You mentioned couple of times, that if transported to WW2, you would choose US BB (forgot witch one), because nobody was killed aboard during the war. I read that same was true for HMS Jarvis. Why not UK ship instead? Is my information wrong?
After the battle of the Denmark straight. Why didn't the british took advantage of Bismarck turning towards them, to distract from the Prinze Eugen, to attack it 3 on 1??
it's well known about the British shells at Jutland bursting on impact, I wonder if there is enough information to say what damage could have been caused to the High Seas Fleet if, for example, the later improved (green boy?) shells had been available to the Grand Fleet? 36.42 of your video alludes to maybe half a dozen sinkings but a more in depth investigation would be interesting
The book Ignition! has a similar line in it. It describes how fluorine has a nasty habit of setting organic stuff on fire, including cotton, rubber, and engineers.
I love this. This is absolutely lovely. There is absolutely no reason for me to know anything about face hardened steel plating or semi armor piercing ammunition but yet here I am spending hours upon hours learning about such topics.
I did not even serve in army nor navy (because I was incabable) and so I have zero knowledge about any weaponry science ... except what I read in a few books, and: what Drach is explaining to us. In my naive view, I thought the only reason why the ball was replaced by a "longshot" was aerodynamics ...
Crews would literally hammer the iron shot into shape. They would also measure the shot and choose the ones that were the best size (and shape) for their particular gun. These shot would be the ones stacked on the "brass monkey" to be used first. (although they would sometimes fire a couple of less good shot initially to warm the gun before using the more accurate "best" shot).
@@dimesonhiseyes9134 Actually, it's surprisingly easy, for a given value of "round". Shot towers take advantage of the tendency of liquids, including molten metals, to form spherical drops when allowed to fall freely under gravity. Whilst the products were rarely perfect spheres, the cannon the balls were being fired from were hardly precision engineered either
@@talltroll7092 Now show me the shot tower that can form 10-20 pound solid iron cannonballs. Thing would collapse under its own weight, because you'd have to build taller than the Burj Khalifa. What I'm trying to say is that the shot tower concept does not scale well. Even lead buckshot requires a very tall tower indeed, and it only gets worse with a material with higher melting temperatures and larger size shot. You'd need a tower several kilometers tall to form something that could be fired out of even a parrot gun, let alone a full-on cannon. So you stick to molds for cannonballs and hammer out the imperfections as best you're able to measure them.
@@talltroll7092 with lead shot you are correct. However that is not how they made iron shot for naval guns. It's more or less impossible to make shot that large using a drop method even with lead, which has a much lower melting point. Iron balls were made the old fashioned way of casting.
At a local foundry a 60 pound James round came in during the scrap metal drives during WWII. Being wise and prudent this shell was put aside. Years later we found the current foundry owner trying to remove the contact fuse. We persuaded him to think better of it.
A fascinating time to be an engineer, metallurgist or chemist working on shell and armour development. But, probably very frustrating trying to get the old fogies in the admiralty to adopt new ideas! Poor John Jellicoe, he pushes for more effective large calibre shells, but gets promoted to command the Grand Fleet, so nothing changes. Then, when the outcome of Jutland is disappointing, due in no small part to the mediocre large calibre shells, he gets the blame and (mediocre) Beatty gets his job. That's life!!
Also Orks: OR YOUSE COULD SEND OVER A FEW NOBS WIT' POWER KLAWS TA KRUMP 'EM PROPER. MEBBE YA COULD BUILD A GUN WHAT FIRES NOBS AT STUFF? Origin of Ork boarding torpedoes and drop pods, which are basically the same thing pointed at different targets.
@@eligedzelman5127 Probably because it has some serious issues. I lost count of the number of time I had to re-try one mission. The AI ship I was supposed to disable kept flying into an asteroid. The game is also about as dense and impenetrable as naval armour.
I feel like a broken record saying the same thing every time but the quality of your content is top notch. For the upcoming video on special shells I propose: japanese sanshiki (like you said), japanese diving shells, colored dye packs, flares and gas generators, and the french variable time fuses of the dunkerques.
@@bpetnoi1472 it refers to the 20-sided dice used in Dungeons and Dragons and many other games for rolling to hit your target. A natural roll of 20 usually results in a critical hit, doing extra damage.
A long time ago, I was in this one Shadowrun game. I was playing the Decker, and I had managed to get 20 dice for this really important roll. I needed ONE DAMN SIX, but did I GET IT? Of course not!
@@evensgrey I feel you. On the flipside, I was playing Exalted once, and managed 15 successes on 15 dice, destroying a ballista targeting the boat I was on with a sling and a small glass marble (I was actually out of sling stones). Bear in mind Exalted uses 10-siders and for a success they have to come up 7 or higher...
Yes, please, more shell videos in the immediate future! I truly enjoy the details of all the machinery and weaponry in the videos. Ordnance and gunnery are my favorites. I know I'm a small fish in a large ocean but maybe you'll see my request. Thank you so much for your high quality content. Cheers from the States.
Which begs the question: Why did the Americans make the "Great White Fleet" when they could have gone with the "Great Red Fleet"? Would provide a bonus to speed and rate of fire... though of course at a penalty of a slightly higher chance of Communism. :P
Not quite DAKKA, more Da....K...K...A!, (sounds of shells and powder on their way up)...reload, wait for it, wait for it! Da....K..K...A! ( recalibrate everything, smoke is everywhere, wind has increased, enemy has changed tack. Repeat.
11:40 Differential cooling, especially cooled casting forms, was used also by Oliver farm equipment to make plowshares, it was perfected to the point that in many places even into the 1990's local foundries were still making plows using the iron casting technique globally. The process is rather well described and had the result that it produced iron castings with surface hardnesses much like Prince Rupert drops except on the level of iron. Oliver is responsible for making farming viable almost anywhere on Earth with that plow.
Ditto for railroad wheels of the period. They would be cast in a mold that was sand in the middle but iron at the rim so the tread would cool faster and be harder -- more wear resistant. Nowadays they simply press a yellow-hot billet into a die, roll it while still hot, then machine the final profile. th-cam.com/video/ui--zx1RmDU/w-d-xo.html
5:50 Hey! That's the shot oven in my town, St. Augustine, Florida at the Castillo de San Marcos! The oven is still there, positioned behind battlements by the harbor, but outside of the fort proper. Now I know why.
Your explanations are well written and very informative in a highly understandable manner. You are a born teacher and public speaker, as well as an expert in so many topics that I am amazed. Bravo, bravo, and again, bravo!
Being an ex-sailor, I found this fascinating. I was on an SSN, so we had no guns. When we were in port, I could see the Naval guns, but never got a close look at them. I was wondering about the history of the AP shell. This was an excellent source. And I watched it all the way through at one sitting.
I love the picture of the massive shell with the back half shattered... There's barely a dent or a scratch on the front of it!! That's a lot of hard steel
15:18 If that's the one you're talking about, I've rested my hand on that shell fragment many many times over the years. That's a fragment from a US 16" AP shell that was dug out of the French battleship Jean Bart and returned to us after the USS Massachusetts opened fire on her at Casablanca and struck her several times with the main battery. That fragment is displayed on the deck mounted onto turret #3. :) I have 35mm film pictures of me as a toddler touching it, and I have pictures all the way up to me as an 18 year old standing next to it which was when I last visited and touched it. I love Big Mamie. I really miss going to see this fragment as well as the twisted piece of deck armor that was damaged by the shore battery hit to an empty barracks. I miss saying hi to George the Gremlin on the forward turret, and tracking the cars on Braga Bridge with one of the 40mm Bofors mounts or a 20mm Oerlikon pretending they were Japanese planes. Museum ships are absolutely incredible. Battleship Cove was what got me to fall in love with military history, naval ships, and WW2. It was always incredible stepping aboard the Massachusetts and thinking "This exact ship beneath my feet fired the first and last US 16" shell of WW2 and never lost a man the entire time."
The US Super heavy shells were designed to be able to go through anything that was on the drawing board as a ship prior to WW2 in battleships. They had the capacity to punch through 27 inches of armor at 16k yards. We recovered the turret face armor of the Shinaro the 3rd Yamato class that was converted to a carrier. A 16 in superheavy penned it like it wasn't there.
