The Drydock - Episode 304 (Part 2) 

You know we are spoiled when you are disappointed that there is *ONLY* 4 1/2 hours of Drydock this weekend! 😄

Operating an enemy vessel: When I was on USS John F. Kennedy (CVA-67) in the early 1970s I was nominally assigned to be the radar technician on the 'prize crew' because I was the only ET on board who knew any Russian. Nobody took it seriously; it was just a box that needed to be checked.

re: firing from landing craft: certain units with M7 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriages ("Priest") during Operation Neptune were supposed to be able to fire during the run in, but as you say the vehicles had no adaptation to their sights, so it would be blind suppressive fire. Second, most of the tanks on the LCTs were waterproofed ti improve their fording depth which limited use of the main gun, except for emergencies. DD tanks could NOT shoot anything while the screens were raised. One consideration on the idea of a railway gun on a ferry; railway guns are generally NOT fired from the tracks. The carriages are raised so that the shock of firing did not damage the railway track structure. Secondly, "travel mode" for those gun also tends to put the gun out of service. Lastly, the ammunition wouldn't be on the gun carriage and moving 28cm shells and cartridges would take so long that the ship would be sunk long before the travelling gun could be prepared and loaded.

Interestingly, I exchanged a couple of emails with Mr Reeman in the early 2000s. I sent an email to him via the publisher and surprisingly(to me) he responded rather promptly with a nice follow up. We went back and forth a couple of times about his books and upcoming projects. He seemed a genuinely nice guy and shared some of the titles and plot lines of his upcoming books. I like him and and his books.

Fun fact re: smuggling Before COPP did their beach reconnaissance landings on the Normandy coast in early '44, they were taken to have their photos taken in civilian clothing - if they were forced ashore, their cover was that they were members of the 'apache' criminal gangs operating in Paris. It was a 'disguise' somewhat compromised by the fact that even those who spoke some French spoke it badly. The unit's commanding officer, Nigel Willmott, said in an interview in the early 1990s that there was quite a lot of smuggling on the Normandy coast at that time - although how accurate he was there, who knows? This was a time before Rommel had started increasing the beach fortifications, so it might have been slightly possible, or maybe they were meant to pose as people operating from Ouistreham or Courseulles harbours, etc

Glad to hear I haven't just hallucinated reading about it! I vaguely recall it was to do with VE or VJ day, definetely World War 2 and possibly in London firing from the Thames, but it was so long ago I just can't remember much about it, likewise hoping someone here can shed some light on this incident! Edit: So not the incident I was thinking of, but according to "Naval Accidents 1945 - 1988 " an incident occured on 18/03/1975 where "Royal Navy coastal minesweeper HMS Maxton accidentally fires at the Royal Navy frigate HMS Achilles off the Scottish coast when live shells instead of blanks are used in a practice firing. Two shells hit and cause moderate damage to the Achilles". So it does appear to have happened at least once in the Royal Navy.

On the 'tanks in landing craft' question, I did find the following: _Hall had also formed a second "fire support group," consisting of landing craft to which bombardment rockets and small-caliber guns had been affixed. These vessels had shallow drafts and could therefore approach their targets more closely than larger warships, even the nimble destroyers. In fact, this group held the daunting missing of landing U.S. Army tanks on Omaha Beach at H-Hour by means of sixteen LCT(A)s (landing craft, tank armored) recently handed over by the Royal Navy to the Americans and specially modified with extra armor and raised platforms allowing embarked Sherman tanks to fire as their craft headed for shore._ Omaha Beach - Joseph Balkoski I have no idea whether this scheme actually worked. It's very hard to find out any information about the close in fire support group, other than the well established fact that the LCRs completely missed hitting anything useful. Apparently Captain Lorenzo S Sabin Jr commanded the gunfire support craft of the US Navy's Eleventh Amphibious Force at Omaha Beach - he notes that the group was assembled so late in the process that training was greatly inadequate. See: Omaha Beach: A Flawed Victory by Adrian R. Lewis. My guess would be that the LCT gunfire support was poor, as it would have been severely affected by the waves moving the LCT and hence moving the tanks so even with direct visibility the odds of hitting anything useful were not great. I did, however, find the following: _There was a loud bang in my right ear, and I turned to see an LCG [landing craft, gun] blazing away with its 4.7 inch guns and scoring direct hits on the pillbox. I wished it could have stayed longer, but it disappeared as quickly as it had arrived._ Sub-Lt Jimmy Green, Royal Navy 551 Assault Flotilla, Embarking Company A, 116th Infantry. [also in Balkoski's book]. Note that there *were* British units helping to land US troops at Omaha Beach, not something that's widely known. This quote suggests that some of the modified landing craft (a LCG is NOT carrying a tank so they are different) could be accurate even under the conditions of fairly high surf present at Omaha Beach. Not sure how to reconcile my expectations with this information that contradicts them. More data needed ... There was also a group of landing craft carrying howitzers (M7, 105mm, self propelled) and apparently expected to use these on the trip in, but not attached to Sabin's command (again, from the book by Lewis). I have no data on these, other than a note that they were to cease fire when the first wave was 1000 yards from the beach, then turn back out to sea, and circle until their designated landing time.

