Speaking of the Dardanelles, do you think the _original_ plan could have forced an Ottoman surrender if the captains and admirals involved had damned the torpedoes as intended and charged all the way to Istanbul?
Hey Drachinifel, there's a game called Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought that just released public Alpha version. You should check it out. I'd like to see you build some dreadnought and maybe pre-dreadnought ships :P
Do you know why the cage mast was such the rage in the U.S. Navy for a period of time? Was there reasons why they were hesitant to go with tripod masts like every other modern navy?
The British have a tendency to give many ships ironic names. I always liked the ship that delivered Maj. Andrea was H.M.S Vulture, a bit on the nose I should say.
Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet" series has some fun with this. Ships named "Invincible" invariably were lost quickly. The Fleet officers wanted the name retired but the bureaucrats kept insisting on reusing the name.
My daydream is that the wing turrets are removed and small tube boilers and modern turbines installed giving the ship a top speed of say 28 or 29 knots. The center section would then be open for 4-6 inch d.p. guns and lighter aa guns. What you get is kind of a small battlecruiser similar to the larger Glorious with 12 inch guns in two twin turrets. I imagine them defending the far corners of the Empire. Facing off against the Graf Spee off Argentina. Would 4 12inch guns overcome 6 11 inch guns.also in 2 turrets?
@@eknapp49 Just looked it up, yeah. So they used the name on six different ships, and out of those FOUR were either lost in battle or wrecked, usually with incredible haste. No wonder the fleet wanted the name gone.
@@Feiora not necessarily true. if there is improperly stored ammo in the turret then a direct hit may rattle it enough to trip it off even if it does not penetrant.
The ironic part is that the guy who were giving the order to stockpile ammo in the turrets and leaving the hatches open + having an useless signalofficer got promoted, while Jellicoe turned of to avoid the destroyers and was left With the blame. Whats even more Incredible? Beatty tampered with the charts to show he didnt do any tactical error. It was proven just recently by a team who went to Research the Battle area and found some big errors. They also found one of Jellicoes Charts who seemed to be slightly more accurate than Beattys.
andreas pedersen We did love punishing success, look what happened to Dowding after BoB. Funnily enough there is a common personality inthe background...
@@Karibanu If you are referring to Churchill please remember he was NOT in the government in 1916. After time in the trenches he sat with the opposition in Parliament and was not in the government again till 1917.
@@ags5696 In a way RN did... But I believe that Beatty had ordered the battlecruisers to keep the "flash-gates" open to accelerate the ammunition handling? Pretty ironic that Jellicoe was forced to step down mainly because he turned the fleet away from the destroyers. While Beatty who failed to deliver intelligence about the KMs whereabouts so the fleet had problems with their placement. Then he placed the BCs at the front of the battle line, though they not are supposed to fight what they can't outgun. Mostly because of the armor.
I was never bothered by the name choice, it was just another in a long series of that type of name scheme. Indefatigable has to be my favorite. Great word.
War declared does sound like a cricket game. War was declared and both teams went for lunch. Actually there is some dispute as to whether war was declared by Britain and if so by whom. Though the British government decided that Britain was going to war no one can remember making a formal declaration, or who did declare it. There is some thought that Sir Edward Grey, Bt Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs may have been the one who did it, but he may have just told the press. To put this into some sort of context Germany's Hamburg Shipping Line was still advertising trips to Germany in the British press for sometime after war was declared, and there were newspaper advertisements for British people to apply to a German music academy. No one at that time actually thought it would end in fighting.
@@Armo1997 That was Rahbar Al Haq complaining that Drach said war broke out rather then war was declared. He's a bit of a stickler for getting things right.👍
My school in Portsmouth had a very large roll of honour- this was on wooden plaques on the side of a memorial organ which was commissioned for the new school building as the old one had been Blitzed in 1941. Three names were those of three old boys who had studied together and died together in the engine room of HMS Invincible.
Commissioned in 1908 and scrapped in 1921 - shows how crazy the rate of change of naval design was in the early 20th century that a top of the line ship was effectively obsolescent in 12 years.
That's actually a rather long interval between commissioning and obsolescence....there were many capital ships (both before and after this class) that were outright obsolete *before* they were even in service!
It was obsolete by 1916, so only 8 years... By that time, the Queen Elizabeth 15” super dreadnoughts able to do 25kts were in service. Even the Iron Dukes had 13.5” guns. Admittedly those are true Battleships not Battlecruisers, but it does point out the rate of development. Dreadnought herself was outclassed by the time of Jutland.
@@bkjeong4302 battleships were not useless in WW2 (the carrier era). Yes, a coordinated strike from a carrier could sink a battleship easily. But carriers were restricted to daytime operations, good weather and calm sea. These were of course ideal conditions for battleships as well, but battleships could also fight at night and in bad weather. Battleships also had the advantage in rate of fire. A carrier needs mostly over an hour to launch a full strike, and another hour to recover planes. This makes them less usefull when they cant play their trump card: the range of their planes. At closer distances, a battleship can do so much more damage than a carrier, for example in shore bombardment or escord duty. Also, you dont need a carrier if you are in range of land based aircraft. This was mostly the case in the european theater. The whole North sea, baltic sea, black sea and mediterran could be covered by land based aircraft. And if those attack, they attack in large numbers. Like, 100 or so. With fighter escord. To prevent your carrier from taking catastrofic damage, you need armor on them. This is what the british did. But that limits your aircraft complement due to the weight of the armor. So to summarise, a carrier can have the advantage over a battleship, but a battleship can also have the advantage over a carrier. It depends on the strategic and geografical situation. If you fight in the european theatre, battleships are just as important if not more important than carriers. But in the calm, open pacific carriers can play their trump card, their range. And they are the only way of getting large numbers of aircraft in the air. But to have a good navy that is prepared for all situations, you need both types of ships. Carriers and battleships. Btw, I am basically only writing here what our beloved british naval expert Drach said in multiple different videos.
