The Drydock - Episode 228 (Part 2)

[@Drachinifel]

Pinned post for Q&A :)

[@michaelkovacic2608]

Regarding the Deutschland class, one of the design proposals of the early 1920ies was a coastal battleship with two twin 380mm turrets (same as those of the Bayern class), a speed of 22 knots and a 200mm belt. What is your opinion on this design and how well does it compare to the coastal battleships then in service with the Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish navies? Could these ships have been deployed for the invasion of Norway, at least the ports of Oslo, Bergen and Kristiansand? Also, if the Germans had built several coastal battleships of this design instead of the Deutschlands, they would obviously have given up the seagoing ability enjoyed by the Deutschlands. How does this impact the following German battleship classes? After all, the Scharnhorst evolved from the Deutschland class, so could we perhaps see the Kriegsmarine never going for battleships and instead focusing on uboats and other small craft like Schnellboote from the beginning? And do you think the Allies would have allowed the construction of these ships, since they carried 15inch guns? I cannot see why not, since coastal battleships aren't really a threat for Allied commerce.

[@scootalooswings3576]

When did desalination plants start with navy ships? Where some navy faster to adopt it?

[@swampyankee]

I would be very interested in your opinion of the 255' lake class US Coast Guard cutters. They were built during WWII but were commissioned to late to see action. Rumor has it they were the most heavily armed vessel per square foot built. I served aboard the USCGC Androscoggin and was a member of the decommissioning crew. One reason they were built was to replace cutters given to the UK through lend/lease.

[@geoguy001]

How come the Japanese did not use their massive force of submarines to attack the USN supply chain....it seems to me that this was the only action they could have taken that could have significantly dragged out the war

[@bkjeong4302]

@@geoguy001 Because Japanese submarine doctrine was stupid.

[@chrisf4659]

I love that the cows have taken advantage of the shade that R101 has so graciously provided.

[@stone-hand]

"... That stupid defense white paper..." - Never truer words were ever spoken.

[@michaelimbesi2314]

1:00:20 Hi. Naval architect here. I don’t personally know of any limit at all. Currently, the limiting condition on the size of cargo ships is port infrastructure (berth sizes, depth of channels, etc) Powering isn’t a problem because of the square cube law, as mentioned. (Fluid friction is proportional to the surface area, maximum horsepower you can fit is proportional to the volume). It’s maybe technically possible that we may, at some point far into the future, meet a structural limit, but I don’t know of any at the moment.

[@calvingreene90]

I remember them claiming that the first supertanker wouldn't work because you couldn't build a keel strong enough to prevent it from breaking in half. Apparently the solution was to build a ship with three keels.

[@willcaputo1]

So the ships from Girls und Panzer might actually be possible? Damn.

[@MonkeyJedi99]

@@willcaputo1 Excellent (steeples fingers)

[@PaulfromChicago]

The Sepping's Humphrey's question is a good question and a great answer. Thank you.

[@Kirk00077]

I’ve been reading Six Frigates by Ian Toll and the same question occurred to me, cool to see it answered here

[@cathyharrop3348]

That was a case where two diagrams were worth a million words.

[@StrategosKakos]

@ securing cannon or shot that has come loose in the age of sail: The most important tool often were the sailors'hammocks. Impromptu netting to keep the carriage wheels turning or the shot rolling when bunched up and fastened somewhere (fastenings being happily already incuded)

[@calvingreene90]

1:00:20 We build a lot of complex structures full of structural supports wrapped in weather tight covering and find them quite useful. Granted people rarely want to use a skyscraper as a warehouse but a tank full of structural supports fills and empties just the same. You might call the supports baffles.

[@B1900pilot]

Here’s a few from the USN that were “in” during my time... Sliders and Rollers: hamburgers and hot dogs Horsecock: Bologna Elephant scabs: breaded mystery meat patties Skating: acting like yourworking, but really doing anything. On the pad: Put on report Old man: Commanding Officer Goat locker: chiefs mess Airdale: Aviation ratings Mom/Mother: CV/CVN Pony: Mail Miss Piggy: US-3A COD acft. Bug juice: koolade Queer: EA-6B Prowler UNREP aka RAS panties waver: signalman Snipe: engineroom sailors Pecker checker: Corpsman Sand crabs: civilians working on a navy base Autodog: soft serve ice cream Geedunk: snacks or ship’s store ( Ice cream fountain on capital ships during WW2 ) Sweepers: daily ritual ship and shore

[@kemarisite]

Drach estimated a total additional aircrew requirement of 600-800 additional aircrew. For comparison, there were some 765 aircrew who participated in the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

[@curtiswebb8135]

You provide a tremendous amount of knowledge. Thank you for all that you do and continue to do. From the heart and From California USA

[@glyantz]

The Washington Treaty without a no-sale clause is something I used to wonder about too. I always came back to the MN. In 1918 they had a lot of warship tonnage but essentially all of it was obsolete. They had no modern cruisers, they were so hard up for destroyers they'd bought a small batch from Japan. They might want to buy an entire fleet, at least as a stopgap. Picking up say, the remaining M class destroyers and the Arethusas would be a massive *upgrade* for the French. If they could find docks to accept them, they could upgrade by replacing all their existing capital ships with the Orions and the Lions. Likely save money too.

