Would Edwan Tomas be better instead of David Beatty (if promoted to Vice Admiral), or who do you think would be better instead of Beatty both as a commander or a politician.
Would Prince of Wales stood a chance against Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had admiral Lutjens been more aggressive in continuing the engagement after his task force sunk the Hood?
How big a problem was piracy to the RN from pirates based out of Ireland. I've heard stories of the Irish Prirate queen and the time a Dutch Navy landed on the west coast to eliminate pirate bases, but it doesn't get mentioned much in regards to the RN.
The biggest difference between RN and USN rations was the amount of refrigerator (cold room) and freezer space available. The USN built almost all ships from about 1934 forwards with enough cold room and freezer space available that the crew could have mostly fresh food available for the first 8-12 days (depending on climate) at sea and frozen meats and vegetables for about 20-23 days. By 1942, it was the goal of the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts (later Bureau of Logistics) to retrofit every ship with enough cold room and freezer space to have enough room for food based on the above plan. Each ship also needed to have about twice that cubic footage available for dry stores like flour, rice, and potatoes. The USN prepared a tremendous amount of dry store products. Loaf bread was the most popular, but men from the South wanted biscuits and grits while men from the North generally wanted oatmeal and toast or sliced bread. They all wanted cakes, pies, doughnuts, and coffee cakes. On destroyer size ships and up, one night was usually steak night, and every meal had some kind of meat product, with bacon, chicken, turkey, and some types of fish being common. The main meal in the Navy was called dinner, and that meal had the most food. Supper was served in the evening and was generally the lightest meal of the day, even lighter than breakfast. Breakfast was often eggs, bacon or sausage, griddle cakes, French toast, dry cereal, grits, or oatmeal along with fruit, fresh or canned. A pot of soup with bread, butter, and coffee as almost always available in the galley for men who missed a regular meal or were just hungry. Men out on the gun line during regular meal hours were brought out trays of sandwiches along with coffee, milk (if available), and fruitaides. Surprisingly, peanut butter and jelly was the most popular sandwich, followed by the aforementioned spam slathered with mustard and ketchup, and sometimes cheese. The fleet train could generally resupply ships with dry and frozen foods at sea, but they obviously couldn't do so when the ships were under constant threat of attack from kamikazes, and that's when the cook's talents (or lack of the same) would come to the fore. A good cook knew twenty ways to prepare food men would grow to hate, like spam or Australian lamb, and make it tasty enough the men would eat it. He could make dry eggs and dry milk taste like the fresh products, and knew how to substitute one ingredient for another and still make food that mostly tasted good. It's said that ships with the happiest crews had good cooks, and captains often horse traded with other captains for cooks and kinds of foods. Bad cooks could find themselves reassigned from a cruiser to something like a minesweeper just so a captain could get a good cook assigned to his ship. There are numerous stories of good "cookies" given anything they wanted by officers and crews, from women to vodka, as long as they could keep them on their ship. I'm sure being an admiral was good, but it seems like being the most popular cook in a fleet was even better. Well, rats, I've done another "War and Peace", but I now realize I have no idea how things went in the RN. From everything I heard and read, British and Commonwealth (especially Australian) ships didn't fare as well in the food department. Anyone here who knows how food service went in the RN?
Plenty of alcohol on Australian ships which makes up for a lot. During WW2 the food on Australian ships depends upon where the ship was as food was supplied by either the RN for ships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean/Western Indian Ocean or the USN in the Northern Pacific. From the discussions I had with some of the vets the food supplied by the RAN in the immediate waters around Australia was much better (fresh beef/lamb, cheese, vegetables, etc). These days the food on RAN ships is top tier and there still is alcohol.
There was a special Canteen Serving board Called NAAFI (Navy Army Airforce) it was a Voluntary Organization aimed on selling Rare Foods on Royal Navy ships. Such as Jam, Honey ETC idk about how was their service in Airforce and Army though
Thanks for the shout out for the USS New Jersey channel. I'm seeing many familiar Drach names in the comments. Makes both channels even better. His delivery may be a bit rough but homey, honest opinions & getting better.
Random Japanese pilot- That island appears to be moving, but it's likely nothing, going on about my glorious business. Nervous Dutch crew on the moving island- Goawaygoawaygoaway !!!! Im glad the "Dutch noises" has been preserved as a muesem ship. Her history is incredibly interesting. As far as the 10th to 12th century in terms of European Naval warfare, I've heard it described as the most boring two centuries since the invention of the war canoe. Fantastic video as always Drach.
The funniest thing about a chow line onboard the USS Forestall was that the munitions hoists were right next door ....so you had to get out of the way for a dolly full of 500lbders Sidewinders or everyone’s favorite ....cluster bombs
PART II Explosion problems. While using Lyddite (trinitrophenol or picric acid), British ammo did not have to worry ever about the main charge in their shells exploding if their fuzes worked (and, against heavy armor, even if the fuzes didn't work!). The US, with its large amount of experience in the US Civil War, and Germany, did not like such a sensitive and, to them it seems, dangerous explosive in their ammunition (the US would not even allow double-based propellants like Cordite, which contained nitroglycerine, in their ships anywhere, so Lyddite was out of the question). The Germans decided to use the commercial explosive TNT but only when they could get their AP shells through KC armor in an intact manner, which Krupp finally succeeded in doing in 1902 with a satisfactory soft-steel AP cap at near-right-angle impact (the then standard for test) -- prior to that, their AP shells for hitting heavy armor were solid shot only. The US went directly from black powder or black-powder and granulated TNT, which were rather low-power explosives by 1900, to Explosive "D" (ammonium picrate), the most inert explosive anyone ever used through the end of WWII and slightly weaker than TNT, just like Lyddite was slightly more powerful. Germany and the US had a problem, though: While large-filler HE shells with minimal armor penetration requirements could use large booster charges of TNT attached to the end of their impact or time nose fuzes to set off these much more inert explosive fillers, AP and base-fuzed Common ("SAP") shells had to have tiny fuzes and boosters to keep them intact on heavy armor impact so that they could live long enough to set off the main filler, even when no delay was used (which none had back then do to lack of adequate design work). Various ideas on how to get small boosters to set off AP/SAP shell fillers (even using small fillers didn't seem to help -- the scaling rules for such things were NOT relative, but absolute, it seems) were tried, with only partial success. Krupp fuzes used long, narrow fingers of Lyddite (under their own name of course) that extended deep into the filler to get as much surface contact between the booster and filler as possible, while still keeping the finger strong enough to not break during the armor impact. The US Army Coast Defense Artillery, which also never got on the Lyddite bandwagon, also used Explosive "D" and they tried using a finger with a TNT filler and a set of stacked TNT rings surrounding the finger, using the idea of "many bangs" will get enough hits that, like rolling dice, you will roll "box cars" at least once most of the time to get a full detonation. These worked most of the time, but they never got the 90% minimum success spec level that most designers are held to with every other part of the shell design. Also, they made the fuzes more expensive. When delay-action fuzes became the rule (French in 1908 or so, Germany and, I think, Austria in 1911, Britain and, following their lead, Japan and, I think, Italy, after Jutland in 1917, and the US during the early 1930s), things got worse, since the upper part of the fuze that was attached to the booster, and the booster itself, had to survive the ENTIRE penetration BEFORE it was set off, rather than being already in the burning/exploding process and only having to survive the initial impact to get to that point. This degraded the reliability of the fuzes with the inert fillers significantly. The British after Jutland switched to using Shellite (a 70% Lyddite, 30% dinitrophenol (an weak Lyddite cousin) mixture) and the French Switched to "Mn.F.Dn" (an 80% Mélinite (their version of Lyddite), 20% dinitronaphtaline mixture very similar to Shellite), which could be set off by the same fuzes that they used with Lyddite (now with an optional delay added in the British case), though tests I have seen with Shellite seem to show that it really needed as booster like TNT to get good results. The Japanese were very stubborn and tried and tried again to get Shimose (their name for Lyddite) to work with AP shells, but even those hard-headed conservatives finally gave up and in 1931 replaced Shimose in AP shells, not in any other shells until WWII, though, with Type 91 Explosive (trinitroanisol), which was ALMOST as sensitive and needed thick plaster, wood, and aluminum cushions in the cavity to keep it inert on heavy armor impact), but it could be set off as easily as Shimose by a similar tiny booster. The US Navy -- following the US Army in 1918 (their specs about safety were not as strict, obviously) --and British in 1928 both finally got the extremely powerful and, in tiny amounts, booster explosive "tetryl" (abbreviating a very long chemical name), called by the British "Composition Explosive", that could very reliably detonate ANY explosive then in use with only tiny amounts. The British used a fiber can placed on the end of their base fuzes that had very thin layers of tetryl separated by fine metal foil separators, building it up to the needed minimum amount, while the US put it in two tiny rocket-nozzle-shaped pits on either side of the end of its fuzes, using two (for reliability) needle-like jets of blast into the bottom of the filler to set it off, which even Explosive "D" could not resist. However, looking at German fuzes, they have all sorts of improvements as to reliability and safety (Japanese base fuzes were based on them in WWII), but their block-TNT fillers and long fuze booster "fingers" are identical to the WWI-era designs, and for all I know, they still used picric acid as the booster, with the expected inferior results. Does anybody have more information on this? Mutual interference. Gun blast from one gun hits a shell from another gun on its side,, causing it to wobble and corkscrew through the air in badly-controlled flight. Most multi-barrel guns in warships when longer range were necessary ended up using a short delay between firing built into the trigger system so that the first gun firing gave its shell time enough to be out of at least most of the blast of the other gun(s). The closer the guns are together, the worse this gets, obviously. Italian WWII cruiser guns, for example, were almost on top of each other, being loaded from opposite sides of the mount inside and needed a considerable version this kind of delay. In fact, they almost needed to work like 40mm pom-poms to really prevent the problem. I am not quite sure why this was not accomplished. Japanese YAMATO main armament guns had a double-delay to keep ANY of the turret's guns from firing at the same time, seeing how powerful the gun blast was. I think that most other nations that had guns even marginally close together used such -- I am not sure of BISMARCK with its very wide separation needed it. Every subject is handled by different countries in different manners. Some are quite logical, while others make one think of Rube Goldberg cartoonists being given the job. It makes this subject of naval technology "interesting", does it not?
Essex was named for the Massachusetts county that sponsored her construction Edit to clarify that I meant the original wooden frigate Essex that was captured by the Brits in 1814
I was very happy to hear you mention Battleship New Jersey. I've been binge watching their channel recently and can't wait for you to go there and meet your American cousin!
I can't believe they seem to be trying to produce a video every DAY. And the number of comments in each one saying "You and Drach should collaborate..." has got to be getting tiring for both!
@@yes_head yeah, luckily I already knew they'd planned go meet up before world events changed things or I'd probably be one of those pestering them both 😅
If we could get a collaboration video of the Drach and Ryan Zimanski from New Jersey... that would be exceedingly cool. Two real heavyweights of naval war history together. AWESOME!
I do not know what food was like in the US Navy in most ships in WWII, but in the early 1970s, when I first went to sea as a junior engineer for TERRIER, I was sent my first time to the USS FOX (CG-33), the ship that then had the most senior US Navy Captain on the West Coast. It turned out, possibly due to that officer pulling strings for his last few voyages before retiring, the ship had the cook who had won the previous year's Best Cook in the Navy Award. And it was MOST DEFINITELY TRUE!!! I was eating in the regular crew's mess (you had to be given special invitation for the Chief's Mess and Officer's Mess and I never rated such) and I had meals equal to anything I had ever had at a good restaurant. There were Chinese Nights and Steak Nights and so forth. All great. The breakfast and lunch menus were not as spectacular, but the food was always top-notch. I seem to have very exceptional luck in such things and in this kind of setting, I appreciate it big time!
Some downed air crew in US subs where most definitely presses into service. Many got to experience depth charging and torpedo attacks. In one particular instance a downed battleship float plane pilot was used as a spotter vis the raised periscope to observe fall of shot for the subs 5"/25 as it fired on a munitions dump. Many life gaurd duty is portrayed in the TV series, The Silent Service. They are on TH-cam, i recommend.
