00:00:00 – Intro
00:00:35 – When and how did the Kriegsmarine figure out that the Allies were using Hedgehog AS weapons?
00:04:12 – 18th century mortar bombs
00:07:32 – Admiral King and grey uniforms?
00:09:43 – USN Machinist Mate rank?
00:13:07 – What was the best destroyer class of WW1?
00:17:10 – Tudor era breech loading cannon?
00:22:58 – More consistent USN command after 1st Savo?
00:26:04 – US Coastal fortifications in the early 19th century?
00:31:00 – Longer barrel 5″/38?
00:36:12 – Why did Admiral Nishimura not wait for Admiral Shima at Surigao Strait, and would it have made a difference?
00:39:42 – Visualising a battleship calibre shell hit?
00:47:14 – IJN officers aggressive training but passive results?
00:53:17 – Operation Catherine or Churchill’s seeming dislike of the R class?
00:58:29 – USS Texas and VTE’s
01:01:33 – Best way to investigate a naval career?
01:04:17 – What could the IJN have done to oppose Operation Downfall?
01:07:20 – Standardized range tables and penetration probabilities for main battery naval guns in WWII?
01:09:25 – Why the US fleet was planning to send the older standard battleships to engage Yamato versus sending the newer fast battleships?
01:12:00 – WW1 era flying platforms
01:15:44 – What ship design should not have worked, but wound up having the best career or most significant impact on a battle?
01:18:14 – Battleship convoy escorts?
01:21:15 – What is the best source on the radio experiments of Adm. Jackson?
01:23:00 – If ABDA Command was an international fleet that didn’t quite work, what’s your best example of a combined fleet that did?
01:26:15 – Design choices for ships limited by natural resources?
01:28:41 – Why are the senior officers of a command referred to as the brass?
01:30:06 – Do Royal Navy vessels stock demonstrably more tea than those of other navies?
01:31:06 – Sinking of the Chiyoda and the lack of rescue?
01:33:05 – What are your thoughts on Admiral Yamamoto?
01:36:33 – What went so wrong at a time when the English were starting to standardise their building and design?
01:40:09 – What were the lessons learned on Aircraft Carrier Crews of the US Navy until the end of WW2?
01:42:37 – Why were so many countries so patient with the Barbary states for so long?
01:47:01 – How were battleship barrel liners fitted into the barrel itself?
01:49:45 – How do you interpret flooding figures given in damage reports?
01:54:30 – Which class or type of vessel from the WWI-WWII period had the most success in a role other than that for which it was originally intended?
01:56:02 – In WWII and modern day, capital ships have battle groups around them. Was there anything like this in the age of sail, with First Rates paired with lesser ships, or was it get the Ships of the Line in a, well, Line and blast away?
01:57:56 – Concentration of force or engage along the line?
02:02:12 – Has there been any mutual job shadowing (similar to a student exchange) between the navies in the inter war years?
02:04:28 – How much did the pre-dreadnoughts allowed Germany in the Versailles treaty effect future Reichsmarine and Kreigsmarine ships? Did any design features (or flaws) from them sneak into later designs?
02:06:27 – Since it was possible to spot freefalling bombs, did AA gunners attempt or succeed at shooting them out of the sky?
02:09:33 – Could Hood outrun Nelson and Rodney in reverse?
02:11:22 – What is the point of wing turrets?
02:14:59 – If the KGV’s had been built as Lions instead (as they might have been in the year each KGV was commissioned), do you think there would have been any difference in how major events played out?
02:18:43 – Were there enough gunners to man every cannon on an age of sail ship or were there just enough to cover only one side (port or starboard) at a time?
02:21:52 – HMS Scylla vs HilfsKreuzer at night?
02:24:29 – Why are there only two access points to the Turrets of the Iowa’s, under the Barbette/Magazines and the Turret Bustle? And was this common or did some Classes allow access through a higher deck?
02:26:59 – I believe that in my childhood I heard of people packing utensils into canister rounds during the age of sail, is this really true?
02:31:38 – How are Hedgehog’s fired?
02:33:41 – How do the 5 in/54 guns used on Midway and planned to be used on the Montanas compare to the 5 in/38’s in the anti-air – anti-surface trade off?
02:36:28 – AA weapons that suffered in an anti-surface engagement?
02:40:31 – If the Luftwaffe tried their own version of Operation Starvation against the U.K. in WW2 instead of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, how would this have affected the Battle of Atlantic?
02:43:47 – How would the Naval aspect of WW1 change if the Royal Navy and Imperial German Navy swapped radio practices?
02:47:35 – USN perceived a threat from Germany in 1900-1910?
02:52:54 – Hiryu’s forces encoutering SBD’s on their way home?
02:57:03 – Differing 5″/38 mounts on the same ship?
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Pinned post for Q&A 🙂
I was at Pointe du Hoc in 2019. After 75 years, a 14 inch is roughly similar in size to a 2000 pound bomb. The big difference is the bomb hit is circular, the battleship hit is oblong.
01:47:01 Tom Scott, The older one, from Battleship Texas did a video on the manufacturing of the 14" Barrels, in which the process of putting in a new liner is also described https://youtu.be/IJXmcXilWQ8
@39:42 per R. Lundgren Washington fired on Kirishima for 2minutes 39 seconds, checked fire for 1 minute 30 seconds, fired for 2 minutes 45 seconds and then ceased fire a total of 5 minutes 24 seconds. Prudently Washington disengaged leaving Kirishima to sink. Bismarck was shelled longer but only because the RN closed to point blank range and as Bismarck sank less hull was exposed and shells began to ricochet off the sea. If KGV and Rodney had disengaged she would have sunk in any case.
