How different would the history of the East Asia Squadron have been if, instead of Scharhorst and Gneisenau, Von Spee had two battlecruisers such as Moltke and Goeben?
Hi Drach how many light bulbs radio valves and glass covers did a u boat carry and how were they packed so the didn't all break when they were depth charged and were any patrols aborted because of this....
How many different ships with the same name were lost during WW1, and in WW2? I served on U.S.S. Meredith, DD890, last of the Gearings, and I know that two previous destroyers named "Meredith" were lost in WW2. Had that happened before?
It’s January 1941 and Admiral Dönitz has received creditable intelligence that allowed the Kriegsmarine and German intelligence services to confirm that the BdU Enigma codes have positively compromised by the Allies. With Dönitz’ 1941 rank (I think the following is correct) Konteradmiral and Supreme Commander of the Kriegsmarine U-Boats, (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU), would he have had the rank (authority) to stop/modify or completely cease using Enigma for a more secure alternative? On the face of it, it seems to me such an action by Dönitz would have been so crosscutting and has such obvious further potential complications that only full cooperation with the OKW, intelligence services, et al, would be necessary for new code development/use. Essentially, what could Admiral Dönitz do, short of recalling all his boats to their home ports and perhaps the use of some kind of temporary code system? It would no doubt have been an operational, security and intelligence nightmare, particularly when the other services entered the fray, not to mention everyone’s favorite, politicians.
Dark horse but actually pretty likely in terms of claimed capital ship kills that never happened: USS Pennsylvania. As the former Flagship US Fleet, the Japanese claimed her sunk upwards of 50 times during the war. Her name came up pretty much every time they claimed a battleship, regardless of whether any battleships were present.
Re: the propulsion system for the Prince Eugen, Montgomery ("Scotty") Scott of Star Fleet and the Starship Enterprise would opine: "The fancier the plumbing, the easier it is to clog up the works."
Keith Yates wrote a book about Graf Spee's squadron called "Graf Spee's Raiders: Challenge to the Royal Navy." He speculated Graf Spee's forces were doomed. Yates suggests that the cruisers could have split up and operated as individual raiders. Emden raised a LOT of hell all by herself. Imagine if all his cruisers split up and did what they could before being sunk or interned. With the destruction of his squadron at the Falklands, the raider problem was mostly over (except for Konigsberg, trapped in a river in Africa and Dresden, which was later sunk in Chilean waters).
Are the Weird Sisters cruisers?? If so HMS Furious with its 18 inch guns must get a mention. After all she was assigned to the the 1st Cruiser Squadron!
Master & Commander: I wish they would have explained why the Anchor was just "sitting there" underwater. I've had to explain that this is called "Holding the anchor underfoot", so that the anchor finds those "uncharted reefs and shoals before the HMS Surprise's hull does!
The problem with any plans Graf Spee might have made is that it would have been the "smart" move to inform the german high command about it in advance, especially if he is trying to return via the North Sea because he needs to be escorted through the minefields he has no charts of. And while the radios of his ships may have lacked the range, the colonies he would have had to stop by surely would have had one with enough range to reach Germany. Which of course means that thanks to room 40 the Admiralty would also have known in advance where to send the battlecruisers.
@@VersusARCH Given Rommel once managed to lose the whole of Libya whilst broken down in his solo command vehicle which he had charged deep behind enemy lines because he thought he was winning, one can only imagine what a mess he might have got himself into with a naval raiding squadron.... The less leeway Rommel had the more effective he was.
Not saying Graf Spee had much chance, but I would note that in 1914, no one communications system could move a message more than some hundreds of miles without relays of some kind, often using a different form of communication, including couriers! Thing is that most telecommunications networks in 1914 were owned by or passed through British systems at one or more points. Thus, any message Graf Spee tried to send would likely pass over some British telecom desk at some point where it might be recognized. Even if Graf Spee himself sent no messages, neutrals messaging other neutrals that mentioned the existence of the German fleet would often pass over British telecoms desks at some point.
@@genericpersonx333 The german Nauen Transmitter Station had a range of 9000km (5600mi), enough to reach the colony of Togoland (today Ghana). But since its counterpart in Kamina was lost in August 1914 there was indeed no way a message could be directly transmitted from the german colonies to germany at the time Graf Spee would have been there. Edit: the station at Windhoek in Namibia was capable of making sporadic contact with Nauen, so it would have been possible to transmit a message.
50:43 After how many times Enterprise had been reported 'clearly about to sink,' at this point in the war I'd expect an IJN aviator to report something more along the lines of "The USN has again increased Enterprise's anti-aircraft firepower - this time, she fired a whole *aircraft elevator* at us!"
"Floating Plot Shield Device" haha brilliant. Don't be mean to the Grand Old Lady, Warspite simply decided she didn't feel like sinking, so just didn't sink. Ever. It's not Warspite's fault no-one else could figure it out... Although I'm pretty sure USS Enterprise reached the same conclusion; sinking sounds unpleasant, so we just don't, combat damage be damned.
One thing missed about Napoleon's navy was Napoleon himself. He didn't understand the navy and sea navigation in the least and didn't care to learn. He saw it as a sea borne army that moved the same as an army and fumed when it didn't act as such. The best example of this is the Trafalgar campaign where, to him, the navy only had to be there to protect the army crossing over to England for a day. As such, he ordered them like an army to avoid combat and arrive in the Channel on a timetable where he expected to load up quickly, cross and invade just like he'd order an army to break up and meet up again at a certain place on a certain date. That ships relied on wind, and that wind was beyond their control to go anywhere unless it cooperated, he didn't care about. As such, when the fleet was continually delayed by winds not going where the French needed them to he was furious and refused to listen to the reasons why - the navy should just do as they're told and "march" to the damn Channel so he could invade on X date! It's not like they had mountains and mud restricting their travel. They had the entire open ocean to move on! That is why he'd had enough of relying on such a seemingly unreliable thing as a navy, canned the invasion, ordered the fleet back to the Med where it might do SOMETHING when it got caught at Trafalgar and then didn't give much of a damn when it was destroyed. It didn't behave like an army and did what he wanted (or understood), so who cares if it was wiped out?
Napoleon first rose to prominence commanding the artillery which forced Lord Hood to abandon his occupation of Toulon early in the conflict. He also used naval power to seize Malta on his way to invading Egypt. Given better and more aggressive commanders in the French Navy his invasion of England was sound strategy. It wasn’t a lack of understanding so much as poor execution on the part of the French Navy and superior execution of the RN which was the key to Englands survival
@@tomdolan9761 Aggressive commanders do not dictate where the winds blow. His entire strategy revolved around dancing around and avoiding combat with the RN in an overly complex series of baits and maneuvers that ships could not do. What happened to Ganteaume's contingent illustrates this well. Brest is a wonderful harbour from a geographic perspective, but the winds it experiences are horrible (The less said about how isolated it was from the rest of French and dependent on blockaded coastal shipping and badly made roads the better). The way they blow makes it easy to get in but very hard to get out for most of the year and they blow into Brest far more often than they do out of it. When it came to his breakout to join with the the rest of the fleet the winds refused to cooperate and he remained bottled up there (It' worth noting that those very same winds also make English harbours excellent as the directions from which they blow, combined with their geographic position, allow them wide access to get in and out of port more often when they want to). Napoleon's strategy required ships to sail on and arrive at specific dates that they couldn't do. Having someone aggressive in command might have pissed him off in other ways by attacking when they should have been working towards the invasion plan. That was something that could work on the other side of the Atlantic supporting the US as it did in the War of Independence, but not in the RN's backyard given it's innumerable advantages that replacing Villeneuve would have not fixed.
@@marhawkman303 a harbour that lets you in but doesn't let you out isn't anywhere good as a harbour that allows for both easily. France's problem was that their Atlantic coast was bad for harbours and they didn't have many to choose from.
Small correction: The V in "von" ("of") in german noble titles is always pronounced like an F. So it's actually "Admiral fon Spee". The V has different pronounciations in German (either the english V, identical to the german W, or the english F). PS: The "au" in "Breslau" is pronounced like the "ow" in "owl" or "Ow, that hurt!" I don't want to be rude, I'm just honest. 😅 Constructive criticism is the second most popular activity in Germany, right after complaining.
1:11:00 This is also why I felt compelled to be a Patreon supporter for you (fun fact, I created a Patreon account specifically to support you). Because tech company algorithms suck, and creators having to /chase/ the algorithm, or try to interpret it and manipulate it (clickbait titles anyone?) is soul-deadening and not the sort of lifestyle we should feel compelled or forced into. You, and creators in a broader sense, shouldn't have your livelihoods in jeopardy because of a reprogrammed or glitchy algorithm. You provide incredibly well-researched material, break it down and make it both understandable and incredibly interesting for laypeople like myself, present it with wit and without condensation, and with genuine affection and respect for the material and people's whose lives are covered by it. This is the sort of genuine intellectual pursuit and personal enrichment that futurism had always promised us. And I like to think that supporting via Patreon helps safeguard such endeavors or at least mitigate the worst parts of having to chase the algorithm.
Was the indifferent reputation of the the Royal Navy's 16" Mark I guns mounted on the HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney all that unfair or undeserved? A number of very reliable sources I've seen suggest these guns had issues that went beyond their troublesome mounts, and the guns earned their reputation. The following paragraph from the page on the website Naval Weapons website offers a good summary of these other major problems the 16" Mark I gun: "From inadequate firing trials, a mistaken theory was promulgated by the Director of Naval Ordnance (DNO) that held that a high-velocity, low-weight projectile would have superior armor penetration characteristics at large oblique angles of impact, a conclusion which was the opposite of previous findings. This theory was not substantiated by later trials, but these took place too late to affect the decision to use a lightweight APC projectile for new designs. As a result, these guns proved to be only marginally better in terms of armor penetration than the previous 15"/42 (38.1 cm) Mark I and much less satisfactory than those older guns in terms of accuracy and barrel life." Various sources indicate the inaccuracy was in large part due to the guns' rifling. The guns were made with two different riflings: Mark I and Mark II. The Royal Naval, apparently in a move to save money and time, fitted ships with both the two types of rifles. This resulted in problems with dispersion. The two different rifling patterns arose in an attempt to improve the short barrel life. Sources indicate this solution was not particularly successful. Further, the performance of RN 16" Mk I was not good compared to its foreign peers, such as USN 16" 45 Mk 1 with WWI era Mk 3 shell. The comparison is even worse with WW II era US Mk 5 shell. Much of this of data on gun performance also can be found online at the Naval Weapons website, as well as in various books such as "Naval Weapons of World War Two" by John Campbell. BTW, I'd post a link to the Naval Weapons website but TH-cam seems to hide posts that have links.
I'd say that the degree to which they are looked down upon is rather unfair. At the end of the day, they acquitted themselves well enough during engagements like the sinking of the Bismarck.
A lot of this needs to be put in proper context. Being "marginally better in terms of penetration" and "much less satisfactory ... on terms of accuracy and barrel life" than the 15"/42 is comparing it against one of the best weapons of its time and arguably throughout the entire era of "post-dreadnought" battleships. Having worse accuracy and rated barrel life than a 15"/42 is a trait shared with almost every other battleship gun up to and including the Iowa's 16" Mk7 (excluding post-war upgrades of course). And only having marginally better penetration than the 15"/42 still puts it at similar penetration characteristics to the Colorado's 16"/45 using Mk3 shells. Since you're looking at navweaps as well, you may have missed that the Nelson's guns quite significantly outperform the Colorado's at 20k yards. Of course the penetration was significantly better with the Mk5 shells from the reconstructed guns at any range, but that's a much later and fairly deep upgrade. The 16"/45s for the Nelsons were very problematic weapons with very problematic mounts, but a lot of the disappointment stems from them having to compare against the breakaway success of the 15"/42 and in practice they more than proved themselves in peer combat against Bismarck. Calling it an "indifferent reputation" actually fits pretty well. They're not terribly bad, just a major 'meh' compared to their predecessor. Very disappointing in that they no longer have something with clearly superior characteristics to their peers, like they did with the 15"/42, now they just have something that's roughly comparable but slightly worse.
@@Tepid24 Proper contex would include the following. 1. The RN 16"/45 Mk.1 gun was less accurate than the RN 15"/42 and most other comparable contemporary naval guns. 2. The RN 16"/45 Mk.1 gun had a significantly shorter barrel life than the RN 15"/42 or most other comparable contemporary naval guns. Even with improvements, the RN 16"/45 Mk2 had a barrel of 180 rounds compared to the 200-250 rounds of the US Mark 11 14"/40, 335 round of the RN 15"/42, or the 350 rounds for the USN 16"/45 Mk 1 used on the Colorados . 3. The RN 16"/45 Mk.1 gun penetration was worse than most of its peers, not just similar to the RN 15"/42, according the Naval Website table and other sources. Guns that had better penetration according to Naval Weapons website tables include: -USN 16"/45 Mk 3 (introduced on the USS Colorados) -USN 16 Mk 5 (WW II update of the Colorados) -USN's 16"/45 used on the -USN 14"/50 Mark 11 (used on the Standards) -USN 12" Mark 12"/50 (used on the Alaskas) -KM 38 cm (14.96") SK C/34 (used on the Bismarcks) -MN 15" Mods. 1935/1936 380 mm (used on Richelieus) -MN 330 mm Mod. 1931 (used on the Dunquerkes) It does appear to be better than the IJN 45 caliber 3rd Year Type 40 cm Guns found on the Nagatos but data is sketchy. 4. The guns on the Rodney did perform adequately in helping to sink the crippled, unmanueverable KM Bismarck. At the very close ranges involved in this battle, the guns were able to overcome their inherent inaccuracy and hit the Bismarck. At landing, where they were shooting with minimal counter-battery fire and aerial spotting at fixed coordinates, the guns also performed adequately. Given all this context, along with the other issues in the NelRod (e.g., the marked blast damage from firing the main guns), the checkered reputation of the RN 16"/45 as a gun appears to be very fairly earned, @DuraLexSedLex.
