I'm sure this has been asked and answered before but in the photo at 19:34, what are those things near the top of the mast that look like giant speakers?
The proper way to account for random variation is a Monte Carlo simulation with a large number repetitions and a distribution of outcomes. I suspect Drachs swipe at Mk 8 FCS capabilities was aimed at me so I will reclama. If you want to be pedantic the test was run with Massachusetts and was about finding the limits of FCS ability to maintain target lock. It is the kind of testing that militaries do in peacetime when equipment is now available. They were not developing battle tactics. The US Navy already knew what the capabilty of the Mk 8 maintain lock under normal combat maneuvers. They had real combat data such the West Virginia at Surigao Strait where West Virginia acquired a targeting solution at about 30kyds and never lost it. Update: I did a little research. The Massachusetts last radar upgrade appears to be 1944. She went right from overhaul into the reserves. The test was highly likely to be a reflection of WWII capabilties.
So...while you've laid out your reasons why you won't do 1v1s in your videos, that made me wonder...which 1v1 would you most like to see purely as a spectator?
@@jeromebirth2693 Now I want a Fishing boat VS Torpedo boat comparison, but where the crew of the latter only has Xmas decorations, nick nacks and curbside sofas as ammunition. 😆😆😆😆😆
It is fascinating (to me, anyway) how the variety of "modern" (by WWII at least) weapons makes it optimal to have an array of ships covering the size range from PT/motor torpedo boats up to fleet carriers and battleships and everything in between. It's never quite as simple as "bigger always beats smaller." And the size sequence gets even smaller as we include aircraft. Just about the smallest vehicle type that a human can pilot can potentially cripple or sink a capital ship, and often you need your own small vehicles to counter the enemy's small vehicles. Thus the whole "ship vs. ship" comparison becomes, effectively, contrary to the nature of modern warfare. A similar size sequence occurred in the air war over Germany in 1943-1944. Heavy Allied bombers could be defeated by cannon- and rocket-armed German heavy fighters, which were smaller than the bombers. The heavy fighters in turn became easy meat for smaller and more maneuverable Allied escort fighters, necessitating smaller and more maneuverable German escort fighters for the German heavy fighters. (The "big bugs have little bugs upon their backs to bite 'em" poem comes to mind.) But the latter didn't really work by early 1944 as the Doolittle tactics began to tell (send the Allied escorts far ahead of the Allied bombers to intercept the German fighters during their vulnerable climb to altitude and forming-up to prepare for the bombers). Thus the notion of two opposing battleships wandering out alone to duke it out as if in some medieval jousting match, if it could ever actually happen, would probably require simultaneous failures of commands on both sides.
I’m sure this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I would personally opine that there is exactly one scenario where a 1v1 comparison makes sense: Comparing prospective designs a navy was considering building or buying. It would be rather interesting to see why navies chose what they chose and what your thoughts on their choice. This is of course comes with the caveat that there’s still plenty of other matters like build time and location, cost, and geopolitical relations.
Even then, it should be a comparison of the various candidate designs against a defined, hypothetical enemy force, while supported by a friendly fleet, rather than a 1v1 against each other. Even then, this exercise should allow for a weaker, cheaper battleship with a correspondingly stronger escort fleet.
The French, Italian, German, and Japanese navies weren't able to keep up with shipbuilding deep into WWII, for various reasons. The USA expanded its shipbuilding steadily and was able to build new ship designs in response to the wartime results of its pre-war ship design decisions. For example, the Montana-class battleships were canceled and the resources were redirected to other ship types, such as aircraft carriers. Thus the USN decided there was no need to build a battleship that could rival Japan's Yamato-class in a direct engagement. And both Yamato-class battleships were indeed sunk by USN aircraft, although Yamato did manage to get within gun range of some USN surface units in the battle off Samar thanks to Halsey (in)famously taking the bait of the Japanese decoy fleet. The submarine and aircraft carrier effectively rendered surface warship gunnery duels obsolete, although they did happen with decreasing frequency to the end of 1944. It is remarkable how infrequently opposing battleships got a chance to shoot at each other in the Pacific War, given the large size of fleets at the outset and the subsequent growth of at least the Allied fleet. The fact that nobody built another battleship after WWII is telling.
@@danielmocsny5066 The USN still really should have gone further with cancelling battleships and cancelled the Iowas. Yes, I know they got used as AA escorts for carriers, but that’s a more appropriate role for CLAAs.
@@bkjeong4302 That decision would have required a crystal ball that was providing accurate field assessments from a war that hadn't even started yet. Which suddenly gives me an idea for a story line in a book I'm writing. Someone DOES have said crystal ball, but it's predictions are so insane that nobody believes them.
designs were chosen for how they'd fit into the existing line of battle, not which was "better" than the other designs in a 1v1 engagement. E.g. a ship might have a higher rate of fire, but be so slow it couldn't keep up with the battle force so it's rejected. Or it has much better speed but is so unstable a gun platform it can't hit anything. Again, rejected. Those theoretical 1v1 comparisons don't cover any of that. Some ships operated better than others for things you'd never see in those internet comparisons, things like having air conditioning to keep the crew from collapsing from hyperthermia and the optics fogging up in the tropics.
Drach! According to all you've just said, there actually IS a perfect scenario for a fair 1 vs 1 comparison. We are proud to introduce: a ramming bout between two galleys with well fed crews!
not taking in account currents , sea state and wind of course ... where the crew came from and their tolerance to heat/cold and other weather conditions ... :-)
Take heart Drach. Nobody on their deathbed ever wished that they had spent more time arguing with strangers on the internet so don't waste your time on haters. No matter how satisfying it might be to prove them wrong it still would not change their minds
This is a very echo chamber narrow minds approach to anything, arguing with ‘haters’ ie debating is a very important thing in…anything To say ‘ah ignore the haters who cares if you argue with strangers’ misses the butterfly effect on it and others, just imagine if no one bothered to call out David Irving on his shit, yeah
You've both got points. There comes a point where discourse is pointless, however to not even give it a go.... let's those who are extremely vocal and willing to impose their thoughts, speech and beliefs on everyone else. It's a fine line and I think his on to a thing or two by arguing articulately to state his point. Also while pointing out why others are 're--tarded' - yes the r word is important and the war on speech itself is abhorrent to public discourse. Good ideas, should always be able to overpower bad ones. History has taught, time and time again that the stifling of discourse allows for the abuse of others. I didn't articulate that very well, but I'm not that smart either. There's a good middle ground you two have hit on and I don't think humans have ever found it. It always seems to go back and forwards. Hopefully we'll get there!
I'm afraid I will have to disagree with you. To the Hard Core Internet Troll nothing is more important than "winning" an empty argument over some trivial matter on the internet. Their only deathbed regret will be that they didn't fight hard enough to convince everyone of their obviously superior mental facilities and "logical" conclusions.
Yes, Drach certainly had a bit of a "triggered" tone in his voice for this video 😳 you could almost sense the inner Drach screaming to everyone "these types of questions are dumb so STOP asking me as I will no longer answer them!" Lol
Drach, I just took a sip of Coke when you said, "...until the cows come home and well after they've been turned into burgers...". I prefer drinking Coke to shoving it up my sinuses.
Hey Drac, if the _Vasa_ hadn't sank within half an hour of being launched and instead had been outfitted with antigravity engines and a fusion-powered plasma cannon, could it have sunk the _Bismarck?_ (Of course not, cuz the _Bismarck_ was the BEST SHIP EVAR.)
Yes, but was it Vasa or Wasa? Or maybe it should have been Eriksson, as Gustav Eriksson was his real name? The Vasa was one of the biggest military failures of all time anyhow. 😱 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)
A few centuries later, an other Swedish Eriksson, John Ericsson, made a significantly larger impact of naval warfare with the construction of the USS Monitor in 1862. He also decided, that the translation between inches and centimeters was exactly 2,54 cm! 😁
Hey Drach, would you consider doing more videos on ships of the line? I'd love to see an extended one on the L'Ocean class of french line ships. Your video on the american ships of the line was probably one of the most informative I've seen, not only on the specific ships, but on the design, construction and operation of ships of the line in general. Maybe a series of videos on the evolution of ships during the age of sail, from the late medieval ships like the cog to the caravels, carracks and galleons, finally ending in the indiamen, pinnaces, brigantines, fluyts/flyboats, frigates and line ships that dominated the late age of sail till the XIX century.
So, what would happen if: Nelson's flagship Victory (if it was made of iron and had engines) fought Dreadnought (if it was made of wood and used sails)?
HMS Dreadnought was a 98 gun second rate ship of the line at Trafalgar, she would already lose to HMS Victory without Victory needing modifications because she was a First Rate with 104 guns.
@@Edax_Royeaux Depends on who's commanding her. Put Nelson in command of even the 1654 HMS Dreadnaught (52 guns) and she'd take on the both the 1801 HMS Dreadnaught (98 guns) and HMS Victory (104 guns) - at the same time - and win. Or haven't you heard of 'Nelson's Patent Bridge for Boarding First Rates'? Damned soft factors! :P
Another fun detail of Bismarck vs Iowa, other than Bismarck having been sunk 2 years before Iowa was commissioned, was that the USA and Germany were not at war with each other when Bismarck sank.
Yes, Tirpitz, although by the time an Iowa-class BB could have tangled with Tirpitz, Allied dominance of the air was so complete that Tirpitz could only have sortied on a Yamato-style suicide run. When Yamato herself actually tried to make a run at the USN's battle line the USN air arm wouldn't let her get close. The RAF didn't even give the Tirpitz a chance by hitting her at anchor with all those Tallboys in sort of the poster child for an unfair fight. WWII did provide a number of lessons in aircraft humbling the mighty battleship. The ship type seen as the decider before the war proved best suited for shore bombardment (on the winning side) or bomb absorption (on the losing side).
@@danielmocsny5066 Yamato wasn’t making a run at the US battle line in Ten-Go. It was making a run to Okinawa to beach itself and provide fire support. The US formed a battle line out of the old Standard battleships, but Adm. Kincaid decided to let Adm. Mitscher get first crack at it with aircraft. The old US battleships would have definitely sunk Yamato, but there was no need to risk letting Yamato take one of them (and 1,500 American sailors) down with her. As for Iowa, she was sent to operate with the British Home Fleet in August 1943. The Germans still had a pretty strong aircraft presence, even in Norway, and aircraft were still of little use at night or in bad weather.
I think a great example is HMS Shannon who actually had a 1v1 fight in 1812, her armament and the performance of her sister ship HMS Guerriere, would show she should lose to Chesapeake, but not just did she win, she won so decisively, you'd need 4 chessapeake's too have the same number of cannon balls hitting Shannon as hit Chessapeake. This doesn't even go into the tactics and the way the Shannon had a cannon at the bow specifically placed their to act like a giant sniper rifle taking out the cheesapeakes helmsmen and wheel, this wasn't a particularly normal tactic, but won them the battle. Another example is HMS Speedy Vs El Gamo 14 guns vs 32 guns of bigger calibre, yet Speedy won. The idea of doing a 1v1 based on specs does not show training or how ships are set up differently, the accuracy or preferred tactics, it doesn't examine the captains. Or as you said when, where and why they are fighting which create 100s of different results.
@@andrewfanner2245 yes Unicorn in Dundee and Trincomalee in Hartlepool, which can also be used in this as both of them were made 18 and 11 years after HMS Shannon making their firepower relatively weaker for the time period.
I'm sorry, but you could hardly find a more even fight between ships alone in the War of 1812 as Shannon and Chesapeke. Chesapeke was 4" longer on the gun deck, measured more tonnage because on depth in hold, but both were 18pdr frigates with the same 28 guns on the gun deck and a similar number of 32pdr carronades aboard both ships. There was little to chose as far as performance under sail or gun power. Too say the Chesapeake should have won on ship's data is a gross exaggeration. In the end it was ship's crew quality that counted, Chesapeake's crew being new to the ship and Shannon's in the ship for years under a n excellent captain in Brooke.
@@Jaxck77 Tell that to the HMS Guerriere, Macedonian, Java, Levant, Cyane, Boxer, Penguin, etc. One of the largest collection of Royal Navy battle flags in the world is in the museum at the US Naval Academy.
Drach, we both know that if admiral Lee is in command of your BB, no 1v1 can be a fair fight. Also if your ship mascot is unsinkable Sam your ship is doomed.
This is the most Rozhestvensky I've heard Drach in a long time. Also, this is the "Dicta Drachinifel" for those diving into naval history. Sterling content, mate. Well done.
Please don’t give up on the “what ifs” scenarios. You briefly touched on one of my great curiosities, what if Tirpitz had actually sortied during Operation Rosselsprung. Tirpitz, Hipper, Lutzow, Scheer, and escorts opposed by Duke of York and Washington, plus escorting cruisers and destroyers. Would Victorious have been in the battle line? How would have the cruisers like Wichita and Tuscaloosa as well as the British cruisers have done?
Then you get Drach's 'soft' factors. The RN had 3 centuries of 'do or die' behind them, plus the knowledge that landing even a few hits would count if it slowed the enemy or left them vulnerable to aircraft or the rest of the navy (Graf Spee, Bismarck). German admirals were always conscious that they were all spearhead, no shaft. They tried to live to fight another day - they were not in for long slug-fests.
You can add USS Ranger - for all her faults, she carried 2 squadrons each of Wildcats and SBD's (40 of each) and the USS South Dakota, which was declared operational in mid July 1942, just in time for Rosselsprung.
