Repairing a Damaged Warship - Ship Triage and Treatment
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- čas přidán 4. 07. 2023
- Today we take an overview look at the process behind repairing a ship that has suffered combat damage.
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Pinned post for Q&A :)
Solid video
12:00 coconut logs are not in the script, but they are canon. 😊
ba dumm tiss 🥁
Since armor plate is a relatively long lead time item, and somewhat form fitted to each ship, do they maintain replacements
Is there any case where the distributed armor scheme has benefits over the all or nothing scheme?
@@robertmills8640 Drach answered a question of mine similar to this in a previous live segment Drydock. Non-face-hardened armor plate, such as that used for splinter protection and for mass-produced gun mountings, can be mass-produced and stockpiled. Face-hardened plate for things like belt armor and turret facings are made in much more limited quantities, but some spares would be produced and stored for use when damage makes it necessary.
Did ships in WWI/WWII time frame have generators to produce electricity independent of the boilers? What systems had the highest priority for power if the ship was forced to run on such "emergency" power? Welding the ship back together would be tough without power.
The most important part of repairing a ship? Replacing all the binoculars the admiral threw overboard
Prompts the kind of treasure hunt I really like.
very subtle allusion
Also getting rid of the snake that blocks the main gun and driving back imaginary Japanese boarding parties.
And always be on alert for the Kamchatka
@@joeclaridydo you see torpedo boats?
The long awaited sequel to "Survival at Sea - Oh Lord the ship is on fire/sinking/exploding/disagreeable"
Somebody save the cat.
"Damage control, report!"
"Sir, the ship has suffered a significant emotional event!"
@@speedster29 I'm sorry sir, the first lieutenant reports that he finds the state of the wardroom quite disagreeable now.
I find that any vessel can get disagreeable quickly when you get seasick.
once my now exGF asked me what the fuck was I doing watching a one hour long video about" steam boilers on warships" It wasnt that easy to explain. Now I'm single therefore able to enjoy Drachs channel without being targeted for it so thats a win in my book yey!
Steam boilers are cool.
Warships are cool.
Therefore steamboilers on warships are double plus cool.
But really, if Drak did a 2hr talk on maritime paint and how long the various coats take to dry it would still be an interesting listen.
My employer's late father-in-law was an officer on USS New Orleans (CA-32) during the Battle of Tassaforanga. After the entire front quarter of the cruiser's length was blown off by a Type 93 torpedo and subsequent magazine explosion, the ship had to lay to Tulagi the next morning.
While the crippled ship was laid up in Tulagi for more than a week, the captain ordered the ship camouflaged with netting and coconut palms. The story passed on to me is that the hard-pressed crew had little confidence in the ruse, convinced that Japanese aircraft would appear at any moment to finish off what little was left after the destroyer's aggressions. So the captain sent up their floatplane to circle the ship from above. Upon return, the aircrew confirmed to the captain that the New Orleans did indeed appear to be an immobile target covered in palm branches amidst a slick of oil.
Then the captain took to the ship's PA to confidently declare to the crew: "Our efforts have been a complete success; we are now invisible to the Japanese."
The crew then famously jury-rigged the missing bow with coconut logs just to limp to Sydney, before eventually sailing stern-first all the way back to Puget Sound.
Those long steaming in reverse stories always puzzled me. Our reverse stages were only rated for ten minutes at a time because they were on the same turbine shaft as the forward stages. The forward stages would overheat if they were turning at speed without the steam cooling those stages.
So to go astern for a long time it would have been ten minutes astern, a couple minutes forward to cool the forward turbine, then repeat.
Were the reversing turbines on a separate shaft? Or did they have a cooling steam flow cut in to the forward turbine while in reverse?
@@mikespangler98 No idea, but it was possible, as is evident, because while puzzling those incidences such as with USS New Orleans are well documented and verified.
I rather suspect that cooling may have been at least partially solved by labour intensive but relatively simple means, like a bunch of guys with hose pipes playing sea water over the shafts. That sort of thing.
@@mikespangler98 Pre-Esssex class US Carriers were capable of steaming flank speed indefinately in reverse, the requirement was to be able to land aircraft over the bow. Yes, they had arresting wires forward.
As an engineering officer aboard USS Koelsch, FF-1049, I remember at Gitmo doing a half hour full speed reverse with the conning officer in help control as part of our training.
