Hi, "Military History Visualized", I am Academy-trained Naval Officer having spent 28 years in the US Navy and survived three wars including completing 118 combat mission. Even after graduation from the US Naval War College, I have learned so much from your lectures; I am eternally grateful for the accuracy, documentation, and unbiased opinions you have provided YT viewers interested in the history of warfare and honestly learning about the truth about the human tragedy of World War II. I appreciate your extensive documentation, references and your background education which shows in your lectures. I lost two uncles in World War II on the European theater front while I lost another one against the Imperial Japanese Navy. To me, despite being military-trained, this was such a loss of lives for humanity - thank you for your respectful and deferential narrative about such a painful subject (for some of us Veterans). I hope that our younger generations realize, treat, and hopefully learned for previous armed conflict with respect and appreciation for all the sacrifices that were made by all the parties involved, regardless of one's political beliefs, denomination, genders, etc. My Peace be with you, Ciao, L, Captain US Navy Retired, Veteran (Kapitän zur See)
I'm a US submarine veteran... SSBN 2 boats; CV really means what he claims? Maybe initially but nomenclature, usage depends on who's using it. Carrier Vehicle. I find it hard to believe America is using French usage for ship designations. Capt of what?
I am a Vietnam era veteran. I am also the son of a US Navy WW2 veteran that served the entire war on an Escort carrier. In fact it was the first one in the US Navy. CVE-1 USS Long Island. I have studied WW2 naval history for the obvious reasons. I am very supportive of the theory that the escort carrier served a very important role in the war and may have supplemented the US Navy's dominance by early 1944. Also the escort carriers of both the US and Britain were crucial to the defeat of the U-boats in the Atlantic. Just my opinion.
You were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Torpedo Boats, not join them! Bring balance to the Navy battles ... not leave them in darkness!
After they became the thing they swore to destroy, giant torpedo boats, they did it again. Destroyers are now large multi mission surface ships, the very thing torpedo boats were first designed to destroy.
"...and the Imperial Japanese Navy, in the late war, was...mostly sunk."
5 лет назад
David Beamer If you see a modern ship, it’s the US Navy. If you see an old ship, it’s the Royal Navy. If you see no ship at all, it’s the Imperial japanese navy.
"Note that the British called their lend-lease destroyer escorts 'frigates', likely to annoy anyone who likes standards and clarity; like me." Well, annoying the Germans is a national pastime ;-) (I know you're not German, but couldn't pass up the joke.)
A.J.P. That’s like calling a Canadian an American. They get kind of shirty about it, in their very polite way. Considering Austria was around for hundreds of years before unified Germany, maybe its more like calling the UK “East America.”
I liked your nautical pun that "the displacement bar should be taken with a bit of 'leeway' ", although I suspect it was unintentional, and in any case, more apt for sailing ships than those powered by steam turbine.
10:30 Spain had a naval plan from 1927 (expanded after the treaty of London in 1930) to have cruisers operating in pairs: one heavy cruiser with 8x203mm guns and one light cruiser with 8x152mm and 4x101mm guns (+ torpedo tubes), complementing each other, with the heavy one (Canarias-class) having more powerful guns, and the light cruiser having quicker rate of fire (and more guns). This was put to test during the battle of Cape Palos in the Spanish Civil War (1938), in which the "light" cruiser Libertad was able to go toe to toe with the "heavy" cruiser Canarias during an artillery exchange (with both ships being lightly damaged). I say "light" and "heavy" because both cruisers had almost the same tonnage (9240 tons for the Libertad and 9900 tons for the Canarias). On the same battle, the "sister" ship of the Canarias, the cruiser Baleares was sunk by torpedoes from the republican destroyers.
Oh, there are plenty of us here. I'd say many came to make sure this video hasn't gone too far wrong. And as I'm sure you know and just misspoke, Drach does all ships except active duty ones and that's just for political reasons.
I dunno, the modern vessel classification can be pretty misleading, especially when compared to WW2 classification. Also, let's not get into JMSDF's... um, "interesting" take on it.
@@BicyclesMayUseFullLane It seems everything is called a destroyer now, save for a few cruisers - but the cruiser/destroyer distinction seems pretty vague. Russian Kirov class is sometimes called either (it's bigger than any current destroyer I know of, but not by that much, and seems built for the same role as a modern destroyer). Royal Navy destroyers have often been operating alone like a cruiser role, and the type 45 /Daring class is pretty big, again should it be a cruiser. At least US missile cruisers are used for the role their name suggests. But they never travel alone. Oh idk
Hey, I justed wanted to say thank you for such a great and informative video! I'm just your average American citizen so before this I knew basically next to nothing about warships, and only got interested in learning because of a certain app I play on my phone (lmao) but you provided such a clear and easy to follow description of everything I was kind of blown away. I even tried watcing a few documentaries after your video and found yours to be so much more indepth and helpful! It was also nice to hear someone who wasn't American or British talking about WW2 for once (which btw your accent is amazing). Keep up the good work~ ❤️
Perfect timing I've been spending the last two days playing Civ 6 with the (battle of the Pacific mod) most of the mods I've played tend to just be overblown what ifs or the equivalent of Dracula versus Yoda fights, but this one actually takes an account and limits what you are able to work with based on realistic ships of the line.