Ive always taken issue with calling something; invincible, infallible, unstoppable etc.. Because its always a little awkward when they get sunk or captured...
H.M.S. Mother inlaw and H.M.S. Root canal treatment are maybe the most scary names to use on the high seas. Enemy ships crews have constant shivers along their spine when engaging them. And should you lose one no problem , you can always re use the name. There is an endless suply of mother in laws and root canal treatments 😁
Sad, laughable irony: there have been six Royal Navy vessels named Invincible--three sank as shipwrecks and one was sunk in battle. RN should stick to names like HMS Inedible, Inscrutable, or Implausible.
Admiral Beatty´s responsibility isn´t sufficiently taken care of in that video. The sinking of 3 ships with 3300+ sailors on board is entirely the result of carelessness, ordered by the man himself, implemented by his subordinates who should have and could have known better. The aftermath, resulting in a massive cover-up, resulted in Beatty beeing promoted. Untill the very day this is one of the darkest chapters in british military history.
I'm imagining an "Epic Rap battle of history" style fight between Beatty and Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, USN where they both brag about how many allied people they killed.
The Battlecruisers thought they were the Cavalry of the seas. Unfortunately with cavalry, the horse usually had the brains and at sea that’s not much use... Although... you might argue that Harwood’s later action in WW2 with two light cruisers and a type B County class 8” against a pocket battleship was equally foolhardy, but it seemed to pay off that time... even if Exeter was basically scragged in the process. It could also be said that there was a certain level of frustration over the last 2 years since the battlecruisers had kept trying to force an action with the High Seas fleet, and they had become impetuous through it. Still no excuse for the excessively high loss of life though.
You know if I was the captain of invincible and Beatty told me to remove safety doors and stockpile ammunition in the turrets I would have told him to shove it! What good is a high rate of fire when you're dead?
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe - an excellent notion, which needs a couple of notes. The HMS Victoria disaster would still be in living memory and it showed the level to which the Royal Navy would obey orders, no matter how damned stupid. And the Troubridge affair in 1914 where the senior officer refused to engage two battle cruisers, feeling that they were a superior force - he was court martialled for it. In both cases, independent action was not condoned by the Navy.
@@mikereger1186 Good points, but HMS Tiger and the 5th battle squadron all stuck to the navy's proper method for handling ammunition and they all survived Jutland, despite being under Beatty's command. I'm sure a small degree of independent thinking was allowed especially when it came down to small things like ammunition handling. I mean storing ammunition in the turrets wasn't exactly accepted practice in the Royal Navy at the time, or in any navy for that matter. Beatty should have been nailed to the wall for the losses at Jutland.
So, they had a ship with cruiser grade armour but big enough guns to make sure the brass wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to press it int the line of battle anyway, and named it Invincible? Might as well have named her HMS Tempting Fate...
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe Yes, they simply didn't understand how crucial it was to follow the standard procedures when it came to flash protection etc. Getting people to follow procedures when they get the confidence of familiarity is a very common problem (consider Chernobyl as a great illustration). The Germans had an experience similar to what cost the RN at Jutland; the ship barely avoided a catastrophic explosion, and the message went through the fleet very clearly.
@@steeltrap3800 Indeed. Just look at HMS Tiger. Her crew followed the correct ammunition handling procedure and she survived Jutland, despite taking a direct hit to one of her turrets. Beatty should have been nailed to the wall after Jutland, but instead he was promoted! Hardly the navy's finest hour.
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe to be fair, while I doubt the British CCs would have been lost without that doctrinal error, they would have likely still come off worse damaged on average compared to the Germans. (The fact the Germans retreated doesn't contradict this as the German plan at Jutland was to hit and run from from the start, they knew better than to try and break the blockade in one massive battle they would probably lose; at the end of Jutland only two of the German battlecruisers were damaged to the point of being inoperable and only one fo those two were sunk)
For whatever reason the robo version of this one has always been one of my favorites, I think it's the perfect valance of information and British dry sence of humor 😂
Robert Massie's "Dreadnought" says that the preliminary concept design for the Invincible class was called HMS Perfection by Fisher. he references Fear God and Dread Nought and an older book about Jutland.
so at jutland it seems hipper's 5 battle cruisers fought beatty's 7 battlecruisers, the 4 QE class battleships and Hoods 3 battle cruisers! 5 on 13! They sank 3 battle cruisers 2 armored cruisers, almost sank the Lion and inflicted heavy damage on others though they lost Lutzow and suffered heavy damage themselves
I have sometimes wondered what happened to the old robot voice. Is it in a cupboard somewhere next to a rather battered old Commodore 64 and a ZX 80 who's rubber keyboard is worn out. It will be on an antiques show in about twenty years time. This was owned by that Drach guy. You know. The one who bought out RUclips before disappearing into the virtual Bermuda Triangle on World of Warship. To busy talking and not watching where his ship was going.
Random musing. If someone named the Dreadnaught after flowers we might have ended up with HMS Daisy. Then we'd have a silly references to the "The pre-Daisy era" and the "The super Daisy battleships"
Swap the Flower-class corvette names with Dreadnought battleships? that'd make both Jutland and the Battle of the Atlantic quite silly... Super-Petunias, that'd have been fun. Marigold? Hollyhock? names to really put the fear into an enemy fleet :)
"Congratulations. You are promoted to Captain and will be given your own command!" "Huzzah! Thank you! Which one?" "The Invincible" ... *prepares will*
Eerie coincidence. Invincible was the flagship of a small squadron of battle cruisers commanded by Admiral Horace Hood. He was killed along with almost the entire crew when Invincible catastrophically exploded. The Hood of WW II fame was named after his great, great grandfather, Admiral Samuel Hood. Admiral Horace Hood's widow christened the Hood.
