On age of sail timbers used in building. Seems I heard that one of the American superfriggets captured in war of 1812 iirc after it had decayed beyond worth savings the timbers was used to built a church. 1836? Uss president?
I was Tin-Can Navy. We walked up ladders face forward, and slid down the rails on our hands, face-away from the ladder, at sea or in port, regardless of sea state when at sea. Going down was dangerous, and it was just best to get it over with. One time, when we were in port, I got assigned to tour guide duty (USS Berkeley, DDG-15, somewhere around 1982, San Diego, IIRC). I had just shown my troupe the signal bridge on the O3 level forward, one deck above the bridge, and was taking them down to the ASROC deck on the O1 level. The only starboard to port ladder on the entire ship was behind the forward stack, and it went from the O3 to the O2. It was a long one. The next was a for-and-aft to the O1 just forward of the ASROC. I wasn't thinking. I jumped the rails and slid down to the O2, took the standard one-step-and-turn at the bottom of that ladder, turned to the next ladder, and slid down to the O1. It only took seconds, and not very many of them. I looked up two decks and there were some boys staring at those ladders with something akin to pure glee in their eyes. I yelled, "DO NOT DO THAT!" Their mothers and/or fathers grabbed the kids and kept them off of the rails. The boys were horribly disappointed. I could have gotten into some serious trouble. Without extensive practice, riding the rails can get you either killed or severely injured. It's just how we took the ladders.
Based on my years in the navy on surface ships and submarines, the safest way to go down ladders is always facing it. You have the best grip and most of one or both feet are on the ladder. Facing away your grip is not as strong and you only have your heals on the rungs. Of course, almost all sailors go down ladders facing away. It is just faster, as you mostly slide. As well, it marks you out as someone with experiance of life at sea, as oppsed to passengers and riders.
@@johndrennan5933 I normally went down that way (On O-boats there was physically no option, the ladders were literally ladders). The one excepting was when wearing fire fighting gear. There is simply not enough purchase for your feet if you try to go down facing away. When the replaced the Chemox Re-breathers with air bottles the bottles caught on the rungs if you were facing away.
People go down ladders facing away from them? If the ladder is angled a bit like a staircase that sounds fine but if it’s vertical it sounds like asking for trouble
@@johndrennan5933 I’ve been out of the navy 30 years and still occasionally say bulkhead (edit: and head). But I always went down ladders on my carrier facing forward and don’t recall seeing anyone do it differently. Of course space is less of a premium on a modern carrier than an older destroyer for example. Some of their ladders are very steep and I couldn’t imagine walking down them like steps.
My Dad was in the USAF and during the "Draft Era," pay for even the upper enlisted was so bad most tried to keep their families with them overseas where the cost of living was much lower. I was born in the Philippines and raised there, in Nippon (Japan), and on Okinawa while it was an American Territory. Of the many troubles we who speak English have with pronouncing other languages is that we always stress the first syllable and other languages do not. Now, when Dad wasn't in Vietnam he worked with the local police and military units training them on technical matters. Also, no matter where we lived (when in Japan we were moved to several areas) Mom worked off base in public schools teaching English. Both Mom and Dad were so deeply respected for their efforts, even though many Japanese hated American deeming them an Army of Occupation, we were quite often invited to lunches and dinners in the homes of their administrators or coworkers. Mom and Dad insisted that that we, the 3 kids, knew how to be polite and speak properly when we were in the homes of they who hosted us, even to the point of learning that Japan has a calendar based on the reign of their Emperor. They also let us know of the other reason why we who speak English have so much trouble pronouncing Japanese words was due to a British diplomat who asked that they who spoke German to convert Japanese to a modern alphabet. This was done to many languages across the Pacific do to the efforts of Christian Missionary's to start written languages or translate them to a modern alphabet.
In the mid-1970s I was on the USS FOX CG-33 during a post-overhaul shakedown cruise. Very interesting trip for me! One good thing was that the ship had as its cook the person who had won the best chef in the Navy award the previous year. I gained 6 pounds in three weeks...
As someone who lives on the Great Lakes I would like to say that the vessels that operate on the lakes even the massive 1000 footers are referred to as Boats or Lakeboats and if you refer to them as Ships most enthusiasts and Mariners will correct you. The exception to this rule are Salties or Ships that primarily sail in the ocean but still regularly find themselves in the Great Lakes.
Love Drach using the word "detritus" to describe the results of Bismarck in a battle with a modern battleship. One of my favourite yet rarely heard words in the English lexicon.
@Drachinifel As a young idiot Midshipman I cut my teeth on descending down ladders forward on Her Majesty's Australian Ships (As they were then) TOBRUK and MANOORA. As you said; it was faster and easier; you basically slid down putting all your strength into your arms on the rails and basically allowed gravity to carry you down, controlling your descent speed using your feet. This was commonplace alongside and at sea. What was also commonplace, however, was the amount of people who hit their heads on the opposite sides of hatchs whilst descending due to an unforeseen pitch of the ship. It was also surprisingly difficult to descend down a stairwell forwards during damage control whilst wearing OCCABA as the tank had a tendency to hit the rungs as you went down. All pussers did it of course, but even when I first joined, RAN's Green Team (Sea Training Group) were cracking down on it to eradicate it as some boffin had done the studies to show that descending forwards was more dangerous than descending facing the rungs. And it probably was, on average.
As you exercise your idea of the hydrogel beads, take into account the replenishment of oxygen rich water from rain. Both the rain landing in the cofferdam tub as well as the runoff from the ship itself could be fairly significant in rainy climates such as Houston and the UK.
Regarding ships with a permanent list, the Bundesmarine recently (last decade) gave one of their newer frigates (the Baden-Würthemberg, I think) back to the shipyard because of a permanent list, saying something along the lines of "fix this **** or we won't pay".
During the time period after 1916 both the US (due to the major improvements in metallurgy by the Midvale Company) and British (by the results of Jutland making them study Krupp shell designs and finding out that they needed new test specs for their AP shells -- they hadn't been updated in decades since the first major ironclad, HMS WARRIOR, was commissioned) had some major improvements in their AP ammunition and, in the British case, also a better understanding in how the 10%-black-powder-filled Common, Pointed, Capped (CPC) shells for use against smaller armored warships actually worked. The Midvale Company had developed in 1911 an 8" (203 mm) Mark 11 MOD 1 AP projectile that, in most cases when tested at right-angles, remained intact even when it bounced off the armor it hit, which was previously considered impossible against Krupp Cemented type of face-hardened side armor. Since this was not a battleship shell, though, it seems to have been ignored by the US Navy. In 1916, though, in its Midvale-made 12" Mark 15 MOD 6 AP shells, Midvale had enough test results to apply this hardening/tempering system to its battleship ammo. The results were even better, even when tested at up to 15 degrees from right-angles all of its new "Midvale Unbreakable" shells remained intact whether penetrating or not, allowing the "Effective" (British "Fit-to-Burst") striking velocity to be lowered to the barely-penetrating-in-any-condition "Navy Ballistic Limit" (British "Perforating Limit"). This immediately made all prior US AP ammo obsolete. Because the AP caps remained soft, though, the impact angles for possible unshattered penetrations did not improve. Only when hard-capped mid-1930s US Navy new AP projectile designs were introduced did projectile shatter of US AP shells no longer occur at any impact angle (the caps always worked), though of course other types of damage could occur, especially against the lower shell body at higher impact angles as the shell was "refracted" to a more-right-angle direction as it punched through. The WWII hard-capped AP shells, made by all three manufacturers of US Navy AP shells -- Midvale, Bethlehem, and Crucible Steel -- used a Russian Doll (softer regions of smaller size as one went from the top to the bottom of the shell and from the outer surface to the explosive cavity surface) "Sheath Hardening" method, where the entire nose was of one maximum hardness (525 Brinell or 555 Brinell, depending on the manufacturer's idea of the optimum nose hardness), then along the centerline the hardness dropped rapidly to the minimum hardness of circa-249 Brinell, which it kept to the tip of the explosive cavity in the lower half of the shell. Along the outer surface of the shell, the hardness dropped much more slowly to about the minimum 249 Brinell value just above the lower bourrelet where the driving band was cut, going rapidly softer to the 249 Brinell when you reached the surface of the explosive cavity from top to bottom. This eliminated any sudden steps in hardness anywhere between the highest and lowest hardness values, so cracking of the projectile near the explosive cavity from a force from any direction was minimized. Later shells had some improvements in the hardness pattern, such as having the minimum hardness upper to 256 Brinell in the 12" Mark 18 MOD 1 to make the shell slightly more rigid at oblique impact and a proposal, never actually implemented after WWII, to change the final tempering temperature of all AP shells to 350 degrees F from the WWII standard 475 degrees F, which was found to give a harder and more rigid shell lower body but with no increase in cracking during experimental tests. US naval ammunition had much more variation in design during WWII than any other country had. The rather major change in the hardness pattern from the earlier "Through Hardening" -- with the entire projectile nose of one maximum hardness everywhere and then a sudden step to the minimum middle and lower body hardness at the joint of the nose and cylindrical body, which was originally used with chilled cast iron projectiles -- and the British-developed improved form called "Decremental Hardening" -- where the Through Hardening method was modified to have a more gradual softening at the base of the nose to the minimum hardness around the tip of the explosive cavity but kept constant at any distance downward from the centerline to the outer surface (unlike the Sheath Hardening, there is no improved rigidity against forces from the side, so high-obliquity impacts can bend the shells much more than with WWII US Navy AP shells) -- when Sheath Hardening was introduced, imply to me that this may have been, among other improvements in hardening and tempering that the Midvale Unbreakable AP shell used, the basis for the later major improvements in post-1930 US Navy AP shells resulting in 35-40-degree oblique impact spec intact penetration requirements against 0.8-caliber of US Class "A" KC-type armor from plates of the 1921-25 "Bethlehem Thin Chill" (15-20% face thickness) made by both Bethlehem and Midvale for and then stored due to the cancelled Washington Treaty of 1923 battleships to the latest Thick Chill (55% face) WWII armor and, even more, the ability of these US Navy WWII AP shells to penetrate in an intact condition plates much thicker than the US AP shell's diameter -- 17.3" Thick Chill Class "A" barbette armor using 14" Mark 16 AP projectiles at 30 degrees, for example -- which was virtually impossible for any non-US AP shell made at any time by anyone else. (CONTINUED BELOW)
if anything Trafalgar is an underrated battle as it represents the first day of globalisation. It introduced the Pax Britannica, enabling the Royal Navy as world policeman for the next hundred years, initiating a unique period of maritime trade peace persisting with the two violent exception to this day, with the trident being passed to Uncle Sam.
1:49:00 I suspect a big factor would be the scenario where the landing occurs. If you are out of the front and the last plane returning crashes, you are probably salvaging whatever you can fr it and, unless it burnt up, there are almost certainly valuable parts and equipment on board. On the other hand if you are on the front lines and a plane crashes in the middle of your flight deck while you are trying to land one large strike package and launch another, you are may well just shove it overboard regardless of condition as the loss of one aircraft is cheap price to pay to minimize the disruption to flight operations.
On the question of larger ships being faster, you're right on the mark about hull speed. The calculation is the most basic one in all of naval architecture - 1.34 x the square root of the waterline length. At that speed any displacement hull will have the trough from the bow wave extend all the way to the stern end of the waterline. The amount of power it takes to go faster than hull speed rises exponentially.
