Upon doing some research upon the H class mainly H39 and H41, I noticed that the Germans changed the location of the aircraft catapult and storage facilities from amidships to on the stern or even below turret c on each side of it. Why is this and does it really offer any advantage over the amidships catapult?
If airplanes were never developed but everything else progressed as in our history, how would have naval forces have developed? How big would have battleships grown?
I used to serve on a US Los Angeles Class submarine in the engineering department, and can second Drach's comments on propulsion plant wear. Even with improved modern materials and chemistry control for the boiler water, erosion and corrosion of steam plant components is still a significant concern, and ships still undergo major overhauls about halfway though their designed lifetime to inspect/repair/replace these components. In fact, during the overhaul my boat was in, the only major propulsion train component that wasn't scheduled for anything more that routine inspection was the reduction gear complex. On a CVN, these overhauls take over 4 years, only about a year of which is needed for refueling the reactors. This time is also usually used to upgrade and modernize many of the systems on the ship as significant portions of the ship will be torn apart anyway.
I was engineering in Aux 1, on a Knox class Frigate, where the ship's 3 SSTGs were. Cleaning out condenser pipes was a major ordeal, but a necessary evil. Seawater is dirty with metals and other contaminants. Any ship has a Main Circ Pump for circulating large volumes of seawater for cooling. The pipes and intake filters for this system cake up fairly quickly.
Remember-water is a great solvent. And electroplating is a thing that works according to electronegativity, not hopes and prayers to Neptune . . . or Cthulu.
@William Cox On the subject of using sea water for cooling, one of the dirtiest jobs I ever had was cleaning a cooling block on a power station. The temperature and surface area made it a breading ground for molluscs. We used shovels to remove all the molluscs and plastic plugs and air guns to clean the 1300 tubes in the heat exchanger. Took 13 hours to clean one for three people, but it was at double pay plus hazard pay so almost 100 $ an hour. The hazard was for the sulfur fumes coming from the dead molluscs and people had passed out on previous cleanings. Sea water for cooling is really tough on the equipment. :)
My grandfather was also a bit of a math genius before WW2. He entered Fordham University at 16 years old on a partial math scholarship in 1935, paid for the rest of University with Army ROTC and graduated in the spring of 1939 and commissioned as a 2nd Lt in the US Army Artillery. He loved trying to do his trajectory calculations entirely in his head faster than others could do them with the mechanical calculators and tables. When the US joined the war, he was a 1st Lt and was promoted up to the rank of Major over the course of a few months, as the Army sought to expand massively. However, his career was cut short by his sharp tongue when he mouthed off about a situation that had not gone well for him in earshot of the General, and got to spend the rest of the war in charge of coastal defense batteries in Iceland and Greenland, getting drunk and learning dirty limericks.
No system is frictionless and no system is perfectly 100% balanced. Or as an engineering professor I had once said “anything with a moving part will break eventually”
Colin Chapman is quoted to have said "Make the suspension adjustable and they will adjust it wrong -- look what they can do to a Weber carburetor in just a few moments of stupidity with a screwdriver."
As an applied math professor who spent her early career at a national lab, I wholeheartedly endorse your suggestion for recruiting math students. My students perk up whenever I tell them about applications of math to blowing stuff up. These days I use it more to detect diseases, but that’s the cool thing about math; the same equations are used for lots of things. A couple of other math-related thoughts: first, Admiral Willis Lee was a pretty good mathematician. Second, how about a full episode on the role of operations research in world war 2 naval warfare?
When you talk about steam power plant degradation there’s some factors that are not directly engine related but are nonetheless incredibly important. Steam plant piping uses large flange type gaskets and when they’re hot and flex around these gaskets degrade naturally. This Gasket degradation allows for steam leaks both internal to the system and externally which obviously lower the amount of pressure you have you have waste steam that you’re burning fuel to generate and then not using for power generation. And you also have the literal insane danger of steam leaks. To give you a story of steam leak danger when we were checking for steam leaks in our power plant we would take a broom And wave it around the steam pipes and we know we found the leak when it cut the broom in half so imagine a 30-35 mm broom handle Or inch and a half inch diameter wooden shaft being severed by invisible high-pressure steam
Not to mention the Australian ships complete with ski jumps up the front that are slightly bigger than the Japanese ships. They are definitely not aircraft carriers either, the ski jumps are just there for aesthetic effect and they honestly weren't added to the ships to assist planes to take off.
@@Dave_Sisson actually, that appears to be nothing more than australian penny pinching, they didn't want to pay the amount it would have cost to modify the design in order to not include the ramp.
@@Dave_Sisson Blame the original Spanish design, that was meant to be a light aircraft carrier, but the Canberra's design was modified to carry more troops and vehicles. To modify the ship back into something that can usefully carry out any sort of extended carrier operation would cost a significant percentage of the ships original price, it'd be more cost effective to build new ships from scratch to be carriers while retaining the extra amphibious operations capability.
PT Boats and MTBs carried depth charges to provide a nominal ASW capability. They got used to sink merchant vessels to save a torpedo. You'd have to trust the coxswain to cut under the target's bows at high speed, but they were very effective in doing underwater damage to 1000-3000 ton coastal freighters.
Yes, I can see the usefulness of that approach. The objective of the magnetic torpedo pistols was to detonate a torp set to run under a ship, rather than hit on the side. A ship running over a depth charge would have the same effect as a torp with a magnetic pistol.
I imagine the outwards-pointing depth-charge throwers mounted on the decks of anti-submarine escorts could have been used to lob a depth charge towards a surface ship, but I don't know if this was ever done.
@@CharlesStearman I suspect we'd have heard about it if it had. If you're that close you probably already lost the exposed depth charge crews to enemy fire anyway.
Concerning the depth charge question. I had a VCR tape on Royal Navy history decades ago, and one small item - that was shown as a film taken from on board - was a destroyer sinking a reasonably large merchant ship by sending a single depth charge at it, around mid-length, using a side depth charge projector. The destroyer had to be pretty close by the target ship so the point of entry was close to the target, and was running fast to clear the explosion. The distance to the resulting explosion was about what Drach showed as a still on this subject. But the accompanying narration said that this was not an unusual method for sinking merchant ships. Presumably the ships that got this treatment were either friendly ones sinking anyway or enemy ones that had previously been stopped. In both cases I understood that there was nobody on board the target. If the target was still running and able to maneuver, the close proximity required would make that a very dangerous way to sink a ship.
To add to all the other engineers talking about steam's myriad effects on metal, I'll add the quote "water will always find a way" and remember it's not considered the universal solvent for nothing.
Re: Mismatched battles: The Naval Battle of Campeche - sailing ships of the Republic of Texas and the Republic of the Yucatan take on steamships of the Mexican Navy. A sloop-of-war, a brig, two schooners and five gunboats, all sail powered versus three steam warships, two brigs and two schooners - partially manned by British sailors and with numerous Royal Navy officers in command. The greatly inferior Republic of Texas force fought the the Mexican Navy forces to a dead draw two actions in a row, caused more damage and casualties than they suffered - and in the end the Mexican Navy was the one that retreated from the area. One of the few times that sail beat steam.
@Charles Yuditsky For something that was pretty surprising even for the day and should be widely noted as a bizarre anachronism in the history books, it's surprisingly obscure. Especially considering the Texas Navy men *knew* they were likely going up against steam frigates - which turned out to be armed with the new and fearsome 68-pounder *shell* firing Paixhans guns - and yet they went to break the blockade of Campeche anyway. IIRC, they didn't even lose any ships.
@@dancingwiththedarkness3352 Yup, which is why they're counted as Yucatan forces as well. The defunding of the Navy was one of Sam Houston's bigger mistakes, which the inhabitants of Galveston expressed their displeasure with by rioting - which prevented the ships being sold off. Despite all these handicaps and blows to morale, nobody broke and nobody ran. Instead, they managed to fight Royal Navy personnel commanding a far superior force (as mercenaries) to a draw twice, took far fewer losses, and got a strategic win when the Mexican Navy/RN 'military advisors' retreated rather than try conclusions a third time.
I recall from a book talking about US PT boats in WWII, they did mention that sometimes they did carry depth charges. Granted, they carried quite a variety of ordnance over the duration of the war. They mentioned about using them to deter pursuing destroyers, and having damaged or destroyed a handful of destroyers.
There are many ship collisions every year, and almost all will involve one ships bow hitting another ship. Merchant ships are designed to survive this as they are fitted with a collision bulkhead. Waves can damage a bow its a lot rarer, for a bit of interest google "the front fell off".
It was an Venezuelan corvette or similar smaller warship who started playing rough and started bumping an cruise ship, it was small for a cruise ship but also an light icebreaker as it was an expedition ship designed for Antarctica. Well the corvette took so much damage it sunk. Can the cruise ship claim it as an kill?
Fantastic video as always Drach. Btw I've been listening to the Bilge Pump and I absolutely love it. It's one of my favorites. That lone crazy French frigate, I'm sure the First officer or equivalent looked at his Captain like he was nuts. Then he ran screaming and shouting abandon ship as he jumped off the side. Basically Pirates of the Caribbean. If you could build 5 or more Thunderchild classes. I'd love to see Stormbreaker, Hammer of Dawn, Storm Herald , Hurricane, Cyclone as possible names as well. And yes I cribbed some of those from Sci Fi universes.
To answer your WW1 Australian Army commanders. Lt Gen Monash comanded the largest western front army Corps by quite some number - the ANZAC Corps, and Lt Gen Chauvel commanded the largest cavalry force in modern history - the Desert Column.
@Drachinifel "Have there ever been any hugely mismatched battles..." The Royal Navy brig HMS Speedy v the Spanish frigate El Gamo in 1801 and the Royal Australian Navy sloop HMAS Yarra v Admiral Kondo's IJN heavy cruiser and destroyer squadron 1942. Just for two notable ones...
Drach; Pleasantly surprised to find out you've comminisioned a Queen Elizabeth from Steamgezzer, surprised your having it done in the 1943 configuration though, would have thought the Jutland configuration would have been your choice. Thanks for supporting Steam G. He deserves it, my second favorite Brit on TH-cam.
About Norweigian fortress torpeding German cruises in WW2: in the fjords of Norway, a fortress or other land based defence was probably acceptable longer then in other places becuase of the terrain. A fjord is a place where you have virtually little to almost none space to take evasive manouvers. As in the fjord being a few hundred meters across. And often there are massive mountains right up to the water line, mountains made out of granite. That is an excellent place to blast a fort into. Germany did it with uboat pens in Namsos, for example. After the war they made indoor and bomb proof swimming pools out of the pens in Namsos. Worth a visit, if its still open (havent been there since my youth 30 years ago).
