"I tend to divide reaction videos into four broad categories ..." must be the most engineer-y way to comnence a response to such a question. 😊 Thanks so much for all of your work though the year. It has been appreciated.
Your explanation of your thought and work processes comes with a complete lack of surprise; it has shone through in everything you have produced, everything you have said. In fact, it's been obvious and familiar to me all these years of watching your channel because that's how my best friend was, eidetic memory, no-nonsense work ethic and all. Indeed, it's partly why I feel such a sense of affinity and affection for you from over five thousand miles away, because you remind me so much of him (down to the dry sense of humor!). He was a historian, too; a writer of history. Alas, he passed away 13 years ago. I am absolutely certain he would have loved your channel.
I find your answer to how you manage your work load awesome, especially the part about always needing to "look like you're working" in the office, because i use your content to "look like i am working" all the time. Then again i really do work with the cast of Yes, Minister
Re: Bismark comparison video. Being a former engineer, pictures, tables, charts, etc., always resonate more with me than words. I might recommend a simple excel spreadsheet of the various factors you are comparing and perhaps score or color code which are the best in class for each criteria or rank them to see how they all compare and summarize at the end. Don't think that's too difficult. As you are also an engineer by training I tend to think you may have already been planning that...
Several days later and 35000 ft above the sea. Im listening to the 2 part dry dock. Im am now happy and have something to listen to thats not a boring movie/movies to watch. Thanks Drach for your awesome work.
Your 15-min answer reminded me of a Descartes Square technique, a square with 4 questions that help you in decision making - "What will happen if I do this?", "What will happen if I do not do this?", "What will not happen if I do this?", "What will not happen if I do not do this?". I actually enjoyed that part quite a bit.
Troubleshooting Triangle. How does it function. What isn't functioning? What is required. Management Triangle Why did it break? Who is responsible? How soon( not how long) will it take?
I'll use this video to forget about the past 11.94 months and be in the right state of mind for the upcoming New Year celebrations. Thanks, Drach and Happy New Year.
Regarding the discussion at "02:10:01 - Were the WW2 positions such as CnC Royal Dockyards considered promotions", I've mentioned this before but seems worth reiterating for younger engineers or military personnel watching. If you are considered by upper management as an up and comer, you WILL be assigned or offered positions you may feel are a demotion or sideways move or just perhaps strange, but it MAY be the case the senior management wants to expose you to a wider variety of the business operations. Its invaluable to understand how the "other side of the fence" thinks; you start to understand decisions with a more global perspective, the 'why's' of decisions that seem odd to you. Generally you will be told that when you are reassigned and in many cases, it's stated to you in the vein of "you need to take this position". Then, when you are promoted to higher positions in your area you are much more valuable to the organization.
Also can't ignore that "field service" or "sea service" in wartime tends to be very unhealthy for senior commanders, and it is around the Second World War that it was appreciated that even the best generals and admirals needed some time off the frontlines to keep from wearing out. A "demotion" to a rear-echelon posting seems a "waste" of a good commander, but given how many high-ranking frontline commanders ended up being retired entirely due to physical and/or mental collapse, the concept had merit. Another thing people don't think about is that officers on the frontlines, as they wear out, tend to make more and more minor administrative mistakes, and while each mistake on paperwork may seem minor in and of itself, they do tend to accumulate, thus creating enormous drag on the whole system. By rotating out commanders, it helps maintain overall efficiency. For sure, a few unique officers do in fact get more energized and efficient as war goes on, but such people are rare and NOT who one should be building a military around. For every George Patton, we have scores of other officers who wore down or outright broke under the pressure despite excellent performance in early days.
The biggest problem is, that the sidegrades etc are often NOT explicitly laid out as "we feel you need this sort of experience before we can promote you higher. We want you to have a broader base of how other parts of X works first. So you will have a broader knowlege of how different parts of the company mesh together, in a higher position". Showing that people are looking at you for the higher positions, but need a bit more seasoning and experience, before such a position is offered first. So hopefully, someone will be more motivated in the new "lesser" post to learn. Not sit and sulk over not being promoted to what they believe, is a higher position. I have actually been in this situation. I became so disenchanted, I resigned. Only to be told the side(down)grade was grooming for a higher position, AFTER I resigned, via the Grapevine. With worse hours and a longer commute to another location with the sidegrade. Being told upfront, WHY would have kept me motivated, and on the payroll. Where I was sent off too was not a highly regarded part of the company, with a high staff turnover. With hindsight, I wonder how much churn was sending people there, without an explanation as to the transfer. HR really dropped the ball, or were under orders not to spell it out, which is worse.
Was listening to this while painting my Land Raider when you made a reference to Fire Dragons during the fire pikes bit. Stay away from my metal boxes, knife-ear!
A 14-minute answer to my question...WOW! I think that's longer than any other answer to me combined!! Thanks for the insights. And for any fencers in the viewership (And Drach, let me know if I should edit this out) who may want to learn about armory so you can fix your gear, just plug "I can haz armory" into the TH-cam search bar.
My favorite humor in official documents was in the technical publications for the 53F Fire Control Radar. On one particular page, the end of the page had a partial sentence that you had to turn the page to see the rest. The first page read, 'The nutating feedhorn is powered by a squirrel'. Turn the page and you read, 'cage motor'. I found a sticker of a squirrel and put it on the side of the feedhorn to make the manual more accurate.
Multitasking isn't something that most people can do. Replacing a rebuilt gearbox on a large mixer on the production floor, then, two emergency (GQ) calls upstairs in wrapping, a bad conveyor jam, and packaging machine out of timing. As you said, the subconscious sees the clock, reminding that the boiler checks are at the top of the hour. In this chaos, with the right mind and experience, you put out the biggest fire first. The pride without thanks is knowing that most people can't do what your crew just did. Happy New Year, Semper Fi.
The most amusing documentation that I ever heard of was a brief note within an Architectural firm that stated simply "F..k you. Strong memo to follow".
On the subject of the effectiveness of US privateers in the War of 1812 (1:26:24) I think one second-order effect that's worth considering is that, while their direct impact was pretty trivial, they did force British merchantmen to continue to sail in convoy and pay wartime insurance rates at a time (between Napoleon's first abdication and the Hundred Days) that the rest of Europe was reverting to peacetime routing and insurance. My understanding is that this competetive disadvantage was one of the factors that led the British government to accept status quo ante and get the nonsense over and done with, rather than maintaining the blockade long enough to compel the US to make greater concessions such as territory along the south bank of the St Lawrence and/or northern Maine.
Regarding the effect of faster QEs at Jutland (discussed in passing at 01:33:18) I seem to recall a fear expressed by someone (maybe Jellicoe, maybe Churchill) that if Beatty had "these magnificent ships" (or similar words) then he might be tempted to take on the whole High Seas Fleet (and get smashed as a consequence, QEs or not) then is there not a risk that with the QEs in formation during the run to the south, yes, 1SG gets badly handled, but then the BC Fleet gets "too keen for the kill" and gets far too close to the HSF and then gets very badly handled. Basically, the Beatty/Seymour combo finds a way to lose even WITH the QEs at hand...
To whoever asked why aerials weren't damaged due to blast. Think of the wire as a sail. The wire is so thin it doesn't catch any air. Blast acts the same as wind. The wire's surface area is tiny.so the blast effects are "tiny" as well. They tried using arty to cut barbed wire in WW1 and it didn't work for the same reason.
For what its worth my grandma was a tiny thing and she was sent into the small voids to double check work and patch it. Her info lines up with the official story :D
2:10:02 postings ashore: another reason to send people ashore was simply to give them a break: it was found during WWI that stresses of war led to people breaking down, which was avoidable by maintaining peacetime sea-shore rosters as much as possible. This was clearly problematic early in WWII when there simply weren't the ships to do what needed doing, and only got slightly easier once they became available: for example, Captain Harold Farncomb RAN spent the whole war not only at sea, but in command at sea. This didn't do his alcohol consumption much good until he got on top of it after the war: even so, it probably cost him becoming the first Australian Navy CNS, which instead went to John Collins in 1948.
Regarding damage to radio aerials, an interesting comparison is the attempted use of air-burst shrapnel shells to cut barbed wire in WW1, which turned out to be ineffective.