We had no specific requirements on reverse speed, you only had to keep careful watch on the condensor vacuum. As long as you were drawing a vacuum, you were good, and that depended entirely on seawater temperature and flow thru the condensor. Medium-slow speeds were bad because you had to have either normal main circ pump flow thru the condensor at slow speed or reversed natural flow thru the condensor at higher speeds, in the middle neither worked.
@@mikespangler98I'm sure it was always nice if you had a "Rear Admiral" abord ...
@@mikespangler98could they just flip the prop around?
Don't forget the cleaning out of the damaged spaces... including bits and pieces of people, sludge/oil/grease buildup, grey water, etc. As a Navy Veteran of the 90's ... I cannot fathom the experience sailors had during the world wars... truly the greatest generation
Like those who had to go thru the Oklahoma after it was raised and recover hundreds of co mingled skeletons...
After Pearl Harbor, the Navy realized that it was important to skim off any fuel oil on the surface before dewatering a compartment.
My mom worked at Bemerton during the war. She had a girlfriend who was on a damage assessment team. Now I'm not sure what ship it was , but she was down looking at damage and discovered a dogged hatch. She opened it and there were the remains of 3-4 sailors.
I've read that the Pearl Harbor salvage crews said the refrigerated food stores were really really bad
Grandpa endud up senior enlisted in the repair operation on Guam. He did not like cleaning out compartments. I do not know if he did this at Pearl as well. Of course another part not mentioned at the forward bases is scavaging parts from damaged vessels going back and doing upgrades on the fly in theatre. Grandpa had to tell senior officers "no" several times to additional small AA guns and tub that could compromisrt stability.
Early step in the triage process: "Is there any unexploded ordinance on the ship?" No body wants to start draining the drydock only to find an armed torpedo or 14 inch shell sticking out of the hull.
Makes you wonder what the guys fixing up Prince of Wales thought when they found one of Bismarck's 15" shells fetched up deep in the ship :D
@@Drachinifel I'd be really interested in a video detailing how in the name of Rozhestvenskys Binoculars you'd dispose of another nations 15" Shell that had taken one hell of a waterboarding, followed by a butt first collision with a literal steel wall, Breaking through said wall only to stop when it had found a cozy home for its wife and children.
Fuse condition questionable at best and taking the civilian approach of "just toss a truckload of sandbags on it and then make it detonate on purpose" is probably something that the British admirality would have liked to avoid.
@@Drachinifel Souvenir ...
@@minklmank very carefully
Would kinda bring things to a halt i imagine.
This was actually my grandfather's job during WW2. He was the foreman of a repair crew at a naval shipyard in the San Francisco area that the ships damaged vs the Japanese in the Pacific would be sent to. He worked there before the war, actually. After Pearl Harbor he went to enlist but the military turned him down flat. They said that he was in an absolutely war-critical role, and he could contribute FAR more to the war effort by staying right where he was than he could by enlisting.
Given the stigma that was associated at the time w/ not being in the services, the War Dept. should have had a small badge (tie tac? Everyone wore ties back then) such men could wear indicating their mission critical status. Something subtle that you'd only see F2F, but would be readily apparent to anyone cognizant. I'm certain it would have had a great effect on moral, and saved a lot of time every day lost to explanations for those men who were needed right where they were...
Honestly there are an awful lot of photos there which show just what a Herculean task the crews did with their damage-control procedures. With a lot of them it's a case of "how the hell did it survive THAT???". Some of those chuffing great holes look way too wide to have survived.... but still they did. My respect for the sailors of various navies has gone up several points.
One of those pictures I recognized as an American cruiser that ended up missing everything forward of the turret... and I remember this picture because it was the number two turret. Number one turret was gone, the bow was gone, and the magazine that had exploded and taken them off was gone... yeah, the magazine exploded and they still managed to save the ship.
There's a lot of motivation in the fact that, if you don't keep it afloat, it's a long swim home. My own, noncombat experience doing emergency repairs to reactor controls involved shutting down the reactor and running on the diesel. The diesel exhaust pipe ran very near where we were working and an earlier hydraulic leak had saturated the insulation on that pipe. We found ourselves doing delicate, precision work with our heads spinning from the fumes. I know this pales in comparison to the conditions those heroes endured while saving, and in many cases, not saving their ships.
