35:50 Having small items stolen isn't unique to museum ships. I've been to a number of car shows, and nearly every vehicle would be missing it's shift knob. It was such a common thing I initially assumed the shifters were removed pre-show to prevent this from happening, but every now and then you'll find a car with a complete shifter.
I've actually been on a privately owned PT boat. My two biggest takeaways? 1) They're much larger than you think from pics and vids, at least IMHO. and 2) God, the power of those engines!!!!
Right, a place around me has a couple of Vietnam era river boats that never went over. Get used to drop off canoers at the other end of the lake for their river excursion.
Drach, in your discussion on warships converted to civilian use you didn't mention Royal Navy Mark I class motor minesweeper HMS J-826. She was better known in civilian use with the Cousteau Society as the RV Calypso.
The idea that Byrd was a valued confidential advisor to King is not born out in Master of Sea Power a biography on Adm. King by Thomas B. Buell. On pages 322-323 a memo from King to a staff officer reads," Keep Dickie Byrd out of my office, EJK." It appears that Byrd was pestering King with ideas about how the Antarctic could play a role in the war. Byrd had political connections with Roosevelt that put pressure on King to make use of Byrd. King then sent Byrd off on a lengthy inspection tour of the Pacific which may have provide information of value, but the main purpose appears to be keeping Byrd busy, and out of Kings office.
John Wayne's private ship was a converted mine sweeper. After he died, it was bought and converted as party boat for cruising around the New Port Beach bay in Southern California, and is still in use today
An interesting thought about the M-N forts, would the "Channel Dash" still have occurred? Granted, if the ones close to France had been seized by the Germans, the force could have passed between them. But would the forts still in British hands have spotted/raised the alarm any sooner than it was historically? Would they have been able to help correct the fire of the Dover batteries that were firing blind at the radar images on their scopes?
Plenty of auxiliaries end up in civilian service after the world wars, but probably one of the most interesting cases to me is the case of USS Worden DD-16, which was sold off after WW1 and became a banana carrying ship in the Caribbean until it was sunk in that service by a U-boat in 1942. It’s not often that you see a warship end up in civilian service like that, especially early destroyers.
The other interesting one I've heard of was a WWI Hunt Class minesweeper named HMS Wexford. After the war it was sold into civilian service and was used in Queensland, Australia as a ferry boat named SS Doomba. When WWII started it was chosen for reconversion into an escort vessel and served in the RAN as HMAS Doomba.
ww2 landing craft are still running around in Indonesia. If it could carry a tank, it can carry a oilfield truck. The oil industry in Venezuela took up a LOT of surplus auxiliaries, tugboats and barges. Regards
The Cape Henlopen was built as USS LST 510 and continues to operate as a ferry for the Cross Sound ferry from New London CT to various points in Long Island NY to this day and was most recently overhauled in 2016.
Just wanted to leave my thanks. When I open RUclips after 11pm my first recommendation is always one of your fids. Always watch you to calm down and expand my naval knowledge. Thx for everything up till now.
RE “Petty theft” at a *very high* level. There was a story in one humor section of *Reader’s Digest* that when Churchill was at an embassy dinner, he saw a guest pocket a silver salt shaker. Churchill immediately purloined the matching pepper shaker and went over to the guest, pulling the pepper shaker from his pocket. After showing it to the guest, he said “I believe we have been observed: We must put them back.” Whereupon they both sidled up to the buffet and replaced the pair, nodding and smiling to each other, put them back ! Where the Hell have such men gone?
DUKWs in usage as sightseeing here in the US are a somewhat common thing- at least they used to be.... Those craft had their own civilian Hindenburg-caliber incident some years back now- I think a ban went into place thereafter, if memory serves..... 🚬😎👍
The Australians kept using DUKWs and LARCs to land supplies at their Antarctic bases long after their military had stopped using them. And I think I recall one doing tours of London and the Thames River?
Like many adoring subs, Ive listened to every one. One redeeming feature of my rubbish memory is that I shall eventually listen to them all again, in order, in the full expectation that it will all seem completely new to me😂
M-N forts as bridge piers: In this hypothetical alternate universe I wonder if they might have made the bridge decks as covered bridges, a sort of suspended tunnel? Not sealed airtight, you would want natural circulation to constantly refresh the air, but enough to moderate the force of the wind and rain so that unexpectedly fast moving storms wouldn't blow or wash cars over the side or trigger accidents or collisions on the bridge.
Back when the channel tunnel was being planned, one of the proposed design studies (Eurobridge) was an enclosed bridge connecting piers like that. The main objection was that it would block the shipping lanes.
regarding the M-N platforms and your speculation about a bridge: the longest current suspension bridge single span is the Cannakale Bridge across the Dardanelles, with a span (between towers) of 2,023 metres (1.26 mi). In the 1960s, the longest one was Verazzano Narrows (1,298m) (opened 1964), so perhaps another 12 towers would have been possible, but potentially another 24 would have been needed, leaving a much more feasible gap of 2/3 miles per span
@@Dave_Sisson It's an important milestone. Don't you get a brief moment of joy when you hit 10,000 steps flat or the clock shows 12:34:56? I sure did when I fotographed my clock on 22/02/2022 at 22:22:22. Also, there are sometimes small gimmicks in the 00-series drydocks.
Continuing the fine tradition of asking Drach "Why don't you cover ", may I humbly propose HMAS Kinchela? This gallant tub was the slowest ship in the RAN in WWII. Such a slug in fact, that on her bows she did not display her name, but rather the hand-painted warning "DEAD SLOW". That's gotta be worth a Five Minute Guide.
