@@adaw2d3222 according to the replacement schedule in the WNT, the legacy ships would have been mostly gone. Assuming everything on the replacement schedule through 38 is scrapped on schedule, the only remnants would be Valiant, Renown, Repulse, Ramillies, Hood and the Nelsons.
At what point would the channel, and its inherent workload, be considered "too big" for just yourself to manage? More succinctly: when would you consider expanding your staff?
What would it have taken for the US navy to pick up and continuously develop submarines after the CSS Hunley's successful attack? 1. An incredible amount of desperation. 2. High Value Targets in unassailable Confederate ports. The Union had neither of those problems to overcome in the Civil War.
How to tell when drach likes a question. "I'll keep this brief" and then 15 minutes go by with him deep into his own brain of some wild alternate history.
I posed several alt history questions a few months ago: USN Colorados never built, RN reorders all four of the ships cancelled in 1914 as Renowns, and a couple others. It will be interesting to see if any tickle his fancy. Maybe even a speculation about the UK swapping all it's West Indies colonies to the US in settlement of it's war debt? (the more I looked into that one, the better I liked it)
QE and Valiant received new powerplants in their modernizations. I'm thinking there was an interpretation of the treaty that the UK observed that prohibited uprating the QE powerplants. Or, could be, that the assertion that the QEs could be uprated enough to hit 28kts was hooey. The only upgrades the WNT explicitly allowed were for torpedo protection, AA armament, and deck armor.
@@stevevalley7835 That's an interesting point about the treaty, but I believe that HMS Warspite received new boilers and turbines during her rebuild. I was also more meaning that as the QE class could have been 28kt from the start (the question at 00:29:31); the refit could allow for additional upgrades and efficiency increases.
@@Adam-ns3gg OK, 28kt QEs from the start, then the rebuilt QEs could maintain that speed without any treaty issues. What does that do for the case for building the Renowns and Hood? The QEs would be as fast as Tiger, and all the preceding battlecruisers. The KGVs would not offer any speed advantages over rebuilt QEs either. The KGVs are better protected, but could they modernize Malaya and Barham, and bring Warspite up to 1939 standard for the price of one KGV?
The South Dakota, which is about the same size as a Queen Elizabeth, had engines that produced almost twice as much power as the Warspite's. That 5 extra knots cost a lot.
Somehow I get the feeling that turning the Mk14 into a wire guided torpedo with a flag with "Bang!" on it would have been both the safer and more effective option.
I thought Drydock was just a program about looking at a particular ship while in drydock. I didn't know it was a great q/a session about a variety of topics. Now I have over 160 episodes to listen to😀
Hey Drach, how about a dedicated video on turrets at some point? I'm wondering how we came to the multi-gun turrets of WW2. What considerations go into choosing X turrets with Y guns? Do the guns aim somewhat independently? What sort of firing patterns would be used and why? Etc. Etc.
On the U-Boot vs escort question, I've looked up losses of RN destroyers and other escorts to U-Boats: 1939: none 1940: 3 DDs sunk, 2DDs damaged & scuttled, 3 sloops sunk 1941: 4 DDs sunk, 1 sloop sunk, 6 corvettes sunk, 2 A/S trawlers sunk 1942: 11 DDs sunk, 1 DD damaged (not reactivated), 3 escorts sunk, 1 frigate sunk, 6 corvettes sunk 1943: 5 DDs sunk, 3 escorts sunk, 1 sloop damaged (not reactivated), 1 frigate sunk, 2 frigates damaged (not reactivated), 2 corvettes sunk, 4 A/S trawlers sunk 1944: 4 DDs sunk, 1 DD damaged & scuttled, 1 DD damaged (not reactivated), 5 escorts sunk, 2 sloops sunk, 3 frigates sunk, 5 frigates damaged (not reactivated), 5 corvettes sunk, 1 corvette damaged (not reactivated), 2 A/S trawlers sunk 1945: 4 escorts damaged (not reactivated), 1 frigate damaged (not reactivated), 1 sloop sunk, 3 corvettes sunk, 1 corvette damaged (not reactivated) The Royal Canadian Navy lost 2 DDs, 3 frigates, 2 frigates damaged (not reactivated) and 8 corvettes to German U-boats from 1939-45 At a quick glance, the US Navy also lost half a dozen DDs, a dozen 10 DEs and a few sloops/frigates/USCG cutters to German U-boats (I can look for more detailed numbers if desired) (Source: Harald Fock, Z-Vor!, Band 2) Please note that these numbers are German and Italian submarines combined until 1943 and include German manned torpedos and midget subs for 1944-45. I can't motivate myself to look up all classes and names of the ships involved to see if they were WW1 vintage escorts or top-notch fleet DDs or if they were on escort or other fleet duties. If you wish to compare the losses to U-Boats to that sunk by Luftwaffe/Italian Air Force: the Royal Navy alone lost about 100 DDs/escorts to aircraft only from 1939-42.
🤔 It's not that people working in legislature are stupid. It's actually worse than that. It's that they are selfish, uncaring "dark triad" types, who are motivated mostly by increasing their own personal power and wealth! That's true regardless of their party affiliation. However, since the "news" media and social media oligarchies are dominated by corrupt, partisan leftists, they almost always ALLOW leftist politicians to literally get away with incompetence and corruption, without reporting on it and holding them accountable. Biden abruptly pulled the USAF from Bagram air base, without even telling the local Afghan officials when they were leaving!! Then the rest of the military were ordered to leave BEFORE they'd evacuated the 20k to 40k American and Afghani civilians! They were left to the wolves in Afghanistan, because the politicians in power DIDN'T CARE!! 😠👎 The social media monopolies have now basically become the 21st century "public square", but they too have fully embraced partisan bias, and leftist authoritarianism. They admit to working with the Biden administration to censor so called "misinformation". What that really means, is that they censor any FACTUAL information thats inconvenient to the Democrat party(or the Labour Party), as they effectively silence the "enemies of the left"! 👺😈👹 For instance, they censored the New York Post's report that included legitimate PROOF of corruption involving Joe Biden and his family, just weeks before the 2020 election! From March 2020-2021, they also censored ALL legitimate scientific discussion involving the Wuhan lab leak theory(reality)!
1:05:00 1% edge case: the rubber flight deck tests find that you _can_ belly-land if you also incorporate bouncy-castle technology, leading to the Maltas carrying JATO-equipped Vulcans to the Falklands.
Regarding the difficulty of producing turbine engines, I am reading a history of CL-90, the second WW2 USS Astoria. She and several of her sisters had turbine engines breakdowns during sea trials due to attempts to make the bearings cheaper and require fewer strategic materials. It was an expensive lesson in 1944-45.
also producing precision equipment under wartime conditions in general is difficult, you had places that were making 2-3 engines a quarter, suddenly told build 5 a week
@@AsbestosMuffins there were also a lot of assumptions about industrial ability in that time that were less than accurate. Yes a Typesetting Factory may be very good at making precision machines specialized for their industry, but it may not be able to make even more simple but precision oriented things like bearings, gunmounts, engine/transmission parts ect. They often ended up re-equipping the entire factory and re-training the entire staff, at nearly the cost of building a whole new factory from the ground up.
@@archibaldlarid3587 Sometimes the war equipment itself was redesigned for faster, cheaper production. The Russians were masters at that, hence the numbers of tanks they produced compared to the German precision production methods. Plus they had access through the US and UK to scarce materials.
Another good Dry dock. Re the Malta class, the two biggest detractors to Royal Navy carrier operations were the Treasury and the R.A.F. The latter in particular went out of their way to brief against the Navy having this capability.
@@RedXlV Yes, they even produced a doctored map to support them. Trouble is, they gave Wilson and Healy the excuse they needed to cancel CVA01 and phase out the carriers that the Rn had then. Didn't do them any good, Labour cancelled te TSR2 also.
" Whats the difference between naval and merchant spec construction? " Modern warships incorporate the so called "gas tight citadel" in which the atmosphere and environment within a substantial portion of the ship can be sealed off and controlled for nuclear, chemical and biological defence. You wouldn't bother incorporating such a feature in a commercial vessel. Maybe, cruise ships have climate controlled areas but they are nothing like the sealed and filtered atmosphere in a gas tight citadel.
That is one difference, and a more modern one. Naval spec gets down to the level of reinforced scantlings to withstand battle damage, higher-test more-expensive materials, and redundant control and communication systems.
The gas tight citadel is only used in certain larger Naval ships, not in all naval vessels. Merchant ships use gas tight citadels in the ships that require it. Oil Tankers Chemical tankers Gas tankers. Drilling vessels Offshore support vessels. Some Ro RO and container vessels
@@gregorywright4918 He hinted at it in the video but your post is more precise. That's why it takes six years or so to build a proper destroyer (makes you wonder what sort of tin can the Chinese are pushing out right now)
@@abrahamdozer6273 If you include the ability to close doors and ports and put the A/C on recycle like patrol boats then pretty much all merchant vessels built in the last 25 years will also be included.
Why do Royal Navy last stands always have two steps from hell themes but United States navy last stands have Benny Hill themes? Whenever I hear of Taffy 3 I can't stop laughing.
Because Royal Marines have the better band. :P (For real, though, check out the Mountbatten Festival of Music, the last four or five years are available here. And yes, there's pieces from TSfH.)
"Why did the River class use triple expansion engines if they were built in 1941? Weren't those outdated by WW1? " Steam turbine production required high skill levels that were anything but widespread. Reciprocating steam engines had been produced all over the place for more than a century and good production techniques were widely known. Any factory or engine shop that cold produce large railroad steam locomotives could all make marine reciprocating steam and they did all over.
Exactly. In World War 2 the local foundry in my home town in Victoria, Australia happily churned out triple expansion engines that were used in merchant ships and corvettes, but there is no way they would have been able to build turbines.