"part 2" is a nice treat, whenever it happens. Thank you, Drachinifel

Regarding the Trent Affair (1:03:04), Abraham Lincoln wanted the problem to go away/wanted to deescalate, and is quoted as saying, "One war at a time."

Regarding salute firing; where one can make a blank fire case for a single piece ammunition gun, Separate charge guns can not be fired without a projectile. When my 155mm field artillery battery where called on to fire a salute at one point, we simply fired live shells onto our regular target area. If this happened, my guess is that the order to fire a salute was passed on somewhat haphazardly, resulting in the main guns being fired without a safe target.

On the subject of Admiral Rodney, the behaviour of his that is very hard to defend is his looting of St Eustatius. Not only his clearly antisemitic detentions and expulsions of the local population but his insistence on personally overseeing the sorting of loot kept his fleet inactive at a time when Britain was facing the French, Spanish, and Dutch (granted, that last one was Britain's declaration of war) and so was being forced to make hard strategic decisions about where to send fleets and could not afford to have them sitting while its admirals Scrooge McDucked themselves in prize money. I think it is a pretty clear dereliction of his duty for the purpose of personal enrichment, not helped by the fact that he was very poor with money. And in the end it was all for nothing! La Motte Picquet captured most of his loot and he spent the rest of his life fighting St Eustatius related lawsuits! And the French recaptured the island pretty quickly anyway in a very embarrassing fashion to the British and captured a bunch of Rodney's own money. The whole affair was huge net loss for Rodney in terms of both the esteem of his peers on his personal finances.

As always thanks for getting my name right. And first question even!

Regarding the question on mascots... Those viewers of a certain age and members of the Audacious class _Ark Royal_ still have nightmares over Wilf and his Winker Band

@Drachinifel I'd love to see a video on the wind-down of WWII from the naval perspective. For example, when did convoys end? Were they still worried about rogue u-boat commanders not wanting to go down without a fight for some period after the war? Where and how were some of the significant vessel surrenders taken? What did that look like? How were the axis navies demobilized? What naval units remained in service in axis nations as those countries transitioned to new peacetime governments? I think it would be fun and unique to look at such a niche area of naval history. Thanks!

The Titantic question. All I could think of was. Where is Mike Brady? Feels more in his area.

Thanks for the great long form videos Drach!

Admiral Wags of the Lexington. He belonged to the son of Captain Sherman, but Sherman took him to sea when his son was at boarding school. Sherman's wife wrote a book about Wags.

Excellent DDs Drach Thanks for all your hadrwork on them.

Signal, Close Action was my first introduction to Bolitho and the Royal Navy. I scoured the Pinellas Park public library for more volumes. I was aided by the librarian who was able to get me the missing books of the series. That was 50 years ago.

LST/LCT firing, if a portable AA SPG had been loaded, that might have a very good reason to fire from aboard.

wrt saving/extending the life, of Titanic. Given the sort of damage she is assumed to have suffered: hull plates stove in and seams opened. the best measure would be collision mats. Lacking that, I wonder how many large tarpaulins and hatch covers were in ship's stores, that potentially could be combined to make a facsimile of a collision mat? Apparently, if the leaks could have been stemmed in two compartments, the ship could have stayed afloat.

On the subject of Ireland/N.Ireland, there was a shortage of coal in the south. Various railway engines would coal up in the north having left some contraband for the coaling crew to discover...

Well done😊

British SP artillery "shot themselves in" on D-Day. I think Americans M-7s did as well. It wasn't about hitting a specific target, it was about keeping German heads down.

