The Other Ships With 18in Guns - with Special Guest Drachinifel

In this episode we're talking about the largest guns ever put onto ships with our special guest, ‪@Drachinifel‬
To send Ryan a message on Facebook: / ryanszimanski
To support this channel and Battleship New Jersey, go to:
www.battleship...

[@absenttk4213]

I feel that these combined communities would pay good money for a “Drach & Ryan” video series!

[@Plaprad]

A buddy cop comedy where they moonlight as amateur investigators for naval mysteries. I see an iconic car, and catchphrases.

[@Tuning3434]

I would love to hear the BB NJ crew pop up as special guests in an episode (or two) of The Bilgepumps.

[@mamarine81]

@@Plaprad Yes. So much yes. And a catchy opening a la Magnum P.I. or the Interceptors from Top Gear.

[@jilldesruisseau]

oh heck yes! sign me up!

[@pierre1714]

Sign me up too. I really like these two guys and together they could do a vwry interresting show 😃

[@FandersonUfo]

no one loves ships more than these two - outstanding content

[@JoshuaTootell]

Which is pretty funny, since I'm 99% sure neither served 🤣 But I appreciate their enthusiasm.

[@FandersonUfo]

@@JoshuaTootell - there may be very good reasons they could not serve which are probably not our business - I'm sure they both serve to promote naval careers better than any recruitment office - 🛸✨

[@gishuk]

@@JoshuaTootell strange comment

[@Argondo]

@@JoshuaTootell beeing a service man does not always correlate to beeing the best content provider on a certain subject.

[@allmachtsdaggl5109]

I love ships as much, but i do not know as much as the hair on Alex' pinkie finger

[@admiraltiberius1989]

Drach and Ryan The ultimate Naval team up Like Nelson and Farragut getting together.

[@Zonkotron]

Needs Jingles for 3rd. he is "just" a gaming youtuber but is an old RN sailor and knows drach and is just hillarious.

[@memelord7333]

@@Zonkotronyes

[@boosuedon]

Drachinifel is a real life walking naval Encyclopedia! His knowledge and expertise is unmatched, at least from what I have seen. Impressive!

[@christineshotton824]

One can really tell the depth of his knowledge when he goes off script and just tosses out a string of detailed, arcane, information right off the top of his head.

[@bobhealy3519]

Nothing better than Drach and Ryan together ❤ match made for Valentines day. Joke aside. 2 of the best world wide. This from a Big Mamie friend.

[@bebo4807]

I wouldn’t mind shooting my 5 inch gun into Ryan’s belt armor…

[@leechjim8023]

2 good looking hunks.

[@davowsp]

The Ryan/Drachinifel bromance is just adorable.

[@barrydysert2974]

"You must be able to say that in your sleep." 😁 If Ryan gets any smoother or faster He'll sound like one of those speed-spoken disclaimers at the end of car ads 😂😂😂

[@stevenjennings197]

Ryan and Drac side by side. Excellent video.

[@piefpv3233]

the two youtubers i watch for Naval history. so cool to see them both together.

[@ricardokowalski1579]

I'll take 2x1 every day and twice on tuesday

[@rickscott8756]

They look like they could be brothers too!

[@jehoiakimelidoronila5450]

Brothers from different countries, I would say

[@claywilson2751]

I like the videos when Ryan uses himself as a unit of measurement.

[@davem2369]

Americans will always use anything but the metric system. Footbal fields, school buses, Ryan's etc 😄

[@Grove122]

@@davem2369 bacon is also a viable measurement for bullets

[@RonGardener4142]

@@Grove122 You can't possibly leave that comment hanging like that! Give us some context here please 😂

[@Grove122]

@@RonGardener4142 the Apache chain-gun fires 30mm bullets about the length of an uncooked strip of bacon and it also shoots them around 650/minute.

[@niekbeentjes8849]

@@Grove122 Would that be 650 Strips a minute? No wonder Obesitas is such a problem in the US.

[@billmelater6470]

Love seeing you and Drach work together!

