The Drydock - Episode 076

00:00:18 - Channel Admin (with a couple of corrections and a teaser)

00:05:29 - How are ships weighed?

00:10:19 - USS Franklin replaced by HMS Illustrious

00:13:59 - Littorio class successor?

00:18:50 - Why the Gigantic Superstructures of Doom(TM)?

00:24:33 - Why are carrier islands on the right?

00:29:11 - Fences on carriers?

00:31:20 - Carriers in surface gun actions?

00:34:15 - Most implausible ship from an engineering perspective?

00:39:20 - Carrier exhaust vented into the sea?

00:43:10 - Doolittle raid intercepted?

00:48:57 - Who decided on RN ship designs?

00:55:10 - "Trafalgar Refought"?

[Drachinifel]

Pinned post for Q&A, also my Baltic/Black Sea nemesis strikes again!

[Kevin_Kennelly]

Drachisms of the Day:

1:36 "not particularly badger-like to my estimation"

28:57 "If, by any chance, there's a human behavioral psychologist or two listening to this maybe you can
chime in as to whether this theory has, or ever had, any particular weight, um, and we'll see where I go from there."

31:55 "Carriers generally have a fairly enlightened bit of self-interest in staying away from enemy shipping as well."

32:55 "Was in line with the three British battleships, forming a somewhat incongrous battle-line."

34:12 (with pride) And, ironically enough, technically won."

34:44 "There was nothing in it's design...that was completely impossible to do."

43:39 "So this particular little interception scenario greatly depends on what the Japanese actually bring to the party."

47:07 "In regards as to what happened to Mutsu ... well, it went BOOM."

47:56 "The report that was issued at the time officially blamed a disgruntled crewman
who had been accused of theft and may have decided to do the ultimate hara-kiri."

50:49 "A bit of note, note-paper that says 'Something bigger, better and faster than whatever the French have just built.'"

58:16 "There's also a little bit of ramming. And a few of the British ships are lost.
Umm. But, by and large, that may come as little shock to people."

[Axel]

Just want to say that from the perspective of a someone who is a former sailor in the US Navy, a naval history enthusiast, and as someone who works in the naval architecture department of a major naval shipbuilder in the US, I love what you are doing with this channel. Hopefully the great content keeps rolling out for some time to come!

[charlesbaker]

Sunday morning, another installation of "Wry-Dock". Congrats on closing in on 100K and producing over 230 videos, often with amusing titles:
Some notable episode titles that have given me a smile or a laugh:
Naval Boilers - Grates Under Pressure
Breaking Enigma - Exploiting a Pole Position
Honda Point Disaster - Taking a Wrong Turn at Albuquerque (referencing a Bugs Bunny line)
French Pre-Dreadnoughts - When Hotels go to War
Raid on the Medway - Grand Theft Warship

My favorite has to be: Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron - Voyage of the Damned
with flying binoculars!

Usually informative covering topics that others don't/can't get right if they try, always entertaining with your wry humor. Congrats on getting mentioned by Jingles earlier this week and that not the first time other YouTubers have mentioned and recommend your channel. Have fun in America, thanks and here's to another 230+ episodes...

[teotwawkitommy]

RE: carrier abort landings

I believe the answer to this question can best be answered by physiology. In general, Adductor movements (towards the centerline of the body) are stronger than Abductor (away). Right-handed pilots would have more strength moving the control stick left. Think about arm wrestling. It's a very similar action. When in danger, you trust in your strength.

[stephenbond]

Its rotary engines that turn with the propeller around a fixed crankshaft while radial engines are fixed in place and the propeller and crankshaft rotate together. Radial engines produce less torque than rotary engines by virtue of less rotating mass. The aircraft you mentioned all had radial engines or inlines.

[Self-replicating_whatnot]

- The british aircraft carrier is firing at us. With guns.
- What? Is this even legal?

[rascalferret]

what I like about this channel. A mundane question gets elaborated upon with enough information and graphics to show a simple question as a complex problem that needed solving from the start. Manages to inform concisely, a little blithe, not fluffy, a little dry. well done...

[VersusARCH]

25:34 You seem to be describing the ROTARY engine, a short-lived design used in WW1 visually similar to the RADIAL engine while motionless. In the rotary engine the propeller was fixed to the circularly arranged cylinders and both turned together, while the crankshaft was static. The mass of rotating engine amplified the torque effect. Such a bizzare solution was adopted because the airplane speeds were insufficient to provide enough airflow to cool the engine with fixed circularly arranged cylinders that rotate the crankshaft to which the propeller is fixed - which is a basic description of a radial engine. Rotary engines had a lot problems, so once the engines became powerful enough to propel the planes at sufficient speeds to generate enough airflow to cool them properly, they were abandoned. Sopwith Camel for instance had a rotary engine. WW2 designs such as Swordfish, Zero, Wildcat, Thunderbolt, early FW-190 all had radial engines.

Every propeller- driven aircraft (be it rotary, radial or inline engined) with an odd number of engines suffered a torque effect.

Japanese carriers Akagi and Hiryu had islands on the port (left) side however. They were expected to operate in divisions made of 2 carriers with islands on different sides (Akagi's pair was the Kaga and Hiryu's the Soryu, both of which had islands on the starboard or right side) sailing side by side, island to island, so that planes could bank to different sides and reduce the risk of collision. By the time they were designing the Shokakus they realized that the former requirement was unnecessary and prioritized making things easier for the pilots going around torque effect-wise like everyone else.