On things being stolen I believe the Tank Museum at Bovington almost lost the jack for the Tiger 1 Tank. Apparently a couple of light fingered chaps were trying to steal it but were stopped in the action. I’m not sure how you would get that out of the museum unseen?
49:08 one could also say that USS Fort Drum in the Philippines payed for itself. It was overbuilt after the Spanish-American War and paid for itself during WW2 holding of Japan. The Fat Electrician did a video about it m.ruclips.net/video/0hoflGSRDhY/видео.html
Longest single span suspension bridge is 2,023m between towers, so the "Channel Bridge" would've needed intermediate towers between each of the originally planned ones.
Regarding bits of ship going missing when being visited or just before off to the scrappies - it falls outside the time period of the channel, but I happen to know that most of the HQ1 chairs off the most recent _Ark Royal_ ended up being pinched and serving as office chairs in offices
The Memphis Belle was harvested internally for relics during her time in Memphis thanks to being unprotected on a pedestal by the airport. Instruments, handles, yokes, switches. Anything that could be broken off was taken. Took the USAF Museum a decade to return her to as she was when she flew home.
49:26 I've found the best use of sea fortifications is either in places or battles where they are supporting or supplementing actual naval forces or as in the case of the Norway forts is in narrow waters ways. I'v found forts that face the ocean and are unsupported are very vaunrable to either being out ranged by warships, overwhelmed or could just be taken out by shore parties of marines.
Unless the tech disparity was very big, I find it hard to believe that ships could outrange coastal forts on account of the fact that they have it much easier to aim since they don't move like ships, therefore can shoot far more accurately and probably further. Not to mention the fact that since they don't move, they don't have to concern themselves with being light and small enough to fit in a ship, they can be larger, heavier, and more armored than anything a warship can have.
@@edgardox.feliciano3127 In WW2, battleships could effectively outrange coastal forts because hitting at long range depending to a large extent on salvo size, and none of the coastal defenses that anybody built had the required 8-9 identical guns that one would find on a battleship. The most I've found was 4 identical full-size guns (probably supported by lots of smaller guns that don't count for this purpose). Not talking absolute range here: but rather effective range. It's the same factor that made railway guns relatively insignificant for land combat. Big guns, impressive range, couldn't hit the broad side of a barn unless the barn is the size of a small city. For an example, consider the gunnery duel at Toulon during the invasion of Southern France, where the defenders had land-based battleship guns and modern fire control ... and lost.
@@bluelemming5296 I was kinda going off a battle or a few that took place during the Franco-Prussian war, in which the German coastal forts beat the French warships in gun battles because the Germans slightly outranged the French, for the reasons I outlined in my earlier comment.
@@edgardox.feliciano3127 All other things being equal, a shore-gun can outperform its shipboard equivalent in most metrics. They can be heavier, can be more stable, can have better prepared fire-control systems, and so on. The technological disparity is usually the problem. People simply don't update and modernize their sea forts as frequently as their naval warships, and so it is very rare for a sea fort's guns and fire-control to actually be competitive with the common warship coming against them. Another consideration is often the guns being mounted in a sea fort are actually old guns being repurposed or are just the normal naval guns on a special mount, so they are not actually going to significantly outrange their naval counterparts even with the perks of being on a stable land mount because they are not exploiting the ability to be heavier and stronger systems. Long and short, there is a reason most countries stopped seriously investing in new sea forts after the Great War; they just were not as cost-effective as other protective measures. A good fleet of minelayers, a better battlefleet, and increasingly airpower all proved far better than trying to keep modern guns everywhere on the coastline you might want them.
Q & A My biggest question is that with the British being at war for over 3 years before the US got involved, how come the Brits didn't get some monoplanes for carrier use from the USA any sooner in the war. I mean the US was shipping a lot of supplies to the UK for the war effort. It seems to me that they could have updated their carrier aircraft a bit sooner with US planes.
As to "How common was it for small navy ships to enter civilian service after WWII"? One of my local ferries is a converted WWII LST that took part in D-Day.
A follow up regarding timber stocks being burned during shipyard raids: ships are far from the only wooden structure being built during the Age of Sail - how viable would it be for a shipyard that had lost their stock of properly dried wood to buy up wood supplies from various land based construction facilities? I know there would be some limitations - for instance, those lovely curved ships rib pieces were often cut from where the tree bends into the root, which makes a naturally strong and sharp curve...but that kind of specialized piece is not particularly useful for land based construction. Anything so specialized would need a resupply from another shipyard, assuming such a delivery could be arranged. But there's plenty of bits of the ship that are more or less long, straight posts, planks, etc and all of that is at least somewhat comparable to what you'd use in any land based wooden construction. And you can bet that land based carpenters are at least as picky about their wood being properly dried before they start construction. I guess the other problem you might find is wood species - a shipyard in the age of sail would probably be buying up most of the local market's supply of the best shipbuilding trees available in the area - land construction tends not to be all that picky until you're talking finishing materials, which would tend to be much smaller pieces of wood than what a shipyard might consider strategically significant.
@SonsofHerculesTv .PCE class ships had long post war use as small passenger ships and freighters .They were the right length and width to convert to other use. One PCE class shows up in a Dave Clark Five movie or video as I remember being used as one of the illegal free radio ships outside Britains national borders in the 1960s .