[@pigpig252]

The "HE shells against armoured ships" idea seems like a modern equivalent of the heavy French use of chain shot in the Napoleonic wars, the idea being to cleverly cripple a ship's ability to manoeuvre before moving in for the kill. The problem is, while you are busy chucking chain shot/HE at your opponent trying to be clever, your opponent is doing actual penetrating damage to you the whole time with round shot/AP

[@josepetersen7112]

While I generally agree, the Japanese as Tsuahima used HE to great effect, though that's mostly due to the poor design of the Russian ships. Firing at the sails is a little different as it could disable a ship much quicker then hull shots could. Chesapeake bay, as a case in point, saw several British ships largely become combat ineffective from gunfire at medium range. That said, for dreadnoughts I struggle to see effects that HE would have against an armored target that AP wouldn't have anyway.

[@KentuckyAk101guy]

Which was usually my experience in war thunder went. They would throw he at me and I would get ammo detonations or sink them with the vast amount of holes I would put in their ship

[@mbryson2899]

Thank you for giving us another year of absorbing your vast knowledge, Uncle Drach; you are a treasure. Happy New Year to you and yours!

[@tonyjanney1654]

Not to defend Kurita, but like the Americans, he didn't know where Task Force 34 was. He thought Taffy 3 was an outriding unit of Halsey's 3rd Fleet. If those were fleet carriers he was shooting at, that meant Lee and the fast battleships had to be nearby. Throw in that he was an old school "gun club" admiral, steeped in the doctrines of "Fleet in Being" and Decisive battle, and knowing that Southern Force had been massacred, while Northern Force was hollow, Kurita's force was all Japan had left. He may have felt, that if the IJN was going to perish, it was going to do so in defense of the home islands, not the Philippines which were going to be a lost cause in the long run.

[@Joshua-fi4ji]

I know the triple 4" isn't great, but I kind of love it's aesthetics. It looks iconic.

[@charlesjames1442]

Halsey was a bulldog but he had a narrow tactical focus. Saying he was given the green light to abandon the Leyte beach-head because Nimitz told him to destroy the IJN fleet if the opportunity presented itself, flies in the face of good situational judgement. The same lack of clear judgement was demonstrated by him when he ordered all of his ships to rendezvous after Typhoon Cobra rather than assigning units for search and rescue.

[@seanmalloy7249]

36:00 -- "It's going to be somewhat destructive to the crew's next meal, but that's not necessarily too bad..." I'd like to think that the culinary practices aboard naval vessels had improved with the advent of refrigeration and more readily-controllable cookstoves to the point where meals weren't something to be approached with apprehension, being more for fuel than for flavor. Perusing my copy of the "civilian reference edition" of the 1945 _Cook Book of the United States Navy_, aside from the fact that there is a limit to how much delicacy you can get with spices when the unit recipe makes 100 servings, the recipes look fairly good, if largely uninspired.

[@TerryDowne]

I got a flash of Drach smiling blandly in the council meeting while secretly thinking evil Jack Speak thoughts as some nong proposes a particularly idiotic measure.

[@NathanOkun]

Note that the original liquid-void alternating layers in MONTANA, SOUTH DAKOTAS, and IOWA Classes shown were originally more like the NORTH CAROLINA Class, with the first layer void. However, the torpedo hit on NORTH CAROLINA that caused major flooding in the middle of WWII caused rather a lot of initial list as the outermost void flooded. It was decided that the outermost space should be liquid filled, as shown in the diagrams, since the moderate decrease in the effectiveness of the anti-torpedo system when using the first space as liquid was compensated for by significantly reducing the initial list caused by the hit since the leverage of adding water to the ship so far from the centerline was eliminated by having these spaces already filled by liquid. The balance of depth of hole against possible capsizing effects of the hit was now reversed with capsizing being considered the most dangerous threat. All such ship systems are compromises and sometimes the compromise balance is shown to be wrong in the original design.

[@indplt1595]