On the Halsey going north segment, it is worthwhile searching out the YT videos of Mark Stille (and, better still, his book) in which he analyses Halsey’s decision and concludes that it was correct. As Drach mentions in his section on reaction videos, differing opinions on particular events and decisions are possible. I think it is Stille who also analyses whether Halsey could have split his fleet into two in order to deal with both the Northern and Southern forces simultaneously. He concludes that such an action would have been unwise. One of the difficulties in assessing these decisions is to make sure one uses only the information actually at hand at the time. The number of aircraft aboard the northern force is a huge element often taken as what was known after the battle and not before it. Similarly, the number of land based aircraft still available to attack the fleet is often not taken as what Halsey and his staff “knew” (or assessed) at the time.
at 28:05 you mentioned Froude's work on hull forms. Phonetically, I took it as Fraud, which search engines love to treat as a noun referring to a crime, rather than as a proper name. It took some doing, but I eventually ran across mention of William Froude, pioneer of hydrodynamic testing and engineering of hull forms, with focus on speed and resistance using scaled models and using water tanks in an enclosed and controlled laboratory environment. That's the first time I've heard of Froude and his work (1850's-1870's). It being that the RN's Admiralty ended up making such use of Froude, his work, and Froude's son and his follow-up work, in determining hull forms of Royal Navy warships as the era of the iron-hulled ship dawned and rapidly advanced, perhaps I am not alone among your audience in wishing to learn more about Froude, his work, and how it literally shaped the Royal Navy, to whatever extent it did. Similarly, it would interesting to learn about the man and mind behind devising the striking Atlantic bow hullform that graced the revised-bow Deuchlands, revised-bow Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and Bismarck and Tirpitz, and likewise-shaped German hulls planned during the 1930's. And likewise for the 1915-ish clipper-bow of the [New Mexico/]Tennessee/Colorado classes of the US standards built at Brooklyn Navy Yard. I find these specific hull forms exceptionally sleek and elegant visually, and rather suspect that the hydrodynamic performance characteristics of these hullforms remain interesting and informative even now, with relevance for modern marine and naval engineering. I know that the German design(s) had a rigidity/stress issue which compromised structural integrity immediately aft of the armored bulkhead immediately aft of the aft-most turret, but suspect that eventually that problem would have been solved, perhaps either via structural bracing/reinforcement or slightly bulking the hull up to help absorb and distribute the stresses, or a combination thereof; as for the Tennessees and Colorados, inadequate as the hulls were against torpedoes and air-dropped bombs, the hullform was just damn fine and agile, as artistically influenced as the German revised-bow/Atlantic bow commerce raiders having the hullform of the Deuchlands/Scharnhorsts/Bismarcks. I might throw in the Yamatos as well, though that hullform was slightly less about elegance and was a bit more about something else, perhaps utility or practicality, given the odd structural elements aft of the aft turret. But still, knowing who dreamed up those designs and how and why, and what if any hydrodynamic testing was done during the design phase, all is fascinating to consider and learn about. These hullforms are as unique and interesting as those of John L Porter's (?) ram-bow casemate ironclad as manifested in CSS Virginia and subsequent derivations which were based directly upon and adhered to the principles upon which CSS Virginia was designed, as well as John Ericsson's design for USS Monitor, all of which were clear, and clearly different, takes on the principles of minimizing surface area that could be hit by enemy fire, armoring those parts of the ship which could be hit by enemy fire, and placing vital ship parts and systems, such as the power plant, propulsion machinery, and steering mechanism below the waterline to help ensure it remains out of the way of enemy fire and making use of the water outside the ship to help shield that vital equipment. One day, perhaps, we'll be able to pick up a naval architecture and engineering history book that points to each of these evolutionary steps and treats each in detail, as well as many more steps in the evolution of naval and maritime ship design, from the man/mind who came up with each design and how, insights and comparative analyses of how the designs perform hydrodynamically, strengths and weaknesses, specifications in sufficient detail to create replicas or models at any scale, how the designers and designs were influenced and how they influenced each other and future designs, what, if anything, remains of these ships, and where and how these designs are used to inform modern naval and marine architecture and engineering.
0:40 -- Going for the opposite example, the Star of India at the San Diego Maritime Museum (the oldest active sailing ship, and the fourth oldest sailing ship afloat) is an iron-hulled ship, built in 1863 as the _Euterpe_, retired in 1926, then restored in the 1960s to full seaworthiness.
The answer to the "time structuring" question at 30:00 made me sad because, like, I have ADHD and it's like listening to a space alien describe their thought process.
Regarding your comments about radio aerial wires: mariners have known for centuries the difficulty of this--even before radio--and thus developed chain shot to greatly increase the chances of stripping shrouds; sails, and masts from the enemy's ships.
The USN since WW2 has had fairly fixed assignment expectations. Overall one assignment at sea and then next assignment on shore. I had a friend who left the naval academy after one year due to how undesirable the newly commissioned academy graduate career path was to him.
20:20 When HMHS Britannic struck a mine and sank in 1916, the flexing of the hull caused the foremast to whip and that snapped the wireless aerial. She could still send messages but couldnt receive them
As an ex council employee it's what's colloquially known as "tossing it off"......I was very good at it and an expert with the " magic pen" on timesheets
If you want to know the displacement of a ship ... owning the dry-dock it's in gives you that number by necessity. The known volume of the dock, minus the amount of water pumped out, equals the volume (and thus mass) of the ship.
at 11:23 into the video, the question "why all the effort to refloat USS Oklahoma ... rather than scrap her in place?" @drachinifel: this is the first time I've heard you answer a question in complete error. To find the answer to the question, you first need to read the entire salvage report (for contextual information which helps form an accurate picture of what the situation was), and then you'll need to really grasp both that report and what was only implied within the report. I did read that entire report. It clearly stated that the holed side of Oklahoma's hull was sunken rather deeply into the very deep layers of muck and sand which rest atop the volcanic bedrock of the harbor; it also clearly stated that given depth to which the hull had sunk into the muck and sand, the holed side of the hull was largely buried in the muck and sand, making it impossible to survey damage until AFTER the hull had been uprighted and raised OUT of the muck and sand. According to the salvage report, through periodic dredging, the US Navy maintained the water depth at low tide at the battleship moorings at about 16 feet deep, leaving as little as one foot clearance between the bottoms of the battleships and the top of the rather thick muck and sediment layers which rested atop the volcanic bedrock of the harbor floor (the US Navy did not include in the salvage report what the thicknesses of the muck layer and the sand layer beneath it were; however, the report did imply that these layers were on the order of at least 50-75 feet thick in total in the vicinity in which the battleships moored next to Ford Island, from which we deduce that the bedrock was located at somewhere around 100 feet or so beneath the surface of the water at low tide). Oklahoma had rolled such that it's outboard holed side faced the harbor bottom, with the superstructure slightly angled downward. The report stated that Oklahoma's holed side was greatly obscured or hidden by being buried deeply into the muck, making it impossible to access the vast majority of the holed side. The report also stated that it's been observed that the battleships which rested upon the bottom were slowly sinking ever deeper into the muck and sand as time passed, which heightened concerns about the salvage efforts required to salvage untouched battleships growing increasingly more difficult the longer the battleships remained resting in the muck and sand layers in which they sat. Perhaps now the answer to the question is becoming more clear. The salvage teams did not have the manpower and equipment to work all of the battleships simultaneously; hence, after a quick preliminary assessment to identify salvage priority based upon the ease and speed of each salvage job, they worked the easiest and quickest first, progressing to the more difficult salvage jobs as the easier jobs were completed. Oklahoma and Arizona were, according to preliminary assessments, the most extensive and most difficult salvage jobs; hence, these two ships were prioritized to be the last two to be salvaged. The thickness of the layer of muck and the thickness of the layer of sand beneath Oklahoma were SO thick that the ship's damage largely was literally buried deep in the muck and sand of the harbor bottom, and was sinking ever deeper into that muck and sand as the months passed. By the time that the salvage crews turned to Oklahoma and begin to attempt to survey Oklahoma's damage, they found that the ship was so deep in the muck and sand that there was no way to even survey its damage until the ship had been uprighted and raised out of the muck and sand, which would require simultaneous salvage and damage survey operations, progressively surveying as salvage efforts both uprighted and raised the hull, both occurring simultaneously, progressively, bit by bit. It was only when Oklahoma was upright and out of the muck, with sufficient buoyancy to stay above the muck, that the extensive cleanup and extensive damage surveys were able to be conducted, all the while with the hull being slowly patched, slowly cleaned out, and slowly pumped out, such that the hull raised higher and higher in the water. It was only THEN that sufficiently detailed damage surveys were able to be conducted for the US Navy to truly begin to see and understand just how badly damaged Oklahoma was, and for structural engineers to be able to stand any reasonable chance at accurately assessing Oklahoma's overall structural integrity (or rather lack of) in order to begin to arrive at reasonably accurate cost estimations for making the ship seaworthy, moving it to the US west coast for to be rebuilt, actually rebuilding the ship, and what structural integrity issues the hull might suffer were it to be rebuilt, and whether the financial and time cost of doing all of that was even worth the investment. It was at that time that the US