The Drydock - Episode 105 (Live Segment) - 31st July 2020

Answering Patreon Alt-History and What-if's, then general questions

[jim]

Question timeline for everyone's benefit :)
Any questions on Drach's video lists etc. I ommitted.

0:00:31 Hello and introduction
0:02:01 Late Imperial Chinese navy: outcome of Battle of Fuzhou if the Dingyuan had been rush-built and was present?
0:03:59 Battle of Jutland: if Beatty had been trapped between Hipper and Scheer before the battle, what would happen? (spoiler alert: nothing good)
0:06:20 Fall of Singapore: what could the Royal Navy have done to prevent it?
0:10:03 Fall of Singapore: HE shells at Singapore batteries?
0:10:43 What were the fleet problem exercises, what did the USN learn from them, and were there flaws in those lessons?
0:14:10 Hundred Years War: are English billmen the unsung heroes of the war, and theories about mail defending from bladed weapons rather than projectiles?
0:16:40 Second World War: impact of Leonardo da Vinci (1911) if she hadn't blown up in 1916?
0:18:16 How do you replace a battleship or cruiser's main gun?
0:20:10 Second World War: what if the French took their ships to be interned in the U.S. instead of Mers-el-Kébir?
0:23:57 How do navies correctly identify enemy ships in wartime? AND how much protection do partially-open gun mounts offer their crews, and how do ammunition handling systems work?
0:27:00 One-on-one duel: USS Colorado VS. HMS Warspite?
0:28:22 Second World War: Tirpitz, Scharnhorst (original configuration), Gneisenau (hypothetical15-inch refit), Lutzow, Admiral Scheer, and Prinz Eugen VS. HMS Anson, HMS Warspite, USS Alabama, and USS Washington?
0:31:26 Book recommendations for 1800s-1850s tactics, strategy, doctrine, other details? AND what was the role of ships below frigate size?
0:35:16 Opinions on the movie "Greyhound" (2020)? AND would local fire control be better for fighting at close ranges?
0:36:40 Second World War: what if the USS Lexington managed to survive Coral Sea?
0:38:49 Second World War: Japanese contingency plans if something went wrong at Pearl Harbour?
0:41:00 Second World War: would Germany have been better off building 20 Deutschlands or Baltimores instead of all the heavy units they did build? AND how would a Graf Spee with 9x8inch guns at the Battle of the River Plate?
0:44:21 First-Second World War: what High Seas Fleet dreadnoughts/battlecruisers would have been worth modernizing if they made it to the Second World War?
0:46:05 First World War: replace Goeben with Blucher at the start of the war, and what if Blucher and Breslau went up against Troubridge's force?
0:48:25 Second World War: could the Home Fleet have sortied to fight the Channel Dash, what ships would have been present, could they have intercepted, and if they sortie would the Germans have noticed and what would they have done differently?
0:52:40 First World War: if Germany doesn't invade Belgium in 1914 but France does break the Treaty of London, who would you rather you go to war with, and do you honour the Treaty or the Entente Cordiale?
0:55:05 Spanish Armada/Trafalgar: what's the smallest Napoleonic-era force that could defeat the Armada?
0:57:43 Second World War: if the Allies got warnings through to the cruisers in time at the Battle of Savo Island, what would have happened?
0:59:15 Modern Chilean navy: "new" Adelaide-class frigates compared to Heemskerck class (aka. Latorre class), how much better are they?
1:00:34 Second World War: could Scharnhorst and Gneisenau have raided the Caribbean during Operation Berlin?
1:01:50 Imaginary shipyard in the late-18th/early-18th century: what technology/specialists would you hire, what would you buy from other companies etc., and how would you prepare for the upcoming ironclad era?
1:04:26 Second World War: beached Yamato vs. US Marines boarding action?
1:07:28 USS Constitution vs. HMS Victory but present day?
1:09:07 Pre First World War Royal Navy: why did it take them so long to combine many simultaneous technological innovations into one ship?
(1:10:48 Bill Cunningham vs. Drach's brain.)
1:11:24 Interwar Treaties/Second World War: how would you rework them to keep peace for longer? AND how much chaos could the USS Wyoming have caused if deployed overnight at the Second Battle of Savo Island?
1:15:15 Showing off fuse setting computer from Mk. 1 fire control computer from USS North Carolina.
1:15:45 Second World War: why did Yamamoto not directly command the Pearl Harbour attack?
1:16:52 All Barbary pirate ships combined vs. contemporary navies?
1:17:40 Second World War: how do the Bismarck and Scharnhorst classes compare in terms of armour scheme etc. and cost effectiveness?
1:20:55 Second World War: what if one or more South American navies joined the war on the side of the Axis?
1:22:57 Dream cast for Jutland and Bismarck movies? (possibly answered previously, otherwise possibly rain-chequed for later)
1:23:19 Possible Texel-style video on US joining Germany in 1914?
End of Patreon what if's.

