If you swapped the Yorktowns and Shokakus around so the former would be in the IJN and the latter were in the USN, but without changing the aircraft, how differently would various 1942 carrier engagements go?
Recent edition of the TV genealogy show "Who do you think you are" featured the HMS Ulster Queen, a passenger ferry that sailed across the Irish Sea through the 1930s. When war broke out the ship was converted into a auxiliary anti-aircraft cruiser, served on the Arctic convoys and elsewhere. Survived the war but was not converted back to civilian use and was scrapped. Could be worth a 5 minuted prog ?
In your opinion what would it take to convince the US navy to stay with the 14 inch gun instead of going to 16 inches? For example, if you could absolutely guarantee no loss of main gun accuracy with 14 inch guns while maneuvering. Or some other magic wand type gimmick. Would the US navy have reconsider sticking with the 14s.
As an old artilleryman I found the 105mm gun with semifixed ammo, a brass case with a shell on the end, sounded as a loud fast crack. The 155mm with separate bagged ammo, like you see in the footage from the BB main guns (only smaller) sounded as a longer duration boom.
My only personal experience is with small arms. I used to shoot a lot, usually using ball ammo (full metal jacket, cheap and plentiful back in the day) I can share my impressions. As both shooter and spectator, 9mm was a crack. .45 ACP was a boom from 4.4"-5" barrel. (.25 ACP was a pop, easily mistaken for a slammed door or dropped book.) As a shooter or spectator, 9mm from a 3.5" was the same as a 4.5" barrel. As a shooter, 9mm from a 16.5" barrel was a softer crack than the pistol length barrels; as a spectator the 16.5" barrel gave a louder and sharper crack than the pistol length barrels. As an almost-receiver of small arms fire I always heard the same fast buzz, like a wasp zooming past. (Twice as a hunter I was subjected to negligent rifle fire. As a citizen I experienced around a dozen pistol fire ricochets.) And, once as a citizen two idiots conspired and managed to negligently shoot me in in boot heel with a .25 ACP. I don't remember hearing the discharge at all, I just remember the thump of me hitting the wooden floor having performed an unsustainable silly walk. Then the standard "I didn't know it was loaded" from the shooter, and "Why didn't you check" from the lender.
The discussion of Jellicoe generally trying to avoid any drama regarding his thoughts on Beatty reminds me a lot of how the generation of US naval officers who experienced the Sampson-Schley controversy in the aftermath of the Battle of Santiago de Cuba collectively settled on a mentality of never again "airing the Navy's laundry" in public like that. That group included nearly all of the officers who would become the senior admirals of the USN during World War II, and this incident is frequently cited as a reason why naval officers were sometimes not punished as severely or as publicly as one might expect for some transgressions (i.e. Mitscher for his obfuscations after Midway, or Halsey after Leyte Gulf/the typhoon/the other typhoon). I wonder if there was any similar incident in the relatively recent history of the Royal Navy which influenced Jellicoe to act in the way he did.
Jellicoe was the Exec officer aboard HMS Victoria when Admiral Tryon ordered the manoeuvre which caused the collision with HMS Camperdown off Tripoli in 1893. He would have been in a position to argue with the order on the bridge. I don't know if he did.
And of course, one of the risks of trying to minimize crew is ending up with a crew too small to do emergency damage control and fight the ship at the same time, especially once the crew starts taking casualties. *side eyes LCS program complaints*
If CarDiv 5 is replaced with CarDiv 2 at Coral Sea. It might be a bloodier tactical victory for the IJN. If I recall Shattered Sword correctly, Soryu and Hiryu had highly trained and experienced pilots. But their main strength came from Dive Bombing. So highly likely that Lexington may take 3 Torpedoes and another 1 or 2 Bomb hits. Which may sink Lexington outright. Whereas Yorktown may avoid the Torpedoes, she may take similar damage to Enterprise at Eastern Solomons. So 3-4 550lb Bomb hits, which is survivable but would mean Yorktown would not entirely be ready for Midway. Unless the damage control crews and later the shipyard workers at Pearl Harbor are being Intravenously fed coffee. Soryu is smaller than Shokaku and arguably more maneuverable. The issue is that she is also more fragile regarding bomb hits. For the sake of argument, Soryu still takes 3 hits. The explosions could catch something flammable like her Avgas system, even without aircraft in the hangar. Also, if one of the hits lands next to her stack, like at Midway and penetrates the lower hangar. Then it could damage or destroy her boiler and engine rooms leaving her dead in the water. Fast forward to Midway, and Shokaku and Zuikaku, for the sake of argument, are loaded with the same numbers of Aircraft as at Coral Sea. That's 21 Zeroes for Shokaku and 25 Zeroes for Zuikaku. 20 Vals for Shokaku and 22 Vals for Zuikaku, and 19 and 20 Kates for Shokaku and Zuikaku, respectively. Also, there are deck plans of Shokaku and Zuikaku's hangar decks, complete with aircraft spots. Assuming that the events leading up to and during the "Dauntless Ex Machina" occur similarly. Shokaku may end up like Franklin in that it would be a long, bloody and fiery battle with a slight chance of survival. But without the redundancies in here, damage control systems and the open hangar to vent the explosions, fire and smoke. She may go the same way as Akagi and Kaga. Zuikaku if caught in the same circumstances as Hiyru (closed in on TF16 and TF17 and lost most of its air group). Then it could take the 4x 1000lb bomb hits. As Shokaku survived a similar number at Santa Cruz. Of course, if those aircraft are full and ready for another strike, it would cause a fuel-air explosion. Resulting in Zuikaku being sunk outright or being scuttled. Being close to Midway would mean that even if the damage control crews worked through the night to get the fires under control. She may be spotted and tracked by radar-equipped PBYs and be finished off by Enterprise and Hornet the following morning.
