The Drydock - Episode 257 (Part 2)
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- Опубликовано: 5 июн 2024
- 00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:26 - What safety's were there to stop amid ship turrets and turrets that could rotate 360 degrees from blowing a hole in there own ship? Did the AA guns have safety's as well?
00:05:16 - Why did some nation use naval ensigns that differ from their national flag such as the Royal Navy uses of the White Ensign instead of the Union Jack?
00:09:06 - Blocking a narrow passage in the Age of Sail?
00:14:33 - We all know the famous USN and IJN Carrier Admirals, and a bunch of RN Battleship Admirals, but who are the important RN Carrier Admirals?
00:18:34 - When did naval shells start to have driving bands?
00:20:59 - What is your opinion of Theodore Roosevelt's "Naval War of 1812"? It was well regarded in its day, but does it still hold up as good history?
00:26:44 - Are there any cases that stick in your mind as "what were they thinking?" and a better solution or option was right there for the taking?
00:35:57 - Britain famously picked up loads of interesting Spanish, Dutch, and French colonies during the Napoleonic Wars. Yet apart from Nelson´s try on Santa Cruz, the Canary Islands seem to have been largely ignored. Why is that?
00:41:29 - USN high pressure steam plants in WW2?
00:48:01 - Why did the US so rapidly shift away from the Pacific in the aftermath of world War 2?
00:53:45 - KGV design clarifications?
00:58:05 - Why did the escorts leave the convoy in which RMS Carpathia was sunk?
01:04:30 - How bad would firing the guns on a US fast battleship be for the crew of the AA guns atop the turret?
01:09:00 - Problems with the Mk13 aerial torpedo?
01:15:03 - What are some of the lessons, both good and bad, that the USN as well as other Navies observing the American civil War learnt from the naval battle of Memphis?
01:18:07 - If the French hadn't gone down the dead-end that was the Jeune Ecole, how much better might their navy have been going into the World Wars?
01:24:57 - How were the spaces left over by the change in powerplant on USS Texas used?
01:31:21 - Lead cannon balls?
01:36:00 - Are you a fan of Admiral Fletcher?
01:36:56 - How did fuse setters work for an AA shell?
01:41:25 - A commerce raiding sea-plane tender?
01:47:50 - Who coined the term "square-cube law" for the first time, when and how did you first learn about it and how did your appreciation of it change over time?
01:51:09 - The Battle of Hudson's Bay
01:56:04 - One-upmanship in naval history?
02:02:52 - How fast were ships in the period the channel covered?
02:12:27 - G3/N3 turret layout vs Nelson?
02:19:22 - Gross Tonnage of a battleship?
02:24:15 - Where would the 9.2" guns for theoretical British WW2 cruisers come from?
02:27:14 - When did navies start to paint their sail?
02:32:24 - How common were secret fleet voyages in the age of sail? Are there any that you particularly wish we knew more about today?
02:35:29 - Were the British were not favorably disposed toward costal fortresses?
02:44:03 - What changed in royal navy thinking that meant that they only built the Nelsons as an all forward design?
02:46:41 - Lancaster rifled naval guns?
02:51:51 - What was the intended purpose of the post-ww2 Soviet navy?
02:55:34 - Some aircraft cariers have AA guns in sponsons, but I'm not aware of any other ship type doing this. Given deckspace is rare on most ships, I wonder why?
02:57:44 - Large scale evacuations in the Pacific War?
03:01:53 - If the Pre Great War Dreadnaught Race had been more akin to a modern "Arms Jog" where no one in really willing to open the Taps up, what might the navies & the war look like?
![Eminem - Houdini [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/22tVWwmTie8/mqdefault.jpg)
Pinned post for Q&A :)
What is that French ship (pre-Dreadnought? armoured cruiser) that seems to be attempting to emulate a diving submarine at roughly the 27-37 minute mark? Was the forward freeboard really that low or had she suffered damage?
@@talksinsentences Could be Dupuy de Lome but that would require her to be lower in the water than she usually is most of the time.
Otherwise there are several battleships that look similar like Charles Martel, Carnot, Jauréguiberry, Masséna or Bouvet (or even the earlier Brennus).
BTW Drach, I know it is past it now what with the next Drydock already being out but you forgot to pin this comment.
You've talked here about automatic fuze setters being centrally controlled, and elsewhere you've talked about sending ranging data from rangefinders to fire control computers and firing solutions from fire control to turrets before, but my question is how was this done? What kind of signals were actually put on the wire to tell a turret e.g. how high to elevate?
(As a programmer who's worked a little bit with hardware, I'm assuming the signals are analog, but was it as simple as a variable analog voltage? That seems like it would potentially lack precision and be prone to interference so I wonder if something more complex is going on.)
While watching the section on uss Texas I began thinking what was the first ship to utilize refrigeration for stores like food and how did they accomplish it
I am consistently amazed at the content creation machine that is this channel. If there is an award for hardest working RUclipsr surely Drach would have to take it.
Love what you do and you'll never work a single day in your life. I think Drach might not be working a single day doing this.
Simon Whistler could give him a run for his money, what with his 14 or 15 separate channels
😮they should add subsp
MeetKevin could also give him a run for title of hardest working RUclipsr.
@@cleverusername9369 I doubt he's doing all his own writing and researching 😀
01:24:57
In this segment you note the compartment for the "Oil King" musing over what that was? Well, I was an Oil King. The Oil King works out of the "oil shack" and on larger ships may have several people working under them, in my case it was myself and a part time assistant. The Oil King has the job of overseeing refueling, internal transfer of fuel, keeps track of boiler feedwater, maintains proper boiler chemistry along with all the associated records which includes the "Fuel Oil & Water Report" for the Captains daily midnight reports. You also were the guy that kept the ship trimmed and ballasted. I've also seen the title of "Water King" which i believe is only seen on larger ships like carriers and such.
