Did the FAA have any land based air bases around ports like Portmouth and Plymouth for air defence or was it a case of relying on the RAF and if they did have bases around these ports did they take part in the Battle of Britian?
i am a firm believer that the image goes over the other screen because neither of these 2 men are capable of keeping their face normal while someone else is talking. that or drach thinks his fanbase will click off if they can't always see a black and white photo of a ship
Hi Drach, I have a question for you please. It's commonly stated that British Battlecruisers during WW1 removed their flash protection to improve their rate of fire, but I don't think I have ever seen this backed up by source material. An explanation I have heard is that it was most likely a verbal order because that's generally how Beatty was - a bit of a dashing cavalry type officer who did things fast and loose, so to speak. But surely such an order would be so obviously dangerous that it's inconceivable (isn't it?) that not one of the dozens of people all the way down from the ship captains, first officers, turret commanders, etc.. refused to do this without a written order, or at least to put their own concerns about such an order into writing. So is there any written source material for such an order existing? Many thanks, kp.
I had a chemistry teacher in the early 80s who had worked on explosives during the second world war - if you could get him talking about making explosives he would go on about it for hours.. Amatol, Ammonal, TNT, Nitroglycerin, and good old fashioned gunpowder. I still have the notes...
Congratulations, you are a Category C offender under the Counter Terrorism Act 2019! "Offender collected, made a record of, or was in possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism but had no terrorist connections or motivations"
I'm a chemistry teacher. I had a dream that I was making TNT from stuff bought at a hardware store. The equipment setup and procedures that my subconscious put together actually works in real life.
For some added background, there's a reason why all those things that go boom tend to be built around nitrogen chemistry, when it's common knowledge that nitrogen is one of the most inert gases out there. A basic rule in chemistry is that atoms really want to be in the most stable bond they can possibly get. There are few bonds more stable than that of elemental nitrogen, N2. It takes a _lot_ of energy to break that bond up and force the nitrogen atoms to become literally anything other than elemental nitrogen, and that energy is stored in these new compounds. Every nitrogen atom stuck in a compound that isn't N2 longs for the moment it can finally realize its lifelong dream of becoming a hot puff of nitrogen gas while releasing a shitload of energy into its environment, and nitrogen compounds in general have a tendency to be held together by the chemical equivalent of duct tape and a prayer. This means that when things start happening in any kind of reaction involving nitrogen, they tend to happen a.) very quickly and b.) very violently.
Ammonium nitrate has nitrogen groups at each end. Big bang, but very stable. WW2 also demonstrated that gasoline fumes combined with oxygen can make an aircraft carrier open up like a sardine can. Lexington, Taiho....
Thanks Drach for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity to share my insights on the matter and history is somehting I have always wanted to apply my knowledge of chemistry on.
We enjoyed your input, thank you for sharing it with us. Nb - I am not that great at science and chemistry, but you never lost me the once with your explanations and dialogue - you are very easy to listen to as well. All the best!
with a background in manufacturing of industrial explosives this is the best explanation i have seen (for those not of bomb nerd stock) for the causes and effects of compound components and age on explosive reactivity.
I just watched today, and wanted tosay I enjoyed the video and thought your insights and knowledge were great and I enjoyed watching and felt like I was smarter than before I watched , TY sir
A pair of enthusiastic, incredibly intelligent people having a very off the cuff and constantly evolving discussion about a little known topic with multiple "aha" moments for both and more new questions than concrete answers. This is perhaps the most intellectually stimulating content I've ever had the pleasure of consuming. If this were to turn into a proper paper I would be first in line to every nerdy detail. Cheers and thanks gents!!
Some Soviet ballistic missiles were fueled by a mixture of unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and red fuming nitric acid, which they nicknamed "Devil's Venom." One time a pipe burst during the fueling of a prototype, killing dozens in seconds including a number of high-ranking officers observing the test. (They went ahead with the formula anyway because it could be stored for long periods relatively easily and its ability to auto-ignite simplified the plumbing in the engine.)
There was a standing order from the Admiralty that Cordite (especially the Mk2) was to be store in tubes with the date written on the side of manufacture. Cordite more than 12 months old was to be used first due to the afore mentioned deterioration. Grant in the Lion not only found the powder but also found the Cordite had been removed from the storage leather tubes during training and often returned to the incorrectly labelled tubes after if not used so the record keeping was all wrong. He immediately set about having all the Cordite on HMS Lion changed for a new batch. Ref: A Grant “Through the Hawse Pipe” Draft Memoirs IWM 66/28311.
Good comment - nice to see an actual reference as well. Does anyone know of any source material relating to the removal of flash protection? I really wish someone would provide some more concrete evidence to support (or refute) the theory that flash protection was ordered to be removed. I keep hearing this stated that it was done as part of the attempt to increase rate of fire, but no one ever seems to back it up with source material. Not saying it didn't happen, just that no one seems to actually prove it. Surely removing the flash protection from a ship's magazines would be an obviously incredibly dangerous thing to do and I struggle to believe that no one who would have to have actioned such an order across multiple vessels had a problem with that and said "I will only do this if I get it in writing," or put their own concern with such an order in writing.
This is exactly why I love the comment section on this channel. Not only do I get some extra information but I also get sources, which you rarely ever find in comment sections on this platform. Amazing community here.
@@ifax1245 Yes, I understand that it wasn't an Admiralty order - so who did order it? How do we even know it WAS ordered? Again, not saying it wasn't, I'm sure it was, but just asking for some sort of source material to confirm it, because that's what we should be doing - we shouldn't necessarily accept something as fact just because we keep hearing it. So if it was ordered, who by? Was it Beatty, Chatfield or someone else? And why did all the people below them carry it out without raising any concerns? Did NO ONE at any level in the process not write something down? If not, then how do we know it happened? Cheers.
@@afrikacorpse I can only offer you this information; "When Jellicoe became First Sea Lord he ordered Tudor to retract these criticisms of senior officers and also supressed the DNC report. He put the blame entirely on inadequate armour and physical protection against flash." Perhaps the newspapers were encouraged to report issues concerning the anti-flash doors. Ref: Brown, David K.. The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922 (p. 464). Pen & Sword Books.
(23:44) This is true. I used to keep several perfectly dry bottles for Gatorade around. I'd measure out an amount of Gatorade powder and pour it into each bottle through a funnel, so I could have instant Gatorade at work-just add water. I hadn't realized the problem I was creating until I went to clean my kitchen, and found that _anyplace_ I wiped with a damp towel, the towel would come up pink, meaning that Gatorade dust was coating _every_ surface. Gatorade is fairly innocuous, but it demonstrates the problem.
It's insidious how the powder/dust forms of otherwise innocuous things can become dangerously explosive. There've been big fires/explosions over the years at things like grain silos and sugar mills from large amounts of very fine powdery flour/sugar residue in the air and on the working surfaces, and all it takes is a stray spark or overheated machine part and the whole place just detonates. We used to throw unused Kool-Aide powder into the campfire at Boy Scout Camp for fun, since it would readily burn. Bet Gatorade would too.
In chemistry class at a German school, we made nitrocellulose, and learnt in step-by-step detail why it works and how to manufacture it safely. It's weird that today everyone is so concerned about that kind of knowledge spreading to 'ordinary' people.
I think it's more an American sphere of influence thing (also recently exported around the world a lot more than it used to be). There's a distrust of people knowing things, because they might misuse it, even though knowledge tends to correlate negatively with both malice and accident-proneness. Very much an 'elitist' mindset in the classic sense. It's freaking me out too though. These presenters who I know are intelligent people keep stopping every five minutes to go out of their way to say they're not revealing a "secret" I learned in high school chemistry class. It's... a little unnerving somehow. Are we just supposed to assume that people are getting stupider/less knowledgeable and both don't know such things and can't look them up? It's pretty sad.
It is incredibly annoying and condescending - as if higher education has made them more trustworthy. Half of Drac's audience is probably in the US and many of them (including myself) are watching this video in a room with a gun safe that has more pop in it than our guest here ever played with in his little chemistry class.
@@dhindaravrel8712 as opposed to government weapons ownership? None of them ever committed horrible crimes against it's own unarmed citizens.... oh wait. Also funny how the EU with all of its best efforts seems to have serious knife crime issues, and mass stabbings that are worse then most of the "mass shootings" you hear about. What doesn't get reported by the left leaning mainstream news are events like the young man that stopped a mass shooting before police could even be called and hit 8 out of his 10 shots at an impressive range. (Edit: I'm referring to the Greenwood mall shooting, incase you want to look for examples of why normal people should have access to firearms and always be armed)
The Royal Navy attitude towards cordite safety reminds me of the US Army’s attitude towards cleaning the M16 early in the Vietnam war. The gun was designed to not need regular cleaning (cleaning kits not even being issued) but then they changed the powder from a new clean burning one to standard powder and didn’t realize this change the need to clean it. The military is a very large bureaucracy and once it makes a decision it takes a lot to change that decision. Usually a major disaster or two.
@@adenkyramud5005 nah, it was typical of the way the US procurement system and other procedures worked at the time. The same idiocy was seen at all levels, in all services.
Decades ago the Chemistry department at UNC Chapel Hill was cleaning out the old store of chemicals and came upon a bottle with a large amount of "sludge" layered in the bottom of the bottle. Fortunately, one of the attendants recognized the sludge as epoxides from decomposition of the contents. After careful removal, the bottle was detonated with a rather huge explosion following. If the bottle had been mishandled in the Department, it would have been a rather large news item.
Robert Bridges It's a rather too common occurrence. I recall several incidents related to inappropriate or old and forgotten stores of ethers, trinitrophenol, dry nitrocellulose, the list is long...
I read in a 1901 industrial chemistry book the procedure for making nitroglycerin, they used quart jugs stood in a ring trough of flowing cold water, a glass tube bubbled air into the glycerine to stir the mixture, above the ring of jugs a glass tube manifold dripped the nitrating acids into the jugs. The fun bit is the operators job was to adjust the tap of nitrating acid and feel the jugs were not overheating, if they were too hot he was required to swiftly tip the jug out into the water trough. Must have been a keen incentive to keep you mind on what you are doing!
Re: USS Arizona, they found unburnt powder all over Ford Island! That's how stable the Smokeless Powder for her guns was! In fact, I believe it was Drach's video about the ship, actually when you slowed down the actual historic film of her explosion you can see powder bags being thrown in the air and some of them burning (.vs. exploding)....
Cordite, at normal atmospheric pressure, does not explode. It burns quite rapidly, but no boom. To make it boom you have to enclose it to cause the pressure to rise. Which makes it burn faster. Which increases the pressure. Which... So a loose bag flying through the air is just going to burn.
I have secretly been waiting for this video for a long time. The importance of Propellant Types for early-to-antebellum (WW2) Naval Engagements can hardly be understated. After all is said and done. the consistency and performance of shell and propellant and gun in combination are (in my opinion) the most important factor in gunnery, second only to the ability to actually aim the damn thing. I'm looking forward to learning even more about Cordite, Gun-cotton and Co. on this Channel!
15:46 Hexamine is the name for the heating brick. Also very happy that previous generations sorted these issues out as I frequently fire tank ammunition with a cellulose cartridge case that burns when we fire the gun, and sometimes (rarely) they rip and you get the turret floor covered in lots of little pellets.
The local mil surplus shop used to sell hexamine bars in their jungle foil packaging 10 for a dollar. Quite handy. Every family I knew as a kid had a stash for outdoor activities.
Hexamine tablets also at least used to be used for heating the boilers of toy steam engines and were available in hobby stores. You can also use them for preheating oil-burning camping stoves
Actually hexamine tetra mine, but nitration is a little trickier than, say, nitrocellulose. But the chemistry is a little different: RDX is a nitramine, whereas nitroglycerin is a nitro ester. The third category would be nitro aromatics like TNT.
Explosives worker here, so I'm already on a list and happy to talk about it. I agree it's nitroglycerine exudation. There really isn't anything wrong with nitroglycerine bonded propellant, provided the stabilizers bring down its sensitivity enough. Triple base propellant these days are still guncotton (nitrocellulose), nitroglycerine and stabilizers and are fine to use (although its not as high percentage of nitroglycerine as Cordite). In fact Cordite in its original state sounds fine to work with; a reasonable flash point, moderate shock sensitivity, relatively slow burn time etc. I've worked with much angrier modern propellant for ships that have a lower flash point and burns more with more energy and speed than black powder. However as was stated all explosives degrade over time and need to be carefully monitored by people like me. In particular, any explosive with a petroleum jelly stabilizer really doesn't like temperature deviations (such as you mentioned with the lack of temp control in some powder mags) and starts to separate over time. It'll start to feel like its moist on the outside like its sweating, which is the nitroglycerine beginning to separate, forming pure pockets of crystalized nasty. If this isn't caught, you'd have in storage and be handling propellant with all the sensitivity of nitroglycerine with the safety of Cordite. I've found the 1933 "Instruction for the examination, testing and sentencing of cordite, ballistite and nitro-cellulous powder". Seems to indicate there is a war clause for condemned or low test cordite to be held in the magazines. As nitroglycerine tends to detonate not burn if given the right stimulus, it will propagate easily to the rest of the magazine. This will result in either an immediate explosion or a contained aggressive fire that can't vent fast enough, causing an explosion shortly after. Side note: explosives don't 'go off' like parties or 'set off' like a dragster, they 'function' either when you want them to or not.
Campbell's 1985 book "Naval Weapons of WWII" has sections on propellants. Page 104 mentions a 1938 incident of exudation of nitroglycerin out of anti-aircraft ammunition on HMS Glorious.
Err... tiny, minor correction. It would NOT be a fuel-air explosion, because for nitroglycerin the air plays absolutely no role there. Fuel-air explosions work because the fuel uses the oxidiser from the air. But high explosives contain everything they need in the molecule itself. And at least for nitrates it's more like decomposition than oxidation anyway. The air at most is a medium for the resulting shockwave to propagate, but otherwise plays no role in the detonation.
Best way to stop/prevent a magazine explosion is to have your captain wear Maori warrior dress. On another note, imagine if the Kamchatka had a magazine full of cordite!
It would have helped. Kamchatka would have blown up and sunk in the Baltic or North Sea.......saving the rest of the fleet from having to listen to them.
Equally fascinating to me was the episode of Adam Savage's show where he tried to get nitroglycerin to detonate from drop shock, and found it to be EXTREMELY unreliable. Most of the time it didn't mind being dropped from table height, but every now and then... BOOM! Which could explain why people might have become overconfident when handling it.
My Dad and many others used C4 for heating up rations in the Vietnam War. From what he said, it was OK to burn, but being hot might increase its shock sensitivity, so it was ill advised to drop the can on top of it. Also, don't cook with C4 or other explosives. They tend to let off toxic fumes that are not good for you.
