So I know Titanic was equipped with a low pressure steam turbine for electrical generation so the technology was around for at least the pre-WW1 timeframe, but when were turbines more widely adopted in military applications?
@ 02:43:14 - The escape of the submarine ORP Orzeł. Why were ORP Orzeł and its sister ORP Sęp such large (and fast: ~20kn) submarines for such a small sea as the Baltic? I came across an opinion (perhaps Adm. Józef Unrug, but I'm sure) that the reason was that by acting together they had a chance to neutralize the Russian Gangut-class battleship. Do you think this could happen in a real battle?
Why the Soviet Union never managed to build any battleships during interwar period despite their strong industry giving them the capabilities? All I see are unfinished projects
Thank you Drach. This is one of the very few YT history channels that is fact based and well researched. It seems most of them seem to believe that ill informed opinions are more important than the truth.
02:00:02 Not exactly Navy-related, but the Swiss decided to dump all their surplus artillery munitions into their various Alpine lakes following a magazine explosion that leveled half a mountain shortly after WW2. Samples raised in recent years have shown these shells to be in perfect condition due to the cold water. On your next vacation boat trip, you can enjoy both the beautiful scenery and the thought of a few thousand tons of exploding doom a few metres beneath you.
I'm not sure how much detail I should provide. A certain sub-sea pipeline crossed an area of **unofficial** munition dumping. The routine seafloor survey magnetometer didn't respond to the brass / copper cases and the sonar saw them as gravel / cobbles.
Between the story of the escape of ORP Orzel, OPR Piorun taunting Bismarck, 303 Squadron etc, there seems to be a theme emerging. After the fall of Poland, the Free Polish forces really seem to have collectively taken the view that there are no problems, only opportunities to become legends.
Well, they knew British and French guarantees had no practical help versus a German invasion, so they had nothing to lose once they escaped. Hence were extremely motivated to take revenge where they could. My favourite incidence of this is ORP Blyskawica at Cowes (I.O.W) during an air raid on the night of 4-5th May 1942. She basically fired off more than her magazine capacity of AA rounds, and her AA gun barrels got red hot and had to be doused with water to cool them down. Coincidentally, she was there for repair and refit, having been born there. Happily, She is at Gdynia today as a museum ship
Concerning forgotten ammo, I saw a report recently that in a British town square, the town had an empty Grand Slam 22,000-pound bomb from WWII. Children had been playing on it for years. One day recently, the somewhat rusty bomb was going to be cleaned up and repainted. However, when they examined the bomb they found, to their utter horror, that this was a LIVE, COMPLETELY READY-FOR-ACTION Grand Slam bomb with its fuzes removed, but otherwise as deadly as it was during WWII. If it exploded, the entire town might have been removed from the surface of the earth. It was very carefully removed using a heavy-duty transporter vehicle and taken away (don't know where). Kind of pegs the needle about forgotten munitions, doesn't it?
I don't believe this for a minute: Grand Slams were huge things, so if one dropped out of a bomber, it would have made a big crater even without exploding. Plus, very few were made and any one missing would have been noticed very quickly. There's no mention of any aircraft crash involved, nor a name for the town or what year it was. A dud, like the bomb.
@@sqij1 it comes from RAF Scampton, which allegedly have a live grand slam as a gate guard until the late 50's and which would have taken out most of North Lincoln had it detonated. It's largely considered to be an urban myth due to lack of evidence.. but stranger things have happened and I doubt it would have been publicised. I'll put it in the 'I want to believe' category
@@sqij1this wasn't a dropped bomb. It was a base installation. On display. Like you see old propellers plane or artillery guns on display at military bases. What they thought was a deactivate or prop turned out to be a completely live and actual bomb that only had its fuse removed. Left in the open and was suffering weathering. But had photos with kids playing on it. Mess photos on it. In the red tape it had been forgotten that it was an actual live bomb.
@@sqij1 I agree, also very expensive and only a small number made, so they all would have been kept accounted for. Its little brother, the Tallboy , was so precious that when the 1st Lancaster raid on Tirpitz happened, the crews were told to bring the bombs back if they did not have a clear enough view of the target
Shaping armor and connecting plates together. Drach, you are correct that face-hardened armor is very difficult to shape after the hard face is created. However, when improved plates were made using post-hardening tempering to toughen them (as was used in non-face-hardened steels, such as knives and so forth), the reheated armor (to a lower temperature than the hardening process, of course) would soften the plates a little bit and small adjustments using heavy-duty presses could be used to adjust the final shape to exact specs, once this process was perfected, as it was by experts at most major armor manufacturers. Professional steel-makers can overcome lots of such problems. You are incorrect about edge connection, though,, Drach. While many early armor plates were merely pressed tightly together and supported solely by the support structures that they were bolted to, this was found before and during WWI by the results of hits at such cracks at the joints to weaken the armor enough that major leaks could be created if a heavy AP shell hit at such a joint, even if it failed to penetrate. Several British and German ships at Jutland suffered from this and the German ships almost sank due to this being added to their other damage. What was done later more-or-less universally was to "zip-up" the plate edges where they joined by cutting deep wedge-shaped notches along the two edges that met perfectly when the plates were installed. A red-hot nickel-steel "keying" ribbon shaped to exactly fit into the final shape of these combined notches was pressed into the notches from one end along the entire length of the two joined plate edges. These held the plate edges tightly together no matter how the plates and back supports were distorted by a shell edge hit. For very thick plates, more than one keying strip would be inserted. In addition, these results from early-20th Century battles showed that having a moderately thick layer of wood or cement tightly fitting between the ship's plating supporting the armor and the back of the armor plate allowed the armor to distort somewhat under impact and still minimize the distortion and breakage of the supports. WWII armor, in many cases, was much more strongly attached to the ship than many plates used through WWI.
Nathan. Thank you for your description of the process of joing the armour. It's hard to imagine that process, given the mass and thickness, along with the intransigence of the metal makes the process awesome. It would be brilliant to see that process in operation. sdk
That process was done using cold, rather than heat. If you heat the keying strip, it will expand. If you chill it, it gets smaller and easier to insert. When it warms up, it expands and is held tightly in the wedge-shaped slots. The usual chilling method in US shipyards was liquid nitrogen.
Regarding timber for warships, one of my favorite Age of Sail anecdotes is of Cuthbert Collingwood and how, on his (rare) shore sojourns, he would walk around his home with his dog and a pocket of acorns, planting them where he thought an oak tree might grow well, so in future generations the Empire would never lack for the wooden walls on which its security depended.
As for "removing amenities", the "gold plater" destroyers at Pearl Harbor were required to make a lot of changes after the attack. Some items present before December 1941, and never seen again until after the war: excess wooden items (such as bookcases, gratings, duckboards, railing covers on the bridge) linoleum flooring, most nice paint on compartment walls, decorative flags, curtains, awnings, rugs dress uniforms, civilian clothing correspondence more than one year old, paper and office supplies in excess of a three month supply glass in bulletin boards cameras (except official ones) more than 5 gallons of gasoline, 10 gallons of kerosene, 20 gallons of torpedo alcohol, etc. portholes on the first platform. Without these, the crew spaces aft of the engine room get very humid. more than one ship's boat
@45:00 worth keeping in mind that SoDak took that bomb hit during an air raid and then there was time to communicate with BuOrd, which directed them to not use those guns. During a main battery gun action, it's unlikely anyone would notice gouges from the gun barrels until the gun itself burst during a later firing.
Hi! Navarch here: The Length Between Perpendiculars (LBP) is very important in naval architecture and is basically the primary “length” measurement of the ship that we use. It’s the length that defines the station spacing of the hull on the lines plan and the FP is the starting point for frame numbering if you’re in the US, whereas the AP serves that role in Europe. The LOA has a big issue in that it includes a bunch of stuff that isn’t in the water and therefore isn’t suitable for anything that involves hydrostatics and hydrodynamics.
Concerning the Japanese Night fighting capabilities at around 1:40:30 you talk about how they had binoculars with wider angle lenses & filters that also helped pull in extra light from the moon & stars. However, what you fail to mention is that the Japanese trained obsessively for night battles because they knew that they needed every edge that they could get when going to war with the USA & Great Britain cuz as far as numbers of capital ships they were hopelessly outnumbered. And it was basically because of air power combined with Japanese Naval assets & Army's that made them such a formidable opponent. And furthermore, if the Japanese Army & Navy had better coordination & cooperation together they would have been much deadlier than they were. Unfortunately for the Japanese, they didn't realize that America NOT wanting to go war was a completely different animal after Pearl Harbor. America felt like they WERE FORCED into war by Japan & that they were going to make sure that Japan totally regretted doing so & therefore an UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER IS the only option America would agree to terms of peace. And so the idea of grabbing what they could & then trying to negotiate a peace settlement was out of the question as soon as 2500 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor. And then they upped the ante in the Philippines by 1000%. Because by then, way too many Americans had died in the Pacific to even try to negotiate peace. After that America 🇺🇸 was in it to win it! And wanted to crush Japan like an ugly roach scurrying across our kitchen floor! And most every American felt that it was their duty to do everything they could for the war effort. Like some guys training for a year or longer before being deployed, so that they would be capable to take on whatever the Germans or Japanese threw at them. Fight smarter & harder! And the fact that the USA could pull off a landing like D-Day in Normandy while also being fully engaged with the Japanese on the other side of the world was a major FLEX of power. However, with that being said, I seriously don't think it would have been successful if not for the Germans being fully engaged by the Russians which had been richly fortified by the Lend-Lease Act & arctic convoys taking massive amounts of war materials to Russia & the fact that America also had Great Britain, Canada & a massive amount of other Europeans reinforcing the invasion.
Re: 40:38 "Ship unmanned." The U.S. Military Liaison Mission was a defacto legal intelligence gathering operation in Soviet Occupied East Germany. The other three powers, the U.K, France, and the Soviets, all maintained similar operations that were covered under agreements between the powers. The USMLM had a high profile casualty when Major Nicholson was shot by a poorly trained Soviet sentry whilst taking photographs at a tank depot in 1985. The UK group, known as BRIXMIS, have some interesting history as well having recovered then brand new un-fired Soviet anti-armour rounds and information on Soviet field encryption methods and supplies. The LMs were one of the best sources of hard intelligence on the Soviets and Warsaw Pact forces during the Cold War.
