You have talked before about the efficiency or lack thereof of designs like the Bismark class and so on.. in your opinion which 1930 onward battleship design was the most efficient in terms of capability for a given displacment?
how successful would the Malta class have been in Korea had it been completed? odds are by the time the Malta Class were completed it would be post-ww2
Moesgård forest in Jutland is a reserve now. Planted to replace fleet burnt by the British in 1807. In 1985 the admiralty sent the queen a message that the timber was ready!
They have recently started cutting a very limited number of trees from the Danish oak reserves to supply trees for the boatbuilders at the Vikingskibsmuseet in Roskilde. Who are building traditional Danish warships. Granted, they are built to 11th -century designs, but they ARE warships and the originals were indisputably Danish. The Vikingskibmuseet has videos of the process of splitting these oaks into boards on their FB page and website.
In regard to welds cracking...the early Liberty ships had problems with hull and deck cracking, but it was not the welds that cracked...it was the steel plates themselves. The British built Liberty ship Empire Duke was tested by Cambridge University, and it was found that the cracks developed due to low temperature embrittlement caused by the cold water of the north Atlantic. The welds allowed the cracks to propegate to the point where structural failure and sinking occurred...something that did not happen with the same type of hull plates in riveted construction. It was also found that square corner hatch welds at plate seams created stress concentration points that acted as nucleating points for plate cracking to begin.
Not enough is ever said about escort carriers, thank you uncle drach for a good amount of clarity on them. Hopefully they will have their own video down the line.
59:00 regarding welding in Liberty Ships: In our Materials properties class in university we learned that the quality of the weld wasn't necessarily the problem, it was more that they didn't really understand the material properties that caused the welds to fail. Fracture mechanics wasn't a field that was a thing in the 40s and 50s, but the loss of some liberty ships in the arctic for example and the failure of the deHavilland Comet caused this field to be extensively explored. Correct me if I'm wrong, university wasn't yesterday :D
Liberty ship welds terminated at corners of hold openings so the stress concentration was at a weld joint. The fix was to have the corners in the in the middle of a plate.
When you are paying a bonus for the number of feet welded, someone should check the welds where the number of feet claimed exceeds what is possible in shift
In Denmark we have what's called 'Fleet Oaks', which doesn't specifically come as forests, though in cases it is indeed old oak forests. This comes from a certain event involving the British and Copenhagen in 1807, whereupon 3 days after the British left, the Admiralty impounded all oaks, felled or still growing. Essentially all oaks became royal property, and a bunch new oaks were planted. In fact back in 2003 the forest administrator (skovridder) for one of these forests wrote the ministry of defense that the oaks were now ready for delivery. The oaks are still nationally owned, but are readily used for various projects, like when American yacht Coronet from 1885 needed new oak timbers, and are even sold for limited commercial and private use.
Barbette Armor on US Battleships in WW2 was welded. I saw this first hand when exploring the USS Alabama. Later as a Volunteer at Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum I had the pleasure to meet an elderly woman who worked in Newport News Shipyard in WW2. She was a welder and she welded up that armor. She explained it was many passes and took quite a lot of time.
Having served on a carrier I can tell you one thing about it. Driving 30 knots into a 30-40 knot headwind is a perfect recipe for a wind burnt face, but you get used to it.
Japanese subs sank about 75% of all merchant ships sailing from the west coast in the first month of the war. Her subs were the largest and fastest in the world in January, 1942, had the longest range of any sub, and had the most reliable torpedo with the largest warheads of any navy at the same date. Japanese sub skippers were more than willing to go after merchant ships. It was only orders from Tokyo that changed the targets to prefer warships. Captains that sank the most warships were also the most liberally rewarded by the Admiralty with promotions, so it didn't take long for sub commanders to fall into line. The USN would have had to devote many more resources to antisubmarine warfare, and supplies to the South Pacific would have taken much longer to arrive. While it wouldn't have changed the overall outcome of the war, it was a real missed opportunity on the part of the IJN to cause some real havoc here.
@@CSSVirginia Yes, it was the biggest single factor in their naval thinking. The writings of Alfred Mahan and the outcome of the Battle of Tsushima were the two stepping stones to developing the Kantai Kessen Doctrine (literally, "naval fleet decisive battle") that helped to seal the fate of Japan before the first bomb was dropped at Pearl Harbor.
@@sarjim4381 Got to say you may have a point here . If the USN had to defend its supply line then it's build up would have to slow but this works in there favor. With Japan in limited resources than the longer the war drags on then the less they have to use in the decisive battle. They were running out of fuel fast before the war began so with all there commitments then if the USN had started it's push a year or two later then it's unlikely that they could deploy a full battle line to face them. They be in the same situation as the Italian navy with ships but no fuel. Getting a decisive battle as soon as possible was Japans best chance of winning.
Policy aside, the logistics of a East Pacific Anti shipping war don't balance the investment, Huge area. Long transit to a patrol zone. Well protected targets. And few of them. Can they continue such ops past 1942 and risk the losses?
@@paintedblue1791 While they were running out of fuel, after capturing Singapore and Indonesia Japan had access to both oil and refineries. Hence why many damaged IJN vessels had the choice of going to Singapore, and being able to refuel (but not repair), or going to Japan, and being able to repair (but not refuel). If the IJN had kept the US out of the South Pacific for longer, there's a better chance of a decisive battle happening in the North Pacific where the US can provide supplies more easily.
@@Tepid24 He is known amongst viewers of naval channels for his fanatical dislike of battleships and his enthusiasm to take down anyone who thinks they have some redeeming qualities.
@@Dave_Sisson I have read some of his fanatic rantings and find he is mono focused on the Pacific war and he totally ignores just how helpless (and perhaps useless) a carrier would have been in the Battle of North Cape against Scharnhorst where the action took place in the darkness of winter in the Northern latitudes and during a storm.
Core blimey! Strike a light! Stone the crows! 'ouse ya' father? etc. I'm only halfway through the last Dry Dock. Your output is phenomenal and I’m already falling behind. This is fantastic stuff but don’t burn yourself out. Don’t be that sad little rusty gunboat haunting the gin-joints of the world telling all the dreadnoughts and carriers how you used to be a big shot. That wouldn’t be nice. Though seriously this is a magnificent effort and as long as its fun to do, the effort is worth it. It’s a library and a resource.
In regard to growing trees for ship timbers, I'm struggling to find a written source, but in Suffolk near Butley and Staverton by the side of the road are circles of mature trees that I was always told used to be used to grow straight mast timbers in the middle, as the ring of mature trees around would force the inner tree to grow straight quickly.
In terms of the limits on the Japanese building carriers according to Saburo Sakai the famous Japanese ace the standards for naval pilots was so high at the beginning of the war that they were rejecting students who they would have loved to have three years later.
About Royal Oak forrests, in Denmark in the early 1800's, we lost our navy for some unknown reason, so the King ordered all the oak forrest planted, which took around 200 years to be ready, which they were in the early 2000's, where the Royal Forrest called the Royal Court and said that the oak where ready, and the Royal Court called the Goverment, which had no real need for it. Some of these oaks ended at the Vikingship Musuem in Roskilde.
4 года назад+2
Regarding the Speed of a Carrier question. The reason why the british naval task force off the falklands didnt get attacked by the aircraft strike group of the agentinian navy carrier venteicinco de mayo was, that the wind on that day was to slow and combined with a faulty catapult, the heavy leaden A4's couldnt be launched. Then after the loss of the belgrando and the retreat of the agentinian navy to port those A4's reverted to land based operations and did quite a lot of damage.