For the question at 21:23, it was not that the wartime industry could not keep up with the US arms needs, but it was from the fact that the majority of arms manufacturers had already been making arms for the allied part already. As the US was neutral, countries came to the US for the extras as no one European country foresaw the absolute destruction of arms during the war. So, that is why you had American made Moison-Nagant rifles for Russia; P14 rifles, Lewis and Maxim guns for GB and other US contract guns for France. Till arms manufacturers expanded again, and the US learning what they need(light machine guns, lots of rifles, etc), the dearth of manufacturing was by no fault of the US industrial capacity
One day, many years from now, "Welcome to Drydock two thousand, six hundred and one... mhmm mm mhhhmm mm... sorry, my teeth fell out. Where was I? Drydock something. Some whipper snapper asks were battlecruisers a good idea? Really? I must have answered this a thousand times! Next question! Someone younger than my trousers asks what if Bismarck, Tirpitz, the Scharnhörsts and the Deutschland's had all... *sigh* I see where this is going. The answer is no! Some kid who can't spell asks what if you had a time machine and could go back and become grand admiral of the Atlantic and use your knowledge of events to win some battle or other and codswallop! Listen, if I had a time machine I'd go back to when I still had hair, liked sex and I didn't have an orange catheter bag full of Iron Bru! Which reminds me... nurse? Nurse! What's this swill? I said "original" Iron Bru, not this modern organic, low calorie, hypo allergenic, good for the planet crap! Nurse!"
Am I the only one who loves that the terms "Wickes and Clemson Swarm" and "Fletcher Swarm" (And "Flower Class Swarm" actually) have become essentially official terminology to describe the building programs... Having watched a fair few of Battleship New Jersey Museums videos, I can say it is a really excellent channel. General navy history and obviously plenty of Iowa/USS New Jersey related content and Ryan, the curator, is an extremely knowledgeable person.
RE: Ship sheds in DC Many of the early Americans, especially those before about 1820, we're relatively obsessed with Roman and Carthaginian republics. The Carthaginians had shipsheds, and so there was a significant appeal to building some in DC.
The Cockatoo Island Dockyard dockyard in Sydney, Australia, looks to be a very dense industrial facility during 1930-40s. Today it is a historical site and museum.
Concerning the ALGERIE discussion on exploding and accurate shells. ALGERIE, like the Italian ZARAs, had face-hardened (French high-quality Schneider et Cie. KC-type) armor, though thinner than the ZARA (kept to the weight restrictions) -- ZARA used Terni Company KC-type armor, which seems also to have been rather high quality -- unlike the German HIPPER Class, which only had comparatively thin homogeneous (Krupp Wotan Härte) armor. For thin plates, homogeneous armor is superior in that it is not brittle against SAP or AP projectile impacts. You have to have enough ductile back in KC-type armors to soak up an impact on the hard face and have enough resilience -- ability to "give" and still support the hard face layer -- to keep the plate intact long enough for the projectile nose to have time to fail first, by sideways shockwave reflection in the nose, and thin face-hardened armor does not give you that extra time cushion unless you are only being hit by small and mostly unhardened bullets (it does work in armored cars against many machinegun bullets, but those are not what ships shoot). PART I German APC ammo -- XXcm Psgr.m.K. L/Y,Y (where "XX" is the shell size and "Y,Y" is the shell length in calibers) -- after WWI had two generations: The "L/3,7" for the 15cm guns and the 28.3cm guns (both on the Pocket Battleships and, in the 15cm only, on the first post-WWI light cruisers through BB secondaries -- never replaced) and, in the mid-1930s, the "L/4,4" for the 20.3cm, SCHARNHORST new-model 28.3cm, 38cm, and 40.6cm coast defense and proposed but never built H-Class BBs. The former were basically "warmed-over WWI late-model APC shells with a slightly blunter nose, a pointed windscreen for better drag properties and a rather small, but now hardened AP cap (following French post-1908 and British post-Jutland design practice -- in fact, the cap looked like a shrunken version of the British Firth Company "Knob and Ring" AP cap design). It had poor penetration by later standards and broke up easily due to excess brittle body metallurgy -- reflected in the Krupp penetration charts and US post-WWII tests. The Krupp later APC shells were considerably better, with a full-size K-and-R cap shape and a long aluminum windscreen (unique windscreen material). Heavier, much better streamlining similar to modern US and British shell shapes, and with a somewhat smaller 2% (by weight) block-TNT filler (US went down to 1.5% filler and a "Russian Doll" full-body sheath hardening pattern to strengthen the shell better and the British kept the late-WWI 2.5% with a softer, bendable middle and lower body to make its shell be able to remain intact even at high angles when hitting medium-thickness armor (they made the shells work fine against "Treaty" warships, but not against more heavily armored ships). Krupp also seems to have decided that the L/3,7 shells were unsatisfactory and did a major redesign as to their metallurgy, bringing them up to US metallurgical standards, but they too seem to have accepted the "Treaty" armor as the typical enemy protection level (SCHARNHORST and BISMARCK were not the most heavily protected of WWII warships, though their new Krupp KC n/A ("New Type") armor was second to none in most cases). As such, their L/4,4 APC projectiles were somewhat of a compromise: The projectile body was a fixed tough harness level (similar to the lower body of US WWII AP shells but only a single hardness throughout), which was not all that good when hitting at highly oblique angles (not the primary spec, it seems, unlike US and British shells, though those went to opposite extremes to try to match this requirement). The nose hardness was changed considerably to similar to the US sheath hardness design with the outside being very hard and getting softer and tougher in a radial manner as one went directly inward to a point where the body and nose merged. Unlike the US design, where that gradual softening also extended down the length of the body to almost the base to strengthen the entire projectile, the Krupp pattern abruptly stopped in a single step down to the body hardness across the projectile at the lower edge of the forward bourrelet (the slightly raised ring where the projectile slide down the gun barrel with minimal erosion). US tests showed that on hitting thick armor, the nose could snap off right there, much like the old chilled cast-iron Palliser projectiles did in the late 19th Century. It worked at moderate angles and against plates similar to what the British shells worked on, but, unlike the US shells which could punch INTACT through things like the 26" VH turret face plates of YAMATO Class BBs under post-WWII 16" AP testing, against very thick plates the German shells broke up unless they hit at well above their minimum penetration velocity (reduced the time of the shock on the shell structure and minimized the deflection and twisting forces on the shell as it punched through the armor). Krupp must have realized that this step in hardness was not the best idea. but obviously it was "good enough" for current (British and French) threats ("Tradition"?). (Continued)
Had to chuckle. Started reading, saw the level of technical detail, said "I thought I saw a Nathan Okun post." Looked at the author, "I did, I did saw a Nathan Okun post!" (Settles in to read.)
Speaking of Congress and the USN, one of the most heartbreaking images I saw in my childhood was of the U.S.S. Constitution with her deck roofed over for use as a barracks ship. That image spurred me into an interest in the political and financial aspects of warships, et al.
This is episode 130, but the video indicates 129. With this level of in-attention to detail, I don't think i can continue to subscribe.... :) Who am I kidding... I can't quit you Drach.. lol
Another great one drach , for me the HNLMS Abraham Crijnessen : “not quite to that extent” was one of the best lines . Yes they get the gold for sure , keep up the good work . Take care , best wishes to you & “the mine”
On an engineering level, France used to be rather like a parallel universe where everything worked but in a different way, had snuck into our universe!
Wrong. The Russian Borodino class pre-dreadnought battleships were based on the French battleship Jaureguiberry. Some minor navies coppied the idea of a large contre-torpillere destroyer for their flotilla leader (like the Yugoslav destroyer Dubrovnik).
@@VersusARCH They were based on Tsesarevich which was based losely on Jaureguiberry. Tsesarevich is actually damn good looking (i have 1:350 model of it) and pretty good design. Quite underrated, it has good paper stats like british rangefinders, krupp armor with thick belt, modern 2ndary armament in good positions and did good in combat. In many regards it was superior to Mikasa not to mention older japanese battleships. Talking about french pre drednought look at Bouvet and i dare you to call it ugly, it was actually one of the best looking pre drednoughts ever built. Jaureguiberry looks pretty great too. Sadly the english mind can't comprehand curves.
If any of the battles in the Pacific could have been called an effort to try and invoke the Kantai Kessen, the Battle of the Philippine Sea would probably be it since the operational plan was straight up to engage and destroy the Fast Carrier Task Force. And it backfired horribly on them since, as Drach mentioned in the description of Leyte Gulf the odds were definitely against the Japanese at that point. And there was no long voyage across the Pacific with minor battles attempting to whittle down the US Fleet, so the Kantai Kessen doctrine really wouldn’t apply even then. It was mostly just “they’re attacking the Marianas, this is very bad for us. Yes we’re outnumbered but that’s only going to get worse and we have managed to rebuild some stuff. Let’s have a go at this.”
Re: WWII USN food- My father was an LCI skipper in The Mediterranean. He hated cornstarch. He had it tossed overboard. He also told stories of "requisitioning" some admirals stores to improve the menu on his vessel.
During WWI, both the Greek and Ottoman navies had German built Destroyers with turbine powerplants. The French took over the Greek fleet and ran their DDs through most of the war, while Greece was neutral. From Greek and Turkish sources, I have been informed that those German turbine plants were so troublesome that the ships were disposed of soon after the end of the war, while other DDs, in those same fleets, that were older, served into the 1930s. Maybe it's something endemic to German turbine plants that they are so fragile and finicky that no-one could keep them running.
@@stevevalley7835 But, but, but that would mean that the Germans weren't uber engineers with all the best stuff like some people on the internet say they were! GASP! ;) sm
@@mattwoodard2535 I drive a VW. Entirely happy with it, but I noticed an oddity: just about every other gas engine car on the road uses manifold vacuum to run the power brake booster. My VW has an engine driven vacuum pump, to make really, really, sure there is enough vacuum. For several years, when that engine first came out, it had an oil leak issue. The source of that oil leak? The vacuum pump, a device that no other automaker thought was necessary. And it was a very expensive repair too. Remember the words of Lt Commander Montgomery Scott "the more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain".
My Grandfather has been gone many years now, but there was a story he told me, he was on a Royal Navy escort Carrier running supplies to the US carriers, he got winched across to a US ship to fix their Cinema, and while there got served a quarter of chicken. The US sailors were complaining about it, but to him, the first time he saw chicken that did not come in a tin as soup for quite a few years!
Drach, just in case you didn't know, admiral Yi wrote a diary during the Imjin war. Its title is 난중일기 (Nanjung ilgi) Its available to the public but I'm not sure if any English translation has been done yet. From a Korean subscriber
Great answers thanks; especially regarding kantai kessen. Previously, you'd noted that Japan won the war against Russia largely because of the naval victory at Tsushima. Whereas, even if Japan sank all allied warships in the Pacific, and given Allied resolve, she'd have still lost the war.
The all time lifeguard champ is! (insert 5 second drum roll) USS TANG!!! The extra, hands in the form of rescued fliers, were taught to stand watches with the actual experienced crew. Keep in mind all these extra men on board required hot bunking by most of the crew, even in the goat locker. People are sleeping 24X7 on ships and subs, idle hands tend to be noisy. I highly recommend the book "Clear the Bridge" by Richard O;'Kane.
In his autobiography, Dick O'Kane stated that radio operators from rescued air crews were used to establish and maintain communications with USN / Marine aircraft since they had familiarity with the call signs and voices.
@@alexjacobs8399 If you ever get to Tampa Fl, there is a small memorial to USS Tang at Veterans Memorial Park. The Park is on US 301. It is an excellent park. Love the layout, static displays, statues and museum.
The old Navy guys used to tease the Marines and soldiers with this: At least in the Navy you get to take your bunk and mess table into battle with you. The Marines and dogfaces just grimaced.
Regarding aircrew recovered by submarines being marked on the hull, the boats rarely marked the hull itself, but depending on the boat, they would be marked on the boat's battle flag.
Lexington and Saratoga, and the use of those names, were originally going to be battlecruisers. It was the proposed BC line that was supposed to be named after Revolutionary War battles.
Lexington and Saratoga were the only two of the class which were going to be named after battles. The other 4 were Constitution, Constellation, United States, and Ranger.
For a good account of submarines serving as safeguard ships I suggest Thomas McKelvey's book "Pacific Thunder".. It has some good stories of submarine captains commitment (a couple bordering in pure recklesness) in the task of saving downed aviators.
