The Drydock - Episode 248

[@evanceaicovschi7230]

Drach, I really enjoy how there are never interrupting advertisements during your videos. I've been working in carpentry as an apprentice and your work really makes time fly. It keeps a high level of continuity, maintains my interest, and, more importantly, demonstrates that you are genuinely here to speak about these subjects and not to sell your viewers to the advertisers.

[@andrewvenor8035]

Speaking of Naval pranks, back in my Navy days one of my Chief's told me when he reported to his first ship, he was ordered to fetch a bucket of steam. He knew the petty officers were playing a prank on him, so he went across the pier to the submarine tender and got a bucket of dry ice. Right before entering the shop, he poured a glass of water on the dry ice and delivered a bucket of steam. 🤣

[@katana1430]

Former coworker was ex-USN. New guy was told to get a "portable padeye" (the big tie down locations for aircraft, the are very much not portable). New guys disappears for four days, returns with a couple of sailors out of the machine shop lugging a regulation padeye, fabricated from stock with handles on each end so it could be carried though the passageways. New guy was never pranked like that again.

[@adenkyramud5005]

​@@katana1430 absolute legend 😂

[@cdfe3388]

And thus did the apprentice become the master.

[@ronaldfrancis5813]

The favorite pranks we played in the engine room on the Forrestal were to send the new guys out to bring back steam blankets and water hammers. We also used to run them around the engineering spaces to turn on the cooling water to the handrails. Ahh the good old days!

[@sundiver137]

And then there's the ever elusive relative bearing grease....

[@dannyelkins2814]

I approve of the rapid fire Q/A, its a great way to add otherwise non drydock questions especially for the newcomers who may not be up to speed.

[@mbryson2899]

I agree wholeheartedly. I've been following Uncle Drach for years (started around D-D 20) and I can imagine the level of discussion would be quite daunting to some newcomers. The quick, short answers to multiple questions seems a decent way of getting them up to speed.

[@sirmalus5153]

A couple of years ago an old sea mine washed up on the beach in Burry Port, West Wales. A family on holiday took several pictures of said 'object' without realising what it was. This was mostly due to it being covered in muscles and marine growth, which made it look just like a bit of a round metal ball with not much else to reveal its real purpose. Fortunately, after an examination by bomb disposal and a controlled explosion being carried out, it turned out to be a waterlogged dud. The Carmarthen Bay area was filled in wartime by such mines, with certain channels for boat access. These were all controlled electically from the Whitford lighthouse in the bay itself, for either all 'live' function, individual detonation or certain area 'live' function or detonation. Two Royal Marines were stationed in the lighthouse in the bay, on 48 hour guard duty (I think) in charge of the electical 'arming board'. They were in contact with shore by telephone line and signal lamp. However, the two Marines usually spent their time asleep, especially in winter, trying to keep warm. One such Marine lived in Burry Port after the war and my father (a Royal Marine himself) and this chap were workmates on local building sites after WW2. He related his war service to my father and myself one day, while visiting my house in the 1970's. The mine that washed up may well have been one of those old mines.

[@SPR-Ninja]

How people ignore that 1.) Hood's magazine detonation coincided with the impact of a 15" salvo. 2.) Prinz Eugen's fall of shot was pretty much horizontal 3.) Prinz Eugen was firing HE which couldn't pentrate shit all 4.) Kind of most important... Eugen was firing AT PRINCE OF WALES Is beyond me. 🤦🏼‍♂️

[@fidjeenjanrjsnsfh]

Iz wunderwaffe therefore iz gud.

[@hmsverdun]

As an addition to this in general people also don't understand the square cube law when it comes to naval engagements. A single 15 inch shell from Hood or Bismark weighs only slightly less then Prinz Eugen's entire broadside. The math of the 8 inch shell even an AP one is just no that;s not going to work.

[@jackncoke8527]

Also the slight conspiracy theory hint at the end of “neither Germany or Britain want to admit it” like this didn’t happen 82 years ago.

[@robertstone9988]

​@@jackncoke8527or that present-day Germany takes pride in Bismarck whatsoever. Not sure if you've been to Germany recently but they're really trying to shake that whole Nazi thing

[@jackncoke8527]

@@robertstone9988 Haven’t been there except for layovers although I hear the KSK is having some issues with that. If anyone would try and cover it up it would be the British as it might be a hit to national pride to have the shining example of your preeminence as the supreme maritime power get sent halfway to orbit by a 8” gunned heavy cruiser. But I doubt anyone who would go to the trouble of running these computer simulations which I assume are labor intensive to input variables and expensive just to prove what 99% of people already believe: Bismarck sank Hood. Then when you have proof of one of the biggest upsets to post 1900 naval history you hide it.

[@rashkavar]

My dad worked with some guys who had an unnerving encounter with a dud sea mine - it was the kind with the spike contact triggers, not sure how old you have to get to see that style, but given their ship was an old rustbucket barely seaworthy enough to be a floating camp for logging planners, it would have done the job just fine if it had so much as a sneeze worth of explosion left to it. They were used to having to send someone up on deck in the evenings to push away driftwood that had gotten next to the ship, as its tapping would disturb the poker game and, presumably, attempts to sleep afterward, but...let's just say they were decidedly less prepared to see *that* floating alongside them. The story doesn't say whether they decided to risk giving it a good shove (with partly decomposed explosive compounds of unknown type, delivering extra forces to them is generally considered unwise) or conversely risk letting it tap against the ship until it drifted away again (risking the possibility of it being one or several but not all of the detonator/trigger devices that had failed, and eventually spinning around enough to tap one of the working ones up against the ship). Given the detail in this story, I imagine they didn't make the wrong choice, even if they didn't necessarily make whatever the best choice would be.

[@vikkimcdonough6153]

Eep-a-mia. 😨

[@heirofaniu]

That's just downright spooky.

[@justinkacyon6659]

I rather liked the rapid-fire question format. Helped me remember which questions were being answered.

[@madderanger7838]

I enjoyed the rapid fire answers format. The quick snippets of information is helpful to cover general principles and practices of ships. It helps students get a working idea of a subject even if you have previously went into deep dive into a subject. It is also good to review info from time to time.

