From Battleships to Blimps: The Rise and Fall of Military Giants
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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@@TheSh4dowgale🤡
My grandfather's earliest memory was the Zeppelin raid on Sheffield on 25 September 1916. The 36 bombs dropped killed 29 civilians including 10 children.
During WW2 he narrowly missed being killed by a shell fired across the English Channel by a German railway gun. He also witnessed the British 'Bosch Buster' gun being fired, another railway gun, although without the range to cross the channel (despite contemporary newsreel reports implying that it could).
My grandfathers fireplace mantle was lined with small metal bombs, the size that could fit in the palm of your hand. He was a collector of WWI and WWII aviation items. He told me they were used to drop on trench soldiers from blimps and balloons.
That would be a "rail gun" not a "railway gun". Totally different concept.
@@lepayen the commenter was correct, Germans fired a railway based gun over the English Channel, not a Rail Gun, which only exist in current forms and not in WWII Europe.
Yeah, I figured that out while watching the video.@@jubjub7101
0:30 - Chapter 1 - Battleships
3:15 - Mid roll ads
4:20 - Chapter 2 - Heavy tanks
6:50 - Chapter 3 - Railway gun
10:10 - Chapter 4 - Blimps
12:40 - Chapter 5 - Strategic nuclear weapons
Blimps were also used in anti-sub warfare in WWI. They carried small bombs. They reported several sightings of enemy subs, and one may have been sunk by a blimp, but it was not confirmed. They were also used to rescue downed flyers.
One of the biggest problems with railway guns is honestly just the fact that it's a *railway* gun. If you're running an modern industrial war, you need to transport truly vast amounts of material from troops to munitions to food to fuel....logistics are a major and critical aspect of war. And to handle that you have 3 options. If you're fighting in/near the ocean, you use transport ships. If you're inland and have a developed rail network, you use trains. Otherwise you use trucks. (Or you're the US and you use stupid big cargo planes.)
But yeah, if railway guns have a chance of being useful, you need to have a developed rail network. And if you have that, you're probably using that for logistics. Having big weapons that sit still on the tracks fairly near the front makes scheduling everything a lot harder. Throw in all the issues with operating them and you quickly get to a point where you wonder if this weapon is even worth having. Then an enemy dive bomber drops a bomb on it, you fix the track, and let the logistics guys know the rail-blockage they've been working around is gone.
And then shortly after WWII you start getting cruise missiles that are actually pretty effective (V1 is technically the first of these, but without a guidance system there's only so much value you can get out of a cruise missile). And when you have accurate missiles that hit targets hundreds of kilometers away, a gun that shoots 50km and has that many drawbacks becomes an increasingly absurd choice.
Sure, classic artillery has value, but that assumes you have a decent firing rate - the value you get from stuff like howitzers is the ability to saturate an area in explosions and...if you're firing railway guns a few times per hour, how many do you need to achieve that kind of saturation???
I sometimes wonder how many wars nukes have actually prevented.
No really, think about it for a minute. Several could have boiled over into world war 3 pretty easily. I mean, the first one was arguably started over less than what we've faced since 1945. How many leaders decided against it because one side had nukes? How many conflicts were more strongly avoided than they otherwise would have? Would China have gone after Taiwan already? Would we have put boots on the ground in Ukraine? Would Korea or Vietnam have been changed?
It's a valid question that I'm not sure we'll ever really know. For the next 50 years at least, it will be too classified. By the time it's not, it will be lost to time.
The terms blimp and airship are not interchangeable. Airships are larger with a rigid framework. Two military airships worthy of note are the USS Akron and its sister ship the USS Macon. They were huge and carried fighter aircraft, the Curtis Sparrowhawk, for reconnaissance.
They’re called dirigibles, and the US navy had three of them. Like the British airships, all the US navy ones crashed due to being over weighted by officers who insisted on bringing as many creature comforts as possible and negligence in operating them. The carelessness with which they were operated was truly astounding. One was lost off the California coast after running directly into a storm cloud that they had seen and it was recommended they go around. The officer of the deck arrogantly ordered to proceed straight through. Wind shear caused the dirigible to crash. Another one was lost when it was ordered through a mountain pass. The officers had loaded it with so many personal belongings that the aircraft was unable to climb to more than 5000 ft. Traversing the pass, a side wind blew it into a mountainside. The third was destroyed when it was driven directly into a squall line in direct contravention of orders. Wind shear plus overloading by the officers caused the aircraft to crash. In the investigations of the three crashes the common threads were overloading of the aircraft and extreme negligence in their operation. Dirigibles were seen as an undesirable posting and the US had the worst crews and officers as a result. Training was minimal to nonexistent. This was during the 1930s when military service was considered shameful. Pay was poor and treatment of military personnel was poor. Many parks at the time had signs that read, “ No dogs or soldiers.”