An 80 thousand horses power destroyer could hit 40 + knots - a 40 thousand horse power destroyer could hit maybe 35 knots - but slow down quite a but in a big sea .those very very fast destroyers often seemed a bit fragile .(in a big sea)
Also during the British post-Jutland overhaul of the shell designs for more realistic APC/APBC/SAPC oblique-impact intact perforation requirements (tougher middle body and base designs; insensitive Shellite or, for smaller guns using the CPBC/SAPC shells, TNT explosive fillers; and use of hardened AP caps that work against shatter at any impact angle that might occur in a battle), they found out some other interesting facts: (1) Cast projectiles (12" Mark VIIA APC, the first of the Greenboy shells), where the shell was machined from a single pre-shaped steel shape with only heat treating used to adjust the hardness and toughness of the projectile nose and body from point to base, were considerably weaker and more brittle than forged larger shells, where the cylindrical metal blank was squeezed, hammered, and bent to its final rough shape, being heated and reheated between and during mechanical shaping treatments, forcing the cylindrical initial shape into various curved nose-shaped dies and creating the large internal cavity by forcing a cavity-shaped hardened-steel shape into the shell bottom. The mechanical working of the projectile's metal caused the "grain" of the various crystals formed in the shell's metal to line up in ways that reinforced one-another along the directions that impact forces from hitting thick armor would also align. Thus, while the 12" shell could not remain intact when used against 8" (0.67-caliber) KC plate (British "Cemented Armour") at 20 degrees or more obliquity, there was no problem with the larger shells at even high angles against plates of several thicknesses -- tests of the HOOD's design armor by 15" Mark VA APC shells demonstrated this conclusively. Forging was used in all later British shells to be used against armor of any type or thickness. (2) Possibly due to the fact that Shellite was somewhat less powerful than TNT, though Shellite could usually be detonated by a black-powder booster just like Lyddite could, smaller British guns in cruisers and destroyers -- and strangely in the 16" AP shells for NELSON and RODNEY -- used TNT as their explosive filler when introduced in the 1920s, though Shellite was resorted to for the 14" and projected 16" guns in the British WWII battleship designs. TNT was not detonable using black powder and was difficult to get reliable full-power detonations until Tetryl was introduced in 1928. From the many tests that I have seen, including those against the German battleship BADEN, Shellite had a rather large number of less-than-full-power explosions from its use of the same black-powder ring-shaped booster used with Lyddite. It seems that to get delay-action deep target hull penetration, any explosion was considered acceptable. Thus, until 1928, the TNT-filled APC/CPBC/SAPC shells were accepted even with their non-optimum explosive effectiveness. This was similar to all US Navy Explosive-"D"-filled shells AP and Base-Fuzed Common shells until they introduced Tetryl also in 1928, even though the US Army had been using Tetryl boosters in its Explosive-"D"-filled shells since 1918, indicating that the safety requirements of the US Navy were such that retests and re-retests were necessary to convince the safety personnel that Tetryl was "safe enough". Once the Tetryl had made TNT-filled British naval ammo get fully-acceptable test results (90% reliability), eventually the Shellite-filled large-caliber APC shells (all but the TNT-filled 16" Mark IB) were improved by using the same Tetryl booster used for the 16" APC to get full reliability by WWII. (3) Hard caps worked better than soft or tough caps because they punched a deep pit into the plate face as they were destroyed -- which a softer-faced cap could not -- and this acted just like the use of a center-punch just prior to drilling holes in steel plates at a manufacturing plant. No new soft-capped British ammo was made (neither was any US Navy soft-capped AP ammo after the last Midvale Unbreakable 16" Mark 3 AP projectiles were completed for the COLORADO Class battleships, where no new-design, hard-capped AP ammo was introduced until the miod-1930s. (4) British Common, Pointed, Capped (CPC) 10%-black-powder-filled anti-ship (and anti shore in some battles) ammo, was an unusual soft-capped semi-armor-piercing ammo used by the British Navy during WWI. The nose was very similar to a British APC shell, including a soft AP cap for penetrating face-hardened armor at a near-right-angles obliquity. It was specially designed for large guns hitting small enemy ships. The cap was for those ships that had face-hardened armor (battle-cruisers) but armor thin enough, up to 0ne-third caliber, that the shell at those low impact angles could remain intact after penetrating. Black powder in the usual uses exploded with a powerful blast, but not a true detonation, so the shockwave created did not have anywhere near the same power as a detonating explosive like TNT or Lyddite, being about 0ne-third as powerful and causing more damage due to the fireball it creates than its explosion power. Also, however, the shell is blown into fewer, larger, slower pieces, forming more like a shotgun blast moving in the direction of the shell when it exploded, with the heavy nose and base plug punching the deepest and largest holes in front of the shell. The blast from the base fuze takes up to 0.075 second to spread to enough of the black powder filler to finally tear open the projectile body, so that the shell has a very long delay built-in without the need for a delay-action base fuze. Note also that even if the shell breaks up during penetration, the friction from the breakup will usually set off the filler and it will cause considerable fire and fragment damage from the side of the shit hit to as far as the pieces can reach inside the target. In effect, the results of being hit by this shell were in many cases just as bad or even worse than when hit by a Lyddite-filled APC shell. Until the new Greenboy APC ammo was introduced, the post-Jutland battle instructions was to use CPC instead of APC in most situations. It seemed that the British had realized that deep penetrations were better, but until Jutland had not been able to overcome their previous infatuation with the most powerful filler being the best filler, ignoring all other facts. (5) British CPC had another effect that was previously not realized when hitting thick face-hardened armor at a low obliquity. The projectile would collapse like a bag of water dropped from a height onto a concrete plate, being compressed lengthwise as the nose decelerated and the weak middle body kept moving forward. However, when CPC shells hit at low obliquity at a high-enough velocity for a similar size and weight APC shell to perforate the CA plate hit, an unusual thing happened. The black powder, made up of finely-packed, but separate powders of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate (saltpeter), was thrown forward by the intense inertial slowdown at the plate face, compressing it to a virtually solid mass with all of the empty spaces between the powder grains squeezed out. This pushed the powder into the front half of the cavity where the shell was surrounded by the armor plate as the nose punched through. Thus, the filler was held tightly in a oval-nosed cavity held rigid by the thick nose and the armor to the sides and the huge force from the rear due to the sudden slowdown. It was also crushed so tightly together that it started exploding everywhere at once throughout its entire volume, simulating an HE detonation. Since the amount of filler was three times what was in the usual APC shell and one-third as powerful, the result was a detonation inside the armor plate exactly like a Lyddite filler detonating while its shell was imbedded halfway through the armor. This caused British CA plates so hit in tests to have enlarged holes made in them and many plates actually split in two through the hole. Thus, CPC shells could have even better anti-hull armor damage than the APC shells that were supposedly the ones designed to so penetrate the enemy target. Another result not understood and not utilized until after it was no longer the major weapon result desired. It is necessary to fully test and understand the results of the tests of anything that you need to do a task, military or otherwise...
The discussion of ships vs. boats reminds me of an interesting quirk. Vessels designed for service on the Great Lakes, regardless of size, are generally referred to as 'boats'. So yes, this means that a 1000' bulk carrier is an 'ore boat', and the SS _Badger,_ originally built as a railcar ferry and now carrying passengers and automobiles (and the last coal-fired commercial vessel on the Great Lakes) is a 'ferry boat'. The term 'ship' is generally used to refer to 'salties' i.e. ocean-going vessels that came in via the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Another quirk is the use of statute-miles per hour to measure speed, rather than knots.
Relative to sharing the same machines between the services I am aware that the B24 Liberator was used in the Pacific by the Navy's Heavy Bombardment Group as well as the Atlantic for antisubmarine patrol. Basically if the mission required a certain level of performance then inventory was searched for the closest fit for that job.
In the segment on ship speed and size (01:41:47), you talk about bow waves and wave troughs and how some people deny the existence of the troughs. Earlier, in the segment on Kongo's threat (00:40:14), the picture of Kongo shows a trough revealing the part of the ship that corresponds to the area on Hood that would have been hit in the current theory as to why she was lost.
@@JollySchwaggermann When you can, using physics, and not something as scientific as turning lead into gold, explain the phenomenon to me you will have made your point. However, since I know you can't, your point will remain forever unproven in your world. I can show you however, that I can do a barrel roll in my RV6, with a full glass of water and not spill a drop.So let's hear you explain the physics of that phenomenon.
We came close to a barrel roll in a Q class - South China Sea - Its called the South China Sea because him feller belong China. (some furnace oil spilled under my hammock - fear ?
Regarding pirates obtaining a ship of the line, I suppose another theoretical scenario would be a rogue captain and/or a mutinous crew seizing control of the ship and turning pirate themselves.
1:34:07 So what I'm hearing is that if pirates ever got their hands on a ship of the line, the real smart move for them would be to sell it to whatever Navy was the opponent of whom it had been captured from for a reward, even if that reward was less than the naval prize money would be?
1:34:18 technically Henry Every did when he captured Ganj-i-Sawai which was a 62 gun ship, this was when his ship a 46 gun ship so still substantial and a few other ships attacked it on it's way to Mecca laden with treasure. How they won was sort of by accident as one of the guns on the Ganj-i-Sawai exploded and that really turned the tide of the fight to the pirates. Henry Every acquired his original ship through mutiny the ship not being naval, but part of a privately owned fleet that was planning to salvage gold from sunken ships. The plan went completely wrong, when the ships were unable to leave a Spanish port and eventually Henry Every and some men mutined and sailed off. How did the world react they were much more interested in the treasure they had captured.
A pool of those water beads would not be the same density as water because they aren’t perfectly packed together, all the empty space between the beads would cause the resulting pool of beads to have a lower density than water. Love your work, listen to you constantly 😊
If an aircraft does a nose plant into the carrier deck and pretzels the propeller, checking the propeller shaft for alignment is not enough. The engine has to be entirely dismantled and every piece checked for trauma or stress from the instantaneous cessation of rotating motion. In practice this is not cost effective, especially onboard the carrier, so the engine would be entirely replaced, maybe non-moving parts salvaged, or in peacetime the engine could go to a shore facility for assessment/rebuild.
Regarding the pirate question, I suspect the most realistic outcome would be for somebody with an actual navy to quietly pay the lucky finder off and take the ship, leaving everybody more or less happy with minimum fuss.
re: "Ship" versus "Boat". "Boat" is an affectionate term that sailors use when talking about their "Ship". I was Tin-Can Navy, but I've heard this from everybody on everything from Puddle Jumpers to Aircraft Carriers. "Ship" versus "Boat" is what civilians argue about, trying to be cool and make it look like they understand the Navy even though they've never served a grey lady. "Boat" is home. I've even heard this from New Jersey sailors, "Naw, man, no more beer. I have 1st watch on the quarterdeck. Gotta get back to the boat." "Ship" is an official description or title or whatever that civilians use. "Boat" is home. "Ship" is what other people, people not us, call the grey ladies we served(d). "Boat" is home. That's pretty much it.
02:45:09 With regards to submarines, the origin of referring them to "boats" have several possible sources in the US Navy. The early Holland submarines were very small, and Holland's company was originally known as the "Holland Torpedo Boat Company" before becoming Electric Boat (still known by this name to this day). An alternate origin is the term "Pig Boat", which possibly originated from the appearance of early submarines resembling piglets suckling a sow when nested to a tender, the porpoising of the submarine when diving and surfacing, or the smell of the boats. At any rate, whether originally corporate or as an insult by other sailors, submariners adopted the name and made it their own.
0:06:24 re: "Tin Can" origin - In the early 1890's the Austro Hungarian "misson cruisers" (ie. protected cruisers) Kaiserin ELisabeth and Kaiser Franz Joseph I. got the nickname - after baron von Sterneck, CIC of the K.u.K. Kriegsmarine - "Sterneck's Sardine Cans" after being barely protected, but cramped (especially on long missions).
I really like the thoughts regarding Orbeez. Incidentally, do not make the mistake of allowing any of those down your drain. Had some go down a sink drain from a childrens toy and it was a nightmare to clear. You would think they would warn you about that on the packaging somewhere
2:45:09 One of the other distinctions dividing ships and boats was that a boat was manned only when in use; early submarines were fairly small, and did not include accommodations for their crew, so would only be manned during a mission, and were considered to be boats. As submarines got bigger and capable of extended cruises, they retained the designation 'boat' even though they were now manned like ships. also, in the US Navy, a 'boat' is a naval vessel that is launched from a ship; since early submarines were launched from tenders, rather than leaving port on their own, this made them boats. A third possibility comes from one of the earliest terms for submarines -- 'diving boats' -- with 'boat' sticking long after they began to be referred to as submarines.
So far I have found only two useful ways to distiguish between ship and boat: 1.: use the porn definition: "I know it when I see it". 2.: It's a ship if the crew gets annoyed when you call it a boat.
@@Bird_Dog00 when i was in the navy, subs were called boats and mine sweeps were called boats if they were wood hulled. Like MSOs MSCs and MSBs. ''It's a ship if the crew gets annoyed when you call it a boat.'' US Sweep sailors prided our selves on our wooden boats.
Just last week I had a guy tell me in 1940 most of Britain's BBs had been sunk. He is convinced the german battleships could have protected the transports to England for Operation Seelöwe because they were way superior to the british ones as proven by Bismarck sinking Hood in three minutes. He didn't like me asking what combat ready battleships he thought Germany had in the second half of 1940^^
So in 1940, Britain had 17 battleships and 3 battlecruisers either commissioned or nearly finished building, for a total of 20 capital ships. At that time Germany had 1 battleship and 2 battlecruisers for a total of 3. Yep, I can see Germany winning that fight... or perhaps not.
We should send him a compilation of Drachs "Bismarck vs _______" conversations. Most of the proposed confrontations he duscusses are a flup a coin at best, but often the Bis is outclassed and gets trounced by anything contemporary. *dudes head explodes...
When i was at sea we were always told to treat ladders like stairs ashore. if you're going down you face away from the ladder if you're going up you face towards the ladder. This was true for both in port and underway. Even in dry dock we were told to sue the ladders in this manner.