On the cracking of welded Liberty ship hulls, Constance Tippett discovered the primary problem was the not welding but the steel used. The steel often used had a brittle to ductile transition temperature around freezing. When the steel is below the transition temperature to behaves more like a sheet of glass. Thus the Liberty ships hulls at low temperatures could have the toughness of a window pane and would behave like glass.
I.E the ships worked in the summer but in the winter they'd start to fall apart. Just all the other people in the world. Seriously fuck you guys for putting so much emphasis on summer, it sucks and I hate it.
When I was a young lad one of my neighbors was a retired shipyard machinist who had worked on Liberty ships. He told me the engineering specs called for fillet welding (building up inside corners with successive weld beads) for added strength. He said production timelines were so short and pressure from management was so intense--that many welders had taken up the practice of laying welding rods into the corners to build up the fillet and welding beads over them. Bad juju!
GREAT disccussion! One aspect of ramming to inflict damage to an opponent involves the physical orientation of major structural components of a ship. Beams, stringers and plates, through their length, are a lot rougher and more rigid than they are across their width. It's the same physics of the spear concept: the long, narrow prow of a ship is a lot tougher through its length than the side of the same ship across its width.
As for mismatched naval battles, Antivari is a quite good example. A protected cruiser and a destroyer against a fleet of two dreadnoughts, ten predreadnoughts and some cruisers and destroyers.
For preservation of main propulsion equipment, I know that with boilers and steam turbines it depends on how good a job they did doing the layup (i.e. preservation measures made in anticipation of long term inactivity). If I was walking in the active main space of a steam ship that had been laid up for a long time, I would definitely bring a mirror on a metal rod (they make these to look for steam leaks) and a flashlight.
You know... I dont know how I was suggested your channel a long while ago... but I am glad I watched the video that was on the suggestion. Look forward to each of these videos
Re RN & RAN officers Australian naval college commenced in 1913. Collins, Waller, Burnett were from first class. So they were commanders/commodores in 1940/41 in Mediterranean, so they were just too "junior" to command anything larger than a destroyer flotilla. The Australian ships/navy was British built. The Australian navy trained with RN in Mediterraneanin 1930s. So they were part of the RN fleet and would just slot into their usual role like they did in early WW2 and now do with the current USN. Rear Admiral Jack Crace, CinC of Anzac Force /TF44 was Australian born and RN trained just to muddy the waters Lastly, Major General Moreshead was leader of the Tobruk garrison in April 41. He had the British 7th Armour Division/Brigade under him as well other British units as an example how flexible the British command structure was. NZer Freiberg at Crete defense also commanded a mix bag of British Commonwealth troops.
I heard, or possibly read that HMS Ark Royal almost sank herself, when launching a depth charge armed swordfish with the wrong settings on the catapult, ripped the wings off it and ran over the wreckage, the depth charges exploding damaging the ship.
joanne chon I can attest that self injury with your own blade applies also to the Japanese Sword Arts :chuckles:. Until you have cut or otherwise perforated yourself with your own katana you haven’t really acquired the proper respect for Sensei Pain :).
Drac, you need to build the Elbonian Navy, Gun Jesus and The Chieftain have done Infantry weapons and Armour, your turn....we are asking Bismarck to do the Airforce too!!
One advantage to the the turret mounted AA, particularly on the forward superfiring turret is that be it dive bombers or torpedo bombers, they're actually aiming for a point slightly ahead of the ship since it's moving forward, so they're trying to put whatever weapon they have where the ship will be when it needs to hit. So it would actually give you a better angle to line up that shot.
40:00 Nice dodge of the issue of Unions in the shipyards. Welding was an existential threat to riveters and would require either retraining/replacing a large part of the shipyard labor force. Unions threatened to strike leveraging the high demand of the time, institutional change in Union industries requires BOTH the managers and unions to agree...the USA had very little problems with that, mainly because of the rapid scale up of shipbuilding in the USA. British shipbuilding began atrophy post WW1, by the 1960s the British shipbuilding was effectively dead, by 1970 nonexistant.
The modern escort carrier is an interesting idea, but tactically almost every modern navy warship beyond a certain sIze carries at least 1 or 2 helicopters for ASW and potentially light ASuW work - so, in a sense, every ship is an escort carrier. (Then you throw in the coming drone revolution....).
Helicopters are a true force multiplier in the ASW role, but they are very short legged (and vulnerable) in the ASuW/land attack role. Also, in the recent past, fixed wing aircraft were key in n providing air coverage and extend sensor range of a fleet. The modern escort carrier is a very tangible paradigm in navies that don't have the size/money/political will to field "full fledged" carriers (catobar and up), and is indeed a natural evolution for "helicopters heavy" navies like the Japanese and Italian one. See for example the evolution path of the core unit of the Italian navy main task force: from the Vittorio Veneto (helicopter cruiser) to the Garibaldi and then the Cavour (light carriers of increasing displacement, but clearly not LHDs). The main difference from the past is that those navies don't employ "fleet carriers" at all.
@@R00sc0 This is admittedly getting into splitting hairs/nomenclature territory, but, I would argue that by definition, the primary purpose of an escort carrier is to 'escort' something. I know the USN used Jeep carriers for land support and to bulk up available aircraft in the latter stages of WW2, but that was a function of a) the diminishing sub threat and b) they had so many carriers they could afford to use them for tasks beyond their primary mission. I think what you would call a modern escort carrier I would call a light carrier -- or, maybe we should call anything that has surface strike as a mission a fleet carrier, regardless of size. These days, even a detachment of something like 6 F-35Bs can carry firepower equivalent to entire World War II fleet carrier air wings. (At least, if they ever figure out the software.) And while helicopters are relatively short legged and vulnerable in surface strike, I wouldn't count them out. Both the British and US military (if memory serves) have experimented with flying Apaches off their assault ships, and while the Penguin SSM isn't exactly top of the line hardware anymore, a number of helicopters flying below the radar horizon and getting some sort of target handoff from an offboard sensor would still present a credible threat.
@@ghoti221 yes, I agree with you that today the term "escort carrier" is out of context if we mean the same role they had in WW2. My point was mainly related to the viability of the concept of a light carrier today and why it is an evolution/extension of the cold war helicopter based ASW fleets with the bonus that it can perform many different task that an heli-only supported fleet cannot. Attack helicopters are embarked by many modern navies on LHDs but mainly to support amphibious assault: I don't remember if this is the case for the JSDF Apaches but in the Italian Navy the Mangusta (operated by the Army) don't steal spots onboard the Cavour but they are embarked on the San Giorgio class LPDs or on the Trieste, an LHD that can operate as a "backup carrier" when the Cavour is not available. I don't think the concept of light carrier is really an useful concept for "first tier" navies (maybe in the future if the Congress will cut back the number of Ford class this could change but I doubt it) but it is a powerful asset for minor navies. Also please don't be fooled by the outside look of a modern light carrier: it look indeed very similar to an LHD, but the first ones are designed to sustain a somewhat bigger fixed wing air group and, mainly, a greater number of sorties and C4I facilities.
@@R00sc0 Oh, I'm well aware of the compromises that LHD/LHA style ships make, trading off aviation capability versus troop capability, though, given the experiments the US Marines have done with F-35 heavy airgroups, I don't think the trade-off is as big as you think it is. I do have this vague memory of Apaches or some other attack helicopter being used to help guard against small boat swarm attack, or at least considered in that context. Or, in other words, restrictions on use are doctrinal, not technological. (I'm definitely not saying they're as useful as conventional attack aircraft, but they definitely have a capability in a modern OOB.) And I think with modern 21st century technology and the ongoing drone revolution, I think the definition of "what is a strike carrier" becomes very blurry indeed. Sometimes I wonder if people now are counting carriers the way a previous generation counted battleships - but that's not the type of discussion you can decently have in a TH-cam reply chain. :)
Great episode. Was there ever a figure given for the Naval Arms race leading to WW1? For example - what did all of the Dreadnought era battle ships (BBs and Battlecruisers) cost the UK and Germany? I'm curious because in WW2 we get figures cited for the atomic bomb project, the B-29 project (both in the billions of dollars). And what were the leading cost centers for the rise in cost of individual capital ships? Armor while thicker probably wasn't the key factor? Engines? Fire control and internal control ? More complex internal construction?
Sounds like these depth charges would’ve worked well in the Battle of Samar. 😂 Just run your destroyer or destroyer escort right up to your nearest battleship or cruise, flip around, and launch depth charges. In that Battle, it probably would’ve worked through whatever magic the Americans were using.
Don't hold me to it but I'm pretty sure some of the fighter-bombers were dropping depth charges since that was all they had I don't know if they had any way of adjusting the depths once it was attached to the plane but they probably tried to blow something up with them. Also I do want to point out that lie Japanese forces might have figured out they were fighting destroyers and Destroyer escorts if they got close enough to literally throw depth charges at them maybe
Regarding depth charges on sinking destroyers going off, there's also USS _Hamman_ eating one of the torpedoes meant for _Yorktown_ a couple days after Midway and exploding underwater as it sank (which was probably what finally sank the _Yorktown)._
I don't think you should hesitate with taking sponsorship adequate to your audience at all, even on a regular basis. The entertainment and it's quality that you provide us with is a good enough reason for you to make a profit from these videos.
0:03:39 - Dynamite cruiser - maybe a nice, anti-submarine mortar could be pneumatic, considering the Austro-Hungarian pneumatic (trench) mortars 0:28:59 - if memory serves Taffy 3 aircraft did drop depth charges on the Japanese vessels and Dr Alaexander Clarke mentioned that British fast craft did drop depth charges in the path of pursuing S-boots (which are boats, not ships, but still).
On the depth charges, the first operational depth charge had two versions. One issued to faster ships with a full charge and one issued to slow ships with a reduced charge because the slower vessels couldn’t reliably get away from a full charge before it detonated.
LHD’s aka amphibious assault ships are effectively modern day Escort Carriers. They are slower then the modern Aircraft Carriers and can launch VSTOL aircraft and helicopters which is good for hunting submarines.
12:45 To be fair , Izumo class is much perfect for MJSDF ( or what is is called , i dont want to call them IJN :D ) Smaller ships , fast , cheaper , can be in many places at once. Admiral Trawn would be impresed :)
Depth charges were used extensively by Avenger, Liberator and Swordfish against surfaced U Boats to good effect. In addition in the Pacific bombs fused to explode underwater in effect depth charges, were used in skip bombing attacks, for example at the battle of the Bismarck Sea. ASW aircraft armed with depth charges also attacked surface vessels when they were encountered unexpectedly, for example Samar. I believe you cover this in you Video about Samar!
