The Drydock - Episode 317 (Part 2)

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:27 - How did Von der Tann manage to hit and destroy Indefatigable so quickly?

00:05:36 - If modern combustible case ammunition (like what we see on some attack aircraft) technology was made available and practical for naval caliber guns just after WWI, what would the likely impacts be on autoloader technology as it was being developed.

00:08:10 - What are some great naval examples of someone just saying 'no' to the best laid plans of their opposition?

00:14:24 - Could you, please, briefly review the four major Pacific carrier battles of 1942? At least for me, Coral Sea and Midway are more ingrained into the collective unconscious, however the second two battles, Santa Cruz and Eastern Solomons are less familiar.

00:19:23 - Could the Italians have successfully invaded Malta during WWII

00:23:02 - When Winston Churchill wrote his book about WW1, a scenario that he seems to have worried about a lot is the High Seas Fleet attacking the British troop convoys in the opening days of the war, and it seems that Tirpitz also thought post-war that this would have been their least-bad chance. How would it likely have gone for the German fleet if they'd tried this?

00:29:47 - How much HP to get QE up to her design speed?

00:36:00 - With hindsight, what was the last battleship that was "worth the cost" to build for its navy?

00:43:24 - What made the Scharnhorst's guns better than the Deutschlands?

00:46:36 - After the Soviet Union was established, did Japan's naval developments impact Soviet naval shipbuilding/warship design, especially when it came to the Soviet Pacific fleet?

00:49:20 - Regarding the formation of the Italian navy from the various naval traditions across Italy, were fleets and minor navies just gobbled up from the various Italian states?

00:51:06 - Battle of Cape St Vincent and the Levantar wind?

00:56:09 - Did any of the navies during the timeframe of the channel ever experiment with magnetic or other proximity fuses for depth charges?

01:03:40 - What is your take on Myers' argument that the defeat of Japan was not inevitable and that with a couple of smaller changes a different outcome would have resulted, such as a negotiated settlement?

01:12:15 - Enemy warships on display after a war?

01:14:50 - Nitro-boosted engines?

01:17:25 - Why in so many sources are Japanese Daihatsu-class landing craft referred to as "barges"?

01:19:31 - 'A Triple-F' or, 'Aqueous Film Forming Foam' has been a staple of DC Lockers in the US Navy for many decades. Who actually came up with the idea of fighting fires with soap and how did (if it did) spread to other navies?

01:23:38 - With hindsight: what could the USN have done better in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor in terms of recovery and repair?

01:27:37 - Cost of a drydock vs the cost of a battleship?

01:34:49 - Did the UK purchase merchant ships in WW2 to replace losses?

01:38:14 - British 74 vs French 80 gun ship of the line?

01:45:20 - Which WW1 capital ship would be most useful to the Germans if modernised for WW2?

01:50:11 - WW2 Japanese IR homing missiles?

01:52:45 - During the late 18th and early 19th century, the South China Sea harboured some of the largest pirate fleets in history, with crew numbers going into the tens of thousands, yet European Naval presence seems to have been quite limited. Why is that?

01:56:47 - What properties exactly ensure that “big” ships cope better with bad weather?

02:03:09 - Just how massive an advantage did geography grant to the US in the Pacific War?

02:10:29 - Obsolete weapons used during WW2?

02:13:12 - Carrier air group manpower requirements?

02:15:24 - A prominent returning theme of the channel is the lost opportunities caused by the treasury limiting naval spending. Are there any times, in your opinion, when the naval budget of the United Kingdom was too high? Particularly when there were other pressing non-defense budgetary priorities of the nation?

02:19:50 - How are the blocking plans for dry docking damaged ships amended?