The Drydock - Episode 241 (Part 2)

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:28 - How did they measure - in practice - the amount of power (SHP) a ship's engines produced?

00:02:35 - Why did the Austro-Hungarian navy not pursue a more aggressive strategy in the Great War?

00:07:10 - Did the Kriegsmarine ever war game fleet problems similar to the
USN prior to the start of the Polish conflict?

00:10:39 - Would a submarine delivered Nuke be a viable alternative to the B29?

00:13:54 - Searchlight placement and nightfighting?

00:16:42 - Mast/platform access method?

00:18:54 - The Arsenal of Venice has been credited as a significant factor for the West winning against the East. Are their any other similar ship building centers in history with similar impacts in the ancient and classical worlds?

00:20:50 - What stopped GUPPY style subs being developed earlier?

00:24:33 - Naval Ordnance Plant Pocatello

00:28:27 - Blowout panels on warships?

00:31:06 - If you were in charge of designing the Iowa-class battleships, what changes would you have made?

00:33:09 - Is the water-tight compartment useful in the age of sail?

00:36:38 - Going purely on aesthetics alone, what are your favorite looking gun turrets?

00:38:42 - Have you considered ever doing anymore videos on major events in the great lakes? or perhaps a more general video on the great lakes them selves?

00:39:51 - Cost of forts vs ships?

00:42:53 - A look behind the casemates?

00:45:02 - Could you talk about the design, thinking and implementation of the first ammunition hoist systems for the first fully traversable gun turrets on warships? How, when and where they came about?

00:48:57 - Exactly when was the British Admiralty (the institution, not the building) established, and under what circumstances? And what impact did it have on Royal Navy operations once it was in place?

00:52:11 - You occasionally say that land battles involving armies don't concern you unless they have a direction connection to a naval engagement. How then would you classify the capture of the Dutch fleet at Den Helder - as a land event or a naval event and can you think of any other occasion like that which took place?

00:54:06 - How would a naval war between Italy and the British empire in the '30s go? The timeline is when Italy attacked Ethiopia?

00:57:04 - Vanguard was completed using modified 15"/42 turrets, could the same have been done to lion instead using Nelson and Rodney's 16"/45 Turrets? If so how do you think they would have been used?

01:01:20 - Given that Yamato was already pushing the limits of practical design much less Japan's industry what were the preperations for the next classes?

01:03:59 - I know breeches buoys were used as life saving equipment on the Great Lakes; were they used to save people on the ocean?

01:06:12 - Which, if any, ships in the High Seas fleet of each category (battleship, battlecruiser, light cruisers etc) would have been worth or possible to modernize for the 2nd World War if they had survived till the 1930s?

01:10:13 - While reviewing the results a recent Dogger Bank re-fight at my club it struck me that the High Seas Fleet was in essence using the Kantai Kessen doctrine in their attempts to bite off small portions the Grand Fleet. If successful they envisioned a decisive battle to gain parity if not superiority. Did the IJN take inspiration?

01:13:35 - Why did the US prioritize the Essex swarm and not an Iowa/Montana swarm even before Pearl Harbor considering carriers were not yet seen as front line weapons systems yet? Why were the Iowas as carrier escorts built first instead of the more powerful Montanas?

01:16:17 - Questions about the Panzersciffe?

01:20:18 - How would you rate the Design of the Spanish los Meregildos First-Rates vs. their British and French contemporaries?

01:23:51 - Glowing battleship shells?

01:25:52 - Was any effort made to speed the loading of big naval guns by using methods analogous to those used on small arms, e.g., such as a revolver?

01:28:23 - How did the U.S. Navy work with and take advantage of the superfortess bombing campaign over Japan?

[KPen]

Drach: "I love the All Forward gun layout."
Ryan Szimanski: "I feel a disturbance in the force."

[kanrakucheese]

On the Great Lakes and naval history: The weird WW2 aircraft carriers for training would be worthy of a video.

[BleedingUranium]

After something like seven or so months of catching up on aaaall the previous Drydocks, this pair will be the first episode I get to watch / listen to when it actually comes out. :D

[exsanguinenation]

Don't take offense, but this is my favorite channel to listen to if I can't sleep. Last night though, I dreamt C3PO was explaining starship design features to me.

[johnfisher]

thanks Drach
You deserve an award for stamina in producing these videos and all the research that we don't see,

[michaelkovacic]

Regarding that Bayern modernisation, I think giving them a new bow and stern could actually bring them up to a pretty decent speed, perhaps something like 26-27 knots (?) if you lengthen them by 15 or 20 meters and give them new machinery. Scharnhorst and Bismarck both had 12 boilers, so maybe you could fit 8 in the Bayern's hull? I assume the total volume available would be somewhat similar to that of the Admiral Hipper, which produced 130.000 shp. Even if we assume a more modest 100.000 shp, that's still a major increase over the original 35.000 shp.

The Germans prepared a similar hull extension for Gneisenau's planned refit in 1942, so they weren't strangers to such ideas.

[apparition]

Re. blowout panels - the Mark 57 PVLS (peripheral vertical launch system) on the Zumwalts are mounted at the hull and armored on the inside, so if they take a hit they will explode outwards rather than into the ship. Clearly not within Drach's time limits though.

