Coulsdon Eagle
Monthly Donor
Armoured cruiser HMS Natal in Cromarty Firth - 30 December 1915 - 390 naval casualties + some of the officers' wives & children.
McPherson
Banned
From my own research, the IJN from the Russo-Japanese War (4 main armament gun incidents of burst barrels and gunhouse fires on their British built battleships, which is surprisingly similar to incidents aboard British battlecruisers in WWI.) This carries into WWII where US munitions, which should not have had the devastating effects they did, blew up Japanese battleships like they had no protection scheme at all. Note this was sloppy crew training combined with very touchy Shimtose explosive which was very similar to British nitro-powders of the era. Also the hoist system in use by the IJN and RN was shockingly vulnerable to an explosion and fire train down to the magazines. Anything that punched into the citadel and started a fire that was not flooded out o0r any magazine fire not contained was a loss of the ship. Hiei, Kirishima, Mutsu (electric fire in the hoist burned back down to the powder handling room, Musashi, Yamato, Fuso, Yamashiro. Even Kongo gets hers that way.
So, the lesson learned, is that unless one is careful and arduous in training as well as careful in stowage of explosives and design of the fighting platform, one is going to have a variation on the Hood, Yamato, Arizona, theme?
McPherson
Banned
He was. He shouted down Beatty.
Fiske was "diplomatic" (I.e. he knew where the bodies were buried.)
Maybe. Been reading my timeline? They should have won the Span_Am War. I'm trying to explain how they lost.
It’s on the (very long) list of timelines I’m planning to read at some point.
McPherson
Banned
The Japanese board of inquiry.... was a mess.
I think the "Japanese sailor was smoking in the vicinity of exposed and overage propellant bagged charges" is as valid as any I can entertain. San Shiki "shells" could not have been the cause if the first detonation was in the powder handling room and traveled into the adjacent magazine. Can one explain how the bursting charge in San Shiki shell BURNS? The expulsion charge that shot-gunned the WP rods was SEALED and had to be activated by an igniter charge after being thrown from the gun tube. When ignited in trajectory after a clock unlocked the fuse, that charge exploded the rods out like a giant shotgun shell.
Hence I think bagged propellent cooked off and something like a none enemy induced action Queen Mary cordite-like fire in the powder room and thence the magazine.
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"A later investigation by divers found that the third main gun turret and its barbette had been separated from the hull and was damaged. This discovery served to confirm the assumption that the explosion had taken place in the powder magazine below No 3 main gun turret. However, the true cause of the explosion could not be established and is still unknown; again, arson or decomposition of the propellant were suspected."
OK. That's what thought I recalled reading, but I wasn't sure if there had been any recent developments.
Whatever it was - arson, careless smoker, propellant decomposition - it was a failing that did as much damage to the IJN in an instant as Ching Lee did at Gaudalcanal. Woof.
Of course, the USN had its own kabooms. The West Loch disaster knocked out as much raw tonnage as the Mutsu explosion did, and wiped out 17 LVT's into the bargain. But the difference, of course, was that the United States could make good its losses; Japan could not. West Loch set back Operation FORAGER by only a single day!
McPherson
Banned
Dropping a LIVE mortar round on its nose amidst pallets of leaking gasoline cans is about as stupid as it comes. The Board of Inquiry is not about to report THAT THE NAVY was to blame to the American taxpayer, for it was determined that the ARMY racist personnel policies of the time of overworking untrained or inadequately trained soldiers as laborers and ersatz stevedores because they were deemed "unfit" for other service due to their skin color and not worth the time and effort to train to the acceptable standard or be provided the leadership support and safety protocols that the rest of the American ARMY expected and earned.
That was one time the USN was not at fault. And of course the Board of Inquiry was very HAPPY to point the finger at the US Army.
There has to be a certain allowance for human stupidity, fatigue in any weapons system, and with as many weapons as were being shipped into the Pacific in 1942-45, maybe the wonder is that there were not more accidents.
(Speaking of human stupidity, it remains the case that the Navy still suffers expensively from its effects
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Still, it is also true that they greatly revised munitions loading and handling procedures after the West Loch investigation . . . desegregation would have to wait a few more years, alas.
Why the hell did the thing have a fuse in it? I thought they were meant to be installed JUST PRIOR to being fired.
A fun question came up in Drachinifel's last Drydock, by the way, and I am a little surprised to see that I cannot find that it has come up here yet: "Would Germany have been better off building 3 improved Scharnhorst class with the 15” guns than trying to build the 2 Bismarck class and possibly using the spare resources to refit the first 2?"
Drach likes the idea (see the video below for discussion). But not everyone does.
It's not the first time the idea of a modified Scharnhorst with six (2x3) 38 cm SK C/34 naval guns has come up with - as most of us know, that was something Hitler wanted, and had to be talked out of, in 1935.