@@notatruescotch7148 Did you like only read the first two or three sentences before starting to write this? Whatever, might as well stay here for the long haul then: 1. Less accurate, yeah. The point is that it wasn't inaccurate enough to actually prevent it from performing well. It's a physical reality that the guns had suboptimal accuracy, but unlike say, the French 380mm or Italian 381mm guns, this was not enough of a problem to have an adverse effect on them in practice. Rodney started hitting Bismarck at well above ~15k yards judging from the available chart and that's being generous. That's about the same range as Bismarck hit Hood, with Hood not being nearly as erratic of a target. At the danger of me having to repeat myself, the British 16"/45 was not a very good gun, but it was adequate. 2. Feel free to read those footnotes through to the end: > "British Battleships of World War Two" credits these guns as being originally designed with a muzzle velocity of 2,700 fps (823 mps) and a maximum range of 41,983 yards (38,389 m). The very first test firings of these guns found that they had a serious wear problem, with a barrel life of only 180 rounds. It was also found that there was a considerable loss of accuracy during continuous firing, as there was a tendency for the projectiles to strip the rifling out of the guns ". . . due to the hammering action of the short bodied, long headed projectile on its way down the bore . . ." As a result, the rifling in the liners was changed (known as Mark II rifling) for newer guns, the powder charge and chamber size were reduced to the figures shown in the tables above and the diameter of the projectile driving band was increased. Even with these changes, the barrel life and accuracy still compared poorly with the previous 15"/42 (38.1 cm) Mark I. > After those "very first test firings" and the above modifications had been implemented they still had a barrel life worse than the 15"/42 at 200-250 rounds. That is exactly as good as all of the 14" standards. The 14" standards aren't exactly infamous for having short barrel lives. At the danger of me having to repeat myself, the British 16"/45 was not a very good gun, but it was adequate. 3. Did you... read my comment? Or for that matter, did you even read the navweaps tables? Subtly use the word "spaghetti" in your reply if you read this. Anyway. The astute observer may drect their eyes at the 20 000 yard range for the penetration tables publically available over at navweaps for both the Nelson's 16"/45 and the Colorados using their 16"/45 Mk3 AP shells. You will notice that the Nelsons outperform them at that range. As you did see yourself, the Colorados then have an edge at the 15k yard segment. Ah jeez, with the practical impossibility of ever accurately quantifying the penetration ability of something like an AP projectile and these official sources giving one the edge over the other at one range and the opposite at another, fairly close range, with those advantages amounting to no more than 20mm here and there, it's almost like they have practically identical performance and the only differences are going to be dependent on uncontrollable factors and random happenstance. The Mk 5 shells from the Mk 5/8 guns were indeed much better at any range, but you should note that those were a completely new shell design fired from modified and reconstructed guns. Of course those are better, they are also way outside of the frame of reference and irrelevant for a comparison. If you went through the trouble of rebuilding the guns and making new modernized shells for them, the British 16"/45s would also have a massive boost in performance, maybe even more so due to the questionably light design of the original 16" AP shells. In the same vein, going on to list some of the most high performance weapons of the late 30ies and early 40ies doesn't exactly prove anything. The closest thing you've got is the Dunkerque's 330mm guns and even those are 9 years younger in design. And again, even if we choose to include these completely separate gun and shell developments that are between 9 and 18 years younger than the Nelsons, all of them dwarf the original Colorado's performance just as much. In case you've forgotten, on paper the Colorados have less penetration than the Nelsons with their pre-WW2 era shells at 20k yards. At the very end you have to catch yourself lestyou actually compare them to something that is contemporary. So yeah, just like the Colorados and Nagatos, their penetration wasn't at the same level as the much later weapon developments of the mid-late 30ies. This rendered them subpar, but adequate in their WW2 performance. At the danger of me having to repeat myself, the British 16"/45 was not a very good gun, but it was adequate. 4. The first hits and importantly the fatal ones that knocked out Bismarck's fire control, bridge and forward firepower were scored at well outside close range. But yeah, other than these errors, I agree with your ultimate judgement. They were adequate weapons in the truest sense of the word. They did their job and did about as well as you could expect an early 20ies design to do in the 1940ies. They are disastrously disappointing next to the 15"/42 that did better than them despite being even older, but they are obviously miles better than the weapons which had critical flaws stopping them from being practically useful. Shell design, mounting quality and the gun barrels themselves came together to produce a bad, but serviceable package. Which is not something you could say about things like the Italian and French 15" guns ironically enough. Anyway, this entire discussion is basically just nitpicking about the exact degree to which those guns deserve a checkered reputation, so I hope you'll excuse me if I come off as stand-offish at parts.
Hey Drach... In the picture of Enterprise being hit is that elongated black smudge at approximately 5 degrees off the vertical and 2/3 up the frame the fwd elevator departing the ship?
I would just like to say your pronounciation of Atago is far better than most attempts I have heard. The As should be a bit longer, but you avoid the extremely long middle A that so many people say, turning it into something similar to the standard prnounciation of New Zealand's Otago. In Atago the two As should be of similar length. Carry on!
"Mr Allen in Master and Commander?" very good for those who know little about how the Royal Navy was organised in those days. Uniformed RN military personnel as opposed to 'civilians in uniform at sea' (sort of).
00:56:46 - Mr. Allen and his ilk (Boatswain, Carpenter, Gunner, Purser, Surgeon, Chaplain) are more properly referred to as Warrant Officers. Their authority derived from warrants issued by the Admiralty, instead of commissioned officers who received orders in the name of the sovereign and "held the King's commission".
@@rackstraw The Surgeon was not a Warrant Officer. The Warrants were the Master, Carpenter, Cook, Clerk and Gunner to start with, with the Schoolmaster and Chaplain being added somewhat later. The major difference between the Warrants and the NCO's such as the Bosun, Sailmaker, Botswain and the like were that the Warrants were assigned to the ship *permanently*. When the crew was paid off and put into Ordinary the Warrants stayed with her, even when she was in Ordinary. The Other NCO's did not, they were paid off with the rest of the crew. But yes, they did have a warrant issued by the Lords of the Admiralty, so you could argue they were not exactly NCO's but were not Officers either as they did not have the Kings or Queens Commission.
@@clangerbasher As the comment was specifically about the Warrant Officers I do not see how that has any relevance, other than that you appear to want to make an inane comment regarding someone else's knowledge based upon a short three line sentence commenting on a very small and niche subject within the greater whole. Did it make you feel important? I generally find that assumptions based on zero data tend to be wrong, so mr expert... please elucidate upon your comment? Or was it simply made to make you feel superior?
The Richter Scale registered the collective groan of engineers worldwide at the phrase "sea temperature has halved". Unless you're measuring in Kelvin or one of the other absolute temperature (thermal energy quantity) scales, the stated text is nonsense.
00:27:42 - What could you tell about HMS Scourge vs the Sans Cullote?? "Sans Cullote"? "Without Pants"? How could you not have a bit of fun with that name?
The Ships Master was not just an NCO, he was one of the Warrant Officers aboard the ship. The difference between the Warrant Officers were that they were assigned to the ship permanently, even when the ship was in Ordinary the Warrant Officers would remain with her. Generally they were only replaced as they either retired or died. To quote a well known NavalHistory site that ends with net: Warrant Officers have always been specialists carried on board ships for specific responsibilities requiring a very high level of experience and detailed knowledge. These attributes were not expected of the "fighting" officers who were primarily concerned with the tactics necessary to make contact with the enemy and then to "fight" the ship. To do this successfully it was essential for warships to carry others who would ensure that the ship was always in a high state of readiness. It had to be well maintained and its guns always ready for use, with ample charges and projectiles. More importantly it had to be in the right place at the right time. These specialists were attached to the ship throughout its life, whether in commission, or "in ordinary" ("laid up"). They did not hold a King's, or Queen's Commission, but had a Warrant signed by members of the Board of Admiralty. These Warrant Officers were the Master, Gunner, Carpenter, Cook (yes, really) and Clerk. Later the Chaplain and Schoolmaster were added to the list of Warrant Officers. The Schoolmaster was there to teach the Midshipmen and ships boys (though primarily the midshipmen). The Ships Master was not just in charge of day to day running of the ship he was also the ships expert in ship handling and Navigation. As they spent their careers with that particular vessel they tended to know their ship inside and out. As you said Drach, they were also extremely experience Mariners, often having been at sea for decades by the time they were promoted to Master. Remember in those days it was not unusual for boys to go to sea at 9 or 10. So a man with two decades of sea experience behind him may not even be in his thirties.... EDIT Last one got deleted by YT because it did not like the link to a certain Navalhistory site ending in net.
A US navy ship was based in the UK. An order was issued that the local chaplain should not be stopped from boarding at any time and that the sentry should remember that this local chaplain outranked him.
Regarding 56:46, I suppose that the age of sail Sailing Master is roughly the equivalent of the combined expertise of a modern Chief Petty Officer and Head of Navigation... Either of whom a modern captain is intensely foolish or reckless to ignore the advice of.
And hell, as for officers listening to enlisted, I got out of the USMC as a Corporal, was avionics on Huey’s and Cobra’s…officers listened to me all the time, when it came to aircraft, and if they could fly or not, at least that particular bird.
one of the tricks to being a good leader... is learning what those under you can do. If you're not a mechanic you don't tell a mechanic how to do his job... and you listen if he tells you he needs stuff to get the requested work done.
@@marhawkman303 yeah, some would try that though, and thought they knew better than we did. And pretty rarely for us, there was one that was just a total ass. So then they got put on the no fly program, and finally about when they were about to start quals…they’d stop being an ass, and a higher up would politely tell us to stop, haha. It was the first LT’s that’d acted that way, if someone was. My first CO at the unit was the man. He told my shop I’m the only one allowed to work on his bird from AVI, ahaha. That was in Iraq.
The entrance to Stanley Harbour is slightly less than twice the length of a Scharnhorst-class cruiser. Of which Spee conveniently enough had two. His best option was to have Schanrhorst and Gneisenau make their best speed to the harbor entrance and each of them runs itself aground on one of the peninsulas, with their sterns close enough together than nothing bigger than a rowboat will fit between them. Then fire away for as long they're able to until he's destroyed. At which point instead of a pair of intact cruisers blocking the the harbor it's a pair of wrecked cruisers...which are equally difficult to remove. Sturdee's battlecruisers would've been bottled up until the wrecks could be cleared, giving Spee's light cruisers a few months head start for either trying to run the North Sea blockade or do commerce raiding until they're caught. And deprives the Royal Navy of 2 out of their (at the time) 10 battlecruisers for however many months it takes to clear the wrecks. This also would've probably rendered Inflexible not yet available for bombarding Gallipoli in March 1915, meaning some other capital ship would've had to go in her place.
There are absolute temperature scales (as demonstrated above), the most useful of which is Kelvin. Sure, starting at usual terrestrial ambient temperatures, halving the temperature gets you to very, very cold temperatures. So, in this case saying that the temperature has halved is wrong. Although if we are using the most common "normal" temperature scale, the 0 is pretty much the temperature where water will freeze (depending on purity and pressure), so in that sense you have a bit going on for "temperature halving" when it comes to water. But sure, it is not correct.
Before transfer to Rosyth the ships based in Invergordon had ample time for training... they would not live fire.. but would go out in pairs and work their systems against each other.. I think beatty just liked the sound of guns firing
Though without the ability to live fire could they train on spotting and shot correction? That's kind of the make or break part of fire control of the era. You can practice range finding, lining the guns up as directed, and loading all day but that's not enough to make you an effective gunnery ship.
I disagree.. familiarity and practice at sea would cover at least 80 percent of the proficiency of a specific ship... fire correction was often a shit show due to poor target allocation and failure to identify... Also certain individuals .. let's say beatty ordered spurious course corrections and therefore.. due to need to recompile the Germans got to fire first with their shorter ranged guns... This would indicate that non firing practice at sea may be as high as 90 of the equation as perhaps Mr B would have learnt how to handle the entire system properly .. Rodney etc used this same method when training from Invergordon later on and they seemed to do ok... granted the differences...
For biggest-gun cruiser, I have to bring up USS Vesuvius, with her triple-battery of 15-inch guns, probably wins biggest caliber. Classified as a plain cruiser at the time. Granted, they were pneumatic-fired dynamite guns, but the question was only about biggest, not most practical. Honorable mention also to the armored cruiser Georgios Averof, a substantially more practical ship armed with 9.2 inch main battery, and at just about 10,000 tons would even be near enough treaty compliant, had that mattered at the time. Between the design and service history, she certainly fit into the "second class battleship" idea for armored cruisers, though she seemed to have a bit of a problem with that "second class" part.
"00:38:37 - What's the largest gun ever considered for placement on a cruiser? And would it have been feasible or was it just a pipe dream?" HMS Furious comes to mind. . . That got quickly removed because the gun ended up being more harmful to the ship that it carried than any ship it fired against. as for a pipe dream. see HMS Incomparable because Jackie Fisher.
I realize she was a "Large Light Cruiser", but come on. The British used 6X9.2 inch on the Duke of Edinburgh and Warrior classes and 4X9.2 inch on the Minotaur class , the USN 4X10 inch on the Tennesse Class (later renamed Memphis, but the IJN's Tsukuba and Ibuki class armored cruisers mounted 4X12 inch.
You could also consider the Kronshtadt class with the planned German 380 mm guns. Of course, same as with the others, you have the question of large cruiser/super cruiser/battlecruiser and does it count?
@@BruceRKF HMS Furious had 2/3 inch belt armor. Her protection is on par with the contemporary C class light cruisers. A light cruiser armed with 6 inch guns can detonate HMS Furious. So with the HMS Furious the cruiser name sticks.
Speaking of fire control only, and in particular the rangefinders. You could have two absolutely identical ships write down to the barnacles on the keel and the fire control systems will have a different feel in their rangefinders adjustment knobs. These are precision instruments, which is why they were high on the list for salvage at Pearl harbor. The glass in the rangefinders the gears it's all precision. Unfortunately they are never exactly the same. That feel on those adjustments to determine range is critical. If you swap the cruise around whoever operates the rangefinders, will have to get used to the feel of the instrument. There could be a slight difference in the angle of the mirrors, the intermeshing of the gears could be slightly different. These differences could be the result of the manufacturing process of the gears or it could be the way they're maintained or just normal wear
I wonder what effect temperature has on the range finders., thermal expansion / contraction. 100F in the sputh pacific verses -20F in the north atlantic. a 120F temperature swing. That can make the distance between the binocular mirrors change. backlash in gear trains change, etc....
Re: the enterprise and the Japanese being reasonably sure they sunk it so often. Honestly if there is some top trumps or special video game attribute you’d ascribe to the US navy clan, it would be damage control. Some of the stuff they did was Truely supernatural. In fact their officially unofficial slogan or motto is literally “Don’t give up the ship”. (The dying words of captain Lawrence, USN of the “Chesapeake”in 1813)
Hi Drach back in your USS Constitution video you claimed once the Royal Navy had captured USS president you said they took design ques from her, I'm interested where the source was for the UK taking information from USS President. As I have read about the notes they took from her and they were not positive in the slightest, they did say a strong hull, was it that they took. As I haven't found anything positive about them as by the time of 1812 they were 2 decades old and out of date. HMS Endymion which wasn't that new a ship, which captured President was a better ship in every way from speed 14 knots which was a lot faster than any of the 6 frigates, to matching firepower with President in all but the type of oak and possibly cross bracing (although Endymion may have had that) and Britain didn't have access to that type of oak anyway. And Endymion had a class made from her lines, however that was before the war of 1812. I can imagine the initiative hull deisgn being taken but I was under the impression that by even before 1805 other ships were already using it. If the war was when they were built that makes sense as they were revolutionary ships but by 1812 they were out of date.
