Happy New Year one and all! As for the Bismarck, we can all be grateful that it was built instead of using the steel, armor and all the other stuff that went into it and Tirpitz on tanks, aircraft, submarines and guns.
Well said. The only argument t that comes close to “making it (their construction) make sense” is the notion of a Fleet in Being. And there are far better ways to pull that off, also.
@@jimtalbott9535 To me it sounds like yet another rabid Wehraboo dreaming up excuses for the failing of their beloved ship, seen that so many times. Maybe they think if htey keep making up more and more excuses everyone will start to believe them, much like the "only sank due to scuttling" fantasy
At least the "giant waste of steel" part applies to all contemporary designs (though I would argue the Germans deserve more criticism than the others because they were in a position where the Bismarcks would have been terrible strategically even without the advent of aviation). What makes the Bismarcks especially bad is that they *failed even at being a gigantic strategic failure,* because at least everyone else's giant strategic failures were effectively and efficiently designed. So, the Germans made the same mistake as everyone else in wasting money on pointless new battleships and failed even at producing said failure.
True but having a 'capable' navy was key to the Nazi invasion of Norway which was key to the Northern strategy of controlling Swedish Iron, the Baltic and, later, shipping to and from the USSR. While Bismarck did not participate in Operation Weserübung isn't building large battleships an inescapable part of a strategically useful navy in the late 30's?
@ No, building large battleships was the unforeseen disaster nobody avoided in the late 30s because it then turned out there was no more strategic justification for building any new battleships when battleships were becoming obsolete in their intended role (capital ship) and wasteful and redundant in everything else they could be used for, especially with the numbers of older battleships around.
Hey Drach, even though I rarely comment any videos here on YT, I have logged on to ask you a favour. There is one topic - a bit of a delicate topic - I'd want to ask you to cover. As it is, there is no other YT-creator that I would trust to do it. Th topic I am asking for is "dying on warships" (or something alike). After all, war is about killing and people on (or off) board of warships were killed since the very dawn of naval activities. Even without the effects of war, ships may sink or burn, may be smashed in collisions or crushed in freezing ice. And then there is war, weapons, the will to kill and destroy... Actually, here in Germany we have a very good YT-channel run by Ralph Raths, the head of the German Tank Museum in Munster. He did some research on "dying in tanks" for what he originally thought would be one 30-minutes-video or so. While doing his researches he got so deep into it that eventually he ended up with a series of 5 videos. For me, it was very interesting to learn about all the different ways to be killed in tanks - or to escape beeing killed. I am also fascinated how he approached the topic, and how somthing like that can be done in a careful and dignified (is this the word to use here?) way. If there is anyone to cover that topic for warships, it will be you, Drachinifel! Look up "Sterben im Panzer" and switch the subtitels to English, if you want to see that.
Literally every single claim that defends Bismarck to be anything more than hilariously inefficient boils down to "it can do x thing". Almost all of them completely ignore the fact that every other battleship can also do that.
I made the mistake once (back whenever Drach published his video on the inefficiencies of the Bismark design) of agreeing with Drach. I'm still having wherboos commenting that I'm wrong... its almost as if they skipped the video and dived straight to the comments section.
Like, at the most charitable, it was a potent warship, and certainly proved you could kill a Capital Ship (albeit it was a million to one shot that took out Hood). But for that displacement, you could get so much more from a more efficient design.
It says volumes that Bismarck was built to handle Richelieu and somehow ended up being OUTRIGHT WORSE (Not just less efficient but straight-up worse) while also being 5000 tons heavier. Against Littorio she'd be at least as if not even more outclassed. And then there are the folks who think Bismarck would be able to handle Iowa or Yamato...unless it's in the middle of a giant storm (where Iowa's relatively poor seakeeping and Yamato's lack of fire control radar would prevent them from even opening fire), that's a major, major, major mismatch.
This line of logic is fine for a discussion about design efficiency, and has merit for strategic allocation of raw materials and other resources, but the reality is when the metal starts flying all of that is meaningless; what counts is combat capability, and Bismarck objectively was a technical design that was an extremely capable ship, at least as good, if not better than anything bar Yamato at the time of her sole sortie. The reality of combat though is very different to technical specifications, and even further removed from academic discussion about "design efficiency" (just ask the crewmembers of HMS Hood, an arguably roughly "equal" ship on paper. I love Drach, but this is really a case of what we jokingly call "Engineer Derangement Syndrome", where people become obsessed with theoretical technical factors over combat capability.
47:17 From what Mark Stille’s book on Leyte Gulf said. TF34 was also supposed to have TG 38.2 under Gerald Bogan and TG 38.4 under Ralph Davison to provide Air Cover. With Davison as the overall commander. So that’s 3 fleet Carriers (Intrepid, Franklin and Enterprise) and 4 Independences (Cabot, Independence, Belleau Wood and San Jacinto). Plus additional destroyers and cruisers to TF 34.
In another YT Mark Stille says he thinks Halsey’s decision to go north at Leyte was right and that dividing his forces to try to handle Centre and Northern Forces at the same time would have been wrong.
Hey Drach, I have recently made some major changes to the battle of the Java Sea’s Wikipedia article, going into much more detail and giving more accurate information of the battle. It would be nice to see you cover the battle for a Wednesday video, given it was probably a mute crushing Japanese victory then Savo Island
Speaking of HMS Vanguard's Secondary Battery (5.25 inch in Octagonal Turrets), were there ever any plans to Retrofit the Dido's, and KG V's with the Octagonal Turrets to eliminate the issues of the too small Round Turrets?
Re - 00:16, armoured flight decks. Were lifts fitted with deck armour, or were they beyond the armour area? If so, was there shielding between lift shaft and hanger space, lest a bomb penetrate the lift's deck, and explode into the hanger?
@brucewilliams1892 the hangars had several metal roller shutters to compartmentalise them in case of damage. Although in practice they could be perforated by shrapnel, but even in those cases it was better than nothing :)
The lifts were unarmoured but the hangar was closed by 4.5" thick armoured bulkheads with armoured doors that could close off the lift well from the hangar.
@@Drachinifel unrelated drach but, Would a ship of the line be able to outrange and outlast a frigate on a deployment or would they need supply ships to travel the same distance an odd question I know
Take a look at the armored carriers site. Lots of good info. A few oversights as well so be cautious. The armor thickness varied from place to place, 68% of the flight deck had 3 inch armor, it was less at the ends. The elevators were less well protected. If memory serves, there was a clever 'armored lock' system like an airlock to help further isolate the elevator. Technically we're not talking about an 'armored flight deck', what we're actually talking about is an 'armored box', in other words the hanger was armored as well. If only the flight deck is armored, that's a different choice. To help understand the limitations of the armored carriers, you'll want to read the damage report sent on Illustrious after she was hit in the Med, and the navweaps page on Kamikaze hits. In particular, at Okinawa there were so many ships and so many AA guns and such a large fighter CAP that the Kamikaze hits always involved 1 or occasionally 2 hits, followed by a long period in which ships could be repaired. The encounter in the Med involved a lot more hits in a shorter period of time: 6 hits and several near misses over about a 4 hour period. An even more extreme case occurred with the sinking of the Dorsetshire, where the Japanese dive bombers scored ~11 hits and (perhaps) ~24 near misses in under 10 minutes. Note that the armor (or lack thereof) of the Dorsetshire is irrelevant here, this example is mentioned here merely to show how many hits could be achieved on a big ship, in a short period of time, by really good (or really lucky?) pilots. It's dangerous to assume one can generalize from a situation involving a) few hits followed by a long quiet period, to b) many hits in a short period of time, without potentially jumping to erroneous conclusions. In other words, Okinawa was a special case (and not only in this way) and needs to be treated as such if you want an objective assessment of the protection of the armored carriers. Overall, my assessment is the RN did a nice job with the design of the armored carriers - but it had some serious limitations that few people realize or understand. The protection is probably over-stated by most-people, who are jumping to conclusions to go beyond what the very limited evidence we have actually supports.