Per the USN high pressure high temperature machinery: part of what allowed the high pressures and temperatures was a detail in the turbine rotor. Parsons turbines could have individual blades swapped on the rotor which was good for maintenance, but it meant that the rotor and blades expanded more in the pressures and temperatures beyond 400 PSI (that and their larger size and diameter meant that the expansion was greater too). The USN Bureau of Engineering under Harold Bowen Sr. developed forged rotors which meant you couldn't replace the blading, but it didn't expand as much with pressures of 400+ PSI, leading to smaller machinery with greater efficiency and power output (double reduction gearing also helped in this as the smaller turbines spun much faster than larger Parsons derived turbines). Bowens book, "Ships Machinery and Mossback" goes into fairly good detail on this. I've been looking into how the USN developed steam plants from 1930-1945 and its quite the journey from something like USS New Orleans to USS Salem and USS Farragut to USS Gearing.
Another 6 hour banger. I rarely comment but you do great work Drach
Damn right, the longer the bedda
Six. Hours, Of. Drydock.
Drach, you are a madman. I love it.
Another fantastic effort on the Patreon Drydock, Drach. I hope you realise how much your efforts are appreciated by your community, because they absolutely are.
The Oil King is the enlisted man ( small ships) or petty officer (large ships) in charge of the ship's fuel supply. He supervised refueling operations and ran the piping manifolds directing fuel to the various tanks, pumped fuel from one tank to another to correct trim as fuel was burned, sounded the tanks daily and reported the quantities to the ships Engineering Officer and was responsible for maintaining the fuel supply system - tanks, piping, pumps, filters and strainers - to the boilers. The Oil King's store would have the spare and repair parts needed to maintain the system.
"He quickly learned on his first assignment aboard the USS Wallace L. Lind (DD-703) that there are no one-trick ponies in the Navy, and according to Dalby, when he wasn’t firefighting, he was going to be “Oil and Water King.”
“My job was to run up and down, making sure the tanks all over the ship held the necessary fresh water and oil.”
And while the “uninitiated” may not realize the importance of the sea monarch, the “Oil King,” donned in an oil-stained shirt and pants, controlled the ship ballast and all the freshwater. The role is one of the most “mighty important men for you and your ship,” according to the November 1958 issue of “All Hands” naval magazine."
www.hullnumber.com/ALL-HANDS/article.php?title=the-oil-king-sea-going-monarch
On some ships, at least, there was a Water King, - my uncle Jimmy served as part of his party on an LSD after he was promoted from Fireman First Class to Water Tender Third. The King was in charge of the ship's fresh water supply, - evaporators (always "the Vaps"" to the Black Gang) piping, tanks, filters, strainers, etc - to make up the feed water supply to the boilers and drinking water to the Galley and scuttlebutts. My uncle served as one three watch standers in the Water King's gang, assisted by Firemen striking for Water Tender. Diesel powered ships had a bastardized system to provide the crew with fresh water, but my uncle was glad he never had to deal with one.
"In the United States Navy, "watertender" (abbreviated WT) was a petty officer rating which existed from 1884 to 1948. Watertenders held a paygrade equivalent to today's petty officer first class. A chief watertender (CWT) paygrade was established in 1903. In 1921, the lower paygrade was split into watertender first class (WT1 or WT1c) and watertender second class (WT2 or WT2c). Another lower paygrade, watertender third class (WT3 or WT3c), was established in 1943. The watertender and boilermaker ratings were merged into a new "boilerman" rating in 1948, which merged into "machinist's mate" in 1996"
I love the Nelson Class also for their efficiency plus, the look like bull dogs from above (very intimidating) Also, Rodney turning around and racing back at a faster speed then she was theoretically capable of to arrive just in time to blow the nickers off of Bismark just as she was getting her steering back is the stuff of legend. Such things normally occur only in episodes of Star Trek.
Turret stops. Lockout cams were also used. Allowed for full traverse, but kept you from shooting yourself. Usually.
Dad was gunnery officer on USS COLLETT (DD730) , a new build at the time. In November 44, she was attacked by 4 Japanese aircraft. While she had extensive training, and some combat, this was the first extended battle she was in. There was an explosion in the gun tub, and Dad ran to see what happened. There was blood everywhere, and it was immediately obvious to Dad that he had FU'd -- he said he had set all the cutout tabs for the gun to prevent firing into the superstructure, but, in the cooling buckets, there were two hot barrels that had been swapped out due to the extended engagement time. He had never cut cams for them, since they had never been used in anger before. Fortunately, all the blood was from superficial nicks -- no significant injuries to anyone in the crew. But they got two of the aircraft, a third went away smoking, and nobody knew what happend to the fourth. Typical combat.
When you're talking about the Spanish Armored cruisers and their small "belt" armor, you should say the armor wasn't a "belt", it was just the buckle.
As an Avgeek I am amazed by how you have me hooked on Naval stuff. Such an informative channel.
Check out Greg's airplanes and automobiles if you want to geek out on ww2 aircraft specs and performance. A pilot who does deep research from primary sources.
Rex, greg and falcon are probably my top 3 aviation channels on yt
I've never had any interest for naval stuff. It changed because of Drach.
The uncle of a friend of mine served on USS Missouri on a 40mm quad mount. He said the worst part of that was when the 5 inch guns above their heads fired. He said his helmet was dented from the blast effect overhead. Also he said the only hearing protection he had was to stuff his ears with cotton. Didn't sound like much fun to me but he had fond memories of his time on the ship.
The hardest working man on RUclips. Great content
A 10" x 10" cross-section armor belt on a warship is the naval version of the front and rear bumpers of the vituperously vaunted Robin Reliant.
