Q&A: Would the completion of the Italian World War II carrier “Aquila” have had an impact on the Italian Navy’s fortunes in the war in the Mediterranean?
I have a question. I was looking on Wikipedia and I noticed that the Akula and Typhoon are much faster submerged than on the surface. When did submarines go from faster surfaced to faster submerged?
Thanks for pointing that out. It's 5am here in the home of the beaver, and the family was almost awakened to a stream of profanities not heard since Rozhestvensky ran out of binoculars...
I think that the next ship design competition should be to design the “Abomination unto the Lord” fleet, with rough classes based on tonnages. Let’s use WW2 limits for class tonnage...
Two quick points. 1. In terms of your Radar response, you should also point out power requirements. Part of the weight would also be tied up in generating enough juice to power it. Refitting an older ship would require additional capacity. 2. The Akron response was interesting, but my 2 cents would also include their deployments would originate out of New Jersey since that had hangers large enough to handle them. They would only fly from late spring to late summer, save any hurricane weather. Also only traveling east out past Newfoundland. Definitely playing a scouting roll to direct anti submarine efforts. Yet by 1943, they would be grounded because any competent pilots would be flying off carriers. Plus the K-class blimps were coming online to support anti submarine efforts.
RE: Weight of radar -- Drach highlighted a little of the problem, but allow me to go more in depth as to why there was such a weight penalty for adding radar. Say we want to mount a CXAM 1 set on the U.S.S. Arizona. The array itself is a large square made up of pipes approximately ten feet square. This set rotates and is required to be at the highest point on the ship. This alone increases top-weight and increases stresses on the tripod mast, which already holds all the ranging and spotting gear for the guns. Now only do we have the array, but we have all the computer equipment that goes with it, and I don't know if you're familiar with mechanical computers and vacuum tube technology, but it is neither light nor compact. The electronics would easily take up a sizable room in addition to the technicians that need to maintain and run the equipment. This would "displace" room that would possibly be ammunition for, say a 1.1 in AA gun. Also there would be increased wiring run throughout the ship to power such a set and various monitors both in the CIC and possibly the bridge or conning tower. Having toured through the Alabama, I've seen what these sets look like when they're included into the design of the ship. When you're adding these sets to an already existing system aboard a ship, there's always going to be give and take, otherwise you risk the ship being overweight and/or unstable.
Indeed. Additionally, a fire control radar of the period would also have, besides the below deck console, a gyro and computer. The gyro is about a ton itself and the computer weighs even more than the director. Yes, they did have computers in WWII; but these computers were electro-mechanical using synchros, servos and manual inputs. In short- what you see on the mast is less than half of the whole fire control radar system. Including more than a half ton of personnel to operate and maintain the fool thing, just that radar system in total is north of 30 tons. Add multiple MK37 systems, CXAM and such... yeah, 100+ tons for radar in WWII tech is about right.
The weight is secondary. Beiing in the tower, 120 feet above the roll center of the boat is extremely hard on your stomach. I dont use the top con (9f) above rcb on my tuna boat ever - and I dont get seasick in 30f hawaiian swell - its extremely tiring. The large sweep back and forth of high mounted radar in big seas severly hampers radar function. Most of the heavy gear is down in the hull or level deck superstructure for that reason. Old firing mechanical firing computers could not be remotely controlled and were mounted in the towers. With the ascend of tubed computers - those were in the hull and in airconditioned rooms. They really dont like salt.
@@808bigisland I have to disagree with you on this one. Old fc computers- the syncho/servo type, were NEVER in the tower. The were too damned heavy. And the mechanical computers were even more susceptible to salt that the early tube computers (which were not used for fire control due to unreliability). They were connected to the directors by giant shielded cables. Fire control computers went from mechanical to solid state directly, happening in the mid '60's. Also, the roll issue is not as great a problem on a warship that is 5 to 50 times the displacement of a tuna boat and has stabilizers on the hull to minimize the roll effect.
@@VintageCarHistory Agree with you 100%. A tower is heavy and adding equipment will add to bulk and protecting the structure even from small arms fire would be to heavy. All important equipment is in the citadel. Center of roll is the same on big or small boats. Just having a guy up in the tuna tower, 15 feet above the roll center of a tuna boat destabilizes a 30 footer. Its a sickening feeling too to be up there even in calm waters. Sway can be huge. Wind catching on a solid tower acts like a sail. A heavy rotating radar dish might have a big effect on rolling. This is pure guessing - I am too young to have ever sailed on boat with a military 30 foot dish.
@@@808bigisland, Some brainy engineer told me that the firing solutions of differential equations were performed by some kind of rotating gear structures on wheels but I never quit understood how that was done. I do understand the center of gravity issue and so putting up towers for radar certainly raises the CofG.
Drachisms of the Day 23:04 "They were unable to fight the fire despite the fact that the ship was moored alongside the dock and, well obviously, is in an infinite supply of water." 24:21 "Which was probably a bad idea to start with, but...yeah, 'and then it got worse'." 24:41 "Yeah, clap clap clap. All stand up for that one. I wonder who's getting sent to gulag today?" 27:24 "and generally converting it into a fast-moving cloud of chaff"
On Finns vs. USSR There is bit more on this than described on the video. First was Winter War from Nov. 30 1939 to March 13 1940. This was the coldest winter in ages and practically both navies were iced in from mid December and icebreakers were only units capable of independent operations from February. Before icing the Soviet Navy managed to occupy Finnish outer islands in the Gulf of Finland and were active in trying to silence the coastal fortifications. There was some submarine activity. Finnish submarine force didn't manage to fire a single torpedo and they sunked only single ship with mines. Soviets were slightly more successfull. They followed the international treaty forbiding sinking civilian ships without warning at start of the war. Only after declaring whole Finnish coast as war zone and thus being able to attack without warning they managed to sink ships (1 Finnish + 4 others operating in the area). Also one Finnish escort vessel managed to sink itself with malfunctioning DC when hunting Soviet sub. In naval aviation Soviet minelaying operations halted operations in Turku/Åbo harbor for about a week. In the start of the Continuation war there was lots of small ship activity on both sides and one needs to take into account the presence of large German units like Tirpitz in the Baltic theater. Thus it would not have made any sense for Soviets to risk their heavy units against Finns as it might be a trap. As matter of fact loss of Ilmarinen was during an operation where the Finnish navy sailed as a distraction when Germans occupied Estonian islands. After the Red navy was bottled into Leningrad it could not operate heavy units due to multiple minefields in the Gulf of Finland until those were cleared. Meanwhile there was active submarine and light units warfare in the Baltic by both sides.
46:11 - The insuperable problem with "Wargaming Midway," whether that's in an historical or alternate-historical game, is information control - especially for the Japanese player. The lack of information available to Nagumo was a major factor in the historical battle; but any player given the Japanese orders and ORBAT will immediately recognize the setup, and thus *know* from the start that the USN is a) present, b) in strength, and c) *spoiling for a fight.* Even if you implement rules to prevent Japan from (say) ignoring Midway Atoll in favor of flooding the area with recon planes until he's found and dealt with the US Fleet, this additional, anachronistic knowledge can't help but color the player's actions. It changes the entire battle from a somewhat slow-motion, stumbling bushwhack to a more-or-less fair fight... And at that point you aren't really gaming out a "Midway" scenario at all anymore.
I suspect at the illustrated separation of the Warrior and Monitor, the bow wave of Warrior would have very effectively ended Monitor's short and not particularly glorious career.
A squadron of K Class Blimps was transferred to Naval Air Station Port Lyautey in Morocco in July, 1944. These airships conducted ASW patrols above the Straits of Gilbralter. They were equipped with radar, a magnetic anomaly detector, two bombs, and a machine gun. Usually the day shift was covered by PBYs; the night shift by blimps because they were capable of low altitude night flying. They participated in the sinking of U-188 in May, 1945.
It's not just the radar top hamper we can see that contributes to the weight devoted to radars. In those days of vacuum tubes (valves), even a surface search radar display could run to a ton. Once larger plan position indicators (those sweeping oscilloscope type screens) and associated electronics could add another 4-8 tons. In order to coordinate all those radars and fire control systems, something like the USN combat information center (CIC) was now required, with hundreds to tens of thousands of pounds of electronics, radios, phone systems, plus the people to man all of those gadgets. That meant about ten officers and NCOs and another 20 or so enlisted in a cruiser sized vessel, and about half that requirement for a destroyer. Once fighter direction was added to the CIC, another five to seven people had to be crowded into an already inadequate space. The only good thing about being crammed into a small space like a CIC is they were generally one of the first spaces to be air conditioned. Lest you think the Navy had gone soft on the crew, the a/c manual made it clear that it existed mainly to decrease the humidity in the CIC, since all that moisture caused the electronics to break down. Even the so-call plotting tables were in reality large primitive vacuum tube powered analogue computers, each weighing another 3 to 6 tons each. Space also had to be found to accomodate all these men and equipment. The next problem was all the additional bunk and messing space, plus stores for the extra crew, and that could easily add up to another several thousand tons per mission just for stores. But we're not done yet. Something had to make all those all power hungry vacuum tubes light up, and that meant larger steam and diesel generators along with things like dynamotors and sundry other things needed to keep all those screens lit and radar antennas turning, such as additional miles of very heavy electrical cabling, and coaxial cables for the radars themselves. it's hard to find estimates for all the weight added to ships for all these electronics and ancillary things like the CIC. The only seemingly accurate one I've read was in the July (or maybe August) 1945 issue of _Combat Information Center_ magazine, a Navy publication that attempted pull together the best practices from men all over the fleet about how to makes a CIC run efficiently. That estimate included the weight all the electronics and mechanical equipment needed to run all the radars and the CIC itself, plus the CIC staff, but not including some of the engine room generators or radar antennas. That estimate was about 78 tons for a cruiser, 107 tons for a battleship, and an astounding 138 tons for an aircraft carrier, and that didn't include the weight of all the radar antennas. A cruiser size CIC required a minimum of 480 sq ft, a battleship 740, and an aircraft carrier about 950 sq ft. All of this gives some indication that radar was a lot more than slapping a radar antenna on a mast. The next time you look at a late war picture of a USN or RN vessel with those antennas everywhere, just remember that, like an iceberg, a lot of what was required to make them useful was below decks.
One of the earliest radars installed on a select few warships was dubbed the CXAM. It had all the problems listed above; bulky, extra power, crew, etc. One of the old time captains on one U.S. crusier during the guadalcanal campaign didnt trust the new technology and saw it's only use was for keeping coffee pots warm from the large amounts of heat they gave off.
@@BB.61 CXAM is a good example of both the promise and limitations of radar in general, but early radars in particular. The CXAM radio frequency operated at 1.5 meters, or 200 MHz, a very high wavelength in 1938, when CXAM was being tested. The antenna resembled a very large inner spring mattress - very large. The CXAM was 15 feet wide and 16 feet tall, and just the antenna weighed 5,000 pounds. At the time, the most sensitive receiver type was a superheterodyne (superhet), but 200 MHz was such a high frequency that only a superregenerative (regen) receiver was the only type that could provide enough signal amplification to make the return signal visible on a horizontal oscilloscope. It was hard enough to tune in a regen signal sitting in the radio shack on dry land let alone doing so on a rocking, pitching ship. It also required a powerful transmitter on the order of 1,000 watts, something that just didn't exist before 1938. When the radar was on, about 10% of the 10% of the ships power had to be diverted to the CXAM to obtain full transmitting power. Mounted at the very top of a battleship mast, it had a range about 14 miles on a large ship target and 50 miles on a bomber size target. Even with these rather primitive sets, the range was well beyond human lookouts, especially in poor visibility. Luckily for the USN, Admiral Nimitz was something of an electronics tinkerer, and he put himself through a three week radar instruction course in 1938. When he became C in C, Pacific Fleet, he speeded up the number of trainees being sent through radar schools, and he ordered his captains to provide a weekly report of radar usage and issues. He knew too many of his hidebound captains didn't trust radar, and he needed to find a way to make sure it was in use at all time. After a shaky start, it didn't take long for radar to start proving itself, and British and US researchers kept turning out better sets. Radar is generally credited with being among the top three weapons of WWII in the Pacific.
