The Last Battleship Designs - The Good, the Bad and the Mad!
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- čas přidán 26. 03. 2024
- Today we take a look at the last generations of battleship designs, covering everything from nuclear missiles to rocket-assisted Tallboys and re-inventing the pre-dreadnought!
Sources:
www.usni.org/press/books/russ...
www.usni.org/press/books/us-b...
www.usni.org/press/books/brit...
www.amazon.co.uk/Battleships-...
www.amazon.co.uk/Nelson-Vangu...
Lion class design study drawings by Tzoli (many thanks!)
Naval History books, use code 'DRACH' for 25% off - www.usni.org/press/books?f%5B...
Free naval photos and channel posters - www.drachinifel.co.uk
Want to support the channel? - / drachinifel
Want to talk about ships? / discord
'Legionnaire' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au
Pinned post for Q&A :)
Do you have that link for the USS Kentucky work? It doesn’t seem to be in the description
Could the USS Katahadin defeat a K-Class?😉
Of all the post-war battleship designs, which was the most realistic (or perhaps least unrealistic) for their respective navy to produce? And would this design have been useful as anything other than proof that battleships were obsolete?
I had a purely theoretical question that hopefully you can answer. Is it possible to use a triple expansion steam engine in place of a steam turbine in the setup for a turbo electric drive would it actually work? Also given how turbo electric drives work wouldn't this potentially solve the main issue with triple expansion engines being that they can't run for long periods at full speed since in a turbo electric drive system needs to just run at an efficient speed to generate electricity? Id appreciate your opinion given your engineering background
Can you make videos on post-WW2 navies? Like those equipped primarily with missiles?
America’s Last Battleship Designs: MORE *BOOM!*
Britain’s Last Battleship Designs: MORE *ARMOR!*
Russia’s Last Battleship Designs: MORE *PAPER!*
So not much changed then?
*NO* …yeah.
German, Italian, & Japanese Designs: MORE COUNTER-FLOODING VOIDS!
"MORE A-R-M-O-U-R"
As an American I refuse@@consubandon
"rocket-assisted Tallboys"
the WHAT
It's a fun bomb test document to read 😀
@@Drachinifel Someone was using the line between madness and genius as a jump rope again?
@@ph89787We contemplate all manner of possibilities. The trick is to only implement the reasonable. 😂
@@ryanward10 lots of tea and cocaine was taken in this conversation?
@@ph89787 Free your mind my friend. 😏
"Which was more to make the designers look too busy to be sent to the Eastern Front" made me chuckle.
That was the whole story behind German Wunderwaffen
@@jamesricker3997 I have a book written by one of the engineers who worked at peenemunde on the V weapons. He mentions exactly that, as well as basically using the projects to fund research into rocketry for space travel under the guise of it being a weapon.
That is also why Germans came up with so many Advanced Design Jet Aircraft to ensure Design Teams were not Conscripted, also Von Braun and his Rocket Designers who begged him to find something for them to do to avoid being Conscripted last month's of war
"The remaining Japanese ships can be counted unaided on Yamamoto's remaining fingers" is also good
@@connorfanning2956 brilliant.
It's a miracle nobody considered reducing earth's gravity to save weight.
Mass what would be the ultimate limit to acceleration would stay the same.
@@andrewyork3869 At least as much to the point, it wouldn't do anything about the displacement, since mucking with gravity would change the weight of the water and ship equally.
Thanks, Q.
Wouldn't work. It would make water lighter too, so the ship would have to displace the same volume of water in order to float.
@DecidedlyNinja On the one hand, it's nice to know I'm not _uniquely_ insane. On the other, it's irritating to see other people making the same points I made because CZcams has decided to hide my earlier comment. While alerting me to the comment because of that earlier, hidden, comment.
Somewhere there’s a retired attack aircraft pilot and a retired submariner, raising a glass and each wiping away a single tear at all those targets that were never built.
"Sob....... and we had to make do with flight simulators".
"Blub..... what are you complaining about? We had to make do with underwater hearing tests and at least you could go to the pub at the end of the day........ "
Somewhere, almost certainly. But, speaking for the submariners, we'd never admit to drinking with airedales.
the latest update's show's there's missing strategy for shore bombardment and gun-fighter's and something that can soak up some hit's ( including from 155mm rounds aka ground fired ) away from the carrier fleet
18"in X 60ft is probably to big ( drac pointing to firing did damage to the ship and crews like fire and maintenance and air-support, something you really need under fire and hit's ) in less it's a hybrid of missile and gun, leaving 14in to 16"in ( id stick to 16's as the technology is well known and line's/manufacturer's* are there~ ect and GPS+missile's-hybridisation shell's can be done etc for more accurately/penetrating hit or more range trading off $$ and space for limited number of special-rounds ) as the best choice, 5"in to 9in 2022~ showed yes useful but not always enough, 9-gun platform is probably the happy balance as 3-gun/1-turret doesn't fire quick enough or long/round-numbers enough/limited
there was the blueprint with nuke=steam and middle 30~rounds ( USSR in the last fighting 2024~ showed that it works but to $$ plus couldn't stay deployed reliability aka ran out of things to fire plus some targets waste of resources vs a 16in-round would have been etc ) missile silo's for 900~mile range for select targets but mainly setup for gun's, or the other one was a hybrid movable deck flat-top/carrier both are probably viable, also for now USA is being unwise not to patrolling with Iowa's in place and or upgraded for nuke-steaming etc, so they have a place just as zomwalt does for marine-spying/steath-etc and light-fighting like piracy or running away as bait-ship to trade with carrier aircraft or BB62/ hammer 🔨😉
'And the entire rear gunner had to be left behind.' Which was far preferable to only leaving behind half the rear gunner.
