Drach is one of those scholars whom you can just sit and listen to him for hours... Which is why his drydock sessions are so epic in scale. Great co-op content between the great minds!
I had 2 uncles in subs during WWII. One was a torpedoman that started the war in the Philippines. He saw the whole drama of the Mk 14 played out. Command was blaming the skippers and their marksmanship or the torpedomen for improper care of the torpedoes. The crews would risk their lives getting close to the enemy, just to prove the torpedoes didn't work as advertised. He said by the time the war was a couple months old, everyone on board knew the Mk 14 inside out including the officers. He remembers each time one of the flaws was discovered and passed down to all the boats. Only to find out when they quit using the magnetic exploder, the contact exploder didn't work all the time, either. I know Drach told the story of the Mk 14, but I think that story needs to be retold and retold. It helps explain why the military goes thru so much testing of new weapons. Maybe the navy learned the lesson of proper testing.
It was a pleasure to hear the two of you, Paul and Drach, speaking aboard the Cod back in September. Great to see some of the videos from that collaboration coming out now.
This was awesome Paul, thank you! I'm impressed and very pleased with the outreach of COD. Memories of her are going around the world, thanks to Paul, the crew, and those who support her.
The S Class Boats mainly had 4 21" Bow Tubes, a few of the class did include a single 21" Stern Tube. These were essentially Medium range Coastal Boats that were really not much different to the Type II or Type VII U Boats. I read a great book entitled Pigboat S-39, which documented her service while stationed in Cavite, Philippines. The early S Class boats were not all that successful, but one can't fault their brave crews. These boats had no type of TDC, and no air conditioning-hence the name Pigboats due to the odor of unwashed bodies and sweat that permeated the below decks.
The Cachalot class was smaller than a Gato- or Tambor-class boat, being similar in size to the German Type IX. It was also slower than a Gato, just 17 Kn, and only had 6 torpedo tubes. The next, Porpoise class was larger, ~1300 tons and a knot faster, but still just 6 torpedo tubes (and 16 torpedoes). Porpoise class boats did quite a few war patrols and 4 were lost. The Salmon class was closer in size to a Gato, could do 21 Kn, had 8 torpedo tubes, and carried 24 torpedoes. The RN T class had less range than a USN fleet boat, BUT Hong Kong and Singapore were much closer to Japan than Pearl Harbor. In that context the lesser range would not be the limitation it might seem ... until Hong Kong and Singapore were captured by Japan.
From the small bits of I've heard of the service of British submarines was how vital they were to using places like Malta to stage out of to cut off the Italian and German transports to North Africa. Seems weird they never got the recognition that the "silent service" did in the post war era, is this because they ran out of a job by 1943?
@@paulfarace9595 pretty sure 1942 was a pretty good year for their interceptions for the Italian convoys considering they sometimes cut up to 90% of the supplies sent on some months
@19:45- "This concept of keeping the sailors happy..." The boats I qual'd on had massive air-conditioning and refrigeration plants. Of those, only the Refer plant could be said to be for the comfort of the crew. The air-conditioning was entirely for the service of the ships electronics (forward) and the propulsion plant and ancillary systems (aft). Without a massive air-conditioning plant a modern nuclear submarine would become an uninhabitable sewer-pipe. Gato boats had hot diesels and electric motors that, combined with piss-warm tropical waters and heated batteries made habitation prohibitive. A type VII U-Boat could not have operated in the Pacific.
Regarding the habitability features of the Gato/Balao/Trench boats: Air conditioning. Very nice for submariners serving in the South and Southwest Pacific hunting Japanese tankers, but from what I've read, the primary reason for AC was not crew comfort, but reduced humidity. With ninety men exhaling moisture-laden air for 8-12 hours running submerged in daylight, the problem of condensation playing havoc with electrical systems is considerable. Using AC to dehumidify the air helps tremendously. Modern nuclear boats have an even more massive problem with humidity since they usually submerge and surface only once per patrol. Thankfully the nukes have power to spare to circulate conditioned air. O-19. At 265 feet long and 1100 tons, the O-19 class (there were two, O-19 and O-20, both lost) were roughly equivalent to the German Type IX boats in terms of space for fuel, crew, and stores. In other words, good for a patrol anywhere in the North Atlantic -- ten days out, ten days on station, ten days back. Not, however ideal for the Pacific unless the theatre of operation was relatively constrained, such as the East Indies. However, operating from Fremantle, as she normally did, O-19 must have been a difficult vessel to live and fight in. When her crew transferred to Cod, it must have been like a vacation for them.