Reason 7. It's essentially irrelevant. As you've said, ships are rarely alone but a lot of ships, whilst ostensibly the same type, aren't actually that comparable. British battleships of WW1 and the inter-war period were not built for single-ship combat but were built to patrol and control an empire and in most circumstances if they did get into a skirmish, would not be fighting ships of an equivalent class. It's a bit like the idea of tank vs. tank combat. People get very hung up on the idea of an M4 Sherman facing down a Tiger but it was incredibly rare and the vast majority of the time, the tanks are being used as armoured field artillery and infantry support. In those circumstances any tank is better than no tank - so M4 Shermans weren't really built and optimised for tank vs. tank combat and even when the Tiger was in service (however small the numbers) it didn't play into the heads of tank designers that this would even be a particularly important consideration.
The best comparison for the M4 IMO is the Panzer IV Sturmgeschutz. The US response to a Pz 6 would likely be a coordinated air infantry and artillery attack, that would likely just leave it in a gunfight with a knife, and reroute the Shermans and TDs around it.
@@phinhager6509 - Yes, by the time American forces were in France they generally enjoyed a 10:1 advantage in artillery shells over their German opponents. The best use for M4s when Tigers were about was probably as forward artillery observers. The key to reaching old age as an M4 driver was probably never to range farther than your Long Toms behind you could reach. For longer trips try to do them when the weather is fine for friendly aircraft to fly. However, the Americans did respond to the shock of encountering the odd Tiger tank by building their own Pershing tanks to level the field somewhat. Even though the Pershing wasn't at all necessary to defeat Germany (it barely got into combat near the end when the outcome was well beyond doubt), still it's bad for morale to send your boys into combat knowing they might find themselves in a situation outclassed on a one-for-one basis. The same situation applied to aircraft. When the first German jets appeared, there was no question but that the Allied forces had to have their own jets on the next procurement cycle, even though the German jets were too late and too few to change the outcome. The late-war German technological advantages (in those areas where the Germans had advantages) are easy to overblow in retrospect because it's hard to remember just how short WWII actually was. The American Army wasn't even fighting on the ground in France and Germany for a whole year. Some Internet debates last longer than that. Had the war gone on longer and had the M4 Shermans encountered more Tigers then of course the Americans would have fielded heavier tanks. But when the Allies have commanding advantages in artillery and air power there's little need for tanks that can win in 1v1 duels. Although I'm sure the Sherman crews might have wished for some thicker metal in front of them.
@@danielmocsny5066 funny part of the Sherman was it had the same effective frontal armor as the tiger. the 88 was just a damn monster but the Sherman with the 76 was equal in all things but optics.
Consider the Tiger fear and the actual historical evidence: Shermans and Tigers I fought against each other 3 times, in the entire Western Front campaign
An issue I feel causes problems is misapplied scientific thinking. I think the assumption is that if you get ships in a 1 vs 1 you will eliminate all random variables and somehow work out their true, factual superiority/inferiority. The idea is more like a lab experiment seeking to eliminate all outside factors with the dependent and independent variables being singularly focus on. That can't happen. Warships are not variables within something (unless the focus would be upon the strategic aspect of a war and their place in it), they are systems more like living beings. You take them out of their natural habitat and you won't get their true behaviour, you'll get their behavior reacting to artificial conditons. I've heard many species of spider don't actually eat their mates after reproducing, that behavior is only observed in lab conditions because the females are stressed by the different conditons and do it similar to how mothers animals will kill and eat their babies as well. I don't know how accurate that is, but as an applicable example here it will do. Oh, and for a warship: you cannot seriously have covered the French hotel battleships and still not have done Hoche yet!? Really? Get on it!
It is true sexual cannibalism in spiders and mantids is more common in captivity than in the wild, but this is more because the male has nowhere to escape to and less because the female is stressed.
Speaking for myself, I come here to see and hear your presentation because I am generally interested in military history, and you know far more about naval development and history than I do. I am not interested in what commenters who have limited contact with reality have to say, and think you shouldn't bother yourself with them, i.e. don't feed the trolls.
I would also add in that even if you were to insist on an unrealistic "NPC generic crew", how do you define what a "generic" crew of a ship is? Even if you were to assume both ships are crewed by completely identical human-like robots, do you account for various navies having different levels of experience, historical performance, or as we've seen in things like the videos about damage control, outright different doctrines for different scenarios? Or do you ignore that and again drift even farther into not being historical for the sake of quantifiable elements? And either way, that still leaves the question of what this 'generic' crew even means in the first place. Edit: and after writing this, it also occurred to me that there's the "bloodlusted" question; are we assuming to resolve the "1v1" that both ships will, unrealistically, fight until the complete obliteration of their own vessel with no thought of retreat? Abandoning ship? Surrendering? Or do we factor in at what point a ship's captain might decide to try to exit the battle in one form or another (or even that the crew might mutiny), and what impact that would have on the fight? And if so, how do you calculate when that would occur? Does a ship successfully escaping count as a lesser loss than being sunk or captured? Or is it still all the same even though I have a hunch most navies would consider still having their sailors and property intact much, much better than to not. Edit 2: to clarify on the above, I do not mean to imply that there haven't been cases of crews fighting to the final, bloody end against impossible odds, but those were usually a result of circumstances, some larger goal, or an outright inability to escape rather than a case of an entire ship's crew waking up one morning and randomly deciding in unison 'Today is a good day die in a pointlessly fair battle!'
I think the point of these comparisons would be, we have better - armour and or guns - so we will win. If we have worse we have to work harder, think tactically and get better kit. Which means if You are better - You can't be complacent. There could be a torpedo in the water!
One way to handle variables such as crew proficiency is to build a computer model and run a Monte Carlo simulation. You might assume that the variables are normally distributed (for example, most crews are average, with increasingly fewer crews at skill levels farther from the mean in either direction), and run thousands of simulations with combinations of the variables drawn at random from their distributions. The final result is, of course, a win/loss probability rather than a single decision. This reflects the real-world observation that sometimes inferior forces defeat superior forces - but just as in sports where upsets are frequent, they are not frequent enough to change the odds. Since humans usually do not think in terms of probability unless specifically trained to do so, we can expect the same conceptual error with ship duels as in sporting matchups, for which many people insist on picking winners. This is usually an exercise in self-deception, since only win probabilities can be predicted, and it is extremely rare for a win probability to be 100% or 0% (certain win or loss). As to the relative value of sunk vs. damaged, that depends on more variables. For example during WWII the German navy increasingly lacked repair yards that the Allies couldn't bomb from aircraft. Thus a German ship laid up in port became increasingly less likely to ever leave port as the Allies got better at repeatedly undoing the repair work with additional bombs. In contrast, Britain and the USA enjoyed repair yards generally or entirely out of enemy reach, respectively. Thus damage to an American ship had to be quite severe, or coming late in the war, to keep it out of the fight. (No American Essex-class carriers were sunk outright, but some were damaged severely toward the end thanks to those unarmored flight decks and did not return to combat before the war ended. However, late in the war the need for aircraft carriers was gradually decreasing as American forces captured islands closer to Japan that could host air bases. Once you hold an island air base you no longer need fleet carriers to cover the area of ocean out to the combat radius of aircraft based on the island.) The USN also built a series of island repair bases right across the Pacific, so depending on the level of damage to a ship, its travel time to a repair base could be minimized. Only the most damaged ships (that could still float) had to go all the way back to the mainland USA. To sum up, damage to an American ship was probably less bad than the same damage to a German ship, given the German ship's lower probability of recovering to fight again. The mighty Tirpitz for example ended up as little more than a magnet for RAF Tallboys. In terms of crew casualties, that's perhaps less an issue of whether the ship sinks, but rather of how much damage the ship takes and how quickly. And also to how many friendly ships draw alongside to help with damage control and are themselves wrecked when a damaged ship explodes. A ship that sinks slowly might lose fewer crew than a ship that takes a lot of damage quickly but does not sink.
@@danielmocsny5066 Monte-Carlo works well for damage prediction. It's absolute sh!+ for modeling human behavior. At least human behavior for groups of hundreds of people, as opposed to millions of people. I happen to be the developer on an expert system used by several navies to model crew response to shipboard casualties. There have been projects that try to use Monte-Carlo paired with whatever passes for neural nets today. But they tend to produce utter shite. At least as judged by the fact that despite being 25 years old, our model is still being actively developed. (And several competitors have gone from "New Hotness" to "Congressional Waste Inquiry" in that span.) Our expert system actually models the physical steps that a real crew would take, in the order that they would take them. It takes *years* to develop these models, because we actually turn the procedures manuals into executable code. One of the most valuable things we produce in our final reports are all of the ways our model makers had to fill in the gaps in the actual procedures in order to answer specific situation that cropped up in our analysis. We take a hull, and basically hit it thousand and thousands of times with different weapons in different places. And then we set the ship in a different condition, and do it all over again. And usually they also have us run the numbers with a reduced crew, and the magical automation solution dujour. Fires require a certain number of crew to fight. The fire team needs to physically navigate through the ship to the blaze. And they can only fight but so long, before they need to be relieved. And crew engaged in one task can't be doing another. We can even switch between the entire crew being an omniscient beehive, and an agent based model where individual crew have to find the damage, report it up the chain of command, and the commanders can only act on the information they have. In the end they produce the same outcome, by and large. But the agent model is fantastic at pointing out where your gaps in communication exist, and identifying the overstressed chess pieces in your command hierarchy. The omniscient model is a more all-around assessment of the the material vulnerabilities of the ship's design itself. What we usually end up doing is running the omniscient model as a baseline, and then perform the agent simulation if we get hired on to develop drill guides for the crew. The Navy used to do all of this with table-top style gaming. (And they still do.) Our system slots is only an improvement in that the computer can throw in far more detail. Plus we can see from our analysis what sorts of casualties are on that knife edge. Where if the crew functions as they are trained, the ship survives. But if they don't it is a teachable moment. (There are an awful lot of nothingburgers that are solved with a well placed fire extinguisher, or Kobiashi Marus where the only goal it to get the survivors off an exploded hulk. Neither is particularly good for training.)
I wonder who would win a 'rant off' between Drach and Dr Clarke. I used to think it would be Dr Clarke but Drach seems to have an untapped reserve of 'rant' just ready to be unleashed.
A night action where the British and Japanese have the advantage over everyone ... Except Admiral Lee. That got me laughing as I just rewatched the video you did on Admiral Lee.
As far as low-probability events ... that actually happened. I write naval survivability modeling software for a living. It comes up all the time when the navy in question (we work with several) wants to recreate a h(y|i)sterical scenario. We keep having to tell them: there is no f#$&!ng way software could have predicted that. For the George Washington fire there were several parallel issues that all contributed to the disaster. Hydraulic fluids were improperly stored in a void space, which was ignited by flicked cigarettes raining down from careless sailors who were lighting up in an unsanctioned area. For the Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58), what ultimately saved the ship was a sailor disregarding safety protocols. The Hazard class frigates had 3 gas turbines to produce power. Two were destroyed by the mine strike and/or subsequent flooding and fire. The third was actually tagged out as not-working while the ship was under way. An enterprising sailor, realizing the gravity of the situation, climbed into the tagged out generator. He manually operated it for hours, physically taking the role as a defunct control component. But without that generator there would have been no fire pumps, and no auxiliary propulsion. How would our software have modeled that improvised fix? It's literally not in the control manuals we would have used to build the expert system.
I loved how you brought up the "soft factors", (crew) when comparing ships. This is something that very rarely thought of. Mostly, as you so correctly state, folks choose a single ship vs single ship without specifying time periods or any of the other excellent points that you brought up. Wonderful episode to an excellent series. Thanks.
Yeah a ship is nothing if its crew is useless. As proved again and again in battles where smaller & weaker forces have outfought more more powerful enemies through training, experience, clever tactics and/or courage
@@dorn0531 ooh.. that reminds me of something that wasn't found until the wrecks of Sydney was photographed. Sydney's X turret is the one that disabled the engines on Kormoran. Well... people noticed that the access hatch was propped open when using a submersible to examine the wreck. Apparently, the gunners in X turret were manually targeting and not using the ship fire control... which by this point had already been blown to hell anyways.
I always found it funny to watch some people go at it with the ships 1v1 thing. It's like a re-run of childhood "my dad's tougher than your dad" sometimes 😂 The sheer number of variables at play are hilarious when it comes to a ship so nothing serious can really be taken from it.
@@danielmocsny5066 but, but, but that's different because Enterprise with it's shields and phasers and the deflector that's like the tech Swiss army knife of the future and can do anything with a simple line "I'll just reconfigure the flux capacitor to shunt auxiliary power through the manifold"... She'd totally take an imperial star destroyer any day * *sniff* *😁
Love the carousel of Big Gun ships! I served on one of the last pure gun ships built years ago, a Forest Sherman Class Destroyer and I have often speculated in my imagination on how it would have fared 1v1 against a peer.
I feel like this is a tacit rebuttal to the USS New Jersey’s channel making 45 minute videos about how it’s Phalanxes would do against a swarm of Kamikazes, or how it would fare against Hood, the Scharnhorsts, or the Nelsons. I do enjoy most of their videos and it’s probably a coincidence, but I couldn’t help but connect a lot of Drach’s points here with things I’ve seen them talk about.
There is a TH-camr that also asks about this topic a lot. Brothermonro has done several videos with Drach about fighting one BB against another in Ultimate Admirals:Dreadnought. These videos come off as a bit boring because it is usually set up as a player vs. AI, which is a bit of a struggle if the player makes tactical mistakes or the AI just bugs off. I just watched one with Scharnhorst vs Andria Doria and it was frustrating to watch as the AI would cross his T and he would always run directly at the AI, nullifying half of his ship's firepower, and then lose and claim that the other ship was superior.
@@ThornyA_D39 Back when I played Harpoon a lot, they were considered to have ammo for 5 shots per mount, IIRC. OTOH, against kamikazes rather than supersonic cruise missiles, every shot is probably going to result in a kill, and getting even 6 kamikaze attempts against a BB (as opposed to a picket DD) represents a pretty good day for the Japanese, so they might be pretty useful after all.
