The Drydock - Episode 295 (Part 2)

00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:33 - Why were battleship superstructures so different?
00:08:57 - Why were HMS Jellicoe and HMNS Beatty renamed to Anson and Howe?
00:13:03 - Could the Mk13 issues have been found pre-war?
00:17:58 - What would IJN doctrine look like if the IJN had figured out either before or early in the War that Kantai Kessen wasn't working, and how long would it take them to develop new doctine?
00:25:35 - Was there something about German Naval service and/or industry that held back fire-control development?
00:30:04 - Were there ever attempts to modify harbors through dredging or other ways to increase the size of ships that could be accommodated in the harbor?
00:32:57 - Reaction of High Seas Fleet to HMS Zubian?
00:34:58 - How does range and other data get sent through a ship?
00:41:05 - Did King want to invade the Mariannas soley to give the USAAF a base from which to bomb Japan, or did he have other reasons too?
00:44:02 - How big and expensive were ships back in the day?
00:49:38 - Which WW1 or WW2-era carrier or capital ship is best known for its sheer resilience and fighting spirit?
00:52:53 - What were the impacts on the deployment of a "electrified" warship on a strategic and tactic level?
00:57:09 - Please can you calculate where a shell fired from the 9.2inch coastal gun retrieved from Gibraltar and currently on display at James Clavell Square in Woolwich (51° 29.681′ N, 0° 4.24′ E.) would land if someone would be so mischievous as to fire it?
00:59:27 - What can you tell me about Operation Pelikan?
01:06:17 - What did the transition from drum beats to shipwide alarms look like?
01:12:09 - Why did double acting cylinders take so long to make it to ships?
01:15:42 - Why do we see exceptional leadership and high performance only on some ships?
01:25:53 - Admiral Beresfords 'silent orders' initiative?
01:30:43 - The capture of U-570 and her subsequent career as HMS Graph?
01:35:54 - What was the nature of the damage caused to Amagi by the Kanto earthquake?
01:39:30 - Did the IJN have any system for recovering their downed pilots?
01:42:11 - What is your take on the influence/impact of Japanese/Chinese animeization of historical navy ships (the conversion of historical ships to shipgirls)?
01:45:19 - HMS Tiger vs Belgrano?
01:51:35 - 14"/55 or greater to get around some of the Treaty restrictions?
01:55:48 - Larger classes of ships were usually built in different yards. Szent Istvan aside, are there stories of notable and important differences, when all yards should have been building from the same plans?
01:58:05 - How did Force Z plan to resupply battleship-specific consumables and how did navies with global power projection plan to resupply capital ships on foreign station?
02:01:40 - Why were the Spaniards in the Armada carrying so much gold when they should have anticipated battle?
02:06:38 - Did the USN 'win' the War of 1812 at sea?
02:12:42 - How heavy was the biggest cannonball a ship got hit with during the classic Age of Sail, and how heavy was the resulting damage?
02:15:10 - Montana's with turbo-electric drive?
02:19:32 - Can you explain the USN WW2 plane numbering conventions?
02:27:28 - Land guns in naval use?
02:34:21 - Was there any reason why Germany would not have been able to have Italy use some of their shipyards to increase their output?
02:37:56 - Incidents in the age of sail that mirrored the Battle of Samar?
02:42:07 - Replacement for SMS Goben/Yavuz Sultan Selim?

[@BleedingUranium]

I try not to comment twice, but that was an _excellent_ explanation of the USN's awful aircraft naming system. For contrast, it's worth noting that the IJN's system is effectively a direct copy, but with all the bad stuff fixed. The IJN system: * Uses single letters for the type/role (no "SB", etc). * Doesn't omit the "1". Combined, this avoids the common issue of people attaching the variant to "numberless" USN designations (like awkwardly listing "F4F, F4U, SBD-3" together). * Runs the numbers across ALL manufacturers, thus the A6M is the sixth carrier fighter, full stop. There are a couple very rare exceptions where two competing designs were both selected, thus have the same number. * If an aircraft is made by more than one company (I believe some A6Ms were built by Nakajima) the designation does NOT change. All of these together make things FAR less convoluted. And since we're here, two other smaller things which don't affect the quality of the system: * The USN system has a dash before the variant (F4F-3) while the IJN does not (A6M2). * Similarly, the USN uses a capital letter for the subvariant (F4F-3A) while the IJN uses lowercase (A6M2b).

[@vikkimcdonough6153]

1:15:59 - I've always found it amusing that Lee, having honed _Washington_ into a superb long-range sharpshooting platform, then did the battleship equivalent of sneaking up behind someone and shooting them in the head from a foot away.

[@dougjb7848]

The most reliable way to increase accuracy is to reduce range.

[@bkjeong4302]

This is something everyone ignores about that battle: yes Washington was a great gunnery ship but she PHYSICALLY COULDN’T HAVE MISSED due to being POINT BLANK.

[@bluelemming5296]

You are never too close to miss. There's always something that can go wrong.

[@GrahamWKidd]

This is one of the funniest Drach channel comments I have ever read!!