Re: The spying on shipyard activities question. You mentioned the insurmountable problem having any success penetrating Japanese naval yards; Remember, In the movie You Only Live Twice? 6ft. 3in. Scotsman Sean Connery as “James Bond” was surgically turned into a deadly Japanese ninja spy with no problem and fooled everybody 🤣….
There was a social hierarchy of medical practicioners in England Doctors: Considered a high class professional because generally university trained, they did not engage in trade and minimal use of their hands. They can use the title of Dr. and their wives could meet the Royal Family. Surgeons were 2nd level in using their hands was their profession. They were referred to as Mr. and still do in England today. Their wives did not have the social cache to take an audience with Royalty. Apothecary: Bottom of the medical social hierarchy. Being in trade they would be about on par with the butcher. Many authors, including Austen and Charlotte Bronte, indicated the lowly regard of characters by showing them being treated by apothecaries.
On the ship vs. boat distinction: There used to be a surprisingly clear distinction between the German equivalents in the military: a Schiff was a vessel with a First Officer, otherwise it was a Boot. Recently that rule has been abandoned and replaced with »A Schiff is what we say it is«, because they wanted to call their corvettes »Schiff«.
About this question: "How was naval espionage conducted between the British, German, and other naval powers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries?" 1:20:57 During the late 19th century everyone was pretty lax about keeping naval secrets. The British Admiralty would not only allow visiting foreign naval dignitaries to visit dockyards and newly commissioned ships, they would even show off design drawings of the next generation of warships which had yet to start building. I think this level of openness ended in the early 1890's. The French and Germans were no better at keeping secrets, but they had some help from the U.S. Navy in exposing their naval developments. During most of the late 19th century no one took the U.S. Navy very seriously because it was so small. In 1882, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence was created. It was the first international intelligence gathering organization created by the U.S. government, though its focus was limited to naval matters. One of the ways the O.N.I. gathered intel was by sending selected officers abroad as Naval Attachés stationed at various U.S. embassies across the world. They were essentially legal spies. Each attaché had to learn the language of the country they were sent to. They would read and translate articles related to naval warfare or engineering. They would meet with officers from foreign navies at official diners and learn what they could from them. They would go to lectures given by leading naval figures. They would also ask to go as observers on foreign warships and would report on their operations and tactics that were being used in fleet exercises. Here are a couple of examples of what American Naval Attachés learned and reported on and why they were important. Following the Franco-Prussian War there were articles written and speeches given in France about launching an invasion of Germany in the Baltic should a future war occur. It turns out there are only four sectors of coastline in the Baltic where Germany could be invaded. The German Navy was quite small at this time, so the main German response was to build fortifications in these four areas and expand the closest rail lines in order to bring in reinforcements to stymie any possible invasion. German engineers were so proud of the work they did they wrote articles describing in detail how their fortifications were laid out. An American Naval Attaché translated the articles and sent them to O.N.I headquarters. At about the same time the French Navy was becoming the world leader in developing torpedo attack tactics. They were about ten years in front of the Royal Navy. They were also the leader in using a cruiser force to both screen their own main battle line and scout for an enemy one. An American Naval Attaché was with the French Fleet as they practiced their new tactics and reported them back home. The O.N.I. would publish these reports and anyone could order them. Until near the end of the 19th century the Royal Navy used the published O.N.I reports as their main source of intelligence on European naval developments. There are some 19th century O.N.I. reports that occasionally come up for sale on Ebay or might be found in an old bookstore. I've seen one that has information on the design of the engines of the Italian Dulio class turret ships, that was found in a translated article written by the Dulio's designer Benedetto Brin.
Timbers of notable ships - An oak beam off one of Nelson's flag ships HMS Foudroyant is holding up the ceiling in the kitchen of my house I lived in in the 1970s; I unfortunately did not open it up to public view. I have its provenance via the ship wreck off Blackpool and the Majestic Hotel in St Annes on sea. Kind regards
@ship vs. boat in olden times: AFAIK, a boat was "a watercraft that does not have a FIXED mas"t. This was to account for the fact that many bigger ship's boats (like cutters) had the option of stepping in a mast if the winds were helpful; e.g. if travalling ashore or between ships you could row one leg and sail the other one. Cutters seem to have been the dividing line anyway: large enough thet some were operating on their own with a permanent mast as fishing vessels and patrol craft while still small enough to be accried aboard a ship of the line as a "small craft".
Re TSS Earnslaw, it is important to point out you can watch the engines from bar. NZ is a very civilised location. It also has the Edwin Fox - the last convict ship surviving. It's an unrestored hulk, so you can walk on the keel, and see (IIRC) the mast foot.
1:55:00 Back in the late 70's I took a cruise on the SS Azure Seas. It had a list do to faulty ballast tank pump system. I was a good ship, formerly named the SS Southern Cross. a unique for the time ship with a rear funnel.
Navy vet here. Regarding craft, ships, and “boats”. The official military definition is as follows as according to NATO and the USN: Craft = any vessel displacing up to but not including 500 tons. Ship = any vessel displacing 500 plus tons. Boats = this was an older Navy term that once applied to craft of a specific shorter length than ships. In modern times this is traditional slang for submarines and carriers used by their crews out of affection and tradition and as a mark of honor. Also we’re rebellious, as any Brit will attest too. LOVE YOU DRAC AND DR CLARK! Submarines: According to my late Father (career submariner) and his fellow submariners, prior to craft being adapted as the modern distinction between ships and smaller non ship vessels, boat was the official term for non ship vessels. They were defined by their smaller length. When the first submarines were commissioned into the USN the term boat was applied as their shorter length designated them as such. Eventually as they began to displace ship tonnages and the Navy being very traditional, the crews kept the term boat. No one in fleet command was going to challenge a crew of highly intelligent men who purposely sailed into the deep ocean to intentionally sink their boats. You don’t do that. Just don’t poke them. My family were military dependents for nearly 20 years and all we ever heard submarines referred to as by their crews were boats. It's what we called them as well. Carriers: This slang has been used by carrier air crews for a very long time and it’s stuck. Hope this helps clear up any confusion. Basically remember the official major categories are craft & ship, with boat being a traditional term.
About the question, "Was the rivalry between the IJA and IJN really that bad?" Aside from everything Drach mentioned, following the the Battle of Midway Prime Minister Tojo; being an Imperial Army man, was said to be quit pleased that the Navy had been defeated. Obviously, he didn't understand the strategic consequences of that defeat. He felt the Imperil Navy had got what it deserved for being so arrogant and hoped it would teach it's leaders some humility.
2:42:00, there is actually some sense to the Japanese forces following separate paths since the Army was focused on the continent, while the Navy was directed toward everything else.
Viking warrior food is fairly interesting there was a whole art of how you made food energy-rich warming and edible/preserved without having the ability to fires... Roskilde seemed to have a whole section on it in there virtual museum program. given that yes, it has been already done by the re-enactment crews of various dragon-ships, still, trying to make Farnest or Hafnest may be a somewhat interesting idea....
1:01:33 You might want to reach out to Practical Engineering. He has done a lot of videos on rust set-ups, and might well take this project off your hands (or offer you advice based on his experiments). Just a suggestion though :)
As someone who was born in Bulgaria at the time we had 1½ Bulgarian Station and 1 Russian station on TV started school in East Berlin and obviously picked up a little bit of English on my way through the madness called me live, I'm very well acquainted with the problems with translating between languages that have different roots. For example if you are explaining someone's actions in Bulgarian, the actual action is at the start (first or second) of your of sentence, in German it's always the last word. It's a nightmare if you have to do it life, or its something complicated or longer. Also raining cats and dogs is something that would be highly extraordinary and probably will get people really stressed and in shock 😲 and most people would not now that "I'll make your family and friends eat wheat" is a murderer treat in Bulgari most East orthodox slaves will probably get the reference to a funeral service, but Russian people don't use this saying as far as I know. And everybody else does say and write Bulgaria wrong since the sound for the letter ъ, that is the second letter in България is unic in our language. This letter exist in Russian but it has a totally different use, modifying the letter next to it and not having it's own vocalisation. The butchering of our language is so bad for some reason the Bulgarian river turned into Volga and this was done by people who still write in old-time Bulgarian. Which today is called old church Slavic continuing the Greek conspiracy to delete us for history and put all the ass kicking they got back in the day under the rug 😂
02:36:30 - Was the rivalry between the IJA and IJN really that bad? The issue is that people tend to misunderstand where that Honor and Loyalty lies. Japanese society was (and is) one that has most every conceivable social relationship highly regulated by custom, tradition, and often law. The blunt reality was that the Army and the Navy were not obligated to be loyal to each other, so they were not. They only had to be loyal to Hirohito, which they most certainly were, and that was technically adequate. In theory, the Emperor himself was supposed to ensure the two services worked harmoniously, but only Meiji really took that role seriously, with his successors, especially Hirohito, really neglecting such things.
My grandfather had radiation burns on a hand from excess exposure during an early x-ray. When he got a new doctor, they would say something like, "That's unusual, those look like radiation burns," to which he replied something along the lines of "Why, yes, they are," at which point the doctor changed the topic.
Napoleon's Army heading East to Russia reminds me of a certain person's famous saying "Never interrupt your enemy whilst he's making a mistake", Napoleon Bonaparte...Wellington must have loved hearing that Boney had gotten cold feet about invading GB and decided to literally get cold feet in Russia.
1:32:39 exactly. Bismarck was a super duper uber battleship that against 2 treaty battleships lasted only 30 minutes in combat and managed to score, with a super duper uber mega saiyan optical firing control system...NO HITS ON ANY RN SHIP.
@@mryhdy6266 no. It wasnt a speedboat. Gunnery and directors are able to compensate for maneuvering as well as pitch and roll.... No idea why they performed so abyssmally, but I dont think the rudders the issue...
@@wheels-n-tires1846 My question was serious, and she did well against Hood and PoW. What I read is she couldnt keep steady course. Perhaps should have stopped altogethet
@@wheels-n-tires1846 To be fair, Bismarck did straddle on the first salvo in that engagement, so her accuracy was actually pretty good. It’s everything else about her that was the problem in that matchup.
54:26 Another classic example is U.S. intelligence mistakenly believing there was a third Shokaku-class carrier named Ryukaku, due to a mistranslation of the light carrier Shoho's name. There were even some cases of US intelligence believing that this (totally non-existant) Ryukaku was still around in Kido Butai as late as the Guadalcanal campaign, several months after Shoho had been sunk.
concerning pirates acquiring a ship of the line; Based on examples such as Jesus of Lubech, actually buying one might be an option. Especially if you have connections and patronage… Say, an old three decker is taken as a price. The ship is sold “for breaking up”. Some time later a privateer rocks up with a razze frigate…
(1:34:07) The main problems with a SOTL would have been logistics, not just powder and ammo. A sensible thing to do with such a prize. would have been to put the 32 pds on shore and dividing the smaller guns between the ships of a "pirate fleet", and scrap the rest.
The whole issue with pirates is they got even splits of the booty. They wanted as small a crew as possible not 800 guys to run a large ship. In most instances they were extortionists. Give us the booty and you live, fight us and you die. Many used long boats to attack anchored ships.
Regarding ladders- personally, when going up a ladder I always faced the ladder, and when going down I faced forward away from the ladder. There was a kinda unwritten rule that those going up had right of way.
I don't think hydrogel would fully work as a water substitute because the balls at the bottom of the bearth would have to compress and bear all the weight of the beads above as well as the ship, and these things can be crushed relatively easily, unlike a true liquid, unless you only intend to cover the top layer of water with these things
22:37 Drach buddy, pal, chum. There was not a issue on the flight deck with operating tomcats it was hangar height, they were too low to allow for a Tomcat to be jacked up for a gear swing. Tall tales and all that.
When I was on the ship the docents explained the one F-14 they had to launch after it accidentally recovered to them barely made it off even at light load.
@@Drachinifel tall tale, it had the same C11 catapults as on the Nimitz class. I worked with sailors that were stationed on the Midway. When they transitioned to Hornets and happy the Phantoms was going.
Bismarck lands one very luck shot and all of a sudden she's the greatest battleship ever known to man. I hate the Bismarck and by association the Tirpitz.
Drach, Drach, Drach - I have to correct some of your terminology used in your discussion of what constitutes a ship and what constitutes a boat (time stamp about 2:38 or so). Actually an age of sail ship, barque, brig, square topsail schooner etc. carries yards which themselves have yardarms. The yard is the whole spar carried (usually) at approximately right angle to the mast. The yardarm is that portion of the ends of the yard, usually painted white, outside of the band holding the lifts. The lift is a piece of standing rigging (means it doesn't run thru a pulley & is often wormed, parcelled & served as well as being tarred) that supports the ends of the yard when the sails are furled/the yard not hoisted.