Keep in mind, that test took place under unrealistic (point blank range, armour not inclined) conditions, so it isn’t the best indicator of how effective the 16” superheavy was (in spite of it being frequently used to argue that point); in fact the NavWeaps article discussing this exact test points out the result was highly misleading for this reason. The 16” superheavy could still punch through all belt and deck armour ever put on a ship, but there were a few other guns that could also do this, including the Italian 15” gun.
@@bkjeong4302 Of course, the American 16s could actually _hit_ the ship carrying that belt and deck armor... the Italian 15 not so much. Also, those test conditions, although generally unrealistic, could _theoretically_ happen in actual battle (Yamato and Iowa run across each other at point-blank range in a storm, both sides aim their guns at each other and open fire, and Yamato happens to take a clean hit to a turret faceplate at an instant when she's momentarily rolled 45 degrees towards Iowa by the violent sea conditions).
I've watched nearly every Drac vid there is. So when I open new vids I 👍 it first before it even loads. Why? Drac always delivers 100% and never disappoints. One of the greatest channels of our era!!
@@billgates2903 Yes. That is why I suggested upgrading from that, to something more durable. Although I would have expected you to focus more on the movement problems accorded to hardboard armour.
As always, another excellent production. I especially love the way you introduced the subject of sectional density with your “tennis ball” demonstration. For big game hunters, sectional density of the projectile is an important factor in its effectiveness on the targeted game as some animals have the equivalent of natural armor, e.g. wild boars’ protective shoulder shields and elephants’ very thick skulls. Many people would be surprised at how even modern bullet construction and a well placed shot doesn’t always result in defeating nature’s protections for these animals.
Personal military firearms and their munitions are usually geared towards defeating humans or the body armor they wear of course. Usually with a doctrine behind them. The reason for the adoption of smaller, higher velocity rounds in some cases that have less lethality but can defeat body armor. Animals and evolution makes far less specific plans. It's definitely interesting to consider how human devices develop for such specific scenarios when those devices involve competition with other humans.
Another excellent documentary from a generous 'lecturer/military historian/engineer'. Nice video 👌 and your efforts add something substantive to our lives.
I’m building a battleship made of glow stone in Minecraft, but I still wanted a lot of realistic details. This series is perfect for reference thanks so much
I love you picturesque adjectives (hole poking device, shore bombardment landscaping etc.) Sometimes i watch a video just to see what you will add. Thanks.
I had to laugh, just a little, when you said they weren't impressed with TNT compared to other HE types. When calculating how much ordinance you need for a demo job, ALL explosives are compared to TNT. It's RE factor (relative effectiveness) is 1.0. A job calls for X pounds of TNT and you use the RE factor to calculate how much of what's available you need for the mission. I'm just easily amused lol
Well yes there are many different explosive compounds which provide a greater force to mass ratio than standered tnt . TNT is only used as a base measurement as 1 it is relatively simple and easy to make in large quantity’s and 2 it was discovered before a majority of other explosives making it the default standered and 3 relatively speaking it is a stable compound which makes it suited to demolition and other tasks where the exact weight of the explosives has little impact on its performance
@@andrewgraham6006 you're not wrong on any particular point. My post was just about TNT being the default we use when calculating a job. Example: task order comes in, Z needs to go away. Look in a FM to see how much ordinance is required to blow up a Z of the size in front of us. It says you should use 100lbs of tnt. We don't have any TNT on the truck. We've got a shit load of C4. C4 has an RE factor of 1.34. 100÷1.34=74.6lbs round off to 75lbs Stack it, prime it, boom. Miller time. The books give all requirements based on using tnt for the job, if for no other reason than a manual that lists each available types of ordinance on every job type is going to be many pages longer. Give one amount then trust us to do the simple math. Of course, there are jobs where TNT isn't the best choice. Moving a big ass rock for example. ANFO is a much slower blast so it is more likely to just move the rock where C4 would shatter it. Now you've got a bunch of heavy fragments to move but they're too small to justify a second shot. But, the book is still going to list the ordinance req based on TNT because it's the standard. So take that number and divide by 0.42. This is what i meant by TNT being the standard. It's just a fixed variable.
@@kennethdeanmiller7324 lol oh man, i bet that old commercial has haunted you a significant portion of your life. But I'll argue that right after blowing shit up, it's definitely miller time. It's also not a bad idea to phone ahead to the wife or girlfriend and suggest she does some yoga, or at least some stretching exercises so's to avoid pulling any muscles lol. TNT: The OG Viagra
I love that a 48 minute video about naval shells gets 85K views. If Jellicoe's paperwork for better shells for the Royal Navy had as much attention as this video, then Jutland would have been somewhat different.
Wow! Despite its abbreviated nature, that was a lot to take in. Talk about people working at maximum capacity. But all in all a worthwhile video. It will of course require another see-through, when my head regains its normal size. Thanks Drachinifel.
I've watched many vids of yours now and I am consistently amazed on the amount of information you provide along with the quality and humour you put into the narration. top notch sir.
My hometown is Bethlehem, where we built the American navy. Most American ships and guns from WWI and WWII come from steel made here. Sadly it closed before I was born.
The heavy forge is fully active and was spun off before the Bethlehem collapse. I worked in the plant which was an incredible place. If there was a call for new big guns and armor, Lehigh Valley Heavy Forge is fully capable of producing it.
Roman delivered several 20 inch round ball coastal artillery. Their range was between, seven and eleven miles. Smaller boar artillery was sleave to fire cylindrical wheels.
I’m going to recommend that if one wants an in-depth continuing description of the cannon and shot used by crews of English wood ships of the line in the period 1790 to 1815 read the books by Patrick O’Brien - which are available in the libraries of the U.S.
What books does O'Brian write that cover muzzle loading artillery "in depth"? Because I have read most of his stuff and never saw anything like that. He writes historical fiction. He goes as far as to explain the difference between carronades and guns, he describes in the narrative how they operate them, and that it about it. I do not consider that "in depth", not even close. He never even explains what "honeycombing" is, or how during battle the crews can both time the guns to the roll of the ship _and_ fire at the same time as the others, and many other questions he never adequately explains. Because they are novels, not books about guns. For all the technical jargon he uses he never actually does much explaining of how it all works. Absolutely recommend the books though, fantastic, some of my favorite. I actually bought the whole set after reading them 2-3 times from the library.
The flower like appearance for small arms round is mostly likely the result of the impact of jacketed hollow point on a steel plate. A full metal jacket or lead round nose bullet will look more like a disk.
Funny thing with projectile vs. armour hardness. At hyper velocity, 3km/s, both will behave as liquids so hardness is totaly irrelevant. It can even be a gas and it will still work. It is all about the impulse and the area.
Don't you love it how tank designers eventually had to go through same solutions as battleship designers, but on the basis of experience from their own mistakes instead of taking a peek into naval branches. And usually a few decades later:\
Came across your channel accidentally, instant subscribe on this content. Naval politics are particularly funny to me (family background), so very much enjoyed the insight into some of the little dramas of the British Navy's arms race, which is a huge topic in itself. And then I see you've done an episode on the Mark 14 torpedo and I knew this was the right place!
15:18 I've rested my hand on that shell fragment many many times over the years. That's a fragment from a US 16" AP shell that was dug out of the French battleship Jean Bart and returned to us after the USS Massachusetts opened fire on her at Casablanca and struck her several times with the main battery. That fragment is displayed on the deck mounted onto turret #3. :) I have 35mm film pictures of me as a toddler touching it, and I have pictures all the way up to me as an 18 year old standing next to it which was when I last visited and touched it. I love Big Mamie. I really miss going to see this fragment as well as the twisted piece of deck armor that was damaged by the shore battery hit to an empty barracks. I miss saying hi to George the Gremlin on the forward turret, and tracking the cars on Braga Bridge with one of the 40mm Bofors mounts or a 20mm Oerlikon pretending they were Japanese planes. Museum ships are absolutely incredible. Battleship Cove was what got me to fall in love with military history, naval ships, and WW2. It was always incredible stepping aboard the Massachusetts and thinking "This exact ship beneath my feet fired the first and last US 16" shell of WW2 and never lost a man the entire time."
