00:00:00 – Intro
00:00:38 – What if John Paul Jones remained in Imperial Russian Service?
00:04:29 – Why were cutting out operations often successful?
00:11:23 – Why shell vs armour penetration figures do you use?
00:20:28 – Could the Courageous class be modernised into useful gun-based vessels?
00:26:06 – What would at-sea firefighting efforts look like around the 1850s-1870s?
00:28:36 – When is the last recorded time in history that a naval officer used their sword in combat?
00:31:12 – How on earth did the Westinghouse Electropult work?
00:33:29 – Did the Japanese have a navy to oppose the Mongols?
00:35:17 – Did IJN ships have oxygen generation plants aboard their ships?
00:36:47 – What is the IJN and 2nd Pacific Squadron met early in their voyage?
00:38:44 – What are the ‘Brown M&Ms’ of naval history?
00:46:02 – Fighter-carrier Ryujo?
00:50:58 – Magnification on rangefinders?
00:54:27 – Are there any unexpected or particularly annoying holes in the naval historical record you have encountered during your research?
01:03:44 – What is the dimensions and weight of the electric motors used for the Lexington class aircraft carriers?
01:05:13 – How did the Ise class deal with the loss of the weight of the turrets?
01:07:26 – Were Jellicoe and Beatty buried side by side deliberately?
01:08:58 – What’s the longest a wooden ship of the line is known to have been in service?
01:13:44 – Why did the USN only ever try to build 1 class of Battlecruiser?
01:23:00 – AA Omaha conversion?
01:27:23 – What resources would you recommend to learn more about the ship building capacities of the major navies during the interwar period?
01:30:52 – Have you read Robert Massie’s books Dreadnought and Castles of Steel. If so, what is your impression of them?
01:32:28 – Is there a credible scenario where Bismarck and Prinz Eugen escape detection by the British forces and find themselves in the Atlantic undetected? If this occurred, any guess as to what convoys they might have ran across first?
01:35:37 – How many crew do you save switching from coal to oil?
01:37:43 – What are the differences between land and sea warfare that invert what a small country should build?
01:47:24 – Why did diesel aircraft engines not work too well?
01:50:48 – Have you ever made a war canoe?
01:54:53 – The origins of USS Constellation?
02:02:28 – UK Museums question?
02:06:38 – Were the Nelson class completed underweight?
02:14:58 – Would crews of battleships ‘brace for impact’ in WW1 / WW2?
02:20:26 – Electrification of warships?
02:25:06 – On a battleship that used its coal stoarge as a secondary armour belt, what happens if an AP shell exploded in a coal bunker?
02:29:23 – What if the Courageous class were not built?
02:35:02 – How was the armour from the Almirante Cohrane used on the Renown class?
02:37:54 – Why was the submarine HMS P222 not given a name before it was lost?
02:39:51 – Did Conte Di Cavour sink in 1943?
02:44:42 – Can you name some occasions when a Free French ship engaged in a battle with a Vichy French ship that *wasn’t* during Torch?
02:46:21 – What’s happening to HMS Terrible?
02:49:47 – Alternate Sverige class?
02:57:18 – Why did whaling ships have ‘gun ports’?
03:00:50 – Odd lengths on British WW1 battleship guns?
source
And here is Part Deux. Saturday night is officially here.
The second part of a Drydock had dropped – time to get a beer in my local and sit by the fire whilst I listen to it
Drach, while the experiments regarding boarding actions in armor sound interesting, for all of our sakes, please don’t forget the aphorism “Every knight can be a submarine once.”
33:29 – Lions Led by Donkeys Episode 290 goes into some detail on the Mongol Invasion. They're a little bit superficial compared to Drachinifel, but they get the broad strokes right. Probably worth a listen.
There is a proposal called Design G-5 light carrier (9.800tons) in 1932. Sadly there are no specifications and drawings of it but judging by it, I guess it might've been an reduced version of the Ryujo.
the bulletin of Ordnance 2-41 oviously contains details about the Philadelphia Experiment, so they had to cover it up,
Q: I know it’s a bit outside of the channel’s timeframe but my great uncle served on USS Hancock CVA-12 in the 1970s and I never got a chance to ask him about what he did before he passed do you think you could give me a rundown on what the ship did during this time?
917,304 and counting (over 100,000 an hour)… SIGN THE BLOODY PETITION!!!
10th, 24 November 2024
1:48:00 On the subject of an Amerikabomber designed with diesels, the Luftwaffe had a perennial problem with getting any new, good piston engines – let alone diesel-powered ones. Lot of interesting projects were designed around engines that never actually got past prototype – like the infamous Jumo 222 (or HeS 011 in the case of jets) – and ended up using inferior engines as a result.