[@michaelimbesi2314]

To add to answer about the benefits of electrified warships: electric lights also have a couple other benefits that weren’t mentioned. These are largely a result of light bulbs not using fire to produce light. Candles and oil lamps generate smoke and consume oxygen and lamp oil gives off fumes, so the air quality belowdecks would have improved once these were replaced by electric lights. This would have been especially beneficial in the days before mechanical ventilation became well understood. And even old incandescent light bulbs are much more efficient at producing light than candle flames, so the light bulbs would produce less waste heat than candles or lamps of equivalent light output, making what ventilation the ships did have more effective at keeping the spaces below deck cooler and more comfortable. Both of these things would tend to improve crew morale. Candles and lamps also both require that the ship carry some sort of consumable just to produce light. For candles, the ship would need to carry lots of extra candles to replace the ones in use as they burned out. And oil lamps require carrying and storing spare wicks and lamp oil. The electric light bulbs last longer and only require the ship to carry the same coal it already uses for the boilers. This simplifies the life of the supply department a bit. And fire safety is a big benefit. Both oil lamps and candles use a flame. If an oil lamp or candle fell, it would likely continue burning and could easily start a fire. In particular, lamp oil is very flammable, so if an oil lamp fell and broke, the result would often be that the oil would suddenly catch fire in a big woosh of flame. And the stores of that lamp oil below decks are obviously a major fire hazard if they get hit by an enemy shell in battle, or fall over and start leaking in heavy weather or something. And to top it all off, electric lights can be turned on or off instantly with the flip of a switch, and that switch can control a bunch of lights and doesn’t need to be near the actual lights themselves. Things like navigation and masthead lights could be turned on in any weather without needing to send a sailor up the rigging, and lights could be put in hard to reach places in the engine room and controlled by a switch in an easy to reach place. And of course, nobody ever had their light bulb blown out by a sudden gust of wind.

[@micnorton9487]

But isn't there the electrocution risk with AC current when a space has water coming in? I assume they'd just use raw current coming out of the AC generator (s), cut into manageable voltages by voltage drop circuits right? Granted I'd rather risk that than a keg of whale or coal oil spilling inside a ship but it sounds like you've considered every angle of this topic so I thought I'd ask....

[@gwtpictgwtpict4214]

@@micnorton9487 Swings and roundabouts, you're exchanging one set of pros and cons for another. The fact that we're all still using electric light etc says the pros outweigh the cons. That said, Navies don't like fires, I know everyone in the RN has basic fire fighting training, you see a fire, you attack it with available kit* while screaming for assistance. Think the USN has the same approach and assume any half competent Navy does the same. *Attacking a fire with available kit may be as simple as pissing on it. Catch it while it's small.

[@micnorton9487]

@@gwtpictgwtpict4214 Jesus brother I didn't want an argument, I just asked if there was a danger of electrocution from electrical systems in a ship.....

[@gwtpictgwtpict4214]

@@micnorton9487 No intention to start an argument here, just trying to expand on the question. Obviously introducing electricity to a ship introduces it's own issues, but as @michaelimbesi2314 states above it also introduces massive benefits. So, as I said, swings and roundabouts.

[@onenote6619]

I seem to recall in a recent drydock it was mentioned that (at least for the early Royal Navy) lighting was via carbon arc lamps rather than lightbulbs. Those come with a set of interesting hazards.

[@BleedingUranium]

Kantai Collection is a big part of why I'm into ships and naval history now. More specifically, I grew up with aviation / WWII stuff, but tanks and ships were sort of "cool, but don't know them that well". Girls und Panzer got me into actually learning about tanks in a meaningful way, and much more recently (two years ago) I decided to dive head first into ships, with a combination of your videos, War Thunder's interactable/playable 3D models, KanColle's characters, and general reading/etc. For context, terms like "displacement" and "freeboard" were completely new to me, and I could probably only name half a dozen or maybe a dozen famous warships. Combining all of these really did make taking in so much information so quickly drastically easier to grasp and retain. Your coverage and other reading for the raw history and stories, WT's models/gameplay for getting a better feel for things which are hard to visualize from just a few black and white photos, and KanColle giving personality and literal faces to names in a way that makes them all much more memorable in an individual sense. Growing up with '90s Star Trek actually did help too. :)

[@duwop544]

The electrical specifics about range data was fascinating, many thanks.

[@heirofaniu]

You think the US aircraft numbering system is bad? We aren't the only ones. Do NOT confuse the L1A1 Small Arms Cleaning Rod with the L1A1 Small Arms Bore Brush. Or the L1 Training Fuze with the L1 Detcord. And remember, L2 Sterling magazines are designated L1A1 if manufactured by Sterling. L1A2 if made elsewhere. And none of those things are compatible with the L1 rifle or the L1A1 rifle, which are not the same thing as each other. Why even have a designation system if it's nearly impossible to use as short hand?

[@ABrit-bt6ce]

M1. That is all.

[@heirofaniu]

@ABrit-bt6ce The M1 designation isnt as bad once you see the designation system for American airplane mounted guns. You may be familiar that the most common ones are the .30 Cal (AN/M2), .50 Cal (AN/M2), and the 20mm (AN/M2). They all stand for Army-Navy Model 2. Wasn't the .50 the M2 also used by the Army and Navy? Yes. Fuck your record keeping.

[@gwtpictgwtpict4214]

L1A1 SLR. A brief exposure in the early 80's while playing soldiers at university led me to believe this was/is potentially the solution to all my problems. I loved that thing.

[@heirofaniu]

@gwtpictgwtpict4214 The SLR/FAL is a fantastic rifle. I have one that I built years ago off of a Lithgow Armory parts kit and it's always treated me well.

[@derrickstorm6976]

​@@ABrit-bt6ce blind patriotism for the win

[@greenseaships]

52:52- Drach let's not forget poor old USS Franklin who- having been beaten within a hairs breath of her life was rebuilt so well that the USN didn't even want to send her back into regular service but wanted to save her for the "ultimate Essex upgrade" which she sadly never received.

