Pinned post for Q&A :)

@bkjeong4302

Ай бұрын

Did anybody try to make a fast battleship (in the sense of a big-gun capital ship that doesn’t sacrifice either firepower or armour for speed) in the predreadnoughts era?

@reginaldpasao8390

Ай бұрын

Would it have made sense for the USN to forward deploy older battleships or second-line cruisers in the Philippines to deter Japanese aggression, especially as Japan ramped up their war in China as a show of force and as a deterrence/first line of defense against a naval invasion of the P.I.

@patricklandis1286

Ай бұрын

What was different about USS Delaware that allowed her to steam ahead longer than other dreadnought class ships of her time in the US Navy? I read somewhere that she was the first in the US Navy to be able to go full ahead for 24+ hours without suffering breakdown, but don't remember reading why that was so

@robertneal4244

Ай бұрын

If this class had been turned into museum ships would they have been reactivated and modernized for use in World War Two similar to the "standard" battleships?

@scottgiles7546

Ай бұрын

If Hitler had sent the first wave of V-1 Bombs against the invasion fleet at Normandy how affective would it have been? Navies were pretty good at putting up AA by June 1944 so it might not have been as one sided as some think.

Gentlemen, we can build the Ultimate Battleship. We have the technology! Better! Stronger! Faster! The Six Million Dollar USS Delaware. - US Navy, 1906

@rikk319

Ай бұрын

Now if only Steve Austin had been Navy instead of Air Force...

@jeffreyskoritowski4114

Ай бұрын

The United States Congress: Not so fast you dastardly leaches.

@jeffreyskoritowski4114

Ай бұрын

The United States Congress: Not so fast you dastardly leaches.

@jeffreyskoritowski4114

Ай бұрын

The United States Congress: Not so fast you dastardly leaches.

@eyerollthereforeiam1709

Ай бұрын

You know you're getting old if you get that reference.

That foremost casemated five inch gun must have been fun to man in anything but dead calm conditions.

@bigblue6917

Ай бұрын

On the upside you can catch your supper and wash your laundry at the same time.

@khaelamensha3624

Ай бұрын

​@@bigblue6917Thanks for the laugh 😂

@dougjb7848

Ай бұрын

I came here to make sure this was said.

@john_in_phoenix

Ай бұрын

Yes, in the pinned post for questions, I asked if there were any dreadnought class casement guns usable in anything above a dead calm sea state. One would have thought that after the first few, designers would have abandoned the concept rather than continuing through the 20s.

@bachelorchownowwithflavor3712

Ай бұрын

@@john_in_phoenix Design inertia is a hard thing to overcome. The larger the organization, the greater the inertia.

Good old 4am entertainment lol. Why sleep when I can watch this?

@KCAerospace

Ай бұрын

True lol

@AnimeSunglasses

Ай бұрын

Oh Hi! So I'm not the only one!

@bigblue6917

Ай бұрын

One of the joys of the internet.

@khaelamensha3624

Ай бұрын

Got the same issue (well not really an issue) when watch cooking video at 2am 😂 well after Drach video at least you do not the urge to go to your kitchen eating... Firing a 16inches gun urge has a higher probability 😂

@mastathrash5609

Ай бұрын

I'll let it lull me back to sleep and then re-watch it in the morning with breakfast. 👍

I actually have the ship's copy of the "The Ship And Gun Drills, 1914". Inside the first page it says "Property of the "Delaware". The Gunnery Officer keeps a list of these books in his office. If detached, transferred or otherwise leave (sic) the ship - return this book to the Gunnery Officer's Office." It was #219. I saw it for sale at a shop and opened to that page and knew I had to have it.

I still want to see a vid on just what it takes to make and use a remote control battleship in the 1920s. I bet the setup looked like Frankenstein's lab. Another great video! Thanks!

