The USN had the Panama Canal, the Germans had the Kiel Canal, and the British had the Gibraltar Dock: what was the size restriction for the IJN? The size of their largest building slips?
Hi Drach. In Holloway H. Frost's book 'The Battle of Jutland' it is claimed that at some point in the battle Admiral Jellicoe had the opportunity to press a destroyer attack against the battleships of the High Seas Fleet, but chose instead to keep them out of harms way. Frost is very critical of this and insists that Jellicoe was more worried about what enemy torpedoes could do to his dreadnoughts, and not so much about what his destroyers could do to the Germans. Do you have any thoughts about it?
Interesting, how the availability of copper influenced direct/indirect submarine propulsion. Could you list other national resource scarcities that impacted naval decisions?
Who was Halseys seymore? Its been mentioned that it halsey( or his staff) almost ignored pleas for help at Samur? Were the messages blocked from him, or was he deliberately in his actions?
you mention in this video that at practical ship-on-ship engagement ranges that the rate of fire capped out at 1-round per minute. However, did faster fire rates have any impact on shore bombardment?
Agreed. Fine to listen to as I get things done this fine Sunday. Unfortunately, he hasn't gotten to the questions I posted in comments a short time ago. I have faith that he'll get to him one day.
Of course it's up to you but if you're new here, I'd suggest you go through the Drydocks roughly in chronological order. You'll see how this channel developed, how his style changed and how the Drydock came to be what it is today. And yes, they're all this engaging:D
@@tbretten Actually I been following the channel for quite some time but always shied away from the drydocks....probably due to time....but damn....because of all the varied questions and subjects covered.....like my own interests....all over the place....their packed with info....like this one....from dromons to carrier ops to making battleship guns....what a blast!!!😂😂😂 totally awesome .....for kicks I will take your advice and start with number 1 on up....the Midway movies....Drach: you poor person 😅😅😅 gotta love Drachs sense of humor😂
@@tbretten Funny timing actually, I literally just finished this (took over half a year I think) with this episode being the first I get to watch / listen to when it actually comes out since I started that. But slightly oddly I went in reverse, but also skipped the Patreon ones because they seemed daunting at the time... then after I got all the way back to Ep1 I turned around and went back up the normal way though the Patreon ones lol.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Halsey's reaction. I think you completely missed the biggest issue. Halsey was a graduate of the Naval Academy. From a long line of military men. He was a very literate person. So he would have realized, from the instant he heard the words, that the line "the world wonders" is a direct reference to the famous poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Lord Alfred Tennyson. Now I know Drachinfel's familiar with this, but for those readers who aren't- the poem is from the Crimean War, Brits and their allies were fighting against the Russians. Same god forsaken peninsula the Ukrainians are fighting over right now.And it wasn't a huge battle, but it was incredibly dramatic and heroic, at least as the British press and public first became aware of it. British cavalry forces charging straight into the muzzles of enemy cavalry. Think Gandalf showing up on the final day of the Battle of Helm's Deep and charging his forces straight into the Orc army. The most famous line from the poem is "once more into the breech, dear friends!" Only as more information started trickling out, it turned out instead of this glorious act of heroism, it was entirely pointless. A bunch of inbred upperclass British twits all completely screwed up their intelligence. And they ended up ordering, for absolutely no good reason, all these brave soldiers to sacrifice their lives for absolutely nothing. Now if you look into the details there were a whole bunch of very small errors made, and lots of different things went wrong. But it's a textbook case of incompetent officers really screwing up, and a bunch of good young men getting killed over it for no good reason. Now imagine Halsey. He's in command of the 3rd fleet off Samar, supporting the invasion. He and everybody else knows the Japanese are going to try something, but nobody knows what. Then he gets this communication that a massive Japanese carrier task force is approaching from the north. So of course he jumps on it, takes his main fighting forces and heads off, leaving a few task forces to support the landing. Then the next morning, right at the dawn of his huge victory, they realize that the attacking force he's going after is a diversion. Right now, as he's realizing it, poor Taffy 3 is charging straight into the breech of the Wave Motion Gun on the Battleship Yamato, and the real Japanese force. And they're all about to die horribly because of the mistake that he himself just made. And THEN, your boss gets on the radio and says "Where the hell is Halsey? Why is he leaving all these good young men to die." And THEN, he cites a famous 19th century poem about incompetent British knobs getting a bunch of men killed for no reason, just to pour salt in the wound. It's like getting dunked on like that Supa Hot Fire meme. Imagine the commander in chief of the pacific fleet is Admiral Ice Cube, and he just laid down the most savage diss track in naval history. I feel like in that context, having an intense emotional reaction is both appropriate and very human.
I like the item on reliability. Following the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, Richard Feynman was on the Board of Investigation. Some people spoke of how amazing it was that something could have gone wrong because of the degree to which parts were manufactured. I can't remember the figures, but suppose it was one chance of error in 5,000. Feynman noticed that were 5,000 components and so came to the conclusion that something not only could, but statistically would go wrong on every flight.
Statistically - should never have gone into the South China Sea in a 21 year old destroyer - Typhoon season - metal fatigue - might have suddenly submerged ?
I like the percentage of reliability explanation. As someone that has both military and metal fabrication experience. This is one of the hardest concepts to explain to someone on the production line.
Another example of accumulated chances is looking at the chance of a USAAF bomber crewman finishing their mission tour and rotating home. On the average, he would only have a 5% chance of becoming a casualty (killed or shot down) each mission, but across a 26-mission tour, a 95% survival rate works out to a 26% chance of finishing and going home. When you add the chance of being wounded badly enough to justify a medical discharge, things don't look good.
@@seanmalloy7249 Kind of like the medical testing analogy. If you take a test for disease that it 99% accurate and test positive but it's an extremely rare disease, it is still highly unlikely you actually have that disease despite the positive test
Speaking of ship's doctors, I read a book on the US Admirals of WWII (I can't remember the title unfortunately) which detailed how US Admirals got their favorite drinking buddy, who happen to be a physician, commissioned into the navy in order to get around the US Navy's prohibition on alcohol. Admiral Halsey was mentioned as being "prescribed" a half a bottle of scotch a day for his "nerves" by his personal physician who "prescribed" himself the second half of the bottle. They could then relax over a bottle and chat each evening after a hard day's admiral-ing.
Yep. That sounds about right. Let's face it, if you have the power to do such a thing, then you're going to do it. And at this point in his life the man is probably an alcoholic, a functional alcoholic but an alcoholic nonetheless & him going without the scotch would probably make him unfit for duty until fully detoxed. And although it is probably not good to have a "drunk" making decisions in the middle of a war where one bad decision could get a large number of men killed, that is also the reason the man needed to be able to drink & relax at the end of the day. Sending pilots & crew out to do battle in the middle of a war & seeing many of them not come back is usually not easy for any man, so half a bottle of scotch to help wash away the doubts of whatever decisions had been made that day. Yeah, in times of war those decisions have to be made. Halsey did flub up by not leaving those battleships behind. And, I'm fairly certain that with hindsight if he had the chance to do things over, he would leave the battleships behind. And to address him throwing a temper tantrum, he messed up & knew he had messed up & it cost the Navy some ships & cost some very good & brave men their lives. However, if it had not been for this error we cannot really say that less men would have died . And without this mistake, the "Naval Battle of Samar" & the tiny ships of Taffy 3 with the planes from Taffy 1, 2 & 3 could not have won a tactical victory over such an overwhelming force as was the Center Force of the Japanese. And to me, the "Naval Battle of Samar", the "Battle of Midway" & the 2nd(?)" Battle of Savo Island" ,where Admiral Lee used USS Washington to bludgeon IJN Kirishima, those 3 stories are my favorite stories of the Naval clashes in the Pacific war.
Not to mention,, before his hospitalization Halsey was taking so many amphetamine pills that his skin was melting off,, and undoubtedly needed a little something to catch a few minutes of sleep... After the hospitalization,, I'm sure it was just his devotion to duty keeping him awake twenty-three hours a day but I'm sure he still needed a little something to help him sleep...
@@micnorton9487 I thought the skin thing was caused by psoriasis, which is a serious auto-immune disorder. I don't doubt he was taking amphetamines, as almost everyone who wanted to was. The code breakers at Station Hypo of OP-20-G at Pearl Harbor, run by Captain Charles Rochefort supposedly kept a waste basket full of Benzedrine tablets available to anyone who wanted them. Rochefort kept the basket by his desk for easy access while breaking Japanese naval codes and predicting the attack on Midway. There wasn't time for sleep!
I was on board Ranger for two of her major fires, and I can say, at least by the mid eighties, nothing much has changed as far as water tight integrity goes on captial warships of the USN, in both cases I found myself in electrical machinery rooms, armed with a portable pump and a dust pan with orders not to let the water get to the bus bars.
@@WALTERBROADDUS In one case it was pumped into a drain, in the other it was the bilge of the Auxillary Machinery room next door. Yep a dustpan, though to be fair you can move an awful lot of water that is too shallow for a pump with one. In both cases the pump was loaded into a thirty-five gallon trash can which was filled with the dust pan.
@@AtomicBabel In the first case it was more of an accident, I was actually issued a mop, (I think you can tell these were not fast leaks.) They were coming through an electrical stuffing tube were the compartment on the other side was flooded by firefighting water. They were to fast for a mop to keep up with, there was a dust pan available and I switched to that, using the mop bucket to fill the trashcan that the pump was in. This tactic worked as I was then able to keep ahead of the water leaking in. In the second case I just went with the dust pan. The annoyance there was that the pump needed to be wacked periodicly to keep it pumping. As far as being certified, well no one ever told me to stop using it...
I went through a Cat 5 typhoon in 2007 on a 688. We had to go to PD to report an injured man and run to Okinawa. Extremely violent is an understament, sail smashing, half the boat coming out of the water and crashing. Terrifying, the we dove to 400 feet and still took 5 to 10 degree rolls. Horrible 2 days.
In reference to a Battleship hitting an iceberg, there is also the damage control personnel and equipment to consider. A warship would most likely have more and better of both.
