Regarding Mythbusters not being able to use a bigger cannon: Their insurance and legal people banned them from ever using a full-size cannon again after a certain darkly hilarious incident where they were _extremely_ fortunate to only cause (extensive) property damage. A cannonball, instead of embedding itself in their firing range berm as they'd expected bounced off, got some pretty impressive air and _kept_ bouncing all the way through a neighborhood, a house (passing through a bedroom in which a couple was sleeping at the time) and a car window before finally coming to rest in a minivan's passenger seat. After that all further cannon experiments were vetoed.
I heard about that incident, never saw the episode. It turned alot of people in that neighborhood against them. But then again...you live next to a bomb range
@@dgthe3 I hope that she got a bloody big bonus for doing that. Pregnant or not, the sentence "We're sorry our cannon destroyed your house." does little to turn aside wrath, I suspect.
Quick note about scaling model testing. The *wavemaking* resistance can be scaled from a model test. The resistance from fluid friction has to be calculated for the full size hull. This is because the wavemaking resistance scales with the Froude Number. So you can scale the wavemaking resistance as long as the model and ship are at the same Froude Number. But frictional drag scales with the Reynolds Number, which would mean you’d need to test the model at the same Reynolds Number as the ship. But testing the model at the same Reynolds number is effectively impossible, because the model would need to go orders of magnitude *faster* than the full size ship.
All this talk of Reynolds numbers is giving me flashbacks to college....and I'm feeling an unsettling urge to start screaming in terror. Suffice to say, I did not enjoy my fluid dynamics courses 20ish years ago. To date in my engineering career, I've managed to avoid any and all references to such arcane knowledge. Thanks to this video, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be having nightmares for the next few days.....🤣
Some time ago I visited a university pool that was used by the naval engineering people to test hull designs. In particular they were specialized in ice breaker hulls. IIRC for scaling purposes they used a mixture of water and ethanol. They joked it was the largest reservoir of vodka in the country. :)
Correction on the Centreline AA turrets, the King/Nimitz redesign for Iowas 5 and 6 used a centreline AA mount fore and aft, and got the space and weight needed by trunking the funnels into one, shortening the super structure, and deleting the conning tower, they were also to receive 28 quad 40mm mounts and 70 twin 20mm mounts. It obviously was never realized but you can’t say it was never contemplated or considered.
Wargaming with Drach's estimates on what the French converted Dunkerque carriers would have looked like: write that down _write that down!_ I can already practically see the CV line lol
39:20 Funnily enough, this came up in the Cameron report on Bismarck, which I of course started reading as soon as I finished that video :) Baron von Mullenheim-Rechberg recalled in conversation with Garzke and Dulin that the radars weren't installed until after Bismarck had done her gunnery trials, which he found a "puzzling" decision.
Bismarck had lots of issues when she was sent out. Another one is that her 105mm AA guns had 2 different mountings, the C31 and the C37, which were apparently "stolen" from Tirpitz. Thus, half of her heavy AA suffered from faulty fire control. The decision to send the ship out in this state is beyond me.
@@michaelkovacic2608 This one also came up in the Cameron report - Bismarck was apparently supposed to have eight C37 mounts, but four were diverted to fulfil a trade deal with the Soviet Union and were replaced with the C31s.
Regarding Bismarck's radar, I do believe Scharnhorst also knocked out her radar with her first salvo during her encounter with HMS Renown, which prevented her from effectively engaging Renown as the latter could fight from an area with low visibility while the German ships were silhouetted against the rising sun. Gneisenau didn't experience similar difficulties, but had her foretop hit and her 1st gunnery officer killed, which forced both ships to withdraw. 2 months later, during the sinking of HMS Glorious, neither Scharnhorst nor Gneisenau had any apparent difficulties with their fire control, given how they repeatedly hit Glorious through smokescreens. Scharnhorst did lose her radar again due to the torpedo hit by HMS Acasta, but by that time, the damage to Glorious had already be done.
Renown was engaged under truly dreadful sea conditions. Both German battleships had numerous problems with flooding of the A-turret and salt water inundation of the fire control systems. Renown had her own issues, but the Germans expressed amazement at her rate of fire and accuracy, all the while expressing dismay at their own assorted gunnery problems due to the flooding.
@@davefinfrock3324 That is all true, but Renown was very lucky nevertheless. She scored 3 hits on Gneisenau, all of which hit important areas. A 15inch shell struck the foretop, killed the gunnery personnel and also damaged the secondary rangefinder atop the bridge with shrapnel, a 4.5inch shell hit A turret and knocked off the plate which covered the rangefinder, allowing seawater to enter the turret, and another 4.5inch shell hit one of the 105mm heavy AA guns. Gneisenau scored two 11inch hits, but those hit unimportant areas. Renown was also built with a higher freeboard which greatly helped her in those sea conditions. She also had the weather advantage due to the sunrise taking place at that time behind the German ships.
@@michaelkovacic2608 Fascinating that the secondary battery performed so well in disabling various vulnerable equipment. Especially things one wouldn't really think to consider.
@@mysss29 I believe this shows what a complete pissing match this battle really was, when your secondaries score more hits than your main battery, then you know something is not right.
Ah yes censoring photos! I Read in a book written by Peter Cremer, German U-Boat commander, That they had some fine photo's of British escorts Taken in Spain across the bay to Gibraltar. These photo's showed the HUFF DUFF antennae, at least until censors edited the background so no one would be able to tell where the pictures were taken. They also removed the critical antennas from the photo. This occurred as U-Boat losses were increasing precipitously and Admiral Doenitz was, along with the staff were trying to figure out how the Allies were suddenly so successful. If you would like to read the book, it is U-Boat Commander - Peter Cremer. I wouldn't call it a text book, but it is an excellent written account of his experience,
Another thing Mythbusters got wrong was saying that the 'myth' that sailors can be pulled down with sinking ships was 'busted' They used a very small boat to test it the claim and ignored countless reports of sailors being pulled down by sinking ships.
It's been a long time since I've seen the relevant Mythbusters episodes -- but I was left with an impression that, in addition to the issues you mentioned about the gun and the "hull" construction, that there was a disconnect around what constituted a "splinter". Something about their wrap-up led me to believe that they thought the deadly splinters in question were the small wood fragments that would be called splinters during woodworking, or general handling of wooden objects -- say up to maybe 2" long. (If true then that explains why they didn't address the large chunk of post that was sent flying; but it would also mean there had been a failure in their pre-episode research or understanding).
When I watched that episode, and saw both what they were shooting at and what they were shooting with, I made the same judgement that Drach did -- just from the illustrations in my copy of _Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War, 1600-1815_ it was clear that what they'd built wouldn't have been acceptable as a model of a merchantman's hull, much less a warship's. Although if they'd actually built something to the same standards as a ship of the line, they would have been able to claim the myth was 'busted' because the (estimated) six-pounder gun they would be firing at it wouldn't have penetrated.
Thank you for responding to my question about scaling the mythbusters tests. Not to disparage them, but “Our method might’ve been flawed, but the data was good,” stood out as a frequent refrain in the mythbusters aftershow discussions and for reasons, it sounded plausible in that case.
I think the scale problem with the splinter experiment is best analyzed by splitting firewood. Use a 5 pound splitter and hit it hard, it explodes. Hit it with a 1 lb hatchet and it will make a crack. You can’t examine the crack from the 1 pounder to predict the five pounder results.
I worked at Todd Shipyard in San Pedro CA. My uncle Bill Evans was welder/cutter supervisor on drydock there; two tales from drydock, while cutting steel for scrap of liberty ship built at same yard in 1940s a space that was supposed to be square had small 45 degree in one corner ? When offset was cut out a skeleton in a welding suit was found and police called ! . Second; did you know the "love boat" ships would come in once a year for "cleaning" what the dry dock crew would do, would be to cut out main waste lines and replace them rather than clean them due to clogged/ reduced opening because of how much waste produced by people eating so much food at the buffet !