@@BlackMasterRoshi These are basically spam messages advertising various "products" and "interesting videos"; when you report them as spam they will eventually be deleted but the reply count stays the same.
Regarding von Spee's options, I think he should have thought about possible outcomes; weighed their probabilities as best he could with the limited information he had and then decided what option was most likely to achieve the best possible; or more realistically, the least worst outcome. Broadly speaking, no matter what decisions von Spee made, there were only three possible outcomes. The first was the total or near total annihilation of von Spee's squadron, which is what happened. The second was von Spee's squadron, or at least a portion of it, somehow made it back to Germany, or made it to Turkey; which was at least as farfetched a possibility as making it to Germany. The third possible outcome was that von Spee would survive long enough to be forced to take refuge in a neutral port, probably in South America. In any of these possible outcomes one or two light cruisers might be detached as commerce raiders; which is sort of what happened in real life, though the Dresden wasn't able to do more than just hide for a while. We don't know what von Spee was thinking as he approached Port Stanley, when HMS Canopus opened fire on him and the masts of Sturdee's battlecruisers were spotted; other than perhaps "Oh crap, did I make a mistake." We do know that after the Battle of Coronel von Spee was quite pessimistic. When given a bouquet of flowers in Valparaiso, Chile he said, "These will do nicely for my grave." So, he must have believed the worst possible outcome of total annihilation was the most likely one. Even a less pessimistic person might have placed this outcome as being 80 to 90% probable. Getting all the way to Germany; well, only an insanely optimistic person would have placed the odds at better than 1 or 2%. I would have guessed much less than 1%. Surviving long enough to be interned in a neutral port would not have been a glorious outcome for von Spee, but it would have both preserved the lives of his men and given von Spee the opportunity to do some damage to British commerce by capturing and sinking a merchant ship or two along the way. Of course, even reaching a port to be interned in might have required the capture of a considerable amount of coal, but it's the outcome von Spee should have tried to achieve, even if the odds of doing so were 10% or less. Attacking Port Stanley was a very poor option to choose because von Spee appears to have been aware that the Royal Navy would make a special effort to destroy him. I think it was a very fatalistic choice, because even if Sturdee's ships hadn't been there; if they had been delayed sailing by three or four days, knocking out the radio station at Port Stanley would have told the world where von Spee was or at least that he had been there and when he had been there. It would have been simple math to figure out how far von Spee's squadron could have gone following the attack. It's almost as if von Spee wanted to bring about his destruction sooner rather than later. At best I would call it a "high risk - low reward" option and it appears some of his officers voiced their disapproval of that choice.
You're probably right that the attack on Port Stanley was because Spee figured he was doomed and wanted to just get it over with. But beyond that, I suspect his thinking was that attacking right away would give him the best chance to inflict some damage before he's taken out. Without any ability to do maintenance and refuel, his ships' performance was only going to decline more over time even if he escaped detection. That said, I think once he made the decision to attack Port Stanley, he made two core mistakes. First was bringing the light cruisers with him instead of having them disperse and go commerce raiding or try to run the blockade back to Germany as their captains saw fit. They weren't going to make any difference one way or the other. If Sturdee hadn't arrived yet, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau alone could easily destroy the wireless station. And either way he'd be drawing all the attention onto himself and giving the smaller, faster cruisers time to get out of the area. Second was that he was insufficiently aggressive once he realized there were battlecruisers docked at Port Stanley. It took some time for Sturdee's ships to raise steam. With the battlecruisers' superior speed, this didn't give Spee enough of a head start to matter when trying to flee. It would however have given him time to press the attack while Invincible and Inflexible were still at anchor. Two of Sturdee's cruisers were already under steam as guardships, but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were more powerful ships and could likely have forced their way to the harbor entrance. And that point, seeing as the entrance of Stanley Harbour is only about 900 feet wide, he could have maneuvered his cruisers so that they're blocking Invincible and Inflexible from leaving. Even after they sink his ships, the wrecks will still have them bottled up for probably several months. And at such close range he might even be able to inflict some real damage on the battlecruisers.
Back in 1919 British submarine L-55 was sunk near Saint Petersburg, in 1927 she was raised, repaired and studied thoroughly. She even was included in the Russian fleet as Л-55 and scrapped only in 1950. Most of the late 30 early 40ies USSR models had some sort of this back engineering process in it. After USSR got hold on late production German subs in the end of the WW2 all "national" projects were scrapped and first after war subs in USSR were basically a copies of German types, 611 was a copy of XXI and 613 a copy of VIIC
USS Enterprise for the win! I think the Enterprise and the Yorktown even though she ultimately was sunk demonstrates the quality of the design of the Yorktown class.
Well the design had some vulnerabilities such as unarmoured flight deck. But the crews of the Yorktown class demonstrated some phenomenal damage control!
The senior officer of a merchant ship is its master, not its "captain". During the Middle Ages, there was no Royal Navy as such, ships and their crews were called up from the merchant service (in return for lower import duties, each of the Cinque Ports committed to providing a certain number of ships with their crews en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinque_Ports). The King then detailed a group of soldiers to serve as marines on each, appointing an officer called the captain (from the Latin capua = head) to command them. He did not necessarily have any maritime experience. So, the master was in charge of sailing the ship, while the captain was in charge of fighting her. This prevailed until the Pepys Reforms of the 1660's which required a prospective naval officer to demonstrate a knowledge of seamanship and navigation in order to be commissioned. Gradually, this led to a downgrading of the position of Master. He became the ship's senior warrant officer (one of three who was a member of the wardroom) "In 1808, Masters (along with Pursers and Surgeons) were given similar status to commissioned officers, as warrant officers of wardroom rank. The master ate in the wardroom with the other officers, had a large cabin in the gunroom, and had a smaller day cabin next to the captain's cabin on the quarterdeck for charts and navigation equipment " and was the ship's expert on sailing, seamanship and navigation, Masters either transferred directly from the merchant service, or, if a ship's mate, joined the Navy as a Master's Mate and were later promoted. Some Master's Mates were midshipmen who had passed their exam for promotion to lieutenant and were awaiting their promotion orders. Some unlucky passed midshipmen were never commissoned and settled into being Master's Mates were eventually promoted to Master. A prospective Master had to pass an oral exam conducted by a RN captain and three Masters of Trinity House. He was then eligible to receive his warrant from the Navy Board. From 1753, the position of Deputy Master existed aboard ships of the line - generally a Mate who had passed his exam for Master and was deemed capable of serving as such and and was awaiting a position to become available. Smaller rated ships had a Master's Mate as Deputy Master. Unrated ships were authorized an experienced Master's Mate in lieu of a Master. No further Masters were created after 1883 and the last retired in 1892. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_%28naval%29
Also the Warrants stayed with the ship, even when it was in Ordinary, at least during the period of the Age of Sail. That of course changed later, but the period in question is the Age of Sail. The Purser and Surgeon were not 'Warrants' in that respect as they would be Paid off with the rest of the crew after a voyage or if a ship went into Ordinary. The Warrants that I am aware of, those who stayed with the ship were, the Master, Carpenter, Gunner, Clerk and Cook. Later the Chaplain and Schoolmaster were added to that list. Of course, the Age of Sail is a fair old period, so it could be that I have just missed that Warrants were issued to the Purser and Surgeon even though they did not remain with the ship. Or they were made Warrants later, and again did not stay with the ship unlike the other Warrants.
@@alganhar1 The Master was not a Standing Warrant Officer like the Bosun, Carpenter and Gunner, and was paid off with the rest of the crew. Please allow me to quote - "Rank and status in the 18th century In origin, warrant officers were specialist professionals whose expertise and authority demanded formal recognition. In the 18th century they fell into two clear categories: on the one hand, those privileged to share with the commissioned officers in the wardroom and on the quarterdeck; and on the other, those who ranked with more junior members of the ship's crew.[Somewhere between the two, however, were the standing officers, notable because, unlike the rest of the ship's company, they remained with the ship even when it was out of commission (e.g. for repair, refitting or replenishment, or whilst laid up); in these circumstances they were under the pay and supervision of the Royal Dockyard. Wardroom warrant officers These classes of warrant officer messed in the wardroom with the commissioned officers: the master: the senior warrant officer, a qualified navigator and experienced seaman who set the sails, maintained the ship's log and advised the captain on the seaworthiness of the ship and crew; the surgeon: who treated the sick and injured and advised the captain on matters of health; the purser: responsible for supplies, food and pay for the crew. In the early 19th century, they were joined in the wardroom by naval chaplains, who also had warrant officer status (though they were only usually present on larger vessels). Standing warrant officers The standing officers were members of the gunroom and were: the boatswain: responsible for maintenance of the ship's boats, sails, rigging, anchors and cables; the carpenter: responsible for maintenance of the ship's hull and masts; the gunner: responsible for care and maintenance of the ship's guns and gunpowder. Junior warrant officers Other warrant officers included surgeon's mates, boatswain's mates and carpenter's mates, sailmakers, armorers, schoolmasters (involved in the education of boys, midshipmen and others aboard ship) and clerks. Masters-at-arms, who had formerly overseen small-arms provision on board, had by this time taken on responsibility for discipline.
Even in modern military Army Officers & Enlisted tend to gain & lose rank faster then the Navy. Technical Knowledge requirements for Navy promotions has to be higher.
Absolute BS, A helicopter mechanic is a helicopter mechanic. Try commanding a modern tank. Even infantrymen aren't louts wandering around with guns, but highly trained specialists
"Sans culottes" started as French slang for the lower class revolutionaries. "Culottes" were the knee length short trousers worn by aristocrats (it was a fashion thing, no point in trying to argue whether it was sensible or not), "sans culottes" were the poorer people who didn't have them and wore full length trousers instead.
@@hughfisher9820 If we go a little further back in time culottes we're women's under pants with an open crutch. Fast forward past aristocratic gents attire and 70's split skirts to today and the term "Sans Culotte" is the French colloquial equivalent of "Going Commando". As Humpty said of words "It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." No trousers suits me just fine.🙂
The German Pocket Battleship 28.3 cm guns used the German post-WWI "Psgr.m.K." (APHE shell with AP Cap) type "L/3,7" )3.7 calibers long) of circa-600 kg (also used in the all German 15 cm guns through the end of WWII). This shell had a small pointed windscreen and an equally small hardened AP cap, and an improved delay-action base fuze, but otherwise was just a "warmed-over" WWI tough-capped "L/3,2" shell of the same size and had rather poor ability to stay in one piece when hitting any significant thickness of armor. The later post-1930 heavier and improved-metallurgy "L/4,4" used by the SCHARNHORST Class was considerably better.
TH-cam is shadowbanning Drach now? I wonder why. It doesn't seem to make sense. Welp, off to go scroll through videos of teenagers dancing or whatever it is that the algorithm promotes.
Sponsorships are a part of business. Drach is doing this as his job and needs to be compensated. The only time I would get annoyed about a sponsorship would be one for a totally BS product that is actually dangerous for people. You see them all the time on TH-cam. Pseudoscience to cure your diabetes or to lose weight or whatever. TH-cam doesn't give a rat's ass what they advertise as long as the person's check clears. Drac obviously filters is sponsors that he will accept, so I don't have a problem with it at all. He has a very good moral compass which is becoming somewhat rare today. His parents did a great job.
Depended on your birth - were you an "Aristo", but nobody was safe, except maybe the few who had somehow worked their way up from the lower deck, "The Quibéron mutinies were a series of mutinies that occurred in the Brest squadron of the French Navy in September 1793, at the height of the Reign of Terror. They offered reasons and pretexts for the Jacobins to purge the Navy of most of its officers who belonged to the French aristocracy."
Italy actually had 11 triple 12-inch turrets (plus 2 twin turrets) when they were scrapping battleships. 4 triples from Dante Alighieri, 4 triples from the formerly Austro-Hungarian Tegetthoff, and 3 triples and 2 twins from the salvaged Leonardo da Vinci. Plus they get 4 more triple turrets by removing the Q turrets from the Cavour and Duilio-class battleships during their 1930s reconstructions. Even if you ignore the 12"/45 Skoda guns and turrets (since they're a completely different design from the Italian 12"/46s), that still is 11 triple turrets. So if they had the budget for it, that would allow for three cruiser-killers with 3x3 armament and a half-sister with 3x2 and 1x2. Probably boring the guns out to 12.6" like on the battleships, for whatever that's worth. Actually if the Skoda guns and their turrets had been kept around, maybe you bore them out to 12.6" as well that would mostly deal with the logistical problems of their Austro-Hungarian origin. Maybe use those guns for a pair of super-Deutschland style cruisers. As for how Italy would pay for such a thing? Maybe Mussolini just decides to spend a lot more money than Italy actually hand and says he'll pay off the debts by plundering his enemies.
The first question, in which Drach mentions the effect of director control tables on the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914, goes a long way to answer the question I've posed a couple of times and had answered, but only in part, once. If these two battlecruisers had yet to be refitted with a fire control table, then it seems wildly unlikely that the armored cruisers in Troubridge's squadron in the Mediterranean had. If SMS Moltke did have that kind of fire control table, then that would appear to give Moltke a huge advantage over the armored cruisers to go along with its speed. If Moltke has the speed to control the range, and a central fire control table, then it can deliver well-aimed salvos at 10-12,000 yards while the British armored cruisers are throwing out shells with only the barest slim chance of scoring a lucky hit. So it would appear the key issue is whether Moltke had that fire control table or not. Edit: as noted below, Goeben rather than Moltke. Since Goeben wasn't assigned to the Mediterranean until 1912, there may have been time for her to have been refitted with a central fire control table before that assignment.
Norman Friedman in his "Naval Firepower" book writes that German fire control in WW1 had excellent rangefinders but does not seem very impressed with the German range clock equivalent, which relied heavily on human judgement. He also writes that in 1913-14, after Goeben deployed to the Med, the German navy considered 6000 metres decisive range and that fire beyond 10000 metres was ineffective.
On 'Storing guns to deal with later cruisers' question, you don't seem to take into account that a ship could be designed (once the decision is made to keep the guns for future use) while they are waiting to use it. After all during the interwar period the RN had time to work up designs for various proposed battleships. They could have taken the time to design a super cruiser using the guns already in storage. While they could reuse the original twin gun mounts in a 6 gun layout there is nothing stopping them from designing an 8 or 9 gun ship during the design process. The main problem, as I see it, is that once a design is settled on the AA, machinery, and underwater protection would have to be updated due to technical advances. Presumably the advances in machinery would make up for the extra weight of AA and reduced internal volume needed by better underwater protection. As, the details of the possible future ships had not been decided on at the time of storing the guns in question, it would probably be a good idea to store as much armor that would otherwise be scraped since armor is likely another long lead item. Given the pace of technological advancement anything else would probably be obsolete by the time the ships were built.