A modern battleship would have chaubim armor with crazy angles everywhere.
Me expecting typical British understatement.
Drachinifel, "Sarcasm, oh yes. Understatement? Not today."
😂
Love the phrase "instant sunshine in a can"
Sunny D: Now in a can!
…reformulated with twice the diabetes!
Release the flavor of the sun!
The French have "chaleur et lumière" (Heat and Light) as an euphemism for the same phenomenon.
HERE COMES THE SUN
well, since it has long been known as "canned sunshine", its not exactly original.
I think we've set a new record for Drachisms in a single video.
Yeah! 😅
He was in a mood.
What? You a titans lover? XD
😂
Battleships only became obsolete because cowards were unwilling to use nuclear shells
AVE IMPERATOR, SOL INVICTUS, DEUS VULT, EXTERMINATUS!!!
Apparently some in the Navy think they're still viable. There's talk of getting the New Jersy back in action. You also don't have to use nukes to make them viable. Battleships are big enough to launch cruise missiles which they did do in the Gulf War.
Technology has caught up to make then viable again. Missile defenses are much better. Composite and reactive armor can stop HEAT warheads.
Guided artillery shells give big guns the ability to attack precision targets at unbelievable distances with pinpoint precision
"Cowards"? No, my friend. The use of any form of nuclear warhead would bring about Armageddon, and the end of humanity. There's a reason the USSR and USA never went into direct war: it's a little thing called "Mutually Assured Destruction". There would be no winners.
You can also use low yield nuclear shells as AA guns. Clear the whole sky with a single shot.
"...was given the Old Yeller treatment" is the coolest metaphor I've heard in ages.
Dang now I have to see that
I saw it at a Drive In and was scared when the boy was chased up by the rabid Javelina (?) and saved by the dog which had to be shot.
SPOILER ALERT (too late)
Note that a 4.125" subcaliber projectile, wrapped in a sabot and fired from an 8" gun, was actually used by USS Saint Paul to shell targets in Vietnam at about 70,000 yards.
The role of battle ships as shore bombardment artillery platforms doesn’t get enough space. They played a crucial role in so many landings.
That may be true and the 16" Guns were improved to shoot a hell of a lot farther than 24 miles. The age of the Battleship is Not gone. Also a small shell as mentioned earlier is marginal at best as it lacks weight or mass. Bigger guns evolved for a reason.
@@Wolf-hh4rv You can do more with less and be less vulnerable while doing it. No one is going to argue the effectiveness of a 16 inch salvo against targets inland, but its just too much boat and, in more recent times, much too vulnerable to anti ship missiles.
What we really need is an automatic 8 inch gun with extended range projectiles or something similar. Yes, i know the navy trialed an automatic 8 inch gun, but the single mounting weighed as much as the lincoln memorial. Highly effective though! Built a not-a-battleship with three of them.
@@floydrandol2731If the age of the battleship is "not gone", where are all the battleships?
70,000 yards! Good Lord, what was the target? Apart from, you know, Vietnam?
The phrase "boop the snoot of every snake they come across" is truly peak history CZcams.
We can't get better than this.
"The Germans were strapping increasingly improbable bomb loads to the poor Stukas, even to the point where both significant amounts of fuel and the entire rear gunner had to be left behind."
Geez, I hope they weren't running tests with partial rear gunners....
Clearly even recipients of double leg amputations need to fight for the Fatherland!
@@paulmahoney7619
Losing his legs certainly didn't hold Sir Douglas Bader back.
If I had a nickel for every time I saw this joke made I've had two nickels, which wouldn't help me any but it's strange to see it twice.
I’ve noticed a theme among the worst of the worst classes & vessels. They tend to start with K: _the K-Class, the USS Katahdin and the glorious Kamchatka_
Kamchatka would have been fine if it wasn't a Russian ship 😂
@@derrickstorm6976I’m sure Rozhestvensky would’ve loved to give one of his classic hateful nicknames to any of the sunken 🇷🇺 BSF vessels had he met their crews. We could’ve gotten a sequel to classics like the “lecherous old wh*r*.” 😂 The Moskova + Makorov both were running at well below advertised performance after all.
Russian ships still seem to have some sort of curse even today. Wasn't one of those big Russian warships recently taken down with a goddamn drone?
Imagine having your ship sunk by the enemy and they're not even there to engage with lol. That's gotta be frustrating 😅
The notation for a strikeout on a baseball scorecard is "K". So there's that.
🔭TORPEDO BOATS SPOTTED!
"Plasma based shrapnel effects" is the most Warhammer 40k thing I've heard in months.
As a native of Louisiana, its with a mix of pride and hurt seeing that the Louisiana of the Montana class was the last Battleship authorized for construction in the US Navy.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Louisiana_(SSBN-743) Hope this helps
@@johnlavery3433it helped me, also a Louisiana native
I will never understand the fascination with these post war,submerged danger dildos...Need some in my model collection though^^@@thesaintssupperfan
@@thesaintssupperfan ⚜️⚜️⚜️⚜️
@@johnlavery3433 We're dropping the sun on Moscow for Mardi Gras 2025 WOOOOO
It's telling that most of these battleship designs seem to be solutions in search of a problem, with the goal being to have a battleship, not a ship to fill specific battle line role
Well, the role of "sinking big enemy ships" had been taken over by aircraft carriers, so they had to get creative.
