Why was the Fuso Class considered so outdated that they were barely used in WW2? Especially when the Royal Navy was able to continue using the Queen Elizabeths and R class.
Drach, I was playing "Battle Of Warships," which, if you haven't heard of it, is a "bargain basement" knock off of "World Of Warships." At any rate, while fighting as D.K.M. BISMARCK, I lost him/her to a stubborn fire on the hangar deck; which appeared to have spread to my after magazines. In your opinion, could such a fire have spread that quickly to the 15 inch/47 caliber main magazine? Or, did ships of BISMARCK'S era have bulkheads and interfaces that would have prevented this?
I know it's been discussed briefly, but: could the Fuso/Ise classes have had their midships turrets pulled, and additional propulsion gear installed to essentially turn them into battlecruisers? They would be like Kirishimas with better armor, no? Would they be fast enough to fill the same role, escorting the Tokyo Express under cover of darkness? Would 4 additional fast capital ships materially impact the outcome of the Guadalcanal Campaign?
'Stealing' stuff is quite common when de-commissioning. I decommed 2 ships, and skirted away with tools, plates and other mementos- many of which I still have.
Not just decommissioning I got two sofas of my ship when she was in dry dock. They were being thrown away because they didn't want to have nice sofas in what was being turned in to a pet area. They didn't want meets to trash them. So throw them out instead.
I knew a fellow in explosives ordnance disposal who had an interesting knickknack. It was his "first IED", a 122 mm shell that had a low-order detonation and basically just split into three broad leaves from nose to base.
Heck, I'd be happy with just one of the 16" guns &, of course, the hardware & ammunition to be able to fire it too. I've always had a huge love for guns. My favorite American Admiral was "Ching" Lee because of his love for gunnery & the fact that he made sure every ship under his command could fire very accurately. Just like in football, it's NOT practice makes perfect it's "Perfect practice makes perfect!" It was really a shame that Admiral Lee passed away as early as he did. He really could have done so much more for the USN!! However, the USN was so much better during WW2 thanks to the way Lee got things accomplished! That being said he probably saved a lot of American lives due to some of his more simple accomplishments.
28:06 Another loose tradition associated with decommissioning a ship, that ended with USS Long Beach (CGN-9), was the 'plank owner' -- the first crew of a ship after its commissioning (and sometimes after recommissioning) would receive certificates designating them as 'plank owners' (procured by and issued to the crew, not something the Navy itself did). As part of the decommissioning and disposal for a ship, the Navy used to remove a small portion of the deck as a traditional reminder of the days when "wooden ships and iron men" were a key part of the Navy (the last major vessel known to have been fitted with a wooden deck being USS Long Beach). The Naval History and Heritage Command's Curator Branch received the wooden deck planking from major vessels, and a sailor or ex-sailor could present proof of their plank ownership to the Curator Branch and receive a section of a deck plank from their ship. The Curator Branch no longer does this distribution; it worked with various veteran reunion groups to donate planking to these groups for distribution, and surviving plank owners can contact their respective reunion group with proof of service to receive a section of deck plank. With the transition to metal-decked ships, the Navy no longer preserves deck or structural sections, so the certificates are the only recognition of being a member of a ship's commissioning crew.
I recently started taking classes to work in the marine industry and hopefully be a Captain one day. This channel had a hand in motivating me to do that. Thanks Drachinifel!
While not a scrapped ship, my beer opener mounted on my wall made from USS New Jersey's original teak deck I bought off Ryan Szimanski remains an amazing souvenir since it does its job darn well as well as being a conversation piece.
One interesting thing re: Ships fitting under bridges: USS Massachusetts didn't quite fit under the Braga bridge that it had to go under to get to battleship cove, so the radar etc had to be removed when it was towed in, as well as when it was removed for drydocking.
Regarding ships that couldn't pass beneath certain things: it's a bit trivial, but HMS Rodney needed to have the top of her mast removed to pass under the Forth rail bridge on her way to becoming razor blades. However this wasn't the case as designed, and she only required it to be done because the secondary guns had already been removed and as a result the freeboard had increased.
The pick of USS Yorktown - Yes deck-edge elevators are designed to lift vertically to cover the side-hatch of the hanger. This allows them to be stowed for narrow passages (such as canals and narrows) as well as rough seas (such as riding out a hurricane) that horizontal triangle just above the line of aircraft is the roof of the building in the background not part of the elevator.
I lived in an improvised apartment under a house in San Francisco that featured beautiful oak doors (I stripped them down and refinished them) with brass hardware that had walked away from the local shipyard.
Its actually quite scarey whats left on board when a vessel heads for scrapping/ mothballed? I know of one guy who got all the life boat flares !🥺 silly bugger got caught at the airport security! Was at a refit where over 100K of tools walked from the vessel, and not just tools, every electrical appliance, every radio and most of the bridge stuff went walkies. The amount of personal gear was amazing, clothing ,footwear and personal equipment kept me in goodies for yonks, not to mention "adult" materials( mags, videos, cds,) laptops ,tablets were common place,and drugs and alcohol were common place!
I don’t have experience with scrapping a ship in the navy but iI have been the employee of a few companies that were closed and liquidated so I can give some insights there. When I worked for a sporting goods store that was liquidated, the managers actually gave tacit approval for employees to make certain items to disappear such as demo items, dealer samples, and such not, on the pretext that technically they were never part of the sales inventory or equipment inventory.
A Strike Witches question!? What a wonderfully unexpected crossover haha! It's thanks in large part to all your wonderful content that, as I've gone through my crash course in learning about ships over the past year or so (grew up with planes, a bit later tanks, but not so much ships) I've been able to upgrade the World Witches series IMFDB pages' naval/ship sections from barely better than "is ship, has guns" to what I'd like to think are much higher standards. I'm definitely a few months behind watching this video now (I've been catching up on ALL the Drydocks slowly instead), but thank you as always for hosting such an amazing resource of knowledge, and dare I say wisdom. :)
My grandfather was on a US LST in the pacific at the end of WW2. The navy gave the ship to the Japanese to ferry their soldiers back. Anyway basically anything that wasn't bolted/welded down was removed by crew. I have a engine room porthole clock, and somewhere is a gasket making set.
In the trunk of my car today is a blanket from the USS San Jacinto (CVL30). Prior to her decommissioning Dad was part of a "Hey you" detail in charge of removing all the ship's unused bedding (by this time, most of her crew were on their way home). Anyway, at the end of the day, each item had to be counted, so many of this, so many of that. It turned out they had too many blankets. "Count 'em again". They did and the came up with a higher total!. The Chief Petty Officer told the detail to count out the excess and put them in another pile. He and the supply clerk from the base agreed that the proper total being turned in. The Chief then turned to the detail and told them, "Anyone who wants a blanket, take it" Problem solved!
Re: ships not fitting. My dad was chief engineer on Collett as a plank holder in 1944 in Boston. She was sent to the Pacific, escorting one of the new carriers (no idea which, Dad didn't remember) thru the canal. The carrier was designed to fit thru the canal, but retrofitted at build with mor 40mm gun tubs. When they got to the canal, they found she would fit thru the canal, but wouldn't clear the lightposts along the lock sides. The CO asked Washington what to do, and was told "proceed at all speed'..So Collett, hearing 'SNAP, SNAP,, SNAP all the way as she picked off the light posts one by one.
The ship referenced with regard to the Gallipoli landings was the River Clyde, a collier that, with some refits, tried to land 2000 troops at a beach at Cape Helles. It ran right into one of the strongest Turkish defense positions and the attempt was a total failure; the ship did not have sufficient firepower to break or pin down the defenders nor armor to protect the soldiers and crew on board.
The River Clyde beached at V beach, one of the sites where the sea turned red with the blood of the soldiers attempting to take the position. From those landed, 7 Victoria Crosses were awarded for actions in the first hour or two after landing, as well as one for Commander Unwin, the River Clyde’s Skipper and 5 other crew. The beach was taken the following day with casualties of greater than 70%. After the war the River Clyde was refloated and sold to Spanish owners who operated her until the 1960s.
Remember seeing a book in my granddad's collection which dealt with laws for military inheritance in Tsarist Russia (he himself worked in International Merchant Law for some time)… among other things, there was a list of which officers (unless otherwise stated) would get which element of ship Memorabilia in the case of a ship's decommissioning... The Watch-Bell, The Name plaque, The Ships Wheel, Sextant etc. I heard that sometimes parts of a ship lost in action would also be given as part of a medal.