I wouldn't argue that Escort carriers in the WW2 sense are really viable today. What we more have is heavy US and light EU/Asian carriers. An escort carrier was going along with a convoy to provide CAP and ASW support, but since the improvement in AA capability compared to WW2 I don't think convoys necessarily need a CAP, a ship with long-range missiles like ESSM or RIM-167 can do that. So what I could see happening is actually up-gunned (up-missiled?) amphibious assault ship/helicopter carrier doing this. It carries something similar to an Aegis system for air defence of the convoy and helicopters for ASW. It's CLOSE to an escort carrier, but performs the same duty in a different manner. And the availability of a large number of helicopters would also make this ship useful for salvaging crew & material from merchants in the convoy that still happen to be sunk.
To be honest the Izumo Class CVE's make a lot of sense for Japan as a Island Nation with strict resource and Military Funding limits so they can have a few of these built and handle enough of the duties of a Multi-CVE Task Force to make up for lacking a Full Carrier or a Super Carrier like the US can build every 4 decades basically, it also has a certain amount of pragmatic flare to its complement a Squadron of F35's is still a high capable strike and Interception Force if used well and has good all round Fighter-Bomber-Interceptor ability if loaded out right that it can handle a few roles semi well without issue, obviously its not a Master of Anything, more a Jack of all Trades, but even that can be more fitting of Japanese needs for now.
There is a modern 'escort carrier' design out there it's called "Príncipe de Asturias". It's the smallest aircraft carrier in the world today, It started life as the Sea Control Ship. It was designed by Gibbs & Cox. there are 2 copies built 1 for the Spanish Armada, and a second for the Royal Thai Navy. The Príncipe de Asturias is slated for the scrap heap. The HTMS Chakri Naruebet is just sitting there doing nothing. Here are some info on it The design is basically that of the initial US Navy's Sea Control Ship design of the 1970s, modified with a ski-jump ramp added to better enable V/STOL aircraft takeoff and other modifications to fit Spanish specifications. Constructed by the National Company Bazan (then Empresa Nacional Bazán, now Navantia) in their shipyard at Ferrol, Príncipe de Asturias was delivered to the Navy on 30 May 1988. The construction process had begun eleven years previously, on 29 May 1977. The processing of the steel began on 1 March 1978 and the keel was laid on 8 October 1979. On 22 May 1982, in a ceremony presided over by Juan Carlos I of Spain, the launch took place, with Queen Sofía of Spain as the ship's sponsor. The ship made her first sea trials in November 1987. Decommissioned: 6 February 2013.
Today's Escort Carrier? Picture the Kuznetsov/Gorshkov (circa 50,000 tons), but with fewer Antiship Weapons and more deck park. And with USN engineering and propulsion gear. G.E. Gas Turbines (small carriers should be quick to react), some Helos with ASW trawling SoNAR, a Hawkeye or two, half a dozen all weather interceptors, and half a dozen bomb trucks. The aircraft would launch light (no CatoBar) and have short legs, but, for an escort carrier tasked with local defense that shouldn't be a problem. The air wing? 2x E2 Hawkeye AEW/Direction 4x AV8B (quick response is a must) 6x F/A18 All Weather Interceptors 6x F/A18 with Tacam, and Paveway (or modern equivalent) 6x ASW Helos (not my current field of interest) with dipping SoNAR and/or Mine Trawl. The Weapons fit? 2x Goalkeeper CIWS (one each P/S aft corner) 1x ASROC launcher Several light AA/Antipirate cannon. 1x Bofors 57mm DP (fwd) In a What if Scenario: 2x E2 Hawkeye 12x F35B 6x ASW Helo and . . . 2x Twin Arm launcher (fwd and aft) for Phoenix LR AA Missiles and/or Harpoon 2x Bofors 57mm DP (fwd/aft on island) 1x ASROC launcher
With the recent burning of the LHD-6 USS Bonhomme Richard and the supposed refit of the Japanese Navy JS Izumo DDH-183 into a 'light aircraft carrier' of helicopters and F-35 STOLV aircraft it begs the question: In the 20th Century what makes a 'light aircraft carrier' vs 'LHD' (Wasp and Bonhomme Richard) vs 'LHA' (America and Tripoli)? Is 'escort carrier' designation for landing support carriers gone for good? It seems the Izumo is more like an LHA than a 'light aircraft carrier'...and LHA just seems like a classic 'Escort carrier' role.
Mostly the number of Marines on board. The LHD and LHA are designed primarily to land troops in amphibious assaults, sending them ashore in boats and helicopters. So there's a lot of space used up for troops and tanks and supplies that a CVL/escort carrier would instead use for aircraft.
@@hughfisher9820 Yea, for the WASP class and apparently future America class that will be true, but for the AMERICA and TRIPOLI they had their welldeck removed to make room for more aircraft hanger space and that was kinda where I was confused. Later on though found something that answers the question more precisely...the LHA's are 46000+t displacement, so about the size of the Midway-class CVs. Yeah, nothing light about them.
Only if the next Enterprise was to be stationed in the West Pacific. Currently, she is built to replace Dwight Eisenhower and her area of operations, which is around NATO and Middle Eastern waters. You'll need to bet on the chance that Enterprise 80 is relieving one of the Nimitzes stationed on the West Coast, Pearl Harbour, or Yokosuka.
@@stevefaiello3321 In aside, Hushkit (another channel) started the meme (for me, at least) a couple years back with a "World's Worst Air Force" gag video. I dunno how many of us are fans of Hushkit, too, however. I think of the channel as the "Best snob comedy act in all of Military Aviation".
Re: Escort Carriers. I fear the closest that the USN could come to anything like that is the use of America and Wasp class amphibious assault ships as so-called "Lightning Carriers" - unloading all rotary wing craft to make room for 15-20 F-35's - which also happens to be not far off the complement of a Casablanca. Obviously, however, a 40-45,000 ton ship would be one heck of a large escort, and not cheap or quick to construct, certainly not in large numbers (essential features of a CVE). It's really more of a CVL when used in this configuration.
wrt future proofing BBs. The Brits leveraged the Washington treaty to future proof their fleet. Of the ships retained by the RN, all except Tiger mounted 15" guns. The USN Tennessee, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New York classes only had 14" and the Wyomings and Floridas only mounted 12". And, because of the replacement schedule in the treaty, it would be 1941 before the US could replace the last of it's 14" gunned ships. Additionally, the Brits wangled a fleet far above it's quota, while the USN was nearly dead on. The quota was 525,000 tons each for the RN and USN. With the Nelsons, the RN ended up with 558,950 tons, while the USN only had 525,850. If the USN had completed Washington, instead of using it for target practice, the USN would have had 558.450 tons, the parity with the RN the USN was supposed to have, but no, couldn't do that. Wow did the US get rogered. Supposed to have parity with the RN, but, in reality, USN tonnage down a complete BB compared to the RN and locked into smaller guns for 20 years. The Japanese were pretty ill used too. Their quota was 315,000 tons, but their retention list totaled only 301,320. To maintain the 5:5:3 ratio to the RN, the IJN should have been allowed an additional 20,370 tons. for a total of 335,370, not enough for Tosa, which exceeded the 35,000/ship tonnage limit, but enough for another Nagato. Future proofing via lawyers.
I can see a use for a modern escort carrier type, something a little smaller than a World War 2 Essex class carrier with an air wing of Douglas A4 Skyhawk type aircraft. They could be used for ground support for invasions. They would be cheaper than the larger carriers and they would free up the larger carriers to protect the fleet.
Ref positions for AA guns. RFA Wave Knight originally had her 30 mil guns mounted below the bridge wings! As a gunner at the time I was most amused at this fact. These were later replaced with 20 mils above the bridge.
My grandfather was abord a ship that underwent an depthcharging from the air. The ship itself was little bothered but the percussive jarring and potential the next charge might be set to a shallower depth or land on deck had notible moral afect on the crew.
I remember hearing that japans carriers and in general fleet are have a heavy emphasis on ASW capabilities. The carriers had that role idk if that is going to change or they are just adding extra capability.
I would look at the escort carrier question differently. You would go for helicopter operations for anti-submarine and ground attack helicopters. You wouldn't even need a complete flight deck. Maybe something like a Moskva class ship. Though I would keep the hanger on the same level so that the front of the ship would be much higher than the rear.
On Depth-Charges... During WWII my father served aboard LCIs and was a plank-owner on two. He mentioned that when transiting from the east coast to the Panama Canal depth-charge racks were fitted just in case they ran into a U-boat... that didn't go very well. He said the first, and last, time they rolled one off, the stern was hurled out of the water due to their slow speed. Commodore put a stop to that silliness. Additionally... Didn't one of the first pilots to spot the Japanese fleet at Samar try to takeout a Japanese cruiser with his depth-charges, since he was on anti-sub patrol?
Proper water treatment and deaeration can greatly extend the life of boilers.Where I worked we used a witches brew of 3 chemicals for treatment plus of course deaeration. A couple of our boilers had been running for 40 years Out biggest corrosion is was on the hot side of economizers where condensing could cause wicked corrosion problems. I can imagine one problem for ships may be that the chemistry of feed water brought aboard will vary widely depending on where it is obtained.
On the Australian command of British units, there were British units under the command of Australian or other Commonwealth officers. I think the largest factors would be scales and flexibility. Significant naval formations could be quickly built up and moved around, much more so than large army formations. Mooreshead and Freyburg’s commands were hastily put together by necessity rather than well planned formations. In addition, in the Pacific (for the first part of the war, at least), the RAN was a much greater proportion of the commonwealth forces than they had been in North Africa. There were a total of three Australian divisions in North Africa and the Levant, but even these were rarely in the same area/command and were withdrawn over the course of 1942. Also, notably all three commanders of all Commonwealth forced in Korea were Australian.
The USN has been using LHDs as light/escort carriers. At the Battle of the Java Sea Exeter and Houston had equal firepower as Houston had lost her X turret in an air raid.
Now here, I'm afraid I must disagree with you, Mr. Drach. The Titanic ramming an iceberg would have bene a terrible calamity. More modern surveys have shown that the area of the hull breach wasn't as great as initially supposed, with the iceberg banging along the side, rather than slicing a huge gash. The problem was that, with the huge amount of work going on at Harland & Wolff, the demand on producers of steel was high enough that it started causing quality control issues. Samples of hull plating recovered from the wreck show severe brittleness caused by sulfur, making them much less ductile than even contemporary steel, much less modern material. There was similar trouble with the rivets. When the iceberg bumped along the side, it popped open the lap joints between outer hull plates, with brittle rivet heads popping right off. If the Titanic made a direct hit, the hull joints on both sides would unzip and the ship would crumple like a bellows, even away from the impact site, and would certainly sink more quickly.