Navy realized that Oklahoma was a total loss, and held no more value than scrap value, if any value at all; it was only then that the thought "All the effort put into salvaging Oklahoma was wasted" ever came to anyone's mind; yet, even then, there was no denying that the on the other hand, that part of the harbor was now free of the navigation and mooring hazard that the sunken Oklahoma hull had been, and now one more mooring location within the harbor had just been restored. The US Navy DID NOT SEE the salvage efforts spent on the Oklahoma as a complete waste; in fact, for a time, the salvage crews HAD TURNED TO USS ARIZONA to begin salvage work on that final hull, knowing that Arizona had suffered a horrific explosion which none of the other battleships had suffered, and likely was in as bad or worse condition than Oklahoma (to understand how horrific Arizona's explosion was, eyewitnesses stated that the bow of the 35,000 ton ship raised completely clear of the water during the explosion). To say that the salvage efforts spent on Oklahoma were a complete waste is to fail to understand both the circumstances and the great importance placed upon both parking space and freedom from navigation hazards within the harbor: the US Navy initially was ALL-IN on removing the hull of Arizona TOO, despite its more severe damage, knowing full well that Arizona likely would have to be cut/blown in half at the front of the superstructure and removed in pieces, with the aft half of Arizona likely being able to be patched, floated, and moved out of the harbor, with everything forward of the superstructure likely having to be removed in many pieces. The US Navy WANTED that location to be free of navigation hazards and be available for mooring; however, that was where cool, calm, collected, calculating minds interceded: having found an unexpectedly high body count within Oklahoma, knowing that even more of Arizona's crew never made it out of the ship, knowing that Oklahoma had not suffered the horrific explosion that Arizona had suffered yet was a total loss, surmising that Arizona likewise likely would be a total loss, and that the financial and time cost of removing Arizona from the harbor would exceed the cost of Oklahoma's removal from the harbor, that was when it entered the minds of the US Navy brass that were Arizona to remain in situ, as a war memorial and grave, the costs in terms of losing a parking space and leaving in place a navigation hazard within the harbor by leaving the Arizona's hull in place could be offset in the short term by the wreck serving as a potent reminder and rallying point to sailors, soldiers and civilians during the potentially long war as well as serving as a memorial and rallying point after the war, perhaps in future wars. Back then, the salvage efforts spent on Oklahoma were not considered to be a waste, not by a long shot- that parking space in the harbor WAS very valuable, as was having what otherwise would have been a navigation hazard removed, so much so that serious thought was given to removing even Arizona, despite the even greater costs, time and effort. To use hindsight to re-evaluate and re-characterize that situation with Oklahoma and Arizona is rather narrow-minded and obtuse: THEY knew and felt far more keenly than we the value of those parking spots within the harbor and the value of freedom of navigation within the harbor without having unnecessary constriction points or unseen objects which could be run over; they felt those so keenly as to sweep the entire harbor after the 7 Dec 1941 attack to clear any and all unknown objects and debris from the harbor, its entrance, and the surrounding approach, so that no unexpected collisions with then-new underwater obstructions (planes, mini-subs, subs, mines, torps, bombs, etc) were likely to occur. The fact that Oklahoma and Arizona were total losses were disappointments back then, to be sure, but none regretted that Oklahoma had been salvaged, even if the ship itself was a total loss: even the salvage work on ALL of those ships was extremely valuable in terms of effectively writing the US Navy's book on naval salvage operations and the USA's book on maritime salvage operations (the only comparable salvage operations up to that point in time were the salvage operations conducted in Scapa Flow on the KM warships scuttled therein. For the USA and US Navy, you'd have to go back to the relatively few scattered naval salvage operations conducted during and after the US civil war to find marine salvage operations even remotely resembling naval salvage operations, and those tended to be much more along the line of demolitions via explosives, or dragging with claw-hook and line, or both, in rivers and harbors, usually aimed more at eliminating navigation hazards or recovering whatever pieces of wrecks that could be dragged from the water, a far cry from patching and raising hulls.
The use of the privateers by the US in the war of 1812-1815 was basically just a war fought according to the tenets of the Jeune Ecole which as we know was abandoned by almost everyone who tried it
Regarding Flank speed, on USN steam powered warships had telegraphs with positions "1/3, 2/3, Standard, Full and Flank". In addition to ringing up a particular speed range, the requested RPM's are also transmitted. In the case of USS Sacramento (AOE-1), when 999 was the indicated rpm the telegraph settings were for a specific speed (set RPM for telegraph setting). In this case 1/3 = 5 kts, 2/3 = 10 kts and Standard = 15 kts. That was used entering or departing port. Merchant ship telegraphs use Dead Slow, Slow, Half and Full. Both also have Stop, Standby Engines and Finished With Engines. On modern slow speed diesel merchant vessels Standby Engines and Finished with Engines might be buttons on the control console instead of the telegraph.
Halsey's XO got word that Kurita had turned around again around midnight; so had Adm Mitscher in charge of TF 58 and Adm Lee in charge of the battleships. The decision made, by the staff led by Carney, to not wake Halsey with this new info was crucial to the blunder. Entirely possible Halsey would've charged off for Ozawa all the same, but that Kurita's Center Force had turned around again towards SB Strait was known to the Americans before the last admirals had gone to sleep is documented. They never woke the old man up for a decision.
@@edgardox.feliciano3127 Agreed, the solution seems pretty simple, but Halsey wasn't woken up and presented with the new info to make any decision at all. His orders to sail north (in light of the Center Force turning around in late afternoon) therefore stood.
44:10 Drach, don't you DARE be sorry. That wad genuinely the most interesting answer I've ever heard in all the Drydocks. I wish I had your memory, and I think your approach to work would benefit a lot of people. We may share our physical reality, but we're quite isolated when it comes to psychology/neurology. And being able to look through your mind, in a sense, is much more liberating than any book or podcast or whatever. So thank you! Should I ever get stuck in a bar with you, I know what question topic I'll be badgering you with 🤭😇🫶🏼
To me, the use of "clad" only refers to a ships armor, as in ironclad, timberclad, railclad, etc. "Cladding" has a historical usage as to what is being used on the hull to protect the hull from damage by the sea and the organisms in the sea.
1:26:36 A Privateer is driven to seek prizes of high monetary value over cargos that may have greater strategic impact, but lesser value to the Privateer. C.S. Forester in his book on the War of 1812 uses the example that a Privateer would rather capture a ship carrying the payroll for Wellingtons troops where as a ship laden with boots and victuals may have had a much greater impact on the war with France.
Quad Pom Poms, Oct Pom Poms, and Single Pom Poms, why no Twin (or dual) Pom Poms? If such thing was built, would it have been an "Over & Under OR Side by Side?
Hunt Class Destroyer dimensions (2:46:15) - My first dorm room in the USAF at my first duty station was smaller than the minimums for a person in federal prison. The contractor had read an internal wall dimension as the dimension for the external wall.
50:30 um, does that guy have his head pressed against a room divider like he's peeping on a star constellation map? what the heck is going on in this picture? I see other little divider/booths in the background... Is he looking through a recon photo negative mounted in a viewing port?
I'd assume the pressure is just way too low and the water far enough away. That any pressure wave just gets reflected off the water. Plus the water is about 90° to the muzzle blast. Trenches have 90° turns because they stop the pressure waves of explosions from travelling past them. At the end of the day. As impressive as a battleship's muzzle blast is. The pressure doesn't come anywhere near close to the pressures high explosives create. In my limited experience doing something like that. Way past any statue of limitations. It takes a pretty decent explosion to stun fish. Hand grenade, stick of dynamite sized. Enough to throw water in the air.
Thanks for clearing up iron clad definition. Why wasn't iron clad used on earlier wooden warships? The USS Constitution had copper plating at the bottom of it haul to provide hydrodynamics and marine growth so why didn't navies waited to the mid-1800s to start practicing the concept?
@@resolute123 partially the cost and technology needed to mass manufacture large iron plates, and partially due to the vastly increased mass, which really needed a steam engine, even if notionally an auxiliary, to manage properly, especially in harbour work.
1:21:10 -- There is a video on TH-cam that I've, unfortunately, lost the URL for which shows an RC battleship with a stupidly overpowered engine doing precisely this in an irrigation canal, zooming down the canal on plane with the forward half of the ship out of the water and the stern tucked down until the fantail is almost awash. Apart from the entertainment of the mental image of an opposing battle line's commanders' expressions would be seeing something like this at full size, the drawbacks and real-world physics problems (being able to traverse the main turrets fast enough to track, and compensation for the bow-up angle of the ship, inability to get that amount of power from a full-scale power plant, etc.) make it a purely mental exercise.
There was a RC rib powered by a mock outboard in a quiet part of a harbour. He showed off how he could jump it over the boom. He had it up on its tail end and cut the motor at just the right time. Then he could play around outside. Of course he had to come back. Full speed, sitting on its tail straight at the boom. He flipped upside down and wallowed. Stuck. He was pushed back by a pre-Dreadnought battleship and a ferry, both slow RC models.
wrt salvage of Oklahoma. Yes, she did obstruct traffic to a degree where the wreck was. But, rather than tying up a drydock for a few months, and using new material, to patch her up, why not tow the refloated wreck into East Loch, out of the traffic flow, let her settle, build a cofferdam around her, and break her up there? What I would have wanted to do would be to tow the refloated wreck out to sea, and scuttle her, with the service for burial at sea, for the men inside, as was done with Maine after she was raised from Havana harbor. My only concern with that plan was what if one of the temporary patched failed, and she sank in the channel, blocking the entrance to the harbor?
