00:00:00 – Intro
00:00:49 – Were the C-class AA cruisers worth it?
00:05:25 – Was HMS Hotspur’s scrapping anything to do with Jackie Fisher?
00:07:42 – Richelieu secondary battery guns in WW2?
00:10:35 – Would the RN would have been better off building more Arethusa’s (alongside the later Town and Crown-Colony classes) and scrapping the older C and D class vessels, rather than curtailing the Arethusa’s and modernising the WW1 ships?
00:14:10 – I’ve read in AoS novels of hauling a spare sail around the outside of the hull to slow the inflow of water and give the carpenter more time – was this actually a real thing?
00:18:01 – Are there some examples or any theoretical use of “all backwards” main armaments scheme?
00:21:50 – Why were the British slow to adopt all or nothing armour scheme? Was it because it was unproven or was there more to it?
00:29:23 – Could you lose your foot to a rolling cannonball?
00:33:27 – Would a WW2 sub have had difficulties picking up a sailing vessel on hydrophones?
00:37:05 – Headroom in HMS Unicorn gun deck looks much more generous than on Victory, though reducing height lower down. Why was this and why reduce headroom as you go down?
00:41:38 – What factors contributed to Nisshin surviving the Battle of Tsushima?
00:44:19 – Was any consideration made to rearming the County’s with triple 6 inch turrets given the RN was looking more for volume of fire?
00:48:27 – Hitler and the Flanders Flotilla?
00:50:47 – In what ways did Royal Navy anti-aircraft tactics evolve during World War II as a result of combat experience?
00:57:43 – “Why do we do these things? I don’t know, but it is our tradition.”
01:00:24 – During your recent series on US prewar fleet problems you documented the US Navy’s habit of launching air raids on the naval base at Pearl Harbor. Was the US Army Air Corps involved in these exercises and if so why didn’t they take the hint?
source
Pinned post for Q&A 🙂
Why the USAAF didn't get the hint could be partially due the USAAF being oriented toward strategic bombing 'uber alles', air defense was not a priority. Another example of air force generals being a best morons and at worst borderline traitors.
In the movie Tora,! Tora,! Tora!, there is a scene were Col. Bratton interprets the Japanese moves as an attack on the US Pacific possessions on Sunday Nov 30, he was off by 1 week.
42:20 woah, those are some short barrels on that… oh wait.
I broke my ankle in September 2018.
Today I can walk okay and run, sort of, if I have to.
But there are days when I wonder if I’d be better off if the surgeon had amputated my foot and foot and replaced the whole works.
Not historical perhaps but I wish my carriers in WoWS actually had anti surface capabilities, the amount of times my team let a sub or destroyer through the battlelines I'd quite like an 18" rear arc defence gun!
Edit: a superfiring pair of triple 8" turrets even better.
I think the best argument against Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories is the old saw that "three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
1:04:40
Stupidity and ego explain far more in history than any amount of conspiratorial lunacy.
I seriously gotta attend the next visit in my region. I’m 45 minutes from USS New Jersey, and 1:15 from Intrepid.
29:23 I imagine that anything over a 18 pound cannon ball would smash the foot bad enough that it would likely result in an amputation….
50:25 – So you're saying that UB40 might've met Hitler in WWI? 😛
(Also, possibly 1000th upvote for this video…)
Safe travels. Sorry I couldn't get to meet up with you!
Since 2020
Scheme F sort of makes sense in that you’re launching planes forward which is a plus 😂
One of the reasons that Captain Cook was able to use fothering to save the Endeavour was that when the ship was floated off the reef onto which she had run, a large lump of coral broke off and remained in the hole. This reduced the size of the opening through which water could enter, even beforethe sail was deployed over it.
Even so, it was still a close run thing to get her ashore.
[11:43][
"…a few decades earlier Admiral Fisher had listed in order of evil: Bureaucracy, Parliament, Satan and then above all, The Treasury…"
So little has changed.
15:40 As valuable as sail canvas may be, I would have to think that a ship's continued positive buoyancy is even more valuable. Plus, the technique of "fothering" with a sail involved a lot more than just the sail itself. Mariners had developed multiple techniques over the centuries for patching major underwater damage using a sail simply as the base for the plug. Also, keeping in mind that the flow of water into a large hole or leak would help push the sail (and accessories) into the hole, thus helping create a better seal.
For C class its the magazine capacity
The height increases as you go up to lower the ships centre of gravity
Were the Japanese ships in the attack on Pearl Harbor on local time of did they maintain Japanese time (aka Monday)?
I seem to recall that one of the attacks on Pearl Harbour in a U.S. fleet problem was actually early on a Sunday. The army protested “No fair!”
Congratulations on the milestone.
Assuming Admiral James O. Richardson properly evaluated the situation over whether Pearl Harbor was too vulnerable when he was CINCUS in 1940-41 is understandable in the abstract, but the events of 28 April 1938 call into question if there were ANY U.S. military bases on the West Coast that weren't liable to be sundered by an attack from massed carrier planes:
"Kalbfus, the Purple commander, again released his carriers for independent operations. As a result, Rear Admiral King "raided" Mare Island before dawn on April 28th with the carriers under Rear Adm. Halsey."