I got sound at 2:07 (I assume same time as you), but yeah it's super weird. I would assume Drach would at least skip through checking the audio before uploading. Maybe it's a RUclips thing.
It's a special message for dogs only. Unfortunately many mobile devices can't reproduce that high of a frequency, so many dogies may be unprepared for upcoming events.
It was the sequel to the second pacific squadron. It wasn't received well by the critics, because it was basically the same thing again with not that much new stuff.
Hey Drach, appreciated the Drydock as always. In terms of highest-ranking admiral, though, I would tend to disagree. First, the Duke of Edinburgh is a political figure, having been a member of the house of lords for fifty years or so. Also with his post beeing a grand office of state and the other members of said group beeing mostly career politicians, I would doubt that he is not into politics at al. Second, there are of course equivalents to a Lord High Admiral - the swedish Navy, for example, has a "Riksadmiral" and Wallenstein for some time was commander in Chief of the Imperial Navy in the Baltic Sea. Third, I would argue that other candidates have a chance to outrank even a Lord High Admiral, at least historically. Take Don Juan de Austria, for example, who, at Lepanto, outranked a whole bunch of guys who were quite High-Rank-Admirals, including the likes of Alvaro de Banzan (Captain-General of the spanish navy) and Venier (Captain-General of the Navy of Venice).
Maybe butting in.. but Agrippa.. guy was hands on .. I've always liked Nimitz.. his problem was people not doing what he wanted them to.. he would expect other admirals to be fully aware. Halsey sure wasn't. Recently listened to an audiobook tincans and greyhounds... a few times after the I.j.n. with less destroyers no radar low on everything would kick our ass at least in D.D. D.E. battles ... say 6 IJN destroyers in a week sink 12 u.s. lose 3 the narrorator would say...but then Americas manuf. Ability caught up with the Japanese... well crap glad of that other wise they would of kicked our ass. Out producing an enemy isn't out fighting or out leading them
The Duke is not a political figure nor does he sit in the house of lords. Nor is the position a great office of state. Theres only four great offices of state. He sits as the head of the Navy and does not sit in a political position at all.
@@tisFrancesfault Well, from 1948 to 1999 the Duke was a Member of Parliament, of the House of Lords, to be precise. members.parliament.uk/member/2789/career Also, the Lord High Admiral is a Grand Officer of State in England and Wales, as you may check here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Officer_of_State. Also, if youndo not mind, one could try to argue that the Queen migth actually listen if her husband opens his mouth. Given that the Queen still holds tremendous powers at her disposal - even if most of the time she decides to delegate those to her Government - one could argue that HRH is the most influental, be it informal, advisor and councillor of the most potent figure in british politics.
I would call a match up between Scharnhorst and Kongo as even and more of a “toss up” then a definite Scharnhorst victory. Hms Renown a similar vintage battle cruiser was able to counter Scharnhorst and Gneisenau herself (plus destroyers) off Norway. Secondly at Guadalcanal Kirishima was able to in the words of Admiral Lee “render one of our new battleships deaf, dumb, blind and impotent “ when she was firing on South Dakota. Finally Hms Duke of York was able to cause significant damage to Scharnhorst with it’s 14 inch guns at the battle of north cape and the Kongo’s had guns of a similar size, although older. Thanks for great videos Drach
But Hiei was taken out by a cruisers (albeit a swarm of them) in First Guadalcanal. And the main thing that took South Dakota out of Second Guadalcanal was its electrical failure (a design flaw).
The Vickers 14" - as used by the Kongos' - gets little love, despite being a pretty decent gun by most accounts. Though less advanced than the 14"/45 of WWII, I'd definitely rather have them than an 11" gun. Renown had 15"/42 guns, which proved compeditive in performance even with the 16"/50 for accuracy postwar.
@@John-ru5ud Good point about Hiei but I think it's a bit off an exaggeration to say she was taken out by cruisers alone, it took a whole day of air strikes to finish her off. Also I realize South Dakota was having issues but the damage she took is still an example of the hitting power of the Kongo class guns, sending a brand new US battleship into drydock means hits on scharnorst wouldn't just chip the paint.
@@johnshepherd8687 True, but superficial damage can make your ship helpless even if it is in no danger of sinking. Cruiser gunfire drove Scharnorst away at North Cape with superficial damage. I just feel like if a Kongo class hits a Scharnorst first it's not going to shrug it off.
I agree wholeheartedly with your description of a battle between Monitor and Warrior and the fact that it would be seal clubbing. But being at local from the area , is its really so unrealistic that they could meet at ship Island? After all , Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane anchored between Ship Island and Cat Island with a fleet of fifty British warships in 1814 to attack New Orleans. And the island has a natural deep water anchorage that's been used for centuries. Was Warrior's draft really so deep?
Warrior drew nearly 28ft as compared to 20ft for a typical third rate ship of the line, which from my understanding would limit Warriors approaches and operational area quite considerably in general, and more specifically from the charts I've seen the specific place to book identifies is far too shallow. :)
The part of putting Monitor against Warrior and even thinking Monitor might have a chance by this certain author, seems to be the naval history analogy to Monty Pythons Black Knight sketch, when his arms and legs were already chopped off.
For me, biased as a german, the Type XXI (Twentyone) is somehow one of the best. - heck a lot of torpedoes, with fast reload mechanism. (6 tubes with 2 to 3 reload each) - huge battery capacity - first boat to cruise underwater at a descent speed with snorkel - good hydrophones (as I heard from a brit, after they captured one "the best hydrophones by a decade ahead") BUT: as usual for germans totally overengineered! (and therefore expensive and hard to maintain)
@@TraditionalAnglican Actually the hydrodynamic shape did not originate with the German type XXI The British built a series of Submarines called the R class in WW1 with high underwater speed, a high battery capacity, large bow salvo and hydrophones. Built today they would be classed as Hunter/Killers. Sadly the design was not continued. You could say the type XXI were based on the shape of the R class
John Fisher - Design of the R-Type is here - en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_R-class_submarine forums.armchairgeneral.com/forum/historical-events-eras/world-war-i/5104534-the-british-r-class-submarine Design of the Type XXI is here - en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_XXI_submarine www.militaryfactory.com/ships/detail.asp?ship_id=Type-XXI-Uboat The differences between these 2 designs are really quite significant.
Looking at the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier it is nice to know the old pre WW2 Soviet standards are still maintained. What with it's setting fire to itself and needed to be escorted by a flotilla of tugboats. Plus having its own crane on the flight deck, just in case. And the only floating dock big enough to take her has sunk. And she is back in dock again for more repairs. Apparently the cost of repairs is the same as its scrap value. Though there would be a saving in tugs and cranes and floating docks.
I'm not sure I'd want to get that close to a large moving ship with the Monitor. She doesn't have that much extra buoyancy and I'm thinking a collision would be much worse for Monitor than the other ship. Hell, was her free board even higher than Warrior's wake at cruising speed?
I think the UK's answer to 300+ U-Boats, if it became obvious that invading Europe had become a non-starter, would have been to turn the European Coast into one vast minefield. Exactly the same trick as they did to the Irish Sea. The Germans lost a lot of U-Boats to the minefields in the Irish Sea. Mostly because the U-Boats had to transit submerged at depth.
Wanted to say how much I enjoyed you and your wife sharing a bit of your private lives with us during the game play through. Please thank her for spending a little time with us. Wishing you both the best.
My point about the Iowa vs Yamato. On a one on one fight the Yamato has 18" guns so if the Iowa's are not using a super heavy shell then then the Yamato can start hitting the Iowa before the Iowa can answer. And if those first hits take out something vital it could be over. But, in my opinion, the Japanese Yamato's is the USA's version of the Montana's. Soo, if we are going to play all of these "what if" scenarios(that basically gets on my nerves btw) then how about both Yamato ships squaring off with 2 of the Montana's??? Hey if ya gonna do it, either do it BIG or go home!
Regarding the question of Battleship shells, detonating, here's a study done on 16"/50 shells in the 1980s: www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-093.pdf Which discusses it, by blowing up a 16" shell right next to others (there was variable distances) Only when packing 9 together at 0 distance did they get a secondary detonation of any other shells. For reference, A Standard SAM like the SM-2 (literally Standard missile) has a 137 lbs (62.14 kg) warhead, while a 16" shell has a 154 lbs (69.85 kg) warhead (Note this is the HC shell, a High Explosive warhead, not an armor piercing shell. The casing is still 3.2+ inches (81.28 mm+)) Note also that uses a different type of warhead, and the detonation is not at speed, so there's no aerodynamic forces pushing to destroy the shell (Somewhat unlikely, the thickness is due to the gun's pressure to begin with.) or more likely pushing it off course. A head on hit may damage the forward fuse on a HC shell, and cause it to detonate, but there's also a base fuse. So IMO, the idea of detonating a shell is unlikely, but possible. Destroying a shell other than by detonation is unlikely. Creating a miss if you hit the ship is likely. (Now there's a question, of using the radar to predict the shell impacts, steer the ship and create misses that way.)
Note that, while 18" was most common for aerial torpedoes, the US Mark 13 was actually fatter, at 22.4", than the Mark 14 for subs and Mark 15 for destroyers (both 21"). The Japanese Type 93 carried a warhead of 1,080 lb at the start of the war, going up to to 1,700 lb with the Mod 3 in the middle of the war.
The only problem with mounting a recoiless rifle on a dirigible would be finding some way to deal with the backblast in such a way it wouldn’t be absolutely useless because of firing arc limits but it’d be an interesting concept, part of me wishes for a world that still had the aerial goliaths
Drydock is always a nice way to spend a Sunday morning (US Eastern Time Zone.) going into the early afternoon. A hour of Q&A followed by hours of reading the comments. Thanks Drach and Drydock shipmates. Real dry docks suck for a sailor. Dirty nasty places with lazy-assed yard birds mucking up your home if not outright trying to burn it down. Necessary evil but would rather be at sea.
So many here love imagining one-on-one match ups for the Yamato. If I had a key to the Multiverse, I too would like to see a Monti fight the Yami; but I would also want to find one where Yamato was sunk by the New Jersey, specifically because historians on this time line would have to say the Yamato was sunk by the New Jersey.
Naval gunnery in the early years of iron ships was directly related to the Gunnery officers' knowledge of trigonometry and range estimation. It would have been a fascinating thing to witness (well if they were not shooting back)
The ironic thing about Harrison is that he was a fan of the UK, at least as much of one to live or keep a home here from the mid 1970s, which makes it around half of his life. Whilst toward the end of his life he lived in Ireland he kept a flat in Brighton which he visited regularly and to which he moved permanently after the death of his wife in 2002. He died there in 2012.