It is quite incredible isn't it
I looked at those USN after action analysis drawings, and the images of ships like CA-32 and breath a lot. Fix it or burn or swim seems to be a great motivator. Respect is indeed due.
you can become very motivated when your only other option to saving the ship is to go for a very long swim.
An interesting future video would be design, development and deployment of the Advance Base Sectional Docks (ABSD), the moveable dry docks which were used in the Pacific conflict to allow repairs at sea or in those instances where proper repair and refit facilities didn’t exist at a nearby port. The first ship of the class was the USS Artisian ABSD-1 which was used to repair damaged US Navy ships initially at Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides Islands.
Seconded - just looking at the images used here, I am guessing there were thousands of people doing their stuff on a man made island in the middle of nowhere. I would love to know more.
I will add my vote for this as a future video subject. The existence of Espiritu Santo early in the Pacific campaign, and later Ulithi, paid major returns to US Navy operations.
A note re: avoiding splicing wires. I can confirm, at least in a mining environment, when re-building equipment we ALWAYS re-cable. Any splice, no matter how carefully done, will quickly corrode and cause problems. I can imagine this is much worse in saltwater spray environments.
Nonsense.
I working for a company that repaired cables. It's never as good as new but can be done well. I'm not aware of any mines that will do anything but the most basic repairs on-site however.
Of course this was in a workshop hours from the sea.
Interesting seeing the difference in fields - I work in automotive and we vastly prefer splicing in most cases. A well-soldered/crimped and heat-shrinked connection, especially in a static position (I.e. you don’t have to account for the wires to a control unit ever moving much) is usually plenty fine for the life of the car. But cars wiring is generally undergoing much lighter stresses by comparison - rarely hotter than 250F and not submerged or flexing a ton.
Re-laying is also often untenable, since the majority of the car’s components are serviced by like 3 embedded harnesses + one for each door if you’re lucky. Tearing apart an engine or an interior just to replace the whole harness is a ton of work, and even if you just wanted to replace the wire between two components, that may require a long journey of removing stuff and opening up ducting.
@TimelyAbyss Are the harnesses in your equipment more modular, or more easily accessed, to make re-laying less of a hassle? I’m sure you don’t have to deal with a lot of trim panels 😂
@@constructmaster6280: I'd imagine that it's a more explosion-prone equivalent of housing rewiring, and the only reason that doesn't get done frequently is a lack of desire to hire an electrician, which likely isn't the case in any authorized mine.
I would very much like to see a video on the salvaged ship's of pearl harbor and what repairs/ modernization were done to them
He did a 3 part series on the recovery of the Pearl Harbor ships. It’s incredibly interesting.
czcams.com/video/bB-V9cCSC8o/video.html
He did a series on salvaging those ships but I’d love to hear about the repairs.
On this exact channel.
I'm recovering from _yet another_ major surgery (and this one's unusually difficult/painful). But a new Drachinifel video makes ANY day better!
and if you're still commenting, it makes everyone's day better too, I wish you a swift recovery
So, you're in the yard after a major refit?
Get well soon, Chuck!
Did they use parts from another ship to repair ypu ?
I like the fact that you point out the floating drydocks. My father served aboard ABSD (Advanced Base Sectional Drydock) #1 during WW2.
floating dry docks, and sub tenders, and destroyer tenders were all critical to keeping the fleets going .
I watched your video on the salvaging/raising of the ships at Pearl Harbor. We always hear about the attack, that was the first time I realized the scope of the horrors that were faced and overcome by the men and women in the aftermath. My heart simultaneously swelled with pride and died at the same time. I hope that made sense.
On a lighter note as an US Navy veteran I enjoy your content, Thanks for your continuing efforts.
"Men and women" -- seriously? There were NO women killed (nor even serving) aboard the ships at that time. The six women who were awarded various commendations were nurses at the hospital. Those who died during the cleanup and salvage operation were all men. I'm not saying that the contributions of the nurses weren't critical, or that they didn't witness some horrible shit, but let's not pretend that the horrible shit happened TO anyone but the men.
@@colormedubious4747 Your quote ""Men and women" -- seriously? There were NO women killed (nor even serving) aboard the ships at that time."" Over 250 women and 11 children were killed during the attack on Pearl Harbor. While I will agree that the women and children who died were NOT stationed aboard the ships, or may not have even been in the military, does that diminish their deaths?