[@DaremoKamen]

If someone wants another implausible HMS Hood scenario, say the fire is getting into the torpedo area, the torpedo crew launches the torpedoes so they don't cook off in the tubes, and one or more of the torpedoes has a circle run and slams back into Hood. Showing why this couldn't happen is trivial, but people ignore reality all the time.

[@kumaflamewar6524]

Obviously a Japanese torpedo boat snuck close to hood undetected. It's the only reasonable explanation

[@jackncoke8527]

I personally believe the ghost of Kamchata mistook her for a Japanese torpedo boat patrolling the Denmark Strait

[@spinetanium3296]

Didn't Drach already cover a scenario where all four torpedoes detonated? How would ¼ of that be a factor?

[@waynesworldofsci-tech]

Nah, what really happened was the Martian War Machine patrolling near the Martian’s North Pole base blew up the Hood! Everyone knows that! Sheesh. I probably shouldn’t have posted that, someone will take me seriously.

[@robertstone9988]

There were Torpedoes reported in the water and hood is the only ship that had torpedoes I don't think torpedoes circling back around sank Hood but I also don't think that anybody knows what son could entirely completely including the people who were on board Hood when she blew up. Drachs explanation is just as good as any of the best explanation I've ever heard and probably the most plausible the truth is no one will ever know what exactly happened on Hood because there's nothing left of it

[@nathanokun8801]

Concerning Japanese naval armor: (1) Japan used as its baseline the post-1912 British armor steel processes used by the British Vickers Company for the battle=cruiser KONGO circa 1914. It kept this baseline armor processing throughout its WWII production, also, with some changes due to improved metallurgy knowl;edge and design requirements by WWII. (2) As mentioned, by WWII the Vickers steel quality was somewhat behind the best US and European steel quality used in armor manufacture, but not really by a lot, since the additional processing to upgrade the original Vickers steel by WWII was somewhat successful. (3) In 1931 the Japanese changed their armor steel composition by increasing the carbon content (what is the major additive that turns wrought iron into steel) from the usual 0.25-0.4% (mainly, armor steel is a "souped-up" form of mild steel, with extra additives like nickel, chromium, and, sometimes on WWII armors, molybdenum) to 0.55% in their homogeneous, ductile New Vickers Non-Cemented (NVNC) armor. This increased carbon allowed higher hardening of the steel to compensate for poorer baseline quality, but also required very tight quality control to prevent making the steel too hare during manufacture and causing final product failure. It worked reasonably well and by WWII, as post-WWII US Naval Proving Ground tests showed, Japanese NVNC and its late-1930s very thick face-hardened form (YAMATO Class only) Vickers Hardened (VH), replacing the older Vickers Cemented (VC) used in all previous battle-cruisers and battleships from KONGO through MUTSU -- no smaller Japanese warships ever used VC armor), was about 90% as good as equivalent US Navy WWII armors. The face thickness of both VC and VH was 35%, based on the original form of German Krupp Company "Krupp Cemented" face-hardened armor developed in 1894 -- the face thickness and other properties of such armors varied all over the place as different armor manufacturers "tinkered" with the original KC process, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. Actually, due to an error in the design of US Navy WWII "Thick Chill" face-hardened "Class 'A'" armor, against the larger battleship-caliber guns, especially 15" (38cm) and up, the US increased the face thickness to 55% to try to make the armor damage the new-model US Navy post-1930 hard-capped, small-filler-charge, complete-sheath-hardened (hardened like a series of Russian dolls one inside the other, with the outer one the hardest and getting softer and tougher -- crack-resistant -- as one got closer to the explosive charge deep in the lower body of the shells). These new hard-capped Armor Piercing (AP) shells, especially the ones made near the end of WWII, were much better than the designers had expected and were eventually completely damage-proof when tested using even the thickest-faced and latest US Class "A" plates. Thus, by making the face so thick to try to break the shells, they had gone too far and, due to scaling effects from the somewhat brittle face layer, had actually decreased the resistance of the US Class "A" armor somewhat in this futile attempt. Since the armor was still better than WWI-era armor, they did not know at the time that they were sabotaging their own armor compared to what it could have been had they kept the face thickness at the original 35% as with the VC and VH plates. (NOTE: The Germans slightly thickened the face in their latest WWII KC armor (KC n/A) to cause slightly more shell damage with minimal scaling penalty, while the Italian Terni Cemented WWII face-hardened armor and British WWII Cemented Armour actually reduced the face thickness down to at most 30% in their heavier plates, making them better against larger AP shells.) Because of the too-thick face in the WWII US face-hardened plates, against the 46cm (18.1") Type 91 AP shells of YAMATO, the US armor lost all of its superior baseline resistance. (4) To decrease costs and speed up VH production, they eliminated the thin, high-carbon, super-hard surface layer (identical to that used by pre-KC US-developed "Harveyized" armor) added to most forms of KC-type armor, with no loss of resistance, making VH actually the most advanced type of face-hardened armor used by anybody ever. (5) Japanese quality control became the best of all WWII naval armor makers due to this high-carbon-content requirement, which stood them in good stead after WWII in commercial competition with the US manufacturers of cars and electronics (they "wiped the floor" against US manufacturers for some time until the US finally realized what was happening). (6) During WWII Japanese Navy developers kept working to improve their VH armor, though it was never used again on any Japanese warship. They solved the severe cracking problem with the thickest VH plates (turret face plates, for example) due to the inadequate hardening methods used by the Vickers system that was never designed for such thick plates. The resistance had not suffered, but later hits on the same plates would have been more damaging, so it needed solving. They also worked on improving the VH armor to at least equal German KC n/A armor, which they had been supplied information about (samples?). They made two experimental VH plates of regular steel but different hardening methods, one 7.25" (180mm) tested by the US after WWII and another of 380mm (15") tested by the British simultaneously. Both had somewhat deeper faces more like the German plates but otherwise seemed to be no different from VH. Boy, was this WRONG! Both plates were found to be the BEST PLATES EVER TESTED at their proving grounds!! The thin plate DESTROYED the regular US Navy 335-pound 8" (203mm) Mark 21 MOD 3 AP shell (used during most of WWII), causing it to deform like toothpaste through a tube when penetrating at a much higher needed striking velocity, and even the improved MOD 5 with its super-hard AP cap needed a noticeably higher striking velocity to penetrate compared to any US armor ever tested, though at least the shell remained in one piece this time. And they NEVER figured out why these plates were better...