[@curtshelp6170]

There's a little reservoir in Southern California well up State highway 39 that was a torpedo testing site in WW2, I don't remember what year they started using it but they had a test facility with a long slide to run the torpedo into the water from a hilltop.

[@curtshelp6170]

Morris reservoir test site.

[@donshively9395]

What’s the name of the place? Can’t find it. I’ll bet there are some interesting artifacts to be found. A buddy of mine contacted the Navy 30 years ago and somehow got the tiny turbine from a torpedo they were scrapping. Being in a turbine repair school at the nuke plant, it was fascinating.

[@curtshelp6170]

@@donshively9395 Morris reservoir I believe. Above Azusa California.

[@samsignorelli]

2:26:06 Thanks for mentioning the Convair Sea Dart! One of my father's projects when he was a young Convair engineer. I'm the surviving member of the restoration crew for the one t the San Diego Air & Space Museum....have always thought of her as "my" plane!

[@BleedingUranium]

It's an incredibly cool and unique plane, thank you for your and your father's contributions! :)

[@samsignorelli]

@@BleedingUranium Thanks! It was really quite entertaining to see the older guys give him crap because he was a junior engineer while they had much more experience at the time! 'Course, I also remember when he gave me a bucket and sent me into the empty engine bay to bail water out....I certainly TRIED to hit him when I chucked a bucket full out one of the engine inlets!

[@TrickiVicBB71]

Oh right. End of the month 6 hour Drydocls again. Time flies

[@nickdanger3802]

Illustrious arrived at the Norfolk Navy Yard in the United States on 12 May 1941 for permanent repairs under Lend Lease. Modifications were made to her flight deck arrangements, including the installation of a new aft lift and modification of the catapult for use by American-built aircraft. Her light antiaircraft armament was also augmented during the refit. Collided with Formidable, 16 December 1941.

[@TrickiVicBB71]

The Ship girl question has popped up before. If it does get some people into naval history. That's good

[@Rosenrot774]

Do you remember when? I kinda wanna hear the answer lol

[@TrickiVicBB71]

@Rosenrot774 Honestly, I don't remember even if you put a gun to my head. 295 drydocks and some questions get repeated.

[@lunatickoala]

The US Navy aircraft designation system might be suboptimal, especially when the same aircraft is made by more than one manufacturer, but it's nowhere near as bad as US Army designating everything as an M-something. In WW2 there was an M3 light tank (Stuart), M3 medium tank (Lee), M3 half-track, M3 armored car, M3 gun motor carriage. There was an M1 rifle (Garand), M1 Carbine, M1 submachine gun (a variant of the Tommygun). Not to be confused with the M1 main battle tank. Yes, I get that technically the M is just a model number so the M1 Garand is officially a "Rifle 0.30 caliber M1" and the M4 Sherman is technically the "Medium Tank M4" but they still haven't created a system to pack more information into a short designation.

[@tonyjanney1654]

A questioner asked "Why do we see exceptional leadership and high performance only on some ships?" Whether on land or at sea, Napoleon said it best "In war, men are nothing, one man is everything."

[@gwtpictgwtpict4214]

He was a big fan of 'lucky' generals too.

[@metaknight115]

I have the feeling had Japan ditched the Kantai Kessen plan, Washington and South Dakota would have had a very bad day facing Yamato and Musashi instead of a WW1 era battlecruiser.

[@jon-paulfilkins7820]

Though to be fair, coming up with another plan to succeed vs the USA would have taken resources away from plans to deal with the real enemy, the IJA. 😜

[@ph89787]

Assuming the IJN can scrounge up the Fuel and shells for them.

[@bkjeong4302]

That’s assuming the IJN can get the Yamatos into the Slot, which is a massive if.

[@bluelemming5296]

It would have been easy, because the airmen who mistook the cruisers for seaplane carriers would have mistaken Yamato and Musashi for islands. :-)

[@metaknight115]

@@bluelemming5296 A little unrelated, but I recall commander Hara of the destroyer Amatsukaze believing he had spotted a sea plane tender initially. However, upon further inspection, it was the crippled heavy cruiser San Fransico, so badly mauled by Hiei and Kirishima's gunfire she didn't even resemble a warship.

[@spudskie3907]

I kinda like the look of the Iowa-class in the Great White Fleet look.

[@HerrPolden]

Concerning requirements for orders to be given silently; In my experience, training certain military team efforts such as MOUT, going silent actually increases team performance. It requires everyone to maintain situational awareness and identify their own tasks, while suppressing tendencies of micromanagement. I can easily see how such experiences in training can give the impression that running silent is better. Though Outside of drill it has obvious disadvantages, of course.

[@myparceltape1169]

Run silent Run deep. Or that BBC documentary about HMS Britania where orders had to be communicated silently when the Royal family was aboard.

[@cleverpete]

The way to think about the USN airplane naming convention is to realize what the Navy wanted to know about its aircraft. Type (fighter, bomber, scout bomber, torpedo craft, torpedo bomber, patrol craft, patrol bomber) and manufacturer were most important. Order of entry into service wasn't important. In fact, it was so unimportant that they went with order of appearance of the prototype instead.

[@awathompson]

Being an airline pilot I am aware of aerodynamic drag or in the case of projectiles ballistic coefficient, was there ever an attempt to both increase the weight of a given projectile or increase the range of projectile by increasing its length to increase it ballistic coefficient. Sidenote: In the reloading world of shooting there is a product sold called "Cavity Backed Bullets" where the projectile is lengthen and thus increasing its Ballistic Coefficient.

