So what about the Jeune Ecole made the Hoche and other French BattleHotels inevitable?

[@charlesmaurer6214]

A line often used by the author David Weber "If your not cheating your not trying" when it comes to war comes to mind.

[@TheFleetOfOceans]

27:06 'Some Say that for all that she's a good ship.' That's me, you are talking about me.

[@lesliemitchell4984]

NoOne else has such bad eye sight :p

[@hmsverdun]

Say its name and he appears clap clap Foo believes in the Hoche yeah clap clap, Foo believes in the Hoche yeah.

[@baronvonfaust]

Hey! It's that guy who loves Hoche!

[@WilliamClodius]

Thanks!

[@karlvongazenberg8398]

42:55 Althought The Late Day Biplane put the fear of God into the heart of the beholder (therefore it is sacred) it is surprisingly usefull in its role and age. Add to it, that the role in question is also well defined and devised.

[@mickbrown7793]

Arthur C Clarke's short story Superiority covers the issue of what happens if a fleet bets everything on new technology that isn't ready yet.

[@Graham-ce2yk]

Some time ago I read a naval history book whose title I've forgotten and it covered the evolution of the FAC-M (Missile armed Fast Attack Craft) which were seen in a similar light to torpedo boats in the 19th Century. The author opined that the reason the UK didn't go in for them was that most of the senior officers in the late 1960s and early 1970s had served in the Coastal Forces and remembered how vunerable torpedo boats had proven to be against aircraft. Instead the British developed the Sea Skua missile which was designed to be fired from a range outside that of the kinds of weapon fitted to the typical FAC-M. The Soviet response was the Nanchucka class FAC-Ms which fitted a surface-to-air missile system, but to carry it the size of the craft had to be increased to that of a typical corvette of the time. A similar evolution can be seen with the Israeli Sa'ar class, the first four classes were essentially FAC-Ms. The Sa'ar V (The Eliat Class) was a corvette size warship intended to carry up to 16 Harpoon missiles, though in the event they only carried half that amount. The succeeding Sa'ar VI is again a corvette sized warship a long way from the 'cheap expedible' concept in the same way that the Destroyer as a type was by the start of WWII far away from the torpedo boats from which it evolved.

[@shawnc5188]

I don't think the RN was ever interested in FACs after WW2, as they never needed a coastal force, especially as from the early 1970s when they had the Blackburn Buccaneer conducting maritime strike around the UK, and they had more critical budgetary issues to content with. The experience of the Israeli Navy at the dawn of ASMs was different to that of the RN - one was in constant conflict over three decades and had to defend their coastline from multiple threat axis and hostiles that could hide in international shipping lanes, while thee other was primarily focused on NATO and the North Atlantic in the cold war.

[@davidbriggs7365]

Suggestion: I note that yet again, you have two blank spaces in September, and another in August. I would like to suggest that you move one of the pieces currently planned for October over to either August or September and replace with a Counterfactual looking at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, and what would be the outcomes if you moved some of the Admirals in that battle (or that could have been in that battle) into a different command. Replace Halsey with Spruance or move one (or more) of the Japanese Admirals to a different command. Exchange Kurita with Ozawa for example, or maybe have Kurita go the Suriago Strait and have someone else come through San Bernardino Strait. It'd be an interesting look at an actual battle and the effect that various Admirals had on that battle.

[@Knight6831]

30:03 Agreed Doc The 1890s was the era of transition between end of the age of the Ironclad battleship and the beginning of the age of the pre-dreadnought battleships.

[@NaomiClareNL]

Considering what happened in 1870-1871 and its aftermath, I am amazed that they got anything going at all. Does anyone know how many ship yard workers were send to the frontlines and died there? And what the competition for skilled workers was between various ship yards as well as with other industries?

[@steveclarke6257]

The love of Fleets life brought to a sharp contrast with reality.

[@elliottjames8020]

Theodore Ropp also wrote "The Development of a Modern Navy: French Naval Policy 1871-1904" that is really worth reading too. I'd aslo say that modern scholarship has started to undermine Auther Marder's "The Anatomy of British Sea Power" covering the same period.

[@DrAlexClarke]

Deffinitely on Ropp, on Marder, I've read a lot of his books... they're interesting

[@elliottjames8020]

@@DrAlexClarke the book I found particularly interesting in reevaluation Marder was "The Transformation of British and American Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era: Ideas, Culture and Strategy." by Robert E Mullins.