@@Philip271828 Years ago I read a book called "Seventeen Seconds" about the disposal teams for the magnetic mines which the Germans began dropping on British cities because they contained a lot more explosive than ordinary bombs. They had a self-destruct mechanism with a delay of 17 seconds (hence the title of the book) which was originally intended to stop them being captured if they were accidentally dropped on land or in shallow water, but it proved to be unreliable in practice. The book also described the discovery and successful defusing of later, more sophisticated German anti-shipping mines such as the acoustic and combined acoustic-magnetic types.
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.
The issue with Casablanca class was their uniflow reciprocating engines. The Bogues, due to their conversion had steam turbines, hence their use into the 1960s as aircraft transports vice the Casablancas.
On the manufacturing question (00:27:00) - We in the USA don't really understand the inability to just "build more", because we had the capability to build more yards and infrastructure at a rate that was incomprehensible to other countries. And even then, as you pointed out, we hit bottlenecks of our own. But countries like the UK and Japan had fare greater choke-points than we did. Easy to forget that. Thank you for the detailed response on this one!
Similar to the point on Liberty and Victory ship welds breaking: two T2 Tankers broke in half within hours of each other during the same storm in New England in 1952. One of the ships was recovered and rebuilt... and broke in half again in 1964 and again rebuilt. So it had three different bows.
43:10 a great example of how large there oak demands were is that the frigate HMS Trincomalee (which is now a museum ship in Hartlepool) was made out of Teak due to oak shortage.
The drydock in which the hulls of the Bismarck and Tirpitz were built is still in operation in Blohm and Voss in Hamburg. It was specially built for this task. The only docks these ships could use in Occupied Europe was this and one at St Nazaire, the Normandy Dock. This was effectively put out of action by the St Nazaire Raid.
In regard to the relative ease of fighters taking off from carriers compared to strike aircraft, I watched a documentary about the British Pacific Fleet. In it during audio interviews with the actual aircrew they said the Seafire could take off without catipult assistance, but all the other aircraft required catapult assistance. The relative lightness and slow takeoff speed and Powerful engine of the Seafire made it an easy aircraft to fly off a carrier. Conversely, these very same characteristics made it hard to land back on an aircraft carrier. In those days the technique to landing an aircraft on a carrier was to fly as slow as possible and get as low as possible and stall the aircraft onto the deck as soon as you got over the deck, in.order to catch the arrestor wires as early as possible. Apparently the seafire just wouldn't stall easily and they would quite often find themselves halfway down the deck before it did finally stall. That and the nose up landing attitude and long nose of the seafire made it difficult to land on carriers.
They also had to come in on an angle (yaw) because the length of the nose made it difficult to see the deck! Amazing the planes took off the deck at all with the pilots having such huge, heavy balls of steel!
In Italy we still have some very big fir forest that were extensively used for mast making in the past: "Foreste Casentinesi", between Florence and Bologna, were tended by monks till the XII century which sold high quality wood to the Republic of Pisa and later, in the XV and XVI century, even to the English.
For fire arms speak to the royal armouries in Leeds. Your in good enough standing that they would let you in to the archive of fire arms for a touch and a feel
During the American Civil War , the US Navy procured/bought most of the gatling guns available to mount on their river iron clad ships. These were intended for use as security while at anchor to prevent boarding raids by the Confederate Army, and not for use as an offensive battle weapon.
I think of you were to do a naval small arms special, the absolute BEST person to do it with would be Ian from Forgotten Weapons. Much like you, that man is damn near a national treasure when it comes to the absolute wealth of accessible information when it comes to all things military related.
The biggest problem with cracking on a welded ship is the welds don't stop the propagation of the crack were as when a crack reaches a riveted joint it stops. A book I read twenty or thirty years ago stated that bad welding or bad steel got the blame all the cracking on Liberty Ships happened in the same area which leads to the conclusion that the problem was bad design. The two long steel bandaids riveted to the ship to reinforce the structure where the cracking took place solved the problem and of course being riveted in the crack couldn't propagate into the bandaids.
On the practice of welding of ships in WW2 I was told that USN ships were both welded and riveted because the rivet holes served as crack stopping points if a plate had a crack propagating in it. Also the cracking in Liberty Ships was because of inappropriate grades of steel being used as much as the method of construction.
Drach: Re: Failed welds in Liberty Ships. As I understand it, the preponderance of these failures were essentially the building environment. As construction ramped up, many more workers were trained in both welding, and weld inspection. A green welder may learn to make a visually "pretty bead", but lack penetration. Likewise, those inspecting, might not be able to detect a shallow weld. The shallow weld might later fail. I believe most of those Liberties lost were the mid-production, such as SS Jeremiah O'Brien, which were half-riveted, half welded. Later on, further training, and experience, had solved the issues.
I just wanted to say thank you for posting all the amazing content. I’m impressed at not only the quantity, but the quality of your videos. I started watching your channel roughly a year ago and I’ve been blown away by the vastness of your knowledge and I’m amazed that you’re able to produce so many, high quality, videos every week. Ships were a subject I had little knowledge or interest in prior to finding your channel. Your videos were definitely a highlight of my 2020 and are proving to be as well for 2021. Again, thank you for all that you do and keep up the great work!!!
Escort carriers often had catapults as well for getting heavier planes off the deck. From late 1942 on many IJN submarines had to be used as stealth freighters to supply bypassed garrisons or bases where the Allies had air superiority, which meant they couldn't be hunting as much or at all.
Before the English conquest of Ireland, Ireland was one large Oak forest. Ireland today is roughly 4% forested thanks in a large part to these forests being stripped for the British navy. Granted the idea of forest conservation was neglected for a long long time in Ireland.
Then why did forest cover in Ireland continue to diminish long after the British Royal Navy stopped building ships out of timber altogether, and switched to all-steel construction? According to the academic Dr. Richard O’Hanlon the causes of Ireland’s deforestation have been numerous, intertwining and historic. Deforestation originally occurred due to the needs of growing agriculture trends in Ireland and this escalated with the birth and growth of the Industrial Age. One of several major reason for the destruction of forests during the 16th and 17th century, for example, was the making of barrel staves. These were shipped to France and Spain in vast quantities to make casks, which were essential to the wine trade. In the late 19th century the passing of the Land Act of 1881 enabled land transfer from landlord to tenant. However landlords felled timber to generate revenue before transfer, then the new owners continued felling to recoup costs. In 1903 with the passing of another Land Act, the rate of land transfers accelerated, increasing woodland clearance even more. In the early years of the 20th century almost over 800 recorded sawmills were in operation, with numerous travelling sawmills completing the devastation. Woodland cover fell to an all-time low of 1.5%, with remaining areas of forest often being of such poor quality they were not worth felling. During the late 20th century, support and subsidies from the EU encouraged farmers to use as much of their land as possible for agricultural production, with woodland cover often restricted to the most infertile land deemed unsuitable for any other use. Fortunately this has now changed, but only comparatively recently. Today roughly 11% of Ireland is under forest cover and it’s understood that around 1% of that is made up of native Irish trees.
