I asked this about a year ago, though I’m not sure if it answer already or has previously been asked. What effect do you think anti ship guide missiles would have had on war time and post ship design had they been developed just before the Second World War or during it’s early stages? I’m referring to self guided self propelled weapons, not manually controlled glide bombs like the FritzX.
Speaking of Iron Duke at Jutland, could its gunnerery prowess be because a member of Jellicoe's staff was Sir Fredrick Dreyer, inventor of the Dreyer Table, and known gunnery expert? If so, could the presence of an expert in a field be a contributing factor in things such as exceptional damage control, fire control, or other aspects of combat?
@@Concealed1911 Depends on definition of “hearing.” If you’re aboard ship, unless you’re in the boiler or turbine machinery spaces or immediately adjacent, you likely wouldn’t “hear their sound,” as much as feel their vibration through the ship structure. Sailors pretty quickly acclimate to this, and can estimate how quickly the ship is moving by it, and if it stops completely unannounced they know something likely is wrong. Underwater is a different story. Depending on water and equipment quality, passive sonar systems can hear surface ships from dozens of nautical miles away. But what they hear is not always “the ship’s machinery;” it may instead be the ship’s screws turning (and good systems can determine ship speed by counting RPM if the screws), or the disturbance of hull through water, etc.
My grandfather was born in 1922. By his last year of high school he was about 6’, maybe 6’1”. In photos of his football team and Drum Corps that he was part of, he’s taller by inches than anybody else. By time he finished Marine Corp boot camp he was 6’2”, weighed 200-210, and was enormous compared to the vast majority of his peers. His best friend throughout his life was 6’4”, maybe a shade over, and he may have invented the concept of photo-bombing, being very good at noticing folks nearby who were about to take a picture and leaning ever … so … slightly toward them.
I enjoyed the height discussion! It always amuses me how much average height varies in Europe between places that are pretty close together from a North American perspective. An important contributing factor for the variation in height across time in a country is the exposure to disease of a population, especially disease in childhood. I read a book on this in the context of the Roman Empire. In the mid Republic of the 2nd century BC the average Italian was about 5'6''-5'7" but by the height of the empire in 2nd century AD that had collapsed to 5'2"-5'3". Then in the Middle Ages Italians are back to their Republic height. The Imperial period saw the massive urbanization of the Roman world to degrees probably not seen again until the 19th century and a vast interconnection of the Mediterranean via trade networks. This gave diseases ready breeding grounds and allowed them to spread easily which meant lots and lots of Romans were repeatedly infected by severe illness which permanently stunted their growth if they survived. The UK during the Industrial Revolution with its mass urbanization, global empire, and general decline in health conditions due to unsanitary living conditions and poor air quality probably imposed a similar burden on the growth potential of individuals as you see newer diseases to Europe like cholera emerge.
The Dutch being giants is especially interesting since they're a small urban country in western Europe. I can understand people in the Balkans being really tall. Generations of hardy mountain men fighting the Ottoman Empire. But how can the Dutch be so much taller than their immediate neighbors?
The average British soldier in ww1 was 5' 4" and put on up to 40 lb in the time he was in service due to regular high calorie diet tells you what a poor diet the average working man had ...
@@stanleyrogouski No idea! Maybe similar to Lamark's theory of how giraffes' got such long necks - having to constantly stretch to see above sea level?
@@stanleyrogouski I think that the height of the men in the Balkans may have more to do with their original genetic material. The thing is that the highest people in archeological record were people of gravetien (upper paleolit), but the populations were pushed out by agroculturalist from near east, some went north, and others into moutains. The population had one more significant drift during conquest by indoeuropeans in the bronze age, and those were also quite tall for their time, were pasturalist (thereby interested in moutains) and had a presence in Balkans. This kind of siv may be responsible for the efect, and the region of Illirium has produced warriors very long way back, and I'm not really sure, what did the ancient authors say about their origins, so I may be wrong. As for the Dutch, your gues is as good as mine, I think it might have something to do with reasonably high standart of living for quite a long time and some kind of non genetic heredity.
Another issue with gunnery data is that, especially in WWII, plenty of ships either never fired their guns in combat at all, never did so against another ship, or never did so against another ship that was actually capable of putting up a fight; and even among those that did, they usually did so on only one occasion. And then you get all the salvoes that were on target but ended up being near misses rather than hits. To say nothing of ships that actually combined these factors, making it all but impossible (and often actually impossible) to gauge how effective their gunnery would have been on average. For the regrettable losses one, Chilcheonryang-the one where Admiral Won Gyun won his naval Darwin Award-should qualify IMO. Not only because he somehow managed to lose with a fleet that had proven itself repeatedly in the opening months of the naval campaign under his predecessor/successor, but because he lost almost the entire navy and would have cost the entire naval war for his nation if not for his predecessor/replacement working miracles to regain naval superiority while vastly outnumbered.
Thanks Drach When you started these did you ever, in either your wildest imaginings (or nightmares) think you would reach the level it has? And I've been listening and learning (oh the horror! lol) since I found this channel in its single digits. Thank you so much for all you have done. And an even bigger thanks to Mrs Drach for putting up with it all
In the gunnery exercises I was involved in, we didn't offset range, only bearing. Typically, the offset would be in degrees or mils (depending on whether the practice target was at sea or on land) and a 'hit' was recorded by the judges was done as you described. We would use, 'BL&P' rounds for such training, meaning, 'Blind, loaded and plugged'. They had the same weight and form as an AP round and ranging was obviously more important than bearing. Thus we'd be shooting at the wake of the ship, and we'd better hit it if we're decent Fire Control Techs.
Re Japanese Fleet problems They did fleet exercises every September. Results were assessed in October. Promotions and rewards were given out in November. The 4th Fleet Incident did actually have 3 Fleets sailing about, 58 ships. 1st (Battleships) and 2nd (Cruiser) Fleets were the Blue (Americans) up againat Red (4th/Japanese) Fleet. The typhoon ended up being 200 mile wide. Japanese 1st and 2nd fleet were able sidestep the storm, but 4th Fleet was near the middle of the storm, and lesser fleet units (ie destroyers) couldn't run away from typhoon (10knots max) because the waves to big and could have greater stresses on the hull. So they had to stick it out and suffer. End of the day, it was beneficial (despite 54 lives lost) that the typhoon and Tomozuru Incident occured, as allowed the IJN to strengthened the existing hulls and improved their survivability in WW2 and helped save costs redesigning their new ships (welding aside).
Ww1 ships in Ww2: Agreed with overall statement... but I will say Fuso was the opposite. The Fusos and Ises were put in as training ships as soon as Yamato came on line, and officially designated that after Midway (2nd line roles as we know). Though Ises were converted as we all know in early 1943, Yamashiro was left as training ship. However, the Fuso did play an pretty active war after June 43 when reactivated but never fought a battle until 25Oct44. Fuso took part in 2 fleet sorties by Combined Fleet in trying to intercept the US 5th Fleet in October and Nov 43. Escaped Truk, before Hailstone, escaped Palau before its carrier raid, then training at Lingga with Combined Fleet. Sortied to Tawi-Tawi in anticipation of A-Go, but diverted to KON operations to relieve Biak (same as Yamatos later) and was Davao on stand by for Phillippine Sea battle. Trained again at Lingga with 2nd Fleet for next 3 months then sortied and sunk at Letye. So Fuso at least tried to fight against US Fleet.
Insular Dwarfism: I think the Great Depression and malnutrition might have something to do with how people born in the 1920s often seem so small. There were so many tiny little men from my grandparents generation and ethnicity didn't matter that much. German, Irish, Italian American, I suspect many were stunted by malnutrition. I think nutrition also explains why the Dutch are so much taller than their neighbors like the British and French.
Army field exercises faced the same problem in that you really don't want to be actually dropping rounds on live troops. Since the operating area has a defined impact area where it was safe to fire, the artillery batteries would be assigned targets within that area and the effectiveness graded on timelines and accuracy ie. "on time, on target". Maneuvering units could be many miles away in a totally different direction or may have been elements moved around on a game board.
In my opinion, the "Des Moines" class of Heavy Cruisers were both the best looking & the greatest heavy cruiser class ever built. Their firepower for surface engagement, shore bombardment & anti-air battery was awesome. I still feel their is a place for Naval vessels that can lay down old fashioned gun fire support, as after all, a ship of her size can still carry considerably more 8" & 5" rounds than a similar sized vessel outfitted with only missiles...not to mention the expense per round saving versus cost of missiles & time taken to manufacture. Also much harder for opposing forces to intercept & destroy an 8" (or 5") round.
The fact that you actually attempted to answer the gun accuracy question shows incredible patience . That person was a troll. I half expected you to continue on “… and by time of day, duration of battle, experience of gunnery crew, and astrological sign of the captain.”
Dear Uncle Drach, Longtime subscriber here. With current events in this world I feel the time has come to say we need you to apply your insight into issues of a more immediate temporal component. I love naval history, like you I come from a "Naval" (albeit military- like yourself) family. In addition I work in the defense industry here in the States. We need you do add a new channel to deal with educating the public in the ways of our current situation and how best to view and understand significant issues that traditional media sources have shown a stunning inability to communicate honestly and accurately. A certain Australian You-tuber who uses power-points every Sunday morning has shown to us all just how effective this can be. Please consider this as we move forward. Thanks for everything you do!