I can think of one thing that occasionally got thrown over the side equipmentwise: older codebooks or cipher gear that was known to be insecure. My father in particular had a story of an old strip cipher used by the USN from before WW2, which was still being maintained as a backup system aboard his first ship after he graduated in 1966. Some time after my dad came aboard, David Khan published The Codebreakers, which not only described this system but the mathematical means to break it, and the ship's XO bought the book and pointed this out to the captain over dinner in the wardroom. The captain ordered the strip cipher system consigned overside in a weighted bag.
the main cause of the denuding of England's forests was the insatiable demand for Charcoal, for the purpose of smelting Iron. Coal , as it came from the ground, was unsuitable; it introduced too many impurities into the Iron. It was not until the invention of the Coking Oven, in the 1830s, that coal could be used to produce iron of good quality; but, by that time, the damage was already largely done.
About forest destruction for charcoal: Oliver Rackham made the point that coppiced woods are the most efficient source of charcoal, and are potentially everlasting, being harvested on a ten-year or less cycle.
At Jutland, German torpedo boat flotillas were controlled from the light cruiser SMS Rostock, flying the flag of Kommodore Andreas Michelsen. From what I have read, Rostock and Elbing (Elbing originally belonged to II Scouting Group, attached to the German battlecruisers) joined up with the IV Scouting Group, attached to the German main body, for the night voyage back to Germany, where Rostock was scuttled after a torpedo hit. I think other German light cruisers also had torpedo boat flotillas (or half-flotillas?) attached to them, but I might be wrong here. Rostock seems to have been the overall command ship. For example, she ordered torpedo boats to escort the badly damaged Lützow after the main engagement. Rostock also seems to have fired a huge amount of 105mm ammunition during the battle.
If one ever travels to Lakehurst NAS from the Delaware Valley, (this thought came about while discussing timber, so....) you'd pass through an area of Southern New Jersey called The Pine Barrens. This area, way back when, was culled for "bog iron" deposits- found under water or near water. Bog iron was used for cannon shot a few centuries ago for The Colonies. The Pine Barrens were also used, and set up to receive goods, to avoid taxation from The Crown via other controlled ports. When discovered by The Crown in The Pines, steps were taken to inspect & redirect vessels to proper ports that had the ability to tax incoming goods to The Colonies. The adhoc docks set up in the Pines were destroyed, only to spring up again. Very interesting area- although you'd never know it to look at it today. It is called The Pine Barrens for a reason.... Nothing but rivers of cedar water & brackish toward the coast, sand & lots of it, scrubby pine & oak, and bush. And it should be said- cranberries & blueberries. And a wonderful place to canoe or kayak in the summer months. Aside fini..... 🚬😎 Edit: and underneath all of this sits the largest underground fresh water deposit on the planet !!
Four minutes into the first question I thought to myself finally I can point out something that he is either wrong or omitted information. Unfortunately the information I thought you were going to omit you thoroughly covered in minute 5 of answering the question. Oh well. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into your videos, thumbs up.
At Naval Support Activity Crane, near Bloomington, Indiana, the U.S. Navy maintains "Constitution Grove," where a forest of white oaks are grown for the sole purpose of restoring and refitting the USS Constitution
Hello Drach, we met on the New Jersey when you were in the states earlier this month, thanks for answering my question on your tightrope analogy. After that meeting I went to the USS Olympia and was struck by how much more similar it was to the USS Constitution in terms of wooden paneling and furnishing everywhere and similar to the picture and question you took at 17:48 regarding 'luxuries.' Was also struck by how massive the engines were compared to the SHP as vs the NJ, seemed like a 'Moore's Law' of the 19th-20th century...
Re luxuries: According to the museum, the USS New Jersey would land its grand ceremonial dining service before going to war. It was apparently extremely expensive, so it’s loss with the ship was to be avoided. In peacetime it arguably gave good value when used for diplomatic missions, but those didn’t happen in war time.
Referencing the automatic Tiny Tims, it's been a while, (And my books are currently buried after a move) but I seem to recall the US Navy put them on landing craft, I want to say eight twin launchers to a vessel. I don't think they were properly developed before the end of World War 2 but did see some use in at least Korea. I apologize I can't provide more accurate or extensive information than that at this time. Keep up the great work by the way, a huge fan!
There were bombardment ships equipped with the rocket turrets. There is a video out there. The turrets themselves were mounted on 40mm Bofors mounts. Controlled from a central fire control system. Mark Felton. Beach landing battering rams. At least a couple of them were in service into the 60s.
At the edges of adjacent plates, in many cases the edge had a deep groove cut into it matching the groove on the touching plate and a thick ribbon of armor-class steel was forced into the edge groove to prevent the two plates from moving separately on an impact on or near that groove. This was not always used, but by WWII, it was the primary locking method for adjacent plates.
I'm not sure you are correct about the levels of forestation in the UK. Forest cover reached an all time low during the world wars and has been increasing since then
Could've sworn the primary deforestation started out with the Romans... So when you say "all time low" my brain screams "all time recorded low" as I'm fairly certain that the woodland rebound has been an up and down flow over the ages.
wrt the question about casemate mounted secondaries, I noticed that the battlecruisers that Jackie Fisher had a hand in, tended to have deck mounts, rather than casemates. I found the text of a letter Jellicoe is supposed to have written when he raised his flag on Iron Duke. The letter was hilarious in it's description of the amount of water shipped by the casemate mounts. I can't help but wonder if Jellicoe had some input on the immediate post-war British designs in pushing away from casemate mounts, due to the problems he had directly experienced with them.
In unverified news, the Danish navy lately got a letter from the national forestry service, that the Oaks planted after the British raid on Kopenhagen (that would be Nelson) were now ready to be harvested.
2:49:31 Regarding Ryan, Ramius, and Admiral Halsey, I can't remember the exact quotes, but there are some brief passages in other Ryanverse books referring to his bio of Halsey. The basic summary seems to be that Ryan is more supportive of Halsey than most historians - again I can't remember the exact quotes, but I remember something along the lines of "Halsey could only be expected to act on the information that he had access to." While that's fair, I think that Jack Ryan (and Tom Clancy himself) maybe didn't have as clear an idea of all the information Halsey had on October 24, 1944 as Drach and others do. As Drach has pointed out in various other videos, it seems that there was plenty of information available to Halsey (and in many cases, being specifically pointed out to him by his subordinates) for him to figure out what Kurita and Ozawa were actually doing.
Re RN and USN together in surface actions. In Kolambangara, the New Zealand Leander participated, and at Surigao Straight, you have Shropshire and Arunta from the Australian navy
1:21:26 Well I held my phone at arms length, the camouflage made it look like there was just a small grey ship although the superstructure grey did make you realise something was off, rather than adding to the disguise.
That picture of the HMS Unicorn led me to reading about it and a wonderful example of metal being used in construction. I can't imagine the US building a ship 100 years ago, never rigging it, and it still being around today. It makes you wonder just how pestimistic the gov't might be... "Just in case the next war goes seriously wrong."
I got you Drach. That one that starts with J is "Jauréguiberry". Call me crazy but I think those ships are beautiful in an ugly dog or hairless cat kind of way.
34:20 KMS Lutzow didn’t do as much physical damage to friendly ships as Mogami, but she probably had a higher occurrence of “bad luck incidents” during the time she accrued in actual operational deployments.
0:58 One of the additional requirements of reserving timber stands for wooden warships is the necessity of devoting attention to controlling how the trees grow. For example, you want to encourage particular bends in the growth of a tree that will be used for futtock timber, in order that the grain of the wood will follow the curve of the hull for maximum strength. And the Jauréguiberry, I'm given to understand, should be pronounced "zhor-eh-GEE-bear-ee"
2:08:00 one note on the Monroe Doctrine, there are originally talks about the US and UK issuing a joint declaration, but the US decided they didn't want to make such a statement along with the UK. The UK basically said "as long as the markets stay open, we don't really care"
37:10 Excelsior Communications Officer: Sorry to wake you, sir. Captain Hikaru Sulu: What is it? Officer: Starfleet urgently requests any data we have on the whereabouts of Enterprise. Sulu: What? Officer: Apparently, they're refusing to acknowledge signal to return to spacedock, sir. Sulu: Signal Starfleet that we have no idea location Enterprise. Officer: Sir? Sulu: You have hearing problems, mister? Officer: [leaving] No, sir.
wrt the 1.1"/Bofors 40mm/Vickers pompom question. iirc, one major issue with the Vickers was that it did not work right using USN propellant, and no-one in the US made cordite. Another gun tested in the USN shootoff that the Bofors won, was a 37mm gun the US Army was using. The 37mm had a significant range advantage over the Vickers, though range and shell size were slightly less than the Bofors offered. In the absence of the Bofors, I would expect the 37mm to receive the mods it historically did later: metallic link belt feed, in place of clips, and feed from either right or left. With belt feed from either right or left, I envision a quad mount quite like the quad Vickers mount, with the same rate of fire as the Vickers, but significantly longer range.
The M3 model of the 37mm gun could reach out to 6900 yards with a 56cal barrel. I’m not sure how much further you might be able to extend that barrel length. But if you could get it to reach out to 8000 yards or so, it would have been quite impressive.
