The Drydock - Episode 325 (Part 2)

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?

[Exkhaniber]

1:47:24 Honestly rather amazed that you refrained from the phrasing, "Yeah, diesel-powered aircraft just never really took off".

[VintageCarHistory]

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.

[lenheinz]

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.

[Toreno]

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.

[Trek]

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

[antoninuspius]

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.

[lenheinz]

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.

[andreidescult]

Regarding rangefinder magnification: learning that rangefiders had something like 20-25-30x magnification and owning a 50x10-30 binocular (unstabilized) gave me A WHOLE NEW UNDERSTANDING of the importance of being a stable platform (ie slow gentle roll) and not having vibration transmitted through the hull. Thank you.

[VeekerStudios]

IMO, the Canadian flag is one of the most visible brown M&Ms in WWI, WWII, and Korean War histories: If you see the Maple Leaf flag instead of the Red Ensign, put your skeptical glasses on. Once you notice this, you can never not notice it.

[ssgtmole]

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).

[hughfisher]

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.

[amnucc]

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. 😉

[onenote]

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?

[BHuang]

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.

[pedenharley]

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.”

[questionmark]

Really hope Ultimate Admiral does fast battleships eventually. Would be great to have all the AA and radar.

[danhaas]

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.

[thedevilinthecircuit]

The Electropult was at "pat-TUX-ent" River Naval Air Station (NAVAIR) in Maryland on the Chesapeake Bay, right down the road from me. Also nearby are Dahlgren and Indian Head--two other US Naval test centers. They have very interesting museums.

[shaun]

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.

[Ulani]

The idea of a video on boarding actions sounds good to me. I'd certainly watch that video.