In Denmark we build a suspension bridge with the span of 1650m and pylon height of 254m, 65m under the bridge and it Opened in 1994. When we started Thacher was in office, so you would not beed able to start until she was out of office..
In the cartoon movie "Anastasia", at one point the main characters voyage the Baltic on a liner that is evidently a surplus german proteced cruiser. Really nice artwork, I thought, though not very practical. A while ago however, I saw a youtube about german cruisers which were converted to commercial use after the war. It might even have been one of Drach's Rum Rations. Apparently it was a stop-gap measure required by a post-war shipping shortage. And the seaplane tender HMAS Albatross was also converted to a liner after WWII. So some quite large ships went into Civvy Street.
Regarding the Kantai Kessen question - not at all surprised to see you pick Midway as the turning point. It's very much the turning point of the entire theatre - the loss of the Kido Butai is widely regarded as significant but honestly, the more I learn, the more I realize that the common understanding *undersells* just how critical that loss was.
Great video as always. Speaking of ex naval ships being converted to civilian use, etc, there’s the example of what might be the remaining ship of the Austro-Hungarian Navy: SMS Dalmat? I think it’s in limbo as to its final status. Let’s hope it finds a home in a museum. Is there an example of a German High Seas fleet small ship that also still exists after having been converted (besides the miraculous MV Liemba, formerly Graf Goetzen, which I too hope will be retired to a museum)?
When referring to naval fortifications paying for themselves, do you mean exclusively against enemy naval vessels? Because if one considers major land invasions as well, Krasnaya Gorka in Leningrad Oblast and the Maxim Gorky at Sevastopol have to take the prize. Even the Schwerer Gustav 800mm railway gun had trouble dealing with the Sevastopol fort's 12-inch guns, resulting in the Soviets resorting the Maxim Gorky I fort postwar and remaining in operation until 1997. But even that performance paled against Krasnaya Gorka. The fortress so dominated the approach to Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersburg the Wehrmacht was not able to take the Oranienbaum Bridgehead nor the city during the brutal siege of 1941-44, largely due to Krasnaya Gorka never running out of ammunition, unlike Maxim Gorky. It is also striking that no Kriegsmarine surface ships appear to have shelled Leningrad during the siege, likely due to the knowledge that even HMS Erebus' 15-inch guns were unable to crack Krasnaya Gorka when she provided gunfire support when the 1st Division of the Estonian Army unsuccessfully assaulted it in 1919. This also leads to a conundrum--why were Operations Berlin and Exercise Rhine permitted to be executed in 1941, given that Bismarck's and Tirpitz's 15-inch guns would have permitted a volume of fire on Krasnaya Gorka and Kronstadt from eight times as many barrels as those employed by HMS Erebus 22 years prior? If the Scharnhorsts and Deutschlands (both the modern cruisers and predreadnoughts) had escorted the Bismarcks in this hypothetical summer of 1941, the Kriegsmarine could have brought Krasnaya Gorka under the fire of 38 11-inch guns in addition to the 16 15-inch guns of the Bismarcks. Planning for Barbarossa long predated Lutjens' two raids in 1941--why wasn't the Kriegsmarine capital ship fleet reserved until June-July 1941 to crack the approaches and then shell Leningrad into oblivion? Considering Schleswig-Holstein had fired the first shots of the Second World War against Westerplatte on 1 September 1939, there was recent (to the POV of German flag officers in 1940-41) precedent to using Kriegsmarine battleships against forbidding fortifications in the Baltic...why wasn't Raeder eager to contribute major Kriegsmarine support to the largest land invasion in history?
I do think that deck-edge elevators in the proper sense, not off-edge elevators as on modern carriers, would've been viable. Inside the hull, but at the very edges of hull, perhaps with a slight widening to accommodate it better. Or, for a two-level hangar, off-edge elevators down to the upper hangar deck, then an internal elevator inside the hull to the lower hangar deck. No hull openings far down, but still the benefit of a mostly uncompromised runway.
Dear drach, A humorous thought - I use your channel to distract thoughts at night. So it’d be humorous you recorded reading stories to drach jr at bed time. Cheers, Insomniac
I'd have wanted a Higgins LCVP. 10 kts with a 225 hp diesel. It could carry 4 tonnes cargo or a 3 tonne vehicle. 20 civilians and their stuff. 1 meter draft aft. That would have been nice for doing on demand cargo delivery, vehicle transportation or ferry work.
Sometimes surviving ships in civillian service are modified so heavily, that they are unreconizable. One example I know of is the tall ship Empire Sandy. It was built as a deap sea tug boat for Royal Navy. After the war it was sold to a logging company before being sold and converted into a schooner. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Sandy
Thanks for answering my question! Also; imagine if she actually managed to last that long instead of being rebuilt as an entirely new ship. A ship so far ahead of her time that she’d still be a viable third-rate centuries later. Re; alt-Midway, even if the Americans are holding the idiot ball, I doubt the Yorktowns are going to let the Japanese surface pursuit force close the distance with them unless the Kido Butai has basically reduced them to flaming wreckage already (though that could actually happen here, that would also render a Yamato drive-by shooting pointless).
You've always seemed like a very talented naval historian. Over the past three-ish weeks, I’ve made some major edits to the Wikipedia page of the Zuikaku, and by major, I mean almost completely rewriting it. I was wondering if you could check it out and give some constructive criticism?
16:49 don’t know how to ask this really, but aren’t the masts supported in the wrong direction looking at the big ropes that go from the base of one mast to the top of the one behind it. Like the opposite of how the force of the sail would be applied.