[@erikvandootingh7402]

The Japanese armor inferiority myth is a hard one to kill.

[@kolt46]

Pranks- Sending new person down to the machinery spaces to the biggest BT (boiler technician) for a "BT Punch". Gets a hard punch.

[@ottovonbismarck2443]

Army pranks: a bucket of compressed air, torque scissors, fuel tank bulb, the (straight) airhooks as well (called "Siemens Lufthaken"), calibration hammer etc.

[@almac2598]

RN Pranks - Training for splash target coxwain, the PTIs and divers loved this one - lots of extra PT and spending as long as possible with head in a bucket of water to improve breath holding.; bunk lamp electricity bill - every one in the mess received a bill, the prankee's bill being 10x the rest. The CPO elec would issue a call out fee to 'check the meter', all attempts to reduce usage by switching off or removing the lamp were thwarted by other mess members and so on. Oggy hunting in Cornwall when on a Plymouth based ship, the CPOGI would take great delight in giving extra rifle drill.

[@violinjon]

The rapid fire questions are great! I would however request that you still read out the questions. I enjoy listening to your videos as a kind of podcast to enjoy while engaging in the many short trips that my work requires. They function very well as such, but with onscreen question text the natural verbal flow was lost.

[@seaape1070]

Speeking of pranks, I got one. We were pulling into Norfolk being brought stern to shore. As the tugs backed us in, a forklift started backing down the pier. I convinced the new sailors we had a back up alarm for the ship. Like clockwork, we stopped and the forklift stopped. We moved again, so did the forklift with it's alarm. I was proud of coming up with that on the fly.

[@BigPapaKaiser]

I have headcannon of Beaty growling "BREAK YOUR BACKS AND CRACK YOUR OARS, MEN! IF YOU SEEK TO PREVAIL!" as the order, and some ships deciding losing flash protection is a lesser risk than facing wrath from a man channeling his inner Captain Ahab. And you can't dissuade me.

[@caminojohn3240]

You are spot on in terms of your Yamamoto armor segment. One thing I need to point out is that high quality iron sources were fairly limited. In the US, the source of high quality iron ore was used up due to steel demands in WWI and WWII. Secondary sources are all that is left. I can imagine that in Japan, their native sources may not be all that great, but finding high grade ores that were not already exploited would be very rare. It all boils down to the refinement process and the willingness to repeat the melting process to attempt to extract more impurities.

[@edandrew7842]

Not specifically naval as a prank - but sending people to the stores for a "long weight" was a giggle for the storeman as well as the sender.

[@alganhar1]

There are all kinds of variations on that theme. Glass Hammer, Round Wrench a bunch of others I have either heard people being sent for, or heard of people being sent for. They are kind of standard hazing for young, overenthusiastic apprentices and I am pretty certain every trade that uses tools of one sort or another has a long list of the things.

[@edandrew7842]

@@alganhar1 "You want a long wait? Stay there - I'll go and check."

[@CharlesStearman]

@@alganhar1 One version I've read of is "the key to the keelson locker" which turns out to be be very large and heavy wrench which the victim then has to carry up several decks to where it is supposedly needed.

[@robertbrodie5183]

signalmen: get a tube of squelch grease s2 get a box of grid squares

[@heirofaniu]

@@alganhar1 Chemlight batteries, Humvee keys, 100 feet of flight line, "the elbow is wearing out that's what's squeaking, go get some elbow grease", my favorite one I've seen in a machine shop was when I pissed off one of my coworkers and he tacked every single one of my tools to my bench while I was taking lunch. Edit to add: send the guy to get some BA Eleven-Hundred Ns (balloons), telling the guy that he brought you a standard Crescent wrench and you need him to bring you a metric Crescent wrench, and telling a guy that he needs to fill out the ID-10-T form.

[@cnw5330]

The rapid fire Q&A's are a neat idea, but I'd limit the amount (generally no more than 1-2 per drydock). On a related note, having the question text on screen would be helpful even for "regular" answers.

[@maddthomas]

The funniest prank I heard about the US Navy was a young man sailor was sent to a female officer looking for some fallopian tube's. The female officer said with a straight face "I only have 2 and I need both of them, go ask someone else"

[@raymondbenedict]

There was an recent documentary about HMS QE's shakedown cruise where an very junior RN crewmember was sent to find fallopian tubes for the F-35, even one senior guy he asked made up an form with the tagline ID:IOT.

[@markrobinson9956]

Liked the quick format for some questions. Keep up the good research and work.

[@stevevalley7835]

wrt the flash door question, I read somewhere along the line (perhaps "The Grand Fleet" by D K Brown) that after-war tests done showed that the flash doors were too weak, blowing open when there was an explosion on one side of them. So, whether the doors were in place on the ships lost, or not, might be irrelevant, because they could not do their intended job anyway.

[@eiwtsexiang]

Thank you so much for answering all my questions!

[@ph89787]

11:21. This is the first time I've heard of this bomb and the image that came into my head was a Barracuda dropping an exploding Mickey mouse

[@greenseaships]

To achieve any appreciable damage at all, one would require a Donald Duck.

[@adenkyramud5005]

​@@greenseaships yeah that would cause a duckload of damage... Yes I know where the door is, goodbye 😂

[@michaelkovacic2608]

Regarding the sinking of neutral ships, I know of at least one incident during 1942 (I think) where a uboat operating in the South Atlantic found a Swedish ship and first radioed the BdU (Dönitz) for permission to sink the ship. Also, during operations by uboats of the type IXD2 in the Indian Ocean, I know of one incident in 1943 where a uboat stopped a Swedish ship, gave the crew time to abandon ship, and only then sank it. So it seems that in relatively distant waters, at least some restriction remained in place, at least regarding Swedish ships. (The uboats in question here are U134 and U181 respectively. The latter was commanded by Kapitän zur See Wolfgang Lüth, who was the 2nd highest scoring uboat commander of WW2 and one of only 2 uboat commanders to receive the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds)

[@WALTERBROADDUS]

Actually was the British during most of the sinking of Swedish ships. Royal Navy coastal forces actively chased after German convoys from Sweden.

