I recently stumbled across images of the “Anti Mobile Fish Torpedo” from 1871 and models of USS Holland (SS-1) and it surprises me that both appear to have a Kort’s Nozzel despite the Kort’s Nozzel not being invented for another 60 years, is this another “Ictineo II” situation where someone unwittingly invented something decades ahead of it’s time but didn’t realize it?
Given that the Hunley caused far more Confederate deaths than Union deaths would you call her a massive strategic failure? Or does deprieving the USN of a fairly major combat unit make up for it?
Hi Drach, you mentioned then number of depth charges issued and the number of claimed kills. That got me thinking, of the weapon systems used to sink ships, which was the most efficient on a per ammo expenditure and which was most cost effective?
@@CorePathway In the movie 'The Cruel Sea' as Compass Rose is sinking one of the leading hands is last seen removing a ditching the primers on the ships arsenal of charges for that very reason.
Then thou shalt count to three. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count and the number of the counting shalt be three. Four thou shalt not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting thou shalt then proceed to three. Five is right out!
This is just the story of a fisherman progressively getting angrier about not catching anything until they finally break out the dynamite, only on a larger scale.
the idea of a net that catches submarines seems like something out of a cartoon that is used to foil the villan's escape. I just imagine Kaiser Wilhelm being hoisted out of the water and going "Curses! I'll get you next time Royal Navy"
@@Shadooe German sonar operator: "Sir, I'm hearing music getting louder and louder. It sounds like...Led Zeppelin." Captain: "Uh oh, their Norse god anti-submarine hammer operator is coming!"
I would love to see a video on the invention of the hedgehog! They completely changed the game for anti-submarine warfare, yet I feel like a lot of people aren't even aware of them
Thanks again for an explosive study of the depth charge. The racks and K guns were very stturdy devices as i found out last year chipping paint and repainting them on the USS Slater during our work week before you visited. They had a very nice presentation on the use and setting of the mechanism and allowed me to set it. Something i had wanted to do since i first saw them as a kid. Impressive as they had to set and fire patterns off while rolling around in the violent waters during maneuvers at 18-19 years old holding on to the key! Add into these the Hedgehogs and you can see how the U-boats had life very rough in the latter half of the war. The congressman telling about how our subs were simply diving below the Japanese depth charges should have been keel hauled under the Iowa.
@@ulfosterberg9116 It really doesn't matter anymore. US politics underwent a certain evolution in the 1960s that has rendered previous labels inaccurate.
One of things we historians forget is it isn’t needed to sink a submarine, just keep it from attacking. So while a submarine is avoiding being destroyed, it’s not launching its torpedos. That success is hard to quantify.
To be a really effective anti-submarine aircraft, said aircraft needed three things. Range, Range and Range. And the best of the best was the B-24, because of it's range. It sank more than a few submarines. But what made it really effective was its ability to force a submarine to submerge. This alone was very effective. Think about it. It took months to build a U-boat, years for a crew to train. Once ready for combat, by 1942-1943, a U-boat spent most of its time: * being repaired and maintained in port. * sailing to the mid-Atlantic to take up its station. * sailing back to France to replenish. * patrolling in a wolf pack, in a long line, searching for a convoy. all so it could * receive the report of a convoy. * spend many hours on the surface, racing to position to attack. * launching an attack. In a year, a U-boat might spend 8,680 hours preparing for battle and 80 hours in high speed pursuit and battle. If a single measly B-24, with a crew of under 10, could prevent an 8 hour attack, reducing that U-boat's and the 50 man crew effectiveness by 10% for the whole year. In the most critical hours of the year, a U-boat might have to spend several hours, not racing ahead of an 8 knot convoy at 16 knots, but plod along at 1 to 2 knots, surface hours later and race ahead to end up in the wake of the convoy, missing it. To go down in history as a non event.
Seems similar to a lot of AA guns if the period. If you manage to force the aircraft to abort it's attack or attack in such a way that it misses/is less effective, then you've done your job.
Woe to the occasional ship, during WW2, that had their depth charges armed when the ship was sunk. Surviving crew in the water were suddenly unalived when the ship reached detonation depth.
USS Hamman was sunk at Midway next to the USS Yorktown with the same Japanese torpedo spread. When Hamman sank, her depth charges went off, killing many sailors in the water. I remember reading that one survivor had his watch smashed flat in his pocket.