The bombers references in the Houston's case were high level, twin-engine bombers. They were the same ones that bombed Darwin. He could have been running turns off the planes. He could have possibly seen the bombs and gave commands on that.
Two problems I can see with firing on the bombs. First off, you'd basically be laying on the deck to fire at the bombs. Second, because of one, the shells could come down on your own ship.
They Had a wide varietea ;)?
I can imagine what the average American's response would be to the landing of 200,000 German soldiers would have been.
Who needs an army when many of your citizens own rifles & rather like their personal freedom?
Maybe I missed it, but was wondering if you would be doing an update on your take on Battleship Texas. I saw the episode you made a few years ago.
Given that ground must still be held by infantry, does the usefulness of shore batteries still have potential? Islands, etc.
As a Fitter Machinist myself, Yea, Machinists don't just machine, they also strip and repair machinery
Only Wills Lee would bring nine 16" guns to a knife fight. Eighteen, really, but, you know, South Dakota.
Could you explain why shell splashes are so narrow and vertical? Assuming that explosions underwater result in a spherical pressure wave, this seems odd to a non-engineer.
A exception that "proofs" (tests) the rule?
IMHO two of the best uniforms for USN officers were the dress khakis and aviator working greens. Regrettably, both had been phased out before I was commissioned.
I really have to disagree with your placing Yamamoto in the upper 1/3 of Admirals based on his performance in WWII.
Let’s start with Pearl Harbor what many would consider a prime example of his brilliance. Of all the senior Japanese commanders Yamamoto was in the best position to understand how a surprise attack on a Sunday morning would affect the American psyche. He should certainly have known that such an attack regardless of how much initial advantage it might but him would guarantee his nation’s ultimate destruction by an enraged American populace. Given the Japanese hope for a negotiated peace the attack he planned was all but certain to make that impossible. And he certainly understood that he could not win a protracted war with an enraged American adversary period.
Ok what about initial Japanese success in the war. Given the strategic picture I don’t think even a brilliant American Admiral can do much to halt those. So while these plans were certainly well executed (well maybe not the attack on Wake Island) they don’t have the mark of brilliance.
Coral Sea and Midway are two conjoined disasters for the IJN that Yamamoto absolutely owns. Shattered Sword does a brilliant job of laying out the failures in these plans and how they led to the destruction of what had been Japan’s trump card up to that point the Kido Butai.
Finally we move to the Solomon’s Campaign. I think most would argue that by this point in the war the US and Japan were fighting from essentially a position of parity. So with the odds at least even Yamamoto had a fighting chance of winning that campaign but he lost. And it’s not like the Americans didn’t make mistakes of their own during the campaign.
It must be noted in fairness that many of his weaknesses were endemic to the Japanese Navy as a whole. His massively complex midway plan was right in line with how nearly all Japanese Admirals planned operations.
But still he was in command. His open move essentially doomed his nation to defeat. And subsequent moves gave away his advantage and then when asked to fight on an equal footing he lost.
I don’t see anything there that merits an upper 1/3 classification. More like bottom 1/3.
I BEAT THE GEOMETRY DASH LEVEL 9 CIRCLES (NEW HARDEST) WHILE LISTENING TO THIS THANKS DRACH!
IF YOU LOT WANT SOME GOOD STUFF ABOUT THE BLOODY LIMEY SODS… READ ALL OF THE HORATIO HORNBLOWER BOOKS. LOTS ABOUT MOTARS
The world is on the cusp of the final great war that will erase thousands of years of progress. Anyone disagree?
Liner removal in an interference fit barrel…grind a groove into the liner and remove liner with one hand. Shrinkfit, coldfit a new liner. I wonder what test pressures they used? 10%+?
Glad to hear you're feeling somewhat better, Drach. The halves of the Patreon Drydock over two weekends is more than sufficient – it's not anything like "half rations" in the usual sense. We love your content in any amount.
No need to push yourself when you're running on fumes…oops. 😁
My understanding is that Horrible History has become extremely political and revisionist in the past few years. I only know about it, and how good it used to be, because I had relatives in the UK who brought us some of their books when we were kids.
There are some fortifications in the hills overlooking the north side of the seaward entrance a few miles before the Golden Gate Bridge. They had either 16 or 18 inch guns, the guns are gone but the casements where they had been are open to hikers. They look like "The Guns of Navarone". They had been on platforms that are gone but could swing the guns about 120-150 degrees, you can walk around this place and get a good idea of what they could do to approaching battleships, they'd have been a huge problem for an attacking fleet. They're built into the hillside a good 300 feet above sea level which would give them a real big advantage and not that visible to an approaching fleet. If you'd like I could take some pictures and get you some detailed information, history and maps of these gun emplacements.
The Hedgehog is based on the PIAT?!?! Wow!
01:57:56 question on concentration of fire in a naval context: that's what crossing the T is for, as happened at Tsushima. This is the entire purpose of that tactic, which is also very hard to achieve (although Jellicoe did come close to pulling it off, almost by accident, at Jutland). Cross the T, and every ship in your line targets the lead few ships of the other guy's line in concentrated fire.
If the Japanese had acted like decent human beings in WW2 then I would suspect that far more sailors would have been rescued. As an Aussie with a father who was a spitfire pilot in the RAAF, I grew up being told how merciless their military acted.
Are we talking about radar fuses???
When did German submariners discover the incredible Mr. Limpet anti-submarine fish-crab system? What counter measures did they develop?
1:21:54 They should have been called the Tesla Radio sets to begin with.
Actually about the access to the turret i think it is more if the ship is sinking you are really really thankful if you can get out on the deck level.