I think the state of the carriers when they're hit is the single biggest factor. If CarDiv 5 replaces CarDiv 2 at Midway, they'd have a better chance of survival. But, if they're hit while in the same state that Soryu and Hiryu historically were (vulnerable fuel and/or ammunition all over the hangar decks), I don't think Shokaku, Zuikaku, or any Japanese carrier in 1942, is going to survive those hits. You made a good comparison to USS Franklin, but of course Franklin was bigger than the Shokakus, had much better damage control systems than the Shokakus, and the USN in 1945 had vastly more experience with that sort of damage control than the IJN did in 1942. Conversely, when Shokaku was hit at Coral Sea, she survived in part because she had very few aircraft aboard at the time (they were almost all either attacking Yorktown and Lexington, or aloft on CAP). Swap in Soryu or Hiryu taking those same three hits, and they'd be at greater risk of sinking, but might survive due to the much lesser risk of fire. One other point about CarDiv 2 at Coral Sea is that, given their smaller air groups and given the losses the IJN had taken in the earlier stages of the battle (especially the debacle of the attempted night attack on May 7), CarDiv 2 might not have had as many aircraft available to fight the main battle on May 8 as CarDiv 5 did historically.
I remember laughing at the opening music for Dry-Dock 42. That was May, 2019. The time has certainly flown by! edit: Oh, and the robovoice! I'd love to hear a retro style Five Minute Guide or Dry-Dock done with the robovoice. It'd probably blow up the comments.
@@mbryson2899 I remember "robo voice" as I found this great channel when the sip guides and dry docks were in single digits :) I'm sure Mrs Drach is grateful they found the cure for that condition 😅
@@mbryson2899Now he’s doing collaborations with some of the world’s most respected WWII naval historians. Party of me wants to be jelly sometimes but the fact is everything he’s earned every bit of his newfound fame & fortune. Turns out that an ordinary fella with exceptional talent & a great passion can accomplish quite a bit. All you need is a willingness to sweat, bleed & consume copious amounts of Irn Bru…
I love the Navy, but I have to say that I would never have thought that I would end up becoming an avid fan of technical specifications of 100+ year old battle cruisers. Nah I lie, I just didn’t know I needed this.
At Midway the Japanese fueled and armed their planes in the hangar because they had to cycle the CAP.. Tully and Parshall point out that fueling and arming in the hangar was at that time of the war Japanese doctrine, as well.
Regarding the Turret and broadside ironclads question. USS Dunderburg's early design iteration had 2 turrets and a casement in between. Design was changed later, extending the casement over where the turrets were originally going to sit.
Thanks and for the description of the sound booth in which Warspite fired her guns. In that complex intricate soundscape each shot would be snowflake different, but all horrific.
Re: 00:26:36 - Could you explain the lack of an island on some carriers like the Ryūjō? The design of the first US Navy "Super Carrier", USS United States (CVA-58) didn't have an Island included in the design (but it was supposed to have folding funnels and a retractable pilothouse). I wonder what the designers were smoking or drinking when they came up with that design?
discarding the officers at the side I guess the black uniformed sailors might be petty officers instead of enlisted? I don't know however. The only sailor whose rank insignia seems visible (other than the Captain on the right) seems to be a Leading Rate.
For reasons diverse and somewhat subjective, many navies have long maintained multiple colors of uniform of their sailors (up to six in some fleets) and what colors you wear when is somewhat left up to the individual captains to determine as they will. If the CPO or the Ship's Captain wants the engineering crew to be in blue and the deck swabs in white on a given day, so it was. My Brother-in-Law, an US Navy officer, had to maintain at least four colors for normal operations on his ship and what he wore was determined by a rotating schedule the Captain devised. No real rationale beyond it ensured all the uniforms the sailors had were worn regularly.
Sailors have always been prone to gallows humor. American escort carrier sailors in WWII always insisted that CVE stood for Combustible, Vulnerable and Expendable….
My tutor always referred to PPI as Plan Position Indicator, which makes sense in that the view is in plan. Before that came about, I am aware of at least one sort of display that used twin linear indicators. One displayed range and the other azimuth and a spike on both would give the overall result. Obviously this is in the days when Cathode Ray Tubes were new and cool technology and the prototype semiconductor transistor was about the size of a fist.