The Lexington and Saratoga were laid down as battle cruisers, and they were, appropriately, named for battles. Then the next set of carriers were named for historic ships (Enterprise, Hornet, Essex, etc.). At some point in WW II the names of battles were restored, then everything went crazy. Now it appears that they are generally named for admirals (Nimitz) and politicians (especially Presidents). Exceptions are the Enterprise (continued by tradition and the Doris Miller). Trivia - the third and last submarine of the Seawolf class is named for a President - Jimmy Carter, who served as a submarine officer.
Slightly outside of your usual timeline, but I'd like to give an honorable mention for disguises to the Canadian Geese who occasionally convinced early warning radar that they were ICBMs.
Hipper class cruiser actually displaces slightly more than a Baltimore class cruiser, and I don't think anyone has any real question about how large an advantage the Baltimore class would have held in a one-on-one fight.
@@ThatZenoGuy it's a point about the inefficiency of the German design, illustrated even more graphically than the Bismark. It's the kind of thing that happens when you lose a generation of design work.
@@kemarisite Except again a good 6 years of designwork and testing (not to mention America's infinite money cheat), and Hipper would've been a hell of a lot better than what they actually got. When you're in a war, sometimes 'something now' beats 'something better later'.
@@ThatZenoGuy Baltimore was commissioned in April, 1943. USS Vincennes, last of the New Orleans class of treaty cruisers, was commissioned in February, 1937. There's your six years. Hipper actually commissioned two years later in April 1939, around the time frame of Wichita. Hipper isnt really a good match against any of those three, but displaces as much as Baltimore. When one loses a design generation, one loses a lot of competitiveness.
@@kemarisite Hipper laid down=1935 Baltimore Laid down=1941 Six years. In six years Germany could've built something better than the Hiipers. Not to mention that a lot of Hipper's weight comes from redundancy, armor, a bigass hanger, torpedoes, etc.
Interesting comments about the RAN ship build and procurement possibilities in the 30s. Hindsight as mentioned in the discussion is a wonderful thing.The Depression might have had a bit of influence in procurement decisions which ties in with the Washington treaty.
On the question of US carrier names: the battle-named ships were originally intended to be battle cruisers, not carriers. Their hulls were already laid down, I believe, and names had been assigned before the conversions happened.
@@Axel0204 very true, I stand corrected. Four of the battle cruiser hulls were scrapped due to the treaty. Odd that after using Yorktown as the class name for the purpose-built CV, they changed midstream and didn’t use other battle names for the other 2 of the class...
Scott Drone-Silvers the USN hadn’t really standardized naming conventions for anything except battleships and cruisers at that point. The names for the Lexington class weren’t standardized either. It just so happened that the two that were furthest along at the time of the Washington Treaty were the only two named after battles. The others were Constitution, Constellation, United States, and Ranger. So it’s not that surprising they didn’t stick with battles for the other Yorktowns.
Going to be fun seeing the USS Texas people learn how to build the lower 1/3 of a ship hull while the upper 2/3s is sitting on the compressed rust of the former 1/3.
How about the New Mexico class? There’s no guide for any of the ships and would love learn about the wartime experiences plus the nearly stand-alone super structure has always interested me
11:40 Can you imagine how France and Italy would have reacted if Australia were allocated the same ratio of capital ships, especially since if AUS actually built their tonnage it would be 1920-fresh or later, while FR and IT were saddled with stuff they built between 1908 and 1915.
42:00 Finnish coastal defence ship Väinämöinen used similar approach for camouflage in Baltic during WW2 with significant success. armedman.ru/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/beregovoy-kamuflyazh.jpg But it looks that the ship's name must be impossible to pronounce for the enemies in order the camouflage to work :)
Miller definitely deserves a ship to a carry his name...but a carrier ?? I don't like any carrier to have a persons name. Except maybe Nimitz, George Washington and TR. But even then, I'm not sold entirely. He should have had several destroyers already carrying his name, just like the Kidd series. And a yearly award or honor as well. But for me carriers should be historic, legacy names and for the rare individual who's services are so unbelievable to the Navy and Country, they warrant such an honour.
@@karlvongazenberg8398 As a Carrier, a naval aviator would be more fitting. Ensign Jesse Brown would have been fitting. th-cam.com/video/Cuo1sia2-EI/w-d-xo.html
USS Langley was named after Samuel Langley, who as well as being an astronomer was an aviation pioneer who launched his failure of an aircraft (called the 'Aerodrome') from a catapult atop a large houseboat in 1903 - so rather appropriate for the US Navy's first aircraft carrier that itself in service gained the nickname of 'the Covered Wagon'.
You should have mentioned that Lexington and Saratoga were supposed to be battle cruiser names. The names weren't changed after the change to aircraft carrier because sailors are superstitious.
Re: Erebus and Terror Another couple reasons why they went with the loco engines was they were much lighter than maritime models (tying back into their small size), and they were cheap; the locomotives, much like the two ships, having reached the end of their service lives in their original capacity.
Could the Japanese have upgraded the Ise Class to proper fast battleships by removing one or both of the midships turrets and installing more armor and machinery in their place? Could they have realistically pushed the ships to 28-30 knots? I feel that they would have fared better with these ships than they did with two of the Kongos.
Probably, the turret and elevator systems would be at least 2000 tons, all of that spent on extra machinery would be a lot more extra oomph. Add to the fact you can shorten the citadel a bit and give it a slightly more hydrodynamic design and you can probably add a bit more extra armor too.
While possible, I suspect they'd suck compared to a new build of equal technology. That's quite a bit of length you aren't using for going faster or punching holes in things. Length is weight. If you want length to go fast, better to put a longer bow on it (Iowa) because its both lighter and cheaper than midships, but if you get a big hole in it, the ship doesn't roll over and sink. Maybe not literally Iowa silly long, but point still stands.
Probably not, because their hulls couldn’t handle it. Hull form is a huge determining factor in a ship’s speed, and none of the WWI-era battleships had hull forms designed for speeds in the high 20s of knots range. (Battlecruisers did, which is why the Kongos could go faster with more powerful machinery.) Even if you could somehow cram an Iowa’s power plant into an Ise class, it’s probably not going to hit 28 knots. And if it did, it would probably rip itself apart from the huge drag forces on a hull only designed for 23 knots. Now if you added 50 feet to the hull and changed some hydrodynamic features, you could probably do it. But by the time you do all that, you might as well build a new ship.
@@bluemarlin8138 Oddly enough their hull forms and overall dimensions strongly resembled the Kongo Class so I believe the Ises probably had a better chance of hitting 28+ knots than any other WWI dreadnoughts. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/ONI-Ise-classDrawing.jpg upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Kongo1944.png . The Ises hit 25 knots on 80,000 HP after their 1930s rebuild so I don't think it's much of a stretch to say they could have reached 28 knots with about 140,000 HP. The modernization also added some length to the ships. Had the Japanese really invested in them they could have served as useful carrier escorts and the extra deck space from the removed turret(s) could have hosted an enormous anti-aircraft battery. They would have functioned as much tougher Kongos. While converting the Ises to proper fast battleships may have been almost as expensive as just building new battleships it wouldn't have violated any naval treaties.
The Americans in WW1 had a large portion of our small arms production tied up with European sales until we joined. A lot of the need for French arms was because we mobilized our army with "urgency" and "logistical support" as thoughts for later.
And some genius decided that issuing Browning Automatic Rifles to American troops risked the Germans copying the design if they captured a few of them. ATST, another genius decided that keeping the French happy required using French Cauchat Light Machine Guns instead of British Lewis Guns.🤦🏼♂️ The French did make a fine rapid-fire 75 mm cannon in WW1...
Re repulse she was expecting to engage Bismarck but Suffolk lost contact the early morning of the 25th and KGV and repulse ended up crossing ahead of Bismarck's track as she started to make south east to circle in towards France. Tovey had ordered repulse to stand off KGV by 5000 yards and not get in action until Bismarck and KGV were exchanging salvos. Once it was realised Bismarck had been missed Repulse was detected to refuel in Newfoundland.
I think the Japanese missed their opportunity for Kentai Kaisin to have worked at Guadalcanal. Had they committed the combined fleet to that battle, it would have forced the USN to scrape up every ship they had. 1) They couldn't abandon the Marines 2) there was the threat of Guadalcanal being returned to Japanese control 3) the overall impact a IJN victory would have on the SW Pacific strategically. Instead the IJN committed penny packets of ships. This committed the IJN to a battle of attrition on the land, sea and air. A battle they could not win.
There was a reason the IJN didn't send everything they had to Guadalcanal (fuel supply issues, aircraft carrier pilot attrition, plus the fact their battle line save the Kongos and arguably the Yamatos not being fast enough).
@@bkjeong4302 the Japanese Navy at that point was still near its peak. The Yamato was capable of 27 knots. Within a knot of top speed of any American battleship at that time. They outnumbered us in battleships, cruisers and destroyers at that point in time. We would have had to withdraw from Guadalcanal or take every ship available to the Pacific fleat to try and support, supply and reinforce Guadalcanal. There's a good chance the Japanese would have won that confrontation had they committed what the ships they had at that point against are available ships. That's my opinion anyhow. I respect that you have a different opinion. That's the point of having these conversations. from a fuel perspective they were at a high point in their merchant ships since the notorious Mark 18 torpedo had not been fixed yet, let alone the problems admitted by bureau of ordinance.
John Rodrigues It’s also worth noting that the Japanese did not consider the waters around Guadalcanal to be suitable for large fleet engagements due to the confined spaces. In fact, they were very surprised when Halsey sent SoDak and Washington to defend Guadalcanal for this reason. Yes, Japan did send the Kongos on night raids, but they weren’t expecting to fight large fleet actions with them-just to bombard Henderson Field and get out of air strike range by dawn. It’s doubtful that either side would have risked their full battle fleets in those waters. It would have to have been a carrier battle, and while Japan had more carriers at the time, the US had an unsinkable carrier in Henderson Field. Also, if Japan had sent its entire fleet, Britain would have sent the 4-5 battleships and 1-2 carriers it had in the Indian Ocean at any given time to assist. So a kantai kessen at Guadalcanal wouldn’t have been as favorable to Japan as it might seem. And even if Japan had won, that would buy them maybe a year before the Essexes, the rest of the SoDaks and some Iowas, a repaired NC, the repaired Pearl battleships, about a billion cruisers, destroyers, and subs (with working torps), AND more of the Royal Navy, came and totally destroyed Japan’s already probably badly weakened fleet.
@@bluemarlin8138 They didn't have to deploy in the slot. South of the Solomon would have cut off Guadalcanal and Tulagi. Once cut off the cactus air force, so much a thorn in their side, would have become moot at best. Most likely it would have stopped operating due to a lack of aircraft, parts and other necessary supplies. At that point the Japanese could resupply at will.
One additional comment on the AEF being equipped with a lot of British and French equipment: there were other factors at play, including saving shipping space by concentrating on bringing manpower (which was the desperate need on the Western Front at the time) in preference to materiel, which was more available in Europe, and also some ussues of commonality. The US had prior to entry been supplying the Western Allies with equipment anyway.
And to be fair the US Army had until recently been small and using old equipment, stuff like British and French field artillery and aircraft were, thanks to the war, simply more advanced at that point.
Believe it or not, what we ate in the US Navy during my time ( 1980-2000 ) wasn't much different from what sailors ate during WW2. I'd venture that the BPF likely ate pretty good since they were getting their supplies via the US Navy fleet train. I can say that marmalade wasn't generally on a US Navy mess deck nor was tea...However, we did have PB&J at every meal...I was on small ships ( FFs and DDs, and large ships ( CV/CVN ), and the food was generally better on the small boys. However, when I was embarked on Kitty Hawk 91-95 she won the Ney award for best mess on a CV in the Pacific Fleet. She was a pretty good feeder! WE frequently had steak, lasagna, baked chicken, pepper steak, etc...Really good breakfasts too...RN guys that came over for medical/dental treatment really liked our food better...( We had an RN DD as one of our escorts in the Persian Gulf ).
