The Drydock - Episode 096

[@Drachinifel]

Pinned post for Q&A :)

[@Sky_Eden]

Shipbuidling, design, construction and naval budget during the Great depression ( 1929 to 1932 ) since corona is killing the economy

[@connormclernon26]

What if all of the Japanese submarines at Pearl Harbor were all replaced with I-400 type submarines along with aircraft. Would they get destroyed by ASW or could they have launched an attack on Washington DC?

[@iansadler4309]

RN interwar years - Destroyers were mostly commanded by "salt horses" (officers who had not specialised in (say) navigation, gunnery etc.) Only seaman branch could command vessels, Engineers and Supply couldn't. The other route to early command (and extra pay!) was in submarines.

[@Eric_Hutton.1980]

Battleship icebreaker. Wouldn't you basically have a monitor.

[@jeremywilson207]

Did the royal navy, or any other large navy during the age of sail ever use sail colours other than plain white?

[@PurpleChipz]

Somehow, I don't know how, everytime I fall asleep watching youtube videos,when I eventually wake up, I am always watching one of your videos lol

[@tomaszwota1465]

The Algorithm works in mysterious ways. I can relate. ;)

[@mgrzx3367]

Me too his voice is so wonderful to wake up to, even if I'm touching myself

[@tomaszwota1465]

@@mgrzx3367 okay, let me stop you right there...

[@michaelamos4651]

Me too . How strange .The world is now full of naval experts 😢

[@hopper1]

Drach should get, nay deserves, some sort of unique award from KZbin for his consistency on top of his already stunning accuracy. KZbin is awash with thumbnails designed to lure people in, people claiming to have a "video every Friday!" and they don't last more than a few weeks before disappearing completely. Yet, Drach is still cranking out quality content like a man possessed. Take a moment, admire the staggering amount of content Drach has produced, on a regular basis mind you, and thank your lucky stars that he's here for all of us ship nerds. S! Drachinifel. (a salute via us old pharte CFS2 pilots).

[@jean-francoisaubry]

Indeed

[@dropdead234]

Possessed by Iron Brew?

[@flattblackcopper4558]

Think he went from smoking iron brew to snorting it,just hope when he starts main lining the alixer. Content doesn't fall off dramatically...💉😏

[@jrhearron8946]

M bn

[@Chris-xl6pd]

@@dropdead234 It best be that 1901 stuff, the new stuff tastes like crap!

[@nicholashagen7239]

fell asleep n this is what i wake up to

[@roverboat2503]

Been there. Fell asleep to Drach, woke up hours later: still Drach.

[@patrickhorvath2684]

Same here..lol

[@Warentester]

I admit I use Drachs Voice to put me to sleep if I can't fall back asleep at night. Unfortunately I then sometimes get sucked into the topic waaay to much to sleep.

[@fareedosman2317]

This is me right now!

[@jeffreyhill1011]

Pretty sure it doesn't matter what I fall a sleep to, if it's not a playlist, from SoulsBorne content to early Republic Rome I still wake to Drach

[@michaelandersen5821]

Why do i keep waking up to this ? Like 2 hours and 52 mins into a QA of ships ? 😂 this algoritme really does strange things

[@brentmilender110]

heres a suggestion that will garner alot of interest: research ways that damaged merchant ships made port. some stories i've heard -a cargo of barage baloons used to reduce flooding, replacing a propeller at sea, draging doors using the cranes to steer, using a modified sea anchor to catch ocean currents like an under water sail, lashing a rudderless ship to an undameged ship. the merchant marine administrations should be full of interesting stories.

[@wicked_24k]

Bro I fell asleep and left my phone charging with KZbin premium so videos don’t stop and this is playing, I watched all eps till this one

[@73Trident]

Sunday morning Drydock and coffee, a great start to the day.

[@VintageCarHistory]

Sonar equipment is most definitely vulnerable to weather. Coming back from the Gulf War, the USS Barbey (a Knox class frigate- primarily built for anti-submarine warfare) hit a bad storm in the middle of the pacific. The ship rode a huge wave and then slammed down the other side- shattering the sonar dome. It took almost two weeks in Pearl to get it fixed enough to make home port.

[@colinwhaley244]

I could never understand the move the bow domes for sonar. They are very vulnerable and can loose signal when leaving the water or going high in it.

[@tomriley5790]

@@colinwhaley244 I think it's doing the best to keep it away from the propellor noise and the turbulent flow from the wake, in terms of weather though - Everything is vulnerable to the weather (given enough weather :-))

[@altoclef2688]

There's always the option to tow the array, but that comes with its own set of of problems. While great for reducing the impact of self-noise (and thus the hydrophone could be made more sensitive, and area of the baffles is reduced), extra time may be needed to resolve a contact due to inherent bearing ambiguity. This is because a detection will produce a true contact and 'mirrored' contact, and there is no way to know which one is the true contact without either correlating it with another sensor or turning the array (the contact that remains at the same bearing throughout the turn is the true contact'). Of course, due to hydrodynamics, the longer the wire towing the array, the longer it takes for the array to begin and complete the turn from when the ship initiates said turn.

[@charlesaugust8671]

I had not heard of another 26 sonar dome failure before. Back in the winter of 1980 the CG I was on also had sonar dome damage. Lets just say it was a REALLY bad storm between the US and Bermuda. Blew out the aft starboard section of the rubber window. The hull mounted low frequency sonars of the later 1950s through today are quite large and heavy. Original steel dome shells were replaced by a "rubber window" when research discovered rubber is acoustically transparent. The loss to structural integrity was negligible to the gain in sonar performance. The domes are placed as low and far forward in the hull as possible to separate them form the ship's machinery and hull flow noise. They aren't designed to act like a bulbous bow but there there is a slight effect due to the placement of the dome. Due to the weight of the array and the water filling the dome they are quite heavy and not prone to rising out of the water. If the sea state is bad enough they rise to the level of the surface, or beyond, well you aren't going to hear anything anyway in such conditions.

[@JTA1961]

I know nothing about this at all. However... we're in Hawaii... { take your time }📉😎📈

[@danielkarmy4893]

I've just discovered your channel - it's interesting that your dry-dock episode should have been number 96, at least on a personal note. My great-grandad was born on 12 January 1922, and had a long and fruitful career as a sailmaker at Portsmouth Dockyard (fruitful until he was forced to retire early with asbestosis, that is). It was quite apt that he worked in and around HMS Victory for forty years, because he was born on the same day that Victory went into dry-dock. He enjoyed a long, happy retirement, eventually taking his leave of this world at the age of 96...

[@admiraltiberius1989]

Always love your work Drach. That live stream earlier on Friday worked really well and it was enjoyable. As far as my question I asked on the livestream. If you took charge of the US navy as far as construction, R@D and other aspects. You'd have ALOT of political will backing you up. The President was a massive supporter of the Navy, he got two different Two Ocean expansion bills passed. So combine that with a 20 percent increase in the budget, you could accomplish alot. Like getting the Essex class started 2 to 3 years ahead of schedule. Starting the Gearing class 5 years early and by passing the Allen M Sumners entirely. You maybe could even get the Alaska class started or go really big and try for the Montana class. So as I said imagine 2 or 3 armored flight deck Essex classes at Coral Sea and Midway with 40mm and 5inch radar guided guns with VT fuses.