Still looking for you to do the Mississippi class, Mississippi (BB-23) and Idaho (BB-24) . Should be lots of snark at Congress over them. Remember "One useless man is a disgrace; two useless men are a Law Firm and three or more useless men are a Congress"

It has to have been an interesting time for naval ship building. USN: the good news is we've built our new warship. The bad news is the RN have just built Dreadnaught

@hanzzel6086

Ай бұрын

That was kinda the case for everyone. The French after laid down an entire class of pre-dreads *after* Dreadnoughts commissioned.

@genericpersonx333

Ай бұрын

@@hanzzel6086 In fairness, France was already no longer building "against" the Royal Navy, thanks to changes in diplomatic norms between the two nations. Predreadnoughts were only really obsoleted when the Superdreadnoughts arrived in great numbers around the beginning of the 1910s, and as France's main naval rival was Italy, who didn't have many dreadnoughts and never quite got around to a superdreadnought, so predreadnoughts remained relatively useful. The US Navy, on the other hand, was trying to build a fleet to challenge the Royal Navy as the Anglo-American Rivalry heated up over the Doctrine of Freedom of the Seas. This required a modern battlefleet powerful enough to challenge the typical Royal Navy battlefleet able to operate off the US Coastline to end the traditional British threat of blockade and coastal harassment. With the "Great White Fleet," the US Navy was getting close to that cherished goal, but Dreadnought and her many sisters and half-sisters basically derailed all that.

@davidchambers8697

Ай бұрын

There was a new "most powerful battleship in the world" every few months.

@hanzzel6086

Ай бұрын

@@genericpersonx333 True

@hanzzel6086

Ай бұрын

@@davidchambers8697 Also true!

North Dakota's turbines were the source of considerable consternation. She was equipped with Curtis turbines, which broke down, often. Newspapers of 1916-1917 reported North Dakota being laid up, and ongoing discussions whether to scrap her, or replace the turbines. The US' entry into the war motivated the decision to replace the turbines. iirc, when North Dakota was scrapped, the relatively modern turbines were recovered and installed in Nevada, when that ship was modernized.

@genericpersonx333

Ай бұрын

Indeed, it is fairly clear the US Navy understood that domestic turbine manufacturers were not really ready yet to make the big battleship turbines, which is a big part of why they went with expansion engines for the South Carolinas. I believe the decision to put turbines in just North Dakota was partially to get some more practical experience with turbines in hope that would speed up development to minimize dependence on British and German sources. It seems to have worked for the most part, as US turbines got good enough and even excellent not long after North Dakota was operational.

@stevevalley7835

Ай бұрын

@@genericpersonx333 indeed. After North Dakota, the Floridas and Wyomings went to Parsons. The New Yorks reverted to VTE, due to US turbine manufacturers inability to meet Navy specifications. Nevada reverted to Curtis, while Okie continued with VTE. In her modernization, Nevada's original Curtis turbines were swapped out for the newer models salvaged from North Dakota. According to Wiki, Pennsylvania had Curtis turbines, while Arizona had Parsons. Both received new turbines in their late 20s modernizations. (after the cancellations for treaty compliance, the USN had a lot of new boilers and turbines laying around) The New Mexicos apparently had Curtis initially, which were switched out for Westinghouse in their early 30s modernizations.

@genericpersonx333

Ай бұрын

@@stevevalley7835 No wonder the Navy finally embraced a full university-style education for naval engineering officers around this time period, with the Academy instituting its first comprehensive program for Marine Engineering in 1909 and having the Naval Postgraduate system in place by 1912 offering full education in multiple engineering fields. Engines alone were too complicated for men to master just with a few months in the engine-room getting their hands dirty while peering at manuals.

@robdgaming

2 күн бұрын

New Mexico started life with turbo-electric drive (2 generators, 4 shafts), while her two sisters had direct-drive turbines with geared cruising turbines, similar to Nevada as built. During the mid-life refits all three were re-engined with Westinghouse turbines, I suspect geared but Breyer and Friedman don't say. Friedman says Nevada was re-equipped with North Dakota's original Curtis turbines in 1917.

My mother-in-law had a uncle who served on the Delaware! I saw pictures of iy. He worked in the galley!