The 11th to 13th centuries were an insane period of naval innovation in China - the Mongols had conquered the north, leaving a weakened but still colossally wealthy Southern Song dynasty to scramble together a defence of the Yangtze river (which was now the new border). The Southern Song was the first period in China in about 1,500 years to have established a standing navy, extensively using paddle-wheel ships, and they were possibly the first to use gunpowder as a ship-to-ship weapon - lobbed from traction trebuchets, mainly. Just to give a sense of the scale of this warfare, in the 1260s, a naval commander wrote to the capital in modern-day Hangzhou saying that he was receiving about 5,000 cast-iron, gunpowder trebuchet bombs a month. And the best thing is, he was *complaining* about that. *Only* 5,000 gunpowder trebuchet bombs a month.
HMS Terror would be a good 5 min deal too. And the rockets red glare,the bombs bursting in air, gave proof though the night that our flag was still there. The Terror was shooting the bombs that had fuse issues busting in the air
The point of the Kantai Kessen was a decisive battle. I disagree that you'd have to destroy the majority of the enemy, you just have to weaken them enough that your remaining forces have full control of the seas. You can see this in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905: numerous Russian ships survived (including those that weren't in the Pacific) but they couldn't continue the war. If Japan had lost the battle of Tsushima, they'd have been in the same position. In WW2 though, I agree: None of the battles were expected to be decisive for either the US or Japan. Even at Leyte Gulf, the Japanese did not expect the US to retreat and surrender in the case of a Japanese victory. They just hoped that they could keep the US out of the Phillippines and away from their mainland.
Royal Navy ship's grub wasn't standardised? Some friends and I discovered an official RN Chef's Handbook in an old house in Portsmouth that instructed those worthies to cook by class of ship. Under 'County Class Cruiser', breakfast routine began with 'take 685 eggs . . .'
The Battlecruiser Australia would have been scrapped about that time anyway. It was too expensive to maintain, too slow to catch interwar cruisers and too weak to. Fight anything bigger. It was a much revered symbol of national pride but, like it RN sisters and step sisters, was outdated in the 29's and 39's
@@alecblunden8615 It still would have been nice to be compensated for our contribution to Britain's treaty obligations. I'm not arguing it was worth keeping, I want ships.
@UNSCForwardontodawn It would have been interesting. Given the Italian deficiencies in gunnery and armour, I suspect the Regia Marina would have spent more time in harbour. The accountants would have approved.
I have a question about the Jellicoe plan, If Australia was to have a battlefleet of some kind and then have a seat at the Washington navel treaty but the cost would have been massive , Why did the Royal Navy not donate some of the ships that the treaty said had to be scraped this would have saved money, Australia would have got a pretty good sized and powerful fleet. It would have been a way for the Royal Navy to get around the treaty as they could just ask for the ships when needed as Australia being part of the commonwealth.
iirc, the treaty said that condemned ships could not be sold or gifted to anyone. All condemned ships had to be scrapped or stripped of armament and armor and made unfit for war use.
The US and Japan would not have signed on to the treaty if this happened. At that point in time, Australia, Canada, and many other former colonies were still Dominions of the British Empire. This meaning evolved throughout the first third of the 20th century, but at the time of the Washington Treaty, it basically meant that they had control over internal affairs, but foreign policy was mostly conducted by Britain and was in service of the goals of the Empire. So their navies were basically arms of the Royal Navy. You can see how this would have been a problem for the US and Japan. The only way Australia could have gotten its own seat at the table is if Britain gave it full independence.
Drach, in Ketai Kessen question you didnt mention battle of Philipine sea. I was of the opinion that it was this battle that broke IJN, since carrier air arm almost ceased to exist and since both sides pretty much deployed everything they had, it was a closest thing to decisive battle in the war. Is that a wrong opinion?
It certainly could be considered as such for the fleet air arms. The surface action was decidedly less impressive, though. So I would argue that it couldn't qualify as the KK for the IJN's definition. The surface fleet never waded in to gloriously kill (or be killed by) the USN surface fleet. For all that the Kido Butai was the cutting edge of the fleet, the IJN BBs were the soul and ego of the fleet from a strategic perspective.
The point is that kentai kessen as defined by Japanese doctrine specifically called for a decisive battle before any major Japanese fleet assets were lost, and possibly after as much of opponent's were out of action. So while Pearl Harbor is an opening move towards it, the payout never happens. And after Midway, such battle as described in doctrine simply becomes impossible, as major assets are already lost. So Midway, while not the kentai kessen, is essentialy the battle that made kentai kessen impossible.
From the bits I have seen on rations over the years, there was a bit of bartering going between USN and RN ships when it came to food, just to add variety,
Love the shows! Just curious if it could be possible to do a video on the USS Clamagore at some point? I was informed last year that the museum ship is going to be sunk as a reef this coming year. She is the last of her kind and it would be amazing to hear her story! Thanks in advance!
Just a comment about storing a fleet: don't forget that the frigate HMS Unicorn (built 1824) never left the "in ordinary" status, and is still in existence as a museum ship in Dundee. Later in its life it was used as a base for training naval reservists, but it never sailed. So wooden ships could be stored for a very long time indeed. As I understand it, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Royal Navy got a significant fraction of its crewmen by press-ganging merchant seamen (wasn't the pressing of American sailors one of the root causes of the war of 1812?) OTOH, incorporating pressed merchant seamen in an existing naval crew would be a different kettle of fish from creating a warship's crew entirely from merchant seamen.
The only ships that mounted the early 5'54 cal...Were the Midways and early JMSDF destroyers...In fact, the turrets on the JMSDF came from the Midway when she went through a major refit in 1955 (SCB-110).
Langley was the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution ( The us national Museum in Washington DC). in the first decade of the 20th century He designed an experimental aircraft the was launched from a catapult on a houseboat anchored in the Potomac River at Washington. Unfortunately the aircraft was not a truly practical aircraft and crashed on launching in both attempts that were made.. There was a long running controversy between the Wright brothers and the Smithsonian over a claim that Langley's "aerodrome" actually achieved the first controlled heavier than air flight.
@@gizmophoto3577 Looked, he is not objective, Whitehead flew before the Wrights. The Smithsonian only have the Wrights aircraft if they defend the Wrights fraud.
See, now I want a Dragonball Z-Azure Lane mix/crossover where the characters are all WW2 Admirals. Halsey: “AND THIS....IS TO GO...EVEN...FURTHER...BEYOND!
US subs had there own logo and flag and on the subs flag was kept a record of there ships sunk if it was a war ship or merchant ship also a count of airman pick up while on life guard duty
Hi! Loving your channel and have recommended it to several friends! I'm looking for a book or books on the Soviet Navy during WW2 something along the lines of Maurizio Brescia's Mussolini's Navy. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks!
The problem with the Jellicoe Plan for Australia was that it was completely unaffordable. Also, Australia could not have had a seat at the Washington Treaty Conference as a separate nation as she was not legally fully independent of Britain until after the Statute of Westminster 1936 (an Act of the British Parliament) which was not adopted by Australia till 1942 (Statute of Westminster Adoption Act, an Act of the Australian Parliament). Only after 1942 was Australia entitled to her own foreign policy and separate diplomatic representation, when she sent an Australian Minister to Washington. Not many people realise that there was not even a separate Australian nationality until the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 (Aust) was passed - before that the population of Australia consisted of British Subjects, not Australian Citizens. Australia sent observers to international conferences (e.g. Versailles 1919) as part of the British Empire delegation, not in its own right.
3:40 Well, the KM ships were under orders to avoid damage, so they never directly squared off against eg Renown, and we do not know whether a Scharnhorst or Renown would prevail in a fight to the last.
I'd argue that the actual decisive battle was Philippine Sea. At Leyte the Japanese had no chance of winning, even if Kurita had continued on at Samar.
Idea for topic: Peter the great's navel campaigns in the Black Sea vs. Turks and the Great Northern War in the Baltic with galleys vs. Swedish ships of the line/frigates. See Massie's "Peter the Great"
Arguably Philippine Sea was the all-out Kantai Kessen from Japanese doctrine. It was deliberately aimed at the US Navy with everything they had. Ironically, the fleet carrier ratio was about 15 to 9 (roughly same as the odds they faced in the Battleship days). It didn’t turn out well, including failure of the land based air to equalize the odds (equivalent to use of subs and night torpedo attacks to soften up the USN battle line)
In regards to WW1 US production. Much of the allied equipment the US used was war material produced under license from the allies. It made little sense to alter logistic lines from the US to Europe when the troops could be supplied with what was on hand. In regards to naval production; the cruiser and destroyer swarm was a feature of the build plan. It was thought capital ship production would take the longest, so they were given priority before the war. However, when you consider the theoretical build plan of the naval act and it's amendments, the scale was impressive by any standard.
Note there was a IJN Cruiser that also disguised it's self as an In island... mostly due to the fact it's engines were a mess and it couldn't leave...or maybe it was a fuel issue.. I don't recall for sure.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Would Edwan Tomas be better instead of David Beatty (if promoted to Vice Admiral), or who do you think would be better instead of Beatty both as a commander or a politician.
Would Prince of Wales stood a chance against Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had admiral Lutjens been more aggressive in continuing the engagement after his task force sunk the Hood?
What was Kriegsmarine's role in Operation Barbarossa?
How big a problem was piracy to the RN from pirates based out of Ireland. I've heard stories of the Irish Prirate queen and the time a Dutch Navy landed on the west coast to eliminate pirate bases, but it doesn't get mentioned much in regards to the RN.
You mentioned a Nelson style battlecruiser, what would this have looked like?
The biggest difference between RN and USN rations was the amount of refrigerator (cold room) and freezer space available. The USN built almost all ships from about 1934 forwards with enough cold room and freezer space available that the crew could have mostly fresh food available for the first 8-12 days (depending on climate) at sea and frozen meats and vegetables for about 20-23 days. By 1942, it was the goal of the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts (later Bureau of Logistics) to retrofit every ship with enough cold room and freezer space to have enough room for food based on the above plan. Each ship also needed to have about twice that cubic footage available for dry stores like flour, rice, and potatoes.
The USN prepared a tremendous amount of dry store products. Loaf bread was the most popular, but men from the South wanted biscuits and grits while men from the North generally wanted oatmeal and toast or sliced bread. They all wanted cakes, pies, doughnuts, and coffee cakes. On destroyer size ships and up, one night was usually steak night, and every meal had some kind of meat product, with bacon, chicken, turkey, and some types of fish being common. The main meal in the Navy was called dinner, and that meal had the most food. Supper was served in the evening and was generally the lightest meal of the day, even lighter than breakfast. Breakfast was often eggs, bacon or sausage, griddle cakes, French toast, dry cereal, grits, or oatmeal along with fruit, fresh or canned. A pot of soup with bread, butter, and coffee as almost always available in the galley for men who missed a regular meal or were just hungry. Men out on the gun line during regular meal hours were brought out trays of sandwiches along with coffee, milk (if available), and fruitaides. Surprisingly, peanut butter and jelly was the most popular sandwich, followed by the aforementioned spam slathered with mustard and ketchup, and sometimes cheese.
The fleet train could generally resupply ships with dry and frozen foods at sea, but they obviously couldn't do so when the ships were under constant threat of attack from kamikazes, and that's when the cook's talents (or lack of the same) would come to the fore. A good cook knew twenty ways to prepare food men would grow to hate, like spam or Australian lamb, and make it tasty enough the men would eat it. He could make dry eggs and dry milk taste like the fresh products, and knew how to substitute one ingredient for another and still make food that mostly tasted good. It's said that ships with the happiest crews had good cooks, and captains often horse traded with other captains for cooks and kinds of foods. Bad cooks could find themselves reassigned from a cruiser to something like a minesweeper just so a captain could get a good cook assigned to his ship. There are numerous stories of good "cookies" given anything they wanted by officers and crews, from women to vodka, as long as they could keep them on their ship. I'm sure being an admiral was good, but it seems like being the most popular cook in a fleet was even better.
Well, rats, I've done another "War and Peace", but I now realize I have no idea how things went in the RN. From everything I heard and read, British and Commonwealth (especially Australian) ships didn't fare as well in the food department. Anyone here who knows how food service went in the RN?
Got to have room for beer.
I think the rum tot was the foremost priority in the RN.