Ranger recieved an upgrade that allowed the ship to embark torpedo bombers in late 1941. She embarked her first TBD squadron in February 1942. Ranger had an avenger squadron inboard when she served with the home fleet. Second take. I think Wasp was a perfectly acceptable carrier for the US Atlantic Fleet given US carrier doctrine. The big fear in 1942 was Tirpitz and the Scharnhorsts breakint out into the Atlantic at a time when the Home Fleet was short of fast capital ships. The two North Carolinas had the firepower but with the high speed vibration issues they were limited to 25kts and below. Having two American fleet carriers with 36 TBDs between them as well more dive bombers than the FAA had a sea would go a long way to deal with such a breakout.

That bit about Titanic revisited and somehow saving more lives than the previous historical numbers. Both ideas were good ideas! Ships have been known to be able to steam backwards. And for the face 😢

wrt making Wasp more survivable. I don't think trying to use the same torpedo and AA protection tonnage allowance as the Lexingtons would be viable, because, iirc, the tonnage added for those systems was counted in the displacement of the ship, and that additional tonnage was not available when Wasp was built. The best thing that could have been done with Wasp was to route all the gasoline mains outside of the hull. A lesson learned from the loss of Lexington was, when an inbound attack is detected, drain the gas mains and fill the mains and pump rooms with CO2. When Yorktown and Hornet were lost, they did not burn. That was not possible with Wasp, as she was actively operating aircraft at the time, and hit without enough warning. A running modification that was being made on carriers, as they came in for refit, was to reroute the gas mains outside the hull. Wasp was in Norfolk for some work at the beginning of June, before deploying to the Pacific. The material I have access to this morning does not say if the gas main modification was done on Wasp. Late war photos of Enterprise show what I believe to be that external gas main, running horizontally down the starboard side, just below the hangar. There are a couple photos of Wasp, taken in Norfolk. in June 42, that do not show a similar pipe system.

I can’t find a reference for it, but I remember the us navy strapped a marine vehicle on the deck of one of the gater carriers when transiting the Persian gulf to help with close in defense because they felt they were vulnerable to Iranian speedboats.

There were a few incidents of embarked tanks firing from LCT's, or I maybe LCM's? Landing Craft Medium which if I recall correctly were just about large enough for a single M4 Sherman. If I recall I read of it in a book specifically about Landing Craft, the details of which I will have to try and dig out. What I do recall is it was indirect fire, spotted by one of the TC's walking the fire in. It was never really about pin point accuracy but trying to smother certain parts of the beach before the tanks landed. It was not common though, and from what I can gather likely not really very effective for obvious reasons. Support fire from Landing Craft was definitely a done thing though. My Grandfather was one of the permanent Royal Marine crew on board HMS Glengyle, one of the Glen Class LSI's. As a mortar man his job was to crew one of the mortars on the specially designed Mortar equipped landing craft HMS Glengyle on board specifically for supporting the landings. I am not really certain how it worked however, I have not really found much written info about how they coordinated such fire (if indeed they did), and my Grandfather never spoke of it while he was alive.

Thanks Drach

41:00 re:Titanic I like the idea of putting it into reverse and heading straight for Californian…Bob Ballard claims the 19 mile figure is nonsense, that it had to have been more like 10. The downside of doing that is you’re not fixing your pos for Carpathia(?) I remember long ago seeing a “what could be done” documentary - maybe a professor and his class did a project trying to come up with ideas to maximize lives saved. And the winning idea was basically an extension of the Jack/Rose raft. The moment they struck they start ripping out doors and wall panels and pieces of furniture, lashing it together - and to the side of the ship so you have a big flat platform of wood for people to stand on. An hour in, you detach it and with all lifeboats rowing you detach and pull safely away from the ship. I think they calculated that with lifeboats filled they could have assembled enough buoyant square footage per person to save everyone. It was fascinating. (The runner up entry was interesting as well - it was to steam the boat to the nearest biggest berg, use that as the basis of a platform for people, hope it doesn’t flip while people are on it. That one seemed more far fetched…)

On the Titanic going in reverse, I think this could have reduced the rate of water inflow. I used to sail dinghies which had devices like transom flaps and self bailers that could suck water out of the boat if it was travelling fast enough. Where the damage was on the bow of the Titanic, putting the ship into reverse would cause some degree of suction reducing the water pressure at the bow, almost certainly not enough to reverse the inflow, but possibly enough to reduce it.

GREAT EASTERN REFERENCE

How effective was the RN blockade in WW2 ? How much and what type of material did Germany receive through "neutral" nations including USSR prior to June 1941 ?