@@stevewyckoff6904 I was on one, once in Halifax: HMCS Cape Scott. She was a Canadian-built Liberty ship which had been acquired by the Royal Canadian Navy as a supply ship, post war. Her days steaming around were long behind her and she was a floating machine shop and at the end of her life. As a young Marine Engineer we were fascinated by her triple expansion reciprocating engine and I remember an ad hoc lecture that an old hand gave us describing how the ingenious machine worked. Reciprocating steam had ended years before in the Canadian Navy with the retirement of some modified WWII Frigates in the late 50s except for Cape Scott, her sister in Esquimalt and a lonely, old Flower Class Corvette HMCS Sackville who is still with us.
Rather than turbine or triple expansion Steam; a better option may have been Marine Diesel? As submarine diesels became more popular and advanced. Their use will become more widespread.
@@WALTERBROADDUS Diesel wasn't well developed among the Allies during WWII. The Germans were a generation ahead of the British and Americans although the US experimented with diesel-electric drive in one class of escort. They were a bit of a flop. A couple of dozen US built Lend-Lease diesel electric built ships ended up in the RN but they were a dismal failure.The British and Americans even put gasolene engines in their torpedo boats, they were so far behind (German Schnell Boots wee all diesel and therefore far less explosive.)
With regards to increasing the calibre size by 2 inches wouldn't that cause more shock to the slewing ring and track as well as the ship's hull around the barbette?
Harland and Wolff were not only involved with ship building, they were also involved in manufacturing Tanks, Artillery and general munitions during WW2.
Harland and Wolf were a Clyde based shipbuilder before they opened a shipyard in Belfast, they had three shipyards on the Clyde the last shut in the 1960's. They could have moved equipment and men to these shipyards.
I sandblasted the tanks and innerbottoms of the LPD1 in 1980, she was in drydock in the baltimore shipyards,I sandblasted from the stern to the aft in the inner tanks as well as the weld deck,and the chain room fro the ankor , the weld deck was 90feet high' that is the portion of the ship that is sunken to allow subs to board to be repaired, it was a great year in my life, the uss Raleigh was sunk in1994 ,
Drach is the master of simplification; a merchant ship is a "slightly pointy box with an engine in it." I wonder if he's given any thought to standing for a seat in Parliament?
They should have paid more attention to Jellicoe. He wanted revamped shells (Greenboys) and small tube boilers before WW1. Those two things would have made a big difference.
Speaking of QE the battlecruiser, I know you and Alex have been back and forth on what Agincourt was supposed to look like. Were there leftover 15-in guns in the 1912 budgets? I know it would be tough to tell from actual numbers built due to the Revenges showing up the next year.
I don't think you can go by the number of guns being built, because it is routine to produce many more guns than needed to populate the turrets when the ship is built, so that replacement guns are readily available when the original guns need to be relined or are damaged in some manner. Total number of 15" guns mounted in ships: (40) in QEs, (40) in Rs, (12) in Renowns, (8) in Courageouses, (8) in Hood, (8) in monitors, for a total of 116. According to Wiki, 186 were built. Whether Agincourt was intended as a QE, or a proto-Hood, it probably would have used (4) turrets, implying that, from the cancelled Rs plus Agincourt, there should have been (16) Mk I turrets in inventory, but I can only account for (14): (6) on the Renowns, (4) on the Courageouses, (2) on Erebus class monitors and the final (2) landing on the Roberts class monitors in 1940. But that is inconclusive too, because there could have been more turrets in process that were never completed when the four battleships were canceled in 1914.
@@PaulfromChicago true, but I'm thinking there were turrets early in the production process, or planned, but not in production, that were simply canceled. All the ships that came after, Renowns, Courageouses, Erebus and Marshal Ney monitors, were all using leftovers from the canceled ships. The changes in the Mk II turrets seem substantial enough for the Mk IIs to not be Mk Is that were modified during production.
Hmmm not sure you answered the HIpper question. I THINK he was asking if you could build a similar ship from the ground up with 11" guns as they were already a large ship for a heavy cruiser. I wonder maybe not 8 x 11's but perhaps 6 in twin turrets might be doable
I have to say I see your 30 percentile carrier case as more the 80 percentile based upon what happened to Eagle & Ark Royal except I can't see the Invincibles coming earlier. It's not as though HMG hasn't shown that they're happy to lose carrier aviation for a few years since the 70s......
Irish neutrality was a bit like Swiss Neutrality. Neutral certainty, but there were certain Political, Economic & Geophysical realities that would dictate the nature of that neutrality.
Ireland needed all its shipping supplies, Grain, OIl and people to be moved on British Ships, as well as Irish Ships. The Nazi's did not respect neutral ships even when they painted a large flag on the hull
An interesting what if in conjunction to the Malta question is that FAA looks at the US next gen sea based fighter competition and selects the F8U-3 Super Crusader. It's basically an F-15 without the 70s avionics package. From a Air-to-Air combat role the U-3 was the best pure fighter that was ever made available to the US Navy. The reason that the Navy went with the Phantom was the work load for a single pilot aircraft was too much. However, the introduction of the E-2 and data links a few years later solved that problem. The Sea Vixen was a nice aircraft but it was introduced after the F8U Crusader which was the best fighter in the world land or sea until the early 60s. As I have said before the FAA would have been wise to hop on that train and produce it under license.
Not sure about that, but if you go later down the timeline one likely result of the Maltas being built and having a long service life would be that the Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon as we know them wouldn't exist. The primary reason France dropped out of what would become the Eurofighter program was that they placed high priority on a carrier-based version, whereas none of the other partners had carriers and thus had zero interest in that. If the Maltas were around, Britain would be equally in need of a new carrier-based fighter. Thus, either France would remain in the program, or *both* Britain and France would leave and go for a joint Dassault/British Aerospace product. If it were the latter, given how central BAe was to the Typhoon's development I'm not sure whether the project could've survived at all with just Germany, Italy, and Spain. Either way, I'm guessing the end result would be something uglier than the Rafale but not as ugly as the Typhoon. :P
@@RedXlV There is also alternative US Aircraft design timelines with the availability of the Malta claas because the Royal Navy will have input into the next gen US sea based fighter competition. Alternative #1 The RN input swings the US Navy's decision to the U-3, which is really the first 4th generation fighter, but the USAF goes with the Phanton for its multirole capability. Vietnam evolves as it did historically but the USN destroys the NVAF in short order because it basically flying an F-15 equivalent aircraft in Vietnam. The Air Force sees this and proceeds with the F-15. But whither naval aviation? The U-3 is a traditional air superiority fighter which lacks the capability to defeat the emerging supersonic bomber armed with long range ASMs threat. The interim solution would probably be a A-6 outfitted as a missilier. They Navy actually considered the concept when the F-111B was failing. You don't need speed and maneuverability to shoot Phoenix missiles against unmaneuverable bombers. The Navy won't get a new fighter until the late 80s which will combine the fighter and bomber killer roles. Alternative #2: The USAF returns to the P-51/P-47 paradigm with an air superiority fighter (the U-3) and a multi-role fighter (the F4). The US then eliminates the NVAF in 1965. In this alternative I don't see an F-15. I think the USAF gets the 5th gen fighter in early 90s.
Sort of. The difference being that previously, "battlecruiser versions" of Royal Navy battleships ranged from the same size as their battlecruiser equivalent to about 4,000 tons heavier. Whereas Hood was a whopping 15,000 tons heavier than Queen Elizabeth. Lion was 18% heavier than her battleship counterpart Orion. Queen Mary was 16% heavier than King George V (and there's certainly jokes to be made there). Tiger was 14% heavier than Iron Duke. Renown was initially 1% lighter than Revenge, but became 14% heavier once the 6" belt armor was upgraded to 9" (ie the same protection as Lion, Queen Mary, and Tiger). Hood was *55%* heavier than Queen Elizabeth. When you made the "battlecruiser version" of a battleship, normally you got the additional speed by having lighter armor and one less turret. In Hood's case, she instead got that extra speed via being *enormous.*
Regarding the experimental British subs, they were nicknamed the HMS Exploder and Excruciator, for Explorer and Excalibur, respectively, for their reputation
Follow on question, why then did steam powered vessels become prevalent when sailing ships had many advantages in the merchant/cargo realm. reference 27:30.
@36 minutes regarding wire guidance on WW2. The Chieftain had a similar comment about dealing with anti-tank missiles as a tanker. The standard response is "gunner, fire on that smoke plume" because tank rounds fly faster than missiles, and most ATGMs are guided by the launcher in some capacity. Kill the launcher, or even just make him duck, and the missile goes stupid.
Alt RN '82 Hi this is a supercarrier worth of Buccaneers, this is supercarrier worth of UK version of the F4 oh and we seem to have found some USN F4s and a 3rd supercarrier just lying around... Fun alt history, but you know that they'd have been scrapped by 1980, after the worst condition one was given a really expensive refit and the best condition one was passed over for a light, but gamechanging refit and the 3rd one is paid off after Singapore gains independence in 1965... (edit originally put 1971 for Singapore independence)
Concerning the destruction of sailing merchantmen in the Great War, it occurs to me that an important source of nitrates for the UK was guano, and this was mostly shipped by sailing vessels. Nitrates were important for making explosives such as TNT and picric acid and for making guncotton. If the Germans sank a load of guano, this represented a considerably higher mass of explosives that was prevented from making it to the front. We mustn’t forget that at the time of the Great War, the Germans were considerably ahead of Britain in chemical technology, and that made Britain more dependent on raw materials like guano than Germany was.
In WW! Germany used the chemical process to produce nitrates for explosives. They did not use the nitrates to keep up agriculture production and therefore people starved. Start of Nazi ideology ?
