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Today we take a look at a few issues that have cropped up recently and my thoughts on the lessons that can be learned from them as well as providing some more context as why what was said, was said.
00:00:00 – Intro
00:01:55 – Purpose of Video
00:04:32 – Perspective on Questions
00:11:53 – Context of Questions
00:19:01 – A follow-up on Cordite
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Pinned post for Q&A 🙂
Time for my second cup with a side of Drach, whose analysis of topics that may at first seem of minor importance turn out to be to critical. All taken together, I think you’d be the best “Deputy to the First Sea Lord” ever. (I say “Deputy,” so that you could concentrate on what matters, while the “Admiral Fisher” types could handle the politics.
Alfred T. Mahan would be proud to consider you one of his successors. Keep up the work!😊😊😊😊😊
Did it crystalize? When a shell passes through armor, some would say the armor crystallized and broke. They would be wrong…since it was solidified, it was crystallized. Totally unlike the issue with Nitroglycerin dealt with in this and previous video. Excellent video Drach!
G'day Drachinifel, I think you were right with the interpretation of the prize rule. However, I think you needed to put in an aside to say that there was a per head reward for slaves that was issued at the same time.
Considering that America was perfectly capable of winning any arms race it was forced to participate in, it was amazing that it was America that called for the conference. Britain, Italy, and Japan avoided going bankrupt, especially Britain as their debt to America would have paid for any expansion of the US Navy. The American steel industry wasn't hurt like the rest of the world by the end of the war. America just went back to making cars, skyscrapers and washing machines. America used the treaty period to develop high temperature high pressure boilers, better fire controls, better armor and better radios. Radios? Yes, think RCA, Motorola, Belmont, Noblitt Sparks, Stewart-Warner, Farnsworth, all of whom made electronics during WW2.
From my perspective, there is no doubt who won the Washington Treaty – the Taxpayers of all signatories. I would give second place to the Germans, who weren’t bound by it (so could design & build Bismarck class without the 35,000t/14” gun limits) while facing a smaller and less modern Royal Navy than would otherwise have probably been the case (G3s would have helped Britain greatly in 1939-41, allowing Hood to be sent to the Mediterranean). Third placing is more difficult, but probably the Americans, as they accidentally received two aircraft carriers which were much larger ships than they would otherwise have built, and experience with them (and the aircraft built to fill them) was of vital importance to the USN in WW2.
LOL at least she didn't shut the tube door on you 😉
What substitutes very well is adding Your Context as a codicil either To the Question OR To The Answer. "Who wins the Washington Naval Treaty" – In terms of….. Alternatively, I see the USN winning the WNT because of…
Of significant issue to me is the effect or not of the silk bags everything is in. Tho what extent do the silk bags affect the retention, dispersion and or absorption. The reasoning is the dust as silk has an especially tight weave and one would have thought would have done well in retaining the detritus to within the bag??? This implies either other problems OR that the issue was far more significant??
You commented on the different views of who won the Washington Treaty. I thought of one where Japan won. Where other countries could spy on countries, Japan really didn't have to worry about it. The best case is the Yamato. Japan held the secret of the guns until the end of the war.
I am going to be teaching a class soon and the more I research the subject the more contradictory the evidence and the opinions of the historians and scientists about said evidence seem. So what you are discussing here is highly relevant to my situation.
The best kind of correct is a host that holds his guests in such high regard that he goes out of his way to share a teaching moment with them.
My primary takeaway from this video is that Drach has now gotten the justification for recreating RN cordite using a research paper as an excuse! Not just for fun. Not at all.
In my opinion, in the broadest sense, nobody won. It led to a arms race in regards ship building, which led to international distrust and that in it's own way led to WWII. Each Country in it's own way was doing a "Keeping up with the Jones"
As a side note, who LOST with the Washington Naval Treaty? The Japanese were unhappy with the eventual outcome, but did they really lose that much? And I don't know enough about the French or the Regia Marina to say.
About the "research" into cordite formulations, two pesky details come to mind:
1) The makeup and concentration of "impurities" in the compounding chemicals. Keep in mind that then-day practitioners of explosive manufacture may not have been aware of the presence of some molecules. Exploration of the origins of those chemicals might be necessary to ascertain the probable answers.
