The Drydock - Episode 109

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:30 - Nelson class seakeeping?

00:04:45 - Boiler explosions under fire?

00:09:32 - What if George Tryon didn't die?

00:15:19 - Importance of flogging in the Royal Navy?

00:19:25 - USN resource allocation in WW2?

00:25:48 - What is a frigate?

00:32:22 - What did the British intend to do with the German fleet after the end of WWI?

00:34:27 - Naval wars won by attrition?

00:39:37 - Warship structural plans?

00:42:08 - How did crews survive in the colder Northern Seas during Age of Sail on warships?

00:45:22 - Closing the mid-Atlantic Gap?

00:49:09 - Nelson class speed with more machinery?

00:52:40 - Chores aboard a submarine for an aviator?

00:54:48 - Was there ever a point that Japan could have realistically beaten the U.S. during WWII?

00:58:51 - How did the role of a boy seaman in the Royal navy evolve from the age of sail to the end of the first world war?

01:03:21 - The RNLI

01:07:03 - RNAS Yeovilton

01:09:15 - Turtle ships in Europe?

01:14:34 - Drach designed model kits?

01:17:18 - Renaming ship classes?

01:19:48 - Why did HMS Berwick perform so poorly against the Admiral Hipper?

01:22:17 - Luftwaffe vs warships

01:25:56 - Most common German naval mine in 1944?

01:27:26 - Tiger Cruise's

01:29:45 - Testing large naval guns on land

01:39:07 - Ships without casualties and salvaging ships

01:43:24 - Which was more out of date, USS Texas (1892) during the Spanish American War, or USS Texas during WW2?

01:48:06 - Coaling a ship

01:51:41 - Ships winning through 'impossible' positions?

01:54:04 - 8" or 6" cruisers?

01:58:12 - Drydock Load Distribution

02:06:01 - Triple / 3-gun turret?

02:06:28 - Loss of slipways? (Video: Stefano Ferrara 2019)

02:09:13 - USN opens fires sooner at Guadalcanal?

02:14:29 - Sailors deserving of the highest awards?

02:18:15 - What is a lake freighter? What do you think happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald?

02:25:02 - Unusual AA systems and jets?

02:35:52 - Blockade of Germany in WW1 and WW2?

02:41:15 - Halifax Explosion

02:43:22 - Fuel additives in naval engines?

02:45:01 - Quickest way to advance dreadnought design?

02:49:22 - Flag Officer Seymour vs Flag Officer Drax

02:52:15 - Guns and increasing range

02:58:34 - Replacing Sails

03:02:02 - Channel Admin + an appeal

[michaelimbesi]

The big reason that slipways were largely abandoned is that constructing a ship on a slipway means that nothing is straight up-and-down. This makes lining things like vertical bulkheads up much, much harder because you can't just use a plumb line, and anything flat can't simply use a level. The extra amount of work that this requires is surprisingly large. It also makes using block-style construction much harder, which further increases costs. Source: I'm a naval architect and I also used to work as a planner at a large shipyard.

[glennricafrente]

The last time I was this early Drach was still apologizing for making 5-minute guides that went over by a couple of minutes.

[steveamsp]

"Yeah, the one the front fell off?" "Yeah" "Yeah, that's not very typical, I'd like to make that point."

[GaldirEonai]

Regarding the anti-air flamethrower: A rear-mounted flamethrower was tested on some bomber aircraft. It produced an impressive burst of flame, but more importantly a thick trail of black smoke and soot that served to _really_ mess with any fighter attacking from the rear.

It was eventually decided that it was effective but definitely not effective enough to make up for the sheer madness of carrying a pressurized tank of flamethrower fuel in your already fire-vulnerable bomber.