I will never, ever, EVER get tired of hearing the sporadic "Lord Quack, King of the Ducks asks..." peppered like grapeshot across the hulls in The Drydock 😂😂 Always appreciate the content, Drach!🦆🦆🦆
US Navy 1200-psi steam plants in guided missile cruisers, and so forth. These were EXTREMELY dangerous if they had steam leaks. The steam was "dry" and invisible for some time until it cooled down considerably. Thus, a leak would in many cases be far away from the visible steam cloud it formed, To find out where the actual leak was, one of the ways used was to get a wooden rod (mop handle, for example) and slowly move forward, swinging the handle back and forth in front of you over the entire area deck to overhead. When the handle was sliced in two, you had found the leak. "Snipes" who worked on such power plants lived in a different world from the rest of the crew!!
We occasionally get leaks on the MSV steam chests on a supercritical unit. Although the steam is dry and has a couple of hundred degrees of superheat it can usually be seen because any moisture in the air it passes through becomes saturated steam. Agreed though near the leak where it has a higher velocity it can be invisible.
If you work with steam you soon respect it and its habit of trying to kill you and destroy what it is in...... it is nasty, mean and sneaky.
An interesting thing about the British 9.2" guns used for coast defense in WWII. These guns were repurposed WWI-era British Navy guns for the most part. During the late 1930s a new Mark 12B (long windscreen) APC shell was developed for these guns that weighed the same as the original APC shell of WWI use and even retained the same 3.8% Shellite filler size (instead of the original Lyddite filler). One would think that the new shell, because of the large 8internalk cavity by WWII British standards (2.5% was used in the new battleship APC shells, mostly Shellite with TNT with beeswax for the 16" Mark IB APC, as used in the smaller WWII British cruiser-size anti-armor shells, 6" CPBC and 8" SAPC). However, the 9.2" Mark 12B APC shells were made to the same standards as the larger WWII battleship shells and, amazingly, had the same armor penetration ability as the larger shells did. While British WWII APC was rather soft and bent rather than broke in many cases when hitting thick face-hardened armor, the fact that this 9.2" shells large cavity did not compromise the anti-armor capability of these APC shells in worth noting. It seems that the improve WWII British AOC shell design, while unable to penetrate really thick armor due to the bending on impact, actually was superior to many other designs when hitting more reasonable armor thicknesses up to about caliber thickness. Don't use it against things like YAMATO or the turrets of US WWII battleships, but otherwise these new 9.2" APC shells were quite effective against their expected targets.
So I just came home at 17:00 and thought I'd get some late work done before the new week. Then I find almost exactly 7 hours of new drydock and oceanliner designs videos just waiting for me... 😅
27:15 Early French Submarine design is truly something to behold during the early twentieth century.
Memes aside, French were actually one of the pioneers of Submarine development.
On the topic of the Battle of the Hudsons Bay, this also occured during the time of the golden age of privacy and specifically at this point the impressive expeditions of the Buccaneers. Which over shadowed actions like this.
Haha, love the "I Survived The Dry Dock" idea, that'd be a best-seller!
I've seen every min of every Dry Dock you've recorded. I would SO buy a shirt if you made one.
Thank You Drach for yet another 6 hour Drydock. I'm not sure how long it took you to research all of that but thanks for doing that as well.
Wow, in the world of Drydocks, this one was a freaking Nimitz-class Refueling and Overhaul!
Thank you for all the work you put into these, and of course all your other videos. This is amazing stuff.
LOL, looking at Tshirt sizes for "I survived the Patreon Dry Dock episode XXX.
First time? I have most of those possible shirts.
I've been listening to this in bed at night, it helps me get to sleep. I average about 15 minutes before I nod off! I'm hoping I can get thru it over the next few nights and then watch the Spanish Armada videos, and the latest Drydock. It's not that it's in any way boring, maybe Drach's voice is too soothing....
1:29:05 the person in charge of the oil fuel system was called the Oil King
I still prefer the idea of an SCP entry aboard 😀
@@Drachinifel if Texas has the Oil King, what is hiding on Warspite?
@@king_br0k helm gremlins
@@Drachinifel Rudder Raptors sounds more ominous
Oil King was a position that tested oil and boiler feedwater, controlled tank filling during refueling activities.
Concerning non-firing/non-pointing zones, With the older guided missile launchers, they also acted like guns with the missiles replacing the gun barrels when loaded. Originally, the cut-out stops were remeasured after each overhaul and the values where the launcher would disconnect the firing circuit and force the launcher to elevate so that it was pointing inti the air above the ship when rotated toward the superstructure would be entered into the aiming computer software (after digital computers replaced the gear-driven types). This was tedious, let me tell you!
One day I was doing this for the Mark 76 TERRIER AAW Guided Missile System on a warship when a sudden light-bulb went off with a BANG in my head: WE HAVE GUIDED MISSILES THAT AIM AT THE TARGETS! WHAT AM I DOING THIS FOR?!?!?!? I decided that over the arc of the blocked superstructure you instead simply aim the launcher up to 45 degrees and fire there, telling the missile the offset to still aim at the target (a rather small patch needed for such a fixed elevation value). The radars tracking the targets were high on the superstructure and had only a very small blind zone, so normally that was not a problem. I called it "FIRE AROUND THE LAUNCHER BLIND ZONE" and it removed the no-fire cutout logic since the launcher never went "blind". This was later changed by others to "Curve Fire Mode". I submitted it as a run-of-the-mill BENEFICIAL SUGGESTION to increase the launcher bearing aim ability by 50% (toward the other end of the ship from the launcher position). My boss sent it to the Applied Physics Laboratory of John Hopkins University (TERRIER Design Agent) for testing to see if there were any targets this interfered with. They found it worked against ANYTHING!! Indeed, shortly thereafter, they decided to use 45 degrees ALWAYS, no matter what bearing the target was, making the patch even simpler. I got a mere $400 for the idea due to it not saving any money (If it saved even one ship, it was worth a BILLION dollars, but no such luck). Thus, I created what eventually became, when improved and the launchers eliminated, Vertical Launch Capability in Aegis and ESSM.
