What if the USN rifle they're smoothborg cannons with rifleing like the US army did with the 6-pounder field guns too the 14-pounder james rifle what will they be in the pounder measurement system
01:43:26 - Cargo submarine designs? Actualy there was a dutch design for a 3 cilinder cargo submarine to relief malta , Dutch designer Max Gunning . offerd the design based on the Type 1939 a succesor in development of the O21 class . Max Gunning was born on October 9, 1895 in Zwolle. He was the eight and youngest son of professor Dr. Jan Gunning and Cecilia van Eeghen. He stems from an upper class family with an academic background. Until his graduation as naval engineer, in 1922, he lived in Delft and after that, because of his work for the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Navy), in The Hague, Hellevoetsluis and Vlissingen. He succeeded in his career and became manager (1935-1940) and permanent consultant (1945-1960) of the design consortium N.V Nederlandse Verenigde Scheepsbouwbureaux (Dutch United Shipbuilding Agencies PLC) (NEVESBU) in the Hague, where work was done for the four biggest shipyards in the Netherlands. Basically NEVESBU was his brainchild. In 1940, when the war broke out, he decided to flee to England via Portugal, in all probability with help from the Navy. Max Gunning was appointed Head Engineer in the Dutch Ministry of Naval Affairs which was stationed in London. He was responsable for the completion and repair of warships like HNLMS van Heemskerk and Isaac Sweers, hurriedly transported across to England. In 1942, in the middle of the war, he conceived the brilliant idea for a three-cylindre cargo submarine with a bigger carrying capacity. This made it possible to transport goods to the allied forces in Africa at a smaller risk than by way of the famous Malta- convoys. But the British expected to be able to beat the German general Rommel very soon and dropped the plan, also because the estimated building time was at least one year. For many years Max Gunning was in the frontrank of the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Navy) regarding the designing of warships. He was the man who devised the post-war new model convential submarine of the three-cylindre type, with an unprecedented maximum diving depth of 350 meters. Between 1954 and 1966 four submarines of this so called Dolphin class were built. Only the submarine HNLMS Tonijn has been preserved. The Tonijn is kept on shore in the Naval Museum at Den Helder, where it can still be seen.
I understand that your knowledge on modern day naval warfare is not as widespread as say the WWII era and earlier, however do you have an opinion on why modern destroyers seem to be a lot slower than the older destroyers, and in some cases even the Iowa class battleships?
Thanks Drachinifel for another Episode …! I would like to please ask about Cannon Rifling .. and the history and development of … however that is probably a forthcoming episode.. so as a back up question..Thornycroft had a reputation for building top shelf destroyers .. how did they do it ..?
It's wild to really consider the sheer amount of time he puts into this channel. And he does it all without the videos being packed full of ads, as well as completely refraining from divisiveness, and clickbaity ploys. If there were a very short list of the hardest working youtubers, Drach would undoubtedly be quite near the top. ^_^
Fun thing about US MREs - they are meant for military duty in a highly active role. If you are lugging a full field pack on the march, they are pretty good calorie wise. If you are an Air Force enlisted type being given one on a simulated war footing doing your normal job, expect to gain weight.
@@c7042-u5g I had the experience of trying a C-rat in AF Basic Training in 1983 (I don't remember what the exact vintage was - but close to Viet Nam era), and I was disappointed when my Training Instructor made me turn in my P-38. I have one in my camping gear because I found them a novel idea - even if they are a pain to use instead of a full-size kitchen can opener.
Drach, the “large clocks on ships” question you answered is one I’ve had for a while, and was totally unexpected, and another reason you are such a treasure of naval knowledge 👌🏼👌🏼
Perisher is bloody tough indeed - if you make a single mistake then you are kicked off the boat right then and there and never again allowed to try it. The ONLY known incident of someone getting a second chance at the course was an USN exchange officer that when confronted with fishing boats that had been undetected until the very last moment reacted as he had been trained by his "home" navy and not the correct RN method. They had him taken ashore and was going to send him home when he remarked that it was the way he had been trained in the US and so they let him have another go and did it well. He seemingly retired not so long ago with the rank of Rear Admiral
If you are an RN officer and fail the Perisher, you are kicked off the course and the Submarine Service - you are never allowed on an RN submarine again. Its an evil course, but if you pass then you must be very, very good indeed.
I suppose the logic is that if you get to the point where you might actually be put in command of a submarine the final test is as far as possible for real - where an unrecognised mistake could lead to the death of the entire crew. Sudden (submarine career) death is as near to the real thing as you can get. And the officer's departure does leave a career vacancy for the next candidate. You wouldn't want to have top-level but not quite good enough officers blocking throughput in the career level that provides tomorrow's submarine captains.
Public Health commentary: Reasonably good discussion about infectious diseases (7:54). Most Age of Sail sailors had the "Usual Childhood Diseases" (Mumps, Measles, Rubella/German Measles, Chickenpox) as children and were immune for life. Smallpox was also very common but after 1796 vaccination (and variolation before that, see George Washington's General Order #1, 1775) minimized this on ships. England introduced compulsory vaccination of children in 1853. Introduction of these diseases to naïve populations, e.g. the Spanish and Portuguese into the Americas, caused massive depopulation, possibly as much as 90% of the Americas in the 16th Century and were the major factor in the success of the European occupation. Even in the 20th Century, measles in Africa caused severe outbreaks during my tenure with case fatality rates of over 25%. A lot of that was probably due to malaria co-infections. Malnourished (not undernourished, just dietary imbalance) could put sailors at high risk of other diseases, particularly Yellow Fever and Malaria. These are both mosquito-transmitted, so if the water sources on ship are protected, they don't propagate, although that knowledge didn't exist until about 1900. Hence the original US Public Health Service sites were quarantine stations for sailors.
My imput/suggestion to all ? Geirr Haarr's books are excellent !! Some of the best WWII naval reads I've ever encountered !! His books focus on the northern European sphere- Norway mainly. His books are engaging, well resourced and read in a way that is completely approachable. Fact filled but written in a way that is ultimately easy to absorb; heightening your enjoyment- not always an easy task for authors. Mr. Haarr has nailed this aspect down, as I'm on my 3rd volume from him. 🚬😎
At around 14:35 you state that the North Carolina had outboard skegs. In fact, only the South Dakota class had outboard skegs, making them unique. All other USN fast battleship classes (North Carolina and Iowa) had inboard skegs. They did swap the positions of the four blade and five blade props to help alleviate the vibration problem, but it was never totally solved.
I always have found it unimportant if Bismarck was scuttled or not. The simple fact of the matter is that the damage she had taken was mortal and would have killed her no matter what, so whether it was helped along or not matters little. And the biggest thing people seem to disregard in this is fire. The waves and the shell holes would wreak their toll of course, but eventually, other things would begin to explode since the fires were out of control. It’s what killed Blucher, it’s what would have sunk Bismarck if left to her devices
@@asureaskie I disagree, because she could've been saved had the royal navy not expended significant resources to hunt her down and shoot her to bits. The swordfish made that possible, but saying she was sunk by that plane and its torpedo is like saying the man who called the cops because he was suicidal was saved by the dispatcher who sent out some units instead of saying he was saved by the officers who spent hours talking to him and convinced him to give life another chance. Without that dispatcher the cops wouldn't have had a chance to save him but the cops did all the work, not the dude who took the call and sent them out there.
@adenkyramud5005 I see your logic, I just disagree. In that framework, the Swordfish is a neighbor who breaks the suicidal guy's kneecaps, keeping him from reaching the gun in the first place. Nice, no; effective, yes.
I find it a little unfair to say Bismarck went down easily. As much as i love Drach :), but in my opinion we should maybe have a more detailed look at the battle and keep in mind that Bismarck was not able to maneauver more than to stay against the wind in a Northwest direction, maybe do some random curves . Obviously the time for her to go down is relatively short, since Bismarck is heading straight towards the British and firing distances close down very quickly (after 20 minutes down to 12.000 yards?). So getting everthing on your superstructure shot to pieces and not being able to fight anymore in a very short period sounds pretty logical to me? Also i think the Bristish managed to stay out of Bismarcks rear firing arc for quite a while? Would have been interesting to see how things change if they managed to fix the rudder in time...
first of these i've watched. i'm a complete nautical novice...but bigger into military history which includes naval and this type of excellent technical expertise i find fantastic. I AM a huge F1 fan and am just a sucker for engineering details, which concerning sea vessels, this video is chalked full of. bravo. thank you.
I absolutely agree with your opinion on cruise ships. They've been very lucky so far, but there have been many close calls. On several occasions for various reasons these vessels have lost propulsion which in turn meant no food or sanitary systems, they were fortunate that in most cases the weather was calm.
Even the design of the big cruise ships, with a large open space running up several decks amidships, only alleviates the problem of putting so much weight that high on the superstructure, not eliminating it; this is counteracted on some larger cruise ships by having large void spaces -- theatres, ice rinks, ballrooms, etc. -- placed low in the hull, where they don't take away from the number of potential windows and balconies for the passengers. And as you point out, they rely on a continuous supply of power to keep the various systems running; loss of sanitary services, refrigeration, or HVAC systems rapidly renders the vessel unlivable.
@@seanmalloy7249 Indeed... stability aside, it wasn't until recently that redundant systems have been built into these vessels. And, we haven't even touched on a fire at sea with 3,500 people aboard. No, I'll stick to sailboats for my crossings thank you.
Apart from being designed by expert naval architects, cruise ships have an obvious safety margin. If the weather gets really rough and they can't avoid a storm, they always empty the 3 or 4 swimming pools they have on deck 14. That gives them vastly more stability in just 5 minutes.
I loved Patrick Obrian writing Doctor Maturin mulling over the mumps as a more humane way of providing the opera with castrati, all while mumps is making its way through the ship.
I believe the North Carolina class has a propeller arrangement similar to the Iowa Class with the inboard shafts in skegs and the outboard shafts supported on struts. The builders model and construction photos that I have seem clearly depict this. Not to say there weren't vibration problems. Most of the high speed high power four shaft ships suffered such issues. The SS United States, without skegd, had a lot of attention put into propeller design to deal with cavitation and vibration, but never completely eliminated it.
Convoy commodores. At the time, the commodore was typically a retired Navy captain. This was supposed to give the civilian skippers someone they were old enough tnd experienced enough to respect, and give the overall command to someone senior to the escort commodore. When he retired about 1972, my dad (CAPTUSN, RET), was assigned to that duty in case of an emergency recall.
1:18:25 - And even _with_ those improvements, modern jets are _still_ considerably slower to spool up than piston engines (because of the honking great rotational inertia of the compressor/turbine rotors); also, with a prop plane (assuming it's using a tractor configuration, which most do), an increase in engine power produces an immediate increase in lift (from the prop wash going back over the wings), whereas a jet engine has to accelerate the entire airplane to a higher speed in order to increase the airplane's lift.
Which is why a new class of engine is a high bypass turbofan with a propellor bolted on the front (outside the air effects of the turbofan itself) to be used on passenger aircraft or anything that uses the high bypass turbofan. There is also something called boundary layer control which could be adjusted to run permanently and provide surface lift from a jet engine (venting just behind the leading edge in this case, instead of trying to maintain the boundary layer over the wing so carrier landings aren't more of a splat).
Having spent years working on various Carnival cruise ships, mostly the Fantasy class, calling them unstable is begin nice. There's a reason they sail in calm seas and having to outrun a hurricane in one is terrifying. Good times.
I have read of several incidences in the battle of the Atlantic where the commander of the group of escorts that joins a convoy with an escort Commander, would usually defer to the guy who's already in command and not worry about the niceties of rank in time and grade. It prevented confusion among the ranks on the ships. Convoy Commodores they're actually in a lot of instances two of them the commodore and an assistant commodore in case the commodore got Sonic which happened all too often. Their sinking was unfortunate happenstance as opposed to being targeted deliberately. Many of the Commodores were retired Royal Navy officers called back to service. They gave their lives in combat at an age when they should have been rocking in front of a fireplace talking to the grandchildren.
The underwater cargo carrier is similar to the design of the whaleback steamships and barges that were designed to handle the rough waters of the great lakes. Fully loaded the superstructure had to be water tight as the waves freely washed over the deck. They were virtually a submarine and they regularly towed an unpowered barge with an identical hull. They were built 1897 to 1898.
Interesting. Are Marco "subs" a variation? I would think the downside of "whale back (besides cost of construction and loading) would be crew feeling " contained?