One shouldn't count the USN out if they went to war in 1939--contrary to the statement that the F4F and SBD were the first monoplane fighter and dive bomber in American aircraft carrier service, the Wildcat succeeded the Brewster F2A Buffalo that had entered USN service in 1939 and the Dauntless succeeded the SB2U Vindicator which had entered USN service in 1937. The Buffalo was proven at Midway to be totally outclassed by the Zero and the Vindicator didn't vindicate much of anything either when flown by USMC crews against the Kido Butai in June 1942, but other than John Thach's VF-3 employing the Thach Weave the Wildcat also was shown to be much less than the A6M. Yet the SB2U could also hoist and drop 1,000-lb bombs like the succeeding SBD, so it stands to reason that highly trained, highly aggressive American dive bomber crews would have become the death dealers all IJN personnel feared after Midway even if the USN had been thrust into the war two years earlier. In fact for the Germans a belligerent United States would probably be the thing of nightmares after the Battle of the River Plate. The U.S. Marine Corps would probably been champing at the bit to go into Norway in 1940 once Oscarborg Fortress sank Blucher and turned back the German assault on Oslo, especially in an amphibious assault after or during Warspite's rampage in Narvik. Additional Allied heavy units could have made the risk calculus to employ Scharnhorst and Gnesienau suicidal off Norway, and U.S. Navy battleship escorts for convoys in addition to Rodney, Ramillies and Malaya might have made Operation Berlin untenable (which already was a Pyrrhic victory for the Kreigsmarime, the only worse outcome being Bismarck's victory over Hood where Prince of Wales nevertheless mission-killed Excercise Rhine before Rodney killed Lutjens, Lindemann and most of the battleship's crew on 27 May 1941). Even if the Japanese would join the fight in 1939 as well (a decidedly unlikely event as prior to the July 1941 embargo Japan needed American trade, especially U.S. oil exports to continue prosecuting its war against China), the IJN was significantly less powerful than it was in 1941. Japan had no modern battleships in 1939 either, as Yamato wouldn't be commissioned until two weeks after the attack of Pearl Harbor and Musashi wouldn't enter service until two months after Midway...but more importantly the Shokaku and Zuikaku weren't commissioned until 1941 either. Nor was the feared Zero ready until 1940 (2600 in the Imperial Japanese calender, hence its designation Type 00), the same year the D3A entered service. The U.S. carrier fleet decidedly outnumbered the IJN until Zuikaku was commissioned, as the USN operated the full fleet carriers Lexington, Saratoga, Yorktown and Enterprise along with the questionable Ranger while the IJN had the veteran Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and the VERY green Hiryu in September 1939. Nor was the Pacific Fleet based at Pearl in 1939, so a decapitating strike wasn't really possible that year (Soryu and Hiryu's bunkerage as a result as a result of their rather diminutive size gave them much less range than their predecessors and successors, making a raid on San Diego farfetched in the extreme). If Shokaku and Zuikaku hadn't had time to work up before entering the war, their performance would likely have been similar to Taiho's (though Shokaku had become a shadow of herself by 1944, blowing up in a manner very similar to her armored successor).

[@TomLuTon]

2:36:48 I have read a story about this that during the Korean war this tradition was carried out onboard a Canadian Destroyer (HMCS Cayuga?), at which point the new 'captain' orders the ships boats to be lowered so he can call on the UN task force Admiral aboard USS Missouri

[@tylerservies3380]

As a retired Navy officer, my opinion is Leyte is all on Halsey. Firstly, Halsey doesn’t seem to have managed his force well from a logistical standpoint. Two of his task units were off station at the time for resupply. If Halsey managed his force such that only one unit was off station, he’d have had sufficient force to obliterate both Japanese formations. He could have sent two task units with New Jersey north, and kept Admiral Lee’s battle line with the third carrier TF for cover and air support, and blown bothThe northern and center force off the planet.

[@johnnichter5087]

Happy new years! And thanks for all the great content.

[@jtpenman]

Love this channel. Thank you for all your hard work

[@WelBike1967]

As regards to Question time stamp 2:00, two of Hood's 5.5 inch guns are still sited at Fort Bedford on Ascension Island, and a side note these guns were used to drive off an attack by U-124 on December 9th 1941 (the last hoorah for the mighty Hood). This little weird. island is well worth a visit / further investigation for any navy historian.

[@Wolfeson28]

2:26:17 I think personal armor such as a cuirass would still have been quite effective against melee weapons and small arms even up through the Napoleonic era. After all, such armor was quite common on ships when boarding was the primary means of naval combat, and continued to be used on land to at least some extent even into the Napoleonic era. It's true that a cuirass and/or a helmet doesn't cover the entire body, but it still makes it a lot harder to deal damage to a very large central part of the target. I think the key factor was simply the transition from boarding actions to cannon fire as the most decisive means of naval combat, since no armor in the world was going to stop a round shot or even grapeshot (my favorite example of this is the French cuirass in the Paris Army Museum with a giant hole through the right breast from a cannonball at Waterloo). I also very much doubt that the whole "officers showing lack of courage by putting on armor" thing was a factor at all. After all, the richest and higher-ranking individuals had always been the ones wearing the best armor or any armor at all, and there was never any social convention holding that against them.

[@gizmophoto3577]

I agree with Drach’s assessment, but I can at least see a case for asking about Nimitz’s responsibility for Halsey’s actions. However, I see no reason to bring Roosevelt into the issue, as he rarely, if ever, put himself in the midst of operational decisions. If you’re going to ask about FDR, it seems to me you have to bring King into the loop.

[@M167A1]

There is a difference between being responsible and being in charge, responsibility ultimately goes to the top of the chain command. Having said that, as Gizmo alluded to, FDR for all his faults did not typically micromanage the Navy, so you could ultimately say that responsibility again as Gizmo said, lies with King on who it would fall to apply any remedies.