Drach, if you ever start doing videos on famous naval personnel, could you please do one on Beatty? I'm confused as to how this man rose so high in the Royal Navy during wartime despite seemingly making all the wrong calls, suffering horrific losses at Jutland, and being considered generally mediocre these days. I assume it was because people's perceptions of his performance were different at the time. That, or he was a public relations genius and/or had lots of really good friends in really high places. Also, what were the thoughts of the British BC crews about removing their flash protection before and after Jutland? Did they agree with the decision beforehand, and did they later recognize it as part of the reason for their losses?
@@jamesharmer9293 correct, if i remember from a comment on another video (I can't prove it cause i have parental control and can't look it up) he fakes the charts on some maps so the government doesn't find the flaws he made
Should have called them Battledestroyers, the Terror of torpedo boats everywhere. How big could they possibly be? By the time other Navy's figured it out, they would have wasted their money on slightly bigger Cruisers, the natural prey of this type of ship. Nothing like catching your potential enemies with their pants down!
Excellent videos! All of them! I do have a small suggestion/request though.. Please balance the audio of the outro to the actual video.. My poor ears will be forever grateful!
Since there were apparently three German ships named Lutzow at one time or another spanning both wars I think it would be interesting if you could produce one video that covers all of them. Jutland, etc.
@@ivangenov6782 The third was an unfinished Admiral Hipper-class cruiser. It was cancelled and sold to the Soviets in 1940, renamed Petropavlovsk (later Tallinn in 1944 and Dniepr in 1953), sunk (still incomplete) during Operation Barbarossa, raised that same year, and used as a barracks and training ship until it was scrapped in 1953.
@@G011d3n oooohhhh, thanks for the information Edit: Just looked the Petropavlovsk up, i must say, the Soviets changed her so much the only thing that remains the same is the atlantic bow design
The next one at least survived to be scrapped ( Falklands conflict carrier ). HMS Invincible-because-of-escort-fleet doesn't have quite the same ring to it...
If the Admiralty had called them "Super Cruisers" from the very start then we probably would not have this persistent confusion that Battlecruisers are just under-armoured Battleships that can still fight with the main battle fleet. And then we'd be much more likely to see 1944 refit Renown as a T9 Cruiser instead of trying to shoehorn her in somewhere as a Battleship.
Yeah the Admiralty and politicians just tended to look at the calibre of the main guns and then order them into battle. Simple equations for posh idiots (15 inch = 15 inch) meant the Hood died and all the battle-cruisers found themselves in roles that they weren't designed for.
It really must be said. Taking the door off the magazine of a ship totally negates the safety the magazine was designed to implement. Any and ALL of the sailors that did this are and/or were guilty of gross negligence, incompetence & total ignorance. And most every sailor aboard paid the cost. Every sailor that knew that those safety mechanisms had been taken away should have spoken up & blown the whistle about it, so to speak. It should not have been kicked down the road like a tin can & ignored until battlecruisers started suffering catastrophic explosions & sinking with all hands in a matter of what??? Three ships in one battle? The only saving grace for the sailors aboard... their loved ones can truthfully say "They went out with a bang! A VERY BIG BANG"!!! I'm certain they covered it up so that close relatives couldn't sue the Gov't for negligence. Although it is a much different circumstance, whenever I hear of a magazine detonation I always think of the horrifying footage of the Arizona blowing up at Pearl Harbor. And how over a thousand lives can be snuffed out in a second!!!
O.k., so she blew up; but isn't it a fact that Invincible and Inflexible, in terms of enemy ships sunk and damaged, were our most successful and effective battlecruisers?
Hmmm ... that's interesting. I had been under the impression that the poor safety practices were the result of training competitions to have the greatest rate of fire. .
These ships attract a lot of negative comments and distasteful jokes because of their losses at Jutland, but when they were used for the roles they were designed for they proved to be highly effective ships. the losses at Jutland were more due to poor ammo handling plus both skilled and lucky German gunnery. The German BC's were more fast BB's than cruiser killers/scouts, which is the role the Invincible class was built for. The German ships had many flaws as well, but too many believe they were perfect in every way, which they most certainly were not.
The issue isn’t with their viability in their intended role; as you said they’re fine when used to chase down cruisers. The issue is strategic, in that building a capital ship to chase down subcapital units is a poor investment. Later battlecruisers (culminating in the actually-the-first-fast-battleship that was Hood) avoided this issue entirely by being intended to chase down other capital ships rather than being dedicated cruiser killers, but this doesn’t apply to Invincible.
@@bkjeong4302 True, once enemy raiding cruisers were swept from the sea the I's had little role. Personally I do not consider them BC's at all despite them being reclassified. They were conceived, designed and built as Dreadnought Armoured Cruisers and therefore the first British ships to be designed as Battlecruisers to be the Lion class. And faulty cordite handling aside they proved well able to stand up to the German BC's given the large number of hits they took at Jutland and were still combat capable whereas their more heavily armoured opponents (hit by defective AP shells) were hors de combat despite their advantage of being designed solely for short term voyages in the North Sea and thus could be far more heavily sub devided. Something they deny of course. But that's just my personal opinion.
@@johnfisher9692 Only two of the German battlecruisers at Jutland were damaged to the point they couldn’t engage the British any more: the rest were still able to engage the British if they wished. They genuinely did hold up well against British fire rather than being put out of action as you claim, albeit with the caveat that the British could have inflicted more damage with better-quality ammunition. The German retreat wasn’t because their ships were no longer able to fight-it was because Jutland was never intended to be a major fleet action in the first place (for the Germans), they simply wanted to kill some British battlecruisers but then ran into far more British opposition (in the form of Jellicoe’s battleline) than they expected. The Germans were NEVER going to stick around, regardless of what happened. Before you say “but the Germans wanted to break the blockade”, that was their goal for the entire naval campaign, not any one battle specifically. Jutland was only ever intended as another stepping stone in their ultimately futile plan to reduce the British capital ship force a few ships at a time.