1:24:28 Modern navies today if the modern missile age never came about?
1:26:29 Georgios Averof vs. Graf Spee, Indian Ocean 1941?
1:27:40 Second Sino-Japanese War/Second World War: how did Japan's war in China spiral out of control?
1:30:00 Second World War: how scared should the Germans have been if a very angry Free Polish navy had got their hand on a battleship?
1:31:37 Book recommendations for U.S. gun mounts, and tips for calculating hull form etc. for contest submissions?
1:33:14 Second World War: T-class vs Gato class submarines? (Also potential correction: I believe the actual submarine that scored the underwater submarine kill was a V-class, HMS Venturer.)
1:34:10 Second World War: what if, after Savo Island, the Japanese had gone for the troop transports?
1:35:19 First World War: if the U.S. had joined the war on Germany's side before Jutland, how much of the Royal Navy would that have tied up?
1:37:30 Second World War: if the IJN and the Japanese army managed to actually cooperate for once, how much would that have slowed the Allies?
1:38:49 USS South Carolina (1908) vs. HMS Dreadnought (1906)?
1:39:28 What was worse for the Royal Navy, the 1957 or 1966 Defence White Paper? (CVA-01 is the 1966 one btw)
1:41:19 Second World War: did the turtleback armour have any benefits or not?
1:43:57 Are ships equipped with long-range missiles better than aircraft carriers or not?
1:45:45 What's wrong with quadruple expansion engines?
1:47:15 Two non-fictitious Duke of Kent class ships of the line vs. 4 American ironclads (ex-Confederate Albemarle, Atlanta, Tennessee, and completed Texas)? What if a resurrected Pennsylvania-class appears mid-battle?
1:48:25 Favourite naval aircraft of the 20th century?
1:49:50 First/Second World War: would it have been worth it for the Germans to set up supply dumps on Antarctic islands?
1:50:56 Did guided missiles make just battleships guns obsolete, or battleship armour as well?
1:52:47 Second World War: could the Japanese have ousted the Allies from Guadalcanal if they deployed more battleships?
1:54:29 Second World War: how powerful would a 16-inch KGV be?
1:55:17 Second World War: how would Denmark Strait have gone if HMS Hood was refitted?
1:56:28 HMS Warspite and USS Texas elope after the Second World War: how does everyone react?
1:57:27 First World War: how would Jutland have gone if Bayern and Baden had been completed and present? What about Hindenburg and Goeben?
1:59:05 Was there any chance of the Franco-Spanish fleet beating the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars?
2:00:35 Why do blimps not receive much recognition for their anti-submarine work given as effective they were?
2:01:58 Second World War: if Germany entered the war with 5 15-inch Scharnhorst-class, 8 Hippers, and 2 Mainz derivatives, how much of a bigger threat would they have been?
2:03:48 Second World War: why were German destroyers partially named and partially designated alphanumerically?

And rapid fire until the end of the video, I'm not going to bother typing up all those questions.

