The Drydock - Episode 292

00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:47 - If there hadn’t been the resistance to back and forth on accepting the concept, how much sooner could the Independence class have been built? Could one or two have been in service by Midway or the Guadalcanal campaign?
00:06:17 - Why did the Essex's arrive so quickly?
00:11:44 - During the Age of Sail we know the British were very pretty good at boarding actions (To the point some officer like Nelson and Cochrane were likely born with a cutlass in hand) and the French's abilities tended to wax and wane depending on the exact time and commander, but how good or bad at boarding actions were the Spanish and American navies?
00:20:46 - What if HMS Unicorn had been ordered and completed a couple years earlier?
00:26:35 - Would the Nelsons have been better off having A and B turrets at deck level and C turret superfiring over the other two, in the style of the Mogamis' forward turrets?
00:31:59 - In your opinion if the Guerriere had been up to date, would it have been a more equal battle between her and Constitution? And how do you think the battle would have really played out then?
00:36:07 - What would’ve been played on the Mary Rose drums they found?
00:40:31 - Accidental advances in naval design?
00:45:16 - Were the 18.1" guns in fact, the upper limit of plausible gun design during the period the channel covers?
00:52:13 - If Force A saw the special strike group on its way to hit Dorsetshire and Cornwall in it's radar, why was there no CAP or other fighter interception?
00:56:45 - The wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery?
01:02:19 - Why did the Royal Navy put such wimpy main guns on KGV?
01:08:41 - German WW2 aerial torpedoes?

[@onenote6619]

The bit about Mosquito aircraft being the first 'stealthy' aircraft has some measure of truth. Early radar like Chain Home had a frequency in the early models of about 30MHz, so a wavelength on the order of 10m. Fortunately, the long metal spars of a bomber, running wingtip-to-wingtip were comparable to that and could be detected easily. A Mosquito has no such structure and those early radars might have had some difficulty. Later in the war when Mosquito appeared, radar frequencies got higher and even the smaller bits of metal (such as the propellors) would be quite detectable. Interestingly, the comment about the spinning of the props is also relevant - when chaff (or Window/Duppel as it was known back then) was deployed in force, Germany developed a means to put the radar return through a pair of headphones. The operator could then - to a degree - distinguish between slowly-moving chaff clouds and a rapidly-spinning prop-modulated return. 'Instruments of Darkness' by Alfred Price is a fun read on the whole early electronic warfare thing.

[@The_ZeroLine]

I believe its wood construction also massively aided in its low radar returns.

[@onenote6619]

@@The_ZeroLine That was my point, but I should have made it more clearly. Metal is conductive and so radio waves will reflect off it - but only if said metallic objects are of a size similar to the wavelength. The Mosquito contained metal, but nothing of a size similar to early radar wavelengths. And yes, wood does not reflect radio waves very much at all. The point becomes moot in the later war, when radar wavelengths dropped into the 10cm range.

[@electricalmayhem]

Germany didn’t use HF radar

[@onenote6619]

@@electricalmayhem True enough. Freya started at 250MHz, a wavelength of a bit more than 1m. But that also equates to reduced range, because HF radar conforms to earth curvature (up to a point). Even so, the amount of metal on an Mosquito that is more than 1m long is not huge. The propellers, internal power cables and control rods. Still much less than your average metal-skin bomber. The Wellington, with it's basket-weave frame, might have been comparable. But by the time Mosquitos show up, the Welly is pretty much obsolete. Of course, by the time Mosquitos show up, the weaknesses of Freya were well-known and it was subject to heavy jamming. Plus, Mosquitos were hard targets even when they were not fighter-variants pretending to be bomber-variants. Your mileage may vary. I suspect that the average Luftwaffe pilot would have proceeded with extreme caution.

[@juanfervalencia]

please reply always

[@GrahamWKidd]

8, EIGHT Drydocks to 300. And I have a 25 hr day to listen to it in!!

[@dougjb7848]

(Count’s voice) Ah-hah-hah-hah!

[@kemarisite]

One point about the Shinano armor plate test is that, even though the shot was fired at point black distance, the propellant was reduced to yield a muzzle velocity of about 1700 ft/sec for one shot and 2000 ft/sec for the other. This is the impact velocity at about 20,000 and 11,000 yards, respectively, so not the equivalent of firing a full charge round at contact distance.

[@bluelemming5296]

What would the impact angle be expected to be at those ranges? I'm wondering if they actually fired at the correct angle as a result of calculating what it would have been in real life? Is there a good paper out there that goes into detail on these tests?