"Or imagine being magically whisked away by the USS Delaware." Aboard the USS Delaware: "Hi. I'm on... the Delaware."

@MonkeyJedi99

Ай бұрын

Wayne's World! Party time, excellent!

@robertsolomielke5134

Ай бұрын

One casemate gun position was retired, plated over , so the space became the " aux. mess (bar/lounge/card room) where we can party as we sail the globe. ;)

Being in sight of a U-boat qualifies as war service.

My OCD has been waiting for the Deleware class video to complete the American dreadnoughts series since the pandemic; it feels so nice that my patience has finally paid off!

The 5 minute Guide to Warships is what I always look forward to. Excellent research and presentation.

@somebloke3869

Ай бұрын

I like them especially when they go over the 5 minutes in the title.

Love the abrupt and mostly sad endings. Don’t ever change Drach.

The earlier battleships are just more interesting. Good video.

Excellent video as always. I would not want my battle station to be on the main mast between the two funnels. Lungs full of coal smoke does not appeal to me.

@khaelamensha3624

Ай бұрын

Well sadly it was a common condition for a lot of people in towns at the time

@paoloviti6156

Ай бұрын

​@@khaelamensha3624not to mention the awful smog that afflicted London in 1952 because of excessive use of coal to heat the houses and dependency of coal with the factories. Even Milan, Italy, suffered the same problem up to late sixties...

The technology jump from the US Civil War to 1900 is crazy. 40 years to Dreadnaught and then another 40 years to battleship obsolescence.

Please cover USS Montpelier, CL-57, which saw more combat than almost every other light cruiser, from the Solomons to Kamikaze Alley. A deck gang seaman, James Fahey, wrote Pacific War Diary, with lots of deck hand insights. There is also a DVD copy of the ship's cruise book.

Not often I catch a video this soon after release.

Being a Delawarean, this is a wonderful video. That is all.

Hey y'all from Delaware!!! 👋👋

Excellent and Outstanding!!!

Hope your having a good weekend drach ❤

Thanks!

Thanks Drach

I was wanting some more American Dreadnoughts! Great video!

I love these videos! More more more!

Most informative. I would love to see ones on the California and perhaps the Sacramento.

Get home from a trip and sit down to dinner and see Drac has a new video. Awesome

Very cool and unique Vessels those Delawares and Floridas

The design of turret 4 looks like a cat ran over some draftsman’s board and everybody just ran with it the whole way through

I notice in the intro, in the second view of turrets firing, a cloud of large white confetti projected from the left. Might this be the remains of an unfortunate passing Albatross, or someone's instruction manual carelessly left on the turret roof or top of the gun?

@khaelamensha3624

Ай бұрын

Or the casing of the powder... Like the bird 8dea. On the command deck : main guns reporting they had the seagull who emptied it's bowel on your uniform Sir!

@hanzzel6086

Ай бұрын

Improperly secured/forgotten in place canvas coverings.

Incredible to compare the expected service life of ships at this point.

Noticed again how much the quality has improved. Do I recall correctly that your first videos had computer voice? I am actually only mildly interested in these detailed ship breakdowns, but your voice and narration stile make them always fun to listen to. Keep it up and thanks a lot!

In my ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ alternative history book series, the Delawares (and the South Carolinas) provided the guns and turrets for the Texas Navy’s large armored cruisers and some coastal defense monitors.

@derrickstorm6976

Ай бұрын

So Republic of Texas would design and build them somehow, then?

@DABrock-author

Ай бұрын

@@derrickstorm6976 Yes. In that timeline Texas has its own shipyards and manufacturing facilities. Due to (spoiler deleted) certain events, they don’t want to be dependent on other countries for their defense needs.

My Boats predecessor

@koboldparty4708

Ай бұрын

You mean the Virginia-class, I assume?

@jonathanwhite5132

Ай бұрын

@@koboldparty4708 yep

@jacobdill4499

Ай бұрын

I think there were a couple other classes between.