Plenty of alcohol on Australian ships which makes up for a lot. During WW2 the food on Australian ships depends upon where the ship was as food was supplied by either the RN for ships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean/Western Indian Ocean or the USN in the Northern Pacific.
From the discussions I had with some of the vets the food supplied by the RAN in the immediate waters around Australia was much better (fresh beef/lamb, cheese, vegetables, etc).
These days the food on RAN ships is top tier and there still is alcohol.
There was a special Canteen Serving board Called NAAFI (Navy Army Airforce) it was a Voluntary Organization aimed on selling Rare Foods on Royal Navy ships. Such as Jam, Honey ETC idk about how was their service in Airforce and Army though
Drac also omitted one RN staple - kye.
Thanks for the shout out for the USS New Jersey channel.
I'm seeing many familiar Drach names in the comments.
Makes both channels even better.
His delivery may be a bit rough but homey, honest opinions & getting better.
His videos started out VERY rough, but he is improving. I doubt any TH-cam channel is polished and professional in their early videos.
Drachism of the Day: Problems would have cropped up on Blucher, but the Norwegians cropped up and were a much bigger problem for Blucher.
I laughed when I heard this.
JAJAJAJA it's such a good one
Random Japanese pilot- That island appears to be moving, but it's likely nothing, going on about my glorious business.
Nervous Dutch crew on the moving island- Goawaygoawaygoaway !!!!
Im glad the "Dutch noises" has been preserved as a muesem ship.
Her history is incredibly interesting.
As far as the 10th to 12th century in terms of European Naval warfare, I've heard it described as the most boring two centuries since the invention of the war canoe.
Fantastic video as always Drach.
Ga weg, ga weg, ga weg!
"Probably just rats"
Battle of Sluys?
“Eight armed spider mutant with six engineering degrees.”
~Adeptus Mechanicus intensifies~
Peter Parker was sadly unavailable to the German navy
The funniest thing about a chow line onboard the USS Forestall was that the munitions hoists were right next door ....so you had to get out of the way for a dolly full of 500lbders Sidewinders or everyone’s favorite ....cluster bombs
Same on the JFK.
PART II
Explosion problems. While using Lyddite (trinitrophenol or picric acid), British ammo did not have to worry ever about the main charge in their shells exploding if their fuzes worked (and, against heavy armor, even if the fuzes didn't work!). The US, with its large amount of experience in the US Civil War, and Germany, did not like such a sensitive and, to them it seems, dangerous explosive in their ammunition (the US would not even allow double-based propellants like Cordite, which contained nitroglycerine, in their ships anywhere, so Lyddite was out of the question). The Germans decided to use the commercial explosive TNT but only when they could get their AP shells through KC armor in an intact manner, which Krupp finally succeeded in doing in 1902 with a satisfactory soft-steel AP cap at near-right-angle impact (the then standard for test) -- prior to that, their AP shells for hitting heavy armor were solid shot only. The US went directly from black powder or black-powder and granulated TNT, which were rather low-power explosives by 1900, to Explosive "D" (ammonium picrate), the most inert explosive anyone ever used through the end of WWII and slightly weaker than TNT, just like Lyddite was slightly more powerful. Germany and the US had a problem, though: While large-filler HE shells with minimal armor penetration requirements could use large booster charges of TNT attached to the end of their impact or time nose fuzes to set off these much more inert explosive fillers, AP and base-fuzed Common ("SAP") shells had to have tiny fuzes and boosters to keep them intact on heavy armor impact so that they could live long enough to set off the main filler, even when no delay was used (which none had back then do to lack of adequate design work). Various ideas on how to get small boosters to set off AP/SAP shell fillers (even using small fillers didn't seem to help -- the scaling rules for such things were NOT relative, but absolute, it seems) were tried, with only partial success. Krupp fuzes used long, narrow fingers of Lyddite (under their own name of course) that extended deep into the filler to get as much surface contact between the booster and filler as possible, while still keeping the finger strong enough to not break during the armor impact. The US Army Coast Defense Artillery, which also never got on the Lyddite bandwagon, also used Explosive "D" and they tried using a finger with a TNT filler and a set of stacked TNT rings surrounding the finger, using the idea of "many bangs" will get enough hits that, like rolling dice, you will roll "box cars" at least once most of the time to get a full detonation. These worked most of the time, but they never got the 90% minimum success spec level that most designers are held to with every other part of the shell design. Also, they made the fuzes more expensive. When delay-action fuzes became the rule (French in 1908 or so, Germany and, I think, Austria in 1911, Britain and, following their lead, Japan and, I think, Italy, after Jutland in 1917, and the US during the early 1930s), things got worse, since the upper part of the fuze that was attached to the booster, and the booster itself, had to survive the ENTIRE penetration BEFORE it was set off, rather than being already in the burning/exploding process and only having to survive the initial impact to get to that point. This degraded the reliability of the fuzes with the inert fillers significantly. The British after Jutland switched to using Shellite (a 70% Lyddite, 30% dinitrophenol (an weak Lyddite cousin) mixture) and the French Switched to "Mn.F.Dn" (an 80% Mélinite (their version of Lyddite), 20% dinitronaphtaline mixture very similar to Shellite), which could be set off by the same fuzes that they used with Lyddite (now with an optional delay added in the British case), though tests I have seen with Shellite seem to show that it really needed as booster like TNT to get good results. The Japanese were very stubborn and tried and tried again to get Shimose (their name for Lyddite) to work with AP shells, but even those hard-headed conservatives finally gave up and in 1931 replaced Shimose in AP shells, not in any other shells until WWII, though, with Type 91 Explosive (trinitroanisol), which was ALMOST as sensitive and needed thick plaster, wood, and aluminum cushions in the cavity to keep it inert on heavy armor impact), but it could be set off as easily as Shimose by a similar tiny booster. The US Navy -- following the US Army in 1918 (their specs about safety were not as strict, obviously) --and British in 1928 both finally got the extremely powerful and, in tiny amounts, booster explosive "tetryl" (abbreviating a very long chemical name), called by the British "Composition Explosive", that could very reliably detonate ANY explosive then in use with only tiny amounts. The British used a fiber can placed on the end of their base fuzes that had very thin layers of tetryl separated by fine metal foil separators, building it up to the needed minimum amount, while the US put it in two tiny rocket-nozzle-shaped pits on either side of the end of its fuzes, using two (for reliability) needle-like jets of blast into the bottom of the filler to set it off, which even Explosive "D" could not resist. However, looking at German fuzes, they have all sorts of improvements as to reliability and safety (Japanese base fuzes were based on them in WWII), but their block-TNT fillers and long fuze booster "fingers" are identical to the WWI-era designs, and for all I know, they still used picric acid as the booster, with the expected inferior results. Does anybody have more information on this?
Mutual interference. Gun blast from one gun hits a shell from another gun on its side,, causing it to wobble and corkscrew through the air in badly-controlled flight. Most multi-barrel guns in warships when longer range were necessary ended up using a short delay between firing built into the trigger system so that the first gun firing gave its shell time enough to be out of at least most of the blast of the other gun(s). The closer the guns are together, the worse this gets, obviously. Italian WWII cruiser guns, for example, were almost on top of each other, being loaded from opposite sides of the mount inside and needed a considerable version this kind of delay. In fact, they almost needed to work like 40mm pom-poms to really prevent the problem. I am not quite sure why this was not accomplished. Japanese YAMATO main armament guns had a double-delay to keep ANY of the turret's guns from firing at the same time, seeing how powerful the gun blast was. I think that most other nations that had guns even marginally close together used such -- I am not sure of BISMARCK with its very wide separation needed it.
Every subject is handled by different countries in different manners. Some are quite logical, while others make one think of Rube Goldberg cartoonists being given the job. It makes this subject of naval technology "interesting", does it not?
If there was a battle of Essex I imagine it being fought with heavily modified Ford Escorts
Essex was named for the Massachusetts county that sponsored her construction
Edit to clarify that I meant the original wooden frigate Essex that was captured by the Brits in 1814
Nice wordplay
I can see it now. A battle line of Escorts, Sierras and a couple of XR2s with fake tan camouflage, whitened grills gleaming in the sun.
More likely wonky wheeled supermarket trolly cavalry of by Essex girls.
@@iansadler4309 Charge of the Lambini Brigade?
I was very happy to hear you mention Battleship New Jersey. I've been binge watching their channel recently and can't wait for you to go there and meet your American cousin!
I have been doing the same, both channels are addictive.
I can't believe they seem to be trying to produce a video every DAY. And the number of comments in each one saying "You and Drach should collaborate..." has got to be getting tiring for both!
@@yes_head yeah, luckily I already knew they'd planned go meet up before world events changed things or I'd probably be one of those pestering them both 😅
If we could get a collaboration video of the Drach and Ryan Zimanski from New Jersey... that would be exceedingly cool. Two real heavyweights of naval war history together. AWESOME!
I do not know what food was like in the US Navy in most ships in WWII, but in the early 1970s, when I first went to sea as a junior engineer for TERRIER, I was sent my first time to the USS FOX (CG-33), the ship that then had the most senior US Navy Captain on the West Coast. It turned out, possibly due to that officer pulling strings for his last few voyages before retiring, the ship had the cook who had won the previous year's Best Cook in the Navy Award. And it was MOST DEFINITELY TRUE!!! I was eating in the regular crew's mess (you had to be given special invitation for the Chief's Mess and Officer's Mess and I never rated such) and I had meals equal to anything I had ever had at a good restaurant. There were Chinese Nights and Steak Nights and so forth. All great. The breakfast and lunch menus were not as spectacular, but the food was always top-notch. I seem to have very exceptional luck in such things and in this kind of setting, I appreciate it big time!
I thing Drach deliberately elided over the mutton in the RN, for patriotic reasons 😝
While there were no battles "of" Wasp or Hornet there have certainly quite a few battles "with" Wasps and Hornets.
ooh that stings
This bit of history is kind of hard to nail down. It's a bit too flighty.
The modern iteration of this battle is once more with the Japanese [murder hornets].
@@deidryt9944 And they once again are lying about their displacement.
40:37 "Chaos, luck, and duct tape" is an amazing phrase.
Some downed air crew in US subs where most definitely presses into service.
Many got to experience depth charging and torpedo attacks.
In one particular instance a downed battleship float plane pilot was used as a spotter vis the raised periscope to observe fall of shot for the subs 5"/25 as it fired on a munitions dump.
Many life gaurd duty is portrayed in the TV series, The Silent Service.
They are on TH-cam, i recommend.
For the question at 21:23, it was not that the wartime industry could not keep up with the US arms needs, but it was from the fact that the majority of arms manufacturers had already been making arms for the allied part already. As the US was neutral, countries came to the US for the extras as no one European country foresaw the absolute destruction of arms during the war. So, that is why you had American made Moison-Nagant rifles for Russia; P14 rifles, Lewis and Maxim guns for GB and other US contract guns for France. Till arms manufacturers expanded again, and the US learning what they need(light machine guns, lots of rifles, etc), the dearth of manufacturing was by no fault of the US industrial capacity
One day, many years from now, "Welcome to Drydock two thousand, six hundred and one... mhmm mm mhhhmm mm... sorry, my teeth fell out. Where was I? Drydock something. Some whipper snapper asks were battlecruisers a good idea? Really? I must have answered this a thousand times! Next question! Someone younger than my trousers asks what if Bismarck, Tirpitz, the Scharnhörsts and the Deutschland's had all... *sigh* I see where this is going. The answer is no!
Some kid who can't spell asks what if you had a time machine and could go back and become grand admiral of the Atlantic and use your knowledge of events to win some battle or other and codswallop! Listen, if I had a time machine I'd go back to when I still had hair, liked sex and I didn't have an orange catheter bag full of Iron Bru!
Which reminds me... nurse? Nurse! What's this swill? I said "original" Iron Bru, not this modern organic, low calorie, hypo allergenic, good for the planet crap! Nurse!"
That was quite amusing to read
due to be released,,,
approximately mid june 2068?
Am I the only one who loves that the terms "Wickes and Clemson Swarm" and "Fletcher Swarm" (And "Flower Class Swarm" actually) have become essentially official terminology to describe the building programs...
Having watched a fair few of Battleship New Jersey Museums videos, I can say it is a really excellent channel. General navy history and obviously plenty of Iowa/USS New Jersey related content and Ryan, the curator, is an extremely knowledgeable person.