My first opportunity to comment on technology that I’m qualified to discuss. Drach, in the response to the question regarding high speed photography of shell tests in the 1910’s and 20’s, you refer to to ‘losing light’ or footage being ‘darker’ as a result of zooming into a tighter focal length (producing a greater magnification of the subject). This is known as aperture ramping, usually just referred to as ramping and is a common characteristic of older and less complicated zoom lens designs. Essentially the lens will trade its ability to gather light for increased magnification. I just wanted to mention that this is not inherently true of all zoom lenses, even ones that predate computers in their design. There’s examples of zoom lenses that do not ramp that I’ve worked with personally that date back to 1950’s construction. I can’t personally say whether non ramping zoom lenses would’ve been available for use with high speed camera systems available in the early 20th century, but it does seem like a possibility. Overall, you are correct to make the assertion that lenses that produce a greater degree of magnification gather less light relative to ‘standard’ or ‘normal’ magnification. This light gathering in large zooms can be improved by making the lens physically larger, but there’s a limit to the practicality, usually what a human is capable of handling. Beyond this, such as for filming high magnification footage as was used to capture the Apollo launches in the upper atmosphere, large gyro stabilized motorized mounts are used to manipulate camera systems whose proportions are akin to anti aircraft mounts. Even had something like this been available in the early 20th century, my guess is that introducing the motion of a rolling ship as would be needed to film these tests would make the task extremely difficult.
If you want to capture hi-res imagery of shell impacts on fixed targets, the optics set-up would simply need to be a large aperture, long focal length telescope, placed a safe distance away from the target. No ramping or additional lens elements, that degrade image quality would be needed. A prime focus instrument would work very well. A very bright artificial light source (high speed strobe light) would also be required, which didn't yet exist in the early 1900s. Another fly in the ointment was having fine grained film with a high enough ISO value (light sensitivity), and the ability to shoot at the required frames per second, for the images to be of any value. A guy nicknamed 'Doc Edgerton' was a pioneer in this field, and did extensive work for the U.S. government and military. He designed and built some truly amazing equipment to that end, but was only a kid in the early 20th century, so none of that stuff was yet available. Quality optics weren't a problem in the early days, but the needed additional equipment and film was.
@stargazer5784 Why would you need a high-speed strobe light? My first thought is to just light some magnesium flares nearby - it probably isn't as good as something purpose-built, but it's probably decent, and well within their technological base.
Shameless copy pasta because my melatonin is kicking in: 41:30 Iirc, the way modern slow motion is taken during destructive testing is via mirrors. I think the Slow Mo Guys did a video where you could see a bullet shooting right at you, and at the last moment you suddenly see a mirror shattering. And that's when you realize the camera was never directly down range from the rifle's muzzle, haha. I suppose they could've done something similar in the 1910s. You'd have needed multiple mirrors so you can put the camera down the nearest hatch, looking upwards at the sky from inside, in a sense. That should protect it from the fragments. Whether it also protects from the shockwave(s), I don't know. The mirrors are gonna be destroyed by it anyways, so you're never gonna capture the final parts of the impact regardless. But hopefully you'd still save the footage, and preferably also the expensive camera hardware. I'm not an engineer though.... Drach, does this sound remotely plausible? 😅🤓🤭
i liked the overview regarding the economy attributed to the French army/navy and the British navy. i think an example of the thought experiment you made for current day UK would be the amount of their respective economy that Prussia attributed to their army during the time of Frederick the Great (late 17th century to mid 18th century) and that their level of funding to the army precluded any ability to field anything above a token naval force until the German reunification.
The information about Yamato's torpedo defense system is fascinating! However, I’m slightly skeptical when comparing it to more modern designs like the Vanguard.
The oldest battle in which more than one museum ship took part might be the Battle of Tsushima, in which both the battleship Mikasa and the cruiser Aurora took part.
For 'decent condition' I would have thought it would be still floating. Belfast is obviously there but is there a ship called Constitution floating in USA waters?
@@myparceltape1169 I would consider decent condition as the ship being complete. Many museum ships are kept on land or in dry docks. The sruiser Aurora is still afloat in the Neva river, but Mikasa is encased in concrete (a condition of the Washington Naval Treaty), which may have saved her from total destruction by bombing in WWII. HMS Victory is kept permanently in dry dock, but USS Constitution is still afloat and makes one turnaround cruise every year.
Halsey should have left the slower 'fast battleships', and their supporting escorts, behind when he went after Ozawa. The Washingtons and South Dakotas were around 5 kts slower than the Iowas and the carriers. Their presence slowed down Halsey's pursuit of Ozawa.
11:00 Given that some of the early submarines were equipped with spar torpedoes, it seems a given that *someone* would design a boat where being inside the blast radius was expected.
Would such a vessel have been viable? At some point, the improvements of explosives and warhead design would make a pressure hull able to withstand that rather “heavy”.
@@jimtalbott9535 I suspect that the early submersibles carrying spar torpedoes had a rather low survival chance, but they were still used. The detonation distance in that case would be however long the string attached to the detonator was. CSS Albemarle survived using hers, H L Hunley did not. The earliest self-propelled torpedoes had a range of less than 1km and very pedestrian speed, but that would have been more than enough for ships at anchor, and I believe that several ships were sunk by self-propelled torpedoes prior to 1900 (likely because they had no idea what was approaching them). Of course, this assumes that the inventor of this speculative submersible wouldn't go 'full Jules Verne' and equip the vessel with some kind of motorised ramming-beak.
"Air blast injuries killed the crew of the submarine H.L. Hunley". Rachel M. Lance,Lucas Stalcup, Brad Wojtylak, Cameron R. Bass. August 23, 2017 at Plos one. Abstract : "The submarine H.L. Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy ship during combat; however, the cause of its sinking has been a mystery for over 150 years. The Hunley set off a 61.2 kg (135 lb) black powder torpedo at a distance less than 5 m (16 ft) off its bow. Scaled experiments were performed that measured black powder and shock tube explosions underwater and propagation of blasts through a model ship hull. This propagation data was used in combination with archival experimental data to evaluate the risk to the crew from their own torpedo. The blast produced likely caused flexion of the ship hull to transmit the blast wave; the secondary wave transmitted inside the crew compartment was of sufficient magnitude that the calculated chances of survival were less than 16% for each crew member. The submarine drifted to its resting place after the crew died of air blast trauma within the hull."
@@Drachinifel @billbrockman779 It's the french fleet at Cherbourg during the visit of queen Victoria in 1858, under Napoléon III. The three-decker you see is the french flag ship "Bretagne" accompanied by several two-deckers of 90 guns, and one of the smaller ship is the royal yacht "Victoria and Albert". There are other photographs of this event, they are very interesting because they allow you to see a squadron of ships of the line like this!