[@jonathan_60503]

The speed round of quick answers worked pretty well - but I still think I'd appreciate if you'd read out the condensed question. I'm often listening to drydocks while doing other things, so I'm not watching the screen 100% of the time.

[@toymachine2328]

16:43 My impression regarding the removal of flash doors to implement faster firing- I work in a factory and I was a mechanic before that. Anytime it's possible to remove a safety device for some slight, negligible or perceived advantage, a considerable majority of people are going to do it, with or without orders. Orders to leave safety devices in place only increase the speed with which they're bypassed. Chalk it up to human nature.

[@thehandoftheking3314]

30:30 drach, I never knew you were such a heartless monster to ignore a poor doggo

[@Zephyrmec]

One classic prank you missed, “mail buoy watch”. New crewman is dressed out in every bit of safety equipment and then stationed on the fo’csle virtually on the bullnose, with a boat hook and megaphone to pick up the mail that accidentally was dropped early by the helicopter. Even any senior officers or petty officers will let him stand the watch long enough for photos from the bridge or other convenient location

[@cf453]

The short burst of questions was great, and well-handled.

[@73Trident]

Great Dry Dock as usual.

[@nigelleyland166]

As the son of a transatlantic convoy stoker, coal was routinely damped down in storage for the simple reason, stokers didn't want to be breathing in the dust when lstoking, thus it was either a wet slurry at the bottom of the coal store, later becoming a dry cake.

[@bjturon]

Captain Coles would be pleased by the BD mount 😁

[@vikkimcdonough6153]

Regarding the lack of surviving direct written orders to remove flash protections, it probably would've been in Beatty's interest to avoid putting those orders to paper - had they existed in written form, then, if something went horribly wrong as a result, there'd've been a paper trail pointing back to Beatty ordering the ships under his command to ignore safety precautions and disable, circumvent, or remove interlocks to increase their rate of fire, at which point Beatty'd be facing some very uncomfortable questions as to why he gave orders that needlessly endangered his ships.

[@afrikacorpse]

Hi - I asked Drach that question. Totally agree with you (and Drach) that Beatty may have deliberately avoided putting such an order in writing, for exactly the reason you mention, but I was wondering (and hoping) if there was anything written by any of the large number of people who would have had to pass on and implement that order. Drach mentions Alexander Grant, HMS Lion’s chief gunnery officer a few times, and Grant did indeed write about his experience being transferred to Lion. How he found the cordite situation a total mess, mixed and expired lots, poor storage, poor cleanliness, uncontrolled access to magazines etc… basically he was horrified. I only found one of the chapters of his book online so I probably need to buy a copy to check the whole thing, but he doesn’t seem to talk about any command from above about improving rate of fire by any means necessary. In fact, he mentions carry out a firing/loading demonstration in which he proves that rate do fire is not impacted by having full protection. Pretty sure he says that Chatfield was present for this test too. He also had to get his approval to have the ships entire cordite store replaced. So if Grant wrote about his experiences, and was obviously so concerned about the situation, didn’t any of the other people in the BC fleet happen to mention the same? Did no one, not a Captain, gunnery chief, turret crew, magazine crew etc… not write anything about being told to do something that they presumably knew was incredibly unsafe? Not even after the event to cover themselves? I’m not saying it didn’t happen, I’m pretty sure it really did and was obviously an endemic problem in the BC fleet, but it’s just doesn’t quite sit right that we don’t have any source proof.

[@vikkimcdonough6153]

@corpse Well, Beatty later rose to become commander of the Grand Fleet and even later First Sea Lord, _and_ was also rather massively corrupt; it's possible that some of those people _did_ put those sort of concerns into writing, and Beatty had that writing quietly disappeared or their concerns about his orders expunged from it, like how he made the report into the battlecruiser losses at Jutland, which by all rights should've gotten him cashiered, instead exonerate him completely. Hell, maybe the writing into which they put their concerns _was_ (at least some of) what Beatty prevented from making it into the final loss report!

[@SCjunk]

As to the question on cordite being spread around the wrecks of the Jutalnd battlecruiser losses - it has to be said and is often deliberately forgotten the HMS Indefategable was further boken up by Danish salavage companies in the 1920s - there being reports and probably a few photos of substancial armour being landed at Esjberg, so clarkson cases being found spread around when the wreck was "rediscovered" in the early 21st C is fairly irrelevant. Both shells and cases have been seen in both the surveys of Audacious and Vanguard -the latter being surveyed due a North Sea oil pipeline being uncomfortably close to it's area of loss.

[@ronaldfinkelstein6335]

Since Drach has been in contact with some other naval historians, I was wondering if he's had contact with Indy Niedell, and the people over at the World War 2 KZbin channel. That channel does a video each week, covering the progress of the War, as of 79 years ago. That means they are in late May, 1944, and will be doing a special event thing about D-Day, in about 2 weeks. I am asking because, just under two weeks after D-Day, the largest carrier battle of all time, the Battle of the Philippine Sea will take place...and that action is in Drach's 'ballpark'

[@antonalerte1189]

I think they’ve done a video together about Pearl Harbor

[@bluemarlin8138]

Yes, he has. I know they did a video about naval actions in the Baltic in 1919-20 back when Indy still did the Great War channel, and I think they have done a WWII video as well. The better question is when he’ll team up with the guys at the “Unauthorized History of the Pacific War” podcast on KZbin.

[@Andy-ql9wh]

@@bluemarlin8138 he already has

[@drtidrow]

@@Andy-ql9wh Yep, he was with them for the episode about Dick O'Kane and _Tang_

[@ph89787]

@@drtidrow and he’ll be back for Emperor Augusta Bay.

[@JS-ui5ew]

16:43 I don't think it would have needed any direct verbal order. As Drach mentions the motivation came from the order to speed up rate of fire. It only takes one captain to give the nod when his officers are removing the flash protection and peer pressure between the BCs will require all to follow to keep up with that ship that mysteriously increased their rate of fire. I'm sure Beatty would have known unofficially but all that's needed us plausible deniability.

[@lamwen03]

Officers wouldn't remove anything. They would just 'not see' that the ratings had done so.