Ship's design drawings going back and forth between specifying steel plate by thickness or weight is an issue that we still deal with in modern shipbuilding (at least at the yard I work at)
With regards to the King George V armour thickness (and British armour plates in general), British armour weights were specified in lbs per sq foot. In design documents the conversion was universally done (in my experience) as 40 lbs : 1" so 15" and 600 lb plates are used interchangably. However, plates were rolled to the weight specifcation, and the precise conversion is 40.8 lbs : 1". So the 15" plates are actually 600 lb / 40.8 = 14.71" thick, at least nominally. This difference between 40.8 and 40 is about 2%, which was apparently considered too small to be of any note. For example, with a 5" plate, it's the difference between it being 125mm and 127mm thick. A 1/10th of an inch being not worthy of note. Generally, take any British plate's design thickness and multiply by 98% to get its actual thickness. e.g. 14" x 98% = 13.7". Direct evidence for this can be seen in the handbook for the 14-inch gun, which lists the turret armour thicknesses. Unlike any other document I've seen, this gives the thickness in precise values. So while the Ship's Cover talks of a 13" faceplate and a 6" roof, the handbook lists 12.74" CA and 5.88" NCA. These are the values you get if you use the 40.8 lb : 1" conversion. You can also see this if you compare the design and actual weights in the completed ship. The design weights assumed 40.8 lb per square foot, whereas the completed weights were to 40 lb per square foot. So the KGV's belt armour was designed to be 4,755 tons. The completed ship had 4,640 tons, or 97.6% (compared to the theoreretical 98%) of the nominal rounded number. The final aspect was the rolling tolerance. For the KGVs this is listed in Buxton's "Battleship Duke of York". For belt armour this tolerance was 0 lb/sqft over and 10 lb/sqft under, for deck armour this was 0 lb/sqft over and 2.5lb/sqft under. So, the design documents referred to a 15" or 600 lb plate, but the design weights taken reflected to 'full' value of 612 lbs (15" X 40.8). The plate manufacturers however would roll to the 600 lb nominal thickness, and had a +0 / -10 lb/sqft tolerance, so the actual plate thickness was allowed to be 590 to 600 lbs thick (providing it met performance requirements, of course). Given that the ship's final armour weights were 97.6% of the design weights, the typical 15" plate was likely approximately 597 lbs thick (612 x 97.6%). Or in other words, 14.63" or 372mm.
@@gregorywright4918 Some armor plate was saved for various purposes. Some was used for low-background steel to shield radiation detectors; steel made in the years of atomic testing was 'contaminated' with atmospheric radioactive particles that would cause such instruments to register false positives. Other times big armor plates were used as the backstops of shooting ranges.
The USS Olympia (C-6/CA-15/CL-15/IX-40) had hatches that went from the Superstructure (lifeboat) Deck, down to the top of the turtleback armor, which I assume also had hatches in it. They appear to be too small to lift out or replace the boilers and triple expansion engine intact, but were probably designed to allow removal/replacement of the components that could not be broken down smaller. The booklet of general plans is available online.
Drach, I'm sure you may already be aware but the Battleship Texas Foundation is moving the ship today from its berth at LaPorte, Texas to the drydock in Galveston. I's great to see the ship underway again, although it is moving very slowly under tow. Everything seems to be going well although it does look like it's riding a little low in the water. But nothing alarming. Getting an update video on this great ship would be great.
The document that the builders for KGV would be following would almost certainly be the Ship Spec or its equivalent. It supersedes all other documentation because it is the document that the shipbuilder is contractually held to.
I'd recommend watching the Forgotten Weapons videos about the L96 sniper rifle to get a flavour of the ridiculous and idiotic things contractors have been known to do, either because it'll save them money or they just think they know better.
26:05 Polish plans were to have 2 cruisers, 12 destroyers and some submarine, but budget limitations stopped that. So there wasn't an idea for a coastal defense battleship. Interesting to know what size and layout of cruiser they were planning though, if they took some ideas from the Germans like the pocket battleships i.e. Deutschland class cruisers, which could take on Schleswig-Holstein
Richard Worth noted in "Fleets of World War II" that there was a proposal for 3 25,000 ton ships; 9 12 inch guns, sexondary 12 5.9 inch guns, unknown dual purpose battery, 6 torpedo tube, on 30 knots. Worth noted it was a rather ambitious armament per displacement. Unfortunately... worth did not include footnotes, so it is a bit hard to chase down the original source (assuming it exists).
@@prussianhill fascinating it would be cool if we could find the blueprints, the Polish used the British to build their destroyers and submarines so maybe it was a British 25,000 12 inch design that was the base for what they were looking at before adding their specific specifications for the polish navy.
I don't think a ship like KMS Deutschland would have been quite so dangerous to a ship like KMS Schleswig-Holstein. Despite its age, KMS S-H was still a battleship, pairing powerful guns to heavy protection, so its weaponry could defeat cruiser levels of protection at ranges far greater than any cruiser's guns could defeat the KMS S-H's own. Even the Deutschland, with low-end battleship guns of its own, was not complimenting those guns with low-end battleship armor, so it would be risking citadel penetration at ranges where its own guns would not be certain of doing the same. This is one reason Germany didn't immediately replace the Schleswig-Holstein when they had the chance, because only dreadnought battleships actually represented a threat beyond S-H's ability to handle on favorable terms. There was a reason the Allies threw so many bombers at the old battleships, trying to keep them disabled in port, because there were basically no Allied warships sailing in the Baltic that could match them in a stand-up fight.
@@genericpersonx333 it was a pre dreadnought battleship with the same calibre guns although the deutschlands were slightly updated. The thing it did have was better armour on the other hand it had older range finding tech.
@@Alex-cw3rz Bear in mind, KMS S-H was extensively modernized so its firecontrol was not so old as one might think. Either way, the battleship's armor gave it a stand-off range measured in the high thousands of meters, so that is a long time for a Deutschland to be sailing closer and closer to be sure its guns will have the desired effected while any one of those incoming shells could be fatal. Not saying the Deutschland didn't have a chance, but it would have been very risky for anything short of a dreadnought battleship to take on Schleswig-Holstein because penetrating 24cm belts and multiple armored decks is no simple thing even for 283mm guns.
If you look at a chart of the Finnish archipelago, you see that draft is a big issue as is navigation. I think that Ilmarinen would have got the upper hand in that environment.
It is fun listening to Drac dropping the mike on the idiots that fixate on a few sentences in a report and try to bend it to the truth they want to believe. Well done.
Another issue with HESH rounds is that they work best at relatively low velocities. The plastic explosive has to form a 'pat' before detonating and high velocities would just splatter it uselessly. Low velocities and naval gunnery likely don't mix.
That is objectively wrong. Because of the large distances the shells travel, at the point of impact naval shells have drastically lower velocities than shells in army application. For direct fire against armored targets in army terms 3km is extremely long range. 3km in naval terms is knife fighting range. Also the muzzle velocity of HESH from a royal ordonance L7 105mm gun for example is about 730m/s. The Iowas guns had a muzzle velocity of about 820mm for HE and other multipurpose shells and 760m/s for AP. Naval artillery shells have either about the same or lower velocity than their army counterparts when they impact.
@@schullerandreas556 For the Chieftain tank round, impact velocity seems to have been about 0.6km/s. So, yes, the (relatively) limited range in land use is definitely a thing. So that makes the HESH even more problematic for naval use because you would have to consider whether the round will hit fast and splatter at short range or be slow and effective at long range. So as Drachinifel points out, for naval use a HE round would be less 'fussy'. Out of interest, why is it 'objectively' wrong rather than just wrong?