Hey Drach, what is that really low deep bass booming sound that starts around 9:21 seconds and continues for awhile at several seconds intervals? I only noticed it once I put both my ear buds in and turned on noise cancelling. I’ve also heard it in some other dry dock episodes as well. Never seems to last too long.
33:25 Damn now that is an awsome ability and sad to hear previous employment howled it out. I would say you might want to find some treatment for that but sadly I have no idea what would work. Actually its really a shame we don't all have the ability to a point then politicians everywhere would be in big trouble. Shame.
This one I think that I'll have disagree with Drach on . I'm not talking about intelligence here, it's more information management and networking. Better guns are great, better optics are great, how do you make them work together and co-ordinate their capabilities? How do you make them their combined strengths not just additive, but multiplicative. It's about getting the information around, to the right people quickly, effectively and in such a format that they can make the most use of it. Secondly, deny that information to the opposition. Even if things are overheard, EW is going on, you're still confident and able to get information to the people who need it, with enough time to act on it. This is true all the way down individual shipboard systems to task group, fleet wide actions, commands. The radio, encryption and the range of radio right at one end all the day down to the voice phone from the bridge to a turret, engine room or damage control centre. Getting the right information to the right people to command, direct the right actions is something immensely powerful. My favourite example of this is the sheer dominance shown in the action of Surigao Strait. Radio, RADAR and good practise in using it allowed Oldendorf to prepare his forces, control the time and nature of the engagement and just while he was at it, make sure he wasn't as much as it was, fighting the full force of his opposition. Information did that, not guns and optics. Information wins wars before any gun ever gets involved. Even if intelligence likes to think they're more important than they are.
Ugly non-French warships: * The Japanese designs of the 1930s that thankfully remained on paper. * British heavy cruisers with the large, boxy hangars aft. * Gangut with the enlarged bridge structure. What. A. Turd. * Nevada with that awkward, thin raked funnel. * Navarin. Looks like a factory and is about as visually appealing as one. * G3/N3 class.
I ponder the influences of salt , alone ,salt alla mode , salt of the earth salt of the sea - nacl , simple ,stand alone salt , salt as electrolite , salts influence on corrosion - salt run amuck - salt water ,densiety , salt on the run. Salt in my blood , salt in the sun ,salt cast on crops salt spread on ice , salt tossed viciously in eyes ,ya know?
I am reading Andrew Boyd's " The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters" and seeing the constraints on British force levels available for deployment imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty it looks to me that Japan was the real winner in treaty system. I think the results of the first 6 months of the war bear this out.
Saying who won the most is really difficult because the wins were often in different ways. Without the Washington Naval Treaty, Japan is going to ruin its economy if it seriously tries to keep pace with a UK / US naval arms race, so it won handily there. But at the same time, the agreement to the Washington Naval Treaty finalized the UK turning it's back on Japan as an ally and looking to cooperate with the US. So Japan is closer in capabilities to either the US or UK navies, but easing the tensions between the two that a big naval arms race would have generated is a huge diplomatic loss for Japan.
@88porpoise There were gains and losses for each Party to the Washington and London Naval Treaties but the measure of net winner is who comes off best in a conflict and that would be Japan in the first six months of the war. It was not inevitable that Japan suffered major losses in the second half of 1942.
@@johnshepherd9676 But there are a whole ton of other changes that would occur in the intervening 20 years that looking at just 1942 is pointless. If conflict brews between the UK and US due to an ongoing naval arms race in the late 1920s, the entire situation in the Pacific is completely different. In terms of pure naval capabilities relative to the other powers, Italy and France were almost certainly the biggest winners because they were the least capable of expanding their navies in the 1920s and would have been left further behind than they were. If the British were able to send more capital ships and carriers for a sustained campaign in the Mediterranean they could potentially cut Italy entirely off from North Africa before the Africa Korps is deployed. Germany is another one that could only build a somewhat relevant surface fleet because of the treaties. If the British had a couple dozen modern capital ships available in 1940, Bismarck would not have been a serious threat like it was. On the other hand, being that much more hopelessly behind the curve maybe Germany doesn't pursue a surface fleet prior to WWII so maybe they are better off without the treaty.
How does one submitt a question for drach to answer on one of these ? Been a long time listener/subscriber but no idea how to ask him a question 😅 thanks in advance for any replies
Re random bit of uboat- I know a guy, college IT lecturer amongst other things- who has one the smaller targeting periscopes of a ww2 uboat stored in one his sheds. In the West Midlands, Worcester. miles and miles from the sea. The full story how it got there eludes me, but he is mildly eccentric, English and has multiple sheds...
The sad thing is that reddit leaks into other platforms (or arrogant stupidity is just universal across the internet). I was flabbergasted by the “wisdom” that Admiral Yi was in fact a useless coward who lost all his battles but one on a youtube video. No evidence of course, but lots of chest-beating, painful ignorance, and “everyone knows” (“If Admiral Yi was so great, why was Korea a vassal of China?” “Admiral Yi couldn’t beat the Japanese, his troops didn’t have katanas!” “If Admiral Yi won so many battles, how come Japan conquered Korea?”). About the only use I’ve found for reddit is a handful of game subreddits that manage to focus on the subject and not veer into “Who is a fascist/communist”.
A worryingly large number of people outside of the Koreas believe Korea was a part of China for most of its history due to misunderstanding what it meant to be a Chinese vassal state (which were still sovereign). Worse, this plays into modern CCP propaganda....
On reaction videos, the only kinds IMHO worth watching are those that actually add more nuance to the original content. Either, that is interesting because actual research shows X while the popular narrative says Y or those where experts are debating the relative importance of A in relation to B. Also, anyone who thinks the cesspool called Reddit (I know I'm insulting cesspools) is worth anything is someone I want to avoid.
Drach, your pronunciation of Esquimalt is a bit off. It is Ess-kwhy-malt not Ess-key-malt. The name comes from a First Nation settlement at the head of Esquimalt harbour but later became applied to the entire harbour which in turn gives the name of the naval base and the town of Esquimalt.
Regarding " surface ship vs surface ships battles, ww1 vs ww2", I suspect that Dac underestimated ww1, as there were alot of actions involving the Russians in the Black and Baltic (like the battle of the gulf of Riga) seas that tend to be overlooked in the west. Both major and smaller ones.
"I tend to divide reaction videos into four broad categories ..." must be the most engineer-y way to comnence a response to such a question. 😊
Thanks so much for all of your work though the year. It has been appreciated.
Your explanation of your thought and work processes comes with a complete lack of surprise; it has shone through in everything you have produced, everything you have said. In fact, it's been obvious and familiar to me all these years of watching your channel because that's how my best friend was, eidetic memory, no-nonsense work ethic and all. Indeed, it's partly why I feel such a sense of affinity and affection for you from over five thousand miles away, because you remind me so much of him (down to the dry sense of humor!). He was a historian, too; a writer of history. Alas, he passed away 13 years ago. I am absolutely certain he would have loved your channel.
Many thanks for the shout out, my friend. I pray that your holidays are blessed.
Hello over here, too vch!
I find your answer to how you manage your work load awesome, especially the part about always needing to "look like you're working" in the office, because i use your content to "look like i am working" all the time. Then again i really do work with the cast of Yes, Minister
We're happy to have you make one of the best channels on youtube. Thanks for all you do Drach. Happy 2025 for you and your family.
Re: Bismark comparison video. Being a former engineer, pictures, tables, charts, etc., always resonate more with me than words. I might recommend a simple excel spreadsheet of the various factors you are comparing and perhaps score or color code which are the best in class for each criteria or rank them to see how they all compare and summarize at the end. Don't think that's too difficult. As you are also an engineer by training I tend to think you may have already been planning that...
Several days later and 35000 ft above the sea. Im listening to the 2 part dry dock. Im am now happy and have something to listen to thats not a boring movie/movies to watch. Thanks Drach for your awesome work.
Your 15-min answer reminded me of a Descartes Square technique, a square with 4 questions that help you in decision making - "What will happen if I do this?", "What will happen if I do not do this?", "What will not happen if I do this?", "What will not happen if I do not do this?". I actually enjoyed that part quite a bit.
Troubleshooting Triangle.
How does it function.
What isn't functioning?
What is required.
Management Triangle
Why did it break?
Who is responsible?
How soon( not how long) will it take?
Drach: "...More armor, which might have been a good idea."
An understatement if ever there was one when discussing the Lexington class design.
I'll use this video to forget about the past 11.94 months and be in the right state of mind for the upcoming New Year celebrations. Thanks, Drach and Happy New Year.