Anglophilia notwithstanding, he was (primarily) a sci-fi author with such 'classics' as "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers" plus the "Stainless Steel Rat" and "Bill the Galactic Hero" series to his name. Not exactly Booker Prize winners but amusing in a juvenile sort of way (yes, I read them all in my youth). "Make Room, Make Room" was a passable affair although I'm not sure whether the book or the "Soylent Green" film was the better version of that story. Has anyone read his other non-sci-fi nautical endeavour "The QEII is Missing" and does that display the same level of 'research' as the "Stars and Stripes" series?
"Can a modern missile intercept a BB round?" -- I see someone has watched Zipang. In that case, too, the shells are not going at the ship, but towards a beach -- which makes the intercept problem all the more difficult.
@@ReptilianLeptonTo large degree its development and tooling costs, Tomahawks only cost around $1m each because so many were being made and it was a mature piece of ordinance despite being a complex design, the shells for the Zumwalts they were only going to make enough for 3 ships and so the development and tooling costs had to be amortised over a much smaller number. When you have something like a dumb bomb they cost low tens of thousands because they were being made in the millions and because theres so many around that otherwise would be going to waste nowadays it makes a guidance conversion kit, which is just an off the shelf GPS and inertia sensors and some active guidance surfaces (costing $18,000) extremely worthwhile. It achieved that low unit price because they ordered 300,000 of them.
"During trials, the missile performed impressively, once intercepting a 114 mm (4.5 in) shell." en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Wolf_(missile) IIRC both missile and shell were not live (it being a test firing) so the physical hit was only confirmed when the shell was recovered by divers with a Seawolf shaped gouge along its side.
Probably not much of an impact, as he was aging, but it should be recalled that Rear Admiral Moffett was killed in the Akron disaster. He was a strong advocate for naval airpower (heavier and lighter than air) who probably had some weight with the establishment as he had been awarded the Medal of Honor as a member of the surface force and was not a flier himself. Again, doubtful that getting a couple more years out of him would have substantially changed naval aviation, but his death did mean the loss of an advocate, and probably left some of the most staid members of the institution arguing, "see, you mess around with these contraptions, they kill you."
I wonder if a "Thru-deck" Airship would have been viable? A full length flight deck allowing aircraft with actual landing gear would be very useful. Wouldn't need catapult to launch aircraft, but the aircraft WOULD still need to be lightweight. But still an interesting thought.
@@WALTERBROADDUS The Macron & Akron also were no thru-deck carriers. I'm commenting about a "Complete" Full sized flight deck, large enough to launch AND recover at the same time larger aircraft that the "Hook and Trapeze" arrangement that those two had. The launch & recovery method of the Akron class severely limited the size & capability of the aircraft carried. An actual flat flight deck on a "Larger" Airship COULD have allowed for a larger & more capable complement of aircraft due to a more secure form of landing surface. Not requiring "Cats" means less weight, if the Airship is at sufficient altitude launching aircraft is as simple as building up enough speed to drop off the "Deck" & then trade altitude for speed.
Regarding the use of missiles to intercept battleship shells, I understand the Sea Wolf missile successfully intercepted a 4.5" shell. However, an armour piercing shell may not even have noticed.
That; and no ship in existance can track, engage and launch - all at once - enough SAM's to stop nine to fifteen incoming projectiles. (as such a broadside or multiple ships firing salvoes would be an uphill fight) Some sort of dedicated shipboard Active Defence System - as is appearing on Tanks ATM - might be useful, but no substitute for a good offence, and having struck the enemy first.
@@jimtaylor294 what the fuck are you talking about? The SAMPSON radar system on the modern type 45 destroyer can track over a 1000 cricket sized objects flying at supersonic speed at once.
^x1 Profanity; always a crutch for a lack of anything else. Also: My point was as a job lot. Even a T45 can't Engage that many incoming targets with SAM's at the same time. The reason is that it's impossible to launch and guide that many SAM's all at once. In the situation Drach' was presented with, that'd be game over. Most warships don't have any realistic prospect of needing to intercept as many as 15 projectiles at once though, as few threat countries possess the ability &/or will to try, and none still possess ships with enough guns to attempt it.
@chris younts CIWS is in theory very capable, but as no ships possess more than four emplacements and also lack the vast amount of sensory hardware to independently target more than that, the abilities thereof are limited. That; and no CIWS has yet managed to decap or otherwise stop a shell above 5" caliber. That said it's as of the moment unlikely to need to. Phalanx's past history suggests though that CIWS leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to accuracy, and of course the limited number even on a ship the size of an Iowa class limits the stopping power.
lovablesnowman - The problem with dealing with 9 - 22 incoming shells (9/10 main battery shells & up to 12 secondary rounds) isn’t tracking them - It’s launching enough missiles quickly enough to redirect or shoot them down. At 3-5 missiles per main-gun projectile, that would require a minimum of 27 missiles just to deal with the main-gun shells. At 1 a maximum of missile/second, it would take 27 seconds to launch those missiles. Add tracking and targeting time to that, & we’re talking about a minimum of 32 seconds, which would require the enemy to fire from a minimum of 20 km, & this is assuming everything goes right.
Radar weight consideration had me think of the British Vanguar, the last battleship launched. I read a list of 19 different radar that it mounted. No mention of their weight was made but I guess the total might be impressive.
9:30 Which is why the Japanese classed them as Auxiliary Fleet Carriers. Also they operated with the main fleet. 27:30 "A cloud of fast moving chaff" now that is my new favorite Drachism.
In 1983 CG-47 USS Ticonderoga was deployed to the coast of Lebanon. Where it's SPY-1 radar was used for the first time. On paper the SPY-1 could do it all. Control the entire combat zone. Seen this was the first time ever for it's use, no one be leaved it's paper spec. By the time of the US Navy withdrawal from the eastern Mediterranean, it was doing everything in it's spec and then some. The SPY-1 radar was not only tracking the USS New Jersey's 16" out going shell but it's 5" too. I saw it on the evening news one night. It was wild to see the blips on the screen as the left the ship on it's way to the target. The down side to this is that if you have someone who see thing that aren't there you shoot down a airline over the Persian Gulf. The USS Vincennes CG-49 did this. killing 242 passage's. No one understood how the SPY-1 radar could make that big off a mistake. When the US Navy play back the tap of the radar an compared it to the USS Slides older mold radar they found that they saw the same-thing. What the radar operator saw and what he called out were 2 different things. Ex. He said the plane was diving when it was climbing. SPY-1 radar is on all of the DDG-51 class of ships. No that the CG-47 are retired.
@@toveychurchill6468 It's an expression that appears in the old King James version of the Old Testament, where various sinful practices are condemned as "an abomination unto the Lord".
On Akron/Macon: ACKrun/MAYkun. The design flaw that killed the Macon was known before the Akron went down. US Navy brass considered it more important to keep the ships flying (and impressing Congress) than laying them up for months of repairs. If Akron had not gone down, Admiral Moffett would have quite probably have become Sen. Moffett, Democrat South Carolina. That would have helped with funding the airship program. Airships are surprisingly resilient to gunfire. The Zeppelin bombers of WWI regularly flew home with hundreds of bullet holes. Through the wonders of square-cube law, the Akron-class ships would have been able to take more damage. There are few vital spots on a Zeppelin-style ship, the engines, gas tanks, and the "cruciform" member at the aft of the tail fins. . Akron and Macon would not have been able to perform long-range maneuvers in the Atlantic from October through March. Even at 6 million cubic feet, they lacked the lift to carry the engines, fuel and ballast to ride out a major Atlantic winter storm. If my failing memory is correct, the Pacific storm season is April through September, with the same limits. Again with the wonders of square-cube law, the potential 10 to 12 million cubic foot Z-CRV ships would have the lift to operate year-round.
0:41:51 I think the questioner meant the 5th Carrier Division. 3rd Carrier Division was light carriers (and Houshou). Shoukaku and Zuikaku were the 5th Carrier Division.
thanks for answering the question Drach! probably thanks to video games but I thought naval guns should be more accurate, especially when there's fire control computer and later radars. I mean I didn't expect numbers to hover around the single digit range, but after explanation and some thought it makes sense
Regarding the Akron/Macon class - It's worth remembering that even the non-aircraft carrying airships, the US had a horrible record with the loss of Shennandoah, as well as the unnamed ZR2 crashing during delivery. Only Los Angeles survived to be decommissioned. (For these purposes the metallic envelope ZMC-2 is just too weird to be considered comparable.)
if they had got these ships to be reliable i think there real strength would have been in the Atlantic chasing u-boats. Imagine being a uboat commander knowing one of them was over head and could stay there and had air craft that could patrol in a large area.
@@TheWareek Neville Shutes book SlideRule, gives details on the construction of R100 and its successful trip to/from Canada. It leaves no doubt that the airship can cross/survive the North Atlantic. He also goes into details on the R101 and its many problems during construction.
Regarding the state of the post revolution Soviet navy, I think there was a question a few drydocks back about a ship actually managing to hit itself with its own guns. So that's two questions with one stone. Managing to hit your own superstructure ... depending on the circumstances that might be worthy of renaming the ship Kamchatka.
drach your gonna hate me and all Americans for butchering your beautiful language, but the USS Macon is pronounced May-Kin as in, may i have a drink and kin as in my brother is my kin, the latter is said quickly Maykin basically, i know again sorry lol im actually from the area in GA and would love to meet on your Grand American Tour love the vids keep up your amazing work
I have a question, I know the graphic for the last question is not real and the battle would might never have happened or be possible and the gun calibre and damage was discussed but why would HMS Warrior not just go for the good old Ram. USS Monitor would quickly become a U-boat
Was thinking the same thing. I forget what the potentially lethal blast area behind the bigger ones is, but do remember that it is impressively large. Shredded airship.
Amazing channel. After having visited hms Belfast in 1985 as 7 year old, I have been intrigued by the history of battleships. So, guess how felt discovering yourself channel ... just to let you know - the episode on steel metallurgy for battleships :-)
As for the Hiyos, their lack of speed is probably what keeps them from being true fleet carriers in their time similarly to Ranger, and Eagle had she survived. The 1942 Light Fleet Carriers, and the slightly smaller US CVLs are fleet units because they can keep up with the full fat fleet carriers.
The intro to these drydocks is fascinating! Just wondering what you think about this match-up: All 5 KGV's vs. Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau. I'd say pretty close....maybe advantage on the Brit's side for shear no. of main guns, better gunnery skills and one more hull in the water....if only 4/5 KGV's, then I think its a coin toss.....
Does the Warrior have a ram bow ? Because I could see the British Captain going ‘I’m not wasting ammunition on that ‘ and just running the monitor over.
I've been wanting to read up on submarine warfare, particularly regarding Germany, in World War I. There are a number of books listed on Amazon, but I was hoping you could recommend one that would be the most comprehensive and definitive work on the topic.
Kinetic kill anti-ballistic missile weapons like sm-3 would probably work a bit better against battleship shells in terms of damage than a traditional anti-aircraft SAM. Although there may be issues with actually hitting the target at such a low altitude and so close to the launching warship. The Turtledove alternate history series Worldwar had a part like this, where aliens attempted to shoot down large artillery shells (I think from the gustav/dora guns) aimed at their "beachhead" forward operating base with traditional fragmenting anti-aircraft SAMs. Needless to say, it didn't work.
