The Drydock - Episode 208 (Part 1)

00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:31 - Why did the United States give their brand new ship of the line, USS America (1782) to France in 1782?
00:07:00 - How much cross-pollination was there between service branches?
00:15:09 - When did the examination for Lieutenant become explicit Admiralty policy?
00:19:52 - Why did the lateen sail on the mizzenmast go out of style, and does the gaff-rigged sail have any particular advantage?
00:24:18 - Could the Yamato's have safely bombarded Henderson Field?
00:27:39 - Apart from obvious sources like aviation fuel, oil or munitions stored outside the magazines, are there any other items on or components of 20th century warships — specifically battleships and battlecruisers — that cause fires after damage was sustained?
00:31:59 - The RN had the Queen Anne Mansions style superstructure and the IJN had the Pagoda for some of their ships. Were there other navies that had names given to their superstructures, such as USN fast battleships since they all look a bit similar?
00:35:11 - Victoria Drummond MBE and her career
00:41:13 - What are the major advantages and disadvantages of variable pitch propeller types over a more conventional model?
00:44:46 - Can you 'cut a destroyer in two' with a bombers guns?
00:48:20 - What would have been acceptable losses at Jutland for the British while destroying the German fleet?
00:59:40 - For Royal Navy scientific expeditions, how did officers and men normally view such assignments, and how were the officer assignments usually determined?
01:02:51 - Wacky and wonderful conversions of ships into bizarre roles?
01:06:34 - To what extent did the French and British collaborate on warship and naval weapons development in the first half of the 20th century?
01:10:23 - Did the design of the Bismarck have vulnerable areas where such a penetrating hit below the armoured belt could have caused Bismarck, like Hood, to explode?
01:16:23 - Have any other ships had as extensive refit history as the Kitakami?
01:19:21 - What went wrong during the 1711 Quebec Expedition and if it went as planned what impact would it have had on colonial North America?
01:25:21 - Should you put the definite article, "the", before a ship's name if you do not use a prefix like HMS or USS?
01:31:23 - Is SMS Linz the smallest armored warship ever, and if not, then what was?
01:32:34 - Rangefinding equipment on WW1 light warships?
01:37:44 - What, if any, design differences exist for a Venetian mass produced galley vs. its contemporaries?
01:41:29 - How do aircraft carriers etc determine wind direction and speed while making headway?
01:44:09 - The Mary Celeste mystery...
01:49:44 - Where would a shot from Fort Widley's 9-inch gun land?
01:51:39 - How effective was disruptive camouflage/dazzle paint? And is there a decent book on the subject?
01:55:17 - Were coal, oil, and wood the only fuels used by naval vessels in the period covered by this channel?
01:57:50 - What is considered the first effective class of submarine?
02:00:46 - What role did Italy play in the Battle of the Atlantic?
02:03:29 - After the Battle if Jutland, Jellicoe was often criticized for not achieving a Trafalgar-like total victory. What were the ideas which might have had the most effect on the outcome?
02:13:51 - France vs Thailand 1941
02:20:27 - What do you make of the argument that human beings are a seafaring species?
02:25:57 - It was stated that Halsey was warned that the navigation lights in San Bernardino Strait had been lit and should have been a sign of impending trouble. How did the navigation lights work and was this an important clue of Kurita's movements?
02:29:06 - Given the focus on commerce raiding during WWII, would the construction of more 15" armed Scharnhorsts have been a better alternative compared to the 2 Bismarcks?
02:35:21 - In the german language there is a word that describes a daring, reckless act that ends in (huge) success and humiliates the opponent, the "Husarenstück". Are there such acts in the naval history from the age of sail to 1950 and could you name/describe 5?
02:40:55 - Which ships modernisation would you sacrifice to modernise HMS Hood?
02:42:45 - Could you briefly talk about and describe the Battle of Sinop in 1853?
02:46:52 - Battlecruiser classifications
02:50:51 - Did ammunition ships carry torpedos for their nations destroyers and cruisers to be restocked at sea or did those ships have to go back to port to restock their torpedos?
02:54:01 - When defending doesn't work out?
02:57:36 - While the Royal Navy enjoyed a certain amount of patronage. The bulk of captains seem to have been overwhelmingly from the Gentry or just below. Was this sociological or practical (the Royal Navy being large and the English nobility small)?