[@freedomfirst7143]

My two favorite naval content creators in one place!! 👍👏

[@Philistine47]

I've also read that the USN considered the 18" gun's muzzle blast a bit excessive - that it would have wrecked exposed fittings on the deck (such as, for example, AAA mounts). The development of the "super-heavy" 16" AP shell, as used by the USN's fast battleships, allowed the Navy to effectively up-gun their battle fleet without actually having to go up to a larger gun caliber.

[@Tuning3434]

I agree with the excessive part, especially as the 16"/50 and the super-heavy got really close to the performance of the US designed 18" gun. I don't think gun-blast perse was a major factor. More the fact that if you really don't want to compromise on other aspects of the ship, you really need a huge ship like Yamato, while you could have more ships, with more shells on target, with performance that is not that far behind an 18" gun. IMHO the USN wanted to be able to fight a BB engagement and win, but it also realized it would be mostly doing other things to actually win the war. The IJN really went into the mindset that they could humiliate a weak-willed Western opponent by crushing them hard in one grand battle involving subs, torpedo-engagements and a final BB clash and that the USN /RN would crawl back in their cosy Victorian era mansions without ever considering a fight again.

[@Wick9876]

I do wonder a bit about the super-heavy shell, as one way they increased the weight was by shrinking the explosive charge. Penetration is important but some boom on arrival seems similarly important.

[@Philistine47]

@Wick9876 Well, yeah. It's engineering, not magic - there's no such thing as "perfect," there are only tradeoffs to be balanced against each other. In this case, the choice was between bursting charge and penetration - with the context being that everyone expected navies to continue building battleships for decades to come, with 16" guns (and thus _protection against_ 16" guns) becoming the new standard. And after all, the Navy still had HC shells for when they just needed a bigger boom and didn't care about penetrating battleship-scale armor.

[@himoffthequakeroatbox4320]

@@Tuning3434 Oh it is. Nelson's 16" guns would damage the deck and break light bulbs when it fired. Yamato's 18" guns could concuss anyone exposed on deck when they fired. Before anyone asks, AA crews. And in WW1 a ship's pet chicken got all its feathers blown off by its own guns.

[@jayvee8502]

The US had an 18 inch gun already in testing too and it had a super heavy shell weighing almost 4k lbs. But the era of battleships were ending so further development of a super battleship ended as Aircraft carriers became the more effective way of striking the enemy.

[@jamieknight326]

Wonderful seeing these two together. It also makes me giggle when drach says an idea was ‘shot down’ while talking about a battleship and stood next to a massive shell.

[@himoffthequakeroatbox4320]

Scuppered would be a better word.

[@The_Modeling_Underdog]

Congratulations to Drach for receiving the coveted "Curator Unit of Measure" recognition from Ryan.

[@DEPARTMENTOFREDUNDANCYDEPT]

As a Navy veteran, let me say, OUTSTANDING!

[@XanderDorn]

Some ship designs are so crazy, if you would read about them in a science fiction or diesel punk novel you would deem them too unrealistic.

[@waynesworldofsci-tech]

My friend Leo Champion has written an SF series with tanks that had 21” guns. I pointed out the ammo handling issues to him. He laughed, and pointed out this is far enough in the future that they’d have the handling equipment. Check out Desert Strike, it’s a great romp.

[@pizzaivlife]

tbf an Iowa or Yamamoto would seem unrealistic to a WWI sailor

[@newbasilisk4032]

*Tillman on KRAK* How about, we arm our ship, with 24 guns in sextuple turrets!

[@pamgettel9056]

@@waynesworldofsci-tech comity sf ? HAMMERS SLAMMERS much more plausible in tank format long time sf and military reader 1952 just saying

[@waynesworldofsci-tech]

@@pamgettel9056 Leo was writing for fun. He also does some interesting stuff with the background cultures.

[@TacoSallust]

Between Ryan's hands-on knowledge and Alex's historical and engineering knowledge, I could watch these guys chat all day. Kind of like watching Bernhard Kast and Nicholas Moran on "Military History not Visualized" recently.

[@BobBacheler]

Wow. So much naval knowledge in one frame.