To Train The Fleet For War, Albert Nofi, pg 265.
The consequences of continuing to base the Pacific Fleet in California prior to 7 December 1941 would probably have invited an attack by the Kido Butai on San Diego, San Francisco (Mare Island, the first U.S. naval base on the West Coast, lies on San Francisco Bay) or both…and would have left the Hawaiian Archipelago open to an amphibious assault (Midway definitely but possibly Oahu as well if Army forces had not been built up to protect the fleet base).
The most direct reason the U.S. Army learned nearly nothing from the Fleet Problems and GJEs (Grand Joint Exercises) was the ranking USAAF flag officer and its commander, Hap Arnold, wasn't promoted to Lieutenant General until 15 December 1941. This mistake, where the highest ranking active-duty Army aviator remained a major general after the Air Corps was reorganized into the Army Air Force independent of Army Ground Forces and Army Service Forces (but still bizarrely under a common command structure without equivalent three and four-star ranks in the AAF service) on 20 June 1941, left the defense of Oahu on 7 December 1941 in the clueless hands of Lieutenant General Walter Short, AGF.
Short ordered all USAAF aircraft, INCLUDING fighters, to be lined up wingtip to wingtip to protect against sabotage…despite King and Halsey having demonstrated how vulnerable Hickam and Wheeler AAFs were to carrier attack on 29 March 1938:
"Kalbfus now gave Rear Admiral King the freedom he wanted. King decided to effect a surprise air raid on Pearl Harbor. He directed Saratogo to the northwest of Hawaii. Using a convenient weather front, at 0450 on March 29th King launched an attack from 100 miles that hit the Army's Hickam and Wheeler air fields and the Pearl Harbor Air Station with devastating effect."
To Train The Fleet For War, Nokia, pg. 261.
Undoubtedly Captain Minoru Genda was paying attention to King's operations, because the Kido Butai's first wave attacked in almost precisely this same way 3.5 years later, albeit with considerably more aircraft. But it shouldn't have been a walkover, as the USAAF forces were considerably stronger in 1941 than in 1938. But the result was worse, because Army Ground Forces was calling the shots in the Hawaiian Department, so the fighters were lined wingtip-to-wingtip to "protect" against saboteurs–a dream for strafing Zeroes.
Any USAAF officer knew the proper defense to both threats is to FLY the fighters, keeping the forces dispersed amongst multiple airfields, especially against a dawn raid on a Sunday, demonstrated by Admiral Yarnell's raid on Pearl in GJE 4 on 7 February 1932. But the Department commanders were all from Army Ground Forces, such as Lt. General Walter Short and had no concept of the danger of air attack…unlike the Army Major General that made the Navy see the light in May 1928:
"In mid-May, at the request of Major General Fox Conner, Commander, Hawaiian Department, a "minor joint army-navy" exercise was developed to test the defenses of Hawaii against a surprise air-sea attack.
At about 0430 [on May 16, 1928] Langley commenced launching two squadrons, 35 aircraft, getting them off very quickly. Soon afterward, at dawn, these aircraft–described as "swarms" in the press–achieved complete surprise, despite the fact that the defenders had been warned that an exercise was underway. The aircraft conducted simulated raids on Wheeler Field and other installations on Oahu.
At 0730, the battleships drew off, covered by Langley aircraft, which had proven able to keep the Army Air Corps away from the Fleet
Following this exercise, Major General Conner, who had accompanied the fleet aboard the flagship California, commented favorably on the performance of the naval aircraft during the operation, and joined Admiral de Steiguer in stressing the importance of aviation to the defense of Hawaii and the operation of the fleet, calling for an increase in the numbers of aircraft and ships in service."
To say the least, this speaks VERY poorly to U.S. Army-Navy relations before and during the Second World War. The Army brass learned nothing from the attacks from Reeves' carrier in 1928, Yarnell's carriers in 1932, nor King's and Halsey's carriers in 1938…and Fox Conner never was promoted past two-star rank, retiring the same year as Fleet Problem XIX proved nowhere was safe from carrier air power. Army Ground Forces flag officers dominated throughout the interwar years and the Second World War, essentially turning the European Theater of Operations into an exclusive province of the War Department (major USMC units were totally excluded from the ETO, to multiple disastrous effect in amphibious operations as U.S. Army Ground Forces tried to reinvent the wheel on the fly) while the Army brass also almost totally ignored their Pacific responsibilities…such as DEFENDING THE HAWAIIAN DEPARTMENT.
FDR needed a Fox Conner on 7 December 1941, not James O. Richardson. Someone like Conner undoubtedly would have adopted a more effective aerial defense plan for Oahu than Short's…which would have been possible if FDR had created an Army equivalent to CINCUS in the Pacific and promoted Fox Conner to four-star rank rather than letting him fade away after retiring in 1938 and tending to his old superior until General Pershing's death in 1948.
What a waste…could the "man who made Eisenhower" have ripped out the heart of the Kido Butai if he had countermaneded Short's asinine orders and the A6Ms, B5Ns and D3As had encountered massed USAAF fighter sweeps, always on the lookout for a Yarnell-style Sunday morning punch?