet: all the armor, except that directly behind the pilot, was removed. The wing 50 cal machine guns were replaced with .303s. Besides the reduced weight of the .303 guns and their ammo, putting the weight reduction out on the wins would also reduce rotational inertia, which improves roll rate. The life raft and Brewster provided radio, which did not work worth a hoot, were also removed. As modified, the Aussie Buffs apparently pretty much held their own against the early Japanese army fighters. Another problem was the engines installed on the Aussie and far east RAF Buffs. There was apparently a shortage of Wright Cyclones, so the planes built for export were fitted with worn out airline castoffs (the DC-2 used the Cyclone) that had been 'refurbished" by Wright. Whether due to the engines being refurbs, or the fundamental design of the engine, I don't know, but the Buffs in far east service also tended to overheat and blow out their oil. Given that the Cyclone was also used in the SBD and B-17, I would lean toward laying the engine's ill temper in the export Buffs on their state of wear, in spite of being "refurbished". Best moves to improve the Buff, besides the weight reduction program the Aussies gave them, would be actual, new, Cyclones, or Pratt Twin Wasps, like the earlier, Grumman-built, F4Fs had. Or, take the entire program away from Brewster and give it to someone who knew how to run an aircraft factory, and had capacity available.
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  234. The A5 Vigilante had a folding vertical stabilizer. Perhaps a similar approach could have been taken with the Tornado.
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  235.  @HumphreyHorsehead  I would suspect the poo went into the water at sea. I think I have a pic, on my other computer, of the instruction plaque in the head of USS Silversides. Solid trash and garbage went off the fantail of the ship. When I was on the Lex, sometime during the day, the 1MC would bark "take all trash and garbage aft", and over the rail it went. Marine heads on pleasure boats used to discharge into the water too. I remember the rhubarb when pleasure boat owners on the Great Lakes had to install holding tanks, iirc in the late 60s. I used to ride passenger trains in the 60s. Their bathrooms dropped directly onto the tracks.
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  236. Drac, I started looking in to the Courageous class "large light cruisers" some days ago. There are two narratives about them that I see repeated over and over: 1: they were built with shallow draft to operate in the Baltic. and, 2: they were converted to carriers because of the Washington treaty. I can't find any support for either of those narratives that makes any sense. As you point out in your piece on the Courageouses, the Germans could send any capital ships into the Baltic that they wanted via the Kiel Canal. If the Courageouses were the only big gun ships the RN could get into the Baltic, they would be dead meat when the entirety of the High Seas Fleet came over the horizon. If the RN could get other capital ships into the Baltic, there is no reason to build the Courageouses. The WNT appears to not regard the Courageouses as "capital ships". The Courageouses do not appear on the capital ship disposal list, nor the capital ship retention list, nor is there any verbiage that I can find in the treaty compelling their conversion. Why were the Courageouses built? One person on another forum has offered a scenario that makes sense: the Courageouses were built as cruiser killers that were small and cheap enough, in relative terms, to build in large quantity. That scenario has the virtue of making sense. The Courageouses cost a third less than the Renowns, and used fewer of the limited inventory of twin 15" turrets per ship, allowing more of them to be built. Have you ever heard of this alternative to the generally accepted scenarios?
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  237. wrt the question about the USN experimenting with T-E drive before using it in battleships, USS Jupiter had TE drive. Laid down in 1911, she was four years ahead of the T-E powered New Mexico.
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  238.  @timrobinson513  the full text of the treaties is available on line. Makes for interesting reading. For instance, Italy and France were the only countries given BB building windows in 27 and 29, while no-one else could start building replacements until 31. The first London treaty extended the BB building moratorium from 31 until 36, but the two construction windows the 1922 treaty allocated to France and Italy did not expire in those years, but rather were good until used. That is how France could lay down the Dunkerques and Italy could lay down the first two Littorios when they did, while the UK could not lay down the KGV until 37.
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  239.  @jetdriver  by "fully modernized" members of the Big 5, I presume you are referring to California and West Virginia. Those ships had been sunk, and were going to be in the yard a long time anyway. As long as a lot of reconstruction was being done anyway, may as well build them to 1942 standard. Colorado received next to nothing in reconstruction, just added AAA. Once the war was on, as long as ships were not severely damaged, I can understand the Brits not wanting to take a ship offline for a year or two for major work. As for wearing out the QEs and Rs, the ships were over 20 years old and obsolete. With Italy out of the war in 43, the German capital ships mostly sunk, and the KGVs in commission, the old tubs were not worth more than what could be described as palliative care as they all had a date with the breakers on V-E day.
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  240.  @f12mnb  "The Battleship Builders", which focuses on the RN, says the really heavy cranes were in the fitting out basin, where they handled the turrets, guns and, the object of the question I put above, the turbines and boilers. The cranes along the building ways were smaller, as they only handled sections of steel.
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  241.  @brendonbewersdorf986  Salamis being about 100 feet shorter, and 30 feet narrower than Eagle, and 30 feet shorter, 30 odd feet narrower than Bearn, and the Germans not having the experience the UK obtained with Argus, Furious, and Vindictive, the amount of suckage a Salamis carrier conversion would exhibit would probably make the French say "whew Bearn isn't as bad as that thing the Germans have"
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  242.  @memeboy8207  as Fred said, the only TV series that comes to mind is "McHale's Navy". For theatrical films including PTs, "They Were Expendable" and "PT 109". When "PT 109" was in production, there were no 80 foot Elco boats available, so 85 foot former Air Force rescue boats were modified to resemble Elcos.
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  243.  @scottgiles7546  each DD carried a dozen Mark 8s. Not a very good torpedo, but the captain of the Scheer could not count on any particular one malfunctioning. It would take some pretty fancy driving to duck all of them. And, while Scheer was ducking torpedoes, the freighters of the convoy are disappearing over the horizon.
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  244. wrt the question about models vs drawings, in some applications, the model was built first, because of the difficulty of rendering 3-dimentional objects on 2-dimension drawings. When I worked in fluid handling in the 70s, it was routine to build a model of a refinery or chemical plant first, to work out all the pipe routing, then make up drawings from the model. It was routine to build full scale mockups of new aircraft for the same reason, to work out all the hydraulic and electrical conduits and possible interference with bulkheads. The Boeing 777 was the first aircraft to be designed entirely in computer, in the early 90s, because, 3D computer modeling had finally advanced enough.
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  245. USN procurement choices in 1936. That is a "target rich environment", especially BuOrd. It wasn't just the ineffective Mk 14 detonators. The air launched Mk 13 torp suffered multiple failure modes including the motor not starting, sinking, running too deep and running erratically. In a live fire exercise in the summer of 41, of 10 Mk 13s fired, only 1 ran hot, straight and normal. Once BuOrd was convinced the failures were not all pilot error and went to work, the faults were corrected and the Mk 13 was an excellent weapon, by late 44. Then there was the 1.1" AA gun. Looked good on paper, liquid cooling and an automatic ammo feed system so it could fire continuously, with a larger shell and greater range than the 25mm AA guns then available. But the 1.1" had multiple jam modes, plus the human factors issue of not having adequate room for the loaders to do their job. The Navy produced a color newsreel film about Midway that has several short looks at a couple 1.1s, firing. In the first 3 looks, the 1.1" in the foreground is blasting away with all 4 guns and looking very formidable. In the 4th glimpse, only the gun on the right end is firing, the other three are all stopped. The 1.1's faults were never corrected. If BuOrd was not going to conduct adequate development programs and deliver reliable weapons, they should have overcome their "not invented here" bias and bought weapons from other services. so we would have gone into the war with Brit Mk VIIIs in subs, Brit Mk XIIs in aircraft, and Bofors AA guns.
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  246.  @alantoon5708  the "Honor Restored" that I find on YT was made in 2011, with the survivors of the crew talking in studio. The film from the 60s was shot when Franklin was in the breaker's yard, with the crewmen on the ship retracing their steps and actions the day of the attack.
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  247. I posed several alt history questions a few months ago: USN Colorados never built, RN reorders all four of the ships cancelled in 1914 as Renowns, and a couple others. It will be interesting to see if any tickle his fancy. Maybe even a speculation about the UK swapping all it's West Indies colonies to the US in settlement of it's war debt? (the more I looked into that one, the better I liked it)
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  248. My favorite alternate Midway (I did see the new film, prefer the mid 70s version) would be if the US dive bombers and fighters from all three carriers took the same route to the Japanese fleet as their torpedo bombers did, so the attack has something resembling coordination. The Devastator did fine at Coral Sea. They stuffed 6-7 torps into the Shoho, and fired about 20 torps at Shōkaku, though they all missed. Accounts I have read of Coral Sea indicate that the Devastators operated without loss, while losses were sustained by the SBDs and F4Fs that were intercepted by the CAP. My theory of why the TBDs scored hits against Shoho, but not against Shōkaku is that the Shoho was lightly defended, but the greater amount of AA fire they were taking from Shōkaku motivated the pilots to rush their aim and release point, giving the ship more time to maneuver against the slow Mk 13s.
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  249.  @kommissarkillemall2848  yes, it was one of Reeman's. As for the romantic angle, it was the 60s. I remember the hot scene in the book. There was a hot scene in Jan de Hartog's "The Captain" as well. I found "Saracen" in the library at school. I would have been about 13 when I read it, and wondered if the librarian knew that bit was in there.
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  250. Why not take the direct approach, license the 40mm from Bofors? It was available about the same time as the Hotchkiss. Bofors would license it to anyone with a checkbook. The Soviets licensed the 25mm version from Bofors, reverse engineered it, and scaled it up to 37mm.
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  251.  @TheLeper2001  In the 1960s, Avalon Hill produced a game based on the battle. The game was initially fought on maps, and, when British and German units were found to be at the same coordinates, then cardboard tiles for each capital ship and each CL and DD squadron were used to lay out and fight the battle, using speed and range measuring devices and hit probability tables. A battle in progress on my living room floor looked very much like what Drac showed in the video. In the version of the game I had, the ship tiles were flat cardboard with a drawing of the ship, and numbers denoting speed, gunnery and armor factors. I would not be surprised if a later version of the game had molded plastic ship tiles like Drac used in the video.
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  252.  @sharlin648  in short, yes, the Pom-Pom was hindered by a low muzzle velocity, which limited range. Keep in mind how old the Pom-Pom design was by WWII. The early, smaller bore version, dated from the Boer War. I have heard wartime Pom-Pom gunners say their objective was not so much to shoot down enemy aircraft, as it was to provide deterrence: throw so much flack in the aircraft's path that the pilot decides to go look for an easier target. The Pom-Pom had something of a renaissance when the RN returned to the Pacific late in the war. While the Pom-Pom lacked the range to effectively engage attacking aircraft before they dropped their payload, in the case of a kamikaze, where the aircraft does it's damage at zero range, the range limitation of the gun was not a factor. When a kamikaze closed to effective range, a Pom-Pom could shoot it to bits much more effectively than an Oerlikon.
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  253. wrt the question about the 14" guns on the KGVs, British cordite seems to be considerably less dense than USN smokeless powder. While the weight of the charge in the British guns is less, the chamber size of the British guns is significantly larger. This is also true of the 16"/45 used on the Nelsons vs the 16"/45 used on the US Colorado class. The muzzle velocity of the British guns is a bit lower, but a lower muzzle velocity results in a higher trajectory and steeper angle of fall, which is better able to penetrate deck armor. The debate about whether to stay with 16", or having more guns by downscaling to 14", was a long standing debate. The USN had had exactly the same debate 20 years earlier. The head of BuOrd insisted that engagements would always be fought at 12,000 yards or less, a 14" could penetrate well enough, and, being smaller, more 14" could be carried. The USN General Board looked at the engagement ranges at Jutland, overruled the head of BuOrd, and made long range gunnery the priority. As Drac said, the choice for the KGVs was dependent on the same condition that the head of BuOrd had specified in 1915: engaging at short range. I have another theory about the move to 14" guns. UK industry's capacity to make large guns had atrophied since WWI. The guns for the KGVs had to be ordered by late 35, before the change to 14" was specified by the Second London Treaty, to meet the construction schedule for the ships. I have read that the new 14" was designed to fit in the same cradle as the earlier 13.5"/45. When Tiger and most of the Iron Dukes were scrapped in the early 30s, the Admiralty retained many of the 13.5" guns. Navweaps says 54 of those guns were in inventory in 1939. It may be possible that the Admiralty designed the KGV gun mounts for backward compatibility. If there was a development or production problem with the new 14"/45, I think it is possible the Admiralty was looking at completing some or all of the KGVs with the 13.5" as a stopgap.
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  254.  @LucioFercho  I think it was in Brown's "The Grand Fleet" where I read of post-war testing that showed the flash doors used in British capital ships were too weak. If the doors were closed, an explosion would blow them open, defeating their purpose. Why does the story persist that the safety features had been intentionally defeated by the crew? It may be true, or maybe not. The dead can't tell us. It is easier for the higher ups to blame the victims, than to admit that maybe their design was not fit for purpose. When the turret on Iowa suffered an explosion in 1989, the Navy was very quick to blame one of the men in the turret, floating a story that he had decided to commit suicide, and take everyone else in the turret with him, by placing a detonator in the gun to ignite the charges before the breech was closed.
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  255.  @untruelie2640  the Germans tried raiding northern England from Norway. The range was beyond the capability of the single engine German fighters. The unescorted bombers were slaughtered.
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  256. I'll second that thought. As it happens, I dug out my copy and watched it again last Saturday. The opening, where the crewman is hung for the temerity of suggesting the Captain's navigation is wrong reminds me of some of the places I worked over the years.
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  257. wrt the "Vickers 14" salesman", certainly not the only Vickers agent, but one of the most notorious, was Basil Zaharoff. who was in Vickers' employ in the early 1900s. If you happen to come across a DVD box set of the early 1980s production of "Reilly Ace Of Spies", Zaharoff, played by Leo McKern, appears from time to time. Jackie Fisher also shows up a few times. The series is based on "Ace Of Spies" by Robin Bruce Lockhart, based on the memories of his father, who worked with Reilly.
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  258.  @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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  259. On that 1936 question, I'll give the USN General Board and C&R a thumping too. 36 is too early to prevent resources being wasted on the Alaska class cruisers, but it's just about right to have the Tennessee and Colorado class BBs updated into something useful in a mid 30s threat environment. As Drach's boiler video went into, boilers were much more capable in the mid 30s, than 20 years earlier, when the Tennessees and Colorados were designed. Use the space freed up by eliminating the motor-generator sets to install larger turbines to use the greater boiler output and they could produce a decent turn of speed. Being short and fat, they will not be efficient at speed, but then the length/width ratio was actually slightly higher than the also short and fat 27kt South Dakotas. Then a new superstructure and AA suite like West Virginia had after it's rebuild. If the budget was not available for the work, then i would lay up the Wyomings, New Yorks, Nevadas and Pennsylvanias to reduce running costs to make the funds available to C&R for the rebuilds. Just because the treaties allowed those old hulks to be run, doesn't mean they need to be run at the expense of improving newer, more capable, ships.
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  260.  @willrogers3793  Ship based helos vs floatplanes: Ever see a film of what has to be done to get the floatplane back on board the ship while the ship is under way? After the floatplane makes a water landing, which has it's own hazards in open ocean, the ship tows a large net through the water. The floatplane taxies up onto the net and a hook on the underside of the float catches the net. With the position of the plane wrt the ship stabilized, then the crane drops it's hook and the plan's pilot stands up in his cockpit, grabs the hook and attaches it to the plane. Then the plane is lifted on board. Fascinating process to watch, but landing a helo on deck is a lot simpler, faster and safer. There is a film on youtube of USS Chester recovering a Kingfisher.
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  261.  @VersusARCH  I would like to hear about the First Balkan War myself. Especially, why, in neither the battle of Elli or Lemnos, did either side attempt to torpedo the other's ships? I gather the Greeks had not had the money to buy 21" torpedoes for the new Aetos class DDs, but the Thyellas and Nikis had been in commission for years. Same thing on the Ottoman side. All the DDs ran back up the Dardanelles, instead of attacking, though I did read there were charges and counter-charges whether Ottoman command had signaled the DDs to attack and the DD squadron commander not seen the signal.
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  262.  @enoughrope1638  My Canadian friend likes to wind me up about how obsolete those destroyers were. I remind him that the USN was still using a lot of them too: first USN loss in the Atlantic was a four piper (Reuben James), first USN win in the Pacific was a four piper (Ward). Sending more modern DDs to the UK in 40-41 would have been taking them right off the tip of the USN's spear.
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  263.  @galbert117  on the Pacific fleet vs IJN on Dec 7th: of they stayed in Pearl and used the Steve plan: scramble every fighter on the island when the phone call came in from the radar station, while a DD steamed around Ford Island laying smoke (the Japanese can't hit what they can't see) there would have been less damage. If the battle line stood out to meet the IJN, it would have been a slaughter. The BBs were so slow that the IJN could stand off and use it's air group to sink everything in sight. The USN only had two carriers available in the Pacific that day. If they were in the fight, they would have been lost too. The third alternative is interesting: the USN at Pearl had far more cruisers and DDs available than the IJN force. Leave the BBs in port and sortie the lighter units. The US cruisers and DDs charge the Japanese formation and shoot up everything in sight.
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  264. wrt the question about the RN pushing for the reduction to 14" guns in Second London. Nothing prevented the Brits using 14" guns in the earlier treaties, if they wanted to do that to provide, what in their assessment, was a better balanced ship. The French had built the Dunkerques well below treaty maximums in both guns and displacement. Seems it's more a matter of the RN trying to use the treaty to force everyone else to build what the RN wants, rather than everyone else working their own design within the original parameters. This was done again wrt carriers. Seems the Brits did a survey of their repair facilities around the empire and found that some facilities could only handle a carrier of 23,000 tons, not the 27,000 tons the earlier treaties had allowed. So, Ark Royal was built to 22,000 and the Illustrious class built to 23,000. And, Second London cut the carrier tonnage limit to what the Brits wanted to build, not what any other party was capable of building. The "escalator clause" of Second London only covered the gun size increase from 14" to 16". It did not include the displacement increase. The displacement increase was negotiated between the US and UK in early 38, and, again, the Brits tried to limit the increase to the 41-42,000 ton range, the largest British facilities could handle. The US held out for 45,000, which they finally got in mid 38, enabling the Iowas. Without so much time wasted due to British obstruction wrt the tonnage increase, the US could have skipped the slow, cramped, South Dakotas and gone straight to the Iowas that they really wanted.
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  265.  @george_364  Consider the spring of 38: Germany just annexed Austria, Italy had invaded Ethiopia, Japan had invaded China, Japan formally dropped out of the naval treaty, Italy was ignoring it, France was mad because the UK had done it's own naval deal with Germany, without consulting France. The world is catching fire, and the UK is still trying to make sure the one country still willing to talk with it, the US, can't build a bigger ship than the Brits can.
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  266.  @timmyrtue7252  my first thought is that, for a while, the USN was very short of torpedo bombers. Only about 130 TBDs were built. I read, somewhere along the line, that what with attrition from accidents before the war, only 90-something of them were still in service. 41 were launched at Midway, but only 6 made it back to their carriers. 13 more were lost with Lexington at Coral Sea. The navy may have only had 40+ left. The TBD was pulled from front line service after Midway. It probably took a while for Grumman to build enough TBFs to get every carrier up to strength.
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  267. 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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  268.  @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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  269. 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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  270. Both the submarine. USS Silersides, and the LST in Muskegon, MI host overnight groups.
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  271.  @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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  272. 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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  273.  @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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  274. 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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  275. I laffed, a couple years ago, when the VAG CFO was talking about how they will take the VW brand "upmarket". That seems to be the ambition at a lot of companies: push prices and profit margins higher and higher. Wags have said "VW has always thought it was more high end than it really is". There are a couple UK based T-Roc reviews on youtube, where the reviewer comments on the cheap, hard, plastic, interior, but notes that, in spite of the cheap materials, VW wants over 30,000 Pounds for the things.
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  276.  @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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  277. @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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  278. 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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  279.  @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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  280.  @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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  281.  @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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  282.  @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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  283. 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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  284.  @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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  285. 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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  286.  @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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  287.  @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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  288.  @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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  289. 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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  290.  @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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  291. 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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  292.  @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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  293. 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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  294.  David Carr  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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  295.  @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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  296.  @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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  297.  @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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  298.  @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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  299.  @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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  300. 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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  301.  @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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  302.  @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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  303.  @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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  304.  @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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  305. 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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  306.  @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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  307. 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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  308. 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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  309.  @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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  310.  @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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  311.  @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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  312. 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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  313.  @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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  314.  @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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  315. 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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  316. 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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  317.  @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.
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  318.  @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.
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  319.  @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.
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  320. 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.
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  321.  @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.
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  322. 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.
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  323.  @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.
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  324.  @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.
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  325. 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.
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  326.  @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.
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  327.  @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.
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  328.  @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.
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  329. 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?
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  330.  @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.
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  331. 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.
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  332.  @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.
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  333. 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.
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  334. 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.
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  335. 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.
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  336.  @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.
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  337.  @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.
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  338.  @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.
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  339.  @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.
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  340.  @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.
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  341.  @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.
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  342.  @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.
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  343.  @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.
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  344. 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.
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  345. 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.
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  346. 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.
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  347. 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.
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  348.  @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.
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  349.  @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.
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  350.  @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.
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  351.  @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.
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  352. 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.
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  353. 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.
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  354. 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.
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  355. 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"?
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  356. 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.
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  357. 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.
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  358.  @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.
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  359.  @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.
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  360.  @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.
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  361.  @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.
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  362. 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.
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  363. 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.
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  364.  @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.
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  365. 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.
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  366. 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.
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  367. A popular narrative in the GOP, for several years now, has been "the US is a republic, not a democracy". I heard that come from the mouth of a candidate for Governor in Michigan, a few years ago. So, they seem to think that a republican form of government, and democratic processes, like voting, are mutually exclusive.
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  368. The Caribbean could have been a virtual US lake, from 1922. Arthur Balfour sent a letter to the French ambassador to the UK in 1922, which was openly published by the UK government, saying that, if it was up to the UK, they would cancel the debts owed it by the allies, and forego reparations from Germany, but, as the US was demanding debt repayment in cash, the UK had no choice but to demand repayment from it's allies, in cash. As an exercise, some time ago, I looked in to the market value of all the British colonies in the Caribbean circa 1920. Using the price per square mile that the US paid Denmark for the Virgin Islands in 1917, I found the value of all the British held islands, plus British Honduras, almost exactly equaled the entire UK war debt to the US, specifically equal to all the loan principle and about half of accrued interest. Coincidentally, the war debts owed by the other allies to the UK almost exactly equaled the UK's debt to the US. Hypothetically, if the UK had bartered it's West Indies colonies to the US, which would make the Caribbean approaches to the canal a virtual US lake, the UK could then cancel the debts owned it by all the other allies as it would be a wash with the cancellation of UK debts to the US. What a different world the interwar years would have been if all that debt had vanished. There was a lot of chatter about a US/UK land for debt swap in US newspapers at the time, but President Harding said no, Lloyd George said no, so that was the end of it.
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  369.  @MrDoctorCrow  in general, "caliber" as it applies to naval guns is the multiple of bore to barrel length. So a 4"/40 would have a barrel 40 x 4" long.
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  370.  @tjb0502  The 1.1 used clips, but, unlike the Type 96, the 1.1 loading machine held two clips and, when one clip was empty, would automatically switch to feeding from the other clip while the empty was replaced.
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  371.  @alexhunt7810  The Tennessees were the first USN BBs to have a multiple bulkhead TDS. The preceeding New Mexicos only had one internal torpedo bulkhead. When the New Mexicos were modernized in the early 30s, a second internal bulkhead was added, as well as bulges.
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  372.  @Xenophaige_reads  Greece was very close to civil war. While the PM favored the allies, the Greek king was married to a sister of the Kaiser, so which side Greece came down on was an open question. When Constantine abdicated in June 1917, Greece was free to join the allies and the ships were returned to Greek command.
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  373.  @philvanderlaan5942  even the best models of the time still show up. "The Enemy Below" uses a real DE, until the ramming scene. The difference is obvious. That being said, if all the shots of Salem were tightly framed, so you couldn't get an overall look at the ship it would help. Maybe not show the superfiring forward turrets, but only the aft turret, with a plywood shell on it to look like the German turret. The producers put plywood shells on the forward turrets of HMS Manxman in "Sailor of the King", and on the former location of the superfiring turret of USS Philip in "In Harm's Way", but they really didn't look quite right.
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  374.  @johnshepherd9676  indeed. According to Wiki the Finns had a variation on the F2A-1, with no armor, no self-sealing fuel tanks, and the life raft and tail hook removed. The cooler weather in Finland also helped with the Cyclone's tendency to overheat, and improved reliability. The Wiki article cites a kill ratio in Finnish hands of 26:1, vs other sources giving a kill ratio of 6.9:1 for the F4F in US hands.
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  375.  @adaw2d3222  according to the replacement schedule in the WNT, the legacy ships would have been mostly gone. Assuming everything on the replacement schedule through 38 is scrapped on schedule, the only remnants would be Valiant, Renown, Repulse, Ramillies, Hood and the Nelsons.
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  376.  @Cbabilon675  As we know, the Japanese had a relationship with Vickers, covering everything from battleships, to building the 2 pounder pompom under license. The Japanese also had a relationship with Hotchkiss. Besides the Type 96 AA gun, the Japanese Type 92 and Type 3 heavy machine guns were based on the Hotchkiss Mle 1914, changing out the original 8mm Lebel cartridge for the 6.5 Arisaka in the Type 3, and 7.7mm in the Type 92. As these guns were licensed from Hotchkiss, getting them into production was no doubt much easier than trying to reverse engineer captured Bofors. The Russians bought some examples of the 25mm Bofors, which preceded the 40mm version, in 1935. They reverse engineered it, increasing the bore to 37mm, test firing the prototype in late 1938. If the Japanese took as long to reverse engineer Bofors captured in late 41, it would have been late 44/early 45 before they could get it into production. I would venture that, if Vickers had produced a modern AA gun, to replace the pompom, in the mid 30s, the Japanese would have licensed that, rather than the Hotchkiss.
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  377.  @madrabbit9007  iirc, no. The Washington treaty treated the fleets of the dominions as part of the RN. The disposal list in the treaty for the RN includes Australia, even though it was owned by Australia, not the UK.
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  378.  @rickyc8958  The RM's issue seemed to be more a matter of fuel and leadership. Some things I have read about the Caracciolo class are not very complimentary, like that the torpedo protection was inadequate. That being said, after all the money spent updating the Cavours and Dorias in the 30s, they were well short of state of the art too. At lease the Caraccoilos started out with better speed capability. It's doubtful that the Caracciolos could have been completed before the Washington Treaty went into effect. The Caracciolo was built up enough to launch, to clear the ways, in the spring of 20. If Italy had had the money, which it didn't, that one could probably have been completed by the end of 21. Ansaldo had Columbo about 5% done, overall. The Orlando and Odero yards had made even less progress on their ships. If Italy had the money, which it didn't, it could have argued at the Washington conference that, as the US and UK were both allowed to complete two ships after the treaty went into effect, Italy should receive the same courtesy, but if they did that, then Italy would not have had the 1927 and 1929 BB construction windows, which they used to build the first two Littorios. Given a choice between two updated Caracciolos and two Littorios, I would go with the Littorios every time. The other issue with completing the Caracciolos is most of the 24 guns that had been made for them had been diverted to other uses. 7 of the Ansaldo built guns had been transferred to the army, which mounted 4 of them on railroad carriages that were on the firing line for almost 2 years. The other two Ansaldos were mounted on a monitor of particularly eccentric design, and spent a few months on the firing line. Two of the Terni built guns were installed as shore batteries near Venice, which left one Terni as a spare. Four of the Pozzuoli built guns were used as shore batteries at Brindisi. Two Pozzuolis were installed on an improvised monitor that foundered in a storm. Two more Pozzuolis were installed on improvised monitors that survived the war. So, of the 24 guns built for the Caracciolos, there were only 3 Ansaldos, 1 Terni and 4 Pozzuolis that were in new condition and could be made available. This is where it gets complicated. The guns were supposed to all have the same ballistic performance, but they were different designs. The Pozzuolis were designed by Armstrong, the Ternis by Vickers and the Ansaldos were a monobloc design by Schneider. By 1919, I don't think this mess could have been cleaned up at anything resembling reasonable cost to get even two Caracciolos built, and if they did, they would have lost authority to build two Littorios a dozen years later. And that is probably far more than you anticipated learning about the Caracciolos.
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  379.  @TheBaldParakeet  Basil Zaharoff was a notorious arms dealer during that period, and he was an agent for Vickers. I would not be surprised if he had a role in the sale to Chile.
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  380.  @matthewgriffiths5005  I don't know about being totally self sufficient, but the British Army in India had it's own small arms factory in Ishapore. There is a piece on line about the light machine gun made and used in India, instead of the Bren: a Vickers adaptation of a Berthier design.
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  381.  @brendonbewersdorf986  ever read "The Enemy Below"? I did, about fifty years ago. The book was written by Denys Rayner, who spent the war variously commanding a Corvette or a Destroyer, hunting subs, so I suspect some of the details in the book may be accurate. I remember one passage in the book where the CO is frustrated because his Destroyer is so long it can't stay with the U-Boat in a turn. The CO recalls that his old Corvette was so short it could easily stay with a U-Boat in a turn, but the Corvette was so slow, the U-Boat could surface, and run away from the Corvette on it's diesels. With nothing other than that tidbit, and taking U-505's length of 251feet and surfaced speed of 18.2kts, I eliminate the Flower and Castle class Corvettes because they can barely crack 16kts. I eliminate full sized DDs, as too long, Mahan 341' and Fletcher 376', for instance. Best combination of small size and high speed, at least in USN inventory, would probably be a Buckley class DE: 306', 24kts.
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  382. Just a reminder: Bush 41 invaded Panama, and overthrew the government.
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  383.  @tjokflots  before GPS, they used celestial navigation: to find latitude, use a sextant to measure the angle of elevation above the horizon of Polaris, if in the northern hemisphere, or the Southern Cross, if in the southern hemisphere. Finding longitude was a much tougher nut to crack, which brings up your other question, the revolutionary invention. To find longitude, use the sextant to find noon where you are, then compare local noon to GMT shown on a chronometer (hyper accurate clock) which shows how many hours, and degrees of planet rotation, you are away from GMT. The chronometer was the revolutionary invention. The first practical chronometer was invented by John Harrison, in England, around 1761, after several years of working the problem and several previous failed attempts.
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  384.  @BestAnswer12549  The RN sent out everything it had, that could keep up with Bismark. There were only two KGVs in service. PoW and Hood covered north of Iceland. KGV, Repulse, and a carrier, were south of Iceland. Renown was with Force H at Gibraltar. Those five ships were all the RN had that could come close to the Bismark's combination of speed and firepower.
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  385.  @Matahpi  sticks in my mind that the usual tactic is to use paravanes. Paravanes look somewhat like airplanes, and are towed through the water by the sweeper. The "wings" and "tail" fins of the paravanes are set so they spread out away from the minesweeper, and the tow cable between the paravane and ship cuts the mooring cables of the mines. The mines then pop to the surface where they can be detonated with gunfire.
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  386.  @albertorepetto2909  France took Tunisia in the 1880s. Since the turn of the century, France and the UK had been making noises supportive of Italian control of Libya. I think Italy could have walked out of the carve-up of the Ottoman Empire with Libya, if they had not already taken it.
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  387.  @gustaveliasson5395  actually, you are right. By the time Bismark was launched in 39, the US and UK, by mutual agreement, had increased the treaty limit to 45,000, so Bismark was treaty compliant.
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  388.  @themightynanto3158  Decades ago, I read a book written by a Brit submariner who had served in the Med. iirc, the issue is the Med is shallow and the water was relatively clear, so it was easy for aircraft to see a submerged sub.
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  389.  @jlvfr  two German commerce raiders, armed former ocean liners, Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Kronprinz Wilhelm steamed into Newport News, Virginia for fuel and repairs in 1915, when the US was neutral. The first to arrive, the Friedrich, received a lot of play in the newspapers of the time. British and French warships arrived just outside the US' three mile limit in short order, should the Friedrich attempt a breakout. The USN maintained a reserve fleet of old pre-dreadnoughts with skeleton crews, so men were transferred from other reserve ships to bring the complement of one at the Philadelphia Navy Yard up to full strength, and it steamed down to Newport News for neutrality enforcement, should the British and French think about steaming into Newport News to attack the Friedrich. The Captains of both ships decided to accept internment in the US. When the US entered the war, both ships were seized and used as troop transports for the duration. After the war, they were sold into commercial service.
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  390.  @beedrillbot121  I don't understand what claim Germany could have on former Spanish possessions that the US held. The US paid Spain something like $12M to give up it's claims on the Philippines and Guam, while Germany paid Spain something on the order of $4M for the Marianas and Carolines. Cuba was a US protectorate, self-governing, as long as the governing suited the US. The UK would not be on Germany's side. iirc the UK's alliance with Japan was intended to make the Japanese UK proxies to keep an eye on Russian and German ambitions in the Pacific. Chew on this possibility: when President Wilson snubs President Victoriano Huerta of Mexico, Huerta embraces an alliance with Germany. (Germany, along with the US under Taft, had supported Huerta's coup.) The Tampico affair, and Admiral Mayo's and Wilson's determination to escalate the situation, could have had the US at war with a Mexican/German alliance months before the Archduke was killed. Would the UK and France rush to the US' aid? Would WWI start at Veracruz, Mexico?
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  391. I read "War of the Worlds" probably 50 years ago, and remember that sequence. Unlike the movie, the machines in the book did not have impenetrable force fields and there were occasions where an artillery gunner would land a shell directly in the cockpit and shred the Martian, but the losses of Brits vs Martians were asymmetric, to say the least. The Captain of the Thunderchild was clearly related to Captain Evans of the Johnston.
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  392.  @spookyshadowhawk6776  the source I use for naval guns and torpedos, besides Wiki, is navweaps.com
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  393.  @richardcutts196  my favorite scenario for the three Mackensens that were in the water was for France to claim them as war reparations and tow them to Brest for completion. The incomplete Normandies that France had in the water had been obsoleted by the war, but many of the guns intended for the Normandies has been completed, and the Normandie guns were just a hair smaller than what Mackensen was designed for 13.4" vs 13.8" and 5.5" vs 5.9". Of course, the WNT would interfere with that plan, so then two are completed as fast BBs, instead of France receiving the licenses to build two new ships, which became the Dunkerques, and the third is converted to a carrier, instead of Béarn. But France was broke. The US was pressing for repayment of war debts, in cash, and the UK was pressing France for repayment of war debts, in cash, so the UK could use the cash to pay it's debts to the US, and France had a huge reconstruction job ahead of it as it had "hosted" the front line for the entire war.
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  394.  @Philistine47  iirc, the 1.1" was generally replaced by the Bofors. The 1.1" outranged the Oerlikon and threw a much larger shell. By the end of the war the Oerlikon was worthless as the shells it threw were so tiny that, by the time a kamikaze was within range, an Oerlikon couldn't do enough damage to shoot the plane to bits before impact. The 1.1" didn't actually disappear before the end of the war. As Bofors became available, the 1.1s were moved to lower priority ships, like minesweapers.
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  395.  @johnfairhurstReviews  I don't know if she is the record holder, but Lexington, CV-16, was reported sunk so many times her nickname became "the blue ghost". When I was on the Lex, some 50 years ago, her C-1 had a blue ghost mascot painted on it. The web site for the Lexington, which is now a museum, says she was reported sunk by the Japanese at least four times.
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  396.  @Aelxi  The Tosas and Amagis, as designed, exceeded the treaty tonnage limit of 35,000. Even if they did not exceed the tonnage limit, the treaty required all capital ships presently under construction to be scrapped in place, not completed. The US was allowed to complete West Virginia and Colorado, and the British were allowed to build the two Nelsons, as compensation for the Japanese having two "post Jutland". 16" armed, ships in commission (Nagato and Mutsu). Third, the Fusos and Ises were too slow to be carriers. Even Kaga's speed was not up to the 30+ kt normal for carriers. The Fusos and Ises were even slower.
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  397.  @bkjeong4302  Yes. Devastators did fine prior to Midway. At Coral Sea, the strikes were properly coordinated, with dive bombers and fighters attacking at the same time as the Devastators. From everything I read, at Coral Sea, losses were taken by the dive bombers and fighters, that came in at the altitude where the CAP was, but the Devastators attacked without loss. There were 6 Avengers at Midway. Only 1 returned from their attack on the fleet. The Brits had the same issues: catastrophic losses of Beauforts and Swordfish when attacking ships with a DD screen. During Operation Cerberus, the first Brit force to intercept the Germans was 6 Swordfish. The Swordfish had a squadron of Spits as escort. The Swordfish could outmaneuver the Fw190s that intercepted them, but, while all six made it over the DD screen to line up to attack the battleships, only two survived to make it back out past the DD screen. Those two survivors were flaming wrecks who ditched a couple minutes after clearing the DD screen, with the surviving crewmen picked up by Brit MTBs. Pat Gibbs commanded a Beaufort squadron on Malta and demonstrated that the way to attack ships was first: in overwhelming numbers to saturate the enemy defenses, and, second, bring along aircraft to strafe the escorting ships to suppress AA fire.
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  398. @nicholas ringer Sounds like maybe you read the navweaps article on the 13. By the end of 44, they had the 13 sorted out. Drop limits improved from 110kts/50 feet to something like 410kts and 2400 feet and reliability was near 100%. By late in the war, they were using Mk 13s on PT boats, instead of the Mk 8.
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  399.  @and15re1  In 1914, Japan was busy rolling up German colonies in the Pacific, including the Marianas, Marshalls and Carolines, so the IJN was pretty busy. That is how Japan got it's hands on Truk Lagoon. The Aussies were rolling up some German colonies too. After the war, the ex-German colonies south of the equator were handed to Australia and everything north of the equator was officially handed to Japan.
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  400. Amen to that. Muskegon, MI is a good destination: an LST, Gato class sub, and a civilian Great Lakes passenger steamer all on display. But they are only open during the summer. Muskegon is on the Lake Michigan shore and, in February, an Alberta Clipper comes off that lake that will freeze your nuggies off.
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  401.  @Drachinifel  I agree entirely, the UK was working within it's budget and facility constraints. President Coolidge was notorious for his reluctance to spend anything on anything, including defense. He called a naval conference in 1927, to try to use a treaty to force the RN's cruiser force to be drawn down to the cruiser force Coolidge felt like funding for the USN. The UK wasn't having it, due to the size of the empire they needed to patrol. I read of comments like "the US is trying to buy parity on the cheap". Japan threatened to withdraw from the treaty, unless they were granted parity with the US and UK. The naval treaties are fascinating, for the parties each trying to advance their own national interest, while restraining the other parties. Everyone does it. It's their job to do it. It is fascinating to watch.
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  402.  @colezimmerman5187  "destroyers" were originally "torpedo boat destroyers" as their mission was to protect the battleships from torpedo boats.
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  403. Something I have been playing with over the last few days: the fleet tonnage quotas of the WNT seems to have ended with Second London, as the RN laid down four new treaty max carriers in 1937, which would put the RN far over their quota, if it was still in force. If the US had delayed ordering Wasp until after the Second London conference, and the end of the fleet quotas, the ship could have been redesigned as a 23,000 ton treatymax ship. With that new 23,000 ton design in hand, when Congress authorized two more carriers in 38, that new design would have been used for Hornet, rather than the obsolescent Yorktown design. That matters because, after the Yorktowns, the USN went to staggered boiler and engine rooms, for better survivability. What doomed Hornet was total loss of power. If Hornet had been built to a design with staggered boiler and engine rooms, she may have still had partial power for damage control and propulsion.
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  404.  @sharlin648  on the issue of reloading the Pom-Pom, I was looking for pix of ratings carrying ammo belts to put the question to the brain trust of how the things were reloaded. Found a pic on Navweaps, and read the caption. Ah! Now, I understand. The bins don't hold the ammo like I figured. The caption says it would be difficult to reload while the gun was firing, but, I can see how it would be possible. Only the first and last rounds of each belt were in the rail, with the rest of the belt hanging below. That means that last round would be stationary, while the belt hanging below is fed into the gun, so the loader would have a few seconds where it would be possible to attach another belt.
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  405. wrt to the question about a fleet of Vanguards. in the Q&A section on Queen Mary post a few days ago, my reply to a question of what if the RN had completed all four Admirals followed the repercussions on the fleet due to treaty tonnage limits, resulting in the R-class ships going to the breakers for the fleet draw down called for by the First London Treaty in the early 30s. That opens up the possibility of the Admiralty having a very large number of dual 15" turrets on hand when the battleship construction moratorium ended at the end of 36. Using four turrets per ship, as Vanguard, requires a long hull, which would exceed the treaty 35,000 ton limit. The thought crosses my mind that, a KGV using 3 twin 15" turrets, instead of the 14" layout historically received, would result in lower displacement due to the smaller turrets and, because fewer guns, less ammunition carried, which might result in more speed. Additionally, the cost savings of using existing guns and turrets may make it possible to build more than the five KGV class ships that were built. But, would the RN really be comfortable building a battleship that would assuredly be outgunned by any other individual battleship, because such a KGV would only have 6 guns vs potential adversaries having 8 or 9. Or, would they take a compromise route and remount the used 15" guns in new triple turrets?
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  406.  @dougjb7848  the Admiralty did not have sufficient quantity of 16" guns of any sort laying in a warehouse. I am proposing the 13.5" as a stopgap, if there was a design or production problem that prevented new 14" being built to equip all the KGVs in a timely manner. For that matter, there appears to have been close to 200 15"/42s built. With the Revenges, QEs, Renowns and Hood, that totals 100 afloat at any given time. With, say, 16 or 24 held in inventory for rapid replacements for serving ships, there would be plenty more available to equip the KGVs, at 8 or 9 guns per ship, if a new 15" suffered design or production delays. The bias at the Admiralty at that time was for more, smaller, guns, hence the shift to 14", of which they also had roughly comparable replacements in inventory.
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  407.  @vikkimcdonough6153  that is a good question. Even better question, given that the Mk 14 had a generator and capacitor to provide power, and they wanted to use a fuse oriented crosswise, why not use a trembler switch, like the German Type 15 bomb fuse?
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  408. @Enterprise One if you want to see a good sub movie, check out "The Enemy Below". The film is loosely based on the novel of the same name, written by Denys Rayner, who spent WWII commanding Corvettes and Destroyers, hunting subs. Cracking good story, so good, that the plot was stolen, virtually point by point, for an episode of the original "Star Trek". The movie also features a real, Buckley class DE, a specialized sub killing machine. If you want to view more from the German/sub side, watch "Das Boot", but the critics were more enthusiastic about that one than I.
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  409.  @admiralrover74  the 14"/45 on the KGVs was really pretty ordinary. Muzzle velocity was 2483fps, vs 2458 for the 15"/42 during WWII. The 14" shell weighed 1590lbs vs 1938lbs for the 15" during WWII. And lighter shells tend to lose momentum faster than heavier shells, so, at distance, the 14" will deliver a lighter shell at slower speed. The only advantage to the 14" is it is a bit lighter, so more can be mounted on a ship. The same debate, more smaller guns, or fewer larger ones, raged in the USN during WWI.
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  410. ​ @admiralrover74  in general, that would be the case. I looked up the specific information for the 14"/45 and 15"/42, and it almost looks like the 14" was designed to replicate the performance of the 15", in a smaller, lighter package, rather than exploiting twenty years of advances in technology to produce a higher performance gun. The tables on Navweaps for these guns are expressed in degrees of elevation required to reach a specific range. For the 14": 13.75 degrees reaches 20,000yds, 19.25 degrees reaches 25,000. For the 15": 13.8 degrees reaches 20,000, 19.2 reaches 25,000. For the 14" striking velocity at 20/25K are 1563fps/1459. For the 15" @ 20/25k: 1556fps/1461. Angle of fall 14" @20/25K: 18.2/26.4. For the 15" @ 20/25K: 18.3/26.3. Armor penetration: 14" @ 20/25K: 11.2"/9.5" 15" @ 20/25K: 11.7/10.2". What was a 14" capable of in 1935? The USN rebuilt it's 14"/50s in the mid 30s and significantly improved their performance over their 1915 configuration. Performance of the rebuilt Mk 11 guns: range: 12 degrees yields 20,000yds and 17.6 gives 26,000 (not a typo, the tables do not give an elevation for 25K for an AP shell) Impact velocity (muzzle velocity was 2700) @ 20K/25K: 1588/1455. Penetration @20/25K: 13.75/11.27". Angle of fall at 20/25K: 16.33/24.8. According to the footnotes of the tables, the penetration data for both US and UK guns were calculated using a USN formula, so they should be comparable to each-other. Bottom line, for the typical BB armor belt of 13-14", the US 14" can penetrate at longer range than either British gun, and it's flatter trajectory will produce a wider danger space, improving the odds of a hit. The cost of the higher performance for the US gun is higher barrel wear due to the higher muzzle velocity, barrel life being on the order of 200 rounds, vs 340 for the 14"/45.
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  411.  @admiralrover74  Thanks to you for asking the right questions too. I just reviewed the deep dive KGV video again, and there is no discussion of the 14" being interoperable, in performance terms, with the 15" that armed 13 of the other 15 capital ships in the fleet. The documents cited simply handwaved away questions of an opponent being 2-3 kts faster, and dismissed questions about guns able to do decisive damage at greater range by saying that battle conditions may not always be good enough for the sighting systems to work at maximum efficiency. Official statements like that always leave me wondering what is not being revealed.
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  412. @UNSCForwardontodawn the RM built the San Giorgio class armored cruisers after the Pisas, but I think the Pisas are better looking. The Pisas also abandoned casemate mounted guns. The thing about both classes was the reliance on 14 pounders for plinking torpedo boats, as the 1890s torpedo boats were rapidly being replaced by destroyers of 1000 tons, that a 14 pounder would not make much of an impression on. The Russians were all too familiar with trying to swat destroyers. When Vickers suggested Rurik receive the usual peashooter torpedo boat defense, the Russians demanded something a heck of a lot heavier, so Rurik ended up with 4.7" instead. Rurik is a pretty handsome ship too. I'm torn between Pisa, for looks and abandoning casemate guns, and Rurik, which has a tertiary armament that can actually do damage.
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  413.  @Rdeboer  that question came up in a FB group, specifically, why did Warspite retain most of her 6" secondaries in her rebuild, as the twin 4"/45s that were installed were capable of performing as dual purpose guns. Removing all the 6" and replacing them with twin 4"/45s would triple her heavy AA armament, potentially resulting in the ship taking less damage from aircraft. A question along the same lines came up, if Bismark had gone all in on the 105mm gun, instead of dividing deck space between the 105s and 150s, that would greatly have improved the probability of splashing a particular Swordfish. Seems that the roadblock to going all in on 4"-5" DP secondaries was a consensus that heavier secondary guns were needed for dealing with attacking destroyers. The one dissenter to that consensus appears to be Jackie Fisher. Jackie held that a quick firing 4" was perfectly fine for dealing with light surface targets. The two classes Jackie had a hand in designing during WWI, the Renowns and Courageouses, had low angle 4" secondaries, while the QEs, Revenges and Nelsons all had 6". To directly answer your question, yes, the adoption of DP guns greatly increased AA firepower. Had more navies abandoned the concept of dedicated, heavy, low angle, secondary armament, more deck space would have been available for armament that could perform in the AA role, as well as anti-surface.
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  414.  @jbepsilon  I think the issue was that no country could have a ship substantially more powerful than what other countries had. The objective was also to limit the cost of new ships. So, BBs were set at 35,000 tons/16" guns, because, except for Hood, those were the parameters of the ships just then coming into service: the Colorados and Nagatos.
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  415.  @vixtontitano2394  It seems that political influence played a part. The ship that history knows as the New Mexico was laid down as California. She was renamed New Mexico in March of 1916, due to pressure from A A Jones, First Assistant Secretary of the Interior, who was from New Mexico. The California Congressional delegation was fine with that, as they pressured the Navy to build a BB at Mare Island, named California. If I think of it, I might start digging through the archives to see if BB 44 had always been planned to be built at Mare Island, or if it was reassigned to placate the California Congressional delegation.
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  416.  @vixtontitano2394  I started looking through newspapers from late 1915 when the bids for BB 43 and 44 were opened. The two low bids, under $7M were from the New York and Philadelphia Navy yards, while Mare Island bid $7.4M. Neither Philadelphia or Mare Island were presently equipped to build battleships. Mare's bid included the money for needed improvements, Philadelphia's did not. Ballpark estimates for improvements in Philadelphia ran from $200,000 to $400,000, which, on top of the construction bid of $6.774M was still less than Mare Island's. SecNav Daniels asked Congress for $175,000 to extend the slipway and dredge the channel in Philadelphia to allow battleships to be built, on December 6. Then Daniels met with President Wilson. Suddenly, the estimate for improvements in Philadelphia jumped to $1M on December 10th, which made Mare Island cheaper. At that time, BB44. the one to be built in Mare Island was unnamed. Then Assistant Secretary of the Interior Jones was given the credit for changing the name of the ship building in New York from California to New Mexico in early 16, freeing the name California for BB44. Thanks for asking that question. Newspaper reports of this sequence of events made for fascinating reading.
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  417.  @joshthomas-moore2656  according to sources, the guns were 4.5"/45 (11.4 cm) QF Marks I, III and IV (Marks 2, 3, 4 and 5), while that low profile twin mount was the Mk II BD.
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  418. The guy said $4.6T over the next 10 years. The US imports about $3.8T of goods per year. Trump's 20% tariff would generate $760B/year of revenue, or 165% of the revenue needed to cover the tax cuts over 10 years. The Department of Education's budget is about $80B per year. So, over 10 years, $4.6T of extended tax cuts, offset by $7.6T of tariff revenue and $800B of education defunding. My math says Trump would have a surplus of $3.8T to pay for more tax cuts for the "job creators".
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  419. As an exercise, I wondered what would have happened if the USN had started installing the twin 4"/50 that was experimented with in the late teens, as battleship secondary, instead of the 5"/51. Came up with mount weight and weight of fire numbers that made the 4" look like a good bet. From there, development into an analog of the British 4"/45 QF Mk XVI/twin Mk XIX mount would be a logical progression. If all the standards at Pearl had twin DP 4"/45s, in place of the 5"/51s, that would leave the entire upper deck, where the 5"/25s were historically, open for light AA.
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  420. I have been through USS Silversides, in Muskegon, MI. Also a Gato class boat. In her case, they rigged a ladder down the port side forward, and cut a doorway through the hull, rather than ask people to go down the ladder you used on Cod. I would expect that, regardless of age, the USN had height and girth maximums for sub service. I know there are height maximums for pilots.
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  421. I agree that PoW was the greater loss in Force Z. Not only because I hate to see a ship that is only a year old sunk, but she was entirely modern, and able to operate in any theater. Repulse had been operating in the Indian Ocean since October. Repulse was searching for German raiders, an important job, but also an implied recognition that she did not have the AA armament to be well suited to a more active theater. The Revenge class battleships all ended up in the Indian Ocean as well, probably for the same reason, I have read that Somerville was unhappy about having the somewhat decrepit Malaya for a flagship. Tried to put together an alt history where PoW becomes Force H flagship, Malaya and Revenge deploy to Alexandria, and QE and Valiant shift to the far east, but I couldn't get the timelines to mesh well enough for the slower battleships to get to Singapore in time.
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  422.  @stashaszezlenko9601  Yes, the superimposed turrets. Another gift from the mind of Joseph Strauss at BuOrd. The same Strauss who clung to outdated notions of typical combat ranges and forced the USN to cling to the 14" gun for the Tennessee class, when the 16"/45 was available.
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  423.  @vodeankandosii3982  First order of business would seem to be to build a larger drydock at Cockatoo Island. According to my 1928 USN port guide, the larger of the two docks at Cockatoo was 630' over the blocks and 84' wide. There was a privately owned dock in Woolwich that was 850' over the blocks, but only 83' wide. Renown, for instance, would not fit in either, due to it's 90' beam. The Admiralty built a large enough dock to handle anything existing or planned in Singapore, in the late 30s, which was lost to Allied use when the war was barely started. The Cook dock in Sydney harbor, large enough to handle anything, did not open until 1945. The Aussies started looking at large drydock options in 1938, just as the King George dock in Singapore was opening. The planning and construction for the King George dock had started in 1928. 20/20 hindsight says the Admiralty and the RAN should have cooperated to share the costs of building a large dock at Sydney, instead of Singapore, but didn't work out that way.
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  424.  @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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  425.  @erikgranqvist3680  Germany developed "navalized" versions of the Bf-109 and Ju-87 for the Zeppelin. Given the 109's long nose, and narrow tracked, fragile, undercarrage, I am hard pressed to think of a worse choice. The Ju-87 certainly looked the part, with it's folding wings. I have read there was a lot of resentment from the Luftwaffe about any of it's 109 and 87 production being diverted to the navy.
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  426. On the Kimmel December 6th scenario, I think Graham Baxter is pretty close: schedule an all forces air raid drill for Dec 7th, at say, 7:00am. Sunrise that morning was at 6.26am, so everyone has plenty of daylight to work in. One thing I would like to try is have the destroyers in Pearl circle Ford Island laying smoke. If the entire harbor basin is full of smoke, the Japanese can't hit what they can't see. Then, with every Army fighter in the air, I, as Kimmel, would be in the fully manned communications center when the phone call from the radar station at Opana Point came in shortly after 7:02. I would say something along the lines of "I have an idea, lets vector about 50 fighters to the target the radar has identified to practice an intercept." Then, when the Japanese react to their formation being buzzed by 50 P-40s, it's game on.
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  427.  @johnfisher9692  I spent plenty of time chipping old paint on the Lexington. Take your pick of tool: chipping hammer, needle gun, or rotary chipper, and grind it off. Then lay on red lead and new haze grey.
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  428.  @kemarisite  I second everything Frank says. The Vickers, especially in the octuple mounts, can throw an absolutely lurid amount of steel, but not very far, nor for very long, while a Bofors can really reach out and touch someone, and bang away all day. The Vickers did have something of a return to usefulness in 45, when the Brits started running into Kamikazes, as their throw weight dwarfed an entire phalanx of Oerlikons and they could shoot an inbound plane to bits. The Italians used Vickers guns on several of their warships during the 20s and 30s, the guns being license built by Terni. The RM changed out a lot of the Vickers in the late 30s in favor of the Breda 37mm, for the same reasons that the Brits and US went to the Bofors: the Breda had three times the effective range, and magazines could be stacked in the loading machine to maintain a high rate of fire, without the reload stoppages of a Vickers.
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  429.  @bjorntorlarsson  I doubt crewing them would have been a problem considering the size of fleet Germany was able to man in WWI. The large problem with the French fleet was that it was split: part on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, and part in the Med. Easy enough for the Germans to man the contingent in Morocco, but Richelieu was the only modern BB. That is hardly a major boost to what the Germans already had in service or fitting out. The Brits seized the units in the UK and in Alexandria. That leaves the units in Toulon: Dunkerque, Strasbourg and a variety of cruisers and destroyers. Those ships would probably operate under Regia Marina command, meaning DDs escorting convoys to Libya, cruisers dicing with the Brits occasionally, and Dunkerque and Strasbourg sitting in port for most of the war.
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  430.  @comeslittorissaxonici7395  recovering a floatplane worse in heavy seas? Yes. In the film of the Chester recovering a Kingfisher, you can see that the Chester is creating a smoother patch of water in it's lee for the Kingfisher. A friend of mine is retired career Canadian military, much of it as AESOp on a Sea King helo embarked on DDHs. The guy has more sea stories than you can imagine. The Canadians developed the "Beartrap" cable and winch system that, essentially, pulls the helo out of the air and onto the deck. Tim has posted some videos of Sea King landings where the horizon can be seen rising, falling and rocking side to side to an alarming degree, yet the Beartrap pulls the helo down to a safe landing.
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  431.  @cycloneranger7927  that question was being asked when 16" guns were selected for the Colorados in 1916. iirc, the official answer from the USN was that the New Mexicos would not have been cost efficient to try to convert during construction. Tennessee and California were not laid down until after the decision on the Colorados had been made, in the summer of 16. From what I can find, the barbettes of the Tennessee's are the same diameter as those on the Colorados: 32 feet. The part of the twin 16" turret that extends down into the barbette on the Colorados is actually about 6" smaller in diameter than the triple 14". I'm going by memory here, but sticks in my mind that the turrets for the Tennessees had not been built yet, when the decision was made to go to 16" for the Colorados, they were still in design. So, yes, by everything I see, it would have been feasible to build Tennessee and California with 16" guns. Now, we get to the complications. BuOrd had ordered 14"/50 guns for the New Mexicos, Tennessees, and the battlecruisers, in one lot. The Navy had those 14" guns coming out it's ears. Shifting the Tennessees to 16", with so much money already sunk into building the 14"/50s would have had Congress in an uproar about the waste. Then we get to the Washington Naval Treaty. In a feat of diplomatic art, Hood was deemed "post-Jutland" even though it was designed before the battle. Tennessee and California, both laid down after Hood, and with a more advanced armor and torpedo protection system, were deemed "pre-Jutland", while the Colorados, a near-repeat of the Tennessees, but with 16" guns, were deemed "post-Jutland". I lay the difference between the "pre" and "post" ships to the Tennessees having 14" guns. If the Tennessees were built with 16", it would have been nearly impossible to insist they were "pre" ships. With Tennessee and California 16" armed and deemed "post-Jutland", the US would not have been allowed to complete Colorado or West Virginia. After the treaty went into effect, upgunning the ships was prohibited. As for getting more speed out of the standards, you are dealing with multiple problems with the turbo-electric ships, because, even having more steam, you would need to install uprated turbines, uprated generators, and uprated final drive motors. The interior arrangement of the ships was specialized for TE drive, making it impossible to shift to modern geared turbines, for anything resembling a reasonable cost. And the ships were still short and fat. Lengthening them to improve speed would add even more cost, and, as they were already over 30,000 tons, there may not have been enough room left before hitting the 35,000 ton treaty limit, to lengthen them enough to significantly improve speed. The Italian Andrea Doria class gained about 4,000 tons in their rebuild, but they started far below the 35,000 ton limit.
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  432.  @cycloneranger7927  upgunning the Tennessees, before construction started, would probably have ended up with a slightly lower cost ship, due to the lower part count of only having 8 guns, instead of 12, if you ignore the sunk cost of the 14" guns sitting in inventory or in production process. As for the speed potential of a Tennessee or Colorado, I have no idea off the top of my head. You might care to experiment with Springsharp. Start with a design close to what the ships actually were, in terms of dimensions and displacement, then play with things like replacing the 1916 power plant with a 1939 power plant, or adding 25-35 feet to the bow or stern.
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  433.  @jbepsilon  some British ships mounted a quad Vickers .303 machine gun. Pretty useless, apparently. I did a bit of comparison on Navweaps, the 37mm M4 actually had a longer range than the Oerlikon. The Oerlikon cycled at 450 rounds/minute. The M4 cycled at 125rpm. The Oerlikon mag held 60 rounds. The M4 mag held 30. The M4 can fire longer than the Oerlikon, between reloads. The Oerlikon throws more rounds, but the M4's rounds could do a lot more damage. I have read that the old Vickers PomPom had something of a renaissance when the Brits ran into Kamikazes. The Oerlikon rounds were too puny to really stop a plane, while the old PomPom would shoot a Kamikaze to bits.
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  434.  @brendonbewersdorf986  the Kiis were never laid down. The treaty only allowed for conversion of existing ships that exceeded treaty limits. The other two Amagis, Atago and Takao, were broken up in April, 1924. The earthquake that wrecked Amagi was in September, 23, so, theoretically, Atago or Takao could have been completed as a carrier, as they were still in existence when Amagi was wrecked. Kaga's construction, being much farther along, probably cost a lot less to covert than completing Atago or Takao.
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  435.  @brendonbewersdorf986  The Kii is little more than an up-armored Amagi. All the information I can find show virtually the same hull dimensions, except the Kii's draft is a bit deeper, thanks to the additional armor, and the armament is the same. I have a theory that the Kii was not a distinct class, but a proposal to uparmor the Amagis on the slipway as I rarely see a Navy build two classes that are so similar, rather than making evolutionary improvements with each class.
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  436. I have quite a rant about how US defense contracts today are about milking the R&D phase, not actually getting anything deployed. How much did we pay for 20 B2s? Another huge pile of cash for less than 200 F-22s. F-35 nearly 20 years in development. Building two different designs of LCS at the same time, instead of building one design and seeing how it works out first. Billions for only 3 Zumwalts would be a scandal if this nonsense was not so common.
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  437.  @danpower-JP  Probably no Essexes were sold to allies because the USN was still using them through the 50s and 60s. Another thought is the Essexes, due to their size, were more expensive to operate. Then there is the age issue, and trying to source replacement parts, by the time the USN was done with them. I read a magazine article about the Lexington in the 70s, that talked about how other WWII ships were being cannibalized for spares to keep the Lex going.
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  438.  @marcusfranconium3392  Why not use the Italian 15"? First thought is the "not invented here syndrome". Same as why did Bismark have German single shot 37mm AA guns, rather than the full automatic Italian 37mm. Part German national pride, part was probably paranoia on the Italian's part parting with weapons technology before the war. It seems it wasn't until both countries were well stuck into the war that technology sharing started.
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  439.  @themightynanto3158  more aggressive command of Bismark by Marschall? He probably would have pursued and finished off Prince of Wales. But. by then, the damage to Bismark had already been done, so he would have turned for France for repairs and the rest of the operation would have gone as it did.
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  440.  @Jwatt898  from the drawings I see, X and Y turrets are separated like that to make space between the magazines for the turbines.
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  441. Ranger had been built several years earlier, so the USN would have had her, regardless what happened years later. On the question of Wasp, if she had been delayed, then, yes, she could have been redesigned as a 23,000 ton "improved Yorktown", with the deck edge elevator. Then, when Congress authorized money for two new carriers, instead of building Hornet to the then somewhat obsolete Yorktown design, and Essex held up waiting for a new design, Hornet and Essex could both be built to the new "improved Yorktown" design the navy already had in hand , and both would be in commission on December 7th.
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  442.  @michaelpiatkowskijr1045  yup. Thach earned his wings in early 1930. Apologies for misspelling his name with an extra "t". I took the names off of the caption for the pic on the site I looked at.
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  443.  @vikkimcdonough6153  I read, somewhere along the line, that, after the loss of the Lex at Coral Sea, the USN learned to inert the fuel delivery system, On warning of an attack, the gas mains to the flight deck were drained, and the mains and pump rooms were filled with CO2, Wasp was lost because she had no warning of the sub's attack, and was running air ops, so the gas mains were full of gas. As for filling the storage tanks with inert gas, I don't know if that was/is done on carriers. Sticks in my mind that a certain concentration of O2 in the fuel tank would be needed for combustion. A tank with nothing but fuel vapor in the top of the tank might not burn. Aircraft, and cars, have been running around for well over a century, without elaborate inert gas systems for the tanks, without exploding in a fireball, unless the tank is ruptured.
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  444. Do any of your books mention the Navy's consideration of completing Salamis for German service? I was reading through Friedman on WWI Naval Weapons, and noticed that the barbette diameter for the German 12"/50 turret was slightly smaller than that of the US 14" Salamis was designed for. Seems 12"50 turrets could be fitted, with small flanges on the bottom of the turret to cover the top of the barbette. Considering the way the UK Hoovered up every capital ship under construction, why did the Germans not do the same with Salamis?
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  445.  @captain61games49  replacing twin 16" turrets with triple 14" would probably not save any weight. An interesting possibility would be to replace three twin 16" turrets with triple 14"/50s, of which the USN had a surplus in inventory by 1921, and delete turret #4. Besides eliminating the weight of the turret and barbette, deleting #4 would also allow the belt and armored deck to be shortened. You could sit down with Springsharp, first laying out Lexington as designed, then start making modifications to see if you can cut enough weight to allow better protection over what vitals remain, and maintain that 34-35kt speed. I have done that exercise a couple times, but I was not designing for a speed that high.
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  446.  @JimmyCricket93  organized training depots, as opposed to "on the job training", seems to have been established much later than I would have imagined. The RN effectively stopped using press gangs after 1815, but Parliament was still passing laws allowing press gangs as late as 1835. Great Lakes appears to have been the first official USN "boot camp", established in 1911. The first US Army training camps were established in 1917.
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  447. wrt the question about alt history, I enjoy speculating about the repercussions of a pivot in a decision, but do not go in for magical thinking. I have never seen, nor have any interest, in seeing "The Final Countdown", as a for instance. The fun ones are where one person changes his mind: Admiral Strauss at BuOrd accepts the 16"/45, instead of pushing the 14"/50, so Tennessee and California are built with the 16", making them "post-Jutland" in the treaty, so Colorado and West Virginia are never completed. Or, when Congress is demanding, in June 1918, that the navy make a start on all the ships authorized in the 1916 Act, SecNav Daniels talks common sense to Congress, that the South Dakotas have rendered the Colorados obsolete, so cancel West Virginia, Colorado, and Washington, before they are laid down, and proceed with the South Dakotas, then the treaty intervenes to prevent the South Dakotas being completed. How does the non-existence of Colorado and West Virginia vibrate through the next 25 years?
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  448.  @hawkerhellfire9152  Part of the problem with maintaining high speed, especially with the low grade coal the Germans had, was the boilers clog up with soot and debris from the coal, which inhibits heat transfer to the water. Auger stokers, like railroad engines had in the 1920s, would not have helped when the boiler is clogged.
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  449.  @SoonerDan77  The QEs level of activity was probably a product of being there at the start of the war, and not being sunk before the end, combined with not a large number of newer ships taking their place on the front line in between. The Brooklyn class cruisers were everywhere all through the war too. Boise earned 11 battle stars, Nashville 10, Phoenix 11, Honolulu 8, St Louis 11. They pale compared to Enterpise's 20, but those cruisers earned their keep.
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  450.  @its1110  that developmental work could have been done with Ranger. As Drac's video said, in war games it was found that "a carrier found is a carrier sunk", and the Navy was very concerned about having nearly half of it's carrier tonnage allotment under the treaty tied up in only two ships. The USN did a lot of work in trying to divy up the remaining tonnage in a large number of small ships but decided that a ship as small as Ranger wasn't really up to the job, hence the move back to a larger hull with the Yorktowns.
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  451.  @ZenkoTheGreat  The drawings on Navweaps do not give the diameter of the barbettes, but they do give the diameter of the parts of the turret that fit inside the barbette. The triple 14" as used in the Tennessees is 28ft, 11.5in in dia. The twin 16" as used in the Colorados is 28ft, 5.5in. As the twin 16" is slightly smaller, it should fit within the Tennessee class barbette, by my thumbnail math. However, the change would need to be ordered when the ships were built. The Washington Naval Treaty prohibited up gunning a battleship's main armament, except in the cases of France and Italy.
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  452.  @tommeakin1732  that thought crossed my mind. Use a development of the 12"/50 on the Wyomings on the Lexingtons to save weight and size, vs the 16", making the Lexingtons essentially a 1920 version of the Alaskas. Thinking about it, a 12"/50 could punch through the armor of anything that could catch up to a Lexington, and having a sub-battleship size gun would discourage the temptation to put battlecruisers in the battleline against full-on battleships. But the Wyomings were years away from scrapping. What was available in abundance immediately after WWI was the 12'/45, but then you start running into problems penetrating battlecruiser armor. Navweaps gives a penetration for the 12"/50 at 12,000 yards of as much as 12.3" and 10" at 20,000 yards, enough to punch through an Amagi's belt at those ranges. But the 12"/45 could only penetrate 10.8" at 12,000 yards, so punching through Amagi's belt at longer range than that becomes problematic.
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  453. In the battles of Elli and Lemnos, Averof did most of the work, inflicting gun damage on several Ottoman ships, but sinking nothing. The newly purchased Aetos class destroyers had 21" torpedo tubes, unique in the Greek fleet, and the Greeks had not bought any torpedoes for them. However, Greece had the eight Thyella and Niki class destroyers, each of which mounted a pair of torpedo tubes. Newspaper reports at the time say the older Greek destroyers, the ones that should have had torpedoes, stayed at Lemnos, rather than come out with the rest of the fleet and participate in the battle. Why didn't the Nikis and Thyellas come out with the rest of the fleet and torpedo the ex-German pre-dreadnoughts when they were exposed, and sink them, so they would not need to be dealt with again? And thanks for addressing my question about battleship construction sequence.
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  454.  @brucewilliams1892  The deck in Drac's pix does not look the Lex's deck when I was on her, some 50-odd years ago. The Lex's deck forward was still wood. The after flight deck, with the angled part, looked like fine grained asphalt, which I suspect was some sort of non-skid coating on steel. The after deck was also a fraction of an inch higher than the forward part, enough of a difference that the planes visibly changed attitude as they went down the short ramp from the angled part onto the original forward part of the deck.
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  455. A Bismark vs Hood question came up on another forum a few days ago. The theory was offered that Bismark penetrated Hood's deck by using a reduced charge, to lower muzzle velocity, enabling firing at a higher angle. Extracts from a 1935 USN gunnery table, were offered as evidence this was an established practice: for a USN 14" full charge, 2600fps MV, at 14,500 yards, angle of fall is 12 degrees, for reduced charge, 2000fps, angle of fall is 20 degrees. For a USN 16", full charge, at 23,500 yards, angle of fall is 22 degrees, reduced charge, 42 degrees. One pushback offered to this theory was that there was no record of Bismark doing this, but the records would be in the ship, at the bottom of the ocean, and no-one would have though it worth mentioning in the after action debrief of the surviving crew, because it was SOP. Additional challenge to the theory was that Bismark's guns used brass cased charges that could not be adjusted. But only the main charge was brass cased, the fore charge was in a bag, so the charge could be adjusted. What say you? Is it plausible that, knowing they were shooting at an old ship with inadequate protection against plunging fire, Bismark's gunners simply turned to the reduced charge page of their gunnery table, fired at high angle, and the eye-witness accounts, and narrative of the last 80 years, that it was a deck hit that penetrated to the magazine, are correct?
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  456.  @WaverleyWanderer  your question sounds close to what I proposed in the ship profile post Q&A a couple days ago: what if the WNT gave the RN two licenses for future BB construction in 1927 and 29, like France and Italy received, instead of being allowed to build the Nelsons immediately. As Todd said, the bar on BB speed had been raised significantly by 1930. In planning the KGV,s seems the Admiralty did not even seriously consider 16" guns when First London permitted them. I ran some quick estimates and the three triple 15" armament proposed for the KGVs would have weighed 850 tons more than the 14" armament the ships ultimately received. I would suspect that, with 1930 powerplants, it could be impossible to build a heavily armored. 28 kt, ship with the weight of 9-16" guns. I'm sure there was a reason the Admiralty wanted 14" guns on the KGVs, and negotiated the gun size reduction in Second London. The Admiralty didn't revisit 16" guns until the collapse of the treaty system allowed them to increase displacement to over 40,000. Considering the alternative, I suspect that, with the two licenses in hand, the RN would not have responded to the Deutschlands, as they apparently didn't even consider the Deutschlands enough of a threat to spend the money to modernize both Renowns at that time. Most likely, and best outcome, for the RN, would be to see the first two Littorios laid down in 34, and use the licenses to advance the timeline for the KGV class, laying down KGV and Prince of Wales in 36, with Duke of York and Anson laid down on January 1 of 37. That would have the RN, at the time of Bismark's breakout, with four KGVs in commission, instead of two KGVs and two old, slow, Nelsons.
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  457. wrt von Spee's options, a route around Africa would afford the opportunity to pick up Königsberg in Tanganyika en route. Most of Africa being colonies of various European powers means that most of the places they could put in for coal would either be hostile, or neutral, but full of allied spies that would report their arrival. Scharnhorst had a range of 4800nm and Königsberg's range was 5750nm. As soon as the war started, British and French troops invaded Kamerun, taking Douala on September 27, 1914. South African forces landed at Lüderitz in Southwest Africa in the fall of 14 and Swakopmund on Feb 11, 1915. Dar Es Salaam to Swakopmund is 3385nm, so von Spee could make it, if he started early, and if plenty of coal was available. Spain was neutral, and the distance from Swakopmund to Dakhla in the Spanish Sahara is 4249nm. From Dakhla to Wilhelmshaven is 2552nm, if going by the channel. So the trip would be feasible, provided von Spee started early enough to reach Swakopmund before the South Africans occupied the town, and if there was plenty of coal available.
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  458.  @baronungernthebloody553  easy part first, Kaga also had flying off decks for both upper and lower hangars as originally built. If WWI had not happened, the UK would not have had a huge debt to US money interests. If WWI had not happened, the US would not have started the 1916 building program. The US Congress, in the 1920s, was not interested in funding a large navy. The thinking is, had the US not proposed the treaty to halt construction, Congress would have stopped funding for the 1916 program and the Lexingtons and South Dakotas would have been broken up on the slipway anyway. Without WWI, I do not see the US military ever being built up beyond that needed for random "big stick" waving exercises in Latin America, so taking on a British Empire not weakened by WWI would be suicidal. No matter how much US money interests may cry about British obstacles to their trade ambitions, I do not see Americans being willing to pay the tax to enable a large military.
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  459.  @dyerwulf5459  I noticed that too: KGVs in the Home Fleet, QEs in the Med and Rs in the Indian Ocean, but, on paper, the RM had a much more formidable surface force than Germany. My hunch is the Admiralty's perception of the threat. German surface ships could attack convoys needed to supply the UK. Egypt could be supplied via Suez, Gibraltar would make an Italian attempt to force the strait costly, and, at the end of the day, Malta and Cyprus aren't as important as the UK.
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  460.  @baronungernthebloody553  there was no "American military giant" until WWII. TR postured with the "Great White Fleet", but most of those ships were obsolete when they made the trip around the world. The US could handle Spain in 98, but declined an opportunity when it only took the Philippines and Guam, instead of all of the Spanish colonies in the Pacific. I wonder if the US could have engaged in WWI prior to April 1917, as it had been involved in "big stick" waving exercises in Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic in 16. When the US did engage in WWI, it was with French artillery and French and British aircraft. By some accounts, the Navy Bill of 1916 was in response to British interference in US trade. By some accounts, the RN was seizing neutral US ships carrying goods to neutral European countries, on the possibility of the goods being transshipped to Germany,, then selling the cargoes, and sometimes the ships, and the crown pocketing the proceeds. The 1916 bill was intended to build a fleet capable of standing up to the RN. Interest in building a fleet "second to none" came to a screeching halt when the Harding administration took office in 1921. Secretary Hughes' initial treaty proposal was an immediate stop to all capital ship building, because the US didn't want to spend another dime and wanted a way out from under the contracts with the shipyards. The treaty was supposed to give the USN parity with the RN, but reality is far from it. Look at the retention lists. The treaty gave the RN more tonnage, more ships and more firepower than the USN. The original Hughes proposal had the US retaining six battleships with 12" guns, while West Virginia, Colorado and Washington, all in an advanced state of construction, would be scrapped. Even the oldest ships retained by the RN in Hughes' proposal had 13.5" guns with substantially more throw weight, and they were newer than the 12" gun USN ships. The RN was also given licenses to build the Nelsons. The Colorados and Nagatos were 1916 designs. The Nelsons were a six year newer design that could fully exploit wartime experience. The US was clearly negotiating from a weak position, and everyone knew it, but the objective was to stop US spending on ships. Frankly, I'm amazed the USN got the money for the carrier conversions. When Calvin Coolidge was POTUS in the mid 20s, seeing a request by the Army for money for aircraft, asked "why can't they buy one aeroplane, and take turns flying it?"
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  461. Excellent, well thought out presentation. I'm inclined to agree, as the long column of flames were clearly cordite burning, not any sort of explosive. Somewhat surprising how many golden BB shots there are in a war: this one, the one on Arizona, the one that disabled Saratoga's electric drive system...
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  462. So, Drach is on board with the theory that Bismark was unsinkable by British fire and was, instead, scuttled? Or just repeating German puffery? When Ballard found the wreck, he also said he believed the scuttled line, but, looking at the video shot of the wreck, i see a heck of a lot of damage, including long strips of the outer hull torn off below the waterline, and the entire stern missing.
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  463.  @bkjeong4302  a quick look at Wiki, shows Alaska had only a 9" belt. enough to fend off 8", and maybe German 11" shells. vs a Kongo's armor, which varied from 3"-8". Navweaps does not have armor penetration data for the Japanese 14"/45, but muzzle velocity and range of that gun vs the US 12"/50 are very close. If the Kongo blew a lot of chaff in the air to blind Alaska's radar, it could go either way.
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  464. wrt the question about substitutes in the absence of the 20mm and 40mm guns, in my reading about the navy's AA gun competition, while the Vickers performed fairly well, apparently it did not function well using USN smokeless powder, and no-one in the US made cordite. Given that issue, I'm thinking they would have gone with the 37mm. The 37 apparently had a tendency to jam, but a proper cooling jacket may have solved that. The army version had a water chest, and, the crew was supposed to stop firing every 60 or 90 rounds, and flush water through the gun to cool it. The manual for the gun says if it jams, it's because it's too hot. The 37 was developed into a model that could be fed from either right or left, with simple modification, and switched from rigid clips, to metal belt ammo. The 37 has a significantly higher ceiling than the Vickers, though not quite as high as the Bofors. Given that the gun and ammo were already in production in the US, I would think logistics would have won the day and the 37mm would have been adapted. The 20mm Hispano never seemed to work right for the US, which is why US fighters tended to have .50 cal machine guns instead. Here's an odd thought. The aircraft version of the 37mm was light enough to use on a free mount, as was done on PT boats. A while back I looked at the numbers, and, iirc, the aircraft 37mm had range performance competitive with the 20mm. While it's rate of fire was slower, the weight of the shells was greater, so each would do much more damage to the target. If I was running BuOrd, I could see the M1 in twin and quad mounts replacing the Bofors, and the M4 replacing the Oerlikon.
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  465.  @johnshepherd8687  as luck would have it, somehow, a side by side cross section drawing of QE and Hood found it's way into my files. I don't know how accurate it is. From the bottom up, QE's side armor was 13", a 6" strake. and a second 6" strake, ending at the main deck. Hood had a 12" strake, 7" strake, and a 5" strake, all angled. QE had a 1" main deck, 2" one deck below, then 1" two decks farther down. Hood had 2" on the main deck, 0.75 to 1" one deck below, 2" one deck farther down outboard, with a 1" vertical bulkhead, then 1.5" deck inboard. So, yes, assuming the drawing is accurate, and allowing for the greater effectiveness of sloped armor, Hood was pretty close to being as well protected as a QE.
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  466.  @myrecreationalchannel7181  that concept, "armored against it's own guns" always amused me. Who shoots at themself? What matters is how it holds up against fire from it's likely opponents.
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  467.  @stephenknowles1420  Yes, the classifications can get confused at the extremes. I have always heard the Alaskas referred to as cruisers. When the Dunkerque's were designed, the UK had been pressing for lowered tonnage and gun size limits in the treaty system, and was reportedly pleased that the French designed well below the treaty limits. Of course, then Italy laid down the Littorios, a treaty-max (plus some) design, and France realized it had made a mistake. When Alaska was designed, there were no limits, as the treaty system had collapsed, and no-one was building a capital ship with main guns smaller than 14". So at the time of her design, Alaska was too undersized, under armed, and under protected, to be any sort of capital ship.
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  468.  @deplorablemecoptera3024  I think the objective was to restrict spending on ships, so the ship size was constrained. When the limit on BB tonnage was set at 35,000, that was just as ships started topping that displacement. The QEs, Colorados and Nagatos were just under 35,000. Only one that comes to mind right now that was over 35,000 was Hood. But everything being laid down or planned after the war was well over that limit, and the treaty's intent was to curtail the size/cost escalation, both in individual ships and navy size overall.
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  469.  @kemarisite  So, in cruisers, the treaty stopped the growth trend at current practice, just as it did in capping BB growth at the size commonly built in 1916.-19
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  470.  @bkjeong4302  in defense of the Iowas, when they came into service, there were still several IJN BBs running around, and the Iowas could have earned their keep, if they had been in the right place at the right time. In one of my alternate histories. the tonnage increase to 45,000 tons would be written into the Second London treaty, like so many articles erroneously say, instead of being negotiated between the UK and US in 38. Then the USN would skip the slow tubs of the North Carolina and South Dakota classes, build 6 Iowas, which would start commissioning in 41, when they would have had plenty to shoot at.
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  471.  @bkjeong4302  under ideal conditions, I agree. Then you run into the Solomons campaign, Samar, Surigao. Occasions where the Iowas could have earned their keep, if they had been there. Our guys had to take out one of the Kongos with cruisers, because that was all that was available. If the Iowas had been left behind from Bull's Run, they could have settled Yamato's hash right then.
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  472.  @sander6438  geometry. calculate the volume of the hull and where the waterline is, to calculate the weight of water it is displacing.
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  473.  @AtomicBabel  same thing with Hornet. Not burning. DC crew working and correcting list. The issue with the Yorktowns was the boiler and engine rooms were not staggered, so they could lose all boilers or all engines, and be dead in the water. Being dead in the water is what killed both Yorktown and Hornet.
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  474.  @bkjeong4302  Given the multiple battles in the Solomons, the Iowas would have looked useful when they were building in 42, but not so useful, in addition to the NCs and SDs, to carry on with Illinois and Kentucky, which were suspended in later 42. wrt Samar, there is a narrative that Halsey was supposed to leave the BBs behind when he started his run to the decoy group, but brought them along to realize his fever dream of having the BBs finish off what the air group had not already sunk. The decoy group only had two big gun ships. Halsey could have brought the two Iowas along, as they had the virtue of being able to keep up with the carriers, to do the mopping up, while leaving the four 28kt tubs behind so they wouldn't slow him up. That leaves Taffy 3 in the warm company, of Alabama, Massachusetts, South Dakota and Washington, when Kurita's posse comes over the horizon. That would have been interesting: Yamato, the biggest dude on the block, Nagato being pretty decent, and Kongo and Haruna with glass jaws, squaring off against 4 USN ships with state of the art fire control, while the Taffy 3 air group throws everything but the kitchen sink at them. I bet Halsey would have been pissed he missed it.
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  475.  @AtomicBabel  Agree wrt Yorktown, but the sub had other ideas. If Yorktown had staggered engine and boiler rooms, it could have made some speed, 10 kts would probably have been enough, to be long gone before that sub wandered through the area two days later.
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  476.  @AtomicBabel  aircraft maintenance eh? After college, I looked very hard at AMDO. Thing is AMDO is back seat qualified, meaning back to Pensacola to train with the airdales. I have never been Joe athlete. Gunny would take one look at me and toss me during poopy week. The guys at NAMI are real comedians. After winding you up about the "pain tolerance test", they start making snarky comments about the "blind NFO program". Actually, I think maybe the blind NFO program was real. I have really bad eyesight, but the Flight Surgeon at NAMI said I was PQ for AMDO.
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  477. I read an account of the RAF torpedo bomber attack on the Lutzow. It was at night, and the Lutzow had several DDs as escort. None of the German ships fired a shot at the attacking Beaufort, so it was able to get in close and make a solid hit. Apparently, the German crews were told there was a Ju-88 operating in the area that night, and mistook the Beaufort for that 88.
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  478.  @disunityholychaos7523  that account is in a book by Ralph Barker. It was published in the US as "Torpedo Bomber" a paperback from Ballantine in the early 70s. It was also published in the UK as "Ship-Busters". The book covers Beaufort ops in the North Sea and Channel, then moves to ops in the Med around Malta, then moves back to ops around England late in the war. I found it a fascinating read. Besides the attack on the Lutzow, it covers the torpedoing of Gneisenau in Brest and the "channel dash" when Scharnhorst and Gneisenau ran up the English Channel, in broad daylight, and a lot more.
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  479. Looked up this video as I have been reading a book about Beaufort torpedo bomber operations during the war and read the chapter on this operation last night. The dribbling of British attacks through the day, which allowed the German air cover and flak gunners to concentrate on relatively few aircraft at a time, reminded me, more than anything else, of the US TBDs at Midway, another tragically uncoordinated attack that killed a lot of good men.
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  480.  @timengineman2nd714  I think he is referring to the torpedo net booms.
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  481.  @timengineman2nd714  the full text of the treaties is on line. I read the replacement sequence off of the WNT. The treaty required the older ships to be decommissioned when the new ships entered service, three years after they were laid down, so, technically, as the drawdowns from First London only gave the USN 68kt of headroom, theoretically, Arkansas would need to be decommissioned when Washington commissioned in May of 41, but, by then, events had made the treaties irrelevant. As an exercise, I considered what if the USN had taken a page from the Admiralty's book in April 1917, and cancelled outright BBs that had been ordered, but not laid down, as the Admiralty cancelled three Rs and a QE. That would mean Tennessee and all the Colorados would never be built. To fill the USN's 525,000t quota, the USN would have needed to retain not only the South Carolinas, but also three of the pre-dreadnought Connecticut class. Being saddled with such hopelessly obsolete ships, the USN would probably be granted licenses for future construction, as France and Italy were, but would Coolidge have spent the money?
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  482.  @DELTATROOPER5555  I would expect that the powers with the largest fleets offer the most targets for frogmen. Imagine if, while the battleship forces are duking it out around Leyte Gulf, a swarm of Japanese frogmen got in among the invasion force, all those stationary ships full of cargo, or in any of the big anchorages the allies had around the Pacific. The Brits adopted both midget subs and manned torpedoes. The USN established the UDT teams, originally to clear obstacles for amphib landings in 42. The UDT teams evolved into the SEALs of today. Why didn't the Germans and Japanese pick up the idea?
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  483.  @the_mighty_cornflake3858  the Fusos and Ises were a mite slow. A more interesting scenario might be converting the Kongos, but the Kongos were real workhorses through the war, used until they were wiped out, while other battleships sat in port. So would CV converted Kongos have greater utility than the Kongos as battlecruisers? By 44, seemed that more carriers would have been redundant anyway, because they didn't have enough pilots to man the carriers they still had. Too many moving factors in that scenario for me to game out.
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  484.  @chedelirio6984  not really. As long as the pressure inside and outside the hull is equalized, the excess air could be vented. The danger is going so deep that the crew starts suffering from the bends when they surface. Men working under pressure in the caissons, building the foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge, often suffered from the bends. The depth of the caissons on the Brooklyn side was 44.5 feet, and 78.5 feet on the Manhattan side. Didn't Drac say the French sub was limited to running 40 feet deep?
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  485.  @prussianhill  offhand, my suspicion is the PoW and Repulse were no more than a speedbump to the IJN. If they had not been sunk that day, they would have been sunk on another day, unless they got out of there.
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  486.  @kalinmir  The guns were not outrageously long, some 45 feet/13.75M. That is not unheard of for shipping by rail. I have seen photos of guns that size shipping from the US Naval gun factory on rail cars. The turrets are another matter, due to their width. My first thought is river barge, but from Plzen you end up on the Elbe, ending up at the North Sea. Entirely the wrong direction from Trieste.
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  487.  @brendonbewersdorf986  There is just such a case, actually two. Germany sold two Brandenburg class pre-dreadnoughts to the Ottoman Empire in 1910. They served through a war with Italy, war with Greece and into WWI. The case more relevant to your hypothetical is when the US sold the two Mississippi class pre-dreadnoughts to Greece in 1914. Both of those ships were still in Greek service at the start of WWII: one as a gunnery training ship and the other disarmed, with the guns reinstalled as shore batteries. Both were riding at anchor at Salamis when attacked by Stukas and sunk in 1941. Based on the Greek example, I doubt pre-dreadnoughts, even if kept in something resembling combat condition, would have accomplished anything in the hands of any other country the Germans wanted to invade.
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  488.  @erichammond9308  the IJN did use the Vickers pompom in the 1920s and early 30s. The guns were built in Japan under license. The pompom was replaced by the 25mm.
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  489. 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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  490.  @pyronuke4768  I found an interesting clause in Second London: minimum values for a "capital ship": 17,000 tons and 10" guns. Anything smaller than than runs into the maximums for a cruiser: 10,000 tons and 8" guns. Second London does not explicitly limit the number of ships of a type, but the limit, is implicit, as the only mention of an exception to replacing ships when they age out, by the rules of the treaty, is when a ship is lost or destroyed by accident. Germany's Panzerschiff were exempt, because Germany was not a party to the naval treaty system when they were built. The Panzerschiff complied with the limits imposed by the Versailles treaty. Another factor is how much the county's industrial base for building warships had deteriorated between the wars. To complete the KGVs, between 40 and 42, they had to order the 14" guns in December 35. Some of the armor for the KGVs had to be contracted out to a company in Czechoslovakia. A couple weeks ago, I fired up SpringSharp to see what I could come up with, if the Admiralty had kept the armor and 13.5" armament when the Iron Dukes were scrapped, and needed something quick and cheap. I used the length and beam of Renown, deepened the draft 3 feet to improve beam strength of the hull, installed a KGV power plant, as it was already designed and in production, 5" deck armor, assuming it was bought out, maybe US STS, with 4 Iron Duke main turrets and the Iron Duke belt armor. The Iron Duke belt was skimpy, a narrow 12" band at the waterline, with 8" above. Outside of the skimpy belt, it worked out really well. SpringSharp gave a top speed of 29kts, stable gun platform, good sea boat, roomy and comfortable for the crew. The displacement came out over your 25,000. It was somewhere in the low 30s, within treaty limits. With your 25,000 limit, you will probably come up with something like Dunkerque. Roughly the same armor, armament, and speed, as my "HMS Expendable", but Dunkerque had the compromised armament layout, and everything was custom made and, thus, optimal, but expensive. Mine has a more flexible 2 twin turrets at each end, and is quick and cheap to build due to extensive use of existing material.
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  491.  @pyronuke4768  I understand what you are going for. We have to be mindful of the existing constraints. If you wait until the haggis hits the fan, to render the treaty irrelevant, you end up with something like the Alaskas, ordered in 40, but, by the time they are in commission, almost all of the IJN cruisers they were intended to kill had already been sunk. We need something that can commission in 40-41, which means it must be started during Second London. The RN was in a good position to build a lot of capital ships, except it didn't have the industrial capacity anymore. Second London said capital ships age out at 26 years. That means the RN can commission one ship in 40, two in 41, and 8 in 42. The UK only had the capacity to build the 5 KGVs new, from the keel up, not the 11 ships they could have commissioned. In the USN, Arkansas aged out in 38, the New Yorks in 40, and the Nevadas in 42, a total of 5, but, over that period, the US built 2 North Carolinas and 4 South Dakotas, so, looking at the situation from 1937, they had no more "replaceable" ships. The Italians, if they were abiding by Second London, could have called Roma and Impero replacements for two Cavours, leaving the two Dorias eligible to be replaced in 42. If you want to be Japanese, Russian or Dutch, you can do anything you want. The material you can buy from other countries would probably be limited by national security concerns of the selling countries. You are unlikely to be able to buy the latest and greatest guns and high pressure power plants from anyone you wish. Example, Vanguard was laid down 2 years after the South Dakotas, but Vanguard's plant ran at 350psi, rather than the 600psi of the South Dakota plant. There is also a logistics problem Different country's guns use different propellant. When the Admiralty bought some US made 14" in 1914, they had to buy US smokeless powder for them through the war. They tried RN cordite, but saw a significant loss of muzzle velocity and range. If you want to be the USN, you need to wait until Congress decided to ignore the treaty limits in mid 38. Then grab as much off the shelf hardware as possible, to speed construction, so they are in commission in 41. The USN had an abundance of new 14"/50s on the shelf. Maybe combine some of them with a 120,000hp Hornet powerplant. I have great fun with alt history scenarios, but, I dig into the details to see what was realistically possible.
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  492.  @snakeplissken2018  that thought crossed my mind too. The Yamatos, Nagato, and the Kongos were together with the Fusos at Brunei. They all set sail on October 22. It would have been easy to switch assignments so that BB Division 1, the Yamatos and Nagato, went through Surigao, while the Fusos and Kongos form the center force. Only thing that comes to mind that would cause an objection to that alignment would be the speed difference between the Fusos and Kongos. Of the US battleships at Surigao, only two, West Virginia and Maryland, had 16" guns. I would put the Yamatos at the head of the column to break trail, presuming they can take the most damage, while they deal with the US line. That would leave Nagato, no pushover itself, relatively undamaged, to get at the beachhead. Of course, it would have also helped if Shima's force of cruisers and destroyers had coordinated better, so they could deal with the US DDs and PTs before they got a crack at the Japanese battleships.
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  493. I have seen UK market road tests of the T-Roc, that make the same point: it is very expensive, for what it is. Here in the US, Stellantis and Ford are working the same business plan: increase price, while reducing quality. Globally, VW's warranty claims expense is only exceeded by Ford's. In the US last year, the average transaction price, across the industry, was about $48,000. Stellantis' ATP was over $53,000, and the company bragged it was the highest ATP in the US. And Stellantis takes that much money off of people without a "luxury" brand like Cadillac or Lexus. They just price Jeeps like they were Range Rovers.
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  494.  @deadzone4155  Company greed? There was so much corrupt thinking in US companies during WWII, Harry Truman, then a Senator, headed up an investigation of corporate activities. One of the larger scandals involved a Curtiss-Wright engine plant near Cincinnati: company officials were paying off Air Corps inspectors to look the other way, while the plant shipped known substandard aircraft engines. Brewster Aeronautical was a total dumpster fire: notorious for late deliveries and substandard build quality. Brewster was so bad the Navy took over the company in the spring of 42, and showed CEO Jimmy Work the door.
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  495.  @Pavlos_Charalambous  iirc, the British naval advisors to Greece were recommending they buy more torpedo boats and destroyers, instead of sinking so much money into one or two big ships, but seems the politicians had other ideas. I read about how, when ordering Salamis, the Greek PM authorized a ship with three turrets that, iirc, could fit in the drydock. As soon as the PM was out of the country for a few days, a handful of movers and shakers in Parliament sent Vulcan a change order for the larger, more expensive, more heavily armed version that was actually built. When the PM arrived back in Greece and saw what they did, he tried to reverse the change order but Vulcan refused to allow the reversal. Vulcan really tended to play hardball with Greece. In 1912, Greece needed new destroyers desperately. They bought two V-class ships that Vulcan had built for the German navy, but, to compensate Vulcan for having to schedule two more Vs for the German navy, Vulcan required Greece to buy more torpedo boats. That is something I noticed about the battles of Elli and Lemnos: the Greek torpedo boats were a non-factor. I gather the Aetos class had empty tubes. The Niki and Thyella class ships must have had torpedoes on board. But the only Greek torpedo attacks I see mentioned are a couple raids in harbor, sinking an Ottoman ironclad that had been pretty much reduced to a hulk, and a gunboat, and the torpedo boats used on those occasions seem to be the oldest ones in Greek inventory.
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  496.  @Aelxi  the title for a piece on the Marshal class would probably be "diesels, not ready for prime time". I have read there were cases when those two had to be towed to their missions. The shame is they were provided with brand new twin 15"/42 turrets, surplus from the cancelled Revenge class battleships. The ship's performance was so bad that the turret was removed from Ney and reinstalled on Terror, while Ney was rearmed with a mix of 6" and 4" guns and spent the rest of the war as a guard ship.