I propose a new definition of battleship. Would the captain of a KGV smirk if a theoretical ship appeared on the horizon? If yes, then it is not a battleship. For example: KGV vs Yamato, no smirk KGV vs Renown, smirk KGV vs Iowa, no smirk KGV vs Hood, no smirk KGV vs Kongo, smirk KGV vs Scharnhorst, smirk KGV vs Tirpitz, no smirk KGV vs KGV, no smirk
@@PaulfromChicago My point is the smirk test only works within a generation or two. BB 34 & 35 are undeniably battleships but still significantly inferior to KGV.
The US Navy in my timeframe had a variety of accounts within a squadron. One of them was our OPTAR ( Operations and Training ) funds, which we used for operation of the squadron; flight hours, schools, etc…As for education, in the US Navy it was encouraged, but not essential to advancement. I used my VA benefits to complete my degree…
In Forester's novel, "The Good Shepherd", which Greyhound was adapted from, the USN DD was a fictional Mahan-class ship ("USS KEELING"). The film's makers chose to represent a ship they could obtain a digital model AND film aboard, and wound up using the Fletcher-class USS Kidd, restored to late World War Two rig at Baton Rouge, LA. They also did 3D scans of HMCS Sackville to construct their digital Flower class corvette - which did look wonderful, but had limited screen time. I must admit that it bothered me no end to see the representation of a late-war, square-bridge, low director Fletcher tearing around the North Atlantic in early 1942 jammed with twin 40mms - I had really hoped to see somebody represent one of the 1500 tonners, with their high forecastles and their smaller tactical diameters... much more suitable and historically accurate as USN Atlantic ASW ships in early 42 assuming you weren't a four-piper. Not sure if they went and obtained digital data for their 3D model of the Tribal from HMCS Haida or just built that model up from other sources.
Isn't this a little bit of generational Nitpicking? And criticize people using Winchester 92s in a film that's not post 1892? Or complain about airplanes in the film, "Battle of Britain" having the wrong engines? It's a movie. It's entertaining. Leave it at that. Old warships don't grow on trees.
@@WALTERBROADDUS - Of course it is - Guilty as charged! ;-) It also bugs me to see stock, late-war footage of quad 40mm mounts blazing away in "documentaries" about Midway and Coral Sea, which also tend to include TBFs and Hellcats rolling down carrier decks in June of 1942. GAK! I suppose it's about the depth of one's immersion in the minutiae of the subject - and I am admittedly quite the World War Two naval nerd. With the advent of credible CG modeling, I had simply hoped for the makers of Greyhound to go whole hog and generate their models from plans - obviously a more labor-intensive project that they may have lacked the budget for. For me, there is a world of difference twixt an early-war, round-bridge high director Fletcher with a sparse AA rig and the later square-bridge ships. But of course, then they could have also gone ahead and just done a 1500 tonner from scratch... Not sure if ANY Fletchers were to be found in North Atlantic convoys during early 42! I still enjoyed the film (though not the repeated German transmissions on the TBS frequencies...). It was reasonably faithful to the primary character in the book, which I had read many decades ago. The sweeping views of the convoy itself and the sense of the desperation of those convoy battles were conveyed wonderfully IMHO. Not a movie where the technical inaccuracies overshadowed the storytelling for me, unlike some other films dealing with areas of my interests.
Regarding the Kongo. Japanese word for battlecruiser (巡洋戦艦) literally means "Cruising Battleship" and their re-designation from battlecruiser to battleships is just removing the first two letters. Obviously everybody would have use BB instead of CCBB unless they were explicitly told to.
The flip side is that you have officers who have spent a decade and a half referring to the Kongo's one way which is distinct from the other capital ships. Some of them seem to have continued this in correspondence after the official deletion of the term.
@@Drachinifel But weren't the Espana-class battleships comparable in weakness of their armor to the Kongos, yet designated battleships nevertheless? If the reason is their comaratively low speed, does a Kongo with half of her boilers out of order get to be promoted to a battleship after all? :)
@@VersusARCH it's relative to time period and size. At the time they were laid down, the Espana's were on the low end of battleship protection, but were also very small. Other somewhat larger battleships at the time had only slightly breater protection. Although the Kongos were started only a couple of years later, protection generally was increasing and at their displacement they could've had a lot more armour, but being BC's this was obviously sacrificed for speed. Plus, the Espana class armour had some marginally protective value against their own guns at longer ranges, Kongo dod really have any effective protection against her own guns at any practical battle range.
@@Drachinifel While I mostly agree with this, the issue with the “a battlecruiser isn’t armoured against her own guns at any practical battle ranges” argument is that by this logic, Iowa, North Carolina, Yamato and Littorio would be battlecruisers, because they weren’t armoured against their own main batteries at any practical battle ranges (with the partial exception of Yamato’s turret armour and even that’s only for the front of the turret)
I think one reason that they used a Fletcher in Greyhound is because they filmed on USS Kidd, which is the only surviving WW2 destroyer in original configuration. It would be more plausible for something along the lines of a four-stack or a Gleaves of Benson, but there are no surviving prewar US destroyers.
Also in the original novel, the RN and RCN ships are both corvettes. Edit: It is also stated in the book that the crews of the two corvettes and the Polish destroyer are all 'experienced' whereas the captain of the American destroyer (USS Keeling in the original) has never seen action before.
@Charles Stearman I finally got my apple + account to work and watched Greyhound for the first time. It kinda gives the impression it's his first time leading a patrol now, but maybe had WW1 experience 🤔?
On Bismarck at the end: it doesn't matter who sunk her, once the guns went silent she was mission-killed. Like if you kill the turret crew of a tank -- the driver, down in front, may still be able to drive it around, but at that point it's kinda just a crappy tractor. Or conversely, if you manage to make a tank throw a track, it becomes a pillbox, and is still just as dangerous if the crew doesn't bail out (either to run away or try to fix it).
I would generally agree, except to point out that a mobility kill CAN still be a mission kill if the tank/ship can't get its guns TO the enemy. ... Generally speaking, you need to be able to both shoot AND move in order to be considered combat effective...
@Crazyfrog41 Yes, you are very right. There is a reason for the expression "a sitting duck!" A target that can't move. Sooner or later it's going to have a round breach it's armor. So best to NOT be inside when it happens.
I am disappoint!!! 😢 You brought up mines but there was no Mrs. Drach gracing us with "floaty, floaty, floaty." Please let her know that some of us miss her contributions terribly.
22:00 To be clear, that isn't a government thing. It happens quite broadly across private entities as well. And similar to your mention of governments paying for random things at the end of the fiscal year, you quite commonly see corporate departments buying new equipment or stocking up on supplies or other stuff to use up their excess budget at the end of the corporate fiscal years. One thing you will find it you get to see how a lot of companies operate, most of those wasteful and inefficient things governments do, private companies are doing just as much. It is just less visible.
British post-Jutland 15" Mark VA APC Shells are the standard anti-armor shells that replaced the original Greenboy 15" APC design circa 1920 through I think the year 1930 or so when the newer rather different designs began to be issued. The Mark VA (the "A" indicating a shot windscreen design later replaced by the much longer "B" design for reduced drag) were equipped with a hardened AP cap (flattened cone face for Hadfield and "knob-and-ring -- also later used by Krupp naval APC shells --- for Firth) and a much smaller explosive charge than pre-Jutland Lyddite-only charges of only 2.5% of the projectile's weight using the Lyddite (70%) and dinitrophenol (30%) "Shellite" filler and an optional, set during loading, delay-action base fuze (Number 16D) of circa 0.025 second or so delay (Lyddite almost always detonated within 0.003 second when a shell hit thick armor, fuzed or not, which is also the average delay in a non-delay base fuze (pre-Jutland Lyddite shells were VERY reliable to their test spec). The smaller filler cavity allowed better body strength to the shell at oblique impact and the hard cap allowed the cap to make a pit in the armor plate before the shell itself hit the plate, greatly improving depth of penetration and allowing such improved penetration at virtually any impact angle and keeping the projectile body intact by reducing the high forces caused by the now-partially-punched-through face or face-hardened Cemented Armor. The hard caps and stronger bodies allowed significantly thicker face-hardened armor to be penetrated by the improved APC shells at any given angle and striking velocity. Originally the Number 16D base fuze, also used without the later Greenboy delay modifications in the Lyddite-filled pre-Jutland APC shells, did not use an added booster charge, just black powder at its tip to set off the main filler (Lyddite did not need a booster). However, by WWII it was found that a rather lot of Shellite fillers were not exploding properly --the insensitive Shellite was more insensitive than they had originally thought --So they added a "Composition Exploder" (CE) -- Tetryl -- booster to the new base fuzes for Shellite-filled shells, which had previously only been used for TNT-filled smaller cruiser-sized Common/SAP shells. The BADEN firing tests show a lot of less-than-full-power explosions by APC shells, but it seems that it took some time to accept the problem as needing to be corrected (Tetryl was adopted for TNT shells in 1928, since TNT was also very insensitive, but it was over 10 years later before Shellite shells started using it too). The US Army had adopted Tetryl before the end of WWI, but, like the British Navy for TNT shells, the US Navy did not trust it and waited until 1928 to put it in all of their base fuzes, though again in all size shells with any filler.
I think a good point on weather the Kongo's are Battleships or Battlecruisers, is HMS Repulse, the two in WW2 are very simular and comparible, they had simular speed, simular firepower (Kongo might have more but Repulse has heavier) and they have simular armour. Yet the Repulse was called a battlecrusier her whole live and was never modified like her sister Renown, so given that Repulse is accpeted as Battlecrusier by everyone and the Knogo's are in the same ball park i think that makes them a Battlecrusier, a good Battlecrusier no doubt, but a still battlecrusier. And just to throw my hat in another ring i would call Hood a Fast Battleship because shes effectively a Queen Elizabeth with more speed, same guns, simular protection Hoods just faster and we accpet the QE's as Battleships so i think we have to call Hood a Battleship to.
The mention of the Ryan reminded me. The Hickory (NC) Aviation Museum, 30 min from the farm, has a Curtis XF15C-1, another hybrid. They also have a Vampire.
On the subject of steam supply and boilers. Most steam ships had small auxiliary boilers that could be flashed up quickly when the main boilers were off line. They were for powering auxiliary plant like generators, pumps, fans winches and capstans etc. One of their important jobs was to provide power to the boiler room to pump fuel, water and draught fans for the main boilers until enough pressure was on line to be self sustaining. Cargo ship could even have 'donkey' boilers on deck to provide steam for capstans and cargo winches when the boiler roo was completely shut down.
The advance of electronics and all things it affected on warships increased in speed after WWII to the point that the average sailor could no longer maintain the new missile weapon systems replacing most guns, especially for anti-aircraft use. Contractors had to be assigned to ships for such things and this was considered unacceptable by the US Navy by 1960. In 1963 the US Navy created the US Naval Ship Missile Systems Engineering Station (NSMSES -- pronounced "Nemesis") on the SeaBee Base in Port Hueneme, California, a few miles north of Los Angeles in Ventura County. It was assigned to fix the maintenance problem and within a few years it had done so. It based a new layered process (day, week, month, quarter, semi-year, and year scheduled maintenance plus special as needed tests and repair procedures) and documentation system on the NASA methods and also changed the entire process to bott0m up, in that the person on the ship with the problem could bypass everybody else and contact NSMSES directly and NSMSES had to immediately (within 24 hours) respond to the call to do everything from just call back with advice to sending out personnel to the ship to help the ship fix the problem (I had to do the ship visits with only one day notice twice). It helped that the average sailor also had more knowledge about electronics due to working on automobiles and similar things, but major work had to be done to package the instructions properly.
Special naval ammo. During WWI and still available, if desired, the US Navy developed their "Bombardment" round for the 14" gun. It was filled with 12% Explosive "D" (ammonium picrate -- the same super-insensitive explosive used in all WWI and after naval and some Army explosive big gun shells) and a non-delay base fuze. Similar to the British WWI-era CPC round, but not used for any kind of armor penetration use. It had a medium-length bare pointed nose and was designed for high-angle long-range fire from railway guns. This shell was needed because the US Navy had NO HE-type shells for its battleships until the WWII multi-fuzed High Capacity (HC) round type was introduced early in WWII, which was a rather standard HE shell with the option of several nose fuze types or none at all, since it also had a non- or very-short-delay base fuze for concrete/rock penetration. I do not know if these Bombardment shells were ever used.
Use it or lose it is how I ended up eating lobster and crab in basic training. Before you get up in arms a military kitchen can not cook lobster, it's cruel and unusual punishment.