This is the French fleet during the visit of Queen Victoria and Napoleon III to Cherbourg in 1858, there are other photographs of the event, they are interesting for the view of a squadron of ships of the line like this one! The three-decker in the center is the French flagship "Bretagne" :)
Good morning Drach! In the last question you answered today on the Bismarks turret, you had a layout diagram of the turret showing. Could you guide me to that layout? I would like to explore all the identification numbers and get a better Idea of whats what. Thank you!
I would argue that Bearn (while being an absolutely terrible ship) wasnt such a bad investment for the french as it may seem. They at least got some great carrier experience - especially what not to do - as other nations did with their first or second class of carrier. See the poor thing as a beautifully exccentric french version of HMS Hermes or Hosho. Just a tiny bit later, since france was very broke.
46:07 - Halsey _was_ there for Santa Cruz; he's the one who Leeroy Jenkinsed the U.S. fleet into a much-larger Japanese fleet at a time when the USN couldn't afford to lose any more carriers.
How many u-boats could have been built instead of Bismarck / Tirpitz, what type would they have likely been and how would it affect the Battle of Atlantic?
Bismarck and Tirpitz were built from 1936 to 1941, and they didn't start building the Type VIIC and IXC U-boats until 1940, so it's safe to say "mostly early Type VII and early Type IX". Cost estimates vary widely, but 30-40 U-boats for each battleship seems reasonable. The 2000-man crews could each supply 40 U-boats. Assuming there were resources, shipyards, and facilities to build and commission an additional 75 U-boats by the end of 1941 (this is NOT a safe assumption), it would have pushed the average number on patrol in 1941 from ~40 to ~65, which is still far less than the 100 Dönitz thought he needed to win the Battle of the Atlantic. (He estimated 300 total, with one third on patrol at any given time.) If you are going to decide in 1936 to build U-boats instead of battleships, you should scrap/cancel all the heavy surface units started in 1935 (the Scharnhorsts and Hippers) along with Graf Zeppelin. That would get a lot closer to 300 U-boats - but either way, the British will certainly notice what you are up to, and will be pouring additional resources into anti-submarine warfare.
The number of slipways would also be an issue until more were added. Not building Bismarck frees up just one, which might be able to be used to build one sub. Could more be built in the same place at the same time?
Also-also, this is assuming (presuming) that 100% of crew deployed aboard the major surface units would be suitable for UBoot duty. After 1943, when the KM surface fleet was put into a heavily static / training routine, rarely sortieing and almost entirely to conduct short bombardment to support the army, the crewmen aboard the surface units were those already passed over for UBoot duty.
Yes, definitely. However, the hanger itself was armored. It wasn't just an 'armored deck', it was an 'armored box'. Further, if the armor on top caused the bomb to detonate early (no guarantees, bomb behavior can be very unpredictable!), then less of the explosion would get into the hanger (as Drach mentions in this video), in which case there is less explosion 'volume' to spread through the available space. Once the hanger was penetrated, a serious hanger fire was the likely result. Look at the damage to Illustrious in the Med, or to the damage to Formidable off Okinawa for examples where the armor was penetrated and a serious hanger fire did happen. In both cases the ships were able to put out the fire. In those cases, as far as I know, it's an open question whether the ships survived because they got lucky, or the circumstances were 'just right' to minimize the fire damage, or whether the armored box and good fire fighting systems was sufficient to keep a serious fire from becoming a catastrophic one. With only a couple examples to look at, we really don't have enough data to reach a defensible conclusion one way or another. For example, whether or not there were torpedoes or bombs present in the area where the fire happened could have made a difference in the outcome. For that matter, a piece of hot shrapnel that penetrated the hanger and then set off a bunch of torpedoes would give you a secondary explosion that might be far more serious than the original explosion, and due to the hanger armor, most of it would be contained within the hanger (there are always ventilation shafts, so there is some opportunity for a portion of the explosion to escape, hopefully in a non-problematic direction!). Since neither ship sunk, I think it's safe to assume no torpedoes - and maybe no bombs - were present in the hanger at the time.
Two questions: I was under the impression that the water/void torpedo defense was better. As once the void was flooded, you could empty the water section and return to normal buoyancy. Is this incorrect? The U.S. had to abandon the hornet because of approaching IJN surface units. Yet in many other battles the surface units were far behind, like midway. This seems to me to be a very incompetent planning. Was there a reason why the surface units didn’t arrive around the save time as the air strikes?
Ah, so Scheer's battleships didn't switch fire to 5th Battle Squadron because they were distracted by Evan-Thomas's BBs, but, rather, because Beatty's ships were drawing completely out of range and the QEs were the only thing left they _could_ shoot at?
Drach is right it was a monetary decision not to fight for more tonnage. Thanks to the war a large part of northern France was devastated, on top of that if the French lacked the infrastructure needed if they wanted to build anything worthwhile. They had run into the infrastructure problem before the war as their dry docks were too small to build anything bigger than the Normandies and Lyons, that's the reason for the quad turrets it was the only way the could get a decent amount of firepower on such a small hull. However I do think that they should have fought for a provision allowing new construction with early replacement of the Dantons or at least allowing them to up arm them by replacing the twin 9.4" with single 12".
Battleships of ww2: "whats that annoying buzzing thing? What's that in the water?! More in the sky?!?!" FISH 20 minutes later: "oh look, a fancy coral reef!"
I've seen the recent jokes about destroyer and battleship 'agility' and that has caused to wonder what exactly we mean (or should mean) by 'agility'. In particular, is 'turning radius' at a particular speed the only consideration? My guess would be no. I would expect 'turning radius' to be measured in some standard fashion during trials, maybe it's measured at one particular setting of the ship's engines, perhaps the engines going 80% of maximum power and thrusting in the same direction. Or maybe it's measured at multiple speeds, again with all engines operating at the same and in the same direction. But I've read of cases where destroyers ran one engine forward and one engine in reverse, in order to 'snap around' quickly, and help dodge torpedoes. I'm assuming this is not something done when conducting a standard measurement of 'turning radius'. I'm wondering if this is something that smaller ships - particular destroyers - can do far more effectively than big ships, perhaps because they have powerful engines trying to turn less mass, or maybe they can reverse faster? If so, that would mean smaller ships are potentially far more agile than larger ships, even if they have a larger turning radius. I'm also wondering about a 'side slip' - how well can a destroyer do that, versus a larger ship - and how would it do it? Can somebody please point me to any references out that there that discuss this issue?
I had no idea that Hood's battlecruisers actually advanced this far to the East, and that Hipper's light cruisers of the II Scouting Group were actually this far to the East as well. I always assumed the engagement which left Wiesbaden disabled happened just to the North of the main action, not to the Northeast.
Thanks for answering my question. I would argue that France economic situation was not nearly as bad as it is often stated, but still the worst of the entante, and MN has very often been short on cash. My thought about the french and the WNT was more on the line of international appearance. While not being able to remotely fill their tonage, France has historically often tried to give of the appearance of being a world major power. But by being side lined with Italy, a navy that only operated in the Mediterranean, it would make France appear weak.