"HTP powered U-Boats" see: Royal Navy experimental submarine HMS Explorer a.k.a. "HMS Exploder". Word is that you could always spot her crew on the streets because none of them had eyebrows.
Considering the submarine steam plant, couldnt you have a separate compartment for your steam plant and suffocate it when you dive just by air sealing the compartment?
One problem with starving a coal fire of air is that it generates carbon monoxide - this is how they made town gas in the old days, not only is carbon monoxide poisonous it is also explosive.
Drach-could you do a good comparison vid on the Revenge class vs the Queen Elisabeth’s? When I was young, I always though that the QE’s followed the Revenges as they were ‘better’, but now know the Revenges were like a POV-pack QE? Would just be good to get a side by side comparison.
A question for the future if you ever feature Italian battleships.....In WWII The Italian tank armor was described as being somewhat soft and brittle; I have seen a number of references to this problem on various armor channels. Was the same true of Italian warship armor? TIA
On wire guided torpedoes, I would assume that a 5-10 kilometer long wire strong enough to hold together in the open ocean while light enough not to seriously degrade performance or take up too much space on a small warship would also be an issue in the 1940s.
Ammonia absorption and caustic soda engines could provide short ranged air independent propulsion and oil fired steam plants can also recharge the energy storage of both types. They were both used along side the shorter ranged pneumatic locomotives as smoke free locomotives for use in tunnels before the electric motor was invented. The danger represented by the energy storage technology in both had them completely retired from commercial and industrial use within 2 years of the first successful electric locomotive. I would put the risk of operating them at about the same as a nuclear powered ship generating and fueling anti-submarine helicopters with hydrazine.
The High Seas Fleet had already gone out on 8 training exercises that eventually turned into battles with the Royal Navy. When they were asked to do it again at the end of the war in what they knew would inevitably be a suicide mission the sailors said Nein!!!
True and not a uniquely naval or even German attitude. When the knew the war was to end on the 11th hour ,on the 11 day of the 11th month there were still infantry field grade officers on both sides ordering frontal attacks into no man's land on the Western front.
@@tomdolan9761 Germany did have a large social democratic movement lurking under the surface. The social democratic party supported the war in 1914 but I think everybody regretted it. It's interesting how often sailors were the backbone of leftist revolutions in the early 20th century. Perhaps because on a warship there's absolutely no illusion you're living in a democracy so when the leadership loses its credibility, revolt is inevitable
Harland and wolf in the early 1920s bought up a number of yards in Greenock to built a superyard. Had Belfast been part of a United Ireland HandW would have moved to greenock and Glasgow. Their plans for the yard fell apart and was abandoned after some construction work had started including removing and rebuilding the old parish church. Much of the yard was not used in www2 being used as a seaplane base and a boom defenses depot. Had the yard been built it would have taken much of Belfast yard workload.
I know you've joked about USN vessels in WW2 loading up on 40mm Bofors as 2nd Amendment rights but one reason so many of these weapons were available is that when Chrysler built these under license they came up with a modification. The Swedes rifled the barrels requiring 3.5 hours per barrel. Chrysler broached the barrels, a 15 minute process. They were cranking lots of them out so why not use them?
The 40mm was used more later in the war because the smaller calibers (50-cal, 1.1", and 20mm) could not stop a kamikaze from hitting the ship. The bigger shell had much more hitting power and could rip apart a plane. They came in single, twin, quad, and sextuplet mounts, so they could replace light or medium weight mounts, and they paired well with existing directors.
Yes and they mounted them throughout the fleet. Combined with the twin 5 inch mounts with VT fuses they did all they could to counter kamikazes which were effectively guided missiles with direct human guidance
@@gregorywright4918 .50 caliber and 1.1" were almost entirely extinct as AA guns in the US Navy before the first kamikaze took off. Yes, I'm aware that Enterprise carried a 1.1" mount until pretty late in the war, which is why I said "almost entirely". The 20 mm Oerlikon was in sufficiently widespread service by late 1942 that even cargo ships off Guadalcanal in November were carrying half a dozen or more. The Bofors came into widespread US service during 1943 but the Navy would not have all the Bofors guns it wanted until late 1944, by which time the kamikazes had created a new need to replace the smaller Oerlikons.
The Bofors was widely available because of the innovation of Chrysler. It could be manufactured rapidly in the large numbers to equip a wide variety of naval vessels. Quantity was certainly important but the quality of the innovation was a major force multiplier little appreciated in the post war analysis of ultimate victory
@@tomdolan9761 I'm going to disagree slightly on the last sentence. Post war US analysis showed that the Bofors scored more kills (742) than any other AA gun in US Navy service, with the 5"/38 second at 688 and Oerlikon third at 617. However, both the Oerlikon and Bofors ran into a bit of an outside context problem with the kamikazes during the last year of the war, leading to the Oerlikon being replaced with the Bofors (where possible) and the crash program to get the 3"/50RF into service.
Cheap pinatas are crepe over corrugated cardboard, whereas expensive pinatas are thin papier-mache. Cheap pinatas are MUCH more difficult to fold or breach.
It may have been possible to get 11" guns on a ship of Hipper's displacement (infact Deutschland doing it proves it can be done) but you wouldn't literally just put 11" turrets on the historical Hipper as Drach said. Also as to a Deutschland vs Hipper comparison remember that Hipper was a 32 knot or more ship and Deutschland was a 28ish knot ship. Look at a South Dakota vs Iowa to see how much extra machinery you need just to go faster without improving armament or armor
You would have to take out BOTH sets of turrets fore and aft, rebuild the area for a single larger turret ring, and then drop in a single 11" turret instead. Since the Hipper is 50 ft longer, you might be able to keep the same machinery spaces for the extra 3 kts, but you would not be able to up-armor her without having to add bulges.
What did you not like about the modernisation of Victorious, I can see a better argument for modernising the Implacables, longer more power etc. Obviously Victorious took far too long and it was not ideal to half way through decide to replace the engines etc
The sheer cost and time of it compared to the estimates was far larger, and in the end the hanger still didn't support the latest and greatest aircraft nor any particularly large number of them
I think that my point was that if the two low mileage Implacable class had been modernised is the late 1950s, as the largest of their class with more hanger space, this could have been made suitable for larger aircraft. The larger engine power would have helped. The thought of these two with a modernised Eagle, 3 dustbin radar Fleet Carriers, with Ark Royal modernised to catch up, would have released the Light Fleets to be commando carriers, repair ships, Vis Triumph. As you stated with a number of carriers there could be a UK designed Phantom equivalent, designed to be on the RN Carriers. In my view Victorious was the wrong carrier to modernise, with so much technology advancement at the time, it was running to keep pace, requiring redoing much of the work when the engines were deemed to need replacing.
@@philipgadsby8261 The problem with the Implacables was fundamental - their dual hangars only had 14 foot clearance, and newer planes required at least 16 foot (preferably 17.5). They were bigger ships with more SHP, but their lifts and hangar clearance doomed them to an early retirement. The rebuild of Victorious did include 17.5 foot hangar height (apparently they razed her to the hangar deck and rebuilt upwards; must have been fun reorganizing the armor). When they took her in they thought they could get it done in a few years and not have to deal with the engines, but as the rebuild stretched out due to changing requirements and funding shortages they realized she was not aging well.
@@gregorywright4918 Seems like it would be far easier to get that increased hangar height out of the Implacables, though. If you've got two 14 foot hangars one on top of the other, strip out the middle deck now it's a single 28 foot hangar. Victorious was a mistake, there's no way around it. Implacable and Indefatigable were much better candidates.
@@gregorywright4918 as I understand it the Implacables were designed with two full length hangers, this was modified to one and a half due to crew accommodation requirements. There were as I understand it plans to merge the hangers so a rather tall one would be available. I would have thought that a deck under the flight deck could have been constructed as was done with Victorious, so a lower hanger deck, better for weight distribution etc with a decent height, new lifts could of course be installed as would angled flight decks and steam catapults, more redundancy with four sets of boilers. Just my thoughts.
On submarines ramming. In 1941 Polish submarine ORP Wilk rammed something. Might have been an U-boat as reported. Might have been an allied submarine mistaken for a U-boat, possibly Dutch. Might have only been a large bouy. Or anything else really.
35:00 Guided Torpedoes. Back in 1898 Nikola Tesla successfully demonstrated a radio controlled model boat which he tried for several years to sell to the Navy as a guided torpedo system. It would need an antenna above the surface, and one would guess that it could eventually be electronically jammed after the initial surprise period ended. Back then radio was "one frequency", or perhaps more accurately, bleeding across all frequencies in the general range, which could be why it was rejected. It took Tesla over 25 years to get a court to rule that his radio patents came before Marconi's, who got credit in the text books for inventing radio (and the Nobel Prize). Tesla first successfully demonstrated radio in 1893 (clearly before Lodge, Bose, or Marconi). The Imperial Germans used Tesla-style radio systems in WW1 and before (the land stations were unique in that they had huge buried Grounding networks), the Marconi system was used by most other countries. Tesla-style radio system live on today as the ELF submerged submarine communications technology, first studied in the 1920's and remaining "secret" ever since (Tom Clancey not withstanding).
Have you ever heard the story about the us battleship's in 1924'25 as it goes the fleet was cruising in the N Sea at 14 knots and it was one of the New York' s propeller shaft vibrated so badly that in threatened to crack at the navies standard cruise speed and the navy wanted to scrap in them and there
U 162 sank the Sailing vessel Florence M. Douglas a magnificent vessel of 119 tons off British Guiana in 1942. They did however save a small black pig they named Douglas and keep it as a pet.