[@gizmophoto3577]

As the sign on FDR's successor's desk said "The buck stops here," so your point about ultimate responsibility is well-taken, though obvious "ultimate responsibility" is not equivalent to "sole responsibility." Halsey certainly can't claim he was merely a pawn in the higher commanders' game; he directed his fleet, not anyone else. It would be a distraction for this thread to get into a discussion of FDR's merits and faults, so I will say only that it is my view that he arguably exhibited the least faults of any of the major war leaders.

[@PalleRasmussen]

@@gizmophoto3577 he trusted Stalin over Churchill, and thought he could charm The Man of Steel. Biiiig mistake.

[@gizmophoto3577]

@@PalleRasmussen Respectfully, I disagree regarding trusting Stalin more, as FDR and Churchill had an unusually close relationship, as shown by the number of times they met, including hosting Churchill over Christmas in 1941. Regarding Stalin, it is hard for me to see what could have been done significantly differently. Eastern Europe was going to be dominated by the USSR unless the western Allies were going to fight, which would have greatly extended the tragedy of the war. As I said, I don’t wish to hijack this thread with a tangential discussion, so I’m going to step away. Best wishes to you.

[@PalleRasmussen]

@@gizmophoto3577 I do not mind hijacking threads, and you are very wrong. I do not want to sound denigrating, but read up on the late war meetings between the three. Roosevelt vastly misjudged Stalin and snubbed Churchill several times in his attempt to charm "Uncle Joe". Churchill had a lot of faults, so- so many, but he was right on point with Stalin and the USSR.

[@bkjeong4302]

Re: Kurita, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire and Leyte, 1944: The Soldier’s Battle make the point that not only were the troops for the first wave of landings ashore, so were much of their supplies. One thing Kurita could actually have caused serious damage to (in addition to the loss of the actual transport vessels themselves), however, was the materials needed to set up airstrips and other USAAF infrastructure, as that was apparently part of the cargo that hadn’t yet been unloaded. Of course, this is assuming he gets there without wasting time chasing Taffy 3 or without suffering further losses because of Kinkaid.

[@AnimeSunglasses]

01:50:41 having a Drach-built class in the Med gave me almost immediately the phrase "Admiral Cunningham on the _Thunderer."_ and now I'm very torn on whether that would be worth lessening Warspite's record...

[@ericplaysbass]

15:49 “Oh my gosh, he just sailed in!“😢

[@piritskenyer]

One thing to add to the 4" triple mount disaster: the guns in the mounting were BL guns with Welin breeches and bag charges as opposwd to QF guns that would have had semi-automatic wedge breeches with fixed cased rounds, which meant that the guns' individual fire rates were no greater practically than that of a 6", and since the mount had the guns so close together and they had the breech open to the side, they were evn nore cumbersome.

[@CAP198462]

Hey, I know it’s been a while, several episodes ago a question was raised about the names of the Danube Frigates that fought in the battle of Peterwaradien (1716). My German isn’t perfect but the names I was able to find were St. Carolus, St. Leopoldus, St. Elisabeth, St. Josephus, and St. Franciscus. Saints were popular names for Donau-frigates, sometimes referred to as warships in the documentation.😊

[@billbrockman779]

Cutler’s “Leyte Gulf at 75” has great discussions of Halsey’s decision and the repercussions.

[@Trek001]

Jack Ryan's book had wrong conclusions - Halsey acted stupidly

[@jameshain1248]

Happy New Year to you and your family

[@VintageCarHistory]

Regarding the Fellow that served on the Yorktown- the US National Archives had a major fire in 1973 which destroyed many of the service records from early Vietnam and prior conflicts. It is possible that George Stacey's record may be gone forever.

[@silas4lagoon776]

True, but most of the records destroyed were army and Air Force records (especially since they were army-air-force/core at the time). The navy records were mainly singed.

[@Riccardo_Silva]

I agree with RoadRunner's question. After all, the 140000-odd tons required to buid two Yamatos (together with the expertise required to build and the money to pay for those eighteen huge guns and those huge armor plates) could have allowed to build six (!) more Shokakus! Provided they could have made some hundreds of trained airmen and some thousands of trained crew members available (this is a big caveat!), how much deadlier for the USN would have been such a force than those two sitting ducknosaurs? Of course, this would have required a degree of smartness and sound mindedness seldom showed by the military throughout history, let alone japanese brass! But, all the same, given a brilliant admiral like Yamamoto, and the scant resources of japanese economy, one can't help but try to imagine such a what-if scenario.

[@geoguy001]

Seventh Carrier series by Perter Albano posits a 4th Yamato carrier conversion with extended hull that gets trapped in a glacier and attacks Pearl Harbor 40 years later after its freed by global warning crewed by geriatric Samurai

[@Driver-ur9mf]

Okay, guess they had a lot of rations when she sailed!

[@camenbert5837]

Are there are a lot less sailors too when it re-emerges

[@geoguy001]

The ship was trapped in harbor in sakahlin by a glacier...so they went fishing for 30 years. @@camenbert5837

[@geoguy001]

They were all in their 70s and 80s....admiral in charge was pushing 100

[@cp1cupcake]

2:24:00 I recently tried looking up a relative's WW2 service record. I don't remember if it hit the navy (my relative was army) but the US lost a lot of the records due to a fire around the '70's.

