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 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.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 bery badly handled. Basically, the Beatty/Seymour combo finds a way to lose even WITH the QEs at hand...
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the forecast! Could you help me with something unrelated: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How should I go about transferring them to Binance?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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...
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 🤭😇🫶🏼
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....
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 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.
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 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?
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.
1:21:55 Much of this is the fault of the (hilariously inaccurate) battleship comparison page on combinedfleet from Parshall and Tully, which made claims that were blatantly false even for the time (such as the idea of Yamato having an obsolete incremental armor layout and thus being as inefficient as Bismarck), and even more claims that have become outdated since then (such as the idea the Littorios were hilariously inaccurate or pretty much any of the armor quality claims). They assumed Iowa was the best battleship of WWII by a massive margin in both capability and in actual utility (never mind that the Iowas were still ultimately capital ships that were incapable of being used as such, like all the rest) based in large part on this misinformation, and a huge number of naval history enthusiasts took that page at face value. The other thing is that the Iowas, much like Bismarck (but not to the same extent), are severely lionized at the expense of other contemporary designs due to the myth of them having been "successful" battleships (which I can't really agree with when their entire careers were spent either in mothballs or servicing as gigantic and overpriced destroyers or monitors).
Am I alone in being annoyed (perhaps unreasonably so) by the "essay questions" where it takes some 30 seconds just to say the question? It's like one of those "sports interviews" where the interviewer sticks a whole bunch of analysis in the question, leaving the poor interviewee with little options but "yes" or "no" as answers...
The worst kind of reaction videos are the ones of people with no knowledge of a subject expounding on a video made by 'experts' who ALSO have no knowledge of the subject they are covering... Something unfortunately all too common in Science... especially environmental or climate related. Though these fall at least partially into the confirmation bias camp as well.... So there is that.... Its a strange thing, the internet, while everyone with access has a huge amount of material from all kinds of viewpoints available to them, echo chambers are becoming increasingly more common! Must be some kind of psychological explanation for that, but being no psychologist I'll be the first to admit to not knowing what the hell the explanation is.... It may be something so simple as the echo chambers are simply more visible... but I would'nt really know.
To be fair any American fast battleship is going to easily dispose of any German or Italian battleship. The radar and fire control are too much of an advantage unless you come up with very specific circumstances to even the playing field.
I don't mind reaction videos if they bring up evidence to back up their comments. To me "reaction" videos are the laziest form of TH-cam content as they can't be bother to come up with their own material.
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 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.
Many thanks for the shout out, my friend. I pray that your holidays are blessed.
Hello over here, too vch!
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
I'm a bit behind; only just learned about Mini Drach. Congratulations! I hope everyone is doing well!
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...
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?
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.
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.
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 !
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 😂
Drach: "...More armor, which might have been a good idea."
An understatement if ever there was one when discussing the Lexington class design.
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”
Your description of the refitted Baltimore-class missile cruisers was the best use of Scripture I heard all Sunday.
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.
I really like the photo you used for the 1st question.
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.
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.
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.
Flank Speed is like when you turn the AC off in your car to get that 10 horsepower back.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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 bery badly handled.
Basically, the Beatty/Seymour combo finds a way to lose even WITH the QEs at hand...
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.
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.
Drach even works in the magic time between Christmas and New Year. So amazing!
Thanks for another great installment. I think the format for the Bismark video would be a great approach for evaluating its design
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
Right on bed time... excellent after an exciting day watching cricket
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
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
Wonderful detail in the answers. I learn alot..., thank you.
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.
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 😮
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?
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.
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. 😉
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.
Another day, another Drydock! Nice
What's the image at the 1:00:00 mark? I love it.
2:31:33 Wildfire House? Sounds like something from "A Song of Ice and Fire".
Happy New Year!
When speaking of USN AA, talking about Kamikaze engagements is much, much more representative of actual numbers involved.
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.
Thanks for the forecast! Could you help me with something unrelated: My OKX wallet holds some USDT, and I have the seed phrase. (alarm fetch churn bridge exercise tape speak race clerk couch crater letter). How should I go about transferring them to Binance?
