00:00:00 – Intro
00:00:32 – Airborne attack on the High Sea Fleet on 1st November 1918?
00:11:03 – Royal Navy Turret naming?
00:18:25 – How many navies observe the crossing of the equator tradition?
00:24:07 – Half Pay in the 20th century?
00:29:18 – ‘Losing’ a ship to get around naval treaties?
00:32:20 – What notable actions were Japanese patrol planes involved in?
00:37:03 – Wind gauge in the age of sail and the age of steam
00:44:43 – Warships entering Pearl Harbor render passing honors to the wreck of USS Arizona and those entering Sydney render passing honors to the HMAS Sydney memorial. Are there any other such traditions you are aware of?
00:46:04 – There are several tall ships such as the USCGC Eagle, NRP Sagres, Gorch Fock and the Amerigo Vespucci that are all used as both training ships and ceremonial vessels. Can you explain why navies or the coast guard continue to use rigged ships for training, and where the tradition of keeping a fully rigged ship as a sort of national ambassador comes from?
00:51:29 – During the first half of the 20th century what are the pros and cons of geared drives and electric drives relative to each other for surface ships?
01:03:44 – Jet/Rocket powered boats in WW2?
01:07:38 – Assuming you wanted to design a semi-practical cruiser/battleship-sized vessel at 40 knots (so nothing is allowed to run from it) and at least 15 inch guns, is that possible using interwar/WWII-era technology?
01:16:56 – The development and significance of water condensers for letting steam engines become useful propulsion for naval craft?
01:21:02 – Can you tell us more about this character running the HMS Canopus’ engine room in the lead up to Coronel?
01:25:41 – What is the modern convention for English ships during the Interregnum, and what was used at the time?
01:28:12 – If you have a battleship under construction, how long is it on the slipway before being pushed out for final completion? How much of the ship is finished?
01:31:00 – Was there a special Christmas ration for the US or Royal Navy sailor and what did it look like in the theatres of the Atlantic, Pacifc and Indian Ocean?
01:34:12 – Any notable examples of a subordinate commander ignoring orders and “opportunistically” leading, say, a squadron under his command into a perilous situation for which the enemy promptly chastised him (or the rest of the fleet)?
01:38:18 – Why did the Royal Navy revert HMS Vindictive back into a heavy cruiser instead of doing a full conversion like HMS Furious?
01:41:59 – What could have been done to make conning towers a more popular choice to use in battles?
01:49:46 – How often were carrier pigeons used by age of sail ships for communications and considering their effectiveness later, do you think they should have been more widely used?
01:54:16 – Did battleships have hydrophones and sonar?
01:57:41 – Battleship ‘live’ gun tests?
02:07:42 – Could you talk a little bit about HMS Diamond Rock and it’s somewhat unusual construction?
02:11:37 – How big of a gap in capability is there between the ‘best’ pre-dreadnought and the ‘worst’ Dreadnought?
02:21:01 – On the Second Northern War — in your opinion what did the Swedes do wrong in the Battle of the Sound, given their slightly larger fleet? And what did the Dutch and Danes do wrong at Ebeltoft for that matter?
02:27:06 – Has there ever been a really uneconomical ‘refit’ for prestige/stuborness reasons?
02:33:17 – Why didn’t the British source timber from Canada?
02:37:23 – Raising and restoring a wreck?
02:46:05 – If you have seen it, what are your thoughts about the film Godzilla: Minus One, on its depiction of several different IJN Navy vessels?
02:50:39 – Given the track record of SMS Emden, was Graf Spee wrong when he tried to get his squadron back to Germany instead of dispersing it and wrecking as much havoc as possible?
02:53:52 – Why didn’t more nations (particularly the US) adopt the all-gun-forward arrangement used in the design of Richelieu and Nelson?
02:57:04 – What nation in the period the channel covers would benefit most from modern resource maps & extraction methods & for which era?
