Naval Engineering Disasters - How not to design a ship 

Pinned post for Q&A :)

"You could have 50 foot of the submarine sticking up out of the water... in the air... and the bow would still reach crush depth and implode." That's an HMS Captain level of design flaw, but also a morbidly amusing mental image.

HMS Inflammable was canceled after Jutland. The designer quietly shelved his pitch to use the ships magazines as anti-torpedo defences.

"Sir the submarine is sinking!" "I know, its supposed to do that." "Ya but we're at cruise, not drill."

“Where are your dedicated battleships and why are they on fire?” I’m dead.

"slow clap for the Muppet that designed the indefatigable" sent me into a laughing crying coughing fit. well done Drach 👏

Me before seeing this: I bet the Omaha is in this list. Me after hearing the first ship's armor belt was underwater: The Omaha isn't going to be in this list.

Ooh! Ooh! "The Royal Navy's last civilian designed ship." Aside from the Type 21 Amazon Class Frigates, designed and built by Vosper Thorneycroft. Sunk by the Argentine Air Force.

"Or perhaps Achilles being some horrible mutant hybrid monster that was 25 percent heel by volume." What a wonderful sentence!

I still go with Vasa for number 1. Even during a test at dockside, when sailors ran from one side of the ship to the other.... the test had to be stopped as everyone was afraid that Vasa would roll over. No-one dared to tell the King. Secondly, when the ship left the dockside, she did not have either her full complement on board, or her full load of stores, which would have made her freeboard higher than normal. That still wasn't enough to prevent the ocean from flooding in through the lower gunports when Vasa heeled over a bit in a light breeze. So, designing a ship with holes in it's side that would be effectively UNDERWATER in any kind of weather, seems to me to be THE number 1 engineering SNAFU. Apologies for the added emphasis but I've seen Vasa up close and personal and I think it's a crying shame she was ever built. Her only use in the end, was as an underwater storehouse of unparalleled archaeological significance.

When Drach says "in Theory...." you know he is going to explain how reality is going to wreak havoc on an otherwise elegant hypothesis.

Those IJN battlecarriers would make an awesome museum ship in that the stern of the ship would hold a fabulous naval air museum. Maybe their designers had that in mind.

Drach ripping into Indefatigable was among the funniest things I've heard on his channel.

The "Well there's your problem" podcast needs drach on their show for engineering disasters!

Too many years ago to remember, I had a paperback about the 'K' Class subs. At the time I had no real interest in them but the quote from a 'K' class captain on the back cover caught my eye - while inspecting his boat, he contacted the control room with the message " I say No.1 my ends diving - what's your end doing?" Of course I had to buy the book... :)

"Sir we hit the enemy armored cruiser, but it does no damage!" "What? Oh you mean you hit the 5.5ft armor belt? You're a sniper son! Get this man a gunnery medal"

#3 was secretly the first prototype submarine and was functioning as designed, until the crew noticed that they and it needed to have air to survive.

But Drach! You’ve already done French Pre dreadnoughts!

I would like to have seen the look on the face of the first person who ran the numbers on the K class and realized you could exceed crush depth while still partially surfaced.

In a way, you could argue that Indefatigable was lucky in being destroyed by gunfire that she was never supposed to withstand, as opposed to gunfire that she SHOULD have withstood but didn't (then again, wasn't it magazine handling shortcuts which did for all three of the British BC's at Jutland?) On the topic of "Who the hell thought of this?", it would be interesting to see you cover the history of the capital ship-mounted ram in the 19th Century ironclad era, especially given the number of own-goals it caused (and I'm not just talking about the Victoria).

"It meant that the Courbet's secondary battery could fire further, by a considerable margin than the main battery could." WARGAMIIING!

I am amazed by the quality AND quantity that you have in this very niche historical topic. Thank you very much!

Can you imagine the egg on the British Navy’s face had Von Spee run up against the [#1 Ship Name], destroyed it, and actually made it back to Germany or interned in a South American nation’s port? British Naval Pride would’ve been in shambles!

Yes! Of course the British K(offin) class will get a mention. The steam-powered submarine that was more a death threat to their crews than to the enemy.

Wonder how many of viewers thought when they saw this, "HMS Captain I wonder what the other 9 are"

Ship capsizes: Well There's Your Problem!