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  497.  @davidlow8104  Drac has commented in the past that the IJN's building program was unsustainable due to the projected budget consuming so much of government revenue, so the IJN program would collapse of it's own weight. The US was demanding repayment, in full, of it's ally's war debt. When the depression hit, France immediately defaulted. The UK and Italy made partial payments as best they could, until Congress passed legislation that defined partial payment as a default, punishable by the same sanctions. With nothing to lose, the UK and Italy stopped making payments entirely. From that, I take that the five powers that were parties to the treaty were all under significant financial stress in 1930. Converting an existing battlecruiser to a carrier is very expensive. Converting Courageous to a carrier cost some 2M GBP, about the same as the cost to originally build her as a "large light cruiser". Building Ark Royal, from the keel up, cost 3M GBP, for a more capable ship with a larger air group. Converting an old battlecruiser to a carrier would have the same capacity restrictions as the Courageouses and Lexingtons, as well as the cost of an entire new powerplant: replacing direct drive turbines with geared turbines, replacing coal fired boilers with oil fired, converting coal bunkers to oil tanks, adding torpedo protection. The four G3s would barely be enough to replace the coal fired battlecruisers that survived the war, so I would expect the Renowns and Hood to be retained as they were. Likewise, the four N3s would barely replace the 12" armed dreadnoughts, let alone the 13.5" armed Orions, KGVs, and Iron Dukes The fleet size drawdown motivated by the state of the economy and the hypothetical 1930 treaty would probably see the last of the coal fired ships scrapped, rather than see any of them converted to carriers.
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  498. Washington Treaty era alt history. Right in Steve's wheelhouse. Historical basis: The 1916 Navy Bill had a cost limit on the first four BBs, which we know as the Colorados. There was no cost limit on the following six BBs, which we know as the South Dakotas. USN priorities changed when the US entered the war, and capital ships were put on the back burner. In June 1918, Congress included an amendment in the annual Navy Bill, requiring the Navy Department to make a start on the ships authorized in 16, but not yet started. That would be the three remaining Colorados, Lexingtons and South Dakotas. SecNav Daniels proceeded per plan. The Steve alt: Daniels says the 42,000 ton design, which Congress had approved, made the Colorados obsolete, so building the remaining three would be a waste. He proposes completing Maryland with 14"/50s, as BuOrd head Strauss had ordered them in quantity far in excess of need. Skip the 16"/45, and go straight to the 16"/50, laying down the South Dakotas as soon as practicable. There is a South Dakota class drawing dated 5-3-18, planned to be laid down in 1919. That drawing shows the ships with a displacement of 42,500 tons. 400 tons of that being reserve boiler feed water, and 1600 was fuel, which were omitted from treaty displacement calculations. Historically, the UK was willing to accept an individual ship displacement of 42,000 tons, due to Hood, so the South Daktoas, per the 1918 drawing, are golden. The final construction drawings for the South Dakotas are dated April 25, 1919, approved by Franklin Roosevelt, as "acting" SecNav. So we are looking at them being laid down in late 1919, at the earliest. There is no way they would be complete before the treaty, just as the three later Colorados were not complete, historically. Japan demands to be allowed to complete Tosa, because of Hood, giving Japan three "post-Jutland" ships with 16" guns, one being of 40,000-ish tons. Given the 5:5:3 ratio, that would mean the US could complete 5 of the South Dakotas, but Japan objects to the US having that many ships of that size, and the US doesn't want to spend that much money. The compromise reached is the US completes two South Dakotas, and is allowed to up-gun Maryland, Tennessee, and California to the 16"/45, if it wants to, giving the US 5 "post-Jutland", 16" armed, ships. The UK is then allowed to build one ship of up to 42,000 tons, and 3 32-35,000-ish ton "post-Jutland", 16" armed, ships.
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  499. A major factor in the US industrial output during the war was the auto industry's perfection of mass, assembly line, production. Consolidated built "hand crafted" B-24s. Ford, at it's Willow Run plant, cranked them out like cars. The Bofors gun and RR Merlin were designed to be "hand crafted", with lots of hand fitting of parts. The first thing Chrysler and Packard had to do was reverse engineer the guns and engines to accuractly define all the dimensions, so they could use their mass precision machining capability to eliminate the hand fitting. It wasn't just a matter of the manpower, and a lot of womanpower too, that could be put on the job, but the level of productivity that was realized.
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  500.  @godofprocurement  the main guns were 15" (381mm)/40 caliber.
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  501.  @dimhal7840  You can get a feel for the effectiveness of axis AA by reading Ralph Barker's "Ship-Busters", published in the US as a Ballantine paperback "Torpedo Bomber". The book primarily covers RAF Beaufort ops, with an occasional mention of Swordfish. Losses to axis ship-borne AA were horrific. When the Scharnhorsts made their run up the channel, the first formation to attack them were a half dozen Swordfish. The stringbags were wiped out by German AA fire, with only 5 crewmen surviving and picked up by British MTBs. Beauforts suffered heavy losses in both the Med and North Sea, until they hit on the idea of bringing along some Beaufighters to strafe the ships to suppress AA fire while the torpedo planes made their attack. The man that really developed Beaufort tactics was Pat Gibbs (later Wing Commander, DSO, DFC and bar) who developed the tactics while commanding a squadron on Malta. He ended up launching mass attacks of Beauforts with torpedoes, strafing Beaufighters and Blenheims dropping bombs, all at the same time, to overwhelm the Italian convoy escorts.
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  502.  @kemarisite  I watched that video a while back. The book does have an advantage by being focused on the torpedo ops, and goes in to great detail as long as someone lived to tell the story.
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  503.  @DrSid42  Depending on the size of ship, a cabin cruiser would be for the top brass. In the USN. for the captain of the ship, the cruiser is called the "captain's gig". For an admiral, the cruiser is called a "barge". At least in my day, the two were easily distinguishable: a captain's gig was painted grey, an admiral's barge was black with a white superstructure. Besides that, a ship could carry a variety of motor whaleboats or motor launches for carrying the crew to/from shore (liberty launch), delivering mail and similar errands.
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  504.  @brendonbewersdorf986  Navypedia says all three were removed from the active list in 1919. One persisted as a gunnery school until scrapped in 1929. One persisted as a communications school until scrapped in 29. One persisted as a boy's school until scrapped in 1932.
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  505.  @tomdolan9761  I agree. At that time, every navy, except the USN, had scout cruisers. An Invincible would be capable of performing the scouting function, and eliminate the other force's scouts, giving the RN a tactical advantage.
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  506.  @bkjeong4302  I can certainly see a scenario where they build four Kiis, rather than any Tosas or Amagis. Yes, if the Tosas had not been laid down, that would leave the slipways at Kawasaki and Mitsubishi available for Atago and Takao at the same time as Amagi and Akagi were laid down, so there would be better alternatives to Kaga, when Amagi was wrecked. But would the IJN do that, with a doctrine that called for both battlecruisers and battleships? The last iteration of the Lexingtons was spawned after SecNav Daniels and his entourage inspected Hood on a junket to Europe in early 1919. If the Japanese had made a similar inspection of Hood, they may have made the leap in doctrine to the fast battleship in 1919, cancelled the Tosas and Amagis, and gone straight to the Kiis, I have noticed, everything I see indicates the Kiis were little more than up-armored Amagis, so the doctrinal leap to the fast battleship may have been made over a very short time span.
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  507.  @MrTScolaro  yes, that was the case, and the rebuilt 16"/45 could do some damage. They could punch through Yamashiro's 12" belt at that range. I finished watching that video yesterday, and found a discrepancy. The slide in the video shows the 14" penetrating 17" of armor at 16,000 yards, which is what Wiki says. Navweaps quotes two different sources saying that gun could only penetrate 13", which would mean that the 14"/45 was barely adequate at the Admiralty doctrine dictated 16,000 yards, and not up to the job of landing a kill shot beyond that. The penetration of the US North Carolina 16"/45 is understated in the slide, according to Navweaps too. The number cited, iirc 16.7" is close to the 16"/45 mounted on the Colorados. Per Navweaps, the Mk 6 guns the North Carolinas carried could penetrate over 20" at 15,000. I have asked around for another source for penetration data on the 14"/45 and come up empty, so far. The only other reasonably modern 14" at that time to compare were the US rebuilt 14"/50s, which has a muzzle velocity 200fps higher than the 14"/45 and could only penetrate, 16.76" at 15,000. How the British gun, with a lower muzzle velocity, penetrate more, at longer range? I would love to see a credible source.
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  508. Captions on pix of that sort of rig, iirc, mirrors on brackets, that I have seen say they are for gunnery practice. I have no idea how that rig would work though.
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  509.  @user-nh1yb9mk7y  if they lose the US market, they are going to have another pile of excess production capacity. In their deal with the German union, they announced that the Mk 9 Golf, for the EU, will be built entirely in Mexico, from 2027, so Mexican production must be cheaper than in the EU.
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  510.  @ghost307  Drac posted he is visiting Cod on September 13th. Somehow, I missed the announcement of his visit to Silversides. Living in metro Detroit, Cleveland makes a nice day trip, so I might stop and say hi to him when he visits Cod.
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  511.  @AsbestosMuffins  the SPR works both ways: to glut the market to lower gas prices just before an election, and buy up oil to tighten supplies and raise prices at other times. The Elk Hills naval oil reserve was sold to Occidental Petroleum in 1998. Teapot Dome was sold in 2015.
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  512.  @Dave_Sisson  you can thank a combination of being retired, and the plague closing down things I normally do for entertainment, providing the time to research and ponder. I've reworked the Washington Naval Treaty and WWI capital ship building decisions a couple different ways to.
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  513. wrt future proofing BBs. The Brits leveraged the Washington treaty to future proof their fleet. Of the ships retained by the RN, all except Tiger mounted 15" guns. The USN Tennessee, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New York classes only had 14" and the Wyomings and Floridas only mounted 12". And, because of the replacement schedule in the treaty, it would be 1941 before the US could replace the last of it's 14" gunned ships. Additionally, the Brits wangled a fleet far above it's quota, while the USN was nearly dead on. The quota was 525,000 tons each for the RN and USN. With the Nelsons, the RN ended up with 558,950 tons, while the USN only had 525,850. If the USN had completed Washington, instead of using it for target practice, the USN would have had 558.450 tons, the parity with the RN the USN was supposed to have, but no, couldn't do that. Wow did the US get rogered. Supposed to have parity with the RN, but, in reality, USN tonnage down a complete BB compared to the RN and locked into smaller guns for 20 years. The Japanese were pretty ill used too. Their quota was 315,000 tons, but their retention list totaled only 301,320. To maintain the 5:5:3 ratio to the RN, the IJN should have been allowed an additional 20,370 tons. for a total of 335,370, not enough for Tosa, which exceeded the 35,000/ship tonnage limit, but enough for another Nagato. Future proofing via lawyers.
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  514.  @redrust3  the original Lexingtons had the same number of boilers as Hood, 24, but the design also had turbo-electric drive, which requires a lot more space than Hood's geared turbines, and the original Lexington design was about 13 feet narrower than Hood, because USN scouting group doctrine dictated 35kts, rather than the 32kts of Hood. All added up to an excruciatingly cramped hull, which, combined with the TE drive, necessitated an extremely unorthodox boiler arrangement, which played havoc with the boiler uptake arrangement. It's something, how Vickers could come up with a functional design for Kongo, the Brits could design Hood, and with those ships showing the way, the USN created that mess.
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  515. As others have noted, the Cordite propellant the Vickers used was susceptible to degradation from heat. I have also read that, in the engagement where the Prince of Wales and Repulse were sunk, the Vickers were constantly jamming, put down to deterioration of the ammunition due to the heat and humidity. With that vulnerability, the Vickers would not have been a good choice in the Solomons campaign. Then there is the short range issue, which the Brits tried to address with a "high velocity" version of the gun, but the HV version still wasn't all that high velocity. The Vickers did seem to have something of a renaissance late in the war, where range was not such an issue when shooting at kamikazes and they threw enough steel to knock down a plane in a hurry, something the Oerlikon was deficient at. One other thing was reload time. The Vickers had huge magazines, which, when they ran dry, required a crane to replace, while you could simply keep stuffing more clips into the Bofors loader.
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  516.  @johnshepherd8687  originally, all four of the Abercrombie class monitors were named for Americans. The other two were named after Generals Grant and Lee. The turrets and guns for these were bought from Bethlehem Steel in the US. Bethlehem had built them for the Greek battleship Salamis, which was building in a German yard, but they could not be delivered due to the British blockade, so Bethlehem offered them to the Admiralty instead. The original names were intended as a tribute to the gun's American origin, but, as the US was neutral at the time, on second thought, that did not seem very diplomatic, so the ships were renamed.
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  517.  @biggiouschinnus7489  my hunch is, even if Force Z had more escorts, even if Force Z had air cover, the Japanese aircraft would have kept beating on PoW and Repulse until they sank. Articles on the action note that, when word of the sinking of the British ships reached the bases in Indochina, another wave was preparing to attack the ships.
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  518.  @nowthenzen  agreed. If PoW had made it to drydock, that would have been in Singapore, which fell in February 42. iirc, she was too big for the docks on Cockatoo Island.
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  519. wrt the question about a 12 gun KGV, from what I have read, in both engagements with Bismark. Prince of Wales' and KGV's B turrets functioned perfectly. All the faults were experienced in the quad turrets. If the twin B turret was replaced by a quad, on paper they gain two guns, but how much unreliability would they gain? With increased unreliability, would there be any net increase in rounds fired, or would there be a reduction of the number of rounds fired?
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  520. wrt the Normandie carrier conversions, seems someone would have pointed out their lack of speed to temper the enthusiasm for converting all of them to carriers. If someone had that moment of clarity, and France not having anything in the works that could show a decent turn of speed, they could have claimed the three incomplete Mackensen class battlecruisers as war reparations and towed them to France to be fitted with French machinery and converted to carriers.
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  521. The Garzke book on Allied battleships has a detailed analysis of the damage done to Jean Bart. The way those 2700lb shells cut through her, if Jean Bart had been complete and combat ready, and squared off with Massachusetts, I'm thinking there would have been a very good chance of Jean Bart being sunk in deep water, instead of being sunk at the pier. And that isn't counting the way USN dive bombers opened up Jean Bart's quarterdeck like a can opener. Looking at the drawings in the book of the shell paths through Jean Bart, my thought was "what armor?".
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  522. wrt the potential of a late 30s Hood rebuild, given that Hood already exceeded treaty displacement, and given that the treaty allowances for added torpedo, deck and anti-aircraft protection were 3,000 tons, regardless how much hull or deck needed to be protected, how effective would a major rebuild be?
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  523.  @skywise001  Some material says that the UK was willing to accept a single ship displacement limit of 42,000, rather than 35,000, in the Washington treaty. I am pretty confident that Japan would opt to complete one of the Tosas. The US could have completed one of the Lexingtons, or a South Dakota. A South Dakota would be something of a stepchild, unable to use her higher speed, because the other battleships in the fleet could not keep up. A Lexington could steam with the two carrier conversions as part of the Scouting Group, so, my hunch is, a Lexington would be completed. France and Italy would probably not build anything.
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  524.  @Caktusdud.  the funnel creates an updraft that pulls the exhaust gasses out of the boilers. Put holes in the funnel, or uptakes, and that updraft is lost. When escaping from Mers-el-Kébir, Strasbourg was hit in an uptake. The men in the boiler room served by that uptake were all asphyxiated.
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  525. wrt the USN rebuilding ships during the interwar period, the USN spent a surprising amount of money modernizing obsolete ships in the 20s, starting with the oldest. Some $18.3M was budgeted for modernizing the six coal burners. $6.6M was spent on Florida and Utah alone, in 1926-28. only a few years before they were scrapped/demilitarized. The budget for modernizing the two Nevadas was over $13M. $30M went into the three New Mexicos. This at a time when a new battleship cost $30-$35M. For a long time, the USN did not build up to treaty limits, so, in the 30s, a lot of what money was available went to replacing other obsolete types. The USN had not built any new destroyers since the WWI types. The Vinson-Trammell Act of 1934 mentions that ships that Congress had authorized in 1929 still had not been started. So, at the end of the day, there wasn't any money to modernize the Tennessees and Colorados.
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  526.  @lloydknighten5071  my suspicion is the pressure pulse inside the hull from the magazine explosion would seek escape through any means, including going through open/ruptured wt doors and bulkheads into the boiler rooms and out the funnel.
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  527. It doesn't sound that absurd to me. Freighters have cranes anyway, for cargo handling, so I doubt anyone would twig if a Q ship had a slightly larger than normal crane for handling a hidden float plane. Probably no-one would twig that a freighter's cargo hatch is large enough to allow a floatplane to be lowered into the cargo hold that acts as it's hanger. A false deck, or "deck cargo" could be used to conceal the catapult. The cats themselves used effectively, big gun propellant cartridges to provide the thrust to launch the plane. The one snag is the combined weight of the torpedo, 1800-2000lbs and the floats, on the plane. I have wondered what the floats on the Arado 196 weighed, as it crossed my mind that the Arado might have gained enough payload by replacing the floats with a conventional retractable undercarriage to be turned into a torpedo bomber for the Graf Zepplin.
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  528.  @merafirewing6591  the followon battlecrusier after the Kongo was Amagi. With a 9.8" belt and 3.7" deck, Amagi is getting a bit thin skinned, compared to battleships. A US 14"/50, like on a Tennessee, could punch through that belt at any range under 30,000 yards.
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  529. Well, according to the 1919 edition of Jane's, Delaware had triple expansion engines while North Dakota started with Curtis turbines then was refitted with Parsons turbines. Utah and Florida both had Parsons turbines. Arkansas and Wyoming both had Parsons turbines. New York and Texas reverted to triple expansion engines with a note that US turbine builders refused to comply with the Navy Department's standards, hence the reversion to reciprocating engines. Then Oklahoma had triple expansion engines while Nevada had Curtis turbines. Then Pennsylvania had Curtis turbines while Arizona had Parsons turbines.
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  530. @Barry Ervin, the Fleetwings plant was on the riverfront on Radcliffe St. It had earlier been the Keystone plant, but Keystone was bought by Curtiss Wright and closed. The original plant site is full of condos now, but the buildings built on the other side of Radcliffe when production expanded during the war still stand. The airport and final assembly building you were familiar with were built several years after the main plant.
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  531.  @barryervin8536  Yes, I have seen aerials of the plant, The ramp was next to a hangar that was separate from the plant. iirc, one of the pix I saw showed a Loening amphib sitting on the ramp. According to a "lost airports" site I found, the airfield was established by 1930. The assembly plant was built in 41. The plant is the complex on Green Ln, close to the turnpike. Yes, it looks like a factory, not a hangar.
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  532.  @userofthetube2701  iirc they looked at 9- 15" and 16" options, but the extra weight of the guns and ammo would have required sacrifices of either armor, or speed, or both, than the RN didn't want to make. Turned out that the 14" on the KGV did well enough, which probably took a lot out of the case for the Lions, so resources were redirected from the Lions to other projects.
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  533.  @Cdodders27  if you are talking about USN ships exclusively, I can think of a reason: the depth of the locks in the Panama Canal. I can't remember which class, but I was reading about one class of USN BBs that couldn't pass through the locks at full load. With that situation, an extra foot of draft for a keel hanging below the rest of the bottom is a no-go.
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  534.  @Cdodders27  Germany and Japan could have had drydock depth constraints.
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  535. Thank you for your reply. It appears that I can request my local library to transfer in a 1919 edition of Jane's, so I can look into this further. A 1920 or 21 edition would be preferable, but none are available in my area. I don't think Congress would have objected to going straight from the Tennessees to the SoDaks. Congress approved the SoDaks as designed, and the Colorados were not that much of an advance over the Tennessees. The Colorados had the advantage of being within the 35KT limit of the 1922 treaty, so the US was able to swap the Delawares for Colorado and West Virginia, as the Brits swapped 4 older BBs the treaty allowed them to keep for the clean sheet design Nelsons. Yes, the SoDaks exceeded the treaty limit by some 7-8KT. As carriers, the Lexingtons exceeded the treaty limit of 27KT, but the US got a clause added to the treaty allowing 2 conversions at 30KT, and apparently they were allowed another 3KT for their torpedo protection. How could the SoDak's displacement be reduced? The first thing that comes to mind would be deleting the #1 and #4 16" turrets with their associated barbettes, magazines, and extensions of the armor belt, then shortening the barbettes of #2 and #3 turrets to lower them to deck height. Somewhere between the flexibility in displacement cap, the allowance for torpedo protection and putting the SoDaks on a displacement reduction program, two SoDaks probably could have been completed, maybe three. If the entire Colorado class had been cancelled, the USN would be some 90KT short of the RN's battleship tonnage. Add the 40KT of the two Delawares to the existing 90KT deficit and there would be tonnage available for three SoDaks. Have you done a piece on the SoDaks? I haven't seen one.
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  536. wrt the two questions about the Courageouses, my first thought is that the cruiser fleet tonnage limits of First London would make it imperative the Courageouses be scrapped as soon as possible, as each Courageous scrapped would make tonnage available to build three new cruisers. On the other hand, by the time of First London, the Deutschland was building, and the Admiralty might think the Courageouses were the perfect thing to kill Deutschlands. As for a no Courageouses at all scenario, Jackie had tried to have a third Renown class, probably as Resistance, built, but his request was refused. The turrets were in hand, from the cancelled R-class ships. They probably would have ended up on monitors, or used on Hood, instead of the Mk II turrets being built from scratch. Regarding the impact on naval aviation, the Washington treaty does allow conversion of two ships that would otherwise be scrapped to be converted. The Wiki article on the G3s says there is no photographic evidence any of them were actually laid down. The G3s were so huge that they could probably not be cut down enough to get under the 33,000 limit anyway. The Lions were scheduled to be scrapped for treaty compliance. They are significantly shorter, and a bit beamier, than the Courageouses. Fit a modern, oil fired, plant, and their speed might be improved significantly. But the cost would probably be so great that the Admiralty would probably be better off building a clean sheet design. Without the Corageouses, something like Ark Royal would probably have been built in the late 20s.
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  537. Jordan's "Warships After Washington" says that the UK was supportive of a 43,000 ton limit for individual battleships, while the US wanted the 35,000 ton individual ship limit. (chapter 5, page 74) What if they compromised, that everyone was entitled to one 43,000 ton ship, because the RN had Hood, with the rest of their battleship force limited to 35,000 tons? The Japanese could have demanded the right to complete one of the Tosas as their 43,000 ton ship. That would give the IJN 3-16" armed ships. To maintain the 5:3 ratio, the US would need to complete the forth Colorado, Washington, and one 43,000 ton ship. Which 43,000 ton ship would they choose, a South Dakota, or a Lexington, and why?
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  538.  @nathand.9969  If we assume the "reasons" are because the British have pursued the other Admiral class battlecruisers, as suggested in a question in part 2 of today's drydock, then converts two to carriers, leaving them with two 40,000 ton + ships, that creates the justification for the US to complete two Lexingtons as battlecruisers, for parity. I would expect them to be paired with the carriers, through the interwar years, by virtue of the fact they can keep up with the carriers, and that deployment would be consistent with the "scouting group" thinking in the USN. On December 7th, if the battlecruisers are not in refit, they would be at sea with the carriers. As the carriers were in heavy use in 42-43, I would expect the battlecruisers to be equally as busy, with modernization being along the lines of improved AA armament, radar, and fire control, rather than an extensive rebuild, like West Virginia, California, and Tennessee received.
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  539. wrt the Ise conversions, I am a bit puzzled too. Apparently Hyūga was nominated for conversion because both of her aft turrets were already damaged, limiting her effectiveness as a battleship anyway. My first impulse would be to remove the superfiring midships turrets, one from Hyūga, and one from Ise, due to their more limited field of fire, to replace the two damaged turrets, then use the freed up midships deck space for more AA. That doesn't help their lack of carriers though. Apparently the conversion work started in early 43. By that time, the Kongos had demonstrated that they did not have the survivability for a surface engagement. My plan would be to pull turrets from the surviving Kongos to replace the damaged ones on Hyūga, if feasible, and convert the Kongos to full length deck carriers, because they could keep up with the other carriers, which the Ises could not.
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  540.  @metaknight115  I pondered that myself. Both the center and southern forces started from Borneo, so the allocations could have easily been shifted around. Say, send both Yamatos and the Fusos through the strait. The Yamatos to break trail, because they could take the most punishment, with the Fusos bringing up the rear, where they would be relatively fresh, to attack the invasion force, while the Yamatos retire to lick their wounds. They are all faster than the USN standards, so if they survive the "T" interception, the USN BBs may be out of the fight.
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  541.  @TeaDrinkingOspin  Wiki says the Lex earned 11 Battle Stars and a Presidential Unit Citation. I never read the Wiki entry on her before. Wiki notes that, when she was torpedoed off Kwajalein, most of the casualties were in the Chief's mess. My rack was right next to the Chief's mess. It wasn't even a compartment, more a wide spot in the passageway that we shared with a foam proportioner and racks full of the foam chemical. I figured we had to be just about over the screws. The ride was smooth and quiet in that space, until they gave the throttle the last notch, then things would start to shake. As a training carrier, the Lex would steam back and forth across the Gulf. The Lex ran at full speed most of the time as it was running air ops continuously. Once you get a ship that size up to full speed, you don't want to slow down for anything, so, when they ran out of water, either approaching the oil rigs off Louisiana, or Florida, they would execute a 180 degree turn at full speed. I swear they had it in for me, saying "ah, Steve is sitting down to chow, time to turn the ship around". All too often, I would be just getting into my meal when the 1MC would bark "heel to port". I would have to grab my tray and glass and hang on as the ship heeled over in the turn.
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  542. There was discussion, in the press, of upgunning the Tennessees to 16" in the later part of 1916, after the decision was made to go with the 16" on the Colorados. The newspapers quoted a Navy official as saying upgunning the New Mexicos would be prohibitively expensive, but, iirc, he did not directly answer the question wrt the Tennessees. The barbette diameter figures I have at had do not give the diameter for the turrets on the New Mexicos, however, the drawings on NavWeaps show the turret pan diameter being exactly the same as the Tennessees at 28' 11.5". According to the Wiki entry, 119 14"/50s were built, almost two complete sets of guns for every ship that used that model. I have read that the guns for the battlecruisers were ordered at the same time as the guns for the Tennessees. Even though California and Tennessee had not been laid down yet, I would expect contracts for that large number of 14" guns had been let, and, if the Navy did make the gun size change on the Tennessees, there would be substantial order cancellation charges that would need to be paid. The "more smaller guns equals more hits" argument that you mention was loudly and publicly exercised in the Navy at the time. While SecNav Daniels and the General Board eventually decided on 16", their determination that was the correct decision was probably not firm enough to pay the cancellation charges for the 14" guns that were already in production.
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  543.  @vikkimcdonough6153  wrt your fist question, providing a hangar for the floatplane. You can get a good idea what it would look like, by looking at a Fletcher that had the FRAM modernization, which had a hangar for the DASH ASW helo, as well as the flight deck. The hanger for an OS2U would be a lot longer than the DASH hangar as the plane is over 33 feet long, vs a length of 13 feet for the DASH helo.. In addition to losing the second torpedo mount, and #3 5" mount, she would also lose the #4 5" mount. That may still leave the cat overhanging the #5 5" mount. Someone with drafting skills may care to do a layout of a FRAM Fletcher, with a hanger twenty feet longer, to see where the cat ends up, and whether it interferes with #5 5"'s arc of fire.
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  544. Expanding on the issue of the British blockade of Germany in WWI, at least in terms of raw materials for war production, tended to be a bit porous. During 1915-16, there was a lot of friction between the US and UK, over neutral US flag ships, bound for neutral European ports, being seized by the UK, the cargoes declared contraband, and sold, with the proceeds paid to the crown. The US was protesting the seizures vigorously, until the US Secretary of State met with his UK counterpart. The UK representative, the name is in my notes somewhere, brought hard data showing a sharp uptick in imports of strategic materials by the neutral European powers, and asked words to the effect "if Denmark (for instance) is not reshipping this material to Germany, why have their imports of nickel quadrupled since the war started?" Of course, once the US entered the war, that closed off a major source of material that could be reshipped to Germany.
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  545.  @myparceltape1169  that is understandable. Double handling goods, unloading in Danish ports, then reshipping to Germany, raises costs and delays receipt at the final destination. An uptick in traffic in neutral ports, caused by goods destined for Germany could exceed port capacity, and cause more delays. We in the US spent several months recently listening to the media natter daily about port backups on the west coast causing shortage of goods across the US. And, of course, Germany would prioritize things like minerals and chemicals needed for the war effort, so things like grain wait again. During WWII, my mother worked in the offices of a machine shop. One frustrated customer called one day, said words to the effect "I entered my order months ago, I haven't even received a date when it will start production. It has a Double A-1 priority. What does it take to get something out of your shop?". Mom said, with a straight face "Triple A priority". That is a wartime footing. Orders in that shop with less than Triple A never went anywhere, until they were upgraded to Triple A, or the war ended.
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  546.  @Captain_Seafort  A second Italian battleship, Benedetto Brin, suffered a magazine explosion in Brindisi in 1915.
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  547.  @BB.61  sticks in my mind that I read the intent of the turtle deck was to shed water. Apparently, what happened was that the turtle deck destroyers tended to act like submarines instead, burying their bow in the water, while the raised forcastle ships did a better job of staying on top of the water.
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  548.  @The_New_IKB  A stoutly defended North Africa would preempt invasion of Sicily and Italy. The Allies may go straight for Normandy, figuring that Germany was the driving force of the war and taking Germany out would end the war.
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  549.  @NoNameAtAll2  The Italians starting going to the destroyer swarm model in the 20s. Overall, Italy lost about 9 DDs in WWI, but received 10 ex-Austrian and German DDs as war reparations. They also built 35 more during the war. From the end of the war to 1925, Italy scrapped or sold 17 old DDs. So Italy had a net gain of 19 vs prior to 1915, so no shortage of DDs at all. While the RM was pleading poverty, cancelling the Caracciolo class BBs, scrapping all their pre-dreadnoughts and abandoning the salvage of da Vinci, leaving them with only 5 BBs, they were constantly building more DDs. Their DD building program laid down 3 in 1919, 4 in 20, 5 in 21, 2 in 22, 3 in 23, 4 in 24 and 8 in 25. 26 was the only year of that decade when the RM did not lay down more DDs, all the while pleading poverty, economic recession, and social unrest. They didn't lay down a new cruiser until 25, and they didn't use their 1927 and 1929 battleship construction windows offered by the Washington treaty until they laid down the first two Littorios in 34. The light Italian units appear to have been plenty busy during the war, as most of them were sunk, while the BBs mostly sat in harbor.
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  550.  @johnloman2098  Some RAF Mosquitos were equipped with a 57mm gun for attacking U-Boats, and had some success, until the U-Boats started shooting back. Several Mosquito squadrons were based at Banff, Scotland, for attacking German shipping around Norway with rockets. I have also read of Beaufighters using rockets on German shipping. Rockets were more accurate, and cheaper, than torpedoes. The C-47 and Bofors were both around during the war. I'm thinking they might not have tried to use the combination because the targets were shooting back, so a faster attack was called for.
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  551.  @robertsantamaria6857  the net seems to have eaten my reply so I'll post again. From what I can find, the Tennessee and Colorado barbettes had the same inside diameter: 31 feet. The twin 16" turret appears to be slightly lighter than the triple 14" and the part of the 16" turret that extends down into the barbette was about 6" smaller in diameter. I don't see why the Tennessees could not have been upgunned to 16" while under construction, other than a disinclination to revive the 14" vs 16" argument that had raged in the Navy Department. The WNT banned upgunning main armament, so that took future upgunning of the Tennessees off the table.
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  552. How valid was the "pre-Jutland" vs "post-Jutland" classification in the WNT? Newspapers of the time reported consensus among conference delegates that 12" guns were obsolete. The modernization of the 12" armed Florida and Utah cost $6.6M. Washington, being about 80% complete, could have been completed for about the same cost. But if Washington was completed, that would give the USN four "post-Jutland" ships, putting pressure on the UK to build a third Nelson for parity. The conference had already engaged in some political art in defining Hood as "post-Jutland", while the two Tennessees, which were laid down after Hood, were classified as "pre-Jutland". The inconsistent way the "post-Jutland" measure was applied, Hood vs Tennessee, seems to render the distinction meaningless.
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  553.  @javelin2811  I would suspect because the USN had a huge stock of the older 14"/50. Seems that the guns for the battlecruisers, when they were planned to have 14", were ordered at the same time as the guns for the Tennessees, and the orders were not cancelled when the battlecrusiers were suspended. The Navy ended up with some 119 of the 14"/50, nearly enough for two complete sets for each of the five ships that used them. The Navy probably could not justify using the resources to build new guns from scratch, for second line ships, when so many guns were already available.
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  554.  @kirkmorrison6131  I think I read that the Texas was closed to visitors a few weeks ago. They need to make several repairs before towing it away for restoration.
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  555. regarding the design of the stern of a carrier: the Lexington class had a sharp stern and the sharpness was carried up to just below the flight deck. In purpose built carriers of the 30s, like Yorktown and Ark Royal, the stern is sharp at the waterline, but then rapidly flairs above the waterline, which allows a longer hangar deck. USN drawings of purpose built carriers from the early 1920s show this was a known factor as those drawings show a hangar extending nearly the full length of the aft end of the flight deck, while the drawings of the battlecruiser conversion show the hull tapering at hangar level, and a short hanger. Was it impossible to rebuild the aft part of the Lexington hulls to provide more buoyancy to support the wider above waterline stern and longer hangar, or was such a rebuild expensive to he point where it blew the selling point to the politicians that the conversions would cost less than purpose built carriers?
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  556.  @vikkimcdonough6153  pushing muzzle velocity higher has it's costs, primarily bore wear. Design faces more issues as velocity is increased too. I have read that the RN tried 50 caliber guns, and they always proved unsatisfactory, though my readings did not say exactly why. The Germans seemed to have more success with 50 caliber guns, but post-war analysis showed the German guns to be made of considerably higher quality (and higher cost) steel, than British guns. The USN 14"/50 suffered very high dispersion when first introduced delivering 12 gun patterns at longer ranges of 1,200 to 3,200 yards. It was not until after 20 years of tweaking the guns, that the pattern size was reduced to 700 yards. At Surigao Strait, Tennessee and California reported patterns of 300-400 yards, at 20,000 yards. Additionally, the longer the barrel, the more it will tend to droop. The Navy Indian Head proving grounds were far too small to fire a 14"/50 with a full charge, so, even if the gun had been subjected to a test program prior to being put into production, the dispersion problem might not have been revealed. Dahlgren was big enough to allow full charge test firings, but it did not open until late 1918, long after the 14"/50s had been built, then superseded by the 16/45.
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  557.  @marckyle5895  the starboard side island was not universal at first. Pilots tended to turn left after an aborted approach. Most aircraft engines rotate clockwise, when viewed from the rear of the airplane. With the prop spinning clockwise, engine torque will tend to bank the airplane counterclockwise, making a left turn easier.
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  558.  @vikkimcdonough6153  the fourth Mackensen class battlecruiser was to be equipped with Föttinger fluid drives, rather than mechanical reduction gears. My father worked for a company that made fluid drives. The speed of the output shaft can be varied by the amount of hydraulic fluid in the drive. Thing is, seems that reducing the amount of fluid in the drive, to obtain a lower output shaft speed, would be inefficient, which is counter to the objective of reducing fuel consumption in the ship, so there is something about that decision on that one ship that I don't understand.
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  559. Were small German marine turbines of this era particularly fragile or maintenance intensive? The Ottoman Empire had some Schichau built torpedo boats, and the two that survived WWI were immediately scrapped, while French built boats, with VTE power, that were slightly older, served into the early 1930s. Greece bought two turbine powered V90 class torpedo boats in 1912 which were also scrapped immediately after the war, though I have been informed that the French assigned crews that tended to neglect and loot those ships. The Vulcan built boats Greece ordered immediately after the V90s, were VTE powered, and served into 1941, in spite of also being in the care of the French for part of WWI. The Greek cruiser Elli, with Parsons turbines, also survived French possession and served until being sunk by an Italian sub in 1940. It seems that only the torpedo boats with Schichau or AEG-Vulcan turbines had the lifespan of a mayfly.
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  560.  @TheOhgodineedaname  You didn't say when that manual was written, but I'm expecting it was talking about cordite or US smokeless powder. Black powder burns fast, so peak pressure is in the chamber, and pressure falls as the shell moves down the tube. Smokeless powder burns slower, so it is still burning, and adding pressure, as the shell moves down the tube. When the USN switched to smokeless at the turn of the century, the gun designers did not understand this. The result was chamber pressure within expected limits, but the muzzle and chase blowing off the gun because the pressure down the tube was far higher than it would have been with black powder. If the shell is only a quarter to halfway down the tube, and is not instantly dislodged by the charge, then you have the combustion gasses compressed in a quarter to half of the tube, instead of distributed through the full length of the tube.
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  561.  @chrissouthgate4554  yes, I have read that 100-110lb limit for one man to handle. Reality seems to have been, yes, a man could lift a shell that size, once, maybe twice, but fatigue will become an issue very quickly. The British 4.5 had fixed ammo, with the complete round weighing 87lbs, and they had crew fatigue issues. Enter the 5.25": semi-fixed ammo, but the shell alone weighed 80lbs, so they did not improve the human factors. The USN 5/38 had semi-fixed ammo, and the shell only weighed 55lbs.
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  562.  @dreadnoughtic4324  correct. A compressed air purge system was installed in USN big guns after a particularly lurid turret fire that killed over 30 in the turret and handling room. Prior to that fire, the crewmen were simply told to look in the barrel for flames and embers, before ramming the next round. That same fire resulted in the USN enclosing hoists in trunks with flash doors on both ends, for the first time.
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  563.  @bkjeong4302  I am not sure the USN would necessarily be much smaller if the US did not hold the Philippines. The lever for the 1916 building program was that the US was whining about the British blockade of trading partners in Europe. Or, consider the flipside: the US buys all of the Spanish Pacific possessions, rather than just the two real pearls. The US did pay Spain to drop it's claims to the Philippines, $20M. Germany paid 17M Marks for the balance of the Spanish colonies. What was the Mark/USD exchange rate in 1899? If the US held all of the Marianas, and Carolines, and Palau, Japan could not have occupied those territories in 1914, and the League of Nations would not have given Japan a mandate to rule those islands after the war. That might turn Japanese attention even more toward a land campaign in China and eastern Russia, rather than across oceans. Would the IJN have had such aggressive expansion plans, post WWI, if they did not have an island empire to patrol?
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  564. To add an additional stop to your itinerary, HMCS Sackville, reputed to be the last surviving Flower class Corvette, is preserved in Halifax, NS. I know a guy in Halifax, retired career Canadian military, who has more sea stories than most people as he spent most of his career on a Sea King helo embarked on a variety of Canadian Navy ships.
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  565.  @genericpersonx333  apparently, the KGV turrets were designed and built by Vickers. But you would think there would be some interface between Vickers, RN Ordinance, and the higher ups in the Admiralty that coordinate the work of the various departments. I have staked out the KGV armament as an area of study over the winter. Coming up with some interesting tidbits. In 35, a large series of different concepts were designed, with armament of 16", 15" and 14" and speeds of 30kts, 27kts, and 23kts. An armament of 9-15" was determined to provide the best balance of speed, protection, and firepower. The admiralty's own analysis said the 14" should be forgotten about, unless it is required by a treaty. Shazam. A year later, the UK has written a clause into the treaty to mandate 14".
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  566.  @IO-hh2fz  actually, the RN did have two more of that model of twin 15" turret, and several spare 15"/42 guns available. Those other two turrets were installed in the Roberts class monitors in 1940. The more interesting scenario is if, in 1937, as a backup should issues arise with the quad turrets on the KGVs, build two of the KGV hulls as faster battleships, with 3 of the 15" turrets each. The escalator clause that allowed larger than 14" guns was tripped in April of 37. Anson and Howe were not ordered until April of 37 and laid down in June and July of 37, so, if they had the contingency plan of using the existing 15" turrets and guns, they could have implemented it on those two ships.
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  567.  @toddwebb7521  yes, the French 13.4 would make a good replacement for the 13.8" the Mackensens were designed for. The French BB secondary gun of choice was a 138mm, also a good substitute for the 149mm the Mackensens were designed for. The Mackensens still had a somewhat pre-war armor and torpedo defense design, but that could be upgraded. The fly is that the Germans had already figured out that the 13.8 was inadequate, cut the Mackensen class short and redesigned the last three to take a 15" gun. France didn't have a 15" gun, but had plenty of 13.4s available that had been built for the Normandies. A Mackensen with French 13.4s would not look that formidable when the Brits had a 15" in service and the USN and IJN were installing 16" guns. On the other hand, a 28kt Mackensen with 13.4s would be an improvement over 21kt Bretagnes with the same guns or 21kt Courbets with 12" guns. Even better, complete two of the Mackensens as battlecruisers/fast battleships and complete the third as a carrier, instead of Bearn.
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  568.  @toddwebb7521  it's a tough call. The Dunkerque's high velocity guns had more range and, probably, penetration than the old 13.4, and the Dunkerques had a more modern armor and torpedo protection scheme, so, in some ways, they were better protected. If the MN had the Mackensens, the Washtington treaty probably would not have given them the two construction licenses they used to build the Dunkerques, so, when they laid down Richelieu in late 35, they would have been in violation of the treaty anyway. The idea of getting ships already half built, for free, and being able to use guns already in inventory on them, is appealing from a cost savings standpoint. But, a dozen years later, they would be sort of obsolete compared to the Dunkerques.
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  569. @ and how many do they sell? Ford sells the US built Bronco in the EU too. Base price of the Bronco in the US is about $40K. In Germany, they start at 68,000 Euros.
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  570.  @ZweiZwolf  The US fuel consumption reg used to be based on a sales weighted average of all models built, which forced manufacturers to produce smaller, more economical, more affordable, vehicles, in addition to the larger models. The fuel consumption reg was 'reformed" around 2006. The new system assignes a "target" consumption number based on the vehicle's footprint: the product of the wheelbase and track. I read the reg when it was published. The reg plainly stated that the equation used to calculate the fuel consumption target was skewed to provide targets for large vehicles that were easier to attain, while the targets for smaller vehicles were made harder to attain, and the formula favored trucks over cars. This "reform" removed the need for manufacturers to make smaller cars at all, so the move to gigantism was expedited. Automakers make a larger profit margin on more expensive cars, so price soared, as well as size, in pursuit of higher profits from shrinking volume. Did you hear the howler from Ford CEO Farley recently? He declared Ford will be "the Porsche of off-road". What is Porsche know for? High prices, and exceptionally fat gross margins. Thing is, unlike Porsche, Ford is not a cult. People will not pay Porsche prices for the shoddy stuff Ford turns out.
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  571.  @adamalton2436  I am not sure what sort of powder Maine was equipped with that night, whether black powder, brown powder, or early USN nitrocellulose. iirc, USN nitrocellulose does not contain any nitroglycerine, as cordite does. USN nitrocellulose seems to be pretty patient, compared to cordite. In the early 1900s, before the USN used any safety features, there were a couple lurid turret fires, one involving the entire interior of the barbette, with 20-30 men killed, but the magazines did not blow up.
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  572. What puzzles me about Nelson and Rodney: I get that the UK was allowed to build those two new ships, the US was allowed to complete two Colorados, and Japan was allowed to keep Mutsu, but why did the treaty require Italy and France to wait until the late 20s to build new capital ships?
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  573.  @TheJudge2017  I could guess, it was a matter of inertia. Having a long, heavy, barrel makes it harder to change the direction the barrel is pointing. I don't know if that is the case, specifically, with the 38, but I have read of other guns intended for AA use being cut down to improve their responsiveness.
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  574.  @sparviero142  adding to Frank's comments, from the specs on navweaps, the German gun had a longer range and higher ceiling than the Breda, but the Breda's rate of fire was 4 times that of the German gun. The Breda came out in 1932, but, apparently, the early models did not have a full recoil mechanism, so the mounts had to be very heavy and strong, limiting the gun's use to capital ships, and they vibrated like crazy. The model 1939 single mount had an equilibrator, so the entire gun could recoil, smoothing operation. The gun was reportedly accurate and popular with it's crews. Why the heck the other axis powers didn't standardize on the Breda beats me.
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  575.  @sparviero142  that issue with developing a recoil system may explain why the 1932 model Breda did not have a good recoil system and vibrated so badly. The Breda's recoil was addressed with the 1939 model however. This issue of Germany not having the guns it needs, but Italy does, comes up again wrt the Scharnhorsts. Supposedly, the Scharns were intended to have 15" guns, but the Germans had not developed a 15". The Italians had a 15" in hand. The model the Littorios used was available when the Scharns were laid down. Why didn't Hitler say to his buddy "hey Bennie, can we buy a license to produce your 15"/50s?". It's probably a good thing, from our perspective, that the Germans were in the grip of "not invented here" syndrome and declined to buy Italian gun designs. Imagine the warmer welcome the Stringbags would have gotten if Bismark had been equipped with the Breda AA gun, or Renown would have received if the Scharns were armed with the Italian 15".
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  576.  @phoenixjz4782  Thanks for the excellent and detailed reply. wrt the moving of Impero, iirc the French and British fleets both shelled Genoa in 40 and 41. If Impero had been there, it almost certainly would have been targeted.
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  577.  @TheKingofbrooklin  France did, strongly, blatantly, egregiously, violate the naval treaties. The WNT gave France good until used licenses to build 35,000 tons of battleship in 1927 and another 35,000 tons in 1929 for a total of 70,000 tons. The Dunkerques used up some 50,000 tons of that, leaving only about 20,000 tons left. France broke the treaty the day they laid down Richeleau, October 22, 1935. Then they broke it again when they laid down Jean Bart on December 12 of 1936. If there were any repercussions for violating the treaty, I have not heard of them.
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  578. 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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  579.  @padurarulcriticsicinic4846  I have pondered how the RN deployed it's ships. Each force had one new BB and one decrepit battlecruiser. If KGV and PoW were together, both with the latest armament and fire control, it would have been a more interesting fight, especially if the cruisers closed at the same time for a torpedo attack, but if Bismark had gone south of Iceland, it would have hit Repulse and Hood, both long overdue for modernization. On the other hand, the southern force had air cover.
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  580. wrt the undersized British BBs, iirc, during the 1930 London conference, the UK did make a proposal to reduce both the tonnage limit and gun size limit for BBs. I have read that the Dunkerques were built undersized, in part, due to British pressure to build smaller ships. Italy considered smaller designs in the late 20s, before deciding on a treaty-max design with Littorio. If the UK has won the day in 1930, and everyone was limited to smaller ships, 25,000t with 12" guns, would that not give the treaty parties incentive to heavily modernize their older 15"-16" armed ships, instead of building new, but weaker, ships?
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  581.  @culex818  In the WNT,. the US was supposed to have equal tonnage to the RN. The limit settled on was 525,000 tons. Adding three Admirals, at 41,200T, as measured for the treaty, would require a corresponding amount of other ships be scrapped, or the treaty limit increased and US required to retain enough pre-dreadnoughts to have a corresponding amount. To offset the additional 123,600T of Admirals, the RN would need to dispose of Tiger, Thunderer, and the 3-KGVs. Historically, Thunderer and the KGVs were scrapped to make room for the two Nelsons, so, if the RN wanted the Nelsons too, then two or three of the Iron Dukes would head to the breakers as well. Historically, Tiger and the Iron Dukes were eliminated in the additional fleet drawdown required by the First London Treaty in 1930. If those ships had been scrapped in 22, then the 1930 drawdown would have eliminated the R-class BBs. So the RN in 1940 would have been the QEs, Admirals, Renowns, Nelsons and the new KGVs building, with, potentially a very large number of slightly used twin 15" turrets in inventory.
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  582. wrt the question about the Nelsons being armed with 15" guns, that would not have impacted the choice of 14" on the KGVs. I looked in to the question of the KGV armament decision, combining information in books by Garzke, Raven, and Friedman, as well as other sources. The Admiralty's own analysts, in the fall of 35, said that a 9-15" armament would give a better balanced ship than the 12-14" alternative that was contemplated. The analysts said the only reason 14" would be selected would be if required by treaty. Someone in the USN, in the fall of 35, said they would be open to a 14" standard, if Japan agreed. That gave the "influencer" in the Admiralty the excuse to promote 14". Of course, the entire notion of Japan agreeing to anything was a pipe dream. When Japan announced, in December of 34, they were dropping out of the treaty system, they said they were open to a new conference and a new treaty, only if Japan was given parity with the US and UK, (which was not going to happen). This was widely reported in the newspapers at that time. Orders for the KGV armament had to be entered by late 35, to meet the build schedule for ships laid down in 37, so the decision to go 14" was made in late 35, before the Second London conference started. Who was the "influencer" and why? The "who" appears to be First Sea Lord Chatfield. The "why" appears to be an embrace of the "more smaller guns equals more hits" theory, a theory the USN had argued, and rejected, twenty years earlier.
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  583.  @tanegashima5395  Probably not very effective. Like most ships of their era the hull tapers a great deal aft. That taper would severely limit the size of the hangar. The Lexingtons also had a very small hangar, while purpose built carriers, like Ranger or Yorktown, were designed with the hull flaring out a great deal above the waterline aft to accommodate a longer hangar. Compare the British Courageous class, as converted to carriers, 24,000T standard displacement and 48 aircraft vs Ark Royal 22,000T and 72 aircraft (design) 50-60 actual. All numbers from Wiki. The conversions were very inefficient as carriers, wasting the one thing that was in restricted supply by the treaty: tonnage.
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  584.  @bkjeong4302  You could say the same about the Iowa class: ran around a lot, never faced another BB. Were the Iowas ever in a surface engagement at all? Washington and SoDak were, when they sank one of the Kongos.
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  585.  @bkjeong4302  If the Iowas are seen in a better light than the Yamatos, it is probably because they weren't sunk. When the Kongos were built, before WWI, you could make a case for them. If Vickers had been a little slower getting Kongo built, the Royal Navy probably would have grabbed her, like they grabbed a lot of other ships being built for foreign governments, and she probably would have fought at Jutland.
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  586.  @bkjeong4302  I pretty much agree. I would agree a lot more if the North Carolinas and South Dakotas were built using a rejected design that would have them running at 30kts.
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  587.  @iansadler4309  the IJN did about the same thing with Kaga's exhaust initially, with the same result.
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  588. wrt the question about a lend lease Iowa, When I was reading "Fifty Ships That Saved The World" a while back, the thought crossed my mind, what if the US offered New York, Texas, and Arkansas, in addition to the destroyers? Those three battleships were operating together in the Atlantic in early 40. The book I read mentioned that one of the groups of destroyers was en route to the UK when they picked up radio traffic from Jervis Bay, when it was being attacked by Scheer. The destroyers, which the USN had handed over with full magazines and torpedo tubes, rushed to Jervis Bay's location, but arrived too late. What if the US had handed over those three obsolete battleships, and one had been traveling with Jervis Bay? Scheer's recon plane had reported the convoy was unescorted. If the plane had reported a battleship escorting the convoy, regardless how old, Scheer may not have attacked at all.
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  589.  @jamesmckenzie9551  my hunch is, if the entire French fleet had gone to the far east, it would have gone to Indochina, which surrendered to the Japanese with almost no resistance.
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  590. My first concern would be the beam of a QE being broad enough to accommodate triple turrets. Wiki shows a QE having a beam of 90 feet. The 1916 design for the Lexingtons had a maximum beam of 91', but #1 and #4 turrets were twins, due to the taper of the bow and stern, and those were 14" guns. Nevada, with triple 14", had a beam of 95'. Hood, with twin 15" had a beam of 104', while the J3, with three triple 15" turrets, had a beam of 106'. The Littorios, with triple 15" had a beam of over 107'. Bismark, with a beam of 118', would probably have no problem taking three triple turrets. To answer the question Drac responded to, I would say easily practical for Bismark to have three triples, and through a few more shells at both Hood and PoW. Hood, if starting from a clean sheet, could certainly have been fattened a bit, to accommodate triple 15". I am dubious about the QEs. I suspect they would need to be broadened significantly to take the larger turrets. That wrecks the length to beam ratio. To maintain speed, they would need to be lengthened proportionally to the broader beam. The Exchequer was already hyperventilating about the cost of the QEs. Escalate the cost even more, by building a longer and wider hull to accommodate triple turrets, and the Exchequer may go into full apoplectic fit and spike the entire program.
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  591. Silversides and the LST are each worth a trip. The Milwaukee Clipper is very interesting too. Anyone that goes to see the LST, have the attendant start the training film that explains how the systems on the ship work and the procedures prior to beaching the ship.
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  592. Thanks for addressing my question about Lexington cost overruns. Rather confirms my suspicion that the USN should have skipped them, gone straight to Ranger, saving the tonnage allocation for when they knew what they were doing when designing carriers. I can't help but wonder about the arguments that went on, to get progressively larger piles of money out of Congress.
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  593.  @stephenbond1990  The 1922 treaty specifies that, if a non-contracting power contracted with a contracting power to build a new ship, the new ship was subject to the treaty tonnage and armament limits. Contracting powers were not allowed to commandeer ships being built in their jurisdiction for any other power. Contracting powers were not allowed to gift or sell warships to other powers. So, nope, the Brits would not be able to build a G3 for Brazil, even if Brazil could pay for it and the US would not be able to build a South Dakota or Lexington for Argentina, because those ships exceed treaty limits. However, Washington was about 75% complete, and was within treaty limits. I don't know how selling it to Brazil would have worked out. It would meet condition 1: within treaty limits, but how would the decision fall wrt the prohibition on selling existing warships? Washington was incomplete, so not a functioning warship, but it's construction was not under foreign contract from the moment the keel was laid.
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  594.  @kemarisite  Yes, the 13 was improved dramatically by late 44, so improved it was used on PT boats in place of the Mk 8. Small consolation to the men who were trying to use it in 42-43, when taking out an IJN fleet carrier would have more impact on the balance of power.
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  595.  @cjknoll4440  I'm thinking that West Virginia and Oklahoma took so many torpedoes that they still would have been hit repeatedly, because the first couple torpedoes would have shredded the nets.
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  596.  @IanLthestig  As Walterbroadous said, torps of the time were not self-propelled, but riding on the end of a pole mounted on the bow of a sub, like the Hunley, or a steam powered launch. Another point is the confusion about terminology. When Admiral Farragut said "Damn the torpedoes" the torpedoes he was referring to are what are now called "mines". With the spar torpedo, the boat would ram the warhead against the side of the ship, and the tip of the warhead would embed in the wooden hull. The launch would then pull away to a safe distance and detonate the warhead by means of pulling a rope. As the spar torpedoes were usually delivered by surface vessels the defense system adopted was a boom made of logs, floating on the surface, so an attacking torpedo boat would be stopped before it was close enough for the spar to reach the hull. Eons ago, I read of a successful attack, in spite of the log boom, so I looked it up. An attack against the Confederate ironclad Albemarle was lead by Lt William Cushing on the night of October 28, 1864. The Albemarle was defended by a log boom, but the logs had been in the water a long time and were covered with moss and slime. The logs were slippery enough that Cushing's launch rode up and over them, and the attack was successful, with the warhead holing Albermarle at the waterline. The ironclad quickly sank. Cushing had detonated the warhead immediately on contact and the concussion threw him and all his crew in the water. Most of the crew were captured, but Cushing and one other crewman were able to evade capture and make their way back to Union lines. For this action, Cushing received the "Thanks of Congress". The Cushing family seems to have produced men with an exceptionally large pair. Cushing's brother, an army artillery officer, received the Medal of Honor posthumously for defending his position at the Battle of Gettysburg.
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  597.  @kirkandersen2658  if Spain had joined the Allies, the Germans would probably have implemented a variation of Operation Felix: after overrunning France, continue through Spain and overrun Gibraltar.
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  598.  @bkjeong4302  That question has crossed my mind too. Most navies had been settled in at 12", for a while. European next evolution seemed to always be a hair under 14". The Brits went to 13.5", French 13.4", German 13.8". Then those three, plus Italy, which got big gun technology from Vickers and Armstrong, went to 15". Japan, in spite of it's close ties to the RN, went to 14", then 16", following the US pattern. The first cause that comes to mind is the various gun development programs are following the evolution of forging equipment, Europe went to 15" during WWI because that was the largest/longest tube the Brits and Germans could forge? But the Japanese bought forging equipment from the US, and US forging technology was at a slightly different pace than in Europe? I really don't know. Don't even have any sort of evidence based suspicion.
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  599. wrt the Bofors vs Vickers. I don't see it mentioned much anywhere, but Bofors also built a 25mm gun, visually and mechanically much like the 40, produced for the Swedish Navy from 1932 on. As the USN was looking for something in the neighborhood of 1" to replace the .50 M2, it is entertaining to consider if the USN had evaluated the 25mm Bofors before pressing ahead with the 1.1".
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  600. I just addressed that scenario in a separate post. The IJN did not have enough headroom under it's treaty tonnage limit to build another Nagato, without scrapping a Fuso or Kongo to make the tonnage available. The net gain in ship firepower, for all the money spent building a third Nagato, would be poor value for money. as the throw weight of a Fuso's 12-14" guns is very close to that of a Nagato's 8-16" guns. The RN was well over it's tonnage limit, so, to build a third Nelson, they would need to scrap two Iron Dukes. As the Dukes went to the breakers in the early 30s, that would be a net gain for the RN by 1940. Similarly, the US was just about dead on it's treaty limit, so completing Washington would require scrapping the two Floridas, but the two Floridas were scrapped/demilitarized in the early 30s, so that is also a net gain for the US by 1941. One big difference, the third Nelson and Nagato would need to be built from the keel up, at considerable additional expense. I tried to find what the USN spent modernizing the Floridas (conversion to oil, with new boilers, added deck armor and torpedo bulges) vs what it would have cost to complete Washington. Turns out it would have been about a wash: Washington could have been completed for the money spent on the Floridas only a few years before they were disposed of.
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  601. The engines used were Packard V-12s, 2500cuin, supercharged. The engine was initially designed as an aircraft engine in the 1920s, but was a commercial failure. In the 1930s, Gar Wood started using them in his racing boats. The Navy chose the Packard engine over the Hall-Scott Defender, to power all PT boats. A Packard 4M-2500 as well as Wood's "Miss America X" which uses 4-2500 engines, are on exhibit at the Packard Proving Grounds north of Detroit.
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  602.  @erikgranqvist3680  the Navy will remove equipment that can be reused. When the Connecticut class battleships were scrapped, their 12"/45 guns were removed, some for spares for the Navy, some were transferred to the Army for use in shore batteries. When the Maine and Virginia class battleships were scrapped, the Navy didn't want their 12"/40 guns, so large holes were cut in the side of the barrels to render them useless, before they were sold as scrap.
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  603. The man who took the fall for dieselgate, Martin Winterkorn, also presided over a time when VAG improved quality markedly. In retrospect, the Winterkorn era was when VW was offering some of it's most reliable cars in the US, in decades, with the product line scoring at least average reliability records. Now, some VW products, like the Jetta and Taos, are among the worst on the market.
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  604.  @nomayor1  when I was in b-school, decades ago, we discussed the dangers of debt. The problem with debt is that, while earnings can fall, debt service costs continue. VAG could have sold the vanity brands years ago, and paid down some of that debt. VAG could have wound down the redundant Skoda and Seat divisions, to reduce overhead costs, and apply the savings to paying down debt. Nope. They did none of that.
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  605. wrt the Lexington battle cruiser refit question. I have seen pix of a scratchbuilt Lexington model modernized to WWII standards. It looked very much like an Iowa. What would have happened in the real world, if they had been built as battle cruisers? If they had been built as planned, that implies the Washington Treaty didn't happen, which means the SoDaks would have been built as well, so no surplus material ordered for the SoDaks would be available to reinforce the Lexington's armor. Would the Lexingtons ever have been significantly updated at any point through 1945? I would say probably not. They would not have been updated any more than any other class of USN capital ships in the 30s. If they were based at Pearl, due to their ability to keep up with the carriers, they would have been out with the carriers and not damaged in the attack. Without being sunk or heavily damaged at Pearl, they would have had the minimal updating that other capital ships that missed Pearl received: added triple A, updated fire control and radar, like Colorado. Their best chance of surviving the war would have been as triple A platforms protecting the carriers. as the Japanese pilots would be concentrating on the carriers. If they got involved in any of the surface engagements around the Solomons or Philippines , they would have been shot full of holes.
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  606.  @QuizmasterLaw  Several older ships seem to have been pretty decrepit. Most of the surviving Revenges and Malaya were put in reserve by the end of 43. I read somewhere, regarding the Madagascar operation, the original intention had been to use Malaya, but she was so decrepit they used Ramillies instead. Rodney was intended to be used for fire support in Normandy, but, first, went into drydock, because the hull was leaking so badly. Royal Sovereign went to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for refit in early 43, but the navy yard couldn't do anything with the hoists, because they were worn out. After repairing what it they could, the ship was returned to the UK, and they passed her off to the Russians. Drac has commented on the poor condition of Nevada at Pearl Harbor. At the time the Washington Treaty was signed, battleships were expected to have a 20 year life. First London decreed they would have a 26 year life. By the time WWII got rolling, these ships were closing in on 30 years, well past their projected life spans.
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  607.  @icefox192  In the system I have seen diagrammed, the anchor unreels a weight until it hangs a preset distance below the anchor. This preset distance is the distance the mine is to lay under the surface. As the anchor starts to sink, it unreels the mooring cable to the mine, while the mine floats on the surface. When the weight hanging below the anchor hits bottom, the mechanism in the anchor locks the reel that had been paying out cable to the mine, so the mine is then pulled under the surface as the anchor sinks the last few feet to the bottom.
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  608. The Washington Naval Treaty granted the RN construction licenses for two battleships, which could be used immediately, which produced the Nelsons. If those two licenses had been granted for execution in 1927 and 1929, as the licenses granted to France and Italy were, how would that impact Admiralty decision making when the Deutschlands were built? Would the Admiralty follow the lead of the French and build two light battlecruisers, possibly using the 15"/42 turrets in inventory as a cost saving measure? Or, would the Admiralty decide Hood and the Renowns were sufficient to deal with the Deutschlands, and, when the first two Littorios were laid down in 1934, use the licenses to advance the timeline of the construction of the KGV class, laying down KGV and Prince of Wales in 36, with Duke of York and Anson laid down January 1 of 37 and Howe laid down in May of 37?
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  609.  @jasonbrannock1698  the RM only "kept" the San Giorgios in the loosest sense. San Giorgio was, from the 1930s, a training ship, with some boilers removed and speed reduced. San Marco was disarmed and converted into a radio controlled target ship.
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  610.  @WALTERBROADDUS  The Philippines were virtually unreinforceable once the war started. The former German colonies of the Marianas, Carolines, and Marshalls, were all handed to Japan by the League of Nations after WWI. To evade Japanese bases, any US reinforcement would need to go around the south side of New Guinea, because Japanese bases were sitting astride the direct route from Hawaii. My nightmare scenario has the Japanese not attacking the fleet in Pearl, but only attacking the Philippines, in hopes political pressure would force FDR to send the fleet out into deep water, to attempt relief of the garrison, and run the gauntlet of Japanese forces.
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  611.  @WALTERBROADDUS  As the Japanese already held all the rest of the Marianas, they could take Guam without even changing their watches for a different time zone. For the US, Guam was just as unsupportable as the Philippines. Wake was on the border.between US and Japanese held areas. The US might have been able to make a stand on Wake, if it could have brought enough force to bear. Midway was well within US territory, reachable by a direct line from Hawaii.
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  612.  @WALTERBROADDUS  yes, the implication of the crack about the 26th Cavalry was the horses ended up as the main course. Trivia bit, the 26th mounted the last cavalry charge by the US Army on January 16, 1942, at the village of Morong.
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  613.  @Philistine47  from my study on the subject, Ranger's lack of size was directly due to the Lexington's excess of size. The two Lexingtons used half of the US' tonnage allotment. Friedman on carriers talks about the debates in the Navy about how many carriers they wanted, and how to divide up the remaining tonnage. They soon decided Ranger was too small, so the Yorktowns were made larger, but not too large, so that enough tonnage allotment was left to build a minimally effective carrier, which became Wasp. Yes, the Yorktowns were vulnerable. They did not have staggered boiler and engine rooms. Considering how Yorktown and Hornet were both lost: dead in the water, but not on fire, can't help but wonder, if they had been built with staggered boiler and engine rooms, like an Essex, would they have survived?
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  614.  @christopherrowe7460  the USN did have a lot of input from the RN in carrier design. Stanley Goodall was seconded by the Admiralty to the USN during the war and was a major conduit of information between the USN Bureau of Construction and Repair and the Admiralty's chief constructor Eustace Tennyson-D'Eyncourt. Goodall provided in depth information about Hood to the USN. Friedman's book on carriers goes on to describe the continuing exchange of information between the USN and RN in the 20s, The RN went to larger carriers during the war. As soon as the war ended, enthusiasm for carriers waned significantly and Eagle and Hermes were both long builds. Seems the IJN took the rational approach to carriers. Hosho was laid down in 1920, when Akagi and Kaga were both intended as big gun capital ships. It would be interesting to see where IJN carrier design would have gone without the intervention of the treaty, and that special clause the US wanted, allowing the conversion of outsized battlecruisers. Yes, the USN was designing 35-39,000 ton carriers before the treaty. You know how we Americans roll, always want to have a bigger one. But reality, and a tight fisted Congress, resulted in Langley. I have read that, until the intervention of the treaty and availability of the battlecuriser hulls, the Navy was planning on converting a second collier. As for the dimensions of US carriers, beam is dictated by the Panama Canal. The need for speed, the more wind over the deck, the safer air ops are, as well as USN "scouting group" doctrine, dictates the length to beam ratio of a cruiser/battlecruiser. If I was in charge in the 20s, Langley would have been followed in 3-5 years, by Ranger. Even looking at Ranger, I can see the lineage going to Langley, not the Lexingtons. Ranger has the same far aft positioned boilers, with swiveling, deck edge funnels, as Langley. Ranger, as originally planned, was flush decked, same as Langley. The USN did not return to the Lexington's layout with midships boilers and an island, until Yorktown.
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  615.  @christopherrowe7460  buying the books can be an expensive endeavor. Well worth it for someone who will refer to them repeatedly, like Drac. My local public library doesn't have much, that is of this specialized nature, but they can transfer in a great deal from other libraries in their exchange network. I have had them transfer in Friedman on carriers, battleships, and cruisers. as well as other works on the Washington Treaty, and ships of the IJN. The IJN inquiry was fascinating: working on a hypothesis that the Kii class was not a distinct class, but a proposal to up-armor the Amagis on the slipway and reclassify them as fast battleships. Information I was able to find was too fragmentary to be sure, but the Kii and Amagi designs are so similar it bucks the percentages that they were distinct classes.
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  616.  @axelrajr  here's a bureaucratic inertia story that a Canadian friend of mine tells. He was in an aircrew of either a Sea King helo or Argus patrol bomber, he did tours in both, and had occasion to spend some time at a US air base. Every few days, a US Airman came around, spraying insecticide for roaches. Thing is, the roaches had long before become immune to the insecticide being used, but the standing orders said to spray it, so spray they did. Everyone knew it was useless, but it was easier to keep spraying than trying to get the standing orders changed.
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  617.  @stanleyrogouski  I looked up the AA armament SD had when completed in March of 42: (8) .50 machine guns, (28) 1.1" (I take that as 7 quad mounts), and (16) Oerlikons, along with (16) 5"/38s. That was a substantial increase from what had been originally planned. Prince of Wales had (16) QF 5.25" in twin turrets, (32) 2 pounder pompoms (which I take to be (4) octuple mounts), and (80) UP projectors. The SD's 1.1 mounts can engage more targets at the same time, but PoW's pompoms will do more damage to anything they get zeroed in on. Without the golden BB torpedo hit that killed power to many of the mounts on PoW, there isn't much to choose between the two, and SD had it's own wonky electrical system issues. Repluse had not been modernized like Renown, and was somewhat deficient in AA, by 1941 standards: (8) 4" and (2) octuple pompoms. For the heck of it, I proposed sending the newly rebuilt QE and Valiant as Force Z, with their places in Alexandria being taken by Malaya and Revenge, and Malaya's place in Force H taken by Prince of Wales. Rebuilt QE and Valiant: 20 4.5" in twin turrets, 4 octuple pompoms, and 4 quad .50 machine guns. I could make a case that QE and Valiant, together, could put up more AA than PoW and Repulse, combined, and the QEs might even have an edge on a pair of SDs. Even more interesting: there was a suggestion that Hermes join Force Z, but she was rejected as too slow to keep up with PoW and Repulse. Hermes could keep up with QEs just fine, but I doubt it would occur to anyone in Singapore to make up tail hooks for some of the Buffalos the RAF and RAAF were flying so that Hermes could have some proper fighters to provide a CAP.
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  618.  @lukedogwalker  Congratulations. Drac responded to a couple of mine months ago. When he was reading the first question, I was thinking it sounded just like what I had been pondering, then backed up the audio as I had not caught the name. My name! Couldn't believe it. He answered a second of mine a week later.
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  619.  @kemarisite  would Halsey consider the force a decoy, or easy pickings so he can run up a big score?
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  620. wrt the question about all the Rs being built as Renown class battlecruisers, consider the alternative: in addition to Renown and Repulse, the other two cancelled ships; the R class Resistance and QE class Agincourt are also reordered as Renowns making use of the 15" guns and Mk 1 turrets that were in process for the cancelled ships. It is written that the Admiralty proceeded with construction of Hood as it, in conjunction with the two Renowns, were seen as replacements for the three battlecruisers lost at Jutland. If the Admiralty had four Renowns building at the time of Jutland, would the Admiralty see any need to build Hood? Would any of the Admirals been laid down at all, considering the wartime press of other priorities, and the number of Renowns building? Impact on the WNT? The 525,000 ton limit, as I read the treaty, was only a factor when building replacements for ships currently in commission. The original retention list for the RN, with Tiger, the three surviving KGVs and Thunderer was some 580,000 tons. When the Nelsons were built, the drawdown toward the limit started, with four dreadnoughts scrapped and the RN's tonnage reduced to just under 559,000T. Without Hood, but with two additional Renowns, the RN's treaty retention list would have probably looked very much the same, with the possible elimination of Thunderer.
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  621. Almirante Latorre and the USN, revisited. Two concerns I had; ammo and spares supplies for a British built ship in USN service. If the Elswick and USN 14" guns had precisely the same bore, it may have been possible to use USN shells. The Elswick chamber is significantly larger than the chamber in the USN gun, so plenty of room to load a charge of USN smokeless to provide equivalent performance to cordite. That leaves the problem of the USN trying to source replacement parts for all the UK built systems in the ship. Hence, Plan Steve: The UK buys Almirante Latorre into service (again), or, if lacking cash, the US buys her and lend-leases her to the U.K. There is a significant probability that the shells and charges from the 14" mounted on the KGVs would work in the Elswick guns, and spares would, from RN perspective, be locally sourced. With an additional obsolete BB available for convoy duty, the Latorre (HMS Canada, again?) could relieve one of the New Yorks, so the New York could be redeployed to the US west coast, without creating the logistics problems deploying a foreign built ship would.
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  622.  @usssouthdakota5541  Renown was with Ark Royal, in Force H. Repulse was with KGV in the channel south of Iceland. The way I see it is Tovey know how vulnerable Hood was, and Repulse was even more vulnerable, so the two forces were formed of one strong ship (KGV or PoW) and one weak ship (Hood or Repulse). PoW, still working up, was the weaker of the two KGVs, so was paired with the stronger of the two obsolete battlecruisers, Hood. To directly answer your question, if Repulse had been placed with PoW, there would have been no doubt which was the weaker ship, so I would have expected PoW to lead the attack. PoW would probably have lasted longer than Hood, but surviving the engagement is another question. iirc, Bismark initially concentrated on Hood, allowing PoW to close to "decisive" range undamaged. With PoW leading, it would have been taking fire longer and would have been more damaged by the time it entered "decisive" range of under 16,000 yards.
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  623. A very good question. Placing two guns side by side limits their firing arc, which doesn't happen in a superfireing arrangement. iirc, there were some British scout cruisers in the early 1900s that had three 12 pounders on the foc'sle, so their arc was even more limited. The three 12 pounders were later replaced by a pair of 4"/40s, side by side. When Peru ordered a pair of cruisers based on the Vickers scout design, they had a single 6" installed on both foc'sle and quarterdeck, instead of the multiple small guns.
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  624.  @blogsblogs2348  I understand that the Mk II had a lot of reliability issues, some were addressed by switching to a metal link belt for the ammo. The interesting thing is I see pix of Mk IIs in single barrel, free mounts. Crosses my mind that the concept of the single barrel, free mount, with the better mechanism from the Mk VIII might have been a better "last ditch" weapon than the Oerlikon due to the much larger, more lethal, shell the Vickers fired.
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  625.  @Davidsladky135  as Joe said, carriers started out being named after previous ships, just as the Brits keep recycling names. When I was on the Lex, 50 years ago, there was a painting on a bulkhead in the hangar of all the previous Lexingtons. iirc, there were 4 or 5 preceding ships of that name. There was a long string of Enterprises before CV-6. It was as much chance as anything else that most of the early carriers were named after battles as previous USN ships had been named to commemorate the same battles. Of the six Lexington class battlecruisers, the two that were completed were named after preceding ships that had been named after battles, three were named after ships of the original 6 frigates and one, Ranger, named after a ship commanded by John Paul Jones during the revolution. There were six USS Hornets, dating back to the revolution, before CV-8 and there were eight USS Wasps, dating back to the revolution, prior to CV-7.
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  626. wrt the question about returning Okie and Arizona to service. I have read that Okie was scheduled to be deactivated by mid 42, as it was so obsolete. There is a model of Arizona, as it appears today. Most of the ship forward of the funnel is pancaked, as if the explosion blew out all of the vertical supporting structures, and the decks collapsed on top of each-other. Maine also suffered a magazine explosion in Havana. Maine was salvaged by building a cofferdam around it, cutting off the damaged forward section, and installing a temporary bow. Maine was then towed out to deep water and scuttled. The same could probably have been done with Arizona. As for returning them to service, the best thing would probably be to take a page from the RN's book from WWI, pull the turrets and install them on hastily and cheaply built monitors. The aft two turrets of Arizona were removed and installed as shore batteries. All four 14" turrets on Okie were still in place when she was righted in early 43.
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  627.  @RedXlV  The Italian 15"/40s built for the Caracciolo class battleships were used as shore batteries in twin turrets. One turret installed near Venice, two at Brindisi, which used turrets much like those on a battleship, with hoists bringing the ammo up from a magazine. Later, a twin turret of different design was installed near Augusta, Sicily, and two more turrets of the later design were installed near Genoa in 42. The two after 14" turrets from Arizona were installed as shore batteries in Hawaii, but it took the entire war to build them. iirc, they were first test fired within days of V-J day.
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  628. A while back, I took a look at the USN using the twin low angle 4"/50 that was experimented with in 1918 as a battleship secondary, rather than the single 5"/51. Interesting: greater rate of fire, greater throw weight, for the same installed weight. Then I created a hypothetical DP twin 4" cutting the 4"/50 down to 45 caliber, using the mount from the British DP 4"/45. Weighed less than the combination of a 5"/51 and 5"/25 that the USN used, with a higher rate of fire in both anti-surface and AA roles that the mix of 5", and the 01 deck was left open for installation of light AA.
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  629.  @kemarisite  , the thing that has puzzled me for a long time is using armor from one ship on another. I have read, for instance, that armor made for the South Dakotas in the early 20s was used to reinforce existing BBs when the SoDaks were cancelled. On the face of it, seems unlikely that armor plate made to fit a specific spot on a SoDak could be bolted on to a ship of different design. Seems that the curve of the hull would be different.
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  630. The GOP has no alternative to MAGA. The traditional "supply side" argument, that everyone else needs to make do with less, so more money can be given to the rich, is a non-starter. The GOP Presidential candidate has only won the popular vote once, in the last 35 years. MAGA is the only alternative: policies to enrich the rich, at everyone else's expense, camouflaged with racism and homophobia. Trump said he would not run in 28, if he lost in 24. If he wins in 24, and can still draw a breath in 28, he will run, regardless what the Constitution says.
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  631.  @brendonbewersdorf986  eons ago, I read a book about the work of the RN DMWD during the war. One device they came up with was an anti-aircraft rocket that trailed a steel cable. The idea was, rather than trying to take the aircraft out with an explosion, get the plane fouled in the cable. Not terribly effective, but made for some struggles for German crews that got one of those cables wrapped around a propeller.
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  632.  @mitchwatson6787  iirc, the USN was headed in the direction of nothing but BBs and DDs 100 years ago. BBs are expensive and slow. DDs don't have much endurance at high speed. iirc, the change in doctrine came after WWI, when the USN saw how handy cruisers were to the RN. which gave birth to the Omaha class cruisers, the first light cruisers laid down by the USN since the Chesters in 1905. Of course, we are headed back there now, with CVNs replacing the BBs, and DDs with various armament schemes., and nothing else in the way of deep water surface combatants.
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  633.  @Kumimono  there were certainly ships purpose built for easy conversion into auxiliary cruisers. The target of Operation Creek was a German freighter, Ehrenfels. British agents had gotten on board Ehrenfels before the war started, and determined, from the way the ship was built and the decks reinforced, she was intended for conversion to an auxiliary cruiser. The Italian "banana boats" Ramb I and Ramb II were also built with an eye to easy conversion to auxiliary cruisers. The Japanese has several carriers that were converted from liners and seaplane tenders. Sources vary if the liners were purpose built for easy conversion.
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  634. ​ @brendonbewersdorf986  the same thought crossed my mind. Italy, in particular, was stuck with some impossible ships, the four Elena class pre-dreadnoughts and the salvaged hulk of the da Vinci, classified as front line battleships, to fill up Italy's quota. Three Orions or KGVs would replace the tonnage of those five worst ships, or Erin, by itself, would make a good replacement for da Vinci. Sold to Italy for their scrap price, as that was their fate without a sale, which Italy could cover by selling the Elenas and da Vinci for scrap. But would Italy want the running cost? And, would the transfer of dreadnoughts that were only a decade old cause Italy to loose the licenses it was given to start building replacement ships in the late 20s, licenses which were used to build the first two Littorios? Without those licenses, the Littorios could not have been laid down until 1937, meaning they would not have completed until 41. With the Littorios not laid down until 37, the French would not have laid down Richelieu and Jean Bart until 38, so they would have been too far from completion when France fell to escape to North Africa. With battleships only ten years old, would Italy have been given the latitude for improving existing ships that allowed the rebuilds of the Cavours and Dorias?
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  635.  @brendonbewersdorf986  the pre-dreadnoughts, and the RN 12" gunned ships were being sold for scrap before the treaty, so, if the UK had wanted to sell them to other users, they could have. The UK proposed selling the two surviving Invincibles to Chile, replacing the battleship that was halfway converted to HMS Eagle. That deal fell through, so the battlecruisers were stricken in March of 1920 and sold for scrap. HMS Canada, which had been purchased from Chile, was sold back to Chile with the deal closing in April of 20. The UK tried to sell the Gin Palace to Brazil, but Brazil declined. Greece already had the two former US pre-dreadnoughts. Greece's new-build ship, the Salamis, was tied up in litigation with the Vulcan yard in Germany for several years, with Greece trying to cancel it, and Vulcan wanting to be paid.
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  636.  @brendonbewersdorf986  the better German battleships were scuttled at Scapa. The older German and Austrian ones were handed over as reparations, and either scrapped or used for target practice. The one scenario that seems plausible is France claiming the three incomplete Mackensens that were in the water, towing them back to France and completing them, using the guns that had been built for the Normandies. The chances of getting anything out of Germany in serviceable condition were pretty slim. Several of the surviving Zeps were allocated as reparations, but where destroyed by their crews.
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  637.  @brendonbewersdorf986  I find the most satisfying alt history scenarios are the ones where I try to poke holes in the scenario to see if it holds up. I ran a scenario a while back where the US bought one or both of the surviving Invincibles to get their large, fast, hulls to convert to more satisfying carriers than Langley. I required the conversion to be cheap, because that was how Congress rolled. Had in mind to use the powerplants from a handful of Clemsons that had been cancelled before being laid down in February of 1919, hence the plants would be surplus and available cheap. Worked out that the cancelled Clemsons were to be built by Newport News. News sourced turbines from Westinghouse and boilers from Babcock and Wilcox. Unfortunately, New York Shipbuilding sourced turbines and boilers from the same vendors, and laid down ten more Clemsons, after the ones from News were cancelled. So the powerplant vendors most likely trimmed the back end of their production schedule, components they had not started building yet, so no cheap surplus plants for the carrier conversions. Based on the re-enginging of North Dakota in 1917, new turbines, at market price, for an Invincible would cost $1.2M, plus 8 boilers, plus converting coal bunkers to oil tanks. I'm thinking close to $2M just to replace the worn out coal fired plant, before conversion to a carrier can even start. The budget for Langley was $500,000, so the Invincible idea is a no-go.
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  638.  Versusdelyxe  not necessarily a capture scenario, but Italy received several Austrian destroyers as reparations after WWI. The ships were refitted with Italian guns and served in the RM for several years.
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  639.  @MickeyBlueEyes34  USS Memphis, ACR-10, was at anchor in Santo Domingo on August 29, 1916. Heavy swells started to develop and the captain ordered steam raised to get underway and out of the harbor. Before steam could be raised the swells were so large the ship was rolling 45 degrees, and more. A series of three waves estimated to be 70 feet high hit the ship and drover her onto the beach half a mile away from where she had been. The ship was completely wrecked and sold for scrap in place. Some accounts speculate the waves were a Tsunami, but there was no seismic activity in the area at that time. The speed of the waves, which took about an hour to reach the ship from when they appeared on the horizon, is more typical of wind generated waves, possibly produced by a hurricane that was in the area at the time.
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  640.  @gneisenau89  information I find says over 80 ocean going Navy ships were built by Kewaunee (Wisconsin) Shipbuilding and Engineering alone, mostly cargo ships and tugs. One of their ships, originally built as FP-344 for the Army, was taken over by the Navy after the war. She was converted into an intelligence gathering ship and renamed Pueblo. Now, the Freedom class LCS is built at Marinette, Wisconsin. The Constellation class Frigates will also be built in Marinette.
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  641. I posted a comment related to this earlier, which the net seems to have eaten. There was a debate in the USN on this very topic during WWI. The head of BuOrd from 1913-16, Admiral Strauss, seemed dead set against the 16"/45. Strauss seems to have been of the opinion that optical gun direction systems would never be improved, and battleships would never engage at more than 12,000 yards. In his view, the greater range and long range penetration ability of the 16"/45 was unneeded, while the 14"/50 penetrated well enough at less than 12,000 yards, and, being lighter, more could be mounted on a ship. The 14"/50 could not penetrate battleship belt thickness armor at more than 12,000. In the 1915 BuOrd annual report, Strauss sneers at the mounts in the Tennessees being designed for 30 degrees of elevation, vs the 15 degrees of the New Mexicoes, because, in his view, that much elevation will never be needed. Even more disturbing, was the disinformation about the 16" being fed to American newspapers at that time. One story that appeared in several papers in early 1915, a couple months after the Battle of Dogger Bank, which proved that capital ships could engage at much greater distance than 12,000 yards, said that the 16" suffered very high erosion, the British 15"/42 only had a life of 100 rounds, and the 14"/50 was more durable. Barrel life data on Navweaps shows exactly the opposite: the early 15" and 16" both more durable than the 14". In an article published in early 1916, Strauss is directly quoted as saying the 14" is the equal of the 15"/42, and, again, rattles on about how USN guns can penetrate "heavy armor" at 12,000 yards. A few months later, the Battle of Jutland, again, demonstrated that battles can be carried out at far grater ranges than the 12,000 that Strauss kept rattling on about. Strauss had his way with the New Mexicoes and Tennessees, but, the need to reach and penetrate at ranges of 15,000-20,000 yards, having been demonstrated twice, SecNav Daniels announced the Coloradoes would be armed with 16" guns. In the 1916 SecNav annual report, Daniels says the move to 16" is being made over the objection of some Naval officers. Also in late 16, Strauss was transferred out of BuOrd and given sea duty.
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  642.  @kemarisite  and, just to complicate the torpedo issue, the TBD carried the torp in a...lets say "novel" manner, with the tail buried in the airplane's fuselage and the body of the torp angled downward, due to a theory that it would be advantageous for the torp to enter the water at an angle, rather than belly flop in. The British Mk 12 wasn't foolproof either, as the RN had it's own flirtation with magnetic pistols, which didn't work any better for them than they did for the USN. 20/20 hindsight would have the TBD designed for the Mk 12, which would probably work better for the plane due to less weight, and having the torp cinched up tight under the fuselage resulting in less drag. Then leave the magnetic pistols back at the torpedo warehouse. But all that requires about 6 years of 20/20 foresight from 1935 as the TBD was being developed. just as the Mk 12 was being designed.
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  643.  @RobJaskula  If the treaty replacement schedule had been revised to allow completion of unfinished hulls, instead of new construction, the USN could have retained Washington too. But Washington, as designed, was a lot closer to the treaty limit, so would have little flexibility to improve speed. Would the USN want a new, 21kt, BB when the treaty would allow them to complete Washington, in 1931.
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  644.  @satern7473  I looked in to that a bit recently. The ships the Netherlands was looking in to at the start of WWI would have been meat on the table in 41. I'm not sure how realistic the 1047s were. They seem to be a very ambitious, and expensive, design. If they had built anything heavier than De Ruyter, I'm thinking maybe a variation on a Deutschland. Maybe with a steam plant, rather than diesel, as their fuel source was close at hand, so the ships would not need extreme range, and steam may provide more speed. During the invasion of the DEI, all four Kongos were in theater, escorting the carriers. If the Dutch had one or two Deutschalnds deployed, the Kongos would simply be brought forward to deal with them, if they had survived the air strikes.
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  645. The Dunkerques combine the fragility of the Courageous class with the awkward armament layout of the Nelsons. The French should have followed the example of the USN and converted these misconceived ships to carriers on the ways.
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  646.  @kemarisite  agree. The Brits could have painted a bull's eye on that spot on the deck with a big sign "aim here", and Bismark couldn't have hit it, intentionally, in a thousand tries. Pure dumb luck, just like the torpedo that jammed Bismark's rudder.
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  647.  @fran87blacon  did you see "PT Boats Giant Killers" on youtube. It is a color documentary produced by ELCO about how the boats were built.
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  648. wrt the 12" gun proposal at First London, I would say this was aimed directly at Italy, and, secondarily, at France. While First London overrode the replacement schedule in the WNT, and extended the battleship construction holiday through 1936, Italy and France each had two good until used licenses to build battleships that took effect in 1927 and 1929. At that point in time, the largest guns the RM had in service were 12", and the largest France had were 13.4". Even with the 12" proposal failing, I have read that the UK brought a great deal of pressure to bear on France to build the Dunkerques well below the treaty limits. This is clearly intended as a means to keep the Nelsons, QEs and Rs relevant, by leveraging the treaty to, as Drac correctly says, force Italy and France to build hilariously undersized and underarmed battleships. Meanwhile, the Versailles Treaty kept Germany down to the Deutschlands, with their 11" guns.
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  649. ​ @Thecrownswill  the US probably did not have any to spare at first. The RN did pick up some Vindicators from a French order, after France fell. Their idea was to use the Vindicators on HMS Archer, but Archer was so slow it couldn't produce enough wind over the deck for the Vindicators to be able to take off with a useful sized load. As Drac said, at least on paper, the Skua wasn't that bad as a bomber, compared to the Vindicator. The Skua also had the advantage of the way the wings folded beside the fuselage, rather that above the fuselage, which was the norm for US carrier aircraft, except those built by Grumman. I don't know, but could imagine some older British carriers having an issue with overhead height.
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  650.  @Thecrownswill  by 1940, the Dauntless was pretty much obsolete. It stayed in front line service so long because Curtis had so much development trouble with the Helldiver. Little reason for the UK to bother setting up an entire supply chain to produce an obsolete plane. The UK never bought the Helldiver at all, judging it unacceptable for any use, due to it's vile handling characteristics. The UK did buy a few Brewster Buccaneers, naming them Bermuda in RN service. The RN only used the Bermudas for training, judging them unacceptable for combat. Then there is the overhead clearance issue in the hangars of RN carriers. The Corsair's wing tips had to be clipped 6" to fit in some RN carriers with it's wings folded. The Dauntless' wings were longer, though a different in where the hinge was could make a difference in folded height. I looked, but could not readily find, a dimension for height for either plane with it's wings folded. The one USN bomber/torpedo plane the RN did buy in quantity was the Grumman Avenger, which, like all Grumman aircraft, folded it's wings parallel to the fuselage, so it did not suffer overhead clearance issues.
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  651.  @rambling_reiver  the need for speed has several factors: safer take off and landing due to more wind over the deck. Ability to take off with more gas and payload, due to more wind over the deck. The Brits took over some Vought Vindicators that the French had ordered, but wanted to use them on HMS Archer, a converted freighter, but, due to Archer's low speed, 16kts, the Vindicators could not lift a useful payload, so Archer got Swordfish instead. The third factor in favor of high speed for a carrier was that, for air ops, the carrier needs to head into the wind to maximize wind over the deck. Wind direction usually varies from fleet direction, so, with the extra speed, a carrier can chase the wind to launch a strike, then use it's high speed to catch up with the rest of the fleet.
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  652.  @bkjeong4302  yes, that was the plan, by the late 30s, rendering the Lexington's 8" battery useless, but then Glorious was sunk, then Gambier Bay was sunk. When the Lexingtons were built, nothing larger than a cruiser could keep up with them, outside of the few remaining Brit battlecruisers, so 8" guns would be adequate to defend against any likely surface opponent. If Glorious had 8" guns, and was attacked by Prinz Eugen, it could have held it's own. If Glorious had been attacked by Lutzow, it could have run away. Just bad luck it ran into ships it couldn't outrun, or outgun with an 8" armament, if it had had that armament.
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  653.  @alex57633  He may have covered that in his video on the conference. The US Congress was highly unlikely to have continued to fund the building program that was in place. The Japanese economy could not support their building program. France and Italy were broke, abandoned the capital ships they had been working on at the start of the war. The UK, if it had the will, could have built, but the UK had a massive debt from the war, so it's a matter of how fast the UK would want to pay off the debts, vs make money available to the Admiralty. The US was clearly more interested in paying off it's debts. Through the 1920s, with a budget of about $3B/year, the government was running surpluses of $700M-$1.1B per year. A decade if that penny pinching still left the US government with some $15.6B of debt from the war.
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  654.  @TwinHuginHelmet  I would think the IJN would go with Tosa or Kaga, as their construction was more advanced than the Amagis, having gotten to the point of launching. For the USN, none of the 40,000 ton ships was all that great. The South Dakotas were too slow and the Lexingtons were vulnerable. The USN was in a spot. It laid down so many ships in 1919-20 because Congress had passed a Naval appropriation bill on July 1, 1918, which compelled the Navy to begin construction of all the ships that were authorized in the 1916 act, but not yet begun, to be begun by July 1 of 1919. That was some 48 ships, including three Colorados, all the South Dakotas, all the Lexingtons and all the Omahas. Were I in SecNav Daniels' shoes, I would have tried to reason with Congress that the Colorados were a waste of money, because the South Dakotas, in breaking with the "standard battleship" template, made the Colorados obsolete. Failing that, I would step into Secretary Hughes' shoes at the Washington conference. Understanding that Congress in 1922 will not fund much of anything, I would look at the US being the only one of the big three navies stuck with ships mounting 12" guns, and demand licenses for future construction the same way France and Italy had licenses due to their obsolete, 12" gunned ships.
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  655.  @gregorywright4918  I am more familiar with US history. You may be right. The UK did return Java to the Netherlands and some possessions to France after Napoleon's defeat. I do not see mention of any possessions sold for cash or barter in the late 19th or early 20th century. I don't know enough about British politics to know why, other than maybe pride. I can think of several reasons why President Harding would not be interested. Congress passed a law requiring all debtors to repay their war debts, in full, in cash, on time, with interest. Some of the large debtors, including the UK, opened their negotiations with the assertion that all the US' loans should be entirely forgiven. as the US' contribution to the war effort. One reason I can think of that Harding would not be interested is that the West Indies, particularly Jamaica, were famous for rum production, and prohibition was the law of the land in the US. The US apparently did not impose prohibition in the Philippines, but prohibition was the law in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Due to proximity to the US, prohibition would probably have been imposed on all the West Indies colonies, putting a lot of people out of work and stirring resentment of the US. Another reason that comes to mind is that US immigration policy in the 20s was very restrictive and blatantly racist. Some of the newspaper articles from the early 20s that I read noted that the British tended to treat citizens of color better than the US treated it's black citizens. Most of the British West Indies islands have populations that are 80-90% of African decent. I can see Harding and his cabinet, given their biases, taking one look at large numbers of blacks, out of work because rum production is shut down, coming to the US looking for work, vs a nice, big, pile of cash, and grabbing the cash, in spite of the payment schedule negotiated with the UK being 62 years.
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  656.  @kemarisite  Seems that the Italians were asking the same question as Joe: what's the point of a heavy cruiser? With treaty tonnage limits, heavies were not well protected, so could be chopped up by a CL, or a DD, but a CA's 8" isn't going to make much more of an impression on a BB's 12" thick armor than a CL's 6". Italy started out building heavies in the late 20s and early 30s, but then built nothing but CLs in later years.
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  657.  @kemarisite  The postwar preference for the Baltimores could be, as Drach said in his piece on interwar Brit cruiser development, because a heavy cruiser is the most impressive looking thing you can show the flag with, if you can't use a battleship. Or, it could be that a lot of Clevelands saw a good portion of the war and were worn out, while the Baltimores saw less war and were in better condition.
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  658. wrt the question about the USN contribution to WWI, I was reading some contemporary newspaper articles recently. In April, within days of the US entering the war and before Maryland and Tennessee were laid down, SecNav Daniels was already publicly speculating that all capital ship construction should be suspended and all the resources put in to DD and freighter construction. By July, the magnitude of losses to U-Boats was becoming apparent. In April, the Emergency Fleet Corporation was established to organize the mass production of freighters, with the goal of building 3 million tons of ships in 18 months. The US had already lost 3 million tons in only four months.
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  659.  @flakstruk-8481  sorry, misread your OP. There wasn't much point in removing the secondaries on pre-dreads. Pre-dreads had heavy secondaries because the rate of fire of the main guns was so slow, so removing a 6" to 8" secondary battery would remove most of the firepower of the ship.
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  660. Another "Danger UXB" fan here. There was a "Foyle's War" ep that featured a bomb disposal team. First time we see the officer in the Foyle ep defusing a bomb, he identifies the fuse as a "Type 15". OK, I know what he's talking about. So the officer tries to remove the locking ring. It won't budge. So he goes at it with a hammer and chisel until it starts to unscrew. then he puts the Crabtree discharger on it. If Brian Ash had beat on a bomb with a hammer and chisel, before discharging the fuse, the birds would have found his pieces.
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  661. ​ @TankerBricks  some time ago, I worked out a plan where PoW joins force H at Gibraltar, replacing Malaya. Malaya and Revenge replace QE and Valiant at Alexandria, and QE and Valiant form Force Z, along with Hermes. I found a site with activity logs for all these ships, and the timeline works out just about right.
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  662.  @arivael  Force Z had DD escorts. PoW had had two or three DDs escorting it all the way from the UK. Plan Steve has PoW, Express and Electra turning in at Gibraltar, instead of steaming past. Then Malaya, with the two DDs use the decoy convoys as cover to transit to Alexandria. This scenario has an extra benefit. Malaya had not had the late 30s rebuild that some others had, and was somewhat decrepit. Reportedly, Admiral Somerville was exceptionally displeased being stuck with an old tub for his flagship, so I suspect he would be delighted to raise his flag on PoW. Historically, Express and Electra made the entire trip with PoW, to the day she sank, and carried survivors back to Singapore.
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  663.  @arivael  actually, more were on the way, not that they would have made a difference. As the DDs, laden with survivors, steamed south after the battle, they passed four American DDs that Admiral Hart had dispatched to join Z.