@@johnniewoodard648 It does not, sir, but they were not intentionally targeted and the topic of this video (and Drach's 3-part series about the salvage op) is damaged warships that were.
@@johnniewoodard648 and indeed your comment was about the horrors that men and women faced in the aftermath; not about how many were killed. Yes, what you wrote did make sense; we can see and respect great human achievement in the face of adversity, but doesn't it reflect badly on us as humans that this actually happened at all? That's why my heart dies when I visit war cemeteries, and observe Armstice Day here in the UK. Hats off to you, and thank you for your service.
@@colormedubious4747 you think nurses didn't face horrors?
I'd be interested in any damage report compiled after the first Tallboy hit on the Tirptz. Damage, at her bow, left her confined to Norwegian coastal water. There must have been an appreciation that this was no normal weapon but bigger, a major step up in risk.
Descent into Darkness by Edward Raymer is a first-person account of a salvage diver at Pearl Harbor. He was the first to dive the USS Arizona only a few days after it sank. He and others mention men dying from hydrogen sulfide gas generated by decaying biomass when entering dewatered compartments (aside from bodies, the larger ships had what were essentially meat processing plants). His account is very interesting, as was your series on salvage operations at Pearl (especially the Oklahoma) and a follow up on the subsequent repair of those or other ships would help flesh put this outline.
Yorktown & Enterprise: That's enough repairs. I'm going back to sinking ships.
Fascinating!
I remember reading an account from David K Brown that Lord Mountbatten visited his ship (HMS Kelly) while it was being built and discussed the matter of WTF-level damage control at sea with the constructors (including the matter of what to throw overboard). When she received WTF levels of damage, he then proceeded as he had been instructed in order to bring his ship home. Could you possibly cover this, please?
Having been on ships going into overhaul, though fortunately not damaged from combat. The whole triage process is kind of a balancing act. Stuff that has been broken for years will appear on the repair list, and many things you have to ask yourself is this something that really needs to be fixed or is this something we can live without. It's the old warrant against need contest. I really want this thing but do I need it? Then you add the needs the fleet to the time it takes to repair that thing, and you get things like Yorktown leaving Pearl Harbor before Midway in 77 hours.
And then later in 1942, you have Enterprise participating in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal with her repair division, a Seabee battalion and some of Vestal's crew repairing her.
@@ph89787 Pearl Harbor Naval Yard got pretty well known for putting boxcars full of Parts on ships and repair Crews while sending them back out to fight
Repair for USS Texas. Yes. All please.
@@fooman2108 Oh i don't doubt that. Except that Enterprise between the Battle of Santa Cruz and the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal was repaired at Noumea, New Caledonia.
@@rogersmith7396are you talking about the ongoing repairs while she’s in drydock? Because their CZcams channel is posting videos of them (note: the torpedo blisters were so bad that the museum crew is essentially recreating them by hand).
It would be interesting to see this done for an age of sail warship as well.
Pump me hardies pump.
Age-of-sail field repairs were sometimes pretty wild. Look up the practice of "careening" sometime!
My grandfather worked in Chatham Dockyard and served on the committee that assesed and triaged damaged ships.
Having checked some family history granddad (Eveoy Head) was a Master Electrician and later an instructor of apprentices.
The committee was during WWI, probably following D-Day.
As a Hull Maintenace Technician (HT), second generation, this may be the greatest video EVER posted. Go Navy!
My father in law joined the USS West Virginia late in the war. I know the post Pearl Harbor refit was so extensive she could no longer transit the Panama Canal but the actual details of this refit are hard to find. I would enjoy a detailed review of her repairs and upgrades. Thanks for the work you do.
On the video in the future: I want to hear Drachinifel talk about HMS Zubian and if that was ever done to another set of ships. It's the kind of whackiness you'd expect from a cartoon, and the fact that the result seems to have actually worked makes it even more amazing.
The one Iowa class had bow damage from collision and received the bow from a cancelled Iowa and is a different length from the other three.
You mean Wisconsin borrowing Kentucky’s bow.
One of the most extremely complicated (by the many possible variations) subject, @Drachinifel you have a very special talent covering it so comprehensively in 40min. Thank you.