I’d love to know more about the forced circulation boilers. I’ve only ever found 1 journal article online and haven’t been able to dig up more. Anyone know any sources to seek out?
1:36:00 My first thought of a theoretical pirate ship-of-the-line would be a crew mutinies and turns pirate. Of course that has all the same issues with maintaining a large pirate crew while providing the government even more incentive to hunt it down.
My thoughts as a M.D. on question "How good were doctors?" at 12:11: 1.) Schools for surgeons existed back then (of varying quality) later in the late 19th, early 20th century many were turned into Medical Universities (greatly improving quality) 2.) Prescribing mercury? Why not it works great and improves stamina and physical endurance although it will cause cancer especially white skin cancer. Don't worry you do not live long enough as today, you will fall from the rigg. Or drown. Or get killed by the enemy. By the way today I would prescribe you overpriced Diclofenac as a cure for your white skin cancer. 3.) 50% Survival rate of amputation? Pretty good for that time, up to 70% death rate were considered acceptable at least in the Imperial Austrian Army. 4.) I wonder how many of the viewers would trust me in the Age of Sail (or Sail and Steam if you want) to cut of their shattered leg.
A Surgeon Lieutenant was "doing" my ingrown toenail so we both could avoid SUNDAY morning divisions and Prayers on the fo'c'sle- South China Sea without waves crashing over . (for a change) Catholics dogs go one way - Protestants dogs the other for prayers - Atheist Dogs didn't get a mention . He used his entire supply of apathetic needles - he stuck in me poor toe - failed (he thru them out the scuttle) So he froze me poor toe with ether stuff. Talk about frost bite ! A pompous git too as well ! Later another Surgeon Lieutenant was treating me for Rheumatics when I had Hepatitis. Then i developed the "black dog". Worse than the scurvy dog . That was the end of that - The shell shock hospital (Concord)found my IQ was around 145. We achieved 36 knots in our particular Q (Quiberon) converted and lighter than 1942.went up the Hoogley at 20 to 25 knots with the wash going well over the banks . Ganges river bottom mud sucked into the evaporation plants . Shut them down ! One of our crew had been on the HMAS PERTH - A beautiful Leander. Then the Burma Railway. Skin like leather . 4 inch gun genius .
Comparing Kirishima engagement to the Bismarck one seems unfair imo. Bismarck was damaged prior to her last battle and was against 2 BBs, cruisers and DDs.
Sure. The navy is cool. I watch the drydock to hear drach say “buuuuuut”, “however…” and “etc etc etc”. I do love the cab Calloway opening too… best navy ever here
The (building) FFG-62 class of frigates, so far, are being named for the original frigates: Constellation, Congress and Chesapeake. United States may still have a chance-- -- Constitution remains on the lists. I doubt President will be used.
Concerning British APC ammo before replaced after Jutland by the much-improved "Greenboy" projectiles. ALL ammo made by anybody up through 1911 was of the general British type: Soft AP cap, tested at 15 degrees obliquity or less, and having a non-delay fuze (nobody had come up with a minimally-reliable delay-action mechanism, and, except for the US Navy, which used for its large-size gun projectile main armament filler Explosive "D" (the extremely insensitive ammonium picrate, the very powerful and sensitive explosive trinitrophenol (British Lyddite, French Melanite, Japanese Shimose, etc.). In fact, until 1902 the German Navy did not use asny filler in its APC shells due to their inability to go deep into an enemy warship and explode properly, while any other hits, such as on turrets, did not need such deep penetration. Thus, British APC ammo was not in any way inferior to the shells used by anyone else. The use of Explosive "D" in US AP ammo caused problems in getting full-power detonations even if the fuze acted properly, but this was true for all explosive fillers other than trinitrophenol until about 1928 when the higher-power Tetryl explosive was introduced in the boosters between the fuze and the main filler (not sure when some nations got this improvement, but US and British boosters were changed to Tetryl in 1928 for all shells requiring small boosters (base fuzes primarily) and reduced-sensitivity fillers (TNT in post-WWI British cruiser ammo) Note that Japanese APC ammo in the Russo-Japanese War was essentially British-type and the high power and almost 100% full-detonation rate caused the Japanese to be hooked onto such explosive fillers even in WWII (they did not change to a less-sensitive filler until 1931 and, even then, only changed to tri-nitro-anisol, which was barely able to be kept intact when going through thick armor by using thick wood, plaster, and aluminum cushions filling up about one-third of the cavity. Thus, British ammo could not be considered a failure when one of the major users of it prior to WWI in actual combat considered it so highly. The US rejection of higher-power, but also higher sensitivity, AP ammo was due in major part to safety requirements, just like their rejection of nitroglycerine in their gun propellent powders (WWII "flashless" powders used a much less sensitive additive that reduced the temperature of the blast). They allowed prior to the introduction of Tetryl a higher percentage of less-than-full-powder filler detonations, which the British also allowed after replacing Lyddite with Shellite in their Greenboy shells and afterwards, though eventually they added Tetryl (British "CE") boosters to their Shellite-filled APC shells to improve this by WWII. German post-1911 APC shells (C/11 and after) made a few secret improvements that others only learned about during WWII when studying German APC duds (much of the improvements after Jutland in British APC ammo was due to this study). First, Krupp introduced a much stronger high-temperature solder to hold on their soft AP caps so that they remained functional up to 30 degrees obliquity.(a form of "tough" cap), since all other soft caps, including the earlier Krupp designs, would begin to peel off the nose at over 15 degrees and never work at over 20 degrees (all AP caps other than Krupp -- except perhaps WWII Italian Navy APC shells -- were soldered on using a lower-strength low-temperature solder, sometimes with crimping into a ring of pits around the lower nose added for additional strength). Note that the acceptance tests for plates over 0.5-caliber KC were not increased in impact angle, so the shell body strength, even when the cap worked, was not really much different from British or US AP shells during most of WWI. This meant that 11" and 12" German naval guns firing post-C/11 Krupp APC ammo could punch through most plates of roughly 6" WWI-era KC armor in an intact condition (if going fast enough, of course) and getting a chance of causing deep hull damage. Not through thicker plates, though, so there was no improvement over British APC against BB-thickness armor (explains why only British BCs were blown up at Jutland, no matter how good or bad the British anti-flash powder safety systems were). Second, Krupp found out that tri-nitro-phenol could not take an armor impact against plates over 0.25-caliber thickness without being set off at roughly 0.003 second, which turns out to be the typical delay in a base fuze without any delay mechanism. In fact, with this filler, in hits against thick armor, the fuze did nothing in almost all cases since the filler was very reliable, as the Japanese found out. This precluded the use of a delay-action fuze, so they switched to TNT as the filler. This filler was not quite insensitive enough in its pure, single-piece form, so Krupp had a wooden cushion added to the tip of the cavity and formed the TNT into stacks of separate pre-formed blocks with thin cushioning material separating them. This filler was kept by Krupp through the end of WWII for its shells with armor penetration of any kind. This filler was less reliable when set off by the pre-Tetryl boosters, which is why German shells had so many duds for the British to study. Third, the German secret delay-action base fuze was developed. It was a very poor design, being essentially a regular non-delay base fuze with a single primer/detonator hit by the firing pin modified as follows: (a) To reduced the blast power of the primer/detonator on the black-powder delay element inserted in direct contact with the trinitrophenol booster charge, a corkscrew "tortuous tunnel" (British term) of triangular shape was inserted that more than tripled the distance that the primer/detonator blast had to travel before hitting the delay element. Four, the delay element was made of a thin wafer of black powder pressed tightly to the booster and with a thin iron foil layer with many tiny holes facing the primer/detonator to further reduce the blast on the black powder. However, due to the irregular effects of that corkscrew tunnel, many cases occurred where the blast did not set off the black powder properly, so the delay became forever (dud). To help fix this, a small amount of loose black powder was poured into the fuze just in front of the waver to get the fuze to work, even if the delay was now very unreliable as to its length (I think 0.025 second was the spec requirement). Five, unlike all later delay-action fuzes, there was no detonator after the delay element to properly set off the booster. Using tri-nitro-phenol as the booster meant that it was much easier to set off than most other explosives then in use, but burning black powder without a confined area to build up a major explosion was not very reliable even using tri-nitro-phenol. What most other later fuzes used, including the delay-action version of the British APC Number 16 base fuze used in the Greenboy shells, was to put an extremely sensitive explosive like fulminate of mercury or lead azide (used as the primer hit by the firing pin) between the delay element and the booster, so that the burning delay, when it hit its far end, would very reliably set off the detonator just like it had been hit by a firing pin, so that the delay element did not decrease the blast that set off the booster. This design lack made the KGerman base fuze even more unreliable. When the German fuze worked properly (half of the time?), the delay caused significantly more internal hull damage than the shells with non-delay fuzes, but at the Battle of Jutland only a very few shells using these fuzes allowed the shells to reach deep enough into the target to endanger the ship in any important way. WARSPITE took such a hit that came close to disabling an engine, if I remember right, but that was the worst hit due to the delay working that I know of. Battleship heavy armor works in slowing down an intact penetrating shell so that it does not go very far after penetration, especially if the shells are rather small, as the 11" and 12" German shells were. This is the major reason for making naval guns so big, even if a smaller gun might be able to barely penetrate the armor. So, British pre-Jutland APC shells were not inferior to anybody else's APC shells. What the Krupp shells gained in occasional deep penetration, they lost in greatly increasing the number of duds. Note what British ammo did to those German battle-cruisers -- some barely made it back to port. It was only when better fuzes and boosters were introduced in the 1920s that reliable post-penetration shell blast effects were achieved.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Could you at some point discuss Hugh Evan-Thomas and his handling of the 5th Battle Squadron at Jutland and the critique he got post war?
Could you do an assessment of any potential action between the British Mediterranean Fleet and the Italian navy in the 1880s and early 1890s.
Jet boats? When did they appear? Why? A broad overview, please sir.
On age of sail timbers used in building. Seems I heard that one of the American superfriggets captured in war of 1812 iirc after it had decayed beyond worth savings the timbers was used to built a church. 1836? Uss president?
Do not know it it is same or different story but did find uss chessipeke after being broke in was used in building the Chesapeake mill in England
The fletchers fletching fish farm farmer patron is gradually becoming one of my favorite parts of these dry docks.
I was Tin-Can Navy. We walked up ladders face forward, and slid down the rails on our hands, face-away from the ladder, at sea or in port, regardless of sea state when at sea. Going down was dangerous, and it was just best to get it over with. One time, when we were in port, I got assigned to tour guide duty (USS Berkeley, DDG-15, somewhere around 1982, San Diego, IIRC). I had just shown my troupe the signal bridge on the O3 level forward, one deck above the bridge, and was taking them down to the ASROC deck on the O1 level. The only starboard to port ladder on the entire ship was behind the forward stack, and it went from the O3 to the O2. It was a long one. The next was a for-and-aft to the O1 just forward of the ASROC. I wasn't thinking. I jumped the rails and slid down to the O2, took the standard one-step-and-turn at the bottom of that ladder, turned to the next ladder, and slid down to the O1. It only took seconds, and not very many of them. I looked up two decks and there were some boys staring at those ladders with something akin to pure glee in their eyes. I yelled, "DO NOT DO THAT!" Their mothers and/or fathers grabbed the kids and kept them off of the rails. The boys were horribly disappointed. I could have gotten into some serious trouble. Without extensive practice, riding the rails can get you either killed or severely injured. It's just how we took the ladders.
Haha....great story!!!! Even as an adult (??), I remember "the slide" was always a quick source of joy aboard ship!!!
😂more spectacular with a plate of scran and smarty pants gets it wrong -
Based on my years in the navy on surface ships and submarines, the safest way to go down ladders is always facing it. You have the best grip and most of one or both feet are on the ladder. Facing away your grip is not as strong and you only have your heals on the rungs. Of course, almost all sailors go down ladders facing away. It is just faster, as you mostly slide. As well, it marks you out as someone with experiance of life at sea, as oppsed to passengers and riders.
True
@@johndrennan5933 I normally went down that way (On O-boats there was physically no option, the ladders were literally ladders). The one excepting was when wearing fire fighting gear. There is simply not enough purchase for your feet if you try to go down facing away. When the replaced the Chemox Re-breathers with air bottles the bottles caught on the rungs if you were facing away.
People go down ladders facing away from them? If the ladder is angled a bit like a staircase that sounds fine but if it’s vertical it sounds like asking for trouble
On board a ship, the nomenclature isn't ceiling, wall, floor, and stairs; but overhead, bulkhead, deck, and ladder.
@@johndrennan5933 I’ve been out of the navy 30 years and still occasionally say bulkhead (edit: and head). But I always went down ladders on my carrier facing forward and don’t recall seeing anyone do it differently. Of course space is less of a premium on a modern carrier than an older destroyer for example. Some of their ladders are very steep and I couldn’t imagine walking down them like steps.