@@SnakebitSTIexactly. Carriers replaced battleships.
Any BB design after that was just because they *wanted* a battleship, not because they *needed* one is what they are saying I think.
Think what the battleship’s actual role in WWII turned out to be:
#1: Fleet air defense with 20 5/38’s and a hundred 40mm and 20mm tubes
#2: Shore bombardment.
#1 is relevant today: a fleet sailing into battle could use another couple hundred VLS cells, and 4 127mm and 2 57mm turrets, and a bunch of CWIS and RAM launchers. All on a fast, tough-to-neutralize platform.
#2: Give them the ability to fling 1000 pound glide bombs out to 300 kilometers, and 2000 pound conventional guided rounds out to 70km. Using volcano 127mm rounds you also have 50-70 km reach with smaller boom. Shore bombardment check.
@@CorePathway But the question is whether that's the most effective use of your budget. Especially since you can't deploy half a battleship-sized hull to two different locations.
@@CorePathwayWhat about convoy defense, night actions, and just plain heavy armor and firepower? It's not fair to marginalize the role battleships played in WW2 just because they were on the way out at the end of the war.
USS Texas got its underside redone, a splash of paint, and refloated this year; now it's USS New Jersey's turn, it entered drydock today.
5:59 LOL!!! I was not prepared for the Yamamoto reference at 7:15 in the morning!🤣
What about a Rozhestvensky reference?
@@The_ZeroLinebut you both forgot the human ship reference!
@@Tipman2OOO The Human Ship Experience needs to be the name of a band.
@@The_ZeroLine Well, it certainly wouldn't be the _most_ outlandish band name out there...
17:06 "Presumably, these would be conventionally tipped, but only because large air-burst nuclear warheads didn't fit on them, and no one had made the logical leap to sticking Davey Crockett warheads on them, and then taping some nails to the outside of the resulting monstrosity for some plasma based shrapnel effects."
18:33 "was quietly taken out back and given the 'Old Yeller' treatment."
I stopped to note all Drachisms of this video😂 Seems the subject generates them 🤣
Drach sure was in a chipper mood when writing this script
Hebdoes seem to be on his game. Might be the slightly daft subject matter.
As soon as I saw the title, I said "Oh YEEEES" out loud. This is gonna be good.
👌
18:30 " ..the US battleship development was quietly taken out back and given the Old Yeller treatment". Oh, man, that's harsh! lol
40:15 - In fairness, given that for reasons of geography the Soviet Union/Russia had/has to essentially build and maintain four separate navies, all isolated from each other, then if they needed _any_ of those battleships they probably _did_ need at least ten of them to avoid giving their enemies in each theater an easy defeat-in-detail target (same as with the original plans to build twenty _Sovetsky Soyuzes)._
Imagine being at war with pretty much..everyone and than having to relocate from the black seas to either the pacific or the baltic...With atleast 2 areas in the way where your enemies would not even need to really aim^^
Well, even so, pouring in the vast resources required to have an adequate-sized fleet in every one of those four areas still isn't really viable. What you have to do is decide on one of two of those areas that are the most important or where your fleet can have the most impact, and focus on those while accepting that you can be outmatched at sea in the others. That pretty much what the Soviet Union ultimately did, concentrating the vast majority of their resources into the Northern (Barents Sea/North Sea/Atlantic/Mediterranean) Fleet and putting far less focus on the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, and Pacific.
Correct. Dig deeper, nobody really wanted them, and everyone understood the impossibility of building even one operational group. Quite likely, including JS himself. I'm more familiar with the civilian projects of the Dark Age (ca. 1946-1954), and those were far more insane than anything conceived inside the Soviet military. Sort of a "ministry of silly walks". Fortunately, unlike the military, everyone involved knew it was just a paper exercise.
How is Russia's need for four separate fleets different from any other country patrolling the world's shipping lanes? Britain, for example, during WWII, had three fleets just in the Indian Ocean, protecting the Suez Canal, Madagascar/Cape of Good Hope, and Burma. A fourth was fighting the Japanese in all around Indonesia.
If anything, Russia has it easier due to its relative lack of dependence on international trade; they simply do not need a navy, and only have one now for following other navies.
@@ryanaegis3544 It's different in that anyone _other_ than Russia can easily move ships between fleets, or move entire fleets to support other fleets if necessary, whereas for Russia this would require forcing at least one narrow chokepoint either outright controlled or easily plugged by a powerful enemy (for the Barents Sea, the gap between the North Cape and the Arctic icecap [easily plugged by Britain]; for the Baltic Sea, the Danish Straits [easily plugged by Germany] and the North Sea [easily plugged by Britain]; for the Black Sea, the Turkish Straits [controlled by the Ottoman Empire/Turkey] and the Aegean Sea [easily plugged by Britain/France/Italy/Austria-Hungary/whoever]; and for all the Russian Pacific ports other than Petropavlovsk, the straits ringing the Sea of Okhotsk and Sea of Japan and the mouth of the Yellow Sea [all either controlled or easily plugged by Japan, and even for Petropavlovsk transferring ships or fleets to or from anywhere _else_ under Russian control would still require forcing one of the other aforementioned chokepoints]).
There was a 1960s scheme proposed by Avro to fire a boosted-equipped version of it's Blue Steel nuclear-tipped ASM, powered by the ever forgiving combination of kerosene and concentrated hydrogen peroxide, from converted Manxman class minelayers, these being chosen due to their large internal volume and high freeboard.