While the main tranche of heavy cruisers were the result of scaling light cruisers up to the limits of the naval treaties, there _was_ one case of an armored-cruiser design evolving directly into a heavy cruiser (SMS _Blücher)._
Welding was a new technology. However most of the issues experienced with Liberty Ships were due to the steel used. Steel wit specific properties becomes brittle in cold weather. It will shatter like glass , well safety laminated glass actually. particularly near a welded joint. The weld wouldnt let loose but the steel along side the joint would . Even modern steel breaks easier when exposed to cold weather and shock is introduced. ie snow moving equipment
That’s why SpaceX has developed a custom steel (SS 304X) that is more ductile & less brittle at Cryogenic Temperatures than almost all other standard steels.
@@TraditionalAnglican Austenitic stainless steels in the 3xx series have excellent low temperature ductility, they're basically standard for cryogenic equipment. SpaceX's stainless (as used in the starship prototypes) is anything but custom- it's just grade 304L (the same as used for making kitchen sinks and cooking pots). They probably have tighter control of composition and properties than standard commercial stainless, but the underlying metallurgy dates back to the 1930s.
The best books on edged weapons and smallarms at sea I know of are by William Gilkerson: ‘Boarders Away: With Steel’ and ‘Boarders Away II: With Fire’. Informative and beautiful books but hard to get hold of now. One detail I remember that normal procedure with a sea service pistol was to fire it and then to throw it at someone.
Australia was settled as a response to Britain's need for mast timber. During Cooks voyage of discovery he noticed some excellent trees on Norfolk Island. Unfortunately the trees did not pan out, but otherwise they had to settle for just some cool things from Australia.
The naval adoption of small arms saved the then-new Colt company from bankruptcy when the newly-minted navy of the Republic of Texas ordered a large batch of their Patterson model revolvers and revolving carbines. Colt commemorated this by engraving the cylinders of their future revolvers with scenes from the Battle of Campeche (which you really ought to do a special on). Colt continued to benefit from this contract when the Texan navy was recalled to port and dissolved for insubordination, allowing their weapons (and branding) to propagate across the American west, including use with the Texas Rangers.
I was thinking about your rational about the Japanese carriers. It makes sense from the cost and infrastructure angle. But if you are committed to build more carriers wouldn't you naturally build more planes and train more pilots? Something that would greatly aid Japan in the future.
I think the rate of fire cruiser killer would probably be better with an eight inch gun layout and maybe just have the armor to resist the same vs 12 inch fire. Most treaty cruisers could probably do fairly well at resisting six inch fire while they had problems with eight inch fire. You’d also get much better capabilities in a situation like the Battle of the River Plate. And it would have better capabilities against the supercruisers by having better firepower and potentially by being faster with a slightly lighter armor ... or at least able to have a good speed without a massively supercharged power plant. If we are insisting on the six inch guns maybe a quad turret might be the way to go. Technical issues aside it’d allow that six turret arrangement to give 24 barrels. That would be a very popular vessel for shore bombardment duties, but it would probably need a whole convoy of supply vessels to top up ammunition
You missed another factor that made high-speed capability an important requirement for aircraft carriers: Hit and run raids. A task group could make a fast run into a target minimizing the target's chances of detecting the incoming strike, make their strikes and then make a fast run back out and get out of range of possible retaliatory strikes as soon as possible.
Also, launch a strike ASAP and sail towards the target so that returning aircraft could make it back before running out of fuel, thus maximizing range. Also, before advanced electronics and radar, the use of daylight was critical, especially if your enemy was adept at nightfighting surface actions. Scoot into range, launch attack, scoot out once planes return.
Navy planed forrest in Sweden: a decade (or 2) ago, the Swedish navy reported to the goverment that the oak forrest on Visingsö is ready to be fell and building warships. It was kind of a moment of some pride - forrest is extremley well cared and the monetary worth is in over 100 million euros. The forrest is there to this day, and the state keep a keen eyed management.
One thing that delayed US warship builds was that leading up to the invasions of the Marianas and Normandy there was a critical shortage of LSTs and other landing craft because of steel shortages so the reset priorities
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.
Q&A: When CoVid-19 is "in our rearview mirror", are you planning doing a Guide to the USS Salem (last Heavy Cruiser in existence) that's "home ported" in what's left of Quincy (Mass.) Naval Ship Yard? What do you think of her 3 inch AA guns? It seems to me that they would have a high "burst" rate of fire, but the way they're set up, the shell handling crews would tire quickly if they tried to maintain a high sustained rate of fire.... This question is in part to the question @ 36.02 mark of #132 Drydock since she had "Automatic" 8 inch guns and perhaps making her a bit longer so she could have a Superfiring turret aft, and maybe even 6 more 5"/L38 twin gun houses amidships (3 Port & 3 Starboard) for additional DP fire support .
The trolley catapult on Graf Zeppelin, on paper this seems rather innovative, allowing her to launch massive strike attack at once at rapid rate but practically, its very complex design and proved problematic as recharging take many times (meaning they can only do one massive strike attack) and prone to bad weather (hence the trolley should be pulled back into flight deck to avoid being break or froze by winter), a joke floating Graf Zeppelin-class described them as "mother of seaplane" sorta things.
@@TraditionalAnglican thays what I was thinking, long noses and restricted forward view is par for the course but those wide landing gear would be golden compared to the 109
To add to the weld discussion, I think the Yamato-class would've been able to endure even more punishment if they had welds instead of their rivets, since they had known faulty rivets after the USS Skate torpedo attack on Yamato that tore the large gash, the 1000 lb. AP bomb hit that penetrated Yamato and blew out a side plate from the inside at the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, and the hits on Shinano. It likely would've prolonged their demise, but I'd be curious as to how long.
@@bkjeong4302 The joint that failed used tap rivets and three-ply rivets (see Page 7): www.fischer-tropsch.org/primary_documents/gvt_reports/USNAVY/USNTMJ%20Reports/USNTMJ-200H-0745-0786%20Report%20S-06-2.pdf
There is a lot of photos of battleships and cruisers with wires/cables going from tower to beam and stern. Was there any concern those could get in the way of gunfire (like did they have some (un)written rule about shoting straight ahead and aft)? Or was it regarded as if they get in the way of a shell who cares we'll get a new wire later?
WRT the potential effectiveness of _Graf Zeppelin_ , the sooner the ship entered service, the sooner the Germans could have started to climb the learning curve of carrier aviation operations. An experimental carrier along the lines of _USS Langley_ would have been useful in this regard, had the Kriegsmarine been serious about naval aviation.
The Kriegsmarine did have a big obstacle to overcome re naval aviation in the shape of Hermann Goering, who believed every German aircraft belonged to him , and he wasn't sharing
Convoy escorts had no real AA capability because none was needed. Surely if the Admiralty had known there was an enemy CV at large things would have been somewhat different.
Unfortunately I'm not a patron (I just don't have the extra money), your channel is worth paying for. However, frequently you refer to a previous Drydock where you cover a specific topic rather than rehash the same information. I think that is the appropriate thing to do too. Is there a "master" list of topics that are covered in different episodes? You have a virtual library of very valuable information that would exponentially increase in value if there was a list or searchable database (maybe something just available to patrons to increase your numbers). It might leave me out but it would probably still be good for you and your patrons. I would think that it would also help to reduce the number of questions on topics already covered in depth. Either way, I wish for the best of outcomes of your endeavors.
@@kemarisite Well I have managed to make myself look like a dummy yet again! LOL If you have the time I can give you a hundred excuses why I didn't see that before but it would be just a bunch of BS. I have actually used that link in the past but apparently my memory is like a steel trap.. that rusted away years ago. Thank you for pointing that out and reminding me.
