The Drydock - Episode 188

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:34 - What are some of the most notable lauch failures or disasters and how did they happen?

00:04:57 - What exactly happens to the steel/iron which is recovered from scrapped ships?

00:10:46 - Different types of torpedo tube?

00:19:01 - How was Great Eastern somewhat competitive for so long?

00:23:02 - Why no all-forward armament in the pre-dreadnought era?

00:26:29 - At what point in history did naval design make the about turn, from a place of 'advertising' a ship's presence (with "garish" paintwork) to concealment?

00:29:23 - What's your favorite exhibit at the Vasa?

00:32:51 - Why were aircraft carriers given armour belts if they were not supposed to be involved in a surface engagement?

00:35:50 - Age of Sail book recommendations?

00:37:28 - Possible counter-U-Boat tactics in WW1?

00:40:27 - Gatling 20mm in WW2?

00:45:44 - Stronger Free French Navy?

00:49:30 - Vulnerability of steering gear through the ages?

00:58:03 - How good would Jackie Fisher be commanding a fleet Battle of Jutland style?

01:04:46 - Hazards of rivets in battle?

01:07:19 - Channel Admin

[model-man]

My family is in Kharkiv, 🇺🇦 I'm in America and your channel gives my love of ships ✌ peace.

[admiraltiberius]

In today's naval warfare, visual camouflage doesn't really matter anymore. You got all these sensors and weapons with hundreds of miles of range. I wish bright paint schemes and the like would make a return.
I can dream.

Fantastic video as always Drach.
Thank you for everything you do.

[kemarisite]

BTW, was listening to early drydocks yesterday. Hilarious to go back and listen to Drach (when this wasnt his day job) talking about the "monster" 45 minute drydocks he was doing when he started them.

6 hour Patreon drydock: "Hold my Irn-Bru."

[josephpicogna]

Having lost steering on a single screw FFG seven class, the auxiliary power units that were slow but very welcome alternative

[keithplymale]

I strongly suspect if Fisher had commanded the BC Fleet one major change you would have seen is avoiding the signals confusion that happened at Dagger Bank and Jutland. And that change alone I suspect would have changed the outcome of both those encounters.

[davidrosing]

Two stories of Shinano applicable to this weeks drydock: It did have a launch problem where the caissons weren't filled with water as they were supposed to be, so at launch they popped open and flooded the slipway suddenly causing the ship to bang bow and stern against the dock as things settled out.

Second, her armor plate was riveted like Yamato and Musashi, which contributed to her sinking, as Archer Fish's torpedoes, set to run at 11 feet, hit the junction between the torpedo blister and the main hull, ripping the riveted armor plating apart. Shinano's damage control officer just couldn't understand the damage he was seeing as massive sections of the the ostensibly armor-plated hull had cracked open to the sea and Abe was in such a rush to get away from the 'wolf pack' (of one submarine, as it turned out) he drove tons of seawater into the ship by maintaining high speed right after the torpedo hits. (list was up to 13 degrees within minutes) From that Shinano could never recover.

[TomSedgman]

Re: Fisher at Jutland, I wonder if Beatty would have been so silent on the radio if he’d known that there was a very angry Fisher steaming up behind him? Or perhaps Fisher would have done a Rozhestvensky and started throwing things from the bridge of Iron Duke as they passed

[jakemillar]

Launch disaster, not a naval ship, but it is a ship: SS Edmund Fitzgerald. It took 3 attempts to break the bottle of champagne over the bow, (bad omen if you believe superstition) it took 36 minutes to release the keel blocks. When the ship finally launched, it made a large wave, dousing the crowd, and the ship then crashed into the pier. THEN, a man had a heart attack and died.

Maybe not a 'disaster' but is isn't great. However, if you believe superstition, the events during the launch may have helped cause the sinking. Costa Concordia also had a bad christening, and we know what happened to that ship.

[sirmalus]

My father and his mates (Royal Marines) once had a chat with some other Marines on a battleship. Besides the discipline being much tougher on the big ship, as opposed to that on a landing craft (LCM) the rivetts on the battleship would sometimes fly about whenever the 15" guns were fired. Much to the annoyance of the Marines and the sailors on board the big ship.

[kemarisite]

Worth keeping in mind that armor plate, particularly face hardened armor like US Class "A" armor, is terrible for use in the torpedo protection. It is too brittle and does not flex enough under blast pressure, as the South Dakotas and Iowas found by tying the armor belt into the torpedo defense system, and then having to reinforce it later.