[davidvik]

Along with the plant at Pocatello there was the Naval Proving Ground near Arco Idaho where the guns were proof fired over 35 miles of nearly flat ground. The site was taken over by the Atomic Energy Commission and is now the Idaho Falls National Laboratory. The Gun Factory closed after the Korean War, but was reactivated to refurbish guns for the New Jersey in the 1960's. By this time the range at the Proving Ground was dote with various reactor facilities so an impromptu test stand was set up across the road to the south, and proof rounds were fired into the side of Black Butte. As I understand the factory has been sold to private entities with the proviso that key equipment was to be available should it be needed by the navy.

[matismf]

The "blowout panels" in battleships were the turrets!

[lennyhendricks]

I have to hand it to you. You are really getting around, within the last 48 hours I've seen you on both Unauthorized History of the Pacific War with Seth and Bill and on Battleship New Jersey with Ryan Szimanski. I don't subscribe to anyone's site because I am already getting way too much junk email, junk snail-mail and junk texts, but if I started subscribing those 3 would be at or near the top of my list.

[darrellsmith]

@36:38 I wonder how high Drach's anxiety rose when someone asked an Engineer to rate something mechanical "purely on aesthetics"?

[Aelvir]

57:04 given that the Lion-class 16" guns were meant to be an improvement over the Mark I guns used by the Nelsons and the lighter shell/higher velocity design was dropped after the Nelsons, I don’t really think they would have wanted to reuse them for the Lions.

[NathanOkun]

As to gun shells looking like "glowing points of light" at night. That is from the colored glowing Night Tracer elements screwed into the bottom of the shell base fuzes (or the base plugs if no base fuze). As with the colored dye bags used in US and Japanese and British and French WWII AP shells (the British adopting the French "K" explosive dye bag system in the windscreen in the middle of WWII), the US and British adopted these colored tracers to assist aim at night (British "N.T." labels on their later anti-ship shells with these added tracers) before radar and even after radar to get more accurate miss information from human spotters. The French explosive dye bag system was created since regular colored-splash results were not visible at night or in poor visibility conditions or, irritatingly, when a direct hit was made on the enemy ship. Each ship in a group was given its own color (I assume the dye bag and tracer colors matched) to allow the sorting out of whos shells were hitting where for correcting gunnery aim. It is amazing that the British Navy did not adopt some sort of dye bag system earlier, given the problems that they had in WWI and against, say, GRAF SPEE, at the start of WWII when several ships were shooting at the same target and "stepping on each other's toes" when trying to use spotting to correct their ship's aim. Thus, the use of shell base colored tracers for night firing gives exactly the pictures that you show here, not any kind of "hot shells".

Hot shells would be very dim at night since the shell goes through the gun barrel very fast and only the very surface of the shell would be heated and high-speed air would cool that also very quickly. I doubt that you could see such shells at the far end of their trajectories at all, no matter how clear the night sky was.

Final note: VT-fuzed shells could not use tracers of any kind since the hot ionized gas trail that they created would effectively short-out the small, short-range radar signal that these fuzes generate. Time-fuzed shells would be inserted every so often as the guns fired to allow tracer corrections and small AA guns would have much brighter tracers visible during the day too.

[dougjb]

1:19:30

Exeter was hit by seven 11” shells, which knocked out A and B turrets, destroyed her bridge and forward command station, reduced her speed to 18kts and put a 8^ list on her.

Exeter was a “diminutive County” but I’m not sure even two proper County class would defeat a Scheer-class.

[gneisenau]

Re: breeches buoys. There is a locally famous case of the entire crew of a freighter called the Plassey that wrecked in 1960 on Inis Oirr (smallest of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland) being saved by such a system. The volunteer rescue unit on the island apparently had enough training to pull this off (or they got very lucky). They had three rockets to use to get a messenger line over to the vessel to start the operation. The first two attempts failed, but the third and final rocket succeeded. The wreck of the ship is still there today.

[ImpmanPDX]

I did a ship-to-ship transfer in a bos'uns chair once when I was younger. We were in harbor so the water was close enough to flat calm. I couldn't imagine trying out the maneuver in open sea.

[larrymcgraw]

Reference minute 27, The gun plant in Pocatello Id. was also near a large open area that could be used to test any guns that were worked on at the plant. I have seen 16 inch shells that have been fired out into the desert as well as concrete blocks about 8 feet long and 6 feet high that had been hit in the center by some of the 6 and 8 inch guns that passed through this plant. The test range is now known as the Idaho National Laboratory.

[gregbryan]

Here's another issue you didn't mention with the battleship revolver question. Gases escape through the gap between the cylinder and barrel. Which isn't a big issue with pistols but would be highly problematic with warship guns

[Hruljina]

Hi Drach. I have a question! I really appreciate your answer on the 17 and 19 inch guns. I am currently writing an alt history bit on WW1. During the start of WW1 the French made a naval raid on Austrian naval installations and close in blockaded the town of Kotor and its bay. The forces seem similarly matched up. What would happen if this French raid ended in a disaster with the French dreadnoughts and predreadnoughts sunk in the engagement. How would an early Austrian naval success affect the balance of forces in the Mediterranean, the future of Otranto barrage and potential RN commitments to the Med to contain the Habsburgs? Would it affect the Italian calculations on entering the war? And would it embolden habsburgs to attack more or would it be more of a last hurrah before spending the war docked in port.

[DrHenry]

Must be good questions, Drach is hemming and hawing a bit this week.