My thoughts 1) The Graf Zeppelin would have been extremely effective at being an artificial reef. Provided she was sunk in shallow water. Given the loss rate of 109s from accidents I doubt they would last very long. A far better air group for her had she gone into service in my opinion would have been all FW-190 A4s with some possible torpedo bomber. The A4 coul have handled the dive bomber role better than the Stuka at sea. The only real problem I see with the 190 is it's relatively high wing loading iirc. Now I'll have to go back and go through Jerry's FW-190 series. 2) In terms of a cost benefit analysis the Bouge and Casablancas may have been the most effective ships built in WWII 3) The first "cruiser". Well I would consider the ACW Kearsage a cruiser. As for Battlecruisers I'll go with the Constitution. Outrun what you can't fight. Outright anything else. If we get into battle axes well that's highly subjective. 4) Building x ships instead of y ship. It's not just the hulls and dockyard space. It's the other stuff that goes into those hills. If the Kreigsmarine decided to build a bunch of destroyers instead of Bismarck and Tirpitz it would have been a better use of the steel (nothing Germany does affects the overall outcome of the war after 1941). But then you need to compete with sub production for power plants etc. 5) Carriers getting involved in a surface action. Unless they blunder into one there is no excuse for a carrier captain to allow his ship to get into a surface action with an enemy warship. Plus nobody really operated carriers all by themselves. If a carrier does get into a gun surface action with say a cruiser the two vessels early in the war up to say the end of 42 that would have had the best chance to survive would be Lexington and Saratoga given their 8" cruiser guns. Late war the Essex's might have a chance given their high rate of fire from their 5"38s. Glorious' captain if he survived should have been given a locked room and a pistol. 6) Shimano would have been a decently effective fleet carrier provided she was being used by the US Navy or the Royal Navy. The IJN simply didn't have the depth of pilot pool the US and Britian did. 7) Hydrofoils. I can see their use as missile boats possibly but as attractive as their speed capability is once radars and surface to surface or air launched surface missiles come on line they simply have no protection from these beyond dodging. Plus there operating costs at high speed I would imagine are rather high. Looking at the current Aimerica's Cup boats i am amazed just how much hull and effective sail area they can support and maintain on two foils much less the three. 8) Naval small arms. One advantage Navies have over Armies in this field is the small arms requirements for a Navy tend to be much lower in terms of the number of weapons needed. The US Navy was able to field the Lee while the US Army was still fielding Trapdoor Springfields (the US Army was not ignorant of the capability of repeating rifles, they had tested numerous trials guns). Today we see US Navy ships still carrying M14s in their arms lockers. The Goast Guard might have M16s or M4s inboard the cutters involved in drug interdiction. The Royal Navy probably still has L1A1 SLRs.
Steel beocming brittle, ductile - brittle transition temperature of shipbuidling steel is easiy reached in the Atlantic in winter, but you need some form of stress concentration too. My Engineering degree course a LOT of years ago always mentioned a hatchway as an example, simply cut square as opposed to a radiused corner, because the square cut is faster to do on a ship where a short build time is part of the specification.
Type 95: 900 lb warhead G7: 600 lb warhead Mark VIII: 750 lb warhead Mark 14: 500 lb warhead Drach: Type 95 has a "decent enough warhead". If that doesn't rely entirely on differences in explosive strength, then, as the above comparison shows, the statement makes no sense. Even then, the next largest warhead is entirely TNT while the Japanese used essentially the same hexanite formula as the Germans (slightly less powerful than pure TNT, probably not enough to cover the 20% weight difference).
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Pinned post for Q&A :)
What would happen if King George V was in place of the Hood accompanying Prince of Wales during the battle of Denmark strait?
How would having effective ammunition from the beginning ei not mk14 torpedoes have affected the war in the Pacific for the us
Would the HMS Agincourt have been able to face the Wyoming or König head on?
You have talked before about the efficiency or lack thereof of designs like the Bismark class and so on.. in your opinion which 1930 onward battleship design was the most efficient in terms of capability for a given displacment?
how successful would the Malta class have been in Korea had it been completed?
odds are by the time the Malta Class were completed it would be post-ww2
Moesgård forest in Jutland is a reserve now. Planted to replace fleet burnt by the British in 1807. In 1985 the admiralty sent the queen a message that the timber was ready!
How delightfully drole!
In Sweden theres one as well. On the island Visingsö in lake Vättern.
And she was like: "Finally I can get rid of this stupid steel hulls."?
They have recently started cutting a very limited number of trees from the Danish oak reserves to supply trees for the boatbuilders at the Vikingskibsmuseet in Roskilde. Who are building traditional Danish warships. Granted, they are built to 11th -century designs, but they ARE warships and the originals were indisputably Danish. The Vikingskibmuseet has videos of the process of splitting these oaks into boards on their FB page and website.
In regard to welds cracking...the early Liberty ships had problems with hull and deck cracking, but it was not the welds that cracked...it was the steel plates themselves. The British built Liberty ship Empire Duke was tested by Cambridge University, and it was found that the cracks developed due to low temperature embrittlement caused by the cold water of the north Atlantic. The welds allowed the cracks to propegate to the point where structural failure and sinking occurred...something that did not happen with the same type of hull plates in riveted construction. It was also found that square corner hatch welds at plate seams created stress concentration points that acted as nucleating points for plate cracking to begin.
Not enough is ever said about escort carriers, thank you uncle drach for a good amount of clarity on them. Hopefully they will have their own video down the line.
I so want a colab between Drach, Chieftain, and Forgotten Weapons. The true holy trinity. Perhaps a D-Day video? It involves ships, guns, and tanks!
16:08 I love the famous japanese Aircraft Carriers *looks at smudged writing on hand* Akaga and Kagi
Even Drach is shipping those two.
59:00 regarding welding in Liberty Ships: In our Materials properties class in university we learned that the quality of the weld wasn't necessarily the problem, it was more that they didn't really understand the material properties that caused the welds to fail. Fracture mechanics wasn't a field that was a thing in the 40s and 50s, but the loss of some liberty ships in the arctic for example and the failure of the deHavilland Comet caused this field to be extensively explored.
Correct me if I'm wrong, university wasn't yesterday :D
You are right sir, its obvious !
Liberty ship welds terminated at corners of hold openings so the stress concentration was at a weld joint. The fix was to have the corners in the in the middle of a plate.
When you are paying a bonus for the number of feet welded, someone should check the welds where the number of feet claimed exceeds what is possible in shift
In Denmark we have what's called 'Fleet Oaks', which doesn't specifically come as forests, though in cases it is indeed old oak forests. This comes from a certain event involving the British and Copenhagen in 1807, whereupon 3 days after the British left, the Admiralty impounded all oaks, felled or still growing. Essentially all oaks became royal property, and a bunch new oaks were planted. In fact back in 2003 the forest administrator (skovridder) for one of these forests wrote the ministry of defense that the oaks were now ready for delivery.
The oaks are still nationally owned, but are readily used for various projects, like when American yacht Coronet from 1885 needed new oak timbers, and are even sold for limited commercial and private use.
Barbette Armor on US Battleships in WW2 was welded. I saw this first hand when exploring the USS Alabama.
Later as a Volunteer at Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum I had the pleasure to meet an elderly woman who worked in Newport News Shipyard in WW2. She was a welder and she welded up that armor. She explained it was many passes and took quite a lot of time.