I was just reading a 1930s manual of British army ordnance. It was quite scientific and gave a lot of background. Lyddite, the army's standard HE filler/burster early in the century, tended to react with the metal of the shells so they had to coat the inside of the shells with some kind of shellack to prevent this.
The quality of C4 to be able to be used as cooking fuel in small quantities(Matt mentions at about 15:30 or so) is one well known and severely frowned upon by the military - it's DANGEROUS as You-know-What. I met several people at VA Hospitals in the US who had their foot(or part of it) blown off by the C4 when using it to cook dinner; not when lighting it, but while trying to stamp out the fire after cooking their C-ration dinner. (Yes, this really HAS happened.)
Reading Richard Hough's The Big Battleship, a biographical history of HMS Agincourt, one thing that struck me was the antiquity of some of the 12' inch ammunition issued to the ship in 1914 , which included a shell marked 'repaired 1892'.
That is the way big shells like that are. When the Iowas were finally retired permanently, the shells that were at the depots were still the WWII vintage that had been made for them.
@@hokutoulrik7345 The Iowa's case is more understandable coming as they did at the end and acme of big gun naval artillery, but the period 1890-1914 was one of great transition. The era of the first USS Iowa and HMS Nile to the launch of HMS Queen Elizabeth and USS Pennsylvania.
@@vespelian yes but the 12" gun was of not inconsiderable vintage itself by 1914 and while guns advanced a lot in the period between dreadnought being launched and the end of the 1st world war it hadnt advanced massively in the previous era, most of the technological change was in design and layout of fire control engines and main battery, not the guns themselves, the 12 inch had been a standard gun size for about 30 years by then but was no longer a primary type in the RN being used on older dreadnoughts hence the old ammunition, less new stuff was being produced and agincourt got what was left
An interesting topic that could be expanded upon would be the awakening of the US Navy to the value of the "French Low Flash" gunpowder for nighttime engagements. The corollary use by the Japanese of low flash propellant for night engagements was part of the steep learning curve of the US "nine to five" Navy surrounding Guadalcanal. As I remember there was a limited supply of French low flash propellant used by the US Nay in the Pacific but it was not always available when needed.
Low-flash propellant used in two out of the 3 cruisers at the Battle of the North Cape is why Scharnhorst thought it was up against a battleship and 2 cruisers instead of 3 cruisers. The muzzle flash was so much greater from the 8” guns using regular propellant that they looked like battleship guns by comparison. Of course then Duke of York showed up anyway and probably still would have if Scharnhorst had turned to engage the cruisers, but it’s possible that a cruiser or two might have been sunk.
It must be terrible living in the UK. You can legally manufacture explosives here in the USA as a citizen, so long as you do it for recreational purposes, you dont transport the explosive in it's final state(making unmixed binary explosives preferred), and you don't build "explosive devices", explosive devices being packaged explosives with a detonator or a pressure vessel such as a pipe bomb which can bring low explosives up to detonation pressures. The knowledge is absolutely a constitutionally protected right here. The US government wouldn't prevent you from discussing how to make explosives to the most minute detail. I could drive to any sporting goods store and buy Tannerite without even getting my ID checked, Tannerite is Ammonium Nitrate and Aluminum Powder, a binary high explosive.
I have a ship for you to review! USS Norton Sound. A ww2 sea plane tender with two battle stars that went on to launch nuclear tipped rockets as part of the US Navy's space program and was eventually the first ship to be fitted with the AEGIS combat system.
@@garrettschweitzer7138 yup, before it was all centralised under NASA the US Navy, Air Force, and Army each had its own space program. Which is one reason why the Soviets got there first, the inter service rivalry meant a lot of wasted time, money, and manpower as the agencies were more paranoid about each other than about foreign powers (including the Soviets) stealing secret data.
@Garrett Schweitzer There was a plan to launch a naval astronaut on top of a modified Polaris missile, basically a seat & oxygen to the space suit. Possible just as well they didn’t do it.
USS Norton Sound, home ported in Port Hueneme was the USN test bed for countless missile programs. Visit Missile Park, adjacent to Point Mugu Naval Air Station, to see examples of many of these weapon systems.
Doesn't hurt that the main charge for German guns is in a brass casing that seals the breach. The Germans are handling far less powder in bags than the British. or anyone else for that matter.
I was a Gunners mate in the US Navy during the 70's and can ask a dozen questions on this? Such as temperature, in the early 1900's what there anything like temperature monitoring of the magazines done? Rotation of powder use oldest first during training. Or did powder just sit in a magazine for years? Were there any issues with powder fires or explosions when a ship went in for refit? One should remove all the ammunition from the ship before cutting on it. A cool show would be reviewing any post dreadnought looses or ones suffering major damage from non combat related causes. Thanks to the both of you for another interesting presentation.
From Campbell`s: "The real cause of the disasters was that the precautions for preventing flash of ignited propellant reaching a magazine were not matched to the behaviour of British charges, though if the British ships had had German charges it is very unlikely that they would have blown up. This was not, however, clear at the time. It was realised before 1914 that there were two dangers, the first that decomposition of the nitro-cellulose could initiate a spontaneous explosion, and the second that the effect of enemy shells, torpedoes or mines might blow up the ship. The first required that the magazine cases of the charges, and the magazines, should be able to vent to air before a dangerous pressure built up from the ignition of the charge or charges in the case affected, and the second that the magazines should be protected from enemy weapons. Such pre-1914 evidence as there was indicated that the first danger was greater than that of enemy shells causing a magazine explosion, and was best avoided by a strict time limit on the service life of the charges, not exposing them to excessive heat or damp, and great care in manufacture so that certain impurities in the nitrocellulose, notably traces of sulphate, often derived from pyritic coal dust or cinders, were avoided. The pre-war records of the British and German navies were good in this respect, and though there were spontaneous explosions of 6in charges in the pre-dreadnought Revenge in 1899 and in the cruiser Fox in 1906, and of 5.9in charges in the German cruiser Vineta in 1903, none of these caused a major disaster to the ship. The Germans learnt much from the Vineta incident, and by 1914 had developed a far more advanced propellant than the British. Other navies had suffered serious losses from spontaneous propellant explosions, the principal incidents prior to 1914 leading to the loss or total wrecking of the following ships - Maine (USA) 1898, Mikasa (Japan) 1905, Aquidaban (Brazil) 1906, lena (France) 1907, Matsushima (Japan) 1908, Liberte (France) 1911. Further disasters occurred between 1914 and the date of Jutland. In the British navy the pre-dreadnought Bulwark was blown to pieces in the Medway in November 1914, though it appears that gross carelessness in the treatment of exposed 6in charges and HE shells with live fuzes may have been the reason and not decomposing propellant. The armoured cruiser Natal was sunk in December 1915 at Cromarty, and this ship had much dubious cordite on board. In the German navy, the light cruiser Karlsruhe was lost 350 miles east of Trinidad from an internal explosion in November 1914. The Karlsruhe was extremely unsuited to the tropics as temperatures as high as 76°C had been recorded, and the German Official History remarks that the explosion may have been due to a quantity of lubricating oil thinned with petroleum for use as fuel. In other navies, an explosion in the old Chilean battleship Capitan Prat, which had some very bad cordite in her magazines, was not disastrous to the ship, as the gases of the explosion had an easy vent to air, while the loss of the Italian pre-dreadnought Benedetto Brin is said to have been due to a bomb placed in the after magazine. As far as the effect of enemy shells was concerned, the evidence from the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-5 seemed to show that this danger was not so great. The Russian pre-dreadnought Borodino had been sunk at Tsushima by a final magazine explosion after a number of serious ammunition fires, the worst of which broke out as a result of 2-12in hits near the mainmast, about 10 minutes before the final explosion, which occurred after a 12in hit near the foremost beam turret of the 6in secondary armament. Serious ammunition fires or explosions had however occurred at Tsushima in the Russian pre-dreadnoughts Kniaz Suvarov, Orel and Sissoi Veliki without involving a magazine, and previously in another Russian pre-dreadnought, the Poltava, a hit by an I 1 in howitzer shell at Port Arthur had caused a serious fire in a 6m magazine, apparently involving some 12in charges also, but it had been possible to flood the magazines before disaster occurred. On the Japanese side a violent ammunition explosion from a hit by an 8in shell destroyed a 6in casemate in the armoured cruiser Iwate at the battle of Ulsan. Flames passed down a hoist, but apparently got no further and no magazine was involved. Later at Tsushima in the predreadnought Fuji, a 12 in shell pierced the shield of the after barbette and burst inside, setting fire to 3-12in charges. A large part of the shield was blown away by the shell burst, and water shooting out of the cut hydraulic pressure pipe to one of the loading rams was of great use in quenching the fire. The Fuji's 12 in guns had charges of British type, and it is important to notice the value of a high pressure water source at the site of a propellant fire, and also of free venting to air, both accidentally provided by the shell burst. The Iwate's 6in guns also used British type propellant, but in brass cartridge cases, which would help in limiting the spread of a violent ammunition fire. Much data is lacking on the fires and explosions in the Russian ships at Tsushima, but the largest fire in the Kniaz Suvarov, that in the .Orel and also in the Sissoi Veliki appear to have concerned the 6in ammunition where the nitro-cellulose propellant charges were in brass cartridge cases, as were those for the Poltava's 6in guns. The method of ammunition supply to the heavy guns in British capital ships appeared to be reasonably safe in 1914, but no large scale trials with up-to-date turrets had been carried out, and this was the important and blameworthy omission. The magazines were above the shell rooms in all ships, and in the dreadnoughts the magazine crowns were one deck below the armour deck, or two decks below in the Royal Sovereigns, where the armour deck rose to main deck level. The crowns of `Q' magazines in the 13.Sin battlecruisers were also one deck below the armour deck, but in the other turrets in these ships, and in all turrets in the 12in battlecruisers, the magazine crowns were at armour deck level, and slightly above 1wl. The magazine doors gave access to the handing room where the charges were placed in the lower hoists which were located in a trunk fixed to the rotating part of the turret. These hoists brought the shells and charges for each gun to the working chamber, where they were transferred to the gun loading cage of the respective upper hoist. Waiting positions for two charges were provided in the working chamber, and for two more in the handing room, and in action there would thus be eight charges in a turret between magazines and guns Flash doors were fitted to the trunk and the cages of the hoists, and the propellant was in more or less closed compartments in all stages of its passage from handing room to gun loading cage. Unfortunately it was not realised how violently British charges would ignite in a turret fire, and the above flash doors were inadequate, the magazine doors were not flash tight under pressure, and flash had a free path to the handing room via the space between the fixed and rotating turret structures, and possibly via other routes. Also there were no magazine scuttles for passing charges, in fact, the magazine doors would be continuously open in action, and many more charges removed from their magazine cases, or in opened cases, than there should have been. There is a revealing remark, too, in the Invincible's reports on the Battle of the Falklands, stating that the flash doors on the gun loading cages in `P' turret had been previously removed as the charges occasionally jammed in the cages, and it was easier to clear the jam if the doors were removed. Nevertheless none of this would have been fatal to the ship if British charges had behaved like German ones."
I absolutely love that this topic came up! I am a chemistry student, currently studying for my PhD in America. Propellants are one of my loves in chemistry, even though I do not do my PhD research on them. I want to preface this post by saying that nobody should ever do what I have done, it's extremely dangerous, and that I also won't be talking about any specifics of how the manufacture of propellants happens. I have done some work with propellants, nothing that would enable me to be called an expert in any sense, mostly just research and some small scale synthesis/manufacture. I no longer do the synthesis part, as the acid preparation is stupendously difficult and dangerous. Also, having made the modified version Cordite Mk. I as well as formula B, I can say with confidence that (especially if QC is done correctly) cordite does not seem that unstable (and I must stress that this is EXTREMELY relative to black powder and other extremely reactive/unstable compounds) fresh off of the production line. That's not my endorsement of cordite as a remarkably stable propellant, there is a reason we don't use it anymore, but it's not nearly so bad that you'd think it would detonate/deflagrate as easily as black powder. If acid quenching during manufacture was as serious a problem as indicated in the video, then serious decomposition issues would be at hand if either sulfuric or nitric acid at the concentration used for manufacture, especially if storage temperatures were fairly warm. The crystallization of Nitroglycerin is something I had never come across as a side effect of decomposition of the propellants, however. I am slightly curious about it, but not enough to ever try to store cordite anywhere near human life for anything resembling that kind of extended time period. That said, I was curious if there are any good sources that could indicate what the general magazine temperatures in capital ships (especially Royal Navy ships, since cordite is the topic) could reach during the early 1900s? I am somewhat curious to see if there's any non-dangerous experiments I could do to model the decomposition of cordite in this fashion. Information on the manufacture of cordite is much more readily available to me than anything resembling detailed information on warships and/or history (at least in the places I know to look) If there's any information out there on the storage conditions that would be present on ships of the time period, I'd greatly appreciate the help.
All three,French,German and British,had warships stationed in tropical Africa and/or South East Asia. For all practical purposes, the only refrigerant available was ammonia which itself is highly flammable and can be explosive. There are accounts of Royal Navy officers stationed there sitting in their wardrooms naked having a hot curry and literally sitting in rivers of sweat. Now just what that meant for the internal temperature of the ships magazines,I simply cannot say. Usually stationed in rivers,most likely the ambient river water temperature would be high. Add boiler heat,the whole ship would heat soak,I would think. I do know there were two propellant formulations prior to WWI,North Sea and Tropical Service. No idea as to detail differences. Dynamite freezing in winter storage and then safely thawing the stuff was the subject of many magazine articles back about 1905,1910 or thereabouts. Farmers leaving different brands of dynamite in unsafe storage in sheds for years was an ongoing issue until at least the 1950s. Once a sheen of nitroglycerin was seen on the individiual sticks,there was known trouble. There are accounts of wooden shelves soaked in the stuff. Abandon and burn the shed was about the only advice given. Yikes. Not sure if any of that addresses your post,but it is what I have.
@@paulmanson253 that is rather helpful. I am trying to figure out if I can find the formulations, but the info on the dynamite issues sent me in a hood direction as far as this issue goes. Thanks!
@@InkyWeb It occurs to me that a great deal of old US Navy stuff is going to be public record. Paid for by the US taxpayer,so unless secret,public information. The stabilizer used by the Germans was better than anyone else's. I would imagine its choice post WWI. And sparking (!) research into other stabilizers. So just what is available electronically,I cannot say,but different Navy departments,plus such as the USDA,are going to have different levels of info. Happy digging. Oh,if you can find genuinely old copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica, my father's 1955 edition was informative but I am told the circa 1900 was even better for technical articles.
@@InkyWeb And to this day,quite a bit of cordite washes up on beaches in Newfoundland and New Brunswick. From torpedoed ships. And still burns well when dried out. As to how well it would explode in containment I hope nobody thinks that would be a bright idea as an experiment. So stored in cold seawater,it remains quite stable. Buried in soil,would it degrade to a useful donor of soluble nitrate fertilizer ? No idea. Let someone else find that out.
