I hope people haven't been complaining about your Shameless Book Plugs. Having bought and read it, I can only say it was a solid bit of work and I'm glad you're going to be researching/writing more.
42:40 In the 1915 Austro-Hungarian attack on Italy (exactly 12 hours after Italy declared war on the dual Monarchy) the A-H flagship was one of the Habsburg class - 1900ish - older battleships, because the admiral wanted to lead the fleet but also preserve the Tegethoffs and Radetzkys, which sailed back in the battleline.
one funny thing is that the german term that was used for the german battle cruisers was "Grosskreuzer", which can be translated to "large cruiser". Always good for confusing people ;)
🙋🏼♂️ physical book purchaser here! Have backed a couple of books by Kris of Military Aviation History and a couple of others over last couple of years.
Shortland: frequently when authors cite "original sources" in their footnotes rather than citing my work as their source, but they use my shorthand nomenclature instead proper forms of citation. It lets me know they used my work as a secondary source while avoiding a trip to a library. I approve of lazy so it amuses rather than bothers me while letting me know that people are reading and making use of my books! All of my books include a handy list of my abbreviations in the front.
27 minutes in, comment about UK refusing to sell/delaying delivery of turbines. While it may have made sense for BRITAIN to delay things, it makes less sense for THE MANUFACTURER. Britain would get the transitory benefit of delaying the German ships, but the manufacturer (who wants future sales from the Germand AND the possibility of orders in future from other nations) gets a reputation for unreliability, which impacts sales (I believe you mentioned in another video something about the Germans being highly rated for engineering and design, but losing sales due to a reputation for unreliability). Additionally playing games with turbines only serves to encourage Germanty to fdevelop home grown turbines. thereby introducing a new competitor and reducing your potential fture sales. So deliberately delaying deliveries is something the manufacturer wold only do under really, really heavy pressure from HMG, due to the potential downside risk.
I think there must have been a couple of British and French designers who saw those photos and thought "A submersible (battle)cruiser - what a brilliant idea!!"
BZ the Problem with fast Battleships in the german Navy is that they could not operate with the older, slower vessels, needed to keep up the Numbers (unless you are willing to throw away the speed Advantage). So the only way to make use of fast ships is to put them in the cruiser role.
One advantage of the disadvantage of having a smaller shipbuilding industry is that you build tougher ships because it's easier/cheaper/ quicker to repair a damaged ship than build a new ship. At least that's how the Germans looked at it. If the British lost a ship while it was considered unfortunate, they could always build another.
You talk about the cross pollination between British and US yards, It would have been interesting if the US had commissioned 33 kt (I know the US was looking at 35kts, but that was a bit much) Battlecruiser designs from both Vickers and Armstrong just to see what an experienced designer could have done with the desired specifications.
i do like your key ships series a bit more in depth than drachs 5 min guides i like the why when and how always good to learn something new or make me think well done dr clarke
What do you think the short and long term consequences would be for the Imperial Navy if Seydlitz had exploded at Dogger Bank? Would the Kaiser be even more cautious about committing his ships to any action? And with the loss of Seydlitz the Germans would remain ignorant of their dangerous powder handling with possible fatal results if a Jutland type battle ever happened
It would've been awesome if the Kaiserlichemarine built Fast Battleships tbh, the Imperial German Navy had so much potential and Battleships that were faster than the British Battleline would be perfect
The downside would be that the fast Battleships would outrun the older ships (incl. first generation Dreadnoughts) with their piston engines. So it's either sacrificing speed, or numbers.
Seydlitz wasn't done at Jutland, no one had a hostile fork. I'd been on a USN LSD that had before I'd been aboard; it's ballasted down for boat operations but by malfunction kept going down, to a gentle sandy bottom. But 10 or 15 feet from lifeboats! Where is the bottom?
Much as I personally like Seydlitz and agree with Dr. Clarke's point about the fast-battleship option as a potentially better route for Germany, did no one in the German naval hierarchy consider the British use of battlecruisers for trade interdiction and consider that as grounds for building faster, lighter battle cruisers (two words). You would think, with the potential for Britain as a possible future foe, the thought of trade interdiction with something larger than submarines and converted merchantmen might have crossed someone's mind.