Yes, stories about the repairing of the BBs "sunk" at Pearl would be a fascinating story. Each one was, no doubt, different and enlightening.
He already did that. 3 parts.
There is also an excellent book on the Pearl Harbor Salvage.
@@sadlsore Title and author? Thank you!
@@randallreed9048 : Title: Pearl Harbor: Why, How, Fleet Salvage and Final Appraisal
Author: Vice-Admiral Homer N. Wallin.
I live about 10 minutes from the bremerton naval yard, where the bunker hill was repaired and the uss Turner Joy (one of the ships that started the Vietnam War) is in gorgeous museum condition. Highly recommend a visit on your next USA trip!
it would be interesting to see a breakdown in HMS Belfast's repair and refit.
Instances of temporary repairs done by crews are surprising, ingenious, great examples of "thinking outside the box". Bows made from coconut tree logs, patches of said logs; ideas unimaginable during peacetime. "Heeling" an aircraft carrier, as was done after SARATOGA took her second torpedo so that temp repairs could be made to get her to Pearl. Such tales and stories would make fascinating reading and fill volumes, I'm sure. And then there are the words of the people faced with the actual repairs and wondering, "Why the blasted blazes did those idiots do that?!"
The joy when you see a new black and white drach thumbnail
I have to say I saw that first drawing and was like "Why have you been watching me play warships... because this was me last battle... holes everyplace and on all the fires..."
I would absolutely love an in-depth look into the recovery and repair of the USS West Virginia
Drach has a few great videos about the recovery post pearl harbor
Ye. I think part 2 of his Pearl Harbour series covers it in enough detail.
For an example of how dangerous small holes can be:
RMS Britannic sunk not because of the mine, but because the hospital staff onboard left portholes open for water to enter the ship.
Had that not happened, the Britannic would likely have survived hitting the mine.
Wake up babe, new Drachinifel video just dropped
Yes, a video following one ship through its repair process would be interesting if pictures of the work are available.
I recognized many of the ships illustrated here, but many were a mystery. Fascinating subject, well presented.
Excellent as always, Drach. I have long been awed by, in particular, the USN's repair efforts after Pearl Harbour/Coral Sea/various other battles. And is it just too nerdy to be fascinated by those wonderful dockyard photographs? So much history in every one ....
Your comment about the crew being sent to other ships due to how long the ship would be in dry dock reminded me of the Military Funeral Honors I performed for a Sailor. In May 2016 I had the Honor to perform the Honors for a Shipmate, who was a survivor of the Pearl Harbor attack. Channel 2 news in Reno did a fairly good report about the Sailor, but got one fact wrong, and left off the most important fact about the Sailor. In the video they said he joined the Navy at the age of 17 to fight in WWII. He did join the Navy at 17, but in 1930 over 11 years before the attack. Channel 2 did disclose the Sailor spent three days in the Pacific Ocean with an injured knee, after the ship he was on was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, which is true. They failed to say why he was on the ship which was sunk. They show a picture with the Governor of Nevada at the granite stone in Carson City, to get a certificate of appreciation. The Sailor was on the ship which sunk, because the ship he was originally on was the USS Nevada during the attack at Pearl Harbor and was in dry dock for repairs, so he was reassigned to the ship which sunk. Attached is the CZcams video of the Military Funeral Honors, which shows the Air Force rifle team supported our Navy Reserve Funeral Honors team.
czcams.com/video/WKEyl3Eg9PQ/video.html
This is very good indeed. Thanks for a repair video. Great like your Pearl Harbor series was.
perfect timing, just got home from a visit to the RAN Fleet Air Arm museum and this is perfect to unwind!
The USS Marblehead video was a great demonstration of what this can look like
Hi Drach.
I think a really interesting video would be the comparison in living /working conditions on ships based on climate/location. Say, between the Atlantic, Mediterranean & Pacific. Then temperate, tropical & arctic conditions maybe?
You do a fantastic job on these topics, thank you. I especially loved the one about the Russian fleet misadventure in 1905 ;)
You've poked holes in my ship! what is one to do? Your resurrection of the US fleet at Pearl Harbor comes to mind. A lovely compelling program I find myself viewing again and again. ^~^
Some of those ships really went thru the ringer. Amazing they kept floating.
Yes, Yes, Yes you should absolutely do a vid on each ship salvaged from Pearl Harbor and their repair cycle.
