The Drydock - Episode 045
Added 2019-06-08 09:00:59 +0000 UTC
Comments
Worst ships; Preston:Couple of interesting points on this discourse: HMS Hood; My uncle served as a medical officer on Hood before its demise (fortunately transferred to Port Elizabeth), his memories of the ship was of the largest submarine ever built as the aft mess decks were constantly wet or damp and the crew level of health was notoriously bad in peace time let alone on a war footing and one of the parts of protection was to keep the crew healthy and fit to fight, this the design failed to do with the changes made before launch. My uncle despaired of keeping the crew fit, it was one of the worst ships in the RN for sea keeping. Alpha class submarines; really the Soviet/Russian submarines have one basic design problem which over shadows the rest and that is the design and safety of their reactors (seagoing Chernobyls) but the Alpha class had one additional reactor feature that was problematic on land let alone at sea - the reactors were liquid sodium cooled and as with peroxide power, seawater and liquid sodium do not mix especially when the design, bad build and penny pinching (to make up for titanium cost ) left the separation and contamination safety very much lacking; Russian submariners had notoriously short life expectancy when serving on nuclear boats - Alpha class certainly on general and crew safety was one of the worst submarines ever to be in operation. Regards
John Hargreaves
2019-06-12 12:25:42 +0000 UTCDrydock Ep. 45: In addition to your answer to the German industry in 1910 -1918 and bearing on the cordite answer; the German chemical industry at this time was more capable and larger than the UK and this enabled the cordite in the Grand Fleet to be better than RN (a lot more stable) and contained better as well as explosive charges within shells and their detonators to be more reliable. This caused the effect of the cordite issue and storage to be a bigger difference in battle till the UK improved design.
John Hargreaves
2019-06-08 11:41:40 +0000 UTC