A cathode ray oscilloscope was used to measure fast changes in viscosity. The man who brought it in had spent the war going back and forth across the Atlantic in a corvette. He told me it had been used (or possibly this type of instrument) to look out for submarines. The screen was a green disc about 3 inches in diameter. We were able to establish that abrupt changes were happening and got a recorder which printed, as far as I can remember, 6 inches in one second. Instead of a pen it bounced light off a mirror in a tiny tube. D
@ 0:31:32 From my understanding (and my seeing) medium & large sizes of boats in heavy seas, they go to the top of a wave crest and then often completely or almost completely disappear into a trough behind the wave(s) crest... This probably explains a lot of the misses since you have to get the timing just right for when the shells get there to hit the "Gosh Darn" thing! Too early or too late you either hit he wave the boat is "hiding" behind or go over (litterally)by a mile!
As a different 'minimizing the rolls' there was also the cunning measure started by the Dutch Navy of making a reduction to the number of Admirals they had on the rolls: create a new rank of "Commodore", which had all the responsibilities of an Admiral at the time, but only half the pay!
I think you should do a couple videos on Union and Confederate warships. Would be interesting because this time period was the transition from wooden ships to iron and steam power. A lot of novel ideas on both sides too.
22:52. Larger carriers made in same standard is just more planes, bombs and fuel to do their worst. Having seen and heard 16/50s USS Iowa. She was 15 miles away, target rock was 3 miles. The shell hit was louder. But still the shot fired sound was after the shell impact. And both shook the glassware on USS Spiegel Grove lsd32
Regarding the sound of firing guns. I understand that normally USN 16 inch guns fired a staggered broadside, implicitly this the if a nine gun broadside results in a longer 'experience'. How often did both or all guns in a turret fire at the same moment, ditto on a multi turret ship was it usual for, to start with, one turret to fire then another etc or was the firing autonomous?
Most US ships with triple turrets were firing ragged broadsides because of the delay coils installed to separate shells from one another to avoid shell dispersion from turbulence.
@@kemarisite that is what I thought, the photo of Iowa doing a broadside was done as a one off with the delay coils 'deactivated'. The sound of a ripple of 9, with delay coils would be far more impressive, due to length, than the absolute level of noise when all fire with no delays, was my conjecture.
The delay coils did not work as described by kemarisite. The shell separation required was about fifty feet, which works out to about 0.02 seconds at the muzzle velocities involved, with the center gun being delayed that much compared to the wing guns. A 0.02 second delay is essentially undetectable for a human (it's about one-half of a movie frame's display duration). The ripple fire/staggered broadside seen in the famous footage of the ships firing broadsides were all the result of those clips being filmed during the 1980s refits. Apparently, the shock of firing a full broadside with the original delay coils was enough to break a lot of the new electronics that were installed aboard the ships, so new delay coils were fitted that would ensure that only one gun per turret would fire at any given time, with about a half-second delay to the next one, resulting in the famous "boom-boom-boom" cadence heard in those film clips. There is plenty of footage, if you dig for it, of US fast battleships firing shore bombardment in WW2 where all three guns go off essentially simultaneously, to human perception. Indeed, firing the wing guns independently caused greater wear and tear on the turret training mechanisms, due to the whip from the now-unbalanced recoil of the guns firing independently. As for the famous photos of Iowa firing broadsides off Vieques in '84, those were taken with the new delay coils in place and operating--if you look closely, you can see that each gun in each turret is at a different point in its operating cycle, and at least one of the guns hasn't actually fired yet. It just *looks* like they all fired simultaneously because of the sheer size and duration of the muzzle flash and blast from such large guns. (You can also see the same thing in the famous photos of New Jersey splitting her fire for a photo shoot about three years later.)
@@kemarisite My mistake, then. That said, 60 milliseconds is still *nearly* instantaneous to human perceptions; the delay seen in the firings back in the 80s was closer to 400-500 milliseconds. (I got my figure by just dividing the 50-foot separation figure by the nominal muzzle velocity of a 16"/50 Mark VII firing a Mark VIII APC shell--I *knew* I should have looked it up!)
I think it's fair to say that the launching of Riachuelo by Brazil was probably the final stopper that put to rest the question of "do we need a proper battle fleet?" After Riachuelo the questions became "how BIG of a navy do we want?"
I have to interject some actual ballistics info on the question at 55:56 about sound pressures for the big battleship guns. If Drach had ever looked at my ballistics file, he perhaps would have answered this with a bit more real data. Of course, the best data is to talk to someone that was on deck on several different battleships of different gun sizes when they were fired. There may also be some dB ratings on the big ships buried somewhere on each ship. But, Ballistics will have to do for a real scientific answer. If you start with the weakest big guns of WW II, the British KGV guns of 14", they (the AP round) produced only 142 million ft. lbs. of Muzzle Energy (ME), The Iowa's AP produced 262 million ft. lbs. of ME, and the Yamato's produced 327 million ft. lbs. of ME. To think that these all created the same sound pressures is ludicrous! In addition to that, the size of the projectile varied a fair amount as well., from about 1,600 lbs. on the KGV,, to 2,700 lbs. on the Iowa's, to 3,200 lbs. on the Yamato's. This will have an impact on the sound generated at blast time as well. In addition, if you fire handguns with exactly the same ammo, the length of the barrel will impact the sound you hear as well. if you fire handguns with exactly the same ammo, the length of the barrel will impact the sound as well. Those with the shorter barrel length will sound louder. But in the case of the WW II battleships and their guns and ammo, there is only one case that come close to this criteria of shooting the same ammo - the US South Dakota's (16/45 caliber) vs. the Iowa's (16/50 caliber) , where they both shot the 2,700 lb. projectile, but the Iowa's used six 110 lbs power bags and the South Dakota's used six 90 lbs. powder bags, thus making the ammo not exactly the same. Thus, this is not the case where they both shot the very same ammo, but it it is fairly close. So, did the South Dakota's sound louder?
