The Drydock - Episode 268

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:53 - Were flat-side first rates a bad idea?

00:04:47 - How do you replace the guns on a ship of the line?

00:07:29 - Had America lost the revolutionary War, what impact would its resources have on the British Navy during the Napolonic wars?

00:12:04 - In the 1830's/1850's, did the combination of (potentially) sparking funnels and sails in close proximity actually pose a problem?

00:14:10 - Why were naval mines once called 'torpedos', and how, why, when, etc did the nomenclature change to the modern definition of, and distinction between 'mines' and 'torpedoes'?

00:17:35 - Why was USS Iowa restricted to full speed only in water greater than 600ft deep?

00:20:38 - If the US Navy wasn't able to acquire the 20mm oerlikon or the bofors 40mm do you see there being a timeline where they would press the US army's 37mm M1 auto cannon into service in a navalized form? Or would they try to upgrade the 1.5inch Chicago piano?

00:21:59 - Do we have solid information on the ratio of flowers destroyed compared to submarines destroyed during the war?

00:23:32 - How many ships in the Royal Navy actually had "Royal" in their name?

00:26:56 - When was the first Naval battle in 'the new world' post 1492, and which war was the first to feature a major Naval theater in the America's?

00:29:38 - Which would have had a higher impact factor on the naval war in the Mediterranean: better leadership in the Regia Marina early in the war, or better quality control in the factories that produced naval ammunition?

00:32:18 - What is the difference in role and equipment between a navy yard, fleet base, section base, and other levels of naval bases?

00:36:22 - How do time fused shells work?

00:39:39 - I recently discovered that the Papal States intermittently had its own navy over the course of several centuries prior to Italian unification. Could you perhaps discuss its history, briefly?

00:43:48 - Were there any two enemy warships that fought each other more times than USS Enterprise (CV-6) and the IJN's Zuikaku in history?

00:45:26 - What damage did Yorktown take to Midway from Coral Sea?

00:51:18 - How much air conditioning capacity would it have taken to keep Prince of Wales and Repulse's fire control functioning?

00:53:28 - Why did the UK try to save HMS Conway and not Implacable or Warspite?

00:57:46 - How dramatically would daily life for a sailor differ today compared to a common sailor in the dreadnought/Great War era?

[mattblom]

Having been here since a few days after Drydock 1 released, it's still amazing how many *good* questions had not yet been asked of the channel in all these years.

[dougjb]

Dragging a cannon out through a gun port sounds like a great way to create a very small artificial reef very quickly.

[frankbodenschatz]

Thanks again Alex for an entertaining hour while i make coffee and breakfast us. Cheers to you and the missus! Hope to visit with you next year after we travel across on on the QE2!

[adamalton]

Privacy of space dramatically improved for crews since turn of century. The crew of USS Olympia slept in hammocks and had a shoebox of personal storage on the gun deck versus the relatively spacious quarters on USS Lexington.

[mikemullen]

Rooster tails. There can be a significant negative to high speed operations in shallow water. In WWII, Dad said he was escorting a convoy to Rio de Janerio, and the skipper decided to impress someone by doing a high speed run near the port. They quickly developed "condenseritis', and, after inspection, spent the next several days pulling buckets of small shells out of the innards.. (He also mentioned that on the return, they got a strong periscope signal on the radar, and started a high speed run to depth charge, which almost had them collide with a recently sunken freighter with the upper masts above water. Oops.

[timenginemannd]

@ 51:18: Air Conditioning aboard ship uses "Chilled Water" where an electric powered refrigeration plant cools water down and then you pipe the water to and from what is basically a car/truck's radiator (Bath) with a fan to cool what you want to be cooled.

So, find a way to run a pair electrical cables to an area above decks (so you can have the refrigeration plant can have an air cooled condenser .vs. a sea cooled heat exchanger. Unless you plug it into part of your fire main than you just have to find somewhere that has enough room!). And then run the supply and return pipes to the space and put in a "head basher" somewhere in the overhead and hope that the space is crewed by average height or shorter people!

[OtakuLoki]

Regarding the lot of the common sailor's life in Great War warships vs. more modern ones: Based almost solely upon my recent reading of HMS Royal Sovereign and her Sister Ships by Peter C. Smith, and comparing it to my experience in the early 90s aboard a USN CGN, the biggest difference I could see was ventilation & air conditioning. The Virginia class had had ship-wide AC built into the ship, including all berthing areas.

There was also a big difference in where the crew was expected to bunk. At least on the R-class, the accounts in that book suggest that large numbers of enlisted were sleeping in what would have been mess areas, which is very different from what I saw in my ship. (or even any "modern" USN museum ship I'd ever seen.)

Mess decks would be available outside of meal times for crew to hang out, socialize, read, run lectures for some things (I did a few All Hands Radcon lectures in our mess decks when the division in question lacked a space open enough for most of the division's personnel to gather in one place.) but they weren't where any crew were expected to be sleeping or stringing hammocks, which is how In interpreted some of the passages in the Peter C. Smith book.