For stealable reproduction items, maybe have some kind of non-removable markings on the side that isn't seen? Someone steals a switch cover, than at home flip it over and find embossed into it "Reproduction made in Thailand"?
Could you say the US South Carolina Class was a transitional ship in that they could be considered an all big gun pre Dreadnought because they had as many characteristics of pre dreadnought battleships.
I wonder if any of the cargo type ships were sold off for anything other than scrap? My Grandmothers brother served aboark the USS Andromeda - AKA-15. Andromeda herself stayed in reserves till stricken in 1960. It seems some of these would have served well as post WW2 commercial cargo ships.
Could the Japanese have won their Kantai Kessen major battle? I wrote a paper during study at the Naval War College, many years ago. The Japanese DID arrange their Kantai Kessen Decisive Battle. It was off the coast of Midway and they lost. The fact the Japanese did not bring their battle line into action was a major factor in loosing the Decisive Battle. A few hundred extra AA guns would have been useful.
Arguably, the Norwegian defenses were only effective because of the White torpedo mounts. They were only effective because of the geography in that area.
Dear Drach and viewers; over the past three-ish weeks, I’ve made some major edits to the Wikipedia page of the Zuikaku, and by major, I mean almost completely rewriting it. I was wondering if you guys could check it out and give some constructive criticism?
I would argue that Denmark's coastal defenses paid for themselves during WWII since the Royal Navy had to take the long way around to supply the Soviet Union.
i would feel that's more to the fact you are sailing through a tight corridor , then into the baltic , with Denmark, Germany, Poland right next to you, with the luftwaffe able to constantly attack you, sailing right past places like Kiel ,and no way out but to come back the way you came i.e even if there who no coastal defences in denmark it would still be dodgy as eff
m8 i love your work and i face followed you since the first days, however that discord has become the most awful nazi club i have ever seen online, was abused and spatted on by disgusting people since the first day, and when its fine some mod who are with these nazis suddenly muted me even though i was only defending myself from these rude obnoxious people and said its fine
on the tabletop version of your discord people get bullied to oblivion and then your mods mute them when they try to defend themselves, you should reset a new discord, this is the most horrid place i have ever seen online
the discord is an absolute hellscape where people get abused and banned by elite culture mods, have been on many discord servers since its inception, here even after you get bullied you get muted or banned by awful mods and admins, your discord that should be about ships has turned into a hell elite culture where people both get bullied and then muted when they try to defend themselves from these bullies because of elite mod culture, its the worst place on the internet
09:27 Even during the Civil War and commonwealth the Navy could not really be regarded as a Royal Navy or HMG Naval Armed Forces as most ships in use on either side in Civil War were pressed merchant ships of war. So probably during the later Commonwealth (Republic) and during Restoration did a Navy become a state entity, same with Land forces - although the "New model army" existed in the Civil War first "regular" army Regiments existed from 1656 with Grenadier Guards and the other two Guards Regiments Coldstream and Scots formalised in 1661, although they like other form of Kings bodyguards like Yeoman etc date back further.
35:50 Having small items stolen isn't unique to museum ships. I've been to a number of car shows, and nearly every vehicle would be missing it's shift knob. It was such a common thing I initially assumed the shifters were removed pre-show to prevent this from happening, but every now and then you'll find a car with a complete shifter.
In regard to the MoP, you do not give them the chance to stroll off with your things, you make it as difficult as you can for things to wander off.
Regarding deck edge elevators, the angled flight decks facilitated the change by providing offset weight to port.
I've actually been on a privately owned PT boat. My two biggest takeaways? 1) They're much larger than you think from pics and vids, at least IMHO. and 2) God, the power of those engines!!!!
4500 horsepower and what? 50 tonnes? Yep, that'll pull a skier for sure!
Right, a place around me has a couple of Vietnam era river boats that never went over. Get used to drop off canoers at the other end of the lake for their river excursion.
@@orionstrehlow6816 Like the one from Apocalypse Now?
Didn't the PT Boats have like 3 engines?
@@kennethdeanmiller7324 Had to look it up. Yup, three 12-cylinder liquid-cooled Packard gasoline engines rated at 1,200bhp each.
Drach, in your discussion on warships converted to civilian use you didn't mention Royal Navy Mark I class motor minesweeper HMS J-826. She was better known in civilian use with the Cousteau Society as the RV Calypso.
The idea that Byrd was a valued confidential advisor to King is not born out in Master of Sea Power a biography on Adm. King by Thomas B. Buell. On pages 322-323 a memo from King to a staff officer reads," Keep Dickie Byrd out of my office, EJK." It appears that Byrd was pestering King with ideas about how the Antarctic could play a role in the war. Byrd had political connections with Roosevelt that put pressure on King to make use of Byrd. King then sent Byrd off on a lengthy inspection tour of the Pacific which may have provide information of value, but the main purpose appears to be keeping Byrd busy, and out of Kings office.
John Wayne's private ship was a converted mine sweeper. After he died, it was bought and converted as party boat for cruising around the New Port Beach bay in Southern California, and is still in use today
‘The hell it was!’
An interesting thought about the M-N forts, would the "Channel Dash" still have occurred? Granted, if the ones close to France had been seized by the Germans, the force could have passed between them. But would the forts still in British hands have spotted/raised the alarm any sooner than it was historically? Would they have been able to help correct the fire of the Dover batteries that were firing blind at the radar images on their scopes?