[@kemarisite]

@@bluelemming5296 images of the test plate post-test show it was vertical, so a perpendicular impact. At 10,000 yards the angle of fall would be about 5 degrees, while at 20,000 yards it's almost 15 degrees. Since the turret plate was mounted at 45 degrees, a perpendicular impact cannot be accomplished within a range where hitting is plausible. At any range where a hit is plausible, the turret face will reject the shell because of the angle of impact.

[@bluelemming5296]

@@kemarisite I thought about this a bit, and I think you need some qualifiers. Based on the pictures I've looked at, the Yamato appears to have an all-or-nothing armor scheme, which means hits outside the armor belt can cause flooding and hence roll - perhaps catastrophic flooding that can't be corrected if the designers didn't get something right (I'm thinking about Prince of Wales here) or something unexpected happens (thinking about South Dakota's power loss during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal). Also, rough seas can cause the ship to pitch and roll (I'm thinking about the encounter between Renown and Scharnhost/Gneisenau off Norway here). As such, it is plausible that hits aren't necessarily going to happen at the full 45 degrees where the turret face might be expected to reject the shell. I recall reading that angled armor makes less difference at closer ranges, but I don't recall the details - not sure if that would be applicable as well. Certainly the angled armor on Soviet tanks didn't stop late war German tanks from penetrating during WW2, nor did it stop upgunned Shermans from easily penetrating the same tanks in Korea, but that may have been a matter of munitions that somehow differ from naval munitions in some critical manner. I suppose I'll have to see if I can do some research into the details of how angled armor performs in the real world. I imagine the base of the turret would be a vulnerable spot in much the same sense that the base of a conning tower on a WW2 sub is vulnerable. I did find the navweaps page on the test, which has some more detail. Unfortunately, the author of the page does not take these real world considerations into account. I wonder if there are other real world considerations that have been missed in considering this test? Based on the gunnery data that was finally declassified in the early 2000's, it was very possible for skilled crews to start getting hits on a moving Yamato sized target using late-war radar at ranges of 32k+ yards, assuming full salvos and no competing fall of shot to confuse the radar display. This is reported in a two part article in Warship International (2005-2006), which still does not appear to be widely read. Still, having said all that, it's a very impressive armor scheme. A remarkable feat of engineering. I'd still trade a Yamato for several carriers, but I suppose they had no way to know that in 1934.

[@onenote6619]

On the subject of the Mongomery, you mentioned that a recently-discovered Tallboy turned out to have more boom in it than was expected. The Torpex used to fill Tallboys had a significant paraffin wax content for both chemical stabilisation and to help prevent it from going off on physical impact. That might have been at least part of the reason, as might the thick, heavy armour-piercing case. Edit: On a side-note to that, humans have been dumping nitro-explosives into the sea for well in excess of a century and they are compounds with (understatement alert) a lot of readily available energy content. Microbes evolve fast, so I wonder how long until something arrives that can eat them.

[@NashmanNash]

I wonder how FAST microbes can eat the stuff one day... "Tube 1,launch torpedo" "Torpedo away....and already eaten"

[@onenote6619]

@@NashmanNash There are some microbes (and a few macrobes with the right microbes in their guts) that seem to be able to eat plastics and plastic-adjacent hydrocarbons. And plastics don't have a whole lot of readily-available energy to spare. It would be interesting if high-explosive warheads required a sterile shield at some point in the future. Or if a bacterial culture capable of eating high-explosive quickly (while living on humans slowly) were developed as a means of sabotage.

[@iankerridge5720]

Given: "there is nothing new under the sun" and bacteria have been around for such a long time, there probably are prokariotes around that CAN digest such chemicals. They might not exist in sufficient numbers in the right places/ conditions to be able to do it. Or maybe they do?

[@Trek001]

Accidental advances in naval design... Well, that missile jamming device created after they found by accident that an officer's electric razor still running springs to mind

[@TheRandCrews]

man that was many Drydocks ago

[@Trek001]

@@TheRandCrews 162 drydocks ago I think

[@iankerridge5720]

Radar was discovered via experiments to create a working " Death Ray" vs aircraft. Anything is possible!

[@electricalmayhem]

That’s a myth with no basis in reality if you know anything about radio theory. How people think that razors were emitting that much rfi even back in 1940’s is beyond me.

[@WALTERBROADDUS]

I noticed on the news this week that the last remaining survivor of the USS Arizona passed away at age 102. 😪 hopefully, he will join his Shipmates...