@@scott2836 are we talking about the same gun? The only 37mm M3 I know of is the single shot anti-tank gun. The Browning designed 37mm AA gun started as the M1, with the original clip feeding system. Army manual TM-9 235 gives the ranges as maximum: 6200 yards vertical, ie 18,600 feet, and horizontal range of 8875 yards. With self-destroying HE rounds the range is shortened to 3960 yards vertical, ie 11,860 feet, and 4070 yards horizontal, with a muzzle velocity of 2600fps, and an HE shell weighing 1.34lbs. The Vickers Mk VIII pompom, according to Navweaps had an altitude max, with the high velocity ammo, of 13,300 ft, and horizontal range of 5,000yds. The USN Bofors had a max ceiling of 23,500 feet and a horizontal range of 10,750 yards, with a muzzle velocity of 2890fps and am HE shell weighing 1.985lbs. The Bofors tops the Browning on every parameter, but the Browning tops the Vickers. John Browning originally designed the gun around the end of WWI. In the 30s, Colt made some improvements, and it went into production in 1939, one year after the Navy put the 1.1 into production. Given when it was designed, if development had been pressed more urgently, seems reasonable it would have gone into production years earlier. The Browning had a tendency to jam but, being an army gun, it was burdened with a clumsy cooling system. According to the manual, after every 60 rounds, you had to stop firing and pump water through the barrel to cool it. The manual says, if it jams, it's because it has overheated, due to the crew not executing the cooling cycle. Of course, a navy mount would have a proper water jacket to eliminate the cooling problems.
3 inch RP equate to a salvo of 6 inch shells - probably due to the content as opposed to shell weight the HE having very thin cases compared to a gun shell. however most anti-ship use was either mixed use or exclusively firing of the AP type which was a solid shot (hard concrete filler) because especially against merchant ships , HE tended to blow up on contact with the plating whereas the solid lump would pass through and go smashy smashy with internals and thus causing waterline and underwater damage. letting water in rather than air, (standard ETO target being German coastal merchant ships in Norwegian waters). The concrete fulled AP round started life as a training rocket - but it was soon round in training that especially actually hitting things as small as a truck or tank with an RP was negligible whereas a near miss with a HE tended to work, Training ranges such as Goswick near Lindesfarne in Northumberland had a target line of tucks and some early model Churchill tanks, all of which were completely wrecked by the time the range closed in 1946. the sunk barges that were used as ship targets are still there more or less permanently underwater except on the very rare low tide. Although major operation took place ending in the late 1990s to clear Goswick took place, beach digging is still forbidden and RAF EOD are still on standby for RPs being found, most are these days the concrete filled warheads the RP stick bodies have rotted away, but occasional HE warheads are found. Same with other redundant RP ranges such a Mabelthorpe. and SummerCoates.
Got a few ship requests: - Minotaur-class armored cruisers - Andrei Pervozvanny-class battleships - Swiftsure-class battleships I'd also like to request a video on semidreadnoughts and the various design approaches thereof.
I do recall from reading that when the British sighted the Norfolk Islands they were quite excited about the Norfolk Pines as potential masts. Unfortunately these pines were unsuitable for such use.
Regarding what to do with left over ammunition: the US Army had some 23000 left over 11 inch rounds, and there were proposals to use sabots to enable them to be used by the Iowa class's 16 inch guns. Test were done, but the program wasn't proceeded with. Relatedly, there were also proposals in the '80s for 11 and 13 inch sabot rounds carrying submunitions with ranges out to around 40 miles, but the end of the Cold War and the decommissioning of the Iowas put an end to that as well. I've also read about ramjet rounds for attacking land targets several hundred miles from the battleships, but that's more obscure and ranges on the order of 600 miles seem unfeasible.
Does anyone know if the Renown-class as built had the 9inch belt covering the entire length between the barbettes? I'm asking because the Splendid Cats had only the machinery spaces and the amidships turret covered by 9 inches, while the fore and aft barbettes only received 5 inches of side plating (the barbettes themselves had some armor, but it's still not very much) Hood was a massive step forward in British BC design since she had roughly equal armor protection to the Mackensen-class while continuing the trend of being both faster and more heavily armed than the contemporary German BC design (but as Drach has pointed out, she was 10.000 tons heavier)
Did you check if Drach's 5 minute guide on the Renown covers it. Else you could try Dr. Alexander's video's covering Renown. Been a while since I've seen the latter, but the good doctor does tend to dive pretty deep into design and refits.
CV6 could certainly have continued in “active service” after WW2, and even launched airstrikes in a hot-war environment, even during the Korean War, but her overall capabilities would have been so much lower than the Essex class, even before those were modified to support gen-1 jet aircraft (which BigE simply could not have done), it would have been like a 2015 era sporting car that had run dozens of races per year, with occasional crashes, trying compete in 2023. Sure, the older car might be able to deliver the same, or even better, performance in raw stats like acceleration, braking, corner grip as when it was new, but it still can’t keep up with the brand new cars. And it’s gonna have some quirks and oddities that a rookie driver won’t understand, and eventually the drivers and crew who do understand them will themselves retire out of service.
Loosing sonar contact as you passed over the contact was still a problem with modern surface SONAR because of prop noise and wake turbulence following the ship. I was able to moonlite in CIC and observe an exercise with a sub. Periodically I would hear the ASW officer or CO give the command " Take her through the baffles" and the ship turned with the contact being lost as it passed asterm and then regained with a more side to bow on angle. There was a concern that the contact would capitalize on momentary the blindness (deafness) with a creative escape maneuver.
At speed, turbulence wipes out the faint sonar return. Even today you have to slow down to "clear the baffles" before using the sonar. That's why you can't have sonar on an Iowa class battleship. There is so much natural turbulence that you'd have to practically stop the ship to read the sonar. A BB doesn't ever want to do that in a combat situation, and that's why we have destroyers.
The US WWII 6" AP Mark 35 was kept just light enough for hand-loading capability in emergencies. The last versions of the US 130-pound 6" Mark 35 (MOD 9 and, I think, MOD 10) and the 335-pound "super-heavy" 8" Mark 21 MOD 5, had super-hardened AP caps of 650-680 Brinell Hardness (same as the face surface of most KC armor) ALL THE WAY THROUGH. This cap greatly increase the intact penetration ability of these small AP shells against rather thick KC-type armor. Nobody else seems to have developed such improved AP shells.
I could be wrong but from what i've read we are at the same level in terms of wooded/forested areas as we were in the middle ages/ 14th century, there is written evidence of the Romans struggling to produce fired terracotta roof tiles in some areas of the UK due to lack of trees even back before 410 AD
UK foresting levels have bounced back and forth, pre-Roman it was heavily forested, by the end of the Roman period a lot had been cut down, at the start of the Norman period most of it had grown back, by the Black Death huge amounts of that had been cut down again. Etc, etc :)
As for tracers. British main battleship APC shells added night tracers ("N.T.") to their base fuzes during WWII for use at night. I think that was done about the time that they added the French-developed explosive dye bag "K" shell mod to the windscreen for absolute determination of where all APC shells hit, not just the ones that hit water. NOTE: Tracers screwed up VT fuzes, so no tracer could be used on any VT-equipped AA/HE shell. A few time-nose-fuzed shells with tracers were inserted here and there.
They were, but that was literally why they existed (the logic was that the Iowas were needed to intercept the Kongos if they made a run against the American fleet carriers or ran away from the other, slower American fast battleships, except neither of these scenarios were all that likely by WWII to start with). Just another example of how superfluous the Iowas really were.
@@bkjeong4302 The Kongos could do 30 knots. The South Dakotas could do 28.5. I don't see a Kongo attacking a carrier with a pair of South Dakotas lurking about. Not sure why the US didn't buy and modernize Tiger if the Kongos were such a threat. Seems like she would have been a valuable ship.
Anyone read Dr Barton's book "Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism"? I took one of his classes and he contends that Britain and France began the first scientific conservation programs in order to have supplies of ship building timber, including extensive efforts in Burma to assure access to teak.
Portugal's largest pine forest, still in existence, was planted on the 13th century to provide wood for building of the ships that were used on the portuguese maritime expansion on the subsequent centuries. There's your centuries long planning :)
One thing on the ORP Orzeł escape - they actually made a suprisingly good map from memory. It is actually on display in Sikorski institute in London. Or at least was.
re: 00:54:17 - Early counter-U-Boat tactics with ASDIC/sonar? - I don't think it was just that contact was lost if you passed over a Uboat, I seem to recall that there was an angular aspect to the area covered by the sonar such that even a Uboat ahead of the ship could be lost to the sonar, provided it was close enough. (Essentially the sonar could not even look straight down, but rather only down to say 45 or 60 degrees, so if the lower edge of the sonar "cone" passed the Uboat, you were blind. I found this in a description of the final stages of an attack on a Uboat: "The deeper the U-boat was the longer the range of the lost contact and thus more difficult to attack accurately. Normally a good and firm contact was lost at 300 yards." i.e. well in front of the attacking escort.
That is my understanding also - the transmitter/receiver could be rotated 360 degrees in the horizontal plane but was fixed in the vertical plane so could not look 'down' beyond a certain angle.
1:20:30 I suspect another factor is people tend to assume worst case scenarios. You see that on land with tanks of all sorts often being reported as Tigers.
For ships that were a menace to their own side: how about the USS William D. Porter of "we almost torpedoed FDR" fame? She also managed to damage another destroyer with her anchor while leaving Norfolk and shot up the USS Luce at Okinawa.
Re: Lee and supporting Taffy 3. I understand your position with regards to the long lance. However, I think given the dramatic improvement in the MK 15, radar directed torpedo accuracy and late war aggressive destroyer tactics, I could see Lee detaching his escort for a night torpedo attack as Kurita is leaving San Bernadino Straight. This could have a devastating effect.
Alternative use for a USS Lafayette could be something like the Japanese idea for Shinano - a floating reserve of a gazillion planes for the main combat task groups, but kept another couple hundred miles back so not a frontline role.
Two minor observations, which may not be news to you. First, on Yorktown, you noticed the helm had left-right designators. For some reason, the US Navy gives steering directions as Left or Right, rather than Starboard-Port. I do not know when that became standard practice. Second, the question as to amenities is interesting. I served in the US Navy 1959-63. While I was mostly stationed at a small radio station, I did bunk at NTC San Diego. There was mess for enlisted, a seperate mess for petty officers, and another again for CPO's. Where warrant officers messed, I do not know.
(@ 01:40:16, Another feature of "Night time Binoculars" is that instead of the light going into a person's eyes having the rough diameter of a person's pupils during daylight, the diameter is larger so the user's dilated pupils are put to full use. Another possibility is the grade of glass/"glass" used in the lenses and prisms, the higher the grade the less light is lost going through the binoculars and telescopes!
