comissioning of a AEGIS guided missile cruiser. I wont say which one. Part of the ceremony is turning on the ship. So antenaes are rotated ships whistle blow ect. The Torpedo Men were to open the doors and swing out the 3 tube mount. They decided to give a show and loaded a tube with thousands of ping pong balls painted red white and blue. But they underestimated the amount of air used for launch. oops. fooom knocked down 3 rows of people in chairs.
BTW, was listening to early drydocks yesterday. Hilarious to go back and listen to Drach (when this wasnt his day job) talking about the "monster" 45 minute drydocks he was doing when he started them. 6 hour Patreon drydock: "Hold my Irn-Bru."
I strongly suspect if Fisher had commanded the BC Fleet one major change you would have seen is avoiding the signals confusion that happened at Dagger Bank and Jutland. And that change alone I suspect would have changed the outcome of both those encounters.
The idea of a n "unsinkable" merchant was also tried in WWII iirc. As I recall a U-,Boat torpedoed a merchantman *repeatedly* only to eventually find out that they'd had such a difficult time... because the holds and available spaces were filled to bursting with cork and empty oil drums, apparently in an attempt to make a U-Boat waste all of it's torpedoes/ give itself away.
I read that the German Navy used that, e.g. in France at the U-Boot bases to safely escort them out of the bases because of the mines the RN had placed there. They literally banged their way out 😆
This was a common tactic for Q-ships, whose holds were often filled with cork or other buoyant materials. It would not stop the ship sinking because of the inevitable loss of bouyancy and structural damage by the torpedo hit, but would slow the rate to the point the submarine would surface to finish it with the deck gun. Submarine captains were very aware of their limited supply of torpedos and so would be unlikely to use more than one or two torpedos on an average cargo ship relying on the deck gun when possible. For an excellent memoir of the use of Q-ships see "my Mystery ships" by Gordon Campbell V.C D.S.O Double Day Doran 1929 no ISBN for the 1st edition I have.
Launch disaster, not a naval ship, but it is a ship: SS Edmund Fitzgerald. It took 3 attempts to break the bottle of champagne over the bow, (bad omen if you believe superstition) it took 36 minutes to release the keel blocks. When the ship finally launched, it made a large wave, dousing the crowd, and the ship then crashed into the pier. THEN, a man had a heart attack and died. Maybe not a 'disaster' but is isn't great. However, if you believe superstition, the events during the launch may have helped cause the sinking. Costa Concordia also had a bad christening, and we know what happened to that ship.
Worth keeping in mind that armor plate, particularly face hardened armor like US Class "A" armor, is terrible for use in the torpedo protection. It is too brittle and does not flex enough under blast pressure, as the South Dakotas and Iowas found by tying the armor belt into the torpedo defense system, and then having to reinforce it later.
@@davidlow8104 That is what I'm seeing in the armor diagrams, a transition from class A to class B at what I assume is just below the water line. The question at was about whether carrier armor belts were part of the torpedo defense system, and I was attempting to point out that this would be a terrible idea for the reasons given.
My grandfather was a Pearl Harbor survivor and naval photographer would love to talk and share some time. He followed the Marines island across the pacific to the atom bomb tests at bikini atoll witch I have the original black and whites.
Re: Fisher at Jutland, I wonder if Beatty would have been so silent on the radio if he’d known that there was a very angry Fisher steaming up behind him? Or perhaps Fisher would have done a Rozhestvensky and started throwing things from the bridge of Iron Duke as they passed
In today's naval warfare, visual camouflage doesn't really matter anymore. You got all these sensors and weapons with hundreds of miles of range. I wish bright paint schemes and the like would make a return. I can dream. Fantastic video as always Drach. Thank you for everything you do.
If you build stealth warships that is hard to detect on radar then yeah it matter since people are trying to engineer stealth tech on todays or future warships, camo scheme also matters if you want to get into gun or boarding party range with the stealth vessel that is.
Royal Navy Patrol Ship HMS Tamar has dazzle camoflage as a nod to history, and USS Freedom had dazzle camo because the captain asked for it. It is not as important as it used to be, but it still looks cool.
@@jakemillar649 I hope HMS Dragon keeps that large red dragon icon I've seen it with through its whole service life because hot damn does a ship wearing its heraldry like that look good. In that regard I hope heraldic icons as bow art become commonplace.
My father and his mates (Royal Marines) once had a chat with some other Marines on a battleship. Besides the discipline being much tougher on the big ship, as opposed to that on a landing craft (LCM) the rivetts on the battleship would sometimes fly about whenever the 15" guns were fired. Much to the annoyance of the Marines and the sailors on board the big ship.
For age of sail book recommendations 00:35:30 I'll throw out a couple of suggestions, but only for those people who really get into the subject; because some of these books can be difficult to find and can be very expensive. Great Ships: The Battle Fleet of Charles II by Frank L. Fox - This is IMO the best reference book on warships of the mid to late 17th century. A Distant Storm: The Four Days Battle of 1666 by Frank L. Fox - You want to get an understanding of the largest and longest naval battle of the Anglo-Dutch Wars and how these huge fleets maneuvered and fought, this is it. There is also a less expensive version of the same book; I guess it's an abridged version, simply titled The Four Days Battle of 1666. The Seventy-Four Gun Ship: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Naval Architecture (4 Volume set) by Jean Boudriot - Do you want to build a 74-gun ship of the line from the ground up and maintain it? This will include learning exactly what kind of dock yard facilities you will require, and every type of wood and hemp rope; and how much, you will need for every part of the ship. Plus, as a bonus you will also learn exactly what type of iron you will need to mine; because a specific crystallization pattern is required for some metal parts. You will also learn to man and provision your new late 18th century terror of the seas. If that sounds enticing and you have money to burn, these are the books for you. I just have the first two volumes and it was cheaper to purchase them at the Musée de la Marine in Paris and mail them home, but that was a number of years ago. John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme Richard: A Reconstruction of the Ship and an Account of the Battle With H.M.S. Serapis by Jean Boudriot. A much less expensive; though not cheap, book on a more limited and specific subject, but really in depth. The amount of research done on the ship itself is freaky amazing. This author has a number of interesting books, I wish more of them were translated into English.
Hey Drach, I've being re listening to the two videos you had on the Zero. Is it possible you might dona series on the Fleet Air Arm? From early years, pre war to ww2, on development, tactics and performance vs other navel air arms?
In RE Steering and damage to... Bismark's steering casualty was not damage to the rudders nor steering machinery, but a knock on effect of a design flaw. The armored citadel ended at the steering gear and the keel and stern structure aft of that was not nearly as strong. The air dropped torpedo hit at this juncture (golden torpedo?) and the keel at that point failed allowing the stern structure to settle on the rudders jamming them in the position they were currently at...
ONI Report One torpedo struck amidships on the port side, one on the starboard quarter, and possibly a third on the port quarter; The torpedo which hit the starboard quarter wrecked the steering gear, jamming the rudders and causing the Bismarck to turn slowly in circles to the starboard. Frantic efforts were made to repair the damage: It was announced that the man who succeeded in freeing the rudders would be given the Knight Insignia of the Iron Cross. Divers succeeded in centering one rudder, but the other could not be freed, Efforts were made to steer the ship by her engines, but after a short period, instead of proceeding on her intended southeasterly course, the Bismarck was actually northwest of her position when the attack was made. There appears to have been further controversy among the officers. The captain, when asked by an officer whether he should try to blow off the jammed rudder, is reported to have replied, "Do what you like; I am through with it." The ship's best speed was now reduced to 10 to 12 knots.
Two stories of Shinano applicable to this weeks drydock: It did have a launch problem where the caissons weren't filled with water as they were supposed to be, so at launch they popped open and flooded the slipway suddenly causing the ship to bang bow and stern against the dock as things settled out. Second, her armor plate was riveted like Yamato and Musashi, which contributed to her sinking, as Archer Fish's torpedoes, set to run at 11 feet, hit the junction between the torpedo blister and the main hull, ripping the riveted armor plating apart. Shinano's damage control officer just couldn't understand the damage he was seeing as massive sections of the the ostensibly armor-plated hull had cracked open to the sea and Abe was in such a rush to get away from the 'wolf pack' (of one submarine, as it turned out) he drove tons of seawater into the ship by maintaining high speed right after the torpedo hits. (list was up to 13 degrees within minutes) From that Shinano could never recover.
Most of the armour on the Yamatos was welded: only the thickest sections were riveted due to difficulties in welding armour that thick. That part about Shinano’s incompetent DamCon is true though.