The single greatest threat to western sovereignty is corruption within the defense industry. You all need to start acting more like patriots and less like businessmen, because we're not getting enough capability per dollar. If we were receiving a reasonable return on investment, no one could touch us.
Your comments about how Axis admirals viewed their performance made me consider their view of the war. If a Japanese admiral believed the losses reportedly inflicted on the U. S. Navy, how many carriers, battleships, etc.. did he think the U. S. built during World War 2?
Lefty bolts are rare and generally only found in limited runs of sporting/hunting rifles. Service bolt guns were never made with left-handed bolts, though it’s possible that somebody may have had one custom-built by a gunsmith.
Bolt action for left handed people which are operated in their right minds. I think you have to keep in mind that there is quite a bit of machining that has to be done with various parts and how they all fit together. To make a left handed version would just require to mirror the appropriate parts; however, you are talking about a massed produced components that have numerous custom milling machines set up to churn everything out in stages. To create a left handed version would require someone to hand machine the parts, using the original plans, but flipping it inside your head to make it as a mirror. No small feat given the sheer amount of milling required. A trained machinist has a hard enough time following normal instructions.
Drach, if you want to see folks shooting lever action rifles quasi-professionally, look for videos of Cowboy Action Shooting. In my experience the fingers are left in the loop, but I have seen people doing it slightly differently. Thanks for all the entertaining teaching you do!
Completely agree about the left handed use of right handed bolt actions. I have one left handed bolt gun and it’s weird to use after having years of using “normal” bolt actions.
00:29:23 Had a Winchester lever early in my life and it doesn't take but one time for someone to be working the lever as fast as they can to mess up and hammer their finger onto the trigger in that pinch point. The only thing I was ever gun shy about handling firearms was that pinch point after I healed up.🤕 Got it good. The bad part of being quick as a cat is when the curiosity of exactly how fast you can unload a lever action catches you out.😾 I just make sure the finger is outside the loop now.
To clarify, the vessel is not sinking, rather it’s demonstrating A) the scale of a high Sea State B) how poorly this class of ship fared against such - the Scharns were notorious for having A, and sometimes B turret as well, put out of action by ingress of sea water.
It was always quite interesting how the cancelled ships of the 1943 Minotaurs were essentially Ontario/Swiftsure/Superb, but with a new dual-purpose Mark XXIV turrets and they ended up developing it into the Mark XXV turrets of the Neptune-class. It’s also peculiar just how different the 1943 Minotaurs were to the other RN cruisers as they were the only RN cruisers to have an aft center secondary mount.
Were the Montana class the last battleships designed for the U.S. navy? Although the class was never built, I was wondering if any other designs were submitted.
Just wanted to say thanks. Your vids are helping me stay sane, or as close as I can be during chemo & surgeries for aggressive triple negative breast cancer. Due to start red devil chemo as soon as last surgery (to fit portacath) heals. Odds not good since cancer came straight back after the first batch. Hope you are well. If anyone here has a friend or relative with Fibromyalgia please advise them that new research has identified same as an autoimmune cancer causing syndrome. *AVOID ALCOHOL AND OPIATES AT ALL TIMES.* Get full body contrast CT scans regularly because any cancer will be hyper aggressive and you won't be able to tell cancer pain from fibro pain. Ask me how I know. You will need to be in isolation from family members and partners. Chemo leaches through the skin and the doxorubicin group drugs are much like cytotoxic snake venom. You will need to wash your clothes separately. I am not kidding here. *Chemotherapy drugs are CARCINOGENIC.* They are especially dangerous to pre pubescent children because cancer + puberty = death sentence. Get hold of the HPV vaccine ASAP. This has been a public information broadcast by a walking corpse. PS when someone says they have cancer the correct response is *not* "but you look so healthy...".
The way you cycle the lever action, is different, but if works for you that's great. Most lever guns I've owned/used I find I need more fingers to cycle the action. I sometimes wear gloves to protect my fingers when cycling.
I'm not aware of any military left-handed weapons, especially rifles. Even in the post-WW2 commercial world, left-handed boltguns were rare and usually didn't last long. There's always someone bemoaning the lack of left-handed guns, but when they're produced they don't sell. So they invariably are quickly discontinued and the whole process starts over when the next advocate "discovers" a lack of left-handed guns and convinces a manufacturer to dip its toe (again) in a practically non-existent market.
Coming from a family of Southpaws you are correct. My Father ran a sporting goods store and advocated learning to shoot right handed. Easier in the long run and ends the search for a left hand action.
@@Edax_Royeaux So can the AUG, but it's not something you do just by switching shoulders. The F2000 is as about as ambi as bullpups get, but it's ergonomics otherwise are poor. I think some of the Keltec stuff is bottom eject, but they're not what you'd call milspec.
@@davefinfrock3324 If you want "as ambi as bullpups get", the obvious answer is the P90. Though of course it fires a much shorter cartridge, so bottom-eject is rendered much easier.
My understanding is that - post war - the Germans were very forthcoming with assisting the western allies, because the Soviets were on their border and an existential threat. That's a general thing, and I have no idea how that applies to the navy. In 'Instruments of Darkness' by Alfred Price there is described a post-war exercise where German night-air-combat staff co-operated greatly. It's a very interesting book on electronic warfare in WW2 by the way.
Lever action: 3 fingers in the loop, pushing down then up. Somewhere in that movement, trigger finger straightness out so it's clear, then reindex inside the guard once action is closed, if a follow up shot is needed. Oddly enough, the way drach works a lever is how a martini Henry would be run.
I would put on that list of most regrettable naval defeats on where no actual shots were fired, yet soon turned out to be quite a catastrophe. And it could've been a winnable battle if better decisions had been made. That would be the escape of SMS Goeben to Turkey. Goeben only barely made it into the Dardanelles before HMS Indomitable and HMS Indefatigable caught up even with all the poor decisions made by the British and French admirals. And if Goeben had been stopped, the balance between the pro-German and pro-British factions of the Ottoman Empire might never have been tipped decisively enough for the Ottomans to enter the war. Ottoman neutrality, or even a significant delay in Ottoman entry into the war, would've been an enormous victory for the Allies, and likely would've resulted in World War I ending significantly sooner. Meaning that such events as the Gallipoli campaign, the Battles of Verdun and the Somme, the Russian Revolution, and US entry into the war would never have happened. The Armenian genocide also would be less likely to happen, and who knows how much longer the Ottoman Empire could've survived.
Not only that, Goeben heavily contributed to the rise of the USSR and the entire clusterfuck that is the Middle East, including the War on Terror. Goeben not escaping likely would have meant no Red October, no Cold War, no Korean War, Vietnam, none of the Israeli wars, no Taliban and no ISIS.
Victorian room sizes for the working class might be small because it was cheaper to build. The smaller the room, apartment, etc, the more units => paying tenants could be squeezed into a given volume. Comfort was a luxury.
I've visited both the "Merchants House" and the "Tenement Museum" in New York City and I was struck by how large I felt in the Tenement Museum and how natural everything in the Merchants House seemed. I'm 6'0", which would have been a little above average for the 19th Century but nothing very remarkable. My guess is the bourgeoisie was perhaps a bit bigger than the working class (generals in the United States Civil War mostly seemed to be 5'11" or 6'0" and the enlisted men a bit shorter) but the amount of space and comfort $$$ brought was even greater.
On the size question, when speaking of worker housing. Keep in mind that the persons building said housing are not going to spend any more than they must to build that house than is necessary. So skimping on a few inches between the ceiling and the floor and the width of the stairway or hall would be done because exactly who is going to complain and to whom will the complaint be lodged with? Right, exactly. Those with the cash to spend to build a home their way will, of course get it built their way. Those with limited funds to build or rent - oh well, that's the way it is.
All main line combat rifles were right handed models, with an average of 1 in 6 people being left handed, it didn't make sense for the military to build them for left handed people. One of the advantages of lever action rifles is they are user-friendly to a person who dominate in either hand. Yes, the Martini- Henry was made in 303 British, just some they could simplify supply, at least until they could build enough Enfields could fielded and they were great for colonial troops.
@@kemarisite the Winchester 1894 design pre 1984 top ejection model over the Angled ejection model but with the later models and the Marlins you are 100% correct.
Here we go again with the "Armada" as a naval defeat...😎...Cap Sant Vincent is a much bette example of naval defeat when some chances of victory were at hand (from the spanish side)...
DRACH, I thought you might appreciate this as a Brit - - I've just now finished watching the 1967 British comedy classic spoof Casino Royale (Peter Sellers, David Niven et al., jolly good show!). If ya' haven't seen it, ya must, matey!
If you do watch it, I would love to see you do a movie review. In fact, would love to see you do a whole series of movie reviews and spoofs! (PLEASE!). - - NEW TH-cam CHANNEL: DRACH'S MOVIE REVIEWS.