I likw how in the last slot you can hear Drach lose his sanity point by point.Also a video for economical or stratigical disasters would also be cool to see

10. "Infanta Maria Teresa" armored cruisers. (1880's Spain) 9. "Ise" class battleships with rear aircraft carrier deck. (1940's Japan) 8. "Courageous" class "large light cruisers." (1915 UK) 7. "K Class" fleet submarines. (1917 UK) 6. "Courbet" class dreadnoughts (1913 France) 5. "Konigsberg/Leipzig" class light cruisers (1927 Germany) 4. "U.S.S. Galena" ironclad (1862 US) 3. "Vasa" (1627 Sweden) 2. "HMS Captain" Ironclad (1869 UK) 1. "HMS Indefatigable" (1909 UK)

An entire hour on naval engineering disasters? _lights fire and sips coffee_

"The designers knew better than that, and did it wrong anyway." Enhancing your user experience, naval version. 🤬🤬 Slow 👏👏

Alternate title - How to design a single-use coral reef

The top three places go to: 1) the Vasa 2) the Vasa 3) the Vasa Seriously, on her maiden voyage, she sailed no more than 1300 meters before "heeling to port and filling with water". Blub blub blub.

As someone who eschewed the chance to get his dolphins by going the sub route, I would like to point out that any ship that sinks on purpose has an uncomfortably large chance of not correcting their surface to dive ratio. The K-Class does seem to take that to ridiculous extremes, even by the standards of the day.

The ever so gradual loss of of sanity and patience as the list goes on is truly a beautiful thing to behold.

Galena's weak armor resulting in her going into situations over her head reminds me of a guy I knew who, when asked if they taught him hand to hand fighting in the Army, replied, "They teach you just enough to get your ass kicked."

I am blessed on this fine Wednesday, a Drach special on Naval Engineering!

Can we talk about that German U Boat that was sunk because of toilet issue? technically it's an engineering problem. Toilets can be deadly, you know

As spaniard myself I think you don't know how the navy procurement of Spain worked untill 1980's. Let me explain, 1st took a proven (ie obsololete) foreing desing, so as being obsolete we got licensing cheap. 2nd build it cutting corners as far as you can so you make it even cheaper. 3rd now the money saved on the building goes to the pocket of the king, the minister, the dictator, the admirall who endorsed it

As a native born Illinoisan, it's "gah-lee-nah", but since the USS Galena would have served a more useful purpose in the IJN and IJA in most efficiently and expeditiously sending their warriors to meet their honoured ancestors in the afterlife, you can pronounce Galena however you want, the muppets who designed this nautical abomination can't object! Oh, HMS Indefatigable - and here I thought your introduction to the I-400 was the ne plus ultra of your wordplay...so help me Jellicoe, I am going to make some portion of that monorant my voice mail message! (Even better, how much would I have to pay for you to record the unexpurgated and uncensored version of that monorant about the HMS Indefatigable?)

50:42 Thankfully my third great grandfather had one child before the lousy decision making that led to that awful ship HMS Caption took his life. My second great grandmother was 10 months old when the Captain succumbed to poor design and thanks to her I am here typing a comment on the HMS Captain. It is even noted on her birth certificate: Occupation of Father; Seaman on H.M.S. Captain. I've recently picked up a book, HMS Captain by Arthur Hawkey 1963, now on the hunt for a copy of 'The Narrative of the loss of H.M.S. Captain' by James May (one of the survivors) publish 1872.

Okay I get the problems with the Courageous class, but they are very elegant, beautiful ships and look very cool like an ultimate Pre Dreadnought (ignoring the armour). Just don't let them go into battle, just have them around so we can admire them

K Class "about as agile as a brick" love this Drachinifel your commentary is gold 😂

The rant following the description of faullt on first place is so terribly british in all regards, I love it. How different might WWI have turned out if Indefatigable would have been in place and sunk at the battle of the Falkland Islands? Spee still wouldn't have made it home, but probably would be remembered even more for taking down a ship, one specially designed to hunt his squadron, in his last engagement. Also the British might consider their usage of Battlecruisers quite differently, maybe giving the rest of the class a smaller uparmouring, or not letting them participating at Jutland in parts or at all, which would give that quite a different outcome, Beatty being slowed down after turning back, probably with more casualties, or not being there, so either a full on fleet clash when both main lines clash without prior scouting, or a complete decline of battle if the german battlecruisers can make early contact and advise the main fleet.

You have the best naval history content on RU-vid, hands down. Over the past 6 months, I've learned more from you than I have in all of my years of personal study- presented in easily digestible nuggets with humor injected where appropriate. You keep things fresh and insightful, even with what many could consider to be 'old, tired concepts.' Cheers man, it's definitely appreciated.