On the question of Dönitz getting his 300 Uboats at the start of the war: The officer training system was barely able to keep up to assign commanding officers to the boats they had (in the end they had to scrape the bottom of the barrel quick-training officers with zero prior experience at sea, i.e. paper-pushers and shore-artillery guys who needed a crash course in navigation first). Unfortunately, the U-boat branch was extremly thorough at destroying records at war's end, so there are close to no primary sources. So, the bottleneck would have been the personnel, not the building capacity, if the ressources had been allocated in favor of the subs. Not to forget that the British would not have sat idle getting news of a mass building program before the war.
@@niclasjohansson4333 Nope, U-boats are special. Submariners can run (small to medium) surface ships but not vice versa without special training. Big ships and small ships also need different qualifications. One would not let a commander of a cruiser run a torpedo boat either.
Which nation in WW2 build the best submarines? I think the Dutch were the most effective during the first 2 years if you count to most sank tonnage with the amounts of ships. So what is the term best i think the ones who sink the most with the ;east amount of ships.
I would reccomend United States Navy: 200 Years by Edward Beach, Jr. to illustrate the cooperation by Percy Scott and William Sims to improve the accuracy of American gun accuracy.
The book "The Great Gunnery Scandal: the mystery of Jutland" by Anthony Pollen (Collins, 1980) examines the issue of increasing gun ranges in the early 20th century versus the difficulty of hitting a moving target at long range, and focuses in particular on the Royal Navy's refusal to adopt an advanced fire control system that had been invented by a civilian -they eventually chose a much less capable system designed by a naval officer, and the author believes that this was at least partly to blame for the British fleet's relatively poor performance at Jutland.
How on earth did they manage to load the 12.5" muzzle loading battleships like HMS Ajax (1880) ? The question occurred to me after watching Forgotten Weapon's video on the Malta Shore Battery.
For the Midway scenario, given the extra time, would the US also have an opportunity to reinforce the land based air presence on Midway itself? If yes, I wonder how that would affect things.
Ritchie Mx7 - The US had reinforced the air garrison during the months previous to the Battle of Midway. As you can see from the description of air assets based on Midway, the airfields on Midway were already pretty crowded by June 4. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway The one thing that would have helped is if the US had had F4F’s (or some other modern aircraft) instead of the F2A’s they were stuck with.
Hit and miss is also a question of time of flight. At long range a shell can take over 1 minute to reach the target. If you turn when you see the gun flash, you invalidate the fire control solution used to fire the round and effectively dodge the shot.
Battleship shells would be a ballistic missile. Meaning that even without a working fuse, a (roughly speaking) ton of steel is still heading to it's target.
Just gonna put this out there. Could you do a Battle of Midway video discussing it from both sides and also dispelling a lot of the myths and assumptions that have grown over the years especially in regards to how the Japanese conducted themselves?
The fundamental flaw in airships, even the modern ones of today are their susceptibility to weather. That is never going to change and therefore the promise of airships will always remain just a promise.
The Germans discounted close blockading UK as they did not have enough u boats... I played this out with an extra 60 assorted u boats at the start of 1940... and ramping up thereafter at very high priority... The Norway campaign has only slight alterations... with the RN and allied forces doing a bit better... Once the U boats have switched detonators the UK falls by mid 1942 average in 3 play throughs. .. This does require the invasion of USSR to be delayed by a year... but more effort can be expended on North Africa... very complex.. As an aside.. we reviewed the posibility of USN joining in.... this has 3 common themes.. number one. . The USN are attritted near UK waters... second The IJN realising that the USN will take time to ramp up production.. strikes earlier and with better results.... third the USN dies a lot and this would require a 1945 1950 sort of scenario to sort out... often with ER condor and missile equipped u boats.. using gas.. plague warheads and or radiological dirty weapons to destroy the eastern coast USA.. Interestingly this often leads to USA western resurgence.. but not very pleasant in any scenario...
Akron and Macon would have made an interesting addition to the Pearl Harbor recon force. With their range and scope (Sparrow Hawks on each beam for quite a ways) one wonders if the Japanese fleet would have remained undiscovered. The Airships were conceived as fleet scouts not for action and the idea was for the on board aircraft to range out ahead and on each beam covering an enormous area. Also the American airships used helium as a lifting gas not hydrogen as in the Hindenburg so the Hindenburg disaster would have had little impact on the American program. Regardless, airships remained vulnerable to weather and given their long endurance and the limited weather forecasting ability of the time they would always have been at significant risk. In spite of that the USN operated a large lighter than air arm in WWII and they lasted on active duty in an anti sub role well after the end of WWII. And as a final note the B-25 J model carried a 75mm cannon without too much trauma so the Akron or Macon could probably have carried at least a 75mm. Recoilless rifles are a bad idea as the back blast is VERY significant and unless you are firing laterally with the back blast aimed clear of the hull would not be very useful.
the major cause of the Hindenburg disaster was not the Hydrogen gas in it's gas bags but the aluminum coating on the ship itself. If you will check the german reports and later examinations by a # of authorities this the conclusion they came to.
I've heard mention of 'Fleet Carriers' and 'Fleet Submarines,' What exactly is the difference between the two? Do we still differentiate them today? How do you use them?
BB shell against a guided missile. The main issue is mass and momentum. Unless you can knock the shell off its path the sheer weight of mass will continue on to impact. Same with aircraft, if you kill the bird at too short of a range the sheeer weight of mass will continue on to impact
It occurs to me that the most likely result of setting off a missile in front of a battleship shell is that it may damage and tear off the windscreen (ballistic cap). AP shells used a cap to protect the body of the shell from impact t with the armor, and then a thin windscreen crimped or soldered in place to restore ballistic performance. If the windscreen is gone, then the ballistic performance becomes drastically different than what the firing solution was set for. The cap is much blunter than the windscreen, so a shell that is on a course to hit will fall short. OTOH, a shell that is on course for an "over" may turn into a hit.
@@WALTERBROADDUS doesn't need to stop, just needs to miss. I thought I made that clear in the original comment. It would be kind of like firing a .30-06 rifle with 150 gr pointed soft point bullet to hit a distant target, and at some point replacing that bullet in flight with a 150 gr flat nose bullet for a .30-30. Yes, the bullet is still the same weight and retains its velocity, but the aerodynamic profile has changed drastically and I'd that change happens at, say, 200 yards on a 400 yard target the bullet may now lose velocity quickly enough, and fall far enough, to miss completely.
Regarding the interception of a shell by an modern missile IIRC the Royal Navy demonstrated the ability of the Sea Wolf Missile to intercept and destroy a 4.5in shell in the 80s/90s
Something all too many people ignore about the gunnery of the British WW1 BC's is that based at Rosyth they could not practice live shooting at all. So of course their skills would deteriorate. Just notice the excellent gunnery of the Third BCS after they had transferred to Scapa Flow for gunnery practice. IMO Beatty copes a lot of flak for things beyond his immediate control. He gets blamed for the BC's shooting at the wrong ship but I think his orders (given the tech of the time) would be simple like "Engage opposite numbers" and the other ship captains are the one who screwed up. He just gets blamed for it. I think I read some of that Harry Harrison book before I threw it away in disgust. The whole thing was a poorly written British bashing fantasy.
I looked at that book and agree it's garbage. I remember it came out right after 9/11, so I always assumed it was aimed at scared milhist fans who needed reassurance that 'MURICA was still badass. As ever, the sad thing about such nonsense is that it overshadows far better and more worthy books.
In response to that question about high rank admirals and the crazy ceremonial ranks created for them, my favorite thing like that is George Washington's rank in the United States Army. I don't know when they did this, but at some point it was decided that George Washington needed to be ceremonially ranked as the highest ranking officer in the United States Army, and since the highest rank a normal officer can attain in the US Army is General of the Army, they created the rank of General of the Armies of the United States of America for George Washington. I love it.
I would imagine that the variable hit rate of ships during war time would be due to expert crew members being transferred to new construction and being replaced by recruits, not to mention that new equipment such as radar requires retraining and may not be reliable. As I recall from training the CIWS can engage incoming 5 inch shells, not sure about missiles. As to the cost of the missile, you only have to engage the shell that will hit, given shell dispersion, and the cost of an expended missile or two is cheap compared to the cost of taking a hit
Apart from spotting for Graf Spee, Warspite at Narvik and for the Japanese early in WWII, shipborne planes on gunships seem to have been pretty much a waste of space (and a highly flammable waste of space). Agree?
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Also, I have no idea why the channel admin section at the start isn't audible...
Was hoping that it wasn't just me. I was frantically swapping audio devices thinking something had blown up post intro
Q&A: Would the completion of the Italian World War II carrier “Aquila” have had an impact on the Italian Navy’s fortunes in the war in the Mediterranean?
I have a question. I was looking on Wikipedia and I noticed that the Akula and Typhoon are much faster submerged than on the surface. When did submarines go from faster surfaced to faster submerged?
Thanks for pointing that out. It's 5am here in the home of the beaver, and the family was almost awakened to a stream of profanities not heard since Rozhestvensky ran out of binoculars...
@@Shenaldrac Partially Type XXI u-boat and surrounding spin-off post-war refits, but definitely with USS Albacore
Drach must be running silent to avoid an Anti Submarine sweep by the Utube Escorts at the beginning.
XD
Either that or he heard that the Kamchatka was around
You mean Utube anti monetization sweeps.
He's just piloting the Cyclops submarine into the Lava biome in "Subnautica," hoping to dodge the fire-spitting Sea Dragon Leviathan.;)
I think that the next ship design competition should be to design the “Abomination unto the Lord” fleet, with rough classes based on tonnages. Let’s use WW2 limits for class tonnage...
SCOTT !! thats an amazing comment ,
I can't do it Captain, I'm giving it all she's got!
Two quick points.
1. In terms of your Radar response, you should also point out power requirements. Part of the weight would also be tied up in generating enough juice to power it. Refitting an older ship would require additional capacity.
2. The Akron response was interesting, but my 2 cents would also include their deployments would originate out of New Jersey since that had hangers large enough to handle them. They would only fly from late spring to late summer, save any hurricane weather. Also only traveling east out past Newfoundland. Definitely playing a scouting roll to direct anti submarine efforts. Yet by 1943, they would be grounded because any competent pilots would be flying off carriers. Plus the K-class blimps were coming online to support anti submarine efforts.
RE: Weight of radar -- Drach highlighted a little of the problem, but allow me to go more in depth as to why there was such a weight penalty for adding radar. Say we want to mount a CXAM 1 set on the U.S.S. Arizona. The array itself is a large square made up of pipes approximately ten feet square. This set rotates and is required to be at the highest point on the ship. This alone increases top-weight and increases stresses on the tripod mast, which already holds all the ranging and spotting gear for the guns. Now only do we have the array, but we have all the computer equipment that goes with it, and I don't know if you're familiar with mechanical computers and vacuum tube technology, but it is neither light nor compact. The electronics would easily take up a sizable room in addition to the technicians that need to maintain and run the equipment. This would "displace" room that would possibly be ammunition for, say a 1.1 in AA gun. Also there would be increased wiring run throughout the ship to power such a set and various monitors both in the CIC and possibly the bridge or conning tower.
Having toured through the Alabama, I've seen what these sets look like when they're included into the design of the ship. When you're adding these sets to an already existing system aboard a ship, there's always going to be give and take, otherwise you risk the ship being overweight and/or unstable.