Having served on a carrier I can tell you one thing about it. Driving 30 knots into a 30-40 knot headwind is a perfect recipe for a wind burnt face, but you get used to it.
Thank you for your surface
Glad to see Drach keeping the lengths more reasonable. Don't overwork yourself Drach! Another great Drydock, thanks again!
Drach only sorties his entire fleet when German Battle Cruisers are fainting British Battle Cruisers on to the High Seas Fleet.
He only overworks himself for the patreon dry docks
fainting?
You can just watch them in segments. He like to use every moment of his time😊
@@spikespa5208 probably autocorrect, "feinting".
Japanese subs sank about 75% of all merchant ships sailing from the west coast in the first month of the war. Her subs were the largest and fastest in the world in January, 1942, had the longest range of any sub, and had the most reliable torpedo with the largest warheads of any navy at the same date. Japanese sub skippers were more than willing to go after merchant ships. It was only orders from Tokyo that changed the targets to prefer warships. Captains that sank the most warships were also the most liberally rewarded by the Admiralty with promotions, so it didn't take long for sub commanders to fall into line. The USN would have had to devote many more resources to antisubmarine warfare, and supplies to the South Pacific would have taken much longer to arrive. While it wouldn't have changed the overall outcome of the war, it was a real missed opportunity on the part of the IJN to cause some real havoc here.
Do you think their "Decisive battle" doctrine influenced this behavior?
@@CSSVirginia Yes, it was the biggest single factor in their naval thinking. The writings of Alfred Mahan and the outcome of the Battle of Tsushima were the two stepping stones to developing the Kantai Kessen Doctrine (literally, "naval fleet decisive battle") that helped to seal the fate of Japan before the first bomb was dropped at Pearl Harbor.
@@sarjim4381 Got to say you may have a point here . If the USN had to defend its supply line then it's build up would have to slow but this works in there favor. With Japan in limited resources than the longer the war drags on then the less they have to use in the decisive battle. They were running out of fuel fast before the war began so with all there commitments then if the USN had started it's push a year or two later then it's unlikely that they could deploy a full battle line to face them.
They be in the same situation as the Italian navy with ships but no fuel.
Getting a decisive battle as soon as possible was Japans best chance of winning.
Policy aside, the logistics of a East Pacific Anti shipping war don't balance the investment, Huge area. Long transit to a patrol zone. Well protected targets. And few of them. Can they continue such ops past 1942 and risk the losses?
@@paintedblue1791 While they were running out of fuel, after capturing Singapore and Indonesia Japan had access to both oil and refineries. Hence why many damaged IJN vessels had the choice of going to Singapore, and being able to refuel (but not repair), or going to Japan, and being able to repair (but not refuel). If the IJN had kept the US out of the South Pacific for longer, there's a better chance of a decisive battle happening in the North Pacific where the US can provide supplies more easily.
54:40 "Why exactly does sir need 16 repeating rifles and a Gatling gun?"
"To repel the French, officer!" is the proper answer.
53:08 - Drachinifel & Forgotten Weapons crossover WHEN? We must inform Ian!
Hoist the signal flags. Get on the Signal lamp. Don't panic Don't panic
Is it possible to pull in the chieftain. Ships, guns and tanks all together it would be a perfect time to cover Amphibious operations.
The Chieftain does have a certain interest in naval matters. He did an excellent video on the Battle of the River Plate a few years ago.
A drydock where both guides are about carriers, BK Jeong should like this week
Lmao. He's famous apparently.
@@Tepid24 He is known amongst viewers of naval channels for his fanatical dislike of battleships and his enthusiasm to take down anyone who thinks they have some redeeming qualities.
@@Dave_Sisson I have read some of his fanatic rantings and find he is mono focused on the Pacific war and he totally ignores just how helpless (and perhaps useless) a carrier would have been in the Battle of North Cape against Scharnhorst where the action took place in the darkness of winter in the Northern latitudes and during a storm.
@@Dave_Sisson Yeah, I've had some fun discussions with him on that topic lol
@@Dave_Sisson I kind of wish I could have such a fervent belief of something as he does.
Core blimey! Strike a light! Stone the crows! 'ouse ya' father? etc. I'm only halfway through the last Dry Dock. Your output is phenomenal and I’m already falling behind. This is fantastic stuff but don’t burn yourself out. Don’t be that sad little rusty gunboat haunting the gin-joints of the world telling all the dreadnoughts and carriers how you used to be a big shot. That wouldn’t be nice.
Though seriously this is a magnificent effort and as long as its fun to do, the effort is worth it. It’s a library and a resource.
Thanks for answering my question Drach! I hadn't really considered that they were too big.
In regard to growing trees for ship timbers, I'm struggling to find a written source, but in Suffolk near Butley and Staverton by the side of the road are circles of mature trees that I was always told used to be used to grow straight mast timbers in the middle, as the ring of mature trees around would force the inner tree to grow straight quickly.
In terms of the limits on the Japanese building carriers according to Saburo Sakai the famous Japanese ace the standards for naval pilots was so high at the beginning of the war that they were rejecting students who they would have loved to have three years later.
Thanks Drach
Your stamina and dedication in cranking out all these high quality videos if much appreciated by all of your devoted followers (minions?)
Sounds like Gun Jesus needs to make an appearance with Drach
About Royal Oak forrests, in Denmark in the early 1800's, we lost our navy for some unknown reason, so the King ordered all the oak forrest planted, which took around 200 years to be ready, which they were in the early 2000's, where the Royal Forrest called the Royal Court and said that the oak where ready, and the Royal Court called the Goverment, which had no real need for it. Some of these oaks ended at the Vikingship Musuem in Roskilde.
Regarding the Speed of a Carrier question. The reason why the british naval task force off the falklands didnt get attacked by the aircraft strike group of the agentinian navy carrier venteicinco de mayo was, that the wind on that day was to slow and combined with a faulty catapult, the heavy leaden A4's couldnt be launched. Then after the loss of the belgrando and the retreat of the agentinian navy to port those A4's reverted to land based operations and did quite a lot of damage.
I’d love to see a collaboration of you with Forgotten Weapons. Referring to unexplored ordinance, the UK show “Danger UXB” is a classic.
...and it was based on actual training films from WW2 (which I watched before learning about the mini series).
Agree about "Danger UXB".
Haven't seen it in decades.
Danger UXD was also pretty good. :)
@@Philip271828 Years ago I read a book called "Seventeen Seconds" about the disposal teams for the magnetic mines which the Germans began dropping on British cities because they contained a lot more explosive than ordinary bombs. They had a self-destruct mechanism with a delay of 17 seconds (hence the title of the book) which was originally intended to stop them being captured if they were accidentally dropped on land or in shallow water, but it proved to be unreliable in practice. The book also described the discovery and successful defusing of later, more sophisticated German anti-shipping mines such as the acoustic and combined acoustic-magnetic types.
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.
Great commentary! Increasing a carrier's speed also effectively increases the length of the landing area when recovering aircraft.
Good point!
In addition to Forgotten Weapons, I would also suggest reaching out to C&Rsenal. They are another firearm history channel with excellent researching.
Bloke on the Range may also be a good addition to this round table.
I expect that "Gun Girl" Mae would like to pick off the odd seagull or two with her favorite Mauser.;)
The issue with Casablanca class was their uniflow reciprocating engines. The Bogues, due to their conversion had steam turbines, hence their use into the 1960s as aircraft transports vice the Casablancas.