[GrahamWKidd]

A Drydock and the HMS Neptune guide all at the same time!
You spoil us Drach, you really do!!

[VersusARCH]

1:44:09 The Mary Celeste: The ship had been rebuilt not long before the fatal trip: another deck had been added to increase her cargo hold. Her center of gravity had thus been raised and consequently she rolled more than before and, perhaps more crucially - took longer to right herself. The crew of the Dei Gratia (the ship that found the abandoned Mary Celeste) found a significant amount of water in the hold and critically - a pump which had been dissassembled while being repaired - a process which was not completed.

What most probably happened is this: the Mary Celeste was in a storm, she rolled considerably, it was difficult for the crew to measure the amount of water she took, as it constantly rocked with the ship, and then the pump, that was critical for removing the said water, broke down. The crew tried to repair it but was being unsuccessful, and as time passed, for all the captain knew, the ship's hold was filling with water, the danger of ship rolling over and capsizing, killing most if not all on board becoming ever greater. So the captain at some point decided to evacuate the crew to a lifeboat, taking the basic navigational equipment to find land in case the ship rolled over and sank (had that happened the crew would have cut the rope) but, since the ship might also ride out the storm-tied the boat to the ship to re-board her if all ended well after all. Unfortunately, the crowded boat ended up being more prone to being rolled over by the storm waves than the abandoned ship - especially because the former was being steered by the latter via the rope, rather than by its occupants. When the boat rolled over, its drag increased significantly and the rope snapped. The boat then sank and its occupants all drowned in the storm. The abandoned ship, however, rode out the storm, to be found by the Dei Gratia.

This is the only explanation that fits all the evidence for me

[JessicaZanerealz]

This just gets better and better and all I know is I'm so thankful I learned about the USS Missouri and that's got me so interested in your channel and your amazing content.

[kingleech]

Drach’s “establishment” noises gave me a big grin.

[joshkamp]

With the forward turret locked forward, the solid strafing nose, and the side pods, a B-25 or PBJ could actually muster 18 forward firing 50 cals. Which in an absolutely ridiculous but amusing comparison gives them almost exactly the same weight of shot fired per minute as a WWI R-class destroyer, at least very, very briefly.

[porpoise]

49:00 I think you also differentiate a good performance by the RN and a good outcome of the battle. While a one for one trade would be a pretty poor performance, if they wiped out the High Seas Fleet as an effective fighting force and still have any sort of viable battle fleet, the British are far better positioned in the war after the battle than before.

[pyro]

My favorite outside static gun display is the M65 atomic howitzer near the Army base I live by.

A good story I heard about it is when they set it up, as a tribute to the man that was the driving force behind it being put there, they zeroed it in right on his house in the nearby city.

I don't know if he was with anyone, but imagine having to try and explain to your spouse why there's an 11" cannon that shoots 15-20 kiloton warheads aimed at your home.

Another fun fact more relevant to this channel: Of the 2 warheads developed for the "Atomic Annie" the second one was the W19, which would later be adapted into the 16" W23 "Katie" atomic warhead made for the Iowas in the 50's.

[loanstowalruses]

A hit with incendiary ammo from a PBJ could probably quite easily touch off the deck mounted torpedoes amidships on a Japanese destroyer, and that would give you at least two separate bits of Japanese destroyer, but I'm not sure that counts.

[vikkimcdonough]

9:36 - Another bit of direct cross-pollination between ships and locomotives occurred a couple decades later in the opposite direction, with a fairly-successful class of powerful diesel locos being built around Fairbanks-Morse opposed-piston submarine engines (used for their indecently-high power-to-mass ratio).