Anti-torpedo nets- the booms can be folded out while stationary, to protect against a submarine or torpedo boat sneaking in and damaging a ship while at anchor. These booms are common on WWI-era capital ships, but disappear in the interwar period due to torpedoes becoming powerful enough to tear through the netting, and underwater protection arrangements becoming durable enough to withstand a torpedo hit themselves.
Invincible might be the most overly ambitious name for a first of it's kind sort of ship, but the other two ships were just as bad. Inflexible, because being effectively a stick up the *** is such a great idea for a name. Yes I know inflexible in this case is intended to mean 'not going to give in to enemy pressure', but that is certainly not the image you get, rather it is that of a ship that is unable to effectively cope with new circumstances. Indomitable, that is a great sounding name. It rolls off the tongue real well. But the meaning of 'can't be dominated/tamed/subdued' seems really far off course for a battlecruiser. Any time an actual battleship would square off against her, she would need to turn and run. Hardly very indomitable then.
The problem is that it gets quite cold in the south sea and in English we have the {near} homophone *chilly* which a good narrator, (like Drachinfel) should try to differentiate.
What is it with the British and calling things invincible and then getting them destroyed? Like HMS Invincible, The "Invincible" Hood, you really think they would have learned after the first time no? Gosh and they even named an aircraft carrier invincible after too, they should count their lucky stars that it wasn't sunk in the Falklands mark my words.
Germans copied these ships, they came, up with the blucher, then found out how, good they,were then changed there design, copied it.very good design invincible class, proved its worth in Falklands, and Jutland, disabled lutzow.and heavily damaged, defflinger, and a light cruiser,weisbaden.
![Quando Rondo - Grow Up [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8zFnCg3BO4Q/mqdefault.jpg)
Pinned post for Q&A :)
And yet another request for the Project 21 bullshit detection commentary. :)
Speaking of the Dardanelles, do you think the _original_ plan could have forced an Ottoman surrender if the captains and admirals involved had damned the torpedoes as intended and charged all the way to Istanbul?
Hey Drachinifel, there's a game called Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought that just released public Alpha version. You should check it out. I'd like to see you build some dreadnought and maybe pre-dreadnought ships :P
Do you know why the cage mast was such the rage in the U.S. Navy for a period of time? Was there reasons why they were hesitant to go with tripod masts like every other modern navy?
The British have a tendency to give many ships ironic names. I always liked the ship that delivered Maj. Andrea was H.M.S Vulture, a bit on the nose I should say.
Award for most ironically named warship goes to.
Jack Campbell's "The Lost Fleet" series has some fun with this. Ships named "Invincible" invariably were lost quickly. The Fleet officers wanted the name retired but the bureaucrats kept insisting on reusing the name.
My daydream is that the wing turrets are removed and small tube boilers and modern turbines installed giving the ship a top speed of say 28 or 29 knots. The center section would then be open for 4-6 inch d.p. guns and lighter aa guns. What you get is kind of a small battlecruiser similar to the larger Glorious with 12 inch guns in two twin turrets. I imagine them defending the far corners of the Empire. Facing off against the Graf Spee off Argentina. Would 4 12inch guns overcome 6 11 inch guns.also in 2 turrets?
Well Vanguard was our last BB built so you don't get more ironic than that either:)
@@eknapp49 Just looked it up, yeah. So they used the name on six different ships, and out of those FOUR were either lost in battle or wrecked, usually with incredible haste. No wonder the fleet wanted the name gone.
You should have seen the USS Texas' Sister ship: the USS Accurate
Before Jutland: Invincible. After Jutland: Invisible.
Savage.
It learned how to explore underwater, hence the name change! ;P
At Jutland: HMS Inflammable
Should we name our lightly armored battlecruiser invincible just to tempt fate? Of course!
Other battlecruisers got hit plenty of times and didn't explode. Don't blame the design for the ammo handling fuck ups.
@@migkillerphantom ammo handling fuck up aside, if the turret had more armor then there wouldn't have been an explosion. -.-
'SPEED. IS. ARMOR!!!!!1!!!" - ghost of Jackie Fisher
@@migkillerphantom it’s luck with your hits
@@Feiora not necessarily true. if there is improperly stored ammo in the turret then a direct hit may rattle it enough to trip it off even if it does not penetrant.
The ironic part is that the guy who were giving the order to stockpile ammo in the turrets and leaving the hatches open + having an useless signalofficer got promoted, while Jellicoe turned of to avoid the destroyers and was left With the blame.
Whats even more Incredible? Beatty tampered with the charts to show he didnt do any tactical error. It was proven just recently by a team who went to Research the Battle area and found some big errors. They also found one of Jellicoes Charts who seemed to be slightly more accurate than Beattys.
andreas pedersen We did love punishing success, look what happened to Dowding after BoB. Funnily enough there is a common personality inthe background...
@@Karibanu If you are referring to Churchill please remember he was NOT in the government in 1916. After time in the trenches he sat with the opposition in Parliament and was not in the government again till 1917.
@@Wombat1916 Nothing has changed in the Uk. The privileged still get rewarded handsomely for failure. Look at Boris.
It's funny that the German Fleet seemed to place stricter safety measures on their ammunition
@@ags5696 In a way RN did...
But I believe that Beatty had ordered the battlecruisers to keep the "flash-gates" open to accelerate the ammunition handling?
Pretty ironic that Jellicoe was forced to step down mainly because he turned the fleet away from the destroyers. While Beatty who failed to deliver intelligence about the KMs whereabouts so the fleet had problems with their placement. Then he placed the BCs at the front of the battle line, though they not are supposed to fight what they can't outgun. Mostly because of the armor.