This really seems to boil down to how many people like to look at history vs how history is actually studied. For a lot of people it is a continuation of a fascination with one specific weapon (system) and the boyish desire to want to know which is the biggest-mostest (as a certain bearded gentleman from Carolina might say). You see it in just about any hobby and it really boils down to wanting to dive into a narrow nice to find the coolest guy/thing/fight or the most awesome guy/thing/fight from the part they particularly like. Having to put reasons why implements of war were designed in a certain way together from the perspective of naval requirements and strategy is also a lot more involved and layered, which is something that only a very limited amount of people have time and interest for.
I do enjoy the alternate history simulations you've run with other war historians and gamers. They provide a format in which these questions about various scenarios that are relevant to history can be played out with all of the factors you list controlled.
I can't believe that, after mentioning Admiral Lee, you didn't include the command factor. Swap ship or fleet commanders and MANY historical battles would have come out differently.
Battle of Lissa was probably one the battles where commander had the biggest influence. Trafalgar too. If the admirals in those battles had been less daring/talented/crazy they would not have had the same result
Even on small ships it made a difference, vetran destoyer commanders v. someone who had only been in the navy for a couple of years and found themself in charge of a ship. Then there's the motivation to be fierce. The British executed Admiral Byng for cowardice nearly 200 years before the Second World War and while that sort of punishment was no longer applied, it still motivated ship captains like the famous case of the captain of the destroyer HMS Gloworm when he rammed a much bigger German cruiser.
@@Dave_Sisson Very true. Individual commanders varied hugely. Look at Admiral Benbow. His subordinates were worthless compared to his incredible courage.
38:57 - "...Italian shells..." - My first thought on hearing that was about pasta shells with a nice Italian sauce. The ship's gunnery may have been deficient but I imagine before she goes down the galley will feature some fine cuisine. Royal Navy ships did tend to beat up on French and Italian ships during WWII in actual gunfights but who would have won in a cook-off? That's a ship-vs.-ship I'd like to see (and taste). Best of all it could be done repeatedly as most ships tended to survive their own cooking.
A soft factor often overlooked. Is your crew well fed? The USN was at pains to ensure this knowing its effect on morale. Consider an American crew that has not tasted ice cream for two weeks due to a paperwork foulup. Will they be despondent and sluggish? Or irritable and ready to kick any ass offered?
Adjacent to point 1, a hypothetical battleship that goes without AA or secondary batteries and puts the displacement savings in the usual triangle could have an on-paper advantage in a 1v1 against another battleship of comparable tech and size. But it's a worse ship in an actual war.
Though if things have gotten to the point airpower is a serious problem, should you even have a battleship at all (discounting battleships you’ve built a long time ago), since you’d probably be using it entirely in supporting roles anyways (and almost all of those roles are already covered by other warships)?
I mean, if we're going to put future weapons into play, Yamato vs Iowa, the Iowa is gonna have a hard time dealing with Yamato's Wave Motion Gun which its going to be equipped with sometime at the end of the next century
@@marhawkman303 Your comparison of the 2 Yamatos is akin to saying the Enterprise NCC1701 and NCC1701-A actually have shared components at some point when the fact is they only share the name and no actual physical components!!! 🤠👍
Love that opening. I never had a problem with excellent fixes using sun lines or lines from planets or the moon. Stars always eluded me. In twenty odd years of shooting stars, EVERY fix I plotted put me about 100 miles southwest of the Zagros Mountains, in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Now, many times, that was an accurate fix, as that was our usual deployment. But once I was off Guam, several times off California, often in the Caribbean, once in Lake Michigan, and once off Rios de Janiero.
Using Seakrieg rules , we did a Bismarck vs Warspite and Renown. Both British ships were mailed and moved to escape . When Warspite scored a non penetrating critical hit that blew up the magazine and Bismarck was gone. To explain this we came up with a member of the Bismarck’s crew opened a hatch for fresh air right as the shell passed into the ship. Randomness spoils everything
This video is what I needed to start my week. You can hear Drach's face sliding further and further into his palm when he talks about some of the hypotheticals he gets asked.
Moreover, if you did extended videos on individual matchups, how would we get away with asking you six slightly different questions about the same four naval engagements every month?
Terrific program as always, proud to be a patron. I must admit, I stopped this program and move to one of your older efforts as the topic is extremely aggravating to someone who sailed on board and actually for on board all four Iowas. People are certainly entitled to their opinion, although it seems ridiculous to state that this or that is the “most beautiful battleship ever,. “, It just seems too presumptuous. I’m afraid I’ve left many Facebook groups that allow these discussions to go on ad infinitum. Patriotism is one thing but some of our French, German, and even Russian compatriots, to go a bit too far, for anyone who knows the detailed capabilities of their favorite ships. I do hope that you will not stop your own analysis of fleet to fleet and even ship ship battles, your video on Willis Lee engaging the Japanese battle line off of lite, is the best analysis I’ve ever seen of the topic, including all the US and reports which were available to me during my 25 years of service. While I would never bet against the British navy, I worked with many of their ships in my time , I shudder to think of them facing the Nazis without US yards available , or the Japanese fleet , without the USN in harms way. I am old enough to have climbed all over the standards after the war, and, Prince Eugene, to say nothing of my many ships didn’t the career. The Newport class cruisers, the Long Beach, middle shooting CLs and CAs, etc. The technology was incredible but nothing topped BB61 class for me. Having watched Kentucky sit for years over 80% finished and then having to surrender her bow, was very difficult.
Hi Drach. Please , please, please do a myth busting video on common naval misconceptions. Partly because I'm interested in finding out how many I share, but mostly because we love it when you do your nut.
You're spot on, on all your points. I've often thought the same about them as I listen to Drydocks when you hav't to answer those ship vs ship questions. I often think they're pointless and a waste of time. Keep on with your good works👍
It’s too bad people get so butthurt about these 1v1 comparisons, I think they are fun as long as you take it all with a grain of salt. It can also be a good framing device to talk about advances in naval technology, differences between tactics or training in different navies, etc. I understand the issues that will come about on the internet having these discussions though.
You know, I reckon if it was pouring with rain and snowing heavily on a bright sunny day in the middle of the night, Bismarck might have the advantage there....
Some amazing stuff on this channel. 300+ individual ships in 5min summaries...... longer reviews of ships that featured during a certain time period.... Wednesday specials and Friday Fun DAYS.... So much to choose from and there is always something new to find. Not formatted as well as it could be (library style) but if you know what you want you can search for it.Amazed at the depth of ships featured..
A neat video and I agree that one on one fights for capital ships is fruitless, though it did happen at least three times during the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars when single French and British 74s matched up to each other. On the other hand, I'm not sure about the tech comment. Yes, the North Carolina and Washington in 1941 did NOT have an SG and only had Mk.1(FA) fire control radar (basically a Mk.3 with antennas stacked on top of each other like a Mk.4). However, they had the complete fire control system that was aboard every US fast battleship. This doesn't just come from Friedman's Naval Gunnery but from the USN's manuals on fire control and from articles on US battleship gunnery from Jurens and others. The Mk.38 fire control director fed the Mk.8 rangekeeper, one in each protected fire control compartment. The Mk.8 was linked to a Stable Vertical Mk.41 (IIRC), which was a gyroscope system that maintained an artificial horizon. All the other nation's capital ship fire control systems required a cross-level telescope on the director to maintain the visual horizon. The combination of rangekeeper and stable vertical DEMONSTRATED in numerous tests before and during the war, the ability to maintain a firing solution on an enemy ship that was maneuvering (not violently) at 20 kts while the US BB did the same. No figure eights at full speed. Ac power allowed synchros to feed data from the FCD and other sources directly into the rangekeeper, where DC powered ships had to substitute manual input to their fire control computers. It should be pointed out here that the Germans were the only other navy that adopted AC power. Even RN MAGSLIPS had to transmit data in steps. Finally, the firing solution was not fed by follow the pointer or visual signals (counters) or verbally, but through remote power control which allowed what essentially continuous aim. All of this in 1941, not post-war. Finally, the AC power system allowed the massive switchboard to link turrets and secondary mounts to main, alternate (CT and turret no.2) and secondary directors almost w/o delay, compared to a DC powered ship that could take an hour to bring all turrets and directors fore and aft, re-calibrate the transmission system and re-set the fire control computer before switching between the fore and aft main gun directors. After some e-mail exchanges with the USS North Carolina Museum, it is possible the RPC was not installed or active when launched but was certainly so before Sep 41. And by mid-1942, both ships did have RPC and SG when operating with the Home Fleet against Tirpitz as did some of the South Dakota class, who also had 10cm Mk.8 FCR when Tirpitz still had 80cm FuMo 27 (Seetakt). This was the result of BuOrd using seed money and cooperating with GE and RCA and other US electronic firms, just as they did with Edison and GE for high temp/high pressure boilers and turbines and with the locomotive industry, where the diesel-electric system was tried and proved and then moved onto the fleet subs.
This was the most bizarre comment in the video. You could practically hear Drach gritting his teeth in anger about "misinformation" while at the same time telling a lie, or at least saying something extremely misleading. I don't know about the exact provenance of his "figure 8" story, but it was certainly a fact that during WW2, US ships were able to maneuver while maintaining target lock while their opponents simply couldn't. Shame on Drach here.
I like 1vs1 camparisons no matter how realistic the idea of comparing ships who never met or had opprotunity to meet 1 on 1 in combat but definetly some great points here on not doing them really do appreciate all you do drach awesome job
I'd add mistakes as another reason why a real world battle is extremely difficult to model. So many battles were partially decided by mistakes. That isn't a dd sir that's a cruiser. oops. They don't have the range, I'm not worried about torpedoes just yet, we can sneak out without air cover, and so many more honest mistakes in identification, stratagy, technical capability and such are a huge factor. And I would say this is different than the competence of the crew skill wise. Another possible add would be intelligence gathering. Many battles were decided long before the opponents met because one side intercepted communications, planted false information, figured out the uboat tactics and such so that the classic fight would never happen as one side had already set up the odds in their favor.
Sitting here laughing about an Iowa launching Tomahawks and Harpoons vs Yamato.....then he said it!!! Roaring with laughter. God, how many times have I had "conversations" like that one!?
A cursory familiarity with a number of battles suggests to me a "soft factor" sometimes overlooked: momentum of a battle, campaign, or war. Assuming the equality of other factors, it seems logical to expect soldiers and sailors will take fewer risks, and commanders will be more reluctant to sacrifice their subordinates' lives, if victory in the battle or war appears unattainable. Some experience backs this conclusion; contrast the behaviour of the Japanese units in the battles of the Java Sea which destroyed the ABDA, with Admiral Kurita's retreat at the battle off Samar.
Albeit that in Kurita’s case, he was right that he couldn’t achieve his objective, albeit not for the reason he thought. The actual reason was that he was way too late to do anything amount the American troops and supplies, which had already been landed.
Leadership is the biggest component of the Soft Factor. When I was in the Navy, a change of command, would cause vast changes in the performance of the command. The departure of an ExO or the transfer of a Chief, would greatly influence how the average Sailor would react and do his/her job.
The Swordfish torpedo into Bismarck's rudder and props. The USS Arizona's catapult charge magazine (added after the ship was built, not especially well protected and adjacent to the forward main battery magazine) taking a direct hit from an armor piercing bomb. Combat proved that using heavy bombers against ships was vastly overrated pre-WW2, and yet...Gneisnau become a Constructive Total Loss from RAF heavy bombers at altitude - at night, no less. " On the night of 26 February, the British launched an air attack on the ship; one bomb penetrated her armored deck and exploded in the forward ammunition magazine, causing serious damage and many casualties. The repairs necessitated by the damage were so time-consuming that it was determined to rebuild the ship to replace the nine 28 cm guns with six 38 cm guns in double turrets."
28:50 at least for an Iowa class vs Yamato 1v1, the battle off Samar would be a good setting. We know that the Yamato & the USS NJ were in the area, we know the times & weather patterns when events occurred. We could then use handwaivium magic to swap the Taffies with the NJ & to remove the rest of the Japanese force so that only the Yamato is there.
Your point about rarity of similar ship v ship engagement is valid... however note the nearly universal design approach to armor and guns was an assumption of fighting a similar vessel
after paddling around the world in a warship for a few years...talking to senior and junior line O's...reading book after book...yada yada yada... naval warfare gets boiled down very simply... some days you get the bear and some days the bear gets you.
I work in applied mathematical modelling of risk assessment and management - Bayesian Belief Nets and @ Risk (the tools I use - but there are many many others) - completely different area but very similar principles and issues arise to those raised here in particular the poor appreciation of point 6. randomness/chance which makes a mockery of those who believe faithfully in linear cause and effect sequences and determinism. Three things that support Drach's scepticism about war gaming: 1. Stochastic timeseries modelling shows how often and how the 'average' cause > effect sequence of events can be very different from the individual timecourses. People should have heard of 'the Butterfly Effect'. Today perhaps a better metaphor is the coronavirus effect - plausibly a tiny mutation somewhere in Covid19's ancestors (termed a top event) led to an event tree of humoungous proportions we are still living through. 2. Bayes nets programming are especially suited to modelling complex cause > effect networks and doing what-if probablistic modelling (you can input real numerical data or 'expert opinion'). These highlight how inherently variable outcomes of 'fault trees' are. The node of most interest is termed the top event - like the Hood exploding. These trees allow the likelihood not just of a battle but other random events which might cause a sinking to be estimated for different what-if scenarios. Ideally the numbers tell you where your vulnerabilities mainly lie. The trick though is to have plausible input data and that turns out to be really really hard and this is arguably the whole point of Drach's offering here and objection to spinning naive narartives. 3. A few years ago I was at a Bayes Net conference where some defence related people described their own use of these computer systems when designing a patrol boat. The problem was this. In a complex machine that is a boat of any kind, its functioning is dependent on all sorts of interaction mechanical and communications systems and a degree of redundancy still operating when under attack. How do you identify its greatest vulnerabilities given this complexity. To understand what might happen they first created a stochastic model of the boat in 3-D, ran it and recorde what would happen if say a small shell landed in different random locations. This created a massive number of what-if scenario outputs with different impact event magnitudes impacting on different boat systems. The output from this model was then analysed using a Bayes Net which could identify where the greatest vulnerability lay. IRT the latter. a. I am not giving away any great secret here. This quantitative risk modelling is what professionals do routinely when they are trying to assess ANY complex system...e.g. dam safety, flooding and so forth and each situation. The best developed area is probably in business where big profits are there to be made from identifying marginal but robust opportunities. b. The bigger message here is that playing genuinely credible what-if games is far more complex than making up a new story about say the battle of Gettysburg and playing with toy soldiers. You can believe of course whatever you want to believe. But you really will be kidding yourself - hence Drach's partial allergy - unless you do what professional people do. c. This said I am not disparaging scenario exploration which is a great way to think about many problems. I am just saying there are good ways and bad ways and the good ways are damn hard.