My Dad was in the USAF and during the "Draft Era," pay for even the upper enlisted was so bad most tried to keep their families with them overseas where the cost of living was much lower. I was born in the Philippines and raised there, in Nippon (Japan), and on Okinawa while it was an American Territory. Of the many troubles we who speak English have with pronouncing other languages is that we always stress the first syllable and other languages do not. Now, when Dad wasn't in Vietnam he worked with the local police and military units training them on technical matters. Also, no matter where we lived (when in Japan we were moved to several areas) Mom worked off base in public schools teaching English. Both Mom and Dad were so deeply respected for their efforts, even though many Japanese hated American deeming them an Army of Occupation, we were quite often invited to lunches and dinners in the homes of their administrators or coworkers. Mom and Dad insisted that that we, the 3 kids, knew how to be polite and speak properly when we were in the homes of they who hosted us, even to the point of learning that Japan has a calendar based on the reign of their Emperor. They also let us know of the other reason why we who speak English have so much trouble pronouncing Japanese words was due to a British diplomat who asked that they who spoke German to convert Japanese to a modern alphabet. This was done to many languages across the Pacific do to the efforts of Christian Missionary's to start written languages or translate them to a modern alphabet.
In the mid-1970s I was on the USS FOX CG-33 during a post-overhaul shakedown cruise. Very interesting trip for me! One good thing was that the ship had as its cook the person who had won the best chef in the Navy award the previous year. I gained 6 pounds in three weeks...
And to think, Marines accuse the Navy of being soft …
I just got to hear Drach say Naruto Run in a drydock. I'm good for the week.
As someone who lives on the Great Lakes I would like to say that the vessels that operate on the lakes even the massive 1000 footers are referred to as Boats or Lakeboats and if you refer to them as Ships most enthusiasts and Mariners will correct you. The exception to this rule are Salties or Ships that primarily sail in the ocean but still regularly find themselves in the Great Lakes.
Love Drach using the word "detritus" to describe the results of Bismarck in a battle with a modern battleship. One of my favourite yet rarely heard words in the English lexicon.
it is a good one
Sufficient scurrilous shenanigans from you sailors (matelots)
@Drachinifel As a young idiot Midshipman I cut my teeth on descending down ladders forward on Her Majesty's Australian Ships (As they were then) TOBRUK and MANOORA. As you said; it was faster and easier; you basically slid down putting all your strength into your arms on the rails and basically allowed gravity to carry you down, controlling your descent speed using your feet. This was commonplace alongside and at sea. What was also commonplace, however, was the amount of people who hit their heads on the opposite sides of hatchs whilst descending due to an unforeseen pitch of the ship. It was also surprisingly difficult to descend down a stairwell forwards during damage control whilst wearing OCCABA as the tank had a tendency to hit the rungs as you went down. All pussers did it of course, but even when I first joined, RAN's Green Team (Sea Training Group) were cracking down on it to eradicate it as some boffin had done the studies to show that descending forwards was more dangerous than descending facing the rungs. And it probably was, on average.
As you exercise your idea of the hydrogel beads, take into account the replenishment of oxygen rich water from rain. Both the rain landing in the cofferdam tub as well as the runoff from the ship itself could be fairly significant in rainy climates such as Houston and the UK.
Regarding ships with a permanent list, the Bundesmarine recently (last decade) gave one of their newer frigates (the Baden-Würthemberg, I think) back to the shipyard because of a permanent list, saying something along the lines of "fix this **** or we won't pay".
To expect Bismarck not to be Drach's pick for overrated ships is like someone actually expecting the Spanish Inquisition.
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Wait a moment Drach would
Or expecting Uncle Drach to defend David Beatty.
@@Uncle_Neil he has done a few times
the Spanish Inquisition where very much expected, they usually gave 6 months notice, well according to Qi they did.
The line, "the Bismarck could defeat a Yamato... if catapulted at sufficient velocities." summed it up beautifully.
During the time period after 1916 both the US (due to the major improvements in metallurgy by the Midvale Company) and British (by the results of Jutland making them study Krupp shell designs and finding out that they needed new test specs for their AP shells -- they hadn't been updated in decades since the first major ironclad, HMS WARRIOR, was commissioned) had some major improvements in their AP ammunition and, in the British case, also a better understanding in how the 10%-black-powder-filled Common, Pointed, Capped (CPC) shells for use against smaller armored warships actually worked.
The Midvale Company had developed in 1911 an 8" (203 mm) Mark 11 MOD 1 AP projectile that, in most cases when tested at right-angles, remained intact even when it bounced off the armor it hit, which was previously considered impossible against Krupp Cemented type of face-hardened side armor. Since this was not a battleship shell, though, it seems to have been ignored by the US Navy. In 1916, though, in its Midvale-made 12" Mark 15 MOD 6 AP shells, Midvale had enough test results to apply this hardening/tempering system to its battleship ammo. The results were even better, even when tested at up to 15 degrees from right-angles all of its new "Midvale Unbreakable" shells remained intact whether penetrating or not, allowing the "Effective" (British "Fit-to-Burst") striking velocity to be lowered to the barely-penetrating-in-any-condition "Navy Ballistic Limit" (British "Perforating Limit"). This immediately made all prior US AP ammo obsolete. Because the AP caps remained soft, though, the impact angles for possible unshattered penetrations did not improve.
Only when hard-capped mid-1930s US Navy new AP projectile designs were introduced did projectile shatter of US AP shells no longer occur at any impact angle (the caps always worked), though of course other types of damage could occur, especially against the lower shell body at higher impact angles as the shell was "refracted" to a more-right-angle direction as it punched through. The WWII hard-capped AP shells, made by all three manufacturers of US Navy AP shells -- Midvale, Bethlehem, and Crucible Steel -- used a Russian Doll (softer regions of smaller size as one went from the top to the bottom of the shell and from the outer surface to the explosive cavity surface) "Sheath Hardening" method, where the entire nose was of one maximum hardness (525 Brinell or 555 Brinell, depending on the manufacturer's idea of the optimum nose hardness), then along the centerline the hardness dropped rapidly to the minimum hardness of circa-249 Brinell, which it kept to the tip of the explosive cavity in the lower half of the shell. Along the outer surface of the shell, the hardness dropped much more slowly to about the minimum 249 Brinell value just above the lower bourrelet where the driving band was cut, going rapidly softer to the 249 Brinell when you reached the surface of the explosive cavity from top to bottom. This eliminated any sudden steps in hardness anywhere between the highest and lowest hardness values, so cracking of the projectile near the explosive cavity from a force from any direction was minimized. Later shells had some improvements in the hardness pattern, such as having the minimum hardness upper to 256 Brinell in the 12" Mark 18 MOD 1 to make the shell slightly more rigid at oblique impact and a proposal, never actually implemented after WWII, to change the final tempering temperature of all AP shells to 350 degrees F from the WWII standard 475 degrees F, which was found to give a harder and more rigid shell lower body but with no increase in cracking during experimental tests. US naval ammunition had much more variation in design during WWII than any other country had.
The rather major change in the hardness pattern from the earlier "Through Hardening" -- with the entire projectile nose of one maximum hardness everywhere and then a sudden step to the minimum middle and lower body hardness at the joint of the nose and cylindrical body, which was originally used with chilled cast iron projectiles -- and the British-developed improved form called "Decremental Hardening" -- where the Through Hardening method was modified to have a more gradual softening at the base of the nose to the minimum hardness around the tip of the explosive cavity but kept constant at any distance downward from the centerline to the outer surface (unlike the Sheath Hardening, there is no improved rigidity against forces from the side, so high-obliquity impacts can bend the shells much more than with WWII US Navy AP shells) -- when Sheath Hardening was introduced, imply to me that this may have been, among other improvements in hardening and tempering that the Midvale Unbreakable AP shell used, the basis for the later major improvements in post-1930 US Navy AP shells resulting in 35-40-degree oblique impact spec intact penetration requirements against 0.8-caliber of US Class "A" KC-type armor from plates of the 1921-25 "Bethlehem Thin Chill" (15-20% face thickness) made by both Bethlehem and Midvale for and then stored due to the cancelled Washington Treaty of 1923 battleships to the latest Thick Chill (55% face) WWII armor and, even more, the ability of these US Navy WWII AP shells to penetrate in an intact condition plates much thicker than the US AP shell's diameter -- 17.3" Thick Chill Class "A" barbette armor using 14" Mark 16 AP projectiles at 30 degrees, for example -- which was virtually impossible for any non-US AP shell made at any time by anyone else.
(CONTINUED BELOW)
I love the Orbeez idea; it the experiment works out that would be amazing. I can picture a dreadnaught in a field of blue and green Orbeez.
The IJA and IJN also formed out of historically rival clans (Choshu and Satsuma), which didn't exactly help with their rivalry during WW2.
if anything Trafalgar is an underrated battle as it represents the first day of globalisation. It introduced the Pax Britannica, enabling the Royal Navy as world policeman for the next hundred years, initiating a unique period of maritime trade peace persisting with the two violent exception to this day, with the trident being passed to Uncle Sam.
FANTASTIC reality check of the Bismarck hype.👍👍👍
Bravo Zulu.
1:49:00 I suspect a big factor would be the scenario where the landing occurs.
If you are out of the front and the last plane returning crashes, you are probably salvaging whatever you can fr it and, unless it burnt up, there are almost certainly valuable parts and equipment on board.
On the other hand if you are on the front lines and a plane crashes in the middle of your flight deck while you are trying to land one large strike package and launch another, you are may well just shove it overboard regardless of condition as the loss of one aircraft is cheap price to pay to minimize the disruption to flight operations.
They should have called that battle "the one with Hiei and Kirishima" from the start.
On the question of larger ships being faster, you're right on the mark about hull speed. The calculation is the most basic one in all of naval architecture - 1.34 x the square root of the waterline length. At that speed any displacement hull will have the trough from the bow wave extend all the way to the stern end of the waterline. The amount of power it takes to go faster than hull speed rises exponentially.
An 80 thousand horses power destroyer could hit 40 + knots - a 40 thousand horse power destroyer could hit maybe 35 knots - but slow down quite a but in a big sea .those very very fast destroyers often seemed a bit fragile .(in a big sea)
Also during the British post-Jutland overhaul of the shell designs for more realistic APC/APBC/SAPC oblique-impact intact perforation requirements (tougher middle body and base designs; insensitive Shellite or, for smaller guns using the CPBC/SAPC shells, TNT explosive fillers; and use of hardened AP caps that work against shatter at any impact angle that might occur in a battle), they found out some other interesting facts:
(1) Cast projectiles (12" Mark VIIA APC, the first of the Greenboy shells), where the shell was machined from a single pre-shaped steel shape with only heat treating used to adjust the hardness and toughness of the projectile nose and body from point to base, were considerably weaker and more brittle than forged larger shells, where the cylindrical metal blank was squeezed, hammered, and bent to its final rough shape, being heated and reheated between and during mechanical shaping treatments, forcing the cylindrical initial shape into various curved nose-shaped dies and creating the large internal cavity by forcing a cavity-shaped hardened-steel shape into the shell bottom. The mechanical working of the projectile's metal caused the "grain" of the various crystals formed in the shell's metal to line up in ways that reinforced one-another along the directions that impact forces from hitting thick armor would also align. Thus, while the 12" shell could not remain intact when used against 8" (0.67-caliber) KC plate (British "Cemented Armour") at 20 degrees or more obliquity, there was no problem with the larger shells at even high angles against plates of several thicknesses -- tests of the HOOD's design armor by 15" Mark VA APC shells demonstrated this conclusively. Forging was used in all later British shells to be used against armor of any type or thickness.
(2) Possibly due to the fact that Shellite was somewhat less powerful than TNT, though Shellite could usually be detonated by a black-powder booster just like Lyddite could, smaller British guns in cruisers and destroyers -- and strangely in the 16" AP shells for NELSON and RODNEY -- used TNT as their explosive filler when introduced in the 1920s, though Shellite was resorted to for the 14" and projected 16" guns in the British WWII battleship designs. TNT was not detonable using black powder and was difficult to get reliable full-power detonations until Tetryl was introduced in 1928. From the many tests that I have seen, including those against the German battleship BADEN, Shellite had a rather large number of less-than-full-power explosions from its use of the same black-powder ring-shaped booster used with Lyddite. It seems that to get delay-action deep target hull penetration, any explosion was considered acceptable. Thus, until 1928, the TNT-filled APC/CPBC/SAPC shells were accepted even with their non-optimum explosive effectiveness. This was similar to all US Navy Explosive-"D"-filled shells AP and Base-Fuzed Common shells until they introduced Tetryl also in 1928, even though the US Army had been using Tetryl boosters in its Explosive-"D"-filled shells since 1918, indicating that the safety requirements of the US Navy were such that retests and re-retests were necessary to convince the safety personnel that Tetryl was "safe enough". Once the Tetryl had made TNT-filled British naval ammo get fully-acceptable test results (90% reliability), eventually the Shellite-filled large-caliber APC shells (all but the TNT-filled 16" Mark IB) were improved by using the same Tetryl booster used for the 16" APC to get full reliability by WWII.