In general, there still aren't any left-handed military rifles, aside from a few of the modern bullpup-style ones that can swap the ejection port to the other side (for obvious reasons), and most modern rifles have ambidextrous controls, but those are all added on as an afterthought. Y'know that bump behind the ejection port of an M16A2/M4? That's to bounce the empty case, the original M16 and A1 without that bump would send the brass straight into a lefty's face. But for the vast majority of military history, you were forced to learn to shoot right-handed, there were no Brown Bess muskets with the lock on the wrong side, or lefty SMLEs. As Drach said, you CAN buy left-handed versions of many sporting rifles (and a left-ejecting Remington 870 shotgun) for twice the price of a normal one, but I just deal with the normal 870: jkbaker.com/SA/dmshotty.jpg )
When firing a lever-action rifle, on the downward movement of the lever I straighten my trigger finger so that on upward movement it is outside of the trigger guard. Keeps the finger from getting pinched and no risk of accidently pulling the trigger. As a lefty firing an M16 back in the 1970's I don't recall being hit by an ejected casing, but definitely felt a breeze as the casings whizzed past my cheek!
I also think Hitler mentioned scrapping the fleet was was because in WW1 the justification for the HSFleets expense was hey if this doesn't go our way we have some bargaining powerish. Obviously anything other than total victory would mean eventual defeat for WW2 Germany. Not sure if that message really needed expounding on however metaphorical the medium.
21:34 My grandfather on my dad’s side of the family was left handed but they forced him to write right handed so no there weren’t any left handed bolt action rifles in military service. Even when you look at the old training films there has been no concession to left handed users even mentioned so if there are any left handed bolt action military rifles they would be so exceedingly rare that they would most likely be tool room prototypes.
To add my bit to the heigh discussion. Great Britain itself is a bit too big for insular effects to occure, and it was conected to the mainland Europe not that long ago. On the other hand, smaller landmasses, like the Channel Isles, Isle of Mann and others probabley are, although probabley not in humans, especially if they depend on see for susteinance. The animals depending on the land sources are a differend cattle of fish. For Instance the Jersey cows are smaller than their counterparts, and they are the most known ones, sadly I don't know about any others, but I'm sure they exist.
Lol "i dont like to make a habit of jamming my fingers in the mechanism." You'd be suprised when skiff gets heavy how bad the beretta bite can tear you up until the adrenaline drops and your thumb looks like it's hanging by a thread lol 🤠
I shoot left. For the Winchester lever action I use three fingers in the lever keeping index finger out but pointed forward while cycling the action before returning it to the trigger. Pretty basic really. A friend prefers using two fingers keeping index and pinky finger out. Whatever works for you and is comfortable with practice will work.
One of my problems being a left hander shooting rifles is that my LEFT EYE is my also my dominant eye. Therefore, for good accuracy, I NEED to shoot left handed. (I tried to learn to shoot right handed). This has resulted in some oddball grips, stances etc. to shoot with guns designed for righties. This has all been civilian shooting, I'd love to know what they do in the military.
As a former US Army service man. The whole left handed issue was “solved” by a brass deflector after a few shots it falls off then the fun of hot brass down your sleeve or shirt.
I have seen one left heanded schmidt rubin rifle listed for sale. It was a factory modification of I believe a K-11 or G-11 rifle however I do not know why and for whom the modification was made.
As for post war accounts, I've seen comments ranging from they had an ax to grind against various people, to "the book was little more than a fantasy book of the kind you would read to small children to put them to bed." He also comented that it was so detached from reality someone has probably made a one piece level magna out of it.
on the size of british people fluctuating, i actually consider that to be the initial stages of insular dwarfism. it just didnt go the extremes seen on some islands with people and animals. on ships remaining in service a long time, i always considered carriers a special case. their service life has a lot more to do with the aircraft they operate than the ship itself. so as long as teh ship can operate the planes it needs to and is in otherwise good repair, they just keep going. Lexington lasted into the 90s as a training carrier. the US accepted a handling problem on the E-2/C-2 (the tail plane specifically) in order to let them fit in the hanger of the Essex class, they never did though, the E-1/C-1 fill the role until those ships retired. and the USN retired the last of the phantoms and crusader variants along with the smaller carriers in the 90's
There are no WW1 or WW2 left handed bolt action military rifles. I have several left handed hunting rifles but even the availability of these is a relatively recent thing (commercially _circa_ 1959).
Regarding LH/RH. Logistics, especially at the field level, simply doesn't have the capacity to deal with two different rifles,. Can you imagine having two different rifles in a platoon? There are also no LH single seat combat aircraft. 😊
Wouldn't a 'modern' ship start shooting either when it thought it had a chance of hitting or when it was being shot at unless there was a tactical imperative? Unless the psychology of gunnery officers changed drastically opening fire wouldn't depend much on chance of hitting. Once fire was opened the side with better gunnery conditions is going to have better hit percentages.
Guns Austro -Hungarian continued to manufacture steel-bronze landguns into WW1 -example 8 cm M 1905. larger guns such a 9.4 inch were still produced in Steel-Bronze into 19th Century, main reasin iron guns in 17th 18th early 19th century ships of the line was down to cost. dealing with 90 guns per ship of the line in Bronze would be very expensive.
One thing to remember about left handed bolt action rifles is very often in the period they were used, growing up if you’d have been discovered to be left handed, mom dad and teacher would have spent much of your upbringing literally violently beating that tendency out of you. So accommodating left handed people to that degree would have been seen as a very odd expend for s government
Was the picture of Scharnhorst at 14:00 taken at the time of her sinking or is just bad weather? She seems to be sitting extremely low in the water. I'm confused because I thought these events occured at night time and if so how come more German sailors weren't saved,? I didn't think British ships were as close to enable them to take a picture such as this . Sorry, if I'm talking rubbish as I'm only a deck hand.
My uncle was in the UK in ‘43-44, and was moved by what he thought was impaired growth and thinness of the children. He visited with a family near his base, and after seeing them put what he later learned was a goodly proportion of a weeks rations on the table for tea, he made it a practice to scrape together everything possible that would otherwise be discarded from the mess and took it to them on his visits. This wasn’t very difficult, since the mess would discard half full containers of jam, peanut butter, partial loaves of bread, etc according to internal rules. He told me of an occasion where the wife teared up when one of these parcels contained the better part of a pound of butter. They just stood and looked at it for a bit, and then sent the children to bring a neighbor family over. He was greatly moved by the stalwart endurance of the British under grindingly strict rationing of virtually everything. His stories of this were vivid. I greatly enjoyed meeting them during their visit to him in his hometown in the late 1960’s.
Define “in WW1/2 era.” The USN completed and commissioned ships during the closing months of WW2 that were on-track to active deployment when hostilities ended. Example is the Baltimore class. Of the seventeen ships completed (including three built to the modified Oregon City spec ), twelve were commissioned before the Japanese capitulation on September 2, 1945, but only *seven took part in the battles of the Pacific Theater and one in the European Theater.* The remainder were still working up when the war ended.
I thought Midway might have made the list of regrettable defeats. The Japanese were always going to win that battle until they did not. The US had a good dollop of luck. and the Japanese suffered from a number of poor minor decisions that stacked up to defeat them
I’d have to disagree there. They were seen as the favorite to win, but it would be hard to see them making it out without losing a carrier or two. And if they had won, it wouldn’t have made any difference to the eventual outcome. There would have been no Guadalcanal in late ‘42 and early ‘43, but it’s not as if they could have taken Hawaii. They couldn’t have even held Midway even if they could take it (which was very much in doubt). They didn’t have the fuel to keep the fleet on station, and as soon as they left, the US would just pound the island daily with B-17s until nothing was left of the Japanese garrison. The US also had an absolutely massive fleet under construction that Japan could never hope to match, so all the US had to do was hold the line until a few more carriers launched. The only thing a Midway victory would have done is extend the war and cost more lives on both sides (but mainly Japan’s).
For the destruction of Taffy 3 itself, yes, but the rest of Seventh Fleet is another story, and the broader goal of attacking the American transports was mostly much too late by then, due to the fact the landings had begun five days earlier. Kurita could have destroyed the transport vessels themselves and some of the equipment needed to built airfields, but the majority of the supplies, the American armour support, and almost all of the US Army forces were already ashore by that point. It was never going to be the decisive victory Morison argued it could have been if Kurita hadn’t turned around.
@@bkjeong4302 We are playing a lot of "what if's" but the part that I struggle with is on land the Japanese fought until no one was left standing, the navy not so much. I can understand this through out most of the war as your ships are a very large capital investment that you can't just throw away. However, they knew that this was their last chance for a fleet engagement, it was make or break time. Saving your resources for another day wasn't in the cards. Realistically, most nations would probably have sued for peace at this point and stop the losses they were incurring. Oh well, alternative histories are just wild a$$ guesses. While most of US assets that needed to be ashore were there, there were still a lot of supply ships that if sunk would have severely hindered operations. In addition, numerous other support ships and jeep carriers could have been sunk and if that had happened the end of the war would have probably been stretched out longer. Just guessing of course. I'm glad I wasn't the one making the call that day on either side.