On back of turrets on the Wisconsin is a ventilation opening. Without ventilation the gun house would fill with gases from the guns. The position is to prevent entrance of shrapnel and shock from the other turret
The air group on the Independence class (my dad served on one) was a double squadron (VF) of 36 F6F fighters and a squadron (VT) of 9 TBM torpedo bombers. CVE's had a composite squadron (VC) of 14 to 16 FM fighters and 8 to 10 TBM's. So, a task group of a CVL and CVE would have 50-52 fighters and 17 to 19 torpedo bombers for a total of 69 aircraft (Note, we're talking about authorized strength, obviously this could vary depending on operational and combat losses)
Hi. Magics stuff (first comment to this channel or any other) My algorithm knows when I am watching something to default afterwards to Drachinfel a lot of time and I dont change it. I find myself with 2 questions from this 223 episode and I thought that was worthy of comment. I certainly find the channel great and long running enough that I do not have worry about running out of content and falling into re-runs. I waffle, so now the comments. Firstly I saw the part about the cargo submarine and had an I know something moment. I am sure that it nearly reached fruition that a balloon of oil (up to amazing tonnage by expansion) could be secreted by submersing and towing. I may be remembering a non military use , but I dont think so. Secondly and why I got off my arse to ask was:- I would suppose is the idea of any military is to deliver the maximum of munitions for the cost attached , which allows expansion for the same budget or the reduction of budget. So has anyone ever looked at the cost versus success that, say, a navy with a 1000 destroyers could overcome a 100 battle ships. Is it a case of how much budget per kilo of munitions delivered ? I would guess due to the greater scale of munitions in the navy , and a smaller number of measurable individual units , it could be a researchable experiment. I do not mean to suggest the standard day to day money in and money out that the treasurer gives out . I am curious if you could say remove a class of ship as it has a poor measurable return for cost versus delivery. Apologies for the garble. Thank you very much as I am sure you have deservedly heard before. Dave T
On the Cruise Ship stability thing, if motion is an issue try to book in the center and inboard area of the ship to reduce the rolling an pitching in your cabin. I only felt motion while sitting and laying down so if it starts to bug you you can usually just stand up and walk around for a bit.
Ref the Perisher Course. Admiral Ben Bryant, who commanded HMS Sealion in the Noth Sea and HMS Safari in the Med, recalled that one portion of the course had the prospective skipper conducting attacks via periscope against a target - all on dry land with the replica of the control room on the ground floor and the target "sailing" on the blue painted floor of the second story. The target's course and speed could be controlled via cables attached to the ceiling which led to a control station, allowing it to maneuver. He recalled that the news that the target had "rammed" the sub trying to attack it was announced by a wild pounding of feet from upstairs
Re: the combustibility / explosive behavior of Cordite / Poudre B dusts, there is already a fair body of knowledge collected and published in English by various fire protection professional organizations such as the NFPA and the US Bureau of mines and US Dept. of Energy regarding explosives and fuels. Various chemical engineering societies also publish papers on these topics. The issues of combustible dusts and gas mixtures are fairly well known, if not as widely dispersed as should be the case.The chemical and oil & gas industries try to educate engineers on how to prevent such incidents, and, should that fail, how to safely vent the resulting over-pressure to protect lives and equipment. You cannot have an explosion without ignition (an explosion is a case of the pressure wave of rapid combustion being constrained to force compression) and combustion only occurs in the vapor phase, so your combustible dust has to sublime before it can burn / explode. Mixing dusts really only effects the combustibility to the extentof the minimum ignition energy / minimum combustion temperature of the most readily ignited material in the mix... once it lights off, you're pretty much assured to ignite all of the others... One notably low ignition temperature is for carbon dust films / thin layers. These ignite at ~155 C, which is significantly lower than most gase mixtures, even with a significant portion of hydrogen depressing their ignition temperature. (The behavior of combustible / explosive gas mixtures is an entirely separate, parallel, conversation.) So, if your ship's compartment having a thin layer of combustible dust on things like pipes and electrical conduits and boxes gets exposed to a temperature of around 150 C, whether through hot shards from a penetrator, spalling, or from compression heating due to a shock wave from the impact of a projectile, you are pretty much guaranteed to have a flash fire. Depending upon the brissance / flame velocity, if those combustion gases form their own shockwave that exceeds the capabilities of the enclosed space to vent them, you are going to have some sort of an explosion, as those hot gases will create their ventilation path by ripping holes in the steel.
In terms of "worst" carrier conversions, I'd nominate the first two US built CVE's, USS Long Island and HMS Archer, The Maritime Commission had a world of trouble with its diesel powered C2's and C3's - so much so that the USN got rid of as many as possible after WW2, Unfortunately, both the vessels were diesel C3's and suffered accordingly. The Long Island was never trusted with a combat mssion, but served as an aircraft transport and training ship. The Royal Navy gave up in disgust with the Archer, " Her transmission was a constant cause of problems which led to her being withdrawn from front-line service. She was used as a stores ship and then as an accommodation ship before a refit and subsequent use as a merchant aircraft ferry ship, Empire Lagan" Of her diesel powered half-sisters, HMS Avenger was torpedoed, HMS Dasher blew up at her moorings and HMS Biter was fobbed off to the unlucky French. A war record to be truly proud of. Fortrunately, the steam powered C3 conversions of the Bogue/Attacker and Prince William/Ruler classes proved much more successful.
On the subject of off the job formal naval education it seems to start around the middle of the 19th century for officers. As to graduate degrees becoming significant among NCOs, this is probably a post 1970s phenomenon. I remember the careers information in my British school at that period and degrees in the armed forces were only covered in officer recruitment literature. Other ranks, where they did mention qualifications, were below graduate level.
To be honest, I seriously don't think that even with today's technology that if they were building a North Carolina type battleship today that today's technology would discover problems with the propeller resonance if it hadn't already been previously discovered in the North Carolina battleships already. I would imagine that it would be akin to being in a 35k ton washing machine on the spin cycle and the load is not balanced enough to spin correctly. I would make the guess that the engineers aboard ship, after they had diagnosed the problem and had made it to where it was happening around 17-18 knots, I would think that they would find a way to cut power to the inner shafts when appropriate and allow the outer shafts to accelerate passed that speed before giving the inner shafts power again. Not totally sure if that would work, or just prolong the vibrations rather than just powering past that speed to begin with. But if it's the inner shafts causing the resonance then it would seem that if they could make 20 knots just using the outer propellers then they could give the inner shafts power & just keep it moving.
20:17 - The "expiring funds" syndrome is well-known in the US military as well, where you see a lot of purchases made in the August-September timeframe so that you spend any unused portion of your OPTAR (OPerating TARget) funds before the end of the fiscal year, so you don't run into the problem of coming in under budget. And I agree that it's a stupid way to handle funding, as it sometimes results in all sorts of only marginally-useful purchases (or redundant, such as buying new furniture when the current furniture is still well within its useful life).
Always thought Rodney and P.O.W. ended up near point blank punching 16" holes down the whole profile of Big Biz..a kind of final "🖕 ☠️" for the whole Hood tragedy? Anyway..cheers Drach and keep up the excellent work ya wonderful Brit sunufagun you! 🎉❤
Queen Mary sometimes gets a bad rap due to how she went down, but she was theoretically a very capable battlecruiser. Just as much so as Tiger. Her Downfall was more a cross between being poorly crewed, the ammunition and charge issues and Beatys misuse of his fleet. Her armour was quite decent. Nowhere near battleship levels, but it should have been sufficient to engage battleships without too much issue (I don't mean that she should slug it out with them in a battle line like they did). I imagine the UK may have tried to keep her and Tiger if they both survived the war.
Enterprise is a battleship based on the graphic at 7:00. I personally haven't seen planes land on Enterprise and therefore I can reasonably conclude that the runway was a decoy. It's science.
My father: Jesse J.Bryant chief electrician U.S.S.SKIPJACK(and many others 1946-67) No other information due to national security. BT3 Bryant Advance boiler technician U.S.S.GRIDLEY CG-21 ACC/ABC L.M.E.T. 6YO(6 year obligater)10-17-84. Stay safe people 🙏 ❤️.
23:00 I don't know if other public schools go through this, but I went to high school in the United States. And they suffered from that problem in respect to their budget for heating the school. Every school year come April/May/June, if the school hadn't already burned through their budget for heating oil, they'd crank up the heat (yes even in June) until they burned off all the excess money from the budget precisely because if there was any left over they would be penalized for it the following year. Imagine early June, getting ready for finals, and it's 85-90^F outside the school and about 95^F *inside* the school (29-32^C, 35^C respectively). It was quite unpleasant.
A quick caution on 'Two nations separated by a common language'. In the US 'Public School' means one financed by government, local or otherwise, funds. In the UK, confusingly, 'Public School' means one NOT funded with government funds. So if not specifically mentioned as being a Public School it's publicly funded - go figure. Same sort of thing as 'First Floor'. In the US, the floor at ground level. In the UK, the floor above the one at ground level (which is called the 'Ground Floor').
I agree with your assessment on the Kongo being a battle cruiser. The ship was built as a battle cruiser they did very little change to make it a real battleship. It was too lightly armored to be a real battleship. It was a very elegant design but that does not change it's actual capabilities
One reason Dr. Clarke argued that the Kongos could be called battleships was because, thanks to their reconstructions, their hull structure and overall robustness had become more of a capital ship (battleship) and less that of a cruiser (battlecruiser). He also mentioned, practically in the same breath, that this robustness remained questionable.
For the question on childhood diseases, from someone with a background in epidemiology/history/immunology: Drach is correct in the assertion that ships become sort of self-contained environments once they're at sea. That said, this isn't as protective as you might imagine. While age of sail crews aren't quite large enough for most diseases to form a stable endemic reservoir (ie stable levels of transmission between people on board and a flux of people entering/leaving the ship), there are a few incredibly important exceptions to this. If a pathogen progresses slowly, has a long incubation time, has a non-human animal vector such as rodents or insects, or has an external vector such as fresh water or fecal matter, a pathogen can quite easily become endemic to a particular ship. This is, of course, not including ships with huge crew complements like modern aircraft carriers or cruise ships which have enough crew that there are practically no limitations to what diseases can spread. On an age-of-sail ship, barring scurvy-induced immunosuppression, there are a couple historically-relevant diseases that tick these boxes. Tuberculosis thrives in humid environments, even in water droplets that are external to the body, and has a slow growth-rate and a penchant for producing asymptomatic carriers. Black plague (Yersinia pestis) has its infamous flea/rodent/human transmission trifecta. Cholera and typhoid fever are positively lethal in any kind of environment where a constant source of fresh, running water is unavailable, and devastate any population that has little to no barrier between activities like cooking/cleaning/eating/drinking/washing and defecating, as is the case on a ship where the only source of fresh water is what you bring with you. As for "childhood" diseases, most were not confined to childhood until relatively recently. While chickenpox was not likely a concern due to almost certain early-life exposure, it still has a startlingly high lethality rate in individuals who were either unexposed or have immunological issues. Strep throat, however, will almost certainly progress to the highly-lethal scarlet and the bacteria causing it commonly transmits through fresh water and humid environments. Measles is a special case. While it hasn't been a concern in modern times until recent... developments, new research indicates that the reason measles is so dangerous is due to the likelihood of secondary infection. Measles actually has significant immunosuppressive effects, "wiping" an infected person's immune memory and making them susceptible to diseases that they had previously encountered. This would "stack" with the effects of scurvy. An outbreak of measles aboard a ship would make the crew highly susceptible to chickenpox infection later on, suffering the severe effects as if they had never been exposed to it before. And that's just the most "mild" of infectious diseases that I mentioned. Vaccination and antibiotics have dramatically reduced the incidence, severity, and mortality associated with all of these diseases. There are a few more that I wanted to touch on, but these are the ones that I think made the most sense in the context of the original question.
Yeah, measles reboots the B cells amongst others. Resets the immune memory. New Fibromyalgia research indicates an autoimmune disease that screws up the cytokine balance - hence lots and lots of cancer. Ask me how I know..
AR-4 USS Vestal helped many a catastrophically damaged ship make it back to dry dock stateside. She helped stabilize the stern of USS Pensacola that had it literally hanging on by almost nothing. She even patched a torpedo hole.
Alex's comments about Kongo are a little misrepresented. Dr Clarke posits (more or less offhandedly) that Kongo became a battleship when additional structure was added into the hull rather than armor just bolted to the side.
Speaking of childhood disease killing someone measles & mumps can turn deadly, the main thing that would kill someone is if they already had a weak immune system & they could get a fever so high that it causes brain damage and/or heart problems. Once we learned how to fight the fever and symptoms of such disease. Then most kids would either easily get over them after a few days of rest. And once we started having immunizations for these diseases things improved even more. But also, with any type of illness, especially anyone at sea, dehydration could be a problem. Someone could be in need of fluids & just not getting them which could also affect your body trying to fight a disease.