Cool, Drachin-Clause dropped a 2 part present under the tree!
Happy New Year All !
Your description of the refitted Baltimore-class missile cruisers was the best use of Scripture I heard all Sunday.
At 1:21:30, the mental image of that destroyer drawing had me laughing so hard I did a literal spit take. That's amazing.
I am fast as fuuucccckkkkk boiiii. . . I am speeeeeeedddddddddd
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
And HMS Abdiel was born...
I'm a bit behind; only just learned about Mini Drach. Congratulations! I hope everyone is doing well!
Regarding the discussion at "02:10:01 - Were the WW2 positions such as CnC Royal Dockyards considered promotions", I've mentioned this before but seems worth reiterating for younger engineers or military personnel watching. If you are considered by upper management as an up and comer, you WILL be assigned or offered positions you may feel are a demotion or sideways move or just perhaps strange, but it MAY be the case the senior management wants to expose you to a wider variety of the business operations. Its invaluable to understand how the "other side of the fence" thinks; you start to understand decisions with a more global perspective, the 'why's' of decisions that seem odd to you. Generally you will be told that when you are reassigned and in many cases, it's stated to you in the vein of "you need to take this position". Then, when you are promoted to higher positions in your area you are much more valuable to the organization.
Also can't ignore that "field service" or "sea service" in wartime tends to be very unhealthy for senior commanders, and it is around the Second World War that it was appreciated that even the best generals and admirals needed some time off the frontlines to keep from wearing out. A "demotion" to a rear-echelon posting seems a "waste" of a good commander, but given how many high-ranking frontline commanders ended up being retired entirely due to physical and/or mental collapse, the concept had merit.
Another thing people don't think about is that officers on the frontlines, as they wear out, tend to make more and more minor administrative mistakes, and while each mistake on paperwork may seem minor in and of itself, they do tend to accumulate, thus creating enormous drag on the whole system. By rotating out commanders, it helps maintain overall efficiency.
For sure, a few unique officers do in fact get more energized and efficient as war goes on, but such people are rare and NOT who one should be building a military around. For every George Patton, we have scores of other officers who wore down or outright broke under the pressure despite excellent performance in early days.
The biggest problem is, that the sidegrades etc are often NOT explicitly laid out as "we feel you need this sort of experience before we can promote you higher. We want you to have a broader base of how other parts of X works first. So you will have a broader knowlege of how different parts of the company mesh together, in a higher position". Showing that people are looking at you for the higher positions, but need a bit more seasoning and experience, before such a position is offered first.
So hopefully, someone will be more motivated in the new "lesser" post to learn. Not sit and sulk over not being promoted to what they believe, is a higher position.
I have actually been in this situation. I became so disenchanted, I resigned. Only to be told the side(down)grade was grooming for a higher position, AFTER I resigned, via the Grapevine. With worse hours and a longer commute to another location with the sidegrade. Being told upfront, WHY would have kept me motivated, and on the payroll. Where I was sent off too was not a highly regarded part of the company, with a high staff turnover. With hindsight, I wonder how much churn was sending people there, without an explanation as to the transfer. HR really dropped the ball, or were under orders not to spell it out, which is worse.
Was listening to this while painting my Land Raider when you made a reference to Fire Dragons during the fire pikes bit. Stay away from my metal boxes, knife-ear!
A 14-minute answer to my question...WOW! I think that's longer than any other answer to me combined!! Thanks for the insights.
And for any fencers in the viewership (And Drach, let me know if I should edit this out) who may want to learn about armory so you can fix your gear, just plug "I can haz armory" into the TH-cam search bar.
Mini Drach LOL 😂
My favorite humor in official documents was in the technical publications for the 53F Fire Control Radar. On one particular page, the end of the page had a partial sentence that you had to turn the page to see the rest. The first page read, 'The nutating feedhorn is powered by a squirrel'. Turn the page and you read, 'cage motor'. I found a sticker of a squirrel and put it on the side of the feedhorn to make the manual more accurate.
Nice. Now i got 2 part Dry Dock to carry me home when I fly back from Italy.
Multitasking isn't something that most people can do. Replacing a rebuilt gearbox on a large mixer on the production floor, then, two emergency (GQ) calls upstairs in wrapping, a bad conveyor jam, and packaging machine out of timing.
As you said, the subconscious sees the clock, reminding that the boiler checks are at the top of the hour. In this chaos, with the right mind and experience, you put out the biggest fire first. The pride without thanks is knowing that most people can't do what your crew just did.
Happy New Year, Semper Fi.
The most amusing documentation that I ever heard of was a brief note within an Architectural firm that stated simply "F..k you. Strong memo to follow".
In legal circles, something along the lines of:
“No (or some rude pithy equivalent)
Rude letter follows”
On the subject of the effectiveness of US privateers in the War of 1812 (1:26:24) I think one second-order effect that's worth considering is that, while their direct impact was pretty trivial, they did force British merchantmen to continue to sail in convoy and pay wartime insurance rates at a time (between Napoleon's first abdication and the Hundred Days) that the rest of Europe was reverting to peacetime routing and insurance. My understanding is that this competetive disadvantage was one of the factors that led the British government to accept status quo ante and get the nonsense over and done with, rather than maintaining the blockade long enough to compel the US to make greater concessions such as territory along the south bank of the St Lawrence and/or northern Maine.
Thanks for another great installment. I think the format for the Bismark video would be a great approach for evaluating its design
Flank Speed is like when you turn the AC off in your car to get that 10 horsepower back.
I really like the photo you used for the 1st question.
Regarding the effect of faster QEs at Jutland (discussed in passing at 01:33:18) I seem to recall a fear expressed by someone (maybe Jellicoe, maybe Churchill) that if Beatty had "these magnificent ships" (or similar words) then he might be tempted to take on the whole High Seas Fleet (and get smashed as a consequence, QEs or not) then is there not a risk that with the QEs in formation during the run to the south, yes, 1SG gets badly handled, but then the BC Fleet gets "too keen for the kill" and gets far too close to the HSF and then gets very badly handled.
Basically, the Beatty/Seymour combo finds a way to lose even WITH the QEs at hand...
To whoever asked why aerials weren't damaged due to blast. Think of the wire as a sail. The wire is so thin it doesn't catch any air. Blast acts the same as wind. The wire's surface area is tiny.so the blast effects are "tiny" as well. They tried using arty to cut barbed wire in WW1 and it didn't work for the same reason.
Right on bed time... excellent after an exciting day watching cricket
Drach even works in the magic time between Christmas and New Year. So amazing!
For what its worth my grandma was a tiny thing and she was sent into the small voids to double check work and patch it. Her info lines up with the official story :D
2:10:02 postings ashore: another reason to send people ashore was simply to give them a break: it was found during WWI that stresses of war led to people breaking down, which was avoidable by maintaining peacetime sea-shore rosters as much as possible. This was clearly problematic early in WWII when there simply weren't the ships to do what needed doing, and only got slightly easier once they became available: for example, Captain Harold Farncomb RAN spent the whole war not only at sea, but in command at sea. This didn't do his alcohol consumption much good until he got on top of it after the war: even so, it probably cost him becoming the first Australian Navy CNS, which instead went to John Collins in 1948.
Regarding damage to radio aerials, an interesting comparison is the attempted use of air-burst shrapnel shells to cut barbed wire in WW1, which turned out to be ineffective.
Another day, another Drydock! Nice
Wonderful detail in the answers. I learn alot..., thank you.
On the Halsey going north segment, it is worthwhile searching out the YT videos of Mark Stille (and, better still, his book) in which he analyses Halsey’s decision and concludes that it was correct.
As Drach mentions in his section on reaction videos, differing opinions on particular events and decisions are possible.
I think it is Stille who also analyses whether Halsey could have split his fleet into two in order to deal with both the Northern and Southern forces simultaneously. He concludes that such an action would have been unwise.
One of the difficulties in assessing these decisions is to make sure one uses only the information actually at hand at the time. The number of aircraft aboard the northern force is a huge element often taken as what was known after the battle and not before it. Similarly, the number of land based aircraft still available to attack the fleet is often not taken as what Halsey and his staff “knew” (or assessed) at the time.