One thing that I have always wondered on the Allied side is the ground-side consequences of fuels with very high octane ratings to greatly improve performance. Part of this was done by chemically 'cracking' long-chain components into shorter chains and additionally removing components that tended to cause corrosion or 'gumming'. But they also put a whole lot of additives that even then were known to be viciously toxic – like Tetraethyl Lead. I have seen at least one document that mentions: "Higher relative toxicity of the fuel necessitates more careful handling". Anyone know of situations where this toxicity had real-world consequences?
When I went through Fire Control Tech A School at Great Lakes in the mid 1980's, some half a dozen optical range finders were in the school plaza for us to play with. 30X magnification was the most that I recall on those machines, and it makes sense for several reasons. First, high magnification allows you to look further away but too much of it and you'll be trying to look over the horizon which a line-of-sight device cannot do. Also, the mountings of these rangefinders was interesting; some of them hanging in gimbals with the spotter scope also having its own stabilizing. However- the higher the magnification, the more difficult it is to track the target at range- especially in the pitching and rolling environment of a warship. The lower the magnification, the easier it is to track the target at long distance… but it fills less of your field of vision and you need a split silhouette to find range and thus higher magnification. It's a fine balance.
2:02:33 Anyone visiting England has to realise that UK road network is heavily overloaded, often with speed restrictions, I'd certainly not recommend some-one from abroad trying a notional tour of UK museums in short order, I know friends, who migrated to the USA and Canada in the 1990 / 2000s, who on return to visit find travel in UK stressful in extreme. That's why I laugh at people who post nonsense like you travel in Texas for 11 hours and not leave the State, My view I've done similar in UK, but other than an idiot why would you want to.
02:29:23 Re Vanguard that would depends how far along the turrets of the Rs were along.
I wonder if you can find the Battlecruiser 1919 detailed design studies sitting in a file cabinet next to the crated Ark of the Covenant in the warehouse at the end of the Indiana Jones movie. 😉
would Diesel engines be useful on the Walrus? Performance is not that a priority. having no aviation fuel on Cruisers sounds safer.
One of the often overlooked areas of reference is to gain access to government contracts of either purchase, replacement, or resupply.
wrt the two questions about the Courageouses, my first thought is that the cruiser fleet tonnage limits of First London would make it imperative the Courageouses be scrapped as soon as possible, as each Courageous scrapped would make tonnage available to build three new cruisers. On the other hand, by the time of First London, the Deutschland was building, and the Admiralty might think the Courageouses were the perfect thing to kill Deutschlands.
As for a no Courageouses at all scenario, Jackie had tried to have a third Renown class, probably as Resistance, built, but his request was refused. The turrets were in hand, from the cancelled R-class ships. They probably would have ended up on monitors, or used on Hood, instead of the Mk II turrets being built from scratch. Regarding the impact on naval aviation, the Washington treaty does allow conversion of two ships that would otherwise be scrapped to be converted. The Wiki article on the G3s says there is no photographic evidence any of them were actually laid down. The G3s were so huge that they could probably not be cut down enough to get under the 33,000 limit anyway. The Lions were scheduled to be scrapped for treaty compliance. They are significantly shorter, and a bit beamier, than the Courageouses. Fit a modern, oil fired, plant, and their speed might be improved significantly. But the cost would probably be so great that the Admiralty would probably be better off building a clean sheet design. Without the Corageouses, something like Ark Royal would probably have been built in the late 20s.
03:00:50 Gun pits at Elswick and Barbette assembly pits at the old Scotswood works in Newcastle existed until the plants closed in late 1960s, the large gun pits were floored over, so turrets like 4.5 inch, and later Destroyer turrets, could be assembled, but being close to the river, the lower area had been inundated. There was even a lead shot making tower on site, which was used to produce shot for Shrapnel shells in WW1.
Six hours in dry dock today! My yacht is hardly in harbour more than that.
Really hope Ultimate Admiral does fast battleships eventually. Would be great to have all the AA and radar.
As much as I would love a special dedicated to medieval naval combat Drach… I would be very worried for your safety if you tried experimenting with swimming with armor in any amount of water. Every year it seems in Michigan there are reports of people accidentally falling into various lakea and rivers while wearing steel-toed boats, only to drown when they cant doff the boots quickly enough. And thats just modern boots.
LOL political agenda in documentaries is always there, so let's hope, sincerely hope that Disney never attempts a Midway Movie. You can just see it now, Halsey can't go with the carriers to the battle because SHE'S pregnant and about to give berth.
As a trained SCUBA diver, I suggest you have at least one safety diver on hand for your "swimming" in plate mail experiment. And if you already don't have experience with breathing through a SCUBA regulator, please get some practice in first. That way, if you find yourself underwater and the safety diver hands you a regulator mouthpiece, you know how to use it and are comfortable with using it. You might also learn the underwater hand signals for divers.