[mattblom]

Great shout out to Prince Phillip about 33:00. The man was a big part of one of the most important naval engagements of WW2...And he's still around.

[TonboIV]

Concerning the carrier islands question, amateur pilot here, and the answer is very straightforward and obvious to any pilot of a propeller aircraft. The rotation the propeller produces several asymmetrical effects that I won't go into, but the upshot is that the plane will pull left. It will pull harder at higher throttle settings, and at low airspeeds. Every pilot learns early on to compensate for this by stepping on the right peddle, in anticipation of what he knows the aircraft will do, BEFORE opening the throttle, and he'll always have some pressure on the right peddle while hand flying. Of course, if he screws up, and fails to anticipate, he usually ends up going left when he doesn't want to, and this is most likely to happen during a sudden throttle increase at low airspeed, which is exactly what happens during take-off and during an aborted landing.

Planes with even numbers of engines don't do this if the engines have opposite rotation, as in the P-38 Lightning, but this was a rare design feature. Likewise planes with contra-rotating propellers which is ever more rare. Jets don't do it at all.

Also, radial engines don't normally have large rotating components beyond the fly-wheel and crankshaft, but ROTARY engines (not wankel, but rotary radial engines) as used on very early airplanes, do have a gyroscopic effect that does some very perverse things to airplane handling.

[craigpalmer]

USS Gambier Bay scored 5
' hits on the IJN ship that sunk it, spotter sitting on the flight deck with bino's

[DoddyIshamel]

Bulgaria isn't near the black sea now? 🤔

I take it this is your Black sea / Baltic sea confusion rearing its head again 🙂

[jerry]

Just a comment: many Great War aeroplanes had rotary (in contrast to radial) engines. In a rotary engine the crankshaft remains stationary and the cylinders rotate around the crankshaft with the propellor. Radial engines as used in WWII had fixed cylinders and a rotating crankshaft.

The cylinders in rotary engines act as a significant gyroscope, so, for instance, the Sopwith Camel would turn much faster to the right than to the left.

[TheAngelobarker]

Ngl dracinifel whenever you do italian navy stuff it makes me happy. They're so interesting and rarely brought up/underestimated. Love the whole channel though.wish someone would do these type of videos for tanks.

[taivaankumma]

Now the question about Trafalgar Re-fought is probably the best question on the channel for a while, and that's saying a lot. Ordered it on Abebooks; an Edwardian era book that combines naval history, the RN and what were the current fleets at the time, well there is just no way it's not going to be right up my alley.

[AEW]

Hey Drach, just a point on weight estimates. Summing all the individual components will only give you a very basic estimate which is probably a fair bit under. Even today there are too many unknowns, mainly around the outfit that would skew your estimate. Steel weight can be measured quite accurately but things like pipework, cabling as well as niffnaff and trivia such as paint & soft furnishings all add up to a significant weight when taken in their entirety. Stability experiments are by far the most accurate way to measure a ship's displacement. A bottom-up weight estimate would only be of use during the design phase (although I stand to be corrected if this was more common back in the day).

[theMoerster]

Someone needs to tell Formidable that deciding to fire a salvo before pulling out can have negative, lifelong consequences.

[admiraltiberius]

Fantastic video Drach, always love and appreciate your work.
One quick question, did you get the Baltic and Black sea confused again ?? Cause last time I checked Bulgaria is indeed pretty close to the Black Sea.
And thank you for the quick add on the White Plains and its noble efforts to impede the full might of the IJN Navy with a lone 5inch gun. Sarcasm aside, I always struggled to believe a lone ranging shot got that lucky.
Lastly, fold out maps need to make a come back.
One of my favorite books, The War that never was, seriously needs some fold out maps.

[robertmarsh]

@Drach - Love the DryDock as ever, but you might want to do a follow up on rotary, radial and in-line engines. The info around 26 mins isn't quite accurate.

Lots of people have posted already on here, but in summary, there are torque effects with all types of engines, however the types you call out as rotary engines, are in fact radials.

Rotary engines are where the propellor and cylinders all rotate together and the crank stays fixed. These were phased out from end ww1 onwards. As displacements got bigger having the whole mass of cylinders rotating wasn't practical, and improved cooling and faster speeds meant having the cylinders rotating was less critical for airflow.

The flat fronted aircraft such as P47s mentioned had radial engines, where the crank and propellor rotate but the engine remains fixed. Fighters from the 20s such as the Bristol Bulldog to the post ww2 Hawker Sea Fury all featured such radials.

Rotary, radial and inline engines all produce a torque effect, its direction will depend on the way the engine and prop spins. You will often see some commentary about spitfires needing a lot of opposite rudder on take off / landing to counter the huge torque, and you will see this if you go to an air display or watch a YouTube video. Interestingly the firing order of the Griffon engine installed in later variants was reversed compared to the Merlin, hence the opposite rudder movement was required.

Another interesting footnote post ww2 is the use of contra rotating propellors driven by the same engine, such as on the Shackleton. This was designed to minimize torque effects (amongst other reaons).