Full pupil dilation is about 7mm, so to maximize the light to them, the binoc needs an exit pupil that diameter, so 7x50mm, 11x80mm, 20-25x150mm are common sizes. One could get by with 7x35 etc on fullmoon nights since the pupil might not dilate above 5mm. You really haven't seen the night sky until looking through some 11x80. Andromeda galaxy is about 8X the width of the moon, for example.
@@robertslugg8361 I've driven in Colorado on a full moon night without any car lights on at all! (Note: I was dozens of miles away from anyone, on a County Road (no drainage ditches, etc.), So if I F*cked up, I wouldn't have hurt anyone but myself.). Got up to 30 mph which I felt was the max. safe speed since there were a lot of mule deer out and didn't want a new "hood ornament"!!!
2:45:35 On the Red October question. Remember that it wasn't irl Ramius who said those words. It was the author, Tom Clancy, putting those words in his fictional characters mouth. What I think is more likely is that old Tom was also not a huge Halsey fan, but American WWII and post WWII propaganda made that the kind of thing you didn't say if you didn't want to get the 1980's version of cancelled.
1:33:00 The Treaty of Versailles denied Germany the right to build any warship that had a displacement of more than 10,000 tons. Nothing in Versailles prevented Germany building heavy cruisers. Nor were they forced to use any particular gun size. In fact, since Germany wasn’t invited to the Naval Treaty, they could have used whatever they wanted. They built the Scheers with 11” because that was the largest gun they could get on a ship that whose speed and protection could be deemed “will do.” Any gun larger would force them to use either fewer guns or compromise speed or protection so much as to make the ships useless. Ironically, they wound up with ships that were massively overpowered for merchant raiding, insufficiently protected to withstand even a few hits from proper battleship guns, and too slow to escape the kinds of ships tje used to harass and shadow them while awaiting
Im wondering if naval guns used any internal sleeves in the barrels. Instead of replacing a whole barrel did they use sleeves to be worn out & just replacing them as a consumable ?
44:30 Depends on definition of “inoperable.” Would the gun fire if the button were pressed? Probably. Is the likelihood the gun’s firing cause greater damage to our ship than we are likely to suffer if we don’t fire the gun at the target and they, instead, hit us? 🤨
The US Navy gave up steamships (except nukes) in 1990-92, but these were replaced by GAS turbines, not diesels (usually). This sudden US Navy decision was quite traumatic for us using TERRIER guided missile ships -- ending TERRIER -- for example, being without any warning in 1990.
When it comes to all-forward cruiser designs...the 17,500 ton concept that was part of the design process eventually leading to Dunkerque, even though it had 305mm guns and by Washington Treaty standards would be a capitol ship, was really more of a cruiser. Only armored against 203mm guns and only a few thousand tons heavier than the Deutschland-class heavy cruisers.
wrt the Caribbean, I did some research into WWI debts a while back. The US had bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917. As Drac noted, the bulk of the remaining islands were UK possessions. I extrapolated the price per square mile the US had paid for the Virgin Islands to the land area of all the UK island possessions in the Caribbean, plus British Honduras, and found that a fair price for those UK possessions would be a bit over $4B US, enough to cover the entire principle of UK war debt to the US, plus part of the accrued interest. The amount other allies owed the UK, which had financed WWI, until the entry of the US in 1917, almost exactly equaled what the UK owed the US. On August 1, 1922, the UK government published a note from Arthur Balfour to the French ambassador to the UK, which was widely considered to be for US consumption. The note said that, if it was up to the UK, the UK would cancel the debts owed it by it's allies, but, as the US was pressing the UK for payment, in cash, the UK had no choice but to press it's allies for repayment, in cash. So the bottom line is, if the UK had signed over it's Caribbean possessions to the US as repayment of it's debts, then cancelled all debts owed it by it's allies, as those debts would be a wash with the debts owed to the US, the acrimony through the 20s and early 30s created by the pressures for repayment would have been greatly reduced. Such a scheme was widely discussed in the newspapers at the time. But President Harding said no. Lloyd George said no. Even the Prince of Wales weighed in, "no".
In terms of ships that were extremely dangerous to their own side, HMAS Melbourne is within the channels time period, although the events were not. Although maybe her curse was having escorts that didn’t follow procedure near a carrier.
I thought the carrier Melbourne (there have been other ships ranging from frigates to cruisers bearing the name), just had a fetish for ramming and sinking destroyers. It's interesting to hear that the destroyers were largely at fault.
In both cases the destroyers where ordered to reposition on the other side of the carrier, ahead of it. In both cases the destroyers went in front instead of peeling off and going behind. In the first case (Voyager) arguably the Melbourne could have raised an objection immediately, but as I understand it the larger ship always maintains course so that the ships don’t avoid in the same direction. So their only negligence was not radioing to ask wtf the destroyer was doing. The second time was a complete mystery, the captain of Melbourne laid down the law with all the captains of the escorts. Explained how the manoeuvre should go, explained about voyager, etc etc. Melbourne contacted the escort when it started moving in front, which was acknowledged. The officers on the watch were two lts, one failed to qualify once for watch duty, the other was on his first tour. The fact it ended the career of the captain of Melbourne, is a tragedy. He was only apologised to by the government 50 years later.
That’s possible. I’m not an expert, but I believe avoiding collision the smaller ship always moves out of the way first unless there’s signalling, that’s an international standard. I doubt escorts switch sides of the carrier in the USN by moving in front. Have a read of the wikipedia article, it details the briefing and the near miss, that proceeded the actual accident.
00:21:58 - What was the USN's plan to deal with the Kongos before the Iowas were put into service? So in summary, the US Navy hoped the Japanese would kindly send the Kongos at the US battleships because the US Navy had no practical counter to the Kongos and never did until the Iowa Class was ordered with the 33-knot speed requirement. For myself, the only counter I can think of before the maturation of airpower around 1941-42 that didn't rely on Japan intentionally misusing their battlecruisers is massing a swarm of destroyers, literally dozens, against any Kongos that were caught operating close enough to a US base. Not a pretty or elegant solution, but that is how bad the situation was for the US Navy between 1917 and 1940 when it came to countering fast capital ships of any kind.
I’d argue that airpower would have already done the job by 1940 if people actually realized its value at that point and focused on naval aircraft development than on trying to build new battleships that ended up pointless and obsolete by the time they entered service.
@@bkjeong4302Not forgetting that Kirishima fell to Washington's guns in November 1942. Thus the USA had the solution before the Iowa's came into service.
The problem with Drach's TF 34 scenario is the failure to coordinate with the senior Admiral Spague.. He had the equivalent of 3 fleet carriers at his disposal. While they have limited anti-shipping capability the tendency of aviators to go for the biggest target the Yamato would likely have been crippled before the gun action.
I find it odd that the US hasn't called out the behavior of the Beshar more directly or loudly, and I'm sure available assets are surveiling her comms to the max extent possible. What is there realistically to be done about it? VBSS? Threat of sinking?
We had a king in the 1800 that decided to dedicate a island in our second largest lake to grow oaks for the navy Then we stopped to go to war all the time, and then we all got steel ships, But we did recently build a east Indiaman with oaks from that Island at least :-D
There's one type of warship which used diesel engines, almost universally...submarines! The British K class demonstrated why steam propulsion was not practical for subs, and experiments with gasoline powered subs ended disastrously. So, diesels were the default engine, for surfaced submarines [they all used battery power underwater].
Though the ocean liner SS United States might be an exception to liners lagging behind the fastest warships. She never did a crossing at full power, but is reportedly capable of 42 knots, which for 1952 is right up there with the fastest warships I'm aware of. (And even her official crossing speed on her Blue Riband winning run was a not too shabby 34.51 knots - though, yes, that does lag behind some of the fastest warships like the Le Fantasques, the Capitani Romanis, or the Abdiels)
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Which ships were the most detrimental to their own crews outside of combat scenarios?
So I know Titanic was equipped with a low pressure steam turbine for electrical generation so the technology was around for at least the pre-WW1 timeframe, but when were turbines more widely adopted in military applications?
What can be considered the most dangerous ship in each navies history? By dangerous I mean to their own side.
@ 02:43:14 - The escape of the submarine ORP Orzeł. Why were ORP Orzeł and its sister ORP Sęp such large (and fast: ~20kn) submarines for such a small sea as the Baltic? I came across an opinion (perhaps Adm. Józef Unrug, but I'm sure) that the reason was that by acting together they had a chance to neutralize the Russian Gangut-class battleship. Do you think this could happen in a real battle?
Why the Soviet Union never managed to build any battleships during interwar period despite their strong industry giving them the capabilities?
All I see are unfinished projects
Thank you Drach. This is one of the very few YT history channels that is fact based and well researched. It seems most of them seem to believe that ill informed opinions are more important than the truth.
Thank you very much Drach for your incredible content and answering all these crazy questions some of which have been mine …
Glad you're back safe and suffering from no more than jet lag after the trip.
well, that an a sudden moment of muscle memory accidentally trying to get him to drive on the oncoming side of the road...
02:00:02 Not exactly Navy-related, but the Swiss decided to dump all their surplus artillery munitions into their various Alpine lakes following a magazine explosion that leveled half a mountain shortly after WW2. Samples raised in recent years have shown these shells to be in perfect condition due to the cold water. On your next vacation boat trip, you can enjoy both the beautiful scenery and the thought of a few thousand tons of exploding doom a few metres beneath you.
I'm not sure how much detail I should provide. A certain sub-sea pipeline crossed an area of **unofficial** munition dumping. The routine seafloor survey magnetometer didn't respond to the brass / copper cases and the sonar saw them as gravel / cobbles.
The K Class crash dive is impressive in a geological time scale.
If anybody here hasn’t seen Fredrick Knudsen’s video on the Battle of May Island you need to go check that out
Between the story of the escape of ORP Orzel, OPR Piorun taunting Bismarck, 303 Squadron etc, there seems to be a theme emerging. After the fall of Poland, the Free Polish forces really seem to have collectively taken the view that there are no problems, only opportunities to become legends.