For "Blocking a narrow passage in the Age of Sail?" there's also the Battle of Lake Champlain (the Naval part of the Battle of Plattsburgh); as the last naval battle of the War of 1812 involved an American squadron anchored to defend the American base on the lake against a British squadron. The ships of the American squadron were anchored in a way that they could spin around, and the American flagship did so to present an undamaged broadside to the British flagship at close quarters (the British ship tried to do the same but failed). The technique to spin the American ship was 'winding' and not 'springs', but it was a decisive application of seamanship by the American squadron.
HMS Campbeltown was one of the kind leaders destroyers. She was used in the Saint Nazaire raid, to destroy the gate of the dry dock there.
I suspect you mean Lend-Lease, and I wonder if your speech-to-text is North Korean...
@@AnimeSunglasses No, I'm not a citizen of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea...just a bad typist. I don't think the 50 destroyers were part of the Lend Lease deal...that occurred earlier...the destroyers for bases deal.
@@ronaldfinkelstein6335 I didn't say you were, just assumed it was a s-t-t error.
Sure relate about the typing though!
One important fact other than Nelson was a vice admiral of the White was to distinguish itself from the East India company which also had warships and had on various occasions declared war on states with which the British empire was not at war: E.G China in the opium wars and which used a red and white striped flag similar to that used today in Hawaii
Over 7 and a half hours of content for a week. I take my jaunty hat off to you Drach. I worry about how you manage to find some time for sleep but thanks a lot for your hard work to bring us naval history and entertainment!
The position of “ oil king” is a position that still exists on modern ships. It is held by usually one of the mechanical ratings, such as machinist, mate or gas, turbine technician. Their duties include sampling and testing of all lubricating oils and similar products used on board ship. They are essentially quality assurance for oil. they will do research testing as viscosity, “oil, color and suspended solids”, transparency (looking for a water), and other tests. It is training that I have. Though I have never held the position.
well.
I made it through 6 hours and some minutes of Drydock in the week it was released.
a magisterial effort Mr Drachinifel!
As to the 1200 psi propulsion plants made for US light cruisers and later missile-firing ships, the laws of thermodynamics do indeed give better efficiency to higher temperqature differences and the resultand higher pressures used in the engnes. Maintenance was indeed a significant problem. Even a small leak could be EXTREMELY dangerous to the "snipes" maintaining said systems. For example, such steam leaks, if creating a jet shooting from some crack or hole, could be invisible in the air until it had cooled down considerably at some distance from the actual leak point. To find said leaks, a long broom handle was swung around in front of the personnel as they SLOWLY moved toward the leak area and many leaks were found when it was SLICED IN HALF by the jet. (Instead of the snipe, of course.) Dangerous work!!!
In the middle of WWII, the US finally decided that using "VT" nose fuzes in AA shells (proximity fuze using tiny short-range radio-like transmitter/detectors in the fuze side to blow it up near a target, greatly reducing any range-error problems) was needed, clearing the previous "secret" label inhibiting their use. It was very quickly found that the base tracers (glow-plugs in the rear of many AA shells to allow night/day tracing of the shell by the gunners to quickly adjust their aim) created a long smoke-like plasma that was electrically conductive. This long trail of near-invisible smoke turned out to really distort and mess up the ability of the VT detector circuits to be set off properly. Thus, VT fuzes could not use such tracers and they actually fired a mix with a few spaced time fuzes when using VT fuzed shells to give back the aiming help to the gunners.
Imagine how tall shot tower would have to be for a 32lber
Those. were cast, not drop formed....
I love questions like this. So you want a shot tower for cannonball sized lead droplets. How tall would the tower need to be?
Let's say that a 100ft shot tower can make 1 inch lead spheres. (Arbitrary values). Now let's scale up the 1 inch spheres to 10 inches. The surface area of the sphere has grown by X^2 but the volume of the sphere increases by X^3. (The square cube law, we meet again) This means the 10inch sphere has 1000 times the volume holding heat and only 100 times the surface area radiating it away. So the 10 inch sphere needs 10 times the cooling of the one inch sphere; it needs to fall for 10 seconds, not one.
It actually takes 2.5 seconds to fall 100 feet, so how long of a distance is 25 seconds? Punch that into the calculator . . . . 10,054ft! That's two miles high, with 5000 freedom feet per freedom mile. These are all arbitrary values, and you didn't ask about diameter of lead shot but weight of lead shot. The 10 inch shot would weigh 214 pounds of freedom. A 32LB shot would have a diameter of . . . .5.3 inches. That's not that bad! It only needs to fall for five times however long it takes for a one inch lead shot to cool. Do any shot towers make 1 inch shot? No, not even close. Let's do some more mathcrimes.
2.4mm is basically 1/10 of an inch and 40 meters is kinda close to 100 feet. (Actual 40 meter towers can produce actual 2.4mm shot) Five inch lead shot is scaling that up by a factor of 50 . . . As we've seen, scaling up by a factor of ten got us a two mile high tower or 100ft multiplied by 10^2.
100ft multiplied by 50^2 is . . . .a very big number. Just go with the two mile high tower and figure out a way to get 5 times the amount of cooling done during the fall.
Auto play started this after the most recent drydock so I ended up listening to you for almost 8 hours. Good afternoon :D
Drach, is there anyone in the world who knows more general naval history than you? You crank out SO MUCH content, you have to be the premier repository for naval history on the planet.
