The Drydock - Episode 207
Added 2022-07-22 18:00:06 +0000 UTC
Comments
Here's a suggestion you should like: Why don't you do an episode on the USS Gambier Bay? Since the ship's career was so short, it only had one air group so you can cover both ship and air group pretty easily. There's an entertaining book on the subject, "The Men of the Gambier Bay" by Edwin P. Hoyt. It isn't perfect (it suggests that the ship was built at Kaiser's Swan Island Shipyard when it was actually build, I believe, at the Vancouver Shipyard), but it does tell a great story.
Ted Jones
2022-07-26 06:25:15 +0000 UTCWhen your combined enemies can out produce you 10:1 (or more) you are in a box. If you inherently possess excellent engineering prowess (which Germany did/does), your choice is sort of made for you. You must design solutions that provide your military with cutting edge systems that provide a force multiplier and, critically, it must be done relatively quickly. Thus we have Panther, Tiger I/II, Panzerfaust, V-1, V-2, Me-262, Me-163, Dornier Do-335, Horton Ho-229, Silbervogel (never completed but fascinating for the time period), StG-44, Type XXIII Electroboot, infrared weapon sights (Vampyr), Henschel-293, Fritx-X, V-3 cannon (Vergeltungswaffe 3). Alas, combined with fighting a full out war with technologically adept enemies ( U.K. & U.S.) with far more production capacities it was simply not enough. Still, IMO, from an engineering and scientific perspective, highly impressive.
Capitano Lorenzo
2022-07-25 19:16:59 +0000 UTCI would like to express my gratitude for your explanation of the difference between the difficulties when commanding ground and seafaring forces. It actually adds a lot to your answer about the impact revolutions have on corresponding navies. Believe it or not, being your viewer I am still dumb enough to not understand it. Maybe I can partially explain it by being born in Siberia, seeing the sea only several times in my life, and in general not understanding this whole maritime culture.
Robert Socal
2022-07-24 17:22:43 +0000 UTCPolitical and engineering pragmatism, I think it may be described as a level of "common sense" which brings decision makers "down to earth" and engender a form of lateral thinking creating what will work in all areas of operation not just the immediate goal by reiterative review such as the fell gate process to ensure the design process sees the way forward to achieve fitness for purpose in all the aspects of use.
John Hargreaves
2022-07-23 15:47:41 +0000 UTCInteresting. Would you say that "perfect being the enemy of good enough" is a common failure in any organization that subscribes to the "quality over quantity" doctrine? How would you mitigate that?
John McDonough
2022-07-23 13:27:11 +0000 UTCThe Germans have always even now gone the route of theoretical complexity leading to in the initial trials practical difficulties and also have the tendency to try and make the perfect solution from the get go rather than the US/UK of less perfect philosophy but creating incremental improvement during trails and testing. The Germans have also come up with highly complex and difficult to service providing machinery which in war time will be better but causes so many issues in service causes little room for redundancy. This is particularly shown in big battle tanks both costly to build and to service; they give 100% when working but are not working half the time - the T34 and Sherman were only 80% effective but could work most of the time and were quicker an less costly to service for the logistics chain and they could be made so quickly with less skills of production. The design philosophy in ships was the same but without the institutional knowledge created ships of lower engineering efficiency and overly complex systems that failed under high stress situations. Regards
John Hargreaves
2022-07-23 11:39:52 +0000 UTCThanks
Clayton Bradish
2022-07-23 00:38:27 +0000 UTCPer Dunnigan and Nofi in "Dirty Little Secrets of World War II" (1994-pages 317-318), it was a tie between Haruna and Enterprise at 6 each. However, the all time all time record holder is USS Tang at no fewer than 25 times reported sunk before it finally really happened.
John McDonough
2022-07-22 20:57:46 +0000 UTC