[ImpmanPDX]

My dad was a civ. contractor for the USN out of Hueneme/Mugu. He used to tow target hulks out to San Nicholas and provide radar support. During the summer I would go along seeing as being born on a ship [based lightly on the HMS Arrow BTW] by age 5 I was a competent deckhand/navigator. I would end up getting press ganged by the uniforms all the time. Mostly "hey kid coil this line" or "take my duffel", but sometimes things like "take the UHF/helm for a bit" or "keep an eye on this radar for me". I think they got a kick out of a grade schooler who was just powder monkeying around. Got to see a Seawolf up close (not on board though). Life at sea for a child is a mix of boring punctuated by some very interesting stories. At least they had an NES in the galley. Sometimes I regret not joining the Navy, but with a decade at sea already I picked the Forest Service instead haha

[tonyvancampen-noaafederal]

All of the steel hulled ships that I have sailed on have had as part of the construction blue prints a Dry Docking Plan that lays out the positions for the keele blocks. As a side note, there are extra keel and side block positions which allows a different set to be used in each dry docking and allows for complete coverage of hull paint over a period of several dry dockings it is difficult to take the paint down to bare metal where the blocks are.
Since the mid-1970's when Ingalls Shipbuilding constructed a new plant to built the Spruance class. The keel block plan is an integral part of construction. The ship is constructed on blocks riding on electric trucks as the hull moves through various phases and sections of the yard. Finally when it is ready for launch the electric trucks are replaced with dummy trucks and the ship is moved onto the yards floating drydock. The drydock is moved out into the harbor and ballasted down launching the ship, which is then moved by tugs to the fitting out pier.

[jonathan_]

Though she wasn't put back into service, the USN submarine S-51, sunk on Sept 25, 1925 in 132 feet of water off Rhode Island after being accidentally rammed, was finally raised on July 5, 1926 and towed back to port. However she was, as far as I recall, never really repaired and was sold for scrap in 1930. The tale of raiser her, as told by the commander of the USN salvage effort in his book 'On The Bottom' by Edward Ellsburg, is fascinating.

[danhaas]

“Nobody wants to be flogged”

Some corners of the internet might disagree with that! :P

[mbryson]

Uncle Drach, you are clearly an exceptional human. THANK YOU for another amazing Dry-Dock!

My hat is off to you I am once again in awe of your knowledge and skill.

[thatguynameddan]

Speaking of boilers in that early question, steam is crazy stuff. i have pictures where it ate away metal on heavy fittings after developing a pinhole leak or not being seated properly. That was on less than 200 lbs steam, i could only imagine how bad that could get on something 4-5 times that amount of pressure.

Like guys i know that work in a power house, they test fittings with a broom (because they play with something close to 1-1.5k pounds) so if theres a leak it cuts off bristles instead of a finger.

i have more stories, but ill just end the blogpost there. As always, very happy to use my time listening to Drach. Love learning about naval stuff.

[widescreennavel]

I hope everyone watches your excellent series on the unbelievably intense recovery from the attack on Pearl Harbor. I wish a) you could visit every middle and high school and give lectures and/or b) Social Studies and History teachers used your videos to light a fire in the imagination of kids. Great channel, thanks!

[jonathan_]

I think it was Norman Friedman's Naval Anti-Aircraft Guns and Gunnery
that said another reason navies starting looking hard for 3" around the end of WWII, in addition to being a lighter weapon and faster firing that a 4.5", 5", or 5.5", is that the lethal burst radius of the 3" shell better fit the effective trigger range of the newly developed proximity fuse. The bigger lethal burst size of the larger shells is largely wasted if they won't detonate at all unless they come close enough the 3" shell would have killed the target anyway.

[jetdriver]

I've actually spent a fair amount of time looking at the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald and I'm convinced that the NTSB has it right. First this isn't the first big lake freighter to be lost so we have that data to look at. Including ships that broke up on the surface. Second the modeled the various scenarios and only one really fit the evidence that is there. We know she was listing and taking on water. We know that her cargo hatches were not water tight and that she had water pretty much continuously on her deck. Thus we know water was getting into the holds without a way to detect it or remove it. We also know that her hatch covers were not strong enough to survive a very large boarding wave. So the most likely scenario is that she gets hit by a large wave which collapses her forward hatch cover. She is already very low in the water with minimal reserve buoyancy by this point. the sudden filling of her forward holds with tons of water drives her quickly down by the head leaving no time for any kind of crew action. She simply dives under. when the bow hits bottom the shock of the impact results in her hull failing. We can see evidence of how hard she hit in the bow damage. When the hull fails the stern rips off capsizing and vomiting its cargo. Its likely that the stern doesn't immediately fully sever from the bow section which is part of why the two sink together.