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?
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.
enjoy the new year all
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.
2:56:30 - And to be perfectly frank, Halsey was... not hard to predict.
yeah. dry dock of the year. 😍
So deac's brain works on a whole other level from mine
Drach = King of Time Management.
Ahhh... We have the eidetic memory in common. It is quite helpful when conducting research.
Whats eidetic ? ...how does it feel ?
"All ahead flank" = Capt. Sulu: "Fly her apart then!"
It might just be me, but I kind of like the looks of the Canarias cruiser.
1:21:50
Good news: we can *all* water ski … _at the same time._
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.
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...
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 🤭😇🫶🏼
19th/early 20th shell's and fuses not much difference?
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....
Well strap in, get comfortable and here we go.
Interesting, so that’s where we get the term Ironclad, from ship armor 🚢 As in something that is strong, unbreakable, or guaranteed, Ironclad 😮 ohhh
Last sunday of the year happy new year
Regarding Drach’s work/life balance, it’s obviously nothing that he can’t do in a 36 hour day.
In regards to reaction videos of at least the first 2 types, that is what I like to call "Graham Hancocking".
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.
1:20:27 "This Is Spial Tap" meets Naval Requirements.
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.
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 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?
2:39:38 I'd think the US Navy would rethink duels after losing Decatur.
The rebuilt Albanys were known as the ugliest ship in the US Navy.
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.
You still need to deal TH-cam policies though... Not as bad as office política, but...
1:21:55 Much of this is the fault of the (hilariously inaccurate) battleship comparison page on combinedfleet from Parshall and Tully, which made claims that were blatantly false even for the time (such as the idea of Yamato having an obsolete incremental armor layout and thus being as inefficient as Bismarck), and even more claims that have become outdated since then (such as the idea the Littorios were hilariously inaccurate or pretty much any of the armor quality claims). They assumed Iowa was the best battleship of WWII by a massive margin in both capability and in actual utility (never mind that the Iowas were still ultimately capital ships that were incapable of being used as such, like all the rest) based in large part on this misinformation, and a huge number of naval history enthusiasts took that page at face value.
The other thing is that the Iowas, much like Bismarck (but not to the same extent), are severely lionized at the expense of other contemporary designs due to the myth of them having been "successful" battleships (which I can't really agree with when their entire careers were spent either in mothballs or servicing as gigantic and overpriced destroyers or monitors).
Am I alone in being annoyed (perhaps unreasonably so) by the "essay questions" where it takes some 30 seconds just to say the question? It's like one of those "sports interviews" where the interviewer sticks a whole bunch of analysis in the question, leaving the poor interviewee with little options but "yes" or "no" as answers...
02:55:58 Wishful thinking.
The worst kind of reaction videos are the ones of people with no knowledge of a subject expounding on a video made by 'experts' who ALSO have no knowledge of the subject they are covering...
Something unfortunately all too common in Science... especially environmental or climate related. Though these fall at least partially into the confirmation bias camp as well.... So there is that....
Its a strange thing, the internet, while everyone with access has a huge amount of material from all kinds of viewpoints available to them, echo chambers are becoming increasingly more common! Must be some kind of psychological explanation for that, but being no psychologist I'll be the first to admit to not knowing what the hell the explanation is....
It may be something so simple as the echo chambers are simply more visible... but I would'nt really know.
Reaction content is the laziest types of content creating. I am of the same opinion as you Drach
2:31:05 😀😄🙂 nerd 😎.
16th, 29 December 2024
To be fair any American fast battleship is going to easily dispose of any German or Italian battleship. The radar and fire control are too much of an advantage unless you come up with very specific circumstances to even the playing field.
I don't mind reaction videos if they bring up evidence to back up their comments. To me "reaction" videos are the laziest form of TH-cam content as they can't be bother to come up with their own material.
Halsey wasn't led by the nose.
When was your divorce from reality finalized?