The talk of ironic names reminds me of those great Galactic Fleet battleships, GSS Daring, GSS Audacity and GSS Suicidal Insanity.
If Vogon poetry is transmitted by Beatty, will it be survivable?
I was never bothered by the name choice, it was just another in a long series of that type of name scheme. Indefatigable has to be my favorite. Great word.
3:06 oh come on Drach, that was the most perfect opportunity to say "war were declared."
Also that ping from his phone lol
War declared does sound like a cricket game. War was declared and both teams went for lunch.
Actually there is some dispute as to whether war was declared by Britain and if so by whom. Though the British government decided that Britain was going to war no one can remember making a formal declaration, or who did declare it. There is some thought that Sir Edward Grey, Bt Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs may have been the one who did it, but he may have just told the press.
To put this into some sort of context Germany's Hamburg Shipping Line was still advertising trips to Germany in the British press for sometime after war was declared, and there were newspaper advertisements for British people to apply to a German music academy. No one at that time actually thought it would end in fighting.
@@Armo1997 That was Rahbar Al Haq complaining that Drach said war broke out rather then war was declared. He's a bit of a stickler for getting things right.👍
Big Blue nooo that was him saying drac shoulda done an Othais.
@@sugarnads Spot the fellow C&Rsenal viewers.
There's something humiliating about being scrapped just before the Washington Naval Treaty.
Lots of ships where, everyone knew what was coming so why waste the money keeping the ships around.
"Blimey, she's a bloody good-looking ship!"
"Indeed, and we shall name this new class of battlecruiser, HMS *title card*"
My school in Portsmouth had a very large roll of honour- this was on wooden plaques on the side of a memorial organ which was commissioned for the new school building as the old one had been Blitzed in 1941. Three names were those of three old boys who had studied together and died together in the engine room of HMS Invincible.
Roses are red, Spiders are frightening,
Why do the turrets keep making lightning?
- the turret crews
Commissioned in 1908 and scrapped in 1921 - shows how crazy the rate of change of naval design was in the early 20th century that a top of the line ship was effectively obsolescent in 12 years.
That's actually a rather long interval between commissioning and obsolescence....there were many capital ships (both before and after this class) that were outright obsolete *before* they were even in service!
@@bkjeong4302 *sad Lord Nelson-Class noises*
And then you have the predreadnoughts built in the dreadnought era and all the battleships built in the carrier era....
It was obsolete by 1916, so only 8 years...
By that time, the Queen Elizabeth 15” super dreadnoughts able to do 25kts were in service. Even the Iron Dukes had 13.5” guns. Admittedly those are true Battleships not Battlecruisers, but it does point out the rate of development. Dreadnought herself was outclassed by the time of Jutland.
@@bkjeong4302 battleships were not useless in WW2 (the carrier era). Yes, a coordinated strike from a carrier could sink a battleship easily. But carriers were restricted to daytime operations, good weather and calm sea. These were of course ideal conditions for battleships as well, but battleships could also fight at night and in bad weather. Battleships also had the advantage in rate of fire. A carrier needs mostly over an hour to launch a full strike, and another hour to recover planes. This makes them less usefull when they cant play their trump card: the range of their planes. At closer distances, a battleship can do so much more damage than a carrier, for example in shore bombardment or escord duty. Also, you dont need a carrier if you are in range of land based aircraft. This was mostly the case in the european theater. The whole North sea, baltic sea, black sea and mediterran could be covered by land based aircraft. And if those attack, they attack in large numbers. Like, 100 or so. With fighter escord. To prevent your carrier from taking catastrofic damage, you need armor on them. This is what the british did. But that limits your aircraft complement due to the weight of the armor.
So to summarise, a carrier can have the advantage over a battleship, but a battleship can also have the advantage over a carrier. It depends on the strategic and geografical situation. If you fight in the european theatre, battleships are just as important if not more important than carriers. But in the calm, open pacific carriers can play their trump card, their range. And they are the only way of getting large numbers of aircraft in the air. But to have a good navy that is prepared for all situations, you need both types of ships. Carriers and battleships.
Btw, I am basically only writing here what our beloved british naval expert Drach said in multiple different videos.
“This ship is invincible”
-crewman of a ship that was not invincible
"it was a crushing victory" - Drachinifel
-Did you die?
-Unfortunately yes , but I survived!
5:20 the painting looks like a modern take on Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire, tugged to her last berth to be broken up”
So.... this is Megumin's favorite class of ship? EXPLOOOSION!
Are you sure that's not Darkness, getting off on all that punishment?
@@kemarisite no, that would be the USS Nevada when they were trying to sink her....
3:18-3:51 this sir is funniest line with a straight face I have ever heard
Ive always taken issue with calling something; invincible, infallible, unstoppable etc..
Because its always a little awkward when they get sunk or captured...
HMS Victory Flashbacks
H.M.S. Mother inlaw and H.M.S. Root canal treatment are maybe the most scary names to use on the high seas.
Enemy ships crews have constant shivers along their spine when engaging them.
And should you lose one no problem , you can always re use the name.
There is an endless suply of mother in laws and root canal treatments 😁
Sad, laughable irony: there have been six Royal Navy vessels named Invincible--three sank as shipwrecks and one was sunk in battle. RN should stick to names like HMS Inedible, Inscrutable, or Implausible.
@@americanmade6996 Inedible...
Yup, the German Navy (with Beatty's help) proved that she was indeed quite... vincible.
Admiral Beatty´s responsibility isn´t sufficiently taken care of in that video. The sinking of 3 ships with 3300+ sailors on board is entirely the result of carelessness, ordered by the man himself, implemented by his subordinates who should have and could have known better. The aftermath, resulting in a massive cover-up, resulted in Beatty beeing promoted. Untill the very day this is one of the darkest chapters in british military history.