Had a weird thought on a WWI dynamite cruiser, but the range issue ruins it. I'd wondered if you could build a high angle one and use it as a bomb ship for shore bombardment at the Dardanelles (should have less peak recoil force than a normal heavy mortar). But you'd need at least 15 mile range to drop your big shells onto the forts from safely out in the Aegean. And honestly, if you were building a dedicated bomb ship it's probably easier and more reliable to simply design one around a more conventional heavy siege mortar.
Drachinifel, what are your top 5 lessons learned from Jutland that should have been thrown out? The navies of the time obviously studied the battle closely, and built new ships and tactics for the future. What were some of the demonstrably incorrect conclusions they drew?
Recently (2013) decommissioned, and technically not a designated escort carrier, but the Spanish [Príncipe de Asturias](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_aircraft_carrier_Pr%C3%ADncipe_de_Asturias) had a displacement of 16,700 tons and a complement of Harriers and helicopters.
Though it didn’t happen, a deliberate technological mismatch would have been Japanese wooden boats and biplanes used in suicide attacks against an Allied invasion fleet. Wooden boats and planes had smaller radar cross sections, an example of using old tech to fool new tech.
I could only see dynamite guns useful in amphibious fire supoort. There again advances in rocket tech may overcome their cost and complexity for tossing large HE shells downrange.
You know full well if Titanic had rammed the iceberg head-on and survived, maritime armchair scholars would still be muttering that Smith had plenty of time to evade, it would have just been a light brush down the side, the ship would totally have handled that and all those injuries could have been avoided...
Smith would have been ripped for steaming into a known ice-field without slowing down. One commenter wrote that the miracle was she got so far into the ice-field without hitting one much sooner.
You mention lopsided battles within the same era and don't mention the (wonderfully covered by yourself btw) slightly imbalanced sides of the Battle off Samar?
It's worthwhile pointing out that in terms of Australian formations, units, under British command, there's two distinct sides. On the RN, RAN side, it's a lot kinder. They don't have the history the Australian Army, through the colonial units do, with their English counterparts. This might apply to the RAF and RAAF as well. Considering the proto-RAAF was running around helping Lawrence in Arabia for a while, as well as I think some Australian presence in the RAF during the Battle of Britain. Not sure if we had a full squadron, I'll need to check records. I think there were a number of volunteers over there. Not sure of the role, as well. On the Australian Army side, the land side, you have a few issues. In between Breaker Morant in the Second Boer War, where you had a mix of Australian colonial units and the first units of the Australian Army, there's the start of bad blood. Later on you have the Gallipoli campaign, which was not just Australian and New Zealand units, it was also Indian units and a few more as well if you don't mind the tangent, it got to the stage that the Australian Army and Australian soldier was almost mortally opposed to the British officers in command. There's a joke of two British officers going by some Australians and the first complains to the second they weren't saluted, the second replies, they are being respectful, they didn't do anything else. I don't know how true this was of the officer core, or how true it is to this day. However, when you have a connected Englishman let off at the last moment and the colonials left to be shot for/with obvious political reason, it did leave a sense of bad blood. Combined with at least the perception of the colonials do the fighting and dying while the rest drink tea/they care more about their clocks than the lives under their command, well, there's a bad foundation for a long term relationship. To the degree and I don't know who made it effective formal policy, you wanted the Australian Army, you got an Australian Army officer to lead it. Certainly no British military authority would be held over an Australian in Australian uniform.
Addendum/revision - There's also a version of the joke about the two British officers that goes like this. Two British officers are walking past an Australian patrol and the patrol walks around them. The first officer complains to the second, 'see how disrespectful they are, they didn't salute us' and the second replies 'they were being very respectful, they walked around us.' I think the implication is obvious.
With regard to a modern Light Carrier, I would have thought that the Italian Cavour would have been a better fit, considering it was definitely designed as an Aircraft Carrier at around 27,000 tons and currently operates Harriers, and has plans to operate F-35Bs in the future.
But countries with "helicopter carrying destroyers" like Japan and Australia can not call them aircraft carriers, even if they really are carriers, because China would be very upset and no one except the current American government wants to upset the Chinese. Spain has a carrier of a similar design to the Australian ships, but they are a long way from China, so they can call their ship an aircraft carrier.
Oh Japan and their "Helicopter Carriers" It reminds me of that scene from the Simpsons where that guy on the Cayman Islands says he can't discuss his customers illegal offshore accounts. "I'm sorry, the Japanese Navy cannot discuss their illegal aircraft carriers" "Oh crap, I shouldn't have said Japan had a navy. Oh crap, I shouldn't have said they were illegal Oh crap, I definitely shouldn't have said they were aircraft carriers. It's too hot today"
24:30 HMAS Perth was laid down 26-06-1933, launched 27-07-1934 and commissioned 15-06-1936. The Ruyter was laid down 16-09-1933, launched 11-03-1935 and commissioned 03-10-1936. So who again has the most modern cruiser? 😉 On top of that, the Admiralen-class destroyers are extremely similar to the early 1930's British destroyers seeing as they originate from HMS Ambuscade. I am not letting you get away with that one Drach. That is blatant anti Dutch heresy and I won't stand for it. It is time to dust off the old maps and sail back to the Medway. 😄 But seriously, seeing as Exeter could not hit anything and Jupiter had an encounter with a Dutch mine that got a bit confused whether to kill the British or Japanese, a common occurrence, arguably the Dutch force was just about the strongest. It is really down to the destroyers. Then again, the US destroyers launching a torpedo attack outside of effective range and then retiring to Surabaya, being out of torpedoes and simply to slow to keep up, doesn't help their case either. Not that it mattered because the Ruyter and Java encountered a long lance problem later on and that was it. The USA DD's might have been useful as impromptu torpedo net, but that was about it for that utter disaster of a battle.
Australian / British Army officer interchangeably vs RAN / RN officers: easy to understand if one realises Australian Army senior officers until the end of WWII were nearly all militia while British Army were nearly all permanent, whereas nearly all RAN officers were full timers with the same training as their RN peers. Although the Australian Army had a few full-time senior officers, these only had staff rather than command roles until the Australian Regular Army was formed in 1947.
"Three dimes and a nickel"!!! LOL!!! As the man once said, "You can get anything you want...........as long as you are willing to pay the price." Hard to believe that once upon a time the U.S. government was reluctant to spend the tax payers' money.
For an example of a British officcer that commanded Australians, consider VC, KCB, DSC, DL. Desoite what poor historians often write, Criutchley was not Australian, but a RN career officer with an extensive noble background (Queen Victoria was his godmother) who won the DSC and VC in WWI during the two Ostend raids. Roger Keyes was his naval "godfather," so he saw a lot of action. He also commanded your baby the Warspite during the Second Battle of Narvik. The Australian Squadron was his onlky non-RN command. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Crutchley
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Pinned post for Q&A :)
Upon doing some research upon the H class mainly H39 and H41, I noticed that the Germans changed the location of the aircraft catapult and storage facilities from amidships to on the stern or even below turret c on each side of it. Why is this and does it really offer any advantage over the amidships catapult?
If airplanes were never developed but everything else progressed as in our history, how would have naval forces have developed? How big would have battleships grown?
Further, what would ww2 combat look like, assuming the general course of events remained the same?
Could you talk about uss downs and uss cassian?
When you refer to your channel you say “we”, who is this other person?
I used to serve on a US Los Angeles Class submarine in the engineering department, and can second Drach's comments on propulsion plant wear. Even with improved modern materials and chemistry control for the boiler water, erosion and corrosion of steam plant components is still a significant concern, and ships still undergo major overhauls about halfway though their designed lifetime to inspect/repair/replace these components. In fact, during the overhaul my boat was in, the only major propulsion train component that wasn't scheduled for anything more that routine inspection was the reduction gear complex. On a CVN, these overhauls take over 4 years, only about a year of which is needed for refueling the reactors. This time is also usually used to upgrade and modernize many of the systems on the ship as significant portions of the ship will be torn apart anyway.
I was engineering in Aux 1, on a Knox class Frigate, where the ship's 3 SSTGs were. Cleaning out condenser pipes was a major ordeal, but a necessary evil. Seawater is dirty with metals and other contaminants. Any ship has a Main Circ Pump for circulating large volumes of seawater for cooling. The pipes and intake filters for this system cake up fairly quickly.
Remember-water is a great solvent. And electroplating is a thing that works according to electronegativity, not hopes and prayers to Neptune . . . or Cthulu.
Anyone who works with Steam has a respect and workable fear of its capabilities.... it has moods and a lack of care to everything around of it.
Look k Klkoookoyl
@William Cox On the subject of using sea water for cooling, one of the dirtiest jobs I ever had was cleaning a cooling block on a power station. The temperature and surface area made it a breading ground for molluscs. We used shovels to remove all the molluscs and plastic plugs and air guns to clean the 1300 tubes in the heat exchanger. Took 13 hours to clean one for three people, but it was at double pay plus hazard pay so almost 100 $ an hour. The hazard was for the sulfur fumes coming from the dead molluscs and people had passed out on previous cleanings. Sea water for cooling is really tough on the equipment. :)
My grandfather was also a bit of a math genius before WW2. He entered Fordham University at 16 years old on a partial math scholarship in 1935, paid for the rest of University with Army ROTC and graduated in the spring of 1939 and commissioned as a 2nd Lt in the US Army Artillery. He loved trying to do his trajectory calculations entirely in his head faster than others could do them with the mechanical calculators and tables. When the US joined the war, he was a 1st Lt and was promoted up to the rank of Major over the course of a few months, as the Army sought to expand massively. However, his career was cut short by his sharp tongue when he mouthed off about a situation that had not gone well for him in earshot of the General, and got to spend the rest of the war in charge of coastal defense batteries in Iceland and Greenland, getting drunk and learning dirty limericks.
11:34 "...ignore the fact that we named the second one 'Kaga'."
Best Drachism I've heard in a while :-D
ignore the fact it's about the same length as _the kaga_
@@ayylmao9697 false.
Izumo class is 35 cm longer in lenght
They name their next class of destroyers Yamato. With Musashi, Mogami, and Kii
@@Boxghost102 "Destroyers".