Keep up the good work Drach. :) By the way, the deck edge elevators on the Essex class were absolutely designed to fold up. You can find pictures of both Essex herself and Ticonderoga, on the web, with the elevators folded fully vertical so they are flat against the side of the ship. That was part of the design since they knew they had to go through the Panama Canal and to fit in drydocks. I don't know why Yorktown has hers in that odd position in that picture though rather than folded flat up against the side. Modern carriers can do this as well by the way. I don't know what exactly is involved in folding the elevator up, but they are designed to do it.
in reference to the Elevator the Panama Canal wasn't built with Essex and Iowas and my father read something that the first one through ripped down telephone and light piles and they didn't care they needed the ship in the Pacific they refunded and rebuilt afterwards.
Dad had books from the California and accidentally took tools off the Yorktown when the returned from Coral Sea.He never mentioned it till just a few years before he passed. I knew about the books the ships name is written inside the covers but the tools lay in his toolbox unused and un discussed my entire life till I asked.
11:11 Wholly unexpected Strike Witches question there. Slippery slope to get on. Next thing you know Drach will be getting questions about what color panties various historical naval figures preferred. :)
Really took me by surprise, but in the best way possible! There's a decent amount of naval related stuff in World Witches; outside of the many, many ship classes from various nations that show up across the seasons (including Amagi completed as a carrier), we also get the see the four completed Kii-class in one of the mangas (with a mention that the other two Amagi-class were also completed as carriers, but sold to Karlsland/Germany). Thanks in large part to Drach here (among other resources of course), within the past year I've managed to massively upgrade the ship sections on the series' IMFDB pages, which, while I had most of the screenshots before, were generally barely better than "is a ship, has some guns".
I have a couple of chairs from the wardroom of the most recent _Ark Royal_ along with branded notepaper, dinner plates and things like that... Amazing how much of a war canoe (and some older people here might get *that* Sailor reference as I am sure High Admiral Drach will) you can fit in a 15 year old Ford Transit
Would a video about the evolution of the fire control and aiming systems used by warships mounting turreted guns be possible? I think it's interesting that the resolver is a 150 year old rotary position sensor circuit design still in use on EV and hybrid vehicles that was used early on to measure and control the bearing and elevation of the guns and turrets of ships such as HMS Dreadnaught and the Iowa class. I think that fire control is just 'smoke in the box' for most folks with an interest in naval history. With recent history and current events showing that sensor guided smart munitions have a huge advantage over fire controlled munitions, I think that the technology race associated with naval fire control systems would make some interesting videos.
Warship, both in the magazine period and in the ongoing annual period, often had articles of various depth on various navies fire control of various types.
It IS possible to lift ships partly with floation devices! it is done alot. partial drydocks to lift the stern to do emergency rudder/prop repairs, additional pontons to the side to increase stability on heavy lift ships. to things as "scheepskamelen" (age of sail) to lift ships as a whole to pass shallows to get bigger ships into Amsterdam.
Regarding reducing a ship's draught to allow it to enter shallow waters, C. S. Forrester described the process (known as a "camel") in one of his Hornblower stories. In the story "The Commodore", Forrester sends Hornblower to the Baltic in 1812 (presumably so he doesn't have to send him up the Potomac to burn Washington) in charge of a small squadton to assist the russians against Bonaparte. In one episode, he fills a couple of lighters with water and then lashes them to each side of a bomb ketch. The water is then pumped out of the lighters, which raises the ketch sufficiently to be able to cross the bar of a river and attack french shipping. I don't know if this ever worked in reality, but Forrester usually did a good job on his research.
Yes, it has been done, but it is tricky and would not last long-term, especially not during battle. Getting over a bar is one thing, and can be done carefully and slowly or timed to the tide. The stresses of firing would snap ropes like tissue, leading to the grounding or breaking up of a ship in the middle of a battle. Note also that a bomb ketch is basically a large ship-borne mortar, and there is a significant downward recoil associated with it. They are heavily reinforced, but rely on the water displacement to absorb it. Those lighters would pop off at the first firing.
Regarding the Hipper vs Deutschland, I believe the pockets shouldn't have too much of an immune zone against the Hipper's gunfire. Those were some pretty punchy 60 caliber weapons. Side armor was a combination of 50mm and 80mm for the Deutschland and Admiral Scheer, and a 100mm belt for the Graf Spee. Also, Hipper was an excellent gunboat, hitting several destroyers at Barents Sea despite very bad visibility, and a sea state where even the battleship-sized Admiral Hipper would experience a bit of roll. And if Hipper takes out one of the pocket's turrets, I think its pretty much game over. Also, Graf Spee took quite some damage from Exeter's gunfire at river plate, and those were only 50 caliber weapons. Not only did Graf Spee have thicker belt armor than her elder sisters, it was also higher (though admittedly not by much).
GS took a penetrating 8 inch hit that narrowly missed her engine room. Whether that would have totally disabled her is impossible to say, but imagine her drifting with Harwood circling just out of range until the big stuff arrived
Until (I believe) the Midway class aircraft carrier, all U.S. Navy ships were designed (a) to pass through the Panama Canal, for obvious reasons, and (b) to pass under the Brooklyn Bridge (to access the New York Navy Yard. So I think this was designed, as was the folding radar masts on some U.S. battleships.
55:12 and because of that same principle in an other application, modern car engines tend to have rather 2 individually smaller intake and exhaust valves than one bigger valve each side.
As to the question about flotation for the Yamato, there have been dedicated barges designed to float warships over shallow places. I believe the Dutch used these for some of their sailing warships back in the day, and the system was used to get ocean going submarines from from the builder's yard on Lake Michigan through the Chicago ship canal and so on to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. I don't think such a system has been used for anything as remotely as large as the Yamato, nor do I think it was ever used in combat.
The "fitting into" question. Size constraints, for Welland Canal access, depths, locks and bridges, are common to me. Locks provide a fixed element to size, whereas depths can be slightly altered with load and ballast lightening. Mast height adjustment (or removal) is fairly typical for bridge passage.
I'm presently reading a book about allied battleships of WWII, and it talks about the development of the KGVs and Lions, with the constraints on draft imposed by Suez and on beam by two drydocks. The Admiralty jumped the shark with Vanguard, as it was too wide for two docks, iirc Portsmouth and Rosyth, but they were satisfied with the number of civilian owned docks around the UK that could accommodate it, if needed.
I would think a limiting factor on boiler tube design would be in cleaning scale out of them which I would guess is done with brushes. You could flood the boiler with acid to chew on scale but in a massive installation this might be problematic. Small diameter tubes might clog quicker than larger. I don't know how ships deionize feed water but I would think they do not produce lab grade water in vast quantities. Given hoop stress calculations I would think small tubes could have thinner walls and be stronger than large tubes giving less weight and more efficient heat transfer.
They make their own feed water, they boil seawater, catch the steam and condensate it. Said condensate is free of any calcium and nasties. And also a small amount of chemicals is added to counter the scale creation. But indeed once in a while you open up the end covers and ram trough the tubes with a coperwire brush on a long stick.
My dad, Chief electrician submarines U.S. Navy, Jesse J. Bryant, once told me as a little kid,”Son, l don’t care if you get in a fight in school, but you better not lose. This was really bad news.
The brig Niagara was moved from the sheltered area where she was built over a sand spit by use of logs passed through her gun ports supported by 'camels' that were pumped out to reduce her draft.
@ 56:40 There is a story that a US navy carrier was ordered to transit the Panama Canal and soon discovered that the flight deck was above the level of the walls of the Canal, but extended just far enough to collide with the light posts that were on the sides of the canal. They sent it through anyway, and destroyed many of the lights along the way. Search for "Army South links past and present through Panama Canal artifacts" for an article that mentions this.
Re Yamato floats. FWIW, the only patent by a US president was given to Lincoln for a device to get riverboats over shallows. Oil wasn't a big thing then, so I'm not sure what he used instead.
00:47:41 - Did Greece doom Force Z? The problem with this whole question is that it misses that Force Z's main problem was not the numbers of escorts, but the idea that one battleship and one battlecruiser were an appropriate force to deter Japanese aggression in the first place. A few more cruisers or destroyers didn't change that even if the planes had failed to sink the capital ships, the Japanese had all of her battleships grouped up and desperate for an inferior force of capital ships to concentrate their strength on. All the airplanes did was save the Japanese battleship squadron having to do the job later. Add in that IJN Yamato was available just a few weeks later, it would have been very difficult for Force Z to represent a credible threat to any Japanese ambitions in the region.