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  664.  @emperordave3006  the USN had a 14"/50 in 1915. In 1916, the USN looked at what had been happening in Europe, and switched to the 16"/45. I don't understand the physics, but, apparently, a lighter shell looses momentum faster compared to a heavier shell. I have access to partial copies of USN gunnery range tables from the mid 1930s. I looked up both a 14" and 16". both fired with an initial muzzle velocity of 2600fps. By the time the shells reach 14,500 yards, the 16" shell is traveling 200fps faster than the 14". So, it comes down to a 16" holding momentum longer, and hitting at longer ranges with higher velocity. Looking at the late 1930s rebuilt USN 14" and 16", the 14"/50, with a muzzle velocity of 2900fps could penetrate 13.75" at 20,000 yards, but the 16"/45, with a muzzle velocity of 2520fps could penetrate 16.24" at 20,000.
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  665. wrt the question about stripping the turrets off of the Nelsons for the Lions, I looked at a variation of that, using the debugged Nelson turret design for new construction turrets, and found another problem: the rate of fire of the Nelsons was slow, on the order of 1.5 rounds per minute, vs 2 rounds per minute on the 15"/42 and 14"/45. This was apparently an effect of how the systems in the turret worked, even after the reliability problems had been addressed. Bottom line is it seems the Nelson turret's best contribution was informing the designers how not to design the systems.
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  666. Agree. I have found things in authoritative books that either don't make sense, or are completely wrong, when I compare to documents published at the time the decisions were made. How many times have you read that the Washington Treaty forced Courageous and Glorious to be converted to carriers? The treaty does not list those ships as capital ships. Lexington and Saratoga are listed as capital ships, and required to be disposed of.. My take is the treaty respected the Courageouse's definition by the Admiralty as cruisers, and they were converted to carriers because the Admiralty wanted them to be carriers, rather than cruisers. I wish I could find on-line access to source documents for the RN, like I have found for the USN.
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  667. A navalized 190 would seemingly be a better choice than a 109, due to the wide track landing gear and short, radial, engine, giving the pilot a better view of the deck.
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  668.  @tgmccoy1556  the sub had size on it's side. It was small enough to drag overland to water.
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  669.  @tgmccoy1556  I was reading about that a while back. The logging company bid was initially rejected, because the plan sounded nutty. Bids from conventional salvage companies were exorbitant. So, with nothing to lose, the Navy gave the logging company the contract, and they succeeded. Apparently, there are still traces of the wreckage of the Milwaukee visible on the beach. The USN had some pretty lurid groundings in those days. Everyone has heard of the Honda Point multiple grounding. I see Drac has the Tennessee class armored cruisers on his list to profile. The Tennessee was on a big stick waving exercise in the Dominican Republic, and was hit by a rogue wave while riding at anchor. The ship was driven up on the shore and wrecked. The Navy stripped off what it wanted and sold the wreck for scrap as it sat.
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  670.  @carlcarlton764  "Wind Indicator"? You mean the "Vibrator"?
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  671.  @tripducey3076  The treaties after WWI, rather than WWII? the appeal of the treaty was that no-one really wanted to get into another naval building race, partly due to their debt overhang from WWI. Nothing really happened if someone broke or left the treaty system. Japan gave notice in 1934 that it would leave the treaty system when First London, which Japan signed, expired at the end of 36. France broke First London when it laid down Richelieu and Jean Bart. but signed Second London anyway. Italy did not sign Second London, because of the criticism of it's invasion of Ethiopia. The only consequence in any of the treaties for anyone dropping out was tripping the gun size escalator clause in Second London, that stipulated that, if any power that had signed the previous treaties did not sign Second London, maximum gun size would go back to 16" from the 14" that Second London stipulated. As Japan had given notice two years earlier it would not sign, it was a certainty the clause would be triggered. The tonnage escalator was much more vague. It stipulated that if any power not in the treaty system built a ship that exceeded treaty limits, the parties to the treaty would negotiate an appropriate increase in treaty limits. As soon as the US and UK discovered how much material was being ordered for Yamato, making it clear it would exceed treaty limits, they started negotiating the tonnage limit increase.
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  672. I have been waiting for this story since I saw the Marblehead listed in the upcoming articles about a year ago. Thanks! The thought occurs that the four upper 6" casemates are just about the right size to be replaced by 1.1" gun tubs. If the ship had that additional AA armament, she might not have been hit on that fateful day. If she had not been hit then, she probably would have been sunk, along with Houston.
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  673.  @MisterW0lfe  the 1.1" was what was available in December 41. iirc, Cavite received 5 - 1.1" mounts. Four were mounted on the roof of Houston's seaplane hangar. The fifth mount is said to have been sent to Corregidor, where it was used on an improvised land mount.
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  674. I did a post on a Naval group on Facebook a while back, speculating on a triple turret arrangement. That half salvo doctrine was one of the objections made, and redundancy was another. But the Scharnhorsts, with three triples, seems to discredit the idea of half salvos and redundancy being mandatory. After years of building triples, the reversion to twins just does not make sense.
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  675.  @ironmanhowes8200  sticks in my mind I have seen photos of both Kaga and Akagi with three decks, as originally built. Both were rebuilt in the 30s with a single deck.
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  676.  @johnlavery3433  The version I read, somewhere along the line, did not mention a plague. According to what I read, if the men left the ship, before they were paid, they were not paid. So the men stayed on the ships, waiting for their pay. The crown kept delaying payment, in the hope that many men would give up and walk away, forfeiting their pay. I have no idea if any of this is true.
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  677. So many questions about converting BBs and BCs to carriers. The Lexingtons had speed and length, but were also terribly inefficient as carriers. I have been banging on for a bit about what a mistake the Lexingtons were, especially as the treaty tonnage limits were known when work on the conversion started. For the same tonnage as the two Lexingtons, the USN could have built three Yorktowns, with enough tonnage left over to make the Wasp another Yorktown. The result would have been more operational flexibility and survivability due to having more hulls, and more aircraft embarked.
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  678.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Utah could have been refloated the same way Okie was, Arizona was blown apart, so would me a more difficult job. Utah and Arizona did not obstruct the traffic pattern in the harbor the way Okie did. Of course, now, there doesn't seem to be much traffic around Battleship Row, as there is now a bridge to Ford Island just north of the BB moorings. The bridge is retractable, but I doubt they would have built it if there was a lot of traffic.
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  679. wrt the question about Naval espionage, you might like to read "Reilly, Ace Of Spies" by Robin Bruce Lockhart. There was a TV series, based on the book, produced in the early 1980s, which makes for interesting viewing. A couple of Reilly's operations: he was sent to infiltrate the B&V yard to obtain the drawings for a new model gun. He got himself hired in at the yard as a fireman, and persuaded the head of the yard fire department to gather keys for every building and office in the yard, in one place, which was accessible by the firemen. Reilly then pilfered the keys to the drafting office, and made off with the drawings. After losing most of their fleet to the Japanese, the Russians put out an RFP for a new fleet. Reilly got himself appointed the agent for B&V in Russia. Basil Zaharoff, as usual, represented Vickers. Reilly told his superiors in British intelligence, if B&V won the contract, he would forward copies of the B&V drawings to the British. The British then had an incentive to hobble Zaharoff's efforts on behalf of Vickers to obtain the intelligence. Of course, if B&V won the contract, Reilly would pocket a very large sales commission. This was not the first time the British questioned whose side Reilly was really on.
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  680.  @readingrailroadfan7683  iirc, the other two Amagis had hardly been laid down. Kaga had the virtue of a significant amount of construction having already been done, so had the virtue of being a lower cost option.
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  681.  @RupertFoulmouth  A Tennessee class BB was scheduled to be built at Mare island, but the California name had already been allocated to the ship from the previous year's program. Pressure was brought by the California Congressional delegation to switch names. iirc, it was an Assistant Secretary in the Interior Department that wrote a letter to SecNav Daniels stating his arguments for naming the ship building in New York after his home state, New Mexico.
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  682.  @jonathanj8303  the Rivadavias were turbine powered dreadnoughts mounting 12-12" guns, and, apparently, the latest in US fire control technology. The US was as much concerned about any buyer flipping them for a quick profit to a major, potentially hostile, power, like Germany, as they were the Greeks having them. The Mississippis were 6 years old at the time of sale, VTE powered, with only 4-12" guns, and bog slow at 17kts. The Mississippis were pretty much a pork barrel creation, too slow and short ranged to steam with the fleet, so pretty much useless to the USN. There were some pretty blunt articles in the press about how Senator Hale had forced inferior ships on the Navy.
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  683.  @jonathanj8303  in the period around WWI, Greece was half a step, or less, from civil war between the PM and the King. Greece was so untrustworthy that France seized the Greek destroyers and torpedo boats, manned them and operated them under French command, while seizing the breechblocks from the Averof and the Mississippis. The situation was resolved when the King abdicated in 1917. The PM promptly joined the alliance against Germany, and France returned her warships.
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  684.  @chrissouthgate4554  I don't view Ranger as a cheaper option. It was the USN's first purpose built carrier. Ranger was larger than either Hōshō or Hermes. Especially with the treaty limiting displacement, it would be foolish to waste a lot of displacement, as well as money, on concepts that may not prove out in use. Think, for instance, about the triple flying off decks that Akagi and Kaga were originally built with, and what it cost to rebuild them with single, full length, decks. Imagine if the Brits had actually built a carrier with islands on both sides of the flight deck, and what it would cost to fix that mistake. The USN was remarkably lucky the Lexingtons came out as well as they did, because the USN didn't know diddly about carriers at the time. I envision the Lexingtons accumulated a pile of change orders the size of a house as experience was gained with Langley. The cost overruns on a Lexington, alone, would have paid for Ranger.
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  685.  @reginaldpasao8390  I think the Navy recognized that, should war break out, the ships in the Philippines were goners as many of the ships and subs assigned to the Asiatic Fleet were obsolete. It would have been about impossible for the USN to reinforce a squadron in the PI, as they would need to run a gauntlet of Japanese held islands between Hawaii and the PI. So, if the Pennsylvanias, or Tennessees, were in the PI, and tried to make a stand, they would have ended up like Prince of Wales and Repulse: beat on until they sank.
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  686. So Mahan advocated for bases and protection of the supply lines to those bases. Yet, just as Mahan was doing all this scribbling, the US took the Philippines and Guam, both having very nice harbors, from Spain, but the US did not take the rest of the Marianas and Carolines from Spain at the same time, leaving the door open for a hostile power to take those islands and stand astride the supply lines to Guam and the Philippines. First Germany, a nation later hostile to the US, bought those islands from Spain. Then the Japanese, later very very hostile to the US, took those islands from Germany. Then the US garrison in the Philippines was cut off and starved, because the US couldn't run the gauntlet of enemy bases to relieve the Philippines, just as Mahan warned could happen. How could the US miss something so obvious?
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  687.  @WALTERBROADDUS  The US Asiatic squadron didn't have a port it could call it's own. What the Philippines and Guam have in common are very nice harbors. I figure the US knew exactly what it was about. The interesting thing is. shortly after the battle, the German squadron showed up and behaved very aggressively against Dewey's squadron. Ultimately, Germany backed down from it's interest in grabbing the Philippines. Interesting to ponder for a moment, if the Germans had been successful in pushing Dewey out and taking the Philippines for themselves. Then, Japan would have rolled up the Philippines in 1914, when they rolled up most of the other German possessions in the Pacific. Then, in 41, Japan could attack Malaya, without so much as a speed bump in their way.
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  688. I would suggest that historical norms to not apply. We never had a former POTUS running again, in recent history. We never had a former POTUS who tried to overthrow the government running before. That being said, numbers are meaningless without context. 28% say the country is on the right track now. I found an article in the Salt Lake Tribune from July 2020, quoting an AP poll that showed only 20% thought the country was headed in the right direction. So, as bad as the polls are for Biden/Harris, Trump's "right direction" poll was worse.
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  689. Book recommendations are always welcome. What I have found is, often, reading on a topic produces more questions, because there often seem to be things left out. One fact does not knit tightly with the next fact in the narrative. How could the Washington treaty regard Hood as "post Jutland", but Tennessee and California are "pre-Jutland"? The narrative about the KGVs having 14" guns made no sense. I went through books by Garzke, Raven, and Friedman, before I was satisfied that the decision to go to 14" was driven by First Sea Lord Chatfield, and his embrace of the "more smaller guns equals more hits" theory, and I many have only picked up on that as the pivot because I have studied the row in the USN over going from 14" to 16" in 1916. Has anyone written an in-depth analysis of the story of the Greek battleship Salamis? I thumbed through Friedman on WWI naval weapons, and found that the German 30.5cm/50 mount would have fit almost perfectly, being designed for a barbette less than 1.5" smaller in diameter than what Salamis was built for. Why didn't the Germans do that? I will be chasing these questions for years.
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  690.  @jliller  a lot of the German and Austrian ships were awarded to allies as war reparations. Italy and Greece operated several ex-Austrian ships through the 20s. One of the surviving Tegetthoffs was allocated to France, and, iirc, was used for target practice. The other Tegetthoff was awarded to Italy. Again, iirc, the main guns were reused as shore batteries, and the hull was sold for scrap.
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  691.  @PelhamExpress  The Second London treaty specified a reduction in gun size to 14", effectively outlawing the 15"/42 for new construction, though the treaty did have an escalator clause permitting a return to 16" by, iirc, April 37, if any party to the previous treaties refused to sign the new one. Japan had given notice in 34 that it was dropping out of the treaty system, but the RN didn't want to wait until the April drop dead date, laying down the KGV and PoW on New Year Day of 37, the first day after the moratorium on BB construction ended. What puzzles me about the Lions, is why the Admiralty insisted on trying to reinvent the 16" gun. The UK and US were allies. The US had developed 16"/45 and 16"/50 guns in the late 30s. Seems the obvious thing to do would be for the Admiralty to send a purchase order to the USN for the required number of guns, and move on to the next issue.
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  692. wrt reforming the USN in the 1910s. Building the standards with an eye to reengining them in the 30s for more speed would be futile, because the USN didn't update the Tennessees or Colorados during that period, when the update of the New Mexicos in 31 showed the way. A more plausible choice would be to forego the turbo-electric drive in the first place and use the space freed up by elimination of the motors and generators for larger turbines and boilers. Also, forget triple expansion engines and go straight to turbines, even if that means buying them from Parsons. Another thing would be to forget the casement mounted secondary armament. Put all the secondary armament on deck, so they can be easily replaced with modern AA during WWII. With a large increase in the budget prior to WWI, at least some of the Battle Cruisers would have been laid down, in their original 1916 design. If the USN were lucky, the hulls would have been launched in 17 to clear the building ways and further work delayed until after the war. Then, instead of converting a collier that would have had resale value, convert the incomplete BC hulls to carriers. With construction under way, in 21, they would have been exempt from the treaty as "experimental", so could be replaced whenever the USN saw fit.
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  693.  @ricardokowalski1579  after Dec 7th, the "thrusters" had a lot less to thrust with. My favorite scenario would be if the Japanese had left Pearl alone, and hit only the Philippines. Would the US go to war over an attack on the Philippines, executed after the US received Japan's ultimatum in DC? There would be a huge cry to save the troops stationed there, but not the fury unleashed by the attack on Pearl.
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  694. Yes, BK and Gues, they were intended as cruiser killers, just like the WWI Brit battle cruisers. They are bigger and more expensive than a CA, but, at some point, they are probably going to find themselves in a situation where they are up against real battleships, running is not an option, and they are going to get pounded, just like a CA, in spite of their extra cost to build and run. Scharnhorst did OK, until it ran into the Duke of York. Imagine what would have happened to the Lexingtons if they had been built as Battle Cruisers, and got stuck into the Solomons campaign.
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  695.  @dimitriouchemistry2215  two examples: the Greek battleships Lemnos and Kilkis were sunk by Stukas on April 23, 1941. The Wiki article says the Stuka was used in the anti-shipping role with "considerable success", without giving specifics.
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  696.  @beigethursday1352  Interestingly, I just looked at the Wiki article on Force Z and it rejects the narrative that Indomintable was supposed to join the force. fwiw, Wiki gives the air group of Indomintable in 42 as 22-Sea Hurricanes, 12-Martlets and 16-Albacores. A Sea Hurricane or Martlet could handle the twin engine bombers the IJN used. The location of the battle appears to be within the range of an A6M from the bases in Indochina, but would A6Ms have been available? A6M supply was still insufficient in December 41. Some carriers still had A5Ms. I figure the effectiveness of air cover for Z would depend more on the availability of A6Ms than anything else.
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  697. All the foreign automakers are losing big gobs of market share in China. Jeep has already withdrawn. Ford is looking at China more as an export hub, rather than competing in the domestic Chinese market. VAG started losing focus in the 90s. Ferdinand Piech went into "empire building" mode, adding armloads of halo products, Bugatti, Bentley, Ducati, and Lamborghini to the product portfolio. Marchionne said that Bugatti was the biggest waste of capital he had ever seen. He also added Skoda and Seat, offering the same products, in the same markets, as the VW brand, while adding extra overhead. I had hopes that the diesel scandal would force VAG to clean up it's product portfolio. The head of the union made the same observation. Why is VAG wasting so much money on redundant and vanity products? But no, VAG kept all the nonsense, and kept bleeding. So now, VAG declares a "crisis", and dumps on the staff in the plants. Right out of the McKinsey playbook. Not a word about VAG going all in on gimmicks, that don't work every well, while the basic reliability of their cars goes in the tank. And I say all this as a VW owner, a now 10 year old VW, from a time when VW executed much better on reliability and useability.
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  698. wrt you being "without portfolio", I have been laid off twice. once when the department was closed, again, six years later, when the company failed. I am sure your engineer's skill set will provide you with opportunities, as it did me.
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  699. wrt the Mers-el-Kebir full battle scenario: the Bretagnes were only armed with 13.4" guns. As well as being even slower than an R class, they would be hard pressed to penetrate to the vitals of a QE or R class, while the British 15/42s would have no problem cutting through their 10" belts. Given the RN's numerical superiority in light units, plus it's heavier guns, plus speed advantage, it sounds like a slaughter if the entire French squadron stood out to engage. Were I the French commander, out of respect for French human life, I think I would have the Bretanges stay in port and provide covering fire, while the Dunkerques and DDs run at high speed. Leaving Valiant and Resolution in their wake would even the odds, if the RN wanted to make a running fight of it, while the crews of the Bretagnes could swim to shore.
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  700. Thanks for the bit about the Iwo Jima loan offer. I had not heard that one before. My first choice would have been Lexington for reasons of size and speed, and probable lack of any really state of the art, thus classified, radar or comm equipment, so it could be handed over to a mercenary crew. On the other hand, the Lex was completely unarmed.
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  701.  @christopherrowe7460  the "cautious" strategy of taking measured steps, establishing intermediate bases along the way would take longer than six months. The Philippines were deep within the Japanese sphere of influence. Japan had occupied the Marianas, Carolines and Marshalls since 1914.
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  702.  @gregorywright4918  the lack of bases and drydocks was the vulnerability of the "thruster" plan exposed in 34. There was no way to repair damage suffered steaming past the mandates to reinforce the Philippines, and the force would need to steam past the mandates again to get to the facilities at Pearl. The King George dock in Singapore was not completed until the late 30s, and it was captured by the Japanese. Neither of the docks at Cockatoo Island could accommodate the largest battleships and carriers. It wasn't until the Cook dock was completed in 45 that Sydney could repair anything afloat. The buildup of the Philippine military should have started as soon as the islands became a commonwealth, with it's own civilian government, in 35. The Philippine military was woefully under-equipped. Apparently, they had M1917 Enfields. We made over 2M of those rifles, so there had to be large numbers of them available in US inventory. The army was extremely short of artillery. The US had provided a few WWI 75mm guns, but hundreds more of those guns were in inventory. The Philippine air force had 48 P-35s. The Air Corps was replacing 36s with 40s and B--18s with 17s and 25s, so 36s and 18s could have been provided. The Air Corps decided it didn't like dive bombers, so the A-17s were retired in 38, when only a couple years old. The A-17s could have been provided. The other shortfall was training. Instead of keeping the Philippine Scouts concentrated in US Army units, the Scouts could have been reformed into training cadres and used to train the Philippine troops. If bringing the Philippine forces up to scratch had begun in earnest as soon as the "thruster" plan was found to not be viable, then the only US personnel left in the islands would have been at Subic, a number small enough to be evacuated with the USN surface elements. At the end of the day, if relief didn't come in six months, Filipino soldiers could ditch their uniforms, blend in to the civilian population, and wage a guerilla war for years. Blending in to the civilian population was not an option for an American, so those men were doomed.
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  703.  @igooooorrrrr  the Wiki entry for Dreadnought says she cost 1,785,683 GB Pounds to build. That converts to about 8,598,849 US Dollars. When Dreadnought was sold for scrap in 1921, US newspapers reported the selling price as $176,000, so scrap price was about 2% of the build price. These days, it seems the USN nearly has to pay to get breakers to take old ships off it's hands. The USN sold Kitty Hawk to the breakers for 1 cent, vs a build cost of $264M in 1961, which equates to $2.5B now.
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  704.  @michaelmacleod7051  yes, the WNT specifically prohibited sale of condemned ships. If the UK had sold Erin to Chile, in place of Almirante Cochrane, which was in mid-morph to HMS Eagle, that would have happened in April 1920, coincident with the sale of HMS Canada to Chile, and prior to the treaty. It crossed my mind that Italy's battleship force after the treaty, which included four pre-dreadnoughts and the salvaged hulk of Da Vinci, listed as front line battleships, was insulting enough to justify Erin or one of the condemned Orions or KGVs to be offered at scrap price, to replace Da Vinci, but that didn't happen.
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  705. A two part question about the two surviving Littorio class battleships: first part: the Wiki entry notes both had been significantly damaged prior to the Italian surrender. Was that damage repaired at any point? Second part: we have all heard about how President Roosevelt promised Stalin a significant part of the Italian fleet, and the Soviets were a bit put out when they were handed worn out US and UK castoffs instead. After the surrender, the Littorios sat at Malta, then at Alexandria, then in the Great Bitter Lake, until after the end of the war, then they were handed to the US and UK, then scrapped. What was the problem with handing those two battleships to the Soviets in 44? It is only two ships, arguably obsolete by 1944. If there was concern about post-war hostilities with the Soviets, US and UK naval air and sub forces were so large that, if the Soviets went off the reservation with the battleships, the ship's life expectancy would be measured in days. I don't see the point in reneging on FDR's promise.
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  706. The Tennessees and Colorados were the only WWI vintage BBs to never see a major modernization prior to 1941. There was consideration, but the pushback by the early 30s was a combination of tight depression era budgets, and consideration that putting millions into these obsolete ships, vs building new, was a waste.
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  707.  @observationsfromthebunker9639  This is from the record of the US Senate, 1930: "Of the enormous total of $118,000,000, we have already spent or have been obligated to spend about $38,000,000, leaving $80,000,000 still to be appropriated if we are to modernize our battleship fleet, and then we do not obtain parity with Great Britain. According to the testimony, a new battleship would cost approximately $39,000,000. Hence we could match the Rodney and Nelson and make up our existing deficiency in battleship strength, which can not be done by modernization, by building two ships like the Rodney and Nelson with the money which it is proposed to spend for modernization." There you have it. Modernizing old BBs does not make them the equal of new-build. As we know, the Tennessees and Colorados never saw a rebuild, so were even farther off the pace compared to the Nagatos and modernized Kongos and Ises. Sure, a Tennessee or Colorado can hurt you, so you are better off sinking it into the mud of Pearl, but they are less of a threat than a KGV or North Carolina, because they are so obsolete. Of course, if I was in command in Japan, I would never have attacked Pearl in the first place. I would have taken the Philippines, preferably by infiltrating the Philippine government that was established in 1935, and rolled the dice that the US population would not support a war over the Philippines.
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  708.  @Foxttellio  the cage masts appear to be a lot taller than the designs that preceded them. The monitor Florida was fitted with one in May of 1908 for a live fire exercise. In that exercise, the mast withstood hits by 5-12" shells. Newspaper reports at the time said ""Forty shots would not bring it down, and no enemy would waste ammunition and time shooting at it" was the expert comment. It was predicted that all new ships will be equipped with battle masts of this design." On January 15, 1918, the forward mast on USS Michigan collapsed in a gale, killing 6. Whether it was the collapse on the Michigan, or other reasons, I don't know, but the Navy started installing tripod masts on ships modernized in the 1920s.
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  709.  @wyatthawthorne9541  the Japanese were busy rolling up the German colonies in the Pacific: Marianas, Carolines and Marshalls. After the war, Japan continued to hold those islands under a League of Nations mandate. The Russian and Ottoman navies were engaging in the Black Sea.
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  710.  @SeanPaulinho  I have seen a few, in drawings and models. The problem is there isn't much room for bow, or stern, chasers. I think it was the model I built of HMS Victory in the far distant pass, that had a couple huge carronades as bow chasers, so, if someone crossed Victory's T, at close range, they would be hurt, at least a bit.
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  711.  @fooman2108  you are talking about the Tennessees and Colorados? iirc there were plans for their modernization, after the New Mexicos, but the depression prevented the funding being available.
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  712.  @brendonbewersdorf986  The first thought that comes to my mind, would a Japanese designed ship have enough interior room for tall Germans? I'm barely 6', and there were places in the Lex where I did not have a huge surplus of headroom below the ducts, pipes, and conduits, hanging from the overhead. Are Japanese ships designed for smaller people? Second issue is the timeline. Even if Germany and Japan signed their treaty earlier than September 40, the Graf was laid down in December 36, while Zuikaku was laid down in May of 38. Would the Germans break up the Graf on the slipway, and start over? We would need to push the timeline for the alliance back to 34, when Japan gave notice it was dropping out of the treaty system, a year after the Nazis came to power, and are preparing a naval building program, and coincident with the rebuilds of Akagi and Kaga, so that IJN officials could provide advice to the Nazis, before the Graf was laid down. But, even in that fortuitous set of circumstances, Nazi leadership would be the same, so I suspect that even a Graf of sound design would end up exactly the same as the historical one.
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  713.  @MrPro897  my hunch is, as the attack was so hopelessly botched, TBFs would have been slaughtered the same way. There were TBFs that attacked the Japanese force from Midway. They were slaughtered. One of the six survived attacking the Japanese formation.
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  714. I don't think you can go by the number of guns being built, because it is routine to produce many more guns than needed to populate the turrets when the ship is built, so that replacement guns are readily available when the original guns need to be relined or are damaged in some manner. Total number of 15" guns mounted in ships: (40) in QEs, (40) in Rs, (12) in Renowns, (8) in Courageouses, (8) in Hood, (8) in monitors, for a total of 116. According to Wiki, 186 were built. Whether Agincourt was intended as a QE, or a proto-Hood, it probably would have used (4) turrets, implying that, from the cancelled Rs plus Agincourt, there should have been (16) Mk I turrets in inventory, but I can only account for (14): (6) on the Renowns, (4) on the Courageouses, (2) on Erebus class monitors and the final (2) landing on the Roberts class monitors in 1940. But that is inconclusive too, because there could have been more turrets in process that were never completed when the four battleships were canceled in 1914.
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  715.  @PaulfromChicago  true, but I'm thinking there were turrets early in the production process, or planned, but not in production, that were simply canceled. All the ships that came after, Renowns, Courageouses, Erebus and Marshal Ney monitors, were all using leftovers from the canceled ships. The changes in the Mk II turrets seem substantial enough for the Mk IIs to not be Mk Is that were modified during production.
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  716. Thanks for your thoughts on the twin DP 4". On a Facebook group, recently, I proposed doing a mass "austere" update on all of the QEs and Rs, replacing all the casemate 6", with twin 4"., rather than spending so many resources on the more expensive rebuilds if QE, and Valiant, leaving the other ships unable to mount a credible AA defense. I credit their lack of AA as the primary reason Repulse, and, later, all of the Revenges, were banished to the Indian Ocean.
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  717. I'm thinking with Franco friendly to Germany and Italy, but officially neutral, it probably would not have been diplomatic to offer the Japanese bases in the Philippines. Spain could cede the Philippines to Japan the way Spain ceded Florida to the US, but that probably would not be diplomatically acceptable either. Because of Spain's relationship to Japan's allies, a Japanese invasion of the Philippines would not have been greeted with cheers in Madrid or Berlin. As others have suggested, the best course for Japan would be to not attack, but buy the resources it needed from the Philippines, and conserve it's military power for other endeavors. Buying the material might even be cheaper than invading and occupying the islands.
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  718.  @WALTERBROADDUS  yes, I would expect a significant working up time. Before Richelieu joined the RN force in the Indian Ocean, she worked with the Home Fleet for five months after her refit in the US. My favorite scenario is where Richelieu and Jean Bart make for the UK, rather than North Africa when France falls. And both Dunkerques just happen to be in the Atlantic and make for the UK as well. Over the following months, the French ships are reequipped with UK AA armament and exercise with the Home Fleet. When Bismark tries to break out, the three French ships make for the Denmark Strait, because they are faster, while KGV and PoW make for the closer Faroe Islands channel. The obsolete battlecruisers serve as a backup in case Bismark breaks through the first line. Of course, for the French ships to serve willingly with the RN in 41 would require Reynaud to skip across the channel, set up a government in exile, and denounce collaborators like Petain and Darlan.
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  719.  @AdamosDad  you know that, and I know that, but what about all the non-Americans on this channel?
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  720.  @david_fisher  George Bernard Shaw is supposed to have said something along the lines of "the English and Americans are two peoples, separated by a common language". I like to wind of a Canadian acquaintance by objecting to his putting a "u" into words where it does not belong, like in "color" or "labor".
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  721.  @brendonbewersdorf986  it is possible to modernize destroyers. Greece bought the 4 Aetos destroyers from Cammell Laird in 1912. The ships were heavily modernized in the 1930s and looked like thoroughly modern, 1930s ships.
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  722.  @genericpersonx333  there are really several factors in a ship's life, including how rapidly it becomes obsolete, and the country's ability to pay for a replacement. Chile had Latorre, the former HMS Canada, in service until she was disabled by an engine room fire in 1951, but, her usefulness as a front line battleship would have ended at the end of the 30s, when ships like the KGVs, North Carolinas and Littorios started entering service. The only reason the USN still had ships like the New Yorks and Wyomings in service in 41 was the treaty imposed "battleship holiday" that prevented their replacement.
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  723.  @genericpersonx333  what you say is true, everything is relative. Latorre was fine, as long as it only faced the Rivadavias, one at a time. If Argentina had a sudden improvement in it's economy, and bought a couple Scharnhorsts from Germany, the calculus would be different.
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  724.  @Johnny_Tambourine  one I remember was the retaking of the SS Mayaguez by US Marines boarding from a USN destroyer along side, in Cambodia, May 15, 1975. More recently, boardings have been executed against pirates and drug smugglers. Within the last year, the news has run video of US frogmen boarding and pounding on the hatch of a drug smuggling "submarine", until the occupants surrendered.
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  725. Second question: some sources say the Dunkerque and Richelieu classes suffered excessive dispersion of shot due to the main guns being mounted in pairs, too close together, leading to the muzzle blast of the guns knocking the shell from the neighboring guns off course. Was this the case, and, if so, did the navy install a delay circuit so that two guns would fire first, then their close-mounted mates fire a split second later, after the muzzle blast from the first two guns had dispersed?
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  726.  @gildor8866  14" production was certainly on stride. By June of 16, the guns for Idaho had been delivered, the guns for New Mexico and Mississippi were being proof fired, and the turret mounts were being assembled at the Naval Gun Factory. By June of 17, all the 14" for Tennessee and California were expected to be completed by October. However, by June 1917, the turrets for the Tennessees were still in design. Then priorities changed and resources were funneled into freighters and DDs. As for the ships, there was not a lot of daylight between the two classes. Maryland was laid down a month before Tennessee, so, at the time Maryland was laid down, they must have anticipated having the 16" guns ready in time.
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  727.  @RedXlV  If it's any consolation, the 1919 edition of Jane's calls them "Maryland" class, and the preceding class the "California" class. If you look at what those two yards were building before the Colorados, New York Shipbuilding laid down Idaho on Jan 20, 1915, while Newport News laid down Mississippi on April 5, 1915, so New York Shipbuilding should have launched Idaho first, so the slipway would have been clear for Colorado before Newport News launched Mississippi on Jan 25, 1917. If New York shipbuilding had taken the same amount of time on Idaho as Newport News took on Mississippi, Idaho would have launched in October of 16, so, given the same lag Newport News had between the two ships, Colorado would have been laid down, in January 1917, 3 months ahead of Maryland, and all would be right with the world. The Navy probably did not allow for New York Shipbuilding taking so long on Idaho when the hull numbers for Maryland and Colorado were set.
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  728.  @kemarisite  Yes. There are a number of situations where technology sharing between the Axis members would have been beneficial. Germany could have had Ansaldo build 15"/50 from the Littorio for the Scharnhorsts, instead of limping along with the 11" guns. The Italians could have been building Ju-88s instead of SM-79s, and Panzer IIIs instead of M14s. Too late, the Germans licensed the Italians to build the DB-601 and 605 V-12s. and the Italians designed some fighters around it so good the Germans considered building the fighters under license, in place of the Bf-109.
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  729.  @kemarisite  I suspect what made the semi-fixed ammo for the 5"/38 workable was the power rammer. iirc, shell and charge are dumped in the loading tray and rammed together., vs loading shell and charge separately on the 5"/51. That is what gave the 5"/38 the rate of fire equal to a gun with fixed ammo. I did an exercise where the USN used the twin 4"/50 mount that was installed on a few DDs experimentally, in place of each 5"/51 on a BB. The results were interesting. Then I did an exercise where the 4" is cut down to 45 caliber, converted to a sliding breech, and installed on the twin, dual-purpose, British Mi XIX mount they used with their 4", in place of the 5"/51-5"/25 combination USN BBs had in the 30s. Even more fascinating results. I have read that Jackie Fisher was an advocate of more smaller, rapid fire, guns, for a secondary, rather than the 6" casemate mounts then common on RN capital ships. The ships Jackie had a personal hand in, the Renowns and Courageouses, both had 4" secondaries. My hypothetical USN 4" exercises indicate Jackie might have had a point.
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  730. The RM the biggest threat to the allies, at any point? Even given abundant fuel and leadership? The RM was bottled up in the Med. Can't get past Gibraltar without taking a lot of damage. If the Brits had to pull back out of Egypt, they would scuttle every ship they could find in the canal, making it impassable for years. The Med could be an Italian lake, but still a landlocked lake. The Allies can land on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, free of interference by the RM and push east, as they did, but why, if the Brits had already abandoned Egypt and the canal, and pulled back to the Persian Gulf? The problem was in Berlin. Skip the entire Med campaign and hit Normandy a year earlier?
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  731. wrt the question about books by IJN veterans, in the late 60s Ballantine published a large number of WWII books by vets. One I quite enjoyed was "Suicide Submarine" by Yutaka Yokota. As the title implies, Yokota trained to pilot a Kaiten.
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  732.  @ric8868  I have not seen that film, but your observation is correct. AA mounts tend to be open, so the crew can see the aircraft they need to shoot at. Aircraft attacks, especially torpedo planes, make the aircraft very vulnerable to AA fire. I read an account of RAF Beaufort torpedo bomber ops in the Med. The Beauforts suffered horrific losses, until they hit on the idea of bringing a couple Beaufighters along to strafe the ships, to suppress AA fire, while the Beauforts made their attack.
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  733.  @aaronbasham6554  they do look very formidable, when they are running. There is color footage of Midway on youtube, that include about three short glimpses of a 1.1" in action. In the first couple glimpses the gun in the foreground is barking away and looking very good. In the last glimpse of that mount, only the gun on the right end is still working. US PT boats had a lot of trouble with armored Japanese barges as even the 20mm had trouble penetrating the armor. Occurred to me that a 1.1", cut down to 2 barrels to reduce weight, would have been helpful on a PT, until it jammed.
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  734.  @arandonmusicvenue9431  my first thought is a 3.7" is pretty wimpy for shooting at ships. With the Bofors for mid-weight AA, it could be that guns 4" and larger were preferred at sea, for their dual purpose potential. I have read that the Admiralty was figuring out, buy the turn of the century, that the usual 3" bore 12 pounder was completely inadequate for defense against torpedo boats, and gun escalation continued through 4", 4.7" and larger. Then the larger guns were installed in high angle mounts so they could be used against both air and surface threats.
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  735.  @WALTERBROADDUS  when I visited the LST museum ship in Muskegon, MI a few years ago, I had them start up the old Army training film on how the ship operates. As you said, first, schedule the landing on a rising tide. So. between the landing craft being lighter, after discharging it's cargo, plus the rising tide, they can back off. The LST was much more elaborate. They had ballast tanks that would be pumped out before hitting the beach, then refilled to plant the ship firmly on the beach for unloading. They also kept the engines going forward, to keep the ship forced onto the beach. After unloading, they pumped out the ballast tanks, started reeling in the kedging anchor they dropped on the way in, reversed the engines, and, with the rising tide, pulled themselves off the beach.
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  736.  @M.M.83-U  After WWI, France looked at the Caracciolo's 28kt speed capability, and did a study of what would be required to make a Normandie competitive. The cost to lengthen and reengine a Normandie was exorbitant, so the idea was dropped. It crossed my mind that the French could have claimed as war reparations the three incomplete Mackensen class battlecruisers that had been launched, which were designed for 28kts, tow them back to France and complete them with French equipment and armament. So, to answer your question, the French regarded the Caracciolo as more capable than a Normandie as they explored improving a Normandie to make it competitive. Another factor in the Caracciolo's favor was main armament. The Caracciolos used a 15"/40. The French BB gun of the era was only a 13.4".
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  737.  @M.M.83-U  The Normandies, Caracciolos and Mackensens all had obsolete armor and TDS systems by 1919 standards. I have seen drawings of a Caracciolo that show the last modification, in 1919, with 110mm of armor added to the weather deck. Those same drawings show most of the boilers arranged in compartments along the sides of the hull, separated by an additional bulkhead from the centerline compartments that contained another half dozen boilers and the turbines for the inboard shafts, so the side boiler rooms act like a TDS. I have seen a photo of Caracciolo dated December 1915 that shows the weather deck being installed. The interesting thing about the photo is most of the decking is not yet in place and I can see that there are no compartment bulkheads below the weather deck and I can see the turtleback armor deck. I interpret that photo as showing a temporary deck being put on to protect the hull from the weather in preparation for work on the ship being suspended. Seems that, with the turtleback being exposed like that, the reasonable thing would have been to add more armor to the turtleback, before completing the first deck and the permanent weather deck. Alltogether, considering the way the boiler rooms were arranged to mimic a TDS, the opportunity to reenforce the turtleback offered by where construction was when suspended in early 16, speed, and the 15" guns, I would much rather go into WWII in Caracciolo than a Normandie or Mackensen.
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  738.  @M.M.83-U  Reportedly, the RM did consider a carrier conversion, but I have not seen any drawings of that. Are the drawings you have seen speculative, or something actually considered by the RM? Given the RM's priorities in the early 20s, any cost for Caracciolo would have been "excessive". If they had not spent so much building ever more Destroyers in the early 20s, Caracciolo would have been more affordable. The RM's battle ship force was pretty farcical in the 20s. To get to Italy's tonnage quota, the retention list in the Washington treaty included four pre-dreadnoughts and the Da Vinci, which was a wreck they were trying to salvage. The RM really only had 5 serviceable dreadnoughts at the time of the treaty, but the RM didn't seem to care, being more focused on torpedo boats.
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  739. wrt the 1.1"/Bofors 40mm/Vickers pompom question. iirc, one major issue with the Vickers was that it did not work right using USN propellant, and no-one in the US made cordite. Another gun tested in the USN shootoff that the Bofors won, was a 37mm gun the US Army was using. The 37mm had a significant range advantage over the Vickers, though range and shell size were slightly less than the Bofors offered. In the absence of the Bofors, I would expect the 37mm to receive the mods it historically did later: metallic link belt feed, in place of clips, and feed from either right or left. With belt feed from either right or left, I envision a quad mount quite like the quad Vickers mount, with the same rate of fire as the Vickers, but significantly longer range.
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  740. During VAG's last crisis, over diesel emissions, the company whined about the cost, and threatened factory headcount reductions. The head of the union, made a very good point: why not VAG get rid of redundant divisions and vanity projects instead? Skoda and SEAT compete in the same segment as VW, so they are paying for three sets of administrative overhead, when there could be only one. Then there is the money they pour into vanity projects like Bugatti and Lamborghini. Sergio Marchionne publicly said Bugatti is the biggest waste of capital he had ever seen. Did VAG clean house? Nope. VAG has followed the same playbook at Stellantis, and Ford, with the same result. They all cut quality, and raised price, to fatten up their operating margins. VW's global warranty claims expense is now only exceeded by Ford's. They could charge premium prices, after the plague, by working the "shortage" narrative. But now, they have 100 days supply, or more, of cars sitting in storage lots, so the "shortage" narrative no longer works and customers are rejecting the high prices. So what is VAG's response? Same thing that their first choice was in their last crisis: take money away from the employees.
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  741.  @stormy0307  I agree a mongrel fleet is not ideal from a supply standpoint, but if you order a Yarrow widget, you should receive a Yarrow widget, not an Ansaldo widget. The fact that the RM used several German and Austrian ships for a number of years, rather than scrapping them outright, as the UK, US, and France did, with their war reparations ships, tells me the supply problems paled at the prospect of a free ship. In the case of battleships, the RM would not have wanted UK castoffs anyway, due to the running costs. While the RM was happy to run Austrian and German cruisers and destroyers, they sent the Tegetthoff to the breakers as soon as they received her. I did some back-of-the-envelope figuring a while back. The RM had a significant destroyer building program in the 20s. I figured that, if they had foregone about half of those destroyers, they would have had enough money to complete Caracciolo, but the RM's priorities said destroyers, not battleships.
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  742.  @potbelliedslim7645  , just answered your original post. It's a rig of mirrors on brackets for gunnery practice. Have no idea how that rig was used though.
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  743.  @madrabbit9007  iirc, the two level turrets the USN used on the Kearsarge and Virginia classes was because the 12-13" guns took forever to reload. So the smaller guns on the upper level were supposed to keep up a hot fire wile the big guns were reloaded. Apparently, the Navy figured out that, if they worked on the ergonomics of the big gun turrets, and did some training, reload times dropped dramatically, eliminating the need for the superimposed smaller guns.
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  744.  @hughfisher9820  Yes indeed. When the Italians were working on the Caracciolo class battleships, the 15" guns were made in Italy, but were foreign designs, by Vickers, Armstrong and Schneider. When the USN started using nitrocellulose propellant around 1900, they didn't fully understand the dynamics of the powder and started blowing the muzzles off their guns. The entire production run of 12"/40 guns had to be brought back to the gun factory for new liners and to be hooped to the muzzle to make them safe to use. The Brits had a learning curve too. The early 12"/35s were taken off of the obsolete Majestic class battleships and mounted on the Lord Clive class monitors to provide fire support to ground troops. Copper choke was becoming an understood issue: where copper from the driving bands forms deposits in the bore which impede the shell's travel through the gun. The old 12"/35s had an extra trick "steel choke", where a ridge would form in the liner. The ridge would grow to the point where the shell would hit it with enough of a jolt to trip the fuse and detonate the shell. In one case, a monitor fired, a shell detonated at the muzzle and a nearby French destroyer was showed with shell fragments.
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  745.  @colemasse7177  HMS Furious before her first refit: flightdeck forward and single 18" turret aft.
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  746. Weren't we kicking around the Italy joins Central Powers idea a week or two ago? One of the respondents on that thread talked about Italy invading southern France, and there was discussion of Italy's territorial ambitions wrt some of the area held by Austria motivating Italy to side with the UK and France. So, the question is what is in it for Italy? Italy had territorial ambitions in Africa, had gone to war with Turkey in 1911-12 to seize Libya. Rather than Italy invading southern France, what if Italy saw entering the war on the side of the Central Powers as an opportunity to push out of Libya toward either Suez or Algeria. Taking Suez might not go down well with Turkey, so more likely Italy pushes west through Algeria and Morocco, while the Turks push west to Suez. That would create a lot of naval conflict in the Med as France, UK and Italy duke it out to keep their North African operations supplied. An eventual Allied victory would see Italy stripped of Libya, which eliminates the North African campaign in WWII.
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  747. In fairness, comparing Joe reading a speech off a teleprompter, four years ago, to Joe, thinking on his feet now, is not right. He can still sound good, when he is reading a script, just like Reagan did.
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  748.  @johnfisher9692  those four ships cancelled in 1914 are a fascinating pivot point: what if Fisher had been a better salesman and all three cancelled Rs were reordered as Renown class battlecruisers? Would Hood have been built? What if Fisher is less of a salesman and none of the cancelled Rs were reordered as Renowns. Would the Admiralty have built three, or all four, Admiral class battlecruisers? Without the left over guns and turrets from the cancelled ships, would the Courageouses have been built? And if not, what would the UK carrier force look like in the 30s? Or, what if the Admiralty did the same as the USN, postpone the four ships until after the war, then build them to their obsolete designs, the way the USN did with three of the Colorados?
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  749.  @ph89787  with a properly coordinated attack, combined with the historical factors of some US personnel, like Waldron, being right about where the Japanese force was, and command being willing to listen to them, the IJN would have been slaughtered. A lot of TBD drivers would have survived the day, there would have been no "flight to nowhere" and no other SBD force's success hinging on the chance sighting of a Japanese DD. With all three US carriers steaming together, rather than Yorktown exposed and naked by itself, the combined CAP would have been better able to swat the Japanese counterstrike, and Yorktown may have survived.
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  750.  @dancingwiththedarkness3352  the way museums are closing in the US right now, there might not be much for him to look at, even if he could get here.
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  751. wrt the question about USN alternatives to the Oerlikon and Bofors guns: the US Army had two 37mm guns, the lightweight, low velocity, M4, which was used in aircraft, such as the P-39 that Drac mentions, and the high velocity M1, which was used as a ground based AA gun. Comparing the M1 to the Bofors, the Bofors fired a heavier shell with greater range and ceiling, which would make the Bofors the winner in a head to head competition. The Bofors clips being gravity fed also simplified loading as the clips needed to be pushed into the M1 by the man loading the gun so that the feed pawls would grab it. The M1 also had an awkward cooling system, using a water chest. M1 firing had to be stopped every 60 rounds while water was flushed through the gun to cool it. The M1 was later developed into the M9, where the rigid clips were replaced by a disintegrating metal link belt, like the Vickers used, and redesigned for both left and right side feed versions. If the Bofors had not existed, the M9 would probably have been developed sooner, a more effective cooling system developed, and the gun could probably be adopted to any style mount that was developed for the Vickers, as they were both side fed, metal link belt, guns.
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  752.  @Zonkotron  I think the velocity vs size debate was cited wrt the guns on the Nelsons. The formula E=M(Vsquared) argues that a higher velocity shell will deliver more energy. A Nelson gun fired at about 150fps higher muzzle velocity than a 15"/42. Penetration at 20,000 yards was 12.2" for a 16" vs 11.7" for a 15". Barrel life for the 16" was 200-250 rounds, vs 335 for the 15", so not a lot of penetration gained for the 30% reduction in barrel life, considering the 16" shell was also slightly heavier. The difference was even more stark between the USN 14/50 and 16"/45, The 14" Mk 4 (New Mexico and Tennessee class) fired a 1400lb shell at 2800fps and could penetrate 6.7" at 20,000 yards, with a barrel life of 250 rounds. The 16"/45 Mk 1 on the Colorado class fired a 2110lb shell at 2600fps, and could penetrate 11.5" @ 20,000 yards, with a barrel life of 350 rounds. It is hard to imagine, now, how a debate between the 14" and 16" could rage in the USN at the time, but it did.
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  753.  chris younts  As far as I know, everything built with a T-E drive carried it through their service life. When Saratoga was torpedoed the second time, the flooding shorted the control system for the T-E drive, leaving her dead in the water. I don't think it would even be possible to convert from T-E to geared turbine because of the way the T-E allowed greater compartmentalization. The conversion would require a lot of bulkhead removal and realignment of turbines and shafts. The USN had not given up on T-E drive after the 20s either. The Buckley class DEs, laid down 42-43, had T-E drive.
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  754. This question received several likes, but no answer, when posted a while back, so, with a shipbuilding video, lets try it again: At what point were a battleship's turbines and boilers typically installed? "The Battleship Builders" says the powerplant was installed during fitting out, so that the hull would be lighter at launching. But, the Wiki entry on the North Carolina class shows boilers being installed in NC, on 16 January of 39, while the ship was launched in June of 40. I have seen an aerial photo of Washington being launched, which shows midships decked over, implying the powerplant has already been installed. Which was the usual sequence of powerplant installation on a BB, before or after launch? Thanks!
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  755. The naval treaties have been brought up in comments a couple times recently, and that got the wheels turning wrt the Deutschlands. Some articles mention that, as the allies were trying to figure out a way to prevent their construction, Germany offered to break up Deutschland on the ways, if the allies agreed to replace the naval limitations of the Versailles treaty with the existing naval treaties between the five powers, with a capital ship quota of 125,000 tons, vs 175,000 for France and Italy. Ultimately, France opposed the proposal and it was dropped. What if Germany had come under the 5 power treaties? The Deutschlands would immediately be outlawed as cruisers as their 11" guns exceeded the treaty limit. However, Germany then could go directly to the Scharnhorsts, which were comfortably under the naval treaty's 35,000 ton limit for battleships. Drach's video on Scharnhorst says that Germany had lost the ability to build really large guns, so, instead of the desired 15". the Scharns received the 11" developed for the Deutschlands. But if the Deutschlands are not built, then that 11" gun is not developed either. By the time the Deutschland would have been laid down, the treaty change agreed, Deutschland broken up on the ways, and the Scharnhorsts designed, Hitler was in power. By 34, Hitler could ring up his buddy in Rome and say "hey Benny, could Ansaldo run off some extras of the 15"/50 it's making for your Littorios? I have an idea." So, which would work out better for the allies? With the treaty switch, the Deutschlands, which churned up their share of mischief early in the war don't exist, but the Scharnhorsts are more potent.
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  756.  @jetdriver  Yes, you are correct wrt Tennessee and Maryland. All of the big 5 were promptly laid up at the end of the war, along with the North Carolinas and South Dakotas, where they languished for a dozen years before going to the breakers. All the QEs, Rs and Nelsons went straight to the breakers in the late 40s. I think the US hanging on to the big 5 was the aberration, not the Brits sending 30 year old ships straight to the breakers. Besides the 4 surviving KGVs, the Brits also had Vanguard. Reading about the construction of the Lions and Vanguard, I get the impression that the UK was having chronic shortages of workers and material during the war, far worse than the US ever had as work on the ships started, and stopped, several times. A severe shortage of workers and material in the UK could also contribute to skimping on refits for old ships that weren't long for the world anyway, while the US was relatively flush with resources, so could do work the Brits couldn't manage.
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  757.  @Paladin327  I think you are referring to the ventilators. They provided fresh air into the ship. They disappeared on newer ships as electric blowers could move more air faster, without taking up as much deck space. Here is a photo of what I'm talking about. https://www.harpgallery.com/shop/item23570.html
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  758.  @coltaxe100  There would actually be two different "if you coulds', one with the naval treaties and one without. Without treaties and an unlimited checkbook, the sky is the limit, especially if you include contracting with yards in Canada and the US. With the treaties, then you get out the calculator and a copy of Jane's to see what decisions to make differently. wrt Carriers, the Washington treaty specified that all carriers in service or building at the time of the treaty were deemed "experimental" and not subject to the 20 year replacement schedule, so they could be replaced at any time. Argus, Eagle and Hermes all fit that criteria. Eagle was not efficient as a carrier, but had a bit of size and a bit of speed, not fast, but fast enough to cruise with QEs, so it might be worthwhile to retain. Argus had no speed, and Hermes had no size. so remission both as seaplane tenders to free up the tonnage to build a second Ark Royal. Depending on the assessment of the situation, Renown and Repulse had size and speed, and could have been converted to carriers, after the treaty collapsed, faster than new carriers could have been built from the keel up. As for BBs, instead of building the Nelsons, the RN could have taken deferred construction windows, like France and Italy did, so they could have built two, modern, fast, BBs in the early 30s, rather than the eccentric and slow Nelsons. Outside of that, the RN really couldn't do anything more within the framework of the treaties. The 1930 London treaty extended the BB building moratorium through 1936. KGV and Prince of Wales were laid down New Year's day of 1937. The other three KGVs had all been laid down by July of 37. Really, when it comes to BBs, the Brits did about as well as they could, within the limits of the treaty, without having 20/20 foresight.
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  759.  @greg_mca  the first thing is carrier aircraft tend to be built stronger to withstand the rigors of carrier ops. The first day out when I was on the Lexington, I was taking a shortcut through the hanger when, with no warning, I heard *WHAM*. I was wondering what part of that old ship had broken, when a guy walking with me said "plane landed". I also, by luck, got a photo of an A7, that had just trapped. The deceleration was so strong the pilot can be seen in the photo thrown several inches away from his seatback, in spite of the harness he was wearing. I used to know at what deceleration rate a person's eyeballs will pop out of their sockets. Obviously, the deceleration on a carrier landing is safely below that limit, but not hugely below it. Consequently, a land based plane, like a Hurricane or Spitfire, will usually require structural strengthening, in addition to the expected arresting hook and life raft. The strengthening will usually degrade performance due to the extra weight. The aircraft will be changed to suit the ships, not the other way around. The Brits were hurting for single seat fighters in 40. They bought the Grumman F4F, know in British service as the Martlet. The Martlet I, like all early Wildcats, did not have folding wings, so the Brits tended to leave them ashore. The Martlet II introduced Grumman's folding wing feature to the Royal Navy, so more of the planes could be accommodated on board. When Drac does his video on the Graf Zepplin, he may get into how the 109s and Stukas were modified for carrier service. If you get a chance, see "Ships With Wings", a British 1941 production. It gives some good looks at Swordfish and Skuas coming up the elevator with their wings folded. A lot of that footage was shot on the Ark Royal, less than a year before it was sunk.
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  760. Didn't Drac do a piece about fire control a while back? I think the title was "plotting your destruction" or some such thing.
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  761. wrt making Wasp more survivable. I don't think trying to use the same torpedo and AA protection tonnage allowance as the Lexingtons would be viable, because, iirc, the tonnage added for those systems was counted in the displacement of the ship, and that additional tonnage was not available when Wasp was built. The best thing that could have been done with Wasp was to route all the gasoline mains outside of the hull. A lesson learned from the loss of Lexington was, when an inbound attack is detected, drain the gas mains and fill the mains and pump rooms with CO2. When Yorktown and Hornet were lost, they did not burn. That was not possible with Wasp, as she was actively operating aircraft at the time, and hit without enough warning. A running modification that was being made on carriers, as they came in for refit, was to reroute the gas mains outside the hull. Wasp was in Norfolk for some work at the beginning of June, before deploying to the Pacific. The material I have access to this morning does not say if the gas main modification was done on Wasp. Late war photos of Enterprise show what I believe to be that external gas main, running horizontally down the starboard side, just below the hangar. There are a couple photos of Wasp, taken in Norfolk. in June 42, that do not show a similar pipe system.
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  762.  @emperordave3006  seems the RN's low opinion of the USN dated from the revolution, such as using phrases like "fir built frigates". Understandable, given the RN's centuries of experience, vs the USN's entire history spanning less that the lifespan of one man.
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  763.  @thehuscarl4835  My grandfather was a welder in the Bremerton Navy Yard during WWI, as you said, oxyacetylene welding. He told of one day when he was way up in the forepeak welding, when he realized he started feeling woozy. Correctly thinking the torch had burned up all the oxygen in the space, he turned off the acetylene and let the oxygen run until he felt better. I don't know what he was welding up there, but there certainly was some welding used on ships at that time.
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  764.  @bryant7201  wrt the "how do they meet" question. My nightmare scenario is the Japanese hit the Philippines and start closing the noose on the US garrison. Public pressure to "save our boys" with a naval relief effort would have been gigantic. Of course, any movement in force would pass through island groups that Japan had held since the end of WWI, affording plenty of opportunity to chip away at the US force before it is within striking range of the Philippines. A piece Drac did on US strategy from 39 on left me with the impression the strategic thinkers were writing off the Philippine garrison, but. with an intact fleet, in this scenario, would the American people accept the garrison being written off?
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  765. The net seems to have eaten my comment, so here is a second try: I have read that the Dunkerques were designed as a response to the Deutschland, with a little more gun and a little more armor, rather than building up to the limit France was allowed under the treaty, while Italy's quota under the same treaty was unused. Then the French had to run back to the drawing board when the Littorios were laid down, because the Littorios were treaty-max ships, and the Richelieus were created. Would have been interesting if the Dunkerquies were built as treaty-max, essentially being the first two Richelieus, with the Littorios being answered with the Gascogne design. Then France and Italy would both enter the war with 4 treaty-max ships built or building.
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  766.  @angelomaset1441  my first guess would be the KM would look a lot like the Italian RM, except with smaller quotas under the naval treaties: a couple of WWI BBs, probably the two Bayerns that were completed, cruisers, DDs, probably no Deutschland class, as the 11" guns exceeded the treaty limits for cruisers, but with the Scharnhorsts built a few years sooner, but with 15" guns developed from the Krupp 38 cm SK L/45 used on the Bayerns. The 11" would not have been available, as the Deutschlands not being built means the 11" is never developed. Then you get into speculation: would the Germans have radically updated the Bayerns the way the Italians updated their old BBs, or just press ahead with the Bismarks as soon as the naval treaties collapsed.
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  767.  @jamesmasonaltair  a friend of mine is retired Canadian military. He spent the 70s and 80s hunting subs as AESOP, one or two tours in Argus patrol bombers and four tours in Seakings embarked on a variety of Canadian ships. He holds that the best surface ship for ASW is the one that gets out of the way and lets the helos handle it. He has offered that, given two helos, a sub is pretty much dead meat.
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  768.  @jamesmasonaltair  Have you seen the Japanese DDHes that entered service in the last few years? 15-20,000 ton, 30kt helo carriers, loaded with ASW helos.
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  769.  @bkjeong4302  I remember my grandfather talking about how the Japanese used a little latch, rather than the large, and heavy, mechanisms the USN used. I'm thinking weight was the factor, with the IJN choosing to maintain aircraft performance, at the expense of not carrying quite as many aircraft. wrt, the folding wings on dive bombers, the multi-G stress was a consideration. That being said, while the SBD did not have folding wings, the SB2U and SB2C did have folding wings. I found a pic on-line of three SB2Us in the hangar of Bearn, with their wings folded. The Skua and navalized Stuka also had folding wings.
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  770. How about this one: instead of trying to do a piecemeal update on Tiger, which, iirc, had never been converted to oil fuel, nor had torpedo bulges installed, so add that to the work order. let's take a Sawzall to the Revenges, about midships, and add an 80 foot, or so, plug in the hull to house more propulsion machinery, and improve the length to beam ratio. An 80 foot plug amidships would give almost exactly the same length to beam ratio of the Lion class battlecruisers, that could make 27.5kts. without the modern propulsion machinery the Revenges would be retrofitted with.
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  771. First point: I expect that Trump is itching to push racist buttons. Whether Harris is at the top of the ticket, or still VP, in line if Biden dies or is disabled in office, Trump is going to float the dog whistle "you want another of those people as President?" Options: Gavin Newsom? His ex-wife is snuggling with one of Trump's spawn. She will say the most horrible, personal, things about Newsom. Won't matter if any of it is true, or not. Newsom would have no way of pushing back. Few other Dems have had national exposure. Jamie Raskin? Cancer survivor. What are the chances of a relapse? Adam Schiff? Maybe. Got plenty of exposure in the two impeachments. Who has instant, national, name recognition? Who has a lot of influence in the party? Get ready for "everybody sucks 2.0" as Hillary walks in to, in her mind, "save the world". The hardest voting decision I ever had to make, was in 2016. Which corrupt, megalomaniac to vote for?
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  772. That was quite an accomplishment. They pressurized the hull while inverted, so a crew could work inside to remove the fuel and ammunition, while the guns and superstructure were removed to lighten the hull. Then a channel was dredged to the drydock, because the ship drew more water inverted. The hull was repaired, then a channel out into the harbor, and a deep basin were dredged. The inverted hull was towed into the basin and ballasted to rotate it upright. There is film of the ship being righted on youtube.
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  773.  @brendonbewersdorf986  as they say, everything is relative. HMS Rawalpindi and HMS Jervis Bay could manage about 15kts and carried seven or eight 6" guns. A Connecticut class pre-dreadnough could touch 18kts, and carried 4-12" and 8-8" in twin turrets, as well as some casemate mounted 7" that might be useable in a flat calm. I would not bet a lot on the Connecticut against both Scharnhorsts. Connecticut's 12"/45s, even with unmodified mounts that are restricted to 15 degrees, can reach out 20,000 yards. Her 8" mounts could elevate to 20 degrees, good for 22,000 yards. At ranges greater than that, Scheer could not penetrate Connecticut's 11" main belt, but at any range they can reach, Connecticut's 12" and 8" can punch through Scheer's 3.1" belt. Against the Scheer, with the Connecticut positioned so the Scheer would have to go through it to get at the convoy, I rather like Connecticut's chances, if given modern fire control.
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  774.  @arivael  the Courageouses were called "large light cruisers". I would run with that, use them as light cruisers, that happen to have very large guns. A triple 8" turret weights less than half what the twin 15" turret's weight, but I don't know if a quad would fit on the existing barbette. Would the greater rate of fire, vs throwing smaller shells, be worth the effort? Thinking of them as cruisers, I don't see a need for significant additional armor, as they are about as well protected as treaty era cruisers. Replace the six triple 4" mounts with six, or more, twin DP 5.25" and some medium AA, and they would not seem absurd to me.
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  775. 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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  776.  @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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  777. Looking through some newspapers and Bureau of Construction and Repair reports from the 20s, I have noticed the degree of cost overrun on the Lexington class carriers. Admiral Moffett was claiming, in 1922. the conversions could be done for $12M each. The Wiki article on them says the conversions were budgeted for $23M. In Feb, 1925, newspapers reported the budget was increased to $34M each. In March of 1927, the budget was increased to $40M each. Newspapers reported their cost after completion at $45M each, though that may include the $6.7M of sunk costs prior to conversion. What was the cause of the cost overruns? I envision a pile of change orders the size of a house as experience was gained with Langley.
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  778.  @johnfisher9692  I understand where you are coming from, but the hazard is in sacrificing good enough for better, to the point that nothing ever gets built. At some point, a design needs to be frozen, so it can be built, while the designers keep working to improve on that design for the next generation. The other hazard is, of course, that a design element could be entirely wrongheaded, and the subsequent design heading even farther off in the wrong direction, before the flaw in the logic is discovered. An example of the first case is the first generation carriers. Eagle and Hermes were six year builds. The Lexingtons were seven year builds, and C&R was complaining, in it's annual reports, about how disappointed they were in the slow progress. Akagi and Kaga were also slow builds. In the case of the Lexingtons, I am thinking the delays, and the huge cost overruns, were the result of a massive number of change orders as new ideas were birthed, or experience was gained with Langley. In comparison, Ranger was built in only 3 years, with only a $2M, about 10%, cost overrun. Ranger had one major change order while construction was underway: the addition of an island, which probably accounts for a good share of that $2M overrun. I have no doubt that the original $23M conversion cost for the Lexingtons was intended to be accurate. The estimate given in 1922 for a clean sheet dedicated carrier was $27M. Extrapolating Ranger's cost to 20,000 tons gives a cost of $28M. Lexington's cost ballooning from $23M to $40M was probably unforeseen and the result of starting the ships when the USN was still too far down the learning curve. A few days ago, I asked my local public library to transfer in a copy of Friedman on carriers to see if he can provide conformation of my suspicions that the Lexington's cost overrun, was due to change orders.
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  779.  @brianwillson3565  Yes, several USN and IJN carriers had enough overhead clearance to store spare aircraft suspended from the overhead. The number of spares that could be carried that way varied between the different classes of carriers. At some point, I saw a listing for carriers that broke out the number of spares, vs number that were ready for service, but, right now, I don't recall where. Some British carriers had very low overhead clearance. F4U Corsairs had to have some 6" clipped from their wingtips so they would fit in some British carrier hangars with their wings folded, because, as with most USN aircraft, except Grumman's, the Corsair's wings folded upward. All RN aircraft wings folded back, parallel to the fuselage, so they could fit in the hangars with low clearance.
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  780. With regard to the 13.5 superseding the 12"/50, there was a very loud and public debate in the USN regarding the 16" superseding the 14"/50, with Admiral Strauss of BuOrd leading the "more smaller guns equals more hits" school. Was there a similar debate in the RN during the move to 13.5", then 15"? In a related question, the "more smaller guns equals more hits" school seems to have returned in the design of the KGVs, as no other explanation for the retrenchment to 14" makes sense, and that school of thought driving the decision is implied in the Garzke/Dulin book on allied battleships. Was that gun size retrenchment driven by Lord Chatfield, who was First Sea Lord during the design of the KGVs. or, if not him, who?
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  781. wrt the question about Force H, in late 41, Somerville's flagship was Malaya. Reportedly he was displeased at having such and old, slow, ship. I worked out a scenario where Prince of Wales put in at Gibraltar to become flagship, while Malaya steamed around Africa, and, with Revenge, relieved QE and Valiant in Alexandria. QE and Valiant then steaming for Singapore as Force Z, but those old QEs were too slow to make the timing work out.
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  782. Excellent video. Maybe there should be a series of BuOrd misfires covering the Mk 13 and 1.1". Seems that the 5/38 was the only decent product to come out of BuOrd in the 30s, maybe because it was developed from the 5/51 and 5/25, or maybe because it's simpler thus harder to mess up. The response of BuOrd to reports of it's products failing reminds me of the management of a couple companies I used to work for. One, a major electronics retailer, never adopted to the changing market environment. Anyone who tried to tell the CEO the market had changed was shouted down with "I've been in this business 40 years and I know everything". While the company changed CEOs several times over the next 20 years, they made sure to only hire CEOs that had the same attitude. The company went bankrupt in 2015.
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  783.  @DrSid42  Skoda made a lot of guns. The Italians reverse engineered a 100mm Skoda that was mounted on some Austrian DDs they received as war reparations and developed it into a rather nice AA gun. I have seen it reported that one of the reasons Germany wanted to carve up Czechoslovakia was to get it's hands on Skoda, which then, as now, is in Plzeň aka Pilsen, as in beer, in Bohemia, in western Czechoslovakia, which was one of the first places the Germans latched onto.
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  784.  @Lubyak  it may be a matter of how much a gun does or doesn't irritate it's crews. The US 1.1 jammed, a lot, in several different ways. There is color combat footage of Midway, shot by the USN, that has several short looks at a couple 1.1" mounts on one of the ships. In the first couple looks, the mount in the foreground is banging away just fine and looking very potent. In the third glimpse, only the right end gun is firing. As the loading machine of the 1.1" held two clips and switched between clips automatically when one clip was empty, the three guns that are stopped are probably not stopped for a reload, but because the things jammed, again. That is probably a total, of all the glimpses, of 10 seconds of looking at that mount, and the camera caught 3 of 4 guns jammed. Any machine will engender a degree of loyalty, if it simply works as intended. Doesn't matter if the 96 has to stop to reload every few seconds. Doesn't matter if the 96 throws a light shell. Doesn't matter if the 96 has a short range. Doesn't matter if the 96 vibrates. If the thing shoots when you pull the trigger, it will be appreciated.
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  785. wrt to the question of KGV joining PoW and Hood, KGV and Repulse were patrolling together to the south of Iceland. The intention appears to have been to place one strong ship (KGV or PoW) with one weak ship (Hood or Repulse) on each possible route. If they sent KGV and PoW together to Denmark Strait, leaving Hood and Repulse together south of Iceland, and Bismark took the southern route, it could have been an even worse day for the RN. Tovey had hopes of engaging Bismark on the 25th, and ordered Repulse to stay some 5000 yards behind KGV until KGV had engaged Bismark, to avoid Repulse performing a repeat of Hood's destruction.
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  786. Re warships being designed as merchant ships, a couple cases come to mind. In the 30s, Italy built 4 banana boats that were designed from the outset for easy conversion to merchant cruisers. Guns and military equipment for them were pre-positioned in Naples and Massawa. When the war started, three of the ships were stranded in the Red Sea. One was converted to a hospital ship, while Ramb1 and Ramb2 were armed as planned. The IJN designed ships to be easily converted to carriers to game the tonnage limits of the naval treaties. The Chitose class seaplane tenders and Zuihō class sub tenders were designed for this transformation, as well as the passenger liners that were converted to Hiyō class carriers.
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  787.  @Dave_Sisson  "Escape of the Red Sea Flotilla: RAMB I, RAMB II and Eritrea" by The History Guy.posted 10 days ago. I found that by investigating Italian ops in the Red Sea as half a dozen Italian DDs became stranded there when the war started. The thought crossed my mind that, as the Italians were losing Ethiopia, the ships were doomed. What if the Italians steamed them all up the Gulf of Suez, stuffed them all into the Canal and scuttled them? Then the Brits would need to move supplies overland from Suez City, rather than using the vastly more extensive port and transportation facilities in Alexandria, or run the gauntlet between Tunisia and Sicily.
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  788.  @BenMyhillJones  reload times varied considerably, depending on gun size, and when they were designed. Navweaps gives rounds per minute data for most naval guns. As you reason, the level of training of the crew plays a major role. The USN made two ventures into superimposed turrets, reasoning that the smaller guns in the upper level could fire more rapidly, thus keep up a hot fire while the larger guns in the lower level were reloaded. The Navy discovered if they worked on the ergonomics of the big gun mounts, and trained the crews a bit, reload times could be reduced dramatically, rendering the superimposed guns redundant.
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  789.  @brendonbewersdorf986  the Browning designed M1 was tested by the Navy, in the late 30s, but was bested by the Bofors, which participated in the same trials. In a world without Bofors, or if the Nazis had paid heavily to obtain an exclusive license from Bofors, then I can certainly see the M1 performing fairly well in it's place. But, seeing how the big dogs at BuOrd behaved in the late 30s, seems like the M1 may have been rejected because "not invented here". In one flight of fancy, I conceived of belt fed M1s in a quad mount patterned after that used with the Vickers Pompom, and single, flex mounted M4s, with a quick change magazine, used in place of the Oerlikon.
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  790.  @brendonbewersdorf986  the M1 was an Army AA gun that was mounted on a towed trailer, or half track. The M4 was used in the P-39, and PT boats. The M4 was smaller, lighter, with a lower muzzle velocity. M1: length 104", weight 365lbs, muzzle velocity 2600fps. M4: length 89.5" weight 213lbs, muzzle velocity 2000fps. For comparison: Bofors muzzle velocity 2890fps, Vickers pompom low velocity: 1920fps, HV 2400fps.
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  791.  @brendonbewersdorf986  The M1 used a rigid 10 round clip that fed from the left. The M4 used a fixed, 30 round, endless belt magazine. The M9 and M10 were updates of the M1 and M4 that used metal link belts and could be built to feed from either the left or the right.
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  792.  @joelmontgomery4837  Of the three battlecruisers, Renown was the only one with a modern AA suite. Probably would have ended up the way Z historically did. As an exercise, I put together some timelines and found an alternate Force Z that would have been more capable against aircraft, and salve Somerville's bruised pride. Due to the shortage of battleships, Somerville was stuck with Malaya as his flagship, which he didn't like. So, instead of continuing around Africa, on it's way to the far east, PoW pulls in to Gibraltar to be Somerville's flagship. Historically, shortly after that time Force H and the force from Alexandria were both engaged in diversionary actions to distract from a British land offensive in Africa. Use those diversionary actions to cover the transfer of Malaya to Alexandria. At the same time, Revenge delivered a convoy to Aden, so then have Revenge steam up the canal to Alexandria. With Malaya and Revenge in place, QE and Valiant, both with modern AA, become Force Z and make for Singapore. Hermes finishes it's refit at Simonstown and makes for Singapore. A workshop in Singapore fabricates arresting hooks that are fitted to some of the RAF Buffalos based there. When QE, Valiant and Hermes meet up in Singapore, all but one or two of Hermes' Swordfishes are put ashore and as many Buffalos as possible put on board to provide a CAP. Some sources say there was consideration of Hermes joining PoW in South Africa, but not pursued as Hermes could not keep up with PoW, but the dozen or so Stringbags she normally carried would not have been useful as the battle occurred.
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  793.  @gregorywright4918  the RAF in Malaya had Buff B-339Es, with several items of UK equipment and a different Mod Cyclone engine, from the 339 C and D the Dutch flew. The question of structural strength is one I don't have an answer to. Depends on how Brewster designed them: with additional parts, beside the hook, that were deleted from the 339 variants, or making the existing structural parts stronger. If Brewster had two sets of structural parts, it's a sure bet the factory would have mixed them up and some USN pilots would see their tails break off on an arrested landing. I would expect the planes to be structurally identical, except for the hook not being bolted in, because that would be simplest for Brewster. Of course, the easy thing would have been to send a wire to Brewster at that time to confirm, but getting anything out of Brewster, parts or information, in a timely manner was difficult. Even if the RAF did get an answer, if it came from Brewster's export agents, a pair of brothers by the name of Miranda. I wouldn't trust it. Before being hired by Brewster, the Mirandas had done time in Federal prison for violating a US arms embargo. After the USN took over the Brewster factory in PA, the government sued the Mirandas and Brewster principle Jimmy Work for $3.2M for fraud. I wonder if the Aussies knew up front that the shiny new Buffs they bought were going to have engines that had been discarded by US airlines and "refrubished" by Wright, instead of new engines?
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  794. That is how Italy came to have Libya as a colony. Taken by force of arms from the Ottoman. Of course, the irony is, Italy could have gotten Libya for free after WWI, while the UK and France were carving up the rest of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans had ordered a new protected cruiser from Ansaldo, the Drama. Drama was to be a sister to two cruisers of similar design already in Ottoman service. When the old Ottoman sultan was overthrown, the new regime refused to pay for it. It sat on the slipway at Ansaldo for a time, until the war started and the Italian government sized it. The ship was completed for the RM, and named "Libia". In 1921, the RM sent Libia on a world cruise. When the ship visited San Francisco, a documentary film of the visit was made by a very young Frank Capra. I found that film on youtube a while back.
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  795. Watching the several documentaries on investigation of Titanic's wreck, I saw several sections of hull plating being recovered. In some, the plates had empty rivet holes, indicating the rivets failed first. In others, the plates had long tears in them, indicating the rivets held and the plates failed. As an irresistible force will eventually break something, seems that the strength of the plates and strength of the rivets were pretty close, neither being a particular weak point.
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  796.  @grantlee5737  three differences between the Deering and Constitution, that I see. The Deering is a schooner, vs square rigged, was built in 1919, rather than more than a century earlier, and does not have guns or boarding parties to man. Being a schooner, sails are raised and lowered by pulling on halyards, rather than climbing out on a yardarm. Being built in 1919. most of the pulling on the halyards was probably done by an engine driven winch. rather than purely manpower. According to Wiki, the crew of the Deering was 11, as you said. Compare to Preussen, also five masted, but square rigged, built in 1902, which had a crew of 45. Cutty Sark, roughly the same size as Deering, but a three masted, square rigged clipper, built in 1870, had a crew of 28-35. Wiki says that HMS Bounty, when she set sail for Tahiti in 1787, had a crew of 44, including the captain, plus two civilian gardeners. Crew on non-military square rigged ships appears to have been fairly stable over the centuries. The major labor saving came in the switch to schooner rig, and the availability of an engine driven winch to do the halyard pulling.
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  797. The one thing missing is a compelling reason for the North Africa focus. Suppose that the Italians had discovered the vast oil reserves in Libya and those reserves were producible with the technology of the mid 1930s. Then the Axis powers would be motivated to defend Libya vigorously. Imagine an Italian fleet with an unlimited fuel supply, and land based air cover in the choke point between Sicily and Tunisia. Imagine a large force of Italian and German aircraft based in Ethiopia, turning the Red Sea into a second gauntlet for British supply shipping to run. Eventually, the British are forced to withdraw from Egypt and pull back to a line from Aqaba to Gaza, while hoping Axis forces do not cross the Red Sea, push through the Arabian Peninsula and surround them.
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  798.  @AddumEnied  the carrier conversions were quite inefficient at carrying aircraft. I suspect that the US, and Japan, both shot themselves in the foot by doing the conversions, rather than building carriers from the keel up, which could be optimized for carrying aircraft. There is an alt history, however, where, at the Washington conference, Japan demands to be allowed to build a 42,000 ton capital ship, because of Hood. So, to make tonnage available to complete Tosa, Kongo is converted to a carrier.
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  799.  @jacqueshejeije7499  no specific name, or number, for that alt history scenario. I generate alt histories as a hobby during the winter. The Washington treaty intervention provides a wide range of possible scenarios. That scenario of Tosa being built, is based on a factual position by the UK negotiators that they were willing to accept an individual ship displacement limit of 42,000 tons, because of Hood. The US pressed for a 35,000 ton limit, because it didn't want to spend the money to build anything bigger. The treaty allowed Japan to have 315,000 tons of capital ships, but the retention list in the treaty shows Japan having only 301,320 tons. Not enough room for Tosa, without reclassifying Kongo, to free up her 27,500, giving Japan 41,180 tons, just enough to allow for Tosa to be completed.
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  800. Seems so wasteful to scrap ships that were relatively new. But, considering how much the USN spent on it's older ships, converting to oil fuel, adding bulges and deck armor, it was probably the more sensible move. Apparently the Admiralty did not spend much on the Iron Dukes, until they went to the breakers a decade later.
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  801.  @jrd33  quite so, though running costs would have been reduced by putting some ships in reserve. The USN spent a considerable sum modernizing obsolete BBs into ships that were still obsolete. I have seen numbers in the range of $118M, cited by a Senator, in 1930, who was advocating the US not sign First London, and use the money to build new, effective, ships, instead.
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  802.  @TraditionalAnglican  one humorous bit I remember from that book: the Brit subs operating in the Atlantic were painted black, the ones operating in the Med were painted blue. The author's sub was based at Malta. Whenever a sub was observed being repainted black, the money lenders in town would come around looking for the crewmen to collect their loans.
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  803.  @slavkovalsky1671  the Brit subs needed to be where the Italian convoys to North Africa were running. If the convoys run west of Sicily, to stay away from aircraft from Malta, then to Tripoli, that is where the subs need to be: some of the shallowest waters of the Med. Another path the convoys took was along the Greek coast, then past Crete to Libya. That route also has shallow areas.
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  804.  @Knight6831  what-ifs abound. The other day, I asked myself what if the USN, instead of spending years trying to get the 1.1" to work, embraced the 37mm AA gun John Browning designed in the 1920s for the US Army, then leveraged the Browning's side, belt-fed, loading machine to adopt it to the multiple mounts developed in the UK and Japan for the Vickers.
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  805.  @beedrillbot121  I didn't know that. Of course, the Kaiser sitting in his palace, dreaming of being a global player, urged on by the sycophants around him, and actually making it happen, are two different things. They didn't even project power from their colonies around the Bismark Sea after the US exterminated the Spanish Asiatic squadron to take the other Spanish colonies. Germany bought them. But an alliance with Huerta, and German intervention provoked by the US invasion of Veracruz, would be something that would have repercussions. The USN only had 8 modern battleships. No modern cruisers. No significant airforce, or artillery, or machine guns.
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  806.  @beedrillbot121  I could see the Germans making the same offer to Mexico that they made in the Zimmerman telegram: help Mexico recover all the territory the US took from them, and German troops help knock off the rebels. Oil was just becoming valuable, and there was a lot, not only in Mexico, but also Texas and California, and Germany could place itself first in line to buy it, at an advantageous price. All the first line US battleships appear to have been in the Atlantic, so the Philippines would be rather naked and exposed. I'm thinking the Germans might what to have a go at them at the same time. i'm not sure Japan would move on the Philippines or Guam They were still aligned with the UK. Whether Veracruz is the match that starts WWI really depends on whether the UK, France or Russia gets an idea of exploiting Germany being distracted by beating on the US.
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  807.  @beedrillbot121  one other thought occurred to me: Italy had a mutual defense treaty with Germany. Historically, Italy did not join Germany as it was a "defense" treaty, and Germany was seen as the aggressor. If the UK or France attacked Germany, Italy aligns with Germany and Austria, probably bringing more assets to the German war effort than Germany would have had deployed in Mexico. Italy had several pre-dreadnoughts in commission in 14, plus there would not have been an Otranto barrage, so the Austrian fleet would not have been bottled up in the Adriatic, plus Italy had an army of over 1 million in the summer of 14.
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  808.  @beedrillbot121  I haven't give an alternate WWI as much thought as you. Given that Germany already held most of the Marianas, I would say it's guaranteed that von Spee would head his squadron to Guam and knock it off, which would give von Spee a home port Germany could call it's own. There is a possibility that, with Germany declaring war on the US and intervening in Mexico, the other European powers say "oh, that was random", sit back for a while and see what develops. If Huerta told the Mexican population that, while the US started the war, Mexico (with Germany's help) is going to retake all the territory the US stole from it and restore the Mexican borders of 1824. would the rebels put their revolution on hold, and line up behind Huerta for the greater good of Mexico? Hispanics constituted a large part of the population of the SW US, but the Angeloes often treated them as badly as African-Americans. Would the Hispanics be loyal to the US, or form a fifth column to aid the Mexicans? Germany would be in it for oil concessions. The UK would be looking at it's primary economic rival, Germany, and it's up and coming economic rival, the US, bleeding each-other. The UK may choose to sit back and watch, while selling war material to both at a tidy profit. Would the US put up a fight, or sue for peace? The German army had 4.5M men, the US Army had 200,000, so a small portion of the German army could overrun the US Army. Most of the US population and industry wee outside of the disputed area, but most of the oil was in the disputed area. The reason the US was so hopped up about Tampico was that it was the site of the first Mexican oil boom, and US oil companies wanted that oil.
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  809.  @beedrillbot121  the more I roll this over in my mind, the more I think you are right. Mexico was so fouled up that Germany really would not want to get officially involved. The next guy didn't seem to do much better than Huerta, and the US invaded, again, on his watch. Of course, by the time Pershing made his incursion, the window for German intervention was long closed.
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  810.  @TheJuggtron  you are talking about the battlecruiser? The WNT included ships owned by commonwealth navies in the RN's total. The "British Empire" delegation included representatives from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India. So, if Australia retained it's battlecruiser, something else from RN inventory would need to be disposed of.
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  811.  @TheJuggtron  I read a book about the Washington conference last winter, but I was more focused on the US and UK activities. iirc, the Australian member had some input into the decision making, but I don't recall what that was specifically. A bit of background: Australia became independent of the UK in 1901. New Zealand declined to join the Australian federation, so became a dominion of the UK in 1907: self-rule for internal affairs, but foreign affairs directed by the UK. While Australia formed the RAN, a division of the RN was assigned to defend New Zealand, largely funded by Wellington and increasingly manned by Kiwis. There was no formal New Zealand navy until 1941. Australia's GDP, hence it's ability to fund a navy, was about 5% of that of the UK. New Zealand's GDP was about 20% of Australia's. Australia had funded and operated a battlecruiser. New Zealand funded the construction of a battlecruiser, then gifted it to the RN. By the time of the WNT, both of those battlecruisers were nearly ten years old, with an entire war's worth of hard running. I don't think either country would want a badly worn, obsolete, coal-fired, battlecusier. How about the UK expressing it's gratitude for the gift of HMS New Zealand and the contributions during the war of HMAS Australia, by gifting Courageous and Glorious to the two countries? Nearly new, oil fired, state of the art weaponry. If Australia did take on both Courageouses, they probably never would have bought the two County class cruisers. If the Kiwis had a Courageous, they probably could not afford any other cruisers of any description. Of course, the other fly is the Courageouses were too big for the Sutherland drydock at Cockatoo Island, the dock being 210 meters long and the ships 240 meters. The RN would have to gift the Aussies a floating drydock too.
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  812.  @88porpoise  yes, you are right, the timeline is pretty tight. Allied troops evacuated mainland Greece by about April 30. The coup in Iraq, with the backing of Germany and Italy, was on April 1. Luftwaffe personnel and aircraft were operating in Syria. British intervention in Iraq unhorsed the junta on May 2. The British then invaded Syria on June 8. Crete fell June 1. The unknown is if German resources were not being allocated to Barbarossa, how much faster would the Greek campaign have gone? To make the Syrian landing viable, the Germans would have had to move immediately to suppress offensive operations in Crete, and Cyprus, while the landing and supply convoys steam by, to Syria. Then it's a matter of whether the Germans can drive from Syria to Baghdad faster than the British can make the trip from Palestine.
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  813.  @88porpoise  you could be right. The Axis was never able to really suppress Malta. But then, the forces in Malta and Alexandria took quite a while to strangle the Italian convoys heading for North Africa. The Beaufort torpedo bombers operating out of Malta took frightful losses until they started bringing some Beaufighters along to strafe the ships, to suppress AA fire.
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  814.  @colinhunt4057  I agree that Sea Lion was probably postponed, iirc it was not officially canceled, due to the lateness of the season, rather than entirely due to the resilience of the RAF, as some narratives claim. And, as you said, the river barges that had been commandeered for the sea lift needed to be released to resume their commercial hauling. At the moment, I am reading a speculative alt history of Sea Lion, that draws a lot from German preparations and planning for the invasion. I think it was serious, as England was very much back on it's heels, due to the loss of equipment in France. iirc, Ian on Forgotten Weapons, noted some 90% of army inventory of Bren guns had been lost in France, along with vast numbers of tanks, artillery, and anti-tank guns. Have you seen the sort of things being issued to the Home Guard? Some folks were handed a length of pipe, with a WWI bayonet welded on the end. What changed my thinking about the motives for invading the Soviet Union was my chance hearing of that recording of Hitler from 42. According to Hitler's statements in that recording, the negotiations in late 40 were an attempt to pull the Soviets into the Axis. Hitler was proposing the Soviets would be allocated Iran and India. Apparently, the Soviets also wanted the Balkans. The way to get to the Balkans from the Soviet Union, was through Romania, which threatened German oil supply. Hitler said that, by the time Molotov headed back to Moscow in November 40, he was sure the Soviets wanted a war, so he acted proactively and attacked first. Of course, that left no resources for invading the UK.
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  815.  @spookyshadowhawk6776  iirc, the Vickers in the Boer War was a 1 pounder, single barrel, 37mm, that could be mounted on a carriage similar to that used for a Gatling, or post mounted on a vehicle or ship's deck . That begat a 1 1/2 pound/37mm, which was used as a light AA gun by the RN in WWI, which begat the 2 pound/40mm. The early 2 pounders, Mk I, Mk II, were single mounts and apparently suffered reliability issues. The later Mk VIII, used in multiple mounts, was more reliable.
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  816.  @manufromlucerne  sticks in my mind that I read that navies produced a series of gauges of a go/no-go type to measure the diameter of balls and the bore of guns. The gauges were then distributed to the producers of the guns and balls so their product could be measured to verity compliance with the navy's standard. Another issue was the consistency of the powder. About 45 years ago, James Burke hosted a documentary series "Connections", where the apparatus for measuring powder potency was demonstrated: a calibrated vertical scale was erected. A sample of powder was placed in a cup at the bottom of the scale, and a cannon ball of known weight placed on top of the cup. The charge was detonated, and how high the ball was propelled up the scale showed the potency of the powder.
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  817.  @dandarling152  it seems, no. Hornet succeeded in losing a large portion of it's air group for nothing. In the case of all three carriers, only the torpedo squadrons flew on the right course to intercept the Japanese. Hornet's dive bombers and fighters flew too far to the north, and several ended up ditching when they ran out of gas. Enterprise and Yorktown's bombers and fighters flew too far to the south. Can't help but wonder what the result would have been if the bombers and fighters from all three carriers had followed their torpedo bombers and launched a coordinated attack, as they had at Coral Sea.
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  818.  @StE-m8w  On the other hand, from my readings, the Type 96 was reasonably reliable. The USN 1.1" did not have to stop firing to reload, and vibrated less, but jammed frequently. In the color USN film about Midway, there is a view of a pair of 1.1" mounts shown several times. In the first couple shots, all four guns of the mount in the foreground are firing, but in the last shot, only the far right side gun is firing. Additionally, with the largest Type 96 mount being a triple, the loaders had room to work, while, in the quad 1.1" mount, the loaders were absurdly crowded.
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  819.  @StE-m8w  that seems to be the real issue with any "last ditch" close in defense gun. It needs to be light enough to be freemounted, so it can be handled fast enough to track an aircraft close in, but a gun that light can't fire a round heavy enough to do real damage, and the magazine is small, so it spends almost as much time reloading as it does firing. The Type 96 was available as a single gun free mount, but, again, the small magazine limited it. The German and Italian 20mm guns had small magazines. Seems the Oerlikon's advantage was the 60 round magazine. One wonders if the original 1pdr Vickers, which was freemounted, could have been developed into a more useful last ditch weapon.
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  820.  @jrturner7707  The deletion of casemates seems to have been uneven. The early British battlecruisers had deck mounted 4", the middle group: the Lions, Queen Mary, Tiger, had casemates, but the last group: Renowns, Courageouses, Hood, had deck mounts. British dreadnoughts clung to casemates through the Revenge class, then the Nelsons went to deck mounts. The USN persisted with casemates through the Lexingtons and South Dakotas. The IJN clung to casemates through the Tosa, Kii, "Number 13" and Amagi designs.
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  821.  @JSremus  the British had a beachhead, behind the Axis front lines, at Tobruk, which Axis forces had surrounded when the British were pushed back into Egypt. In mid/late 41, the Aussie defenders held out until relieved by a British land offensive in December 41. The second time, in 42, Tobruk fell to the Germans. That tells me the British were incapable of landing enough men and equipment to launch an offensive out of Tobruk.
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  822. What indeed was his plan with Renown and Courageous? Think I would suggest that he was trying to get back to his original concept. As the battlecruisers had grown, their speed had not increased appreciably. So, with the last two generations, he makes another leap in speed, at the expense of protection and number of guns. I have read a claim that Renown was intended for the Baltic project. I have read the generally accepted narrative that Courageous was intended for the Baltic project. In reality, Renown was some five feet shallower draft than the immediately preceding battlecruisers, but Courageous' draft was only 14" less than Renown's. Hardly seems worth the bother for another 14". A letter from Fisher to d'Eyncourt was calling for a draft of no more than 22 1/2 feet, for Courageous, saying that that draft was "vital for Baltic work", but also saying that he and d'Eyncourt need to "make a good story for the Cabinet", and "It's on the Baltic necessity that we will carry these ships through in the Cabinet." Courageous missed that mark by over three feet. Courageous meets all of his design parameters, except draft. If draft was the key consideration, for the Baltic op, and the ship missed that parameter by over 3 feet, why was Courageous built? I'm thinking Courageous was built only because they would not let him build a third Renown. The Baltic op story was used to con the Cabinet, and was never his actual intention.
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  823.  @marktuffield6519  Thanks for the tip. I reviewed that video. As noted previously, my reading on the X-Lighters is completely at odds with what the speaker states. They were not laying around in British ports, waiting for the Baltic op, as the speaker claims. The speaker also does not disclose that Courageous, as built, missed that draft parameter by several feet, and was barely an improvement over Renown. He glosses over just how Fisher proposed to provoke the Germans into invading Denmark. And, if Germany did invade Denmark, would that allow enough time for the Danish/Swedish/British alliance the speaker claims? In 1940, it took Germany all of 6 hours to crush all resistance in Denmark. If the British tried to land on those two Danish islands that sit astride the straits, they would probably find them already occupied by the Germans. Looking at a map of that area, I see plenty of bays that the Germans could anchor old pre-dreadnoughts in, to create instant shore batteries. And that map that Fisher supposedly drew? Drawn in 1917, two years later. Was he trying to give the Baltic op the color of a serious plan, after the fact? Would not be the first time someone tried to rewrite history for personal benefit. All in all, I have trouble taking that speaker seriously. Here is something for your aviation enthusiast side. I presume you are aware of the Battle of the Coral Sea. I also presume you know of the Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bomber, and how they were slaughtered at Midway. You may know that Lexington was sunk at Coral Sea, and the wreck found in 2018. You may also be aware that a cluster of aircraft were found on the ocean bottom that had slid off the Lexington's deck as she sank. An expedition is scheduled to set sail in May, to attempt to recover some of those aircraft. At 11,000 feet, this is the deepest salvage ever attempted. Their targets are an F4F Wildcat that was flown by both Jimmy Thach and Butch O'Hare, and as many as all seven TBDs that are laying there. At present, there are no TBDs above water, anywhere in the world. Due to the cold, dark, oxygen starved, water, the planes are in good condition.
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  824.  @montecorbit8280  I'm pretty sure you are right. US flag ocean liners during that period, being US sovereign territory, had no liquor on board, so passengers had to face the entire trip stone, cold, sober. Passengers on a Cunard liner could start getting juiced up the moment the ship was outside of US territorial waters, so the liquor was certainly on board, while the ship was in a US port. That brings up an interesting question: while a British ship could have liquor on board while in a US port, could they serve, or was the rum ration stopped while in US territory? I read of one incident, before prohibition became US law. There was some sort of diplomatic function going on, on board a ship, tied up at a USN base. SecNav Daniels was an ardent temperance campaigner. When a couple wagons full of liquor for the function showed up at the gates of the navy base, they were denied entry. I somehow suspect the diplomatic function did not go well, without "lubrication".
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  825.  @LD-wm7jm  There is a WWII vintage LST on display in Muskegon, Michigan, which I toured a couple years ago. There is some genius engineering in there, ranging from ballast tanks to kedging anchors. They had an Army training video running that laid out the entire process of preparing the ship for beaching. Fascinating.
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  826.  @fooman2108  iirc, CV-6 was not sunk at Bikini. That was Saratoga. The Navy hung on to CV-6 for years as a group in New York was trying to raise money to turn her into a museum. The group couldn't pull the money together and the Navy finally tired of waiting. She went to the breakers in 58.
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  827.  @waynesworldofsci-tech  possibilities are nearly infinite. Royal Oak could have been escorting a convoy, instead of Jervis Bay, or patroling, instead of Rawalpindi. If Royal Oak had been in Jervis Bay's place, it is almost certain that Scheer would not have engaged.
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  828. @nicholas ringer it was all USN torps. PTs carried the Mk 8. It didn't work either. The Devastator carried the Mk 13. It didn't work either. In a live fire exercise in the summer of 41, Devastators dropped 10 Mk 13s. Only 1 of them ran "hot, straight and normal".
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  829. wrt the Tegetthoff, as Drac said, it appears to have been mostly a matter of cost, for what were not particularly good battleships. After the war, many Austrian destroyers and torpedo boats were allocated to Italy, Greece, Romania and Yugoslavia. Many of these ships served their new owners well into the 1930s. Italy did not have a huge inventory of destroyers, like the US did after the war, and embarked on a significant destroyer building program through the 20s. Italy was also putting down a rebellion in Libya. Even if Italy had done some horse trading with France to get both Tegetthoffs, potentially to use one as spares for the other, battleships were not a priority for Italy at the time, iirc, I did read somewhere along the line that the Italians did strip the heavy guns off of Tegetthoff for use as shore batteries.
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  830.  @lloydknighten5071  to expand on Walter's reply, sighting was done at the turret. In the pic of Barham undergoing refit that Drac used, you can see the three sighting periscopes on the top of A turret: one between the guns for the man traversing the turret and one on each side for the men operating the elevation of the corresponding gun. At the turn of the century, there were armored hoods in those locations, where the gunners stood, sighting through small telescopes. The telescopes were connected to the guns by a complex linkage so they would elevate in unison. Slop could never be entirely eliminated from the linkage connecting the gun to the scope, so, with the South Carolina class, the USN changed to a new model turret that had the scope rigidly bracketed to, and concentric, with the gun trunnion, so there was no slop. This resulted in the scopes being mounted low on the side of the turret, instead of the top, which also had the advantage, as the South Carolinas were the first USN battleships with superfiring turrets, that the sights were out of direct muzzle blast of the superfiring guns. While the RN persisted with the turret top mounted sights when they shifted to superfiring turrets, I have read that the gunners were directed to not fire the superfiring guns within 20 degrees either way of dead ahead, to prevent the sighs in the lower turret suffering from the muzzle blast.