The idea of replacing 4.5" Mk.6 gun turrets with Seaslug on a one-for-one basis is just mind-blowing: the magazines for Seaslug in the County class were 290 feet long and held 24 ready-use rounds, or 16 ready-use plus 23 crated...
Is that where you send all the sailors you really, really hate?
@@grahamstrouse1165 Yeah, it's the navy equivalent of "go play in the traffic" - "go play with horrifically explosive, corrosive, toxic and twitchy chemicals on a pitching, rolling platform."
@@MrHws5mp😂😂😂
@@MrHws5mp The kerosene is the nice part. Concentrated H2O2 will spontaneously combust or detonate at concentrations over 25-30%. Definitely not the kind of thing you clean a cut with (2%).
Are there any books that will give more details on that? It sounds brilliant! 😁
Love your sense of humor: the "Davy Crockett warhead" idea! "Fist-a-cuffs with a Megladon!" "the Good Idea Comrade" 🤣
The deadpan or stoic delivery accompanied by upside down hulls and ships sunk in harbour is why I save these so they can be truly enjoyed. Well done!
"Now to the British proposals there was no Lack of insanity...." HA! Love it
I'm reminded of the dual gun tank video. By splitting up a battleship into two or three smaller ships it reduces risk and enables you to be in two or three places at once. If Russia or China has a battleship you sink it with a submarine or aircraft carrier. But post WWII the median opponent has zero battleships total so just build destroyers, minesweepers, etc. A barge with an artillery piece is pretty much equal to a battleship as far as the enemy is concerned.
@WhatIfBrigade From a naval architecture perspective you will want some larger ships, as relatively speaking they'll have more space for equipment and people and they will have longer range (look up the concept of a 'natural speed' of a non-hydroplaning hull - which ultimately determines relative space). So destroyers/minesweepers/etc really aren't optimal from a long term perspective. But that doesn't mean you need battleships, cruisers are fine. Of course, you can build a cruiser and call it a destroyer ...
@@bluelemming5296 "Of course, you can build a cruiser and call it a destroyer..." USN doing the look away meme lol
Nice illustration of the Lion class. The absurd levels these post war battleships were reaching, we're in denial of the financial resources left after the war. The UK was bankrupt!
How beautiful the Montanas would have been to behold.
I love the whole era of design in the 1950’s it’s like someone asked a toddler for all their ideas and actually pulled half of it off . Of course the other half gives you the battleship nuclear ballistic missile anti everything hull of death or BBNBM
Excellent video as always.
The really beautiful thing that RAF Coastal Command discovered with the 'flattening out' of 'short' rocket launches was that, given the correct shallow dive attack angle, this harmonised nearly perfectly with the ballistics of the old .303-inch machine-gun. A Coastal Command training video (available on CZcams and I think Armoured Carriers has posted it up) actually instructed pilots of Rockbeaus and Mosquitoes to fire *all* guns as they attacked.
The principle was that 20mm cannon and .303s were not harmonised with each other, but the cannon would strafe and suppress the target vessel (reducing the obvious deleterious effects of return flak fire) on the approach, then as soon as the .303s were seen to be reaching the target *that* was the time to let fly with the rockets, which would enter the water just short, steer themselves level, and strike the target below the waterline, sinking it outright.
Brilliant tactics, derived entirely from battle experience and usefully taking full advantage of a Beaufighter or Mosquito FB's cocktail of weaponry to a frightening level of effectiveness.
Did I just hear NINETEEN FIFTY FIVE in a Drach video??? Heresy!
IM CALLING THE INQUISITION!!!
He was talking about the 19" 55 caliber gun, of course.
"Yes Inquisitor, this man seems to have strayed from his station and begun researching... *Other things* ..."
"19 inch belt armor and capable of 35 knots"
Man I wish the Iowas were the ship the soviets thought they were.
This video reminds me of a news interview I saw as a kid, during the Falklands War. A retired Iowa class captain was asked what he would do if struck by an Exocet missile (a la HMS Sheffield). "Send out a sailor with a broom and paint bucket." I laughed for days!
Which in turn reminds me of the WW2 American sailor who reportedly said that British carriers were so tough that their response to kamikaze strikes was "sweepers, man your brooms."
@@theawickward2255 British carriers had armored decks, so the kamikazes barely hurt them. Sadly US carriers did not have armored decks. 😞
Also imagine what effect fire support from the nine 16' guns of an Iowa class battleship would have had on Argentine positions. The British battle reports would have been filled with the phrase "totally obliterated".
@@Dave_Sisson The decks weren't penetrated, but they _were_ warped, which led to the ships being retired years before their American counterparts.
@@GoranXII Okay, I thought it was the British were bankrupt after 6 years of war, so they trashed most of their carriers to save money when the war ended?
God the thought of a Davy Crocket powered claymore is horrifying
Even scarier, one item that was designed for Project Orion: Nuclear. Shaped. Charges.
Jesus, I forgot that that made. I mean, is there anymore proof the greatest generation were just grown up kids designing evil toys lol. They really needed Admiral Ching Lee around. He wouldn’t have allowed this nonsense.
@@CybrluditeFor those extra hard to penetrate doors?
@@The_ZeroLineIf only it were that straightforward. Project Orion was a spacecraft. The shaped charges were shot out the back and detonated, with the shaped charge pointed at the spacecraft. The spacecraft would ride the repeated nuclear blasts through space using an enormous metal plate on shock absorbers.
Project Orion was a prospect at propulsion for a spacecraft not really applicable to this
I spit my tea out at nukes being referred to as "instant sunshine in a can".