Excellent entry, Drach. Sometimes, it's such a pleasure just to listen to someone who knows what the sweet hell they're talking about going on about that subject they love to a fault.
I got like.....48 of those.....at least.
Well done and keep at it! 👍
i always love these general logistical, technical, and procedural vids you do. Never so much interested in specific ships so much as the processes and history of shipbuilding & repair and naval warfighting.
great photos that I've never seen before, my favorites are when you cover warships from 1880s to 1950, the other stuff not so much, not to take anything away from your outstanding narration Sir. your knowledge is priceless.
FANTASTIC array of photos!
The settling was the most fascinating part of this. It makes sense but I guess I just never thought of a ship settling back into shape in certain cases before doing repairs or else the repairs wouldn't be properly fitted.
Thanks as always for these awesome videos, haven't watched in a bit, marathon time!
I, for one, would definitely like to see a Pearl Harbor series continuation, or really anything more on this topic. A case study would be really cool.
another great video. I would love to see you do a continuation of this series on specific ships like say West Virginia.
I'd like to see more of this. Your stuff is so comprehensive and helpful.
Hi Drach. I would specifically like very much to know about the massive refits on the two Tennessee class and West Virginia, that altered them to such an extent that they were too wide to fit through the Panama Canal, in particular, the superstructure changes that utterly changed their profiles, the bulges, the decision to integrate the 5”-38 twin mounts, the modern fire control upgrades, and above all, the decision making that said that these changes were more economical, than just scrapping WWI vintage slow warships, considering the amounts of damage to West Virginia and California.
The men who were able to get the carriers repaired to be ready for the battle of midway were the hero’s
A very interesting account of the ships but it might have been better if the impact on the poor devils who had to do do the immediate/short term repairs had been considered.
My dear old pa as a shipwright found himself found himself in Freetown at the age of 22 doing repairs to get wounded vessels back to the U.K.. He had nightmares for the rest of his life regarding the efforts he and his comrades had to endure clearing out compartments of the remains of the crew which were often partly eaten by barracudas.
The lads did a greatly under appreciated job.
This may sound gruesome, but definitely would have to account for any body pieces that may be anywhere at that point. Cleaning up in general just to be able to see what all it needs, amd even if its worth trying to save, i would think. Its not like a claims adjuster calculating a fender bender. Im glad whoever suggested this made the suggestion. Totallu not something the average viewer , such as myself would have thought of. Thanks Drach
Excellent program.
Excellent overview as usual Drach! Some interesting insights and observations. I especially liked the visuals you found of the American floating repair "yards", absolutely fascinating...
Thanks again
I’d just like to say thanks for recommending “Descent into Darkness” in your Pearl Harbor salvage video. It was a fascinating read
Thank you for the video. It's a great help in understanding the vast amounts of time and resources that the various navies had to take into account.
Lots of good pictures of US Treaty cruisers, which is appropriate considering how many of them were seriously damaged!
Battleships may look "obsolete" if compared to modern missile warships but they were still a true marvel of engineering. Just imagine: they built those formidable monsters without any electronic stuff and other "super-duper high technologies".
Play Rule the Waves and build your own!
I recall that in the '90s it was said that an Exocet missile would just ruin the paint job on an Iowa class battleship.
@@harrykoppers209 mmhmm.
With ships having a minimum of armour these days, no need to have as much penetration in your munitions, when you can instead blast bigger holes, or have more range.
Someone, if they decided to make a modern battleship, and assuming said battleship got hit in the armour belt, would laugh off modern anti ship missiles. If it got hit anywhere else though... lets say, going straight down through the deck? battleships of WWII would NOT, survive that any better than a modern warship.
As such, if anyone WAS, going to make a modern battleship, intended to be armoured to protect against all threats. It needs to be far more armoured than battleships ever were historically, in an age where 13 inch thick plates of properly heat treated steel just aren't made anymore. And that then begs the question, won't someone just make a bigger missile with your fancy new ship as a target, or find an already existing missile, made for bunker busting perhaps, that will do the job?
@@Destroyer_V0: I suspect they would worry about torpedoes and their own soft spots, build extra large so there's extra bulkheads to provide structural support & compartmentalization, and then allocate the rest of their attention to "stealth" and active defenses. _LOTS_ of active defenses.