I disagree on the US Navy's ability to produce a effective submarine post civil war. While chemical batteries where not ready salt based thermal batteries where simple and easily produced. If I was the lead engineer. I would design a six bladed propeller with a thrust/steam exhaust nozzle built into the center hub. Driven directly by a double expansion duel row twelve cylinder radial steam engine. Engine would be made of high grade bronze alloy steel rods, crankshaft, and bronze cylinder linners. Cooling water would be pumped though a heat exchanger preheating the sea water before boiler. Engine cradle would be designed to mount with five bolts. To enable the engine being spun on prop bearing after bolts/steam lines are removed for servicing though hull hatches. Ahead of the engine the kerosene fired boiler would be built inside the molten salt thermal battery. It would small to medium sized nickel coated tube boiler to use filtered salt water(tubes would also be slightly thicker copper for added service life). With tubes running in coils from the boiler though the battery into the engine making any changeover between between power supply unnecessary.to submerge simply shut off fuel supply and close boiler intake/exhaust. With exhaust running through a coil transferring heat into the battery before being vented though the sail. Water would be provided into the boiler by a combination of ram intake and Engine driven water pump. Engine steam would be vented though propeller hub for extra thrust. Ship would be roughly forty-four feet long by eight feet in diameter in the first twelve feet would ten torpedo tubes. Next eight feet would be crew compartment for four man crew followed by eighteen feet for the combination boiler/battery. With the final six feet being the engine compartment which would be serviced only though hull hatchs when surfaced. Kerosene would be carried in numerus ballast tanks externally that would be filled with sea water after the tank was empty. Making a large percentage of fuel supply effectively available at no extra weight. The sail/tower would be on the large side at four feet wide by eight feet tall/long to house a air intake, boiler exhaust, and periscope/crew ingress. As well as the tall tower allows for better optimizing the hull for underwater performance. For simplicity no deck gun would be carried, and torpedoes would be loaded externally with no reloads carried. It would have been a effective threat to the ironclads of the day. Might even have made the Spanish American war occur earlier which could have resulted in Cuba being a state.
@@WALTERBROADDUS It's not using chemical batteries. It would use thermal batteries which are coils of tube in a container of salt heated to molten by the kerosene boiler while on the surface. Submerged water is pumped through the loop and is heated to super critical in the battery instead of the boiler powering the engine. When the battery becomes low air is blown into the primary ballast tank after surfacing the kerosene boiler is fired powering the engine and reheating the battery. It's actually a very simple design that would have excellent performance.
@@alt5494 Okay... been a few years since thermodynamics class. Well, over 30... I've heard of sodium nuclear reactors. But your using heated Sodium to create steam and thus work?🤔 Off the top of my head..... Assuming the Metallurgy of this work? The heat generated in a sub would be rather uncomfortable at best?🤔 What works the pump? How do you make the exhaust watertight?
@@WALTERBROADDUS Fuel and water are primed with manual pumps before engine driven pumps takeover. Steam exhaust would be a series of one way ball valves with soft copper seals. Heat is actually one of the easier problems. The boiler/thermal battery assembly would be insulted from the hull/interior with fireclay (natural material used in foundry's),and a bulkhead between the crew compartment and the boiler. The two big problems to clear are a 6" diameter propeller over 70% efficient, and welding technology to assemble the hull in 1870. Although just about every form of welding became practical in the 1880's. So some types may have been ready earlier.
@@alt5494 This also run smack-dab into the historical timeline of the invention of the internal combustion engine and electrical generator....🤔 This Jules Verne Sub would be made obsolete by Mr. Holland's sub rather quicky.
It would not be inaccurate to call The American Civil War, The Prototype War. Its not like that war is alone in showing off things that would be far more mature and deadly during ww1, The Crimean War comes to mind. It is true that a lot of what would come 50 years later, show up in some form during the Civil War. edit: alternatively, The Proof of Concept War
"the sort of leaks you get from ramming you're not diving anytime soon" drach, i think you would probably be diving rather soon albiet not of your own accord.
You didn’t even really answer the hipper question: the question was if the ship could be built right from the start with 8 11“ guns and not if it could be refitted with the guns later on
You’d have to design & build the ships to do it. For the reasons Drach explained, it would have been extremely difficult, expensive & time consuming to reconfigure the Hippers to accept the larger 11” guns once construction on the hull was significantly underway.
You could try it on a ship-design simulator, but my guess would be no. The Scharnhorst and the Alaska had 9x 11"/12" guns, and they were 30,000 ton ships. The Hippers were 16,000 tons. Usually the armament is chosen first, then the ship is designed around it. Up-gunning the armament requires either expanding the ship size or dropping the number of guns.
@@WALTERBROADDUS It seems like Drach answered a different question from what was actually asked. The question wasn't about rebuilding the Hippers for 28cm guns. It was about whether (given how the Hippers were somewhat hilariously oversized for an armament of only 4x2 20.3cm) it would've been possible to design them from the keel up for 4x2 (or perhaps 2x4?) 28cm while still using the same size hull.
@@gregorywright4918 On the other hand, we have Hans Zenker's 1928 proposal for a follow-up to the Deutschlands: a 19,000 ton battlecruiser with 4x2 30.5cm guns and the same 100mm belt armor as Admiral Graf Spee. This never went anywhere because 1928 was the same year that Zenker was replaced by Raeder as head of the Reichsmarine.
What book/ship/story/family member/etc. Inspired you, a viewer here, to be interested in naval history? EDIT: I know Drach's story on how he found naval history.
I had two great uncles who fought in the US Navy in WW2 (brothers). One was on the standard BB Maryland (engine room hand, coming onboard in '43), the other was originally on a troop transport in 1942 as a stoker, but got in a fight with a petty officer and as punishment he became crew on a Higgins LCVP for several beach assaults including Saipan. He had a very rough time of it in the war and after with PTSD. As a teen I was all lined up to go to Annapolis but that was the anti-war years and I rejected the idea... and luckily missed the Draft by a year or two. As a kid I read Hornblower, and that was also a driving factor. Back then to study WW2 after you went through all the books in the local library, you had to buy these thin little series books loaded with photos. They usually covered either a weapon or a particular battle. Most kids were buying comic books but we bought those instead with our snow shoveling, grass cutting, and paper route money ;)
A successful attack means sinking your enemy and living to tell the story. The Hunley was a slow moving nautical kamikaze. It did sink a ship but was in no way a success.
As for hydrogen peroxide fuel, ask the Russians. And if you have an Ouiji Board you can as the crew of the submarine Kursk what their thoughts are. Now granted you have to take into account that it was the Soviet Union under communism, so things like quality control, maintainence, and crew training and diligence, are all concepts that didn't exist . So under western use, it might be a bit more stable.
Pinned post for Q&A :)
If the Great Depression didn't happen, what happens to the RN? Do they replace most of their legacy ships or do they modernize more?
What was the strongest type of wood used on age of sail warships in regards to resisting cannon fire and where was it sourced?
@@adaw2d3222 according to the replacement schedule in the WNT, the legacy ships would have been mostly gone. Assuming everything on the replacement schedule through 38 is scrapped on schedule, the only remnants would be Valiant, Renown, Repulse, Ramillies, Hood and the Nelsons.
At what point would the channel, and its inherent workload, be considered "too big" for just yourself to manage?
More succinctly: when would you consider expanding your staff?
What would it have taken for the US navy to pick up and continuously develop submarines after the CSS Hunley's successful attack?
1. An incredible amount of desperation.
2. High Value Targets in unassailable Confederate ports.
The Union had neither of those problems to overcome in the Civil War.
How to tell when drach likes a question.
"I'll keep this brief" and then 15 minutes go by with him deep into his own brain of some wild alternate history.
"I didn't have much time, or I would have written a shorter letter."
I posed several alt history questions a few months ago: USN Colorados never built, RN reorders all four of the ships cancelled in 1914 as Renowns, and a couple others. It will be interesting to see if any tickle his fancy. Maybe even a speculation about the UK swapping all it's West Indies colonies to the US in settlement of it's war debt? (the more I looked into that one, the better I liked it)
I have literally over 12 hours of Drach content to catch up on. I consider that a good thing.
So the last two Patreon drydocks?
A 28kt Warspite, with a 1930s refit sounds both terrifying and beautiful
QE and Valiant received new powerplants in their modernizations. I'm thinking there was an interpretation of the treaty that the UK observed that prohibited uprating the QE powerplants. Or, could be, that the assertion that the QEs could be uprated enough to hit 28kts was hooey. The only upgrades the WNT explicitly allowed were for torpedo protection, AA armament, and deck armor.
@@stevevalley7835 The machinery was downscaled on the QE refits in order to pay for their upgrades, so that may be the issue
@@stevevalley7835 That's an interesting point about the treaty, but I believe that HMS Warspite received new boilers and turbines during her rebuild. I was also more meaning that as the QE class could have been 28kt from the start (the question at 00:29:31); the refit could allow for additional upgrades and efficiency increases.
@@Adam-ns3gg OK, 28kt QEs from the start, then the rebuilt QEs could maintain that speed without any treaty issues. What does that do for the case for building the Renowns and Hood? The QEs would be as fast as Tiger, and all the preceding battlecruisers. The KGVs would not offer any speed advantages over rebuilt QEs either. The KGVs are better protected, but could they modernize Malaya and Barham, and bring Warspite up to 1939 standard for the price of one KGV?
The South Dakota, which is about the same size as a Queen Elizabeth, had engines that produced almost twice as much power as the Warspite's. That 5 extra knots cost a lot.
Somehow I get the feeling that turning the Mk14 into a wire guided torpedo with a flag with "Bang!" on it would have been both the safer and more effective option.
😂
I thought Drydock was just a program about looking at a particular ship while in drydock. I didn't know it was a great q/a session about a variety of topics. Now I have over 160 episodes to listen to😀
Bravo on the New York to Nevada battleship turrets question. That answer was way deeper than I was expecting.