10:00 What a cute, compact naval base :)
"Is this the Kantai Kessen?" "Nope, we lost.."
RE: Ship sheds in DC
Many of the early Americans, especially those before about 1820, we're relatively obsessed with Roman and Carthaginian republics. The Carthaginians had shipsheds, and so there was a significant appeal to building some in DC.
Still kinda obsessed
@@wierdalien1 Not obsessed enough
The Cockatoo Island Dockyard dockyard in Sydney, Australia, looks to be a very dense industrial facility during 1930-40s. Today it is a historical site and museum.
Concerning the ALGERIE discussion on exploding and accurate shells. ALGERIE, like the Italian ZARAs, had face-hardened (French high-quality Schneider et Cie. KC-type) armor, though thinner than the ZARA (kept to the weight restrictions) -- ZARA used Terni Company KC-type armor, which seems also to have been rather high quality -- unlike the German HIPPER Class, which only had comparatively thin homogeneous (Krupp Wotan Härte) armor. For thin plates, homogeneous armor is superior in that it is not brittle against SAP or AP projectile impacts. You have to have enough ductile back in KC-type armors to soak up an impact on the hard face and have enough resilience -- ability to "give" and still support the hard face layer -- to keep the plate intact long enough for the projectile nose to have time to fail first, by sideways shockwave reflection in the nose, and thin face-hardened armor does not give you that extra time cushion unless you are only being hit by small and mostly unhardened bullets (it does work in armored cars against many machinegun bullets, but those are not what ships shoot).
PART I
German APC ammo -- XXcm Psgr.m.K. L/Y,Y (where "XX" is the shell size and "Y,Y" is the shell length in calibers) -- after WWI had two generations: The "L/3,7" for the 15cm guns and the 28.3cm guns (both on the Pocket Battleships and, in the 15cm only, on the first post-WWI light cruisers through BB secondaries -- never replaced) and, in the mid-1930s, the "L/4,4" for the 20.3cm, SCHARNHORST new-model 28.3cm, 38cm, and 40.6cm coast defense and proposed but never built H-Class BBs. The former were basically "warmed-over WWI late-model APC shells with a slightly blunter nose, a pointed windscreen for better drag properties and a rather small, but now hardened AP cap (following French post-1908 and British post-Jutland design practice -- in fact, the cap looked like a shrunken version of the British Firth Company "Knob and Ring" AP cap design). It had poor penetration by later standards and broke up easily due to excess brittle body metallurgy -- reflected in the Krupp penetration charts and US post-WWII tests. The Krupp later APC shells were considerably better, with a full-size K-and-R cap shape and a long aluminum windscreen (unique windscreen material). Heavier, much better streamlining similar to modern US and British shell shapes, and with a somewhat smaller 2% (by weight) block-TNT filler (US went down to 1.5% filler and a "Russian Doll" full-body sheath hardening pattern to strengthen the shell better and the British kept the late-WWI 2.5% with a softer, bendable middle and lower body to make its shell be able to remain intact even at high angles when hitting medium-thickness armor (they made the shells work fine against "Treaty" warships, but not against more heavily armored ships). Krupp also seems to have decided that the L/3,7 shells were unsatisfactory and did a major redesign as to their metallurgy, bringing them up to US metallurgical standards, but they too seem to have accepted the "Treaty" armor as the typical enemy protection level (SCHARNHORST and BISMARCK were not the most heavily protected of WWII warships, though their new Krupp KC n/A ("New Type") armor was second to none in most cases). As such, their L/4,4 APC projectiles were somewhat of a compromise: The projectile body was a fixed tough harness level (similar to the lower body of US WWII AP shells but only a single hardness throughout), which was not all that good when hitting at highly oblique angles (not the primary spec, it seems, unlike US and British shells, though those went to opposite extremes to try to match this requirement). The nose hardness was changed considerably to similar to the US sheath hardness design with the outside being very hard and getting softer and tougher in a radial manner as one went directly inward to a point where the body and nose merged. Unlike the US design, where that gradual softening also extended down the length of the body to almost the base to strengthen the entire projectile, the Krupp pattern abruptly stopped in a single step down to the body hardness across the projectile at the lower edge of the forward bourrelet (the slightly raised ring where the projectile slide down the gun barrel with minimal erosion). US tests showed that on hitting thick armor, the nose could snap off right there, much like the old chilled cast-iron Palliser projectiles did in the late 19th Century. It worked at moderate angles and against plates similar to what the British shells worked on, but, unlike the US shells which could punch INTACT through things like the 26" VH turret face plates of YAMATO Class BBs under post-WWII 16" AP testing, against very thick plates the German shells broke up unless they hit at well above their minimum penetration velocity (reduced the time of the shock on the shell structure and minimized the deflection and twisting forces on the shell as it punched through the armor). Krupp must have realized that this step in hardness was not the best idea. but obviously it was "good enough" for current (British and French) threats ("Tradition"?).
(Continued)
Had to chuckle. Started reading, saw the level of technical detail, said "I thought I saw a Nathan Okun post." Looked at the author, "I did, I did saw a Nathan Okun post!"
(Settles in to read.)
A lot of really excellent, interesting questions this ep!
Speaking of Congress and the USN, one of the most heartbreaking images I saw in my childhood was of the U.S.S. Constitution with her deck roofed over for use as a barracks ship.
That image spurred me into an interest in the political and financial aspects of warships, et al.
Thank you, Drachinifel.
This is episode 130, but the video indicates 129.
With this level of in-attention to detail, I don't think i can continue to subscribe....
:)
Who am I kidding... I can't quit you Drach.. lol
Another great one drach , for me the HNLMS Abraham Crijnessen : “not quite to that extent” was one of the best lines . Yes they get the gold for sure , keep up the good work . Take care , best wishes to you & “the mine”
Re: The Algerie and French design: "The French imitate nobody...and NOBODY imitates the French!"
On an engineering level, France used to be rather like a parallel universe where everything worked but in a different way, had snuck into our universe!
Wrong. The Russian Borodino class pre-dreadnought battleships were based on the French battleship Jaureguiberry. Some minor navies coppied the idea of a large contre-torpillere destroyer for their flotilla leader (like the Yugoslav destroyer Dubrovnik).
In this case, imitating the French would've been the better choice.
@@VersusARCH They were based on Tsesarevich which was based losely on Jaureguiberry. Tsesarevich is actually damn good looking (i have 1:350 model of it) and pretty good design. Quite underrated, it has good paper stats like british rangefinders, krupp armor with thick belt, modern 2ndary armament in good positions and did good in combat. In many regards it was superior to Mikasa not to mention older japanese battleships.
Talking about french pre drednought look at Bouvet and i dare you to call it ugly, it was actually one of the best looking pre drednoughts ever built. Jaureguiberry looks pretty great too. Sadly the english mind can't comprehand curves.
If any of the battles in the Pacific could have been called an effort to try and invoke the Kantai Kessen, the Battle of the Philippine Sea would probably be it since the operational plan was straight up to engage and destroy the Fast Carrier Task Force. And it backfired horribly on them since, as Drach mentioned in the description of Leyte Gulf the odds were definitely against the Japanese at that point. And there was no long voyage across the Pacific with minor battles attempting to whittle down the US Fleet, so the Kantai Kessen doctrine really wouldn’t apply even then. It was mostly just “they’re attacking the Marianas, this is very bad for us. Yes we’re outnumbered but that’s only going to get worse and we have managed to rebuild some stuff. Let’s have a go at this.”
“This isn’t even my final form!” 😂😂😂
Re: WWII USN food- My father was an LCI skipper in The Mediterranean. He hated cornstarch. He had it tossed overboard. He also told stories of "requisitioning" some admirals stores to improve the menu on his vessel.
Bloody great, interesting and very good info Drachinfel ! Thx man !!!!
Oh I love Battleship New Jersey Channel, that's how you get support for your museum.
US Navy engineers looks at the Prince Eugen's engine room. "Ok, this is NOT how you do a high pressure boiler system." sm
During WWI, both the Greek and Ottoman navies had German built Destroyers with turbine powerplants. The French took over the Greek fleet and ran their DDs through most of the war, while Greece was neutral. From Greek and Turkish sources, I have been informed that those German turbine plants were so troublesome that the ships were disposed of soon after the end of the war, while other DDs, in those same fleets, that were older, served into the 1930s. Maybe it's something endemic to German turbine plants that they are so fragile and finicky that no-one could keep them running.
@@stevevalley7835 But, but, but that would mean that the Germans weren't uber engineers with all the best stuff like some people on the internet say they were! GASP! ;) sm
@@mattwoodard2535 I drive a VW. Entirely happy with it, but I noticed an oddity: just about every other gas engine car on the road uses manifold vacuum to run the power brake booster. My VW has an engine driven vacuum pump, to make really, really, sure there is enough vacuum. For several years, when that engine first came out, it had an oil leak issue. The source of that oil leak? The vacuum pump, a device that no other automaker thought was necessary. And it was a very expensive repair too. Remember the words of Lt Commander Montgomery Scott "the more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain".
My Grandfather has been gone many years now, but there was a story he told me, he was on a Royal Navy escort Carrier running supplies to the US carriers, he got winched across to a US ship to fix their Cinema, and while there got served a quarter of chicken. The US sailors were complaining about it, but to him, the first time he saw chicken that did not come in a tin as soup for quite a few years!
Complaining, especially about food, is a tradition in the US Navy. “The food here is terrible, and there’s not enough of it.”😂
Drach, just in case you didn't know, admiral Yi wrote a diary during the Imjin war. Its title is 난중일기 (Nanjung ilgi) Its available to the public but I'm not sure if any English translation has been done yet.
From a Korean subscriber
English translation is "The war diary of Admiral Yi"
I am fairly certain an English translation exists, though I have never seen it.
Paperback 1977 edition is listed on Amazon and a few libraries collection; however, no online public versions appear to be accessible.
There's also a translated compilation of his reports to the Korean government.
Great answers thanks; especially regarding kantai kessen. Previously, you'd noted that Japan won the war against Russia largely because of the naval victory at Tsushima. Whereas, even if Japan sank all allied warships in the Pacific, and given Allied resolve, she'd have still lost the war.
The all time lifeguard champ is! (insert 5 second drum roll) USS TANG!!! The extra, hands in the form of rescued fliers, were taught to stand watches with the actual experienced crew. Keep in mind all these extra men on board required hot bunking by most of the crew, even in the goat locker. People are sleeping 24X7 on ships and subs, idle hands tend to be noisy. I highly recommend the book "Clear the Bridge" by Richard O;'Kane.
In his autobiography, Dick O'Kane stated that radio operators from rescued air crews were used to establish and maintain communications with USN / Marine aircraft since they had familiarity with the call signs and voices.
@@alexjacobs8399 His Radio operators were also running a still! LOL!
@@alexjacobs8399 If you ever get to Tampa Fl, there is a small memorial to USS Tang at Veterans Memorial Park. The Park is on US 301. It is an excellent park. Love the layout, static displays, statues and museum.
@@JohnRodriguesPhotographer I've been there. It was very nice and I hope it still is.
@@alexjacobs8399 I need to go back, it has been a few years
The old Navy guys used to tease the Marines and soldiers with this: At least in the Navy you get to take your bunk and mess table into battle with you. The Marines and dogfaces just grimaced.
"This isn't even my final form" hahaha great answer, thanks Drach!
Another Great episode- thank you👍👍👍
Regarding aircrew recovered by submarines being marked on the hull, the boats rarely marked the hull itself, but depending on the boat, they would be marked on the boat's battle flag.
Lexington and Saratoga, and the use of those names, were originally going to be battlecruisers. It was the proposed BC line that was supposed to be named after Revolutionary War battles.
Lexington and Saratoga were the only two of the class which were going to be named after battles. The other 4 were Constitution, Constellation, United States, and Ranger.
"More decisively broken than Prinz Eugen's machinery..."
For a good account of submarines serving as safeguard ships I suggest Thomas McKelvey's book "Pacific Thunder".. It has some good stories of submarine captains commitment (a couple bordering in pure recklesness) in the task of saving downed aviators.