I mean we made them to destroy thing.
@@murderouskitten2577
>35 _centimeters_ longer
>As if it makes a difference
No system is frictionless and no system is perfectly 100% balanced. Or as an engineering professor I had once said “anything with a moving part will break eventually”
And anything with removeable parts will /be/ broken.
Anything Made by Fiat Chrysler is guaranteed to fail.😏
In a similar manner, "any component in an electrical circuit can act as a fuse if you use it wrong enough."
Colin Chapman is quoted to have said "Make the suspension adjustable and they will adjust it wrong -- look what they can do to a Weber carburetor in just a few moments of stupidity with a screwdriver."
My brain is perfectly smooth, yet still broken, how is this so?
As an applied math professor who spent her early career at a national lab, I wholeheartedly endorse your suggestion for recruiting math students. My students perk up whenever I tell them about applications of math to blowing stuff up. These days I use it more to detect diseases, but that’s the cool thing about math; the same equations are used for lots of things.
A couple of other math-related thoughts: first, Admiral Willis Lee was a pretty good mathematician. Second, how about a full episode on the role of operations research in world war 2 naval warfare?
A full episode from Drach on operations research? Can't wait for that one. Hell, this guy makes armor development and production interesting.
When you talk about steam power plant degradation there’s some factors that are not directly engine related but are nonetheless incredibly important. Steam plant piping uses large flange type gaskets and when they’re hot and flex around these gaskets degrade naturally. This Gasket degradation allows for steam leaks both internal to the system and externally which obviously lower the amount of pressure you have you have waste steam that you’re burning fuel to generate and then not using for power generation. And you also have the literal insane danger of steam leaks. To give you a story of steam leak danger when we were checking for steam leaks in our power plant we would take a broom And wave it around the steam pipes and we know we found the leak when it cut the broom in half so imagine a 30-35 mm broom handle Or inch and a half inch diameter wooden shaft being severed by invisible high-pressure steam
Gee, it's almost as if the Japanese Navy expects to operate with an ally, who Just Happens to have larger carriers....
a friendship forged in blood
@@deathsheadknight2137 And neither the US nor Japan want China muscling in.
Not to mention the Australian ships complete with ski jumps up the front that are slightly bigger than the Japanese ships. They are definitely not aircraft carriers either, the ski jumps are just there for aesthetic effect and they honestly weren't added to the ships to assist planes to take off.
@@Dave_Sisson actually, that appears to be nothing more than australian penny pinching, they didn't want to pay the amount it would have cost to modify the design in order to not include the ramp.
@@Dave_Sisson Blame the original Spanish design, that was meant to be a light aircraft carrier, but the Canberra's design was modified to carry more troops and vehicles. To modify the ship back into something that can usefully carry out any sort of extended carrier operation would cost a significant percentage of the ships original price, it'd be more cost effective to build new ships from scratch to be carriers while retaining the extra amphibious operations capability.
8:05 Thunderchild, Thunderstruck, Thunderthighs
Thunderbolt.
Thunderchief..
Nm been looking at aircraft
PT Boats and MTBs carried depth charges to provide a nominal ASW capability. They got used to sink merchant vessels to save a torpedo. You'd have to trust the coxswain to cut under the target's bows at high speed, but they were very effective in doing underwater damage to 1000-3000 ton coastal freighters.
I beleve this could be the reason why nearly every ship in WarThunder had depth charges but most people end up killing themselves with them😂
Useful for stopping a chasing destroyer as well. A shallow depth charge would crack the keel of many.
Yes, I can see the usefulness of that approach. The objective of the magnetic torpedo pistols was to detonate a torp set to run under a ship, rather than hit on the side. A ship running over a depth charge would have the same effect as a torp with a magnetic pistol.
I imagine the outwards-pointing depth-charge throwers mounted on the decks of anti-submarine escorts could have been used to lob a depth charge towards a surface ship, but I don't know if this was ever done.
@@CharlesStearman I suspect we'd have heard about it if it had. If you're that close you probably already lost the exposed depth charge crews to enemy fire anyway.
Concerning the depth charge question.
I had a VCR tape on Royal Navy history decades ago, and one small item - that was shown as a film taken from on board - was a destroyer sinking a reasonably large merchant ship by sending a single depth charge at it, around mid-length, using a side depth charge projector. The destroyer had to be pretty close by the target ship so the point of entry was close to the target, and was running fast to clear the explosion. The distance to the resulting explosion was about what Drach showed as a still on this subject. But the accompanying narration said that this was not an unusual method for sinking merchant ships.
Presumably the ships that got this treatment were either friendly ones sinking anyway or enemy ones that had previously been stopped. In both cases I understood that there was nobody on board the target. If the target was still running and able to maneuver, the close proximity required would make that a very dangerous way to sink a ship.
To add to all the other engineers talking about steam's myriad effects on metal, I'll add the quote "water will always find a way" and remember it's not considered the universal solvent for nothing.
Re: Mismatched battles: The Naval Battle of Campeche - sailing ships of the Republic of Texas and the Republic of the Yucatan take on steamships of the Mexican Navy. A sloop-of-war, a brig, two schooners and five gunboats, all sail powered versus three steam warships, two brigs and two schooners - partially manned by British sailors and with numerous Royal Navy officers in command. The greatly inferior Republic of Texas force fought the the Mexican Navy forces to a dead draw two actions in a row, caused more damage and casualties than they suffered - and in the end the Mexican Navy was the one that retreated from the area. One of the few times that sail beat steam.
@Charles Yuditsky For something that was pretty surprising even for the day and should be widely noted as a bizarre anachronism in the history books, it's surprisingly obscure. Especially considering the Texas Navy men *knew* they were likely going up against steam frigates - which turned out to be armed with the new and fearsome 68-pounder *shell* firing Paixhans guns - and yet they went to break the blockade of Campeche anyway. IIRC, they didn't even lose any ships.
And that's where The Colt Navy gets it's name and engraving from.
Gets even better, their funding was cut off, so to pay Bill's they hired out as mercenaries.
@@dancingwiththedarkness3352 Yup, which is why they're counted as Yucatan forces as well. The defunding of the Navy was one of Sam Houston's bigger mistakes, which the inhabitants of Galveston expressed their displeasure with by rioting - which prevented the ships being sold off. Despite all these handicaps and blows to morale, nobody broke and nobody ran. Instead, they managed to fight Royal Navy personnel commanding a far superior force (as mercenaries) to a draw twice, took far fewer losses, and got a strategic win when the Mexican Navy/RN 'military advisors' retreated rather than try conclusions a third time.
@@TexasSpectre Don't mess with Texas!
I recall from a book talking about US PT boats in WWII, they did mention that sometimes they did carry depth charges. Granted, they carried quite a variety of ordnance over the duration of the war. They mentioned about using them to deter pursuing destroyers, and having damaged or destroyed a handful of destroyers.
Wife is gone for the weekend & a Drydock is ready. Life is good..
I just wanna grill and learn about navy ships for gods sake!
There are many ship collisions every year, and almost all will involve one ships bow hitting another ship. Merchant ships are designed to survive this as they are fitted with a collision bulkhead. Waves can damage a bow its a lot rarer, for a bit of interest google "the front fell off".
It was an Venezuelan corvette or similar smaller warship who started playing rough and started bumping an cruise ship, it was small for a cruise ship but also an light icebreaker as it was an expedition ship designed for Antarctica.
Well the corvette took so much damage it sunk.
Can the cruise ship claim it as an kill?
@@magnemoe1 Absolutely! Paint a silhouette on the side of the bridge.
Ben Wilson is referring to 'The Front Fell off', a classic 2 minute 1991 satirical sketch. th-cam.com/video/3m5qxZm_JqM/w-d-xo.html
Fantastic video as always Drach.
Btw I've been listening to the Bilge Pump and I absolutely love it. It's one of my favorites.
That lone crazy French frigate, I'm sure the First officer or equivalent looked at his Captain like he was nuts. Then he ran screaming and shouting abandon ship as he jumped off the side. Basically Pirates of the Caribbean.
If you could build 5 or more Thunderchild classes. I'd love to see Stormbreaker, Hammer of Dawn, Storm Herald , Hurricane, Cyclone as possible names as well. And yes I cribbed some of those from Sci Fi universes.
-- That has to be the dumbest frigate captain I've ever seen.
-- So it would seem.
@@theleva7 I'm sure he found himself rather alone rather quickly
@@admiraltiberius1989 There's no better time to ponder one's choices in life.
To answer your WW1 Australian Army commanders. Lt Gen Monash comanded the largest western front army Corps by quite some number - the ANZAC Corps, and Lt Gen Chauvel commanded the largest cavalry force in modern history - the Desert Column.
Moreshead - the Tobruk garrison in WW2
NZ Freiberg, Crete defense and Monte Cassino attack
@Drachinifel "Have there ever been any hugely mismatched battles..." The Royal Navy brig HMS Speedy v the Spanish frigate El Gamo in 1801 and the Royal Australian Navy sloop HMAS Yarra v Admiral Kondo's IJN heavy cruiser and destroyer squadron 1942. Just for two notable ones...
Thank God the Battle of Samar was an even match then!
Poor kondo was heavily overmatched
Drach;
Pleasantly surprised to find out you've comminisioned a Queen Elizabeth from Steamgezzer, surprised your having it done in the 1943 configuration though, would have thought the Jutland configuration would have been your choice.
Thanks for supporting Steam G.
He deserves it, my second favorite Brit on TH-cam.
About Norweigian fortress torpeding German cruises in WW2: in the fjords of Norway, a fortress or other land based defence was probably acceptable longer then in other places becuase of the terrain. A fjord is a place where you have virtually little to almost none space to take evasive manouvers. As in the fjord being a few hundred meters across. And often there are massive mountains right up to the water line, mountains made out of granite. That is an excellent place to blast a fort into. Germany did it with uboat pens in Namsos, for example. After the war they made indoor and bomb proof swimming pools out of the pens in Namsos. Worth a visit, if its still open (havent been there since my youth 30 years ago).
On the cracking of welded Liberty ship hulls, Constance Tippett discovered the primary problem was the not welding but the steel used. The steel often used had a brittle to ductile transition temperature around freezing. When the steel is below the transition temperature to behaves more like a sheet of glass. Thus the Liberty ships hulls at low temperatures could have the toughness of a window pane and would behave like glass.
I.E the ships worked in the summer but in the winter they'd start to fall apart.
Just all the other people in the world.
Seriously fuck you guys for putting so much emphasis on summer, it sucks and I hate it.