Yamato was not even sinking by at least the 7th, but probably 9th torpedo hit. She was still making 18 knots and only listing at 10 degrees (albeit all void spaces had been filled, making further counter flooding impossible without sarcastic measures. It was only the next 4 torpedoes that finished her off.
41:30 Iirc, the way modern slow motion is taken during destructive testing is via mirrors. I think the Slow Mo Guys did a video where you could see a bullet shooting right at you, and at the last moment you suddenly see a mirror shattering. And that's when you realize the camera was never directly down range from the rifle's muzzle, haha. I suppose they could've done something similar in the 1910s. You'd have needed multiple mirrors so you can put the camera down the nearest hatch, looking upwards at the sky from inside, in a sense. That should protect it from the fragments. Whether it also protects from the shockwave(s), I don't know. The mirrors are gonna be destroyed by it anyways, so you're never gonna capture the final parts of the impact regardless. But hopefully you'd still save the footage, and preferably also the expensive camera hardware. I'm not an engineer though.... Drach, does this sound remotely plausible? 😅🤓🤭
The painting of the SBD's and exploding IJN aircraft carrier. I wonder if the fire ball was influenced by the iconic photo of the USS Shaw explosion? Especially, as that photo was often mistaken for the Arizona's explosion? Whether the painter was messaging a payback/vengeance for Pearl Harbor is worth thinking about.
I thought the Russian armored(?) cruiser Aurora also took part in the Battle of Tsushima, and is also a museum ship in St. Petersburg. I didn't double check before typing this, but that's just from my memory. Not sure if Aurora is an armored cruiser or not either. I looked up Aurora, it's a protected cruiser. So here is my edit.
Another reason for the size of the Bismarck class turrets is that they were designed to be able to be used with the 420 mm guns planned for larger battleships.
Utter nonsence When Bismarck was designed Germany was lucky to be able to build even the 15inch guns they did. Changing to the 16.5 would require complete replacement of the shell hoist system to handle the larger shell and charges Bismarck was just a poor, treaty breaking design
@@johnfisher9692 Not surprising. Missing nearly 2 decades worth of warship development comes at a cost. Yes, there was little battleship construction between 1918 and mid 1930s, but a LOT of planning and testing. Being overweight for their performance goes for pretty much all of the Kriegsmarine: the Hippers being a very fat, problem ridden bunch of heavy cruisers (imho notably inferior to British, US and Japanese designs), the Panzerschiffe being a wierd in between of heavy cruiser and battlecruiser aimed for raiding but frankly not particularly good at anything. The only class where you can partially forgive the being so overweight a bit are the Sharnhorsts - they never got the upgrades that they were designed for
@@karl3998 The Hippers were even less efficient than the Bismarcks; literally everyone else had much more efficient designs than them, and that includes the other treaty-breaking designs (Italy and Japan also broke treaty limits, but not to the level of the Germans and they managed to get more speed, armor and firepower on their 12,000 ton hulls that were still 2,000 to 6,000 tons lighter than the Hippers) And the panzerschiffs ended up with the problem of having too few main guns to effectively deal with cruisers and being slow enough that LITERALLY EVERY WWII-era battleship could run them down.
@@karl3998 Absolutely a valid point you make, regarding the playing/testing between 1918 and the 30s - but ALSO, they had the lessons of Jutland to assimilate.
Likely not four. While one Bismarck required more “stuff” than one Scharnhorst, it was not a direct 2:1 ratio, allowing all the “stuff” required for one Bismarck to instead build two Scharnhorst. Further, even if Germany had had all the “stuff” needed to build four Scharnhorst instead of two Bismarck, they would not have had the yard capacity to build four Scharnhorst simultaneously.
Maybe not even three. The standard displacement of Bismarck was only ~30% heavier than Scharnhorst. Two fully-equipped Bismarcks would only give you 2.6 fully-equipped Scharnhorsts. While the main armament approached double the weight, the crews were only 25--30% larger, and for many key components - directors, secondary armament, AA guns, boilers, turbines, gearsets - the number and size was the same or only slightly higher. You kind of need two Bismarcks AND one Hipper to get three Scharnhorsts.
If you just look at the cost of the ships in "Reich Marks" you would get roughly 2,5 "Scharnhorsts" ! Another questions is if the Germans hade any slipways large enough for a Scharnhorst, but to small for a Bismarck ?!
Depends on the amount of dockyard space, the same reason why not building Yamato and Musashi only gives you another 2 Shokakus instead of another full Kido Butai. And the Scharnhorsts weren't particularly great either IMO, in terms of strategic value. Just build more subs (though again, dockyard capacity).
Did Midway validate the US Navy doctrine of dispered carrier formations at least in the early years of WWII when fleet air defense was less eeffective? Japan lost 3 out 4 carriers in a single strike while the Japanese only found the Yotktown. Isn't this the kind of outcome that US Navy fleet problems exposed?
Roses ,bunches ,flying ,swirling - pierouetting ! Dump truck of blosoms cascading abound an up across an dumbfounded : pecks an cubic yards an bushels of red scented blooms ,run amuck...🎉
I’m gonna be honest the freshwater combat during the war of 1812 was one of the fist videos I watched on this channel. I would like to see it with the frigate duels in the war of 1812 playlist
We have survived the Millennium bug, byt Hmm a couple of years Nice way of dealing with that Bismarck question, it was framed in a way to make it seem the Germans cold have built 4 Bismarck's if it was for the over engineering The number of excuses made up for the failings and inefficiencies of German designs grows with each passing day and all of them unsubstantiated, except maybe Wikipedia. And we all know how perfect and accurate that is.
Bismarck was a good ship with a proficient cap and crew. It took 3/4 of the Brutish Fleet to hunt her down. Within two days the German and the British flagships and thousands of lifes were lost. Nobody courtmarshalled both admiralities. The odds could have been very very different if Tirpitz wasn’t held back.
Happy New Year one and all!
As for the Bismarck, we can all be grateful that it was built instead of using the steel, armor and all the other stuff that went into it and Tirpitz on tanks, aircraft, submarines and guns.
Well said. The only argument t that comes close to “making it (their construction) make sense” is the notion of a Fleet in Being. And there are far better ways to pull that off, also.
@@jimtalbott9535 To me it sounds like yet another rabid Wehraboo dreaming up excuses for the failing of their beloved ship, seen that so many times.
Maybe they think if htey keep making up more and more excuses everyone will start to believe them, much like the "only sank due to scuttling" fantasy
At least the "giant waste of steel" part applies to all contemporary designs (though I would argue the Germans deserve more criticism than the others because they were in a position where the Bismarcks would have been terrible strategically even without the advent of aviation). What makes the Bismarcks especially bad is that they *failed even at being a gigantic strategic failure,* because at least everyone else's giant strategic failures were effectively and efficiently designed.
So, the Germans made the same mistake as everyone else in wasting money on pointless new battleships and failed even at producing said failure.
True but having a 'capable' navy was key to the Nazi invasion of Norway which was key to the Northern strategy of controlling Swedish Iron, the Baltic and, later, shipping to and from the USSR. While Bismarck did not participate in Operation Weserübung isn't building large battleships an inescapable part of a strategically useful navy in the late 30's?