[@themadhammer3305]

On the Gearing point, if your skipping the Sumners would you also be skipping the Fletchers? Because if you have the Gearing design ready to roll out in 1940 the Fletcher class would not yet have started construction and I'd imagine having the 175 Fletchers and 58 Sumners instead completed as Gearings would be a very attractive option

[@admiraltiberius1989]

@@themadhammer3305 definitely produce the Fletchers, they are much cheaper. It would be I think 3 Fletchers to 1 Gearing.

[@joshuanethaway491]

My favorite early US navy joke! If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?

[@ringowunderlich2241]

Regress. Sorry its you, but I felt the need to spoil someones joke.

[@Alpostpone]

@@ringowunderlich2241 Progress and regress meeting together is congress.

[@Nick-rs5if]

@@ringowunderlich2241 History shows that regress and Congress aren't mutually exclusive.

[@davidmaccormack7067]

Snafu

[@johnd2058]

Mitch "Moscow" McConnell is doing a great job of progressing us to Marx's mass-unemployment as the final phase of history before the Revolution. (Speaking of dialects like re-/pro- > con-). Sorry, we're all crapping on your joke. What proof do you have of it originating in the Navy. ...man, I'm sorry we

[@AtomicBabel]

Saving this to savour at the end of a beautiful spring - summer day.

[@sarjim4381]

The original _Fletcher_ class also had problems with forward visibility. The bridge was low to begin with, being barely higher than the superfiring B turret. Visibility wasn't helped by the bridge windows just being a series of relatively small portholes. The bridge was raised slightly just before _Fletcher_ itself was laid down, but it was a source of complaints from the bridge crew for most of the war. The bridge wings were truncated to the bridge sides to give the AA guns a better arc of fire. The addition of twin 40 mm mounts just ahead of the bridge didn't help side visibility. the combination of truncated bridge wings and the forward AA guns were a big enough problem for underway refueling that several collisions and near collisions resulted. The original flying bridge was completely in the open, so it was a friendly place in heavy weather. Late war and postwar, the bridge was was successively raised and enclosed with large windows canted inward to help with downward and side visibility. The _Sumner_ class had many of the same issues made even worse by the larger twin 5"/38 turrets, and it was only the _Gearing_ class that more or less solved the problem with a bridge slightly higher, slightly set back from B turret, and angled off instead of rounded.

[@colinwhaley244]

In reality the helmsman does not need vision. Steering is done by command.

[@sarjim4381]

@@colinwhaley244 Right, but that's not the sole purpose of the bridge. Visibility for side maneuvering by the captain or XO is important, and someone needs enough aide and forward visibility to pass orders to the helmsman. Keeping track of aircraft executing a bow on attack, or a surface ship crossing your "T" is also kind of important. There were many reason why good visibility from the bridge was important other than just steering the ship.

[@slawbunnies3486]

You ever just fall asleep and let KZbin play? Well this is what I wake up to, 2 hours and 50 minutes in, amazing.

[@comeslittorissaxonici7395]

Snotties were more likely to be sent to bigger ships than destroyers in pre-WWI and WWI, one popular duty for them was running boats in harbour ("commanding" a Chief or senior PO as Cox'n, stoker, bowman and sternsheetsman), learning to handle the vessel, under the cox'ns tutelage, another popular task (at least with those delegating the task) keeping the the CBs (Confidential Books) up to date and dealing with the Notices to Mariners. At sea, probably it would be "watch on and stop on" until No 1/ "Jimmy the b@$tard" thought they were competent to stand a watch. At that date, destroyers were pretty short-winded. btw - the RN convention (at that date at least) is you served IN not ON a warship.

[@jamesm3471]

If there EVER was a Dreadnought that should have been saved as a museum ship, it should have been WARSPITE. They scrapped the entire first half of the 20th Century when they broke up the Grand Old Lady. What a tragic loss to history...

[@sarjim4381]

_Queen Mary_ had quite a heavy armament added during her refit in during January, 1942 in Boston. She was stripped of her sparse British armament except for two of the questionable Unrotated Projectile rocket launchers mounted near the aft funnel. The rumor is Churchill himself wanted the UP mounts retained, so orders were dutifully followed. Otherwise, she was outfitted along the lines of a merchant cruiser, albeit a very large merchant cruiser. She mounted four 6" guns, two forward and two aft, six 3"/50 DP guns singly mounted fore and aft, five twin 40 mm mounts sited along the superstructure, and rounded off with twenty-four 20 mm cannon mounted wherever space could be found in typical USN fashion. Unusually for a merchant cruiser, she was fitted with directors for all her guns excepting the 20 mm cannon. Roosevelt and Churchill both realized what a catastrophe the sinking of _Queen Mary_ would have been, both to the thousand of troops onboard and to British morale. She was actively hunted by German U-Boats and the German surface fleet, and escaped several close calls with shadowing U-Boats. _Queen Mary_ mostly relied on her speed to evade attack when sailing unescorted, but the Admiralty wanted her to have the ability to fight it out with attacking aircraft or surface ships if it came to that.

[@yourmanufacturingguru001]

Are you following the Queen Mary today? Good chance of being scrapped in place today due to its current state of condition. I dont see anyone dredging a channel out to remove her today. Cost and bark huggers big barriers.

[@RobinTheBot]

@@yourmanufacturingguru001 As sad as it is thru can't last forever. At some point we need to say goodbye and take the money from preservation to memorials. Our dear old Texas down america way is in the same boat (pun intended) and is getting a huge fix-up... but they don't even know where they'll put her next because the cost means her traditional dock is just not gunna make enough money to cover it. Might not even be in Texas.

[@yourmanufacturingguru001]

Robin Bot , U505 covered and dry is answer to all of these ships. You are correct they can't float forever so out of water with som form of cover only answer if they are to be preserved.

[@Aelvir114]

A little bit of fun stuff with the ocean liner question: For the case of them thinking they can travel without escort and that they could outrun subs and the subs wouldn’t be able to chase them down. The latter was done to SS Justicia. She torpedoed a few times, managed to escape, got chased down and torpedoed several more times before actually finally sinking. As for ocean liners being troop transports, funny they mention Olympic in the original question. Olympic was probably the most successful troopship of both world wars imo. Sure, Queen Mary transported more and has the largest carriage in a single voyage record for her WW2 service, but Olympic did sooo much, courtesy of her badass captain Bertram Fox Hayes. Olympic saved the survivors of the French ship SS Provincia which was torpedoed by a u-boat. While the Admiralty heavily criticized him for stopping in an active u-boat area to take on survivors, his valiant rescue of the survivors was commended by French Vice-Admiral Louis du Fournet and awarded him the Gold Medal of Honor. And let’s not beat around the bush, she sunk the u-boat U-103 by ramming her, owing to her astoundingly maneuverable turning to stroke the uboat with her stem, where it then tried to escape by diving as it was slowly pulled under but was caught in the suction of Olympic's propellers, which one sliced aft of her conning tower and that was curtains. It was such a feat that British Movietone's newsreel of her departing on her final voyage stated that she "sunk two enemy submarines". Even a news source in 1918 stated that she sunk THREE: one for when she opened fire at the surfaced uboat with her forward gun the second for the ramming, the third for when she fired her aft 4.7-inch gun as she sailed off away from the u-boat. Speaking of her guns, she was also the most heavily armed merchant ship of the war (maybe even WW2 but I don’t not know how armed WW2 Troopships were), early into her troopship service, when Hayes was assigned to her she had a 12-pounder forward and a 4.7-inch gun aft, then a year later, she received an additional armament of six 6-inch guns; two fitted on the forecastle deck, two in the forward well deck and two aft on the poop deck. She also had structural reinforcements completed to the decks to support the 6-inch guns’ weight and to cope with the force of their firing. Looks about as armed as a cruiser.