I believe that a ship’s Master had a legal responsibility for the safety of the ship in terms of seamanship. Ergo, if the ship was lost due to errors in navigation or storm preparation or anything similar such as masts carried away due to weather leading to the loss of the ship, then they’d also be court martialed. This includes the usual explanation that ‘to be court martialed’ is not the same as to be found guilty. There are numerous situations for which a court martial is automatic, but that is to enable the person(s) responsible (if any) to be identified.
I should note that your account of the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits, more of a campaign really, is incomplete and deserves a greater treatment. The Choshu for example were certainly not necessarily on the Emperors side but manoeuvring for position as the Schoganate broke down. I have inspected the key sites and fortifications as they were nominated as part of a proposed World heritage listing. The Straits are a strategic waterway. the battle would have been hard to fight under sail as there are strong currents and limited room to manoeuvre. The advantage of steam was that the warships could stay in place and bombard. The European forces landed marines to take out the forts.
So Mr Allen was basically like the British Army's Warrent Officer. Each Company/Battery etc has a WO2 who will be the most senior NCO there, he or she is reported to by the Staff Sgts, the Sgts and would usually be the man who did the day to day running of things. And each Regiment has a WO1 aka The Regimental Sargent Major. IE the right hand of God/power behind the throne. A WO2 can for example advise and in private talk with say a Company Commander (a Major) about things, and push back against ideas they may have if they feel they have to.
He was literally a Warrant Officer. Not basically like one but one in actual fact. He did not hold a commission but instead had a Warrant signed by some of the Lords of the Admiralty. I think the idea was adopted by the Army well after the Navy had begun the practice. The Warrants, at least the original warrants (Master, gunner, carpenter, cook, clerk, chaplain and schoolmaster) were assigned to the SHIP, and not the crew. As a result they stayed with the ship even if she went into Ordinary.
I had a weird situation looking at the channel shortly after your Weapon class upload, most of your videos were invisible, given what you said in the channel admin section, wouldn't surprise me if it's youtube screwing with you
Well on the stockpiling of naval rifles front don't know of anyone stockpiling 12s for cruiser killers, but the British held on to like all the 13.5s from scrapped ships and ended up putting them in coastal batteries in the buildup to war. Presumably if they had more time and money for ship building they could have also used them to spam out modern fast hulls with Orion/original KGV/iron duke turrets in scaled down vanguards The US also had an assload of Lexington/1920s South Dakota 16"/50s that could presumably have been used to make a bunch of Iowas/Montanas if a WWI style dreadnought race broke out with Britain and/or Japan and the Beaord didn't mess things up.
Three BL 13.5 inch /45 Mark V guns, named Gladiator, Piece Maker and Scene Shifter, were mounted on railway chassis during World War II for use as railway guns. They re-used a railway mounting which had carried a BL 14 inch Railway Gun in the First World War. After the gins wore out, they were retained without ordnance. In 1940 they given stored 13.5 inch Mk V guns and were issued to the Royal Marine Siege Regiment at Dover in Kent to bombard German batteries and shipping in the Calais area. The fourth 14 inch mounting, Boche Buster, had been given an 18 inch howitzer (NOT the 18 inch naval gun) after her 14 inch wore out and was also deployed to the Dover area. th-cam.com/video/tbA9fyo2DoY/w-d-xo.html and th-cam.com/video/egW5eHfW4WI/w-d-xo.html
About ships falsely reported as sunk, I believe the Essex-class Lexington was falsely reported as sunk quite a number of times apparently, though i cant find the number right now. Might be worth checking on?
I think the “Blue Ghost” (Lexington’s nickname). Was claimed to have been sunk 6 times. Weirdly enough a number of newspapers also claimed , the Grey Ghost (Enterprise) sank that many times as well.
Other Scharnhorst didn't have to worry about the constant stream of traffic in the channel or approaching it at the time. One radio call from a merchantman reporting his position...
Worth noting, with regards to the RM's plans for countering enemy invasions, that by mid-1943 it was recongized the air situation was so poor for the Axis that an intervention in defense of Sicily would be untenable, though the fleet was still intended to be deployed if the Allies attempted to invade Sardinia or Corsica. It can also be noted that if the enemy were to try and land on the Tyrrhenian coast of Sicily, then dependent on the strength of the allied forces, it may be possible for the main fleet to intervene. Otherwise, the defense of Sicily was to be left to submarines and MAS. Interestingly enough, the Allies decided against any landings on the northern coast of Sicily precisely to avoid the potential for intervention by the Italian fleet, though King George V and Howe were positioned to the north-west of the island just in case (the rest of the British capital ships were off the south-east coast). As it happens, though, at the time Husky started only one Littorio - Littorio herself in fact - was actually ready for action. Roma was under repair and Vittorio Veneto still working up after being repaired from bomb damage suffered during a large USAAF raid on La Spezia on 5 June 1943. With only one of the three battleships available for such an operation, any mission to attack Allied landing efforts were firmly rejected when the scale of the landing force was reported.
Great stuff as always. When the platform plays stupid games it gets stupid prizes. The only channels that I have been auto unsubscribed from are C&Rsenal and Brandon Herrera.
I read somewhere many years ago that Russian submarines suffered from open bilges. The crews found them extremely convenient to urinate in them. So you take the normal submarine funk of the day in the air and add to that the ambience of a public restroom.
@1:00:48 A 13.5” turret weighs about three times as much as Town class 8”. Even a one for two swap would seemingly require a lot of re-engineering. On the other had it is surprising the guns weren’t saved. I wonder if the ships could have been moved to say Gibraltar, Singapore or Scapa and permanently grounded as defensive fortifications?
No, the treaty required their being broken up - and apart from a few outliers like the Courageous class, they agreed not to retain the turrets and guns.
could removed an emplaced on land. Also there is no limitation as to where to ships be scrapped etc. I’ll look for cases where US, Japan or Great Britain repurposed guns from the warships scrapped under the treaty. There may be some separate agreement among the parties as to what happened to the guns. The 16” guns intended for Lexington and Saratoga were stored for use in future warships but actually used as coast defense artillery after the barbettes are too small fiasco.
@@richardschaffer5588 I looked at The Treaty, and "disposal" of ships is defined, and the method of effecting it prescribed, in Chapter II, Part 2 -"RULES FOR SCRAPPING VESSELS OF WAR", Clause III, subclause (b)(1) - you are correct, it is landed, not necessarily destroyed. "Disposal" or "scrapping" only refers to the ship as a whole, not all the fixtures and fittings, and not even the armour plates. So there was nothing in the treaty to stop guns being stored as spare parts or put to a use other than arming a combat vessel. The Courageous class are probably a unique case - the turrets from those (which were completed as cruisers) were stored and eventually used on the HMS Vanguard; they were however the same model 15" as used in the QE, "R" class and the battle cruisers, so it may be the barrels, particularly, had already been used as replacements, and the Vanguard received newly manufactured weapons.
1:00:23 didn't they also serve together previously or for a long time? Therefore giving him maybe a little bit more freedom to express his opinion in private.
I say to you again Sir: you are quite brilliant. I just listened to your answer on the role of the ship's Master. Would you consider doing a more in depth post both elaborating on your answer plus the roles of the other higher non-commissioned "officers" during the Age of Sail? It seems to me this might warrant an in depth presentation by you.
How about a ten minute infomercial to sell, the worlds brightest military spec. flashlight? Or a solar powered generator that fits in a vest pocket? or a knife that never needs resharpening, how about 80 year shelf life survival food? So informative, so captivating.
HMS Warspite. One of the luckiest damn ships to have served in *anyone's* navy, bar none. Lived through damage in both world wars that could have sunk many vessels, and even grounded herself in an attempt to avoid the breakers (which I firmly believe is a sign of sentience, even a soul). RN should have made her a museum alongside HMS Victory, which proves that even the British can be immensely stupid with their history.
wrt von Spee's options, a route around Africa would afford the opportunity to pick up Königsberg in Tanganyika en route. Most of Africa being colonies of various European powers means that most of the places they could put in for coal would either be hostile, or neutral, but full of allied spies that would report their arrival. Scharnhorst had a range of 4800nm and Königsberg's range was 5750nm. As soon as the war started, British and French troops invaded Kamerun, taking Douala on September 27, 1914. South African forces landed at Lüderitz in Southwest Africa in the fall of 14 and Swakopmund on Feb 11, 1915. Dar Es Salaam to Swakopmund is 3385nm, so von Spee could make it, if he started early, and if plenty of coal was available. Spain was neutral, and the distance from Swakopmund to Dakhla in the Spanish Sahara is 4249nm. From Dakhla to Wilhelmshaven is 2552nm, if going by the channel. So the trip would be feasible, provided von Spee started early enough to reach Swakopmund before the South Africans occupied the town, and if there was plenty of coal available.
I believe Drach discussed this option in an earlier video - as I recall the problem with it was the risk of encountering the battlecruiser HMAS Australia and possibly Japanese ships.
@@CharlesStearman Emden was detached from von Spee's squadron, penetrated the Indian ocean and raided commerce in the eastern Indian Ocean for several months before being caught and defeated by HMAS Sydney. If Emden had been trying to transit the Indian Ocean in an attempt to get home, Sydney would never have caught up with her.
@@benwilson6145 I looked at my 1928 USN port guide to get an idea of the coal supplies typically on hand in those African ports. Dar Es Salaam typically had no more than 500 tons on hand. The other ports on the hypothetical route were so small they were not listed at all. Suspect that the lack of fuel that would be accessible by the Germans makes that route a no-go. Going around South America was a better option. Von Spee had refueled in Valparaiso, and German diplomats were arranging fuel supplies elsewhere along the South American coast. He could have made it back to Europe, if he had stayed away from the Falklands, and British spies did not pick up on fuel supplies being staged for the squadron, so the RN could lay a trap. Prinz Eitel Friedrich, a merchant cruiser, was detached from von Spee's squadron and raided independently in the Pacific and South Atlantic. She made it as far as Newport News, Virginia, where she put in for fuel and repairs, and was quickly blocked in by British and French warships.
@@stevevalley7835 The reason for going to Port Stanley was a hope to capture coal. The Far East was now closed to Germany with its possession, Tsingtao, Guam, New Guinea, Narau now lost. I'm not sure how the Dutch East Indies would do but I suspect that was not an option.
The father of the US nuclear Navy, Admiral Rickover, was brilliant in that he insisted new submarine and surface nuclear plants be prototyped on land in an building replicating the engineering spaces. This prototype was constructed a few months ahead of the actual ship. In this way problems could be worked out ahead of time. The Germans may have benefited if they had prototyped the Hipper engineering plant.
I would say that closest analogue to the sailing master on a modern warship would be the Command Master Chief or equivalent the Chief of the Boat on a Submarine. They will have the most experience at sea than any of the officers. And in honor of the Sans-Culottes: th-cam.com/video/cPr5gaVMkZc/w-d-xo.html
I wonder why Sturdee didn't detach Caernarvon to rescue Scharnhorst's survivors, bearing in mind his later attitude to Stoddart's (perceived) slowness in deploying her boats to rescue survivors of Gneisenau.
The Master was the senior warrant officer and was a member of the wardroom. The Bosun, Gunner and Carpenter, although also warrant officers, were junior to him and were members of the gunroom.
![ลองสั่งของจากแอพ temu ถูกจริงหรอ?? [โกงไหมครับ ep.88 ] | DOM](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RTcZSQTiDZw/mqdefault.jpg)
Pinned post for Q&A :)
How different would the history of the East Asia Squadron have been if, instead of Scharhorst and Gneisenau, Von Spee had two battlecruisers such as Moltke and Goeben?
What was the food like on WW2 battleships?
Hi Drach how many light bulbs radio valves and glass covers did a u boat carry and how were they packed so the didn't all break when they were depth charged and were any patrols aborted because of this....
How many different ships with the same name were lost during WW1, and in WW2? I served on U.S.S. Meredith, DD890, last of the Gearings, and I know that two previous destroyers named "Meredith" were lost in WW2. Had that happened before?
It’s January 1941 and Admiral Dönitz has received creditable intelligence that allowed the Kriegsmarine and German intelligence services to confirm that the BdU Enigma codes have positively compromised by the Allies. With Dönitz’ 1941 rank (I think the following is correct) Konteradmiral and Supreme Commander of the Kriegsmarine U-Boats, (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU), would he have had the rank (authority) to stop/modify or completely cease using Enigma for a more secure alternative? On the face of it, it seems to me such an action by Dönitz would have been so crosscutting and has such obvious further potential complications that only full cooperation with the OKW, intelligence services, et al, would be necessary for new code development/use. Essentially, what could Admiral Dönitz do, short of recalling all his boats to their home ports and perhaps the use of some kind of temporary code system? It would no doubt have been an operational, security and intelligence nightmare, particularly when the other services entered the fray, not to mention everyone’s favorite, politicians.
Feel like this Drydock has more of Drach's dry old humour and I like it
TH-cam: We shall adjust analytics to stop historical youtubers from getting views
Drach Fans: *draw cutlasses and swords*
After grabbing eye patches. Gotta look the part
I will still watch Drach, even with Raid Shadow Legends sponsorship.
Dark horse but actually pretty likely in terms of claimed capital ship kills that never happened: USS Pennsylvania. As the former Flagship US Fleet, the Japanese claimed her sunk upwards of 50 times during the war. Her name came up pretty much every time they claimed a battleship, regardless of whether any battleships were present.
Re: the propulsion system for the Prince Eugen, Montgomery ("Scotty") Scott of Star Fleet and the Starship Enterprise would opine: "The fancier the plumbing, the easier it is to clog up the works."
Keith Yates wrote a book about Graf Spee's squadron called "Graf Spee's Raiders: Challenge to the Royal Navy." He speculated Graf Spee's forces were doomed. Yates suggests that the cruisers could have split up and operated as individual raiders. Emden raised a LOT of hell all by herself. Imagine if all his cruisers split up and did what they could before being sunk or interned. With the destruction of his squadron at the Falklands, the raider problem was mostly over (except for Konigsberg, trapped in a river in Africa and Dresden, which was later sunk in Chilean waters).
Slight problem, coal, each ship would need its own collier.
Are the Weird Sisters cruisers?? If so HMS Furious with its 18 inch guns must get a mention. After all she was assigned to the the 1st Cruiser Squadron!
The floating plot shield device is the perfect name for warspite haha
Ideal for the USS Voyager as well 🤣🤣🤣
IJN Yukikaze.
Enterprise: Am I a joke to you?
@@bkjeong4302 Enterprise stalks her prey like an effective Freddy Kruger. Everytime you think she's done, she appears again...
Master & Commander: I wish they would have explained why the Anchor was just "sitting there" underwater. I've had to explain that this is called "Holding the anchor underfoot", so that the anchor finds those "uncharted reefs and shoals before the HMS Surprise's hull does!