@@schullerandreas556 even if velocity was a real issue, a HESH shell would be lighter than an AP shell of identical dimensions. At practical battle ranges, that lighter shell will lose more of its initial velocity and have a lower striking velocity.
Even if that was an issue, it could almost certainly be worked around (by shell or guns design) if HESH presented a significant value in naval combat. But HESH was effective against tanks because tanks have a single, small interior volume filled with fragile and critical items. Ships are large, compartmentalized, and critical items are much more spread out. Even against tanks HESH never really got broad acceptance compared to sabotted AP and HEAT with it only achieving and significant use outside the British and their former empire because it came with the immensely successful L7 gun. It mainly survives for use against structures and fortifications where it concentrated the blast more than HE so most wasn't just wasted in the air around the target but was less concentrated than HEAT resulting in much broader damage. HESH could be useful for shore bombardment, but heavy naval funds were already such a degree of overkill in that role that it isn't worth degrading their naval warfare capability.
@@88porpoise That's probably the main issue. HESH is fine for relatively short ranges (tank vs tank) where a low velocity retains a relatively flat trajectory. Under those circumstances, any impact will be near-orthogonal and against armour. For a ship, the angle will be highly variable and possibly against superstructure. My guess is that against a non-flat target, HESH will be less than optimal and a HE round likely better.
I would think that the critical width for a drydock is likely to be the maximum beam of the ship which for most ships built in the last hundred years or more is likely to extend pretty close to the bottom. Aircraft carriers are the one exception I can think of with the often huge overhang on modern carriers. Much of the choice of vertical vs sloping walls can be a result of soil conditions and the availability of shoring. Soft soils with a shallow angle of repose will require a very wide excavation at the top relative to the bottom unless elaborate shoring is used to support the sides of the excavation.
Fundamentally scaling impacts is difficult as the amount of energy to be resisted is quadratic with velocity but the forces generated are a function of the momentum change which is linear with velocity.
Just a quick throw-in since some listeners might not be aware of it: Yes, Bucentaure would be classified as a third-rate under the British rating regime, but her firepower was remarkably greater than those of any British-build third rate of the time: With a broadside weight of roughly 540 Kilos (using Kilos here since the weight of British and French pounds differed somewhat), a Bucentaure or Tonnant Class Ship of the Line was equal in firepower to British second or first rate Ships of the Line ,making the nominal firepower difference between Bucentaure and Victory not quite so damming as "104 vs 80 guns" might sound.
@@gregorywright4918 the french had some kind of their own caronnades later, but for the Tonnant and Buccentaure Class the broadside weigth pre 1806 resulted from two factors: A long waterline resulting in many large caliber guns per gundeck, and comparativley large guns (i.e. french 36 pounders on the lower gundeck when the british used their 32 pounders on that Deck).
At 26:05, Richard Worth noted in "Fleets of World War 2" that a polish proposal for a 25k ton battleship capable of 30 knots that was ambitiously armed with 9 12 inch guns, 12 5.9 inch guns, unknown dual purpose guns and 6 torpedo tubes existed. Unfortunately Worth did not include any footnotes so chasing the original source (assuming it exists) would be a rough challenge.
So basically a Scharnhorst with slightly bigger guns and less armor, due to the 7000 ton difference. However, given that it was only a proposal, detailed plans might not exist at all.
I would bet that there are reasons for either a slab or stepped dry dock as well, a stepped one you could float more stuff in, manuver it close together as you bring the water level down, and like you said stepped drydocks require less excavation, but also it might be the only way to build a drydock in a given area's geology
Apologies if you’ve already covered these in one of your many videos: if someone could point out which one, I’d gladly watch it. What if… after the raid on Scarborough (16 December 1914), Ingenohl did not immediately turn back to Germany after the raid, but instead engaged the pursuing battle cruisers and battleships with his much larger force? What effect might that have had on the naval actions during WWI? And… What if… von Spee had immediately started the return voyage to Germany on 6 December instead of raiding the Falkland Islands?
56:50 - This is true even today, with the reactors in nuclear-powered ships generally being designed to last the length of the ship's service life, after which it's off to the scrapyard, and, hence, not being designed to be easily removable or replaceable (this is why turning entire nuke vessels into museum ships is generally cost-prohibitive); it's just that nowadays the lives of both the ship and its powerplant are measured in large multiples of decades.
The Bismark's radar suite was not installed until *after* she completed her sea and firing trials. The first time the radar was tested with the guns firing was in the Battle of Denmark Strait.
The Cruiser ( pennant # 130 is in Yokosuka, Japan...Formerly the Yokosuka Arsenal of the IJN, its now a US Naval base...However, the JMSDF also use these facilities and the Submarine base for the Yokosuka Naval district is on the US installation.
While you mention sneak attacks in the fog a question came up in my mind , when was smokescreening employed in military tactics ? how would it be done in the age of sail or started it way later ?
You may have addressed this in your original discussion (I can't find it quickly), but I think the basic difference was 'two nations separated by a common language'. In modern US usage, a splinter is only used for a piece of wood you extract from your finger with a tweezer. Obviously, the shot you used here shows what a 17th century sailor would have called a splinter. A little original research would have paid off here.
With regards to the armor plate thickness, the actual thickness may depend on how the plate was paid for. Was it paid on a flat price for the job, on a price per square foot, or on a price per pound? Alloy plates bought in quantity today are actually sold on a price per pound. Because of this the mill will try to roll the plate to nearly the maximum thickness tolerance making it as heavy as they can. resulting in more profit for the supplier.
Years a go I met a old gentleman. He was on the Colorado in that battle. We would talk a bit about what he did. I thought the next time we met he was going to tell me some stories. But I learned he died suddenly.
1/350 scale test runs way more issues. Air density and water density if I remember is significant as things get smaller. Don't get me started on the physics of 1/350 scale 16" gun 😁🤪 not to mention how silly it would look firing. Imagine the challenges of making a shell that small. 😝
Wondering if it would be possible to answer something along the lines of Main gun placement on a ship e.g: HMS Nelson and FS Richelieu having all forward gun placements. moreover, a page about an explanation or reason behind gun placement either doesn't exist or I just can't seem to find one, considering some of the unique placements in WW1 (HMS Bellerophon and SMS Kaiser come to mind), I'd want to know more about it
5:30 One of the other things with Mythbusters is they do entertainment not so much science. There have only been a couple of myths that they did the full science and that was because they didn't have a choice they where dangerous to a point they couldn't have done it without that level of science. The two that spring to mind is the explosive decompression and bullet fired strait up being as lethal going down as up.
The topic @20:20 ? I'm thinking that this may be why, at least in part, that ships within the same classmay have had different characteristics in regard to balance/displacement or "feel" or possibly even top speed capabilities ? Different plate thickness, over a wide area, I think would have it's effects. Unless they were aware of it & balanced out their applications upon installation to counter possible ill-gotten effects ? Interesting, nonetheless !! 🚬😎
Sometimes equipment, even up to engines, varied between ships of a single class. Availabilities, cost, time of order, etc all varied. Even when built in the same shipyard.
Referring to 04:16 and splinters: There was a video done in Britain, I forget what the title was, but it was an investigation about the USS President, which was one of the 6 frigates that were built between the end of the US War Of Independence and the end of the War of 1812.... It covered the fact that the President had it funds "diverted" (basically spent by local politicians and business people on something other than the ship that was supposed to be built) and was built with substandard (for shipbuilding) wood. They did a test fire with a small naval cannon from the Napoleonic Period, and scaled down the hull of the USS Constitution where the cannon ball did bounce off of the hull's side at a short range (they scaled that down as well). When they test fired it against what their research indicated that the USS President's hull was made of, and at the same range, (and same reduction in scale for the hull thickness), it was splinters and chunks of wood everywhere!!!