Speaking of single gun turrets and the number of 16"/50 Mark 7 barrels that were made, I'm surprised that post-WW2 cruisers weren't fitted for one of these VW Beetle launching cannons. I'm sure that the Marines would happily chip in for its creation.
@@gregorywright4918 I'm not talking about taking the engine out of a Dodge Hellcat and putting it in a VW Bettle. Can it be done, maybe, would it be practical, not a chance. That said, I'm pretty sure that said stresses would be factored into the design of this Cruiser.
as for the loss of force Z, there was supposed to be an aircraft carrier with it, indomitable or illustrious and it might have helped if Singapore had been informed of there position and the requirement for air cover.
True, air cover, whether land or ship-based (the latter would have been better), would have been a big improvement for Force Z, as the bombers were not escorted. But the question asked was whether additional escort ships might have been available if they had not been lost off Greece. Yes, they MIGHT have been available, they MIGHT have been assigned, but they might not have made much of a difference. AA in 1941 was not that great.
@21:00 This is why I consider the QE's the 2nd-best battleship design of all time (Iowa = #1) : unplanned longevity. They were designed in 1912, and 30+ years later only the two biggest, baddest BBs ever built possessed "excessive overmatch" against them. That is some damn fine engineering work. Yamato SHOULD be able to kill 2x QE....she displaces as much as both combined!
Concerning people stealing from ships about to be scrapped, I got this very amusing mental image of a Looney Tunes-esque attempt by some sailors trying to scoot off with something ludicrous, like a battleship anchor. All set to "Pink Panther" music, of course. "What do you got there?" *sweating* "Nothing"
Hello Drach, I wondered why you didn’t include the option ship-camels as used by the VOC. Yes, other era, but technically a lot more sound that either barrels or permanent structure.
I imagine if we are going for a Battle of Tsushima Japan vs America, we have to point out how much more experienced the Japanese are, at this point. One of the reasons for Russia's defeat was that the force wasn't the best trained, especially compared to the Japanese. When we look at the American Battle line in WW1 and vs Spanish in the 1890s. Their accuracy was poor.
We'd probably have done terribly against the Japanese in that era. There was an old Metagaming microgame called Battlewagons that would have let you game it out as a speculative fight and actually reflect how important a training edge was. Only game I can think of where it really was modeled to be as important as the technological side of things.
Well, the Russians had been worn down by Japanese torpedo boats almost from the moment they sailed from Mother Russia... Although some of those torpedo boats were cleverly disguised as British fishing trawlers.
Does changing floatation through bulges create enough top weight issues to make a similar tumblehome to that seen on French pre-dreadnoughts? Would such bulge refits have to be redesigned to widen the hull above the waterline to prevent this phenomenon?
Well, any surprise attack would fall under that interpretation. But he may have missed the American "Neutrality Patrol", which got in some fights while still "non-aligned"...
The impact of the british blockade is often underestimated. Industry suffered heavily, the starvation of civilians was much higher than in WW2. So I think a blockade of England is not the point, but I guess Germany would have done a lot better if the RN could not keep up their blockade any longer.
In Germany, A trade magazine from that time implied that some imported food was being left on the docks giving some cis->trans changes. There was certainly a big reduction in usable fat intake. This was overcompensated afterwards.
Stupid question apologies in advance. In many of the bb pics you show, there are multiple pipes on the side of the hull running diagonally from the deck level to the waterline. What are these appendages doing?
If you gave a particular timestamp reference that would help, but there have been multiple questions in the past about booms attached to the sides of WW1-era ships for anti-torpedo nets used in harbor.
wow never knew they lost 2 bigger cruisers with Greece/Crete. only really think about bonaventure and york the rest kind of just melt into a jumble for me.
Battleship amphibious assault ship: just don't do the landing portion the same way the ship at Gallipoli did, with a couple of gangplanks for troops to come down in the face of machine gun fire.
The ship used at Gallipoli was HMT River Clyde. They just cut some sally ports in her side and ran her onto the beach in the face of heavy fire. It was a bloody slaughter. I really don't think that a battleship assault craft would do a better job; at least not for the PBI who would still be emerging from a limited number of exits. It wouldn't take too many machine guns to repeat the massacre of Cape Helles.
Not the amount of firepower between Goben and multiple Russian pre-dreadnought, it is the fire control not the number of barrels - no WW1 had capability to split targeting except with derisory secondary armament.
The 12"/50 vs 13.5" question brilliantly indicates the difference between good historians/authors, who go to the original sources and look at dates, times and sequences of events as recorded in the primary record... and the bad authors who just parrot what they've read in other bad author's books, without ever checking the original sources to confirm.
Agree. I have found things in authoritative books that either don't make sense, or are completely wrong, when I compare to documents published at the time the decisions were made. How many times have you read that the Washington Treaty forced Courageous and Glorious to be converted to carriers? The treaty does not list those ships as capital ships. Lexington and Saratoga *are* listed as capital ships, and required to be disposed of.. My take is the treaty respected the Courageouse's definition by the Admiralty as cruisers, and they were converted to carriers because the Admiralty wanted them to be carriers, rather than cruisers. I wish I could find on-line access to source documents for the RN, like I have found for the USN.
@@stevevalley7835 it's that feeling when you look up from the page and realise you've read more books than this author... and you know which two or three books he bothered to read, and can see how he came to his dodgy conclusions, as a result!
@@lukedogwalker there are things I read that simply don't make any sense. I have been looking in to the choice of 14" for the KGVs. One narrative says the British were forced to go 14" by Second London, but it was the British that pushed for 14" in the treaty, and their decision to go 14" was made before the conference started. Another narrative says the 14" armament was chosen for lower cost. Drac's piece on the KGVs shows the estimated weight for the 12-14" originally planned was higher than that of the 9-15" alternative, and the 14", having more guns, means more parts to be forged, fabricated, and machined. I don't see how it is possible for the 14" set to cost less with more material and a higher part count than the 15" alternative. I picked up the Garzke/Dulin book at the library last week. They talk about the "more smaller guns means more hits" school of thought driving the decision. *That* has the ring of truth to it, because the USN had the same argument in 1915-16. I read about the debate in the USN from the annual reports of the Secretary of the Navy, and newspaper reports, written at the time. I have visions of someone at the top, or above the top, of the Admiralty, clinging to that obsolete theory, ignoring that the French and Italians were both building 15", ignoring that the US made it's support for 14" contingent on Japanese support, ignoring that the Japanese were not going to support it because they already said they were dropping out of the treaty, and forcing the 14" gun. There was no need to write 14" into the treaty, as there was nothing in the treaty prohibiting building under treaty limits. The French had built 13", then 15", and the Italians were building 15", when the treaty limit was 16". My take is, whoever it was that forced the 14" gun on the RN, had it written into the treaty, and the fake narratives about treaty compliance and cost created and disseminated for political cover. It may sound bizarre, but no more bizarre than Admiral Strauss' antics at BuOrd, pushing 14".
@@stevevalley7835 One area you might look into is which guns were currently in active manufacture, as an existing line is cheaper to continue than to restart or new-start a different line of greater or lesser caliber. Also, were 14" available from older ships, rather than needing new manufacture? One of the other external pressures on the Admiralty was the pacifist movement in British society in the mid-20s to 30s. Appeasing them was a concern, and they had some pull in Parliament funding discussions. They wanted smaller ships and smaller guns.
@@gregorywright4918 the only preceding 14" guns in the UK were export only, wire wound, designs circa WWI, produced by Elswick and Vickers. Logic would dictate that, when they started working on the Lions, they would have used three of the quad 14" turrets that Vickers already had in production to expedite the ships, but no, they started with a clean sheet triple 16" design. The French, Italian, and German battleships that were building in 39, were the same ones that had been building in 36, but the 14" guns that were deemed competitive in 36, were seen as uncompetitive in 39? That is another aspect of the 14" gun KGV that doesn't make any sense.
Were there incidents where on board foreign naval attaches that were pressed into service at a time of emergency? If so how did it work out and were there issues with chain of command?
A US naval observer was in the PBY that spotted Bismark. He took the controls while the British pilot radioed the contact. This was secret, I think until after the war.
There was an incident during the Second Opium in China that Jackie Fisher recounted when there was a fight between British gunboats and a Chinese fort. An American officer observing rowed over to a British vessel to talk to the Royal Navy officers, and his sailors, having nothing to do, stayed in cover. One of the British gun crews had a sailor wounded, and one of the American sailors rushed over to assist as he was taken away. Then another Brit was wounded, and another American came in. When the officer came out of his conference from his conference, he found that the gun position on a British gunboat, involved in a conflict the Americans were officially neutral in, was entirely manned by American sailors.
btw Venice is the english name, but it goes from Veneto(that is the region, the city goes like Venezia in Italian, not Italian btw), so "Venetian navy"
@@simonw5094 We were talking about the Navy in the era of the Spainish American war. It took about 100 shots to get a hit. Also the Brits found the US Navys shooting in WWI to be abysmal.