The problem with any plans Graf Spee might have made is that it would have been the "smart" move to inform the german high command about it in advance, especially if he is trying to return via the North Sea because he needs to be escorted through the minefields he has no charts of. And while the radios of his ships may have lacked the range, the colonies he would have had to stop by surely would have had one with enough range to reach Germany. Which of course means that thanks to room 40 the Admiralty would also have known in advance where to send the battlecruisers.
If Rommel were a naval officer he would have found a way to get creative with his announced plans or given orders while maintaining radio silence...
@@VersusARCH Only if he suspected that his codes had been broken. AFAIK he never did. And he did consult with the high command on important decisions.
@@VersusARCH Given Rommel once managed to lose the whole of Libya whilst broken down in his solo command vehicle which he had charged deep behind enemy lines because he thought he was winning, one can only imagine what a mess he might have got himself into with a naval raiding squadron.... The less leeway Rommel had the more effective he was.
Not saying Graf Spee had much chance, but I would note that in 1914, no one communications system could move a message more than some hundreds of miles without relays of some kind, often using a different form of communication, including couriers! Thing is that most telecommunications networks in 1914 were owned by or passed through British systems at one or more points. Thus, any message Graf Spee tried to send would likely pass over some British telecom desk at some point where it might be recognized. Even if Graf Spee himself sent no messages, neutrals messaging other neutrals that mentioned the existence of the German fleet would often pass over British telecoms desks at some point.
@@genericpersonx333 The german Nauen Transmitter Station had a range of 9000km (5600mi), enough to reach the colony of Togoland (today Ghana). But since its counterpart in Kamina was lost in August 1914 there was indeed no way a message could be directly transmitted from the german colonies to germany at the time Graf Spee would have been there.
Edit: the station at Windhoek in Namibia was capable of making sporadic contact with Nauen, so it would have been possible to transmit a message.
50:43 After how many times Enterprise had been reported 'clearly about to sink,' at this point in the war I'd expect an IJN aviator to report something more along the lines of "The USN has again increased Enterprise's anti-aircraft firepower - this time, she fired a whole *aircraft elevator* at us!"
"Floating Plot Shield Device" haha brilliant. Don't be mean to the Grand Old Lady, Warspite simply decided she didn't feel like sinking, so just didn't sink. Ever. It's not Warspite's fault no-one else could figure it out... Although I'm pretty sure USS Enterprise reached the same conclusion; sinking sounds unpleasant, so we just don't, combat damage be damned.
One thing missed about Napoleon's navy was Napoleon himself. He didn't understand the navy and sea navigation in the least and didn't care to learn. He saw it as a sea borne army that moved the same as an army and fumed when it didn't act as such.
The best example of this is the Trafalgar campaign where, to him, the navy only had to be there to protect the army crossing over to England for a day. As such, he ordered them like an army to avoid combat and arrive in the Channel on a timetable where he expected to load up quickly, cross and invade just like he'd order an army to break up and meet up again at a certain place on a certain date. That ships relied on wind, and that wind was beyond their control to go anywhere unless it cooperated, he didn't care about. As such, when the fleet was continually delayed by winds not going where the French needed them to he was furious and refused to listen to the reasons why - the navy should just do as they're told and "march" to the damn Channel so he could invade on X date! It's not like they had mountains and mud restricting their travel. They had the entire open ocean to move on!
That is why he'd had enough of relying on such a seemingly unreliable thing as a navy, canned the invasion, ordered the fleet back to the Med where it might do SOMETHING when it got caught at Trafalgar and then didn't give much of a damn when it was destroyed. It didn't behave like an army and did what he wanted (or understood), so who cares if it was wiped out?
Napoleon first rose to prominence commanding the artillery which forced Lord Hood to abandon his occupation of Toulon early in the conflict. He also used naval power to seize Malta on his way to invading Egypt. Given better and more aggressive commanders in the French Navy his invasion of England was sound strategy. It wasn’t a lack of understanding so much as poor execution on the part of the French Navy and superior execution of the RN which was the key to Englands survival
@@tomdolan9761 Aggressive commanders do not dictate where the winds blow. His entire strategy revolved around dancing around and avoiding combat with the RN in an overly complex series of baits and maneuvers that ships could not do.
What happened to Ganteaume's contingent illustrates this well. Brest is a wonderful harbour from a geographic perspective, but the winds it experiences are horrible (The less said about how isolated it was from the rest of French and dependent on blockaded coastal shipping and badly made roads the better). The way they blow makes it easy to get in but very hard to get out for most of the year and they blow into Brest far more often than they do out of it. When it came to his breakout to join with the the rest of the fleet the winds refused to cooperate and he remained bottled up there (It' worth noting that those very same winds also make English harbours excellent as the directions from which they blow, combined with their geographic position, allow them wide access to get in and out of port more often when they want to).
Napoleon's strategy required ships to sail on and arrive at specific dates that they couldn't do. Having someone aggressive in command might have pissed him off in other ways by attacking when they should have been working towards the invasion plan. That was something that could work on the other side of the Atlantic supporting the US as it did in the War of Independence, but not in the RN's backyard given it's innumerable advantages that replacing Villeneuve would have not fixed.
@@nektulosnewbie funnily enough... being a "good" harbor... means shelter from heavy winds, and often... well.. yeah....
@@marhawkman303 a harbour that lets you in but doesn't let you out isn't anywhere good as a harbour that allows for both easily. France's problem was that their Atlantic coast was bad for harbours and they didn't have many to choose from.
@@nektulosnewbie hmm I suppose some of them would be far better for non-sailign ships?
Small correction: The V in "von" ("of") in german noble titles is always pronounced like an F. So it's actually "Admiral fon Spee".
The V has different pronounciations in German (either the english V, identical to the german W, or the english F).
PS: The "au" in "Breslau" is pronounced like the "ow" in "owl" or "Ow, that hurt!"
I don't want to be rude, I'm just honest. 😅 Constructive criticism is the second most popular activity in Germany, right after complaining.
Same goes for USS Bataan. English speakers often join the two a's as a single long sound. Native speakers would read it as how it's spelled (bata.an)
"Actually"...
1:11:00 This is also why I felt compelled to be a Patreon supporter for you (fun fact, I created a Patreon account specifically to support you). Because tech company algorithms suck, and creators having to /chase/ the algorithm, or try to interpret it and manipulate it (clickbait titles anyone?) is soul-deadening and not the sort of lifestyle we should feel compelled or forced into. You, and creators in a broader sense, shouldn't have your livelihoods in jeopardy because of a reprogrammed or glitchy algorithm.
You provide incredibly well-researched material, break it down and make it both understandable and incredibly interesting for laypeople like myself, present it with wit and without condensation, and with genuine affection and respect for the material and people's whose lives are covered by it. This is the sort of genuine intellectual pursuit and personal enrichment that futurism had always promised us. And I like to think that supporting via Patreon helps safeguard such endeavors or at least mitigate the worst parts of having to chase the algorithm.
Was the indifferent reputation of the the Royal Navy's 16" Mark I guns mounted on the HMS Nelson and HMS Rodney all that unfair or undeserved? A number of very reliable sources I've seen suggest these guns had issues that went beyond their troublesome mounts, and the guns earned their reputation.
The following paragraph from the page on the website Naval Weapons website offers a good summary of these other major problems the 16" Mark I gun:
"From inadequate firing trials, a mistaken theory was promulgated by the Director of Naval Ordnance (DNO) that held that a high-velocity, low-weight projectile would have superior armor penetration characteristics at large oblique angles of impact, a conclusion which was the opposite of previous findings. This theory was not substantiated by later trials, but these took place too late to affect the decision to use a lightweight APC projectile for new designs. As a result, these guns proved to be only marginally better in terms of armor penetration than the previous 15"/42 (38.1 cm) Mark I and much less satisfactory than those older guns in terms of accuracy and barrel life."
Various sources indicate the inaccuracy was in large part due to the guns' rifling. The guns were made with two different riflings: Mark I and Mark II. The Royal Naval, apparently in a move to save money and time, fitted ships with both the two types of rifles. This resulted in problems with dispersion.
The two different rifling patterns arose in an attempt to improve the short barrel life. Sources indicate this solution was not particularly successful.
Further, the performance of RN 16" Mk I was not good compared to its foreign peers, such as USN 16" 45 Mk 1 with WWI era Mk 3 shell. The comparison is even worse with WW II era US Mk 5 shell. Much of this of data on gun performance also can be found online at the Naval Weapons website, as well as in various books such as "Naval Weapons of World War Two" by John Campbell.
BTW, I'd post a link to the Naval Weapons website but TH-cam seems to hide posts that have links.
The craziest part was that Rodney even ended up with a mix of guns with Mk I and Mk II rifling *within the same turret.*
I'd say that the degree to which they are looked down upon is rather unfair. At the end of the day, they acquitted themselves well enough during engagements like the sinking of the Bismarck.
A lot of this needs to be put in proper context. Being "marginally better in terms of penetration" and "much less satisfactory ... on terms of accuracy and barrel life" than the 15"/42 is comparing it against one of the best weapons of its time and arguably throughout the entire era of "post-dreadnought" battleships. Having worse accuracy and rated barrel life than a 15"/42 is a trait shared with almost every other battleship gun up to and including the Iowa's 16" Mk7 (excluding post-war upgrades of course). And only having marginally better penetration than the 15"/42 still puts it at similar penetration characteristics to the Colorado's 16"/45 using Mk3 shells. Since you're looking at navweaps as well, you may have missed that the Nelson's guns quite significantly outperform the Colorado's at 20k yards. Of course the penetration was significantly better with the Mk5 shells from the reconstructed guns at any range, but that's a much later and fairly deep upgrade.
The 16"/45s for the Nelsons were very problematic weapons with very problematic mounts, but a lot of the disappointment stems from them having to compare against the breakaway success of the 15"/42 and in practice they more than proved themselves in peer combat against Bismarck. Calling it an "indifferent reputation" actually fits pretty well. They're not terribly bad, just a major 'meh' compared to their predecessor. Very disappointing in that they no longer have something with clearly superior characteristics to their peers, like they did with the 15"/42, now they just have something that's roughly comparable but slightly worse.
@@Tepid24 Proper contex would include the following.
1. The RN 16"/45 Mk.1 gun was less accurate than the RN 15"/42 and most other comparable contemporary naval guns.
2. The RN 16"/45 Mk.1 gun had a significantly shorter barrel life than the RN 15"/42 or most other comparable contemporary naval guns. Even with improvements, the RN 16"/45 Mk2 had a barrel of 180 rounds compared to the 200-250 rounds of the US Mark 11 14"/40, 335 round of the RN 15"/42, or the 350 rounds for the USN 16"/45 Mk 1 used on the Colorados .
3. The RN 16"/45 Mk.1 gun penetration was worse than most of its peers, not just similar to the RN 15"/42, according the Naval Website table and other sources.
Guns that had better penetration according to Naval Weapons website tables include:
-USN 16"/45 Mk 3 (introduced on the USS Colorados)
-USN 16 Mk 5 (WW II update of the Colorados)
-USN's 16"/45 used on the
-USN 14"/50 Mark 11 (used on the Standards)
-USN 12" Mark 12"/50 (used on the Alaskas)
-KM 38 cm (14.96") SK C/34 (used on the Bismarcks)
-MN 15" Mods. 1935/1936 380 mm (used on Richelieus)
-MN 330 mm Mod. 1931 (used on the Dunquerkes)
It does appear to be better than the IJN 45 caliber 3rd Year Type 40 cm Guns found on the Nagatos but data is sketchy.
4. The guns on the Rodney did perform adequately in helping to sink the crippled, unmanueverable KM Bismarck. At the very close ranges involved in this battle, the guns were able to overcome their inherent inaccuracy and hit the Bismarck. At landing, where they were shooting with minimal counter-battery fire and aerial spotting at fixed coordinates, the guns also performed adequately.
Given all this context, along with the other issues in the NelRod (e.g., the marked blast damage from firing the main guns), the checkered reputation of the RN 16"/45 as a gun appears to be very fairly earned, @DuraLexSedLex.
@@notatruescotch7148 Did you like only read the first two or three sentences before starting to write this? Whatever, might as well stay here for the long haul then:
1. Less accurate, yeah. The point is that it wasn't inaccurate enough to actually prevent it from performing well. It's a physical reality that the guns had suboptimal accuracy, but unlike say, the French 380mm or Italian 381mm guns, this was not enough of a problem to have an adverse effect on them in practice. Rodney started hitting Bismarck at well above ~15k yards judging from the available chart and that's being generous. That's about the same range as Bismarck hit Hood, with Hood not being nearly as erratic of a target.
At the danger of me having to repeat myself, the British 16"/45 was not a very good gun, but it was adequate.
2. Feel free to read those footnotes through to the end:
>
"British Battleships of World War Two" credits these guns as being originally designed with a muzzle velocity of 2,700 fps (823 mps) and a maximum range of 41,983 yards (38,389 m). The very first test firings of these guns found that they had a serious wear problem, with a barrel life of only 180 rounds. It was also found that there was a considerable loss of accuracy during continuous firing, as there was a tendency for the projectiles to strip the rifling out of the guns ". . . due to the hammering action of the short bodied, long headed projectile on its way down the bore . . ." As a result, the rifling in the liners was changed (known as Mark II rifling) for newer guns, the powder charge and chamber size were reduced to the figures shown in the tables above and the diameter of the projectile driving band was increased. Even with these changes, the barrel life and accuracy still compared poorly with the previous 15"/42 (38.1 cm) Mark I.
>
After those "very first test firings" and the above modifications had been implemented they still had a barrel life worse than the 15"/42 at 200-250 rounds. That is exactly as good as all of the 14" standards. The 14" standards aren't exactly infamous for having short barrel lives. At the danger of me having to repeat myself, the British 16"/45 was not a very good gun, but it was adequate.
3. Did you... read my comment? Or for that matter, did you even read the navweaps tables? Subtly use the word "spaghetti" in your reply if you read this. Anyway.
The astute observer may drect their eyes at the 20 000 yard range for the penetration tables publically available over at navweaps for both the Nelson's 16"/45 and the Colorados using their 16"/45 Mk3 AP shells. You will notice that the Nelsons outperform them at that range. As you did see yourself, the Colorados then have an edge at the 15k yard segment. Ah jeez, with the practical impossibility of ever accurately quantifying the penetration ability of something like an AP projectile and these official sources giving one the edge over the other at one range and the opposite at another, fairly close range, with those advantages amounting to no more than 20mm here and there, it's almost like they have practically identical performance and the only differences are going to be dependent on uncontrollable factors and random happenstance.
The Mk 5 shells from the Mk 5/8 guns were indeed much better at any range, but you should note that those were a completely new shell design fired from modified and reconstructed guns. Of course those are better, they are also way outside of the frame of reference and irrelevant for a comparison. If you went through the trouble of rebuilding the guns and making new modernized shells for them, the British 16"/45s would also have a massive boost in performance, maybe even more so due to the questionably light design of the original 16" AP shells.