Isn't the splinters proven on the armor test? The armor test of naval guns. Or the gun test? Or the shell test on tanks that squish on the armor and send a shock wave thru? Just needs to be scaled up?
I honestly think Drach is kind of a britaboo about British Ironclads. Now, I don't doubt the HMS Warrior could defeat the CSS Stonewall/Kotetsu. They were much larger and had many, many more guns. However, I don't think Drach's account of how she would do against the CSS Stonewall. However, there are several things he ignores 1) It is unlikely that the penetration of the 68 lbr was nearly as good as claimed. Yes, the 68lbr did manage to penetrate 4.5 inches of armor using a Pallister shot in 1862. However, this has two big problems. Firstly, the Pallister shot was not officially adopted by the British navy until 1867. Secondly, nearly every penetration test from that time period turned out to be massively optimistic under actual battlefield conditions. The 68 lbr gun was never actually taken into combat, so we don't really have a good idea how it would have performed. 2) Attempting to "kite" the CSS Stonewall likely would have been totally ineffective. Drach ignores in this calculus the armament of the CSS Stonewall. The Stonewall was armed with all rifled cannons, including a massive 10 inch 300 lbr armstrong rifle. These were muzzle-loading guns which did not suffer the problems of the 110lbr rifles the Warrior carried. The result of this is that the Stonewall would likely have had much more accurate fire with its guns than the British could have managed, assuming the Confederacy was using a well-trained crew. When you take into account the smaller size of the Stonewall, it really makes sense for the Warrior to close the range to maximize effective penetration and accuracy as the Confederate gun would be less effected by range. Undoubted, the Warrior would win such a slung fest, but even a few 10 inch penetrations would cause severe damage.
Drach, sir? May be out of your purview, but please, some of the rent paid by the Scottish earls were longboats, were they built in Scotland or on the norse mainland?
Well on stuff made for upgrading the Colorado class twin 16 turrets just happened to be the same diameter as 14" triple standard turrets, so in theory if the wheels fell off the treaties in the 20s or early 30s when the speed of the Standards wasn't such a problem the US could have Coloradoed the 12 14" gun standards
@@gregorywright4918 although you would have the deck armor problem the Big 5 (Colorado and Tennessee classes) had a bit of extra machinery space built in compared with Pennsylvania and New Mexico classes where they could potentially have been bumped up to around Queen Elizabeth speed if they had been refit in an era before they needed massive torpedo bulges.
RE bismarck failed radar- did the bismarck not send this info??o via radio to hq soon after it was damaged? Would the radio archives not have this info?
Did the Royal Navy and other navies adjust their training programs as the literacy of the sailors increased? In Nelson's time, most sailors learned hands-on, but by WWI, nearly all were literate.
gun decks were open. shot could travel the length, potentially hitting every gun station. while from the side you're looking at 2. there are Windows and a square back on the stern, for the captain's cabins etc. while the bow is planked and curved. so easier to penetrate the stern. the rudder and steering gear is back there too. so a chance to lose mobility.
In the event a British armor supplier was contracted to supply a large continuous piece of, say, 15” thick piece of battleship armor. If for whatever reason it came out seriously under spec and outside the acceptable margin of error, say 14” thick instead, what then? Back to the melter? Huge loss for the contractor on that job? Or something else?
Concerning the censoring of ships' armament. I have a photo in one of my books showing a gun being lowered onto a mounting pad on the deck of a merchant ship, with the serial number of the gun scratched out. That would not be to hide the type of gun, but it might well be to try and hide how ancient the weapon was?
Might also be to hide how many of the guns were available, where they had come from or just about anything else... All depends on what was publicly known about them...
Its kind of weird everybody seems to just assume the bismarck had the most advanced stuff out there, when in reality its the US and British that had the most advanced systems on their ships, and ships plural, the germans only had a small surface fleet and the 1 Bismarck
Slight problem with the Stonewall, both sides' ironclads were notoriously terrible at manuvering, especially in the riverine combat they tended to be deployed in, maybe being built in france it wasn't CSS Virginia levels of poor handling but I can't imagine them being able to get into ramming position against a monitor either
Hi Drach. Just watched youtube short, very short, on USS Salem. What was it like, how did it serve? Most importantly how do you think it might have done in WWII as speed, sailing alone delivering equipment- officers-politicians, fighting other cruisers, shore bombardment, or shore bombardment.
Yes, quite. However, he did correct himself and just meant that vacuum tubes (triodes) were being used to perform the same function as transistors in those Radar circuits. One should assume that he did know that the transistor wasn't invented until 1947.
Aren't all hits on battleships lucky considering how far away they are I don't imagine the gun crew at 15 17 miles going ok let's aim for the turrets I'm not trying to be a smart ass I'm genuinely curious maby I'm missing something I'm not trying to start an argument
15 to 17 miles is about 1,900 yards further than Warspite's hit on Giulio Cesare or Scharnhorst's on Glorious, so, yeah at that range you're happy to get a straddle.
Yep, aiming at specific parts of the hull isn't really a thing at any real range. However a hit can still be lucky if it hits something critical as opposed to not being lucky when you straddle the enemy ship (aka aiming correctly but being trolled by the dispersion of your guns).
Regarding Mythbusters not being able to use a bigger cannon:
Their insurance and legal people banned them from ever using a full-size cannon again after a certain darkly hilarious incident where they were _extremely_ fortunate to only cause (extensive) property damage.
A cannonball, instead of embedding itself in their firing range berm as they'd expected bounced off, got some pretty impressive air and _kept_ bouncing all the way through a neighborhood, a house (passing through a bedroom in which a couple was sleeping at the time) and a car window before finally coming to rest in a minivan's passenger seat.
After that all further cannon experiments were vetoed.
I heard about that incident, never saw the episode.
It turned alot of people in that neighborhood against them.
But then again...you live next to a bomb range
@@TrickiVicBB71 apparently that episode got destroyed as part of the settlement
@@TrickiVicBB71 They sent a pregnant Kari in to apologize, figuring that people are less likely to be horrible to a pregnant woman.
@@dgthe3 I hope that she got a bloody big bonus for doing that. Pregnant or not, the sentence "We're sorry our cannon destroyed your house." does little to turn aside wrath, I suspect.
@@notshapedforsportivetricks2912 well yes but the" here a some millions ... “Probably will help
Quick note about scaling model testing. The *wavemaking* resistance can be scaled from a model test. The resistance from fluid friction has to be calculated for the full size hull. This is because the wavemaking resistance scales with the Froude Number. So you can scale the wavemaking resistance as long as the model and ship are at the same Froude Number. But frictional drag scales with the Reynolds Number, which would mean you’d need to test the model at the same Reynolds Number as the ship. But testing the model at the same Reynolds number is effectively impossible, because the model would need to go orders of magnitude *faster* than the full size ship.
All this talk of Reynolds numbers is giving me flashbacks to college....and I'm feeling an unsettling urge to start screaming in terror. Suffice to say, I did not enjoy my fluid dynamics courses 20ish years ago. To date in my engineering career, I've managed to avoid any and all references to such arcane knowledge. Thanks to this video, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be having nightmares for the next few days.....🤣
Oops I jus made the same comment. This is why hill design for seakeeping is so difficult even now.
Some time ago I visited a university pool that was used by the naval engineering people to test hull designs. In particular they were specialized in ice breaker hulls. IIRC for scaling purposes they used a mixture of water and ethanol. They joked it was the largest reservoir of vodka in the country. :)
@@jbepsilon USS Screwdriver v HMS Martini?