The picture at 5:57 is in my home town if St Augustine, FL! I was told that it was used to make cannon balls but shows what they know haha. There are hundreds of old cannons and mortars all around the city. Cool place but don't move here it's a tourist trap and we don't need no more new yorkers
I just finally caught up after the 4+ hours drydock of last week, this weeks dry dock and the Belfast video. Guess Drach wants me to listen to another 50 minutes. 😅
22:34 picric acid is lyddite, which is made by the nitration of phenol, a petroleum distillate. not certain if you meant that it was made with cordite and lyddite, or if you mean that the shell filler was a mix of cordite and picric acid.
I used to play the old SSI game Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic back in the 90s. It had a thick manual that was also a pretty good history book about WWII Atlantic theater. One of the tactics sections mentions that while cruiser fire won't penetrate battleship armor, it is useful for starting nuisance fires and fore taking out things like gun directors and other sensitive bits above deck. And that's exactly what I used them for. I particularly like 6" gun cruisers, which often had 12 guns each and a rapid rate of fire, so I could form them up, get in close, and pepper the enemy battleships with them, then when my battleships came into range I had the advantage since I was not busy fighting fires and my fire control systems were all still in good shape.
@@tbg3889 It was called Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic. There was a follow-on to it that was about the Pacific war but it wasn't as good as North Atlantic.
There are stories told in British naval gazettes about gunnery officers changing the loads and the tactics depending on the range. At long range they ordered a single shot and a full charge of powder. As the range closed they would double the shot and reduce the charge to keep the guns from exploding... As they closed to point blank range the guns were loaded with three shots, and the charge was reduced again. This was done to increase the amount of wood splintered inside the target ship, and the point blank triple shot with reduced powder loads produced long sharp splinters that acted like lances impaling crew members, and the shot would frequently ricochet and skip around the inside wooden floors and bulkheads, showering splinters, and causing enormous damage.
I have watched this episode a number of times, as much for the humor as for the knowledge. Congrats on a most hilarious style of presentation! I have learned a great deal while laughing aloud.
Your note that ships are big and gun projectiles are tiny is the main difference between anti-ship and anti-tank ammo, regardless of penetration ability. Tanks are small and even a small bullet can hit something important if it gets inside, while ships are so big and mostly empty space so the shell damage-causing effects must be enlarged considerably for anything but a chance of nailing something important that is not replaceable is not large and lots of hits are needed on a ship unless the ship is profoundly unlucky..
@@jamesb4789 Correct, but HOOD had a design error. It was built for pre-WWI warfare where shells were not expected to remain intact if they hit at anything over 15-20 degrees from right angles against thick, face-hardened side armor and, even if they did penetrate, the shells had relatively reliable NON-DEALY base fuzes. "non-delay" means that they had no internal delay elements to allow the shell to move more than a very few feet inboard after punching through the armor, even if the shell was in perfect condition as it went through (it would always lose its windscreen and AP cap and perhaps a little of its nose, but otherwise be undamaged). Thus, the deck armor was in thin layers spaced over two or three decks from the level of the top of the main belt down to near the bottom edge of the main belt. Those would be enough to stop most fragments, so they were called "protective" decks, not true "armored" decks. The ships also usually had some thin side armor extending upward from the top edge of the main belt to set off the fuze of the big shells so that they would exploded well above the lowest protective deck layer and, due to the shallow angle of fall, caused the exploded shell fragments to skip off instead of going deep enough to reach the magazine. They also usually had a sloped "turtleback" deck layer behind the main belt to soak up such fragments that got through the heavy belt armor. HOOD was almost ready to start building when Jutland happened and new stronger-bodied, hard-capped APC shells (the so-called "Greenboys") were developed that could penetrate thick KC-type face-hardened side armor at 20 degrees (spec) and sometimes even 30 degrees (a US test of one of them) INTACT and thinner armor at up to 30 degrees INTACT (some new HOOD tests -- see below). On top of that, new delay-action fuzes were developed based somewhat loosely on German new model APC shells ("C/11" and "C/13" (1911 and 1913 models) 3.2- to 3.5-caliber ("L/3,2" to "L/3,5") length shells), which had poorly-designed, but sometimes functional base fuzes of nominal 0.025-second delay from the moment that the impact shock from the shell's nose set off the fuze, compared to roughly 0.003 second for the older non-delay designs (the German delay was rarely achieved, with lots of dud, short delays and long delays). The British fuze was much more reliable, being a very well-designed upgrade of their tried-and-true Number 16 APC base fuze, renamed the Number 16D (it also had a setting to allow it to revert back to non-delay when the shell was being loaded, as an option. Suddenly, the old thin spaced armor protection method was much less viable unless the shell could be slowed down by the armor considerably, as otherwise the shell at typical battle ranges would be able to move 30-60' inside the ship aft hitting the outermost plate that set it off (which was virtually every plate here due to the many thinly-armored plates used for internal decks, bulkheads, and sloped "splinter screens" -- a "screen" was not going to stop an intact APC round! So a set of new tests were performed on sets of test plates arranged like amidships portions of the original HOOD side armor design, including decks and inclined plates and bulkheads arranged closely to the thicknesses and spacing and tilting that the actual ship had adjacent to its magazines (the worst placed to get a hit, obviously). Several tests were performed using the latest British 15" APC shells, with and without fillers and fuzes, fired at various equivalent angles of fall and striking velocities to see what would happen and what could be done to fix any indicated excessive weaknesses found. They found that as long as the ship got rather close (but not TOO close!) to any enemy with shells like the British ones being used here (actually the British shells were somewhat better than those used by BISMARCK, both being about the same size, so these tests were quite relevant to what happened to HOOD later), so that the angle of fall was rather shallow, hits on the upper side that went through the moderately-thick upper hull side armor before hitting the thin decks, the distance with a shallow angle was such that in most cases the shell would not get to the level of the magazine before it went out the far side of the ship or perhaps exploded against the belt on the far side with the wide anti-torpedo system and internal protective plates being able to stop the fragments and blast that bounced backward into the ship, just as against the old non-delay shells. Same with shells that hit the weather deck and penetrated that No problem there. They then analyzed the 12" belt armor and 2" high-tensile steel hull it was bolted to and decided that this armor, though not as thick as the British WWI later battleships had, was inclined and not terribly weaker than those battleships, so that was not any more of a problem than a British battleship of the time. The armor was on the light side, but not by much and most shells would never get to the magazine before they exploded higher up, unless they could punch clean through the belt armor intact, which was not much more likely than against, say, one of the "R" Class British battleships. They did find one significant weakness, though. If a 15" or so shell hit the 7" upper belt plate attached to the top of the 12" waterline belt (and inclined just like it) on the lower third or so of its height, just skimming over the top of the 12" main belt, it would usually have a downward angle at most expected fighting ranges that would punch through that thinner plate with ease, then the thin deck plate even with the top edge of the main belt, then the 2" sloped "turtleback "splinter" plate, then some light vertical "splinter screen" plates making up the top edge of the anti-torpedo system plates, and into the magazine. KABOOM!!! Hitting higher up caused the penetrating shell to hit the 2" inboard horizontal portion of that thin deck (which was bent down at its edges to form the turtleback and why it was so thin at the edges) and this deck hit at a shallow angle farther inboard would deflect fragments of a shell that blew up above it and even from an explosion just below it due to the magazine having additional thin protective roof plating on the deck below that 2" deck -- the long path from the back of the 7" upper belt plate would not allow most still-functional shells to reach that far before exploding due to fuze action. What to do? They came up with a fix that added 3" of high-tensile to that first thin horizontal deck plate prior to hitting the turtleback after punching through the 7" plate near its bottom. The next shot ricocheted off of that now 3.5" laminated edge region above and in front of the turtleback and the shell never even reached the turtleback plate. Success!! (Or so they thought...) This same design for the belt and decks was used over the entire side of the ship "Citadel" between the just forward of "A" Turret to just aft of "Y" turret. Due to weight restrictions and major delay in a redesign of all of the side protection, they added this new 3" plate to the magazine side armor only, the engine and boiler rooms still had this weak spot running most of the Citadel length since the propulsion plant in HOOD was so very big (to get that "astronomically high" speed they wanted). Hits on these spaces would cause problems, but the ship had four engines and lots of boilers, so they could take a few such "mid-belly-level" hits and still keep fighting. But they had NOT fixed the problem! There was only a 0.75-1" high-tensile-steel bulkhead plate between the power plant and the magazines at each end of the ship so a hit on the huge end compartments of the powerplant that punched through that weak point would get into the space and, if it exploded IN THERE, those thin bulkheads would not stop the blast and fragments from a 15" or so AP shell detonation (AP shells have smaller explosive charges than nose-fuzed HE shells, but they make LOTS MORE hardened steel body fragments than an HE shell does, so the fragments have a lot of "reach"). Thus, if BISMARCK repeated the hit made during that testing before the 3" fix in the nearby engine/boiler room, the hit would in most cases be identical to a hit in the magazine itself!!! Due to the large target this weakspot made along the side of the ship because of the size of the propulsion plant, the chance that this is what caused the HOOD to sink much larger than one would originally think, but, of course, is not certain, but a hit on the after engine room in this manner would be almost 100% likely to kill HOOD if the shell exploded as designed. Bad luck, but not nearly as bad as it should have been...