[@thegreatchewwyexpress8044]

Im so happy to see ryan and drach in a video together, we need drach going through ships and nerding out on details. I think would be great content. I would love to see drach stop by Texas in her dry dock state. I'm going to be scheduling a tour here soon and can't wait.

[@purleybaker]

These guys are great together. Drach's depth of knowledge and ability to recall it is unreal.

[@kevinwayne7546]

That Guy is Cool. Thanks for bringing him in.

[@aserta]

If people look online for the rail, and wonder where it is, and happen to find a top down drawing of the Monitors modified to hold the 18in guns, it's the round (piano like) shaped lines. It goes around the gun, with a chevron termination on the far end, and a (i believe) parking line that forks parallel to the "piano end loop". From a drawing i found, i think storage on deck would've been 61 shells on the upper deck.

[@Backwardlooking]

Fantastic. Great technical knowledge. As in Nature a larger opponent can be defeated by the blows is a more agile opponent landing more blows. Size isn’t an indication of fighting ability. 👍🏻🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[@sielingm]

Its like the avengers....they finally team up and its amazing

[@nx014]

the US Navy during interwar years of WWI and WWII tested firing of 18 inch naval guns on land along with the 16 inch guns . The US Navy noticed that the shells for the 18 inch naval guns weigh more than the 16 inch naval guns and the loading time was slower as well. The US Navy went on to use the 16 inch naval guns

[@Rammstein0963.]

Same reason we settled for the 50 cal. For our fighters and bonbers, as opposed to more cannons like everyone else, we figured the 50 could carry more ammo on board, fire faster, and generally would be "good enough".

[@shannonlim739]

Haha! Love how Ryan's looking more and more like an old sea captain

[@marcm.]

16 versus 18 in sounds very much like the five versus six inches in the smaller warship categories... The increase in the caliber just didn't pay off versus the in practice fire rate

[@craigevan9649]

Drach, are you still scheduled to aboard the USS Midway on Thursday 1:00pm? I’ll be driving down from OC to see you and the ship. Thanx for all that you do! Thanx to your wife too for supporting you!

[@Drachinifel]

Yep :)

[@Tuning3434]

@@Drachinifel 'start preparing another Chocomel bomb for miss Drach'

[@Aaron-cb2dd]

The N3 battleships were also due to use improved versions of these 18 inch guns, wish they were built! 😭

[@Knight6831]

Yeah the N3 Class Hyper -Dreadnoughts would be hard in a post WW1 and Pandemic World

[@Captain_Seafort]

There's also one of the 101,000 theories of what the QE (or modified QE) class HMS Agincourt was going to be

[@numbercrunched]

Nice tow my favorite historians together. I would love to see you guys to a debate on modern ships. Another good one to have on a channel with me Aaron from sub brief.

[@keithstudly6071]

I think it depends on what you envision the ships mission to be. If you expect ship-to-ship combat and you have very accurate fire control then go with the big guns. If you see the main mission as carrier escort and shore bombardment even 14" might be best because it allows you to more completely saturate the target area with hits as the smaller guns will deliver more rounds during the time period.

[@gusbuckingham6663]

I like Drach and and Ryan's channels. Combined even better.

[@noneofyourbusiness2997]

There was the Duilio class of 450mm (17.7") class 🙂

[@yakhooves]

I love that we have Ryan and "British Ryan." You two look more similar than I would have thought and I love it. Been watching both channels forever now.

[@Kenshindegozaru]

A pleasure to see this 2 fine gentlemen together in one video. Just amazing.

[@beckismith2373]

Dammit I need to go to sleep early as I'm working super early tomorrow morning, this vid title looks like it will be awesome! I have a little model I made from balsa of HMS furious and that was a ship with a single 18-inch gun., my version fires paperclips lol 🙂 😆

[@mamarine81]

Ryan legit looks like he's about to skipper a U-Boat into the Atlantic. 😉 Great work. Keep it up.

[@brovold72]

Would be a tough gig for a (seemingly) tall fella.

[@davidrenton]

Drach looks like he about to the death star run

[@andredegraaf1643]

So much for my idea of mounting one big gun on a small ship. Been done and now I can see how that does not work. Fun to see that the idea was actually tried.

