The Architecture of Dreadnoughts - Blueprints of Success 

Pinned post for Q&A :)

Suggestion: it would be awesome to put the name of ships somewhere on the corner of the screen when you show examples.

48:27 “ Materials are very important, because ships do need to flex” And that’s why you decorate your dreadnought with solid gold plating.

"The idea of a 45,000 ton glass battleship shattering the first time it encounters a large wave is amusing to think about, but perhaps not so amusing to be on" Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "glass cannon" Talking about materials, R. Buckminster Fuller once used the analogy that you could have two battleships, built entirely the same, with the same design, almost exact copies, but change one thing on the second ship and it can shoot farther and more accurately: the type of steel in the gun barrels. It made his point about materials science being an important one and how simple changes can do great things.

I do believe the Italians insisted that their warships look "bellissima" (beautiful) in addition to all other concerns. I for one believe they succeeded.

Regarding flexing, I met a captain of a container ship, that sat "when you are in heavy seas on your bridge at the back of the ship, it is an impressive sight how the waves are rolling through the container rows". Meaning, you see the gaps between the containers widening and narrowing when the hull flxes when going over the crests and troughs of the waves.

The example of stable hull vrs unstable, I worked mainly on Fast Craft ferries. The Italian built MDV1200 SuperSeaCat's are mono hull fast craft and quite high freeboard. While they do have stabilisers to somewhat reduce their motion they still tend to roll around if things get a bit choppy. They were rated up to force 6 or 7 weather. Anything more we'd just not go. Passengers found them quite comfortable though. Most of my time was served on Incat 74 and 81's. These are Fast Craft Cats and as they're catamaran hulls very stable in the water even though they are slightly smaller than SuperSeaCat. As a result those were rated in everything right up to force 9 weather. We'd head on out in weather that everyone else was battening down the hatches and heading off home. SeaCat Scotland did however pick up the nickname "the Vomit Comet" in Belfast 😂 It took more to get them bouncing but when they did move around, the pitch and roll was just weird and there were times you'd feel her roll, pause then snap back exactly as you described. Fun story, worst weather I was ever out in was part of the crew that took Seacat Scotland light ship from Belfast to Dover to hand her over. We got caught in a massive storm off the coast of Wales. All we could do was turn away from the coast, head further out and try to go round the worst of it. We ended up lashing the cpt to his chair to stop him being thrown out of it and the rest of us just lay on the deck because we'd end up on our arse anyway if we tried to stand. In the cabin heading up to the bridge when we first got into it I was walking along then the deck just dropped out from under me then came back up to smack me as I fell. Well built little ship though. There were massive container and tanker ships out that night reporting damage over the radio all through it and we came through with some bumps and bruise but not a scratch on the ship and compared to the ships that got the snot kicked out of them, we were like a coke can 🤣

"So you need to design a Dreadnought battleship" Soviet car makers: *confused screaming*

You forgot the true final form of the dreadnought bow, as seen in a much later modification of the _Yamato_ : the fixed center-line forward cannon bow, favored for use in interstellar combat :-P Not the sort of wave motion you had in mind.

Your engineering background is most appreciated as it obviously enables your cogent explanations of the various design balances and the why's of these based on the physics, materials etc., etc.

Thank you for another great one Drach!! One request that I think people would love is that each ship picture you use be labeled with a name and the year the picture was taken

Hi! Perhaps some day you can cover the subject of Russian dreadnoughts and battleships in the first half of the 20th century, especially since they flew below the radar and then, much like the russian tanks, they suprised everyone with some relatively modern and effective designs!

Last time I was this early _Dreadnought_ still had Longbowmen

Imagine balancing the hundreds of factors needed in a fighting ship with basically hand calculations

53 minutes on 'battleship hull design'. What has my life come to?

Much of the prestige of leading powers of the era was actually being able to produce such complex artifacts... not mearly ownership or numbers....

Interviewer: What is your job? Drachinifel: I'm a battleship scientist. Interviewer: What..?

Ah, another good Wednesday Special. Sure do enjoy looking forward to these each week. Keep up the great work, Drach!

26:55 Clearly the Russian round hull ships win the extreme stability award, right? :)

Loved this video! As someone no where near fluent in “battleship” I would have liked labels under the names of these ships. Most I knew or at least thought I did but some..... nope. Great video nonetheless.

The bulbous bow doesn't shift the bow wave forward. Its hydrodynamic shape helps drain it away making it smaller. Remember the bow wave isn't the "curl" of water thrown up as the leading edge slices through the water. It's a large mass of water always pushed ahead of a hull in motion. By reducing its size (thus mass) the bulbous bow reduces the amount of energy required to push a hull through water. For the same power it can make a ship faster. Two big caveats. For a given hull a bulbous bow must be designed for one speed--usually cruising speed for merchants and top speed for warships. At any other speed the advantage is lost. Second, a bulbous bow is designed for relatively calm seas. When it's rough enough that water is coming over the bow the advantage is lost.