[@bificommander]

"Their knowledge of disease was no where near as detailed we understand it." Given that part of "we" think disease spreads through telephone towers...

[@michaelmoorrees3585]

Disease only comes from cell towers on a flat earth !

[@Sarcastro_78]

The Moon Nazis contracted the Lizard People to build the cell towers.

[@whitewolf1298]

You are over the target. Many indications point to the "Spanish flu" being due to the recent rollout of the radiation (radio) towers. Don't let all the trolls bother you.

[@davy1458]

Damn that 5g

[@SVPD-LR-114]

White Wolf lol

[@MichaelLlaneza]

I've toured the USS Hornet II, and I got to see the brig. It's 5 stacked bunks and barely enough floor space to get out of the bunk. It would absolutely suck to be confined in there. No room to turn over in bed, can't even lie on your side. I think you could deter a lot of misbehavior by just making sure every sailor has seen that space and understands just how much being in there would suck.

[@nathanokun8801]

Ideas for auto-loading big guns (from another discussion episode). The French (who else?) came up with part of an idea, this being a fast opening and closing "universal" breach end-cover, replacing the standard rotating interrupted screw or sliding breach block used by all modern breech-loading guns (depending on whether they used cartridge cases or not as the last things put in the gun). What the French naval gun designers did was take an obsolescent 13.4" gun and rebuild its base so that it had a vertical power-rotated pivot with heavily reinforced bearings and a large spherical fitting between them with an obturator (blast seal) on one or two opposite faces and a large hole through the sphere at right-angles to the obturators large enough to allow the shell and its propellant casing to be rammed (no cartridges unless they were completely burnable). The sphere would be rotated so that the hole faced the breech-end of the barrel, the shell and propellants would be rammed through the hole (I assume very quickly), the sphere would rotate 90 degrees to put the obturator against the opening of the breech, the gun would fire, the sphere would rotate 90 degrees to allow loading again. and so forth. Obviously some new way to ram the shell and propellant into the gun at high speed would be needed (not mentioned in the report), but if this could be done, you had a rather fast opening and closing breech block. Never went anywhere else, to my knowledge, but it was a new idea...

[@DanielWW2]

Drach, you do realise that the Dutch submariners where kinda angry at the Germans right? Arguably the last time the Dutch navy was that angry they went "swiggetly swooty, the Royal Charles is now our booty". The Germans got off easy. ;)

[@Drachinifel]

True, but there is anger expressed via kills and then there is hunting submarines with other submarines, which is also a remarkable feat of skill. :)

[@DanielWW2]

@@Drachinifel Sneaking and making one hit kills was a speciality for Dutch submarines. ;) The Dutch navy embraced the submarine as the core of its fleet right until Furstner became chief of staff. The Dutch navy, just like the army was quite German oriented in that period and the internal debate really was between submarine warfare against both merchant shipping, but mainly invasion fleets. The other side was Tirpitz his risk theory combined with surface anti merchant warfare. So basically exactly what Germany tried during WW2, before once again switching to submarines. Furstner was very much the Dutch navy is Raeder. Both outmanoeuvred and/or forced retirement upon most opposition, authoritarian tendencies including anti democratic political sympathies with far right and waisted their countries there already limited naval resources on a case of "bigger ship is better" syndrome. Can you tell I am not a fan or? :P But Furstner is behind the push for the pretty useless battlecruiser designs that where not supposed to be attacked by lets say, the Kongo's or air power. For air power, Karel Doorman was the main advocate and that is why Dutch carriers where named after him. Doorman also seems to have been leaning far more towards the submarine rather than the surface fleet. Thus he had to go on the Java Sea suicide mission without the submarines who where supposed to be there to sink stuff. I will just copy paste what I posed four weeks ago with some details added. It got swamped with the 5,5 hour drydock, but I don't really mind. :) First of all the Dutch navy had arguably better developed wolf pack tactics than the Germans. They had tactics for day (underwater) and night (above the surface and below). Main weapon was the torpedo to be fired from close range, thus going for accuracy and making every torpedo count. The deck gun was not emphasised. Reliance on central command on shore was also not emphasised. It could be done, but was not the main operating mode. Further Dönitz was lying about being the first to trial wolf packs in 1935 in Europe. The Dutch navy was experimenting already in the early 1930's in the Java sea. It was doctrine by 1934 manoeuvres of the Dutch coast. And yes, the Germans knew about it. Dutch wolf packs where supposed to be larger than German ones and rely heavily on aerial reconnaissance. That is for example why Dutch destroyers also carried reconnaissance planes. The surface fleet was supposed to be mainly a scouting force. The submarine was central and that is kinda unique for a 1930's navy. Short wave radio's where to deliver the information directly to the submarines and then they could go to the target. This while remaining submerged the whole time because the Dutch navy feared the developing ASW capabilities, especially aerial, and really took it seriously. This had its technical implications. Because of pessimism about survival rates for submarines attacking defended convoy's, especially against aircraft, the Dutch doctrine really emphasised a long, stealthy underwater approach at a depth of 30 meters. Dutch submarines had their periscopes installed quite high up so the boat could lay deeper in the water than for example a British one at periscope depth. The Dutch navy was calculating on 20 meters (from the keel) for the Java sea and 25 meters for other seas to be invisible from aircraft. Periscopes could not reach that, but the placement was intended to spend as little time as possible at periscope depth and then back to save depths. Thus Dutch submarines where designed to also launch torpedoes at 30 meters. Basically peek up after the approach under passive sonar guidance, calculate a trajectory, dive again and fire based on passive sonar at close range (1000 meters or less). Active sonar was present, but should only have been used when no other option existed. That was standing doctrine years before WW2 began. The oxygen used to launch the torpedo was also sucked back into the boat to prevent an air bubble from popping up, thus revealing the submarine its location. The submarines had German passive sonar systems from Atlas-Werke. Apparently the Germans also sold at least some early systems to the Japanese. In 1933 there was a trial where a Japanese submarine could track a destroyer at 10 nautical miles. Then O-16, 0-19 and O-21 class boats received the Gruppen-Horch-Gerät. That is dozens of nautical miles against convoys. Because the intended target where Japanese troop convoys, some coordination was considered necessary before the attack. Thus these boats also carried a short range, retractable radio antenna for communication between the boats at periscope depth. The range was variable. When sticking out 3.5 meters, range would be 40 nautical miles. At 1.5 meters it was just 10 nautical miles. Again, stealth reasons, both hearing communication but more importantly seeing the antenna from an aircraft. From 1939 a new antenna was introduced where the tip basically was a flexible antenna that would be pushed down when the submarine was submerged and spring up when the antenna was above water. That antenna being invisible to see from both the surface and not leaving a trail that can be seen from the air. The snuiver was part of doctrine, but not really that important. Because the expectation about enemy ASW was so pessimistic, it was intended that the boats remained under water throughout the day. Then they also had to close in for hours on a convoy and that was draining the batteries. Thus snuiver to run on diesels under normal patrol usage and switch to batteries when needed and dive to 30 meters. Again, intended because of fears of aircraft. This was the early 1930's we are talking about. Years ahead of the curve. Source: Jaap Anten, Navalisme nekt de onderzeeboot. Yea, you might understand like 5% of the content. To bad, because it is a very good, 800+ page book about the Dutch interwar period its navy. Now Drach, imagine the Japanese with their limited ASW capabilities, finding themselves up against a force that basically was intended to successfully attack against mid war British ASW capabilities. Now that would have made the Battle of the Java Sea all the more interesting. Yes, you are allowed to giggle a little bit an the thought of the Dutch submarines launching coordinated attack after coordinated attack against the Japanese invasion fleet and just picking them off one by one. :D They might have saved Singapore by just sinking everything Japanese, if a large part of the force was actually present in late 1941. So when I hear about them sinking a German submarine I think, "nice party trick". The Dutch submarine arm never really got to demonstrate what they truly where capable off. They never got to concentrate and being put under RN control arguably was a downgrade for their capabilities. A grouping of them with a reconnaissance squadron could have really caused havoc in the early stage of the pacific war against Japanese troop convoys.