Years ago, we found a cache of a case of dynamite. The outside of the sticks looked kinda sweaty. It was buried out in the open, no buildings nearby. We dug out one side of the case, got a hundred yards away, and used a rifle to dispose of it. Found out later that it was old, unstable, and the sweat contained nitroglycerin. Disposing of it this way was the best choice. Was told sweaty dynamite sometimes makes even experienced EOD people piss in their pants dealing with it.
All dynamite is is nitroglycerin absorbed into diatomaceous earth. The diatomaceous shells helped cushion it. Temperature changes will change the density pumping it out of the earth.
The delay between the initial event is characteristic of industrial dust explosions. A small shock kicks up dust which is then ignited by something like a spark. It deflagrates (< speed of sound). Nitroglycerin dust would not be a fuel-air explosion as NG does not need oxygen to explode. It is a high detonation (>> speed of sound) and tends to crack armors. Also important is the minimum ignition energy (MIE) required by a compound to detonate. NG dust is so volatile that "brush" static is enough to ignite it. In other words, kicking up NG dust and it dust flying through the air creates enough of a static charge to detonate it. Large ungrounded storage tanks, cranes, and large metallic devices can store significant electrical charges to set off many combustible dusts. This is why hydrocarbon-containing tanks have multiple bonds and grounding cables. Electrically insulated parts of a ship might also store enough of a charge to set off very combustible dust like coal dust in a fuel bunker. Deflagrations proceed less than the speed of sound but can be damaging if contained such as under a WW1 trench and produce significant amounts of gas (black powder). There are also hybrid explosions of combined fuels and dust. The low MIE for the fuel (typically a solvent) starts a flash fire which ignites the combustible powder. It tends to be a sustained explosion and is very deadly. Burning solids ejected can fly to other combustible matter and produce a cascade of explosions. From one photo and eyewitness testimony, it is conjecture as to what happened at Jutland due to the lack of time scale, distance scale, and multiple frames showing shockwaves.
I suspect what happened with the LUSITANIA was a coal dust explosion. The ship was nearing the end of its run, so many of the coal bunkers were low with a lot of dusty space. The torpedo explosion throws a lot more coal dust into the air and boom.
Unfortunately we didn't understand the concept of propellant degradation even in Vietnam adequately. In small arms (infantry wpns) the degradation usually results in wildly inconsistent velocities and surprisingly large amounts of unburnt gunk in the action and barrel. Still an issue military units face today.
We made some picrate-based stuff in high school, one of the piles had not 'destabilized' properly when we tried to shock them so instead of going off the dust spread along the desks and floor of the classroom. The next morning when we had a class in the same room you could hear tiny 'explosions' from underneath your shoes and when placing anything on the desk or sitting in the chair.
12:00 From your excellent Jutland 3-parter I recall before Beatty got to quip about the British ships exploding easily, the mortally wounded Frances Harvey VC was used his last breath to order the flooding of Q turret magazine just aft of the Vice-Admiral. Maybe it was Grant’s pre-clean-up of the Lion’s base turret & magazine grime that gave the crew those seconds to successfully douse the magazine despite cordite dust accruing during the battle? The immediate flooding of Q turret after the shockwave that “folded back the roof like a used sardine can” ordered by a commander already in medical shock is credited as all that saved HMS Lion and her Vice-Admiral from sharing the fate of half his squadron. In this way HMS Lion appears to be that control data of this Jutland cordite thought experiment 38:33
Harveys's tale was a hoax: "The above account is largely taken from Jellicoe's memorandum of 16 June 1916 which contained notes on the more important damage to the battlecruisers and the Warspite and was later reproduced in Grand Fleet Gunnery and Torpedo Order No 15 on the lessons of Jutland. There is no mention in this of the part played by Major FJW Harvey, RMLI, the officer of the turret, except that he sent a messenger to the bridge to report that the turret was out of action. Major Harvey was awarded a posthumous VC for giving orders to close the magazine doors and flood the magazine when he was mortally wounded; in the event the order to flood the magazine came from the Captain to the transmitting station, and William -Yeo, Stoker 1st class, special messenger to the transmitting station, was the man actually sent to order `Q' magazine to be flooded. The transmitting station asked for the order to be repeated, as the Lion had partially flooded `A' magazine in error at the Dogger Bank battle, and Grand Fleet Gunnery Orders after the action had indicated that the person in charge of a magazine, if there was no fire there, should take steps to find out why the order to flood had been given, and inform a responsible officer of what was occurring. In this case it was fortunate that `Q' magazine was flooded in time, as tests later showed that magazine doors as then fitted, were by no means flash tight when closed. As it was, a venting plate admitted a tongue of flame into the magazine but no harm was done. At that date magazine venting plates were fitted in handing rooms, so that a sudden pressure rise in the magazine from spontaneously ignited cordite would vent into the handing room and thence up the space between the fixed and revolving turret structures, and also up the turret trunk. They were not flash-tight in the reverse direction."
Major Harvey may have singlehandedly kept the KM from completely realizing the goal of the Jutland sortie which was to destroy a significant portion of the RN. If Beatty blows up, there's three battle cruisers left plus the 5th squadron and and Jellicoe is two hours away. Thanks to Beatty's _excellent_ headwork (rolls eyes), he has no idea of what Hipper or Scheer's course or speed are to send to Jellicoe at the time the Lion hypothetically blew.. Maybe Adm Evan-Thomas would have saved the situation due to his distance from Beatty. Beatty was a narcissistic prat.
All this reminds me of something my dad told me regarding coal bunkers on ships. He said that a coal bunker was far more dangrous empty then full if a ship was struck by a torpedo/shell/explosive. Coal dust would be thrown up into the empty space and if ignited would cause a secondary explosion, similar to a grain elevator explosion. Im not sure how prevalent this was, but might be an interesting topic for another video.
What a very interesting talk you fellows have done. My dear Grandmother Petty told me of an occasion in her youth, where a nitroglycerin transport wagon blew up in rout. The story included the gory finding of body parts over a large debris field. Incidentally she described the transport wagon as having a large heavy box for the explosive, suspended by multiple springs.
I doubt liquid nitroglycerin was transported anywhere except within the confines of the manufacturing plant where it was mixed into the safer forms of dynamite or gelignite
@@snowflakemelter1172 Actually - it was at one time made in batch plants and then taken to point of use. Proved too dangerous and practice abandoned, but happened. Actually more than once. Look into the history of the building of the Central Pacific and there was some use in oil fields between the Wars.
A new take on an old subject. I’ve changed my mind about Jutland. Interestingly, old film was made of nitrocellulose, and has been know to spontaneously combust. Old movie theaters were sometimes built with blowout back walls for just this reason, and they had thick glass blocks separating the projection room from the audience.
I think nitrocellulose film would explode in theaters when the projector jammed, leaving a single bit of the film in front of the extremely bright, extremely hot projector bulb for too long.
@@SeanCMonahan yes. This is true. Most large theaters used carbon arc lamps, which are not only very bright, but extremely hot. New film was fairly stable if stored properly. But nitrocellulose film degrades over time and will become unstable and there is a risk of it combusting. Several museums have had fires as a result.
What really gets me about modern high explosives is just how stable they are. There are compounds out there that will properly detonate if you look at them the wrong way (this is barely hyperbole, look at the history of fulminating metals and other things that can actually technically detonate). Chemists have come a long way since the first high explosives, it is damned impressive... and a bit scary.
That progress comes on the shoulders of lots of lab accidents involving explosives, at times happening even without knowing that something explosive might be involved. There is a reason chemists still learn the basics of the "old school" explosives in the beginner courses, so you know what they can do and not to create them by accident (yes that is a thing happening way more often in student labs than you want, I had a couple of instances where I sent students out of the lab with the homework to look up and tell me the next day how I safely got rid of their "waste product" the day earlier...)
love these types of videos about different aspects of naval history though I still love the different ships ones. Still way behind catching up on all the dry docks! Thanks Drach and Matthew, does Matthew also have a channel link as well?
I hade a reeeeally cool chemistry teacher in the Swedish equivalent to junior high. In ninth grade he let us make guncotton. We even got to make it twice, since they got the formula wrong the first time. My friend and I were lab partners, and we actually did discover something important about the process. While the proportions of the acids is critical to actually get guncotton, the quality is largely determined by how thoroughly you soak the cotton in the acid, and, importantly, how thoroughly you wash the acid out. Me and my friend did both steps very thoroughly (the teacher let us stay in the lab for almost an hour after class to finish), and we ended up with a top quality product that burned incredibly cleanly. We found this out when we were testing the guncotton in the next lab session. We had a glass petri dish full of the stuff to one side, a ball of very loose cotton fluff about the size of a fist. We took small pieces off and set fire to them in a metal dish on the other side of the bench, about a metre away. One of those pieces combusted so explosively that it shot itself across the table in a split second, landing in the petri dish. The whole classroom lit up in a yellow flame about a metre tall, and all that was keft was an almost invisible yellowish/brownish residue burned into the surface of the glass. Most other lab pairs had lumps of slightly sour-smelling cotton that did not burn nearly as well.
Thank you Sirs! I knew some of it but I had no idea of the historical context. Happy to say I have re-subscribed (a sad story involving a cat, a moth, a full bottle of beer and my laptop unattended, old mobile numbers etc, I lost my accounts, it wasn't personal, honest!). So very glad to re-visit the site. Respect and Pax.
In the Navy when you begin your first fire fighting and damage control training evolutions you're taught about Forrestal. It was sobering. Basically, most of the crew and officers had no damage control and fire fighting training. You can see footage of the crews reading the instructions to their oxygen systems while the ship is burning. After the initial ignition of a rocket, due to a fault casualty during a test, which impacted into a line of A4 Skyhawk light strike aircraft, loaded up with cannon projectiles, rockets, HE bombs, napalm, and fuel. There were two fire countermeasures being employed during that damage control fight, salt water and AAAF (A Triple F, basically deprives thermal events of oxygen). Due to the lack of training, the water crews were washing the AAAF off of the fires. A terrifying result of this was liquid fire being washed down into the hangers and interior spaces and unfortunately onto fellow crewmates. I saw this film and was going to A school to become a gunnersmate. Definitely took these lessons to heart.
This type of presentation is my favorite I think. Technical talks on Naval topics. I for one know a lot about the ship stats ,but these understandable deep dives fill in areas us generalists don't know much about, the how and why's of ships and Naval combat🤔🙂
Something I have seen around is that a lot of early users of early modern explosives (basically everything post Black Powder) suffered from the assumption that their new explosives would basically rot like Black Powder does, where it becomes less effective over time and with contamination. Being basically a mix of two elements in low-reactive forms and a fairly stable nitrogen salt, Black Powder generally becomes less reactive over time in most conditions, not more so. It was a real shock to many that these new chemicals would do things like become more powerful or more sensitive over time.
Nitrocellulose is still the primary ingredient in propellants in shells and even the common small arms round - nitroglycerin as well, in the case of triple base propellants. We wouldn't have smokeless powder without them. To say both are poor propellants and poor propellants because they cannot be stabilized is incorrect as they have been used practically for nearly 100 years. It was the inability to completely clean Nitrocellulose, in particular, during that time. It was the perfection of the cleaning which took a very long time to perfect. I have made both compounds and degradation was always a concern. Boiling Nitrocellulose 4 times in a mild baking soda solution for many hours after the nitration process of cotton still renders Sulfuric acid one the process is done. I always stabilized both with acetone until they were ready for use.
I've recently been watching some of the RUclips channels on the space industry (Scott Manley et. al.) and came across the acronym RUD which apparently stands for Rapid Unplanned Disassembly.
I was a gunner in the RN in the 60,s One of the tests was to check the state of the chamber on 4.5 mk6 barrels This was to insert Gutta percha warmed and then expanded in the chamber This impression was removed and inspected for any erosion scouring
Pre- WW1 French Governments were parsimonious with fuel allowances which even effected time at sea so most likely will have effect on running motors for cooling plants even in ports.
An older source on powder handling safety issues is Hatcher’s Notebook, by Julian Hatcher. He noted that some formulations of smokeless powder would detonate if in over a certain quantity, as the mass would act as a tamper on itself. Cordite was two high explosives mixed to deflagrate rather than detonate, but the conditions were critical. The recent issue with automotive air bags was with using ammonium nitrate as a propellant, which in certain conditions would detonate.
I still have a scar on the outside base of my left thumb from the propellant charge of an airbag in a car nearly 20 years ago. The airbag did save me from serious injury though!
@@tomhalla426 My friend's car (this incident was nearly 40 years ago) was an old mark one Ford Escort (British model) and the damage was more than it was worth. That wasn't the only thing that went wrong for him that weekend though - he broke his wrist exiting from a cave and insisted we take his wetsuit top off before taking him to hospital because he couldn't afford for them to cut it off. Those were the days - trying to lead an active life on a shoestring budget.
When he mentions Forrestal, I remember reading that the leftover Korean War era bombs on the deck were seen leaking paraffin because they’d been so old and improperly stored prior to being loaded on ship.
With even small arms they have to mop out etc indoor shooting ranges or they will have fires because it's like 15 percent unburned gunpowder. I never thought about residue causing a fire or accident in a turret.
I love these colourful drawings of ordnance and cartridges - is there a specific source of high quality scans out there somewhere? Keep up the good work Drach!
I was hoping more along the lines of hi-res scans. You occasionally get lucky on wikipedia but if I'm looking for a specific piece then I often come up empty-handed.
Most of the colour plates come from "List of Changes" although they are spread about.. Many are reproduced in the various "Treatise on Ammunition" which were published every 15 years or so..
Ideally, one's propellant should benefit one's own goals rather more than those of the opposition. Words to live by. Much energetic materials research continues unabated to this day for a whole variety of applications, but the unifying theme remains that the special stuff should fall apart in a way that meets a bunch of parameter requirements according to the application, but only when you're very certain you want those requirements met. The difficult thing is not making stuff keen to come apart for you, but rather to have a clear way of communicating that it's time now to fulfil your destiny that hopefully doesn't include misinterpreting other things happening in the environment for your sweet nothings. Great episode!
What would be informative is a follow-on discussion in regard to HMS Hood. I've read that the magazines flared so hot that the steel lost its temper, broke its keel and folded up.