Well, they knew British and French guarantees had no practical help versus a German invasion, so they had nothing to lose once they escaped. Hence were extremely motivated to take revenge where they could. My favourite incidence of this is ORP Blyskawica at Cowes (I.O.W) during an air raid on the night of 4-5th May 1942. She basically fired off more than her magazine capacity of AA rounds, and her AA gun barrels got red hot and had to be doused with water to cool them down. Coincidentally, she was there for repair and refit, having been born there. Happily, She is at Gdynia today as a museum ship
Concerning forgotten ammo, I saw a report recently that in a British town square, the town had an empty Grand Slam 22,000-pound bomb from WWII. Children had been playing on it for years. One day recently, the somewhat rusty bomb was going to be cleaned up and repainted. However, when they examined the bomb they found, to their utter horror, that this was a LIVE, COMPLETELY READY-FOR-ACTION Grand Slam bomb with its fuzes removed, but otherwise as deadly as it was during WWII. If it exploded, the entire town might have been removed from the surface of the earth. It was very carefully removed using a heavy-duty transporter vehicle and taken away (don't know where). Kind of pegs the needle about forgotten munitions, doesn't it?
Documented here:
raafansw.org.au/docPDF/Gate_Guard_bomb_was_live1958_Vintage_news_151106.pdf
I don't believe this for a minute: Grand Slams were huge things, so if one dropped out of a bomber, it would have made a big crater even without exploding. Plus, very few were made and any one missing would have been noticed very quickly. There's no mention of any aircraft crash involved, nor a name for the town or what year it was. A dud, like the bomb.
@@sqij1 it comes from RAF Scampton, which allegedly have a live grand slam as a gate guard until the late 50's and which would have taken out most of North Lincoln had it detonated.
It's largely considered to be an urban myth due to lack of evidence.. but stranger things have happened and I doubt it would have been publicised. I'll put it in the 'I want to believe' category
@@sqij1this wasn't a dropped bomb. It was a base installation. On display. Like you see old propellers plane or artillery guns on display at military bases.
What they thought was a deactivate or prop turned out to be a completely live and actual bomb that only had its fuse removed.
Left in the open and was suffering weathering. But had photos with kids playing on it. Mess photos on it.
In the red tape it had been forgotten that it was an actual live bomb.
@@sqij1 I agree, also very expensive and only a small number made, so they all would have been kept accounted for. Its little brother, the Tallboy , was so precious that when the 1st Lancaster raid on Tirpitz happened, the crews were told to bring the bombs back if they did not have a clear enough view of the target
Shaping armor and connecting plates together.
Drach, you are correct that face-hardened armor is very difficult to shape after the hard face is created. However, when improved plates were made using post-hardening tempering to toughen them (as was used in non-face-hardened steels, such as knives and so forth), the reheated armor (to a lower temperature than the hardening process, of course) would soften the plates a little bit and small adjustments using heavy-duty presses could be used to adjust the final shape to exact specs, once this process was perfected, as it was by experts at most major armor manufacturers. Professional steel-makers can overcome lots of such problems.
You are incorrect about edge connection, though,, Drach. While many early armor plates were merely pressed tightly together and supported solely by the support structures that they were bolted to, this was found before and during WWI by the results of hits at such cracks at the joints to weaken the armor enough that major leaks could be created if a heavy AP shell hit at such a joint, even if it failed to penetrate. Several British and German ships at Jutland suffered from this and the German ships almost sank due to this being added to their other damage. What was done later more-or-less universally was to "zip-up" the plate edges where they joined by cutting deep wedge-shaped notches along the two edges that met perfectly when the plates were installed. A red-hot nickel-steel "keying" ribbon shaped to exactly fit into the final shape of these combined notches was pressed into the notches from one end along the entire length of the two joined plate edges. These held the plate edges tightly together no matter how the plates and back supports were distorted by a shell edge hit. For very thick plates, more than one keying strip would be inserted.
In addition, these results from early-20th Century battles showed that having a moderately thick layer of wood or cement tightly fitting between the ship's plating supporting the armor and the back of the armor plate allowed the armor to distort somewhat under impact and still minimize the distortion and breakage of the supports. WWII armor, in many cases, was much more strongly attached to the ship than many plates used through WWI.
Nathan. Thank you for your description of the process of joing the armour. It's hard to imagine that process, given the mass and thickness, along with the intransigence of the metal makes the process awesome. It would be brilliant to see that process in operation.
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That process was done using cold, rather than heat. If you heat the keying strip, it will expand. If you chill it, it gets smaller and easier to insert. When it warms up, it expands and is held tightly in the wedge-shaped slots. The usual chilling method in US shipyards was liquid nitrogen.
00:54:17 This is a fascinating description of tactical development against the U-boats. Probably the most informative I've read. Thanks, Drach.
Regarding timber for warships, one of my favorite Age of Sail anecdotes is of Cuthbert Collingwood and how, on his (rare) shore sojourns, he would walk around his home with his dog and a pocket of acorns, planting them where he thought an oak tree might grow well, so in future generations the Empire would never lack for the wooden walls on which its security depended.
As for "removing amenities", the "gold plater" destroyers at Pearl Harbor were required to make a lot of changes after the attack. Some items present before December 1941, and never seen again until after the war:
excess wooden items (such as bookcases, gratings, duckboards, railing covers on the bridge)
linoleum flooring, most nice paint on compartment walls,
decorative flags, curtains, awnings, rugs
dress uniforms, civilian clothing
correspondence more than one year old, paper and office supplies in excess of a three month supply
glass in bulletin boards
cameras (except official ones)
more than 5 gallons of gasoline, 10 gallons of kerosene, 20 gallons of torpedo alcohol, etc.
portholes on the first platform. Without these, the crew spaces aft of the engine room get very humid.
more than one ship's boat
@45:00 worth keeping in mind that SoDak took that bomb hit during an air raid and then there was time to communicate with BuOrd, which directed them to not use those guns. During a main battery gun action, it's unlikely anyone would notice gouges from the gun barrels until the gun itself burst during a later firing.
Hi! Navarch here: The Length Between Perpendiculars (LBP) is very important in naval architecture and is basically the primary “length” measurement of the ship that we use. It’s the length that defines the station spacing of the hull on the lines plan and the FP is the starting point for frame numbering if you’re in the US, whereas the AP serves that role in Europe. The LOA has a big issue in that it includes a bunch of stuff that isn’t in the water and therefore isn’t suitable for anything that involves hydrostatics and hydrodynamics.
LOA is 'length overall'? What is FP and AP please?
Concerning the Japanese Night fighting capabilities at around 1:40:30 you talk about how they had binoculars with wider angle lenses & filters that also helped pull in extra light from the moon & stars. However, what you fail to mention is that the Japanese trained obsessively for night battles because they knew that they needed every edge that they could get when going to war with the USA & Great Britain cuz as far as numbers of capital ships they were hopelessly outnumbered. And it was basically because of air power combined with Japanese Naval assets & Army's that made them such a formidable opponent. And furthermore, if the Japanese Army & Navy had better coordination & cooperation together they would have been much deadlier than they were. Unfortunately for the Japanese, they didn't realize that America NOT wanting to go war was a completely different animal after Pearl Harbor. America felt like they WERE FORCED into war by Japan & that they were going to make sure that Japan totally regretted doing so & therefore an UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER IS the only option America would agree to terms of peace. And so the idea of grabbing what they could & then trying to negotiate a peace settlement was out of the question as soon as 2500 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor. And then they upped the ante in the Philippines by 1000%. Because by then, way too many Americans had died in the Pacific to even try to negotiate peace. After that America 🇺🇸 was in it to win it! And wanted to crush Japan like an ugly roach scurrying across our kitchen floor! And most every American felt that it was their duty to do everything they could for the war effort. Like some guys training for a year or longer before being deployed, so that they would be capable to take on whatever the Germans or Japanese threw at them. Fight smarter & harder! And the fact that the USA could pull off a landing like D-Day in Normandy while also being fully engaged with the Japanese on the other side of the world was a major FLEX of power. However, with that being said, I seriously don't think it would have been successful if not for the Germans being fully engaged by the Russians which had been richly fortified by the Lend-Lease Act & arctic convoys taking massive amounts of war materials to Russia & the fact that America also had Great Britain, Canada & a massive amount of other Europeans reinforcing the invasion.
Very good video content with a very knowledgeable and entertaining guest. Thank you, Drach!
Re: 40:38 "Ship unmanned." The U.S. Military Liaison Mission was a defacto legal intelligence gathering operation in Soviet Occupied East Germany. The other three powers, the U.K, France, and the Soviets, all maintained similar operations that were covered under agreements between the powers. The USMLM had a high profile casualty when Major Nicholson was shot by a poorly trained Soviet sentry whilst taking photographs at a tank depot in 1985. The UK group, known as BRIXMIS, have some interesting history as well having recovered then brand new un-fired Soviet anti-armour rounds and information on Soviet field encryption methods and supplies. The LMs were one of the best sources of hard intelligence on the Soviets and Warsaw Pact forces during the Cold War.
I can think of one thing that occasionally got thrown over the side equipmentwise: older codebooks or cipher gear that was known to be insecure. My father in particular had a story of an old strip cipher used by the USN from before WW2, which was still being maintained as a backup system aboard his first ship after he graduated in 1966. Some time after my dad came aboard, David Khan published The Codebreakers, which not only described this system but the mathematical means to break it, and the ship's XO bought the book and pointed this out to the captain over dinner in the wardroom. The captain ordered the strip cipher system consigned overside in a weighted bag.
Fascinating take on the Monroe Doctrine that I'd never otherwise learn about.
the main cause of the denuding of England's forests was the insatiable demand for Charcoal, for the purpose of smelting Iron. Coal , as it came from the ground, was unsuitable; it introduced too many impurities into the Iron. It was not until the invention of the Coking Oven, in the 1830s, that coal could be used to produce iron of good quality; but, by that time, the damage was already largely done.