When speaking of USN AA, talking about Kamikaze engagements is much, much more representative of actual numbers involved.
at 28:05 you mentioned Froude's work on hull forms. Phonetically, I took it as Fraud, which search engines love to treat as a noun referring to a crime, rather than as a proper name. It took some doing, but I eventually ran across mention of William Froude, pioneer of hydrodynamic testing and engineering of hull forms, with focus on speed and resistance using scaled models and using water tanks in an enclosed and controlled laboratory environment. That's the first time I've heard of Froude and his work (1850's-1870's). It being that the RN's Admiralty ended up making such use of Froude, his work, and Froude's son and his follow-up work, in determining hull forms of Royal Navy warships as the era of the iron-hulled ship dawned and rapidly advanced, perhaps I am not alone among your audience in wishing to learn more about Froude, his work, and how it literally shaped the Royal Navy, to whatever extent it did. Similarly, it would interesting to learn about the man and mind behind devising the striking Atlantic bow hullform that graced the revised-bow Deuchlands, revised-bow Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and Bismarck and Tirpitz, and likewise-shaped German hulls planned during the 1930's. And likewise for the 1915-ish clipper-bow of the [New Mexico/]Tennessee/Colorado classes of the US standards built at Brooklyn Navy Yard. I find these specific hull forms exceptionally sleek and elegant visually, and rather suspect that the hydrodynamic performance characteristics of these hullforms remain interesting and informative even now, with relevance for modern marine and naval engineering. I know that the German design(s) had a rigidity/stress issue which compromised structural integrity immediately aft of the armored bulkhead immediately aft of the aft-most turret, but suspect that eventually that problem would have been solved, perhaps either via structural bracing/reinforcement or slightly bulking the hull up to help absorb and distribute the stresses, or a combination thereof; as for the Tennessees and Colorados, inadequate as the hulls were against torpedoes and air-dropped bombs, the hullform was just damn fine and agile, as artistically influenced as the German revised-bow/Atlantic bow commerce raiders having the hullform of the Deuchlands/Scharnhorsts/Bismarcks. I might throw in the Yamatos as well, though that hullform was slightly less about elegance and was a bit more about something else, perhaps utility or practicality, given the odd structural elements aft of the aft turret. But still, knowing who dreamed up those designs and how and why, and what if any hydrodynamic testing was done during the design phase, all is fascinating to consider and learn about. These hullforms are as unique and interesting as those of John L Porter's (?) ram-bow casemate ironclad as manifested in CSS Virginia and subsequent derivations which were based directly upon and adhered to the principles upon which CSS Virginia was designed, as well as John Ericsson's design for USS Monitor, all of which were clear, and clearly different, takes on the principles of minimizing surface area that could be hit by enemy fire, armoring those parts of the ship which could be hit by enemy fire, and placing vital ship parts and systems, such as the power plant, propulsion machinery, and steering mechanism below the waterline to help ensure it remains out of the way of enemy fire and making use of the water outside the ship to help shield that vital equipment. One day, perhaps, we'll be able to pick up a naval architecture and engineering history book that points to each of these evolutionary steps and treats each in detail, as well as many more steps in the evolution of naval and maritime ship design, from the man/mind who came up with each design and how, insights and comparative analyses of how the designs perform hydrodynamically, strengths and weaknesses, specifications in sufficient detail to create replicas or models at any scale, how the designers and designs were influenced and how they influenced each other and future designs, what, if anything, remains of these ships, and where and how these designs are used to inform modern naval and marine architecture and engineering.
0:40 -- Going for the opposite example, the Star of India at the San Diego Maritime Museum (the oldest active sailing ship, and the fourth oldest sailing ship afloat) is an iron-hulled ship, built in 1863 as the _Euterpe_, retired in 1926, then restored in the 1960s to full seaworthiness.
What! I didn’t know there was a mini Drach. Nice
I'm half expecting see pics of Drach and Mini Drach in pirate costumes pacing the deck of HMS Victory in the future.
The answer to the "time structuring" question at 30:00 made me sad because, like, I have ADHD and it's like listening to a space alien describe their thought process.
Regarding your comments about radio aerial wires: mariners have known for centuries the difficulty of this--even before radio--and thus developed chain shot to greatly increase the chances of stripping shrouds; sails, and masts from the enemy's ships.
The USN since WW2 has had fairly fixed assignment expectations. Overall one assignment at sea and then next assignment on shore. I had a friend who left the naval academy after one year due to how undesirable the newly commissioned academy graduate career path was to him.
20:20 When HMHS Britannic struck a mine and sank in 1916, the flexing of the hull caused the foremast to whip and that snapped the wireless aerial. She could still send messages but couldnt receive them
As an ex council employee it's what's colloquially known as "tossing it off"......I was very good at it and an expert with the " magic pen" on timesheets
If you want to know the displacement of a ship ... owning the dry-dock it's in gives you that number by necessity. The known volume of the dock, minus the amount of water pumped out, equals the volume (and thus mass) of the ship.
yeah. dry dock of the year. 😍
It might just be me, but I kind of like the looks of the Canarias cruiser.
1:24:00 Bring back the Iowa’s.
Happy New Year!
2:31:33 Wildfire House? Sounds like something from "A Song of Ice and Fire".
at 11:23 into the video, the question "why all the effort to refloat USS Oklahoma ... rather than scrap her in place?" @drachinifel: this is the first time I've heard you answer a question in complete error. To find the answer to the question, you first need to read the entire salvage report (for contextual information which helps form an accurate picture of what the situation was), and then you'll need to really grasp both that report and what was only implied within the report. I did read that entire report. It clearly stated that the holed side of Oklahoma's hull was sunken rather deeply into the very deep layers of muck and sand which rest atop the volcanic bedrock of the harbor; it also clearly stated that given depth to which the hull had sunk into the muck and sand, the holed side of the hull was largely buried in the muck and sand, making it impossible to survey damage until AFTER the hull had been uprighted and raised OUT of the muck and sand. According to the salvage report, through periodic dredging, the US Navy maintained the water depth at low tide at the battleship moorings at about 16 feet deep, leaving as little as one foot clearance between the bottoms of the battleships and the top of the rather thick muck and sediment layers which rested atop the volcanic bedrock of the harbor floor (the US Navy did not include in the salvage report what the thicknesses of the muck layer and the sand layer beneath it were; however, the report did imply that these layers were on the order of at least 50-75 feet thick in total in the vicinity in which the battleships moored next to Ford Island, from which we deduce that the bedrock was located at somewhere around 100 feet or so beneath the surface of the water at low tide). Oklahoma had rolled such that it's outboard holed side faced the harbor bottom, with the superstructure slightly angled downward. The report stated that Oklahoma's holed side was greatly obscured or hidden by being buried deeply into the muck, making it impossible to access the vast majority of the holed side. The report also stated that it's been observed that the battleships which rested upon the bottom were slowly sinking ever deeper into the muck and sand as time passed, which heightened concerns about the salvage efforts required to salvage untouched battleships growing increasingly more difficult the longer the battleships remained resting in the muck and sand layers in which they sat. Perhaps now the answer to the question is becoming more clear. The salvage teams did not have the manpower and equipment to work all of the battleships simultaneously; hence, after a quick preliminary assessment to identify salvage priority based upon the ease and speed of each salvage job, they worked the easiest and quickest first, progressing to the more difficult salvage jobs as the easier jobs were completed. Oklahoma and Arizona were, according to preliminary assessments, the most extensive and most difficult salvage jobs; hence, these two ships were prioritized to be the last two to be salvaged. The thickness of the layer of muck and the thickness of the layer of sand beneath Oklahoma were SO thick that the ship's damage largely was literally buried deep in the muck and sand of the harbor bottom, and was sinking ever deeper into that muck and sand as the months passed. By the time that the salvage crews turned to Oklahoma and begin to attempt to survey Oklahoma's damage, they found that the ship was so deep in the muck and sand that there was no way to even survey its damage until the ship had been uprighted and raised out of the muck and sand, which would require simultaneous salvage and damage survey operations, progressively surveying as salvage efforts both uprighted and raised the hull, both occurring simultaneously, progressively, bit by bit. It was only when Oklahoma was upright and out of the muck, with sufficient buoyancy to stay above the muck, that the extensive cleanup and extensive damage surveys were able to be conducted, all the while with the hull being slowly patched, slowly cleaned out, and slowly pumped out, such that the hull raised higher and higher in the water. It was only THEN that sufficiently detailed damage surveys were able to be conducted for the US Navy to truly begin to see and understand just how badly damaged Oklahoma was, and for structural engineers to be able to stand any reasonable chance at accurately assessing Oklahoma's overall structural integrity (or rather lack of) in order to begin to arrive at reasonably accurate cost estimations for making the ship seaworthy, moving it to the US west coast for to be rebuilt, actually rebuilding the ship, and what structural integrity issues the hull might suffer were it to be rebuilt, and whether