I'm imagining an "Epic Rap battle of history" style fight between Beatty and Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, USN where they both brag about how many allied people they killed.
The Battlecruisers thought they were the Cavalry of the seas. Unfortunately with cavalry, the horse usually had the brains and at sea that’s not much use...
Although... you might argue that Harwood’s later action in WW2 with two light cruisers and a type B County class 8” against a pocket battleship was equally foolhardy, but it seemed to pay off that time... even if Exeter was basically scragged in the process.
It could also be said that there was a certain level of frustration over the last 2 years since the battlecruisers had kept trying to force an action with the High Seas fleet, and they had become impetuous through it. Still no excuse for the excessively high loss of life though.
You know if I was the captain of invincible and Beatty told me to remove safety doors and stockpile ammunition in the turrets I would have told him to shove it! What good is a high rate of fire when you're dead?
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe - an excellent notion, which needs a couple of notes.
The HMS Victoria disaster would still be in living memory and it showed the level to which the Royal Navy would obey orders, no matter how damned stupid.
And the Troubridge affair in 1914 where the senior officer refused to engage two battle cruisers, feeling that they were a superior force - he was court martialled for it.
In both cases, independent action was not condoned by the Navy.
@@mikereger1186 Good points, but HMS Tiger and the 5th battle squadron all stuck to the navy's proper method for handling ammunition and they all survived Jutland, despite being under Beatty's command. I'm sure a small degree of independent thinking was allowed especially when it came down to small things like ammunition handling. I mean storing ammunition in the turrets wasn't exactly accepted practice in the Royal Navy at the time, or in any navy for that matter. Beatty should have been nailed to the wall for the losses at Jutland.
So, they had a ship with cruiser grade armour but big enough guns to make sure the brass wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to press it int the line of battle anyway, and named it Invincible?
Might as well have named her HMS Tempting Fate...
Pinned post for Q&A :)
"There appears to be something wrong with our Battlecruisers today"
~ said after the 3rd BC exploded...
If you're referring to Adm Beatty, he said "bloody ships" not "Battlecruisers".
There was something wrong with his bloody gunnery doctrine. A bad workman always blames his tools. There was nothing wrong with those ships.
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe
Yes, they simply didn't understand how crucial it was to follow the standard procedures when it came to flash protection etc. Getting people to follow procedures when they get the confidence of familiarity is a very common problem (consider Chernobyl as a great illustration). The Germans had an experience similar to what cost the RN at Jutland; the ship barely avoided a catastrophic explosion, and the message went through the fleet very clearly.
@@steeltrap3800 Indeed. Just look at HMS Tiger. Her crew followed the correct ammunition handling procedure and she survived Jutland, despite taking a direct hit to one of her turrets. Beatty should have been nailed to the wall after Jutland, but instead he was promoted! Hardly the navy's finest hour.
@@AWMJoeyjoejoe to be fair, while I doubt the British CCs would have been lost without that doctrinal error, they would have likely still come off worse damaged on average compared to the Germans. (The fact the Germans retreated doesn't contradict this as the German plan at Jutland was to hit and run from from the start, they knew better than to try and break the blockade in one massive battle they would probably lose; at the end of Jutland only two of the German battlecruisers were damaged to the point of being inoperable and only one fo those two were sunk)
Another great video from the master of all things warship, "Drachinifel"!
Regardless of how she performed at Jutland, she is one heck of a beautiful ship.
She performed extremely well at Jutland it was just an unlucky hit
In honor of them finding the IJN Kaga, how about a video on the Kaga. If you want in depth, then maybe the Battle of Midway. Thank you
For whatever reason the robo version of this one has always been one of my favorites, I think it's the perfect valance of information and British dry sence of humor 😂
Robert Massie's "Dreadnought" says that the preliminary concept design for the Invincible class was called HMS Perfection by Fisher. he references Fear God and Dread Nought and an older book about Jutland.
This may be the best looking warship of them all!
I recall staring at its picture years ago when I found a German book on Spee's squadron.
so at jutland it seems hipper's 5 battle cruisers fought beatty's 7 battlecruisers, the 4 QE class battleships and Hoods 3 battle cruisers! 5 on 13! They sank 3 battle cruisers 2 armored cruisers, almost sank the Lion and inflicted heavy damage on others though they lost Lutzow and suffered heavy damage themselves
That name was just asking for trouble....
Not the Hms Invincible I recall serving on, where's the ski ramp? 🤔😉
Tell me you are joking
I feel like any ship is claimed as unsinkable, or invincible it is now a doomed ship.
I have sometimes wondered what happened to the old robot voice. Is it in a cupboard somewhere next to a rather battered old Commodore 64 and a ZX 80 who's rubber keyboard is worn out. It will be on an antiques show in about twenty years time. This was owned by that Drach guy. You know. The one who bought out RUclips before disappearing into the virtual Bermuda Triangle on World of Warship. To busy talking and not watching where his ship was going.
believe its being kept to be the voice of the Dalek Cruiser Exterminate.
2:42, is that "New Zealand" I spy on the stern?
Good eye mate, that sure is New Zealand right there
I'm not sure if this video was in response to my recent request or not but, either way, thanks for another great video!
Great Video as always thank you again
That notification sound around the Indefatigable class remark drove me nuts until I figured out it was in the video itself.
Invincible
*Blows up anyway*
so basically the bcvs germans is a typical irl world of warships match
Random musing. If someone named the Dreadnaught after flowers we might have ended up with HMS Daisy. Then we'd have a silly references to the "The pre-Daisy era" and the "The super Daisy battleships"
Swap the Flower-class corvette names with Dreadnought battleships? that'd make both Jutland and the Battle of the Atlantic quite silly...
Super-Petunias, that'd have been fun. Marigold? Hollyhock? names to really put the fear into an enemy fleet :)
Complete with 'The Devils Paintbrush'!