[@joshthomas-moore2656]

38:58 Wow, i thought the Bismarck fan boys were bad but that historian (Not the person asking the question to be clear) takes the cake and table to be honest and i'm now trying to avoid a mental image of him hugging a body pillow of Prinz Eugen. (Take that in anyway you wish to)

[@bkjeong4302]

This is the one time I think Bismarck fanboys could actually do good, because that idea of PE killing Hood is just….no.

[@greenseaships]

Serious question- do they make body pillows of RMS Queen Mary or Ile De France? Asking for a friend.

[@adenkyramud5005]

​@@greenseaships I mean... You could ask some artist to make a ship girl version (if one doesn't already exist) and get that as a body pillow if you really wanted to... 😂😂😂😂😂

[@greenseaships]

@@adenkyramud5005 I don't know... I just remembered that in France, they consider their ships to be "he"...

[@theawickward2255]

@@adenkyramud5005 KanColle does have a shipgirl Prinz Eugen, and I'm sure some fan has made a body pillow of her.

[@mytube001]

Mines keep showing up in trawlers' nets and on shores all around southern Sweden. Rare now, but still very common in the 70s and 80s, decades after the end of the war. The most recent one in my local area was in 2005, but that mine turned out to be from WW1!

[@WALTERBROADDUS]

I keep thinking about that scene in that James Bond movie, "for your eyes only." Where the British have the fake fishing trawler and it catches a mine in the nets.

[@alganhar1]

Same in the UK. Last one that actually washed up that I know of washed up in Cornwall in 2021, so not really that long ago. They are also occasionally caught up in trawlers nets, which must lead to some interesting expressions on that trawler crews faces when they see their catch! Much rarer now than they used to be but still out there.

[@alganhar1]

@@WALTERBROADDUS That actually happens. Its actually one of the more common ways detached sea mines are discovered!

[@davidbell5528]

on naval mines etc I do remember Southend beach had a disarmed mine painted red with a warning sign about the risks of munitions washing ashore. Admittedly not just or indeed mainly for naval mines, as Shoeburyness was an artillery training range firing out into the waters, and there is that ship off Kent visible from the shore

[@greenseaships]

53:34- I hope I'm not the only one thinking about that scene in Finding Nemo right now. "Oh look! Balloons! It IS a party!" On a serious note, back in 1981, a mine in the Ionian Sea detonated when a Greek fishing trawler snagged it in their net and inadvertently brought it into contact with the hull. XD True story! ;)

[@jimdavidsmith4374]

Years ago I heard that the samurai swords had something over 30,000 layers. Using the 2x2x2x2 etc. method, it works out to 15 foldings.

[@frankbodenschatz173]

Drach, thanks agan, as always!

[@calvingreene90]

Torpedoes have a rather distinctive sound so probably some of the evasive maneuvers resulted from reports from sonar Torpedoes in the water. Again the assumption is the person who launched them is competent.

[@princeoftonga]

Whether it’s assumed the launcher is competent or not my impression was that if it’s coming even remotely in your direction at least turning away is advisable. Once fired mr torpedo is nobody’s friend!

[@rashkavar]

It's very much worth noting that by the time you get to steelmaking though the Bessemer process, a lot of the worst of Japanese iron ore is already overcome. The traditional Japanese steelmaking process used in making those traditional katanas that need so much folding is much closer to the bloomery furnace process that was developed during the Iron Age in Europe than it is to using blast furnaces and the Bessemer process (which, it must be noted, are relatively recent developments in Europe as well, especially the Bessemer process which is less than 2 centuries old) (if it's now older than that, hello person from the 2050s, why are you reading ancient KZbin comments?) Instead of producing a relatively uniform pig iron (blast furnace) or steel (Bessemer process), bloomeries of all types produce a bloom - a half-molten mess that is slag in places and iron with varying amounts of carbon in others (which spans the full range of carbon content that is considered steel). A skilled blacksmith familiar with this method of steelmaking can identify the various sections and split them up accordingly. The folding process to diminish the effect of impurities is not unique to Japan (see Damascus steel), but the Japanese smiths excelled in that they found ways to layer different sections of this bloom-derived steel together to improve the effectiveness of the blade. There were a number of different mixes used, depending on the period and the skill of the smith in question. But since bloomeries *don't* actually melt down the iron fully, they are *terrible* at removing impurities. The more modern techniques, starting with blast furnaces, do actually get hot enough to fully melt the iron and keep it molten long enough to separate out the impurities. That ability completely changed the metallurgy world, and allowed us to develop reliably consistent iron and steel pretty much as long as the ore in question has some steel in it. (We still greatly prefer mining iron oxide deposits to others, but that's mostly an ore grade thing - when you've got rocks that are like 75% iron by mass (or more) just sitting in the ground waiting to be dug up, it's not really worth going for stuff that's 20% iron by mass.

[@88porpoise]

0:16:43 I can absolutely see peer pressure and overconfidence along with top-down pressure to increase rates of fire redulting it bypassed safety procedures without even unofficial order. If someone did say something the response probably amounted to "Hey Bobby, you think we are gonna get hit? We are the best ship in the Royal effin' Navy which means we are the best ship in the world and we will fire off so many shells that any Huns'll ve smoking wrecks before they can get the range. And do you want to look like a fool when they dolts in Z turret are faster than us?" And for a hell of a lot of young men that would be enough to convince them to go along with it. Add in that people are skyptical of basically every safety measure that slows down their job. People in factories etc bypassing security measures (both by their own decision and when told to do so) is pretty common. I doubt Beatty or any senior officer ever gave an order to bypass safety measures, but they would likely have demanded increased rates of fire and left it to junior officers and crewmen to figure out how while turning a blind eye to certain decisions.