I think most ships now use a variant of the pintle and ram. The tiller is an extension along the line of the rudder within the ship, and the ram is a double-acting hydraulic cylinder at right angles. The tiller is connected by a pin to the center of the ram. on 21JULY45, Dad was XO on a destroyer in a shipping sweep through Tokyo Bay. After doing a bit of damage, they withdrew, and Dad, as tail-end-charlie, found himself doing circles, with no rudder response. He ran down to after steering, and found the crew blithely answering helm orders, and ignoring the fact that the pin connecting the tiller to the ram had fallen out. he corrected the problem, and they withdrew in good order. They were actually not in great danger: it was a night mission, and the Japanese thought it was an air raid, and never fired a shot at them. But he knew nothing of the atomic bomb, and we had liberated enough prison camps by then that the pucker factor was close to 100%.. I think this was USS BLUE, under Capt Smith (son of Gen "Howling Mad" Smith), who my dad greatly admired.
Launch problems: In the Potter biography of Nimitz, he recounts a failed launch of Derfflinger in June 1913 when the ship wouldn't budge. Instead of being launched on 14 June, she was still stuck on the ways at the end of the month.
If the French fleet had joined the allies, it's quite possible the North Africa campaign would have been over in 1941 & Crete might have remained in allied hands. That would have left the Axis with a real dilemma, though Barbarossa might have begun earlier, so Moscow & Stalingrad might have been taken. A real quantum weather butterfly twist...
Solution for the ammo consumption problem of the 1935 Gatling 20mm that's more simple than paired mounts with Orlicans: a drive motor with high and low speed windings and a switch to change fire rate. Low speed has the fire rate matched to the traditional cannon. Once you've lined up the target, flip the switch to high speed and send a burst out. Make it a momentary, and it will even automatically revert to the low fire rate when released.
Re Fisher and turning towards. It is a nice idea, but at the time there was no such signal existing in the RN at the time of Jutland, so it would be very hard to send to other ships quickly and also hardly the moment to improvise such a thing when it would allow two more German flotillas to get into attack positions.
With regard to Fisher at Jutland, if somehow he'd been able to reassign himself to sea duty, presumably his seniority would require him to command the Grand Fleet. Even though he'd probably prefer to command the battlecruisers. In which case...would that mean Jellico commands the battlecruiser fleet? And how well would Jellico do at commanding battlecruisers?
Old boats keep showing up in my city as those steel plates covering holes on streets. When I lived in Baltimore, you could almost see the aircraft carrier Coral Sea being dismantled in the bay and transferred to cover the holes that the city couldn't afford to fix properly.
Vulnerability of ship steering. Had several steering fails. Worst was a gradiant (pitman arm) failure on my tuna boat while manoeuvering through a coral reef. Could only steer a wide left circle. Had to disconnect the blockage while play strong wind, waves, currents, tide for an hour between two very shallow reefs. A friend finally got his 3hp dinghy running. With both engines we pushed and pulled the heavy 30footer through a super tight s-bend into the ramp. On other occasions oil line burst and a steering cylinder broke. A sailboat rudder is easy to maintain and fix. A wheeled yacht. Same thing with my tuna boat. Big boat steering fails are electronic or hydraulic. Mechanical Outboard steering fail at the cable bracket near the engine. If you got twin screws..differential steering with props and putting the opposite engine in reverse when turning slowly will keep you going through tight turns.
I'm going to assume you'll be paying Battleship Cove in Fall River MA? If so, I would enjoy meeting you- I'm 15 minutes away from there. Hopefully, it doesn't snow -😂- with the weirdo weather over here as of late, I'd count nothing out.
Why did the British chose the N3 design over the L3 design? And if the L3 was chosen and got built because of no Washington Naval Treaty, how would it have been modernised/performed in WW2?
N3 was chosen because compared to L3 she's 9 meters shorter and nearly 3000 tons lighter, while having the same armament and armor. Even when you don't have any treaty-imposed size limits, if you can reduce weight without any change to combat ability, that's worth doing because the smaller ship will cost less and take less time to build. As for if an L3 had been built (either there's no treaty, or Britain somehow managed to pull a Dreadnought by laying her down immediately in 1920 and having her already in service by the time the Washington Naval Conference began in November 1921), she'd probably have been refitted along similar lines to Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and Renown, with new boilers and turbines, a line of QF 4.5" BD Mk II twin turrets down each side of the superstructure, etc. Given that she probably wouldn't need to add large torpedo bulges, what with her postwar design already having better torpedo protection than the QEs, I imagine that L3 might gain some speed in that refit. Probably not quite able to keep pace with the KGVs when they're steaming at full speed, but 27 knots wouldn't be out of the question. This would definitely be a ship that Bismarck doesn't want to run into.
The octuple pom-pom had 140 rounds per gun, so the mount had 1,120 rounds aboard. Belt feed would keep the gun going long enough for an attack to be over. The ships that used them carried over average 2.5k to 3.5k rounds per gun in the magazines. So a theoretical gatling 20mm that replaced an Octuple pom pom could have 20,000k rounds available for a mission.
The Hispano-Suzia HS.404 20mm revolver cannon and it's variants were everywhere in WWII. There were belt feed variants that fired 700 rounds a minute from feed systems that look pretty well identical to what current rotary cannons use, so I don't think there would be an issue with feeding as they already had pretty fast cannons using belts traveling in raceways. I think the real issue is that the main advantage of a single rotary cannon over a dual or quad mount is it needs less crew, which wasn't a big deal in WWII, so they just kept going with what they knew worked and had factories already tooled up and building. Now days, a single 35mm Rheinmetall Oerlikon Ahead turret would sterilize the skies of WWII aircraft out to 5 km or more. Hell....they can shoot down mortar and artillery shells. th-cam.com/video/bdwjcayPuag/w-d-xo.html
The issue with gatling type of weapons, extremely high rate of weapons is the human reaction time. The fact is you can't aim a gatling. You point, watch the tracer/watch the impacts and adjust. All the while hoping you have enough ammunition to actually do something to the target. What makes Phalanx and other gun based CIWS systems so deadly is the fact humans do not have to aim the gun. They turn it on and they let it do its work. You need not just an electric motor for the gun, but for the mount too. It's an information bottleneck due to a person that makes it a very impractical idea.
The possibly main problem with a powered 20 mm Gatling gun is heat. Manual aiming of the gun means you would want to fire much longer bursts. Modern 20 mm guns do not fire very long strings. The 20mm Oerlikon had rather small magazine capasity (65 round drums?) so the barrels had some time to cool, even though there were provisons to change barrels rather quickly. The 40mm guns had water cooled barrels. There is a chance that the ammuntion reloaded system could hamper the gun as much as the Japanese Type 96 25mm guns were.
With gyroscopic sites such as those used on the later m163/m167 it's not really a human factor that's the problem. Supplying them with ammunition and electricity is going to be more trouble than it's worth. Yes they could probably have come up with something comparable to the m167 towed Vulcan turret would it be worth it in those circumstances? As a former Vulcan myself I think I would rather have more 40 mm
Since I have no clue as where to look for answers to certain questions concerning warships of the pre-dreadnaught through say 1945 I must once again ask for help from you as well as fellow subscribers/viewers. 1) I've seen any number of still photos of torpedoes being "shoe horned" ( loaded ) into WWI and WWII submarines but I've always wondered how those self same torpedoes were shipped from their assembly points. Individual crates, container tubes? 2) The USS Texas will hopefully soon be undergoing her first major overhaul in many decades before being moved to a new home. How is the even older USS Olympia even still afloat? I can't recall ever seeing or reading anything about that grand old ship and how she is maintained. I mean, unless something has changed, even "Old Ironsides" is occasionally moved from one spot to another and inspected on something of a regular basis to determine hull integrity. As a follow on to#2 I've heard, on occasion, that at least two of the ships in the Patriots Point "fleet" are slowly sinking due to degrading hull plating below the waterline and I'm pretty sure that if ANY of those floating museum ships needed to be moved, especially the aircraft carrier, for repairs to their hulls the press here in South Carolina would be all over it. I'm sorry for taking up so much time with this comment but every time a new "Drydock" video comes out new, for me at least, questions arise that I just have to ask. Take care and keep up the fantastic work you do!
As far as the USS Olympia is concerned, I saw the ship in the early 1980s,. It looked pretty good then. Later I learned the the hull was badly corroded, and according to some critics, it was actually sunk in mud which was all that kept it afloat. I am not sure that was accurate, but it did get funds available for proper preservation and restoration by the 1990s. As I understand, rather than haul it out in a drydock, they used portable cassions, and did the work in sections. Which also leads me to believe earlier reports of it's dire straits to be exaggerated. I plan to visit it again in the next year, but from all accounts, it is kept in very good shape with maintenance as needed.