the financial and time cost of doing all of that was even worth the investment. It was at that time that the US Navy realized that Oklahoma was a total loss, and held no more value than scrap value, if any value at all; it was only then that the thought "All the effort put into salvaging Oklahoma was wasted" ever came to anyone's mind; yet, even then, there was no denying that the on the other hand, that part of the harbor was now free of the navigation and mooring hazard that the sunken Oklahoma hull had been, and now one more mooring location within the harbor had just been restored. The US Navy DID NOT SEE the salvage efforts spent on the Oklahoma as a complete waste; in fact, for a time, the salvage crews HAD TURNED TO USS ARIZONA to begin salvage work on that final hull, knowing that Arizona had suffered a horrific explosion which none of the other battleships had suffered, and likely was in as bad or worse condition than Oklahoma (to understand how horrific Arizona's explosion was, eyewitnesses stated that the bow of the 35,000 ton ship raised completely clear of the water during the explosion). To say that the salvage efforts spent on Oklahoma were a complete waste is to fail to understand both the circumstances and the great importance placed upon both parking space and freedom from navigation hazards within the harbor: the US Navy initially was ALL-IN on removing the hull of Arizona TOO, despite its more severe damage, knowing full well that Arizona likely would have to be cut/blown in half at the front of the superstructure and removed in pieces, with the aft half of Arizona likely being able to be patched, floated, and moved out of the harbor, with everything forward of the superstructure likely having to be removed in many pieces. The US Navy WANTED that location to be free of navigation hazards and be available for mooring; however, that was where cool, calm, collected, calculating minds interceded: having found an unexpectedly high body count within Oklahoma, knowing that even more of Arizona's crew never made it out of the ship, knowing that Oklahoma had not suffered the horrific explosion that Arizona had suffered yet was a total loss, surmising that Arizona likewise likely would be a total loss, and that the financial and time cost of removing Arizona from the harbor would exceed the cost of Oklahoma's removal from the harbor, that was when it entered the minds of the US Navy brass that were Arizona to remain in situ, as a war memorial and grave, the costs in terms of losing a parking space and leaving in place a navigation hazard within the harbor by leaving the Arizona's hull in place could be offset in the short term by the wreck serving as a potent reminder and rallying point to sailors, soldiers and civilians during the potentially long war as well as serving as a memorial and rallying point after the war, perhaps in future wars. Back then, the salvage efforts spent on Oklahoma were not considered to be a waste, not by a long shot- that parking space in the harbor WAS very valuable, as was having what otherwise would have been a navigation hazard removed, so much so that serious thought was given to removing even Arizona, despite the even greater costs, time and effort. To use hindsight to re-evaluate and re-characterize that situation with Oklahoma and Arizona is rather narrow-minded and obtuse: THEY knew and felt far more keenly than we the value of those parking spots within the harbor and the value of freedom of navigation within the harbor without having unnecessary constriction points or unseen objects which could be run over; they felt those so keenly as to sweep the entire harbor after the 7 Dec 1941 attack to clear any and all unknown objects and debris from the harbor, its entrance, and the surrounding approach, so that no unexpected collisions with then-new underwater obstructions (planes, mini-subs, subs, mines, torps, bombs, etc) were likely to occur. The fact that Oklahoma and Arizona were total losses were disappointments back then, to be sure, but none regretted that Oklahoma had been salvaged, even if the ship itself was a total loss: even the salvage work on ALL of those ships was extremely valuable in terms of effectively writing the US Navy's book on naval salvage operations and the USA's book on maritime salvage operations (the only comparable salvage operations up to that point in time were the salvage operations conducted in Scapa Flow on the KM warships scuttled therein. For the USA and US Navy, you'd have to go back to the relatively few scattered naval salvage operations conducted during and after the US civil war to find marine salvage operations even remotely resembling naval salvage operations, and those tended to be much more along the line of demolitions via explosives, or dragging with claw-hook and line, or both, in rivers and harbors, usually aimed more at eliminating navigation hazards or recovering whatever pieces of wrecks that could be dragged from the water, a far cry from patching and raising hulls.
The use of the privateers by the US in the war of 1812-1815 was basically just a war fought according to the tenets of the Jeune Ecole which as we know was abandoned by almost everyone who tried it
Regarding Flank speed, on USN steam powered warships had telegraphs with positions "1/3, 2/3, Standard, Full and Flank". In addition to ringing up a particular speed range, the requested RPM's are also transmitted. In the case of USS Sacramento (AOE-1), when 999 was the indicated rpm the telegraph settings were for a specific speed (set RPM for telegraph setting). In this case 1/3 = 5 kts, 2/3 = 10 kts and Standard = 15 kts. That was used entering or departing port.
Merchant ship telegraphs use Dead Slow, Slow, Half and Full. Both also have Stop, Standby Engines and Finished With Engines. On modern slow speed diesel merchant vessels Standby Engines and Finished with Engines might be buttons on the control console instead of the telegraph.
That was interesting, I actually possess a book of naval wargaming from 1913-14. Royal Australian Navy edition, I think.
@01:21:24, How do you think an USS Iowa .vs. IJN Yamamoto would work out?
(i.e. Her speed and 16" heavy shells, etc. .vs. the (somewhat) brute strength of the Yamamoto....)
Drach = King of Time Management.
enjoy the new year all
Halsey's XO got word that Kurita had turned around again around midnight; so had Adm Mitscher in charge of TF 58 and Adm Lee in charge of the battleships. The decision made, by the staff led by Carney, to not wake Halsey with this new info was crucial to the blunder.
Entirely possible Halsey would've charged off for Ozawa all the same, but that Kurita's Center Force had turned around again towards SB Strait was known to the Americans before the last admirals had gone to sleep is documented. They never woke the old man up for a decision.
All Halsey had to do, was leave Lee behind to guard the SB Strait with the battleships, maybe leave a light carrier for recon and cap.
@@edgardox.feliciano3127 Agreed, the solution seems pretty simple, but Halsey wasn't woken up and presented with the new info to make any decision at all. His orders to sail north (in light of the Center Force turning around in late afternoon) therefore stood.
44:10 Drach, don't you DARE be sorry.
That wad genuinely the most interesting answer I've ever heard in all the Drydocks.
I wish I had your memory, and I think your approach to work would benefit a lot of people.
We may share our physical reality, but we're quite isolated when it comes to psychology/neurology.
And being able to look through your mind, in a sense, is much more liberating than any book or podcast or whatever.
So thank you!
Should I ever get stuck in a bar with you, I know what question topic I'll be badgering you with 🤭😇🫶🏼
At 2:20:20 the Canarias was based on "a perfectly fine looking county-class destroyer"? The look of that ship must have really upset Drach. 😉
1:21:50
Good news: we can *all* water ski … _at the same time._
To me, the use of "clad" only refers to a ships armor, as in ironclad, timberclad, railclad, etc. "Cladding" has a historical usage as to what is being used on the hull to protect the hull from damage by the sea and the organisms in the sea.
1:26:36 A Privateer is driven to seek prizes of high monetary value over cargos that may have greater strategic impact, but lesser value to the Privateer. C.S. Forester in his book on the War of 1812 uses the example that a Privateer would rather capture a ship carrying the payroll for Wellingtons troops where as a ship laden with boots and victuals may have had a much greater impact on the war with France.
Quad Pom Poms, Oct Pom Poms, and Single Pom Poms, why no Twin (or dual) Pom Poms? If such thing was built, would it have been an "Over & Under OR Side by Side?
"No politics" after 12 unbroken hours researching French pre-dreadnaughts, Drach starts to tender against himself
So deac's brain works on a whole other level from mine
Hunt Class Destroyer dimensions (2:46:15) - My first dorm room in the USAF at my first duty station was smaller than the minimums for a person in federal prison. The contractor had read an internal wall dimension as the dimension for the external wall.
Well strap in, get comfortable and here we go.
Last sunday of the year happy new year
50:30 um, does that guy have his head pressed against a room divider like he's peeping on a star constellation map?
what the heck is going on in this picture?
I see other little divider/booths in the background... Is he looking through a recon photo negative mounted in a viewing port?
1:24 When BB fire full salvos like that on this picture, do stun fish flow on the surface of the water ? Is it "valid" method to fish ?
I'd assume the pressure is just way too low and the water far enough away. That any pressure wave just gets reflected off the water.
Plus the water is about 90° to the muzzle blast. Trenches have 90° turns because they stop the pressure waves of explosions from travelling past them.
At the end of the day. As impressive as a battleship's muzzle blast is. The pressure doesn't come anywhere near close to the pressures high explosives create.
In my limited experience doing something like that. Way past any statue of limitations. It takes a pretty decent explosion to stun fish. Hand grenade, stick of dynamite sized. Enough to throw water in the air.
Ahhh... We have the eidetic memory in common. It is quite helpful when conducting research.
Whats eidetic ? ...how does it feel ?
Thanks for clearing up iron clad definition. Why wasn't iron clad used on earlier wooden warships? The USS Constitution had copper plating at the bottom of it haul to provide hydrodynamics and marine growth so why didn't navies waited to the mid-1800s to start practicing the concept?
@@resolute123 partially the cost and technology needed to mass manufacture large iron plates, and partially due to the vastly increased mass, which really needed a steam engine, even if notionally an auxiliary, to manage properly, especially in harbour work.
