Dracs rants are always awesome. And hilarious. Another good one is David Fletcher of the tank museum at bovingtion who the Chieftain (Nicolas Morin considers the king of sarcasm.
This channel has blown up. It makes me super happy. Love seeing how comfortable Ryan is on camera and I love how you're using your platform to do more than just advertise the museum. This is so awesome
We still have pocket battleships , but no more Ryan sticking his hands in his pockets on the Battleship! Alot of people are very proud of you Ryan. You've grown into this position better than anyone else they could of chosen. Good job buddy.
He still looks like someone might be holding a high powered nerf gun on him off screen. You can tell he does the videos for the love of history and not because he loves making videos. It is impressive to watch this video compared to the first videos he's made, but but part of why I love this channel. It makes it feel like a friend is telling you stuff instead of a over produced TV show.
It's great presence but clumsy presentation. Ryan is still awkward at times but is far better at explaining things now than 6 months ago. The fact that he loves the subject he's talking about outweighs the "Are people really listening" feel the videos sometimes have. Keep It Up Mate, People are interested and listening.
Top 10 worst haircuts to put on a person, haha. I mean.. it's probably due to the camera/green screen that makes it worse, and we're not here for fashion advice anyways. I'll be good if he stays the way he is look wise, anything you're comfortable with, it's great. Confidence wise and presentation wise, I would agree that an updated look could boost confidence, but simple practice and getting used to an aufience does the same, as we see.
Mark you are so right! I would love to see Ryan do a top worst things about "Under Siege" everything from having seven people able to fire a 16 inch gun, to having the Tomahawks somehow taken out of their ABLs, transported thur the ship on a rail and then back on Deck. Also the CIWS will not engage a crossing target and there is no manual targeting on that Mod.
Just two more quick ones and then I'll be quiet: everything about the Harpoon land attack missile ca and anchoring in the middle of the Pacific that is 1 long anchor chain also the brakeman on the anchor windlass are very experienced I don't think these Elite Mercenaries have a lot background Iin handling the brake more likely it would be a runaway chain right to The Bitter End
That would actually be an interesting debate re: whether the difference in power between an 18 inch vs. 16 inch shell was worth the tradeoffs. It'd be a purely academic one, though, since the twilight of the battleship as the mainstay of the fleet had already happened by the time the Yamato-class put to sea, so the conventional ship-vs-ship battles they were designed to dominate just never happened.
@@TomG1555 I think he was specifically talking about the San Shiki "type 3" anti-aircraft shells, which were notably bad at it's intended purpose (anti-aircraft fire) yet still comprised 40% of Yamato's main ammunition load. The copper drive bands were poorly machined and constant firing caused damage to the gun barrel's rifling. In fact, one of these shells may have exploded early and damaged one of Musashi's guns during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea.
Except the American pilots reported that when the 18" AA shells exploded it was a spectacular fireworks display, totally ineffective as a weapon but a spectacular show.
Also didn't you have to clear the decks to fire them? Which would mean you only have a brief window to fire at the incoming aircraft otherwise it interferes with the smaller AA mounts.
Drachinifel did an interview with former Iowa commanding officer Larry Seaquist about a year ago. He mentioned that during Iowa's time escorting tankers in Operation Earnest Will they had paravanes installed on the ship and were basically plowing a channel free of Iranian mines in the Suez Canal. I agree that using an expensive asset such as a battleship for minesweeping is not the greatest idea but it does show the versatility of the Iowa class.
To be entirely fair to the Richelieu-class, the 6" 'single-purpose' secondary guns were *intended* to be able to engage aircraft as well, it just wasn't wholly practical to do so due to relatively slow elevation and traverse.
Similar story with the 6.1" the Japanese developed, originally they had a goal of being made into dual-purpose guns, however that plan fell through. It was equipped with the Type 91 dual-purpose fuze and a mechanism to have it set for AA or AS at the gun, however it proved not too useful as an AA weapon due to other limitations (hoists, training rate, they couldn't even get the 70 degree elevation they originally wanted). Later on, when Yamato received the Type 22 Mod 4 radar upgrade, they also replaced 2 of her wing 6.1" with a bunch more dual purpose HA 12.7cm guns.
Generally speaking secondary batteries was never really successful and the German navy from the start always had separated artillery for AA batteries and naval guns as well the Italian navy...
@@paoloviti6156 german navy was out of the Battleship building business for 20 years. So they completely lost touch with everybody else, as construction teams tend to disband, when there is no work. So they didn’t have dual purpose mounts among other things. The best idea would have been to roll with the punch and build no battleship😄
@@theonlymadmac4771 or just bite the bullet, drop the 15 cm secondaries and mount far more (28-32 guns) 10.5 cm guns for both AA and anti-surface roles.
@@cyonemitsu Rate of fire and reloading mechanics - auto reload and high cap storage is it true that the Yamato still used human operated AA guns.. ? i wonder if smoke generating explosives will do also good to fence fighters .. if the smoke is at the right altitude - one must fly lower to engage.. and get within a different gun type range.
Not only Tirpitz has had deck Torpedo tubes. Scharnhorst class too. This was because of their main purpose as commerce raiders. To sink a merchant ship after capturing the crew is much easier with a torpedo. Especially at night gunfire can be seen from lots of miles distance and. So German raiders often used Torpedos at night.
@@George-Hawthorne Not Pointless, they were used successfully at Jutland by the British in WWI ,and Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had to make a hard turn to starboard to evade a torpedo sited be Prinz Eugen in the Denmark Straits. The only ship it could have come from is H.M.S. Hood.
Ryan comes off to me as someone who literally has so much technical knowledge just spilling out of his every utterance, and yet, comes off being able to explain himself in a way a non-engineering degreed person can understand. Well done video!
23:00 Concerning the torpedo-theory for the loss of HMS Hood, I very much recommend the video Drachinifel did on the loss of Hood. He nicely outlines why that theory doesn't hold water. In fact in that video he is going over all the various theories about that incident in great detail.
There is the mystery of the torpedo noise identified by Prinz Eugen's hydrophones that caused Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to take evasive action during the Battle of the Denmark Strait. Prinz Eugen's crew were experienced and it can't be automatically assumed they made a mistake. There was a fire on Hood just before she exploded, perhaps it's just possible the torpedo crew fired the torpedo(s) in the general direction of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to avoid the fire getting to them.
@@philiphumphrey1548 Maybe. But even so, that was only half of Hood's complement. it did carry a set of reloads. Also, the launchers were (if i recall correctly) not anywhere near the fire on the boat deck. And even if the torpedos had been set off by the fire (unlikely due to the explosives used being very stable just like TNT), it would have exploded fairly high up in the ship and nowhere near violently enough to cause the cataclysmic detonation that tore the ship apart further down. Had the torpedoes exploded aboard the ship, they would have torn a chunk out of the superstructure, but that is about it. Most of a torpedo's destructive capability comes from the water surrounding it - because unlike air, water can not be compressed by an explosion.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 The reason the DNC Sir Stanley Goodall, who was on the Hood design team believe it was possible is that the damage it could do to the top of the hull girder close to the discontinuity of the forecastle break. Hood was overweight and a stressed ship travelling in a moderately poor sea state at high speed.
@@JevansUK Overweight and stressed she may have been, but given the location of the torpedo launchers it would have caused the ship to snap downwards, not upwards - and that is IF the shockwave from the explosion had been powerful enough. However, the sip snapped upwards - meaning the explosion has to have happened way further down in the ship - in a location where there is no physical connection to the torps for a shockwave to travel along. as I said, it would have blown a chunk out of the superstructure - and that would be it. Severe damage? Sure. Mission-kill? Possibly. Cataclysmic destruction? Not really. I for one find the trough-theory most plausible.
Fun fact: the wing turrets of Russian battleships were likely the cause of their capsizing during the Russio-Japanese war. Apparently, the Russians took the French built battleships, and upgraded the wing mounted turrets, causing the ships to have heavy weights off center, making them easy to capsize.
I think the pompous Japanese pagoda masts had the same effect. I remember an interview with a veteran aviator who talked about plugging enough torpedoes into the hull and that mast would make them turn turtle.
I think the hull shape also kinda helped in that. The french and russian ships tended to have a tumblehome hull, where the hull narrowens as it gets taller. This means that when one side floods it is really easy to capsize.
The Japanese came REALLY close to putting depth charges on the Yamato class Battleships, which isn't surprising since they put depth charges on all their late war carriers, that has to be the worst idea ever even beating torpedos.
Musashi did have depth charge rails installed on her fantail in 1944 whether or not she had depth charges to launch from them is debatable i suppose but if she had the rails you have to assume she had the charges
depth charges yes, torpedos not so much. In a broadside scenario torpedo's are a very good choice even more so given just how damn good japanese ones were for the time. ITs just that putting 40 torpedo tubes on one side of the ship as primary armament is a little too much, its like that "all the missiles meme" but with torpedo's
The ram bow on early Dreadnoughts was another pretty useless feature, even dough the battleship HMS Dreadnought managed to ram and sink the German U-boat U-29. Probably the only instance used successfully..
The semi-ram bow on Dreadnought and subsequent classes was only ram-shaped. It was in no way reinforced or intended to be used as a weapon, as it was in pre-dreadnoughts. It was used because it improved fuel efficiency.
There is a use for diesel propulsion in case of an emergency sortie. Unlike regular steam plants diesel doesn't need to raise power to move. The reason Nevada was able to get underway at Pearl Harbor was because they had recently switched from one boiler to another thus saving a great deal of time in raising enough steam pressure to move.
I want to add here, but I could be wrong. I thought those steam powered warships would usually keep steam raised in one or two boilers at all times; in case they had to make an emergency deployment. Short of being in dry dock; they would keep a boiler hot while in port.
@@wyndhamcoffman8961 I spent a career in Navy steamships. Unless you were in homeport, you would keep one plant steaming for "hotel services," if nothing else. You had to provide electrical power and heating for the ship as well as steam for other things, like laundry and galley. In homeport, unless we were going to be there only a few days, we'd shut the whole plant down and go on shore power and shore steam. The boilers are kept in hot layup with shore steam to prevent corrosion while shut down. Even idle boilers on a ship that is lit off will be on steam layup. It would take about 4 hours to light off and raise enough steam to get underway from shore steam layup. If you were going to be inport for longer than a month, the boilers would be drained, dried out and put on a dry layup with heated air or desiccant bags. As you can imagine, it takes a couple of days to get ready to light off when in that type of layup. There are other types of wet layup like using hydrazine, which is also very common.
@@wyndhamcoffman8961 The amount of steam pressure needed to run an electrical generator is much less than that needed to move a ship. Normally it could take an hour or more to raise enough steam pressure to move. After the war, in non nuclear powered ships, it became common, on new construction, to have diesel, or gas turbine as well as conventional boilers as part of the power plant so they would not have to wait to raise steam to move. A gas turbine (essentially a jet engine) could be used to give a speed boost when needed as well.
@@richardcutts196 Nuclear powered ships are steam propelled. And they also have diesel engines. Nuclear power just provides the heat for the steam generators. The diesel is used for hotel services when the nuclear plant(s) are offline. In port shore power is used.
@@richardcutts196 Civilian ships are diesel powered these days - even >100k tonnes ones. Big non-nuclear warships today will typically have diesels for cruising with extra gas turbines for action, whether using electric or direct drive. Smaller warships are mostly diesel with a few gas turbine. Prewar diesels did not scale well - massive ones were inefficient (eg the swirl chamber was invented in 1934) and too heavy. The middle of a war was not the right time to change new capital ship propulsion, so steam it stayed.
Flight decks, I can understand an aircraft catapults for a spotter plane. What I can't understand is putting a partial flightdeck and hangar on a battleship, like with the Ise and Hyuga of the IJN, I especially can't understsand putting a paltry number of strike craft on the ship rather than fighters that could protect the ship and her consorts from enemy air attacks.
This one is an easy one. Japan lost 4 carriers at Midway and needed a way to get more planes in the air. Ise and Hyuga were old and obsolete as actual combat ships, so they refitted them to carry an airgroup and operate as a light carrier. Light carriers were not a new concept.
@@MrEddieLomax That would be HMS Furious, Courageous and Glorious were converted in the interwar period from large light cruisers (whatever those were) straight to carriers, Furious ended up being something of a testbed for the royal navy and was never completed to her original spec.
That was that Winston Churchill's pet rocket program, wasn't it? Though if I'm not mistaken, it eventually led to the development of the radio proximity fuze, after photoelectric and acoustic ones proved to be, uh, not good at all.
The british had alot of goofy ideas across the board for defence and new weapons most of which were scrubbed.Its for that reason that Barnes Wallace was initially snubbed for his " bouncing bomb".Potentially just another expensive gimmick that wouldnt work.The rest is history.
Didn't the Japanese also experiment with ship mounted rocket AA launchers on their final WW2 ships too due to desperation? I think the Unryuu class had them.
Worst idea on a battleship to me would have been the so called hybrid battleships like the Japanese had where they had small flight decks installed with a very small number of aircraft on board. Other than the fact that they could scout for themselves in theory the number of planes in a battle would have made this entirely a waste of space for either guns or fuel or ships stores of some other kind. Also with them now having to carry around aviation grade gasoline for these few planes it made them even more in danger of fire. They would have been much better off just using that space to add another turret of main battery guns.
Japan realized that air power was the future and they didn’t have the resources to build a bunch of purpose built Carriers so they converted what they could to get as many planes out as possible
I can kind of understand the conversion of Hyuga and Ise in the context of the aftermath of Midway and wanting to replace those losses in flightdecks as quickly as possible. As it stood, both ships were obsolete (though still operating) by the start of WWII, so the thought was probably to try and get some use out of them which they couldn't provide as old BBs. I believe the conversions ran into problems with maintaining the ship's balance once the turrets were removed, though, and as you say they were never going to be able to operate anything like what even a CVL could. The IJN was grasping at straws, but understandable as a desperation move. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Hy%C5%ABga#Conversion_to_hybrid_carriers
I certainly entered this video expecting "half a flight deck" to be up there near the top. You might say tht once you add a flight deck, it's no longer a battleship.
The hybrid conversions would've been better off just being left as battleships and attempting to find a gun duel. If the Japanese had put a large battleship force into the Guadalcanal campaign, they might have still wrested control from the Americans in their night actions. Ise and Hyuga would've fared much better against South Dakota and Washington than Hiei and Haruna.