[@SynchroScore]

One comparison of ship size and cost went the other way. At the start of the Cold War, the US Air Force began the Heavy Press Program. With a shortage of aluminum, German aircraft manufacturers turned to magnesium structural elements, formed by closed-die forging in enormous hydraulic presses. The US wanted to develop this process further, and funded a number of massive forging and extrusion presses, including two rated at 50,000 tons. They're both still working, and an article I read on them described them as "able to bench-press the USS Iowa." To bring things full-circle, one of the Fifties was made by Mesta Machinery. Normally a maker of steel mill equipment and other huge things, they also made 16" guns, propeller shafts, and during WWII operated an arsenal in Pittsburgh that made large-caliber shells for the Navy and Army.

[@jeffreybaker4399]

Drach, your "Voyage of the Damned" video is one of my all-time favorites across all genres. Recommended it to a friend who came up with an astonishing, obvious question that I had never considered or heard anyone speak to. "So, this fleet is a complete disaster before the battle starts, right? Very crippled, they lose the battle. Well, seeing as they were in such horrible shape, what would have happened if they had 'won' the battle? What would they have been able to accomplish after that given their condition? Isn't this a case of 'even if they win, they lose'?" Know you are not a big fan of contrafactual scenarios, but can you comment on this? Thanks.

[@GrahamWKidd]

Pyhrric Victory?

[@calvingreene90]

You can run refrigeration, hoists, blowers... From the steam engines without using electricity.

[@Drachinifel]

You can, but then you either are robbing your engines of power or you need bigger boilers (as shown by Carpathia), electricity powered by discrete generators (by the 20th century often with standalone power plants) impacted propulsion less and was easier to trunk :)

[@Yandarval]

Dardanelle's Gun. It looks like parts from Dr Bull's Super Gun he was building for Iraq in the late 80s.

[@bryanstephens4800]

Is it the end of the month already? I can't believe New Daddy Drach has this time.

[@ph89787]

I can imagine that when you saw the Shipfu question Drach. That you were thinking on how to keep mini-Drach away from it all costs.

[@jonathansmith6050]

16:00 I think a true hindsight analysis of the impact of a Mk13 aerial torpedo at the start of the war which performed like its 1944 version would be EVEN MORE complicated than you described. By late '44 the drag ring and pickle barrel improvements had been fielding allowing for much higher and faster torpedo drops. With those capabilities the early war torpedo bombers needn't (and likely wouldn't) have flown the same attack profiles -- which utterly wrecks any attempt to work out precisely how much better things might have gone.

[@bluelemming5296]

@drachinifel It's common for engineers to claim they have two left feet. My experience has been that engineers can learn to be good dancers, if they have the right instructor. Dance ultimately comes down to control of timing, much like driving a car. For example, if you want to pass somebody, there's a sequence of timed actions that you take. You look for a certain amount of time, you turn on the signal, you look again, you move the wheel over for a certain amount of time, and so forth. So if you can control the timing of your body's movements sufficiently to drive a car with competence, you can also control the timing of your body's movement sufficiently to do any dance figure well in most dances. That is a fundamental truth that I have seen over and over again with many students and fellow dancers. The idea of two left feet is for the vast majority of people simply a myth. As for rhythm, it's just another word for 'frequency', and we control frequency by controlling timing. It's straight out of physics math: frequency and period are related, and period refers to time: by controlling time, we generate frequencies - it's the heart and soul of a lot of electrical engineering. These concepts also map onto Fourier Series and the concept of the Frequency Domain. So control of timing also gives you rhythm, or higher frequency components with respect to movement over time. Melody comes from the lower frequency components. You practice basic units of rhythm with certain timing, and then combine them together to create more complex rhythm, which can be matched to music with practice and appropriate education. When I was teaching dance in graduate school, I had a number of dance students that were majoring in physics or astrophysics or astronomy and they loved to hear this stuff, because when you understand it, that understanding can make a lot of things that previously seem mysterious and perhaps unattainable actually become easy or at least comprehensible! Another aspect of dance is replacing bad movement habits with good ones. We pick up bad habits throughout our lives, a lot of them from our parents, our friends, and even some of our misguided coaches. An activity like Tai Chi - if taught well - can be very helpful in both building good movement through practice, and in studying movement to help one develop exercises to make it better, and is an excellent complement to formal dance training. It doesn't need to be studied as a martial art to benefit movement in other activities, although for the kinds of people that are on this channel it's probably a lot more fun to study it as a martial art - and there too we find quite a lot of physics. Activities like Yoga and Pilates can also help, though neither is as good for most students in terms of benefits to dance as Tai Chi. Of course, none of this matters without student motivation. That is where most engineers shoot themselves in the foot: they create self-fulfilling prophecies that they can't do something, and of course they are right - once they have decided they can't learn something, it's very hard to correct that mental blunder. Different people learn in different ways, and that complicates teaching. There is no 'one size fits all' recipe. Teaching systems like universities often fail with students because ethical conflicts of interest such as the 'publish-or-perish' system serve to pull time away from teaching, which means teachers no longer have the time to figure out how to reach different students - and it does take a lot of time to do that well. I know this from my own experience helping students that were failing classes to understand the subject well enough to pass, and sometimes even start to like it: in every single case I had to spend a fair amount of time working with people, usually 1 on 1. In my experience, the higher levels is where talent comes in - where by 'talent' I mean things that are difficult to train. However, even here a lot of what we call 'talent' is probably the aggregation or result of years of experience doing things that build related skills, as a child and as a young adult. There is very little evidence of any genetic component. But it's also extremely hard to replace those years of experience with any shorter term training process, this is where we get real differences in people at high levels of performance. I imagine military leadership works much the same way. There are a lot of basic skills that people can be taught to do at a good level. Doing them at an exceptional level requires talent, which in turn requires many years of the right 'life experiences' - and usually a lot of learning from one's own mistakes over those years. Wisdom and intelligence are not the same thing. Things are complicated by the fact that a lot of ambitious people don't want to spend the time to learn skills at the level needed to lead people effectively - a lot of people get positions because of political skills or circumstances that have little to do with doing the job well. Reading a military history series like Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy pretty clearly shows this when you look at the many leaders he discusses - and look at their successes and failures, their strengths and weaknesses, the things they do well and the things they do poorly.