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No, building large battleships was the unforeseen disaster nobody avoided in the late 30s because it then turned out there was no more strategic justification for building any new battleships when battleships were becoming obsolete in their intended role (capital ship) and wasteful and redundant in everything else they could be used for, especially with the numbers of older battleships around.
The First DryDock of 2025 … Thank You Very Much Drach …!
Hey Drach, even though I rarely comment any videos here on YT, I have logged on to ask you a favour. There is one topic - a bit of a delicate topic - I'd want to ask you to cover. As it is, there is no other YT-creator that I would trust to do it. Th topic I am asking for is "dying on warships" (or something alike). After all, war is about killing and people on (or off) board of warships were killed since the very dawn of naval activities. Even without the effects of war, ships may sink or burn, may be smashed in collisions or crushed in freezing ice. And then there is war, weapons, the will to kill and destroy...
Actually, here in Germany we have a very good YT-channel run by Ralph Raths, the head of the German Tank Museum in Munster. He did some research on "dying in tanks" for what he originally thought would be one 30-minutes-video or so. While doing his researches he got so deep into it that eventually he ended up with a series of 5 videos. For me, it was very interesting to learn about all the different ways to be killed in tanks - or to escape beeing killed. I am also fascinated how he approached the topic, and how somthing like that can be done in a careful and dignified (is this the word to use here?) way.
If there is anyone to cover that topic for warships, it will be you, Drachinifel!
Look up "Sterben im Panzer" and switch the subtitels to English, if you want to see that.
Literally every single claim that defends Bismarck to be anything more than hilariously inefficient boils down to "it can do x thing". Almost all of them completely ignore the fact that every other battleship can also do that.
I made the mistake once (back whenever Drach published his video on the inefficiencies of the Bismark design) of agreeing with Drach. I'm still having wherboos commenting that I'm wrong... its almost as if they skipped the video and dived straight to the comments section.
Like, at the most charitable, it was a potent warship, and certainly proved you could kill a Capital Ship (albeit it was a million to one shot that took out Hood). But for that displacement, you could get so much more from a more efficient design.
@@MikeLima777 On three thousand more tons than *Hood*, building twenty years later, the Germans managed to get... a slightly improved *Hood*.
It says volumes that Bismarck was built to handle Richelieu and somehow ended up being OUTRIGHT WORSE (Not just less efficient but straight-up worse) while also being 5000 tons heavier.
Against Littorio she'd be at least as if not even more outclassed.
And then there are the folks who think Bismarck would be able to handle Iowa or Yamato...unless it's in the middle of a giant storm (where Iowa's relatively poor seakeeping and Yamato's lack of fire control radar would prevent them from even opening fire), that's a major, major, major mismatch.
This line of logic is fine for a discussion about design efficiency, and has merit for strategic allocation of raw materials and other resources, but the reality is when the metal starts flying all of that is meaningless; what counts is combat capability, and Bismarck objectively was a technical design that was an extremely capable ship, at least as good, if not better than anything bar Yamato at the time of her sole sortie.
The reality of combat though is very different to technical specifications, and even further removed from academic discussion about "design efficiency" (just ask the crewmembers of HMS Hood, an arguably roughly "equal" ship on paper.
I love Drach, but this is really a case of what we jokingly call "Engineer Derangement Syndrome", where people become obsessed with theoretical technical factors over combat capability.
Great start to the new year Drach. Thanks.
It does not matter what the question is.
The answer is always “Beatty and Seymour sucked.”
_Always._
Except where the answer is that Seymour and Beatty sucked.
Saturday night in old Melbourne town, and everything is all right!!
47:17 From what Mark Stille’s book on Leyte Gulf said. TF34 was also supposed to have TG 38.2 under Gerald Bogan and TG 38.4 under Ralph Davison to provide Air Cover. With Davison as the overall commander. So that’s 3 fleet Carriers (Intrepid, Franklin and Enterprise) and 4 Independences (Cabot, Independence, Belleau Wood and San Jacinto). Plus additional destroyers and cruisers to TF 34.
In another YT Mark Stille says he thinks Halsey’s decision to go north at Leyte was right and that dividing his forces to try to handle Centre and Northern Forces at the same time would have been wrong.
Hey Drach, I have recently made some major changes to the battle of the Java Sea’s Wikipedia article, going into much more detail and giving more accurate information of the battle. It would be nice to see you cover the battle for a Wednesday video, given it was probably a mute crushing Japanese victory then Savo Island
Great discussion on the NC torp hit. Any chance you can do a series on this type of info? Go over the damage plates, discuss what happened, etc?
Speaking of HMS Vanguard's Secondary Battery (5.25 inch in Octagonal Turrets), were there ever any plans to Retrofit the Dido's, and KG V's with the Octagonal Turrets to eliminate the issues of the too small Round Turrets?
This is a good question that I hope gets answered 👆
Re - 00:16, armoured flight decks. Were lifts fitted with deck armour, or were they beyond the armour area? If so, was there shielding between lift shaft and hanger space, lest a bomb penetrate the lift's deck, and explode into the hanger?
@brucewilliams1892 the hangars had several metal roller shutters to compartmentalise them in case of damage. Although in practice they could be perforated by shrapnel, but even in those cases it was better than nothing :)
Thank you, boss.
The lifts were unarmoured but the hangar was closed by 4.5" thick armoured bulkheads with armoured doors that could close off the lift well from the hangar.
@@Drachinifel unrelated drach but, Would a ship of the line be able to outrange and outlast a frigate on a deployment or would they need supply ships to travel the same distance an odd question I know
Take a look at the armored carriers site. Lots of good info. A few oversights as well so be cautious.
The armor thickness varied from place to place, 68% of the flight deck had 3 inch armor, it was less at the ends. The elevators were less well protected. If memory serves, there was a clever 'armored lock' system like an airlock to help further isolate the elevator.
Technically we're not talking about an 'armored flight deck', what we're actually talking about is an 'armored box', in other words the hanger was armored as well. If only the flight deck is armored, that's a different choice.
To help understand the limitations of the armored carriers, you'll want to read the damage report sent on Illustrious after she was hit in the Med, and the navweaps page on Kamikaze hits.
In particular, at Okinawa there were so many ships and so many AA guns and such a large fighter CAP that the Kamikaze hits always involved 1 or occasionally 2 hits, followed by a long period in which ships could be repaired.
The encounter in the Med involved a lot more hits in a shorter period of time: 6 hits and several near misses over about a 4 hour period.
An even more extreme case occurred with the sinking of the Dorsetshire, where the Japanese dive bombers scored ~11 hits and (perhaps) ~24 near misses in under 10 minutes. Note that the armor (or lack thereof) of the Dorsetshire is irrelevant here, this example is mentioned here merely to show how many hits could be achieved on a big ship, in a short period of time, by really good (or really lucky?) pilots.
It's dangerous to assume one can generalize from a situation involving a) few hits followed by a long quiet period, to b) many hits in a short period of time, without potentially jumping to erroneous conclusions. In other words, Okinawa was a special case (and not only in this way) and needs to be treated as such if you want an objective assessment of the protection of the armored carriers.
Overall, my assessment is the RN did a nice job with the design of the armored carriers - but it had some serious limitations that few people realize or understand. The protection is probably over-stated by most-people, who are jumping to conclusions to go beyond what the very limited evidence we have actually supports.
OK. I want a turret condo! One question tho- can it rotate?