Hérésie ! Talking about Tsushima without mentioning the Kamtchatka (it is not relevant here but it's precisely the point of the Kamtchatka : irrelevence).
I tell you old boy. We should design entire ships around ramming. Putting a ram on an ironclad isn’t enough. We should commission an entire line of rams. Yes, if naval guns rapidly advance, then these ships will become redundant before their even built. but really, what’s the chance of that happening?
@@orenashkenazi9813 we must ensure that that the Fwench the Huns and the wussians don’t get any big ideas. Convert all our ships into rams! Convert our merchant ships into rams! convert queen Victoria into a ram! convert the isles into rams! We must be prepared to be ahead of the curve on the ram trend we mustn’t let there be a ram gap. We must establish ram supremacy. We must... wait.. what rear admiral? Armor piercing shells? Oh...
Fantastic content as usual. Please don't go shy on the physics and engineering on technical videos such as this! Although I'm naturally biased as an engineer/metallurgist, the subject matter is a technical one and rightly deserves it. This sort of content is very hard to find on youtube!
What would be interesting is a study on the shells used by the Japanese fleet during the battle of Leyte, when they used AP shells against the smaller carriers and ships of the invasion fleet. -Gunny T sends
Great stuff always mate!!! You’re material and delivery produces an addicting calming experience while filling my head with fascinating facts of history. Keep up the great job and thank you very much for all your hard work and passion for learning!! May God bless all the works of your hands.
I do long range shooting and I recognize a lot of similar terms and calculations you're using. There's a good book to help provide a broad and in depth view of the discipline called; "Understanding Firearm Ballistics". It also shows how we calculate the Correalis effect and the various types of projectile ogives. The aim is to get a shot with a low Ballistics Coefficient. And that includes the rifle barrel bore twist rate, barrel length and thickness (to lower the amount of barrel whip). Nearly all naval projectiles use the G1 ogive type.
Drach also touches on the subject of sectional density with his “tennis ball” demonstration. For big game hunters, sectional density of the projectile is an important factor in its effectiveness on the targeted game as some animals have the equivalent of natural armor, e.g. wild boars’ protective shoulder shields and elephants’ very thick skulls.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
You mentioned couple of times, that if transported to WW2, you would choose US BB (forgot witch one), because nobody was killed aboard during the war. I read that same was true for HMS Jarvis. Why not UK ship instead? Is my information wrong?
@@nenad8845 Massachusetts is bigger and has ice cream :D
After the battle of the Denmark straight. Why didn't the british took advantage of Bismarck turning towards them, to distract from the Prinze Eugen, to attack it 3 on 1??
it's well known about the British shells at Jutland bursting on impact, I wonder if there is enough information to say what damage could have been caused to the High Seas Fleet if, for example, the later improved (green boy?) shells had been available to the Grand Fleet? 36.42 of your video alludes to maybe half a dozen sinkings but a more in depth investigation would be interesting
here's a simple aircraft carrier question why did the IJN build half there fleet carriers with islands on opposite sides
I love how nonchalantly Drach lists “people” as a form of object aboard ship that burns
Based
The book Ignition! has a similar line in it. It describes how fluorine has a nasty habit of setting organic stuff on fire, including cotton, rubber, and engineers.
The screaming Alfa fire.
He isn't wrong though
@@dylantowers9367 that book is awesome
Already looking forward to The History of Naval Provisions - Why is the rum always gone?
Sea gremlins
Sounds like the perfect subject for a Wednesday Rum Ration
Spirited away?
@@benwilson6145 oh you.
Same
I love this. This is absolutely lovely. There is absolutely no reason for me to know anything about face hardened steel plating or semi armor piercing ammunition but yet here I am spending hours upon hours learning about such topics.
It's intheresting tho!
Maybe not at the moment, but I'd bet that it won't be that long until your understanding of the topic comes in handy in daily life!
Ahh , But what a great topic for a wee dram and a good cigar with friends.
Maybe we all secretly want to build our own battleships and this is the best way to get a basic knowledge of how to build one
I did not even serve in army nor navy (because I was incabable) and so I have zero knowledge about any weaponry science ... except what I read in a few books, and: what Drach is explaining to us. In my naive view, I thought the only reason why the ball was replaced by a "longshot" was aerodynamics ...
Government official: "We want our cannonball to be rounded iron spheres."
Cannonball producer: "Well they're more like guidelines really."
With out machining it's rather hard to make a solid metal round ball.
Crews would literally hammer the iron shot into shape. They would also measure the shot and choose the ones that were the best size (and shape) for their particular gun. These shot would be the ones stacked on the "brass monkey" to be used first. (although they would sometimes fire a couple of less good shot initially to warm the gun before using the more accurate "best" shot).
@@dimesonhiseyes9134 Actually, it's surprisingly easy, for a given value of "round". Shot towers take advantage of the tendency of liquids, including molten metals, to form spherical drops when allowed to fall freely under gravity. Whilst the products were rarely perfect spheres, the cannon the balls were being fired from were hardly precision engineered either
@@talltroll7092 Now show me the shot tower that can form 10-20 pound solid iron cannonballs. Thing would collapse under its own weight, because you'd have to build taller than the Burj Khalifa.
What I'm trying to say is that the shot tower concept does not scale well.
Even lead buckshot requires a very tall tower indeed, and it only gets worse with a material with higher melting temperatures and larger size shot.
You'd need a tower several kilometers tall to form something that could be fired out of even a parrot gun, let alone a full-on cannon.
So you stick to molds for cannonballs and hammer out the imperfections as best you're able to measure them.
@@talltroll7092 with lead shot you are correct. However that is not how they made iron shot for naval guns. It's more or less impossible to make shot that large using a drop method even with lead, which has a much lower melting point.
Iron balls were made the old fashioned way of casting.
At a local foundry a 60 pound James round came in during the scrap metal drives during WWII. Being wise and prudent this shell was put aside. Years later we found the current foundry owner trying to remove the contact fuse. We persuaded him to think better of it.
37:19 "But, with Jellicoe promoted to First Sea Lord and, in at least this matter, with the support of Beatty..."
The shade never stops.
A fascinating time to be an engineer, metallurgist or chemist working on shell and armour development. But, probably very frustrating trying to get the old fogies in the admiralty to adopt new ideas!
Poor John Jellicoe, he pushes for more effective large calibre shells, but gets promoted to command the Grand Fleet, so nothing changes. Then, when the outcome of Jutland is disappointing, due in no small part to the mediocre large calibre shells, he gets the blame and (mediocre) Beatty gets his job. That's life!!
"Really the only thing you can do is just build an even bigger gun"
Orks: I LIKE DIS PLAN, 'UMMIE
Also Orks: OR YOUSE COULD SEND OVER A FEW NOBS WIT' POWER KLAWS TA KRUMP 'EM PROPER. MEBBE YA COULD BUILD A GUN WHAT FIRES NOBS AT STUFF?
Origin of Ork boarding torpedoes and drop pods, which are basically the same thing pointed at different targets.
Or DEY SHULD PAINT DA DAKKA YELLOW!