Alex, you are a master of understatement; "the sea is very powerful", "water is awfully heavy".
I love it, so very British.
"water is awfully heavy" apart from being "everywhere" 😎
Careful.....Drach will start thinking you're a dodgy fellow
@@tomdolan9761 I am Danish. You judge 😉
I lso hooked him up with Jon Parshall. I do believe that earns some credit.
Lol....personally I'm inclined to agree with you ....
~13:00, wow i love the temperature issue. an ironic type of trivia that is actually interesting from a technical perspective :)
Hey Drach, how about a dedicated video on turrets at some point? I'm wondering how we came to the multi-gun turrets of WW2. What considerations go into choosing X turrets with Y guns? Do the guns aim somewhat independently? What sort of firing patterns would be used and why? Etc. Etc.
Drach did cover turret considerations in an earlier Drydock. Check the topic list and look in the mid-XXs (50-90ish).
Thanks for the answer drac! Mrs Andrews got a chuckle off of your "a miracle" preface.
Another excellent Drydock.
Very nice thought experiment about the Malta class, thank you Drach.
On the U-Boot vs escort question, I've looked up losses of RN destroyers and other escorts to U-Boats:
1939: none
1940: 3 DDs sunk, 2DDs damaged & scuttled, 3 sloops sunk
1941: 4 DDs sunk, 1 sloop sunk, 6 corvettes sunk, 2 A/S trawlers sunk
1942: 11 DDs sunk, 1 DD damaged (not reactivated), 3 escorts sunk, 1 frigate sunk, 6 corvettes sunk
1943: 5 DDs sunk, 3 escorts sunk, 1 sloop damaged (not reactivated), 1 frigate sunk, 2 frigates damaged (not reactivated), 2 corvettes sunk, 4 A/S trawlers sunk
1944: 4 DDs sunk, 1 DD damaged & scuttled, 1 DD damaged (not reactivated), 5 escorts sunk, 2 sloops sunk, 3 frigates sunk, 5 frigates damaged (not reactivated), 5 corvettes sunk, 1 corvette damaged (not reactivated), 2 A/S trawlers sunk
1945: 4 escorts damaged (not reactivated), 1 frigate damaged (not reactivated), 1 sloop sunk, 3 corvettes sunk, 1 corvette damaged (not reactivated)
The Royal Canadian Navy lost 2 DDs, 3 frigates, 2 frigates damaged (not reactivated) and 8 corvettes to German U-boats from 1939-45
At a quick glance, the US Navy also lost half a dozen DDs, a dozen 10 DEs and a few sloops/frigates/USCG cutters to German U-boats (I can look for more detailed numbers if desired)
(Source: Harald Fock, Z-Vor!, Band 2)
Please note that these numbers are German and Italian submarines combined until 1943 and include German manned torpedos and midget subs for 1944-45. I can't motivate myself to look up all classes and names of the ships involved to see if they were WW1 vintage escorts or top-notch fleet DDs or if they were on escort or other fleet duties. If you wish to compare the losses to U-Boats to that sunk by Luftwaffe/Italian Air Force: the Royal Navy alone lost about 100 DDs/escorts to aircraft only from 1939-42.
Fantastic video as always Drach.
Thank you for taking time to answer my question in such glorious detail.
Man, Tiberius how many years have you been a regular here now? Like 4?
@@mattblom3990 I think 3 now 🤔......its been a fantastic ride. Drach is a benevolent bearded Baron.
And I know you've been around for forever as well.
@@admiraltiberius1989 Yep, I'm pretty much at my 3 year anniversary I believe. Very early August, right as Drydock 001 launched.
@@mattblom3990 I believe episode 31 was the first time I had a question.
I'm wondering when I started now. I certainly remember the robo voice. I just don't comment much
Drach: "Someone with an actual working brain sits down in parliament"
Me: "Good luck finding someone with an actual working brain in parliament"
Probably no more luck than we, in the U.S., are having anyone with brains in our Congress.
🤔 It's not that people working in legislature are stupid. It's actually worse than that. It's that they are selfish, uncaring "dark triad" types, who are motivated mostly by increasing their own personal power and wealth! That's true regardless of their party affiliation. However, since the "news" media and social media oligarchies are dominated by corrupt, partisan leftists, they almost always ALLOW leftist politicians to literally get away with incompetence and corruption, without reporting on it and holding them accountable.
Biden abruptly pulled the USAF from Bagram air base, without even telling the local Afghan officials when they were leaving!! Then the rest of the military were ordered to leave BEFORE they'd evacuated the 20k to 40k American and Afghani civilians! They were left to the wolves in Afghanistan, because the politicians in power DIDN'T CARE!!
😠👎
The social media monopolies have now basically become the 21st century "public square", but they too have fully embraced partisan bias, and leftist authoritarianism. They admit to working with the Biden administration to censor so called "misinformation". What that really means, is that they censor any FACTUAL information thats inconvenient to the Democrat party(or the Labour Party), as they effectively silence the "enemies of the left"!
👺😈👹 For instance, they censored the New York Post's report that included legitimate PROOF of corruption involving Joe Biden and his family, just weeks before the 2020 election! From March 2020-2021, they also censored ALL legitimate scientific discussion involving the Wuhan lab leak theory(reality)!
1:05:00 1% edge case: the rubber flight deck tests find that you _can_ belly-land if you also incorporate bouncy-castle technology, leading to the Maltas carrying JATO-equipped Vulcans to the Falklands.
"That brings us to the end of this week's drydock." Is that the saddest sentence on TH-cam? I believe so.
Regarding the difficulty of producing turbine engines, I am reading a history of CL-90, the second WW2 USS Astoria. She and several of her sisters had turbine engines breakdowns during sea trials due to attempts to make the bearings cheaper and require fewer strategic materials. It was an expensive lesson in 1944-45.
also producing precision equipment under wartime conditions in general is difficult, you had places that were making 2-3 engines a quarter, suddenly told build 5 a week
@@AsbestosMuffins there were also a lot of assumptions about industrial ability in that time that were less than accurate. Yes a Typesetting Factory may be very good at making precision machines specialized for their industry, but it may not be able to make even more simple but precision oriented things like bearings, gunmounts, engine/transmission parts ect. They often ended up re-equipping the entire factory and re-training the entire staff, at nearly the cost of building a whole new factory from the ground up.
@@archibaldlarid3587 Sometimes the war equipment itself was redesigned for faster, cheaper production. The Russians were masters at that, hence the numbers of tanks they produced compared to the German precision production methods. Plus they had access through the US and UK to scarce materials.
Yes, "Shattered Sword" is fantastic.
Best channel on TH-cam easily. 👌
Another good Dry dock. Re the Malta class, the two biggest detractors to Royal Navy carrier operations were the Treasury and the R.A.F. The latter in particular went out of their way to brief against the Navy having this capability.
Same problem in the US with the USAF...
The best part was the RAF telling Parliament that Australia is 500 miles northwest of its actual location to insist that carriers weren't needed.
@@RedXlV Yes, they even produced a doctored map to support them. Trouble is, they gave Wilson and Healy the excuse they needed to cancel CVA01 and phase out the carriers that the Rn had then. Didn't do them any good, Labour cancelled te TSR2 also.
Totally off topic the channel dash video is a gem, most are but that one always stands out and I’ll watch it again. Keep up great content
Thank you, Drachinifel.
Recent use of HPT was the Squall torpedoes on the Kursk.
" Whats the difference between naval and merchant spec construction? "
Modern warships incorporate the so called "gas tight citadel" in which the atmosphere and environment within a substantial portion of the ship can be sealed off and controlled for nuclear, chemical and biological defence. You wouldn't bother incorporating such a feature in a commercial vessel. Maybe, cruise ships have climate controlled areas but they are nothing like the sealed and filtered atmosphere in a gas tight citadel.
That is one difference, and a more modern one. Naval spec gets down to the level of reinforced scantlings to withstand battle damage, higher-test more-expensive materials, and redundant control and communication systems.
The gas tight citadel is only used in certain larger Naval ships, not in all naval vessels. Merchant ships use gas tight citadels in the ships that require it.
Oil Tankers
Chemical tankers
Gas tankers.
Drilling vessels
Offshore support vessels.
Some Ro RO and container vessels
@@gregorywright4918 He hinted at it in the video but your post is more precise. That's why it takes six years or so to build a proper destroyer (makes you wonder what sort of tin can the Chinese are pushing out right now)
@@benwilson6145 I've never served on a ship without one.
@@abrahamdozer6273 If you include the ability to close doors and ports and put the A/C on recycle like patrol boats then pretty much all merchant vessels built in the last 25 years will also be included.
Why do Royal Navy last stands always have two steps from hell themes but United States navy last stands have Benny Hill themes? Whenever I hear of Taffy 3 I can't stop laughing.
because USN has such a big balls, you view their last stands as mockery of enemy .
Because Royal Marines have the better band. :P
(For real, though, check out the Mountbatten Festival of Music, the last four or five years are available here. And yes, there's pieces from TSfH.)
@@rolfs2165 you havent heard USMC playing spaceship Yamato then 🤣
This is the best comment.
"Why did the River class use triple expansion engines if they were built in 1941? Weren't those outdated by WW1? "
Steam turbine production required high skill levels that were anything but widespread. Reciprocating steam engines had been produced all over the place for more than a century and good production techniques were widely known. Any factory or engine shop that cold produce large railroad steam locomotives could all make marine reciprocating steam and they did all over.
Exactly. In World War 2 the local foundry in my home town in Victoria, Australia happily churned out triple expansion engines that were used in merchant ships and corvettes, but there is no way they would have been able to build turbines.