@@mahbriggs Thanks for the kind and informative reply! I'm sad to say that The Lovely Bride and I once lived, in Maryland, within relatively easy driving distance of the USS Olympia but she was being treated for and later recovering from a rather rare form of cancer during our time together in that state. Money was tight and travel was, due to her condition, limited to "road trips" to and from Baltimore so despite my interest in touring the USS Olympia my wife came first and I/we never got the chance to visit her before moving back home to our beloved home state of South Carolina. I think it was in 2019, not long after we got settled into our home, that I saw a very brief, and not very informative to be honest, news story about the slowly sinking ships at Patriots Point. Since the nearest drydock(s} to Patriots Point, that I know of at least, capable of handling large ships, let's say an Essex Class aircraft carrier for example, is/are in the old U.S. Navy Yard in Charleston, SC. If what I have heard about the leaking hulls of at least two of the musem ships is true, I would think somebody would have enough pull to have the ship or ships in question towed to and repaired in one of those drydocks before it is too late.
@@fdmackey3666 There are several ship museum channels on TH-cam. The USS New Jersey one is pretty good, and most of the ship museums have a web page. Don't use Facebook myself, but most also are on there as well. I am hoping to see several of them in the next year or two, if I can afford the gas!
I would be curious to get your insight in the history of how knots became the standard unit of speed for warships, and stuff like what exactly is a knot and what did they use in the age of sail
A knot is simply one nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile was historically 1/60th of a degree of latitude, or 1/21,600th of the circumference of the Earth. Since that circumference varies depending on the section, it's been defined by various countries to varying degrees of precision, all of which are in the neighborhood of 1,850 m.
@@kemarisite yes but a knot tends to be faster than MPH and i thought it wasn't a set amount of distance rather a distance and time traveled on the longitude/latitude
I'd be surprised. The North Carolinas and South Dakotas didn't with the US fleet the previous 2-3 years. Sure the top speed is lower than the carriers, but the carriers rarely need to run flat out for very long, and they can easily cruise along at the same speed the rest of the time without getting too fuel inefficient.
@@timothyschmidt9566 wikipedia lists a range of 11,000 nautical miles at 14 knots versus 15,600 knots at 10 knots. Doesnt look to me like there would be a huge difference at the same speed.
The range of the KGVs may be lesser as they have to cheese it to keep up with the carriers. So the slower top speed is no issue but lower cruising speed maybe issue? As to keep up they have to go faster than they like it?
XD. Any scenario where you add fisher just gets infinitely more entertaining due to both his good strategic thinking, understanding of his ships and his aggressive nature. Wouldve been interesting to see what fisher would have done at the 2nd battle of heligoland bight. Considering only Repulse was detached from 1st battlecruiser squadron and acted as a rear guard.
I've read the book "Pig Boats" that is referenced in the question at 00:37:28 and it strangely mirrors the movie U-571, in that it takes real accomplishments of Royal Navy submarines during WW1 and has them accomplished by an American submarine. More interesting than the book is the movie that it inspired, made in 1930 titled "Hell Below." The story from the novel was completely ditched for a new, totally different and even crazier story. For some reason they have an American submarine patrolling the Adriatic and getting attacked by a Gotha bomber. The highlight of the movie is when a Clemson class destroyer is blown in two and sinks. Not a model of a Clemson class destroyer, it was the real thing. Though they also mixed in some shots of a ship model. They even had stunt men onboard and you get to see them jump overboard before both half's of the destroyer go down. The movie company purchased a destroyer that was to be scrapped in compliance with the London Naval Treaty and the U.S. Navy's loss became Hollywood's gain. I'm pretty sure you can find video of it on TH-cam.
A similar thing happened to the CGT liner Ile de France. The poor old thing was sunk in shallow water in the making of a hollywood pot-boiler called The Last Voyage. She was then raised and scrapped. A very undignified end.
@@notshapedforsportivetricks2912 - Yea, I've seen it and it's a pretty mediocre movie. I met the author of a book on the sinking of the Andrea Doria and he told me the plot of The Last Voyage was actually taken from an actual incident in the sinking of the Andrea Doria. There was a women passenger who was trapped under a metal bulkhead and cabin furniture when the Doria was rammed. Her compartment was right next to where the bow of the Stockholm smashed into the Doria. There was a race to get her out before rising water drowned her, just like the movie. I think they even got an oxyacetylene torch from another ship to help cut her loose, just as in the movie. Tragically, when they finally freed her, she went into shock and died moments later. She had probably suffered crushing injuries which didn't bleed out internally because of the huge amount of weight on top of her, similar to case of person who falls off a subway platform and gets crushed by a train against the platform, but will survive for hours until the train is moved off of them. That knowledge made The Last Voyage seem even worse to me. Taking an actual tragic story and tacking on a happy ending to make a movie out it seemed a lot worse to me than sinking the poor old Île de France for the movie. I forgot, the Île de France was the first ship to reach the Andrea Doria and rescued most of her passengers.
In terms of gatling guns, the first large use of gatlings or miniguns were in Vietnam War largely on fixed wing aircraft and rotary aircraft, especially on late version of Hueys, AC-47 gunships and jet fighters. Kn WWII most warring nations use old fashioned guns or Autocannons.
Corollary is a hard word to pronounce - do you deliberately simplify it to "corally"? I was disappointed in your answer to the rudder question. You almost completely avoided talking about the actuating mechanisms, other than vaguely alluding to the ropes used on age of sail ships. There is surely a huge difference between mechanisms used in steel ships, and perhaps quite a lot of variation and experimentation by different nations.
Rivet popping in tanks is a myth - there is little if any evidence of tanks in WW2 in particular that rivets break off and rattle around inside a tank (ar least in British and US tanks) -the nature of tank construction was such that a hit which was capable of displacing rivets would in a welded or cast structure cause equally catastrophic spalling of the inner surface. -Tank manufacture went over to welding for much the same reason ship building went over to welding -it was cheaper required less space. less training of personnel, Ships armour apart from splinter shields was not riveted - nothing on a ship beyond boiler plating was riveted -one certainly never would have tried to rivet sections of 40 lb 1 inch armour plate together, set screws were the standard in fastening those to structure and boiler plating.
Don't know whats going on with your favourite museum Portsmouth.Tried booking but got no indication of failure on the website, but no confirmation email either.
Imperial Russian Navy destroyer Novik Engels was fitted with a 305 mm (12 in) recoilless rifle for testing in 1934. Picture looks pretty wild fitted out with this weapon hanging off the stern.
The SS Daphne sunk on launch from Alexander Stephens yard in Govan on 3/7/1883 , she dragged an anchor and capsized taking nearly 200 with her of which 124 died
Nothing to do with current dry dock, I was wiki-ing some stuff from previous. Manley Powers (RN) is not the first Manley Powers in the British Armed forces... en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manley_Power I wonder which Manley was more manly and/or greater powers...
So, now we have the ridiculous Tony Blair 2000 strategy, underarmed giant empty boxes. The UK/RN absolutely ruined any chance of the RN having any relevance they might have had.
In terms of Gatling guns bear in mind that the later m163/m167 Vulcan cannons fired in a 30/60/100 round burst mode. There was a setting for no burst limit but that was itself limited to about 1,000 rounds per minute simply because you couldn't keep the thing fed otherwise. I'm not certain how the phalanx and descendants handles this issue, but remember it's very much a niche weapon, that typically will not be asked to handle a sustained attack.
(40:27) One possible solution is quite simple! Have a multiple speed motor on the Gatling gun!! They've done 2 speed motors (and upon occasion a 3 speed motor on various trial guns) this would allow you to track and correct aim at let's say 750 Rounds Per Minute, and perhaps up to 2,250 RPM at a target! (I don't see the need for much more than 2,250 at an attacking airplane during WW2 (except for perhaps Me262s and the Ohka (Baka) aircraft, and those were exceedingly rare!)
What is the warship firstshown? Not the U.S.S Roaoke of the 1850's or lt. crusier of WW II. The steam frigate was badly converted to a three turret ocean-going monitor.
The "WW2 Gatling" is a neat idea, but as stated below you are relying on the Mk1 Eyeball, possibly aided by a lead-computing sight. A good dose will literally tear a WW2 aircraft apart, but one needs to hit. Another detail is that by the time your 20mm has engaged, corrected, and hit, the other guy's aircraft has probably released its payload. 20mm are easy to install in great numbers, but they are really good for causing the pilot to pilot to lose his aim, less so for stopping a determined attacker (like a kamikaze). Unless the aircraft is physically torn to bits the wreckage may still come in at the ship. A power failure would also leave a big gap in the air defenses (presumably they would only be one part of a layered AA defense).
The British did a much simpler system , they used Merchant ships as as Anti Aircraft Ships, the Ulster Queen using radar shot down a JU88 through the clouds on PQ18.