1:21:10 -- There is a video on TH-cam that I've, unfortunately, lost the URL for which shows an RC battleship with a stupidly overpowered engine doing precisely this in an irrigation canal, zooming down the canal on plane with the forward half of the ship out of the water and the stern tucked down until the fantail is almost awash. Apart from the entertainment of the mental image of an opposing battle line's commanders' expressions would be seeing something like this at full size, the drawbacks and real-world physics problems (being able to traverse the main turrets fast enough to track, and compensation for the bow-up angle of the ship, inability to get that amount of power from a full-scale power plant, etc.) make it a purely mental exercise.
There was a RC rib powered by a mock outboard in a quiet part of a harbour. He showed off how he could jump it over the boom.
He had it up on its tail end and cut the motor at just the right time. Then he could play around outside.
Of course he had to come back. Full speed, sitting on its tail straight at the boom.
He flipped upside down and wallowed. Stuck.
He was pushed back by a pre-Dreadnought battleship and a ferry, both slow RC models.
Imagine the pressure on the hull 😮
Maybe one end was a pike,spike as a weapon or to stick in to the ground with a lamp on the other end?
"All ahead flank" = Capt. Sulu: "Fly her apart then!"
In regards to reaction videos of at least the first 2 types, that is what I like to call "Graham Hancocking".
wrt salvage of Oklahoma. Yes, she did obstruct traffic to a degree where the wreck was. But, rather than tying up a drydock for a few months, and using new material, to patch her up, why not tow the refloated wreck into East Loch, out of the traffic flow, let her settle, build a cofferdam around her, and break her up there? What I would have wanted to do would be to tow the refloated wreck out to sea, and scuttle her, with the service for burial at sea, for the men inside, as was done with Maine after she was raised from Havana harbor. My only concern with that plan was what if one of the temporary patched failed, and she sank in the channel, blocking the entrance to the harbor?
Hey Drach, what is that really low deep bass booming sound that starts around 9:21 seconds and continues for awhile at several seconds intervals? I only noticed it once I put both my ear buds in and turned on noise cancelling. I’ve also heard it in some other dry dock episodes as well. Never seems to last too long.
@@2down4up might be a passing aircraft or large vehicle?
@ I dunno. Doesn’t sound like that but what do I know?
33:25 Damn now that is an awsome ability and sad to hear previous employment howled it out. I would say you might want to find some treatment for that but sadly I have no idea what would work. Actually its really a shame we don't all have the ability to a point then politicians everywhere would be in big trouble. Shame.
2:56:30 - And to be perfectly frank, Halsey was... not hard to predict.
What's the image at the 1:00:00 mark? I love it.
This one I think that I'll have disagree with Drach on .
I'm not talking about intelligence here, it's more information management and networking. Better guns are great, better optics are great, how do you make them work together and co-ordinate their capabilities? How do you make them their combined strengths not just additive, but multiplicative.
It's about getting the information around, to the right people quickly, effectively and in such a format that they can make the most use of it. Secondly, deny that information to the opposition. Even if things are overheard, EW is going on, you're still confident and able to get information to the people who need it, with enough time to act on it.
This is true all the way down individual shipboard systems to task group, fleet wide actions, commands. The radio, encryption and the range of radio right at one end all the day down to the voice phone from the bridge to a turret, engine room or damage control centre.
Getting the right information to the right people to command, direct the right actions is something immensely powerful.
My favourite example of this is the sheer dominance shown in the action of Surigao Strait. Radio, RADAR and good practise in using it allowed Oldendorf to prepare his forces, control the time and nature of the engagement and just while he was at it, make sure he wasn't as much as it was, fighting the full force of his opposition.
Information did that, not guns and optics. Information wins wars before any gun ever gets involved.
Even if intelligence likes to think they're more important than they are.
Ugly non-French warships:
* The Japanese designs of the 1930s that thankfully remained on paper.
* British heavy cruisers with the large, boxy hangars aft.
* Gangut with the enlarged bridge structure. What. A. Turd.
* Nevada with that awkward, thin raked funnel.
* Navarin. Looks like a factory and is about as visually appealing as one.
* G3/N3 class.
Regarding Drach’s work/life balance, it’s obviously nothing that he can’t do in a 36 hour day.
Interesting, so that’s where we get the term Ironclad, from ship armor 🚢 As in something that is strong, unbreakable, or guaranteed, Ironclad 😮 ohhh
1:20:27 "This Is Spial Tap" meets Naval Requirements.
Collaboration with Todd Cutler on making a fire pike?
I ponder the influences of salt , alone ,salt alla mode , salt of the earth salt of the sea - nacl , simple ,stand alone salt , salt as electrolite , salts influence on corrosion - salt run amuck - salt water ,densiety , salt on the run. Salt in my blood , salt in the sun ,salt cast on crops salt spread on ice , salt tossed viciously in eyes ,ya know?
I am reading Andrew Boyd's " The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters" and seeing the constraints on British force levels available for deployment imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty it looks to me that Japan was the real winner in treaty system. I think the results of the first 6 months of the war bear this out.
@johnshepherd9676 well, unlike the other 2 big navies she could concentrate all her naval power in one theatre.
@Drachinifel That's my point, Draco.
Saying who won the most is really difficult because the wins were often in different ways.
Without the Washington Naval Treaty, Japan is going to ruin its economy if it seriously tries to keep pace with a UK / US naval arms race, so it won handily there.
But at the same time, the agreement to the Washington Naval Treaty finalized the UK turning it's back on Japan as an ally and looking to cooperate with the US. So Japan is closer in capabilities to either the US or UK navies, but easing the tensions between the two that a big naval arms race would have generated is a huge diplomatic loss for Japan.
@88porpoise There were gains and losses for each Party to the Washington and London Naval Treaties but the measure of net winner is who comes off best in a conflict and that would be Japan in the first six months of the war. It was not inevitable that Japan suffered major losses in the second half of 1942.
@@johnshepherd9676 But there are a whole ton of other changes that would occur in the intervening 20 years that looking at just 1942 is pointless.
If conflict brews between the UK and US due to an ongoing naval arms race in the late 1920s, the entire situation in the Pacific is completely different.
In terms of pure naval capabilities relative to the other powers, Italy and France were almost certainly the biggest winners because they were the least capable of expanding their navies in the 1920s and would have been left further behind than they were. If the British were able to send more capital ships and carriers for a sustained campaign in the Mediterranean they could potentially cut Italy entirely off from North Africa before the Africa Korps is deployed. Germany is another one that could only build a somewhat relevant surface fleet because of the treaties. If the British had a couple dozen modern capital ships available in 1940, Bismarck would not have been a serious threat like it was. On the other hand, being that much more hopelessly behind the curve maybe Germany doesn't pursue a surface fleet prior to WWII so maybe they are better off without the treaty.
How does one submitt a question for drach to answer on one of these ? Been a long time listener/subscriber but no idea how to ask him a question 😅 thanks in advance for any replies
Re random bit of uboat- I know a guy, college IT lecturer amongst other things- who has one the smaller targeting periscopes of a ww2 uboat stored in one his sheds. In the West Midlands, Worcester. miles and miles from the sea. The full story how it got there eludes me, but he is mildly eccentric, English and has multiple sheds...
The sad thing is that reddit leaks into other platforms (or arrogant stupidity is just universal across the internet). I was flabbergasted by the “wisdom” that Admiral Yi was in fact a useless coward who lost all his battles but one on a youtube video. No evidence of course, but lots of chest-beating, painful ignorance, and “everyone knows” (“If Admiral Yi was so great, why was Korea a vassal of China?” “Admiral Yi couldn’t beat the Japanese, his troops didn’t have katanas!” “If Admiral Yi won so many battles, how come Japan conquered Korea?”).
About the only use I’ve found for reddit is a handful of game subreddits that manage to focus on the subject and not veer into “Who is a fascist/communist”.
A worryingly large number of people outside of the Koreas believe Korea was a part of China for most of its history due to misunderstanding what it meant to be a Chinese vassal state (which were still sovereign). Worse, this plays into modern CCP propaganda....
… 2:30:40 …and can Drach make one in his back garden?……, please.
On reaction videos, the only kinds IMHO worth watching are those that actually add more nuance to the original content. Either, that is interesting because actual research shows X while the popular narrative says Y or those where experts are debating the relative importance of A in relation to B. Also, anyone who thinks the cesspool called Reddit (I know I'm insulting cesspools) is worth anything is someone I want to avoid.
2:39:38 I'd think the US Navy would rethink duels after losing Decatur.
19th/early 20th shell's and fuses not much difference?
Drach, your pronunciation of Esquimalt is a bit off. It is Ess-kwhy-malt not Ess-key-malt. The name comes from a First Nation settlement at the head of Esquimalt harbour but later became applied to the entire harbour which in turn gives the name of the naval base and the town of Esquimalt.
Regarding " surface ship vs surface ships battles, ww1 vs ww2", I suspect that Dac underestimated ww1, as there were alot of actions involving the Russians in the Black and Baltic (like the battle of the gulf of Riga) seas that tend to be overlooked in the west. Both major and smaller ones.
The rebuilt Albanys were known as the ugliest ship in the US Navy.