My first opportunity to comment on technology that I’m qualified to discuss. Drach, in the response to the question regarding high speed photography of shell tests in the 1910’s and 20’s, you refer to to ‘losing light’ or footage being ‘darker’ as a result of zooming into a tighter focal length (producing a greater magnification of the subject). This is known as aperture ramping, usually just referred to as ramping and is a common characteristic of older and less complicated zoom lens designs. Essentially the lens will trade its ability to gather light for increased magnification. I just wanted to mention that this is not inherently true of all zoom lenses, even ones that predate computers in their design. There’s examples of zoom lenses that do not ramp that I’ve worked with personally that date back to 1950’s construction. I can’t personally say whether non ramping zoom lenses would’ve been available for use with high speed camera systems available in the early 20th century, but it does seem like a possibility. Overall, you are correct to make the assertion that lenses that produce a greater degree of magnification gather less light relative to ‘standard’ or ‘normal’ magnification. This light gathering in large zooms can be improved by making the lens physically larger, but there’s a limit to the practicality, usually what a human is capable of handling. Beyond this, such as for filming high magnification footage as was used to capture the Apollo launches in the upper atmosphere, large gyro stabilized motorized mounts are used to manipulate camera systems whose proportions are akin to anti aircraft mounts. Even had something like this been available in the early 20th century, my guess is that introducing the motion of a rolling ship as would be needed to film these tests would make the task extremely difficult.
If you want to capture hi-res imagery of shell impacts on fixed targets, the optics set-up would simply need to be a large aperture, long focal length telescope, placed a safe distance away from the target. No ramping or additional lens elements, that degrade image quality would be needed. A prime focus instrument would work very well. A very bright artificial light source (high speed strobe light) would also be required, which didn't yet exist in the early 1900s. Another fly in the ointment was having fine grained film with a high enough ISO value (light sensitivity), and the ability to shoot at the required frames per second, for the images to be of any value. A guy nicknamed 'Doc Edgerton' was a pioneer in this field, and did extensive work for the U.S. government and military. He designed and built some truly amazing equipment to that end, but was only a kid in the early 20th century, so none of that stuff was yet available. Quality optics weren't a problem in the early days, but the needed additional equipment and film was.
@stargazer5784 Why would you need a high-speed strobe light? My first thought is to just light some magnesium flares nearby - it probably isn't as good as something purpose-built, but it's probably decent, and well within their technological base.
Shameless copy pasta because my melatonin is kicking in:
41:30 Iirc, the way modern slow motion is taken during destructive testing is via mirrors.
I think the Slow Mo Guys did a video where you could see a bullet shooting right at you, and at the last moment you suddenly see a mirror shattering.
And that's when you realize the camera was never directly down range from the rifle's muzzle, haha.
I suppose they could've done something similar in the 1910s.
You'd have needed multiple mirrors so you can put the camera down the nearest hatch, looking upwards at the sky from inside, in a sense. That should protect it from the fragments.
Whether it also protects from the shockwave(s), I don't know.
The mirrors are gonna be destroyed by it anyways, so you're never gonna capture the final parts of the impact regardless.
But hopefully you'd still save the footage, and preferably also the expensive camera hardware.
I'm not an engineer though....
Drach, does this sound remotely plausible? 😅🤓🤭
i liked the overview regarding the economy attributed to the French army/navy and the British navy. i think an example of the thought experiment you made for current day UK would be the amount of their respective economy that Prussia attributed to their army during the time of Frederick the Great (late 17th century to mid 18th century) and that their level of funding to the army precluded any ability to field anything above a token naval force until the German reunification.
A Brit expounding on the minimal virtues of an armored flight deck, how new and exciting.
The information about Yamato's torpedo defense system is fascinating! However, I’m slightly skeptical when comparing it to more modern designs like the Vanguard.
The oldest battle in which more than one museum ship took part might be the Battle of Tsushima, in which both the battleship Mikasa and the cruiser Aurora took part.
For 'decent condition' I would have thought it would be still floating.
Belfast is obviously there but is there a ship called Constitution floating in USA waters?
@@myparceltape1169 I would consider decent condition as the ship being complete. Many museum ships are kept on land or in dry docks. The sruiser Aurora is still afloat in the Neva river, but Mikasa is encased in concrete (a condition of the Washington Naval Treaty), which may have saved her from total destruction by bombing in WWII.
HMS Victory is kept permanently in dry dock, but USS Constitution is still afloat and makes one turnaround cruise every year.
Halsey should have left the slower 'fast battleships', and their supporting escorts, behind when he went after Ozawa. The Washingtons and South Dakotas were around 5 kts slower than the Iowas and the carriers. Their presence slowed down Halsey's pursuit of Ozawa.
11:00 Given that some of the early submarines were equipped with spar torpedoes, it seems a given that *someone* would design a boat where being inside the blast radius was expected.
Would such a vessel have been viable? At some point, the improvements of explosives and warhead design would make a pressure hull able to withstand that rather “heavy”.
@@jimtalbott9535 I suspect that the early submersibles carrying spar torpedoes had a rather low survival chance, but they were still used. The detonation distance in that case would be however long the string attached to the detonator was. CSS Albemarle survived using hers, H L Hunley did not. The earliest self-propelled torpedoes had a range of less than 1km and very pedestrian speed, but that would have been more than enough for ships at anchor, and I believe that several ships were sunk by self-propelled torpedoes prior to 1900 (likely because they had no idea what was approaching them).
Of course, this assumes that the inventor of this speculative submersible wouldn't go 'full Jules Verne' and equip the vessel with some kind of motorised ramming-beak.
"Air blast injuries killed the crew of the submarine H.L. Hunley". Rachel M. Lance,Lucas Stalcup, Brad Wojtylak, Cameron R. Bass. August 23, 2017 at Plos one.
Abstract : "The submarine H.L. Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy ship during combat; however, the cause of its sinking has been a mystery for over 150 years. The Hunley set off a 61.2 kg (135 lb) black powder torpedo at a distance less than 5 m (16 ft) off its bow. Scaled experiments were performed that measured black powder and shock tube explosions underwater and propagation of blasts through a model ship hull. This propagation data was used in combination with archival experimental data to evaluate the risk to the crew from their own torpedo. The blast produced likely caused flexion of the ship hull to transmit the blast wave; the secondary wave transmitted inside the crew compartment was of sufficient magnitude that the calculated chances of survival were less than 16% for each crew member. The submarine drifted to its resting place after the crew died of air blast trauma within the hull."
Sole survivors? How about IJN SHIGURE? She seemed to be the sole survivor on several occasions!
But where is she now?
Thanks Drach.
What is the photo at 31:51 that goes with the discussion of France’s army and navy? Very striking.
It's a very early photo from back when woodem ships were still the front line warship type :)
@@Drachinifel @billbrockman779 It's the french fleet at Cherbourg during the visit of queen Victoria in 1858, under Napoléon III. The three-decker you see is the french flag ship "Bretagne" accompanied by several two-deckers of 90 guns, and one of the smaller ship is the royal yacht "Victoria and Albert". There are other photographs of this event, they are very interesting because they allow you to see a squadron of ships of the line like this!