As to why laminated plates of a single kind of armor are weaker than a solid plate of the same total thickness, the reason is that, if the shell damage does not change its penetration ability, the penetration formula for homogeneous, ductile armor (decks, for example) that gives a reasonably good fit over the plate thickness range of 0.2-calibers to 1.1-caliber at low obliquity angles is the De Marre 1890 Nickel-Steel Penetration Formula (its curve versus velocity interlaces the actual curve from projectile tests very closely), which is in essence T = K x V^1.43, where the constant K takes plate quality and projectile quality and angle of impact effects into account. For face-hardened armor, the similar best-fit curve is T = K x V^1.21 for an even larger range of plate thicknesses. Note that in both cases the value of the Str8iking Velocity for Penetration, V, exponent is well under 2, which is for the kinetic energy of the projectile. Thus, in these cases, the kinetic energy to punch through a solid plate is greater at the face and then gets lower the farther into the plate you go, but this increase at the face is due to the rigid support of the plate material deeper into the plate. Thus, the thicker a solid plate, the greater the resistance at the face compared to the resistance of the plate at the rear. With laminated plates, each one acts like a near-the-back portion of the total armor structure, since the further rearward plates support the front plates only as to being pushed directly backwards. The steel in each laminated layer can individually bend SIDEWAYS out of the projectile's path, which is easier by far for each thin plate than a single thick plate, allowing the projectile to wedge its nose forward, bending the metal in each layer out of the way one by one, with the last layer being even easier to bend away as it has nothing to support it in any direction. It is like a stack of loose boards hit by an axe compared to the same stack that is strongly glued/screwed together into in effect a single solid piece and therefore all must be forced aside during the entire penetration of the blade. With face-hardened armor, the face may be brittle, but it is also extremely strong for a short time, allowing the impact shock to move backwards into the soft back, which acts as a shock-absorber. Thus the face of the plate is far stronger and more rigid for a short time, requiring even more energy to penetrate. Thin layers stacked up would not have this shock-absorber effect and thus fail more easily if laminated, on top of the effects on the soft back portions of the now-separate plates if in layers, as mentioned above.
Best thing about Drach's drydocks are that he admits when he doesn't know something,, either ferrets out the best information he can or refers to another source,, and invites other pundits to comment on the matter so he can learn as well...
1:25:50 Technically, it isn’t just the Akizukis that depart from that design style. The Hatsuharu were originally built with 3 turrets: a superfiring pair forward and one turret aft, and the forward superfiring turret was a single-turret. But this was eventually changed early on in their careers by replacing one of the three torpedo-launchers with the single-turret, which was carried on with their Ariake-subclass. What Drach says at 1:26:40 is pretty much the experiences the Hatsuharu's had. The nail in the coffin that made them remove a torpedo launcher and replace it with the single turret was because the Chidori-class torpedo-boat Tomozuru capsized and forced the IJN to re-evaluate the stability of ships that were just completed or still being built. Tomozuru herself was armed with a three 5"/50 guns in a single turret forward and a twin turret aft. After she was salvaged and extensively overhauled, she came out with 3 single 120 mm/45 11th Year Type guns in gun-shields. Likewise, I’d imagine if World of Warship's Elbing (Essentially the Spähkreuzer design but with made-up DP twin-turrets using the same 150 mm/60 guns as Nürnberg, removed the aft 88 mm/76 twin-mount, and replace the 20 mm/65 and 37 mm/83 AA guns with never-built AA weaponry) was put to sea, she would suffer similar issues, if not outright do a really impressive impression of a submarine.
25:00 An Independence class light carrier (USS Cabot CVL-28, which served in WW2) served in the Spanish Navy as the Dédalo and operated Harriers (Matadors in Spanish service), which would post-date the A-6 Intruder. However F/A-18 or Sea Harrier (pretty sure F/A-18 post-dates the Sea Harrier thought) would beat out the Dédalo/Harrier.
I find that questions reffering to something you had/ said/having you dig into something you had mentioned previously/eluded to needs to get its own section maybe, I find those questions to be jems in the greater scheme of things as its always nice to hear something explained further that you had mentioned before as it completes the picture in and of itself.
Drach that was a crackin book on the Marblehead - hairs on the back of your neck stuff. Thanks for the tip. I've got to ge to the UK to pick the Smthwick VC one - thanks Royal Mail.
"The world wonders" re: Halsey, was actually unfortunate "padding" on the part of the coding officer at Pearl. American signals in CINCPOA at the time had nonsense "padding" at the front and back of each message. In this case, the front-padding was "Turkey trots to water" -- absolutely irrelevant, right? Then the message itself, with the repeat too. The closing padding "the world wonders" was selected. The coder had already interposed "RR" meaning "end of message" before quoting Tennyson. Halsey's temper seems to have gotten the best of him, or perhaps the decoding on the ship didn't convey the "RR" signalling the end of the body? That he blew a fuse is doubtless. But I think it lays on the coding officer to have missed the contextual implications of such a choice of padding.
@1:08:00? In the early 1990s, I saw that in person. Apparently, the 1st foot of the Long Lance was cut off of two seperate torpedoes, and fashioned onto the chest area of a feature performer at Al's Diamond Caberet in Reading, Pennsylvania. I knew I recognized them immediately..... 🚬😎👍
2:28:13 I've read reproduced guides written both for new WW2 Royal Navy Captains, and new WW2 Royal Navy doctors. The first advised that Captains shouldn't socialise with the officers too often, for decorum and to give them some breathing room The second suggested that doctors could well be invited to dine with the captain fairly often. Makes sense for the reasons you say, and not just in the Age of Sail
On the topic of most Modern Aircraft, Drach is slightly off on the Sea Harrier vs Legacy Hornet (which, well, it's beyond the point of time he does most of his research in.) as the F-18 first flight is actually later (late 1978) than the Sea Harrier first flight (mid 1978). However, while the basic Sea Harrier itself is an older aircraft, the Indian Navy kept Hermes (as Viraat) long enough that their later updated iterations of Sea Harrier would become the most modern, as Midway decommissioned without ever receiving the F-18C. As for the actual WW2 participants, the answer depends. For combat use, this is most likely actually the A-7 Corsair, as the last combat Essex was the Oriskany which had later (for the era at least) model A-7s aboard on her last combat cruise. If testing counts, then the answer possibly becomes the T-45 Goshawk trainer, which I believe was tested aboard Lexington before her decommissioning, but did not enter proper service until Lexington retired.
Fun Fact: The mustard gas incident at Bari Harbor is what lead to the eventual breakthrough for the first chemo therapy treatment. A doctor back in the US reviewing tissue or cell samples or something (Don't remember what) from those exposed at Bari, noticed the cells of those exposed weren't replicating. This knowledge eventually lead to the treatment of chemo therapy to slow the body's cells, with radiation to kill the cancerous ones. This also means the first chemo therapy was to IV what was basically liquid Mustard gas, though in this instance Nitrogen Mustards or something were used instead of the Sulfur Mustards used in Mustard Gas. I know people say chemo is poison becauseof how much it wrecks your body, but in this case it literally was. I've probably got a lot of details wrong, but the overall picture of what I've said is true.
Drach, just got to the USS INDIANAPOLIS bit. You forgot that some of the survivor's were so deliriously dehydrated they actually mistook shipmates for Japanese and were killing eachother in survivor's accounts. If they pulled some in and they babbled on about Japanese in the water that message would have spread incredibly quickly.
Could you elaborate on the ABDACOM answer? I feel that its downfall has more to do with tactics, lack of coordenation, and proper command/control than the stats of each ship
You have cruisers and destroyers from four different countries quickly thrown together to form a fleet and only two of those navies had limited experience of working together. It's not a great surprise that things got rather confused.
"The World Wonders" is a quote from the Tennyson poem, "Charge of the Light Brigade". Did Halsey or anyone on his staff recognize the quote? Especially since It was the anniversary of the Charge.
That concept looks a lot like the giant 40 knot catamaran car ferries (and military transports) invented in 1990 by a company called Incat in Hobart (of all places). But those ships are powered by props or water jets, not by giant wheels.
2:19:30 Another concern with the VT fuses would be the enemy developing countermeasures. Such as duplicating the signal and trigger the VT fuse while it was still a ways away.
18:47 I think the way you describe the anti-air stuff is a little... I don't know how to put it... odd. Or maybe I should say... pointless? IDK exactly. I think my main question is, what is the alternative? Leave the ships completely vulnerable? Let enemies attack straight and level with no interference? I can see a point in measuring one gun/plane/doctrine(like the trying to hit vs causing explosions in front of to scare pilots methods)/targeting system VS another. But AA was REQUIRED to survive. Every plane shot down, every pilot rushed to drop their ordinance or forced to maneuver helps in the defense. The amount of ammo used is cheap compared to having the ships undefended. So what if a handful of planes got through, its a LOT better than the alternative. I think the fact that we are discussing a FEW planes getting through is a testament to HOW effective it truly was at breaking up attacks.
Hello Drach, hope this finds you well. The fiance and myself were watching a movie/documentary about the Engineering crew on Titanic. In this they said the watertight compartments were just that. Completely sealable boxes. Is this true? If so, is the idea the WT compartments were filled then flowed into the next incorrect and in fact what happened was the ship was pulled far enough down that she flooded from above like a bath toy? Also if the unaffected compartments were pulled down, how deep would they need to be to implode? Could this have assisted the speed in which she broke in two, and would it explain the damage to the stern section seen on the bottom?
A-6s weren't deployed on Essex class carriers, they were too heavy. A-7s were however, and according to their first flight in 1965 would be the most recently developed airframe. I'd go with avionics fit rather than date of first flight for advanced, in which case I'd say it would be the A-7E for aircraft from classes that fought in WW2. For developed during WW2, I'd say F-18s from the Midways on both date and avionics, unless you consider the Sea Harrier a different aircraft than the Harrier I, which I don't*, in which case it would 'win' for first flight. However, if you go by date it entered service, we are back to the F-18 with 1984. *I can see both arguments for the AV-8B Harrier II since it's a new airframe, but I'd argue the Sea Harrier is an alternate version of the Harrier rather than a new aircraft.
So apparently POMPANITO's crew determined that the sea state precluded the use of the main induction, which normally provided air to the diesels. Not shocking, given the location down on the upper pressure hull. The main inductions did have a float type of safety to seal them up during intermittent periods awash, but apparently the sensation the crew would experience during the periods when the main induction seal would seat and unseat with hatches to the weather decks closed was an extremely uncomfortable sudden drop in air pressure in the boat. Taking suction through the boat via the bridge hatches would create one hell of a draft (the diesels gulped a considerable volume of air) but at least they were drawing from a position several feet higher than the main induction location, so the hatch slam/partial vacuum episodes were hopefully less frequent - and they didn't chance flooding out a main induction line completely, which was a possible failure mode... That might also explain running on less than all four diesels - as long as you could maintain control, less air demand, fewer diesel motormen on watch - benefits accrue quickly for a skipper having to plan for possible days of just hanging on. It did preclude closing up W/T doors between the conning tower and the diesels.