Correction on the Centreline AA turrets, the King/Nimitz redesign for Iowas 5 and 6 used a centreline AA mount fore and aft, and got the space and weight needed by trunking the funnels into one, shortening the super structure, and deleting the conning tower, they were also to receive 28 quad 40mm mounts and 70 twin 20mm mounts. It obviously was never realized but you can’t say it was never contemplated or considered.
Wargaming with Drach's estimates on what the French converted Dunkerque carriers would have looked like: write that down _write that down!_
I can already practically see the CV line lol
Dear god
well there is t6 cv bearn , but thats a story for another day : 20 knots max speed because it has troubles with ship engines
39:20 Funnily enough, this came up in the Cameron report on Bismarck, which I of course started reading as soon as I finished that video :) Baron von Mullenheim-Rechberg recalled in conversation with Garzke and Dulin that the radars weren't installed until after Bismarck had done her gunnery trials, which he found a "puzzling" decision.
Bismarck had lots of issues when she was sent out. Another one is that her 105mm AA guns had 2 different mountings, the C31 and the C37, which were apparently "stolen" from Tirpitz. Thus, half of her heavy AA suffered from faulty fire control. The decision to send the ship out in this state is beyond me.
@@michaelkovacic2608 This one also came up in the Cameron report - Bismarck was apparently supposed to have eight C37 mounts, but four were diverted to fulfil a trade deal with the Soviet Union and were replaced with the C31s.
@@Dafmeister1978 sorry I got it wrong, thx for clearing it up.
Regarding Bismarck's radar, I do believe Scharnhorst also knocked out her radar with her first salvo during her encounter with HMS Renown, which prevented her from effectively engaging Renown as the latter could fight from an area with low visibility while the German ships were silhouetted against the rising sun. Gneisenau didn't experience similar difficulties, but had her foretop hit and her 1st gunnery officer killed, which forced both ships to withdraw.
2 months later, during the sinking of HMS Glorious, neither Scharnhorst nor Gneisenau had any apparent difficulties with their fire control, given how they repeatedly hit Glorious through smokescreens. Scharnhorst did lose her radar again due to the torpedo hit by HMS Acasta, but by that time, the damage to Glorious had already be done.
Renown was engaged under truly dreadful sea conditions. Both German battleships had numerous problems with flooding of the A-turret and salt water inundation of the fire control systems. Renown had her own issues, but the Germans expressed amazement at her rate of fire and accuracy, all the while expressing dismay at their own assorted gunnery problems due to the flooding.
@@davefinfrock3324 That is all true, but Renown was very lucky nevertheless. She scored 3 hits on Gneisenau, all of which hit important areas. A 15inch shell struck the foretop, killed the gunnery personnel and also damaged the secondary rangefinder atop the bridge with shrapnel, a 4.5inch shell hit A turret and knocked off the plate which covered the rangefinder, allowing seawater to enter the turret, and another 4.5inch shell hit one of the 105mm heavy AA guns. Gneisenau scored two 11inch hits, but those hit unimportant areas.
Renown was also built with a higher freeboard which greatly helped her in those sea conditions. She also had the weather advantage due to the sunrise taking place at that time behind the German ships.
@@michaelkovacic2608 Fascinating that the secondary battery performed so well in disabling various vulnerable equipment. Especially things one wouldn't really think to consider.
@@mysss29 I believe this shows what a complete pissing match this battle really was, when your secondaries score more hits than your main battery, then you know something is not right.
Ah yes censoring photos! I Read in a book written by Peter Cremer, German U-Boat commander, That they had some fine photo's of British escorts Taken in Spain across the bay to Gibraltar. These photo's showed the HUFF DUFF antennae, at least until censors edited the background so no one would be able to tell where the pictures were taken. They also removed the critical antennas from the photo. This occurred as U-Boat losses were increasing precipitously and Admiral Doenitz was, along with the staff were trying to figure out how the Allies were suddenly so successful. If you would like to read the book, it is U-Boat Commander - Peter Cremer. I wouldn't call it a text book, but it is an excellent written account of his experience,
Yes. The size and shape of an antenna can give important information.
Another thing Mythbusters got wrong was saying that the 'myth' that sailors can be pulled down with sinking ships was 'busted'
They used a very small boat to test it the claim and ignored countless reports of sailors being pulled down by sinking ships.
Trying to scale up by a factor varying from 1000:1 to 50000:1, is unlikely to to be accurate.
De
It's been a long time since I've seen the relevant Mythbusters episodes -- but I was left with an impression that, in addition to the issues you mentioned about the gun and the "hull" construction, that there was a disconnect around what constituted a "splinter".
Something about their wrap-up led me to believe that they thought the deadly splinters in question were the small wood fragments that would be called splinters during woodworking, or general handling of wooden objects -- say up to maybe 2" long. (If true then that explains why they didn't address the large chunk of post that was sent flying; but it would also mean there had been a failure in their pre-episode research or understanding).
When I watched that episode, and saw both what they were shooting at and what they were shooting with, I made the same judgement that Drach did -- just from the illustrations in my copy of _Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War, 1600-1815_ it was clear that what they'd built wouldn't have been acceptable as a model of a merchantman's hull, much less a warship's. Although if they'd actually built something to the same standards as a ship of the line, they would have been able to claim the myth was 'busted' because the (estimated) six-pounder gun they would be firing at it wouldn't have penetrated.
I learn something every time I watch these videos.
Thanks, Drach!
Thank you for responding to my question about scaling the mythbusters tests. Not to disparage them, but “Our method might’ve been flawed, but the data was good,” stood out as a frequent refrain in the mythbusters aftershow discussions and for reasons, it sounded plausible in that case.
Cup of coffee, and a brand new drydock fresh from the press...
I'd call this a good morning, thanks much Drach.
I think the scale problem with the splinter experiment is best analyzed by splitting firewood. Use a 5 pound splitter and hit it hard, it explodes. Hit it with a 1 lb hatchet and it will make a crack. You can’t examine the crack from the 1 pounder to predict the five pounder results.
I worked at Todd Shipyard in San Pedro CA. My uncle Bill Evans was welder/cutter supervisor on drydock there; two tales from drydock, while cutting steel for scrap of liberty ship built at same yard in 1940s a space that was supposed to be square had small 45 degree in one corner ? When offset was cut out a skeleton in a welding suit was found and police called ! . Second; did you know the "love boat" ships would come in once a year for "cleaning" what the dry dock crew would do, would be to cut out main waste lines and replace them rather than clean them due to clogged/ reduced opening because of how much waste produced by people eating so much food at the buffet !
Thank you, Drachinifel.
Ship's design drawings going back and forth between specifying steel plate by thickness or weight is an issue that we still deal with in modern shipbuilding (at least at the yard I work at)
Just rewatched your Falkland video, I think admiral Sturdee merits his own video. Sounds like an interesting character
With regards to the King George V armour thickness (and British armour plates in general), British armour weights were specified in lbs per sq foot. In design documents the conversion was universally done (in my experience) as 40 lbs : 1" so 15" and 600 lb plates are used interchangably. However, plates were rolled to the weight specifcation, and the precise conversion is 40.8 lbs : 1". So the 15" plates are actually 600 lb / 40.8 = 14.71" thick, at least nominally. This difference between 40.8 and 40 is about 2%, which was apparently considered too small to be of any note. For example, with a 5" plate, it's the difference between it being 125mm and 127mm thick. A 1/10th of an inch being not worthy of note. Generally, take any British plate's design thickness and multiply by 98% to get its actual thickness. e.g. 14" x 98% = 13.7".
Direct evidence for this can be seen in the handbook for the 14-inch gun, which lists the turret armour thicknesses. Unlike any other document I've seen, this gives the thickness in precise values. So while the Ship's Cover talks of a 13" faceplate and a 6" roof, the handbook lists 12.74" CA and 5.88" NCA. These are the values you get if you use the 40.8 lb : 1" conversion. You can also see this if you compare the design and actual weights in the completed ship. The design weights assumed 40.8 lb per square foot, whereas the completed weights were to 40 lb per square foot. So the KGV's belt armour was designed to be 4,755 tons. The completed ship had 4,640 tons, or 97.6% (compared to the theoreretical 98%) of the nominal rounded number.