ALL of the Liberty ships were triple expansion.
@@stevewyckoff6904 I was on one, once in Halifax: HMCS Cape Scott. She was a Canadian-built Liberty ship which had been acquired by the Royal Canadian Navy as a supply ship, post war. Her days steaming around were long behind her and she was a floating machine shop and at the end of her life. As a young Marine Engineer we were fascinated by her triple expansion reciprocating engine and I remember an ad hoc lecture that an old hand gave us describing how the ingenious machine worked. Reciprocating steam had ended years before in the Canadian Navy with the retirement of some modified WWII Frigates in the late 50s except for Cape Scott, her sister in Esquimalt and a lonely, old Flower Class Corvette HMCS Sackville who is still with us.
Rather than turbine or triple expansion Steam; a better option may have been Marine Diesel? As submarine diesels became more popular and advanced. Their use will become more widespread.
@@WALTERBROADDUS Diesel wasn't well developed among the Allies during WWII. The Germans were a generation ahead of the British and Americans although the US experimented with diesel-electric drive in one class of escort. They were a bit of a flop. A couple of dozen US built Lend-Lease diesel electric built ships ended up in the RN but they were a dismal failure.The British and Americans even put gasolene engines in their torpedo boats, they were so far behind (German Schnell Boots wee all diesel and therefore far less explosive.)
With regards to increasing the calibre size by 2 inches wouldn't that cause more shock to the slewing ring and track as well as the ship's hull around the barbette?
⚠️ Warning ⚠️ This is your usual Drydock + an improv version of a Wednesday special "What if: HMS Malta"
Harland and Wolff were not only involved with ship building, they were also involved in manufacturing Tanks, Artillery and general munitions during WW2.
Harland and Wolf were a Clyde based shipbuilder before they opened a shipyard in Belfast, they had three shipyards on the Clyde the last shut in the 1960's. They could have moved equipment and men to these shipyards.
I sandblasted the tanks and innerbottoms of the LPD1 in 1980, she was in drydock in the baltimore shipyards,I sandblasted from the stern to the aft in the inner tanks as well as the weld deck,and the chain room fro the ankor , the weld deck was 90feet high' that is the portion of the ship that is sunken to allow subs to board to be repaired, it was a great year in my life, the uss Raleigh was sunk in1994 ,
Drach is the master of simplification; a merchant ship is a "slightly pointy box with an engine in it." I wonder if he's given any thought to standing for a seat in Parliament?
"Sailing ship with an auxiliary engine..."
A reference to the HMS _By Jove_ video?
They should have paid more attention to Jellicoe. He wanted revamped shells (Greenboys) and small tube boilers before WW1. Those two things would have made a big difference.
Speaking of QE the battlecruiser, I know you and Alex have been back and forth on what Agincourt was supposed to look like. Were there leftover 15-in guns in the 1912 budgets? I know it would be tough to tell from actual numbers built due to the Revenges showing up the next year.
I was thinking of you recently, hadn't heard from you in awhile though I could be out for lunch on that. Just my own fading memory lol.
I don't think you can go by the number of guns being built, because it is routine to produce many more guns than needed to populate the turrets when the ship is built, so that replacement guns are readily available when the original guns need to be relined or are damaged in some manner. Total number of 15" guns mounted in ships: (40) in QEs, (40) in Rs, (12) in Renowns, (8) in Courageouses, (8) in Hood, (8) in monitors, for a total of 116. According to Wiki, 186 were built. Whether Agincourt was intended as a QE, or a proto-Hood, it probably would have used (4) turrets, implying that, from the cancelled Rs plus Agincourt, there should have been (16) Mk I turrets in inventory, but I can only account for (14): (6) on the Renowns, (4) on the Courageouses, (2) on Erebus class monitors and the final (2) landing on the Roberts class monitors in 1940. But that is inconclusive too, because there could have been more turrets in process that were never completed when the four battleships were canceled in 1914.
@@stevevalley7835 That's interesting. Those numbers would make sense if the Agincourt was going to have only 6 15" guns.
@@mattblom3990 No, haven't had much to say. I'm on Alex's discord if you need to hear rants about coal.
@@PaulfromChicago true, but I'm thinking there were turrets early in the production process, or planned, but not in production, that were simply canceled. All the ships that came after, Renowns, Courageouses, Erebus and Marshal Ney monitors, were all using leftovers from the canceled ships. The changes in the Mk II turrets seem substantial enough for the Mk IIs to not be Mk Is that were modified during production.
Hmmm not sure you answered the HIpper question. I THINK he was asking if you could build a similar ship from the ground up with 11" guns as they were already a large ship for a heavy cruiser. I wonder maybe not 8 x 11's but perhaps 6 in twin turrets might be doable
I have to say I see your 30 percentile carrier case as more the 80 percentile based upon what happened to Eagle & Ark Royal except I can't see the Invincibles coming earlier.
It's not as though HMG hasn't shown that they're happy to lose carrier aviation for a few years since the 70s......
Irish neutrality was a bit like Swiss Neutrality.
Neutral certainty, but there were certain Political, Economic & Geophysical realities that would dictate the nature of that neutrality.
Ireland needed all its shipping supplies, Grain, OIl and people to be moved on British Ships, as well as Irish Ships. The Nazi's did not respect neutral ships even when they painted a large flag on the hull
Swiss Neutrality is defined in serving to all possible Sides at once.
Regarding an exceedingly important topic, does the current Royal Navy continue issue rum rations to the hard working sailors of the RN?
The rum ration ended in 1971, at least while underway. I think the RN permits it in port. Beer is permitted at all times.
An interesting what if in conjunction to the Malta question is that FAA looks at the US next gen sea based fighter competition and selects the F8U-3 Super Crusader. It's basically an F-15 without the 70s avionics package. From a Air-to-Air combat role the U-3 was the best pure fighter that was ever made available to the US Navy. The reason that the Navy went with the Phantom was the work load for a single pilot aircraft was too much. However, the introduction of the E-2 and data links a few years later solved that problem.
The Sea Vixen was a nice aircraft but it was introduced after the F8U Crusader which was the best fighter in the world land or sea until the early 60s. As I have said before the FAA would have been wise to hop on that train and produce it under license.
Not sure about that, but if you go later down the timeline one likely result of the Maltas being built and having a long service life would be that the Dassault Rafale and Eurofighter Typhoon as we know them wouldn't exist.
The primary reason France dropped out of what would become the Eurofighter program was that they placed high priority on a carrier-based version, whereas none of the other partners had carriers and thus had zero interest in that. If the Maltas were around, Britain would be equally in need of a new carrier-based fighter. Thus, either France would remain in the program, or *both* Britain and France would leave and go for a joint Dassault/British Aerospace product. If it were the latter, given how central BAe was to the Typhoon's development I'm not sure whether the project could've survived at all with just Germany, Italy, and Spain. Either way, I'm guessing the end result would be something uglier than the Rafale but not as ugly as the Typhoon. :P
@@RedXlV There is also alternative US Aircraft design timelines with the availability of the Malta claas because the Royal Navy will have input into the next gen US sea based fighter competition.
Alternative #1 The RN input swings the US Navy's decision to the U-3, which is really the first 4th generation fighter, but the USAF goes with the Phanton for its multirole capability. Vietnam evolves as it did historically but the USN destroys the NVAF in short order because it basically flying an F-15 equivalent aircraft in Vietnam. The Air Force sees this and proceeds with the F-15. But whither naval aviation? The U-3 is a traditional air superiority fighter which lacks the capability to defeat the emerging supersonic bomber armed with long range ASMs threat. The interim solution would probably be a A-6 outfitted as a missilier. They Navy actually considered the concept when the F-111B was failing. You don't need speed and maneuverability to shoot Phoenix missiles against unmaneuverable bombers. The Navy won't get a new fighter until the late 80s which will combine the fighter and bomber killer roles.
Alternative #2: The USAF returns to the P-51/P-47 paradigm with an air superiority fighter (the U-3) and a multi-role fighter (the F4). The US then eliminates the NVAF in 1965. In this alternative I don't see an F-15. I think the USAF gets the 5th gen fighter in early 90s.
wasn't the hood effectively a battlecruiser version of the QE?
That’s what I was thinking as well
Sort of. The difference being that previously, "battlecruiser versions" of Royal Navy battleships ranged from the same size as their battlecruiser equivalent to about 4,000 tons heavier. Whereas Hood was a whopping 15,000 tons heavier than Queen Elizabeth.
Lion was 18% heavier than her battleship counterpart Orion. Queen Mary was 16% heavier than King George V (and there's certainly jokes to be made there). Tiger was 14% heavier than Iron Duke. Renown was initially 1% lighter than Revenge, but became 14% heavier once the 6" belt armor was upgraded to 9" (ie the same protection as Lion, Queen Mary, and Tiger).
Hood was *55%* heavier than Queen Elizabeth. When you made the "battlecruiser version" of a battleship, normally you got the additional speed by having lighter armor and one less turret. In Hood's case, she instead got that extra speed via being *enormous.*
Regarding the experimental British subs, they were nicknamed the HMS Exploder and Excruciator, for Explorer and Excalibur, respectively, for their reputation
Follow on question, why then did steam powered vessels become prevalent when sailing ships had many advantages in the merchant/cargo realm. reference 27:30.
@36 minutes regarding wire guidance on WW2.
The Chieftain had a similar comment about dealing with anti-tank missiles as a tanker. The standard response is "gunner, fire on that smoke plume" because tank rounds fly faster than missiles, and most ATGMs are guided by the launcher in some capacity. Kill the launcher, or even just make him duck, and the missile goes stupid.
Alt RN '82
Hi this is a supercarrier worth of Buccaneers, this is supercarrier worth of UK version of the F4
oh and we seem to have found some USN F4s and a 3rd supercarrier just lying around...