First question, on signals, there most definitely did exist standard flag signals for communicating navigational hazards or passing orders for dealing with adverse weather. Flag signalling actually became a very subtle and flexible art and should not be dismissed as primitive.
If you want to be truly harsh then you could say all Bismarck managed to do was sink an old WW1 battlecruiser that was in desperate need of a major repair and refit, and even then it was down to pure luck.
Even n July 2023 many Americans decry having any overseas involvement. As was said to me just yesterday. The navy exclusively provides the means to do just that.
Why was the US so bad at identifying enemy ships at the battle off Samar. Johnston recorded being hit by three 14-inch shells from the battlecruiser Kongo at 12,000 yards, when she was hit by three 18.1-inch shells from battleship Yamato at 20,300 yards. Hoel and Heerman recorded launching torpedoes at what they thought was a cruiser column but what was actually the battlecruiser Haruna. Several shells that slammed into the escort carrier Gambier Bay that were thought to have been 14-inch shells and even a few 8-inch shells were yet again 18.1-inch shells from Yamato. Why was that?
I think this was asked like two weeks ago? You are just basically looking at silhouette book. They weren't close enough for an accurate identification. Nor was it particularly relevant who got credit for shooting at you at the time.
Well, first off, at that point, ONI was still convinced that Yamato carried only 16" guns. Secondly, Hoel and Heerman were desperately trying to avoid getting hit and obliterated while sailing through rain squalls and gun smoke when they launched their torpedoes, so they didn't exactly have a long time to look at their target for proper identification. And as for the shells that hit Johnston and Gambier Bay being misidentified, well, when you're aboard a ship that is in the process of rapidly being literally shot to pieces by the enemy, whilst trying to keep what's left of the ship fighting and/or keep yourself alive as it goes down, you don't really have time to go take a tape measure to the holes and report their actual diameter; they were basically reporting the hits after the fact, based on what they felt like and how devastating they were, and guessing at the most likely ship to deliver them. This is boosted by how many of those 18.1-inch hits from Yamato were AP shells that didn't strike anything solid enough to cause them to burst, so they did less damage than would be expected of a 16-inch shell, but were definitely bigger than an eight-inch cruiser shell, so they assumed that they were 14" shells from a Kongou-class, rather than 16" shells from Nagato or Yamato. In short, it's because it's pretty damned hard to do a detailed accounting of what hits you suffered if you don't have the ship available to use for documenting the damage and measuring the holes and such. Same reason why Admiral Lee only claimed Washington scored nine hits on Kirishima at 2nd Guadalcanal, while examination of the wreck has identified at least 20 such hits.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
If Yamamoto survived his flight in April 1943, how would the outcome of the remaining major Pacific naval battles change, if they would change at all?
If you swapped the Yorktowns and Shokakus around so the former would be in the IJN and the latter were in the USN, but without changing the aircraft, how differently would various 1942 carrier engagements go?
Was the Montana class the last battleship design for the U.S.?
Recent edition of the TV genealogy show "Who do you think you are" featured the HMS Ulster Queen, a passenger ferry that sailed across the Irish Sea through the 1930s. When war broke out the ship was converted into a auxiliary anti-aircraft cruiser, served on the Arctic convoys and elsewhere. Survived the war but was not converted back to civilian use and was scrapped. Could be worth a 5 minuted prog ?
In your opinion what would it take to convince the US navy to stay with the 14 inch gun instead of going to 16 inches?
For example, if you could absolutely guarantee no loss of main gun accuracy with 14 inch guns while maneuvering. Or some other magic wand type gimmick.
Would the US navy have reconsider sticking with the 14s.
Thank you, Drachinifel.
Thanknyou ahesflow6814
Thank you, datadavis.
Jellicoe going with the clasic response of 'with regards to the reminicances of the Admiral Beaty recollections may vary.'
As an old artilleryman I found the 105mm gun with semifixed ammo, a brass case with a shell on the end, sounded as a loud fast crack. The 155mm with separate bagged ammo, like you see in the footage from the BB main guns (only smaller) sounded as a longer duration boom.
My only personal experience is with small arms.
I used to shoot a lot, usually using ball ammo (full metal jacket, cheap and plentiful back in the day) I can share my impressions.
As both shooter and spectator, 9mm was a crack. .45 ACP was a boom from 4.4"-5" barrel. (.25 ACP was a pop, easily mistaken for a slammed door or dropped book.)
As a shooter or spectator, 9mm from a 3.5" was the same as a 4.5" barrel.
As a shooter, 9mm from a 16.5" barrel was a softer crack than the pistol length barrels; as a spectator the 16.5" barrel gave a louder and sharper crack than the pistol length barrels.
As an almost-receiver of small arms fire I always heard the same fast buzz, like a wasp zooming past. (Twice as a hunter I was subjected to negligent rifle fire. As a citizen I experienced around a dozen pistol fire ricochets.)