24:34 it’s not certain whether it deployed with these, but the beginning of operational service of the T-45 Goshawk overlaps with the final years of Lexington (AVT-16)’s service as a training carrier.
Obviously, the British Fleet really needed dye bag shell ID markers. It is amazing that they did not introduce this until they got the French explosive windscreen-tip dye bag system for large AP shells in their modified "K" APC shells after the fall of France. This was the best, most reliable dye bag marking system, useful at night and also when a direct hit occurs, which were not true for the US and Japanese dye bag designs.
Sorry, an answer to a question about the effectiveness of AAA in WWII veers into territory about resource expenditure, ending in conjecture about Ten-Go without mentioning the one resource the Anglophone Allies were obsessed with conserving--blood? Initial accounts of the ineffectiveness of Allied AAA in the Pacific in 1945 was because of the Anglophone Allied "casualty surge" of 1944-45, as Dennis Giangreco described in 2009's Hell to Pay and Giangreco used the term liberally in an interview on MHV's channel. On 27 March 1945 Eisenhower declared the Germans "as a military force on the Western Front are a whipped army," while the Pacific had turned into a bloodbath on Iwo Jima and the fighting on AND off Okinawa was beginning to look like a glimpse of Hell. From the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot triumph, the Allies lost two carriers off Leyte to air attack and USS Franklin was struck by a traditional bomb attack off Peleliu, a kamikaze off Leyte, and was engulfed in flame by the worst air attack since Pearl Harbor during a sweep of the Home Islands during the Battle of Iwo Jima. She was but one of hundreds of IJNAS-stricken vessels clogging the drydocks and shipyards on both coasts as their men filled up hospitals and cemeteries. As the war in Korea dawned five years later, RN and USN survivors realized that had the kamikazes been armed with nuclear weapons the entire fleet would have been irradiated, causing countless more deaths and every ship not sunk to be disposed of like USS Independence. This was the historical consensus for decades until authors like John Parshall and Anthony Tully noticed in Japanese archives that the IJN's defenses against American air attack were next to nothing from the outset of the war, in stark contrast to the Kido Butai's attrition against American AAA. According to Shattered Sword, only Kaga managed to down a SBD in the attacks that took down Akagi, Kaga and Soryu (and the lone loss was due to a direct hit from a 5-inch shell); Japanese pilots meanwhile suffered 74 killed IN THE AIR out of 110 KIA in total off Midway...and Japanese industry constructed a mere 56 carrier attack aircraft in the whole of 1942 according to Parshall and Tully's tome against the more than 1000 IJNAS aircraft lost that year. This somehow got worse as the war dragged on, with the USN losing 10 planes and 12 crewmen dead against over 4000 killed aboard Yamato, Yahagi, and the four IJN destroyers sunk out of eight during Ten-Go: "The Japanese opened up with everything they had, which looked terrifying, but U.S. pilots quickly figured out that Japanese anti-aircraft fire was wildly inaccurate...More U.S. aircraft may have been knocked down by the magazine explosion than by Japanese anti-aircraft fire." www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-044/h-044-3.html Both points of view are valid--RN and USN anti-aircraft artillery was FAR deadlier than IJN AAA, yet Anglophone Allied AAA was singularly unable to contain the Kamikaze threat.
ROFL. When I saw That photo at 27 minutes I heard “the wheels on the ship go round and round” On the other hand, it’s balance is like a catamaran. Should be more stable in the water with much less lateral roll. If made of rubber with a lot of cells inside…… hmm. Reinforce with steel belts like used in a tire. At least it’s interesting to contemplate.
Here's what I understand the USN's BB replacement plan was. Remember that the US was still assuming the Treaty limit of 15 capital ships would hold Arkansas - North Carolina Texas - Washington New York - South Dakota Nevada - Indiana Oklahoma - Massachusetts Arizona - Alabama Pennsylvania - Iowa New Mexico - New Jersey Mississippi - Missouri Idaho - Wisconsin Tennessee - Montana California - Ohio Colorado - Maine Maryland - New Hampshire West Virginia - Louisiana Notes - New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Iowa were fitted as fleet flagships Notes - The modified Iowa class Illinois and Kentucky were inserted into the program “Hull numbers BB-65 and BB-66 were originally intended as the first and second ships of the Montana-class of battleships; however the passage of an emergency war building program on 19 July 1940 resulted in both hulls being reordered as Iowa-class units to save time on construction”
Im surprised that ur surprised that a bunch of shed loving blokes wouldn’t be fascinated at ur well researched and laid out presentations whilst they’re tinkering on their newest invention to rescue humankind from its own follies
Every disciplinary write up I have ever received at work has been for saying " I have found this problem. I've worked out a solution to the problem. If we all do this instead of that we will never have this problem again." So, yeah, I can totally believe Scott's career suffered for that.
wrt the more smaller vs fewer larger guns question, this argument raged for decades. In the USN, it was the head of BuOrd, during the teens, Joseph Strauss, that promoted the more/smaller option. As Drac said, the argument for more, smaller guns, always depends on an artificial restraint. Strauss insisted that all combat would be at 12,000 yards, or less. Since a 14" could penetrate well enough at that range, they could put more of them on a ship and increase the probability of a hit. The Tennessees could have been built with 16", there was active speculation they would be, reported in the newspapers, but Strauss pushed through the 14" option. Jutland satisfied the General Board and SecNav that engagements would be fought at considerably more than 12,000, so Strauss was overruled when guns were specified for the Colorados. In his annual report that year, SecNav Daniels said the 16" decision was made over the objections of some officers. That same argument arose again, in the design of the KGVs. In the Admiralty's own analysis, a 9-15" armament would provide a more satisfactory ship, but the decision was made to go to 12-14" instead. It is probably worth noting that Admiralty fighting instructions at the time required closing, as fast as possible, to 16,000 yards, or less, before fully engaging. Again, the artificial restraint: not requiring the KGVs to be effective at greater ranges, made the 14" look like the better option. I give the credit for the Admiralty clinging to an obsolete doctrine, against the recommendations of Admiralty technical staff recommendations, to Admiral Chatfield, who was First Sea Lord from 1933 to 38.
1:45:00 Bombing half sunk ships could make things a LOT worse. It's not just the direct damage but the time it takes to control any flooding or fires. It could easily be the difference in if the men are able to get the damage under control or if the ship sinks/burns out completely. Though there are also things like the fuel depots and that can be hit. i don't know which would be more effective. Spreading the fire fighting equipment out over a larger area might allow some fires to spread due to lack of manpower/equipment. At the same time a ship or dock can hit its limit on the number of people able to fight a fire so spreading the damage might be less effective if there is idle capacity in fire fighters able to quickly address things away from the docks.
Well, if you're using different units within the imperual system, you just designate the units separately. So in your example, it would be 12 feet and half an inch, or more succinctly, 12' 1/2".
@@hughgordon6435 You listed no units. So metric has the same problem. Is that 12.5 kg, g, mm, meters, kilometers, what? Numbers with no units are pretty meaningless.
I think the Casco Monitors are the closest to a class that completely failed to enter service due to unresolvable design flaws. Even trailed with a light load they puttered at below half their design speed and were already awash.
During the Battle of the Bulge Major David Niven was detained by US Military police. He was asked the "who won the World Series" question. He answered "I haven't the foggiest but I did star in a movie with Ginger Rodgers in 1937." They let him go. The World Series question is not a good one for the Japanese because they were/are big baseball fans.
USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) and USS Oriskany (CV-34) were both modified to operate A-7s prior to their final deployments off Vietnam with the latter carrier's A-7s seeing extensive combat service until the end of American involvement in 1973. In this case the sequence, which implies the A-7 entered service (1967) after the A-6 (1963), is correct. However, Essex-class carriers never were modified to embark F-4s or A-6s, as these jets were heavier (requiring higher landing airspeed) than the F-8s, A-4s, and A-7s that typically were deployed on Essex-class carriers off Vietnam; as such F-4s and A-6s were usually relegated to Midway-class or supercarriers.
The thing is, the real answer to the question is probably "whatever happend to be the most modern thing to fly off USS Lexington during her training days"
@mancubwwa That would make sense, except the answer if one includes training fixed-wing aircraft is the TA-7 variant of the A-7 Corsair II. There is a photo of Lexington launching one in 1984: de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:USS_Lexington_(AVT-16)_launches_an_A-7_Corsair_II_in_1984.jpg. This was unusual, though. The primary US Navy carrier-capable trainer in use when USS Lexington was slated in 1962 into the USN's training carrier was the T-2 Buckeye, which remained in that role until...2008. The T-2 entered service in 1959, eight years prior to the A-7. Lexington was decommissioned in 1991. For attack conversion training Lexington typically operated TA-4s, but that was a variant of the A-4 Skyhawk that entered service with the USN in 1956 and remained in service until...2003. Lexington's attack conversion trainers remained TA-4s well into the 1980s, as there is a photo of Skyhawks performing touch and goes on Lexington's deck from 1989: de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Douglas_TA-4J_Skyhawk_aboard_USS_Lexington_(AVT-16),_1_April_1989_(6445251).jpg The US military has a history of operating its training aircraft for a LONG time, as the USAF still uses the T-38 for supersonic training despite the T-38 having entered service in 1961 and the last one rolling off the production line in 1972 (the T-2 stopped production in 1970). So there is a distinct possibility that Lexington never operated any fixed wing aircraft that were newer than the A-7/TA-7, which entered service in its role as an attack aircraft in 1967. As for helicopters, the USN's primary trainer was the TH-57 until being replaced by the TH-73 starting in 2021, a variant of the Bell 206 that entered into service in 1967 as well as the A-7, but the 206's first flight overall was in 1962 compared to the A-7 in 1965. There is also the question of what constitutes service, as there are both an A-7 Corsair and a Blue Angel F/A-18 Hornet currently sitting aboard Lexington's deck right now in Corpus Christi...the A-7 clearly counts as Lexington operated TA-7s in the 1980s, while I cannot find any photos of Hornets launching or landing aboard Lexington. Drach also mixed up the Hornet and Sea Harrier, as the latter entered FAA service in 1978, the same year the F/A-18 first flew before the Hornet entered service with the USMC in 1983 and the USN in 1984...but the SH-60 Seahawk (one of which sits on Midway's deck currently in San Diego) first flew in 1979 before entering service in the same timeframe as the F/A-18.