29:28 Christopher Columbus'es caravel Santa Clara (nicknamed Nina) started her 1492. jorney, that would result in discovery of the Carribean Islands, with lateen sails, but when the fleet stopped at the Canary Islands she was re-rigged with square sails.
I think that there was one example of a "speculative" warship back in the early 2000s. There was a trimaran named Triton (I don't think she was ever a RN ship) that was built for demonstration purposes. She was leased to the Australian customs service for a few years, I believe.
A shipyard in Hobart invented the large truck carrying fast catamaran in 1990, this was widely copied, and a shipyard in Perth, Australia developed the idea into a trimaran. Around the turn of the century, the Royal Australian Navy was short of fast transports for the East Timor operation, so they leased a fast catamaran from Incat, the Hobart company and it used it to shuttle troops and vehicles to Timor. Other navies noticed how successful this commercial ferry was in naval operation and either built their own, or got Incat to build them. As ferries they run between 35 and 55 knots, but naval ones are usually slower.
If I may relay an alternate theory about the Deering. The ship was hauling a particular chemical cargo that started to smell foul. The crew took this as a sign the ship might explode or gas them all so they abandoned ship. Fortunately the ship didn’t explode and the foul smell dissipated but by then the crew was already aboard the Hewitt and were too far away to know. The mysterious ship came alongside to investigate the Deering, when the light ship signalled them they ran thinking they’d uncovered something nefarious.
Polish destroyers. My dad was on Atlantic convoy escort duty in 42 and 43. He served with a Polish ship. He said the escorts had blown a U-boat to the surface and they abandoned ship. The Polish ship sailed thru the survivors, dropped a depth charge pattern, and reported 'no survivors found." Dad disapproved of the action, but said he had trouble blaming the Poles.
"If a Pole is your friend they're a friend for the rest of your life, if not that's about 5 minutes" They're still not fans, but kind of hard to blame them.
(2:11:40) Both Tenders and Repair ships would often repair damaged ships enough so that they could reach a shipyard.... (Even if it was a Destroyer Tender repairing a cruiser!)
I am aware of one advanced munition for naval guns in the 1940s that was not mentioned: the gun-launched guided anti-aircraft projectile originally known as project Arrow Shell and later as XSAM-N-8 Zeus.
@ Drachinifel.....Although I can see your case for Victory and or an Iowa...bit surprised with your love of engineering you didn't pick S.S. Great Britain and have an entire world's tour to explore her while she's underway.
To be honest, on one hand I'm kinda glad Drach addressed the incredible stupidity that some people exhibit & create in the comments sections at times on rare occasions. And on the OTHER hand I kinda wish he had NOT even bothered to give that person the satisfaction of mentioning his brash stupidity. With that being said, the main reason I say that is because I've been a fan of Drach's for 4-5 years now. And I rarely EVER see any brash comments like that. Even the "what if" questions that normally bother me more than than most of the simple questions like the constant questions about range clocks on American ships or the booms for the old torpedo nets. But as I stroll thru the comments section I usually try to answer the easier questions when I can. Mostly when the answers are just a quick & easy sentence or two. But when people are clearly trying to find fault with the current status quo & clearly have an "alternate agenda". On one hand I want to totally ignore them & not give them the satisfaction of even acknowledging their idiocy but then I feel like if people do ignore it, it's NOT going to make it go away. And that if someone doesn't address it's wrongfulness, then others may think that there is truth there. And so I'd rather call it out for it blindly ignoring reality rather than thinking if we ignore it MAYBE it will go away! I hope you get my meaning & will help to identify & address people blatantly pushing agendas that try to call certain parts of history false. E.G. Like people who try to say"the Holocaust" never happened!
The Kongo being a battleship argument goes like this. " If a ship is used in a battle, it becomes a battleship therefore if a rowboat was present at Tsushima, it was a battleship."
Isn't it the difference between "Battleship" (defined term), and "battleship" generic word without specific definition, that just has to have an intersection between ship and battle? Of course, tje strongest argument that the hypothetical rowing boat and Tsuchima was not a battleship, was the second limb- it is a boat, not a ship.
If you think about the illness question? Let's just look at today. We have merchant ships all over the world stacked up for the last 3 years. And there's not been a major covid outbreak at all in the merchant or military navies really. Being at at Sea, you're basically quarantined from most problems ashore.
The point about the inherent inefficiency of shellfire at sinking large vessels is one that needs to be emphasized more. There’s a reason torpedoes inflict far more effective damage per hit than any naval shell. Even the Second Pacific Squadron pre-dreads took hours to actually sink, and this was in spite of them having been turned into floating fuel air bombs during their trainwreck of a voyage.
The limit on a repair ship capacity to repair is the size of the ship - a capital ship propeller shaft blank is just too big and heavy to physically fit in a repair ship machine shop let alone get machined. There are numerous reports of capital ships being patched up just enough to get them back to either the United States or United Kingdom from the pacific after groundings bending propeller shafts because even the land based ship yards couldn’t handle building replacements. When machining shafts like that a ship physically can’t be stiff enough to act as the lathe bed big enough to accurately machine a propeller shaft or the even lift the raw steel blank for a capital ship propeller shaft (which will weigh ten times as much as the finished shaft).
Nearly any dust is highly flammable and in heaviely dusted areas smoking is usually prohibited and you need to make sure that there is no hazard of sparks cause it will lead to dust-air explosions.
It occurs to me that the Carroll A Deering was found during US Prohibition -- so the mysterious steamer you mentioned, that didn't want to be identified, might have been involved in bootlegging. Having a cargo of illegal alcohol, inside US territorial waters, could explain why she didn't wish to stick around after someone noticed her. Pure speculation of course -- but just one more reason a ship of the era might want to sidle off before anybody official showed up.
I am not an expert on naval procurement, but I think you will find that in bureaucracies in general, If you don't spend the money allocated for something The bureaucrats and/or legislators will assume that you didn't need it. Also in most circumstances you cannot carry over a budget from one year to the next unless it is set up like that to begin with
They key to understand is the difference between operational accounts and programmatic accounts. Weapons programs are usually funded through multiple years while OPEX type accounts are funded one year at a time. In both cases, however, the US government only has money for one FY at a time. So, if the Navy is procuring a new destroyer class, for example, the way that works is that the ship is funded entirely in the first year, but executed over the lifecycle. Each year, congress has to appropriate the the funds necessary which is why programs get cancelled more than that the program is failing.
“Capable of engaging any enemy ship with guns…..” Well, I could take my 30-40 Krag to the USS Iowa museum at San Diego and take a shot or two…..but I’m not a battleship. I think…..
Regarding speculative aircraft projects I am thinking of the high proportion of british industry that was dedicated to aviation during the war, the push for refineries to concentrate on higher octanes rather than diesel etc.. There was a lot of design talent and manufacturers "needing" such projects. Needless to say that the government, for the most part, did not take decisive action and meekly allowed expertise to be plundered if not given away.
7:12 the other dreadful thing about the measles specifically is that it STRONGLY suppresses your immune system - recent research suggesting that this even extends to effectively _erasing parts of your immune memory of other diseases,_ and while people before modern medicine couldn't have known that, they sure as hell would have noticed that measles seemed to bring other dangerous diseases in its wake. Like most "childhood diseases", we really only think of it that way because either it used to kill a lot of children, or because in modern society it's only children too young to have been fully vaccinated yet who get it...
Any parent who doesn't vaccinate against HPV should be publicly executed in interesting ways. After what my partner went through as far as I'm concerned it should be made compulsory - to the extent, no vaccine, no schooling.
1:38:00 Poseidon theme starts playing. Rock the boat baby I just realized that Rock the boad came out a mere few months AFTER the book to movie adaption.
"Use it or lose it" is an insane accounting method, leading to budgets being spent on pointless &/or inefficient matters, rather than needed but longer term projects.
The point of it isn't to ensure any sort of efficiency; it's recognized as being bad for that. It's about ensuring that organizations remain dependent upon their funding. In the US, the Congress does not control the military, only the funding for it; if the military was permitted to squirrel away money from year to year and establish their own pool of resources, Congress would have far less control over them.
@@chs76945 That doesn't really hold when the military budget is controlled by a government department, rather than the military themselves. Here in the UK, it's the MOD who hold the purse strings.
@@GARDENER42 Actually you see the same reasoning applied to everything from school districts to government agencies.... anywhere that the guys providing the funding don't have the ability to easily fire the guys spending the money. They want to keep control, and you do that by making sure they don't have their own pot of money.
A key point on the childhood diseases is that the sailors would have been far more likely to have had them as children, which is why they are childhood diseases. People were exposed to them as children leading to either child mortality or adult immunity. It's very unlikely enough people on an age of sail warship would not have immunity already for such an outbreak to happen. The case of an extremely malnourished crew coming into port and being exposed is valid but they would be far more likely to pick up pneumonia or suchlike, or one of umpteen tropical diseases if it was a foreign port.
Your comments on repair ships? Royal navy artificer did not just have workshops? The ships galley was also considered part of the workshop? Deep fat friers to heat treat small items and galley ovens used to remodel perspex?
The main reason all this naming silliness exists is because past WWI "Battlecruiser" has become an out-of-date term that keeps sticking around, and "Fast Battleship" is political/spin silliness nearly on par with "Large Light Cruiser". If we swap the latter for the far more appropriate, but not historically used term of "Light Battleship", things would make infinitely more sense and we wouldn't be arguing over these things. But no one wants to call their huge, powerful, intimidating capital ships "Light", so we're stuck with the goofy term "Fast". So that's my pick-a-third-option take, the Kongous are Light Battleships.
The National Geographic magazine I saw with the cargo sub had a shape very similar to the Typhoon class nuclear powered with container style cargo Pods loaded like a drive on through clamshell bow doors
20:17 I think this is less of a government specific problem, but more of a large organizations in general problem. You can see the exact same behavior in multinational cooperations as well.
With regard to reduced charge armament testing, do you still achieve the same rotational velocity in the reduced charge test as in the real-fire end state; and if not, does this affect post-impact armor piercing performance ?
Cargo Submarines. I note the cargo hatches in the design, but no holds. It would be interesting to exactly how they intended to actually _load_ these things. Utube has a video by Calum on shipping containers which describes the pre-container loading process. Look at this, and you will see the problems.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
What if the USN rifle they're smoothborg cannons with rifleing like the US army did with the 6-pounder field guns too the 14-pounder james rifle what will they be in the pounder measurement system
01:43:26 - Cargo submarine designs? Actualy there was a dutch design for a 3 cilinder cargo submarine to relief malta , Dutch designer Max Gunning . offerd the design based on the Type 1939 a succesor in development of the O21 class .
Max Gunning was born on October 9, 1895 in Zwolle. He was the eight and youngest son of professor Dr. Jan Gunning and Cecilia van Eeghen. He stems from an upper class family with an academic background. Until his graduation as naval engineer, in 1922, he lived in Delft and after that, because of his work for the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Navy), in The Hague, Hellevoetsluis and Vlissingen. He succeeded in his career and became manager (1935-1940) and permanent consultant (1945-1960) of the design consortium N.V Nederlandse Verenigde Scheepsbouwbureaux (Dutch United Shipbuilding Agencies PLC) (NEVESBU) in the Hague, where work was done for the four biggest shipyards in the Netherlands. Basically NEVESBU was his brainchild.
In 1940, when the war broke out, he decided to flee to England via Portugal, in all probability with help from the Navy. Max Gunning was appointed Head Engineer in the Dutch Ministry of Naval Affairs which was stationed in London. He was responsable for the completion and repair of warships like HNLMS van Heemskerk and Isaac Sweers, hurriedly transported across to England. In 1942, in the middle of the war, he conceived the brilliant idea for a three-cylindre cargo submarine with a bigger carrying capacity. This made it possible to transport goods to the allied forces in Africa at a smaller risk than by way of the famous Malta- convoys. But the British expected to be able to beat the German general Rommel very soon and dropped the plan, also because the estimated building time was at least one year.
For many years Max Gunning was in the frontrank of the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Navy) regarding the designing of warships. He was the man who devised the post-war new model convential submarine of the three-cylindre type, with an unprecedented maximum diving depth of 350 meters. Between 1954 and 1966 four submarines of this so called Dolphin class were built. Only the submarine HNLMS Tonijn has been preserved. The Tonijn is kept on shore in the Naval Museum at Den Helder, where it can still be seen.
I understand that your knowledge on modern day naval warfare is not as widespread as say the WWII era and earlier, however do you have an opinion on why modern destroyers seem to be a lot slower than the older destroyers, and in some cases even the Iowa class battleships?