About random chances during Bismarck's voyage: PoW also got some hits, that could have altered a lot if the projectiles exploded. One was a shell from Bismarck that ended up inside the torpedo defense system and it would definitely be bad for PoW to have an explosion inside the protected area, not outside. And the other was a shell from Prinz Eugen (agreed, smaller, but it wouldn't matter in that case), which ended up in the propellant charge/round manipulation chamber underneath a secondary aft turret. It exploding would have also resulted in some damage to PoW. And either one could have delayed PoW retreating, which would have allowed Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to score possibly even more hits, maybe even crucial (considering every hit could be a crucial one). And considering when PoW was leaving, the guys in Prinz Eugen were preparing the torpedo launcher, that would also open up more possibilities, if PoW was forced to stay a bit longer. Tl;dr: Yes, you absolutely can't plan in random chance, so you can't know, how it would turn out in the end
Excellent points. On the other hand, what if all Prince of Wales’ guns had worked perfectly for the entire battle? There’s no way to account for all those extra shells. Even if nothing else changed, one of them COULD have hit Bismarck’s bridge & wiped out the command crew in the first five minues. Impossible to say exactly what would have happened if that one factor had changed
@@Hendricus56 Fair enough. I was simply adding a small detail that could just as easily have happened since there were engineers onboard fixing the guns in real time. I was agreeing with your point that small, random events could change everything
@@dorn0531 Yes, it is just easier to speculate with stuff that did happen (the shells still hit PoW after all) than discussing which gun might have been fixed and how it would affect the performance from then on and something like that
Drach, I'd like to learn more about torpedoes. Given the video, I'll make my question a hypothetical. Assume all relevant navies in WWII have sufficient experience with 7-inch torpedoes, please speculate on the impact they may have had if submarines were typically equipped with a pair of 7-inch launchers. I picture this as an additional pair, but maybe you can think of a reason to replace a pair instead. This question stems from the knowledge that 21-inch torpedoes are quite expensive and there are situations where a submarine captain might want to use a torpedo, but the target just isn't worth it. The choice of 7-inch is somewhat arbitrary. I chose it because the math seems straightforward, it gives a torpedo small enough to represent a noticeable cost savings while still having a warhead large enough to do something. I could easily be wrong in my assumptions and would consider telling me what a less ignorant person would ask as an equally valid response to the question.
What target are you thinking of - fishing boats? A military vessel wants to carry the most powerful weapon it can fit for it's intended target. Hunting merchantmen was not in the original plan, but one hit from a 21-incher usually did the job. When a sub had a minor target that was not worth a torpedo she often surfaced and used the deck gun. It would have been more precise than a 7-inch torpedo (could they fit the engine and control system in there?).
A 7" torpedo would be unlikely to do more than scratch the paint of anything larger than a light cruiser. Moving from a 21" torpedo, which typically had a warhead around 700lbs to 18" dropped the warhead size by over half (excepting a couple air-launched 18" torpedoes with 400+lb warheads but comparatively short ranges). The smallest torpedo's to see active use were the American Mk 43 ASW torpedoes, which had a 54lb or 60lb warhead and 10" diameter. They were enough to damage a sub of that era via a localized overload of the pressure hull when the sub was submerged, but were fairly quickly replaced by a 12.75" Mark 44 with a larger warhead.
@@gregorywright4918 I was thinking destroyers on down. There are fairly small vessels that can cause trouble for a submarine. Think of them as secondary weapons.
I remember a 1 vs. 1! You told about it in your video of...I think the naval war of the German-French War of 1870/71. It was a German ship that met a French one in Cuba. The fight ended inconclusive as one of them retreated to Cuban waters. And I think I remember you portraying a battle between a German comerce raider and a British auxiliary crusier that you called one if not the most akward battle of naval history. - Just metioning the two exceptions that confirm the rule since both instances are pretty much an example of a case that navies try to prevent from happening.
This reminds me of the 1v1s in the Pirates of the Caribbean. * In the first movie, the Interceptor, a brig, was facing against a cursed skeleton crew whose Indiaman had oars for extra propulsion. * In the second, Black Pearl was against a cursed flyut/Vasa/submarine hybrid in calm seas. The Dutchman had its submarine ability plus a bigger broadside and tri-barrel rapid fire chaser guns. Oh wait, the Pearl is literally the fastest ship in the Caribbean and had the the wind on her side. So the Dutchman had to "cheat" via Kraken to do any real damage and sink her. * In the third it took A LITERAL goddess and a malestrom to force a fight against the Pearl and Dutchman where only broadside weight mattered and the wild card (Captain Jack Sparrow notwithstanding) was the fact that the immortality of the Dutchman's captain was at stake. Not speaking for the realism (or lack thereof otherwise) in the movies, I'm just pointing out that even there, there are hardly any preconditions that lead to a "fair fight". There's always a supernatural force or the weather in play.
From the first roughly half of this I watched I've run into similar debate for Hearts of Iron IV. Whenever someone mentions the ridiculous air warfare system that allows 2000 aircraft to be airborne over northern France in 1940 invariably someone mentions the British 1000 bomber raids. Which if you look into them there were only like three or four of them ever executed and they were barely able to put enough aircraft up to achieve those figures.
To make up the numbers for the 1000 bomber raid on Cologne in 1941, the RAF really scraped the bottom if the barrel by using aircraft from Coastal command and the Operational Training Command. And it was not only heavy bombers, they also used light bombers. Raids in 500 bomber range was much more common than the 1000, for various reasons of practicality.
@@kimleechristensen2679 Exactly, and the more aircraft you have flying in a formation/train the more of a nightmare command and control/coordination becomes.
@@catloverjerrygarcia5086 Have you read the book, "Before the Storm" it tells the story of the RAF bomber command in the early years of WW2 1939-42, and how they gradually developed the formular of bombing raids that proved so devastating in 1943-45. Insightful read but also chilling.
This used to come up on the sci.military.naval USENET board when I would post and lurk there, back a few years. One of the big ones was "German WW2 Raider vs. Convoy Escorting heavy ship." Say, Scharnhorst vs. USS Arkansas, or USS Pennsylvania, or HMS Malaya, etc.* The big problem here is, maybe the German heavy raider has some support ships, but moreover, the escorting heavy ship has Destroyers and other escorts with the convoy as well. So, instead of Panzerschiffe vs. USS Arkansas or Scharnhorst vs. USS Pennsylvania or HMS Malaya, or Tirpitz vs. same, you end up with the convoy commander turning his heavy ship to fight, while sending the other escort ships to do torpedo runs. Thus, one on one fighting between heavy ships would have been unlikely. *Notwithstanding the usual German orders to raiders telling their commanders to avoid combat with heavy naval units, which were often breached. See: Graf Spee, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, etc.
As a retired armor officer, I feel the same way about the various online games claiming to depict tank combat. They are totally wrong as tanks don't operate alone (My big problem with "Fury" is that by April 1945 no one would dispatch a platoon of tanks without an accompanying Armored Infantry Platoon in halftracks to eliminate tank killer teams like the one that killed the platoon leaders vehicle) they operate in a combined arms team with infantry, artillery, combat engineers, air defense, attack aviation, close air support, naval gunfire (if you're near the coast), etc. Each arm's strength balances another's weakness.
Most 1v1 of any type of fight seems to make the assumption that they happen in a well lit covered colosseum and that the combatants, or at least one of them, is in perfect condition making no errors in either technique or judgement. I feel that it’s to make it as close to a computer simulation as possible so it’s easier to understand or explain.
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Pinned post for Q&A :)
I'm sure this has been asked and answered before but in the photo at 19:34, what are those things near the top of the mast that look like giant speakers?
The proper way to account for random variation is a Monte Carlo simulation with a large number repetitions and a distribution of outcomes.
I suspect Drachs swipe at Mk 8 FCS capabilities was aimed at me so I will reclama. If you want to be pedantic the test was run with Massachusetts and was about finding the limits of FCS ability to maintain target lock. It is the kind of testing that militaries do in peacetime when equipment is now available. They were not developing battle tactics. The US Navy already knew what the capabilty of the Mk 8 maintain lock under normal combat maneuvers. They had real combat data such the West Virginia at Surigao Strait where West Virginia acquired a targeting solution at about 30kyds and never lost it. Update: I did a little research. The Massachusetts last radar upgrade appears to be 1944. She went right from overhaul into the reserves. The test was highly likely to be a reflection of WWII capabilties.
Sooooo Iowa vs Yamato vid when??? heh I kid
What/who was the largest British shipbuilder in terms of the Pound value awarded to them between 1936-1946?
So...while you've laid out your reasons why you won't do 1v1s in your videos, that made me wonder...which 1v1 would you most like to see purely as a spectator?
Someone: asking Drach a ship vs ship question
Drach: throwing his binoculars
All good the crew brought 12 cases of binoculars for the voyage
@@jeromebirth2693 Does he see Torpedo Boats??
@@masterskrain2630 Yes! Those fishing boats are certainly disguised torpedo boats!!!
@@jeromebirth2693 Now I want a Fishing boat VS Torpedo boat comparison, but where the crew of the latter only has Xmas decorations, nick nacks and curbside sofas as ammunition.
😆😆😆😆😆
@@masterskrain2630 The Kamchatka does!
Capital ship fleet management for beginners: They're moving in herds.... they *do* move in herds.
I herd that!
It is fascinating (to me, anyway) how the variety of "modern" (by WWII at least) weapons makes it optimal to have an array of ships covering the size range from PT/motor torpedo boats up to fleet carriers and battleships and everything in between. It's never quite as simple as "bigger always beats smaller." And the size sequence gets even smaller as we include aircraft. Just about the smallest vehicle type that a human can pilot can potentially cripple or sink a capital ship, and often you need your own small vehicles to counter the enemy's small vehicles. Thus the whole "ship vs. ship" comparison becomes, effectively, contrary to the nature of modern warfare. A similar size sequence occurred in the air war over Germany in 1943-1944. Heavy Allied bombers could be defeated by cannon- and rocket-armed German heavy fighters, which were smaller than the bombers. The heavy fighters in turn became easy meat for smaller and more maneuverable Allied escort fighters, necessitating smaller and more maneuverable German escort fighters for the German heavy fighters. (The "big bugs have little bugs upon their backs to bite 'em" poem comes to mind.) But the latter didn't really work by early 1944 as the Doolittle tactics began to tell (send the Allied escorts far ahead of the Allied bombers to intercept the German fighters during their vulnerable climb to altitude and forming-up to prepare for the bombers).
Thus the notion of two opposing battleships wandering out alone to duke it out as if in some medieval jousting match, if it could ever actually happen, would probably require simultaneous failures of commands on both sides.
Suddenly I understand why his character wanted to see Montana so much in his previous film.
7-hour Drydock video:
“You did it! You crazy sonofabitch, you did it!”
@@cdfe3388 "Um, uh, are there going to be any uh, actual battleships on your battleship tour? Hello? (fogs up camera lens)
Now I want to see an April fool's video where drach does a 1v1 ignoring all of this and just treating the exercise like he's five.
Yes. This.
“But we can see Warspite has a definitive speed advantage due to the flames painted on her hull”
USS 2nd Amendment vs Kamchatka
@@gurk_the_magnificent9008 or red stripes and crewed by Orcs 😄
Through the medium of a top trumps game? Or interpretive dance?
I’m sure this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I would personally opine that there is exactly one scenario where a 1v1 comparison makes sense: Comparing prospective designs a navy was considering building or buying. It would be rather interesting to see why navies chose what they chose and what your thoughts on their choice.
This is of course comes with the caveat that there’s still plenty of other matters like build time and location, cost, and geopolitical relations.
Even then, it should be a comparison of the various candidate designs against a defined, hypothetical enemy force, while supported by a friendly fleet, rather than a 1v1 against each other.
Even then, this exercise should allow for a weaker, cheaper battleship with a correspondingly stronger escort fleet.
The French, Italian, German, and Japanese navies weren't able to keep up with shipbuilding deep into WWII, for various reasons. The USA expanded its shipbuilding steadily and was able to build new ship designs in response to the wartime results of its pre-war ship design decisions. For example, the Montana-class battleships were canceled and the resources were redirected to other ship types, such as aircraft carriers. Thus the USN decided there was no need to build a battleship that could rival Japan's Yamato-class in a direct engagement. And both Yamato-class battleships were indeed sunk by USN aircraft, although Yamato did manage to get within gun range of some USN surface units in the battle off Samar thanks to Halsey (in)famously taking the bait of the Japanese decoy fleet.