Since a lot of german naval thinking at the time was focused on fighting and winning against a royal navy that would do a close blockade of germany, nobody really put that great a thought on trade warfare beyond the north sea. That and the fact that german yards would never really be able to outbuild the british ones led to them very quickly and thoroughly go down the route of considering survivability and fighting a decisive engagment in the north sea before everything else. As far as I am aware only with the later Derfflinger-class did the naval command consider using them to raid british shipping beyond the north sea.
To quote a certain Dr Clarke - a battlecruisers needs a speed advantage and room to manoeuvre. Given that the Germans are fighting the biggest battle fleet ever assembled in a fairly restricted bit of water I'm not sure that the speed advantage helps them that much, especially with the advatage of Room 40 for the RN
She was damaged almost an much as Drach was after his Video about her damage after making the model of her and then burning the damage in to it...... his refit time was likewise similar in length.
A side question: you've mentioned that had the QE class used small boilers they may have reached 28 knots! It has always been a bit a mistery to me why the RN took so long to incorporate small boilers into their bigger ships (I think the Courageous class of "large light cruisers" were the first ones?). The usual answer is that they had higher maintenance requirements and for long deployments away I guess that reason makes sense. But is that all?
The trouble is those reasons were added on afterwards, in the case of the QEs Jellicoe & other senior naval officers were advised by industry that they weren't viable and wouldn't be ready in time... this was wrong, but what they advised, there were/are suspicions as to why...
@@Knight6831 STB seem quite proven technoloy to me. The Germans also thought it would be a very short war but nevertheless they used STB very early on. All their battlecruisers, included Seydlitz used small tube boilers. On the other hand, large light cruisers aside, the first British capital ship using them would be HMS Hood, years after WWI had finished.
how long did the whole back turrets exploding bit last? How fast would those flames be spreading?Also flooding the magazines (with yourself in them) is suicide right? You just chose to save the ship since you gonna blow up anyways right?
It's minutes, more accurately seconds - it spreads fast once it's got started... and yes, it is having the presence of mind in the face of certain death to do an action which will definitely kill you but save your friends amongst the crew... It's in a very short amount of time recognising your own mortality and going beyond that - we call it bravery because honestly we don't have a more accurate word for it as it's sacrificing even a small chance of survival to save everyone.
13:30 How much actual design was there of the N3 though? The G3 had clearly been thought through and was going to be built. The n3 though. I'm not sure about that. I get the distinct impression the G3 and N3 was a shell game. Push the N3, and hope you get both, but know that you'll get the G3. (Which of course that didn't work out either.)
14:00 KGV might just be a plain old battleship. (Maybe Yamato as well.) All the other treaty battleships could not stand up to 16" shells at battle ranges, nor even in fact their own shells. But KGV could. It's a byproduct of a 14-in gun, but it is still true. Heck, she could stand up to Nelson or Colorado.
They'd placed the confirmed orders with the yards, materials were being procured - it was a very expensive shell game going to an extent they really didn't need to.
So Von der Tann, Moltke, Goeben, and Seydlitz are all build as Fast Battleships, with a speed that is within the 'Margin of Damage' to the first four RN Battle-Cruisers. Should cost the Germans a (grossly estimated) few million Quid. This practically demotes Battle-Cruisers to pure Cruiser hunters, only permitted overseas basing to actually carrying out their Trade protection duties. So that's 7 million Pounds of Capital ships that can't go into the North Sea. Increasing the problem is that both sides would switch to FBB, as soon as the specs for Von der Tann hit. For the Germans this would occur at the laying down in March 1908. So Posen and the four Helgolands would have been switched over to the new design, which for a marginal increase in price grants a much better ship. By the time this becomes clear to the RN both the Colossus-Class and Indefatigable would be too far al long. This erases the early start advantage that the RN had up to all ships in service or under construction around mid 1910. That's 10 Dreadnaughts and 4 Battle-Cruisers relegated to second division. Thus with the OTL build schedule pre Elizabeth you would have a RN Fast Battle-line of, 18 Super-Dreads FBB (6 BC, 4 Orion, 4 KGB, 4 ID). VS 19 Super-Dread FBB (4 BC, 1 Nassau, 4 Helgoland, 5 Kaiser, 4 König, 1 Derfflinger) There is no way that GB or the RN would permit anything close to these number to occur. So looking at 6 upgraded BC and 6 ships Classes for Orion, KGV, ID, and E for 30 FBB all being commissioned by the end of 1914. Said 30 FBB to be build within three and a half years. *HMS Indefatigable would be turned into HMAS Australia. **Don't think the three export BB get build, even Salamis might be butterflied. Might well be replaced by four second hand now too slow Dreadnaughts/Nassau.