Sunday mornin, coffee and a new Drydock. Life is good. Thanks Drach
Cheers 🍻
A new Drydock and a new Odd Tinkering this day!
Plenty of auxiliaries end up in civilian service after the world wars, but probably one of the most interesting cases to me is the case of USS Worden DD-16, which was sold off after WW1 and became a banana carrying ship in the Caribbean until it was sunk in that service by a U-boat in 1942. It’s not often that you see a warship end up in civilian service like that, especially early destroyers.
The other interesting one I've heard of was a WWI Hunt Class minesweeper named HMS Wexford. After the war it was sold into civilian service and was used in Queensland, Australia as a ferry boat named SS Doomba. When WWII started it was chosen for reconversion into an escort vessel and served in the RAN as HMAS Doomba.
Did the crew paint a 🍌 kill on the sail😂
Naval to civilian: I believe a number of landing craft also went into private hands, as ferry boats and motorized barges.
ww2 landing craft are still running around in Indonesia. If it could carry a tank, it can carry a oilfield truck.
The oil industry in Venezuela took up a LOT of surplus auxiliaries, tugboats and barges.
Regards
John Wayne owned a minesweeper from WW2
The Cape Henlopen was built as USS LST 510 and continues to operate as a ferry for the Cross Sound ferry from New London CT to various points in Long Island NY to this day and was most recently overhauled in 2016.
So, would the French 4 gun turrets, since they were set up as 2 pairs locked together, would those the be doublé twin gun turrets
I've lived on a houseboat built on a landingcraft hull
Just wanted to leave my thanks. When I open RUclips after 11pm my first recommendation is always one of your fids. Always watch you to calm down and expand my naval knowledge. Thx for everything up till now.
RE “Petty theft” at a *very high* level. There was a story in one humor section of *Reader’s Digest* that when Churchill was at an embassy dinner, he saw a guest pocket a silver salt shaker. Churchill immediately purloined the matching pepper shaker and went over to the guest, pulling the pepper shaker from his pocket. After showing it to the guest, he said “I believe we have been observed: We must put them back.”
Whereupon they both sidled up to the buffet and replaced the pair, nodding and smiling to each other, put them back !
Where the Hell have such men gone?
DUKWs in usage as sightseeing here in the US are a somewhat common thing- at least they used to be....
Those craft had their own civilian Hindenburg-caliber incident some years back now- I think a ban went into place thereafter, if memory serves.....
🚬😎👍
The Australians kept using DUKWs and LARCs to land supplies at their Antarctic bases long after their military had stopped using them. And I think I recall one doing tours of London and the Thames River?
For sure, whereupon they became obscenely modified and antiquated death traps. Loads of compelling disaster vids on RUclips about them. 😖
Getting pointy now!!
2 Drydocks and 300K subscribers to go!!
I know - I have a good question lined up for it too
Like many adoring subs, Ive listened to every one. One redeeming feature of my rubbish memory is that I shall eventually listen to them all again, in order, in the full expectation that it will all seem completely new to me😂
M-N forts as bridge piers: In this hypothetical alternate universe I wonder if they might have made the bridge decks as covered bridges, a sort of suspended tunnel? Not sealed airtight, you would want natural circulation to constantly refresh the air, but enough to moderate the force of the wind and rain so that unexpectedly fast moving storms wouldn't blow or wash cars over the side or trigger accidents or collisions on the bridge.
Back when the channel tunnel was being planned, one of the proposed design studies (Eurobridge) was an enclosed bridge connecting piers like that. The main objection was that it would block the shipping lanes.
regarding the M-N platforms and your speculation about a bridge: the longest current suspension bridge single span is the Cannakale Bridge across the Dardanelles, with a span (between towers) of 2,023 metres (1.26 mi).
In the 1960s, the longest one was Verazzano Narrows (1,298m) (opened 1964), so perhaps another 12 towers would have been possible, but potentially another 24 would have been needed, leaving a much more feasible gap of 2/3 miles per span
Only 2 Drydocks to go.
How exciting!
From now on it will just be Drydock 299 with an additional letter :D
What's the big deal about number 300? Have I missed something?
@@Dave_Sisson It's an important milestone.
Don't you get a brief moment of joy when you hit 10,000 steps flat or the clock shows 12:34:56?
I sure did when I fotographed my clock on 22/02/2022 at 22:22:22.
Also, there are sometimes small gimmicks in the 00-series drydocks.
Continuing the fine tradition of asking Drach "Why don't you cover ", may I humbly propose HMAS Kinchela? This gallant tub was the slowest ship in the RAN in WWII. Such a slug in fact, that on her bows she did not display her name, but rather the hand-painted warning "DEAD SLOW".
That's gotta be worth a Five Minute Guide.
On things being stolen I believe the Tank Museum at Bovington almost lost the jack for the Tiger 1 Tank.
Apparently a couple of light fingered chaps were trying to steal it but were stopped in the action.
I’m not sure how you would get that out of the museum unseen?
49:08 one could also say that USS Fort Drum in the Philippines payed for itself. It was overbuilt after the Spanish-American War and paid for itself during WW2 holding of Japan.
The Fat Electrician did a video about it m.ruclips.net/video/0hoflGSRDhY/видео.html
Wow them towers at the end as a concept, brilliant!
Makes you wonder why we bothered with an impractical and annoying tunnel….80 years later🤷♂️
I was thinking of the Nab Tower when you were dealing with coastal fortifications.
Longest single span suspension bridge is 2,023m between towers, so the "Channel Bridge" would've needed intermediate towers between each of the originally planned ones.