Considering the shape of the "Physics package" (aka nuclear warhead) of a typical thermonuclear weapon being not unlike a tin can in shape, and the fact that they use fusion just like the sun does... it seems a particularly apt descriptive phrase.
I have long before this taken to the phrase "Drop the sun on it" or "The sun rises twice today" to refer to the use of nuclear weapons, this doesn't seem that much different in spirit.
Language is cool sometimes!
It's a common term on a web forum drach is part of.
The US Did build Nuclear shells for the Iowas, They also had Nuclear land based artillery for the Atomic Annie gun, which was actually tested.
Early Cold War nuclear weapons and doctrine are comical. No wonder films were as wacky as they were.
Draco’s segue about the SeaSlug gave me brief glimpses into what he would have to say about 1960s ship design, and I kinda liked it.
40:50 The RAF dropped a 12,000lb bomb from 16,000ft to hit the Tirpitz. Admittedly the Tirpitz was not moving but a bomb of a third the size could be delivered by a much smaller and more agile aircraft and advances in aiming would mean hitting a ship of that size would be feasible.
Armor that stopped the Tallboys would necessarily stop them from disabling a ship. The Terpitz was warped by a Tallboy enough that it was severely impaired. The Shock wave from the bombs also disabled submarine pens by transmitted shockwave without penetrating the outer concrete.
man, being anywhere near the shockwave from a tallboy hit would suck so bad.
Yeah, with a bomb that big, armor won't help much... the shock wave of a near miss going off in the water will do more damage than a direct hit.
30:09...okay, the description of Seaslug here is absolutely brilliant. also, the image of a man trying to fight a Megaladon hand-to-hand is amazing.
I'm not gonna lie, i kinda like those soviet battleships. The really small ones.
The reality is no matter what the soviets built a surface action against the US would never ever work.
But having bigger gun ships than everyone else gives you a lot of flexibility in your own waters, and smaller neighbors.
This is why it's in fact important to understand politics; USSR would never have nominally limited themselves at pushing around smaller states around it, even if that's all they were capable of
@@derrickstorm6976Literally all they ended up doing during the cold war
@@bruh-ni1fy all large powers do is push around smaller nations, no major powers went to war with each other beyond the two world wars
Would you want to call yourself a great power and then admit that your enemy is superior, and not build up against them?
@@derrickstorm6976 As opposed to the USA fumbling in Korea, Cuba and Vietnam and, in more recent times, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Never underestimate Russian chauvinism
Drach’s ‘Drachisms’ in this video were particularly hilarious
At least the guy sticking single submerged torpedo launchers on the sides, bow and stern of every battleship must have been pensioned as all these designs seem to have been blessedly free of them.
Really illustrate that the whole battleship concept had reached the limits of what was 'reasonably' possible.
Anything you try to improve over an Iowa class is too big or too heavy or too slow, doesn't carry much more firepower in main turrets and cost half your national budget, and would still sink (or at least be out of comission for multiple months of repair) to a badly placed rocket assisted bomb (after known as missiles)
Note that in the BBG61, ASROC had a nuclear option as well.
And at one point it was planned to make those ships nuclear powered as well as nuclear armed.
The idea was shelved in favour of placing Polaris in submarines once the Navy managed to get submerged launch capability for the missile worked out (the lack of which was why the surface ship to launch them was considered in the first place).
Italy in fact went ahead and modified a cruiser to carry 4 Polaris missiles (and for good measure 3 more were built for 2 missiles each), but the missiles were never delivered as a result of the arms reductions negotiated that ended the Cuban missile crisis and the fielding of the US Polaris submarines which could operate in the Mediterranean without getting the anti-nuclear lobbies in Europe riled up.
Ironically, the idea is currently being developed AGAIN, but this time by the Chinese.
Just as the idea of a nuclear powered nuclear tipped cruise missile, abandoned by the US Air Force as unworkable around the same time is currently being considered (and possibly even fielded) by Russia.
Polaris and Regulus were both also considered for the nuclear-powered cruiser Long Beach as well. In the end she got ASROC and a couple of 5" 38s (the latter at the insistance of JFK allegedly) in the same midships space.
I still want the Nuclear Land Train back. That thing was actually awesome, except for being totally inferior at its intended job (crossing the Antarctic while hauling + providing living space) compared to the Soviet’s much more effective and practical T34 chassis based RV/Pickup.
The nuclear tipped cruise missiles were thought to be unworkable. Just a violation of the INF Treaty.
Actually the nuclear tipped cruise missile was a very real and effective weapon. It was discontinued as part of the deal eliminating the intermediate range nuclear missiles.
Since the Russians reneged on the deal under Putin, I wouldn't be surprised to see them come back!
Various versions could be launched from surface ships, submarines, aircraft, and land vehicles.
Doesn't Pakistan have nuke capable surface ships right now? I remember that being a big deal when terrorists almost took control of one.
We NEEEED Jackie Fisher's Ghoast T shirts.
IMO, “assume if you’ve designed it, anyone else could,” is a sound principle. Speaking of principles, it’s crazy that during this era the US made functional nuclear howtizers, land trains & probably a nuclear powered toothbrush + romance toy too embarrassing to ever be leaked. Oh
There was a nuclear experimenters kit - and quite a few were sold.
Then the was the story of the "nuclear boy scout", who was on the way to collecting enough fissionable material to make his intended BOMB.
The backyard shed he used was so "hot" that the US Army had to be brought in the remove all of it to a military facility.