I have noted before in comments and on patreon that stabilisation chemistry was key to these problems. Part of my early career was working for Nobel division (the explosive division of ICI) I worked as a chemist and physicist on the testing and formulation as well as manufacture of explosives. The industry and particularly Nobel division had taken over manufacturing from Royal ordinance from the great war and consequently there was a lot of handed down experience from handling of things that go boom. I changed over to nuclear work after a few years, but from the passed down experience of creating and handling from the particularly the Great war experiences stabilisation has been the great lessons learned. The Germans had a better chemical understanding of explosives and stabilisation in those times as their chemical research and industry at that time was the best in world. The lessons that I learned in such a narrow field from my time with Nobel division are essentially perfectly in agreement with the hypotheses presented in Matthew's excellent and logical presentations of the causes of the failures in handling and storing of explosives and propellants; what he has concluded in his presentation is almost exactly what we gained from the passed experience handed down within the narrow community of the explosive industry. I loved my time making things go boom and handling explosives in Wales knowing that; time, temperature and stabilisation were the most important things to consider if you did not want to lose anything you considered valuable. Congrats to you both on an excellent piece, Kind Regards JohnH
As an ammunition handloader, my heart leapt with joy when Matt finally (44:59) uttered the word "propellant! " ;) This video is like dessert for my brain, guys! Thanks for producing it!
Explosive note that when bombs burn and the expulsive melts and then flows, the side effect is that the liquid then solidifies becomes shock sensitive.
Great video about the various explosives/propellants and their effects and short comings. I worked as a safety officer in the missile industry and actually did a safety awareness presentation based on the Jutland and Forrestal case. The Jutland case definitely seems like safety procedures were being bypassed for firing rate. The Lion’s gun captain was apparently fanatical about propellant safety, and after Q turret was hit, a petty officer was able to flood the magazine, prevent ing a detonation. The Forrestal case is total massive error chain that went badly wrong! One big contributor was that they had a shortage of 500 lb bombs. They got sent a very dodgy batch of bombs which they were going to reject, but were told this is what you, can get, so these bombs were supposed to be transferred to North Vietnam ASAP. When the deck fires started after the Suni rocket event, these things did not melt, they detonated!
THEY WERE GOD ALMIGHTY BLOODY IDIOTS TO BE USING THOSE BLANKETY-BLANK 500 POUNDERS WHICH WHO WEREN'T THE FIRST FLUSH OF YOUTH TO BEGIN WITH THEY OUGHTA BE SHOT!
It used to happen when old sticks of dynamite would start to sweat out the nitro, when they were wet it was bad, but when it dried and formed crystals...it was deadly. Even it one rubbed against another, major explosion
We need the 'Flux Capacitor' to slow down time, the dicussion went and ended to quickly. Absolutelty an excellent discussion. Thank you both very much.
As a child my father had a small company he ran out of our garage. He use a great deal of concentrated nitric acid. Starting at age ten or so I used to hang out in his workshop and I remember my cotton T shirts rotting away and turning yellow in a mater of hours. This acid came delivered in huge stainless steel barrels. He was very dangerous with his methods of handling these chemicals. part of his process he would have 6 inch diameter magnesium pipe machined in a local machine shop. The machine shop would fill several 55 gallon barrels waste chips of pure magnesium. I do remember dad telling the owner of this shop not to keep these chips next to his metal turning lathe because of the fire danger. The owner said he was saving this scrap because it had great value as scrap. A very short time later the fire department called him and we drove down to the machine shop. The only thing remaining of the machine shop was breached bright white concrete block walls and nothing else. The iron lathe had mostly melted. there was no roof, no glass and what steel that was not melted in a puddle had vaporized. Even steel I-beams at the end of the small building had folded over from the heat. Back a dads shop the reactive nature of nitric acid destroyed everything even the concrete floors Several years later I was still a child and I remember working in the shop on the weekend and a leak started in one of the holding tanks. I managed to stop the leak but in the process burn both hands badly. The skin on my hands turned to leather and weeks later at school I remember pealing all the skin off in one massive tug of the leather skin , starting at my wrist. Dad dropped dead six months later. He was 51 years old. I was surprise he lived so long. The cotton in our clothing had rotted from exposure to the nitric acid fumes. Im sure it had turn to Gun cotton we were lucky it never exploded or burned. Please keep in mind that I was only ten years old when these events first started. Dad was a poorly educated yet was a fantastic inventor and would build a kinds of stuff that he used in many applications. Needless to say he took all kinds of risks.
Sunday used to be my cigar day when i sit down with a great Stogie and relax but now it's Wednesday. Now i watch the Wednesday rum ration with a great cigar and rum and it's a great part of my week. Thank you, Drachinifel 🤙🤙🤙
The moment he said "Degrade" I had a bad idea where he was going. Dynamite does the same kind of thing, the nitroglycerine.. oh... it forms crystals... no that's really bad. Really bad. And you have an entire magazine full of this. Oh, it forms crystal *dust!* that's... yeah, no, that's really really bad bad. And then someone sneezes on it and your ship goes straight to hell.
Just curious, did Gunner Grant receive some kind of serious recognition for how he showed "higher,higher" that their current practices were unwise and unsafe?
Grant was commissioned to Lieutenant RN shortly after Jutland (actually he was paid less than as a Warrant Officer due to some complications in the pay and seniority lists). His captain recognised that this wa inappropriate and he was put in command of a destroyer.
I wonder if the manufacturer had more contact with the end user, and realized their product was degrading in a dangerous way, how quickly it would have been fixed. Tragic and avoidable.
6:25 "we dont want to tell you how to make cordite" But you just did, I just have to nitrate glycerin and cotton, which if you paid attention in chemistry class thats easy enough to do, then add some vasalene and you have cordite. Sure the exact rations would have to be played with but a day in the sand pit would sort that bit out.
@@Drachinifel besides... the idea is to divide out the "bored but unmotivated" and the "I want a boom but I do not want to read things". Those of us with any particular interest already have ebooks from places like Gutenberg... and are just interested in "this is why you need to be extra careful with steps 3 and 4".
I did 11 years RA. Our supercharge, i.e. the max charge was called charge 7. It looked like a cylindrical polystyrene green in color. There was a bedford near the firing line with these charges on it, only these. Anyway it ignited. Was interesting to watch. Because it was not enclosed it burt like magnesium. After it was done the Bedord was a puddle
Along these lines of interest see "Ignition! A History of Liquid Rocket Propellants" by John D. Clark. An introduction in the chemistry never talked about in polite company.
A question for your guest. the germans had an issue with the first smokeless poweder in infantry files before WW1. the G1888 rifles were exploding due to metal issues but also powder. is it possible the fix for the infantry powder filter into the Germany navy's powder manufacturing?
1.) Nitrocellulose - It is a cotton waste converted to nitrate. 2.) Mixed Acids (M/A) - Concentrated Sulphuric Acid (57%) and Nitric Acid (43%) - It is used in nitroglycerine production to nitrate glycerine and to act as a dehydrating agent during the process. 3.) Oleum (Fuming Sulphuric Acid) - It is used in the reprocessing of refuse (spent) acids to concentrate the nitric acid and replace used sulphuric acid. 4.) Glycerine - It reacts with acids under strictly controlled conditions. 5.) Sodium Carbonate - Used to neutralise remaining acids in the separated nitroglycerine and makes it less likely to explode when moved to other processes. 6.) Acetone - A solvent additive that stabilised the nitroglycerine and later in the process helped to gelatinise the nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine to a paste for forming into 'cords'. Acetone is known to most women as a nail-varnish remover. 7.) Vaseline - added to the mix as a stabiliser and gun barrel lubricant. 8.) Graphite - 'Lampblack' to reduce the risk of static ignition in some forms of loose cordite. 9.) Nitroguanidine (Picrite) - It is added to artillery cordite to reduce barrel wear and to stabilise the cordite in storage.
a lot of people miss the fact that most explosives and propellants have very similar energy density but wildy different burn rates/detonation velocity. But with a faster burn rate you get a lot more force exerted on the breech rather than more evenly distributed while the projectile moves down the barrel. the shorter the barrel the faster you need it to burn, the longer the barrel the more propellant you can add with a slow burn rate to have an overall higher amount of energy to release.
The German light cruiser SMS Karlsruhe blew up in the Caribbean in November 1914. She was on her way to bombard Barbados when she suffered an internal explosion that tore the ship in half. There doesn't seem be to any information on Wikipedia about what caused the detonation. Anyone have any info?
¨From Campbell: "Further disasters occurred between 1914 and the date of Jutland. In the British navy the pre-dreadnought Bulwark was blown to pieces in the Medway in November 1914, though it appears that gross carelessness in the treatment of exposed 6in charges and HE shells with live fuzes may have been the reason and not decomposing propellant. The armoured cruiser Natal was sunk in December 1915 at Cromarty, and this ship had much dubious cordite on board. In the German navy, the light cruiser Karlsruhe was lost 350 miles east of Trinidad from an internal explosion in November 1914. The Karlsruhe was extremely unsuited to the tropics as temperatures as high as 76°C had been recorded, and the German Official History remarks that the explosion may have been due to a quantity of lubricating oil thinned with petroleum for use as fuel. In other navies, an explosion in the old Chilean battleship Capitan Prat, which had some very bad cordite in her magazines, was not disastrous to the ship, as the gases of the explosion had an easy vent to air, while the loss of the Italian pre-dreadnought Benedetto Brin is said to have been due to a bomb placed in the after magazine."
Mr. Drackinifiel, love listening to you brainstorming with Matthew evaluating the pros and cons of different propellants and. Did the blowing up Hood follow the same scenario of the battlecruisers at Jutland with a conflagration then an explosion?
Back in the early 60s, while in HS, a friend and I figured out how to make nitro-cellulose . Our goal was not explosives but rather a homemade solid rocket fuel to refill used Estes model rocket engines. While our never worked as well as the store bought ones, they DID work! We both still have all of our fingers. My friend went on to get his MS in Physics and worked developing "classified" stuff at the Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.
7:08 - High explosives _can_ be used to propel things (for instance, in the 1960s, NASA was doing work on Project Orion, a project to propel spacecraft by setting off nuclear bombs behind them, and, although the project was ultimately cancelled, they ran a number of successful small-scale tests using a scale model of the spacecraft design propelled by small charges of dynamite) - just not with a conventional gun (unless you make it ridiculously thick and heavy and sturdy around the breech where the detonation's going to happen). Not saying you're wrong (because you're right), just felt like clarifying a bit.
I'm sure this has been commented on but I'm too lazy to scroll that far. Knowing a bit about these processes from a purely chemical standpoint the delicate dance you both did to avoid... unintended... complications of this discussion was rather fun to listen to. Thanks gents.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Did the FAA have any land based air bases around ports like Portmouth and Plymouth for air defence or was it a case of relying on the RAF and if they did have bases around these ports did they take part in the Battle of Britian?
WoW, great cast gentlemen. Any ideas on the possible effects of breathing this stuff in over years or decades on sailors?
What was the job of a dockyard repair ship?
i am a firm believer that the image goes over the other screen because neither of these 2 men are capable of keeping their face normal while someone else is talking. that or drach thinks his fanbase will click off if they can't always see a black and white photo of a ship
Hi Drach, I have a question for you please. It's commonly stated that British Battlecruisers during WW1 removed their flash protection to improve their rate of fire, but I don't think I have ever seen this backed up by source material. An explanation I have heard is that it was most likely a verbal order because that's generally how Beatty was - a bit of a dashing cavalry type officer who did things fast and loose, so to speak. But surely such an order would be so obviously dangerous that it's inconceivable (isn't it?) that not one of the dozens of people all the way down from the ship captains, first officers, turret commanders, etc.. refused to do this without a written order, or at least to put their own concerns about such an order into writing. So is there any written source material for such an order existing? Many thanks, kp.
I had a chemistry teacher in the early 80s who had worked on explosives during the second world war - if you could get him talking about making explosives he would go on about it for hours.. Amatol, Ammonal, TNT, Nitroglycerin, and good old fashioned gunpowder. I still have the notes...
He didn't happen to be Irish did he?
Congratulations, you are a Category C offender under the Counter Terrorism Act 2019! "Offender collected, made a record of, or was in possession of information likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism but had no terrorist connections or motivations"
Man that sounds like fun honestly
I'm a chemistry teacher. I had a dream that I was making TNT from stuff bought at a hardware store. The equipment setup and procedures that my subconscious put together actually works in real life.
@@liberalsockpuppet4772 _does this imply you have tried it before considering you say that the thoughts you have on how to make TNT actually worked?_
An hour and five minutes on defective warship powder is exactly why I subscribed to this channel many years ago (sarcasm not intended).
I could not agree more!
There is something deeply relaxing about doing a multi hour deep dive on naval gun propellants.
Never know when you'll need to know why high explosives exployed
I sub for Drach saying “Hello, BANG!”
This sort of nerdy stuff that most people would roll their eyes at really makes my day
For some added background, there's a reason why all those things that go boom tend to be built around nitrogen chemistry, when it's common knowledge that nitrogen is one of the most inert gases out there.
A basic rule in chemistry is that atoms really want to be in the most stable bond they can possibly get.
There are few bonds more stable than that of elemental nitrogen, N2. It takes a _lot_ of energy to break that bond up and force the nitrogen atoms to become literally anything other than elemental nitrogen, and that energy is stored in these new compounds.
Every nitrogen atom stuck in a compound that isn't N2 longs for the moment it can finally realize its lifelong dream of becoming a hot puff of nitrogen gas while releasing a shitload of energy into its environment, and nitrogen compounds in general have a tendency to be held together by the chemical equivalent of duct tape and a prayer. This means that when things start happening in any kind of reaction involving nitrogen, they tend to happen a.) very quickly and b.) very violently.
Well said.
Just one minor note: I think N2 is better referred to as molecular nitrogen, rather than elemental nitrogen.
NO3 is over oxygenated and readily gives up the O which is the oxidizer for the reaction.
Points for the "Things I Will Not Work With" reference. Entirely appropriate.
@@ericraymond3734 It's a wonderful little phrase, isn't it?
Ammonium nitrate has nitrogen groups at each end. Big bang, but very stable.
WW2 also demonstrated that gasoline fumes combined with oxygen can make an aircraft carrier open up like a sardine can. Lexington, Taiho....
Thanks Drach for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity to share my insights on the matter and history is somehting I have always wanted to apply my knowledge of chemistry on.
We enjoyed your input, thank you for sharing it with us. Nb - I am not that great at science and chemistry, but you never lost me the once with your explanations and dialogue - you are very easy to listen to as well. All the best!
with a background in manufacturing of industrial explosives this is the best explanation i have seen (for those not of bomb nerd stock) for the causes and effects of compound components and age on explosive reactivity.
I'm very grateful - this was fascinating.
I just watched today, and wanted tosay I enjoyed the video and thought your insights and knowledge were great and I enjoyed watching and felt like I was smarter than before I watched , TY sir
A pair of enthusiastic, incredibly intelligent people having a very off the cuff and constantly evolving discussion about a little known topic with multiple "aha" moments for both and more new questions than concrete answers. This is perhaps the most intellectually stimulating content I've ever had the pleasure of consuming. If this were to turn into a proper paper I would be first in line to every nerdy detail. Cheers and thanks gents!!
C
Gm
Page 295:
library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/the_chemistry_of_powder_and_explosives.pdf
Thank you very much, I did have a lot of fun recording this with Drach, and I appreciate that people got a lot from it.