British change to the 13.5" from the 12"/50? - So what did the RN do to correct the problem with 12/50 inch and how successful was it? And for &diety's sake, why did they repeat the error with 16/45 Nark I ?
21:33 I dunno Drach. The QEs had a 3, maybe 4 knot advantage on Dreadnought, and you claim that would allow QE to dictate the range of engagement. A SoDak, NoCar or KGV had a 3, maybe 4 knot advantage on the QE, yet you say that is not enough to “dominate” the engagement. A ship carrying 9x16”/45 (especially firing the Mk8 super heavy) and covered by armor that was “even adequate” at stopping a 15”/42 round, against a ship carrying 8x15”/42 and covered by armor that could not _possibly_ be adequate against the 16” Mk8 … the NoCar or SoDak have the edge. I think KGV, carrying 10x14”/45, and covered by armor that you directly credit as being highly effective (here and in other videos), would also have an advantage against the QEs. If one KGV could not sink two QE (25 years older than it) without suffering fatal damage itself, doesn’t that make the KGV a failure as a surface warship?
Sir I believe that I speak for a larger part of your audience thing you think I'd like to hear the Aztec stories and also what do you think about the Stars :Stargate ,Star Trek, Star wars just label it properly and the non fan's can pass on it.I'D hope that most of us can read.
I've read an allegedly true story about the Italian navy building a minesweeper at a small riverside shipyard and then discovering that it wouldn't fit under one of the bridges further downstream.
Drachinifel If I was to talk about Grecian and Cretan operations having an effect on British deployments I would talk navally last. I would talk about the victories in North Africa which could have been exploited to a greater extent without Grecian adventures. Perhaps the land battle victories could have reduced the need for Malta convoys as land based air cover would be available. The Malta convoys were a major drag on the resources of the fleet. Then of course the biggest loss related to the Grecian campaign was imo the damage to HMS Formidable. It was February 1942 before she returned to service. While she was replaced in the Mediterranean her availability may have provided a carrier for Force Z. Finally of course there is the Destroyers and cruisers whose losee you mention.
It was entirely political. Churchill had proclaimed Britain as the champion of the free world. He had boxed himself into a corner, he HAD to come to the aid of Greece. As far as Crete goes, the reason it was a defeat for the British was Freyberg's mismanagement of the battle. "In the chaos of the retreat from the Battle of Greece in 1941, Churchill gave Freyberg command of the Allied forces during the Battle of Crete. Although instructed to prevent an assault from the air, he remained obsessed with the possibility of a naval landing and based his tactics on it, neglecting adequately to defend the airfield at Maleme, ignoring ULTRA intelligence messages, which showed that the assault was coming by air" No lost battle, no evacuation, no lost ships. Admittedly, there then occurs the problem of keeping Crete supplied, but Hitler solved that by invading Russia which pulled most of the Luftwaffe into that meatgrinder. The Axis could either try attacking the Malta convoys or attempting to blockade Crete from the air. Malta was obviously the more important of the two - Malta based RN subs and light forces and the RAF were slaughtering the convoys to North Africa and starving Rommel of supplies. But. Hitler could no longer execute Operation Hercules, his airborne capability died at Crete.
@@gregorywright4918 no carrier was assigned to accompany Force Z. There was discussions at the highest level about assigning Indomitable but it didn't happen. My argument is that having an extra available carrier might shake something free for Force Z. Force Z hadn't been considered at the time of the campaign in Greece so obviously that carrier wasn't assigned to it.
Regarding the topic "First ship to 'Dreadnought' HMS Dreadnought?" Agreed the "Queen Elizabeth" is as good or better than most other candidates I can think of. However the ship that succeeds Queen Elizabeth is not a ship. Could be the Swordfish or the Nakajima B5N as you choose.
Please pronounce dido properly.....it’s die-doe not Dee-doe.Actually I’m really surprised you don’t pronounce this word correctly.I’m still on episode 128 and it’s taking forever to catch up.So I’ve listened to you miss pronounce this word for a long time and it’s like when someone drags their nails down the blackboard.Incidentally I am a big fan....
Leaving aside the fact that we are peoples divided by a common language, you can often get a good idea of where someone was educated just by how they pronounce classical names; you follow what your teacher/professor did, and so on, and they often follow disputes that have gone on for many decades if not centuries.
@@stuartwald2395 my Dad’s mate was Yeoman of Signals on Orion. He corrected me once when when I asked him about “Dee-Does”. I was doing Latin at school and thought this was the proper pronunciation. I would go with the guys who were there.🇳🇿
i think you must know you are being disingenuous . bismark was not alone, prince of wales still had workmen on and neither is a QE class battleship. could bismark defeat 2 QE battleships? it could run from them . by your rationale renown is better by 2 than the sharnhorst class
With the canibalization of US battleships it would seem the Navy has a record of what is on each ship and what is available for removal. Personally I would'nt mind having a 100,000 HP steam turbine and gen set if I could get away with it.
Ryan on NJ has a video or two about cannibalizing other ships, he recently went to the Philadelphia Navy Yard to look for stuff on some old Perry class frigates.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Creese is the word, is the word, the word 😂
Do you answer modern related question, if so can modern destroyer counted as capital ship now
Why was the Fuso Class considered so outdated that they were barely used in WW2? Especially when the Royal Navy was able to continue using the Queen Elizabeths and R class.
Drach, I was playing "Battle Of Warships," which, if you haven't heard of it, is a "bargain basement" knock off of "World Of Warships." At any rate, while fighting as D.K.M. BISMARCK, I lost him/her to a stubborn fire on the hangar deck; which appeared to have spread to my after magazines. In your opinion, could such a fire have spread that quickly to the 15 inch/47 caliber main magazine? Or, did ships of BISMARCK'S era have bulkheads and interfaces that would have prevented this?
I know it's been discussed briefly, but: could the Fuso/Ise classes have had their midships turrets pulled, and additional propulsion gear installed to essentially turn them into battlecruisers? They would be like Kirishimas with better armor, no? Would they be fast enough to fill the same role, escorting the Tokyo Express under cover of darkness? Would 4 additional fast capital ships materially impact the outcome of the Guadalcanal Campaign?
'Stealing' stuff is quite common when de-commissioning. I decommed 2 ships, and skirted away with tools, plates and other mementos- many of which I still have.
My mother still lives with furniture removed from minesweepers prior to then being scrapped.
@@neilatkinson5142
Which explains why Mrs Atkinson's front yard is always free of mines.
@@Kevin_Kennelly That and the 35 cats that live with her.
Not just decommissioning I got two sofas of my ship when she was in dry dock. They were being thrown away because they didn't want to have nice sofas in what was being turned in to a pet area. They didn't want meets to trash them. So throw them out instead.
I knew a fellow in explosives ordnance disposal who had an interesting knickknack. It was his "first IED", a 122 mm shell that had a low-order detonation and basically just split into three broad leaves from nose to base.
30:55 I'm picturing a couple of dock workers trying to work out the best way to steal a 16inch triple turret.
Call in David Copperfield?
Jim, go get your pick up and bring the large trailer.
@@a2rgaming863 Got a 120 ton rating?
USS New Jersey's old guns: ruclips.net/video/MSgxpZD2qRw/видео.html
Heck, I'd be happy with just one of the 16" guns &, of course, the hardware & ammunition to be able to fire it too. I've always had a huge love for guns. My favorite American Admiral was "Ching" Lee because of his love for gunnery & the fact that he made sure every ship under his command could fire very accurately. Just like in football, it's NOT practice makes perfect it's "Perfect practice makes perfect!" It was really a shame that Admiral Lee passed away as early as he did. He really could have done so much more for the USN!! However, the USN was so much better during WW2 thanks to the way Lee got things accomplished! That being said he probably saved a lot of American lives due to some of his more simple accomplishments.