[@timpost2981]

During rapid fire Q/A, it would be very helpful if you read the question out loud for those who are listening but not watching the episode

[@dennisharrington3384]

Sir. Thanks. I really really enjoy your work, especially as relates to USN, which seems to be delivered with a sense of wonderment that the Navy could even find the ocean, much less put to sea.🇺🇸

[@WALTERBROADDUS]

Well with the current United States Navy? There may be some question about finding the ocean. 😒

[@dennisharrington3384]

Sadly, I agree. Aye aye, si… um ma’a…? uh….. Fortunately, Mr. (I hope!) Drach…. concentrates on the time when men were men…🇺🇸

[@billbrockman779]

But what’s your real opinion on Prinz Eugen sinking Hood? 😂

[@richardmalcolm1457]

Re: "wide variety of guns on pre-Dreads." It is worth bearing mind too that the very idea of having numerous calibers on a capital ship goes far back into the dim mists of the Age of Sail! A first rate like VICTORY or SANTISSIMA TRINIDAD quite commonly had a range of gun types, diminishing in weight (of course) as you move up decks: 32 pounders, 24 pounders, 12 or 18 pounders, probably some carronades or 8 pounders, and even 9 pounders as chasers, to say nothing of swivel guns. This deep-set mentality carried right over into the ironclad age, even as the new technology altered (or eliminated) the premises for having all these gun sizes.

[@alganhar1]

Not sure technology really made a mix of calibres pointless until relatively late, specifically the advent of modern style quick firing artillery. Even during say the Ironclad era that main battery would be slow to load, not the kind of thing you wanted to be using against say a faster moving but less lightly armoured opponent that may still pose a danger, like an early Torpedo Destroyer. Once you got those quick firing guns then yes, but before then there was still a valid argument for primary, secondary and tertiary batteries.

[@richardmalcolm1457]

@@alganhar1 I wouldn't really disagree with any of that. My point was only that the habit of having numerous gun sizes/calibers was an ancient one for Western navies, and habits like these were not always easy to shake off, even as circumstances and technology changed.

[@davidsachs4883]

Concerning old naval mines: About a decade ago I think I read somewhere that US naval SEALS were being rotated in small groups to either Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia (I forget which) to aid The local government, (and get practical experience) in hunting and destroying naval mines left over from WW2

[@alganhar1]

Mines are washed up on UK shores semi regularly, even now. Last one I remember washed up in Cornwall in 2021. One or two tend to turn up every year, either washed up ashore, or caught up in fishing nets. I can only imagine what the crews of those trawlers must be thinking if they haul one of those things up onto their deck!!!

[@davidmcintyre8145]

When talking of armour we have to remember that while Japanese armour was among the weakest in WWII US armour had not advanced significantly since WWI and was no better than that fielded by the British,French and Germans in the earlier conflict; while British and German armour was significantly better inch for inch in thickness

[@NielMalan]

1:02:16 Tartan paint, specifically.

[@mike28003]

Ahh 43:00 time frame ahhhhhhhhhhh knee knockers got to love them. And navy pranks mail bouy watch, 5 gallon bucket of prop wash, 25 yards of flight line, go get an ordi punch.

[@alganhar1]

Pretty much every trade that uses tools has a list of such things, mostly used to haze young, overenthusiastic apprentices. Would not surprise me to find that one could fill a fairly substantial book of the things....

[@williamharvey8895]

I love Floppy dog, I have not even seen Floppy dog but I know I love Floppy dog.

[@Aelvir114]

39:36 I do find it funny that that picture shows her 5.5 inch guns.

[@calvingreene90]

All it should take to generate a general order to make sure the flash protection is in place is one ship caught without it and a couple other ships blowing up mysteriously quickly.

[@BigMoTheBlackDragon]

Classic one The Mighty Jingles brings up is sending someone for a left-handed spanner.

[@johnjephcote7636]

I havecome across a 'bucket of steam' and asking stores for 'a long wait/weight'..."Where's my long weight?"..."Well, you've just had one". On land I heard of a lorry driver going to London Docks to collect glider engines.

[@heirofaniu]

One of my personal favorites is to tell the guy to bring me a standard Crescent wrench, not a metric one.

[@USS-SNAKE-ISLAND]

I do believe, if memory serves, the Portuguese were quite well established in Japan long before the Dutch began to trade there.

[@JevansUK]

With regards the flash protection in the Battlecruiser, my understanding is the that the flash door in the working compartment to the gun house is open when the gun loading cage is in the up position and closes as it returns down to the working space. Standard practice was the magazine were open during action unless there was a lull in firing, I don't think that RN magazine had scuttles to pass cordite prior to the aftermath of Jutland. One thing I hadn't thought about until now is that the Lyditte in the ready use shell bins might not be a great idea given it's tendency to go off in shock events, I don't think that the ready use ammo would have been used as it's a slower process they seem more to cover for a break down in shell supply.

[@GrahamWKidd]

I love Saturday night!

[@Cbabilon675]

There's a very interesting History Channel episode about when they went down to the wrecks of the battlecruisers. Queen Mary for instance, had some of her flash protectors open. So I guess the evidence stands true that what happened to each individual battlecruiser is not the same.

[@stephenmeier6091]

@Drachinifel in the first question check the control surface on the tail of the plain, you don't want to get marked for that.

[@ReverendHowl]

51:00 - A WWII American mine washed up on the local beach a couple of years ago. Porth Tywyn, Sir Gâr.

[@skeltonpg]

Re British flash protection. IIRC the burn-out of a 6" casemate aboard HMS Malaya was resulted from removal of propellant charges from their protective cans

[@DaremoKamen]

Never in a navy, but I've heard at a Boy Scout camp with a small lake campers being sent out for "50 feet of shore line".

[@davidbell5528]

Army technician on day one sent to the stores to get 'a long weight'. The clerk would leave him stood there until the clerk was bored and then send him back

[@derekbowbrick6233]

KG 100 group at Anzio was testing the new type of glide/wire guide missle, or was it the video/tv version, could this have hit the Spartan?

[@rackstraw]

01:01:47 : Other USN pranks: Mail Buoy watch; "Do you want to see the Sea Bat?"; "Go get a [fill in the rate] punch"; Relative Bearing Grease; "Request permission to blow the [officer billet acronym]".

[@tomdolan9761]

Weren’t there post war US gunnery tests using surplus armor from the Shinano made which survived the war because of her conversion?

[@b18271]

1970 USN-Get a lit smoking lamp, 5 gallons of stanchion remover, fallopian tubes for the radio.

[@dougjb7848]

4:16 “Cleanup on aisle three…”

[@nk_3332]

Typical prank includes a can of Relative Bearing grease. They pulled this on one sailor who was an avid sailboat racer. He left, had lunch and a nap, and came back in a terror because he 'hadn't been cleared to even know about that stuff yet!'