A couple of notes regarding the Ise-class conversions: 1. Hyuga's No. 5 turret was apparently wrecked by an ammo accident in 1942, and the No. 6 turret had elevation issues from the start - so to an extent the conversion was motivated by the Navy deeming it less useful to replace two already broken turrets and to instead add the catapult for aircraft. 2. Almost all documentation strongly indicates the ships could only _launch_ planes. Returning aircraft could not land on either ship. As a result, they were both equipped with float planes - which by default were not great fighter aircraft as the floatation systems tended to weigh down the plane for maneuvers. 3. Japanese doctrine actually assigned all of their scout aircraft (many of which were sea planes and strike aircraft) to the cruisers escorting the carriers. The Tone-class in particular exemplified this. After Midway - where a failure in scouting by the Tone was a major cause of the defeat - it is very likely that Ise/Hyuga were converted to serve more as oversized Tones, rather than as a truly independent strike carrier force. Likewise - note that the Japanese had no idea that the US would end up making so many carriers. Midway was a devastating defeat for Japan, but by Santa Cruz the USN had likewise been reduced to just the carrier Enterprise in the Pacific. Without the massive American shipbuilding industry coming to the rescue Japan in fact had some room to believe they would face the Americans on relatively even terms in 1943/44, and in these new battles shoring up the scout group complements would have made sense. It is also worth noting that these small scout groups still nonetheless did admirable work under the circumstances. Mogami for instance had a similar conversion - which gave Nishimura's force accurate scouting in the lead up to the Battle of Surigao Strait. Trouble is, it turned out that Nishimura had been ordered from the start to embark on a suicide mission and he was deliberately just bait to draw 7th Fleet's battleships away from the Leyte Gulf transports, whereas everyone in the Western world assumed he had simply blundered into an ambush (at least until Parshall's Battle of Surigao Strait uncovered Japanese documents that showed Nishimura in fact had the clearest idea of any of the Japanese commanders of what they were facing, and was basically told to proceed anyway in a manner similar to the final sortie of the Yamato).

Well we all know that this list isn’t entirely complete. Drach made such a nice list…a list that completely refuses to admit that the French predreadnoughts even exist. Half the list could consist of them. Nope, Drach refuses to look at them again, because then he would have to admit to himself that yes, those ships did exist. Unfortunately. If France Really wanted to troll English naval historians, they should have kept one around as a museum. Thus forcing English historians to not only visit France, but also having a battleship museum ship that the English don’t have.

17:21 the IJN doctrine states that battleships and cruisers have to provide for their own recognition: carriers do not carry any recce plane on board. Later in the war the carrier number was becoming scarce and it was understood that providing recce intel with just cruisers and battleships mounted planes was not feasible. Ise was an attempt to provide eyes to the fleet without losing hit power on the few remaining carriers. Ise and Hyuga were "FLOATPLANES" carriers anyway. They were too slow to be effective but I can see the reasoning behind the conversion; they could have removed the useless two stern guns remaining but we have to understand that "ballance" in a hull buoyancy is also a thing and a single turret assembly can weight thousand of tons alone, and especially in such a stern armed ship, removing everything could have caused too many issues. A failed experiment out of desperation but not among the worse, expecially with the USN operating such odd monstrosities as the fat short WWI era battle barges across the Pacific. Strike aircrafts have longer legs then fighters, with usually 2 or more pairs of eyes and hands not flying the plane, and because they have to be floatplanes, as fighters they would be useless as fighters in 1943, so IJN chose to have recce planes that could damage things if opportunity arose. Among the failures I would have put Tegethoff class: the B turret with three guns could warp the hull just by firing due to severe undersizing of the hull structure. The crew of the main turrets could choke to death, not being allowed to fire for more then 15 minutes before opening all the bulkheads and portholes to allow air in. The crew was so sacrificed quarter wise that the ship was unfitted for more the a week out of the port, having to literally sleep among the machineries, while the officers quarter were as luxurious as in a line ship first class, if not more: talk about priorities! The roof of the main turrets were so under armoured that a glancing shot from a 12" gun could have ripped it straight off the ship. The Tsaint Istvan was built in Croatia for political reasons and the execution was so poor that it should have been rejected straight off but the Hungarians refused to do that forcing the Austrians to put it in service.

"...they were designed to hunt down enemy cruisers, *_kill them horribly_* and secure the high seas for British trade" You killed me x'D

H.I. Sutton over on Covert Shores actually did a fairly good explanation on the Steam-Powered fleet submarine concept. His main take away was that the Kalamity's were of sound concept for the period in which they existed, his main critique is the way in which the Royal Navy utilized them and he believed that that was a big part of the class's less than Stirling reputation.