[@j_taylor]

Thank you for that amazing explanation! For work and fun, I am mostly mechanistic and analytical. I discovered ballroom dance can be great fun, but it's such a different direction for me that it's entirely out of my comfort zone and always requires concentration and intention. Great fun though, for all that. Your explanation of how rhythm and melody map to frequency, and how movement can be analyzed, has given me some insight and a lot to think on. Quite a gift. Do you find that square and line dancing are more accessible for engineer types? I learned square dancing at MIT. We covered Basic, Mainstream, and Plus all within one semester because of course they did. Not enough women, so we all ended up learning both parts ("Arky"). Never a perfect multiple of eight, so from the start we danced with "ghosts." It was only later, at a folk festival, when they called progressively more difficult levels and I failed to get off the dance floor, that I learned about "dancing by definition" which that MIT class had been doing from the start. Because of course they did.

[@bluelemming5296]

@@j_taylor I find that square and line dancing are more accessible to everybody - and good movement training even for those who focus on partner dancing. Having a real partner through an entire song complicates things a lot - and I'm saying this as somebody who has interacted with many championship line dancers and has enormous respect for their skills. Performing any movement activity at a high level is hard. But, once you hit a certain level of experience with partner dancing it becomes very addictive and fun, in ways that are different from any other forms of dance. Long term, the benefits of having a partner completely pay for the extra time and effort required to learn to dance with a partner. It doesn't have to be a regular partner, either, I've had many incredible dances with people I'd just met. There's always something of a chemistry issue - sometimes it works out really well, sometimes it doesn't, but over time it tends to work out well often enough to make it highly addictive. In some of the more advanced dance communities - such as West Coast Swing - the instructors and community leaders actively encourage people to dance with lots of different partners. That helps enormously in developing skills that would otherwise be very hard to learn. It's a lot like martial arts in that respect. Interestingly, the experienced dancers can almost always tell when somebody dances too much with one person or within a small clique - it shows in their movements and their response time, there's a very sluggish and 'off' feel to their movements and a lot of missed opportunities. Plus they tend to be terrible at 'floor crafting' and cause or get themselves into a lot of collisions, so their partner has to work harder to help them not do that. We can see parallels here with military history and military leadership: the people that live in a 'small world' mentally - no matter how big their world may be in some sense - tend to miss things and/or not think about things. For example, the US Navy in WW2 and not being ready for night fighting, and not being prepared to question intelligence information, and all sorts of other things that affected the battles in the Solomon Islands (with the first battle of Savo Island being a fantastic example). Though the US navy had bases spread over enormous differences across the planet, they still had something of a 'small world' mentality when it came to the leaders thinking about how to do their jobs. One could draw all sorts of similar analogies throughout other areas of that conflict, both on sea and on land.

[@Moredread25]

I hope there's some tickets left, but I would not be surprised if they were sold out. I highly recommend people go if they are nearby.

[@archiescriven6178]

Note really a Military naval question, but i can't think of any better person to ask. Was there ever a German J-Class racing yacht project? It would be a legendary propaganda stunt for any dictator to win a trophy literally called the "America's" cup.

[@GrahamWKidd]

5 Drydocks to 300! (Part 2) 7k to 500,000 subscribers. And also it's Saturday night!!

[@Dave_Sisson]

Why are people making a big deal over 300? How is it more important than 250, or 200 or any random number like say, 287? Have I missed something?

[@johnfisher9692]

Thanks Drach The numbering system of the US Navy aircraft is enough to make you dizzy and ask for some Aspirin. When you have that meet and greet it's probably advisable to have plenty of pictures of baby Drach to show everyone, probably surrounded by her plushie shell and torpedo

[@DamianMaisano]

I wonder if in a Tiger vs Belgrano fight the helicopters of Tiger could help. If she has any Lynxs or Wasps then they could have missiles to shoot

[@anarionelendili8961]

I honestly was expecting the wok story to end: "...stir it for 5 minutes AND THEN THROW IT AWAY." :)

[@Eboreg2]

Who's going to tell Drach that Kancolle's Massachusetts was released less than a month before he released a video touring the Massachusetts?

[@billbrockman779]

I believe F4U Corsairs fought FG Corsairs in one of the Central American wars in the 1950’s.

[@Eboreg2]

Are you talking about the Soccer War?

[@billbrockman779]

@@Eboreg2 May be the one. I didn’t look it up, just going by memory.

[@notshapedforsportivetricks2912]

I believe in the soccer war that it was Corsairs vs Mustangs.

[@theoutcastraven9777]

@@notshapedforsportivetricks2912 Yes, as well as F4U-5Ns in the FAH vs FG-1Ds in the FAS. Only pilot to get kills was the FAH pilot Fernando Soto Henriquez, who shot down a Mustang and two FG corsairs on the 17th of July 1969

[@notshapedforsportivetricks2912]

@@theoutcastraven9777 Thanks for the info. Appreciate the extra details.