[@88porpoise]

I do wonder how many times those types of pranks are actually effective versus the new guy playing along to fit in.

[@timwilliamanderson]

50:34 in I believe it was 2022 but it might’ve been 2021 a World War II see mine washed up on a beach in Puget Sound. Which means it was more than likely we’re almost certainly an American mine in a small protected waterway lead by Americans under relatively unchallenging conditions, and it was still missed.

[@dougjb7848]

5-pound bucket of relative bearing grease. 100 feet of coiled shore line. Left-handed (also anti-clockwise) socket wrench.

[@808bigisland]

Yamato seemed to suffer frame splits and massive leaks because the hung on armor was too heavy causing cracking. One of the reasons why JN rarely took her out of berth. It would have selfsunk itself sooner than later.

[@01ZombieMoses10]

"And then aircraft come along and ruin the nice simplicity of it all" Said everyone in the big-gun school *with feeling*

[@stevewaldorff4327]

01:01:47: The RN had no Sea Bat watch?

[@GaldirEonai]

Regarding the Shogun 2 question, you're not buying _warships,_ exactly. What you get is a _cargo_ ship with guns on it. The only european _warship_ is the Black Ship which you need to capture if you want it...they're definitely not willing to sell it to any japanese warlords :P.

[@nnoddy8161]

Can we please do a segment on Pound's role in PQ17?

[@aebirkbeck2693]

starting my apprenticeship I was sent to the store for a long stand on hearing this the store man told me stand over there also on another time I sent a youngster for a box of sparks for the grinder. All good fun and never did me any harm.

[@MehrumesDagon]

I'm not sure if someone else didn't say it yet because there is alot of comments up at the time of writing it, but the bit about katana folded steel while pertains the spirit of the subject is not entirely accurate on the technical side. You can separate pretty much all impurities from iron when smelting it - assuming your furnace runs hot enough - japanese during relevant period for katana production, did not have a furnace that would reach that temperature, hence more of the impurities would get into their steel. The "folding" thing, was a technique to burn out as much of impurities as possible during smithing - it also burns out the carbon out of it, so if you you it too much, you will make your steel sword into an iron sword. but it was compensated for by simply starting with higher carbon steel, which would generally be less useful for swords due to it's brittleness, but after a fair share of foldening, you get down to proper carbon steel for the sword. Afterwards, whatever impurities are left, are fairly well distributed across the blade, so that there is no "weakpoints" created by concentration of impurities in one area. That being said I am not aware (since I didn't study that part) how was furnace technology in japan around period when yamato armor was being made, so I have no input on how all of that affects the armor. The only critique I saw about yamato's armor belt, is that japanese didn't have capacity to actually make armor plate as thick as specification requested, resulting in yamato's main belt being basically two much thinner armor plates put together instead of single uniform one. And I do not know nearly remotely enough on armor plates to judge how that impairs effectiveness....

[@bkjeong4302]

Yamato’s armour belt was made as one uniform plate: the concern with “we might have to make two belts and weld them together” was with the planned, but never built, A-150 class that was supposed to follow after the Yamatos, and with the unfinished Russian Sovetsky Soyuz-class.

[@guidor.4161]

i rather like the new -experimental- speed question answering format.

[@davecollier583]

Shout out to Floppy Dog!

[@fouraces9137]

Another Sunday made better, thanks. As far as the Prinze Eugen thing, I'm sure there are computer simulations that will show anything. It's all about input as far as what you get out. I saw a documentary that said Mercury will slam into the Earth in a billion years or so.........if millions of variables fall just right and land on that head of a pin. The truth is out there, but so are some people...way out there to the point they will substitute reality with a version of their own no matter what physics says.

[@SpyCrab102]

Speaking of the Japanese armor differences how much of a difference is 14 vs 16 inch armor of the same quality? Does it really render the ship immune to suck a large number of shells? And why didnt anyone just take an older battleship and armor the daylights out of it so peer ships cant get a complete kill on it? Sorry for all the questions

[@TomLuTon]

green and red oil = military grade headlight fluid

[@johnjephcote7636]

Has Drach done a video on the Corfu Channel mining/incident/case, (October 1946) involving destroyers Saumarez and Volage...and the eventual and belated resolution of the dispute?

[@frankfeitoza6211]

When I was in High School our shop teacher told us about the pranks pulled on newbie mechanics. Prop was was one of them. Our propeller teacher said someone once aske him to go an get some prop wash, so he went an filled a buck of water an soup an when broth back he poured of the man head an said here your "prop wash"

[@edwardscott3262]

At extreme range all guns projectiles come down at a much steeper angle than they were fired. The Sandy Hook tests with the 45-70 and even shooting .308 at long range it's weird how the bullets drop not almost straight down but close enough you can't deny they were coming down like mortars. I know nothing of navel shells but I wouldn't be surprised if the people saying Prinz Eugen's shells would be coming in steeper were right. I don't think they'd have all that much penetration ability with so much velocity lost but it would cause interesting problems for whatever got hit by them.

[@madaro504]

While not neutral, my Great Grandfathers trawler was sunk by U33 on 24 September 1939. After being taken aboard by a Swedish ship, the Destroyer Friedrich Ihn took the crew as prisoners, they were then interned at Stalag XB. He was exchanged for Axis prisoners in Lisbon June ‘43.

[@dougjb7848]

I’m glad he made it home and hope the remainder of his life was peaceful and happy.