[@DrAlexClarke]

thanks for the recomendation...

[@elliottjames8020]

isn't France rather forced into the Jeune Ecole because of the economic fallout from the defeat in the Franco-German War? Not that the French covered themselves with glory in 1870 by their failure to establish an effective blockade the North Sea ports of the North German Confederation in 1870.

[@eddierudolph8702]

That blockage might have brought the British into the war on the North German Confederation. The Royal Navy wouldn't have allowed the blockade to happen, too much trade went between them.

[@Knight6831]

Considering that the Royal Navy keeps as many ironclad battleships as it needed maybe a bit longer than they should have but I think that the RN was planning to do a phased out approach with the youngest Ironclad battleship staying on until the pre-dreadnought battleship fleet is built in sufficient numbers to fully replace them but meddling politicians from the treasury decide to stick their nose in when they have no business doing so influencing Jackie Fisher to slash the fleet even though he could have kept the youngest Ironclad battleship on the foreign station until he could assign the pre-dreadnoughts to them while the battlecruiser fleet was being built which for the RN was their long term replacement for the Ironclad battleship on the foreign station operations

[@guestmatejek9029]

HMS Captain… a ship literally unbalanced with new turret technology. Great video Dr. Clarke.

[@Knight6831]

The primary problem for Hoche and the Ironclad battleship after her is they are an Ironclad battleship in the end times of the age of the Ironclad battleship and the beginning of the age of the pre-dreadnought battleships. Hoche was completed on New year's day 1890, the very same day Pre-dreadnought battleship Repulse is laid down and the British Empire is building pre-dreadnought battleships which ironically themselves are larger versions of the last generation of British Ironclad battleships

[@RedeyzMinecraft]

The whole idea of naval treaties just blows my mind, i mean its all just so insane when you think about it.... just rules about how countries are allowed to fight and kill each other... its just madness!

[@davidbriggs7365]

That's a problem with things written by Lawyers who are not experts within a given field, which is what they always are, unless you are talking able the law itself.

[@jbepsilon]

I don't really agree with that characterization. Fundamentally, the naval treaties weren't about specifying exactly how you should be allowed to kill each other, but rather an attempt to prevent a ruinous naval arms race. And in that they succeeded, arguably even too well considering the capital ship construction pause caused a hollowing out of the industrial base which arguably made the post-WWI economic slump even worse. And talking of specifying when and how one is allowed to kill others in wars, we've had a series of those too in the form of the various Hague and Geneva conventions. And I'd argue those have been good too, limiting collateral damage while not much limiting armies capabilities to beat each other up.

[@20chocsaday]

Rules about boxing held up very well.

[@RedeyzMinecraft]

@ yes your point about the Geneva convention is very relevant. But it still just seems wild to me that half of warfare seems to be based around economics. Thank you for your reply.

[@RedeyzMinecraft]

@@jbepsilon by the way I'm just a normal dumbass so I really do appreciate your explanation!

[@stuartwald2395]

Of course you need French hotel-battleships for the Jeune Ecole! You don't expect the crews to eat their brie and caviar on those little FAC's, do you? After a day's patrol, they need to pull up next to the bigger ship, hand the keys over to the valet (a good French-sounding word), and have a quality dinner and a good night's sleep.

[@ChandelordChandel-wi6hx]

5:29 As a Spaniard, I must say (in the historical context of the other unifications) that was a good joke

[@dvpierce248]

French 5D Chess: If all of our battleships have different capabilities nobody will know what to expect when they're fighting us!

[@christopher5723]

Say what you will about the more reactionary elements of the RN's senior leadership but atleast they prevented flights of fancy like this from taking root in the RN.

[@89volvowithlazers]

France from 1885 onward was not fighting anybody on the continent. Second the Europeans joined together 1900 to subdue China. France's Navy had to halt due to civilian leadership challenges and the need to patrol southeat asia and African holdings not to fight a modern counterpart from 1880 onward. Thus ship building is civilian econ issue. There was no need to be England or to replicate the royal fleet

[@DrAlexClarke]

Scuttlebutt 9...

[@jevinliu4658]

Uh... I honestly do not know how to respond to this