Do I need to observe that he had a short life?
@@John.0z
Not a bomb, but a reactor! Big difference.
Even better: They were SHORT-RANGE nuclear howitzers,
@@grahamstrouse1165 Shorter than 25-40km?
@@John.0z Oh, I just glanced and responded. Reread and realize you’re talking about David Hahn. That was fairly recently. Early 90s. I remember watching a great documentary about that.
The '50s (mentioned here concerning the proposed Kentucky mods) were a truly interesting time. I spent 13 years in USS Long Beach - as originally proposed in the '50s it would have been a single ship battle cruiser. Proposed were 8 Polaris launchers (4 per side amidships; the provisions for these launchers still existed and were labeled when I retired in '92), a Regulus launcher on the 01 Level amidships with reloads (an ASROC launcher was actually installed in the proposed Regulus launcher position and the constructed Regulus reload magazine was repurposed as the Ship's Library), the 2-rail Talos launcher aft which was installed, and the two 2-rail Terrier (later SM-1/SM-2) launchers which were installed. One salvo would have been 15 missiles in the air at once doing whatever various things they were designed to do, all on a platform 721' x 73' x 17k to 18k tons with the monstrous SCANFAR radar paneled box superstructure. Truly missile-crazy times.
"Instant sun in a can." - Drachinifel.
Oh, you're getting credit for that one! I am so remembering that one...
I sometimes think that with the advent of drones (both air and sea), we might see a return to ships bristling with multipurpose anti-air or sea guns. While Aegis destroyers are doing yeoman work in the Red Sea, shooting down relatively cheap drones with expensive missiles is not necessarily economically sustainable over the long run, when bullets or small cannon shells are much cheaper. I can see something being built like a new battleship, which carries missiles, advanced radars, multiple gunnery platforms (including shore bombardment) filling the role the fast battleships did in WW2.
It does seem likely that we'll see a lot more dakka on future warship designs. Using multi-million dollar missiles to take out drones that cost as much as a nice used car isn't very practical.
The problem with the USN's standard missile is that it's expensive because you can shoot it at anything; there's even an anti-satellite model (although that's more a different weapon that can use the same launch system.) Point is, a gun is a much more limited weapon, so it depends on whether they decide a specialized weapon that's _relatively_ cheaper to fire is worth the loss of flexibility of losing some of the standards.
Mind, it's arguable that just forcing a change to more expensive drones (to defeat your early generation countermeasures) may be worthwhile all on its own.
@@boobah5643 The reason I said there might be a "back to the future" in warships is due to what we're seeing in the Ukraine conflict, as well as in the Red Sea. The missile capability has been built around the idea of defense against airplanes or other missiles, with a mix of anti-ship (harpoon) or ground targets (tomahawk). In other words, what was the threat and relatively cost effective for dealing with those. As the Ukrainians have shown, large numbers of cheap drones can be devastatingly effective against both land and sea targets. I know the Navy has been working on anti-drone technology, including lasers, but 40mm Bofors are still quite capable against both air and sea threats, particularly where a missile might not be appropriate or necessary, reserving the missiles for targets where they would be.
Not only is it not economically sustainable, ships have limited munitions. Even if it were economically sustainable, the ship will have to leave the front line to reload, and frankly, there aren't enough ships to just swap them out.
@@boobah5643 The Iron Dome uses specialized short-range missiles and each still costs $55-60k. Meanwhile, fpv drones in Ukraine cost $700-800, and Australia has a cardboard attack drone that costs $50. Even a phalanx gun platform will burn through at least $100 worth of ammo every second it is firing.
There is simply no way a missile with the technology to intercept another object in flight will ever be cost effective.
Rocket-assisted Tallboys. Here i am thinking the British aren't batshit crazy
We've always been batshit crazy, we just hide it well under a smooth, suave, tea drinking veneer of respectability. It's how we got away with the Empire for so long.
For a modern example of British batshit craziness I give you cheese rolling. Been going on for hundreds of years, generally happens annually though modern Health & safety types do try and stop it now and then. Held at Coopers Hill in Gloucester which is nice and steep. A 7 to 10lb round of Double Gloucester cheese is released down the hill with a one second head start before the competitors can chase it. In theory you can win by catching the cheese, though as it can reach 70mph that doesn't happen, so the winner is the first person to cross the finishing line after the cheese. Prize is the cheese. Note, the hill is too steep to run down, you will fall over and finish your run bouncing arse over tit down the hill.
Much beer will be drunk post the cheese rolling, possibly a fair amount before, including the competitors. Bruises, contusions and friction burns are expected, broken bones, concussions etc also happen. Don't think anyone has actually died though.
To finish, a quote from the Wikipedia article and a link,
'Canadian competitor Delaney Irving won the ladies race in 2023, despite finishing unconscious, and only learning of her victory in the medical enclosure.'
czcams.com/video/PdKRx30s6sk/video.html
Batshit crazy enough for you? 🙂
ETA youtube link.
"Sir, we didn't over penetrate the ships enough. We need to give 'er a rocket assisted boost!"
"What do you mean we didn't over penetrate enough?"
"The bomb only went through the top and bottom of the ship before it exploded underneath it. It would be much better if it embedded itself deep in the sea bed so the explosion would force a jet of water mixed with sand upward, cutting the ship in half with raw abrasion."
"Blimey! We DO need a rocket booster!"
hey now at least they did not ask the Americans for any nuclear cores after 1945 to make rocket assisted nuclear tallboys.
@@filanfyretracker oh, that's something to see.