[@madaro504]

Only trawler crew to be taken as POW as far as I know. There’s more info, rather not post publicly

[@rashkavar]

It is worth noting the ironclads in Shogun 2 would make sense in the expansion campaign, which covers the Meiji Restoration. The base game covers the Sengoku Jidai (the wars eventually ended by Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, though that's kinda just the last generation or so of an ongoing mess that had gripped Japan from 1467 to at least 1568 (Nobunaga's march on Tokyo), perhaps more realistically up to 1600 (Tokugawa Ieyasu's victory over Toyotomi's successor), and arguably as far as the suppression of the Shimabara Rebellion in 1638. I'm not hugely familiar with that specific game (I'm better with the decidedly pre-musket tactics of Rome: Total War and thus that tends to be the more satisfying replay) but from what I know of that period, Western ships would not be much of a thing in the real Sengoku Jidai. One need only look at the naval difficulties experienced by Japan in the Imjin War (a pair of invasions of Korea staged by Toyotomi Hideyoshi to keep Japan's rather expansive army at the time occupied with foreign wars rather than starting domestic ones up again) to see a decided lack of cannon based naval power. Which the Koreans, particularly Admiral Yi, exploited ruthlessly by employing floating cannon fortresses called turtle ships, which were all but impossible to defeat without cannons, rams, or incompetence on the part of its crew. There definitely might have been European and/or European-inspired hull designs, but by and large there was a decided lack of the big guns that go on to make European ships capable of terrorizing the rest of the world for the next few centuries. And there definitely would not have been ironclads - the closest thing in that era would probably the Korean turtle ship, though it's definitely *not* an ironclad and would, in fact, not really have a significant advantage over any other ship with cannons.

[@bkjeong4302]

Note that the turtle ships were only a very small portion of Yi’s overall force, used specifically for the purpose of breaking up and disrupting enemy formations (hence the anti-boarding spiked roof, as it was expected they’d be up close to the enemy much of the time). At the Battle of Hansan Island, for example, only three of the Korean vessels involved were turtle ships, and they served to blunt the momentum of the Japanese naval charge (the Japanese having been lured into a double envelopment trap by Yi, which successfully trapped the bulk of the Japanese force and resulted in a decisive victory) so that the centre of the Korean battleline would be fully armed and ready to open fire by the time the Japanese got into their effective range. The other heavy hitters in his fleet were comprised of panoeksun (around the same size as the turtle ships and also armed with cannon, but sans the roof and with a commanding platform instead), but as these were fairly large vessels they still made up less than half the Korean fleet, mostly used as the van or the centre of a battleline (depending on which part of the battleline Yi expected to face the most powerful portion of the Japanese fleet opposing him). The remainder of his fleet comprised of smaller (but still heavily cannon-armed) warships of a similar design to the panoeksun.

[@rashkavar]

@@bkjeong4302 Interesting. I did know the turtle ships were a relatively small part of the overall fleet, but definitely didn't know much about the other ships he had available. And yes, there is *much* more to the naval side of the Imjin war (even in the relatively sparse amount that I know personally), but as the comment was primarily regarding Japanese ships during the civil war directly predating their invasion of Korea, I didn't want to delve *too* deeply. (And honestly I am definitely not the correct person to delve deep into the history of the Imjin War - I'm not a historian, and I'm not Korean.) I mostly just wanted to point out that the turtle ships worked out so well specifically because the Japanese didn't have much in the way of cannons and thus didn't really have many options to counter them, and that they probably would have had cannons if they were straight up buying Portuguese ships and all the equipment that goes with them.

[@mystatwo]

Question for all 'yall navy experts. I've always assumed that a ships wooden boats would be turned in and stowed unless being actively used. But I see a lot of photos and films on this channel of ships in convoy with one, two, or more of their boats hung out over the side. What's the convention here? When is a boat stowed and when is it hung out over the side? I would have thought in heavy seas they would be stowed to avoid loosing them over the side in a swell, but it might make sense to have it out in case it's needed in a hurry?

[@andrewpease3688]

Being sent to the stores for a long weight (wait)RN dockyard prank

[@robertthecag1230]

I'm looking for 20ft of flight line.

[@GlenVandeventer]

I know it's of the subject but do any photos of the Yamatos life bota deck exists

[@Yandarval]

handing out a chit to get some Plymouth Rock is one I have heard. An utter windup. As Candy Rock from Plymouth could be bought back. Which is wrong of course. Its a play on the Plymouth rock in the US.

[@drakenred6908]

About them finding charges, it proves that there were unexploded charges in the magazine, after all we habe diagrams of where a bomber that survived damage hit. The charges existing untill recently only really proves that was where an explosion wasn't. Which makes me wonder what other erroneous assumptions made based on misinterpreting the evidence that you think is the biggest misunderstanding that we now know to be false based on misunderstood evidence

[@bkjeong4302]

The “Yamato was poorly protected because Japanese steel sucked/Japan used obsolete incremental layouts for Yamato“ (the second one being just plain false) meme is one of my least favourite bits of naval “common knowledge” ever. Between the Japanese steel quality being only somewhat worse than that of other navies, Yamato actually having AoN armour layouts and the sheer amount of armour involved, she was still quite well-protected compared to other contemporary designs, with only a few other contemporary designs having (arguably) superior belt protection and none having superior deck protection. Unless you’re talking about her anti-torpedo defences, which really were rather awful (albeit not because of steel quality). That was a genuine major design issue.

[@metaknight115]

Even then, flaws and all, Yamato's torpedo defense was still the best. It took 10-13 torpedoes to sink Yamato and around 19-20 to put down Musashi. It took 5 to sink Bismarck and Repulse, 4 to sink Prince of Wales and Royal Oak, 3 to sink Barham and Kongo, and 1 to sink Duilio and Conte Di Cavour.

[@rupertboleyn3885]

Then there are the claims on the internet that Yamoto had terrible fire control and sights/rangefinders. I have no idea where that came from, except perhaps people deciding that no radar capable of fire direction means 'bad fire control'.

[@metaknight115]

@@rupertboleyn3885 The tie for the longest ranged naval hits being made by battleships lacking advanced radar fire control, and Iowa....barely hitting a slow moving training cruiser at mid range kind of disproves that bulls Yamato also.........arguably hit the escort carrier White Plains at 34,500 yards. It's agreed that the shell exploded underneath the keel, but I've seen a few sources dictate that Yamato's shell scraped White Plain's hull.

[@bkjeong4302]

@@rupertboleyn3885 That’s nothing. People (including some actual historians) still sometimes claim Yamato literally had no fire control computers at all and was completely incapable of mechanically calculating a firing solution. Yeah. I suspect that this has much to do with conflation of radar fire control with fire control computers.

[@bkjeong4302]

@@metaknight115 To be fair, Musashi was attacked from both sides making it so that the attackers accidentally counterflooded her, and the last couple torpedoes put into Yamato were just to make sure (granted, taking 9 torpedoes before being a lost cause is still a quite severe amount of damage to soak up).