General History: British Battlecruisers 2 

Everything in this video is taken direct from the books linked in the description. As well as dives on the sunken battlecruisers, in particular, Queen Mary. Nothing is untrue in here unless you want to argue that the sources (including Friedman, probably the most well-regarded Naval Historian alive) are lying.

By all means, keep up the snark! If I want dry, there is, as you said, wikipedia :D

"Snarky and Dry"... Don't sweat it, your doing a good job, believe me. I follow several other naval history channels aside from Drachinifel. And they all have different and unique personalities, that differentiates them one another. That includes you. It's nice to hear from someone who doesn't have a beautiful British accent talk naval history.

I actually enjoy your delivery. I love Drach for being the you tube naval historian god he is, but his dulcet tones tend to put me to sleep. Despite being genuinely interested in what he has to say on the subject. Where as you livelier tones and small jokes keep me engaged most of the time.

Enjoying the videos! Agree that the Blatant Drach copycats try to take his dry wit and approach too far off the scale and create some rather sterile content. Your style fits nicely in my naval history playlists, between the more engineering based Drach who appeals to my mechanical nature, and the VERY passionate Dr. Alexander Clarke who doesn’t hold back from shedding a tear in the company of retired warships!

Renown faced off against the scharnhorst and her sister ship which are now called battleships and they both declined combat

You're no snarkier than Drachinifel. You've got a good channel going, keep it up..

9:44 Jackie Fisher's rationale for the Courageous and Glorious was operations in the shallow waters of Baltic sea and a potential invasion by that route into Germany.

I love your mixture of good history with the appropriate snark as needed. Jackie Fischer deserves as much snark as available. 😂

lol at 3:13, I've said it before, and I'll say it now... doing something different to doctrine, or doing doctrine but stupid in the circumstance , its sometimes just what happens and sometimes helps... It can just be .. inanity due to the stress of being pushed into battle... the captain mispeaks and everyone just goes about doing it, and the captain has to think "will it cause more confusion if I rescind ??? yep, so lets just go with it". etc .etc. I sail on 10 metre yachts in races, you know, we have that problem... ur yeah well normally we do blah blah blah.. and you said .. so it was done.. ok lets just go with it now ?

re: your postscript. Dry humor and snarkiness are tools that a skilled toureguide utilizes to engage genuinely enquiring minds and meet them, avoiding direct insult and invective (as in Fox Propaganda crap). Leave no thinking person behind.

Fisher's theory did sound good in head: super fast and super powerful, quick strike. Then you need just paper armor, if fight would be over fast. Sounds ideal. Only if there wasn't that one tiny detail that precision was not a thing in 1910s. Americans had still similar ideas much later when they intended to built basically just paper armored floating rocket launchers.

The 5 Queen Elizabeth's showed what could have been. Oil fired, armed with a 15 inch main battery and a speed of 25ish knots. The fact that four of them were supporting Beatty at Jutland kind of makes the point.

Funny factoid. I read somewhere that on the stocks HMS Vanguard was classed for a short time as a Battlecruiser because of her speed. So HMS Vanguard was almost the last British battlecruiser. During the late 1930s Battlecruiser were set to make a comeback as treaty cruiser killers like the Alaskas, B65 Super Type A, Project 1047, the German O cruisers and the Soviet Kronstadts. There's a hint that these ships would shift from hunting treaty cruisers to hunting each other with the development of the B65 Super Type A cruisers. After the Japanese learned about the Alaskas the B65 design went from 30,000 tons to 40,000 tons and from 31 cm guns to 36 cm guns. The American response to this upgrade would have been simple. USS Iowa.

People don't appreciate my dry humor or snarky comments either.i feel your pain. great video.ty

Your snark is distinct enough from drach.

One thing to note, Hood was not using the bad ammunition handling practices of the Battlecruiser Squadron at Jutland. Such practices were distinctly against British practice by that time, and Hoods crew were mostly pre war professionals. Why she blew up is still debated, but it was NOT because of poor ammunition handling. That particular myth was essentially made up. Its kept alive essentially because people point and scream 'almost no one survived so we don't know'.... Oh and even the best historians such as Friedman can be wrong on occasion. That does not mean they are lying, simply that they are wrong in that instance. Oh and if you don;t believe that myths can continue to propagate even after they are debunked? Let me point you to two from my own specialisation.... 1) Sharks are attracted by blood in the water and they go into a frenzy on smelling it. They are not, and they do not. I have WITNESSED a Shark Biologist opening up a bag of fish blood in the water, and the fish did nothing. What WILL attract them frim miles away is the smell of flesh, especially if its starting to rot. 2) Wolves are led by a Pack Alpha. They are not, the author of the paper that suggested this actually spent much of his career trying to convince people he was wrong. The issue was a lack of knowledge. The paper was written based on observation of a group of wolves in a zoo, NOT a wild pack. Wolves do not form packs by a group of random individuals joining together such as the Zoo pack, they are FAMILY groups. Their pack interactions are completely different compared to the captive animals in the zoo, none of which were related. Despite these myths being wrong, they are STILL widely believed and widely stated as fact. History is no different to Zoology in that respect, and anyone studying it should bear that in mind.