[@SCjunk]

some of the US triple 14 inch turrets were sleeved with all guns elevating as a single unit. Something the RN wouldn't contemplate.

[@thedevilinthecircuit1414]

Re: Jackspeak, there was a Seattle band in the 1990s named Harvey Danger that had a huge song entitled Flagpole Sitta. In it was the line, 'And when I feel a bit naughty, I run it up the flagpole and see who salutes--but no one ever does'.

[@christophero1969]

Thanks!

[@NathanOkun]

Concerning the effects of a dud/solid shot projectile going through the unarmored parts of a warship. (1) USS SOUTH DAKOTA in the battle where USS WASHINGTON demolished IJN KIRASHIMA took a water ricochet of a Japanese 8" (20.3cm) Type 91 AP shell across its lower superstructure from side to side more-or-less horizontally. The description of this and several other hits to SOUTH DEKOTA during this battle has several photographs of the progressive damage due to this hit, such as it slamming through a heavy safe along the way and its final bashing into the rear of one of the 5"/38 mounts on the far side of the ship. If you can get a copy of this document or a book describing the battle's hits, you will have n interesting read! (2) During tests of cast iron cannon balls against thin wrought iron plates simulating the spaced bulkhead plates of the unarmored parts of a warship or transport ship, the cannon ball is undamaged during its entire flight. However, the holes left in the plates change form and size progressively, as follows: The first hole, at high speed, cuts out a hole the size of the cannon ball that looks like it was drilled through the plate by a drill press, with a single dented disk of wrought iron cut from the plate. As the projectile slows down more and more through each successive plate, though, the hole made becomes larger and more irregular, with a large dent surrounding the hole and the wrought iron being torn open on the far side of the hole such that it pulls long "tentacles" of wrought iron out the back of the plate, which get more numerous and longer as the cannon ball slows down, as well a tearing out many small pieces of the iron plate flying along-side of the cannon ball. This makes the damage near the far side of the target when the cannon ball has almost stopped being much more difficult to try to plug up if flooding is occurring than the original hole is. Due to this and other such tests, the use of wrought iron in warships prior to thick armor being used was determined to be much worse than retaining wood bulkheads and these results slowed the introduction of iron armor being considered for warships during the first half of the 19th Century.

[@edwardloomis887]

In the U.S., the equivalent of "Run it up the mast and see who salutes" replaces flagpole for mast for the most part. "True colors" is the same in the U.S. and became a rock era song title by Cyndi Lauper.

[@seanmalloy7249]

'Mast' replaces 'flagpole' for a speaker with any sort of nautical background; the other services largely retain the 'flagpole' usage.

[@Thumpalumpacus]

Kurita's mistake, imo was the "general attack" order, It discombobulated his forces and rendered any further drive into the landing area unfeasible. The order was premature. Agree that he should have sailed past the Taffies launching potshots but keeping his eye on the ball, and Devil take the hindmost on what was essentially as win or die mission anyway,

[@stimublu8570]

I would imagine that the very idea that Navy would scarfice their ship just to help the army is unthinkable in IJN circles.

[@dmphoenix973]

36:37 I prefer the advanced French method of Wine-as-Armour. In all seriousness, I think I have learned more about anti-torpedo protection from the Drachinifel channel than from entire books.

[@Tuning3434]

I don't know, I see benefit of the Italian's Wine-as-lifepreserver doctrine. probably not true, but still beneficial imho

[@nathanokun8801]

TALPS was a huge ramjet missile with a very long range. Originally, it was a pure "optimized" beam-rider only, with a separate large target-tracking antenna and a small separate missile guidance transmitter dish to allow best-fit aiming (TERRIER beam-rider versions -- BW and BT -- had the two antenna combined, which limited the path the missile could be aimed. TALOW later added a homing ability on the tracker beam for tight terminal attack, which was the complete replacement for beam-riding only for later TERRIER and the original TARTAR missile systems (SM-1 and SM-2 still later). TALOS was amazingly advanced for its time (RAMJET, wow!!), but it was so big that it eventually had to go away as new ships were put into service (only LONG BEACH ever used it for new ships). Aegis eventually replaced both TERRIER and TARTSR using SM-2=type missiles that could be controlled by radio uplink to an optimum trajectory. US Navy missiles systems were way ahead of everybody else in this subject for many years and it is still is top-line.

[@GrahamWKidd]

The Battlecruiser 1917/18 are just gorgeous!!

[@marktuffield6519]

If you are interested in WW1 seaplane tenders and maritime aviation in general, then I would recommend getting back issues of journals from the Great War Aviation Society "Cross & Cockade International Journal", the US League of World War One Aviation Historians who publish "Over the Front" and The Australian Society of World War One Aero Historians who publish "The '14-'18 Journal". A book on my favourite seaplane carrier, Ben-My-Chree, was written by Ian M Burns and is still available from the GWAS in a downloadable form. Ben-My-Chree was a former Isle of Man Packet Steamer and at different times some fascinating characters served on her.