Near the end of this video you talked about the problems of AA weapons on aircraft carriers that must not interfere with the aircraft activities, such as mounting the many small AA guns of WWII all around the edge of the deck. Some earler carrierws of US make actually had 8" guns mounted near the small cuperstructures of these ships to try to allow some form of self-protection. This was eventually realized to be inefficient and the guns reduced to the much better AA guns of 5"/38 type. However, in the US there were still people who wanted self-protected carriers after WWII. Somehow these badly-mistaken people actually got THREE (3!) carriers built with the rather large and complex TERRIER AAW guided-missile systems installed, again around the edge of the deck. BIG, BIG, BIG MISTAKE!!! Such missile systems with their rather large radars and launching systems scattered around cost a large amount of space on the outside and, for the magazines and control systems, inside the carriers. And, as you could imagine, those big missiles (12" in diameter and over 10' long), if used, made a very large region around them not suitable for any aircraft at all. The captains of those ships said "Bullshit to that nonsense!" and in effect turned them into unusable storage spaces for aircraft parts, so they could not ever interfere with any aircraft operations whatsoever. Eventually, they were removed. Sometimes you wonder how some people who are supposed to be good engineers can be so dumb...
Can't wait for tge First 144 hour drydock!
1h56m04: One-Upmanship. a modern variation on the coming in under sail: Remember in PT109? charging towards the dock and reversing smartly to perfectly tie up? Once saw a Brit destroyer do it… extremely impressive to see. and they did charge at the pier and transition to sliding towards and into using reverse too. Wish I had a video clip of it, but digital cameras with video back were barely a thing back then. Cant imagine how often it went wrong in the days before reversible pitch propellers (and electric auxiliaries if equipped).
Great job as per usual Drach.
When USS Hornet was found there was a 5" shell still in the fuse setter of one of the 5" gun tubs.
The aa crews on the yamato had to wear protective clothing because in testing some men lost skin. And they added gun tubs around the aa guns
The "Oil King" and "Water King" in USN parlance were senior petty officers responsible for the testing, treatment and use of fuel oil, lubricating oil and boiler feed water respectively. While feed water tanks are few and simple to track, Texas had many, many fuel storage tanks which fed the service tanks.
Total talking museum.... astonishing range of knowledge and resources, most interesting .... thank you
On the question of a seaplane tender/commerce raider. Another issue you might run into is a seaplane tender belongs to a navy. I commerce raider is often disguised as a merchant ship. If you are spotted, a seaplane tender would be MUCH more likely to be investigated than something that looks like a friendly freighter.
Fair point.
There are a number of "If's" that came to mind as Drach talked about the idea. For the raider the vessel would either have to be purpose built or heavily modified internally. For the ship one possibility, something like MS Schwabenland a catapult ship used as a refueling ship for trans-Atlantic Dornier Wal flying boats. The Wal or BV.138 are big, but could be catapult launched.
Practical? No. Mad as a box of frogs? Yeah. Worth the effort? Probably not, but the chaos it could create until captured or sunk?
No way it would pass close inspection.
Ref: the U.S. destroyers deal, the Drachinifel response characterizes them as a group very well. But something I didn't realize as a young person reading about the raid on St. Nazaire, HMS Campbeltown (formerly USS Buchanan) was one of the U.S. four-stackers adapted for the mission. I can't think of any American who is going to have a problem with a U.S. WWI destroyer being turned into a bomb that destroys the only dry dock that can handle biggest Kriegsmarine ships.
2:27:14 Marked sails were much more of a thing in the mercantile fleet, particularly as ship designs became more and more similar for speed, both as a form of advertising and as an identification to allow the shore staff for a shipping line or a whaling firm to call up personnel to load/unload a ship when it came into port. If you look through the lyrics to sea shanties, you'll find references to this -- "...her sails tautly set for the red cross to show..." from 'The Dreadnought', for example
Why was I not surprised to see a pic of a French pre-dreadnaut for the "what were thinking"... pastis all round.
Growing up and living on the Isle of Wight (which has very extensive coastal fortifications ranging from the late medieval to WW2 periods), British coastal fortifications have always been a bit of an interest of mine, and I was a bit puzzled by your section on British coastal fortifications.
Absolutely, Britain has generally relied on the Royal Navy for defence, but there have also been periods where extensive coastal fortifications were developed, particularly along the South Coast, in response to fears of invasion. Henry VIII's Device Forts included not just harbour defences, but extensive earthworks overlooking likely invasion points. There was also extensive fortification done in the 19th century, not all of which was focused on major harbours, with the Palmerston forts, Martello Towers (including quite a few in Kent) and so on, and fortified barracks, logistics infrastructure and inland fortifications designed to provide depth of defence. During WW1, Kent had multiple lines of anti-invasion trenches, as well as other fortifications, and there was even more extensive fortification during WW2.
Listening to the part about questionable design choices. Stop to take a look at the picture, and of course it's a French pre-dreadnaught 😂 It is one of my favorites.
70-pounder Whitworth naval gun
Place of origin United Kingdom
Service history In service 1863-
The 70-pounder Whitworth naval gun was designed by Joseph Whitworth during the 1860s. It was a rifled muzzle loader and used his hexagonal, rifled-bore design. The gun used polygonal rifling, a principle invented by Whitworth in 1853. The concept was to use the hexagon to impart a very rapid spin to the projectile.
Maybe a I survived the dry dock challenge coin.
I absolutely love love love this channel. ❤
25:55 To add, even if the British didnt actually intend to follow through qith saying they were going to stop impressment of any Americans, by 1815 that was a moot point anyway. Peace in Europe meant the Royal Navy was entering a large drawdown so they no longer had any need or reason for impressment and they wouldn't reintroduce such a system until conscription was introduced (for both the Army and Navy) in 1916.