The submarine and aircraft carrier effectively rendered surface warship gunnery duels obsolete, although they did happen with decreasing frequency to the end of 1944. It is remarkable how infrequently opposing battleships got a chance to shoot at each other in the Pacific War, given the large size of fleets at the outset and the subsequent growth of at least the Allied fleet. The fact that nobody built another battleship after WWII is telling.
@@danielmocsny5066
The USN still really should have gone further with cancelling battleships and cancelled the Iowas. Yes, I know they got used as AA escorts for carriers, but that’s a more appropriate role for CLAAs.
@@bkjeong4302 That decision would have required a crystal ball that was providing accurate field assessments from a war that hadn't even started yet. Which suddenly gives me an idea for a story line in a book I'm writing. Someone DOES have said crystal ball, but it's predictions are so insane that nobody believes them.
designs were chosen for how they'd fit into the existing line of battle, not which was "better" than the other designs in a 1v1 engagement.
E.g. a ship might have a higher rate of fire, but be so slow it couldn't keep up with the battle force so it's rejected.
Or it has much better speed but is so unstable a gun platform it can't hit anything. Again, rejected.
Those theoretical 1v1 comparisons don't cover any of that.
Some ships operated better than others for things you'd never see in those internet comparisons, things like having air conditioning to keep the crew from collapsing from hyperthermia and the optics fogging up in the tropics.
Hard factors include:
Is Warspite sailing with your convoy?
If yes, then
chances of victory go up 2000 percent
No doubt. Conversely, if you have Kamchatka sailing with your convoys, chances of victory go down 2,000%, notwithstanding all the thrown binoculars.
@@lorenrogers9269 Throw in a fishing boat or two and its 20.000% 😄😄😄
Same for New Zealand too, right? I mean she's practically invulnerable
@@DeltaV2TLI At least if the Captain decides to wear his skirt
@@DeltaV2TLI its called history plot armour 😏
Drach! According to all you've just said, there actually IS a perfect scenario for a fair 1 vs 1 comparison. We are proud to introduce: a ramming bout between two galleys with well fed crews!
not taking in account currents , sea state and wind of course ... where the crew came from and their tolerance to heat/cold and other weather conditions ... :-)
Warspite (any iteration, including the submarine) will win any ramming contest.
@@SennaAugustus Ah, but... what about Glowworm?
"Your question is pointless, stop asking." Drach
Roflmao I love it. I'm so glad I found this channel.
Yet if anyone else says anything similar, everyone freaks out and calls that person an ass. The idol worship in this comments is mindblowing.
Take heart Drach. Nobody on their deathbed ever wished that they had spent more time arguing with strangers on the internet so don't waste your time on haters. No matter how satisfying it might be to prove them wrong it still would not change their minds
This is a very echo chamber narrow minds approach to anything, arguing with ‘haters’ ie debating is a very important thing in…anything
To say ‘ah ignore the haters who cares if you argue with strangers’ misses the butterfly effect on it and others, just imagine if no one bothered to call out David Irving on his shit, yeah
You've both got points. There comes a point where discourse is pointless, however to not even give it a go.... let's those who are extremely vocal and willing to impose their thoughts, speech and beliefs on everyone else.
It's a fine line and I think his on to a thing or two by arguing articulately to state his point. Also while pointing out why others are 're--tarded' - yes the r word is important and the war on speech itself is abhorrent to public discourse.
Good ideas, should always be able to overpower bad ones. History has taught, time and time again that the stifling of discourse allows for the abuse of others.
I didn't articulate that very well, but I'm not that smart either. There's a good middle ground you two have hit on and I don't think humans have ever found it.
It always seems to go back and forwards. Hopefully we'll get there!
I'm afraid I will have to disagree with you. To the Hard Core Internet Troll nothing is more important than "winning" an empty argument over some trivial matter on the internet. Their only deathbed regret will be that they didn't fight hard enough to convince everyone of their obviously superior mental facilities and "logical" conclusions.
Don't play chess with pigeons.
1. They knock over the pieces.
2. They shit on the board.
3. Then they strut around as if they had actually won.
@@looinrimstigi uhvhc 6 u v
I feel like Drachinifel snapped from so many people asking 1v1. Then he created this nearly hour long video explaining why he doesn't do 1v1. LoL
I gave up listening halfway thru since this video clearly wasn't meant for me.
@@Squirl513 I do feel like this had a Target audience. lol
Yes, Drach certainly had a bit of a "triggered" tone in his voice for this video 😳 you could almost sense the inner Drach screaming to everyone "these types of questions are dumb so STOP asking me as I will no longer answer them!" Lol
How about a 1v100,000 comparison: Drach vs. the uninformed Internet troll legion. A battle of the elephant vs. the army ants.
Enjoyable.
Drach, I just took a sip of Coke when you said, "...until the cows come home and well after they've been turned into burgers...".
I prefer drinking Coke to shoving it up my sinuses.
Hey Drac, if the _Vasa_ hadn't sank within half an hour of being launched and instead had been outfitted with antigravity engines and a fusion-powered plasma cannon, could it have sunk the _Bismarck?_ (Of course not, cuz the _Bismarck_ was the BEST SHIP EVAR.)
Yes, but was it Vasa or Wasa? Or maybe it should have been Eriksson, as Gustav Eriksson was his real name? The Vasa was one of the biggest military failures of all time anyhow. 😱 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_(ship)
A few centuries later, an other Swedish Eriksson, John Ericsson, made a significantly larger impact of naval warfare with the construction of the USS Monitor in 1862. He also decided, that the translation between inches and centimeters was exactly 2,54 cm! 😁
Hey! The Yamato blew up entire space fleets after she had sunk. The Vasa could do that too with the right refit!
Spaceship Yamato has a leg up on anybody in that comparison.
@@bjornnordstrom It was not Vasa or Wasa.
It was Fasa.
An important soft factor to be considered for HMS New Zealand is whether or not the captain is wearing his grass skirt and tiki.
Exactly...
Haha I've heard that story somehwere, can someone tell what's going on?
It's referencing New Zealand's luck during the Battle of Jutland. It was incredibly lucky
Of course he was wearing it. You don't expect him to go into battle naked, do you?
"But in terms of soft factors, you know, Warspite appears to be a case of actual living plot armor."
I just lost it. "Hey, Fritz! Nice try!"
Hey Drach, would you consider doing more videos on ships of the line? I'd love to see an extended one on the L'Ocean class of french line ships. Your video on the american ships of the line was probably one of the most informative I've seen, not only on the specific ships, but on the design, construction and operation of ships of the line in general. Maybe a series of videos on the evolution of ships during the age of sail, from the late medieval ships like the cog to the caravels, carracks and galleons, finally ending in the indiamen, pinnaces, brigantines, fluyts/flyboats, frigates and line ships that dominated the late age of sail till the XIX century.
That would be worth it for the visuals alone. Age of sail warships are so beautiful.
Hear, hear!
So, what would happen if: Nelson's flagship Victory (if it was made of iron and had engines) fought Dreadnought (if it was made of wood and used sails)?
@@chamberlane2899 That was incredible
HMS Dreadnought was a 98 gun second rate ship of the line at Trafalgar, she would already lose to HMS Victory without Victory needing modifications because she was a First Rate with 104 guns.
@@Edax_Royeaux Depends on who's commanding her. Put Nelson in command of even the 1654 HMS Dreadnaught (52 guns) and she'd take on the both the 1801 HMS Dreadnaught (98 guns) and HMS Victory (104 guns) - at the same time - and win. Or haven't you heard of 'Nelson's Patent Bridge for Boarding First Rates'?
Damned soft factors! :P
I think a lot of people forget that battles in war are more like street fights than they are a sanctioned boxing match.
Yeah, were there is one guy with a single shot pistol on one side and 12 guys with bats on the other side. 😏
Been waiting for this. Personally, I would much rather learn about naval history than some time and space defying what if scenarios. 👍
I agree. I enjoy what ifs but I prefer to learn actual history. Nice distraction now and then but not too often
Another fun detail of Bismarck vs Iowa, other than Bismarck having been sunk 2 years before Iowa was commissioned, was that the USA and Germany were not at war with each other when Bismarck sank.
Substitute Tirpitz for Bismarck.
Yes, Tirpitz, although by the time an Iowa-class BB could have tangled with Tirpitz, Allied dominance of the air was so complete that Tirpitz could only have sortied on a Yamato-style suicide run. When Yamato herself actually tried to make a run at the USN's battle line the USN air arm wouldn't let her get close. The RAF didn't even give the Tirpitz a chance by hitting her at anchor with all those Tallboys in sort of the poster child for an unfair fight. WWII did provide a number of lessons in aircraft humbling the mighty battleship. The ship type seen as the decider before the war proved best suited for shore bombardment (on the winning side) or bomb absorption (on the losing side).
@@danielmocsny5066 Then substitute Washington for Iowa.
@@danielmocsny5066 Yamato wasn’t making a run at the US battle line in Ten-Go. It was making a run to Okinawa to beach itself and provide fire support. The US formed a battle line out of the old Standard battleships, but Adm. Kincaid decided to let Adm. Mitscher get first crack at it with aircraft. The old US battleships would have definitely sunk Yamato, but there was no need to risk letting Yamato take one of them (and 1,500 American sailors) down with her.
As for Iowa, she was sent to operate with the British Home Fleet in August 1943. The Germans still had a pretty strong aircraft presence, even in Norway, and aircraft were still of little use at night or in bad weather.
Well, if the USA didn't keep turning up late for World Wars ...... 🤣
The last 10 minutes is basically, Drach pointing out that Million to one shots seem to happen 9 times out of 10
Indeed, but do they go left or right, up or down, back or forwards, before or after?
If...
The highly improbable is what draws the most attention - particularly of armchair historians of the future...
I think a great example is HMS Shannon who actually had a 1v1 fight in 1812, her armament and the performance of her sister ship HMS Guerriere, would show she should lose to Chesapeake, but not just did she win, she won so decisively, you'd need 4 chessapeake's too have the same number of cannon balls hitting Shannon as hit Chessapeake. This doesn't even go into the tactics and the way the Shannon had a cannon at the bow specifically placed their to act like a giant sniper rifle taking out the cheesapeakes helmsmen and wheel, this wasn't a particularly normal tactic, but won them the battle.
Another example is HMS Speedy Vs El Gamo 14 guns vs 32 guns of bigger calibre, yet Speedy won.
The idea of doing a 1v1 based on specs does not show training or how ships are set up differently, the accuracy or preferred tactics, it doesn't examine the captains. Or as you said when, where and why they are fighting which create 100s of different results.
And we stall have bits of one and a sister to the other still available to see.
@@andrewfanner2245 yes Unicorn in Dundee and Trincomalee in Hartlepool, which can also be used in this as both of them were made 18 and 11 years after HMS Shannon making their firepower relatively weaker for the time period.
A prime example of why picking a fight with the Royal Navy in the 19th century was a dumb fucking idea.
I'm sorry, but you could hardly find a more even fight between ships alone in the War of 1812 as Shannon and Chesapeke. Chesapeke was 4" longer on the gun deck, measured more tonnage because on depth in hold, but both were 18pdr frigates with the same 28 guns on the gun deck and a similar number of 32pdr carronades aboard both ships. There was little to chose as far as performance under sail or gun power. Too say the Chesapeake should have won on ship's data is a gross exaggeration. In the end it was ship's crew quality that counted, Chesapeake's crew being new to the ship and Shannon's in the ship for years under a n excellent captain in Brooke.
@@Jaxck77 Tell that to the HMS Guerriere, Macedonian, Java, Levant, Cyane, Boxer, Penguin, etc. One of the largest collection of Royal Navy battle flags in the world is in the museum at the US Naval Academy.
Drach, we both know that if admiral Lee is in command of your BB, no 1v1 can be a fair fight.
Also if your ship mascot is unsinkable Sam your ship is doomed.
What if both?
Essentially an hour of Drachinifel ranting, I love it 🙂
Yes it's almost on par with a certain Gray cartoon squirrel that you can also find on TH-cam!!! 🤠👍
I appreciate that this channel doesn't deal with 1v1 ship comparisons. The nuance is what keeps it interesting.
This is the most Rozhestvensky I've heard Drach in a long time. Also, this is the "Dicta Drachinifel" for those diving into naval history.
Sterling content, mate. Well done.
Please don’t give up on the “what ifs” scenarios. You briefly touched on one of my great curiosities, what if Tirpitz had actually sortied during Operation Rosselsprung. Tirpitz, Hipper, Lutzow, Scheer, and escorts opposed by Duke of York and Washington, plus escorting cruisers and destroyers. Would Victorious have been in the battle line? How would have the cruisers like Wichita and Tuscaloosa as well as the British cruisers have done?
Then you get Drach's 'soft' factors. The RN had 3 centuries of 'do or die' behind them, plus the knowledge that landing even a few hits would count if it slowed the enemy or left them vulnerable to aircraft or the rest of the navy (Graf Spee, Bismarck). German admirals were always conscious that they were all spearhead, no shaft. They tried to live to fight another day - they were not in for long slug-fests.
You can add USS Ranger - for all her faults, she carried 2 squadrons each of Wildcats and SBD's (40 of each) and the USS South Dakota, which was declared operational in mid July 1942, just in time for Rosselsprung.
Reason 7. It's essentially irrelevant. As you've said, ships are rarely alone but a lot of ships, whilst ostensibly the same type, aren't actually that comparable. British battleships of WW1 and the inter-war period were not built for single-ship combat but were built to patrol and control an empire and in most circumstances if they did get into a skirmish, would not be fighting ships of an equivalent class.
It's a bit like the idea of tank vs. tank combat. People get very hung up on the idea of an M4 Sherman facing down a Tiger but it was incredibly rare and the vast majority of the time, the tanks are being used as armoured field artillery and infantry support. In those circumstances any tank is better than no tank - so M4 Shermans weren't really built and optimised for tank vs. tank combat and even when the Tiger was in service (however small the numbers) it didn't play into the heads of tank designers that this would even be a particularly important consideration.