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  831.  @WALTERBROADDUS  in the cases of Averoff and the Aetos class DDs, Greece did very well for itself, gaining some very powerful ships. The Ellie was another "distressed stock" proposition, but that ship wasn't that great of a prize. I don't know how Greece missed out on an unfinished cruiser sitting at Ansaldo, which was eventually seized by the Italian government and completed for the RM. Greece's purchase of the Mississippi and Idaho is an entirely different matter. The Greeks were severely used by the US. Newspaper accounts in the summer of 1914 say the $12+M paid by Greece for those old, obsolete, ships, was what the USN had paid for them new. The only thing the Mississippis had going for them was they could fit in the drydock at Piraeus.
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  832.  @lloydknighten5071  iirc, USN gunnery in the Spanish American War was pretty terrible, but the Spanish were worse. William Sims, when only a Lieutenant, started agitating for better gunnery training at the turn of the century. He ended up writing directly to President Roosevelt. Roosevelt was sufficiently impressed that he appointed Sims Inspector of Naval Gunnery in 1902.
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  833. So, you are assuming a scenario at the Washington conference where the USN starts sniveling "the Brits have 4 battle cruisers, the Japanese have 4 battle cruisers, but we don't have any, that's unfair!", resulting in the USN swapping both Floridas, both Wyomings, both New Yorks and Oklahoma to clear the tonnage to build 4 Lexingtons, with the last two hulls converted to carriers. The potential for new tactics being developed around a very fast task force combining aircraft and big guns is intriguing. However, as the USN did not modernize it's capital ships during the 30s, the BCs would have gone into WWII, with, probably 8-5/25s replacing the original 3" AA guns, plus a couple of 1.1" Hardly adequate by WWII standards. Additional AA guns would be added from time to time, but the chances of them ever seeing the all singing, all dancing dual 5/38s would be pretty slim as installing them would require so much time in the yard. The best thing about the BCs might be, had they been based at Pearl, they probably would have been out with the carriers on Dec 7th.
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  834.  @georgedavidson957  "late war", iirc, the Oerlikon was not very effective either, due to short range and small shell. For something to be widely deployed in 44, it would probably need to exist in some form in 1940. The first thing that comes to mind is the John Browning designed 37mm, used by the Army as the M1. It was adopted by the Army in 1938, so, in a Bofors-deprived world, it would probably have shown up everywhere on land and sea.
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  835.  @andrewcross1469  I can't totally eliminate the future knowledge from my mind that Z was doomed. Even if they had a carrier, the location of the battle was within range of Zeros from southern Indochina, where the bombers were based, so Fulmars or Sea Hurricanes would probably have been shredded and the carrier sunk too, unless supply of Zeros was so tight that the only thing available in Indochina was the A5M Claude that a Sea Hurricane could stand up to. My first impulse would be to send Queen Elizabeth and Valiant from Alexandria and hurry up Hermes' refit in South Africa and sent it. Somewhere along the line, Hermes would meet up with a crate of tail hooks from Brewster, to be installed in the Buffalos that were deployed in the far east with the RAF, RAAF and Dutch, and embark those planes as air defense. Sink all three, and the RN doesn't lose that much. QE and Valiant were badly damaged by Italian frogmen in Alexandria later in December and Hermes was sunk a few months later anyway.
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  836. I'll add that my nightmare scenario is the IJN converting the Kongos to carriers, due to their thin armor and vulnerability in a gun fight, just before going after the US, and doing it so quickly that the USN could not build carriers from the keel up fast enough to respond. So, instead of IJN fleet carriers outnumbering the USN 6 to 5, the IJN would hold a 10 to 5 superiority on Dec 7th. That would mean the actions the Kongos participated in, and were lost, would, instead see Nagatos or Ises. Nagatos could top 26kts and the Ises were juiced up when modernized to make 25, so they are considerably faster than a USN standard or an R-class.
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  837.  @coyotehater  If I were Tojo, I would refrain from irritating the Brits and Americans, when I would receive their full attention in return. Attacking the French or Dutch colonies would probably bring the Brits in too. Japan had invaded China in 37, so that operation could keep them entertained. by itself. That being said, if I were Tojo, I would start a covert propaganda campaign in the US to turn US opinion against hanging on to the Philippines, combined with some astroturf demonstrations in the Philippines to make hanging on to the islands more expensive for the US. When the Germans finally get it in gear, I would not attack Pearl, as that would make Americans really mad. Now that the propaganda campaign has had time to work to loosen the US' grip on the Philippines, I would push harder for US withdrawal from the islands. If the US still doesn't leave, then offer an ultimatum to either withdraw or be removed forcibly. If the US pulls out, fine. If the US sends the Pacific Fleet plodding over to defend the islands, that's good too, because that presents the opportunity to decisively defeat the US Fleet in deep water and far from their repair facilities.
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  838.  @lonjohnson5161  Drac could fill a day in Muskegon, MI. While there are several Gato class subs around, the one in Muskegon, USS Silversides, is pretty well known, including being mentioned, along with Tang and Wahoo, in the movie "Operation Pacific". There are also a WWII vintage LST, and a Great Lakes excursion steamer in the same port. I think there is also a Gato class boat in Wisconsin. The air and space museum in Kalamazoo, Michigan has a restoration shop that does a lot of work for the Navy, restoring aircraft salvaged out of Lake Michigan. They are presently working on their third SBD. An expedition is scheduled to set sail in May to attempt salvage of the planes that fell off the Lex's deck when she sank at Coral Sea. If the salvage is successful, the Kalamazoo museum is in line to get a couple of the TBDs to restore.
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  839.  @gamebook727  there had been consideration of converting the Caracciolo, in the 20s, but was dropped, as Drac said, because land based air was thought to provide adequate cover. I would be concerned about the structural integrity of a converted liner. Maybe converting Impero would have been a better move?
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  840. When I visited the Constitution around 1970, there was a modern seat installed in one of the quarter galleries, with a pipe leading to the pier. Also in the 60s, I built a model kit of a topsail schooner that had what were effectively two outhouses in the aft corners of the main deck, which overhang the sides of the hull.
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  841. Same as many other speeches at the convention. It isn't "Trump is a good guy". The message is "Trump is the chosen of God". May as well extend the argument: elections don't matter, because Trump is the chosen of God. Constitutional limits on Presidential power don't matter, because Trump is the chosen of God. Trump is above and beyond a mere President, because he is the chosen of God.
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  842. Thanks for your input on the question of German turbine reliability.
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  843. As I commented on the Wasp post, the Lexingtons were horribly inefficient carriers, with hangers 200 feet shorter than a Yorktown's on more than 50% greater tonnage than a Yorktown, an issue compounded by the Washington Treaty's tonnage limits. The Friedman book indicates that the pro-air faction in the Navy appears to have had their eyes on the battle cruisers for conversion to carriers before the BCs were even laid down. By 1920, the pro-air faction had decided that a carrier "must" be 35,000 tons, with 180,000hp, a recipe that the Lexingtons fit perfectly. I would not be surprised if the "cost savings" numbers were manipulated to justify giving the pro-air faction what it wanted. Interestingly, once the pro-air faction had been placated by the Lexingtons, Navy thinking turned 180 degrees, with the concern that having a few large carriers would result in the sinking of only one ship severely crippling carrier strength, so then the decision was made to use the remaining carrier tonnage on 5 ships the size of the Ranger. Of course, the push for the Lexingtons could have been partly motivated by the ridiculous inadequacy of the Langley, a topic to be taken up when the video on that ship is presented.
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  844. Or more to the point, his attempt to overthrow the government was an "official act", as if election results are only valid if the POTUS says they are.
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  845. perk an alt history situation with all four Admiral class being continued. If two Admirals were completed as carriers, they, plus Argus, Hermes, Eagle, and Furious, would fill the RN's carrier tonnage quota under the treaty. That would mean Courageous and Glorious could not be converted, unless, Argus, Eagle and Hermes were all scrapped/reclassified, which would have been allowed under the WNT. If those three ships are eliminated to permit conversion of Courageous and Glorious, there would be no tonnage available for Ark Royal. If only one Admiral was converted to a carrier, that would leave enough tonnage for Courageous and Glorious, provided Argus was scrapped/reclassified. Then Eagle and Hermes could be scrapped/reclassified to clear tonnage for Ark Royal. The one Admiral conversion also has the virtue of making the math simple: the RN has three Admirals as "post-Jutland", the US has the three Colorados and Japan has the two Nagatos. On the other hand, there would be a tendency to convert two, because the US and Japan were converting two. The RN could forgo converting the Courageouses, which leaves them available to chase German raiders in 1940. I rather like the prospect of Courageous squaring off against Sheer, rather than Jervis Bay.
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  846.  @brendonbewersdorf986  I did an exercise a few years ago, where France claimed the three Mackensen hulls that were in the water as war reparations, towed them back to France. Two completed using the armament that had been built for the Normanies, and one completed as a carrier, instead of Bearn. I'm sure a converted Mackensen would be inefficient as a carrier, just as the US and British conversions were not as efficient at maximizing the number of aircraft for their displacement, but it would be better than Bearn. Interesting as the French 13.4" and 5.5" were all a smidge smaller and lighter than the German 13.8" and 5.9". Of course, if France had two newly completed Mackensen class capital ships, they would not have gotten the licenses for future construction that they used to build Dunkerque and Strasbourg.
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  847.  @brendonbewersdorf986  when I was working that exercise, I found speculative drawings of a Mackensen carrier conversion. The original "as built" drawing shows the after flight deck sloping up hill to help slow the plans on landing, somewhat as Bearn had. The forward flight deck was cut off halfway between the island and bow, with a flying off platform from the forward hangar, much as the Courageouses had. The "after refit" drawing shows a single, level, full length flight deck. Both drawings show the hanger extending from the position of A turret aft to Y turret, with the flight deck supported on columns beyond the hangar, and the casemate mounted secondary retained for anti-ship defense.
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  848. I was growing concerned as well.
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  849. Noticing the retirement of older RN ships at the end of 43: Revenge, Resolution, Royal Sovereign and Malaya all pulled out of service. Was this purely a function of wear and tear, or the capitulation of Italy, which removed six battleships, and the serviceable German capital ship force being reduced to Tirpitz, leaving the RN with the feeling that, with four KGVs, they had things pretty well in hand?
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  850.  @DanielSilverthorn  the way a double acting cylinder is done in a railroad engine is by use of a slide valve that alternately directs steam to one end of the cylinder or the other. The slide valve is connected via linkage to the connecting rod from the piston to keep the motions synchronized. I would expect the same is done in marine steam engines.
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  851.  @Silavite  iirc, I read somewhere that the feeling at GE and Westinghouse was that their steam turbine knowledge would transfer to jet engines. Things worked out well for GE and they are still at it. Did not work out well for Westinghouse and they closed their jet engine division in 1960.
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  852. wrt changes in Second London, from my reading, Second London seemed to be more about the UK trying to push everyone else down to the sort of ships the UK wanted. I have read that Ark Royal was built the way she was, under the Washington limit of 27,000 tons, to maximize the number of drydocks around the empire that could accommodate her, so the treaty tried to push everyone else's carriers down to the same size. The UK had to build smaller cruisers to obtain the number of cruisers needed in the tonnage allowance available. The treaty tried to force everyone else's light cruisers down to the same size. Nothing in the earlier treaties said the UK could not build battleships with 15" or 14" guns. The French, and Italians, were perfectly happy to build 15" guns, when the treaty allowed 16". But someone in the Admiralty was pressing for 14". The decision to go 14" on the KGVs had been made before the Second London conference started. So, again, Second London was used to try to force everyone else down to the gun size the UK wanted to use. Same mindset came up when the US and UK were negotiating the displacement escalator in early 38. The UK was pushing for a 42,000 limit, as that was the maximum their facilities around the empire could accommodate. The US wanted 45,000, so the Iowas could be the ships they wanted. As we see with Lion, nothing prevented the UK building what suited it's needs, even if it was under the official limit. The consistent mindset in the UK, was to use the treaty to try to prevent anyone building anything more powerful than what the UK wanted to build. I could point out that Lord Chatfield was First Sea Lord from January 33 through September 38, so he was in a position to influence the design of the KGVs, Second London, and the negotiations for the battleship tonnage escalator.
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  853.  @Gailim  The Floridas and Wyomings had Parsons turbines. I have read that the USN wanted US made turbines, but none of the US turbine makers could meet the Navy's specifications, so the Navy reverted to triple expansion engines.
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  854.  @brentrawlins6490  the RN did shell Flanders, until the Germans deployed so many shore batteries that sitting offshore became more dangerous. The British used a variety of hastily build monitors for shore bombardment in several theaters during the war. Some monitors mounted old guns scavenged from obsolete ships, including several Majestic class battleships. Others used new 15/42s. One class of monitors used US 14"/45s bought new from Bethlehem Steel. Bessy had built the guns and turrets for a battleship being built in a German yard for the Greek navy. The guns and turrets could not be delivered to the German yard because of the British blockade, so Bessy offered them to the Brits instead.
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  855.  @bluemarlin8138  Knowing ship course, if the wind direction indicator showed any divergence from dead ahead, that would indicate a crosswind. Adjust course so the wind direction indicator is exactly aligned with the ship, and you are heading into the wind. Some early carriers had a small steam jet on the forward flight deck. Steer the ship so the steam jet is trailing directly back another the ship's centerline, and you're heading into the wind. Calculating true wind speed and direction for the airdale's navigation requires math. Indicated wind speed and direction according to the ship's instruments will be a geometric sum of actual wind and ship generated wind. Eons ago, I could do vector analysis to solve for an unknown direction and amplitude, but also forgot how to do that eons ago.
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  856.  @RedXlV  somewhere, recently, I floated my WNT idea of using throw weight as the standard to equalize BB power, rather than displacement. An objection came up of that exact nature: the IJN simply decks over one barbette, to keep the ship in the 8-16" gun limit, and, when the balloon goes up, the fifth turret and guns magically appear from a warehouse and are installed. I conceded that is a possibility, but, at least, it's harder to do than simply lie about the displacement. If you would like to do the math, Navweaps has the weights for the guns, turrets, shells, powder charges and number of rounds carried per gun, so see if it all adds up to the 5,000+ tons you would need to carve off a Tosa to get under the displacement limit.
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  857.  @johnperetin5944  I figure the oldest, effective, AA gun was the Vickers pom-pom. While the basic design dated to the 1890s, the 2-pounder version debuted in 1914. It had rate of fire and a usefully large shell in it's favor. By WWII it was only obsolete due to it's short range.
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  858. wrt the question about guns being the longest lead item for a BB, what was the lead time for a gun around WWI? I started looking into the history of the Italian Caracciolo class BBs a while back. The Caracciolo was launched in May of 20, and Ansaldo had built up about 12% of the hull of Columbo, but, if Italy had wanted to continue with their construction, they would not have had guns for them as most of the guns that had been ordered for them had been redirected during WWI as shore batteries, mounted on railroad carriages or mounted on monitors.
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  859.  @joshthomas-moore2656  my two cents worth: BCs cost as much to build as a BB. BCs cost as much to run as a BB. Due to their armament, they will, sooner or later, be stuck into a battle against BBs, where their glass jaw will become evident. iirc, one of the Kongos was sunk by cruisers in the Solomons. To my eye, BCs are poor value for money. BCs are at a disadvantage against BBs, yet they can be taken out by a group of 3-4 cruisers. One of my nightmare scenarios is the IJN realizing the Kongos aren't up to the job around 1938, and converting them all to carriers, so they will not be stuck into a surface engagement, which would give the IJN a massive superiority in air group strength early in the war.
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  860. Exactly what I was thinking. Same scenario: German cruiser hiding up a river, sighted by a borrowed airplane. Here's the trailer for the film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNlGAq45Rlo
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  861. I saw the debate where Jerry Ford said the Soviets did not dominate Poland, but claiming that migrants are stealing and eating pets is a new low.
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  862.  @sharlin648  agree, better than throwing rocks! The reload is something I would really like to see being done. With the Bofors, you just keep dropping clips in the loading machine, and the gun fires continuously. The USN 1.1 had two magazines, so it would feed from one magazine while the other was being replaced, so it could fire continuously. To change out the entire bin on a Pom-Pom would require a crane. I have seen many photos of ratings carrying belts of Pom-Pom ammo, something like 15 or 20 rounds per belt. So, do they reload the bins by hitching the belts together? If the gun is firing, how do you hitch another belt to the end of the one in the gun, when the belt is feeding through the gun and the free end is rapidly running away from you?
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  863.  @themanformerlyknownascomme777  the F4U could carry a large payload, and be an effective fighter. That might have demonstrated that the concept was viable. As for being official DoD policy, my seat-of-the-pants hunch is the policy could be attributed to SecDef Robert McNamara. iirc, the F-111 was supposed to be a fighter, carrying a load of Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix, and a bomber, with an internal bomb bay, as well as wing hardpoints, and be used by both the USAF and USN, and McNamara was the one pushing it's development.
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  864.  @vikkimcdonough6153  Jackie sold them as "light cruisers". A 2-3" belt is consistent with the C Class light cruisers of the same era. The Wiki entry says that belt armor was high tensile steel, ie structural steel, rather than the typical hardened steel. The plan may well have been for the belt armor to act as a structural member of the ship.
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  865.  @geofftimm2291  the KGVs were originally designed to have three quad turrets. Then the Admiralty decided to raise the armor deck one level, which increased the height of the belt armor. To compensate for all the extra armor weight, something had to go. The quad B turret was reduced to a twin to reduce top weight.
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  866.  @themanformerlyknownascomme777  by it's designation, F-111, the plane was intended as a fighter. During it's development in the early 60s, dogfighting was considered passe. The idea was to stand off and shoot the other guy down with a missile. iirc, the Hughes Phoenix system the F-111 was designed for could guide six missiles to separate targets, simultaneously. Turned out the 111 was too big and heavy for carrier ops, so Grumman designed the 14, to use the same Phoenix system. As for a replacement for the 111, we now have the "Strike Eagle" version of the 15, and people have been strapping bombs on the 16 for decades as well. The USAF also had the F-117. which, in spite of it's "F" designation, I never heard of being used as an air superiority fighter, only as a bomber.
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  867.  @geofftimm2291  The justification for the regression to 14" was the "more guns equals more hits" narrative. As originally intended, a 12 gun KGV would send 50% more rounds down range, than a QE, or a Bismark. Given the RN fighting instructions that required the ships to close to 16,000 yards or less, rather than standing off at greater range, the 14" could penetrate well enough and the greater number of shells would, all other things being equal, result in more hits and faster degradation of the enemy ship. The problem was, the KGV had to be well enough protected to survive until it closed to 16,000, which resulted in the increase in armor, which required the reduction from 12 to 10 guns, which partially defeated the rational behind regressing to 14" in the first place.
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  868.  @Thirdbase9  Drac, and others. have, from time to time, mentioned the RN's use of "supercharges", which were larger than standard charges to increase the range of large guns. USN gunnery tables from the 1930s provide trajectory tables for both "full charge" and "reduced charge" shots. I have been offering that Bismark penetrated Hood's deck, as Captain Leach said he saw, by use of a reduced charge, to provide a lower muzzle velocity, resulting in a steeper angle of fall, but I have received withering pushback, insisting that reduced charge was never, ever, used in combat....but the data was readily available, Bismark's gunners would have known what angle of fall was needed for a penetrating deck hit, reduced charge made that angle possible at that range, and no-one else has offered a scenario that fits with the eye-witness accounts.
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  869.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  the Dewey drydock was built on the east coast of the US and towed, in one piece, across the Atlantic, through the Med and Suez, across the Indian Ocean and to the Philippines, in 1906. I would suspect the WWII floating docks were towed around the same way.
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  870.  @ramal5708  the M4 had a very low muzzle velocity. It was fine for plinking barges, but would not have had much range as an AA gun. In the 1920s, John Browning developed a 37mm AA gun for the army that had more potential. The original M1 version was clip fed. The later M9 version was fed via a metallic belt. The USN tested both the M1 and the Bofors, and chose the Bofors. which topped the M1 with both a larger shell and higher maximum altitude. Had the Bofors not been available, the M1 could probably have been developed into a serviceable naval AA gun.
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  871. wrt the Courbet class, there was a significant body of opinion at that time that battles would always be fought at short range. The head of USN BuOrd at that time, Admiral Strauss insisted that battles would never be fought at more than 12,000 yards. At 12,000 yards, the 14"/50 could penetrate well enough, and, being lighter, more 14"/50s could be mounted vs 16". When the Tennessees were designed to allow their 14" guns to elevate to 30 degrees, vs the 15 degrees of the New Mexicos, Strauss scoffed, saying the ships would never need that amount of range. The armor of the Courbets, or lack thereof, is another matter.
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  872.  @dariuszrutkowski420  yes
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  873. Very true. Newspaper accounts at the time had plenty to say about Senator Hale's influence in getting these ships built, and the criticism of them in the press was blistering.
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  874.  @eamon821  for your scenario 1: I would look at Italy, where Italy was allowed to make more significant improvements in it's ships, because they were so obsolete, compared to the other powers. So the Nassau class could receive the same treatment as the Cavour class. Scenario 2: I'd built Scharnhorsts, secretly designed from the outset to be easily upgunned to 15". A smaller hull would probably have trouble with an adequate number of 15" guns, plus some armor, plus enough engine to drive it at 30kts. On paper, a Scharnhorst with six 15" would be a match for a Renown, and could outrun a QE or Revenge. Going toe to toe with Hood might be a bit problematic, but the RN only had one Hood.
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  875. wrt salvage of Oklahoma. Yes, she did obstruct traffic to a degree where the wreck was. But, rather than tying up a drydock for a few months, and using new material, to patch her up, why not tow the refloated wreck into East Loch, out of the traffic flow, let her settle, build a cofferdam around her, and break her up there? What I would have wanted to do would be to tow the refloated wreck out to sea, and scuttle her, with the service for burial at sea, for the men inside, as was done with Maine after she was raised from Havana harbor. My only concern with that plan was what if one of the temporary patched failed, and she sank in the channel, blocking the entrance to the harbor?
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  876. My dad was a corporal in the artillery during the war. The enlisted guys in his battery all had carbines. Always cracked dad up, when he would be walking along and a group of infantry guys would see him from a distance, and mistake him for an officer, because of the carbine. As the carbine was originally intended to be capable of full auto fire, and later was produced with that option, and combined a shorter barrel and lighter cartridge, can it be argued that the carbine was actually the first assault rifle?
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  877. wrt Kirishima at Guadalcanal, one wonders why the IJN did not make more use of the Nagatos. The Kongos were constantly put in harm's way, and were harmed a lot. The Nagatos were not that slow, better armed and better protected. The battles of Guadalcanal would have probably gone differently if the IJN had brought Nagato and Mutsu.
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  878.  @bkjeong4302  I would think speed not that important in restricted waters, like the Slot. The faster you get the ship going, the harder it is to turn. The Nagatos were only a couple kts slower than SD or Washington, and, with their better armor, a Nagato would probably not have been disabled by cruiser fire in round one, so the odds would have been more even in round two.
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  879.  @gregorywright4918  yes, I am assuming a twin 4" mount, which the USN experimented with on a couple Clemsons. Looking at the photos of the mounts in use, the issue is clear. There was not enough deck room on the foc'se of a Clemson for the crew required to operate a twin mount. (all data taken from Navweaps) weight of a 5"/51 with single mount: 15.36-17.26mt. Weight of a twin 4"/50, guns and mount, 12.33mt. Rate of fire is the same, 8-9rpm, but adoption of a sliding breech, combined with the 4" fixed ammo could double that. Weight of the 5" common shell: 50lbs, vs 33 for the 4". Charge in common shell 5": 1.73lbs, 4": 1.39lbs. Range to penetrate 2" of armor 5": 8000yds, 4": 6300yds. So the twin 4" mount can fire more steel, with more charge than a single 5". Go to a sliding breech, and the twin 4" can fire a lot more steel and a lot more charge. Yes, the 5"/51 can penetrate more armor, but the DDs and torpedo boats that would usually be attacking are not armored. It would take a light cruiser to stand up to the 4". Yes, the 5"/51 has more range, 18,800yds @ 25 degrees, than the 4": 15,000yds @ 19.9 degrees, but torpedo boat armament was aimed by the Mk 1 eyeball, and, particularly hull mounted casements offered such a poor view of potential targets that maximum range is probably academic. I took my investigation one step farther: cutting the 4"/50 down to 45 calibers, and mounting them in a copy of the British Mk XIX mount. The result was lighter than the combination of a single 5"/51 and a single 5"/25, while being able to throw more steel than either of the 5" guns, and freeing the upper deck for more light AA armament. Yes, I am assuming the 1.1" for light AA, as that is what they had.
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  880. My thoughts? Farley is an idiot. I will explain. In spite of Trump openly campaigning on putting tariffs on Canadian and Mexican cars, Farley is crying that he wants steep tariffs on Toyotas and Hyundais, not Fords, regardless of where they are built. As you said, the models Ford builds in Mexico are the Bronco Sport, Maverick, and Mach-E. Farley said, publicly, a couple years ago, he wants to get out of the two row SUV market, where the Bronco Sport and US built Escape are, because, he complains, there is too much competition in that segment, so he can't charge as high a price, with as fat a profit margin, as he wants. So, cutting Bronco Sport and Maverick production off from the US, would give Ford an excuse to shift prospects into the larger Bronco, or Ranger pickup, which are more expensive. Farley committed some $5.6B for "Blue Oval City", a greenfield battery and assembly plant to build electric F-150s. Why F-150s? That is Ford's most profitable product. A few days ago, he claimed to have just discovered that F-150s have poor aerodynamics, and people with F-150s carry heavy loads, pull trailers, and take long trips, which puts a lot of demand on the battery. A battery that could meet that demand would be large, heavy, and expensive. So, now, Farley claims that, for large EVs, "the economics are unresolvable". Seems likely he is preparing shareholders for a multi-billion dollar writeoff of "Blue Oval City". Last, and most absurd, Farley insists Ford "will be the Porsche of off-road", meaning he wants to raise prices, a lot. Farley is a buffoon.
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  881. Changed their appearance so they didn't look so threatening? iirc, when Sheer's recon plane spotted convoy HX 84, it reported the convoy was unescorted. In reality, it's only escort was Jervis Bay, a converted liner. As it happened, there was a group of four ex-US DDs that were also en route to the UK, from Halifax, traveling separately. It crosses my mind that, if those four DDs had left Halifax with HX 84, Sheer may have gone off looking for easier prey.
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  882. As Matthew said, apparently, in the real world, a heavier shell retains it's momentum better than a lighter shell. The propellant charge in a larger gun is going to be larger than the charge in a smaller gun. If the same charge is pushing a larger shell, seems the PSI on the back of the larger shell will be lower, because the burning propellant can only generate a set amount of hot gas, and it has a larger space to expand into. The issue I have been wrestling with is I have been looking for the velocity of SC Cordite, so I can perform some recoil calculations, but have not been able to find it. I'm sure the difference in die size would made a difference too, as a smaller die size means more sticks of Cordite can fit in a given space, with more surface area exposed, so the burn rate is higher, but at this point, I will settle for any velocity spec for SC.
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  883.  @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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  884.  @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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  885.  @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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  886.  @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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  887.  @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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  888.  @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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  889.  @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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  890.  @gruntforever7437  in the three years since I posted that comment, I have continued to look in to the issue. The Navy had no choice about whether to proceed with the South Dakotas. The House added language to the annual Navy appropriation bill in June, 1918, urging the Navy to make a start on the ships authorized in 1916, but not yet started, which included the South Dakotas and Lexingtons. When the legislation got to the Senate, the Senate changed the wording from urging, to demanding, the Navy make a start on those ships. This was reported in the newspapers at the time. Apparently, Admiral Taylor, the chief designer, was not happy with the design, and drew up something he liked a lot better, but it was bigger and more expensive, so it was a no-go.
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  891. @Benson Caisip you are referring to the late 40s, when Truman was pressing for a consolidated armed forces, with the Navy being sharply drawn down? There was a lecture about that at an air museum near my home last Wednesday. Very interesting episode.
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  892.  @Billy_Annizarry  I figure it would have been a very bad day for Bismark. As it was, the RN deployed one strong ship, a KGV class, and one weak ship, obsolete battlecruiser, in each passage. If they had sent KGV and PoW to Denmark strait, they would have been taking a huge gamble. If they did that, and Bismark went through the Faroe Island passage, it would probably have rolled up both Hood and Repulse.
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  893. Given that Biden had a pre-selected list of reporters to call on, how much was the presser stage managed?
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  894. Relocating the funnels to the island of Ranger would probably not have been practical. As you note Ranger was initially designed flush-decked, which is what the airdales wanted. To avoid long ducting to carry the stack gas aft, Ranger was designed with the boilers aft of the turbines, so putting a funnel on the island partway through construction would have required long ducts to carry the stack gas forward. At the time of Ranger's design, the USN was so sold on dive bombers, to the exclusion of torpedo planes, so the ship was designed without any torpedo storage. Ranger wasn't all that slow either. Several Brit and IJN light carriers could only dream of 29kts.
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  895.  @kitowen7714  "Pom Pom" generally refers to a series of autocannons produced first by Maxim-Nordenfelt, then Vickers, and used by the Boers in the Boer war and the British into WWII. The nickname "Pom Pom" is from the sound the guns made when fired.
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  896.  @Conelead  The Japanese preference seems to have been to land a knockout blow on the first go, so availability of a 5th carrier might have resulted in pounding Midway even heavier. I'll counter your alternate reality with this: suppose the three US carriers and all their squadrons coordinated, like they did at Coral Sea, so they all close in on the Japanese force at the same time, rather trickling in, or missing the scrap entirely? Then Zuikaku goes to the bottom two years early.
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  897.  @Conelead  sure, that could have worked out in the favor of the Japanese. The US could have changed it's doctrine on defending carriers from air attack earlier, so that Yorktown would have been cruising in close company with Enterprise and Hornet, so that Yorktown would be protected by the combined AA umbrella and CAP, rather than it's own, much smaller, resources. The bottom line is the USN found the Japanese force first. If the US strike had not been so tragically botched, the bombers and fighters had followed the course the torpedo planes set, the slaughter of the Japanese force would have been epic.
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  898.  @bkjeong4302  I'm sure the Germans did their best to maintain secrecy of the actual details of Bismark's construction. I'm also reasonably sure that British intelligence had developed some information, but their estimates could have been wrong. Then there is the element of German "master race" propaganda, backed up by overrunning most of Europe in a matter of months. Then Bismark dispatched the Hood with little difficulty. In May of 41, it did look like a "supership".
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  899.  dimapez  it would be amusing of the French, with confidence in the Entente Cordiale, built that big dock in Toulon, where the Germans could not get at it by sea at all.
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  900.  @CTXSLPR  The US BBs have the advantage of playing defense. Scharnhorst or Gneisenau try to use their superior speed to get on the other side of the convoy from the BB, the BB simply takes a shortcut through the body of the convoy, so by the time the faster German ship has gone around the formation, the BB is there waiting for it.
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  901.  @davidharner5865  The Tennessees and Colorados were significantly different than the New Mexicos inside, due to the turbo-electric drive. The New Mexicos had the boiler rooms amidships, and the engine rooms all in line with the shafts. The TE powered ships had the boiler rooms along the perimeter of the hull, to also act as a secondary torpedo barrier, while the tubro-generator sets were along the centerline, inboard of the boiler rooms. Only the electric motors were in line with the shafts. Admiral Strauss at BuOrd made an interesting comment about the increased elevation of the Tennesse's guns. He had maintained, for some time, that all combat would be fought within 12,000 yards, so he said the Tennessees would never need the rage they could reach with 30 degree elevation, but, as it did not cost more to build the mounts with the greater elevation, he did not oppose it.
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  902.  @davidharner5865  Strauss was head of BuOrd. During a previous stint at BuOrd, as a young officer, he invented the concept of the superimposed turrets, as used on the Kearsarge and Virginia classes. His devotion to the "more smaller guns means more hits" school became obsessive. In newspaper articles speculating on whether the Tennessees would have 14" or 16", there was FUD inserted in the article, but no source named, that the then new British 15"/42 suffered extremely high barrel wear, while the 14" showed excellent durability, with that point expanded to claim all guns larger than 14" would probably suffer excessive wear. After Jutland, Daniels and the General Board decided on 16", for it's ability to penetrate at longer ranges. In his annual report in late 1916, Daniels said the decision was made "over the objections of some officers". Strauss requested sea duty, about a year before his stint at BuOrd would have been expected to end. There was no movement on his request for a couple months. In a public Congressional hearing, Strauss, again, trotted out his 14" talking points, pushing back on the decision his superiors had made months before. President Wilson nominated Ralph Earle, then head of the Indian Head proving range, as head of BuOrd the next day, and Strauss got his sea duty, command of Nevada. This entire row over gun size was very public and widely reported in the newspapers at the time. Daniels wasn't all bad. He had no Navy experience, but he had the General Board to advise him, and he was capable of listening, sometimes. Strauss wasn't all bad either. After the gun size row, he was still widely respected, and was appointed to a seat on the General Board some years later.
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  903.  @davidharner5865  wrt Colorado class armor, the drawing I see shows the belt at 13.5" thick, thinning to 8" below the waterline. The barbettes were 13" where they extended above the belt, thinning to 4.5", behind the belt. The drawing I am looking at has a cross section, but it doesn't say where the cross section is on the ship. Deck armor at the top of the belt was 140lbs (40lbs = 1"), armor one deck below was 60lbs. New Mexico could be converted to conventional geared turbines because her interior had not been optimized for turbo-electric drive. There was space to put the entire turbine/reduction gear set in line with the shafts. In a Tennessee or Colorado, it would be necessary to move the boiler rooms to make space in line with the shafts, to convert the ships to geared turbine drive.
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  904. wrt the question about AA gun alternatives to the Bofors and Oerlikon: sticks in my mind I read that one of the issues with the Vickers PomPom was that it would not run satisfactorily using USN smokeless propellant, and no-one in the US made cordite. My favorite for medium AA, in the absence of the Bofors, is the Browning 37mm, which was used by the US Army. It had the advantages of already being in production, using US materials and propellant, and offered significantly greater range than the Vickers. Modify it for proper water cooling, and implement the mods later introduced on the Army version: feed by metal link belt, from either side, and I envision a quad mount along the lines of that used with the Vickers. A replacement for the Oerlikon is a problem, because, for a close in weapon, I would want the responsiveness of a pintle mount. The Bofors 25mm that the 40mm was based on was too heavy. iirc There was a pintle mount version of the Vickers, but then the propellant problem resurfaces. The Hisso, in US service, was horrible unreliable. I'm thinking of the M4 version of the US 37mm, as it was significantly lighter than the M1 version, and was used successfully on a free mount on PT boats. The 37mm has a lower rate of fire than the Oerlikon, and a lower muzzle velocity, but, if it does hit, the 37mm shell will do a lot more damage than a 20mm.
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  905.  @RedXlV  even if the ship designers were careless enough to put M1 and M4 ammo in the same magazine, mixed from rack to rack, seems the way the ammo is mounted would be enough of a signal to the ammo passers. The M1 originally used a 9 round rigid clip, but, I am assuming the mod to metal link belt is implemented for shipboard quad mounts. The M4's loop magazine was intended for aircraft use and had to be bolted in place, with cartridges loaded into the mag one at a time, after the mag was mounted on the gun. That is so awkward I wonder why it wasn't changed when the M4 was mounted on PT boats. The M4 would probably be converted to rigid clips, like the M1 originally used. So, even in a carelessly design magazine on a ship, the passers would know, if the ammo is in a metal link belt, it is for an M1, and if it is in a rigid clip, it is for an M4. In the magazines, the loading tables for the belts and clips would be designed to make it obvious if the loader was trying to load the wrong size round. You are correct that the M4 had a lower muzzle velocity than the M1, but in this context, compare to the Vickers PomPom and the Oerlikon. The Vickers and Oerlikon have very nearly the same range, while the M4 appears to top both of them, with a maximum range of 8,875 yards, vs 3,800 to 5,000 for the Vickers LV/HV respectively, and about 4,800 yards for the Oerlikon.
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  906.  @rupertboleyn3885  yes, the Vickers range is quite close to that of an Oerlikon. My only concern is the weight of the gun and ammo reducing the responsiveness of the mount to the gunners efforts to aim the thing.249kg, vs 97kg for the M4, and 68kg for the Oerlikon.
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  907. Seems to me Trump has always talked like that: rambling, and disjointed. First thing I noticed, when Biden took office, was how nice it was to have someone in charge that spoke like a rational human being. But, over the last four years, Biden lost that advantage. Trump's followers understand him perfectly well. Among all the rambling, are the dog whistles they clearly understand, him saying he will "make America white again".
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  908. In the New Mexicos, New Mexico itself had TE drive, while Mississippi and Idaho had straight turbine drive. One of the selling points of TE is it allows tighter compartmentalization. The engineering spaces of New Mex were designed like the other two, rather than the larger number of smaller compartments TE would have allowed, so replacing it's TE with geared turbines was about as easy as replacing the old turbines in the others. Doing a TE to geared turbine conversion of the Tennessees or Colorados would have been far more complicated as some bulkheads would need to be removed to make room for the new turbines and reduction gears.
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  909.  @andrewcox4386  probably because about 70 of the earlier 16"/50, enough to arm all six planned Iowas, with several spares, had been made, so it would be cheaper to use the old guns, rather than design and build new ones. Think of it as the USN version of using WWI vintage 15"42s and Mk 1 turrets on Vanguard.
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  910.  @marcusfranconium3392  the Italian ships could not get past Gibraltar without taking a lot of damage. There could have been much more synergy between Italy and Germany, if they had worked more closely. Italian 15" and 37mm guns on German ships. Italian troops with German tanks. Italian aircraft with German engines. It works both ways. Imagine USN TBDs with the British Mk 12 torpedoes (leave the magnetic pistols at home). and USN subs with British Mk 8 (leave the magnetic pistols at home)
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  911.  @ph89787  As I read Second London, while the total fleet wide tonnage limits were gone, the treaty only appears to allow for replacements for existing ships, and the treaty still limited the pace at which ships could be replaced. Wasp was the replacement for Langley, and limited by the fleet tonnage limits of Washington. If Congress would be willing to fund another 20,000 ton carrier, they probably could have been persuaded to go 23,000 tons, which was the limit imposed by Second London. Going to 23,000 might allow the Navy to address the one real vulnerability in the Yorktown design: the boiler and engine rooms were not staggered. When the haggis started to hit the fan and Congress authorized two more carriers, iirc, the language of the legislation allowed for 40,000 tons of carriers, but the Navy built a 20,000 ton Yorktown, and a 27,000 ton Essex. The Navy certainly could have made a case to Congress, if they had a 23,000 ton "improved Yorktown" design in hand, that, Congress funding anything else would delay construction, so Congress should authorize 46,000 tons of carriers.
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  912.  @ph89787  Congress abandoned undersized carriers after Ranger. The Yorktowns were limited to 20,000 as that was all the displacement the Navy had to work with, until Langley was reclassified. I have little doubt FDR could have won approval for a 23,000 ton Wasp, if the displacement had been available, and won approval for 46,000 tons of carriers in 38, if a new 23,000 ton design had been available for immediate construction. The major pivot point in USN carriers, to my eye, is when they sank an overlarge part of the displacement quota, and money, into the Lexingtons. You may have heard Drac's reply, a couple weeks ago, to my question about the huge cost overruns on those ships. The bottom line, at that time, the Navy had no idea what it was doing, when it was building the Lexingtons. We were lucky they turned out as well as they did. For the tonnage those two ships soaked up, we could have built three Yorktowns, with enough left over to build Wasp as another full sized 20,000 ton carrier.
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  913.  @AdelineLowry  That is the nightmare scenario I have offered in the past: leave Pearl alone, and only attack the Philippines. Because the US had not swept up all the Spanish colonies in the Pacific, but only the best parts, the Philippines and Guam, Spain sold the rest of it's holdings, the balance of the Marianas, Carolines, and Marshalls, to Germany. The Japanese swept up all these islands during WWI, and held them after the war under a League of Nations mandate. For the USN to get a relief expedition to the Philippines, it would need to traverse a shooting gallery of Japanese held islands. USN command, and the President, would probably recognize this was suicidal, but could they stand up to US civilian demands to "save our boys". It was easy to say "no" when the battleships sank at Pearl, but what if the fleet was intact? I think it was October 20 of 21 that Drac did a piece on USN Tactics 39-45, and I wondered at that time if USN policy was to write off the Philippine garrison if it was attacked. To answer your question, if the US was goaded into trying to relieve the Philippines, I envision the fleet being picked apart by Japanese subs, until it is weakened enough for a major strike by IJN carrier air, with the IJN battleships mopping up the remains. An even better scenario, from the Japanese perspective, is to not attack the US at all. Bypass the Philippines and only attack British and Dutch possessions. The Germans had been beating on the UK and Netherlands for 2 years, without provoking the US enough to bring the US into the war. Why not let that sleeping dog lie in the Pacific too?
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  914. @UNSCForwardontodawn Alrighty, first, Wiki says the Sutherland dock, after it's 1927 expansion, is 210 meters/690 feet long, 27 meters/88.6 feet wide and max water depth over the sill at high tide is 9.75 meters/32 feet. My 1928 USN port directory, which may have old data since Sutherland was expanded in 27, says 637' overall/630' over the blocks, 84' wide and depth at sill of 31' 4". The 1928 directory also lists Mort's graving dock at Woolwich: 850' overall and over the blocks, 83' wide, and max depth over the sill of 28'. KGV and Renown are both too wide for either dock. A Deutschland would fit. So lets use Deutschland as a template, and, as a cost and time saving expedient, use the twin 15"/42 turrets in RN storage for the main armament. Beam would probably need to be increased from the Deutschland's 68' as the twin 15"/42 turret and gun sets will weigh about 300mt more each than the triple 11"s on Deutschland.. So what happens to the two shiny new ships? They get deployed to Malaya, instead of PoW and Repulse, and are sunk, but they might hold their own in the Java Sea, if they were not used for Force Z. Plan B: USS Wasp would fit. What would happen if the Aussies had two carriers the size of Wasp, except with a decent amount of protection? By 41, the two carriers have air groups composed of Skuas for the scout bomber role, and Buffaloes, as the Aussies, Kiwis, Dutch and RAF all flew Buffs in that theater in 41. The two carriers are deployed with Force Z. The twin engine bombers the IJN used would be meat on the table for Buffs. The location was within range of Zeros, but would the IJN have Zeros available to escort the bombers? Some of the smaller carriers still had Claudes at that time, so the supply of Zeros may have been restricted. When the Aussies stripped their Buffs down, they held their own for a while. So, if the Aussies bought carriers, PoW and Repulse have a fighting chance, as would the force in the Java Sea, until the IJN brought their A game with Zeros.
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  915.  @bkjeong4302  Midway and the Aleutians make me wonder, as does Wake. Small islands strike me as places to stake out garrisons to be beat on until they surrender. I don't see the point, vs using subs for reconnaissance. My favorite plan remains a multi-year plan to infiltrate the Philippine government and have that government announce it is voluntarily aligning with Japan and inviting the US to leave, which clears the way for the assault on the Dutch East Indies, which, ideally, would have been "authorized" by the Netherlands government the Germans set up.
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  916.  @Simon-Says-H  they didn't. iirc Nevada was able to attempt a breakout from Pearl because, some hours earlier, someone in the engine room decided to light a second boiler, so the one that had been running for days to provide steam and electricity could be shut down. So, when the attack started, the ship had two of the six boilers percolating, which gave it a big head start.
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  917.  @Packer910  iirc, a lot of those AP bombs were duds. In Arizona's case, it was another golden BB, direct hit on a magazine that was not well protected from above, on a pre-Jutland ship.
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  918.  @bobbychoate7476  I doubt it. The characteristics of USN smokeless are quite different. USN power does not contain any nitroglycerine, like British Cordite does. Several other nations used powders that contained nitro, but the proportions varied. During WWI, the Brits had one class of monitors that used US built 14" guns, and, for most of the war, bought US smokeless for them. Near the end of the war, the Brits tried using Cordite in them, and found range was significantly less with Cordite.
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  919. So, what, specifically, don't people like about Vance? He seems to be in a no-man's land, where ardent Trumpers look at his "never Trumper" comments, while the never-Trumpers look at his pro-Trump comments. And, with Harris presumably heading the Dem ticket, opening the door to openly racist thought and speech, Vance's non-white, non-Christian wife is another issue. How could a Trump administration be pushing Christian nationalist (aka white supremacist) ideology, when the second lady is neither? There is a precedent for replacing a VP candidate who turns out to be toxic. We old geezers remember when Tom Eagleton, was replaced as McGovern's running mate in 72.
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  920. Then there is the other shoe. The incoming Trump administration, in the US, has promised to impose 25% tariffs on Mexican built cars. VW, and Stellantis, each have two plants in Mexico. Mexico has a free trade agreement with the EU. If Mexican products are priced out of the US market by the tariff, the plants will probably pivot to building for the EU, as their labor cost is far lower than that in the EU. That puts even more pressure on plants with higher labor costs, in Germany and France.
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  921. Operation Pacific, starring John Wayne.
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  922.  @harriam0  I doubt the South Dakotas would have been a factor at all. They were too slow to keep up with carrier groups. Had they been completed, they would have probably replaced older ships, so the Wyomings, Nevadas and Pennsylvanias would have been retired by 1941.
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  923.  @TraditionalAnglican  I'm not thinking in terms of "saving" the obsolete BBs. I'm thinking getting at the cream of the IJN carrier force. It would take excellent reconnaissance, but, if the US force could position itself for a dawn strike, before the carriers could launch a significant force, or attack while the air groups are attacking Pearl, their numerical advantage could carry the day.
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  924.  @TraditionalAnglican  I agree on the intelligence aspect. Everything would have had to go exceptionally well for a good outcome, like a sighting report by a US sub on the 5th. The USN probably had a pretty good idea of the combat radius of Japanese aircraft. Given the course of the air wing as plotted by radar on the island, the US force could have zeroed in on IJN force, if it was already in the approximate area. Hitting the IJN fleet while the air wing was attacking Pearl would have been ideal as there is little left minding the store, except the CAP. The 5"/38 came out in the mid 30s, and several classes prior to the Fletcher were armed with at least a couple of 5"/38s in the all singing, all dancing, power enclosed turrets with integral ammo hoist, which gave them a rate of fire advantage. As for radar: there is a photo of USS Phoenix leaving Pearl on the 7th, with West Virginia and Arizona burning in the background. It has what looks very much like a radar antenna on top of the gun director at the top of the superstructure. The BBs escorting the carriers were a pair of Kongos, so they were vulnerable to heavy cruisers. It would have been a brawl, but the IJN ships would be so outnumbered, some of the USN DDs would probably have gotten through to the carriers. However, as you said, the fleet running away in the opposite direction could have been an option too.
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  925.  @emperordave3006  in the USN "V" designates fixed wing. "Z" designated lighter than air, Zeps and blimps.
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  926.  @dennisnichols2411  Sticks in my mind that I have read accounts of Coral Sea where SBDs were flying CAP.
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  927. Did the RN consider a more radical rebuild of the QEs, comparable to the rebuild the Italians did with the Andrea Doria class, with the hull lengthening and more than doubling engine power? The thought of 5 totally modern, 28+ kt QEs is appealing. The first thought of "why not" would be the improvements would push displacement over the 35,000 ton limit as the Wiki entry shows the QEs displacing over 32,000 tons. The rebuilds of the Dorias and Kongos added some 4-5,000 tons, which would have put the QEs over the limit. But, as measured for treaty purposes, without consumables, the QEs are listed in the treaty text at 27,500, so it looks like there is enough room to do the lengthening. Such radically updated QEs would nearly render the KGVs redundant.
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  928.  @aclark1000603  iirc, the boilers in an Iowa class run at about 600psi.
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  929. The Germans had a plan to take Gibraltar, which involved pulling Spain into the war on their side, so the German army could cross Spanish territory to lay siege to Gibraltar. The problem with using Brest and St Nazaire was they were within range of British bombers. Using the port facilities in Ferrol and Rota, would probably put German ships out of range of British land based bombers. Of course, with Gibraltar neutralized, that opens the Atlantic to the Italian fleet, and makes all the repair facilities of Italy accessible to German ships.
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  930.  @WALTERBROADDUS  the plan was not a hostile invasion of Spain, but a friendly alliance, so that the German forces in France could get at Gibraltar. Gaining access to Spanish ports would have been free. Look up "Operation Felix".
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  931.  @rodrigogoncalves6165  According to my 1928 USN Port Guide, there are no drydocks, in Spain, or Portugal, that could accommodate the largest German ships. I don't know what may have been built between 1928 and 1940. Of what existed in 28, the largest drydocks, outside of France, that the Germans could have had access to, from the Atlantic, without running a gauntlet of British fire. were in Italy. assuming Gibraltar had been neutralized.
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  932.  @rodrigogoncalves6165  yes, a nice anchorage, but you need repair facilities, like drydocks. That was the point of the British executing the St Nazaire raid, to disable the only dock in France that could accommodate Tirpitz. The USN wanted to base ships in the Philippines, but needed adequate repair facilities. The Dewey drydock was built in Maryland, in 1905. At the time, it was the largest floating dock in the world. It was then towed across the Atlantic, through the Med, through Suez, across the Indian Ocean, and into the Pacific, to get it to Subic Bay. The newspapers reported the Navy did the tow itself, using a couple colliers and a supply ship, because no commercial towing company, that had proper, sea-going, tugs, would attempt it. I'm sure suitable floating docks could have been built in Italy and towed to Spanish Atlantic ports, but it might have been simpler to send the German ships to Naples for work.
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  933.  @ZenkoTheGreat  Happened on a site yesterday that lists barbette inside diameters. According to that site, and I have no idea if it is accurate or not, the inside diameter of the barbettes of the Tennessees and Coloradoes are identical at 31feet. Armor thickness is also the same at 13". The weight of two 16"/45s is 213,918kg. The weight of three 14"/50s is 244,419kg. Navweaps does not list a weight for the Tennessee turrets. Based on what I see, and as the Navy Department had already moved from the 14" to the 16" for Maryland, which was building at the same time as the Tennessees, I would ask SecNav Daniels why not tag the 14"s that were in production as spares for the New Mexicos, and shift the Tennessees to the 16".
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  934.  @Volunteer-per-order_OSullivan  wrt BB designs available in 35, there were probably early iterations of the KGV on paper, but, due to the BB construction moratorium extended through 36 by First London, the only designs actively under construction in 35 were Littorio, Scharnhorest, Dunkerque and Richeleau. iirc the Naval Treaties prohibited yards in countries that were parties to the treaties building BBs that exceeded treaty limits for sale to other countries, so, if India wanted a BB that exceeded treaty limits, it would have to shop in countries that were not in the treaty. Everything is conspiring for India's ambition of being a battleship owner to be frustrated.
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  935.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I would not think the idea would be "out of the box" since the necessary data was in the printed gunnery tables, well before the war started, so someone else had to be thinking the same thing. As math works the same everywhere, I expect the Germans could calculate the equations just as well as the USN could. Your thought about what to do with the removed powder is a good one. Off hand, I don't know exactly how much the charge would be reduced to reduce the MV the required amount, but I'm sure someone 80 years ago had calculated that, otherwise, specs for reduced charge firing wouldn't be in the gunnery tables. Knowing the German fetish for organization, Bismark probably had reduced charge bags already made up. So, when they wanted to shoot through PoW's belt, they used a full charge for the wider danger space and higher kinetic energy, and they grabbed the smaller bags for lobbing shells at Hood that could punch through the deck.
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  936.  @whiskydeltagolf4555  probably a matter of availability and being able to push the ship to adequate speed for the mission. Flower class corvettes also had VTE power.
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  937.  @damndaniel2880  So, you are assuming someone assassinated Darlan in June of 40. With the chain of command broken Admiral Muselier, having been named head of the Free French Navy by de Gaulle on July 1, issues his first order to all freedom loving French sailors to follow his lead to push the Boche out of France. So, when the RN shows up on July 3rd, Gensoul follows orders, and weighs anchor to be escorted past Gibraltar, rendezvous with Richelieu and Jean Bart and steam to England for refit, primarily replacement with British AA armament for which ammunition can be resupplied. So, when Bismark attempts it's break out, Richelieu, Dunkerque and Strasbourg are in Scapa, ready for action. The French squadron makes for the Denmark strait, because it's a farther run and the French ships are faster, while KGV and PoW, being slower, make the shorter trip to the strait between Iceland and the Faroe islands. So the three French ships engage, heading straight for the Germans, as all of their main armament is forward, and this approach provides the smallest target for the Germans. Then Richelieu's wonky ammunition blows up three of it's barrels, and they only have four spares on Jean Bart. Richelieu retires, while Dunkerque and Strasbourg, with their thoroughly tested high velocity 13" guns, press the attack. Yes, could be interesting.
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  938.  @jamesd3472  My suspicion is that the Admiralty's architects had determined that the combination of 16" guns with the speed and armor they wanted in the KGVs was a no-go. Design work on the KGVs started when 16", as well as 15", guns were still legal. Doing a bit of back of the envelope figuring, I get an estimate for the 3-triple 15" turrets considered for the KGVs as being some 850 tons heavier than the 14" arrangement they settled on. 16" would probably be even heavier, unless they cut back the number of guns. The Littorios and Bismarks mounted 15", but they also significantly exceeded treaty displacement limits. The North Carolinas mounted 16", but are considered underarmored. The South Dakotas mounted 16", but were slow, in spite of using bleeding edge powerplant technology that was not available to the Brits when the KGVs were designed. The escalator clause of Second London allowed the return to 16" guns, if a party refused to sign the new treaty by April 1937, which the Japanese said in 34 that they would not do, but the tonnage increase was not specified. The escalator clause said the parties would try to negotiate tonnage escalation to a new point. So, because of that poor planning, the UK and US wasted over a year arguing about the new tonnage limit, the US wanting 45,000 while the UK looking for something in the 41-42,000 ton range. Once the tonnage increase was agreed, then the UK proceeded with the Lion class, but, by then, battleships were pretty much irrelevant and the Lions with their 16" guns were stillborn.
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  939.  @CharlesStearman  Emden was detached from von Spee's squadron, penetrated the Indian ocean and raided commerce in the eastern Indian Ocean for several months before being caught and defeated by HMAS Sydney. If Emden had been trying to transit the Indian Ocean in an attempt to get home, Sydney would never have caught up with her.
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  940.  @benwilson6145  I looked at my 1928 USN port guide to get an idea of the coal supplies typically on hand in those African ports. Dar Es Salaam typically had no more than 500 tons on hand. The other ports on the hypothetical route were so small they were not listed at all. Suspect that the lack of fuel that would be accessible by the Germans makes that route a no-go. Going around South America was a better option. Von Spee had refueled in Valparaiso, and German diplomats were arranging fuel supplies elsewhere along the South American coast. He could have made it back to Europe, if he had stayed away from the Falklands, and British spies did not pick up on fuel supplies being staged for the squadron, so the RN could lay a trap. Prinz Eitel Friedrich, a merchant cruiser, was detached from von Spee's squadron and raided independently in the Pacific and South Atlantic. She made it as far as Newport News, Virginia, where she put in for fuel and repairs, and was quickly blocked in by British and French warships.
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  941.  @benwilson6145  The Netherlands being neutral, the Dutch colonies would probably sell them fuel and supplies, same as US held Guam or the Philippines, but not allow the Germans to use neutral territory as a base.
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  942.  @michaeltruett817  iirc, the USN started using a multi-bulkhead torpedo defense system in the Tennessees. Ships prior to that were provided with a single torpedo bulkhead. During modernization in the early 30s, the New Mexicos apparently received a second torpedo bulkhead, as well as bulges. Earlier ships received bulges in their modernizations. There is a damage analysis of the BBs at Pearl on line, which I read some time ago. From my memory of the article, the multi-bulkhead system the West Virginia was built with performed well. The ship sank because it was hit so many times the system was overwhelmed. The retro-fitted bulges on Oklahoma did not perform as well.
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  943.  @konnigkratz  G B Shaw once said something along the lines of "Americans and English are two peoples separated by a common language". I tease my Canadian friend about putting a "u" in words where they don't belong, like labor and color. :^)
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  944.  @johnshepherd8687  Capital ships absolutely could be sunk by carrier aircraft in the 20s. The RN had Sopwith Cuckoos armed with Mk 9 18' torpedoes embarked on Argus in late 1918. The Cuckoo was followed by a continuous string of torpedo bombers through WWII. The USN had the DT embarked on carriers from 1921. followed by a string of models from Martin. There would be plenty of aircraft about looking to put a big hole below the waterline of capital ships, and a lot of those capital ships were built with diddly for protection against torpedo hits, and bulges were only retrofitted as the navies got around to it. For active defense against those torpedo bombers, both the RN and USN had single shot 3" guns and machine guns. The RN also had the Mk II iteration of the Vickers 2 pounder pompom. Such a hypothetical encounter could look very much like Midway, or Coral Sea, at half speed. The first ship sunk by an aerial torpedo was a Turkish freighter, sunk in the Sea of Marmara in August 1915. The torp was delivered by a Short floatplane. In 1918, the British navy planned a mass attack on the High Seas fleet in port using more than 100 carrier launched Cuckoos, but the war ended before enough of the aircraft could be built.
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  945.  @Strelnikov403  as originally built, the Renowns were very thin skinned as well. Hood's 12" thick belt does not cover much, before it is replaced by a 7" belt, with a 5" belt above that. The 12" thick portion is less than 9' high, with 3' of that below the waterline, according to drawings by the USN. The 13' thick belt on a Colorado class BB was 17' high, with 8'10" of that below the waterline. iirc, Drac noted that the problem with battlecruisers is, the moment you put battleship size guns on it, there is an overwhelming temptation to put it in line against real battleships. If you keep the battlecruiser in the "armored cruiser/second class battleship" range, with guns noticeably smaller than those of a BB, the temptation to routinely go against BBs starts to disappear because, all other things being equal, the smaller shells can't penetrate a BB's armor.
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  946.  @johnshepherd8687  I don't think we are discussing "accelerated" carrier development. We are discussing what was available in the late 20s. Yes, fighters would be embarked, Fairey Flycatchers for the RN and Boeing FBs for the USN. I figure the US has the two Lexingtons, while the RN has the three Courageouses, Eagle and Hermes. Both Argus and Langley left in port because they are too slow. The USN did figure aircraft were becoming too fast for machine guns in the early 30s and started developing the 1.1. BuOrd spent years on that thing, finally putting it in production in the late 30s, but it still didn't work right. The Mk II Vickers had reliability issues too, but it was available in the 20s. Later marks resolved those issues in the early 30s. As I said, it would be a precursor to Coral Sea or Midway, at 85mph instead of 150. Like the IJN, the RN would probably have an advantage in the effectiveness of it's torpedo planes too, because the USN lost interest in torpedo planes. Ranger is said to have been originally built with no torpedo magazine.
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  947.  @willpat3040  I don't understand the physics involved, but I have read that a heavier shell retains it's momentum longer.
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  948.  @willpat3040  You are going by the tables on Navweaps? The muzzle velocities are different. On the Mk 7 gun, the AP is fired at 2500fps, the HC is fired at 2690. On the Mk 6 gun, the AP is fired at only 2300fps, while the HC is fired at 2635fps. The different guns use a different charge. The Mk 6 uses a 535lb charge. The Mk 7 uses a 660lb charge. The tables do show how the lighter Mk 13 shell loses momentum faster than the Mk 8, which weighs 800lbs more. In the Mk 6 gun, the lighter Mk 13 starts out at 2635fps vs only 2300 for the Mk 8. But, 30,000 yards out, the Mk 13 has slowed to 1375, while the heavier Mk 8 is steaming along at 1490.
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  949.  @willpat3040  It is a combination of weight of shell, and muzzle velocity. MV for the 2110lb Mk 3 shell, in a Mk 1 16", is 2600fps, using a 590lb charge. MV for a 2240lb Mk 5 shell, in a Mk 5 gun, is reduced to 2520fps, with a smaller 545lb charge. The 2700lb Mk 8 shell, in a Mk 6 gun, is fired at only 2300fps, using an even smaller 535lb charge. Everyone wants to hit with maximum kinetic energy. The equation is E=M(V squared), so the most efficient way to increase kinetic energy would seem to be to increase velocity, but high velocity guns tended to have issues with dispersion and rapid barrel wear. Then someone noticed that heavier shells retained more velocity at range. Using the tables on Navweaps, the Mk 3 was traveling at 1656fps at 17,300yds,, the Mk 5 travels at 1629 at 20,000yds, and the Mk 5 travels at 1604 at 20,000, nearly the same velocity at impact as a Mk 3, at longer range, in spite of a slower muzzle velocity, and delivering a lot more weight, hence more kinetic energy. Losing a bit of extreme range to obtain the greater kinetic energy at combat range is immaterial, as the chances of hitting anything at more than 30,000 yards are pretty slim. So subsequent marks of 16"/45 guns and AP shells trended to heavier shell, smaller charge, and lower muzzle velocity, for better accuracy, better penetration, and better barrel life.
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  950.  @willpat3040  well, I posted a very detailed comparison of shell weight, muzzle velocity, and shell velocity at range, to make a point about kinetic energy, a few hours ago. But now it has vanished.
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  951.  @johnshepherd8687  yes. That's what I keep telling my Canadian friend when he cries about how old and decrepit the four pipers were that FDR gave the UK. My point about the Marianas and Carolines, for instance, is that the US could have scooped them all up in 98, because Spain did not have the wherewithal to say "no", but left the supply lines to the Philippines open to being cut by another power holding those islands.
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  952. I have read that, during the North Africa campaign, the Italian army had mobile bordellos to keep the troops relaxed. Did they have a floating bordello too?
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  953.  @rickardw1875  Yes. Battle of Imbros, January 20, 1918. HMS Raglan, one of the monitors fitted with a twin 14" turret The Admiralty purchased from Bethlehem Steel in the US, and M28, armed with a 9.2" gun, were attacked by the Ottoman battlecruser Yavûz Sultân Selîm, formerly the German battlecruiser Goeben and the cruiser Midilli, ex-German Breslau. Both monitors were sunk. Raglan did return fire, but scored no hits before it was knocked out.
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  954. The Swordfish were supposed to have, iirc, 5 squadrons of Spits escorting, 3 on high cover and 2 more with them. Only 1 squadron showed up on time. The Swordfish don't carry a lot of fuel, so they couldn't wait any longer for the other Spits. They were intercepted by FW-190s. The Squadron of Spits were fully engaged and there were plenty of 190s left to attack the Swordfish. The Swordfish were so slow the 190s had trouble staying on their tail, and the Swordfish were far more maneuverable and could easily outturn the 190s. All the Swordfish were lost to flak.
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  955. If Harris is meticulous about record keeping, like I am, she would still have her 1983 tax return, with the W2 showing where she worked.
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  956.  @garyhill2740  The British, US, Germans and Japanese all had chaff that could be dropped by aircraft. The Wiki article does not discuss ship mounted rockets for dispensing chaff, like the British used successfully in the Falklands.
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  957.  @Ralph-yn3gr  the US' intent in calling the conference was to stop all new ship construction, because the US didn't want to spend anything. They probably could have gotten a waiver for one of the Lexingtons, by arguing parity with Hood, but the US didn't want to spend the money. I have read that the UK was inclined to allow a single ship displacement limit of 42-43,000, because of Hood, but the US insisted on the hard 35,000 limit. It actually would probably have been cheaper to complete a Lexington as designed, than to break up all the battlecruisers that were in process, and start over with a new design that was under the 35,000 limit. It was even cheaper to complete Colorado and West Virginia for 16" armed, "post Jutland" parity, because the ships were already in an advanced stage of construction. Bottom line: US took the cheapest possible route to having a 16" armed 3:2 ratio with Japan.
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  958. A question came up on a FB group a few days ago: why did Warspite retain most of it's casemate mounted 6" after it's rebuild, when the 4"/45 Mk XVI, a few of which were mounted in the rebuild, was capable of dual purpose use? Seems that the 6" were a waste of space and weight, which could be better used for more of the 4"/45.
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  959.  @toddwebb7521  Battleccruisers were not treated as a separate class by the treaty. Whether to build a battlecruiser or a battleship was entirely up to the parties to the treaty. Personally, I loath the Nelsons, because they look odd and are slow. Hood was grandfathered as it was already in commission when the conference started. As I mentioned in my "tweaks" to the treaty, posted below, I would have set the capital ship displacement limit at Hood's displacement, to settle the issue.
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  960.  @stuross85  The WNT left the RN with more tonnage than the USN. While the quota for both USN and RN was the same, 525,000 tons, the actual retention list totals were far apart: 500,650 for the USN and 580,450 for the RN. The adjustments that allowed completion of Colorado, West Virginia and the Nelsons brought them closer: 525,850 for the USN, almost dead on the quota, and 558,950 for the RN, so the RN had about 33,000 tons, almost an entire treaty battleship more, than the USN. These tonnages are all in the treaty text. While the RN, with the Nelsons, had 2 BBs with 16" guns and the USN had 3, the RN had 13 ships with 15" guns and 5 with 13.5" guns, while the USN had 9 with 14" guns, though with more guns per ship, than the RN 15" BBs, and 4 with 12" guns. That's why, in my post below, I said I would tend to give the UK the stink eye about it's crying about not having any 16" ships. If I was dictating treaty terms, the RN would have scrapped Thunderer and Centurion, to bring it's initial tonnage down to 534,950, less than 10,000 tons over it's quota, and it could start building 16" ships when the treaty's planned replacement program started in the 1930s. So, for what it's worth, I agree with Admiral Sims.
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  961.  @RedXlV  the RN drew up a wide variety of designs in the early 20s. I quite like the J3, which had 3-triple 15" turrets, in a conventional layout, and could make about 33kts. This would be a vastly more useful ship 20 years later, due to it's speed, as they could kill a Scharnhorst, and run down a Deutschland and turn it into hamburger before tea time. But the J3 displaced about 43,000 tons. Besides, the RN seems to have had a size obsession and demanded something with 16" guns.
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  962.  @RedXlV  on converting the Admirals to carriers, the result would have been the same as with the Lexingtons: horribly inefficient ships that burn up the tonnage allotment. The problem seems to be the long, tapered stern that the battlecruisers need for speed. Look at a stern view of a Lexington. You can hardly tell it's the stern because it is so sharp, only flairing out just below the flight deck. That creates a ludicrously short hangar deck. Look at the sterns of other carriers, like a Yorktown or Ark Royal: the stern is narrow at the waterline, but broadens quickly above the waterline, to allow a longer hangar. imho, the RN chose wisely.
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  963.  @bookertamm3020  that ship has been "cabbed over". That was commonly done to obsolete ships to convert them to barracks or receiving ships. The USS Constitution spent some years like that too.
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  964.  @DubGathoni  The most likely scenario would be additional ships would be scrapped according to their age. The treaty text is on line. Scroll down to the replacement schedules to see the sequence the additional ships would be scrapped in. For the IJN, the next ships up for the chop would be the Kongos, then the Fusos. For the USN, the Floridas then Wyomings. For the RN: the Iron Dukes, then Tiger.
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  965.  @RedXlV  the scenario I proposed below would have set the tonnage limit per ship in the neighborhood of Hood, rather than 35,000 tons. As the real limiting factor was the total tonnage allocation to each party to the treaty, the tonnage of each ship only really matters if someone is obsessing about how many he has, and wants to make sure no-one else can have more. Otherwise, does it matter if a country has 4-43,750 ton ships vs 5-35,000 ton ships?
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  966.  @stephenknowles1420  my opinion is worth what you paid for it :) I have held that the Deutschlands were the last of the armored cruisers. Nothing is battleship grade, not the armor, not the armament, not the displacement, nor are they as fast as treaty cruisers or battle cruisers of the same vintage. Dunkerque is, by my measure, a battlecruiser: big guns, and a glass jaw, with it's 8.9" belt. Scharnhorst, with it's 13.8" belt, I view as a BB, if an under gunned one, because it can hold up fairly well to fire from a BB. Scharn certainly took a lot of punishment before it finally went down, while Dunkerque was disabled by only four hits from Hood, two of which penetrated it's main belt.
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  967.  @stephenmeier6091  would Fisher have agreed to any limitation treaty? If the fleet is a deterrent, than reducing the fleet reduces the deterrent.
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  968.  @galbert117  how small of a ship have BB grade guns been used on? The Royal Navy built a series of "monitors" for shore bombardment in WWI. The Erebus class mounted (2) 15"/42 in a Mk 1 turret, the same as was used in a QE class BB. They were 405' long and displaced 8,000 tons. The Italians mounted 15"/40s that had been built for the Caracciolo class BBs on a variety of improvised, self propelled, barges during WWI. They did have one class of purpose built, single gun monitors, the Monte Grappa class, 40 meters long, displacing about 600 tons.
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  969.  @AtomicBabel  She was dead in the water and listing, but not sinking, before the sub finished her off. If she had power, she would almost certainly have been salvageable. When I was on the Lex, we had portable, submersible pumps, in racks, all over the ship. They were brass cylinders maybe 6-8" in diameter and 3 feet long. One rainy day, I was detailed to pump out a bomb elevator that had flooded from the rain. Grab a pump from the rack, attach a hose to the top end of the pump, attach the other end of the hose to a nearby port in the hull to dump the water overboard, plug the pump in to power, and watch the water go away. No power, and all these pumps become useless. Pumping is limited by the number of portable generators you can bring on board, and salvage becomes orders of magnitude more difficult.
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  970.  @kemarisite  didn't Jackie Fisher overrule that decision in late 14, so the Revenges were completed as entirely oil fired? After the cull following the WNT, weren't the Iron Dukes and Tiger the only coal fired capital ships left? I have not read any note saying the Dukes and Tiger were converted to oil before they were culled for First London.
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  971.  @ArcticTemper  Not specific to your question, but if WWI had broken out in 08, it would have enormous ramifications for Italy. Italy fought it's own war with Turkey in 1911-12, the spoils of which were possession of Libya and several islands off the Turkish coast. If WWI had broken out earlier, or Italy had held off on it's own war with Turkey, then, at the conclusion of WWI, when Britain and France were carving up the ME, Italy could grab Libya for free. That would leave a considerable pile of money in the teens that Italy could potentially put into finishing the Caracciolo class battleships, which would have major implications at sea in WWII.
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  972.  @garrettledford1147  Given the knowledge available in 1918, how would I prepare for a war 20 years later, that I would not know was coming, and did not know what technology would be ascendant? I would have looked at Hood, and the Italian Caracciolo class and decided that fast battleships were the way to go. Not thin skinned Lexingtons, not slow South Dakotas and certainly not the even slower Colorados, 3 of which had not yet been laid down due to the intervention of WWI. I probably would have laid down half a dozen ships with the size and power of the Lexingtons, but with the armor of the South Dakotas. We are talking a USN version of a G3. Of course, it takes 3 years to build a capital ship. The earliest I could get anything laid down would be 1919, so they would all be incomplete when the treaty went into effect, and, being way over treaty limits, they would not be completed, no matter how many other battleships the US offered to scrap to save them, but scrapped or used for target practice when 75-80% complete. All a titanic waste of money and effort, and the US goes into WWII without Colorado or West Virginia.
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  973.  @jamesd3472  As I read First London, it sounds like the replacement schedule as laid out in the Washington Treaty was simply deferred through 1936. The replacement sequence for the RN as laid out originally was the four Iron Dukes in 34, but First London had them scrapped without replacement. For 35, the schedule called for Tiger (which First London scrapped without replacement), QE, Warspite and Barham. For 36: Malaya and Royal Sovereign. 37: Revenge and Resolution, 38: Royal Oak. 39: Valiant and Repulse. 40: Renown. 41: Ramillies and Hood. I see things that beg questions be asked, like why Valiant would be retained for a few years after the other QEs had been scrapped. The ships are all named specifically in the text of the treaty, so the UK must have had it's reasons. So, given the scrapping sequence, and as the Iron Dukes and Tiger were already gone, the implication is the KGVs were intended to replace QE, Warspite, Barham, Malaya and Royal Sovereign.
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  974.  @timengineman2nd714  The RN was not in a bind wrt tonnage after First London. With the Nelsons, the RN was at 558,950, but, when First London deleted the Iron Dukes and Tiger, that drew the RN down to 430,450, roughly 95,000t below their 525,000t limit, so they had headroom for two KGVs before firing up the cutting torch for anything. The USN came out of the treaty at 525,850t. First London deleted both Floridas and Wyoming, so the USN had 68800t of headroom, a bit short of enough for both North Carolinas. The replacement schedule for the USN isn't as scrambled as the RN's: Arkansas and both New Yorks in 35. both Nevadas in 36. both Pennsylvanias in 37. Mississippi in 38, New Mex and Idaho in 39, Tennessee in 40, California and Maryland in 41. Then First London pushing everything back 5-6 years.
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  975.  @robertstone9988  there are pix on line of a model of Arizona as it is today. Outside of the tip of the bow, the forward half of the ship is structurally destroyed. Had Arizona sunk in deep water, that forward half would probably have broken up during the fall. Drawings I see of Hood sinking show the forward section at a steep angle, with the bow far into the air. Material I read says the bow broke near the spot where the way the keel is made changed. I suspect Hood's bow broke off due to the same forces that broke Titanic in half from one end being entirely out of the water, with the forces acting on that weak spot where the keel structure changed. Then the pieces of Hood would suffer additional damage from impact with the bottom after their long fall, while Arizona only settled a few feet, coming to rest with her quarterdeck barely awash.
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  976.  @robertstone9988  HMS Furious was intended to have single 18" fore and aft, but then the fore turret was replaced by the flight deck before completion. Furious went in months later, when the rear 18" was pulled and a landing deck for aircraft added. The 18" guns were later remounted on some of the Lord Clive class monitors.
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  977.  @robertstone9988  your question seemed to make sense to me, and I gave my theory about why Arizona is, sort of, in one piece: the wreck only dropped about 20 feet, so didn't have a chance to fall apart, like Hood did. I take the "final salvo" as exactly that. If the guns are loaded and ready to go, and the trigger is right in front of you, why not pull it? Those shells aren't going to do any good sitting on the bottom. If the forward magazines had detonated, there wouldn't be much left of the Hood at all, as the extent of damage would probably be about equal to the length of the ship shattered by the aft mag explosion.
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  978.  @mikesaporitojr3313  offhand, I would say Italy. Japan gave notice in 1934 that it would leave the treaty system when First London expired at the end of 36, so it had a free hand when it did things like build the Yamatos. Germany was not part of the treaty system. Italy was a member of the treaty community when it laid down battleships and cruisers that violated the displacement limits, and it lad down a lot more treaty breaking ships than Germany did. so would have been a bigger violater than Germany, if Germany had been a member of the treaty system.
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  979.  @seppokajantie9588  I just did a comment on this post, outside of this Q&A thread, on relining barrels. Once the new liner is in place, restoring the original inside diameter to the barrel, new rifling is cut in the liner.
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  980.  @and15re1  from my reading, the RN sort of backed into the entire idea of a monitor in WWI. The RN was using obsolete battleships for bombardment, as the US did in WWII. The President of Bethlehem Steel, which owned the Fore River shipyard, was negotiating with the Admiralty, in November 1914, for a contract to build 20-30 submarines for the RN, when the Admiralty officials asked if he had anything else useful around. Greece had contracted with a German yard to build a new battleship, but the turrets and guns had been subcontracted to Bethlehem Steel. Bessie could not make delivery to the German yard, due to the British blockade, so the 4 twin turret and 14"/45 gun sets, and 4,000 rounds of ammo, were offered to the Admiralty. The Admiralty snapped them up and threw together the first modern monitors, the Abercrombie class, with shallow draft and huge torpedo bulges. That started the monitor building program, with guns taken from the obsolete Majestic class battleships and Drake and Cressy class cruisers. My suspicion is the US never went that way, because, in WWII, they already had a very large supply of obsolete battleships and didn't see the sense in building new hulls to carry the obsolete guns that were already afloat on the battleships. If the RN had been able to source more turret and gun sets, the way they sourced the sets from Bethlehem, they probably would not have been stripping obsolete warships either. Oh, the submarines? Bethlehem got away with selling the guns while the US was neutral, but, when President Wilson got wind of the submarine deal, he had the subs impounded until the US entered the war.
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  981. wrt the question about the relative value of a WWI vintage destroyer vs an AMC, I recently reread "Fifty Ships That Saved The World". A group, iirc 4, of those destroyers were making their way from Halifax to the UK when they received radio traffic from Jervis Bay, which was squaring off against Scheer. The USN had handed over those whips with full magazines and torpedo tubes. The DDs rang up flank speed to aid Jervis Bay, but arrived too late. Can't help but wonder what if the DDs had departed Halifax with the convoy Jervis Bay was escorting? The British crews only had a brief orientation on the US weapons before heading to the UK, so the battle with Scheer may have been chaotic. On the other hand, I have read that Scheer's recon plane had spotted the convoy and reported to Scheer that it was not escorted at all. If that spotter plane had seen four destroyers with the convoy, would Scheer have attacked?
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  982.  @kemarisite  That is what I was thinking. The UK had a highly developed ammunition industry. Not a big deal to copy the French shells. iirc, when the RN was using US built 14" guns on some monitors in WWI, they made their own shells for them, but bought USN smokeless propellant for them as using cordite imposed a range penalty.
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  983. The USN's naming conventions were not that organized at the time. Monitors, and armored cruisers, could both be named after states, while a battleship could reuse a historical name, like Kearsarge. As you said, the monitors, and the armored cruisers, were renamed when naming battleships after states became formalized. Florida was used as the target in a live fire exercise in 1908, where the turret was hit by a 12" shell and sustained some damage. Florida was using that turret in a live fire exercise targeting the San Marcos (formerly USS Texas) in 1911, so, presumably, the Navy had replacement parts available for the Florida's turret.
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  984. When the Iowas were being reactivated, a Navy representative appeared on a news interview show I saw. He was asked about their vulnerability to Exocets, this being shortly after the Falklands war. His reply was that, if an Iowa was hit with an Exocet, they would "pipe sweepers on deck to push the remains of the missile over the side". I can see that, as ASM warheads don't have a casing strong enough to penetrate armor, as that would reduce the bursting charge, resulting in the ASM going splat against the side of the ship.
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  985.  @kemarisite  Looking at the Sheffield and Stark, cruise missiles appear to hit only several feet above the waterline, where they would hit the side armor of a BB. Additionally, the Iowas don't have aluminum superstructures, but steel, with a higher melting point, so fire damage is not as severe as in a modern ship. I think of radar guidance as having ADD. it will home in on whatever gives it the best return at the moment, which would be the long, tall, flat side of the hull. Sheffield was hit in the side of the hull, just about amidships. Stark was hit in the hull, just below the bridge. On an Iowa, hits in those locations, only several feet above the waterline, would go splat against the armor.
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  986.  @kemarisite  That is interesting. The Harpoon test shots I saw pix of several years ago were all hull strikes. The popup is probably to exploit the vulnerability of an aluminum superstructure, or the hanger of a carrier. In the case of a DD, that popup means aiming for a smaller target. It may look good on paper, but there may be a lot of missiles that whiz harmlessly over the ship.
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  987.  @brendonbewersdorf986  are you assuming the naval treaties exist, or not? We need to look at the precise language of the WNT, however, for some reason, the full text I have referred to in the past is not coming up in a search today. As I recall, the language of the treaty related the tonnage limits to replacement ships, implying that a power could retain more than it's quota worth of ships, but would have to start drawing down the surplus as new, replacement, ships were built. In the original treaty retention list, the RN was well over it's 525,000 ton limit. Even after the Nelsons were added, and four old ships eliminated in exchange, the RN was still over it's 525KT limit. If my read is correct, the US could have retained more older ships, if it wanted to, up to the moment it was granted authority to complete West Virginia and Colorado as replacements for the two Delawares, which would then compel adherence to the 525kt limit. If the US, in April 1917, had taken a page from the RN and cancelled all the Colorados and Tennessees outright, to clear the slipways for DD construction, then all the South Dakotas and Lexingtons are scrapped because they exceed treaty maximums, the USN would be stuck, not only with the Delawares, but also the South Carolinas and some of the pre-dreadnought Connecticuts to fill it's tonnage quota. Potential use for pre-dreadnoughts? Before US entry into WWI, it engaged in several "big stick" waving exercises, invading Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Mexico. As there was no opposing naval force, the USN used a variety of obsolete ships, battleships, armored cruisers and monitors, in those operations. In a post WWI environment, and a shortage of modern capital ships, I could see the US continuing to use pre-dreadnoughts in big stick waving exercises to frighten the locals. I doubt a Connecticut would be any deterrent to a Nelson though.
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  988.  @erichammond9308  the pompom's shortfall is short range. The 25mm has a significant advantage in range. Navweaps gives a max ceiling, for the high velocity version of the pompom MV 2300fps, which Japan did not have, of 13,300ft, vs 18,000 for the Type 96. If the Japanese had licensed the Italian 37mm, they would have a more formidable AA defense as it threw a larger shell than the Type 96, with a higher ceiling, 16,400ft, than the pompom, with a loading system that eliminated the reload stoppages of the Type 96. And the Italian twin 37mm, was available from 1932.
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  989. The Swordfish, Kate and Devastator were all pretty short ranged, when carrying a torpedo. The Dauntless was the one of that era that could really "reach out and touch someone", as it probably had the flexibility to reduce the payload in exchange for more gas. The Brits would need to change their tactics to use bombs more than torps.
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  990.  @johnshepherd8687  and neither a Merlin powered Mustang, nor a Corsair, was available in late 41.
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  991.  @johnshepherd8687  The TBD did OK at Coral Sea, because the Wildcats and Dauntlesses waited for the TBDs to catch up, then they launched a coordinated attack. Midway was a pig's breakfast, because all the fighters and bombers flew off in the wrong directions. If the USN had repeated the coordination of Coral Sea, the IJN would have been distracted watching the CAP intercept the Wildcats while the Dauntlesses dove on them, and might not see the TBDs sneaking up on them at masthead height. Thing is, the Brit Mk 12 is longer than the USN Mk 13, so I don't know if the TBD could have been modified to carry them.
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  992.  @johnshepherd8687  iirc, the FAA pilots developed a curving approach, so they could keep eyes on the deck until the last few moments. That approach helped considerably.
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  993.  @jacobdill4499  I thought about that. The US was building to the 35,000 ton limit. Using vertical 13.5" armor, vs new, and sloped, 12" would add a lot of weight. Given the rate that the US cranked out battleships, they did not seem to be armor production capacity limited, like the UK was. Looking at the build times for the KGVs, the first ship completed in good time, but the build times got longer and longer. Anson and Howe were laid down 6-7 months after KGV and PoW, but commissioned 18 months after KGV and PoW. Considering the rate the RN was losing battleships in 41, having those last two KGVs finished a bit earlier would have been nice.
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  994.  @rupertboleyn3885  everything you say is true. However, as I remind my Canadian friend when he starts complaining about the 50 old DDs the US handed over to the RN in late 40, you use what is available. Belt armor bolts on, so the Admiralty could always change out the 13.5" when better material was available. I have read that the 14" on the KGVs was designed to fit the same cradle as the 13.5". Navweaps says 54 of the old 13.5s were still in inventory in 1939. What mongrels Anson and Howe could have been, with US belt armor from the South Dakotas, and guns from the Iron Dukes, Considering that, over the course of 41, the RN had lost Hood, Barham, Prince of Wales, and Repulse, and Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were disabled, a couple of mongrels may have been welcome.
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  995. When I saw the first report why the merger was spiked, my first thought was "Nissan management thought Honda would pay their bills, out of the kindness of it's heart?" Working for decades in the US, I became used to delusional management, like Ford's Farley insisting Ford will "be the Porsche of off road". Idiocy. But I always thought of the Japanese as a bit more connected to reality.
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  996.  @gerardlabelle9626  the newspapers of the time reported there was a consensus among the delegations at the conference that 12" guns were obsolete. Of the three largest navies, the USN was the only one required to retain ships with 12" guns. France retained three 12" armed Dantons, which commissioned in 1911, and received licenses to start building replacements in 1927 and 29. The Floridas were also 12" armed, and commissioned in 1911. but the US did not receive licenses to begin construction of replacements before the 1930s, or authority to improve side armor and upgun the 12" ships, like France and Italy did. I went through the annual spreadsheets published by the Bureau of Supply and Accounts and found that, in the late 1920s, the USN spent some $6.6M modernizing the Floridas, bulges, deck armor, conversion to oil fuel, when the WNT called for them to be scrapped in 34. Washington was 80% complete when work was stopped. The $6.6M spent on the Floridas, already obsolete due to their 12" guns, was just about what was needed to complete Washington, which would have been expected to serve for 20 years. But completing Washington would give the US too many "post-Jutland" ships. I think the real issue separating "pre" from "post" was the size of the guns, not the date ships were laid down or designed. In July 1916, SecNav Daniels announced, with the General Board agreeing, that Jutland had proven the need to go to larger guns, which could penetrate at longer range. If they settled on 15" as the "post-Jutland" size, then the RN would have 13 ships in commission that would be defined as "post-Jutland", even though some of those 15" ships were at the battle, and everyone else would be demanding authority to build a compensating number of ships If they settled on 16" as the "post-Jutland" size, then the UK would need to spend the money to build three Nelsons. So, the delegates engaged in some Orwellian doublethink that said Hood was "post", to avoid spending more money on a third Nelson, while the Tennessees with their advanced torpedo protection and all-or-nothing armor scheme were "pre", so the US could complete Colorado and West Virginia, to replace the obsolete Delawares.
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  997.  @johnshepherd9676  If the US had built the South Dakotas, that means an individual ship limit of some 42-43,000 tons, instead of 35,000. So the Admiralty would not have built the Nelsons. They probably would have proceeded with the G3s, as they had been formally ordered, and complied with the 16" gun limit, which the N3s did not. Probably with some corners cut to reduce the displacement to the low 40s. The SoDaks would have a third more guns, throwing slightly heavier shells, with a larger bursting charge, at higher velocity, with a higher rate of fire per gun, and the after turrets would have a wider firing arc. On the other hand, the G3s could steam rings around the SoDaks. If they were forced to go toe to toe, I would give it to the SoDaks, because they can throw so much steel.
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  998.  @johnshepherd9676  OK, you are talking complete replacement, so the USN makes a quantum leap in size, speed, and firepower, from the Tennessees, to the SoDaks, on the schedule that the Colorados historically occupied. That means Iowa, the one assigned to Newport News, would be laid down in April 1917, because News had the slipway available. The other ships would be suspended for the duration of the war, as the Colorados were. Laid down in 1919, the other SoDaks would be incomplete at the time of the treaty, and, exceeding the 35,000 ton limit, would not be allowed to complete. If the SoDaks replace the Tennessees as well, that means SoDak is laid down in Brooklyn in May 17, and Montana is laid down at Mare Island October 16. So three are complete before the treaty goes into effect. If the US had one SoDak, I think the Brits would call it a wash with Hood. In my readings on the Washington conference, the UK suggested a 43,000 ton limit for individual ships. It was the US that insisted on the hard 35,000 limit. So, if anyone else had 43,000 tonners, the UK would certainly insist they have a sufficient number of ships of that size, for parity. If the US had three SoDaks complete, the Brits would demand two more 43,000 ton ships, for parity, which brings us back to two somewhat slimmed down G3s. More Admirals, or J3s, would only mount 15" guns, and the UK would want 16". for parity. Of course, all this between the US and UK is not happening in a vacuum. If the UK and US both had 43,000 tonners, the Japanese would demand they be allowed to complete one or both Tosas, for proportional parity. Getting back to your original SoDak vs Nelson question, the previous gunnery assessment stands: the SoDaks way outgun whatever the UK had in the works. G3s would have a significant speed advantage over the SoDaks, the Nelsons would not. The G3s could run away before they were crippled, the Nelsons could not.
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  999.  @johnshepherd9676  well, as I commented to someone else upthread, when I do alt history, I keep it close to reality. with all it's complexity, and use only one or two pivot points to create the alternate timeline. It makes the exercise more challenging. I understand that isn't everyone's cup of tea. That's fine.
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  1000.  @somethinglikethat2176  I don't even play Drac on TV, but I have a project in mind. I think the TBD gets a bum wrap for it's performance at Midway. Up to that point, the plane had done well. There are no surviving TBDs in museums anywhere. The Lexington is, of course, a war grave, and cannot be disturbed. However, there are several TBDs in the debris field around the ship. Due to the cold, dark, and oxygen starved conditions at that depth, photographs have shown the planes to be well preserved. My project would be to salvage the TBDs in the Lexington debris field, for restoration and display at the USN aviation museum in Pensacola, and selected other museums around the US.
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  1001.  @davidlow8104  I would suspect the answer to your question would be "no difference". I have read that the UK was willing to accept a limit for individual ships in the 42,000 ton range, an intellectually honest position as the UK already had Hood, of that size. But, the treaty also limited overall battleship fleet size to a set tonnage limit, so building larger ships would result in having fewer ships. When First London set a cruiser fleet tonnage limit, the RN had to build below the individual cruiser displacement limit to be able to build enough cruisers to meet their needs.
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  1002.  @davidlow8104  iirc, the objective of the treaty was to cut spending. If the UK had built 45.000 ton Nelsons, then the US would have wanted to complete three South Dakotas and Japan would have wanted to complete the Tosas for parity, and the spending would continue to spiral. The first London treaty extended the battleship construction moratorium through 1936, so any ships that were scrapped, beyond those First London required to be scrapped, could not have been replaced. By the time Second London went into effect, battleship building capacity had atrophied from lack of use. Look at the build times for the KGVs. In discussions in another forum, it appears the Admiralty ordered the five ships of the class laid down essentially simultaneously, when it knew the UK lacked the industrial capacity to build five simultaneously. Consequently, delivery times for the first two, KGV and PoW were not too bad, but deliveries became progressively later on the subsequent ships. With new construction capacity so constrained, they had no option but modernize older ships.
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  1003.  @Tuning3434  The thought crossed my mind, if the Courageous class turrets had been installed as shore batteries, instead of sitting, invitingly, in storage, would Vanguard have been built at all?
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  1004.  @mikolajgrotowski  North Atlantic weather. Lufthansa flew Dornier Wal flying boats to South America in the 1930s with a fueling stop at a tender in mid ocean, but the weather was not as bad as in the North Atlantic.
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  1005.  @Thecrownswill  Greatest success by the French Navy over the Brits? From my perspective as a citizen of the US, the French under deGrasse at the Battle of the Chesapeake in September 1781. deGrasse defeated and drove off the British fleet, stranding Cornwallis' army at Yorktown, resulting in Cornwallis' surrender to the American Continental Army.
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  1006.  @magnusredin6991  the one about French ships covered pre-dreadnoughts and was subtitled "when hotels go to war". When i plugged the "when hotels go to war" phrase into the search thing on Drach's page, it pulled the post up.
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  1007. In the thread about battleship hull design, there is a photo of a hull under construction that has large, horizontal cylinders along the sides of the hull. A search confirmed my suspicion those cylinders were the Pugliese torpedo protection system in a Littorio. How wide was that system? It appears to consume an enormous amount of hull space. In the ongoing "save the Caracciolo" project, reboilering in the 30s with Littorio style boilers in the forward and after centerline boiler rooms will free up the space originally occupied by the 7 boilers in each side boilerroom, to allow installation of the Pugliese system midships, but A and D turrets are placed so far toward the bow and stern that width may be inadequate to allow the Pugliese system without compromising the size of the cylinder.
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  1008.  @kingquackie7284  lets see. Akagi at 36K standard load and 66+25 spare aircraft (numbers plucked from Wiki), Kaga 38Kt standard for 72+18 spare vs Shokaku at 26Kt standard, for 72+12 spares. This is the same sort of question as with the Lexington conversions vs purpose built carriers. Shokaku has a roughly equal size air group on 10K tons less displacement, so if Akagi and Kaga has not been built, the IJN could have built, with a bit of fibbing, three Shokakus instead, for a net gain of 1 hull and an extra 72 plane air group available. The difference would really only matter when Japan was still pretending to abide by the treaty, so the correct comparison would be Agaki and Kaga, vs more Sōryūs at 16KT standard and 63+9 spares. Foregoing Akagi and Kaga would enable 4 more Sōryūs, with a net gain in deployable air group of 114 planes and a net loss of 7 spares. On the US side, foregoing Lexington and Saratoga would have freed up enough tonnage to allow construction of 3 Yorktowns, with enough tonnage left over to build Wasp as a 20,000 ton improved Yorktown.
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  1009. The "perfect knowledge" question is excellent. I have been trying to gain knowledge of the negotiations of the Washington Naval Treaty. Just finished reading the Goldstein/Maurer book. Still not satisfied. Things like mentions that the US wanted to set the displacement limit at 32,500 while the UK preferred 35,000, but no discussion of why either nation picked that value. Why was the UK allowed the Nelsons, because they weren't equal to the Nagatos and Coloroados, they were a next generation design. Plan Steve would have been to set the maximums at whatever was in service at that time: guns at 16.1" because that is what Nagato had, and displacement at that of Hood, with the addition of a quantity limit on armament: no more than 8 guns up to 16.1" per ship or up to 12 guns of no greater than 14", again, because those were the maximums in service.
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  1010.  @gregorywright4918  The USN replaced the coal fired boilers with oil fired ones, in the older BBs retained after the WNT. The New Mexicos received new turbines and new boilers.
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  1011.  @davidlow8104  the 1922 treaty intent was to stop spending. If everyone was fine with having another arms race, building all the ships planned at the time, there would probably not be a treaty until 1930, when the depression forced a cut in spending. The 1930 treaty would probably look a lot like the historical First London treaty: suspension of shipbuilding, with the fleet size drawdowns of the WNT. If 1920s building programs had been pursued, I would suspect strategy to be much more battleship-centric, as that is what the fleets have to work with. Without the WNT, Akagi, Kaga, Lex and Sara would have been completed as originally designed, rather than converted to carriers. That would postpone development of naval air by close to a decade.
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  1012.  @derrickstorm6976  the 16"/45 originally developed for the Colorados was the Mk 1, which started design in 1913. The 16"/50 designed for the South Dakota program of the 1920s was the Mk 2, designed in 1916. You might be confusing the South Dakotas that were cancelled in 1922, with the South Dakotas that were built at the start of WWII. The BuOrd 1918 annual report says the test program for the 16"/50 had been completed, and the production program for 104 guns had started. So both were in hand when SecNav Daniels could have told Congress to cancel the Colorados in June of 1918.
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  1013.  @calvingreene90  expanding on Frank's reply. over last winter, I read about RAF Beaufort torpedo bomber operations. The low and slow approach required for launching a torp left the plane very vulnerable to AA fire from the escorts, which the Beaufort had to overfly to get at the intended target, resulting in a lot of Beauforts being shot to bits. The Brits hit on the idea of bringing along some Beaufighters to suppress the AA fire by strafing the escorts, to improve the probabilities of the Beauforts surviving. By 44, aerial torpedoes were becoming obsolete as they were very expensive and had a low probability of a hit. The preferred weapon was becoming rockets, which were both cheaper and more accurate.