@@indplt1595 As far as I can find, F18s and F14s never flew off of Lexington. I could be wrong but I believe you are correct on A7 or some variant thereof. F18s did serve on Midway and Coral Sea but of course they never saw WWII action
Interestingly the title may go not to any fighter, but rather to Grumman C2A Greyhound COD plane, specifically to a C2A(R) variant, if it was ever used to resupply Lexington. Obviously this is not counting Midway class carriers as they never actually served in combat in WWII. But that would need further reaserch...
On land,. The CL USS Helena fired the first VT fuzes in 1943. "Beginning in January 1943, Helena took part in several attacks on Japanese positions on the island of New Georgia in preparation for the planned New Georgia campaign.[20]... The ship had received the new 5-inch shells fitted with proximity VT fuses, and her use marked the first time they were used successfully in combat.["
Maybe I am a bit late, but something about your Answer regarding AA effictiveness bugs me. I mean not that I am a professional but I have learned another view on Air Defence as a whole. That view basically is: It is not the AD's Job to Kill enemy aerial Assets, but more to achive what I like to call "Mission kill" and thus counter the aerial Threat. Mission kill would be the Enemy not achieving his target. This can definitely, but not merely be done by shooting down the enemy assets, making a pilot miss, pull out of an attack, damaging a Plane so it can't attack are all mission kills. So looking only on the stats and say: Well, boy's you spend 30000 Rounds shooting down a single plane. That was not good enough. Is a bit of a misconception. For example: A ship(let's call it "ShipA") shot down no Aircarft during an action, but did not receive any hits. ShipA made pilots drop their bombs early, worried pilots to drop Torpedoes hastily and scared others of. ShipB is faced with same attack, shoots down 3 Planes but gets hit by an bomb and an Torpedo. In my view ShipA did a better job than ShipB. And this goes on regarding the economics of Air Defence. Just saying you spend 25$ of ammo to shoot down a single 10$ Plane that's uneconomical, is shortsighted. Watching the whole picture reveales you spend 25$ worth of ammo shooting down a 10$ Plane to protect your 10.000$ ship.(to lazy to find realistic numbers right now.). So it is not the Expense vs. what is shot down but the expense vs. what is protected by AD. And comming back to the Question: what I see is more a of an emphasis towards what is protected instead of an actual look on the kill sheet. Not the emphasis on the longterm effects. But that is only my two cents. An may I ad, naval Air Defence would deserve a Viedoof it's own in all it's complexity and beauty.
In response to the question on chemical weapons, I will note that the US official production numbers include mustard gas munitions (e.g. a total of 2.91 million mustard gas artillery rounds).
1:35:40 If Nimitz had simply appended a few festive emojis to his official naval communiqué, this would never have happened: WHERE IS, REPEAT, WHERE IS TASK FORCE 34 ❤🤘👍😅⛵⛵⛵❔❔❔
VT shells were available to land artillery for use use in the Battle of the Bulge (Ike got things fixed in time). I'd assume, but don't know for sure, that some of the 5" issued for AA in the Pacific found use in infantry support.
Drach touched on this, but the use of VT fused shells for shore bombardment hinges on actually having a suitable target. 5" VT fused common can smother a banzai charge, but will accomplish very little against entrenched infantry and nothing against bunkers.
@@kemarisite The issue was secrecy and when VT shells were permitted on shore. VT forces entrenched infantry to seek overhead cover (the idea that it's ineffective is ludicrous), and strips armor of its necessary accompanying infantry. Airbursts at a desired height are the gold standard for artillery support.
23:00 I would suspect that this also the increased distance in time from WWII and the Cold War also played a role. It's something we can see in general scholarship of WWII, much of the post-war histories were built up as Cold War propaganda (the most notable probably being the whole Clean Wehrmacht BS). And over the past 10-20 years post-Cold War studies are entering general knowledge. Fighters and their pilots were sexy and highly marketable. You could put on a big show trotting out "Commander McCampbell, who shot down 7 Japanese planes in one day", that just wasn't the same with "a member of one of several 5-inch gun crews that participated in shooting down Japanese bombers" simply couldn't do, so public focus was always on pilots. Plus, there were vested interests in justifying more carriers and fighters and missiles through the Cold War. So I can totally see early post-war focus (completely unintentionally, even) on the downsides of AA guns versus fighters and it to grow in the Cold War. Like almost all history, it will likely swing back too far and then correct over time.
Question: how would you move a warship over a railway. Example: Russia sending built ships to Vladivostok or Britain sending HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou for the Tanganyika campaign? What are special requirements for the parts? And are there any examples I am forgetting?
A curious thing is that final battle of Bismarck and the final battle of Yamato took nearly an identical amount of time, going from either the first shots fired or the first hit scored.
Yamato was undamaged before the final action, Bismarck was damaged by two 14" shells and 3 torpedoes (enough to sink most other BBs) days before it was sunk.
@@niclasjohansson4333 Those first 2 torpedoes did next to no damage. Swordfish torpedoes were extremely weak. The two 14" overpenetration would not have sunk any battleship, not even HMS Victory. The 3rd 14" under-penetration would also not have been fatal to any Battleship.
@@Edax_Royeaux Littorio was sunk in harbor by only 3 torps from the Swordfishes, and the first torpedo to hit PoW had an even weaker charge, and that single "tinfish" would have sunk the British battleship all by itself, the 3 hits on the opposite side actually slowed down the capsizeing. The point is that Bismarck was far from "undamaged" !
@@niclasjohansson4333 The torpedo hit on Bismarck amidships by HMS Victorious killed 1 man and caused minor damage to electrical equipment. The second torpedo hit on Bismarck's port side by HMS Ark Royal caused some structural damage and minor flooding. Such damage is hardly fatal to any Battleship.. The Littorio was in shallow water which magnifies the power of an underwater explosive, it bares little comparison to Bismarck which was sailing in the ocean.
@@Edax_Royeaux The torpedoes that hit Littorio did strike the side of the hull, not underneath the ship, so it did not matter that she was in harbor. One hit the stern, one between A and B turrets, and the 3rd in the bow. Just because a few torpedoes and 14" shells wasnt fatal to Bismarck doesent mean its not fatal to most other battleships.
More than anything the rebalancing of the design would delay Honet massively rather that a straight repeat -unless the Navy Department already have a design that they had done full design work on, which they didn't as they wouldn't have been working on the Essex and were still two years away from having an off self design.
I have sent you an email with a question about a warship in a wartime photo I recently won, I know a fair bit about WW2 of all areas but this one is stumping me.
Drach knows a lot! Bet he doesn't know how those huge circus guns worked that launched a man high into the air! Breech loader? How did they aim the thing?
I thought you did a video about the manufacturing processes for battleship guns. In fact, I think it was how I found your channel. But now I can't find it... Where's it gone?!
Regarding the question at 1:42:37 , I’m not 100% sure but aren’t we currently dealing with a situation this question poses with the “splendid” U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat ships? Aren’t they scheduled for scrapping right after construction of all the vessels in this worthless class are completed?
I thought that submarine motors were usually shunt wound motors, thus the motor could also be a generator for the battery pack with a simple "turn the motor with the engine". You can vary the field current (which is small) quite easily to limit the charge the batteries. Declutch the engine and you're on batteries/electric motor. In other words, a hybrid.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
The USN had the Panama Canal, the Germans had the Kiel Canal, and the British had the Gibraltar Dock: what was the size restriction for the IJN? The size of their largest building slips?
Hi Drach. In Holloway H. Frost's book 'The Battle of Jutland' it is claimed that at some point in the battle Admiral Jellicoe had the opportunity to press a destroyer attack against the battleships of the High Seas Fleet, but chose instead to keep them out of harms way. Frost is very critical of this and insists that Jellicoe was more worried about what enemy torpedoes could do to his dreadnoughts, and not so much about what his destroyers could do to the Germans. Do you have any thoughts about it?
Interesting, how the availability of copper influenced direct/indirect submarine propulsion.
Could you list other national resource scarcities that impacted naval decisions?
Who was Halseys seymore? Its been mentioned that it halsey( or his staff) almost ignored pleas for help at Samur? Were the messages blocked from him, or was he deliberately in his actions?
you mention in this video that at practical ship-on-ship engagement ranges that the rate of fire capped out at 1-round per minute. However, did faster fire rates have any impact on shore bombardment?
Time to relax and listen to Drach waffle on for hours. ♥
Lord Drach does not waffle.... ever😮
Now i want waffles..... good thing its breakfast time
Agreed. Fine to listen to as I get things done this fine Sunday.
Unfortunately, he hasn't gotten to the questions I posted in comments a short time ago. I have faith that he'll get to him one day.
Yes but no. 😁
Part 1.....
Came for the ships and history, also got a free brief explanation of some high level math and its more understandable than my college math teacher.
Damn....are all these Drydock episodes so riveting engaging and interesting?!?!?!? There's 240 others!!!! I'm gonna be busy for years!!!!!
Of course it's up to you but if you're new here, I'd suggest you go through the Drydocks roughly in chronological order. You'll see how this channel developed, how his style changed and how the Drydock came to be what it is today.
And yes, they're all this engaging:D
@@tbretten Actually I been following the channel for quite some time but always shied away from the drydocks....probably due to time....but damn....because of all the varied questions and subjects covered.....like my own interests....all over the place....their packed with info....like this one....from dromons to carrier ops to making battleship guns....what a blast!!!😂😂😂 totally awesome .....for kicks I will take your advice and start with number 1 on up....the Midway movies....Drach: you poor person 😅😅😅 gotta love Drachs sense of humor😂
@@tbretten Funny timing actually, I literally just finished this (took over half a year I think) with this episode being the first I get to watch / listen to when it actually comes out since I started that. But slightly oddly I went in reverse, but also skipped the Patreon ones because they seemed daunting at the time... then after I got all the way back to Ep1 I turned around and went back up the normal way though the Patreon ones lol.