Battle of Cape Matapan ...
The best comparison for the M4 IMO is the Panzer IV Sturmgeschutz.
The US response to a Pz 6 would likely be a coordinated air infantry and artillery attack, that would likely just leave it in a gunfight with a knife, and reroute the Shermans and TDs around it.
@@phinhager6509 - Yes, by the time American forces were in France they generally enjoyed a 10:1 advantage in artillery shells over their German opponents. The best use for M4s when Tigers were about was probably as forward artillery observers. The key to reaching old age as an M4 driver was probably never to range farther than your Long Toms behind you could reach. For longer trips try to do them when the weather is fine for friendly aircraft to fly.
However, the Americans did respond to the shock of encountering the odd Tiger tank by building their own Pershing tanks to level the field somewhat. Even though the Pershing wasn't at all necessary to defeat Germany (it barely got into combat near the end when the outcome was well beyond doubt), still it's bad for morale to send your boys into combat knowing they might find themselves in a situation outclassed on a one-for-one basis.
The same situation applied to aircraft. When the first German jets appeared, there was no question but that the Allied forces had to have their own jets on the next procurement cycle, even though the German jets were too late and too few to change the outcome.
The late-war German technological advantages (in those areas where the Germans had advantages) are easy to overblow in retrospect because it's hard to remember just how short WWII actually was. The American Army wasn't even fighting on the ground in France and Germany for a whole year. Some Internet debates last longer than that. Had the war gone on longer and had the M4 Shermans encountered more Tigers then of course the Americans would have fielded heavier tanks. But when the Allies have commanding advantages in artillery and air power there's little need for tanks that can win in 1v1 duels. Although I'm sure the Sherman crews might have wished for some thicker metal in front of them.
@@danielmocsny5066 funny part of the Sherman was it had the same effective frontal armor as the tiger. the 88 was just a damn monster but the Sherman with the 76 was equal in all things but optics.
Consider the Tiger fear and the actual historical evidence: Shermans and Tigers I fought against each other 3 times, in the entire Western Front campaign
An issue I feel causes problems is misapplied scientific thinking. I think the assumption is that if you get ships in a 1 vs 1 you will eliminate all random variables and somehow work out their true, factual superiority/inferiority. The idea is more like a lab experiment seeking to eliminate all outside factors with the dependent and independent variables being singularly focus on.
That can't happen. Warships are not variables within something (unless the focus would be upon the strategic aspect of a war and their place in it), they are systems more like living beings. You take them out of their natural habitat and you won't get their true behaviour, you'll get their behavior reacting to artificial conditons.
I've heard many species of spider don't actually eat their mates after reproducing, that behavior is only observed in lab conditions because the females are stressed by the different conditons and do it similar to how mothers animals will kill and eat their babies as well. I don't know how accurate that is, but as an applicable example here it will do.
Oh, and for a warship: you cannot seriously have covered the French hotel battleships and still not have done Hoche yet!? Really? Get on it!
It is true sexual cannibalism in spiders and mantids is more common in captivity than in the wild, but this is more because the male has nowhere to escape to and less because the female is stressed.
Speaking for myself, I come here to see and hear your presentation because I am generally interested in military history, and you know far more about naval development and history than I do. I am not interested in what commenters who have limited contact with reality have to say, and think you shouldn't bother yourself with them, i.e. don't feed the trolls.
I would also add in that even if you were to insist on an unrealistic "NPC generic crew", how do you define what a "generic" crew of a ship is? Even if you were to assume both ships are crewed by completely identical human-like robots, do you account for various navies having different levels of experience, historical performance, or as we've seen in things like the videos about damage control, outright different doctrines for different scenarios? Or do you ignore that and again drift even farther into not being historical for the sake of quantifiable elements? And either way, that still leaves the question of what this 'generic' crew even means in the first place.
Edit: and after writing this, it also occurred to me that there's the "bloodlusted" question; are we assuming to resolve the "1v1" that both ships will, unrealistically, fight until the complete obliteration of their own vessel with no thought of retreat? Abandoning ship? Surrendering? Or do we factor in at what point a ship's captain might decide to try to exit the battle in one form or another (or even that the crew might mutiny), and what impact that would have on the fight? And if so, how do you calculate when that would occur? Does a ship successfully escaping count as a lesser loss than being sunk or captured? Or is it still all the same even though I have a hunch most navies would consider still having their sailors and property intact much, much better than to not.
Edit 2: to clarify on the above, I do not mean to imply that there haven't been cases of crews fighting to the final, bloody end against impossible odds, but those were usually a result of circumstances, some larger goal, or an outright inability to escape rather than a case of an entire ship's crew waking up one morning and randomly deciding in unison 'Today is a good day die in a pointlessly fair battle!'
I think the point of these comparisons would be, we have better - armour and or guns - so we will win. If we have worse we have to work harder, think tactically and get better kit. Which means if You are better - You can't be complacent. There could be a torpedo in the water!
One way to handle variables such as crew proficiency is to build a computer model and run a Monte Carlo simulation. You might assume that the variables are normally distributed (for example, most crews are average, with increasingly fewer crews at skill levels farther from the mean in either direction), and run thousands of simulations with combinations of the variables drawn at random from their distributions. The final result is, of course, a win/loss probability rather than a single decision. This reflects the real-world observation that sometimes inferior forces defeat superior forces - but just as in sports where upsets are frequent, they are not frequent enough to change the odds.
Since humans usually do not think in terms of probability unless specifically trained to do so, we can expect the same conceptual error with ship duels as in sporting matchups, for which many people insist on picking winners. This is usually an exercise in self-deception, since only win probabilities can be predicted, and it is extremely rare for a win probability to be 100% or 0% (certain win or loss).
As to the relative value of sunk vs. damaged, that depends on more variables. For example during WWII the German navy increasingly lacked repair yards that the Allies couldn't bomb from aircraft. Thus a German ship laid up in port became increasingly less likely to ever leave port as the Allies got better at repeatedly undoing the repair work with additional bombs. In contrast, Britain and the USA enjoyed repair yards generally or entirely out of enemy reach, respectively. Thus damage to an American ship had to be quite severe, or coming late in the war, to keep it out of the fight. (No American Essex-class carriers were sunk outright, but some were damaged severely toward the end thanks to those unarmored flight decks and did not return to combat before the war ended. However, late in the war the need for aircraft carriers was gradually decreasing as American forces captured islands closer to Japan that could host air bases. Once you hold an island air base you no longer need fleet carriers to cover the area of ocean out to the combat radius of aircraft based on the island.) The USN also built a series of island repair bases right across the Pacific, so depending on the level of damage to a ship, its travel time to a repair base could be minimized. Only the most damaged ships (that could still float) had to go all the way back to the mainland USA. To sum up, damage to an American ship was probably less bad than the same damage to a German ship, given the German ship's lower probability of recovering to fight again. The mighty Tirpitz for example ended up as little more than a magnet for RAF Tallboys.
In terms of crew casualties, that's perhaps less an issue of whether the ship sinks, but rather of how much damage the ship takes and how quickly. And also to how many friendly ships draw alongside to help with damage control and are themselves wrecked when a damaged ship explodes. A ship that sinks slowly might lose fewer crew than a ship that takes a lot of damage quickly but does not sink.
@@danielmocsny5066 Monte-Carlo works well for damage prediction. It's absolute sh!+ for modeling human behavior. At least human behavior for groups of hundreds of people, as opposed to millions of people.
I happen to be the developer on an expert system used by several navies to model crew response to shipboard casualties. There have been projects that try to use Monte-Carlo paired with whatever passes for neural nets today. But they tend to produce utter shite. At least as judged by the fact that despite being 25 years old, our model is still being actively developed. (And several competitors have gone from "New Hotness" to "Congressional Waste Inquiry" in that span.)
Our expert system actually models the physical steps that a real crew would take, in the order that they would take them. It takes *years* to develop these models, because we actually turn the procedures manuals into executable code. One of the most valuable things we produce in our final reports are all of the ways our model makers had to fill in the gaps in the actual procedures in order to answer specific situation that cropped up in our analysis.
We take a hull, and basically hit it thousand and thousands of times with different weapons in different places. And then we set the ship in a different condition, and do it all over again. And usually they also have us run the numbers with a reduced crew, and the magical automation solution dujour.
Fires require a certain number of crew to fight. The fire team needs to physically navigate through the ship to the blaze. And they can only fight but so long, before they need to be relieved. And crew engaged in one task can't be doing another.
We can even switch between the entire crew being an omniscient beehive, and an agent based model where individual crew have to find the damage, report it up the chain of command, and the commanders can only act on the information they have.
In the end they produce the same outcome, by and large. But the agent model is fantastic at pointing out where your gaps in communication exist, and identifying the overstressed chess pieces in your command hierarchy. The omniscient model is a more all-around assessment of the the material vulnerabilities of the ship's design itself.
What we usually end up doing is running the omniscient model as a baseline, and then perform the agent simulation if we get hired on to develop drill guides for the crew. The Navy used to do all of this with table-top style gaming. (And they still do.) Our system slots is only an improvement in that the computer can throw in far more detail.
Plus we can see from our analysis what sorts of casualties are on that knife edge. Where if the crew functions as they are trained, the ship survives. But if they don't it is a teachable moment. (There are an awful lot of nothingburgers that are solved with a well placed fire extinguisher, or Kobiashi Marus where the only goal it to get the survivors off an exploded hulk. Neither is particularly good for training.)
@@danielmocsny5066 But aboard the USS Lake Woebegon, the entire crew is above average
That was by a good margin the best squarespace ad I've seen.
I wonder who would win a 'rant off' between Drach and Dr Clarke. I used to think it would be Dr Clarke but Drach seems to have an untapped reserve of 'rant' just ready to be unleashed.
See HMS Indefatigable...the rant-kraken that is Drach is ready!
We all have our breaking points.
@hourlardnsaver Beatty wouldn't stand a chance; put Seymour in there with him to even things out a bit.
@@billbolton That wouldn't help at all...maybe giving Beatty some Sturdee support?
In awe of the photos, a good topic, fun Fridays are really....enjoyable
A night action where the British and Japanese have the advantage over everyone ... Except Admiral Lee. That got me laughing as I just rewatched the video you did on Admiral Lee.
As far as low-probability events ... that actually happened. I write naval survivability modeling software for a living. It comes up all the time when the navy in question (we work with several) wants to recreate a h(y|i)sterical scenario. We keep having to tell them: there is no f#$&!ng way software could have predicted that.
For the George Washington fire there were several parallel issues that all contributed to the disaster. Hydraulic fluids were improperly stored in a void space, which was ignited by flicked cigarettes raining down from careless sailors who were lighting up in an unsanctioned area.
For the Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58), what ultimately saved the ship was a sailor disregarding safety protocols. The Hazard class frigates had 3 gas turbines to produce power. Two were destroyed by the mine strike and/or subsequent flooding and fire. The third was actually tagged out as not-working while the ship was under way. An enterprising sailor, realizing the gravity of the situation, climbed into the tagged out generator. He manually operated it for hours, physically taking the role as a defunct control component. But without that generator there would have been no fire pumps, and no auxiliary propulsion.
How would our software have modeled that improvised fix? It's literally not in the control manuals we would have used to build the expert system.
Interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Dang, how many medals did that guy get? Seriously, that's the sort of heroism that deserves to be remembered.
I loved how you brought up the "soft factors", (crew) when comparing ships. This is something that very rarely thought of. Mostly, as you so correctly state, folks choose a single ship vs single ship without specifying time periods or any of the other excellent points that you brought up. Wonderful episode to an excellent series. Thanks.
Yeah a ship is nothing if its crew is useless. As proved again and again in battles where smaller & weaker forces have outfought more more powerful enemies through training, experience, clever tactics and/or courage
@@dorn0531 ooh.. that reminds me of something that wasn't found until the wrecks of Sydney was photographed. Sydney's X turret is the one that disabled the engines on Kormoran. Well... people noticed that the access hatch was propped open when using a submersible to examine the wreck. Apparently, the gunners in X turret were manually targeting and not using the ship fire control... which by this point had already been blown to hell anyways.
@@marhawkman303 Manual aim while under fire like that is pretty impressive
Love a Drach rant. Especially the voice going up an octave at certain moments, 😁
A great & comprehensive "why I don't..." video. Chapeau!
I always found it funny to watch some people go at it with the ships 1v1 thing. It's like a re-run of childhood "my dad's tougher than your dad" sometimes 😂 The sheer number of variables at play are hilarious when it comes to a ship so nothing serious can really be taken from it.
Even sillier are the entirely fictional starship arguments. In which some people become actually emotionally invested.
@@danielmocsny5066 but, but, but that's different because Enterprise with it's shields and phasers and the deflector that's like the tech Swiss army knife of the future and can do anything with a simple line "I'll just reconfigure the flux capacitor to shunt auxiliary power through the manifold"... She'd totally take an imperial star destroyer any day * *sniff* *😁
Love the carousel of Big Gun ships! I served on one of the last pure gun ships built years ago, a Forest Sherman Class Destroyer and I have often speculated in my imagination on how it would have fared 1v1 against a peer.
I feel like this is a tacit rebuttal to the USS New Jersey’s channel making 45 minute videos about how it’s Phalanxes would do against a swarm of Kamikazes, or how it would fare against Hood, the Scharnhorsts, or the Nelsons. I do enjoy most of their videos and it’s probably a coincidence, but I couldn’t help but connect a lot of Drach’s points here with things I’ve seen them talk about.
