Youtube hearted 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. 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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  3. 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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  4. 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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  5. 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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  6. 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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  7. 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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  8. 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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  9. 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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  10. 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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  11. 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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  12. 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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  13. 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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  14. 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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  15. 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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  16. 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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  17. 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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  18. 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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  19. 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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  20. 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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  21. 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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  22. 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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  23. 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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  24. 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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