One of the first training sessions I had, my instructor had us take our fins off and try to swim with just our booties on our feet. It was a marked decrease in forward motion from kicking my feet. I imagine if I had also the weight of an air tank, a buoyancy compensation device (BCD), and the weights used to maintain neutral buoyancy, then it would have been even more of a struggle (without any air in the BCD).
Barry Gough deals deals with Beatty's funeral in 'Churchill and Fisher' (p.501). According to Gough, Jellicoe's widow was incensed that Beatty was placed beside Jellicoe, complaining to Ernle Chatfield, who was then First Sea Lord. Gough writes that Jellicoe was buried in the 'naval' corner of the Cathedral, implying that it would have been odd for Beatty to have been placed elsewhere.
HMS Prince certainly had a very long life, its fascinating to think that before Trafalgar Nelson or another sailor might have witnessed a ship that could trace its routes back to the reign of Charles II and only a few years after the Dutch raid on the River Medway.
Of course as you mentioned some wooden ships of the line did also survive long periods of time, with some noticable examples being HMS Nile, which was launched in 1839 and survived as a training ship until 1953, when she unfortunately ran aground on the way to a refit, having served for 114 years, while HMS Cornwallis survived for a whopping 144 years, from 1813 to 1957, but was converted into a jetty in the 1860s so would have been unrecognisable by the end.
re coal bunker Lumps of coal tossed into water sink
Re: French ships at Trafalgar
Does Marryat comment on this at any point in his books?
So if I'm understanding Drach's response correctly, the US Navy designed a lot of battlecruisers, started building two classes Lexington and Alaska, and only completed one class, Alaskas.
I'm grinding through Italian Battships in WoW Legends, 13 heavy guns, what's not to like?
At 33, “PAH-tucks -it” is the pronunciation.
In regards to the idea of building an on-land replica of a medieval warship for some experimental archaeology, it occurs to me that this sort of thing might be right up Tod's Workshop's alley. Perhaps a 3-way collab with Tod, Matt Easton, and Drach? Maybe Tod might be able to find a weird weapon from history with a naval connection! It's certainly worth an ask I'd think; I'm sure you'd all have a total blast with it.
Hey Drach,
As a side note, there is a tradition in the US of including some fittings or other artifacts of a pervious ship in the next ship to bear its name. Not saying this happened with CV-6 to CVN-65, but My understanding is it has happened with CVN-65 to CVN-80.
Thanks Drach.
From what I've read of Jones's departure from Russian service, it was less "court intrigue" and more "Jones being a child rapist".
2:00:00 according to official navy history, the portholes from the captains import cabin on CVN – 65 were reused from CV 6. They were saved and are going to be reused on CVN – 80. So other than her nameplate, parts of the gray ghost are still around.
56:00 – Seems the other French and Spanish ships looked like [DATA EXPUNGED]
37:26 Of course it would be infinitely worse! The Kamchatka would be there !:-)
Have you heard about a youtube channel called PotestasLunae? He makes music about ships, battles and stuff. I think you'll like it. The song about The Grand Old Lady is quite good.
There is also one for Ryan Szimanski's 1:1 scale model ship.
Cutting out operations.. "the british did it best.". meanwhile the Dutch at Chatham: "are we just joking around here or what ?"..
Diesel Engines in aircraft – Diesel and Petrol have very similar energy density by weight, which likely negates some of the advantages in an aircraft.
I'd have thought that lower flammability would have been it's major attraction, the reduced risks of fires/explosions could be very tempting
Regarding the "Brown M&Ms" segment. My YouTube "Brown M&Ms" is when I see a recommended video that is titled "The Amazing Story of USS XYZ….", or "The Shocking sinking of XYZ…", or something like that. When I did watch them in the past, rarely if ever are the stories "Shocking" or "Amazing". Ya know, it was amazing that destroyer sunk cause it got hit amidships by a 16" shell. No, what would be amazing is if it got hit amidships by a 16" shell and didn't sink. Now I just ignore them. They're just trying to get clicks.
The question on Helena's ROF motivated me to look at the USN action reports for Kula Gulf. Helena's captain estimated that her 6-inch battery fired between 1000-1100 yards in 6-7 minutes of fire, so a bit less than 100 rds/min over that time. But Honolulu's gunnery officer reported firing 172 rounds in 1.7 minutes and then 220 rounds in 2.5 minutes of firing–so right around the 100 rd/min mark. Opening ranges were less that 7,000 yards, promoting rapid firing. Both ship used continuous fire (rather than salvo fire). As an aside, most accounts mention Helena running through her stock of flashless powder, as S E Morison mentions this as contributing to her torpedoing. But it seems that all three cruisers in the action had only limited stocks of flashless powder and probably ran through them very quickly in the first minute or two of firing. Added to that, there's a good possibility that Japanese torpedoes were in the water before the stocks of flashless powder were exhausted.
I spoke to the USS Kidd Youtube channel. They would love to collab with you while they are in Drydock.