[@NathanDudani]

More Drachinifel collaboration!!!

[@matthewmoore5698]

Fascinating thank you chaps

[@andriiyevdokymov6781]

The Iowa project under 18 "was worked out. But at 45000 tons, the maximum contractual displacement, i.e. 35000 + 10000 escalators, only 7 guns were obtained and there was no certainty that 33knt would be obtained in normal displacement. And the speed for the Iowa project was the main characteristic. In fact Iowa is a battlecruiser. So the fact that the Iowas did not get 18 "was not because of the mythical low rate of fire, but because of contractual restrictions and speed requirements.

[@Aubury]

The BL 18-inch Mk I naval gun was a breech-loading naval rifle used by the Royal Navy during World War I. It was the largest and heaviest gun ever used by the British. Only the Second-World-War Japanese 46 cm/45 Type 94 had a larger calibre, 18.1 inches, and it fired a lighter shell. Wikipedia Designed: 1915-1916 Barrel length: 60 ft (18.3 m) (L/39) Breech: Welin breech block Caliber: 18 in (457 mm) Effective firing range: 31,400 yd (28,700 m) Elevation: -3° to +30° on Furious, +22° to + 45°, Lord Clive class

[@robertreedjr5072]

You all should go to naval weapons station Dalgren, they have fire able 18",16",14" gun barrels,plus the armor from the Yamato shipyard that was tested (they shot it), plus other surface warfare guns.

[@robertpalma7946]

I always enjoy your videos the 16" guns were the ideal size

[@son_of_caesar8908]

GREAT COLLAB! I watch both of these channels and I love that they are working together.

[@Knight6831]

Well the Yamatos had them as HMS Furious and Lord Clive Class Monitors, the HMS General Wolfe and HMS Lord Clive got 1 single 18" turret and the 3rd was intended for the HMS Prince Eugene

[@1roanstephen]

Rate of fire and number of barrels firing seems to be the real King of Battle. A 12 gun broadside firing every 30 to 45 secs is far more shell weight delivered than a larger gun that means fewer barrels and lower rate of fire. I would love to see a statistical account of how many hits were actually obtained in battle per salvo.

[@fredinit]

Agreed - Very much like automatic weapons... which can throw more lead at the opponent per unit time. Now, if you could get an three 18" triples with the same rate of fire as a 14" or 16" - I'll take the 18".

[@1roanstephen]

@@fredinit Unfortunately, no one could make that happen.

[@Nitramrec]

If you ever get the chance to come in shooting distance ... And don't forget the thicker armour of larger ships with larger guns ...

[@himoffthequakeroatbox4320]

You forgot about range.

[@higgydufrane]

@@1roanstephen Never say Never.

[@jimcronin2043]

In addition to the shell handling problems, I would surmise that the 18" shell would either reduce the number of rounds that a ship could carry or require more space to accommodate the same number. The 2" diameter difference would have been a 12.5% difference for not only the shells but also the powder bags. The 500 lb. weight difference would have increased the burden on the buoyancy reserve by 19%.

[@himoffthequakeroatbox4320]

Stop bringing practicality into it, everyone knows that bIgGER is mORE bETteReST.

[@SonOfAB_tch2ndClass]

You’re lowballing it by a lot. An 18 inch shell is about 42.4% heavier than a comparable 16 inch shell

[@johnshepherd9676]

The Yamato's 18" AP shell wasn't just heavier, it doubled the weight of the bursting charge over the Mk 8. That would was getting to the point where the explosives can cause major structural damage and you won't need that many hits to kill your opponent. Break break. I watched a video on the Battle of the Denmark Straits on Oceanliner Designs. It was quite well done It seemed to draw heavily on Drach's loss of the Hood video.

[@DK-gy7ll]

I saw that as well. I was surprised that no credit was given to Drach.