In the same vein, going on to list some of the most high performance weapons of the late 30ies and early 40ies doesn't exactly prove anything. The closest thing you've got is the Dunkerque's 330mm guns and even those are 9 years younger in design. And again, even if we choose to include these completely separate gun and shell developments that are between 9 and 18 years younger than the Nelsons, all of them dwarf the original Colorado's performance just as much. In case you've forgotten, on paper the Colorados have less penetration than the Nelsons with their pre-WW2 era shells at 20k yards.
At the very end you have to catch yourself lestyou actually compare them to something that is contemporary.
So yeah, just like the Colorados and Nagatos, their penetration wasn't at the same level as the much later weapon developments of the mid-late 30ies. This rendered them subpar, but adequate in their WW2 performance. At the danger of me having to repeat myself, the British 16"/45 was not a very good gun, but it was adequate.
4. The first hits and importantly the fatal ones that knocked out Bismarck's fire control, bridge and forward firepower were scored at well outside close range.
But yeah, other than these errors, I agree with your ultimate judgement. They were adequate weapons in the truest sense of the word. They did their job and did about as well as you could expect an early 20ies design to do in the 1940ies. They are disastrously disappointing next to the 15"/42 that did better than them despite being even older, but they are obviously miles better than the weapons which had critical flaws stopping them from being practically useful. Shell design, mounting quality and the gun barrels themselves came together to produce a bad, but serviceable package. Which is not something you could say about things like the Italian and French 15" guns ironically enough.
Anyway, this entire discussion is basically just nitpicking about the exact degree to which those guns deserve a checkered reputation, so I hope you'll excuse me if I come off as stand-offish at parts.
Hey Drach... In the picture of Enterprise being hit is that elongated black smudge at approximately 5 degrees off the vertical and 2/3 up the frame the fwd elevator departing the ship?
sure looks like it to me man
I would just like to say your pronounciation of Atago is far better than most attempts I have heard. The As should be a bit longer, but you avoid the extremely long middle A that so many people say, turning it into something similar to the standard prnounciation of New Zealand's Otago. In Atago the two As should be of similar length. Carry on!
Quick question, there is a scene in greyhound where a torpedo strikes the destroyer at a parallel nearly angle, would it really ricochet?
"Mr Allen in Master and Commander?" very good for those who know little about how the Royal Navy was organised in those days. Uniformed RN military personnel as opposed to 'civilians in uniform at sea' (sort of).
00:56:46 - Mr. Allen and his ilk (Boatswain, Carpenter, Gunner, Purser, Surgeon, Chaplain) are more properly referred to as Warrant Officers. Their authority derived from warrants issued by the Admiralty, instead of commissioned officers who received orders in the name of the sovereign and "held the King's commission".
@@rackstraw There is a whole history you seem to be not aware of beyond 'warrants'.
@@clangerbasher Please enlighten us.
@@rackstraw The Surgeon was not a Warrant Officer. The Warrants were the Master, Carpenter, Cook, Clerk and Gunner to start with, with the Schoolmaster and Chaplain being added somewhat later.
The major difference between the Warrants and the NCO's such as the Bosun, Sailmaker, Botswain and the like were that the Warrants were assigned to the ship *permanently*. When the crew was paid off and put into Ordinary the Warrants stayed with her, even when she was in Ordinary. The Other NCO's did not, they were paid off with the rest of the crew.
But yes, they did have a warrant issued by the Lords of the Admiralty, so you could argue they were not exactly NCO's but were not Officers either as they did not have the Kings or Queens Commission.
@@clangerbasher As the comment was specifically about the Warrant Officers I do not see how that has any relevance, other than that you appear to want to make an inane comment regarding someone else's knowledge based upon a short three line sentence commenting on a very small and niche subject within the greater whole.
Did it make you feel important? I generally find that assumptions based on zero data tend to be wrong, so mr expert... please elucidate upon your comment? Or was it simply made to make you feel superior?
The Richter Scale registered the collective groan of engineers worldwide at the phrase "sea temperature has halved". Unless you're measuring in Kelvin or one of the other absolute temperature (thermal energy quantity) scales, the stated text is nonsense.
00:27:42 - What could you tell about HMS Scourge vs the Sans Cullote??
"Sans Cullote"?
"Without Pants"?
How could you not have a bit of fun with that name?
it was the nickname for the Paris Mob, a very revolutionary name in the same way as the Droits d'le Homme
The Ships Master was not just an NCO, he was one of the Warrant Officers aboard the ship. The difference between the Warrant Officers were that they were assigned to the ship permanently, even when the ship was in Ordinary the Warrant Officers would remain with her. Generally they were only replaced as they either retired or died.
To quote a well known NavalHistory site that ends with net: Warrant Officers have always been specialists carried on board ships for specific responsibilities requiring a very high level of experience and detailed knowledge. These attributes were not expected of the "fighting" officers who were primarily concerned with the tactics necessary to make contact with the enemy and then to "fight" the ship. To do this successfully it was essential for warships to carry others who would ensure that the ship was always in a high state of readiness. It had to be well maintained and its guns always ready for use, with ample charges and projectiles. More importantly it had to be in the right place at the right time. These specialists were attached to the ship throughout its life, whether in commission, or "in ordinary" ("laid up"). They did not hold a King's, or Queen's Commission, but had a Warrant signed by members of the Board of Admiralty.
These Warrant Officers were the Master, Gunner, Carpenter, Cook (yes, really) and Clerk. Later the Chaplain and Schoolmaster were added to the list of Warrant Officers. The Schoolmaster was there to teach the Midshipmen and ships boys (though primarily the midshipmen).
The Ships Master was not just in charge of day to day running of the ship he was also the ships expert in ship handling and Navigation. As they spent their careers with that particular vessel they tended to know their ship inside and out. As you said Drach, they were also extremely experience Mariners, often having been at sea for decades by the time they were promoted to Master. Remember in those days it was not unusual for boys to go to sea at 9 or 10. So a man with two decades of sea experience behind him may not even be in his thirties....
EDIT Last one got deleted by YT because it did not like the link to a certain Navalhistory site ending in net.
A US navy ship was based in the UK. An order was issued that the local chaplain should not be stopped from boarding at any time and that the sentry should remember that this local chaplain outranked him.
Regarding 56:46, I suppose that the age of sail Sailing Master is roughly the equivalent of the combined expertise of a modern Chief Petty Officer and Head of Navigation...
Either of whom a modern captain is intensely foolish or reckless to ignore the advice of.
And hell, as for officers listening to enlisted, I got out of the USMC as a Corporal, was avionics on Huey’s and Cobra’s…officers listened to me all the time, when it came to aircraft, and if they could fly or not, at least that particular bird.
one of the tricks to being a good leader... is learning what those under you can do. If you're not a mechanic you don't tell a mechanic how to do his job... and you listen if he tells you he needs stuff to get the requested work done.
@@marhawkman303 yeah, some would try that though, and thought they knew better than we did. And pretty rarely for us, there was one that was just a total ass. So then they got put on the no fly program, and finally about when they were about to start quals…they’d stop being an ass, and a higher up would politely tell us to stop, haha. It was the first LT’s that’d acted that way, if someone was. My first CO at the unit was the man. He told my shop I’m the only one allowed to work on his bird from AVI, ahaha. That was in Iraq.
The best option was to close the falklands at maximum speed.. ram the largest british ships... all guns blazing...
Ah, the Brother Munro tactic...
The entrance to Stanley Harbour is slightly less than twice the length of a Scharnhorst-class cruiser. Of which Spee conveniently enough had two. His best option was to have Schanrhorst and Gneisenau make their best speed to the harbor entrance and each of them runs itself aground on one of the peninsulas, with their sterns close enough together than nothing bigger than a rowboat will fit between them.
Then fire away for as long they're able to until he's destroyed. At which point instead of a pair of intact cruisers blocking the the harbor it's a pair of wrecked cruisers...which are equally difficult to remove. Sturdee's battlecruisers would've been bottled up until the wrecks could be cleared, giving Spee's light cruisers a few months head start for either trying to run the North Sea blockade or do commerce raiding until they're caught. And deprives the Royal Navy of 2 out of their (at the time) 10 battlecruisers for however many months it takes to clear the wrecks.
This also would've probably rendered Inflexible not yet available for bombarding Gallipoli in March 1915, meaning some other capital ship would've had to go in her place.
Whenever I think of the Hippers I always think of wet BMWs.
What about the "Large Light Cruiser" - HMS Furious?? She mounted an 18 incher and was a "cruiser" according to Mr. Fischer....
Covered in petrol juggling flaming balls covered in ants....and I thought it was because the tools the yanks had were standard, not metric.
Temperatures cannot halve. The numbers on our arbitrary scales can halve, double or cube but temperature itself does not work like that.
Sure it can. A temperature of 200° Rankine is exactly half of 400° Rankine.
There are absolute temperature scales (as demonstrated above), the most useful of which is Kelvin.
Sure, starting at usual terrestrial ambient temperatures, halving the temperature gets you to very, very cold temperatures.
So, in this case saying that the temperature has halved is wrong. Although if we are using the most common "normal" temperature scale, the 0 is pretty much the temperature where water will freeze (depending on purity and pressure), so in that sense you have a bit going on for "temperature halving" when it comes to water. But sure, it is not correct.
Before transfer to Rosyth the ships based in Invergordon had ample time for training... they would not live fire.. but would go out in pairs and work their systems against each other.. I think beatty just liked the sound of guns firing
Though without the ability to live fire could they train on spotting and shot correction? That's kind of the make or break part of fire control of the era. You can practice range finding, lining the guns up as directed, and loading all day but that's not enough to make you an effective gunnery ship.
I disagree.. familiarity and practice at sea would cover at least 80 percent of the proficiency of a specific ship... fire correction was often a shit show due to poor target allocation and failure to identify...
Also certain individuals .. let's say beatty ordered spurious course corrections and therefore.. due to need to recompile the Germans got to fire first with their shorter ranged guns...
This would indicate that non firing practice at sea may be as high as 90 of the equation as perhaps Mr B would have learnt how to handle the entire system properly ..
Rodney etc used this same method when training from Invergordon later on and they seemed to do ok... granted the differences...
Does this mean you're not going to be sponsored by RAID:Shadow Legend, Drach?
Maybe for April 1st 😀
@@Drachinifel No, we need dress hauls from Fashion Nova....🤣
For biggest-gun cruiser, I have to bring up USS Vesuvius, with her triple-battery of 15-inch guns, probably wins biggest caliber. Classified as a plain cruiser at the time. Granted, they were pneumatic-fired dynamite guns, but the question was only about biggest, not most practical.
Honorable mention also to the armored cruiser Georgios Averof, a substantially more practical ship armed with 9.2 inch main battery, and at just about 10,000 tons would even be near enough treaty compliant, had that mattered at the time. Between the design and service history, she certainly fit into the "second class battleship" idea for armored cruisers, though she seemed to have a bit of a problem with that "second class" part.
I've been on an old russian submarine. There was(is?) a museum one on the west coast canada.
"00:38:37 - What's the largest gun ever considered for placement on a cruiser? And would it have been feasible or was it just a pipe dream?"
HMS Furious comes to mind. . . That got quickly removed because the gun ended up being more harmful to the ship that it carried than any ship it fired against.
as for a pipe dream.
see HMS Incomparable because Jackie Fisher.
I was thinking of the British monitors (Roberts, et al)-basically battleship guns on cruiser hulls.
I realize she was a "Large Light Cruiser", but come on. The British used 6X9.2 inch on the Duke of Edinburgh and Warrior classes and 4X9.2 inch on the Minotaur class , the USN 4X10 inch on the Tennesse Class (later renamed Memphis, but the IJN's Tsukuba and Ibuki class armored cruisers mounted 4X12 inch.
@@WildBillCox13 I mean, monitors are short and wide while cruisers are long and thin.
You could also consider the Kronshtadt class with the planned German 380 mm guns. Of course, same as with the others, you have the question of large cruiser/super cruiser/battlecruiser and does it count?
@@BruceRKF HMS Furious had 2/3 inch belt armor. Her protection is on par with the contemporary C class light cruisers. A light cruiser armed with 6 inch guns can detonate HMS Furious. So with the HMS Furious the cruiser name sticks.
Speaking of fire control only, and in particular the rangefinders. You could have two absolutely identical ships write down to the barnacles on the keel and the fire control systems will have a different feel in their rangefinders adjustment knobs. These are precision instruments, which is why they were high on the list for salvage at Pearl harbor. The glass in the rangefinders the gears it's all precision. Unfortunately they are never exactly the same. That feel on those adjustments to determine range is critical. If you swap the cruise around whoever operates the rangefinders, will have to get used to the feel of the instrument. There could be a slight difference in the angle of the mirrors, the intermeshing of the gears could be slightly different. These differences could be the result of the manufacturing process of the gears or it could be the way they're maintained or just normal wear
I wonder what effect temperature has on the range finders., thermal expansion / contraction. 100F in the sputh pacific verses -20F in the north atlantic. a 120F temperature swing. That can make the distance between the binocular mirrors change. backlash in gear trains change, etc....
Re: the enterprise and the Japanese being reasonably sure they sunk it so often.
Honestly if there is some top trumps or special video game attribute you’d ascribe to the US navy clan, it would be damage control. Some of the stuff they did was Truely supernatural. In fact their officially unofficial slogan or motto is literally “Don’t give up the ship”. (The dying words of captain Lawrence, USN of the “Chesapeake”in 1813)
It's a pity history has forgotten the words of Cpt Sir Phillip Bowes Vere Broke that day as he boarded the Cheasapeake.
"Follow Me Who Can"
@@richardcowling7381 The US navy is always accepting applicants to add to their history including foreigners :)
Shouldnt the large light cruiser Furious win the biggest gun competition? 18inch on a "cruiser"
Hi Drach back in your USS Constitution video you claimed once the Royal Navy had captured USS president you said they took design ques from her, I'm interested where the source was for the UK taking information from USS President. As I have read about the notes they took from her and they were not positive in the slightest, they did say a strong hull, was it that they took. As I haven't found anything positive about them as by the time of 1812 they were 2 decades old and out of date. HMS Endymion which wasn't that new a ship, which captured President was a better ship in every way from speed 14 knots which was a lot faster than any of the 6 frigates, to matching firepower with President in all but the type of oak and possibly cross bracing (although Endymion may have had that) and Britain didn't have access to that type of oak anyway. And Endymion had a class made from her lines, however that was before the war of 1812. I can imagine the initiative hull deisgn being taken but I was under the impression that by even before 1805 other ships were already using it. If the war was when they were built that makes sense as they were revolutionary ships but by 1812 they were out of date.
The Royal Navy copied the President solely for the purpose of trolling the United States of America. And it wasn't that obsolete.