The pre-WWII steel present in the wrecks of the German High Seas Fleet and various wrecks around the world (HMS Renown, Prince of Wales and HMAS Perth (I) in particular) is particularly valued for high-precision radiological instruments. A reason people violate the war graves of these sites for scrap.
Teddy roosevelt book on the war of 1812. Pretty good. He kind of oversold his point at times but was very clear as to why american ships had advantages early and how that advantage turned into a liability in later war engagement.
@Drachinifel have you ever considered narrating a Naval audio book or writing your own book? Or just excellent TH-cam content and such for the foreseeable future?
Having lost steering at the dock as in transmission in command did an emediot port turn ran to my lazoret with my mate at helm doing circles saw the cable to transmission broken ran to tools grabbing a vicelock and was able to shift transmission but no view as to heading hot to dock and tied off thank God and my thinking
There is a Mark 28 torpedo, it was an electric torpedo developed from the Mark 18. The Mark 28 was in service from 1944 until 1960, so I'm not sure that's the one you mean. The Mark 14 21" submarine torpedo was initially terrible and Drach has a video on the subject, subtitled Failure is Like Onions or something like that.
Sideways launches have been noted for some large wave events. When the Edmund Fitzgerald was launched the wave event was large enough that on of the people at the launch suffered a fatal heart attack.
4:10 The Yamato battleship was notable for accidently flooding a nearby district when launched. There mightve been some miscalculations on how much displacement Yamato had when launched.
Gatlings in WWII: Instead of a 20mm round, what if they'd made electric Gatlings in .50 BMG? They could probably be made to use the same belts that the M2 Brownings already did, making ammunition supply simpler, though being able to feed the thing would be a lot tougher than an M2; you'd have to link several belts together just to be able to fire it for more than a second or three, and at 3,000 rpm the .50BMG round might be able to rip apart aircraft a lot better. You'd really want radar fire control for either that or the 20mm version just to get it pointed int he right way fast enough
20 mm is only good for point defense. Even the Vulcan air defense cannons from the 50s and 60s on which the phalanx is based only have a maximum slant range of about 2,500 m. The 50 BMG is an even more limited round. Conceivably this would have been useful against kamikazes but on the whole I think I would rather have more 40 mm
Regarding the Vulcan/phalanx type Gatling gun being available in 1940, could the material science and manufacturing available in 1940 be enough to build a phalanx type Gatling gun?
Gatling guns are not classified as machine guns under American law. When the local museum had one for sale, a friend bought it and mounted a car starter on it. It’s basically what a Vulcan is. The problem was the gravity feed system wasn’t up to feeding cartridges into the gun at that speed. With the resources of the government, they probably could have solved that problem.
@@silenceoftheyams5969 Probably should tell your friend to be careful, that counts as manufacturing an illegal machine gun the moment an electric motor is mounted to it.
@@toddwebb7521 Under current law, a machine gun is classified as one barrel that fires in full automatic, a Gatling gun, even a Vulcan, doesn’t function that way. It’s a system to reload a cluster of single shot barrels very fast as they rotate and fire continuously. The later version, with the crank in the back instead of on the side, was capable of 900 to 1,200 shots per minute, already higher than most standard military machine guns today. Putting a electric motor on one is easy, converting it from gravity feed to a belt system isn’t worth the time and money it would take to make to make it work. As Vulcans are only manufactured as military arms, it’s classified as a military arm and under the same restrictions. It’s not illegal to build your own version for yourself, just too expensive to be practical.
Drachma, I watched a very funny movie last night titled Yellowbeard. My question is, when did the practice of using press gangs to Shanghai crews for naval vessels come to an end ?
One issue with the 20 mm gatling is that its an heavier mount so you might prefer an 40 mm instead. But the idea of standard 20 mm with tracers to walk and the gatling to kill might work well against kamikaze.
The main issue I would see is getting a reliable 20mm rotary cannon. In particular the feed system. A quadruple or octuple gun has four or eight feed systems so their feed systems only need to be 1/4 or 1/8 the speed of a gattling type cannon. And in the event of any failure you lose 1/4 or 1/8 your firepower rather than all of it. The feed system was a significant issue the Americans had in developing the Vulcan, and more generally is a major source of failures in firearms.
Drach - as always, great. BUT, would you please caption the photos you show as you speak. When you're discussing steering gear, what ship has this great red rudder? Also, btw, enjoy your US trip but very disappointed to see you're missing San Francisco Bay Area while going to LA (poor choice. SFBA has USS Hornet, National Maritime Museum with clipper Balclutha etc, Rosie the Riveter museum, USS Pampanito, Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien, Victory ship Red Oak Victory....Happy to host you if this changes your mind.
@@CharlesStearman thank you, I thought so. Mnay of the photos are more obscure and it would be good if they could be captioned. More work, I know, but not that much more.
A comment and a question. Comment: the pairing of a standard 20mm with a 20mm gatling sounds quite similar to the ranging machine gun on a Chieftain MBT (feel free to compare/contrast this with the man in the hatch). . Question: Could a 20mm gatling be worked into a ship's torpedo defense system? After all, shooting at torpedoes did sometimes work. The trick would be early (enough) warning and giving the gun enough depression to work in as close as possible to the ship.
SINCE the hypothetical 20mm Gatling was ELECTRIC drive, why not just reduce the speed with a second trigger? - no second gun or mount or feed mechanism - just a second speed or variable rheostat like on a sewing machine. start with a light trigger squeeze and as the deflection or lead began to match the target, squeeze harder and increase rate-of-fire. or a separate foot pedal for speed and a trigger for on/off. As for tracers every 3rd round, that is done when loading the belt. You want a spacing such that all barrels used would fire equal number of tracers - so a mutually prime number like 5 barrels and every third round in the feed belt would assure equal use of all barrels to try to keep from having a single barrel skew the visual effect of the tracers not matching the AP rounds.
Torpedoes were normally set to run deep enough (10+ feet) that a small caliber gun like a 20 mm, even firing an explosive shell, would not reach and do anything to it.
comissioning of a AEGIS guided missile cruiser. I wont say which one. Part of the ceremony is turning on the ship. So antenaes are rotated ships whistle blow ect. The Torpedo Men were to open the doors and swing out the 3 tube mount. They decided to give a show and loaded a tube with thousands of ping pong balls painted red white and blue. But they underestimated the amount of air used for launch. oops. fooom knocked down 3 rows of people in chairs.
FITREP Bullet Point
Having lost steering on a single screw FFG seven class, the auxiliary power units that were slow but very welcome alternative
BTW, was listening to early drydocks yesterday. Hilarious to go back and listen to Drach (when this wasnt his day job) talking about the "monster" 45 minute drydocks he was doing when he started them.
6 hour Patreon drydock: "Hold my Irn-Bru."
I strongly suspect if Fisher had commanded the BC Fleet one major change you would have seen is avoiding the signals confusion that happened at Dagger Bank and Jutland. And that change alone I suspect would have changed the outcome of both those encounters.
The idea of a n "unsinkable" merchant was also tried in WWII iirc.
As I recall a U-,Boat torpedoed a merchantman *repeatedly* only to eventually find out that they'd had such a difficult time... because the holds and available spaces were filled to bursting with cork and empty oil drums, apparently in an attempt to make a U-Boat waste all of it's torpedoes/ give itself away.
I read that the German Navy used that, e.g. in France at the U-Boot bases to safely escort them out of the bases because of the mines the RN had placed there. They literally banged their way out 😆
This was a common tactic for Q-ships, whose holds were often filled with cork or other buoyant materials. It would not stop the ship sinking because of the inevitable loss of bouyancy and structural damage by the torpedo hit, but would slow the rate to the point the submarine would surface to finish it with the deck gun. Submarine captains were very aware of their limited supply of torpedos and so would be unlikely to use more than one or two torpedos on an average cargo ship relying on the deck gun when possible. For an excellent memoir of the use of Q-ships see "my Mystery ships" by Gordon Campbell V.C D.S.O Double Day Doran 1929 no ISBN for the 1st edition I have.
@@johnnemo6509 not a guarantee though, see USS "Atik"
Launch disaster, not a naval ship, but it is a ship: SS Edmund Fitzgerald. It took 3 attempts to break the bottle of champagne over the bow, (bad omen if you believe superstition) it took 36 minutes to release the keel blocks. When the ship finally launched, it made a large wave, dousing the crowd, and the ship then crashed into the pier. THEN, a man had a heart attack and died.
Maybe not a 'disaster' but is isn't great. However, if you believe superstition, the events during the launch may have helped cause the sinking. Costa Concordia also had a bad christening, and we know what happened to that ship.
But it made a good song. And a pretty good beer.