When I was a young lad one of my neighbors was a retired shipyard machinist who had worked on Liberty ships. He told me the engineering specs called for fillet welding (building up inside corners with successive weld beads) for added strength. He said production timelines were so short and pressure from management was so intense--that many welders had taken up the practice of laying welding rods into the corners to build up the fillet and welding beads over them. Bad juju!
The Devil In The Circuit :
GREAT disccussion! One aspect of ramming to inflict damage to an opponent involves the physical orientation of major structural components of a ship. Beams, stringers and plates, through their length, are a lot rougher and more rigid than they are across their width. It's the same physics of the spear concept: the long, narrow prow of a ship is a lot tougher through its length than the side of the same ship across its width.
As for mismatched naval battles, Antivari is a quite good example. A protected cruiser and a destroyer against a fleet of two dreadnoughts, ten predreadnoughts and some cruisers and destroyers.
For preservation of main propulsion equipment, I know that with boilers and steam turbines it depends on how good a job they did doing the layup (i.e. preservation measures made in anticipation of long term inactivity).
If I was walking in the active main space of a steam ship that had been laid up for a long time, I would definitely bring a mirror on a metal rod (they make these to look for steam leaks) and a flashlight.
You know... I dont know how I was suggested your channel a long while ago... but I am glad I watched the video that was on the suggestion. Look forward to each of these videos
2:36 If a ship comes out of a battle without a bow, can you really say it came out "ahead"?
I'll see myself out.
The front fell off. th-cam.com/video/3m5qxZm_JqM/w-d-xo.html
Re RN & RAN officers
Australian naval college commenced in 1913. Collins, Waller, Burnett were from first class. So they were commanders/commodores in 1940/41 in Mediterranean, so they were just too "junior" to command anything larger than a destroyer flotilla.
The Australian ships/navy was British built. The Australian navy trained with RN in Mediterraneanin 1930s. So they were part of the RN fleet and would just slot into their usual role like they did in early WW2 and now do with the current USN.
Rear Admiral Jack Crace, CinC of Anzac Force /TF44 was Australian born and RN trained just to muddy the waters
Lastly, Major General Moreshead was leader of the Tobruk garrison in April 41. He had the British 7th Armour Division/Brigade under him as well other British units as an example how flexible the British command structure was. NZer Freiberg at Crete defense also commanded a mix bag of British Commonwealth troops.
I heard, or possibly read that HMS Ark Royal almost sank herself, when launching a depth charge armed swordfish with the wrong settings on the catapult, ripped the wings off it and ran over the wreckage, the depth charges exploding damaging the ship.
That poor swordfish pilot.. At least they went quick when the depth charge went off I guess :/
joanne chon I can attest that self injury with your own blade applies also to the Japanese Sword Arts :chuckles:. Until you have cut or otherwise perforated yourself with your own katana you haven’t really acquired the proper respect for Sensei Pain :).
For the depth charge that can sink a ship, it's time for Jellico's "crushing hand of God prototype" to shine
Thank you for atleast filling an hr of my lockdown day and giving me even more knowledge to make my friends wonder how I know this stuff😂👍
Drac, you need to build the Elbonian Navy, Gun Jesus and The Chieftain have done Infantry weapons and Armour, your turn....we are asking Bismarck to do the Airforce too!!
One advantage to the the turret mounted AA, particularly on the forward superfiring turret is that be it dive bombers or torpedo bombers, they're actually aiming for a point slightly ahead of the ship since it's moving forward, so they're trying to put whatever weapon they have where the ship will be when it needs to hit. So it would actually give you a better angle to line up that shot.
40:00 Nice dodge of the issue of Unions in the shipyards. Welding was an existential threat to riveters and would require either retraining/replacing a large part of the shipyard labor force. Unions threatened to strike leveraging the high demand of the time, institutional change in Union industries requires BOTH the managers and unions to agree...the USA had very little problems with that, mainly because of the rapid scale up of shipbuilding in the USA. British shipbuilding began atrophy post WW1, by the 1960s the British shipbuilding was effectively dead, by 1970 nonexistant.
The modern escort carrier is an interesting idea, but tactically almost every modern navy warship beyond a certain sIze carries at least 1 or 2 helicopters for ASW and potentially light ASuW work - so, in a sense, every ship is an escort carrier. (Then you throw in the coming drone revolution....).
Helicopters are a true force multiplier in the ASW role, but they are very short legged (and vulnerable) in the ASuW/land attack role. Also, in the recent past, fixed wing aircraft were key in n providing air coverage and extend sensor range of a fleet. The modern escort carrier is a very tangible paradigm in navies that don't have the size/money/political will to field "full fledged" carriers (catobar and up), and is indeed a natural evolution for "helicopters heavy" navies like the Japanese and Italian one. See for example the evolution path of the core unit of the Italian navy main task force: from the Vittorio Veneto (helicopter cruiser) to the Garibaldi and then the Cavour (light carriers of increasing displacement, but clearly not LHDs). The main difference from the past is that those navies don't employ "fleet carriers" at all.
@@R00sc0 This is admittedly getting into splitting hairs/nomenclature territory, but, I would argue that by definition, the primary purpose of an escort carrier is to 'escort' something. I know the USN used Jeep carriers for land support and to bulk up available aircraft in the latter stages of WW2, but that was a function of a) the diminishing sub threat and b) they had so many carriers they could afford to use them for tasks beyond their primary mission. I think what you would call a modern escort carrier I would call a light carrier -- or, maybe we should call anything that has surface strike as a mission a fleet carrier, regardless of size. These days, even a detachment of something like 6 F-35Bs can carry firepower equivalent to entire World War II fleet carrier air wings. (At least, if they ever figure out the software.) And while helicopters are relatively short legged and vulnerable in surface strike, I wouldn't count them out. Both the British and US military (if memory serves) have experimented with flying Apaches off their assault ships, and while the Penguin SSM isn't exactly top of the line hardware anymore, a number of helicopters flying below the radar horizon and getting some sort of target handoff from an offboard sensor would still present a credible threat.
@@ghoti221 yes, I agree with you that today the term "escort carrier" is out of context if we mean the same role they had in WW2. My point was mainly related to the viability of the concept of a light carrier today and why it is an evolution/extension of the cold war helicopter based ASW fleets with the bonus that it can perform many different task that an heli-only supported fleet cannot. Attack helicopters are embarked by many modern navies on LHDs but mainly to support amphibious assault: I don't remember if this is the case for the JSDF Apaches but in the Italian Navy the Mangusta (operated by the Army) don't steal spots onboard the Cavour but they are embarked on the San Giorgio class LPDs or on the Trieste, an LHD that can operate as a "backup carrier" when the Cavour is not available. I don't think the concept of light carrier is really an useful concept for "first tier" navies (maybe in the future if the Congress will cut back the number of Ford class this could change but I doubt it) but it is a powerful asset for minor navies. Also please don't be fooled by the outside look of a modern light carrier: it look indeed very similar to an LHD, but the first ones are designed to sustain a somewhat bigger fixed wing air group and, mainly, a greater number of sorties and C4I facilities.
@@R00sc0 Oh, I'm well aware of the compromises that LHD/LHA style ships make, trading off aviation capability versus troop capability, though, given the experiments the US Marines have done with F-35 heavy airgroups, I don't think the trade-off is as big as you think it is. I do have this vague memory of Apaches or some other attack helicopter being used to help guard against small boat swarm attack, or at least considered in that context. Or, in other words, restrictions on use are doctrinal, not technological. (I'm definitely not saying they're as useful as conventional attack aircraft, but they definitely have a capability in a modern OOB.) And I think with modern 21st century technology and the ongoing drone revolution, I think the definition of "what is a strike carrier" becomes very blurry indeed. Sometimes I wonder if people now are counting carriers the way a previous generation counted battleships - but that's not the type of discussion you can decently have in a TH-cam reply chain. :)
@@ghoti221 US Marines LHA/LHD are way bigger than an Izumo, but maybe you are right.
Great episode. Was there ever a figure given for the Naval Arms race leading to WW1? For example - what did all of the Dreadnought era battle ships (BBs and Battlecruisers) cost the UK and Germany? I'm curious because in WW2 we get figures cited for the atomic bomb project, the B-29 project (both in the billions of dollars).
And what were the leading cost centers for the rise in cost of individual capital ships? Armor while thicker probably wasn't the key factor? Engines? Fire control and internal control ? More complex internal construction?
Sounds like these depth charges would’ve worked well in the Battle of Samar. 😂 Just run your destroyer or destroyer escort right up to your nearest battleship or cruise, flip around, and launch depth charges. In that Battle, it probably would’ve worked through whatever magic the Americans were using.
Don't hold me to it but I'm pretty sure some of the fighter-bombers were dropping depth charges since that was all they had I don't know if they had any way of adjusting the depths once it was attached to the plane but they probably tried to blow something up with them. Also I do want to point out that lie Japanese forces might have figured out they were fighting destroyers and Destroyer escorts if they got close enough to literally throw depth charges at them maybe
2345tomson I did have that thought. But, you would think they would’ve figured it out from the shells that were coming at them, so who knows?
I've gone fishing with dinomite & always wondered if ever fresh fish were on the menu after depth charge runs ?
Regarding depth charges on sinking destroyers going off, there's also USS _Hamman_ eating one of the torpedoes meant for _Yorktown_ a couple days after Midway and exploding underwater as it sank (which was probably what finally sank the _Yorktown)._
I don't think you should hesitate with taking sponsorship adequate to your audience at all, even on a regular basis. The entertainment and it's quality that you provide us with is a good enough reason for you to make a profit from these videos.
Very interesting as always
0:03:39 - Dynamite cruiser - maybe a nice, anti-submarine mortar could be pneumatic, considering the Austro-Hungarian pneumatic (trench) mortars
0:28:59 - if memory serves Taffy 3 aircraft did drop depth charges on the Japanese vessels and Dr Alaexander Clarke mentioned that British fast craft did drop depth charges in the path of pursuing S-boots (which are boats, not ships, but still).
On the depth charges, the first operational depth charge had two versions. One issued to faster ships with a full charge and one issued to slow ships with a reduced charge because the slower vessels couldn’t reliably get away from a full charge before it detonated.
LHD’s aka amphibious assault ships are effectively modern day Escort Carriers. They are slower then the modern Aircraft Carriers and can launch VSTOL aircraft and helicopters which is good for hunting submarines.
12:45
To be fair , Izumo class is much perfect for MJSDF ( or what is is called , i dont want to call them IJN :D )
Smaller ships , fast , cheaper , can be in many places at once.