The final aspect was the rolling tolerance. For the KGVs this is listed in Buxton's "Battleship Duke of York". For belt armour this tolerance was 0 lb/sqft over and 10 lb/sqft under, for deck armour this was 0 lb/sqft over and 2.5lb/sqft under.
So, the design documents referred to a 15" or 600 lb plate, but the design weights taken reflected to 'full' value of 612 lbs (15" X 40.8). The plate manufacturers however would roll to the 600 lb nominal thickness, and had a +0 / -10 lb/sqft tolerance, so the actual plate thickness was allowed to be 590 to 600 lbs thick (providing it met performance requirements, of course). Given that the ship's final armour weights were 97.6% of the design weights, the typical 15" plate was likely approximately 597 lbs thick (612 x 97.6%). Or in other words, 14.63" or 372mm.
When they scrap a ship, do they measure any of the plates or just melt them down? Are any plates still around?
@@gregorywright4918 Some armor plate was saved for various purposes. Some was used for low-background steel to shield radiation detectors; steel made in the years of atomic testing was 'contaminated' with atmospheric radioactive particles that would cause such instruments to register false positives. Other times big armor plates were used as the backstops of shooting ranges.
I am always impressed by the quality of questions that end up on the Drydock... it certainly makes for great content.
The unrotated projectiles weren't censored it was an attempt to erase their memory from existence
Regarding shore batteries in the Pacific Theater, there was also the sinking of the Destroyer Hayate by a USMC 5" battery at Wake Island.
The USS Olympia (C-6/CA-15/CL-15/IX-40) had hatches that went from the Superstructure (lifeboat) Deck, down to the top of the turtleback armor, which I assume also had hatches in it. They appear to be too small to lift out or replace the boilers and triple expansion engine intact, but were probably designed to allow removal/replacement of the components that could not be broken down smaller. The booklet of general plans is available online.
Drach, I'm sure you may already be aware but the Battleship Texas Foundation is moving the ship today from its berth at LaPorte, Texas to the drydock in Galveston. I's great to see the ship underway again, although it is moving very slowly under tow. Everything seems to be going well although it does look like it's riding a little low in the water. But nothing alarming. Getting an update video on this great ship would be great.
The document that the builders for KGV would be following would almost certainly be the Ship Spec or its equivalent. It supersedes all other documentation because it is the document that the shipbuilder is contractually held to.
I'd recommend watching the Forgotten Weapons videos about the L96 sniper rifle to get a flavour of the ridiculous and idiotic things contractors have been known to do, either because it'll save them money or they just think they know better.
26:05 Polish plans were to have 2 cruisers, 12 destroyers and some submarine, but budget limitations stopped that. So there wasn't an idea for a coastal defense battleship. Interesting to know what size and layout of cruiser they were planning though, if they took some ideas from the Germans like the pocket battleships i.e. Deutschland class cruisers, which could take on Schleswig-Holstein
Richard Worth noted in "Fleets of World War II" that there was a proposal for 3 25,000 ton ships; 9 12 inch guns, sexondary 12 5.9 inch guns, unknown dual purpose battery, 6 torpedo tube, on 30 knots. Worth noted it was a rather ambitious armament per displacement. Unfortunately... worth did not include footnotes, so it is a bit hard to chase down the original source (assuming it exists).
@@prussianhill fascinating it would be cool if we could find the blueprints, the Polish used the British to build their destroyers and submarines so maybe it was a British 25,000 12 inch design that was the base for what they were looking at before adding their specific specifications for the polish navy.
I don't think a ship like KMS Deutschland would have been quite so dangerous to a ship like KMS Schleswig-Holstein. Despite its age, KMS S-H was still a battleship, pairing powerful guns to heavy protection, so its weaponry could defeat cruiser levels of protection at ranges far greater than any cruiser's guns could defeat the KMS S-H's own. Even the Deutschland, with low-end battleship guns of its own, was not complimenting those guns with low-end battleship armor, so it would be risking citadel penetration at ranges where its own guns would not be certain of doing the same. This is one reason Germany didn't immediately replace the Schleswig-Holstein when they had the chance, because only dreadnought battleships actually represented a threat beyond S-H's ability to handle on favorable terms. There was a reason the Allies threw so many bombers at the old battleships, trying to keep them disabled in port, because there were basically no Allied warships sailing in the Baltic that could match them in a stand-up fight.
@@genericpersonx333 it was a pre dreadnought battleship with the same calibre guns although the deutschlands were slightly updated. The thing it did have was better armour on the other hand it had older range finding tech.
@@Alex-cw3rz Bear in mind, KMS S-H was extensively modernized so its firecontrol was not so old as one might think. Either way, the battleship's armor gave it a stand-off range measured in the high thousands of meters, so that is a long time for a Deutschland to be sailing closer and closer to be sure its guns will have the desired effected while any one of those incoming shells could be fatal.
Not saying the Deutschland didn't have a chance, but it would have been very risky for anything short of a dreadnought battleship to take on Schleswig-Holstein because penetrating 24cm belts and multiple armored decks is no simple thing even for 283mm guns.
If you look at a chart of the Finnish archipelago, you see that draft is a big issue as is navigation. I think that Ilmarinen would have got the upper hand in that environment.
It is fun listening to Drac dropping the mike on the idiots that fixate on a few sentences in a report and try to bend it to the truth they want to believe. Well done.
Another issue with HESH rounds is that they work best at relatively low velocities. The plastic explosive has to form a 'pat' before detonating and high velocities would just splatter it uselessly. Low velocities and naval gunnery likely don't mix.
That is objectively wrong. Because of the large distances the shells travel, at the point of impact naval shells have drastically lower velocities than shells in army application.
For direct fire against armored targets in army terms 3km is extremely long range. 3km in naval terms is knife fighting range.
Also the muzzle velocity of HESH from a royal ordonance L7 105mm gun for example is about 730m/s. The Iowas guns had a muzzle velocity of about 820mm for HE and other multipurpose shells and 760m/s for AP.
Naval artillery shells have either about the same or lower velocity than their army counterparts when they impact.
@@schullerandreas556 For the Chieftain tank round, impact velocity seems to have been about 0.6km/s. So, yes, the (relatively) limited range in land use is definitely a thing. So that makes the HESH even more problematic for naval use because you would have to consider whether the round will hit fast and splatter at short range or be slow and effective at long range. So as Drachinifel points out, for naval use a HE round would be less 'fussy'. Out of interest, why is it 'objectively' wrong rather than just wrong?
@@schullerandreas556 even if velocity was a real issue, a HESH shell would be lighter than an AP shell of identical dimensions. At practical battle ranges, that lighter shell will lose more of its initial velocity and have a lower striking velocity.
Even if that was an issue, it could almost certainly be worked around (by shell or guns design) if HESH presented a significant value in naval combat.
But HESH was effective against tanks because tanks have a single, small interior volume filled with fragile and critical items. Ships are large, compartmentalized, and critical items are much more spread out.
Even against tanks HESH never really got broad acceptance compared to sabotted AP and HEAT with it only achieving and significant use outside the British and their former empire because it came with the immensely successful L7 gun. It mainly survives for use against structures and fortifications where it concentrated the blast more than HE so most wasn't just wasted in the air around the target but was less concentrated than HEAT resulting in much broader damage.
HESH could be useful for shore bombardment, but heavy naval funds were already such a degree of overkill in that role that it isn't worth degrading their naval warfare capability.