I have a few to add as well. *Ram Bows* These were the Emperor's New Clothes of Cruisers and Battleships from the 1860s through the 1910s, and no one _dared_ risk the ridicule of building a major warship without them. The mindset was that these warships would ram one another frequently in naval battles, which somehow wasn't dampened by the advent of armor-piercing ammunition, high explosive ammunition, torpedoes, and the constantly improving power, range, accuracy, and fire control of medium and large caliber naval guns. Ram bows also forced the use of tumblehome hulls, whose tendency to easily capsize became alarmingly apparent in the First World War, which is why they've almost never been used in any surface warships since. Moreover, the rammings that _did_ occur in combat were all against Submarines, Destroyers, minor surface combatants, and non-military vessels, none of which required a capitol ship to have a ram bow. *Extremely large-bore secondary guns* It was extremely common on Predreadnoughts to mount secondary guns that were nearly as gigantic as the guns in the main battery. Consequently, these ships ended up with guns too weak to effectively sink other Battleships, overkill against Cruisers, and too unwieldy for use against anything smaller. Fire control with these guns was quite a headache as well, considering that they would inevitably be used simultaneously with the main battery, because the shell splashes of a 10" shell are almost impossible to distinguish from a 12" shell, effectively making both batteries much harder to aim. *Low aft quarterdecks* Often used to minimize displacement or volume, the quarterdecks on many Battleships were one or more levels lower than the main deck, resulting in a quarterdeck that was very close to thew waterline --- perilously close, as luck would have it. Low quarterdecks were constantly awash in rough seas, which not only meant more flooding in the stern and equipment stowed topside constantly being washed overboard, but it also resulted in a loss of speed. *Hull-mounted casemates* Before small secondary gun turrets were a thing on Battleships, they often carried their secondary guns inside armored casemates. These had limited elevation and traversal, but they did offer protection for the gun crew, and a large quantity of them tended to give a 360-degree field of fire for the entire battery. Thing is though, casemates were partially open in front, and in warships that had them mounted on the hull, they tended to flood in rough seas. This not only weighed-down the ship, increase topweight, potentially flood further into the hull, and all sorts of other bad things, but flooded casemates were also unusable in combat, and any ready ammunition stowed in them while flooded could be ruined as well (particularly for guns that used powder bag charges) *Longitudinal Bulkheads* It has been common since the late 19th century for large ships to be built with major hull compartments isolated from one another by large bulkheads with watertight doors, so that if unstoppable flooding occurred inside one of these compartments, it could be sealed-off to keep the rest of the ship dry. These have prevented the sinking of more than a few ships, but there were two drastically differing schools of thought on how they should be built. The "British" philosophy was to have many latitudinal bulkheads, creating many compartments down the length of the ship, some of which could be fully-inundated without threatening to skin the ship. The "French" philosophy was to use a single longitudinal bulkhead that ran down the center of the ship, and to strategically balance flooding and counter-flooding between one side and another. History proved the British method was the correct decision. Many Battleships and Cruisers were needlessly lost in the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War to flooding that latitudinal bulkheads would have made manageable --- and it was all the more worse by the infamously bad topweight of many ships from this era (see the above comments about gigantic secondary guns), and the universal acceptance of the tumblehome hull.
About the torpedo tubes thing, I wonder if part of the reason they were kept is that it's mostly in pre-radar designs. If you have working radar, then you can at least spot the enemy even if you're both in a thick fog bank at night. Without that, you may not spot the enemy until you're basically in a naval knife fight, and it's a bit like carrying a bayonet - you'll probably never need it, but if you do, it might just be the thing that saves your life.
New York and Texas had single purpose secondary battery guns (5"51) through WW2. Although in their case there was some justification, since the ships were tasked primarily for shore bombardment.
That's mainly because there wasn't really any space available to mount 5" DP guns on those ships. The USN put 5"38s on EVERYTHING, I'm sure they would have thrown a few onto the New Yorks if it had been possible.
Here I'd point out the guns were intended for anti-destroyer and in that role they worked with the HMS Warspite hull mounted 5.5" repelling a German destroyer attack in the English channel. Deck mounted of course was better as they could help with AA...
The USN didn't put 5"38s on everything. 5"25s remained in use on the less heavily rebuilt battleships, where not replaced by turreted 5"38s such as on the NV and PA, as well as most of the inter war treaty cruisers. By the way, now that I think of it, the USS Arkansas (BB33) also carried 5"51s through WW2, similar to NY and TX.
Paravanes. My dad said they (destroyers) would sweep and clear the area off the beach, before the Battleship/Cruisers would arrive for shore bombardment. I suppose if the minesweepers or destroyers were unavailable or incapacitated for whatever reason, the Battleship would have something to work with as a last resort.
Paravanes cost almost nothing to mount to the battleship, and don't impede it's other functions - it's more of a case of "Might as well give it SOME kind of mine defense"
@8:00 - also a point with spotting tops _right next_ to smokestacks ... at flank speed, HMS _Dreadnought_ couldn't _use_ her spotting top because the heat from the smokestack fell on the access ladder for that spotting top and became too hot to use.
I was crew (Plank Owner) on USS Missouri in the 80s. We had a triple mount torpedo mount installed to experiment with ASW torpedoes. The spots were normally for the 25mm guns used for Arabian Sea deployments to keep Iranian speed boats at bay. Those were switched from Big Mo to Big J at Diego Garcia. There is still a cast ring on the bow at keel level that held paravane chains.
In the late 70's I did sea duty on an old DE steamer while my younger brother spent most of his time on diesel & gas turbine frigates, his complaint was the water discipline which steamers didn't have because of the water plants needed to keep the boilers happy.
Wing turrets, hexagonal layouts and other predreadnought oddities are found today on the armored cruiser Averof, which is a good example of features not found on ww2 museum ships. Just like battleship Texas as well. Averof also has a Ram bow, also a bizzare idea to fit on large warships, even as late as early 20th century.
I would have to add cage masts. They were supposed to be a lighter alternative to the design of the 1890s and be more resistant to battle damage. But storms knocked them down and they didn't provide a stable enough platform for ever-heavier ranging equipment for the main battery.
This was a fun video. Before I started the video I sat and thought of some of the stupid things put on Battleships. I came up with about 7, like casement turrets ,torpedoes, Turret tiers , etc. The I watched the video and all of them were covered. Made me smile, good job.
Thank you. I always enjoy discussions of bad engineering. I think the torpedoes were far worse than paravanes because of the primary reasons you gave- a hole in the side with a powerful warhead in it. The captain of the ship had the option of whether or not to deploy the paravanes and proceed or to call up the lighter vessels, but he had no option to remove the hole or the wasted and dangerous explosives.
Great video, Ryan, I'm totally with you on 9 of these bad ideas, with a few doubts about diesel cruise engines since they did work fairly well in extending the range of the "Pocket battleships". On the paravanes, when I got to do a ship check of the New Jersey (one of the Iowa's anyway, in preparation for the reactivations, I think in 1983 or 1982), I got to see her out of water. My main interest was in the propellers because NAVSEA's files had disappeared since the previous decommissioning, and the propellers were unusual with different dimensions, blade number, and other parameters for the inboard and outboard pairs. I recommend you do a video on the propellers on all US WW II battleships and the Navy's struggles with vibration and integration with the side protection! It's a really neat story that is covered in one of Mr. Garzke's books but his explanation isn't quite convincing. Two classes had to have their propellers replaced multiple times but I believe the Iowa's were right from day one. Too bad the guys who really knew the "backstage" story are deceased by now, but there's a paper trail in the National Archives. Sorry that was a digression to explain what I was doing walking around the floor of a drydock with a battleship in it. I walked around the ship and got to the bow, recognizing I'd never see one of those out of water again, and discovered a cast-metal padeye at the bottom of the stempost. I asked my host from the Navy Yard (that was before it was privatized) what that was and he said it's a fitting for the paravane. At that time I didn't know what a paravane was but there was a hole aft of the padeye that disappeared into the ship. It was big, maybe a foot diameter? Later I got back into the ship and discovered this pipe came right up through the hull and emerged on deck where the winch that you showed in the video is placed. Looking at photos of WW II vintage revealed that the paravanes, when stowed, had twin chains running down the stem of the ship on the outside, and from there they must have gone through the padeye and into the pipe and up inside the ship to the winch. The paravanes were not stored at the stem head so it's not that easy to visualize how they were deployed, but in use, the paravane produced lift and "flew" out from the ship's side, spreading the chain outboard and aft to "collect" the wires of moored mines. The mine wire would slide out along the chain till it hit the blade on the paravane and that was supposed to cut the wire, when the mine would bob up to the surface and the Marines would try to hit it before it was left astern. I don't think the ship really depended on the Marines to stop the mines from hitting the ship, because the cables would be cut far enough outboard that the ship would just steam on past the floating mines if the paravane functioned as intended. My understanding in the renovation discussions at NAVSEA was that the paravanes would not be reactivated so the comments in this video are news to me.
Apparently those beehive shells were also good for cratering runways, and may have saved some USN ships as during the initial night engagement at Guadalcanal, Hiei and Kirashima both had beehive shells loaded and staged in anticipation of bombing the runway at the US base, so their first few salvos were ineffective against the USN ships they were fighting.
Calling developing diesel engines for battleship the "worst" idea is nonsense. It was excellent idea for many reasons. It just so happen that it didn't work in practice for the time. I would definetely put single purpose secondary battery at first place. In the thirties and forties they really should've know better.
Very good list, Ryan. I especially concur with your criticism of the installation of torpedo tubes and broadside mounted casement guns on dreadnoughts.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention putting a flight deck on a battleships, Ise and Hyuga just was a waste of resources. I have no idea if Shinano would have been a good CV if she was finished but it just seemed like you either were left with a battleship that now has to stay out of gun range, or you have a carrier with very limited hanger space. This is more for trying to mount a full wing of craft from a full fledged flight deck as opposed to spotting aircraft stored in a small hanger. My list is 1. Trying to build BB-CV Hybrids 2. Use BBs as Minesweepers 3. Super firing turrets (Like Kearsarge and Virgina) 4. Mounting Torpedoes on BBs 5. En-echelon turrets 6. No dual purpose secondary guns on BBs built post World War I 7. Casements guns mounted in the hull. 8. Wing Turrets 9. Observation towers above smoke stacks 10. The original bows of the Scharnhorst class battleships
Has anyone ever seen plans/drawings of the Floatplane Bombers the Japanese intended to put on Ise and Hyuga? My understanding is that they were never constructed. I believe the Japanese also intended to use Shinano as more of a "Replenishment" Carrier, allowing aircraft from other Carriers to land and be rearmed/refueled, as opposed to a full fledged Fleet Carrier. Reportedly Kaga was more or less a successful BB to Carrier conversion. Her biggest drawback was that she was a few knots slower than other Japanese Carriers.
@@edwardmcirvin8342 You are correct on the Japanese intended use of the Shinano. It has always seemed to me to be a waste of a huge hull. Ise and Hyuga just seemed to be a bad idea as aircraft carriers that couldn't land planes. Of course the IJN was pretty much out of carrier capable pilots after June 1944. But as the turkey shoot demonstrated the capability of their pilots was pretty low even before then.
@@jimfisher5856 Yes, one has to seriously wonder how much utility Shinano would have provided (assuming she hadn't been sunk) considering when she would have entered Service. By that point the Japanese only had a handful of Unryu Class and some Light/Escort Carriers, not a lot of Aircraft and few Experienced Pilots, and not a lot of Fuel Oil to spare (I'm pretty sure Shinano would have been a Guzzler). I suspect even if Shinano had never been Torpedoed and Sunk she would have joined both Ise and Hyuga being bombed at Anchor and sunk in shallow water.
How about some honorable mentions: a) Torpedo netting, at Jutland the Germans were terrified their rather useless (at sea) torpedo nets were going foul their screws as they ran back to base. b) Unrotated Projectile (UP), useless boxes of high explosives and rocket fuel sitting atop turrets which had virtually no chance of hitting enemy aircraft c) Ise class reconstruction, on paper a battle-carrier is a winner. Classic hybrid combining ability to strike at long range with aircraft with the battleship's toughness and close range (relatively) firepower. In practice it combined the toughness of a light carrier with 1/3 diminished firepower of the original configuration. The planes, if they'd had any to carry, could not land on deck and lots of avgas might have proved problematic in a gunfight. d) Single shot medium AA batteries, 3.7 cm SK C/30 and 37 mm Modèle 1925 and the like made the 1.1-inch/75 and Type 96 25 mm look like a world beaters.
Lots of these are retrospective though, until tsushima, there were assumptions about battles being fought at under 5000yards. Even after that, the rangefinding tech isnt there
I believe that the torpedoes on battleships were meant to keep the enemy battleline from closing to the range where secondaries could blast out great chunks of the lesser armored portions of the ship, as the range where the approached line could expect to hit the approaching line was longer than the range that the approaching line could launch at. I suspect that paravanes were included on BBs on the off chance that a squadron of BBs might find itself in a minefield, while it did not have the luxury of waiting for lighter ships to show up to lead them through. Also, the marines are not trying to detonate the mines with their rifles; although, they would rejoice when that did happen (provided there were no splinters pelting the ship). The goal was to simply punch holes in the flotation chamber, filling it with water, and causing the mine to sink harmlessly to the bottom.
Drachinifel had a drydock question on why battleships used torpedoes. The idea was apparently to use them against the enemy battle line as a whole rather than specific ships. If the torpedoes can reach the enemy line (arguably possible until gunnery range increased to around 20,000 yards during WW1) then you can launch torpedoes "into the brown" (at the formation) that basically have a 1/3 chance of hitting a ship within the line of battle because of the spacing.
Yeah! I've often read that quadruple barrel turrets come with a league of complications and issues that really just made them a failed experiment. They were used and sometimes worked well enough but there's a number of good reasons they weren't more widespread. The french seemed to have commited to it a bit. British experimented with it. I'd be curious to hear about more cases.
Here's a bad idea that was exclusive to the British: mounting anti-aircraft rocket launchers on battleships. The Unrotated Projectile (UP) rockets were intended to drop a cable with explosives on the ends in the path of an aircraft. An "aerial minefield", in effect. The Royal Navy (at the insistence of Churchill, who really liked the idea) mounted the UP launchers on top of the main battery turrets. HMS Hood's UP launchers were ignited by a shell hit shortly before her loss.
I'd add two more thoroughly useless additions to battleships. HMS Hoods "Unrotated Projectile" AA - unlikely to be more effective then a fireworks display when under air attack, as a note they issued single grenade launchers to escort ships for use as AA - the sailors found then useless but did load them with potato's for fun... Beehive and all the other methods of using the main armament for AA, I'd suggest they'd get similar results from filling shells with gold or bank notes...
The 16-inch guns on the Iowa's could also be used for anti-aircraft. They just sent the fuse on a normal high explosive shell to explode at a certain time
By "grenade launchers" I'm assuming you're referring to the Holman projector? That was actually pretty effective at scaring off German aircraft, since the grenades used in them (basically glorified Molotov cocktails) made a big cloud of black smoke when they burst, making it look to the attackers like they were being shot at with actual AA cannon.