Indeed; this was a really cool idea for a discussion; a very informative presentation.
okay but consider its not
"Aerosolized Nitroglycerin Dust" has to be the most inherently dangerous thing I've heard all year, and I work with firearms for a living lmao
@Peter smith The difference between the two is that you can't really synthesize azidoazide azide as easily and in great quantities as nitroglycerin.
Some Soviet ballistic missiles were fueled by a mixture of unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and red fuming nitric acid, which they nicknamed "Devil's Venom." One time a pipe burst during the fueling of a prototype, killing dozens in seconds including a number of high-ranking officers observing the test.
(They went ahead with the formula anyway because it could be stored for long periods relatively easily and its ability to auto-ignite simplified the plumbing in the engine.)
A couple more "fun" chemical names: Chlorine pentafluoride and FOOF (as in fluorine-oxygen-oxygen-fluorine).
@@fluffly3606sounds like something we would use for stability thrusters one day
TEB (Triethylborane) another angry chemical that explodes on contact with air, they used it to ignite the JP7 fuel in the SR-71.
There was a standing order from the Admiralty that Cordite (especially the Mk2) was to be store in tubes with the date written on the side of manufacture. Cordite more than 12 months old was to be used first due to the afore mentioned deterioration. Grant in the Lion not only found the powder but also found the Cordite had been removed from the storage leather tubes during training and often returned to the incorrectly labelled tubes after if not used so the record keeping was all wrong. He immediately set about having all the Cordite on HMS Lion changed for a new batch. Ref: A Grant “Through the Hawse Pipe” Draft Memoirs IWM 66/28311.
Good comment - nice to see an actual reference as well.
Does anyone know of any source material relating to the removal of flash protection? I really wish someone would provide some more concrete evidence to support (or refute) the theory that flash protection was ordered to be removed. I keep hearing this stated that it was done as part of the attempt to increase rate of fire, but no one ever seems to back it up with source material. Not saying it didn't happen, just that no one seems to actually prove it. Surely removing the flash protection from a ship's magazines would be an obviously incredibly dangerous thing to do and I struggle to believe that no one who would have to have actioned such an order across multiple vessels had a problem with that and said "I will only do this if I get it in writing," or put their own concern with such an order in writing.
This is exactly why I love the comment section on this channel. Not only do I get some extra information but I also get sources, which you rarely ever find in comment sections on this platform. Amazing community here.
@@afrikacorpse There was no Admiralty order. That's why you can't find one.
@@ifax1245 Yes, I understand that it wasn't an Admiralty order - so who did order it? How do we even know it WAS ordered? Again, not saying it wasn't, I'm sure it was, but just asking for some sort of source material to confirm it, because that's what we should be doing - we shouldn't necessarily accept something as fact just because we keep hearing it. So if it was ordered, who by? Was it Beatty, Chatfield or someone else? And why did all the people below them carry it out without raising any concerns? Did NO ONE at any level in the process not write something down? If not, then how do we know it happened? Cheers.
@@afrikacorpse I can only offer you this information; "When Jellicoe became First Sea Lord he ordered Tudor to retract these criticisms of senior officers and also supressed the DNC report. He put the blame entirely on inadequate armour and physical protection against flash." Perhaps the newspapers were encouraged to report issues concerning the anti-flash doors. Ref: Brown, David K.. The Grand Fleet: Warship Design and Development 1906-1922 (p. 464). Pen & Sword Books.
(23:44) This is true. I used to keep several perfectly dry bottles for Gatorade around. I'd measure out an amount of Gatorade powder and pour it into each bottle through a funnel, so I could have instant Gatorade at work-just add water. I hadn't realized the problem I was creating until I went to clean my kitchen, and found that _anyplace_ I wiped with a damp towel, the towel would come up pink, meaning that Gatorade dust was coating _every_ surface. Gatorade is fairly innocuous, but it demonstrates the problem.
Maybe gatorade crystals are forming
It's alive !
It's insidious how the powder/dust forms of otherwise innocuous things can become dangerously explosive. There've been big fires/explosions over the years at things like grain silos and sugar mills from large amounts of very fine powdery flour/sugar residue in the air and on the working surfaces, and all it takes is a stray spark or overheated machine part and the whole place just detonates. We used to throw unused Kool-Aide powder into the campfire at Boy Scout Camp for fun, since it would readily burn. Bet Gatorade would too.
@@paulseifert6598 kool aide powder is just colored sugar. That would burn excellently.
I have the same thing with iced tea powder.
In chemistry class at a German school, we made nitrocellulose, and learnt in step-by-step detail why it works and how to manufacture it safely. It's weird that today everyone is so concerned about that kind of knowledge spreading to 'ordinary' people.
I think it's more an American sphere of influence thing (also recently exported around the world a lot more than it used to be). There's a distrust of people knowing things, because they might misuse it, even though knowledge tends to correlate negatively with both malice and accident-proneness. Very much an 'elitist' mindset in the classic sense.
It's freaking me out too though. These presenters who I know are intelligent people keep stopping every five minutes to go out of their way to say they're not revealing a "secret" I learned in high school chemistry class. It's... a little unnerving somehow. Are we just supposed to assume that people are getting stupider/less knowledgeable and both don't know such things and can't look them up? It's pretty sad.
It is incredibly annoying and condescending - as if higher education has made them more trustworthy. Half of Drac's audience is probably in the US and many of them (including myself) are watching this video in a room with a gun safe that has more pop in it than our guest here ever played with in his little chemistry class.
@@razorwire4247 Private gun ownership, now that's a real public safety issue.
@@dhindaravrel8712 as opposed to violent criminal enterprise, which is entirely safe
@@dhindaravrel8712 as opposed to government weapons ownership?
None of them ever committed horrible crimes against it's own unarmed citizens.... oh wait.
Also funny how the EU with all of its best efforts seems to have serious knife crime issues, and mass stabbings that are worse then most of the "mass shootings" you hear about.
What doesn't get reported by the left leaning mainstream news are events like the young man that stopped a mass shooting before police could even be called and hit 8 out of his 10 shots at an impressive range.
(Edit: I'm referring to the Greenwood mall shooting, incase you want to look for examples of why normal people should have access to firearms and always be armed)
The Royal Navy attitude towards cordite safety reminds me of the US Army’s attitude towards cleaning the M16 early in the Vietnam war. The gun was designed to not need regular cleaning (cleaning kits not even being issued) but then they changed the powder from a new clean burning one to standard powder and didn’t realize this change the need to clean it. The military is a very large bureaucracy and once it makes a decision it takes a lot to change that decision. Usually a major disaster or two.
see also the US Navy's attitude towards torpedo problems at the start of WW2.
They bought tons of dirty ammo from a low dollar supplier. Maybe millions of dollars. Who gets the blame for that?
@@jwenting that's just buord being buord tho... And boi did King rip them a new one over that... Would've loved to see that happen 🤣
@@rogersmith7396
The DOD also decided to eliminate the chroming in the chamber
@@adenkyramud5005 nah, it was typical of the way the US procurement system and other procedures worked at the time.
The same idiocy was seen at all levels, in all services.
Decades ago the Chemistry department at UNC Chapel Hill was cleaning out the old store of chemicals and came upon a bottle with a large amount of "sludge" layered in the bottom of the bottle. Fortunately, one of the attendants recognized the sludge as epoxides from decomposition of the contents. After careful removal, the bottle was detonated with a rather huge explosion following. If the bottle had been mishandled in the Department, it would have been a rather large news item.
Robert Bridges
It's a rather too common occurrence.
I recall several incidents related to inappropriate or old and forgotten stores of ethers, trinitrophenol, dry nitrocellulose, the list is long...
I read in a 1901 industrial chemistry book the procedure for making nitroglycerin, they used quart jugs stood in a ring trough of flowing cold water, a glass tube bubbled air into the glycerine to stir the mixture, above the ring of jugs a glass tube manifold dripped the nitrating acids into the jugs. The fun bit is the operators job was to adjust the tap of nitrating acid and feel the jugs were not overheating, if they were too hot he was required to swiftly tip the jug out into the water trough. Must have been a keen incentive to keep you mind on what you are doing!
I read that the operators sat on one legged stools to ensure they didn't fall asleep during the process.
@@royhills That's charcoal burners (the people not the device) it takes hours to make charcoal and you need to keep watch on it the whole time.
@@rabidmidgeecosse1336I heard it works even better if you turn the stool upside down.
Re: USS Arizona, they found unburnt powder all over Ford Island! That's how stable the Smokeless Powder for her guns was! In fact, I believe it was Drach's video about the ship, actually when you slowed down the actual historic film of her explosion you can see powder bags being thrown in the air and some of them burning (.vs. exploding)....
Cordite, at normal atmospheric pressure, does not explode. It burns quite rapidly, but no boom. To make it boom you have to enclose it to cause the pressure to rise. Which makes it burn faster. Which increases the pressure. Which... So a loose bag flying through the air is just going to burn.
Full German magazines burned down, never exploded... Seydlitz, Derfflinger, Gneisenau...
Compare that to the RN, IJN or USN.
Explosion was also allegedly a testament to the dangers of black powder in the AZ's black powder magazine, forward.
I have secretly been waiting for this video for a long time.
The importance of Propellant Types for early-to-antebellum (WW2) Naval Engagements can hardly be understated. After all is said and done. the consistency and performance of shell and propellant and gun in combination are (in my opinion) the most important factor in gunnery, second only to the ability to actually aim the damn thing.
I'm looking forward to learning even more about Cordite, Gun-cotton and Co. on this Channel!
15:46 Hexamine is the name for the heating brick. Also very happy that previous generations sorted these issues out as I frequently fire tank ammunition with a cellulose cartridge case that burns when we fire the gun, and sometimes (rarely) they rip and you get the turret floor covered in lots of little pellets.
This is the component used in the manufacture of RDX.
The local mil surplus shop used to sell hexamine bars in their jungle foil packaging 10 for a dollar. Quite handy. Every family I knew as a kid had a stash for outdoor activities.
Hexamine tablets also at least used to be used for heating the boilers of toy steam engines and were available in hobby stores. You can also use them for preheating oil-burning camping stoves
Actually hexamine tetra mine, but nitration is a little trickier than, say, nitrocellulose. But the chemistry is a little different: RDX is a nitramine, whereas nitroglycerin is a nitro ester. The third category would be nitro aromatics like TNT.
Explosives worker here, so I'm already on a list and happy to talk about it. I agree it's nitroglycerine exudation.
There really isn't anything wrong with nitroglycerine bonded propellant, provided the stabilizers bring down its sensitivity enough. Triple base propellant these days are still guncotton (nitrocellulose), nitroglycerine and stabilizers and are fine to use (although its not as high percentage of nitroglycerine as Cordite). In fact Cordite in its original state sounds fine to work with; a reasonable flash point, moderate shock sensitivity, relatively slow burn time etc. I've worked with much angrier modern propellant for ships that have a lower flash point and burns more with more energy and speed than black powder.
However as was stated all explosives degrade over time and need to be carefully monitored by people like me. In particular, any explosive with a petroleum jelly stabilizer really doesn't like temperature deviations (such as you mentioned with the lack of temp control in some powder mags) and starts to separate over time. It'll start to feel like its moist on the outside like its sweating, which is the nitroglycerine beginning to separate, forming pure pockets of crystalized nasty. If this isn't caught, you'd have in storage and be handling propellant with all the sensitivity of nitroglycerine with the safety of Cordite. I've found the 1933 "Instruction for the examination, testing and sentencing of cordite, ballistite and nitro-cellulous powder". Seems to indicate there is a war clause for condemned or low test cordite to be held in the magazines.
As nitroglycerine tends to detonate not burn if given the right stimulus, it will propagate easily to the rest of the magazine. This will result in either an immediate explosion or a contained aggressive fire that can't vent fast enough, causing an explosion shortly after.
Side note: explosives don't 'go off' like parties or 'set off' like a dragster, they 'function' either when you want them to or not.
Campbell's 1985 book "Naval Weapons of WWII" has sections on propellants. Page 104 mentions a 1938 incident of exudation of nitroglycerin out of anti-aircraft ammunition on HMS Glorious.
Err... tiny, minor correction. It would NOT be a fuel-air explosion, because for nitroglycerin the air plays absolutely no role there. Fuel-air explosions work because the fuel uses the oxidiser from the air. But high explosives contain everything they need in the molecule itself. And at least for nitrates it's more like decomposition than oxidation anyway. The air at most is a medium for the resulting shockwave to propagate, but otherwise plays no role in the detonation.
Bio dust wood, flour, human skin... Burn so when atomized in air it can go boom. A little gunpowder lofting the dust...
THE REGULAR BLACK-POWDER FOR SALUTING GUNS ABOARD THE USS ARIZONA WHEN IT WAS SETTED-OFF YOU'RE DEAD RIGHT MR D!
42:15 Propellant instability accelerated by high ambient temperature might also be a factor in the 1898 explosion on U.S.S. Maine.
I appreciate the "exploding inappropriately". The most British
Something seems to be wrong with our bloody ships today. As 10,000 guys go flying to the heavens.
"Oh bugger! The ship is being explosively disagreeable!"
look up his video on the Japanese long lance torpedoes. He referred to a similar issue with them as "rapid spontaneous disassembly"
'Unwanted magazine explosion' came close for me too 😅
Best way to stop/prevent a magazine explosion is to have your captain wear Maori warrior dress.
On another note, imagine if the Kamchatka had a magazine full of cordite!
It would have helped. Kamchatka would have blown up and sunk in the Baltic or North Sea.......saving the rest of the fleet from having to listen to them.
Her magazine was full of spare crates of binoculars
Somehow the Kamchatka would survive but somehow blow up the rest of the fleet :p
@@taccovert4 she had plot armour.
@@Arbiter099 : Rozhestvensky would have filled the binoculars with cordite and tossed them like grenades at the Kamchatka.
Speaking of C4 stability, there’s a great Myth Busters video where they try to make C4 explode without a detonator.
“Now, Mr. McClane, where are my detonatahs?”
Equally fascinating to me was the episode of Adam Savage's show where he tried to get nitroglycerin to detonate from drop shock, and found it to be EXTREMELY unreliable. Most of the time it didn't mind being dropped from table height, but every now and then... BOOM! Which could explain why people might have become overconfident when handling it.
My Dad and many others used C4 for heating up rations in the Vietnam War. From what he said, it was OK to burn, but being hot might increase its shock sensitivity, so it was ill advised to drop the can on top of it.
Also, don't cook with C4 or other explosives. They tend to let off toxic fumes that are not good for you.
I was just reading a 1930s manual of British army ordnance. It was quite scientific and gave a lot of background. Lyddite, the army's standard HE filler/burster early in the century, tended to react with the metal of the shells so they had to coat the inside of the shells with some kind of shellack to prevent this.
Lead free Copal Varnish..