Admiral Trawn would be impresed :)
JMSDF - Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force. Just for the future information :D
@@SgtLevis tnx. theyr really need better name for themselfs :)
@@murderouskitten2577 Sounds better than the Chinese. The People's Liberation Army Navy... 🤔
@@WALTERBROADDUS well CCP also has maritine militia :D
Depth charges were used extensively by Avenger, Liberator and Swordfish against surfaced U Boats to good effect. In addition in the Pacific bombs fused to explode underwater in effect depth charges, were used in skip bombing attacks, for example at the battle of the Bismarck Sea. ASW aircraft armed with depth charges also attacked surface vessels when they were encountered unexpectedly, for example Samar. I believe you cover this in you Video about Samar!
I wouldn't argue that Escort carriers in the WW2 sense are really viable today. What we more have is heavy US and light EU/Asian carriers. An escort carrier was going along with a convoy to provide CAP and ASW support, but since the improvement in AA capability compared to WW2 I don't think convoys necessarily need a CAP, a ship with long-range missiles like ESSM or RIM-167 can do that. So what I could see happening is actually up-gunned (up-missiled?) amphibious assault ship/helicopter carrier doing this. It carries something similar to an Aegis system for air defence of the convoy and helicopters for ASW. It's CLOSE to an escort carrier, but performs the same duty in a different manner. And the availability of a large number of helicopters would also make this ship useful for salvaging crew & material from merchants in the convoy that still happen to be sunk.
To be honest the Izumo Class CVE's make a lot of sense for Japan as a Island Nation with strict resource and Military Funding limits so they can have a few of these built and handle enough of the duties of a Multi-CVE Task Force to make up for lacking a Full Carrier or a Super Carrier like the US can build every 4 decades basically, it also has a certain amount of pragmatic flare to its complement a Squadron of F35's is still a high capable strike and Interception Force if used well and has good all round Fighter-Bomber-Interceptor ability if loaded out right that it can handle a few roles semi well without issue, obviously its not a Master of Anything, more a Jack of all Trades, but even that can be more fitting of Japanese needs for now.
There is a modern 'escort carrier' design out there it's called "Príncipe de Asturias". It's the smallest aircraft carrier in the world today, It started life as the Sea Control Ship. It was designed by Gibbs & Cox. there are 2 copies built 1 for the Spanish Armada, and a second for the Royal Thai Navy. The Príncipe de Asturias is slated for the scrap heap. The HTMS Chakri Naruebet is just sitting there doing nothing. Here are some info on it The design is basically that of the initial US Navy's Sea Control Ship design of the 1970s, modified with a ski-jump ramp added to better enable V/STOL aircraft takeoff and other modifications to fit Spanish specifications. Constructed by the National Company Bazan (then Empresa Nacional Bazán, now Navantia) in their shipyard at Ferrol, Príncipe de Asturias was delivered to the Navy on 30 May 1988. The construction process had begun eleven years previously, on 29 May 1977. The processing of the steel began on 1 March 1978 and the keel was laid on 8 October 1979. On 22 May 1982, in a ceremony presided over by Juan Carlos I of Spain, the launch took place, with Queen Sofía of Spain as the ship's sponsor. The ship made her first sea trials in November 1987. Decommissioned: 6 February 2013.
Look at Thailand's, Spain's, and Italy's current carriers - RN invented the modern CVE with the Invincible class...
I made that same observation on a navy FB group a few days ago. The advent of V/STOL aircraft have made carriers affordable for far more navies.
With ship to ship ramming HMAS Voyager is a good example to cover. Apologies if you have already covered this...
Today's Escort Carrier? Picture the Kuznetsov/Gorshkov (circa 50,000 tons), but with fewer Antiship Weapons and more deck park. And with USN engineering and propulsion gear. G.E. Gas Turbines (small carriers should be quick to react), some Helos with ASW trawling SoNAR, a Hawkeye or two, half a dozen all weather interceptors, and half a dozen bomb trucks. The aircraft would launch light (no CatoBar) and have short legs, but, for an escort carrier tasked with local defense that shouldn't be a problem.
The air wing?
2x E2 Hawkeye AEW/Direction
4x AV8B (quick response is a must)
6x F/A18 All Weather Interceptors
6x F/A18 with Tacam, and Paveway (or modern equivalent)
6x ASW Helos (not my current field of interest) with dipping SoNAR and/or Mine Trawl.
The Weapons fit?
2x Goalkeeper CIWS (one each P/S aft corner)
1x ASROC launcher
Several light AA/Antipirate cannon.
1x Bofors 57mm DP (fwd)
In a What if Scenario:
2x E2 Hawkeye
12x F35B
6x ASW Helo
and . . .
2x Twin Arm launcher (fwd and aft) for Phoenix LR AA Missiles and/or Harpoon
2x Bofors 57mm DP (fwd/aft on island)
1x ASROC launcher
With the recent burning of the LHD-6 USS Bonhomme Richard and the supposed refit of the Japanese Navy JS Izumo DDH-183 into a 'light aircraft carrier' of helicopters and F-35 STOLV aircraft it begs the question: In the 20th Century what makes a 'light aircraft carrier' vs 'LHD' (Wasp and Bonhomme Richard) vs 'LHA' (America and Tripoli)? Is 'escort carrier' designation for landing support carriers gone for good? It seems the Izumo is more like an LHA than a 'light aircraft carrier'...and LHA just seems like a classic 'Escort carrier' role.
Mostly the number of Marines on board. The LHD and LHA are designed primarily to land troops in amphibious assaults, sending them ashore in boats and helicopters. So there's a lot of space used up for troops and tanks and supplies that a CVL/escort carrier would instead use for aircraft.
@@hughfisher9820 Yea, for the WASP class and apparently future America class that will be true, but for the AMERICA and TRIPOLI they had their welldeck removed to make room for more aircraft hanger space and that was kinda where I was confused. Later on though found something that answers the question more precisely...the LHA's are 46000+t displacement, so about the size of the Midway-class CVs. Yeah, nothing light about them.
My god man! I've to sleep somtime. This is a most inconvenient time for those of the antipodean nations!
ʎʇɥƃᴉlq uᴉ ǝɹǝɥ dɐu ǝɯᴉʇɥɔunl ɐ ƃuᴉʌɐɥ ɟo pɐǝʇsuᴉ dn ǝɯ dǝǝʞ oʇ ƃuᴉoƃ s,ǝɥ uoᴉʇɐlosuoɔ ʎuɐ sʇᴉ ɟI
Am I the only one that would find it ironic if Kaga found itself escorting the Enterprise?
Only if the next Enterprise was to be stationed in the West Pacific.
Currently, she is built to replace Dwight Eisenhower and her area of operations, which is around NATO and Middle Eastern waters.
You'll need to bet on the chance that Enterprise 80 is relieving one of the Nimitzes stationed on the West Coast, Pearl Harbour, or Yokosuka.
Speaking of poor quality oil, I was reminded of the IJN use of Soybean oil, as fuel, in 1945, not a great outcome.
Thank you.
None of you asked for sabotage of Elbonian navy. Disappointed.
That, my friend, was included in the main purchase roster. ;-)
I thot Elbonia was a made up country like Billy Connelly's 'jebrovia'? I used 2b hood at geography fuck it
Pepperdog181@gmail.com 🏴🍺🚬🔪
These questions are from April. I don't know if Elbonia 'existed' at that point.
@@stevefaiello3321 In aside, Hushkit (another channel) started the meme (for me, at least) a couple years back with a "World's Worst Air Force" gag video. I dunno how many of us are fans of Hushkit, too, however. I think of the channel as the "Best snob comedy act in all of Military Aviation".
Here's the Hushkit original: th-cam.com/video/PxvFZiemegQ/w-d-xo.html
Re: Escort Carriers. I fear the closest that the USN could come to anything like that is the use of America and Wasp class amphibious assault ships as so-called "Lightning Carriers" - unloading all rotary wing craft to make room for 15-20 F-35's - which also happens to be not far off the complement of a Casablanca. Obviously, however, a 40-45,000 ton ship would be one heck of a large escort, and not cheap or quick to construct, certainly not in large numbers (essential features of a CVE). It's really more of a CVL when used in this configuration.
wrt future proofing BBs. The Brits leveraged the Washington treaty to future proof their fleet. Of the ships retained by the RN, all except Tiger mounted 15" guns. The USN Tennessee, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New York classes only had 14" and the Wyomings and Floridas only mounted 12". And, because of the replacement schedule in the treaty, it would be 1941 before the US could replace the last of it's 14" gunned ships. Additionally, the Brits wangled a fleet far above it's quota, while the USN was nearly dead on. The quota was 525,000 tons each for the RN and USN. With the Nelsons, the RN ended up with 558,950 tons, while the USN only had 525,850. If the USN had completed Washington, instead of using it for target practice, the USN would have had 558.450 tons, the parity with the RN the USN was supposed to have, but no, couldn't do that. Wow did the US get rogered. Supposed to have parity with the RN, but, in reality, USN tonnage down a complete BB compared to the RN and locked into smaller guns for 20 years. The Japanese were pretty ill used too. Their quota was 315,000 tons, but their retention list totaled only 301,320. To maintain the 5:5:3 ratio to the RN, the IJN should have been allowed an additional 20,370 tons. for a total of 335,370, not enough for Tosa, which exceeded the 35,000/ship tonnage limit, but enough for another Nagato. Future proofing via lawyers.
I can see a use for a modern escort carrier type, something a little smaller than a World War 2 Essex class carrier with an air wing of Douglas A4 Skyhawk type aircraft. They could be used for ground support for invasions. They would be cheaper than the larger carriers and they would free up the larger carriers to protect the fleet.
Ref positions for AA guns. RFA Wave Knight originally had her 30 mil guns mounted below the bridge wings! As a gunner at the time I was most amused at this fact. These were later replaced with 20 mils above the bridge.
A friend mine’s grandfather served aboard Electra and was one of the few survivors. Shame poor Electra and Exeter are gone..
My grandfather was abord a ship that underwent an depthcharging from the air. The ship itself was little bothered but the percussive jarring and potential the next charge might be set to a shallower depth or land on deck had notible moral afect on the crew.
I remember hearing that japans carriers and in general fleet are have a heavy emphasis on ASW capabilities. The carriers had that role idk if that is going to change or they are just adding extra capability.
I would look at the escort carrier question differently. You would go for helicopter operations for anti-submarine and ground attack helicopters. You wouldn't even need a complete flight deck. Maybe something like a Moskva class ship. Though I would keep the hanger on the same level so that the front of the ship would be much higher than the rear.