Don’t miss episode 33, or 75
Think 33 is when he explains “The Dreadnought hoax,” and 75 well, listen to it.
Not all of them are riveting. At least a few of them are welding.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Halsey's reaction. I think you completely missed the biggest issue.
Halsey was a graduate of the Naval Academy. From a long line of military men. He was a very literate person. So he would have realized, from the instant he heard the words, that the line "the world wonders" is a direct reference to the famous poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Lord Alfred Tennyson.
Now I know Drachinfel's familiar with this, but for those readers who aren't- the poem is from the Crimean War, Brits and their allies were fighting against the Russians. Same god forsaken peninsula the Ukrainians are fighting over right now.And it wasn't a huge battle, but it was incredibly dramatic and heroic, at least as the British press and public first became aware of it. British cavalry forces charging straight into the muzzles of enemy cavalry. Think Gandalf showing up on the final day of the Battle of Helm's Deep and charging his forces straight into the Orc army. The most famous line from the poem is "once more into the breech, dear friends!"
Only as more information started trickling out, it turned out instead of this glorious act of heroism, it was entirely pointless. A bunch of inbred upperclass British twits all completely screwed up their intelligence. And they ended up ordering, for absolutely no good reason, all these brave soldiers to sacrifice their lives for absolutely nothing. Now if you look into the details there were a whole bunch of very small errors made, and lots of different things went wrong. But it's a textbook case of incompetent officers really screwing up, and a bunch of good young men getting killed over it for no good reason.
Now imagine Halsey. He's in command of the 3rd fleet off Samar, supporting the invasion. He and everybody else knows the Japanese are going to try something, but nobody knows what. Then he gets this communication that a massive Japanese carrier task force is approaching from the north. So of course he jumps on it, takes his main fighting forces and heads off, leaving a few task forces to support the landing.
Then the next morning, right at the dawn of his huge victory, they realize that the attacking force he's going after is a diversion. Right now, as he's realizing it, poor Taffy 3 is charging straight into the breech of the Wave Motion Gun on the Battleship Yamato, and the real Japanese force. And they're all about to die horribly because of the mistake that he himself just made. And THEN, your boss gets on the radio and says "Where the hell is Halsey? Why is he leaving all these good young men to die." And THEN, he cites a famous 19th century poem about incompetent British knobs getting a bunch of men killed for no reason, just to pour salt in the wound.
It's like getting dunked on like that Supa Hot Fire meme. Imagine the commander in chief of the pacific fleet is Admiral Ice Cube, and he just laid down the most savage diss track in naval history.
I feel like in that context, having an intense emotional reaction is both appropriate and very human.
I like the item on reliability. Following the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, Richard Feynman was on the Board of Investigation. Some people spoke of how amazing it was that something could have gone wrong because of the degree to which parts were manufactured. I can't remember the figures, but suppose it was one chance of error in 5,000. Feynman noticed that were 5,000 components and so came to the conclusion that something not only could, but statistically would go wrong on every flight.
Statistically - should never have gone into the South China Sea in a 21 year old destroyer - Typhoon season - metal fatigue - might have suddenly submerged ?
I like the percentage of reliability explanation. As someone that has both military and metal fabrication experience. This is one of the hardest concepts to explain to someone on the production line.
Another example of accumulated chances is looking at the chance of a USAAF bomber crewman finishing their mission tour and rotating home. On the average, he would only have a 5% chance of becoming a casualty (killed or shot down) each mission, but across a 26-mission tour, a 95% survival rate works out to a 26% chance of finishing and going home. When you add the chance of being wounded badly enough to justify a medical discharge, things don't look good.
@@seanmalloy7249 Kind of like the medical testing analogy. If you take a test for disease that it 99% accurate and test positive but it's an extremely rare disease, it is still highly unlikely you actually have that disease despite the positive test
Speaking of ship's doctors, I read a book on the US Admirals of WWII (I can't remember the title unfortunately) which detailed how US Admirals got their favorite drinking buddy, who happen to be a physician, commissioned into the navy in order to get around the US Navy's prohibition on alcohol. Admiral Halsey was mentioned as being "prescribed" a half a bottle of scotch a day for his "nerves" by his personal physician who "prescribed" himself the second half of the bottle. They could then relax over a bottle and chat each evening after a hard day's admiral-ing.
Yep. That sounds about right. Let's face it, if you have the power to do such a thing, then you're going to do it. And at this point in his life the man is probably an alcoholic, a functional alcoholic but an alcoholic nonetheless & him going without the scotch would probably make him unfit for duty until fully detoxed. And although it is probably not good to have a "drunk" making decisions in the middle of a war where one bad decision could get a large number of men killed, that is also the reason the man needed to be able to drink & relax at the end of the day. Sending pilots & crew out to do battle in the middle of a war & seeing many of them not come back is usually not easy for any man, so half a bottle of scotch to help wash away the doubts of whatever decisions had been made that day. Yeah, in times of war those decisions have to be made. Halsey did flub up by not leaving those battleships behind. And, I'm fairly certain that with hindsight if he had the chance to do things over, he would leave the battleships behind. And to address him throwing a temper tantrum, he messed up & knew he had messed up & it cost the Navy some ships & cost some very good & brave men their lives. However, if it had not been for this error we cannot really say that less men would have died . And without this mistake, the "Naval Battle of Samar" & the tiny ships of Taffy 3 with the planes from Taffy 1, 2 & 3 could not have won a tactical victory over such an overwhelming force as was the Center Force of the Japanese. And to me, the "Naval Battle of Samar", the "Battle of Midway" & the 2nd(?)" Battle of Savo Island" ,where Admiral Lee used USS Washington to bludgeon IJN Kirishima, those 3 stories are my favorite stories of the Naval clashes in the Pacific war.
Not to mention,, before his hospitalization Halsey was taking so many amphetamine pills that his skin was melting off,, and undoubtedly needed a little something to catch a few minutes of sleep... After the hospitalization,, I'm sure it was just his devotion to duty keeping him awake twenty-three hours a day but I'm sure he still needed a little something to help him sleep...
@@micnorton9487 I thought the skin thing was caused by psoriasis, which is a serious auto-immune disorder. I don't doubt he was taking amphetamines, as almost everyone who wanted to was. The code breakers at Station Hypo of OP-20-G at Pearl Harbor, run by Captain Charles Rochefort supposedly kept a waste basket full of Benzedrine tablets available to anyone who wanted them. Rochefort kept the basket by his desk for easy access while breaking Japanese naval codes and predicting the attack on Midway. There wasn't time for sleep!
my dog loves Sunday at Drach's house, curls up and doesn't miss a word..... right up there with those renown Hush Hush episodes.
I was on board Ranger for two of her major fires, and I can say, at least by the mid eighties, nothing much has changed as far as water tight integrity goes on captial warships of the USN, in both cases I found myself in electrical machinery rooms, armed with a portable pump and a dust pan with orders not to let the water get to the bus bars.
A dust pan and a pump? Where were you going pump water too? Was there a drain?
@@WALTERBROADDUS In one case it was pumped into a drain, in the other it was the bilge of the Auxillary Machinery room next door. Yep a dustpan, though to be fair you can move an awful lot of water that is too shallow for a pump with one. In both cases the pump was loaded into a thirty-five gallon trash can which was filled with the dust pan.
@fred1451 none a dust pan for DC, not something that comes up at first thought.
Come to ponder on it, did the dust pan need to be certified?😂
@@AtomicBabel In the first case it was more of an accident, I was actually issued a mop, (I think you can tell these were not fast leaks.) They were coming through an electrical stuffing tube were the compartment on the other side was flooded by firefighting water.
They were to fast for a mop to keep up with, there was a dust pan available and I switched to that, using the mop bucket to fill the trashcan that the pump was in. This tactic worked as I was then able to keep ahead of the water leaking in.
In the second case I just went with the dust pan. The annoyance there was that the pump needed to be wacked periodicly to keep it pumping.
As far as being certified, well no one ever told me to stop using it...
@@frednone .. Jesus Christ..
I went through a Cat 5 typhoon in 2007 on a 688. We had to go to PD to report an injured man and run to Okinawa. Extremely violent is an understament, sail smashing, half the boat coming out of the water and crashing. Terrifying, the we dove to 400 feet and still took 5 to 10 degree rolls. Horrible 2 days.
In reference to a Battleship hitting an iceberg, there is also the damage control personnel and equipment to consider. A warship would most likely have more and better of both.
Warspite or New Zealand would have sunk the iceberg...
@@camenbert5837😂 Gah!
As to why laminated plates of a single kind of armor are weaker than a solid plate of the same total thickness, the reason is that, if the shell damage does not change its penetration ability, the penetration formula for homogeneous, ductile armor (decks, for example) that gives a reasonably good fit over the plate thickness range of 0.2-calibers to 1.1-caliber at low obliquity angles is the De Marre 1890 Nickel-Steel Penetration Formula (its curve versus velocity interlaces the actual curve from projectile tests very closely), which is in essence T = K x V^1.43, where the constant K takes plate quality and projectile quality and angle of impact effects into account. For face-hardened armor, the similar best-fit curve is T = K x V^1.21 for an even larger range of plate thicknesses. Note that in both cases the value of the Str8iking Velocity for Penetration, V, exponent is well under 2, which is for the kinetic energy of the projectile. Thus, in these cases, the kinetic energy to punch through a solid plate is greater at the face and then gets lower the farther into the plate you go, but this increase at the face is due to the rigid support of the plate material deeper into the plate. Thus, the thicker a solid plate, the greater the resistance at the face compared to the resistance of the plate at the rear. With laminated plates, each one acts like a near-the-back portion of the total armor structure, since the further rearward plates support the front plates only as to being pushed directly backwards. The steel in each laminated layer can individually bend SIDEWAYS out of the projectile's path, which is easier by far for each thin plate than a single thick plate, allowing the projectile to wedge its nose forward, bending the metal in each layer out of the way one by one, with the last layer being even easier to bend away as it has nothing to support it in any direction. It is like a stack of loose boards hit by an axe compared to the same stack that is strongly glued/screwed together into in effect a single solid piece and therefore all must be forced aside during the entire penetration of the blade.
With face-hardened armor, the face may be brittle, but it is also extremely strong for a short time, allowing the impact shock to move backwards into the soft back, which acts as a shock-absorber. Thus the face of the plate is far stronger and more rigid for a short time, requiring even more energy to penetrate. Thin layers stacked up would not have this shock-absorber effect and thus fail more easily if laminated, on top of the effects on the soft back portions of the now-separate plates if in layers, as mentioned above.