Good morning, nothing better naval history with coffee in the morning

Love this channel, I find the narration soothing and informative. keep up the great work

"...build a pyramid or a giant office block on the ship." Honestly, I was waiting for a bait-shot of USS Long Beach or Zumwalt to follow that up

Does this mean we will have a follow up video, classifying which ships/ classes by these features ie where the Nelsons sat on stability, turning sea keeping etc

Our last battleship, the Vanguard was, apparently, an excellent sea boat, shipping green seas in Korea. What I remember of her in Pompey was the height of the superstructure. While not a 'hotel', I guess her armour belt kept her stable. I don't think any battleships had anything more than bilge keels.

Imagine beeing in the mast lookout on one of those ships and you go into a battle, large caliber stuff flying all around you and all the smoke and shaking from the weapons of you ship, while you try to spot where they hit and talk to them through some pipes. Crazy.

So where do you start? I will take 'Giant piles of cash' for $800 Alex

I was an engineer and number 1 attack team leader for the ships Flying Squad when I was on the Kitty Hawk. I've been down inside the TSPS system. We actually had to make sure it was configured right. I'd be happy to answer any questions that wouldn't get me in trouble on Torpedo Side Protection Systems if you have any.

Excellent introduction to the organizational and philosophical requirements that went into the pre-designing phase of Capital ship construction. In this particular instance this was regarding the 1905-1945 Dreadnought 'types' which evolved and grew over their relatively short lifespan as arbiters of global geopolitical power. Having said that, a continuation of this discussion into the topics of determining and generating "balanced designs" that are appropriate seems like the next obvious step. Whereas books and journals, both contemporary and historical are plentiful regarding this and the plethora of related topics, a contemporary discussion would be of considerable value from today's very different historical perspective. Quite interesting too, considering the apparent dryness of topics relating to metallurgical properties and those requirements as well as the logistical and budgetary issues that each major Naval power had to address. Some issues were common to all major Naval powers. Politics and imperial aspirations versus retaining security during changing times. The national and international issues were variable and changed over time via treaties, temporal economics, and geopolitical pressures from rising nations which challenged the existing world order of the first half of the twentieth century versus the older superpowers who were concerned with continued domination and command of the sea was an obvious imperative to achieve such lofty objectives. Very interesting topics related to ship design are inevitably included in such a survey of recent history. This includes an infinite number of "what if" alternative historical scenarios which the battleship and it's relatives enable the imagination to give serious thought to with numerous potential outcomes. Another excellent and thought provoking presentation by the producer and I applaud his efforts.

Another effect of the flaired waterline to deck, or flaired wings, is the progressive increase of displacement. As the bow dives, the displacement increases, offering more resistance to submarining.

“Yanked off in a completely different direction.” ~giggidy~

Materials are a complex subject, though you hinted at this, but to say it slightly differently. has materials get stronger and harder they become easier to shatter. A rubber band is structurally weak, but impossible to shatter - however a diamond is statically strong and hard, but can be shattered easily (both are predominately carbon).

Has anyone else heard of the "X-bow" that has been developed for some of the newest seagoing support vessels for oil rigs? Smoother ride, a lot less water thrown upwards? Also, if battleships were still around, I think they would be a good candidate for the same barrel stabilizing technology that tanks use. Just thoughts that I was thinking about while listening to this...

Damn, I’m on my lunch break, but I’m definitely going to be watching this when I get home

5:50 bow waves have been one of the first things i learnd about ship in from a at that point already 25 year old science magazin.

15:46 Drach talking about the problems with low freeboard, immediately thinks USS Monitor, Drach, "like USS Monitor" I was like ayyyyyyyy! and now everyone thinks im crazy :D

In the early years of the Dreadnoughts, when they didn't have computers or even slide rules, scaled ship models played a very important part. Several designs were made and tested in tanks (still done today). IMHO, I think the designers did a very good job considering what they had to work with. In the age of sail, A ship model was handed to the builder as a set of 'blue prints' to help in construction. That's why we have so many fantastically detailed models of those ships.

I already have a flared bow on my Narrowboat, but I definitely need a bulbous bow now 🤔. Especially effective on lock gates. 🙈 Edit.... Anyone willing to teach me how to use a sextant to help me navigate ? 🙈🙈🙈😳😳😳. 😈

I'm so glad you kept it brief.

Yeah Drachs chan is pretty much the in thing right now. Oh and Mark Felton is awesome too.