On the manufacturing question (00:27:00) - We in the USA don't really understand the inability to just "build more", because we had the capability to build more yards and infrastructure at a rate that was incomprehensible to other countries. And even then, as you pointed out, we hit bottlenecks of our own. But countries like the UK and Japan had fare greater choke-points than we did. Easy to forget that. Thank you for the detailed response on this one!
Similar to the point on Liberty and Victory ship welds breaking: two T2 Tankers broke in half within hours of each other during the same storm in New England in 1952. One of the ships was recovered and rebuilt... and broke in half again in 1964 and again rebuilt. So it had three different bows.
43:10 a great example of how large there oak demands were is that the frigate HMS Trincomalee (which is now a museum ship in Hartlepool) was made out of Teak due to oak shortage.
The drydock in which the hulls of the Bismarck and Tirpitz were built is still in operation in Blohm and Voss in Hamburg. It was specially built for this task. The only docks these ships could use in Occupied Europe was this and one at St Nazaire, the Normandy Dock. This was effectively put out of action by the St Nazaire Raid.
The Tirpitz was actually built at Wilhelmshaven in a naval yard, not a private sector yard.
@@simonpitt8145 Your correct it was the Bismark that was built in Hamburg.
In regard to the relative ease of fighters taking off from carriers compared to strike aircraft, I watched a documentary about the British Pacific Fleet. In it during audio interviews with the actual aircrew they said the Seafire could take off without catipult assistance, but all the other aircraft required catapult assistance. The relative lightness and slow takeoff speed and Powerful engine of the Seafire made it an easy aircraft to fly off a carrier. Conversely, these very same characteristics made it hard to land back on an aircraft carrier. In those days the technique to landing an aircraft on a carrier was to fly as slow as possible and get as low as possible and stall the aircraft onto the deck as soon as you got over the deck, in.order to catch the arrestor wires as early as possible. Apparently the seafire just wouldn't stall easily and they would quite often find themselves halfway down the deck before it did finally stall. That and the nose up landing attitude and long nose of the seafire made it difficult to land on carriers.
They also had to come in on an angle (yaw) because the length of the nose made it difficult to see the deck! Amazing the planes took off the deck at all with the pilots having such huge, heavy balls of steel!
Awesome! This is basically my Sunday routine... Drydock 😄
You and Forgotten Weapons would be stellar as both of your channels are excellent
In Italy we still have some very big fir forest that were extensively used for mast making in the past: "Foreste Casentinesi", between Florence and Bologna, were tended by monks till the XII century which sold high quality wood to the Republic of Pisa and later, in the XV and XVI century, even to the English.
For fire arms speak to the royal armouries in Leeds. Your in good enough standing that they would let you in to the archive of fire arms for a touch and a feel
The trouble with this Drydock is that I haven't finished the previous one. :D
During the American Civil War , the US Navy procured/bought most of the gatling guns available to mount on their river iron clad ships. These were intended for use as security while at anchor to prevent boarding raids by the Confederate Army, and not for use as an offensive battle weapon.
I think of you were to do a naval small arms special, the absolute BEST person to do it with would be Ian from Forgotten Weapons. Much like you, that man is damn near a national treasure when it comes to the absolute wealth of accessible information when it comes to all things military related.
The biggest problem with cracking on a welded ship is the welds don't stop the propagation of the crack were as when a crack reaches a riveted joint it stops.
A book I read twenty or thirty years ago stated that bad welding or bad steel got the blame all the cracking on Liberty Ships happened in the same area which leads to the conclusion that the problem was bad design. The two long steel bandaids riveted to the ship to reinforce the structure where the cracking took place solved the problem and of course being riveted in the crack couldn't propagate into the bandaids.
On the practice of welding of ships in WW2 I was told that USN ships were both welded and riveted because the rivet holes served as crack stopping points if a plate had a crack propagating in it. Also the cracking in Liberty Ships was because of inappropriate grades of steel being used as much as the method of construction.
Drach: Re: Failed welds in Liberty Ships.
As I understand it, the preponderance of these failures were essentially the building environment. As construction ramped up, many more workers were trained in both welding, and weld inspection. A green welder may learn to make a visually "pretty bead", but lack penetration. Likewise, those inspecting, might not be able to detect a shallow weld. The shallow weld might later fail.
I believe most of those Liberties lost were the mid-production, such as SS Jeremiah O'Brien, which were half-riveted, half welded. Later on, further training, and experience, had solved the issues.
Thanks Drach! Great job as always!
I just wanted to say thank you for posting all the amazing content. I’m impressed at not only the quantity, but the quality of your videos. I started watching your channel roughly a year ago and I’ve been blown away by the vastness of your knowledge and I’m amazed that you’re able to produce so many, high quality, videos every week.
Ships were a subject I had little knowledge or interest in prior to finding your channel. Your videos were definitely a highlight of my 2020 and are proving to be as well for 2021.
Again, thank you for all that you do and keep up the great work!!!
Escort carriers often had catapults as well for getting heavier planes off the deck.
From late 1942 on many IJN submarines had to be used as stealth freighters to supply bypassed garrisons or bases where the Allies had air superiority, which meant they couldn't be hunting as much or at all.
Thank you. As always, fascinating and enlightening.
Deutschland class was constructed with transverse steel beams. But 90% of the ship was welded. Saving around 15% of weight.
15%! that's amazing
Thanks for answering my question drach! It’s seems navies are pretty much stuck building what they have to with their docks
Thank you, Drachinifel.
@54:49 Gun Jesus looked down upon Ship Daddy from the rigging and smiled in Nelsonian Musket.
Before the English conquest of Ireland, Ireland was one large Oak forest. Ireland today is roughly 4% forested thanks in a large part to these forests being stripped for the British navy. Granted the idea of forest conservation was neglected for a long long time in Ireland.
Then why did forest cover in Ireland continue to diminish long after the British Royal Navy stopped building ships out of timber altogether, and switched to all-steel construction?
According to the academic Dr. Richard O’Hanlon the causes of Ireland’s deforestation have been numerous, intertwining and historic. Deforestation originally occurred due to the needs of growing agriculture trends in Ireland and this escalated with the birth and growth of the Industrial Age.
One of several major reason for the destruction of forests during the 16th and 17th century, for example, was the making of barrel staves. These were shipped to France and Spain in vast quantities to make casks, which were essential to the wine trade.
In the late 19th century the passing of the Land Act of 1881 enabled land transfer from landlord to tenant. However landlords felled timber to generate revenue before transfer, then the new owners continued felling to recoup costs. In 1903 with the passing of another Land Act, the rate of land transfers accelerated, increasing woodland clearance even more.
In the early years of the 20th century almost over 800 recorded sawmills were in operation, with numerous travelling sawmills completing the devastation. Woodland cover fell to an all-time low of 1.5%, with remaining areas of forest often being of such poor quality they were not worth felling.
During the late 20th century, support and subsidies from the EU encouraged farmers to use as much of their land as possible for agricultural production, with woodland cover often restricted to the most infertile land deemed unsuitable for any other use. Fortunately this has now changed, but only comparatively recently.
Today roughly 11% of Ireland is under forest cover and it’s understood that around 1% of that is made up of native Irish trees.