[@greenseaships]

My favorite things on KZbin include but are not limited to: 1. Hearing Drach punctuate the number 2. 2. Hearing Drach say "RE-LATIVEly" 3. Hearing Drach begin an answer with "It DEPENDS...."

[@dougjb7848]

4. “… just about.” 5. “… or so.”

[@greenseaships]

@@dougjb7848 Sooner or later we need to introduce the "Drachinifel drinking game" :D

[@waynegordon2628]

In theereee... Thee-at-uuh...😀

[@Andy_Ross1962]

Front.

[@dickrichardson1804]

Because

[@robertstone9988]

Accidentally the ram bow worked for hydrodynamics as a crude bulbous bow.

[@SuperAKJR]

This. I was looking if someone had already commented this. 😊

[@kkupsky6321]

Best opening tune on KZbin. It’s been 292 weeks? Feels like yesterday

[@iankerridge5720]

Getting used to the " new" 5 minute guide and rum ration music. If Drach was forced by A@#£holes making dubious copyright claims, to abandon the drydock music, I think a popular uprising would be in order!

[@kkupsky6321]

@@iankerridge5720 I mean. Mutiny? I dunno. You know penalty for mutiny. I think some of the back catalogue still has the original music but yea. If they change the dry dock song it’s a fight.

[@anarionelendili8961]

Typo in the Guerriere question timestamp: 01:31:59 should be 00:31:59

[@Alex-cw3rz]

1:02:19 I would also point out to that commenter as you have said before the armour on British ships was better, so it wasn't just thicker. In addition, there was no ship they fought that their shells had issues with. Sharnhorst and Bismarck had thicker armour than any Italian or American ship and the KGV's went through both armour. I think this sort of my guns bigger than your guns doesn't work when at any resonable battle ranges the shells will go through and with the accuracy of the 14 inch guns it makes them even better. I think it's also an irony that britiain has the joint longest hit in a naval battle when they had a shorter battle range tactic.

[@CSSVirginia]

Yhea, its hard to argue the 14s were insufficient in veiw of their service history

[@duwop544]

Sea Mosquito? Am in LOVE

[@bryanstephens4800]

And here I was unhappy I woke up early now I have something to listen to

[@ronhudson3730]

Essential reading to learn more about the U.S. Navy, its decision-making processes and the capabilities or lack thereof, of the key people involved, is Mastering the Art of Command by Trent Hone. It gives clear-eyed insight into the limitations of the planners, leaders and industrial capacities of the Navy at the beginning of the war in the Pacific. Had they had more carriers at the time, it is uncertain that they could have used them to maximum effect. Deficiencies in strategic and local command, tactics, supply and construction limitations made it more than likely than not that had they had more carriers, they would have incurred great losses. The lack of carriers dictated their very careful employment, allowing the time need to learn to best employ them.

[@knightofavalon86]

On board aircraft repair and maintenance facilities? HMS Unicorn is the Battlestar Pegasus?

[@mytube001]

Radar stealth is mainly a matter of geometry, with materials being a secondary aspect. You want to have a geometry that reliably reflects incoming radiation away from the source, regardless of angle, but also align major edges to the same angle so that they all re-radiate strongly in the same direction, and only that direction. The other issue is that a radar reflection reduction only decreases detection ranges by the fourth root of that reduction. So to halve the nominal detection range, you need to reduce the radar return to 1/16th, or just around 6 % of the original. Making a lot of the fuselage and wings out of wood could maybe knock a few percent off the radar return, for a detection range reduction of almost nothing.

[@onenote6619]

You should also consider wavelength. Chain Home was on the order of 10m at the start of WW2, so any geometry less than - roughly - a tenth of that is irrelevant. Later on in the war, those wavelengths went down a lot.

[@mytube001]

@@onenote6619 The German early warning radars operated on fairly short wavelengths, but yes, I considered that and decided not to include that in my comment. The wavelengths used were around 1-2 m, which is short enough to detect engines, props and such.

[@iankerridge5720]

Well, modern stealth aircraft use radar absorbant materials along with odd shapes which reflect radar radiation in a scattered pattern, less able to make a large return. Mossies, for all their great qualities, dp not do this. Yes , the wood might not return as strong a signal, but apart from the props, two rather solid metal lumps in the shape of RR Merlins would solidly reflect radar.