Indeed. Additionally, a fire control radar of the period would also have, besides the below deck console, a gyro and computer. The gyro is about a ton itself and the computer weighs even more than the director. Yes, they did have computers in WWII; but these computers were electro-mechanical using synchros, servos and manual inputs. In short- what you see on the mast is less than half of the whole fire control radar system. Including more than a half ton of personnel to operate and maintain the fool thing, just that radar system in total is north of 30 tons. Add multiple MK37 systems, CXAM and such... yeah, 100+ tons for radar in WWII tech is about right.
The weight is secondary. Beiing in the tower, 120 feet above the roll center of the boat is extremely hard on your stomach. I dont use the top con (9f) above rcb on my tuna boat ever - and I dont get seasick in 30f hawaiian swell - its extremely tiring. The large sweep back and forth of high mounted radar in big seas severly hampers radar function. Most of the heavy gear is down in the hull or level deck superstructure for that reason. Old firing mechanical firing computers could not be remotely controlled and were mounted in the towers. With the ascend of tubed computers - those were in the hull and in airconditioned rooms. They really dont like salt.
@@808bigisland I have to disagree with you on this one. Old fc computers- the syncho/servo type, were NEVER in the tower. The were too damned heavy. And the mechanical computers were even more susceptible to salt that the early tube computers (which were not used for fire control due to unreliability). They were connected to the directors by giant shielded cables. Fire control computers went from mechanical to solid state directly, happening in the mid '60's. Also, the roll issue is not as great a problem on a warship that is 5 to 50 times the displacement of a tuna boat and has stabilizers on the hull to minimize the roll effect.
@@VintageCarHistory Agree with you 100%. A tower is heavy and adding equipment will add to bulk and protecting the structure even from small arms fire would be to heavy. All important equipment is in the citadel. Center of roll is the same on big or small boats. Just having a guy up in the tuna tower, 15 feet above the roll center of a tuna boat destabilizes a 30 footer. Its a sickening feeling too to be up there even in calm waters. Sway can be huge. Wind catching on a solid tower acts like a sail. A heavy rotating radar dish might have a big effect on rolling. This is pure guessing - I am too young to have ever sailed on boat with a military 30 foot dish.
@@@808bigisland, Some brainy engineer told me that the firing solutions of differential equations were performed by some kind of rotating gear structures on wheels but I never quit understood how that was done.
I do understand the center of gravity issue and so putting up towers for radar certainly raises the CofG.
I vote Abominations unto the LORD to be an official ship class
Seconded.
Sounds like a worthy home for Kamchatka...
@@ggroube Seconded.
Or at least a Drach T-Shirt .. ;o)
Geoff Groube
Or Massena.
Drachisms of the Day
23:04 "They were unable to fight the fire despite the fact that the ship was moored
alongside the dock and, well obviously, is in an infinite supply of water."
24:21 "Which was probably a bad idea to start with, but...yeah, 'and then it got worse'."
24:41 "Yeah, clap clap clap. All stand up for that one. I wonder who's getting sent to gulag today?"
27:24 "and generally converting it into a fast-moving cloud of chaff"
"Abominations unto the lord" also belongs here
Weeb Extraordinaire
Agreed.
@@bkjeong4302 Rare for us to do so :p
Why you'd want to do this other than 'merica I don't know.
On Finns vs. USSR
There is bit more on this than described on the video. First was Winter War from Nov. 30 1939 to March 13 1940. This was the coldest winter in ages and practically both navies were iced in from mid December and icebreakers were only units capable of independent operations from February.
Before icing the Soviet Navy managed to occupy Finnish outer islands in the Gulf of Finland and were active in trying to silence the coastal fortifications. There was some submarine activity. Finnish submarine force didn't manage to fire a single torpedo and they sunked only single ship with mines. Soviets were slightly more successfull. They followed the international treaty forbiding sinking civilian ships without warning at start of the war. Only after declaring whole Finnish coast as war zone and thus being able to attack without warning they managed to sink ships (1 Finnish + 4 others operating in the area). Also one Finnish escort vessel managed to sink itself with malfunctioning DC when hunting Soviet sub. In naval aviation Soviet minelaying operations halted operations in Turku/Åbo harbor for about a week.
In the start of the Continuation war there was lots of small ship activity on both sides and one needs to take into account the presence of large German units like Tirpitz in the Baltic theater. Thus it would not have made any sense for Soviets to risk their heavy units against Finns as it might be a trap. As matter of fact loss of Ilmarinen was during an operation where the Finnish navy sailed as a distraction when Germans occupied Estonian islands. After the Red navy was bottled into Leningrad it could not operate heavy units due to multiple minefields in the Gulf of Finland until those were cleared. Meanwhile there was active submarine and light units warfare in the Baltic by both sides.
46:11 - The insuperable problem with "Wargaming Midway," whether that's in an historical or alternate-historical game, is information control - especially for the Japanese player. The lack of information available to Nagumo was a major factor in the historical battle; but any player given the Japanese orders and ORBAT will immediately recognize the setup, and thus *know* from the start that the USN is a) present, b) in strength, and c) *spoiling for a fight.* Even if you implement rules to prevent Japan from (say) ignoring Midway Atoll in favor of flooding the area with recon planes until he's found and dealt with the US Fleet, this additional, anachronistic knowledge can't help but color the player's actions. It changes the entire battle from a somewhat slow-motion, stumbling bushwhack to a more-or-less fair fight... And at that point you aren't really gaming out a "Midway" scenario at all anymore.
Warrior wouldn't even need to hit the monitor. Just fire in front and let the waves sink it :D
I suspect at the illustrated separation of the Warrior and Monitor, the bow wave of Warrior would have very effectively ended Monitor's short and not particularly glorious career.
A squadron of K Class Blimps was transferred to Naval Air Station Port Lyautey in Morocco in July, 1944. These airships conducted ASW patrols above the Straits of Gilbralter. They were equipped with radar, a magnetic anomaly detector, two bombs, and a machine gun. Usually the day shift was covered by PBYs; the night shift by blimps because they were capable of low altitude night flying. They participated in the sinking of U-188 in May, 1945.
It's not just the radar top hamper we can see that contributes to the weight devoted to radars. In those days of vacuum tubes (valves), even a surface search radar display could run to a ton. Once larger plan position indicators (those sweeping oscilloscope type screens) and associated electronics could add another 4-8 tons. In order to coordinate all those radars and fire control systems, something like the USN combat information center (CIC) was now required, with hundreds to tens of thousands of pounds of electronics, radios, phone systems, plus the people to man all of those gadgets. That meant about ten officers and NCOs and another 20 or so enlisted in a cruiser sized vessel, and about half that requirement for a destroyer. Once fighter direction was added to the CIC, another five to seven people had to be crowded into an already inadequate space. The only good thing about being crammed into a small space like a CIC is they were generally one of the first spaces to be air conditioned. Lest you think the Navy had gone soft on the crew, the a/c manual made it clear that it existed mainly to decrease the humidity in the CIC, since all that moisture caused the electronics to break down. Even the so-call plotting tables were in reality large primitive vacuum tube powered analogue computers, each weighing another 3 to 6 tons each. Space also had to be found to accomodate all these men and equipment. The next problem was all the additional bunk and messing space, plus stores for the extra crew, and that could easily add up to another several thousand tons per mission just for stores.
But we're not done yet. Something had to make all those all power hungry vacuum tubes light up, and that meant larger steam and diesel generators along with things like dynamotors and sundry other things needed to keep all those screens lit and radar antennas turning, such as additional miles of very heavy electrical cabling, and coaxial cables for the radars themselves. it's hard to find estimates for all the weight added to ships for all these electronics and ancillary things like the CIC. The only seemingly accurate one I've read was in the July (or maybe August) 1945 issue of _Combat Information Center_ magazine, a Navy publication that attempted pull together the best practices from men all over the fleet about how to makes a CIC run efficiently. That estimate included the weight all the electronics and mechanical equipment needed to run all the radars and the CIC itself, plus the CIC staff, but not including some of the engine room generators or radar antennas. That estimate was about 78 tons for a cruiser, 107 tons for a battleship, and an astounding 138 tons for an aircraft carrier, and that didn't include the weight of all the radar antennas. A cruiser size CIC required a minimum of 480 sq ft, a battleship 740, and an aircraft carrier about 950 sq ft. All of this gives some indication that radar was a lot more than slapping a radar antenna on a mast. The next time you look at a late war picture of a USN or RN vessel with those antennas everywhere, just remember that, like an iceberg, a lot of what was required to make them useful was below decks.
One of the earliest radars installed on a select few warships was dubbed the CXAM. It had all the problems listed above; bulky, extra power, crew, etc. One of the old time captains on one U.S. crusier during the guadalcanal campaign didnt trust the new technology and saw it's only use was for keeping coffee pots warm from the large amounts of heat they gave off.
@@BB.61 CXAM is a good example of both the promise and limitations of radar in general, but early radars in particular. The CXAM radio frequency operated at 1.5 meters, or 200 MHz, a very high wavelength in 1938, when CXAM was being tested. The antenna resembled a very large inner spring mattress - very large. The CXAM was 15 feet wide and 16 feet tall, and just the antenna weighed 5,000 pounds. At the time, the most sensitive receiver type was a superheterodyne (superhet), but 200 MHz was such a high frequency that only a superregenerative (regen) receiver was the only type that could provide enough signal amplification to make the return signal visible on a horizontal oscilloscope. It was hard enough to tune in a regen signal sitting in the radio shack on dry land let alone doing so on a rocking, pitching ship. It also required a powerful transmitter on the order of 1,000 watts, something that just didn't exist before 1938. When the radar was on, about 10% of the 10% of the ships power had to be diverted to the CXAM to obtain full transmitting power. Mounted at the very top of a battleship mast, it had a range about 14 miles on a large ship target and 50 miles on a bomber size target. Even with these rather primitive sets, the range was well beyond human lookouts, especially in poor visibility.
Luckily for the USN, Admiral Nimitz was something of an electronics tinkerer, and he put himself through a three week radar instruction course in 1938. When he became C in C, Pacific Fleet, he speeded up the number of trainees being sent through radar schools, and he ordered his captains to provide a weekly report of radar usage and issues. He knew too many of his hidebound captains didn't trust radar, and he needed to find a way to make sure it was in use at all time. After a shaky start, it didn't take long for radar to start proving itself, and British and US researchers kept turning out better sets. Radar is generally credited with being among the top three weapons of WWII in the Pacific.
Anyone else only get sound after 2:10? The first two minutes of the video are deathly silent to me.
I got sound at 2:07 (I assume same time as you), but yeah it's super weird. I would assume Drach would at least skip through checking the audio before uploading. Maybe it's a RUclips thing.
He was talking about submarines. You know, the “silent service”...
It's a special message for dogs only. Unfortunately many mobile devices can't reproduce that high of a frequency, so many dogies may be unprepared for upcoming events.
same
@@christopherconard2831 It is not for dogs only. My cats heard it and translated the admin for me. Drach said, 'Meow! Now on to the Drydock...'
"No idea why you'd want to do that, besides 'murica"
Yeah, that sounds like something we would do just to see what happened.
Is there really any other reason to do anything?
Murcia is reason enough.
Well... We packed 75mms into B-25s so yeah..
That bit with the mishaps of the Soviet fleet in the 20's sounds like the plot to a wacky comedy film!