[@Deccra]

@@DanielWW2 i am not gonna read that comment but thank you

[@Trollmasta101]

Hey man I just wanna say your videos are real great to sleep on. No nonsense random noises it’s chill

[@CanuckWolfman]

I live in hope that, some day, one of Drach's Interludes will be preceded by a discussion of Typhoon Cobra, leading to him introducing the break with "And now... the weather."

[@wallymorgan2524]

Thg hi

[@wallymorgan2524]

Thg hig

[@RJYeates]

7hx3r

[@RJYeates]

@@wallymorgan2524 r c

[@classifiedad1]

I'd argue the Midway-class carriers are a good runner-up to the whole "20th century capital ships," as while they may not have served in any world war, the Midways gave very useful service as front-line capital ships for a very long time. Of course, probably won't upstage the Queen Elizabeths, but a worthy runner up.

[@BaronBunny-fb2vp]

About improving on large german(i.e. Narvik-type) and french(i.e. Le Fantasque-type) destroyers that were significantly(talking 1000t more fully loaded) larger then their contemporaries, I think Drach missed the point of question. So I'll try to answer it instead. Let's get one thing first. Destroyers are universally unarmoured. Indeed they have certain element of structural integrity, but a single 5in shell hit near boilers puts a destroyer out of commission disregarding how big it is. Putting more guns, or somewhat bigger guns, would not provide decisive advantage. Some advantage will be there, for sure, but bulding large unarmoured ships to dominate smaller unarmoured ships is just an exercise in furtility. Now, large destroyers truly had advantage over their smaller cousins. Large size gave a lot more room for additional equipment to be installed, and still have some room left for the extra crew manning that equipment. Such "upgradeability" is extremely important factor and the reason why destroyers got larger and larger. By pre-war standards 2500t destoyer fully loaded was considered destroyer leader. During the war all relevant players built 2500t destroyers in great numbers and no one called them leaders, they were the new standard. Fitting all the new and necessary equipment required that much space. For more colourful example, let's take a Fletcher. It is a child of Porter and Sommers, further development of a large destroyer, and no one questions Fletcher's success. Returning to the question of how to improve 3500t+ destroyers to be destroyer hunters they were imagined as, I think the only real solution is armour. I recon slapping 2in belt over machinery would really do much more then bigger guns or a pair of extra ones in becoming the undisputed top dog of destroyer dogfight. And it's not going to take that much of weight all things considered. Something like 35 knots, six 5in guns, 6 centerline torpedo tubes with 2in belt over machinery would still be as agile as other destroyers and would definitively fit in Le Fantasque displacement with a bit of extra space for future improvements, talking mid to late 1930s tech level. No one ever tried to armour up their DDs or build such micro-CLs though. At that period everyone thought that cruisers would be the main force clearing up destroyers. 2in armour is barely enough to stop destroyer shell, there is no way to stop cruiser shells so why bother. War showed completely different picture with destroyers pulling well above their weight and the only effective counters to DDs being airstrikes and ironically other destroyers, by no means cruisers. Cruisers, especially heavy cruisers, universally had lackluster performance in WWII for all the hype they built up in interbellum.

[@gazzmilsom]

Reminds me of why I like the British C class of WW1. They are small, fast and ultimately expendable enough to go around beating up destroyers. They even look a bit like massive destroyers I guess the theory of "light" cruisers didn't work at 10000 tons, they became too valuable to lose and so sometimes too valuable to use.

[@bamafan-in-OZ]

How you express your opinion of Beatty is always so entertaining.

[@spikespa5208]

And if Beatty were alive in today's legal environment, possibly actionable. LOL

[@f-xdemers2825]

To be perfectly honest,, incredible work. Thanks.

[@UNSCrearadmiral]

For the brig, I have some experience with this one For example the brig can be used when a sailor or passenger commits a crime on shore on foreign soil as a form of extradition. And will be kept there until he receives formal charges from the country or port in which he committed the offense. It’s also used for enemy POWs as a place in which to hold a possible hostile entity to the ship. The pow is generally the more common in times of war. A brig is supposed to be used as a form of jail in which holding is temporary and where if the prisoner is a crewman then he will be held until his misdeed can be reviewed by a senior officer or the captain. Or as a specific place to hold drunk sailors after shore leave 😂

[@UNSCrearadmiral]

To clarify I never ended up in the brig but we did have the captain of the ship I was embarked on and our commanding officer have to argue extradition of one of our guys and he spent the next two months of our voyage in the brig...

[@robertblake1032]

I was watching the video on either the Bismarck or one on firepower and you included a photo of Fred Dubnor the Steamer from the 1980s, 90s did great work as a SteepalJack and was a hobbiest steamer and public Icon. Started doing BBC TV Presenter of the Canal System, the Industrial Revolution, etc. I never realized that the British ruled the World. Wonderful Man.

[@benwilson6145]

Fred Dibnah

[@hanslenk9603]

I am propably late, but a comment to the 9.4" guns on germen predreadnoughts: According to Paul Schmalenbach in his history of the german naval artillery, another reason they switched down to 9.4" from their previous 11" guns was that at this time, the first rapid firing guns were introduced, but the germans were only able to build this fast firing guns in calibres up to 9.4 inch - they thus had the choice between the somewhat outdated 11" and a brand new type of 9.4", and following their doctrine, they went with the 9.4" guns

[@ronaldfinkelstein6335]

About flooding high up on a ship-Archerfish, under Joe Enright, fired her torpedoes at the super carrier Shinano, set shallow, to do just that. And it worked.

[@bravooz852]

i sleept and forgot i had the autoplay and woke up knowing facts about boats.

[@linnharamis1496]

Thanks- this Drydock was both entertaining and informative - as always.👍👍

[@jayfelsberg1931]

Keep in mind that the Liberty ship program itself was largely of British origin. The concept was taken from the British order for 60 Ocean class merchantmen with Todd Shipyards in California and Maine, the latter being built in basins, a new concept in the US. A British coal-fired VTE engine was built in the US and Canada. Eighteen were sunk during the war and eight lost to accident. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship

[@AndrewPalmerMTL]

Regarding releasing someone from "the brig" in action: would other considerations perhaps be (a) the need to spare other crew to monitor the "jailed" person, thus taking them away from a useful action station as well and/or (b) the risk of the ship sinking, which would leave anyone actually locked up condemned to drowning, which is probably an extreme punishment for whatever they are held to have done. On the latter, this is alluded to in Alistair MacLean's "HMS Ulysses", which given his background and the semi-autobiographical nature of the novel would suggest it may be something he actually encountered, if perhaps not as "dramatically".