[CharlesStearman]

Regarding reasons for a ship reducing speed when in shallow water, I've got an old book called "Supership" by Noel Mostert (Book Club Associates, 1975) which is about the challenges of operating the then-new generation of supertankers of 100, 000 tons and over. Among other things, it states that studies had shown that the turning circle of such large ships increased sharply (by double or more) when the depth of water under the keel was less than 40% of the ship's draft, and with less than 3 feet under the keel the ship may become virtually uncontrollable. I don't know if this would also apply to a ship of Iowa's size.

[Alex-cwrz]

25:47 Interesting fact the HMS Royalist on screen a Dido class Anti-Aircraft cruiser was earmarked to work with the battleship HMS Vanguard, as britains anti-Sverdlov task force. I believe it even had a refit to make it better in this role. However some bright spark politician thought I know what would be equivalent to one of the most sophisticated and advanced battleships on the planet and a recently refitted heavily armed Anti-Aircraft crusier, Two aging light cruisers.

[whodat]

At 36:44- time fuse shells. Supplement to Drach's discussion of time fuses. One must be careful not to confuse the fuse arming mechanism and the fuse detonation mechanism. Variants of both can involve timers, for different purposes. I don't recall the date, but coincident with rifled gun barrels came the fuse arming mechanism which operates using the centrifugal force of the projectile spinning as it exits the gun barrel- at a design-determined threshold of centrifugal force or rotational speed, the fuse physically is enabled to function and awaits its detonation trigger. This arming mechanism was used with both contact and proximity fuses. With contact fuses, an added timer could set a detonation delay to allow the projectile fractions of a second to penetrate armor and/or penetrate into the target's interior space, and so this combination could be used against varied armor protection simply by setting the delay time from 0 to various fractions of and whole seconds, with the delay time chosen based on expected armor type and thickness, or lack of- hence was used on various projectiles including but not restricted to shipboard and land-based HE and armor piercing shells. My guess would be that it was developed after purely time-based fuse arming, which was developed after straight up delayed detonation fuses lacking any arming mechanism. The arming mechanism was introduced to render explosive projectiles and their very sensitive fuses safe to store and handle without unexpected detonation. The arming mechanism is why you can drop a projectile even from great height and not get a detonation, something which can't be said of projectiles manufactured before arming mechanisms were invented. That said, even the best arming mechanism can't stop an unusually and overly sensitive primer, fuse or main charge explosive from going off, which is another discussion point on specific explosives, manufacturing quality control, storage conditions and duration, and environmental hazards such as high heat, high-frequency vibration, and EM fields, radiation and discharges.

[VersusARCH]

43:48 In particular, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War a personal rivalry between Edward Spragge and Cornelis Tromp extended to their ships, the Prince Royal and Gouden Leuw which finally ended with Spragge's death.

As for later examples: during the Russo-Japanese War IJN Fuji participated in 3 attacks on Port Arthur and the Battle of Yellow sea facing Russian battleships like the Pobieda there.

[admiraltolokus]

Drach, about a few month ago I posed to one of your pinned comments for Q&A a question about shipboard newsletters/newspapers that were operated by the ship's crew: asking how prevalent were ship newspapers, which navies allowed them and when? And who had control over the contents? But it seems it hasn't been discussed, is that a question that will be looked at at some point in the future still? I posed this after I started collecting originals of USS Oklahoma's Powwow, and the weekly newsletters that were also sometimes published. These ships newspapers are absolutely amazing!

[relpmat]

It was mentioned in WW 2 in real-time channel that at battle of Philippine sea Japanese attack required the combined efforts of land and carrier based aircraft for any chance of success but the land based ones suffered heavy casualties leading up to the battle but the army conveniently forgot to tell the navy. What would have happened if the IJN knew would they call off the operation?

[ph]

Still of the opinion that Cape Engano was a missed opportunity by both the USN and IJN for Enterprise and Zuikaku to have a one on one carrier battle.

[ernestcline]

Depending on how quickly the American Revolution failed, there might never have been a French Revolution and thus no Napoleonic Wars. A major impetus for the French Revolution was the need to call the Estates General to deal with the horrible fiscal mess the French Crown was in after aiding the American rebels. Less aid means less need to call the Estates General, and thus less chance of a French Revolution.

[philipdepalma]

The food on a WW1/WW2 ship may not have been up to modern standards but I bet any age of sail sailor would not have complained.

[bkjeong]

I’d say the Yorktowns and Shokakus as a whole might take the record for being nemesis ships at the level of classes.

[kennethdeanmiller]

That last picture with all the guys in their bunks pretty much shows how packed a warship could be. Not much room at all, but once you were actually asleep it probably didn't matter for most.

[atlanticcoast]

Very much enjoyed your comments on HMS Conway - could you take a few moments in a future Drydock to talk about the attempted preservation and loss of USS Hartford, Farragut's flagship at Mobile Bay? She held on until 1956 before sinking at dockside. Best regards from the US -

[kanrakucheese]

23:56
Shore bombardment was a major factor in the war against the Aztecs. Some of the mutiny attempts under Cortés and his on-off relationship with his government might also be called naval battles.