The answer is yes they could have, it would have been as North Sea/Baltic focused as the Littorios of WWII were Mediterranean Focused, but they could have
As a swede I always had a problem keeping a straight face when talking shorthand for the Austria-Hungaria Imperial and Royal anything (k.u.k. in swedish synonymous with dick).
I don't think fast battleships in place of battlecruisers make sense for Germany. They are, as Mahan would say too much battleship to serve as a cruiser and while they're not too much cruiser to fit in the line of battle the speed is wasted expense when they're in the line of battle with slower battleships. Replacing both types with fast battleships puts England into a bind where they need to plan to fight the German maneuver oriented fleet but also have to plan to fight the American "our guns have the same range, who cares how they maneuver" fleet and can't very well do so with the same ships with current technology. They essentially need completely different Atlantic (anti-American and anti-French) and North Seas (anti-German) fleets until small tube boilers come in, and they have to keep building expensive small tube QE successors instead of economizing as they did with the Rs. Replacing just the battlecruisers with fast battleships the English might need to match them as a type for political reasons, but if they ever liberate themselves from the slower portion of the German battle line they open themselves up to defeat in detail so just building some battlecruisers that can distract and damage them while the battle fleet mops up the now hopelessly outnumbered slow wing of the German battle fleet neutralize them tactically.
Oh boy! I’ll have a Seydlitz video out later this week!
I hope people haven't been complaining about your Shameless Book Plugs. Having bought and read it, I can only say it was a solid bit of work and I'm glad you're going to be researching/writing more.
42:51 magic shirt colour change
42:40 In the 1915 Austro-Hungarian attack on Italy (exactly 12 hours after Italy declared war on the dual Monarchy) the A-H flagship was one of the Habsburg class - 1900ish - older battleships, because the admiral wanted to lead the fleet but also preserve the Tegethoffs and Radetzkys, which sailed back in the battleline.
one funny thing is that the german term that was used for the german battle cruisers was "Grosskreuzer", which can be translated to "large cruiser". Always good for confusing people ;)
🙋🏼♂️ physical book purchaser here! Have backed a couple of books by Kris of Military Aviation History and a couple of others over last couple of years.
Shortland: frequently when authors cite "original sources" in their footnotes rather than citing my work as their source, but they use my shorthand nomenclature instead proper forms of citation. It lets me know they used my work as a secondary source while avoiding a trip to a library. I approve of lazy so it amuses rather than bothers me while letting me know that people are reading and making use of my books! All of my books include a handy list of my abbreviations in the front.
27 minutes in, comment about UK refusing to sell/delaying delivery of turbines. While it may have made sense for BRITAIN to delay things, it makes less sense for THE MANUFACTURER. Britain would get the transitory benefit of delaying the German ships, but the manufacturer (who wants future sales from the Germand AND the possibility of orders in future from other nations) gets a reputation for unreliability, which impacts sales (I believe you mentioned in another video something about the Germans being highly rated for engineering and design, but losing sales due to a reputation for unreliability).
Additionally playing games with turbines only serves to encourage Germanty to fdevelop home grown turbines. thereby introducing a new competitor and reducing your potential fture sales.
So deliberately delaying deliveries is something the manufacturer wold only do under really, really heavy pressure from HMG, due to the potential downside risk.
And on the other side the german Navy has a strong preference to buy german anyway, even if this means sticking with piston engines.
Very much enjoyed listen in on this video :D
I think there must have been a couple of British and French designers who saw those photos and thought "A submersible (battle)cruiser - what a brilliant idea!!"
BZ the Problem with fast Battleships in the german Navy is that they could not operate with the older, slower vessels, needed to keep up the Numbers (unless you are willing to throw away the speed Advantage). So the only way to make use of fast ships is to put them in the cruiser role.