28:06 Another loose tradition associated with decommissioning a ship, that ended with USS Long Beach (CGN-9), was the 'plank owner' -- the first crew of a ship after its commissioning (and sometimes after recommissioning) would receive certificates designating them as 'plank owners' (procured by and issued to the crew, not something the Navy itself did). As part of the decommissioning and disposal for a ship, the Navy used to remove a small portion of the deck as a traditional reminder of the days when "wooden ships and iron men" were a key part of the Navy (the last major vessel known to have been fitted with a wooden deck being USS Long Beach). The Naval History and Heritage Command's Curator Branch received the wooden deck planking from major vessels, and a sailor or ex-sailor could present proof of their plank ownership to the Curator Branch and receive a section of a deck plank from their ship. The Curator Branch no longer does this distribution; it worked with various veteran reunion groups to donate planking to these groups for distribution, and surviving plank owners can contact their respective reunion group with proof of service to receive a section of deck plank. With the transition to metal-decked ships, the Navy no longer preserves deck or structural sections, so the certificates are the only recognition of being a member of a ship's commissioning crew.
I recently started taking classes to work in the marine industry and hopefully be a Captain one day. This channel had a hand in motivating me to do that. Thanks Drachinifel!
While not a scrapped ship, my beer opener mounted on my wall made from USS New Jersey's original teak deck I bought off Ryan Szimanski remains an amazing souvenir since it does its job darn well as well as being a conversation piece.
One interesting thing re: Ships fitting under bridges: USS Massachusetts didn't quite fit under the Braga bridge that it had to go under to get to battleship cove, so the radar etc had to be removed when it was towed in, as well as when it was removed for drydocking.
Regarding ships that couldn't pass beneath certain things: it's a bit trivial, but HMS Rodney needed to have the top of her mast removed to pass under the Forth rail bridge on her way to becoming razor blades. However this wasn't the case as designed, and she only required it to be done because the secondary guns had already been removed and as a result the freeboard had increased.
The pick of USS Yorktown - Yes deck-edge elevators are designed to lift vertically to cover the side-hatch of the hanger. This allows them to be stowed for narrow passages (such as canals and narrows) as well as rough seas (such as riding out a hurricane) that horizontal triangle just above the line of aircraft is the roof of the building in the background not part of the elevator.
I was wondering if they could double as a door like that.
@@cheshire4856 Not so much a door - the opening to the hanger has a hanger door as well , but more of a shield for that hanger door.
I lived in an improvised apartment under a house in San Francisco that featured beautiful oak doors (I stripped them down and refinished them) with brass hardware that had walked away from the local shipyard.
Its actually quite scarey whats left on board when a vessel heads for scrapping/ mothballed? I know of one guy who got all the life boat flares !🥺 silly bugger got caught at the airport security! Was at a refit where over 100K of tools walked from the vessel, and not just tools, every electrical appliance, every radio and most of the bridge stuff went walkies.
The amount of personal gear was amazing, clothing ,footwear and personal equipment kept me in goodies for yonks, not to mention "adult" materials( mags, videos, cds,) laptops ,tablets were common place,and drugs and alcohol were common place!
I don’t have experience with scrapping a ship in the navy but iI have been the employee of a few companies that were closed and liquidated so I can give some insights there.
When I worked for a sporting goods store that was liquidated, the managers actually gave tacit approval for employees to make certain items to disappear such as demo items, dealer samples, and such not, on the pretext that technically they were never part of the sales inventory or equipment inventory.
A Strike Witches question!? What a wonderfully unexpected crossover haha! It's thanks in large part to all your wonderful content that, as I've gone through my crash course in learning about ships over the past year or so (grew up with planes, a bit later tanks, but not so much ships) I've been able to upgrade the World Witches series IMFDB pages' naval/ship sections from barely better than "is ship, has guns" to what I'd like to think are much higher standards. I'm definitely a few months behind watching this video now (I've been catching up on ALL the Drydocks slowly instead), but thank you as always for hosting such an amazing resource of knowledge, and dare I say wisdom. :)
I love it when you ( figuratively ) get out your slide-rule and pencil and start engineering. 😀
My grandfather was on a US LST in the pacific at the end of WW2. The navy gave the ship to the Japanese to ferry their soldiers back. Anyway basically anything that wasn't bolted/welded down was removed by crew. I have a engine room porthole clock, and somewhere is a gasket making set.
In the trunk of my car today is a blanket from the USS San Jacinto (CVL30). Prior to her decommissioning Dad was part of a "Hey you" detail in charge of removing all the ship's unused bedding (by this time, most of her crew were on their way home). Anyway, at the end of the day, each item had to be counted, so many of this, so many of that. It turned out they had too many blankets. "Count 'em again". They did and the came up with a higher total!. The Chief Petty Officer told the detail to count out the excess and put them in another pile. He and the supply clerk from the base agreed that the proper total being turned in. The Chief then turned to the detail and told them, "Anyone who wants a blanket, take it" Problem solved!
Simple solutions are best...
Re: ships not fitting. My dad was chief engineer on Collett as a plank holder in 1944 in Boston. She was sent to the Pacific, escorting one of the new carriers (no idea which, Dad didn't remember) thru the canal. The carrier was designed to fit thru the canal, but retrofitted at build with mor 40mm gun tubs. When they got to the canal, they found she would fit thru the canal, but wouldn't clear the lightposts along the lock sides. The CO asked Washington what to do, and was told "proceed at all speed'..So Collett, hearing 'SNAP, SNAP,, SNAP all the way as she picked off the light posts one by one.
The ship referenced with regard to the Gallipoli landings was the River Clyde, a collier that, with some refits, tried to land 2000 troops at a beach at Cape Helles. It ran right into one of the strongest Turkish defense positions and the attempt was a total failure; the ship did not have sufficient firepower to break or pin down the defenders nor armor to protect the soldiers and crew on board.
The River Clyde beached at V beach, one of the sites where the sea turned red with the blood of the soldiers attempting to take the position. From those landed, 7 Victoria Crosses were awarded for actions in the first hour or two after landing, as well as one for Commander Unwin, the River Clyde’s Skipper and 5 other crew. The beach was taken the following day with casualties of greater than 70%. After the war the River Clyde was refloated and sold to Spanish owners who operated her until the 1960s.
Remember seeing a book in my granddad's collection which dealt with laws for military inheritance in Tsarist Russia (he himself worked in International Merchant Law for some time)… among other things, there was a list of which officers (unless otherwise stated) would get which element of ship Memorabilia in the case of a ship's decommissioning... The Watch-Bell, The Name plaque, The Ships Wheel, Sextant etc.
I heard that sometimes parts of a ship lost in action would also be given as part of a medal.
Keep up the good work Drach. :) By the way, the deck edge elevators on the Essex class were absolutely designed to fold up. You can find pictures of both Essex herself and Ticonderoga, on the web, with the elevators folded fully vertical so they are flat against the side of the ship. That was part of the design since they knew they had to go through the Panama Canal and to fit in drydocks. I don't know why Yorktown has hers in that odd position in that picture though rather than folded flat up against the side. Modern carriers can do this as well by the way. I don't know what exactly is involved in folding the elevator up, but they are designed to do it.
in reference to the Elevator the Panama Canal wasn't built with Essex and Iowas and my father read something that the first one through ripped down telephone and light piles and they didn't care they needed the ship in the Pacific they refunded and rebuilt afterwards.
57:32 - "Smile and wave, boys, smile and wave - yes, Elevator Operator #2, you too!"
Dad had books from the California and accidentally took tools off the Yorktown when the returned from Coral Sea.He never mentioned it till just a few years before he passed.
I knew about the books the ships name is written inside the covers but the tools lay in his toolbox unused and un discussed my entire life till I asked.
An open end wrench for 4 inch diameter bolts is of limited use in civilian life. Perhaps a home defense weapon.
And the only thing my dad took from the Prinz Eugene was the captain's state room key.
11:11 Wholly unexpected Strike Witches question there. Slippery slope to get on. Next thing you know Drach will be getting questions about what color panties various historical naval figures preferred. :)
Fisher went commando
@@Trek001 IIRC "Nice N' Breezy" was the episode title for that one...
@@richmcgee434 Love it!
Really took me by surprise, but in the best way possible! There's a decent amount of naval related stuff in World Witches; outside of the many, many ship classes from various nations that show up across the seasons (including Amagi completed as a carrier), we also get the see the four completed Kii-class in one of the mangas (with a mention that the other two Amagi-class were also completed as carriers, but sold to Karlsland/Germany).
Thanks in large part to Drach here (among other resources of course), within the past year I've managed to massively upgrade the ship sections on the series' IMFDB pages, which, while I had most of the screenshots before, were generally barely better than "is a ship, has some guns".
I have a couple of chairs from the wardroom of the most recent _Ark Royal_ along with branded notepaper, dinner plates and things like that...