Best thing about Drach's drydocks are that he admits when he doesn't know something,, either ferrets out the best information he can or refers to another source,, and invites other pundits to comment on the matter so he can learn as well...
“Leans excessively under the influence of wind” sounds like a problem I have after too much bratwurst and sauerkraut.
Or that I have had after an excessive amount of Mexican food.
Best sleep aid on the entire Internet. Never fails to deliver! ❤
1:25:50 Technically, it isn’t just the Akizukis that depart from that design style. The Hatsuharu were originally built with 3 turrets: a superfiring pair forward and one turret aft, and the forward superfiring turret was a single-turret. But this was eventually changed early on in their careers by replacing one of the three torpedo-launchers with the single-turret, which was carried on with their Ariake-subclass. What Drach says at 1:26:40 is pretty much the experiences the Hatsuharu's had. The nail in the coffin that made them remove a torpedo launcher and replace it with the single turret was because the Chidori-class torpedo-boat Tomozuru capsized and forced the IJN to re-evaluate the stability of ships that were just completed or still being built. Tomozuru herself was armed with a three 5"/50 guns in a single turret forward and a twin turret aft. After she was salvaged and extensively overhauled, she came out with 3 single 120 mm/45 11th Year Type guns in gun-shields.
Likewise, I’d imagine if World of Warship's Elbing (Essentially the Spähkreuzer design but with made-up DP twin-turrets using the same 150 mm/60 guns as Nürnberg, removed the aft 88 mm/76 twin-mount, and replace the 20 mm/65 and 37 mm/83 AA guns with never-built AA weaponry) was put to sea, she would suffer similar issues, if not outright do a really impressive impression of a submarine.
25:00 An Independence class light carrier (USS Cabot CVL-28, which served in WW2) served in the Spanish Navy as the Dédalo and operated Harriers (Matadors in Spanish service), which would post-date the A-6 Intruder.
However F/A-18 or Sea Harrier (pretty sure F/A-18 post-dates the Sea Harrier thought) would beat out the Dédalo/Harrier.
I find that questions reffering to something you had/ said/having you dig into something you had mentioned previously/eluded to needs to get its own section maybe, I find those questions to be jems in the greater scheme of things as its always nice to hear something explained further that you had mentioned before as it completes the picture in and of itself.
Drach that was a crackin book on the Marblehead - hairs on the back of your neck stuff. Thanks for the tip. I've got to ge to the UK to pick the Smthwick VC one - thanks Royal Mail.
"The world wonders" re: Halsey, was actually unfortunate "padding" on the part of the coding officer at Pearl. American signals in CINCPOA at the time had nonsense "padding" at the front and back of each message. In this case, the front-padding was "Turkey trots to water" -- absolutely irrelevant, right? Then the message itself, with the repeat too. The closing padding "the world wonders" was selected. The coder had already interposed "RR" meaning "end of message" before quoting Tennyson.
Halsey's temper seems to have gotten the best of him, or perhaps the decoding on the ship didn't convey the "RR" signalling the end of the body? That he blew a fuse is doubtless. But I think it lays on the coding officer to have missed the contextual implications of such a choice of padding.
Thank you, Drachinifel.
@1:08:00? In the early 1990s, I saw that in person. Apparently, the 1st foot of the Long Lance was cut off of two seperate torpedoes, and fashioned onto the chest area of a feature performer at Al's Diamond Caberet in Reading, Pennsylvania.
I knew I recognized them immediately.....
🚬😎👍
I LOVE Sundays!
2:28:13 I've read reproduced guides written both for new WW2 Royal Navy Captains, and new WW2 Royal Navy doctors.
The first advised that Captains shouldn't socialise with the officers too often, for decorum and to give them some breathing room
The second suggested that doctors could well be invited to dine with the captain fairly often.
Makes sense for the reasons you say, and not just in the Age of Sail
Sounds rather TNG too.
I agree with you about USS Merrimack being a most famous frigate. I thought of her when I read the question but before hearing your answer.
On the topic of most Modern Aircraft, Drach is slightly off on the Sea Harrier vs Legacy Hornet (which, well, it's beyond the point of time he does most of his research in.) as the F-18 first flight is actually later (late 1978) than the Sea Harrier first flight (mid 1978). However, while the basic Sea Harrier itself is an older aircraft, the Indian Navy kept Hermes (as Viraat) long enough that their later updated iterations of Sea Harrier would become the most modern, as Midway decommissioned without ever receiving the F-18C.
As for the actual WW2 participants, the answer depends. For combat use, this is most likely actually the A-7 Corsair, as the last combat Essex was the Oriskany which had later (for the era at least) model A-7s aboard on her last combat cruise. If testing counts, then the answer possibly becomes the T-45 Goshawk trainer, which I believe was tested aboard Lexington before her decommissioning, but did not enter proper service until Lexington retired.
Fun Fact: The mustard gas incident at Bari Harbor is what lead to the eventual breakthrough for the first chemo therapy treatment.
A doctor back in the US reviewing tissue or cell samples or something (Don't remember what) from those exposed at Bari, noticed the cells of those exposed weren't replicating. This knowledge eventually lead to the treatment of chemo therapy to slow the body's cells, with radiation to kill the cancerous ones.
This also means the first chemo therapy was to IV what was basically liquid Mustard gas, though in this instance Nitrogen Mustards or something were used instead of the Sulfur Mustards used in Mustard Gas. I know people say chemo is poison becauseof how much it wrecks your body, but in this case it literally was.
I've probably got a lot of details wrong, but the overall picture of what I've said is true.
Drach, just got to the USS INDIANAPOLIS bit. You forgot that some of the survivor's were so deliriously dehydrated they actually mistook shipmates for Japanese and were killing eachother in survivor's accounts. If they pulled some in and they babbled on about Japanese in the water that message would have spread incredibly quickly.
Could you elaborate on the ABDACOM answer? I feel that its downfall has more to do with tactics, lack of coordenation, and proper command/control than the stats of each ship
You have cruisers and destroyers from four different countries quickly thrown together to form a fleet and only two of those navies had limited experience of working together. It's not a great surprise that things got rather confused.
The fighting by the Dutch in the Four Days war sounds like the tactics used in Random Battles in World of Tanks
"The World Wonders" is a quote from the Tennyson poem, "Charge of the Light Brigade". Did Halsey or anyone on his staff recognize the quote? Especially since It was the anniversary of the Charge.
Especially since the message started with "Turkey trots to water" as padding at the beginning.
The World Wonders was another piece of padding. Or at least it was supposed to be
There is a lot of info on German AA going after B 17 and 24 fleets. Pretty effective.
Still a lot of rounds expended to gain a kill.... the tactics and counters involved is interesting.
I myself know old cars,, I have mad respect for your knowledge of this subject!!! 👍
Thank you! this and part 2 will make my upcoming 8 hr drive something to look forward to!😂
I drove TO and FROM work, listening to this drydock (on 1.5 speed) and I still haven’t heard it all. I can’t wait to go back to work tomorrow!
The voice that brings my unconsciousness peace ☮️
1:35:35
My moms basement needs more windows.
F ing hilarious. well done.
Roller ship aircraft carriers 😳
This is a steampunk novel that writes itself! 😀
That concept looks a lot like the giant 40 knot catamaran car ferries (and military transports) invented in 1990 by a company called Incat in Hobart (of all places). But those ships are powered by props or water jets, not by giant wheels.
That was a very informative explanation about the Long Lance. Cheers.
2:19:30 Another concern with the VT fuses would be the enemy developing countermeasures. Such as duplicating the signal and trigger the VT fuse while it was still a ways away.
18:47 I think the way you describe the anti-air stuff is a little... I don't know how to put it... odd. Or maybe I should say... pointless? IDK exactly. I think my main question is, what is the alternative? Leave the ships completely vulnerable? Let enemies attack straight and level with no interference?
I can see a point in measuring one gun/plane/doctrine(like the trying to hit vs causing explosions in front of to scare pilots methods)/targeting system VS another. But AA was REQUIRED to survive. Every plane shot down, every pilot rushed to drop their ordinance or forced to maneuver helps in the defense. The amount of ammo used is cheap compared to having the ships undefended. So what if a handful of planes got through, its a LOT better than the alternative. I think the fact that we are discussing a FEW planes getting through is a testament to HOW effective it truly was at breaking up attacks.
Hello Drach, hope this finds you well. The fiance and myself were watching a movie/documentary about the Engineering crew on Titanic. In this they said the watertight compartments were just that. Completely sealable boxes. Is this true? If so, is the idea the WT compartments were filled then flowed into the next incorrect and in fact what happened was the ship was pulled far enough down that she flooded from above like a bath toy? Also if the unaffected compartments were pulled down, how deep would they need to be to implode? Could this have assisted the speed in which she broke in two, and would it explain the damage to the stern section seen on the bottom?
My question answered AND a prior one (about Sturdee) referenced. Nice!
"The Almighty Hypnotoad asks" cracks me up. 25:58
A-6s weren't deployed on Essex class carriers, they were too heavy. A-7s were however, and according to their first flight in 1965 would be the most recently developed airframe. I'd go with avionics fit rather than date of first flight for advanced, in which case I'd say it would be the A-7E for aircraft from classes that fought in WW2. For developed during WW2, I'd say F-18s from the Midways on both date and avionics, unless you consider the Sea Harrier a different aircraft than the Harrier I, which I don't*, in which case it would 'win' for first flight. However, if you go by date it entered service, we are back to the F-18 with 1984.
*I can see both arguments for the AV-8B Harrier II since it's a new airframe, but I'd argue the Sea Harrier is an alternate version of the Harrier rather than a new aircraft.
If talking avionics fit wouldn't TA-4J 's be more modern fit? Even though the airframe is older?