[@pedenharley6266]

Happy New Year, Drach!

[@ellisonms]

I am surprised that you didn't visit the Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis during your recent visit to the USA. If you had done so, you would have seen the cuirass of John Paul Jones. The fact that he was usually "cash strapped" indicates the value of the device to him. Whether he ever really wore it was a different issue. But it does survive. I suspect that it would be worn UNDER the uniform. The fun fact is that, judging by the size of the chest plate, He was about the stature of a modern 15-year-old!

[@matthewkidd7219]

Captain and low ranking rating swapping places is reminiscent of Roman Saturnalia, where slaves and masters swapped places temporarily.

[@Captain_Seafort]

Re:1:35:38, I doubt the RN would name a ship after County Donegal in the 1920s or 30s, given that it was in the RoI by then.

[@ernestcline2868]

The earliest plausible entry of the US into WW2 that I can see is if Hitler declares war in March 1941 in response to the Lend Lease Act.

[@DaremoKamen]

Triple 15 QEs: If you also removed the rear super firing turret to give a layout similar to USN fast battleships you would remove a lot of top weight and open up some deck space. Turn the no longer used barbette into a sort of flak tower for dual purpose guns and their fire control, remove the same number of casement guns as the DPs you've added and plate over their mounts. Still while I am no naval architect I have to doubt that the tiny increase in main gun fire power and large increase in air defense would be worth the expense.

[@ronaldfinkelstein6335]

HE shells vs. Ships...First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The US destroyers got to knife fighting range of the "battlecruiser" Hiei...and were using everything they had against her, including lots of HE.

[@Isolder74]

Halsey, as far as I can see, had no reason to move any of his ships to go after the decoy force. If he had to send anything at all it only needed to be his carriers. Other then extra AAA his battleships have little value against the incoming carrier force. His carriers and their escorts were plenty strong enough to on their own destroy the northern force. Frankly Lee should have been left guarding the straits.

[@fire304]

Re Jack Speak, there is a wonderful book When a Loose Cannon Flogs a Dead Horse, There Will be the Devil to Pay that has many nautical phrases which have worked their way into common speak.

[@jimkluska253]

Awesome vid bro!!!

[@mikemullen5563]

Re Temeraire--HMS President (The latest namesake which is still afloat) is interesting, since she seems to be named for both American and a French captures.

[@thunderhead180]

1:34:14 how about Fanny Adams as in tinned foodstuffs?

[@Plantagenaut]

You deserve a medal.🎖

[@steveclarke6257]

All I know about Sea Slug use....it was used by the cold war county class cruises as a ground bombardment weapon in the Falklands conflict.

[@davidbirt8486]

Oh-, yes, we did launch a couple at Stanley airport, with mixed results.

[@rosiehawtrey]

Oh, you mean Jimmy Savilles War?

[@apolloreinard7737]

Admiral Drachinifel sir, Upon which ship is the Monopoly ship modelled? ( @31:50, the ship in the fore appears similar. However, your eye is undoubtably much more keen than mine.) Also, have there been differences in the development of Monopoly ships over time?

[@AndrewPalmerMTL]

Re the question about aerial policing of the Empire at sea at 01:24:31 - one of the big arguments in favour of RAF spending between the wars was aerial policing of the LAND portions of the Empire (The Middle East, for example). There might have been even an element of the RN not wanting to let the RAF muscle-in on their maritime turf. Any money spent on a "maritime policing air force" is going to come out of the RN's budget!

[@jonsouth1545]

That is a beautiful battlecruiser for your hypothetical WW1/2 ship

[@AndrewPalmerMTL]

re the comment on Seaslug at about 2h19m. Its true Talos is rather larger than Seaslug (3.5 ton and 32ft long vs 2 ton and 20ft long) but Talos was considerably longer ranged. Terrier - which is the US's first medium range naval SAM and is a contemporary of Talos was 1.7 ton and 27ft long, so a lot closer to Seaslug overall. So I don't think the fact that Seaslug entered service in 1961 versus Terrier in 1956 gave the RN any great technology "leapfrog"; they were of similar technological vintage. (Seaslug was also a quite awful missile by all accounts).

[@johnshepherd9676]

Beat me to it. Talos was a 100nm missile. Both Long Beach and Chicago shot down MiGs well flying we'll inland. There was also an anti-radiation variant that was used to slick several North Vietnamese coastal early warning radar sites.

[@Riccardo_Silva]

We can certainly assume that Troubridge was not an Harwood. Could we assume as well that the Sublime Porte wouldn't have been drawn into war against the Entente by Germany donating them a badly battered battlecruiser? This would be a big twist in history!

[@chloehennessey6813]

Drach, A Uboat cow is suddenly caught in the open replenishing another alongside it. You’re in: 1. A Fletcher Class Destroyer 2. A primed and ready USS Missouri 3. A Gato Class Submarine 4. HMCS Haida 5. HMS Gypsy 6. HMS Blanche 7. ORP Witcher What do you do? Which ship do you command?