[@NFS_Challenger54]

There is one thing the Iowa's have over both Yamato and Musashi don't. The increase gun caliber length. Yamato's and Musashi's guns were 46cal length. That's only 1cal length longer than the 16'/45cal Marks 5 and 6 guns that the Colorado, North Carolina, and South Dakota classes had. I won't lie, the 18.1' shell was heavier, however it was being fired out of a shorter barrel length than what the Iowa-class has. That 50cal length, coupled together with the mark 8 superheavy armor-piercing shell, is on par with, if not slightly superior to the punching power of the Yamato's bigger guns. Shell/muzzle velocity from longer gun barrel is basically key in overall performance of battleship guns. Also, I too watched Oceanliner Designs' video about the battle of the Denmark Strait several hours ago. The more you research, the more you'll learn something that was ultimately not mentioned or accidentally missed out.

[@Tuning3434]

Sure, there are many things to say about design and doctrines. For Bismarck in the situation it was, even relative limited damage was crippling enough to abandon the mission and try to recover the ship. And with German naval capabilies in '41, not an unreasonable decision. Yamato was build to really slug it out in the last BB clash with the remainder of a USN or RN fleet in the South China sea or East Pacific, or in ideal situations a confined space like the streets of Malakka under air superiority. And if you all chips in like the Yamato design did, it works on a unit level. I feel Yamato would kill everything or die trying. But for the IJN there was no recovery whatsoever after the 'die trying'. I understand why an 18.1" feels appropriate for them, but not claiming it was the wisest investment though. But in the end, WW2 showed time and time again that complex plans only work out if the enemy allows you to execute them, and there is a lot of merit to go for several 16" armed ships to have the extra operational flexibility. The USN had nothing gain from a 'die trying' doctrine. A fight hard, fight well doctrine feels more suitable because there is always a massive economic powerhouse an ocean away behind the fleet. In the End the USN was able to leverage there economic power and had the flexibility to not even have to engage Musashi or Yamato in surface combat.

[@Drachinifel]

This is true, however, bigger bursting charges give an advantage on a roughly equal number of hits. If your opponent can land 3 hits for every 1 you get, then the difference in damage per shot has to be very large to justify it.

[@johnshepherd9676]

@@Drachinifel Hi Drach! If you can achieve a 3-1 rate it doesn't really what the caliber of the main battery is.

[@bobbenson6825]

Lovely to have both of these men doing a vid together. Peak content.

[@mulletoutdooradventures6286]

These 2 are the only channels I even watch anymore. Living in Philly and having so much naval history and having the NJ and Ryan just across the river in slightly biased 😂. But Drach is the man. He's got literally every ship in his head.

[@Xmaster1990]

nice to see both of my fave ship youtubers together!

[@scottshort3718]

I hope you guys do more videos! You two really know your stuff!!

[@reese2694]

Do you mean more videos together? If not and you're new to this channel and Drachinifel...better strap in.

[@brandondimmitt8467]

Drach is literally the best historian I follow on KZbin! He’s a wealth of knowledge

[@megan00b8]

In my opinion the long 16 was a much better idea than 18. Sure, there's the obvious increase in penetration, but another important factor is that with the higher velocity your accuracy goes up, and both your effective and maximal ranges increase significantly, plus you need no changes to manufacturing because you can fire the same 16in shells and use the same propellant bags, just more of them, this makes practical implementation much easier I reckon. To add to the list, because the shell is the same weight you can reload almost at the same pace, and can physically store more ammo aboard the same ship, and most likely fit more guns, all adding to your chances of first hit.

[@tanknick22]

I remember reading in a book on battle ships that German was looking to build a battleship with 20in guns

[@CRAZYHORSE19682003]

I think finding the sweet spot between shell size and reload time is the way to go. Smaller shells with a faster reload time didn't work for the Germans in Jutland and it didn't work out for the Scharnhorst.

[@admiralbeatty6083]

Wish I could have gotten up to see you both. Very best wishes!

[@strelnikoff1632]

Thanks to the battleship New Jersey for its support of us ground pounders in Vietnam!

[@Knight6831]

The title card is Lord Clive Class Monitors ain't it?

[@ThePsiclone]

Etiquette Ryan, you should introduce your guest at the same time as yourself, not at the end when he's finished speaking. Sure we all know who he is but its good manners. That said it was a very interesting presentation thank you :D A suggestion of topic for you might be those rammers used to push the shell and charge bags into the gun. Looks like a chain but you cant push a chain...what's going on with that?