The quality of C4 to be able to be used as cooking fuel in small quantities(Matt mentions at about 15:30 or so) is one well known and severely frowned upon by the military - it's DANGEROUS as You-know-What. I met several people at VA Hospitals in the US who had their foot(or part of it) blown off by the C4 when using it to cook dinner; not when lighting it, but while trying to stamp out the fire after cooking their C-ration dinner. (Yes, this really HAS happened.)
REALLY? I WOULDN'T DO IT FOR A THOUSAND BUCKS
Reading Richard Hough's The Big Battleship, a biographical history of HMS Agincourt, one thing that struck me was the antiquity of some of the 12' inch ammunition issued to the ship in 1914 , which included a shell marked 'repaired 1892'.
That is the way big shells like that are. When the Iowas were finally retired permanently, the shells that were at the depots were still the WWII vintage that had been made for them.
@@hokutoulrik7345 The Iowa's case is more understandable coming as they did at the end and acme of big gun naval artillery, but the period 1890-1914 was one of great transition.
The era of the first USS Iowa and HMS Nile to the launch of HMS Queen Elizabeth and USS Pennsylvania.
@@vespelian yes but the 12" gun was of not inconsiderable vintage itself by 1914 and while guns advanced a lot in the period between dreadnought being launched and the end of the 1st world war it hadnt advanced massively in the previous era, most of the technological change was in design and layout of fire control engines and main battery, not the guns themselves, the 12 inch had been a standard gun size for about 30 years by then but was no longer a primary type in the RN being used on older dreadnoughts hence the old ammunition, less new stuff was being produced and agincourt got what was left
An interesting topic that could be expanded upon would be the awakening of the US Navy to the value of the "French Low Flash" gunpowder for nighttime engagements. The corollary use by the Japanese of low flash propellant for night engagements was part of the steep learning curve of the US "nine to five" Navy surrounding Guadalcanal. As I remember there was a limited supply of French low flash propellant used by the US Nay in the Pacific but it was not always available when needed.
Low-flash propellant used in two out of the 3 cruisers at the Battle of the North Cape is why Scharnhorst thought it was up against a battleship and 2 cruisers instead of 3 cruisers. The muzzle flash was so much greater from the 8” guns using regular propellant that they looked like battleship guns by comparison. Of course then Duke of York showed up anyway and probably still would have if Scharnhorst had turned to engage the cruisers, but it’s possible that a cruiser or two might have been sunk.
It must be terrible living in the UK. You can legally manufacture explosives here in the USA as a citizen, so long as you do it for recreational purposes, you dont transport the explosive in it's final state(making unmixed binary explosives preferred), and you don't build "explosive devices", explosive devices being packaged explosives with a detonator or a pressure vessel such as a pipe bomb which can bring low explosives up to detonation pressures.
The knowledge is absolutely a constitutionally protected right here. The US government wouldn't prevent you from discussing how to make explosives to the most minute detail.
I could drive to any sporting goods store and buy Tannerite without even getting my ID checked, Tannerite is Ammonium Nitrate and Aluminum Powder, a binary high explosive.
8:03 - Also, if the projectile leaves the barrel before the propellant's finished burning, you get a _lot_ more muzzle flash.
I have a ship for you to review! USS Norton Sound. A ww2 sea plane tender with two battle stars that went on to launch nuclear tipped rockets as part of the US Navy's space program and was eventually the first ship to be fitted with the AEGIS combat system.
Navy space program? I like this already!
@@garrettschweitzer7138 yup, before it was all centralised under NASA the US Navy, Air Force, and Army each had its own space program.
Which is one reason why the Soviets got there first, the inter service rivalry meant a lot of wasted time, money, and manpower as the agencies were more paranoid about each other than about foreign powers (including the Soviets) stealing secret data.
@Garrett Schweitzer There was a plan to launch a naval astronaut on top of a modified Polaris missile, basically a seat & oxygen to the space suit. Possible just as well they didn’t do it.
USS Norton Sound, home ported in Port Hueneme was the USN test bed for countless missile programs. Visit Missile Park, adjacent to Point Mugu Naval Air Station, to see examples of many of these weapon systems.
A shame Drach doesn't cover Cold War stuff. Lots of wackiness
The German tradition of high expertise with chemistry especially in the 19th Century certainly helped them in this regard.
Doesn't hurt that the main charge for German guns is in a brass casing that seals the breach. The Germans are handling far less powder in bags than the British. or anyone else for that matter.
@@SgtBeltfedmaybe for the range which is seen but in terms of not becoming a massive floating bomb this helps.
I was a Gunners mate in the US Navy during the 70's and can ask a dozen questions on this? Such as temperature, in the early 1900's what there anything like temperature monitoring of the magazines done? Rotation of powder use oldest first during training. Or did powder just sit in a magazine for years? Were there any issues with powder fires or explosions when a ship went in for refit? One should remove all the ammunition from the ship before cutting on it. A cool show would be reviewing any post dreadnought looses or ones suffering major damage from non combat related causes. Thanks to the both of you for another interesting presentation.
From Campbell`s:
"The real cause of the disasters was that the precautions for preventing flash of ignited propellant reaching a magazine were not matched to the behaviour of British charges, though if the British ships had had German charges it is very unlikely that they would have blown up. This was not, however, clear at the time.
It was realised before 1914 that there were two dangers, the first that decomposition of the nitro-cellulose could initiate a spontaneous explosion, and the second that the effect of enemy shells, torpedoes or mines might blow up the ship. The first required that the magazine cases of the charges, and the magazines, should be able to vent to air before a dangerous pressure built up from the ignition of the charge or charges in the case affected, and the second that the magazines should be protected from enemy weapons. Such pre-1914 evidence as there was indicated that the first danger was greater than that of enemy shells causing a magazine explosion, and was best avoided by a strict time limit on the service life of the charges, not exposing them to excessive heat or damp, and great care in manufacture so that certain impurities in the nitrocellulose, notably traces of sulphate, often derived from pyritic coal dust or cinders, were avoided. The pre-war records of the British and German navies were good in this respect, and though there were spontaneous explosions of 6in charges in the pre-dreadnought Revenge in 1899 and in the cruiser Fox in 1906, and of 5.9in charges in the German cruiser Vineta in 1903, none of these caused a major disaster to the ship. The Germans learnt much from the Vineta incident, and by 1914 had developed a far more advanced propellant than the British.
Other navies had suffered serious losses from spontaneous propellant explosions, the principal incidents prior to 1914 leading to the loss or total wrecking of the following ships - Maine (USA) 1898, Mikasa (Japan) 1905, Aquidaban (Brazil) 1906, lena (France) 1907, Matsushima (Japan) 1908, Liberte (France) 1911.
Further disasters occurred between 1914 and the date of Jutland. In the British navy the pre-dreadnought Bulwark was blown to pieces in the Medway in November 1914, though it appears that gross carelessness in the treatment of exposed 6in charges and HE shells with live fuzes may have been the reason and not decomposing propellant. The armoured cruiser Natal was sunk in December 1915 at Cromarty, and this ship had much dubious cordite on board. In the German navy, the light cruiser Karlsruhe was lost 350 miles east of Trinidad from an internal explosion in November 1914. The Karlsruhe was extremely unsuited to the tropics as temperatures as high as 76°C had been recorded, and the German Official History remarks that the explosion may have been due to a quantity of lubricating oil thinned with petroleum for use as fuel.
In other navies, an explosion in the old Chilean battleship Capitan Prat, which had some very bad cordite in her magazines, was not disastrous to the ship, as the gases of the explosion had an easy vent to air, while the loss of the Italian pre-dreadnought Benedetto Brin is said to have been due to a bomb placed in the after magazine.
As far as the effect of enemy shells was concerned, the evidence from the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-5 seemed to show that this danger was not so great. The Russian pre-dreadnought Borodino had been sunk at Tsushima by a final magazine explosion after a number of serious ammunition fires, the worst of which broke out as a result of 2-12in hits near the mainmast, about 10 minutes before the final explosion, which occurred after a 12in hit near the foremost beam turret of the 6in secondary armament. Serious ammunition fires or explosions had however occurred at Tsushima in the Russian pre-dreadnoughts Kniaz Suvarov, Orel and Sissoi Veliki without involving a magazine, and previously in another Russian pre-dreadnought, the Poltava, a hit by an I 1 in howitzer shell at Port Arthur had caused a serious fire in a 6m magazine, apparently involving some 12in charges also, but it had been possible to flood the magazines before disaster occurred.
On the Japanese side a violent ammunition explosion from a hit by an 8in shell destroyed a 6in casemate in the armoured cruiser Iwate at the battle of Ulsan. Flames passed down a hoist, but apparently got no further and no magazine was involved. Later at Tsushima in the predreadnought Fuji, a 12 in shell pierced the shield of the after barbette and burst inside, setting fire to 3-12in charges. A large part of the shield was blown away by the shell burst, and water shooting out of the cut hydraulic pressure pipe to one of the loading rams was of great use in quenching the fire. The Fuji's 12 in guns had charges of British type, and it is important to notice the value of a high pressure water source at the site of a propellant fire, and also of free venting to air, both accidentally provided by the shell burst. The Iwate's 6in guns also used British type propellant, but in brass cartridge cases, which would help in limiting the spread of a violent ammunition fire.
Much data is lacking on the fires and explosions in the Russian ships at Tsushima, but the largest fire in the Kniaz Suvarov, that in the .Orel and also in the Sissoi Veliki appear to have concerned the 6in ammunition where the nitro-cellulose propellant charges were in brass cartridge cases, as were those for the Poltava's 6in guns.
The method of ammunition supply to the heavy guns in British capital ships appeared to be reasonably safe in 1914, but no large scale trials with up-to-date turrets had been carried out, and this was the important and blameworthy omission. The magazines were above the shell rooms in all ships, and in the dreadnoughts the magazine crowns were one deck below the armour deck, or two decks below in the Royal Sovereigns, where the armour deck rose to main deck level. The crowns of `Q' magazines in the 13.Sin battlecruisers were also one deck below the armour deck, but in the other turrets in these ships, and in all turrets in the 12in battlecruisers, the magazine crowns were at armour deck level, and slightly above 1wl.
The magazine doors gave access to the handing room where the charges were placed in the lower hoists which were located in a trunk fixed to the rotating part of the turret. These hoists brought the shells and charges for each gun to the working chamber, where they were transferred to the gun loading cage of the respective upper hoist. Waiting positions for two charges were provided in the working chamber, and for two more in the handing room, and in action there would thus be eight charges in a turret between magazines and guns Flash doors were fitted to the trunk and the cages of the hoists, and the propellant was in more or less closed compartments in all stages of its passage from handing room to gun loading cage.
Unfortunately it was not realised how violently British charges would ignite in a turret fire, and the above flash doors were inadequate, the magazine doors were not flash tight under pressure, and flash had a free path to the handing room via the space between the fixed and rotating turret structures, and possibly via other routes. Also there were no magazine scuttles for passing charges, in fact, the magazine doors would be continuously open in action, and many more charges removed from their magazine cases, or in opened cases, than there should have been. There is a revealing remark, too, in the Invincible's reports on the Battle of the Falklands, stating that the flash doors on the gun loading cages in `P' turret had been previously removed as the charges occasionally jammed in the cages, and it was easier to clear the jam if the doors were removed. Nevertheless none of this would have been fatal to the ship if British charges had behaved like German ones."
I absolutely love that this topic came up! I am a chemistry student, currently studying for my PhD in America. Propellants are one of my loves in chemistry, even though I do not do my PhD research on them. I want to preface this post by saying that nobody should ever do what I have done, it's extremely dangerous, and that I also won't be talking about any specifics of how the manufacture of propellants happens.
I have done some work with propellants, nothing that would enable me to be called an expert in any sense, mostly just research and some small scale synthesis/manufacture. I no longer do the synthesis part, as the acid preparation is stupendously difficult and dangerous. Also, having made the modified version Cordite Mk. I as well as formula B, I can say with confidence that (especially if QC is done correctly) cordite does not seem that unstable (and I must stress that this is EXTREMELY relative to black powder and other extremely reactive/unstable compounds) fresh off of the production line. That's not my endorsement of cordite as a remarkably stable propellant, there is a reason we don't use it anymore, but it's not nearly so bad that you'd think it would detonate/deflagrate as easily as black powder. If acid quenching during manufacture was as serious a problem as indicated in the video, then serious decomposition issues would be at hand if either sulfuric or nitric acid at the concentration used for manufacture, especially if storage temperatures were fairly warm.
The crystallization of Nitroglycerin is something I had never come across as a side effect of decomposition of the propellants, however. I am slightly curious about it, but not enough to ever try to store cordite anywhere near human life for anything resembling that kind of extended time period. That said, I was curious if there are any good sources that could indicate what the general magazine temperatures in capital ships (especially Royal Navy ships, since cordite is the topic) could reach during the early 1900s?
I am somewhat curious to see if there's any non-dangerous experiments I could do to model the decomposition of cordite in this fashion. Information on the manufacture of cordite is much more readily available to me than anything resembling detailed information on warships and/or history (at least in the places I know to look) If there's any information out there on the storage conditions that would be present on ships of the time period, I'd greatly appreciate the help.
All three,French,German and British,had warships stationed in tropical Africa and/or South East Asia. For all practical purposes, the only refrigerant available was ammonia which itself is highly flammable and can be explosive. There are accounts of Royal Navy officers stationed there sitting in their wardrooms naked having a hot curry and literally sitting in rivers of sweat. Now just what that meant for the internal temperature of the ships magazines,I simply cannot say. Usually stationed in rivers,most likely the ambient river water temperature would be high. Add boiler heat,the whole ship would heat soak,I would think. I do know there were two propellant formulations prior to WWI,North Sea and Tropical Service. No idea as to detail differences.
Dynamite freezing in winter storage and then safely thawing the stuff was the subject of many magazine articles back about 1905,1910 or thereabouts. Farmers leaving different brands of dynamite in unsafe storage in sheds for years was an ongoing issue until at least the 1950s. Once a sheen of nitroglycerin was seen on the individiual sticks,there was known trouble. There are accounts of wooden shelves soaked in the stuff.
Abandon and burn the shed was about the only advice given. Yikes.
Not sure if any of that addresses your post,but it is what I have.
Black powder doesn't detonate.
@@paulmanson253 that is rather helpful. I am trying to figure out if I can find the formulations, but the info on the dynamite issues sent me in a hood direction as far as this issue goes. Thanks!
@@InkyWeb It occurs to me that a great deal of old US Navy stuff is going to be public record. Paid for by the US taxpayer,so unless secret,public information. The stabilizer used by the Germans was better than anyone else's. I would imagine its choice post WWI. And sparking (!) research into other stabilizers. So just what is available electronically,I cannot say,but different Navy departments,plus such as the USDA,are going to have different levels of info. Happy digging.
Oh,if you can find genuinely old copies of the Encyclopedia Britannica, my father's 1955 edition was informative but I am told the circa 1900 was even better for technical articles.