I know this horse is beaten well into the zombie state by now, but I still think the Charles Martel class warrants a honorable mention. Not so much for being a well-known comic relief, but for colossal waste of taxpayer money ending in a bunch of things that were dangerous to serve on. It's not even a matter of the tumblehome hull because Tsesarevich proved you can build it survivable (and within a reasonable amount of time provided you are properly motivated by your customers breathing down your neck). Good thing only Bouvet got herself into position to show how bad those ships were. If those truly were pioneering designs, but after Hoche and Brennus none of this should happen. It's unlikely their crews ever considered them funny, unless in a very gallows humor way the Kalamity class submariners considered theirs.

If I didn't know any better I'd say this video is a perfect starting point for Drach's own book on world's worst warships

Loved It.... Especially when you referred to the designer as a Muppet. Absolutely golden Keep up the great work!!!!!

16:12 "But if you're in a situation where the enemy battleships have arrived in gun range of the carrier group you're escorting, you probably have larger things to worry about like; where are your dedicated battleships, and why are they on fire?" Absolute comedic gold with that deadpan delivery 😂

Greeting from the all of us coming off of night shifts in the US Drach . May all your Boats stay Afloat and all your coffee be strong and dark !

Ok so the K Class is impressive, I've never heard of a submarine that could hit it's crush depth whilst surfaced before.

The level of 'cranky' you have at the end of this video is *delightful*. (I know it's old, I don't know how I missed it when you put it out originally, but I did.)

The Indefatigable-class weird concept , even the dutch Zeven provincien class had a better or equal armour protection .

Modern attack submarines are very much "fleet submarines" in their role escorting carrier strike groups. In the very, very long run, the concept worked out :D

Many years ago, I was selected to give a group of naval architects familiarisation training on the 9mm pistol. After the classroom portion, we went down to the range. I passed out the magazines and several boxes of 9mm ammunition and told them to load their magazines. After a bit, one guy raised his hand and said he had a problem. I walked down the line and asked what was the problem. He held up a magazine and told me he couldn't get it to hold more than five. He had managed to load it backward and I had to disassemble the magazine to unload it. I told him to think of it as a ship, you want the pointy end to face forward.

Hour long video? About engineering disasters? Today is a good day, everybody.

Drachism of the day : rigidity of a wet noodle! How to make a great video an amazing one! Drach should be knighted by the queen! I do not know how to thanks him for his amazing work!

Anyone else get hype when you hear the intro music and the guns firing off?

Had expected to see the "The existence of the kamtschatka" as one of the failures 🤣

Because beating down on HMS Captain never gets old.

Glad to hear you mention the little-known battle of Drewry's Bluff. My great-great-grandfather was with the Confederate 26th Virginia Infantry supporting the guns in Fort Darling at that battle.

The Indefatigable class was fitted for, but not with, magic armor. HMS New Zealand had hers installed during her world cruise. HMS Indefatigable never had hers fitted. With magic armor in place, you don't need 6" or 9" or even 12" of armor belt.

Until I came across this channel I never had all that much interest in naval history but now I am hopelessly hooked! The narration is what caught my attention at first but the content is just so fascinating that I find myself glued to each video. The narration itself has a delightfully different style that blends with the video content in such a way as to make this channel incredibly entertaining! Keep up the good work, I for one can't seem to get enough!

I have a feeling someone has been watching Sacred Cow Shipyards. This is lovely.

Maybe a video about Royal Navy steam submarines would be an idea. They all lie at the bottom of the river Forth.

Remember boys and girls, everything can be a submarine once.

I don’t think you covered the Battle Of Rennell Island quite clearly enough. That was the Chi-Town that went to the bottom. We, aboard Chicago (CG-11) laid a wreath over that Posit. during West-Pac 79’. The water was black, literally. I did cry, although I knew none of those good bastards. Be advised, I like your presentations and am a fan.

Only Drach would have the imagination to compare the Death Star to WW1 era naval engineering failures and have it make perfect sense! Bravo Zulu Mr D

As an engineering student, this is very entertaining and insightful

As far as the hybrid BB/CVs go, I think fighters would actually use more fuel, not less. The reason being that your fighters need to be in the air before the enemy arrives. Otherwise, by the time you get them prepped to launch, launched, and they get up high enough in altitude, it'll be far too late. So you need to launch them if enemy contact is possible, and keep them up all the time from that point on. And that means they fly a lot more, which in turn means more fuel use, more maintenance. With the strike craft, you only launch them when you have something to strike. And with the how the Japanese fortune was at the time, you don't even have to recover them ;)

Interesting detail: at 18:58 you can see The photographer writing 1945, but 4 is a bit scribbled. It seems like The writer mistakenly wrote 3 instead of 4 and The corrected 3 into 4. I dont know i think its interesting to see people being people 80 years ago

That bit about the K-class being able to be arse-up in the air and still have its bow get below crush depth, that's just... wow. Absolutely insane. Only topped by the Indefatigable. Just... how do you make things WORSE? [Looks at LCS] Oh.