(3) Hard caps worked better than soft or tough caps because they punched a deep pit into the plate face as they were destroyed -- which a softer-faced cap could not -- and this acted just like the use of a center-punch just prior to drilling holes in steel plates at a manufacturing plant. No new soft-capped British ammo was made (neither was any US Navy soft-capped AP ammo after the last Midvale Unbreakable 16" Mark 3 AP projectiles were completed for the COLORADO Class battleships, where no new-design, hard-capped AP ammo was introduced until the miod-1930s.
(4) British Common, Pointed, Capped (CPC) 10%-black-powder-filled anti-ship (and anti shore in some battles) ammo, was an unusual soft-capped semi-armor-piercing ammo used by the British Navy during WWI. The nose was very similar to a British APC shell, including a soft AP cap for penetrating face-hardened armor at a near-right-angles obliquity. It was specially designed for large guns hitting small enemy ships. The cap was for those ships that had face-hardened armor (battle-cruisers) but armor thin enough, up to 0ne-third caliber, that the shell at those low impact angles could remain intact after penetrating. Black powder in the usual uses exploded with a powerful blast, but not a true detonation, so the shockwave created did not have anywhere near the same power as a detonating explosive like TNT or Lyddite, being about 0ne-third as powerful and causing more damage due to the fireball it creates than its explosion power. Also, however, the shell is blown into fewer, larger, slower pieces, forming more like a shotgun blast moving in the direction of the shell when it exploded, with the heavy nose and base plug punching the deepest and largest holes in front of the shell. The blast from the base fuze takes up to 0.075 second to spread to enough of the black powder filler to finally tear open the projectile body, so that the shell has a very long delay built-in without the need for a delay-action base fuze. Note also that even if the shell breaks up during penetration, the friction from the breakup will usually set off the filler and it will cause considerable fire and fragment damage from the side of the shit hit to as far as the pieces can reach inside the target. In effect, the results of being hit by this shell were in many cases just as bad or even worse than when hit by a Lyddite-filled APC shell. Until the new Greenboy APC ammo was introduced, the post-Jutland battle instructions was to use CPC instead of APC in most situations. It seemed that the British had realized that deep penetrations were better, but until Jutland had not been able to overcome their previous infatuation with the most powerful filler being the best filler, ignoring all other facts.
(5) British CPC had another effect that was previously not realized when hitting thick face-hardened armor at a low obliquity. The projectile would collapse like a bag of water dropped from a height onto a concrete plate, being compressed lengthwise as the nose decelerated and the weak middle body kept moving forward. However, when CPC shells hit at low obliquity at a high-enough velocity for a similar size and weight APC shell to perforate the CA plate hit, an unusual thing happened. The black powder, made up of finely-packed, but separate powders of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate (saltpeter), was thrown forward by the intense inertial slowdown at the plate face, compressing it to a virtually solid mass with all of the empty spaces between the powder grains squeezed out. This pushed the powder into the front half of the cavity where the shell was surrounded by the armor plate as the nose punched through. Thus, the filler was held tightly in a oval-nosed cavity held rigid by the thick nose and the armor to the sides and the huge force from the rear due to the sudden slowdown. It was also crushed so tightly together that it started exploding everywhere at once throughout its entire volume, simulating an HE detonation. Since the amount of filler was three times what was in the usual APC shell and one-third as powerful, the result was a detonation inside the armor plate exactly like a Lyddite filler detonating while its shell was imbedded halfway through the armor. This caused British CA plates so hit in tests to have enlarged holes made in them and many plates actually split in two through the hole. Thus, CPC shells could have even better anti-hull armor damage than the APC shells that were supposedly the ones designed to so penetrate the enemy target. Another result not understood and not utilized until after it was no longer the major weapon result desired. It is necessary to fully test and understand the results of the tests of anything that you need to do a task, military or otherwise...
Um…. I can recognize the intelligence of your words even though I cannot understand most of them.
Are you a metallurgist by any chance?
The discussion of ships vs. boats reminds me of an interesting quirk. Vessels designed for service on the Great Lakes, regardless of size, are generally referred to as 'boats'. So yes, this means that a 1000' bulk carrier is an 'ore boat', and the SS _Badger,_ originally built as a railcar ferry and now carrying passengers and automobiles (and the last coal-fired commercial vessel on the Great Lakes) is a 'ferry boat'. The term 'ship' is generally used to refer to 'salties' i.e. ocean-going vessels that came in via the Saint Lawrence Seaway. Another quirk is the use of statute-miles per hour to measure speed, rather than knots.
Relative to sharing the same machines between the services I am aware that the B24 Liberator was used in the Pacific by the Navy's Heavy Bombardment Group as well as the Atlantic for antisubmarine patrol. Basically if the mission required a certain level of performance then inventory was searched for the closest fit for that job.
In the segment on ship speed and size (01:41:47), you talk about bow waves and wave troughs and how some people deny the existence of the troughs. Earlier, in the segment on Kongo's threat (00:40:14), the picture of Kongo shows a trough revealing the part of the ship that corresponds to the area on Hood that would have been hit in the current theory as to why she was lost.
Arguing with people that know nothing about physics is the same as arguing with flat earthers and equally as successful:)
@@stevewhite3424 i couldn't agree more sir. Good on you !
@@stevewhite3424you can see that the earth is flat - let's see you hold a glass of water inverted-
@@JollySchwaggermann When you can, using physics, and not something as scientific as turning lead into gold, explain the phenomenon to me you will have made your point. However, since I know you can't, your point will remain forever unproven in your world. I can show you however, that I can do a barrel roll in my RV6, with a full glass of water and not spill a drop.So let's hear you explain the physics of that phenomenon.
We came close to a barrel roll in a Q class - South China Sea - Its called the South China Sea because him feller belong China. (some furnace oil spilled under my hammock - fear ?
As Alexandre Dumas wrote. "He survived because he didn't see a doctor..."
Or as Voltaire put it: "Thanks to the medicine and blood lettings, Candide became worse."
George Washington wasn't so lucky
I remember Drach talking about preserving ships in Orbeez on the Yorktown! It’s a hilarious idea to imagine pitching that to a board of trustees.
You could try adding a need for Slinkies and silly putty.
1:01:55 I think he meant "see if my theory holds any water". 😁
Regarding pirates obtaining a ship of the line, I suppose another theoretical scenario would be a rogue captain and/or a mutinous crew seizing control of the ship and turning pirate themselves.
I seem to recall that Henry Avery actually did do that with a 2nd rate!
1:34:07 So what I'm hearing is that if pirates ever got their hands on a ship of the line, the real smart move for them would be to sell it to whatever Navy was the opponent of whom it had been captured from for a reward, even if that reward was less than the naval prize money would be?
1:34:18 technically Henry Every did when he captured Ganj-i-Sawai which was a 62 gun ship, this was when his ship a 46 gun ship so still substantial and a few other ships attacked it on it's way to Mecca laden with treasure. How they won was sort of by accident as one of the guns on the Ganj-i-Sawai exploded and that really turned the tide of the fight to the pirates. Henry Every acquired his original ship through mutiny the ship not being naval, but part of a privately owned fleet that was planning to salvage gold from sunken ships. The plan went completely wrong, when the ships were unable to leave a Spanish port and eventually Henry Every and some men mutined and sailed off. How did the world react they were much more interested in the treasure they had captured.
A pool of those water beads would not be the same density as water because they aren’t perfectly packed together, all the empty space between the beads would cause the resulting pool of beads to have a lower density than water. Love your work, listen to you constantly 😊
If an aircraft does a nose plant into the carrier deck and pretzels the propeller, checking the propeller shaft for alignment is not enough. The engine has to be entirely dismantled and every piece checked for trauma or stress from the instantaneous cessation of rotating motion. In practice this is not cost effective, especially onboard the carrier, so the engine would be entirely replaced, maybe non-moving parts salvaged, or in peacetime the engine could go to a shore facility for assessment/rebuild.
Small fast ships
LCS has entered the chat
Combining gear problems
LCS has left the chat
Regarding the pirate question, I suspect the most realistic outcome would be for somebody with an actual navy to quietly pay the lucky finder off and take the ship, leaving everybody more or less happy with minimum fuss.
Treating some aliments with mercury....I know one infamous ailment that was treated with mercury; one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.
re: "Ship" versus "Boat". "Boat" is an affectionate term that sailors use when talking about their "Ship". I was Tin-Can Navy, but I've heard this from everybody on everything from Puddle Jumpers to Aircraft Carriers. "Ship" versus "Boat" is what civilians argue about, trying to be cool and make it look like they understand the Navy even though they've never served a grey lady. "Boat" is home. I've even heard this from New Jersey sailors, "Naw, man, no more beer. I have 1st watch on the quarterdeck. Gotta get back to the boat." "Ship" is an official description or title or whatever that civilians use. "Boat" is home. "Ship" is what other people, people not us, call the grey ladies we served(d). "Boat" is home. That's pretty much it.
02:45:09 With regards to submarines, the origin of referring them to "boats" have several possible sources in the US Navy. The early Holland submarines were very small, and Holland's company was originally known as the "Holland Torpedo Boat Company" before becoming Electric Boat (still known by this name to this day). An alternate origin is the term "Pig Boat", which possibly originated from the appearance of early submarines resembling piglets suckling a sow when nested to a tender, the porpoising of the submarine when diving and surfacing, or the smell of the boats. At any rate, whether originally corporate or as an insult by other sailors, submariners adopted the name and made it their own.
Japanese submarines were commonly known as "sewer pipes "
@@JollySchwaggermann Not just Japanese...
0:06:24 re: "Tin Can" origin - In the early 1890's the Austro Hungarian "misson cruisers" (ie. protected cruisers) Kaiserin ELisabeth and Kaiser Franz Joseph I. got the nickname - after baron von Sterneck, CIC of the K.u.K. Kriegsmarine - "Sterneck's Sardine Cans" after being barely protected, but cramped (especially on long missions).
I really like the thoughts regarding Orbeez. Incidentally, do not make the mistake of allowing any of those down your drain. Had some go down a sink drain from a childrens toy and it was a nightmare to clear. You would think they would warn you about that on the packaging somewhere
2:45:09 One of the other distinctions dividing ships and boats was that a boat was manned only when in use; early submarines were fairly small, and did not include accommodations for their crew, so would only be manned during a mission, and were considered to be boats. As submarines got bigger and capable of extended cruises, they retained the designation 'boat' even though they were now manned like ships. also, in the US Navy, a 'boat' is a naval vessel that is launched from a ship; since early submarines were launched from tenders, rather than leaving port on their own, this made them boats. A third possibility comes from one of the earliest terms for submarines -- 'diving boats' -- with 'boat' sticking long after they began to be referred to as submarines.
So far I have found only two useful ways to distiguish between ship and boat:
1.: use the porn definition: "I know it when I see it".
2.: It's a ship if the crew gets annoyed when you call it a boat.
@@Bird_Dog00 when i was in the navy, subs were called boats and mine sweeps were called boats if they were wood hulled. Like MSOs MSCs and MSBs.
''It's a ship if the crew gets annoyed when you call it a boat.'' US Sweep sailors prided our selves on our wooden boats.
Just last week I had a guy tell me in 1940 most of Britain's BBs had been sunk. He is convinced the german battleships could have protected the transports to England for Operation Seelöwe because they were way superior to the british ones as proven by Bismarck sinking Hood in three minutes.
He didn't like me asking what combat ready battleships he thought Germany had in the second half of 1940^^
In 1940? So Royal Oak constitutes "most"?
That's just Wehraboo nonsense
So in 1940, Britain had 17 battleships and 3 battlecruisers either commissioned or nearly finished building, for a total of 20 capital ships. At that time Germany had 1 battleship and 2 battlecruisers for a total of 3. Yep, I can see Germany winning that fight... or perhaps not.
Some of us never recovered from watching to much Hitler TV. AKA, the history channel 20 years ago.
We should send him a compilation of Drachs "Bismarck vs _______" conversations. Most of the proposed confrontations he duscusses are a flup a coin at best, but often the Bis is outclassed and gets trounced by anything contemporary.
*dudes head explodes...
Thank you, Drachinifel.
How about trying WW2 Japanese naval rations? I bet they will be interesting.