@@88porpoise That's probably the main issue. HESH is fine for relatively short ranges (tank vs tank) where a low velocity retains a relatively flat trajectory. Under those circumstances, any impact will be near-orthogonal and against armour. For a ship, the angle will be highly variable and possibly against superstructure. My guess is that against a non-flat target, HESH will be less than optimal and a HE round likely better.
I would think that the critical width for a drydock is likely to be the maximum beam of the ship which for most ships built in the last hundred years or more is likely to extend pretty close to the bottom. Aircraft carriers are the one exception I can think of with the often huge overhang on modern carriers. Much of the choice of vertical vs sloping walls can be a result of soil conditions and the availability of shoring. Soft soils with a shallow angle of repose will require a very wide excavation at the top relative to the bottom unless elaborate shoring is used to support the sides of the excavation.
I would to see like a video about Secondary Batteries in the age of steel.
Who did it best.
How effective were they.
stuff like that.
Fundamentally scaling impacts is difficult as the amount of energy to be resisted is quadratic with velocity but the forces generated are a function of the momentum change which is linear with velocity.
Just finished watching the Bismarck special when this arrived.
Oh man. Did you look at the comment section? I don't think I've seen crankier comments on a Drach video.
Stainless steel foil is readily available as an oxygen barrier wrap for heat the treatment of other steels.
Just a quick throw-in since some listeners might not be aware of it: Yes, Bucentaure would be classified as a third-rate under the British rating regime, but her firepower was remarkably greater than those of any British-build third rate of the time: With a broadside weight of roughly 540 Kilos (using Kilos here since the weight of British and French pounds differed somewhat), a Bucentaure or Tonnant Class Ship of the Line was equal in firepower to British second or first rate Ships of the Line ,making the nominal firepower difference between Bucentaure and Victory not quite so damming as "104 vs 80 guns" might sound.
Was any of that throw-weight make-up because of carronades, which have much shorter range?
@@gregorywright4918 the french had some kind of their own caronnades later, but for the Tonnant and Buccentaure Class the broadside weigth pre 1806 resulted from two factors: A long waterline resulting in many large caliber guns per gundeck, and comparativley large guns (i.e. french 36 pounders on the lower gundeck when the british used their 32 pounders on that Deck).
I think I remember some river boat monitors that were armed with mortars at the siege of Vicksburg on the Mississippi river.
57:54
The Martians had a fleet? Who knew? Thunderchild will have its work cut out for it.
I had the same reaction 😂
At 26:05, Richard Worth noted in "Fleets of World War 2" that a polish proposal for a 25k ton battleship capable of 30 knots that was ambitiously armed with 9 12 inch guns, 12 5.9 inch guns, unknown dual purpose guns and 6 torpedo tubes existed. Unfortunately Worth did not include any footnotes so chasing the original source (assuming it exists) would be a rough challenge.
So basically a Scharnhorst with slightly bigger guns and less armor, due to the 7000 ton difference. However, given that it was only a proposal, detailed plans might not exist at all.
I would bet that there are reasons for either a slab or stepped dry dock as well, a stepped one you could float more stuff in, manuver it close together as you bring the water level down, and like you said stepped drydocks require less excavation, but also it might be the only way to build a drydock in a given area's geology
Apologies if you’ve already covered these in one of your many videos: if someone could point out which one, I’d gladly watch it.
What if… after the raid on Scarborough (16 December 1914), Ingenohl did not immediately turn back to Germany after the raid, but instead engaged the pursuing battle cruisers and battleships with his much larger force? What effect might that have had on the naval actions during WWI? And…
What if… von Spee had immediately started the return voyage to Germany on 6 December instead of raiding the Falkland Islands?
56:50 - This is true even today, with the reactors in nuclear-powered ships generally being designed to last the length of the ship's service life, after which it's off to the scrapyard, and, hence, not being designed to be easily removable or replaceable (this is why turning entire nuke vessels into museum ships is generally cost-prohibitive); it's just that nowadays the lives of both the ship and its powerplant are measured in large multiples of decades.
It's been a while since I've been able to watch a drydock right when it comes out.
The Bismark's radar suite was not installed until *after* she completed her sea and firing trials. The first time the radar was tested with the guns firing was in the Battle of Denmark Strait.
The Cruiser ( pennant # 130 is in Yokosuka, Japan...Formerly the Yokosuka Arsenal of the IJN, its now a US Naval base...However, the JMSDF also use these facilities and the Submarine base for the Yokosuka Naval district is on the US installation.
Photo at 58:00, oh yes, I can see why you like that. Thanks for sharing.
Dunkirk and Strasburg were beautiful ships with very graceful lines....a pity they didn't get to really show their stuff.
While you mention sneak attacks in the fog a question came up in my mind , when was smokescreening employed in military tactics ? how would it be done in the age of sail or started it way later ?
You may have addressed this in your original discussion (I can't find it quickly), but I think the basic difference was 'two nations separated by a common language'. In modern US usage, a splinter is only used for a piece of wood you extract from your finger with a tweezer. Obviously, the shot you used here shows what a 17th century sailor would have called a splinter. A little original research would have paid off here.
With regards to the armor plate thickness, the actual thickness may depend on how the plate was paid for. Was it paid on a flat price for the job, on a price per square foot, or on a price per pound? Alloy plates bought in quantity today are actually sold on a price per pound. Because of this the mill will try to roll the plate to nearly the maximum thickness tolerance making it as heavy as they can. resulting in more profit for the supplier.
@Drachnifel what is the name of the song played at the very beginning of drydock? i can't get it out of my head! thank you.
Years a go I met a old gentleman. He was on the Colorado in that battle. We would talk a bit about what he did. I thought the next time we met he was going to tell me some stories. But I learned he died suddenly.
1/350 scale test runs way more issues. Air density and water density if I remember is significant as things get smaller. Don't get me started on the physics of 1/350 scale 16" gun 😁🤪 not to mention how silly it would look firing. Imagine the challenges of making a shell that small. 😝
Advance boiler technician BT3 Bryant U.S.S. Gridley CG-21 loves your channel.
Wondering if it would be possible to answer something along the lines of Main gun placement on a ship e.g: HMS Nelson and FS Richelieu having all forward gun placements. moreover, a page about an explanation or reason behind gun placement either doesn't exist or I just can't seem to find one, considering some of the unique placements in WW1 (HMS Bellerophon and SMS Kaiser come to mind), I'd want to know more about it
Do they have scale fluids, to keep things like renolds numbers correct during scale testing?
5:30 One of the other things with Mythbusters is they do entertainment not so much science. There have only been a couple of myths that they did the full science and that was because they didn't have a choice they where dangerous to a point they couldn't have done it without that level of science. The two that spring to mind is the explosive decompression and bullet fired strait up being as lethal going down as up.
What are the names of the monitors shown at 58:03?
In general, I would like to see photos captioned with the names of the ships. This would make it a lot easier too do further research.
The topic @20:20 ? I'm thinking that this may be why, at least in part, that ships within the same classmay have had different characteristics in regard to balance/displacement or "feel" or possibly even top speed capabilities ? Different plate thickness, over a wide area, I think would have it's effects.
Unless they were aware of it & balanced out their applications upon installation to counter possible ill-gotten effects ?
Interesting, nonetheless !!
🚬😎
Sometimes equipment, even up to engines, varied between ships of a single class. Availabilities, cost, time of order, etc all varied. Even when built in the same shipyard.
Good video
The picture of Bismarck at 38:00 actually has its radar censored as well.
Referring to 04:16 and splinters: There was a video done in Britain, I forget what the title was, but it was an investigation about the USS President, which was one of the 6 frigates that were built between the end of the US War Of Independence
and the end of the War of 1812....
It covered the fact that the President had it funds "diverted" (basically spent by local politicians and business people on something other than the ship that was supposed to be built) and was built with substandard (for shipbuilding) wood.