While the main tranche of heavy cruisers were the result of scaling light cruisers up to the limits of the naval treaties, there _was_ one case of an armored-cruiser design evolving directly into a heavy cruiser (SMS _Blücher)._
Welding was a new technology. However most of the issues experienced with Liberty Ships were due to the steel used. Steel wit specific properties becomes brittle in cold weather. It will shatter like glass , well safety laminated glass actually. particularly near a welded joint. The weld wouldnt let loose but the steel along side the joint would . Even modern steel breaks easier when exposed to cold weather and shock is introduced. ie snow moving equipment
That’s why SpaceX has developed a custom steel (SS 304X) that is more ductile & less brittle at Cryogenic Temperatures than almost all other standard steels.
@@TraditionalAnglican Austenitic stainless steels in the 3xx series have excellent low temperature ductility, they're basically standard for cryogenic equipment. SpaceX's stainless (as used in the starship prototypes) is anything but custom- it's just grade 304L (the same as used for making kitchen sinks and cooking pots). They probably have tighter control of composition and properties than standard commercial stainless, but the underlying metallurgy dates back to the 1930s.
The best books on edged weapons and smallarms at sea I know of are by William Gilkerson: ‘Boarders Away: With Steel’ and ‘Boarders Away II: With Fire’. Informative and beautiful books but hard to get hold of now. One detail I remember that normal procedure with a sea service pistol was to fire it and then to throw it at someone.
So what you're saying is the Type 95 was a good torpedo because it actually exploded when required?
Nice photo there of the entire Italian Sparviero Class.
Australia was settled as a response to Britain's need for mast timber. During Cooks voyage of discovery he noticed some excellent trees on Norfolk Island. Unfortunately the trees did not pan out, but otherwise they had to settle for just some cool things from Australia.
The Canadian forests are lot closer and numerous.
@@WALTERBROADDUS They were interested in the Norfolk Island pine. Grow to about 180 feet, with very straight trunks
Besides a number of Australian trees simply say sheer off and stuff yourselves, humans!
16:05 Hoping we get a Guide on the Akaga and the Kagi soon.
The naval adoption of small arms saved the then-new Colt company from bankruptcy when the newly-minted navy of the Republic of Texas ordered a large batch of their Patterson model revolvers and revolving carbines. Colt commemorated this by engraving the cylinders of their future revolvers with scenes from the Battle of Campeche (which you really ought to do a special on). Colt continued to benefit from this contract when the Texan navy was recalled to port and dissolved for insubordination, allowing their weapons (and branding) to propagate across the American west, including use with the Texas Rangers.
I was thinking about your rational about the Japanese carriers. It makes sense from the cost and infrastructure angle. But if you are committed to build more carriers wouldn't you naturally build more planes and train more pilots? Something that would greatly aid Japan in the future.
Haha, finally a drydock with a sensible length
Remember originally Drydocks were supposed to be half an hour
I think the rate of fire cruiser killer would probably be better with an eight inch gun layout and maybe just have the armor to resist the same vs 12 inch fire. Most treaty cruisers could probably do fairly well at resisting six inch fire while they had problems with eight inch fire. You’d also get much better capabilities in a situation like the Battle of the River Plate. And it would have better capabilities against the supercruisers by having better firepower and potentially by being faster with a slightly lighter armor ... or at least able to have a good speed without a massively supercharged power plant.
If we are insisting on the six inch guns maybe a quad turret might be the way to go. Technical issues aside it’d allow that six turret arrangement to give 24 barrels. That would be a very popular vessel for shore bombardment duties, but it would probably need a whole convoy of supply vessels to top up ammunition
You missed another factor that made high-speed capability an important requirement for aircraft carriers: Hit and run raids. A task group could make a fast run into a target minimizing the target's chances of detecting the incoming strike, make their strikes and then make a fast run back out and get out of range of possible retaliatory strikes as soon as possible.
Also, launch a strike ASAP and sail towards the target so that returning aircraft could make it back before running out of fuel, thus maximizing range.
Also, before advanced electronics and radar, the use of daylight was critical, especially if your enemy was adept at nightfighting surface actions. Scoot into range, launch attack, scoot out once planes return.
17:07 "rapid decommissioned" yes...HMS Courageous would like a word
Similiar to SpaeceX's RUD. Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
It’s all very well having super fast carriers but spare a thought for the swordfish vainly trying to catch the bugger
Navy planed forrest in Sweden: a decade (or 2) ago, the Swedish navy reported to the goverment that the oak forrest on Visingsö is ready to be fell and building warships. It was kind of a moment of some pride - forrest is extremley well cared and the monetary worth is in over 100 million euros. The forrest is there to this day, and the state keep a keen eyed management.
you ever consider putting your audio on spotify as a podcast? your vids make pretty good radio and could be a boost to your viewership.
If you are looking for a ship type that may be fun. You ahould look at the paddle wheel carriers Wolverine and Sable
One thing that delayed US warship builds was that leading up to the invasions of the Marianas and Normandy there was a critical shortage of LSTs and other landing craft because of steel shortages so the reset priorities
Yes, even the US did not have unlimited steel production.
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.
Q&A: When CoVid-19 is "in our rearview mirror", are you planning doing a Guide to the USS Salem (last Heavy Cruiser in existence) that's "home ported" in what's left of Quincy (Mass.) Naval Ship Yard?
What do you think of her 3 inch AA guns? It seems to me that they would have a high "burst" rate of fire, but the way they're set up, the shell handling crews would tire quickly if they tried to maintain a high sustained rate of fire....
This question is in part to the question @ 36.02 mark of #132 Drydock since she had "Automatic" 8 inch guns and perhaps making her a bit longer so she could have a Superfiring turret aft, and maybe even 6 more 5"/L38 twin gun houses amidships (3 Port & 3 Starboard) for additional DP fire support .
Only an hour! What am I supposed to do with the rest of my day?
The trolley catapult on Graf Zeppelin, on paper this seems rather innovative, allowing her to launch massive strike attack at once at rapid rate but practically, its very complex design and proved problematic as recharging take many times (meaning they can only do one massive strike attack) and prone to bad weather (hence the trolley should be pulled back into flight deck to avoid being break or froze by winter), a joke floating Graf Zeppelin-class described them as "mother of seaplane" sorta things.
The thought of landing a 109 on a carrier is genuinely frightening
Although the flight deck/landing camera footage could be hilarious (as long as you have no empathy or otherwise ignore what happens to the pilots).
@@kemarisite it's a smile when the guy gets out in one piece. Which I doubt would be happening with many 109 pilots
Yes, just look at the number of Spit/Seafires that crached on landing, thats why the Germans was developing a "carrier adopted" 109.
I’d much rather be launching & landing a FW-190A which was a much easier aircraft to fly & land than the BF-109.
@@TraditionalAnglican thays what I was thinking, long noses and restricted forward view is par for the course but those wide landing gear would be golden compared to the 109
Hurrah for Sunday!
To add to the weld discussion, I think the Yamato-class would've been able to endure even more punishment if they had welds instead of their rivets, since they had known faulty rivets after the USS Skate torpedo attack on Yamato that tore the large gash, the 1000 lb. AP bomb hit that penetrated Yamato and blew out a side plate from the inside at the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, and the hits on Shinano. It likely would've prolonged their demise, but I'd be curious as to how long.
The Yamatos DID use welding, not rivets. The fault in their TDS was a result of poor design in one specific (welded) part, not rivets.
Under the condition that its good quality welding, yes, and the Yamatos would also have been several K tons lighter !