So apparently POMPANITO's crew determined that the sea state precluded the use of the main induction, which normally provided air to the diesels. Not shocking, given the location down on the upper pressure hull. The main inductions did have a float type of safety to seal them up during intermittent periods awash, but apparently the sensation the crew would experience during the periods when the main induction seal would seat and unseat with hatches to the weather decks closed was an extremely uncomfortable sudden drop in air pressure in the boat. Taking suction through the boat via the bridge hatches would create one hell of a draft (the diesels gulped a considerable volume of air) but at least they were drawing from a position several feet higher than the main induction location, so the hatch slam/partial vacuum episodes were hopefully less frequent - and they didn't chance flooding out a main induction line completely, which was a possible failure mode... That might also explain running on less than all four diesels - as long as you could maintain control, less air demand, fewer diesel motormen on watch - benefits accrue quickly for a skipper having to plan for possible days of just hanging on. It did preclude closing up W/T doors between the conning tower and the diesels.
As always, thank you for the answer.
24:34 it’s not certain whether it deployed with these, but the beginning of operational service of the T-45 Goshawk overlaps with the final years of Lexington (AVT-16)’s service as a training carrier.
Obviously, the British Fleet really needed dye bag shell ID markers. It is amazing that they did not introduce this until they got the French explosive windscreen-tip dye bag system for large AP shells in their modified "K" APC shells after the fall of France. This was the best, most reliable dye bag marking system, useful at night and also when a direct hit occurs, which were not true for the US and Japanese dye bag designs.
"The World Wonders" was essentially padding to for the coding of the message that wasn't removed upon reception
I love these Drachathons, and free math lessons
Sorry, an answer to a question about the effectiveness of AAA in WWII veers into territory about resource expenditure, ending in conjecture about Ten-Go without mentioning the one resource the Anglophone Allies were obsessed with conserving--blood?
Initial accounts of the ineffectiveness of Allied AAA in the Pacific in 1945 was because of the Anglophone Allied "casualty surge" of 1944-45, as Dennis Giangreco described in 2009's Hell to Pay and Giangreco used the term liberally in an interview on MHV's channel. On 27 March 1945 Eisenhower declared the Germans "as a military force on the Western Front are a whipped army," while the Pacific had turned into a bloodbath on Iwo Jima and the fighting on AND off Okinawa was beginning to look like a glimpse of Hell.
From the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot triumph, the Allies lost two carriers off Leyte to air attack and USS Franklin was struck by a traditional bomb attack off Peleliu, a kamikaze off Leyte, and was engulfed in flame by the worst air attack since Pearl Harbor during a sweep of the Home Islands during the Battle of Iwo Jima. She was but one of hundreds of IJNAS-stricken vessels clogging the drydocks and shipyards on both coasts as their men filled up hospitals and cemeteries. As the war in Korea dawned five years later, RN and USN survivors realized that had the kamikazes been armed with nuclear weapons the entire fleet would have been irradiated, causing countless more deaths and every ship not sunk to be disposed of like USS Independence.
This was the historical consensus for decades until authors like John Parshall and Anthony Tully noticed in Japanese archives that the IJN's defenses against American air attack were next to nothing from the outset of the war, in stark contrast to the Kido Butai's attrition against American AAA. According to Shattered Sword, only Kaga managed to down a SBD in the attacks that took down Akagi, Kaga and Soryu (and the lone loss was due to a direct hit from a 5-inch shell); Japanese pilots meanwhile suffered 74 killed IN THE AIR out of 110 KIA in total off Midway...and Japanese industry constructed a mere 56 carrier attack aircraft in the whole of 1942 according to Parshall and Tully's tome against the more than 1000 IJNAS aircraft lost that year.
This somehow got worse as the war dragged on, with the USN losing 10 planes and 12 crewmen dead against over 4000 killed aboard Yamato, Yahagi, and the four IJN destroyers sunk out of eight during Ten-Go:
"The Japanese opened up with everything they had, which looked terrifying, but U.S. pilots quickly figured out that Japanese anti-aircraft fire was wildly inaccurate...More U.S. aircraft may have been knocked down by the magazine explosion than by Japanese anti-aircraft fire."
www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-044/h-044-3.html
Both points of view are valid--RN and USN anti-aircraft artillery was FAR deadlier than IJN AAA, yet Anglophone Allied AAA was singularly unable to contain the Kamikaze threat.
ROFL. When I saw That photo at 27 minutes I heard “the wheels on the ship go round and round”
On the other hand, it’s balance is like a catamaran. Should be more stable in the water with much less lateral roll. If made of rubber with a lot of cells inside…… hmm. Reinforce with steel belts like used in a tire. At least it’s interesting to contemplate.
Roller ships. or in other words, basically that monster truck floating trick they did in the '80s.
On the question of the KGV turret: that nice schematic, I tried finding it via google and failed. Any source for it?
Here's what I understand the USN's BB replacement plan was. Remember that the US was still assuming the Treaty limit of 15 capital ships would hold
Arkansas - North Carolina
Texas - Washington
New York - South Dakota
Nevada - Indiana
Oklahoma - Massachusetts
Arizona - Alabama
Pennsylvania - Iowa
New Mexico - New Jersey
Mississippi - Missouri
Idaho - Wisconsin
Tennessee - Montana
California - Ohio
Colorado - Maine
Maryland - New Hampshire
West Virginia - Louisiana
Notes - New York, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Iowa were fitted as fleet flagships
Notes - The modified Iowa class Illinois and Kentucky were inserted into the program “Hull numbers BB-65 and BB-66 were originally intended as the first and second ships of the Montana-class of battleships; however the passage of an emergency war building program on 19 July 1940 resulted in both hulls being reordered as Iowa-class units to save time on construction”
Love it thanks drach!
Im surprised that ur surprised that a bunch of shed loving blokes wouldn’t be fascinated at ur well researched and laid out presentations whilst they’re tinkering on their newest invention to rescue humankind from its own follies
My only day off today. Gonna stay in bed and listen to Drach
Every disciplinary write up I have ever received at work has been for saying " I have found this problem. I've worked out a solution to the problem. If we all do this instead of that we will never have this problem again." So, yeah, I can totally believe Scott's career suffered for that.
wrt the more smaller vs fewer larger guns question, this argument raged for decades. In the USN, it was the head of BuOrd, during the teens, Joseph Strauss, that promoted the more/smaller option. As Drac said, the argument for more, smaller guns, always depends on an artificial restraint. Strauss insisted that all combat would be at 12,000 yards, or less. Since a 14" could penetrate well enough at that range, they could put more of them on a ship and increase the probability of a hit. The Tennessees could have been built with 16", there was active speculation they would be, reported in the newspapers, but Strauss pushed through the 14" option. Jutland satisfied the General Board and SecNav that engagements would be fought at considerably more than 12,000, so Strauss was overruled when guns were specified for the Colorados. In his annual report that year, SecNav Daniels said the 16" decision was made over the objections of some officers. That same argument arose again, in the design of the KGVs. In the Admiralty's own analysis, a 9-15" armament would provide a more satisfactory ship, but the decision was made to go to 12-14" instead. It is probably worth noting that Admiralty fighting instructions at the time required closing, as fast as possible, to 16,000 yards, or less, before fully engaging. Again, the artificial restraint: not requiring the KGVs to be effective at greater ranges, made the 14" look like the better option. I give the credit for the Admiralty clinging to an obsolete doctrine, against the recommendations of Admiralty technical staff recommendations, to Admiral Chatfield, who was First Sea Lord from 1933 to 38.
on a direkt drive you only need one electric machine. running either as a motor or as a generator. that saves weight and space.
Yes, many were worried about the use of chemical weapons during WW2. German soldiers carried one around for most of the war.
1:45:00 Bombing half sunk ships could make things a LOT worse. It's not just the direct damage but the time it takes to control any flooding or fires. It could easily be the difference in if the men are able to get the damage under control or if the ship sinks/burns out completely.
Though there are also things like the fuel depots and that can be hit. i don't know which would be more effective.
Spreading the fire fighting equipment out over a larger area might allow some fires to spread due to lack of manpower/equipment. At the same time a ship or dock can hit its limit on the number of people able to fight a fire so spreading the damage might be less effective if there is idle capacity in fire fighters able to quickly address things away from the docks.
Drach,,, what is your technical engineering opinion of mixing imperial measurements with metric decimals? Especially in calibers?
I don't get the point here? Both systems exist and are used.
@@WALTERBROADDUS well is a 12.5, a foot and a half or is it 12 and a half inch? Seem to remember NASA had a problem using both?
Well, if you're using different units within the imperual system, you just designate the units separately. So in your example, it would be 12 feet and half an inch, or more succinctly, 12' 1/2".
@@hughgordon6435 You listed no units. So metric has the same problem. Is that 12.5 kg, g, mm, meters, kilometers, what? Numbers with no units are pretty meaningless.
@@wingracer1614 calibers in inches with decimal points? So a 13.5 gun? Is that 1foot ,1 inch and half an inch? Or 13 inches and half of 13 inches?
I think the Casco Monitors are the closest to a class that completely failed to enter service due to unresolvable design flaws. Even trailed with a light load they puttered at below half their design speed and were already awash.
During the Battle of the Bulge Major David Niven was detained by US Military police. He was asked the "who won the World Series" question. He answered "I haven't the foggiest but I did star in a movie with Ginger Rodgers in 1937." They let him go.
The World Series question is not a good one for the Japanese because they were/are big baseball fans.
You are correct that the chemical weapons in the Pacific was/is a classified matter long after W.W. II.
For sound and good reasons.
AA fire tends to throw off accuracy, so maybe a few less torpedo or bomb hits.
USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) and USS Oriskany (CV-34) were both modified to operate A-7s prior to their final deployments off Vietnam with the latter carrier's A-7s seeing extensive combat service until the end of American involvement in 1973. In this case the sequence, which implies the A-7 entered service (1967) after the A-6 (1963), is correct.
However, Essex-class carriers never were modified to embark F-4s or A-6s, as these jets were heavier (requiring higher landing airspeed) than the F-8s, A-4s, and A-7s that typically were deployed on Essex-class carriers off Vietnam; as such F-4s and A-6s were usually relegated to Midway-class or supercarriers.
The thing is, the real answer to the question is probably "whatever happend to be the most modern thing to fly off USS Lexington during her training days"
@mancubwwa That would make sense, except the answer if one includes training fixed-wing aircraft is the TA-7 variant of the A-7 Corsair II. There is a photo of Lexington launching one in 1984: de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:USS_Lexington_(AVT-16)_launches_an_A-7_Corsair_II_in_1984.jpg.
This was unusual, though. The primary US Navy carrier-capable trainer in use when USS Lexington was slated in 1962 into the USN's training carrier was the T-2 Buckeye, which remained in that role until...2008. The T-2 entered service in 1959, eight years prior to the A-7. Lexington was decommissioned in 1991.