I love how the segway from U.S.A to UK is “We are far more reasonable.” And proceeds to explain how you want to make a British Yamato that has pace with nuclear carrier’s
I'd like to take a moment. To say thank you for all the information imparted in each episode. I am enthralled by all things military. I am seeing the sunset of my life, and in these moments that cause me to dwell on silly shite like that. I bring up one of your episodes which draws me away from my mental abyss. I've learned so much and had so many chuckles since I discovered you. Thank you, please keep it coming. I'll always watch.
Strength and bravery to you sir.
Sometimes Autumn is a very long season. I hope that you make the utmost of it.
If you drew up the Iowa-class based on what the Soviets thought it had, I feel like it would displace about as much as H44 might have.
taping nails to the outside of the monstrosity for plasma based shrapnel effects if my favorite line in the whole video
Thank you for covering these I was aware of the British designs thanks to Tzoli's artwork, I think they also covered one of the proposed modifications for the unbuilt USS Kentucky. The various Soviet designs are a real revelation. There might be a case for covering the USN's 'small battleship' designs of 1919 (all designs with a main battery of 16 inch guns) and two later proposals, one in 1942 for ship with a pair of triple 14 inch gun turrets and a bizarre proposal from the 1980s for mounting Iowa class turrets on new hulls to create what the designer termed a 'light battleship' but was in reality a revival of the Monitor concept.
16:28 The closest they ever got to that thing was USS Mississippi refitted as a trials ship with a pair of twin-arm Terrier launchers aft. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that they had plans to do the same thing to Kentucky.
A modern nuclear powered battleship with guided shells, datalink and aegis, and a vast amount of vls cells would be very interesting to see
Remove the armour and you have the concept of the Arsenal Ship.
@@jlvfrMore the Zumwalts I think. Arsenals are just VLS with minimal crew and other stuff, and were intended to be remotely targeted.
@@SciFiAddict189I thought of those, but they got so fraked up, being nearly useless junk, I decided to stick to just the idea...
@@SciFiAddict189Well, they realized their modules were neither economical, plug and play or good. So, they copied the much, much smarter Danish style of cargo container based modules, which is perfect for VLS.
@@jlvfrfair enough, the Railguns they were relying on never came to to fruition.
"Drawing pretty ships kept people out of gulags."
"Not so fast, comrade" replies a generation of soviet engineers.
Oh yes!
Beria definitely had his own view on this.
Keep your engineers in The Gulag to maximise control.
Those were the ones who drew ugly ships.
@@theawickward2255
An oblique revenge.
I'm going to need to re- watch this somewhere that I don't have to smother my laughter...
The office is not that place.
Have fun with the New Jersey today! I enjoy the content you and Ryan put out.
@45:54 Drach, if you open up the game World of Warships, the dev Wargaming actually modeled and introduced one of these "pocket-fast/Black Sea battleships, which in-game is named "Borodino". It's armed with a 2×3 406mm/L50 B-37 main armament, and 2×2 180mm/L65 SM-45 cannons for the secondary armament and who's turrets are superfiring and on the centerline for both the primary and secondary armament, with the main 16" turrets mounted on the bow and the 7.1" secondary turrets mounted on the stern. The rest of the armament is 12x4 25mm and 12x2 57mm AA mounts. The 16" cannons are the same model and fire the same post-war shells as the Sovietsky Soyuz battleship in-game.
Kremlin and Slava are additionally interpretations of the Project 24 ships. Although the Admiral Ushakov that was recently added was also one of these early Pr. 24 interpretations
The truly insane part in all of this, is that some countries are rumored to once again be designed Battleship proposals to see if modern and more importantly upcoming technology may render them useful once again for primarily long range bombardment and anti-ship shelling. So a new updated video of those designs in a couple of decades (or however long it takes the naval boards to swallow their potential embarrassment) would be interesting to say the least.
Which ones? Chad?
@@BishopStars Your Mom.
It would have been so interesting to see one or two Sovetsky Soyuz completed, joined by another class of British and American battleships.
I love all the never built designs. Nothing is ever wrong with them. They never get budget cut. And they are often pie in the sky pipe dreams.
Speaking of the Kentucky I served on the USS Sacramento AOE1 which was laid down in 1961 she received 2 of the Kentucky's turbine sets and boilers and her sister ship USS Camden received the other two . I understand her bow was used to repair the Wisconsin bow that had been damaged in a 1956 collision with the destroyer Eaton. Scuttlebutt had it that the Camden also got her keel????
There is a 1:700 scale model available of AOE-1 SACRAMENTO & one of her sisters. Trumpeter makes it- and there are also some very nice aftermarket brass photo etch sets made specificly for those kits, to dress them up, big time, in terms of details & accuracy....
🚬😎👍
the music on this always gets my heart pumping
OMG...I love the incredulous sarcasm in your voice, when you're describing some of these outlandish designs & the nonsensical decision making behind them. The hilarity made my day!
3 of my favorites are Alaska class Baltimore and dea moines class cruisers and fletcher destroyers. I wish i was alive back then to see them working when they were new. Its amazing what we accomplished making amazing ships like that with no computers to use for designing. I think one of the best naval break throughs was the radar guiding for shells. B4 we had radar for help with aiming it was alot harder im sure. Having to lead the target also dealing with your speed and also the waves bobbing the ship up and down
It was an absolute tragedy no Alaska class was preserved. They were beautiful battlecruisers
14:35 there is in fact not a link in the description below to the 8 inch autoloader iowa design video
you have taken the run-on sentence to a new level.