It was the sequel to the second pacific squadron. It wasn't received well by the critics, because it was basically the same thing again with not that much new stuff.
@@fabianzimmermann5495 went over well in the Japanese market
Fabian Zimmermann
Lmao
@@scottygdaman Yes, the Japanese loved it and gave it 5/5 stars.
Presumably staring a soviet version of George Formby
Hey Drach, appreciated the Drydock as always. In terms of highest-ranking admiral, though, I would tend to disagree.
First, the Duke of Edinburgh is a political figure, having been a member of the house of lords for fifty years or so. Also with his post beeing a grand office of state and the other members of said group beeing mostly career politicians, I would doubt that he is not into politics at al.
Second, there are of course equivalents to a Lord High Admiral - the swedish Navy, for example, has a "Riksadmiral" and Wallenstein for some time was commander in Chief of the Imperial Navy in the Baltic Sea.
Third, I would argue that other candidates have a chance to outrank even a Lord High Admiral, at least historically. Take Don Juan de Austria, for example, who, at Lepanto, outranked a whole bunch of guys who were quite High-Rank-Admirals, including the likes of Alvaro de Banzan (Captain-General of the spanish navy) and Venier (Captain-General of the Navy of Venice).
Maybe butting in.. but Agrippa.. guy was hands on .. I've always liked Nimitz.. his problem was people not doing what he wanted them to.. he would expect other admirals to be fully aware.
Halsey sure wasn't.
Recently listened to an audiobook tincans and greyhounds... a few times after the I.j.n. with less destroyers no radar low on everything would kick our ass at least in D.D. D.E. battles ... say 6 IJN destroyers in a week sink 12 u.s. lose 3 the narrorator would say...but then Americas manuf. Ability caught up with the Japanese... well crap glad of that other wise they would of kicked our ass. Out producing an enemy isn't out fighting or out leading them
The Duke is not a political figure nor does he sit in the house of lords. Nor is the position a great office of state. Theres only four great offices of state. He sits as the head of the Navy and does not sit in a political position at all.
@@tisFrancesfault Well, from 1948 to 1999 the Duke was a Member of Parliament, of the House of Lords, to be precise. members.parliament.uk/member/2789/career Also, the Lord High Admiral is a Grand Officer of State in England and Wales, as you may check here: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Officer_of_State. Also, if youndo not mind, one could try to argue that the Queen migth actually listen if her husband opens his mouth. Given that the Queen still holds tremendous powers at her disposal - even if most of the time she decides to delegate those to her Government - one could argue that HRH is the most influental, be it informal, advisor and councillor of the most potent figure in british politics.
I would call a match up between Scharnhorst and Kongo as even and more of a “toss up” then a definite Scharnhorst victory.
Hms Renown a similar vintage battle cruiser was able to counter Scharnhorst and Gneisenau herself (plus destroyers) off Norway.
Secondly at Guadalcanal Kirishima was able to in the words of Admiral Lee “render one of our new battleships deaf, dumb, blind and impotent “ when she was firing on South Dakota. Finally Hms Duke of York was able to cause significant damage to Scharnhorst with it’s 14 inch guns at the battle of north cape and the Kongo’s had guns of a similar size, although older. Thanks for great videos Drach
But Hiei was taken out by a cruisers (albeit a swarm of them) in First Guadalcanal. And the main thing that took South Dakota out of Second Guadalcanal was its electrical failure (a design flaw).
The Vickers 14" - as used by the Kongos' - gets little love, despite being a pretty decent gun by most accounts.
Though less advanced than the 14"/45 of WWII, I'd definitely rather have them than an 11" gun.
Renown had 15"/42 guns, which proved compeditive in performance even with the 16"/50 for accuracy postwar.
@@John-ru5ud Good point about Hiei but I think it's a bit off an exaggeration to say she was taken out by cruisers alone, it took a whole day of air strikes to finish her off. Also I realize South Dakota was having issues but the damage she took is still an example of the hitting power of the Kongo class guns, sending a brand new US battleship into drydock means hits on scharnorst wouldn't just chip the paint.
@@michaeljones9861 The damage was superficial. No shell penetrated the armor.
@@johnshepherd8687 True, but superficial damage can make your ship helpless even if it is in no danger of sinking. Cruiser gunfire drove Scharnorst away at North Cape with superficial damage. I just feel like if a Kongo class hits a Scharnorst first it's not going to shrug it off.
I agree wholeheartedly with your description of a battle between Monitor and Warrior and the fact that it would be seal clubbing. But being at local from the area , is its really so unrealistic that they could meet at ship Island? After all , Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane anchored between Ship Island and Cat Island with a fleet of fifty British warships in 1814 to attack New Orleans. And the island has a natural deep water anchorage that's been used for centuries. Was Warrior's draft really so deep?
Warrior drew nearly 28ft as compared to 20ft for a typical third rate ship of the line, which from my understanding would limit Warriors approaches and operational area quite considerably in general, and more specifically from the charts I've seen the specific place to book identifies is far too shallow. :)
15:53 We need a drydock episode for that beauty!
The part of putting Monitor against Warrior and even thinking Monitor might have a chance by this certain author, seems to be the naval history analogy to Monty Pythons Black Knight sketch, when his arms and legs were already chopped off.
For me, biased as a german, the Type XXI (Twentyone) is somehow one of the best.
- heck a lot of torpedoes, with fast reload mechanism. (6 tubes with 2 to 3 reload each)
- huge battery capacity
- first boat to cruise underwater at a descent speed with snorkel
- good hydrophones (as I heard from a brit, after they captured one "the best hydrophones by a decade ahead")
BUT: as usual for germans totally overengineered! (and therefore expensive and hard to maintain)
Christoph Poll - And every American submarine through USN Nautilus used the hydrodynamic shape of the Type XXI.
@@TraditionalAnglican Actually the hydrodynamic shape did not originate with the German type XXI
The British built a series of Submarines called the R class in WW1 with high underwater speed, a high battery capacity, large bow salvo and hydrophones. Built today they would be classed as Hunter/Killers. Sadly the design was not continued. You could say the type XXI were based on the shape of the R class
John Fisher - Design of the R-Type is here -
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_R-class_submarine
forums.armchairgeneral.com/forum/historical-events-eras/world-war-i/5104534-the-british-r-class-submarine
Design of the Type XXI is here -
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_XXI_submarine
www.militaryfactory.com/ships/detail.asp?ship_id=Type-XXI-Uboat
The differences between these 2 designs are really quite significant.
Looking at the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier it is nice to know the old pre WW2 Soviet standards are still maintained. What with it's setting fire to itself and needed to be escorted by a flotilla of tugboats. Plus having its own crane on the flight deck, just in case. And the only floating dock big enough to take her has sunk. And she is back in dock again for more repairs.
Apparently the cost of repairs is the same as its scrap value. Though there would be a saving in tugs and cranes and floating docks.
I'm not sure I'd want to get that close to a large moving ship with the Monitor. She doesn't have that much extra buoyancy and I'm thinking a collision would be much worse for Monitor than the other ship. Hell, was her free board even higher than Warrior's wake at cruising speed?
I think the UK's answer to 300+ U-Boats, if it became obvious that invading Europe had become a non-starter, would have been to turn the European Coast into one vast minefield. Exactly the same trick as they did to the Irish Sea. The Germans lost a lot of U-Boats to the minefields in the Irish Sea. Mostly because the U-Boats had to transit submerged at depth.
Entertaining as always, informative as always. I must say, I really look forward to the posting of these videos more than any other on you tube.
One of the better things about Sunday,your upload,much appreciated.
Wanted to say how much I enjoyed you and your wife sharing a bit of your private lives with us during the game play through.
Please thank her for spending a little time with us.
Wishing you both the best.
My point about the Iowa vs Yamato. On a one on one fight the Yamato has 18" guns so if the Iowa's are not using a super heavy shell then then the Yamato can start hitting the Iowa before the Iowa can answer. And if those first hits take out something vital it could be over. But, in my opinion, the Japanese Yamato's is the USA's version of the Montana's. Soo, if we are going to play all of these "what if" scenarios(that basically gets on my nerves btw) then how about both Yamato ships squaring off with 2 of the Montana's??? Hey if ya gonna do it, either do it BIG or go home!
Regarding the question of Battleship shells, detonating, here's a study done on 16"/50 shells in the 1980s: www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-093.pdf Which discusses it, by blowing up a 16" shell right next to others (there was variable distances) Only when packing 9 together at 0 distance did they get a secondary detonation of any other shells.
For reference, A Standard SAM like the SM-2 (literally Standard missile) has a 137 lbs (62.14 kg) warhead, while a 16" shell has a 154 lbs (69.85 kg) warhead (Note this is the HC shell, a High Explosive warhead, not an armor piercing shell. The casing is still 3.2+ inches (81.28 mm+)) Note also that uses a different type of warhead, and the detonation is not at speed, so there's no aerodynamic forces pushing to destroy the shell (Somewhat unlikely, the thickness is due to the gun's pressure to begin with.) or more likely pushing it off course. A head on hit may damage the forward fuse on a HC shell, and cause it to detonate, but there's also a base fuse.
So IMO, the idea of detonating a shell is unlikely, but possible. Destroying a shell other than by detonation is unlikely. Creating a miss if you hit the ship is likely.
(Now there's a question, of using the radar to predict the shell impacts, steer the ship and create misses that way.)
Note that, while 18" was most common for aerial torpedoes, the US Mark 13 was actually fatter, at 22.4", than the Mark 14 for subs and Mark 15 for destroyers (both 21"). The Japanese Type 93 carried a warhead of 1,080 lb at the start of the war, going up to to 1,700 lb with the Mod 3 in the middle of the war.
The only problem with mounting a recoiless rifle on a dirigible would be finding some way to deal with the backblast in such a way it wouldn’t be absolutely useless because of firing arc limits but it’d be an interesting concept, part of me wishes for a world that still had the aerial goliaths
Blast shield? Should solve the issue.
Drydock is always a nice way to spend a Sunday morning (US Eastern Time Zone.) going into the early afternoon. A hour of Q&A followed by hours of reading the comments.
Thanks Drach and Drydock shipmates.
Real dry docks suck for a sailor. Dirty nasty places with lazy-assed yard birds mucking up your home if not outright trying to burn it down. Necessary evil but would rather be at sea.
So many here love imagining one-on-one match ups for the Yamato. If I had a key to the Multiverse, I too would like to see a Monti fight the Yami; but I would also want to find one where Yamato was sunk by the New Jersey, specifically because historians on this time line would have to say the Yamato was sunk by the New Jersey.
Naval gunnery in the early years of iron ships was directly related to the Gunnery officers' knowledge of trigonometry and range estimation. It would have been a fascinating thing to witness (well if they were not shooting back)
15th! This Channel Admin section is the best ever!
R.I.P. channel admin...
The ironic thing about Harrison is that he was a fan of the UK, at least as much of one to live or keep a home here from the mid 1970s, which makes it around half of his life. Whilst toward the end of his life he lived in Ireland he kept a flat in Brighton which he visited regularly and to which he moved permanently after the death of his wife in 2002. He died there in 2012.
Anglophilia notwithstanding, he was (primarily) a sci-fi author with such 'classics' as "Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers" plus the "Stainless Steel Rat" and "Bill the Galactic Hero" series to his name. Not exactly Booker Prize winners but amusing in a juvenile sort of way (yes, I read them all in my youth).