@@absalomdraconisimagine the chaos if instead of plastering it's ships with Bofors and oerlikon's the usn would cover any new battleships with Phalanx CIWS and all other manner of guns, decoy launchers, and missiles.
I love these types of videos that Drach does 🙂
Great video. The repairs to Kelly would be a great case study. And to bring it up to date, the challenging reconstruction of the Type 42 DDGs Southampton and Nottingham.
You know, this probably isn't the kind of thing you want to hear in terms of engagement, but you have what is probably the most soothing voice on all of CZcams. For some reason, The Holy Algorithm started showing me your vids back in June or July 2019, which I particularly remember because it was the most stressful period of my entire life. Things were so bad that I couldn't fall asleep without drugs and even then I was getting no more than about 4 or 5 hours a night. Then I started watching your vids. _So_ relaxing!
It's not that your content isn't fascinating. It is, even if it's not the kind of thing I guessed my have been in my wheelhouse (so to speak.) I love your content. But your VOICE. You could bottle that shit and it would be the best anti-anxiety med ever.
This comes to mind because it happened again last night, after another period of only occasional solid sleep. I ended up getting something like 9 hours, which is close to miraculous.
Can we see a breakdown of the repair of the USS Yorktown prior to Midway? That's a story I have been wanting to see for ages.
Great Video! I would love to see a video on USS. California. BB44 I looked like a totally different ship after it was repaired post Pearl Harbor attack.
As usual, an excellent vid. Thank you.
Would love to see more about the Pearl Harbour ships!!
Superb episode Drach!
wonderful episode......cheers from Florida, USA....Paul
Imagine working on that dry dock in the middle of the Pacific ocean 🌊😮 what a juicy target
Would have been great to see labels on the photos of what ship and date?
Some of them I had never seen before.
me too
A lot of them are from wiki commons (essentially the photo repo for wikipedia with copyright free images)
Another well done Vid!
Excellent thank you, a field I have long been interested in . Anytime you have more to write I will be ready to read
I would love a look both at Belfast and the Pearl Harbor repairs!
Good job 👍 buddy 👏
A lot of archive pictures i never seen before.
And very smart comments 😎
Please do Belfast repair process that would be so fun and interesting to learn about
Drach, thanks for the Ration. I needed a good tot, this morning.
Great video, thank you.
Excellent. Thank you.
The video you did on SMS Seidlitz was incredible, and while we might not get scale models for them, it'd be amazing to have you do an episode or two detailing a ships combat damage in detail, and then detailing it's repair and refit process.
Yes, a continuation of the Pearl Harbour savaged survivors would be wonderful please.
I live for these technical videos.
Thanks Drach
I would like to see the peral harbor repairs and the USS North Carolina
While it may be a rather gruesome topic, it would be interesting to know what the procedures were for dealing with any human remains that were mixed in with the battle damage. At what point was it worth trying to recover and return remains versus just washing it off with a hose and continuing on with the repairs.
Regarding the concurrent upgrading that goes on during these major repairs: After her post-Pearl Harbor repair, the upgrades to West Virginia were so extensive that she was seen by the USN as fully the equal of the Iowas in every way except speed, hence why she was retained until the 1958-1960 period when we disposed of all remaining battleships that weren't the Iowas.
Naval ships were not the only vessels that sometimes had to be repaired at sea by non-standard methods. Robert Blackwood Robetrson, a Scottish MD and psychiatrist, joined a Scottish-Norwegian whaling fleet for one season in the Antarctic in the early 1950s and published a book titled "Of Whales and Men" (1954) on his experiences. Robertson relates how on one occasion, two catchers (harpoon craft) collided and the resulting damaged was patched up with cement that was carried on the catchers expressly for emergency repairs on orders of the fleet's Head Engineer.
@ 7:50 You know, Drach, somehow I instantly think of several of your OTHER, OLDER, videos that talk of the heroic efforts of the crew to do EXACTLY what you are describing at this timestamp?
There's an ideal way to do it, and then there's all the inventive ways people will come up with to not end up in the sea :)
15:44 Yes, all hail the mighty tarpaulin for repairs! LOL
I’d be interested in a video on US 4 piper DD’s in WW2 (i.e. Clemson, Wickes classes). Particularly their WW2 modernizations and conversions.