Impressment was never really a reason, it was an excuse to present to the American public as a causus belli. A certain proportion of the US elite wanted a war with Britain as they thought, given that Britain was pretty much engrossed in the Napoleonic war they could grab what they wanted and deliver a fait accompli within short order. It was in essence a land grab, nothing more, nothing less....
Unusual point about the British 9.2" gun APC Mark 12 shells used in WWII. To minimize costs it was decided that the new British 9.2" APC shells just mentioned would be of roughly the same manufacturing quality as the new 14" and 15" shells, but otherwise be internally designed and the same weight as the old WWI-era shells with their much larger explosive volume inside. This should have made those Mark 12 shells act more like SAPC shells (similar to the British 8" SAPC shells of WWII). But, amazingly if did not! These shells, for their size, turned out to be about the best APC-type British shells as to their ability to penetrate INTACT heavy armor. I think that the British APC shells of WWII needed more work...
Love the reporting on the War of 1812 … Any war like this that is “won” begets the question ‘at what cost?’. The US held its own but the fighting stopped long before there was a unilateral “winner.”. The better way of winning an international argument.
Very much reminded of the curious logic I sometimes hear about America supposedly winning the Vietnam war. I see it as a draw myself -- the costs tremendously outstrip the gains -- but if one of the two sides won, it was probably the side that gained nibbled bits of Spanish territory and some indemnities. Typically the winnings go to the victor, no?
With respect to the first question of turret stops and lockout cams for the big guns, this is something that George Lucas evidently never thought about, despite real WW2 battle sequences were used as models for some of the space battles and dogfights in several Star Wars movies, at least for the first one to be released back in 1979.
Anyone who has watched the original trilogy will probably know what I am referring to here: In "Return of the Jedi", shortly after Jabba gets strangled to death, Luke and Leia destroy his hover-barge ship (or whatever the correct name for it is) by turning its main gun around, pointing it directly at the deck and then pulling the trigger, just before they swing clear of it and make their escape.
Before anyone points out that you can't really apply this sort of thing to the entirely fictional Star Wars universe, I would just mention that a similar mistake also exists (albeit for a much smaller gun) in one of the "Indiana Jones" movies, which were all set on earth in the first half of the 20th century: In particular in the "Last Crusade" movie (where they go after the Holy Grail), there is the scene where Jones and his father escape from the German airship in a biplane, and are subsequently chased by a pair of Messerschmitt 109s trying to shoot them down.
This is a hilarious sequence, partially because even a single Me-109 should be able to beat an old biplane to pulp easily (even if the latter had been flown by a more competent pilot than Jones), because it has bigger guns, more of them, probably more ammunition to play with, as well as a maximum airspeed more than twice as fast as the biplane. But mainly because Jones senior gets the job done first by shooting the tail off the biplane, using the machine gun turret positioned behind the cockpit. Which should not have been possible - even in an old biplane, the guns should have had some kind of lockout mechanism to prevent exactly this outcome.
Having said all that, at least one of the Me-109 pilots demonstrated that he was a long way from competent later in the sequence: After landing the crippled biplane, Jones and son had stolen a car and were using this to try and escape, which involved driving through a short road tunnel. The pilot of one of the Me-109s chasing them thought it was a good idea to follow at such a close range that he couldn't avoid the same road tunnel. Which might have been a spectacular piece of flying if the tunnel had been wide enough to accommodate the plane - but of course it wasn't, so this attempted maneuver was instead revealed to be spectacularly stupid.
I survived the Dry Dock, so I would claim the t-shirt. 😂
Regarding question 3 (9:06), an example of ships on spring lines defending a narrow passage is the Battle of Valcour Island. The Wikipedia article on this has a diagram and discusses near identical motivations: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valcour_Island
Concerning the effects of sloping side armor. By the 1930s projectile and armor testing of most nations using such heavy armor had progressed to using 30 degrees for the test plates against whatever shell types they used for such testing. Thus hitting at angles up to 30 degrees from an enemy ship of one of those nations was "baked into" the designs. Thus, while smaller angles did indeed help the resistance somewhat, there was not that much improvement in the velocity expected to defeat it by well-designed AP shells. What the angling did was add to the angle of fall so that the total angle, expecially if the ship could add a horizontal angle by not being broadside-on the enemy ship, gets at or near the 30-degree point. At this point, AP shells, which were usually also only tested to that angle -- except for the new US AP shells tested at 35-40 degrees (WAY better than most foreign AP shells!!) -- would have the secondary effect of causing major damage to the middle and base of the shell as it was violently "refracted" by the armor to more of a right-angle path as it pushed through the plate. Many non-US shells simply snapped in half near and over 30 degrees unless they hit at a much higher velocity to minimize this refraction effect. Thus, the shell might get through but not explode properly or even still be in one piece, drastically reducing the damage inside the ship if the ship had some light interior fragment-protection plating behind the main armor. Keeping the deck high also reduced the unprotected amidships volume that could be destroyed and thus yiou had to make a rather large hole through the main armor -- side or deck -- to cause the ship to begin to lose floatation. The BISMARCK had better side protection at close range to its underwater systems by the sloped deck it used, but it had an entire upper deck that could be riddles by even small fragments of big shells going through the rather light upper hull armor, and thus have major floatation problems due to hits that the higher-deck designs would just shrupg off. Not good!
Not spring line per se, but Battle of Lyngør absolutely has tight waters and some phenomenal anchor use.
This sort of illustrates some of the troubles you have when dealing with close to shore.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lyng%C3%B8r
In addition to part of the space formerly used for boiler room B-1 having been reclaimed for other uses on WWII _Texas,_ it also looks on that diagram like the floor of the boiler rooms's been raised somewhat to create an additional tank layer underneath the boilers?