Worth keeping in mind that armor plate, particularly face hardened armor like US Class "A" armor, is terrible for use in the torpedo protection. It is too brittle and does not flex enough under blast pressure, as the South Dakotas and Iowas found by tying the armor belt into the torpedo defense system, and then having to reinforce it later.
I thought they used class B in the tapered lower section?
@@davidlow8104 That is what I'm seeing in the armor diagrams, a transition from class A to class B at what I assume is just below the water line. The question at was about whether carrier armor belts were part of the torpedo defense system, and I was attempting to point out that this would be a terrible idea for the reasons given.
@@kemarisite oh that makes sense
My grandfather was a Pearl Harbor survivor and naval photographer would love to talk and share some time. He followed the Marines island across the pacific to the atom bomb tests at bikini atoll witch I have the original black and whites.
Re: Fisher at Jutland, I wonder if Beatty would have been so silent on the radio if he’d known that there was a very angry Fisher steaming up behind him? Or perhaps Fisher would have done a Rozhestvensky and started throwing things from the bridge of Iron Duke as they passed
In today's naval warfare, visual camouflage doesn't really matter anymore. You got all these sensors and weapons with hundreds of miles of range. I wish bright paint schemes and the like would make a return.
I can dream.
Fantastic video as always Drach.
Thank you for everything you do.
If you build stealth warships that is hard to detect on radar then yeah it matter since people are trying to engineer stealth tech on todays or future warships, camo scheme also matters if you want to get into gun or boarding party range with the stealth vessel that is.
Royal Navy Patrol Ship HMS Tamar has dazzle camoflage as a nod to history, and USS Freedom had dazzle camo because the captain asked for it. It is not as important as it used to be, but it still looks cool.
@@jakemillar649 I hope HMS Dragon keeps that large red dragon icon I've seen it with through its whole service life because hot damn does a ship wearing its heraldry like that look good. In that regard I hope heraldic icons as bow art become commonplace.
My family is in Kharkiv, 🇺🇦 I'm in America and your channel gives my love of ships ✌ peace.
Who ?
My father and his mates (Royal Marines) once had a chat with some other Marines on a battleship. Besides the discipline being much tougher on the big ship, as opposed to that on a landing craft (LCM) the rivetts on the battleship would sometimes fly about whenever the 15" guns were fired. Much to the annoyance of the Marines and the sailors on board the big ship.
For age of sail book recommendations 00:35:30 I'll throw out a couple of suggestions, but only for those people who really get into the subject; because some of these books can be difficult to find and can be very expensive.
Great Ships: The Battle Fleet of Charles II by Frank L. Fox - This is IMO the best reference book on warships of the mid to late 17th century.
A Distant Storm: The Four Days Battle of 1666 by Frank L. Fox - You want to get an understanding of the largest and longest naval battle of the Anglo-Dutch Wars and how these huge fleets maneuvered and fought, this is it. There is also a less expensive version of the same book; I guess it's an abridged version, simply titled The Four Days Battle of 1666.
The Seventy-Four Gun Ship: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Naval Architecture (4 Volume set) by Jean Boudriot - Do you want to build a 74-gun ship of the line from the ground up and maintain it? This will include learning exactly what kind of dock yard facilities you will require, and every type of wood and hemp rope; and how much, you will need for every part of the ship. Plus, as a bonus you will also learn exactly what type of iron you will need to mine; because a specific crystallization pattern is required for some metal parts. You will also learn to man and provision your new late 18th century terror of the seas. If that sounds enticing and you have money to burn, these are the books for you.
I just have the first two volumes and it was cheaper to purchase them at the Musée de la Marine in Paris and mail them home, but that was a number of years ago.
John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme Richard: A Reconstruction of the Ship and an Account of the Battle With H.M.S. Serapis by Jean Boudriot. A much less expensive; though not cheap, book on a more limited and specific subject, but really in depth. The amount of research done on the ship itself is freaky amazing. This author has a number of interesting books, I wish more of them were translated into English.
Hey Drach, I've being re listening to the two videos you had on the Zero. Is it possible you might dona series on the Fleet Air Arm? From early years, pre war to ww2, on development, tactics and performance vs other navel air arms?
35:21. Yorktown at Midway and Enterprise at Guadalcanal were held together with spitballs and hope and still did ok.
Yorktown at midway is such a meme, ''Were gona need two weeks to repair the ship'' ''You have until tomorrow morning to get her ready''
In RE Steering and damage to... Bismark's steering casualty was not damage to the rudders nor steering machinery, but a knock on effect of a design flaw. The armored citadel ended at the steering gear and the keel and stern structure aft of that was not nearly as strong. The air dropped torpedo hit at this juncture (golden torpedo?) and the keel at that point failed allowing the stern structure to settle on the rudders jamming them in the position they were currently at...
ONI Report
One torpedo struck amidships on the port side, one on the starboard quarter, and possibly a third on the port quarter; The torpedo which hit the starboard quarter wrecked the steering gear, jamming the rudders and causing the Bismarck to turn slowly in circles to the starboard. Frantic efforts were made to repair the damage: It was announced that the man who succeeded in freeing the rudders would be given the Knight Insignia of the Iron Cross. Divers succeeded in centering one rudder, but the other could not be freed, Efforts were made to steer the ship by her engines, but after a short period, instead of proceeding on her intended southeasterly course, the Bismarck was actually northwest of her position when the attack was made. There appears to have been further controversy among the officers. The captain, when asked by an officer whether he should try to blow off the jammed rudder, is reported to have replied, "Do what you like; I am through with it." The ship's best speed was now reduced to 10 to 12 knots.
Two stories of Shinano applicable to this weeks drydock: It did have a launch problem where the caissons weren't filled with water as they were supposed to be, so at launch they popped open and flooded the slipway suddenly causing the ship to bang bow and stern against the dock as things settled out.
Second, her armor plate was riveted like Yamato and Musashi, which contributed to her sinking, as Archer Fish's torpedoes, set to run at 11 feet, hit the junction between the torpedo blister and the main hull, ripping the riveted armor plating apart. Shinano's damage control officer just couldn't understand the damage he was seeing as massive sections of the the ostensibly armor-plated hull had cracked open to the sea and Abe was in such a rush to get away from the 'wolf pack' (of one submarine, as it turned out) he drove tons of seawater into the ship by maintaining high speed right after the torpedo hits. (list was up to 13 degrees within minutes) From that Shinano could never recover.
Most of the armour on the Yamatos was welded: only the thickest sections were riveted due to difficulties in welding armour that thick. That part about Shinano’s incompetent DamCon is true though.
I think most ships now use a variant of the pintle and ram. The tiller is an extension along the line of the rudder within the ship, and the ram is a double-acting hydraulic cylinder at right angles. The tiller is connected by a pin to the center of the ram.
on 21JULY45, Dad was XO on a destroyer in a shipping sweep through Tokyo Bay. After doing a bit of damage, they withdrew, and Dad, as tail-end-charlie, found himself doing circles, with no rudder response. He ran down to after steering, and found the crew blithely answering helm orders, and ignoring the fact that the pin connecting the tiller to the ram had fallen out. he corrected the problem, and they withdrew in good order.
They were actually not in great danger: it was a night mission, and the Japanese thought it was an air raid, and never fired a shot at them. But he knew nothing of the atomic bomb, and we had liberated enough prison camps by then that the pucker factor was close to 100%.. I think this was USS BLUE, under Capt Smith (son of Gen "Howling Mad" Smith), who my dad greatly admired.
Launch problems: In the Potter biography of Nimitz, he recounts a failed launch of Derfflinger in June 1913 when the ship wouldn't budge. Instead of being launched on 14 June, she was still stuck on the ways at the end of the month.
If the French fleet had joined the allies, it's quite possible the North Africa campaign would have been over in 1941 & Crete might have remained in allied hands. That would have left the Axis with a real dilemma, though Barbarossa might have begun earlier, so Moscow & Stalingrad might have been taken.
A real quantum weather butterfly twist...
Solution for the ammo consumption problem of the 1935 Gatling 20mm that's more simple than paired mounts with Orlicans: a drive motor with high and low speed windings and a switch to change fire rate. Low speed has the fire rate matched to the traditional cannon. Once you've lined up the target, flip the switch to high speed and send a burst out. Make it a momentary, and it will even automatically revert to the low fire rate when released.
Re Fisher and turning towards. It is a nice idea, but at the time there was no such signal existing in the RN at the time of Jutland, so it would be very hard to send to other ships quickly and also hardly the moment to improvise such a thing when it would allow two more German flotillas to get into attack positions.
With regard to Fisher at Jutland, if somehow he'd been able to reassign himself to sea duty, presumably his seniority would require him to command the Grand Fleet. Even though he'd probably prefer to command the battlecruisers. In which case...would that mean Jellico commands the battlecruiser fleet? And how well would Jellico do at commanding battlecruisers?