I've noticed in the last few weeks tons of hidden replies on TH-cam comments
@@BlackMasterRoshi These are basically spam messages advertising various "products" and "interesting videos"; when you report them as spam they will eventually be deleted but the reply count stays the same.
Regarding von Spee's options, I think he should have thought about possible outcomes; weighed their probabilities as best he could with the limited information he had and then decided what option was most likely to achieve the best possible; or more realistically, the least worst outcome. Broadly speaking, no matter what decisions von Spee made, there were only three possible outcomes. The first was the total or near total annihilation of von Spee's squadron, which is what happened. The second was von Spee's squadron, or at least a portion of it, somehow made it back to Germany, or made it to Turkey; which was at least as farfetched a possibility as making it to Germany. The third possible outcome was that von Spee would survive long enough to be forced to take refuge in a neutral port, probably in South America. In any of these possible outcomes one or two light cruisers might be detached as commerce raiders; which is sort of what happened in real life, though the Dresden wasn't able to do more than just hide for a while.
We don't know what von Spee was thinking as he approached Port Stanley, when HMS Canopus opened fire on him and the masts of Sturdee's battlecruisers were spotted; other than perhaps "Oh crap, did I make a mistake." We do know that after the Battle of Coronel von Spee was quite pessimistic. When given a bouquet of flowers in Valparaiso, Chile he said, "These will do nicely for my grave." So, he must have believed the worst possible outcome of total annihilation was the most likely one. Even a less pessimistic person might have placed this outcome as being 80 to 90% probable. Getting all the way to Germany; well, only an insanely optimistic person would have placed the odds at better than 1 or 2%. I would have guessed much less than 1%. Surviving long enough to be interned in a neutral port would not have been a glorious outcome for von Spee, but it would have both preserved the lives of his men and given von Spee the opportunity to do some damage to British commerce by capturing and sinking a merchant ship or two along the way. Of course, even reaching a port to be interned in might have required the capture of a considerable amount of coal, but it's the outcome von Spee should have tried to achieve, even if the odds of doing so were 10% or less.
Attacking Port Stanley was a very poor option to choose because von Spee appears to have been aware that the Royal Navy would make a special effort to destroy him. I think it was a very fatalistic choice, because even if Sturdee's ships hadn't been there; if they had been delayed sailing by three or four days, knocking out the radio station at Port Stanley would have told the world where von Spee was or at least that he had been there and when he had been there. It would have been simple math to figure out how far von Spee's squadron could have gone following the attack. It's almost as if von Spee wanted to bring about his destruction sooner rather than later. At best I would call it a "high risk - low reward" option and it appears some of his officers voiced their disapproval of that choice.
You're probably right that the attack on Port Stanley was because Spee figured he was doomed and wanted to just get it over with. But beyond that, I suspect his thinking was that attacking right away would give him the best chance to inflict some damage before he's taken out. Without any ability to do maintenance and refuel, his ships' performance was only going to decline more over time even if he escaped detection.
That said, I think once he made the decision to attack Port Stanley, he made two core mistakes. First was bringing the light cruisers with him instead of having them disperse and go commerce raiding or try to run the blockade back to Germany as their captains saw fit. They weren't going to make any difference one way or the other. If Sturdee hadn't arrived yet, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau alone could easily destroy the wireless station. And either way he'd be drawing all the attention onto himself and giving the smaller, faster cruisers time to get out of the area.
Second was that he was insufficiently aggressive once he realized there were battlecruisers docked at Port Stanley. It took some time for Sturdee's ships to raise steam. With the battlecruisers' superior speed, this didn't give Spee enough of a head start to matter when trying to flee. It would however have given him time to press the attack while Invincible and Inflexible were still at anchor. Two of Sturdee's cruisers were already under steam as guardships, but Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were more powerful ships and could likely have forced their way to the harbor entrance. And that point, seeing as the entrance of Stanley Harbour is only about 900 feet wide, he could have maneuvered his cruisers so that they're blocking Invincible and Inflexible from leaving. Even after they sink his ships, the wrecks will still have them bottled up for probably several months. And at such close range he might even be able to inflict some real damage on the battlecruisers.
Back in 1919 British submarine L-55 was sunk near Saint Petersburg, in 1927 she was raised, repaired and studied thoroughly. She even was included in the Russian fleet as Л-55 and scrapped only in 1950. Most of the late 30 early 40ies USSR models had some sort of this back engineering process in it. After USSR got hold on late production German subs in the end of the WW2 all "national" projects were scrapped and first after war subs in USSR were basically a copies of German types, 611 was a copy of XXI and 613 a copy of VIIC
I love this content so much. You make a naval nerd like me so happy! Thank you!
USS Enterprise for the win! I think the Enterprise and the Yorktown even though she ultimately was sunk demonstrates the quality of the design of the Yorktown class.
Well the design had some vulnerabilities such as unarmoured flight deck. But the crews of the Yorktown class demonstrated some phenomenal damage control!
@@BHuang92 And yet, no Yorktown was ever sunk by bombs. In fact, no US fleet carrier was sunk by bombs, all succumbed to torpedoes.
The senior officer of a merchant ship is its master, not its "captain". During the Middle Ages, there was no Royal Navy as such, ships and their crews were called up from the merchant service (in return for lower import duties, each of the Cinque Ports committed to providing a certain number of ships with their crews en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinque_Ports). The King then detailed a group of soldiers to serve as marines on each, appointing an officer called the captain (from the Latin capua = head) to command them. He did not necessarily have any maritime experience. So, the master was in charge of sailing the ship, while the captain was in charge of fighting her. This prevailed until the Pepys Reforms of the 1660's which required a prospective naval officer to demonstrate a knowledge of seamanship and navigation in order to be commissioned. Gradually, this led to a downgrading of the position of Master. He became the ship's senior warrant officer (one of three who was a member of the wardroom) "In 1808, Masters (along with Pursers and Surgeons) were given similar status to commissioned officers, as warrant officers of wardroom rank. The master ate in the wardroom with the other officers, had a large cabin in the gunroom, and had a smaller day cabin next to the captain's cabin on the quarterdeck for charts and navigation equipment " and was the ship's expert on sailing, seamanship and navigation, Masters either transferred directly from the merchant service, or, if a ship's mate, joined the Navy as a Master's Mate and were later promoted. Some Master's Mates were midshipmen who had passed their exam for promotion to lieutenant and were awaiting their promotion orders. Some unlucky passed midshipmen were never commissoned and settled into being Master's Mates were eventually promoted to Master. A prospective Master had to pass an oral exam conducted by a RN captain and three Masters of Trinity House. He was then eligible to receive his warrant from the Navy Board. From 1753, the position of Deputy Master existed aboard ships of the line - generally a Mate who had passed his exam for Master and was deemed capable of serving as such and and was awaiting a position to become available. Smaller rated ships had a Master's Mate as Deputy Master. Unrated ships were authorized an experienced Master's Mate in lieu of a Master. No further Masters were created after 1883 and the last retired in 1892. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_%28naval%29
Also the Warrants stayed with the ship, even when it was in Ordinary, at least during the period of the Age of Sail. That of course changed later, but the period in question is the Age of Sail.
The Purser and Surgeon were not 'Warrants' in that respect as they would be Paid off with the rest of the crew after a voyage or if a ship went into Ordinary. The Warrants that I am aware of, those who stayed with the ship were, the Master, Carpenter, Gunner, Clerk and Cook. Later the Chaplain and Schoolmaster were added to that list.
Of course, the Age of Sail is a fair old period, so it could be that I have just missed that Warrants were issued to the Purser and Surgeon even though they did not remain with the ship. Or they were made Warrants later, and again did not stay with the ship unlike the other Warrants.
@@alganhar1 The Master was not a Standing Warrant Officer like the Bosun, Carpenter and Gunner, and was paid off with the rest of the crew. Please allow me to quote - "Rank and status in the 18th century
In origin, warrant officers were specialist professionals whose expertise and authority demanded formal recognition. In the 18th century they fell into two clear categories: on the one hand, those privileged to share with the commissioned officers in the wardroom and on the quarterdeck; and on the other, those who ranked with more junior members of the ship's crew.[Somewhere between the two, however, were the standing officers, notable because, unlike the rest of the ship's company, they remained with the ship even when it was out of commission (e.g. for repair, refitting or replenishment, or whilst laid up); in these circumstances they were under the pay and supervision of the Royal Dockyard.
Wardroom warrant officers
These classes of warrant officer messed in the wardroom with the commissioned officers:
the master: the senior warrant officer, a qualified navigator and experienced seaman who set the sails, maintained the ship's log and advised the captain on the seaworthiness of the ship and crew;
the surgeon: who treated the sick and injured and advised the captain on matters of health;
the purser: responsible for supplies, food and pay for the crew.
In the early 19th century, they were joined in the wardroom by naval chaplains, who also had warrant officer status (though they were only usually present on larger vessels).
Standing warrant officers
The standing officers were members of the gunroom and were:
the boatswain: responsible for maintenance of the ship's boats, sails, rigging, anchors and cables;
the carpenter: responsible for maintenance of the ship's hull and masts;
the gunner: responsible for care and maintenance of the ship's guns and gunpowder.
Junior warrant officers
Other warrant officers included surgeon's mates, boatswain's mates and carpenter's mates, sailmakers, armorers, schoolmasters (involved in the education of boys, midshipmen and others aboard ship) and clerks. Masters-at-arms, who had formerly overseen small-arms provision on board, had by this time taken on responsibility for discipline.
Even in modern military Army Officers & Enlisted tend to gain & lose rank faster then the Navy. Technical Knowledge requirements for Navy promotions has to be higher.
Absolute BS, A helicopter mechanic is a helicopter mechanic. Try commanding a modern tank. Even infantrymen aren't louts wandering around with guns, but highly trained specialists
So, have I got this right? The Scourge captured the "The No Trousers". The French were caught with their pants down?
Sounds like part two of the Royal Navy's great traditions of rum, sodomy, and the lash
"Sans culottes" started as French slang for the lower class revolutionaries. "Culottes" were the knee length short trousers worn by aristocrats (it was a fashion thing, no point in trying to argue whether it was sensible or not), "sans culottes" were the poorer people who didn't have them and wore full length trousers instead.
@@hughfisher9820 If we go a little further back in time culottes we're women's under pants with an open crutch. Fast forward past aristocratic gents attire and 70's split skirts to today and the term "Sans Culotte" is the French colloquial equivalent of "Going Commando". As Humpty said of words "It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." No trousers suits me just fine.🙂
The German Pocket Battleship 28.3 cm guns used the German post-WWI "Psgr.m.K." (APHE shell with AP Cap) type "L/3,7" )3.7 calibers long) of circa-600 kg (also used in the all German 15 cm guns through the end of WWII). This shell had a small pointed windscreen and an equally small hardened AP cap, and an improved delay-action base fuze, but otherwise was just a "warmed-over" WWI tough-capped "L/3,2" shell of the same size and had rather poor ability to stay in one piece when hitting any significant thickness of armor. The later post-1930 heavier and improved-metallurgy "L/4,4" used by the SCHARNHORST Class was considerably better.
HMS "The Floating Plot Shield Device" Warspite
1:08:34.
Drach: The killer of Bismarck and her sister.
HMS Nelson: HEY!
Better yet, The Floating Plot Shield Device and her sister
HMS Valiant is displeased
12" /50 on the Alaska class were pretty damn big.
TH-cam is shadowbanning Drach now? I wonder why. It doesn't seem to make sense.
Welp, off to go scroll through videos of teenagers dancing or whatever it is that the algorithm promotes.
TH-cam is run by the same as Google. And have the same Silicone Valley bent philosophy. What is popular is not always with their political thinking.
Admittedly not a fan of sponsorships, but yours are, if not topical, at least helpful. No random products hyped.
Sponsorships are a part of business. Drach is doing this as his job and needs to be compensated. The only time I would get annoyed about a sponsorship would be one for a totally BS product that is actually dangerous for people. You see them all the time on TH-cam. Pseudoscience to cure your diabetes or to lose weight or whatever. TH-cam doesn't give a rat's ass what they advertise as long as the person's check clears. Drac obviously filters is sponsors that he will accept, so I don't have a problem with it at all. He has a very good moral compass which is becoming somewhat rare today. His parents did a great job.
Re the napoleonic navy? J7st how far were the officer corp executed? Midshipman level? above?
Depended on your birth - were you an "Aristo", but nobody was safe, except maybe the few who had somehow worked their way up from the lower deck, "The Quibéron mutinies were a series of mutinies that occurred in the Brest squadron of the French Navy in September 1793, at the height of the Reign of Terror. They offered reasons and pretexts for the Jacobins to purge the Navy of most of its officers who belonged to the French aristocracy."
How did the "cement" battleship of Manila? fit into treaty?
Italy actually had 11 triple 12-inch turrets (plus 2 twin turrets) when they were scrapping battleships. 4 triples from Dante Alighieri, 4 triples from the formerly Austro-Hungarian Tegetthoff, and 3 triples and 2 twins from the salvaged Leonardo da Vinci. Plus they get 4 more triple turrets by removing the Q turrets from the Cavour and Duilio-class battleships during their 1930s reconstructions. Even if you ignore the 12"/45 Skoda guns and turrets (since they're a completely different design from the Italian 12"/46s), that still is 11 triple turrets. So if they had the budget for it, that would allow for three cruiser-killers with 3x3 armament and a half-sister with 3x2 and 1x2. Probably boring the guns out to 12.6" like on the battleships, for whatever that's worth.
Actually if the Skoda guns and their turrets had been kept around, maybe you bore them out to 12.6" as well that would mostly deal with the logistical problems of their Austro-Hungarian origin. Maybe use those guns for a pair of super-Deutschland style cruisers. As for how Italy would pay for such a thing? Maybe Mussolini just decides to spend a lot more money than Italy actually hand and says he'll pay off the debts by plundering his enemies.
The first question, in which Drach mentions the effect of director control tables on the Battle of the Falkland Islands in 1914, goes a long way to answer the question I've posed a couple of times and had answered, but only in part, once. If these two battlecruisers had yet to be refitted with a fire control table, then it seems wildly unlikely that the armored cruisers in Troubridge's squadron in the Mediterranean had. If SMS Moltke did have that kind of fire control table, then that would appear to give Moltke a huge advantage over the armored cruisers to go along with its speed. If Moltke has the speed to control the range, and a central fire control table, then it can deliver well-aimed salvos at 10-12,000 yards while the British armored cruisers are throwing out shells with only the barest slim chance of scoring a lucky hit. So it would appear the key issue is whether Moltke had that fire control table or not.
Edit: as noted below, Goeben rather than Moltke. Since Goeben wasn't assigned to the Mediterranean until 1912, there may have been time for her to have been refitted with a central fire control table before that assignment.
You mean SMS Goeben, Moltkes sistership.
@@gildor8866 yes, you are correct.