Drachs rant about the indefatigable battlecruisers was glorious and easily one of the most fun to listen to that he's done. The fact that this whole video is basically a rant about idiotic ship designers makes it even better!

First how to design, and now how not to design, great Drach!!!!

I must say, I appreciate how you usually do not make word choice errors and don't load your vids up with a bunch of "uh" "um" and confused "I don't know" ramblings. Even when you are asked a complex question, you've done the minimum of trying to find the answer, and report what you could find glibly.

Is it just me or did he seem rather adamant about No. 1 LOL. Enjoy your videos immensely Drach thanks bunches.

Huh, today I learned there were steam-propelled submarines before nuclear power came onto the scene. I'm morbidly curious now to look into the rest of the engineering challenges and problems that came along with what must've been an incredibly complicated propulsion plant.

The Indefatigable also makes the cardinal sin of being a really fugly ship. At least the Courageous class look battlecruiser-esc ie sleek and elegant, and the Konigsberg looks distinctive. Even the Ise battlecarrier has a presence to it. The indefatigable just looks dumb; the superstructure looks weirdly large, like it was reused from a larger battleship, and the proportions make it look like there's a turret missing for the hull size and looks a little like a funnel farm. In fact, to me, it's like someone looked at the French ships, also fugly things covered in funnels and went "yes, I like that". I know aesthetics is a matter of opinion and some love the Invincible/Indefatigable look but I categorically do not.

Truly a good day when we get a special to listen to while going about our commutes and such

"Oh, but it gets worse!" - seems to be the key phrase for all of these.

This is a really good list. I would put the K-Class submarine a bit higher because out of all of them, that design is the only one that is sheer madness. A steam-powered submarine, Jesus. I know a lot about submarines, they are my speciality and I don't even know where to begin with that one.

Me as a german who knows your channel for a while am positively surprised that the Nassau and Bismarck class did not make it

I came across the K-class submarine in a book called 'The Book of Heroic Failures', and... very deserved.

I haven't looked forward to a Drach video this much in QUITE a while, and that's a high bar to clear!

The problems on Courbet and Danton classes come from a long political battle between the pro and anti battleship concepts. The pros wanted a heavy fleet of battleships whereas the anti thought at the late 19th century that the battleship concept was already obsolete and that the future was to cruiser+destroyer doctrine of fast and nimble ships, opposed to slow battleships. For decades, the French Marine Nationale was prevented to research of build battleships of any good design, only obsolete designs were reluctantly accepted. So when they finally woke up, they began research from scratch with a absurd amount of delay compared to other nations, essentially having one or two generations of battleship design to take on and experiment with. Dantons were pre Dreadnaught designs and Courbet were early Dreadnaught designs, essentially one or two generations too late. They then decided to go for the "MOAR GUNS" to compensate and invented the quad turret design for Normandie and Lyon concepts that WW1 cancelled. After WW1, the NAvy then worked on faster and more cost effective ships but trying to do several things in one, the Dunkerque class. Richelieu was then a more streamlined design.

Going in, I was expecting this to just be listing HMS Captain ten times over, but it turns out some other ships were not that great either!

An hour long naval engineering video? You spoil us Drach.

At 19:44 I spit my coffee out. Well done sir.

Regarding Vasa: the biggest engineering mistake was that results of her stability tests had been ignored.

Universally agreed upon engineering disaster: the mk14 torpedo.

Famous quote by K Class Sub Lieutenant ... "I say sir, my end is diving. What is your end doing"?

Whoever engineered the Maori warrior skirt and pin for the HMS New Zealand is a master.

A couple more "engineering disasters": - French Surcouf: What was its purpose? - German Scharnhorst: It was a way of "using up" triple 11 inch turrets from 3 cancelled Graf Spee" class ships but... - Prinz Eugen: Good looking but dreadfully overweight, complicated and expensive to build. Also those steam turbines were problematic. - German WW2 destroyers: Good firepower and speed but poor seagoing qualities and problematic steam turbines. See HMS Nonsuch report. To be fair of course, with hindsight every fault is clear. Thanks for a very interesting video. Keep up the great work.

I dont think I've ever heard you rant the way you did against the Indefatigable Drach.

The best spent hour of 2023 so far

Hey thanks a lot for the videos! They're really good and interesting to listen to. Your calm voice helps me a lot to relax before going to bed.