Your description of Jelicoe in command sounded very much like you could have been describing’Chin’ Lee!
Old boats keep showing up in my city as those steel plates covering holes on streets. When I lived in Baltimore, you could almost see the aircraft carrier Coral Sea being dismantled in the bay and transferred to cover the holes that the city couldn't afford to fix properly.
Launch disasters? The launch of HMS Captain, the launch went fine and the ship didn’t sink, which of course was the disaster.
Vulnerability of ship steering. Had several steering fails. Worst was a gradiant (pitman arm) failure on my tuna boat while manoeuvering through a coral reef. Could only steer a wide left circle. Had to disconnect the blockage while play strong wind, waves, currents, tide for an hour between two very shallow reefs. A friend finally got his 3hp dinghy running. With both engines we pushed and pulled the heavy 30footer through a super tight s-bend into the ramp. On other occasions oil line burst and a steering cylinder broke. A sailboat rudder is easy to maintain and fix. A wheeled yacht. Same thing with my tuna boat. Big boat steering fails are electronic or hydraulic. Mechanical Outboard steering fail at the cable bracket near the engine. If you got twin screws..differential steering with props and putting the opposite engine in reverse when turning slowly will keep you going through tight turns.
I'm going to assume you'll be paying Battleship Cove in Fall River MA? If so, I would enjoy meeting you- I'm 15 minutes away from there. Hopefully, it doesn't snow -😂- with the weirdo weather over here as of late, I'd count nothing out.
Steel from HMS Vanguard was used as the floor in British Steel River Don apprentice work shop
"Spitballs and Hope"; Sounds like me designing the RM in HOI4.
Sounds like the last briefing I had in the infantry...
@@thehandoftheking3314 2nd ID '84-'85 Korean DMZ...so they haven't learned anything since then, oli? Damn...
@@mikhailiagacesa3406 2005, duke of Wellington's Regiment Iraq.
"What's the plan sir?" Sitting in a snatch landrover
"Well...."
Why did the British chose the N3 design over the L3 design? And if the L3 was chosen and got built because of no Washington Naval Treaty, how would it have been modernised/performed in WW2?
N3 was chosen because compared to L3 she's 9 meters shorter and nearly 3000 tons lighter, while having the same armament and armor. Even when you don't have any treaty-imposed size limits, if you can reduce weight without any change to combat ability, that's worth doing because the smaller ship will cost less and take less time to build.
As for if an L3 had been built (either there's no treaty, or Britain somehow managed to pull a Dreadnought by laying her down immediately in 1920 and having her already in service by the time the Washington Naval Conference began in November 1921), she'd probably have been refitted along similar lines to Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and Renown, with new boilers and turbines, a line of QF 4.5" BD Mk II twin turrets down each side of the superstructure, etc. Given that she probably wouldn't need to add large torpedo bulges, what with her postwar design already having better torpedo protection than the QEs, I imagine that L3 might gain some speed in that refit. Probably not quite able to keep pace with the KGVs when they're steaming at full speed, but 27 knots wouldn't be out of the question.
This would definitely be a ship that Bismarck doesn't want to run into.
On 20mm Gatling in WW2 - would the ammo feed systems of the day actually have been able to keep up with the consumption for any length of time?
The octuple pom-pom had 140 rounds per gun, so the mount had 1,120 rounds aboard. Belt feed would keep the gun going long enough for an attack to be over. The ships that used them carried over average 2.5k to 3.5k rounds per gun in the magazines. So a theoretical gatling 20mm that replaced an Octuple pom pom could have 20,000k rounds available for a mission.
Ah wow, that's way more than I would have expected.
@@thomasrast6710 You can find pictures online, you'd be surprised how many "small" calibre rounds you can stack in a magazine.
@@Drachinifel the bigger issue would be getting ammunition into the gun.
An octuple pompom has eight separate feed systems, a rotary cannon has one.
The Hispano-Suzia HS.404 20mm revolver cannon and it's variants were everywhere in WWII. There were belt feed variants that fired 700 rounds a minute from feed systems that look pretty well identical to what current rotary cannons use, so I don't think there would be an issue with feeding as they already had pretty fast cannons using belts traveling in raceways.
I think the real issue is that the main advantage of a single rotary cannon over a dual or quad mount is it needs less crew, which wasn't a big deal in WWII, so they just kept going with what they knew worked and had factories already tooled up and building.
Now days, a single 35mm Rheinmetall Oerlikon Ahead turret would sterilize the skies of WWII aircraft out to 5 km or more. Hell....they can shoot down mortar and artillery shells. th-cam.com/video/bdwjcayPuag/w-d-xo.html
The issue with gatling type of weapons, extremely high rate of weapons is the human reaction time.
The fact is you can't aim a gatling. You point, watch the tracer/watch the impacts and adjust. All the while hoping you have enough ammunition to actually do something to the target.
What makes Phalanx and other gun based CIWS systems so deadly is the fact humans do not have to aim the gun. They turn it on and they let it do its work. You need not just an electric motor for the gun, but for the mount too. It's an information bottleneck due to a person that makes it a very impractical idea.
It's called Spray and Pray technique, it's fun to learn tho
The possibly main problem with a powered 20 mm Gatling gun is heat. Manual aiming of the gun means you would want to fire much longer bursts. Modern 20 mm guns do not fire very long strings. The 20mm Oerlikon had rather small magazine capasity (65 round drums?) so the barrels had some time to cool, even though there were provisons to change barrels rather quickly. The 40mm guns had water cooled barrels. There is a chance that the ammuntion reloaded system could hamper the gun as much as the Japanese Type 96 25mm guns were.
With gyroscopic sites such as those used on the later m163/m167 it's not really a human factor that's the problem.
Supplying them with ammunition and electricity is going to be more trouble than it's worth.
Yes they could probably have come up with something comparable to the m167 towed Vulcan turret would it be worth it in those circumstances? As a former Vulcan myself I think I would rather have more 40 mm
Most the notable launch failures, the boat be like "You know what, I identify as a submarine."
Since I have no clue as where to look for answers to certain questions concerning warships of the pre-dreadnaught through say 1945 I must once again ask for help from you as well as fellow subscribers/viewers. 1) I've seen any number of still photos of torpedoes being "shoe horned" ( loaded ) into WWI and WWII submarines but I've always wondered how those self same torpedoes were shipped from their assembly points. Individual crates, container tubes? 2) The USS Texas will hopefully soon be undergoing her first major overhaul in many decades before being moved to a new home. How is the even older USS Olympia even still afloat? I can't recall ever seeing or reading anything about that grand old ship and how she is maintained. I mean, unless something has changed, even "Old Ironsides" is occasionally moved from one spot to another and inspected on something of a regular basis to determine hull integrity. As a follow on to#2 I've heard, on occasion, that at least two of the ships in the Patriots Point "fleet" are slowly sinking due to degrading hull plating below the waterline and I'm pretty sure that if ANY of those floating museum ships needed to be moved, especially the aircraft carrier, for repairs to their hulls the press here in South Carolina would be all over it. I'm sorry for taking up so much time with this comment but every time a new "Drydock" video comes out new, for me at least, questions arise that I just have to ask. Take care and keep up the fantastic work you do!
As far as the USS Olympia is concerned, I saw the ship in the early 1980s,. It looked pretty good then. Later I learned the the hull was badly corroded, and according to some critics, it was actually sunk in mud which was all that kept it afloat. I am not sure that was accurate, but it did get funds available for proper preservation and restoration by the 1990s.
As I understand, rather than haul it out in a drydock, they used portable cassions, and did the work in sections. Which also leads me to believe earlier reports of it's dire straits to be exaggerated. I plan to visit it again in the next year, but from all accounts, it is kept in very good shape with maintenance as needed.
@@mahbriggs Thanks for the kind and informative reply! I'm sad to say that The Lovely Bride and I once lived, in Maryland, within relatively easy driving distance of the USS Olympia but she was being treated for and later recovering from a rather rare form of cancer during our time together in that state. Money was tight and travel was, due to her condition, limited to "road trips" to and from Baltimore so despite my interest in touring the USS Olympia my wife came first and I/we never got the chance to visit her before moving back home to our beloved home state of South Carolina. I think it was in 2019, not long after we got settled into our home, that I saw a very brief, and not very informative to be honest, news story about the slowly sinking ships at Patriots Point. Since the nearest drydock(s} to Patriots Point, that I know of at least, capable of handling large ships, let's say an Essex Class aircraft carrier for example, is/are in the old U.S. Navy Yard in Charleston, SC. If what I have heard about the leaking hulls of at least two of the musem ships is true, I would think somebody would have enough pull to have the ship or ships in question towed to and repaired in one of those drydocks before it is too late.