@@rickkephartactual7706 True, Kurita could have done more damage if he’d destroyed the remainder of Taffy 3 and then engaged the rest of Seventh Fleet; however, most people criticize him because they assume he threw away a precious opportunity to achieve his objective of ruining the American landings, and that part is very much a result of poor historiography. Operation Sho-Go was doomed to fail before it had even started simply due to bad timing. The best-case scenario (Kurita keeps going at Samar) would have seen the IJN completely destroyed even more than happened historically, with the USN getting a bloody nose but the Philippine land operations happening with at most a delay of a few days to a week.
@@bkjeong4302 You are probably correct, however, the US Navy sustained some pretty significant losses as it was, if they lost the fleet supporting the landings you can believe they would rethink how they would conduct the rest of the war. There were already some that suggest not demanding unconditional surrender so we could stop the large loss of both manpower and machine. The US has been very loss adverse when in comes to KIA's and injuries.
@@rickkephartactual7706 the IJN were never going to win that battle. The outcome will be the same. In the Battle of Samar Taffy 3 was discovered and under attack but Taffy 1&2 were still hidden. And ultimately it was the efforts of Taffy 1 and 2 air attacks which made Admiral Kurita withdraw. Let's say they did destroy Taffy 3, Taffy 1&2 still have 10 CVE and their escorts. 4 of those CVE are the Sangamon class. So that's still around 300 planes. Yeah, Kurita would've a hard time getting to the landing.
i believe the fashion around WW1 was to force lefties to act right handed as children. As a child, British king George VI (1895-1952) was naturally left-handed. He was forced to write with his right hand, as was common practice at the time. He was not expected to become king, so that was not a factor-Wikipedia
21:28 Short answer: No Long Answer: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, No. Detailed answer: As far as the military was concerned, then and today, being left handed was your problem, not theirs. Same issue as being right handed and left eye dominant. Source: My left-handed dad who was in the military in the 1970s.
Drach, does the preponderance of broader European or Germanic immigration to the United States in the Second Industrial Revolution also factor in to the relative heights of American military personnel versus their British equivalents in the late 1800s and early 1900s?
The main factor was, by large, food and nutrition. In the late XIX early XX century, the average low class British man survives with a diet of bread, butter and sugared tea. The average height of a British male in 1914 was 5´ 2". 157.5 cm. The limit for enlisting in the (peacetime) army was 5´3" and, in 1914, almost 40% of the recruits were rejected. But curiously, the average height of the officers, same country, same moment, was 5´6". Just a matter of better feeding.
If the internet is to be believed, the first left-handed bolt action rifles weren't made until 1959 when Winchester came out with a couple of sport/hunting models. There are quite a few options for them today, but I don't see any evidence of southpaw military rifles ever having been issued by any country. Lots of vets (from WW2 and up) talking about how they were trained to be right-handed shooters whether they liked it or not, which may still be the case. The military prefers to mold people to fit their procedures, combat effectiveness be damned. I've heard plenty of anecdotes from lefties about how their parents forced them to use the wrong hand as children, mostly from parents who were Boomers or older. To quote my own grandmother "eating with your left hand at the table is rude to the normal people around you and an insult to the cook" - which is typical of her overall insanity and horrible outdated ideas. Being a nonconformist leftie was apparently not something that older generations catered to at all when you get back to Boomers and before. How widespread this kind of crap is these days I don't know, but there sure seem to be few horror stories out of younger folks.
Militaries I'm aware of didn't do left handed rifles. Their approach was "congratulations soldier you are now right handed and will learn to shoot right handed" One of the few accomodations I can think of is that since revolvers are pretty much ambidextrous and USGI M1911 semi auto pistols are definitely right handed if you was wrong handed you could get issued a WWI leftover M1917 revolver if you was a lefty.
The average height for British males was "low" (not tall) because coal mines were geared to not cave in and small workmen were needed, as well as small work houses, tools, etc. Consider the practicality and financial savings. The armed services used small males to accommodate military campaigns that utilized the swarm techniques often witnessed by marauding ant colonies. The breeding of little Brits gained popularity and became especially rampant on the stages of comedy throughout time. The only problem with this system is that it didn't bode well for the tallish British women. The spider and fly syndrome can still be seen in today's modern couples and has been known to confuse many astute anthropologists. (Stop laughing.)
Idk how it is today with all the millennials and the older zoomers at adult height but in the 90s when Gen X was the youngest generation at adult height I definitely got the impression that Brits are shorter than Americans. I'm only 6'2" and felt like a giant instead of slightly above average. Of course at the time a decent number of WWI generation was around and lots of WWII and Korea generations around and they may have suffered from poor nutrition during the wars and the depression
@@davidrenton and just because that's the case in 2023 doesn't mean it was necessarily the case in the past when some now gone or mostly gone generations was around
I dunno. Yeah the Battle of Midway was preceded by months if not weeks of US Intel reading Jap decodes, but off the top of my head I can think of one or two 'butterfly wing' moments when that battle could have swung the other way....
Greed conquers all. Now Drach did a piece on tanks for the government funded, The Tank Channel. Sad that he's gone off the rails after a few good years.
Yes but the average height with reagrd to U.S. Media is 6ft 3inch male and 4 foot 11 inch female. Hand size is a bit of a myth -the hands in Victorian and up to WW2 were probably larger because of the requirement for mechanical manufacture -no air tools or power assit back then. As to Dracs engineer eye -if victorians houses were so tiny how come most rooms 2900 mm high, doors 2050 mm (>80 inches ) x 810 mm >32 inches doors -try going to B&Q and buy that size standard size is around 1980mm x 760mm 78 inches x 30 inches or less even down to 530 mm (21 inches) 😂 (my house not Victorian -actually built in Edwardian times to Victorian build standard) Living rooms /bedroom all exceed 1930s to 1950s semis and of course Wimpy /Barrat boxes and those g'd awful rabbit hutches that were L/A both pre and post WW2 builds.
@@dougjb7848 Yes that is correct back in 1980 the 50% (50 percentile) male was 5ft 7.5 in 172 cm and female 5ft 3.5 in 161 cm. These are figures used by DoD -not least for uniform size and of course fitting in equipment aircraft tanks gun mounts, size of weapons -rifles etc (which is strange becasue it goes against the apodtion of M16 over M1 Garand and M1906). Incidentally US forces have a max height -I think it is still 6ft 8in over that and you're unfit for service. The other caviat is the average for US combatants in the Civil War was 5ft 8in (173cm) so conforms with Dracs point about agricultural population over those in cities -especially like New York.
@@dougjb7848 I think he was just talking about the portrayal of heights in the media. I mean, there are a lot of short actors that can play tall characters with clever filmmaking tricks, and then you see them and realize they’re actually 5’8”.
23:39 Malnourishment, alcoholism and canesugar overconsumption and inbreeding was offset by emptying poorhouses and asylums into US and AUS and reduction of low Q genepools in a series of wars. Today the US grifts high IQ individuals and leaving the UK without the most important 1% of the population. It’s now a ship without captains. As for leveraction rifles…the Marlins are better than Winchesters.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
How loud or quite is a navy ship while sailing under normal conditions? Do you hear the engines running?
What would happen to a WW1 or later ship if it was struck by lightning? Are there any documented cases of this happening?
I asked this about a year ago, though I’m not sure if it answer already or has previously been asked.
What effect do you think anti ship guide missiles would have had on war time and post ship design had they been developed just before the Second World War or during it’s early stages? I’m referring to self guided self propelled weapons, not manually controlled glide bombs like the FritzX.
Speaking of Iron Duke at Jutland, could its gunnerery prowess be because a member of Jellicoe's staff was Sir Fredrick Dreyer, inventor of the Dreyer Table, and known gunnery expert? If so, could the presence of an expert in a field be a contributing factor in things such as exceptional damage control, fire control, or other aspects of combat?
@@Concealed1911
Depends on definition of “hearing.”
If you’re aboard ship, unless you’re in the boiler or turbine machinery spaces or immediately adjacent, you likely wouldn’t “hear their sound,” as much as feel their vibration through the ship structure. Sailors pretty quickly acclimate to this, and can estimate how quickly the ship is moving by it, and if it stops completely unannounced they know something likely is wrong.
Underwater is a different story. Depending on water and equipment quality, passive sonar systems can hear surface ships from dozens of nautical miles away.
But what they hear is not always “the ship’s machinery;” it may instead be the ship’s screws turning (and good systems can determine ship speed by counting RPM if the screws), or the disturbance of hull through water, etc.
Regrettable navel defeats. Warspite vs the uk coastline was very regrettable. The coastline got lucky
My grandfather was born in 1922. By his last year of high school he was about 6’, maybe 6’1”. In photos of his football team and Drum Corps that he was part of, he’s taller by inches than anybody else. By time he finished Marine Corp boot camp he was 6’2”, weighed 200-210, and was enormous compared to the vast majority of his peers.
His best friend throughout his life was 6’4”, maybe a shade over, and he may have invented the concept of photo-bombing, being very good at noticing folks nearby who were about to take a picture and leaning ever … so … slightly toward them.
I enjoyed the height discussion! It always amuses me how much average height varies in Europe between places that are pretty close together from a North American perspective.