[@DaremoKamen]

Wimpy 14 inch: I don't know if it translates upwards to artillery, but in small arms it has been found that a less dense bullet in the same weight and caliber tends to retain velocity much better. Possibly the most extreme example was the Spanish cartridge developed for them by German engineers that used an aluminum bullet. The US testers were very impressed but still insisted on the 7.62 x 51 they had developed and Spain was in even worse position than the UK to stick with their own arguably superior cartridge.

[@arivael]

For a direct shot with something like a rifle that makes sense but once you get into arcing shots you have to account for the fact that a good chunk of the initial velocity is lost getting to the top of the arc, your impact velocity is going to be what little is left plus what gravity has added on the way down, since gravity is always going to add the same, regardless of shell mass adding mass to the shell is going to give the greater increase in impact energy at that point.

[@Pensect]

So our saying that a longer bullet of the same caliber and mass works better? It sounds like they found a niche case where the longer bullet was more aerodynamic than the previous bullet. The general rule is that for the same dimension and velocity the heavier bullet made with the denser material would retain its velocity much better due to conservation of momentum.

[@nichevo1]

This is all very confusing to me. I had thought that the super lightweight bullets like nylon, for instance are extremely zippy at phone booth range but are not much past 10 yd. My understanding is that sectional density is key to long range performance, SD=length/weight. So for the same weight, a longer, slimmer bullet retains more energy, as does one with a higher BC (ballistic coefficient). That said I don't know about the Spanish bullet and it sounds interesting.

[@yenerhd]

​@@nichevo1if you are interisted, Ian from Forgotten Weapons made a Video about the spanish SETME rifles a good while back. If I recall correctly he mentioned something about that.

[@Mildly.Squeued]

Well thank you Drach, My normal out of the rack grumpyness was met with a Patreon clang of a notification. YES ! Drydock 292 was on the board… Woot ! Talk about redirecting my thoughts in a positive manner…

[@SuperTelecom]

Ah yes, my favourite time of the week

[@elliottjames8020]

Re music for rowers on a galley. There are Greek illustrations form the classical period of a muscian with the double flute. The also crop up in depictions of Hoplite battles from the same period.

[@rashkavar]

Can definitely see the land commands being of use for some of the broader maneuvers - there's a good deal of overlap between how infantry formations might need to move and how segments of fleet formations would. But you don't have to get too into the weeds of advanced naval gunnery tactics to start hitting tactics that are...not smart in a land engagement. Forming a firing line and crossing the T are both staple examples of naval gunnery tactics for pretty much the entire period that naval ships have big guns (or perhaps I should add "and the concept of fleet-wide tactics has progressed beyond "don't shoot at the guys flying the same flag as yours!"), whereas in conventional ground tactics, pretty much anything that exposes your side to the enemy is somewhere on the range of unwise to suicidal. All this is to say, I'd imagine there would be some adaptation of the drum signals to account for the different tactics demanded by the different environment.

[@israel_started_it_ALL_in_1948]

nice. thanks

[@iankerridge5720]

Wrt german aerial torpedoes, seems like they should have bought a Stringbag and copied it, for the launch vehicle: Stringbags perfectly capable of flyong low and slow. Also can laugh in the face of small caliber AA fire! ( looking at you, Bismarck)

[@indplt1595]