Clevelands did not have dual purpose main batteries, most pre-war and WWII cruisers did not have DP main batteries. The post war Worcester class was the first (and only) USN 6" Mk16 DP armed cruiser, and even that used a special dual gun turret because of accuracy issues with the triple turrets on the non DP Mk 16s. During the war , the main exceptions were the Royal Navies Dido class and the US Navy Atlanta class, maybe some other class from other navies that I dont know.
listening to the whole video clearly helps: "One key aspect of some - yet not all - light cruiser was the use of dual-purpose guns as their main armament that allowed them to engage both surface targets and aircraft with their main batteries. Yet, although nearly all Navies tried this, few of them were successful until late and post-war."
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized I understand, I did watch the whole video, but what I'm trying to say is that it is confusing - you state that "a key aspect" is that "only some" cruisers had dual purpose batteries, of which "few were successful until late and post-war", which is not really logical in my opinion - a key feature that only some cruisers had and barely any were good at. At the same time you are giving an example of a ship, who did in no way have a dual purpose main battery, neither in theory nor in practice. Neither did any of the 39 ships built in the Brooklyn/St. Louis/Cleveland/Fargo lineage that you use as an example of Light Cruisers, or any of the comparable classes from other countries (e.g. the Town Class, Emile Bertin/La Galissonnière class, Condottieri class). Basically I feel that stating that a key aspect of light cruisers during the Second World War is having dual purpose batteries is not really correct. And this is really just constructive criticism, I trust your research, but I just feel that you might have formulated that point a bit confusingly.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized well, you are German, than you should know that even the German heavy cruisers have amunition ( timefuzed HE shells ) they were able to shoot against aircraft. Also the US heavy cruisers. I saw one document, where survivor from Princ Eugen was describing how were they using their 20,3cm guns in AA role. But yes, it was very rare... The firecontrol was not suited for them.
@Kristof Kolumbus: first I am Austrian, second I don't care what you think I "should know" according to my background, which you have clearly no knowledge about. So maybe do your own homework before you throw around "you should".
Sometimes this dudes accent throws me off. I was trying to figure out what _ship long tongs_ were... _It's ship long tons_ then again I'm sure my German would be 10x worse so who am I to criticize?
Battleships were also used as a "fleet in being". Pretty much a deterrent to certain areas for fear of losing ships. More psychological then anything else. Bismarck's sister ship Tirpitz is famous for this. It did next to nothing in it's intended role and aside from a few commerce raids it sat in a fjord in Norway for most of the war. But just knowing it was in the area was enough for the British to divert supplies and troops to attempt to sink it even though Germany had no plans to move or use it in its intended war knowing it would just be sunk
Until April 1945... You know what the maximum suckage was? Not when the ship actually sunk, but beforehand when the captain made the tough call to flood some compartments to correct a list threatening the ship, intentionally drowning about 300 men at their posts. The intercom conversation there would have been grim ... "Attention main bridge, incoming flooding! Doors are sealed from the outside!" "We know - that's us. Be grateful you get to die for the Emperor."
@@cpttankerjoe tell that to the Japanese Navy sailors who named her just that as they watched her being tied up to the pier constantly while they headed out to battle.
Thank you for putting in all the work to make this presentation. You bring a lot of clarity through your organization and use of categories to sort out classes. I see that names of types are mostly just labels of convenience - or sometimes a subterfuge.
It might be pointed out that the British had a different definition of what a battle-cruiser was, it was based on speed. For Jutland type battleruisers this was obtained by sacrificing armor. That doesn't mean they were battlecruisers because they were lightly armored. They were BC's because they were fast. Hood was a different breed and its design was changed drastically after Jutland. She sacrificed displacement instead of armor. She had the same protection and guns as the Queen Elizabeth class but was MUCH longer and weighed a lot more. The British had no concept of a fast battleship so kept the nomenclature of battlecruiser for her. She is almost in the same boat (see what i did there) as the Scharnhorst class where they were improperly called battlecruisers though they had superb armor.