About forest destruction for charcoal: Oliver Rackham made the point that coppiced woods are the most efficient source of charcoal, and are potentially everlasting, being harvested on a ten-year or less cycle.
At Jutland, German torpedo boat flotillas were controlled from the light cruiser SMS Rostock, flying the flag of Kommodore Andreas Michelsen. From what I have read, Rostock and Elbing (Elbing originally belonged to II Scouting Group, attached to the German battlecruisers) joined up with the IV Scouting Group, attached to the German main body, for the night voyage back to Germany, where Rostock was scuttled after a torpedo hit.
I think other German light cruisers also had torpedo boat flotillas (or half-flotillas?) attached to them, but I might be wrong here. Rostock seems to have been the overall command ship. For example, she ordered torpedo boats to escort the badly damaged Lützow after the main engagement. Rostock also seems to have fired a huge amount of 105mm ammunition during the battle.
If the question is “why was the RN in general or a specific RN capital ship like X” and the period is 1905-1920, the answer is always “Fisher.”
Huge fan of your videos, informative and fun to listen to. Thank you.
If one ever travels to Lakehurst NAS from the Delaware Valley, (this thought came about while discussing timber, so....) you'd pass through an area of Southern New Jersey called The Pine Barrens. This area, way back when, was culled for "bog iron" deposits- found under water or near water. Bog iron was used for cannon shot a few centuries ago for The Colonies.
The Pine Barrens were also used, and set up to receive goods, to avoid taxation from The Crown via other controlled ports. When discovered by The Crown in The Pines, steps were taken to inspect & redirect vessels to proper ports that had the ability to tax incoming goods to The Colonies. The adhoc docks set up in the Pines were destroyed, only to spring up again.
Very interesting area- although you'd never know it to look at it today. It is called The Pine Barrens for a reason....
Nothing but rivers of cedar water & brackish toward the coast, sand & lots of it, scrubby pine & oak, and bush. And it should be said- cranberries & blueberries.
And a wonderful place to canoe or kayak in the summer months.
Aside fini.....
🚬😎
Edit: and underneath all of this sits the largest underground fresh water deposit on the planet !!
Four minutes into the first question I thought to myself finally I can point out something that he is either wrong or omitted information. Unfortunately the information I thought you were going to omit you thoroughly covered in minute 5 of answering the question. Oh well. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into your videos, thumbs up.
At Naval Support Activity Crane, near Bloomington, Indiana, the U.S. Navy maintains "Constitution Grove," where a forest of white oaks are grown for the sole purpose of restoring and refitting the USS Constitution
Hello Drach, we met on the New Jersey when you were in the states earlier this month, thanks for answering my question on your tightrope analogy. After that meeting I went to the USS Olympia and was struck by how much more similar it was to the USS Constitution in terms of wooden paneling and furnishing everywhere and similar to the picture and question you took at 17:48 regarding 'luxuries.' Was also struck by how massive the engines were compared to the SHP as vs the NJ, seemed like a 'Moore's Law' of the 19th-20th century...
During Vietnam they had 2 5" rocket launchers fitted on a converted LCM (LCFS). Riverine fire support.
Re luxuries: According to the museum, the USS New Jersey would land its grand ceremonial dining service before going to war. It was apparently extremely expensive, so it’s loss with the ship was to be avoided. In peacetime it arguably gave good value when used for diplomatic missions, but those didn’t happen in war time.
Referencing the automatic Tiny Tims, it's been a while, (And my books are currently buried after a move) but I seem to recall the US Navy put them on landing craft, I want to say eight twin launchers to a vessel. I don't think they were properly developed before the end of World War 2 but did see some use in at least Korea. I apologize I can't provide more accurate or extensive information than that at this time. Keep up the great work by the way, a huge fan!
There were bombardment ships equipped with the rocket turrets. There is a video out there. The turrets themselves were mounted on 40mm Bofors mounts. Controlled from a central fire control system.
Mark Felton. Beach landing battering rams.
At least a couple of them were in service into the 60s.
yes they were definitely used in operations equipped on LSTs
there are videos out there on them but not a lot
At the edges of adjacent plates, in many cases the edge had a deep groove cut into it matching the groove on the touching plate and a thick ribbon of armor-class steel was forced into the edge groove to prevent the two plates from moving separately on an impact on or near that groove. This was not always used, but by WWII, it was the primary locking method for adjacent plates.
I'm not sure you are correct about the levels of forestation in the UK. Forest cover reached an all time low during the world wars and has been increasing since then
Could've sworn the primary deforestation started out with the Romans... So when you say "all time low" my brain screams "all time recorded low" as I'm fairly certain that the woodland rebound has been an up and down flow over the ages.
Indeed, pre-Black Death the forests were in far worse shape than a century later.
@@Drachinifel ll
wrt the question about casemate mounted secondaries, I noticed that the battlecruisers that Jackie Fisher had a hand in, tended to have deck mounts, rather than casemates. I found the text of a letter Jellicoe is supposed to have written when he raised his flag on Iron Duke. The letter was hilarious in it's description of the amount of water shipped by the casemate mounts. I can't help but wonder if Jellicoe had some input on the immediate post-war British designs in pushing away from casemate mounts, due to the problems he had directly experienced with them.
In unverified news, the Danish navy lately got a letter from the national forestry service, that the Oaks planted after the British raid on Kopenhagen (that would be Nelson) were now ready to be harvested.
2:49:31 Regarding Ryan, Ramius, and Admiral Halsey, I can't remember the exact quotes, but there are some brief passages in other Ryanverse books referring to his bio of Halsey. The basic summary seems to be that Ryan is more supportive of Halsey than most historians - again I can't remember the exact quotes, but I remember something along the lines of "Halsey could only be expected to act on the information that he had access to."
While that's fair, I think that Jack Ryan (and Tom Clancy himself) maybe didn't have as clear an idea of all the information Halsey had on October 24, 1944 as Drach and others do. As Drach has pointed out in various other videos, it seems that there was plenty of information available to Halsey (and in many cases, being specifically pointed out to him by his subordinates) for him to figure out what Kurita and Ozawa were actually doing.
Re RN and USN together in surface actions. In Kolambangara, the New Zealand Leander participated, and at Surigao Straight, you have Shropshire and Arunta from the Australian navy
1:21:26 Well I held my phone at arms length, the camouflage made it look like there was just a small grey ship although the superstructure grey did make you realise something was off, rather than adding to the disguise.
That picture of the HMS Unicorn led me to reading about it and a wonderful example of metal being used in construction. I can't imagine the US building a ship 100 years ago, never rigging it, and it still being around today. It makes you wonder just how pestimistic the gov't might be... "Just in case the next war goes seriously wrong."
56:17 I’d like to add: during a high speed approach to the contact, the water flow noise over the sonar renders it useless
I got you Drach. That one that starts with J is "Jauréguiberry". Call me crazy but I think those ships are beautiful in an ugly dog or hairless cat kind of way.
34:20
KMS Lutzow didn’t do as much physical damage to friendly ships as Mogami, but she probably had a higher occurrence of “bad luck incidents” during the time she accrued in actual operational deployments.
50:00-ish. Air mount rockets vs shipping had great effect in the old 8 bit (on apple) "Wings of Furry." Highly recommended.
0:58 One of the additional requirements of reserving timber stands for wooden warships is the necessity of devoting attention to controlling how the trees grow. For example, you want to encourage particular bends in the growth of a tree that will be used for futtock timber, in order that the grain of the wood will follow the curve of the hull for maximum strength.
And the Jauréguiberry, I'm given to understand, should be pronounced "zhor-eh-GEE-bear-ee"
2:08:00 one note on the Monroe Doctrine, there are originally talks about the US and UK issuing a joint declaration, but the US decided they didn't want to make such a statement along with the UK.
The UK basically said "as long as the markets stay open, we don't really care"
37:10
Excelsior Communications Officer: Sorry to wake you, sir.
Captain Hikaru Sulu: What is it?
Officer: Starfleet urgently requests any data we have on the whereabouts of Enterprise.
Sulu: What?
Officer: Apparently, they're refusing to acknowledge signal to return to spacedock, sir.
Sulu: Signal Starfleet that we have no idea location Enterprise.
Officer: Sir?
Sulu: You have hearing problems, mister?
Officer: [leaving] No, sir.
2:52:33 I'm feeling cold just looking at that picture...!! Pity the poor sod who had to stand outside and take that picture!
Reasons to be cheerful: Part 1.
😉
wrt the 1.1"/Bofors 40mm/Vickers pompom question. iirc, one major issue with the Vickers was that it did not work right using USN propellant, and no-one in the US made cordite. Another gun tested in the USN shootoff that the Bofors won, was a 37mm gun the US Army was using. The 37mm had a significant range advantage over the Vickers, though range and shell size were slightly less than the Bofors offered. In the absence of the Bofors, I would expect the 37mm to receive the mods it historically did later: metallic link belt feed, in place of clips, and feed from either right or left. With belt feed from either right or left, I envision a quad mount quite like the quad Vickers mount, with the same rate of fire as the Vickers, but significantly longer range.
The M3 model of the 37mm gun could reach out to 6900 yards with a 56cal barrel. I’m not sure how much further you might be able to extend that barrel length. But if you could get it to reach out to 8000 yards or so, it would have been quite impressive.
@@scott2836 are we talking about the same gun? The only 37mm M3 I know of is the single shot anti-tank gun. The Browning designed 37mm AA gun started as the M1, with the original clip feeding system. Army manual TM-9 235 gives the ranges as maximum: 6200 yards vertical, ie 18,600 feet, and horizontal range of 8875 yards. With self-destroying HE rounds the range is shortened to 3960 yards vertical, ie 11,860 feet, and 4070 yards horizontal, with a muzzle velocity of 2600fps, and an HE shell weighing 1.34lbs. The Vickers Mk VIII pompom, according to Navweaps had an altitude max, with the high velocity ammo, of 13,300 ft, and horizontal range of 5,000yds. The USN Bofors had a max ceiling of 23,500 feet and a horizontal range of 10,750 yards, with a muzzle velocity of 2890fps and am HE shell weighing 1.985lbs. The Bofors tops the Browning on every parameter, but the Browning tops the Vickers. John Browning originally designed the gun around the end of WWI. In the 30s, Colt made some improvements, and it went into production in 1939, one year after the Navy put the 1.1 into production. Given when it was designed, if development had been pressed more urgently, seems reasonable it would have gone into production years earlier. The Browning had a tendency to jam but, being an army gun, it was burdened with a clumsy cooling system. According to the manual, after every 60 rounds, you had to stop firing and pump water through the barrel to cool it. The manual says, if it jams, it's because it has overheated, due to the crew not executing the cooling cycle. Of course, a navy mount would have a proper water jacket to eliminate the cooling problems.