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  1014.  @calvingreene90  taking out escorts is easier said than done as they are usually a smaller target, can move at a higher speed and are more maneuverable. I think I grasp what you are saying: suppress the triple A by sinking the ships at the edge of the formation, and work your way in to the main target. Thing is, a sub lining up a shot has lots of time: multiple periscope sightings and a TDC to perform the calculations. A pilot of a TBD doesn't have any of that, and he has the pressure of dozens of people trying to kill him as he lines up the shot. A TBD driver has to estimate distance to target, target speed, and amount to lead the target, all calculated in his head. One of the theories of why all the torpedo planes missed Scharnhorst and Gneisenau during the Channel dash is that the pilots were used to shooting at freighters steaming at 10-12 kts. The battleships were steaming at 30, and the pilots simply didn't lead them enough when dropping the torp. Error in the amount to lead the target can be reduced by dropping closer, but there is an inner limit to the drop zone as the torp needs time to come back up to running depth after the deep plunge it takes from being dropped, and then the warhead has to arm itself. Meanwhile, the target can see the TBD coming long before it drops, and start taking evasive action. At Coral Sea, TBDs dropped close to 20 torps at Shōkaku without result. Yes the early Mk 13 was a sorry excuse for a torp, but zero for twenty? That is how hard it is to hit a ship at high speed with a torp, even a big ship.
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  1015.  @RedXlV  My take on the Nelsons is the US was sniveling about having 3 Colorados, which were under the treaty 35kt limit, so close to completion being scrapped, so was allowed to complete 2 Colorados, in exchange for scrapping the two Delawares that the treaty would have allowed the US to keep. The UK didn't have any treaty compliant ships under construction, so was compensated by being allowed to build the Nelsons, in exchange for scrapping 4 ships the treaty allowed them to keep. The compensation for France and Italy, for the US and UK being allowed to complete two new ships were their own new construction windows in 1927 and 1929, which the other signatories were not given. The US and UK construction windows did not open until 1931. The first London treaty extended the battleship holiday to 1936, but the construction windows given to France and Italy starting in 27 and 29 were good until used, so, the Dunkerques and first two Littorios could be laid down in the early 30s, using those 27 and 29 construction windows, while everyone else was still shut down. If France had completed two of the Normandies and Italy completed two of the Caracciolos, using the same forbearance that the US and UK used, then they would have lost the 27 and 29 construction windows and not been able to build the Dunkerques and Littorios.
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  1016.  @RedXlV  the objective of the treaty was to reduce spending, so, if the RN had three treaty busting battle cruisers, their scrapping list for other ships would have been even longer than it already was, to keep total tonnage under the limit. If BCs were to be regarded as a separate class from BBs, and the RN had the three treaty busters, plus Renown, Repulse and Tiger. then the US would demand it be allowed to complete an equivalent tonnage of Lexingtons and Japan would want to complete enough of the Amagis to have a proportional tonnage. when combined with the Kongos. All this BC building sort of defeats the intention of the treaty to reduce spending. On the other hand, if the US was content to scrap Colorado and West Virginia, or use them for target practice, like Washington was, the Nelsons would not have happened, and France and Italy would not have had the 27 and 29 construction windows, so the Dunkerqes and Littorios are not built in the early 30s. That leaves Italy entering the war with only the four rebuilt Cavours and Dorias as they could not have started work on the Littorios until Italy withdrew from the treaty system in 36, leaving Littorio and Veneto with a completion date in 41 or 42, if ever. The Richelieus would be laid down as a response to the Bismarks, in 37, later than historically,, unless the drydocks were occupied by the Dunkerques being laid down to respond to the Scharnhorsts. The French would be just nicely started on the Dunkerques, see the Bismarks laid down, realize how inadequate the Dunkerques are, and start over. This all ends up with the Richelieus being incomplete hulls destroyed by allied bombing or broken up for scrap by the Germans.
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  1017.  @olivergoodridgeify  I have read a bit about them. According to what I have read, they proceeded with Hood, as a replacement for the BCs lost at Jutland. They started reworking the design for the other Admirals, based on their analysis of Jutland, until they reached the point where the other Admirals were effectively, a different class than Hood, and such a patchwork of adaptations that they decided to chuck the mess and start over with a clean sheet. The irony is the 1919 design for the Lexington class BCs, the design that was laid down, is said to be heavily influenced by Hood, even though, by the time the Lexingtons were green lighted, the Brits had said they didn't want any more ships like the Hood.
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  1018.  @kemarisite  I have been considering the Deutschlands, and they seem more of a throwback to the pre-WWI Armored Cruisers, which were sometimes referred to as "second class battleships" as they tended to be just a bit faster, with slightly smaller guns and a bit less armor, than a BB. The US Tennessee and Italian Pisa classes mounted 10" guns when the usual BB armament was 12", and they could make 22-23kts vs 18-21 for a BB. The Deutschlands seem to fit right in: 11" guns vs 8" treaty cruisers and 15-16" BBs, slower than a treaty cruiser, but faster than a USN standard or QE or R-class BB.
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  1019. They could not have built anything bigger than Wasp in 36, as Wasp used the last of the USN's carrier tonnage allotment under the treaty.
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  1020.  @CTXSLPR  who couldn't have gone full CV? The Japanese gave notice in late 34 that they would not participate in the treaty after the end of 36, so they could build all they wanted. Ark Royal used the last of the RN's carrier tonnage, except there was a clause in the treaty that carriers in service or building at the time of the treaty were "experimental" and not held to the treaty's 20 year replacement cycle. Hermes, Eagle and Argus all fit that criteria, so the RN could have refitted all three as sub tenders, for instance, and freed up enough tonnage for two more Ark Royals. If they measured the age of the Courageous class carriers from when they commissioned as "large light cruisers", rather than as carriers, they were all 20 years old by 37, so they could all have been replace by new build carriers as well. The Brits laid down four 23,000 ton Illustrious class carriers in 37, so they probably had one of these replacement scenarios in mind at the time. Only the USN had all it's tonnage quota tied up in relatively new carriers and was still trying to abide by the treaty, until 38.
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  1021. @Kato Ho Ten Soeng the thinking at the turn of the century was that the large guns would not fire very often in an action. The standard ammo storage for the big guns on USN ships was only 60 rounds/gun. The reload cycle for a 12-13" was very slow also. So, the idea was the 8" on the upper level would keep up a hot, rapid, fire, while the 12 or 13" would carry out it's arduous reload cycle, and, occasionally, fire. But, the USN discovered that, if they worked on the ergonomics of the big gun mounts, and trained the crews a bit, reloads took a lot less time. The reload cycle time of the USN 13"/35 was reduced from 5 minutes, to 1 minute, vs the 30-45 second reload cycle for the 8" in the upper section. I have read a US Naval Academy gunnery text book from 1915 that compares different turret designs and it says that the only advantage they really realize from the superimposed turrets, vs two separate turrets, is a weight savings. Of course, by 1915, the Navy had figured out the real solution was superfiring turrets, rather than superimposed turrets. There were two USN classes with superimposed turrets: the Kearsarge class (identifiable by low freeboard and round turrets) and the later Virginia class (more reasonable freeboard and flat-sided turrets)
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  1022.  @dimhal7840  Bismark's performance could have been a function of it being a new ship with a green crew. Another factor could be that Bismark was alone. In the "channel dash", the Scharnhorsts had a destroyer screen. The Italian convoys in the Med also had destroyer screens, with well seasoned crews. All too often, the screen would shoot torpedo planes to bits, as they flew over the screen, before they got close enough to drop at the ship they wanted to hit. A single Beaufort penetrated Brest harbor and hit Gneisenau. The Germans were taken by surprise, but were awake when the torpedo hit. The Beaufort was shot down in the harbor basin, all crew killed. The pilot, Kenneth Campbell, was awarded a posthumous VC.
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  1023.  @kemarisite  in the account I read, in "Torpedo Bomber", that group of 6 Stringbags was indeed attacked by a group of FW-190s. The Swordfish had Spitfires as escort, but some 190s did try to attack the Swordfish. According to that account, the Swordfish were so slow, and could turn so sharply, even carrying the torp, that the 190s could not really get in position and hose them down. The real damage was done by AA fire from the destroyer screen. Six Swordfish went in over the screen. Two made it back out over the screen, both flaming wrecks that went in the drink moments later. That book was one of the best dollars I ever spent. Picked it up at a surplus sale at a warbird museum near my home. Saw it sitting there, thought "airplanes and ships in one book? MINE!"
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  1024.  @davidknowles2491  I'm sure the designers intended the quad turrets to be reliable. I looked in to the choice to revert to 14" on the KGVs. The decision seems to have been driven by the "more guns equals more hits" theory. The initial plan was for the KGVs to mount 12-14", but the armor deck was raised, and that extra weight required B turret to be reduced to a twin. As one book I read said, that decision, which reduced the armament to only 10 guns, undercut the reasoning to go to 14" in the first place. Admiralty analysis of the various design proposals said that 9-15" gave the best balance of firepower, speed, and protection, and explicitly said the only reason to go to 14" was if required by treaty. I also looked in to the triple turrets on the Nelsons. They also had many faults, most of which had been corrected by the mid 30s, but the basic design of the systems slowed the rate of fire to only about 1.6 rounds per minute, vs 2 rounds per minute on the KGVs, so adopting the Nelson design, in spite of it being debugged by 36, was a no-go.
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  1025.  @morat242  The Japanese wanted a more favorable ratio to the US and UK, but the US said that was not going to happen, so the best way to save face would be to at least complete Tosa, which would put the IJN 26,000 tons over their limit, vs the historical retention list putting them 14,000 tons below their quota. The Japanese could have made a credible argument that they were entitled to a 42,000 ton ship, because of Hood. If the USN Tennessee class was deemed "post-Jutland", then they, combined with the three Colorados that were completed, would make 5 "post-Jutland" ships, at zero additional cost vs historical expenditure, vs Japan's 3. Maybe give the US clearance to upgun the Tennessees to 16", if they want to, to make a 5:3 ratio of 16" gun, post-Jutland ships. Then the UK would be entitled to 4 Nelsons, which they might have trouble paying for, on top of their load of war debt.
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  1026. I'm thinking battlecruisers were an evolution of armored cruisers. The Invincibles are not that much larger than the Tennessees, and 12" guns are the next logical step from the Tennessee's 10". The Brits called them "Dreadnought armed cruisers", while the USN called the early designs "battle scouts". as well as "battlecruisers". Speed is also evolutionary. The 21kt "standard battleship" was not much slower than the Tennessees, so a step up in cruiser speed was required. I'm thinking the battlecruiser concept was intended to perform scouting, as well as engage the enemy scouting force.
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  1027.  @bkjeong4302  At the time, 1906ish, "normal cruisers" covered a pretty wide range, from 3,000 ton "scout cruisers" with 4" guns, to "armored cruisers", like the Minotaur class of 14,600 with a mix of 9.2" and 7.5" guns. With dreadnoughts mounting 12" guns, where would you go with something superior to a Minotaur? More 9.2", or bear the expense of developing something larger than a 9.2", but smaller than a 12", or mount the 12" guns that have already been developed for the dreadnoughts? Minotaur was 519' overall, with a beam of 74.5ft. Invincible was 17,250 tons, 18% more than Minotaur, 567ft, 9% longer than Minotaur, with a beam of 78.5ft, only 4 feet wider than Minotaur. Invincible was 2.5kts faster than Minotaur, so she could keep up with the scout cruisers. Looking at the specifications, seems the Invincibles were an evolution of the cruisers the Admiralty had been building. Putting the Invincibles up against real battleships would be a doctrine failure. They should probably have been used the way the Courageouses were, in light cruiser squadrons.
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  1028.  @bkjeong4302  so, you are proposing the fast battleship was a cost saving measure, more than following Hood.
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  1029.  @kemarisite  I have read that, due to the low angle only, nature of the 4"/50, some Clemsons had two torpedo mounts removed and replaced with 3"/50s to improve AA armament. I have also read that some Clemsons had all their 4"/50s removed and replaced with 3"/50s as the 3" could act as a dual purpose weapon.
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  1030.  @kemarisite  as an exercise, I ran a scenario where the USN developed the 4"/50, instead of going to 5" for battleship secondaries. A twin 4" mount was developed during WWI. The mount was very light and, from the numbers I see, did not weigh any more than a single 5"/51. The guns were set very close together, so I wonder about dispersion, though information I see does not say they suffered that problem. Range was similar to the casemate mounted 5". The 5'/51 has better armor penetration, but BB secondaries are for plinking torpedo boats and DDs, which are not armored, so does the armor penetration superiority of the 5" really matter? The dual mounted 4" still had a screw breech, so no rate of fire advantage over the 5", but, with twice as many guns, the throw weight of the 4" battery is greater. So, everywhere you see a main deck mounted casemate 5" on a USN BB, imagine a twin 4" instead. Then, when aircraft become a thing, design a 4" DP mount, like the British DP Mk 19, fit a sliding breech to double the rate of fire, and maybe clip the gun down to 45 calibers in length to reduce inertia. A twin 4/45 DP mount would weigh less that the combination of 5"/51 and 5"/25 that the US BBs had in the 30s, with twice as many guns that could be used in either mode, in those same main deck locations. That would also leave the 01 deck above the twin 4" mounts open for light AA to be installed. But no, the USN went 5" The 51 cal version was too heavy to retrofit Clemsons. They probably decided the 25 cal was too short ranged to be a DP gun. If they had developed the 4" instead?
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  1031. The Nissan plants in Mexico appear to build the low priced sedans, Sentra and Versa, for the US, as well as other models for Latin America. The larger, more profitable, models, are built in their three plants in the US. So the Trump tariffs would not be devastating to Nissan. The thinking in another forum I read is that MITI would not allow Nissan to be completely owned by a non-Japanese company. If that is the case, the most likely scenario is the non-Japanese operations being sold off, with US operations most likely going to Hyundai, non-US operations going to a Chinese company, and the Japanese operations staying with the rump Nissan, in Japanese hands.
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  1032.  @vikinggamer9545  Thank you! I have been wondering where that 17.3" number came from. The slide in the presentation appears to be using the "EFF" numbers. I was looking at the numbers on the Navweaps page about the specific guns. The 14"/45 page has two tables, from different sources, which are roughly in agreement. Why is there such a discrepancy between those two sources and the numbers generated by the "Facehard" program for the British 14? Other questions that come to mind: If the 14"/45 could penetrate any likely BB belt (13-14") out to 22,000+ yards, as shown in the "Facehard" tables, why did the Admiralty pursue a 16" for the Lions? Seems, if their thinking was consistent, the Lions would have been designed with 3 or 4 quad 14" turrets. Why did doctrine dictate closing to 16,000yds, if the 14" could penetrate any likely belt at 22,000+, because that doctrine puts the RN ships at a disadvantage, starting every engagement with their "T" crossed? What makes "decisive range" decisive, and distinct from engagement range? I'm thinking "decisive range" is the range where the belt armor can be penetrated for a magazine kill shot, while "engagement range" is the range where chunks can be shot off the edges of the target, slowly degrading it. As I think I noted elsewhere, this is all very reminiscent of a debate that went on in the USN in 1915, where the 14" advocates also hinged their argument on assuming engagements would be at medium range, in their case, 12,000. The 14" advocates ultimately lost that argument as Dogger Bank and Jutland demonstrated that engagements could be fought at longer ranges, so the USN advanced to the 16", that could better penetrate at those longer ranges.
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  1033. Peter Egan wrote a column for Road & Track some 35 years ago on the same topic of collecting, in his case, cars. His inspiration was when a total stranger called him at home one evening demanding to be told which cars to collect. Peter tried to explain, just as Ian does, that you collect what interests you. When I hear a "what do I buy" question about collectables, the asker is either looking for "collectables" that he wants to make a big pile of money off of, or he is trying to impress other people. He obviously doesn't care about the actual item, because, if he did, he would not need to ask the question because he would gravitate toward something specific. If I was going to "collect" something, it would be some of the fake hack jobs, like a couple Ian has reviewed. because I find it amusing what some charlatans try to pass off on the unaware. The problem, of course, is the charlatans don't price their wares like the worthless hack jobs they are.
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  1034.  @GaldirEonai  water escape from aircraft is a routine part of pilot training in the USN. At NAS Pensacola they have a device called the "Dilbert Dunker", which is a mockup cockpit sitting on a steeply inclined track. The pilot trainee is strapped in the cockpit, it runs down the track, hits the water and flips upside down. Then the pilot unstraps and swims out. They also have a "helo dunker" that does the same thing, with full complement of cockpit crew and passengers. The helo dunker drops in the water, rolls inverted, then everyone has to get unstrapped, find a window or door and get out. iirc the Marines also have a helo dunker. There are several videos on youtube of these devices in use. Back in my day, there was another water escape training exercise, for a bail out scenario: The pilot candidate is strapped into a parachute harness, tied to a line from a motor launch. He's tossed in the water and the motor launch tows him around Pensacola Bay while he tries to get out of the harness.
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  1035. wrt the question of substituting a 20mm AA gun for the Japanese 25mm, from my readings, the Oerlikon 20mm was regarded as ineffective by late in the war. A Japanese 20mm would have been just as ineffective, because the shells are too small to do much damage. If the IJN had licensed the 40mm from Bofors, or the Italian 37mm, it would have made life more challenging for US pilots as those guns could do a lot more damage.
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  1036.  @scottgiles7546  I'm not sure Jackie "lost it" at all. His thinking did not always align with everyone else's, which can cause a person to be dismissed as being around the bend. The Courageouses were forced upon him by higher ups in the government, who decreed that nothing larger than a cruiser should be started, because, they were sure the war would be over before new capital ships could be built from the keel up. What Jackie really wanted was a third Renown, but the government would not let him have it. There are some hilarious bits on The Dreadnought Project about the gestation of the Courageouses. Basically, TPTB decreed "nothing bigger than a cruiser", but failed to define how large a cruiser could be. Jackie exploited that loophole to build 20,000 ton cruisers with 15" guns. If he had been around the bend, he would not have had the presence of mind to notice that loophole, and exploit it.
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  1037. wrt the question about casemate guns being on the way out anyway, in the absence of the treaties, there was a precedent that pre-dates the treaties: the British battlecruisers. The Renowns and Courageouses had the deck mounted triple 4", and Hood had deck mounted 5.5" secondaries.
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  1038. Difference between a stump speech and debating: reading a teleprompter, vs thinking on the fly. Biden's performance validated everything the naysayers have been saying. What if Putin or Xi catches him on an off day? I'm old enough to remember when LBJ said he was not going to run for another term. The date of that announcement was March 31, 1968. His VP, Humphrey, was the candidate that fall, Humphrey only lost to Nixon by a thin margin, and Nixon didn't have near the baggage that Trump has. Newsom should not run, if he values his dignity. His ex-wife is playing nookie with one of Trump's spawn. Can you imagine the nasty, vicious, highly personal, things she will say about Newsom? I think Biden is enough of an adult to realize he hurt himself a lot last night, and willingly step aside, before he is pushed. They have just short of two months to get their house in order, before the convention.
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  1039.  @irgendeinerirgendwo8420  another training ship forced into combat: USS Utah. Resources I see don't say if Utah put up a defense. She was torpedoed only about 6 minutes after the attack started.
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  1040.  @davidkaminski615  binoculars? I can't tell for sure from the pix and diagrams I have seen if they have binos or mono telescopes. Center position of the three is for the man training the turret, the two on the sides are for the men elevating the corresponding gun. Major downfall of that arrangement was the scope had to elevate in sync with the gun. Synchronizing the movement required an elaborate linkage. No matter how precisely the linkage components were made, there was always a bit of slop, and the longer the range, the larger the error the slop caused. When the South Carolinas were built, a new model turret was introduced that had periscopes extending from the sides of the turrets for the elevation men. The periscope was rigidly bracketed directly to the trunnion of the gun, eliminating moving parts and the slop they cause. Moving the scopes to the side of the turret also got them farther away from the muzzle blast of the superfiring turret, which was also introduced on the South Carolinas.
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  1041.  @satern7473  a good question. I have read that the Sharnhorsts also approached a convoy, realized it was escorted by HMS Malaya, and turned tail. My fun scenario involves convoy HX84. That convoy with Jervis Bay as escort, left Halifax on October 28, 1940. From September, into December of that year, the handover of the US destroyers to the RN was taking place, in Halifax. The USN transferred those destroyers with full magazines and torpedo tubes. What if half a dozen of those DDs tagged along with HX84, and Scheer found itself facing a squadron of angry Clemsons, instead of only Jervis Bay? As it happened, some of those old DDs were en route to the UK, but not with the convoy, heard Jervis Bay's radio traffic and rushed to help, but arrived too late.
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  1042. I noticed Trump doubled down on a comment he made in the debate. He said illegals take jobs from Blacks and Hispanics. I would love to say "do you think Blacks and Hispanics are the only ones doing menial work? Do you think Blacks and Hispanics are only fit for menial work?"
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  1043. wrt the question about boring out the 15"/42, the Washington treaty prohibited improvements in the main armament. Italy was given special allowance for improvement because her battleships were so obsolete. The newspapers of the time reported a general consensus among conference participants that 12" guns were obsolete. The treaty also prohibited changes in the type of mount. When the USN started modifying the mounts to increase elevation, there was considerable discussion among treaty members whether that was allowable, or a prohibited change in the type of mount.
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  1044. I'm presently reading a book about allied battleships of WWII, and it talks about the development of the KGVs and Lions, with the constraints on draft imposed by Suez and on beam by two drydocks. The Admiralty jumped the shark with Vanguard, as it was too wide for two docks, iirc Portsmouth and Rosyth, but they were satisfied with the number of civilian owned docks around the UK that could accommodate it, if needed.
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  1045. ​   I played around with a scenario like that a while back. It seems evident that Darlan's loyalties were "flexible". Gensoul was following orders received, over Darlan's signature, to resist the British. The pivot point is Reynaud going across the channel to the UK, forming a government in exile, and ordering all loyal French forces to rally to him, rather than surrendering. Darlan would probably follow Reynaud. That would have Richeleau and Jean Bart making the shorter trip to the UK, and Gensoul bringing his force to the UK. First order of business would be sorting out the loyal crewmen who wanted to fight on, from those that want to call it a war. Manning the best ships with loyal crews, training, and upgrading things like AA armament, replacing the French single shot 37mm guns with Vickers pompoms, for instance, would probably all happen at Scapa. So, everyone is in place for Bismark's breakout. For simplicity of communications, all the French ships sail together, and they make for the Denmark Strait, because they are faster, so can cover the longer distance quicker. Meanwhile KGV, Prince of Wales, Hood, and Repulse make for the channel south of Iceland. So the engagement starts, but, then Richeleau suffers three guns out of action due to premature detonation of the shells, and pulls back, leaving the somewhat thin skinned Strasbourg and even thinner skinned Dunkerque to duke it out.
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  1046.  @userofthetube2701  That would be interesting: two ships with glass jaws. It appears that, in WWII trim, the 11" on the 1047s would have a range advantage vs the Kongos, and, as the 1047s would have a speed advantage, they could stand off and chip away at the Kongo, until the Kongo called for air support. A 1047 against a Littorio, and the 1047 has to make a stand to protect a beach head, or a convoy, so it can't use it's speed advantage to run away? My money is on the treatymax Littorio.
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  1047.  @themanformerlyknownascomme777  the Washington Treaty prohibited improvements in main armament. Italy and France were given some extra latitude, as their ships were so obsolete, compared to those of the big three, so the Italians were able to bore out their 12" guns a bit. I saw an item in the contemporary newspapers that there was a general consensus at the Washington conference that 12" guns were obsolete. There was some controversy whether increasing the elevation was allowed under the treaty, The treaty explicitly prohibited changing the type of mount. When the USN started modifying the mounts to increase elevation, the UK called foul, claiming that violated the clause regarding mounts. After some discussion, it was decided that modifying the existing mounts was not a change in the type of mount, so then the UK started modifying it's mounts.
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  1048.  @WillowEpp  "lack of sanity" is subject to interpretation. It could mean "innovative", or "audacious", or "bold", anything but conforming to "the way it has always been done". The staff of the RN DMWD, were probably all regarded as head cases, but look at their body of work. I read a copy of Gerald Pawle's book about their work during the war, Fascinating read.
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  1049. wrt Japan signing Second London. First change is the gun size escalator would not be triggered, as the trigger was Japan not signing the treaty. Second change, if Japan built Yamato as anything remotely treaty complaint, 35-40,000 tons, western intelligence would never have caught on. Reportedly, it was the amount of material being ordered for Yamato that indicated it was well over treaty limits. The fact that Japan was building battleships in late 37 would not ring alarms, as the Kongos would start to age out in 40. If the displacement escalator is not triggered, the Iowas and Lions are never conceived. There was not much of Japan's 81,000 ton carrier allotment left after Kaga, given that Hōshō and Ryūjō were both under 10,000 tons. They probably could have built Sōryū, but there would not be enough tonnage left to build any of the other pre-war carriers, so the 23,000 ton limit does not come into play, as long as Japan holds to the treaty.
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  1050. wrt the High Seas fleet not being scuttled, Italy did take a number of Austrian and German destroyers and cruisers into it's service as war reparations, many of them lasting into the 1930s, though Italy did change out the guns for Italian types. Considering the loss of da Vinci, and the obsolete condition of most of the RM's BBs, if the RM was inclined, I could see them welcoming the Bayern and Baden into their service. The French would probably prefer the Italians have those two than complete the Caracciolos. It seems that, what freaked the French the most about the Caracciolos was their 28kt speed. From my readings, the MN did a study of what was needed to juice up the incomplete Normandies to match the Caracciolo's speed. As if lengthening the hulls and installing a more powerful powerplant was not exorbitant enough, France built capital ships in drydocks, and they did not have drydocks long enough to allow the lengthening of the Normandies that would be required. While the Badens had 15" guns, larger than the 13.4" on the Normandie and Bretagne classes, they were only 2 ships, and they topped out at 21kts.
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  1051. lol, carrier conversions more expensive and less effective then starting new, purpose built carriers, from scratch. Just like the Lexingtons, twenty years earlier.
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  1052.  @gregorywright4918  sticks in my mind that, in the case of the Lexingtons, the barbettes were left in, as they were a structural part of the hull. The belt armor may not have been installed yet. I read somewhere along the line that the Midways were built with belt armor, and the belt was removed some years later. What i am thinking of is the price of the conversion. Drac replied to my question a while back about the price escalation of the Lexingtons. The conversions cost more than triple what Admiral Moffett sold to Congress in 22. The Lexingtons ended up costing twice as much each, as Yorktown cost.
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  1053.  @gregorywright4918  a very good point.
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  1054.  @kevinschultz7040  The Germans built "flak ships", basically anything they could get their hands on, that they could bolt AA guns to, during WWII for convoy escort.
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  1055. wrt the viability of Operation Felix, the prerequisite was that Spain come in to the war on Germany's side. With Spain joining the Axis, a frontal assault on Gibraltar is unnecessary. Subject Gibraltar to constant shelling and air strikes from Spanish territory and Gibraltar's air strip is knocked out and Force H is forced from the harbor. German subs and surface elements based in Spain attack any Allied forces trying to pass through the strait. Continue to give Gibraltar the Corregidor treatment until it surrenders.
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  1056. wrt the question about USN carriers that were faster than their BB escorts, and the concept of the "super-cruiser". What if the Alaskas were conceived of as "carrier consort", rather than "cruiser killer"? When the battleship holiday ends in 1937, the USN decides that 28kts is perfectly fine for BBs as the USN is still thinking in terms of a line of battle, so builds the North Carolinas and South Dakotas as they were. Meanwhile, with the mindset of carriers being a "scouting force", addressing the problem of consorts for 33kt carriers, with the Alaskas, rather than arguing over the tonnage escalator clause with the UK for six months, then building the wildly expensive Iowas, because the Alaskas were powerful enough to defeat anything anyone else had that was capable of 33kts.
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  1057.  @bradleyjames1340  I would say an octuple Vickers is pretty close to a blunderbuss in effect. The Vickers had fallen out of favor due to it's short range, compared to a Bofors, but, I have read, that the old Vickers has a renaissance when the RN started running into Kamikazis as attacking aircraft range approached zero, and the old Vickers threw enough steel to shoot a plane to bits in short order.
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  1058. In the debates in 2020, Harris seemed to be exhausted much of the time. Very low energy. The one time she lit up, was when she was attacking Biden for his less than stellar record on civil rights. Right after that debate, she was attacked as not being "black enough" to talk about civil rights. Regardless, I fully expect the Trump campaign to switch from basing their attacks on age, to dog whistles about her race and gender. They will have a needle to thread, given that Vance's wife is of Indian extraction, and Trump is trying to win some of the African American vote.
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  1059.  @themanformerlyknownascomme777  the Lexington class carriers. The Lexington conversions were sold to Congress as being cheaper than new build carriers. The price escalated, a lot. I have the exact numbers in my notes somewhere, as reported in the newspapers, as the Navy went back, repeatedly, for more money. The Lexingtons ended up costing something like triple what the Yorktowns cost.
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  1060. One problem with claiming the Mackensens and completing them in any configuration, the Mackensens were 730 feet long. France did not have a drydock that big at that time. They had looked at lengthening and up-engining the Normandies to compete with the 28kt Caracciolos, but the cost of building a drydock big enough for the work put the cost of the project out of sight.
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  1061. wrt the question about USN 5" gun ammunition interchangeability. From my reading, the 5/25 used "fixed" ammunition, ie the shell and propellant charge came assembled in one piece, which would make for faster loading, but, at 80lbs, for the round, crew fatigue would be a greater factor. Most models of the 5/51 used propellant in bags, making for slow loading. Neither the 5/25 or 5/51 had a power rammer, both required loading shell and propellant into the breach by hand. The 5/38 used semi-fixed rounds: separate shell and metal cased propellant charge. With the semi-fixed ammo, the shell and it's propellant charge were each lighter than the fixed 5/25 round, so less crew fatigue, but, in the 5/38 mounts with power rammers, the loaders only needed to drop the shell and propellant in the loading tray and the rammer seated them in the breach, so loading speed was equal to loading a single. fixed round in a 5/25 and twice the speed of a 5/51. So, while the 51, 25 and 38 may appear to use the same shell, I would not count on being able to pry the shell off of a fixed 5/25 round and use it in a 5/38 with the 38's propellant charge. I would be even more doubtful of using a 5/25 round as is, in a 38.
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  1062. Yes, Dearborn has a vary large Middle Eastern population. The city used to host an Arab Festival, until Christian extremists kept showing up, trying to create an incident. A few years ago, some gun nutters walked into the Dearborn PD headquarters, to complain about being rousted, because they had been walking down the street brandishing assault rifles. They walked into the police station, still carrying their assault rifles, tactical vests, and wearing face masks. There were immediately about six policemen, with guns drawn, ordering them to drop their guns. I live near Dearborn. These incidents have been local news.
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  1063. iirc, the Washington treaty said that any carrier in service or building at the time of the treaty, which would include Langley, was deemed "experimental" and not subject to the treaty's replacement schedule. Langley was probably converted to a tender to free up the tonnage to be used by Wasp, but I do not find confirmation of that readily at hand.
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  1064.  @calvingreene90  a lot of material that was overseas was destroyed, rather than hauled back to the US. My dad didn't have enough points to be shipped home quickly after VE day, so spent some time in an occupation garrison during the post war cleanup. He watched as a flock of US bombers were lined up at an airfield, and a crane went down the line dropping a wrecking ball on the planes to break their backs.
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  1065.  @bkjeong4302  comparable in what way? Later boilers were more powerful and light. Later protection schemes were more appropriate to the threat environment. We saw what happened when Bismark landed a golden BB on Hood. We saw what happened to Kirishima when it squared off against Washington. We see, in the modernizations of WWI ships, what parts of them were inadequate by 1930s standards. I did a thought exercise a while back about the French claiming the Mackensens as war reparations and completing them, instead of trying to lengthen and upengining the Normandies. The result was, by 1930s standards, a ship with short ranged guns, inadequate torpedo protection , only a single 50mm torpedo bulkhead 6m inboard from the hull, and an obsolete armor scheme, with 3 decks of only 25-30mm each. The French were better off with the Dunkerques.
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  1066.  @bkjeong4302  I agree, the hit on Hood was a golden BB, but the vulnerability was there. The Brits rained shells on Bismark for how long, and never found a vulnerability like that? Yes, Kirishima was even older than Hood, but had been modernized. Washington didn't find a vulnerability on it like Hood's, so shot it to bits the slow way. As someone else said upthread, there were not that many WWII engagements of WWI vs WWII BBs that came to a clear conclusion, one of them sinking. Washington vs Nagato or Littorio vs Queen Elizabeth, one on one, would have been interesting, but never happened.
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  1067.  @pedrofelipefreitas2666  it appears such a ship would have been within Japanese capability, if they settled for "average" amounts of armor, vs the exceptionally thick armor of the Yamato. The Kii. basically an uparmored Amagi, and the Number 13, were estimated to make 29.75-30kts. According to Wiki those classes had 11.5"-13" belts and 4.7"-5" decks, vs Yamato's 16" belt and 9" deck and Iowa's 12.1" belt and 6" deck. The 13, with it's four, twin 18" turrets, modernized for late 1930s thinking on secondary/AA armament, could have been an interesting alternative, and it's 47,000 ton displacement might have been close enough to the treaty limit for western intelligence agencies to not twig until it was too late to design and built a reply. An updated Kii, with 16" armament and 42,000 ton displacement almost certainly would have flown under western intelligence's radar.
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  1068.  @merafirewing6591  by "Kongo replacement battleship" do you mean a Kii? A modernized Kii could do uncomfortably well against a North Carolina: comparable armor, slightly more speed, and one 16" gun more than a North Carolina. A South Dakota would be a tougher opponent, due to it's better armor. A 13 would still be at a protection disadvantage to a SD, but would be hitting the SD with 18" guns, which might offset the SD's armor advantage.
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  1069. At what stage of construction of a BB are the boilers and engines installed? In the book "The Battleship Builders", the powerplant is said to be installed during fitting out, after launch due to reducing weight of the hull at launch and the more powerful cranes being located in the fitting out area. In the film "Corvette K225" there is a scene were a boiler is being lowered into place in a Corvette at this stage. However, in the Wiki entry on the North Carolina class BBs, there is a photo of the boilers being installed on NC, dated 16 January, 39, but NC wasn't launched until 13 June of 40. I have seen aerial photos of BBs being launched, and the midships area appears to be decked over, implying the boilers and turbines have already been installed. Thanks!
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  1070. Trivia bit: that friend of American insomniacs, Johnny Carson served on the Pennsylvania. Re engines: don't know if it's accurate, but Wiki says the Floridas and Wyomings used Parsons turbines.
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  1071.  @barryervin8536  Yes. I have seen aerials of the riverfront plant. There was a hangar at the ramp, separate from the plant. According to a "lost airports" site I found, the airfield was established by 1930. The assembly plant was built in 41. It still stands. It's the complex on Green Ln, near the turnpike.
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  1072.  @comtedeloach2  my hunch would be none. The Alaskas, as well as the North Carolinas and South Dakotas went to mothballs and sat until they went to the breakers or became museums, because they weren't Iowas. The Alaskas weren't as big and the others weren't as big or as fast as an Iowa.
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  1073.  @bkjeong4302  oh yes, I have noted your stated opposition to all BBs. You would have a hard time selling that to the USN in 38 tho. In defense of BBs, they can carry more AA than a CL or DD, and if they have to take a torpedo to protect the carrier, they can take the hit better than a CL or DD. Having them along helps in situations like Guadalcanal, where Washington and SD were detached from the carrier force to kill off a Kongo. The ultimate Steve Plan for late 30s BBs rests on a couple of assumptions: BB guns are very expensive and take a long time to make, and making the guns for the NCs and SDs took a lot of material and manpower away from making more cruiser and DD guns. While the Pennsylvanias and New Mexicos were updated significantly in the late 20s/early 30s, next to nothing had been done with the Tennessees and Colorados since they were built, so those last two classes may have been in significantly worse material condition that the earlier ships. The triple 14" turrets in the Tennessees and twin 16" turrets in the Colorados use the same diameter barbette, and the twin 16" turret and gun combination is about 70 tons lighter than the triple 14". So, the Steve plan is to use the NC class plan known as XVI-C with the 9-14" gun option, which gives the 13.5" belt and 30kt speed. Scrap the two Tennessees and move 6 of their turrets, with the rebuilt and upgraded 14"/50 Mk 11 to NC and Washington. When the escalator clause triggers, use the same ship design, for the four SDs, while scrapping the Colorados and moving three of their twin turrets with the newly rebuilt 16"/45 Mk 8 to each of the new SDs. Then we have 6-30kt BBs that can hang with the carriers pretty well, carry lots of AA, and put the hurt on any enemy fast cruiser force that manages to get within gun range of the carrier force, and it's done relatively cheap, quick, and without burdening the Naval Gun Factory. Then when someone proposes the Iowas and Alaskas, people ask "all that expense and work, for a lousy three knots over what we already have?" That is probably what did the Lions in more than anything else. They were only a couple knots faster than the KGVs, the 14" on the KGVs were proving effective, so the Lions didn't offer enough of an advantage to really motivate anyone to push ahead with them.
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  1074.  @bkjeong4302  not totally unheard of for a carrier to get stuck into a surface action. Happened to Glorious. Imagine if Renown had been tagging along with Glorious. Having run into Renown two months earlier, the Germans would probably have turned tail. Happened to the CVEs off Samar, but a support group like that would not have had a BB with it anyway. All the fast BBs were off on Bull's Run.
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  1075.  @bkjeong4302  everything you say is true, in ideal conditions. I learned long ago to try to anticipate how others would drop the ball, and "idiot-proof" the operation so their sloth would not produce bad results.
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  1076.  @jamesb4789  Several good comments in your post. The US agreed to the Second London treaty, which had the gun size reduction, so if command wants to give the stink-eye to someone, give it to their own leadership. If the NCs had been built with the lighter 14" guns and ammo, they would have been faster. If the NCs had been built with twin 16" turrets, instead of triples, to save weight, they would have been faster. Something in the American psyche always wants bigger and more. Everything I read says the General Board was very happy with the 9-14"/30kt option, because it had the armor to get stuck in against BBs, and speed to better hang with carriers, everyone, except Reeves. It seems Reeves' mind set was it's all about the carriers, everywhere, all the time, and anything that impedes carriers to the slightest degree needs to be tossed out. So, he seems to have rejected the 30kt option in the expectation that the BBs would never, ever, be operating with carriers, while the guys who always want more and bigger guns, pounced on the chance to load up on 16", as soon as the escalator clause tripped, regardless of impact on speed. Just for good measure, there was a large faction crying for battle cruisers to hang with the carriers, but, with the treaty and power plant technology constraints, that would have required sacrifice of armor, which would put them behind the 8-ball if they got stuck in against real BBs. So, with factions pulling in different directions, the compromise design that could do everything fairly well, the 9-14"/30kt, was tossed aside, in favor of ships that had lots of big guns, but speed compromised and armor compromised. As for the SDs, I find it interesting that SD was laid down the day after Lion. Both with 9-16" guns, but Lion was a hair over 40,000 tons and could make 30kts, on the same 130,000shp that SD had, without the benefit of SD's 600psi powerplant.
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  1077.  @jamesb4789  again, you make a lot of good points, but my take on Reeves' position was that, in his search for the perfect, he missed an opportunity to get "pretty good", and got "what were we thinking with these tubs?" instead. iirc the Brits looked at a KGV with 9-15 or 16" guns and the extra weight required too much sacrifice of armor. The Brits and US should have agreed on the tonnage escalation in Second London beforehand. All the treaty text says is they can go to 16" guns, but it only says the signatories need to consult and try to come to an agreement on tonnage increase. The US and UK spent the first half of 38 arguing about how much to increase the tonnage. The Brits were looking for around 42,000, as that was the largest their facilities could build and service, while the US was holding out for 45,000, so they could build the "perfect" BB that could match carrier speed, and have a lot of really big guns, and have a lot of armor. That's why I pointed out earlier that the fat, slow, SD was laid down the day after the 40,000 ton, 30kt, 9-16" gun Lion was laid down. If the US was OK with 30kts, instead of holding out for 33, they could have built better ships than the SDs, starting in 39. Impact on the RN of a 40,000 ton limit written in to the escalator clause? While the first three KGVs were ordered in 36. Anson and Howe were not ordered until April 28 of 37, four weeks after the escalation clause was triggered. If the escalation clause in the treaty offered 40-42,000, without all the negotiating the US and UK did later, Anson and Howe could have been ordered to the Lion design. As it was, by the time they got around to the Lions, they already had five KGVs building, and the incremental improvement offered by the Lion was probably not enough to maintain enthusiasm for getting them built. By the same token, if the NCs and SDs had been capable of 30+kts, the incremental improvement offered by the Iowas, may not been enough to get them built, when the USN already had 6 BBs building.
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  1078. Well, well. Maybe I can make the day at Cod. Missed your trip to Muskegon last year.
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  1079.  @eamon821  I'm sure Bethlehem Steel would have been happy to build a replacement turret. The other three should have been available from the Admiralty for a pittance. She probably would have been completed as oil fired, so her 18 coal fired boilers would probably have been replaced with half that number of small tube oil fired boilers. The change in boilers probably would enable the elimination of the after funnel. Feature creep would probably result in a larger forward superstructure and larger fore mast. Casemate mounted secondaries were still a thing in the 20s. When the Nevadas and Pennsylvanias were modernized, their casemate mounts were relocated from the hull to the superstructure, rather than replaced by turrets, so Salamas would probably retain the casemate secondary. Add torpedo bulges, and some single shot 4" AA guns, and call it a day. More than anything else, I suspect Salamis would have looked something like the QEs after their 1930ish rebuilds.
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  1080. I was going to mention Calypso myself, then saw your comment.
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  1081.  @TheJudge2017  Essex class ships found work through the 50s and 60s. Some became specialized ASW carriers. Some became helo carriers, predecessors to the purpose built LPH of the 60s. The "ultimate Essex" may have only been an exercise to see what could be done with them, like the "Tillman battleships" of the WWI era. There is always an itch to see an asset in hand, and try to do something with it, like the WWI vintage twin 15" turrets that spawned HMS Vanguard, or the incomplete Lexington class battlecruisers, that were converted to carriers that were very wasteful of the one asset in short supply: carrier tonnage quota. A year or so back, I looked into the eye-popping cost overruns on the Lexingtons, which ended up costing far more than the early projections that were sold to Congress, or the cost of new, purpose built, carriers, but those hulls were sitting there, so there was a temptation to try to use them.
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  1082. Trump pushes the racist and homophobic buttons harder and harder, and his followers love it.
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  1083. I picked up on that "immigrants taking black jobs" narrative in the debate. Knowing that most illegal immigrants work low/no skill jobs in agriculture and construction, I wish that Biden had replied "you think African Americans are only suitable for menial work? How long have you been this racist?". But no, he didn't jump on that obvious opening.
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  1084. I wonder the same thing. Even the 5.1s on the Dunkerques were not well suited to AA use. The fixed rounds were terribly heavy, some 117lbs. The loaders would get tired in a hurry hefting rounds that heavy. The 6" was even worse, with the shell alone weight over 120lbs, with a rate of fire of only 5-6 rounds/minute. The 5"/38 shells only weighed about 55lbs. and with the all singing, all dancing mounts with built in hoists could fire up to 22r/m. The only thing that 6" would be particularly good for is if the battleships were attacked by a cruiser swarm, like Graf Spee was. Seems the French did start to catch on as some sources say some of the 6" on Richelieu were replaced with more of the 100mmDP.
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  1085. 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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  1086. On the question of using battleships as convoy escort, that was done in the Pacific to a degree. According to the Wiki entries, New Mexico and Mississippi were escorting a convoy to Fiji from Dec 42 to March 43. The Wiki entries also say that Colorado and Maryland sailed from Pearl on November 8, 42 and patrolled in the vicinity of Fiji until the following September. I dug out my DVD of "The Gallant Hours" last week, which is set during the Guadalcanal campaign. Callaghan's convoy sailed from Noumea. Scott's convoy sailed from Espiritu Santo. Fiji is not that far away. Steaming time from Hawaii to Fiji at a Colorado's economical cruse speed of 10kts is 15 days. A Colorado's range at economical cruise is some 9000 miles. It's 3100 miles from Hawaii to Fiji. If Colorado and Maryland had been dispatched to Fiji on the same day that Pennsylvania steamed from Hawaii back to Mare Island for modernization, October 4, they would have been at Fiji, with plenty of fuel in their tanks, to join Scott's convoy. and make the battle on November 13th much more interesting.
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  1087.  @gregorywright4918  yes, the tanker shortage is usually the first objection to that scenario, but apparently the two BBs were dispatched to Fiji in early November, so the tanker shortage must not have been so acute as to prohibit their forward basing. Espiritu Santo is a bit closer to Fiji, about 750 miles. It wouldn't matter which convoy the BBs traveled with as they were both going to the same place, at freighter speed. I would presume the BBs could get underway faster than the convoy could be loaded and get underway. Is the information available regarding when the convoy from Espiritu Santo received it's orders? The convoy from Noumea set sail November 8. The convoy from Espiritu Santo set sail November 9. If the convoy from Noumea required a day to load and organize, that would put the date of receipt of orders on the 7th. If we assume the two BBs could get under way faster than the convoy, the time difference between when they could get moving, and when the convoy left Espiritu Santo narrows considerably.
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  1088. Bush 41 invaded Panama, in 89, overthrew the government, and hauled the head of the Panamanian government back to the US to face a criminal trial. Historical tidbit: the US bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark, in 1917.
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  1089. If the KM had not tried to use planes the Luftwaffe was interested in, it probably would not have had to compete with the Luftwaffe. The KM was already using the Arado 196. Removing the 196's floats, with their attendant weight and drag, would do wonderful things for the plane's speed, range and payload, and the Luftwaffe isn't interested in it, so no conflict. Of course, they could steal a design for a dedicated carrier plane. Brewster Aeronautical was so corrupt and disorganized that German spies could probably have walked off with drawings for the F2A and SBA in broad daylight without anyone noticing and the BMW 132 was, in size, weight and power, nearly a drop in replacement for the Wright Cyclones the Brewsters used.
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  1090.  @kemarisite  I thought about a single or twin 1.1, on an improvised mount to give the PT guys in the Solomons a bit more hitting power than the Oerlikon, but it may be too heavy. If the USN had adopted the 37mm, they probably would not have bothered with the 1.1. When the 37mm evolved to the M9 version, I can see the USN stealing the design of the Japanese twin Vickers mount, and the UK quad Vickers mount, as in the pic Drac showed. The specs, Navweaps for the Bofors and a 1944 Army manual for the Browning 37mm: ceiling: Bofors 22,299ft, Browning: 18,600ft, range Bofors 11,133 yards, Browning: 8,875 yards, projectile weight; Bofors HE: 1.985lbs, Browning HE: 1.34lbs, rate of fire 120rpm for both. For the Vickers Mk VIII: ceiling 13,300ft (HV version), range 5,000yds, projectile weight HE HV 1.81, HE LV 2.0lbs, rate of fire 115rpm.
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  1091.  @kemarisite  alrighty, we have established (?) that the Browning 37mm M1/M9 (metallic link belt fed both right and left feed versions) could take the place of a Bofors or Vickers well, including single, double and quad mounts. Oerlikon alternatives? The low velocity M4 37mm, as used in the P-39 weighed 213lbs, light enough for the PT guys to use on a free mount. Fires the same 1.34lb HE round, but at only 2000fps, vs the 2600 of the M1. Range 8,875yds (that is what Navweaps says, but that is the same as the M1 and I question it due to the lower muzzle velocity, The Army manual does not give a range for the M4) vs 4,800 for an Oerlikon. 125rpm, much slower rate of fire than an Oerkilon, but hit a plane with that size shell, he'll know it. Or, there is another alternative. The Wickes class DDs were originally supposed to have a 1lb Maxim/Nordenfelt/Vickers gun as AA armament. I have seen pix of early production Wickeses with one Maxim mounted behind the #1 4" mount and another on top of the aft deckhouse, and they were on free mounts. The USN switched to the 3"/23 because they could not get enough Maxims. An update of the 1pounder Maxim could provide that last ditch firepower, but, with the M4 already in production, I don't know why they would bother with the Maxim. Wiki says the 1 pounder weighed 410lbs and only had a range of 4,500 yards. So, there you have USN medium and light AA: M1-M9 37mm in single, twin and quad mounts for midrange, and free mounted 37mm M4/M10 for last ditch.
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  1092.  @dogsnads5634  you are right, I had not thought of, or even heard of, either of them. From the information I can find, they both seem to have performance comparable to the Vickers 2 pounder, with a muzzle velocity below 2000fps.
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  1093. I remember those days. Visited the academy in 68. Only a dozen years ago, I could still walk in to the Air Force Museum in Dayton. No visible security at all. Then, a few years later, had to go through a metal detector, with an Airman, with a sidearm, standing by. Had to pre-register to tour the museum's restoration facility, as it is on Wright Patterson AFB proper.
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  1094.  @michaelsommers2356  at the Academy? No. I remember seeing the mast from the Maine, and some artifacts in the museum, from when the Maine was raised, particularly a very rusted cutlass that had been in a scabbard bracketed on a bulkhead. Also took a tour through Bancroft Hall.
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  1095.  @NoNameAtAll2  I happened upon a video that gave numbers for the strength of the RM vs what the Brit and French navies had assigned to the Med in June of 40m and shows how overweighted the RM was with DDs: BBs: Italy 4, UK 5, France 5. CAs: Italy 7, UK 0, France 7. CLs: Italy 12, UK 9, France 7. DDs and torpedo boats: Italy 126, UK 35. France 57. Subs: Italy 113, UK 12. France: 46. Italy had more DDs/torpedo boats and subs in the Med than the UK and France combined. Then France surrendered, and the Brits were really outnumbered by the Italian destroyer swarm.
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  1096. I just read about the Lexingtons. I think it was an air control position, but I don't recall for sure. It was removed later in the ship's life. If you look at a picture from the right angle, you can see that structure on the funnel is quite a bit higher than the bridge, so the view is only obstructed by the mast and gun director. My best guess why they didn't put it above the bridge on the island is if it was narrow enough for the brass on the bridge to see up, the air control position would not be able to see around the funnel. Dandy pic of the air control here. The caption says it's the Sara, but the horizontal stripe on the funnel says it's the Lex. http://historylink101.com/n/bw/aircraft_carriers/slides/IMG_4570_s2a.html
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  1097.  @johnshepherd8687  I answered a very similar question just above. Technically, I don't see any problem as the barbettes appear to be the same size and the twin 16" is slightly lighter and smaller diameter. The treaties prohibited upgunning however, with the exceptions of Italy and France, which were allowed to upgun to 16", as if that was feasible on the ships they had.
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  1098.  @edwarddunne2758  they are a bit before the dreadnought era, but I would nominate the USN 8"/40 and 12"/40. The USN had switched to smokeless powder, without really understanding the implications of the slower burning powder. The guns started blowing off their muzzles and chases with disturbing frequency, which puzzled BuOrd, because chamber pressures were as expected. Further testing revealed that, because the powder burned slower than black or brown powder, pressure in the gun was still building as the shell ran down the tube, so pressure in the chase was far higher than expected. The solution was to install a strong liner, and hoop the tube to the muzzle, to reinforce it. The early British 12"/35 and 12"/40 has a problem with "steel choke". A ridge would form in the liner after some use. When the ridge grew large enough, the shell would hit it with enough force to start the fuse, so the shell would detonate at the muzzle or shortly after leaving the muzzle. By WWI, the USN was also discovering "copper choke", where material from the driving bands on the shells built up in the bore, creating the same issues with detonating shells, stuck shells, and exploded guns. Copper choke was more of a maintenance problem, while the USN 40 cal guns and the British steel choke were more design problems. Drac has made some disparaging comments about some of the French battleship main guns, which had a shorter range than the ship's secondary armament, but that could have been a function of the French turrets only elevating to 12 degrees.
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  1099.  @keithmoore5306  Yes, I have had the same thought. The Japanese could not hit what they could not see. I would think one DD steaming a circuit around Ford Island could lay a pretty thick screen in two or three laps. The wind was blowing from the northeast at 9 to 14mph, so the smokescreen would need periodic refreshing.
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  1100.  @matthewrademacher5183  The US engaged in several "big stick" waiving exercises in the Caribbean during the period Connecticut was in commission, including interventions in Mexico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Offhand, I don't know if Connecticut fired any 12" ammo during those interventions. A search of newspapers of the period, especially 1915-1916 would probably provide detail on her activities as the Wiki entry does say she was deployed to both Mexico and Haiti during that period to support ground troops.
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  1101.  @gregorywright4918  I floated the same question in another forum and the discussion came down to cost. Harding, and Congress, didn't want to spend anything on the Navy, so the Navy was probably willing to settle for a less than optimal design because the alternative would be nothing.
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  1102.  @gregorywright4918  I don't think the entire cost of the Lexingtons had been appropriated in 1916. The government usually funds things on a year by year basis. In reading about the Washington treaty over the winter, the thought in the back of the minds of several US officials was that Congress was going to cut off funding for the ships already under construction, whether they had the treaty or not. I remember Congress cutting off funding for the Clinch River breeder reactor and the SST that Boeing was working on, and, more recently, we saw how the production run of Zumwalt class destroyers was cut off. According to the Wiki article, conversion cost for the Lexingtons was $22.4M each, on top of the sunk cost of $6.7M, vs $27M for a purpose built carrier of comparable size. On the other hand, Ranger only cost $15.2M, so they could have built two Rangers for less than the conversion cost of the two Lexingtons, and embarked air groups of nearly the same size because Ranger was more efficient at carrying aircraft. People may complain that Ranger was a waste of displacement because it was so less capable than a Yorktown, but you could build a Ranger out of the displacement that a Lexington wasted vs a Yorktown, because of it's inefficient design.
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  1103.  @Jon.A.Scholt  I second the recommendation of Silversides. Also in Muskegon are a preserved WWII LST, and a Great Lakes passenger steamer. Trivia note, in the John Wayne movie "Operation Pacific", Silversides is mentioned.
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  1104. That has been the objective of torps with magnetic pistols since the 1930s.
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  1105.  @imprisongroverfurr5252  my first hunch is Gallipoli is not painted as "good vs evil", because the Ottoman army won. That fights the narrative that "good" will always defeat "evil". As luck would have it, I just finished rewatching "Band Of Brothers". The "why we fight" episode is very much the "good vs evil" narrative.
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  1106.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I don't know what uniform policy was in the RN. In the USN, blue wool is worn in the winter, and white cotton in the summer. Apparently there are regional variations when the spring and fall shifts occur, and some bases in hot climates wear whites all the time. I am at a loss to explain men, even if from different ships, wearing blues and whites, in the same location, at the same time.
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  1107.  @seanmalloy7249  yes, naval guns have a purge system. The USN started thinking about safety after a particularly lurid incident in the early 1900s. The drill up to that time was for the loaders to look inside the bore for flames or burning embers, before ramming the next round. One battleship was on a firing exercise when the loaders apparently missed something in the bore from the previous round. The moment the first two bags were rammed, they ignited, sending flames shooting out of the open breech. The USN had not twigged at all about flash tightness, so the flames from the breech ignited the other two bags sitting on the open hoist. Burning bits from the bags on the hoist fell down the barbette and ignited more charges at the bottom, that had been staged for loading onto the hoist. By some miracle, the fire did not spread to the magazine. Over 30 men died that day. The navy started retrofitting a compressed air purge system to the guns, and fitting trunks and flash doors around the hoists.
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  1108.  @brendonbewersdorf986  The USN had a shortage of crewmen, guns, and material. They couldn't man all the ships they had. Congress was laid up in late 1813. I have read that her crew and guns were diverted to the squadron on Lake Erie. Frigate John Adams was undergoing refit in Boston at the start of the war. She was moved to New York, but did not go to sea until early 1814, taking the peace negotiators to Europe under a flag of truce. The frigate Adams was undergoing conversion to a Sloop of War in the Washington Navy Yard at the start of the war. She didn't get to sea until January 1814. Damaged by a grounding, she was in Hampden, Main, and burned when British troops took that city, in September 14. The frigate New York had been laid up in the Washington Navy Yard since 1803, and was burned when the British took the city in 1814. Frigates Boston and General Green had also been laid up in Washington in 1803, and deemed too far gone to repair in 1812. They were also burned when the British took the city in 1814.
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  1109.  @TheMolesRevenge  are you asking about the number of hits in one action, or the number of actions where a ship was hit? Off the top of my head, Enterprise, CV-6, would probably be in the running: battle damage on six occasions, totaling 6 bomb hits, 4 bomb near misses, 1 kamikaze hit, 2 kamikaze near misses, and 2 US 5"/38 shells fired by another ship.
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  1110.  @centurion_a4136  I was investigating the WNT a while back. The UK was open to a 42-43,000 ton limit for individual ships, but the US wanted the 35,000 ton limit. The ships of each nation were divided as "pre-Jutland" or "post-Jutland", and the Nelsons were built for "post-Jutland" parity with the US and Japan. There appears to be more than a bit of political art in the "pre" vs "post" classifications, as Hood, laid down after the battle, was deemed "post" even though it was designed before the battle, while California and Tennessee, both laid down after Hood, were deemed "pre-Jutland", so the US could complete Colorado and West Virginia, to combine with Maryland to be the US' three "post" ships. To make the Nelsons faster would have required either a lot less armor, or a lot more engine, which would exceed the 35,000 ton limit. At that time 23kts was deemed adequate for a battleship. The US South Dakota class, which was cancelled for treaty compliance, was designed for 23 as well.
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  1111. wrt the question about battleship guns being downsized at the turn of the century, as Drac said, the key development was smokeless powder. Black power burns very rapidly, so building a gun with a longer barrel is pointless, as the charge would be fully burned before the shell exited a barrel longer than 30 calibers, or so. The smokeless powders that were introduced around the turn of the century burned much slower, enabling longer barrels. As Drac said, I suspect the issue driving the downsizing was weight, because you really are not comparing the weight of a black or brown powder burning 13"/35 to a smokeless burning 12"/40. but the weight of a smokeless burning 13"/40 to a 12"/40. Gun weight plays a role in ship size, and cost. The BB4 Iowa was built as a smaller, cheaper, battleship, than the Indianas, just as Mississippi and Idaho were built as a smaller, cheaper, alternative to the Connecticuts, and downsizing from a 13"/35 to a 12"/35 played a role in downsizing the entire ship.
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  1112. With regard to BuOrd and the Mk 14, the problem may be, not only the designers trying to protect their reputation, but, also, a degree of deference being given to the "experts". In the USN, the Mk 13 aerial torpedo, and the 1.1" AA gun joined their pantheon of designs that looked good on paper. The Tennessee class BBs could have had 16" guns, if not for the advocacy of the 14", by Admiral Strauss at BuOrd. The Nelsons could have had more effective guns, except for the embrace, by the RN Director of Naval Ordinance, of the light shell/high velocity theory, a theory that the Germans seem to have also embraced, considering Bismark's 15" shells were close to 200lbs lighter than a British or Italian 15". I am still trying to discover the real reason the KGVs mounted 14" guns. The 14" armament was neither lighter, nor cheaper, than the 15" alternative. The official excuses offered by most scribes, including Raven, make no sense. The only thing I can think of is embrace by either DNO, or someone else at the highest level of, or higher than, the Admiralty, embraced the same theory as Strauss, which had been discredited 20 years earlier.
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  1113.  @AWPtical800  I did some comparison last night. According to the tables on Navweaps, the 14"/50, as modified in the mid 30s had a slight advantage over the 12" in range and penetration. Additionally, the USN had a surplus of 14"/50s in inventory. There were enough of the 14" guns to provide two sets of 12 each as spares for the 5 BBs that used them, with 35 left over, enough to arm 4 battlecruisers with 6 or 7 each, with a full set if spares. On the other hand, the 12" was lighter, so, for the same weight, more 12", of nearly the same performance as the 14", could be mounted. More guns means a greater probability of a hit with each salvo.
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  1114.  @podmonkey2501  the Brits had "large light cruisers" with 4-15" guns, in WWI. The Washington treaty seems to have respected the classification of the Courageouses as "cruisers", as they are not listed among the capital ship retention or disposal lists. HMS Furious was initially intended to be armed with 2-18", but still a "large light cruiser". We could establish a rule that, to be a battleship, a ship had to be armored against it's own guns at "typical combat range", but "typical combat range" proved to be a moving target as guns and fire control systems improved. By that measure, the Alaskas are not battleships, because their guns could punch through their own 9" belt at anything under 30,000 yards, but then the North Carolinas would also not be battleships as their guns could penetrate their 12" belt at anything under 30,000 too. And no one would want to publicly call their ship a "battleship" or "cruiser" as it would tip off potential adversaries about how well protected they are.
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  1115.  @Drachinifel  thanks for clearing up that point wrt the QE rebuilds not enjoying a speed improvement. Too bad they weren't built like the older Italian BBs, or the Iron Dukes, with a Q turret that could be eliminated to free up more space.
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  1116.  @paulgoyne6926  it could be that the "more smaller guns equals more hits" school had it's adherents in the German Navy. In the USN, Admiral Strauss at BuOrd argued in 1915 for putting 12-14" guns on the Tennessees, rather than fewer, 16" guns, as the probabilities say the more guns you have firing, the more hits you will get, and smaller, lighter, guns means you can mount more guns on a ship for a given amount of weight. I have been studying the Admiralty's decision to put 14" guns on the KGVs. The only possible explanation, which is, to a degree, confirmed in the Garzke book, is someone at the top, or above the top, of the Admiralty, was a devotee of the "more smaller guns" theory, some twenty years after it had been discredited.
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  1117.  @paulgoyne6926  as you said, it is a balancing act, between armor, armament, and speed. Comparing a Kaiser to a KGV, because the displacements are very close, speed and number of guns are the same, but the Kaiser appears to have more armor, a 13.8" belt, vs KGV's 12", according to Wiki, for instance. Using the weights on Navweaps. a set of 10 German 12" weighs 518,500 kg. The 13.8" guns as intended for the Mackensens would give gun size parity, but weighed 73.5mt, so, for the same weight, the Kaisers could only mount 7 of the 13.8", without sacrificing armor or speed. So going 12" on the Kaisers is still a "more smaller guns" choice.
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  1118.  @scottgiles7546  let's pull that scenario into "if the Italians had realized how much oil was sitting under their feet in Libya, and they had the equipment that could stand up to desert conditions to produce it" That oil would be so valuable to the German war effort that, following the fall of France, such a whirlwind would have fallen on the 8th Army, they would have been pushed back to Palestine. That would require a full-on effort by the RM to seal off the Med between Sicily and Tunisia, with supplies being flown into Ethiopia to cut off the Red Sea to British traffic. Then the RM would have the motivation to campaign aggressively, rather than be a "fleet in being". If RM command was not sufficiently aggressive, Duce would be leaned on by the Germans to find commanders who would fight.
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  1119.  @alexeisinitsa  The impression I got watching the video yesterday was Drac was thinking in terms of a repeat of Vanguard; pulling the entire turrets off the old ships and installing them on the new. I foresee issues with that. iirc, the Courageouses were laid up shortly after WWI, then converted to carriers in the late 20s, so their turret mechanisms had minimal wear on them. The Erebus class monitors spent much of the interwar years as gunnery training ships. Marshal Ney also spent significant time as a training ship. I wonder what condition those turrets were in. The turrets, mounts and hoists in the Rs were heavily worn from decades in service. If you look at how much work was put into updating the turrets for Vanguard, without the wear issues, I start to wonder if it was worth it. I figure the more likely scenario would be the Lions would begin construction with three triple turrets, in the expectation that the 16" would be sorted out by the time the ships were ready for them. When the 16" falls behind schedule, then the mounts in the Lion's turrets would be modified to take 15"/42s, because they are available.
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  1120.  @matehavlik4559  It is an interesting question. After the US took the Philippines and Guam, Spain sold the rest of it's Pacific holdings, the balance of the Marianas, the Carolines, and a couple other bits to Germany. When WWI started, Japan, being allied with the UK, occupied the German colonies. After the war, the League of Nations gave Japan a mandate to hold all the former German colonies north of the equator. So, would Spain have held all of it's Pacific colonies until 1941, or sold everything, including the Philippines and Guam, to Germany? If Spain sold everything to Germany, then Japan would have held the Philippines and Guam in 1941.
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  1121.  @bkjeong4302  I was reading "Castles of Steel" tonight. The book says that, in early 1898, the Kaiser was openly saying he would buy, or simply take, the Philippines, if the opportunity presented itself. The Germans were too slow when the opportunity, US declaration of war on Spain, came. The Germans did not arrive in Manila Bay, in strength, until about a month after Dewey's arrival. Their play, at that late date, was to hope the US failed. Bottom line is the Kaiser was very interested in the Philippines, and would have taken them if the German Asiatic squadron had been quicker on the jump and gotten there first. Without the Philippines, would the US have been interested enough in the Pacific to claim Samoa and Wake in 1899? Would the fleet have been move to Hawaii? Would the IJN try to attack the fleet in San Pedro?
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  1122.  @JohnRodriguesPhotographer  the Washington treaty forbade that. The treaty defined all carriers in commission or building at the time of the treaty as "experimental" and not subject to the replacement schedule of the treaty. The UK could replace Argus, Eagle, Hermes, or Furious whenever it wanted. The US could replace Langley whenever it wanted. The UK reclassified Argus, to free the tonnage to build Ark Royal. The US reclassified Langley to free the tonnage to build Wasp. Ranger, being built after the treaty conference, would have to wait until it aged out, twenty years after it was built.
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  1123.  @drafty9580  for the heck of it, I tried to find a sale price for Florida, but came up empty. She was broken up in a navy yard, so no labor and material cost for the breakup. The newspapers said the metal was offered for bid, but did not report what the winning bid was. A dozen years earlier, Dreadnought was sold for scrap, for $176,000. The first question would be could the Netherlands buy Florida and Utah for less that it cost to build De Ruyter? I have not found construction cost for De Ruyter. Of course, the second question is would the Netherlands want two slow, old, ships?
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  1124. wrt the more smaller vs fewer larger guns question, this argument raged for decades. In the USN, it was the head of BuOrd, during the teens, Joseph Strauss, that promoted the more/smaller option. As Drac said, the argument for more, smaller guns, always depends on an artificial restraint. Strauss insisted that all combat would be at 12,000 yards, or less. Since a 14" could penetrate well enough at that range, they could put more of them on a ship and increase the probability of a hit. The Tennessees could have been built with 16", there was active speculation they would be, reported in the newspapers, but Strauss pushed through the 14" option. Jutland satisfied the General Board and SecNav that engagements would be fought at considerably more than 12,000, so Strauss was overruled when guns were specified for the Colorados. In his annual report that year, SecNav Daniels said the 16" decision was made over the objections of some officers. That same argument arose again, in the design of the KGVs. In the Admiralty's own analysis, a 9-15" armament would provide a more satisfactory ship, but the decision was made to go to 12-14" instead. It is probably worth noting that Admiralty fighting instructions at the time required closing, as fast as possible, to 16,000 yards, or less, before fully engaging. Again, the artificial restraint: not requiring the KGVs to be effective at greater ranges, made the 14" look like the better option. I give the credit for the Admiralty clinging to an obsolete doctrine, against the recommendations of Admiralty technical staff recommendations, to Admiral Chatfield, who was First Sea Lord from 1933 to 38.
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  1125.  @almightykingpin6322  The UK already had an alliance with Japan. By some accounts the purpose of the alliance was to use Japan to check Russian ambitions in the Pacific. The UK bought the two Swiftsure class BBs from Chile so that Chile could not resell them to Russia. The UK could have obstructed the Russian Navy's passage to the far east. I don't know of any Russian territory that the UK would consider worth fighting for. If the UK was formally in the Russo-Japanese War, that would give the UK a seat at the table for the Treaty of Portsmouth, but, again, little territory up for grabs would be of interest to the UK. The UK could have supported much larger Japanese territorial claims, or demanded a great deal of cash.
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  1126. Or, the "Ministry of Truth" will take over, and insist that Trump's racist tirades are about Muslims, have always been about Muslims, and he is going to deport all the Muslims, including US citizens.
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  1127.  @janwitts2688  They couldn't build more Admirals, because the 35,000 treaty tonnage limit was still in effect. That is the problem with trying to mount four 15/42 turrets. Vanguard was well over 40,000 tons too. From what I have read, the KGVs acted like they were overloaded as it was, tending to bury their bow, for instance. Installing three of the Nelson class triple 16", already designed so only need to build, would add another 500 tons over the 10-14" setup. Going to the three twin 15/42s would reduce displacement by 1900 tons. While the KGVs would need to be reinforced, and probably some armor sacrificed, to take the weight of the 16" turrets, nothing would need to be reinforced for the switch to two 15/42s. The individual 15" guns weigh more than the 14", but the twin 14" turret is 145 tons heavier than the 15/42 turret, more than making up for the 32 ton heavier each guns. The twin 15/42 turret weighs about half what the quad turrets weigh. To this non-engineer, sounds like adjusting the size of the barbettes for the diameter of the 15/42 turret would be the largest part of the modification needed.
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  1128.  @notshapedforsportivetricks2912  it may be a matter of the facilities they had to do the construction and maintenance. Dock 4, in the Brest Arsenal is only 656 feet long. Docks 8 and 9, which were built during WWI are 820 feet, but it seems they don't like having 8 or 9 occupied by a years long build. Dunkerque and Richeleau both exceeded Dock 4's length, so they built the main hull in Dock 4, then floated them over to 8 or 9 to have the bow built on, and, in Richeleau's case, add on the stern as well. Prior to construction of the Normandie dock, the longest drydock in St Nazaire was 758'. Longest in Lorient was 669'. Longest in Marseille was 698'. The Lyons were 638' overall. If the Lyons had a longer foc'sle, they rapidly start losing options for a drydock for repair. At 638' the Lyons were already too long for any of the drydocks in Toulon.
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  1129.  @rogervila7353  That is the theory I always see: it makes it possible to shorten the armor belt. But the French ships had the two forward turrets widely spaced, so a golden BB would not take out both turrets. That wide spacing would reduce the benefit. I'm sure the designers could show you how many tons they saved doing that, but as the French returned to a conventional layout with Gascogne and the Brits with the KGV, they apparently decided it was not worth hindering the ship's functionality to that degree.
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  1130.  @bkjeong4302  Interesting thought, basically the battleship building holiday imposed by the Washington treaty be made permanent, and respected by all parties until they all have an epiphany that carriers are more powerful over a wider area of sea. Now, would that also include scrapping of all the older BBs, or would they be retained, and spend the war providing invasion fire support and convoy escort? The old Battle Cruisers, with the speed to keep up with the carriers, would still be formidable weapons in gun fights like during the Solomons campaign.
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  1131. Meanwhile, Ford Motor, is pouring $4.8B into it's European operation. Ford's operation has withered in recent years, down to a 3.3% market share, soon to drop farther as they drop the Focus, which accounts for 20% of EU sales. Their two EU market EVs, the Explorer and Capri, are built on a VW platform. Seems they are trying to bail out the Titanic with a teaspoon, just as impending tariffs removed the US as an export market, leading to more production overcapacity in the EU.
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  1132. Ah. I kept digging to see what Ford was up do. Finally found out. Some years ago, Ford USA guaranteed all of Ford EU's liabilities. This $4.8B infusion is intended to pay down Ford EU's debt enough for Ford USA to get out from under the guarantee. Then Ford USA can stand aside as Ford EU goes bankrupt and closes.
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  1133.  @readingrailroadfan7683  fwiw, my take on making the three Alaskas useful, and save money at the same time: The DesMoines class cruisers were built as a platform for the autoloading 8" turrets, which were too big for the earlier classes of cruisers. The 12" turrets on the Alaskas were bigger than the autoloading 8", however. My take would be, instead of building three huge cruisers from the keel up, convert the already-built Alaskas to carry the autoloading 8". If the autoloader fails, the Alaskas could be converted back to their 12", or laid up.
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  1134.  @ROBERTN-ut2il  The Kongos were not really armored against 14", as they were battlecruisers. Wiki gives Kirishima's belt as 8-11" Washington opened up on Kirishima at 9,000 yards. At that range, Alaska's 12" could penetrate 18", and the 12" rate of fire was higher than the 16". On the other hand, the Alaskas were not as well protected against torpedoes as a battleship, so, if one or more had been in that battle, she could well have been sunk.
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  1135. The "traditional family values" narrative has been GOP bedrock since at least Bush 41. The notion that there is something fundamentally wrong with anyone who does not conform to the church going, straight, married, with children, lifestyle. As for Project 2025, recall the "Plan For A New American Century", which was authored by several members of the Bush 43 administration. One of the first priorities of PNAC was the invasion of Iraq, and overthrow of Saddam. The document said that it would probably take a "Pearl Harbor scale" event to get the mob behind that program. 9/11 provided the event. Bush fabricated the excuses, and made the invasion of Iraq happen.
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  1136.  @michelangelobuonarroti4958  The RM considered converting Caracciolo to a carrier. Where would the money come from? The RM was building DDs steadily through the 1920s. They had lost 9 in the war, but received 10 DDs from Austria and Germany as war reparations and used most of them into the 1930s, so their war losses were more than made up. Shortly after the war 17 obsolete DDs were scrapped, but they had built 35 new DDs during the war, so the RM was not short of DDs vs before the war. Never the less, the RM built 28 more DDs by the mid 1920s. A 1,000 ton Destroyer cost about 100,000 GB Pounds. To put that in perspective, a QE class BB cost about 3M GBP and an R-class cost about 2M GBP. So, by my figures. if the RM had put a moratorium on DD construction through 1925, that would have freed up the equivalent of 2.8M GBP. Then it's a matter of figuring the cost to convert Caracciolo. The hull had been built up to the weather deck and launched, but I don't know if the engines and boilers had been installed, or paid for. Courageous and Glorious were complete, serving, ships when converted, and their conversions cost about 2M GBP each. Bearn, which was somewhat smaller, had been launched to clear the slipway before the decision to convert to a carrier was made. The budget for the conversion was 66.33M Francs, in 1923, which works out to about 883,000 GBP. I have read that Bearn was selected for conversion as less progress had been made in building her as a battleship, so there was less battleship material to remove to make the conversion. The budget to convert Lexington was $22.4M US, which works out to 4.89M GBP. Lexington was quite a bit larger than Caracciolo, the hull being on the ways about 25% complete, with no machinery installed. So, it really comes down to how much more work Caracciolo would need. Was it an empty shell, or was a large portion of the machinery already in place? There probably was the money to convert Caracciolo, but the RM decided it's strategy would be built around torpedo boats and subs, so that is where the money went.
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  1137.  @BillWilsonBG  At the end of WWI, Italy received several former Austrian and German destroyers as war reparations. The guns were changed out for Italian models, and most of the ships were used by the Italian navy into the 1930s.
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  1138.  @michelangelobuonarroti4958  I could see retaining the Elenas while the debate raged about the direction the RM would take, to retain the experienced personnel. Probably, once the decision was made to cut the capital ship force, the Elenas, and their senior crewmen, because expendable. They scrapped Alighieri around 1928 too, to reduce running costs. The Destroyer building program started in 1919, with 3 laid down late that year, 4 laid down in 20, 5 in 21, 2 in 22, 3 in 23, 4 in 24 and 8 laid down in 25. That is where all the money was going. At the end of the day, the expenditure to convert Caracciolo to a carrier would be a lot to invest in something as experimental as a carrier for the RM, considering the state of the battleship force, but completing Caracciolo as a battleship had it's hurdles too.
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  1139. Thanks for the video. The models make the movements of the engagement clearer than any diagram I have ever seen in a book. It is somewhat questionable if Guerriere would have been a useful addition to the USN. The frigate John Adams spent most of the war laid up due to lack of crewmen and material, and Congress was laid up at the end of 1813 for the same reasons.
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  1140.  @tenarmurk  with the development of cannon, came the development of "chain shot" and "bar shot". As the names imply, chain shot was two balls with a length of chain between them, the idea being the chain would be stretched between the balls in flight and tear out rigging. Bar shot was the same idea, with the potential of the bar being strong enough to break a spar.
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  1141. AA armament and Force Z. I have read that Churchill wanted to send a new battleship to Singapore to impress the natives, hence Prince of Wales. Repulse was already in the Indian Ocean, which apparently nominated her as consort, but Repulse's AA armament seems woefully inadequate: apparently 3 Vickers and half a dozen QF 4". Did that concern Admiral Phillips? QE and Valiant had much more potent defensive armament and would seem to be a better choice. Their positions in Alexandria could be filled by using Operation Chieftain to facilitate transfer of Malaya to Alexandria and Revenge could be ordered to Alexandria after it delivered a convoy to Aden on the 20th, while Malaya's position with Force H could be filled by Prince of Wales, which passed near Gibraltar on October 29th. on it's way to the Cape.
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  1142. Regarding the question on shell caliber, was there consideration of main armament throw weight at the Washington Conference? If main armament was limited to 8-16" or 9-15" or 12-14" the total weight of shells fired by the 16", 15" and 14" batteries would be quite close, while giving designers choices whether to plan for the greatest penetration, or sending a greater number of shells downrange, thus increasing the probability of a hit. Verification would also be simpler. It's easier to count the number of guns, and measure the bore, than to estimate displacement. If the treaty set limits for the US and UK for 15 battleships, and limiting the main armament as described, there would not be any incentive to build wildly huge ships, because tonnage beyond that really needed to support the treaty limited battery would be a waste of material and money. If a spendthrift country decided to build 42,000 ton ships, they would not have more firepower than a 32,000 ton ship.
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  1143.  @toddwebb7521  sure. Or build with 12-14" guns, but have the turrets designed so the 14" can be changed out for 16". iirc, Drac did a piece about the Japanese cruisers that were designed to be upgunned from 6" to 8", and the Scharnhorsts were designed to be upgunned from 11" to 15". It's still easier to simply lie about the displacement.
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  1144.  @gregorywright4918  yes, there is a decided risk to trying to do a hardware cheat, instead of simply lying. Drac's piece on the County class cruisers pretty much implies the ships were planned from the start to be up armored, probably beyond the treaty's 10,000 tons, as soon as the treaty fell apart, or they figured no-one was looking. Ever notice how the belt armor is installed on a KGV? Looks like a slab simply bolted on the side of the hull. Would have been exceptionally dangerous for the Admiralty to design the KGVs at 35,000 tons, without that belt armor, planning to up armor it the same way the Counties were up armored when no-one was looking, or didn't care anymore. A too sudden start of the war would have had the KGVs making the Renowns look robust and survivable. Of course, as things worked out, with the US and UK agreeing on a displacement increase in June of 38, the belt armor could be installed while the ships were still building, and no-one would care if they ended up being 38,000 or 40,000 tons, but the risk that things would not work out that way, when the KGVs were being designed, was astronomical. That's why I like my armament limitation scheme better than a displacement limitation scheme. It's harder/riskier to cheat.
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  1145. iirc, I read that the Texas closed a few months ago, so it can be repaired enough to make it to a drydock without sinking. In bypassing Texas, you also miss the Lexington in Corpus.
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  1146. wrt the question about axis attacks on the Suez Canal: Italy occupied Ethiopia until April 41. Italian air and naval assets could have made using the canal problematic. The RM had 6 destroyers based at Massawa, on the Red Sea. With Italian entry into the war, those destroyers became stranded without access to Italian shipyards for refit and repair. They were all sunk by British action or scuttled by their crews April 2-4 of 41. In a precursor to the St Nazaire raid, those destroyers could have steamed into the southern end of the canal and scuttled. Half a dozen wrecked DDs in the canal would have disrupted operations for some time.
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  1147.  @alganhar1  the treaty specifically allows France and Italy to lay down 35,000 tons of capital ships, each, in 1927, 1929, while everyone else could not start building again until 1931. When First London extended the capital ship building moratorium through 1936, France and Italy retained the rights to lay down the ships under their 1927 and 1929 permits. Those ships became the Dunkerques and first two Littorios. France's battleship "France" found a reef and sank in 1922. The Washington treaty allowed immediate replacement of ships lost by accident. France used the left over tonnage from the Dunkerques and France, to build Richelieu. Yes, France and Italy deferred using their 1927 and 1929 construction permits, but the question remains, why were France and Italy not allowed to build new, "post-Dreadnought" ships immediately, as the US, UK, and Japan were?
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  1148.  @mancubwwa  thanks, I was not aware of that.
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  1149.  @beigethursday1352  One convoy the Scharns intercepted was escorted by HMS Malaya. Malaya apparently had not been modernized like the other QEs, so it's 15" guns would have been limited to the original 20 degree elevation. 20 degrees gives a 15/42 a range of 23,734yds. Scharn's guns could elevate to 40 degrees, giving a range of over 40,000yds. So a Scharn could hang outside of Malaya's range and shower shells on it with impunity, and Scharn's superior speed can be used to maintain that distance. On paper, the Scharn's shells could not penetrate the thickest parts of Malaya's armor. My theory of the nature of a heavily armored citadel is the only thing it does is prevent the engagement being brought to a sudden end by a direct hit to a magazine or engine room. Lay enough rounds on target, and the target will eventually be shot to bits, without the citadel being penetrated. I have a hunch that is what happened to Bismark: no single fatal hit through the heaviest armor, but the ship progressively shot to bits until it could not carry on the engagement, then the Germans tried to salvage their pride by scuttling it. So, by the information I have at hand right now, when the Scharns intercepted the convoy escorted by Malaya, they might not have been able to sink Malaya, but they could probably have pounded it to the point where Malaya would have all it's armament disabled and dead in the water.
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  1150.  @johnfisher9692  thanks for your input on long range gunnery. I looked up the longest range hits and there were 2 noted at 26,000yds. One of the two hits at that range was by Scharn, on Glorious. wrt to your question on why German capital ships had three screws, instead of four. I have not seen cross-section drawings of Bismark, but I suspect that 3 more powerful turbines would make a narrower package than 4 less powerful turbines. With a narrower turbine package, there would be more width available in the hull for torpedo protection.
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  1151.  @DurinSBane-zh9hj  Probably the same situation as previously discussed wrt the two Scharns engaging Malaya. The Scharn's guns have a far greater range than that of a 15/42 in a turret that can't elevate above 20 degrees. However, as discussed above, with WWII gunnery technology, the farthest Scharn ever hit anything was 26,000 yards, which is still slightly longer than the maximum theoretical range of a 15/42 as installed in Ramilies or Malaya. When both of the Scharns engaged Renown, Renown held it's own, but Renown was just out of an extensive modernization and was a far more capable ship than Ramilies or Malaya. Considering that the Scharns were out to attack convoys, declining to engage a convoy, without even trying to fend off the obsolete BB, seems a step too far on the damage-phobic scale.
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  1152.  @jkausti6737  The movie shows the idea of Bis sortieing with both Scharns as Lutjens' wet dream. Sounds to me like 3/4s of the German capital ship force, in one place, without air cover, is a really big opportunity for the Fleet Air Arm.
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  1153.  @skwb29  First thing that comes to my mind is the Bonnie is over 20 years old. All the ships of the preceding class were decommissioned at 25-30 years. There is an America class currently building. Given the Bonnie's age, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out cheaper to simply run one of the other Wasps longer as the Americas enter the fleet.
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  1154. wrt the USN building battlecruisers in the 1920s, some of the material I have read about the WNT says the UK was open to an individual ship upper limit of 42-43,000 tons, ie Hood size ships, it was the US that demanded the hard 35,000t limit. The US' position at the conference was that it didn't want to spend anything on anything. To get battlecruisers built would require getting them laid down earlier. The Lexingtons were authorized in the 1916 appropriation, but construction was suspended before they were laid down, due to the change in priorities after the US entered the war. Meanwhile, the head of BuOrd, Strauss, was a fan of the 14" gun, and actively opposed the 16". When the 14" guns for the Tennessees were ordered, 14" were also ordered for the battlecruisers, as that is what the preliminary designs called for. It was not until mid summer 1916, when the SecNav and General Board analyzed Jutland, overruled Strauss, and decreed that future capital ships would have 16" guns. Keep in mind, in 1914, the USN had no modern cruisers, only an accumulation of obsolete armored and protected cruisers. The scenario to get battlecruisers built would need to go down along the lines of Congress being suitably impressed by the Battle of the Falklands, and stampede into adding battlecruisers to the 1915 appropriation that included the Tennessees, using the extra 14"/50s that had been ordered. The designs that used the 14"/50s were generally under 35,000 tons. Then get the long slipways built at the yards and get them laid down, before the US enters the war. With the earlier start, laid down in late 16-early 17, they would be complete before the Washington Conference.
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  1155. The most blatantly racist ad I have seen, has been running in metro Detroit. The ad shows pix of Hispanic migrants and transexuals, and the narrator says "Harris is for them". Then the ad shows a white, hetro, family, and the narrator says "Trump is for people like you". With Trump saying he approves of the ad. How blatantly racist and homophobic can an ad be?
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  1156.  @phoenixjz4782  I have read that, after the French shelling, the Faà di Bruno, a WWI monitor mounting two 15"/40 guns, was towed to Genoa to act as a floating battery. When the British came calling, the Bruno only got off about three rounds before the Brits hit the power cable from shore, shutting the Bruno down, so if they had an attractive target, the Brits could hit it. After that, about four more of those 15"/40s were pulled from the armory and installed around Genoa. The Brits must not have liked 15" shore batteries, because they didn't call at Genoa again.
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  1157.  @hughfisher9820  First London extended the battleship construction moratorium through the end of 1936. That's why KGV and Prince of Wales were laid down New Year Day, 1937. From the text of the treaty: "The High Contracting Parties agree not to exercise their rights to lay down the keels of capital ship replacement tonnage during the years 1931-1936 inclusive..." with the exceptions being France and Italy: "France and Italy may, however, build the replacement tonnage which they were entitled to lay down in 1927 and 1929 in accordance with the provisions of the said Treaty." Italy used it's two licenses with the first two Littorios, and France used most of it's tonnage for the Dunkerques. Richelieu and Jean Bart were both in violation of the treaty when laid down. The issue with the French ships became moot when Second London went into effect in 37, but France was blatantly in violation of the treaty for over a year before then.
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  1158. 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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  1159. 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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  1160.  @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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  1161. At the end of WWI ships requisitioned from Brazil and Chile were offered to those countries. At the start of the war, the Admiralty had also requisitioned four destroyers and two cruisers that were building in the UK for Greece. At the end of the war, the three surviving Medea class destroyers and both of the cruisers, Birkenhead and Chester, went to the breakers. The question is were these ships offered to Greece, before being scrapped? If so, why did they go to the breakers instead? Thanks!
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  1162.  @lt_darkseekerantique3911  in the case of Hermes, Eagle, Saratoga and Lexington, the flight deck more or less follows the curve of the bow. In the Courageous class, iirc, there was an aerodynamic theory behind the curve, but I don't recall the reasoning or where I read it.
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  1163. iirc, some of the 6 inch secondaries were swapped out for more AA. The issue with using a heavier gun for AA is rate of fire, or lack thereof. A 5/38 can fire at a pretty decent rate until crew fatigue sets in, but a Bofors can fire a lot faster. If you are the biggest ship in the group, rate of fire matters more than range, because the attacking aircraft are going to be coming at you.
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  1164.  @coldown_ivan4864  no, they were RN standard H class boats. H-11 through H-20 were built at Fore River. H-13 and H-16 though H-20 were transferred to Chile as partial payment for the requisitioned ships. After WWI, H-14 and H-15 were transferred to Canada as CH-14 and CH-15, decommissioned in 22 and scrapped in 27. H-11 and H-12 finally made it to RN hands, and were scrapped in 20.
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  1165. Being so desperate for flight decks, one wonders why they did not convert the really obsolete battleships, the Wyomings, New Yorks, Nevada and Pennsylvania, into carriers.
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  1166.  @WALTERBROADDUS  compared to an Essex or Yorktown, yes a converted New York would be terrible. Compared to a converted freighter, they are a bit faster, bigger, and a lot better protected. Then there is the opportunity cost. Losing an obsolete battleship that isn't useful for anything but shore bombardment, vs losing a fleet oiler.
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  1167.  @WALTERBROADDUS  lets compare the New Yorks to the Sangamons. Length S: 553'oa, NY 573'oa. Beam, S: 75'. NY: 95'. Speed: S: 18kts, NY 21kts. The New Yorks can accommodate a flight deck both longer and wider than a Sangamon, and have a higher speed, so they can handle any aircraft a Sangamon can, with safer flight operation. Greater beam means a wider hangar with room for more aircraft. The Wyomings and New Yorks are flush decked, so clear off the superstructure to the main deck, then build the hangar directly on the deck, with the barbetts providing a variety of places to house the elevator machinery. Magazines are already in place, so install bomb elevators in a couple of the barbetts to get the payloads to the deck. Keep the casemate mounted 5"51s to take on any commerce raiders that might have ambitions of attacking the convoy. If I could convince C&R this was a good idea, might even propose the USN buy the Rivadavias from Argentine, if the hulls were still sound, as they are even longer, wider and a bit faster than the New Yorks. They would probably need a complete refit of electrical and mechanical system, and more work to build the hangar as they have a step down quarterdeck, like the Pennsylvania and Nevada, but they would not require a builder's slipway.
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  1168.  @tanegashima5395  The Kongos were real workhorses during the war, probably because of their speed capability. Two were sunk in surface engagements in the Solomons and one fell to a US sub. The last one was bombed and sunk at it's moorings at Kure, at the end of the war, along with both of the Ises.
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  1169.  @sergarlantyrell7847  I really hate waste. There were several ships in advanced stages of construction, and their elimination resulted in a lot of money being spent to extend the lives of old ships instead. My proposal would be that any ship that had been laid down prior to January 1, 1921 could be completed, provided a corresponding amount of tonnage of old ships was scrapped. This was done in the case of the US BBs West Virginia and Colorado, which were completed in exchange for the Delaware class BBs being scrapped. I would let anyone with ships already under construction do whatever they want. This system would be self-limiting as the ships being scrapped approached the new ships in capability, thus offering no incentive to replace them. Example: the IJN would be allowed to complete the two Tosa class BBs, but they would need to scrap the two Fuso class BBs to make enough tonnage available. But if the IJN wanted to complete Amagi and Akagi, because they were so large, they would need to scrap three of the Kongos, so they really aren't gaining much with the Amagis. The USN could complete Washington, in exchange for scrapping Florida. Completing two of the larger South Dakota class BBs would require scrapping of Utah, Wyoming, Arkansas and New York, again, rapidly approaching the point of diminishing returns for spending to complete two new BBs.
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  1170.  @stallfighter  Yes, I would like to know that too.
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  1171.  @iansadler4309  Right off the top of my head, I would agree, right down to it's concrete torpedo protection system, though it didn't founder like Alfredo Cappellini did. In the back of my mind is the thought that Bruno might have stayed afloat long enough to make it to shore because it was using Ansaldo built guns that weighted a lot less than those on Cappellini.
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  1172. Drachinifel, does your RN budget info make it possible to estimate the total running cost for, say a Revenge class battleship during the 30s, crew pay, food, clothing, benefits, fuel, ammunition, repair and maintenance? Reason I ask: some time ago, I was commenting on the fact that, while the USN had extensively modernized the New Mexico class BBs in the early 30s, they did very little work on the Tennessees and Colorados. The consensus answer, was "no money". It occurs to me that, just because the London treaty says the USN could operate a certain number of BBs, doesn't mean that it had to operate that many. I'm wondering if the Wyomings, New Yorks, Nevadas and Pennsylvanias were all laid up from 32-38, how much funding would be freed up that could be used to modernize the Tennessees and Colorados? Thanks!
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  1173.  @RedXlV  Drac did not address the cost. Building a bigger hull, and putting more guns on it, will raise the cost. If the Exchequer did go along with it? The US Congress didn't want to spend anything. and the head of BuOrd was a tireless promoter of the 14" gun, over the 16". When the British introduced the 15", I saw a lot of FUD in the US press, claiming the British 15" was subject to such a high rate of wear it was nearly useless, therefore the US 14" was better. Starting with the Pennsylvanias, the US was mounting 12 guns, up from 10 on the Nevadas, which were contemporaries of the 8 gun QEs. I doubt putting more guns on the QEs would impact USN policy, because, in the USN's eyes, they had the more heavily armed ships anyway. What finally tipped the General Board and SecNav to 16", was their analysis of Jutland, in summer 1916. Their hands were tied as far as the Colorado class was concerned. The 1916 Navy Act, which authorized the Colorados, Lexingtons and South Dakotas, put a cost limit on the Colorados, so they could not be anything but a Tennessee modified with 8-16". There was no cost limit in the Act for the South Dakotas, so they escalated to 12-16", on a substantially larger hull: 60 feet longer and 9 feet wider.
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  1174. Increasingly, the US media is all about hype and hysteria. All weather is "severe" and all news is "breaking". The Detroit Lions are having their first winning season in over 30 years, and the local media is screaming at the top of their lungs about the Lions "hype train". One station's ads about their Lions coverage openly boasts "get all the hype". It is not surprising that youtube people would copy the hype techniques they see the media "professionals" using.
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  1175.  @Kirk00077  aircraft as large as a PBY could be embarked on seaplane tenders and carried close to their area of operation, then set into the water by a crane. Two of the ships at Pearl on December 7th were seaplane tenders: USS Tangier, a converted cargo ship, and USS Curtiss, the first purpose built USN seaplane tender.
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  1176. They took a more conventional approach with the Andrea Dorias, taking the original bow off, before building the new one.
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  1177.  @theamericanpotatonamedphil4306  the Lexingtons had one major drawback, vs the early British carriers, they were built after the Washington Treaty. The treaty defined any carrier, built or building, at the time of the treaty as "experimental" and not subject to the treaty's 20 year replacement cycle. The RN could have built replacements for Argus, Eagle, and Hermes, whenever they wished. I have read that Argus was disarmed and converted to a tender in the 1930s, to free up the tonnage for Ark Royal. The US could do the same with Langley, and so she was converted to a tender to free up tonnage for Wasp. As the Lexington conversions did not start until after the treaty, they could not be replaced until they aged out, in the late 1940s, according to the treaty. The Lexingtons were very wasteful of the one commodity that was in short supply, tonnage. A Yorktown could carry nearly the same size air wing, on a third less displacement. Even Ranger had a larger hangar than Lexington. How much did the Lexingtons contribute to USN design expertise? The Ranger followed the lead of Langley, not Lexington. Like Langley, Ranger had the boilers far aft, with hinged, deck edge, funnels, and, as originally planned, had no island. Two Rangers could have provided all the operational experience as the two Lexingtons did, on less than half the displacement, and at dramatically lower cost.
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  1178. The navalized Stuka certainly looked the business. Maybe a squadron of them, plus whatever they can come up with for a fighter.
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  1179.  @kemarisite  Thing is, Italy had it's own war with Turkey in 1911-12, the spoils being possession of Libya and some islands off the Turkish coast. I doubt Turkey would be happy allied with Italy only a couple years after that war. I haven't studied WWI enough to understand how Turkey came to be allied with Germany and Austria. Would Turkey be neutral, if Italy aligned with Germany? A neutral Turkey means not only would the Dardanelles campaign not have happened, the entire "Lawrence in Arabia" thing would not have happened. Austrian troops that opposed the Italian army would be available on the western front, as well as the Italian army, but the Brits would not be fighting in the middle east either. Without losing in WWI, Atatürk would not have been a national hero, and the Ottoman Empire might survive intact. We could even flip the WWI Turkey/Italy thing around. If Italy was allied with Germany, would Turkey align itself with the UK and France, to recover Libya after defeating Germany/Austria/Italy?
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  1180. ​ @joesvoboda3509  To get Oklahoma to deep water, inverted probably would have required a lot of dredging Having Oklahoma right side up probably also made it easier to salvage equipment and the remains of the dead crewmen.