[@drewmiller6166]

i believe the u.s,m.c.j. covers this ... if in custody you stay that way regardless. from my pesonal experience here in the southeastern u.s., inmates stay under lock and stock . under no circumstance are the 'allowed out' . the jailers could watch you burn alive and wouldnt let you out. your tough luck.

[@thomaslinton1001]

"The Blue Riband (/ˈrɪbənd/) is an unofficial accolade given to the passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean in regular service with the record highest speed. The term was borrowed from horse racing and was not widely used until after 1910.[1][2] Traditionally, the record is based on average speed rather than passage time because ships follow different routes.[3] Also, eastbound and westbound speed records are reckoned separately, as the more difficult westbound record voyage, against the Gulf Stream and the prevailing weather systems, typically results in lower average speeds." A nuclear submarine would have no fuel issues and can cruise well north of thirty knots. That Soviet "one of" did better than 44 knots underwater decades ago.

[@vespelian5274]

Alpha, Project 705 were the Soviet boast. No problem speed wise but passenger capacity would be both basic and limited.

[@stevek8829]

There all time winner and still champion: SS United States.

[@benwilson6145]

Fastest crossing's is by the Australian built Hoverspeed Great Britain, then Catalonia and finale Cat Link V

[@LordOceanus]

Pushin in on episode 100 boys and girls! Knowing Drach he is going to do something big like answer 100 questions for it.

[@billbrockman779]

Well, this will take up a decent part of the weekend.

[@obliteron]

Me every weekend 😂

[@captainswoop8722]

Wheelhouse position. I served on a Rothesay Class which had the Wheelhouse below the bridge, there was one small 'porthole' more for letting in light then looking through. On the Leanders the wheelhouse was way down on deck 3, deep in the ship. In action of course, a modern ship is conned from the Ops Room, not the Bridge.

[@jadeekelgor2588]

In the Brig?! Lol During the Gulf War I was sent ashore by order of the State Dept. I ended up in London at the embasy "recuperating". When I finialy made it back to my ship my Capt had me charged for missing movement. It didn't help when I referanced the Carrier I was put on after I was shot. He simply explained that the DoS had "no naval protocol to remove a member of my crew". It was nonsense since HIS superior approved the DoS request for me to go work for them ashore. I descided at that time to change my rating (job). Yep, a peacetime Capt during wartime is a Capt waiting to assert authority.

[@nospampleasemam]

Ksiuah tu tibm

[@trevorjones2523]

I just woke up to find that I have stumbled on this why I was sleeping

[@Milo_1368]

Drach, your content is amazing. Especially for long trips

[@erikgranqvist3680]

You should do a special about the Psilander affair from 1940. Sweden bought a couple of Italian destroyers and sailed them home. They eventually got them to Sweden, but not before a few turns and twists due to poor comunication within the Brittish navy. It is quite interesting and somewhat telling in how caotic the early war was.

[@jonathan_60503]

Two random thoughts about the Blue Riband. One the SS United States was apparently , according to the book 'A Man and His Ship : America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S. S. United States' under orders not to use her full power in the crossings; and so might have been able to manage a crossing closer to 40 knots than the approximately 35 knots of her actual Riband winning run. But she was specially built and furnished with an eye to keeping the displacement down to let her massive engines really shine. Second the range issues of a warship attempting to better a liner at a high speed transatlantic crossing had an almost perfect mirror several decades later with the Concorde airliner. There were a number of military aircraft that could fly faster, but most fighters could keep up for less than half an hour before the fuel hungry afterburner needed to keep pace depleted their fuel and they'd have to slow and return to base. Even the earlier SR-71 Blackbird, while around 50% faster, had a shorter unrefueled range!

[@Feiora]

That Tillman design looks tasty... I see LOTS of room for improvements, additional firepower, insane AA mounting space, torpedoes, and plenty of room for new and improved guts. If Congress had approved of this then there'd be some sort of stipulation for funds to be set aside to refit these Tillmans as the need arises as well as funding to build a drydock capable of refitting them when it comes time to do so. The Navy wouldn't be so stupid to let the opportunity slip past for more money to do things during this time, especially if say the ship construction order is staggered so that one Tillman is built at a time, meanwhile to money thats to fund the whole Tillman project gets syphoned into other projects as much as possible without disrupting the Tillman project too much, maybe one less Tillman than is stated in the original plan outline, or a bold face lie to Congress that there was an problem with one of the TIllmans and the funds ran out fixing it and asking "nicely" for some more funds to finish the final Tillman... This assumes a drydock for these behemoths was built first of course, but hey look at this way any drydock capable of holding a Tillman would definitely hold any other ship with the appropriate bracings in place...

[@pittsburghwill]

i have always been under the impression that the Panama Canal Zone was possibly the most defended place on the planet second only to Gibralter would like to hear more on this subject thank you

[@colinwhaley244]

Flying flags from a jackstaff/bow. Ships fly a flag from the bow to denote that they are anchored or alongside and not underway. This is an important navigation aid for other ships going near to your ship in restricted waters, ie where one can anchor. They will not expect you to drift with the tide but your ship will swing. Warships naturally fly nationally unique flags. The jack is dropped when the anchor leaves the sea bed on recovery or when all the warps have been taken in or cast off when leaving a jetty etc. The Nations ensign or Naval flag is flown from the mainmast when underway and from the stern when anchored or alongside also to denote they are not underway.

[@benwilson6145]

Several errors. There is no flag to denote being at anchor. (a) A vessel at anchor shall exhibit where it can best be seen: (i) in the fore part, an all-round white light or one ball; (ii) at or near the stern and at a lower level than the light prescribed in sub-paragraph (i), an all-round white light. Not sure what a Nations flag is, However in a foreign port the Flag of of the Country is flown from the highest yard and on the furthest Starboard hoist, The Ships own national flag is flown at the stern.

[@johnshepherd8687]

The Midshipman's book lives on in the US Navy for officers working on their SWO or Submarine qualification. The F4U was the best carrier fighter of the war and arguably the best overall fighter of WWII. The Fleet Air Arm eventually receive the F4U-1D which out performed the Seafire even with the Griffen engine. I don't think the Fleet Air Arm ever received the -4 but I believe the RAN did. The -4 was the among the fastest fighter aircraft of WWII that was produced in large numbers. The post war -5 was the fastest single seat piston fighter ever to see service in large numbers. It was the first true strike fighter.

[@icarusDaBoi]

The Hellcat outmaneuvered and outlanded it, and required less takeoff room. The F4U was a good fighter, but the Hellcat was a better carrier fighter.

[@johnshepherd8687]

@Raging S By the time the RN arrives in the Pacific the F4U's carrier qual problems were solved and by the time the -4s arrive Corsairs are flying off of US Decks. Had the USN shown a little more inginuity and perseverance the Corsair would have made it to carrier service by the end of 1943. The Fleet Air Arm was already flying Corsairs off of CVEs. The F6F was a stop gap fighter as the initial failure of the F4U to qualify left a void. The F8F was really a contemporary of the the -5 which was superior to the bearcat. That's why the F8F was retired first.