I heard somewhere that the non-adjustable hydrostatic triggers would be modified to go off at deeper depths by cramming soap into the orifice it used to allow water pressure in, delaying activation until the soap dissolved
Greetings and salutations Drax! Thank you for all your fantastic videos, I am an avid fan of yours. I am also an amateur student of Naval History, especially the WW2 period. I am an Icelander, living in Sweden, and I befriended a Brit whose father served in WW2 on the HMS Ashanti. I started to look into the history of that particular ship, and what a story that turned out to be. One of 4 of the 16 RN Tribals that survived the war. Her story reads more or less as "been there, done that". The Norway campaign, (where my friends father was decorated), later the Arctic Convoys (incl possibly PQ 17), definately with PQ 18, down south to the Pedestal Convoy, back up north to the Arctic and then back south taking part in the Torch landings. Later she operated in the Bay of Biscay alongside some of the Canadian Tribals. If ever there was a ship deserving a video of it`s own I would vote for the HMS Ashanti. Again, thanks again for all your fantastic videos, I especially liked your recent ones about AB cunningham and Johnny Walker. All the best to you and yours, Billi Stefansson.
Training seagulls to defecate on a raised periscope. Giving a swimmer a bag to jump overboard and tie the bag around the periscope thus blinding it. An yes a hammer given to a man in a rowboat to row out and smash the periscope. All three of these were also genuinely tried as ASW weapons by harbour defence units.
@@marekstanek112 so, much this^^ depth charges need to deal with the inverse square law. you need a hefty blast radius to work and there's only one way to do that.
Some might say that "Our Own Devices " 's video is much more ..."in depth" :D Full title is "Depth Charge Hydrostatic Pistols: Getting That Sinking Feeling" for anyone interested.
There have been accidents off Scotland when trawlers caught RN SSNs. It doesn't tend to go well for the trawler: an SSN has enough power to just tow it away.
Over on this side of the pond, there have been recent occasions when trawlers have netted Trident missile subs heading out from Bangor, Washington. Crewman: Captain! Why are we going backwards! Captain: Just cut the blasted net!
I have heard (from a submariner) those are not always complete accidents. There is generous compensation for damaged fishing gear, so a sub can be a very profitable catch.
Honestly, I think a rather effective option for Jellicoe would be to have him convince the Admiralty to assign Beatty to be a liaison to the Kriegsmarine with a goal of teaching them his rather unique ideas regarding safe weapons handling and communications. The problem would have largely resolved itself.
The RN hydrostatic pistols most used (~WWII Mks 7/10) weren't triggered directly by water pressure at the pre-set depth. They exploded based on a time delay calibrated to allow the charge to sink to that depth. The surrounding water pressure _operated_ the fuze mechanism but did not _trigger_ it by reaching a set value.
I know you probably won't see this, but seriously, thank you for not using the AI-generated voices for reading excerpts of the crew accounts, they ruined being able to enjoy a few of the recent videos you've put up, and I'm happy you're back to reading them aloud yourself. (also god... that submarine just sitting there provocatively under the water in clear sight made me laugh at how much it feels like how some games'll implement subs as a pay-to-win feature for how OP they are lmao)
You mentioned that in several cases, U-boat personnel were reported to become unable to perform their duties as a consequence of the stress of prolonged depth charge attacks. I wonder if there any surviving accounts from the crew of HMS Meteorite that reflect the sheer terror of being on board such a volatile piece of ironmongery even without being attacked.
@@nerd1000ify I can believe it. The conditions aboard a U-boat after a long deployment would probably be considered a war crime in the modern age, even without coming under attack.
A great episode and now additional information I can use as a volunteer at the Oregon Military Museum concerning the "K" gun depth charge display we have. Thank you!
Interesting historical note: the photo at 2:28 is taken in the Solent off Portsmouth harbor entrance with the Solent forts in the background. Probably Spitbank fort and horse sands fort on the right and No Man lands fort on the left. Portsmouth was the home port of the 1st submarine flotilla in the Royal Navy
You went right past the idea, but ship-gun rifle grenades...? I love that idea lol. It's one of those things that sounds kind of mental...but also like it would work. The big problem would likely be loading the things (I don't see how you'd pull that off with guns high up from the deck). That being said, for deck guns, I can imagine you could have a magazine loading system that could give an alright rate of fire. With rifle grenades, the standard bullet might weigh, say 10g; and the rifle grenade might weigh 600g or more. If we kept that same scaling for ease, but only made the grenade fifty times the weight (to lessen stress on the gun) of a standard 102mm round, that could be a 750kg grenade. And you could make them way lighter, or a bit heavier (proportionately). You'd clearly need a powered system to load them, but I could at least see that being done for the foremost and aftmost main guns of a destroyer or smaller ship. There's a world out there where, instead of Hedgehog and Squid, the RN just went for firing 1000kg+ destroyer grenades off the main guns.
Dual-purpose guns could just fire at high angles, howitzer style and not use much charge, I guess. Wouldn't need to attempt to muzzle-load a tonne of explosive :)
Your description of the spar torpedo attacking subs and going bonk now has the image of a destroyer going bonk to a submarine conning tower with a baseballbat like in the dog meme. Thanks Drach! Edit wait they later actually tried to do that? History is sranger then fiction.