@@richardbeckenbaugh1805 The ones that crashed were German dirigibles, overloaded with riches.
I recently got into a debate with someone about whether or not the use of nuclear weapons by the US was a war crime. We came to the conclusion of "unquestionably, BUT there is a reason no one has used a nuke since August of 1945, and that's *because* the United States used a nuke in August of 1945. It's not hard to imagine an alternate scenario where the US never uses a nuke during WW2 (maybe they aren't ready in time and Japan surrenders anyway after the Soviet Union invades Manchuria), then the the world goes into the cold war with potentially 3 or 4 nuclear powers that have much more itchy trigger fingers. In that alternate scenario, I don't see how we survive as a species. So... was the use of nukes by the US a war crime? Absolutely, but it was also one that, in my opinion, had to happen, otherwise we would all be dead.
Per ww2 bomber doctrine used on both sides hitting cities was not only aceapted but common practice. The only thing special about Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the munitions and that theyd done it with one plane not a hundred
The USA had a done a good job burning Tokyo to the ground earlier, Warsaw a d most of eastren eroupe was leveled, London was blown apart and the Japanese weren't exactly nice when attacking China and Korea including using gas, and other chemical and biological agents on whole towns in some cases juat to test effectiveness which unlike nukes was actually banned under existing articles of war.
Were the nukes terrible undoubtedly but they weren't a war crime.
The Japanese had THOUSANDS of kamikaze planes for a land invasion of Mainland Japan. If the US had to invade Japan, the death toll was predicted to be in the millions. Nukes were necessary.
The Japanese weren't just going to give up because of the Soviet Union invading Manchuria. They were deadlocked about surrender. In the months leading up to Stalin turning east they were trying to engage the Soviets to propose terms to the USA and GB. After this avenue proved fruitless they were still unable to figure out how to end the war. The destructive power of the bombs proved so great Hirohito intervened and forced the High Command to accept terms from the Allies. This made the planned invasion by force thankfully unnecessary.
@@vonfaustien3957 war crime. Just because others did it doesn't give you a pass.
To quote TFE "it's never a war crime the first time" so USA dropping Atom bombs on Japan was not a war crime.
I went to an air show at Lakehurst air base years ago. They still have the zeppelin hangar on their base and it was enormous.
The speed of the light tank still gives it a role. And it just made a comeback in the US Army as the Booker (it's a tank in everything but name).
I always thought the Type "B" limp airship (as opposed to the rigid dirigible airship) was an outgrowth of the unmanned barrage balloons that were used to try to interfere with low-flying aircraft.
02:55 - Sad
Last ever Battleship put to sea and sent to war 😔
RIP 🚢....
Rail guns would be cool in a video game.
Pls do a video on the bf 109
Love to see railway guns get a mention 💪👍
Nice little Lubitel you have behind you on the left! What is on the leather case?
Interesting that the country with so many different types of tanks (Great Britain) design the main battle tank.
Nice Work! All of you freakin‘ Rock! Thank you for your dedication. ❤️
I mean nukes are the ultimate bargaining chip and who’s gonna give that up?
Using blimps for subs was pretty cool... never knew that. Didn't know we really used blimps for much. But that's nearly a perfect role for them. And a sub wouldn't really have much of a way to retaliate back then.
Centurion was the first Main Battle Tank, not the Chieftain.
Blimp in military nomenclature is Balloon, Limp. As in the gas bag itself has no rigid frame structure.
Thanks Simon!
There is a view among some military pundits that modern anti-ship weapons systems, such as torpedoes and missiles, or even ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads have made aircraft carriers and carrier groups too vulnerable for modern combat.
I think it's safe to say those pundits have no idea about the defensive capabilities of a carrier group...
This may be playing out with drones as we speak.
High altitude dirgibles can be useful for things like radar and electronic warfare.
I served on 3 aircraft carriers, but still, battleships are just cool. I know they are antiquated, but nothing is cooler than an 18in naval gun.
So you're old and Japanese?
@@mistermcgoering7904 middle aged and white 🤷🧐
6:50 Am I the only one who thought Gauss Rifles and Mass Drivers when he said "Rail[way] guns?"