Fun alt history, but you know that they'd have been scrapped by 1980, after the worst condition one was given a really expensive refit and the best condition one was passed over for a light, but gamechanging refit and the 3rd one is paid off after Singapore gains independence in 1965...
(edit originally put 1971 for Singapore independence)
Concerning the destruction of sailing merchantmen in the Great War, it occurs to me that an important source of nitrates for the UK was guano, and this was mostly shipped by sailing vessels. Nitrates were important for making explosives such as TNT and picric acid and for making guncotton. If the Germans sank a load of guano, this represented a considerably higher mass of explosives that was prevented from making it to the front.
We mustn’t forget that at the time of the Great War, the Germans were considerably ahead of Britain in chemical technology, and that made Britain more dependent on raw materials like guano than Germany was.
In WW! Germany used the chemical process to produce nitrates for explosives. They did not use the nitrates to keep up agriculture production and therefore people starved. Start of Nazi ideology ?
"HTP powered U-Boats"
see: Royal Navy experimental submarine HMS Explorer a.k.a. "HMS Exploder".
Word is that you could always spot her crew on the streets because none of them had eyebrows.
Exporer and Excalibur, aka, "Exploder and Excrutiating".
Considering the submarine steam plant, couldnt you have a separate compartment for your steam plant and suffocate it when you dive just by air sealing the compartment?
What about the crew?
And submarines with steam was tried. It was a fail.
One problem with starving a coal fire of air is that it generates carbon monoxide - this is how they made town gas in the old days, not only is carbon monoxide poisonous it is also explosive.
Drach-could you do a good comparison vid on the Revenge class vs the Queen Elisabeth’s? When I was young, I always though that the QE’s followed the Revenges as they were ‘better’, but now know the Revenges were like a POV-pack QE? Would just be good to get a side by side comparison.
A question for the future if you ever feature Italian battleships.....In WWII The Italian tank armor was described as being somewhat soft and brittle; I have seen a number of references to this problem on various armor channels. Was the same true of Italian warship armor?
TIA
Can you do an episode about british subs in ww2 soon?
Odd that it hasn't been added to the main Drydock Playlist yet.
edit: now it is. :-)
I think he's out-of-town on some visit or research, so he scheduled the episode and postponed the admin.
On wire guided torpedoes, I would assume that a 5-10 kilometer long wire strong enough to hold together in the open ocean while light enough not to seriously degrade performance or take up too much space on a small warship would also be an issue in the 1940s.
An actual working brain in the realms of government?
How much of the cooking sherry have you ingested, Drach?
Ammonia absorption and caustic soda engines could provide short ranged air independent propulsion and oil fired steam plants can also recharge the energy storage of both types. They were both used along side the shorter ranged pneumatic locomotives as smoke free locomotives for use in tunnels before the electric motor was invented. The danger represented by the energy storage technology in both had them completely retired from commercial and industrial use within 2 years of the first successful electric locomotive.
I would put the risk of operating them at about the same as a nuclear powered ship generating and fueling anti-submarine helicopters with hydrazine.
The High Seas Fleet had already gone out on 8 training exercises that eventually turned into battles with the Royal Navy. When they were asked to do it again at the end of the war in what they knew would inevitably be a suicide mission the sailors said Nein!!!
True and not a uniquely naval or even German attitude. When the knew the war was to end on the 11th hour ,on the 11 day of the 11th month there were still infantry field grade officers on both sides ordering frontal attacks into no man's land on the Western front.
@@tomdolan9761 Germany did have a large social democratic movement lurking under the surface. The social democratic party supported the war in 1914 but I think everybody regretted it. It's interesting how often sailors were the backbone of leftist revolutions in the early 20th century. Perhaps because on a warship there's absolutely no illusion you're living in a democracy so when the leadership loses its credibility, revolt is inevitable
Wheres the index?
6 of the River Class Frigates were built with Turbines. HMS Cam, Chelmer, Ettrick, Halldale, Helmdale and Tweet.
A Drydock under 4 hours?! I feel cheated... LOL
wait till next weekend...
Sail-powered merchant ship: "We don't need no steeenking machinery spaces!"
Harland and wolf in the early 1920s bought up a number of yards in Greenock to built a superyard. Had Belfast been part of a United Ireland HandW would have moved to greenock and Glasgow. Their plans for the yard fell apart and was abandoned after some construction work had started including removing and rebuilding the old parish church. Much of the yard was not used in www2 being used as a seaplane base and a boom defenses depot. Had the yard been built it would have taken much of Belfast yard workload.
I know you've joked about USN vessels in WW2 loading up on 40mm Bofors as 2nd Amendment rights but one reason so many of these weapons were available is that when Chrysler built these under license they came up with a modification. The Swedes rifled the barrels requiring 3.5 hours per barrel. Chrysler broached the barrels, a 15 minute process. They were cranking lots of them out so why not use them?
The 40mm was used more later in the war because the smaller calibers (50-cal, 1.1", and 20mm) could not stop a kamikaze from hitting the ship. The bigger shell had much more hitting power and could rip apart a plane. They came in single, twin, quad, and sextuplet mounts, so they could replace light or medium weight mounts, and they paired well with existing directors.
Yes and they mounted them throughout the fleet. Combined with the twin 5 inch mounts with VT fuses they did all they could to counter kamikazes which were effectively guided missiles with direct human guidance
@@gregorywright4918 .50 caliber and 1.1" were almost entirely extinct as AA guns in the US Navy before the first kamikaze took off. Yes, I'm aware that Enterprise carried a 1.1" mount until pretty late in the war, which is why I said "almost entirely". The 20 mm Oerlikon was in sufficiently widespread service by late 1942 that even cargo ships off Guadalcanal in November were carrying half a dozen or more. The Bofors came into widespread US service during 1943 but the Navy would not have all the Bofors guns it wanted until late 1944, by which time the kamikazes had created a new need to replace the smaller Oerlikons.
The Bofors was widely available because of the innovation of Chrysler. It could be manufactured rapidly in the large numbers to equip a wide variety of naval vessels. Quantity was certainly important but the quality of the innovation was a major force multiplier little appreciated in the post war analysis of ultimate victory
@@tomdolan9761 I'm going to disagree slightly on the last sentence. Post war US analysis showed that the Bofors scored more kills (742) than any other AA gun in US Navy service, with the 5"/38 second at 688 and Oerlikon third at 617. However, both the Oerlikon and Bofors ran into a bit of an outside context problem with the kamikazes during the last year of the war, leading to the Oerlikon being replaced with the Bofors (where possible) and the crash program to get the 3"/50RF into service.
Cheap pinatas are crepe over corrugated cardboard, whereas expensive pinatas are thin papier-mache. Cheap pinatas are MUCH more difficult to fold or breach.
So the British tried steam powered subs... Ever consider a video on them?
It may have been possible to get 11" guns on a ship of Hipper's displacement (infact Deutschland doing it proves it can be done) but you wouldn't literally just put 11" turrets on the historical Hipper as Drach said.
Also as to a Deutschland vs Hipper comparison remember that Hipper was a 32 knot or more ship and Deutschland was a 28ish knot ship. Look at a South Dakota vs Iowa to see how much extra machinery you need just to go faster without improving armament or armor
You would have to take out BOTH sets of turrets fore and aft, rebuild the area for a single larger turret ring, and then drop in a single 11" turret instead. Since the Hipper is 50 ft longer, you might be able to keep the same machinery spaces for the extra 3 kts, but you would not be able to up-armor her without having to add bulges.
I remember ramming sampans in my boat in silent hunter IV
U boots target escorts? HMS Edinburgh?
How the hell is that art print of the Hunley to scale??? There is no way a row of guys would it in there, even sitting down!
What did you not like about the modernisation of Victorious, I can see a better argument for modernising the Implacables, longer more power etc. Obviously Victorious took far too long and it was not ideal to half way through decide to replace the engines etc
The sheer cost and time of it compared to the estimates was far larger, and in the end the hanger still didn't support the latest and greatest aircraft nor any particularly large number of them
I think that my point was that if the two low mileage Implacable class had been modernised is the late 1950s, as the largest of their class with more hanger space, this could have been made suitable for larger aircraft.
The larger engine power would have helped.
The thought of these two with a modernised Eagle, 3 dustbin radar Fleet Carriers, with Ark Royal modernised to catch up, would have released the Light Fleets to be commando carriers, repair ships, Vis Triumph.
As you stated with a number of carriers there could be a UK designed Phantom equivalent, designed to be on the RN Carriers.
In my view Victorious was the wrong carrier to modernise, with so much technology advancement at the time, it was running to keep pace, requiring redoing much of the work when the engines were deemed to need replacing.
@@philipgadsby8261 The problem with the Implacables was fundamental - their dual hangars only had 14 foot clearance, and newer planes required at least 16 foot (preferably 17.5). They were bigger ships with more SHP, but their lifts and hangar clearance doomed them to an early retirement. The rebuild of Victorious did include 17.5 foot hangar height (apparently they razed her to the hangar deck and rebuilt upwards; must have been fun reorganizing the armor). When they took her in they thought they could get it done in a few years and not have to deal with the engines, but as the rebuild stretched out due to changing requirements and funding shortages they realized she was not aging well.
@@gregorywright4918 Seems like it would be far easier to get that increased hangar height out of the Implacables, though. If you've got two 14 foot hangars one on top of the other, strip out the middle deck now it's a single 28 foot hangar.
Victorious was a mistake, there's no way around it. Implacable and Indefatigable were much better candidates.