[@heatherparisi7078]

Without the Washington Treaty the 18 and possibly the 20 inch guns would likely have evolved into the standard for the major navies of the world. Having said that, the U.S. did develop an 18 inch shell for the Montana's but opted for the 16 incher's faster rate of firing coupled with the enhanced penetration from the new 2700 lb. Armor Piercing projectiles.

[@Redlin5]

Amazing vid, love both Ryan and Drach's work!

[@alexwood5425]

Getting a greater rate of fire for an 18" seems like challenge rather than problem. Find a couple of Engineers and tell them it can't be done. You will have a solution in no time!

[@5000mahmud]

Theres a video out there showing the Japanese loading systems for the 18.1 inch, its pretty advanced.

[@himoffthequakeroatbox4320]

But only for a spherical ship in a vacuum running the second latest version of libstdc++.

[@brianberry1851]

It was great seeing you two in person last weekend and was well worth the trip.

[@tools6106]

Love the channel, the 16” guns were and are the greatest compromise between ability to create damage and high rate of fire!

[@wills2140]

Thank you for the video! Glad to see Drachinifel over to talk with Ryan. (:

[@olegadodasguerras3795]

2 legends of KZbin Nice vídeo

[@kendallturnage9058]

Please send Drachinifel to Wilmington, NC next... I would like to walk around the USS North Carolina with him and listen.

[@nomore9203]

good to see Drachinifel.

[@simongleaden2864]

I recommend Drach's KZbin channel to any subscribers or other fans of Ryan's channel. Very informative videos. Great to see this conversation between two experts who clearly love the subject of big gun capital ships.

[@brianwilson3458]

Quantity has a quality of its own.

[@mortimersnerd4156]

I really liked the fact that Drachinifel was on your podcast, Kudos! A good presentation, I always wondered why the bigger is better didn't hold true for battleships. However, that said, aviation and carriers would be the death knell for the battleship and no gun measurement was going to halt the movement to aviation.

[@radiosnail]

Excellent video. I recall reading that the Japanese did look at a design with 6 x twenty inch guns.

[@dennissmith8947]

Great duo!!!

[@danielstickney2400]

The Yamato class really defined the ragged outer edge of practicality and in some cases exceeded it. Every aspect of their design taxed the available technology and metallurgy to the very limit, and in some cases beyond, like the turret bearings, which simply weren't up to the task and wore at an astounding rate a more practically minded navy would have found unacceptable. The IJN had to develop an entirely new and very innovative conveyor system just to move the shells from the shell rooms. All to achieve a theoretical range advantage that would have been completely unusable with anything less than perfect visibility and glass-smooth seas. They more or less proved that 18 inches was the largest practical caliber and barely practical at that.

[@himoffthequakeroatbox4320]

Radar is a thing.

[@Desertrat87]

Shell caliber is always an interesting subject. One thing that I think they didn't quite touch on as much here is penetration. Sure, you want to be able to fire more shells per minute than your enemy and hopefully hit them with a higher combined throw weight (the total weight of shells per salvo), but one factor I think they also needed to consider is how much armor penetration does a given shell have. You could mount 6" guns on a battleship and have a much higher fire rate than the enemy with 16" or 18" guns, but those 6" shells, while they may do plenty of damage to the superstructure and deck equipment, are not going to penetrate a battleship's armor, and probably have a low chance of knocking out the battleship's main guns due to the armor on the turrets (which in a lot of cases was thicker than the belt armor). But there is a famous photo going around where the US apparently captured a piece of the armor used on the Yamato class after Japan's surrender, and they fired a 16" 50cal gun at it and the AP shell penetrated the armor. Of course, that is under ideal static conditions, but if you have confidence that your shell can penetrate the enemy's armor, and you can get a higher rate of fire out of your guns than they can, then there's no reason to move up from 16" to 18" and slow your rate of fire. On the other hand, if you don't think your smaller shell will penetrate the armor, it may be worth considering the larger caliber.

[@jimmins31]

Saw drach in person on Saturday at the BB NJ. Very cool. Enjoyed the vid.