Thanks Drachinifel for another Episode …! I would like to please ask about Cannon Rifling .. and the history and development of … however that is probably a forthcoming episode.. so as a back up question..Thornycroft had a reputation for building top shelf destroyers .. how did they do it ..?
Any notable river combat ship thats underated?
Thanks to our author for countless hours of Naval History and questions answered… I do believe Drachinifel is the go to source for all things Warship
Jolly Good Comment!
Well said old bean
It's wild to really consider the sheer amount of time he puts into this channel. And he does it all without the videos being packed full of ads, as well as completely refraining from divisiveness, and clickbaity ploys.
If there were a very short list of the hardest working youtubers, Drach would undoubtedly be quite near the top. ^_^
@@frankbodenschatz173 thanks
@@johnfisher9692 thank you
Fun thing about US MREs - they are meant for military duty in a highly active role. If you are lugging a full field pack on the march, they are pretty good calorie wise. If you are an Air Force enlisted type being given one on a simulated war footing doing your normal job, expect to gain weight.
2K kcals a pack, IIRC.
I love guys that just eat one when they go sit in a hide while hunting all day. You gunna get a belly doin that for a season. :P
@@c7042-u5g I had the experience of trying a C-rat in AF Basic Training in 1983 (I don't remember what the exact vintage was - but close to Viet Nam era), and I was disappointed when my Training Instructor made me turn in my P-38. I have one in my camping gear because I found them a novel idea - even if they are a pain to use instead of a full-size kitchen can opener.
Drach, the “large clocks on ships” question you answered is one I’ve had for a while, and was totally unexpected, and another reason you are such a treasure of naval knowledge 👌🏼👌🏼
Perisher is bloody tough indeed - if you make a single mistake then you are kicked off the boat right then and there and never again allowed to try it. The ONLY known incident of someone getting a second chance at the course was an USN exchange officer that when confronted with fishing boats that had been undetected until the very last moment reacted as he had been trained by his "home" navy and not the correct RN method. They had him taken ashore and was going to send him home when he remarked that it was the way he had been trained in the US and so they let him have another go and did it well.
He seemingly retired not so long ago with the rank of Rear Admiral
If you are an RN officer and fail the Perisher, you are kicked off the course and the Submarine Service - you are never allowed on an RN submarine again.
Its an evil course, but if you pass then you must be very, very good indeed.
They undoubtedly checked to make sure it was in fact the US Navy "correct" response.
I suppose the logic is that if you get to the point where you might actually be put in command of a submarine the final test is as far as possible for real - where an unrecognised mistake could lead to the death of the entire crew. Sudden (submarine career) death is as near to the real thing as you can get. And the officer's departure does leave a career vacancy for the next candidate. You wouldn't want to have top-level but not quite good enough officers blocking throughput in the career level that provides tomorrow's submarine captains.
Public Health commentary: Reasonably good discussion about infectious diseases (7:54). Most Age of Sail sailors had the "Usual Childhood Diseases" (Mumps, Measles, Rubella/German Measles, Chickenpox) as children and were immune for life. Smallpox was also very common but after 1796 vaccination (and variolation before that, see George Washington's General Order #1, 1775) minimized this on ships. England introduced compulsory vaccination of children in 1853. Introduction of these diseases to naïve populations, e.g. the Spanish and Portuguese into the Americas, caused massive depopulation, possibly as much as 90% of the Americas in the 16th Century and were the major factor in the success of the European occupation. Even in the 20th Century, measles in Africa caused severe outbreaks during my tenure with case fatality rates of over 25%. A lot of that was probably due to malaria co-infections. Malnourished (not undernourished, just dietary imbalance) could put sailors at high risk of other diseases, particularly Yellow Fever and Malaria. These are both mosquito-transmitted, so if the water sources on ship are protected, they don't propagate, although that knowledge didn't exist until about 1900. Hence the original US Public Health Service sites were quarantine stations for sailors.
My imput/suggestion to all ? Geirr Haarr's books are excellent !! Some of the best WWII naval reads I've ever encountered !! His books focus on the northern European sphere- Norway mainly.
His books are engaging, well resourced and read in a way that is completely approachable.
Fact filled but written in a way that is ultimately easy to absorb; heightening your enjoyment- not always an easy task for authors. Mr. Haarr has nailed this aspect down, as I'm on my 3rd volume from him.
🚬😎
I hope he's a certain sort of accented Scottish, with all the rs.
At around 14:35 you state that the North Carolina had outboard skegs. In fact, only the South Dakota class had outboard skegs, making them unique. All other USN fast battleship classes (North Carolina and Iowa) had inboard skegs. They did swap the positions of the four blade and five blade props to help alleviate the vibration problem, but it was never totally solved.
I always have found it unimportant if Bismarck was scuttled or not. The simple fact of the matter is that the damage she had taken was mortal and would have killed her no matter what, so whether it was helped along or not matters little.
And the biggest thing people seem to disregard in this is fire. The waves and the shell holes would wreak their toll of course, but eventually, other things would begin to explode since the fires were out of control. It’s what killed Blucher, it’s what would have sunk Bismarck if left to her devices
100% agree. Sadly many of my fellow Krauts don't think that far, at least the ones in the amateur historian category.
Ultimately, Bismarck was sunk by a Swordfish and its torpedo.
I have staked my flag on this hill and will die here defending it!
@@asureaskie I disagree, because she could've been saved had the royal navy not expended significant resources to hunt her down and shoot her to bits. The swordfish made that possible, but saying she was sunk by that plane and its torpedo is like saying the man who called the cops because he was suicidal was saved by the dispatcher who sent out some units instead of saying he was saved by the officers who spent hours talking to him and convinced him to give life another chance. Without that dispatcher the cops wouldn't have had a chance to save him but the cops did all the work, not the dude who took the call and sent them out there.
@adenkyramud5005 I see your logic, I just disagree. In that framework, the Swordfish is a neighbor who breaks the suicidal guy's kneecaps, keeping him from reaching the gun in the first place. Nice, no; effective, yes.
I find it a little unfair to say Bismarck went down easily. As much as i love Drach :), but in my opinion we should maybe have a more detailed look at the battle and keep in mind that Bismarck was not able to maneauver more than to stay against the wind in a Northwest direction, maybe do some random curves . Obviously the time for her to go down is relatively short, since Bismarck is heading straight towards the British and firing distances close down very quickly (after 20 minutes down to 12.000 yards?).
So getting everthing on your superstructure shot to pieces and not being able to fight anymore in a very short period sounds pretty logical to me? Also i think the Bristish managed to stay out of Bismarcks rear firing arc for quite a while? Would have been interesting to see how things change if they managed to fix the rudder in time...
first of these i've watched. i'm a complete nautical novice...but bigger into military history which includes naval and this type of excellent technical expertise i find fantastic. I AM a huge F1 fan and am just a sucker for engineering details, which concerning sea vessels, this video is chalked full of. bravo. thank you.
I absolutely agree with your opinion on cruise ships. They've been very lucky so far, but there have been many close calls. On several occasions for various reasons these vessels have lost propulsion which in turn meant no food or sanitary systems, they were fortunate that in most cases the weather was calm.
Even the design of the big cruise ships, with a large open space running up several decks amidships, only alleviates the problem of putting so much weight that high on the superstructure, not eliminating it; this is counteracted on some larger cruise ships by having large void spaces -- theatres, ice rinks, ballrooms, etc. -- placed low in the hull, where they don't take away from the number of potential windows and balconies for the passengers. And as you point out, they rely on a continuous supply of power to keep the various systems running; loss of sanitary services, refrigeration, or HVAC systems rapidly renders the vessel unlivable.
@@seanmalloy7249 Indeed... stability aside, it wasn't until recently that redundant systems have been built into these vessels. And, we haven't even touched on a fire at sea with 3,500 people aboard.
No, I'll stick to sailboats for my crossings thank you.
Apart from being designed by expert naval architects, cruise ships have an obvious safety margin. If the weather gets really rough and they can't avoid a storm, they always empty the 3 or 4 swimming pools they have on deck 14. That gives them vastly more stability in just 5 minutes.
As they taught us in law school, "Jerry rigging is an art. Jury rigging is a crime." 😁
Like that!😂🤣
😂
Lol. But, it is jury-rigged.
I loved Patrick Obrian writing Doctor Maturin mulling over the mumps as a more humane way of providing the opera with castrati, all while mumps is making its way through the ship.
I believe the North Carolina class has a propeller arrangement similar to the Iowa Class with the inboard shafts in skegs and the outboard shafts supported on struts. The builders model and construction photos that I have seem clearly depict this. Not to say there weren't vibration problems. Most of the high speed high power four shaft ships suffered such issues. The SS United States, without skegd, had a lot of attention put into propeller design to deal with cavitation and vibration, but never completely eliminated it.
Ahhh the return of the long form drydocks the gods bless us this day.
Convoy commodores. At the time, the commodore was typically a retired Navy captain. This was supposed to give the civilian skippers someone they were old enough tnd experienced enough to respect, and give the overall command to someone senior to the escort commodore. When he retired about 1972, my dad (CAPTUSN, RET), was assigned to that duty in case of an emergency recall.
1:18:25 - And even _with_ those improvements, modern jets are _still_ considerably slower to spool up than piston engines (because of the honking great rotational inertia of the compressor/turbine rotors); also, with a prop plane (assuming it's using a tractor configuration, which most do), an increase in engine power produces an immediate increase in lift (from the prop wash going back over the wings), whereas a jet engine has to accelerate the entire airplane to a higher speed in order to increase the airplane's lift.
Which is why a new class of engine is a high bypass turbofan with a propellor bolted on the front (outside the air effects of the turbofan itself) to be used on passenger aircraft or anything that uses the high bypass turbofan.
There is also something called boundary layer control which could be adjusted to run permanently and provide surface lift from a jet engine (venting just behind the leading edge in this case, instead of trying to maintain the boundary layer over the wing so carrier landings aren't more of a splat).
Having spent years working on various Carnival cruise ships, mostly the Fantasy class, calling them unstable is begin nice. There's a reason they sail in calm seas and having to outrun a hurricane in one is terrifying. Good times.
Drach; constructs a chart for what many consider to be semantics.... 😆
Keep on Drachin', Drach !!!
🚬😎
I have read of several incidences in the battle of the Atlantic where the commander of the group of escorts that joins a convoy with an escort Commander, would usually defer to the guy who's already in command and not worry about the niceties of rank in time and grade. It prevented confusion among the ranks on the ships. Convoy Commodores they're actually in a lot of instances two of them the commodore and an assistant commodore in case the commodore got Sonic which happened all too often. Their sinking was unfortunate happenstance as opposed to being targeted deliberately. Many of the Commodores were retired Royal Navy officers called back to service. They gave their lives in combat at an age when they should have been rocking in front of a fireplace talking to the grandchildren.
Thank you, Drachinifel.
The underwater cargo carrier is similar to the design of the whaleback steamships and barges that were designed to handle the rough waters of the great lakes. Fully loaded the superstructure had to be water tight as the waves freely washed over the deck. They were virtually a submarine and they regularly towed an unpowered barge with an identical hull. They were built 1897 to 1898.
Interesting. Are Marco "subs" a variation?
I would think the downside of "whale back (besides cost of construction and loading) would be crew feeling " contained?
@@waltermachnicz5490 same principle, different purpose. Narco subs are avoiding radar return, whaleback steamships avoided wave battering.
I propose a new definition of battleship. Would the captain of a KGV smirk if a theoretical ship appeared on the horizon? If yes, then it is not a battleship.
For example:
KGV vs Yamato, no smirk
KGV vs Renown, smirk
KGV vs Iowa, no smirk
KGV vs Hood, no smirk
KGV vs Kongo, smirk
KGV vs Scharnhorst, smirk
KGV vs Tirpitz, no smirk
KGV vs KGV, no smirk
What about Warspite and the R-class? Those are the main ships I had issues with in my own way (can it beat Hood?)
By that logic, the QEs are battlecruisers….
There is a bit of logic to it but it doesn't account for older battleships.
KGV vs Dreadnought, smirk but still battleship.
@@calvingreene90 Something like a New York is a second class battleship by the time the KGVs hit the water.
@@PaulfromChicago
My point is the smirk test only works within a generation or two. BB 34 & 35 are undeniably battleships but still significantly inferior to KGV.