And, once as a citizen two idiots conspired and managed to negligently shoot me in in boot heel with a .25 ACP. I don't remember hearing the discharge at all, I just remember the thump of me hitting the wooden floor having performed an unsustainable silly walk. Then the standard "I didn't know it was loaded" from the shooter, and "Why didn't you check" from the lender.
that fits the pressure curve
8954🥚
2988🤠🤭
The discussion of Jellicoe generally trying to avoid any drama regarding his thoughts on Beatty reminds me a lot of how the generation of US naval officers who experienced the Sampson-Schley controversy in the aftermath of the Battle of Santiago de Cuba collectively settled on a mentality of never again "airing the Navy's laundry" in public like that. That group included nearly all of the officers who would become the senior admirals of the USN during World War II, and this incident is frequently cited as a reason why naval officers were sometimes not punished as severely or as publicly as one might expect for some transgressions (i.e. Mitscher for his obfuscations after Midway, or Halsey after Leyte Gulf/the typhoon/the other typhoon).
I wonder if there was any similar incident in the relatively recent history of the Royal Navy which influenced Jellicoe to act in the way he did.
Jellicoe was the Exec officer aboard HMS Victoria when Admiral Tryon ordered the manoeuvre which caused the collision with HMS Camperdown off Tripoli in 1893. He would have been in a position to argue with the order on the bridge. I don't know if he did.
There was also the drama around Charles Beresford and Jackie Fisher with the introduction of the Dreadnought-size ships in the decade before WW1
And of course, one of the risks of trying to minimize crew is ending up with a crew too small to do emergency damage control and fight the ship at the same time, especially once the crew starts taking casualties.
*side eyes LCS program complaints*
I’m even more suspicious of the USN’s proposals for minimally & optionally manned mini-arsenal ships…
If CarDiv 5 is replaced with CarDiv 2 at Coral Sea. It might be a bloodier tactical victory for the IJN. If I recall Shattered Sword correctly, Soryu and Hiryu had highly trained and experienced pilots. But their main strength came from Dive Bombing. So highly likely that Lexington may take 3 Torpedoes and another 1 or 2 Bomb hits. Which may sink Lexington outright. Whereas Yorktown may avoid the Torpedoes, she may take similar damage to Enterprise at Eastern Solomons. So 3-4 550lb Bomb hits, which is survivable but would mean Yorktown would not entirely be ready for Midway. Unless the damage control crews and later the shipyard workers at Pearl Harbor are being Intravenously fed coffee.
Soryu is smaller than Shokaku and arguably more maneuverable. The issue is that she is also more fragile regarding bomb hits. For the sake of argument, Soryu still takes 3 hits. The explosions could catch something flammable like her Avgas system, even without aircraft in the hangar. Also, if one of the hits lands next to her stack, like at Midway and penetrates the lower hangar. Then it could damage or destroy her boiler and engine rooms leaving her dead in the water.
Fast forward to Midway, and Shokaku and Zuikaku, for the sake of argument, are loaded with the same numbers of Aircraft as at Coral Sea. That's 21 Zeroes for Shokaku and 25 Zeroes for Zuikaku. 20 Vals for Shokaku and 22 Vals for Zuikaku, and 19 and 20 Kates for Shokaku and Zuikaku, respectively. Also, there are deck plans of Shokaku and Zuikaku's hangar decks, complete with aircraft spots. Assuming that the events leading up to and during the "Dauntless Ex Machina" occur similarly. Shokaku may end up like Franklin in that it would be a long, bloody and fiery battle with a slight chance of survival. But without the redundancies in here, damage control systems and the open hangar to vent the explosions, fire and smoke. She may go the same way as Akagi and Kaga. Zuikaku if caught in the same circumstances as Hiyru (closed in on TF16 and TF17 and lost most of its air group). Then it could take the 4x 1000lb bomb hits. As Shokaku survived a similar number at Santa Cruz. Of course, if those aircraft are full and ready for another strike, it would cause a fuel-air explosion. Resulting in Zuikaku being sunk outright or being scuttled. Being close to Midway would mean that even if the damage control crews worked through the night to get the fires under control. She may be spotted and tracked by radar-equipped PBYs and be finished off by Enterprise and Hornet the following morning.
24:16
9165?
@@datadavismate you alright? You havin a stroke?
I think the state of the carriers when they're hit is the single biggest factor. If CarDiv 5 replaces CarDiv 2 at Midway, they'd have a better chance of survival. But, if they're hit while in the same state that Soryu and Hiryu historically were (vulnerable fuel and/or ammunition all over the hangar decks), I don't think Shokaku, Zuikaku, or any Japanese carrier in 1942, is going to survive those hits. You made a good comparison to USS Franklin, but of course Franklin was bigger than the Shokakus, had much better damage control systems than the Shokakus, and the USN in 1945 had vastly more experience with that sort of damage control than the IJN did in 1942.
Conversely, when Shokaku was hit at Coral Sea, she survived in part because she had very few aircraft aboard at the time (they were almost all either attacking Yorktown and Lexington, or aloft on CAP). Swap in Soryu or Hiryu taking those same three hits, and they'd be at greater risk of sinking, but might survive due to the much lesser risk of fire.