Regarding bits of ship going missing when being visited or just before off to the scrappies - it falls outside the time period of the channel, but I happen to know that most of the HQ1 chairs off the most recent _Ark Royal_ ended up being pinched and serving as office chairs in offices
The Memphis Belle was harvested internally for relics during her time in Memphis thanks to being unprotected on a pedestal by the airport. Instruments, handles, yokes, switches. Anything that could be broken off was taken. Took the USAF Museum a decade to return her to as she was when she flew home.
Yes, new expanded updated video on the West Africa Squadron / anti slavery patrols would be great
My PhD advisor was the commanding officer of the nearest Swedish coastal battery during whiskey on the rocks. Pretty cool story.
49:26 I've found the best use of sea fortifications is either in places or battles where they are supporting or supplementing actual naval forces or as in the case of the Norway forts is in narrow waters ways.
I'v found forts that face the ocean and are unsupported are very vaunrable to either being out ranged by warships, overwhelmed or could just be taken out by shore parties of marines.
Unless the tech disparity was very big, I find it hard to believe that ships could outrange coastal forts on account of the fact that they have it much easier to aim since they don't move like ships, therefore can shoot far more accurately and probably further. Not to mention the fact that since they don't move, they don't have to concern themselves with being light and small enough to fit in a ship, they can be larger, heavier, and more armored than anything a warship can have.
@@edgardox.feliciano3127 In WW2, battleships could effectively outrange coastal forts because hitting at long range depending to a large extent on salvo size, and none of the coastal defenses that anybody built had the required 8-9 identical guns that one would find on a battleship. The most I've found was 4 identical full-size guns (probably supported by lots of smaller guns that don't count for this purpose).
Not talking absolute range here: but rather effective range.
It's the same factor that made railway guns relatively insignificant for land combat. Big guns, impressive range, couldn't hit the broad side of a barn unless the barn is the size of a small city.
For an example, consider the gunnery duel at Toulon during the invasion of Southern France, where the defenders had land-based battleship guns and modern fire control ... and lost.
@@bluelemming5296 I was kinda going off a battle or a few that took place during the Franco-Prussian war, in which the German coastal forts beat the French warships in gun battles because the Germans slightly outranged the French, for the reasons I outlined in my earlier comment.
@@edgardox.feliciano3127 That makes sense.
@@edgardox.feliciano3127 All other things being equal, a shore-gun can outperform its shipboard equivalent in most metrics. They can be heavier, can be more stable, can have better prepared fire-control systems, and so on.
The technological disparity is usually the problem. People simply don't update and modernize their sea forts as frequently as their naval warships, and so it is very rare for a sea fort's guns and fire-control to actually be competitive with the common warship coming against them.
Another consideration is often the guns being mounted in a sea fort are actually old guns being repurposed or are just the normal naval guns on a special mount, so they are not actually going to significantly outrange their naval counterparts even with the perks of being on a stable land mount because they are not exploiting the ability to be heavier and stronger systems.
Long and short, there is a reason most countries stopped seriously investing in new sea forts after the Great War; they just were not as cost-effective as other protective measures. A good fleet of minelayers, a better battlefleet, and increasingly airpower all proved far better than trying to keep modern guns everywhere on the coastline you might want them.
Q & A My biggest question is that with the British being at war for over 3 years before the US got involved, how come the Brits didn't get some monoplanes for carrier use from the USA any sooner in the war. I mean the US was shipping a lot of supplies to the UK for the war effort. It seems to me that they could have updated their carrier aircraft a bit sooner with US planes.
As to "How common was it for small navy ships to enter civilian service after WWII"?
One of my local ferries is a converted WWII LST that took part in D-Day.
Guy down the block ,has a minesweeper- with a retractable kiel , on lake Michigan
A follow up regarding timber stocks being burned during shipyard raids: ships are far from the only wooden structure being built during the Age of Sail - how viable would it be for a shipyard that had lost their stock of properly dried wood to buy up wood supplies from various land based construction facilities?
I know there would be some limitations - for instance, those lovely curved ships rib pieces were often cut from where the tree bends into the root, which makes a naturally strong and sharp curve...but that kind of specialized piece is not particularly useful for land based construction. Anything so specialized would need a resupply from another shipyard, assuming such a delivery could be arranged.
But there's plenty of bits of the ship that are more or less long, straight posts, planks, etc and all of that is at least somewhat comparable to what you'd use in any land based wooden construction. And you can bet that land based carpenters are at least as picky about their wood being properly dried before they start construction. I guess the other problem you might find is wood species - a shipyard in the age of sail would probably be buying up most of the local market's supply of the best shipbuilding trees available in the area - land construction tends not to be all that picky until you're talking finishing materials, which would tend to be much smaller pieces of wood than what a shipyard might consider strategically significant.
Also, bloody hell it's cold in Melbourne tonight!!
Very jealous of the bloke dressed up in the Antarctic cold weather gear at 9:02
@SonsofHerculesTv .PCE class ships had long post war use as small passenger ships and freighters .They were the right length and width to convert to other use. One PCE class shows up in a Dave Clark Five movie or video as I remember being used as one of the illegal free radio ships outside Britains national borders in the 1960s .
In Denmark we build a suspension bridge with the span of 1650m and pylon height of 254m, 65m under the bridge and it Opened in 1994.
When we started Thacher was in office, so you would not beed able to start until she was out of office..