Really funny video talking about the usa japan and the new "Kaga"
On Depth-Charges... During WWII my father served aboard LCIs and was a plank-owner on two. He mentioned that when transiting from the east coast to the Panama Canal depth-charge racks were fitted just in case they ran into a U-boat... that didn't go very well. He said the first, and last, time they rolled one off, the stern was hurled out of the water due to their slow speed. Commodore put a stop to that silliness. Additionally... Didn't one of the first pilots to spot the Japanese fleet at Samar try to takeout a Japanese cruiser with his depth-charges, since he was on anti-sub patrol?
Proper water treatment and deaeration can greatly extend the life of boilers.Where I worked we used a witches brew of 3 chemicals for treatment plus of course deaeration. A couple of our boilers had been running for 40 years Out biggest corrosion is was on the hot side of economizers where condensing could cause wicked corrosion problems. I can imagine one problem for ships may be that the chemistry of feed water brought aboard will vary widely depending on where it is obtained.
On the Australian command of British units, there were British units under the command of Australian or other Commonwealth officers.
I think the largest factors would be scales and flexibility. Significant naval formations could be quickly built up and moved around, much more so than large army formations. Mooreshead and Freyburg’s commands were hastily put together by necessity rather than well planned formations.
In addition, in the Pacific (for the first part of the war, at least), the RAN was a much greater proportion of the commonwealth forces than they had been in North Africa. There were a total of three Australian divisions in North Africa and the Levant, but even these were rarely in the same area/command and were withdrawn over the course of 1942.
Also, notably all three commanders of all Commonwealth forced in Korea were Australian.
The USN has been using LHDs as light/escort carriers.
At the Battle of the Java Sea Exeter and Houston had equal firepower as Houston had lost her X turret in an air raid.
Drach needs to build Elbonian Navy! And sabotage it, and rebuild it again!
Now here, I'm afraid I must disagree with you, Mr. Drach. The Titanic ramming an iceberg would have bene a terrible calamity. More modern surveys have shown that the area of the hull breach wasn't as great as initially supposed, with the iceberg banging along the side, rather than slicing a huge gash. The problem was that, with the huge amount of work going on at Harland & Wolff, the demand on producers of steel was high enough that it started causing quality control issues. Samples of hull plating recovered from the wreck show severe brittleness caused by sulfur, making them much less ductile than even contemporary steel, much less modern material. There was similar trouble with the rivets. When the iceberg bumped along the side, it popped open the lap joints between outer hull plates, with brittle rivet heads popping right off. If the Titanic made a direct hit, the hull joints on both sides would unzip and the ship would crumple like a bellows, even away from the impact site, and would certainly sink more quickly.
Had a weird thought on a WWI dynamite cruiser, but the range issue ruins it. I'd wondered if you could build a high angle one and use it as a bomb ship for shore bombardment at the Dardanelles (should have less peak recoil force than a normal heavy mortar). But you'd need at least 15 mile range to drop your big shells onto the forts from safely out in the Aegean. And honestly, if you were building a dedicated bomb ship it's probably easier and more reliable to simply design one around a more conventional heavy siege mortar.
Mathematics - the silent killer
Drachinifel, what are your top 5 lessons learned from Jutland that should have been thrown out? The navies of the time obviously studied the battle closely, and built new ships and tactics for the future. What were some of the demonstrably incorrect conclusions they drew?
Recently (2013) decommissioned, and technically not a designated escort carrier, but the Spanish [Príncipe de Asturias](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_aircraft_carrier_Pr%C3%ADncipe_de_Asturias) had a displacement of 16,700 tons and a complement of Harriers and helicopters.
Might have missed it but have you done a video on the HMS 'Good Hope' that was Craddock's flagship at Coronel WWI pls?
Though it didn’t happen, a deliberate technological mismatch would have been Japanese wooden boats and biplanes used in suicide attacks against an Allied invasion fleet. Wooden boats and planes had smaller radar cross sections, an example of using old tech to fool new tech.
The British Invincible class fit the bill of escort carriers quit well and showed their usefulness from the Falkland till they were scraped
Güzel video olmuş👍🏻
Ref A.A. guns on lower main battery turrets, check out HMS Valiant late war, with 20mm guns on said turrets, and I suspect she wasn't alone.
I could only see dynamite guns useful in amphibious fire supoort.
There again advances in rocket tech may overcome their cost and complexity for tossing large HE shells downrange.
You know full well if Titanic had rammed the iceberg head-on and survived, maritime armchair scholars would still be muttering that Smith had plenty of time to evade, it would have just been a light brush down the side, the ship would totally have handled that and all those injuries could have been avoided...
Smith would have been ripped for steaming into a known ice-field without slowing down. One commenter wrote that the miracle was she got so far into the ice-field without hitting one much sooner.
You mention lopsided battles within the same era and don't mention the (wonderfully covered by yourself btw) slightly imbalanced sides of the Battle off Samar?
It's worthwhile pointing out that in terms of Australian formations, units, under British command, there's two distinct sides.
On the RN, RAN side, it's a lot kinder. They don't have the history the Australian Army, through the colonial units do, with their English counterparts.
This might apply to the RAF and RAAF as well. Considering the proto-RAAF was running around helping Lawrence in Arabia for a while, as well as I think some Australian presence in the RAF during the Battle of Britain. Not sure if we had a full squadron, I'll need to check records. I think there were a number of volunteers over there. Not sure of the role, as well.
On the Australian Army side, the land side, you have a few issues. In between Breaker Morant in the Second Boer War, where you had a mix of Australian colonial units and the first units of the Australian Army, there's the start of bad blood. Later on you have the Gallipoli campaign, which was not just Australian and New Zealand units, it was also Indian units and a few more as well if you don't mind the tangent, it got to the stage that the Australian Army and Australian soldier was almost mortally opposed to the British officers in command.
There's a joke of two British officers going by some Australians and the first complains to the second they weren't saluted, the second replies, they are being respectful, they didn't do anything else.
I don't know how true this was of the officer core, or how true it is to this day. However, when you have a connected Englishman let off at the last moment and the colonials left to be shot for/with obvious political reason, it did leave a sense of bad blood. Combined with at least the perception of the colonials do the fighting and dying while the rest drink tea/they care more about their clocks than the lives under their command, well, there's a bad foundation for a long term relationship.
To the degree and I don't know who made it effective formal policy, you wanted the Australian Army, you got an Australian Army officer to lead it. Certainly no British military authority would be held over an Australian in Australian uniform.
Addendum/revision -
There's also a version of the joke about the two British officers that goes like this.
Two British officers are walking past an Australian patrol and the patrol walks around them. The first officer complains to the second, 'see how disrespectful they are, they didn't salute us' and the second replies 'they were being very respectful, they walked around us.'
I think the implication is obvious.
Can we expect a episode on naval mines in WW2?
44:59 "being in the same boat" is an idiom. And now it's a pun.
With regard to a modern Light Carrier, I would have thought that the Italian Cavour would have been a better fit, considering it was definitely designed as an Aircraft Carrier at around 27,000 tons and currently operates Harriers, and has plans to operate F-35Bs in the future.
But countries with "helicopter carrying destroyers" like Japan and Australia can not call them aircraft carriers, even if they really are carriers, because China would be very upset and no one except the current American government wants to upset the Chinese. Spain has a carrier of a similar design to the Australian ships, but they are a long way from China, so they can call their ship an aircraft carrier.
Izumos were also ver, clearly designed as carriers.
Oh Japan and their "Helicopter Carriers"
It reminds me of that scene from the Simpsons where that guy on the Cayman Islands says he can't discuss his customers illegal offshore accounts.
"I'm sorry, the Japanese Navy cannot discuss their illegal aircraft carriers"
"Oh crap, I shouldn't have said Japan had a navy.
Oh crap, I shouldn't have said they were illegal
Oh crap, I definitely shouldn't have said they were aircraft carriers.
It's too hot today"
Exeter is my most beloved ship always loved the look of it close second would be HMS Shropshire the County Class CA.
24:30 HMAS Perth was laid down 26-06-1933, launched 27-07-1934 and commissioned 15-06-1936. The Ruyter was laid down 16-09-1933, launched 11-03-1935 and commissioned 03-10-1936. So who again has the most modern cruiser? 😉
On top of that, the Admiralen-class destroyers are extremely similar to the early 1930's British destroyers seeing as they originate from HMS Ambuscade. I am not letting you get away with that one Drach. That is blatant anti Dutch heresy and I won't stand for it. It is time to dust off the old maps and sail back to the Medway. 😄
But seriously, seeing as Exeter could not hit anything and Jupiter had an encounter with a Dutch mine that got a bit confused whether to kill the British or Japanese, a common occurrence, arguably the Dutch force was just about the strongest. It is really down to the destroyers. Then again, the US destroyers launching a torpedo attack outside of effective range and then retiring to Surabaya, being out of torpedoes and simply to slow to keep up, doesn't help their case either. Not that it mattered because the Ruyter and Java encountered a long lance problem later on and that was it. The USA DD's might have been useful as impromptu torpedo net, but that was about it for that utter disaster of a battle.
22:30 Replace them with nuclear power plants! Also! 29:00 harkens back to crushing hand of God depthcharges...
15:00 You would also simultaneously having a Significant Emotional Event in the process.
Australian / British Army officer interchangeably vs RAN / RN officers: easy to understand if one realises Australian Army senior officers until the end of WWII were nearly all militia while British Army were nearly all permanent, whereas nearly all RAN officers were full timers with the same training as their RN peers.
Although the Australian Army had a few full-time senior officers, these only had staff rather than command roles until the Australian Regular Army was formed in 1947.
Re: USS England. The US code breakers put the DDEs in the right place to nail the IJN submarines.
"Three dimes and a nickel"!!! LOL!!! As the man once said, "You can get anything you want...........as long as you are willing to pay the price." Hard to believe that once upon a time the U.S. government was reluctant to spend the tax payers' money.
USS England was playing with a stacked deck 😁
SMS Kaiser.
When ship goes berserk.
For an example of a British officcer that commanded Australians, consider VC, KCB, DSC, DL. Desoite what poor historians often write, Criutchley was not Australian, but a RN career officer with an extensive noble background (Queen Victoria was his godmother) who won the DSC and VC in WWI during the two Ostend raids. Roger Keyes was his naval "godfather," so he saw a lot of action. He also commanded your baby the Warspite during the Second Battle of Narvik. The Australian Squadron was his onlky non-RN command.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Crutchley
Victor Crutchley......bad cut and paste of his name.