[@richdurbin6146]

I'd love to see Ryan and Drach sketch out a 21st century battleship design. No need to stick to the Dreadnaught paradigm either.

[@carrickrichards2457]

Useful stuff. Thank you

[@erictwickler4247]

Thank you Ryan and Drach I try to catch all your videos for straight dope on warships.

[@petestorz172]

Re the weight vs. the number of guns and rate of fire question, the USN's 8" gun cruisers and the Brooklyn class 6" gun could speak to this. The 8" guns had heavier shells, but their rate of fire was slower, and the Brooklyns had 15 instead of 9 guns. The 6" shell might not penetrate a larger ship's armor, but that larger ship's superstructure getting smothered would have a high chance of causing a "mission kill".

[@tertiaryobjective]

One of my favorite tag teams.

[@MrAjmay1]

Thanks for the collab guys... Great teamup!

[@donaldkwasnicki9554]

Enjoyed the speaking event with you both.

[@billharm6006]

Nice to see this presenting pair. My viewpoint is largely uneducated, but I'll share it: Seems to me that accuracy and penetration are most important. Accuracy improvements can have many forms, one of which is the feedback from previous rounds. In turn, rate of fire affects that feedback: More shots = more correction opportunities. As to penetration, mass helps, but so does velocity. Considering the equation: Ke = 1/2 M V^2, the increase in velocity seems important. Thus, gun caliber becomes a factor. I conclude that there is a reasonable argument for lower diameter, longer barreled guns. They load more quickly but still hit very hard. Besides, you can put more shells and propellent in the same magazine space (relative to larger diameter rounds).

[@davidncw4613]

The good man from across the pond makes an excellent point. Any major grade shell is going to cause a lot of damage. Very unpredictable damage. Look at how often ships would lose major systems, knocked out from the concussion of firing their own guns. 15, 16 or 18 will bring hell when they come home to roost.

[@sugrue8526]

USS Salem was nice. It was retained. If I was Pres., Sec of Navy, or Admiral, I would have done all to keep 4 Iowa’s to speak softly and carry big stick foreign policy forever. P.S. Carriers are nice too

[@johnshepherd9676]

John Lehman looked at reactivating and modernizing the Des Moines but found it would cost about as much as an Iowa. It wasn't worth it.

[@31dknight]

Another great video from the battleship. Keep it going

[@Bovey100]

Drach on the New Jersey!!!! Good to see!!!!!!

[@lancethompson6839]

Enjoyed that thorouhgly. Thanks!

[@jimcat68]

I've learned a lot about warship design just by watching the videos from you two. If I had to come up with a scenario in which 18" guns came into wider use, I'd need to use an alternate history in which heavier-than-air flight was somehow not possible or not allowed, and naval surface warfare continued to be based on line-of-battle tactics into the later half of the 20th century. With improvements in materials, and in the technology of handling and loading mechanisms, a ship armed with nine or twelve 18" guns might have become the US Navy standard by the 1960's.

[@Alsadius]

There's also the Duilio and the Enrico Dandolo, built by the Italians in the 1870s. They had 17.72" guns, but that rounds to 18", so I'll count them. Those guns were nowhere near as powerful as the 20th century equivalents, of course - the Yamato fired a shell 60% heavier, with a muzzle velocity 65% higher, at about ten times the rate of fire. They also had more than four times the maximum elevation, so their range was seven times higher, and they had fire control good enough to hit things that far away too. But I still think they count.

[@charlesmarino2027]

Ryan wins the beard contest.

[@jessecarozza8134]

First VenomGeekMedia and now Battleship New Jersey! Drach gets around!

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

Great video, guys...👍

[@pauld6967]

Always nice when both of you work together on a topic.

[@TheFreaker86]

There! On the right! Don’t let him run off! There is the stowaway again! 😜

[@cammobus]

Yay ... Drachinifel and Ryan

[@vrod665]

Can we make a trade with the UK? We can send over a few up and coming / prospective curators in exchange for Drach. His permanent presence with Ryan and the rest of NJ staff would elevate NJ to unbelievable new levels. That’s for your insight as always.