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  1181.  @grumpyoldman-21  Italy's territorial ambitions in WWI were not the only area the country was shortchanged. Have you looked at the provisions of the Washington treaty? Italy and France were supposed to have parity. The ships France was allowed to keep were 3 semi-dreadnoughts and 7 dreadnoughts. Italy's retention list amounted to 5 dreadnoughts, 4 small pre-dreadnoughts and the da Vinci, a dreadnought that had suffered a magazine explosion and sank in 1916, that the Italians were trying to salvage. Even including ships that were hopelessly obsolete, and wrecked, Italy's retention list was still 40,000 tons short of France's, yet Italy was given the same replacement schedule as France. If Italy had still been entertaining thoughts of battleships, instead of the swarms of destroyers that it continued to build all through the 20s, that naval treaty would have been an insult, as it effectively locked Italy into a battle line half the size of France's for over a decade.
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  1182. The USN had torpedo boats at the turn of the century, but does not appear to have been interested in using them, as many seem to have spent nearly their entire life in reserve. I have speculated about the feasibility of securing maybe four of them inside the Dewey drydock, to take a piggy back ride to the Philippines, where inter-island patrol would fit their capabilities.
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  1183.  @JeffEbe-te2xs  they may have had some utility around the Caribbean, after 98. But the Philippines seems the most natural place for short range, shallow draft, ships. The trick is getting them there. Getting the first squadron of destroyers there was enough of a challenge. That's why I wonder about the Dewey giving them a piggy back. When the Dewey was moved to the Philippines, it was the longest tow ever completed successfully, up to that time.
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  1184. wrt to the claim to "win all 50 states", according to Wiki, Trump did "win" all the state delegations in 2020, whether they were chosen by primary, caucus, or back room dealmaking. But like his claim that he won more votes than he did in 16, neither sweeping state delegations, nor winning the second largest number of votes for an office, in a general election, makes you the winner. He is feeding his "victim" narrative, just like his attempts to provoke the judge in court today. He wants to be admonished, he wants to be sanctioned. He would love to be tossed in jail for contempt. Because it all feeds his "victim" narrative. If he can provoke the judge to really lose his temper and say something outside the guardrails, then he has grounds for appeal. Trump is expert at keeping things tied up in court, for years.
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  1185. Eons ago, I saw a US Navy recruiting ad with a pic of a Phantom, and the headline "0-150mph in 2.3 seconds", or something like that. So, even if the ship is making 30 kts, and the plane's engines are at full throttle, most of the initial plane speed is generated by the cat. There were days when I was on the Lex, that there was hardly any wind at all. All the Airdales had was the approximation of top speed that those tired old engines could generate, plus the push from the cat.
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  1186. Drac, in the live stream segment yesterday, there was some discussion of the QEs, in theory, being capable of 28kts. The first thought that comes to my mind, as QE and Valiant received new powerplants during their rebuilds, why did they not install more powerful plants so the ships could make 28kts? Looking at the WNT, I see that improvements are limited to torpedo and aircraft defense, not to exceed 3,000 tons. Alterations in side armor and main armament are explicitly prohibited, except in the case of France and Italy. Given the other changes made in specifications in Second London, why were terms not inserted that would give the other parties the same latitude in upgrading ships as Italy was implementing on it's battleships of similar age?
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  1187.  @timengineman2nd714  some sources say that NC and Washington initially had vibration issues at normal speeds and it took some experimenting with different screws to reduce the vibration. I'm responding to Drac's comments that the people in a position to know were saying the QEs could have made 28 if they had been fitted with small tube boilers. Their rebuilds in the late 30s offered the opportunity to do that, but they didn't. According to the text of the WNT, the QE's displacement was only 27,500 tons, so they had plenty of headroom to the 35,000 ton limit, more than a Tennessee or Colorado, they could use to make improvements, like lengthening the hull to improve speed more, like the Japanese and Italians did. Thanks for posting your dad's experience. I have read elsewhere that that the NCs had better speed capability than the South Dakotas, in spite of the lower power plant. Had not expected to see 30+. I presume the ship was lightly loaded at the time.
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  1188.  @jamesb4789  That is true, in general. The QEs were designed from the outset for more speed, so they trended longer and narrower that USN battleships of the time. A US Pennsylvania class is 600' at the waterline with a beam of 97'6", and plods along at 21kts with 31,500hp. A QE, of about the same vintage is 643'9" at the waterline with a beam of 90'7" and was designed for 24kts with 75,000hp. When QE and Valiant were rebuilt in the late 30s, their new boilers did nudge power up to 80,000, but, as you say, the bulges offset the power increase. It could be the Admiralty interpreted the WNT's prohibition on "reconstruction" conservatively and declined to put as much power in the QEs as late 1930s technology allows. or the people Drac was quoting were blowing smoke.
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  1189.  @bcoop1701  I start from the assumption that the Admiralty designers were pretty good at their job, as they had more experience designing battleships than anyone else. They clearly thought that performance and weight distribution were favorable for what they settled on. What I find so disturbing/hilarious is the kabuki dance with the treaty: the UK demands the gun size limit for all parties be cut to 14", after the limit had been 16" for 15 years, and many ships the KGVs would potentially run up against would have 15-16" guns.. Then the US demands the escalator clause to put the limit back to 16" if any party to the WNT fails to sign Second London by April 37. Japan gave formal notice, in 34, that it would leave the treaty system when First London expired at the end of 36. Italy left the conference over pushback over it's invasion of Ethiopia. It was a sure bet the escalator clause would be tripped. But the Admiralty pressed on with the KGVs as designed, with the 14" guns, while floating a narrative to the effect "oh darn, the escalator clause tripped, too late for us to change the KGVs".
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  1190.  @a2rgaming863  Yes, there have been post-WWII boats similar in size to the PT. The Norwegians developed the Nasty class in the late 50s: 80'5" long, powered by two turbocharged Napier Deltic diesels, with a 45kt top speed. The USN was among the buyers of the type, for use in Vietnam. Also in the 50s, the Soviet Union developed the Project 183R/Komar class, 83'4", powered by 4 diesels delivering 4,800hp for 44kts. The Komar was armed with P-15 Termit/Styx surface to surface missiles. A Komar operated by the Egyptian Navy because the first ship to sink another ship with a missile, an Israeli destroyer, in 1967. Following Soviet/Russian models have grown well beyond classic PT boat size, but still top 40kts.
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  1191.  @bkjeong4302  the entire topic of the KM and carriers offers some interesting possibilities. We can get into it in depth when Drac posts his upcoming piece on the Graf Zepplin, but one bit that comes to mind: the Scharnhorsts would decline to engage a convoy if it was escorted by a BB, even a slow, obsolete BB. But carriers generally don't get sucked into surface engagements. They stand off and let the air group do the fighting. Would the Graf deal with an R-class escorting a convoy by simply staying over the horizon and letting the dive bombers overfly the R-class and bomb the daylights out of the cargo ships?
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  1192.  @bkjeong4302  another advantage to deploying the Graf comes to mind. From my reading, the German maritime patrol planes were operated by the Luftwaffe. If a Condor saw a convoy, the sighting report was passed up Luftwaffe command to the crossover point to the KM, then down KM command to U-Boat command. That process could take as much as 24 hours, making a lot of the sighting reports useless. If the KM deployed the Graf, with scout bombers with the sort of range the USN and IJN carrier aircraft had, then KM command has total control of sighting reports, so should be able to get reports to U-Boat command a lot faster. Imagine a convoy under attack by a wolf pack, and carrier dive bombers, at the same time.
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  1193.  @janwitts2688  the superimposed turrets, the brainchild of Joseph Strauss, during an earlier stint at BuOrd, was to address the very slow rate of fire of the larger guns. The idea was that, while the 12" or 13" on the lower level were being reloaded, the 8" on the upper level could keep up a hot fire. Then, the Navy discovered that, if they worked on the ergonomics a bit and trained the crews a bit, the rate of fire of the larger guns could be improved dramatically, rendering the upper level guns redundant.
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  1194.  @gregorywright4918  that is a surprising take on how nets work. Other material I see talks about impact with the net detonating the torpedo. Either way, a couple of 1800lb torpedoes running at 40kts will do damage to a stationary net, hit at a right angle, just from kinetic energy. Stuff I just learned: looked at Navweaps to double check the weight of Japanese torps, and the entry notes the Japanese used inertia pistols that were sensitive enough that passing through a ship's wake could trip it. If that is the case, hitting a stationary net at 40kts would certainly detonate the torp.
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  1195.  @gregorywright4918  nothing in the Navweaps article indicates the Japanese used anything but the inertia pistol at that time, regardless whether the torp is surface, sub or air launched. Nets probably could have saved California, which was only hit by two. West Virginia and Oklahoma were hit with as many as nine, each. I read somewhere along the line that inspection of West Virginia indicated that a torp had gone right through the hole created by a previous torp. I have no idea how large a hole a torp warhead would tear in a net, but it's hard to believe that all nine, or even seven of nine, would be stopped, if they are all fired at the middle of a stationary 600 foot long ship. The two hits on California were pretty far apart, one just aft of B turret and one just forward of X turret. I don't see a diagram of the hits on West Virginia, but a diagram for Oklahoma shows a pretty tight group, with only #6 at a distance from the rest, with the other eight all hitting between 160ft and 280ft from the bow.
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  1196.  @glennsimpson7659  sure enough. I had known how the San Giorgio ended up scuttled, but had not read the last line of the Wiki paragraph about Tobruk. As you say, some 39 British torpedoes were found stuck in her nets. So, we come back to the question of the pistol's tolerance of the rapid deceleration the torp would experience hitting a net. British torps used a magnetic pistol, which apparently proved unreliable. I can't fine anything definite, but the British pistol probably had an impact function as well. How the British pistol impact function worked, I can't find in a brief search. Was it, literally, a plunger on the nose of the torp, or a trembler switch? Navweaps calls the Japanese pistol an "inertia" type, which sounds to me like a trembler switch. A photo I found of a torpedo armed Beaufighter shows a very prominent plunger on the nose of the torp, but a cutaway drawing of a Japanese Type 95 shows the fuse pocket in the side of the torp, just like a German aerial bomb, which used a trembler. I would assume that, having developed a reliable pistol, the Japanese would use it on all models of torps, not just the Type 95. So, the question is, did the British torps not detonate in San Giorgio's net because the plunger did not happen to directly hit a cable of the net? Would a Japanese torp detonate under the same circumstances, because of it's trembler switch pistol?
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  1197.  @glennsimpson7659  oh great, you'll make me dig out my DVD of "Dam Busters" again. Sticks in my mind that the bouncing thing was to decelerate the bomb as it had to just get to the dam, then sink to the bottom, right against the dam wall, before detonation, for the explosion to be effective. Distance from the dam, altitude and speed were all critical for the bomb to land where they needed it.
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  1198. Decades ago, I read "Secret Weapons of WWII" by Gerald Pawle, which is about the inventions created by the DMWD, including their work on "Swiss Roll" and the "Bombardon". The book I read was published by Ballentine in the US in the 60s. Apparently it was first published in the UK as "The Secret War1939-45". Interesting read.
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  1199.  @Nemisiscreed  I read an account a while back, it might have been in "Big Gun Monitors" that, in retrospect, was hilarious. The normal routine for monitor operations along the occupied Belgian/French coast was for the monitors to drop anchor out of range of the German batteries, rig a torpedo net to their seaward side, and lob shells into a rail yard or canal for several hours, then head back to England for tea. The Germans had installed a new 11" gun, without the British observing the work. One day, monitors showed up near the new gun. The Germans held their fire as the monitors did their normal routine of dropping anchor and rigging torpedo nets, well within the 11" gun's range. Then the battery opened up, showering the monitors with shells. Some of these monitors could only make about 7kts, so they were desperately trying to waddle their way out of range as the Germans were trying to get zeroed in on them. I don't recall now, if the Germans scored a solid hit on any of the monitors, but, iirc, one shell did go through the torpedo bulge of one of them.
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  1200.  @Nemisiscreed  "Big Gun Monitors" is pretty good. It covers each class, conception, design, construction and operations. The Abercrombie class almost happened by accident. The President of Bethlehem Steel was in the UK in the fall of 1914 negotiating a contract to build submarines for the RN. With that deal done, one of the Admiralty officials asked if Bethlehem had anything else that the RN could use. Schwab mentioned the brand new 14" gun and turret sets they had built for the new Greek battleship, but could not deliver to the German yard where the ship was being built, due to the British blockade. The Wilson administration did not share FDR's very liberal interpretation of "neutral". The guns and turrets were spirited to the UK in a couple Cunard steamers in February of 1915. But when Wilson found out about the sub contract, the subs were impounded until the US entered the war.
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  1201. I can see that point about IJN command thinking 25mm was adequate. The USN developed the 1.1", or about 27mm. Bofors developed a 25mm gun at the same time as the 40, because a lot of people didn't think anything as big as a 40 was needed. By the late 30s, aircraft were larger and faster, and the swing to larger AA guns started. If there had been more technology sharing among the Axis powers, Japan could have obtained a production license for the Breda 37mm gun, which would have been more effective than the 25, both in terms of shooting a larger round, and, as magazines could be stacked in the Breda's loading machine, eliminating reload stoppages.
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  1202.  @briancox2721  that was the day the USN discovered "copper choke", where copper from the driving bands on the shells builds up in the bore to the point where it impedes passage of the shell to the point where pressure in the tube is high enough to burst the gun. After that, the USN started issuing cleaning tools to remove the copper buildup.
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  1203.  @jakemillar649  it would probably asphyxiate or burn everyone in the turret to death. There was a case, prior to WWI, when the propellant ignited as you suggest. At that time, there was no air purge system in guns. The gunners were instructed to look in the tube for embers and flames, before ramming the next round. On a 12" four propellant bags were used, rammed two at a time. The gunners rammed the first two bags, and ignition was almost instant, as inspection after the fire showed the rammer was still in the fully extended position. There were no safety shutters on hoists then either. When the flames shot out of the breech, they ignited the other two bags that were still on the hoist. Hoists were not in enclosed trunks then either, so chunks of burning powder rained down to the handling room, igniting more bags of powder. Somehow, the magazine was not ignited, so the ship didn't go up like a Roman candle. Some 35 men died that day.
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  1204.  @dmnorthwind9584  Guns can be relined. The usual procedure is to heat the outer jacket of the tube, while running cold water through the bore, to make the outer jacket swell and the liner in the bore shrink, loosening the old liner, so it can be pressed out. Then a new liner is inserted, and the outer jacket allowed to cool, which clamps the liner firmly in place.
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  1205. I'll be looking forward to see which clips you chose. In "Legionnaire" for instance, there are two segments that sound quite different, one that would work with the film of guns firing, and another that would be appropriate for ships steaming along, but not firing. One thought crosses my mind though. Given this DRM company has tried to shake you down (American gangster slang) over one piece of royalty-free music, what is to keep them from shaking you down over a different piece of royalty-free music?
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  1206.  soaringtractor  negative. First, the Liberty was liquid cooled, co-designed by Jessie Vincent of Packard and A J Hall of Hall-Scott. The 4M-2500 used in PT boats was a derivative of the Packard 1A-2500 developed in the 1920s. Mosey down to your public library and check out a copy of "Master Motor Builders" by Robert J. Neal. It is a history of all of Packard's work with non-automotive engines.
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  1207. What you said is correct, regarding Trump's status in the criminal cases: "innocent until proven guilty", so he can not be disqualified only on the strength of the charges against him. However, he has already been declared "guilty" by a majority vote of jurors, on a charge of "incitement of insurrection". 57 Senators voted "guilty" in the second impeachment. Did not meet the Constitutional standard for removal from office, but it is a majority vote of jurors. If all else failed, I could make a case on the basis of the impeachment. Then let Trump challenge the decision in court.
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  1208.  @kemarisite  The 5.25" had semi-fixed ammo. The shell alone weighed about 80 lbs. The 4.5", prior to the Mk 4, had fixed ammo, which contributed to a higher rate of fire, 12 rpm vs only 7-8 rpm for the 5.25, but the fixed round weighed 87lbs, which slowed rate of fire due to crew fatigue, just like the 5.25. In the back of my mind is the thought that designing a gun to fire the heaviest shell a man can lift does not work out in practice. The 4"/45 Mk 16 was designed as a DP weapon. It fired fixed ammo, so featured a rof of about 15-20 rpm, and the round only weighted 65lbs. Unfortunately, seems that Jackie Fisher was the only Admiralty honcho that figured a 4" was large enough for a capital ship secondary, so, when Warspite was rebuilt, and Jackie long gone, she retained most of her obsolete 6" casemate guns, and received only four twin 4"/45 Mk 16 mounts. Speculating, had they replaced all the 6" with twin 4"/45s Mk 16s, (the single 6" and twin 4" weigh almost the same, about 21,000kg) Warspite may not have been so banged up by aircraft on so many occasions, meanwhile, thin skinned DDs and treaty cruisers at Narvik and Matapan, instead of facing several 6" shells, would face a hail of 4" fire from nearly twice as many guns with triple the rate of fire.
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  1209.  @kemarisite  in retrospect, being able to throw more steel at aircraft would have been beneficial to Bismark. On the other hand, were the 150s better for Graff Spee? Theoretically, Ajax and Achilles could have stayed out of range of the 105, and, with Graff having only two 11" turrets, one of the cruisers would not take any return fire. The range issue is more interesting on Warspite. The 6" PIX mounts could elevate, at best, to 17.5 degrees, which would give a range of less than 15,000yds, while the 4" could manage over 19,000. Fisher certainly seemed to think that 4" quick fire guns were preferable, as the two WWI classes where he dictated the design, the Renowns and Courageouses, had the triple 4" secondaries. Yes, the triple mount didn't work out so well, but it's clear where his thinking was going: throw a lot more shells and increase the probability of a hit. Even in a better protected ship than a DD, a hail of 4" may not penetrate the belt, but they'll make a mess of the upper works, gun directors, command staff on the bridge.
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  1210.  @kemarisite  I was looking at the range tables on Navweaps when I wrote that. The 150 was about the equal of the British 6" wrt range, so Ajax and Achilles would be expected to give as well as they got, regardless of range. The somewhat shorter range of the 105 opens the possibility of engaging beyond it's range, at least in theory. Whether the Brits could hit anything at 20,000 is another matter. If the light cruisers closed to 12-16,000, and Graff had an all 105 armament, twice as many guns with twice the rate of fire, the cruisers would be pretty badly chewed up. Once the hail of small caliber fire has taken out the gun directors, radio antennas, Morse lamps, signal flag halyards, and command officers on the bridge, the effectiveness of the light cruisers would have been sharply reduced.
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  1211. @joshthomasmoorenew well, would that violate the orders from General Marshall that the Japanese commit the first "overt act"? Apparently, the Japanese force was between 200 and 275 miles from Hawaii, so a round trip of 400 to 550 miles. A P-36 has a range of about 600 miles. A P-40 has a range of about 700 miles. Fly out to the Japanese force, figure 20 minutes of full throttle engagement, and the survivors would probably run out of gas before they got back to Hawaii. And they would be escorting horizontal bombers, primarily B-18s. Can't hit a ship worth a lick with horizontal bombers, unless they come down to low altitude. If Mitchell had tried that, probably a lot of brave Americans would have died, for little damage to the Japanese fleet. That being said, with surprise lost, the Japanese could have turned around, and headed for home. That sets up the nightmare scenario of an intact US fleet, and enormous pressure on the President to send the fleet to reinforce the Philippines, with Japanese subs picking them off, all the way.
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  1212. February 1919. Maryland is only about one third done. The other three Colorado class battleships have not been laid down yet. The Navy has made the decision to abandon the standard battleship template and go larger and faster with the South Dakota class. SecNav Daniels has an epiphany: decisions made since the Colorado class was ordered in 1916 have rendered the Colorados obsolete, so why put any more money into them? Maryland is scrapped on the slipway. The other three are never laid down. The South Dakotas and Lexingtons are scrapped for treaty compliance. That leaves the Nagatos as the only battleships in the world with 16" guns. Are the Nelsons built for parity with the Nagatos? Does the US build two new, clean sheet, 16" gunned ships, like the Colorados that had been cancelled two years earlier, even though the entire idea of the conference was to stop spending on new ship construction? Is the maximum treaty gun size set at 15" and Japan required to regun the Nagatos with 15" guns? Do the US and UK decide to not get upset about the IJN having only two ships with slightly larger guns, because they both have numerical and firepower superiority over the IJN, even with the Nagatos?
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  1213.  @RedXlV  I did not see reasoning behind that reduction discussed in the turn of the century BuOrd annual reports I was reading some months ago. The first Iowa, commissioned in 1897 had 12"/35s. iirc the thinking behind Iowa was to be a smaller, cheaper, battleship. Looking at NavWeaps, it appears the 12"/40 was some 10,000kg lighter than the preceding 13"/35. A 13"/40 would be even heavier vs a 12"/40. We are talking quite small ships, 13,000 tons. Maybe the judgement was 4-13"/40s would be too heavy?
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  1214.  @RedXlV  there are two schools of though wrt Mutsu's status. Wiki shows a commission date in October, a couple weeks before the start of the conference. Under treaty rules carriers in commission, *or building*, when the conference started, were regarded as experimental and exempt from the treaty replacement schedule, which exempted Langley, Eagle, Argus and Hermes. The treaty parties could be flexible, if they wanted to, or they could leverage the treaty to beat someone down by being rigid. If the US and UK have severe size envy issues over the Nagatos, it would be a lot easier, and cheaper, to regun the Nagatos, than for the other parties to build new, clean sheet, battleships. I could even suggest it would be cheaper for the UK to settle it's size envy issues by giving the IJN a couple dozen 15"/42s out of spares inventory with which to regun the Nagatos. Interestingly, according to NavWeaps, the 15"/42 and 16.1"/45 weigh almost exactly the same. That way, the Japanese save face by keeping both Nagato and Mutsu, without having a "bigger one" than the UK.
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  1215.  @torgarth  Newspaper reports of the sale of Dreadnought for scrap in November, 1921 say her cost to build was "almost" $10M US Dollars, while her sale to the breakers was for $200,000 US Dollars.
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  1216.  @WALTERBROADDUS  actually V specifies fixed wing aircraft....don't ask me how they came up with that. A ship that carries helos has an H in the designation somewhere, like an LPH or LHD. The V for fixed wing carries over to squadron designations as well. Remember the baseball cap that "TC" wore on the original "Magnum PI"? VMO2 = fixed wing, Marine, observation squadron 2. A member of the board of the aviation museum near my home drove P3s, in VP-45 (fixed wing, patrol)
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  1217.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Yes, I did forget Z. I don't think Z was included in my training 50 years ago. I'm not sure there were any blimps in service at that time.
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  1218.  @brianpanco8325  to add to Walter's reply, Mare Island is quite small. They built a number of destroyers there, but when California was being built, while the stern was hanging over the water, the bow nearly reached to a public street outside of the yard. Then, when California was launched it got away from them and hit the opposite bank. They tried to build one of the South Dakotas at Mare Island, which was even larger. They had to extend the slipway out into the water farther, and move a retaining wall on one side of the slipway to make room. My grandfather spent WWI building sub chasers at Bremerton. USS Nebraska was built at the privately owned Moran yard in Seattle. I suspect the greatest obstacles to shipbuilding on the west coast were 1: the steel mills were clustered around the great lakes, due to the supplies of iron and coal in the area and 2: east coast yards had been in existence longer. It was just simpler to build on the east cost and redeploy as needed, especially after the canal was built.
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  1219.  @WALTERBROADDUS  very neat film. Ford did for aircraft building what Kaiser did for shipbuilding. Ford won a contract to build B-24s. A delegation, including Ford's manufacturing guy, Charles Sorensen visited the Consolidated plant in San Diego. Sorensen decided it would be impossible to build enough planes building them the way Consolidated did, and designed what became the Willow Run plant in his hotel room that night. I have read that, at the beginning of 42 or 43, FDR gave a speech laying out how many ships and aircraft and trucks would be built over that year. Hitler heard those numbers and laffed, surely it was impossible for anyone to build that much equipment. By the end of that year, FDR's production targets had been exceeded.
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  1220.  @fredflinstone8628  Equity is safer, because you never need to redeem it, and you can stop paying dividends any time you wish. Default on debt, and you are in the kimchee.
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  1221.  @dylanthomas12321  my term for running a company for financial manipulation is "Welchism", after Jack Welch, who ran GE into the ground. If you haven't noticed, Boeing, once a leading US manufacturer, after 20 years of Welchist management, had driven equity Billions of dollars into the red, while their reputation for sound engineering is in tatters. Welchist management put all their profits, and more, into stock buybacks, while cutting corners in engineering and product quality. By the standards I was educated to, Boeing has been bankrupt for a number of years now, because they owe more than they own. They just haven't defaulted on any of their mountain of debt, yet. Have you noticed how high VW's warranty claims expense is? Like at Boeing, shoddy quality is a sign of Welchist management. In 2022, VW's global warranty expense was 3.9% of sales. For context, Ford, which is pilloried in the US for high warranty claims, has a claim expense of 2.9%; Hyundai, with it's repeated issues with defective engines, pays out 2.8%. BMW 1.7%, Renault 1.3%. Honda 1.2% Toyota 0.7% So, does VW improve quality to reduce it's warranty claims expense? I don't hear one word about that. All I hear from VW is how they want to raise prices even more, while taking from the line workers in the plants.
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  1222. It's a bit more complicated. The 5/25 used fixed ammunition: shell and propellant charge connected together. The 5/38 used semi-fixed ammo, with the propellant charge in a metallic cartridge that was handled and loaded separate from the shell. Most models of the 51s used propellant in bags. It might be possible to use the same shell in a 51 and a 38, but, with the 25 designed to use fixed rounds, seems it would be a complex operation to try and seat a shell intended for a 51 or 38 into the 25's propellant case, or to pull the shell from a 25's fixed round so it could be used in a 38 or 51 with either of those gun's propellant charge. In the color pic of 5/25s on New Mexico that is in the Wiki entry on that gun, you can see loaders on the right side of the pic holding the fixed rounds.
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  1223.  @kemarisite  good question about the range table. If such a thing was foreseen, I can see someone finding a math whiz to make that addendum to "the book". The more likely scenario though, would be a ship like the Pennsylvania, with both 51s and 25s, needing more ammo for one type vs the other, which, in itself, makes the case for replacing all the 25s and 51s with 38s, as was done on the BBs rebuilt after Pearl. I really can't throw bricks at the Brits for their variety of guns, not to mention the Vickers 2 pounder being made in both low and high velocity versions, ammo not interchangeable, as the variety of ages of ships in service in WWII, made such variations inevitable.
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  1224.  @RedXlV  Ironically, if the Lexingtons had not been rebuilt as carriers, the US would have been better off in 1941. The Lexingtons were very inefficient aircraft carriers. If those two carriers were not built, the USN would have had tonnage allowance for 3 more Yorktowns, with enough tonnage left over for Wasp to be a full sized Yorktown, instead of the undersized, underpowered, underprotected thing it was.
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  1225.  @Knight6831  The subsequent treaties did not have a fixed replacement schedule like the Washington Treaty did. First London extended the life of battleships to 26 years. The WNT replacement schedule went strictly by age. QE, Warspite and Barham replaced in 35. Malaya and Royal Sovereign replaced in 36. Revenge and Resolution gone in 37. Royal Oak gone in 38. Valiant and Repulse gone in 39. Renown gone in 40. Ramillies and Hood gone in 41. Nelson and Rodney gone in 42. The life extension in First London appears to have scrambled that schedule some. From my reading, Ramillies was in somewhat better condition than the other Revenges, the only one still in active RN service after 43, so probably would have been the last to go in any event.
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  1226.  @Knight6831  my favorite what if would be if the third cancelled Revenge, Resistance, was completed as a third Renown, using the three surplus turrets that ended up on monitors. The Admirals were started as answers to the Mackensens, but then delayed as work on the Mackensens was slowed, except Hood was completed, so that it, plus the two Renowns, would make up the battlecruiser losses from Jutland. If Resistance had been built, so there would be three Renowns to replace Jutland losses, would Hood have been completed, or cancelled with the other Admirals?
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  1227.  @Knight6831  I'm not so sure the French were that far behind. The Bretagne isn't that far off the pace of the Iron Dukes, and both classes were laid down in 1912. The primary difference between the Normandie and Revenge classes, both laid down in 1913-14, is the French went for a large number of 13.4" guns, while the Revenges went with only 8 of the new 15". That debate, more smaller guns vs few larger guns, raged in the USN until Jutland proved combat at longer range was viable, so the French were not necessarily backward for specifying the 13.4" before the war started. They are very close in displacement, though the Revenges appear to have a slight speed advantage. Hood was designed during the war as a reply to the Mackensens, and G3 was an entirely postwar design, so can't really be compared to the pre-war French designs.
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  1228.  @Knight6831  you are referring to my scenario where Resistance is built as a battlecruiser? The scenario rests on Jackie being a slightly better salesman, and having all three cancelled Revenges reordered as battlecruisers. In that scenario, Resistance would have been laid down in 1915, so, when three battlecruisers are lost at Jutland, three more would already under construction. The Admirals were laid down in late 16. The impetus to build the Admirals clearly was lost as three of the class were suspended and the design repeatedly revised. They only pressed on with Hood, apparently to make up Jutland losses. With Resistance building, they would not have needed Hood to make up losses, and Resistance would likely be completed in late 16/early 17, so would be useful during the war.
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  1229.  @unemployed_history_major4795  two hulk questions in one day! A hulk is a ship that generally has been stripped of weapons, and maybe means of motive power and repurposed. If you read or saw "Les Miserables" the main character is held in a prison hulk, an old, unseaworthy, ship of the line, being used as a cell block. Hulks can be used for accommodation, or office space. USS constitution was used as a receiving ship for some years, with the weather deck enclosed, "cabbed over", so it could be used as working space, which made the ship impossible to sail.
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  1230.  @WALTERBROADDUS  how would the US resupply the garrison after the war started? I remember reading that wags were saying the army could hold out in the Philippines as long as the 26th Cavalry had horses. We are seeing in Ukraine, now, how fast a full-on war burns through ammo and equipment.
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  1231.  @gregorywright4918  the Navy had plenty of options in 1922. Congress essentially was hoodwinked with an unrealistically low initial estimate for the cost of the conversions. Once millions more had been poured in to the project, more than what a clean sheet carrier would have cost, Congress kept approving increases in the appropriation for them. Admiral Moffett was claiming, in 1922. the conversions could be done for $12M each. The Wiki article on them says the conversions were budgeted for $23M. In Feb, 1925, newspapers reported the budget was increased to $34M each. In March of 1927, the budget was increased to $40M each. Ranger cost about $20M.
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  1232.  @gregorywright4918  yes, I agree, no experience. That was a major risk in tying up half the US' tonnage allotment in only two ships, which forced the choices for later ships to smaller designs. What if the Lexington's design was totally wrongheaded and irrecoverable? The treaty would not have let the US replace them for 20 years. We were lucky they turned out as well as they did. The navy opting for ineffectively small designs in the absence of the Lexingtons is not a sure bet. C&R had drawn up a 35,000 ton, 32kt design in 1920, which had the key feature of the hull flairing out, above the waterline, aft, so the hangar could be 64' wide all the way to the fantail. The designers knew how to get more aircraft into a carrier of a given displacement, but they were hamstrung by the requirement to use the battlecruiser hulls, which had been sold to Congress with wildly lowballed estimates.
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  1233.  @christopherrowe7460  you're not late to the party. I have been holding forth on the waste of the Lexingtons and the virtues of Ranger for years. The first purpose built Japanese and British carriers were small too, smaller than Ranger. I would interpret these "baby steps", as their recognition that they don't know what they are doing. Clean sheet 27,000 ton carriers would be almost as wasteful as the Lexingtons, due to the lack of operational experience. Clean sheet carriers would probably have had the same magnitude of delays and cost overruns, because they would probably have had a lot of revision during construction.
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  1234.  @Concealed1911  My rack on the Lexington was on the starboard side, aft, one deck below the hangar, next to the Chief's mess, so must have been just about over the screws. Loudest noise I heard was usually the ventilation system. There were some places where I could hear an electrical hum. As the Navy's training carrier, "full" speed was the norm, as she was running air ops almost continuously. One day I happened to be in the wheelhouse and noticed the engine room telegraph pushed all the way to "flank". Never was really aware of the engines, except when the throttle was pushed to the last notch. Then she would really shake. The most irritating noise? The Lex steamed back and forth across the Gulf of Mexico, which required making 180 degree turns, at full speed, when she ran out of open water. The most irritating noise, often just as I was sitting down to chow, was the 1MC barking "heel to port", as she started one of those full speed turns.
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  1235.  @dougjb7848  re your comment about an office block with the HVAC system running hard, I was never near the air intakes on the Lex, but some guys I have conversed with on another forum were on the battleships in the 80s and 90s. They have commented that, if you were on deck, standing near the boiler room air intakes, when the bridge called for more speed, they could hear the blowers speed up, to feed more air to the boilers.
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  1236. 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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  1237.  @stanleyrogouski  130,000hp for the SD vs 75,000 for QE. But SD is porky 680ft x 108ft, vs QE: 643ft x 90'7". Takes a lot of power to push a fat tub like an SD. After their rebuild, the Andria Dorias, with 75,000shp, could touch 26kts: 613ft x 92'.
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  1238.  @gregorywright4918  Japan gave notice in 34, as the Kongo rebuilds were starting, that it was leaving the treaty system at the end of 36, so they would not have cared what anyone thought of their enhancing the Kongos. Even as much as the Kongos were improved, they actually still came close to the WTN tonnage limit. I think the US and UK had a grip on just how huge Yamato was. Second London had a vague tonnage escalator. The clause said that if a power who was not a party to the treaty (like Japan, which dropped out effective the end of 36) built a ship of tonnage exceeding treaty limits, the powers in the treaty were to negotiate an answering tonnage limit increase among themselves. Yamato was laid down in late 37. By the beginning of 38, the US and UK were arguing about how far to push the new limit, with the UK wanting 42,000, while the US wanted 45,000. The US won the argument, but they wasted six months arguing.
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  1239.  @timengineman2nd714  the start of celestial navigation? Ancient Egypt? The Arab cultures of the Middle East and North Africa were heavily engaged in astronomy. Some contend Vikings used instruments for celestial navigation. Cheating and looking on-line, Claudius Ptolemy cataloged Polaris in 169AD. That star's usefulness in navigation was first described in the 5th century. The same source says that, due to the Earth's slowing changing it's direction, Polaris was not a true "north star" until the 12th century, but, I would suspect that, without precise instruments, navigators found it to be close enough before then.
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  1240. After WWI, when Chile was negotiating to repurchase Latorre, but Cochrane was uneconomic to reconvert to a battleship, some accounts say several other ships were offered to Chile instead, including the two surviving Invincibles. What other capital ships were offered to Chile?
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  1241.  @joshthomas-moore2656  Repulse was a bit faster, with slightly larger guns, but fewer of them only 6 vs 10. The major difference was Repulse's inadequate AA armament. When PoW was dispatched to the far east from the UK, Repulse was already in the Indian Ocean, to chaise raiders. By 42, all the Revenges were also in the Indian Ocean. I am thinking the RN dispatched Repulse and the Revenges to the Indian Ocean, because of the lack of airborne threat that they could not defend themselves against adequately. So yes, PoW was, by far, the greater loss, because she was better able to defend herself against aircraft, so was better suited to operate in the Med or North Sea.
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  1242.  @WALTERBROADDUS  iirc, the US did "stand up" a Philippine government in the late 30s, long after it could have been useful as a dump for surplus battleships in 22. But, given the precedent set by the treaty's handling of the Dominion's fleets, the existence, or not, of a Philippine Navy in 22 is irrelevant. It could not have been used to stash surplus ships, if it had existed.
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  1243.  @WALTERBROADDUS  that is one aspect. The other, which I touched on in reply to Alex's comment, was that anything that was on the disposal list was so obsolete I don't see why anyone would want them. If I squint really hard, I can cook up a scenario where the IJN demands it be allowed to complete Tosa, for displacement parity with Hood. To clear the tonnage, the IJN would need to get rid of Kongo. That is one way I can see a really decent ship being on the market. An even more desperate attempt would be someone buying the incomplete Caracciolo, buying surplus oil-fired boilers and armor from the US, buying surplus armament and turrets from someone, and bashing it all together.
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  1244. The irony of Trump complaining about Harris supposedly snubbing "Bibi" is that much of his base is virulently anti-Semitic. Several times, when he was POTUS, he had to voice support for Jewish people, to try and call off his followers. Will Trump debate Harris? I watched the Dem primary debates in 2020. She was OK in the fist one. But, after that, she always looked exhausted. Did very poorly. Trump may gamble that exhausted Harris will show up. He always has his fall-back position, leave it to his water carriers to spin whatever disaster he stumbles into as "winning".
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  1245.  @RedXlV  you and Ian asked the same question. It was probably a matter of economics. Kaga was much farther along, with more sunk cost, so it was probably felt the conversion would cost less. I wonder if the Japanese estimates were as optimistic as the estimates for the Lexingtons? Somewhere in my notes I have the original swag that, iirc, Admiral Moffett, was spreading when the question of converting the ships first came up. What Congress originally authorized was a good deal more. Then I saw newspaper reports of at least one, maybe two, supplements Congress passed to increase funding for the ships.
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  1246.  @RedXlV  from what I have read, the path of military aggression was still being debated at that time. Kaga had been built up enough to launch. I have read a US newspaper report about her launching, with the note that she will be scrapped due to the treaty. The second pair of Amagis had been laid down in November and December of 21, so there would have hardly been more than the keel and part of the bottom of the hull riveted together when the treaty was signed in Feb 22.
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  1247.  @kemarisite  The Wiki article says, after the war, Skoda diversified into turbines, power generation, machine tools, and railroad locomotives and carriages. Germany's first slice of Czechoslovakia, in 38, brought them to the outskirts of Plzeň, which, I would expect, expedited capture of the Skoda works before they could be destroyed.
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  1248. While researching the cost of converting Jupiter into a carrier, I found that the 1919 appropriation bill that funded that project also had money for investment in zeppelins. $1.5 million was to be invested in building Shenandoah, $2.5M for buying R38 from the UK, and $3.7M to build two hangars for them. A total of $7.7M invested in zeps, vs $500,000 invested in converting Jupiter into a carrier. Was there reasonable evidence at that time, for zeps having more potential for the Navy than carriers?
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  1249.  @WALTERBROADDUS  OK, zeps have about twice the speed of a fast carrier, like HMS Furious. Range was comparable. Carriers can send planes in several different directions to take a look-see, which was attempted by Akron and Macon. Hadn't they figured out how fragile zeps were yet? Losses of German zeps during the war, other than from being shot at, were pretty high.
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  1250.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I see your point, but it's the imbalance in the investment between the two experimental weapons systems, more than ten times the money allocated to zeps than to carriers. I did a bit of swaging, and figure that the US could have built a decent carrier conversion for less than they were willing to spend on R38 alone, $2.5M. The surviving Invincibles probably each went to scrap for about the same price as Dreadnought: $176,000. Six Clemson class DDs were cancelled in early 1919, a year and a half after being ordered, so I expect their powerplants were in an advanced stage of construction, so could be completed for relatively little additional money. Two Clemson plants would give an Invincible modern, geared, turbines, a bump from 40,000shp to 55,000shp and 8 oil fired boilers in place of the original 31 coal burners. Then add for the conversion, which would probably be more than that spent on Jupiter, if they wanted to do a decent job. and you have a carrier that can show a decent turn of speed, 25 feet longer and 13 feet wider than Langley. But nope, they wanted to spend the money on R38, which broke up during a test flight in the UK, before the USN even took possession.
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  1251. wrt the question about Pearl Harbor being ready for the attack on December 7th, the intercept would have been too late, even if handled expeditiously in Hawaii. The radiogram arrived in Hawaii at 7:33am. The Japanese had specified their ultimatum be delivered in DC at 1:00pm. which was 7:30am in Hawaii. It is safe to assume that the Japanese considered 7:30am too close to arrival time of the attack for the US to set up a defense, so the message, even if handled expeditiously, would not have helped much. The film also dramatizes the consideration of possible targets of the Japanese attack, with the Malay Peninsula, aka the Kra Peninsula, specifically mentioned. The delivery time of the ultimatum in DC, 1pm, tips the target. At that hour, it was the middle of the night in Malaya. Of the possible attack targets, Hawaii was the only one where it would be daylight at that hour. The best shot at being ready for the attack was the radar contact at 7:02am. The wind that morning was light, from the northeast. A tactic that has crossed my mind is have a DD turn on it's smoke generator, and start making laps around Ford Island. The Japanese could not hit what they could not see.
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  1252.  @okamiinukiba  That would be Operation Creek. If you would like to read about it, while Drac gets to it, try "Boarding Party" by James Leasor. I read it a couple years ago, The first part of the book is pretty slow moving, but once the operation gets underway, the book picks up considerably.
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  1253. Frankly, good. No sense in Honda being dragged down, paying for Nissan's mistakes. If there is anything of Nissan that Honda wants, they can pick those bits up in the liquidation sale.
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  1254.  @richardcutts196  The Washington treaty explicitly prohibited changes in side armor. One of the Renowns was in the process of having her side armor improved when the treaty was negotiated, so work on that one ship was allowed to be completed, but no more.
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  1255.  @DELTATROOPER5555  Looking at the spreadsheet of Tillman specs in the Wiki article, appears Tillman III had a speed of 30kts. With that sort of speed capability, they might have been out with the carriers...but that isn't the question you asked. wrt avoiding the WNT, the US instigated the WNT because the Harding administration didn't want to spend anything building new capital ships, so, if there was no treaty, or there was a loophole large enough to sail a 63,000 ton battleship through, the US would not have built it anyway...but that isn't the question you asked either. To the question you did ask, a rebuilt and modernized Tillman would probably look very much like an Iowa, just as the rebuilt West Virginia looked quite like a South Dakota. The actual Iowas would still be a clean sheet design, rather than a modified Tillman, because designers are constantly having "better ideas".
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  1256.  @WALTERBROADDUS  double entendre intended. A lot of my male coworkers drove huge SUVs and pickups, which I defined as compensation for some inadequacy anxiety.
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  1257.  @Maty83.  my take is, having looked at a KGV with 9-15", the Admiralty didn't like the compromises required in other aspects of the design to carry the 15" armament. The curious thing is why that reduction to 14" was written into the treaty? France and Italy were not going to cancel their 15" gunned ships. Japan had already dropped out of the treaty system. The only other party that would be impacted would be the US.
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  1258.  @Maty83.  I'm pretty confident that even the lowest file clerk in the Admiralty design office knew more about designing battleships than I ever will. I'm sure there were sound reasons for designing the KGVs the way they did. What puzzles me is why that reduction of the gun size limit to 14" was put in the treaty. The US was the only other power still paying any attention to the treaty, so why make a change that will only restrain an ally, someone you want to have powerful ships, because you are on the same side? Same thing with the reduction in carrier displacement from 27,000, where it had been since 1922, to only 23,000. I understand why the Brits designed Ark Royal the way they did, to maximize the number of drydocks around the empire that she would fit in, but, again, why constrain the US to only build what the UK wanted to build due to it's internal infrastructure limitations? That's like the US demanding that no-one else be allowed to build a ship that could not fit through the Panama Canal. They went through that again on the displacement increase. The US wanted 45,000 tons, because that is what they needed for a 33kt ship, but the UK held out for a 42,000 ton limit, because that was the largest RN facilities could handle. They argued about it for six months, when they needed to be building, not arguing.
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  1259. wrt the question about air to surface rockets used against ships, in Ralph Barker's "Torpedo Bomber", published in the UK as "Ship Busters". the transition from torpedoes to rockets in the anti-shipping role is described. Rockets were a lot cheaper than torpedoes. They were a lot lighter, so several could be carried, vs one torpedo. Because of a rocket's higher speed, they were much easier to aim and more likely to hit, than a torpedo. So rockets became the preferred weapon.
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  1260.  @thomasjamison2050  as my Canadian friend likes to remind me, the US invaded Canada twice, and got thumped both times. While the UK liked having access to southern cotton and tobacco, slavery was outlawed in the UK in 1833. The optics of openly defending slavery in the CSA would not be very good.
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  1261.  @AtomicBabel  Yes. They had the prop driven planes lined up along each edge of the flight deck, with the pilots on one side or the other given signals to gun their engines to provide thrust.
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  1262.  @johnfisher9692  my suspicion is the Italians rebuilt the old ships, because they didn't have the industrial capacity to build more new ones, like the UK did. The UK laid down all 5 KGVs within 6 months of the end of the treaty BB construction moratorium. The two Italian yards in Trieste and Genoa may have been the only two that could build a BB in the 30s as they built all 4 Littorios, 2 at a time, while the RN was building 5 KGVs and 4 Illustrious class carriers of the same length, all at the same time.
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  1263.  @johnfisher9692  The Washington Treaty caused the cancellation of a lot of construction in 22, with construction of replacements to start in 31. The first London treaty extended the moratorium until the end of 36. If the London treaty had allowed construction to resume in 31, it might have acted as a "make work" program, but governments were not really all in on the Keynesian "pump priming" deficit spending thing yet.
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  1264.  @johnshepherd8687  everything has gotten larger. The Essex class carriers were at the limit of the Washington and First London treaties at 27,000 tons. The Ford clocks in at 100,000 tons.
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  1265. iirc, Philadelphia and Essex were both built in repose to the government's request for privately funded frigates. Were their any other ships of that period that were built privately and donated to the USN?
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  1266.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Opana Point radar picked up the Japanese formation at 7:02 and reported it to the Army information center at Fort Shafter. The bulk of the air power on the island was Army. An hour should be plenty of time to get a substantial reception committee in the air and vectored toward the Japanese. The fault point would be the Navy getting the sub contact info to the information center at Fort Shafter, so that they would take the report from Opana Point seriously. Instead, the Ward's report was passed up the chain all the way to Kimmel, rather than alerting the Army information center.
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  1267. Yes, $5.8B in Rivian, and another $2B for a greenfield plant in the US to build the Scout. And they apparently keep the administrative overhead of their redundant mass market brands, and all their vanity projects. In true McKinsey fashion, they take the money they want out of the line workers. VAG has two assembly plants in Mexico, one branded VW, the other branded Audi. Stellantis and Ford also have two assembly plants each in Mexico. Mexico has a free trade agreement with the EU. The incoming US administration has been threatening a 25% tariff on Mexican goods, in defiance of the free trade agreement the US has with Mexico. So, it would be natural for the Mexican plants to pivot to supplying the EU. The implications for the ex-Opel Stellantis plants in Eisenach and Rüsselsheim and the Ford plant in Cologne may be the same as for VW plants.
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  1268.  @WALTERBROADDUS  with 20/20 hindsight, yes he was. The thought crossed my mind that Vichy might have been willing to provide bases in Algeria and Morocco for Axis use in reducing Gibraltar. After the British attacks on Mers el Kebir and Dakar, Vichy was more accommodating to the Axis, giving the Luftwaffe access to Vichy air bases in Syria for instance. Spain holds a sliver of Morocco fronting on the south side of the strait, but base bombers and subs in western Algeria and northern French Morocco to interdict British traffic through the strait, while bombing Gibraltar daily could make things "interesting", like forcing Force H out of Gibraltar and making supply of Malta much more difficult. The Germans could have gotten into a lot of mischief in the Med, if they had not started pouring resources into invading Russia.
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  1269.  @thomasembleton1467  I'm partial to "When I Was A Lad": "Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip That they took me into the partnership. And that junior partnership, I ween, Was the only ship that I ever had seen. But that kind of ship so suited me, That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!"
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  1270.  @toddwebb7521  Newspapers of the time reported that there was a consensus among the conference delegations that 12" guns were obsolete. Add in their greater age and a war of hard running and I'm thinking the Gin Palace would be the only one anyone would be interested in. The RN had plenty of 13.5" ships on the treaty disposal list: the four Orions, three KGVs, Erin, and the two Lion class battlecruisers.
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  1271.  @toddwebb7521  The dominion's fleets were counted by the treaty as units of the RN. Australia was owned by Australia, but included in the disposal list for the UK, for instance. As for "close allies", I'm not sure who would qualify. I floated Italy as a potential new home for Erin, but I don't think the UK or France really trusted Italy.
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  1272. The thing about operating in the Great Lakes is the horrible winter weather. I live in Michigan. The cold, snow and wind may be great training for being in the Aleutians or North Atlantic, but a challenge for green pilots. And, often, Lake Michigan ices up too much for navigation.
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  1273.  @genericpersonx333  actually, no, they did not have a lot of latitude regarding which ships were retained. Other conference attendees wanted to force Japan to retain Settsu, and scrap the newly completed Mutsu. The whole idea of the treaty was to stop spending on capital ships. Secretary Huges' initial proposal was immediate halt to all capital ship construction, including ships that were in an advanced state of construction, and retain older ships until they aged out at 20 years of age. I did see a newspaper report that conference attendees were in general agreement that 12" guns were obsolete, but only allowed the US to replace the two Delawares with two Colorados, while leaving the USN with 4 other 12" gunned ships, while Washington was used for target practice. I did a bit of back-of-the-envelope figuring, and the US could have completed Washington for about the same amount as they spent modernizing Florida and Utah, only half a dozen years before Florida was scrapped and Utah was converted to a target ship. The Kongos, being less than 10 years old, armed with 14" guns, and fast, were no where near being replaced.
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  1274.  @Wolfeson28  the North Carolinas were built was just before an increase in power plant efficiency. The NC's plant generated 121,000 hp. The SDs had the all singing, all dancing, 600psi plant producing 130,000hp. To illustrate how inefficiently the SDs used that power, the British 1938 Lion class design was designed for 30kts, with 130,000hp.
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  1275. Did some more reading on this issue last night. The 16"/45 completed trials in late 1914. To get the 14"/50 on the New Mexicos, instead of the 16"/45, they were ordered off the drawing board, without a prototype being built and tested. A prototype 14"/50 finally completed trials in August, 1915. In July, 1916, SecNav Daniels announced that, due to multiple examples from the war, the next generation of BBs would have 16" guns. On December 21st of 1916, months after the train had left the station wrt what size guns future BBs would have, Strauss was quoted in newspapers, again, promoting the 14" and insisting BBs would never engage at more than 12,000-13,000 yards. On December 30th, Strauss was transferred out of BuOrd, to command Nevada. Seems like Strauss was stubborn to the edge of irrationality in his promotion of the 14". Without his obstruction, it's quite possible the New Mexicos would have had the 16", and probable that the Tennessees would have had the 16". Wonder how that would have impacted terms of the WNT? The Admiralty could not build 8 Nelsons. By Drac's work, the 16", in improved 1930s form, was slightly inferior to the 15"/42, implying that a US argument that, while the 16" had a bigger bore, it was actually the equal of the 15" and no more, so the US BBs were actually comparable to the Revenges and Queen Elizabeths. But the data Drac was using for his comparisons would have been secret at the time.
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  1276.  @kemarisite  I'm sure the TBF bay was designed for the Mk 13. I expect the Mk 13 was designed short and fat to fit the odd, eccentric, to say nothing of suggestive, way that the TBD carries it. Given the way the TBD carries the torp, putting the much longer Mk 12 in, the nose of the torp will hit the deck the moment the tail of the plane lifts during takeoff. Secondly, given the way the back end of the torp nests in the fuselage, it may have been impossible to move the back of the torp aft to balance it on the plane's center of lift. It would be easier to put a Mk 12 in a TBF: forget the weapons bay and shackle it under the fuselage, unless the ventral gun position doesn't leave enough deck clearance.
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  1277. Frank, I entered a reply here an hour or so ago, which has since vanished. The Cliff Notes version is the people writing the Wiki articles are only as good as their sources. There are plenty of "sources" with bogus information.
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  1278.  @stanrogers5613  I can only report Tim's observations. Grumman didn't exactly make hatches enormous. An E2 was at an air show I attended some 20 years ago. When they were getting ready to leave at the end of the show, a crewman came up through a hatch on the top of the fuselage, and looked like he was reenacting his birth.
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  1279. My take is the hit on Bismark that sealed it's fate was a golden BB, pure luck. The hits on Yorktown's boilers and Hornet's engines that left both of them dead on the water do not quite rise to that level, due to the size of the target area. The hit to Saratoga's electrical control room that ran the electric drive system is certainly another golden BB. In the case of both Bismark and Saratoga, even if the vulnerable spot was marked with a big X and a sign "Aim Here", the variabilities of torpedoes: estimating target speed, estimating range, target course changes, would make trying to hit such a small area futile.
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  1280.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I was thinking of the entire Pearl Harbor attack, mostly symbolized by that pic of the Arizona burning, but you are right about the Maine. Hearst made it all about Spain in his newspapers, when no-one really knew at the time. The one that amuses me is when people say the US got in to WWI because of the Lusitania, when the US didn't declare war until nearly two years later.
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  1281.  @scottygdaman  lets say the US was "western hemisphere centric" rather than isolationist. The "Roosevelt Corollary" was the excuse for a decades long series of military interventions in Latin America to make the region "safe for purchase". iirc, those interventions ended in the 1930s, about the same time the Philippines were set on a path to independence.
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  1282.  @paulpeterson4216  across Lake Michigan, in Muskegon, is the USS Silversides, one of several Gato class subs preserved. Muskegon is also the home of a preserved WWII LST. Going through the Silversides, I noticed it's interior is exactly like the set used in "Operation Pacific", and the Silversides is mentioned in that film.
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  1283. wrt the question about USN battlecruisers, prior to the SecNav's proposal in 1915, which was adopted in the 1916 Navy Bill, formal requests by the SecNav for battle cruisers were made for 1, along with 2 battleships, in 1911, and for 2 battlecruisers, along with 4 battleships, in 1912. Battleships were always given priority, to replace obsolescing battleships, to maintain strength. As we know, Congress only approved 1 battleship in 1912, Pennsylvania, and 1 in 1913, Arizona. If battlecruisers had been authorized in 12 and 13, the design prepared by C&R in late 1912 was 920ft long, 97ft beam, 42250 tons, 10" armor belt, 8-14" guns, 16-6" guns, and turbine power providing speed of 29kts. This is a significantly larger ship than either Tiger or Kongo.
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  1284.  @wierdalien1  I did a long reply, yesterday, to Tim Engineman 2nd in the Q&A thread with the trajectory information I have on full vs reduced charges for USN guns, but the net seems to have eaten it. It really comes down to the ballistics of Bismark's guns and the state of training of Bismark's gunnery officers. If the gunnery officer looks at his full charge table and sees the angle of fall at 19,000 yards is under 20 degrees, which his training tells him will ricochet off of the deck, does he turn to the reduced charge table to see what the angle of fall is? The partial USN tables I have show the angle of fall for a 14"/45 at reduced charge is 20 degrees at 14,500, so longer ranges would result in a steeper angle of fall. Was firing a reduced charge a thing in the German navy, and what was the state of training of Bismark's gunnery officers?
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  1285. where did he mention that?
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  1286.  @michaelmoorrees3585  Thanks for the reply. Not all engines are "interference" engines. It is only "interference" engines where the pistons will collide with the valves if the belt breaks. As others have said, most timing belts have a replacement schedule, usually a pretty conservative one. A coworker's Hyundai Excel had a 60,000 mile belt replacement interval, and an interference engine. He never had the belt replaced. The original one broke around 180,000, so he donated the then rusty, dozen year old car to a charity. I'm surprised Drac was being towed by a strap. In the US, tow trucks that lift one end of the car off the pavement and pull the car as a trailer have been SOP for a century. I have a photo of my Grandfather with the tow truck his shop used, in the 1920s. For the last 30 odd years, the thing has been a flatbed, that gives the broken car a piggyback ride to the shop.
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  1287.  @cha0sr1pper  as it happens, I have been trying to research the history of the USN 12"/40 and have been reading a lot of BuOrd annual reports. The early reports 1900-1905 are very helpful, but after that lost a significant amount of content, shrinking from some 95 pages to 35. By the early 20s, the annual reports were nearly content free, only numbering about a dozen pages. In the 1911 report, Admiral Twining said he was omitting information he judged "tedious and uninstructive". Information that vanished from the reports included listings of individual shop orders for guns, with the gun numbers, and incident reports, such as an exploded 12" gun on USS Georgia that was well covered by newspapers, but completely unmentioned in the BuOrd annual report. So, if I were head of BuOrd in 1919, I would restore that "tedious and uninstructive" information, so that future historians can find the information they are looking for.
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  1288.  @F-41927  Some time ago, I was reading about the French Navy considering how much it would cost to lengthen and upengine the incomplete Normandie class ships to approach the 28kt speed of the Caracciolo class, found the cost was exorbitant and sold them all for scrap. I considered whether it would be productive for the French to claim the three incomplete Mackensen class battlecruisers, which were designed for a 28kt speed, tow them back to France and finish them, using the guns built for the Normandies. The bottom line was that the Mackensens still had an obsolete armor scheme, inadequate torpedo protection, the French 13.4" guns were obsolete and, if France had completed those three ships, they would have lost the two battleship constriction windows allocated to them by the Washington Treaty, which they used to build the two Dunkerque class ships, which had a more modern armor layout, better torpedo defense, and higher performance guns. So, in the long run, France was better off letting all the German ships go to scrap.
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  1289. On the question about completing Carraciolo, the RM built a significant number of destroyers and torpedo boats during the 1920s, so there was money available for naval construction. Some years ago, I took a stab at producing cost estimates for the construction of destroyers and completion of Carraciolo, as a battleship. If the RM had foregone something on the order of half of the destroyers they built, they would have had the funds to complete Carraciolo. Could they have completed Carraciolo post-Washington treaty? The treaty allows for immediate replacement of ships lost due to accident. As daVinci blew up by accident, it would probably be a legitimate move to say Carraciolo was the replacement for daVinci, even though the explosion on daVinci predated the treaty. Carraciolo was, apparently, not broken up until 1926. Somewhere between Mussolini becoming Prime Minister in late 22, and the elections of April 1924, when the Fascists lead the winning coalition, a door could have opened to allow Carraciolo to be completed as a figurehead of the new regime. Apparently, the RM was more interested in building up it's destroyer force.
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  1290. He has always had a plodding delivery, when he was talking about something he didn't really care about. He would get more animated when spewing bigotry and ridiculing people. Of course, he is nearly as old as Biden. The speech went to about midnight EDT. Maybe it was past his bedtime?
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  1291. That was the second shelling of Genoa. In 1940, the French fleet visited. In 42, the Italians dug out 4 of the 15"/40 guns that had been built for the Caricciolo class battleships, from the armory and installed them as shore batteries overlooking Genoa. The Brits didn't come calling again.
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  1292.  @TheJsmitty85  The two after turrets from Arizona were installed as shore batteries on the island. One of the two batteries was completed and the guns test fired shortly before V-J day. The US never really went in for monitors in the 20th century. One possibility is the glacial speed of the things. Most of the RN monitors seemed to top out around 8-12kts. A monitor that slow would be really tedious to cross the Pacific in. Besides, the USN had lots of old, slow, battleships for fire support.
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  1293.  @benjamin4673  my guess, and worth what you paid for it, is torps used contra-rotating screws due to the size limitation of the tube. Same as some aircraft used contrarotating props to clear the ground.
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  1294.  @paulgoyne6926  your comment ties in to a thread going on a previous post. I think the assertion that three Canadian QEs would simply replace the three KGVs on the original retention list, or Thunderer and two GKVs, is correct. The RN might even get the Nelsons, in place of the Iron Dukes as well. The US did not want that conference to fail, for domestic, political, reasons, so was very lenient with the UK. The UK was the only power to come out of the treaty well above it's tonnage quota, with numerical superiority, with firepower superiority, and with two ships of entirely postwar design, but the US got what it wanted: an excuse to cancel the 1916 capital ship building program.
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  1295.  @johnshepherd8687  my suspicion is, had Tennessee and California both been built with 16" guns, then, assuming you buy the story that West Virginia and Colorado were completed to approximate the 5:5:3 ratio of 16" gun ships with the Nagatos, then West Virginia and Colorado would not have been completed. That scenario would have the Delawares carrying on into the early 30s, and Florida and both Wyomings entering WWII as "first line" battleships. I put a question to Drac in guide 220 that would have about the same result: Daniels realizes. in Feb of 1919, that his decisions wrt the South Dakotas had rendered the Colorodoes obsolete, so, rather than throw good money after bad, Daniels orders Maryland cut up on the slipway and the other three cancelled before they were laid down, then the Lexingtons and South Dakotas are canceled for treaty compliance, what happens? Unfortunately, he declined to address that question. An even worse scenario is if Daniels had taken a page from the Admiralty's book, and canceled both the Coloradoes and Tennessees when the US entered the war in April 1917, as neither Tennessee nor Maryland was laid down yet, and all that was built of California was the bottom of the hull. Then, to get the USN to the 525,000 ton treaty limit, the USN would need to retain the Delawares, the South Carolinas and some of the Connecticut class.
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  1296. Thanks for the video. I remember the fleet deploying to the Falklands. In one clip the news camera panned around the harbor and showed one of these cruisers sitting at anchor.
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  1297. Many thanks for responding to my question about the RN exploiting the "experimental carriers" clause of the WNT. I suspected budget would be the stumbling block. If one wanted to really game the system, then convert the three "experimental" carriers to tenders, remove part of the flight deck, as was done with Langley, then lay them up, to reduce running costs, because the object of the exercise is to free up the carrier tonnage, not create more tenders. Then, when the war starts, rebuild the flight decks and they become carriers again. The R-class BBs could have been laid up in the 30s, also to reduce running costs. Even with those economy measures, it would probably still be a long pull to find the 3M Pounds each for more Ark Royals.
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  1298. wrt the question about battlecruisers, it occurs that the battlecruiser was a development of the pre WWI Armored Cruiser concept. Armored Cruiser armament topped out at 10" with the US Tennessee and Italian Pisa classes, when their contemporary battleships carried 12". Armored Cruiser top speed was a few knots faster than pre-dreadnoughts. Battlecruisers made the final step in adopting battleship size guns. That final step was also their downfall, as, the moment they adopted battleship size guns, it was inevitable they would be put up against battleships, where their vulnerability was exposed. I put the Deutschlands and maybe the Scharnhorsts, down as the final expressions of the armored cruiser concept, large, armored, faster than battleships, with sub-battleship size guns.
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  1299.  @horikyosuke4794  it's possible. The US Naval Gun factory had special railroad cars to transport guns anywhere in the country. There was also at least one case I know of, where 12" guns from the Gun Factory, which was in the Washington DC Navy Yard, went to Norfolk by barge. In 1914, Bethlehem Steel in the US sold four sets of 14" guns and complete turret assemblies to the Admiralty, and they made the trip to the UK in two Cunard steamers. As for why the Germans did not leverage the Italian 15" guns, a very good question. Even if the Germans had their reasons for using twin turrets, why did they reinvent the wheel designing and building 15" guns, instead of simply buying the Italian guns? National pride? "Not invented here syndrome"?
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  1300.  @CharlesStearman  The UK did it's own naval treaty with Germany, which had the effect of superseding the Versailles treaty, without the consent of the other parties to Versailles, particularly France. The treaty, actually an exchange of memos, limited the German fleet to 35% of the UK's fleet, dated June 18, 1935, three days after Scharnhorst was laid down.
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  1301. The discussions of "cruiser killers" brings a thought. Reading over the Washington Treaty, the Courageouses are not listed anywhere as capital ships, in spite of their battleship size guns and size. As we know, Fisher defined them as "light cruisers" to exploit a loophole in policy. The Washington treaty appears to have accepted them as "light cruisers". Can't help but wonder, if the Admiralty had retained the "Dreadnought armed cruiser" designation, would all the battlecruisers also have been exempted from the British capital ship quota? But then, would Renown and Repulse, classified as cruisers, be scrapped in the mid 30s to clear the tonnage for a greater number of treaty cruisers?
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  1302.  @kemarisite  that is what the Wiki entry says, but I think it is wrong. The Courageouses are not listed in either the retention or disposal list for the RN in the Washington treaty. Saratoga and Lexington are in the US disposal list, and Amagi and Akagi are in the IJN disposal list. If the Courageouses were to be disposed of, if not converted, they would have been listed. The Courageouses were not that outrageous, compared to other armored cruisers, in either armament or displacement. They had been classified as cruisers since inception. Everything I see tells me the treaty regarded them as cruisers.
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  1303. ​ @jakemillar649  I'm thinking Akagi, in battlecruiser form, had the most potential. I'm not sure the G3s and N3s were really a serious proposal. The G3s were 856 feet long, displaced over 48,000 tons. When the US and UK were arguing about the tonnage escalator in 38, the UK wanted to set the limit at 42,000, because that was the most their facilities could handle, so I suspect the G3 and N3 were a bluff. Most of the other BBs that were cancelled were really too slow to be relevant in the 40s. The Tosas and Nagatos would make a nice division of 26kt, 16" armed BBs, but the IJN did not make much use of it's BBs. The IJN heavily used the Kongos however. I bet they would have made good use of Akagi too. Amagi, would not have been completed due to the earthquake damage that prevented her being completed as a carrier. The most useless cancelled ship? I'm thinking either Washington or any of the 1920 South Dakotas, due to their low speed. The Lexingtons, as battlecruisers, could at least keep up with the carriers, and add some AA fire. They might have mixed it up with the Kongos if they had been in the right place at the right time, like heavyweight boxers with glass jaws squaring off against each-other.
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  1304.  @bkjeong4302  OK, let's hear your candidate for most useful ship that was cancelled.
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  1305.  @Ralph-yn3gr  I doubt it. The problem was having a rapid fire gun that could do damage before the torpedo boat got close enough to launch a torpedo. The RN was using 12 Pounders (3") guns for plinking torpedo boats up to the beginning of WWI, but soon figured out they were too small. A shrapnel shell, if it could be timed accurately to burst right over the torpedo boat could mow down anyone on deck, which would probably include the captain as TBs tended to have completely open bridges, but it wouldn't stop the boat.
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  1306.  @bkjeong4302  I think the other Admirals had already been broken up by the time the conference started. You know my opinion of the Lexingtons as carriers: horribly inefficient at carrying aircraft and wasteful of the one resource in limited supply: aircraft carrier tonnage. Yes, I have noticed your opinion of big gun ships before. As posted above, I would have favored the US being granted licenses for future capital ship construction, rather than finish anything on the slipway in 22, but, considering the Admiralty still considered 23kts as a perfectly acceptable speed for a battleship in 1930, I suspect anything built in the early 30s would have been as irrelevant as any WWI holdover, except, with future knowledge, I know Coolidge would not build anything, nor Hoover, so FDR could have gotten the North Carolinas started a year or two sooner.
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  1307.  @rambling_reiver  the turret layout is the same as the Amagis, while the Tosas had #3 turret at main deck level. I'm thinking the Amagis and Kiis carried #3 turret higher, to make room below for the extra machinery needed to drive the ship at that higher speed.
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  1308. Drac, you have mentioned the friction between the US and UK in the 1920s. One contributor was the UK's war debt. Apparently the UK wanted to pay by exporting manufactured goods to the US, but the US had protectionist trade politics, did not want British goods, but cash instead Did anyone explore the UK transferring real estate to the US instead? At that time, the British Empire was centered around the Indian Ocean. The West Indies were not strategic to the UK, but they were strategic to the US, abutting the US coast, and controlling access to the Panama Canal. The UK West Indies holdings: all the islands, plus British Honduras, but not British Guyana, total some 22193.5 square miles. Extrapolating the price the US paid Denmark for the Virgin Islands in 1917, gives a value for the UK holdings of about $4.150B. UK debt to the US after WWI, by what I have seen, was some $4.277B. Seems that, rather than arguing about a discount to face value, and a 60 year payment schedule. the UK could sign over the West Indies colonies, the US extinguish the debt, and we are square. addition: Drac, never mind. I found lots of discussion of this very suggestion in newspapers of 1920-1923. Seems many were in favor of such a trade, except Lloyd George and President Harding.
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  1309.  @williamgoin139  that is why, if I was running the Washington Conference in 1922, I would have introduced throw weight into the capital ship specifications, setting the main battery at 8-16", or 9-15", or 12-14" per ship, so each nation could choose whether they wanted to fire fewer, larger shells, or more smaller shells, but they would all be sending the same weight of fire downrange, roughly 17,000lbs, give or take about 1,000. As 12" shells were so much smaller, roughly 870 pounds, vs 1400 for a 14", I would define 12" as obsolete, as ships with such small guns were so far off the throw weight target range. 12" armed ships would not be subject to the treaty replacement schedule and could be replaced at any time at their nation's convenience, if I ran things.
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  1310.  @gregorywright4918  Churchill rolling over at the thought of selling off some non-strategic colonies? Buying and selling colonies was pretty routine. The US paid Spain several million to give up it's claims to the Philippines and Guam. Spain still held the rest of the Marianas and Carolines after that, but then sold them to Germany for about $4M. The US bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark. Going farther back, the US bought Alaska from Russia, and half of the western US was purchased from France. Winnie was Secretary of State for the Colonies from Feb 1921 to October 1922. The negotiations for the repayment of debts to the US were in 1922, so, if Winnie was a big picture guy he might see the advantage of Plan Steve. Winnie was Chancellor of the Exchequer from November 1924 to June of 1929, where he would certainly see the benefit to the UK of making over $4B of debt vanish with the stroke of a pen.
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  1311.  @gregorywright4918  That idea about the West Indies colonies jelled in my mind yesterday and I put the numbers together. This evening I started looking through newspapers of 1920-1923. Exactly such a land for debt swap was widely discussed at the time. Seems many were in favor, but both Lloyd George and President Harding opposed it. So, the US demanded cash, payable over 62 years, and resentment between the two countries festered for years. A wise person once said, the best way to lose a friend is to loan him money.
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  1312.  @Fought_in_the_CrimsonRedSeas  It's " Last Warrior" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg_nrOM9ve4
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  1313.  @alanwilliams4443  a Flower class displaces about 900 tons. That puts them in the same range as a USN PCE, like the USS Havre, which I spent a weekend on, bouncing around Lake Michigan. Other ships of Havre's class have been called frigates in Dutch service, and Corvettes in Philippine service. The USN WWII PC is smaller, about 450 tons. I have found a case of a PC having it's ASW gear removed and reclassified as a PGM, aka gunboat.
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  1314.  @bkjeong4302  wouldn't it be a pretty safe assumption that every ship, of an existing type, is designed as a response to a design by a potential opponent?
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  1315. wrt the question about the USN in WWI, specifically, Battleship Division Nine. By some accounts, the RN was running out of men. They were using several pre-dreadnoughts as convoy escorts. The RN needed the men from those pre-dreadnoughts to man new destroyers and cruisers, so looked to the US to take over the job the pre-dreadnoughts had been performing. One criteria, as every drop of oil in the UK had to be shipped in, through the gauntlet of U-Boats, was that the US battleships be coal-fired. The initial squadron was New York, Wyoming, Florida, and Delaware. After some consultation with his British counterparts, Admiral Rodman made adjustments, adding Texas and Arkansas to the squadron, and sending Delaware back to the US. The jobs they did, like escorting iron ore carriers from Norway to the UK were not glamorous, but necessary. The pic Drac showed was the initial squadron arriving at Scapa on December 7, 1917.
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  1316.  @CharlesStearman  I only know what I can read. Both the page on BatDiv9 on the Naval History And Heritage Command site, and the Wiki article say that, by 1917, the RN needed to lay up some pre-dreadnoughts to free up their crews for reassignment to destroyers and cruisers, and asked the US to backfill the RN's battleship force.
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  1317. What was the first class of CL to have multiple gun turrets, like the Leanders? A quick look around gave me the Omahas as the first with a dual gun turret main armament. I saw several WWI CLs with a pair of single 6" mounts side by side forward, which seems particularly awkward. BBs and armored cruisers had dual gun turrets for decades before WWI.
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  1318. wrt the Kongos. considering they were still vulnerable to large bore fire, and given the IJN's forward thinking wrt naval air resulting in the treaty limits being gamed by certain ships being designed for easy conversion to carriers, a nightmare scenario has the Kongos all being converted to carriers in the 1939-40 time frame, rather than conceived as carrier escorts. When the Kongos went in for "modernization", spies in the yards would think nothing was amiss when the turrets came off, or when the superstructures were removed, or when the boilers and turbines were replaced, but would panic when the hangar deck bulkheads started to be erected, and by then it would be too late for the USN or RN to build more carriers to offset the greater IJN carrier strength before the war started. Lacking the Kongos, the IJN could have deployed the Nagatos instead. In the Solomons campaign, for instance, not losing one Nagato to cruiser fire might have resulted in two Nagatos being on hand when the USN brought SD and Washington.
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  1319. I assume you are thinking remove existing guns of limited use, to clear space and top weight to be used for more useful armament. That was done. Repulse had one of her problematic triple 4" mounts removed, and replaced with an octuple Vickers PomPom. As they were rebuilt, USN standards had their 5"/51s removed and replaced with dual purpose 5"/38s. Earlier USN dreadnoughts had hull casemate mounted secondaries removed as the mounts shipped so much water they were unworkable in many sea conditions.
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  1320.  @themanformerlyknownascomme777  your scenario might have happened. During the Washington conference, the UK was willing to accept an individual ship limit around 42,000 tons. An intellectually honest position, due to Hood. The US wanted 35,000, to keep costs down. At the first London conference, with the depression on, the UK was proposing lowering the tonnage limit well below 35,000, to constrain costs. The Dunkerques were built the size they were as a compromise: large enough to deal with the Panzerschiff, but lower cost than a treaty max ship. First London put a fleet tonnage limit on cruisers. While the USN continued to build 10,000 ton cruisers, the Admiralty looked at it's commitments. I recently reread "Fifty Ships That Saved The World", which said the Admiralty's assessment was that German surface raiders would be more of a threat than U-Boats, so wanted more cruisers. The Admiralty's decision was to build somewhat undersized cruisers, so they could have more cruisers, within the treaty's fleet tonnage limit. While a 42,000 ton limit was possible, what each country actually builds is a balance of what they can pay for, and how many ships they want, within the treaty's fleet tonnage limits. I am pretty confident that, whatever limits the US and UK agreed on, Germany and Italy would cheat by 6-7,000 tons, because that is small enough overage to get away with. The Yamato would have been what it was, as Japan had dropped out of the treaty system, so was unconstrained. What tipped off the US and UK that Yamato exceeded treaty limits was the amount of material being ordered for her. Intelligence like that is vague. Apparently, the US and UK thought Yamato would be somewhere in the mid 40,000 range, so negotiated the tonnage escalator appropriately. I suspect that, if Japan had opted to build Yamato at 45.000, the US and UK would not have twigged that she exceeded treaty limits in time to start work on the Iowas and Lions.
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  1321. It was inevitable the GOP would play the race card. I was expecting a more pointed dog whistle like "we don't want another one of those people as President", to throw shade on both Harris and Obama. The DEI narrative is a two-fer: a play on the old "affirmative action" narrative that she was not qualified for the job, and, feeding the "replacement" conspiracy theory, that she took the job away from a white person. They will probably start screeching that she will "force CRT indoctrination on our children in school". to make a racist trifecta. Maybe they can connect her to Jeremiah Wright, so Hannity can dust off the narrative he used to connect Obama to Louis Farrakhan, and imply Obama "hates white people"
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  1322. ​ @arivael  somewhere along the line, I read that Churchill wanted to send a "new" battleship, to impress the natives, hence the long trip from the UK to Singapore, rather than using units that were closer. They knew that Repulse was not a front line ship as it had been relegated to the Indian Ocean by then, along with the Revenges, where it busied itself looking for commerce raiders. QE and Valiant, with their heavy rebuilds, could, at least, look like modern ships, and they would not be held back by Hermes. By some accounts, there was a suggestion that Hermes tag along with PoW as she rounded the Cape just as Hermes was coming out of refit at Simon's Town, but the idea was rejected because Hermes could not keep up with PoW. Other carriers? Ark Royal had been sunk in November. Illustrious had been in the US for refit, steamed to Jamaica in November, then collided with Formidable on the way back to the UK in December, and went back in the yard for repair. Formidable had also been in the US for repair, until the trip back to the UK, and the collision, then undergoing repair until early February. Victorious was patrolling the Denmark Strait looking for Tirpitz and Scheer. Indomitable ran aground in the West Indies in early November while working up. Eagle was in the UK for refit and repair, having suffered a fire in the hangar and serious powerplant problems. Hermes was the only carrier available.
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  1323.  @arivael  you are correct, I did forget Furious. I checked. During October 41, Furious was carrying aircraft to Jamaica for ASW patrol. From November into March 42, Furious was undergoing refit in the Philadelphia. Navy yard. Returned to the UK in April. In the UK back to refit for completion of installation of radar. Joined the Home Fleet in July. I have heard that story about Indomitable too. She ran aground in the West Indies on November 3rd. By November 3rd, PoW was approaching Freetown, Sierra Leone, arriving there November 5th, and departing for Cape Town on the 7th. The log I have access to does not say where in the West Indies Indomitable grounded, but it's 4,440 miles from Jamaica to Freetown. If Indomitable had made for Freetown the day she grounded, she would have had a hard time catching up to PoW as that looks like about a 6 day trip. wrt carriers in the Med, I don't think Force H had a carrier between when Ark Royal sank in November and when Eagle joined H February 23rd. Meanwhile, Victorious was the only serviceable carrier with the Home Fleet. Hermes was the only option, but if she was sent with Z with her usual handful of Stringbags, she would have been nothing but another target. Two of the Kongos were off on the Pearl Harbor op at that time, though the Admiralty had no way of knowing that. As it was, the Japanese knew the Brits were sending battleships, so they reinforced the bomber groups in Indochina. I expect that, had QE and Valiant been sent instead, the Japanese would have dealt with them the same way.
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  1324.  @jamesd3472  it would have made sense for the French and Italians to claim unfinished German ships as reparations. It crossed my mind that the Mackensens would be a better option than completing the Normandies, and the guns already built for the Normandies were the right size for the Mackensens. Of course, the Normandies were not completed either. France was broke. The US was pressing for war debt repayment, in cash. The UK was also pressing France for repayment of war debt, in cash, because it needed the cash to pay it's debts to the US. And France had a large war zone to rebuild. For the Italians, they could have easily finished Caracciolio, but they didn't want to go that way. They put their money into destroyers instead. France and Italy did claim several German and Austrian cruisers and destroyers, completed ones, as reparations. France and Italy each received a Tegetthoff as reparatons. France used it's one for target practice. Italy stripped the guns off it's Tegetthoff and installed them as shore batteries, then scrapped the hull.
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  1325. I hold that Captain Leach's eye witness account is correct. In the inquiry, Captain Leach said he had been looking directly at Hood when the inbound salvo of four shells landed. He said two landed short, and one long, or vice versa, he did not recall which, and he had an "impression" something hit near the mainmast. He kept looking at that spot for a few moments to see if something would happen, then the column of fire erupted from just about the same place he thought something had hit. I say Captain Leach is correct, it was a deck hit. Legions of armchair Admirals say the angle of fall at that range was too shallow to penetrate Hood's deck. However, firing with a reduced charge was SOP in the USN. USN gunnery tables published in the 30s give trajectory data for both full charge and reduced charge firing. Firing with a reduced charge, reduces the muzzle velocity. With reduced velocity, the shell needs to be fired at a higher angle to reach the target range, which results in a steeper angle of fall. All Bismark's gunners needed to do was know their business: at that range, they had to fire with reduced charge to punch through Hood's deck, so leave out the fore charge and only fire with the main, brass-cased, charge. Why would Bismark be going for a deck hit, ignoring the armchair Admiral's protests about "danger space"? RN fighting instructions said to close as rapidly as possible, only turning to bring the aft turrets to bear after closing to within 16,000 yards. All Bismark had to shoot at, with a relatively flat trajectory, is the front of Hood's superstructure. If they aimed for a deck hit, they had all of Hood's deck area as target.
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  1326.  @buzzardbeurling  The penetration curve for Bismark's guns shows an angle of fall of 20 degrees or more, is needed to penetrate 80mm of armor. As an analog to Bismark's guns, use the USN 14"/50. 1935 USN gunnery tables show, with a full charge, and a muzzle velocity of 2600fps, the angle of elevation of 8 degrees, 38.9 minutes reaches 14,500 yards, with a resulting angle of fall of 12 degrees, 5 minutes, too shallow to penetrate. The same gun, and the same shell, using a reduced charge, with a muzzle velocity of 2000fps, uses an elevation of 15 degrees 14.4 minutes to reach 14,500, with a resulting angle of fall of 20 degrees, 53 minutes. At 14,500 yards, or more, the angle of fall is steep enough to penetrate, rather than ricochet off, of Hood's deck, when using a reduced charge. What facts support your argument?
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  1327.  @buzzardbeurling  they knew they could not penetrate Hood's deck with a full charge, because of the resulting angle of fall. With Hood coming nearly straight at them, per RN fighting instructions, they could not penetrate the hull because of the angle, and they would not get a kill shot by shooting at Hood's superstructure. Bismark's gunner's experience tells them these facts, and they adjust the drill to suit the situation. Shooting with a reduced charge was SOP, otherwise the trajectory data would not be in the gunnery table.
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  1328.  @buzzardbeurling  those are good questions. I have heard them before. How credible is it that the USN, alone, used the tactic of reduced charge to enable plunging fire at closer ranges? Maybe the Bismark's gunners did not mention it, because it was SOP, and deemed not worth mentioning?
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  1329.  @buzzardbeurling  I certainly have read about testing, as you describe, using a reduced charge to simulate a 20,000 yard hit at 5,000 or so. Didn't the Brits do that in their post-war testing of Baden? The USN tables show reduced charge trajectories at all the same range increments as the full charge trajectories. There were no computers then. All those trajectories had to be calculated by hand. Seems a large undertaking for something that would only be used for a few tests. It is probably safe to assume that everyone involved in setting gunnery policy in the 30s is dead now, so all we have are things that are handed down, and possibly distorted in the process. I don't know if you are familiar with the plant Ford Motor built at Willow Run to build B-24s. A lot of nonsense has crept into the narrative about that plant over the years. I heard an absolute howler, from a supposed "expert" a week ago. According to him, Wayne County was going to tax Ford for every plane that came off the assembly line. Utter nonsense. The government owned the plant, everything in it, and everything that came out of it, and, at that time, the Federal government did not pay local tax, so it would be impossible for Wayne County to tax those B-24s. I know the government had title to the planes, because I read the provisions of the original contract, in the Federal Register, not in an article someone wrote decades later. If I find myself in the hereafter some day, there are some people I want to find and talk with. Jackie Fisher is one. Sergio Marchionne is another. Until then, there are some questions I will not have a definite answer for.
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  1330. wrt cruiser evolution, my take: Early in the 20th century, there were three classes of cruisers: armored, protected and scout. The scout cruisers could function as the leader of a destroyer squadron or, as the name implies, scout on their own. I would call the Omaha class a good example of the scout cruiser morphing into the light cruiser. Protected cruisers were bigger, more heavily armed and armored. I would call the protected cruiser, like the Olympia, the predecessor to the heavy cruiser. The armored cruiser was even more heavily armed and armored. The US and Italian armored cruisers mounted 10" guns in their last pre-WWI iterations, when the battleship standard was 12". Some call armored cruisers "second class battleships". Greece called the Averoff, a Pisa class armored cruiser, a battleship. The first USS Maine has been described as both an armored cruiser and a second class battleship. The armored cruiser concept, guns larger than a heavy cruiser, but smaller than a battleship, returned with the Deutschlands, Scharnhorsts and Alaskas.
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  1331. May as well throw my two cents in. Armament and speed are shifting targets as technology develops. The only possible, durable, definition is protection against capital ship size guns of the same era. The NCs may not be "protected against their own guns", as built, but they can stand up to a KGV fairly well. A ship that can withstand nothing more than heavy cruiser fire at reasonable combat ranges is not a battleship. On the strength of Hood's 12" belt, as skimpy as it is, she is a fast battleship, as she can take capital ship fire, if hit in the right place.
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  1332.  @Tepid24  according to Wiki, Dunkerque only had an 8.9" belt, vulnerable to anything larger than a heavy cruiser. Scharnhorst has a 13.8" belt, so a battleship, even though underarmed, because it can take fire from something like a KGV, to a point. I read that Scharnhorst took 13 hits from Duke of York, 12 from the cruisers and 11 torpedoes. Dunkerque was disabled by only 4 hits from Hood, two of which penetrated her main belt. In open ocean, Dunkerque would have been a goner. 1v1 with Hood.
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  1333.  @Tepid24  as you said, you are looking at the extremes, not the average BB "gun of the era", which would be the basis for the definition. Dunkerque and Scharnhorst were not of Renown's era, but 20 years newer too. It appears that Renown, in 1930s configuration, had a 9" belt. The guns of Dunkerque and Scharnhorst could easily punch through. Navweaps shows the French 13" penetrating 11.48" at over 30,000 and Scharn's 11" penetrating 11.47" at 20,000. On the other hand, Renown's 15" could penetrate Dunkerque's 8.9" at 30,000 yards, but would need to get within 15,000 to penetrate Scharnhorst. A KGV could punch through Renown or Dunkerque at 25,000, but, again would need to close to under 15,000 to penetrate the strongest part of Scharnhorst. fwiw, at North Cape, Duke of York opened fire at less than 12,000, By my measure, Renown and Dunkerque were both battlecruisers, because they are so vulnerable, while Scharnhorst is a BB, even though underarmed.
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  1334.  @Tepid24  I agree with everything you said. You highlighted the variables that intrude on theory. Variables are not predictable however, like the two hits that Gneisenau scored on Renown early on both being duds, while 25 years of experience with the 15"/42 produced reliable results.
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  1335.  @emperordave3006  if the 14" limit had held, it would only impact the US and UK. France and Italy already had 15" gunned ships under construction and Japan had dropped out of the treaty system. The UK settled on the 14"/45, with only average muzzle velocity and average size shell, for a 14", so they were not going for exceptional performance. The USN 14"/50s that were rebuilt in the 30s had a higher muzzle velocity, but it came at a price: barrel life about a third less than the British 14"/45. They had an even more powerful 14" under development, which they dropped like a bad habit when the escalator clause tripped. With the French, Italians and Germans all going for high velocity 15", the US going to extra heavy shells, and the Japanese going to even bigger guns, the British 14", and not a high performance 14" at that, mystifies me.
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  1336. That's interesting. My dad was in the artillery, and was issued a carbine. He commented that the carbine wasn't worth a hoot with grenades, compared to a Garand, because of the weak cartridge.
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  1337. Of course, he might not give a nickle to any school. So, what he says about not giving any money to a school with a vax mandate would be true.
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  1338. I am inclined to agree with Ghosn: the merger is being driven by MITI, probably as a means to "safe jobs" and/or bail out the banks that hold Nissan paper, by giving them access to Honda's checkbook. It certainly is not for Honda's benefit. If Honda wanted a piece of Nissan's market share, all they would need to do is wait until Nissan went toes up. Then they would gain some share of Nissan's customer base, simply by virtue of still being in business.
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  1339. It seems the Buccaneer really wasn't that bad. The Brits bought the Buc for training, but deemed the Helldiver unsuitable for any use. In the back of my mind is the thought the USN bought the SB2C, not because it was a decent plane, but because Curtiss could build them with acceptable quality and could meet delivery schedules, two areas where Brewster was a miserable failure. In some alternate reality, Brewster subcontracted Buff and Buc production to Fleetwings, instead of Jimmy Work lining his own pockets by having the Navy build the Warminster plant. The Miranda boys didn't exactly cover the company with glory either. Did the Aussies even know their new Buffs were built with second hand engines?
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  1340.  @flyswryan  You get a like for "airline proven". Supposedly they were refurbished by Wright, but I still wonder how up to spec they were. The Miranda boys were pretty sketchy characters, but they knew people. Shouldn't be surprised if the goods didn't live up to the sales pitch.
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  1341.  @bluemarlin8138  The US and UK did overcome national pride to use the Bofors and Orlikon, and the hedgehog. The RN also used the F4F, F4U and TBF, along with a variety of other US designed and built aircraft. You hit on one major problem: logistics. The US guns were designed to use USN smokeless. The British gun was designed for cordite. USN smokeless appears to be more energy dense than cordite. The chamber volume of the British gun is 34,000cuin, while the chamber of the US gun is only 23,000 cuin. When the British were running the Abercrombie class monitors, with US 14" guns in WWI, they had to import US smokeless powder for them. When they tried cordite in the US guns, they suffered significant loss of range. We see the same difference in chamber volume with 14" guns. The US built guns on the Abercrombie had a 15,332cuin chamber. The 14" guns on HMS Canada had 23,500cuin chambers and the 14" on the WWII KGVs had 22,000cuin chambers.
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  1342.  @ROBERTN-ut2il  everything you say is true. I don't recall where I read about the difference in range in the US built 14" with smokeless vs cordite. It might have been in "Big Gun Monitors", might have been Friedman on WWI weapons, but seems the RN could not get enough cordite into the guns to duplicate their performance with US smokeless.
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  1343. wrt the Force Z aircraft carrier question and Churchill trying to cover himself. I doubt that the Admiralty had a clue, when PoW set sail for the far east on October 24th, that all six large IJN carriers would be off on the Pearl Harbor op by the time PoW arrived in the far east. Seems that the reasonable assumption would be that if the Japanese made a move on Malaya, they would have air cover. Second point, assuming the range of a G3M or G4M with a torpedo load was unknown, and most bombs could not hurt PoW critically, bombs could hurt Repulse. So, seems irresponsible that the possibility of airborne attack on Force Z could be handwaved away. Hermes was finishing repair in Simonstown on November 16th. Hermes' usual air wing was a handful of Swordfish. The RN was starting to receive Martlets, but the early Martlets did not have folding wings, and, iirc, the wingspan of an F4F is too wide to fit on Hermes' elevators. At that time, it seems all the Martlets were in the UK anyway. The Buffalo had a slightly smaller wingspan, just small enough to fit on Hermes's elevators, and there were plenty of Buffalos in Singapore. So the only practicable way to get a credible CAP for Force Z would be to send Hermes. Meanwhile, get the information from Brewster to fabricate tailhooks in Singapore, and train the RAF pilots in carrier ops. When Hermes arrives, put the Swordfish ashore and load as many Buffalos as would fit on the ship. Bottom line, given the gyrations that would be needed to give Force Z a CAP, if that Hermes/Buffalo scenario even occurred to anyone, I figure Winny rolled the dice, then tried to cover his rear when it went wrong.
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  1344.  @gregorywright4918  iirc, a flight of Buffalos did arrive at the scene of the battle, too late. Apparently Philips, or someone, did finally send a signal, when they realized how deep in the kimchee they were.
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  1345.  @bostonrailfan2427  iirc, the WNT allowed carriers to be armed with guns up to 8". The USN did not know, for sure, how carriers would be used, so apparently considered the possibility that the carrier would operate alone, in a scouting role, and needed to be able to defend itself against other surface ships.
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  1346. wrt the question of barrel wear between French and Italian ships. Drac touched on it at the last moment, the quality of the steel used in the gun. I was reading Friedman on WWI naval weapons recently. Friedman mentions a couple things: the quality of the steel, and the combustion temperature of the propellant. British analysis of captured German guns after WWI showed the Germans were using much higher quality steel than the UK used, which enabled much greater barrel life. Estimates were that the German guns cost 5 to 6 times as much to build as British guns, but the superior material lead to much greater barrel life. The lower combustion temperature of the German propellant was another contributor to barrel life. That being said, I have noticed that the barrel life for German guns on Navweaps is in line with UK guns, so I am not sure about who is right.
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  1347.  @lukedogwalker  there are things I read that simply don't make any sense. I have been looking in to the choice of 14" for the KGVs. One narrative says the British were forced to go 14" by Second London, but it was the British that pushed for 14" in the treaty, and their decision to go 14" was made before the conference started. Another narrative says the 14" armament was chosen for lower cost. Drac's piece on the KGVs shows the estimated weight for the 12-14" originally planned was higher than that of the 9-15" alternative, and the 14", having more guns, means more parts to be forged, fabricated, and machined. I don't see how it is possible for the 14" set to cost less with more material and a higher part count than the 15" alternative. I picked up the Garzke/Dulin book at the library last week. They talk about the "more smaller guns means more hits" school of thought driving the decision. That has the ring of truth to it, because the USN had the same argument in 1915-16. I read about the debate in the USN from the annual reports of the Secretary of the Navy, and newspaper reports, written at the time. I have visions of someone at the top, or above the top, of the Admiralty, clinging to that obsolete theory, ignoring that the French and Italians were both building 15", ignoring that the US made it's support for 14" contingent on Japanese support, ignoring that the Japanese were not going to support it because they already said they were dropping out of the treaty, and forcing the 14" gun. There was no need to write 14" into the treaty, as there was nothing in the treaty prohibiting building under treaty limits. The French had built 13", then 15", and the Italians were building 15", when the treaty limit was 16". My take is, whoever it was that forced the 14" gun on the RN, had it written into the treaty, and the fake narratives about treaty compliance and cost created and disseminated for political cover. It may sound bizarre, but no more bizarre than Admiral Strauss' antics at BuOrd, pushing 14".
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  1348.  @gregorywright4918  the only preceding 14" guns in the UK were export only, wire wound, designs circa WWI, produced by Elswick and Vickers. Logic would dictate that, when they started working on the Lions, they would have used three of the quad 14" turrets that Vickers already had in production to expedite the ships, but no, they started with a clean sheet triple 16" design. The French, Italian, and German battleships that were building in 39, were the same ones that had been building in 36, but the 14" guns that were deemed competitive in 36, were seen as uncompetitive in 39? That is another aspect of the 14" gun KGV that doesn't make any sense.
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  1349.  @gregorywright4918  I was reading the section of the Garzke/Dulin book on the Dunkerques a couple days ago. Not only did the quad turrets result in the least amount of weight per gun for the turret, they based the design on the quads that had been designed for the Normandies, which saved significant time and money in design. The Normandie turrents had originally been designed for only 15 degrees of elevation, so increasing elevation was one of the modifications that had to be made. Then, when they designed the Richelieus, they scaled up the same turret design. The KGV turrets were designed for 40 degrees of elevation and had the powder magazines below the shell rooms, the opposite of the WWI RN BBs. The Nelson turrets were designed for 40 degrees of elevation and had the powder magazines below the shell rooms, the first RN turrets meeting the new specifications. The Nelson turrets could have been used on the KGVs with only sleeving the mounts down for a 15" gun, saving even more time and money than the French saved by recycling the Normandie design, and they also benefited from 15 years of debugging, but no, the Admiralty wanted a clean sheet quad.
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  1350.  @gregorywright4918  what I have not seen in the book was any mention of dispersion problems with the French guns. The guns were mounted in pairs, in a common sleeve, hence very close together, and had a high muzzle velocity. both of which seem to be associated with excessive dispersion. The Brits might have wanted to avoid the French design for that reason. In any event, the US auto industry is not the only industry that suffers "Not Invented Here" syndrome.
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  1351.  @gregorywright4918  I haven't heard that one. I have read that the RN developed it's own magnetic pistol. Found it very unreliable. iirc, the Brits found the earth's magnetic field changed so much the pistols would always need to be fine tuned to exactly where they were on the earth to work. I read that the RN told BuOrd about this, but BuOrd persisted. Given the size of the explosion that disabled the Richelieu at Dakar, the thinking is the torp, with magnetic pistol, went under the ship, blissfully unaware of it's presence, and hit the depth charges that had been dumped near by, by the British, in an earlier failed attempt to disable Richelieu.
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  1352. Yes, Biden's debate was terrible. But look at the nutty stuff that comes out of Trump's mouth, like how he can't wash his hair because of dripping faucets, or the electric boat and shark thing. Or, going back a few years, Trump talking about American soldiers, in the revolution, capturing airports. Or the time he made a mistake about the path of a hurricane, so drew in the path he had predicted on a map with a black Sharpie, to blame someone else for the mistake. In the last couple of years, Biden has, at times, spoken haltingly. His advocates always brush it off by reminding people he has a stutter. But look at the expression on Biden's face in the group photo from the G7 conference in Italy two weeks ago. He really does not look fully aware of where he is. Bottom line, neither is really fit for office. Each can have good days, and bad days, but can we accept someone in that position that could have an incoherent moment when there is a crisis? Who is an alternative? Kennedy? With a worm in his brain?