[@Hendricus56]

1:45:10 "and Hornet is definitely on board with this" I see what you did there

[@Joshua-fi4ji]

The bigger thing about dredging Portsmouth Harbour was the number of unexploded bombs they kept finding on the seabed

[@johnshepherd9676]

Kantai Kessen is to naval war as the Confederate strategy was to early modern war. Here is what I mean. Modern war is more about production and logistics than it is about battle. Strategically, modern war is all about attrition. There is no single decisive battle. Just as Lee sought to defeat the Union Army in a campaign leading up to a single decisive battle, Kantai Kessen had the same objective in the naval sphere. They misread their own victory in the Russo-Japanese War by focusing on Tsushima and not the war of naval attrition that proceeded the singular victory. A Pacific war with the US and Royal Navies was destined to be a long drawn out campaign. Japan could not win either that production war or the logistics war. The US recognized the new strategic realities in the mid 1930s and abandoned the "Through Ticket" strategy, which the US Navy's version of singular decisive battle in favor of the deliberate advance across the Pacific. Had the Japanese realized that Kantai Kessen was not going work under the conditions of modern naval war they might have decided not go to war with US at least until they expanded their industrial potential to give themselves a fighting chance to win in new environment.

[@abnurtharn2927]

Talking about cannons. Could the guns of Navarone been build, and how long range would they have?

[@ROBERTNABORNEY]

Yes All the way

[@bluelemming5296]

@abnurtharn2927 Sure. Look up the railway guns used in both world wars (and earlier). You could also look up the coastal defense battery "Little Willie" in Toulon. It's mentioned on the wikipedia page for the USS Nevada and also (briefly) in the last volume of Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy. During operation Dragoon, it repelled the first naval assault, but was eventually disabled after multiple days under attack. There were 4 x 340mm (~13 inch) naval guns, which wikipedia gives as having a range of 19 nautical miles, with associated naval fire control systems and a naval gun crew. These big guns tended to be not so great at hitting small highly maneuverable targets like destroyers, plus the rate of fire for the 340mm guns is only 2 rounds per minute, so I don't think they would have been as much of a threat to an evacuation as portrayed in the book, provided destroyers and not transports could be used to do the evacuation. It would take very unusual circumstances, such as the ships being forced to relatively close range by mined channels that couldn't be readily cleared for the guns to be decisive. Or the guns bearing directly on the evacuation beach/port area so they can hit the destroyers while they are loading. Otherwise, you might lose a destroyer or two, but most of the ships would get through. At long ranges, guns rely heavily on the spread of shot, so having only two guns is very limiting. There's a big difference between maximum range and effective range, where effective ranges means you're likely to get a hit on every salvo.

[@abnurtharn2927]

@@bluelemming5296 Thanks for the info.

[@calvingreene90]

What's the ultra-long 14-inch guns you could reduce some of the barrel wear by firing super heavy shells at more conventional velocities using weight instead of speed to get deeper penetration. While well balance turrets are nice with power traverse it is not necessary.

[@bryanstephens4800]

The commercial port of Savannah had a multi year operation to widen its channel. Big long term economic boost.

[@rpick7546]

Hello Drach. Let's suppose two what ifs about Jellico. First, Beatty ( or at least his signals officer ) is moderately competent; second, British AP shells actually work at Jutland. Given those two things, in your opinion, where would Jellico rank in the pantheon of great British admirals?

[@onenote6619]

The only fault with Mk13 & Mk14 torpedoes that might not have been detected with actual testing is the fact that Earth's magnetic field is not as smooth as the designers expected, especially in areas where volcanic activity is going on (ie the Pacific). The magnetic field strength in Hawaii is likely different from wherever the torpedoes were used in anger.

[@augustosolari7721]

Your Japanese strategy is similar to the one Ozawa used in Phillipine Sea, but with the Marianas instead of the bait force, and with better pilots.

[@user-it4vg4yz4m]

re: US Naval aircraft naming. The Chance Vought Corporation was bought by United Aircraft and Transportation Corporation in 1928 and operated as a separate division. Hence, it makes sense that Vought aircraft were designated by the Navy with the letter "U" but the "U" designation was assigned in 1922, six years prior to that purchase. Perhaps the Navy was holding the "V" in case of purchasing Vickers aircraft?

[@Wee_Langside]

I spent a number of years working for Plessey in the 1980s and 90s. The company made communication systems for Royal Navy ships. All circuit boards were conformation coated. Salt water and electronics do not make for reliability.

[@walterkronkitesleftshoe6684]

Are there any impending updates on the efforts to preserve U-534 at Woodside ferry terminal?

[@takaneseven1465]

my path to becoming a warship history nerd started out with an anime so.. it was at least a good influence on me, however, i didnt start out with the famous ones that really seem to go with cup-size relative to displacement, i first watched Arpeggio of Blue Steel, which then set me down the path of actually researching the ships portrayed and eventually here

[@StevenPalmer-cs5ix]

One other facet to the Tiger vs. Belgrano fight, Tiger carries Sea Lynx armed with Sea Skua in lieu of her normal Sea King helicopters.

[@danieltaylor5231]

"Don't worry about OPSEC" he says while showing HMS Victory without her mainmast.

[@camenbert5837]

Dammit! The French could exploit this...!!

[@tylerservies3380]

Testing a new weapon system!? What a novel idea! 😂

[@TheDoctorMonkey]

2:49:00 I am disappointed that this is, in total, less than 6 hours and thus not worthy of the award of a medal 🥇

[@davidvik1451]

FYI: The Forrest Sherman Class had two shafts with 35000 HP each for a total of 70K HP.