[DMarsh]

Imagine if the Royal Navy had given the Free Polish Navy the Warspite. The sheer memetic backlash would probably end in the ship sailing up the Spree and shelling the Reichschancellary

[DMarsh]

One thing in the "board the Yamato" scenario, the Corps would absolutely be writing their anthem after that

[ScipioAfricanusI]

From Trent Hone's book on Fleet problems, I thought one of the take-aways was that larger flight decks was better as larger carriers could spot strikes quicker and the ability to get strikes in the air was paramount and that is why they built larger fleet carriers after Hornet/Wasp/Ranger.

[carebear]

As US Rep Hank Johnson mentioned in a Congressional hearing not too long ago, the trick with making island bases like Guam (or Singapore) mobile is the risk of putting on too many troops and them tipping over.

[MGBait]

Decades ago, when i lived in Hong Kong we used to play airsoft (back in the days of spring guns) and I had a pellet blow off a chunk of one of my front teeth. Parents weren't pleased...

[PSPaaskynen]

Actually, the Polish navy DID get a battleship (sort of), the Courbet-class ship Paris, taken by the British from the French in operation Catapult, but they only used her as a barracks ship.

[attilarischt]

I clicked on the video. That T-shirt has already made it worth the watch.

[mflashhist]

Another great Dry Dock !! Regarding ammunition supply to destroyer mounts I have heard that some ships had an ammunition room below or behind the mount where shells were manually passed to the guns through a scuttle after the ready-use shells were fired off.

[RedXlV]

The Adelaides still have the single-arm missile launcher. They just *also* have a box added containing an 8-cell VLS for 32 quadpacked Evolved Sea Sparrow.

[mrbeep]

Dam I missed it. I was mowing the yard. I do say the grass I have dumped on the uneven spots of it is making it look better. Man I can't imagine how tall the grass is in England considering how much it rains there.

[sthenzel]

From what I understand, quadruple expansion engines are certainly more efficient than triples, but for one the 4th cylinder, in relative terms, is pretty costly for its gains, and second, as it´s considerably larger than the third, adds quite some weight and size to the engine, while, due to the high mass, has problems at high rpms.
A thousand tons more coal may weigh much more than a more efficient engine, but don´t come with high rpm or additional maintenance issues.

[calvingreene]

I think the Polish battleship would get an extra 3 knots of extra speed from the crew rowing.

[kemarisite]

If Mikawa continues on to attack the transports, there are still San Juan, Hobart, and Australia defending the transports, and what they're still carrying is supplies. The transports historically continued unloading during the day on the 9th and left around sundown. If Mikawa sticks around to reorganize his force and go after the transports, then there is a good chance he loses some of his ships to Fletcher's airstrikes on the 9th. While Fletcher had begun his withdrawal the evening of the 8th, he turned back to the northwest at 0100, about the time Mikawa was heading around Savo Island to the south. Mikawa ordered his ships to withdraw at 0220, whereas if they continued the action they probably would have been involved until, say, about 0330-0400, about the same time that Ghormley authorized Fletcher to continue withdrawing. At that point, escaping from retaliatory air strikes is almost entirely a question of American communications, and I don't see much opportunity to misunderstand the importance of Japanese cruisers engaging transports, especially when one of those transports is the flagship of the admiral commanding the amphibious force. Neither is Ghormley likely to have authorized withdrawal, or failed to countermand, if Turner had spent an hour screaming for support because he could personally see Japanese ships attacking his transport group.

[davidbrennan]

Another dashing Destroyer action from Drach.

Though his Gunnery Officer has had an “Interview without coffee”.

Great pumping of the bilge action.

[toddwebb]

As Family Guy said With a Great Mustache comes great responsibility

[papajohnloki]

In one of the books I read about Pearl Harbor (Prange?) Admiral Yamaguchi was either asked about that possibility or simply mused to a fellow officer that "they would show their colors, fire a salute and turn about and head for home"

[duncani]

Would love to see a series about the fleet problems. Read a lot about them in passing reference or uss Saratoga experiences only. Given the massive ammount of ships parcipitatating i think it would be a great addition to your channel.

[ryangale]

Thanks for answering my question there Drach, glad to see yours and my conclusions weren't too far off.

[AdmiralKodai]

I pictured him as a much, much older gentlemen.