Amazing how much of a war canoe (and some older people here might get *that* Sailor reference as I am sure High Admiral Drach will) you can fit in a 15 year old Ford Transit
huuur duur war cAnOE
@@implosion1476 I am sure that you did not get the reference then
44:38
Thanks for answer drach didn’t even occur to me to think of Mers El Kébir as a non-aligned battle!
That picture with the comment on the size of boiler tube diameters immediately reminded me of Scotti climbing up the Jeffries tube in Enterprise.
Would a video about the evolution of the fire control and aiming systems used by warships mounting turreted guns be possible? I think it's interesting that the resolver is a 150 year old rotary position sensor circuit design still in use on EV and hybrid vehicles that was used early on to measure and control the bearing and elevation of the guns and turrets of ships such as HMS Dreadnaught and the Iowa class. I think that fire control is just 'smoke in the box' for most folks with an interest in naval history. With recent history and current events showing that sensor guided smart munitions have a huge advantage over fire controlled munitions, I think that the technology race associated with naval fire control systems would make some interesting videos.
Warship, both in the magazine period and in the ongoing annual period, often had articles of various depth on various navies fire control of various types.
Didn't Drac do a piece about fire control a while back? I think the title was "plotting your destruction" or some such thing.
@@stevevalley7835 He did.
But I doubt if he will cover television guided missiles. Leave that to videos of home made missiles coming out of Ukrain.
@@stevevalley7835 ruclips.net/video/cbXyAzGtIX8/видео.html
It IS possible to lift ships partly with floation devices! it is done alot. partial drydocks to lift the stern to do emergency rudder/prop repairs, additional pontons to the side to increase stability on heavy lift ships. to things as "scheepskamelen" (age of sail) to lift ships as a whole to pass shallows to get bigger ships into Amsterdam.
Yes, but they are temporary and not intended for extended use.
@@colbeausabre8842 In particular, not for use during battle...
Regarding reducing a ship's draught to allow it to enter shallow waters, C. S. Forrester described the process (known as a "camel") in one of his Hornblower stories.
In the story "The Commodore", Forrester sends Hornblower to the Baltic in 1812 (presumably so he doesn't have to send him up the Potomac to burn Washington) in charge of a small squadton to assist the russians against Bonaparte. In one episode, he fills a couple of lighters with water and then lashes them to each side of a bomb ketch. The water is then pumped out of the lighters, which raises the ketch sufficiently to be able to cross the bar of a river and attack french shipping.
I don't know if this ever worked in reality, but Forrester usually did a good job on his research.
Yes, it has been done, but it is tricky and would not last long-term, especially not during battle. Getting over a bar is one thing, and can be done carefully and slowly or timed to the tide. The stresses of firing would snap ropes like tissue, leading to the grounding or breaking up of a ship in the middle of a battle. Note also that a bomb ketch is basically a large ship-borne mortar, and there is a significant downward recoil associated with it. They are heavily reinforced, but rely on the water displacement to absorb it. Those lighters would pop off at the first firing.
Well, all Essex deck edge elevator could be stowed vertical. It's possible that in later refits that possibility was deleted.
Regarding the Hipper vs Deutschland, I believe the pockets shouldn't have too much of an immune zone against the Hipper's gunfire. Those were some pretty punchy 60 caliber weapons. Side armor was a combination of 50mm and 80mm for the Deutschland and Admiral Scheer, and a 100mm belt for the Graf Spee.
Also, Hipper was an excellent gunboat, hitting several destroyers at Barents Sea despite very bad visibility, and a sea state where even the battleship-sized Admiral Hipper would experience a bit of roll.
And if Hipper takes out one of the pocket's turrets, I think its pretty much game over. Also, Graf Spee took quite some damage from Exeter's gunfire at river plate, and those were only 50 caliber weapons. Not only did Graf Spee have thicker belt armor than her elder sisters, it was also higher (though admittedly not by much).
GS took a penetrating 8 inch hit that narrowly missed her engine room. Whether that would have totally disabled her is impossible to say, but imagine her drifting with Harwood circling just out of range until the big stuff arrived
@@colbeausabre8842 do you happen to know if the 8inch shell penetrated through the 100mm belt or the 40mm deck?
Never thought I'd hear Strike Witches from a Drachinifel video
Until (I believe) the Midway class aircraft carrier, all U.S. Navy ships were designed (a) to pass through the Panama Canal, for obvious reasons, and (b) to pass under the Brooklyn Bridge (to access the New York Navy Yard. So I think this was designed, as was the folding radar masts on some U.S. battleships.
Well in a Hipper vs Deutschland remember that the Deutschland also has a 150mm secondary battery that it can fire between main gun salvos.
33:25 - I would be quite amused to see battlecruisers listed on Amazon! 🤣
Some of the Majestic class were in fact disarmed and used as if not assault ships then armoured troop ships during the Dardanelles campaign
55:12 and because of that same principle in an other application, modern car engines tend to have rather 2 individually smaller intake and exhaust valves than one bigger valve each side.
As to the question about flotation for the Yamato, there have been dedicated barges designed to float warships over shallow places. I believe the Dutch used these for some of their sailing warships back in the day, and the system was used to get ocean going submarines from from the builder's yard on Lake Michigan through the Chicago ship canal and so on to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. I don't think such a system has been used for anything as remotely as large as the Yamato, nor do I think it was ever used in combat.
They are called "camels" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_camel
The "fitting into" question. Size constraints, for Welland Canal access, depths, locks and bridges, are common to me. Locks provide a fixed element to size, whereas depths can be slightly altered with load and ballast lightening. Mast height adjustment (or removal) is fairly typical for bridge passage.
Alternately, bridge removal is an option for a ship with 18" guns. Not the ship's bridge, the one that's in the way. :)
I'm presently reading a book about allied battleships of WWII, and it talks about the development of the KGVs and Lions, with the constraints on draft imposed by Suez and on beam by two drydocks. The Admiralty jumped the shark with Vanguard, as it was too wide for two docks, iirc Portsmouth and Rosyth, but they were satisfied with the number of civilian owned docks around the UK that could accommodate it, if needed.
I would think a limiting factor on boiler tube design would be in cleaning scale out of them which I would guess is done with brushes. You could flood the boiler with acid to chew on scale but in a massive installation this might be problematic. Small diameter tubes might clog quicker than larger. I don't know how ships deionize feed water but I would think they do not produce lab grade water in vast quantities. Given hoop stress calculations I would think small tubes could have thinner walls and be stronger than large tubes giving less weight and more efficient heat transfer.
They make their own feed water, they boil seawater, catch the steam and condensate it. Said condensate is free of any calcium and nasties. And also a small amount of chemicals is added to counter the scale creation.
But indeed once in a while you open up the end covers and ram trough the tubes with a coperwire brush on a long stick.
It is a problem with watertube boilers
My dad, Chief electrician submarines U.S. Navy, Jesse J. Bryant, once told me as a little kid,”Son, l don’t care if you get in a fight in school, but you better not lose. This was really bad news.
The brig Niagara was moved from the sheltered area where she was built over a sand spit by use of logs passed through her gun ports supported by 'camels' that were pumped out to reduce her draft.
Best dry dock questions in while
@ 56:40 There is a story that a US navy carrier was ordered to transit the Panama Canal and soon discovered that the flight deck was above the level of the walls of the Canal, but extended just far enough to collide with the light posts that were on the sides of the canal. They sent it through anyway, and destroyed many of the lights along the way. Search for "Army South links past and present through Panama Canal artifacts" for an article that mentions this.
Missed your comment. See mine on the same issue (My dad was there when it happened).
Re Yamato floats. FWIW, the only patent by a US president was given to Lincoln for a device to get riverboats over shallows. Oil wasn't a big thing then, so I'm not sure what he used instead.
Question: have 2 warships of the same class ever fought each other? If so, what were the results?
00:47:41 - Did Greece doom Force Z?
The problem with this whole question is that it misses that Force Z's main problem was not the numbers of escorts, but the idea that one battleship and one battlecruiser were an appropriate force to deter Japanese aggression in the first place. A few more cruisers or destroyers didn't change that even if the planes had failed to sink the capital ships, the Japanese had all of her battleships grouped up and desperate for an inferior force of capital ships to concentrate their strength on. All the airplanes did was save the Japanese battleship squadron having to do the job later. Add in that IJN Yamato was available just a few weeks later, it would have been very difficult for Force Z to represent a credible threat to any Japanese ambitions in the region.
Speaking of single gun turrets and the number of 16"/50 Mark 7 barrels that were made, I'm surprised that post-WW2 cruisers weren't fitted for one of these VW Beetle launching cannons. I'm sure that the Marines would happily chip in for its creation.