I have came to an idea of all forward Deutschlands in Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts about a year ago and it is still the cutest thing i have ever seen
3 inch RP equate to a salvo of 6 inch shells - probably due to the content as opposed to shell weight the HE having very thin cases compared to a gun shell. however most anti-ship use was either mixed use or exclusively firing of the AP type which was a solid shot (hard concrete filler) because especially against merchant ships , HE tended to blow up on contact with the plating whereas the solid lump would pass through and go smashy smashy with internals and thus causing waterline and underwater damage. letting water in rather than air, (standard ETO target being German coastal merchant ships in Norwegian waters). The concrete fulled AP round started life as a training rocket - but it was soon round in training that especially actually hitting things as small as a truck or tank with an RP was negligible whereas a near miss with a HE tended to work, Training ranges such as Goswick near Lindesfarne in Northumberland had a target line of tucks and some early model Churchill tanks, all of which were completely wrecked by the time the range closed in 1946. the sunk barges that were used as ship targets are still there more or less permanently underwater except on the very rare low tide. Although major operation took place ending in the late 1990s to clear Goswick took place, beach digging is still forbidden and RAF EOD are still on standby for RPs being found, most are these days the concrete filled warheads the RP stick bodies have rotted away, but occasional HE warheads are found. Same with other redundant RP ranges such a Mabelthorpe. and SummerCoates.
Got a few ship requests:
- Minotaur-class armored cruisers
- Andrei Pervozvanny-class battleships
- Swiftsure-class battleships
I'd also like to request a video on semidreadnoughts and the various design approaches thereof.
I do recall from reading that when the British sighted the Norfolk Islands they were quite excited about the Norfolk Pines as potential masts. Unfortunately these pines were unsuitable for such use.
Regarding what to do with left over ammunition: the US Army had some 23000 left over 11 inch rounds, and there were proposals to use sabots to enable them to be used by the Iowa class's 16 inch guns. Test were done, but the program wasn't proceeded with.
Relatedly, there were also proposals in the '80s for 11 and 13 inch sabot rounds carrying submunitions with ranges out to around 40 miles, but the end of the Cold War and the decommissioning of the Iowas put an end to that as well. I've also read about ramjet rounds for attacking land targets several hundred miles from the battleships, but that's more obscure and ranges on the order of 600 miles seem unfeasible.
Does anyone know if the Renown-class as built had the 9inch belt covering the entire length between the barbettes? I'm asking because the Splendid Cats had only the machinery spaces and the amidships turret covered by 9 inches, while the fore and aft barbettes only received 5 inches of side plating (the barbettes themselves had some armor, but it's still not very much)
Hood was a massive step forward in British BC design since she had roughly equal armor protection to the Mackensen-class while continuing the trend of being both faster and more heavily armed than the contemporary German BC design (but as Drach has pointed out, she was 10.000 tons heavier)
Did you check if Drach's 5 minute guide on the Renown covers it. Else you could try Dr. Alexander's video's covering Renown. Been a while since I've seen the latter, but the good doctor does tend to dive pretty deep into design and refits.
In regards to timber for USS Constitution there is Constitution Grove in Bloomington, Indiana
White Oak
Naval Support Activity Crane is the USN organization that maintains it.
CV6 could certainly have continued in “active service” after WW2, and even launched airstrikes in a hot-war environment, even during the Korean War, but her overall capabilities would have been so much lower than the Essex class, even before those were modified to support gen-1 jet aircraft (which BigE simply could not have done), it would have been like a 2015 era sporting car that had run dozens of races per year, with occasional crashes, trying compete in 2023.
Sure, the older car might be able to deliver the same, or even better, performance in raw stats like acceleration, braking, corner grip as when it was new, but it still can’t keep up with the brand new cars.
And it’s gonna have some quirks and oddities that a rookie driver won’t understand, and eventually the drivers and crew who do understand them will themselves retire out of service.
So…….Sackville. Was he a member of the Sackville-Baggins branch?
If Beatty had communicated to the submarines . . . -- I see a problem right away
Underwater semaphore with lead flags on a mast located under the hull. Simples..
Loosing sonar contact as you passed over the contact was still a problem with modern surface SONAR because of prop noise and wake turbulence following the ship. I was able to moonlite in CIC and observe an exercise with a sub. Periodically I would hear the ASW officer or CO give the command " Take her through the baffles" and the ship turned with the contact being lost as it passed asterm and then regained with a more side to bow on angle. There was a concern that the contact would capitalize on momentary the blindness (deafness) with a creative escape maneuver.
At speed, turbulence wipes out the faint sonar return. Even today you have to slow down to "clear the baffles" before using the sonar. That's why you can't have sonar on an Iowa class battleship. There is so much natural turbulence that you'd have to practically stop the ship to read the sonar. A BB doesn't ever want to do that in a combat situation, and that's why we have destroyers.
The US WWII 6" AP Mark 35 was kept just light enough for hand-loading capability in emergencies. The last versions of the US 130-pound 6" Mark 35 (MOD 9 and, I think, MOD 10) and the 335-pound "super-heavy" 8" Mark 21 MOD 5, had super-hardened AP caps of 650-680 Brinell Hardness (same as the face surface of most KC armor) ALL THE WAY THROUGH. This cap greatly increase the intact penetration ability of these small AP shells against rather thick KC-type armor. Nobody else seems to have developed such improved AP shells.
I could be wrong but from what i've read we are at the same level in terms of wooded/forested areas as we were in the middle ages/ 14th century, there is written evidence of the Romans struggling to produce fired terracotta roof tiles in some areas of the UK due to lack of trees even back before 410 AD
UK foresting levels have bounced back and forth, pre-Roman it was heavily forested, by the end of the Roman period a lot had been cut down, at the start of the Norman period most of it had grown back, by the Black Death huge amounts of that had been cut down again. Etc, etc :)
As for tracers. British main battleship APC shells added night tracers ("N.T.") to their base fuzes during WWII for use at night. I think that was done about the time that they added the French-developed explosive dye bag "K" shell mod to the windscreen for absolute determination of where all APC shells hit, not just the ones that hit water.
NOTE: Tracers screwed up VT fuzes, so no tracer could be used on any VT-equipped AA/HE shell. A few time-nose-fuzed shells with tracers were inserted here and there.
The Iowas seem like MASSIVE OVERKILL for the Kongos.
They were, but that was literally why they existed (the logic was that the Iowas were needed to intercept the Kongos if they made a run against the American fleet carriers or ran away from the other, slower American fast battleships, except neither of these scenarios were all that likely by WWII to start with). Just another example of how superfluous the Iowas really were.
@@bkjeong4302 The Kongos could do 30 knots. The South Dakotas could do 28.5. I don't see a Kongo attacking a carrier with a pair of South Dakotas lurking about. Not sure why the US didn't buy and modernize Tiger if the Kongos were such a threat. Seems like she would have been a valuable ship.
@@bkjeong4302 The US had two North Carolinas and 4 South Dakotas by 1942. And they did even need North Carolinas to take out Hiei.
Anyone read Dr Barton's book "Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism"? I took one of his classes and he contends that Britain and France began the first scientific conservation programs in order to have supplies of ship building timber, including extensive efforts in Burma to assure access to teak.
Portugal's largest pine forest, still in existence, was planted on the 13th century to provide wood for building of the ships that were used on the portuguese maritime expansion on the subsequent centuries. There's your centuries long planning :)
Lol love the fletchers segment more everytime.
One thing on the ORP Orzeł escape - they actually made a suprisingly good map from memory. It is actually on display in Sikorski institute in London. Or at least was.
Being an Oak farmer is LONG range planning.
re: 00:54:17 - Early counter-U-Boat tactics with ASDIC/sonar? - I don't think it was just that contact was lost if you passed over a Uboat, I seem to recall that there was an angular aspect to the area covered by the sonar such that even a Uboat ahead of the ship could be lost to the sonar, provided it was close enough. (Essentially the sonar could not even look straight down, but rather only down to say 45 or 60 degrees, so if the lower edge of the sonar "cone" passed the Uboat, you were blind.
I found this in a description of the final stages of an attack on a Uboat: "The deeper the U-boat was the longer the range of the lost contact and thus more difficult to attack accurately. Normally a good and firm contact was lost at 300 yards." i.e. well in front of the attacking escort.
That is my understanding also - the transmitter/receiver could be rotated 360 degrees in the horizontal plane but was fixed in the vertical plane so could not look 'down' beyond a certain angle.
1:20:30 I suspect another factor is people tend to assume worst case scenarios.
You see that on land with tanks of all sorts often being reported as Tigers.
13:20 "That's not very typical, I'd like to make that point."
For ships that were a menace to their own side: how about the USS William D. Porter of "we almost torpedoed FDR" fame? She also managed to damage another destroyer with her anchor while leaving Norfolk and shot up the USS Luce at Okinawa.
Neither of these other incidents are corroborated by the other ships she supposedly damaged. The torpedo incident however is real.
Or even plausibly the Russian Japanese war where Aurora wound up taking fire from a ship that was targeting something that Aurora was towing.
Re: Lee and supporting Taffy 3. I understand your position with regards to the long lance. However, I think given the dramatic improvement in the MK 15, radar directed torpedo accuracy and late war aggressive destroyer tactics, I could see Lee detaching his escort for a night torpedo attack as Kurita is leaving San Bernadino Straight. This could have a devastating effect.