@@fdmackey3666
There are several ship museum channels on TH-cam. The USS New Jersey one is pretty good, and most of the ship museums have a web page. Don't use Facebook myself, but most also are on there as well. I am hoping to see several of them in the next year or two, if I can afford the gas!
SS Great Eastern and Vasa. Looking forward to this one!
Drach, have you heard Sabaton's new song about ww1 dreadnoughts?
and if you have not done so, to the masthead for you!
@@andrewfanner2245 what?
@@Indoor_Carrot traditional naval punishment:-)
@@andrewfanner2245 ah, I see
I would be curious to get your insight in the history of how knots became the standard unit of speed for warships, and stuff like what exactly is a knot and what did they use in the age of sail
A knot is simply one nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile was historically 1/60th of a degree of latitude, or 1/21,600th of the circumference of the Earth. Since that circumference varies depending on the section, it's been defined by various countries to varying degrees of precision, all of which are in the neighborhood of 1,850 m.
@@kemarisite yes but a knot tends to be faster than MPH and i thought it wasn't a set amount of distance rather a distance and time traveled on the longitude/latitude
highlight of the day: i see that Drachinifel has uploaded a new video.
Query. Did the slower speed of the KGVs have any effect on the British Pacific fleet in 1945…?
I'd be surprised. The North Carolinas and South Dakotas didn't with the US fleet the previous 2-3 years. Sure the top speed is lower than the carriers, but the carriers rarely need to run flat out for very long, and they can easily cruise along at the same speed the rest of the time without getting too fuel inefficient.
@@kemarisite I've heard that it was the KGV's short range was a bigger issue.
@@timothyschmidt9566 wikipedia lists a range of 11,000 nautical miles at 14 knots versus 15,600 knots at 10 knots. Doesnt look to me like there would be a huge difference at the same speed.
The range of the KGVs may be lesser as they have to cheese it to keep up with the carriers.
So the slower top speed is no issue but lower cruising speed maybe issue? As to keep up they have to go faster than they like it?
Ha! I have Nelson's Navy! I also suggest "In the Hour of Victory" by Sam Willis and "The War for all the Oceans" by Roy and Leslie Adkins.
XD. Any scenario where you add fisher just gets infinitely more entertaining due to both his good strategic thinking, understanding of his ships and his aggressive nature.
Wouldve been interesting to see what fisher would have done at the 2nd battle of heligoland bight. Considering only Repulse was detached from 1st battlecruiser squadron and acted as a rear guard.
I've read the book "Pig Boats" that is referenced in the question at 00:37:28 and it strangely mirrors the movie U-571, in that it takes real accomplishments of Royal Navy submarines during WW1 and has them accomplished by an American submarine.
More interesting than the book is the movie that it inspired, made in 1930 titled "Hell Below." The story from the novel was completely ditched for a new, totally different and even crazier story. For some reason they have an American submarine patrolling the Adriatic and getting attacked by a Gotha bomber. The highlight of the movie is when a Clemson class destroyer is blown in two and sinks. Not a model of a Clemson class destroyer, it was the real thing. Though they also mixed in some shots of a ship model. They even had stunt men onboard and you get to see them jump overboard before both half's of the destroyer go down. The movie company purchased a destroyer that was to be scrapped in compliance with the London Naval Treaty and the U.S. Navy's loss became Hollywood's gain. I'm pretty sure you can find video of it on TH-cam.
A similar thing happened to the CGT liner Ile de France. The poor old thing was sunk in shallow water in the making of a hollywood pot-boiler called The Last Voyage. She was then raised and scrapped. A very undignified end.
@@notshapedforsportivetricks2912 -
Yea, I've seen it and it's a pretty mediocre movie. I met the author of a book on the sinking of the Andrea Doria and he told me the plot of The Last Voyage was actually taken from an actual incident in the sinking of the Andrea Doria.
There was a women passenger who was trapped under a metal bulkhead and cabin furniture when the Doria was rammed. Her compartment was right next to where the bow of the Stockholm smashed into the Doria. There was a race to get her out before rising water drowned her, just like the movie. I think they even got an oxyacetylene torch from another ship to help cut her loose, just as in the movie.
Tragically, when they finally freed her, she went into shock and died moments later. She had probably suffered crushing injuries which didn't bleed out internally because of the huge amount of weight on top of her, similar to case of person who falls off a subway platform and gets crushed by a train against the platform, but will survive for hours until the train is moved off of them.
That knowledge made The Last Voyage seem even worse to me. Taking an actual tragic story and tacking on a happy ending to make a movie out it seemed a lot worse to me than sinking the poor old Île de France for the movie.
I forgot, the Île de France was the first ship to reach the Andrea Doria and rescued most of her passengers.
20 mm Gatling gun. Aka the Sky is bullets.
In terms of gatling guns, the first large use of gatlings or miniguns were in Vietnam War largely on fixed wing aircraft and rotary aircraft, especially on late version of Hueys, AC-47 gunships and jet fighters. Kn WWII most warring nations use old fashioned guns or Autocannons.
Corollary is a hard word to pronounce - do you deliberately simplify it to "corally"? I was disappointed in your answer to the rudder question. You almost completely avoided talking about the actuating mechanisms, other than vaguely alluding to the ropes used on age of sail ships. There is surely a huge difference between mechanisms used in steel ships, and perhaps quite a lot of variation and experimentation by different nations.
Rivet popping in tanks is a myth - there is little if any evidence of tanks in WW2 in particular that rivets break off and rattle around inside a tank (ar least in British and US tanks) -the nature of tank construction was such that a hit which was capable of displacing rivets would in a welded or cast structure cause equally catastrophic spalling of the inner surface. -Tank manufacture went over to welding for much the same reason ship building went over to welding -it was cheaper required less space. less training of personnel, Ships armour apart from splinter shields was not riveted - nothing on a ship beyond boiler plating was riveted -one certainly never would have tried to rivet sections of 40 lb 1 inch armour plate together, set screws were the standard in fastening those to structure and boiler plating.
Don't know whats going on with your favourite museum Portsmouth.Tried booking but got no indication of failure on the website, but no confirmation email either.
Which USS Roanoke sunk? The 1855 version?
I recall a destroyer having 305 mm guns... can’t remember which
Imperial Russian Navy destroyer Novik Engels was fitted with a 305 mm (12 in) recoilless rifle for testing in 1934.
Picture looks pretty wild fitted out with this weapon hanging off the stern.
Look up the Italian liner Principessa Iolanda in 1907. Went down the slipway and then promptly rolled over and sank.
The SS Daphne sunk on launch from Alexander Stephens yard in Govan on 3/7/1883 , she dragged an anchor and capsized taking nearly 200 with her of which 124 died
World War 1 plate is used for calibrating radiation monitors as it is pre Hiroshima
Gatling Oerlikon make plane go shreddy 😂
I hope you get to visit a museum ship when you are in America.
Wasn't the part 2 Vasa video many many months ago?
Nothing to do with current dry dock, I was wiki-ing some stuff from previous. Manley Powers (RN) is not the first Manley Powers in the British Armed forces...
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manley_Power
I wonder which Manley was more manly and/or greater powers...
So, now we have the ridiculous Tony Blair 2000 strategy, underarmed giant empty boxes. The UK/RN absolutely ruined any chance of the RN having any relevance they might have had.
Sadge because I live in ND and cant visit Drach
Eletrically driven 20MM gatling? Look up GE Vulcan aircraft Gun was developed as an updated motorized gatling.!!!
In terms of Gatling guns bear in mind that the later m163/m167 Vulcan cannons fired in a 30/60/100 round burst mode. There was a setting for no burst limit but that was itself limited to about 1,000 rounds per minute simply because you couldn't keep the thing fed otherwise.
I'm not certain how the phalanx and descendants handles this issue, but remember it's very much a niche weapon, that typically will not be asked to handle a sustained attack.
(40:27) One possible solution is quite simple! Have a multiple speed motor on the Gatling gun!! They've done 2 speed motors (and upon occasion a 3 speed motor on various trial guns) this would allow you to track and correct aim at let's say 750 Rounds Per Minute, and perhaps up to 2,250 RPM at a target! (I don't see the need for much more than 2,250 at an attacking airplane during WW2 (except for perhaps Me262s and the Ohka (Baka) aircraft, and those were exceedingly rare!)
Excuse me, Grand Admiral Drach, but both in the description box and in the video timeline you spelt "launch" as "lauch"
Sunk on launch the classic bugs bunny move
What is the warship firstshown? Not the U.S.S Roaoke of the 1850's or lt. crusier of WW II. The steam frigate was badly converted to a three turret ocean-going monitor.