Two years. The original standard for U.S. shipyards to go from launching to commissioning 888-foot-in-length U.S. fleet carriers was two years and change, set when Fore River Shipyard (FRSY) launched Lexington on 3 October 1925 and New York Shipbuilding Corporation (NYSB) launched Saratoga 7 April 1925 before CV-2 was commissioned on 14 December 1927 and CV-3 on 16 November 1927. By 1943, the standard had become less than half a year. Five months to be precise--31 July 1942 to 31 December 1942--USS Essex went from launching to commissioning at Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock (NNSD) in exactly five months, setting a record and new standard by more than halving NNSD's previous fastest carrier launch-to-commission record of 10 months, one week (14 December 1940 to 20 October 1941) with USS Hornet CV-8. This soon became a ceiling, not a floor. CV-9, CV-10 and CV-11 were ordered beginning with USS Essex on 3 July 1940 in response to the Naval Expansion Act, 14 June 1940, and were assigned to be built at Newport News on account of NNSD having constructed USS Ranger and the three Yorktown-class carriers. The Two-Ocean Navy Act authorized the tonnage for eight more Essex-class carriers when FDR signed it into law on 19 July 1940, leading to the assignment in September 1940 of four (CV-12 through -15) to NNSD and the second four (CV-16 through -19) to Fore River on account of FRSY having constructed USS Lexington and USS Wasp. The other U.S. yard with fleet carrier building experience, New York Shipbuilding (built USS Saratoga) was excluded from building the Essex-class because President Roosevelt would not let the cruiser-conversion-to-carrier idea go and NYSB would build all nine Independence-class and the two Saipan-class CVLs. As the first 11 Essex-class were ordered the year before CV-9's keel was laid on 28 April 1941, the second Essex-class carrier, CV-16, was laid down on 15 July 1941 at Fore River...and the third as well, as CV-17 was laid down on 15 September 1941 at FRSY before CV-10 and CV-11 were both laid down at NNSD on 1 December 1941. CV-16 was renamed Lexington at the request of the Fore River Shipyard workers who wished to build both carriers named USS Lexington, reassigning the original name Cabot to CVL-28 at NYSB. As such, Lexington and Bunker Hill launched on 23 September 1942 and 7 December 1942 respectively, and Lexington was the second Essex-class carrier to commission on 17 February 1943 (leading to eternal confusion amongst museum ship patrons as CV-16 is the oldest U.S. carrier that is preserved despite her three remaining NNSD sisters having been ordered before Lexington). For the same reason CV-7's builder Fore River asked the USN to reassign the name Wasp to CV-18 while CV-5 and CV-8's builder Newport News wanted the same honor to reassign Yorktown and Hornet to CV-10 and CV-12. The connection FRSY and NNSD's workers felt with their warships and namesakes also led to an intense rivalry between the two primary American fleet carrier producers as their parent companies jockeyed for assignment of the remaining 21 Essex-class hulls to be built; which led to a new launch-to-commission record being set with Yorktown. Bunker Hill was the third Essex-class carrier to be laid down and launched, and was commissioned in a still-impressive 5.5 months on 25 May 1943 but NNSD pulled out all of the stops to commission Yorktown first on 15 April 1943 despite only having been launched on 21 January 1943, a full six weeks after Bunker Hill was launched on the first anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. Simultaneously, the competition between FRSY and NNSD hit a fever pitch in the winter of early 1943, with the rivals laying down the first "long hulls" with CV-19 at FRSY on 26 January 1943 and CV-14 on 1 February 1943...and raced to see who could build, from keel laying to launch, the new 888-foot-in-length fleet carrier design (same length as the Lexington-class) in under a year. Fore River won, putting Hancock into the water in 363 days, and had her commissioned three days faster than Yorktown's record, earning FRSY the right to build CV-47 and have Philippine Sea commissioned on 11 May 1946. NNSD needed 371 days to launch Ticonderoga and couldn't commission in three months or less (missing the mark by one day). Perhaps as a consequence, CV-46 was scrapped on its NNSD slipway in 1946... Cutting down the launch-to-commissioning standard from two years in 1927 to three months in 1943 was quite a feat...but oddly it in no way affected Essex-class durability or combat performance. Bunker Hill commissioned in less than six months, Franklin went from keel to commissioning in under 14 months, yet both survived in 1945 despite the statistical appearance that their construction was rushed. Essex herself and Yorktown sailed in company with the first CVL, USS Independence (laid down 1 May 1941, launched 22 August 1942 and commissioned 14 January 1943--mimicking Essex's record) to blast Marcus Island on 31 August 1943, marking the combat debut of both classes of fast carriers, less than five months after Yorktown had commissioned...just over eight months having been launched at NNSD. This was in no way a record, as HMS Formidable was hunting Admiral Scheer less than a month after commissioning on 24 November 1940...and Victorious' Swordfish from 825 Naval Air Squadron were slamming torpedoes into Bismarck amidships less than two weeks after commissioning on 14 May 1941. This probably was the key to the Essex-class success--Allied naval aviators did not need to be worked up aboard a brand-new fast carrier if the squadron had been formed back in 1934 and were deployed aboard HMS Glorious at the outbreak of the Second World War. Victorious was a green ship, but her pilots were not.

[@greendoodily]

With regards to the SS Montgomery, the recent explosion in Beirut is estimated to be about 1.1KT TNT equivalent, so that gives you a pretty vivid idea of what "not good" looks like...

[@SennaAugustus]

Unicorn is already an interesting ship, what if there were 3 of them built as intended?

[@cnw5330]

With regards to Nelson alternate arrangement: How much difference in citadel length would there be, in terms of absolute lengths? IMO couldn't be much more than 4-ish meters, which very well may not be enough to offset the advantages, unless you're at the very edge of what you're permitted to build. Similarly, the poorer rearward arcs of the superfiring turret may IMO be compensated by a wider arc on the A turret (which does have a gun length-sized gap behind it after all).