There was a book written named, "Dreadnought". I don't remember the author at this time. According to the book Battlecruisers were invented by the British before World War 1 because, according to their naval planners, commerce raiding heavy cruisers were the main thread to British supply lines. The Battlecruisers were faster and better armed than heavy cruisers (12" guns vs 8" guns). The speed of the battlecruiser would allow the interception of heavy cruisers and the ability to stay out of range of the shorter range of the heavy cruiser main armament. At the same time the 12" guns, which out ranged the heavy cruisers, could pound them to pieces. Once the first world war began the battlecruiser fought in three different roles: 1. Against commerce raiding heavy cruisers - example - Battle of the Falklands. The British battlecruisers sunk and entire squadron of German cruisers with little or no loss. This was the mission they were designed for. 2. Raids, such as against the flemish coast - their speed could get them out of trouble from land based artillery and they could and did some decent damage. 3. Main battle line - In the battle of Jutland they ended up engaging the German high seas fleet. Unlike the battleships the battlecruisers ended up blowing up spectacularly and sinking with almost all hands. This was NOT the mission they were designed for. I heard about the British designation for Battlecruiser which had more to do with speed, hence the heavier armor of Hood, etc. My examples came from that book, which ended its history with the beginning of the first world war. I suspect that, if the book was correct about designs before the war, the definitions will have evolved during and after the war. The book is interesting reading but, out of around 15 or so chapters there were only 2 which dealt with "nuts and bolts" and the rest of the book was politics and personalities.
Great video :) HMS Hood isn't a very good example of a Battlecruiser because it was much more heavily armored and more heavily armed than most Battlecruiser. HMS Renown would have been a better example as it had 3 inches less belt armer and 2 less main guns that battle ships built at the same time :)
As cruisers could be on detached duty far from support, cruisers had fairly substantial repair facilities on board. That is, they had machine shops that could create many parts.
We found out the main reason why Admiral Beatty said at Jutland (which has a different battle name in German naval history); "there's something wrong with my bloody batllecruisers today", he was incorrect about the warkeeping design of the RN's battlecruisers, but correct about the gun crew training (too much ammunition in the gun turrets). This has been confirmed by sea survey of war grave wrecks in the North Sea a few years ago. The reason is subtle, and (at the time) unrecognized in the Kaiserliche Marine, their cruiser bombardment raids of British coastal towns, early in WW1, had bottled up the RN battlecruiser squadron in the Firth of Forth, which retarded naval gunnery training (unlike at Scarpa Flow). Only a major naval battle like Jutland, revealed this shortcoming.
As an aside, a US task force made up of destroyers, destroyer escorts and escort carriers took on the main Japanese battle fleet, including the Yamato, in the Battle for Leyte Gulf and caused them it to withdraw.
@benter1978 Actually they only sunk one cruiser while the US fleet took a beating. However the Japanese fleet should have been able to easily annihilate the US force and then attack the landing force at Leyte. Pure bluff by one of the greatest naval stands in history. As an aside, Adm. Halsey, who fell for a Japanese feint and left the landings almost unprotected, should have been sent home in disgrace.
Frigate nomenclature has been a mess since the age of powered surface combat. Originally a frigate was a fifth or sixth rate ship in the age of sail. The term went unused soon after steam propulsion became the norm, and only reemerged when the RN needed a designation for it's small-ish escort vessels. This has now been accepted as the universal designation, but it took some time, mostly with the US. During the war, the US built two classes of "Patrol Frigates" which were mostly analogous to contemporary DEs or British frigates. Following the war though, the frigate designation was used in place of the older "Destroyer Leader," basically a cruiser. It wasn't until the political hubbub about a supposed "cruiser gap" that these were redesignated as cruisers and "Ocean Escorts" were changed to frigates.
Well done here with these generally fair and accurate insights into our historical 20th century naval vessels. They will be a valuable asset for history students and , personally, a glorious nostalgic asset regarding my grandfather. Stay well and keep them flowing my friend. Dave, Cambridge.
I am always lobbying for His Majesty's Trawlers to be considered as warships, because they were. On the other hand, ignorance is bliss. Just ask the U-boat captain who got too close to one, because he thought it was a much larger freighter, and therefore much farther away. Just to make it clear, they were not only used as coastal defense vessels like the E-boats, they were also used in rather more open spots like the Iceland UK gap. They seem to get amazingly little coverage.
I really don't understand the treaty limit descriptions since they meant nothing by 43. American destroyers and carriers, IJN battleships, and German subs routinely subverted all the limits. Especially US carrier refits where like Enterprise fit the guidelines but put 20 inch guns and double the AA when it was forced to drydock, as were the ten super and escort carriers commissioned after that
Hello u probably won’t read this comment but it’s worth a try nonetheless, I was wondering if you could do the same video for ship classes but in the modern era if it’s to much you don’t have to do it anyway love your videos man
I wanna point out that not all battlecruisers sacrificed armor for speed, as evidenced by the German battlecruisers of WW1 which sacrficied armament for speed instead. Furthermore, usually battlecruisers were actually displacing more than contemporary battleships. Battlecruisers, the variations thereof (mainly the British and German doctrine) are a very interesting concept that deserve their own video. But I want to point out that this is largely from a few well sourced and indepth answers I recieved on /r/askhistorians on Reddit, so take it with a grain of salt.
The Admiral Hipper class may have exceeded the displacement of treaty cruisers yet it was because of inefficiencies in German construction not because it's armour, armament or speed where superior in fact they where comparable.