The air conditioning issue is a very common mistake in sub history. The Navy submarine conference of 1934 dictated aircon for crew comfort in tropical seas... air conditioning is essentially dehumidification, more than chilling AND it certainly helps later when electronics aboard subs expand tremendously during and after the war. But don't believe me, read John Alden's book "The fleet submarine in the US Navy."
U-1206 is a perennial source of amusement for me. Never underestimate the plumbing while underwater. Or, for that matter, above water - as exemplified by USS Ronald Reagan. That a ship of that name ended up stained horribly brown down one side is remarkably apt.
My father was the ERA on HMS Thrasher in 44/45 operating out of Trincomalee, so he would have operated a lathe very similar to that fitted to HMS Alliance. Now he died when I was 16 and i never thought to record what he said to me about his time nor were my questions brilliantly structured - if a submarine film was on TV say "Above us the waves", "we dive at dawn" or "run silent run deep" I would ask questions about bits in the film and he would say its right or wrongly depicted..... Hollywood "Torpedo loading" was one of those he debunked for me and he explained the "Thetis clip" safety device on RN submarines and why it was were brought into service (you can see them on HMS Alliance if you visit Gosport). For him the memory was the stench that you had at the end of a patrol- with 50+ men stuck in the enclosed metal can, who had not fully washed in weeks, with no clean clothes plus the smell of diesel fuel in the engineering space. No wonder a few got into a few scrapes, with Australians in the bars during shore-leave- partying hard to release all those stresses🎉.
Refrigerated air conditioning was needed for the 1940’s electrical equipment. Humidity deteriorates electronic performance. As well as crew performance
While it was a great benefit when operating lots of electronic and electrical systems the AC was stipulated for all US subs after 1934 by the USN for crew habitability. Read John Alden's book The Fleet Sub.
@ … Knowing a Navy mindset it was easier to be persuaded by the electronics benefit than by increased crew performance. Obviously operating in warm or cold water AC was game changer for the crew.
Not sure if put out but I believe most s boats had 4 tubes forward, but may have been modified with one stern tube as listed with 5 tubes. Not sure about sister s49
Hey, Drach. This is what happens whenever you get into a conversation with someone from Ohio. They’re half drunk and tell you a story their dad’s dad told them.
Everyone's torpedoes sucked in the start of the war... it's just that the American weapons bureau refused to consider that their weapons were defective and resisted pressure to retest and reconsider.
Well, the British torpedoes didn't entirely work right from the start. But it was a lot quicker and easier to get them working well enough without having BuOrd opposing every move.
my dad was a merchant seaman in the engine room on the Murmansk run. marine gaurds on the door to keep the guys from going topside while the fish were in the water. my dad introduced me to a german uboater working in a deli in new york when i was a little kid. some ex pow survived the war at ft leonard wood in a pow camp. my dad made sure i knew they were just sailors. bozos on the bus. in 51 my dad was still at sea with the cuard lines and got tricked during a strike to picket on the dock, and got kidnapped by the us army and drafted for korea. he was stationed at ft leonard wood.
Of all the tough jobs in all the lousy wars this world has ever known, engine room hand on the Murmansk run has to have been the worst. Not in a million years could I have faced that day after day.
Drach is one of those scholars whom you can just sit and listen to him for hours... Which is why his drydock sessions are so epic in scale.
Great co-op content between the great minds!
Drach is a star, he makes anything interesting. I had a psychology lecturer that would turn everyone on, that was her thing .
8 out of the 51 S Class submarines built had a single stern torpedo tube in addition to the four forward tubes.
Thanks! We're those the EBCo or the Lake subs...?
@@paulfarace9595I think all of them were Lake. Four Group IIs and all of the Group IVs
I had 2 uncles in subs during WWII. One was a torpedoman that started the war in the Philippines. He saw the whole drama of the Mk 14 played out. Command was blaming the skippers and their marksmanship or the torpedomen for improper care of the torpedoes. The crews would risk their lives getting close to the enemy, just to prove the torpedoes didn't work as advertised. He said by the time the war was a couple months old, everyone on board knew the Mk 14 inside out including the officers. He remembers each time one of the flaws was discovered and passed down to all the boats. Only to find out when they quit using the magnetic exploder, the contact exploder didn't work all the time, either.
I know Drach told the story of the Mk 14, but I think that story needs to be retold and retold. It helps explain why the military goes thru so much testing of new weapons. Maybe the navy learned the lesson of proper testing.
WW2 was a couple of months old? Ahh, yes you must be an American. A day late and a dollar short, eh?
It was a pleasure to hear the two of you, Paul and Drach, speaking aboard the Cod back in September. Great to see some of the videos from that collaboration coming out now.