02:59:27 – Were old destroyers better or worse than AMC’s for convoy escort?
03:02:12 – Was there much of a drawdown in the Allied forces in the Mediterranean after the Italian surrender?
03:05:01 – Drydock Medal and Shipshape rewards update
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Regarding British turret naming, HMS Tiger's rear superfiring turret was named Q turret, despite not being amidships. All her machinery and funnels were ahead of the turret and the turret thus had the same complete firing arc to the rear that the rearmost turret had. But because the turret was a bit further away from the rearmost turret than usual and because the Lion's all had a Q turret, Tiger also had a Q turret, despite it not making any real sense.
I seem to remember reading about US ships rendering honors while around Savo Island/ Ironbottom sound. Don't know if it's a standing tradition, can anyone current on US Navy traditions confirm/debunk this/
"Mass cuckoo attack" Thats a heck of a quote 😀
My kitty is so used to me playing one of your videos to listen to when I lay down that listening to this confused her. Your voice promised snuggles and she got no snuggles (at first).
For a perfect example of "spending too much money for too little in one ship", I nominate the post war refit of HMS Victorious . While the ship did became a more-or-less efective post WWII carrier, it never carried the number of intended planes. But the worse part was that the refit took 8 years, and the budget went from 5 to 30 million pounds . In a cash-strapped post WWII RN, this efectivelly killed any large refits to other carriers.
We used to always rendered Honors to the Statue of Liberty when entering New York Harbor, and the USS Constitution when entering Boston Harbor….
@ 0:29:18 I could see "loosing "a few ships to "Anarchists" and/or "Bolsheviks" that "conducted a co-ordinated attack" at a few ports during some sort of labor dispute…..
Yes, please Mr Drach' sir. We all want a feature length Wednesday special about wacky German speedy + hydrofoil crafts. & Especially so, iffin they're packing jet power.
🦀🇦🇺✌️
16:50 Re: X vs Y in a 3-turret setup – is there not a distinction dependent on the height of the rear turret? If the rearmost single mount is at the same height as A, then it seems to me to be Y turret, but if it's a deck below A, then it's X. This is of course moot in ships with more than one rear mount, but it makes some sense, to me at least.
I swear it seems like a whole year has passed since I started watching this episode…
Made cape e boats✓
Re: saluting wrecks
I'm not sure of the specifics, but I believe that around the anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it is common for a ship to issue a master salute when entering Duluth.
Actually zed would make more sense for the name of the German plan in English since tsett is obviously related to zed linguistically
Wednesday special on madcat German designs? Yes please Mr. Drach.
Drach…Are you a Wog? 🤣🇺🇸🇬🇧
@ 1:41:59 Periscopes? (For conning towers in heavily armoured ships)
Regarding the wind wave line, and it's ability to damage stored ship's. Assuming that stored displacement leaves the ship riding high do to no operating supplies, there should be room to ballast it down. So add ballast to the point where the wave water interface is higher on the ship. Then, periodically, remove that ballast and repair/recoat the interface line.
Anyone see a problem with this as regards that problem?
@ 1:03:44 Shin'yo boats were planned to have basically a pair of large 30.5cm or larger (12" or larger) solid fuel rocket motors (looked like a Huge Firework Rocket). It was supposed to use them to get to the attack speed of 80 (or so) knots!
Thankfully, only a few apparently were used in attempted attacks and they didn't have the rockets on them. They were the surface navy version of the Kaitens…..
Drachinifel: @ 1:07:38 you were talking boilers and turbines. From my understanding the Iowas and the (WW2) Essexes had 600 psi boilers. However (also from my understanding) U.S. long haul steam locomotives of the 1930's onwards used 750 psi boilers (the "Big Boy" UP 4014) was built with a 750psi superheated boiler!)