They did a test fire with a small naval cannon from the Napoleonic Period, and scaled down the hull of the USS Constitution where the cannon ball did bounce off of the hull's side at a short range (they scaled that down as well).
When they test fired it against what their research indicated that the USS President's hull was made of, and at the same range, (and same reduction in scale for the hull thickness), it was splinters and chunks of wood everywhere!!!
Thinking back to my engineering lectures "water is too viscous to scale properly": 🙂
Isn't the splinters proven on the armor test? The armor test of naval guns. Or the gun test? Or the shell test on tanks that squish on the armor and send a shock wave thru? Just needs to be scaled up?
I honestly think Drach is kind of a britaboo about British Ironclads.
Now, I don't doubt the HMS Warrior could defeat the CSS Stonewall/Kotetsu. They were much larger and had many, many more guns. However, I don't think Drach's account of how she would do against the CSS Stonewall. However, there are several things he ignores
1) It is unlikely that the penetration of the 68 lbr was nearly as good as claimed. Yes, the 68lbr did manage to penetrate 4.5 inches of armor using a Pallister shot in 1862. However, this has two big problems. Firstly, the Pallister shot was not officially adopted by the British navy until 1867. Secondly, nearly every penetration test from that time period turned out to be massively optimistic under actual battlefield conditions. The 68 lbr gun was never actually taken into combat, so we don't really have a good idea how it would have performed.
2) Attempting to "kite" the CSS Stonewall likely would have been totally ineffective. Drach ignores in this calculus the armament of the CSS Stonewall. The Stonewall was armed with all rifled cannons, including a massive 10 inch 300 lbr armstrong rifle. These were muzzle-loading guns which did not suffer the problems of the 110lbr rifles the Warrior carried. The result of this is that the Stonewall would likely have had much more accurate fire with its guns than the British could have managed, assuming the Confederacy was using a well-trained crew. When you take into account the smaller size of the Stonewall, it really makes sense for the Warrior to close the range to maximize effective penetration and accuracy as the Confederate gun would be less effected by range. Undoubted, the Warrior would win such a slung fest, but even a few 10 inch penetrations would cause severe damage.
Drach, sir? May be out of your purview, but please, some of the rent paid by the Scottish earls were longboats, were they built in Scotland or on the norse mainland?
The question about capital ships converted to carriers...you left out Shinano, which was intended as the third Yamato class BB.
Well on stuff made for upgrading the Colorado class twin 16 turrets just happened to be the same diameter as 14" triple standard turrets, so in theory if the wheels fell off the treaties in the 20s or early 30s when the speed of the Standards wasn't such a problem the US could have Coloradoed the 12 14" gun standards
Upgrading turrets was easier than engines because you did not have to rip out the deck armor to get to them.
@@gregorywright4918 although you would have the deck armor problem the Big 5 (Colorado and Tennessee classes) had a bit of extra machinery space built in compared with Pennsylvania and New Mexico classes where they could potentially have been bumped up to around Queen Elizabeth speed if they had been refit in an era before they needed massive torpedo bulges.
RE bismarck failed radar- did the bismarck not send this info??o via radio to hq soon after it was damaged? Would the radio archives not have this info?
thank god for a 1 hour video lol
Battleship Texas has left its home and headed for dry dock in Galveston. You can view it live by typing battleship Texas
Did this triode vulnerability affect Scharnhorst too then?
Not really a weapon system, but the screws on submarines are usually physically censored (tarps or such) in drydock photos.
Did the Royal Navy and other navies adjust their training programs as the literacy of the sailors increased? In Nelson's time, most sailors learned hands-on, but by WWI, nearly all were literate.
A question: why were warships in the age of sail so vulnerable from the stern?
gun decks were open. shot could travel the length, potentially hitting every gun station. while from the side you're looking at 2. there are Windows and a square back on the stern, for the captain's cabins etc. while the bow is planked and curved. so easier to penetrate the stern. the rudder and steering gear is back there too. so a chance to lose mobility.
00:57:31 closest I can think of is Austria-Hungary testing a 38cm mortar on SMS Budapest (turned out to be impractical).
In the event a British armor supplier was contracted to supply a large continuous piece of, say, 15” thick piece of battleship armor. If for whatever reason it came out seriously under spec and outside the acceptable margin of error, say 14” thick instead, what then? Back to the melter? Huge loss for the contractor on that job? Or something else?
Concerning the censoring of ships' armament. I have a photo in one of my books showing a gun being lowered onto a mounting pad on the deck of a merchant ship, with the serial number of the gun scratched out. That would not be to hide the type of gun, but it might well be to try and hide how ancient the weapon was?
Might also be to hide how many of the guns were available, where they had come from or just about anything else... All depends on what was publicly known about them...
3 years and still getting the tank weapons versus ship questions?
Many new people have come to the light of this channel. I remember the types of questions when his Texas video came out.
Not really a Warship Question but, what's the Song in the Drydock Intro?
It"s "Horse Trivia," c. 1928(?). Here's the lyrics:
Bucephalus and Rocinante
Bucephalus and Rocinante
One horse was real
One is make-believe
@@mbryson2899, Thanks!
Wait, I didn't see any song after searching it?...
@@admiralrover74 Hmmm, I couldn't find it either. I think my source may have been jesting.
Catchy lyrics, though, they do fit.
Its kind of weird everybody seems to just assume the bismarck had the most advanced stuff out there, when in reality its the US and British that had the most advanced systems on their ships, and ships plural, the germans only had a small surface fleet and the 1 Bismarck
00:10:5 Anything involving fluid dynamics won’t scale because the Reynolds number won’t scale linearly.
Regarding the UP launchers being censored on pictures...maybe they were embarrassed? :P
can you talk about usa project 1058.1
Slight problem with the Stonewall, both sides' ironclads were notoriously terrible at manuvering, especially in the riverine combat they tended to be deployed in, maybe being built in france it wasn't CSS Virginia levels of poor handling but I can't imagine them being able to get into ramming position against a monitor either
20:19 I'm going to need to remember this drydock for this question alone.
Firing over terrain, Falklands battle
I can't find a source for the image of the monitors... anyone has one?
It's from my personal collection, so it may be unique :)
@@Drachinifel Ah drat... looks like a perfect steampunk fleet sailing.
Hi Drach. Just watched youtube short, very short, on USS Salem. What was it like, how did it serve? Most importantly how do you think it might have done in WWII as speed, sailing alone delivering equipment- officers-politicians, fighting other cruisers, shore bombardment, or shore bombardment.
Vacuum tube transistors?
Yes, quite.
However, he did correct himself and just meant that vacuum tubes (triodes) were being used to perform the same function as transistors in those Radar circuits.
One should assume that he did know that the transistor wasn't invented until 1947.
Mk 14 Mortar shell?
Don't challenge someone to fish something up from the HMS Prince of Wales, what are you thinking?
What? The Mythbusters performing inaccurate experiments? Gasp! :P
Steampunk Asylum? Wow
Reynolds number.
Aren't all hits on battleships lucky considering how far away they are I don't imagine the gun crew at 15 17 miles going ok let's aim for the turrets I'm not trying to be a smart ass I'm genuinely curious maby I'm missing something I'm not trying to start an argument
15 to 17 miles is about 1,900 yards further than Warspite's hit on Giulio Cesare or Scharnhorst's on Glorious, so, yeah at that range you're happy to get a straddle.
Yep, aiming at specific parts of the hull isn't really a thing at any real range. However a hit can still be lucky if it hits something critical as opposed to not being lucky when you straddle the enemy ship (aka aiming correctly but being trolled by the dispersion of your guns).
shouldn't rely on mythbusters for anything
:)
49th, 28 August 2022
Algorithm Engagement Comment.
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