@@gregorywright4918 as I understand it the Implacables were designed with two full length hangers, this was modified to one and a half due to crew accommodation requirements. There were as I understand it plans to merge the hangers so a rather tall one would be available. I would have thought that a deck under the flight deck could have been constructed as was done with Victorious, so a lower hanger deck, better for weight distribution etc with a decent height, new lifts could of course be installed as would angled flight decks and steam catapults, more redundancy with four sets of boilers. Just my thoughts.
On submarines ramming. In 1941 Polish submarine ORP Wilk rammed something. Might have been an U-boat as reported. Might have been an allied submarine mistaken for a U-boat, possibly Dutch. Might have only been a large bouy. Or anything else really.
35:00 Guided Torpedoes. Back in 1898 Nikola Tesla successfully demonstrated a radio controlled model boat which he tried for several years to sell to the Navy as a guided torpedo system. It would need an antenna above the surface, and one would guess that it could eventually be electronically jammed after the initial surprise period ended. Back then radio was "one frequency", or perhaps more accurately, bleeding across all frequencies in the general range, which could be why it was rejected. It took Tesla over 25 years to get a court to rule that his radio patents came before Marconi's, who got credit in the text books for inventing radio (and the Nobel Prize). Tesla first successfully demonstrated radio in 1893 (clearly before Lodge, Bose, or Marconi). The Imperial Germans used Tesla-style radio systems in WW1 and before (the land stations were unique in that they had huge buried Grounding networks), the Marconi system was used by most other countries. Tesla-style radio system live on today as the ELF submerged submarine communications technology, first studied in the 1920's and remaining "secret" ever since (Tom Clancey not withstanding).
Have you ever heard the story about the us battleship's in 1924'25 as it goes the fleet was cruising in the N Sea at 14 knots and it was one of the New York' s propeller shaft vibrated so badly that in threatened to crack at the navies standard cruise speed and the navy wanted to scrap in them and there
Let's be honest, the Hunley is closer to a manned torpedo like the Kaitens than a submarine.
U 162 sank the Sailing vessel Florence M. Douglas a magnificent vessel of 119 tons off British Guiana in 1942. They did however save a small black pig they named Douglas and keep it as a pet.
That's lighter than the Panzer VIII
Video posted on the 16th... I get patreon warning on the 20th? Drak, your signals staff needs a spanking.
Beatty is involved somehow....
Probably pre-upload cause of holiday period, but published at the regular Patreon date.
God dammit Seymore!!!!!!
Drachism of the day: "Plus the fuel tanks kept exploding, which was not necessarily a good thing."
I disagree on the US Navy's ability to produce a effective submarine post civil war. While chemical batteries where not ready salt based thermal batteries where simple and easily produced. If I was the lead engineer. I would design a six bladed propeller with a thrust/steam exhaust nozzle built into the center hub. Driven directly by a double expansion duel row twelve cylinder radial steam engine. Engine would be made of high grade bronze alloy steel rods, crankshaft, and bronze cylinder linners. Cooling water would be pumped though a heat exchanger preheating the sea water before boiler. Engine cradle would be designed to mount with five bolts. To enable the engine being spun on prop bearing after bolts/steam lines are removed for servicing though hull hatches. Ahead of the engine the kerosene fired boiler would be built inside the molten salt thermal battery. It would small to medium sized nickel coated tube boiler to use filtered salt water(tubes would also be slightly thicker copper for added service life). With tubes running in coils from the boiler though the battery into the engine making any changeover between between power supply unnecessary.to submerge simply shut off fuel supply and close boiler intake/exhaust. With exhaust running through a coil transferring heat into the battery before being vented though the sail. Water would be provided into the boiler by a combination of ram intake and Engine driven water pump. Engine steam would be vented though propeller hub for extra thrust. Ship would be roughly forty-four feet long by eight feet in diameter in the first twelve feet would ten torpedo tubes. Next eight feet would be crew compartment for four man crew followed by eighteen feet for the combination boiler/battery. With the final six feet being the engine compartment which would be serviced only though hull hatchs when surfaced. Kerosene would be carried in numerus ballast tanks externally that would be filled with sea water after the tank was empty. Making a large percentage of fuel supply effectively available at no extra weight. The sail/tower would be on the large side at four feet wide by eight feet tall/long to house a air intake, boiler exhaust, and periscope/crew ingress. As well as the tall tower allows for better optimizing the hull for underwater performance. For simplicity no deck gun would be carried, and torpedoes would be loaded externally with no reloads carried. It would have been a effective threat to the ironclads of the day. Might even have made the Spanish American war occur earlier which could have resulted in Cuba being a state.
You're dreaming. It's nice to have dreams. But a nineteenth-century steam and and battery powered submarine is just that.
@@WALTERBROADDUS It's not using chemical batteries. It would use thermal batteries which are coils of tube in a container of salt heated to molten by the kerosene boiler while on the surface. Submerged water is pumped through the loop and is heated to super critical in the battery instead of the boiler powering the engine. When the battery becomes low air is blown into the primary ballast tank after surfacing the kerosene boiler is fired powering the engine and reheating the battery. It's actually a very simple design that would have excellent performance.
@@alt5494 Okay... been a few years since thermodynamics class. Well, over 30... I've heard of sodium nuclear reactors. But your using heated Sodium to create steam and thus work?🤔 Off the top of my head..... Assuming the Metallurgy of this work? The heat generated in a sub would be rather uncomfortable at best?🤔 What works the pump? How do you make the exhaust watertight?
@@WALTERBROADDUS Fuel and water are primed with manual pumps before engine driven pumps takeover. Steam exhaust would be a series of one way ball valves with soft copper seals. Heat is actually one of the easier problems. The boiler/thermal battery assembly would be insulted from the hull/interior with fireclay (natural material used in foundry's),and a bulkhead between the crew compartment and the boiler. The two big problems to clear are a 6" diameter propeller over 70% efficient, and welding technology to assemble the hull in 1870. Although just about every form of welding became practical in the 1880's. So some types may have been ready earlier.
@@alt5494 This also run smack-dab into the historical timeline of the invention of the internal combustion engine and electrical generator....🤔 This Jules Verne Sub would be made obsolete by Mr. Holland's sub rather quicky.
It would not be inaccurate to call The American Civil War, The Prototype War.
Its not like that war is alone in showing off things that would be far more mature and deadly during ww1, The Crimean War comes to mind. It is true that a lot of what would come 50 years later, show up in some form during the Civil War.
edit: alternatively, The Proof of Concept War
The Crimean War debuted new technologies but the US Civil War, especially after 1863, debuted the industrial age war.
"the sort of leaks you get from ramming you're not diving anytime soon" drach, i think you would probably be diving rather soon albiet not of your own accord.
When you are so early you are here before the pinned Q&A comment.
💪👏👍✌️
You didn’t even really answer the hipper question: the question was if the ship could be built right from the start with 8 11“ guns and not if it could be refitted with the guns later on
You’d have to design & build the ships to do it. For the reasons Drach explained, it would have been extremely difficult, expensive & time consuming to reconfigure the Hippers to accept the larger 11” guns once construction on the hull was significantly underway.
You could try it on a ship-design simulator, but my guess would be no. The Scharnhorst and the Alaska had 9x 11"/12" guns, and they were 30,000 ton ships. The Hippers were 16,000 tons. Usually the armament is chosen first, then the ship is designed around it. Up-gunning the armament requires either expanding the ship size or dropping the number of guns.
On the contrary, the answer was clearly no.
@@WALTERBROADDUS It seems like Drach answered a different question from what was actually asked. The question wasn't about rebuilding the Hippers for 28cm guns. It was about whether (given how the Hippers were somewhat hilariously oversized for an armament of only 4x2 20.3cm) it would've been possible to design them from the keel up for 4x2 (or perhaps 2x4?) 28cm while still using the same size hull.
@@gregorywright4918 On the other hand, we have Hans Zenker's 1928 proposal for a follow-up to the Deutschlands: a 19,000 ton battlecruiser with 4x2 30.5cm guns and the same 100mm belt armor as Admiral Graf Spee.
This never went anywhere because 1928 was the same year that Zenker was replaced by Raeder as head of the Reichsmarine.
What book/ship/story/family member/etc. Inspired you, a viewer here, to be interested in naval history?
EDIT: I know Drach's story on how he found naval history.
I believe his uncle passed while in the depths of the Royal Oak when it was sunk by the Germans.
@@middleway5271 Sorry, I actually meant this for the viewers not Drach! I will edit my post.
@@middleway5271 You are correct, I remember that story.
Azur Lane.
I had two great uncles who fought in the US Navy in WW2 (brothers). One was on the standard BB Maryland (engine room hand, coming onboard in '43), the other was originally on a troop transport in 1942 as a stoker, but got in a fight with a petty officer and as punishment he became crew on a Higgins LCVP for several beach assaults including Saipan. He had a very rough time of it in the war and after with PTSD. As a teen I was all lined up to go to Annapolis but that was the anti-war years and I rejected the idea... and luckily missed the Draft by a year or two. As a kid I read Hornblower, and that was also a driving factor. Back then to study WW2 after you went through all the books in the local library, you had to buy these thin little series books loaded with photos. They usually covered either a weapon or a particular battle. Most kids were buying comic books but we bought those instead with our snow shoveling, grass cutting, and paper route money ;)
51 min. Mark
Confederate submarine was sunk trying to ram
A successful attack means sinking your enemy and living to tell the story. The Hunley was a slow moving nautical kamikaze. It did sink a ship but was in no way a success.
As for hydrogen peroxide fuel, ask the Russians. And if you have an Ouiji Board you can as the crew of the submarine Kursk what their thoughts are.
Now granted you have to take into account that it was the Soviet Union under communism, so things like quality control, maintainence, and crew training and diligence, are all concepts that didn't exist .
So under western use, it might be a bit more stable.
you're misusing strategic and tactical
138th