@@Drachinifel It's an incredibly beautiful photo
This is the French fleet during the visit of Queen Victoria and Napoleon III to Cherbourg in 1858, there are other photographs of the event, they are interesting for the view of a squadron of ships of the line like this one! The three-decker in the center is the French flagship "Bretagne" :)
32:20
Good morning Drach! In the last question you answered today on the Bismarks turret, you had a layout diagram of the turret showing. Could you guide me to that layout? I would like to explore all the identification numbers and get a better Idea of whats what. Thank you!
I would argue that Bearn (while being an absolutely terrible ship) wasnt such a bad investment for the french as it may seem. They at least got some great carrier experience - especially what not to do - as other nations did with their first or second class of carrier. See the poor thing as a beautifully exccentric french version of HMS Hermes or Hosho. Just a tiny bit later, since france was very broke.
New year and the Drachified what the doot doot dee is still a banger and we start the dry dock with a Drachism. Its good to be home.
46:07 - Halsey _was_ there for Santa Cruz; he's the one who Leeroy Jenkinsed the U.S. fleet into a much-larger Japanese fleet at a time when the USN couldn't afford to lose any more carriers.
As theatre commander. RADM Thomas Kinkaid was tactical commander.
Thank You.
How many u-boats could have been built instead of Bismarck / Tirpitz, what type would they have likely been and how would it affect the Battle of Atlantic?
Bismarck and Tirpitz were built from 1936 to 1941, and they didn't start building the Type VIIC and IXC U-boats until 1940, so it's safe to say "mostly early Type VII and early Type IX". Cost estimates vary widely, but 30-40 U-boats for each battleship seems reasonable. The 2000-man crews could each supply 40 U-boats. Assuming there were resources, shipyards, and facilities to build and commission an additional 75 U-boats by the end of 1941 (this is NOT a safe assumption), it would have pushed the average number on patrol in 1941 from ~40 to ~65, which is still far less than the 100 Dönitz thought he needed to win the Battle of the Atlantic. (He estimated 300 total, with one third on patrol at any given time.)
If you are going to decide in 1936 to build U-boats instead of battleships, you should scrap/cancel all the heavy surface units started in 1935 (the Scharnhorsts and Hippers) along with Graf Zeppelin. That would get a lot closer to 300 U-boats - but either way, the British will certainly notice what you are up to, and will be pouring additional resources into anti-submarine warfare.
The number of slipways would also be an issue until more were added. Not building Bismarck frees up just one, which might be able to be used to build one sub. Could more be built in the same place at the same time?
Also-also, this is assuming (presuming) that 100% of crew deployed aboard the major surface units would be suitable for UBoot duty.
After 1943, when the KM surface fleet was put into a heavily static / training routine, rarely sortieing and almost entirely to conduct short bombardment to support the army, the crewmen aboard the surface units were those already passed over for UBoot duty.
Wouldn't the explosion from a large bomb beneath the armored deck an a British carrriet be maganified by what is effectively an armored box?
Yes, definitely. However, the hanger itself was armored. It wasn't just an 'armored deck', it was an 'armored box'. Further, if the armor on top caused the bomb to detonate early (no guarantees, bomb behavior can be very unpredictable!), then less of the explosion would get into the hanger (as Drach mentions in this video), in which case there is less explosion 'volume' to spread through the available space.
Once the hanger was penetrated, a serious hanger fire was the likely result. Look at the damage to Illustrious in the Med, or to the damage to Formidable off Okinawa for examples where the armor was penetrated and a serious hanger fire did happen. In both cases the ships were able to put out the fire.
In those cases, as far as I know, it's an open question whether the ships survived because they got lucky, or the circumstances were 'just right' to minimize the fire damage, or whether the armored box and good fire fighting systems was sufficient to keep a serious fire from becoming a catastrophic one.
With only a couple examples to look at, we really don't have enough data to reach a defensible conclusion one way or another.
For example, whether or not there were torpedoes or bombs present in the area where the fire happened could have made a difference in the outcome. For that matter, a piece of hot shrapnel that penetrated the hanger and then set off a bunch of torpedoes would give you a secondary explosion that might be far more serious than the original explosion, and due to the hanger armor, most of it would be contained within the hanger (there are always ventilation shafts, so there is some opportunity for a portion of the explosion to escape, hopefully in a non-problematic direction!).
Since neither ship sunk, I think it's safe to assume no torpedoes - and maybe no bombs - were present in the hanger at the time.
Could conscript vs. mainly volunteer army/navy be another significant difference between France and Britain?
Two questions:
I was under the impression that the water/void torpedo defense was better. As once the void was flooded, you could empty the water section and return to normal buoyancy. Is this incorrect?
The U.S. had to abandon the hornet because of approaching IJN surface units. Yet in many other battles the surface units were far behind, like midway. This seems to me to be a very incompetent planning. Was there a reason why the surface units didn’t arrive around the save time as the air strikes?
USCGC Taney is the sole survivor from the battle of Pearl Harbor
Ah, so Scheer's battleships didn't switch fire to 5th Battle Squadron because they were distracted by Evan-Thomas's BBs, but, rather, because Beatty's ships were drawing completely out of range and the QEs were the only thing left they _could_ shoot at?
Sounda,like our Chancellor, Rachel from Accounts was in charge of the French Navy for the Washington Naval Treaty
Drach is right it was a monetary decision not to fight for more tonnage. Thanks to the war a large part of northern France was devastated, on top of that if the French lacked the infrastructure needed if they wanted to build anything worthwhile. They had run into the infrastructure problem before the war as their dry docks were too small to build anything bigger than the Normandies and Lyons, that's the reason for the quad turrets it was the only way the could get a decent amount of firepower on such a small hull. However I do think that they should have fought for a provision allowing new construction with early replacement of the Dantons or at least allowing them to up arm them by replacing the twin 9.4" with single 12".
Battleships of ww2: "whats that annoying buzzing thing? What's that in the water?! More in the sky?!?!" FISH 20 minutes later: "oh look, a fancy coral reef!"
I've seen the recent jokes about destroyer and battleship 'agility' and that has caused to wonder what exactly we mean (or should mean) by 'agility'. In particular, is 'turning radius' at a particular speed the only consideration?
My guess would be no.
I would expect 'turning radius' to be measured in some standard fashion during trials, maybe it's measured at one particular setting of the ship's engines, perhaps the engines going 80% of maximum power and thrusting in the same direction. Or maybe it's measured at multiple speeds, again with all engines operating at the same and in the same direction.
But I've read of cases where destroyers ran one engine forward and one engine in reverse, in order to 'snap around' quickly, and help dodge torpedoes.
I'm assuming this is not something done when conducting a standard measurement of 'turning radius'.
I'm wondering if this is something that smaller ships - particular destroyers - can do far more effectively than big ships, perhaps because they have powerful engines trying to turn less mass, or maybe they can reverse faster? If so, that would mean smaller ships are potentially far more agile than larger ships, even if they have a larger turning radius.
I'm also wondering about a 'side slip' - how well can a destroyer do that, versus a larger ship - and how would it do it?
Can somebody please point me to any references out that there that discuss this issue?
I had no idea that Hood's battlecruisers actually advanced this far to the East, and that Hipper's light cruisers of the II Scouting Group were actually this far to the East as well. I always assumed the engagement which left Wiesbaden disabled happened just to the North of the main action, not to the Northeast.
Don’t see a pinned post for questions. Drach, were the bomb hits on USS Franklin that lucky or was there a major failure in preparedness?