@@connormclernon26 RED WUNZ GO FASTA, YA BAD MOON GIT! :)
U SEE, ROIGHT, IF WE STUCK SUM REAL GOOD AN ’ARD TEEF ON DA FRONT OF DA BOMBZ, DEY’LL GO FRU ANYFIN!
"And if that don't work, use more gun."
So we have gone from 'stop blowing my masts up' to 'stop poking holes in my ship'. I reckon the next one will be 'stop shining lasers at my missiles'
Is that Children of a Dead Earth reference?
I believe the next is: 'Stop firing your railgun at my hull'
@@yulu803 another CoaDE fan in the wild! Oh shit! That game is unfortunately not nearly popular enough
@@eligedzelman5127 Probably because it has some serious issues. I lost count of the number of time I had to re-try one mission. The AI ship I was supposed to disable kept flying into an asteroid. The game is also about as dense and impenetrable as naval armour.
@@mrturtlebobington Yes, the amout of pre-reading is basically 1st year university astrophysics.
I feel like a broken record saying the same thing every time but the quality of your content is top notch. For the upcoming video on special shells I propose: japanese sanshiki (like you said), japanese diving shells, colored dye packs, flares and gas generators, and the french variable time fuses of the dunkerques.
This is why I love TH-cam documentaries. Actually goes into detail. Wastes no time with filler material.
"If you roll enough dice, you will eventually get some natural 20s."
Sorry what does that mean????
@@bpetnoi1472 it refers to the 20-sided dice used in Dungeons and Dragons and many other games for rolling to hit your target. A natural roll of 20 usually results in a critical hit, doing extra damage.
A long time ago, I was in this one Shadowrun game. I was playing the Decker, and I had managed to get 20 dice for this really important roll. I needed ONE DAMN SIX, but did I GET IT? Of course not!
@@evensgrey I feel you. On the flipside, I was playing Exalted once, and managed 15 successes on 15 dice, destroying a ballista targeting the boat I was on with a sling and a small glass marble (I was actually out of sling stones). Bear in mind Exalted uses 10-siders and for a success they have to come up 7 or higher...
Straight from the man himself
I begin to understand my father's excited chattering at the various coastal forts and floating museums watching your channel. Excellent work
"If you roll enough dice, you will eventually get some natural 20s." I see you are a fellow man of culture.
Yes, please, more shell videos in the immediate future! I truly enjoy the details of all the machinery and weaponry in the videos. Ordnance and gunnery are my favorites. I know I'm a small fish in a large ocean but maybe you'll see my request. Thank you so much for your high quality content. Cheers from the States.
LMAO at "militant ballast".....you have quite the way with words.
47 minutes of Drach teaching the history of Naval DAKKA
Unlimited Cannonshot Works
Which begs the question: Why did the Americans make the "Great White Fleet" when they could have gone with the "Great Red Fleet"? Would provide a bonus to speed and rate of fire... though of course at a penalty of a slightly higher chance of Communism. :P
Not quite DAKKA, more Da....K...K...A!, (sounds of shells and powder on their way up)...reload, wait for it, wait for it! Da....K..K...A! ( recalibrate everything, smoke is everywhere, wind has increased, enemy has changed tack. Repeat.
@@neilwilson5785 Wait...... the 'ell is dis "calibra....."? Oh, youz mean aimin..... dats for dem guard gits, just point it and booms!
TOO LONG
NOT ENOUGH DAKKA
11:40 Differential cooling, especially cooled casting forms, was used also by Oliver farm equipment to make plowshares, it was perfected to the point that in many places even into the 1990's local foundries were still making plows using the iron casting technique globally. The process is rather well described and had the result that it produced iron castings with surface hardnesses much like Prince Rupert drops except on the level of iron. Oliver is responsible for making farming viable almost anywhere on Earth with that plow.
Ditto for railroad wheels of the period. They would be cast in a mold that was sand in the middle but iron at the rim so the tread would cool faster and be harder -- more wear resistant.
Nowadays they simply press a yellow-hot billet into a die, roll it while still hot, then machine the final profile.
th-cam.com/video/ui--zx1RmDU/w-d-xo.html
Got a link? PDF/textbooks preferred.
5:50 Hey! That's the shot oven in my town, St. Augustine, Florida at the Castillo de San Marcos!
The oven is still there, positioned behind battlements by the harbor, but outside of the fort proper. Now I know why.
I visited that fort on a trip last winter. Cool place.
Also one at Fort Niagara. I still don’t get how to load it, without igniting powder.
@@robertewalt7789 Wet pad between powder and hot shot is what I remember from Hornblower.
Your explanations are well written and very informative in a highly understandable manner. You are a born teacher and public speaker, as well as an expert in so many topics that I am amazed. Bravo, bravo, and again, bravo!
I wasn't expecting that ending.
And I applaud you for it.
oh snap
Being an ex-sailor, I found this fascinating. I was on an SSN, so we had no guns. When we were in port, I could see the Naval guns, but never got a close look at them. I was wondering about the history of the AP shell. This was an excellent source. And I watched it all the way through at one sitting.
The channel has an excellent video on the infamous Mark 14 Torpedo, the bane of the US submarine fleet.
I love the picture of the massive shell with the back half shattered... There's barely a dent or a scratch on the front of it!! That's a lot of hard steel
15:18 If that's the one you're talking about, I've rested my hand on that shell fragment many many times over the years. That's a fragment from a US 16" AP shell that was dug out of the French battleship Jean Bart and returned to us after the USS Massachusetts opened fire on her at Casablanca and struck her several times with the main battery. That fragment is displayed on the deck mounted onto turret #3. :) I have 35mm film pictures of me as a toddler touching it, and I have pictures all the way up to me as an 18 year old standing next to it which was when I last visited and touched it. I love Big Mamie. I really miss going to see this fragment as well as the twisted piece of deck armor that was damaged by the shore battery hit to an empty barracks. I miss saying hi to George the Gremlin on the forward turret, and tracking the cars on Braga Bridge with one of the 40mm Bofors mounts or a 20mm Oerlikon pretending they were Japanese planes. Museum ships are absolutely incredible. Battleship Cove was what got me to fall in love with military history, naval ships, and WW2. It was always incredible stepping aboard the Massachusetts and thinking "This exact ship beneath my feet fired the first and last US 16" shell of WW2 and never lost a man the entire time."
You definitely gave us more than an empty shell here. I really like the spin you put in the topic. I was fuzed to my couch for the entire episode!
This is terrible. You should feel bad.
@@owenkegg5608 This is great. You should feel great after reading that
@@owenkegg5608my knowledge on this topic exploded after this video
The US Super heavy shells were designed to be able to go through anything that was on the drawing board as a ship prior to WW2 in battleships. They had the capacity to punch through 27 inches of armor at 16k yards. We recovered the turret face armor of the Shinaro the 3rd Yamato class that was converted to a carrier. A 16 in superheavy penned it like it wasn't there.
What was your job title0 b guy.mmm go 4r4 FC
Keep in mind, that test took place under unrealistic (point blank range, armour not inclined) conditions, so it isn’t the best indicator of how effective the 16” superheavy was (in spite of it being frequently used to argue that point); in fact the NavWeaps article discussing this exact test points out the result was highly misleading for this reason.
The 16” superheavy could still punch through all belt and deck armour ever put on a ship, but there were a few other guns that could also do this, including the Italian 15” gun.
@@bkjeong4302 Of course, the American 16s could actually _hit_ the ship carrying that belt and deck armor... the Italian 15 not so much.
Also, those test conditions, although generally unrealistic, could _theoretically_ happen in actual battle (Yamato and Iowa run across each other at point-blank range in a storm, both sides aim their guns at each other and open fire, and Yamato happens to take a clean hit to a turret faceplate at an instant when she's momentarily rolled 45 degrees towards Iowa by the violent sea conditions).
This video is how I discovered your channel. It just showed up again in my feed.
Thanks!
I've watched nearly every Drac vid there is. So when I open new vids I 👍 it first before it even loads.
Why? Drac always delivers 100% and never disappoints. One of the greatest channels of our era!!
Never gonna curb my enthusiasm for these videos. Thanks Drach.
Remind me not to play tennis with Drach.