When i was at sea we were always told to treat ladders like stairs ashore. if you're going down you face away from the ladder if you're going up you face towards the ladder. This was true for both in port and underway. Even in dry dock we were told to sue the ladders in this manner.
Re: The spying on shipyard activities question. You mentioned the insurmountable problem having any success penetrating Japanese naval yards; Remember, In the movie You Only Live Twice? 6ft. 3in. Scotsman Sean Connery as “James Bond” was surgically turned into a deadly Japanese ninja spy with no problem and fooled everybody 🤣….
There was a social hierarchy of medical practicioners in England
Doctors: Considered a high class professional because generally university trained, they did not engage in trade and minimal use of their hands. They can use the title of Dr. and their wives could meet the Royal Family.
Surgeons were 2nd level in using their hands was their profession. They were referred to as Mr. and still do in England today. Their wives did not have the social cache to take an audience with Royalty.
Apothecary: Bottom of the medical social hierarchy. Being in trade they would be about on par with the butcher.
Many authors, including Austen and Charlotte Bronte, indicated the lowly regard of characters by showing them being treated by apothecaries.
Well put.
Where did barber-surgeons fit in?
On the ship vs. boat distinction: There used to be a surprisingly clear distinction between the German equivalents in the military: a Schiff was a vessel with a First Officer, otherwise it was a Boot. Recently that rule has been abandoned and replaced with »A Schiff is what we say it is«, because they wanted to call their corvettes »Schiff«.
Although not a naval ship one of the buildings (believe it's the hotel) in Portmerion is made from ship timbers.
About this question: "How was naval espionage conducted between the British, German, and other naval powers during the late 19th and early 20th centuries?" 1:20:57
During the late 19th century everyone was pretty lax about keeping naval secrets. The British Admiralty would not only allow visiting foreign naval dignitaries to visit dockyards and newly commissioned ships, they would even show off design drawings of the next generation of warships which had yet to start building. I think this level of openness ended in the early 1890's.
The French and Germans were no better at keeping secrets, but they had some help from the U.S. Navy in exposing their naval developments. During most of the late 19th century no one took the U.S. Navy very seriously because it was so small. In 1882, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence was created. It was the first international intelligence gathering organization created by the U.S. government, though its focus was limited to naval matters. One of the ways the O.N.I. gathered intel was by sending selected officers abroad as Naval Attachés stationed at various U.S. embassies across the world. They were essentially legal spies. Each attaché had to learn the language of the country they were sent to. They would read and translate articles related to naval warfare or engineering. They would meet with officers from foreign navies at official diners and learn what they could from them. They would go to lectures given by leading naval figures. They would also ask to go as observers on foreign warships and would report on their operations and tactics that were being used in fleet exercises.
Here are a couple of examples of what American Naval Attachés learned and reported on and why they were important. Following the Franco-Prussian War there were articles written and speeches given in France about launching an invasion of Germany in the Baltic should a future war occur. It turns out there are only four sectors of coastline in the Baltic where Germany could be invaded. The German Navy was quite small at this time, so the main German response was to build fortifications in these four areas and expand the closest rail lines in order to bring in reinforcements to stymie any possible invasion. German engineers were so proud of the work they did they wrote articles describing in detail how their fortifications were laid out. An American Naval Attaché translated the articles and sent them to O.N.I headquarters. At about the same time the French Navy was becoming the world leader in developing torpedo attack tactics. They were about ten years in front of the Royal Navy. They were also the leader in using a cruiser force to both screen their own main battle line and scout for an enemy one. An American Naval Attaché was with the French Fleet as they practiced their new tactics and reported them back home. The O.N.I. would publish these reports and anyone could order them. Until near the end of the 19th century the Royal Navy used the published O.N.I reports as their main source of intelligence on European naval developments.
There are some 19th century O.N.I. reports that occasionally come up for sale on Ebay or might be found in an old bookstore. I've seen one that has information on the design of the engines of the Italian Dulio class turret ships, that was found in a translated article written by the Dulio's designer Benedetto Brin.
Brilliant video thank you ❤️👀👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Timbers of notable ships - An oak beam off one of Nelson's flag ships HMS Foudroyant is holding up the ceiling in the kitchen of my house I lived in in the 1970s; I unfortunately did not open it up to public view. I have its provenance via the ship wreck off Blackpool and the Majestic Hotel in St Annes on sea. Kind regards
You lived in the 1970s- what the are you doing now ?😅 Scarry thought - how do you charge your phone ?
@@JollySchwaggermann Charge? I put it on the rest above the dial like everyone else.
Townsend's site does period food and he had a segment on salt cod, from a naval ration. It's worth a watch and see if you want to do that.
They actually 1:59:19. They actually did finally manage to commission a USS Montana. An attack submarine, in summer 2022
Evidently a new Arizona and Oklahoma are coming as well...
Not sure how I feel about that tbh...
@ship vs. boat in olden times: AFAIK, a boat was "a watercraft that does not have a FIXED mas"t. This was to account for the fact that many bigger ship's boats (like cutters) had the option of stepping in a mast if the winds were helpful; e.g. if travalling ashore or between ships you could row one leg and sail the other one.
Cutters seem to have been the dividing line anyway: large enough thet some were operating on their own with a permanent mast as fishing vessels and patrol craft while still small enough to be accried aboard a ship of the line as a "small craft".
No love for Witcha! An excellent one off cruiser.
Re TSS Earnslaw, it is important to point out you can watch the engines from bar. NZ is a very civilised location. It also has the Edwin Fox - the last convict ship surviving. It's an unrestored hulk, so you can walk on the keel, and see (IIRC) the mast foot.
1:55:00 Back in the late 70's I took a cruise on the SS Azure Seas. It had a list do to faulty ballast tank pump system. I was a good ship, formerly named the SS Southern Cross. a unique for the time ship with a rear funnel.
Navy vet here. Regarding craft, ships, and “boats”.
The official military definition is as follows as according to NATO and the USN:
Craft = any vessel displacing up to but not including 500 tons.
Ship = any vessel displacing 500 plus tons.
Boats = this was an older Navy term that once applied to craft of a specific shorter length than ships.
In modern times this is traditional slang for submarines and carriers used by their crews out of affection and tradition and as a mark of honor. Also we’re rebellious, as any Brit will attest too. LOVE YOU DRAC AND DR CLARK!
Submarines:
According to my late Father (career submariner) and his fellow submariners, prior to craft being adapted as the modern distinction between ships and smaller non ship vessels, boat was the official term for non ship vessels.
They were defined by their smaller length. When the first submarines were commissioned into the USN the term boat was applied as their shorter length designated them as such.
Eventually as they began to displace ship tonnages and the Navy being very traditional, the crews kept the term boat.
No one in fleet command was going to challenge a crew of highly intelligent men who purposely sailed into the deep ocean to intentionally sink their boats. You don’t do that. Just don’t poke them.
My family were military dependents for nearly 20 years and all we ever heard submarines referred to as by their crews were boats. It's what we called them as well.
Carriers:
This slang has been used by carrier air crews for a very long time and it’s stuck.
Hope this helps clear up any confusion.
Basically remember the official major categories are craft & ship, with boat being a traditional term.
1:31:12 Beating on Bismarck harder than Rodney did, good lord lol
About the question, "Was the rivalry between the IJA and IJN really that bad?"
Aside from everything Drach mentioned, following the the Battle of Midway Prime Minister Tojo; being an Imperial Army man, was said to be quit pleased that the Navy had been defeated. Obviously, he didn't understand the strategic consequences of that defeat. He felt the Imperil Navy had got what it deserved for being so arrogant and hoped it would teach it's leaders some humility.
2:42:00, there is actually some sense to the Japanese forces following separate paths since the Army was focused on the continent, while the Navy was directed toward everything else.
Viking warrior food is fairly interesting
there was a whole art of how you made food energy-rich warming and edible/preserved without having the ability to fires... Roskilde seemed to have a whole section on it in there virtual museum program.
given that yes, it has been already done by the re-enactment crews of various dragon-ships, still, trying to make Farnest or Hafnest may be a somewhat interesting idea....
1:01:33 You might want to reach out to Practical Engineering.
He has done a lot of videos on rust set-ups, and might well take this project off your hands (or offer you advice based on his experiments).
Just a suggestion though :)
As someone who was born in Bulgaria at the time we had 1½ Bulgarian Station and 1 Russian station on TV started school in East Berlin and obviously picked up a little bit of English on my way through the madness called me live, I'm very well acquainted with the problems with translating between languages that have different roots. For example if you are explaining someone's actions in Bulgarian, the actual action is at the start (first or second) of your of sentence, in German it's always the last word. It's a nightmare if you have to do it life, or its something complicated or longer. Also raining cats and dogs is something that would be highly extraordinary and probably will get people really stressed and in shock 😲 and most people would not now that "I'll make your family and friends eat wheat" is a murderer treat in Bulgari most East orthodox slaves will probably get the reference to a funeral service, but Russian people don't use this saying as far as I know. And everybody else does say and write Bulgaria wrong since the sound for the letter ъ, that is the second letter in България is unic in our language. This letter exist in Russian but it has a totally different use, modifying the letter next to it and not having it's own vocalisation. The butchering of our language is so bad for some reason the Bulgarian river turned into Volga and this was done by people who still write in old-time Bulgarian. Which today is called old church Slavic continuing the Greek conspiracy to delete us for history and put all the ass kicking they got back in the day under the rug 😂
I’m surprised the Mark 14 torpedo didn’t make its way into the ‘zero to hero’ category.
1:31:40 Possibly the most vivid description of just how one-sided those two matchups would be in reality.
02:36:30 - Was the rivalry between the IJA and IJN really that bad?
The issue is that people tend to misunderstand where that Honor and Loyalty lies. Japanese society was (and is) one that has most every conceivable social relationship highly regulated by custom, tradition, and often law. The blunt reality was that the Army and the Navy were not obligated to be loyal to each other, so they were not. They only had to be loyal to Hirohito, which they most certainly were, and that was technically adequate. In theory, the Emperor himself was supposed to ensure the two services worked harmoniously, but only Meiji really took that role seriously, with his successors, especially Hirohito, really neglecting such things.
I have read before that until roughly 1910 a visit to a doctor was as likely to harm as help
My grandfather had radiation burns on a hand from excess exposure during an early x-ray. When he got a new doctor, they would say something like, "That's unusual, those look like radiation burns," to which he replied something along the lines of "Why, yes, they are," at which point the doctor changed the topic.
Napoleon's Army heading East to Russia reminds me of a certain person's famous saying "Never interrupt your enemy whilst he's making a mistake", Napoleon Bonaparte...Wellington must have loved hearing that Boney had gotten cold feet about invading GB and decided to literally get cold feet in Russia.
1:32:39 exactly. Bismarck was a super duper uber battleship that against 2 treaty battleships lasted only 30 minutes in combat and managed to score, with a super duper uber mega saiyan optical firing control system...NO HITS ON ANY RN SHIP.
Do you suppose having a jammed rither may have something to do with it? Gunnery against Hood and PofW was quite good.
@@mryhdy6266 no. It wasnt a speedboat. Gunnery and directors are able to compensate for maneuvering as well as pitch and roll.... No idea why they performed so abyssmally, but I dont think the rudders the issue...
@@wheels-n-tires1846
My question was serious, and she did well against Hood and PoW. What I read is she couldnt keep steady course. Perhaps should have stopped altogethet
@@wheels-n-tires1846
And the can compensate roll? I always wondered about that.
@@wheels-n-tires1846
To be fair, Bismarck did straddle on the first salvo in that engagement, so her accuracy was actually pretty good.
It’s everything else about her that was the problem in that matchup.
USS LONG BRACH CGN-9 was a good "one-off" in a number of ways: BOTH (!!) TALOS and TERRIER AAW GMS carried; 1st nuclear-powered surface warship; etc.
54:26 Another classic example is U.S. intelligence mistakenly believing there was a third Shokaku-class carrier named Ryukaku, due to a mistranslation of the light carrier Shoho's name. There were even some cases of US intelligence believing that this (totally non-existant) Ryukaku was still around in Kido Butai as late as the Guadalcanal campaign, several months after Shoho had been sunk.
Not "someone's parlour" but surely the most provenanced reuse of a warship's timbers to a land structure is Chesapeake Mill in Hampshire?
"As for me good sir, I swear by Wards Drop!"