I thought that was for the possible Tiki Bar that Drach mentioned?
Thanks again for giving me something to look forward to every Sunday drach
A total victory endeavor!
When dealing with solid objects, the square-cube law can have very negative effects, as the weight of the thing is going up much faster than the underpinning where forces are coming from (underneath if gravity, from the side if a gun projectile in the barrel). This means that the area where the force is pushing or pulling the object is getting smaller compared to the object weight as it gets larger and much heavier. This is why elephants have to have such thick legs and can require greatly increased structural weight in things like guns to allow big guns to not blow up when fired. This law has to be carefully applied to anything that can get big when needed.
USS Massachusetts had an occasion where a 5" double gun mount Gun Captain overrode the "Safety" and discharged his 2 5" .45's INTO another 5" .45 mount ahead of it, killing that gun crew...
i survived the drydock medal and shirt coming when? and make sure your medal is gold drach
I can't believe I watched all of part 1, then have come here for part 2.
I'm not a warship fanatic, or whatever you want to call it. I just think Drach does such a good job that it's really interesting and yes, historically educational.
I'm much more of an aviation nut. But maybe I've seen so much of that, that this becomes more interesting. And sometimes, fascinating.
Also his use of British humour (yes I know it's "humor" but what the hell) is quite decent. :)
The "War of 1812" is called that due to it being the only year the US forces had definite victories over the RN. US first string against British third string ships. After that, As the unending Chess game between France and the UK wound down, The RN could take care of the Gnat stinging them.
36:00 - HMS Campbeltown (ex- USS Buchanan) was used in Operation Chariot - the St Nazaire raid as well 👍
Re: the Lancaster barrels, have any naval guns used hammer forged rifling since its easier?
The King of all oil is in Texas... yeah that tracks! 😆
The last CG(N)s were 600 psi and the CG-16 and CG-26 classes were 1200 psi and very efficient.
Inclined belt armor in 20th Century battleships. This armor was always a form of Krupp Cemented (or, in a few cases such as the YAMATO's Vickers Hardened armor, non-cemented) face-hardened armor. There are significant differences between KC-variant face-hardened armors and the similar homogeneous, soft, ductile nickel-chromium-steel forms without face-hardening (British Navy Non-Cemented Armour, US Navy Class "B" armor or STS, and Japanese New Vickers Non-Cemented, Molybdenum Non-Cemented, and Copper Non-Cemented WWII armors, among others). The homogeneous armors are less brittle and have less scaling effects reducing resistance against larger AP projectiles than the homogeneous types. Also, homogeneous armors do not gain much from tilting them until at and above 45-50 degrees from right angles. It is better by weight to just keep the soft armor at right-angles and thicken it than try to gain resistance by merely tilting the plate; only above the 45-50-degree tilt does the softer steels resist impacts better than the thicker right-angles plates of the same total weight.
With face-hardened armor this is different. Tilting by itself does not cause a large gain in resistance up to 45 degrees due to thickness increase to an undamaged projectile, but the hard, deep face layer causes greatly increased projectile damage effects as impact angle increases. This damage can reduce the ability of the shell to penetrate, but it also has major negative effects on the post-penetration explosive ability of the shell due to breaking of the shell body and/or fuze degradation. Above 45 degrees the armor starts to fail badly due to brittle fracture, which decreases resistance compared to soft armor, though the projectile damage effects stay in force -- highly tilted face-hardened armor messes up the projectile badly, but it allows huge holes throwing major chunks of armor through the plate at the same time.
Thus, use face-hardened armor for low-angle tilting and softer armor when high angles of impact are expected.
Well destroyers for bases weren't getting one back, HMS Cambletown....
Campbelltown
That one was donated to france
Given how "'muricans" are into big explosions - by reputation at least- I don't think they complained too loudly about that one...
Defending a harbor with a reef thereby a narrow passage using as you just said spring anchors I can see an obvious problem with that. The enemy could sit outside the reef and fire broadsides at your ships outside The Reef.
As to the Naval War of 1812, While I agree that Britain won the war, In fact one of the main reasons for the RN's early failures was because it was mainly concerned with beating France and as a result of it's constant success held the US navy in low regard. Once France was beaten there was nothing stopping the RN from bringing it's full attention on the US. If I remember correctly Roosevelt's conclusion was that the US showed that despite their navy's small size they would not be a walkover and that diplomacy would be better than war.
One of the 5/38 turrets on the USS Alabama fired into another turret causing the only fatalities on the ship during the war. I do not know if it was a malfunction.
Is that book, talking about the spring anchors, The Mauritius Command?
I just have to drop a comment, your reference to an Oil King Locker on Texas, I a compartment where all daily oil samples are taken, for comparison, and testing, hope the information helps, great videos, thanks!
Yes. More IL-2 please!
I feel like the Seydlitz after that.
@1:07:00 you referenced a USN study on the effects of blast pressures to the human body.
When was this study conducted?
Was there any attention paid to head trauma? Specifically mTBI?
I know that common knowledge of the deleterious effects of repetitive blast exposure in service members is a relatively (>20y) new thing and am curious if it was recognized in this study.
2:53:13 "OK, let me just revise the date on this pre-war design that we completed so we can submit it next week."
Uncle Drach is correct when he points out the scale of the drawdown in the Pacific after the war. My father joined the USN before Pearl Harbor, served the entire war, plus another year before he was able to bring his ship back home and be discharged. Operation Magic Carpet (bringing 8 million service people home) required many people to be available to run the ships for many months after V-J Day. Everyone just wanted to get home and pick up the pieces of their lives.
Battleship-sized video!