One other point about CarDiv 2 at Coral Sea is that, given their smaller air groups and given the losses the IJN had taken in the earlier stages of the battle (especially the debacle of the attempted night attack on May 7), CarDiv 2 might not have had as many aircraft available to fight the main battle on May 8 as CarDiv 5 did historically.
@@adenkyramud5005 nah man, just had too much to dream last night lol
Drydock - Episode 256
Coming up on the five year mark.
I remember when Drach told us if this feature was popular he might make it regular........the world was much younger then... .
I remember laughing at the opening music for Dry-Dock 42. That was May, 2019.
The time has certainly flown by!
edit: Oh, and the robovoice! I'd love to hear a retro style Five Minute Guide or Dry-Dock done with the robovoice. It'd probably blow up the comments.
@@mbryson2899 I remember "robo voice" as I found this great channel when the sip guides and dry docks were in single digits :)
I'm sure Mrs Drach is grateful they found the cure for that condition 😅
@@davidbrennan660
We were all much younger then....that's before we watched a few of his marathon 'Patreon Drydocks'.
@@mbryson2899Now he’s doing collaborations with some of the world’s most respected WWII naval historians. Party of me wants to be jelly sometimes but the fact is everything he’s earned every bit of his newfound fame & fortune. Turns out that an ordinary fella with exceptional talent & a great passion can accomplish quite a bit. All you need is a willingness to sweat, bleed & consume copious amounts of Irn Bru…
I love the Navy, but I have to say that I would never have thought that I would end up becoming an avid fan of technical specifications of 100+ year old battle cruisers. Nah I lie, I just didn’t know I needed this.
At Midway the Japanese fueled and armed their planes in the hangar because they had to cycle the CAP.. Tully and Parshall point out that fueling and arming in the hangar was at that time of the war Japanese doctrine, as well.
Regarding the Turret and broadside ironclads question.
USS Dunderburg's early design iteration had 2 turrets and a casement in between.
Design was changed later, extending the casement over where the turrets were originally going to sit.
In other words Jellicoe was a 19th century gentleman and Beatty was a 20th century cad.
3635
100%
Thanks and for the description of the sound booth in which Warspite fired her guns. In that complex intricate soundscape each shot would be snowflake different, but all horrific.
Re: 00:26:36 - Could you explain the lack of an island on some carriers like the Ryūjō?
The design of the first US Navy "Super Carrier", USS United States (CVA-58) didn't have an Island included in the design (but it was supposed to have folding funnels and a retractable pilothouse). I wonder what the designers were smoking or drinking when they came up with that design?
It was supposed to carry 4 engine bombers (nuclear capable?)
So uranium spiked cocaine?
Does anyone know why the sailors of HMS Trafalgar are wearing two different uniform styles in the final segment? Fascinating photo.
discarding the officers at the side I guess the black uniformed sailors might be petty officers instead of enlisted? I don't know however. The only sailor whose rank insignia seems visible (other than the Captain on the right) seems to be a Leading Rate.
@@gokbay3057 Yes, not considering the Petty Officer and Captain, the sailors are half in white and half in blue.
For reasons diverse and somewhat subjective, many navies have long maintained multiple colors of uniform of their sailors (up to six in some fleets) and what colors you wear when is somewhat left up to the individual captains to determine as they will. If the CPO or the Ship's Captain wants the engineering crew to be in blue and the deck swabs in white on a given day, so it was.
My Brother-in-Law, an US Navy officer, had to maintain at least four colors for normal operations on his ship and what he wore was determined by a rotating schedule the Captain devised. No real rationale beyond it ensured all the uniforms the sailors had were worn regularly.
Different jobs? Similar to flight deck crews. Easiest way to tell if someone is where they are not supposed to be.
My guess is that the white uniforms are some sort of work clothes, as to me they appear dirtier and less well cared for than the blue uniforms.
Thanks for the solid content.
Great as usual, Thanks Drach.
LST according to my now deceased neighbor who served on one was really known as Long Slow Target
I always heard it as Large Stationary Target.
I suspect the origin was the Bubbleheads - to them there are only Subs and Targets
Sailors have always been prone to gallows humor. American escort carrier sailors in WWII always insisted that CVE stood for Combustible, Vulnerable and Expendable….
@@grahamstrouse1165 True even in the Army. David Drake said the only humor in a combat zone is gallows humor.
How did Landing Ship Tanks (LSTs) make the trip across the Pacific Ocean? Slowly . . . very slowly.
My tutor always referred to PPI as Plan Position Indicator, which makes sense in that the view is in plan. Before that came about, I am aware of at least one sort of display that used twin linear indicators. One displayed range and the other azimuth and a spike on both would give the overall result. Obviously this is in the days when Cathode Ray Tubes were new and cool technology and the prototype semiconductor transistor was about the size of a fist.
A cathode ray oscilloscope was used to measure fast changes in viscosity. The man who brought it in had spent the war going back and forth across the Atlantic in a corvette.
He told me it had been used (or possibly this type of instrument) to look out for submarines.
The screen was a green disc about 3 inches in diameter.