My grandfather saw the bombing of Nagasaki from his position as the nose gunner on a B-24. His squadron was on the way back from bombing an ammo dump and the mushroom cloud was directly in their flight path. I won't repeat what his navigator said on the subject, but needless to say they had to find another way home. That was one of the very few stories he'd tell about WWII.
I don’t wish to be unpleasant but B24s didn’t have dedicated nose gunners. That job was done by the bombadier.
Also, with the exception of the Doolittle Raid, I believe that all of the bombing of the Japanese home islands was done from B29s. They didn’t have nose gunners either.
I’m also a bit sceptical about the routing of a bombing operation on Japan on the same day as the Nagasaki bombings that would have him flying back towards Nagasaki at that time. I’m not saying that that bit of the story is impossible, without detailed research into the bombing sorties of that day, but I believe there were only 2 B29s in the area.
@@bob_the_bomb4508 He was part of the 494th. They were the last B-24 heavy bombardment group, as B-29s were going into production. He was one of the first groups on Anguar Island before being moved to Okinawa.
@@Shiny_Dragonite thank you. But that still doesn’t mean that he was a nose gunner, that he was in a B24 that bombed the home islands or that he witnessed the Nagasaki explosion.
@@bob_the_bomb4508 The B-24's were used in the Pacific i believe due to their superior range over the B-17 which made them far more practical in the Pacific due to the huge distances needed to be covered as opposed to Europe.
I feel like they have up on battleships too soon….
If a new battleship were to be made, it could be outfitted with main cannons that would be leagues more potent in every regard (range, fire rate, accuracy, destructive capabilities, etc…) than what came before, top of the line AA capabilities and even be fitted for deployment and coordination of mass drone strikes.
You are completely ignoring the reason they no longer exist. The fact that cruise missiles and PLANES, like was even mentioned, are the reason they dont exist anymore. And if they are loaded with drones and shit, then they are no longer battleships. They would be drone carriers. There is absolutely no reason to have a giant gun platform anymore, when a smaller guided missile cruiser can field FAR more firepower and at far longer ranges.
@@NavyDood21
I mean, there are 2 flaws with missiles I’ve noticed over the course of the wars in Israel and Ukraine:
⚪️Missiles are EXPENSIVE to use en masse, especially over a longstanding conflict. Artillery rounds meanwhile can just use the cannon they fire out of to move (some have fancier course correction capabilities), so you save on round to round expenses and production time. Not to mention each artillery round is smaller than a missile of similar power, so that make them easier to transport and use more of with any single device.
⚪️And missiles are more “fallible” in a way compared to simpler artillery. More
Moving parts always invite more chances for internal issues you know. Plus missiles can be tracked, deceived and/or intercepted with the right countermeasures. Artillery doesn’t suffer from those sorts of things really… The rounds are fast, small(er), harder to detect and uncomplicated in comparison.
All I’m saying is that it might be a good fallback for naval vessels to at least have the _1_ big gun platform, upgraded to contend with what missiles and drones offer (in their own niche).
Also, think about this: The longest range gun on record is The Paris Gun of WW1 (130 km (81 mi))… Imagine how much a modern military could break that record with some R&D and a good budget?
@@NavyDood21
Besides, I’m pretty sure Battleship style cannons would make a comeback once Railguns become feasible alternatives to the batteries of yore.
Wait... you're telling me that I've gone my entire life in a world where not even one 12" shell got hurled at our enemies? Fuck...
Man all of this makes me miss Battlefield 1 so damn much
Air ballon/ ignition like riding in a time bomb
Aura sells your data like every one else
One iowa class in ready reserve makes sense. Lotta steel on target. The math, they can put more tonnage on target in 30 mins what one carrier would take all day. Look it up..
I thought the reason for going to a uniform armament of large calibre rifles was due to the increased sophistication of fire control systems allowing ships to hit targets at longer ranges, and the difficulty of spotting fall of shot when firing guns of different calibre.
I didn't think it had anything to do with torpedo's.........
Heavy tanks may no longer be a thing, but LIGHT tanks most definitely ARE.
I thought we still use battle ship beside the carriers, I'm now like what makes a ship a battle ship
The aircraft carrier is the next dinosaur to disappear
Nah just the super carrier, smaller ones are the future
Surprised Simon didn't mention the bombing raids by German zeppelins during World War 1, granted fixed wing aircraft eventually proved superior as bombers for World War 2 but those airships were extremely difficult for the British pilots of World War 1 to take down at first due to their size and how high they could fly, especially compared to fighters the British were flying.
Actually bombs are tactical weapons hence the two bombs that were dropped were not strategic.