The Lexington and Saratoga were laid down as battle cruisers, and they were, appropriately, named for battles. Then the next set of carriers were named for historic ships (Enterprise, Hornet, Essex, etc.). At some point in WW II the names of battles were restored, then everything went crazy. Now it appears that they are generally named for admirals (Nimitz) and politicians (especially Presidents). Exceptions are the Enterprise (continued by tradition and the Doris Miller). Trivia - the third and last submarine of the Seawolf class is named for a President - Jimmy Carter, who served as a submarine officer.
Slightly outside of your usual timeline, but I'd like to give an honorable mention for disguises to the Canadian Geese who occasionally convinced early warning radar that they were ICBMs.
I read somewhere that early versions of the Phalanx CIWS used to shoot at flocks of seagulls.
@@CharlesStearman No great loss
Hipper class cruiser actually displaces slightly more than a Baltimore class cruiser, and I don't think anyone has any real question about how large an advantage the Baltimore class would have held in a one-on-one fight.
Hipper was 6 years older than the Baltimore, that's hardly a fair comparison and you know it.
@@ThatZenoGuy it's a point about the inefficiency of the German design, illustrated even more graphically than the Bismark. It's the kind of thing that happens when you lose a generation of design work.
@@kemarisite
Except again a good 6 years of designwork and testing (not to mention America's infinite money cheat), and Hipper would've been a hell of a lot better than what they actually got.
When you're in a war, sometimes 'something now' beats 'something better later'.
@@ThatZenoGuy Baltimore was commissioned in April, 1943. USS Vincennes, last of the New Orleans class of treaty cruisers, was commissioned in February, 1937. There's your six years. Hipper actually commissioned two years later in April 1939, around the time frame of Wichita. Hipper isnt really a good match against any of those three, but displaces as much as Baltimore. When one loses a design generation, one loses a lot of competitiveness.
@@kemarisite
Hipper laid down=1935
Baltimore Laid down=1941
Six years.
In six years Germany could've built something better than the Hiipers.
Not to mention that a lot of Hipper's weight comes from redundancy, armor, a bigass hanger, torpedoes, etc.
Interesting comments about the RAN ship build and procurement possibilities in the 30s.
Hindsight as mentioned in the discussion is a wonderful thing.The Depression might have had a bit of influence in procurement decisions which ties in with the Washington treaty.
On the question of US carrier names: the battle-named ships were originally intended to be battle cruisers, not carriers. Their hulls were already laid down, I believe, and names had been assigned before the conversions happened.
I believe you are correct for USS Lexington(CV-2) & USS Saratoga(CV-3), but USS Yorktown(CV-5) was designed and built from the outset as a carrier.
@@Axel0204 very true, I stand corrected. Four of the battle cruiser hulls were scrapped due to the treaty. Odd that after using Yorktown as the class name for the purpose-built CV, they changed midstream and didn’t use other battle names for the other 2 of the class...
Scott Drone-Silvers the USN hadn’t really standardized naming conventions for anything except battleships and cruisers at that point. The names for the Lexington class weren’t standardized either. It just so happened that the two that were furthest along at the time of the Washington Treaty were the only two named after battles. The others were Constitution, Constellation, United States, and Ranger. So it’s not that surprising they didn’t stick with battles for the other Yorktowns.
Going to be fun seeing the USS Texas people learn how to build the lower 1/3 of a ship hull while the upper 2/3s is sitting on the compressed rust of the former 1/3.
How about the New Mexico class? There’s no guide for any of the ships and would love learn about the wartime experiences plus the nearly stand-alone super structure has always interested me
11:40
Can you imagine how France and Italy would have reacted if Australia were allocated the same ratio of capital ships, especially since if AUS actually built their tonnage it would be 1920-fresh or later, while FR and IT were saddled with stuff they built between 1908 and 1915.
42:00 Finnish coastal defence ship Väinämöinen used similar approach for camouflage in Baltic during WW2 with significant success.
armedman.ru/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/beregovoy-kamuflyazh.jpg
But it looks that the ship's name must be impossible to pronounce for the enemies in order the camouflage to work :)
And possibly impossible to pronounce for some allies as well... :)
The best US Carrier name is still the Shangri-La.We'll revisit when CVN-81 Doris Miller is commissioned.
Miller definitely deserves a ship to a carry his name...but a carrier ??
I don't like any carrier to have a persons name. Except maybe Nimitz, George Washington and TR. But even then, I'm not sold entirely.
He should have had several destroyers already carrying his name, just like the Kidd series. And a yearly award or honor as well.
But for me carriers should be historic, legacy names and for the rare individual who's services are so unbelievable to the Navy and Country, they warrant such an honour.
@@admiraltiberius1989 He had an Knox Class FF I believe.
It feels a little cruel. Considering he died on an escort carrier in 1943.
@@admiraltiberius1989 But then, who would seriously oppose the first US carrier named after a black sailor (and war hero, if memory serves)?
@@karlvongazenberg8398 As a Carrier, a naval aviator would be more fitting. Ensign Jesse Brown would have been fitting. th-cam.com/video/Cuo1sia2-EI/w-d-xo.html
USS Langley was named after Samuel Langley, who as well as being an astronomer was an aviation pioneer who launched his failure of an aircraft (called the 'Aerodrome') from a catapult atop a large houseboat in 1903 - so rather appropriate for the US Navy's first aircraft carrier that itself in service gained the nickname of 'the Covered Wagon'.
About Admiral Yi, have you read the Nanjung Ilgi? It is the diary entries of Admiral Yi during the Japanese invasions of Korea.
You should have mentioned that Lexington and Saratoga were supposed to be battle cruiser names. The names weren't changed after the change to aircraft carrier because sailors are superstitious.
The superstition of renaming ships: the story of USS St. Lo. Renamed twice.
There are some good photos of the Finnish coastal defence ship Väinämöinen disguised as an island.
Re: Erebus and Terror
Another couple reasons why they went with the loco engines was they were much lighter than maritime models (tying back into their small size), and they were cheap; the locomotives, much like the two ships, having reached the end of their service lives in their original capacity.
Could the Japanese have upgraded the Ise Class to proper fast battleships by removing one or both of the midships turrets and installing more armor and machinery in their place? Could they have realistically pushed the ships to 28-30 knots? I feel that they would have fared better with these ships than they did with two of the Kongos.
Probably, the turret and elevator systems would be at least 2000 tons, all of that spent on extra machinery would be a lot more extra oomph. Add to the fact you can shorten the citadel a bit and give it a slightly more hydrodynamic design and you can probably add a bit more extra armor too.
@@brainletmong6302 Didn't the Italians do the same with their refitted battleships, giving them higher speed,although the same poor protection?.
While possible, I suspect they'd suck compared to a new build of equal technology. That's quite a bit of length you aren't using for going faster or punching holes in things. Length is weight. If you want length to go fast, better to put a longer bow on it (Iowa) because its both lighter and cheaper than midships, but if you get a big hole in it, the ship doesn't roll over and sink. Maybe not literally Iowa silly long, but point still stands.
Probably not, because their hulls couldn’t handle it. Hull form is a huge determining factor in a ship’s speed, and none of the WWI-era battleships had hull forms designed for speeds in the high 20s of knots range. (Battlecruisers did, which is why the Kongos could go faster with more powerful machinery.) Even if you could somehow cram an Iowa’s power plant into an Ise class, it’s probably not going to hit 28 knots. And if it did, it would probably rip itself apart from the huge drag forces on a hull only designed for 23 knots. Now if you added 50 feet to the hull and changed some hydrodynamic features, you could probably do it. But by the time you do all that, you might as well build a new ship.
@@bluemarlin8138 Oddly enough their hull forms and overall dimensions strongly resembled the Kongo Class so I believe the Ises probably had a better chance of hitting 28+ knots than any other WWI dreadnoughts. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/ONI-Ise-classDrawing.jpg upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Kongo1944.png . The Ises hit 25 knots on 80,000 HP after their 1930s rebuild so I don't think it's much of a stretch to say they could have reached 28 knots with about 140,000 HP. The modernization also added some length to the ships. Had the Japanese really invested in them they could have served as useful carrier escorts and the extra deck space from the removed turret(s) could have hosted an enormous anti-aircraft battery. They would have functioned as much tougher Kongos.
While converting the Ises to proper fast battleships may have been almost as expensive as just building new battleships it wouldn't have violated any naval treaties.
The Americans in WW1 had a large portion of our small arms production tied up with European sales until we joined. A lot of the need for French arms was because we mobilized our army with "urgency" and "logistical support" as thoughts for later.
And some genius decided that issuing Browning Automatic Rifles to American troops risked the Germans copying the design if they captured a few of them. ATST, another genius decided that keeping the French happy required using French Cauchat Light Machine Guns instead of British Lewis Guns.🤦🏼♂️
The French did make a fine rapid-fire 75 mm cannon in WW1...
Re repulse she was expecting to engage Bismarck but Suffolk lost contact the early morning of the 25th and KGV and repulse ended up crossing ahead of Bismarck's track as she started to make south east to circle in towards France. Tovey had ordered repulse to stand off KGV by 5000 yards and not get in action until Bismarck and KGV were exchanging salvos. Once it was realised Bismarck had been missed Repulse was detected to refuel in Newfoundland.
I think the Japanese missed their opportunity for Kentai Kaisin to have worked at Guadalcanal. Had they committed the combined fleet to that battle, it would have forced the USN to scrape up every ship they had.
1) They couldn't abandon the Marines 2) there was the threat of Guadalcanal being returned to Japanese control 3) the overall impact a IJN victory would have on the SW Pacific strategically.
Instead the IJN committed penny packets of ships. This committed the IJN to a battle of attrition on the land, sea and air. A battle they could not win.
There was a reason the IJN didn't send everything they had to Guadalcanal (fuel supply issues, aircraft carrier pilot attrition, plus the fact their battle line save the Kongos and arguably the Yamatos not being fast enough).
@@bkjeong4302 the Japanese Navy at that point was still near its peak. The Yamato was capable of 27 knots. Within a knot of top speed of any American battleship at that time. They outnumbered us in battleships, cruisers and destroyers at that point in time. We would have had to withdraw from Guadalcanal or take every ship available to the Pacific fleat to try and support, supply and reinforce Guadalcanal. There's a good chance the Japanese would have won that confrontation had they committed what the ships they had at that point against are available ships. That's my opinion anyhow. I respect that you have a different opinion. That's the point of having these conversations. from a fuel perspective they were at a high point in their merchant ships since the notorious Mark 18 torpedo had not been fixed yet, let alone the problems admitted by bureau of ordinance.
@@bkjeong4302 I do find it really interesting that the Japanese tended to be very conservative on defense and very aggressive on offense.
John Rodrigues It’s also worth noting that the Japanese did not consider the waters around Guadalcanal to be suitable for large fleet engagements due to the confined spaces. In fact, they were very surprised when Halsey sent SoDak and Washington to defend Guadalcanal for this reason. Yes, Japan did send the Kongos on night raids, but they weren’t expecting to fight large fleet actions with them-just to bombard Henderson Field and get out of air strike range by dawn. It’s doubtful that either side would have risked their full battle fleets in those waters. It would have to have been a carrier battle, and while Japan had more carriers at the time, the US had an unsinkable carrier in Henderson Field. Also, if Japan had sent its entire fleet, Britain would have sent the 4-5 battleships and 1-2 carriers it had in the Indian Ocean at any given time to assist. So a kantai kessen at Guadalcanal wouldn’t have been as favorable to Japan as it might seem. And even if Japan had won, that would buy them maybe a year before the Essexes, the rest of the SoDaks and some Iowas, a repaired NC, the repaired Pearl battleships, about a billion cruisers, destroyers, and subs (with working torps), AND more of the Royal Navy, came and totally destroyed Japan’s already probably badly weakened fleet.
@@bluemarlin8138 They didn't have to deploy in the slot. South of the Solomon would have cut off Guadalcanal and Tulagi. Once cut off the cactus air force, so much a thorn in their side, would have become moot at best. Most likely it would have stopped operating due to a lack of aircraft, parts and other necessary supplies. At that point the Japanese could resupply at will.