@@InkyWeb And to this day,quite a bit of cordite washes up on beaches in Newfoundland and New Brunswick. From torpedoed ships. And still burns well when dried out. As to how well it would explode in containment I hope nobody thinks that would be a bright idea as an experiment. So stored in cold seawater,it remains quite stable. Buried in soil,would it degrade to a useful donor of soluble nitrate fertilizer ? No idea. Let someone else find that out.
Oh boy chemistry! I teach chemistry and physics, I'm obsessed with naval history. You have my full attention.
Years ago, we found a cache of a case of dynamite. The outside of the sticks looked kinda sweaty. It was buried out in the open, no buildings nearby. We dug out one side of the case, got a hundred yards away, and used a rifle to dispose of it. Found out later that it was old, unstable, and the sweat contained nitroglycerin. Disposing of it this way was the best choice. Was told sweaty dynamite sometimes makes even experienced EOD people piss in their pants dealing with it.
All dynamite is is nitroglycerin absorbed into diatomaceous earth. The diatomaceous shells helped cushion it. Temperature changes will change the density pumping it out of the earth.
The delay between the initial event is characteristic of industrial dust explosions. A small shock kicks up dust which is then ignited by something like a spark. It deflagrates (< speed of sound). Nitroglycerin dust would not be a fuel-air explosion as NG does not need oxygen to explode. It is a high detonation (>> speed of sound) and tends to crack armors. Also important is the minimum ignition energy (MIE) required by a compound to detonate. NG dust is so volatile that "brush" static is enough to ignite it. In other words, kicking up NG dust and it dust flying through the air creates enough of a static charge to detonate it. Large ungrounded storage tanks, cranes, and large metallic devices can store significant electrical charges to set off many combustible dusts. This is why hydrocarbon-containing tanks have multiple bonds and grounding cables. Electrically insulated parts of a ship might also store enough of a charge to set off very combustible dust like coal dust in a fuel bunker. Deflagrations proceed less than the speed of sound but can be damaging if contained such as under a WW1 trench and produce significant amounts of gas (black powder). There are also hybrid explosions of combined fuels and dust. The low MIE for the fuel (typically a solvent) starts a flash fire which ignites the combustible powder. It tends to be a sustained explosion and is very deadly. Burning solids ejected can fly to other combustible matter and produce a cascade of explosions. From one photo and eyewitness testimony, it is conjecture as to what happened at Jutland due to the lack of time scale, distance scale, and multiple frames showing shockwaves.
I suspect what happened with the LUSITANIA was a coal dust explosion. The ship was nearing the end of its run, so many of the coal bunkers were low with a lot of dusty space. The torpedo explosion throws a lot more coal dust into the air and boom.
Unfortunately we didn't understand the concept of propellant degradation even in Vietnam adequately. In small arms (infantry wpns) the degradation usually results in wildly inconsistent velocities and surprisingly large amounts of unburnt gunk in the action and barrel. Still an issue military units face today.
We made some picrate-based stuff in high school, one of the piles had not 'destabilized' properly when we tried to shock them so instead of going off the dust spread along the desks and floor of the classroom. The next morning when we had a class in the same room you could hear tiny 'explosions' from underneath your shoes and when placing anything on the desk or sitting in the chair.
Sounds like more fun than bubble wrap!
12:00 From your excellent Jutland 3-parter I recall before Beatty got to quip about the British ships exploding easily, the mortally wounded Frances Harvey VC was used his last breath to order the flooding of Q turret magazine just aft of the Vice-Admiral. Maybe it was Grant’s pre-clean-up of the Lion’s base turret & magazine grime that gave the crew those seconds to successfully douse the magazine despite cordite dust accruing during the battle? The immediate flooding of Q turret after the shockwave that “folded back the roof like a used sardine can” ordered by a commander already in medical shock is credited as all that saved HMS Lion and her Vice-Admiral from sharing the fate of half his squadron. In this way HMS Lion appears to be that control data of this Jutland cordite thought experiment 38:33
HM HM THAT WAS NASTY THOSE NINETY-NINE MEN OUCH!
Harveys's tale was a hoax:
"The above account is largely taken from Jellicoe's memorandum of 16 June 1916 which contained notes on the more important damage to the battlecruisers and the Warspite and was later reproduced in Grand Fleet Gunnery and Torpedo Order No 15 on the lessons of Jutland. There is no mention in this of the part played by Major FJW Harvey, RMLI, the officer of the turret, except that he sent a messenger to the bridge to report that the turret was out of action. Major Harvey was awarded a posthumous VC for giving orders to close the magazine doors and flood the magazine when he was mortally wounded; in the event the order to flood the magazine came from the Captain to the transmitting station, and William -Yeo, Stoker 1st class, special messenger to the transmitting station, was the man actually sent to order `Q' magazine to be flooded. The transmitting station asked for the order to be repeated, as the Lion had partially flooded `A' magazine in error at the Dogger Bank battle, and Grand Fleet Gunnery Orders after the action had indicated that the person in charge of a magazine, if there was no fire there, should take steps to find out why the order to flood had been given, and inform a responsible officer of what was occurring.
In this case it was fortunate that `Q' magazine was flooded in time, as tests later showed that magazine doors as then fitted, were by no means flash tight when closed. As it was, a venting plate admitted a tongue of flame into the magazine but no harm was done. At that date magazine venting plates were fitted in handing rooms, so that a sudden pressure rise in the magazine from spontaneously ignited cordite would vent into the handing room and thence up the space between the fixed and revolving turret structures, and also up the turret trunk. They were not flash-tight in the reverse direction."
Major Harvey may have singlehandedly kept the KM from completely realizing the goal of the Jutland sortie which was to destroy a significant portion of the RN. If Beatty blows up, there's three battle cruisers left plus the 5th squadron and and Jellicoe is two hours away. Thanks to Beatty's _excellent_ headwork (rolls eyes), he has no idea of what Hipper or Scheer's course or speed are to send to Jellicoe at the time the Lion hypothetically blew.. Maybe Adm Evan-Thomas would have saved the situation due to his distance from Beatty. Beatty was a narcissistic prat.
All this reminds me of something my dad told me regarding coal bunkers on ships. He said that a coal bunker was far more dangrous empty then full if a ship was struck by a torpedo/shell/explosive. Coal dust would be thrown up into the empty space and if ignited would cause a secondary explosion, similar to a grain elevator explosion. Im not sure how prevalent this was, but might be an interesting topic for another video.
What a very interesting talk you fellows have done. My dear Grandmother Petty told me of an occasion in her youth, where a nitroglycerin transport wagon blew up in rout. The story included the gory finding of body parts over a large debris field.
Incidentally she described the transport wagon as having a large heavy box for the explosive, suspended by multiple springs.
Oof, nice story.
The metal box would seem to make it a grenade, maybe it would be better if it were made more open.
Whenever I feel nervous about something, I'm going to think about this and remind myself, eh it's not that nitro box wagon nervous bad
lol
@@SP-sy5nq build it like a powder magazine, strong bottom and sides, weak top. That way the blast is directed up and away minimizing casualties.
I doubt liquid nitroglycerin was transported anywhere except within the confines of the manufacturing plant where it was mixed into the safer forms of dynamite or gelignite
@@snowflakemelter1172 Actually - it was at one time made in batch plants and then taken to point of use. Proved too dangerous and practice abandoned, but happened. Actually more than once. Look into the history of the building of the Central Pacific and there was some use in oil fields between the Wars.
A new take on an old subject. I’ve changed my mind about Jutland. Interestingly, old film was made of nitrocellulose, and has been know to spontaneously combust. Old movie theaters were sometimes built with blowout back walls for just this reason, and they had thick glass blocks separating the projection room from the audience.
I think nitrocellulose film would explode in theaters when the projector jammed, leaving a single bit of the film in front of the extremely bright, extremely hot projector bulb for too long.
@@SeanCMonahan yes. This is true. Most large theaters used carbon arc lamps, which are not only very bright, but extremely hot. New film was fairly stable if stored properly. But nitrocellulose film degrades over time and will become unstable and there is a risk of it combusting. Several museums have had fires as a result.
What really gets me about modern high explosives is just how stable they are. There are compounds out there that will properly detonate if you look at them the wrong way (this is barely hyperbole, look at the history of fulminating metals and other things that can actually technically detonate). Chemists have come a long way since the first high explosives, it is damned impressive... and a bit scary.
Nitrogen chemistry is cool. So many molecules forced together that'd so much rather be alone. Like a massive party full of introverts lol.
That progress comes on the shoulders of lots of lab accidents involving explosives, at times happening even without knowing that something explosive might be involved.
There is a reason chemists still learn the basics of the "old school" explosives in the beginner courses, so you know what they can do and not to create them by accident (yes that is a thing happening way more often in student labs than you want, I had a couple of instances where I sent students out of the lab with the homework to look up and tell me the next day how I safely got rid of their "waste product" the day earlier...)
love these types of videos about different aspects of naval history though I still love the different ships ones. Still way behind catching up on all the dry docks! Thanks Drach and Matthew, does Matthew also have a channel link as well?
Yes, I do have a tiny little channel. Please don't judge me too hard :p
@@AlmostaDoctor1 found it looks good! Thanks for your work
I hade a reeeeally cool chemistry teacher in the Swedish equivalent to junior high.
In ninth grade he let us make guncotton. We even got to make it twice, since they got the formula wrong the first time.
My friend and I were lab partners, and we actually did discover something important about the process.
While the proportions of the acids is critical to actually get guncotton, the quality is largely determined by how thoroughly you soak the cotton in the acid, and, importantly, how thoroughly you wash the acid out.
Me and my friend did both steps very thoroughly (the teacher let us stay in the lab for almost an hour after class to finish), and we ended up with a top quality product that burned incredibly cleanly.
We found this out when we were testing the guncotton in the next lab session.
We had a glass petri dish full of the stuff to one side, a ball of very loose cotton fluff about the size of a fist. We took small pieces off and set fire to them in a metal dish on the other side of the bench, about a metre away.
One of those pieces combusted so explosively that it shot itself across the table in a split second, landing in the petri dish.
The whole classroom lit up in a yellow flame about a metre tall, and all that was keft was an almost invisible yellowish/brownish residue burned into the surface of the glass.
Most other lab pairs had lumps of slightly sour-smelling cotton that did not burn nearly as well.
"Junior high" seems a strange name for högstadiet, but yes, 9th grade gun cotton was part of the course.
Thank you Sirs! I knew some of it but I had no idea of the historical context. Happy to say I have re-subscribed (a sad story involving a cat, a moth, a full bottle of beer and my laptop unattended, old mobile numbers etc, I lost my accounts, it wasn't personal, honest!).
So very glad to re-visit the site.
Respect and Pax.
In the Navy when you begin your first fire fighting and damage control training evolutions you're taught about Forrestal. It was sobering.
Basically, most of the crew and officers had no damage control and fire fighting training. You can see footage of the crews reading the instructions to their oxygen systems while the ship is burning.
After the initial ignition of a rocket, due to a fault casualty during a test, which impacted into a line of A4 Skyhawk light strike aircraft, loaded up with cannon projectiles, rockets, HE bombs, napalm, and fuel.
There were two fire countermeasures being employed during that damage control fight, salt water and AAAF (A Triple F, basically deprives thermal events of oxygen). Due to the lack of training, the water crews were washing the AAAF off of the fires. A terrifying result of this was liquid fire being washed down into the hangers and interior spaces and unfortunately onto fellow crewmates.
I saw this film and was going to A school to become a gunnersmate. Definitely took these lessons to heart.
This type of presentation is my favorite I think. Technical talks on Naval topics. I for one know a lot about the ship stats ,but these understandable deep dives fill in areas us generalists don't know much about, the how and why's of ships and Naval combat🤔🙂
Something I have seen around is that a lot of early users of early modern explosives (basically everything post Black Powder) suffered from the assumption that their new explosives would basically rot like Black Powder does, where it becomes less effective over time and with contamination. Being basically a mix of two elements in low-reactive forms and a fairly stable nitrogen salt, Black Powder generally becomes less reactive over time in most conditions, not more so. It was a real shock to many that these new chemicals would do things like become more powerful or more sensitive over time.
Nitrocellulose is still the primary ingredient in propellants in shells and even the common small arms round - nitroglycerin as well, in the case of triple base propellants. We wouldn't have smokeless powder without them.
To say both are poor propellants and poor propellants because they cannot be stabilized is incorrect as they have been used practically for nearly 100 years.
It was the inability to completely clean Nitrocellulose, in particular, during that time. It was the perfection of the cleaning which took a very long time to perfect.
I have made both compounds and degradation was always a concern. Boiling Nitrocellulose 4 times in a mild baking soda solution for many hours after the nitration process of cotton still renders Sulfuric acid one the process is done. I always stabilized both with acetone until they were ready for use.
I've recently been watching some of the RUclips channels on the space industry (Scott Manley et. al.) and came across the acronym RUD which apparently stands for Rapid Unplanned Disassembly.
I was a gunner in the RN in the 60,s One of the tests was to check the state of the chamber on 4.5 mk6 barrels This was to insert Gutta percha warmed and then expanded in the chamber This impression was removed and inspected for any erosion scouring
Always loving your explosive content, Drach! You really shell out the best naval content!
...I'll see myself out. 😅
I like the magazine content style of Drach's output recently
Please do ! I LL help the door hit ya in the assets
@@WillMoody-crmstorm 😂
Drach's conclusions really hold water.
Pre- WW1 French Governments were parsimonious with fuel allowances which even effected time at sea so most likely will have effect on running motors for cooling plants even in ports.
An older source on powder handling safety issues is Hatcher’s Notebook, by Julian Hatcher. He noted that some formulations of smokeless powder would detonate if in over a certain quantity, as the mass would act as a tamper on itself. Cordite was two high explosives mixed to deflagrate rather than detonate, but the conditions were critical.
The recent issue with automotive air bags was with using ammonium nitrate as a propellant, which in certain conditions would detonate.
I still have a scar on the outside base of my left thumb from the propellant charge of an airbag in a car nearly 20 years ago. The airbag did save me from serious injury though!
@@vipertwenty249 A friend totalled her car hitting a feral hog, She had nasty airbag bruises on her arms.
@@tomhalla426 Lot of mass in a hog. Friend of mine had bad enough damage from just hitting a sheep.
@@vipertwenty249 Low slung enough it did not go through her windshield, though.
@@tomhalla426 My friend's car (this incident was nearly 40 years ago) was an old mark one Ford Escort (British model) and the damage was more than it was worth. That wasn't the only thing that went wrong for him that weekend though - he broke his wrist exiting from a cave and insisted we take his wetsuit top off before taking him to hospital because he couldn't afford for them to cut it off. Those were the days - trying to lead an active life on a shoestring budget.
When he mentions Forrestal, I remember reading that the leftover Korean War era bombs on the deck were seen leaking paraffin because they’d been so old and improperly stored prior to being loaded on ship.