An important contributing factor for the variation in height across time in a country is the exposure to disease of a population, especially disease in childhood. I read a book on this in the context of the Roman Empire. In the mid Republic of the 2nd century BC the average Italian was about 5'6''-5'7" but by the height of the empire in 2nd century AD that had collapsed to 5'2"-5'3". Then in the Middle Ages Italians are back to their Republic height. The Imperial period saw the massive urbanization of the Roman world to degrees probably not seen again until the 19th century and a vast interconnection of the Mediterranean via trade networks. This gave diseases ready breeding grounds and allowed them to spread easily which meant lots and lots of Romans were repeatedly infected by severe illness which permanently stunted their growth if they survived.
The UK during the Industrial Revolution with its mass urbanization, global empire, and general decline in health conditions due to unsanitary living conditions and poor air quality probably imposed a similar burden on the growth potential of individuals as you see newer diseases to Europe like cholera emerge.
The Dutch being giants is especially interesting since they're a small urban country in western Europe. I can understand people in the Balkans being really tall. Generations of hardy mountain men fighting the Ottoman Empire. But how can the Dutch be so much taller than their immediate neighbors?
The average British soldier in ww1 was 5' 4" and put on up to 40 lb in the time he was in service due to regular high calorie diet tells you what a poor diet the average working man had ...
@@stanleyrogouski No idea! Maybe similar to Lamark's theory of how giraffes' got such long necks - having to constantly stretch to see above sea level?
@@stanleyrogouski I think that the height of the men in the Balkans may have more to do with their original genetic material. The thing is that the highest people in archeological record were people of gravetien (upper paleolit), but the populations were pushed out by agroculturalist from near east, some went north, and others into moutains. The population had one more significant drift during conquest by indoeuropeans in the bronze age, and those were also quite tall for their time, were pasturalist (thereby interested in moutains) and had a presence in Balkans.
This kind of siv may be responsible for the efect, and the region of Illirium has produced warriors very long way back, and I'm not really sure, what did the ancient authors say about their origins, so I may be wrong.
As for the Dutch, your gues is as good as mine, I think it might have something to do with reasonably high standart of living for quite a long time and some kind of non genetic heredity.
Another issue with gunnery data is that, especially in WWII, plenty of ships either never fired their guns in combat at all, never did so against another ship, or never did so against another ship that was actually capable of putting up a fight; and even among those that did, they usually did so on only one occasion. And then you get all the salvoes that were on target but ended up being near misses rather than hits. To say nothing of ships that actually combined these factors, making it all but impossible (and often actually impossible) to gauge how effective their gunnery would have been on average.
For the regrettable losses one, Chilcheonryang-the one where Admiral Won Gyun won his naval Darwin Award-should qualify IMO. Not only because he somehow managed to lose with a fleet that had proven itself repeatedly in the opening months of the naval campaign under his predecessor/successor, but because he lost almost the entire navy and would have cost the entire naval war for his nation if not for his predecessor/replacement working miracles to regain naval superiority while vastly outnumbered.
Thanks Drach
When you started these did you ever, in either your wildest imaginings (or nightmares) think you would reach the level it has?
And I've been listening and learning (oh the horror! lol) since I found this channel in its single digits.
Thank you so much for all you have done. And an even bigger thanks to Mrs Drach for putting up with it all
In the gunnery exercises I was involved in, we didn't offset range, only bearing. Typically, the offset would be in degrees or mils (depending on whether the practice target was at sea or on land) and a 'hit' was recorded by the judges was done as you described. We would use, 'BL&P' rounds for such training, meaning, 'Blind, loaded and plugged'. They had the same weight and form as an AP round and ranging was obviously more important than bearing. Thus we'd be shooting at the wake of the ship, and we'd better hit it if we're decent Fire Control Techs.
Re Japanese Fleet problems
They did fleet exercises every September. Results were assessed in October. Promotions and rewards were given out in November.
The 4th Fleet Incident did actually have 3 Fleets sailing about, 58 ships. 1st (Battleships) and 2nd (Cruiser) Fleets were the Blue (Americans) up againat Red (4th/Japanese) Fleet. The typhoon ended up being 200 mile wide. Japanese 1st and 2nd fleet were able sidestep the storm, but 4th Fleet was near the middle of the storm, and lesser fleet units (ie destroyers) couldn't run away from typhoon (10knots max) because the waves to big and could have greater stresses on the hull. So they had to stick it out and suffer.
End of the day, it was beneficial (despite 54 lives lost) that the typhoon and Tomozuru Incident occured, as allowed the IJN to strengthened the existing hulls and improved their survivability in WW2 and helped save costs redesigning their new ships (welding aside).
Ww1 ships in Ww2: Agreed with overall statement... but I will say Fuso was the opposite. The Fusos and Ises were put in as training ships as soon as Yamato came on line, and officially designated that after Midway (2nd line roles as we know). Though Ises were converted as we all know in early 1943, Yamashiro was left as training ship.
However, the Fuso did play an pretty active war after June 43 when reactivated but never fought a battle until 25Oct44.
Fuso took part in 2 fleet sorties by Combined Fleet in trying to intercept the US 5th Fleet in October and Nov 43. Escaped Truk, before Hailstone, escaped Palau before its carrier raid, then training at Lingga with Combined Fleet. Sortied to Tawi-Tawi in anticipation of A-Go, but diverted to KON operations to relieve Biak (same as Yamatos later) and was Davao on stand by for Phillippine Sea battle. Trained again at Lingga with 2nd Fleet for next 3 months then sortied and sunk at Letye. So Fuso at least tried to fight against US Fleet.
Insular Dwarfism: I think the Great Depression and malnutrition might have something to do with how people born in the 1920s often seem so small. There were so many tiny little men from my grandparents generation and ethnicity didn't matter that much. German, Irish, Italian American, I suspect many were stunted by malnutrition. I think nutrition also explains why the Dutch are so much taller than their neighbors like the British and French.
There was also the culling of the tall more fit men due to the Great War.
Umm, there is a published study showing that tall men were selected for husbands and still are. Make of that what you want.
Army field exercises faced the same problem in that you really don't want to be actually dropping rounds on live troops. Since the operating area has a defined impact area where it was safe to fire, the artillery batteries would be assigned targets within that area and the effectiveness graded on timelines and accuracy ie. "on time, on target". Maneuvering units could be many miles away in a totally different direction or may have been elements moved around on a game board.
In my opinion, the "Des Moines" class of Heavy Cruisers were both the best looking & the greatest heavy cruiser class ever built. Their firepower for surface engagement, shore bombardment & anti-air battery was awesome.
I still feel their is a place for Naval vessels that can lay down old fashioned gun fire support, as after all, a ship of her size can still carry considerably more 8" & 5" rounds than a similar sized vessel outfitted with only missiles...not to mention the expense per round saving versus cost of missiles & time taken to manufacture. Also much harder for opposing forces to intercept & destroy an 8" (or 5") round.
The fact that you actually attempted to answer the gun accuracy question shows incredible patience . That person was a troll. I half expected you to continue on “… and by time of day, duration of battle, experience of gunnery crew, and astrological sign of the captain.”
Fushida's memoirs were taken at face value until Parshall and Tully famously exposed his lies in Shattered Sword.
Dear Uncle Drach, Longtime subscriber here. With current events in this world I feel the time has come to say we need you to apply your insight into issues of a more immediate temporal component. I love naval history, like you I come from a "Naval" (albeit military- like yourself) family. In addition I work in the defense industry here in the States. We need you do add a new channel to deal with educating the public in the ways of our current situation and how best to view and understand significant issues that traditional media sources have shown a stunning inability to communicate honestly and accurately. A certain Australian You-tuber who uses power-points every Sunday morning has shown to us all just how effective this can be. Please consider this as we move forward. Thanks for everything you do!
The single greatest threat to western sovereignty is corruption within the defense industry. You all need to start acting more like patriots and less like businessmen, because we're not getting enough capability per dollar. If we were receiving a reasonable return on investment, no one could touch us.
Your comments about how Axis admirals viewed their performance made me consider their view of the war. If a Japanese admiral believed the losses reportedly inflicted on the U. S. Navy, how many carriers, battleships, etc.. did he think the U. S. built during World War 2?
Aaaaah. Saturday morning drydock. It's good to be a patreon.
Morning coffee, the spring breeze, and a Drydock.
Aaaahhhh.
I've been a Patreon for years- and I wait 'til Sunday as Drach is a part of my Lord's Day routine.
Lefty bolts are rare and generally only found in limited runs of sporting/hunting rifles. Service bolt guns were never made with left-handed bolts, though it’s possible that somebody may have had one custom-built by a gunsmith.
Swiss straight pull/ draw carbines are ambidextrous
Bolt action for left handed people which are operated in their right minds.
I think you have to keep in mind that there is quite a bit of machining that has to be done with various parts and how they all fit together. To make a left handed version would just require to mirror the appropriate parts; however, you are talking about a massed produced components that have numerous custom milling machines set up to churn everything out in stages.
To create a left handed version would require someone to hand machine the parts, using the original plans, but flipping it inside your head to make it as a mirror. No small feat given the sheer amount of milling required. A trained machinist has a hard enough time following normal instructions.
Drach, if you want to see folks shooting lever action rifles quasi-professionally, look for videos of Cowboy Action Shooting. In my experience the fingers are left in the loop, but I have seen people doing it slightly differently. Thanks for all the entertaining teaching you do!