Blimps were also used as Bombers in WW1. They could still be useful for Anti sub duties due their ability to loiter in 1 area. Helicopters more useful then Planes for this same reason. Plane flying fast over sub is less likely to spot it then Blimp or Helicopter just sitting & waiting. Not aware of any Submarine with anti-aircraft capability since WW2. We wish we had something but nope. Blimps stopped being used due their inability to operate in all weather safely.
With the introduction of the ability to remain underwater for long periods of time aircraft are now less useful for detecting subs especially with the Mark I eyeball, and AAA capability onboard a sub interferes with its hydrodynamics.
World: Hey! You guys with the nukes! You better not use them!
Nuclear Nations: Yeah? Fuck you! What're ya gonna do about it? Bring an army? I got a nuke.
World: Hmm. Yeah. Can't really argue with that..... without a lot of death. Ok. Ummm. Please don't use them
Nuke Nations: Eehhhh. Depends on how the current leaders feel
World:.......... we're so fucked. Idk when, but we're definitely fucked
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Warfare is trending towards small, quick, precise and inexpensive.
Small? Sure.
Quick? Nah.
Precise? Absolutely!
Inexpensive? Lol!
@@j.a.weishaupt1748 By inexpensive I mean something like a $100k one or two man shoulder fired missile capable of taking out multimillion dollar tanks or helicopters. It seems to be pretty effective in Ukraine.
The oldest ship in the United States that has seen combat and has sunk other ships is the USS Constitution.
I don't get the thumb, why the failed what?
They didn't fail us, we failed them.
Lets not forget that blimps were used as a air defence "thing" in ww2 in ( at least ) the UK. They had wires hanging from them in the hope of airplanes hitting the wires.
Pretty sure the US navy also used them in ww2 for costal defense looking fornU boats
Those are called barrage balloons. They bar aircraft from a certain area by essentially walling it off.
Imagine being a long living alien species seeing how we evolvle in bursts perpendicular to war? They're entertained. Also, this seems so Metal Slug! 👽
This is why blimps failed. Only rich people could afford to ride in them. They were only used to transport rich people to work in high office towers and skyscrapers. And they were full of highly flammable helium, so when they failed, rich people died. If it were poor people, those things would still be in the sky today.
The HMS Dreadnought rendered everything before it obsolete, nice to hear the Chieftain did the same. Don't mess with the UK.
See also Chobham armour, that was quite the change also.
@@VosperCDN yep good point
And the Rolls-Royce Merlin that proved to be the missing piece to get the Mustang and Mosquito to work
I haven't seen this comment yet... but... your statement regarding nukes. Take a look at who influences international law. All the major powers that are listed as "Permanent members of the UN Security Council" are themselves nuclear powers. Each of them have used or treated their nuclear power as a justification for being a world power. I know the UNSC isn't directly responsible for laws but it is an example on the influence those nations have over international law.
None of those countries will ever willingly propose or agree to anything that that limits their perceived power.
That said something I didn't hear you touch on is the war in Ukraine. There has been a lot of speculation and discussion on if the Main Battle Tank is becoming obsolete with the advancements in infantry carried anti-tank munitions.
Still.. big battleships and airships are very COOL ✌️
It's ashame that those railroad guns became obsolete. With today's stealth technology one could be designed to come out of seemingly nowhere and there would be absolutely no way to predict it's movements.
The railroad crossing lights would briefly flicker then *BAM* before you know it there's the land equivalent of a battleship upon you like a flying saucer on rails.
We need at least one Battleship in the American Navy.
The Missouri is still afloat ... isn't she? Technically, the Constitution -is- a battleship.
#Texas has the #Lexington ... but she's more of a "Museum/Fort" than a proper battleship.
Sexy Lexy could still lay down some hurt ... but only to a specific location.
Both of them would take 5+ years to return to service unfortunately. While I can see a benefit for battleships, I don’t see naval warfare being as big a deal in future wars. Most probable wars will be primarily land based and any naval battles would be handled with our current flotilla.
USS CONSTITUTION… go visit.
@@shawn445 Yeah, but the USS New Jersey sank an island. Would you wanna keep up a fight with somebody who just deleted a landmass?
12:34 The reason for not a single international law prohibit the use of strateginc nuclear weapons is due to 3 reasons:
1- Tactical nuclear weapons: They are better, so why anybody that have nukes would use other, worse, options? Sooo, why bother? And again, nukes have a shelf life, and are very expensive to keep up, so when the older SNW are disabled the newer SNW can replace them, because in fact...