In the cartoon movie "Anastasia", at one point the main characters voyage the Baltic on a liner that is evidently a surplus german proteced cruiser. Really nice artwork, I thought, though not very practical.
A while ago however, I saw a youtube about german cruisers which were converted to commercial use after the war. It might even have been one of Drach's Rum Rations. Apparently it was a stop-gap measure required by a post-war shipping shortage.
And the seaplane tender HMAS Albatross was also converted to a liner after WWII.
So some quite large ships went into Civvy Street.
Regarding the Kantai Kessen question - not at all surprised to see you pick Midway as the turning point. It's very much the turning point of the entire theatre - the loss of the Kido Butai is widely regarded as significant but honestly, the more I learn, the more I realize that the common understanding *undersells* just how critical that loss was.
Thanks Drach
Great video as always. Speaking of ex naval ships being converted to civilian use, etc, there’s the example of what might be the remaining ship of the Austro-Hungarian Navy: SMS Dalmat? I think it’s in limbo as to its final status. Let’s hope it finds a home in a museum. Is there an example of a German High Seas fleet small ship that also still exists after having been converted (besides the miraculous MV Liemba, formerly Graf Goetzen, which I too hope will be retired to a museum)?
Damn the Defiant!
If those towers HAD been built, at least you wouldn’t have to worry about ship collisions knocking down the bridge!
When referring to naval fortifications paying for themselves, do you mean exclusively against enemy naval vessels? Because if one considers major land invasions as well, Krasnaya Gorka in Leningrad Oblast and the Maxim Gorky at Sevastopol have to take the prize. Even the Schwerer Gustav 800mm railway gun had trouble dealing with the Sevastopol fort's 12-inch guns, resulting in the Soviets resorting the Maxim Gorky I fort postwar and remaining in operation until 1997.
But even that performance paled against Krasnaya Gorka. The fortress so dominated the approach to Petrograd/Leningrad/St. Petersburg the Wehrmacht was not able to take the Oranienbaum Bridgehead nor the city during the brutal siege of 1941-44, largely due to Krasnaya Gorka never running out of ammunition, unlike Maxim Gorky. It is also striking that no Kriegsmarine surface ships appear to have shelled Leningrad during the siege, likely due to the knowledge that even HMS Erebus' 15-inch guns were unable to crack Krasnaya Gorka when she provided gunfire support when the 1st Division of the Estonian Army unsuccessfully assaulted it in 1919.
This also leads to a conundrum--why were Operations Berlin and Exercise Rhine permitted to be executed in 1941, given that Bismarck's and Tirpitz's 15-inch guns would have permitted a volume of fire on Krasnaya Gorka and Kronstadt from eight times as many barrels as those employed by HMS Erebus 22 years prior? If the Scharnhorsts and Deutschlands (both the modern cruisers and predreadnoughts) had escorted the Bismarcks in this hypothetical summer of 1941, the Kriegsmarine could have brought Krasnaya Gorka under the fire of 38 11-inch guns in addition to the 16 15-inch guns of the Bismarcks. Planning for Barbarossa long predated Lutjens' two raids in 1941--why wasn't the Kriegsmarine capital ship fleet reserved until June-July 1941 to crack the approaches and then shell Leningrad into oblivion?
Considering Schleswig-Holstein had fired the first shots of the Second World War against Westerplatte on 1 September 1939, there was recent (to the POV of German flag officers in 1940-41) precedent to using Kriegsmarine battleships against forbidding fortifications in the Baltic...why wasn't Raeder eager to contribute major Kriegsmarine support to the largest land invasion in history?
@Texas Anla'Shok what book where you refering to? I'm a big fan of the Honor Harrington Serries
I do think that deck-edge elevators in the proper sense, not off-edge elevators as on modern carriers, would've been viable. Inside the hull, but at the very edges of hull, perhaps with a slight widening to accommodate it better. Or, for a two-level hangar, off-edge elevators down to the upper hangar deck, then an internal elevator inside the hull to the lower hangar deck. No hull openings far down, but still the benefit of a mostly uncompromised runway.
Dear drach,
A humorous thought -
I use your channel to distract thoughts at night.
So it’d be humorous you recorded reading stories to drach jr at bed time.
Cheers,
Insomniac
I'd have wanted a Higgins LCVP. 10 kts with a 225 hp diesel. It could carry 4 tonnes cargo or a 3 tonne vehicle. 20 civilians and their stuff. 1 meter draft aft. That would have been nice for doing on demand cargo delivery, vehicle transportation or ferry work.
Only 3k away from the big 500k drach.
Better keep an eye on the counter!!
Hi drach I’m a fan I’ve watched dozens of your videos I was hoping you could do a video on the French flagship Bucentaure
Sir. Did the RN have any involvement in the running of the RAF rescue craft that were used in the Channel?
Sometimes surviving ships in civillian service are modified so heavily, that they are unreconizable.
One example I know of is the tall ship Empire Sandy. It was built as a deap sea tug boat for Royal Navy. After the war it was sold to a logging company before being sold and converted into a schooner.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_Sandy
Thanks for answering my question!
Also; imagine if she actually managed to last that long instead of being rebuilt as an entirely new ship. A ship so far ahead of her time that she’d still be a viable third-rate centuries later.
Re; alt-Midway, even if the Americans are holding the idiot ball, I doubt the Yorktowns are going to let the Japanese surface pursuit force close the distance with them unless the Kido Butai has basically reduced them to flaming wreckage already (though that could actually happen here, that would also render a Yamato drive-by shooting pointless).