[@robertstone9988]

And drak is vary critical of the Bismarck because the citadel dosnt have enough reserve buoyancy. Dosnt seem like the nel/rods would have enough either. A slightly larger citadel seems like it would more than make up for the extra weight in extra buoyancy.

[@cnw5330]

Or hell, if length is an issue, you can force the B turret guns to elevate to clear A turret, Worcester-style..

[@Wolfeson28]

@@cnw5330 Exactly. There's no need to lengthen the citadel in order to allow the B-turret guns to swing behind A-turret at all.

[@stevevalley7835]

wrt the question about the 14" guns on the KGVs, British cordite seems to be considerably less dense than USN smokeless powder. While the weight of the charge in the British guns is less, the chamber size of the British guns is significantly larger. This is also true of the 16"/45 used on the Nelsons vs the 16"/45 used on the US Colorado class. The muzzle velocity of the British guns is a bit lower, but a lower muzzle velocity results in a higher trajectory and steeper angle of fall, which is better able to penetrate deck armor. The debate about whether to stay with 16", or having more guns by downscaling to 14", was a long standing debate. The USN had had exactly the same debate 20 years earlier. The head of BuOrd insisted that engagements would always be fought at 12,000 yards or less, a 14" could penetrate well enough, and, being smaller, more 14" could be carried. The USN General Board looked at the engagement ranges at Jutland, overruled the head of BuOrd, and made long range gunnery the priority. As Drac said, the choice for the KGVs was dependent on the same condition that the head of BuOrd had specified in 1915: engaging at short range. I have another theory about the move to 14" guns. UK industry's capacity to make large guns had atrophied since WWI. The guns for the KGVs had to be ordered by late 35, before the change to 14" was specified by the Second London Treaty, to meet the construction schedule for the ships. I have read that the new 14" was designed to fit in the same cradle as the earlier 13.5"/45. When Tiger and most of the Iron Dukes were scrapped in the early 30s, the Admiralty retained many of the 13.5" guns. Navweaps says 54 of those guns were in inventory in 1939. It may be possible that the Admiralty designed the KGV gun mounts for backward compatibility. If there was a development or production problem with the new 14"/45, I think it is possible the Admiralty was looking at completing some or all of the KGVs with the 13.5" as a stopgap.

[@dougjb7848]

Except the Nelson class launched with 16” guns in 1923, and development / improvement continued specifically because the Admiralty wanted a gun available when it was again allowed to build ships with 16” guns. These 16” guns would have been carried by the Lion class, if they been built. I do not think the Admiralty would have sanctioned the building of a battleship, in the late 1930s, that would have carried WW1-age 13.5 inch rifles.

[@stevevalley7835]

@@dougjb7848 the Admiralty did not have sufficient quantity of 16" guns of any sort laying in a warehouse. I am proposing the 13.5" as a stopgap, if there was a design or production problem that prevented new 14" being built to equip all the KGVs in a timely manner. For that matter, there appears to have been close to 200 15"/42s built. With the Revenges, QEs, Renowns and Hood, that totals 100 afloat at any given time. With, say, 16 or 24 held in inventory for rapid replacements for serving ships, there would be plenty more available to equip the KGVs, at 8 or 9 guns per ship, if a new 15" suffered design or production delays. The bias at the Admiralty at that time was for more, smaller, guns, hence the shift to 14", of which they also had roughly comparable replacements in inventory.

[@pburgvenom]

Puck Footin

[@andrewthomson]

How original.

[@RedXlV]

30:13 An aft arc of fire only matters if you're being chased. A Royal Navy battleship *does* the chasing.

[@SteeGrav]

Hello Drach! I'm a subscriber of your channel for a long time ( I don't know how long, but my son is now seven, and he was just a baby when I began following you with avidity.) You interview with Galveston naval museum was very inspiring. Very good indeed! I have à question, and this is my first ever question. What makes the diesel with gearing a so special power plant ? I'm not an engeneer. I have à degree in History.... (so you know I don't work in the field ;-)_ ) I always thought gears where automatically added to power plant of ship to makes the propellers working at the optimum speed regardless of the rotating speed of the engine. Where was I wrong? Thank you for answering this silly question.

[@stardragon3331]

I hope we will get a UpToDate drydock questions .XLSX soon

[@christianfranzen7854]

Thanks! Regarding boarding actions: what about the Dutch & Portugese?