The reason beehive and other "big gun" AA was useless, though, was because it was designed to deal with high altitude bombers. But high altitude bombing of a ship in open waters was quickly found to be useless so ships needed lots of short range (20 and 40mm) stuff instead. So it wasn't a dumb idea AT THE TIME - it just dealt with a threat that turned out not to be a threat after all.
Just came across your videos and site yesterday. I describe it as "Everything I never knew about battleships - and more". I am an Air Force vet (enlisted, Viet Nam era) but love your channel. Many years ago I toured the USS Massachusetts at Battleship Cove in Fall River.
In regards to wing turrets, it could be a bit understandable, Machinery was quite big, and there were concerns (and possibly turret design incompatibilities) with superfiring guns. Using en echelon or all centerline might've just not been doable (without significantly lengthening the ship) with a number of the designs that used wing turrets due to technological limitations of the time.
it made sense for the first generation of dreadnoughts but by ww1 gun control technology had advanced to the point where it became more practical have all the main battery guns mounted centerline
@@RocketHarry865 Exactly what I was trying to say. At the time such ships were built they really didn't have options to go all centerline yet; I think with the German hexagonal battleships they were still using triple expansions preventing even a 3rd centerline turret whilst Dreadnought with turbines could fit one in. Once sighting hoods improved and machinery got better going for more centerline turrets made more sense. Really, the only ship where I think the wing turrets were a bad idea was on the Courbet class.
There is a single benefit to echelon turrets, but it's a secondary consideration at best. As described, it limits the amount of superstructure you can build on the ship, which has the benefit of giving the ship a greater righting moment by lowering its center of gravity.
I watched... very, very hopefully... and sure enough, I wasn't disappointed by the inclusion of torpedo tubes! That made this old TM2 smile. Just imagining the maintenance requirements... haha!
At 1st "I was like why on earth would you have minesweeping capiblities on a battleship" but then when you theorized why you might have them I was thinking "Why on earth wouldn't you have minesweeping capiblities on a battleship". I think it's just one of those better to have something then absolutely nothing type things. Probably would probably make the crew feel better also because they would at least have some defense against mines then just shutting the engines off and praying to God you don't drift into one.
I think Battleships having torpedos has merit, but purely as a support role. Essentially having them for what Rodney tried to use them for, a scuttling weapon. For enemy or friendly ships (you don't want captured), having a weapon meant to quickly sink a disabled ship is handy. That said, they should be incorporated into the ship for that idea, and not for an active battle. So no underwater tubes, or a lot of exposed tubes. Having 4-8 tubes at the front or rear of the ship in a blast resent case (when not in use) shouldn't prove much a hazard.
In Sweden we had the Vasa. An enormous expensive investment at its time. The worst idea was the ship itself. It became to top heavy and was pretty much designed as self sinkable, (then we did it again with Kronan). Of course this happened. And that is why we at typically Swedish manner designed a museum around Vasa, and proudly made it a tourist attraction.
The Vasa as originally designed was a fine ship. However the King Gustavus Adolphus thought he was a design genius and kept ordering changes to ship so that it was a disaster waiting to happen. The main gun deck was designed so low to the waterline and the sails were too big. What happened was a strong wind ripped the ship over and water rushed in the open gun ports that were only 3” above the water. Vasa capsized minutes into its first deployment.
A former co- worker was a gunner's mate on the New Jersey in the late stages of the Vietnam war. I knew him in the early 2000s. He didn't say much about it. He was a good man though. To all veterans, thank you one and all, whatever flag you served under. Those who make the decision to put the public's safety above their own are the ones we should be supporting.
I would go for the same setup that you find on RMS Queen Mary 2. Combination Diesel Electric for cruising speeds and Gas Turbine Electric for high speed. Nuclear is too risky because a battleship is a frontline weapon that has to resist counter fire. If an enemy shell punches a hole through your lead shielding and damages the reactor it's pretty much Game Over for your ship.
@@legiran9564 they did a video on this. Long an short is, BAD IDEA. The shock from firing the main guns would scram the reactor. Just too delicate for battleships.
I think a modern battleship would be nuclear powered. It also would likely not have many guns on it, I would envision a modern BBN as a massive missile ship, like a Kirov, but bigger. Modern torpedoes and anti-ship missiles also make the armor far less useful. Modern missile would just fire off a shaped charge down the top of a turret into a magazine, modern submarine torpedoes have warheads that could break the keel on any BB ever built.
20:55 I heard of a 2nd possible use of torpedos by a battleship/battlecruiser in WW2. In the video from Drachfiniel about the sinking of the Hood where he covered all kinds of options, he also looked at the torpedos being hit and exploding and he mentioned, that the crew on Prinz Eugen reported torpedoes in the water, which didn't came from Prinz Eugen, obviously, and couldn't have come from PoW
The turrets in echelon started before British battlecruisers, in armored turret and barbette ships of the 1870's and 1880's. They had the same blast effect problems then. It's a wonder it took so long for various navies to figure that out.
the main reason was boilers basically boilers back then were not very efficient compared to later eras, so to produce the same output you needed much more boilers, which took a huge amount of space on the ship, so much that making superfiring turrets was essentially impossible if you look at plans of old pre dreadnought and dreadnought era BBs with wing/en echelon turrets, you will see that the engineering spaces take essentially the entire length between the fore and aft turrets, it was only with the development of better boilers and engines that the engineering spaces could be condensed, allowing the mounting of turrets in a superfiring manner
Not sure about other battleships, but I know the reason Dreadnought had wing turrets was because Fisher wanted the ship to be able to fire 6 guns fore and aft, which considering she predated superfiring turrets, isn’t a bad rationale for wing turrets.
Actually the mast debacle on Dreadnought and later even the Orion class was caused by admiralty board request that the rear leg of the tripod support derricks for boat handling, whilst the DNO maintained that turrets should retain sighting hoods which ensured that super firing guns were impracticable due to blast effects.
There are only bad hair days on a battle ship museum obviously. But finding ideas for interesting videos is obviously what these guys running this channel are good at.
Mixed secondary batteries are only a “mistake” if you are designing your battleships to operate as part of large task force in the Pacific and you are anticipating a long range daylight battle against an opponent with a strong air arm. This is why the Americans, and to a slightly lesser extent the British, went with dual purpose guns. For the European navies that went with mixed batteries this was not the case. For Italy and Germany, France was just as much a naval threat as the UK and the French were laying down 2,500-2,900 ton destroyers with max speeds of over 40 knots, carrying 10+ torpedoes. Against surface threats like this I have my doubts that a 5in gun is going to have enough stopping power to reliably damage an attacking contre-torpilleur enough to prevent it from launching its torpedoes. The French faced a similar problem from Italian light and scout cruisers, and would have to operate in the Mediterranean where the possibility of simultaneous enemy air/surface attack was higher. The limited effectiveness of dual purposes weapons against surface threats is part of the reason why the British opted for the 5.25in on the KGVs and Vanguard instead of the 4.5in and is why the Americans were looking to go from the 5in/38 to the 5in/54 in the Montanas.
From what I've come accross in regards to paravanes, the idea was that they would be deployed on either side from the bow of the battleship. As a battleship is relatively a very wide vessel, it has a large footprint when moving through a potential minefield, with the sole exception of sailing directly into a mine, a mine would in most cases hit the ship further down its side, as the ship pass by, so to avoid this the wires that is attached to the paravane would deflect the anchored mine outwards, away from the hull towards the paravane, where the mine's moring line would be cut, by a special "knife" device on the paravane. The mine would pop to the surface at a safe distance from the ship, so it could be disposed of with gunfire. The fins of the deployed paravanes on either side of the ship, is ofcourse adjusted in a way so they keep a certain depth, and will move outward away from the ships hull, when dragged trough the water. So the paravanes was not used per say for active minesweeping, but more for the ships own protection, when it sailed through waters that an enemy might potentially have laid mines, I.e. the approaches to a harbour or a straight that sees a lot of other maritime traffic which the enemy wish to target with a few well placed mines etc... Anyway just my 2 cent on why paravanes are on a battleship, or any other naval vessel. 🤔🤔🤔
Dumbest idea is trying to combine a battleship with a carrier. Long flight decks make it hard to place large turrets, and while you can slip on armor, aircraft, bombs and fuel don't do well against shell fire. Battleships are designed to slug it out at gun range with an enemy, aircraft carriers need to be kept well back. Also, the optimal position to launch and recover aircraft probably isn't best for delivering a broadside salvo to an enemy ship.
If I remember it correctly the North Carolina class battleships came very close to being built with a hanger/triple seaplane launch set up forward and a pair of quadruple 14inch turrets aft.
Well that's too harsh of a judgement as the Japanese didn't really do so because they wanted to, but because they had to try something, besides those battleship were already useless ships as they had pretty much 0 combat capability. What use was a battleship with it's guns to the Japanese, as such vessel couldn't even get within a hundred miles of anything that was worth shooting before getting sunk by aircraft.
I always thought the Japanese battle carriers were bizarre Ise and Hyuga. They didn't appear to be very successful either. Would like a review on them if you could please..
IIRC, they were supposed to be full conversions to carriers, but it wasn't feasible to do it in one shot for various reasons, so they planned to do the conversion in three phases and just never got past the first.
The 4" secondaries on HMS Renown and Repulse could almost be considered sky mounts. They were nearly as high off the waterline as the Texas 3" mounts, but at least they were connected to a magazine via a very long trunk.
Kersage the only battleship not named for a state served for many years as a crane ship. She served so long that she had to give up her name to an Essex class CV. I believe she was finally scrapped in the 1950's.
12:10-I’ve seen some pictures of those hull-mounted turrets that were actual rotating turret instead of the opening that you described here, and they were water-tight.
The last IJN battleship built with torpedo tubes entered service 6 years before development on the Type 93 torpedo even started. Also, the Type 93 was a 24"/61cm diameter torpedo while all of the battleships had tubes for 21"/53.3cm ones though the Type 95 potentially could have been used. What's important is that when those battleships were designed, they were designed with WW1 torpedo capabilities in mind.
@@AdamosDad I think the main surprise of the USN was how raw their night fighting tactics were in the start of the war, even with radar. In daylight (or in less confined waters than at Guadalcanal) even the LL would be way short of main gunnery range and even if a torpedo can run for a very lomng distance it is practically impossible to hit anything with outside a few miles. It after all only travels at 50 knots pr hour whereas a shell moves at 1600 knots pr hour.
Correction: the Littorio-class's secondary guns were actually dual-purpose and not single-purpose, as while they were mostly meant for defence against surface targets, they could also be used for AA. In fact, historians have argued that if the Roma and her sisters would have shot their secondary batteries for AA during the German bombing, Roma would have likely not been sunk (I personally doubt this statement, but it's still a possibility nonetheless).
honestly. in terms of the no. 1 pick, it's more of a case of "it can fit on the ship and doesn't take up much space, might as well just in case" imo it doesn't deserve the number 1 spot, the others were worse design choices in which they were usually a hazard and this one just doesn't really fit in
I think the point was that actually using them was a bad idea. Because using your battleship as a mine sweeper is a really good way to lose your battleship. Better to have a smaller (and more replaceable) ship do that, then send the battleship(s) after the mines are gone.
@@vbscript2 sure, but imo having it with "it doesn't hurt to have it, and it'll hurt more if we don't have it" really just makes it undeserving of the worst idea
Maritime Diesel powered drive and placing AA guns on the ships high vintage point is actually not bad idea, just that at the time technology had not catch on and the implementation is questionable ( for how they do it then ). Today we see navy putting their CIWS on top of the super structure , we see maritime Diesel power plant so good that they are used on some of the largest ship of todays
Yes, but the CIWS has all of its ammunition in the box under the gun/radar mount -- it's designed to be a 'drop-on' installation, requiring only ship's power (and a minimal activation connection to the battle center) -- and it's a fairly protracted process to roll the card up to the CIWS and reload it. It's been some years, but I remember at the time, it was described as having four missile's worth of ammunition -- that is, it could be expected to be able to knock down four missiles before needing to be reloaded.
Paravanes are just as dumb on Carriers, too (the carriers retained them from their origins as Cruisers). There is an argument that Cruisers ought have paravanes as a cruiser--in the day--was the smallest vessel one sent, alone, to trouble spots. And if a CA has them a BB must, therefore, also. QED. Dumb. Torpedoes on BBs is clearly an accounting requirement. Torpedoes are ridiculously "cheap" for their capability. You get a fire-and-forget weapon with a 1000# warhead that can do in your enemies for less than the cost of an entire Destroyer or Torpedo Boat. Ok, really dump to have a 3-5 mile weapon on ships meant to engage at >10 miles--but, accountants are accountants.
If one were building a battleship today, torpedoes would make much more sense than they did back in the day - nowadays, modern torpedoes considerably outrange even the best guns, rather than the other way around.
Good list. IIRC, the Graf Spee was brought to battle because her diesel only allowed her a 26 knot top speed while the RN cruisers had 30 knot speed. By 1945, gas turbine derivatives were encroaching on the diesels' advantages. Today diesels do rule in the
Graf Spees top speed was actually down to 25 knots due to fouling of the hull, a problem every merchant raider that operates for prolonged time at sea has to deal with. But I don't think that even a 30 knot Graf Spee would have been able to avoid the engagement, by the time she identfied the ships she was approaching as warships she was so close that the british were able to identify her as well and give pursuit. So the only chance had would have been a high speed chase throughout the day and hope to escape at night - that would have consumed a lot of her fuel.
My number one would be center line bulkheads. This was common throughout the pre-dreadnought era, and early dreadnoughts. It did not allow for even flooding in case of an underwater hit, and usually led to capsizing rather rapidly.
To be imposed implies one on top of the other. The weakness of the KEARSARGE turrets was that the 8-inch gun turrets had thinner armor than the 13-inch guns. It also meant that for stability the ships had to have a very low freeboard. Ryan is correct in that the KEARSARGEs were exceptionally good gunnery ships. The VIRGINIAs rolled quite a bit making fire control much more difficult.
On superfiring (or superimposed) turrets: There are two simple, but primary, reasons the early dreadnoughts used wing turrets. One is that the sighting hoods on the turrets were subject to blast effects from a superfiring turret. The US Navy was the first to place gunsights where the gun aimer would not be concussed by a nearby superfiring gun, and only the US Navy had superfiring turrets in all its dreadnought designs. Fred Jane wrote about new US Navy sights in the 1905 Jane's Fighting Ships in an article on recent developments in gunnery. The other reason is that if you need to add guns to your broadside, to put them all on the center line requires more length, which means more displacement, which means much higher cost. In the blessed gold-standard days of the early 20th century, governments couldn't simply print more money or monetize ever increasing amounts of debt, so everywhere they had to control their naval expenditures. Almost all the design failings of ships of this period can be traced, at least in part, to the compromises the designers had to make in obedience to the requirements of economy.