This was awesome Paul, thank you! I'm impressed and very pleased with the outreach of COD. Memories of her are going around the world, thanks to Paul, the crew, and those who support her.
Interesting as always.
Delightful collab!
The S Class Boats mainly had 4 21" Bow Tubes, a few of the class did include a single 21" Stern Tube. These were essentially Medium range Coastal Boats that were really not much different to the Type II or Type VII U Boats. I read a great book entitled Pigboat S-39, which documented her service while stationed in Cavite, Philippines. The early S Class boats were not all that successful, but one can't fault their brave crews. These boats had no type of TDC, and no air conditioning-hence the name Pigboats due to the odor of unwashed bodies and sweat that permeated the below decks.
The Cachalot class was smaller than a Gato- or Tambor-class boat, being similar in size to the German Type IX. It was also slower than a Gato, just 17 Kn, and only had 6 torpedo tubes. The next, Porpoise class was larger, ~1300 tons and a knot faster, but still just 6 torpedo tubes (and 16 torpedoes). Porpoise class boats did quite a few war patrols and 4 were lost. The Salmon class was closer in size to a Gato, could do 21 Kn, had 8 torpedo tubes, and carried 24 torpedoes. The RN T class had less range than a USN fleet boat, BUT Hong Kong and Singapore were much closer to Japan than Pearl Harbor. In that context the lesser range would not be the limitation it might seem ... until Hong Kong and Singapore were captured by Japan.
Yes they were smaller... but like early homosapiens, they were the first of the breed. Each succeeding class was larger and more capable.
Wow, Alex made it home, we were afraid you disappeared in Cleveland.😂😂👍👍
My mother's cousin, the rock star of the family, was the skipper on the USS Grampus - on Eternal Patrol.
Two of my favorite channels combined. 👍
Very interesting, especially the part about getting to Japan and back, I never thought about it that way before. 🤔😂
Greetings from East Tennessee 🤠
Great chat. Thanks for sharing.
20:50 "Creature comforts", the RN rum ration says, "Hold my grog."
From the small bits of I've heard of the service of British submarines was how vital they were to using places like Malta to stage out of to cut off the Italian and German transports to North Africa. Seems weird they never got the recognition that the "silent service" did in the post war era, is this because they ran out of a job by 1943?
Yes and they didn't have too great target prior to 1943.
@@paulfarace9595 pretty sure 1942 was a pretty good year for their interceptions for the Italian convoys considering they sometimes cut up to 90% of the supplies sent on some months
It's interesting to hear another countries point of view on preparing for the big war.
Good to hear about the Royal Navy Submarine force and doctrine from Alex.
We like big boats and I cannot lie ...
(Adm Mix-a-Lot)
Excellent
@ 15:15 You owe me a new set of nostrils from the massive Snort over 'IF the torpedos work!"
US submarines had the ice-cream machines but the British submarine tenders in Fremantle had a beer tap installed by a local Brewery :)
@19:45- "This concept of keeping the sailors happy..."
The boats I qual'd on had massive air-conditioning and refrigeration plants. Of those, only the Refer plant could be said to be for the comfort of the crew.
The air-conditioning was entirely for the service of the ships electronics (forward) and the propulsion plant and ancillary systems (aft).
Without a massive air-conditioning plant a modern nuclear submarine would become an uninhabitable sewer-pipe. Gato boats had hot diesels and electric motors that, combined with piss-warm tropical waters and heated batteries made habitation prohibitive. A type VII U-Boat could not have operated in the Pacific.
Interesting... a lot of good compare and contrast.
Regarding the habitability features of the Gato/Balao/Trench boats:
Air conditioning. Very nice for submariners serving in the South and Southwest Pacific hunting Japanese tankers, but from what I've read, the primary reason for AC was not crew comfort, but reduced humidity. With ninety men exhaling moisture-laden air for 8-12 hours running submerged in daylight, the problem of condensation playing havoc with electrical systems is considerable. Using AC to dehumidify the air helps tremendously. Modern nuclear boats have an even more massive problem with humidity since they usually submerge and surface only once per patrol. Thankfully the nukes have power to spare to circulate conditioned air.
O-19. At 265 feet long and 1100 tons, the O-19 class (there were two, O-19 and O-20, both lost) were roughly equivalent to the German Type IX boats in terms of space for fuel, crew, and stores. In other words, good for a patrol anywhere in the North Atlantic -- ten days out, ten days on station, ten days back. Not, however ideal for the Pacific unless the theatre of operation was relatively constrained, such as the East Indies. However, operating from Fremantle, as she normally did, O-19 must have been a difficult vessel to live and fight in. When her crew transferred to Cod, it must have been like a vacation for them.