I think the loss of Lexington is of much greater consequence than Neosho. First Midway. I’ve no doubt that the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard would have found a way to patch her underwater damage and get her back to sea for Midway. She would almost certainly have been in worse shape than Yorktown but she would have been there. If she is there Hiryu almost certainly does not survive the first round of strikes which mean Yorktown survives. That’s plus two to US fleet carrier strength by the. End of June 42. Both ships are almost certainly headed for a Pacific Coast yard for repairs post battle (as had been planned with Yorktown) so they may not be present at Eastern Solomons but might well have been at Santa Cruz where perhaps the additional air assets might have saved Hornet though this is a guess at this point. The other obvious knock on is that Victorious never becomes Robin and we don’t get the first hand exposure to British Fighter direction. How much longer it takes for the USN to sort that problem then gets very interesting. But the real key is Midway. If Fletcher has Lexington and Yorktown in his Task Force at Midway I just don’t see Hiryu surviving the first round of dive bomber strikes which means the US fleet wins this one in a walkover.

00:25:15 The Royal Marine Armoured support Rgt. had landing Craft Tanks LCT which were initially configured with a raised ramp to allow aimed fired from above the well deck of the LCT, the Centaur IV had their engine compartment vacated and used for additional ammunition stowage, however Gen. Eisenhower observed the LCT is a Solent training exercise and order a rethink, and the motors were re-installed (or more likely the engine-less tanks were replaced by still intact spare tanks, lots of redundant Centaurs knocking about ), the ramps were removed which massively improved stability, the LCT Mk IV then took the various RMASR tanks to the various landing beached and photos of them are seen around Tilly Sur Mere, and there are two representative Centaur IV one at Pegasus bridge and another which is a mock up made from a Centaur dozer and turret from a Cavalier. There is an article in Tracklink magazine which cover a sunken LCT of RMASR which is c/w the raised ramp but I don't think it that LCT2428 which sank at Lee of Solent on June 5th 1944 so maybe Drac. can appraise himself of it next time he is a Bovington.

Drach spoils us every Saturday. II

Douglas Reeman having a cannon pointed at France at all times is peak British sailor energy. I fully understand and can empathize with his disdain for the French

I would think that even if the French squadron interned in Alexandria had agreed to fight for the Allies immediately, the biggest problem would be one of logistics - from spare parts unless they could be fabricated, to ammunition. Could the French CAs 8" guns fire British 8" shells?

Thx as always for the vid, Drach. However, I find myself perhaps a bit in disagreement with you. The impression I got was that you feel there wasn't real dive bomber doctrine at Midway. You were right that everyone did essentially go off on there own. However, it wasn't due to a lack of doctrine. Using Enterprise as an example, the fighters were to defend the Devastators. The plan was for the fighters to hold their altitude, and "come on down, Jim" if needed. It just didn't work out that way. Fog of war and sheer lack of experience were in full-play. What changed as the war went on, through shear necessity, was that the execution of doctrine got a lot better.

Talking of smuggling during WW2 reminded me of the 1955 film The Ship That Died Of Shame about a former WW2 British motor torpedo boat being used for smuggling from the Continent. Well some people must have seen that film and thought that was a good idea because that is exactly what they did. As in the film they eventually got caught and they spent sometime as guest in one of Her Majesties prisons. The MTB was based at the time at Oulton Broad on the Norfolk Broads.

Damage control techniques of WW2 would have benefitted Titanic. They had a Harland and Wolfe guarantee group on board. The carpenters could have lashed some table tops together and tried to plug the gash. Probably wouldn't be water tight but would buy them time.

1:34:00 Assuming it was a WW1/2 Horrible Histories, I think it was "Blitzed Brits" because it was in one 1 read and I only read that one, along with Terrible Tudors and Slimy Stuarts.