One advantage of the disadvantage of having a smaller shipbuilding industry is that you build tougher ships because it's easier/cheaper/ quicker to repair a damaged ship than build a new ship. At least that's how the Germans looked at it. If the British lost a ship while it was considered unfortunate, they could always build another.
I do love me a badass battlecruiser! Wish she had a 1/700 model besides the 1/350.
Great. Now I have to watch Drach destroy a model while explaining in detail the damage that led to Seydlitz being a 25,000 ton pinata".
I'm jealous you get to see that for the first time. That is a great video.
@@PaulfromChicago Don't be jealous -: it'll be my third or fourth time.. 🙂
You talk about the cross pollination between British and US yards, It would have been interesting if the US had commissioned 33 kt (I know the US was looking at 35kts, but that was a bit much) Battlecruiser designs from both Vickers and Armstrong just to see what an experienced designer could have done with the desired specifications.
i do like your key ships series a bit more in depth than drachs 5 min guides i like the why when and how
always good to learn something new or make me think well done dr clarke
What do you think the short and long term consequences would be for the Imperial Navy if Seydlitz had exploded at Dogger Bank?
Would the Kaiser be even more cautious about committing his ships to any action?
And with the loss of Seydlitz the Germans would remain ignorant of their dangerous powder handling with possible fatal results if a Jutland type battle ever happened
It would've been awesome if the Kaiserlichemarine built Fast Battleships tbh, the Imperial German Navy had so much potential and Battleships that were faster than the British Battleline would be perfect
The downside would be that the fast Battleships would outrun the older ships (incl. first generation Dreadnoughts) with their piston engines. So it's either sacrificing speed, or numbers.
Seydlitz wasn't done at Jutland, no one had a hostile fork.
I'd been on a USN LSD that had before I'd been aboard; it's ballasted down for boat operations but by malfunction kept going down, to a gentle sandy bottom. But 10 or 15 feet from lifeboats! Where is the bottom?
BZ thanks!
Much as I personally like Seydlitz and agree with Dr. Clarke's point about the fast-battleship option as a potentially better route for Germany, did no one in the German naval hierarchy consider the British use of battlecruisers for trade interdiction and consider that as grounds for building faster, lighter battle cruisers (two words). You would think, with the potential for Britain as a possible future foe, the thought of trade interdiction with something larger than submarines and converted merchantmen might have crossed someone's mind.
Since a lot of german naval thinking at the time was focused on fighting and winning against a royal navy that would do a close blockade of germany, nobody really put that great a thought on trade warfare beyond the north sea. That and the fact that german yards would never really be able to outbuild the british ones led to them very quickly and thoroughly go down the route of considering survivability and fighting a decisive engagment in the north sea before everything else. As far as I am aware only with the later Derfflinger-class did the naval command consider using them to raid british shipping beyond the north sea.
Bravo zulu
To quote a certain Dr Clarke - a battlecruisers needs a speed advantage and room to manoeuvre. Given that the Germans are fighting the biggest battle fleet ever assembled in a fairly restricted bit of water I'm not sure that the speed advantage helps them that much, especially with the advatage of Room 40 for the RN
QA.
Yes overall. though I see hunt for Gorben and Brestlow might end with a fight instead of a bombardment of the dardanels.
She was damaged almost an much as Drach was after his Video about her damage after making the model of her and then burning the damage in to it...... his refit time was likewise similar in length.
A side question: you've mentioned that had the QE class used small boilers they may have reached 28 knots! It has always been a bit a mistery to me why the RN took so long to incorporate small boilers into their bigger ships (I think the Courageous class of "large light cruisers" were the first ones?). The usual answer is that they had higher maintenance requirements and for long deployments away I guess that reason makes sense. But is that all?
The trouble is those reasons were added on afterwards, in the case of the QEs Jellicoe & other senior naval officers were advised by industry that they weren't viable and wouldn't be ready in time... this was wrong, but what they advised, there were/are suspicions as to why...
@@Knight6831 STB seem quite proven technoloy to me. The Germans also thought it would be a very short war but nevertheless they used STB very early on. All their battlecruisers, included Seydlitz used small tube boilers. On the other hand, large light cruisers aside, the first British capital ship using them would be HMS Hood, years after WWI had finished.
how long did the whole back turrets exploding bit last? How fast would those flames be spreading?Also flooding the magazines (with yourself in them) is suicide right? You just chose to save the ship since you gonna blow up anyways right?