One additional comment on the AEF being equipped with a lot of British and French equipment: there were other factors at play, including saving shipping space by concentrating on bringing manpower (which was the desperate need on the Western Front at the time) in preference to materiel, which was more available in Europe, and also some ussues of commonality. The US had prior to entry been supplying the Western Allies with equipment anyway.
And to be fair the US Army had until recently been small and using old equipment, stuff like British and French field artillery and aircraft were, thanks to the war, simply more advanced at that point.
Believe it or not, what we ate in the US Navy during my time ( 1980-2000 ) wasn't much different from what sailors ate during WW2. I'd venture that the BPF likely ate pretty good since they were getting their supplies via the US Navy fleet train. I can say that marmalade wasn't generally on a US Navy mess deck nor was tea...However, we did have PB&J at every meal...I was on small ships ( FFs and DDs, and large ships ( CV/CVN ), and the food was generally better on the small boys. However, when I was embarked on Kitty Hawk 91-95 she won the Ney award for best mess on a CV in the Pacific Fleet. She was a pretty good feeder! WE frequently had steak, lasagna, baked chicken, pepper steak, etc...Really good breakfasts too...RN guys that came over for medical/dental treatment really liked our food better...( We had an RN DD as one of our escorts in the Persian Gulf ).
The 11th to 13th centuries were an insane period of naval innovation in China - the Mongols had conquered the north, leaving a weakened but still colossally wealthy Southern Song dynasty to scramble together a defence of the Yangtze river (which was now the new border). The Southern Song was the first period in China in about 1,500 years to have established a standing navy, extensively using paddle-wheel ships, and they were possibly the first to use gunpowder as a ship-to-ship weapon - lobbed from traction trebuchets, mainly.
Just to give a sense of the scale of this warfare, in the 1260s, a naval commander wrote to the capital in modern-day Hangzhou saying that he was receiving about 5,000 cast-iron, gunpowder trebuchet bombs a month. And the best thing is, he was *complaining* about that. *Only* 5,000 gunpowder trebuchet bombs a month.
HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were on a 2 to 3 year voyage to the Artic where resupply is difficult.
HMS Terror would be a good 5 min deal too. And the rockets red glare,the bombs bursting in air, gave proof though the night that our flag was still there. The Terror was shooting the bombs that had fuse issues busting in the air
There was a battle of Essex in the war of 1812.
There was also a USS Essex, however, so it could go either way here.
"An eight-armed spider mutant with six engineering degrees." I aspire to be this.
The point of the Kantai Kessen was a decisive battle. I disagree that you'd have to destroy the majority of the enemy, you just have to weaken them enough that your remaining forces have full control of the seas. You can see this in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905: numerous Russian ships survived (including those that weren't in the Pacific) but they couldn't continue the war. If Japan had lost the battle of Tsushima, they'd have been in the same position.
In WW2 though, I agree: None of the battles were expected to be decisive for either the US or Japan. Even at Leyte Gulf, the Japanese did not expect the US to retreat and surrender in the case of a Japanese victory. They just hoped that they could keep the US out of the Phillippines and away from their mainland.
Royal Navy ship's grub wasn't standardised? Some friends and I discovered an official RN Chef's Handbook in an old house in Portsmouth that instructed those worthies to cook by class of ship. Under 'County Class Cruiser', breakfast routine began with 'take 685 eggs . . .'
Related to if the Jellicoe plan went forward; as an Australian gib ships. I reckon you guys owe us for HMAS Australia (I),
The Battlecruiser Australia would have been scrapped about that time anyway. It was too expensive to maintain, too slow to catch interwar cruisers and too weak to. Fight anything bigger. It was a much revered symbol of national pride but, like it RN sisters and step sisters, was outdated in the 29's and 39's
@@alecblunden8615 It still would have been nice to be compensated for our contribution to Britain's treaty obligations. I'm not arguing it was worth keeping, I want ships.
@@davidschulz5315 The obligations were for the Empire as a whole. The cruisers and the N class destroyers should meet your greed for ships.
@@alecblunden8615 My greed? Jeez, just take the personal shot.
@UNSCForwardontodawn It would have been interesting. Given the Italian deficiencies in gunnery and armour, I suspect the Regia Marina would have spent more time in harbour. The accountants would have approved.
Little known fact- most of the Spam used in the British Navy was actually supplied by Vikings from the Green Midget Inn..
Once Drach mentioned spam I was waiting for the Pythonism.
@@kevdupuis Such an obvious yet great reference. People who don't get it deserve a keel hauling..
I have a question about the Jellicoe plan, If Australia was to have a battlefleet of some kind and then have a seat at the Washington navel treaty but the cost would have been massive , Why did the Royal Navy not donate some of the ships that the treaty said had to be scraped this would have saved money, Australia would have got a pretty good sized and powerful fleet. It would have been a way for the Royal Navy to get around the treaty as they could just ask for the ships when needed as Australia being part of the commonwealth.
iirc, the treaty said that condemned ships could not be sold or gifted to anyone. All condemned ships had to be scrapped or stripped of armament and armor and made unfit for war use.
The US and Japan would not have signed on to the treaty if this happened. At that point in time, Australia, Canada, and many other former colonies were still Dominions of the British Empire. This meaning evolved throughout the first third of the 20th century, but at the time of the Washington Treaty, it basically meant that they had control over internal affairs, but foreign policy was mostly conducted by Britain and was in service of the goals of the Empire. So their navies were basically arms of the Royal Navy. You can see how this would have been a problem for the US and Japan. The only way Australia could have gotten its own seat at the table is if Britain gave it full independence.
Drach, in Ketai Kessen question you didnt mention battle of Philipine sea. I was of the opinion that it was this battle that broke IJN, since carrier air arm almost ceased to exist and since both sides pretty much deployed everything they had, it was a closest thing to decisive battle in the war. Is that a wrong opinion?
Yep this was probably the closest to the decisive battle. Leyte Gulf was just cleanup.
It certainly could be considered as such for the fleet air arms. The surface action was decidedly less impressive, though. So I would argue that it couldn't qualify as the KK for the IJN's definition. The surface fleet never waded in to gloriously kill (or be killed by) the USN surface fleet. For all that the Kido Butai was the cutting edge of the fleet, the IJN BBs were the soul and ego of the fleet from a strategic perspective.
The point is that kentai kessen as defined by Japanese doctrine specifically called for a decisive battle before any major Japanese fleet assets were lost, and possibly after as much of opponent's were out of action. So while Pearl Harbor is an opening move towards it, the payout never happens. And after Midway, such battle as described in doctrine simply becomes impossible, as major assets are already lost. So Midway, while not the kentai kessen, is essentialy the battle that made kentai kessen impossible.
From the bits I have seen on rations over the years, there was a bit of bartering going between USN and RN ships when it came to food, just to add variety,
I think it was Drach who discussed the exchange of American ice cream for British rum and beer in the Pacific Theatre.
Love the shows! Just curious if it could be possible to do a video on the USS Clamagore at some point? I was informed last year that the museum ship is going to be sunk as a reef this coming year. She is the last of her kind and it would be amazing to hear her story! Thanks in advance!
Just to point out that the camouflaged ship is Finnish coastal defence ship Väinämöinen, not the Dutch ship.
The camouflage failed.
Having uncles who served in Australia, the food they complained about was the mutton. My father was in Korea, and said the same thing.
Just a comment about storing a fleet: don't forget that the frigate HMS Unicorn (built 1824) never left the "in ordinary" status, and is still in existence as a museum ship in Dundee. Later in its life it was used as a base for training naval reservists, but it never sailed. So wooden ships could be stored for a very long time indeed.
As I understand it, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Royal Navy got a significant fraction of its crewmen by press-ganging merchant seamen (wasn't the pressing of American sailors one of the root causes of the war of 1812?) OTOH, incorporating pressed merchant seamen in an existing naval crew would be a different kettle of fish from creating a warship's crew entirely from merchant seamen.
There are wooden ships been in Port Stanley been there for 150 plus years with minimum maintenance.
The only ships that mounted the early 5'54 cal...Were the Midways and early JMSDF destroyers...In fact, the turrets on the JMSDF came from the Midway when she went through a major refit in 1955 (SCB-110).
Langley was the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution ( The us national Museum in Washington DC). in the first decade of the 20th century He designed an experimental aircraft the was launched from a catapult on a houseboat anchored in the Potomac River at Washington. Unfortunately the aircraft was not a truly practical aircraft and crashed on launching in both attempts that were made.. There was a long running controversy between the Wright brothers and the Smithsonian over a claim that Langley's "aerodrome" actually achieved the first controlled heavier than air flight.
Except it was most probably Gustave Whitehead .
@@benwilson6145 You may be interested in Greg’s Planes and Automobiles analysis of this topic.
@@gizmophoto3577 Looked, he is not objective, Whitehead flew before the Wrights. The Smithsonian only have the Wrights aircraft if they defend the Wrights fraud.
@20:44 Actually, there was a battle of Essex. A British naval shore party burned 27 ships at Essex, Connecticut in 1814.
That is not what the Ship is named for.
Were there 27 Essexes ordered?
See, now I want a Dragonball Z-Azure Lane mix/crossover where the characters are all WW2 Admirals.
Halsey: “AND THIS....IS TO GO...EVEN...FURTHER...BEYOND!
US subs had there own logo and flag and on the subs flag was kept a record of there ships sunk if it was a war ship or merchant ship also a count of airman pick up while on life guard duty
Cockatoo Island is fantastic i have done the self guided tour of the island
It is about time for a review of what happened between Blas de Lezo and the British Navy in cartagena de Indias.......
Hi! Loving your channel and have recommended it to several friends! I'm looking for a book or books on the Soviet Navy during WW2 something along the lines of Maurizio Brescia's Mussolini's Navy. Do you have any suggestions? Thanks!
The problem with the Jellicoe Plan for Australia was that it was completely unaffordable. Also, Australia could not have had a seat at the Washington Treaty Conference as a separate nation as she was not legally fully independent of Britain until after the Statute of Westminster 1936 (an Act of the British Parliament) which was not adopted by Australia till 1942 (Statute of Westminster Adoption Act, an Act of the Australian Parliament). Only after 1942 was Australia entitled to her own foreign policy and separate diplomatic representation, when she sent an Australian Minister to Washington. Not many people realise that there was not even a separate Australian nationality until the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 (Aust) was passed - before that the population of Australia consisted of British Subjects, not Australian Citizens. Australia sent observers to international conferences (e.g. Versailles 1919) as part of the British Empire delegation, not in its own right.
Sausages on a British ship? Snorkers! Good-oh!
3:40
Well, the KM ships were under orders to avoid damage, so they never directly squared off against eg Renown, and we do not know whether a Scharnhorst or Renown would prevail in a fight to the last.
Could you do a video on the Counte de Cavour class Italian battleships?
I'd argue that the actual decisive battle was Philippine Sea. At Leyte the Japanese had no chance of winning, even if Kurita had continued on at Samar.
Idea for topic: Peter the great's navel campaigns in the Black Sea vs. Turks and the Great Northern War in the Baltic with galleys vs. Swedish ships of the line/frigates. See Massie's "Peter the Great"
Arguably Philippine Sea was the all-out Kantai Kessen from Japanese doctrine. It was deliberately aimed at the US Navy with everything they had. Ironically, the fleet carrier ratio was about 15 to 9 (roughly same as the odds they faced in the Battleship days). It didn’t turn out well, including failure of the land based air to equalize the odds (equivalent to use of subs and night torpedo attacks to soften up the USN battle line)
In regards to WW1 US production. Much of the allied equipment the US used was war material produced under license from the allies. It made little sense to alter logistic lines from the US to Europe when the troops could be supplied with what was on hand.
In regards to naval production; the cruiser and destroyer swarm was a feature of the build plan. It was thought capital ship production would take the longest, so they were given priority before the war. However, when you consider the theoretical build plan of the naval act and it's amendments, the scale was impressive by any standard.
Note there was a IJN Cruiser that also disguised it's self as an In island... mostly due to the fact it's engines were a mess and it couldn't leave...or maybe it was a fuel issue.. I don't recall for sure.
We know all Beatty, Fisher, etc but what about Jack Cornwell, Hannah Snell (maybe a bit early for you) and other Lower Deck characters/repobates?
Is that Australia on the picture corresponding to the question regarding Australian fleet? It seems bigger on the maps. Must be perspective... ;)