I don't know how the current generation of lake freighters has been designed but its clear that ships of the Edmund's Generation were not despite their enormous size capable of being on the lakes in all conditions. the lack of subdivision in their cargo holds, low freeboard, and poor hatch design made them very dangerous in high seas.

[Isolder]

For the Edmund Fitzgerald, it's known that they were just passing over a shoals just before the wave hit, damaging the hatches and waves also tend to push ships downwards. It's a possibility that when the ship hit the trough of the wave it pushed it into the bottom just enough to add just an extra bit of leverage snapping the ship in half. If it did do that, the ship was already mostly on its way down and before anyone could react it would have gone under.

[kylebrown]

I dont know about plurals of Texas, but I have a tangentially naval story about Texans. When I was at USN boot camp, at one point my division was gathered on bleachers awaiting our turn at the firing range. To pass the time the range training Cadre began asking all the recruits to raise their hands when he named their native state. As in "who's from California?" And all the kids from California calmy raise their right hand like civilized, well adjusted human beings living in a polite society. This went on through a half dozen or so states until one petty officer asked "who's from Texas?" From far flung points on the bleachers and thus obviously not planned, 4 recruits jumped to their feet thrusting their arms to the heavens and whooping loudly. The Cadre petty officer hung his head and pinched the bridge of his nose as if in physical pain from this performance before resignedly saying, but with building intensity of frustration, "Every time! Every damn time I ask that question, every other state raises their hand; and without fail some Texas shitkicker jumps up and yells like Yosemite fuckin Sam. Don't mess with Texas? Nobody fucking wants to! sit your dumb ass down!" I'll never forget that, and subsequent travels into that benighted state did nothing to alleviate my impression of texans gleaned from that experience.

[RedXlV]

With regard to the use of the term "frigate" in the modern era, there was also that brief period post-WW2 where the US Navy used frigate (with DL or DLG hull numbers) to mean a ship intermediate between a destroyer and a cruiser. Then there was a freak-out in Congress over the Soviets supposedly having more cruisers than the US, so the Navy "solved" that "problem" in 1975 by redesignating most of the frigates as cruisers. At the same time, destroyer escorts became frigates, which brought them in line with how the rest of NATO classified such ships.

Incidentally, some of the Soviet "raketny kreyser" (missile cruisers) were actually smaller than American DLGs. It was literally just that they were *called* cruisers that resulted in the "cruiser gap" nonsense.

[dancolley]

My Dad was an Aviation Machinist's Mate during WW2 on the USS Bear (AG-29). The ship was assigned to the Greenland/North Atlantic Patrol during the war. They had frequent contact with native Eskimos who were sealers and walrus hunters, from which they made warm, dry clothing. Sailors usually spent their small wage on that native clothing when on patrol in the Greenland area. Plenty dry and warm !!!

[yclepe]

Oh boy this is just the sort of pedantry we love.
TEXAS is already plural. it is a Spanish Transliteration of a Cado Indian word meaning friends, In Spanish---- los tejas
Thanks for another great post

[PNurmi]

Sorry if this comment is late but I could only listen to the Drydock on the drive home after moving my child back to college. So I hope this helps and does not repeat a prior comment.
While George HW Bush was on the sub, as an officer, he would have likely been assigned admin duties supporting the XO or another officer (writing war reports, tracking message traffic, performing crew inspections, overseeing the wardroom mess, and the like). Officers on small ships like subs have more than one job and maybe a couple of collateral duties. There were likely a couple of collateral duties he could have taken over for a month to give other officers more down time. He would not be assigned duties that the enlisted crew were already doing.

[shaunprice]

Naval history is a great background while I am doing other things, and old Drydocks are great for this (after discovering Drach's channel I usually watch them new however late nights I love comfort food for the mind, and Naval History has always done that for me), but I was always struck by being impressed that Drach discussed the Edmund Fitzgerald as it's a PURELY civilian vessel. Having grown up in Michigan and sailing/boating the lakes, the Eddie Fitz is a huge history bit for us locally, but unless you are a fan of folk music will be widely unknown to the general populace. The lakes are indeed inland seas, even having tidal actions, though on a much lower scale than a real ocean, and can be VERY dangerous to sail upon. I've always held the Great Lakes merchant fleet sailors in VERY high regard.