If you absolutely have to, then upgrade from cardboard armour. Hardboard might do the trick?
The pins will penetrate the cardboard armour
@@billgates2903 Yes. That is why I suggested upgrading from that, to something more durable.
Although I would have expected you to focus more on the movement problems accorded to hardboard armour.
@@Temp0raryName Just add extra space behind the armour. Long enough for the needles to lose momentum.
Poor Drach needs a new tennis ball! 🎾
As always, another excellent production. I especially love the way you introduced the subject of sectional density with your “tennis ball” demonstration. For big game hunters, sectional density of the projectile is an important factor in its effectiveness on the targeted game as some animals have the equivalent of natural armor, e.g. wild boars’ protective shoulder shields and elephants’ very thick skulls. Many people would be surprised at how even modern bullet construction and a well placed shot doesn’t always result in defeating nature’s protections for these animals.
Personal military firearms and their munitions are usually geared towards defeating humans or the body armor they wear of course. Usually with a doctrine behind them. The reason for the adoption of smaller, higher velocity rounds in some cases that have less lethality but can defeat body armor.
Animals and evolution makes far less specific plans. It's definitely interesting to consider how human devices develop for such specific scenarios when those devices involve competition with other humans.
It's a tough gig staying up too late on work nights watching Drachs videos but someone has to do it
@@lostalone9320 I'm on the east coast of Australia
Another excellent documentary from a generous 'lecturer/military historian/engineer'. Nice video 👌 and your efforts add something substantive to our lives.
6:00, thats the Shot Furnace in St.Augustine Florida at the fort!!! I work across the street !
I’m building a battleship made of glow stone in Minecraft, but I still wanted a lot of realistic details. This series is perfect for reference thanks so much
Another masterpiece by one of the great historians of our time. Thank you for your time and thoughts. Well done, sir!
I love you picturesque adjectives (hole poking device, shore bombardment landscaping etc.)
Sometimes i watch a video just to see what you will add. Thanks.
I had to laugh, just a little, when you said they weren't impressed with TNT compared to other HE types.
When calculating how much ordinance you need for a demo job, ALL explosives are compared to TNT. It's RE factor (relative effectiveness) is 1.0. A job calls for X pounds of TNT and you use the RE factor to calculate how much of what's available you need for the mission.
I'm just easily amused lol
Well yes there are many different explosive compounds which provide a greater force to mass ratio than standered tnt . TNT is only used as a base measurement as 1 it is relatively simple and easy to make in large quantity’s and 2 it was discovered before a majority of other explosives making it the default standered and 3 relatively speaking it is a stable compound which makes it suited to demolition and other tasks where the exact weight of the explosives has little impact on its performance
@@andrewgraham6006 you're not wrong on any particular point. My post was just about TNT being the default we use when calculating a job.
Example: task order comes in, Z needs to go away. Look in a FM to see how much ordinance is required to blow up a Z of the size in front of us. It says you should use 100lbs of tnt. We don't have any TNT on the truck. We've got a shit load of C4. C4 has an RE factor of 1.34.
100÷1.34=74.6lbs round off to 75lbs
Stack it, prime it, boom. Miller time.
The books give all requirements based on using tnt for the job, if for no other reason than a manual that lists each available types of ordinance on every job type is going to be many pages longer. Give one amount then trust us to do the simple math.
Of course, there are jobs where TNT isn't the best choice. Moving a big ass rock for example. ANFO is a much slower blast so it is more likely to just move the rock where C4 would shatter it. Now you've got a bunch of heavy fragments to move but they're too small to justify a second shot. But, the book is still going to list the ordinance req based on TNT because it's the standard. So take that number and divide by 0.42.
This is what i meant by TNT being the standard. It's just a fixed variable.
@@Damocles54 Miller time. I like that.
@@kennethdeanmiller7324 lol oh man, i bet that old commercial has haunted you a significant portion of your life.
But I'll argue that right after blowing shit up, it's definitely miller time. It's also not a bad idea to phone ahead to the wife or girlfriend and suggest she does some yoga, or at least some stretching exercises so's to avoid pulling any muscles lol.
TNT: The OG Viagra
@@Damocles54 *nitroglycerin quietly seeping from the dynamite stick*
I love that a 48 minute video about naval shells gets 85K views. If Jellicoe's paperwork for better shells for the Royal Navy had as much attention as this video, then Jutland would have been somewhat different.
He’s in the millions now!
Wow! Despite its abbreviated nature, that was a lot to take in. Talk about people working at maximum capacity. But all in all a worthwhile video. It will of course require another see-through, when my head regains its normal size. Thanks Drachinifel.
I don’t know why but I keep coming back to this video every few months.
It just tickles the good bits of my brain.
Eloquent, informative, and amusing. Draco is the gold standard.
I've watched many vids of yours now and I am consistently amazed on the amount of information you provide along with the quality and humour you put into the narration. top notch sir.
Best gift for me, just became a flight instructor. Can’t wait to see where this video goes
Congratulations
@@curtismcelhaney2512 thank you
Congrats I always wanted to get my flight license
Good for you sir!
Congratulations
My hometown is Bethlehem, where we built the American navy. Most American ships and guns from WWI and WWII come from steel made here. Sadly it closed before I was born.
The heavy forge is fully active and was spun off before the Bethlehem collapse. I worked in the plant which was an incredible place. If there was a call for new big guns and armor, Lehigh Valley Heavy Forge is fully capable of producing it.
How appropriate that the town that "built the American navy" would be named after the town where Jesus was born.
@@lawsonj39 Reputedly.
Bethlehem native here myself! Currently on main street rn
This clears up some questions I had about the performance of British shells at Jutland, Thanks!
I must say this is an extremely well-done video and deserves recognition for the time put into it.
Thank You, keep up the great content!
"Upcoming- 5hrs on the history of the Paixhans gun in the 1849 Battle of the Eckernforde." *I start salivating like a pitbull at a pig roast*
Roman delivered several 20 inch round ball coastal artillery. Their range was between, seven and eleven miles. Smaller boar artillery was sleave to fire cylindrical wheels.
I’m going to recommend that if one wants an in-depth continuing description of the cannon and shot used by crews of English wood ships of the line in the period 1790 to 1815 read the books by Patrick O’Brien - which are available in the libraries of the U.S.
What books does O'Brian write that cover muzzle loading artillery "in depth"? Because I have read most of his stuff and never saw anything like that. He writes historical fiction. He goes as far as to explain the difference between carronades and guns, he describes in the narrative how they operate them, and that it about it. I do not consider that "in depth", not even close. He never even explains what "honeycombing" is, or how during battle the crews can both time the guns to the roll of the ship _and_ fire at the same time as the others, and many other questions he never adequately explains. Because they are novels, not books about guns. For all the technical jargon he uses he never actually does much explaining of how it all works.
Absolutely recommend the books though, fantastic, some of my favorite. I actually bought the whole set after reading them 2-3 times from the library.
The flower like appearance for small arms round is mostly likely the result of the impact of jacketed hollow point on a steel plate. A full metal jacket or lead round nose bullet will look more like a disk.
Steel gun barrels destroyed by premature look similar, except of course wire wound ones.
Funny thing with projectile vs. armour hardness. At hyper velocity, 3km/s, both will behave as liquids so hardness is totaly irrelevant. It can even be a gas and it will still work. It is all about the impulse and the area.
*laughs in plasma cannon*
I use your vids to fall asleep to sometimes, so whenever I hear your intro music I get nice and relaxed lol
Don't you love it how tank designers eventually had to go through same solutions as battleship designers, but on the basis of experience from their own mistakes instead of taking a peek into naval branches. And usually a few decades later:\
Came across your channel accidentally, instant subscribe on this content. Naval politics are particularly funny to me (family background), so very much enjoyed the insight into some of the little dramas of the British Navy's arms race, which is a huge topic in itself. And then I see you've done an episode on the Mark 14 torpedo and I knew this was the right place!