Would this be a better use of money for the KM than the Bismarcks? My sense is "Probably." But would it really be much of a difference maker? No, probably not. And of course, the refit of the first two Scharnhorsts would not be a simple affair - it would have required extensive changes to the barbettes and bow structure - and worse, it would be coming during the most critical years of the war.
Video cued to timestamp:
Drach likes the idea (see the video below for discussion). But not everyone does.
It's not the first time the idea of a modified Scharnhorst with six (2x3) 38 cm SK C/34 naval guns has come up with - as most of us know, that was something Hitler wanted, and had to be talked out of, in 1935.
Would this be a better use of money for the KM than the Bismarcks? My sense is "Probably." But would it really be much of a difference maker? No, probably not. And of course, the refit of the first two Scharnhorsts would not be a simple affair - it would have required extensive changes to the barbettes and bow structure - and worse, it would be coming during the most critical years of the war.
Video cued to timestamp:
McPherson
Banned
There has to be a certain allowance for human stupidity, fatigue in any weapons system, and with as many weapons as were being shipped into the Pacific in 1942-45, maybe the wonder is that there were not more accidents.
(Speaking of human stupidity, it remains the case that the Navy still suffers expensively from its effects
Still, it is also true that they greatly revised munitions loading and handling procedures after the West Loch investigation . . . desegregation would have to wait a few more years, alas.
There is hope...
(^^^) shows the USN will fight to the death to save their ships. It is good to know that the spirit of their grandfathers still is inside American sailors.
McPherson
Banned
It is the US Army, not the Marine Corps. How the hello should I know why the thing had its fuse screwed in? I've blanched in fear watching US soldiers monkey with ordnance they did not understand very recently. This is not restricted to one nation or one service, either. Practically not a week goes by, where I read, hear or SEE from a human factors standpoint; some poorly trained or poorly supervised or some overconfident and careless human being somewhere has initiated an accident chain that caused loss of lives and hundreds to millions of dollars worth of damage, loss of time and equipment to a military service somewhere.
Stupidity and carelessness is in all too common supply; then and now..
Wasn't enough to save the ship at the end of the day, but I agree just the same.
And that kind of mindset could be a difference maker if this kind of thing happened during combat ops - it could save a lot of lives and equipment, even if (as here) the ship is determined to be a constructive loss.
Part of the problem, too, is the lack of dockyard space left to do this kind of work in the United States, and that contributed to the decision to scrap Bonhomme Richard. We've lost so much of our capacity over the last few decades.
Even if there was yard space I doubt she would have been value for money to repair given the scale of the damage.
First of all that's Drydock 51 rather than 151 (the latest) so it's 100 weeks old.A fun question came up in Drachinifel's last Drydock, by the way, and I am a little surprised to see that I cannot find that it has come up here yet: "Would Germany have been better off building 3 improved Scharnhorst class with the 15” guns than trying to build the 2 Bismarck class and possibly using the spare resources to refit the first 2?"
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Drach likes the idea (see the video below for discussion). But not everyone does.
It's not the first time the idea of a modified Scharnhorst with six (2x3) 38 cm SK C/34 naval guns has come up with - as most of us know, that was something Hitler wanted, and had to be talked out of, in 1935.
Would this be a better use of money for the KM than the Bismarcks? My sense is "Probably." But would it really be much of a difference maker? No, probably not. And of course, the refit of the first two Scharnhorsts would not be a simple affair - it would have required extensive changes to the barbettes and bow structure - and worse, it would be coming during the most critical years of the war.
Video cued to timestamp:
Secondly I suspect that 3 Scharnhorst might cost more than 2 Bismarcks. Its more guns (18 vs 16) more tonnes (114 vs 102) and much more horse power. (495k shp vs 296k shp). There won't be spare resources to refit the older Scharnhorst. To be honest it might cost a cruiser or two in addition to the Bismarcks.
Im not saying it wouldn't be a more efficient way to spend resources. I'd rather two Bismarcks when you are playing keep away in Norwegian fjords but I'd rather 3 Scharnhorsts before USA joins the war and commerce raids can be done.
Probably, but it's hard to say.
Refit and repair would have run $2.5 to $3.2 billion, apparently. A new America-class LHD runs about $4 billion.
But that said, the Navy says the infrastructure issues were part of the decision:
How the the loss of Bonhomme Richard will impact the Navy's operations remains to be seen. The ship was one of eight Wasp class vessels, the service's main type of amphibious assault ship. It also has two new America class amphibious assault ships, as well as a third, the future USS Bougainville, under construction. The Bougainville will be the first example of a distinct subclass, which you can read more about in this past War Zone piece.