Thanks for covering this topic! It's one of those things I've wondered about but never bothered to look into myself. I especially appreciate the history of countermeasure development leading up to the depth charge. Few minutes in and I've heard not only the word protuberance used in a sentence but also the phrase, "bonk the submarine on the head". Good sir, you are a legend.
I rarely comment, but I just wanted to say I love your titles. And yes, they are very effective at getting me to click your videos, without being clickbait. Thank you!
I recall as a child spearfishing for pike through ice. I would sit in a small dark shanty over a large rectangular hole through perhaps a foot of ice, and pike would come by to eat the minnows we were using as bait or to interrogate the decoy. I often wondered as I waited for a big enough fish to unleash my spear against just what it must have been like to be a pike, when suddenly from above a steel spear descends. I still don’t know, but I think submariners might have had an inkling.
Some of the early attempts to battle submarines reminds me of the American cartoon Wiley E Coyote and his Acme blasting equipment trying to catch the Roadrunner.
Thank you again for the awesome info in history! I've always been interested in the little things like this! Keep them coming! By far one of the best researchers of history!
And there I was, watching Dick Dastardly trying to catch a pigeon and thinking "man, that is insane, no one in their right mind would do that". I clearly underestimated the British and their ingenuity!
Imagine being the guy that actually managed to whack a periscope with a hammer. For the rest of his life he'd be able to say he disabled an enemy submarine with nothing but a hammer.
At shallow depth one would be the detonator locking into place, the other would be the striker firing. Depending on the exact model, it could also be the striker priming and then firing.
@@Drachinifel Thank you for the reply. I certainly wasn't expecting the answer to come from you! I remember that some of them had more time between clicks than others. The closer together the clicks were, the more the sub shook and took damage. It could be that this was an audience cue, but it could also have reflected something about Japanese depth charges, their behavior at different depth settings, et cetera.
@@CiaranMaxwell It will be audience cue- damage done depends on distance, in crude terms, and the depth charge not know that detail, so timing of clicks cannot affect damage in RL.
@@keefymckeefface8330 Oh, of course. My implied question was: Does target depth affect click timing, or is it _entirely_ audience cue? It was probably the latter. There'd be some depth charges going off at the right depth, but far away. Some too high, some too low. I suppose I just wasn't explicit enough. ^_^
The dissolving pellet is what we use today to activate our inflatable life-vests. They can also degrade if exposed to repeated temperature cycles, so if you hang a life-vest above a heater, it might at some point just blow up. Then you can go and reload the damn thing, urgh.
Would love a video on the differences and evolution of ww1 vs ww2 destroyers (sonar, radar, armor, radar, speed, GRT, etc). Also a similar video on uboats (german) would be very interesting to learn. Great video 👍
I don't know if you've already done this, but I'd love to see you talk about the development of damage control in a similar vein to this! Was damage control around in the age of sail/ what did it look like? I've seen a lot of your videos on damage control in ww2 and would like to hear the rest of the story!
The idea for depth charges were pioneered by frustrated fishermen. I was there. Me, cousin Merl and our dog Geech (who later got covered in concrete) hadn’t caught a thing. So, we decided to drop a barrel of Acme TNT 🧨 in the pond. When all the fish floated up, a lightbulb went off and we ran off to tell Secretary Stimson.
Excellent video. I have a few questions. It appears to me that a better system than having the guess the depth of a submarine would be to just drop a 'bomb' and if it hit something, explode. Like a 'hedgehog bomb' of World War II which uses a 'strike trigger'. With a 'strike trigger' you won't be able to sink a submarine that you were off by 10 horizontal feet but guessed correctly its depth to within 10 feet. But you could sink a submarine with a bomb that did happen to strike a submarine, even if your guess of its depth was off by 100 or more feet. Questions for Drachinfel: 1. Is it correct that a 'strike trigger' bomb would have been more effective than a 'depth trigger' bomb? 2. If so, did they (during World War I) realize a 'strike trigger' bomb would be more effective than a 'depth trigger' bomb? 3. With 1910's technology, did they know how to design a 'strike trigger' bomb that was reliable and safe for the crews? Thank you for your time.
Hedgehog fired ahead of the attacking ship to help overcome one of the drawbacks of early ASDIC. Once the attacking ship passed over the target echoes from the target were lost in the noise made by that ship thrashing about at high speed. The sub was effectively hidden in this noise which gave it a chance to change course (or depth, or both) and escape.
Squid/Limbo ASW mortar too - threw a pattern of full depthcharges forwards & outwards a bit - was my immediate thought. So many ww1 ideas - and lessons - disappeared interwar.
From the numbers near the end of the video I'm getting about 2000 depth charges issued per submarine sunk. "Issued" not "used" but seems a big number anyway. Hope that future installments will compare the number dropped (does one "drop" depth charges even if they're being fired into the air first?) against submarines sunk other theatres / conflicts.