The "use it or lose it" approach seems universal
The US Navy in my timeframe had a variety of accounts within a squadron. One of them was our OPTAR ( Operations and Training ) funds, which we used for operation of the squadron; flight hours, schools, etc…As for education, in the US Navy it was encouraged, but not essential to advancement. I used my VA benefits to complete my degree…
In Forester's novel, "The Good Shepherd", which Greyhound was adapted from, the USN DD was a fictional Mahan-class ship ("USS KEELING"). The film's makers chose to represent a ship they could obtain a digital model AND film aboard, and wound up using the Fletcher-class USS Kidd, restored to late World War Two rig at Baton Rouge, LA. They also did 3D scans of HMCS Sackville to construct their digital Flower class corvette - which did look wonderful, but had limited screen time. I must admit that it bothered me no end to see the representation of a late-war, square-bridge, low director Fletcher tearing around the North Atlantic in early 1942 jammed with twin 40mms - I had really hoped to see somebody represent one of the 1500 tonners, with their high forecastles and their smaller tactical diameters... much more suitable and historically accurate as USN Atlantic ASW ships in early 42 assuming you weren't a four-piper. Not sure if they went and obtained digital data for their 3D model of the Tribal from HMCS Haida or just built that model up from other sources.
Isn't this a little bit of generational Nitpicking? And criticize people using Winchester 92s in a film that's not post 1892? Or complain about airplanes in the film, "Battle of Britain" having the wrong engines? It's a movie. It's entertaining. Leave it at that. Old warships don't grow on trees.
@@WALTERBROADDUS - Of course it is - Guilty as charged! ;-) It also bugs me to see stock, late-war footage of quad 40mm mounts blazing away in "documentaries" about Midway and Coral Sea, which also tend to include TBFs and Hellcats rolling down carrier decks in June of 1942. GAK!
I suppose it's about the depth of one's immersion in the minutiae of the subject - and I am admittedly quite the World War Two naval nerd. With the advent of credible CG modeling, I had simply hoped for the makers of Greyhound to go whole hog and generate their models from plans - obviously a more labor-intensive project that they may have lacked the budget for. For me, there is a world of difference twixt an early-war, round-bridge high director Fletcher with a sparse AA rig and the later square-bridge ships. But of course, then they could have also gone ahead and just done a 1500 tonner from scratch... Not sure if ANY Fletchers were to be found in North Atlantic convoys during early 42!
I still enjoyed the film (though not the repeated German transmissions on the TBS frequencies...). It was reasonably faithful to the primary character in the book, which I had read many decades ago. The sweeping views of the convoy itself and the sense of the desperation of those convoy battles were conveyed wonderfully IMHO. Not a movie where the technical inaccuracies overshadowed the storytelling for me, unlike some other films dealing with areas of my interests.
@@jimmahon3417 at least this is better than having the battleship Missouri face off versus space aliens.
@@WALTERBROADDUS - Hah! - Concur!
Regarding the Kongo. Japanese word for battlecruiser (巡洋戦艦) literally means "Cruising Battleship" and their re-designation from battlecruiser to battleships is just removing the first two letters. Obviously everybody would have use BB instead of CCBB unless they were explicitly told to.
The flip side is that you have officers who have spent a decade and a half referring to the Kongo's one way which is distinct from the other capital ships. Some of them seem to have continued this in correspondence after the official deletion of the term.
@@Drachinifel But weren't the Espana-class battleships comparable in weakness of their armor to the Kongos, yet designated battleships nevertheless? If the reason is their comaratively low speed, does a Kongo with half of her boilers out of order get to be promoted to a battleship after all? :)
@@VersusARCH it's relative to time period and size. At the time they were laid down, the Espana's were on the low end of battleship protection, but were also very small. Other somewhat larger battleships at the time had only slightly breater protection. Although the Kongos were started only a couple of years later, protection generally was increasing and at their displacement they could've had a lot more armour, but being BC's this was obviously sacrificed for speed.
Plus, the Espana class armour had some marginally protective value against their own guns at longer ranges, Kongo dod really have any effective protection against her own guns at any practical battle range.
@@Drachinifel
While I mostly agree with this, the issue with the “a battlecruiser isn’t armoured against her own guns at any practical battle ranges” argument is that by this logic, Iowa, North Carolina, Yamato and Littorio would be battlecruisers, because they weren’t armoured against their own main batteries at any practical battle ranges (with the partial exception of Yamato’s turret armour and even that’s only for the front of the turret)
I think one reason that they used a Fletcher in Greyhound is because they filmed on USS Kidd, which is the only surviving WW2 destroyer in original configuration. It would be more plausible for something along the lines of a four-stack or a Gleaves of Benson, but there are no surviving prewar US destroyers.
In the novel it was a Mahan, which is closer to a Fletcher than a four stacker
Also in the original novel, the RN and RCN ships are both corvettes.
Edit: It is also stated in the book that the crews of the two corvettes and the Polish destroyer are all 'experienced' whereas the captain of the American destroyer (USS Keeling in the original) has never seen action before.
@Charles Stearman I finally got my apple + account to work and watched Greyhound for the first time. It kinda gives the impression it's his first time leading a patrol now, but maybe had WW1 experience 🤔?
On Bismarck at the end: it doesn't matter who sunk her, once the guns went silent she was mission-killed. Like if you kill the turret crew of a tank -- the driver, down in front, may still be able to drive it around, but at that point it's kinda just a crappy tractor. Or conversely, if you manage to make a tank throw a track, it becomes a pillbox, and is still just as dangerous if the crew doesn't bail out (either to run away or try to fix it).
I would generally agree, except to point out that a mobility kill CAN still be a mission kill if the tank/ship can't get its guns TO the enemy.
... Generally speaking, you need to be able to both shoot AND move in order to be considered combat effective...
@Crazyfrog41 Yes, you are very right. There is a reason for the expression "a sitting duck!" A target that can't move. Sooner or later it's going to have a round breach it's armor. So best to NOT be inside when it happens.
01:25:45 Excellent analysis of historical precedence and a vindication for Schley.
I am disappoint!!! 😢 You brought up mines but there was no Mrs. Drach gracing us with "floaty, floaty, floaty."
Please let her know that some of us miss her contributions terribly.
A 3 hr Drydock and it's only Part 1? Drach is a nutter!
22:00 To be clear, that isn't a government thing. It happens quite broadly across private entities as well.
And similar to your mention of governments paying for random things at the end of the fiscal year, you quite commonly see corporate departments buying new equipment or stocking up on supplies or other stuff to use up their excess budget at the end of the corporate fiscal years.
One thing you will find it you get to see how a lot of companies operate, most of those wasteful and inefficient things governments do, private companies are doing just as much. It is just less visible.
Another outstanding production I listen to the entire video as usual
On the repairship question, are you going to do a spot on the USS Vestal? She had to be a miracle worker early on.
British post-Jutland 15" Mark VA APC Shells are the standard anti-armor shells that replaced the original Greenboy 15" APC design circa 1920 through I think the year 1930 or so when the newer rather different designs began to be issued. The Mark VA (the "A" indicating a shot windscreen design later replaced by the much longer "B" design for reduced drag) were equipped with a hardened AP cap (flattened cone face for Hadfield and "knob-and-ring -- also later used by Krupp naval APC shells --- for Firth) and a much smaller explosive charge than pre-Jutland Lyddite-only charges of only 2.5% of the projectile's weight using the Lyddite (70%) and dinitrophenol (30%) "Shellite" filler and an optional, set during loading, delay-action base fuze (Number 16D) of circa 0.025 second or so delay (Lyddite almost always detonated within 0.003 second when a shell hit thick armor, fuzed or not, which is also the average delay in a non-delay base fuze (pre-Jutland Lyddite shells were VERY reliable to their test spec). The smaller filler cavity allowed better body strength to the shell at oblique impact and the hard cap allowed the cap to make a pit in the armor plate before the shell itself hit the plate, greatly improving depth of penetration and allowing such improved penetration at virtually any impact angle and keeping the projectile body intact by reducing the high forces caused by the now-partially-punched-through face or face-hardened Cemented Armor. The hard caps and stronger bodies allowed significantly thicker face-hardened armor to be penetrated by the improved APC shells at any given angle and striking velocity.
Originally the Number 16D base fuze, also used without the later Greenboy delay modifications in the Lyddite-filled pre-Jutland APC shells, did not use an added booster charge, just black powder at its tip to set off the main filler (Lyddite did not need a booster). However, by WWII it was found that a rather lot of Shellite fillers were not exploding properly --the insensitive Shellite was more insensitive than they had originally thought --So they added a "Composition Exploder" (CE) -- Tetryl -- booster to the new base fuzes for Shellite-filled shells, which had previously only been used for TNT-filled smaller cruiser-sized Common/SAP shells. The BADEN firing tests show a lot of less-than-full-power explosions by APC shells, but it seems that it took some time to accept the problem as needing to be corrected (Tetryl was adopted for TNT shells in 1928, since TNT was also very insensitive, but it was over 10 years later before Shellite shells started using it too). The US Army had adopted Tetryl before the end of WWI, but, like the British Navy for TNT shells, the US Navy did not trust it and waited until 1928 to put it in all of their base fuzes, though again in all size shells with any filler.
I think a good point on weather the Kongo's are Battleships or Battlecruisers, is HMS Repulse, the two in WW2 are very simular and comparible, they had simular speed, simular firepower (Kongo might have more but Repulse has heavier) and they have simular armour.
Yet the Repulse was called a battlecrusier her whole live and was never modified like her sister Renown, so given that Repulse is accpeted as Battlecrusier by everyone and the Knogo's are in the same ball park i think that makes them a Battlecrusier, a good Battlecrusier no doubt, but a still battlecrusier.
And just to throw my hat in another ring i would call Hood a Fast Battleship because shes effectively a Queen Elizabeth with more speed, same guns, simular protection Hoods just faster and we accpet the QE's as Battleships so i think we have to call Hood a Battleship to.
The mention of the Ryan reminded me. The Hickory (NC) Aviation Museum, 30 min from the farm, has a Curtis XF15C-1, another hybrid. They also have a Vampire.
On the subject of steam supply and boilers.
Most steam ships had small auxiliary boilers that could be flashed up quickly when the main boilers were off line.
They were for powering auxiliary plant like generators, pumps, fans winches and capstans etc.
One of their important jobs was to provide power to the boiler room to pump fuel, water and draught fans for the main boilers until enough pressure was on line to be self sustaining.
Cargo ship could even have 'donkey' boilers on deck to provide steam for capstans and cargo winches when the boiler roo was completely shut down.
The advance of electronics and all things it affected on warships increased in speed after WWII to the point that the average sailor could no longer maintain the new missile weapon systems replacing most guns, especially for anti-aircraft use. Contractors had to be assigned to ships for such things and this was considered unacceptable by the US Navy by 1960. In 1963 the US Navy created the US Naval Ship Missile Systems Engineering Station (NSMSES -- pronounced "Nemesis") on the SeaBee Base in Port Hueneme, California, a few miles north of Los Angeles in Ventura County. It was assigned to fix the maintenance problem and within a few years it had done so. It based a new layered process (day, week, month, quarter, semi-year, and year scheduled maintenance plus special as needed tests and repair procedures) and documentation system on the NASA methods and also changed the entire process to bott0m up, in that the person on the ship with the problem could bypass everybody else and contact NSMSES directly and NSMSES had to immediately (within 24 hours) respond to the call to do everything from just call back with advice to sending out personnel to the ship to help the ship fix the problem (I had to do the ship visits with only one day notice twice). It helped that the average sailor also had more knowledge about electronics due to working on automobiles and similar things, but major work had to be done to package the instructions properly.
Special naval ammo. During WWI and still available, if desired, the US Navy developed their "Bombardment" round for the 14" gun. It was filled with 12% Explosive "D" (ammonium picrate -- the same super-insensitive explosive used in all WWI and after naval and some Army explosive big gun shells) and a non-delay base fuze. Similar to the British WWI-era CPC round, but not used for any kind of armor penetration use. It had a medium-length bare pointed nose and was designed for high-angle long-range fire from railway guns. This shell was needed because the US Navy had NO HE-type shells for its battleships until the WWII multi-fuzed High Capacity (HC) round type was introduced early in WWII, which was a rather standard HE shell with the option of several nose fuze types or none at all, since it also had a non- or very-short-delay base fuze for concrete/rock penetration. I do not know if these Bombardment shells were ever used.
Use it or lose it is how I ended up eating lobster and crab in basic training.
Before you get up in arms a military kitchen can not cook lobster, it's cruel and unusual punishment.
On back of turrets on the Wisconsin is a ventilation opening. Without ventilation the gun house would fill with gases from the guns. The position is to prevent entrance of shrapnel and shock from the other turret
I used to have a clockwork Tri-Ang (I think) model of an RAF rescue launch when I was a little boy and I loved it.