These are fantastic videos, honestly thought your subscriber count was 416k not 416. Quality is 416k my friend

Along with Drachinfel & Dr Alexander Clarke you are my go to RU-vid naval historians. Each can cover the same topics because they often highlight different things & have their own styles. Dr Clarke is a conventional academic lecture approach whereas you & Drach have more visual information.

Ummm a few issues with what you've stated which will spread misinformation: 1. Cordite handling wasn't just a problem with where they were kept or safety mechanisms being avoided. The cordite degraded and left an explosive powder residue around the ships. The navy was incorrectly informed that this was safe, when it was only really safe in comparison to black powder. The full effects of this weren't really understood at the time and all navies found similar issues to a degree. Some crews cleaned this and some didn't take it seriously. 2. Invincible and Indefatigable classes didn't have enough armour and may have had their magazine directly penetrated. It was only the 2nd generation losses which can be directly attributed to cordite issues. 3. The Courageous weren't really battlecruisers. They were more single-use monitors intended for Fishers Baltic Raid campaign which never happened. Still a failed and bad design, but not really ever intended as battlecruisers or battle line ships. 4. British Green Boy shells had faulty AP capabilities, which made the German ships seem more capable than they really were. The British were essentially stuck firing HE shells. 5. Hood didn't mishandle cordite. The lessons were learnt. Whilst the exact reason for Hoods loss cannot be determined, it's likely she was lost due to a freak shot under her armour belt. 6. Hood specifically was originally designed as a battlecruiser and had armoured subdivision and hull-shaping of a traditional battlecruiser. It did have equivalent armour to it's contemporary battleship (QE), but his was layered rather than being a solid slab. There are arguments for still calling it a battlecruiser, even if in practice it's a big fast QE. Also you can't criticise Hoods additional armour since: A - it was probably a good thing in the long term. B - lessons from Jutland couldn't be fully understood so soon after the battle. C - they cancelled her sisters in favour of a new design (G3). 7. British changed their definitions of battlecruisers a few times. G3 and Hood were called a battlecruiser due to their speed and lesser armour and firepower when compared to battleships N3. KGV was even called battlecruisers in some circles. 8. Did I miss Renown class or did you not cover them? 9. It should be mentioned the Queen Mary's was more contemporary with Tiger than with Lion with incremental improvements between each.

A proportional representation of the poor powder and ammunition handling that you outlined would possibly be some of the battleships attacked at Pearl..unsure of the set condition of Arizona that morning..however that would be the ultimate example, as having hatches/doors open for inspection. would not be much different...what say you?

@skyneahistory2306 you are the American Drac and I long for the day you two cover the Battle of Samar as a duo.

In 1914, Bluecher was the most modern German armored cruiser, not Scharnhorsts. If "most modern" can be in general said about a warship in class that was completely obsoleted by the battlecruiser concept. :-)

Your dry wit definitely sets your videos apart from many other presenters, so I say intensify the snark until it's enough to trigger turret flashfires XD

One of the important points to why they exploded was the powder they used. Once it degraded it would shed nitroglycerin crystals, sadly pressure sensitive.

like the way your format ....... at least your accent not heavy ..... keep up in how you operate 🤙✌

Very good!

G3 is a Battlecruiser is like calling Iowa Class a Battlecruiser infront of Montana Class

You got the near loss of lion wrong. Lion was never in danger of blowing up.

Are you suggesting Hood was lost because of the same kind of mishandling of charges as at Jutland? This is the first time I have heard this.

No, you're great keep it going...

These are very interesting!

I like it, nice job.

S.M.S Goeben was not "unwilling to fight" ,because if there is no war declared it would`t be nice to shoot. May be you have a different point of view following Adm Fisher" the german fleet should be copenhagend"!When war was declared did the brirish BC followed and fight Goeben? (:-)

Furious was designed for the shallow Baltic sea in flank the western front but when they too it into the Atlantic her deck were warping in sea . So they modified it into a carrier .

Keep the snark!

Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank or as it's known in the Treasury - Large Armoured Car. Great vid, thanks.

Beautiful accents threw an empire and millions of lives away.😎

The way you do your videos is the reason I listen to all of them while I'm at work. Don't change a thing

Perfect appreciation of the subject.

Great video on British BC. Whoa whoa whoa don't attack Drach. That's my boy. Hahahahah but I like your style.

Drach's not impartial when it comes to his domestic naval forces and history, so your vids are rather refreshing in being genuinely impartial.