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  1353.  @WALTERBROADDUS  it would be game over if the Italians had been able to hang on to Ethiopia and make transiting the Red Sea hazardous, or if they had sent their entire East African squadron up the Red Sea to scuttle itself in the canal. I worked that out once, and it would be difficult for even the Italian destroyers to make the entire run up the Red Sea in one night, and, in daylight, the RAF would cut them to ribbons.
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  1354. Not Royal Navy, but wrt the USN, I went through a museum on the campus of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis many decades ago. There was an exhibit of artifacts salvaged off the wreck of the Maine, including a cutlass in a scabbard that had been bolted to a bulkhead of the ship. Not intended for combat, but, when I was a boot at Great Lakes 50 years ago, next month, the RPOC who marched the company around the base had a cutlass.
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  1355. wrt the question about the USN's superimposed turrets, these were the brainchild of a young officer at BuOrd named Joseph Strauss. Strauss was the same bright spark who, years later, as head of BuOrd, decreed that the 14" was the perfect gun, because combat at ranges greater than 12,000 yards would never happen. As Drac said, improvements in rate of fire of the main guns rendered the superimposed turrets redundant. Someone else in the Navy Department figured out that, what was needed in the large turrets, was paying a little attention to ergonomics, and training the crews better. The Navweaps article on the 12"/40, the gun mounted on the Virginias, shows the rate of fire improving from 0.66 round per minute when the ships were first commissioned, to 2 rounds per minute after the modifications to turret ergonomics and training had been implemented in 1906.
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  1356.  @calenedgar3722  given that bulkheads are pierced by pipes, electrical conduits and ventilation ducts, chance of fully dry compartments, after all these years, would be pretty slim. On the other hand, I remember watching a documentary about Arizona, years ago, maybe 91, where a diver looking over the wreck found a porthole with the glass not broken, and the steel cover had been closed before the ship sank. There was a bit of water at the bottom of the space between the porthole glass and the cover, but most of the space between the glass and the cover was still filled with air.
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  1357.  @rhedosaurus2251  apparently, the only official kamikaze unit in the area was based at Mabalacat, on Luzon. The unit then moved to Cebu to be closer to the beachhead.
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  1358.  @rhedosaurus2251  it was a new concept. Someone has to be first. Besides, there is the practical aspect. Qzawa's force was far to the north. The closer the plane's base is, the less fuel it needs to get to the target. The less fuel it needs to carry, the more lifting capability is available for payload.
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  1359. re UK FAA aircraft in 1939. Prior to the SBD, the USN had the SB2U Vindicator, first deployed on Saratoga in December of 37, so by 40, with the SBD, the USN was into it's second generation of monoplane dive bombers. The original F4F proposal was a biplane, and soundly trounced in trials by the Brewster F2A monoplane with retractable landing gear. First deployment of the Buffalo was on Saratoga in December 39. Add the TBD, first deployed in 37, and the USN is deploying all retracting gear/monoplanes by the start of 40.
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  1360. There was a third monoplane USN bomber in the late 30s, the SBA. With a smaller payload than the SBD, and lacking folding wings, it wasn't really in the hunt.
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  1361.  @carlcarlton764  The SBA took forever to get into production because Brewster was already running at capacity building Buffalos, so SBA production was handed off to the Naval Aircraft Factory in Sept 38. NAF had it's hands full too, and with the SBD in the pipeline, the NAF didn't give the SBA, now the SBN high priority, so they only built a handful by 42, when the SBN was obsolete, so the project was dropped. Brewster was a dumpster fire of a company, notorious for late delivery and terrible build quality. The only people who were bigger crooks than Jimmy Work, who owned Brewster, were Brewster's export agents, long time independent arms dealers, the Miranda brothers, dba Brewster Export Company, who, when not doing time in the federal pen for violating the US arms embargo on Bolivia, were embezzling from Brewster. The Royal Navy did have the Skua for a fighter in 39. If Force Z had had a carrier, it probably would have had Skuas embarked. Only problem is the Mitsu Nell bombers that attacked Force Z were faster than a Skua.
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  1362.  @WALTERBROADDUS  are we talking built to order, or second hand? Wiki lists 14 countries who bought/were given Fletcher class cans after the war, vs 11 operators each, other than the US, for Sumners and Gearings. Buckley class DEs served under 7 flags, other than the US and UK. and 12, besides the US for Cannon class DEs.
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  1363.  @RedXlV  I have the exact numbers in my notes, somewhere, wrt how much was spent on da Vinci and how much more it would cost to complete Caracciolo. The amount spent on the salvage op, as far as it got, was far short of the cost to complete the new ship. A lot of what was spent on da Vinci would have been spent to clear the wreck anyway. As with Oklahoma, an air pressure bubble was created in the hull and crews worked inside to remove the fuel, ammo and guns, and cut away the superstructure to lighten the hulk. Because the inverted hull drew more water than the ship did upright, a channel had to be dredged to the drydock. I have read that the RM preferred the Pozzuoli guns, which were designed by Armstrong. The Ansaldoes were a monobloc design by Schneider, which were a lot lighter than the wire wound guns from the other two companies. In the back of my mind is the thought the RM gave seven Ansaldos to the army because they didn't quite trust them. The best reassignment of guns I can think of is to put two of the Ansaldoes that the army did not use in the first shore battery at Brindisi. The second battery at Brindisi was not finished until after the war, so install the two Ansaldoes from the monitor Faà di Bruno in that battery. That frees up four Pozzuolies. Cancel the four small monitors that were not completed until after the war, which frees up four more Pozzuolies. That leaves two Pozzuolies that were installed in improvised monitors during the war as spares. The other two Pozzuolies were on the monitor that sank. With four Ansaldoes installed at Brindisi, that leaves 1 new gun as a spare, and the four that were used as railroad guns during the war. Historically, all seven of the army Ansaldoes appear to have spent WWII in the armory at La Spezia. The next problem is spares, for when the original set of guns need to be relined. Either spend a lot of money making up another eight, or be content for the ship to be laid up for a couple months while it's one set of guns is overhauled. As for the armor, I have seen a speculative drawing of added armor at the main deck level. I have also seen a photo of the incomplete hull just before work stopped during the war. In the photo the decking only covers part of the hull, and I can see that there are no builkheads beneath the decking, I appear to be seeing the top of the turtleback and the decking being installed is temporary, to keep the weather out, until work is resumed. If that is the case, it would be easier to add armor directly on the turtleback before completing the ship.
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  1364.  @RedXlV  Looked up the info on the salvage cost of da Vinci: 135,000 GB Pounds. Caracciolo was about the size of a Queen Elizabeth, so complete cost would have been in the neighborhood of 3M pounds. Given her state when canceled, it probably would have cost in the neighborhood of 1M+ GB Pounds to complete her.
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  1365. As i have offered before, I think the Lexingtons were poor carriers. Maybe not as poor as they would have been as battle cruisers, but still very compromised in their ability to carry aircraft.
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  1366. Last night, I found a pic of two CVEs, Guadalcanal, of U-505 fame, and Mission Bay, under tow, bound for Japan, as scrap, in 1959. I think that is the pic I remember seeing, years ago.
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  1367.  @vikkimcdonough6153  repairing Arizona was probably like restoring an antique car: anything is possible, given enough time and money. When Maine was raised from Havana harbor, they built a cofferdam around it, inspected the wreck, then cut off the blown up part, built a new bow on what was left, towed it to deep water, and scuttled it. They could probably have done the same thing with Arizona, except the scuttling part, tow the intact part to Bremerton for rebuild. I have read that #1 turret was pretty well destroyed, and #2 was not exactly factory fresh, only yielding it's guns, as serviceable. The turrets on Oklahoma appear to be the same diameter as those on Arizona 27ft 11.5 inches, so, potentially, Okie's turrets could be salvaged to repair Arizona, but, in a world of infinite resources, someone would want to rebuild Okie too.
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  1368.  @fjthatguy9496  I would suspect Marines are distinct from sailors due to a training focus on combat, rather than ship handling. I have read that, in the RN, part of the job of the Marines was to protect the officers from the crew, but I don't know how accurate that characterization is.
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  1369.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I agree repairing Arizona was not economic. The question was more a matter of feasibility, in a world of infinite resources. Some sources say that FDR wanted Arizona repaired, for propaganda points, minimizing the number of BBs lost at Pearl, but was talked out of the notion. Considering the herculean effort expended on Okie, I wonder why they didn't built a cofferdam around it, and scrap it in place.
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  1370. People are the same. People buy discount gas, instead of Top Tier, and wonder why their engines carbon up. When I sold consumer electronics, people would come in the store and the first thing out of their mouth is "what's the cheapest VCR (or camcorder, or stereo receiver) you have?"
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  1371. What the Ark could have contributed of most value was the Fairey Gannet radar picket aircraft. It was the lack of airborne radar that left the Sheffield exposed on radar picket duty that lead to it's being sunk.
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  1372. When the Ark was scrapped, the RN , had two older carriers: Hermes and Bulwark, remaining. Bulwark was intended to be retained until the next Invincible class carrier was commissioned, but Bulwark suffered an engine room fire in early 81, and, rather than make repairs on a ship that would be decommissioned in only a year, she was paid off early. That left the RN with only two carriers, instead of the intended three. That is when the Argies decided to wag the dog.
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  1373.  @Knight6831  if the refit schedule had been different, Colorado would have been there, rather than Arizona. Colorado was in refit in Bremerton from June 41 to March 42.
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  1374.  @jonathanj8303  Newspapers at the time reported the US sold Mississippi and Idaho for about what they cost the USN new. That gives a hint of how desperate the Greeks were to get their hands on anything to let themselves be used like that. I have the exact numbers somewhere in my notes, but I don't think the proceeds of the sale equaled the price of the new ship, only a majority of the cost. How the Navy came to have those two undersized ships is a story in itself, thanks to the intervention of Senator Hale of Maine, who chaired the Naval Affairs Committee. All that being said, the Mississippis did have one redeeming quality for the Greeks: they were small enough to fit in the drydock in Piraeus.
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  1375.  @jonathanj8303  Argentina wanted to sell the Rivadavias, but the US vetoed any sale as it didn't want other parties to get their hands on some of the US technology in the ships. Greece had contracted for a new-build battleship with the Vulcan yard in Germany, but the Ottoman battleships, later known as Agincourt and Erin, would be delivered long before the new Greek ship was ready, so Greece went shopping for something ready for immediate delivery. I looked up the numbers. The check the US received for the old ships was $12,535,275.96. Idaho commissioned in early 1919. According to the spreadsheets published by the Navy Bureau of Supply and Accounts, by June 1919, the US had spent $11,108,167.87 on Idaho. Some after commissioning tweaking ran the bill up to $11,798,598.41 by June 1921, so Idaho was indeed free to the USN, net of the sale of the old ships. Considering that any Greek ship would be going up against Agincourt and Erin, the Mississippis would have been meat on the table: slow and weakly armed. The Rivadavias would have made it a contest, but Argentina couldn't sell.
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  1376.  @WALTERBROADDUS  the Greeks seemed to be pretty good about picking up what retailers would call "distressed stock". Elli was ordered by the Chinese, who then reneged on the contract. Averof was Italian surplus. The Aetos class destroyers had been built for Argentina, which defaulted. I call that being a good shopper. I wonder if it was Basil Zaharoff, who was Greek and a friend of the Greek PM, who kept tipping them off about these opportunities?
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  1377.  @johnshepherd8687  somewhat covered this question in a thread below. After SecNav Daniels and the General Board decided in summer 1916 that the Colorados would receive the 16"/45, there was discussion in the press of upgunning the New Mexicos and Tennessees. The New Mexicos were actively under construction at that time, and a Naval officer is quoted in the press as saying they were too far along to be upgunned at any reasonable cost. Tennessee and California had not been laid down yet, but the USN had 14"/50 production in high gear, so the guns for those two ships were in process. However, the barbettes in the Tennessees seem to be the same diameter as the Colorados, 32 feet, the twin 16" turret is slightly lighter than the triple 14", and the part of the 16" turret that extends down inside the barbette is about 6 inches smaller in diameter, so there should not be any problem upgunning the Tennessees. Now, on to your question: The treaty divided battleships into "pre-Jutland" and "post-Jutland" groups. The Tennessees were deemed "pre-Jutland" in spite of them being laid down after the battle and having state of the art armor and torpedo protection. The only reason I can think of for that classification is because they had 14" guns. Put 16" on the Tennessees and there is no way they could be called "pre-Jutland". For everything else to be status quo, with the Tennessees deemed "post-Jutland", Maryland would be the US' third "post" ship, and Colorado and West Virginia would be used for target practice, along with Washington, or scrapped incomplete. If the US insisted on completing West Virginia and Colorado, that would give them five "post" ships. Japan would rightfully, say that they are entitled to have three "post" ships, due to the 5:5:3 ratio, and demand to be allowed to complete Tosa. Tosa was to have displaced about 39,900 tons, over the treaty limit, but, again, the Japanese could claim a right to one 40K ton ship, because of Hood. Let's take a quick math break. If Japan scrapped Settsu and demilitarized Kongo instead. then added Tosa, that would put their capital ship tonnage at 313,720 vs a quota of 315,000, so the IJN is golden. That would leave the UK building four Nelsons for parity. So that is the difference, either the US loses West Virginia and Colorado, or the Japanese gain Tosa and the UK gains two additional Nelsons.
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  1378.  @jonathanj8303  yes, Salamis was turbine powered, iirc AEG built under a license from Curtis. The Ottoman also had a new ship building in the UK, later known as Erin, yet bought Rio, later known as Agincourt, anyway. Greece wasn't all that stable at the time either. While the Prime Minister was leaning toward the allies, the Greek King was married to the Kaiser's sister.
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  1379.  @johnshepherd8687  the USN did retain the Floridas through the 20s. For the fleet drawdown in First London, Florida was scrapped and Utah became a target ship. Colorado and West Virginia replaced the two Delaware class BBs. Delaware was scrapped and North Dakota became a target ship, until it was replaced by Utah a decade later. The US was below it's tonnage quota until the Delawares were replaced by the Colorados, bringing the US' total to 525,850, vs a quota of 525,000. For the US to drop the Delawares, that results in the second case, where the IJN gets the Tosa and the RN builds two additional Nelsons, for 5:5:3 relationship in "post-Jutland" ships, with the US' five. For the RN to build two more Nelsons, they would probably need to get rid of all four Iron Dukes, because the RN was well over it's quota. With two more Nelsons, and without the Iron Dukes, the RN comes in at 528,950 tons, vs a quota of 525,000.
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  1380.  @johnshepherd8687  keep in mind the comments by the Naval officer quoted in the newspaper, upgunning the New Mexicos was not practical. We have two scenarios: two 16" Tennessees plus Maryland, or the two Tennessees, plus three Coloraods, vs Japan having the two Nagatos, or the two Nagatos plus Tosa. The Floridas would age out in 1931. If the US was really adamant that retaining the Floridas was unacceptable, they could be given special licenses to build replacements before the treaty's "holiday" ran out, the same way France and Italy were given special licenses.
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  1381.  @johnshepherd8687  I see what you are saying. I create alt histories as a hobby (much winter weather in Michigan, with little else to do), but I require my alt histories to be practicable, ideally pivoting on one decision being made slightly differently. Yes, your scenario would be interesting. I have not gamed that out. It could go something along the line of 14" being the baseline for BB guns, with 15" and 16" both classified as above baseline. That would give the RN 13 "above baseline" ships, the USN 6 and IJN 2. First take, the RN doesn't get the Nelsons. Below baseline ships eligible for immediate replacement: so the USN completes the other three Colorados, to replace the Delawares and Floridas. Within the displacement limits of the original treaty, Japan could not add any new ships, as it had no below baseline ships to replace. Looks really unbalanced though, with a 13:9:2 ratio of "above baseline" ships. Could go with a throw weight model. 12-14", 9-15: and 8-16" have surprisingly similar throw weights. Decree that the 12-14" ships and 8-16" ships equal, the 8 and 10 gun 14" ships, and anything with 12", substandard and subject to replacement. Decree the IJN Tosas and Amagis verboten due to their 10-16" armament being too superior to the throw weight model. That would give the RN 11 slightly below par ships, and the Renowns and all of the 13.5" ships qualified for immediate replacement due to excessively weak armament. The USN, assuming all the Colorados completed, 11 ships on plan, and the rest qualified for replacement. The IJN 6 ships on plan, and the Kongos qualified for replacement.
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  1382.  @echoveria  pretty common it seems. Hornet gave B-25s a piggy pack to Japan. I have read of Ranger delivering P-40s to North Africa and Wasp delivering Spitfires to Malta. I know, in the case of Hornet, her own air group was in the hangar, while the B-25s filled the deck. I think it was in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" where the author talks about the Navy pilots showing off their planes, in the hangar, to the Army pilots.
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  1383. I did not see mention of the Cruiser Mk III, which introduced the Nuffield built Liberty engine. That tank brings the question, why the Liberty? I gather than Nuffield wanted a "proven" design, but an obsolete one? The Curtiss Conqueror, was almost exactly the same size and weight, but, being a decade newer design, put out about 50% more power, and had the valve train enclosed, instead of the rockers and valves exposed to the environment, as was the case with the Liberty. Given the unreliability of the Nuffield Liberty in North Africa, I can't help but think the Conqueror would have been a better choice.
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  1384.  @Knight6831  I don't think the US getting involved over a handful of US citizens on a British flag ship would happen. Lusitania was sunk in May of 15. The US didn't get into WWI until after Germany had had a long running sabotage program in the US destroying property and killing Americans, and after Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in Feb 17 and sinking US flagged ships, and after Germany tried to induce Mexico to commit to invading the US, if the US entered the war on the UK's side. If "something" significant enough to bring the US in, in 39, did happen, two outcomes: 1: the US sends troops and equipment into France during the sitzkreig, aka "phony war", strengthening defenses enough that the Battle of France in May-June of 40 bogs down into a rerun of WWI. or 2: the US doesn't move until the invasion of France. France's collapse was so fast the US would not be able to intervene on the ground, so the balance of 40 and 41 go as they did historically: the US providing material to the UK so they can hang on, while US forces are built up enough to intervene effectively.
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  1385.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Teddy was Assistant SecNav, until May 10th. Dewey attacked Manila on May 1. I supposed it's possible that an Assistant SecNav could order/motivate offensive actions in the far east. Teddy seems to have had more foresight than any ten other people and would be most likely to see the value of the bases. His quick departure for the army would explain the US' lack of follow-through in taking the rest of the Marianas and Carolines to protect the supply line to the Philippines. By the time Teddy was VP March of 01, where he could make things happen on a national/global scale again, it was too late. Germany had already moved.
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  1386.  @WALTERBROADDUS  agreed. It would have taken something horrendous to get the US in that early. I really can't imagine what the Germans would have been motivated to do at that point. Maybe, in 40, after the fall of France, and the UK refused to sue for peace, and FDR was shipping as much material to the UK as he could get a way with, the Germans might be motivated to do something provocative: like having U-Boats in US territorial waters, laying right off NY and Boston harbors, sinking everything in sight. If Germany had not suspended unrestricted submarine warfare in 1915, it could have brought the US into the war then, instead of the US entering the war when unrestricted sub warfare was resumed in Feb of 17.
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  1387.  @WALTERBROADDUS  thanks. I have not studied the Spanish-American war enough to know all those details. As said in my earlier post, Teddy would have been the one to pull off something like that, and his diversion into the army at that critical time explains the lack of follow-through to secure the rest of the Marianas and Carolines. Have you identified the strength of the naval forces the other powers sent to Manila at that time? I have ID'd the German ships: 3-protected cruisers, 1-unprotected cruiser and 1 obsolete ironclad.
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  1388. wrt the G3 carrier conversion question, I do not find anything in the Washington treaty that is relevant to the conversions of Courageous and Glorious. All capital ships of each nation are listed on either the retention list, or disposal list. The Courageouses are on neither list. My takeaway from that omission is that, as the Admiralty had called them "light cruisers" since inception, the treaty respected that, called them "cruisers", and grandfathered them, just as all the armored cruisers that exceeded treaty limits in displacement and gun size were grandfathered. The treaty clause about converting existing or building ships to carriers does not apply to the Courageouses either. The clause only relates to the conversion of ships that exceed the treaty limit of 27,000 tons. Even after conversion, the Courageouses were well under 27,000, so the treaty clause would not apply. First London would have provided an incentive to reclassify the Courageouses as anything but cruisers due to the establishment of cruiser fleet displacement limits, but the conversions were already done, so First London did not cause their conversion either. My suspicion is Courageous and Glorious were converted due to an Admiralty assessment that they would make better carriers than they did cruisers. Given the cost of the conversions, I almost wonder if the Admiralty would have been better off if it had built new, optimized, carrier hulls, transferred the machinery from the Courageous class hulls, then scrapped the Courageouses as a mistake.
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  1389. Apparently, Biden's presser will be at 6:30 EDT, tonight. Well before his 8pm bed time. We will see how he does.
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  1390. The competition between the UK and Germany was not passing without the notice of the US. With both powers developing 15" guns, the US responded by developing the 16"/45, proof firing it in 1914. So how did the New Mexicos and Tennessees come to have 14" guns? The head of BuOrd decided that battleships would never engage at more than 12,000 yards. Below that range, the 14" would penetrate well enough, and, being smaller and lighter than the 16", more guns could be mounted. Of course, a year later, the British and German fleets engaged at over 15,000 yards, and the 16"/45 that had been discarded as excessive and redundant, suddenly became the gun to have. What award would you suggest for the head of BuOrd, Admiral Strauss?
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  1391.  @AndrewBaker-ym3mk  I think Drac covered that some time ago. His theory is it was a totally different design, that was described as a QE to conceal it's true nature. The name is a known: Agincourt. The name was later applied to a battleship that had been built for the Ottoman Empire, but seized by the UK government at the start of the war.
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  1392.  @scottgiles7546  I checked up on Strauss. Seems he spent the bulk of his career at BuOrd, with a couple of commands along the way. Apparently is credited with several inventions while at BuOrd, but also another clunker: superimposed gun turrets as on the Kearsarge and Virginia classes. In December 1916, he had another command, the Nevada. Unfortunately, Nevada spent the war on convoy duty and never saw action, so he was not able to prove his assertion that battleships will never engage at more than 12,000 yards.
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  1393.  Nguyen Johnathan  the early, direct drive, turbines where horribly inefficient. The Curtiss turbines in North Dakota were so bad they were replaced with Parsons geared turbines. The Floridas and Wyomings were built with Parson's geared turbines. According to the 1919 edition of Jane's, the New Yorks reverted to thriple expansion because US turbine builders refused to build turbines that met Navy Department specifications.
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  1394.  @Alex-cw3rz  you might care to read Buxton's "Big Gun Monitors".
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  1395.  @kemarisite  interesting. Their problem was incomplete combustion? I have read of the British trying different diameters of cordite sticks. Sticks in my mind I have heard of hollow cordite sticks, to increase surface area, to increase combustion speed. It seems the energy density of RN cordite is quite a bit lower than USN smokeless, as British guns tend to have much larger chambers. The 16"/45 on the Nelsons has a 35,205cuin chamber, while the 16"/45 Mk I as used on the US Colorados, has a 23,506cuin chamber. During WWI, the RN tried cordite in the US built 14" on one class of monitors, and found a significant reduction in range, vs that obtained with USN powder. One wonders if the British issue with incomplete combustion would have been addressed by switching to USN smokeless, so there is less charge to burn in the first place.
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  1396.  @terancetheindomitable9701  my point is, as poor as the Biden administration's poll number is, Trump's was worse. The historical numbers the piece cites are an incumbent running against a newcomer, rather than incumbent vs a preceding incumbent who already has a track record as POTUS. The database for this situation is very thin. The only POTUS to serve non-consecutive terms was Grover Cleveland, winning in 1884 and 1892. Cleveland won the popular vote in 1888, but Harrison won the majority of electoral votes.
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  1397.  @josephenders1893  One of the movies I saw, where the ship sat adrift for several hours, maybe "The Enemy Below", maybe "Action In The North Atlantic", showed one of the firemen lighting an oil fired boiler. He first picked up a metal wand, maybe 3-4 feet long. Tied a piece of cloth or wick material to the end. Opened the cover of a little cup on the front of the boiler, which was full of fuel oil. Dipped the wick in the oil, then lit it with a match. Then he stuck the wand through an access port in the front of the boiler near one of the burners, and turned on the oil valve to the burner. It follows that they need electricity first, to run the fuel pumps and blowers for the boiler, so that would come from an auxiliary diesel driven generator, that is started by a battery, or power from shore. At some point, the turbo-generators are cut in, so the ship can go on full internal power. Then, you can see about starting the main engines. In one of Drac's pieces from his US trip, he was in the boiler room of a ship, and might have touched on some of the procedure.
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  1398. A few days ago, we were speculating what if the Spanish had defeated Dewey and held the Philippines. Given the lengths the US went to to suppress the native rebellion after the Spanish decamped, seems clear the US really really wanted a base it could call it's own for the Asiatic Squadron. If Dewey had been defeated, the USN would probably have been back for another go after taking Cuba.
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  1399.  @f12mnb  I have read that at Tsushima the Japanese did exactly that: blanket the Russian's superstructure with fire from their secondary armament to disrupt the Russian's aim. Ultimately, though, you need to punch through the other guy's armor to sink him.
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  1400.  @Drachinifel  true enough. When the Italians rebuilt their 4 pre-WWI BBs in the 30s, they lengthened the hulls by about 35 feet, as well as increasing power from 30,000 to 75,000shp. to push them from 21kts to 26. While building a USN equivalent to a Queen Elizabeth would be a good start, there would not be any follow-through in the 30s. In effect, we would be creating the 1920 South Dakotas. 43' longer than a QE, 15' wider, with 60K shp vs 56K, and 23kts. But, unlike the RN, there would be no major updates in the 30s. If you or I were the typical age of the head of the General Board in 1915, we would be retired, if not dead, long before 1935, so would not be around to make the reengining happen, meaning the ships are stuck at 23kts. There would be no rebuild of the superstructures either, which is why I specified abandoning casement mounted 5/51s in favor of putting them all on the weather deck. In the USN of the 30s, the only updates we could expect would be replacing the 5/51s on the weather deck with 5/25s and 1.1s.
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  1401. The other wrinkle is our advance knowledge of the Washington Treaty. Without our intervention, Maryland was the only Colorado in commission at the time of the treaty. The US negotiated a clause allowing completion of West Virginia and Colorado, in exchange for the disposal of the two Delawares, which the original treaty retention list had included. The Colorados were under the treaty's 35,000 ton limit. As we are talking longer ships with more powerful engines and higher speed capability, essentially 1920s South Dakotas, which displaced 43,000, the US would probably not be able to work that exchange to complete two after the signing of the treaty. So, all the future vision BBs would need to be in commission before the end of 1921, meaning they need to be laid down before 1919. New Mexico was launched 4/13/17 at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Tennessee was laid down a month later, launching 4/30/19, so we can't get more out of Brooklyn. Mississippi was launched 1/25/17 at Newport News. NN laid down Maryland 4/24/17, launching on 3/20/20, so we can't get more out of NN. Mare Island didn't launch California until 11/20/19, so can't get another BB out of that yard. Only opportunity to advance construction schedule in a yard known to have capacity to build BBs is at NY Shipbuilding. That yard launched Idaho on 6/30/17, so Colorado could be advanced from it's actual lay down date of 5/29/19 to somewhere in August of 17.
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  1402.  @chucksneed5670  Drac picks and chooses among many questions. He has bypassed questions I asked I asked questions in guides 216, 217, and 220. He has responded to questions in all three of those guides, but not any of mine.
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  1403.  @connormclernon26  from what some, including Drac, have said: first order of business, recruit some German QC and productivity people for working in the Italian shell factories.
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  1404.  @WALTERBROADDUS  the Philippines were on a path to independence. A new constitution had been written and a civilian Philippine government established. Plus, the Philippines are on the other side of the world. Value to the US government, and value as perceived by the US population could have been very different. But, the islands were still US territory, so let's assume that FDR can get a declaration of war through Congress. What would be the US response, especially if the Japanese had not gone directly after Clark and Subic on the first day, but rather landed on Mindanao or Leyte, rather than Luzon, to minimize initial loss of American lives. In the historical timeline, the US population probably recognized the fleet was damaged and the Philippine garrison beyond help. If Pearl had not been attacked, and the fleet was intact, what would the population's response be to the Philippine garrison being left for dead? But, if the US did move to reinforce the Philippines, they would be steaming past a long line of Japanese held islands, as the IJN chips away at the fleet with subs and both land and carrier based aircraft. Saipan sits directly astride the direct line from Hawaii to the Philippines and had been garrisoned by Japan since the late 30s, FDR could recognize that a relief mission would be suicidal, but refusing to launch the mission would be politically suicidal. What to do? Launch the mission, but recognize it's a one way trip and only send ships of minimal value, like the obsolete battleships? So the US replicates Force Z, at four times the scale?
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  1405.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I agree FDR wanted to take on Germany first. He was stretching the concept of neutrality so far it would be unrecognizable . But to make a Germany fist policy stick, in the face of a Japanese invasion of the Philippines, the US would have had to declare war on Germany the preceding October, when Ruben James was torpedoed. That horse had already left the barn, when the Japanese would have hit the Philippines, so the most immediate concern that would have riled up the US citizenry would have been the Philippine garrison being under fire, regardless of FDR's personal priorities. No pol could stand the optics of leaving 150,000 troops for dead, while avenging the loss of 100.
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  1406.  @johnshepherd8687  Yes, the USN had plenty of BBs by the time the Alaskas entered service. In fact, if the IJN had sent out a cruiser swarm, like the Alaskas were supposed to intercept, the cruiser swarm would probably run into BBs instead. I think the Brits, USN and Italians were 100% correct in building nothing but treatymax BBs in the 30s. I suspect it was only a small group in the USN that saw the shiny things the French, Germans and Dutch had/planned, and decided that the USN "had to have it too", and, when the war engulfed every part of the world except the Americas, they were able to get funding for their pet project. Sanity was restored with the end of the war, and the Alaskas were shoved straight into mothballs, and stayed there until they went to the breakers, while the Iowas were reactivated for Korea, and stayed in service well into the 50s, then mothballed again, and reactivated again in the 80s.
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  1407. wrt the Caribbean, I did some research into WWI debts a while back. The US had bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917. As Drac noted, the bulk of the remaining islands were UK possessions. I extrapolated the price per square mile the US had paid for the Virgin Islands to the land area of all the UK island possessions in the Caribbean, plus British Honduras, and found that a fair price for those UK possessions would be a bit over $4B US, enough to cover the entire principle of UK war debt to the US, plus part of the accrued interest. The amount other allies owed the UK, which had financed WWI, until the entry of the US in 1917, almost exactly equaled what the UK owed the US. On August 1, 1922, the UK government published a note from Arthur Balfour to the French ambassador to the UK, which was widely considered to be for US consumption. The note said that, if it was up to the UK, the UK would cancel the debts owed it by it's allies, but, as the US was pressing the UK for payment, in cash, the UK had no choice but to press it's allies for repayment, in cash. So the bottom line is, if the UK had signed over it's Caribbean possessions to the US as repayment of it's debts, then cancelled all debts owed it by it's allies, as those debts would be a wash with the debts owed to the US, the acrimony through the 20s and early 30s created by the pressures for repayment would have been greatly reduced. Such a scheme was widely discussed in the newspapers at the time. But President Harding said no. Lloyd George said no. Even the Prince of Wales weighed in, "no".
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  1408.  @aliceosako792  This is somewhat related to the question on the post a few days ago. I see an opportunity. I looked in my 1928 USN port directory, and there were no drydocks in Singapore longer than 500 feet. With the Sutherland and Fitzroy docks already existing, and too narrow to accommodate capital ships, as well as too short, the only place I see at Cockatoo Island for a larger dock is where the two old long slipways are. So, I would try to negotiate a deal with the Admiralty where, if the Admiralty covered the cost of a drydock that could accommodate the RN's largest ships, saving them a trip back to England for major work, then the RAN would have all it's ships built in yards in England, rather than building anything at Cockatoo. That way Australia gets a very large dock, and maintenance business from the RN, and UK yards pick up business from the RAN. A larger dock at Cockatoo would certainly have come in handy. A County fits nicely in Sutherland, but I have seen a pic of a carrier in Sutherland , where the edges of the flight deck overhang the edges of the dock, and they probably could not have closed the gate behind it if the stern had an extra coat of paint on it.
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  1409.  @nnoddy8161  off the top of my head, game changer at Java Sea and Sunda Strait, because they were heavy surface engagements with IJN cruisers and destroyers. Probably non-event at Coral Sea as that was a USN fast carrier group. PoW and Repulse would probably not get involved at Guaduacanal due to the close quarters, but Perth, if surviving, might get into it. Seat of the pants hunch is Exeter, if surviving, would stick with the PoW and Repulse. PoW would stand out in the Dutch East Indies theater as being one of the very few with a really decent AA suite. Houston's AA armament had been augmented since she was built, totaling, by then, 8-5"/25s and 4-1.1". Marblehead and the 4 pipers had obsolete 3" AA guns. The wild card would be what would happen to the Dutch cruisers, if they survived? Not being constrained by "Not Invented Here" they seem to have mounted a significant number of 40mm Bofors. Would the force be able to defend itself against air attack in the Java Sea?
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  1410.  @Knight6831  it was a wonderful deal for the UK. They had such a wealth of capital ships that they didn't have anything smaller than a 13.5" gun after the cull, and over a dozen ships with 15" guns, and, iirc, they had not actually started building any of the N3s or G3s, so they didn't suffer the waste of cutting up incomplete ships. Meanwhile, the USN, MN and RM were all stuck with old tubs mounting 12" guns. The IJN came off pretty well, once they successfully overcame demands to scrap Mutsu, with the smallest guns mounted being 14". The RN alone, had a treaty retention list that totaled well over their 525,000 ton quota too. And in spite of already having numerical, displacement, and firepower superiority, the UK successfully argued to be allowed to build two clean sheet, 16" armed ships, the Nelsons. It was a huge win for the UK. Breaking the UK/Japanese alliance didn't cost the UK much either, imho. The intent of the alliance was to use the Japanese to keep an eye on German and Russian ambition in the Pacific. Post revolutionary Russia was not much of a military threat, and Germany had been stripped of it's Pacific colonies. Instead, Japan was occupying the former German colonies north of the equator, bumping up against UK and Australian possessions, so, now, it was Japan that was looking like the threat to UK interests.
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  1411.  @calvingreene90  if you assume you are going up against other battleships, especially ones with all or nothing armor, go with the bigger guns. Both guns will penetrate unarmored areas, but the 16s can punch through armor that could resist the 13.5.
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  1412.  @Knight6831  that is my understanding. iirc, the Admiralty did order the ships of one class, so, presumably, some of the material was early in the production process, but keels had not been laid, vs the South Dakotas, for instance, being as much as 35% done.
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  1413.  @Knight6831  The original retention lists, before adjustments for the two Nelsons and two Coloradoes, had the RN at 22 capital ships, with a total tonnage of 580,450, and the USN had 18 capital ships with a total tonnage of 500,650. The quota was 525,000. The US traded the two Delawares for Colorado and West Virginia, leaving it at 18 ships with a total tonnage of 525,850 tons. The RN scrapped four 13.5" armed ships to build the Nelsons, drawing the RN down to 20 capital ships with a total tonnage of 558,950, with the Nelson's design being a generation newer than the Coloradoes, which had been ordered in 1916. The four RN ships scrapped for the Nelsons, Thunderer, King George V, Ajax and Centurion, each mounted 10-13.5" guns, turbine powered, with a top speed of 21kts. The only obsolete feature of these ships vs USS Nevada, was that they were coal fired. By scrapping them, in favor of the Nelsons, the RN avoided the cost of oil conversion and adding torpedo bulges. Somewhere in my notes, I have the cost the USN paid to have the 12" armed Floridas and Wyomings, as well as the 14" armed New Yorks, all converted to oil and fitted with torpedo bulges. By my figures, the USN could have completed Washington for what it spent modernizing the two Floridas, with Florida going to the breakers and Utah being demilitarized less than ten years later. From my reading, it appears the only coal fired, 13.5" RN ships that survived the treaty cull, the Iron Dukes and Tiger, did not have a Farthing spent on Modernization in the 20s, continuing coal fired and unprotected against torpedoes until they were scrapped/demilitarized in the early 30s.
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  1414.  @calvingreene90  you are correct, in theory, and I admit that I had not considered the velocity difference a 55 caliber tube implies.
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  1415.  @Knight6831  The USN certainly knew what Hood displaced. RN officers had been seconded to the USN Bureau of Construction and Repair to advise on designs. Based on data provided by those RN officers, C&R made up drawings of Hood in 1919, showing a normal displacement of 41,120 tons. Hood was hardly revolutionary, it was just bigger. Hood did not have an all or nothing armor scheme. That 12" belt was very narrow, extending little above or below the waterline. The rest of the side armor was only 5-7" thick.
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  1416.  @Knight6831  It would have been awkward, as Hood had been in commission for months, before the treaty negotiations started. The US' priority was to have an excuse to cancel the 1916 capital ship program, so pressing the UK hard on any point ran the risk of the UK quitting the conference, like it did in 1927 over cruiser strength. Then the US would not have had the excuse it wanted. That, imho, is why the UK won the WNT is such spectacular fashion: numerical superiority, tonnage superiority, firepower superiority. The USN and RN did not approach parity until after First London, where each drew down to 15 capital ships.
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  1417.  @Knight6831  I read "The Washington Conference, 1921-22: Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor" last winter. I remember a push to force the IJN to scrap Mutsu as there was a view the Japanese had cheated and commissioned her when she was not really ready for service, which the other powers eventually backed down on, and I remember France being very put out that the treaty treated it as an equal of Italy, but I don't recall a concerted effort to get rid of Hood. To get right down to it, Hood's main armament was the same as a Revenge, and arguably inferior to a Colorado, with protection inferior to both. Maybe if someone has a copy of that book in their personal library, they can look up Hood in the index for any specific reference. From my perspective, Hood was only one ship, and she commissioned in May of 1920, a year before the Washington Conference was proposed. The horse had clearly left the barn wrt Hood, so it was time to put on the big boy pants and let Hood slide as grandfathered.
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  1418.  @BigPapaKaiser  My suspicion is, beside the usual assertion of better visibility, is that the officers had always stood in the open, since the days of sail. It probably took a while for the officers to get used to the idea of being enclosed at all. Same thing with airplane pilots. Many clung to the open cockpit, in spite of the discomfort, because they claimed they could better "feel" how the aircraft was performing.
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  1419. Everything I read about the Lexingtons, and their, what, 3rd or 4th design, says they were inspired by the Hood. Yet, before the Lexingtons were laid down, the Admiralty decided it didn't want any more ships like the Hood, scrapped the other three Admirals on the ways, after spending some 1.6M Pounds on them, and went back to the drawing board. The USN pressed on with the thin skinned Lexingtons regardless. Another case where the Washington Treaty probably saved the USN from making another mistake. The flaw in the thinking behind the battle cruiser is there are some situations where running is not an option. The US forces off Samar Island in 44, known as "Taffy 3" were wildly outmatched, but running was not an option. They had to stand and fight.
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  1420. Not a bad thing that they spiked product development. All the future models will be rebadged Hondas anyway, just as everything with a Skoda or SEAT badge is assembled out of the VW parts bin.
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  1421.  @vikkimcdonough6153  first, to hit anything with a battleship shell, you pretty well need to see the target. Scaling off of Google satellite view, Battleship Row is nearly 3 miles inland from the beach. Viewing from a low angle, the top of Missouri's mast is completely obscured by land, trees, and buildings. The Japanese would be pretty much shooting blind, as any spotter planes they send up would have P-40s all over them, unless the Japanese established total air superiority first. Even with air superiority, any spotter planes that survived the hail of AA fire that would be directed at them from the ships and surrounding land, only a small portion of the shells would hit anything. It would be a golden BB for those shells to hit anything vital. I read an interesting observation in "The Grand Fleet" a few weeks ago, words to the effect that unless the British battlecruisers were hit in the magazine, they stood up pretty well to gunfire. As for the TBD Devastator, it gets a bum wrap. The TBD performed well at Coral Sea, without a single loss to enemy action, though the torpedoes came up short. The TBDs were slaughtered at Midway because of a fatally botched attack. Blame luminaries like Stanhope Ring. I give secondary "credit" for the fiasco to Mitscher for not taking charge and setting the argument between Ring and Waldron. I'll throw in a dishonorable mention for Ray Spruance, because he was in command of TF 16. At Coral Sea, the TBDs, SBDs and fighters met at a rally point and attacked the Japanese formations together. The man who managed the strikes at Coral Sea, the man they needed at Midway. Aubrey Fitch, was on his way stateside, as his previous command, Lexington, had been sunk.
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  1422.  @T_Hoog  Time, and technology, marches on. After writing the earlier post, I looked online and found several pix and diagrams of the steering gear on Liberty ships, which were very much like what I saw in the film, but Liberties were designed to a much lower technology standard than a late 30s BB. If someone on this board is a member of an engine room crew on a modern container or cruise ship, maybe he could weigh in on what is used now. I wouldn't be surprised if the rudders are moved by electric servos under computer control.
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  1423. Trump plays to his base. They want to hear racist and homophobic garbage, so that is what he feeds them. A few months ago, it was "poisoning our blood". The only thing I have not heard come out of his mouth, yet, is "darkies". Then there are the homophobic screeds, shrieking about Harris supposedly favoring sex change operations for prison inmates.
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  1424. From the numbers I can find, the murder rate in Chicago is 15/100,000 in 2021, half the rate of the worst states. Chicago's rate is lower than some other cities in Illinois. Champaign's rate in 2021 was 18/100,000. In 2020, the gun homicide rate in Rockford was 17/100,000 and 25/100,000 in Peoria. The murder rate in Chicago doesn't even put it in the top five cities, nationally, But Chicago has a large population, so the total numbers are higher, and every media outlet has an office in Chicago, so it is easy for them to cover the city. The Republicans are trying very hard to make this a "liberal" issue, or a racial issue, but gun violence is more a red state issue than anything else, with cities like Memphis, St Louis and New Orleans having significantly higher murder rates.
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  1425. In fairness to the King of the ignorant, he is not the only American to mispronounce a foreign name. How many years have we been hearing the US media pronounce Qatar "Cutter"? It's wrong. Listen to the BBC News. They usually pronounce it correctly. But the bigger question, when people call Trump "sir", are they crying?
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  1426. wrt the Vanguard vs Iowa gun question, the factor not considered is the number of shells each ship throws at a time. Throw more shells and math says there is a higher probability of a hit. It would be interesting to see a Tennessee and a Nagato square off. The Nagato has larger guns, but the Tennessee sends 50% more shells downrange. Using the numbers on Navweaps, Nagato has a throw weight, using WWII shells of 17,992lbs, while Tennessee has a throw weight of 18,000lbs, amazingly close. Would the blunderbuss effect of Tennessee's greater number of guns win the day over Nagato's individually larger shells?
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  1427.  @WALTERBROADDUS  How so? Seems that, if you have a given range of scatter, dropping 12 shells/salvo in that range, rather than 8, increases the likelihood of hitting something, or hitting it more times. If not, then why were some people so obsessed with increasing rate of fire, if not to increase the probability of a hit by sending more shells downrange?
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  1428.  @WALTERBROADDUS  well, we could leave it up to Drac to be the tie-breaker.
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  1429.  @kemarisite  I'm not sure I would call Hood a fast battleship. According to drawings C&R made up, based on information from Goodall and McBride, that 12" belt was only 8'8" high, vs 17' on a Colorado. The rest of Hood's belt was 7" and 5", vulnerable to a heavy cruiser.
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  1430.  @hatchcrazy  I would offer the intervention of President Harding and Secretary of State Hughes, in an unintended manner. Without the Washington Naval Treaty, and Congressional tightfistedness in the 20s, the USN would have built the six South Dakota BBs in the 20s that would have been just as obsolete and near useless in 41 as the "standards" that preceded them. Without the intervention of the treaty, and Congress, the six Lexington class battlecruisers would have been built. Of course, you could also argue that the 1916 Naval Act that authorized the South Dakotas, Lexingtons, and Colorados, was politically motivated and unrealistically ambitious, so Harding and Hughes were correct in their stated intent of reining it in.
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  1431. @Brian Barrigar As Drac said, the US did provide a frigate, Crescent, to Algiers, in 1798. In 1800, the US ambassador to Algiers reported that the ship was not being maintained and was starting to rot. In 1806, Crescent, rotten and leaking, was broken up. If the pirates continued to neglect "free" ships like that, they would not have much of a force, as the ships would be falling apart before a large number could be accumulated from tribute paying nations.
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  1432.  @comeslittorissaxonici7395  if Yavuz was in good repair, it could run away from Erin or Agincourt. The Courageouses could crack 32 kts, a significant advantage over Yavus, and Yavus' armor could be penetrated by the 15" guns on the Courageouses.
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  1433.  @philliphessel6788  that "republic, not a democracy" bit was a favorite of Robert Welch. the founder of the John Birch Society. He felt "we the people" should not be allowed to vote, because we might vote for Communists. Did you know that the parents of Justice Thomas' wife were ardent Birchers?
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  1434.  @calvingreene90  that is about what I have read. The RN had the budget to build an entire division of four battleships of one class. The USN did not have that sort of money, two per year was all they could afford, so they standardized the performance, speed and turning circle, so different classes could maneuver together, while still making incremental improvements in protection and armament. What puzzles me is why the Coloradoes were proceeded with after the war, when Navy decision making after they had been ordered in 1916 had made them obsolete. In early 1919, work on Maryland had proceeded slowly, as it was given low priority and the other three had not been laid down yet. They could have broken up Maryland on the slipway, cancelled the other three before they were laid down, and put the money into the bigger, faster, South Dakotas, until the treaty happened. If the USN had taken a page from the Admiralty when the US entered the war in April 1917, they would have cancelled Maryland and Tennessee before they were laid down, and broken up California on the slipway. I found a pic of California taken in late March of 17, and all that was built was the flat, bottom part of the hull, so there would not have been much waste in breaking it up.
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  1435. If the "thrusters" were discredited by the 1934 exercise, that implies that the garrison in the Philippines was left for dead before the war started by being deemed impossible to relieve/reinforce/rescue?
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  1436. The replacement of the Oerlikons with Bofors keys into something I have been pondering: It seems that I have seen pix of single, free mount, 2pdr Vickers here and there. Would such a free mount Vickers be a better last ditch weapon than an Oerlikon? The HV Mk VIII has equal or slightly better range and altitude than the Oerlikon. The Oerlikon used a 60 round drum, vs the earlier, single mount Mk II Vickers using a 14 round belt. The Oerlikon has a much higher rate of fire, so, in spite of the 60 round mag, the Oerlikon runs dry in 8 seconds, vs the Vickers with it's 14 round belt stopping for reload after 7.3 seconds. The Oerlikon shell weighs .271lbs vs 1.81lbs for the HV Vickers. So, while the Oerlikon has a higher rate of fire, the amount of steel thrown by a Vickers over the 7-8 seconds between reloads is greater. Would everyone have been better off with phalanxes of free mount Vickers, instead of Oerlikons?
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  1437.  @Selim1939  from what I read, raising the midships turret one level made it dryer, that is, less seawater around and entering the turret.
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  1438. wrt the Italian Francesco Caracciolo class battleships, it took three weeks, but I think I figured out a scenario where Italy could have gotten two into commission. Immediately after WWI, Italy built 10 new destroyers. So, convince Admiral Giovanni Sechi that they should finish what they started, before starting something else, and divert the funding from the DDs to building Cristoforo Colombo, which was second farthest along when work was suspended in 16, far enough along to be launched. Work actually was resumed on Francesco Caracciolo, launching on 12 May, 1920. Continue working on the two as funding allows, until the Washington treaty intervenes to halt work. As Italy, and France, were allowed to lay down new BBs in 27 and 29, years ahead of any of the other powers, plead that scrapping the 2 existing hulls and starting over in only 5 years is excessively wasteful, and have a clause added to the treaty allowing any signatory power to lay up existing, incomplete, ships, until the treaty allows new construction to resume, if the incomplete ships comply with treaty limits,. As the Caraccilos were designed to displace 34,000T, they would comply with treaty limits. So Italy updates the design of Caracciolo and Colombo, adding more deck armor, deleting the casement mounted secondary armament in favor of modern turrets, and potentially, preparing new, more advanced and powerful boilers and turbines, for when work is resumed in 27 and 29 respectively. With the two Caracciolos built to late 20s standards, they would only require addition of AA armament to be brought up to 1940 standard. That would eliminate the need to rebuild the Cavours, with the funding and material thus freed up, being available to speed the fitting out of Roma and complete Impero. As Drach said, 1941 would find the Brits facing 6 modern BBs that could run rings around most of the British capital ship inventory.
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  1439.  @bkjeong4302  Vanguard was laid down in 41, the last two Iowas in 42. I would ascribe progress made in their construction to inertia. Work on the Montana program was suspended in 42 and cancelled in 43. No-one was laying down new battleships in early 44, when the Littorios would have been available for transfer to the Soviets, after a through analysis by US and UK technical teams.
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  1440.  @bkjeong4302  as I said, "inertia". People in the Navy department were probably saying "we have XXX dollars already sunk into these two battleships. should we finish them, so that money is not wasted?" In recent years, the inertia to be overcome in cancelling programs has not gotten any less. I remember a Senator from Bath Iron Works crying a river about "jobs", when the Zumwalt program was cut short. We saw Congress continue to appropriate money for more F-14s and C-17s long after the military said it didn't want any more.
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  1441.  @tomhenry897  there had been several Liberty Bond drives during the war. The US government was in a hurry to pay down that debt, running annual budget surpluses of some 20%. Prohibition was the law in the US then, and rum production was a significant industry on some islands. While prohibition was the law on Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, it was not the law in the Philippines. The powers that be probably would have wanted to impose prohibition on the Caribbean territories due to their proximity to the US. That would reduce the economic value of the islands. Another thing is the US had a blatantly racist immigration policy at the time. The British islands have an overwhelmingly African descended population, on the order of 90%. As US colonies, residents of those islands would have free access to move to the US. On the other hand, British Honduras would have been a particular prize. After WWI, British Honduras conducted more trade with the US than with the UK, particularly exports of mahogany. The US conducted several military interventions in Central America during the teens and twenties, and British Honduras would have made an ideal base.
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  1442.  @annadalassena5460  I looked on Navweaps for a section on Dutch torpedoes, and did not see one. Possible that the Dutch bought torpedoes, or a license to build copies, from someone. The Navweaps entry for the UK shows several variants of the 21" Mk X, with the Mk X*** listed as "used on Dutch submarines"
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  1443.  @michaelkovacic2608  Kaiser's top speed was 21kts. Two British battlecruisers were in hot pursuit of Goeben and Breslau on the 4th, but fell behind. A British light cruiser lost contact with the Germans at 19.37. The state of war between the two powers started at 23:00 London time, midnight, Berlin time. If the Germans has been slowed down by Kaiser, they may not have been able to evade the British, and the two forces could have opened fire as soon as they received confirmation they were at war.
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  1444.  @Spectre578  what you would be describing is essentially the Admiralty's J3 battlecruiser proposal: 43,800t with 9-15" in triple turrets. The J3 was rejected as it did not use an all or nothing armor scheme, so the Admiralty moved on to the G3, which far exceeded Hood's displacement. On to the meat of your question. To enable it, the treaty would need to set the displacement limit at Hood's, 41,200 as the treaty measured it, or 42,000 because it's a rounder number, rather than 35,000. iirc, the Admiralty wanted enough tonnage for 15 treaty compliant battleships and 15 times 35,000 comes out to 525,000t, which is where the treaty set the limit for the RN and USN. With the limit at 42,000/ship, the RN would need to have a limit of 630,000t. OK, lets say the other parties went for a 630kt limit, 378kt for Japan. Besides the original treaty retention list, the RN could also retain the other three Orion class, which would put them at 647950t. Building two J3s, at 42,000t each would require scrapping all four Orions to bring them to 639950t. The IJN had the two 40,000t Tosas and the two 41,200t Amagis building. To maintain the 5:5:3 ratio, the IJN could complete any two. With their historical retention list totaling 301,320, they would have approximately 77kt of headroom, but while the RN would be scrapping existing ships and lowering their total tonnage and drawing down closer to their 630kt limit, the IJN would be building up to it's limit, so the other powers might not be in a forgiving mood if the IJN wanted to overshoot by 3-4,000 tons to complete two Amagis. Construction of the Tosas was farther along, and, well, they could lie a teeny bit, claiming each Tosa only displaced 38,000t, 2,000 tons lighter than in fact. Thing is, the Tosas could make about 26kts, about the same as a Nagato, so the Tosas would probably spend a lot of time in port, because they couldn't keep up with the carriers. Building two Amagis instead would probably require scrapping either a Fuso or a Kongo, which reduces the gain of building the two Amagis. How would this shake out for the USN? A quota of 630kt would result in an initial retention list for the USN of a lot of appalling old junk: the two South Carolinas, and four of the Connecticut class pre-dreadnoughts. Lets assume Washington is completed in exchange for two Connecticuts, in addition to West Virginia and Colorado replacing the other two Connecticuts and the two South Carolinas. Now, the US could waggle it's finger at the RN and IJN both having 42,000 ton ships and demand parity. According to Friedman's breakdown of the weights for the South Dakotas and Lexingtons, both classes come in under 42,000t, without fuel and boiler water, so the US could hold it's breath and stamp it's feet until the other parties agree to let the US complete 3 of them. But would the US want to complete them as designed? The whole idea behind the US calling the conference was to get out from under the building program that was started by the 1916 naval act. The US could easily say the Delawares are good enough, and scrap everything on the slipway. So, your 1941 lineup: the RN gains two bad-ass battlecruisers, the IJN gains two battleships that sit in port because they can't keep up with the carriers, and the USN has one additional Colorado class, that is even less able to keep up with anything than a Tosa.
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  1445.  @fooman2108  I think a large part of the removal of the masts was advances in optical rangefinding rendered them obsolete. When the New Mexicos were modernized in the early 30s, they had no large masts at all. Other ship had their after masts removed, but Colorado and Maryland carried their forward cage masts through WWII.
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  1446.  @gary_stavropoulos  I don't know if it was intent, or pilots attacking the nearest target, but in Wiki's list of US ships damaged by Kamikazes, most are DDs, with a smattering of DEs, CLs and BBs.
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  1447.  @rkarnes6304  quite possibly. From the data on Wiki, Yorktown had about 50% more range than Ark Royal or the Graf. Yorktown was apparently thinner skinned, as Wiki does not have a spec for deck armor. An Essex had deck armor close to that of Graf, and a lot more range. When the US was starting to work on carriers, there was a lot of information sharing by the British, but carrier development went in different directions anyway.
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  1448.  @rkarnes6304  There was much more variation in accuracy of mechanical watches, then there is today between a Timex with a quartz movement, and something costing ten times as much, with a quartz movement. I bought a mechanical Omega watch in 1975, for about $300, that was accurate within 2-3 minutes per month. It replaced a Caravelle (cheap Bulova) that cost $36 in 1971, and gained 5 minutes a week. The Caravelle replaced a Timex I paid $12 for, in 1968. that gained 5 minutes per day. Another feature of better watches was "anti-magnetic" design, either an iron case that conducted magnetic fields around the movement, or making the critical parts of the movement from non-ferrous metals.
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  1449.  @dagdom1280  Frank and I have been doing a deep dive into the Browning M1 and M9 in the comments section, as well as the 37mm M4 and M10 that were used in aircraft and PT boats.
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  1450.  @WALTERBROADDUS  Brig and Brigantine are different animals. On a Brig, both masts are square rigged, with a gaff rigged spanker. On a Brigantine, only the foremast is square rigged. The main has a gaff rigged mainsail, and, maybe a square rigged topsail.
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  1451.  @dzzope  Like Shaw said "two peoples separated by a common language" :)
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  1452.  @p.a_thomas661  I have been reading "Sea Of Thunder". which was mentioned by one of the panelists, this week. The second half of the book is mostly about Leyte Gulf. Halsey wanted to meet the Japanese around dawn, so wanted to close at 16kts to get the timing right. iirc, Halsey went to bed to catch a few hours of sleep. Whoever was OOD, during his nap, I forget who, had speed increased to 20kts. When Halsey awoke, he ordered speed reduced to 16kts again. I would take that sequence to indicate that 20 was closer to "normal speed", and 16 was at Halsey's discretion for tactical advantage. Kurita was making 18kts when steaming between Brunei and the Philippines, to conserve fuel, but stepped it up to 24kts, while steaming through the Sibuyan Sea. According to Wiki, Nagato lost some speed as a result of it's modernization a few years earlier, so would have been just about at full speed at 24. The book does not give exact speeds for Nishimura's force. The author quotes the Japanese extensively, from both their immediate postwar interrogations and memoirs. The lack of detail about Nishimura's force, the entire battle is covered in only a couple pages, may be due to the low number of survivors on the Japanese side?
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  1453.  @sskuk1095  I have not heard of nitro being used during WWII, however I have heard of a mix of methanol and water being injected for short bursts of extra power. My first thought regarding use of exotic, high energy, fuels, is their impact on engine reliability.
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  1454.  @rhedosaurus2251  even Nagato could handily outrun the USN Standards. It's possible that none of the USN DDs had any torpedoes left. It was demonstrated that heavy cruisers could disable a Kongo with gunfire. Nagato and Yamato would probably be left for the airdales.
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  1455. First question, wrt the topic today, US BBs through the Colorado class had two, huge, equal height, masts. The size of the masts implies they were trying to use triangulation to estimate range. Was that the case? If so, what sort of shortcut did they use to do the Trig involved? By the time I figured everything out with a slide rule, the firing solution would be outdated.
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  1456.  @thatoneguy8457  I did a cruse on the Lexington when it was the Navy's training carrier in the Gulf of Mexico. I don't know about a separate mess for the Marines, but I did see heads on the ship labeled as being for Marines. I would expect the Marine contingent to have had it's own living spaces as well.
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  1457. 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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  1458. 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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  1459.  @rhedosaurus2251  A better question is why didn't the Japanese license the 40mm from Bofors? Bofors would license it to anyone. I have read that the Japanese captured some Bofors guns from the Brits, and reverse engineered them, but never built them in quantity. It would make sense for them to move to the Bofors, because the AA gun they were replacing was a license built Vickers 2 pounder pompom, which was also 40mm.
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  1460.  @Nightdare  you are talking about why the Japanese did not switch to the reverse engineered Bofors in 43-44? Could be right. I have heard the Japanese had three different cartridges, in 7.7mm alone. A logistics nightmare, compared to the prevalence of .30-06 in the US and .303 in the UK. Before the war would be a different scenario. The Japanese chose the Hotchkiss 25mm in 35, before it was adopted by the French military. Navweaps gives the design date for the Bofors as 1934, and in service in 36, so it may have been a near miss that the Japanese missed having the much more effective Bofors.
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  1461.  @kemarisite  The Japanese could have licensed the 37mm Breda and gained most of the operational advantages of the Bofors, and Italy was supposed to be their ally.
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  1462.  @GUYCLIP  I just happen to have some relevant information close at hand: Bofors projectile weight 1.985lb, rate of fire 120rpm, max altitude 22,299ft, max range at 45 degrees 11,133yds. Breda 37mm (Italian): projectile weight 1.814lbs, rate of fire 120rpm, max alt 16,400ft, max range at 45 degrees 8,530yards. Vickers "pompom" (40mm, high velocity) projectile weight: 1.81lbs, rate of fire 115rpm, max alt 13,300ft, range 5,000yds. US Army M1 37mm, projectile weight 1.37lbs, rate of fire 120rpm, max alt 18,897ft, max range 9,049 yds. So, of the guns available to the allies, Bofors, Vickers and M1, the Bofors was the best performing. The best available to the axis, early in the war, was the Breda. The German 37mm had better range than the Breda, but it was single shot, could manage about 30rpm. Later in the war, the Germans did come out with a naval mount, automatic, 37mm, but the ship that really needed that sort of firepower, Bismark, was already sitting on the bottom of the ocean. The other factor is reloading. The Bofors and Breda loading machines allowed stacking of clips, so the guns could fire continuously. The M1 used clips that had to be changed out when empty and the Vickers used bins that were so big and heavy crewmen needed a crane to change them out.
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  1463.  @GUYCLIP  sorry I misinterpreted your question. Usually, when someone says "Bofors" in a historical context, i expect they are referring to the 40mm. My source for all that data, except for the US Army 37mm, is navweaps.com
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  1464.  @Rooster_0451  The RN did not have very many capital ships that could show a decent turn of speed. If they sent an R-class, or a QE, the Bismark could simply refuse to engage and steam away at 30kts. They had PoW and Hood north if Iceland, KGV and Repulse south of Iceland, and Renown was with Force H at Gibraltar. That was the total RN inventory of capital ships, in service at the time, that could even come close to Bismark's speed.
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  1465. I am really conflicted about the Lexingtons. Great looking ships that gave the US a leg up on gaining experience with large air groups, but, at the same time, they are so inefficient, carrying only a few more aircraft than a Yorktown on more than 50% more displacement, when the treaty made displacement a limited commodity. If the US had foregone the Lexingtons they would have had enough treaty displacement to build three Yorktowns, with enough left over to make Wasp another full sized, "improved" Yorktown.
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  1466.  @deidryt9944  with Ranger, and, perhaps, a pair of proto-Yorktowns, of more reasonable size. C&R knew how to design a ship to be more efficient at carrying aircraft in the early 20s: build the hull broader aft to maximize the length of the hangar. They could not do that with the Lexingtons because they were already committed to the battlecruiser hull shape, with a long, tapered stern. Ranger, on half the displacement, had a longer hanger than a Lexington. I figure the USN was lucky that it did not make a gigantic mistake when designing the Lexingtons. As they aged, the worst thing that happened was the midships elevator became useless as it was too small. Akagi and Kaga were originally built with a short main flight deck and flying off decks from both hangar levels, a huge and expensive mistake that they had to extensively rebuild the upper decks to correct in the late 30s. The other problem was, with the Lexingtons, the USN burned nearly half of it's treaty allotment for carriers, crimping their future building.
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  1467.  @konst80hum  the Axis could have gotten into Palestine or Syria anyway via amphibious landings anywhere in the eastern Med, flanking the Brit lines in Egypt. RAF airpower on Cypris could impede such an invasion, but the RM, and airpower based on Crete, could make reenforcing and supplying Cypris as costly as holding Malta. If the Brits were forced to pull back to the Persian Gulf, holding those oil fields, they could be supplied with food, clothing and refined fuels from India. Only manufactured goods: weapons, vehicles and ammo, would have to be shipped from England. The only real downside to the Allies of evacuating the Med, is they would not be able to bomb the oil fields and refineries in Romania. On the other hand, by skipping landing in Morocco, campaigning all the way across North Africa, landing on Sicily and the Italian mainland, the clock could be advanced by a year or more on the Normandy invasion, aimed directly at the heart of the conflict, in Berlin. If Churchill laid it out that way: giving up Egypt, so that force can be concentrated on Berlin to end the war sooner, he would be OK.
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  1468. My nightmare "everyone sucks 2.0" scenario is holding up. Politico reported on a poll that shows the best alternate Dem would be Hillary. The poll showed Hillary beating Trump 43 to 41, and a Hillary/Harris ticket 43 to 40 percent. The hardest voting decision I ever had to make was in 2016: which corrupt megalomaniac? I see that coming around again. Gah!
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  1469.  @toddwebb7521  the ST stories first requirement was to establish danger. Quickest way to do that was kill off "Ensign Expendable", within the first five minutes. The red shirt beat was not really established until part way through the first season. At first gold and blue shirts were equal opportunity targets. There is a mildly amusing song on youtube "Red Shirt Death" by Sidewalk Furniture.
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  1470.  @bjarkih1977  yes. Two that received a lot of publicity in the 70s were Bill Lear, of Learjet fame, and Wallace Minto. Minto licensed his design to Nissan in 1972. Lear got as far as installing his turbine in a city bus.
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  1471. wrt to the question about no London treaty. I would expect the USN to scrap the Floridas, Wyomings and New Yorks, and possibly the Nevadas, to provide tonnage for new build ships. The later "standard" battleships would be radically improved the way the Italian Cavour and Andrea Doria class ships were reengined, rebuilt, and rearmed.
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  1472. As the video points out, early in the war, German intermediate AA was miserable and Japanese was non-existent. The Italian twin 37mm had been in production since the early 30s. If Bismark had the Italian guns, life would have been very much more difficult for the Swordfish pilots. Why did the Germans and Japanese not license production of it? Hyper-nationalistic "not invented here" syndrome gone counter-productive?
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  1473.  @taynor22  The USN got over BuOrd's "not invented here" syndrome, and was open to whatever solved the problem, regardless of the origin. iirc, the USN's shoot-off of AA gun candidates was before the US was in the war, but they had already realized the 1.1", which had been in development for most of the 1930s, was not up to the job.
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  1474.  @ric8868  probably not "data", as much as the pilots saying "we're getting slaughtered, what can we do to knock down the AA fire?" Some AA guns had shields, so, if they were facing the strafing plane, the crew had some protection. Some AA mounts, like USN Bofors, would be mounted in a tub, so the crew could duck behind the tub wall. A lot of AA crews simply ran for cover. I have read accounts of crews of Italian escorts running for cover, as the 20mm shells from a Beaufighter tore into them. The tactics of combining Beaufort torpedo bombers, strafing Beaufighters, and Blenheim bombers all hitting a convoy at once, were developed by Pat Gibbs (DSO, DFC & bar) while he was stationed on Malta.
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  1475.  @bradleyjames1340  The British Dept of Miscellaneous Weapons Development came up with a couple interesting concepts. One was a huge flame thrower, intended to set aircraft on fire. Totally ineffective. Another was a rocket that trailed a cable. The idea was to fire the rocket up in front of the aircraft, so the cable would damage the aircraft. That did work to a degree. The DMWDs work wasn't all daft. They invented the Hedgehog. If you find a copy "Secret Weapons of World War II", by Gerald Pawle, pick it up. It's a fascinating read. I see there is another book out with the same title. The Pawle book is the one entirely about the DMWD, and the one I read some 50 years ago.
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  1476.  @kemarisite  The 1.1 had several different ways it jammed. I read an account from one Gunner's Mate that there was one jam that could not be seen from either above or below the gun, but could only be checked for and cleared by feel. He became very popular on his ship because he was so good at clearing that particular jam. The 1.1 had an equalizer in it, so it was quite smooth to fire. The Type 96 may shake like a leaf, and need to stop for a reload every few seconds, but, it may have been more reliable than the 1.1. There is a color film of the battle of Midway that has three or four brief looks at a pair of 1.1 mounts firing. In the first couple of looks all four guns on the mount in the foreground are firing. In the last look, only the right side gun is still firing. So, in a total of less than ten seconds of when the camera was on that mount, three of the four guns failed under combat conditions. I think I would rather have the vibrating Type 96, if it was more reliable than the 1.1, and the 1.1 sets a low bar.
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  1477.  @kemarisite  From what I have read, the Gunner's Mates eventually figured out how to make the 1.1 fairly reliable. There were probably a lot of unofficial field modifications being made. BuOrd has already been working on the 1.1 for several years, and couldn't get the thing to work right, but ordered it into production anyway. The 40mm Bofors was in production in 35. If BuOrd had invited a Bofors salesmen in for a demonstration right then, they could have gotten to work on the production licensing and vendors right away, and our guys would never have had to deal with the 1.1.
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  1478.  @kemarisite  Oh yes, the 1.1 was an ergonomic nightmare. I can't help but wonder if one of the sources of jamming was the loaders not getting the clips in straight because they didn't have room to do their job. Another thing that drives me crazy about the 1.1 is the footrests for the guys doing the training and elevating: little tubular "U" shaped things to hook the heels of their shoes on. How the heck are they supposed to brace themselves on those little things? Yes, Chrysler, the prime US contractor for the Bofors, had to reverse engineer the gun to discover the dimensions with precision, so the hand fitting could be eliminated. Packard had to do the same thing with the Rolls Royce Merlin. The Oerlikon also had to be reverse engineered the same way. Consolidated built the B-24 with everything hand fitted. When Ford contracted to build B-24s, they also had to reverse engineer the plane so components mass produced at other Ford plants would go together at final assembly at Willow Run without hand fitting. Most of the "arsenal of democracy" rode on the precision mass production methods developed by the auto industry.
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  1479.  @adam_mawz_maas  The two Lexingtons and two Amagis that were converted are on the capital ship disposal lists. The Courageouses are not. Chapter 1, Article IX, says that only the ships that would otherwise be scrapped, are eligible for conversion under that Article. Again, the Courageouses are not on the disposal list, nor retention list, so are not covered by the capital ship provisions of the treaty. If I missed a clause and am mistaken, please point out where I am wrong.
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  1480.  @scott2836  are we talking about the same gun? The only 37mm M3 I know of is the single shot anti-tank gun. The Browning designed 37mm AA gun started as the M1, with the original clip feeding system. Army manual TM-9 235 gives the ranges as maximum: 6200 yards vertical, ie 18,600 feet, and horizontal range of 8875 yards. With self-destroying HE rounds the range is shortened to 3960 yards vertical, ie 11,860 feet, and 4070 yards horizontal, with a muzzle velocity of 2600fps, and an HE shell weighing 1.34lbs. The Vickers Mk VIII pompom, according to Navweaps had an altitude max, with the high velocity ammo, of 13,300 ft, and horizontal range of 5,000yds. The USN Bofors had a max ceiling of 23,500 feet and a horizontal range of 10,750 yards, with a muzzle velocity of 2890fps and am HE shell weighing 1.985lbs. The Bofors tops the Browning on every parameter, but the Browning tops the Vickers. John Browning originally designed the gun around the end of WWI. In the 30s, Colt made some improvements, and it went into production in 1939, one year after the Navy put the 1.1 into production. Given when it was designed, if development had been pressed more urgently, seems reasonable it would have gone into production years earlier. The Browning had a tendency to jam but, being an army gun, it was burdened with a clumsy cooling system. According to the manual, after every 60 rounds, you had to stop firing and pump water through the barrel to cool it. The manual says, if it jams, it's because it has overheated, due to the crew not executing the cooling cycle. Of course, a navy mount would have a proper water jacket to eliminate the cooling problems.
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  1481. Replace Mr foot-in-mouth with Mr worm-in-brain?
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  1482.  @stormy0307  Italy received several ex-Austrian and German cruisers and destroyers after WWI, and operated many of them into the 1930s. Other powers, like Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Japan, and Russia ran a hodgepodge of British, German, Italian, and French built ships around the same time. Spares did not seem to be an insurmountable problem.
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  1483.  @WALTERBROADDUS  iirc, what the PTs often did, at night, was to creep up at low speed, so they did not create a visible wake, drop, then run like he!!.
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  1484.  @pedenharley6266  I'm partial to the Italian Pisa class, because they completely abandoned casemate mounted guns. Turret primary, turret secondary, and flocks of 14 pounders on post mounts for plinking torpedo boats. Only beef I have is the 14 pounders were a bit undersized for really hurting the 1000+ ton DDs that were being built at the same time as the Pisas. The Rurik, built by Vickers for Russia, looks great, and the tertiary armament is 4.7", but they are still in casemates. If I was designing the perfect armored cruiser for the USN, it would look like the Rurik, with 10" primaries, for hitting power, twin turret 6" secondary for rate of fire, and flocks of 4"/50s on deck mounts for plinking torpedo boats.
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  1485.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I was thinking of the phosphorescent wake that can be generated, particularly in shallow water, particularly in warm climates, like the Solomons.
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  1486.  @robertsewell7729  the two DDs that were in the drydock with Pennsylvania on Dec 7? Off the top of my head, the hulls were so badly wrecked that the machinery was recovered and new hulls built around the salvaged machinery, then commissioned using the wrecked ships names and numbers.
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  1487. wrt the RAN having capital ships in the 20s and 30s, the photo shown of Cockatoo Island shows the problem: lack of a drydock large enough. The Sutherland dock, the one with the carrier in it in the photo, was only about 88 feet wide and 690 feet long. My USN 1928 port guide says there was a privately owned drydock in Sydney that was 850 feet long, but only 83 feet wide. Neither is wide enough for a battleship or battlecruiser, or the pre-war Ark Royal. Meanwhile, a floating drydock of 50,000 tons capacity was not deployed in Singapore until 1929, and the King George VI dock in Singapore was not opened until 1938. Of course, Singapore was overrun in early 42, so the RN lost the use of the KG-VI dock. Sydney did not have a sufficiently large drydock until the Cook dock opened in 45. So, what was the RN thinking when it sent Hood and the Renowns on visits to Austrailia in the 20s and early 30s, when there were no adequate facilities to repair them if something happened? More importantly, why did the RN build the KG-VI in Singapore, where it could be overrun by the Japanese, who were showing their hostile intentions by then, instead of in Australia, where it would be more secure?
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  1488.  @arivael  There really was not a need to recycle turrets off the Rs. The RN had the four turrets off Courageous and Glorious in storage, which eventually found a home on Vanguard, They had two turrets on Erebus class monitors left over from WWI. They had another turret on Marshal Soult, and another spare in storage, which were both used on the Roberts class monitors in 1940. The 15" guns themselves were quite a bit heavier than the 14". As an exercise, I ran up an estimate of three triple 15"/45s that were originally intended for the KGVs, using the weight of a Littorio turret, and they came out 850 tons heavier than the 10-14" armament. The old 15"/42s were about 3 mT heavier, each, than the 15"/45. In the back of my mind is the thought that the Brits pushed for the reduction to 14" guns because they could not get the speed and protection they wanted, within treaty displacement limits, with 15" guns. The escalator clause in Second London only allowed larger guns. It did not have a set increase in displacement. The treaty said the parties were to negotiate an increase in displacement. The UK and US argued about displacement until mid-38. All the KGVs were laid down in the first half of 37, so the quad turrets were most likely already in production. A switch to triple 15s would only delay completion of the ships. I figure the Admiralty had good reason to choose the 14" armament, and good reason to stay with it when the gun escalator clause was triggered.
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  1489.  @arivael  I have seen the drawings of a KGV with 3 triple 15". I don't buy the argument the politicians wanted the 14" to keep the old ships with 15" relevant. If that was the case, why not lower the limit to 15"? Cost? I bet it costs more in manpower and machining time to make 10-14", rather than 9-15", because you have to perform every operation one extra time. The weights I was using in my estimate: 10x14" @ 80.865mT =808.65mt, 2xquad turrets @ 1557mt = 3114mt 1xtwin turret @ 900.5mt. Grand total 4823.15mt. 9x15/45 @ 98.6mt = 887.4. 3xtriple turret @1595mt = 4785. grand total 5672.4. Yes, the Littorio turrets had thicker armor, but that was the only triple 15" turret at that point in time, that came to mind. The Italians had a distinct advantage too; they were lying. Look up the proposed British J3 battlecruiser of 1920: handsome ship, 9-15/50s in three triple turrets, and a displacement over 40,000 tons.
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  1490.  @arivael  I'm sorry, but I do not agree. At the time Second London went into effect, France and Italy each had battleships with 15" guns building. Unlike the WNT, I do not see any clause in Second London that clearly exempts currently building ships from the gun size reduction. Was the UK thinking they could wave their piece of paper at the French and Italians, and they would go "pshaw, we'll have to scrap the 15" guns we are building and start from scratch with a 14" design", the way new ships being built were scrapped for the WNT? If they tried that, the French and Italians would have responded with a remarkable variety of creative gestures, and gone back to building their 15" guns. In effect, that is what happened as Italy dropped out of the treaty system, and France continued with the Richelieus as designed. The only country that complied with the 14" limit was the UK, so the story that the UK sought that change to, in any way, protect their own older ships, makes no sense. Because Japan had already given notice, iirc in December of 34, that they were going to drop out of the treaty system, then the escalator clause, which was apparently demanded by the US, would certainly be tripped on April 1, yet the UK persisted in building the KGVs with the 14" guns, rather than waiting three months. Everything I see says that, whether they admitted it, or not, the UK wanted 14" guns for some sound reason related to the KGVs themselves.
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  1491.  @TheParkerrrrrr6  Being built in the US, most of the internal systems, would have been US sourced. The guns were Bethlehem Steel versions of standard USN guns. According to the Wiki entry, the contract with Argentina gave the USN the option to buy the ships, but, as they used 12" guns, while the USN had moved on to 14", the USN saw the ships as obsolete and didn't want them. Apparently it got very nasty for Argentina as they very much wanted to sell the ships just as WWI was breaking out. But the UK was keen that the Germans not get them. The Germans were keen that the Brits not get them. Ditto for Greece and the Ottoman Empire. The US didn't want it's naval secrets sold to any third party, so leaned on Argentina, hard. So, as they say, the poo rolled downhill to Buenos Aires and they had to pay the $20+M for them that they really could not afford.
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  1492.  @johnfisher9692  actually, it would have probably hurt shipbuilding even more as it would give navies an incentive to hang on to their old tubs. The variation I thought would be interesting would be to set the total fleet tonnage limits where they were 525,000 tons for the UK and US, 315,000 for the IJN. Once they scrap down to those levels, then the parties could build new, but would have to scrap a corresponding tonnage of old ships at a 1:1 ratio, and, just to make it interesting, make it legal to complete ships that had already been laid down, that exceeded the treaty limits. What would happen quite soon is ships being built would not offer a large enough improvement over what would be scrapped to make it worth the bother. Example, let Japan complete the two Tosas, and to keep their total close to the treaty limit, scrap the Fusos. That would probably be worthwhile. But to complete Akagi and Amagi, they would have to scrap three Kongos. That is not such a clear choice. For the US to complete Washington and two of the South Dakotas, they would have to scrap Florida, Utah, Wyoming, Arkansas and New York. To complete one more South Dakota, the US would need to scrap Texas and Oklahoma, because the South Dakotas were nearly twice the size of the older ships. Of course, the UK would cry a river, because it had not laid anything down. All it had was drawings of G3s and N3s.
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  1493.  @arivael  I'm sorry, but I cannot agree. Taking your last point first, yes, imho, the gun size reduction was futile, and doubtless, self-interested. Same thing with the carrier tonnage reduction to 23,000 tons. I can make a case for the WNT. I cannot make a case for Second London as it is so blatantly packed with UK self-interest. Article 25 is what triggered the tonnage increase. 25 was not triggered until Yamato was laid down in late 37, and, because of section 25, the UK and US argued for the first half of 38 about how much the tonnage increase would be: the UK trying to set the limit around 42,000 and the US demanding 45,000. If Second London exempted the Richelieus, seems it would have said so. The WNT was very detailed, explicitly saying two Colorados could be completed, in exchange for two Delawares and the RN could build the Nelsons, in exchange for Thunderer and the three surviving KGVs. There is no specific exclusion language that I can find in Second London. Of course, laying down Richelieu was, itself, a violation of the WNT and First London. Yes, France signed Second London. and Italy didn't, but they were both ignoring it. And, as noted above, the Admiralty could not have laid down Lions in April of 37, because they exceeded 35,000 tons. The displacement of the Lions was not permitted until mid 38. What they could have done was lay down all of the KGVs starting in April, using the 15" design. Alternately, if they wanted to keep their schedule, lay down the first three to the 14" design, then, when Anson and Howe were ordered on April 28, 37, three weeks after the gun escalator clause was triggered, order to the 15" design. They didn't do that. All five were ordered to the 14" design.
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  1494.  @johnfisher9692  I think I understand what you are driving at. Thing is, the RN started with a large advantage. Dug out my notes from a few years ago. For the WNT, the RN scrapped 8-21kt, turbine powered, Dreadnoughts with 12" guns, 8 with 13.5" guns, plus 6 battlecruisers. What the RN scrapped was close to the entire USN strength of Dreadnoughts as of 1920. The USN only had 18 21kt dreadnoughts in commission before the treaty. The treaty had the RN scrapping ships that were newer and more powerful than ones the USN was keeping. Your plan would cement in the RN's roughly 2:1 superiority over the USN. Whether the UK was entitled to a 2:1 superiority over the USN is a different matter, which I would rather not get into as it tends to raise passions. As for the Admiralty quickly laying down several G3s and N3s, the easy solution would be to apply the same strategy the WNT used to divide carriers into "experimental" and non-experimental categories: all carriers under construction as of November 12, 1921, before the conference started, were considered "experimental". That being said, I would have no problem, if the IJN completed two Tosas, and the USN completed 3 South Dakotas (maintaining a roughly 5:3 ratio), if the RN built 3 N3s, instead of the two Nelsons they did build, or completing the other three Admirals, if they had not already been broken up.
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  1495.  @tomaseidtner8116  the foremost problem Greece has to consider is the size of it's largest drydock. The Averof and the Mississippis barely fit. As for "merchants", do you have in mind Basil Zaharoff? Zaharoff did contribute a huge pile of money, far in excess of the Averof bequest that covered the down payment on the armored cruiser, to the Greek intervention in the Turkish civil war, but apparently not anything for the Green Navy. Where Zaharoff could have made a difference with a well timed donation was a few years earlier. Drac mentioned the battles of Elli and Lemnos. The Ottoman cruiser Hamidiye had broken out into the Med and was raiding Greek shipping. The Averof was the only ship in the Greek navy that had the speed, armor and firepower to chase down and kill the Hamidiye, but, if the Averof took off to chase down the Hamidiye, there would not be enough of a Greek force remaining near the Dardanelles to keep the rest of the Ottoman fleet bottled up. iirc, the commander of the Averof defied orders to pursue the Hamidiye and stayed on station at the Dardinelles, waiting for the Ottoman attempts to break their fleet out. Where Basil could have made himself useful: the preceding Ottoman Sultan had ordered a new protected cruiser, essentially a repeat of Hamidiye, from Ansaldo. When that Sultan was overthrown, the new Ottoman regime refused to pay for the ship, so it sat, unfinished, on the slipway, until Italy went to war against the Ottoman Empire in 1912, whereupon Italy seized the ship and completed it for the RM. Seems to me that if the Greek PM, who was well acquainted with Zaharoff had sent a well timed wire "Bas old buddy, the Averof family has made a wonderful contribution to the Royal Hellenic Navy for a new cruiser. There is another cruiser sitting on the slipway at Ansaldo that the Ottomans defaulted on. Maybe you could see your way to help us out with the purchase of that ship?", then the RHN would not have been in a bind when the Hamidiye broke out, because it would have a second capable cruiser.
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  1496.  @tomaseidtner8116  before the war, Greece had ordered the Salamis from Vulcan in Germany. Salamis was to be armed with 8 US built 14" guns, so a credible threat to Goeben. They bought the Mississippis because the Salamis would not be ready when the two Ottoman ships building in the UK were complete. After the war, the incomplete hull of Salamis was still at the Vulcan yard. Vulcan wanted to complete it and deliver it to Greece, and get paid. Greece didn't want it as, first, being a pre-war design, it was obsolete, and, second, Greece didn't have the money. The issue was in court for several years. iirc, Greece ended up paying cancellation charges to Vulcan to get out of the contract, but I forget how much. Another path would be for Greece to demand the two surviving Tegetthoffs as war reparations. iirc, what actually happened to them is one went to Italy, which was scrapped, and the other went to France, which used it for target practice. Greece would still have the running costs of the two battleships. The really low cost alternative is to prohibit Turkey retaining Goeben. Turkey kept Goeben because the Turkish Republic had displaced the old regime and the new Republic was not seen as a threat.
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  1497.  @colemasse7177  but wait, there's more. Furious was very lightly built. I have read that when that 18" gun was fired, the ship popped rivets. If they fired the gun underbagged, the shell would stick in the tube and someone would have to crawl in the tube and defuse the shell. When the aft turret on Furious was replaced with an aircraft landing deck, that 18" gun, and a couple more that had been built, were installed on three of the 6100 ton Lord Clive class monitors. The mounts were fixed, so to train the gun, they had to turn the ship.
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  1498. In 1898, the US took the Philippines and Guam from Spain, but left the balance of the Marianas and Carolines in Spanish hands. In 1899, Spain sold the Marianas and Carolines to Germany. During WWI, Japan took the Marianas and Carolines away from Germany, and held them trough the interwar years under a League of Nations mandate. What if the US, in 1898, had perceived that having the islands astride supply lines from Hawaii to the Philippines in the hands of potentially hostile powers was dangerous, and demanded Spain hand over the Marianas and Carolines to the US, giving the US control of points of interest such as Saipan, Tinian and Truk. While the Japanese could overrun any island in those areas as easily as Guam or Wake, it would take time and resources, possibly inhibiting other operations. How would the US controlling such a wide swath of the western Pacific impact the situation in 1942?
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  1499.  @WALTERBROADDUS  LOL at the oars. I enjoy the movie, but there are some jarring things. The heavy cruiser playing the Spee is one of them. If they had stayed on the quarterdeck, where you would only see one turret, and forgotten that bit of character's exposition trying to explain why it looks like a US cruiser, it would have been better. Is that the movie that shows the British cruisers barely making any headway when incoming shells splash near them? I can understand why the ships were moving so slowly, probably so they had plenty of time in camera frame near an explosive charge planted in the water to simulate the shell hit, but it looks so wrong. If someone was shooting at me, I would want to be a moving target, I mean MOVING, not going dead slow.
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  1500.  @WALTERBROADDUS  unreal Skuhois? Didn't see the new movie. Didn't much care for the old one. Are we talking about things like the movie I saw where Luftwaffe planes were being played by P-51As? Can't remember now if that was "Action In The North Atlantic", or something else.
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  1501. wrt the question of US built battleships for the Ottoman Empire, Argentina was trying to sell the Rivadavias. If the Ottomans opted to buy the Rivadavias, instead of, or together with, the "Gin Palace", they still would have would up empty handed. By the time the Rivadavias were sorted out and ready for delivery, it was spring of 1915, and, as Drac said, they would be unable to get into the Med. The US government may have blocked delivery to the Ottomans in early 15 anyway. Bethlehem Steel won a contract from the Admiralty to build subs. When the Wilson administration got wind of the deal, the subs were impounded until the US joined the war on the UK's side. The alternative would be for the USN to sell a "mistake". The USN knew the Mississippis were a mistake, so sold them to Greece. The South Carolinas were also a mistake as their inadequate speed left them steaming with the pre-dreadnoughts, rather than the other dreadnoughts. The US might have been willing to part with them in the summer of 14, if the Ottomans waived enough money around, and had not already purchased the Rio.
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  1502.  @voqiir3802  I assume you are referring to the Ottoman buying the Rivadavias. The Ottoman Empire joined the war October of 1914. Rivadavia was not complete until December, 1914, and Moreno was not complete until February of 15. Yes, the legality of Churchill seizing both of the Ottoman ships when they were on the brink of the Ottoman crews taking possession, was questionable. Buying the Rivadavias would have a couple issues. First, Armstrong would need to decline to guarantee the French loan, and Bethlehem Steel would need to be willing to guarantee a larger loan. Second, the US government would need to have a more casual attitude about the sale of military technology. Argentina had been exploring selling the ships before they were complete, and, with rising tensions in Europe, there were several interested parties. The US government put significant pressure on Argentina to not sell the ships. The other scenario, the Ottoman buying the South Carolinas from the USN, in response to Greece buying the Mississippis solves the delivery time frame issue as the Mississippis were sold in the summer of 14. That would require Armstrong declining to guarantee the French loan, to keep the Ottoman shopping. But who would guarantee the loan to pay for the US ships? The deal that comes to mind might be where the USN uses the proceeds from the sale of the two South Carolinas to pay for a forth New Mexico, with the new ship built by Bethlehem Steel, provided Bethlehem guarantees the loan for the sale of the old ships. The treaty after the war required Turkey to make the French loan good, but the President of Bethlehem Steel would have had some very nervous shareholders until then.
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  1503.  @voqiir3802  OK, so the question is what could the Ottoman have bought in the US at that time? According to Wiki, the order for Resad V was placed June 8, 1911, at an estimated cost of 2.5M GBP, which was financed internally, built to a modified KGV design, which held cost down. It is still looking like the most likely purchase in the US would be a sister of the Rivadavias. Most US battleships were designed by the Navy, and the US government may not want to share it's latest designs. The Rivadavias were designed by Bethlehem Steel, during a competition for the Wyoming class, but rejected by the Navy in favor of it's own design. As it's own design, Bethlehem could have had more freedom who they sold ships to. The Rivadavias were priced at $10.7M USD each, while the price of Resad V, converted to USD at the time would be $12.15M, so the Ottoman are saving a bit of money. Bethlehem's Fore River yard launched Rivadavia August 26th, 1911, so the slipway was clear less than three months after receiving the order. My bet is Bethlehem Steel would lay the keel for the Ottoman ship at Fore River sometime in the fall of 1911. Resad V was laid down at Vickers December 6th, 1911. So far, the schedule is the same, and the US ship costs less. But the Brits were very good at building battleships. Vickers had Resad V built and ready for handover in 2 years, 8 months. It took Fore River 4 years, 7 months, to complete Rivadavia. With the keel laid in fall 1911, the Ottoman ship would not be completed until spring 1916, and would promptly be impounded by the US government. The only way the Ottoman would have a chance of taking delivery of the ship is if the William Cramp yard built it. Cramp got Wyoming from keel laying to commissioning in 2 years 8 months so would just make it under the wire before the Ottoman Empire entered the war. Cramp had launched Wyoming May 25, 1911, so the slipway was clear when the Ottoman ordered their ship. It would just be a matter of waiting for the material to be delivered from the steel mills. Bethlehem would probably want the ship built in it's own yard however. It would be an interesting test of wills, the Ottoman wanting an earlier delivery, and Bethlehem wanting to maximize profit by building the ship in it's own yard.
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  1504.  @voqiir3802  first, a correction to my above comments, Bethlehem Steel did not buy the Fore River yard until 1913, so any prospective transaction in 1911 would have been between the Ottoman and the Fore River yard, which created the design for the Rivadavia class. What you suggest is possible. Did the UK immediately offer compensation for the ships it seized? The way the Germans "sold" Goeben and Breslau to the Ottoman two weeks after the seizures in the UK would probably make the Brits think Germany and the Ottoman were already defacto allies. Another thought comes to mind: it would have been as unknowable in 1911 as the four-plus year build time, but the Curtis turbines that powered the Rivadavias were not very good. Delivery of both ships to Argentina was delayed due to the turbines being defective. Just before the Rivadavias were built, USS North Dakota was built for the USN, also with Curtis turbines. The Curtis turbines in North Dakota proved so troublesome that they were replaced in 1917, at a cost of some $700,000, the equivalent of $19.5M today. If the Ottoman tried for a new built ship with 14" guns, instead of 12", they would make another discovery: the early US 14" guns tended to droop, as the British discovered with the ones they bought. I'm thinking the best the Ottoman could have done in the US was to buy the two South Carolinas from the USN, with their more reliable triple-expansion engines and well tested 12"/45 guns.
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  1505.  @joelmontgomery4837  I would think that the limits of the naval treaties would have prevented Unicorn being built earlier. What puzzles me is why they put the resources into building a new non-frontline carrier, instead of converting Eagle to the support role, and using the resources to build a new fast, fleet carrier. Unicorn had vastly more hangar square footage, but Eagle's hanger had a higher overhead 20 1/2 feet, so, opening the possibility of hanging spare aircraft from the overhead, to partly compensate for the lack of square footage.
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  1506.  @danielregnard882  incidents of a warship losing to a merchant ship? RMS Olympic was converted to a troop ship, with a few deck guns, during WWI. In the wee hours of the morning of May 12, 1918, Olympic was at nearly full trot, speeding US troops to France. U-103, running on the surface, had ambitions of torpedoing Olympic. Olympic's lookouts spotted the sub. The liner's deck guns opened fire as she turned to ram. The sub attempted to dive. Too late. Olympic's port screw sliced into the sub's hull. Olympic carried on to Cherbourg, while the sub's survivors were picked up by USS Davis.
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  1507.  @ConsumerWatchdogUK  I read Ralph Barker's book about RAF Beaufort torpedo bomber operations a while back. iirc, the Italians used small convoys, maybe five cargo ships and tankers, escorted by destroyers and torpedo boats. Their route from Italy went along the Greek coast, to stay as far away from Malta as possible. Attacking Beauforts tended to be cut to ribbons by AA fire, as they had to overfly the escorts at low altitude to get at the cargo ships. Then the commander of the Beaufort force on Malta hit on the idea of bringing some Beaufighters along to strafe the escorts, to suppress the AA fire. Beaufort survivability increased substantially with the AA suppression. Barker's book is a pretty good read. Originally published in the UK as "The Ship Busters". Published in the US by Ballentine as "Torpedo Bomber!"
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  1508.  @readingrailroadfan7683  interesting question. The other two Amagis, Takao and Atago, had been laid down in late 1921, so, arguably, could have been completed under the treaty provision allowing conversion of ships under construction. The earthquake was in September 1923. According to a book on IJN ships I read, Takao and Atago were not stricken and broken up until April, 1924, so, under the terms of the treaty, one could have been completed as a carrier. The treaty also allowed new construction of replacements for ships lost to accident. I suppose you could argue that Amagi could be replaced under that clause by new construction from the keel up. Building the replacement to the same size as Amagi, which exceeded the treaty limit, might not be allowed.
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  1509.  @toddwebb7521  iirc, they tried to scuttle Hornet, but ran out of time as Japanese forces were approaching. In Yorktown's case, they were desperately trying to save her. The Yorktown design was compromised in that all the boilers were positioned together, and all the engines were positioned together. Being dead in the water doomed both Yorktown and Hornet. If they had had staggered boiler and engine rooms, like Essex, Yorktown in particular, if only capable of 8kts, would have been long gone by the time the Japanese sub happened by.
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  1510.  @napalmholocaust9093  one of the best examples is A6M5 number 61-120, restored to flyable condition, with the correct Nakajima Sakae engine, at the Planes of Fame museum in Chino, California. The Wiki entry on the Zero lists the location and status of surviving examples.
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  1511. Going to Corpus? Paying a visit to the Lex? I did a cruise on the Lex in 70. I don't know how much of the ship is open, but from the hanger, iirc, if you go down a hatch on the starboard side, just forward of the elevator, down one deck and head aft, the passageway ends at the entrance to the Chief's mess, In that space at the end of the passageway is a foam proportioner, racks of drums of the chemical for the proportioner, and my rack. That space must be just about over the screws. The ride was smooth and quiet, until they gave the throttle that last notch, then things would start to shake. As the Lex sailed back and forth across the Gulf at full speed so new pilots could get their practice in, she would run out of water and need to do a 180 degree turn, at full speed. I swear the OOD had it in for me as I would just be settling down for chow and the 1MC would bark "heel to port" and I would have to grab my tray so it didn't slide off onto the deck.
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  1512. Tiger and most of the Dukes were scrapped per the First London Treaty. Tiger was sold in 32, as were three Dukes. Iron Duke herself had the armor stripped off, to be "demilitarized". iirc, (if anyone knows for sure, jump in here) Tiger and the Dukes were never converted to oil fuel, and never had torpedo bulges fitted. The Admiralty did retain several of the turrets, and 13.5" guns. iirc, officially, the mount interchangeability between the 13.5" and 14" was so prototype 14" could be test fired with the existing mounts. In the back of my mind is the thought that the interchangeability was designed in, so, if there were production delays in the new 14", 13.5" from inventory could be installed on the KGVs instead. According to Navweaps, 54 13.5" guns were in Admiralty inventory in 1939. enough to equip all five KGVs, if need be, but not enough to have a spare set in hand whenever a ship needed a replacement set in a hurry.
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  1513.  @notshapedforsportivetricks2912  yes, the Navweaps article talks about three of them, supplied with supercharges, being used as railway guns near Dover. Three more were relined down to 8" as an experimental "super high velocity" gun. Four, with slides and cradles were sold to Turkey, but never delivered.