[@ernestcline2868]

Assuming the US somehow gets involved in WW2 in 1939, which I can't see a plausible way for that to happen, it won't be fighting in the Pacific at first, so the major change would be more of the USN would be in the Atlantic when Japan finally strikes south.

[@Joshua-fi4ji]

Given how isolationist they were, I think you'd need to have an alternative reality where someone else becomes president who either directly supports the French and British or just ignores the wishes of their electorate and drags the country into the war. In which case, this'll be Vietnam before Vietnam and there's unlikely be widespread support for the war. I doubt there will be a fleet in Pearl Harbour (or much in San Diego), so the Japanese would just attack the South East Asia as they did historically. Alternatively, this alternate government in the US will be more friendly with Japan and not oil embargo them. In which case Japan continues doing its thing in China and ignores the rest of the world.

[@jamesmaclennan4525]

Troubridge vs Goeben is a perennial favourite with naval Wargamers and I am afraid to say Goeben usually comes out on top.

[@hughgordon6435]

Which navy in your time period, could you roll a Nat 20 and call B/S?

[@scott2836]

Could you translate that question a bit, please? I get the natural 20 reference, but I’m not sure what you are asking, to be honest. Thanks!

[@hughgordon6435]

@@scott2836 which navy within the time frame were vastly inflated or believed their own B/S.?

[@davidbirt8486]

Took me until today to get through Sundays Dry dock, was well worth it. P.s, Furious had the 5.5 inch secondary armament.

[@davidbirt8486]

pps, only the Belfast and the Tigers survived the 1960's, all the rest were gone by 1968.

[@urbanrenewal3505]

How thick is the steel on the hulls of military ships, in oil tankers and cruise

[@1_2_die2]

Happy New Year 🙃

[@DaremoKamen]

I wonder if it would have made much difference if the Japanese during the inter war years had set up glider clubs at their high schools like the German's did under Versailles. If the clubs were responsible for building their own gliders and possibly flying flea style tugs that might provide them not only a larger base of potential pilots but also a larger base of potential maintenance and manufacturing workers.

[@Isolder74]

Well the Germans did that because they had to get around the versailles treaty. The Japanese did not have that problem. The training issue for the Japanese was twofold, first they saw being an airman as a job for the social elite so they from the start limited their recruiting pool. Second, they set the standards so high that they washed out everyone including the average and moderate pilot all candidates that while not the skilled elite would still provide a strong personnel base to build and expand on. Those pilots would only improve with operational experience where the upper elite were already as good as they were going to get barring weapon and combat experience, something the moderate or average would also be simultaneously gaining. So it meant that at the start they had an initial massive advantage but it also meant that every causality, dead or otherwise, was a quicker drain on overall effectiveness.

[@DaremoKamen]

@@Isolder74 The Japanese didn't have any treaty restrictions against having and developing an air force, but they did have pretty severe resource and money restrictions. That aside you make a clear case for why the Japanese wouldn't have done that, so I thank you. I wonder if it would still be plausible if it was limited to socially elite high schools. And if this hypothetical program produced a larger pool of recruits that could pass the high standards, would the Japanese military have just made the standards even higher?

[@Isolder74]

@@DaremoKamen Well in their system, they started by limiting the possible recruitment pool then after that they flunked everyone but the top 15% so you’d end up with a huge pool of elites but no depth. Of those that passed about half of those wouldn’t qualify for carrier service.

[@tommytwotacos8106]

Halsey not stopping to listen to Ching Lee was one of the dumbest moves any flag officer has ever made in a time of war. It was some Beatty level bullshit.

[@lewiswestfall2687]

Thanks

[@damianzaninovich4900]

Your bringing up how the Japanese should have used their super battleships when they might have made a difference made me think that no one but the British used their battleships in WW2 in a way that wasn’t overly cautious. Battleships we’re already outdated basically but after Pearl Harbor I guess we had ptsd.

[@spencerjones841]

isn't conqueror already in service as a dreadnought in WWI? can't use that name for BC

[@katana1430]

Which Drydock is the last question referencing?

[@garyd.7372]

Here's a first-hand account, from one of Halsey's staff involved in those decisions, who still doesn't believe that Halsey was all that foolhardy. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXi4pJ6hrpqesNk "We analyzed, and we were pretty well unanimous, that ...the most important thing in the future of the war was to get those carriers." (They of course didn't know that the carriers had few planes or pilots.) And the battleships needed to stay with the carriers, during their high-speed run north at night, in case they met enemy battleships coming southward. At night. OK, this was told by Harold Stassen, who resigned as governor of Minnesota to join the Navy, winding up on Halsey's staff. So, as a (former) politician, is his story to be fully trusted? Maybe ...

[@Drachinifel]

My main problem with that argument is the US already knew where the majority of the IJN battleships were. The only ones with the Northern Force were Ise and Hyuga, and the only one unaccounted for was Mutsu as the US didn't know she'd blown up.

[@garyd.7372]

Stassen, in his account, mentions the half-battleships Hyūga and Ise. Halsey and his staff perhaps were less certain of the locations of others: had they then identified with confidence the cast of characters in Nishimura's Southern Force? But that, of course, doesn't absolve Halsey's mortal sin of considering Kurita to be no longer a threat.