[@jamesfisher4326]

@@johnshepherd8687 While the F4U was a fine fighter, the F6F also was and was not a stop gap. A competition between the F4U-5 and F8F-1 would have depended largely on the altitude. The F4U-5 was optimized for higher altitudes by its engine while the F8F-1 engine was optimized for low altitudes. Below 20,000 feet the F8F-1 would have enjoyed the advantage with superior maneuverability and rate of climb. Above 20,000 the F4U-5 would have been at an advantage. The F4U outlasted the F8F because of its usefulness as a ground attack plane not it's ability as a fighter. That role had been taken over by jets.

[@lukerettie]

With stories of Submarine warfare achievements there is also the case of HMS Venturer, a Royal Navy submarine that to date has the only official kill of a submerged submarine by a submerged submarine and this before the development of the equipment needed to work out target solutions for torpedoes in a 3-dimensional plane. The Commanding Officer had to do a lot of mathematics himself to score that one. Also, in World War 1 there was a Royal Navy submarine commander who managed to get his boat through the Dardanelles, sank an Ottoman heavy Cruiser and got back out. I think he was Lieutenant Holbrooke at the time, maybe Lieutenant Commander.

[@iansadler4309]

Dunbar-Naismith, probably. Three tours in the Marmora, 80 vessels sunk, severely damaged the cruiser Peyk-i Şevket, and sank the pre-dreadnought battleship Barbaros Hayreddin. His !st Lieutenant, Guy D'Oyley-Hughes, landed and blew up a section of the railway to Baghdad (yes, the one who had Glorious sunk under him). Got into Constantinople harbour twice and attacked shipping there.

[@lukerettie]

@@iansadler4309 I did not know about Dunbar-Naismith, very impressive record though.

[@piney4562]

@@iansadler4309 I think it is hard to blame anybody for losing a carrier under the circumstances of HMS Glorious. She was pretty much just ferrying land based aircraft, and hardly equipped to deal with two battleships within range.

[@derekrohan9619]

Who knew a video series like this exists, pretty cool. Just found it and have only watched two videos and I have always been fascinated by warships and tactics.. how does this guy know so much about this?

[@nicolaswynkoop]

Bro everyone knew. 1.2M views for a 3.5 hr video!

[@hazchemel]

the picture showing early, HMS Benbow, looked deadly and beautiful, thanks

[@nathanokun8801]

Concerning the BISMARCK's protective tubes between the lower primary armored deck (with the sloped edges) and the fire-control stations located high on the superstructure for controlling the main 15" guns. These tubes existed for all three systems used. Interestingly, they were rather thinly armored (100mm/4", I think) using a non-cemented form of KC (no Harveyized surface layer as was used in most KC-type armors, including the side armor of BISMARCK), probably as they were not for hits by heavy shells but for fragments, blast, and small-caliber (up to maybe 6" guns) glancing hits. Cementing a thin surface layer was not worth the trouble. The cable problem you mention is because they ran the cables on the underside of the main armored deck (I assume spaced a small distance below the armor by the supports), but this was interrupted by British hits on the deck that bent it down or made a slot in the deck, probably not even fully penetrating, that cut the cables. They may have had problems with all of these cables below that very low armored deck.

1:27:30 6-gun turrets.... I need this in my life, NOW!

[@sarjim4381]

I'm an NHS patient living in the US. I normally get a monthly delivery of my meds, and they arrive about 6 days after being shipped through Royal Mail. My last delivery took slightly less than a month! I got an extra delivery at the start of this mess in March, and that enabled me to have enough medication to make it to the much delayed delivery, although just barely. Since I have COPD and asthma, some of these medications keep me out of the emergency room. I suppose I could have gone to an urgent care clinic here and gotten some of the items, but some would have been coming from England or India anyway, and I'm sure there still would have been a delay, not to mention paying three or four times the small amount I normally pay. This global lockdown has caused way more problems than many people realize. I hope we're less hysterical about things like this in the future.

[@alganhar1]

Exactly when are we supposed to get Hysterical? We going to have to sit there and try and determine how deadly the disease is before we institute procedures to slow/stop the spread? Because if we do, then by the time we start acting it will be too damned late. Disease organisms spread like wildfire in the modern world because of the speed of transportation and the mobility of the general populace. A bug like Spanish Flu could kill 4 - 5 times more people today than it did from 1917 - 1920 because of that increased mobility. Given how closely humans are encroaching on wild organisms these days, expect this sort of thing to INCREASE, not decrease. Cross species jumps are rare but hardly unheard of (spanish flu was an avian flu for example). Covid-19 has turned out to be a relatively minor bug, but there IS a big one waiting in the wings, it is not a case of if it will happen but WHEN. Outbreaks like this need to be used to enable those in power to plan and prepare for that big one. Failure to act fast enough in that case will lead to a death rate that would make Black Death look like a minor blip. People tend to be lulled into a false sense of security because of the wonders of modern medicine. Perhaps Covid will teach people a lesson, that it takes a year to *rush* a new vaccine into production for example, and that is RUSHING it. Hollywood tends to suggest this is done in a matter of weeks or even days, oh look, we have mapped out the genome, BANG, vaccine. Real world does not work like that. Currently there are around 80 seperate teams working on a Vaccine for Covid-19, all using different methods. Expect AT LEAST 90% of those to fail, either because they do not work or because there are potentially dangerous or unacceptable numbers of side effects..... An unknown disease is a VERY real threat, Virologists, bacteriologists and Pandemic specialists have been trying to tell people that for decades, literally decades. A disease organism is NOT something you want to underestimate, if you do then the death toll could be in the tens of millions rather than the hundreds of thousands.....

[@AdamMGTF]

@@alganhar1 given the massive global over population. That's just nature balencing things out. I say this as someone who is heavily immunosuppressed. I thought it interesting that Hollywood changed the ending in Dan browns novel about the plague that would drop the population 🤔 Anyway. Sar Jim. God bless the NHS. I'd be in a wheelchair or dead now without it

[@klcs77]

As someone in the states that does a fair amount of shipping with USPS they have been all over the place with how long it takes them to get packages delivered since really right around the time we started to lock down do to covid there has also been some kind of unstated hold on international mail even to and from Canada and Mexico things have started to improve but it is still a little spotty don't know if you will see this but that has been my experience over the last few months

[@flak1939]

Me on other youtube channels: "I wish they'd put out more content" Me on Drach's channel: "Please god stop no no no more drydock questions stop answering them"

[@IanSinclair77]

How dare you sir!?

[@rafgulas6032]

The way someone from the US Navy explained it, the punishment for insubordination could be confinement to the brig for three days with only bread and water. The intent was to induce severe constipation via the bread (no fiber). This was a voluntary punishment instead of a trial or formal hearing.

[@ianbaker1279]

The flare on on guns, it seems to me, are for ease of loading in the heat of battle. It would act as a funnel to aid loading the powder,wadding, shot and ramming time. Great vids Drac.

[@eddirkse9252]

not the bore is flared, only the outside of a barrel.

[@ianbaker1279]

@@eddirkse9252 Thanks for the info.

[@Thirdbase9]

During WWII when the US Navy picked a name out of the New York City phone book for its next Destroyer name, they offered command to that person.

[@mahmudhasan3093]

I was thinking i was the only one but after waking up i see this video is playing lol. even more funny that a lot of guys had the same thing haha

[@shadow7037932]

I love spending Sundays listening to this, drinking a nice Scotch and playing some games.