2- What is the difference between them? I mean, for real, a solid, objective, non ambiguous difference that can be put to law, that diferenciate a TNW from a SNW. There is none, so or they let them be or they will have to ban nukes for good, that is a problem because it leads us to...
3- Why nobody used nukes since 1945? Because everybody saw the results, and noboby liked them. For real, it became the so called MAD protocol (Mutual Assured Destruction, iffy English for a perfect acronim). But, let us think for a moment, if everybody disables theyr nukes, as an international peace propaganda piece, would you believe everybody went all the way? Really? Also, nukes are not that complex, the hard part is to get your hands on weapons grade uranium. Let us say, a western hating caliphate that has a nuclear power program that was not properly regulated or inspected, and has ties with AlQuaeda, Isis, Boko Haran, Hamas, Hezbolah... decides to supply WGU for them to produce theyr nukes. What would prevent them from doing it? Well, already existing nukes, aimed at said caliphate's HQ...
The point is we cannot un-invent nukes, let us just try not to use them to un-invent humanity.
What about the Gustav?? Railway guns were used since the nazis
I thought Blimpies made subs not destroyed them. 🙂
With regards to the battleships:
This is the first time I ever heard somone claiming that the 1850 Napoleon was an ironclad.
All sources I previously came across point to the 1859 La Gloire as the first ocean-going ironclad battleship, quickly followed by the british Warrior a year later.
I would assume that the Napoleon was constructed with iron reinofrcements to her structure (iron fittings fastend to the keel and frames to stiffen the structure) and that could have caused the confusion.
The reason for the switch from the now so-called Pre-Dreadnought battleships to the Dreadnought-Type wasn't exactly wrong, but oversimplyfied.
As for the reason for the battleship's obsolecense: The way it was presented gives the impression that the battleship became obsolete because the aircraft could kill it.
That's not the case. A weapon system doesn't become obsolete, just because a different weapon system can kill it. After all, the torpedo boat could sink battleships since the end of the 19th century, and the battleship hung on for another 50 years or so.
The battleship became obsolete because the aircraft carrier could do its main job (power projection) better. And that too is an oversimplification, I am aware.
The attempt to condense the entire history of capital ship development from the 1850s to the 1940s into a 3 minute section of a 9 minute video strikes me as ill-advised.
Don't care. Still want a battle train! Yea you heard me. Heavy armor cars, big ass guns. Anti aircraft guns and even attack helicopters. Nuclear powered and nuke capable.
OH AND RAIL GUNS! LOL CUZ DUH!
The Centurion tank was the first MBT
The Israelis used them perfectly in the Yom Kippur War
FYI Simon as an American, family member, friend of WWII vets! "I Would Make the Case the ONLY Atomic Bombs EVER USED ARE OF a TACTICAL Type! as they Had and Hit a TARGET! Hit That Target as Targeted! WITH a Stratigic Ending to a Tactical Weapons System that included But Not Limited to the Whole of the Pacific Campaign, Air, Sea, and Land, B-29's and others, ending With the Superior Efforts from Our Home FRONT! All ended in the ENDING of The Pacific Theator! and the ETO!
I Pray God Will Bless US and Our World Again!
I see a list of weapons that would have worked against Russian trenches right now... so... this is a monkey paw?
You could of gone a bit more detail about rockets.
*could have
Hey fact boy, aren't you in Prague? isn't there a 600 year old clock there? Could you tell some history about that?
The Washington and London treatise led to the death of battleship not AC. It killed innovation and led to alot of Ww1 era BB in a world were they were easy targets for air planes. But if you look at the ones built in war time they were better. Case in point Iowa sisters stayed around till the 90s and were retrofitted. Imagine a true mondern battleship would probably be a nasty weapon who only true threat would be nuke
And... The USA just started building nuclear warheads again! 😎
The intro itself makes most obsolete.
KIROV REPORTING ❤❤❤
i feel like simon could of made this cutting together other videos
Never say “could of” again
What's farr parr? 😂😂
Mostly famously dirigibles such as the Hinderberg.
I'm sorry Simon aircraft carriers aren't what stopped the battleships battleships ended up being really useful because they could keep up with the aircraft carrier and provide what they call the fleet screen shoot down all the incoming airplanes trying to sink the Carrier long-range missiles stop to the battleship from being useful
What do you call the tanks tearing up Ukraine right now ?
1/137
The fine structure constant. A favorite topic but not sure how it applies
@@jasonfabo7126 Fine structure constant for fine internet content. Also feeding the Al Gore rhythm.
There was a big tank battle in Kuwait City during the first Gulf War.
👍👍👍
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