Thanks for an educational presentation on repairing battle damaged warships, Drachinifel. Left out of this narrative is that warships were the most expensive and complex war machines in 1940--and for centuries before that. Even in 1940 the "high tech" bombing airplane was a simple machine compared to a submarine, a destroyer--or a heavy cruiser. A capital ship such as a heavy cruiser might take three years to build--a B-24 rolled off the Ford assembly line every hour at peak production. Repairing even a severely damaged warship could return that ship to service in better-than-new condition within months. Famously, the American aircraft carrier USS Yorktown CV-5 was "sunk" by the Japanese during the Battle of the Coral Sea, limped into Pearl Harbor after some heroic at-sea damage control efforts, and three days after reaching Pearl was dispatched to take part in the Battle of Midway (where it was sunk three more times--body counts can be unreliable).
I was a Marine Corps avionics technician assigned to the USS Tripoli LPH-10 for a WESPAC cruise from November 1977 to August 1978. I got to live on a warship for eight months while repairing aircraft radios. A warship is a living thing, a community, constantly undergoing modernization and upgrades. One night during my cruise the Tripoli scraped something with her hull while steaming through a strait. Divers evaluated the damage as soon as we got into port and there didn't seem to be flooding other than the customary leaks that were present prior to scraping something. Since the warship was a synergetic being, trading out one model of radio for another wasn't always simply pulling a unitized module and plugging in a new one--the radio might need a different antenna due to frequencies or signal polarization, the control boxes might need modification or replacement, and while the radios are supposed to be designed around specific input voltages (includes voltage, amperage, and power supply frequencies) other factors such as the need to refrigerate a more-powerful transmitter may require overhauling the power distribution network from buss bar to the mast-mounted motors to turn the antenna.
I toured the Belfast while in London and even though I knew she had been damaged in battle, Drachinifel's presentation told me that the Belfast had been more severely damaged than I suspected. At the same time, the effort to move Belfast from battle zone to dry dock and rebuild her ("repair" is an understatement) resulted in a serviceable cruiser in service faster and with fewer resources than if a new Belfast was built from the keel up. The story of the two Yorktown aircraft carriers (CV-5 and CV-10) is instructive--CV-5 was undergoing salvage operations and was en route to Pearl Harbor when a submarine of the Imperial Japanese Navy Submarine I-168 put two torpedoes into Yorktown for her fourth sinking! Meanwhile, CV-10 Bonhomme Richard had been laid down on 1 December 1941 and was renamed Yorktown on 26 September 1942, launched on 21 January 1943, commissioned on 15 April 1943, and 22 August 1943 began her first combat operations. Three days in Pearl Harbor being repaired versus hijacking a hull under construction and renaming it taking 11 months--with about a ten month head start on construction--no wonder the US Navy put so much effort into repairing battle damaged ships. CV-10 Yorktown is a museum ship today.
Not all recovered or recoverable battle-damaged ships were "economically" repairable. BB-39 Arizona wasn't economically repairable even though parts of Arizona were removed for use elsewhere. Imperial Japan's Shokaku required ten days in drydock and undamaged Zuikaku needed a new air group after the Battle of the Coral Sea, and this kept them from adding a pair of Japanese aircraft carriers to the Battle of Midway. Yorktown got a new air group in the three days she spent at Pearl Harbor. The two Japanese carriers didn't get immediate replacements of aircraft and air crews. Imperial Japan had both the problems of building new ships in a timely manner and being unable to repair battle damaged ships--there wasn't enough shipyard space, enough raw materials, or enough skilled ship wrights to both repair old ships and build new ships. Drachinifel described the issue of limited shipyard space and other resources--triage was prioritizing getting ships into the war quickest. Sometimes that meant repairing shot-up ships, sometimes it meant hijacking a partially completed ship and making it something else (even if only a name change), and sometimes it was building a brand-new ship from scratch.
Great vid Drach. Would've loved to see some captions with those photos though, some interesting stories there.
Was just looking for another Drach video to watch
While the detailed repairs are of course of interest, I would be very much interested in a series on expedient repairs away from equipped facilities. Most have heard of the coconut log bow, but I’m sure there are many weird and wonderful repairs undertaken to get to someplace civilized. Even the story of using a printing press to support a broken timber on the Mayflower is an excellent story of using what you got.