"Make Room, Make Room" was a passable affair although I'm not sure whether the book or the "Soylent Green" film was the better version of that story.
Has anyone read his other non-sci-fi nautical endeavour "The QEII is Missing" and does that display the same level of 'research' as the "Stars and Stripes" series?
Pronunciation on airships is correct 👍
"Can a modern missile intercept a BB round?" -- I see someone has watched Zipang. In that case, too, the shells are not going at the ship, but towards a beach -- which makes the intercept problem all the more difficult.
@@ReptilianLeptonTo large degree its development and tooling costs, Tomahawks only cost around $1m each because so many were being made and it was a mature piece of ordinance despite being a complex design, the shells for the Zumwalts they were only going to make enough for 3 ships and so the development and tooling costs had to be amortised over a much smaller number. When you have something like a dumb bomb they cost low tens of thousands because they were being made in the millions and because theres so many around that otherwise would be going to waste nowadays it makes a guidance conversion kit, which is just an off the shelf GPS and inertia sensors and some active guidance surfaces (costing $18,000) extremely worthwhile. It achieved that low unit price because they ordered 300,000 of them.
"During trials, the missile performed impressively, once intercepting a 114 mm (4.5 in) shell."
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Wolf_(missile)
IIRC both missile and shell were not live (it being a test firing) so the physical hit was only confirmed when the shell was recovered by divers with a Seawolf shaped gouge along its side.
Probably not much of an impact, as he was aging, but it should be recalled that Rear Admiral Moffett was killed in the Akron disaster. He was a strong advocate for naval airpower (heavier and lighter than air) who probably had some weight with the establishment as he had been awarded the Medal of Honor as a member of the surface force and was not a flier himself. Again, doubtful that getting a couple more years out of him would have substantially changed naval aviation, but his death did mean the loss of an advocate, and probably left some of the most staid members of the institution arguing, "see, you mess around with these contraptions, they kill you."
I wonder if a "Thru-deck" Airship would have been viable? A full length flight deck allowing aircraft with actual landing gear would be very useful. Wouldn't need catapult to launch aircraft, but the aircraft WOULD still need to be lightweight. But still an interesting thought.
The Macon and Akron had no catapults.
@@WALTERBROADDUS The Macron & Akron also were no thru-deck carriers. I'm commenting about a "Complete" Full sized flight deck, large enough to launch AND recover at the same time larger aircraft that the "Hook and Trapeze" arrangement that those two had. The launch & recovery method of the Akron class severely limited the size & capability of the aircraft carried. An actual flat flight deck on a "Larger" Airship COULD have allowed for a larger & more capable complement of aircraft due to a more secure form of landing surface. Not requiring "Cats" means less weight, if the Airship is at sufficient altitude launching aircraft is as simple as building up enough speed to drop off the "Deck" & then trade altitude for speed.
@@ovk-ih1zp Well....🤔 Angelina Jolie has one. ruclips.net/video/JcBO7o8QlnQ/видео.html
Regarding the use of missiles to intercept battleship shells, I understand the Sea Wolf missile successfully intercepted a 4.5" shell. However, an armour piercing shell may not even have noticed.
That; and no ship in existance can track, engage and launch - all at once - enough SAM's to stop nine to fifteen incoming projectiles.
(as such a broadside or multiple ships firing salvoes would be an uphill fight)
Some sort of dedicated shipboard Active Defence System - as is appearing on Tanks ATM - might be useful, but no substitute for a good offence, and having struck the enemy first.
@@jimtaylor294 what the fuck are you talking about? The SAMPSON radar system on the modern type 45 destroyer can track over a 1000 cricket sized objects flying at supersonic speed at once.
^x1
Profanity; always a crutch for a lack of anything else.
Also: My point was as a job lot. Even a T45 can't Engage that many incoming targets with SAM's at the same time. The reason is that it's impossible to launch and guide that many SAM's all at once. In the situation Drach' was presented with, that'd be game over.
Most warships don't have any realistic prospect of needing to intercept as many as 15 projectiles at once though, as few threat countries possess the ability &/or will to try, and none still possess ships with enough guns to attempt it.
@chris younts CIWS is in theory very capable, but as no ships possess more than four emplacements and also lack the vast amount of sensory hardware to independently target more than that, the abilities thereof are limited.
That; and no CIWS has yet managed to decap or otherwise stop a shell above 5" caliber. That said it's as of the moment unlikely to need to.
Phalanx's past history suggests though that CIWS leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to accuracy, and of course the limited number even on a ship the size of an Iowa class limits the stopping power.
lovablesnowman - The problem with dealing with 9 - 22 incoming shells (9/10 main battery shells & up to 12 secondary rounds) isn’t tracking them - It’s launching enough missiles quickly enough to redirect or shoot them down. At 3-5 missiles per main-gun projectile, that would require a minimum of 27 missiles just to deal with the main-gun shells. At 1 a maximum of missile/second, it would take 27 seconds to launch those missiles. Add tracking and targeting time to that, & we’re talking about a minimum of 32 seconds, which would require the enemy to fire from a minimum of 20 km, & this is assuming everything goes right.
Radar weight consideration had me think of the British Vanguar, the last battleship launched. I read a list of 19 different radar that it mounted. No mention of their weight was made but I guess the total might be impressive.
9:30 Which is why the Japanese classed them as Auxiliary Fleet Carriers. Also they operated with the main fleet.
27:30 "A cloud of fast moving chaff" now that is my new favorite Drachism.
In 1983 CG-47 USS Ticonderoga was deployed to the coast of Lebanon. Where it's SPY-1 radar was used for the first time. On paper the SPY-1 could do it all. Control the entire combat zone. Seen this was the first time ever for it's use, no one be leaved it's paper spec. By the time of the US Navy withdrawal from the eastern Mediterranean, it was doing everything in it's spec and then some. The SPY-1 radar was not only tracking the USS New Jersey's 16" out going shell but it's 5" too. I saw it on the evening news one night. It was wild to see the blips on the screen as the left the ship on it's way to the target. The down side to this is that if you have someone who see thing that aren't there you shoot down a airline over the Persian Gulf. The USS Vincennes CG-49 did this. killing 242 passage's. No one understood how the SPY-1 radar could make that big off a mistake. When the US Navy play back the tap of the radar an compared it to the USS Slides older mold radar they found that they saw the same-thing. What the radar operator saw and what he called out were 2 different things. Ex. He said the plane was diving when it was climbing. SPY-1 radar is on all of the DDG-51 class of ships. No that the CG-47 are retired.
The mast-less....
The barbet mount....
*And then you got the hotel*
Hon hon hon ,I love your humour ,Drach
Tovey Churchill
“Abominations onto the Lord”
Bk Jeong sorry
I don’t get it
English is not my native language tho
@@toveychurchill6468 It's an expression that appears in the old King James version of the Old Testament, where various sinful practices are condemned as "an abomination unto the Lord".
On Akron/Macon: ACKrun/MAYkun. The design flaw that killed the Macon was known before the Akron went down. US Navy brass considered it more important to keep the ships flying (and impressing Congress) than laying them up for months of repairs.
If Akron had not gone down, Admiral Moffett would have quite probably have become Sen. Moffett, Democrat South Carolina. That would have helped with funding the airship program.
Airships are surprisingly resilient to gunfire. The Zeppelin bombers of WWI regularly flew home with hundreds of bullet holes. Through the wonders of square-cube law, the Akron-class ships would have been able to take more damage. There are few vital spots on a Zeppelin-style ship, the engines, gas tanks, and the "cruciform" member at the aft of the tail fins.
.
Akron and Macon would not have been able to perform long-range maneuvers in the Atlantic from October through March. Even at 6 million cubic feet, they lacked the lift to carry the engines, fuel and ballast to ride out a major Atlantic winter storm. If my failing memory is correct, the Pacific storm season is April through September, with the same limits. Again with the wonders of square-cube law, the potential 10 to 12 million cubic foot Z-CRV ships would have the lift to operate year-round.
0:41:51 I think the questioner meant the 5th Carrier Division. 3rd Carrier Division was light carriers (and Houshou). Shoukaku and Zuikaku were the 5th Carrier Division.
thanks for answering the question Drach!
probably thanks to video games but I thought naval guns should be more accurate, especially when there's fire control computer and later radars. I mean I didn't expect numbers to hover around the single digit range, but after explanation and some thought it makes sense
Regarding the Akron/Macon class - It's worth remembering that even the non-aircraft carrying airships, the US had a horrible record with the loss of Shennandoah, as well as the unnamed ZR2 crashing during delivery. Only Los Angeles survived to be decommissioned. (For these purposes the metallic envelope ZMC-2 is just too weird to be considered comparable.)
if they had got these ships to be reliable i think there real strength would have been in the Atlantic chasing u-boats. Imagine being a uboat commander knowing one of them was over head and could stay there and had air craft that could patrol in a large area.
@@TheWareek Neville Shutes book SlideRule, gives details on the construction of R100 and its successful trip to/from Canada. It leaves no doubt that the airship can cross/survive the North Atlantic. He also goes into details on the R101 and its many problems during construction.
@@benwilson6145 in the early days they would have been a good way to close the gap in air coverage in the mid atlantic
I loved the idea of the airship, i would have liked to see more of them.
You don't need to destroy the round, you just need knock it off course. With the inertia it has, it will be a task
"Abominations unto the Lord..." :D
You gotta admit that an Akron firing guns down on a U-Boat refueling would be quite hilarious.
@chris younts I get the feeling that firing straight up would not be the best option for the U-Boat.
Regarding the state of the post revolution Soviet navy, I think there was a question a few drydocks back about a ship actually managing to hit itself with its own guns. So that's two questions with one stone. Managing to hit your own superstructure ... depending on the circumstances that might be worthy of renaming the ship Kamchatka.
I thought I read somewhere that the British Seawolf SAM was able to take out 4.5 inch shells in tests. Also, what about Vanguard vs. Yamato?
drach your gonna hate me and all Americans for butchering your beautiful language, but the USS Macon is pronounced May-Kin as in, may i have a drink and kin as in my brother is my kin, the latter is said quickly Maykin basically, i know again sorry lol im actually from the area in GA and would love to meet on your Grand American Tour love the vids keep up your amazing work
Matt Easton you say? Nice
I for one welcome continued talk of "context" and "penetration" :D
A true Matt Easton homage contains information content of a single sentence spread over 10 minutes.
"Hey folks, Drach Easton here, scholanauticalia... "
I have a question, I know the graphic for the last question is not real and the battle would might never have happened or be possible and the gun calibre and damage was discussed but why would HMS Warrior not just go for the good old Ram. USS Monitor would quickly become a U-boat
It be more fun
6:29 I don't think so. The back blast on those things is *tremendous.* It would sink the airship.
Was thinking the same thing. I forget what the potentially lethal blast area behind the bigger ones is, but do remember that it is impressively large. Shredded airship.
Amazing channel. After having visited hms Belfast in 1985 as 7 year old, I have been intrigued by the history of battleships. So, guess how felt discovering yourself channel ... just to let you know - the episode on steel metallurgy for battleships :-)
As for the Hiyos, their lack of speed is probably what keeps them from being true fleet carriers in their time similarly to Ranger, and Eagle had she survived. The 1942 Light Fleet Carriers, and the slightly smaller US CVLs are fleet units because they can keep up with the full fat fleet carriers.