Thank you for reminding me at Neptune and Witchita , i totally forgot that i have these ships at WoW.
Thanks for the solid content. You are the man.
Completely agree about the left handed use of right handed bolt actions. I have one left handed bolt gun and it’s weird to use after having years of using “normal” bolt actions.
I thought of Midway for the final question.
00:29:23 Had a Winchester lever early in my life and it doesn't take but one time for someone to be working the lever as fast as they can to mess up and hammer their finger onto the trigger in that pinch point.
The only thing I was ever gun shy about handling firearms was that pinch point after I healed up.🤕 Got it good. The bad part of being quick as a cat is when the curiosity of exactly how fast you can unload a lever action catches you out.😾
I just make sure the finger is outside the loop now.
What ship is sinking at 13:00? That's a remarkable picture I've never seen before.
I believe that's a Scharnhorst in heavy seas :)
@@Drachinifelcan you do a video about the development of submarines?
To clarify, the vessel is not sinking, rather it’s demonstrating A) the scale of a high Sea State B) how poorly this class of ship fared against such - the Scharns were notorious for having A, and sometimes B turret as well, put out of action by ingress of sea water.
@@Drachinifel LOL
It was always quite interesting how the cancelled ships of the 1943 Minotaurs were essentially Ontario/Swiftsure/Superb, but with a new dual-purpose Mark XXIV turrets and they ended up developing it into the Mark XXV turrets of the Neptune-class.
It’s also peculiar just how different the 1943 Minotaurs were to the other RN cruisers as they were the only RN cruisers to have an aft center secondary mount.
Were the Montana class the last battleships designed for the U.S. navy? Although the class was never built, I was wondering if any other designs were submitted.
At 6'3" visiting the National Museum of the United States Air Force, I came to the conclusion that all WWII era and earlier people were very small.
For obvious reasons, they usually selected smaller people to go into machines with confined spaces like fighter planes, tanks and even submarines.
Eric Brown considered his smaller stature an advantage in his career as a test pilot.
Just wanted to say thanks. Your vids are helping me stay sane, or as close as I can be during chemo & surgeries for aggressive triple negative breast cancer. Due to start red devil chemo as soon as last surgery (to fit portacath) heals. Odds not good since cancer came straight back after the first batch. Hope you are well.
If anyone here has a friend or relative with Fibromyalgia please advise them that new research has identified same as an autoimmune cancer causing syndrome. *AVOID ALCOHOL AND OPIATES AT ALL TIMES.* Get full body contrast CT scans regularly because any cancer will be hyper aggressive and you won't be able to tell cancer pain from fibro pain. Ask me how I know.
You will need to be in isolation from family members and partners. Chemo leaches through the skin and the doxorubicin group drugs are much like cytotoxic snake venom. You will need to wash your clothes separately. I am not kidding here.
*Chemotherapy drugs are CARCINOGENIC.* They are especially dangerous to pre pubescent children because cancer + puberty = death sentence. Get hold of the HPV vaccine ASAP.
This has been a public information broadcast by a walking corpse.
PS when someone says they have cancer the correct response is *not* "but you look so healthy...".
The way you cycle the lever action, is different, but if works for you that's great. Most lever guns I've owned/used I find I need more fingers to cycle the action. I sometimes wear gloves to protect my fingers when cycling.
I'm not aware of any military left-handed weapons, especially rifles. Even in the post-WW2 commercial world, left-handed boltguns were rare and usually didn't last long. There's always someone bemoaning the lack of left-handed guns, but when they're produced they don't sell. So they invariably are quickly discontinued and the whole process starts over when the next advocate "discovers" a lack of left-handed guns and convinces a manufacturer to dip its toe (again) in a practically non-existent market.
Coming from a family of Southpaws you are correct. My Father ran a sporting goods store and advocated learning to shoot right handed. Easier in the long run and ends the search for a left hand action.
Though switchable or otherwise ambidextrous rifles are becoming a bit more common, especially among bullpups where it can really matter.
The French FAMAS can be switched to left-handed mode.
@@Edax_Royeaux So can the AUG, but it's not something you do just by switching shoulders. The F2000 is as about as ambi as bullpups get, but it's ergonomics otherwise are poor. I think some of the Keltec stuff is bottom eject, but they're not what you'd call milspec.
@@davefinfrock3324 If you want "as ambi as bullpups get", the obvious answer is the P90. Though of course it fires a much shorter cartridge, so bottom-eject is rendered much easier.
Darch, thanks for the shot of Lady Lex's 8" turret firing!
My understanding is that - post war - the Germans were very forthcoming with assisting the western allies, because the Soviets were on their border and an existential threat. That's a general thing, and I have no idea how that applies to the navy. In 'Instruments of Darkness' by Alfred Price there is described a post-war exercise where German night-air-combat staff co-operated greatly. It's a very interesting book on electronic warfare in WW2 by the way.
There were left hand action .303s in very small numbers _ believe specifically converted by Royal Engineers.
I'm scratching my head about a regrettable victory.
Didn't they have destroyers tow targets for practice? I seem to remember on the Caine Mutiny the Caine was towing targets for other surface vessels.
That was another way to do target practice, the offset method was for exercises against other ships :)
Lever action: 3 fingers in the loop, pushing down then up. Somewhere in that movement, trigger finger straightness out so it's clear, then reindex inside the guard once action is closed, if a follow up shot is needed.
Oddly enough, the way drach works a lever is how a martini Henry would be run.
I would put on that list of most regrettable naval defeats on where no actual shots were fired, yet soon turned out to be quite a catastrophe. And it could've been a winnable battle if better decisions had been made. That would be the escape of SMS Goeben to Turkey. Goeben only barely made it into the Dardanelles before HMS Indomitable and HMS Indefatigable caught up even with all the poor decisions made by the British and French admirals. And if Goeben had been stopped, the balance between the pro-German and pro-British factions of the Ottoman Empire might never have been tipped decisively enough for the Ottomans to enter the war. Ottoman neutrality, or even a significant delay in Ottoman entry into the war, would've been an enormous victory for the Allies, and likely would've resulted in World War I ending significantly sooner.
Meaning that such events as the Gallipoli campaign, the Battles of Verdun and the Somme, the Russian Revolution, and US entry into the war would never have happened. The Armenian genocide also would be less likely to happen, and who knows how much longer the Ottoman Empire could've survived.
Not only that, Goeben heavily contributed to the rise of the USSR and the entire clusterfuck that is the Middle East, including the War on Terror.
Goeben not escaping likely would have meant no Red October, no Cold War, no Korean War, Vietnam, none of the Israeli wars, no Taliban and no ISIS.
Victorian room sizes for the working class might be small because it was cheaper to build. The smaller the room, apartment, etc, the more units => paying tenants could be squeezed into a given volume. Comfort was a luxury.
I've visited both the "Merchants House" and the "Tenement Museum" in New York City and I was struck by how large I felt in the Tenement Museum and how natural everything in the Merchants House seemed. I'm 6'0", which would have been a little above average for the 19th Century but nothing very remarkable. My guess is the bourgeoisie was perhaps a bit bigger than the working class (generals in the United States Civil War mostly seemed to be 5'11" or 6'0" and the enlisted men a bit shorter) but the amount of space and comfort $$$ brought was even greater.
On the size question, when speaking of worker housing. Keep in mind that the persons building said housing are not going to spend any more than they must to build that house than is necessary. So skimping on a few inches between the ceiling and the floor and the width of the stairway or hall would be done because exactly who is going to complain and to whom will the complaint be lodged with?
Right, exactly. Those with the cash to spend to build a home their way will, of course get it built their way. Those with limited funds to build or rent - oh well, that's the way it is.
All main line combat rifles were right handed models, with an average of 1 in 6 people being left handed, it didn't make sense for the military to build them for left handed people. One of the advantages of lever action rifles is they are user-friendly to a person who dominate in either hand.
Yes, the Martini- Henry was made in 303 British, just some they could simplify supply, at least until they could build enough Enfields could fielded and they were great for colonial troops.
The action is compatible with either hand, but the ejection ... Not so much.
@@kemarisite the Winchester 1894 design pre 1984 top ejection model over the Angled ejection model but with the later models and the Marlins you are 100% correct.
Those were known as the Martini-Enfield, IIRC.
@@RedXlV thank you I didn't look that up but I knew they excited
Here we go again with the "Armada" as a naval defeat...😎...Cap Sant Vincent is a much bette example of naval defeat when some chances of victory were at hand (from the spanish side)...
DRACH, I thought you might appreciate this as a Brit - - I've just now finished watching the 1967 British comedy classic spoof Casino Royale (Peter Sellers, David Niven et al., jolly good show!). If ya' haven't seen it, ya must, matey!
If you do watch it, I would love to see you do a movie review. In fact, would love to see you do a whole series of movie reviews and spoofs! (PLEASE!). - - NEW TH-cam CHANNEL: DRACH'S MOVIE REVIEWS.