Drachinifel's exposition is as smooth as silk
Fisher take command of maybe Warspite to lead the Battle of Jutland? Hell hath no fury--let along those 15-inch guns.
The "WW2 Gatling" is a neat idea, but as stated below you are relying on the Mk1 Eyeball, possibly aided by a lead-computing sight. A good dose will literally tear a WW2 aircraft apart, but one needs to hit. Another detail is that by the time your 20mm has engaged, corrected, and hit, the other guy's aircraft has probably released its payload. 20mm are easy to install in great numbers, but they are really good for causing the pilot to pilot to lose his aim, less so for stopping a determined attacker (like a kamikaze). Unless the aircraft is physically torn to bits the wreckage may still come in at the ship. A power failure would also leave a big gap in the air defenses (presumably they would only be one part of a layered AA defense).
Rivet holes have there use, they stop cracks in the steel.
Can you imagine an older carrier converted to an A.A.ship ?
Maybe 12 dual 5s 30 dual 40mm and like 100 20mm
Plus decent radar and fire control.
Only 12? Only 30? Only 100?
The British did a much simpler system , they used Merchant ships as as Anti Aircraft Ships, the Ulster Queen using radar shot down a JU88 through the clouds on PQ18.
The pre-WWII steel present in the wrecks of the German High Seas Fleet and various wrecks around the world (HMS Renown, Prince of Wales and HMAS Perth (I) in particular) is particularly valued for high-precision radiological instruments. A reason people violate the war graves of these sites for scrap.
Hee, I have those same two from that Time-Life set.
Thank you, Drachinifel.
Teddy roosevelt book on the war of 1812. Pretty good. He kind of oversold his point at times but was very clear as to why american ships had advantages early and how that advantage turned into a liability in later war engagement.
I’ve finally got to only 3 dry docks behind!!!! Probably be caught up by ep200
Drach , i asume you have very old and noise air condicioner or something runnig , because that noice makes me want to fire some EMP on the world :D
@Drachinifel have you ever considered narrating a Naval audio book or writing your own book? Or just excellent TH-cam content and such for the foreseeable future?
Having lost steering at the dock as in transmission in command did an emediot port turn ran to my lazoret with my mate at helm doing circles saw the cable to transmission broken ran to tools grabbing a vicelock and was able to shift transmission but no view as to heading hot to dock and tied off thank God and my thinking
Could you do a video on the German auxiliary cruisers such as, kormoran, penguin, and Atlantis.
I don't know if this has been touched on, but what were the reasons why Courbet and Paris were not used as Battleships by the British, or free french?
Fun fact I work right next door to the USS Texas at a terminal facility in the shadow of the monument.
Godly I would love to have seen a battle between the Algiers class of heavy French Cruiser and the Zara Italian class.
British quad mounted phalanx 20 mm in Norway. ..ww2 lol
Why did the US MK 28 torpedo preform horribly
(I’m correct about the mk 28 right)
There is a Mark 28 torpedo, it was an electric torpedo developed from the Mark 18. The Mark 28 was in service from 1944 until 1960, so I'm not sure that's the one you mean. The Mark 14 21" submarine torpedo was initially terrible and Drach has a video on the subject, subtitled Failure is Like Onions or something like that.
@@kemarisite oh yes the MK 14 how did I forget
Sideways launches have been noted for some large wave events. When the Edmund Fitzgerald was launched the wave event was large enough that on of the people at the launch suffered a fatal heart attack.
4:10
The Yamato battleship was notable for accidently flooding a nearby district when launched. There mightve been some miscalculations on how much displacement Yamato had when launched.
That was Musashi, the sister ship.
Where can we find a list of stops you’re making on the America trip?
Thanks for another great drydock
Hope you have a safe and enjoyable trip
did any navy try wire guidance for torpedo's in WW2?
Gatlings in WWII: Instead of a 20mm round, what if they'd made electric Gatlings in .50 BMG? They could probably be made to use the same belts that the M2 Brownings already did, making ammunition supply simpler, though being able to feed the thing would be a lot tougher than an M2; you'd have to link several belts together just to be able to fire it for more than a second or three, and at 3,000 rpm the .50BMG round might be able to rip apart aircraft a lot better. You'd really want radar fire control for either that or the 20mm version just to get it pointed int he right way fast enough
20 mm is only good for point defense. Even the Vulcan air defense cannons from the 50s and 60s on which the phalanx is based only have a maximum slant range of about 2,500 m. The 50 BMG is an even more limited round.
Conceivably this would have been useful against kamikazes but on the whole I think I would rather have more 40 mm
Regarding the Vulcan/phalanx type Gatling gun being available in 1940, could the material science and manufacturing available in 1940 be enough to build a phalanx type Gatling gun?
Keeping them fed is another thing to keep in mind.
Gatling guns are not classified as machine guns under American law. When the local museum had one for sale, a friend bought it and mounted a car starter on it. It’s basically what a Vulcan is. The problem was the gravity feed system wasn’t up to feeding cartridges into the gun at that speed. With the resources of the government, they probably could have solved that problem.
@@silenceoftheyams5969 Probably should tell your friend to be careful, that counts as manufacturing an illegal machine gun the moment an electric motor is mounted to it.
A hand cranked Gatling isn't considered a mg, the second you put a motor on it, it becomes one and is big time illegal.
@@toddwebb7521 Under current law, a machine gun is classified as one barrel that fires in full automatic, a Gatling gun, even a Vulcan, doesn’t function that way. It’s a system to reload a cluster of single shot barrels very fast as they rotate and fire continuously. The later version, with the crank in the back instead of on the side, was capable of 900 to 1,200 shots per minute, already higher than most standard military machine guns today. Putting a electric motor on one is easy, converting it from gravity feed to a belt system isn’t worth the time and money it would take to make to make it work. As Vulcans are only manufactured as military arms, it’s classified as a military arm and under the same restrictions. It’s not illegal to build your own version for yourself, just too expensive to be practical.
1st question: "Failure to Launch?"
Drachma, I watched a very funny movie last night titled Yellowbeard. My question is, when did the practice of using press gangs to Shanghai crews for naval vessels come to an end ?
Sorry..Drach, I thoroughly despise spell correct.
I think You forgot Musashi launch ;)
One issue with the 20 mm gatling is that its an heavier mount so you might prefer an 40 mm instead.
But the idea of standard 20 mm with tracers to walk and the gatling to kill might work well against kamikaze.
The main issue I would see is getting a reliable 20mm rotary cannon. In particular the feed system. A quadruple or octuple gun has four or eight feed systems so their feed systems only need to be 1/4 or 1/8 the speed of a gattling type cannon. And in the event of any failure you lose 1/4 or 1/8 your firepower rather than all of it. The feed system was a significant issue the Americans had in developing the Vulcan, and more generally is a major source of failures in firearms.
very informative!
thanks!
😉👍
Relieving tackle
Drach - as always, great. BUT, would you please caption the photos you show as you speak. When you're discussing steering gear, what ship has this great red rudder? Also, btw, enjoy your US trip but very disappointed to see you're missing San Francisco Bay Area while going to LA (poor choice. SFBA has USS Hornet, National Maritime Museum with clipper Balclutha etc, Rosie the Riveter museum, USS Pampanito, Liberty ship Jeremiah O'Brien, Victory ship Red Oak Victory....Happy to host you if this changes your mind.
The propeller and rudder photo is the SS Great Britain.
@@CharlesStearman thank you, I thought so. Mnay of the photos are more obscure and it would be good if they could be captioned. More work, I know, but not that much more.
A comment and a question.
Comment: the pairing of a standard 20mm with a 20mm gatling sounds quite similar to the ranging machine gun on a Chieftain MBT (feel free to compare/contrast this with the man in the hatch).
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Question: Could a 20mm gatling be worked into a ship's torpedo defense system? After all, shooting at torpedoes did sometimes work. The trick would be early (enough) warning and giving the gun enough depression to work in as close as possible to the ship.
SINCE the hypothetical 20mm Gatling was ELECTRIC drive, why not just reduce the speed with a second trigger? - no second gun or mount or feed mechanism - just a second speed or variable rheostat like on a sewing machine. start with a light trigger squeeze and as the deflection or lead began to match the target, squeeze harder and increase rate-of-fire. or a separate foot pedal for speed and a trigger for on/off. As for tracers every 3rd round, that is done when loading the belt. You want a spacing such that all barrels used would fire equal number of tracers - so a mutually prime number like 5 barrels and every third round in the feed belt would assure equal use of all barrels to try to keep from having a single barrel skew the visual effect of the tracers not matching the AP rounds.
Torpedoes were normally set to run deep enough (10+ feet) that a small caliber gun like a 20 mm, even firing an explosive shell, would not reach and do anything to it.
94th
What! No questions yet?