[@alexkarman4679]

Jack Speak equivalent: U.S. Navy has Falcon Codes

[@frankbodenschatz173]

Happy New Year to All!

[@TheJsmitty85]

Only took me week to get through this

[@frjonathanhill9817]

Why does Buckingham never come into consideration for County Class names? Are we to blame John Hampden?

[@MrJJuK]

LEEEEEEROYYY JENKINS!!!!!

[@hughgordon6435]

Do I have to pY to get questions answered?

[@hughgordon6435]

Over 100 questions asked , bever a direct response? How do I without paying get a resonse?

[@Drachinifel]

Most of my responses come in the Drydock recordings as opposed to manually typing here, but the Drydocks are quite a few months behind the current video releases, hence why I'm doing two weeks worth of questions now in each regular Drydock week to catch up.

[@nineonine9082]

love the question at 1 hour, I love sci fi so size is just not really ever an issue, just look up stellar engines if you don't believe me, as said unless their is some other issues that at the size just can't be done, but that would just mean you ljust need a different design.

[@tombuchanan379]

I understand the rational argument for Troubridge not engaging. But it goes against centuries of British naval tradition. I am an American who first learned of the Royal Navy from Alexander Kent aka Douglas Reeman. The facts of the Royal Navy are better than his fiction. Fight the battle no matter what. Swap him for Harwood. Does River Plate not get fought and Goeben never make the Ottomans? I understand their orders were not same but this is the Navy of the "Blind Eye" tradition.

[@TerryDowne]

Admiral Troubridge's wife, Una, became the lover of Radclyffe Hall, author of the famous lesbian novel "The Well of Loneliness." So the admiral couldn't win for losing anywhere.

[@mbryson2899]

Was he against it? For many people marriage is a matter of practicality and/or convenience and occasionally of appearances.

[@ABrit-bt6ce]

Die Hard a Christmas Movie yes or yes ? Take care all. :)

[@johnferguson1970]

A rather amusing derivative of Jackspeak comes from the movie "In God we Tru$t", which where the the villain's minions say: "Let's run it up the crucifix and see who genuflects."

[@mikepickell8792]

What if Japan joined the Germany in 39 against England and France? Take out Austraila, Singapore & HongKong. Then bring thier fleet to the north Atlantic against England.

[@SCjunk]

Germany dressed up an old French Armoured Cruiser as a decoy for Prinz Eugine and managed to deflect at least one raid by the appaling Manchester bomber.

[@arnoldwu744]

Everyone knows how bad the triple 4" is practically, but can we all appreciate how ugly they are too?

[@hughgordon6435]

If america had joined the war in '39 would Pearl Harbor happened?

[@merlinwizard1000]

10th, 1 January 2023

[@salty4496]

:)

[@BradHartliep-kn9ud]

Japan definitely did not use #Yamato to its fullest or best advantage -- and I believe the reason was because of: B] What happened at Midway .. and A] What happened at #CoralSea .. The outcome of the Battle of Coral Sea is grosslly under-rated .. Yes, Midway had the effect of changing Japan's Fortunes of War and allowing America's Forces to Gain the Offensive .. but the end product at Midway would have been vasty different if Japan had had available to them the two Fleet Aircraft Carriers that were taken out of action at Coral Sea -- or, if they had had the fore-sight of lifting the aircrew of the Damaged Carrier #Shokaku and moving them, and their planes, to the #Zuikaku, which had lost most of its planes and pilots .. #TheBattleOfCoralSea had, really, four effects on the future progression of the War in the Pacific : A] The First was that it prevented Japan from successfully attacking and invading Port Moresby [ Papua New Guinea ] and gaining short range , land-based access for attacking and invading #Australia - which was its original intention for Operation MO .. B] This would have had the secondary effect of shutting off all lines of communication and supply between America [ traveling from #Hawaii and San Diego ] and Australia [ predominantly Sydney ] .. C] These two failures had the third effect of stopping , slowing and / or re-ordering Japan's Eastward Expansion across Nauru , Kiribati , Fiji , Samoa and New Caledonia -- Operations RY and FS -- which probably would have still happened if a] Japan had been successful at Midway .. or b] America had not begun its Westward Offensive across the #SolomonIslands .. D] Fourthly, The Battle of the Coral Sea had a profound affect on the final outcome of the Battle of Midway. With Six Fleet Carriers , instead of four , [ the loss of Shokaku and Zuikaku , with their two additional Aircraft Wings ] , and possible even with just Five [ Zuikaku , carrying Shokaku's one aircraft wing ] , Japan would have had the extra #Carrier Aircraft Squadrons available [ #Fighters, Torpedo Bombers and #DiveBombers ] , pre-loaded with anti-ship torpedoes , for attacks against the American #AircraftCarriers -- And very likely would have won a decisive , and devastating , Victory over the American Carrier Groups at Midway -- Which would have further knocked America out of contention for the Battle for the Pacific -- And given Japan a Pacific Theater Domination that would have been unstoppable .. Brad Hartliep