It's minutes, more accurately seconds - it spreads fast once it's got started... and yes, it is having the presence of mind in the face of certain death to do an action which will definitely kill you but save your friends amongst the crew... It's in a very short amount of time recognising your own mortality and going beyond that - we call it bravery because honestly we don't have a more accurate word for it as it's sacrificing even a small chance of survival to save everyone.
13:30 How much actual design was there of the N3 though? The G3 had clearly been thought through and was going to be built.
The n3 though. I'm not sure about that.
I get the distinct impression the G3 and N3 was a shell game. Push the N3, and hope you get both, but know that you'll get the G3. (Which of course that didn't work out either.)
14:00 KGV might just be a plain old battleship. (Maybe Yamato as well.) All the other treaty battleships could not stand up to 16" shells at battle ranges, nor even in fact their own shells. But KGV could. It's a byproduct of a 14-in gun, but it is still true. Heck, she could stand up to Nelson or Colorado.
They'd placed the confirmed orders with the yards, materials were being procured - it was a very expensive shell game going to an extent they really didn't need to.
So Von der Tann, Moltke, Goeben, and Seydlitz are all build as Fast Battleships, with a speed that is within the 'Margin of Damage' to the first four RN Battle-Cruisers. Should cost the Germans a (grossly estimated) few million Quid. This practically demotes Battle-Cruisers to pure Cruiser hunters, only permitted overseas basing to actually carrying out their Trade protection duties. So that's 7 million Pounds of Capital ships that can't go into the North Sea.
Increasing the problem is that both sides would switch to FBB, as soon as the specs for Von der Tann hit. For the Germans this would occur at the laying down in March 1908. So Posen and the four Helgolands would have been switched over to the new design, which for a marginal increase in price grants a much better ship.
By the time this becomes clear to the RN both the Colossus-Class and Indefatigable would be too far al long. This erases the early start advantage that the RN had up to all ships in service or under construction around mid 1910. That's 10 Dreadnaughts and 4 Battle-Cruisers relegated to second division.
Thus with the OTL build schedule pre Elizabeth you would have a RN Fast Battle-line of,
18 Super-Dreads FBB (6 BC, 4 Orion, 4 KGB, 4 ID).
VS
19 Super-Dread FBB (4 BC, 1 Nassau, 4 Helgoland, 5 Kaiser, 4 König, 1 Derfflinger)
There is no way that GB or the RN would permit anything close to these number to occur. So looking at 6 upgraded BC and 6 ships Classes for Orion, KGV, ID, and E for 30 FBB all being commissioned by the end of 1914. Said 30 FBB to be build within three and a half years.
*HMS Indefatigable would be turned into HMAS Australia.
**Don't think the three export BB get build, even Salamis might be butterflied. Might well be replaced by four second hand now too slow Dreadnaughts/Nassau.
Could the Germans built some version of a capital ship that would have been a fast battleship for that era?
The answer is yes they could have, it would have been as North Sea/Baltic focused as the Littorios of WWII were Mediterranean Focused, but they could have
Seydlitz visited the bottom
As a swede I always had a problem keeping a straight face when talking shorthand for the Austria-Hungaria Imperial and Royal anything (k.u.k. in swedish synonymous with dick).
I don't think fast battleships in place of battlecruisers make sense for Germany. They are, as Mahan would say too much battleship to serve as a cruiser and while they're not too much cruiser to fit in the line of battle the speed is wasted expense when they're in the line of battle with slower battleships.
Replacing both types with fast battleships puts England into a bind where they need to plan to fight the German maneuver oriented fleet but also have to plan to fight the American "our guns have the same range, who cares how they maneuver" fleet and can't very well do so with the same ships with current technology. They essentially need completely different Atlantic (anti-American and anti-French) and North Seas (anti-German) fleets until small tube boilers come in, and they have to keep building expensive small tube QE successors instead of economizing as they did with the Rs.
Replacing just the battlecruisers with fast battleships the English might need to match them as a type for political reasons, but if they ever liberate themselves from the slower portion of the German battle line they open themselves up to defeat in detail so just building some battlecruisers that can distract and damage them while the battle fleet mops up the now hopelessly outnumbered slow wing of the German battle fleet neutralize them tactically.