[@Andy_Ross1962]

Raising the foredeck vertically also increases the buoyancy forward. Look at the Royal Navy frigates designed in the 50s and 60s such as the Whitby, Rothesay, Leander and Leopard classes.

[@jbepsilon]

Or for a modern variation on this concept see the X-bow.

[@nowthenzen]

00:20:46 As Naval history enthusiasts we keep returning the to fate of Force Z because Prince of Whales and Repulse deserved better fates than they got as did the sailors and marines aboard. We should not speculate about Force Z seperate from the larger environment. The Japanese did not need to destroy force Z they just needed to prevent POW from operating in the waters off Malaya's east coast. This could have been accomplished by a torpedo hit that reduced her speed by several knots or a bomb hit that knocked outa turret or even just by the Japanese having strong air units operating out of Thai and captured allied air fields. To me the most interesting alternative history is what influence the presence of the Prince of Whales might have had on that speculative night action of British battleships vs Japanese carriers during the 1942 Easter Raid.

[@themanformerlyknownascomme777]

the usage of a Ram bow and the discovery of the destructive interference which leads to the bulbous bow could be considered an "accidental advance"

[@craigfazekas3923]

Her: "Honey ? Take out the garbage & wash the dog ?" Drach crew: "Sorry. That's not within the period that the channel covers"..... 🚬😎👍

[@paulthewall4764]

Her: “You’re cut off…

[@ant4812]

I believe the designation in the cover for Nelson's third turret was "X" turret.

[@Alex-cw3rz]

31:59 she wouldn't even have to be newer HMS Endymion completely outclassed the 6 frigates and that was designed 1 year after and built at the same time. It defeated President (a more heavily armed ship than Constitution) with ease and it was the fastest vessel in the Royal Navy. Or she could have been a seven class or a razee which were more heavily armed than Endymion.

[@scotthill8787]

Prince of Wales 14in guns were able to penetrate Bismarck’s armor, as did KGV. Duke of York blew Scharnhorst to hell. It seems that the gun did pretty much what it was designed to do.

[@lucajohnen6719]

As for accidental "advantages": what about the hydrodynamic benefits of the ram bow before they were understood?

[@andrewpease3688]

I was under the impression that the anti fouling properties of copper sheathed hulls were an accidental discovery ,having been been initially fitted to stop wood boring creepy crawlers

[@f12mnb]

Were there any efforts made to make it possible to launch torpedoes from aircraft at a higher speed? It seemed that most torpoedo bombers had to run at a slower speed for an effective launch.

[@becauseicangaming2479]

Can you do a video on the USS Livermore?

[@chs76945]

Anyone have some links to pictures of the bows Drach is talking about in the 8th question (40:41, accidental improvements in naval design)? I'm having trouble imagining what he's talking about from the description, and the graphic is a lovely but not very helpful picture of a DH.98...

[@535phobos]

You could simply google the ships he mentions (Ceres and Capetown) to get pictures of before and after that bow modification

[@Alex-cw3rz]

34:00 keep in mind if Chessapeake had the same armament as Constitution and therefore we increased the weight of shot and percentage of guns, the wieght of shot HMS Shannon's hit Chessapeake with would still be higher than what this new Chessapeake hit shannon with.

[@nichevo1]

If memory serves the Chesapeake fought a noble fight; very even; the key was an early decapitation by Shannon via a broadside through Chesapeake's quarterdeck. (There is also a midshipman in the case, who was later exonerated.) I don't believe either Broke or Lawrence had reservations about a disparity of force.

[@Alex-cw3rz]

@@nichevo1 no Broke had trained his crew extremely highly and had introduced sites to his guns, cut elevation markings in the quoins, drilled his men more than almost any other crew in the Royal Navy and there are mutiple other innovations that you can look into.

[@nichevo1]

This is true, Broke had a picked crew ​@@Alex-cw3rz and was as you say an innovator

[@f12mnb]

In your recent guide on the WW2 US Great Lakes aircraft carriers (coal powered, paddle wheelers) kzbin.info/www/bejne/aHfEepZqpreXgqs it was clear that the scale of aircrew training was quite large for the US Navy. How large was the general US crew training effort? How did they train so many engine/mechanics, gunners, etc? I know they rotated air crews but what about the other specialized crew - being on a destroyer engine crew must be quite different than a battleship. How did that compare with the RN, Kriegsmarien and IJN?