I doubt their construction would be able to take the firing stresses. Monitors are heavily reinforced.
@@gregorywright4918 I'm not talking about taking the engine out of a Dodge Hellcat and putting it in a VW Bettle. Can it be done, maybe, would it be practical, not a chance. That said, I'm pretty sure that said stresses would be factored into the design of this Cruiser.
What about the USS Sullivan's Navy ship ? Mary Babiec
as for the loss of force Z, there was supposed to be an aircraft carrier with it, indomitable or illustrious and it might have helped if Singapore had been informed of there position and the requirement for air cover.
True, air cover, whether land or ship-based (the latter would have been better), would have been a big improvement for Force Z, as the bombers were not escorted. But the question asked was whether additional escort ships might have been available if they had not been lost off Greece. Yes, they MIGHT have been available, they MIGHT have been assigned, but they might not have made much of a difference. AA in 1941 was not that great.
@21:00 This is why I consider the QE's the 2nd-best battleship design of all time (Iowa = #1) : unplanned longevity. They were designed in 1912, and 30+ years later only the two biggest, baddest BBs ever built possessed "excessive overmatch" against them. That is some damn fine engineering work. Yamato SHOULD be able to kill 2x QE....she displaces as much as both combined!
Remember
Warspite has plot armour.
Proof against 18" fire and any long lances.
See US Federal Code: Finders vs. Keepers.
Yes based of the shock Supreme Court vote 9-1 that possession is the proof of law
Back from his victory over the cretans at Sparta. Advisor whispers in ear. Make that the Spartans at Crete
Concerning people stealing from ships about to be scrapped, I got this very amusing mental image of a Looney Tunes-esque attempt by some sailors trying to scoot off with something ludicrous, like a battleship anchor. All set to "Pink Panther" music, of course.
"What do you got there?"
*sweating* "Nothing"
For what it's worth the Japanese had the turret battleship Chin Yen (formerly Chen Yuen) taken from China in 1895 in a Sino-Japanese bout.
No, it was the Sino-Japanese War. No US involvement except for some mercenaries
@@colbeausabre8842 Quite correct. That was a typo as my phone was playing silly buggers.
11:08 How many humps do camels on a ship have?
Like humans, as many as they can get.
Hello Drach, I wondered why you didn’t include the option ship-camels as used by the VOC. Yes, other era, but technically a lot more sound that either barrels or permanent structure.
I imagine if we are going for a Battle of Tsushima Japan vs America, we have to point out how much more experienced the Japanese are, at this point. One of the reasons for Russia's defeat was that the force wasn't the best trained, especially compared to the Japanese. When we look at the American Battle line in WW1 and vs Spanish in the 1890s. Their accuracy was poor.
We'd probably have done terribly against the Japanese in that era. There was an old Metagaming microgame called Battlewagons that would have let you game it out as a speculative fight and actually reflect how important a training edge was. Only game I can think of where it really was modeled to be as important as the technological side of things.
Well, the Russians had been worn down by Japanese torpedo boats almost from the moment they sailed from Mother Russia...
Although some of those torpedo boats were cleverly disguised as British fishing trawlers.
Does changing floatation through bulges create enough top weight issues to make a similar tumblehome to that seen on French pre-dreadnoughts? Would such bulge refits have to be redesigned to widen the hull above the waterline to prevent this phenomenon?
@44:39 um, did I miss something about Pearl Harbor...
Well, any surprise attack would fall under that interpretation. But he may have missed the American "Neutrality Patrol", which got in some fights while still "non-aligned"...
HMS Defiant, Damn the Defiant!
The Enterprize could take on 2 QEs and win
That assault ship is a very orky idea...
The impact of the british blockade is often underestimated. Industry suffered heavily, the starvation of civilians was much higher than in WW2. So I think a blockade of England is not the point, but I guess Germany would have done a lot better if the RN could not keep up their blockade any longer.
In Germany,
A trade magazine from that time implied that some imported food was being left on the docks giving some cis->trans changes.
There was certainly a big reduction in usable fat intake. This was overcompensated afterwards.
Stupid question apologies in advance. In many of the bb pics you show, there are multiple pipes on the side of the hull running diagonally from the deck level to the waterline. What are these appendages doing?
If you gave a particular timestamp reference that would help, but there have been multiple questions in the past about booms attached to the sides of WW1-era ships for anti-torpedo nets used in harbor.
@@gregorywright4918 33:30
@@skyking79d Yes, those are anti-torpedo net booms. They get rigged out when in harbor.
Meta question, is there a list of all the questions ever asked and answered in a Drydock?
The Problem with atleast parts of the Venician Arsenal is that its still an active Millitary Base
wow never knew they lost 2 bigger cruisers with Greece/Crete. only really think about bonaventure and york the rest kind of just melt into a jumble for me.
Battleship amphibious assault ship: just don't do the landing portion the same way the ship at Gallipoli did, with a couple of gangplanks for troops to come down in the face of machine gun fire.
The ship used at Gallipoli was HMT River Clyde. They just cut some sally ports in her side and ran her onto the beach in the face of heavy fire. It was a bloody slaughter.
I really don't think that a battleship assault craft would do a better job; at least not for the PBI who would still be emerging from a limited number of exits. It wouldn't take too many machine guns to repeat the massacre of Cape Helles.
Drach’s weakness has been discovered.., the Critical hit is noted as “Deck Elevations types and capability”.........in form all Channel Enemies.
Not the amount of firepower between Goben and multiple Russian pre-dreadnought, it is the fire control not the number of barrels - no WW1 had capability to split targeting except with derisory secondary armament.
The 12"/50 vs 13.5" question brilliantly indicates the difference between good historians/authors, who go to the original sources and look at dates, times and sequences of events as recorded in the primary record... and the bad authors who just parrot what they've read in other bad author's books, without ever checking the original sources to confirm.
Agree. I have found things in authoritative books that either don't make sense, or are completely wrong, when I compare to documents published at the time the decisions were made. How many times have you read that the Washington Treaty forced Courageous and Glorious to be converted to carriers? The treaty does not list those ships as capital ships. Lexington and Saratoga *are* listed as capital ships, and required to be disposed of.. My take is the treaty respected the Courageouse's definition by the Admiralty as cruisers, and they were converted to carriers because the Admiralty wanted them to be carriers, rather than cruisers. I wish I could find on-line access to source documents for the RN, like I have found for the USN.
@@stevevalley7835 it's that feeling when you look up from the page and realise you've read more books than this author... and you know which two or three books he bothered to read, and can see how he came to his dodgy conclusions, as a result!
@@lukedogwalker there are things I read that simply don't make any sense. I have been looking in to the choice of 14" for the KGVs. One narrative says the British were forced to go 14" by Second London, but it was the British that pushed for 14" in the treaty, and their decision to go 14" was made before the conference started. Another narrative says the 14" armament was chosen for lower cost. Drac's piece on the KGVs shows the estimated weight for the 12-14" originally planned was higher than that of the 9-15" alternative, and the 14", having more guns, means more parts to be forged, fabricated, and machined. I don't see how it is possible for the 14" set to cost less with more material and a higher part count than the 15" alternative. I picked up the Garzke/Dulin book at the library last week. They talk about the "more smaller guns means more hits" school of thought driving the decision. *That* has the ring of truth to it, because the USN had the same argument in 1915-16. I read about the debate in the USN from the annual reports of the Secretary of the Navy, and newspaper reports, written at the time. I have visions of someone at the top, or above the top, of the Admiralty, clinging to that obsolete theory, ignoring that the French and Italians were both building 15", ignoring that the US made it's support for 14" contingent on Japanese support, ignoring that the Japanese were not going to support it because they already said they were dropping out of the treaty, and forcing the 14" gun. There was no need to write 14" into the treaty, as there was nothing in the treaty prohibiting building under treaty limits. The French had built 13", then 15", and the Italians were building 15", when the treaty limit was 16". My take is, whoever it was that forced the 14" gun on the RN, had it written into the treaty, and the fake narratives about treaty compliance and cost created and disseminated for political cover. It may sound bizarre, but no more bizarre than Admiral Strauss' antics at BuOrd, pushing 14".
@@stevevalley7835 One area you might look into is which guns were currently in active manufacture, as an existing line is cheaper to continue than to restart or new-start a different line of greater or lesser caliber. Also, were 14" available from older ships, rather than needing new manufacture?
One of the other external pressures on the Admiralty was the pacifist movement in British society in the mid-20s to 30s. Appeasing them was a concern, and they had some pull in Parliament funding discussions. They wanted smaller ships and smaller guns.