15:18 I've rested my hand on that shell fragment many many times over the years. That's a fragment from a US 16" AP shell that was dug out of the French battleship Jean Bart and returned to us after the USS Massachusetts opened fire on her at Casablanca and struck her several times with the main battery. That fragment is displayed on the deck mounted onto turret #3. :) I have 35mm film pictures of me as a toddler touching it, and I have pictures all the way up to me as an 18 year old standing next to it which was when I last visited and touched it. I love Big Mamie. I really miss going to see this fragment as well as the twisted piece of deck armor that was damaged by the shore battery hit to an empty barracks. I miss saying hi to George the Gremlin on the forward turret, and tracking the cars on Braga Bridge with one of the 40mm Bofors mounts or a 20mm Oerlikon pretending they were Japanese planes. Museum ships are absolutely incredible. Battleship Cove was what got me to fall in love with military history, naval ships, and WW2. It was always incredible stepping aboard the Massachusetts and thinking "This exact ship beneath my feet fired the first and last US 16" shell of WW2 and never lost a man the entire time."
Excellent. I had four questions that were answered before the end of the video. More importantly, zero questions remained unanswered.
Well done. I've been curious about the history of Naval Ammunition for a long time and this has filled some holes in my knowledge base.
Listened to the opening three seconds and immediately subscribed .... Thank you Drachinifel.
I Really enjoyed this as it also brings a lot of background to the Landship Ordinances as they're similar if not the same
"if you roll many dices, you get enough natural twenties" XD Drach, I knew you were from ours.
I Thought I had the armour piercing sussed out. But it turns out I really needed an expert to go through the physics in detail. Thank you.
Thanks for the video. Now everyone in my shop knows a bit more about naval shells.
It’s interesting in how most of the terms and effects also relate so well to tank shells which I’ve been reading about
Gee, it's almost like trying to shoot through metal is the same in ships and tanks. What a truly amazing coincidence.
The picture at 5:57 is in my home town if St Augustine, FL! I was told that it was used to make cannon balls but shows what they know haha. There are hundreds of old cannons and mortars all around the city. Cool place but don't move here it's a tourist trap and we don't need no more new yorkers
I would like to point out that the red hot shot furnace that was shown with the crosses/Xs on it is at the Castillo de San Marco in St Augustine fl
Excellent insightful explanation of the driving factors of naval shell advancements over the most turbulent century of naval warfare 1850-1950.
I just finally caught up after the 4+ hours drydock of last week, this weeks dry dock and the Belfast video. Guess Drach wants me to listen to another 50 minutes. 😅
22:34 picric acid is lyddite, which is made by the nitration of phenol, a petroleum distillate. not certain if you meant that it was made with cordite and lyddite, or if you mean that the shell filler was a mix of cordite and picric acid.
“...which might very well end up blowing the furnace, rather counterproductively, all over your own ship.”
Drach, you’re in fine form tonight!
I love your videos, they are so in depth & informative, i enjoy the fun of both watching and playing in the background.
Waddaya know - HE spam in WoWS is based on a real naval tactic.
I used to play the old SSI game Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic back in the 90s. It had a thick manual that was also a pretty good history book about WWII Atlantic theater. One of the tactics sections mentions that while cruiser fire won't penetrate battleship armor, it is useful for starting nuisance fires and fore taking out things like gun directors and other sensitive bits above deck. And that's exactly what I used them for. I particularly like 6" gun cruisers, which often had 12 guns each and a rapid rate of fire, so I could form them up, get in close, and pepper the enemy battleships with them, then when my battleships came into range I had the advantage since I was not busy fighting fires and my fire control systems were all still in good shape.
@@RCAvhstape Would you happen to remember which one of the series the game was? It sounds fun!
USS Atlanta: *Eat my fire*
@@tbg3889 It was called Great Naval Battles: North Atlantic. There was a follow-on to it that was about the Pacific war but it wasn't as good as North Atlantic.
@@RCAvhstape Ah, I see. Thanks, I'll make a point of checking it out!
There are stories told in British naval gazettes about gunnery officers changing the loads and the tactics depending on the range. At long range they ordered a single shot and a full charge of powder. As the range closed they would double the shot and reduce the charge to keep the guns from exploding... As they closed to point blank range the guns were loaded with three shots, and the charge was reduced again. This was done to increase the amount of wood splintered inside the target ship, and the point blank triple shot with reduced powder loads produced long sharp splinters that acted like lances impaling crew members, and the shot would frequently ricochet and skip around the inside wooden floors and bulkheads, showering splinters, and causing enormous damage.
Thanks for a well researched video, very interesting stuff.
I have watched this episode a number of times, as much for the humor as for the knowledge. Congrats on a most hilarious style of presentation! I have learned a great deal while laughing aloud.
"I've got the mouth of my gun literally pressed against the side of your ship." I lol'd!
WOW!
Great detailed history in this video!
Thank you for posting!
"... more like a militant form of ballast..."😂😂😂
At least once in every Rum Ration Drach cracks me up!:-) Militant ballast bwha
Outstanding video on artillery shells in the development well done sir thank you
Your note that ships are big and gun projectiles are tiny is the main difference between anti-ship and anti-tank ammo, regardless of penetration ability. Tanks are small and even a small bullet can hit something important if it gets inside, while ships are so big and mostly empty space so the shell damage-causing effects must be enlarged considerably for anything but a chance of nailing something important that is not replaceable is not large and lots of hits are needed on a ship unless the ship is profoundly unlucky..
HMS Hood
@@jamesb4789 Correct, but HOOD had a design error. It was built for pre-WWI warfare where shells were not expected to remain intact if they hit at anything over 15-20 degrees from right angles against thick, face-hardened side armor and, even if they did penetrate, the shells had relatively reliable NON-DEALY base fuzes. "non-delay" means that they had no internal delay elements to allow the shell to move more than a very few feet inboard after punching through the armor, even if the shell was in perfect condition as it went through (it would always lose its windscreen and AP cap and perhaps a little of its nose, but otherwise be undamaged). Thus, the deck armor was in thin layers spaced over two or three decks from the level of the top of the main belt down to near the bottom edge of the main belt. Those would be enough to stop most fragments, so they were called "protective" decks, not true "armored" decks. The ships also usually had some thin side armor extending upward from the top edge of the main belt to set off the fuze of the big shells so that they would exploded well above the lowest protective deck layer and, due to the shallow angle of fall, caused the exploded shell fragments to skip off instead of going deep enough to reach the magazine. They also usually had a sloped "turtleback" deck layer behind the main belt to soak up such fragments that got through the heavy belt armor.
HOOD was almost ready to start building when Jutland happened and new stronger-bodied, hard-capped APC shells (the so-called "Greenboys") were developed that could penetrate thick KC-type face-hardened side armor at 20 degrees (spec) and sometimes even 30 degrees (a US test of one of them) INTACT and thinner armor at up to 30 degrees INTACT (some new HOOD tests -- see below). On top of that, new delay-action fuzes were developed based somewhat loosely on German new model APC shells ("C/11" and "C/13" (1911 and 1913 models) 3.2- to 3.5-caliber ("L/3,2" to "L/3,5") length shells), which had poorly-designed, but sometimes functional base fuzes of nominal 0.025-second delay from the moment that the impact shock from the shell's nose set off the fuze, compared to roughly 0.003 second for the older non-delay designs (the German delay was rarely achieved, with lots of dud, short delays and long delays). The British fuze was much more reliable, being a very well-designed upgrade of their tried-and-true Number 16 APC base fuze, renamed the Number 16D (it also had a setting to allow it to revert back to non-delay when the shell was being loaded, as an option. Suddenly, the old thin spaced armor protection method was much less viable unless the shell could be slowed down by the armor considerably, as otherwise the shell at typical battle ranges would be able to move 30-60' inside the ship aft hitting the outermost plate that set it off (which was virtually every plate here due to the many thinly-armored plates used for internal decks, bulkheads, and sloped "splinter screens" -- a "screen" was not going to stop an intact APC round!