*_I AM INVINCIBLE!_*
*Turret flies into space
Yeah, there is some irony in the names. But they are still better than the USN practice of naming ships with a map and a set of darts.
how about a special series for the German and British built ships of the Imperial China Navy in the 19th Century
Ah, the good old HMS Hubristic Irony
"Congratulations. You are promoted to Captain and will be given your own command!"
"Huzzah! Thank you! Which one?"
"The Invincible"
... *prepares will*
I would like you to cover the south American pacific war naval combats of the later half of the 19th Century
Eerie coincidence. Invincible was the flagship of a small squadron of battle cruisers commanded by Admiral Horace Hood. He was killed along with almost the entire crew when Invincible catastrophically exploded. The Hood of WW II fame was named after his great, great grandfather, Admiral Samuel Hood. Admiral Horace Hood's widow christened the Hood.
Drach, if you ever start doing videos on famous naval personnel, could you please do one on Beatty? I'm confused as to how this man rose so high in the Royal Navy during wartime despite seemingly making all the wrong calls, suffering horrific losses at Jutland, and being considered generally mediocre these days. I assume it was because people's perceptions of his performance were different at the time. That, or he was a public relations genius and/or had lots of really good friends in really high places.
Also, what were the thoughts of the British BC crews about removing their flash protection before and after Jutland? Did they agree with the decision beforehand, and did they later recognize it as part of the reason for their losses?
Beatty was an arsehole who got a lot of men killed. But he was rich and well connected and untouchable.
@@jamesharmer9293 correct, if i remember from a comment on another video (I can't prove it cause i have parental control and can't look it up) he fakes the charts on some maps so the government doesn't find the flaws he made
@@jamesharmer9293 You have to be a special kind of arsehole if your former enemy refuses to attend your funeral...As Hipper said he would
Was that my Facebook notification..? Nope it was Dracs lol.
4 videos in 1 day, wow nice
I REALLY enjoy your videos... so well done! I oftentimes think I was born in the wrong decade, lol
Should have called them Battledestroyers, the Terror of torpedo boats everywhere. How big could they possibly be? By the time other Navy's figured it out, they would have wasted their money on slightly bigger Cruisers, the natural prey of this type of ship. Nothing like catching your potential enemies with their pants down!
Excellent videos! All of them! I do have a small suggestion/request though.. Please balance the audio of the outro to the actual video.. My poor ears will be forever grateful!
The "new" ships for the Empire: Hurrar! Hubris, Horrible idea and How the mighty have fallen.
now i know why there is no Deutschland-class cruiser with the name Deutschland
So sad when the daughters of invincible had a family in fighting and that her 2 german daughters sank their own mother
Do you ever sleep so many good videos in a short space of time :)
HMS Combustible
Ironic that a 5/7 invincibles sunk.
3:06 checks for text message !!!
Are you going as the robot that did the previous narration for halloween?
There was just something wrong with the bloody ships that day...
Since there were apparently three German ships named Lutzow at one time or another spanning both wars I think it would be interesting if you could produce one video that covers all of them. Jutland, etc.
There is a third? I only knew of SMS Lützow (the one that detonated HMS Invincible) and KMS Lützow (Previously KMS Deutschland as said in the video)
@@ivangenov6782 The third was an unfinished Admiral Hipper-class cruiser. It was cancelled and sold to the Soviets in 1940, renamed Petropavlovsk (later Tallinn in 1944 and Dniepr in 1953), sunk (still incomplete) during Operation Barbarossa, raised that same year, and used as a barracks and training ship until it was scrapped in 1953.
@@G011d3n oooohhhh, thanks for the information
Edit: Just looked the Petropavlovsk up, i must say, the Soviets changed her so much the only thing that remains the same is the atlantic bow design
@@ivangenov6782 No problem, glad I helped!
We need HMS Invincible 2.
*HMS Invincibler
To inevitably be followed by HMS Invinciblest.
The next one at least survived to be scrapped ( Falklands conflict carrier ). HMS Invincible-because-of-escort-fleet doesn't have quite the same ring to it...
If the Admiralty had called them "Super Cruisers" from the very start then we probably would not have this persistent confusion that Battlecruisers are just under-armoured Battleships that can still fight with the main battle fleet. And then we'd be much more likely to see 1944 refit Renown as a T9 Cruiser instead of trying to shoehorn her in somewhere as a Battleship.
Yeah the Admiralty and politicians just tended to look at the calibre of the main guns and then order them into battle. Simple equations for posh idiots (15 inch = 15 inch) meant the Hood died and all the battle-cruisers found themselves in roles that they weren't designed for.
@@Caratacus1 Hood wasn't really an example due to actually having battleship levels of armour. All the older ones on the other hand...
It really must be said. Taking the door off the magazine of a ship totally negates the safety the magazine was designed to implement. Any and ALL of the sailors that did this are and/or were guilty of gross negligence, incompetence & total ignorance. And most every sailor aboard paid the cost. Every sailor that knew that those safety mechanisms had been taken away should have spoken up & blown the whistle about it, so to speak. It should not have been kicked down the road like a tin can & ignored until battlecruisers started suffering catastrophic explosions & sinking with all hands in a matter of what??? Three ships in one battle? The only saving grace for the sailors aboard... their loved ones can truthfully say "They went out with a bang! A VERY BIG BANG"!!! I'm certain they covered it up so that close relatives couldn't sue the Gov't for negligence.
Although it is a much different circumstance, whenever I hear of a magazine detonation I always think of the horrifying footage of the Arizona blowing up at Pearl Harbor. And how over a thousand lives can be snuffed out in a second!!!
O.k., so she blew up; but isn't it a fact that Invincible and Inflexible, in terms of enemy ships sunk and damaged, were our most successful and effective battlecruisers?
Invincible had a kill list of part of von Spee's squadron plus Lutzow, so yeah, she got a good return on investment.