After beeing taken off for AA purposes, were the 1.1 inch guns used on other ships for other duties?
32:56 ....er, the Kamchatka?
do YOU see torpedo boats?
Do you see torpedo boats
@bonemeal_boi and @Gordon519 - there are always torpedo boats around the Kamchatka 🤣
Kamchatka was only a threat to the Admiral Rozhestvensky's sanity.
Didn't actually sink her fleetmates. Tried to sink Aurora though!
2:50:00 Huh i wasn't aware that the "Promethus School of Running Away From Things" had a classes of the military.
Alternative use for a USS Lafayette could be something like the Japanese idea for Shinano - a floating reserve of a gazillion planes for the main combat task groups, but kept another couple hundred miles back so not a frontline role.
Two minor observations, which may not be news to you. First, on Yorktown, you noticed the helm had left-right designators. For some reason, the US Navy gives steering directions as Left or Right, rather than Starboard-Port. I do not know when that became standard practice. Second, the question as to amenities is interesting. I served in the US Navy 1959-63. While I was mostly stationed at a small radio station, I did bunk at NTC San Diego. There was mess for enlisted, a seperate mess for petty officers, and another again for CPO's. Where warrant officers messed, I do not know.
(@ 01:40:16, Another feature of "Night time Binoculars" is that instead of the light going into a person's eyes having the rough diameter of a person's pupils during daylight, the diameter is larger so the user's dilated pupils are put to full use.
Another possibility is the grade of glass/"glass" used in the lenses and prisms, the higher the grade the less light is lost going through the binoculars and telescopes!
Full pupil dilation is about 7mm, so to maximize the light to them, the binoc needs an exit pupil that diameter, so 7x50mm, 11x80mm, 20-25x150mm are common sizes. One could get by with 7x35 etc on fullmoon nights since the pupil might not dilate above 5mm. You really haven't seen the night sky until looking through some 11x80. Andromeda galaxy is about 8X the width of the moon, for example.
@@robertslugg8361 I've driven in Colorado on a full moon night without any car lights on at all!
(Note: I was dozens of miles away from anyone, on a County Road (no drainage ditches, etc.), So if I F*cked up, I wouldn't have hurt anyone but myself.).
Got up to 30 mph which I felt was the max. safe speed since there were a lot of mule deer out and didn't want a new "hood ornament"!!!
2:45:35 On the Red October question. Remember that it wasn't irl Ramius who said those words. It was the author, Tom Clancy, putting those words in his fictional characters mouth. What I think is more likely is that old Tom was also not a huge Halsey fan, but American WWII and post WWII propaganda made that the kind of thing you didn't say if you didn't want to get the 1980's version of cancelled.
1:28:49- Great quality of balsa as a build material- low risk of splinter injury LOL
1:33:00
The Treaty of Versailles denied Germany the right to build any warship that had a displacement of more than 10,000 tons.
Nothing in Versailles prevented Germany building heavy cruisers.
Nor were they forced to use any particular gun size. In fact, since Germany wasn’t invited to the Naval Treaty, they could have used whatever they wanted.
They built the Scheers with 11” because that was the largest gun they could get on a ship that whose speed and protection could be deemed “will do.” Any gun larger would force them to use either fewer guns or compromise speed or protection so much as to make the ships useless.
Ironically, they wound up with ships that were massively overpowered for merchant raiding, insufficiently protected to withstand even a few hits from proper battleship guns, and too slow to escape the kinds of ships tje
used to harass and shadow them while awaiting
In the book: Ryan tells Ramius that he just discovered a new job opportunity for himself, as a book critique.
30:34 Mark Felton has a video on the use of these rocket systems in WWII.
Im wondering if naval guns used any internal sleeves in the barrels. Instead of replacing a whole barrel did they use sleeves to be worn out & just replacing them as a consumable ?
44:30
Depends on definition of “inoperable.”
Would the gun fire if the button were pressed? Probably.
Is the likelihood the gun’s firing cause greater damage to our ship than we are likely to suffer if we don’t fire the gun at the target and they, instead, hit us?
🤨
There's one big source of luxuries on warships you didn't touch: Transporting heads of state. That's how the Iowa got its bathtub.
That's also why Hood became worn out and in need of a refit before WW II.
The US Navy gave up steamships (except nukes) in 1990-92, but these were replaced by GAS turbines, not diesels (usually). This sudden US Navy decision was quite traumatic for us using TERRIER guided missile ships -- ending TERRIER -- for example, being without any warning in 1990.
HMS Trincomalee a ship of the Leda Class, and sister of Unicorn shows the alternative route of building the whole ship abroad, in this case India.
When it comes to all-forward cruiser designs...the 17,500 ton concept that was part of the design process eventually leading to Dunkerque, even though it had 305mm guns and by Washington Treaty standards would be a capitol ship, was really more of a cruiser. Only armored against 203mm guns and only a few thousand tons heavier than the Deutschland-class heavy cruisers.
wrt the Caribbean, I did some research into WWI debts a while back. The US had bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark in 1917. As Drac noted, the bulk of the remaining islands were UK possessions. I extrapolated the price per square mile the US had paid for the Virgin Islands to the land area of all the UK island possessions in the Caribbean, plus British Honduras, and found that a fair price for those UK possessions would be a bit over $4B US, enough to cover the entire principle of UK war debt to the US, plus part of the accrued interest. The amount other allies owed the UK, which had financed WWI, until the entry of the US in 1917, almost exactly equaled what the UK owed the US. On August 1, 1922, the UK government published a note from Arthur Balfour to the French ambassador to the UK, which was widely considered to be for US consumption. The note said that, if it was up to the UK, the UK would cancel the debts owed it by it's allies, but, as the US was pressing the UK for payment, in cash, the UK had no choice but to press it's allies for repayment, in cash. So the bottom line is, if the UK had signed over it's Caribbean possessions to the US as repayment of it's debts, then cancelled all debts owed it by it's allies, as those debts would be a wash with the debts owed to the US, the acrimony through the 20s and early 30s created by the pressures for repayment would have been greatly reduced. Such a scheme was widely discussed in the newspapers at the time. But President Harding said no. Lloyd George said no. Even the Prince of Wales weighed in, "no".
In terms of ships that were extremely dangerous to their own side, HMAS Melbourne is within the channels time period, although the events were not. Although maybe her curse was having escorts that didn’t follow procedure near a carrier.
I thought the carrier Melbourne (there have been other ships ranging from frigates to cruisers bearing the name), just had a fetish for ramming and sinking destroyers. It's interesting to hear that the destroyers were largely at fault.
In both cases the destroyers where ordered to reposition on the other side of the carrier, ahead of it. In both cases the destroyers went in front instead of peeling off and going behind. In the first case (Voyager) arguably the Melbourne could have raised an objection immediately, but as I understand it the larger ship always maintains course so that the ships don’t avoid in the same direction. So their only negligence was not radioing to ask wtf the destroyer was doing.
The second time was a complete mystery, the captain of Melbourne laid down the law with all the captains of the escorts. Explained how the manoeuvre should go, explained about voyager, etc etc. Melbourne contacted the escort when it started moving in front, which was acknowledged. The officers on the watch were two lts, one failed to qualify once for watch duty, the other was on his first tour. The fact it ended the career of the captain of Melbourne, is a tragedy. He was only apologised to by the government 50 years later.
@@TinBane Interesting, I heard somewhere that procedures on the US ship were different from the Australians and that caused confusion.
That’s possible. I’m not an expert, but I believe avoiding collision the smaller ship always moves out of the way first unless there’s signalling, that’s an international standard. I doubt escorts switch sides of the carrier in the USN by moving in front. Have a read of the wikipedia article, it details the briefing and the near miss, that proceeded the actual accident.
00:21:58 - What was the USN's plan to deal with the Kongos before the Iowas were put into service?
So in summary, the US Navy hoped the Japanese would kindly send the Kongos at the US battleships because the US Navy had no practical counter to the Kongos and never did until the Iowa Class was ordered with the 33-knot speed requirement.
For myself, the only counter I can think of before the maturation of airpower around 1941-42 that didn't rely on Japan intentionally misusing their battlecruisers is massing a swarm of destroyers, literally dozens, against any Kongos that were caught operating close enough to a US base. Not a pretty or elegant solution, but that is how bad the situation was for the US Navy between 1917 and 1940 when it came to countering fast capital ships of any kind.
I’d argue that airpower would have already done the job by 1940 if people actually realized its value at that point and focused on naval aircraft development than on trying to build new battleships that ended up pointless and obsolete by the time they entered service.
@@bkjeong4302Not forgetting that Kirishima fell to Washington's guns in November 1942. Thus the USA had the solution before the Iowa's came into service.
The problem with Drach's TF 34 scenario is the failure to coordinate with the senior Admiral Spague.. He had the equivalent of 3 fleet carriers at his disposal. While they have limited anti-shipping capability the tendency of aviators to go for the biggest target the Yamato would likely have been crippled before the gun action.
I love that a 3 hour video still got over 100K views.
I find it odd that the US hasn't called out the behavior of the Beshar more directly or loudly, and I'm sure available assets are surveiling her comms to the max extent possible. What is there realistically to be done about it? VBSS? Threat of sinking?
We had a king in the 1800 that decided to dedicate a island in our second largest lake to grow oaks for the navy
Then we stopped to go to war all the time, and then we all got steel ships,
But we did recently build a east Indiaman with oaks from that Island at least :-D
There's one type of warship which used diesel engines, almost universally...submarines! The British K class demonstrated why steam propulsion was not practical for subs, and experiments with gasoline powered subs ended disastrously. So, diesels were the default engine, for surfaced submarines [they all used battery power underwater].
Though the ocean liner SS United States might be an exception to liners lagging behind the fastest warships. She never did a crossing at full power, but is reportedly capable of 42 knots, which for 1952 is right up there with the fastest warships I'm aware of. (And even her official crossing speed on her Blue Riband winning run was a not too shabby 34.51 knots - though, yes, that does lag behind some of the fastest warships like the Le Fantasques, the Capitani Romanis, or the Abdiels)