Nitroglycerin dust in the powder room is the most terrifying thing I've ever heard of.
With even small arms they have to mop out etc indoor shooting ranges or they will have fires because it's like 15 percent unburned gunpowder. I never thought about residue causing a fire or accident in a turret.
I love these colourful drawings of ordnance and cartridges - is there a specific source of high quality scans out there somewhere?
Keep up the good work Drach!
probably the naval archives?
I was hoping more along the lines of hi-res scans. You occasionally get lucky on wikipedia but if I'm looking for a specific piece then I often come up empty-handed.
Most of the colour plates come from "List of Changes" although they are spread about.. Many are reproduced in the various "Treatise on Ammunition" which were published every 15 years or so..
Ideally, one's propellant should benefit one's own goals rather more than those of the opposition. Words to live by.
Much energetic materials research continues unabated to this day for a whole variety of applications, but the unifying theme remains that the special stuff should fall apart in a way that meets a bunch of parameter requirements according to the application, but only when you're very certain you want those requirements met. The difficult thing is not making stuff keen to come apart for you, but rather to have a clear way of communicating that it's time now to fulfil your destiny that hopefully doesn't include misinterpreting other things happening in the environment for your sweet nothings.
Great episode!
What would be informative is a follow-on discussion in regard to HMS Hood. I've read that the magazines flared so hot that the steel lost its temper, broke its keel and folded up.
I have noted before in comments and on patreon that stabilisation chemistry was key to these problems. Part of my early career was working for Nobel division (the explosive division of ICI) I worked as a chemist and physicist on the testing and formulation as well as manufacture of explosives. The industry and particularly Nobel division had taken over manufacturing from Royal ordinance from the great war and consequently there was a lot of handed down experience from handling of things that go boom.
I changed over to nuclear work after a few years, but from the passed down experience of creating and handling from the particularly the Great war experiences stabilisation has been the great lessons learned. The Germans had a better chemical understanding of explosives and stabilisation in those times as their chemical research and industry at that time was the best in world.
The lessons that I learned in such a narrow field from my time with Nobel division are essentially perfectly in agreement with the hypotheses presented in Matthew's excellent and logical presentations of the causes of the failures in handling and storing of explosives and propellants; what he has concluded in his presentation is almost exactly what we gained from the passed experience handed down within the narrow community of the explosive industry.
I loved my time making things go boom and handling explosives in Wales knowing that; time, temperature and stabilisation were the most important things to consider if you did not want to lose anything you considered valuable. Congrats to you both on an excellent piece, Kind Regards JohnH
20:45 - "....end up with a turret that's full of nitroglycerin - in dust form. Which is not good news." Understatement of the week Drach. ;)
YOU'VE SAID THAT RIGHT MR D!
As an ammunition handloader, my heart leapt with joy when Matt finally (44:59) uttered the word "propellant! " ;) This video is like dessert for my brain, guys! Thanks for producing it!
Explosive note that when bombs burn and the expulsive melts and then flows, the side effect is that the liquid then solidifies becomes shock sensitive.
Great video about the various explosives/propellants and their effects and short comings. I worked as a safety officer in the missile industry and actually did a safety awareness presentation based on the Jutland and Forrestal case. The Jutland case definitely seems like safety procedures were being bypassed for firing rate. The Lion’s gun captain was apparently fanatical about propellant safety, and after Q turret was hit, a petty officer was able to flood the magazine, prevent ing a detonation.
The Forrestal case is total massive error chain that went badly wrong! One big contributor was that they had a shortage of 500 lb bombs. They got sent a very dodgy batch of bombs which they were going to reject, but were told this is what you, can get, so these bombs were supposed to be transferred to North Vietnam ASAP. When the deck fires started after the Suni rocket event, these things did not melt, they detonated!
THEY WERE GOD ALMIGHTY BLOODY IDIOTS TO BE USING THOSE BLANKETY-BLANK 500 POUNDERS WHICH WHO WEREN'T THE FIRST FLUSH OF YOUTH TO BEGIN WITH THEY OUGHTA BE SHOT!
It used to happen when old sticks of dynamite would start to sweat out the nitro, when they were wet it was bad, but when it dried and formed crystals...it was deadly. Even it one rubbed against another, major explosion
We need the 'Flux Capacitor' to slow down time, the dicussion went and ended to quickly.
Absolutelty an excellent discussion. Thank you both very much.
I saw that photo at around the ten minute mark of the cordite being made, and could not help saying out loud "Ah, forbidden spaghetti."
As a child my father had a small company he ran out of our garage. He use a great deal of concentrated nitric acid. Starting at age ten or so I used to hang out in his workshop and I remember my cotton T shirts rotting away and turning yellow in a mater of hours. This acid came delivered in huge stainless steel barrels. He was very dangerous with his methods of handling these chemicals.
part of his process he would have 6 inch diameter magnesium pipe machined in a local machine shop. The machine shop would fill several 55 gallon barrels waste chips of pure magnesium. I do remember dad telling the owner of this shop not to keep these chips next to his metal turning lathe because of the fire danger. The owner said he was saving this scrap because it had great value as scrap. A very short time later the fire department called him and we drove down to the machine shop. The only thing remaining of the machine shop was breached bright white concrete block walls and nothing else. The iron lathe had mostly melted. there was no roof, no glass and what steel that was not melted in a puddle had vaporized. Even steel I-beams at the end of the small building had folded over from the heat.
Back a dads shop the reactive nature of nitric acid destroyed everything even the concrete floors Several years later I was still a child and I remember working in the shop on the weekend and a leak started in one of the holding tanks. I managed to stop the leak but in the process burn both hands badly. The skin on my hands turned to leather and weeks later at school I remember pealing all the skin off in one massive tug of the leather skin , starting at my wrist. Dad dropped dead six months later. He was 51 years old. I was surprise he lived so long.
The cotton in our clothing had rotted from exposure to the nitric acid fumes. Im sure it had turn to Gun cotton we were lucky it never exploded or burned.
Please keep in mind that I was only ten years old when these events first started. Dad was a poorly educated yet was a fantastic inventor and would build a kinds of stuff that he used in many applications. Needless to say he took all kinds of risks.
Sunday used to be my cigar day when i sit down with a great Stogie and relax but now it's Wednesday.
Now i watch the Wednesday rum ration with a great cigar and rum and it's a great part of my week.
Thank you, Drachinifel 🤙🤙🤙
The moment he said "Degrade" I had a bad idea where he was going. Dynamite does the same kind of thing, the nitroglycerine.. oh... it forms crystals... no that's really bad. Really bad. And you have an entire magazine full of this. Oh, it forms crystal *dust!* that's... yeah, no, that's really really bad bad. And then someone sneezes on it and your ship goes straight to hell.
Just curious, did Gunner Grant receive some kind of serious recognition for how he showed "higher,higher" that their current practices were unwise and unsafe?
Grant was commissioned to Lieutenant RN shortly after Jutland (actually he was paid less than as a Warrant Officer due to some complications in the pay and seniority lists). His captain recognised that this wa inappropriate and he was put in command of a destroyer.
I wonder if the manufacturer had more contact with the end user, and realized their product was degrading in a dangerous way, how quickly it would have been fixed. Tragic and avoidable.
YOU SAID IT!
These were the early years of smokeless powder, some accidents were bound to have happened.
The explosion damage photo and illustration review is horrifically awesome at telling the forces in play.
42:00 Also, the Italian Benedetto Brin also exploded in warm Mediterraen weather.
6:25 "we dont want to tell you how to make cordite" But you just did, I just have to nitrate glycerin and cotton, which if you paid attention in chemistry class thats easy enough to do, then add some vasalene and you have cordite. Sure the exact rations would have to be played with but a day in the sand pit would sort that bit out.
The legal distinction between ingredients and recipie/technique is important.
@@Drachinifel besides... the idea is to divide out the "bored but unmotivated" and the "I want a boom but I do not want to read things". Those of us with any particular interest already have ebooks from places like Gutenberg... and are just interested in "this is why you need to be extra careful with steps 3 and 4".
Question: could the shock of firing the guns set off the dust crystals?
See 16:30ish!
This is great work. Possibly the biggest step forward in understanding how these ships died since Jurens.
this has always intrigued me for so long! and now u covered it! very much appreciated!
I did 11 years RA. Our supercharge, i.e. the max charge was called charge 7. It looked like a cylindrical polystyrene green in color. There was a bedford near the firing line with these charges on it, only these. Anyway it ignited. Was interesting to watch. Because it was not enclosed it burt like magnesium. After it was done the Bedord was a puddle
I wonder if there were records of heart/blood pressure health issues in the crew working with nitroglicerine and its derivatives
We actually use nitroglycerin to treat heart conditions so I’d be interested in this data too…
It tends to rise rapidly when it detonated.
But more seriously it is a known hazard for workers in these plants.
Yes, *powder headaches.*
Wrote about this in a fictional context, e.g. “head-masher headaches.”
It was gratefully noted there was no averts during this. Thank you.
"Aerosolised nitrogylcerine dust" is the scariest thing I've heard in a long time
Along these lines of interest see "Ignition! A History of Liquid Rocket Propellants" by John D. Clark. An introduction in the chemistry never talked about in polite company.
Love that book
A question for your guest. the germans had an issue with the first smokeless poweder in infantry files before WW1. the G1888 rifles were exploding due to metal issues but also powder. is it possible the fix for the infantry powder filter into the Germany navy's powder manufacturing?
1.) Nitrocellulose - It is a cotton waste converted to nitrate.
2.) Mixed Acids (M/A) - Concentrated Sulphuric Acid (57%) and Nitric Acid (43%) - It is used in nitroglycerine production to nitrate glycerine and to act as a dehydrating agent during the process.
3.) Oleum (Fuming Sulphuric Acid) - It is used in the reprocessing of refuse (spent) acids to concentrate the nitric acid and replace used sulphuric acid.
4.) Glycerine - It reacts with acids under strictly controlled conditions.
5.) Sodium Carbonate - Used to neutralise remaining acids in the separated nitroglycerine and makes it less likely to explode when moved to other processes.
6.) Acetone - A solvent additive that stabilised the nitroglycerine and later in the process helped to gelatinise the nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine to a paste for forming into 'cords'. Acetone is known to most women as a nail-varnish remover.
7.) Vaseline - added to the mix as a stabiliser and gun barrel lubricant.
8.) Graphite - 'Lampblack' to reduce the risk of static ignition in some forms of loose cordite.
9.) Nitroguanidine (Picrite) - It is added to artillery cordite to reduce barrel wear and to stabilise the cordite in storage.
The NTK used mostly two types of explosives: type 97 (Hexanite) and Type 98. What is the later?
a lot of people miss the fact that most explosives and propellants have very similar energy density but wildy different burn rates/detonation velocity. But with a faster burn rate you get a lot more force exerted on the breech rather than more evenly distributed while the projectile moves down the barrel. the shorter the barrel the faster you need it to burn, the longer the barrel the more propellant you can add with a slow burn rate to have an overall higher amount of energy to release.
The German light cruiser SMS Karlsruhe blew up in the Caribbean in November 1914. She was on her way to bombard Barbados when she suffered an internal explosion that tore the ship in half. There doesn't seem be to any information on Wikipedia about what caused the detonation. Anyone have any info?
I'VE READ ABOUT THAT BY READING THE KAISER'S PIRATES BY NICK HEWETT AND I JUST WROTE ABOUT THAT
¨From Campbell:
"Further disasters occurred between 1914 and the date of Jutland. In the British navy the pre-dreadnought Bulwark was blown to pieces in the Medway in November 1914, though it appears that gross carelessness in the treatment of exposed 6in charges and HE shells with live fuzes may have been the reason and not decomposing propellant. The armoured cruiser Natal was sunk in December 1915 at Cromarty, and this ship had much dubious cordite on board. In the German navy, the light cruiser Karlsruhe was lost 350 miles east of Trinidad from an internal explosion in November 1914. The Karlsruhe was extremely unsuited to the tropics as temperatures as high as 76°C had been recorded, and the German Official History remarks that the explosion may have been due to a quantity of lubricating oil thinned with petroleum for use as fuel.
In other navies, an explosion in the old Chilean battleship Capitan Prat, which had some very bad cordite in her magazines, was not disastrous to the ship, as the gases of the explosion had an easy vent to air, while the loss of the Italian pre-dreadnought Benedetto Brin is said to have been due to a bomb placed in the after magazine."
Mr. Drackinifiel, love listening to you brainstorming with Matthew evaluating the pros and cons of different propellants and. Did the blowing up Hood follow the same scenario of the battlecruisers at Jutland with a conflagration then an explosion?
Back in the early 60s, while in HS, a friend and I figured out how to make nitro-cellulose . Our goal was not explosives but rather a homemade solid rocket fuel to refill used Estes model rocket engines. While our never worked as well as the store bought ones, they DID work! We both still have all of our fingers.
My friend went on to get his MS in Physics and worked developing "classified" stuff at the Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton, OH.
I love that every comment is long. I think that says a lot about the subscribers. Great content
Was powder upgraded by the time Hood exploded? It could be possible Bismarck never penitrated the magazine.
yes Cordite SC rather than MD, SC is closer to german RP c/12 used by the Germans at Jutland
Drach has a whole video on Hoods loss
@@Fulcrum205 yes but I was asking if lessons from this video were applied to Hood
@@jonathanevans4610 Barham and Hood still exploded, no German ship exploded, even with magazines on fire.
@@Fix_Bayonets They tried... and failed, as Hood and Barham demonstrated.
Absolutely fascinating video! A very plausible reason as to why the British battle cruisers erupted after there hits.
Something I have learned from watching "Rex's Hanger", progress comes from examining the wreckage.
So I'm now curious about those navies fully operating mainly in warm waters... and with ships somewhat staying in one piece.
Drach always gets that gleam in his eye when talking about all things going bang.
It's a cultural affectation we Americans share with our British cousins - the love of things going "Ka-boom ! ! !"
Not quite as much as when Matt Easton talks about penetration or shafts
Theres a lot of very educational chemistry channels that cover the recipes
7:08 - High explosives _can_ be used to propel things (for instance, in the 1960s, NASA was doing work on Project Orion, a project to propel spacecraft by setting off nuclear bombs behind them, and, although the project was ultimately cancelled, they ran a number of successful small-scale tests using a scale model of the spacecraft design propelled by small charges of dynamite) - just not with a conventional gun (unless you make it ridiculously thick and heavy and sturdy around the breech where the detonation's going to happen). Not saying you're wrong (because you're right), just felt like clarifying a bit.
NUCLEAR-BOMBS? JESUS H CHRIST!
I'm sure this has been commented on but I'm too lazy to scroll that far. Knowing a bit about these processes from a purely chemical standpoint the delicate dance you both did to avoid... unintended... complications of this discussion was rather fun to listen to. Thanks gents.