There is a TH-camr that also asks about this topic a lot. Brothermonro has done several videos with Drach about fighting one BB against another in Ultimate Admirals:Dreadnought. These videos come off as a bit boring because it is usually set up as a player vs. AI, which is a bit of a struggle if the player makes tactical mistakes or the AI just bugs off. I just watched one with
Scharnhorst vs Andria Doria and it was frustrating to watch as the AI would cross his T and he would always run directly at the AI, nullifying half of his ship's firepower, and then lose and claim that the other ship was superior.
Yes!
While I like the New Jersey channel, sometimes it just gets a bit silly! Like the U.S.S. Constitution against a modern Battleship!
The phalanx doesn’t have that much ammo, i dont think it would be useful
@@ThornyA_D39 Back when I played Harpoon a lot, they were considered to have ammo for 5 shots per mount, IIRC. OTOH, against kamikazes rather than supersonic cruise missiles, every shot is probably going to result in a kill, and getting even 6 kamikaze attempts against a BB (as opposed to a picket DD) represents a pretty good day for the Japanese, so they might be pretty useful after all.
@@stevebulger3432 i mean it’s useful for 5 planes but then its dead weight. A carrier can hold up to 100 planes
I love how the things done in the square space ad are also just the things you did on that page. (yes watch the ad again)
This really seems to boil down to how many people like to look at history vs how history is actually studied. For a lot of people it is a continuation of a fascination with one specific weapon (system) and the boyish desire to want to know which is the biggest-mostest (as a certain bearded gentleman from Carolina might say). You see it in just about any hobby and it really boils down to wanting to dive into a narrow nice to find the coolest guy/thing/fight or the most awesome guy/thing/fight from the part they particularly like. Having to put reasons why implements of war were designed in a certain way together from the perspective of naval requirements and strategy is also a lot more involved and layered, which is something that only a very limited amount of people have time and interest for.
I do enjoy the alternate history simulations you've run with other war historians and gamers. They provide a format in which these questions about various scenarios that are relevant to history can be played out with all of the factors you list controlled.
I can't believe that, after mentioning Admiral Lee, you didn't include the command factor. Swap ship or fleet commanders and MANY historical battles would have come out differently.
Battle of Lissa was probably one the battles where commander had the biggest influence. Trafalgar too. If the admirals in those battles had been less daring/talented/crazy they would not have had the same result
Even on small ships it made a difference, vetran destoyer commanders v. someone who had only been in the navy for a couple of years and found themself in charge of a ship. Then there's the motivation to be fierce. The British executed Admiral Byng for cowardice nearly 200 years before the Second World War and while that sort of punishment was no longer applied, it still motivated ship captains like the famous case of the captain of the destroyer HMS Gloworm when he rammed a much bigger German cruiser.
@@Dave_Sisson Very true. Individual commanders varied hugely. Look at Admiral Benbow. His subordinates were worthless compared to his incredible courage.
Drach, you are awesome! Do not let them get you down!!!
38:57 - "...Italian shells..." - My first thought on hearing that was about pasta shells with a nice Italian sauce. The ship's gunnery may have been deficient but I imagine before she goes down the galley will feature some fine cuisine. Royal Navy ships did tend to beat up on French and Italian ships during WWII in actual gunfights but who would have won in a cook-off? That's a ship-vs.-ship I'd like to see (and taste). Best of all it could be done repeatedly as most ships tended to survive their own cooking.
A soft factor often overlooked. Is your crew well fed? The USN was at pains to ensure this knowing its effect on morale. Consider an American crew that has not tasted ice cream for two weeks due to a paperwork foulup. Will they be despondent and sluggish? Or irritable and ready to kick any ass offered?
Adjacent to point 1, a hypothetical battleship that goes without AA or secondary batteries and puts the displacement savings in the usual triangle could have an on-paper advantage in a 1v1 against another battleship of comparable tech and size. But it's a worse ship in an actual war.
Though if things have gotten to the point airpower is a serious problem, should you even have a battleship at all (discounting battleships you’ve built a long time ago), since you’d probably be using it entirely in supporting roles anyways (and almost all of those roles are already covered by other warships)?
Drach always keep in mind that no matter how much of a genius you might be, no matter how advanced your adhesives might be, you just can't fix stupid.
Never teach pigs to sing.
It annoys the pig.
And wastes your time.
You can't fix stupid, but duck tape will muffle the noise it makes!
This has indeed been a fun Friday
I mean, if we're going to put future weapons into play, Yamato vs Iowa, the Iowa is gonna have a hard time dealing with Yamato's Wave Motion Gun which its going to be equipped with sometime at the end of the next century
I dunno about that one... when you've replaced over 90% of the ship... is it REALLY the same ship anymore?
@@marhawkman303 Your comparison of the 2 Yamatos is akin to saying the Enterprise NCC1701 and NCC1701-A actually have shared components at some point when the fact is they only share the name and no actual physical components!!! 🤠👍
@@worldtraveler930 didn't the anime imply the Yamato at least had the metal frame left?
@@marhawkman303 The version that I watched bragged that it's Only bit of antiquity to have survived was the bronze name plaque alone.
@@worldtraveler930 ah,, yes, well then, yeah... not really the same ship then.
Love that opening. I never had a problem with excellent fixes using sun lines or lines from planets or the moon. Stars always eluded me. In twenty odd years of shooting stars, EVERY fix I plotted put me about 100 miles southwest of the Zagros Mountains, in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Now, many times, that was an accurate fix, as that was our usual deployment. But once I was off Guam, several times off California, often in the Caribbean, once in Lake Michigan, and once off Rios de Janiero.
Ranty Drach is entertaining Drach. Most I've laughed at one of your videos since the 2nd Pacific Squadron. Absolute gold 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Using Seakrieg rules , we did a Bismarck vs Warspite and Renown. Both British ships were mailed and moved to escape . When Warspite scored a non penetrating critical hit that blew up the magazine and Bismarck was gone. To explain this we came up with a member of the Bismarck’s crew opened a hatch for fresh air right as the shell passed into the ship. Randomness spoils everything
similar to arguments on tanks whose was better,tanks were most effective with troop support,battle outcomes depending on weather light fog,
This video is what I needed to start my week. You can hear Drach's face sliding further and further into his palm when he talks about some of the hypotheticals he gets asked.
Moreover, if you did extended videos on individual matchups, how would we get away with asking you six slightly different questions about the same four naval engagements every month?
Terrific program as always, proud to be a patron. I must admit, I stopped this program and move to one of your older efforts as the topic is extremely aggravating to someone who sailed on board and actually for on board all four Iowas.
People are certainly entitled to their opinion, although it seems ridiculous to state that this or that is the “most beautiful battleship ever,. “, It just seems too presumptuous.
I’m afraid I’ve left many Facebook groups that allow these discussions to go on ad infinitum. Patriotism is one thing but some of our French, German, and even Russian compatriots, to go a bit too far, for anyone who knows the detailed capabilities of their favorite ships.
I do hope that you will not stop your own analysis of fleet to fleet and even ship ship battles, your video on Willis Lee engaging the Japanese battle line off of lite, is the best analysis I’ve ever seen of the topic, including all the US and reports which were available to me during my 25 years of service.
While I would never bet against the British navy, I worked with many of their ships in my time , I shudder to think of them facing the Nazis without US yards available , or the Japanese fleet , without the USN in harms way.
I am old enough to have climbed all over the standards after the war, and, Prince Eugene, to say nothing of my many ships didn’t the career. The Newport class cruisers, the Long Beach, middle shooting CLs and CAs, etc. The technology was incredible but nothing topped BB61 class for me. Having watched Kentucky sit for years over 80% finished and then having to surrender her bow, was very difficult.
Radar seems to have a significant influence on sea power during WW2.
I would like to see a discussion of all the variations...
I second that motion!!! 🤠👍
Definitely
Really Drach, tell us what you really think about the subject. Please, don't hold back!
“Assuming both ships are perfect spheres of uniform density, who would win in a fight between HMS Captain and EAS Agamemnon (before its 2261 refit)?”
Hi Drach. Please , please, please do a myth busting video on common naval misconceptions. Partly because I'm interested in finding out how many I share, but mostly because we love it when you do your nut.
"No navy wants a fair fight." I laughed at that. In my navy days we said if you're not cheating you're not trying hard enough.
I once heard that the ideal tank vs tank duel was a shot from the rear on the last tank in the column with everybody looking the other way.
Or perhaps better:
"Let's you and him fight"
@@colbeausabre8842
Late-war Germans actually preferred to shoot the leading tank to stop the column.
You're spot on, on all your points. I've often thought the same about them as I listen to Drydocks when you hav't to answer those ship vs ship questions. I often think they're pointless and a waste of time. Keep on with your good works👍
It’s too bad people get so butthurt about these 1v1 comparisons, I think they are fun as long as you take it all with a grain of salt. It can also be a good framing device to talk about advances in naval technology, differences between tactics or training in different navies, etc. I understand the issues that will come about on the internet having these discussions though.
“Night fighting techniques (…) will have a leg up over anyone who is not Admiral Lee”. Love it!!
"Fun Fridays... Something to do with ships, honest!"
Drach always generates laughs
You used to do them, and I was wondering why that stopped a few years ago. Thanks for the explanation.
Hey Drach, love the channel,
How would the Millennium Falcon do against the Bismarck?
🙂
I think Binkov Battlegrounds did a Millennium Falcon vs F16’s a few years back.
You know, I reckon if it was pouring with rain and snowing heavily on a bright sunny day in the middle of the night, Bismarck might have the advantage there....
It depends ... can the Bismarck do the Kessel run in less than eight parsecs?
Entirely dependent on which one breaks down first.
Han's Falcon or Rey"s Falcon ?
Some amazing stuff on this channel. 300+ individual ships in 5min summaries...... longer reviews of ships that featured during a certain time period.... Wednesday specials and Friday Fun DAYS.... So much to choose from and there is always something new to find. Not formatted as well as it could be (library style) but if you know what you want you can search for it.Amazed at the depth of ships featured..
A neat video and I agree that one on one fights for capital ships is fruitless, though it did happen at least three times during the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars when single French and British 74s matched up to each other. On the other hand, I'm not sure about the tech comment. Yes, the North Carolina and Washington in 1941 did NOT have an SG and only had Mk.1(FA) fire control radar (basically a Mk.3 with antennas stacked on top of each other like a Mk.4). However, they had the complete fire control system that was aboard every US fast battleship. This doesn't just come from Friedman's Naval Gunnery but from the USN's manuals on fire control and from articles on US battleship gunnery from Jurens and others. The Mk.38 fire control director fed the Mk.8 rangekeeper, one in each protected fire control compartment. The Mk.8 was linked to a Stable Vertical Mk.41 (IIRC), which was a gyroscope system that maintained an artificial horizon. All the other nation's capital ship fire control systems required a cross-level telescope on the director to maintain the visual horizon. The combination of rangekeeper and stable vertical DEMONSTRATED in numerous tests before and during the war, the ability to maintain a firing solution on an enemy ship that was maneuvering (not violently) at 20 kts while the US BB did the same. No figure eights at full speed. Ac power allowed synchros to feed data from the FCD and other sources directly into the rangekeeper, where DC powered ships had to substitute manual input to their fire control computers. It should be pointed out here that the Germans were the only other navy that adopted AC power. Even RN MAGSLIPS had to transmit data in steps. Finally, the firing solution was not fed by follow the pointer or visual signals (counters) or verbally, but through remote power control which allowed what essentially continuous aim. All of this in 1941, not post-war. Finally, the AC power system allowed the massive switchboard to link turrets and secondary mounts to main, alternate (CT and turret no.2) and secondary directors almost w/o delay, compared to a DC powered ship that could take an hour to bring all turrets and directors fore and aft, re-calibrate the transmission system and re-set the fire control computer before switching between the fore and aft main gun directors. After some e-mail exchanges with the USS North Carolina Museum, it is possible the RPC was not installed or active when launched but was certainly so before Sep 41. And by mid-1942, both ships did have RPC and SG when operating with the Home Fleet against Tirpitz as did some of the South Dakota class, who also had 10cm Mk.8 FCR when Tirpitz still had 80cm FuMo 27 (Seetakt). This was the result of BuOrd using seed money and cooperating with GE and RCA and other US electronic firms, just as they did with Edison and GE for high temp/high pressure boilers and turbines and with the locomotive industry, where the diesel-electric system was tried and proved and then moved onto the fleet subs.
This was the most bizarre comment in the video. You could practically hear Drach gritting his teeth in anger about "misinformation" while at the same time telling a lie, or at least saying something extremely misleading. I don't know about the exact provenance of his "figure 8" story, but it was certainly a fact that during WW2, US ships were able to maneuver while maintaining target lock while their opponents simply couldn't. Shame on Drach here.
so glad Drach put this video out
"Warspite is the real world embodiment of plot armour".
*happy British noises*
:)
I like 1vs1 camparisons no matter how realistic the idea of comparing ships who never met or had opprotunity to meet 1 on 1 in combat but definetly some great points here on not doing them really do appreciate all you do drach awesome job
I'd add mistakes as another reason why a real world battle is extremely difficult to model. So many battles were partially decided by mistakes. That isn't a dd sir that's a cruiser. oops. They don't have the range, I'm not worried about torpedoes just yet, we can sneak out without air cover, and so many more honest mistakes in identification, stratagy, technical capability and such are a huge factor. And I would say this is different than the competence of the crew skill wise.
Another possible add would be intelligence gathering. Many battles were decided long before the opponents met because one side intercepted communications, planted false information, figured out the uboat tactics and such so that the classic fight would never happen as one side had already set up the odds in their favor.
A classic example is Samar, where the Japanese identified Destroyers and CVE's as cruisers and CV's.
I remember when the drydocks started getting longer,,,,,,,one wonders now, how long it will be until there is a 4 hour fun friday.🤣
But, US battleships did have did have something extra.