Any idea why they didn't upgrade to 750psi? Was it the worry of needing large amount of special alloy metals and the lack of these meant they wouldn't have the reliability and the long life needed for naval use? (Or someone hung up the: "Not Invented Here" sign outside of the Bureau of Engineering door?). Or was it trouble upgrading the Steam Turbines?
18:35 I remember reading in Stalking the Red Bear: The True Story of a U.S. Cold War Submarine's Covert Operations Against the Soviet Union by Peter Sasgen the Soviet Navy had a similar ceremony but it consisted of only eating a piece of hardtack and drinking a shot of seawater
Always great stuff! Happy New Year!
Interesting to have heard. Einstein's original thought on nuclear power was for a ship.
For a last minute attack on Wilhelmshaven, if you know the terms of the armistice, you dont even have to go to the Netherlands. Just get to a field outside the city and you may well get home before internees in the Netherlands.
The Armistice required the immediate release of all prisoners in German custody while, at least theoretically, the Dutch could (maybe even should) maintain the internment until the peace treaty is signed.
In regards to homing pigeons as a communication method, they would have major difficulty navigating at sea. Tracking beacons on pigeons has shown fairly conclusively that they use visual navigation as much as any innate homing ability to get back home. If you take them beyond a few miles from land there is nothing to navigate by, and chances are they'd just fly in circles above the ship for a bit, see nothing near by, and land back on the ship as it is the only thing that isn't water in sight.
We didn't fund your Australia trip for the rewards, we funded it for the content to come….which is always exceptional. Don't sweat the trinkets.
How about the story of the HMS Lesbian, she not a war ship. But dies at the hands of the angry Vichy French.
In addition to the conservation of boiler grade water a condenser can be used to operate at a vacuum. When you expand steam to a lower pressure you can extract one third more energy by expanding the steam below atmospheric pressure as you can extract expanding from boiler pressure down to atmospheric pressure. This additional energy would be thrown out in the cooling water rather than using it to spin the propeller shaft with out a condenser operating at high vacuum.
Happy new year to you, Drach, and to Mrs Drach. May it bring you both peace and joy. Thanks for your excellent videos!
Rocket powered E boats? YES PLEASE!!
I'm not sure a turbine could survive flooding any better than an electric motor or generator. Quenching the lower half of a turbine casing causes it to distort, leading to rubbing between the rotor and diaphragms. Its quite a common means of severely damaging turbines. Having said that I'd rather be around a turbine being quenched than HV electricity and saltwater.
Drach trying to make a functioning 40-knot battleship is hilarious.
Happy and rewarding New Year Drach and all your loyal Inifels. 🎉
Combining the questions about passing honours and Diamond Rock, I understand the Royal Navy still regards the rock as a commissioned warship, and RN ships passing it are required to salute it as they would any other RN warship.
I'm one of those that stands by the fact that on even the Belfast you can't "grind" gears shifting into reverse.since Belfast has a reversing element attached to the LP turbine which is directly connected to the reduction gear. The gear and clutch segment is for engaging and disengaging the cruising turbine which would be a very bad idea to do at speed. On USN systems the cruising turbines remained connected whether in use or not. this required a system to circulate "cooling" steam though the turbine to prevent over heating when not in use. Improved designs post WW2 and greater efficiency of 1200PSI steam found the cruising turbines more trouble than they were worth and so eliminated.
In terms of a historic ship to raise, would either of the Blucher's be suitable, or maybe Lutzow (WW1)
1:07:38
To get a prospective on the power required to move a large ship at high seeds, I took a look at the SS United States. With a 45400Ton displacement, 940ft WTL, and 101.5 ft beam, it was able to hit 38.32 knots on a 1952 trial run with a plant rated at 240,000 shaft horsepower. Power / speed curves of trials show that at some point hitting 42Knts very likely a myth. Yet enough secrecy surrounds the ships power plant to make it easy wonder what the true horse power was.
1:45:00 By adding lense to broaden the view of a given sized viewport on a conning tower will result in less ability to see detail and likely harm low light vision. Another trade off.