I would be interesting to know if the change to geared turbines in the North Dakota improved its range.

When I see one of these grand old girls something in my soul stirs screaming MORE DAKKA

Review the Windclass ice breakers

very nice. as an observation, you could have said it was on the class instead of just the one sister since there we only two and you covered both.since

Drach, at 7:04 is a photo of the Delaware being scrapped. The year is 1923 and anchored in the bay it appears are six sailing vessels. I'm assuming schooners from the masts, but shouldn't there be more than two masts? Are these hybrids of sail and steam, although I don't see any stacks?

2:27 I sense Tillman's hand at work here

How about a video on USS Thurston - AP-77 7 Battle stars WW2?

It’s good to see that Delaware had a battle ship class named in its honor back then … But wait ,,,now we got USS DELAWARE SSN 791 god speed Delaware!!!

Anti-Torpedo boat gunnery aside, was anti-torpedo gunnery/artillery ever devised for warships? What kind of systems and ordnance were used, if any?

6:10 Considering the technology of the time, when used as a remote controlled target ship was it done with radio controls or did they have a clockwork mechanism of some sort to have it run along a pre-planned path? And how was coal for the engines managed with no stokers? Had it been converted to oil by that point?

@derrickstorm6976

Ай бұрын

Considering she survived 8 years in the role, maybe she was a towing ship for the actual target ships?

The South Carolinas were a redux of the USN trying to pack too much into too little, though probably more successfully than the Indianas. Slower than HMS Dreadnought, their speed matched that of the Connecticut class, into which the USN had quite an investment. The Delawares brought USN Dreadnoughts up to speed (hiyuck, hiyuck) and more or less on par with early RN Dreadnoughts. The experiment with VTE vs. turbines is interesting. The USN HAD to operate in the Pacific, in which the USN had few coaling stations. The RN saw Germany as its main potential enemy, i.e. close to Britain, and its empire provided coaling stations along the routes to the Indian or Pacific Oceans. The USN probably really didn't solve the problem of getting good firing arcs/elevations for all guns, fore and aft, until introducing the triple turret in the Nevada class (possibly excepting the turret-farm Wyoming class).

Early enough to swallow before food!

I genuinely want to know whose genius idea it was to put a casemate gun so low on either side of the bow. Some things you only really learn from experience, but "don't put a huge opening in the hull right at the point where water is most likely to be forced into it" seems like something you could figure out just by thinking about it for two seconds.

Did Congress really used to actually do things like determine the size of ships to be constructed? I can see them dictating the cost but not the size. I can't imagine today's Congress actually alloting and bickering about the cost of every single ship the Navy wants to build. Did we not have a Secretary of the Navy or the War Secretary that got a pot of money and they decide the cost of things. I can't believe I learned something new about my Congress from a non-Native American! Thanks Drach! Always love to learn new things.

@boobah5643

Ай бұрын

Dude, they _still_ do this. Yes, the Navy and the civilians in the Defense Department make proposals based on what they think the Navy needs (and what they hope Congress will pay for) but Congress _constantly_ has its nose in every jot and tittle of what gets ordered. See, for example, the fact that the Navy recently ended up with not one, but two mostly useless littoral combat ship classes because Congress decided that, after the prototypes competed, they'd rather keep sending money to both manufacturers' districts rather than pick one and standardize their notionally _modular_ ship. Yes, they were designed to be modular... but the modules from one design couldn't be swapped to the other.

YEAH BABY THATS WHAT IM TALKING ABOUT!

6 million for a battleship in the early 1900's? The New Jersey and Iowa, for example, cost 100 million in 1940 dollars, which if built today would be 2 billion dollars! 6 million 1906 dollars is worth a little over 208 million today. So 208 million in today's dollars for a battleship in 1906 vs. 2 billion in today's dollars for a battleship in 1940.

Yo nice

Thank you for this information. USS Florida wasn't part of this class or was she different enough to be her own class/subclass of the Delaware class?