3:06 I completely expected the phrase, "War Were Declared."
Hmmm ... that's interesting. I had been under the impression that the poor safety practices were the result of training competitions to have the greatest rate of fire.
.
Quick! Someone blame Churchill @4:15 !
HMS Invincible - Was Not Invincible
RMS Titanic "The Unsinkable Ship" - Ended Up Sinking
The British seems to love tempting fate don't they?
At 2:57, is that a US flag on the aft mast?
How did Beatty escape court-martial or censure?
3:06 you have a message
What was point of battle cruiser anyone know
These ships attract a lot of negative comments and distasteful jokes because of their losses at Jutland, but when they were used for the roles they were designed for they proved to be highly effective ships. the losses at Jutland were more due to poor ammo handling plus both skilled and lucky German gunnery.
The German BC's were more fast BB's than cruiser killers/scouts, which is the role the Invincible class was built for.
The German ships had many flaws as well, but too many believe they were perfect in every way, which they most certainly were not.
No, the German BCs were just much better balanced ships.
The issue isn’t with their viability in their intended role; as you said they’re fine when used to chase down cruisers.
The issue is strategic, in that building a capital ship to chase down subcapital units is a poor investment. Later battlecruisers (culminating in the actually-the-first-fast-battleship that was Hood) avoided this issue entirely by being intended to chase down other capital ships rather than being dedicated cruiser killers, but this doesn’t apply to Invincible.
@@bkjeong4302 True, once enemy raiding cruisers were swept from the sea the I's had little role. Personally I do not consider them BC's at all despite them being reclassified.
They were conceived, designed and built as Dreadnought Armoured Cruisers and therefore the first British ships to be designed as Battlecruisers to be the Lion class.
And faulty cordite handling aside they proved well able to stand up to the German BC's given the large number of hits they took at Jutland and were still combat capable whereas their more heavily armoured opponents (hit by defective AP shells) were hors de combat despite their advantage of being designed solely for short term voyages in the North Sea and thus could be far more heavily sub devided. Something they deny of course.
But that's just my personal opinion.
@@johnfisher9692
Only two of the German battlecruisers at Jutland were damaged to the point they couldn’t engage the British any more: the rest were still able to engage the British if they wished. They genuinely did hold up well against British fire rather than being put out of action as you claim, albeit with the caveat that the British could have inflicted more damage with better-quality ammunition.
The German retreat wasn’t because their ships were no longer able to fight-it was because Jutland was never intended to be a major fleet action in the first place (for the Germans), they simply wanted to kill some British battlecruisers but then ran into far more British opposition (in the form of Jellicoe’s battleline) than they expected. The Germans were NEVER going to stick around, regardless of what happened.
Before you say “but the Germans wanted to break the blockade”, that was their goal for the entire naval campaign, not any one battle specifically. Jutland was only ever intended as another stepping stone in their ultimately futile plan to reduce the British capital ship force a few ships at a time.
Spoiler the Invincible wasn't.
She was in serious trouble before her magazines detonated
Can you please speak about the republic and Francos armies during Spanish civil War thanks
I am relatively new, and wow do you always release 4 videos a day?
The ones that say (Human Voice) are older ones that he's redone in his own voice.
@@coreys2686 ah, wel that explains it, thanks!
What are the bars on the side of the ship's hull for?
Anti-torpedo nets- the booms can be folded out while stationary, to protect against a submarine or torpedo boat sneaking in and damaging a ship while at anchor. These booms are common on WWI-era capital ships, but disappear in the interwar period due to torpedoes becoming powerful enough to tear through the netting, and underwater protection arrangements becoming durable enough to withstand a torpedo hit themselves.
@@novafloresca7758 thanks.
(Ship) I'm INVINCIBLE!!!!........
(Germans) .......your a loony!
If it's called invincible, then why can I see it?
Why does the ship at 3:00 have an American flag on the aftermast?
If you name a ship "Invincible" you are really asking for it.
To whomever named a poorly armoured ship Invincible, you keep using that word I do not think it means what you think
HMS Vincible?
Really wish the Royal Navy would retire the name Invincible... possibly the worst name for a seagoing vessel.
the carrier did good.
I think its better than a oil tanker of the Titan Fleet. Titan Uranus.
Invincible might be the most overly ambitious name for a first of it's kind sort of ship, but the other two ships were just as bad.
Inflexible, because being effectively a stick up the *** is such a great idea for a name. Yes I know inflexible in this case is intended to mean 'not going to give in to enemy pressure', but that is certainly not the image you get, rather it is that of a ship that is unable to effectively cope with new circumstances.
Indomitable, that is a great sounding name. It rolls off the tongue real well. But the meaning of 'can't be dominated/tamed/subdued' seems really far off course for a battlecruiser. Any time an actual battleship would square off against her, she would need to turn and run. Hardly very indomitable then.
What are those beams on the side?
Anti-torpedo net supports
In in in in in in in in in in in
3:07 did your phone went off
Sale to `chill- ai` :D
The problem is that it gets quite cold in the south sea and in English we have the {near} homophone *chilly* which a good narrator, (like Drachinfel) should try to differentiate.
What is it with the British and calling things invincible and then getting them destroyed? Like HMS Invincible, The "Invincible" Hood, you really think they would have learned after the first time no? Gosh and they even named an aircraft carrier invincible after too, they should count their lucky stars that it wasn't sunk in the Falklands mark my words.
Germans copied these ships, they came, up with the blucher, then found out how, good they,were then changed there design, copied it.very good design invincible class, proved its
worth in Falklands, and Jutland, disabled lutzow.and heavily damaged, defflinger, and a light cruiser,weisbaden.
Not so "Invincible" after all. *says sarcastically*
Wasent really that invincible
Stupid name for a warship... Just like calling any ship "unsinkable" you're kind of asking for it.