-Some Naval Surgeon who probably is old enough to have served on the previous HMS Victory
My parents had a set of decorative miniature barrels of which the largest bore the legend "Made From The Timber of HMS Champion"/
In the RCN you always face a ladder. (sailors don't but are always supposed to)
So Drach. Your ideal plan for Texas is essentially filling up a dock with Orbees... Definitely not my first pick but it may just work.
thanks
Almost perfect German pronounciation!
concerning pirates acquiring a ship of the line; Based on examples such as Jesus of Lubech, actually buying one might be an option. Especially if you have connections and patronage… Say, an old three decker is taken as a price. The ship is sold “for breaking up”. Some time later a privateer rocks up with a razze frigate…
Well another possibility is convert an East Indiaman or similar ship in a Ship of the Line. I think buying or converting would the mostly scenario. 🤔
(1:34:07) The main problems with a SOTL would have been logistics, not just powder and ammo. A sensible thing to do with such a prize. would have been to put the 32 pds on shore and dividing the smaller guns between the ships of a "pirate fleet", and scrap the rest.
The queen (Then Princess Elizabeth) launched Vanguard
The whole issue with pirates is they got even splits of the booty. They wanted as small a crew as possible not 800 guys to run a large ship. In most instances they were extortionists. Give us the booty and you live, fight us and you die. Many used long boats to attack anchored ships.
Regarding ladders- personally, when going up a ladder I always faced the ladder, and when going down I faced forward away from the ladder. There was a kinda unwritten rule that those going up had right of way.
I don't think hydrogel would fully work as a water substitute because the balls at the bottom of the bearth would have to compress and bear all the weight of the beads above as well as the ship, and these things can be crushed relatively easily, unlike a true liquid, unless you only intend to cover the top layer of water with these things
22:37 Drach buddy, pal, chum. There was not a issue on the flight deck with operating tomcats it was hangar height, they were too low to allow for a Tomcat to be jacked up for a gear swing. Tall tales and all that.
When I was on the ship the docents explained the one F-14 they had to launch after it accidentally recovered to them barely made it off even at light load.
@@Drachinifel tall tale, it had the same C11 catapults as on the Nimitz class. I worked with sailors that were stationed on the Midway. When they transitioned to Hornets and happy the Phantoms was going.
Bismarck lands one very luck shot and all of a sudden she's the greatest battleship ever known to man. I hate the Bismarck and by association the Tirpitz.
@23:15- the Midway DID have F-18s before she was retired.
65' or 20 meters by USCG regs is the break point for boat vs ship argument.
A cabin of HMS Ganges (1821) is built into the Burgh Island Hotel 1:17:30
Drach, Drach, Drach - I have to correct some of your terminology used in your discussion of what constitutes a ship and what constitutes a boat (time stamp about 2:38 or so). Actually an age of sail ship, barque, brig, square topsail schooner etc. carries yards which themselves have yardarms. The yard is the whole spar carried (usually) at approximately right angle to the mast. The yardarm is that portion of the ends of the yard, usually painted white, outside of the band holding the lifts. The lift is a piece of standing rigging (means it doesn't run thru a pulley & is often wormed, parcelled & served as well as being tarred) that supports the ends of the yard when the sails are furled/the yard not hoisted.
I’d love to know more about the forced circulation boilers. I’ve only ever found 1 journal article online and haven’t been able to dig up more. Anyone know any sources to seek out?
The Ware boiler company makes forced circulation boilers and has a video or two about their operation.
1:36:00 My first thought of a theoretical pirate ship-of-the-line would be a crew mutinies and turns pirate. Of course that has all the same issues with maintaining a large pirate crew while providing the government even more incentive to hunt it down.
My thoughts as a M.D. on question "How good were doctors?" at 12:11:
1.) Schools for surgeons existed back then (of varying quality) later in the late 19th, early 20th century many were turned into Medical Universities (greatly improving quality)
2.) Prescribing mercury? Why not it works great and improves stamina and physical endurance although it will cause cancer especially white skin cancer. Don't worry you do not live long enough as today, you will fall from the rigg. Or drown. Or get killed by the enemy. By the way today I would prescribe you overpriced Diclofenac as a cure for your white skin cancer.
3.) 50% Survival rate of amputation? Pretty good for that time, up to 70% death rate were considered acceptable at least in the Imperial Austrian Army.
4.) I wonder how many of the viewers would trust me in the Age of Sail (or Sail and Steam if you want) to cut of their shattered leg.
A Surgeon Lieutenant was "doing" my ingrown toenail so we both could avoid SUNDAY morning divisions and Prayers on the fo'c'sle- South China Sea without waves crashing over . (for a change) Catholics dogs go one way - Protestants dogs the other for prayers - Atheist Dogs didn't get a mention . He used his entire supply of apathetic needles - he stuck in me poor toe - failed (he thru them out the scuttle) So he froze me poor toe with ether stuff. Talk about frost bite ! A pompous git too as well ! Later another Surgeon Lieutenant was treating me for Rheumatics when I had Hepatitis. Then i developed the "black dog". Worse than the scurvy dog . That was the end of that - The shell shock hospital (Concord)found my IQ was around 145. We achieved 36 knots in our particular Q (Quiberon) converted and lighter than 1942.went up the Hoogley at 20 to 25 knots with the wash going well over the banks . Ganges river bottom mud sucked into the evaporation plants . Shut them down ! One of our crew had been on the HMAS PERTH - A beautiful Leander. Then the Burma Railway. Skin like leather . 4 inch gun genius .
Comparing Kirishima engagement to the Bismarck one seems unfair imo. Bismarck was damaged prior to her last battle and was against 2 BBs, cruisers and DDs.
On the other hand, Kirishima was up against something shooting 16” shells at basically point-blank range.
Sure. The navy is cool. I watch the drydock to hear drach say “buuuuuut”, “however…” and “etc etc etc”. I do love the cab Calloway opening too… best navy ever here
22:50. Soooooo trying to land an F14 on a Midway would be some type of danger zone? So to speak?
Lana.
Lana!
*LAAANAAAAAAAAAA!!!!*
The (building) FFG-62 class of frigates, so far, are being named for the original frigates: Constellation, Congress and Chesapeake. United States may still have a chance-- -- Constitution remains on the lists. I doubt President will be used.
Concerning British APC ammo before replaced after Jutland by the much-improved "Greenboy" projectiles. ALL ammo made by anybody up through 1911 was of the general British type: Soft AP cap, tested at 15 degrees obliquity or less, and having a non-delay fuze (nobody had come up with a minimally-reliable delay-action mechanism, and, except for the US Navy, which used for its large-size gun projectile main armament filler Explosive "D" (the extremely insensitive ammonium picrate, the very powerful and sensitive explosive trinitrophenol (British Lyddite, French Melanite, Japanese Shimose, etc.). In fact, until 1902 the German Navy did not use asny filler in its APC shells due to their inability to go deep into an enemy warship and explode properly, while any other hits, such as on turrets, did not need such deep penetration. Thus, British APC ammo was not in any way inferior to the shells used by anyone else. The use of Explosive "D" in US AP ammo caused problems in getting full-power detonations even if the fuze acted properly, but this was true for all explosive fillers other than trinitrophenol until about 1928 when the higher-power Tetryl explosive was introduced in the boosters between the fuze and the main filler (not sure when some nations got this improvement, but US and British boosters were changed to Tetryl in 1928 for all shells requiring small boosters (base fuzes primarily) and reduced-sensitivity fillers (TNT in post-WWI British cruiser ammo)
Note that Japanese APC ammo in the Russo-Japanese War was essentially British-type and the high power and almost 100% full-detonation rate caused the Japanese to be hooked onto such explosive fillers even in WWII (they did not change to a less-sensitive filler until 1931 and, even then, only changed to tri-nitro-anisol, which was barely able to be kept intact when going through thick armor by using thick wood, plaster, and aluminum cushions filling up about one-third of the cavity. Thus, British ammo could not be considered a failure when one of the major users of it prior to WWI in actual combat considered it so highly.
The US rejection of higher-power, but also higher sensitivity, AP ammo was due in major part to safety requirements, just like their rejection of nitroglycerine in their gun propellent powders (WWII "flashless" powders used a much less sensitive additive that reduced the temperature of the blast). They allowed prior to the introduction of Tetryl a higher percentage of less-than-full-powder filler detonations, which the British also allowed after replacing Lyddite with Shellite in their Greenboy shells and afterwards, though eventually they added Tetryl (British "CE") boosters to their Shellite-filled APC shells to improve this by WWII.
German post-1911 APC shells (C/11 and after) made a few secret improvements that others only learned about during WWII when studying German APC duds (much of the improvements after Jutland in British APC ammo was due to this study).
First, Krupp introduced a much stronger high-temperature solder to hold on their soft AP caps so that they remained functional up to 30 degrees obliquity.(a form of "tough" cap), since all other soft caps, including the earlier Krupp designs, would begin to peel off the nose at over 15 degrees and never work at over 20 degrees (all AP caps other than Krupp -- except perhaps WWII Italian Navy APC shells -- were soldered on using a lower-strength low-temperature solder, sometimes with crimping into a ring of pits around the lower nose added for additional strength). Note that the acceptance tests for plates over 0.5-caliber KC were not increased in impact angle, so the shell body strength, even when the cap worked, was not really much different from British or US AP shells during most of WWI. This meant that 11" and 12" German naval guns firing post-C/11 Krupp APC ammo could punch through most plates of roughly 6" WWI-era KC armor in an intact condition (if going fast enough, of course) and getting a chance of causing deep hull damage. Not through thicker plates, though, so there was no improvement over British APC against BB-thickness armor (explains why only British BCs were blown up at Jutland, no matter how good or bad the British anti-flash powder safety systems were).
Second, Krupp found out that tri-nitro-phenol could not take an armor impact against plates over 0.25-caliber thickness without being set off at roughly 0.003 second, which turns out to be the typical delay in a base fuze without any delay mechanism. In fact, with this filler, in hits against thick armor, the fuze did nothing in almost all cases since the filler was very reliable, as the Japanese found out. This precluded the use of a delay-action fuze, so they switched to TNT as the filler. This filler was not quite insensitive enough in its pure, single-piece form, so Krupp had a wooden cushion added to the tip of the cavity and formed the TNT into stacks of separate pre-formed blocks with thin cushioning material separating them. This filler was kept by Krupp through the end of WWII for its shells with armor penetration of any kind. This filler was less reliable when set off by the pre-Tetryl boosters, which is why German shells had so many duds for the British to study.
Third, the German secret delay-action base fuze was developed. It was a very poor design, being essentially a regular non-delay base fuze with a single primer/detonator hit by the firing pin modified as follows: (a) To reduced the blast power of the primer/detonator on the black-powder delay element inserted in direct contact with the trinitrophenol booster charge, a corkscrew "tortuous tunnel" (British term) of triangular shape was inserted that more than tripled the distance that the primer/detonator blast had to travel before hitting the delay element.
Four, the delay element was made of a thin wafer of black powder pressed tightly to the booster and with a thin iron foil layer with many tiny holes facing the primer/detonator to further reduce the blast on the black powder. However, due to the irregular effects of that corkscrew tunnel, many cases occurred where the blast did not set off the black powder properly, so the delay became forever (dud). To help fix this, a small amount of loose black powder was poured into the fuze just in front of the waver to get the fuze to work, even if the delay was now very unreliable as to its length (I think 0.025 second was the spec requirement).
Five, unlike all later delay-action fuzes, there was no detonator after the delay element to properly set off the booster. Using tri-nitro-phenol as the booster meant that it was much easier to set off than most other explosives then in use, but burning black powder without a confined area to build up a major explosion was not very reliable even using tri-nitro-phenol. What most other later fuzes used, including the delay-action version of the British APC Number 16 base fuze used in the Greenboy shells, was to put an extremely sensitive explosive like fulminate of mercury or lead azide (used as the primer hit by the firing pin) between the delay element and the booster, so that the burning delay, when it hit its far end, would very reliably set off the detonator just like it had been hit by a firing pin, so that the delay element did not decrease the blast that set off the booster. This design lack made the KGerman base fuze even more unreliable.
When the German fuze worked properly (half of the time?), the delay caused significantly more internal hull damage than the shells with non-delay fuzes, but at the Battle of Jutland only a very few shells using these fuzes allowed the shells to reach deep enough into the target to endanger the ship in any important way. WARSPITE took such a hit that came close to disabling an engine, if I remember right, but that was the worst hit due to the delay working that I know of. Battleship heavy armor works in slowing down an intact penetrating shell so that it does not go very far after penetration, especially if the shells are rather small, as the 11" and 12" German shells were. This is the major reason for making naval guns so big, even if a smaller gun might be able to barely penetrate the armor.
So, British pre-Jutland APC shells were not inferior to anybody else's APC shells. What the Krupp shells gained in occasional deep penetration, they lost in greatly increasing the number of duds. Note what British ammo did to those German battle-cruisers -- some barely made it back to port. It was only when better fuzes and boosters were introduced in the 1920s that reliable post-penetration shell blast effects were achieved.
1:24:28- Are you saying that the great SEAN CONNERY did not make a convincing Japanese man in You Only Live Twice??