[@davidmaccormack7067]

Puts me to sleep esp nights,don't mean that as a criticism, means l can listen x3 times 😑 [e-mail]

[@murrayscott9546]

The Cutty Sark, when I had the fortune to tour it 1990 hadda magnificent collection of figure-heads, below-decks not to mention the one on her prow.

[@eddierudolph7694]

I highly enjoyed the Livestream from Friday and hope it is continues.

[@whiskeytangosierra6]

My Father rode the Queen Mary to war in Europe. He was quite impressed with the size and speed, despite the obvious crowding. He did not return on such a ship, and his only remark I recall was that the less said about the return trip the better.

[@TraditionalAnglican]

WhiskeyTango Sierra - Mine sailed over on “The Queen” - He also didn’t like talking about the return trip, as he had a Del Gesú Guarnerius Violin that he had found in the ruins of the Vienna Musikverein stolen from him (He actually had played it for a mixed crowd of American 3rd Army & Soviet Red Army in the gutted out Hall) by someone who threw it into his attic when he got home (He didn’t know how to play it). The violin had belonged to a Jewish violinist who died in the death camps. His family & the Israeli government had to fight our government to retrieve it from the man who stole it from my father.

[@whiskeytangosierra6]

@@TraditionalAnglican That is quite a story.

[@myparceltape1169]

A method of return travel I have heard of was to sit on the longitudinal bench installed in the bomb bay of a bomber. He would have had plenty friends to keep him company.

[@dwightehowell8179]

About what Drach said about Battleships. I can't disagree for most of the planet but along the North coast of the Soviet Union things were different. If you are going to move at all having an armored hull that can survive ramming sea ice can prove to be more or less vital because there is going to be a lot of sea ice for at least half the year. The Black Sea has winter ice issues as well.

[@danielscheurwater2466]

About cannons intended to sink ships around 1500, it wasn't unusual to have big cannons to damage them. This wasn't the main strategy as you said. The first who tried to make a strategy of sinking ships by cannons(as much as strategy was made at that point, it is more an idea a lot of people in the navy had) were actually(as far as I am aware) the British around 1580. They concentrated heavy Culverins in their ships to destroy enemy ships, but after the Armada of 1588 concluded this was a lot harder then they thought and the notion that was possible is dropped until the first war with the Dutch 80 years later. The source for my info is Nicholas Rodgers Safeguard of the Sea, a nice overview for the English navy up to 1650. Btw, your pronounciation of the Dutch submarine is about as good as one can expect from someone who doesn't speak the language, small note, the letter a is pronounced as it is the 2nd A in America, make that sound a bit longer and you have a Dutch aa.

[@WildBillCox13]

My understanding was that early war Active (i.e.: "Pinging") SoNAR/ASDIC was very short range. 100-500m on either side of the owning ship. Hydrophones, on the other hand, were able to hear quite some distance, depending on sea state. A submarine near the surface was effectively invisible to wartime SoNARs, or so I thought. Additionally, SoNAR listening was useless above 9 or 10nts speed, due to the sound of the owning ship's passage through its fluid medium. The Hippers were installed with SoNAR, but fat lot of good it did them.

[@niclasjohansson4333]

In the battle of DS the PE did detect the torpedo, or torpedoes fired from Hood (just before she blow up), both German ships turned to evaded the tinfish....

[@M_Mccarney]

It may also be that the flaring at the end of cannon barrels is to help counter the weight of the 'breech' (or at least the rear of the cannon in the case where a breech is not present). This would make it easier to adjust the elevation.

[@sergarlantyrell7847]

The Kaiser's empire was indeed small, infact it merely consisted of a small sausage factory in Tanganiki.

[@LupusAries]

Don't forget the Brewery in Tsingtau (today Quingdao), still running and the beer still being enjoyed after more than a hundred years..... And yeah having tested it, it's quite good. 😉

[@zdenekoldrichmarek2867]

Respected SIR. Pleasse note that Bismarke had a second heavy armoured decking under the upper outside armoured deck.The highest German officer to survive an Eingineering officer did mention that the total zone beneath the second lower armoured deck,which if my memory serves me correctly had an angled structure some many meters wide running parralel to the full length of the ships hull sides with the armoured hull itself.Further the Engineering officer did state with conviction that the lower armoured deck recieved no penetrations and the atmosphere beneath that decking was very quite and the crew working there heard virtually nothing of the battle going on outside.He thus then stated that the Bismarck was sunk by the German Demolition charges and not the Royal Navy. My father worked for Schneider French Engineering Organisation from France and he was involved in trying to solve the Prince of Wales Vickers ships mechanical directoring of the 10 main Guns. As a very young boy after the war I seem to remember that because the English Engineers treated all Foreign Engineers as lower quality father a Czechoslovak with the other European Engineers were left behind ashore when Prince of Wales Sailed to meet the Bismarck only with English Engineers,So the Prince of Wales ended up sailing with only 8 main guns working and it was obvious that had the whole international team of engineers sailed it was likely that the whole fire control could have been corrected. The P.of.W. had two director positions one in the main command tower and the optical/mechanical director turret was in front of the command tower and another combined turret was just behind the rear 4main gun turret.the connection was wires? straight down below the decks to the control room(CAN NOT REMBER NAME) probably where Radar,Radtio,Asdic,Depth sounders etc were,deep down in ship.I presume a repeater for the guns was up in the Captains Tower aswell as down in Control Room? NB Probably less horizontal cable link than in Bismarck?JUST TO LET you know that the Engineers from the captured nations were all treated with much lower pay and not offered proper engineering status.The Engineers from France,Belgium,Holland,Norway,Luxemburg could go home and get their status back but the Czechoslovaks,Polish could not because the communists mistrusted them.So a lot of opportunities were lost buy the English attitudes towards the Allies even Canada and the USA with France had to deal with the English bigotry!. JUST THOUGHT THIS SHOULD BE KNOWN BEFORE I DIE .Thankyou.

[@VintageCarHistory]

Another great Drydock - and on my birthday no less! Thank you for the present, Drach!

[@benconway9010]

One question?.......the picture you showed of the 3 Navy officers walking On a grass bank carrying a bin of some sort? In the top left corner there's a ocean liner? Is that the Olympic?

[@stefanpajung113]

Regarding using battleships as icebreakers - the Germans used the obsolete pre-dreadnought Schleswig-Holstein as an auxillary icebreaker in the Baltic during the winter months of 1941-44, as she had a reinforced bow.

[@dbudelsky]

Why were Goeben and Breslau in the Med and not the Far East? => The reason was the Albania chrisis of 1912. Austria-Hungary wanted to prevent Serbia from occupying Albania during the first Balcan War. A conference in London declared the founding of an independent Albanian state under a German prince. For the military protection of that treaty before an Albaniean military got effective, a "neutral" British-German naval force was founded under British command. While the British sent a squadron of a little obsolete armoured cruisers (The ones who should, but did not intercept Breslau and Goeben on their way to the Dardanelles), Kaiser Wilhelm sent the newest and most impressing force he could to show German naval might (as stated by Drach correctly). The deployment therefor had a good reason, but the selection of the ships was megalomania.

[@rooksfoot1184]

"What went wrong with Operation Wikinger? " sounds like an episode! (2046 maybe.... but a good story, nonetheless)

[@boreasreal5911]

That Wittelsbach pronounciation was perfect. I'm actually suprised

[@Mosquitobomber1]

Yeah, i noticed that too, has he been practicing in secret??