Yeah, after the war, we, we got a little excited about the whole, Unleashing the sun thing....and well, we got a little carried away with the "Everythings a nuke launcher or a Nuke needing a launcher" thing and...Just wanna say our bad for what im sure was probably a terrifying period of time for the rest of the world.... :D ahhhh, memories
Honestly part of me wonders what a 'modern' battleship would look like. Make something carrier sized, put a reactor in it, and festoon it with STA missiles and tomahawk-type stuff for shore bombardment roles and just make it a "you don't get to exist here" platform for things like submarines and aircraft. No idea if that would be viable *at all* but it does make me wonder, at least.
I suspect the modern BB would take inspiration from Monitors.
Kind of like what would a modern biplane look like.
42:00 sounds like someone twirled their mustache, dusted off a Tillman design, relabeled it USS Iowa, & handed it off to the KGB, & laughed heartily afterwards.😅
'That underwater fisticuffs would resolve the situation in his favor.'
I love you, Drach.
Where or how you come up with this stuff....
After this video, I have a newfound appreciation for HMS Lion as implemented in World of Warships. It could have been so much worse...
Mark 1 Human Eye XD hahah, Drach never fails to amaze
Canned Sunshine is the perfect description of nuclear weapons.
Nicely done, Drach.
Comrade Captain! NKVD is now reporting the Iowa class is armed with bald eagles trained to attack ships radar and rangefinding equipment! STAVKA demands a counter to this!
I choose MAD. If you're going to go for the kill, go for the overkill.
Imagine putting all these designers in a room with computers with Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts and letting them have a tournament of some sorts...
2 things .
1. If anyone is interested in ships and shipping, check out Ocean Liner Design . He's just dropped a video about the ship accident .
2. The flashes from the bridge are the HT power cable that run across the bridge. It's these that are arcing, causing the flashing. Anyone who's seen an HT power cable fail and arc its quite spectacular. No explosions.
Im so grateful that you have an amazing catalog of videos. I love naval history and you do such a great job teaching people about naval history. I appreciate your time and effort on every video 👍
To be fair to the designers -- at least the US and British designers--at least some of the more ridiculous concepts were deliberately intended to prove why they were ridiculous to the sort of well-meaning people who start sentences with "Why don't you just..."
Soviet silliness never surprises me, but it is a bit surprising that the Royal Navy persisted in their battleship fantasies long after their obsolescence should have been obvious.
It also strikes me that some of those ridiculous concepts might’ve been engineered to give the Soviet intelligence agencies something to keep them occupied.
Given that all major WWII powers built or (for the USSR) tried to build battleships that should never have existed, it’s not really surprising.
😂 Great video, Drach! I was grinning from ear-to-ear for almost the entire time.. 😂
Thanks Drach for covering this subject. It’s been a question of mine for a very long time.
Your droll, yet humorous presentation is top notch. thumbs up
It seems that Fisher was right after all Fast ships; in essence battlecruisers which is what the Iowas are if one accepts that the battleship variant is the Montanas which is obvious given the battlecruiser system of one less turret and lighter armour as the price of speed supporting or supported by aircraft carriers(the aviation ships from Beardmore Fisher was so keen on)that could drive off cruisers and inconvenience heavier ships enough to allow the carriers to escape allowing strikes anywhere with the use of submarines to keep most heavy units in port. This would seem the basis of most modern fleet doctrines
The issue is that concept didn’t end up working out as it turned out you didn’t really need a fast big-gun capital ship to defend carriers from enemy fast big-gun capital ships, and that big-gun capital ships couldn’t fight alongside carriers even if they could keep up simply because of the range difference.
29:35 "taken out the back and sectioned" 😂
For those listeners outside of the UK, to be sectioned means being locked up in a mental health establishment by either the Police or a suitable doctor. This is done on their own judgement for the protection of both the individual or the general populous for such time as till you are deemed sane and safe.
Oh so not to be confused with drawn and quartered?
When you started talking about the guns that could fire nuclear shells I started singing Davy Crockett.
"Davey Crockett with nails taped on the outside." And with that phrase I have my next tattoo idea!!!
The photo of what l believe is Wisconsin moored next to the raised hull of Oklahoma speaks by volumes.
Battledhips post WWll certainly could have been improved but would still have been vunerable to not only aircraft but the pace of technology. Improved ordinance. Homing torpedoes. Attack aircraft operating at higher speeds. And ultimately nuclear weapons. Their time as naval offensive weapons against naval targets had passed. Their employment against land targets as artillery platforms could be performed by smaller ships and they would always be range limited.
Yet Ronnie did not want to give up his big boats! My understanding of the interaction of 16" guns and modern devices should have seen the battleships quietly put back into mothballs as soon as the first test firing showed the problems.
@@John.0z It is only a matter of time until someone builds a new version of monitor :D
@@NashmanNash You are probably right.
The Zumwalt class is something of a throwback to Olympia, so the process is underway.
With what is happening in Ukraine now it seems that there will be a lot of re-thinking in all branches of the military.
That all said, today, the Battleship does look like a good idea. Thanks to recent developments such as VLS Missiles and SeaRam. The lines would be a lot cleaner.
Plus, it's not like we're not already heading that direction. Could you imagine someone trying to explain away a 22,000-ton Destroyer? I know I can't. And if you're going to have Cruisers again, you're going to want Battleships, too. Because try explaining away a 55,000-ton Cruiser? I know I can't.
I love the comment about the NC and Nimitz at 15:50