Oh, another adept of gold money idiocy? Of course they could print more money, they just had to lower the amount of gold in the coins slightly. Devaluation of money is as old as civilization. To add to it, gold money is a trap for imbeciles (see all economic problems coming with changing ratio of silver to gold price that could topple countries by making their money very easy to manipulate) and the fact the without monetary base expansion with economic growth your economy gets crippled by deflation squeeze...
Some Comments: 1. The Yamato-class battleships for Japan were supposed to be Diesel-powered, and the Japanese spent a lot of time between the wars trying to develop a very high-powered Diesel. They failed. The reason that the pocket battleships could use Diesels were that they simply were not that big, and 8 Diesels could power them. 2. Echelon and Wing Turrets: The British went to the echelon and wing turrets because of the location of the turret sighting hoods, which were mounted on the top of the turret. If a super-firing turret fired over the lower turret, the blast of the guns knocked out the turret pointers. The U.S. Navy had the sighting positions on the side of the turret and did not encounter that problem. The British had this problem throughout World War One, with the result that even with super-firiing turrets, the ahead and astern fire was restricted to a single turret. They could not fire a super-firing turret at less than a 30 degree angle with the lower turret. The blast effects of the early wing turrets restricted the arch of training to more than 30 degrees off of the fore and aft line. The echelon turrets firing across the deck severely strained the hull structure and did a lot of damage to the deck and superstructure. 3. Spotting positions: The British continued to have the problem of the spotting tower located behind the fore funnel up to the beginning of World War One. The justification for it was that it made for easier boat handling. It appears that Jellicoe was one of the main supporters of this location. Not only did the towers suffer from smoke, but the gases coming out of the funnels were HOT, and the towers were essentially not habitable. The battlecruiser Lion had this backwards location, and had to be modified at a cost of 60,000 Pounds, or about $300,000 at the time, to correct the problem. 4. Hull mounted guns: Once World War One started, and the British had to operate all year round in the North Sea, the folly of the hull-mounted gun became swiftly apparent. Both the Queen Elizabeth-class ships and the Iron Duke-class ships had the casement guns, especially the one near the stern blanked off, and the guns mounted on the weather deck. 5. Torpedo Tubes: The loss of the German battlecruiser Lutzow at the Battle of Jutland appears be the result of two 12 inch hits from the British battlecruiser Invincible on the foreward torpedo room, which was one of the largest compartments located below the armor deck. The massive amount of water flooding into this compartment brought several other forward hits underwater, and doomed the vessel. The compartment also proved to not nearly as water-tight as though, and continued to flood compartment further aft. Putting torpedo with a maximum slow-run range of about 11,000 yards on ships capable of fighting effectively at over 12,000 yards is utterly inexplicable except to sheer inertia on the part of the designers and upper naval staff.
Richelieus 152 mm guns were theoretically able to engage aircraft at long range. They had s maximum elevation of 90 degrees straight up. They werent a great design and didnt work well but they WERE dual purpose! compared to the German 152s on theScharnhorsts and Bismarcks. Also just because the 5’38 turned out to be massively successful doesnt mean other guns also had great potential. Post war the French 152s were upgraded with better traverse and loading.
Yes, that is what most people forget: most of the dual purpose-guns were actually only good in one their roles and only somewhere between acceptable and bad in the other role. The 5'38, probably the best of the dual-purpose guns, was an excellent AA-gun but at best average in the anti-surface role. Likewise the british 4.5' gun. On paper you can probably make a case that separate, dedicated gun batteries were better than dp guns. But in reality, with these guns mostly used as heavy AA, using a single battery on the AA-role with some anti-surface capabillity for emergency turned out to be the best solution.
To be entirely fair, because "sky guns" were one of the earliest attempts to mount AA guns on a battleship, and nobody really knew what they were doing when it came to AA guns on ships at that point. IIRC, the British removed a number of hull-mounted sponsor guns from several classes of battleship because of the bad sea-keeping that particularly the forward ones caused. I KNEW, right from the start, the fact that torpedo tubes used to be mounted on just about EVERYTHING would come up. Not only are anything heavier than a destroyer going to get much better results (in terms of both range and damage) for much lower cost from it's main guns (in both weight and volume carried and cost to produce) on everything bigger than destroyers they were only mounted in fixed ones or twos at the most. Meanwhile, Fletcher-class destroyers are carrying a rotating quintuple launcher on each side, and even the destroyer escorts had triple launchers. For tin cans, the torpedo is the great leveler, since a full spread of 5 torpedoes (provided they actually work correctly, which the early WWII torpedoes really didn't in any navy) is enough to cripple anything, and generally it'll outright kill any surface warship if all of them hit.
@@drewfullhart1750 Sounds great to me, but like you said it would have to be heated though. and be fresh water.. And removal of the barbette and magizines would leave room for the bowling ally. :)
Nice video! I was at Battleship Cove recently. Such a great bunch of volunteers! My friends and family really enjoy tooling around in our 26' Whaleboat. Getting repowered now. it's a Mk10 making it walk through. I'll Donate! Everybody likes the PT Boat t-shirt. Good work
Bad idea. Grouping all your propellers close together making propeller steering impossible. See Bismarck. Another bad idea. Separating your boiler rooms from your turbines with a gun turret and magazine. Bad idea. Grouping your guns so close together that the shells end up bouncing off each other in flight causing horrendous dispersion problems. Looking at the American triple gun turret standard BBs.
I don't think there is any remedy for propeller location on a heavy draft, large displacement, war ship that has a high speed requirement because moving the the propellers around causes all sorts of issues such as strong vibrations and propeller slippage. You have to go back a lot of years to find an example that the main gunnery didn't have synchronized gun control to keep the shells from interfering--I think it was brown powder guns or maybe as late as turret farm days when synchronized firing cam in, so technology fixed that shortly after the problem started showing up.
@@thomasmoore8142 Even the engineers who constructed the Bismarck pointed out this flaw to the designers. Even if it can't be used for steering it's still a bad idea to put all those propellers in such a close proximity because a lucky torpedo hit could disable all of them. Had the Bismarck been hit in the same location as the Vittorio Veneto during the Battle of Cape Matapan it would have been over for the Bismarck.
This is insanely interesting. I always assumed battleships to be powered by diesel fuel. Don’t ask me why.I never considered it long enough to form a real opinion. It just made sense in the back of my mind. I learned something new today
@@Graham-ce2yk I don't know if you have ever seen pictures of the Kersarge after she was converted to a heavy lift crane ship but the increase in beam was insane. I haven't been able to find out how the crane was powered. Not for sure if the ships steam plant was still operational. Or if it was capable of propulsion on its own.
@@Graham-ce2yk Unfortunately, they were designed before the KEARSARGEs were completed. Congress was very parsimonious when it came to naval (and army) budgets. Heck, the MISSISSIPPIs were deliberately downsized to 11,000 tons from the 16,000 tons of the preceding CONNECTICUT class, and were just horrible sailing ships.
10:04 - On the other hand, wing turrets can fire to both sides of the ship simultaneously, while a centerline turret can only fire in one direction at once; this would provide a pretty solid advantage for wing turrets when engaging enemy ships on both sides.
If (for some hypothetical or drastic reason) a brand new Battleship was built from the drawing board up with modern/present day technology what do you think it would look like and how big of a crew do you think it would have?
Massive missile ship, probably nuclear powered, might even dispense with Aegis radar to carry more missiles and datalink with escorting DDGs and CGs for fire control. I wouldn't expect the crew to be much bigger than a cruiser. Could maybe even see it carrying ballistic missiles in addition to large quantities of cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles or SAMs (maybe specializing for a specific mission for either land strike or missile defense).
Cruiser sized at smallest and battle-cruiser at biggest. Diesel or nuclear. Tons of missiles and would be able to carry some drones; especially aquatic drones.
@@mrvwbug4423 I feel like they might also just put 1 or 2 battleship guns on it, just for shore bombardment, as guns are cheaper to fire than missiles, and technically could probably fire without needing computers or targeting data(although you probably won't want to EVER do that). The reason being that from what I understand, the guns on a battleship isn't bad, it's just that the platform they're on are old as fuck, so getting these guns on newer ships would be good. Although I suppose if a navy wanted a ship with battleship guns for shore bombardment, they'll probably put it on the smallest and cheapest ship they can so they're not dragging it around when it's not needed, and can have multiple's of such ships operating at the same time around the world.
I think both Yamato and Bismarck are bad examples if you want to make that case. At the time of her sinking Yamato had already had half of her 155mm turrets removed to double the number of heavy 5-inch AA-guns. Also she was covered with 152 25mm guns. No amount of AA could have saved Yamato, even if she had US-AA guns with VT-Fuses. And in Bismarcks case replacing the 5.9 inch guns with additional 4.1 inch AA-guns would have achieved nothing because these guns were the ones being troubled by the swordfishs slow speed. It doesn't matter how many guns are firing on the target if setting for the fuses is wrong. While I agree that a dual purpose battery would have been better, in these two cases it wouldn't have changed much.
@@gildor8866 Eh, you can debate if it would have made a difference all you want. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway because they were In pretty desperate situations to begin with. But obviously wasting space/displacement with SP guns was a case of planning to fight the last war and not the next and that was clear by the end.
@@gildor8866 In almost all cases dual purpose heavy guns would have made no difference because these are for high altitude bombers, and high altitude bombing of a ship in open water proved very ineffective. In WW2 you needed what is now called CIWS to put up a cloud of metal at close range against planes attacking on the deck or dive bombing.
@@kenoliver8913 No, heavy AA-Guns were for engaging all enemy planes at long range (and continuing when they closed in) and breaking up his formations with shrapnell. Given developements of the war short ranged weapons like the 20mm became actually less effective because torpedoes and bombs were dropped from greater distances. Thats also one of the many reasons why the japanese 25mm was never really effective, by the time a US-plane entered effective range it was already close to finishing its attack run, unlike japanese planes who released their ordinance from lower altitudes or shorter distances.
It must be "bad engineering day" because Drach posted an hour long ranting video today. It is informative and hilarious
I was just thinking this lol. It's like elbonia all over again
Im glad i wasn't the only one who caught this lol
I watched that when he posted it. Now I find this. Yep it's bad engineering day
Dracs rants are always awesome. And hilarious. Another good one is David Fletcher of the tank museum at bovingtion who the Chieftain (Nicolas Morin considers the king of sarcasm.
@@anaetachandler8699 its Nicolas Moran
0:49 Diesel power
2:49 Sky guns
5:01 Echelon mounted turrets
7:14 Spotting posts directly over smoke stacks
9:01 Wing mounted turrets
11:14 Hull mounted sponsons
14:26 Single purpose secondary guns
15:55 Super firing turrets
20:11 Torpedo tubes
23:11 Paravanes
This channel has blown up. It makes me super happy. Love seeing how comfortable Ryan is on camera and I love how you're using your platform to do more than just advertise the museum. This is so awesome
We still have pocket battleships , but no more Ryan sticking his hands in his pockets on the Battleship!
Alot of people are very proud of you Ryan. You've grown into this position better than anyone else they could of chosen. Good job buddy.
He still looks like someone might be holding a high powered nerf gun on him off screen. You can tell he does the videos for the love of history and not because he loves making videos.
It is impressive to watch this video compared to the first videos he's made, but but part of why I love this channel. It makes it feel like a friend is telling you stuff instead of a over produced TV show.
It's great presence but clumsy presentation. Ryan is still awkward at times but is far better at explaining things now than 6 months ago. The fact that he loves the subject he's talking about outweighs the "Are people really listening" feel the videos sometimes have. Keep It Up Mate, People are interested and listening.
Agree, though I think someone should have a talk with him about that hair, that ship has sailed a long time ago :)
Top 10 worst haircuts to put on a person, haha. I mean.. it's probably due to the camera/green screen that makes it worse, and we're not here for fashion advice anyways. I'll be good if he stays the way he is look wise, anything you're comfortable with, it's great. Confidence wise and presentation wise, I would agree that an updated look could boost confidence, but simple practice and getting used to an aufience does the same, as we see.
Steven Seagal is the Worst idea to put on a Battleship . But I did enjoy the rest of the Movie . Thank you for the Video .
Mark you are so right! I would love to see Ryan do a top worst things about "Under Siege" everything from having seven people able to fire a 16 inch gun, to having the Tomahawks somehow taken out of their ABLs, transported thur the ship on a rail and then back on Deck. Also the CIWS will not engage a crossing target and there is no manual targeting on that Mod.
Just two more quick ones and then I'll be quiet: everything about the Harpoon land attack missile ca
and anchoring in the middle of the Pacific that is 1 long anchor chain also the brakeman on the anchor windlass are very experienced I don't think these Elite Mercenaries have a lot background Iin handling the brake more likely it would be a runaway chain right to The Bitter End
Follow that up with a review of the documentary of USS Missouri fighting aliens.
Look up fake martial arts videos, he is preposterous.
@@graemewatson7354 The CIWS was designed to protect only the ship on which it is mounted.
Yamato’s anti aircraft 18in shell. It effectively cut the barrel life in half, reduced accuracy, and was pretty much useless in it’s designed role
That would actually be an interesting debate re: whether the difference in power between an 18 inch vs. 16 inch shell was worth the tradeoffs. It'd be a purely academic one, though, since the twilight of the battleship as the mainstay of the fleet had already happened by the time the Yamato-class put to sea, so the conventional ship-vs-ship battles they were designed to dominate just never happened.
@@TomG1555 I think he was specifically talking about the San Shiki "type 3" anti-aircraft shells, which were notably bad at it's intended purpose (anti-aircraft fire) yet still comprised 40% of Yamato's main ammunition load. The copper drive bands were poorly machined and constant firing caused damage to the gun barrel's rifling. In fact, one of these shells may have exploded early and damaged one of Musashi's guns during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea.
Except the American pilots reported that when the 18" AA shells exploded it was a spectacular fireworks display, totally ineffective as a weapon but a spectacular show.
Also didn't you have to clear the decks to fire them? Which would mean you only have a brief window to fire at the incoming aircraft otherwise it interferes with the smaller AA mounts.
At it’s prime, it had 24 dual purpose secondary guns at least
Drachinifel did an interview with former Iowa commanding officer Larry Seaquist about a year ago. He mentioned that during Iowa's time escorting tankers in Operation Earnest Will they had paravanes installed on the ship and were basically plowing a channel free of Iranian mines in the Suez Canal. I agree that using an expensive asset such as a battleship for minesweeping is not the greatest idea but it does show the versatility of the Iowa class.
Was just going to mention that. I wonder if any of that equipment is still on board or if it was removed again.
Iranian mines in the Suez?...
Iran is on the Persian Gulf, nowhere near the Suez Canal.