[@Griz1231]

Barrel flare comes from the difference between casting and a forged or machined barrel. In a cast barrel, the muzzle cools faster than other parts of the barrel making it a bit more brittle. Forging or machining a barrel doesn't introduce that weakness so the flare is no longer required.

[@calvingreene90]

When your ship is fighting for its life you can trust a man that understands that the ship surviving maximizes his survival to fight for the ships survival.

[@WildBillCox13]

I was "restricted to the ship", rather than further confined. My offense? smoking Marijuana . . . in the early 1970s. Fun fact: my fall from grace was sparked by spending time with members of the Navy Band. I was a newb and they wanted to teach me how to party. Now, it's almost 50 years later (48 to be exact) and I salute my captain's relaxed penalties. They got a lot of useful work* out of me by leaving me remain aboard. I also spent a few hours in the Brig at Gitmo . . .for grabassing with other idiots "in a suspicious manner". That was a regular jail, run by Marines. I got awful bored waiting for them to straighten it out. *Filing a hodgepodge of ShipAlt forms detailing every modification and repair the ship had as yet endured into a numerical certainty from SA 000,001 to subjective infinity. A half million of them. An absolutely necessary job nobody wanted. That moved me from the Engine Room to a nice office on O deck for my 8 hour shift. Love ya, Skipper.

[@potterendergaming5335]

Lindybeige,Drachinifel and Dr Clarke all on the same day what could be better!

[@Ye4rZero]

Just found this channel in my suggestions.. haven't seen a video with this much work put into it for a long time. Thhx

[@Grantthetruthteller]

Nimitz class aircraft carriers have published speed of 35 mph (which knowing the government, is probably quite understated for security reasons). The winner, in my humble opinion however is the Soviet submarine K222 with a top speed of 51 mph. Being nuclear both types of ships obviously have adequate fuel to make the crossing....and then some.

[@michaelhart7569]

Yeah. Surprised this escaped him.

[@larrymcgraw8469]

At 3hr 14min the bell shape on the old cannons was to reduce the cracking from gas pockets and slag inclusions because they were cast in the vertical position and these impurities would rise during the cooling period.

[@tamlandipper29]

No idea if true, but neat concept. Could one then cool differentially keeping the upper part hot longer, drawing impurities up further?

[@larrymcgraw8469]

@@tamlandipper29 Metal casting back then was done by forming the sand cavity below grade. Gun size was at the limit of casting metal batch size. All of the metal in a gun had to be pored at the same time. When they shifted to steel it could be kept molten for a longer time and the gases and slag had more time to rise to the top and be removed from the molten metal during the reduction of carbon from the iron. Look up steel ingot casting and the use of "Hot Top" casting flasks.

[@joeottsoulbikes415]

The question of how you become a captain/commander of a ship reminds me of my time in the Marine Corp. I made rank fast but I would have 1. had to become an officer through one of the three ways you can do that from enlisted. 2. Performed well enough/stayed in long enough to become at least a Brigadier General and as a Marine there was only one class of ship you could cammand and not be an aviator. That being the Wasp class amphibious assault ships as either the CO or XO with the other command position having to be a Navy Aviator of at least the rank of Captain. Most all of those have been retired. Now that the America class is replacing Wasp and Tarawa class and they carry a large complement of fixed wing air craft you have to be an aviator or naval flight officer of the rank of Brigadier General or higher to CO or XO the ship opposite a Naval Officer. Marines highest ambitions are usually limited to command of the on board MEU, BLT, CLB or LCE.

[@kemarisite]

Thing about submarine torpedoes is that, until you have electric torpedoes, the wake gives away the direction of the sub for escorts to attack. I'd make sure the I-400s had the capacity to lay mines and go to town with those off the Panama Canal and major West Coast port exits at the start of the war.

[@Uncommoner]

One thing to consider in the discussion of 16inch vs Bismarck is that since the 16" would do more damage and thus sink Bismarck quicker it MIGHT have convinced the crew to abandon ship and thus spare a lot of the crew that were killed during the pummeling and sinking

[@joeblow9657]

"That is somewhat of negative modifier for a battleship to issue pain an destruction" Lol Drach

[@seafreedom334]

A long time ago, when I was an MOD engineering apprentice, I was given the job of preparing a large number of pressure sensing devices for a trial. The trial was to determine the effectiveness of a land artillery style muzzle brake on the 4.5 mk8 auto-loading naval gun, then under development. It took me several days to prepare the devices, mark a grid on the concrete test battery apron and then set all the devices in place on the grid intersections. We then retreated into the bunker and fired the gun with the barrel horizontal. I was then supposed to collect all the devices, examine them to determine the pressure level that each one had experienced and draw a pressure map. Except that, when we came out of the bunker to collect them, the whole lot had disappeared! We eventually found them in the sea and the sand dunes up to 30 meters away. The trial was abandoned.

[@haldorasgirson9463]

Great story.

[@murray1453]

Hi Drach. I'm sorry but the Helmsman does not need to see. On Restiguoche Class ships the Helmsman was located 3 decks below the bridge near the center of ship. On other ships where the helm was on the bridge, the steering console blocks their view forward. The helmsman watches the gyro repeat and works to stay on the course their given by the Officer of the Watch. When your in any sort of sea state you really don't have time to watch anything but they Gyro. The Officer of the Watch is the one who has to see.

[@toddwebb7521]

I have no objection to the dry dock length creeping up but I understand why you want to try and get it back down.

[@KetsaKunta]

You're one of only a few people I've come across that has factually pointed out that the Union treating the Confederacy as a belligerent state is what legitimized them as a state in the first place.

[@rudolfpeterudo3100]

With the Brig question, only larger vessels carried cells, smaller ones you would be given various forms of punishment. Ranging from stoppage of leave, pay, grog issue RN and RAN extra duties and so forth. You would be subject to the King or Queens regulations or articles of War. Investigation would be carried out by your divisional officer or the "Jimmy" (exec). All relevant information would be presented to the "old man" skipper. He would adjudicate and decide your punishment. But you could easily escape this if your story was interesting or had a touch of humour. In my case was up before the old man on a charge of having my feet on the table. Was asked "son do you do this at home?" replied no sir! At home helicopters do not land on the roof. Case dismissed. (the oldman and everyone present really cracked up over that one) Vessel in question was the old aircraft carrier HMAS Sydney on a Vietnam run late 60's

[@pattonkesselring4247]

Hey Drach, great video as usual. In regards to the question on someone doing videos on Merchant and Civilian ships, two places to recommend. Firstly, I did a video on the Marine Adder class Troopship USNS Marine Lynx on my channel, and also The Great Big Move and Bright Sun Films also do videos on various Ocean Liners and Cruise Ships and such.

[@ญัติผิวขาว]

เรือรบ-บรรทุก-ยอว์จ.ดํานํ้า.!.อาวุธรบ..สวยไม่ย่อยสวยมากๆครับ

[@kaijudirector5336]

48:17: No mention of E11's adventures in the Bosphorus during WW1?

[@blutheinkling1346]

I fell asleep watching yt and woke up to this. Not bad, youtube.

[@arnoldwardenaar127]

your pernounciation of "Zwaardvis" was spot on! So no need to apologise😂

[@Walpolemike14]

WHAT! You’re telling me Alaska and Guam weren’t a good value for the money, seeing as they cost about as much as an Iowa and basically never saw any meaningful service! How dare you drach!