[davidvik]

01:41:29
In the age of aircraft carriers knowing the ships coarse and speed, apparent wind speed and relative direction, a paper plotting sheet known as a "Maneuvering Board" (H.O. 2665-10) could be used to quickly perform a graphic solution for true wind speed and direction. The US Weather Bureau Shipboard Wind Plotters kind of whiz wheel, was also used. Both were still used when I was on active duty in the 1970's. I'm sure all navies used a similar if not identical system.
Much more detail is available in the American Practical Navigator HO-9

[stevevalley]

After rolling the "which rebuild to sacrifice to rebuild Hood" question for a few hours, and foregoing future knowledge, I think I would have sacrificed Renown. The question is which rebuild results in the most satisfying result? QEs can go toe to toe with other battleships. So can Hood. Renowns are too thin skinned. Give both Renowns a modest update changing out all the low angle 4" secondaries for DP twin 4", and several Pom-Poms. with an eye to making them fast escorts for carriers, able to fend off aircraft and attacking destroyers and cruisers.

[DuraLexSedLex]

Thinking about it, I've found a quirk in how I personally reference things that I seem to almost universally treat non-military vessels and warships belonging to powers that were hostile or potentially hostile with "the" (e.g. "The Bismarck", "The Moskva" or "The Yamato") while warships belonging either to that of my own nation's Navy or an allied Navy without "the" and more a a person (e.g. "Enterprise", "Prince of Wales", "Chicago" and so on). I've never really thought about it before and I wonder what this implies about my own thinking. Heh.

One fun one though for thinking of ships entirely as objects would be seeing someone potentially write "The The Sullivans"

[michaelpiatkowskijr]

Interesting addition to cross fitting engines. Fairbanks-Morris built locomotives using their submarine motors. They had high hoods for a switcher due to the inline vertical motors. All other companies used V motors which is used today.

[timenginemannd]

Dazzle Camouflage (when they had curved lines .vs. straight lines) was intended to make the simpler rangefinder of a submarine's periscope have "issues" getting an accurate range, which also would make any Torpedo Data (analog) Computer have issues figure out the target ship's speed and to some degree the target ship's course... And as you noted this would cause the torpedos to either miss or to hit on one end or the other of the ship.
My WW2 NavVet father (a "90 day wonder" who made Lt. Commander) was the source of my info.

[AndrewPalmerMTL]

One example of tri-service cross-pollination, though it does post date the channel coverage period, is short range air defence:

1. The Vulcan 20mm gatling cannon started as a airborne weapon, was used at the basis for the M163 VADS (Vulcan Air Defence System) on a tracked carier for army use, and forms the core of the US seaborne CIWS system.
2. The early AIM-9 sidewinder missile similarly was used in the Chaparral Air Defence System on land and I believ later went to sea as the Sea Chaparral.
3. The Sparrow air-to-air missile ended up becoming "Sea Sparrow" (I don't recall ther being a land based stage)

[thomasofnowhere]

"The" is the Oxford comma of naval ship naming in conversation.

[mikemullen]

Wind in carriers: By the 30's, I suspect most ships would have anemometers and weather vanes, which would give the relative speed accurately. Given this, and the speed and course through the water, the absolute can easily be determined by a device any pilot would have readily available, the EA6B computer. This is a standard problem, which must be before any significant solo flights can be approved. Since all carrier COs were pilots, this would have been the obvious way.
On non-aviation ships, the identical calculation can be made using maneuvering board paper.

[leftcoaster]

To quote Captain Herz of the Bonita. "She is about the most courageous woman I ever saw. She seems to be without fear or nerves, is very good at her job and has an uncanny power over engines, for which I once thanked God."

[LeCharles]

I love when British people do impressions of old, frumpy British men.

[HistoryNeedsYou]

Quite a few Diesel power plants were used by both the RN and BR. Notable examples include the Napier Deltic used in mine hunters, the Paxman Valentias used in the HST and Illustrious. Earlier engines such as the Mirrlees were used in subs, smaller vessels and medium locos. Unsurprisingly there were many issues with this as the thermal stresses in a loco were far more severe than in an RN vessel. The Deltic was also very maintenance hungry.