Listening to these videos as I'm sick AF with a cold.I'm hoping some of the knowledge soak in as I drift in and out of cocsciouness.

i always thought "freeboard" was a leonard skinnard song

"rolling with great enthusiasm" That just about covers the second half of my senior year 🤫

wow so many spectacular pics of beautiful ships.

I am sad you missed the collier example of just how out of hand a too stable ship can be. The more stable you are, the greater your angular accelerations on the recovery are. So, far from the center of rotation in the superstructure or up the mast, walls can pick up some impressive horizontal velocities. Some WW1 era colliers had some rather gruesome casualties where crewmen got bludgeoned to death by walls.

The thing about your videos that has always impressed me is all the warship photos, (and where the hell you find them), But this video is just something else !

The bulbous bow is also crucial for housing a Wave Motion Cannon when the ship is refit for space combat during a future apocalypse. #yamato

I was always taught that to make a bow wave cost money and increases energy expenditure. (looks pretty though) can reduce both through the adoption of a bulbous bow. Only down side is that it is very easy to puncture this structure with a miss timed anchor drop. Leaves a nice hole, been there done that.

Ah, so good to hear this discussion on the bow as I was so curious how the ships at this time had a bow resembling the "bulbous bow" developed some 50 years later to reduce the drag from the bow wave. So, a hangover from a ramming bow! Ah, minute 5 you have gotten to this. But oops I did not think the bulbous bow was until the late 1950s. But here we have a WWII battle ship with a bulbous bow. Yeah, and TWO reasons for long and narrow, yes, smaller drag cross sectional area, but also the limit to speed is the speed of the bow wave that is matched to the length of the ship. So the longer the ship, the longer the bow wave and the faster the bow wave (Kelvin wake). The limiting speed is when you are riding up on your own bow wave. ( Kind of like hitting the sound barrier for an aircraft.) This element of ship design is embodied in the dimensionless Froude number of hydrodynamics Fr = V/sqrt(gL). where V is the ships speed and L the ship length, and g is the acceleration of gravity. Well, just woke up to take a .... and might as well sit down and watch a few more minutes of this great video. On sea keeping, the US had a flat water navy (Pacific ocean summertime conditions) until fairly recently. I recall a colleague who , during the last days of the Cold War in the early 1980s was working at the David Taylor Model Basin in Bethesda, Maryland, who expressed a concern over the poor seakeeping of US naval vessels compared to their Russian counterparts. She showed slides of US and Russian vessels in rough seas, with US sailors puking while Russian sailors were relaxing and getting some sun on the stern. She was particularly concerned with the plunging of the bows and the taking of water, noting that bow mounted sonars did not function well in this case. Some years later I was gratified to see that new US vessels now had flared bows, so to prevent untoward plunging making way in heavy seas. Ah, the snows of yesterday.

Fascinating synopsis of factors affecting warship design

thank god for this video, the Time Travelling Czar won't get off my back about giving him a dreadnought design.

Love your channel - but would be cool if you could add which ships are being shown on screen if you could :)

This is my first video of yours: I immediately subscribed. Well done.

Where were the cutlass racks located to repel boarders?

Just a classic from Drachinifel

I'll never forget the advice my dad gave me from his life, never throw stones in glass houses, and never attempt to fire a 12 inch shell off the deck of a glass battleship

Drachinifel ( 15:05 ): 60' freeboard would be impressive to see. US Navy: laughs in aircraft carrier.

Nice! I have not previously viewed an entire Drydock. Good work.

This is FAN-TAS-TIC video. Thank you.

"Remember that while the ram bow makes you inflict greater damage on the enemy, it doesn't prevent you from suffering any damage yourself." Thanks, Drachinifel! I shall definitely keep that in mind next time I'm crusing around the Mediterranean in my own dreadnaught, ramming Italian or Egyptian ships.

Really informative video. I learned lots. Thank you.

I dont know why this series of videos, that are both about a different time and of an unrelated topic to my profession, have become so addictive.

Ah lovely to wake up to on my day off

2:28... always look for the ant-likes working in bottom of dock.

absolutely love this video.

After the fourth time of Drachnifel foreshadowing future videos i stop counting and am now frilled with anticipation.

When u strap a ram bow to your canoe and take on the italians

The French navy kept the deck in front of the forward guns short and flared out the stem to a large ram to preserve the waterline length. Their tactical doctrine emphasised a forward charge with forward guns firing. Heavy guns firing forward caused a lot of deck damage, hence the short forward deck and incredibly long ram bow. Regarding stability, a broad ship has a quick roll unsuitable for good gunnery. A higher metacentre was an improvement giving a slower roll.