You’re maybe thinking of the Straits of Hormuz, or the Persian Gulf in general.
Speaking of Drach... He also did a video on the sinking of HMS Hood - which effectively debunks the torpedo-theory.
To be entirely fair to the Richelieu-class, the 6" 'single-purpose' secondary guns were *intended* to be able to engage aircraft as well, it just wasn't wholly practical to do so due to relatively slow elevation and traverse.
Similar story with the 6.1" the Japanese developed, originally they had a goal of being made into dual-purpose guns, however that plan fell through. It was equipped with the Type 91 dual-purpose fuze and a mechanism to have it set for AA or AS at the gun, however it proved not too useful as an AA weapon due to other limitations (hoists, training rate, they couldn't even get the 70 degree elevation they originally wanted). Later on, when Yamato received the Type 22 Mod 4 radar upgrade, they also replaced 2 of her wing 6.1" with a bunch more dual purpose HA 12.7cm guns.
Generally speaking secondary batteries was never really successful and the German navy from the start always had separated artillery for AA batteries and naval guns as well the Italian navy...
@@paoloviti6156 german navy was out of the Battleship building business for 20 years. So they completely lost touch with everybody else, as construction teams tend to disband, when there is no work. So they didn’t have dual purpose mounts among other things. The best idea would have been to roll with the punch and build no battleship😄
@@theonlymadmac4771 or just bite the bullet, drop the 15 cm secondaries and mount far more (28-32 guns) 10.5 cm guns for both AA and anti-surface roles.
@@cyonemitsu
Rate of fire and reloading mechanics - auto reload and high cap storage
is it true that the Yamato still used human operated AA guns.. ?
i wonder if smoke generating explosives will do also good to fence fighters ..
if the smoke is at the right altitude - one must fly lower to engage.. and get within a different gun type range.
Not only Tirpitz has had deck Torpedo tubes. Scharnhorst class too. This was because of their main purpose as commerce raiders. To sink a merchant ship after capturing the crew is much easier with a torpedo. Especially at night gunfire can be seen from lots of miles distance and. So German raiders often used Torpedos at night.
Hood also was equipped with torpedos as well
Also the deauchlands pocket
battle ships
And the Nelsons, too. In fact, Rodney's torpedo hit on Bismarck may be the sole recorded time a battleship struck another with a torpedo.
@@ianashby1449 Except those were fixed instead of being on turrets. Now those were truly pointless.
@@George-Hawthorne Not Pointless, they were used successfully at Jutland by the British in WWI ,and Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had to make a hard turn to starboard to evade a torpedo sited be Prinz Eugen in the Denmark Straits. The only ship it could have come from is H.M.S. Hood.
Ryan comes off to me as someone who literally has so much technical knowledge just spilling out of his every utterance, and yet, comes off being able to explain himself in a way a non-engineering degreed person can understand. Well done video!
23:00 Concerning the torpedo-theory for the loss of HMS Hood, I very much recommend the video Drachinifel did on the loss of Hood. He nicely outlines why that theory doesn't hold water. In fact in that video he is going over all the various theories about that incident in great detail.
There is the mystery of the torpedo noise identified by Prinz Eugen's hydrophones that caused Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to take evasive action during the Battle of the Denmark Strait. Prinz Eugen's crew were experienced and it can't be automatically assumed they made a mistake. There was a fire on Hood just before she exploded, perhaps it's just possible the torpedo crew fired the torpedo(s) in the general direction of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen to avoid the fire getting to them.
@@philiphumphrey1548 Maybe. But even so, that was only half of Hood's complement. it did carry a set of reloads. Also, the launchers were (if i recall correctly) not anywhere near the fire on the boat deck. And even if the torpedos had been set off by the fire (unlikely due to the explosives used being very stable just like TNT), it would have exploded fairly high up in the ship and nowhere near violently enough to cause the cataclysmic detonation that tore the ship apart further down. Had the torpedoes exploded aboard the ship, they would have torn a chunk out of the superstructure, but that is about it. Most of a torpedo's destructive capability comes from the water surrounding it - because unlike air, water can not be compressed by an explosion.
@@ranekeisenkralle8265 The reason the DNC Sir Stanley Goodall, who was on the Hood design team believe it was possible is that the damage it could do to the top of the hull girder close to the discontinuity of the forecastle break. Hood was overweight and a stressed ship travelling in a moderately poor sea state at high speed.
@@JevansUK Overweight and stressed she may have been, but given the location of the torpedo launchers it would have caused the ship to snap downwards, not upwards - and that is IF the shockwave from the explosion had been powerful enough. However, the sip snapped upwards - meaning the explosion has to have happened way further down in the ship - in a location where there is no physical connection to the torps for a shockwave to travel along. as I said, it would have blown a chunk out of the superstructure - and that would be it. Severe damage? Sure. Mission-kill? Possibly. Cataclysmic destruction? Not really. I for one find the trough-theory most plausible.
This is a very interesting chain of comments
Fun fact: the wing turrets of Russian battleships were likely the cause of their capsizing during the Russio-Japanese war. Apparently, the Russians took the French built battleships, and upgraded the wing mounted turrets, causing the ships to have heavy weights off center, making them easy to capsize.
As the guy that does the "Pitch Meeting" series on Screen Rant would say... "Whoopsie!" 🤣🤣🤣
I think the pompous Japanese pagoda masts had the same effect. I remember an interview with a veteran aviator who talked about plugging enough torpedoes into the hull and that mast would make them turn turtle.
I think the hull shape also kinda helped in that. The french and russian ships tended to have a tumblehome hull, where the hull narrowens as it gets taller. This means that when one side floods it is really easy to capsize.
@@blackvulture6818 by itself, the tumblehome hull is fine, as the French demonstrated. If you put a heavy weight on either side, however...
@@downix It doesn't help that water is rather heavy. Most tumblehome designs were apparently regarded as good ships on peacetime
The Japanese came REALLY close to putting depth charges on the Yamato class Battleships, which isn't surprising since they put depth charges on all their late war carriers, that has to be the worst idea ever even beating torpedos.
Musashi did have depth charge rails installed on her fantail in 1944 whether or not she had depth charges to launch from them is debatable i suppose but if she had the rails you have to assume she had the charges
depth charges yes, torpedos not so much. In a broadside scenario torpedo's are a very good choice even more so given just how damn good japanese ones were for the time. ITs just that putting 40 torpedo tubes on one side of the ship as primary armament is a little too much, its like that "all the missiles meme" but with torpedo's
The ram bow on early Dreadnoughts was another pretty useless feature, even dough the battleship HMS Dreadnought managed to ram and sink the German U-boat U-29. Probably the only instance used successfully..
Engineers thinking of biremes and triremes?
'It's a big heavy ship, why shouldn't we fit a ramming prow on it? At the very least, it won't damage the ship if it hits the dock...'
historical reasons...look up the battle of Lissa.
No, They were used with success during the American civil war . That was why they were fitted .
The semi-ram bow on Dreadnought and subsequent classes was only ram-shaped. It was in no way reinforced or intended to be used as a weapon, as it was in pre-dreadnoughts. It was used because it improved fuel efficiency.
There is a use for diesel propulsion in case of an emergency sortie. Unlike regular steam plants diesel doesn't need to raise power to move. The reason Nevada was able to get underway at Pearl Harbor was because they had recently switched from one boiler to another thus saving a great deal of time in raising enough steam pressure to move.
I want to add here, but I could be wrong. I thought those steam powered warships would usually keep steam raised in one or two boilers at all times; in case they had to make an emergency deployment. Short of being in dry dock; they would keep a boiler hot while in port.
@@wyndhamcoffman8961 I spent a career in Navy steamships. Unless you were in homeport, you would keep one plant steaming for "hotel services," if nothing else. You had to provide electrical power and heating for the ship as well as steam for other things, like laundry and galley. In homeport, unless we were going to be there only a few days, we'd shut the whole plant down and go on shore power and shore steam. The boilers are kept in hot layup with shore steam to prevent corrosion while shut down. Even idle boilers on a ship that is lit off will be on steam layup. It would take about 4 hours to light off and raise enough steam to get underway from shore steam layup. If you were going to be inport for longer than a month, the boilers would be drained, dried out and put on a dry layup with heated air or desiccant bags. As you can imagine, it takes a couple of days to get ready to light off when in that type of layup. There are other types of wet layup like using hydrazine, which is also very common.
@@wyndhamcoffman8961 The amount of steam pressure needed to run an electrical generator is much less than that needed to move a ship. Normally it could take an hour or more to raise enough steam pressure to move. After the war, in non nuclear powered ships, it became common, on new construction, to have diesel, or gas turbine as well as conventional boilers as part of the power plant so they would not have to wait to raise steam to move. A gas turbine (essentially a jet engine) could be used to give a speed boost when needed as well.
@@richardcutts196 Nuclear powered ships are steam propelled. And they also have diesel engines. Nuclear power just provides the heat for the steam generators. The diesel is used for hotel services when the nuclear plant(s) are offline. In port shore power is used.
@@richardcutts196 Civilian ships are diesel powered these days - even >100k tonnes ones. Big non-nuclear warships today will typically have diesels for cruising with extra gas turbines for action, whether using electric or direct drive. Smaller warships are mostly diesel with a few gas turbine. Prewar diesels did not scale well - massive ones were inefficient (eg the swirl chamber was invented in 1934) and too heavy. The middle of a war was not the right time to change new capital ship propulsion, so steam it stayed.
Flight decks, I can understand an aircraft catapults for a spotter plane. What I can't understand is putting a partial flightdeck and hangar on a battleship, like with the Ise and Hyuga of the IJN, I especially can't understsand putting a paltry number of strike craft on the ship rather than fighters that could protect the ship and her consorts from enemy air attacks.
I've always thought that was some kind of weird set up. I don't think it made any kind of productive contribution for them.
I think you mean escorts, not consorts.
You'll love the intermediate designs that HMS glorious had, at one point it had 1*18" and 1/2 an aircraft carrier :D No armour...
This one is an easy one. Japan lost 4 carriers at Midway and needed a way to get more planes in the air. Ise and Hyuga were old and obsolete as actual combat ships, so they refitted them to carry an airgroup and operate as a light carrier. Light carriers were not a new concept.
@@MrEddieLomax That would be HMS Furious, Courageous and Glorious were converted in the interwar period from large light cruisers (whatever those were) straight to carriers, Furious ended up being something of a testbed for the royal navy and was never completed to her original spec.
The British "Unrotated Projectile" AA platform was about as goofy as can be imagined. There were some on HMS Hood.
That was that Winston Churchill's pet rocket program, wasn't it?
Though if I'm not mistaken, it eventually led to the development of the radio proximity fuze, after photoelectric and acoustic ones proved to be, uh, not good at all.
The british had alot of goofy ideas across the board for defence and new weapons most of which were scrubbed.Its for that reason that Barnes Wallace was initially snubbed for his " bouncing bomb".Potentially just another expensive gimmick that wouldnt work.The rest is history.
Didn't the Japanese also experiment with ship mounted rocket AA launchers on their final WW2 ships too due to desperation? I think the Unryuu class had them.
@@michaireneuszjakubowski5289 It also led to the very effective RP-3 aircraft rockets used by the Hawker Typhoon.
@@michaireneuszjakubowski5289 Ooh, guided missiles on the Hood, way cool! ... Wait, they weren't guided? Just glorified fireworks? ... MEDIOCRE. ):D
Worst idea on a battleship to me would have been the so called hybrid battleships like the Japanese had where they had small flight decks installed with a very small number of aircraft on board. Other than the fact that they could scout for themselves in theory the number of planes in a battle would have made this entirely a waste of space for either guns or fuel or ships stores of some other kind. Also with them now having to carry around aviation grade gasoline for these few planes it made them even more in danger of fire. They would have been much better off just using that space to add another turret of main battery guns.
Japan realized that air power was the future and they didn’t have the resources to build a bunch of purpose built Carriers so they converted what they could to get as many planes out as possible
I can kind of understand the conversion of Hyuga and Ise in the context of the aftermath of Midway and wanting to replace those losses in flightdecks as quickly as possible. As it stood, both ships were obsolete (though still operating) by the start of WWII, so the thought was probably to try and get some use out of them which they couldn't provide as old BBs. I believe the conversions ran into problems with maintaining the ship's balance once the turrets were removed, though, and as you say they were never going to be able to operate anything like what even a CVL could. The IJN was grasping at straws, but understandable as a desperation move. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Hy%C5%ABga#Conversion_to_hybrid_carriers
If they removed the pq turrets from the hyuga, they could have fit a longer flight deck, and probably carried more aircraft.
I certainly entered this video expecting "half a flight deck" to be up there near the top.
You might say tht once you add a flight deck, it's no longer a battleship.
The hybrid conversions would've been better off just being left as battleships and attempting to find a gun duel. If the Japanese had put a large battleship force into the Guadalcanal campaign, they might have still wrested control from the Americans in their night actions. Ise and Hyuga would've fared much better against South Dakota and Washington than Hiei and Haruna.
I have a few to add as well.
*Ram Bows*
These were the Emperor's New Clothes of Cruisers and Battleships from the 1860s through the 1910s, and no one _dared_ risk the ridicule of building a major warship without them. The mindset was that these warships would ram one another frequently in naval battles, which somehow wasn't dampened by the advent of armor-piercing ammunition, high explosive ammunition, torpedoes, and the constantly improving power, range, accuracy, and fire control of medium and large caliber naval guns. Ram bows also forced the use of tumblehome hulls, whose tendency to easily capsize became alarmingly apparent in the First World War, which is why they've almost never been used in any surface warships since. Moreover, the rammings that _did_ occur in combat were all against Submarines, Destroyers, minor surface combatants, and non-military vessels, none of which required a capitol ship to have a ram bow.
*Extremely large-bore secondary guns*
It was extremely common on Predreadnoughts to mount secondary guns that were nearly as gigantic as the guns in the main battery. Consequently, these ships ended up with guns too weak to effectively sink other Battleships, overkill against Cruisers, and too unwieldy for use against anything smaller. Fire control with these guns was quite a headache as well, considering that they would inevitably be used simultaneously with the main battery, because the shell splashes of a 10" shell are almost impossible to distinguish from a 12" shell, effectively making both batteries much harder to aim.
*Low aft quarterdecks*
Often used to minimize displacement or volume, the quarterdecks on many Battleships were one or more levels lower than the main deck, resulting in a quarterdeck that was very close to thew waterline --- perilously close, as luck would have it. Low quarterdecks were constantly awash in rough seas, which not only meant more flooding in the stern and equipment stowed topside constantly being washed overboard, but it also resulted in a loss of speed.