For attack conversion training Lexington typically operated TA-4s, but that was a variant of the A-4 Skyhawk that entered service with the USN in 1956 and remained in service until...2003. Lexington's attack conversion trainers remained TA-4s well into the 1980s, as there is a photo of Skyhawks performing touch and goes on Lexington's deck from 1989: de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Douglas_TA-4J_Skyhawk_aboard_USS_Lexington_(AVT-16),_1_April_1989_(6445251).jpg
The US military has a history of operating its training aircraft for a LONG time, as the USAF still uses the T-38 for supersonic training despite the T-38 having entered service in 1961 and the last one rolling off the production line in 1972 (the T-2 stopped production in 1970).
So there is a distinct possibility that Lexington never operated any fixed wing aircraft that were newer than the A-7/TA-7, which entered service in its role as an attack aircraft in 1967. As for helicopters, the USN's primary trainer was the TH-57 until being replaced by the TH-73 starting in 2021, a variant of the Bell 206 that entered into service in 1967 as well as the A-7, but the 206's first flight overall was in 1962 compared to the A-7 in 1965.
There is also the question of what constitutes service, as there are both an A-7 Corsair and a Blue Angel F/A-18 Hornet currently sitting aboard Lexington's deck right now in Corpus Christi...the A-7 clearly counts as Lexington operated TA-7s in the 1980s, while I cannot find any photos of Hornets launching or landing aboard Lexington. Drach also mixed up the Hornet and Sea Harrier, as the latter entered FAA service in 1978, the same year the F/A-18 first flew before the Hornet entered service with the USMC in 1983 and the USN in 1984...but the SH-60 Seahawk (one of which sits on Midway's deck currently in San Diego) first flew in 1979 before entering service in the same timeframe as the F/A-18.
@@indplt1595 As far as I can find, F18s and F14s never flew off of Lexington. I could be wrong but I believe you are correct on A7 or some variant thereof. F18s did serve on Midway and Coral Sea but of course they never saw WWII action
@@indplt1595 Doesn't really matter since we know F18s DID fly off of Lexingtons and Midways and are newer than F14s
Interestingly the title may go not to any fighter, but rather to Grumman C2A Greyhound COD plane, specifically to a C2A(R) variant, if it was ever used to resupply Lexington. Obviously this is not counting Midway class carriers as they never actually served in combat in WWII. But that would need further reaserch...
Awesome
51:14 - Drach appears in uniform on far right
Engaging with the algorithm.
Proximity fuse artillery shells were first used during the Battle of the Ardennes [Battle of the Bulge], in December 1944
On land,. The CL USS Helena fired the first VT fuzes in 1943. "Beginning in January 1943, Helena took part in several attacks on Japanese positions on the island of New Georgia in preparation for the planned New Georgia campaign.[20]... The ship had received the new 5-inch shells fitted with proximity VT fuses, and her use marked the first time they were used successfully in combat.["
Maybe I am a bit late, but something about your Answer regarding AA effictiveness bugs me. I mean not that I am a professional but I have learned another view on Air Defence as a whole. That view basically is: It is not the AD's Job to Kill enemy aerial Assets, but more to achive what I like to call "Mission kill" and thus counter the aerial Threat. Mission kill would be the Enemy not achieving his target. This can definitely, but not merely be done by shooting down the enemy assets, making a pilot miss, pull out of an attack, damaging a Plane so it can't attack are all mission kills.
So looking only on the stats and say: Well, boy's you spend 30000 Rounds shooting down a single plane. That was not good enough.
Is a bit of a misconception.
For example: A ship(let's call it "ShipA") shot down no Aircarft during an action, but did not receive any hits. ShipA made pilots drop their bombs early, worried pilots to drop Torpedoes hastily and scared others of. ShipB is faced with same attack, shoots down 3 Planes but gets hit by an bomb and an Torpedo.
In my view ShipA did a better job than ShipB.
And this goes on regarding the economics of Air Defence. Just saying you spend 25$ of ammo to shoot down a single 10$ Plane that's uneconomical, is shortsighted. Watching the whole picture reveales you spend 25$ worth of ammo shooting down a 10$ Plane to protect your 10.000$ ship.(to lazy to find realistic numbers right now.). So it is not the Expense vs. what is shot down but the expense vs. what is protected by AD.
And comming back to the Question: what I see is more a of an emphasis towards what is protected instead of an actual look on the kill sheet. Not the emphasis on the longterm effects.
But that is only my two cents.
An may I ad, naval Air Defence would deserve a Viedoof it's own in all it's complexity and beauty.
In response to the question on chemical weapons, I will note that the US official production numbers include mustard gas munitions (e.g. a total of 2.91 million mustard gas artillery rounds).
1:35:40 If Nimitz had simply appended a few festive emojis to his official naval communiqué, this would never have happened: WHERE IS, REPEAT, WHERE IS TASK FORCE 34 ❤🤘👍😅⛵⛵⛵❔❔❔
The 🌍 ❔️❔️
" poor, poor person" made me laugh.
I really don't think Carriers are as responsible for Battleship's Obsolescence as much as Missiles are.
VT shells were available to land artillery for use use in the Battle of the Bulge (Ike got things fixed in time). I'd assume, but don't know for sure, that some of the 5" issued for AA in the Pacific found use in infantry support.
Drach touched on this, but the use of VT fused shells for shore bombardment hinges on actually having a suitable target. 5" VT fused common can smother a banzai charge, but will accomplish very little against entrenched infantry and nothing against bunkers.
@@kemarisite The issue was secrecy and when VT shells were permitted on shore. VT forces entrenched infantry to seek overhead cover (the idea that it's ineffective is ludicrous), and strips armor of its necessary accompanying infantry. Airbursts at a desired height are the gold standard for artillery support.
23:00 I would suspect that this also the increased distance in time from WWII and the Cold War also played a role. It's something we can see in general scholarship of WWII, much of the post-war histories were built up as Cold War propaganda (the most notable probably being the whole Clean Wehrmacht BS). And over the past 10-20 years post-Cold War studies are entering general knowledge.
Fighters and their pilots were sexy and highly marketable. You could put on a big show trotting out "Commander McCampbell, who shot down 7 Japanese planes in one day", that just wasn't the same with "a member of one of several 5-inch gun crews that participated in shooting down Japanese bombers" simply couldn't do, so public focus was always on pilots. Plus, there were vested interests in justifying more carriers and fighters and missiles through the Cold War. So I can totally see early post-war focus (completely unintentionally, even) on the downsides of AA guns versus fighters and it to grow in the Cold War.
Like almost all history, it will likely swing back too far and then correct over time.
Question: how would you move a warship over a railway. Example: Russia sending built ships to Vladivostok or Britain sending HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou for the Tanganyika campaign? What are special requirements for the parts? And are there any examples I am forgetting?
A curious thing is that final battle of Bismarck and the final battle of Yamato took nearly an identical amount of time, going from either the first shots fired or the first hit scored.
Yamato was undamaged before the final action, Bismarck was damaged by two 14" shells and 3 torpedoes (enough to sink most other BBs) days before it was sunk.
@@niclasjohansson4333 Those first 2 torpedoes did next to no damage. Swordfish torpedoes were extremely weak. The two 14" overpenetration would not have sunk any battleship, not even HMS Victory. The 3rd 14" under-penetration would also not have been fatal to any Battleship.
@@Edax_Royeaux Littorio was sunk in harbor by only 3 torps from the Swordfishes, and the first torpedo to hit PoW had an even weaker charge, and that single "tinfish" would have sunk the British battleship all by itself, the 3 hits on the opposite side actually slowed down the capsizeing. The point is that Bismarck was far from "undamaged" !
@@niclasjohansson4333 The torpedo hit on Bismarck amidships by HMS Victorious killed 1 man and caused minor damage to electrical equipment. The second torpedo hit on Bismarck's port side by HMS Ark Royal caused some structural damage and minor flooding. Such damage is hardly fatal to any Battleship..
The Littorio was in shallow water which magnifies the power of an underwater explosive, it bares little comparison to Bismarck which was sailing in the ocean.
@@Edax_Royeaux The torpedoes that hit Littorio did strike the side of the hull, not underneath the ship, so it did not matter that she was in harbor. One hit the stern, one between A and B turrets, and the 3rd in the bow. Just because a few torpedoes and 14" shells wasnt fatal to Bismarck doesent mean its not fatal to most other battleships.
@27:00 the wheels on the ship go round and round round and round
Some CVE's went straight to mothballs without ever being completed
More than anything the rebalancing of the design would delay Honet massively rather that a straight repeat -unless the Navy Department already have a design that they had done full design work on, which they didn't as they wouldn't have been working on the Essex and were still two years away from having an off self design.
1:38:40 "When is (REPEAT) when is Drachinifel visiting California again? THE WORLD WONDERS."
What, if any, ideas where there for weapons on ships that did/could not work?
I enjoy this video RUclips
1:11:57 I think u forgot to timestamp the Admiral photo question before moving on to Suez Canal question
Since USS Midway served into the 90s IIRC, whatever jets she flew would probably be the most modern.
Which would be F18s. Coral Sea as well.
I have sent you an email with a question about a warship in a wartime photo I recently won, I know a fair bit about WW2 of all areas but this one is stumping me.
Drach knows a lot! Bet he doesn't know how those huge circus guns worked that launched a man high into the air! Breech loader? How did they aim the thing?
I thought you did a video about the manufacturing processes for battleship guns. In fact, I think it was how I found your channel. But now I can't find it... Where's it gone?!
We feed the algorithm
Regarding the question at 1:42:37 , I’m not 100% sure but aren’t we currently dealing with a situation this question poses with the “splendid” U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat ships? Aren’t they scheduled for scrapping right after construction
of all the vessels in this worthless class are completed?
As I look at it, the French wheel ship looks like a steam-powered catamaran that is suffering from a severe case of over-engineering.
I thought that submarine motors were usually shunt wound motors, thus the motor could also be a generator for the battery pack with a simple "turn the motor with the engine". You can vary the field current (which is small) quite easily to limit the charge the batteries. Declutch the engine and you're on batteries/electric motor.
In other words, a hybrid.
The most modern aircraft carrier to operate off of an aircraft carrier that fought in WWII is probably the A7.