Hi
Norman Friedman in his "Naval Firepower" book writes that German fire control in WW1 had excellent rangefinders but does not seem very impressed with the German range clock equivalent, which relied heavily on human judgement. He also writes that in 1913-14, after Goeben deployed to the Med, the German navy considered 6000 metres decisive range and that fire beyond 10000 metres was ineffective.
@@hughfisher9820 thanks. Obviously they improved quite a bit over the next couple years leading up to Jutland.
On 'Storing guns to deal with later cruisers' question, you don't seem to take into account that a ship could be designed (once the decision is made to keep the guns for future use) while they are waiting to use it. After all during the interwar period the RN had time to work up designs for various proposed battleships. They could have taken the time to design a super cruiser using the guns already in storage. While they could reuse the original twin gun mounts in a 6 gun layout there is nothing stopping them from designing an 8 or 9 gun ship during the design process. The main problem, as I see it, is that once a design is settled on the AA, machinery, and underwater protection would have to be updated due to technical advances. Presumably the advances in machinery would make up for the extra weight of AA and reduced internal volume needed by better underwater protection. As, the details of the possible future ships had not been decided on at the time of storing the guns in question, it would probably be a good idea to store as much armor that would otherwise be scraped since armor is likely another long lead item. Given the pace of technological advancement anything else would probably be obsolete by the time the ships were built.
I believe that a ship’s Master had a legal responsibility for the safety of the ship in terms of seamanship. Ergo, if the ship was lost due to errors in navigation or storm preparation or anything similar such as masts carried away due to weather leading to the loss of the ship, then they’d also be court martialed. This includes the usual explanation that ‘to be court martialed’ is not the same as to be found guilty. There are numerous situations for which a court martial is automatic, but that is to enable the person(s) responsible (if any) to be identified.
I should note that your account of the Battle of Shimonoseki Straits, more of a campaign really, is incomplete and deserves a greater treatment. The Choshu for example were certainly not necessarily on the Emperors side but manoeuvring for position as the Schoganate broke down. I have inspected the key sites and fortifications as they were nominated as part of a proposed World heritage listing. The Straits are a strategic waterway. the battle would have been hard to fight under sail as there are strong currents and limited room to manoeuvre. The advantage of steam was that the warships could stay in place and bombard. The European forces landed marines to take out the forts.
So Mr Allen was basically like the British Army's Warrent Officer. Each Company/Battery etc has a WO2 who will be the most senior NCO there, he or she is reported to by the Staff Sgts, the Sgts and would usually be the man who did the day to day running of things. And each Regiment has a WO1 aka The Regimental Sargent Major. IE the right hand of God/power behind the throne. A WO2 can for example advise and in private talk with say a Company Commander (a Major) about things, and push back against ideas they may have if they feel they have to.
He was literally a Warrant Officer. Not basically like one but one in actual fact. He did not hold a commission but instead had a Warrant signed by some of the Lords of the Admiralty. I think the idea was adopted by the Army well after the Navy had begun the practice.
The Warrants, at least the original warrants (Master, gunner, carpenter, cook, clerk, chaplain and schoolmaster) were assigned to the SHIP, and not the crew. As a result they stayed with the ship even if she went into Ordinary.
What a wonderful Saturday Morning wake up present.
Must be an Aussie or kiwi. Only just now Saturday here in the Midwest lol
Indeed
I had a weird situation looking at the channel shortly after your Weapon class upload, most of your videos were invisible, given what you said in the channel admin section, wouldn't surprise me if it's youtube screwing with you
Well on the stockpiling of naval rifles front don't know of anyone stockpiling 12s for cruiser killers, but the British held on to like all the 13.5s from scrapped ships and ended up putting them in coastal batteries in the buildup to war. Presumably if they had more time and money for ship building they could have also used them to spam out modern fast hulls with Orion/original KGV/iron duke turrets in scaled down vanguards
The US also had an assload of Lexington/1920s South Dakota 16"/50s that could presumably have been used to make a bunch of Iowas/Montanas if a WWI style dreadnought race broke out with Britain and/or Japan and the Beaord didn't mess things up.
Three BL 13.5 inch /45 Mark V guns, named Gladiator, Piece Maker and Scene Shifter, were mounted on railway chassis during World War II for use as railway guns. They re-used a railway mounting which had carried a BL 14 inch Railway Gun in the First World War. After the gins wore out, they were retained without ordnance. In 1940 they given stored 13.5 inch Mk V guns and were issued to the Royal Marine Siege Regiment at Dover in Kent to bombard German batteries and shipping in the Calais area. The fourth 14 inch mounting, Boche Buster, had been given an 18 inch howitzer (NOT the 18 inch naval gun) after her 14 inch wore out and was also deployed to the Dover area. th-cam.com/video/tbA9fyo2DoY/w-d-xo.html and th-cam.com/video/egW5eHfW4WI/w-d-xo.html
About ships falsely reported as sunk, I believe the Essex-class Lexington was falsely reported as sunk quite a number of times apparently, though i cant find the number right now. Might be worth checking on?
I think the “Blue Ghost” (Lexington’s nickname). Was claimed to have been sunk 6 times. Weirdly enough a number of newspapers also claimed , the Grey Ghost (Enterprise) sank that many times as well.
27:26 Who is the other voice and what is said?
The machine rolls on!
The recording Drach records; and, having recorded, records some more.
What happened to the German movement to unionize against TH-cam?
As a glaswiegan I agree with hitting a target reference👌 42:22
It's a good one isn't it.
But wait till he gets up to the target and goes to sit on the crossbar. 😁
British monitors are/were exactly battleship guns on Cruiser hulls, are they not?
A monitor has basically the opposite hull to a cruiser ...
"Sans Cullote" = without shorts?
'Sans culottes' was a term used for the poorest classes of 18th century French society, who later became a symbol of the Revolution.
the ship in the first photo looks almost ethereal somehow
“Or he could try a mad dash up the Channel…” Well it worked for the *other* Scharnhorst!
Other Scharnhorst didn't have to worry about the constant stream of traffic in the channel or approaching it at the time.
One radio call from a merchantman reporting his position...
Worth noting, with regards to the RM's plans for countering enemy invasions, that by mid-1943 it was recongized the air situation was so poor for the Axis that an intervention in defense of Sicily would be untenable, though the fleet was still intended to be deployed if the Allies attempted to invade Sardinia or Corsica. It can also be noted that if the enemy were to try and land on the Tyrrhenian coast of Sicily, then dependent on the strength of the allied forces, it may be possible for the main fleet to intervene. Otherwise, the defense of Sicily was to be left to submarines and MAS.
Interestingly enough, the Allies decided against any landings on the northern coast of Sicily precisely to avoid the potential for intervention by the Italian fleet, though King George V and Howe were positioned to the north-west of the island just in case (the rest of the British capital ships were off the south-east coast). As it happens, though, at the time Husky started only one Littorio - Littorio herself in fact - was actually ready for action. Roma was under repair and Vittorio Veneto still working up after being repaired from bomb damage suffered during a large USAAF raid on La Spezia on 5 June 1943. With only one of the three battleships available for such an operation, any mission to attack Allied landing efforts were firmly rejected when the scale of the landing force was reported.
Great stuff as always. When the platform plays stupid games it gets stupid prizes. The only channels that I have been auto unsubscribed from are C&Rsenal and Brandon Herrera.
I read somewhere many years ago that Russian submarines suffered from open bilges. The crews found them extremely convenient to urinate in them. So you take the normal submarine funk of the day in the air and add to that the ambience of a public restroom.
@1:00:48 A 13.5” turret weighs about three times as much as Town class 8”. Even a one for two swap would seemingly require a lot of re-engineering. On the other had it is surprising the guns weren’t saved. I wonder if the ships could have been moved to say Gibraltar, Singapore or Scapa and permanently grounded as defensive fortifications?
No, the treaty required their being broken up - and apart from a few outliers like the Courageous class, they agreed not to retain the turrets and guns.
@@ianwalter62The Washington Treaty requires the that guns and turrets be destroyed or landed, so my reading is that the guns and turrets
could removed an emplaced on land. Also there is no limitation as to where to ships be scrapped etc. I’ll look for cases where US, Japan or Great Britain repurposed guns from the warships scrapped under the treaty. There may be some separate agreement among the parties as to what happened to the guns. The 16” guns intended for Lexington and Saratoga were stored for use in future warships but actually used as coast defense artillery after the barbettes are too small fiasco.
@@richardschaffer5588 I looked at The Treaty, and "disposal" of ships is defined, and the method of effecting it prescribed, in Chapter II, Part 2 -"RULES FOR SCRAPPING VESSELS OF WAR", Clause III, subclause (b)(1) - you are correct, it is landed, not necessarily destroyed. "Disposal" or "scrapping" only refers to the ship as a whole, not all the fixtures and fittings, and not even the armour plates. So there was nothing in the treaty to stop guns being stored as spare parts or put to a use other than arming a combat vessel.
The Courageous class are probably a unique case - the turrets from those (which were completed as cruisers) were stored and eventually used on the HMS Vanguard; they were however the same model 15" as used in the QE, "R" class and the battle cruisers, so it may be the barrels, particularly, had already been used as replacements, and the Vanguard received newly manufactured weapons.
Can you do a concept video on the Syracusia supposedly designed by Archimedes, like the HMS Thunderchild pls
Great dry-dock yet again.
1:00:23 didn't they also serve together previously or for a long time? Therefore giving him maybe a little bit more freedom to express his opinion in private.
I say to you again Sir: you are quite brilliant. I just listened to your answer on the role of the ship's Master. Would you consider doing a more in depth post both elaborating on your answer plus the roles of the other higher non-commissioned "officers" during the Age of Sail? It seems to me this might warrant an in depth presentation by you.
What about the light battlecruiser a la Furious? So an 18" gunned cruiser 🤔
Battlecruisers don't count as cruisers as they were originally designed to counter cruisers not be cruisers
I have no problem with the amount of sponsorship in this channel. It is on an ok level. As long as it is short it works just fine.
How about a ten minute infomercial to sell, the worlds brightest military spec. flashlight? Or a solar powered generator that fits in a vest pocket? or a knife that never needs resharpening, how about 80 year shelf life survival food? So informative, so captivating.
@@dave8599 It is just fine as it has been so far. Productive content on a limited level that doesn't consume too much time on the channel.
1:08:36 okay what is the Floating Plot Shield Device 🙂?
HMS Warspite. One of the luckiest damn ships to have served in *anyone's* navy, bar none. Lived through damage in both world wars that could have sunk many vessels, and even grounded herself in an attempt to avoid the breakers (which I firmly believe is a sign of sentience, even a soul). RN should have made her a museum alongside HMS Victory, which proves that even the British can be immensely stupid with their history.
You're the best Drach. Your sober voice has saved my sanity over the last 6 months.
wrt von Spee's options, a route around Africa would afford the opportunity to pick up Königsberg in Tanganyika en route. Most of Africa being colonies of various European powers means that most of the places they could put in for coal would either be hostile, or neutral, but full of allied spies that would report their arrival. Scharnhorst had a range of 4800nm and Königsberg's range was 5750nm. As soon as the war started, British and French troops invaded Kamerun, taking Douala on September 27, 1914. South African forces landed at Lüderitz in Southwest Africa in the fall of 14 and Swakopmund on Feb 11, 1915. Dar Es Salaam to Swakopmund is 3385nm, so von Spee could make it, if he started early, and if plenty of coal was available. Spain was neutral, and the distance from Swakopmund to Dakhla in the Spanish Sahara is 4249nm. From Dakhla to Wilhelmshaven is 2552nm, if going by the channel. So the trip would be feasible, provided von Spee started early enough to reach Swakopmund before the South Africans occupied the town, and if there was plenty of coal available.
I believe Drach discussed this option in an earlier video - as I recall the problem with it was the risk of encountering the battlecruiser HMAS Australia and possibly Japanese ships.
The coal came from the UK and would not have been sold to the Germans
@@CharlesStearman Emden was detached from von Spee's squadron, penetrated the Indian ocean and raided commerce in the eastern Indian Ocean for several months before being caught and defeated by HMAS Sydney. If Emden had been trying to transit the Indian Ocean in an attempt to get home, Sydney would never have caught up with her.
@@benwilson6145 I looked at my 1928 USN port guide to get an idea of the coal supplies typically on hand in those African ports. Dar Es Salaam typically had no more than 500 tons on hand. The other ports on the hypothetical route were so small they were not listed at all. Suspect that the lack of fuel that would be accessible by the Germans makes that route a no-go. Going around South America was a better option. Von Spee had refueled in Valparaiso, and German diplomats were arranging fuel supplies elsewhere along the South American coast. He could have made it back to Europe, if he had stayed away from the Falklands, and British spies did not pick up on fuel supplies being staged for the squadron, so the RN could lay a trap. Prinz Eitel Friedrich, a merchant cruiser, was detached from von Spee's squadron and raided independently in the Pacific and South Atlantic. She made it as far as Newport News, Virginia, where she put in for fuel and repairs, and was quickly blocked in by British and French warships.
@@stevevalley7835 The reason for going to Port Stanley was a hope to capture coal. The Far East was now closed to Germany with its possession, Tsingtao, Guam, New Guinea, Narau now lost. I'm not sure how the Dutch East Indies would do but I suspect that was not an option.
1:07:15 Damn Nigel is caked up with an absolute bakery back there
:)
The father of the US nuclear Navy, Admiral Rickover, was brilliant in that he insisted new submarine and surface nuclear plants be prototyped on land in an building replicating the engineering spaces. This prototype was constructed a few months ahead of the actual ship. In this way problems could be worked out ahead of time. The Germans may have benefited if they had prototyped the Hipper engineering plant.
I would say that closest analogue to the sailing master on a modern warship would be the Command Master Chief or equivalent the Chief of the Boat on a Submarine. They will have the most experience at sea than any of the officers.
And in honor of the Sans-Culottes:
th-cam.com/video/cPr5gaVMkZc/w-d-xo.html
59:06 always listen to the old guy in the group, they're usually right. Be it in the military or at work with a new manager.
Appreciate that I've yet to see a Drachnifel video brought to me by RAID SHADOWLEDGENDS. I'm sure they pay better than squarespace.
I wonder why Sturdee didn't detach Caernarvon to rescue Scharnhorst's survivors, bearing in mind his later attitude to Stoddart's (perceived) slowness in deploying her boats to rescue survivors of Gneisenau.
I watch the Dry Dock ever Monday after my morning radio show it over. Hope my views count toward the TH-cam analytics!
When do we get the next video in the Development of Ironclads series?
Oh maaaan... Only an hour... Darn.
Still... Let's see
German Tightrope Walkers are Ballers.
Isn't the bosun the senior enlisted person on a Navy ship? Not the master?
No definitely not
The Master was the senior warrant officer and was a member of the wardroom. The Bosun, Gunner and Carpenter, although also warrant officers, were junior to him and were members of the gunroom.
Conga line or "Kongo" Line? 😆
Thank you
thnx man