In the meantime, the Navy will have to rely on the other seven Wasp class ships, which have the job of moving around Marine Expeditionary Units, sometimes with significant airpower in the form of large detachments of F-35B Joint Strike Fighters. These Amphibious Ready Groups regularly patrol or are otherwise prepositioned around the world, ready to respond to various crises and contingencies on short notice.
Admiral Ver Hage said that this reality was definitely taken into consideration when deciding to scrap Bonhomme Richard, but that there were other concerns about how the expenditure of time and resources to repair that ship might have impacted the Navy's other shipbuilding priorities and other maintenance schedules. The service has been struggling for years now to address significant maintenance backlogs and expand available shipyard infrastructure.
“In the end, the decommissioning decision had a number of factors, and one of which was, what would be the impact of the dollars spent and the actual effort to rebuild, what would be the impact on the industrial base? The dollars definitely would disrupt our strategy for investment," Ver Hage said. "And then from an industrial base perspective, we had concerns that it would impact new construction or other repair work, and we knew that Gulf Coast would be the spot to get the building or the restoration done because of the capacity and their capabilities – but in the end made the decision for multiple factors, as I mentioned, that decommissioning would be the way to go."
Navy Will Spend Around $30 Million To Scrap Fire-Damaged USS Bonhomme Richard
Other options, such as turning it into a hospital ship or a submarine tender, were also considered, but none made sense financially.
www.thedrive.com
Yeah, I realized that right after I posted it, and I was too lazy to go back and edit it. I got my Drydock episodes mixed up in my head - the danger of having too many tabs open! My bad. Thanks for catching that.
Hard to say on the costs without investigating it much more closely, It's *possible* it could be cheaper, but then, maybe not. I'd also have to look at the use of the exact slipways we would be using (obviously, two would be the Bismarck and Tirpitz slipways at Hamburg and Wilhelmshaven) and what impact that would have on cruiser construction.
I do tend to agree that a refit of the first two Scharnhorsts may not make sense. The yards are more urgently needed, and the KM really can't afford to take one out of active service for that long in the middle of the war. They ain't the U.S. Navy.
I suppose...the advantage is that having five battleships gives the KM more flexibility and operational depth than four battleships do; and even if a 15" gunned Scharnhorst is not quite as scary as a Bismarck, a KM with five big ships might make it even harder for the Royal Navy to divert as many capital ships as it would like to the Med. Also, frankly, while the Scharnhorsts certainly have their weaknesses, I think they were still a sounder basic design than the Bismarcks, for what they were. (They'd probably lose a knot or two with the bigger guns, though.)
In the end, as I say, it wouldn't make much difference in terms of what the KM can do for the German war effort. Still, I suppose Drach might be right that it would be a marginally better use of German resources. At least, I am open to the argument.
Probably, but it's hard to say.
Refit and repair would have run $2.5 to $3.2 billion, apparently. A new America-class LHD runs about $4 billion.
But that said, the Navy says the infrastructure issues were part of the decision:
How the the loss of Bonhomme Richard will impact the Navy's operations remains to be seen. The ship was one of eight Wasp class vessels, the service's main type of amphibious assault ship. It also has two new America class amphibious assault ships, as well as a third, the future USS Bougainville, under construction. The Bougainville will be the first example of a distinct subclass, which you can read more about in this past War Zone piece.In the meantime, the Navy will have to rely on the other seven Wasp class ships, which have the job of moving around Marine Expeditionary Units, sometimes with significant airpower in the form of large detachments of F-35B Joint Strike Fighters. These Amphibious Ready Groups regularly patrol or are otherwise prepositioned around the world, ready to respond to various crises and contingencies on short notice.Admiral Ver Hage said that this reality was definitely taken into consideration when deciding to scrap Bonhomme Richard, but that there were other concerns about how the expenditure of time and resources to repair that ship might have impacted the Navy's other shipbuilding priorities and other maintenance schedules. The service has been struggling for years now to address significant maintenance backlogs and expand available shipyard infrastructure.“In the end, the decommissioning decision had a number of factors, and one of which was, what would be the impact of the dollars spent and the actual effort to rebuild, what would be the impact on the industrial base? The dollars definitely would disrupt our strategy for investment," Ver Hage said. "And then from an industrial base perspective, we had concerns that it would impact new construction or other repair work, and we knew that Gulf Coast would be the spot to get the building or the restoration done because of the capacity and their capabilities – but in the end made the decision for multiple factors, as I mentioned, that decommissioning would be the way to go."
Navy Will Spend Around $30 Million To Scrap Fire-Damaged USS Bonhomme Richard
Other options, such as turning it into a hospital ship or a submarine tender, were also considered, but none made sense financially.
Is a scrapping really cheaper then a Sink Ex?