@Drachinifel

Ай бұрын

The Floridas were the next class, similar, but not identical :)

@kleineb334

28 күн бұрын

@@Drachinifelwatching confused me seems most of the pictures were of the Florida class

Drach, have you ever done a review of the battle of the texas navy between two british warships on loan to mexico in the yucatan? The texas navy won that one

Wasn’t there a further 6 turret version?

Six million dollars! Sir, that is our entire budget for opressing women in Deleware in 1907 AND 1908! Madness!

what is the intro from and why are the guns so loud

How was scouting for the enemy done during the period of steam before the introduction of radio?

@derrickstorm6976

Ай бұрын

Spotting aircraft, binoculars, and a really big chalkboard

@HypoceeYT

Ай бұрын

Guys up on tall sticks. Ideally on cruisers that could outrun said enemy, while signaling the main fleet via flags and semaphore/signal lamp.

Congress anticipated what Imperial Germany had to do to keep up with England in the Dreadnaught race - widen the Kiel Canal. A larger authorized ship would of course drive the need for even larger ships and therefore need larger infrastructure - slipways, drydocks, yard cranes, Panama Canal, … the IOWAS just fit through Panama. Today’s commercial sector did invest in such infrastructure for the supertankers and monster cargo containers - MARSK and others show such large ships “pay the freight.” Monster Battleships to fight who - the Brits or the French - simply have little commercial value and little private interest investment. Eventually, a Two Ocean law (and the shear size of fleet carriers needed to host a useful number of jet aircraft) negated a need to widen the canal.

⚓️

wonder if they would have performed better if the weapons in the casements were ommited

I love the old Battleships.I just wished ALNAVCO had produced them in the late 1980s.

@blackopscw7913

Ай бұрын

Funny I had just heard of them a few weeks ago, what is your experience with their models, I was going to order some

@kevinpresley3136

Ай бұрын

​@@blackopscw7913My experience was 100% positive.Nicely detailed with a little work required.I did the US ships of WW2 but they had all the major countries.Good luck and best wishes with them.

@blackopscw7913

Ай бұрын

@@kevinpresley3136Thanks!

@kevinpresley3136

Ай бұрын

@@blackopscw7913 You're welcome.Let me know how everything goes.:)

Why not just change turret #3 to deck level and make turret #4 super firing position? Wouldn’t that have solved the gun position issues?

What did Della wear?….Grey paint.

Why did so many early battleships have torpedo tubes? Considering the short range of early torpedoes and the difficulty of aiming fixed tube, they do not seem very pratical.

@alexandermonro6768

Ай бұрын

HMS Rodney has entered the chat..

@christopherreed4723

Ай бұрын

They weren't. HMS Rodney is *the* exception. I believe the fixed, under water torpedo tubes were a leftover from pre-dreadnaught designs that were meant to engage each other at relatively close range. The theory being that the battleships are engaging each other on parallel courses at a distance of a few thousand yards. In fact, that never happened. But navies kept insisting on them, and designers kept adding them, until long after they'd become a waste of space. Most ships had them removed and the space used for more useful purposes (like croquet mallet storage) in the 1930s.

@notshapedforsportivetricks2912

Ай бұрын

This has been covered. Essentially, optical rangefinders hadn't been developed, even in the early dreadnought era. This meant that effective gunnery range was quite close to maximun torpedo range, so why not include them? As optical rangefinders and then radar came into vogue and massively extended effective gunnery ranges, torpedos became superfluous.

seems like the extra 2 barrels was not worth the trade off

Nothing like forced lubrication to extend running time.

Phew, it ain’t that stupid Battle Carrier off World of Warships 🤣🤣🤣

minute 2.15 on "congress in a rare show of generosity..." as far as i know, congress has been extremely generous with the pentagon, via lobbysts carrying checks for the "reelection campaign" whether or not is an election year. nothing changes.