At 2:17 or so you mentioned heat and its affect on propellant. Could a heated propellant lead to an increase in range of shot from the big guns if controlled?
Now before everyone starts foaming at the mouth, I know there is no direct correlation from small arms to naval guns.... That said, I know that in a hunting rifle, let's say a .300 mag, that it is fairly easy to work up a load in January that performed well, then in July the overpressure locks the bolt in place, where you are beating the action open with a 2 by 4...... I'm not feeling warm and fuzzy about where this could go in a 16 inch gun.
Great content as always 3:07:07
On the flag issue, don't forgot some nations use the same or very similar flags. Poland 🇵🇱 and Indonesia 🇮🇩 for example.
2:24:00 Iowa class was panamax, so I assume most cruise ships up to recent want to be, up to 90.000 ton cruise ships can fit this. I assume its because they are more boxier than an Iowa.
The largest cruise ships today are over 250,000 Gross Tons or four times the size of the 80,000 GT ship Drach discussed. But they are the mass market ones, premium ships are under 150,000 GT and luxury ones are well under 100,000 GT.
Describing a USN admiral as a carrier admiral in WW2 was more than just if the American admiral in question had commanded carriers during the war--the most major factor was 10 USC § 5942.
Passed by Congress in 1926, 10 USC § 5942 required (and still requires) the CO of an aircraft carrier, aircraft tender, NAS (Naval Air Station), MCAS (Marine Corps Air Station) or associated aviation schools and units to be qualified naval aviator or naval flight officer (from 1926 through 1966 the naval air observer course also qualified; today the term naval flight officer encompasses "backseaters" such as RIOs (Radar Intercept Officer) in addition to the pilot in two-seater flighters). 10 USC § 5942 required future COMINCH-CNO Ernest King to go through the USN naval aviator program in January 1927, along with future Amphibious Force commander Richmond Kelly Turner. This also led to William Halsey and John "Slew" McCain, future commanders of Third Fleet and TF 38, to go through naval aviator training in 1935-36, both setting records by earning their wings at the age of 52.
This led to great resentment toward the "Johnny-come-latelys" from early naval aviators such as Chief of Aeronautics Admiral John Towers, especially after non-aviators Fletcher and Kincaid commanded all four IJN-USN carrier battles in 1942, though Fletcher wisely had designated naval aviator Admiral Aubery Fitch in Lexington as OTC (officer in tactical command) in the Coral Sea and providing Fletcher invaluable on-the-job training. Philip Vian appears to have been the beneficiary of similar serendipity off Salerno, ensuring Force V's carriers provided air cover for General Mark Clark's Fifth Army, whatever the cost.
Nevertheless, once the U.S. Navy's Fast Carrier Task Force came into being, it was commanded exclusively by naval aviator admirals, which was quite understandable as early naval aviator Admiral Marc Mitscher designed and perfected these operations in time for the Truk drubbing in Operation Hailstone.
Overall Fleet command was another matter, but Admiral Spurance was a bit of an outlier, as he was eventually relieved of 5th Fleet command by pioneer aviator Admiral Towers when Spurance relived Nimitz as CINCPAC. The invaluableness of naval aviator experience became apparent when the late-war command rule was issued, which required an aviator admiral to have a surface warfare chief of staff and a surface warfare admiral have an aviator chief of staff. Once the quirks were worked out, these staff arrangemants became a major force multiplier, especially when a maverick like Mitcher was paired with an incredibly aggressive destroyer squadron commander like Arleigh Burke.
This stood in stark contrast to the RN, simply because the RAF controlled the FAA for most of the interwar period. With no way for British naval aviators to advance into RN flag ranks, the FAA withered on the vine for 15 years and surface warfare officers commanding aircraft carriers and an associated Force or Fleet was the rule, not the exception. This in some ways was beneficial during WW2, as naval aviator Admiral King, COMINCH-CNO lusted after the Illustrious class for the armoured carriers' ability to withstand every attack and shrug of kamikazes during the war...but then again the RN carriers never had to fight off determined Type 91 attacks from B5Ns escorted by fighters that could outturn everything in the sky in 1942. Tradeoffs, at least until the Midway class combined the best of both worlds...
But the dearth of British naval aviator admirals during WW2 had dramatic, long-term consequences for the RN postwar. This lack of FAA admirals left a decided lack of aviation advocates in the RN, as all British carriers completed prior to the Invincible class were laid down prior or during the Second World War, and the RN did not complete a supercarrier until 2017, 62 years after USS Forrestal. Admiral Mitscher was the primary driver behind the USS United States supercarriers, and his unexpected death in 1947 left a hole which the USAF exploited when Navy man James Forrestal had a mental breakdown, resigned, and committed suicide to be replaced by Army man Louis Johnson as Secretary of Defense.
But naval aviation advocates abounded during the Korean War, where carrier air groups were critical in maintaining the Pusan Perimeter and covering the Inchon Landings in 1950 alone. Naval aviation advocates got their last laugh in 1955 when the most consquential CNO of the Cold War took office--a dedicated and highly decorated destroyer squadron commander during the Pacific War. However he was also Mitscher's chief of staff, and as such Arleigh Burke pressed for and the U.S. Navy became a well-rounded force centered around not just supercarriers but nuclear submarines with a powerful surface and amphibious force that had relegated the USAF to playing catchup to match the USN's dominance in both nuclear capabilities and conventional combat (Top Gun).
Can you make a video about a force field protecting our fleet, bases and cities? Lasers are impractical as you pointed out to defend against hypersonic missiles. How about particle beam weapons?
Surprised the Bahai didnt get a mention with the stops/interlocks for guns shooting youre own ship
Excellent
I’m sure I noticed a DE GAUSSING of the hulls of WW2 ships against MAGNETIC MINES / TORPS. . This has interested me.