You've always seemed like a very talented naval historian. Over the past three-ish weeks, I’ve made some major edits to the Wikipedia page of the Zuikaku, and by major, I mean almost completely rewriting it. I was wondering if you could check it out and give some constructive criticism?
Aristotle Onassis yacht Christina O, an RCN River Class, is still in private ownership and available for charter according to Wikipedia.
Thanks!
16:49 don’t know how to ask this really, but aren’t the masts supported in the wrong direction looking at the big ropes that go from the base of one mast to the top of the one behind it. Like the opposite of how the force of the sail would be applied.
Did I miss them or have there never been videos about WW 1 Helgoland Bight and Dogger Bank engagements?
Not yet
Almost half a million subs 👍
As regards the beginning of the Royal Navy, how about King John?
Have you read the Antonia Fraser biography of Cromwell? I know you're a filthy royalist but he comes off very well in that book.
Speaking as a filthy royalist, I also have read Frazer's biography and Old Noll didn't come out of it looking THAT good.
And I'm not even irish. 😉
Some Flower class corvettes were converted into Weather Ships just after the war.
HEY a Sunday DrachDock...
I'll see myself out...
For stealable reproduction items, maybe have some kind of non-removable markings on the side that isn't seen? Someone steals a switch cover, than at home flip it over and find embossed into it "Reproduction made in Thailand"?
Could you say the US South Carolina Class was a transitional ship in that they could be considered an all big gun pre Dreadnought because they had as many characteristics of pre dreadnought battleships.
RV Calypso (Jacques Cousteau’s ship) was a RN minesweeper in WW2
I fought crabs in the bay near both American east coast dock yards. Is it true everything eventually evolves into a blue crab?
I wonder if any of the cargo type ships were sold off for anything other than scrap? My Grandmothers brother served aboark the USS Andromeda - AKA-15. Andromeda herself stayed in reserves till stricken in 1960. It seems some of these would have served well as post WW2 commercial cargo ships.
Could the Japanese have won their Kantai Kessen major battle? I wrote a paper during study at the Naval War College, many years ago. The Japanese DID arrange their Kantai Kessen Decisive Battle. It was off the coast of Midway and they lost. The fact the Japanese did not bring their battle line into action was a major factor in loosing the Decisive Battle. A few hundred extra AA guns would have been useful.
Where any Flowers converted to Whalers? Whaling was done post WW2 and the hull was based on a whaler
One of the US tanker ships was converted into a crab ship better know as the F/V Wizard from deadliest catch
Arguably, the Norwegian defenses were only effective because of the White torpedo mounts. They were only effective because of the geography in that area.
5:23 Victors will be sending a Rep presently.
Dear Drach and viewers; over the past three-ish weeks, I’ve made some major edits to the Wikipedia page of the Zuikaku, and by major, I mean almost completely rewriting it. I was wondering if you guys could check it out and give some constructive criticism?
Looks so
⚓
Was it possible for any human being NOT to have massive personality clashes with Ernie King? (James Sommerville excepted.)
When the dirigible USS Shenandoah crashed, souvenir hunters stole the Naval Academy ring off the hand of its dead captain.
First of the non-patreons
and no thats not fine you ask your mods what has happened? they just defend some hell culture on the server they dont even understand themselves
I would argue that Denmark's coastal defenses paid for themselves during WWII since the Royal Navy had to take the long way around to supply the Soviet Union.
i would feel that's more to the fact you are sailing through a tight corridor , then into the baltic , with Denmark, Germany, Poland right next to you, with the luftwaffe able to constantly attack you, sailing right past places like Kiel ,and no way out but to come back the way you came i.e even if there who no coastal defences in denmark it would still be dodgy as eff
Missing the nice 3-4 h long drydocks. This channel ain’t what it used to be :)
Re pronouncing Adm Byrds name it bird. He came from a Virginian family of politicans.
I only recently discovered that he was Harry Byrd Sr.'s brother when my grandson did a school report on Harry Byrd Jr.
28th, 19 May 2024
m8 i love your work and i face followed you since the first days, however that discord has become the most awful nazi club i have ever seen online, was abused and spatted on by disgusting people since the first day, and when its fine some mod who are with these nazis suddenly muted me even though i was only defending myself from these rude obnoxious people and said its fine
:)
Am i by any chanse first?
on the tabletop version of your discord people get bullied to oblivion and then your mods mute them when they try to defend themselves, you should reset a new discord, this is the most horrid place i have ever seen online
the discord is an absolute hellscape where people get abused and banned by elite culture mods, have been on many discord servers since its inception, here even after you get bullied you get muted or banned by awful mods and admins, your discord that should be about ships has turned into a hell elite culture where people both get bullied and then muted when they try to defend themselves from these bullies because of elite mod culture, its the worst place on the internet
Sorry i can not spend an hour plus on a show
00:33:48 Some old lady was caught trying carry off a smallish cannon ball out of HMS Victory.
I believe that those are reproductions, as the French navy has the originals.
09:27 Even during the Civil War and commonwealth the Navy could not really be regarded as a Royal Navy or HMG Naval Armed Forces as most ships in use on either side in Civil War were pressed merchant ships of war. So probably during the later Commonwealth (Republic) and during Restoration did a Navy become a state entity, same with Land forces - although the "New model army" existed in the Civil War first "regular" army Regiments existed from 1656 with Grenadier Guards and the other two Guards Regiments Coldstream and Scots formalised in 1661, although they like other form of Kings bodyguards like Yeoman etc date back further.