@youmukonpaku3168

Ай бұрын

Congress was notoriously, and often self-destructively, stingy about funding the Navy specifically in the late 19th and early 20th century before intervening in two successive European and one East Asian/Oceanian barfight convinced them to adopt force projection policies; Drach isn't comparing this to the modern US military industrial complex, where 2+2 equals whatever Lockheed Martin wants it to.

DELAWARE MENTIONED?!?!

@chugachuga9242

Ай бұрын

Yeah let’s go

@theleeharveyoswaldexperien1883

Ай бұрын

lol, had the same reaction

@comentedonakeyboard

Ай бұрын

Dont tell anyone

53rd, 11 May 2024

"a remote control target ship." ? Really? Back then? Whoa. 🐿

Great video... but isn't it number 397? Sorry for being picky...

@mkaustralia7136

Ай бұрын

Drydock 297 Guides 387

@Pusserdoc

Ай бұрын

@mkaustralia7136 my bad: OK :-)

@khaelamensha3624

Ай бұрын

​@@PusserdocOne of the most challenging thing on the web, trying to catch everything since numbers one... Really great but have to forget sleep and work 🤣

@Pusserdoc

Ай бұрын

@@khaelamensha3624 yup :-)

Those were … turbulent times. Things changed quickly…. And Congress…. God bless them… was Congress.

U.S.S.Valcour AGF-1

First to load!

Wow, what an _odd_ turret layout, it feels so... off. >.>

@jimtaylor294

Ай бұрын

Fortunately, the toasty midships magazine ended up causing no issues besides inconsistant gunnery 🤔 .

@fhlostonparaphrase

Ай бұрын

Isn't it? Looks weird. I thought the Japanese were alone in layout like that.

A retrograde design decision: moving the secondaries down a deck into hull casemates.

1:30 Wanting enhanced torpedo protection in 1905??

What dull service for wartime. Perhaps it would have been different had the U.S.A. jumped in early on.

Not wanting to be outdone, recent developments of the Littoral Combat Ships have proved to be similarly useless.

.....I know hindsight is a virtue, but I can't fathom what the engineers were thinking on some of these old designs. Casemate guns, and why do three two gun turrets in the rear instead of two three gun? Why would you do that?

@youmukonpaku3168

Ай бұрын

because they hadn't engineered a three gun turret and it wasn't in the budget (or, quite likely, in the available width of ship that could fit through the Panama Canal) to do so.

@aikimechanic

Ай бұрын

@@youmukonpaku3168 They hadn't engineered it yet? Is that why they weren't flying F-18's in WWI? Thanks Dr Science. It was a rhetorical question. Also, see "Iowa class in Panama Canal." Sometimes things are a bad idea at first glance. All I was saying is how could they not see it....... I do understand the evolution of technology.

@rupertboleyn3885

Ай бұрын

Caremates require less deck space, create less topweight, are easier to work, easier to supply ammunition to, and cheaper (per gun). The USN spent a lot of time and effect trying to get casemate guns that could be worked in poor weather before finally conceding that you just can't - no matter how high you mount them waves hitting the hull will splash water up into them and they'll be wet unless you're stationary in a millpond. Even broadside casemates aren't great, so in the end the USN, like everyone else, gave up on them and switched to turrets.

@jimtaylor294

Ай бұрын

​@@rupertboleyn3885Aye. That, and as dual-purpose secondary batteries became more desirable, turreting up said guns or putting them in open / partially enclosed deck mounts became a prerequisite 🤔

Everyone keeps asking Delaware, but never Delawho or Delawhy.

@MrFleem

Ай бұрын

Delawhat?

For Tax Reasons

Its:! Alot like cartoons in '67. ... ... ....( Nuts!) :!?! ... "Whats mr green jeans wearing today ?" ....[ Thats a captain kangaroo ,jest :;!?! ] ... ( Ask yout mom !)...steam. . 21 knots.... forced lubrication...hes gone. , gone gone mad quite apparently...mad i say !

Huge expense, short life.

on the tabletop version of your discord people get bullied to oblivion and then your mods mute them when they try to defend themselves, you should reset a new discord, this is the most horrid place i have ever seen online