The air conditioning issue is a very common mistake in sub history. The Navy submarine conference of 1934 dictated aircon for crew comfort in tropical seas... air conditioning is essentially dehumidification, more than chilling AND it certainly helps later when electronics aboard subs expand tremendously during and after the war. But don't believe me, read John Alden's book "The fleet submarine in the US Navy."
The Dutch crew i talked to were highly impressed with Cod's size, amenities and the quality of food!
Thanks
U-1206 is a perennial source of amusement for me. Never underestimate the plumbing while underwater. Or, for that matter, above water - as exemplified by USS Ronald Reagan. That a ship of that name ended up stained horribly brown down one side is remarkably apt.
Just wait for the USS Biden. They'll have to pair it with another ship to hold her hand at all times.
My father was the ERA on HMS Thrasher in 44/45 operating out of Trincomalee, so he would have operated a lathe very similar to that fitted to HMS Alliance.
Now he died when I was 16 and i never thought to record what he said to me about his time nor were my questions brilliantly structured - if a submarine film was on TV say "Above us the waves", "we dive at dawn" or "run silent run deep" I would ask questions about bits in the film and he would say its right or wrongly depicted..... Hollywood "Torpedo loading" was one of those he debunked for me and he explained the "Thetis clip" safety device on RN submarines and why it was were brought into service (you can see them on HMS Alliance if you visit Gosport). For him the memory was the stench that you had at the end of a patrol- with 50+ men stuck in the enclosed metal can, who had not fully washed in weeks, with no clean clothes plus the smell of diesel fuel in the engineering space. No wonder a few got into a few scrapes, with Australians in the bars during shore-leave- partying hard to release all those stresses🎉.
Refrigerated air conditioning was needed for the 1940’s electrical equipment. Humidity deteriorates electronic performance. As well as crew performance
While it was a great benefit when operating lots of electronic and electrical systems the AC was stipulated for all US subs after 1934 by the USN for crew habitability. Read John Alden's book The Fleet Sub.
@ … Knowing a Navy mindset it was easier to be persuaded by the electronics benefit than by increased crew performance. Obviously operating in warm or cold water AC was game changer for the crew.
Not sure if put out but I believe most s boats had 4 tubes forward, but may have been modified with one stern tube as listed with 5 tubes. Not sure about sister s49
Whatever happened to the Dutch sub after the war? I’ve tried to find it on google maps but never found it
Rusted away until scrapped circa 2005.
i like big boats I cannot lie...sung to the tune of .....
as i am from and live in cleveland area... i do love the COD and all your videos! as well as i love drach's work! great combo!!
Did the British Subs have rum ration as the surface ships did. Lets see rum or ice cream?
Subs were part of the Royal Navy ... sooooo....
Great discussion...to be a 1942 US submariner..firing duds at targets..2025 will be interesting 😢🇺🇲
Hey, Drach. This is what happens whenever you get into a conversation with someone from Ohio. They’re half drunk and tell you a story their dad’s dad told them.
What are you talking about? "Hic" 🤪🥺🤮 I'd slap someone but I can't decide which of the two of you is the right one...
Explain how the British torpedo differed from the US torpedoes.
Ours worked!
Everyone's torpedoes sucked in the start of the war... it's just that the American weapons bureau refused to consider that their weapons were defective and resisted pressure to retest and reconsider.
@@paulfarace9595… Not everyone’s torpedoes sucked. Japanese torpedoes worked
Well, the British torpedoes didn't entirely work right from the start. But it was a lot quicker and easier to get them working well enough without having BuOrd opposing every move.
Are S and T the same for British and American submarines?
No... very different designs.
It's easy to tell them apart. S is pronounced differently than T.
How functional is COD ?
Cod is 100% functional for her current mission as a memorial ship. Everyone saying their boat is 70 - 40 - 90% functional is kidding themselves.
No mention of the British subs that had a BB gun
my dad was a merchant seaman in the engine room on the Murmansk run. marine gaurds on the door to keep the guys from going topside while the fish were in the water.
my dad introduced me to a german uboater working in a deli in new york when i was a little kid. some ex pow survived the war at ft leonard wood in a pow camp. my dad made sure i knew they were just sailors. bozos on the bus. in 51 my dad was still at sea with the cuard lines and got tricked during a strike to picket on the dock, and got kidnapped by the us army and drafted for korea. he was stationed at ft leonard wood.
Of all the tough jobs in all the lousy wars this world has ever known, engine room hand on the Murmansk run has to have been the worst. Not in a million years could I have faced that day after day.
NEVER not watch a sub talk.