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  1514. *perk*, we get a look at the BB-10 Maine next week? I ran into quite a bit of information about that ship while researching the lurid problems the USN had with the 12"/40 that ship, and a couple other classes, were armed with. I'll be looking forward to your piece.
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  1515.  @geographyRyan  generally they are cut up for scrap. I have seen a photo of then SecNav Denby with a torch in hand, making a ceremonial first cut in one of the ships cancelled for Washington Treaty compliance. Some, like Tosa and Washington, were used for target practice. A few, like Kaga and Lexington, were converted into something else.
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  1516.  @redtob2119  the Normandies were obsolete by the end of the war. France has other financial problems. They had hosted the front line, and some territory was occupied by the Germans, so they had a huge reconstruction project to pay for. The US was demanding repayment of war loans, in cash, and France owed about $3.4B. The US was also demanding the UK repay it's debt of over $4B, in cash. iirc it was Arthur Balfour who wrote a letter to the French ambassador in the UK saying that, as the US was pressing the UK for repayment, the UK had to ask France to repay it's debt to the UK, in cash, because the UK needed the cash to pay the US.
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  1517.  @DanielSilverthorn  during the war, prior to US entry, a German raider steamed into Newport News for repairs, supplies and fuel. In a hot second, UK and French warships were steaming just outside the US' three mile limit, waiting for the raider to attempt a breakout. The USN dispatched an obsolete battleship from the reserve squadron to patrol off Newport News, in case the UK and French ships violated US neutrality and steamed into port to attack the raider. I suspect if von Spee attempted a passage through the canal, the US would accept payment of the toll and pass the ships. But by the time they reach the Atlantic end of the canal, there would be a reception committee on it's way. If von Spee was not intercepted right at the canal,, any ship bound for the Atlantic from the canal would pass through a string of UK and French held islands, so almost certain to be detected.
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  1518.  @SkywalkerWroc  yes, Caracciolo was a pre-war design. Torpedo protection was almost nil, so bulges would need to be added. One of the several photos I found of her showed the hull being closed up when work was suspended. It appears that what was at the main deck level was a wooden, temporary deck, held up by wooden temporary framing. I can see what may be the main armor deck below where the wooden temporary decking has not yet been installed. So the work to bring Caracciolo up to reasonable 1920s spec would be reenforcing the deck armor, before closing up the hull, install oil fired boilers and geared turbines, in place of the coal burners originally specified, and adding the torpedo bulges. Many of the boiler rooms were arranged along the sides of the hull, much as the boiler rooms in the Lexingtons were arranged to act as a secondary torpedo protection. It would be interesting to see if boiler technology had advanced enough to free all of those side boiler rooms, so they could be replaced by a Pugliese system.
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  1519.  @dancingwiththedarkness3352  per the news this morning, the UK and Ireland are being added to the travel ban, so Drack's trip is probably off.
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  1520.  @Axel0204  I'm not Drach, but my 2 cent's worth. On paper, the 1.1 is the more effective gun. From the data I have found, the projectile of the 1.1 weighed .917lbs vs .55 for the 25mm. Max altitude for the 1.1 is 19,000ft vs 18,040 for the 25mm. While the 25mm had a higher cyclic rate of fire, reloading dropped the effective rate of fire down to 120-110 rpm vs the 1.1's 100rpm. The 1.1 had a loading machine with space for two clips. The loading machine would automatically switch from an empty clip to the full one, so the empty could be replaced without stopping fire. The one major problem with the 1.1 was it's variety of ways of jamming. From my readings, by the end of the war, the gunner's mates had figured out how to make the gun operate reliably as they were not pulled from service, but rather transferred to lower priority ships as they were replaced by Bofors in combat ships, so the gunners had time to work out the problems with them.
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  1521. wrt the question about Vickers pom pom vs Bofors, I have also heard of the cordite issue, but, was the Vickers designed to be mass produced? Yes, the US automaker Chrysler reverse engineered the Bofors for mass production. Packard reverse engineered the Rolls Royce Merlin for mass production, and I have read the Oerlikon also had to be reverse engineered before it could be mass produced. Ford had to reverse engineer the B-24 for mass production. It would be unusual if a US automaker could shift it's shops directly to building the Vickers, without similar reverse engineering.
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  1522. Much of the 76 Midway film was shot on the Lex. I recognized some of the spots where they shot scenes.
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  1523.  @Mree17  I remember Charleton Heston on a talk show promoting the film at the time, and, yes, he noted the use of a lot of archival film, tho not necessarily from Midway, but probably later in the war. I am referring to the new footage featuring the actors. There was one real howler where the actors walked from the flight deck onto the starboard elevator, which the Lex didn't have in WWII, and as they stood on the elevator and talked, the elevator descended to the hanger, then, with the conversation over, the actors walked past the camera, heading away from the hanger, in other words, they were all headed toward walking overboard. I have been on that elevator.
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  1524. Greece entered WWI, on the allied side, in mid 1917. If the Kilkis and Lemnos, former USS Mississippi and Idaho, squared off against the Yavuz, former SMS Goeben, how would it shake out? Yavuz had an 6-8kt speed advantage, and 10 guns vs the total of 8 of the Greek ships, but the American 12"/45s threw a heavier shell, with about the same range.
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  1525.  @leogazebo5290  against combined allied forces? Probably second best, especially after Italy came into the war, which is probably why the Austrian fleet was not terribly active. Ponder this possibility though: The landings at Gallipoli were April 25, 1915. Italy did not enter the war until May 23rd of 15, so allied naval forces couldn't use Brindisi before May 23rd, nor was the Otranto Barrage set up until after then. The only capital ships Turkey had to push back against the British invasion were the Goeben and two old pre-dreadnoughts. What if the Austrians made a major fleet movement down the Adriatic in early May, until intercepted by French units. In the resulting fur-ball, the three Tegetthoffs that were in commission at that time are detached and make for Turkey to reinforce the Goeben.
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  1526.  @bloodrave9578  Frank mentioned the Fletchers losing one torpedo tube mount in favor of a pair of quad Bofors. I have seen photos of USN WWI types, Wickes and Clemson classes, with the aft triple tube mounts removed during WWII in favor of a couple 3"/50 AA guns. Seems the trend is more toward the DD's defense, rather than an offensive role.
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  1527.  @gregorywright4918  The IJN was using the Vickers through the 20s and early 30s. Navweaps cites complexity of manufacture, unreliability, (the IJN version was based on the Mk II) low rate of fire and short range, as reasons to look for a new gun. In the mid 30s, 25mm was regarded as adequate to take a plane apart, hence the grouping around that size: 25 from Hotchkiss and Bofors, and 28mm (1.1") from the USN. Thing is, even the twin 25mm mounts were still on a hand cranked mount, like the 40mm guns were, and probably far too slow to track a close-in target, like an Oerlikon could. I have seen pix of a single Type 96 on a free mount. Wonder if the USN ever tried a single 1.1 on a free mount?
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  1528.  @MrNicoJac  I addressed this issue upthread. In short, the kinetic energy formula sounds good, but it doesn't seem to work out that way in practice. I posted some data for the USN 14"/50 and 16"/45 of WWI. Even though the 14" fired at a higher muzzle velocity, the 16" had more penetrating power. Additionally, a lighter shell tends to lose momentum faster, so the longer the range, the more the advantage of the heavier shell. And, as a result of the higher muzzle velocity, the barrel of a high velocity gun wears faster and requires replacement more often.
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  1529.  @marinepixel6325  I think the only appeal of the Tennessees was that they exceeded treaty limits in both displacement and gun size. First London, for the first time, limited total cruiser force displacement, the same way that the WNT limited battleship and carrier force displacement. If the USN had poured money into basically gutting out the hull and starting over with modern powerplant, ventilation, secondary armament, fire control, as soon as the fleet limits of First London went into effect, the USN would want to get rid of them because, for the same displacement of the three Tennessees, they could have four completely new, modern, fast, heavy cruisers, with several thousand tons of quota left over.
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  1530. The thought crossed my mind that, knowing the end was near, the RM launch an operation at the beginning of April 41, to form up a convoy of every RM ship in Massawa, steam them up the Red Sea and perform a precursor to the St Nazaire raid by stuffing every one of them into the canal and port facilities in Suez City and scuttling them. That would leave the Brits in Egypt entirely dependent on running the gauntlet between Sicily and Libya for every bit of supply. The trip would take about 3 days at best speed for the banana boats, so the RAF would do some damage, but as narrow and shallow as the canal is, it wouldn't take much to block it.
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  1531.  @benwilson6145  with the canal full of scuttled ships, supplies would need to be unloaded at Suez City and taken overland, vs unloading in Alexandria. And with the port facilities at Suez City also full of scuttled ships, unloading is slower.
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  1532.  @benwilson6145  Yes, I know where Suez City is. What I would do is steam all the ships into the canal. On each ship in sequence, cut power. Then, as the ship loses way, turn the bow into one bank or the other, let momentum carry the stern forward until the ship is crosswise to the canal, then scuttle it. After the 1973 war, it took from May through December to clear all the shipwrecks in the canal, and that was during peacetime, not during a war with periodic air raids on the salvage operations. The thing about using lighters and tugs to unload ships at Suez City is most of those vessels are in Alexandria, and they could not get to Suez City, because the canal is blocked. The biggest fly in the plan is, at the best speed of the Rambs, it would take three days to steam from Massawa to Suez, with the RAF and any Royal Navy elements in the area fighting them every inch of the way. It might be better to use only the six destroyers, because, with their speed, the amount of time the Brits would have to oppose the operation would be cut nearly in half.
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  1533.  @benwilson6145  Well, take it up with Google Maps. Their map shows Port Tewfik, as you say, and the adjacent city is labeled Suez. I figure the approaches were mined during the war, but the Brits probably had a clear channel through the mines for their own traffic. A bit of prior planning, and reconnaissance by Italian frogmen, who were extremely good at their job, may reveal the clear path.
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  1534.  chris younts  I don't have a copy of Jane's at my fingertips, so I resorted to using Wiki. According to the Wiki entries, NM was refitted with geared turbines in the early 30s, as you said. Her two sisters were originally equipped with Curtis turbines, which were also replaced in the early 30s with geared turbines. So yes, they were all reengined, as you said, but they were not all initially built with T-E systems. As NM was the only one built with T-E, her engine spaces were probably not optimized for T-E, which facilitated the conversion to the geared turbines. Again, according to Wiki, both of the Tennessees and all three Colorados were built with T-E and none of the articles on those five ships mention replacement of the TE systems among the many modifications made over the years. Maryland was hit forward by a torpedo at Saipan. The Wiki article mentions her return to Pearl was done running astern so as to not put pressure on the bulkhead where the damage was. The Wiki article doesn't mention it, but I have read elsewhere that running that distance at any sort of sensible speed was only possible due to her T-E drive. Reversing turbines usually offer only a small fraction of the power available from the forward running turbines. In the case of T-E drive, reversing the drive is done by simply reversing polarity of current flow, so the full power of the turbines, generators and motors is available in both directions. Interesting conversation. I now have a much more granular understanding of early 20s battleship drive systems than I did this morning.
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  1535. ​ chris younts  Again referring to Wiki, NM's original T-E drive generated 27,500hp. The conventional turbines in her sisters generated 32,000. The difference probably due to the power loss inherent in converting from mechanical power to electricity, then converting the electricity back to mechanical power, as Drach notes in the video. They could make 21 knots. After their modernization, which increased displacement by 1400 tons, the new boilers and turbines, which took advantage of performance improvements made since the originals had been installed 15 years earlier, generated 40,000hp, and the ships could reach 22kts in spite of the increase in displacement. The cage masts were gone, a new superstructure was built and they looked modern for 1932. The navy putzed around for years about modernizing the Tennessees and Colorados, but, outside of installing some 5/25s and a couple 1.1s didn't do much with them. Imagine if the second London treaty had not had the escalator clause, or the USN had not expected the escalator to be triggered, while designing the North Carolinas, they would be looking at new BBs with only 14" guns, vs the Colorados with 16" guns and might have seen what could be cone with the Colorados. Imagine Colorados being rebuilt in 1938 with superstructures like West Virginia had in 44, with the bulges that had been planned for years but not installed until after WVa was sunk, with AA armament appropriate for the 1938 threat environment (think 4 twin 5/38 mounts and about 10 1.1 mounts) then take a page from the Italian's book, gut out the engine spaces and install the latest high pressure, high temperature boilers and turbines, and use the room freed by removal of the generators and motors to install physically larger boilers and turbines. The Italians increased power in their old BBs from 30,000 to 75,000 and bumped speed from 21 to 26kts. The original T-E system in the Colorados only generated 28,900hp. Unfortunately, my computer received a new version of ,Net a couple months ago and SpringSharp no longer works. Maybe someone with a working SpringSharp can plug in the Colorado specs and see how much power it would take to push them to 27-28kts and see if that sounds feasible. If WVa and Maryland could turn 28kts, they might have been with the carriers, instead of at Pearl, on Dec 7. Even if WVa was at Pearl, flying into the teeth of 4 or 5 1.1" mounts would have made a much more interesting morning for the Kate pilots attacking the ship, and the bulges would have made the Kate pilot's efforts less productive.
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  1536.  chris younts  the ships that were heavily damaged, California, W Va and Tennessee were really brought up to date wrt superstructure and AA. Colorado and Maryland were shortchanged. The Colorados are actually pretty close to the Italians in size. The Andrea Dorias, after they were lengthened in their late 30s rebuilds, were 613' with a 92' beam. The Conte di Cavour class were lengthened to 611' with a 93.8' beam. The Cavours could hit 27kts with 75,000hp. The Colorados were 624' with a 97.5' beam. Wiki gives partial post-rebuild specs on the W Va; 114' beam with the bulges. The South Dakotas were 680' with a 108' beam and could top 27 with 130,000hp. It puzzles the heck out of me why the USN did not extensively modernize the Tennessees and Colorados in the late 30s. Even the Brits made a lot of improvements in the Queen Elizabeths and Renown, but the newest of the BBs at Pearl sailed into WWII with casement guns, cage masts and 20 year old propulsion machinery.
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  1537.  chris younts  Yes, there was an odd situation with funding. The government was building public works projects all over the country under the WPA. I grew up in Kalamazoo, MI, where the County building, Federal building, civic auditorium and a fountain in Bronson Park were all WPA projects. I have read that Yorktown and Enterprise were built with funds sidetracked from an industrial redevelopment program. Odd And our guys paid for the short-shortsightedness with their lives.
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  1538.  @bluemarlin8115  I don't think there would have been 4-5 Scharns. Given all the time that would have been lost laying down Deutschland, then negotiating the shift to the naval treaty, then breaking up Deutschland on the ways, the political pushback in Germany to building capital ships, then Hitler coming to power, then the time spent arguing over the D class cruisers, The Scharns would have been laid down in 34-35 anyway, and armed with the Ansaldo 15"/50 because it would have been the only big gun available. Once the 2 Scharns were launched in 36, Hitler was feeling his oats and went straight to the Bismarks, laying down both the same year.
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  1539.  @gregblount6640  The WWII action between Renown, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau was fought in bad weather. All ships suffered some damage, nearly as much from the weather as the engagement. The Wiki article is titled. Action off Lofoten.
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  1540.  @ChaosEverDecoy  the Wiki entry on the Littorio class BBs says they apparently got their sums wrong on the bow. The result was a serious vibration, which required modification of the bow.
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  1541. On armor plate: what is the order lead time? Say it is 1919, I'm in Italy, and need 75mm thick STS, how long until my order arrives from Terni?
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  1542.  @WALTERBROADDUS  I agree, no battle of the Denmark Strait. Actually, with QE being some 4-5 kts slower, the Brits might not have intercepted Bismark in the first place. From the accounts I read, all the hits on Bismark came from PoW. Take PoW out of the engagement and Bismark might not have been damaged. If Bismark isn't damaged, it doesn't turn around and make for the French coast. Yup, with QE, instead of PoW, the battle wold have gone vastly better, for the Germans. Now, if you want to send QE and Valiant to Malaya as Force Z, I would be OK with that, because we all know what happened to Force Z and I hate to see a ship as new as the PoW be sunk. Looking on the bright side of them being in Force Z, they would not be sitting ducks in Alexandria in mid December, when Italian frogmen with limpet mines came calling. Actually, with the AA added to both in their rebuilds, they might have had a sporting chance as Force Z.
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  1543. wrt the USN abandoning the "standard battleship" template, that is one of the historical pivot points that could have gone in a different direction very easily. The 1916 Navy Act specified a price limit for the first 4 battleships, the Colorados, but had no price limit for the other 6. The battleships being drawn starting in 1917, were 42,000 ton, 23kt concepts, using the newly developed 16"/50. Three of the Colorados were suspended before they were laid down, due to wartime change in priority. In June of 1918, Congress added language to the annual Naval appropriation bill compelling the Navy to make a start on the ships that had been authorized in 1916, but not started, due to the wartime change in priority, meaning the balance of the Colorados, Lexingtons, and South Dakotas. Meanwhile, BuOrd had ordered 14"/50s for the battlecruisers, when they were originally ordered, which were now surplus because the battlecruiser design had evolved to using the 16"/50. Were I in Daniels' shoes in June 1918, I would have proposed to Congress cancelling the three Colorados, as the previous decision to go larger and faster with the next class had rendered them obsolete, complete Maryland with 14"/50s, as the guns were in hand, abandon the 16"/45, and go directly to the South Dakotas. Of course, that would have had repercussions twenty years later, as Colorado and, especially, West Virginia, proved useful in WWII.
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  1544.  @bkjeong4302  I would propose that, if the Yamatos had never been laid down, in favor of more Shokakus, they would have four additional carriers, as four Yamatos were laid down. Two additional carriers would probably commission in 41. None of the additional Essex class carriers would be available significantly earlier than 43, because the design, which exceeded Second London limits, did not exist earlier. Things would have gotten very dicy off Guadalcanal in November of 42, as there would have been no battleships to reenforce the shattered flotilla that had met the Japanese the first night. Without building the Yamatos, the IJN could have opted for a more aggressive rebuild of the Nagatos, which were significantly faster than the USN standards to begin with. Without modern US battleships, there would have been no controversy about Halsey failing to meet the "center force". With more dedicated carriers, the Ises would not have been converted, so they would have been available for the center force in place of the unbuilt Yamatos. With no battleships to pound Kirishima into scrap at Guadalcanal, she could have joined her two sisters in the center force, along with Nagato and the two Ises (one of them would have been sunk in place of Musashi) Lots of moving parts in this scenario.
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  1545.  @bkjeong4302  actually, I don't think the US would gain 10 Essexes, due to the late start, due to design availability. By my count, the USN could gain 8, by replacing all battleships: (2) built in Philly, (2) in Brooklyn, and 1 each at News, Fore River, Norfolk, and NY Shipbuilding. Meanwhile, starting the war with two more large carriers, potentially, the IJN could have brought more force to Coral Sea, and finished off Yorktown. With only two carriers at Midway, and Hornet's air group totally ineffective, it falls to Enterprise's two squadrons of SBDs to do fatal damage to the IJN carriers. One, or more, IJN carriers might have been able to limp home for repair. Starting the war with two additional carriers, the IJN might have brought more force to Santa Cruz, and finished off Enterprise. The next question is how the USN brings the Essexes into the theater. Do they bring them in one at a time, as they work up, so the first ones are always outnumbered and could be sunk by overwhelming IJN force? Or, do they hold the Essexes in the US or at Pearl, until they can form up a 4 carrier battlegroup that can defend itself?
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  1546.  @MartinCHorowitz  I have lived on a museum ship, the Lexington....of course, she wasn't a museum. at that time, 50 years ago. In keeping with the intent of your question, if I was going to live on a ship today, go big, battleship or carrier. Roomier and quieter. When I toured the LST that is a museum in Muskegon, MI, a couple things I noticed: in the crew birthing space, I could hear water slapping against the hull. On that LST to get from the chow line in the galley, to the enlisted tables to sit down and eat, requires carrying your tray and drink down a vertical ladder. No such nonsense on the Lex. Lots of room. right next to the chow line to sit and eat. Only issue I had eating on the Lex was the tendency of the OOD to order a 180 degree, full speed turn, at chow time. I would be just sitting down to eat, and the 1MC would bark "heel to port". I had to hang on to my tray and drink until she finished that turn. Of course, that would not be a problem in a stationary museum ship.
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  1547.  @thehuscarl4835  I found a page on line from Gullco International, a supplier of welding and cutting automation solutions, which gives a quick rundown of gas, arc, and resistance welding, in shipbuilding applications. It says the problem with gas is a higher risk of the surrounding material becoming distorted. It doesn't say why.
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  1548.  @kurttank_1909  I'm not sure, but I suspect he is referring to anti-flash cream, used to protect skin from burns from nearby explosions. About the only time I have seen it in a movie is "The Caine Mutiny".
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  1549.  @bryant7201  I am assuming everything proceeds on the historical timeline, except the Pearl Harbor op does not happen. Japan attacked the Philippines on December 8, ie the same day as Pearl. The USN can sit tight in it's fortified harbors, and let the Philippine garrison be starved/slaughtered, or it can act. In my scenario, the American people and Congress force an expedition to "save our boys" in the Philippines, in effect forcing the USN into the response that fits the IJN doctrine. Keep in mind that the League of Nations handed the former German colonies north of the equator to Japan after WWI: that means all of the Marianas, except Guam, all of the Carolines, Palau, and all of the Marshalls. That is about 3,000 miles, between Wake and the Philippines peppered with Japanese held islands supporting flying boat and sub patrols, to keep IJN advised of the USN's position so that a trap can be laid. And the IJN will be closer to repair bases than the USN. It's only 1544 miles from Manila to Hiroshima, but 5445 from Manila to Pearl Harbor. I wouldn't bet on there being any functional repair facilities still intact at Subic when the USN showed up. So, the USN is cut up by Japanese subs and the occasional carrier strike on the way to the Philippines, then runs into Japanese land based air in the Philippines, then another gauntlet of subs on the way back to Pearl. I would almost want the IJN carriers to stay out of the way, hang back in the South China Sea, then add their air wing to the land based air to intercept the USN when it arrives. Chop up the US carriers in the "decisive battle" then pick off the battleships and the other major units as they limp back to Pearl.
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  1550.  @captainvladmir7535  the earlier drawings I have seen of USN scout cruiser proposals had the casemate mounts, and no turrets. Seems the turrets were a late addition to the concept.
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  1551.  @DIVeltro  I don't recall seeing any post-Omaha light cruiser designs from the 1920s on the NHHC site. Friedman's book on cruisers might fill in that gap.
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  1552.  @hughfisher9820  The Wiki article says there was a treaty limitation that forced the Dunkerques to be the size they were, but I reviewed the text of both the Washington and 1930 London treaties and found no such reduced limitation in the text, France was allowed 70,000 tons total, and a max of 35,000T each. Another part of the Wiki article says the Brits were pushing for a reduction in the tonnage limits in the 1930 treaty, and France sought to support the British position, then apparently carried through and built the small ships even though the treaty did not in fact include the reduced limits. In the back of my mind is the thought there was a reluctance to spend any more on the two ships to make them treaty-max, and hope everyone else followed their lead. Wishful thinking is rarely a sound strategy. Given Mussolini's territorial ambitions, where were displayed through the 20s and early 30s in reoccupying the parts of Libya that had slipped from Italy's grasp, it seems stunningly foolish to think he would restrain himself and not build anything more potent than the Dunkerques, even though the treaty would allow it. Of course, if the Dunkerques were built to the Richelieu design, the probable net change in the course of the war would be Dunkerque would not be so badly damaged at Mers El Kébir. would have made it's way to Toulon with Strasbourg, where they were both scuttled, so, net, zero change in their part of the war.
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  1553. @ @hughfisher9820  yes, both countries had financial constraints. The Italian fleet being severely constrained in the 20s is laid on the cost of subjugating Libya. I notice the Littorios were ordered shortly after the Libyian campaign was wrapped up in 32. When the Dunkerques were laid down, France was also sinking a fortune into the Maginot Line. I have also read that there was a line of thought that, by building undersized ships, France could build more of them. Italy looked at that through the late 20s as well, but, when it came time to sign a construction contract, they went big.
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  1554. Some articles about the Washington treaty don't have it quite right as they say carriers in existence or building at the time of the treaty don't count toward the treaty limit. Chapter 1, article 8 of the treaty says carriers in service or building as of November 12 of 21 are "experimental" and are not subject to the replacement schedule laid out in Chapter 2, but it does not say anything about their tonnage not counting. The USN converted Langley to a seaplane tender to free up the tonnage for Wasp. With Ark Royal, the RN was at it's 135,000 ton limit. The Illustrious class was ordered in early 37, after Japanese withdrawal from the treaty became effective at the end of 36. It occurs that the RN had the option, in the early 30s, of reducing Argus, Eagle and Hermes to seaplane tenders, as Langley was, freeing up enough tonnage to build two more Ark Royals. Did the RN give that option consideration?
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  1555.  @bkjeong4302  I think we covered this before. While the landings already happened, equipment and supplies continue to be unloaded and taken ashore for days after the landing. Samar was on the 25th. The landings were on the 20th, so there should have been plenty yet to be unloaded, and no doubt, piles of supplies and equipment staged near the beach. If I was Kurita, I would not have engaged Taffy 3. I'd ring up flank speed and blow past them, because only the 3 US DDs were fast enough to keep up with the IJN BBs, and they would be occupied by the smaller IJN units. If Oldendorf's old BBs move to intercept, refuse to engage and blow past them too. Shoot up everything in sight at the beachhead, then exit via Suirgao Straight, assuming there is room to maneuver past the wreckage from the night before, or play it safe and go around Mindanao.
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  1556.  @6763100  wartime tug operations provided plenty of fodder for Jan de Hartog. I read his novel "The Captain" in the 60s and saw the film version of "Stella" as "The Key" several years ago.
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  1557.  @bkjeong4302  Not forgetting about the other Taffies at all. Refusing to engage them. The bulk of the US air cover had been decoyed to the north, as intended. Kurita's objective was shooting up the beachhead. He should have gotten on with it, instead of putzing around with Taffy 3. Some accounts say Kurita thought the US carriers were fleet carriers, a juicier target than CVEs. If that had been the case, they would have been Essexes, which were faster than any of his BBs, so chasing them would have been futile. The USN did a heck of a diversion job on Kurita, as he apparently had the memory of a gnat, and forgot what his mission was.
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  1558.  @bkjeong4302  defend against the attacking aircraft, while continuing at flank speed to the beachhead to execute the primary mission. One interesting question, would the DDs escorting the CVEs continue to attack Kurita's force, following it toward the beachhead, or stay with the CVEs they are assigned to protect?
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  1559. Specifically, boat engines. I think the smell Trump was referring to was the stench of two stroke outboards, which are now illegal in much of the country, due to the oil they dump in the water. Four stroke outboards both don't stink like two stroke engines, they are also quieter.
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  1560. I live in a "swing" state. I will show up and vote. But, I have also compiled multiple layers of documentation that I am a US citizen, so I will be hard to rob and deport, by a hypernationalist regime.
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  1561. wrt the question about Japan v Russia, the thing would have been for Japan to attack the eastern end of Russia. Besides diverting Russian troops from fighting the Germans, occupying eastern Russia would make it possible to intercept US Lend Lease aircraft that were being flown to Russia via Alaska.
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  1562.  @godofprocurement  the Anglo-German naval treaty of 1935 gave Germany 35% of the RN's tonnage, meaning the German navy could be larger than that of France or Italy. Each class of ships limited by the armament and displacement limits of the Washington and First London treaties. The agreement also permitted the Germans to build a U-Boat fleet equal to the RN's. France was not a party to the discussions, and was understandably livid. I can't imagine Germany being allowed a navy that large if France and Italy had participated. My hunch is that, if Germany was a party to the Washington treaty, it would have been limited to parity with Italy and France.
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  1563.  @richardcutts196 the treaties would have prevented the proposed changes in Tiger too. You could not increase the main guns or side armor. You could only improve torpedo and anti-aircraft protection. When the US started modifying the mounts in it's older battleships to increase elevation, there was an argument about whether the modification was a change in the mount that the treaty prohibited. Once the treaty tonnage was increased to 45,000, in mid 38, I doubt the increase in displacement from the plug would be an issue, especially if the lengthened Revenges were deemed their own replacement as most of them would age out in 42 anyway. The long lead items, that British industry was capacity restricted on, were big guns and armor. By reusing the guns and armor of the Revenges, it might expedite the work. Modernizing the QEs also relieved the gun and armor capacity issue. What I don't know, is if lengthening the Revenges as proposed would be any faster, or cheaper, than building new from scratch. The QE rebulds were less ambitious, and took three years.
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  1564.  @oriontaylor  I suspect it would have made no difference at all. The Caracciolos were also a pre-war design, with an obsolete armor scheme and no torpedo protection. Bringing them up to spec in the late 30s would be as big a job as the Cavours and Duilios, for little gain over modernizing the slightly older ships.
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  1565.  @RedXlV  my take is "public relations". During a war, especially when the US is already on it's back foot due to being caught napping on December 7th, everything gets a positive spin. I have ranted from time to time how the TBD pilots at Midway were slaughtered by a failure of command to properly coordinate the attack. But no foul-ups allowed. Everyone had to be a hero. Ever see the early 60s film "Zulu"? Good line as the two Lieutenants are discussing their situation. One says the Army does not allow two disasters in one day, because "it looks bad in the papers and upsets civilians at their breakfast".
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  1566.  @vikkimcdonough6153  The Revenges had not received extensive rebuilds in the 30s. Malaya and Barham had not received major work after their early 30s modernizations. Barham was sunk. Malaya was so worn out it was also retired by the end of 43, along with the Revenges.
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  1567. "Pump and dump" schemes are well known in US financial markets. What in the world would Tesla want with Nissan? Would MITI allow Gaijin to own Nissan? Just more stock market manipulation.
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  1568.  @arivael  as battlecruisers, the Courageouses were around 20,000 tons. I doubt they could be carved down to 10,000 tons. Considering the ships were twenty years old in the late 30s, I doubt anyone would be interested in a rearmament that would require wider barbettes. I really tend to want to run the Courageouses as Jackie Fisher styled them; light cruisers, with really big guns.
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  1569. A couple of interesting questions today. re the Short/Kimmel question, as mentioned some weeks ago in the "you are Kimmel, waking up on Dec 6th, knowing the attack is coming" question, what I would really like to try is swathing the entire harbor in a smoke screen. It probably isn't in "the book", so Kimmel probably would not have thought of it, but having a destroyer on standby, with steam up, specifically to steam laps around Ford Island laying smoke at the first sign of an attack, would have been interesting. The Japanese could not hit what they could not see. re Fletcher vs LCS. imho, the LCS better use it's speed advantage to run away. Doesn't matter what sort of fancy radar the LCS has, if the Fletcher has chaff launchers. Blind the radar, and the Fletcher uses gun direction by the Mk I eyeball, which the LCS isn't equipped for. If the LCS is foolish enough to close the range to try and hit without radar guidance, then it gets blanketed by the Fletcher's 40mms. How long can the LCS' lone gun maintain that rate of fire before the barrel overheats? The 5/38's slower rate of fire allows more cooling time. Then, as Drach said, a Fletcher can take hits from a 57mm a lot better than an LCS can take a hit from a 5/38. I have read that assessments of the LCS indicate they can be disabled by a single hit from an RPG. Would even near misses from a 5/38 damage the LCS' hull enough to slow it or sink it?
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  1570.  @readingrailroadfan7683  decades ago, I read a memoir by an RN sub commander. He mentioned that, when their sub was operating in the Atlantic, it was painted black. When they were based on Malta, the sub was painted blue.
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  1571.  @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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  1572. wrt to the question of upgunning battleships in the 1930s, improvement of the primary armament was prohibited by the naval treaties, except in the cases of France and Italy. Even improving the range of elevation of the mounts was controversial.
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  1573.  @WarrantOfficerWill22  I don't know about WWII, but, I read, somewhere along the way, that, in WWI, the Germans overran the factory where the quad mounts for the Normandie class battleships were being made, and took some of the parts back to Germany.
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  1574.  @CTXSLPR  I read somewhere along the line that the USN switch away from hammocks in the late 30s was due to the hammocks being suspected of contributing to back problems among the crew. I can't recall what the source was for that, so can't attest to it's accuracy.
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  1575.  @kemarisite  iirc, the Illinois class used the modern Mk IV turret, but still used the 13"/35. The Maine class, and the Arkansas class monitors, were the first to use the 12"/40. The performance of the 12"/40 was so much better than the 13'/35, once the guns had been reinforced, that I have wondered why the Illinois class were not rearmed with them. According to my 1910 USNA gunnery text, the turntable of a big gun turret is built up from common steel plate and angle iron, so making a new turntable for the Mk IVs on the Illinois class to take the 12"/40s would not seem to have been a big problem.
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  1576.  @kemarisite  The Navy's choices on the Illinois class are counter-intuitive, mounting obsolete guns in a new and innovative turret. I did a pretty deep dive into the 12"/40 as part of a thought exercise several months ago, working out which ships had it, and the status of all of those ships as of the end of 1914. The objective of the exercise was to find a heavy gun the US could have declared surplus and sold to the UK as armament for their monitors, if President Wilson had been as interested in helping as FDR was a generation later.
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  1577. Completely in line with the opinions of the SecDef nominee, to make the Army white, straight, and male.
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  1578.  @kurumi394  The US and UK were trying to comply with the treaty. Japan gave notice it would drop out of the treaty system, effective 1936, in 1934, so the IJN could build anything it wanted. While Second London had the gun escalator clause, from 14" to 16" built in to it, the tonnage escalator was not explicit. The treaty only said that the parties would try to come to an agreement before increasing tonnage. The Admiralty laid down KGV and PoW on New Year's Day, 1937, the earliest day they could under the treaty, rather than wait for April, when Japan's refusal to sign the new treaty triggered the gun escalator clause. A debate ran for the first half of 38 between the UK and US about how much to increase the tonnage limit. The UK held out for something in the 41-42,000 ton range, the largest UK facilities could handle, while the US held out for 45,000. The US won that debate, enabling the Iowas. So that is why there is so much incrementalism in US and UK battleship development in the late 30s. It's all due to the treaty's incremental approach to increases in gun and displacement.
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  1579.  @gp556by45  because the ship that fired the inbound salvos is moving, the firing solution that put the previous salvo where it hit is no longer valid, so the firing ship would have to calculate a new setup. Beyond that, "chasing salvos" works on the same logic as "lighting never strikes twice in the same place" as a system with multiple variables is unlikely to reach the same result twice in a row.
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  1580.  @WALTERBROADDUS  iirc, the Italians did that with their older BBs: pull the midships turret, and install a power plant of more than twice the horsepower. Navweaps indicates the Fusos and Ises used the same turrets and guns. It would not have been a bad thing, from the IJN's perspective, if they had a couple spare turrets in the warehouse. Hyūga suffered battle damage to turret #5, and #6 had a mechanical fault that limited it's elevation. With spares in the warehouse, after the up-engining project, the two damaged turrets could have been easily replaced.
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  1581.  @colbeausabre8842  why did they keep trying the high velocity approach? E=M(V squared). The Germans went the light shell/high velocity route too. Bismark fired a light shell, for a 15", at higher velocity, than the maligned rifles on the Nelsons.2690fps for Bismark, vs 2614fps for Nelson, while Bismark fired a 15" shell that weighed only 1764lbs vs 1938 for the 15"/42. The Littorio class 15", notorious for dispersion, fired 1951lb AP at 2789fps. The USN 16"/50 developed during WWI, for the later cancelled South Dakota and Lexington classes fired a 2110lb shell at 2800fps. When the USN figured out that the theory was not born out in practice, the 16"/50 used on the Iowas fired a 2700lb shell at 2500fps.
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  1582.  @gregorywright4918  yes, that is what the Wiki article on that ship says, training accident on May 5, 42. The part of the Wiki article I read only said "an explosion", which I misremembered.
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  1583.  @readingrailroadfan7683  Baltimore was laid down in May 41. Cleveland was laid down in July 40, and launched in November 41. I suspect it was a matter of familiarity with the Cleveland design, they knew everything below the weather deck would go together OK.
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  1584.  @AlmiranteBrown-rf9qv  outside of the Independence, seems the only other candidates are the Colossus and Majestic classes. After the war they were used by the navies of France, the Netherlands, India, Argentina, Brazil, Canada. Australia. Many were upgraded with modestly angled flight decks. I can complain about their lack of speed, compared to Independence, but you can't argue with their utility to other navies after the war.
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  1585.  @Captain_Seafort  Yes, I would like to hear that as well.
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  1586.  @amerigo88  a second for Mutsu. I would like to hear the story starting with the WNT conference trying to force it to be scrapped. Mutsu was officially commissioned a few weeks before the conference started, and it was under the 35,000 ton limit. It should have been grandfathered without question, just as Maryland was. Maryland was commissioned in July of 21 and Mutsu commissioned in October of 21. I don't blame the Japanese for being irritated.
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  1587.  @DisSabot  the nightmare scenario I have floated a couple times is what if the IJN converted the Kongo class ships into carriers in 39 or 40. If they had done that, the IJN would still have had 6 large, fast, carriers, even if they lost 4 at Midway, vs the USN only having 4. Then Hornet was lost at Santa Cruze, then Wasp was torpedoed. The IJN would have pretty much had it's own way in the Pacific for the balance of 42 and 43. It took until the end of 43 for the USN to get 6 Essex class carriers in service, to allow it to meet IJN air on equal terms. Until then, it would be up to USN subs to carry the load, as anything on the surface, without air cover, dies. The US would eventually win, as the IJN could not make up it's losses like the US could, but it would have taken several years past 45.
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  1588.  @tommeakin1732  there was a rocket AA system developed by the British DMWD. It wasn't the shotgun approach you describe. When fired, the rocket streamed a cable behind it. The objective was to stream the cable in front of a low flying airplane, in hopes the plane would hit it and the cable would damage a wing or engine.
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  1589. @Colin Walker that would be an interesting dilemma. If the US made obvious preparations, the Japanese would realize the US had broken their code. Churchill was in this dilemma wrt a Luftwaffe attack on Coventry. He let Coventry burn, rather than tip that they had broken the German code. The best scenario I can thing of for the US, is to establish a paper trail explaining that an air raid drill was planned, using the scheduled inbound flight of B-17s as the stand in for a theoretical attacking force. So, when the radar station picked up an inbound formation, everyone proceeds to launch ever fighter on the island to intercept what they are told are US Army bombers, but when they get there, they discover the Japanese, and the furball commences.
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  1590.  @blogsblogs2348  one real problem with that idea, iirc, at that time, 1938, the FAA demanded that every aircraft have a navigator. The Hurricane, being single seat, falls down on that score. If the FAA wanted something more capable than the Skua, they could have bought SB2U Vindicators, a bit more speed, a bit more range, and a bit more payload, and was available in 38. The SBD had more of everything than the SB2U, but did not enter production until 40.
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  1591. My first thought is the incoming US administration is blatantly, proudly, EV-hostile. Then add the challenge of building out EV infrastructure in Central And South America, and the western hemisphere may be the last bastion of ICE vehicles. Mexico has a free trade agreement with the EU. A couple weeks ago, a free trade agreement was reached between the EU, and several South American countries, including Brazil, which has a well developed car industry. The EU nations have not yet ratified the agreement. I can see the western hemisphere becoming the supplier of ICE vehicles to the EU. If VW was moving production to Mexico, I would expect the first candidate to be the EU market Tayron, which is presently built in Wolfsburg, as the US market gen 3 Tiguan, is the Tayron, built in Puebla. It would be relatively simple to simply stop building the Tayron in Wolfsburg, and import the model from Mexico. That being said, I would be perfectly fine with the Golf being built in Puebla as well.
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  1592.  @Alex-cw3rz  we know the Brits are going to use the same tactics, head straight for the German ships at high speed and wind the range down to about 15-16,000 yards. With that approach, the belt armor doesn't matter, because it isn't facing the enemy. Given the frontal area available to shoot at, vs the deck area, and knowing that the most likely error in aim will be estimating range, I figure the trick for the Germans is to use a reduced charge, fire into a high trajectory and go for a deck hit. Not only could Bismark punch through Hood's deck, Prinz Eugen could easily punch through Repulse's deck. Even if the British ships survived to their "decisive" range of 15-16,000, Bismark could penetrate Hood's 12" belt, and Prinz Eugen could penetrate anything short of the thickest part of Repulse's belt. imho, Tovey was correct, send one strong ship, and one weak one, to each passage.
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  1593. Another factor in Kurita's favor at Leyte Gulf would be that most, if not all, of the US DDs had fired their torpedoes the night before, so they have no practical way of hurting battleships. On the other hand, the US had nearly complete air superiority. "Sea of Thunder" questions Kurita's will to fight, suggesting that a sighting report of a US task force to the north, had been fabricated as a face saving excuse to abort the mission and turn north.
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  1594.  @tomdolan9761  the plan was for the Japanese force to make it's exit through Surigao Strait, after raiding the beachhead. According to "Sea of Thunder", the southern force was "suggested" late in the planning, by some bright spark at HQ. Of course, dividing the force made it easier to defeat in detail. Also, according to the book, the Japanese officers were not thrilled about the prospect of attacking freighters that where largely empty by that time.
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  1595.  @tomdolan9761  I tried giving Leyte Gulf the alt history treatment, with the southern force being the section lead by the Kongos, going around Mindanao, rather than through Surigao, and attacking Taffy 1, to try and provoke Kinkaid moving his force off station to aid Taffy 1. But, in retrospect, Kinkaid did not send any help to Taffy 3, passing the buck to Halsey, so my alt history approach would have failed. Kinkaid appears to be content to see the Taffies slaughtered, rather than leave his defensive position in the Gulf. So the only alternative would be a unified center force, hitting Kinkaid head on. One interesting thing I noticed, Kurita literally crossed Shima's wake. Shima stopped to refuel at Coron, departing at 0200 on the 24th for Surigao. He could have waited about three hours, then fallen in like as Kurita passed Coron. With the forces of Kurita, Nishimura, and Shima combined, they are just about a match for Seventh Fleet. With Halsey successfully decoyed away, it would have been an epic brawl.
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  1596. Humorous take on the shrinkage of the immediate WWI battleships and battlecruisers. I have suspected for a long time that the G3 and N3, both around 48-49,000 tons, were a bluff, and a bargaining chip, at the Washington Conference, because, when negotiating the displacement escalator in 38, the UK was pressing for a 42-43,000 ton limit, due to infrastructure limitations.
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  1597.  @johnfisher9692  I wish I could remember which of the books I read, when looking in to the armament decisions on the KGVs, but one of the books had about two pages of the Admiralty's own technical analysis of several different design proposals. The conclusion was that an armament of 9-15" would give the best balance between speed, protection, and firepower. The analysis continued that the only circumstance where they should go with 14" is if required by a treaty. This was before Second London made exactly that change in specification. All this was going on before the treaty, because the British battleship building capability had atrophied to the point that the decisions had to be made and the guns and turrets ordered in late 35, not after Second London had been negotiated. Had they gone with the 9-15" armament, they would have probably had the same weight issue they did with the 14" armament when the armor scheme was revised, so the KGVs would have ended up with an 8-15" layout. One of the talking points in favor of 14" was more guns could be carried, increasing the probability of a hit. One book I read said that the reduction from 12 to 10 14", due to the armor change, largely defeated the reason for going to 14" in the first place.
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  1598.  @johnshepherd9676  that was "Operation Creek". A book was written about the op some years ago "Boarding Party, the last action of the Calcutta Light Horse", by James Leasor. The situation was delicate as Goa was not part of British ruled India at the time. Goa was a Portuguese colony, and Portugal was neutral/leaning British.
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  1599.  @nowthenzen  the Skua was agonizingly slow, according to Wiki. The G3M and G4M were both faster. That's why my alternate scenario, that has Hermes joining Z, uses Brewster Buffalos from the RAF squadrons already in Singapore. The Buff can top 300, 40mph faster than a Fulmar, so has enough speed advantage to be an effective interceptor.
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  1600. I wonder how much of a role management's mind set plays in their loss of volume in China. In the US, the "big three" have been losing market share for 50 years. The US is cluttered with closed/torn down big three plants. Ford, and VW have been open about their disinterest in major market segments. Farley, having dropped all of Ford's conventional passenger cars, has said he wants to get out of the two row CUV segment, because brisk competition prevents him charging as much of the cars as he wants to. VW's CFO said, a couple years ago, they don't care about market share. Both companies are openly pursuing a policy of price escalation so they take more money off of each of their shrinking number of customers. That business model does not seem sustainable to me, but they continue to close plants and lay people off, to adjust to their shrinking volume.
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  1601.  @markjoenks2217  I'll take a crack at that one. Historically, after the US seized the Philippines and Guam, Spain sold the rest of it's Pacific holdings to Germany, which included the balance of the Marianas, the Carolines, and Marshals. As an ally of the UK, Japan rolled up the German possessions in the Pacific, and continued to occupy the colonies north of the Equator under a League of Nations mandate after the war. In the absence of a Spanish-American war, the first pivot would be whether Spain sold it's Pacific colonies, including the Philippines and Guam, to Germany. If Spain did sell, then Japan would take them in 1915, and would continue to hold them in 1941. If Spain did not sell, Spain was neutral in WWII, and Franco and Axis leadership were buddies, so Japan, realizing Spanish possessions were not a threat, may bypass them, on it's way to Malaya and Borneo. Historically, Japan did not invade Macau, the Chinese colony of neutral Portugal, but Japan did appoint "advisors" to the Macau government. Such an arrangement could probably have been arrived at in the Spanish Philippines. Everything else, including the attack on Pearl, would probably have happened anyway, to preclude US interference in Japanese expansion into Malaya and the Dutch East Indies.
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  1602.  @vikkimcdonough6153  that is a good point. The US had quite a time putting down the rebels. That rebellion might have motivated Spain to sell the Philippines to Germany, because Spain could not hold them. If the Philippines did gain their independence, Japan would probably have invaded shortly thereafter. Seems Japan was Hoovering up every independent state in the area. Following the Sino-Japanese war, Taiwan declared itself an independent state, in spite of China ceding it to Japan. Japan promptly invaded. Korea also became independent, but became a Japanese protectorate in 1905. If the Philippines had successfully booted the Spanish, and the Germans were not interested, the Japanese would have moved in.
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  1603. Is that the beer that Larry Kudlow warned Biden would force people to drink, the beer made from plants?
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  1604. Drac, re the time delay on questions, when I ask a question, I write it down, with the date that I asked it. I don't have a problem waiting a year, with one exception: sometimes, in the interim, I have found an answer to the question. and would like to delete my question. For instance, last October, on Drydock 216, I asked who made the decision to put 14" guns on the KGVs. I am now satisfied that the decision was made by First Sea Lord Chatfield, and I would like to withdraw that question. I also deleted a question on the piece about Jervis Bay a day after I posted it, as I found an answer. How should we communicate to you to delete a question you may have selected for answer? The first solution that comes to my mind is for you to backcheck that a question is still on the post, before you research it, unless you think it would be informative for the rest of the community.
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  1605.  @ericjones9487  off the top of my head, I would say Andrea Doria . She outlasted Duilio and Gangut in service by a month or a few, before going to the breakers.
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  1606.  @AddumEnied  battlecruisers have length and speed going for them. But, the hull is the wrong shape. A battlecruiser's stern is long and tapered, for speed, but it does not have much buoyancy to support a hangar and flight deck. Look at the hull form of a Yorktown, for instance. The aft part of the hull is much fuller, so it can support more weight. Compare Kongo to Courageous. Courageous is 4' narrower, but 80 feet longer. Courageous could carry 48 aircraft, according to Wiki, for it's 24,000 tons, normal load. A converted Kongo would probably be in the same ballpark wrt aircraft capacity. Yorktown, at 25,500 full load, was 16 feet shorter than Courageous, but 20 feet wider, and could carry 90 aircraft. I have had some vigorous discussions, over the years, about the wisdom of converting the Lexingtons, as the USN could have built three Yorktowns, and built Wasp as another full sized carrier, for the displacement of the two Lexingtons, and had more aircraft deployed, with more operational flexibility, and more surviveability. In the 1920s, the one carrier resource that was limited was tonnage. Battlecruisers are very wasteful of that tonnage, for the number of aircraft they can carry.
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  1607.  @KingoftheWinterWolves13  When President Harding called the conference, the estimation was that Congress was going to withdraw funding for the building program that was then in progress, regardless. So Harding decided to try and negotiate a treaty so everyone else would stop building too. It is quite possible that the South Dakotas and Lexingtons would have been cancelled by 22 or 23, even without the treaty. A conference in 25 may well have failed. President Coolidge, who became President when Harding died in 1923, called a conference to further limit naval strength in 1927. The conference was a failure. From what I have read, the US was trying to get the other powers to draw down their fleets to the size the US was willing to fund, which wasn't much. There has been a fable, for decades, that, when the US Army asked for more funding to buy aircraft, President Coolidge supposedly said "why can't they buy just one aeroplane, and take turns flying it?" I have read that the UK delegation left the 27 conference proclaiming "the US is trying to buy parity on the cheap". Without the Washington conference, the UK-Japan alliance may have remained in force for some years. The UK might have been able to restrain the Japanese building program, before economic reality forced the Japanese to pull back on their program some. There would be no restraint on Japan fortifying the former German colonies in the Pacific that Japan retained after the war via a League of Nations mandate.
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  1608.  @jacqueshejeije7499  the one that has Tosa completed, and Kongo converted to a carrier? Does not have a name, or number. My winter hobby is creating alt histories, and the Washington treaty provides multiple variations. Example: In June of 1918, Congress put a clause in the annual Navy appropriation bill demanding the Navy make a start on the capital ships that had been authorized in 1916, but not laid down due to the change in priorities in 1917. Congress had authorized the 6 42,000 ton battleships in the 1917 Navy appropriation bill. Those points are both true. The alt history: SecNav Daniels says to Congress, in 1918, that the 42,000 ton battleships make the Colorados obsolete, so recommends cancelling the three Colorados not yet laid down as a waste of taxpayer's money. Additionally, as the Navy had a large quantity of 14"/50 guns, and Maryland's construction is not far advanced, Maryland be completed with a 12-14"/50 armament, rather than be a logistics headache as the only ship in the fleet with 16"/45s. Then the Washington treaty prevents construction of the South Dakotas. As Colorado and West Virginia were never laid down, Delaware and North Dakota are retained. As the three "post-Jutland" US battleships, Tennessee, California, and Maryland, all have 14" guns, the treaty allows them to be upgunned to 16", for parity with the 16" armed UK and Japanese battleships, but the US never pursues the upgunning of those three ships, due to cost.
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  1609.  @joshthomas-moore2656  it seems the USN was fixated on a 35kt speed for it's "scouting" ships. They only grudgingly accepted a slight reduction in speed to get the Lexington's armor as thick as it was. Sacrificing more speed for more armor was, apparently, a non-starter.
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  1610.  @johnfisher9692  yes, Scharnhorst was laid down before the A-G treaty. According to Wiki, 3 days before the treaty was signed. This could get into the hair splitting that diplomats do. The assembled part of Scharnhorst did not exceed the Versailles limit of 10,000 tons, until after the A-G treaty was in effect. Second London was part of the treaty system that the A-G treaty brought Germany into. Again, the assembled part of Bismark did not exceed 35,000 tons until after the displacement escalator had triggered. To answer your original question, there would be honest and dishonest ways to bring Bismark in under 35,000. Some of the dishonest ways I can think of would be to leave the Caesar turret and barbette ashore until Hitler abrogated the A-G treaty. Or only install part of the armor. Recall Drac has commented on a class of British cruiser that rode curiously high in the water, when first commissioned. But a refit on the eve of war added a lot of armor, as if it had been planned that way. Here's a hilarious way to claim a reduced weight: claim Bismark was going to mount (4) Scharnhorst 11" turrets. That saves over 300 metric tons, per turret. Bismark with a dozen 11" would be an interesting sight. Could not penetrate a KGV belt unless at close range, but could knock a lot of parts off the edges of a KGV. We know that 11" had the range and the accuracy to start scoring hits pretty far out.
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  1611. The problem is, the half of the country that supports Trump think they will come out on top in a fascist regime, where the "others" have no vote and no rights. Just like the Trump campaign ad that shows pix of Hispanic migrants and transexuals, saying "Harris is for them", then shows a pic of a white, hetero, family, and says "Trump is for people like you". A blatantly racist and homophobic appeal.
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  1612.  @Captain_Seafort the Washington treaty specified when each capital ship could be replaced. The Kongos were older. The Washignton treaty specified Kongo could be replaced in 34, Hiei and Haruna in 35, and Kirishima in 36. Fuso and Yamashiro could be replaced in 37 and 38 respectively. The Ises could be replaced in 39 and 40. The Japanese were planning replacements in the order the treaty specified. First London pushed replacements out 1936. Second London defined a capital ship as overage and replaceable at 26 years of age. That revision would make the QEs the first to be replaced, as they were older than the Revenges, with the exception of Malaya, which commissioned the same day as Revenge, Feb 1, 1916. Under the terms of the treaty, the Revenges could not have been replaced until 42. When the long lead items for the KGVs were ordered in 1936, that was the treaty replacement schedule. QE would age out in December 1940. KGV commissioned in October 1940. Warspite would age out in March 41. Prince of Wales commissioned in January 41. Barham would age out in October 41. Duke of York commissioned in August 41. Valiant would age out in January 42. Anson commissioned in April 42. Malaya would age out in February 42. Howe commissioned in June 42. This begs the question "if that was the case, why did they spend so much rebuilding some of the QEs in 37?" I would suspect a mid-course correction by the Admiralty, to extend the life of the QEs, and replace the Revenges instead. The outbreak of the war cancelled the retirement of any ships, and probably accelerated work on the KGVs. It would have been interesting to see, if the treaty stayed in effect, and war had not broken out until 43, if the commissioning of all of the KGVs was slow-walked until 42, when the Revenges would age out.
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  1613.  @Thrance  those superimposed turrets were the brainchild of Joseph Strauss, of USN BuOrd. I don't know if any other navy copied them. They were supposed to solve the problem of the glacially slow reload times of the 13" and 12" guns on the lower level, by putting the faster loading 8" on top to keep up fire while the large guns reloaded. Then the USN discovered if they worked on the ergonomics of the big guns and trained the men a bit, reload times improved dramatically, rendering the superimposed turret redundant. During a later tour at BuOrd, during WWI, Strauss obstructed adoption of the 16" gun, promoting the 14" instead, with the assurance that engagements would always occur at 12,000 yards or less, rendering the 16" overkill. By the summer of 1916, the RN and the Germans had disproven Strauss' theory about engagement range enough times for the General Board and SecNav to overrule him and specify the Colorado class with 16" guns. Strauss tendered his resignation from BuOrd, pending appointment of a replacement, and requested sea duty. A month or two later, possibly dissatisfied with the lack of movement on selection of a replacement, he publicly shot off his mouth, spouting his 14" talking points, pushing back against the decision made by his superiors months before. A replacement was selected and Strauss was gone from BuOrd the next day.
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  1614.  @viperuscopperus  the USS Essex came close during the War of 1812. All carronade except for, iirc, half a dozen long 12s on the weather deck. A British force of a frigate and a sloop of war cornered Essex off Chile. The British stood off, outside of carronade range and knocked pieces off of Essex until she surrendered.
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  1615. Samar comes to mind as the argument against battle cruisers. The idea of a BC seems to be that, if outmatched, it can run away. Some times, running is not an option, as at Samar, where the beachhead had to be defended regardless of cost. Consider if the US had successfully argued at the 1922 Washington conference that, as both the RN and IJN had 4 battle cruisers, the US was entitled to have 4 battle cruisers as well, and 4 of the Lexingtons had been completed per the 1919 plan. Due to their high speed, the Lexingtons would have been escorting carriers, rather than sitting at Pearl on December 7th, so the Lexingtons would not have received the major rebuilds received by Dec 7 survivors, but, rather would have received the half-hearted update that Colorado, which also missed the Pearl attack, received. While the Lexingtons would have the speed to steam with TF38, they would have been short of secondary and AAA firepower, to say nothing of armor, so Halsey detaches the Lexingtons to escort Taffy 3, rather than drag them into the anticipated scrap with the northern force. So, the center force is met by 4 capital ships with glass jaws.
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  1616.  Caliban777  It wasn't just the sub torpedoes. The torps on DDs and PT boats and those on the TBD had issues too. Then there was the 1.1" AA gun. It's almost a wonder the 5"/38 turned out well. As for bureaucracies, management at companies I worked for in the private sector were just as oblivious to the shortcomings of their products and business models. One company circled the drain until it was bought out, the other went BK and largely liquidated. If BuOrd had been as badly run as those companies, it would have persisted, insisting it's torps and the 1.1" failures were all the fault of the crews using them, and would never have adopted not-invented-here Bofors and Oerlikon guns, or effectively addressed the issues with the Mk 14.
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  1617.  Caliban777  All true. Then there were the contractors that Harry Truman had to investigate. B-26s with rookie pilots at the controls crashed with alarming frequency, because the wing loading was too high, but Martin, or the Air Corps, didn't care. Quality at the Wright engine plant near Cincinnati was horrible. There was quite a scandal about the Army QC inspectors being paid off to pass substandard engines, as Wright was more concerned with making more profit, then the lives of the men that manned the planes those engines powered. At least BuOrd saw the light and changed it's way of operating, so the deficient weapons were either replaced or modified.
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  1618.  Caliban777  High performance aircraft tend to have high wing loading because the wings are made short to reduce drag. High wing loading also tends to mean high take off and landing speed, where most accidents happen. Pappy Boyington is said to have really liked the F2A when it first came out, said he could turn it in a phone booth. But then the Navy wanted self-sealing tanks and armor. Weight and wing loading soared and the maneuverability went away.
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  1619.  @xgford94  seems that they get more power out of an oil fired plant. iirc, that is why Jackie Fisher was so determined that they switch to oil, even though the UK was dependent on oil shipments from abroad. My nightmare scenario has two vectors: Italy develops the technology in the 30s to produce oil in Libya, or, Germany uses the assets freed by the abandonment of the invasion of the UK to overrun Syria and Iraq, with their already producing oil fields and pipeline to the Med. Germany and Italy did facilitate a coup in Iraq that installed a pro-axis leader, and Vichy was allowing Luftwaffe assets to use French air bases in Syria, but Germany burned up it's ground forces invading Russia instead.
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  1620.  @Knight6831  my take is the attack would have gone the same for the Japanese, because the Americans didn't want to believe they were being attacked. The officer who received the report from the Ward didn't want to act. The officer who received the report from the radar station didn't want to act. I think it's in "Day of Infamy" where there is a mention of a crewman trying to remove an awning that obstructed an AA gun. The man was trying to untie the knots in the ropes, rather than cutting them, because he couldn't get his brain into war mode. I have mentioned before how Second London had a vague tonnage escalator clause, requiring treaty members to negotiate an increase in tonnage, if a nation that was not a party to the treaty built a battleship that exceeded treaty limits. As soon as the UK and US figured out how large Yamato was, they started negotiating. The world is catching fire, the US and UK are the only ones still pretending the treaty meant anything, and they wasted six months arguing over 42,000 vs 45,000 tons.
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  1621.  @arthur_sarmento  they originally used a slide-rule sort of device called an "is/was" In some films, you can see the "is/was", which, iirc, was generally round, hanging around the neck of the officer standing near whoever is calling out target range and speed from the periscope. The "is/was" was replaced by the Torpedo Data Computer, aka TDC. I think "Run Silent, Run Deep" or "Operation Pacific" has a couple looks at a crewman cranking the dials to set the computer for a calculation and a couple scenes where the TDC's remote terminal is used on the open bridge. The TDC terminal looks like a large pair of binoculars mounted on a swivel that is used to sight the target and send the bearing and range data to the computer.
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  1622.  @athena139c  The terms of the Washington Naval Treaty said that carriers built or building at the time of the treaty, I think they used a date in November of 1921 as the cutoff, were to be regarded as "experimental", not subject to the replacement schedule, hence could be replaced at any time. Langley, Argus. Eagle, and Hermes were all laid down/converted before that date. Ranger, being laid down well after that date did not qualify as "experimental", so could not be replaced until it was twenty years old. Langley was redefined as a seaplane tender, to release tonnage for Wasp. The Admiralty could have scrapped or redefined it's three oldest carriers to release tonnage for two more Ark Royals, but, presumably, did not have the money in the mid 30s to build more new carriers. When Yorktown and Enterprise were built, the Navy did have some extra tonnage available, including that released by conversion of Langley, the 15,000 odd tons that went into Wasp. With the Yorktowns at 20,000. that remaining tonnage could have been used to build the Yorktowns at the treaty maximum of 27,000. but the Navy's concern was having all their tonnage quota used by so few hulls.
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  1623.  @colinhunt4057  there are a few inconsistencies in that narrative. -Fearmongering about Communists was standard Nazi boilerplate, but then the Nazis negotiated a treaty with the Soviets. -Why the sitzkrieg? There was some action at sea, and trade embargoes against Germany, but little engagement on the western front. Why didn't the Nazis keep moving east? Would the western powers become exercised, if the Nazis and Soviets went at it, before the western front heated up? -Why were the Nazis and Soviets still negotiating, after France fell, and the Luftwaffe was trying to exterminate the RAF?
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  1624. Thing is, judging someone's "fit to hold the office" and voting for them are two different things. Former AG Bill Barr has said Trump is dangerous to the country, should not be allowed anywhere near the Presidency. But, Barr continues, if Trump is the nominee, he will vote for him.
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  1625.  @gundenordstrom8123  one blind spot I can think of: under the stern, next to the rudder. The hull tapers to a point at the stern, but the upper decks are squared off, creating a blind spot.
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  1626.  @ROBERTNABORNEY-jx5il  from what I find, a Clemson carried 375 tons of fuel, a Wicks 295 tons, and a Caldwell 290 tons. As you said, a Clemson carries 80-85 tons more fuel than the earlier classes.
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  1627. Trump moved the goalpost. The convention was clearly test marketing the narrative that "Trump is chosen by God". That notion was trotted out repeatedly, every night. They probably have TV commercials in production now, with Franklin Graham and any other faith leader they can get on board, to spread the "chosen by God" narrative. To people of faith, whether independent or Democrat, there is no counter-argument to "chosen by God".
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  1628.  @GaldirEonai  I read the Barker book about RAF torpedo bombers a couple months ago. The issues with the torpedo bomber were compounded by the pilot's need to eyeball target speed and range, because the torp is so slow. All that made the probability of a hit slim. By late in WWII, the RAF torpedo bombers were pretty much replaced by aircraft firing rockets. Rockets were not only a lot faster, thus minimizing the impact of pilot errors in range and speed estimates, they were a lot cheaper. Of course, a heavy rocket would hit a battleship in the armor belt or in the superstructure, so would be less likely to be fatal than a torpedo hit, so the RAF move to rockets could be due to the Germans no longer having heavily armored ships to shoot at.
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  1629.  @marktuffield6519  all monitors were built to be shallow draft. That was not a peculiarity of the alleged Baltic op. Motorised lighters could be used, not only for evacuation of troops from a failed beachhead, but also resupply. Resupply of a beachhead is a continuous need, hence the Mulberries in Normandy. They used rowboats for the Gallipoli landing. When hauling freight, every man needed for rowing reduces the payload the boat can carry. A motorized lighter is the business to bring supplies in from ships.
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  1630.  @marktuffield6519  Thanks for the tidbit about the X-Lighters. I am not very familiar with the Gallipoli campaign, and had not heard of their use in any capacity there. Did a bit of reading. They did not have the lighters at "V" beach on April 25th, and the higher ups quickly realized the magnitude of the logistics of establishing and supplying a beachhead, without port facilities. The lighters were quickly designed, built, and towed to the theater. They were used at Suvla Bay on August 6th, and used continuously through the balance of the campaign. The article I read said Fisher thought they would be useful in the supposed Baltic op, but, my read is they were created for Gallipoli. I learned something. That makes this week worthwhile, and it's only Monday.
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  1631.  @montecorbit8280  well, that would have been Wilson, and it's plausible. Prohibition went into effect on January 17, 1920, when Wilson was still in office.
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  1632. This question would have been better on the hull design thread, but most of the eyes are on this thread now, so: does "area ruling" apply to ship hulls the same as it does to aircraft? On aircraft, drag can be reduced by holding the cross section closer to constant. Convair did this with the F-102, F-106 and B-58: the diameter of the fuselage narrows over the wings, so that the total cross section of fuselage plus wings, is closer to the cross section of the fuselage alone where it is not adjacent to the wings. If that rule applies to ships, then an external torpedo bulge could be used where the hull narrows fore and aft, where there is no internal space for a TDS, but then fairing the bulge into the hull midships, where the hull is wide enough to accommodate an internal TDS, and thus not increasing drag as a full length bulge would. The "save the Caracciolo" project continues. Learning fascinating things.
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  1633.  @LD-wm7jm  I was actually aiming for my personal impressions of the workings of an LST. If you get to look through one anywhere, especially if you get to see the film I saw on the one here, check it out.
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  1634.  @HseanIraqi  The Courageouses were completed in time to see some action in WWI. Before the advent of the Battlecruiser, there were plenty of armored cruisers around in the 14-15,000 ton range. The Washington treaty prohibited signatories building new cruisers in excess of 10,000 tons. The Washington treaty also prohibits signatories building ships that exceed treaty limits for anyone else. With the US, UK, Japan, France, and Italy taken out of contention, there is not a lot of shipbuilding capacity left to build cruisers that would not be constrained by the treaty, and not many countries that could pay for a really big cruiser. Postwar, the Soviets built the Kirov class, nudging 25,000 tons and over 800 feet long.
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  1635.  @bkjeong4302  In 42, both the USN and IJN lost capital ships to aircraft. In 42, all the USN had that could fire faster than a 5/38 was the 1.1". In 42, all the IJN had that could fire faster than their 4" and 5" DP guns was the 25mm. Both USN and IJN carriers had CAPs, but still took losses in 42. Both the IJN and USN added more AA to their ships as the war progressed. The IJN continued to lose capital ships after 42, but US losses were sharply reduced. The only USN carrier, outside of CVEs, lost after 42 was Princeton. The difference? Introduction of the Bofors to the USN? The Bofors was more able to reach out and touch someone than the 1.1" or 25mm, and it threw a large enough shell to do damage when it got there. The Italians had developed an automatic 37mm gun in the late 30s that they installed on cruisers and BBs. It wasn't a match for the Bofors, but could outperform the 25mm. Things might have been different for the IJN if they had licensed the Italian gun, rather than the Hotchkiss.
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  1636. wrt the London treaties not superseding the Washington treaty. I see one other major difference: first London extended the BB construction moratorium through 1936. Without first London, the BB replacement schedule in the Washington treaty would have stayed in force. According to the schedule, by 1940, the USN would have replaced everything through the New Mexicos. The Brits would have replaced all the QEs, most of the Rs, and Repulse. All the existing French and Italian BBs in existence in 1922 would have been replaced. For the IJN, the Kongos, both Fusos and Ise would have all been replaced. Of course, reality would be determined by the funding each country had available during the depression, but the Washington treaty would allow everyone to have a very much more modern capital ship fleet by the start of WWII.
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  1637. VAG management keeps listening to McKinsey. In August 2014, the union forced VAG to cancel a consulting contract with McKinsey, because McKinsey always, always, calls for taking money out of the line workers, exclusively. McKinsey never recommends eliminating redundant divisions and vanity projects. McKinsey never asks for any sacrifice by the management that hired them. It is always taking money out of the line workers.
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  1638. How common is it for people's comments to vanish in this site? I had two or three vanish on last Wednesday's video, and a reply to another person's comment today has vanished.
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  1639.  @whiskydeltagolf4555  considering they were looking at 18" guns and displacements well in excess of 35,000 I would say they were not really concerned with treaty restrictions. By the time they actually laid anything down for Sovetsky Soyuz, at nearly 60,000, intelligence reports on Yamato had already tripped the tonnage escalator clause in Second London, and the UK and US had agreed on a new 45,000 ton limit, which the Russian ships exceeded. Had Sovetsky Soyuz been laid down earlier, it would have tripped the tonnage escalator before Yamato did. I just skimmed over First London, and did not see a tonnage escalator, so, assuming Sovetsky Soyuz was laid down in 36, or earlier, to the 60,000 ton design, the displacement limit in Second London would probably have been negotiated higher at that time, rather than the tonnage escalator left to be negotiated later. That would have the KGVs being laid down to the Lion design, and the Iowas being built rather than the South Dakotas and North Carolinas.
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  1640.  @joejolliffe  I would like to hear more about the Greek navy too. They seemed to have had a talent for picking up "distressed inventory", as both the Averof and the Aetos class destroyers were bought after the original purchaser defaulted. Can't help but wonder if Basil Zaharoff put them on to those opportunities.
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  1641.  @Ralph-yn3gr  the Brits probably would have put them in inventory as spares for the QEs and Renown, or installed them as shore batteries. When the Averof was working with the RN during WWII, all of the RN ships which had mounted the same model of 9.2" gun had gone to the breakers, but their guns had been remounted as shore batteries, so the 9.2" ammo was still in production.
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  1642.  @lloydknighten5071  Drac did a piece on fire control some time back. It was shortly after the turn of the century that the USN started retrofitting coincidence rangefinders and the tall lattice masts that became a trademark of USN battleships.
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  1643.  @BraydenPotter  if you define dreadnought as all big guns, with nothing else but 12 pounders for plinking torpedo boats, dreadnoughts could have been built in the 1890s. The largest obstacle was probably the slow rate of fire of the big guns, which made smaller, more rapid firing guns, necessary. When commissioned, the 13" guns on the Indiana class ships of the 1890s had a rate of fire of about 1 shot per five minutes vs about 1 round per 2 minutes for the 8" secondaries. The shift to smokeless powder reduced the amount of propellant that had to be loaded, and the navy discovered that paying attention to ergonomics and doing some training did wonders for reload time. The reload time on the Indianas was cut from 5 minutes to 1 minute for the 13", while the reload time on the 8" secondaries was cut to 30 seconds. The 12" guns on the last USN pre-dreadnoughts had a rate of fire of 2 rounds/minute, the same as the 8" secondaries, which rendered the 8" secondaries a waste of space, vs mounting more 12". That's my take on the question.
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  1644.  @carlcarlton764  Yes, the oldest BBs were modernized, up through the New Mexicos, which received new, more powerful, turbines, new boilers, removal of the cage masts, an extra 2" of STS deck armor, torpedo bulges, a second torpedo bulkhead, and improved AA armament in the early 30s. All the Tennessees and Colorados received in the 30s was the 5/25 and 1.1" AA battery, The Lexingtons would have followed the pattern of the Colorados. The New Yorks and Oklahoma had 14" guns, but triple expansion engines, instead of turbines. Yes, Sara was in Bremerton repairing torpedo damage in the spring of 42. Doing the updates at the same time as repairing the torp damage may have extended the stay in the yard. Consider if Sara had not needed the updates, and had the torp damage repaired at Pearl. That makes 3 carriers available at Coral Sea, which might have prevented enough damage to Lex to make her salvageable. Even if Lex was laid up at Pearl for repair of fire damage, having the Sara would make 4 carriers available at Midway, which might provide enough air cover to prevent fatal damage to Yorktown. Yorktown surviving Midway would make 3 carriers available at Santa Cruze, which might prevent fatal damage to Hornet. But, Sara was laid up, thousands of miles away, receiving updates it should have received before the war started, so we were always operating on a shoestring, unable to bring overwhelming force to bear.
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  1645.  @michelangelobuonarroti4958  Caracciolo had a lot of obstacles to overcome. First, it was a pre-Jutland design. I have seen drawings of a proposal to add armor on the weather deck, which just looks wrong to me. Interestingly, I have seen a photo taken in December 1915, shortly before work was suspended, where they appear to be installing the weather deck. The odd thing about that photo is there are no compartment bulkheads visible below the unfinished part of the deck, only what appear to be a temporary, wood, support structure, which implies the deck being installed is only intended to be temporary, to keep the weather out. Caracciolo's armor turtleback was only one deck below the weather deck, so what I see below the temporary deck would be that armor deck. If that is the case, than the horizontal armor could quite easily be improved when the temporary deck is removed. Second protection issue is the lack of a torpedo defense system. However, Caracciolo appears to have boiler rooms along each side, with more boilers in centerline boiler rooms, so the boiler rooms along each side would tend to provide some protection. Additionally, torpedo bulges could be added. The guns are another problem. The guns were sourced from three different vendors, with each vendor building to a different design. The guns were supposed to have similar ballistic performance, but I would want all eight guns to be of the same design, just to be sure. Three of the guns were a Vickers design, built by Terni. Two of those were installed in a shore battery near Venice. Nine of the guns were a monobloc design by Schneider, built by Ansaldo. Of those nine, two were installed in the monitor Faà di Bruno and the other seven were turned over to the Army. The Army installed four of those seven on railroad carriages and sent them to the front to shell Austrian troops. Twelve were built to an Armstrong design by Pozzuoli. Two of those were installed on a monitor that foundered in a storm, four were installed in shore batteries at Brindisi, two were installed on improvised monitors that were on the firing line late in the war, and the last four were installed in monitors after the end of the war. Saving eight unused guns, of the same design, for the ship, would require prior planning to shuffle the other guns among the recipients. As for the budget issue, the RM was building destroyers all through the 1920s. The RM laid down 29 destroyers from 1919 through 1925. As a rule of thumb, I use 100,000 GPB for the price of a destroyer, and Caracciolo probably would have cost 3M GPB or more, so, considering how far advanced work was on Caracciolo, enough could have been saved by cancelling some of that destroyer building program to cover the cost of the battleship. The most interesting thing about Caracciolo being completed is it would have required far less modernization in the 30s than the older battleships, which would free resources to work on Roma and Impero. But then, I have wondered over the years, if the modernization were not done at all, would that have freed enough resources to complete Roma and Impero when they could have been useful?
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  1646.  @joshthomas-moore2656  my first thought to run BuOrd in the 20s would be Admiral Sims, based on his long standing advocacy of improving gunnery, and experience in WWI, but Sims reached mandatory retirement age in 1922.
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  1647.  @ibbi32  I doubt that a Konig would be converted, because it's slow. Maximizing wind over the deck makes for safer air ops, so speed is particularly desirable in carriers. As for cost to convert a complete, serving, capital ship to a carrier, as an example, Courageous and Glorious cost about 2M Pounds each to convert to carriers, while Ark Royal, of about the same displacement, cost 3M Pounds to build from the keel up. The USN's analysis was in the same neighborhood, it was somewhat less expensive to convert the existing, incomplete, Lexingtons to carriers, than to build a carrier from the keel up, but I don't have those figures at my fingertips. The next factor to consider is efficiency as a carrier. According to Wiki, the Courageous could carry 48 aircraft, while Ark Royal could carry 72, in theory, but more like 50-60 in reality, on the same displacement. The difference between Lexington and Yorktown, in terns of efficiency as a carrier is much greater. Again, using Wiki's numbers, Lexington (CV-2) could carry 78, while Yorktown (CV-5) could carry 90, on a third less displacement. Even the little Ranger had a larger hangar than Lexington. I put a lot of this inefficiency of the Lexington down to the US' lack of experience with carriers when the Lexington's conversion was designed, while, buy the time Courageous and Glorious were converted, the RN had been running serious carriers for several years. The other factor to consider is time. Courageous and Glorious took an inordinate amount of time to convert. Both started conversion in 24. One did not complete until 28 and the other 30, while Ark Royal only required a little over 3 years from keel laying to commission. The slow pace of the conversions may have been a matter of labor strikes or lack of enthusiasm on the part of the RN, but that is only my theory. When the Courageous and Glorious were taken in hand for conversion the RN was under pressure from the Washington Treaty, to reduce BB tonnage, so they could have officially started the conversion process before the RN was really ready.
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  1648.  @ibbi32  it was easy. I had already looked at such questions on my own, so, what information I didn't remember, I knew where to look up.
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  1649.  @kemarisite  I had not known that. Thanks! Doing a bit of reading, i find the Tydings-McDuffie Act made the new Philippine constitution subject to US approval and left defense and foreign affairs in the hands of the US until 45. Any propagandist worth his salt could still stir up doubts the US would make good on independence and agitate for complete Philippine independence immediately, without asking "permission" from the US. If that doesn't work, go ahead and invade, without hitting Pearl, and suck the Pacific fleet into coming to the Philippine's defense, so it can be destroyed in a decisive battle.
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  1650.  @bkjeong4302  I would nominate Franklin, CV13, for her epic recovery from damage and steaming back to New York for repair. When she was scrapped in the late 60s, there was a documentary about her on TV, which included several former crewmembers, telling her story. "The ship that wouldn't die". When scrapped, Franklin was in her original, WWII configuration, except for a piece cut out of the flight deck for use to repair wave damage on another Essex.
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  1651.  @danx4880  it appears that Repulse was tantalizingly close to Renown. On the 8th, at 0915, Repulse was at 61-07N, 1E and ordered to make best speed to assist Glowworm. at position 65 06N, 6-20E. At 1956, Renown and escort were ordered to RV with Renown off Vestfjord. Renown ran into the twins at 0100 on the 9th, at 67-22N, 09-36E. Repulse RVs with Renown at 1400.
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  1652. wrt the Chesapeake, unfortunately, my local public library decided to cull it's collection last summer, and "Six Frigates" was one of the casualties. (so was "The Grand Fleet"). Going by the Wiki entry, yes, some of the crew had been transferred from Constitution. This brings up a couple issues that I would like to see answers to. First: Constitution is generally said to be armed with 24 pounders, Chesapeake, with 18 pounders. Are the ballistics of these two size guns exactly the same? Without sighting systems, accuracy is dependent on the experience and skill of the gunner. Taking a gunner experienced on a 24 pounder, and hand him an 18 pounder, is he going to be able to hit anything, until he becomes acclimated to the smaller gun? Second, I doubt BuPers had an elaborate system for selecting men to man a ship at that time. How were the men transferred from Constitution, or any other ship, selected? If the Captain received an order "transfer 100 men to Chesapeake", what will his selection criteria be? My experience, and human nature, say that the Captain will select his worst crewmen to transfer off his ship: the idiots, the screw-ups, the discipline problems. Lawrence, an experienced, successful, Captain, had just transferred from a 440 ton sloop of war, to a 1200 ton frigate. How familiar was he with the handling characteristics of the Chesapeake? Yes, this all sounds like excuse making. On paper, the two ships were evenly matched. But getting into the details, I do need to wonder if the issues i mentioned played a part in handicapping Chesapeake.
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  1653.  @eiwtsexiang  I might be able to help with questions 4 and 6. I am not sure where the figure of 22 capital ships for the 1916 Navy act comes from. What I have always seen was a program for the (4) Colorado class, three of which were completed, (6) Lexington class battle cruisers and (6) South Dakota class battleships. The act also called for (10) scout cruisers, but that doesn't add up to 22 ships either. Chief designer Admiral Taylor was not happy with the South Dakota design, and drew up an alternative that was a bit larger, and a bit faster, which was also more stable. It may have also had a slightly shallower draft, as the existing South Dakota design was causing concern with regard to passing through the Panama Canal locks. Taylor's improved design was rejected for cost. I have seen newspaper reports, in the immediate aftermath of the war, where SecNav Daniels was saying he was going to propose another major building program, but the incoming Harding administration had other ideas, so the second building program was never enacted. As for the shrinking number of funnels on newer ships, that probably relates to the number of boilers. Newer technology allowed the needed amount of steam to be produced by fewer boilers. New York was built with 14 coal fired boilers. When she was converted to oil fuel, the 14 boilers were replaced by only 6 oil fired boilers. HMS Valiant was originally built with 24 oil fired boilers, and two funnels. In a modernization in the early 30s, the two funnels were trunked into one very broad funnel. In her 1939 rebuilt, the 24 boilers were replaced by only 8 new boilers, and the broad funnel was replaced by a much smaller one. One bit for question #7, as far as the USN was concerned, Jutland made the case for going to 16" guns, due to the demonstrated need to penetrate at longer range. Until that time, the head of BuOrd, Admiral Strauss, championed the 14", saying that a ship could carry more of the smaller guns, which would translate into more hits. Strauss predicated his assessment on his opinion that engagements would always take place at 12,000 yards or less, where the 14" could penetrate. Jutland disproved the 12,000 yard limit on engagements, so SecNav Daniels and the General Board overrode Strauss' assessment. Strauss requested to be relieved at BuOrd and be given sea duty.
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  1654.  @ronaldfinkelstein6335  I'm thinking the most likely to stuff the treaty would be the UK, instigated by the US' attitude wrt repayment of war debts. If the US debt negotiating team, headed by SecTreas Mellon and SecState Hughes, immediately after the Washington conference, stuck to the letter of the law passed by Congress: payment in full, on schedule, with stated interest, instead of the more reasonable approach taken by Mellon and Hughes, the UK could well have decided to walk out. I suspect that the N3 and G3 were bluffs, as the Admiralty did not have facilities around the empire that could handle ships that large. Even in 1938, when the US and UK were negotiating the battleship displacement escalator, the UK still did not have facilities to handle anything much larger than 42-43,000 tons. For a hypothetical British battleship, I would draw a development line between the J3 (a 42,000 ton Hood, with three triple 15" turrets) and the Lion, with a potential blip when Chatfield was First Sea Lord, as he seems to have been the driver of the "more smaller guns" theory that gave the KGVs 14" guns.
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  1655. iirc, the treaty said that condemned ships could not be sold or gifted to anyone. All condemned ships had to be scrapped or stripped of armament and armor and made unfit for war use.
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  1656.  @nullanonsonemmenoiocosascr6676  There was a mention of the Caracciolos in the Q&A on battleship hulls of a few days ago. I'll repeat a couple points; the Caracciolos were criticized for inadequate torpedo protection. The Pugliese system apparently was invented in 1917, after the Caracciolos were designed. Construction of the hull of Caracciolo was advanced beyond where the Pugliese system could have been installed at construction, so considerable rework would have been required to provide sufficient internal space in the hull for the system. Ansaldo had not made as much progress on the hull of Columbo, so less rework would have been required. The Odero and Orlando yards had hardly made any progress on their ships. I covered in the previous post how the guns built for the Caracciolos had been repurposed during the war, so more would have had to be built if construction of the ships had continued. Italy did not have the finances to support a capital ship building program, without shortchanging something else. Immediately after WWI, Italy continued building destroyers. As the Caracciolos were intended as a response to the British QE, I will assume their cost was about the same as a QE 3M GBP. I will further assume that the cost of an Italian DD is about the same as a British DD: about 100,000 GBP. So to clear the cost, after the war, to build two Caracciolos, assuming Caracciolo was 50% done and Columbo was 5% done, the cost to complete wold be roughly 4.35M, or the cost of 43 DDs, or almost all of the DDs the RM laid down through the 20s, and that doesn't include the cost to rework Caracciolo to incorporate the Pugliese system. The delays in construction would put the ships in the clutches of the Washington treaty. Italy could argue that, as the US and UK were both allowed to complete 2 new BBs in the early 20s, the treaty should offer the same courtesy to Italy, so only two Caracciolos could have been built. Because Italy chose not to complete two Caracciolos, they were given two BB building windows opening in 1927 and 1929, that were good until used. Italy used those two windows to build the first two Littorios. If two Caracciolos had been built, Italy would not have had those new construction windows. so the first two Littorios could not have been laid down until 1937. If Littorio and Veneto were not laid down until 37, Veneto would probably have been completed, but Littorio not completed for the same reason Impero was never completed. Littorio was built by Ansaldo, in Genoa. Due to Genoa's proximity to France, Littorio would probably have been moved to a perceived safer location in an incomplete condition just before the war broke out, as Impero was, and the disruptions to work that Impero suffered would have been visited on Littorio. As it turned out, Italian concerns about the exposed position of Genoa were well founded as both the French and UK fleets showed up and shelled the daylights out of Genoa harbor. These visits didn't end until 42, when the Italians installed 4-15" shore batteries on the heights above Genoa. Ironically, the 15" guns installed had originally been built 25 years earlier, for the Caracciolo class ships. Bottom line, the cost to Italy to complete 2 of the Caracciolos would be 43 DDs that were needed to escort convoys to North Africa, and two Littorio class BBs being available in 1940, Littorio never being completed and Roma and Impero probably never laid down. The RM was vastly stronger without the Caracciolos.
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  1657.  @nullanonsonemmenoiocosascr6676  you can thank the coronavirus for the amount of detail. I'm retired and the summer activities I enjoy have all been cancelled., so I have plenty of time to research things. Looking at the Washington treaty's retention list for Italy, that country was pretty ill-used. Even the da Vinci was counted against Italy's quota, even though it had sunk due to a magazine explosion during the war. Italian salvage engineers had managed to refloat and right the hull, but it was far from anything resembling a serviceable ship. After spending the equivalent of some 135,000 GBP on the salvage operation, the work was terminated and the hull scrapped, due to lack of funds. There is some spectacular film of the hull being righted at this link. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieaRidy6ciM&feature=youtu.be
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  1658.  @nullanonsonemmenoiocosascr6676  da Vinci was a sister of the Cavours and only a couple years old when it sank. I'm sure the RM hated to write off some 2M GBP of nearly new ship. Had it been fully repaired, it could have been rebuilt in the 30s, along with it's sisters. Had it sunk in deep water, so that salvage was not an option, or if salvage had not been attempted and the wreck broken up in place, that would have left Italy with an even larger BB tonnage deficit vs France, with whom Italy was supposed to have parity. The treaty committee could not have added more pre-dreadnoughts to Italy's retention list to make up the deficit as both of the Margheritas were sunk during the war, and everything older had already been sent to the breakers or otherwise ceased to be a BB.
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  1659.  @Tuning3434  I generally agree with your reply to J K. The Admiralty had moved beyond the Admirals by 1920, working on the J3, about the same displacement, mounting 15" guns in three triple turrets. Allowing the Admiralty to build more ships of that size would create another entire world of arguments, and the Admiralty was not enthusiastic about the J3's thin armor anyway. The Japanese would be demanding to complete two ships of comparable size, Tosas or Amagis, while the US would be campaigning against it as it called the conference to provide political cover to cancel it's entire capital ship building program. Allowing two J3s would put them in the spot of proceeding with two Lexingtons, or looking weak.
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  1660. The Langley is one that really make me want to crank up the WABAC machine and give the General Board a good talking to. My first point to them would be "You have been banging on for years about how all the capital ships need to have the same speed capability, so they can maneuver together. How can combined air/surface tactics be worked out if the carrier can't keep up?" I would propose the two Wyoming class BBs be converted instead: they can keep up with the other BBs, slightly longer than Langley, 28' wider than Langley, which might save some aircraft and pilots from going over the side and the Wyomings, alone among BBs of the time were flush decked, somewhat simplifying the job of building a hanger and flight deck on top of the hull, while the 6 barbettes provide a wide selection of locations for elevator wells. The Wyomings, with their 12" guns and coal fired boilers, were obsolescent, and, with the South Dakotas building, would soon be expendable anyway. Of course, the impact of the Washington Treaty would have been unknown at the time, but the treaty gives rise to another interesting speculation. With the two Wyomings being converted to carriers, the US could have argued that it would be shortchanged on BBs and work out a deal where, besides allowing Colorado and West Virginia being completed to replace the two Delawares, Washington be completed to replace the two Wyomings.
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  1661.  @glennricafrente58  good points, though, at the time Langley was taken in hand for conversion, the Lexingtons were expected to complete as battle cruisers, not carriers. Considering Jupiter could have been sold as a functioning ship, while the Wyomings probably had a date with the breakers, along with the Delawares and Floridas when the South Dakotas completed, the money lost by temporarily foregoing the scrap value of the two BBs would not be that great. Yes, converted Wyomings would not be as fast as Couragous, for instance, but being faster than Jupiter, more wind over the deck means safer air ops, and, at 21kts, they compare very favorably to the WWII CVEs. I have offered before that the Lexingtons were horribly inefficient as carriers, and consumed far more of the USN's treaty tonnage allotment than clean sheet designs of the same capacity would have. Having the converted Wyomings in the fleet, rather than the dangerously inadequate Langley, could have persuaded the USN to take a pass on the Lexingtons, in favor of a clean sheet design, once they had gained more practical experience with the Wyomings.
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  1662.  @glennricafrente58  Ideally, the Wyomings would have been converted to seaplane tenders, as Langley was, to free up the tonnage under the treaty. So, the USN would enter the war with Ranger, and 6 Yorktown size carriers, plus whatever was built after the treaty collapsed. Ideally, Ranger would have been built 2-3 years sooner. Then Yorktown and Enterprise built in 30-32, then Wasp and Hornet built as full sized improved Yorktowns with deck edge elevators in 34-37, and two additional built 36-40. Then the naval expansion act of 38, following the collapse of the treaties, included two more carriers, which would have resulted in two more built 39-41, instead of what the act actually lead to: Hornet, built to the somewhat outdated Yorktown plan, plus design work for Essex, which delayed construction.
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  1663.  @glennricafrente58  I didn't say it would be easy to change minds on the General Board. :^) As I have offered before, I really don't like the Lexingtons because of their inefficiency as carriers, wasting the one thing that was constrained, tonnage.
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  1664.  @stephenrickstrew7237  I read about that attack on Gneiseneau a while back. The raid was actually botched. It was supposed to be a coordinated strike of horizontal bombers and several Beauforts. The horizontal bombers never showed up, and some of the Beauforts got lost. One Beaufort was orbiting outside of the harbor, waiting for the others to show up, and saw Campbell charge in alone.
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  1665.  @dvpierce248  The IJN scored a first during WWI: launching air strikes on the German colony in China, using license built Farman floatplane from a tender.
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  1666. wrt torpedo boats in the Philippines, the USN had torpedo boats there in 41, PT boats. The USN had not built larger, steam powered, torpedo boats since 1905. The last class of torpedo boats, the 200 ton Blakely class, spent most of their time tied up in reserve in the US, as their construction overlapped the building of the first class of destroyers, the 420 ton Bainbridge class. I considered how the Blakelys could have been moved to the Philippines, given their small size and short range. The best scenario I came up with was building a cradle in the Dewey drydock to hold six of them, as the Dewey was towed to the Philippines in 1906. They would have been redundant however, as the first five Bainbridges had steamed to the Philippines under their own power in 1904.
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  1667.  @stuartwald2395  the problem with the PT boats was lack of time to build up a fleet. The Navy was still testing the prototypes in the first half of 41. The WWI vintage SC class subchasers and Eagle boats were not designed to carry torpedoes, and could only manage 18 kts.
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  1668.  @DanielSilverthorn  The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI has an 1891 marine triple expansion engine, as Tom Edison set it up to drive a dynamo, on exhibit. I looked up the specifications and it has Joy valve gear. The Joy valve setup was popular on locomotives too. The ASME paper I found on it does not explicitly say the cylinders are double-acting. I don't know why they would not be double-acting as that feature would double the power for the same space and weight. There is a photo of the engine on the museum's web site. There is a shaft that runs along the side of the engine, which actuates the valve linkages for all three cylinders.
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  1669.  @rolfs2165  probably not one whit. Kaga and Tosa were both required to be scrapped for treaty compliance. With no earthquake, Kaga would have made a date with the scrapper's torch. Amagi would have been a bit faster. Whether that would make a difference anywhere along the line is probably unknowable. Of course, the second pair of Amagi class battlecruisers had been laid down, so one of them could have been completed, if the IJN had really wanted that extra speed, but it was probably vastly cheaper to convert Kaga due to it's more advanced state of construction.
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  1670.  @patrickradcliffe3837  I would say, if, officially, Japan had stayed in the treaty system, the 1939 South Dakotas would be exactly the same as they were historically. For whatever reason, the UK wanted 14" on the KGVs, so pressed for a 14" limit in Second London. My sense is the US only agreed to the 14" limit, in conjunction with the escalator clause, designed to trip only four months after the treaty went into effect. The escalator clause was almost certain to trip, because Japan had given notice in 34 it was dropping out of the treaty. If Japan had not given notice, then there is no assurance the escalator clause would trip, so the US would not have done the kabuki dance of accepting 14" in the treaty. There was nothing that prevented the UK building below the 16" treaty limit. France, Italy, and Germany, were all building below the 16" limit. The only reason I can think of for the UK wanting the 14" limit in the treaty is political optics, they didn't want to be seen building an "undergunned" ship.
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  1671.  @alexjohnston706  the extra tonnage would not have done anything for Japan. The Tosas and Amagis were well over the 35,000 ton limit, so could not have been completed to backfill the fleet. The next oldest ship that could have been retained would be Settsu, which, with it's 12" guns was quite obsolete by 22. The IJN's replacement schedule in the treaty did not start until the early 30s, then First London extended the halt on construction through 36, and, by then, Japan had dropped out of the treaty.
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  1672. @UNSCForwardontodawn my first thought wrt KGV and Repulse in the Denmark Strait is that KGV, being the more powerful ship, would lead. Bismark's kill shot on Hood, assuming they used reduced charge to punch through Hood's deck, would ricochet off KGV's thicker deck armor. The question would be could Repulse avoid receiving a kill shot? I don't play a gunnery officer on TV, but I'm thinking if KGV was closer, and being more heavily armed, Bismark would direct it's fire at KGV and leave Repulse pretty much for Prinz Eugen to handle. There's a chance that KGV could inflict mission kill damage on Bismark, and the rest of the scenario plays out as it historically did, and Repulse not go up like a Roman candle.
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  1673.  @toddwebb7521  the IJN seemed to get a lot more use out of the Kongos, while most of the other BBs stayed in port. iirc Nagato and both Ises survived the war, while the Kongos went extinct. Losing a Kongo earlier than the historical timeline would probably crimp other IJN ops more than having Mutsu at Samar would help.
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  1674.  @brendonbewersdorf986  Bearn is not that far off of Eagle's specifications, a bit shorter, and a bit slower. Both navies were trying to climb a learning curve at the time, and using what was at hand, instead of a clean sheet design. The best thing I can think of, for the French to do, is forget Bearn, and claim one of the unfinished Mackensen class battlecruisers, as war reparations, for conversion to a carrier. Trying to get a faster hull from the UK (retired battlecruiser) or Italy (Caracciolo), would require payment. Free from Germany is better.
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  1675. So, now Vance attacks Harris for not picking Shapiro, claims Democrats are antisemitic. Seriously, all the GOP has is bigotry. They dispute Harris' racial identity, flame Harris about the border, which is a racist dog whistle, and flame her again for being antisemitic. It has been the GOP base that has been so stridently antisemitic, that even Trump has tried to tell them to cool it. When Walz was a teacher, his subject was "social studies". The GOP will probably twist that into feeding his students "woke indoctrination".
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  1676. wrt the question about early fast battleships, during his first stint as First Sea Lord, Jackie Fisher was developing concepts for new battleships and new armored cruisers, which evolved into the "Dreadnought armed cruiser", aka battlecruiser. The design process apparently yielded a fast battleship concept, in 1905, known as "HMS Fusion", which combined armament of 10-12" guns, 45,000hp turbines for a speed of 24kts, an 11" armor belt, a length of about 620 feet, and displacement of 22,500 tons. There are a couple mentions of Fusion on line, along with the battleship and armored cruiser concepts,
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  1677. It's been a rough week for him. Musk is getting more attention than he is. Even Fox Noise had the nerve to fact check him, when he tried to make the New Year attacks about illegal immigrants, when the perps were both native born US citizens.
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  1678. In the presentation, Drac says that, as a result of British code breaking, the RN knew the Germans were coming out and planned to intercept them. When I read about Jutland in the 60s, the events were described as the RN being on a routine "sweep" of the North Sea, searching for any German ships that may be about, and, by luck, ran into the entire German fleet, with no mention of German codes being broken. Was the fact that the German codes were broken kept secret by the British government until sometime after the material I read was written in the 60s, with the entire action being declared a lucky coincidence?
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