We were able to establish that abrupt changes were happening and got a recorder which printed, as far as I can remember, 6 inches in one second. Instead of a pen it bounced light off a mirror in a tiny tube. D
@ 0:31:32 From my understanding (and my seeing) medium & large sizes of boats in heavy seas, they go to the top of a wave crest and then often completely or almost completely disappear into a trough behind the wave(s) crest...
This probably explains a lot of the misses since you have to get the timing just right for when the shells get there to hit the "Gosh Darn" thing! Too early or too late you either hit he wave the boat is "hiding" behind or go over (litterally)by a mile!
As a different 'minimizing the rolls' there was also the cunning measure started by the Dutch Navy of making a reduction to the number of Admirals they had on the rolls: create a new rank of "Commodore", which had all the responsibilities of an Admiral at the time, but only half the pay!
I'd like to suggest you do a look at U505 and it's final home in Chicago
I think you should do a couple videos on Union and Confederate warships. Would be interesting because this time period was the transition from wooden ships to iron and steam power. A lot of novel ideas on both sides too.
He has
LST: My grandfather's definition was large slow Target😅😊. Especially after briefly serving on one.
Wouldn't the CSS Stonewall Jackson fit the description of an Ironclad with both a casement and turret?
22:52. Larger carriers made in same standard is just more planes, bombs and fuel to do their worst.
Having seen and heard 16/50s USS Iowa. She was 15 miles away, target rock was 3 miles. The shell hit was louder. But still the shot fired sound was after the shell impact. And both shook the glassware on USS Spiegel Grove lsd32
Regarding the sound of firing guns. I understand that normally USN 16 inch guns fired a staggered broadside, implicitly this the if a nine gun broadside results in a longer 'experience'. How often did both or all guns in a turret fire at the same moment, ditto on a multi turret ship was it usual for, to start with, one turret to fire then another etc or was the firing autonomous?
Most US ships with triple turrets were firing ragged broadsides because of the delay coils installed to separate shells from one another to avoid shell dispersion from turbulence.
@@kemarisite that is what I thought, the photo of Iowa doing a broadside was done as a one off with the delay coils 'deactivated'. The sound of a ripple of 9, with delay coils would be far more impressive, due to length, than the absolute level of noise when all fire with no delays, was my conjecture.
The delay coils did not work as described by kemarisite. The shell separation required was about fifty feet, which works out to about 0.02 seconds at the muzzle velocities involved, with the center gun being delayed that much compared to the wing guns. A 0.02 second delay is essentially undetectable for a human (it's about one-half of a movie frame's display duration). The ripple fire/staggered broadside seen in the famous footage of the ships firing broadsides were all the result of those clips being filmed during the 1980s refits. Apparently, the shock of firing a full broadside with the original delay coils was enough to break a lot of the new electronics that were installed aboard the ships, so new delay coils were fitted that would ensure that only one gun per turret would fire at any given time, with about a half-second delay to the next one, resulting in the famous "boom-boom-boom" cadence heard in those film clips.
There is plenty of footage, if you dig for it, of US fast battleships firing shore bombardment in WW2 where all three guns go off essentially simultaneously, to human perception. Indeed, firing the wing guns independently caused greater wear and tear on the turret training mechanisms, due to the whip from the now-unbalanced recoil of the guns firing independently.
As for the famous photos of Iowa firing broadsides off Vieques in '84, those were taken with the new delay coils in place and operating--if you look closely, you can see that each gun in each turret is at a different point in its operating cycle, and at least one of the guns hasn't actually fired yet. It just *looks* like they all fired simultaneously because of the sheer size and duration of the muzzle flash and blast from such large guns. (You can also see the same thing in the famous photos of New Jersey splitting her fire for a photo shoot about three years later.)
@@rdfox76 looking at navweaps, it appears about 0.060 seconds (60 milliseconds) was the standard for battleship guns in US service.
@@kemarisite My mistake, then. That said, 60 milliseconds is still *nearly* instantaneous to human perceptions; the delay seen in the firings back in the 80s was closer to 400-500 milliseconds. (I got my figure by just dividing the 50-foot separation figure by the nominal muzzle velocity of a 16"/50 Mark VII firing a Mark VIII APC shell--I *knew* I should have looked it up!)
Ty
I think it's fair to say that the launching of Riachuelo by Brazil was probably the final stopper that put to rest the question of "do we need a proper battle fleet?"
After Riachuelo the questions became "how BIG of a navy do we want?"
1184
Signalling in the Royal Navy is taught at the Ralph Seymour Flag School.
what's the signal for I see torpedo boats
Shoot the most competent ship in the formation.
If I may opine: Jellicoe was a gentleman, and Beatty merely a player
8583🤔
Beatty was a donkey.
As for prearranged signaling, limited sail disposition could be used.
I have to interject some actual ballistics info on the question at 55:56 about sound pressures for the big battleship guns. If Drach had ever looked at my ballistics file, he perhaps would have answered this with a bit more real data. Of course, the best data is to talk to someone that was on deck on several different battleships of different gun sizes when they were fired. There may also be some dB ratings on the big ships buried somewhere on each ship. But, Ballistics will have to do for a real scientific answer.