Are you able to do one about USS Holland (AS-32).
Has there been a video done on Franklin's lost expedition?
Thanks for answering my question. I would argue that France economic situation was not nearly as bad as it is often stated, but still the worst of the entante, and MN has very often been short on cash. My thought about the french and the WNT was more on the line of international appearance. While not being able to remotely fill their tonage, France has historically often tried to give of the appearance of being a world major power. But by being side lined with Italy, a navy that only operated in the Mediterranean, it would make France appear weak.
Yamato was not even sinking by at least the 7th, but probably 9th torpedo hit. She was still making 18 knots and only listing at 10 degrees (albeit all void spaces had been filled, making further counter flooding impossible without sarcastic measures. It was only the next 4 torpedoes that finished her off.
41:30 Iirc, the way modern slow motion is taken during destructive testing is via mirrors.
I think the Slow Mo Guys did a video where you could see a bullet shooting right at you, and at the last moment you suddenly see a mirror shattering.
And that's when you realize the camera was never directly down range from the rifle's muzzle, haha.
I suppose they could've done something similar in the 1910s.
You'd have needed multiple mirrors so you can put the camera down the nearest hatch, looking upwards at the sky from inside, in a sense. That should protect it from the fragments.
Whether it also protects from the shockwave(s), I don't know.
The mirrors are gonna be destroyed by it anyways, so you're never gonna capture the final parts of the impact regardless.
But hopefully you'd still save the footage, and preferably also the expensive camera hardware.
I'm not an engineer though....
Drach, does this sound remotely plausible? 😅🤓🤭
The painting of the SBD's and exploding IJN aircraft carrier. I wonder if the fire ball was influenced by the iconic photo of the USS Shaw explosion? Especially, as that photo was often mistaken for the Arizona's explosion? Whether the painter was messaging a payback/vengeance for Pearl Harbor is worth thinking about.
also noted or is it me is the IJN Carrier sailing backwards
@@WelBike1967Akagi, had her island on her port side. Instead of the typical starboard side
I want to submit questions to drydock
how do I do that?
While not the oldest, is the Mikasa the only survivor of the Battle of Tsushima?
I thought the Russian armored(?) cruiser Aurora also took part in the Battle of Tsushima, and is also a museum ship in St. Petersburg. I didn't double check before typing this, but that's just from my memory. Not sure if Aurora is an armored cruiser or not either. I looked up Aurora, it's a protected cruiser. So here is my edit.
Aurora is also still around.
Another reason for the size of the Bismarck class turrets is that they were designed to be able to be used with the 420 mm guns planned for larger battleships.
I’d not heard that. It helps explain some of their massiveness though. Have to be able to withstand the thing you’re firing.
Utter nonsence
When Bismarck was designed Germany was lucky to be able to build even the 15inch guns they did.
Changing to the 16.5 would require complete replacement of the shell hoist system to handle the larger shell and charges
Bismarck was just a poor, treaty breaking design
@@johnfisher9692 Not surprising. Missing nearly 2 decades worth of warship development comes at a cost. Yes, there was little battleship construction between 1918 and mid 1930s, but a LOT of planning and testing.
Being overweight for their performance goes for pretty much all of the Kriegsmarine: the Hippers being a very fat, problem ridden bunch of heavy cruisers (imho notably inferior to British, US and Japanese designs), the Panzerschiffe being a wierd in between of heavy cruiser and battlecruiser aimed for raiding but frankly not particularly good at anything.
The only class where you can partially forgive the being so overweight a bit are the Sharnhorsts - they never got the upgrades that they were designed for
@@karl3998 The Hippers were even less efficient than the Bismarcks; literally everyone else had much more efficient designs than them, and that includes the other treaty-breaking designs (Italy and Japan also broke treaty limits, but not to the level of the Germans and they managed to get more speed, armor and firepower on their 12,000 ton hulls that were still 2,000 to 6,000 tons lighter than the Hippers)
And the panzerschiffs ended up with the problem of having too few main guns to effectively deal with cruisers and being slow enough that LITERALLY EVERY WWII-era battleship could run them down.
@@karl3998 Absolutely a valid point you make, regarding the playing/testing between 1918 and the 30s - but ALSO, they had the lessons of Jutland to assimilate.
How many Scharnhorst style ships could they have built by not making the Bismarck and Turpitz? 4?
Likely not four. While one Bismarck required more “stuff” than one Scharnhorst, it was not a direct 2:1 ratio, allowing all the “stuff” required for one Bismarck to instead build two Scharnhorst.
Further, even if Germany had had all the “stuff” needed to build four Scharnhorst instead of two Bismarck, they would not have had the yard capacity to build four Scharnhorst simultaneously.
Not sure, but they'd have had more than they historically had, and that "Atlantic Raider" type was far more disturbing to their enemies war efforts.
Maybe not even three. The standard displacement of Bismarck was only ~30% heavier than Scharnhorst. Two fully-equipped Bismarcks would only give you 2.6 fully-equipped Scharnhorsts. While the main armament approached double the weight, the crews were only 25--30% larger, and for many key components - directors, secondary armament, AA guns, boilers, turbines, gearsets - the number and size was the same or only slightly higher. You kind of need two Bismarcks AND one Hipper to get three Scharnhorsts.
If you just look at the cost of the ships in "Reich Marks" you would get roughly 2,5 "Scharnhorsts" ! Another questions is if the Germans hade any slipways large enough for a Scharnhorst, but to small for a Bismarck ?!
Depends on the amount of dockyard space, the same reason why not building Yamato and Musashi only gives you another 2 Shokakus instead of another full Kido Butai.
And the Scharnhorsts weren't particularly great either IMO, in terms of strategic value. Just build more subs (though again, dockyard capacity).
Did Midway validate the US Navy doctrine of dispered carrier formations at least in the early years of WWII when fleet air defense was less eeffective? Japan lost 3 out 4 carriers in a single strike while the Japanese only found the Yotktown. Isn't this the kind of outcome that US Navy fleet problems exposed?
Roses ,bunches ,flying ,swirling - pierouetting ! Dump truck of blosoms cascading abound an up across an dumbfounded : pecks an cubic yards an bushels of red scented blooms ,run amuck...🎉
I’m gonna be honest the freshwater combat during the war of 1812 was one of the fist videos I watched on this channel. I would like to see it with the frigate duels in the war of 1812 playlist
Fully electric galleys just gobble up the kilowatt-hours…
⚓️
😢 mfw Dry dock isn’t 6 hours long
We have survived the Millennium bug, byt Hmm a couple of years
Nice way of dealing with that Bismarck question, it was framed in a way to make it seem the Germans cold have built 4 Bismarck's if it was for the over engineering
The number of excuses made up for the failings and inefficiencies of German designs grows with each passing day and all of them unsubstantiated, except maybe Wikipedia.
And we all know how perfect and accurate that is.
📌 🚢 ⚓️ ✔️
Great way to relax!
Bismarck WAS a great ship, sir.
Bismarck was a good ship with a proficient cap and crew. It took 3/4 of the Brutish Fleet to hunt her down. Within two days the German and the British flagships and thousands of lifes were lost. Nobody courtmarshalled both admiralities. The odds could have been very very different if Tirpitz wasn’t held back.
37th, 5 January 2025