@@gregorywright4918 the only preceding 14" guns in the UK were export only, wire wound, designs circa WWI, produced by Elswick and Vickers. Logic would dictate that, when they started working on the Lions, they would have used three of the quad 14" turrets that Vickers already had in production to expedite the ships, but no, they started with a clean sheet triple 16" design. The French, Italian, and German battleships that were building in 39, were the same ones that had been building in 36, but the 14" guns that were deemed competitive in 36, were seen as uncompetitive in 39? That is another aspect of the 14" gun KGV that doesn't make any sense.
Were there incidents where on board foreign naval attaches that were pressed into service at a time of emergency? If so how did it work out and were there issues with chain of command?
A US naval observer was in the PBY that spotted Bismark. He took the controls while the British pilot radioed the contact. This was secret, I think until after the war.
There was an incident during the Second Opium in China that Jackie Fisher recounted when there was a fight between British gunboats and a Chinese fort. An American officer observing rowed over to a British vessel to talk to the Royal Navy officers, and his sailors, having nothing to do, stayed in cover. One of the British gun crews had a sailor wounded, and one of the American sailors rushed over to assist as he was taken away. Then another Brit was wounded, and another American came in. When the officer came out of his conference from his conference, he found that the gun position on a British gunboat, involved in a conflict the Americans were officially neutral in, was entirely manned by American sailors.
btw Venice is the english name, but it goes from Veneto(that is the region, the city goes like Venezia in Italian, not Italian btw), so "Venetian navy"
You forget that the US Navy can't hit the broad side of a barn. All the gunnery officers are named "Tex".
Rear Admiral "Ching" Lee Jr would beg to differ!
ijn kirishima would like a word
@@simonw5094 We were talking about the Navy in the era of the Spainish American war. It took about 100 shots to get a hit. Also the Brits found the US Navys shooting in WWI to be abysmal.
@@rogersmith7396 The RN's gunnery of the same period was equally bad, Sir Percy Scott was just getting going in the 1890's
@@colbeausabre8842 My understanding is good fire control had'nt been invented yet.
On rhe high seas fleet question with grand fleet defeated the blockade can fail and open up their own supplies
Episode #216... Is it odd that I remember #16 and #116??? 0~o well nothing for it, on with the show... ^~^
British change to the 13.5" from the 12"/50? - So what did the RN do to correct the problem with 12/50 inch and how successful was it? And for &diety's sake, why did they repeat the error with 16/45 Nark I ?
What good is a longer range gun if you can't hit anything with a shorter range gun? Fire control lagged gun technology.
By the way.. “little British Donkey” are Winston Churchills words..not mine..just riding his coattails
21:33
I dunno Drach. The QEs had a 3, maybe 4 knot advantage on Dreadnought, and you claim that would allow QE to dictate the range of engagement.
A SoDak, NoCar or KGV had a 3, maybe 4 knot advantage on the QE, yet you say that is not enough to “dominate” the engagement.
A ship carrying 9x16”/45 (especially firing the Mk8 super heavy) and covered by armor that was “even adequate” at stopping a 15”/42 round, against a ship carrying 8x15”/42 and covered by armor that could not _possibly_ be adequate against the 16” Mk8 … the NoCar or SoDak have the edge.
I think KGV, carrying 10x14”/45, and covered by armor that you directly credit as being highly effective (here and in other videos), would also have an advantage against the QEs.
If one KGV could not sink two QE (25 years older than it) without suffering fatal damage itself, doesn’t that make the KGV a failure as a surface warship?
Sir I believe that I speak for a larger part of your audience thing you think I'd like to hear the Aztec stories and also what do you think about the Stars :Stargate ,Star Trek, Star wars just label it properly and the non fan's can pass on it.I'D hope that most of us can read.
Somehow I wound up here instead of the T class episode.
I've read an allegedly true story about the Italian navy building a minesweeper at a small riverside shipyard and then discovering that it wouldn't fit under one of the bridges further downstream.
Didn't Jeff Bezos just build a mega-yacht in the Netherlands that would require dismantling a historic bridge to get out?
Drachinifel
If I was to talk about Grecian and Cretan operations having an effect on British deployments I would talk navally last.
I would talk about the victories in North Africa which could have been exploited to a greater extent without Grecian adventures.
Perhaps the land battle victories could have reduced the need for Malta convoys as land based air cover would be available. The Malta convoys were a major drag on the resources of the fleet.
Then of course the biggest loss related to the Grecian campaign was imo the damage to HMS Formidable. It was February 1942 before she returned to service.
While she was replaced in the Mediterranean her availability may have provided a carrier for Force Z.
Finally of course there is the Destroyers and cruisers whose losee you mention.
It was entirely political. Churchill had proclaimed Britain as the champion of the free world. He had boxed himself into a corner, he HAD to come to the aid of Greece. As far as Crete goes, the reason it was a defeat for the British was Freyberg's mismanagement of the battle. "In the chaos of the retreat from the Battle of Greece in 1941, Churchill gave Freyberg command of the Allied forces during the Battle of Crete. Although instructed to prevent an assault from the air, he remained obsessed with the possibility of a naval landing and based his tactics on it, neglecting adequately to defend the airfield at Maleme, ignoring ULTRA intelligence messages, which showed that the assault was coming by air" No lost battle, no evacuation, no lost ships. Admittedly, there then occurs the problem of keeping Crete supplied, but Hitler solved that by invading Russia which pulled most of the Luftwaffe into that meatgrinder. The Axis could either try attacking the Malta convoys or attempting to blockade Crete from the air. Malta was obviously the more important of the two - Malta based RN subs and light forces and the RAF were slaughtering the convoys to North Africa and starving Rommel of supplies. But. Hitler could no longer execute Operation Hercules, his airborne capability died at Crete.
I thought it was the Indominable that grounded itself on some Caribbean reef that was supposed to join Force Z?
@@gregorywright4918 no carrier was assigned to accompany Force Z.
There was discussions at the highest level about assigning Indomitable but it didn't happen.
My argument is that having an extra available carrier might shake something free for Force Z.
Force Z hadn't been considered at the time of the campaign in Greece so obviously that carrier wasn't assigned to it.
Regarding the topic "First ship to 'Dreadnought' HMS Dreadnought?"
Agreed the "Queen Elizabeth" is as good or better than most other candidates I can think of.
However the ship that succeeds Queen Elizabeth is not a ship. Could be the Swordfish or the Nakajima B5N as you choose.
They do have Army/Navy surplus stores.
Haha two To Queen Elizabeth would be any Iowa
the US never HD the comchatka.
Please pronounce dido properly.....it’s die-doe not Dee-doe.Actually I’m really surprised you don’t pronounce this word correctly.I’m still on episode 128 and it’s taking forever to catch up.So I’ve listened to you miss pronounce this word for a long time and it’s like when someone drags their nails down the blackboard.Incidentally I am a big fan....
Leaving aside the fact that we are peoples divided by a common language, you can often get a good idea of where someone was educated just by how they pronounce classical names; you follow what your teacher/professor did, and so on, and they often follow disputes that have gone on for many decades if not centuries.
@@stuartwald2395 my Dad’s mate was Yeoman of Signals on Orion. He corrected me once when when I asked him about “Dee-Does”. I was doing Latin at school and thought this was the proper pronunciation. I would go with the guys who were there.🇳🇿
Would Hipper have the range to get there?
1904 IJN vs USN: Japan has phantom torpedo boats. Japan wins.
Bismarck took on Hood and Prince of Wales and won.
i think you must know you are being disingenuous . bismark was not alone, prince of wales still had workmen on and neither is a QE class battleship. could bismark defeat 2 QE battleships? it could run from them . by your rationale renown is better by 2 than the sharnhorst class
And it was still forced to abandon it's mission.
:)
Algorithm Engagement Comment.
51st, 9 October 2022
With the canibalization of US battleships it would seem the Navy has a record of what is on each ship and what is available for removal. Personally I would'nt mind having a 100,000 HP steam turbine and gen set if I could get away with it.
Ryan on NJ has a video or two about cannibalizing other ships, he recently went to the Philadelphia Navy Yard to look for stuff on some old Perry class frigates.
Lmao sailors if it is not nailed down its going home in my kit bag . Why the good conduct medle is referred to as the not being court medle
I'd never heard of Strike Witches before. I looked it up and man, do I feel like a perv for doing so. WTF Japan.
Teen age boys paradise!
Anime is trash and so am I! But I haven't watched Strike Witches.
Jesus. Thats tame anime.