About air group coordination- the us navy HAD the theory- , but peace time practice with set piece attacks didn’t work out in the real world. Launch rates and loiter time to form up was a big problem and resulted in air groups getting separated ( and in some cases, lost)- but consider that when the fighters did form up with the TBD’s ( I think this was the Yorktown squadrons). - the TBD’s didn’t set slaughtered to the last plane

I’m remarkably sober. “More power more space” counts as square cube. Where the vodka? Square cube is the law. Probst

This is where I think I need to disagree with Drach. At least with the Medium Tank, M4, I think the answer is still no, but not for the given reason. The thing is yes, the tank could be aimed. a quadrant sight on the breech inside the tank would allow for indirect fire. Not sure there's much point of using the main gunner's sight in the roof, but it is there. I think the issue is gun elevation here. I don't think even the 75mm has the elevation to make much of it. Combined with the whole shooting from a moving platform in three dimension against anything even close to a point target? Not sure it's worth it. I'd also ask about the water proofing, how they were set up for transport. I'd doubt even volley firing the entire complement of the vehicle would do anything other than alert the other guy you're coming. GMC, M7 I think is largely the same. They could volley fire, area suppression at absolute best. These vehicles move far less dramatically than ships do. At least in comparison. I'm yet to see a tank handle mid Atlantic storms.

Can you please make a video on the town class light cruiser of 1910

The Trent Affair: It only matters that the UK doesn't get to make the rules, so it isn't fair. The UK didn't like the comeuppance! BTW, Lincoln could have just declared that the domestic ports were closed.

I may be misremembering, but I read that during the Solomon Islands Campaign, Enterprise and Saratoga essentially took turns being the only operational U.S. fleet carriers in the area. If both of them had been knocked out (either sunk outright or damaged enough to have to head back to Pearl or the States for repairs), would the U.S. be desperate enough to bring Ranger over? Would they evacuate from Guadalcanal? Or would they simply try to hold it till the other carriers were repaired or the Essexes brought online?

Someone needs to write the book 1943 -Pacific

On the smuggling question: Where did Churchill get all the French wine? Was it *all* pre-war stocks?

Where was USS Wasp in May 1942 ?

1:03:00 This makes the Altmark incident almost simple by comparison.

I'm not sure that even having more protection would have saved Wasp.

304, I think the battle crusier Daedalus may need to be addressed.

Hi! I'm kinda lost in the mass of content. If want to learn about the russo-japanese war era ships and tactics where i need to start? I find the video about the battles, but i want to understand the basics... If i can... Thanks in advance for the suggestions!

A railway gun firing while on a train ferry would probably crack the ferry down the middle capsizing it.

training rounds are still lethal, so we don’t fire them at people.

41.00 Wasp probably would have finished off almost any carrier

34:39 Did the anti-slavery patrol ships have translaters on board, so they could communicate with the freed slaves and tell them what's going on?

I did not know Rodney was a person…

54:13 There were reasons why it was mockingly referred to by US sailors as the "Son of a Bitch 2nd Class", and reliability problems were certainly among them.

Pearl Harbor

re mascots? norwegian navy ww2? Bamse?

RE smuggling. This may be outside your sphere, but do you ever plan to address the large-scale smuggling of alcohol into the US during Prohibition? Large numbers of British, Canadian, and French vessels participated in this trade, which the relatively weak and underequipped US Coast Guard struggled to contain. International rum-running led to all sorts of ugly diplomatic complications, especially between the US and Britain. There were a number of controversial and violent incidents between the USCG and rum-runners of foreign registry. The 1929 case of the Canadian schooner "I'm Alone," which was sunk by the USCG when it was outside the 12-mile limit, was particularly infamous. Prohibition greatly stimulated the development of fast small craft. Elco, famous for building PT boats in WWII, built fast craft for the rum-running trade. I was also wondering what role, if any, the RN/RCN and coast guards of Britain and Canada might have had in all this.

Smuggling brought some bananas to Scotland. The sailor gave one to the family next door.

Could Titanic bought time for rescue by securing herself to an iceberg? They are unstable, but they're also bouyant. Have there been cases where other ships did something similar to save their crews?

23:57 "This tank being deployed" you've got to be joking. I get it that you are a Navy Man first and foremost but how do you not know what tank this is? (Just to be clear I its your vid I am just poking fun, but still this design is not that obscure, at least last I checked)

6th, 30 June 2024

00:00:33 this idea of no social safety net is B.S. an educated man such as a naval officer is hardly incapable of finding future employment and I'm pretty sure 'half pay' wasn't that onerous, unless you were disabled like Nelson and even then Nelsons injuries hardly effected him or he wouldn't have been able to cuck Emma's husband so successfully. So half pay, a reasonable brain and education - then there is no excuse, I've got to say there is too much of that today with half pay retirements, starting to make exchequer payments unsustainable and future gov't correction will tend effect those (like the maimed) who really need pension and support. Politics out of context for Drydock but consideration of historical circumstance does effect future considerations.