00:00:00 – Intro
00:00:38 – Were there any cruisers designed so badly, they ended being worse than destroyers?
00:05:33 – Plans that make no sense?
00:13:39 – Would you consider Operation Chariot to have been justified?
00:16:56 – Were there any parallels between the notion of pre-dreadnaught armored cruisers fighting in the line of battle and the reality of battle cruisers ending up in this role?
00:22:17 – Modernising the Tennessee’s?
00:24:48 – Given HMS Furious’s 18-inch guns destroyed rivets, what sort of damage would Incomparable suffer if she fired her 20-inch guns?
00:29:32 – Replacing older plate with new in WW2 to increase overall effectiveness?
00:33:22 – Why build light cruisers?
00:36:37 – Raising steam
00:38:38 – Why was HMS Carcass so named?
00:41:25 – Gunners relative ranks in the two fleets at the time of the Armada?
00:45:18 – About how long before we can expect the HMS King Charles III, and what type & class will she likely be?
00:49:05 – How did the QE’s catch the battlecruisers in the Run to the South?
00:52:06 – Experience of actually being on a battleship?
00:54:35 – In the opening scene of the recent movie version of Les Miserables, a veritable army of convicts is seen hauling a ship of the line into a dry dock. Short question – is this remotely possible?
24 Comments
Pinned post for Q&A 🙂
Reconnaissance or intelligence is like Eggs …The Fresher The Better.
Regarding RN naming conventions, @Drachinifel, wat are your feelings about a new RN ship named Warspite? Knowing your inclinations about the WWII battleship, I'm curious whether that would offend you or if you'd look on it and smile knowingly.
Cruisers worse than destroyers. What about the old IJN light cruisers? They seemed to get sunk a lot. So rather than cruisers fighting destroyers, this is about destroyers being better in the situations that destroyer squadrons actually fought in. US CLs were better in their usual role of carrier AA escorts.
Drach, a question for you. On your battleship tour on this side of the pond was there any disappointment on your end not being able to see one of the Iowas with their original era of completion armament? With all of the medium and light AA battery along with 40% of the secondary armament removed and replaced with canister and box missle launchers, ECM antennas, chaff launchers etc. they were no longer bristling with gun barrels that made them look like deadly porcupines.
Ref. your visit of the Battleship(s), you often mentioned just how many backups apon backups there were. You seemed to have been surprised/impressed
Richie benauds favourite number.
Marvellous…
58:40: I don't think the resistance by the water is a big problem, since it matters less the slower you move. A bigger problem is the buoyancy reducing the weight on your feet, reducing friction and thereby lowering the maximum amount of force you can exert.
Currently picturing the 2060 commissioning ceremony of the 6 oar boat-o'-war King Charles III in Portsmouth, with the wrecked HMS Queen Elizabeth as a Backdrop.
HMS King Charles III, to support our leaders environmental policies this should obviously be a wind powered submarine, Putin will never see it coming.
Except for Japan, which kept an improved form of the Vickers Cemented Armor of 1912 (KONGOs and, in house, all pre-YAMATO battleships) with higher carbon content (0.55%) and no cemented surface layer in its YAMATO Class Vickers Hardened armor — otherwise identical except for improved manufacturi9ng techniques gave about 10% improvements, as you stated — all other nations made significant improvements in the steel used and, especially, in improved post-hardening tempering (now avoiding the high-heat "temper embrittlement" region used by most armors prior to 1930 (using higher tempering temperature allowed a shorter tempering time, but it took some time to realize that the high-alloy armor steels did not like that temperature range, so later armors changed this to below 600 degrees C and taking longer to temper the armor and, pro0jectiles and, currently, knives and swords and so forth — see YouTube videos on making such things). US steel was equal.to Krupp steel and, from actuasl test results, French plates were also equal to anyone else's and Italian Terni Cemented armor seems also to have been as good as anyone else's from British post-WWII studies. British steel seems to have been somewhat inferior, on the average than the other European and US steels, but the use of thinner face layers and proper tempering processing, allowed battleship-thickness British WWII Cemented Armor to be better than US Class "A" armor due to the US plates having a too-thick face (55%) in an ultimately failed attempt to damage the greatly-improved US Navy WWII AP shells (the best in the world, by a significant margin, especially at high obliquity). The US problem was simply that they did not prioritize what was the most important factor in armor, though even with a 55% face, the armor was noticeably superior to its WWI-era plates, so they did not realize this too-thick-face problem was blocking their even greater possible resistance. For cruiser thicknesses, the 55% face layer was not a problem, since the greater scaling effect of the thicker brittle face layer worked backward as plates got thinner.
My FACEHARD program found at NAVWEAPS.COM is based on actual test results (hundreds) from the US Naval Proving Ground given to me by Dr. Allen V. Hershey, who was the head of the Ballistics Computation section at the NPG during WWII and through 1955, plus other tests from Germany, Japan, Britain, and France given to me by many other people who study this subject. This program has given EXACT matches to actual tests, though usually the error is about 1% or so. I have the ACTUAL ballistic tests done by the US Navy before, during, and after WWII, plus all tests made by the US on ALL other armors made by anyone else (rather a large number, over the years).
NOTE: Trying to improve the net armor effectiveness by replacing the armor used in a WWI-era ship using WWII-era plate has the problem that the gun projectiles used in WWII have improved even more. Most particularly, the shells can penetrate at higher impact angles and remain roughly intact, at least enough to explode properly after penetrating, which most WWI-era shell could not do, for the most part, after hitting thick armor at anything over 15-20 degrees from right angles. US WWII AP projectiles were tested at 35-40 degrees obliquity against equally thick plate as used in WWI and thus making the armor better would be of only marginal improvement for the older ships with their usually somewhat thinner armor, if not inclined. Also, deck armor against hits at longer ranges or against AP aircraft bombs is the biggest threat than hits on the side armor by another battleship in WWII. This would add a lot of weight, if needed, requiring more than just better plate of the same type.
The 16"/45cal Mk6 was based on the 16"/45cal Mk5 so, I guess it would be possible to make new twin turrets for the Mk6 guns and mount them on the Californias.
24:10 Couldn’t you instead of reconstructing Colorado turrets/guns just take the 16"/50 Mark 2/3 guns intended for the cancelled 1920 South Dakotas & Lexington battlecruisers and put them into a new turret, seeing as the guns would already be readily available.
38:00 I'd imagine that at least one boiler would be needed to run a turbogenerator or two to provide power for the ship, and maybe steam for heating if the ship was in a cold climate.
King Charles.
Luck!
An interesting sea story….Britannia rules the waves!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9_rZya380U
Marveling at the exquisite way Drach pronounces the number TWO all these years, I have been looking forward to this episode. It was…. OK.
Hi Drac, just watched arrows v armour, and saw you were a big sponsor, thanks so much.
9:11The people in charge of the management of the French navy, with a few exceptions, never had both the understanding of the necessities of naval warfare and/or the budget.
the le miz question, you've got the drydock there just wait for the tide to fill it if there's no steam power.
one third of the Beast.
an hour? no problem listening to that in one go…it's the 3 hour plus of the patreon ones.
so, yup. I was still watching by the end of the hour.