*Hull-mounted casemates*
Before small secondary gun turrets were a thing on Battleships, they often carried their secondary guns inside armored casemates. These had limited elevation and traversal, but they did offer protection for the gun crew, and a large quantity of them tended to give a 360-degree field of fire for the entire battery. Thing is though, casemates were partially open in front, and in warships that had them mounted on the hull, they tended to flood in rough seas. This not only weighed-down the ship, increase topweight, potentially flood further into the hull, and all sorts of other bad things, but flooded casemates were also unusable in combat, and any ready ammunition stowed in them while flooded could be ruined as well (particularly for guns that used powder bag charges)
*Longitudinal Bulkheads*
It has been common since the late 19th century for large ships to be built with major hull compartments isolated from one another by large bulkheads with watertight doors, so that if unstoppable flooding occurred inside one of these compartments, it could be sealed-off to keep the rest of the ship dry. These have prevented the sinking of more than a few ships, but there were two drastically differing schools of thought on how they should be built. The "British" philosophy was to have many latitudinal bulkheads, creating many compartments down the length of the ship, some of which could be fully-inundated without threatening to skin the ship. The "French" philosophy was to use a single longitudinal bulkhead that ran down the center of the ship, and to strategically balance flooding and counter-flooding between one side and another. History proved the British method was the correct decision. Many Battleships and Cruisers were needlessly lost in the Russo-Japanese War and the First World War to flooding that latitudinal bulkheads would have made manageable --- and it was all the more worse by the infamously bad topweight of many ships from this era (see the above comments about gigantic secondary guns), and the universal acceptance of the tumblehome hull.
Why would a ram bow force the use of a tumblehome hull?
@@vikkimcdonough6153 Because a flared or straight-sided hull won't structurally support one.
@@BlacktailDefense Why not?
I love that you can really tell how passionate Ryan is about historic battleship armaments and loadouts. Keep the excellent videos coming!
About the torpedo tubes thing, I wonder if part of the reason they were kept is that it's mostly in pre-radar designs. If you have working radar, then you can at least spot the enemy even if you're both in a thick fog bank at night. Without that, you may not spot the enemy until you're basically in a naval knife fight, and it's a bit like carrying a bayonet - you'll probably never need it, but if you do, it might just be the thing that saves your life.
New York and Texas had single purpose secondary battery guns (5"51) through WW2. Although in their case there was some justification, since the ships were tasked primarily for shore bombardment.
That's mainly because there wasn't really any space available to mount 5" DP guns on those ships. The USN put 5"38s on EVERYTHING, I'm sure they would have thrown a few onto the New Yorks if it had been possible.
The James Cameron ? Lol
Both BB-34 and BB-35 were pre-WW1 super-dreadnaughts, designed and built at a time planes were great for entertainment but not for anything useful.
Here I'd point out the guns were intended for anti-destroyer and in that role they worked with the HMS Warspite hull mounted 5.5" repelling a German destroyer attack in the English channel. Deck mounted of course was better as they could help with AA...
The USN didn't put 5"38s on everything. 5"25s remained in use on the less heavily rebuilt battleships, where not replaced by turreted 5"38s such as on the NV and PA, as well as most of the inter war treaty cruisers.
By the way, now that I think of it, the USS Arkansas (BB33) also carried 5"51s through WW2, similar to NY and TX.
Paravanes. My dad said they (destroyers) would sweep and clear the area off the beach, before the Battleship/Cruisers would arrive for shore bombardment. I suppose if the minesweepers or destroyers were unavailable or incapacitated for whatever reason, the Battleship would have something to work with as a last resort.
Paravanes cost almost nothing to mount to the battleship, and don't impede it's other functions - it's more of a case of "Might as well give it SOME kind of mine defense"
@8:00 - also a point with spotting tops _right next_ to smokestacks ... at flank speed, HMS _Dreadnought_ couldn't _use_ her spotting top because the heat from the smokestack fell on the access ladder for that spotting top and became too hot to use.
great stuff, super stoked i found this channel, not only do you create interesting content but the level of knowledge is incredible. subbed.
I was crew (Plank Owner) on USS Missouri in the 80s. We had a triple mount torpedo mount installed to experiment with ASW torpedoes. The spots were normally for the 25mm guns used for Arabian Sea deployments to keep Iranian speed boats at bay. Those were switched from Big Mo to Big J at Diego Garcia. There is still a cast ring on the bow at keel level that held paravane chains.
Interesting! I never heard about that one.
In the late 70's I did sea duty on an old DE steamer while my younger brother spent most of his time on diesel & gas turbine frigates, his complaint was the water discipline which steamers didn't have because of the water plants needed to keep the boilers happy.
Shut off the steam so the skate rates heads only had cold water for showers.
Wing turrets, hexagonal layouts and other predreadnought oddities are found today on the armored cruiser Averof, which is a good example of features not found on ww2 museum ships. Just like battleship Texas as well. Averof also has a Ram bow, also a bizzare idea to fit on large warships, even as late as early 20th century.
I would have to add cage masts. They were supposed to be a lighter alternative to the design of the 1890s and be more resistant to battle damage. But storms knocked them down and they didn't provide a stable enough platform for ever-heavier ranging equipment for the main battery.
This was a fun video. Before I started the video I sat and thought of some of the stupid things put on Battleships. I came up with about 7, like casement turrets ,torpedoes, Turret tiers , etc. The I watched the video and all of them were covered. Made me smile, good job.
Thank you. I always enjoy discussions of bad engineering. I think the torpedoes were far worse than paravanes because of the primary reasons you gave- a hole in the side with a powerful warhead in it. The captain of the ship had the option of whether or not to deploy the paravanes and proceed or to call up the lighter vessels, but he had no option to remove the hole or the wasted and dangerous explosives.
I was surprised that the unrotated projectile antiaircraft defense on British battleships didn’t make the list.
I have a question, how and were did the crew handle counter flooding for stability and damage? I think this question would make a interesting video!
He answered that question in another video. It's in main damage control on iowa battleship
Great video, Ryan, I'm totally with you on 9 of these bad ideas, with a few doubts about diesel cruise engines since they did work fairly well in extending the range of the "Pocket battleships".
On the paravanes, when I got to do a ship check of the New Jersey (one of the Iowa's anyway, in preparation for the reactivations, I think in 1983 or 1982), I got to see her out of water. My main interest was in the propellers because NAVSEA's files had disappeared since the previous decommissioning, and the propellers were unusual with different dimensions, blade number, and other parameters for the inboard and outboard pairs. I recommend you do a video on the propellers on all US WW II battleships and the Navy's struggles with vibration and integration with the side protection! It's a really neat story that is covered in one of Mr. Garzke's books but his explanation isn't quite convincing. Two classes had to have their propellers replaced multiple times but I believe the Iowa's were right from day one. Too bad the guys who really knew the "backstage" story are deceased by now, but there's a paper trail in the National Archives.
Sorry that was a digression to explain what I was doing walking around the floor of a drydock with a battleship in it. I walked around the ship and got to the bow, recognizing I'd never see one of those out of water again, and discovered a cast-metal padeye at the bottom of the stempost. I asked my host from the Navy Yard (that was before it was privatized) what that was and he said it's a fitting for the paravane. At that time I didn't know what a paravane was but there was a hole aft of the padeye that disappeared into the ship. It was big, maybe a foot diameter? Later I got back into the ship and discovered this pipe came right up through the hull and emerged on deck where the winch that you showed in the video is placed. Looking at photos of WW II vintage revealed that the paravanes, when stowed, had twin chains running down the stem of the ship on the outside, and from there they must have gone through the padeye and into the pipe and up inside the ship to the winch. The paravanes were not stored at the stem head so it's not that easy to visualize how they were deployed, but in use, the paravane produced lift and "flew" out from the ship's side, spreading the chain outboard and aft to "collect" the wires of moored mines. The mine wire would slide out along the chain till it hit the blade on the paravane and that was supposed to cut the wire, when the mine would bob up to the surface and the Marines would try to hit it before it was left astern. I don't think the ship really depended on the Marines to stop the mines from hitting the ship, because the cables would be cut far enough outboard that the ship would just steam on past the floating mines if the paravane functioned as intended. My understanding in the renovation discussions at NAVSEA was that the paravanes would not be reactivated so the comments in this video are news to me.
Having your 18" main batteries shoot anti-aircraft shells should be on there somewhere! 🙂
Apparently those beehive shells were also good for cratering runways, and may have saved some USN ships as during the initial night engagement at Guadalcanal, Hiei and Kirashima both had beehive shells loaded and staged in anticipation of bombing the runway at the US base, so their first few salvos were ineffective against the USN ships they were fighting.
@@mrvwbug4423 kek
AA rockets, too, were pretty useless in WWII.
Also, since we're there, every secondary gun mounted in a casemate below deck level.
You are one of my favorite people on the interweb. Thanks for doing what you do bro.
Calling developing diesel engines for battleship the "worst" idea is nonsense. It was excellent idea for many reasons. It just so happen that it didn't work in practice for the time. I would definetely put single purpose secondary battery at first place. In the thirties and forties they really should've know better.
Very good list, Ryan. I especially concur with your criticism of the installation of torpedo tubes and broadside mounted casement guns on dreadnoughts.
I’m surprised you didn’t mention putting a flight deck on a battleships, Ise and Hyuga just was a waste of resources. I have no idea if Shinano would have been a good CV if she was finished but it just seemed like you either were left with a battleship that now has to stay out of gun range, or you have a carrier with very limited hanger space. This is more for trying to mount a full wing of craft from a full fledged flight deck as opposed to spotting aircraft stored in a small hanger.
My list is
1. Trying to build BB-CV Hybrids
2. Use BBs as Minesweepers
3. Super firing turrets (Like Kearsarge and Virgina)
4. Mounting Torpedoes on BBs
5. En-echelon turrets
6. No dual purpose secondary guns on BBs built post World War I
7. Casements guns mounted in the hull.
8. Wing Turrets
9. Observation towers above smoke stacks
10. The original bows of the Scharnhorst class battleships
Has anyone ever seen plans/drawings of the Floatplane Bombers the Japanese intended to put on Ise and Hyuga? My understanding is that they were never constructed. I believe the Japanese also intended to use Shinano as more of a "Replenishment" Carrier, allowing aircraft from other Carriers to land and be rearmed/refueled, as opposed to a full fledged Fleet Carrier. Reportedly Kaga was more or less a successful BB to Carrier conversion. Her biggest drawback was that she was a few knots slower than other Japanese Carriers.
@@edwardmcirvin8342 You are correct on the Japanese intended use of the Shinano. It has always seemed to me to be a waste of a huge hull. Ise and Hyuga just seemed to be a bad idea as aircraft carriers that couldn't land planes. Of course the IJN was pretty much out of carrier capable pilots after June 1944. But as the turkey shoot demonstrated the capability of their pilots was pretty low even before then.
@@jimfisher5856 Yes, one has to seriously wonder how much utility Shinano would have provided (assuming she hadn't been sunk) considering when she would have entered Service. By that point the Japanese only had a handful of Unryu Class and some Light/Escort Carriers, not a lot of Aircraft and few Experienced Pilots, and not a lot of Fuel Oil to spare (I'm pretty sure Shinano would have been a Guzzler). I suspect even if Shinano had never been Torpedoed and Sunk she would have joined both Ise and Hyuga being bombed at Anchor and sunk in shallow water.
How about some honorable mentions:
a) Torpedo netting, at Jutland the Germans were terrified their rather useless (at sea) torpedo nets were going foul their screws as they ran back to base.
b) Unrotated Projectile (UP), useless boxes of high explosives and rocket fuel sitting atop turrets which had virtually no chance of hitting enemy aircraft
c) Ise class reconstruction, on paper a battle-carrier is a winner. Classic hybrid combining ability to strike at long range with aircraft with the battleship's toughness and close range (relatively) firepower. In practice it combined the toughness of a light carrier with 1/3 diminished firepower of the original configuration. The planes, if they'd had any to carry, could not land on deck and lots of avgas might have proved problematic in a gunfight.
d) Single shot medium AA batteries, 3.7 cm SK C/30 and 37 mm Modèle 1925 and the like made the 1.1-inch/75 and Type 96 25 mm look like a world beaters.
Lots of these are retrospective though, until tsushima, there were assumptions about battles being fought at under 5000yards. Even after that, the rangefinding tech isnt there
I think the reason many Battleships had Torpedo tubes is- 'ehh you never know when these might come in handy.' The Kirishima comes to mind.
Can I ask please - have you ever designed, at least in your imagination, what you would consider to be the optimum battleship?
I believe that the torpedoes on battleships were meant to keep the enemy battleline from closing to the range where secondaries could blast out great chunks of the lesser armored portions of the ship, as the range where the approached line could expect to hit the approaching line was longer than the range that the approaching line could launch at.
I suspect that paravanes were included on BBs on the off chance that a squadron of BBs might find itself in a minefield, while it did not have the luxury of waiting for lighter ships to show up to lead them through. Also, the marines are not trying to detonate the mines with their rifles; although, they would rejoice when that did happen (provided there were no splinters pelting the ship). The goal was to simply punch holes in the flotation chamber, filling it with water, and causing the mine to sink harmlessly to the bottom.
Drachinifel had a drydock question on why battleships used torpedoes. The idea was apparently to use them against the enemy battle line as a whole rather than specific ships. If the torpedoes can reach the enemy line (arguably possible until gunnery range increased to around 20,000 yards during WW1) then you can launch torpedoes "into the brown" (at the formation) that basically have a 1/3 chance of hitting a ship within the line of battle because of the spacing.
@@kemarisiteThat was how the Japanese tended to use their Type 93s in WWII, especially during night actions. But they had stupidly long range.
I'd like a video on either quad turrets in general or the original plans for the NCs being 14"/4 gun turrets.
Yeah! I've often read that quadruple barrel turrets come with a league of complications and issues that really just made them a failed experiment. They were used and sometimes worked well enough but there's a number of good reasons they weren't more widespread. The french seemed to have commited to it a bit. British experimented with it.
I'd be curious to hear about more cases.
Interestingly, the French designs were dual twin mountings in a common gunhouse. This can be readily seen in pictures; the barrel spacing is obvious.
Here's a bad idea that was exclusive to the British: mounting anti-aircraft rocket launchers on battleships. The Unrotated Projectile (UP) rockets were intended to drop a cable with explosives on the ends in the path of an aircraft. An "aerial minefield", in effect. The Royal Navy (at the insistence of Churchill, who really liked the idea) mounted the UP launchers on top of the main battery turrets. HMS Hood's UP launchers were ignited by a shell hit shortly before her loss.
I think the Japanese had either developed or were developing these at the end of WWII
No the 4-inch aa gun magazine was ignited not the up aa rockets
Ryan is awesome. Let's pitch in and get him a new coiffure. Seriously, I can listen to Ryan all day. He's a real American hero!