In general, there still aren't any left-handed military rifles, aside from a few of the modern bullpup-style ones that can swap the ejection port to the other side (for obvious reasons), and most modern rifles have ambidextrous controls, but those are all added on as an afterthought. Y'know that bump behind the ejection port of an M16A2/M4? That's to bounce the empty case, the original M16 and A1 without that bump would send the brass straight into a lefty's face. But for the vast majority of military history, you were forced to learn to shoot right-handed, there were no Brown Bess muskets with the lock on the wrong side, or lefty SMLEs. As Drach said, you CAN buy left-handed versions of many sporting rifles (and a left-ejecting Remington 870 shotgun) for twice the price of a normal one, but I just deal with the normal 870: jkbaker.com/SA/dmshotty.jpg )
When firing a lever-action rifle, on the downward movement of the lever I straighten my trigger finger so that on upward movement it is outside of the trigger guard. Keeps the finger from getting pinched and no risk of accidently pulling the trigger.
As a lefty firing an M16 back in the 1970's I don't recall being hit by an ejected casing, but definitely felt a breeze as the casings whizzed past my cheek!
32:18
USS _Porter:_ what? We *don’t* want to hit a friendly ship? Ummm …. I gotta make a radio call.
I also think Hitler mentioned scrapping the fleet was was because in WW1 the justification for the HSFleets expense was hey if this doesn't go our way we have some bargaining powerish.
Obviously anything other than total victory would mean eventual defeat for WW2 Germany. Not sure if that message really needed expounding on however metaphorical the medium.
21:34 My grandfather on my dad’s side of the family was left handed but they forced him to write right handed so no there weren’t any left handed bolt action rifles in military service. Even when you look at the old training films there has been no concession to left handed users even mentioned so if there are any left handed bolt action military rifles they would be so exceedingly rare that they would most likely be tool room prototypes.
I once read somewhere "There are no left-handed riflemen in the British Army".
I refer you to Gordon Pranges
At Dawn We Slept and Midways forward. His co authors give a picture of who was interviewed by Prange.
To add my bit to the heigh discussion. Great Britain itself is a bit too big for insular effects to occure, and it was conected to the mainland Europe not that long ago. On the other hand, smaller landmasses, like the Channel Isles, Isle of Mann and others probabley are, although probabley not in humans, especially if they depend on see for susteinance.
The animals depending on the land sources are a differend cattle of fish. For Instance the Jersey cows are smaller than their counterparts, and they are the most known ones, sadly I don't know about any others, but I'm sure they exist.
Lol "i dont like to make a habit of jamming my fingers in the mechanism."
You'd be suprised when skiff gets heavy how bad the beretta bite can tear you up until the adrenaline drops and your thumb looks like it's hanging by a thread lol 🤠
I shoot left. For the Winchester lever action I use three fingers in the lever keeping index finger out but pointed forward while cycling the action before returning it to the trigger. Pretty basic really. A friend prefers using two fingers keeping index and pinky finger out. Whatever works for you and is comfortable with practice will work.
One of my problems being a left hander shooting rifles is that my LEFT EYE is my also my dominant eye. Therefore, for good accuracy, I NEED to shoot left handed. (I tried to learn to shoot right handed). This has resulted in some oddball grips, stances etc. to shoot with guns designed for righties. This has all been civilian shooting, I'd love to know what they do in the military.
As a former US Army service man. The whole left handed issue was “solved” by a brass deflector after a few shots it falls off then the fun of hot brass down your sleeve or shirt.
And I’m referring to left handed shooters
I have seen one left heanded schmidt rubin rifle listed for sale. It was a factory modification of I believe a K-11 or G-11 rifle however I do not know why and for whom the modification was made.
As for post war accounts, I've seen comments ranging from they had an ax to grind against various people, to "the book was little more than a fantasy book of the kind you would read to small children to put them to bed." He also comented that it was so detached from reality someone has probably made a one piece level magna out of it.
on the size of british people fluctuating, i actually consider that to be the initial stages of insular dwarfism. it just didnt go the extremes seen on some islands with people and animals.
on ships remaining in service a long time, i always considered carriers a special case. their service life has a lot more to do with the aircraft they operate than the ship itself. so as long as teh ship can operate the planes it needs to and is in otherwise good repair, they just keep going.
Lexington lasted into the 90s as a training carrier. the US accepted a handling problem on the E-2/C-2 (the tail plane specifically) in order to let them fit in the hanger of the Essex class, they never did though, the E-1/C-1 fill the role until those ships retired. and the USN retired the last of the phantoms and crusader variants along with the smaller carriers in the 90's
There are no WW1 or WW2 left handed bolt action military rifles.
I have several left handed hunting rifles but even the availability of these is a relatively recent thing (commercially _circa_ 1959).
Left-handed bolt actions exist, but I've never seen one made for the military.
Lepanto would have been a regrettable naval battle if Cervantes had died during the action.
Regarding LH/RH. Logistics, especially at the field level, simply doesn't have the capacity to deal with two different rifles,. Can you imagine having two different rifles in a platoon?
There are also no LH single seat combat aircraft. 😊
8:58
USS Los Angeles, I believe.
Wouldn't a 'modern' ship start shooting either when it thought it had a chance of hitting or when it was being shot at unless there was a tactical imperative? Unless the psychology of gunnery officers changed drastically opening fire wouldn't depend much on chance of hitting. Once fire was opened the side with better gunnery conditions is going to have better hit percentages.
Guns Austro -Hungarian continued to manufacture steel-bronze landguns into WW1 -example 8 cm M 1905. larger guns such a 9.4 inch were still produced in Steel-Bronze into 19th Century, main reasin iron guns in 17th 18th early 19th century ships of the line was down to cost. dealing with 90 guns per ship of the line in Bronze would be very expensive.
One thing to remember about left handed bolt action rifles is very often in the period they were used, growing up if you’d have been discovered to be left handed, mom dad and teacher would have spent much of your upbringing literally violently beating that tendency out of you. So accommodating left handed people to that degree would have been seen as a very odd expend for s government
@21:51 about left handed bolt action rifles....Savage firearms makes LH BA rifles, for hunting. I am not aware of any service BA rifles that are LH.
Was the picture of Scharnhorst at 14:00 taken at the time of her sinking or is just bad weather? She seems to be sitting extremely low in the water. I'm confused because I thought these events occured at night time and if so how come more German sailors weren't saved,? I didn't think British ships were as close to enable them to take a picture such as this . Sorry, if I'm talking rubbish as I'm only a deck hand.
My grandpa was in WWII in the US Army and was left handed. He and all lefties had to learn to shoot right-handed.
Who is this person that thought British people had national dwarfism 😂
My uncle was in the UK in ‘43-44, and was moved by what he thought was impaired growth and thinness of the children. He visited with a family near his base, and after seeing them put what he later learned was a goodly proportion of a weeks rations on the table for tea, he made it a practice to scrape together everything possible that would otherwise be discarded from the mess and took it to them on his visits. This wasn’t very difficult, since the mess would discard half full containers of jam, peanut butter, partial loaves of bread, etc according to internal rules. He told me of an occasion where the wife teared up when one of these parcels contained the better part of a pound of butter. They just stood and looked at it for a bit, and then sent the children to bring a neighbor family over.
He was greatly moved by the stalwart endurance of the British under grindingly strict rationing of virtually everything. His stories of this were vivid. I greatly enjoyed meeting them during their visit to him in his hometown in the late 1960’s.
Would Midway count as a regrettable battle?
Was there a ship/boat in www1/ww2 era that never saw action?
Define “in WW1/2 era.”
The USN completed and commissioned ships during the closing months of WW2 that were on-track to active deployment when hostilities ended.
Example is the Baltimore class. Of the seventeen ships completed (including three built to the modified Oregon City spec ), twelve were commissioned before the Japanese capitulation on September 2, 1945, but only *seven took part in the battles of the Pacific Theater and one in the European Theater.* The remainder were still working up when the war ended.
@@dougjb7848 maybe the question should be... was there any major navy ship in the 2 worlds that did not fire their guns in anger?
Plenty, and even more if you include vessels (especially capital ships) that saw some action but still never got to fulfil their purpose.
I thought Midway might have made the list of regrettable defeats. The Japanese were always going to win that battle until they did not. The US had a good dollop of luck. and the Japanese suffered from a number of poor minor decisions that stacked up to defeat them
I’d have to disagree there. They were seen as the favorite to win, but it would be hard to see them making it out without losing a carrier or two. And if they had won, it wouldn’t have made any difference to the eventual outcome. There would have been no Guadalcanal in late ‘42 and early ‘43, but it’s not as if they could have taken Hawaii. They couldn’t have even held Midway even if they could take it (which was very much in doubt). They didn’t have the fuel to keep the fleet on station, and as soon as they left, the US would just pound the island daily with B-17s until nothing was left of the Japanese garrison. The US also had an absolutely massive fleet under construction that Japan could never hope to match, so all the US had to do was hold the line until a few more carriers launched. The only thing a Midway victory would have done is extend the war and cost more lives on both sides (but mainly Japan’s).
I would have put the Battle off Samar, the Japanese were on the cusp of winning when they decided to retire.
For the destruction of Taffy 3 itself, yes, but the rest of Seventh Fleet is another story, and the broader goal of attacking the American transports was mostly much too late by then, due to the fact the landings had begun five days earlier. Kurita could have destroyed the transport vessels themselves and some of the equipment needed to built airfields, but the majority of the supplies, the American armour support, and almost all of the US Army forces were already ashore by that point. It was never going to be the decisive victory Morison argued it could have been if Kurita hadn’t turned around.