Kamchatka mode for 2 minutes to check for Japanese torpedo boats.
Nah... there wasn't any screaming or shouting or hysterical blubbering.
The intro to these drydocks is fascinating! Just wondering what you think about this match-up: All 5 KGV's vs. Bismarck, Tirpitz, Scharnhorst, and Gneisenau. I'd say pretty close....maybe advantage on the Brit's side for shear no. of main guns, better gunnery skills and one more hull in the water....if only 4/5 KGV's, then I think its a coin toss.....
Does the Warrior have a ram bow ? Because I could see the British Captain going ‘I’m not wasting ammunition on that ‘ and just running the monitor over.
Meep meep
So the Drachinifelisms started right from the first Drydock episode.
I've been wanting to read up on submarine warfare, particularly regarding Germany, in World War I. There are a number of books listed on Amazon, but I was hoping you could recommend one that would be the most comprehensive and definitive work on the topic.
Kinetic kill anti-ballistic missile weapons like sm-3 would probably work a bit better against battleship shells in terms of damage than a traditional anti-aircraft SAM. Although there may be issues with actually hitting the target at such a low altitude and so close to the launching warship.
The Turtledove alternate history series Worldwar had a part like this, where aliens attempted to shoot down large artillery shells (I think from the gustav/dora guns) aimed at their "beachhead" forward operating base with traditional fragmenting anti-aircraft SAMs. Needless to say, it didn't work.
On the question of Dönitz getting his 300 Uboats at the start of the war: The officer training system was barely able to keep up to assign commanding officers to the boats they had (in the end they had to scrape the bottom of the barrel quick-training officers with zero prior experience at sea, i.e. paper-pushers and shore-artillery guys who needed a crash course in navigation first). Unfortunately, the U-boat branch was extremly thorough at destroying records at war's end, so there are close to no primary sources. So, the bottleneck would have been the personnel, not the building capacity, if the ressources had been allocated in favor of the subs.
Not to forget that the British would not have sat idle getting news of a mass building program before the war.
And to crew more surface ships would obviously be difficult for the same reason !?
@@niclasjohansson4333 Nope, U-boats are special. Submariners can run (small to medium) surface ships but not vice versa without special training. Big ships and small ships also need different qualifications. One would not let a commander of a cruiser run a torpedo boat either.
Which nation in WW2 build the best submarines? I think the Dutch were the most effective during the first 2 years if you count to most sank tonnage with the amounts of ships. So what is the term best i think the ones who sink the most with the ;east amount of ships.
Any possibility for a video on the 1945 Kure raid?
Keep in mind that Monitor did not take advantage of its turret vs, Virginia, but ended up pointing the ship at Virginia.
I would reccomend United States Navy: 200 Years by Edward Beach, Jr. to illustrate the cooperation by Percy Scott and William Sims to improve the accuracy of American gun accuracy.
The book "The Great Gunnery Scandal: the mystery of Jutland" by Anthony Pollen (Collins, 1980) examines the issue of increasing gun ranges in the early 20th century versus the difficulty of hitting a moving target at long range, and focuses in particular on the Royal Navy's refusal to adopt an advanced fire control system that had been invented by a civilian -they eventually chose a much less capable system designed by a naval officer, and the author believes that this was at least partly to blame for the British fleet's relatively poor performance at Jutland.
I just had a vision of Lend-Lease Akron class airships carrying 17 pdrs in gondola mounts for taking out u-boats. My life will never be the same.
Yeah, similar to the AC-130 gunship which sports a 105mm Howitzer.
It starts at 2:06. That's weird. I thought RUclips wasn't loading the video!
How on earth did they manage to load the 12.5" muzzle loading battleships like HMS Ajax (1880) ? The question occurred to me after watching Forgotten Weapon's video on the Malta Shore Battery.
For the Midway scenario, given the extra time, would the US also have an opportunity to reinforce the land based air presence on Midway itself? If yes, I wonder how that would affect things.
Ritchie Mx7 - The US had reinforced the air garrison during the months previous to the Battle of Midway. As you can see from the description of air assets based on Midway, the airfields on Midway were already pretty crowded by June 4.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway
The one thing that would have helped is if the US had had F4F’s (or some other modern aircraft) instead of the F2A’s they were stuck with.
Thank you.
Press like, check duration, load one BIG mug of coffee...
Hit and miss is also a question of time of flight. At long range a shell can take over 1 minute to reach the target. If you turn when you see the gun flash, you invalidate the fire control solution used to fire the round and effectively dodge the shot.
Radar helps with generating the initial FC solution, but once the shell is fired it's gone.
Battleship shells would be a ballistic missile. Meaning that even without a working fuse, a (roughly speaking) ton of steel is still heading to it's target.
Just gonna put this out there. Could you do a Battle of Midway video discussing it from both sides and also dispelling a lot of the myths and assumptions that have grown over the years especially in regards to how the Japanese conducted themselves?
Richard Taylor
Hi, I recommend: Shattered Sword
The fundamental flaw in airships, even the modern ones of today are their susceptibility to weather. That is never going to change and therefore the promise of airships will always remain just a promise.
The Germans discounted close blockading UK as they did not have enough u boats... I played this out with an extra 60 assorted u boats at the start of 1940... and ramping up thereafter at very high priority...
The Norway campaign has only slight alterations... with the RN and allied forces doing a bit better...
Once the U boats have switched detonators the UK falls by mid 1942 average in 3 play throughs. ..
This does require the invasion of USSR to be delayed by a year... but more effort can be expended on North Africa... very complex..
As an aside.. we reviewed the posibility of USN joining in.... this has 3 common themes.. number one. . The USN are attritted near UK waters... second The IJN realising that the USN will take time to ramp up production.. strikes earlier and with better results.... third the USN dies a lot and this would require a 1945 1950 sort of scenario to sort out... often with ER condor and missile equipped u boats.. using gas.. plague warheads and or radiological dirty weapons to destroy the eastern coast USA..
Interestingly this often leads to USA western resurgence.. but not very pleasant in any scenario...
Akron and Macon would have made an interesting addition to the Pearl Harbor recon force. With their range and scope (Sparrow Hawks on each beam for quite a ways) one wonders if the Japanese fleet would have remained undiscovered. The Airships were conceived as fleet scouts not for action and the idea was for the on board aircraft to range out ahead and on each beam covering an enormous area. Also the American airships used helium as a lifting gas not hydrogen as in the Hindenburg so the Hindenburg disaster would have had little impact on the American program. Regardless, airships remained vulnerable to weather and given their long endurance and the limited weather forecasting ability of the time they would always have been at significant risk. In spite of that the USN operated a large lighter than air arm in WWII and they lasted on active duty in an anti sub role well after the end of WWII. And as a final note the B-25 J model carried a 75mm cannon without too much trauma so the Akron or Macon could probably have carried at least a 75mm. Recoilless rifles are a bad idea as the back blast is VERY significant and unless you are firing laterally with the back blast aimed clear of the hull would not be very useful.
the major cause of the Hindenburg disaster was not the Hydrogen gas in it's gas bags but the aluminum coating on the ship itself. If you will check the german reports and later examinations by a # of authorities this the conclusion they came to.
What is the lead in music? Sounds like something out of the 1920s or 1930s. What say you?
I've heard mention of 'Fleet Carriers' and 'Fleet Submarines,' What exactly is the difference between the two? Do we still differentiate them today? How do you use them?
In simple terms, they are long range, Ocean going vessels .
BB shell against a guided missile. The main issue is mass and momentum. Unless you can knock the shell off its path the sheer weight of mass will continue on to impact. Same with aircraft, if you kill the bird at too short of a range the sheeer weight of mass will continue on to impact
It occurs to me that the most likely result of setting off a missile in front of a battleship shell is that it may damage and tear off the windscreen (ballistic cap). AP shells used a cap to protect the body of the shell from impact t with the armor, and then a thin windscreen crimped or soldered in place to restore ballistic performance. If the windscreen is gone, then the ballistic performance becomes drastically different than what the firing solution was set for. The cap is much blunter than the windscreen, so a shell that is on a course to hit will fall short. OTOH, a shell that is on course for an "over" may turn into a hit.
That shell is not stopping...
@@WALTERBROADDUS doesn't need to stop, just needs to miss. I thought I made that clear in the original comment. It would be kind of like firing a .30-06 rifle with 150 gr pointed soft point bullet to hit a distant target, and at some point replacing that bullet in flight with a 150 gr flat nose bullet for a .30-30. Yes, the bullet is still the same weight and retains its velocity, but the aerodynamic profile has changed drastically and I'd that change happens at, say, 200 yards on a 400 yard target the bullet may now lose velocity quickly enough, and fall far enough, to miss completely.
What is the importance of the US Navy's proximity fuse during WW2 and what other navies used it?
Regarding the interception of a shell by an modern missile IIRC the Royal Navy demonstrated the ability of the Sea Wolf Missile to intercept and destroy a 4.5in shell in the 80s/90s
Something all too many people ignore about the gunnery of the British WW1 BC's is that based at Rosyth they could not practice live shooting at all. So of course their skills would deteriorate.
Just notice the excellent gunnery of the Third BCS after they had transferred to Scapa Flow for gunnery practice. IMO Beatty copes a lot of flak for things beyond his immediate control.
He gets blamed for the BC's shooting at the wrong ship but I think his orders (given the tech of the time) would be simple like "Engage opposite numbers" and the other ship captains are the one who screwed up. He just gets blamed for it.
I think I read some of that Harry Harrison book before I threw it away in disgust. The whole thing was a poorly written British bashing fantasy.
I looked at that book and agree it's garbage. I remember it came out right after 9/11, so I always assumed it was aimed at scared milhist fans who needed reassurance that 'MURICA was still badass. As ever, the sad thing about such nonsense is that it overshadows far better and more worthy books.
The weather would have remained the bane of airships trying to conduct ASW in the Atlantic.
52:15 I used to have a D&D character named Andrinor. I wonder why he is interested in naval history.
If Germany actually tried to build 300 Uboats Britain would know and wouldn’t allow it. At worst they’d just build a ton of destroyers and corvettes
I believe that is what drac was refering to with tons of clemson's
In response to that question about high rank admirals and the crazy ceremonial ranks created for them, my favorite thing like that is George Washington's rank in the United States Army. I don't know when they did this, but at some point it was decided that George Washington needed to be ceremonially ranked as the highest ranking officer in the United States Army, and since the highest rank a normal officer can attain in the US Army is General of the Army, they created the rank of General of the Armies of the United States of America for George Washington. I love it.
6:36 time to invent AIR-BATTLESHIPS!
Or... even...
AIR BATTLE CARRIERS!!!!!!!!!
I would imagine that the variable hit rate of ships during war time would be due to expert crew members being transferred to new construction and being replaced by recruits, not to mention that new equipment such as radar requires retraining and may not be reliable. As I recall from training the CIWS can engage incoming 5 inch shells, not sure about missiles. As to the cost of the missile, you only have to engage the shell that will hit, given shell dispersion, and the cost of an expended missile or two is cheap compared to the cost of taking a hit
Apart from spotting for Graf Spee, Warspite at Narvik and for the Japanese early in WWII, shipborne planes on gunships seem to have been pretty much a waste of space (and a highly flammable waste of space). Agree?
A veritable missed on the delayed battle of Midway is the reinforcements of the land based aircraft.
Nothing tops the Hornet losing a entire airwing.
16:06 What is that painting?