[@luckymies205]

I really had to laugh to myself how the question number 22 (1:42:28) is really spot on how to make people interested to the navy history, my case was on Bismarck; i was in World of warships like "nice new ship to play trough." When Sabaton released the song "BISMARCK", and almost same time, Bismarck was released First time in Azur Lane. Being a person who likes beautiful ship desings, the compination was SO good that i became interested to the Naval history. How funny how songs and games can make some people interested to the matter.

[@greenseaships]

I'm pretty sure the Navy letter designation "G" was for Great Lakes- an aircraft company of the 1920s that did some obversation aircraft for the Navy but was passed from the scene by WW2. Great Lakes defintely pre-dates Goodyear as a maker of military heavier-than-air craft so 'first come' for the letter G would have been Great Lakes, not Goodyear.

[@Drachinifel]

Different companies seem to have a given letter depending on the type of aircraft being procured.

[@greenseaships]

@@Drachinifel But Great Lakes got there before Grumman was a thing.

[@brianbalster3521]

i was Going to say, The Most Important affect of electricity was the introduction of Ice Cream on board. But! You Don't need electricity to make Ice Cream, you could use steam power (rotation) to run compressors; or even just use Ammonia water (and heat.. believe it or not). So! When, Where, and WHO 1st introduced Ice Cream to Naval Ships? And WHAT did they use for moral before that time? Thanx

[@Dave_Sisson]

I'm not sure if that is relevant. A rum ration would be more effective at increasing morale and it would require less equipment and supplies.

[@warheadsnation]

You know, I bet at some point after 1945, the US would have been willing to sell USS Alaska and Guam to Turkey at surplus prices.

[@PaulfromChicago]

1:22:30 To be fair, that has never stopped Dr Clarke from employing his own WMDs.

[@jackgee3200]

Range etc data transmission. No electronics - but electro-mechanical. 'Synchros' are not _electronic._ The almost universally used basic principle was making a shaft position at a _receiving_ end match a shaft position at a _transmitting_ end via an intermediate set of electrical signals routed through cables and switchboards. These signals carried no_data_ or _information_ in the modern computer sense - they just kept the two ends mechanically 'synced'. The shafts position represented the _information._ As almost all the FCS equipment used shaft rotation for setting /measuring/ indicating/ calculating / positioning etc this was a natural solution. Many detail operating variations over time, of course - mostly either DC pulse or mutli-phase AC voltage based. This approach was very widely used - as eg in the B-29 Central Gunnery System and between sections of early post-war digital computers. It lasted well into the missile age for certain parts of the systems.

[@Trek001]

I am going to assume thats a stain on the photograph or some lucky naval photographer has captured an explosion of tea and coffee on the land to starboard of the ship Edit: You butchered the anime warship's name again... I doubt they will be happy

[@comrade_commissar3794]

Yourcoozecah

[@peterdziallas6264]

😂4😂😂😂🎉😂c😂😂😊

[@johnd2058]

That's just tea; clearly a British stockpile going up.

[@camenbert5837]

British fighting tea, it's very volatile, if left alone for long enough, it will start a fight on it's own..

[@ukaszzyka6279]

Re: 01:15:42 - Why do we see exceptional leadership and high performance only on some ships? One more, quite simple reason is, as with any other corporation, Navy can either train 10 captains to good level or 1 man to excellent. From the corporate perspective, the choice is very simple, you cannot have both with limited resources ;)

[@Papasmag]

With regards to General Quarters in the modern American Navy and more specifically the submarine force. General quarters is sounded for emergencies that arise for non-battle situations and the call for actions related to Battle is simply Battlestations. The difference being related to the varying needs of damage control with or without the need to continue to launch or evade weapons.

[@sadams12345678]

Okay, if that's the case, then why is the announcement over the 1MC: "General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man your battle stations"? kzbin.info/www/bejne/qme1ea1trLh9l7s

[@Papasmag]

@@sadams12345678 specificity to submarines that is not an announcement that is made. General Quarters is manned when an alarm is sounded (flooded, collision, etc.). Battlestations is manned with “Man Battlestations Torpedo” or “Man Battlestations missile”. Again this is limited to my experience on modern American submarines.

[@jamescocking7061]

In regards to ships that took a pounding and then came back wasn't there a ship who had its vowel removed twice by torpedoes

[@gforce2439]

Not sure if this is a question worth answering but what if Germany and Japan actually coordinated the beginning of WWII? Japan hits Pearl Harbor September of 1939 or Germany waits til September 1941 to invade Poland?

[@ROBERTNABORNEY]

The US fleet was in San Diego in 1939.

[@Andy_Ross1962]

If it came to a surface action against Belgrano one of the Destroyers or Frigates would have used Exocets before it got anywhere near.

[@metaknight115]

What are some ships where their most famous action outshines their best action. HMS Hood, HMS Barham, and IJN Yamato come to mind.

[@augustosolari7721]

Santísima Trinidad. I think the Spanish Navy performance was eclipsed by her demise at Trafalgar.

[@dougjb7848]

What would Hood’s or Yamato’s “best action” be, compared to their most famous (when they sank)?

[@bkjeong4302]

@@dougjb7848 Presumably Operation Catapult and Samar (neither of them did well, but they at least DID something for basically the only time ever, and in Yamato’s case showed some pretty good gunnery accuracy while at it-at least before visibility went to shit thanks to squalls + smokescreen).