2) The precision and accuracy of the measurement and compounding methods. Here there is the theoretical answer and the "as practiced" answer. These answers will change with location, operation, and time.
Perhaps these things are a layer too deep. However, I am reminded of issues that have arisen in other fields where the history of "as practiced" technology has significant bearing on the conclusions reached in more modern times.
Love your work. Good luck in your deeper dive.
The winner of the Washington Naval Treaty was? The Germans. And the great Depression.
Ship building was a massive buisness and employed millions. But with the collapse of the civilian buisness, international trade, and global economies the continuity of a ongoing national building program would have ensured a steady trickle of flow down of employment for military purposes and maintenance of Naval construction capacity.
Thus the rollout of carriers would have happened quicker. Battleships would have been replaced with generally superior components if limited in size, and there would clearly be no way that the rush build of German warships could pose a significant threat to the superior ships of the worlds navies. Fast capable battleships from three world beating navies.
The total shutdown of all naval construction strangulated the naval industries of all participants, with Japan being the first to violate the core goal of the treaties.
I love this channel and your work. Keep up the good work sir.
US won the Washington Naval Treaty treaty by removing the Anglo-British alliance. That alone makes it a US win and an achievement of naval pairity with UK, whereas US was a second before. That treaty was a departure from the long tradition of UK always confronting the strongest rival and a major step towards UK eventually accepting to become US sattelite.
As a further indication – it was the USA that proposed to have the naval disarmament in the first place (initiative), it hosted it and finally spied the sh1t out of other parties to get the best deal. And finally, look where USN, RN and IJN (RIP) are today respectively. It really is a no brainer.
From a different perspective – The "winner" of the treaty was Gents like Ernest Cox…..
This why you are one of my favorite channels. You will take feedback and build on it
thew nitroglycerine thing,,, perhaps it was absorbed into dust,, and made an 'ad hoc dynamite'
Try not to beat yourself you too much on context it's important but, you can't see every possible angle to every question. As regards slave ship capture, they asked about prize money, and you answered correctly regarding prize money. If the question was "how were royal navy personnel paid for the capture of slave ships" and you left out "head" money in favor of "prize" money you would be incorrect. The question was not broad enough not the answer. 🙂
One of the driving forces behind the adoption of superfiring turrets fore and aft and the elimination of amidships turrets was the realization that the magazines of those turrets were partitioning the boiler-rooms and the engine-rooms, with steam piping going through or around those magazines. That meant that those magazines- and their powder charges and shells, were always going to be warmer than the loadings from the other magazines.
The result is that the shells fired from the amidships mounts were dispersed from the fore and aft mounts- sometimes wildly so.
Apart from what was building the other probably larger concern was fighting a British Japanese alliance.
That is very interesting that the Royal Navy (UK) used prize formulae to distribute what seems to have been essentially a bounty for freeing slaves.
Isn't the obvious answer: Nobody "won" the Washington Naval Treaty as that is what Treaties of that kind are supposed to achieve (namely Compromises that leave everybody angry and dissatisfied, while only marginally helping the actual goal the negotiators set out to achieve)?
Drach, always impressed by your dedication, professionalism, and complete apparent lack of ego.
You're not a robot, are you?
An awesome and very important set of topics I think. Being yet another academically trained historian, I think a lot of those in the amateur realm miss these "upper" level concepts in history like perspective, context, historiography, and even the more meta-level topics like epistemology and the decades long argument regarding "the duty of historians and 'the truth.'"
I think this is an awesome look into the considerations that professional, semi-professional, and academic historians actually have to work through while doing their work.
Definitely a look beyond what's termed "pop history."
Pussyfooting, having been invited in, is led straight to the head table.
Without my time machine and not having the ability to transport back do you think the the Royal Navy were paid for freed slaves to overcome potential bribes from slave ships?
C.S. Forester referred to it as, "head money" in the Horatio Hornblower series.
Battleship New Jersey is not in Hawaii. Missouri is at Pearl Harbor.