The air group on the Independence class (my dad served on one) was a double squadron (VF) of 36 F6F fighters and a squadron (VT) of 9 TBM torpedo bombers. CVE's had a composite squadron (VC) of 14 to 16 FM fighters and 8 to 10 TBM's. So, a task group of a CVL and CVE would have 50-52 fighters and 17 to 19 torpedo bombers for a total of 69 aircraft (Note, we're talking about authorized strength, obviously this could vary depending on operational and combat losses)
Hi. Magics stuff (first comment to this channel or any other)
My algorithm knows when I am watching something to default afterwards to Drachinfel a lot of time and I dont change it.
I find myself with 2 questions from this 223 episode and I thought that was worthy of comment.
I certainly find the channel great and long running enough that I do not have worry about running out of content and falling into re-runs.
I waffle, so now the comments.
Firstly I saw the part about the cargo submarine and had an I know something moment.
I am sure that it nearly reached fruition that a balloon of oil (up to amazing tonnage by expansion) could be secreted by submersing and towing. I may be remembering a non military use , but I dont think so.
Secondly and why I got off my arse to ask was:-
I would suppose is the idea of any military is to deliver the maximum of munitions for the cost attached , which allows expansion for the same budget or the reduction of budget.
So has anyone ever looked at the cost versus success that, say, a navy with a 1000 destroyers could overcome a 100 battle ships.
Is it a case of how much budget per kilo of munitions delivered ? I would guess due to the greater scale of munitions in the navy , and a smaller number of measurable individual units , it could be a researchable experiment. I do not mean to suggest the standard day to day money in and money out that the treasurer gives out . I am curious if you could say remove a class of ship as it has a poor measurable return for cost versus delivery.
Apologies for the garble.
Thank you very much as I am sure you have deservedly heard before.
Dave T
On the Cruise Ship stability thing, if motion is an issue try to book in the center and inboard area of the ship to reduce the rolling an pitching in your cabin. I only felt motion while sitting and laying down so if it starts to bug you you can usually just stand up and walk around for a bit.
I think he's more concerned about the fact that if a Whale Shark farts in the wrong direction the bloody thing will capsize..
Ref the Perisher Course. Admiral Ben Bryant, who commanded HMS Sealion in the Noth Sea and HMS Safari in the Med, recalled that one portion of the course had the prospective skipper conducting attacks via periscope against a target - all on dry land with the replica of the control room on the ground floor and the target "sailing" on the blue painted floor of the second story. The target's course and speed could be controlled via cables attached to the ceiling which led to a control station, allowing it to maneuver. He recalled that the news that the target had "rammed" the sub trying to attack it was announced by a wild pounding of feet from upstairs
Re: the combustibility / explosive behavior of Cordite / Poudre B dusts, there is already a fair body of knowledge collected and published in English by various fire protection professional organizations such as the NFPA and the US Bureau of mines and US Dept. of Energy regarding explosives and fuels. Various chemical engineering societies also publish papers on these topics.
The issues of combustible dusts and gas mixtures are fairly well known, if not as widely dispersed as should be the case.The chemical and oil & gas industries try to educate engineers on how to prevent such incidents, and, should that fail, how to safely vent the resulting over-pressure to protect lives and equipment.
You cannot have an explosion without ignition (an explosion is a case of the pressure wave of rapid combustion being constrained to force compression) and combustion only occurs in the vapor phase, so your combustible dust has to sublime before it can burn / explode.
Mixing dusts really only effects the combustibility to the extentof the minimum ignition energy / minimum combustion temperature of the most readily ignited material in the mix... once it lights off, you're pretty much assured to ignite all of the others...
One notably low ignition temperature is for carbon dust films / thin layers. These ignite at ~155 C, which is significantly lower than most gase mixtures, even with a significant portion of hydrogen depressing their ignition temperature. (The behavior of combustible / explosive gas mixtures is an entirely separate, parallel, conversation.)
So, if your ship's compartment having a thin layer of combustible dust on things like pipes and electrical conduits and boxes gets exposed to a temperature of around 150 C, whether through hot shards from a penetrator, spalling, or from compression heating due to a shock wave from the impact of a projectile, you are pretty much guaranteed to have a flash fire.
Depending upon the brissance / flame velocity, if those combustion gases form their own shockwave that exceeds the capabilities of the enclosed space to vent them, you are going to have some sort of an explosion, as those hot gases will create their ventilation path by ripping holes in the steel.
In terms of "worst" carrier conversions, I'd nominate the first two US built CVE's, USS Long Island and HMS Archer, The Maritime Commission had a world of trouble with its diesel powered C2's and C3's - so much so that the USN got rid of as many as possible after WW2, Unfortunately, both the vessels were diesel C3's and suffered accordingly. The Long Island was never trusted with a combat mssion, but served as an aircraft transport and training ship. The Royal Navy gave up in disgust with the Archer, " Her transmission was a constant cause of problems which led to her being withdrawn from front-line service. She was used as a stores ship and then as an accommodation ship before a refit and subsequent use as a merchant aircraft ferry ship, Empire Lagan" Of her diesel powered half-sisters, HMS Avenger was torpedoed, HMS Dasher blew up at her moorings and HMS Biter was fobbed off to the unlucky French. A war record to be truly proud of. Fortrunately, the steam powered C3 conversions of the Bogue/Attacker and Prince William/Ruler classes proved much more successful.
On the subject of off the job formal naval education it seems to start around the middle of the 19th century for officers. As to graduate degrees becoming significant among NCOs, this is probably a post 1970s
phenomenon. I remember the careers information in my British school at that period and degrees in the armed forces were only covered in officer recruitment literature. Other ranks, where they did mention qualifications, were below graduate level.
To be honest, I seriously don't think that even with today's technology that if they were building a North Carolina type battleship today that today's technology would discover problems with the propeller resonance if it hadn't already been previously discovered in the North Carolina battleships already. I would imagine that it would be akin to being in a 35k ton washing machine on the spin cycle and the load is not balanced enough to spin correctly. I would make the guess that the engineers aboard ship, after they had diagnosed the problem and had made it to where it was happening around 17-18 knots, I would think that they would find a way to cut power to the inner shafts when appropriate and allow the outer shafts to accelerate passed that speed before giving the inner shafts power again. Not totally sure if that would work, or just prolong the vibrations rather than just powering past that speed to begin with. But if it's the inner shafts causing the resonance then it would seem that if they could make 20 knots just using the outer propellers then they could give the inner shafts power & just keep it moving.
20:17 - The "expiring funds" syndrome is well-known in the US military as well, where you see a lot of purchases made in the August-September timeframe so that you spend any unused portion of your OPTAR (OPerating TARget) funds before the end of the fiscal year, so you don't run into the problem of coming in under budget. And I agree that it's a stupid way to handle funding, as it sometimes results in all sorts of only marginally-useful purchases (or redundant, such as buying new furniture when the current furniture is still well within its useful life).
Hey drach, my grandfather worked for bethlehem steel during ww2. He was a welder
Always thought Rodney and P.O.W. ended up near point blank punching 16" holes down the whole profile of Big Biz..a kind of final "🖕 ☠️" for the whole Hood tragedy?
Anyway..cheers Drach and keep up the excellent work ya wonderful Brit sunufagun you! 🎉❤
Another two parter? Let's go
The correct pronounciation of Gato is to rhyme with Tomato 😂😂😂
That's the way my grandpa (a torpedoman who served in late 44 through VJ day) says it.
@@asureaskie yes but which way does he pronounce tomato?
Just me and the ferrets, again, hi drachonians!
Kongō has less armour than Queen Mary. I don't see anyone saying Queen Mary was a fast battleship and not a battle cruiser.
Queen Mary sometimes gets a bad rap due to how she went down, but she was theoretically a very capable battlecruiser. Just as much so as Tiger.
Her Downfall was more a cross between being poorly crewed, the ammunition and charge issues and Beatys misuse of his fleet.
Her armour was quite decent. Nowhere near battleship levels, but it should have been sufficient to engage battleships without too much issue (I don't mean that she should slug it out with them in a battle line like they did).
I imagine the UK may have tried to keep her and Tiger if they both survived the war.
Enterprise is a battleship based on the graphic at 7:00. I personally haven't seen planes land on Enterprise and therefore I can reasonably conclude that the runway was a decoy. It's science.
My father: Jesse J.Bryant chief electrician U.S.S.SKIPJACK(and many others 1946-67) No other information due to national security. BT3 Bryant Advance boiler technician U.S.S.GRIDLEY CG-21 ACC/ABC L.M.E.T. 6YO(6 year obligater)10-17-84. Stay safe people 🙏 ❤️.
23:00 I don't know if other public schools go through this, but I went to high school in the United States. And they suffered from that problem in respect to their budget for heating the school. Every school year come April/May/June, if the school hadn't already burned through their budget for heating oil, they'd crank up the heat (yes even in June) until they burned off all the excess money from the budget precisely because if there was any left over they would be penalized for it the following year.
Imagine early June, getting ready for finals, and it's 85-90^F outside the school and about 95^F *inside* the school (29-32^C, 35^C respectively). It was quite unpleasant.
A quick caution on 'Two nations separated by a common language'.
In the US 'Public School' means one financed by government, local or otherwise, funds. In the UK, confusingly, 'Public School' means one NOT funded with government funds. So if not specifically mentioned as being a Public School it's publicly funded - go figure.
Same sort of thing as 'First Floor'. In the US, the floor at ground level. In the UK, the floor above the one at ground level (which is called the 'Ground Floor').
I agree with your assessment on the Kongo being a battle cruiser. The ship was built as a battle cruiser they did very little change to make it a real battleship. It was too lightly armored to be a real battleship. It was a very elegant design but that does not change it's actual capabilities
you mean Kongo, Nagato was an actual battleship.
@@gokbay3057 yeah I just corrected it thanks
@@gokbay3057
Albeit a badly armoured one that instead focused on trying to get a 25-26kt speed and eight 16” guns.
One reason Dr. Clarke argued that the Kongos could be called battleships was because, thanks to their reconstructions, their hull structure and overall robustness had become more of a capital ship (battleship) and less that of a cruiser (battlecruiser). He also mentioned, practically in the same breath, that this robustness remained questionable.
For the question on childhood diseases, from someone with a background in epidemiology/history/immunology:
Drach is correct in the assertion that ships become sort of self-contained environments once they're at sea. That said, this isn't as protective as you might imagine. While age of sail crews aren't quite large enough for most diseases to form a stable endemic reservoir (ie stable levels of transmission between people on board and a flux of people entering/leaving the ship), there are a few incredibly important exceptions to this. If a pathogen progresses slowly, has a long incubation time, has a non-human animal vector such as rodents or insects, or has an external vector such as fresh water or fecal matter, a pathogen can quite easily become endemic to a particular ship. This is, of course, not including ships with huge crew complements like modern aircraft carriers or cruise ships which have enough crew that there are practically no limitations to what diseases can spread.
On an age-of-sail ship, barring scurvy-induced immunosuppression, there are a couple historically-relevant diseases that tick these boxes. Tuberculosis thrives in humid environments, even in water droplets that are external to the body, and has a slow growth-rate and a penchant for producing asymptomatic carriers. Black plague (Yersinia pestis) has its infamous flea/rodent/human transmission trifecta. Cholera and typhoid fever are positively lethal in any kind of environment where a constant source of fresh, running water is unavailable, and devastate any population that has little to no barrier between activities like cooking/cleaning/eating/drinking/washing and defecating, as is the case on a ship where the only source of fresh water is what you bring with you.
As for "childhood" diseases, most were not confined to childhood until relatively recently. While chickenpox was not likely a concern due to almost certain early-life exposure, it still has a startlingly high lethality rate in individuals who were either unexposed or have immunological issues. Strep throat, however, will almost certainly progress to the highly-lethal scarlet and the bacteria causing it commonly transmits through fresh water and humid environments. Measles is a special case. While it hasn't been a concern in modern times until recent... developments, new research indicates that the reason measles is so dangerous is due to the likelihood of secondary infection. Measles actually has significant immunosuppressive effects, "wiping" an infected person's immune memory and making them susceptible to diseases that they had previously encountered. This would "stack" with the effects of scurvy. An outbreak of measles aboard a ship would make the crew highly susceptible to chickenpox infection later on, suffering the severe effects as if they had never been exposed to it before. And that's just the most "mild" of infectious diseases that I mentioned.
Vaccination and antibiotics have dramatically reduced the incidence, severity, and mortality associated with all of these diseases. There are a few more that I wanted to touch on, but these are the ones that I think made the most sense in the context of the original question.
Yeah, measles reboots the B cells amongst others. Resets the immune memory.
New Fibromyalgia research indicates an autoimmune disease that screws up the cytokine balance - hence lots and lots of cancer. Ask me how I know..