[@metaknight115]

@@bkjeong4302 Hood scored the kill shot that sank the battleship Bretagne and sank the battlecruiser Dunkerque. Sinking two capital ships doesn't seem like not doing well. Until I read Robert Lundgren's book, I never knew how bad the visibility off Samar was, rain squalls taking Kongo out of action until well after 8:00 (which is how we know all the battleship caliber hits on Johnston, Hoel, and Kalinin Bay don't belong to her, having been fired by Yamato, Nagato, and Haruna respectively)

[@metaknight115]

@@dougjb7848 Hood served in the battle of Mirs El Kiber against Vichy French capital ships after negotiations went bad. She scored the kill shot on the battleship Bretagne that sank her to a magazine explosion, and sank the battlecruiser Dunkerque. Yamato fought a number of escort carrier and destroyers at the battle off Samar. Between 20,000 to 22,000 yards, she sank the escort carrier Gambier Bay and the destroyer Johnston, helped to sink the destroyer Hoel, and severely damaged the escort carrier White Plains.

[@johnshepherd9676]

I can't speak to the quality of modern RN fire control but the US Navy found that the Iowas WWII fire control was more accurate than the then current digitai8l systems so it is quite possible Belgrano's fire control was more accurate as long as her radar was intact.

[@GrahamWKidd]

I mean, the question about exceptionalism answers itself, just by definition alone ...

[@ladrianyu2637]

hey Kancolle/Azur lane and world of warships are the reason im here, not all of them good games or historical accurate, but at least they lead me to a well knowledged channel :) tho i can see drach is shacking his head right now lol

[@thomasbernecky2078]

Buffalo Forger, from my home town.

[@johnshepherd9676]

If the Turks were looking to replace the Yavuz circa 1950 after NATO was established I could see them approaching the US for one of the Alaskas. The shipis slightly bigger than Turkey's original concept but they could get a low mileage large cruiser on the cheap.

[@skeltonpg]

War of 1812 - In the anti-slavery patrol period the RN handled American ships with kid gloves, much more gently than other perpetrators.

[@dougjb7848]

9:20 Because half the RN hated Jellicoe and the other half hated Beatty.

[@NonSektur]

Question: Does anyone know which ships are shown in the video "Scenes on board a light cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Aleutian Islands campaign" (kzbin.info/www/bejne/rHKlc36AZaupoJYsi=zs21_FQRpWJ0X-Zd) ? Interesting drill with a practice gun at 4:10

[@PaulfromChicago]

Drach baby needs food badly!

[@micheallinke9278]

If it helps, I am banned from dancing and singing.

[@scottygdaman]

were Argentine crews also asleep at the early warning console in a war zone ? dang that is bad. oh i get it.. trusting Thatcher out line of safe zone. silly rabbits

[@Rosenrot774]

To be honest Azur Lane, Kancolle made my friends interested about Naval history. Talks like who is the best "waifu" usually end up with debate ... Which ship was better and so on. So imo it helps :P

[@danieltaylor5231]

What makes a sausage German?

[@dougjb7848]

1:28:25 just shoot ALL the guns!!!

[@dougjb7848]

1:24:00 Well yer British. Not doing fresh cooked vegetables is kinda in yer blood.

[@salty4496]

:)

[@jonathanwhite5132]

Seems like the funny mustache art school reject didn’t think is way through when picking fights with American UK and the Russians

[@merlinwizard1000]

9th, 28 April 2024

[@12jazion]

The correct answer to the anime ship girl question is that it is just bad, it is an abomination, and it should be banned worldwide. I watched a few episodes of one of the most popular anime's in that category and I suffered permanent brain damage by the third episode and I had to rip my eyeballs out to unsee what I saw. The FBI also showed up and announced that I am now on a watchlist due to the scantily clad girls portrayed in the anime.

[@bkjeong4302]

Really it’s the RN that’s the odd one out in WWII-era battleship superstructure design: everyone else went for the tower mast.

[@johnshepherd9676]

The US Navy adopted the Queen Anne Mansion style superstructure in one class of post war ships -- The Albany class guided missile cruisers. They had the reputation of being the ugliest ships in the US Navy.

[@SCjunk]

2:01:40 Some of the monies on the Armada was to reimburse the Finance in Antwerp (Spanish Netherlands) where 'Jewish Banking' still existed - 1492 expulsion was to 'purify Iberia - the 'heathens' still ran finance elsewhere, and hard money transfer still had to be made. So Financial transfers to pay for Armies and Navies fighting in the Low Countries were very necessary. Same would apply to English fighting in Flanders in later Centuries.

[@SCjunk]

00:00:33 British New builds and interwar modernisations favoured a large Admin. block hence Renown was highly favoured as a flagship over Repulse because of the 'nice accommodating' for an Admiral. so really "Queen Anne's Mansions" is a misnomer it should have been named for a large civil service building. but a comparison with Italian battleships is significantly missing here.

[@SCjunk]

2:27:28 88 mm was a standard calibre for German land forces from before the Franco Prussian (so the first breech loaders) the C-61 Wardendorf breech designs for example the steels steel tubed in German service and proved somewhat unsatisfactory although compared to the French muzzle loaders were satisfactory, so replaced by the C - 73 field gun. The Reason why people tend to think 8.8 cm is later WW1 calibre is that prior to WW1 the Imperial German Army (Prussians) used the naming convention that calibre were rounded up so a C-61 and C-73 were called 9 cm C- 61 and 9 cm C-73.

[@ROBERTNABORNEY]

The convention lasted until 1945. German servicemen knew it as the "Eight Point Eight"