So a set of new tests were performed on sets of test plates arranged like amidships portions of the original HOOD side armor design, including decks and inclined plates and bulkheads arranged closely to the thicknesses and spacing and tilting that the actual ship had adjacent to its magazines (the worst placed to get a hit, obviously). Several tests were performed using the latest British 15" APC shells, with and without fillers and fuzes, fired at various equivalent angles of fall and striking velocities to see what would happen and what could be done to fix any indicated excessive weaknesses found. They found that as long as the ship got rather close (but not TOO close!) to any enemy with shells like the British ones being used here (actually the British shells were somewhat better than those used by BISMARCK, both being about the same size, so these tests were quite relevant to what happened to HOOD later), so that the angle of fall was rather shallow, hits on the upper side that went through the moderately-thick upper hull side armor before hitting the thin decks, the distance with a shallow angle was such that in most cases the shell would not get to the level of the magazine before it went out the far side of the ship or perhaps exploded against the belt on the far side with the wide anti-torpedo system and internal protective plates being able to stop the fragments and blast that bounced backward into the ship, just as against the old non-delay shells. Same with shells that hit the weather deck and penetrated that No problem there. They then analyzed the 12" belt armor and 2" high-tensile steel hull it was bolted to and decided that this armor, though not as thick as the British WWI later battleships had, was inclined and not terribly weaker than those battleships, so that was not any more of a problem than a British battleship of the time. The armor was on the light side, but not by much and most shells would never get to the magazine before they exploded higher up, unless they could punch clean through the belt armor intact, which was not much more likely than against, say, one of the "R" Class British battleships.
They did find one significant weakness, though. If a 15" or so shell hit the 7" upper belt plate attached to the top of the 12" waterline belt (and inclined just like it) on the lower third or so of its height, just skimming over the top of the 12" main belt, it would usually have a downward angle at most expected fighting ranges that would punch through that thinner plate with ease, then the thin deck plate even with the top edge of the main belt, then the 2" sloped "turtleback "splinter" plate, then some light vertical "splinter screen" plates making up the top edge of the anti-torpedo system plates, and into the magazine. KABOOM!!! Hitting higher up caused the penetrating shell to hit the 2" inboard horizontal portion of that thin deck (which was bent down at its edges to form the turtleback and why it was so thin at the edges) and this deck hit at a shallow angle farther inboard would deflect fragments of a shell that blew up above it and even from an explosion just below it due to the magazine having additional thin protective roof plating on the deck below that 2" deck -- the long path from the back of the 7" upper belt plate would not allow most still-functional shells to reach that far before exploding due to fuze action. What to do?
They came up with a fix that added 3" of high-tensile to that first thin horizontal deck plate prior to hitting the turtleback after punching through the 7" plate near its bottom. The next shot ricocheted off of that now 3.5" laminated edge region above and in front of the turtleback and the shell never even reached the turtleback plate. Success!! (Or so they thought...)
This same design for the belt and decks was used over the entire side of the ship "Citadel" between the just forward of "A" Turret to just aft of "Y" turret. Due to weight restrictions and major delay in a redesign of all of the side protection, they added this new 3" plate to the magazine side armor only, the engine and boiler rooms still had this weak spot running most of the Citadel length since the propulsion plant in HOOD was so very big (to get that "astronomically high" speed they wanted). Hits on these spaces would cause problems, but the ship had four engines and lots of boilers, so they could take a few such "mid-belly-level" hits and still keep fighting.
But they had NOT fixed the problem! There was only a 0.75-1" high-tensile-steel bulkhead plate between the power plant and the magazines at each end of the ship so a hit on the huge end compartments of the powerplant that punched through that weak point would get into the space and, if it exploded IN THERE, those thin bulkheads would not stop the blast and fragments from a 15" or so AP shell detonation (AP shells have smaller explosive charges than nose-fuzed HE shells, but they make LOTS MORE hardened steel body fragments than an HE shell does, so the fragments have a lot of "reach"). Thus, if BISMARCK repeated the hit made during that testing before the 3" fix in the nearby engine/boiler room, the hit would in most cases be identical to a hit in the magazine itself!!! Due to the large target this weakspot made along the side of the ship because of the size of the propulsion plant, the chance that this is what caused the HOOD to sink much larger than one would originally think, but, of course, is not certain, but a hit on the after engine room in this manner would be almost 100% likely to kill HOOD if the shell exploded as designed. Bad luck, but not nearly as bad as it should have been...
Excellent video, really informative. Definitely one of my favorite videos of yours.
Hérésie ! Talking about Tsushima without mentioning the Kamtchatka (it is not relevant here but it's precisely the point of the Kamtchatka : irrelevence).
Did anybody else see torpedo boats?
@@alanfhall6450 Which direction are they coming from? - "ALL DIRECTIONS"
I absolutely love your videos on naval technology! The video on naval armour development was amazing as well. Do more just like this!
Drach Drinking Game.
Take a shot every time he says 'shot'.
Shot.
That hurts my liver.
I will start that game only after the shift from shot to shell :D
By the time you reach the half way mark, you're either completely drunk or you will have died from alcohol poisoning.
@@IO-hh2fz To be fair, I suppose it al depends on the shots you're taking 🤔
I love these videos about specific systems.
Pft, the obvious solution to iron armor is ramming. Ramming is the way of the future I tell you what.
*Stares at Shinyo*
You might have a point there...
*Imperium Navy intensifies*
I tell you old boy. We should design entire ships around ramming. Putting a ram on an ironclad isn’t enough. We should commission an entire line of rams. Yes, if naval guns rapidly advance, then these ships will become redundant before their even built. but really, what’s the chance of that happening?
@@menschman1464 At least we'll be ready to face the Martians!
@@orenashkenazi9813 we must ensure that that the Fwench the Huns and the wussians don’t get any big ideas. Convert all our ships into rams! Convert our merchant ships into rams! convert queen Victoria into a ram! convert the isles into rams! We must be prepared to be ahead of the curve on the ram trend we mustn’t let there be a ram gap. We must establish ram supremacy. We must... wait.. what rear admiral? Armor piercing shells? Oh...
Looking for something to fall asleep to and your voice + interesting material + video length makes this perfect ♥️ thanks mate
4:19
...unless Will Wheaton happened to involve himself...
Edit: timing
Finally, I've found the naval enthusiast I've been looking to learn from!
It seems that the late age of sail would be a personal hell for a modern safety inspector.
Very interesting, I'm looking forward to more of these videos.
Absolutely fascinating Drach and, as usual, told with your dry as the Gibson desert humour! Well done yet again!
I am in school, undercover, if I am comprised; let Admiral Drachinifel know!
No seriously I’m listening during boring science
explosive science is exciting science! :D
Update: mission was success: was not comprised
Admiral Drach!
Would drach be drach if he wussed out of science classes?
Fantastic content as usual. Please don't go shy on the physics and engineering on technical videos such as this! Although I'm naturally biased as an engineer/metallurgist, the subject matter is a technical one and rightly deserves it. This sort of content is very hard to find on youtube!
What would be interesting is a study on the shells used by the Japanese fleet during the battle of Leyte, when they used AP shells against the smaller carriers and ships of the invasion fleet. -Gunny T sends
thank you very much for the upload sir, you have no idea how badly I needed something to occupy my mind.
Fun Fact. Most people that are already commenting haven’t watched the entire video.
I mean, the vid is almost 50 mins lobg and was published 4 ago. You can't blame us for not being able to vend space and time lol
Hey! I waited 8 minutes, what more do you want?
After 300+ Drach video, I give a like ASAP. One can recall it, if ever needed.
Just got in, making a coffee and starting to watch 🤷♂️
I just started watching but came looking for this exact comment
Great stuff always mate!!! You’re material and delivery produces an addicting calming experience while filling my head with fascinating facts of history. Keep up the great job and thank you very much for all your hard work and passion for learning!! May God bless all the works of your hands.
Would love to see a video on propellants & explosives, from black/brown powder to triple base
I do long range shooting and I recognize a lot of similar terms and calculations you're using. There's a good book to help provide a broad and in depth view of the discipline called; "Understanding Firearm Ballistics". It also shows how we calculate the Correalis effect and the various types of projectile ogives. The aim is to get a shot with a low Ballistics Coefficient. And that includes the rifle barrel bore twist rate, barrel length and thickness (to lower the amount of barrel whip).
Nearly all naval projectiles use the G1 ogive type.
Drach also touches on the subject of sectional density with his “tennis ball” demonstration. For big game hunters, sectional density of the projectile is an important factor in its effectiveness on the targeted game as some animals have the equivalent of natural armor, e.g. wild boars’ protective shoulder shields and elephants’ very thick skulls.