Willis Augustus Lee
Sitting here laughing about an Iowa launching Tomahawks and Harpoons vs Yamato.....then he said it!!! Roaring with laughter.
God, how many times have I had "conversations" like that one!?
A cursory familiarity with a number of battles suggests to me a "soft factor" sometimes overlooked: momentum of a battle, campaign, or war. Assuming the equality of other factors, it seems logical to expect soldiers and sailors will take fewer risks, and commanders will be more reluctant to sacrifice their subordinates' lives, if victory in the battle or war appears unattainable. Some experience backs this conclusion; contrast the behaviour of the Japanese units in the battles of the Java Sea which destroyed the ABDA, with Admiral Kurita's retreat at the battle off Samar.
Albeit that in Kurita’s case, he was right that he couldn’t achieve his objective, albeit not for the reason he thought. The actual reason was that he was way too late to do anything amount the American troops and supplies, which had already been landed.
Thank You for quantifying the almost unquantifiable concept of naval combat.
Fun Friday are cool as it gives us time to recover from our Wednesday rum ration... Or maybe I should not use a gallon as ration measurement tool😇
Leadership is the biggest component of the Soft Factor. When I was in the Navy, a change of command, would cause vast changes in the performance of the command. The departure of an ExO or the transfer of a Chief, would greatly influence how the average Sailor would react and do his/her job.
Also, besides the Bismarck hit on the Hood, what are examples of extremely improbably hits on a BB?
Noting that pretty much all hits are improbable. It's less aiming to hit a specific place and more aiming to hit in general.
The Swordfish torpedo into Bismarck's rudder and props. The USS Arizona's catapult charge magazine (added after the ship was built, not especially well protected and adjacent to the forward main battery magazine) taking a direct hit from an armor piercing bomb. Combat proved that using heavy bombers against ships was vastly overrated pre-WW2, and yet...Gneisnau become a Constructive Total Loss from RAF heavy bombers at altitude - at night, no less. " On the night of 26 February, the British launched an air attack on the ship; one bomb penetrated her armored deck and exploded in the forward ammunition magazine, causing serious damage and many casualties. The repairs necessitated by the damage were so time-consuming that it was determined to rebuild the ship to replace the nine 28 cm guns with six 38 cm guns in double turrets."
28:50 at least for an Iowa class vs Yamato 1v1, the battle off Samar would be a good setting. We know that the Yamato & the USS NJ were in the area, we know the times & weather patterns when events occurred. We could then use handwaivium magic to swap the Taffies with the NJ & to remove the rest of the Japanese force so that only the Yamato is there.
24:30 this caught me totally off guard. I even go so far that USS Constitution would have defeated USS Iowa in 1941!
Your point about rarity of similar ship v ship engagement is valid... however note the nearly universal design approach to armor and guns was an assumption of fighting a similar vessel
after paddling around the world in a warship for a few years...talking to senior and junior line O's...reading book after book...yada yada yada...
naval warfare gets boiled down very simply...
some days you get the bear and some days the bear gets you.
I work in applied mathematical modelling of risk assessment and management - Bayesian Belief Nets and @ Risk (the tools I use - but there are many many others) - completely different area but very similar principles and issues arise to those raised here in particular the poor appreciation of point 6. randomness/chance which makes a mockery of those who believe faithfully in linear cause and effect sequences and determinism. Three things that support Drach's scepticism about war gaming:
1. Stochastic timeseries modelling shows how often and how the 'average' cause > effect sequence of events can be very different from the individual timecourses. People should have heard of 'the Butterfly Effect'. Today perhaps a better metaphor is the coronavirus effect - plausibly a tiny mutation somewhere in Covid19's ancestors (termed a top event) led to an event tree of humoungous proportions we are still living through.
2. Bayes nets programming are especially suited to modelling complex cause > effect networks and doing what-if probablistic modelling (you can input real numerical data or 'expert opinion'). These highlight how inherently variable outcomes of 'fault trees' are. The node of most interest is termed the top event - like the Hood exploding. These trees allow the likelihood not just of a battle but other random events which might cause a sinking to be estimated for different what-if scenarios. Ideally the numbers tell you where your vulnerabilities mainly lie. The trick though is to have plausible input data and that turns out to be really really hard and this is arguably the whole point of Drach's offering here and objection to spinning naive narartives.
3. A few years ago I was at a Bayes Net conference where some defence related people described their own use of these computer systems when designing a patrol boat. The problem was this. In a complex machine that is a boat of any kind, its functioning is dependent on all sorts of interaction mechanical and communications systems and a degree of redundancy still operating when under attack. How do you identify its greatest vulnerabilities given this complexity. To understand what might happen they first created a stochastic model of the boat in 3-D, ran it and recorde what would happen if say a small shell landed in different random locations. This created a massive number of what-if scenario outputs with different impact event magnitudes impacting on different boat systems. The output from this model was then analysed using a Bayes Net which could identify where the greatest vulnerability lay.
IRT the latter.
a. I am not giving away any great secret here. This quantitative risk modelling is what professionals do routinely when they are trying to assess ANY complex system...e.g. dam safety, flooding and so forth and each situation. The best developed area is probably in business where big profits are there to be made from identifying marginal but robust opportunities.
b. The bigger message here is that playing genuinely credible what-if games is far more complex than making up a new story about say the battle of Gettysburg and playing with toy soldiers. You can believe of course whatever you want to believe. But you really will be kidding yourself - hence Drach's partial allergy - unless you do what professional people do.
c. This said I am not disparaging scenario exploration which is a great way to think about many problems. I am just saying there are good ways and bad ways and the good ways are damn hard.
About random chances during Bismarck's voyage: PoW also got some hits, that could have altered a lot if the projectiles exploded. One was a shell from Bismarck that ended up inside the torpedo defense system and it would definitely be bad for PoW to have an explosion inside the protected area, not outside. And the other was a shell from Prinz Eugen (agreed, smaller, but it wouldn't matter in that case), which ended up in the propellant charge/round manipulation chamber underneath a secondary aft turret. It exploding would have also resulted in some damage to PoW. And either one could have delayed PoW retreating, which would have allowed Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to score possibly even more hits, maybe even crucial (considering every hit could be a crucial one). And considering when PoW was leaving, the guys in Prinz Eugen were preparing the torpedo launcher, that would also open up more possibilities, if PoW was forced to stay a bit longer.
Tl;dr: Yes, you absolutely can't plan in random chance, so you can't know, how it would turn out in the end
Excellent points. On the other hand, what if all Prince of Wales’ guns had worked perfectly for the entire battle? There’s no way to account for all those extra shells. Even if nothing else changed, one of them COULD have hit Bismarck’s bridge & wiped out the command crew in the first five minues. Impossible to say exactly what would have happened if that one factor had changed
@@dorn0531 yes, but I stayed to the stuff that actually happened and only changed that one or two shells go off as well and what that could result in
@@Hendricus56 Fair enough. I was simply adding a small detail that could just as easily have happened since there were engineers onboard fixing the guns in real time. I was agreeing with your point that small, random events could change everything
@@dorn0531 Yes, it is just easier to speculate with stuff that did happen (the shells still hit PoW after all) than discussing which gun might have been fixed and how it would affect the performance from then on and something like that
@@Hendricus56 Good point.
Bad idea to drink my coffee when Drach is speaking.
Now I have to clean up the mess.
Drach, I'd like to learn more about torpedoes. Given the video, I'll make my question a hypothetical.
Assume all relevant navies in WWII have sufficient experience with 7-inch torpedoes, please speculate on the impact they may have had if submarines were typically equipped with a pair of 7-inch launchers. I picture this as an additional pair, but maybe you can think of a reason to replace a pair instead.
This question stems from the knowledge that 21-inch torpedoes are quite expensive and there are situations where a submarine captain might want to use a torpedo, but the target just isn't worth it.
The choice of 7-inch is somewhat arbitrary. I chose it because the math seems straightforward, it gives a torpedo small enough to represent a noticeable cost savings while still having a warhead large enough to do something. I could easily be wrong in my assumptions and would consider telling me what a less ignorant person would ask as an equally valid response to the question.
What target are you thinking of - fishing boats? A military vessel wants to carry the most powerful weapon it can fit for it's intended target. Hunting merchantmen was not in the original plan, but one hit from a 21-incher usually did the job. When a sub had a minor target that was not worth a torpedo she often surfaced and used the deck gun. It would have been more precise than a 7-inch torpedo (could they fit the engine and control system in there?).
A 7" torpedo would be unlikely to do more than scratch the paint of anything larger than a light cruiser. Moving from a 21" torpedo, which typically had a warhead around 700lbs to 18" dropped the warhead size by over half (excepting a couple air-launched 18" torpedoes with 400+lb warheads but comparatively short ranges).
The smallest torpedo's to see active use were the American Mk 43 ASW torpedoes, which had a 54lb or 60lb warhead and 10" diameter. They were enough to damage a sub of that era via a localized overload of the pressure hull when the sub was submerged, but were fairly quickly replaced by a 12.75" Mark 44 with a larger warhead.
@@gregorywright4918 I was thinking destroyers on down. There are fairly small vessels that can cause trouble for a submarine. Think of them as secondary weapons.
I remember a 1 vs. 1! You told about it in your video of...I think the naval war of the German-French War of 1870/71. It was a German ship that met a French one in Cuba. The fight ended inconclusive as one of them retreated to Cuban waters. And I think I remember you portraying a battle between a German comerce raider and a British auxiliary crusier that you called one if not the most akward battle of naval history. - Just metioning the two exceptions that confirm the rule since both instances are pretty much an example of a case that navies try to prevent from happening.
This reminds me of the 1v1s in the Pirates of the Caribbean.
* In the first movie, the Interceptor, a brig, was facing against a cursed skeleton crew whose Indiaman had oars for extra propulsion.
* In the second, Black Pearl was against a cursed flyut/Vasa/submarine hybrid in calm seas. The Dutchman had its submarine ability plus a bigger broadside and tri-barrel rapid fire chaser guns. Oh wait, the Pearl is literally the fastest ship in the Caribbean and had the the wind on her side. So the Dutchman had to "cheat" via Kraken to do any real damage and sink her.
* In the third it took A LITERAL goddess and a malestrom to force a fight against the Pearl and Dutchman where only broadside weight mattered and the wild card (Captain Jack Sparrow notwithstanding) was the fact that the immortality of the Dutchman's captain was at stake.
Not speaking for the realism (or lack thereof otherwise) in the movies, I'm just pointing out that even there, there are hardly any preconditions that lead to a "fair fight". There's always a supernatural force or the weather in play.
Drach rants are amazing, plus, logic! Love it
From the first roughly half of this I watched I've run into similar debate for Hearts of Iron IV. Whenever someone mentions the ridiculous air warfare system that allows 2000 aircraft to be airborne over northern France in 1940 invariably someone mentions the British 1000 bomber raids. Which if you look into them there were only like three or four of them ever executed and they were barely able to put enough aircraft up to achieve those figures.
To make up the numbers for the 1000 bomber raid on Cologne in 1941, the RAF really scraped the bottom if the barrel by using aircraft from Coastal command and the Operational Training Command.
And it was not only heavy bombers, they also used light bombers.
Raids in 500 bomber range was much more common than the 1000, for various reasons of practicality.
@@kimleechristensen2679 Exactly, and the more aircraft you have flying in a formation/train the more of a nightmare command and control/coordination becomes.
@@catloverjerrygarcia5086 Have you read the book, "Before the Storm" it tells the story of the RAF bomber command in the early years of WW2 1939-42, and how they gradually developed the formular of bombing raids that proved so devastating in 1943-45.
Insightful read but also chilling.
@@kimleechristensen2679 I have not but will note it down.
This used to come up on the sci.military.naval USENET board when I would post and lurk there, back a few years.
One of the big ones was "German WW2 Raider vs. Convoy Escorting heavy ship." Say, Scharnhorst vs. USS Arkansas, or USS Pennsylvania, or HMS Malaya, etc.*
The big problem here is, maybe the German heavy raider has some support ships, but moreover, the escorting heavy ship has Destroyers and other escorts with the convoy as well. So, instead of Panzerschiffe vs. USS Arkansas or Scharnhorst vs. USS Pennsylvania or HMS Malaya, or Tirpitz vs. same, you end up with the convoy commander turning his heavy ship to fight, while sending the other escort ships to do torpedo runs.
Thus, one on one fighting between heavy ships would have been unlikely.
*Notwithstanding the usual German orders to raiders telling their commanders to avoid combat with heavy naval units, which were often breached. See: Graf Spee, Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, etc.
Well clearly in New Jersey VS Yamato, New Jersey would win because she'd be spotting with her drone well plastering Yamato with W23 shells. /s
As a retired armor officer, I feel the same way about the various online games claiming to depict tank combat. They are totally wrong as tanks don't operate alone (My big problem with "Fury" is that by April 1945 no one would dispatch a platoon of tanks without an accompanying Armored Infantry Platoon in halftracks to eliminate tank killer teams like the one that killed the platoon leaders vehicle) they operate in a combined arms team with infantry, artillery, combat engineers, air defense, attack aviation, close air support, naval gunfire (if you're near the coast), etc. Each arm's strength balances another's weakness.
As a 40+ year veteran Mechanical Engineer, If you get into an argument with physics, you will lose 100% of the time, and it usually hurts.
Most 1v1 of any type of fight seems to make the assumption that they happen in a well lit covered colosseum and that the combatants, or at least one of them, is in perfect condition making no errors in either technique or judgement.
I feel that it’s to make it as close to a computer simulation as possible so it’s easier to understand or explain.
U.S.NAVY Advance Boiler Technician BT3 Bryant(the last of the boiler technicians)checking in my friend. U.S.S. Gridley CG-21 10-17-84.
Boiler tech on the last Gearing...U.S.S. Meredith DD-890