@@bkjeong4302 We are playing a lot of "what if's" but the part that I struggle with is on land the Japanese fought until no one was left standing, the navy not so much. I can understand this through out most of the war as your ships are a very large capital investment that you can't just throw away. However, they knew that this was their last chance for a fleet engagement, it was make or break time. Saving your resources for another day wasn't in the cards. Realistically, most nations would probably have sued for peace at this point and stop the losses they were incurring. Oh well, alternative histories are just wild a$$ guesses. While most of US assets that needed to be ashore were there, there were still a lot of supply ships that if sunk would have severely hindered operations. In addition, numerous other support ships and jeep carriers could have been sunk and if that had happened the end of the war would have probably been stretched out longer. Just guessing of course. I'm glad I wasn't the one making the call that day on either side.
@@rickkephartactual7706
True, Kurita could have done more damage if he’d destroyed the remainder of Taffy 3 and then engaged the rest of Seventh Fleet; however, most people criticize him because they assume he threw away a precious opportunity to achieve his objective of ruining the American landings, and that part is very much a result of poor historiography.
Operation Sho-Go was doomed to fail before it had even started simply due to bad timing. The best-case scenario (Kurita keeps going at Samar) would have seen the IJN completely destroyed even more than happened historically, with the USN getting a bloody nose but the Philippine land operations happening with at most a delay of a few days to a week.
@@bkjeong4302 You are probably correct, however, the US Navy sustained some pretty significant losses as it was, if they lost the fleet supporting the landings you can believe they would rethink how they would conduct the rest of the war. There were already some that suggest not demanding unconditional surrender so we could stop the large loss of both manpower and machine. The US has been very loss adverse when in comes to KIA's and injuries.
@@rickkephartactual7706 the IJN were never going to win that battle. The outcome will be the same.
In the Battle of Samar
Taffy 3 was discovered and under attack but Taffy 1&2 were still hidden.
And ultimately it was the efforts of Taffy 1 and 2 air attacks which made Admiral Kurita withdraw.
Let's say they did destroy Taffy 3,
Taffy 1&2 still have
10 CVE and their escorts.
4 of those CVE are the Sangamon class.
So that's still around 300 planes.
Yeah, Kurita would've a hard time getting to the landing.
i believe the fashion around WW1 was to force lefties to act right handed as children.
As a child, British king George VI (1895-1952) was naturally left-handed. He was forced to write with his right hand, as was common practice at the time. He was not expected to become king, so that was not a factor-Wikipedia
Fuso torpedoed?
Back in the day, you were not "allowed" to be left-handed. Militaries didn't tend to be too open to anyone being different.
Regrettable naval defeat. Majorian's fleet burned by saboteurs before he could reconquer North Africa and recapture the Roman bread basket.
re: 23:03 while Brittan is an island it has never been really isolated
Isn't that the USS Los Angeles CA-135?
Yes i think it is....
Only one hour long ... are You feeling well mate ?
...How did I never realize that you're a lefty‽
21:28 Short answer: No
Long Answer: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, No.
Detailed answer: As far as the military was concerned, then and today, being left handed was your problem, not theirs. Same issue as being right handed and left eye dominant.
Source: My left-handed dad who was in the military in the 1970s.
Good stuff
I put it to everyone that acurarcy is always 50%: it either hits or it doesn't ;)
✌
The japanese didnt have the fuel todeploy them earlier
Drach, does the preponderance of broader European or Germanic immigration to the United States in the Second Industrial Revolution also factor in to the relative heights of American military personnel versus their British equivalents in the late 1800s and early 1900s?
The main factor was, by large, food and nutrition. In the late XIX early XX century, the average low class British man survives with a diet of bread, butter and sugared tea.
The average height of a British male in 1914 was 5´ 2". 157.5 cm. The limit for enlisting in the (peacetime) army was 5´3" and, in 1914, almost 40% of the recruits were rejected.
But curiously, the average height of the officers, same country, same moment, was 5´6". Just a matter of better feeding.
If the internet is to be believed, the first left-handed bolt action rifles weren't made until 1959 when Winchester came out with a couple of sport/hunting models. There are quite a few options for them today, but I don't see any evidence of southpaw military rifles ever having been issued by any country. Lots of vets (from WW2 and up) talking about how they were trained to be right-handed shooters whether they liked it or not, which may still be the case. The military prefers to mold people to fit their procedures, combat effectiveness be damned.
I've heard plenty of anecdotes from lefties about how their parents forced them to use the wrong hand as children, mostly from parents who were Boomers or older. To quote my own grandmother "eating with your left hand at the table is rude to the normal people around you and an insult to the cook" - which is typical of her overall insanity and horrible outdated ideas. Being a nonconformist leftie was apparently not something that older generations catered to at all when you get back to Boomers and before. How widespread this kind of crap is these days I don't know, but there sure seem to be few horror stories out of younger folks.
Militaries I'm aware of didn't do left handed rifles. Their approach was "congratulations soldier you are now right handed and will learn to shoot right handed"
One of the few accomodations I can think of is that since revolvers are pretty much ambidextrous and USGI M1911 semi auto pistols are definitely right handed if you was wrong handed you could get issued a WWI leftover M1917 revolver if you was a lefty.
The average height for British males was "low" (not tall) because coal mines were geared to not cave in and small workmen were needed, as well as small work houses, tools, etc. Consider the practicality and financial savings. The armed services used small males to accommodate military campaigns that utilized the swarm techniques often witnessed by marauding ant colonies. The breeding of little Brits gained popularity and became especially rampant on the stages of comedy throughout time. The only problem with this system is that it didn't bode well for the tallish British women. The spider and fly syndrome can still be seen in today's modern couples and has been known to confuse many astute anthropologists. (Stop laughing.)
Idk how it is today with all the millennials and the older zoomers at adult height but in the 90s when Gen X was the youngest generation at adult height I definitely got the impression that Brits are shorter than Americans. I'm only 6'2" and felt like a giant instead of slightly above average.
Of course at the time a decent number of WWI generation was around and lots of WWII and Korea generations around and they may have suffered from poor nutrition during the wars and the depression
the UK and USA have the same average height 5'9 , Americans tend to be rounder :)
@@davidrenton and just because that's the case in 2023 doesn't mean it was necessarily the case in the past when some now gone or mostly gone generations was around
I dunno. Yeah the Battle of Midway was preceded by months if not weeks of US Intel reading Jap decodes, but off the top of my head I can think of one or two 'butterfly wing' moments when that battle could have swung the other way....
I honestly like both the Neptune and the Minotaur very much in the Blitz version.
Hi everybody!
Greed conquers all. Now Drach did a piece on tanks for the government funded, The Tank Channel. Sad that he's gone off the rails after a few good years.
I was going to challenge you,.but decided your comment is too ignorant to bother with.
How many capital ships were actually torpedoed?
Ask the crew of Kamchatka....
Yes but the average height with reagrd to U.S. Media is 6ft 3inch male and 4 foot 11 inch female. Hand size is a bit of a myth -the hands in Victorian and up to WW2 were probably larger because of the requirement for mechanical manufacture -no air tools or power assit back then. As to Dracs engineer eye -if victorians houses were so tiny how come most rooms 2900 mm high, doors 2050 mm (>80 inches ) x 810 mm >32 inches doors -try going to B&Q and buy that size standard size is around 1980mm x 760mm 78 inches x 30 inches or less even down to 530 mm (21 inches) 😂 (my house not Victorian -actually built in Edwardian times to Victorian build standard) Living rooms /bedroom all exceed 1930s to 1950s semis and of course Wimpy /Barrat boxes and those g'd awful rabbit hutches that were L/A both pre and post WW2 builds.
What? Per CDC, US male average height 2022 was 5’9.”
Females 5’4.”
@@dougjb7848 Yes that is correct back in 1980 the 50% (50 percentile) male was 5ft 7.5 in 172 cm and female 5ft 3.5 in 161 cm. These are figures used by DoD -not least for uniform size and of course fitting in equipment aircraft tanks gun mounts, size of weapons -rifles etc (which is strange becasue it goes against the apodtion of M16 over M1 Garand and M1906). Incidentally US forces have a max height -I think it is still 6ft 8in over that and you're unfit for service. The other caviat is the average for US combatants in the Civil War was 5ft 8in (173cm) so conforms with Dracs point about agricultural population over those in cities -especially like New York.
@@dougjb7848 I think he was just talking about the portrayal of heights in the media. I mean, there are a lot of short actors that can play tall characters with clever filmmaking tricks, and then you see them and realize they’re actually 5’8”.
I assume you meant Fuso's and Ise's. I'm guessing a brain fart is at fault. Lol
23:39 Malnourishment, alcoholism and canesugar overconsumption and inbreeding was offset by emptying poorhouses and asylums into US and AUS and reduction of low Q genepools in a series of wars. Today the US grifts high IQ individuals and leaving the UK without the most important 1% of the population. It’s now a ship without captains.
As for leveraction rifles…the Marlins are better than Winchesters.
Boat