If you start with the weakest big guns of WW II, the British KGV guns of 14", they (the AP round) produced only 142 million ft. lbs. of Muzzle Energy (ME), The Iowa's AP produced 262 million ft. lbs. of ME, and the Yamato's produced 327 million ft. lbs. of ME. To think that these all created the same sound pressures is ludicrous! In addition to that, the size of the projectile varied a fair amount as well., from about 1,600 lbs. on the KGV,, to 2,700 lbs. on the Iowa's, to 3,200 lbs. on the Yamato's. This will have an impact on the sound generated at blast time as well.
In addition, if you fire handguns with exactly the same ammo, the length of the barrel will impact the sound you hear as well. if you fire handguns with exactly the same ammo, the length of the barrel will impact the sound as well. Those with the shorter barrel length will sound louder. But in the case of the WW II battleships and their guns and ammo, there is only one case that come close to this criteria of shooting the same ammo - the US South Dakota's (16/45 caliber) vs. the Iowa's (16/50 caliber) , where they both shot the 2,700 lb. projectile, but the Iowa's used six 110 lbs power bags and the South Dakota's used six 90 lbs. powder bags, thus making the ammo not exactly the same. Thus, this is not the case where they both shot the very same ammo, but it it is fairly close. So, did the South Dakota's sound louder?
First question, on signals, there most definitely did exist standard flag signals for communicating navigational hazards or passing orders for dealing with adverse weather. Flag signalling actually became a very subtle and flexible art and should not be dismissed as primitive.
Most lct's carried as deck cargo by lst which sailed in divisions of 6 or flotilla of 36 vessels...the lst would be tilted to launch lct on deck
What is that thing in the water in front of the Ryujo?
Mooring buoy
ruclips.net/video/6zbN42Eh5C8/видео.html
A Russian torpedo boat?
Hey Drach. Any words on the ROUND RUSSIAN popov lol river patrol ships. LoL. Totally round iron clads.
Woohoo, a nice round number!
Happy 2^8-isode!
If you want to be truly harsh then you could say all Bismarck managed to do was sink an old WW1 battlecruiser that was in desperate need of a major repair and refit, and even then it was down to pure luck.
Even n July 2023 many Americans decry having any overseas involvement. As was said to me just yesterday. The navy exclusively provides the means to do just that.
Ur da best!
OMG, not one of ours let's go over there and blow it up, lol😂 priceless
Come get torpedoed Drach! 😅
Are you saying you see TORPEDO BOATS‽
@@AnimeSunglasses About a dozen of them! From all directions!
@@treyhelms5282
@@AnimeSunglasses Ow! *Curses in Russian*
Re iron clads? Cast or wrought?
Wrought / forged. Casting steel pieces that large was a long ways off yet.
Why was the US so bad at identifying enemy ships at the battle off Samar. Johnston recorded being hit by three 14-inch shells from the battlecruiser Kongo at 12,000 yards, when she was hit by three 18.1-inch shells from battleship Yamato at 20,300 yards. Hoel and Heerman recorded launching torpedoes at what they thought was a cruiser column but what was actually the battlecruiser Haruna. Several shells that slammed into the escort carrier Gambier Bay that were thought to have been 14-inch shells and even a few 8-inch shells were yet again 18.1-inch shells from Yamato. Why was that?
I think this was asked like two weeks ago? You are just basically looking at silhouette book. They weren't close enough for an accurate identification. Nor was it particularly relevant who got credit for shooting at you at the time.
I'd imagine trying to ID a ship at 7 miles and beyond would be fairly difficult, much less with shells going both ways furiously.
Why did the Japanese misidentified Jeep Carriers and Destroyers to Cruisers and Fleet carrier?
@@issacfoster1113 perhaps both sides got a case of Buck fever? Hunter's get out in the woods and think everything looks like a deer.
Well, first off, at that point, ONI was still convinced that Yamato carried only 16" guns. Secondly, Hoel and Heerman were desperately trying to avoid getting hit and obliterated while sailing through rain squalls and gun smoke when they launched their torpedoes, so they didn't exactly have a long time to look at their target for proper identification. And as for the shells that hit Johnston and Gambier Bay being misidentified, well, when you're aboard a ship that is in the process of rapidly being literally shot to pieces by the enemy, whilst trying to keep what's left of the ship fighting and/or keep yourself alive as it goes down, you don't really have time to go take a tape measure to the holes and report their actual diameter; they were basically reporting the hits after the fact, based on what they felt like and how devastating they were, and guessing at the most likely ship to deliver them.
This is boosted by how many of those 18.1-inch hits from Yamato were AP shells that didn't strike anything solid enough to cause them to burst, so they did less damage than would be expected of a 16-inch shell, but were definitely bigger than an eight-inch cruiser shell, so they assumed that they were 14" shells from a Kongou-class, rather than 16" shells from Nagato or Yamato.
In short, it's because it's pretty damned hard to do a detailed accounting of what hits you suffered if you don't have the ship available to use for documenting the damage and measuring the holes and such. Same reason why Admiral Lee only claimed Washington scored nine hits on Kirishima at 2nd Guadalcanal, while examination of the wreck has identified at least 20 such hits.
36:40 French comment de jour
46:51 That's funny.. just like the UK wanted out of EU and keep the trade rights.😂
It's a mooring buoy. Saves a ship frim having to drop her anchor.
The was a joke about Quebec separatists that they wanted separation everywhere except the wallet.
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46th, 23 July 2023