[@johnholt890]

Apologies if this has been asked before but my question is why did the Royal Navy not insist on all the German High Seas Fleet Dreadnoughts excepting Rhineland which was an unarmed barrack ship bring interned to Scapa? As after the US, UK and Japan they probably still amounted to the most powerful fleet afloat on their own? Was it the inability of the High Seas Fleet to reliably man them?

[@metaknight115]

Hey Drach, were there really enough differences between the Kagero and Yugumo class destroyers of the Japanese navy to justify their labeling as separate ship classes. At least going by their basic Wikipedia descriptions of their differences, they seem more like sub classes or at most half sisterships than entire separate destroyer designs.

[@sadwingsraging3044]

13:48 So where _exactly_ did all those Spanish treasure ships go? 😊Funding issues indeed! 🏴‍☠️ Treasure blocade we will call it.

[@keithmoore5306]

Drach if the naval treaties were number instead of tonnage what do you think we'd seen in ships?

[@jeffreybaker4399]

Mr. Clarke, during WWII, how did sailors from Idaho get along with sailors from West Virginia? Sorry, I saw the interview on the Galveston Naval Museum channel and just couldn't resist the tease. Apparently, whomever creates titles thinks you are your associate, Dr. Alexander Clarke. I'll show myself out now.

[@user-lw4kp6zf1e]

If the Independents were earlier there would have been no USS Robin, So no exchange of knowledge of fighter control and high capacity operations.

[@Shells-1967]

Still have the same work to do what ever the size of the ship

[@chuckmarble2365]

Here's to you, two ninety two!

[@natthaphonhongcharoen]

Actually another benefit of Mogami/F3 style layout is that the secondary turrets can be much further forward. The superfiring can just shoot over them whereas for Nelson style turret it'd get in the way.

[@Alex-cw3rz]

33:24 if the battle had lasted longer HMS Africa and the rest of the squadron would have caught up and I think Constitution would have surrended on the spot, or at most after a single broadside from Africa.

[@bigsarge2085]

👍

[@The_ZeroLine]

There was massive demand for an episode on the sub Perla. Whatever happened with that?

[@mytube001]

44:00 I hope you'll start using more than one image per question. For this question, showing what a knuckle bow looks like (my Google image searches have failed to give me a clear answer) would have been more helpful than an image of a Mosquito...

[@book5ter]

So; when are we getting a video on HMS Splendid, HMS Splendid and HMS Splendid?

[@mnovick11]

The city for which CL-57 was named, Montpelier, is pronounced mont-peel-yer. Just fwiw.

[@jt_kirk]

@Drachinifel It appears your chat is infected with bots with naughty pictures.

[@Drachinifel]

Sorted :)

[@gregcollins7602]

Man I imagine your wife is about to leave you for spending all this time doing Drydocks. I picture your wife storming into your office asking "what the hell are you doing, another Drydock?" And poor Drach says, "no, no, no I'm not I promise, I'm watching porn."

[@michaelbourgeault9409]

how did submariners do laundry during world war 2?

[@dougjb7848]

Largely, they didn’t. Unless something got messed with a substance that interfered with shipboard operations, they wore the same clothes for several days or longer, then put on clean clothes and put the dirty stuff into a reeeaaalllllyyy stinky locker.

[@michaelbourgeault9409]

@@dougjb7848 o crikey :(

[@merlinwizard1000]

33rd, 7 April 2024

[@bebo4807]

If the Bismarck was twice it’s size with 27 radar controlled 19.375” guns with Prinz Eugen as 3 heavy cruisers with secret weapons could they have escaped the Royal Navy and attacked Pearl Harbor ahead of the Japanese?

[@Maty83.]

Not likely. Your issue will be fuel, because even if you can trek more than halfway across the globe without submarines taking an interest in you, you're just on a suicide misdion. As for the guns and size: A ship with that many guns would be so large and consume so much steel the Germans wouldn't have a single panzer division. Along eith the ship now being large enough that the RAF might actually hit it.

[@kkupsky6321]

I dunno. I may die from the drach drinking game. If it’s a vodka every et cetera et cetera however I’m gonna get liver sick. I thought it was game you never lose but it’s taxing…

[@paulswickard7488]

Whether or not Unicorn was sent to the far east, the aircraft the fleet air arm had in service couldn't match the Kido Butai aircraft.

[@Drachinifel]

True in 1941/2 with the exception of the Martlet, but Force Z wasn't attacked by Kido Butai aircraft :)

[@paulswickard7488]

@@Drachinifel mea maximas culpa. Have you seen the new Ukrainian submersible accommodating 10 troops +1 crewmember?