[Kwolfx]

For age of sail book recommendations 00:35:30 I'll throw out a couple of suggestions, but only for those people who really get into the subject; because some of these books can be difficult to find and can be very expensive.

Great Ships: The Battle Fleet of Charles II by Frank L. Fox - This is IMO the best reference book on warships of the mid to late 17th century.

A Distant Storm: The Four Days Battle of 1666 by Frank L. Fox - You want to get an understanding of the largest and longest naval battle of the Anglo-Dutch Wars and how these huge fleets maneuvered and fought, this is it. There is also a less expensive version of the same book; I guess it's an abridged version, simply titled The Four Days Battle of 1666.

The Seventy-Four Gun Ship: A Practical Treatise on the Art of Naval Architecture (4 Volume set) by Jean Boudriot - Do you want to build a 74-gun ship of the line from the ground up and maintain it? This will include learning exactly what kind of dock yard facilities you will require, and every type of wood and hemp rope; and how much, you will need for every part of the ship. Plus, as a bonus you will also learn exactly what type of iron you will need to mine; because a specific crystallization pattern is required for some metal parts. You will also learn to man and provision your new late 18th century terror of the seas. If that sounds enticing and you have money to burn, these are the books for you.

I just have the first two volumes and it was cheaper to purchase them at the Musée de la Marine in Paris and mail them home, but that was a number of years ago.

John Paul Jones and the Bonhomme Richard: A Reconstruction of the Ship and an Account of the Battle With H.M.S. Serapis by Jean Boudriot. A much less expensive; though not cheap, book on a more limited and specific subject, but really in depth. The amount of research done on the ship itself is freaky amazing. This author has a number of interesting books, I wish more of them were translated into English.

[BornRandy]

comissioning of a AEGIS guided missile cruiser. I wont say which one. Part of the ceremony is turning on the ship. So antenaes are rotated ships whistle blow ect. The Torpedo Men were to open the doors and swing out the 3 tube mount. They decided to give a show and loaded a tube with thousands of ping pong balls painted red white and blue. But they underestimated the amount of air used for launch. oops. fooom knocked down 3 rows of people in chairs.

[robertslugg]

Old boats keep showing up in my city as those steel plates covering holes on streets. When I lived in Baltimore, you could almost see the aircraft carrier Coral Sea being dismantled in the bay and transferred to cover the holes that the city couldn't afford to fix properly.

[briancox]

Solution for the ammo consumption problem of the 1935 Gatling 20mm that's more simple than paired mounts with Orlicans: a drive motor with high and low speed windings and a switch to change fire rate. Low speed has the fire rate matched to the traditional cannon. Once you've lined up the target, flip the switch to high speed and send a burst out. Make it a momentary, and it will even automatically revert to the low fire rate when released.

[bigisland]

Vulnerability of ship steering. Had several steering fails. Worst was a gradiant (pitman arm) failure on my tuna boat while manoeuvering through a coral reef. Could only steer a wide left circle. Had to disconnect the blockage while play strong wind, waves, currents, tide for an hour between two very shallow reefs. A friend finally got his 3hp dinghy running. With both engines we pushed and pulled the heavy 30footer through a super tight s-bend into the ramp. On other occasions oil line burst and a steering cylinder broke. A sailboat rudder is easy to maintain and fix. A wheeled yacht. Same thing with my tuna boat. Big boat steering fails are electronic or hydraulic. Mechanical Outboard steering fail at the cable bracket near the engine. If you got twin screws..differential steering with props and putting the opposite engine in reverse when turning slowly will keep you going through tight turns.

[Rammstein.]

The idea of a n "unsinkable" merchant was also tried in WWII iirc.

As I recall a U-, Boat torpedoed a merchantman *repeatedly* only to eventually find out that they'd had such a difficult time... because the holds and available spaces were filled to bursting with cork and empty oil drums, apparently in an attempt to make a U-Boat waste all of it's torpedoes/ give itself away.

[supertest]

SS Great Eastern and Vasa. Looking forward to this one!

[MakeMeThinkAgain]

Launch problems: In the Potter biography of Nimitz, he recounts a failed launch of Derfflinger in June 1913 when the ship wouldn't budge. Instead of being launched on 14 June, she was still stuck on the ways at the end of the month.

[simonrook]

Your description of Jelicoe in command sounded very much like you could have been describing’Chin’ Lee!

[bjgoodwin]

My grandfather was a Pearl Harbor survivor and naval photographer would love to talk and share some time. He followed the Marines island across the pacific to the atom bomb tests at bikini atoll witch I have the original black and whites.