I'd add two more thoroughly useless additions to battleships. HMS Hoods "Unrotated Projectile" AA - unlikely to be more effective then a fireworks display when under air attack, as a note they issued single grenade launchers to escort ships for use as AA - the sailors found then useless but did load them with potato's for fun...
Beehive and all the other methods of using the main armament for AA, I'd suggest they'd get similar results from filling shells with gold or bank notes...
The 16-inch guns on the Iowa's could also be used for anti-aircraft. They just sent the fuse on a normal high explosive shell to explode at a certain time
By "grenade launchers" I'm assuming you're referring to the Holman projector? That was actually pretty effective at scaring off German aircraft, since the grenades used in them (basically glorified Molotov cocktails) made a big cloud of black smoke when they burst, making it look to the attackers like they were being shot at with actual AA cannon.
@@vikkimcdonough6153 I'm repeating what the sailors on the PQ convoys thought of them. I can understand why when your throwing a grenade
The reason beehive and other "big gun" AA was useless, though, was because it was designed to deal with high altitude bombers. But high altitude bombing of a ship in open waters was quickly found to be useless so ships needed lots of short range (20 and 40mm) stuff instead. So it wasn't a dumb idea AT THE TIME - it just dealt with a threat that turned out not to be a threat after all.
Just came across your videos and site yesterday. I describe it as "Everything I never knew about battleships - and more". I am an Air Force vet (enlisted, Viet Nam era) but love your channel. Many years ago I toured the USS Massachusetts at Battleship Cove in Fall River.
In regards to wing turrets, it could be a bit understandable, Machinery was quite big, and there were concerns (and possibly turret design incompatibilities) with superfiring guns. Using en echelon or all centerline might've just not been doable (without significantly lengthening the ship) with a number of the designs that used wing turrets due to technological limitations of the time.
Main reason for avoiding superfiring turrets in first dreadnoughts was fears of blast effect on lower turrets in certain angles of fire.
it made sense for the first generation of dreadnoughts but by ww1 gun control technology had advanced to the point where it became more practical have all the main battery guns mounted centerline
@@RocketHarry865 Exactly what I was trying to say. At the time such ships were built they really didn't have options to go all centerline yet; I think with the German hexagonal battleships they were still using triple expansions preventing even a 3rd centerline turret whilst Dreadnought with turbines could fit one in. Once sighting hoods improved and machinery got better going for more centerline turrets made more sense.
Really, the only ship where I think the wing turrets were a bad idea was on the Courbet class.
Another consideration
Most aimed fire is towards center of mass
If you have turrets and magazines there, big problem
There is a single benefit to echelon turrets, but it's a secondary consideration at best. As described, it limits the amount of superstructure you can build on the ship, which has the benefit of giving the ship a greater righting moment by lowering its center of gravity.
I watched... very, very hopefully... and sure enough, I wasn't disappointed by the inclusion of torpedo tubes! That made this old TM2 smile.
Just imagining the maintenance requirements... haha!
the sky gun on the Texas was the first AA gun on a warship so It was more of a trail of a solution not the Solution
Enjoyed the video, highly informative. Thank You
At 1st "I was like why on earth would you have minesweeping capiblities on a battleship" but then when you theorized why you might have them I was thinking "Why on earth wouldn't you have minesweeping capiblities on a battleship". I think it's just one of those better to have something then absolutely nothing type things. Probably would probably make the crew feel better also because they would at least have some defense against mines then just shutting the engines off and praying to God you don't drift into one.
I think Battleships having torpedos has merit, but purely as a support role.
Essentially having them for what Rodney tried to use them for, a scuttling weapon. For enemy or friendly ships (you don't want captured), having a weapon meant to quickly sink a disabled ship is handy. That said, they should be incorporated into the ship for that idea, and not for an active battle. So no underwater tubes, or a lot of exposed tubes. Having 4-8 tubes at the front or rear of the ship in a blast resent case (when not in use) shouldn't prove much a hazard.
I think something that should have been added to the list are the unrotated projectile launchers that were fitted to British warships like HMS Hood
Eh maybe top 20 but they weren’t really much of a thing
In Sweden we had the Vasa. An enormous expensive investment at its time. The worst idea was the ship itself. It became to top heavy and was pretty much designed as self sinkable, (then we did it again with Kronan). Of course this happened. And that is why we at typically Swedish manner designed a museum around Vasa, and proudly made it a tourist attraction.
The Vasa as originally designed was a fine ship. However the King Gustavus Adolphus thought he was a design genius and kept ordering changes to ship so that it was a disaster waiting to happen.
The main gun deck was designed so low to the waterline and the sails were too big. What happened was a strong wind ripped the ship over and water rushed in the open gun ports that were only 3” above the water. Vasa capsized minutes into its first deployment.
And a fine museum it is!!
A former co- worker was a gunner's mate on the New Jersey in the late stages of the Vietnam war. I knew him in the early 2000s.
He didn't say much about it. He was a good man though.
To all veterans, thank you one and all, whatever flag you served under.
Those who make the decision to put the public's safety above their own are the ones we should be supporting.
@Ryan: if you were building a battleship today, would you try to power it with Coal, Oil, Diesel, or try for Nuclear?
I would go for the same setup that you find on RMS Queen Mary 2. Combination Diesel Electric for cruising speeds and Gas Turbine Electric for high speed.
Nuclear is too risky because a battleship is a frontline weapon that has to resist counter fire.
If an enemy shell punches a hole through your lead shielding and damages the reactor it's pretty much Game Over for your ship.
@@legiran9564 they did a video on this. Long an short is, BAD IDEA. The shock from firing the main guns would scram the reactor. Just too delicate for battleships.
@@legiran9564 absolutely. however, Corium projectiles are a nice lethal fantasy
IMHO a ship as large as battleship would have a steam plant fed by oil. Other….Combined gas turbine and diesel propulsion.
I think a modern battleship would be nuclear powered. It also would likely not have many guns on it, I would envision a modern BBN as a massive missile ship, like a Kirov, but bigger. Modern torpedoes and anti-ship missiles also make the armor far less useful. Modern missile would just fire off a shaped charge down the top of a turret into a magazine, modern submarine torpedoes have warheads that could break the keel on any BB ever built.
I’m glad you store so much ammo and powder on the ships in the museum status, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to beat back the aliens
20:55 I heard of a 2nd possible use of torpedos by a battleship/battlecruiser in WW2. In the video from Drachfiniel about the sinking of the Hood where he covered all kinds of options, he also looked at the torpedos being hit and exploding and he mentioned, that the crew on Prinz Eugen reported torpedoes in the water, which didn't came from Prinz Eugen, obviously, and couldn't have come from PoW
Yep. He effectively debunks that whole torpedos-blew-up-Hood-theory.
I feel like the sound problems are just part of the charm of the channel at this stage
The turrets in echelon started before British battlecruisers, in armored turret and barbette ships of the 1870's and 1880's. They had the same blast effect problems then. It's a wonder it took so long for various navies to figure that out.
the main reason was boilers
basically boilers back then were not very efficient compared to later eras, so to produce the same output you needed much more boilers, which took a huge amount of space on the ship, so much that making superfiring turrets was essentially impossible
if you look at plans of old pre dreadnought and dreadnought era BBs with wing/en echelon turrets, you will see that the engineering spaces take essentially the entire length between the fore and aft turrets, it was only with the development of better boilers and engines that the engineering spaces could be condensed, allowing the mounting of turrets in a superfiring manner
Not sure about other battleships, but I know the reason Dreadnought had wing turrets was because Fisher wanted the ship to be able to fire 6 guns fore and aft, which considering she predated superfiring turrets, isn’t a bad rationale for wing turrets.
Actually the mast debacle on Dreadnought and later even the Orion class was caused by admiralty board request that the rear leg of the tripod support derricks for boat handling, whilst the DNO maintained that turrets should retain sighting hoods which ensured that super firing guns were impracticable due to blast effects.
Two bad ideas, siting hoods perhaps Number 11.
There are only bad hair days on a battle ship museum obviously. But finding ideas for interesting videos is obviously what these guys running this channel are good at.
Mixed secondary batteries are only a “mistake” if you are designing your battleships to operate as part of large task force in the Pacific and you are anticipating a long range daylight battle against an opponent with a strong air arm. This is why the Americans, and to a slightly lesser extent the British, went with dual purpose guns.
For the European navies that went with mixed batteries this was not the case. For Italy and Germany, France was just as much a naval threat as the UK and the French were laying down 2,500-2,900 ton destroyers with max speeds of over 40 knots, carrying 10+ torpedoes. Against surface threats like this I have my doubts that a 5in gun is going to have enough stopping power to reliably damage an attacking contre-torpilleur enough to prevent it from launching its torpedoes.
The French faced a similar problem from Italian light and scout cruisers, and would have to operate in the Mediterranean where the possibility of simultaneous enemy air/surface attack was higher.
The limited effectiveness of dual purposes weapons against surface threats is part of the reason why the British opted for the 5.25in on the KGVs and Vanguard instead of the 4.5in and is why the Americans were looking to go from the 5in/38 to the 5in/54 in the Montanas.
Sky guns seem to be the perfect instrument to shoot down Zeppelin cloud cars or spy baskets qv. :) Thanks, Ryan!
From what I've come accross in regards to paravanes, the idea was that they would be deployed on either side from the bow of the battleship.
As a battleship is relatively a very wide vessel, it has a large footprint when moving through a potential minefield, with the sole exception of sailing directly into a mine, a mine would in most cases hit the ship further down its side, as the ship pass by, so to avoid this the wires that is attached to the paravane would deflect the anchored mine outwards, away from the hull towards the paravane, where the mine's moring line would be cut, by a special "knife" device on the paravane.
The mine would pop to the surface at a safe distance from the ship, so it could be disposed of with gunfire.
The fins of the deployed paravanes on either side of the ship, is ofcourse adjusted in a way so they keep a certain depth, and will move outward away from the ships hull, when dragged trough the water.
So the paravanes was not used per say for active minesweeping, but more for the ships own protection, when it sailed through waters that an enemy might potentially have laid mines, I.e. the approaches to a harbour or a straight that sees a lot of other maritime traffic which the enemy wish to target with a few well placed mines etc...
Anyway just my 2 cent on why paravanes are on a battleship, or any other naval vessel.
🤔🤔🤔
Plus dedicated mine sweepers are not likely to have the speed to operate ahead of a battle group without slowing them down.
Dumbest idea is trying to combine a battleship with a carrier. Long flight decks make it hard to place large turrets, and while you can slip on armor, aircraft, bombs and fuel don't do well against shell fire. Battleships are designed to slug it out at gun range with an enemy, aircraft carriers need to be kept well back. Also, the optimal position to launch and recover aircraft probably isn't best for delivering a broadside salvo to an enemy ship.
"Yeah that works on cruiser let's put that on Battleship"
If I remember it correctly the North Carolina class battleships came very close to being built with a hanger/triple seaplane launch set up forward and a pair of quadruple 14inch turrets aft.
Well that's too harsh of a judgement as the Japanese didn't really do so because they wanted to, but because they had to try something, besides those battleship were already useless ships as they had pretty much 0 combat capability. What use was a battleship with it's guns to the Japanese, as such vessel couldn't even get within a hundred miles of anything that was worth shooting before getting sunk by aircraft.
I always thought the Japanese battle carriers were bizarre Ise and Hyuga. They didn't appear to be very successful either. Would like a review on them if you could please..
IIRC, they were supposed to be full conversions to carriers, but it wasn't feasible to do it in one shot for various reasons, so they planned to do the conversion in three phases and just never got past the first.
The right person was found for this these videos, one who knows the subject better than an expert.
The 4" secondaries on HMS Renown and Repulse could almost be considered sky mounts. They were nearly as high off the waterline as the Texas 3" mounts, but at least they were connected to a magazine via a very long trunk.
Didn't help Repulse much though
Kersage the only battleship not named for a state served for many years as a crane ship. She served so long that she had to give up her name to an Essex class CV. I believe she was finally scrapped in the 1950's.
Kersage as a craneship mounted the 16" gun turrets on the 'Alabama'. see American civil war.
Number 1 worst idea - designing a ship where the front falls off
Even worse if you make it from cardboard or cardboard derivatives.
12:10-I’ve seen some pictures of those hull-mounted turrets that were actual rotating turret instead of the opening that you described here, and they were water-tight.
In the case of Japanese Battleships, the Type 93 torpedo (long lance) makes sense because of the range.
The last IJN battleship built with torpedo tubes entered service 6 years before development on the Type 93 torpedo even started. Also, the Type 93 was a 24"/61cm diameter torpedo while all of the battleships had tubes for 21"/53.3cm ones though the Type 95 potentially could have been used. What's important is that when those battleships were designed, they were designed with WW1 torpedo capabilities in mind.
Unfortunately it would mean getting within torpedo range of enemy escorting Destroyers.
@@jamesricker3997 The allies were surprised at how, out ranged they were by the Long Lance torpedo.
@@AdamosDad I think the main surprise of the USN was how raw their night fighting tactics were in the start of the war, even with radar. In daylight (or in less confined waters than at Guadalcanal) even the LL would be way short of main gunnery range and even if a torpedo can run for a very lomng distance it is practically impossible to hit anything with outside a few miles. It after all only travels at 50 knots pr hour whereas a shell moves at 1600 knots pr hour.
Correction: the Littorio-class's secondary guns were actually dual-purpose and not single-purpose, as while they were mostly meant for defence against surface targets, they could also be used for AA. In fact, historians have argued that if the Roma and her sisters would have shot their secondary batteries for AA during the German bombing, Roma would have likely not been sunk (I personally doubt this statement, but it's still a possibility nonetheless).
honestly. in terms of the no. 1 pick, it's more of a case of "it can fit on the ship and doesn't take up much space, might as well just in case" imo it doesn't deserve the number 1 spot, the others were worse design choices in which they were usually a hazard and this one just doesn't really fit in
I think the point was that actually using them was a bad idea. Because using your battleship as a mine sweeper is a really good way to lose your battleship. Better to have a smaller (and more replaceable) ship do that, then send the battleship(s) after the mines are gone.
@@vbscript2 sure, but imo having it with "it doesn't hurt to have it, and it'll hurt more if we don't have it" really just makes it undeserving of the worst idea
Am correct that spotting tops over smoke stacks not only obscured observation but often made the spotters rather toasty? Thanks!
That might be a good thing if you're on watch in the north atlantic in winter, the breathing in coal smoke part not so much
Maritime Diesel powered drive and placing AA guns on the ships high vintage point is actually not bad idea, just that at the time technology had not catch on and the implementation is questionable ( for how they do it then ). Today we see navy putting their CIWS on top of the super structure , we see maritime Diesel power plant so good that they are used on some of the largest ship of todays
Yes, but the CIWS has all of its ammunition in the box under the gun/radar mount -- it's designed to be a 'drop-on' installation, requiring only ship's power (and a minimal activation connection to the battle center) -- and it's a fairly protracted process to roll the card up to the CIWS and reload it. It's been some years, but I remember at the time, it was described as having four missile's worth of ammunition -- that is, it could be expected to be able to knock down four missiles before needing to be reloaded.