@@bkjeong4302 The joint that failed used tap rivets and three-ply rivets (see Page 7): www.fischer-tropsch.org/primary_documents/gvt_reports/USNAVY/USNTMJ%20Reports/USNTMJ-200H-0745-0786%20Report%20S-06-2.pdf
There is a lot of photos of battleships and cruisers with wires/cables going from tower to beam and stern. Was there any concern those could get in the way of gunfire (like did they have some (un)written rule about shoting straight ahead and aft)? Or was it regarded as if they get in the way of a shell who cares we'll get a new wire later?
Oh yes! Gardner, Gatling, Nordenfelt - and the Maxims.
WRT the potential effectiveness of _Graf Zeppelin_ , the sooner the ship entered service, the sooner the Germans could have started to climb the learning curve of carrier aviation operations. An experimental carrier along the lines of _USS Langley_ would have been useful in this regard, had the Kriegsmarine been serious about naval aviation.
The Kriegsmarine did have a big obstacle to overcome re naval aviation in the shape of Hermann Goering, who believed every German aircraft belonged to him , and he wasn't sharing
The ship, not the document 🤣
Convoy escorts had no real AA capability because none was needed. Surely if the Admiralty had known there was an enemy CV at large things would have been somewhat different.
53:57 Ian McCollum we need you!
I so need to know what the intro music is, it is some of the most swag stuff I've heard ever and I just love the metal pings in it
Thank you.
Afaik we have an oak forest in Denmark planted for naval use
can you please do a video on WW2 Arethusa? My great grandad served on that ship and would love to see media and info on it. Thank you :)
Unfortunately I'm not a patron (I just don't have the extra money), your channel is worth paying for. However, frequently you refer to a previous Drydock where you cover a specific topic rather than rehash the same information. I think that is the appropriate thing to do too. Is there a "master" list of topics that are covered in different episodes? You have a virtual library of very valuable information that would exponentially increase in value if there was a list or searchable database (maybe something just available to patrons to increase your numbers). It might leave me out but it would probably still be good for you and your patrons. I would think that it would also help to reduce the number of questions on topics already covered in depth. Either way, I wish for the best of outcomes of your endeavors.
There is a link to the question archive in the video description.
@@kemarisite Well I have managed to make myself look like a dummy yet again! LOL If you have the time I can give you a hundred excuses why I didn't see that before but it would be just a bunch of BS. I have actually used that link in the past but apparently my memory is like a steel trap.. that rusted away years ago. Thank you for pointing that out and reminding me.
Johnathan Ferguson may not be a bad option either if he's willing to swing it for the naval small arms.
My thoughts
1) The Graf Zeppelin would have been extremely effective at being an artificial reef. Provided she was sunk in shallow water. Given the loss rate of 109s from accidents I doubt they would last very long. A far better air group for her had she gone into service in my opinion would have been all FW-190 A4s with some possible torpedo bomber. The A4 coul have handled the dive bomber role better than the Stuka at sea. The only real problem I see with the 190 is it's relatively high wing loading iirc. Now I'll have to go back and go through Jerry's FW-190 series.
2) In terms of a cost benefit analysis the Bouge and Casablancas may have been the most effective ships built in WWII
3) The first "cruiser". Well I would consider the ACW Kearsage a cruiser. As for Battlecruisers I'll go with the Constitution. Outrun what you can't fight. Outright anything else. If we get into battle axes well that's highly subjective.
4) Building x ships instead of y ship. It's not just the hulls and dockyard space. It's the other stuff that goes into those hills. If the Kreigsmarine decided to build a bunch of destroyers instead of Bismarck and Tirpitz it would have been a better use of the steel (nothing Germany does affects the overall outcome of the war after 1941). But then you need to compete with sub production for power plants etc.
5) Carriers getting involved in a surface action. Unless they blunder into one there is no excuse for a carrier captain to allow his ship to get into a surface action with an enemy warship. Plus nobody really operated carriers all by themselves. If a carrier does get into a gun surface action with say a cruiser the two vessels early in the war up to say the end of 42 that would have had the best chance to survive would be Lexington and Saratoga given their 8" cruiser guns. Late war the Essex's might have a chance given their high rate of fire from their 5"38s. Glorious' captain if he survived should have been given a locked room and a pistol.
6) Shimano would have been a decently effective fleet carrier provided she was being used by the US Navy or the Royal Navy. The IJN simply didn't have the depth of pilot pool the US and Britian did.
7) Hydrofoils. I can see their use as missile boats possibly but as attractive as their speed capability is once radars and surface to surface or air launched surface missiles come on line they simply have no protection from these beyond dodging. Plus there operating costs at high speed I would imagine are rather high. Looking at the current Aimerica's Cup boats i am amazed just how much hull and effective sail area they can support and maintain on two foils much less the three.
8) Naval small arms. One advantage Navies have over Armies in this field is the small arms requirements for a Navy tend to be much lower in terms of the number of weapons needed. The US Navy was able to field the Lee while the US Army was still fielding Trapdoor Springfields (the US Army was not ignorant of the capability of repeating rifles, they had tested numerous trials guns). Today we see US Navy ships still carrying M14s in their arms lockers. The Goast Guard might have M16s or M4s inboard the cutters involved in drug interdiction. The Royal Navy probably still has L1A1 SLRs.
Shortest Drydock in living memory.
Drydocks are always ~1hour, unless it's the first drydock of the month. Those are the 5h+ ones that pop up from time to time.
Weren't the cracks in the Liberty ships proximately caused by the cold Arctic water embrittling the steel?
Carbon content in the steel and not using an appropriate welding procedure.
Steel beocming brittle, ductile - brittle transition temperature of shipbuidling steel is easiy reached in the Atlantic in winter, but you need some form of stress concentration too. My Engineering degree course a LOT of years ago always mentioned a hatchway as an example, simply cut square as opposed to a radiused corner, because the square cut is faster to do on a ship where a short build time is part of the specification.
It was the welds that failed not the steel. If the plate was the problem then riveted ships would have suffered as well.
@@andrewfanner2245 The fix on Liberty ships was to apply a doubler plate that was riveted in place.
@@andrewfanner2245 "stress concentration" and "simply cut square as opposed to a radiused corner" is also what doomed the de Havilland Comet.
What? Already? I'm not done with the last one yet!
I don't think the Graf Zeppelin was slated to have torpedo aircraft. See 02:13 reference.
I think you could make an argument that the Thresher was lost (at least in part) due to a faulty weld.
Type 95: 900 lb warhead
G7: 600 lb warhead
Mark VIII: 750 lb warhead
Mark 14: 500 lb warhead
Drach: Type 95 has a "decent enough warhead". If that doesn't rely entirely on differences in explosive strength, then, as the above comparison shows, the statement makes no sense. Even then, the next largest warhead is entirely TNT while the Japanese used essentially the same hexanite formula as the Germans (slightly less powerful than pure TNT, probably not enough to cover the 20% weight difference).
@54:45 aggressive mice maybe??
Adapted from rocket science: RUD - Rapid Unscheduled Decommission or Disassembly, originally.
I am seeing a collab with Gun Jesus in the near future.
After the success of the Doolittle raid was there any thought given to building a carrier designed to launch medium bombers.
You can't land them. Nor do you have the ability to put them below deck. So, nope. Not till post war.
Last time I was this early, Kamchatka hadn't seen a torpedo boat, yet.