Thank you for all of your extremely high quality content!

Conclusion: This is why ships are considered female.

An interesting talk as usual with so many fascinating pictures - I do wish you would caption them as I am not very good at playing guess the battleship!

Last time I was this early, french battleships were still ugly.

I had always thought the bulbous bow was to house sonar - think my dad told me that when I was a kid asking too many questions. Deck armor -vs- belt and amount of deck, hadn't ever thought of that. The explanation of stability -vs- gunnery was well done.

Thank you for this excellent discussion. Very enlightening,, and importantly very concise and clear.

At 20:00, on the stern end of this battleship, does it say "Roma," or "Boma?"

the office block superstructure was nice for having an insurance office handy, i imagine

This was extremely informative and answered lots of questions i have had about ship design, thank you!

Your channel is the only One and Awesome one. That i can learn tho make A blueprint for A battleship. If i'm succesvol, i will build A new battleship. Old school.

ive got a calc midterm today to study for, but this is just so fascinating

Another reason longer ships are faster is because of the way the bow and stern wave interact. Their wavelength gets longer as the ship speeds up, and eventually you reach a point where the first trough of the bow wave reaches the stern, and the bow rides up on the bow wave and the stern dips down into that trough, making it very difficult to go faster just by adding more power. And of course, as the ship gets longer, the speed at which that happens, and thus the limit on the practical top speed of the ship, gets higher.

so, in the diagram, 1 creates 3 the green wave.... 2 creates 4 the blue wave..... The waves cancel out giving you smooth water-5 and hence more efficiency? That what you were trying to say?

You mentioned the Monitor's flooding out. FWIW, in a previous century I read the Monitor's turret design included a labyrinth seal that should have been relatively wave proof, (making the ship almost semi-submersible) but the builder scoffed at such nonsense and jacked it up to make a gap for rope caulking that promptly washed out. Hence the flooding. This was in a biography of John Ericsson. Make allowances. I was a child when I read it.

For the US, since a basic requirement is the ship has to be able to pass through the Panama Canal, the newest Aircraft carriers, ie. Gerald Ford class, still uses the Nimitz class hull dimensions

The ocean liners of the era had 60 ft freeboard right? Titanic and such? So some axillary cruisers made from these had such a huge freeboard.

HMS Gannet at Chatham has a Up Funnel down Screw design. Fitted for but currently not with. Interesting to see how that worked.

A brilliant video, thanks from stoker UJ! Now, if necessary, I think I'll be able to step in & help the RAN build a functional Australian dreadnought.

Nice explanation of the bulbous bow effect. Very nice description of marine hull engineering. Thinner or more full are we talking about battleships or ladies undergarments ?

3:28 why do all French warships look ridiculous

Very interesting video regarding naval design criteria for Dreadnought class naval vessels. One obvious suggestion - the sample Dreadnought battleships on the video needed to be identified. I knew which was which but my son had absolutely no idea of which ship was being discussed. So I would look closely through my trifocals as I listened to the narration and identify each vessel. It wasn't that difficult if one is very familiar with the subject. However, if one doesn't know each ship on sight the narration's value becomes rather diminished. I thoroughly enjoy watching and listening to these videos but I know the topic well. However, without the identification of the vessels provided for the viewers some may find the topic frustrating.

I heard a sea story about a freighter Captain who allowed the newly minted Cargo Master to load the military tanks way down in the holds. The ship was safe but with all that weight like a pendulum away from the Center of Mass he learned about its affect on roll.

For an in depth look at these subjects, especially from a U. S. perspective, I highly recommend U.S. Battleships: An Illustrated Design History by Norman Friedman. I have his entire series, covering all classes of U.S. warships in hardcover. They are now out in paperback, which is much less expensive.

I can't wait for the next video in this series 😍

When you FINALLY said "length to beam" instead of "breadth" my jaw unclenched...

02:53 Reminds me of "Death From Above"/"Highlander Burial" attacks from the fictional Battletech setting. Jump attacks do a lot of damage, but they trash your mech's legs and could end up offing your character and mech too.

I would like to see this type of discussion applied to the present day architecture of our mammoth Air Craft Carriers.

HMS Camperdown is the only ship that comes to mind that actually sank a similar size warship using its ram. Un fortunately the ship it sank was the HMS Victoria, killing its own fleet commander,Admiral Tryon, at the same time.

My GF wanted to know about my interests. So we got high and I show her this...

Hence dreadnought battleship HMS Resolution nicknamed 'Rolling Reso'

'It depends', like 'it' does in almost every human endeavour, and technology. There is / was? a book with that title, covering business management. :-) AKA interdependenices, like stability Vs Seakeeping vs the bow, etc, etc.