You forgot to mention the girl who jumped out of the cake on the battleship in the Steven Seagal movie. Terrible idea.
Paravanes are just as dumb on Carriers, too (the carriers retained them from their origins as Cruisers).
There is an argument that Cruisers ought have paravanes as a cruiser--in the day--was the smallest vessel one sent, alone, to trouble spots. And if a CA has them a BB must, therefore, also. QED. Dumb.
Torpedoes on BBs is clearly an accounting requirement. Torpedoes are ridiculously "cheap" for their capability. You get a fire-and-forget weapon with a 1000# warhead that can do in your enemies for less than the cost of an entire Destroyer or Torpedo Boat. Ok, really dump to have a 3-5 mile weapon on ships meant to engage at >10 miles--but, accountants are accountants.
If one were building a battleship today, torpedoes would make much more sense than they did back in the day - nowadays, modern torpedoes considerably outrange even the best guns, rather than the other way around.
Good list. IIRC, the Graf Spee was brought to battle because her diesel only allowed her a 26 knot top speed while the RN cruisers had 30 knot speed. By 1945, gas turbine derivatives were encroaching on the diesels' advantages. Today diesels do rule in the
Graf Spees top speed was actually down to 25 knots due to fouling of the hull, a problem every merchant raider that operates for prolonged time at sea has to deal with. But I don't think that even a 30 knot Graf Spee would have been able to avoid the engagement, by the time she identfied the ships she was approaching as warships she was so close that the british were able to identify her as well and give pursuit. So the only chance had would have been a high speed chase throughout the day and hope to escape at night - that would have consumed a lot of her fuel.
Ryan have you ever watched the Russian movie “admiral”? It has some great naval scenes in the beginning and they show sky guns in action
Was that after Battleship Potemkin?
My number one would be center line bulkheads. This was common throughout the pre-dreadnought era, and early dreadnoughts. It did not allow for even flooding in case of an underwater hit, and usually led to capsizing rather rapidly.
The Kearsarge class is superfiring but wouldn't guns mounted like the Iowas or Szent Istvan class be more properly be called super imposed?
To be imposed implies one on top of the other. The weakness of the KEARSARGE turrets was that the 8-inch gun turrets had thinner armor than the 13-inch guns. It also meant that for stability the ships had to have a very low freeboard. Ryan is correct in that the KEARSARGEs were exceptionally good gunnery ships. The VIRGINIAs rolled quite a bit making fire control much more difficult.
Love these insights into battleships. Great way of putting your museum on the map.
On superfiring (or superimposed) turrets: There are two simple, but primary, reasons the early dreadnoughts used wing turrets. One is that the sighting hoods on the turrets were subject to blast effects from a superfiring turret. The US Navy was the first to place gunsights where the gun aimer would not be concussed by a nearby superfiring gun, and only the US Navy had superfiring turrets in all its dreadnought designs. Fred Jane wrote about new US Navy sights in the 1905 Jane's Fighting Ships in an article on recent developments in gunnery. The other reason is that if you need to add guns to your broadside, to put them all on the center line requires more length, which means more displacement, which means much higher cost. In the blessed gold-standard days of the early 20th century, governments couldn't simply print more money or monetize ever increasing amounts of debt, so everywhere they had to control their naval expenditures. Almost all the design failings of ships of this period can be traced, at least in part, to the compromises the designers had to make in obedience to the requirements of economy.
Oh, another adept of gold money idiocy? Of course they could print more money, they just had to lower the amount of gold in the coins slightly. Devaluation of money is as old as civilization. To add to it, gold money is a trap for imbeciles (see all economic problems coming with changing ratio of silver to gold price that could topple countries by making their money very easy to manipulate) and the fact the without monetary base expansion with economic growth your economy gets crippled by deflation squeeze...
Some Comments:
1. The Yamato-class battleships for Japan were supposed to be Diesel-powered, and the Japanese spent a lot of time between the wars trying to develop a very high-powered Diesel. They failed. The reason that the pocket battleships could use Diesels were that they simply were not that big, and 8 Diesels could power them.
2. Echelon and Wing Turrets: The British went to the echelon and wing turrets because of the location of the turret sighting hoods, which were mounted on the top of the turret. If a super-firing turret fired over the lower turret, the blast of the guns knocked out the turret pointers. The U.S. Navy had the sighting positions on the side of the turret and did not encounter that problem. The British had this problem throughout World War One, with the result that even with super-firiing turrets, the ahead and astern fire was restricted to a single turret. They could not fire a super-firing turret at less than a 30 degree angle with the lower turret. The blast effects of the early wing turrets restricted the arch of training to more than 30 degrees off of the fore and aft line. The echelon turrets firing across the deck severely strained the hull structure and did a lot of damage to the deck and superstructure.
3. Spotting positions: The British continued to have the problem of the spotting tower located behind the fore funnel up to the beginning of World War One. The justification for it was that it made for easier boat handling. It appears that Jellicoe was one of the main supporters of this location. Not only did the towers suffer from smoke, but the gases coming out of the funnels were HOT, and the towers were essentially not habitable. The battlecruiser Lion had this backwards location, and had to be modified at a cost of 60,000 Pounds, or about $300,000 at the time, to correct the problem.
4. Hull mounted guns: Once World War One started, and the British had to operate all year round in the North Sea, the folly of the hull-mounted gun became swiftly apparent. Both the Queen Elizabeth-class ships and the Iron Duke-class ships had the casement guns, especially the one near the stern blanked off, and the guns mounted on the weather deck.
5. Torpedo Tubes: The loss of the German battlecruiser Lutzow at the Battle of Jutland appears be the result of two 12 inch hits from the British battlecruiser Invincible on the foreward torpedo room, which was one of the largest compartments located below the armor deck. The massive amount of water flooding into this compartment brought several other forward hits underwater, and doomed the vessel. The compartment also proved to not nearly as water-tight as though, and continued to flood compartment further aft. Putting torpedo with a maximum slow-run range of about 11,000 yards on ships capable of fighting effectively at over 12,000 yards is utterly inexplicable except to sheer inertia on the part of the designers and upper naval staff.
Richelieus 152 mm guns were theoretically able to engage aircraft at long range. They had s maximum elevation of 90 degrees straight up. They werent a great design and didnt work well but they WERE dual purpose! compared to the German 152s on theScharnhorsts and Bismarcks. Also just because the 5’38 turned out to be massively successful doesnt mean other guns also had great potential. Post war the French 152s were upgraded with better traverse and loading.
Germany had 150s not 152s. But the rest of your argument is pretty good.
Yes, that is what most people forget: most of the dual purpose-guns were actually only good in one their roles and only somewhere between acceptable and bad in the other role. The 5'38, probably the best of the dual-purpose guns, was an excellent AA-gun but at best average in the anti-surface role. Likewise the british 4.5' gun. On paper you can probably make a case that separate, dedicated gun batteries were better than dp guns. But in reality, with these guns mostly used as heavy AA, using a single battery on the AA-role with some anti-surface capabillity for emergency turned out to be the best solution.
To be entirely fair, because "sky guns" were one of the earliest attempts to mount AA guns on a battleship, and nobody really knew what they were doing when it came to AA guns on ships at that point.
IIRC, the British removed a number of hull-mounted sponsor guns from several classes of battleship because of the bad sea-keeping that particularly the forward ones caused.
I KNEW, right from the start, the fact that torpedo tubes used to be mounted on just about EVERYTHING would come up. Not only are anything heavier than a destroyer going to get much better results (in terms of both range and damage) for much lower cost from it's main guns (in both weight and volume carried and cost to produce) on everything bigger than destroyers they were only mounted in fixed ones or twos at the most. Meanwhile, Fletcher-class destroyers are carrying a rotating quintuple launcher on each side, and even the destroyer escorts had triple launchers. For tin cans, the torpedo is the great leveler, since a full spread of 5 torpedoes (provided they actually work correctly, which the early WWII torpedoes really didn't in any navy) is enough to cripple anything, and generally it'll outright kill any surface warship if all of them hit.
A "bad design" would be to remove the rear turret and barbette of the New Jersey and replace it with a heated swimming pool.
But that would be pretty awesome
@@drewfullhart1750 Sounds great to me, but like you said it would have to be heated though. and be fresh water.. And removal of the barbette and magizines would leave room for the bowling ally. :)
@@drewfullhart1750 With the barbette gone, you could have a high dive platform in the pool.
Great for the Murmansk run in January.
Nice video! I was at Battleship Cove recently. Such a great bunch of volunteers! My friends and family really enjoy tooling around in our 26' Whaleboat. Getting repowered now. it's a Mk10 making it walk through. I'll Donate! Everybody likes the PT Boat t-shirt. Good work
Bad idea. Grouping all your propellers close together making propeller steering impossible. See Bismarck.
Another bad idea. Separating your boiler rooms from your turbines with a gun turret and magazine.
Bad idea. Grouping your guns so close together that the shells end up bouncing off each other in flight causing horrendous dispersion problems.
Looking at the American triple gun turret standard BBs.
It wasnt so much the triple turrets being an issue with shell interference, they had that sure, but the rare quad gun turrets had that in spades.
I don't think there is any remedy for propeller location on a heavy draft, large displacement, war ship that has a high speed requirement because moving the the propellers around causes all sorts of issues such as strong vibrations and propeller slippage.
You have to go back a lot of years to find an example that the main gunnery didn't have synchronized gun control to keep the shells from interfering--I think it was brown powder guns or maybe as late as turret farm days when synchronized firing cam in, so technology fixed that shortly after the problem started showing up.
@@thomasmoore8142 Even the engineers who constructed the Bismarck pointed out this flaw to the designers. Even if it can't be used for steering it's still a bad idea to put all those propellers in such a close proximity because a lucky torpedo hit could disable all of them. Had the Bismarck been hit in the same location as the Vittorio Veneto during the Battle of Cape Matapan it would have been over for the Bismarck.
Why is 2 a problem, when you can stagger a broadside?
@@mathiasbartl903 No shit Sherlock.
This is insanely interesting. I always assumed battleships to be powered by diesel fuel. Don’t ask me why.I never considered it long enough to form a real opinion. It just made sense in the back of my mind. I learned something new today
The Kersarge class were something that I don't believe should have been attempted ever . She did have a fairly long career.
Anything is worth trying once, so I'm willing to forgive the Kearsages, but repeating it on the Virginia Class, that's unforgiveable.
@@Graham-ce2yk I don't know if you have ever seen pictures of the Kersarge after she was converted to a heavy lift crane ship but the increase in beam was insane. I haven't been able to find out how the crane was powered. Not for sure if the ships steam plant was still operational. Or if it was capable of propulsion on its own.
@@Graham-ce2yk Unfortunately, they were designed before the KEARSARGEs were completed. Congress was very parsimonious when it came to naval (and army) budgets. Heck, the MISSISSIPPIs were deliberately downsized to 11,000 tons from the 16,000 tons of the preceding CONNECTICUT class, and were just horrible sailing ships.
10:04 - On the other hand, wing turrets can fire to both sides of the ship simultaneously, while a centerline turret can only fire in one direction at once; this would provide a pretty solid advantage for wing turrets when engaging enemy ships on both sides.
just turn your ship 90 degrees so fore and aft guns both get targets
If (for some hypothetical or drastic reason) a brand new Battleship was built from the drawing board up with modern/present day technology what do you think it would look like and how big of a crew do you think it would have?
Massive missile ship, probably nuclear powered, might even dispense with Aegis radar to carry more missiles and datalink with escorting DDGs and CGs for fire control. I wouldn't expect the crew to be much bigger than a cruiser. Could maybe even see it carrying ballistic missiles in addition to large quantities of cruise missiles, anti-ship missiles or SAMs (maybe specializing for a specific mission for either land strike or missile defense).
Cruiser sized at smallest and battle-cruiser at biggest. Diesel or nuclear. Tons of missiles and would be able to carry some drones; especially aquatic drones.
@@mrvwbug4423 So, kind of like the Soviet Kirov class then?
@@mrvwbug4423 I feel like they might also just put 1 or 2 battleship guns on it, just for shore bombardment, as guns are cheaper to fire than missiles, and technically could probably fire without needing computers or targeting data(although you probably won't want to EVER do that). The reason being that from what I understand, the guns on a battleship isn't bad, it's just that the platform they're on are old as fuck, so getting these guns on newer ships would be good. Although I suppose if a navy wanted a ship with battleship guns for shore bombardment, they'll probably put it on the smallest and cheapest ship they can so they're not dragging it around when it's not needed, and can have multiple's of such ships operating at the same time around the world.
The Russians have a crackpot design for a nuclear powered cruiser.
The spotting post over the smokestack got to be a form of veiled punishment lol
I think 4 should be higher since Yamato and Bismarck were both sunk/disabled by airplanes so obviously would have benefited from more AA support.
I think both Yamato and Bismarck are bad examples if you want to make that case. At the time of her sinking Yamato had already had half of her 155mm turrets removed to double the number of heavy 5-inch AA-guns. Also she was covered with 152 25mm guns. No amount of AA could have saved Yamato, even if she had US-AA guns with VT-Fuses. And in Bismarcks case replacing the 5.9 inch guns with additional 4.1 inch AA-guns would have achieved nothing because these guns were the ones being troubled by the swordfishs slow speed. It doesn't matter how many guns are firing on the target if setting for the fuses is wrong.
While I agree that a dual purpose battery would have been better, in these two cases it wouldn't have changed much.
@@gildor8866 Eh, you can debate if it would have made a difference all you want. It wouldn't have made a difference anyway because they were In pretty desperate situations to begin with. But obviously wasting space/displacement with SP guns was a case of planning to fight the last war and not the next and that was clear by the end.
@@gildor8866 In almost all cases dual purpose heavy guns would have made no difference because these are for high altitude bombers, and high altitude bombing of a ship in open water proved very ineffective. In WW2 you needed what is now called CIWS to put up a cloud of metal at close range against planes attacking on the deck or dive bombing.
@@kenoliver8913 No, heavy AA-Guns were for engaging all enemy planes at long range (and continuing when they closed in) and breaking up his formations with shrapnell. Given developements of the war short ranged weapons like the 20mm became actually less effective because torpedoes and bombs were dropped from greater distances. Thats also one of the many reasons why the japanese 25mm was never really effective, by the time a US-plane entered effective range it was already close to finishing its attack run, unlike japanese planes who released their ordinance from lower altitudes or shorter distances.