AR-4 USS Vestal helped many a catastrophically damaged ship make it back to dry dock stateside. She helped stabilize the stern of USS Pensacola that had it literally hanging on by almost nothing. She even patched a torpedo hole.
Alex's comments about Kongo are a little misrepresented. Dr Clarke posits (more or less offhandedly) that Kongo became a battleship when additional structure was added into the hull rather than armor just bolted to the side.
He didn’t exactly say that either but Alex Clarke has had fire-warning ahead of today’s Livestream by him to prepare for questioning!
@Dan Freedman isn't that usually what happens on the Sunday streams, Alex gets bombarded by questions in regards to things that Drach has said
You clearly know more than me.... just in certain areas I have an edge... I'm not in the box that everyone else is in... I'm a free thinker!
Speaking of childhood disease killing someone measles & mumps can turn deadly, the main thing that would kill someone is if they already had a weak immune system & they could get a fever so high that it causes brain damage and/or heart problems. Once we learned how to fight the fever and symptoms of such disease. Then most kids would either easily get over them after a few days of rest. And once we started having immunizations for these diseases things improved even more. But also, with any type of illness, especially anyone at sea, dehydration could be a problem. Someone could be in need of fluids & just not getting them which could also affect your body trying to fight a disease.
29:28 Christopher Columbus'es caravel Santa Clara (nicknamed Nina) started her 1492. jorney, that would result in discovery of the Carribean Islands, with lateen sails, but when the fleet stopped at the Canary Islands she was re-rigged with square sails.
I think that there was one example of a "speculative" warship back in the early 2000s. There was a trimaran named Triton (I don't think she was ever a RN ship) that was built for demonstration purposes. She was leased to the Australian customs service for a few years, I believe.
A shipyard in Hobart invented the large truck carrying fast catamaran in 1990, this was widely copied, and a shipyard in Perth, Australia developed the idea into a trimaran. Around the turn of the century, the Royal Australian Navy was short of fast transports for the East Timor operation, so they leased a fast catamaran from Incat, the Hobart company and it used it to shuttle troops and vehicles to Timor. Other navies noticed how successful this commercial ferry was in naval operation and either built their own, or got Incat to build them. As ferries they run between 35 and 55 knots, but naval ones are usually slower.
@@Dave_Sisson Ah, yes. I'd forgotten about HMAS Jervis Bay. She was quite successful in the role, I recall.
@@notshapedforsportivetricks2912 I had a look at MV Triton on Wikipedia and while the ship found some use, that type of design wasn't going anywhere.
If I may relay an alternate theory about the Deering. The ship was hauling a particular chemical cargo that started to smell foul. The crew took this as a sign the ship might explode or gas them all so they abandoned ship. Fortunately the ship didn’t explode and the foul smell dissipated but by then the crew was already aboard the Hewitt and were too far away to know. The mysterious ship came alongside to investigate the Deering, when the light ship signalled them they ran thinking they’d uncovered something nefarious.
Polish destroyers. My dad was on Atlantic convoy escort duty in 42 and 43. He served with a Polish ship. He said the escorts had blown a U-boat to the surface and they abandoned ship. The Polish ship sailed thru the survivors, dropped a depth charge pattern, and reported 'no survivors found." Dad disapproved of the action, but said he had trouble blaming the Poles.
"If a Pole is your friend they're a friend for the rest of your life, if not that's about 5 minutes"
They're still not fans, but kind of hard to blame them.
(2:11:40) Both Tenders and Repair ships would often repair damaged ships enough so that they could reach a shipyard.... (Even if it was a Destroyer Tender repairing a cruiser!)
I am aware of one advanced munition for naval guns in the 1940s that was not mentioned: the gun-launched guided anti-aircraft projectile originally known as project Arrow Shell and later as XSAM-N-8 Zeus.
@ Drachinifel.....Although I can see your case for Victory and or an Iowa...bit surprised with your love of engineering you didn't pick S.S. Great Britain and have an entire world's tour to explore her while she's underway.
The angry commenter brought attention to his existence, but I haven't seen it, so I am going to choose to believe he doesn't exist at all.
I saw it. Long wall of text that really didn't say anything so I didn't pay any further attention and hadn't noticed that Drach responded.
To be honest, on one hand I'm kinda glad Drach addressed the incredible stupidity that some people exhibit & create in the comments sections at times on rare occasions. And on the OTHER hand I kinda wish he had NOT even bothered to give that person the satisfaction of mentioning his brash stupidity. With that being said, the main reason I say that is because I've been a fan of Drach's for 4-5 years now. And I rarely EVER see any brash comments like that. Even the "what if" questions that normally bother me more than than most of the simple questions like the constant questions about range clocks on American ships or the booms for the old torpedo nets. But as I stroll thru the comments section I usually try to answer the easier questions when I can. Mostly when the answers are just a quick & easy sentence or two. But when people are clearly trying to find fault with the current status quo & clearly have an "alternate agenda". On one hand I want to totally ignore them & not give them the satisfaction of even acknowledging their idiocy but then I feel like if people do ignore it, it's NOT going to make it go away. And that if someone doesn't address it's wrongfulness, then others may think that there is truth there. And so I'd rather call it out for it blindly ignoring reality rather than thinking if we ignore it MAYBE it will go away! I hope you get my meaning & will help to identify & address people blatantly pushing agendas that try to call certain parts of history false. E.G. Like people who try to say"the Holocaust" never happened!
The Kongo being a battleship argument goes like this. " If a ship is used in a battle, it becomes a battleship therefore if a rowboat was present at Tsushima, it was a battleship."
Unless it has torpedoes (or fishing nets, possibly), then its a torpedo boat. :P
USS Johnson was a battleship! Change my mind
/s
Isn't it the difference between "Battleship" (defined term), and "battleship" generic word without specific definition, that just has to have an intersection between ship and battle? Of course, tje strongest argument that the hypothetical rowing boat and Tsuchima was not a battleship, was the second limb- it is a boat, not a ship.
Battlecruiser not being a battleship argument goes like this. Cruisers are not ships.
A Cruiser is definitely a battleship, but not a Battleship
If you think about the illness question? Let's just look at today. We have merchant ships all over the world stacked up for the last 3 years. And there's not been a major covid outbreak at all in the merchant or military navies really. Being at at Sea, you're basically quarantined from most problems ashore.
The point about the inherent inefficiency of shellfire at sinking large vessels is one that needs to be emphasized more. There’s a reason torpedoes inflict far more effective damage per hit than any naval shell.
Even the Second Pacific Squadron pre-dreads took hours to actually sink, and this was in spite of them having been turned into floating fuel air bombs during their trainwreck of a voyage.
The limit on a repair ship capacity to repair is the size of the ship - a capital ship propeller shaft blank is just too big and heavy to physically fit in a repair ship machine shop let alone get machined.
There are numerous reports of capital ships being patched up just enough to get them back to either the United States or United Kingdom from the pacific after groundings bending propeller shafts because even the land based ship yards couldn’t handle building replacements.
When machining shafts like that a ship physically can’t be stiff enough to act as the lathe bed big enough to accurately machine a propeller shaft or the even lift the raw steel blank for a capital ship propeller shaft (which will weigh ten times as much as the finished shaft).
Nearly any dust is highly flammable and in heaviely dusted areas smoking is usually prohibited and you need to make sure that there is no hazard of sparks cause it will lead to dust-air explosions.
It occurs to me that the Carroll A Deering was found during US Prohibition -- so the mysterious steamer you mentioned, that didn't want to be identified, might have been involved in bootlegging. Having a cargo of illegal alcohol, inside US territorial waters, could explain why she didn't wish to stick around after someone noticed her. Pure speculation of course -- but just one more reason a ship of the era might want to sidle off before anybody official showed up.
For my round the world tour, USS Constitution!
Although HMS Victory would be a VERY close second, with USS Iowa a hard on third!
Never been this early to a drydock therefore I've never seen another drydock
I am not an expert on naval procurement, but I think you will find that in bureaucracies in general, If you don't spend the money allocated for something The bureaucrats and/or legislators will assume that you didn't need it. Also in most circumstances you cannot carry over a budget from one year to the next unless it is set up like that to begin with
They key to understand is the difference between operational accounts and programmatic accounts. Weapons programs are usually funded through multiple years while OPEX type accounts are funded one year at a time. In both cases, however, the US government only has money for one FY at a time. So, if the Navy is procuring a new destroyer class, for example, the way that works is that the ship is funded entirely in the first year, but executed over the lifecycle. Each year, congress has to appropriate the the funds necessary which is why programs get cancelled more than that the program is failing.
“Capable of engaging any enemy ship with guns…..”
Well, I could take my 30-40 Krag to the USS Iowa museum at San Diego and take a shot or two…..but I’m not a battleship.
I think…..
Regarding speculative aircraft projects I am thinking of the high proportion of british industry that was dedicated to aviation during the war, the push for refineries to concentrate on higher octanes rather than diesel etc.. There was a lot of design talent and manufacturers "needing" such projects. Needless to say that the government, for the most part, did not take decisive action and meekly allowed expertise to be plundered if not given away.
7:12 the other dreadful thing about the measles specifically is that it STRONGLY suppresses your immune system - recent research suggesting that this even extends to effectively _erasing parts of your immune memory of other diseases,_ and while people before modern medicine couldn't have known that, they sure as hell would have noticed that measles seemed to bring other dangerous diseases in its wake.
Like most "childhood diseases", we really only think of it that way because either it used to kill a lot of children, or because in modern society it's only children too young to have been fully vaccinated yet who get it...
Any parent who doesn't vaccinate against HPV should be publicly executed in interesting ways. After what my partner went through as far as I'm concerned it should be made compulsory - to the extent, no vaccine, no schooling.
@@rosiehawtrey Agreed in spirit. And in detail about schooling.
I genuinely think that producing anti-vax propaganda should be a felony.
1:38:00 Poseidon theme starts playing. Rock the boat baby
I just realized that Rock the boad came out a mere few months AFTER the book to movie adaption.
"Use it or lose it" is an insane accounting method, leading to budgets being spent on pointless &/or inefficient matters, rather than needed but longer term projects.
The point of it isn't to ensure any sort of efficiency; it's recognized as being bad for that. It's about ensuring that organizations remain dependent upon their funding. In the US, the Congress does not control the military, only the funding for it; if the military was permitted to squirrel away money from year to year and establish their own pool of resources, Congress would have far less control over them.
@@chs76945 That doesn't really hold when the military budget is controlled by a government department, rather than the military themselves.
Here in the UK, it's the MOD who hold the purse strings.
@@GARDENER42 Actually you see the same reasoning applied to everything from school districts to government agencies.... anywhere that the guys providing the funding don't have the ability to easily fire the guys spending the money. They want to keep control, and you do that by making sure they don't have their own pot of money.
Shinano was a support carrier? First time hearing of this, just wow.
A key point on the childhood diseases is that the sailors would have been far more likely to have had them as children, which is why they are childhood diseases. People were exposed to them as children leading to either child mortality or adult immunity. It's very unlikely enough people on an age of sail warship would not have immunity already for such an outbreak to happen. The case of an extremely malnourished crew coming into port and being exposed is valid but they would be far more likely to pick up pneumonia or suchlike, or one of umpteen tropical diseases if it was a foreign port.
Your comments on repair ships? Royal navy artificer did not just have workshops? The ships galley was also considered part of the workshop? Deep fat friers to heat treat small items and galley ovens used to remodel perspex?
The main reason all this naming silliness exists is because past WWI "Battlecruiser" has become an out-of-date term that keeps sticking around, and "Fast Battleship" is political/spin silliness nearly on par with "Large Light Cruiser". If we swap the latter for the far more appropriate, but not historically used term of "Light Battleship", things would make infinitely more sense and we wouldn't be arguing over these things. But no one wants to call their huge, powerful, intimidating capital ships "Light", so we're stuck with the goofy term "Fast". So that's my pick-a-third-option take, the Kongous are Light Battleships.
The National Geographic magazine I saw with the cargo sub had a shape very similar to the Typhoon class nuclear powered with container style cargo Pods loaded like a drive on through clamshell bow doors
20:17 I think this is less of a government specific problem, but more of a large organizations in general problem. You can see the exact same behavior in multinational cooperations as well.
With regard to reduced charge armament testing, do you still achieve the same rotational velocity in the reduced charge test as in the real-fire end state; and if not, does this affect post-impact armor piercing performance ?
Ahhh Ark Royal...she really was a lovely boat
Cargo Submarines. I note the cargo hatches in the design, but no holds. It would be interesting to exactly how they intended to actually _load_ these things. Utube has a video by Calum on shipping containers which describes the pre-container loading process. Look at this, and you will see the problems.